Purging your House

And last Sunday, I started a series in preparation

for our revival called Road to Revival.

And today I have a very important, very powerful word

that God has placed in my heart.

If you weren't here last Sunday, please,

you can go back and watch the broadcast.

But we're looking at Genesis chapter 35 and verse one,

Genesis 35 · chapter mention

and we're gonna read this and then we're gonna pray.

But Genesis chapter 35 verse one, a lot to cover today.

Genesis 35 · chapter mention

And I know today is like a big sports day and all that,

but we're here for a very important purpose, amen.

So I just need to give you what God has given me

and let everything else worry about itself, amen, amen.

The word of the Lord says this,

then God said to Jacob, arise, everyone say arise.

Go up to Bethel and dwell there

and make an altar there to God who appeared to you

when you fled from the face of Esau, your brother.

And Jacob said to his household

and to all who were with him,

put away the foreign gods that are among you,

purify yourselves and change your garments.

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel.

And I will make an altar there to God.

You see, you can't just make an altar

just because you wanna make one.

There are some steps you gotta take and he showed us.

Then I will make an altar there to God

who answered to me in the day of my distress

and has been with me in the way which I have gone.

Verse four, so they gave Jacob all the foreign gods

which were in their hands

and the earrings which were in their ears

and Jacob hid them under the terrible tree

which was by Shechem.

Today, with the help of the Holy Ghost,

with God's wisdom, I'm gonna preach this message

to you today, church, purging your house,

purging your house.

I'm gonna invite you, why don't we pray once again?

We're just gonna ask God specifically

to speak to us individually as a church.

Father, we love you, we thank you

for your presence that is here,

for moving in a special and powerful way of God already,

but now the time has come for us to receive your word.

And I ask, Lord, that you would anoint the hearing

of all who are here today

to receive this word with gladness.

God, let the seed of this word penetrate

into the deepest places of our hearts, God.

And then I pray, God, that you would confirm your word

with signs today.

Lord, anoint my lips of clay, God.

Let it be your wisdom and not mine.

Father, in Jesus' name, we pray.

Everyone say amen.

Why don't we clap our hands one more time, amen?

Amen.

Thank you, praise God.

Last Sunday, we left off with God calling Jacob back

to Bethel and how he got delayed

in a place called Shechem, a place in the middle

between where God had called him

and where he was still going

between his past and his future.

But now it was the time for Jacob to move on.

And before he could, before he could,

he had to purge their house.

I don't know if you have ever moved or relocated,

which I've done more times than I care to have,

but whenever you do, whenever you move,

whenever you relocate, one of the things

it forces you to do is to have to purge all of your stuff.

It forces you to go through your things

and sometimes one by one, you have to ask yourself

this very important question, do I need this?

Amen somebody.

Do I need this?

Because you'd be surprised the kinds of things

that we accumulate over time

and sometimes without even our being aware of it,

there are things that are just there

that are gathering up.

You don't realize, you really don't.

You really don't realize how much stuff you have

until it's time to move.

Amen somebody.

Until you have to pack up that U-Haul

and you go, you know, we've got too much stuff

to fit in there and so we're gonna have

to downsize some of the things that we have, amen.

And you don't really realize until you have to purge

and it's the same in the Spirit.

It's the same in the Spirit.

To reach revival, we need to purge things in our homes,

but can I tell you that you don't really realize

what you have, what you've been holding onto,

what's been lurking in your house

until God is calling you to move on.

And then when you decide, now is the time I'm ready

to take that next step forward in God.

I wanna get closer to him.

I want more of his presence.

I want more of what he has and I wanna go deeper with God.

I want revival.

When you make up in your mind that that's what you want,

all of a sudden, you start to realize the things

that you've been holding onto or that have been holding

onto you that you need to let go of.

Who's gonna preach with me here today, amen.

And Jacob had allowed some things to creep into his home

while he was delayed in that middle place of Shechem.

And sadly, his hesitation cost him dearly

because he didn't deal with these things properly

and acutely, it hurt him and it hurt his family.

I don't have a lot of time to preach

on what I'm about to share with you,

but I feel this necessary in the lane of my foundation today

to visit this very painful part of his life.

In Genesis 34, it records how Jacob's daughter

got entangled with the wrong people

while he was settled in that middle place,

not Bethel, but that middle place of Shechem.

Bible reason, verses one and two.

Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah,

whom she had born to Jacob went out to see

the daughters of the land.

When Shechem the son of Hamar the Hivite,

prince of the country, saw her, he took her

and lay with her and violated her.

Now this is a very unfortunate and dark portion

of scripture because we see that injustice was done

to this poor young lady.

But the truth is that Dinah was so close

to these other cultures, these other nations of people

that what she wanted to do was experiment

with their way of life.

She saw the surrounding nations

and because they were so close to them,

she wanted to blend in and experience.

And so scripture says that she went out to see

the daughters of the land.

Now we don't know the details of what that means,

but probably it means she just wanted to go out

and get closer to them to check out

what the latest trends were, what the fashions were,

what the ways of the culture were and get closer to them.

And so what happened to her was very tragic

and it's inexcusable.

But the real blame for her being violated,

this very disturbing incident in her life,

the real blame lies and falls on Jacob

for settling his family in the middle.

The real blame for this lies on Jacob who,

instead of going all the way where God had called them

to go, settled there and put his family at risk.

He compromised and put his family at risk.

He wasn't all the way in, he wasn't all the way out.

He was just close enough to the world

to where his own family got caught up with the wrong people.

And this incident, it led to great conflict,

it led to bloodshed because what ended up happening

is that Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi

decided to avenge their sister's violation

by going out and killing all of the men of Shechem

because they had violated her.

And so they went out into the land.

You could read all of the interesting details in the Bible,

but they went out and they took revenge.

Now, how many of you all know that two wrongs don't make a right?

And so God never told these men to go out

and avenge their sister the way they did, but they did.

Their flesh got the best of them.

And so what we see in the life of Jacob is that

when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

And now he's in trouble.

Tragedy has struck his house and things have run amok.

And so he begins to understand now the consequences

of not standing firm in where God had called him to be.

Now he's starting to deal with the very real consequences

of not going all the way with God,

but settling in this place of compromise.

And what this shows us, church,

is that this often told proverb,

which is that what one generation does in moderation,

the next does in excess.

What we tolerate, let me put it to you this way,

what we tolerate in our homes today

will be embraced by our children tomorrow.

Now maybe Jacob didn't go all the way into Shechem

and do the things that got his daughter into trouble

and got her into the wrong hands with the wrong people.

Maybe Jacob settled on the outskirts,

but his daughter went a step further

and she went all the way.

And I wanna tell somebody from the onset of this message,

and this is a very key point,

and everything that is going to be shared

from this pulpit today and throughout this series

is that we cannot afford to settle anywhere else

than Bethel, the prescribed place

that God has called us to be as apostolic people.

Can you clap your hands and give God some praise today?

Amen, somebody.

You say, why Pastor Jacob?

Because the risk is not worth it.

And what we do in moderation, you say,

well, I don't have a problem.

I know where to draw the line.

Well, good for you.

What about your children?

Yo, so maybe it didn't catch you,

and maybe you didn't get bit by the bug,

or maybe you know how, maybe you know how to turn it on

and turn it off, but your children may not be able to.

And so the actions and the decisions that we take

will affect the next generation.

And unfortunately, Jacob had to learn the hard way

with the fact that his family got caught up into trouble,

and now he is realizing that he has allowed things

to fester on too long in his life.

And so heeding the call of God to go back to revival,

back to the basics, back to God's word,

back to the things that are sacred and holy and true,

and back to Bethel, the house of God.

Now that Jacob realizes this is what he must do,

he cannot just embark out there.

He cannot just pack the bags and hit the road.

There are some things now that he's got to deal with.

There are some skeletons in the closet, so to speak.

There are some issues that need to be laid bare.

There are some things that need to be brought

to the surface and into the light.

And so what Jacob now begins to see is what we all,

and I say all very respectfully

because this is for everybody today.

We need to allow ourselves to come under the microscope

of God so that he can inspect our lives

and see what have you been hiding under there.

You can fool the pastor, you can even fool your spouse

and your family members.

You can fool a lot of people, but you can't fool God.

He's got x-ray vision.

He's got MRI vision.

He can see all the things that we've been hiding.

And he looks at Jacob, and Jacob felt conviction.

He realized if I'm gonna get back to Bethel,

I need to get my heart right.

I need to deal with the things that I have not been dealing

with, the stuff that I've been sweeping under the rug,

the things that I just keep turning a blind eye to.

And then yes, oh, I might feel a little bit

of God's presence, and I might clap my hand,

and I might stop my feet and feel this

and feel a little bit of that.

But there are some things in my life

that have been holding me back.

And the first thing that we've got to deal with

in our lives today, I feel the Holy Ghost today,

is we've got to remove our idols.

Remove our idols.

In verse two, it says, and Jacob said to his household

and all who were with him, put away,

someone say put away.

Put away the foreign gods that are among you.

Put them away.

Jacob knew that these idols were going to prevent him

from reaching the house of God,

from reaching revival, from reaching Bethel.

Now in today's terms, idols are not merely shrines

made of stone and gold.

We think of idols sometimes where our minds

immediately think of man-made altars

and the physical objects that can take place in our life

that we worship, that we enshrine in our lives,

that we see in other religions and other false religions.

But those are not the only types of idols

that can occupy our life.

There are other idols.

There are other things that can come into our lives.

In today's terms, anything, anything, hear me,

anything can become an idol.

Anything can become an idol.

How do I say that?

And why is that true?

Because an idol is anything that you worship,

that you elevate or watch this,

that controls you in some way.

If it's not the Holy Ghost, it's an idol

if it's controlling you in some way.

You know that an attitude can become an idol.

You know that an opinion can become an idol.

You know that an emotion can become an idol.

Anything, even your own, your pride, your own righteousness,

anything can become an idol if it takes the place of God

by controlling your attitude, your actions, your life.

And so the real question I've got to ask today

that as we look upon this scripture,

the real question is, is where did Jacob get these idols from?

It wasn't like these idols glued legs

and just walked into his house.

Where did they come from?

How did they get there?

How did they arrive?

Where did they, did they just go to the local idol dealer?

Did they get them on eBay, Amazon?

How did they get these things into their lives?

And the answer is a three-part answer.

Let me break this down for you in this next slide.

Let me show you that these things that have a way,

oh my God, they have a way of life.

Oh my God, they have a way of creeping into our lives.

I'm gonna put it all up there for you.

There's a three-part answer to how these idols

made their way into Jacob's life.

There wasn't just one, there were many of them.

The first we see is through Laban's household.

Now, once again, Laban was his father-in-law.

Rachel, the Bible tells us in Genesis 31 and verse 19,

stole her father's household idols.

As they were leaving Huron,

she went into her father's house,

and I don't know if he had a special room somewhere

or he had them in lock and key,

but she went in there and she stole the household idols

that belonged to her God.

And so what you might call these, if I could,

if I could label them, these are those hand-me-down issues,

those hand-me-down gods with the little G,

those hand-me-down idols that get passed down

from one generation to the next.

You see, there's one way that an idol,

whatever that idol is, whether it's physical,

metaphysical, spiritual, or even ideological,

that idols can get passed down.

They can creep into our lives when they get passed down

from one generation to the next generation.

They get passed down through the lines of the family,

through the bloodline,

or through the family's cultures and traditions.

They get passed down as they are being repeated

and modeled to the next generation,

as they are being taught about,

as they are being spoken about,

and they are carried about to the next generation.

And we can carry these things,

we can carry these idols in our life

simply because we inherited them

from someone that came before us in our family tree,

in our family line, somewhere in our past.

And so we have to today, with the help of the Holy Ghost,

ask ourselves what kinds of things

have made their way into our thinking,

into our minds, into our spirits

that we are not even aware of,

that we are not even cognizant of,

that have been passed down and just unbeknownst unto us,

that we are operating with an idol in our life

that has been passed down from generation to generation,

maybe even four, five, six generations in the past

that are still sort of finding this way into our lives today.

And it's those things, my friend,

that can keep you from the blessings

and the promises of revival in your life.

And so today, God's got a big old drill in the Holy Ghost,

and we're gonna drill down deep

into those places of our life and say,

God, if there is anything that has been passed down

in my life that has been blocking me

from stepping into greater glory, Lord,

then I need you, Lord, to help me remove it

and evict it and cancel it out of my life.

Because at some point, it's got to stop.

That curse, that idol, that attitude,

that spirit, at some point, somebody at some point

in the family tree has got to say, it stops with me.

It stops here, whatever that is, whatever that is.

It could even be alcoholism,

it can be any type of problem fix,

or even in our minds, okay.

Another place is their time in Shechem.

Now, I told you, while they were in the middle of God,

in the middle of their will and God's will,

while they were kind of like halfway in,

but sort of like not quite there all the way,

there was a cost for that.

And the Bible says again that Jacob's sons, as I said,

went into the city.

Now, they didn't just kill all the men who were there.

They also plundered the city and they wiped them out.

They took all of their goods, their flock,

and all of their gold and all the spoils,

they took them all,

including the gods that were there, everything.

And so they took all the spoils

and they brought these things with them.

And these things made their way into Jacob's household.

These things made their way into his family,

into his house.

And these are the things,

these are the things that we can accumulate.

And we accumulate these things

through different times in our life.

But generally speaking, they kind of attract themselves

or attach themselves to us during periods

where our discernment is not as sharp as it needs to be,

or we're not completely in obedience,

or we're not completely in or under submission to God

or to the authority that God has in our life.

And so stuff can get attached to us without us knowing,

in the same way that as you're walking around this world,

I'm talking physically with your shoes,

and you don't, how many of you have stepped on a piece

of gum and that you didn't know until you get in your house

or carpet and oh my God, what did I step on?

Amen?

And then you gotta dig that thing out, right?

Or you stepped on something.

I was gonna use another example, but you know.

Woo, my Lord, I remember doing that as a kid

out there playing in the grass

and you track some other stuff in.

Man, I hear some of you moms out there

just had a heart attack when I said that.

Playing with the dogs, you know what I'm saying?

Hallelujah.

You track it in and you don't know

what you've been stepping in.

You don't know, you're just having fun,

living your life and you don't realize the stuff

that's been getting stuck to you.

And sometimes because of all the places we've been going,

all the conversations we, oh my Lord,

all the people we've been talking to

and all the stuff we've been doing,

we've been tracking some things.

And we cannot take that stuff with us

into greater glory, into revival.

And so what we've gotta do is we've got to rid

ourselves of these idols, these things

that have attached them to stuff, stuff that owned us,

stuff that's got its imprint on us.

And then thirdly, Jacob had a big household

of servants and people that were with him

whom he had hired from different,

probably varying neighboring nations

that were with him that he had hired

and they were with him.

And so all these people that were working with him,

that were associated with him,

did you guess what they did?

They brought all their stuff,

they brought their customs with them,

they brought their idols with them.

And so Jacob says, not just to his family,

the Bible says to all who were with them.

He said, this is not just for my wife and my children,

this is for everybody that's associated with me.

But the key point here is that issues can creep

into your life unnoticed simply from being associated

with certain people.

They start to rub off on you.

They're ways.

And all of a sudden you find these idols in your life

that are dominating your thinking.

They're just, where did I get off track?

Could it be the people that you've been associating with?

And so God calls us back to Bethel,

but to get back to Bethel, we've got to remove the idol.

So I say this with all sincerity,

with a lot of respect and love.

This is the pastor's message today,

but if there are idols that are in your life,

if there is idols of worldliness,

if there's idols of secularism,

if there is idols of the world wisdom,

if there are even spiritual idols,

there could be religious idols,

people that we are holding up in our life more than God.

Hallelujah.

If that is the case, hear me in the Holy Ghost,

you've got to rid yourself of those things.

You've got to remove those things from your life

because we are going on from faith to faith

and from glory to glory.

Come on, somebody clap your hands

and let's give God a praise here today.

Somebody shout, hallelujah.

We've got to sanctify ourselves,

purge ourselves of pride, anger, envy,

ungodliness, self-righteousness, sexual impurity,

gossip, and all the works of the flesh

because God's got a way and his way is straight and narrow.

Hallelujah.

We've got to say, my Lord,

there's more I want to say,

but remember where Joshua and the children of Israel

were on the brink of the Jordan,

he tells them before we cross over into the promise,

before we cross over into the land of Canaan,

before we possess the land of milk and honey,

before we do this and God does miracles,

he said, we've got to, he says, sanctify yourselves,

sanctify yourselves and tomorrow the Lord will do wonders.

How many of you want to see the wonders of God among us?

Hallelujah.

I said, how many of you want to see the wonders of God?

I want revival.

I want to see the glory of God.

I want to see the dead risen.

I want to see blind eyes open.

I want to see salvation and miracles.

I want to see that baptism tank get filled up again

and if we're going to see those things,

then the church has got to sanctify itself again

and get these idols out of our life

and sweep our spiritual houses.

It's got to happen in the name of Jesus

and it's not just the removing of idols,

but number two, number two, he said, change your garments.

Someone say change your garments.

Jacob said, put away the foreign gods that are among you.

Purify yourself and change your garments.

Now we see a practical and spiritual application to this.

In a practical sense, we see a scriptural principle

that God indeed, regardless of what the charlatans

would say today, that God indeed cares

about what we put on our bodies.

I thought I was going to get more amen's when I said that.

I said God cares about what we put on our bodies.

Thank you.

He cares about what we wear.

He cares about how we are.

He said, well, why?

Because he created us and our bodies,

once they have been surrendered to God,

we are no longer, our life is not our own.

Now we are temples of the Holy Ghost.

So we see a scriptural principle here that God cares about.

Now I know the PC police are not gonna like me to say this.

You know what that means, the politically correct.

You're not supposed to say that.

The problem is that no one is saying it.

But we need to get back to a place

where God has called the church to be distinct.

Church, where's our distinction?

Where's our distinction?

Where's our distinction?

And where are we at today?

Come on, church, I'm asking someone to look in the mirror

of the spirit today and ask yourself,

where have I allowed myself to go

with the standards of my life and the standard?

You know, we still serve a holy God, somebody.

I say, we still serve a holy God.

Come on, church, we still serve a holy God.

And we've got to get back.

Back to the, not to Pastor Jacob,

not to the apostolic assembly, that's all right.

But back to the Bible and what the word of God says.

Did not the word say, come out from among them

and be shepherds?

Did not the word say that we are a holy nation,

a peculiar people, called out of darkness

into his marvelous life, that we are a chosen generation?

This is what God is saying.

And in a time of disappearing morality

and disappearing a monasty,

God is calling the church to be the church

and say, change back to what I called you to be.

Oh, Pastor, what did you eat this morning?

You're on something, isn't it?

I tell you what, because I care about your soul

and because I wanna see God move

and I believe that God's not gonna move

just because we scheduled the revival in February.

You hear what I'm saying?

He doesn't move just because we scheduled the revival,

we call the preacher.

What's the preacher supposed to come?

To clean up the whole church?

What's he supposed to do?

Take care of your consecration

because we won't get rid of the idols in our life?

No, we gotta get rid of these things now.

We gotta deal with it now, why?

So that when the preacher come,

blessed be the name of the Lord,

God begins to move among us in our midst.

We see the wonders of God

and it's not us here on the altar getting right with God.

Come on now.

This is what it's all about.

And if this is too much for you to handle,

my Lord, hallelujah.

Wait, because there's more coming in Jesus' name.

I gotta be your pastor.

My job is not to be your best friend.

I gotta be your pastor.

I'll be your best friend when we get to heaven.

You're gonna thank me when we get there.

Thank you for preaching the truth.

Praise be to God.

That's what it's all about.

And I'm not afraid to say this,

but in an age, there's a practical principle here

that God cares about what his people look like.

He gave us clear word for men to dress and look like men

and for women to dress and look like women.

Men, oh, hallelujah.

We gotta start looking like men, praise be to God.

Men, it's time to stop shopping at Baby Gap for your clothes.

God help us.

You know, now we got a problem.

It was all like tight, now it's all loose.

My Lord.

We gotta get back to being that difference,

that distinction.

Yes, they're apostolic, they're different.

Look at those people.

They must walk with God.

And not with the sanctimoniousness like,

whoa, look at me, I must be something.

No, it is with humility.

It's with humility, hallelujah.

And this is also a prophetic thing

because the garments that people wear

are also symbolic of the ideology,

symbolic of spiritual things.

And so when you see the changing of the garments,

this also represents a changing of the mentality.

There's a mentality, there's a paradigm shift

that is happening with Jacob and his family.

He's saying, hey, we can't dress like that anymore.

It's got more to do than just, you know,

what clothes we got on so much.

It's got to do with what spirit we've got on

and what attitude we've got on.

Oh, hallelujah somebody.

This act portrayed something that is prophetic and divine.

Anytime you see someone in scripture being elevated

to another level of glory, another level of revival,

there's always a change of their garment.

Look at Joseph when his father wanted to set him apart

from the rest of the brother to say,

you're a young man of dreams and promise

and greatness and destiny.

He put on a coat of many colors on him.

He said, you're gonna look different than everybody else.

Come on, am I talking to somebody here today?

I thank God that I've got a coat of many colors on my life.

I thank God that I'm not like everybody else.

I thank God that I'm different.

Come on somebody give the Lord some praise today.

Give the Lord some praise today.

In Ephesians 422, the Bible says put off your old self

and put on the new self.

Created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

He said put off the old and put on the new.

You know what we got to do?

Someone say what?

We got to be dressed for the season

that God is calling us to.

Oh, hallelujah.

I made the mistake one more one time

where I didn't look at the weather app for the location

that I was going to.

And I packed a bunch of stuff, not realizing,

thinking that the weather was gonna be hot,

and it turned out to be freezing cold.

And I had to buy a bunch of it because I wasn't ready.

And when I stepped out of the airport, I looked silly.

I looked so out of place.

And that's how some of you look today,

because you're not dressed for the season

that God has set you in.

But the Lord sent me here today to say,

it's time to put on the whole armor of God.

It's time to put on the mind of Christ.

It's time to get dressed for the season.

Some people say, I want more of God.

I want miracles.

I want revival.

I want blessing.

But are you dressed for where God has taken you?

Are you still with your stinking thinking?

Are you still with your backwards logic?

Or are you ready for God to do a new thing in your life?

Somebody give God some glory today.

We got to do a Holy Ghost fit check.

Sometimes I'll ask my daughter before I go on my own.

I'm going to embarrass her now.

It's OK.

But sometimes I'll ask her, I say, how do I do that?

Look OK.

She's going, oh, man, I got to go back.

So my daughter's like my fit check now.

You know, she makes sure.

Oh, the sneakers, you got to clean them up.

They're kind of dirty.

I was like, oh, man.

You know, we got to do that with the Holy Ghost.

We got to have a Holy Ghost fit check.

Got to make sure, Lord, is my mind right today?

Whoo, hallelujah.

Is my spirit right today?

Oh, Lord, get in the Word and let the Word become the,

how many of you know that the Word of God is alive?

The Word of God is alive and powerful

and is sharper than any two-edged sword.

The vision of evil soul and spirit,

it gets down in the discern of the thoughts and the heart.

That's what it does.

God, I need you to do a fit check in my life

to make sure that I'm walking right, that I'm talking right.

And then we come to the third and the final thing

I'm gonna touch on today, which is when you remove

your idols and you change your garment,

you need to tune your ears to God.

The next step for Jacob's house in Genesis 35 verse four

says, so they gave Jacob all the foreign gods,

which were in their hands and the earrings,

which were on their ears.

And so just like the garments,

we see another practical and prophetic thing.

God said, I care about what you have on your body.

I care about how you entertain these things in your life.

And I need you to remove these things he tells me.

I want you to remove these things from your life.

I want you to, because where I'm sending you is greater.

Piano player, come up in a moment.

I'll be just a few more moments,

but where I'm sending you is greater.

So remove these things, remove these things, remove.

He said, take those earrings out of your ears

and take that jewelry off of your life

and just come and step into this place that I have for you.

This aligns with the New Testament.

The New Testament shows us, it teaches us these principles

that once again, our bodies are the temples

of the Holy Ghost.

And God calls us to remove these things from our life.

And that is why we as apostolic people,

we teach and we preach that we don't adorn ourselves

with these things because the true thing

that God is looking for is a good works and godliness.

He's looking at our hearts, he's looking at our spirits.

And so we are to remove these things from our lives.

Oh, but there's also a prophetic picture here

when he says remove the ear,

he's not just talking about physical earrings.

While that is important, but he is talking about the ears.

These earrings were on their ears.

And he said, I need you because these earrings,

they were symbolic of what you hear.

And there is a powerful message there prophetically

that what you hear, what you hear often determines

what you follow.

Oh, and this was important because Jacob had spent

all of those years listening to everything else.

He spent all of those years listening to other voices

and listening to other people

and listening to the world's wisdom

and listening to the culture

and listening to maybe his own family members

that were out of step with God

and listening to his own cardinality.

And the Lord was sending a message to him

like he's sending a message to us

that we've got to get our ears right.

We've got to get our hearing right

to make sure that in these last days,

there is nothing that is filtering, competing

or distorting the voice of God in our life

so that we can hear the Lord when he speaks to us.

Oh, Jesus said, my sheep know my voice and they follow me.

How many of you wanna follow Jesus today?

Oh, I said, how many of you wanna follow Jesus today?

I need God to sanctify my hearing.

I need God to sanctify my hearing.

My ears, my hearing.

I need God to consecrate and sanctify.

Why?

Because he who has an ear, let him hear.

What the, you know, there are things

that the spirit will shudder.

I feel the Holy Ghost right now.

Can I just move?

Can I minister a little bit more right now?

There are things, how many of you know

there are things that the spirit is saying to the church?

Oh, hallelujah.

There are things that the spirit that God says

through his written word, which is infallible,

which will never change.

This word stands forever.

Hallelujah.

The written word of God, it is God inspired.

It is God ordained.

But then there is also the voice of God

that speaks in seasons and times.

The Rhema word, the voice of the Lord

to his church, prophetically spoken.

And I'm here to tell you that God is speaking

to his church in this hour.

Hora bayah, shamdalah, makamda.

God is speaking and the only, oh hallelujah.

It's not that God's not speaking.

The question is, are you listening?

Oh God, are you listening to what God is saying?

I feel God right now.

I wonder if as I begin to preach a little more,

maybe you would just entertain his presence

and you would begin to pray.

Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Come on, somebody begin to pray.

I feel something happening in this place.

Hora bayah, shamdalah, makamda.

Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah.

If I'm gonna go into revival,

if I'm gonna go into blessing,

if I'm gonna go into salvation and breakthrough

and restoration in my family,

in my marriage, with my children and my grandchildren,

in my home, in my workplace, with my neighbors and all that,

I gotta make sure that I can hear the voice of God clearly.

In my life, I gotta make sure that my ears are open

and there's nothing clogging his voice from entering in.

And is there somebody here today that says,

God, help me Lord, sanctify my hearing

so that I can hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

I can hear what the Spirit is saying to me and my family.

God has been trying to convict some of you

about things in your family and in your life

and in your marriage that you've allowed.

It's corrupting your marriage.

It's corrupting your things that you don't even realize.

It's all happening right beneath the floors of your home.

It's right there, right under your nose.

And so God has said, but I've been trying to tell you,

I've been trying to warn you, I've been trying to awaken you,

I've been trying to help you, but you're not listening.

You keep thinking this, I say this,

and then you try to reinterpret it to be that.

No, if God said it like that, then it's black and white.

Don't try to change it to fit your fancy.

Don't try to change it to fit your current circumstance.

No, the word of the Lord is going forth in this hour.

And I believe right now that God is preparing this church

all about, we're gonna turn this place

into prayer room right now, to a prayer.

We're gonna turn this place into an altar.

And I'm gonna open up this altar.

And I would like for you to come to this altar.

I would like for you to just let God deal

with your life today and say, God, here it is.

I lay it down at your feet, God.

I lay it down, God, I lay it down.

Oh God, I'm ready, God, I'm ready, I'm ready.

I'm ready.

The Bible says that Jacob, he hid all of these gods

and earrings and everything under the tree,

the terrible tree which is in Shechem.

And that, my friend, is a picture of the cross.

He buried all of these issues, all of these gods,

all of these things under that tree.

And the Bible says, cursed is any man

who hangs on a tree referring to the cross.

You know when you can take all those things today,

you can take them to the cross

and you can bury them there, my friend.

You can bury them there.