The Dove

Senator Romans 8, it's nice to see you.

Welcome. It's great to have you.

We're doing a series through Romans 8 and I really want to do

a thing tonight about growing up and there are a lot of people

who stand in queues here waiting for me.

I've been to church a long time. They're just standing queues and

and they've got long term problems and they want short

term solutions. It's like my marriage is in

trouble. Please will you pray for me?

Well, your marriage is in trouble because of 6 or 7 years

of bad choices, bad habits, bad patterns, and, and you think

like my prayer is going to change your marriage.

It doesn't do that. It can change your marriage to

me. But reality is we God has given

us the Holy Spirit. If you're a golfer, maybe you

are not. If you've ever driven a golf

cart, it's one of the most frustrating things in the world

because the golf cart's got a governor on it.

And so it doesn't matter how much you race in a golf cart,

you can't pass the other guy because they govern to the same

speed. And so you try and race as fast

as you can, but, and it's so frustrating because you want to

go fast, but it governs. And every time I sit there, I

think this is what the Holy Spirit does to my life.

He governs me. And so I can't go too fast.

So I cause an accident going downhill because he governs me.

And when you're governed by God, you actually start making good

choices, become good routines, which become good relational

habits. And we actually start living in

freedom and fullness and, and we need to actually be there.

Otherwise we live really ill disciplined lives.

Come to church and look for a quick fix solution.

Amen. Instead of becoming disciples, I

think I said this recently, the difference between mentors,

everybody wants a mentor. I want a mentor, I want a

mentor. A mentor makes you the best

version of yourself. A disciple makes you the best

version of Christ. And we're not trying to make you

the best version of yourself, really the best version of

Christ when we actually, one actually builds you up.

So you become a superstar, the one, the other one kills you so

that you become obedient to Christ.

And the no way that we can all live together, young and old and

rich and poor and English and Afrikaans, we've all got

cultural differences and upbringing differences,

financial differences, different preferences for us to all live

together. We've got to understand Christ.

And that way we humble with each other, we forgive each other, we

learn how to grow together. We learn how to sacrifice, we

learn how to serve and sitting behind the coffee station or

some very qualified people, some of the best musicians in the

city, playing on stage, just volunteering, serving.

And as they serve us, we get blessed.

And as we get blessed, we serve others and we start to become a

community that represents Christ.

Is that cool? And so I want to talk about

growing up and about representing God.

And I wanted to particularly talk about your position or

status as a son or daughter of God tonight and what that

actually means and how you can stand without that being taken

away from you. How you can stand.

So Romans chapter 8, if you can turn there, please.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are

God's children, say the Spirit that and, and if you weren't

here for those students, we used the pneumatic drill, a tool that

has got absolutely no power. We try to nail nails into a

piece of wood just to bring you up to speed and the nails all

bent. And then I plugged air into a

gun. We shot 20 nails through a plank

of wood. Then it just went it's called

the pneumatic drills, exactly the same word.

So whenever you see the word spirit in the New Testament, the

word is pneuma, where we get the word pneumatic from.

So it's like we are absolutely useless.

We get plugged into God and we become highly effective tools.

You saw the lady on the stage today with the flute.

Her name is Bobby. You've got this beautiful flute

with this incredible. It's made absolutely

beautifully. We can look at it, you can, but

unless somebody blows wind into it, it's actually just a useless

piece of metal. And then Bobby, who's got these

unbelievable lungs of which she spent thousands of hours

training because of the flute, you don't put your lips on them.

And somebody actually blowing into the instrument, as she

blows, this flute comes alive. Amen.

It's like a pneumatic tool, and you are this beautiful

instrument made by God in an unbelievably stunning way.

And when the lungs of heaven link into your life, you become

a tune that the world can't refuse.

You become a song that people have to listen to.

Wherever you go. You're like Bobby, and then you

take the guy on the cello and all these beautiful instruments

that's just like you. As the breath of God touches

you, you start to make a song. And now all of a sudden you put

English and Afrikaans guys together.

The breath of God touches us and we start to make it the, the

word in in the scriptures is homo Thummadan.

And when we all start to sing together, we start to make this

most unbelievable tune. And the angels look down and

think, flip the Indian guys there and the black guys there

and the white guys there and there's a white guy preaching

and a black girl leading the meeting and they're sort of like

homo Thummadan. They're in one, they're in

unity, they love each other, they serve one another.

We start to build the church, Amen.

So we don't have rich churches or young churches or old

churches or black churches. We just have all kinds of people

in the church, Amen, Amen. So say the Spirit, the Spirit

capital S speaks to the little S that I'm a child of God.

Point yourself here, because this is where you get betrayed

here. When the little S starts telling

you that you're not worth it, the big S has to override it and

start blowing a tune into you so that the big S starts to dictate

to yourself. And most people that come up in

the queue here for prayer is because the little S is speaking

to the big S instead of the big S speaking to the little S.

We have to be designed to handle difficult times, frames.

Every time you have difficulty, you can't run for prayer.

You've got to run for your status first.

Who are you in God? Don't lose your conviction in

God. Don't lose your intimacy in God.

Don't lose your assurance in God when you're going through a

towel. God can't put me through this.

God can do whatever He likes, whatever He likes.

And many times you are giving up on a God that we don't even

understand. We don't know Him because we are

emotionally somehow attached to Him and we decide what God looks

like in our mind instead of the Word.

We give up on Him too easily. Are you with me?

OK, so that's the big S Say big S speaks to the little S and

says I'm a child of God. OK, so let's have a look at it

in Matthew chapter 3. I'll take you through it.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Matthew 3, verse 16. As soon as Jesus was baptized,

Matthew 3:16

he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened

and he saw that in Greek, the pneuma, the breath, he saw the

spirit of God descending like a dove, say descending like a dove

and lighting on him, John 14 says.

John 4 says it stayed on him, it remained on him and the voice

from heaven say voice from heaven.

Friends, sorry if I repeated this, but most people listen to

voices from earth. Your whole life is dictated to

by voices from earth, your parents, your failures, your

upbringing, your shortcomings, your disqualifications, your

failures at school, your mistakes that you've made in

relationships. And those voices just start

shouting at you, shouting. And you present this incredible

picture of you all together, but you lie in bed at night.

The voice just shouts. And you're stupid.

Your ears are big. You're not good at school.

You failed 79. It just start.

You've got divorce. It just shouts and shouts and

shouts, and it completely and utterly identifies us.

But the Bible says the voice from heaven, and that voice from

heaven is going to do something deep inside of me, and it's

going to convince me that I'm God's son.

And I don't care what you think about me.

Like if I preach well or preach badly, you like me or don't like

me. I'm God's son and it's not

affected by earth. And unless you can understand

that, you're going to spend the rest of your lives like yo yos

going by what your Facebook profile says or what your

Instagram likes or dislikes say. Because when they don't like you

on Instagram, it makes no difference to what God thinks

about you. And you've got to believe that,

friends. But because we live our world in

the in the public eye, we don't take the spiritual truth and let

it settle inside of our hearts. So we become secure, born again

believers, filled with the Spirit of God that makes us

stand under crisis. Say voice from heaven, voice

from heaven, say it again, voice from heaven.

There are so many voices. Afrikaans voices, English

voices, rugby coaches voices, teachers voices, parents voices,

peers voices, authorities voices.

This is my son, This is my son identity, whom I love affection.

With him I am well pleased. Affirmation This is my son

identity, whom I love affection with him.

I'm well, please just keep it up there. close your eyes.

This is my son, This is my daughter identity.

The Spirit of God blowing into the flute is singing a song over

your life that says, this is my son, this is my daughter, whom I

love deeply, passionately, sacrificially enough to send my

one and only son to die for whom I love with him, with her, with

you. I'm well pleased, he said.

But God, I've disappointed, he said, with you, with you.

I'm well pleased that that is the foundation for secure

Christianity. You with me.

Let's go to Genesis chapter one, please.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless, say formless and empty, say empty

and dark. It's called chaos.

It's called chaos. The earth was formless, empty

and dark. It was over the surface of the

deep and there what I had a Zulu friend who said the spirit was

hovering over this waiting to suck up somebody say hovering,

but the if the message Bible can go, please first.

This God created the heavens and the earth.

All you see, all you don't see, earth was a soup of nothingness,

A bottomless emptiness and inky blackness.

And God's Spirit, ruach brooded like her.

Where do we hear that? Where did we see that in the New

Testament? And Jesus was standing when he

got baptized. The Holy Spirit came down like

her, brooded like a bird came upon him.

And from that time on, Jesus went into every situation that

was formless, empty and dark. And he bought form, fullness and

light. So when the Holy Spirit comes

upon us, he comes upon us for what?

To bring form, to fill up and to bring light.

He said don't act weird, pasta or how do doves fly?

What do doves do? I want, Holy Spirit, I want you

to hover over my life. Holy Spirit, I want you to dwell

over my life. Holy Spirit, I want you to fly

over my life. Holy Spirit, I want you to come

and take everything. Lord, that is chaotic and I want

you to bring it into order most of your lives, friends, if

you're a doctor, I saw a doctor today.

If your knee is a knee doctor, if your knee is broken, you go

to a knee doctor and he takes the chaos of your ACL and your

meniscus. He takes the chaos and he and he

puts it all back together and he brings order.

And then you have physio and then you start walking again.

If there's a court case, you have files like this and

advocates go through all the chaos and they eventually put it

back into order and they present it to a judge.

Most of our lives are bringing order to chaos.

God's job is to bring order into chaos.

Some of you are living in chaos, formless, empty and dark because

you don't actually understand what the Spirit of God does for

you as a child of God. And so your sonship and your

daughtership is not formed because it when you grew up, it

was so deformed by the experiences that you had.

So that you live with the deformity instead of deformity.

Makes sense. Let's go back to Matthew 4.

Jesus is led by the Spirit, say Spirit led by the Spirit into

the desert to be tempted by the devil.

Let's keep the Scriptures up there.

So Adam faced temptation in the garden with fruit and he failed.

Jesus faced temptation in the desert without any food, and he

and he passed. And we are disciples of Jesus,

so we should be able to handle desert conditions because our

boss passed the test in the desert as an example for us.

He's now not. He's walking as a man filled

with the Spirit of God. He's giving us an example, not

walking as God, walking as a man filled with the Spirit of God.

After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

You know when you sin, you sin four times in your life.

When you're hungry, when you're stressed, when you're tired and

when you're alone. When you're hungry, when you're

stressed, when you're tired, and when you're alone, that's when

you sin. And so God took Jesus after 40

days to the absolute point of human brokenness.

He had absolutely no strength. He was in the wild, amongst wild

animals. The Bible says he was in a

dangerous place. He was completely alone.

He, his resources would have been stretched to the absolute

uttermost that he was filled with the Spirit.

And the Spirit testifies with my spirit that I am son of God.

And the Bible has just said this is my son whom I love with him.

I'm well pleased. And now he's at the absolute

extreme end of his body's abilities and the devil comes

and says, surely God wouldn't do this to you.

The tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God,

the first thing that gets tempted in our whole lives is

our identity. If you are the Son of God, tell

these stones to become bread. You see, friends, he's hungry.

All he had to do was he had the miracle power.

He full of the Holy Spirit. He just says, say actually

become bread and then I can actually get out of my

circumstances. You see the problem, friends

with young people particularly, is you let the sensual live,

lead your lives instead of the word of God.

So we are, we are led by sensuality, our touch, our

taste, our feeling, our smell. We're touched by that.

Especially when you're hungry, tired, stressed and alone or

lonely. Those are very dangerous places

to be because in that place we learn how to turn stones into

bread. We make a plan to make sure that

our appetite can be met, Sexual, relational, financial, we do all

sorts of things instead of believe.

Now I am a son of God. I am in a difficult place, but

I'm going to let the big S speak to the little S.

I'm not going to do anything stupid that's going to disobey

God's word. Now I'm going to learn how to

stand with Christ, you with me. Tell me to Deuteronomy.

We'll come back to this. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 8.

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

Please be careful to follow every command I'm giving you

today so that you may live an increase.

And may Ensign possess the land that the Lord promised on oath

to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God

LED you all the way into the desert for 40 years, say 40

years. Jesus was following.

So Adam was tested in the garden.

He failed. Jesus was tested in the

wilderness and he passed. These guys were tested in the

wilderness and they failed To humble you and to test you in

order to know that was in your heart whether or not you would

keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to

hunger and then feeding you with manner which neither you nor

your forefathers have known to teach you.

That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that

comes from the mouth of God. And 10 times in the book of

Deuteronomy it says that the Israelites moaned and groaned,

say, moaned and groaned. Your moaning and groaning will

stop you living in the inheritance of God.

And the greatest problem I've ever seen in the church is

critical moaning, groaning people.

If you understand the sonship of God, you will stop moaning about

your circumstances and you'll stop moaning about people in

your lives. Go back to Luke chapter 4

Luke 4 · chapter mention

please. He said if you are the son of

God, tell these stones to become bread.

Jesus answered, it is written man does not live on bread

alone. He passed the essential test and

you and I are friends by the Spirit of God, have to pass the

essential test because if we fail it, we just stay in the

desert. We don't live.

We're still saved, still go to heaven, but you're going to find

yourself way short of the fullness of what the Holy Spirit

has designed us for. Get yourselves out of hungry,

stressed, tired, lonely places and get yourself under the big S

of God so you start winning. Amen.

Let's keep going. Next verse, the devil led him up

to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms

of the world. And he said to him, I will give

all their authority and splendor, for it has been given

to me and I can give it to anyone I want to.

So if you worship me, it'll all be yours.

Jesus answered, it is written, worship the Lord your God and

serve him only friends, He takes someone to this very high place

and he says, I'll give all of this to you.

The whole lot I'll give to you and Jesus says, but worship the

Lord you're God. Only turn with me to Matthew 12

if you can put the Matthew 12 on please.

Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love.

Where did we hear that? Matthew 3.

This is taken from Isaiah 42 in whom I delight.

I will put my say it. I'll put my spirit on him.

Who's going to put his spirit on?

Who's going to put his spirit on?

Not the Son who's going to put his spirit on there.

This how the Bible works, friends.

He's a son and he's called to rule and he's going to become a

king. You and our sons and we call to

rule, we're going to become kings.

But the devil wants to say, let's go the shortcut.

I'll take you straight from sonship to kingship.

But Jesus says no, no, no. It is written worship the Lord

your God. Only the only way I can get it,

I have to go from sonship to servanthood.

I've got to go through the cross and die.

And when I go through the cross and die, I will become the king.

The devil's offering a shortcut. Understand that.

Don't take the shortcut. Not to any form of authority,

because all of us have been called to authority.

Doctors, lawyers, businessmen, some of you financial authority,

some of you educational authority, some of you spiritual

authority. I cannot operate in this

authority. Unless I've gone through the

cross and continue to go through the cross and continue to die to

my own passions and my own desires and my own personality

and my own DNA and my own preference, unless it's prepared

to go to the cross, I will never.

You can't bypass the servant heart of God.

I'm talking to your friends. You have to listen tonight

because there's too much immaturity in the church.

People saying, oh, I want to turn stone to breed and God has.

God will provide for Yori's son. Don't take the shortcut.

Let's keep reading. Back in Isaiah, back in Matthew,

the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the

highest point of the temple. If you are the Son of God, say

that again. If you are the Son of God, what

does the Bible say? The Spirit speaks to my spirit

and says I am there. So when that if comes in your

life, you've got to say it is written every if that we see in

the Bible Jesus says it is written.

If you are, it is written. If you are, it is written.

Don't get tricked by your feelings.

Your feelings are a very bad compass in a storm.

It's got to have the word of God inside of you.

If you are the Son of God, he said throw yourself down for it

is written He will command his angels concerning you and they

will lift you up in their hands so that you'll not strike your

foot against the stone that's taken from Psalm 91.

Jesus answered, it's auto written.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

So if you stand up on the hill and he just jumped down, he

quotes the scripture. He says he'll catch you.

I've got a friend of mine from school who's never acknowledged

God, doesn't go to church, doesn't believe in God, gets

smashed out of his mind four times a week.

His wife does the same and they've got a member of their

family who's sick. And now he's really, really,

really mad cross pissed off with my God that he's never served in

his life. And I said, but you don't

believe in God. How can you be crossed with a

God because a member of your family is sick?

He says, yeah, but the Bible says God heals.

I said, no, hang on, that's just one part of the Bible.

There's a whole Bible. You can't just take a verse.

He's like Psalm 91. If you'd actually take Psalm 91

and go and read it, it says if you make the Most High your

dwelling, then you will not pick your foot against the stone and

you'll command these angels concerning you to guard you in

all your ways. As I meant to say to my my

children when they go out there, it says if you make my God, if

you make my God your dwelling place.

While you were still children and I was your father, I made

God your dwelling place. Now you adults, you go out and

you own, you drive your own cars, you play rugby matches at

Ellis Park. You got to make my God your God

if you want my God's protection to come into your life because

my God can't protect you with my scriptures at the devil's

quoting. You understand that, friends.

And so we take Philippians chapter 4, verse 13, and we put

Philippians 4:13

it on rugby jersey. I can do all things through

Christ who gives me strength. No, you can't.

You can't do that. It's a misquoted scripture.

You don't serve God, you don't love God.

You're getting smashed out of your mind at the end of the

rugby. That scripture doesn't have

power. It's got no power taken out of

context. It's got no, it's got no context

to anything. Friends, we are building a

church that you can actually handle suffering and health.

We do believe in healing. We do pray for the sick, but we

can also see people suffer without throwing our toys out

the cart and letting the little S dictate to the big S.

We can actually stop and say, you know what?

I am a child of God and if the scriptures, I don't fully

understand the scriptures and the scriptures don't seem to be,

I'm just going to keep believing the scriptures anyway.

I will worship the Lord my God only I will not turn stones into

bread because I don't need to learn how to survive.

And my friend Clint always laughs at me because when I saw

that scripture preached in England and I know some of you

know the story, but I want to tell you what your behavior is

like. I remember a whole lot of people

in the preaching Matthew chapter 4 if turning stones into bed.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

I saw all these people go to the front for ministry about the

father heart of God and I felt God say people have got highly

skilled defence mechanisms. Rabbits run, tortoises hide,

snakes fight taught turkeys make a big noise and we've got all

these defence mechanism. When we come under pressure,

when the devil comes as if you are the Son of God, Gone, Run

away, disappear. Every time you have

confrontation, you duck well, like a tortoise.

You just go into your shell like this.

Big hard shell. How are you?

Fine. What's wrong with you?

Nothing. You want to talk about it?

No. I've seen you Afrikaners.

That's what you do. I've been dead serious.

You're so prideful of showing any form of weakness that you

just put this massive hard shell around yourself.

They got everything's cool. No, The Spirit speaks to my

spirit and says I am the Son of God.

I remember going to a Home group once a man had a urinary tract

infection that was so serious as going for an operation and they

went around the Home group and says anybody got anything wrong

with him? And he said no, nothing wrong

with me. I think yes, you have.

You've got a urinary tract infection and you're about to go

to hospital for an operation and I'm full to the Spirit of God

and I can pray for you. But this massive shell of

hardness around him because he doesn't want to show any form of

weakness got this unbelievable survivorship.

Snakes fighting, turkeys make a big noise, blah blah blah blah

blah. Quote scripture.

I'm a top and not the tail. I'm above and not believe.

Young people listen to me. I'm old now.

Learn the Bible, Learn the Bible.

You'd have to learn books at a time.

Just learn the Bible enough so that when you're tired, lonely,

hungry, or stressed, you can stand on some scripture and

stand on some scripture. I'll tell you why I'm preaching

today. I'm preaching today because I

had a nervous breakdown. I spent three months in bed and

the first scripture that I ever preached on my life was Habakkuk

Habakkuk 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3. Though the fig tree doesn't

blossom and the fruit produces no vine yet, I will worship you,

my God and my King. So first scripture I ever

preached on 34 years ago. I preached that scripture as if

I believed it with all of my heart because I stayed with

people in Worcester who had a tomato in their fridge and they

fed me for a whole week and I saw the provision of God.

And I believe Habakkuk chapter 3.

Habakkuk 3 · chapter mention

It is one of the deep scriptures of my heart.

Though the fig tree doesn't blossom and the fruit produce no

vine yet. Will I serve you, my God and my

King? Amen.

Then after three months of lying in bed sick, I cried out to God

and I said, God, will I ever preach again?

Will I ever stand up with your word?

Will I ever stand up in the pulpit of three CR?

And the man who always sits about there on a Sunday morning

sits about there. His name is Francois.

He SMS me, said hey posture at Bedfordia.

And he added for Michael Pratt on Habakkak 3, though the fig

tree doesn't blossom and the fruit produces no vine yet I

will worship you, my God and my king.

I stand here because of that verse of Scripture.

You'd have to know the whole Bible, but you need some

scripture that can hold you when you're hungry, tired, stressed,

and lonely. So that the biggest say, the

biggest speaks to the little S Say that speaks to the little S

and says I am the son or daughter of God.

Say that I am. He'd better say it loudly

because I'm not going to pray for you afterwards.

I'm being dead serious. Say I am.

Say I am the son and daughter of God.

The big S speaks to the little S and gives me a position that can

handle desert, it can handle temptation, it can handle

shortcuts in Jesus name.