"Spirit of Faith" with Ps Don McDonell 21 June 2026

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Morning in church.

Give someone a high five before you sit

down.

Yeah.

Thank you very much, worship team.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you so many people who make this

all fantastic.

Ooh, that was a nice echo, eh?

Sounds like God speaking.

Yeah.

Thank you to everybody who makes these services

happening, though.

Right from the car park, right in on

the door, all the ushers and people who

serve us all and make church fantastic.

Make church fantastic.

And thank you for those who are looking

after sound and all this.

I don't thank you guys a lot, but

we've got an awesome team at the back

there that make it all happen.

You guys are amazing.

And I can never see you, but I

know you're there in the shadows.

But thank you.

Thank you to everybody.

Thank you.

It's awesome.

Awesome.

Great to be in church.

Okay.

And we're talking about a spirit of faith.

All right.

There it is.

How many are enjoying this series on a

spirit of faith?

Okay.

How many, just as a thought, we preach

these messages, but sometimes you wonder if they're

actually getting through.

We have got to live by faith.

Okay.

The Bible says we walk by faith and

not by sight.

I think that's our verse for this, 2

Corinthians 5, 7.

We walk by faith and not by sight.

Actually, we need to do the full version

of that verse, please, in Psalm 92.

Can we get that up?

We all need to quote that together just

to stir faith.

How many know you've got to stir faith?

Okay.

So this is church.

Okay.

It's not the Lions Club.

It's church.

All right.

Just reminding you.

So we have to stir faith up.

All right.

Forsake not.

One of the reasons the Bible is very

clear, Jesus, forsake not the gathering of yourselves

together.

Because there's a lot of thinking out there

today.

I'll tell you what, there's a lot of

thinking.

You can just have church on YouTube now.

You can do church just at home.

It's all cool just doing it at home.

Well, let me just tell you, that's a

lie.

Okay.

I was thinking of other words that you're

not allowed to use in church.

But let me tell you, that's a lie

because people get defeated in the middle of

that.

And not only that, it stops what God's

wanting to do with the congregation of people.

Okay.

So when the people get together, people who

come in who are struggling in faith, we

can stir up that faith.

And we can help people get to a

new level in God where they start to

live in victory instead of defeat.

Okay.

And it's very easy to end up, you've

just got one bad week and just about

take you to defeat.

So that's why it's great to gather together

and stir up faith.

All right.

Remember I did that illustration a while ago

and I had a big jar full of

dirt up here and we stirred it up

with a stick and Jesus popped out of

it.

Remember I had that little baby Jesus in

there and he popped out.

And reality is that see, when we stir

stuff up, it brings stuff to the top

and you want to bring the God in

you to the top.

Sometimes it can get a little bit pushed

down.

Okay.

Stuff happens, man.

When you're paying bills and all the stuff

that goes on in life, sometimes it can

suck the juice out of you, but we

stir up faith.

Hallelujah.

And so today it's about let's stir up

our faith.

So we're going to state this together.

Let's all go on the count of one,

two, three.

I'll sit down.

Let's go.

One, two, three.

The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree.

He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

Those who are planted in the house of

the Lord shall flourish in the courts of

our God.

They shall still bear fruit in their old

age.

They shall be fresh and flourishing to declare

that the Lord is upright.

He is my rock and there is no

unrighteousness in him.

Psalm 92, 12 to 15.

Okay.

So he is my rock.

Stir it up.

You've got to stir it.

Sometimes you've got to stir it up yourself.

Sometimes faith needs you to actually get aggressively

stirring with a spirit of faith.

This is what faith is all about.

So I'm a faith man.

If you haven't already got that, I'm a

faith man.

We walk by faith and not by sight.

If we start walking by just what we

see, we will end up very easily in

a place of defeat.

But if you can lift your eyes up

a little bit and get your eyes on

God in the middle of your storm, if

you've ever been in a decent storm, and

I don't know whether you have, but a

good storm will challenge your faith.

A good storm will always challenge your faith.

I think I've referred to it many times

here, but I was in the middle of

the Pacific on a yacht and we had

a massive storm.

The wind, just to let you know a

little bit of that storm, the wind was

registering on the, what do you call that

thing Dave?

Anemometer.

Anemometer.

Well, I never knew that.

You learn something every day.

The anemometer was reading at 190 knots.

That's a pretty fierce wind.

You can't see wind, but you could certainly

feel it.

Not only that, the waves that were breaking,

I think the waves were something like 15

metres.

That's like, when you're in the middle of

a storm like that, let me tell you,

Paul went through some storms like that, the

Apostle Paul, and I think that's probably, it

helped him stir his faith.

I love being in storms like that.

I like that.

The feeling of it all just gets me

fired up.

A lot of people don't like it.

I was on a yacht one time with

six people in that storm.

I think the waves were like 15, 20

metres tall.

So they were coming clean over the top

of this yacht and people, men, growing men,

were crying.

So if you ever think you're tough, come

with me out on a situation like that,

because a lot of these guys started off

tough.

They were tough.

When I got on the deck of that

boat and said, guys, I think we should

pray before we go to sea.

It's amazing how people will criticise your faith

in God.

They'll rubbish it.

They'll even use bad words in rubbishing it.

But many of them have never experienced the

dynamics that require faith.

They've never been in those situations.

They've never been through the storms.

It's all ho-hum to them.

In fact, I was, I don't know, Josiah,

I haven't even seen Josiah.

I went to Josiah's work day the other

night and I was sitting there with a

couple of men and telling them that they

want to know what I did.

Everybody wants to know what you do.

It's a question everybody asks you.

Everywhere you go, sit on an aeroplane, what

do you do?

It's like they've got it wrong.

Your identity is often found in your work

or in your, you know, if you say

I'm just a, or better not use any

terminology, but if you're in what they would

consider a lower class thing, you're considered nothing

to them.

But if you're like, whatever, a different career,

you can't name them today because whatever you

say is going to upset somebody.

Then it's a good point because then we

can learn to build a bridge over that

and get on the other side of it

and shake off offence.

So they wanted to know what I did.

And I said, well, actually, I'm an agent

of truth.

And it was just cool, you know, because

I'm always asking God, you know, when these

guys, the F word's every second word, I

think.

And some people even get offended at that.

And I don't get offended, so it's nothing

to me.

But anyway, and so they said, so what

about you?

What do you do?

And they were in sales and all that

sort of thing.

And then I said, well, I'm an agent

of truth.

And they really liked that, you know, it

sort of got them fired up.

And then I said, in fact, I'm an

agent of a lot of things.

I'm an agent of faith.

I'm an agent of hope.

And I said, that's what I'm doing here.

And then it ended up when you start

talking about your Christian faith in the church,

then they of course, they say, well, you

might be here this morning.

I don't know, you guys might be here

this morning.

Just thinking of that, I invited you along.

And the reality is, though, it's very easy

to criticise what we have when you've not

experienced it.

And most people haven't experienced it.

So I invited them along today as secret

shoppers.

I said, come along and tell me then

why we're goofy.

So if you're here, I hope you're taking

notes right now.

And come up and tell me after where

we're getting it wrong, because I'm always interested

in that.

And so I invited them.

I said, well, mate, if we're that far

off the track, come and tell us where

we're getting wrong.

But I said, God does miracles in this

place.

People get healed.

People get set free.

Chains fall off.

People come in here who have no hope

at all and they gain hope and they

start to live a life of victory.

People come in here who don't know how

they're going to target or how they're going

to face another week.

And they find hope in the presence of

God and it sets them free.

And when your heart's free, I want to

tell you, man, you can live a great

life even in the hour we're living in

right now, which is a pretty dark hour

out there.

I think some of you would agree.

And yet we can carry hope in our

life and it's all based on, and there

it is there, a spirit of faith.

Everybody yell out a spirit of faith.

Let's say it.

I want a spirit of faith.

And I think if we can get a

spirit of faith, man, we change not only

our world, but we change the world.

See, that's why we're here.

We're here and I don't care if you're...

Oh, well, the kids are all out of

here.

The kids are out.

So whatever, if you're 20 or if you're

100.

And we need to start believing for some

100-year-olds in the place, okay?

I sat down with Ruth.

There she is down the back.

I sat down with Ruth on, I can't

remember, what was that, Friday, Julia?

Friday, we went and had a birthday party

with Ruth.

God bless you, Ruth.

And I don't think Ruth would mind me

saying, would she, Julia?

She's 96.

So we celebrated.

We took around a few goodies and we

celebrated Ruth's 96th birthday party.

And man, I'll tell you what.

See, in the world, you've got used-by

dates.

But in the kingdom of God, with a

spirit of faith, there are no used-by

dates.

Every one of us has a purpose.

It doesn't matter who you are.

It doesn't matter what your struggles are.

We all have an incredible purpose in God.

And we sat down and I'll tell you

what, I came out of there on fire.

Like she started sharing with us just her

past and her father and some of the

things that she'd been through.

I mean, stuff that some of us have

never lived through.

We've never lived through the war.

I mean, what the heck?

We take everything for granted.

This generation, we're the most entitled generation that's

ever been, actually.

We think we deserve stuff.

We deserve nothing, man.

I want to tell you right now, if

you're living there, you need to get your

act together and start to rethink about the

people who laid down their lives so that

we can have the freedom we've got right

now, which is being mostly abused in this

generation, incidentally.

That's why we believe the Word of God

is the answer and the key for our

lives today.

And so I want to stir that up

in you this morning as we come to

the end of this spirit of faith series,

which I think is one of the best

series.

I mean, you read the Bible, everybody in

here had a spirit of faith, right?

All the heroes you read about in Hebrews

11 were spirit of faith people.

So if we want to line up to

these guys, they went through all sorts of

chaos, but here they are registered in the

Word of God as men and women who

withstood the pressure of their day, the struggles

of their day, some of the persecution and

the stuff, which we ain't got nothing, by

the way.

Like the people who tell me we're a

little persecuted today, like, wait, wait, come, come

to Vietnam with me.

Sit down with the youth pastor who's just

had all these fingernails pulled out.

Sit down with some of that and then

tell me that you're having persecution.

We don't even know the meaning of the

word.

We should be the most on fire in

freedom.

Holy ghost, we've got freedom.

We can even in here, we can even

get noisy.

I know a lot of churches today want

to be real quiet about their faith.

And unfortunately they get quiet in church and

they're just as quiet out of church.

Just a thought, just a thought.

But you read about people like Noah.

Noah was a faith man, never seen rain

all the days of his life.

And they never had rain, but God said,

it's going to rain.

And when God gives you a word, he

obeyed that.

And incidentally, I think he was 600 years

old when he started.

Like, like people tell me, I'm thinking like,

I can't even bear the word, like retire,

like, like, like Noah's 600 years old and

he gets a vision from God.

I meet too many people who don't get

vision any longer.

And they're prepared to sit back and just

watch life go by.

We should be the most visionary holy ghost

people on the planet.

We should be stirred.

We not only should be stirred with faith.

We should stir up faith wherever we turn

up.

You know, I just went to the UK.

All right.

And man, I'm just getting so many amazing

testimonies.

Just got a testimony yesterday of a woman.

She's been trying to have a baby for

14 years and we prayed and she's just

sent me a message and said, yee-haw,

we're having a baby.

Not we, she's having a baby with her

husband.

All right.

And, and so very, very exciting, very exciting

testimonies.

I've been trying to get Julia agreeing with

it, but anyway, um, um, um, and so,

so many testimonies of what God is doing,

but probably one of the most encouraging testimonies

for me, like when, when we would, when

we were, they picked me up to take

me to the conference and they picked me

up in Birmingham and we went to a

city called Doodly.

All right.

Everybody say Doodly.

Great, great city.

There's a church there and it's a great

church and I love it.

And, uh, they've got, uh, I think they've

got like 6,000 people in their church

and they, it's, Doodly is a town of

10,000.

So hello, we need to get into gear.

And anyway, um, so, but the fire of

God was in that, that conference I spoke

at.

And I want to tell you when you,

so we're driving there.

Okay.

And I'm like, yeah, okay.

Cause you know what it's like.

You go as a, as a pastor, Ken,

you'd know this, you're going, they pick you

up at the airport and they're driving you

to the meeting where you're the speaker.

Now you're the speaker.

So you're starting to feel a bit of

the pressure.

It's been nice flying, you know, 39,000

feet close to God and, uh, having the

time of your life and then you land

and then it's reality again.

Okay.

And so we're on the, on the deck

now and then they pick you up and

we're driving and not, and so you start

thinking, you know, man, what am I going

to say?

Yeah.

Pastor Ken would never say that.

He'd have every message very clearly sorted out

and some of you others, but I'm sort

of a little bit more agile.

There's a good word.

Good word.

Agile.

Anyway.

So I said, oh, who was your speaker

for the last two years?

And just to see what you've got to

line up with, well, how clever do I

have to be?

Sometimes you're asking, do I even need an

anointing?

That's a terrible statement.

But anyway, I said, oh, who's your new

speakers?

And they start rattling off names like TD

Jakes and like right there, I just, Lord

is like the rapture could happen right now.

This would be a great time for the

rapture.

Like these speakers they had are like Rex

Crane, like these guys are some of the

best communicators in the world of the gospel.

And I'm thinking, and boy, now, God, you

sent me here.

I felt like Gideon, you know, I'm the

least of the least of my brethren and

all that sort of stuff, you know, and

what am I even doing here?

No, surely not.

And anyway, so, but it was a bit

challenging because you go in there with that.

And then so, but here's the thing.

We operate in, we're a faith church, okay?

So faith would, I can't think of the

right word there now, but faith would recommend

that we operate out of a relational anointing

and a relational spirit with God, okay?

So it's all about, see, it's all about

relationship.

See, it's not, this is not a this

is the real us.

This is why you've got to get faith

on the inside.

If it's something that's outside, it's not going

to affect anything, but if it's inside you,

then it flows out of you like a

river.

And so I arrived there and I'm just,

I just felt the Holy Spirit just said,

just be you.

You know, I don't want to be those

guys anyway, but just be you.

And I'm better looking than either of them

actually.

And anyway, so just be you.

And the Holy Spirit said to me, I

want you to bring these people into a

place of relationship with me.

If you can get people closer to me,

that's what we're about.

We're about actually bringing the entire world into

this.

Why did Jesus even come?

He came and died so that you and

I could be restored in relationship to the

father.

Yet we start to get, it's so easy.

We get religious and we start to be

clever with it and we start to get

off track, but God wants to bring us

back to the power of the blood of

Jesus Christ that we are saved by faith

in the blood of Jesus.

That's why we're free.

That's why we're happy.

That's why we've got a great life.

Anyway.

So I just went there with the relationship

of the Holy Spirit.

Next thing I'm getting an invite to come

and speak to the youth conference.

So all of the, so all these kids,

I had all these young kids, man, they

were painting mows on themselves.

These kids, they had black markers out and

they had big, they were painting.

All these young guys had all these mows

on.

It was the most exciting environment you could

get in.

And you couldn't get rid of them.

Everywhere I went, they're following me around.

And I thought, man, God, if we can

just affect the next generation with the flow

of the Holy Ghost out of us.

See these guys caught a spirit of faith.

And right now I'm getting like they're on

Facebook.

Now they're texting me.

These guys have caught something that is going

to revolutionize their future.

Because when you get a spirit of faith

on the inside of you, you are never

the same again.

Let me promise you.

And so we need that fire.

And I want to say to everybody here,

man, you need the fire of the Holy

Spirit on you.

You need, if you haven't got it, then

this is the place you can get it.

Okay.

Because we should not live ordinary.

Honestly, I started, I never got very far

with my notes, did I?

But Noah, so 600 years old, he had

a spirit of faith.

He got into it.

Okay.

People are telling me that they're thinking of

taking it easy now.

Ruth's down there.

Ruth's on fire for God, man.

She got me inspired.

When I got there, she was talking to

some little kids and she got them inspired.

Their eyes were as big as, you know,

like, man, what can we learn off this?

And we should, we've all got something to

give.

We've all got a message of hope.

We've all, we're all agents of truth.

We're all agents of the Holy Spirit.

We're all agents of victory.

And so I believe that's in this place

today.

And I believe that people are going out

of here today and you're going to become

a supernatural fired up Holy ghost agent of

the spirit of God.

And faith is about to to a new

level in your life in Jesus name.

And I speak that over, I see that

on you right now, even as we're Abraham,

he was obviously the father of faith.

That's who we've been talking about.

We've been talking about Abraham, the father of

faith, who we, I preached that message the

other day, count the stars.

If you can count the stars, come on.

Sometimes you've got to just get out of

your tent and count the stars, get out

of the canopy of restriction and limitation.

Because it's easy for things to limit us.

Our mindset is the greatest weapon that would,

would limit us.

That'll hold you back.

That'll make you, when you're talking to these

guys the other night, you know, there's a

lot of things they say that could intimidate

you if you're not careful.

Like if you're, if you're starting to feel

small about yourself, man, you can get intimidated

easily, but you've got to remember greater is

he that's in me than he that's in

the world.

You've got to remember that I walk by

faith and not by sight.

And so you start addressing those issues in

your life and we start living bigger.

I want to title today's message.

Let's go head first into the future.

Head first into the future.

Anybody got that?

Is it not feet first?

You know, when you, you know, when you,

when you dive into a swimming pool, how

do you go in?

Yeah, head first.

When you jump out of a building that's

on fire, how do you go?

Feet first, right?

Feet first, because you're, you're fearful of what

the, the end result could be.

So your fear takes over and you're looking

at self-protection.

I'm going to look up and I'm going

to land feet first.

Probably if you dived out, God would actually

catch you, because it'd be a faith move,

all right?

Just faith, like you dive into the water

because you feel safe about that.

When you were born, when you were born,

okay?

So when you were born, I think probably

most here would have come out head first,

okay?

So God's idea when you're, so you, just

looking at the crowd, see how many young

women are here, could freak them out.

But, but when a baby is born, the

first thing that goes, so I've been at

a couple of births, I've watched my children

get born without, I remember my mate went

to his, watch his baby get born and

he passed out.

Meant to be helping his wife and he

passed out.

I mean, maybe some of you are like

that, but I'm like, what the heck?

Like, harden up.

Like, anyway, and so I've watched these, and

the first thing that comes out is the

placenta.

Well, when does the placenta come out?

Oh, here we go.

The first, thank you.

Well, it looked different to that when Christie

was born.

Okay.

The head comes out first.

Let's all agree on that.

The placenta comes out later.

Now the idea though, the idea that the

head comes out first, it's a God idea,

okay?

It's a God idea.

The head comes out first so the baby

can take its first breath and begin to

breathe.

The issues come when the feet come first.

I think we call it a breach birth.

You know, when, when, when somebody, when somebody

breaks the rules of a contract and, and

goes sideways on the contract, we call it

a breach of contract, okay?

So it's the same, when a baby's born

breach, there's danger of the baby suffocating because

it's not going to get air before it

comes out of the birth canal.

I believe that God wants us to be

people of faith that take a breath of

the Holy Ghost and go head first into

life, okay?

I believe right now, I tell you what,

some of you are facing battles.

Some of you are facing situations that are

intimidating you and causing you to stand back.

But I believe today, I wanted to say

in today's meeting, let's be people who go

head first into the future, believing that if

God's with us, nothing can intimidate us.

I am not ashamed of the gospel of

Christ because it's the power of God unto

salvation to the Jew first and also to

the Greek.

So Abraham starts off as this man of

faith that birthed this into her.

Then you've got Isaac, Isaac sowed, Isaac sowed

by faith.

He sowed seeds of faith, believing that God

was going to give him a harvest out

of that.

How many of, how many have like planted

gardens and, and I know it's the middle

of winter now, you can't plant much, everything

sort of dies, but you've planted seeds in

the garden and you don't see them.

And I was going to bring a little

pot plant along today, but you can't see

the seed until it breaks out of the

top of the ground.

But that's called faith.

When that seed is under there and you're

watering it and you're believing God, it's going

to come through any day.

And then it pops up and man, I'll

tell you what, how exciting is that when

you see a harvest.

And I believe today, get ready for God's

harvest in your life because the reality is

God is taking us.

See, we've talked about faith.

We've talked about the power of faith.

Now God's taking us into his promises.

Okay.

So we inherit the, Abraham inherited the promised

land by his faith and he believed.

Okay.

So let's be believers that God has put

within us a spirit of faith.

And we're going to go with God's will

in our lives in this next season in

Jesus name.

Okay.

So, and it's a, once again, see, you've

got to understand relationship in this.

So it's all about relationship.

And if you talk about, see, relationship is

a faith word.

This is what churches should really be about.

So the first part, if you break the

word down, the first part is real.

Okay.

Real.

So just change the A a little bit

there, R E, pull the A out there,

real.

So number one, we've got to be real.

See, I reckon if it won't work on

the street, then if what's working here won't

work on the street, there's something wrong with

that.

This has got to be real power, real

love, real touches of God, real heaven opened

on your life, real shackles getting broken.

And then we can go and we can

testify with a real message that changes lives.

And so I believe today that God wants

to bring us back into a real relationship

with him.

God wants us to have a real relationship.

Okay.

So it's got to be something that's got

tangible.

It's got to be tangible.

It's got to be something you can carry

out of here.

See my faith, I can carry anywhere in

the world.

My faith, man, I can get on in

any organisation, in any challenging situation and real

faith will bubble up and have an effect

that will be a fruit.

So it's got to be real.

Okay.

So the second part of that word course

is relation, which is real relation.

Okay.

We got to get related to that.

We got to buy into it.

We got to be all in.

You can't be, you know, in a relationship.

The only reason relationships don't work really is

because you don't get all in.

And we got to be all into that.

We've got to be all in.

I want to be all into what God,

I've been all in for the last 48

years, actually, all in, on fire for God.

George Thomas said to me, Don, you were

born in the fire.

You can never live in the smoke, so

stay on fire.

And I thought that'll do me.

And so I've hung on to that fire

and everywhere.

So God, God's used that.

He's opened up doors.

He's put pathways in front of me and

I've got, so here's the other thing with

the relationship.