Sermon

Voicing Our Hearts: The Transformative Power of Prayer

CityLight NYC Church Podcast

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  1. There's so many exhortations in the Bible for God's people to open their mouths and speak.

  2. Over and over again in the Psalms, just let it stand out to you every time the Psalmist says,

  3. I will say, I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, my strength, my high tower, my fortress,

  4. my shield, my buckler, I will say, not I will think, not I will write, I will say.

  5. Welcome to the City Light Church podcast. Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's word

  6. and discover the hope and truth that He has for us. If you want to connect with City Light Church,

  7. feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com that's citylightnyc.com.

  8. Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working in

  9. our hearts and minds. As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply

  10. loved by God, that you are surrounded by His grace, and that He has a real hope and a future for you.

  11. I remember nearly 20 years ago, I was given a BMW, three series,

  12. but nevertheless BMW.

  13. And the Lord was working on me to train myself to respond with praise when negative things happen.

  14. I had just been learning about the principle of first words. When you have an interruption in

  15. your life, when you get a negative report, when something bad happens, the first words you speak

  16. out of your mouth will determine the road, the course that you take concerning that negative event.

  17. And I was in this awesome beamer. The Lord is teaching me this.

  18. And I see somebody coming from my right, and she's on her cell phone,

  19. and I see out of the corner of my eye, I see this.

  20. And she's laughing her head off on her cell phone, so she's oblivious to everything around her.

  21. And she cuts me off and just wax it, and I stop. As soon as she whacked me,

  22. I feel like I need to specify. As soon as she hit my car, I am in New York City after all.

  23. She shouldn't off me. She hit my car. I just lifted my hands up. I was being trained by the Lord.

  24. And I said, Hallelujah, Lord, you're going to do something great.

  25. Now she hit me hard. Have you ever been hit while driving?

  26. The first shock is how loud it is. Do you remember that? The first

  27. what you hear in the movie, you can't replicate what you're experiencing in real life,

  28. you get hit, and it's like, the whole car shakes.

  29. And I lift up my hands and say, Jesus, you're going to do something great.

  30. I think I also said, this will result in your glory. And now I get out of the car and I'm going,

  31. let's see the damage. She gets out of her car and is very anxiously approaching my car.

  32. And we both start looking at my car, and we go around the entire front bumper and the hood,

  33. and there isn't a scratch on it. There's not a scratch on it. It doesn't make any sense in the natural.

  34. And she knew she hit me. I heard the crash and there wasn't a scratch on it.

  35. It was something that I believe that the Lord did miraculously to teach me the importance

  36. of first words, the importance of opening your mouth. The importance of giving him glory and

  37. praising him when supposedly bad things happen. I say supposedly because you don't know how it's

  38. going to turn out. But when you get that negative report, when it seems like you've gotten a life

  39. interruption and not the divine kind, not the good kind, your words make all the difference.

  40. And this is why the Bible commands you to praise him.

  41. It commands you to praise him. The scripture says to shout unto the Lord with the voice of depression,

  42. with the voice of triumph. These are instructions not on how to behave when you're on the mountaintop.

  43. These are instructions on how to behave when you're in the valley or in the pit of despair even.

  44. It's easy. You know, it's always funny to me a couple that gets newly married,

  45. what their first worship service in church is like after they get married.

  46. The guy who's never lifted his hands is like praise the Lord. There's all this and they're also

  47. happy and filled with joy and there's this exuberance and I'm going, where was this?

  48. I'm happy that you're happy, but nah, that was in you. You didn't let it come out of you.

  49. Something stifled you. You told yourself every reason, whatever excuses you had, but

  50. and then it tapers down, but that's how we can be every time it's time to worship and praise the

  51. Lord. Now I'm seeing these things because I'm after your breakthrough. I'm after what's good for you.

  52. Not because I want more ra ra in the service, but when I take the mic after worship,

  53. and there's after again, look at the ceiling, let somebody think I'm talking about them.

  54. And then I see there's some people and they're just kind of like looking at a dot.

  55. They got the hundred yards there. And they're just kind of waiting for it to be over or

  56. they're thinking about what they're going to do later in the day or what's up ahead in the week.

  57. And my heart just breaks because I know they're missing out.

  58. And if you can't do it in here where it's easy, how will you do it when there's a life

  59. interruption of the satanic kind? But you shouting unto the Lord with the voice of triumph,

  60. you having a hallelujah anyhow. You get a bad phone call. You receive a terrible email.

  61. There's some kind of strife in your life. You have to train yourself to hallelujah, Lord.

  62. I'm in the palm of your hand and I thank you. You are faithful and true and you're working it out.

  63. I trust in you. I shout unto you with the voice of triumph. If you can't do it in here,

  64. we're all gathered together and you have a whole worship team leading you. And how will you do

  65. it when the rubber meets the road? No pun intended.

  66. So this is something that we have to get better in.

  67. There's those who are already like this is the wildest church I've ever been in.

  68. What are you asking of them? But we have to reach a point of critical mass.

  69. That's usually around 65%. We have to reach a point of critical mass of radical dedicated

  70. on fire believers who are yes. Yes, they're expressive.

  71. This is not a style thing. This is not a denomination thing. This is not a personality thing.

  72. This is a Bible thing. There has to be an expression. You look at everyone who received a miracle

  73. from Jesus. There was a hunger and a faith manifested with an expression.

  74. He was healed and went walking and leaping and praising God. Can you imagine?

  75. Emily, my wife Emily would whittle away, emotional whittle away and die if I just had an

  76. expressionless marriage. How do you do, wife? You know I love you. I wrote you a letter about it

  77. before we got married. There has to be a passion that's expressed. And you read the Psalms,

  78. you cannot deny that there is a passion there. You say, well, I'm not an expressive person. Yes,

  79. you are. Yes. Oh, no, I'm shy. No. If you were right now getting on a subway train,

  80. you were holding the door for someone and somehow the doors malfunctioned and caught your finger.

  81. And the doors jammed on your finger. You would not say, cheerio, good people.

  82. Perchance, is there anybody on the subway car that could help me out?

  83. You would very expressively say, ah! Somebody pull me out of here!

  84. All of a sudden, what happened to your shyness and your introvertedness?

  85. Your passion came out. Again, this is not a personality thing. This is a Bible thing.

  86. And I'm after it because I know your breakthrough is on the other end of it. It is

  87. lifting up the hands. It's not a denomination thing. You see it in the scriptures.

  88. Over and David said, Lord, in Psalm 67, this is how I'm going to bless you while I live.

  89. I will lift up my hands to your name. Paul said, I want everywhere men lifting up holy hands

  90. without wrath or doubting. That means don't be angry. Don't be confused. Lift up your holy hands.

  91. And I'll never forget. That was the weird thing to me when I first became a Christian. I could

  92. deal even speaking in tongues because it was explained to me. I understood it and to me was cool

  93. and supernatural. It was awesome. But then the people lifting up their hands, I just thought to myself,

  94. now this is starting to look fanatical. I want a cool Christianity that I can export,

  95. but this lifting up the hands, that's probably all the movies I'd seen beforehand.

  96. Maybe I saw some videos of some snake handlers in the Appalachian Mountains,

  97. and I associated it with the fanatic lifting up the hands.

  98. So it wasn't until I was saved in 92. It wasn't until my first year of college in 94

  99. in a church out in Long Island, everybody would lift their hands and I would think,

  100. you know what, I'm going to give this a try. I'm sensing the Lord. I'm wanting to just worship him.

  101. And it was the eternal struggle to get half-mast. Just, and you know, a lot of us have main

  102. characters in Rome. We think everybody's looking at us. We think people are judging us. We think

  103. we're so interesting. Nobody really cares. They don't. They're too busy thinking that everyone's

  104. looking at them. So in my mind, I thought the whole church is going to look at me.

  105. And why did it take so much for my hands to get half-mast?

  106. Because there was breakthrough there. There was something about surrender.

  107. There was something about the prince of the power of the air and you lifting up your hands

  108. into the air and saying, this is my space. Even totally secular humanists. What's his name?

  109. The motivational speaker with the face like a horse? Tony Robbins.

  110. Why what? You all knew who I was talking about right away. Don't look at me like how could you say

  111. that? You knew who I was talking about right away. You need to repent. That was a test. I wanted to

  112. see if you would get it on it. You all laughed right away. Totally secular, but he will say,

  113. in the morning, the first thing you should do is take a wide stance, lift up your arms in a

  114. V shape because there is a mind-body connection and it prepares you for a day of victory. Your physiology

  115. changes when you lift up your hands for 30 seconds. That's just him from a totally secular humanistic

  116. point of view. Never mind the spiritual of what you're actually saying. You're saying, I surrender.

  117. You're saying, I worship you and you're in a place of receiving.

  118. But these are the expressions that have somehow just been relegated to, oh, that's charismatic,

  119. oh, that's Pentecostal. No, it's Bible and it is Bible to shout unto the Lord with the voice of triumph

  120. to open your mouth, especially when you don't feel like it. That's where the victory is.

  121. Anybody can praise them on the mountaintop. Hallelujah. Death and life are in the power of the

  122. tongue and they that love it. What is it in that sentence? They that love it will eat the fruit

  123. thereof. They that love what? They that love the truth that death and life are in the power of the

  124. tongue. They that love the fact that God created you in His similitude, in His image and that the same

  125. creative power He has in His mouth He put in yours. And so you just look, it seems like I'm

  126. harping on a little thing but this is so big. There's so many exhortations in the Bible

  127. for God's people to open their mouths and speak. Over and over again in the Psalms, just let it

  128. stand out to you every time the Psalmist says, I will say, I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge,

  129. my strength, my high tower, my fortress, my shield, my buckler. I will say, not I will think,

  130. not I will write, I will say. And so the enemy is not worried, he's not intimidated of God's

  131. people coming together in half of them during a crescendo like that where it was our opportunity

  132. to really let the maker and king of heaven know to make a declaration here in New York City.

  133. He's not intimidated, he's not bothered, he loves it. I want to chunk of us to just

  134. I'm after your breakthrough. There is a satanic gorilla glue and he comes and he applies it on

  135. people's lips. I used to say crazy glue but nobody knew what I was talking about, it was an

  136. outdated reference. It's a gorilla glue now. Do you remember crazy glue? The guy with the

  137. hard hat, this thing. Awesome, four people are in their 40s, that's beautiful.

  138. You want a gorilla glue, super glue? It's good glue. The thing that holds up my smartphone

  139. and my dashboard comes with a suction and it just keeps falling off, falling off. And I was like,

  140. you know what? I don't care what it does to the resale value. Gorilla glue and a dashboard.

  141. It's been like a statue ever since. He loves to come with that gorilla, we'll put it on your lips

  142. especially when you're going through it and just if you're quiet, you're not creating.

  143. But when you begin to speak, especially when you're praising him, some of you you've never

  144. shouted how the glue out loud. And I'm glad for that. I'm glad only because it shows that we're

  145. growing church and there's people at all different levels in their Christianity. I'm glad. You

  146. don't want to become just like this incestual, blessed me club of 20 people that have all known

  147. each other for the last 20 years and they're all hallelujah people. But there's a disease in

  148. church known as coin anitis. And a coin ania is the Greek word for fellowship, that's beautiful.

  149. But when there's no new people coming in that are not evangelizing and the churches and growing

  150. and I know I was getting saved, then it just becomes this inbred impenetrable social club.

  151. And then you have the disease of coin anitis.

  152. So I'm glad that there's different people at different levels. I'm after those you may be like me

  153. in 94 where I couldn't get past half mast and when I finally did change a lot of things.

  154. I want to give you permission this morning to be expressive.

  155. You notice that Jesus never quieted anybody. I always found that fascinating.

  156. That is awesome. It's beautiful. He never shed anyone. You think about what it looked like when he

  157. was ministering all the kids running around. They didn't have children's church then.

  158. Babies crying kids running around. People talking amongst themselves. And then people crying out.

  159. Now the religious quieted people. Blind Bartimaeus shouted, son of David have mercy on me.

  160. And it says they'll want, don't bother him. And you know what his response was? It says he cried out all

  161. the more son of David have mercy on me. And that caught Jesus's eye and released the anointing

  162. that made old blind Bartimaeus see again. I mean almost every miracle of healing falls under this

  163. category. But I was always especially intrigued with the paralytic and his friends that climbed up

  164. to the house and ripped the roof off of the house. It says, Jesus seen their faith.

  165. You would think you would say, what have you done to this nice man's roof?

  166. But Jesus said, well, we'll get to the roof. I'll send you a love offering.

  167. My ministry has got it covered. But he saw their faith.

  168. It matters. It matters. If you're locked up, you prevent God from touching you and bringing

  169. into your life what he wants to bring into your life. And there's all these reasons and lies.

  170. I was taught something in Bible school just about life. I'll never forget. I was just teaching

  171. my son this last week. I'll never forget the statement excuses our lies. All excuses are lies.

  172. Excuses we give other people excuses we make for ourselves. They're all lies.

  173. So whatever excuses you've been telling yourself, oh, that's not my personality,

  174. oh, that sounds too radical or fanatical. Oh, I'll do it in the privacy of my own home.

  175. You should be willing to do it anywhere. And you're blessed to live in New York City where you

  176. could do it anywhere and no one will even look twice. You can do it on a subway platform.

  177. You can lift both hands and shout in tongues and people walk right past you and not even pay you

  178. any mind. I'm just reminded yesterday when you came into the house. I closed on the house.

  179. It was amazing. So Mauricio came over yesterday and he came in already drunk in the Holy Spirit.

  180. You ready? I heard him laughing in the driveway. And so I opened the door. He comes in

  181. and I immediately just let out a praise in a heavenly language. He joins me in. Now there's no

  182. furniture in the place and it's stone floor. So it's just echoes. I mean, it was like you had a

  183. sound stage and then there was one of those speedwalks. I love the suburbs. I'm getting used to

  184. suburb culture. I didn't know speed walking was still a thing, but I guess it's like I think of

  185. the 90s and more walkers, but she was, you know, I don't want to imitate it. And she looked in like

  186. who are these people? Are they Middle Eastern or what language was that that I just heard?

  187. I just gave her the nod. There goes the neighborhood.

  188. God wants you to have an experience.

  189. Our Christianity has to be an experiential Christianity.

  190. Why don't you just open up your heart right now? Those of you joining us online,

  191. welcome to City Light Church. Right where you are. Just take a moment and let your guard down.

  192. That wall that slowly gets put up over our heart. Let it drop. Forgive whoever you need to forgive.

  193. If you're suffering from condemnation, look to the blood of Jesus and forgive yourself as Christ

  194. has forgiven you. Some people don't praise him. They're not expressive because they say, well, I'm not

  195. worthy. That doesn't matter. He's still worthy. Who are you to stop praising him just because you

  196. think you're not worthy because you don't have a full revelation of the depth of the cleansing of

  197. the blood of Jesus, but he's still worthy. Open up your heart and know this that our God is a God

  198. of experience. Abraham became the father of many nations because he had an experience with God.

  199. Moses, he led the children of Israel out of Egypt because God appeared to him in a bush and a

  200. fire in the bush. The bush was not consumed, but Moses had an experience. David had an experience.

  201. Elijah had an experience. Elijah had an experience. Everyone of the patriarchs had an experience. Jacob

  202. he had an experience laid his head on a stone. They were built different back then.

  203. I love my temperate. Jacob finds a nice rock to use as a pillow and he realizes he says there was

  204. something about that place. This is the very portal to heaven, the stairway to God. He had an

  205. experience that marked him forever. And then as our ultimate example, Jesus had an experience.

  206. He came up out of the water. Do you know how the father welcomed his son into ministry,

  207. into his mission, into what he was put on earth to do with an experience. The heavens opened

  208. and the Holy Spirit alighted upon him, descending from heaven like a dove.

  209. And then even more as an example to us, 120 in the upper room, no one had preached the gospel yet,

  210. but they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They had an experience and then the world was turned

  211. upside down. God wants to give you an experience. God wants you to have a consistent experiential

  212. Christianity. Consistent. Every week ask him, Lord, I want to experience your love. I want to

  213. experience your voice. I want to experience your shepherd like leading and guiding. I want to

  214. experience the miraculous. Begin to pursue him and watch what he does. Oh, he loves to answer

  215. prayers like that. The Apostle Paul, he wrote the Ephesians, he said, I pray for you,

  216. that you would experientially know the love of God, which cannot be, cannot be intellectually

  217. known. Does the Apostle Paul? I pray that you would experientially know

  218. because he can't be known intellectually. I've been thinking about this all week for my son.

  219. He just turned nine a couple of months ago and I feel like the Lord has been visiting me.

  220. Let me let me clarify what that means. Sometimes the Lord has been visiting me for some

  221. the number of lumens in your room. You go up several orders of magnitude when he visited you.

  222. That's preacher talk sometimes. You know, he said, the Lord has been visiting me. He's what I mean.

  223. I'm eating chips on my sofa. Thinking about something other than God and all of a sudden

  224. on the inside, I'm thinking of my son and I see him getting touched by the Holy Spirit.

  225. So that happens once, that happens twice, that happens over the course of the week. That's what I

  226. mean by the Lord was visiting me. Forgive me for that preacherism. And I discern this is the Lord

  227. telling me that he wants to take Victor to the next level. Sure, city kids is nice. Sure,

  228. Bible stories are nice. And we pray together as a family. That's nice.

  229. But now he needs to experience the experiential God.

  230. And then out of the blue, Pastor Marie is a good friend of mine. Text me yesterday and

  231. says the exact same thing. He said, I later said, I said,

  232. why are you writing me this? He didn't know. He said, I've been in an extended time of prayer

  233. in seeking the Lord. And he's ministering at another person's church today. And he's like,

  234. I was in preparation. I've been like hearing the Lord like never before. And I sensed that for

  235. you. And I sent you that text. And I said, you couldn't be more right on.

  236. Why is this important to the Lord? Because there's a lot of theories out there, a lot of

  237. chitchatter, a lot of opinions. I don't know if you've noticed, but culture in America is radically

  238. shifting. A lot of theories, but when you have an experience, you have an advantage because

  239. a man or a woman with an experience, they are never at the mercy of a man or woman with just a theory.

  240. So you're invited into an experiential Christianity by the Lord. And those of you who are

  241. already experiencing that, and I hear the Lord saying, there's an invitation to go deeper.

  242. There's an invitation. I'm never satisfied.

  243. I want to walk down the street vibrating with the glory of God.

  244. I want to be getting coffee at the corner bodega and just be arrested as the Lord whispers to me.

  245. Do you know that Jesus said the Holy Spirit, He's the great comforter, He will come to you and show

  246. you things to come. He will tell you things to come. What does that mean? It means He's going to tell

  247. you the future. Everybody wants to know the future. People pay big money all over New York City for

  248. for the readings and all that witchcraft and that occultism. And Jesus doesn't charge you

  249. thing. He said you can receive the Holy Spirit. He will tell you things to come.

  250. But the catch is in order to receive that, to hear that you have to be heavenly minded.

  251. And the thing is you can't force yourself. That's what I found. All the exhortations to be

  252. heavenly minded. They used to frustrate me because you cannot psych yourself up into being

  253. heavenly minded. I've tried. All right, I'm tired of the way I've been living life.

  254. Today's Monday, I'm going to be heavenly minded. Go.

  255. You can't. It works for like the first two times. And then you're

  256. carnally minded again overwhelmed with the cares of this world. Being heavenly minded

  257. is a consequence and a direct result out of an experiential relationship with the Lord

  258. when you're talking to Him. And He's warming your heart. He's flowing out of your spirit.

  259. There's an ease to everything. There's an ease. And to those of you who you think you're distant,

  260. notice I say you think you're distant because the Bible says because of the blood of Jesus,

  261. you who are in the outside have been brought near, have been brought close. But understand,

  262. when you're overwhelmed with the cares of this world, you think you're far from God. You think

  263. you're distant. What's the secret? Start talking to God. Just start talking to Him. Open your mouth

  264. and just start talking to Him. When you're under attack, when you're in a dry place,

  265. it may be hard to talk to Him for more than three minutes.

  266. Fine. Talk to Him for three minutes and then do it again an hour later.

  267. And salt and pepper and interspersure day then with three minute spurts.

  268. Say, what should I talk to Him about? It's between you and the Lord. Talk to Him about just talk to

  269. Him. There's other ways I can teach on the principles of prayer, how to pray effectively,

  270. and there are certain principles you can apply. Just forget that for now. You just need to open

  271. up your mouth and talk to your heavenly Father. And He doesn't mind. The Lord is so awesome.

  272. Can I confess something to you? I've already confessed it during 21 days of prayer and fasting.

  273. And I sometimes think my confessions are the greatest hindrance to church growth here at City Light.

  274. But I'm going to confess anyway. City Light won't pay for therapy sessions for me,

  275. so I'm forced to make the congregation my therapist. No, I want you to learn and I want to share this.

  276. No, I have been bored to tears by listening to some people pray.

  277. And don't tell me you haven't either. Have you ever listened to someone pray for like 10 minutes,

  278. you don't know one thing they said? What are you even like? My mind is melting. My IQ just dropped

  279. 50 points. Just listening to you go around and around and oh, Father God, Lord, we just,

  280. we just, we just, Lord God, Father God, Lord God, we just want to, we just, I feel like if we were

  281. to listen in an heaven it's just, we just, we just, we just want to, we just, Father God,

  282. Father God, oh God, oh God, oh God, Father God, we just, we just want, and I was thinking that,

  283. right? As somebody was just not here by the way, never here, no. These other prayer meetings

  284. have been attending. Another church in desperate need of revival, not here though. And I'm having this

  285. thought. And the Lord, the Lord just warms my heart with his love and his patience.

  286. And you know, he, he just receives things in a different way. For me, in the natural, I'm just

  287. thinking in somebody's just like, will you just say something that I don't even know how to

  288. translate your prayer. It doesn't have a beginning, middle and end. It's just words. It's like this

  289. prayer salad. But the Lord is hearing their heart. And it's music to his ears. And he's just after

  290. our heart. Hallelujah. And so you can't go wrong is what I'm saying in talking to him.

  291. Don't ever feel intimidated. Or what will he think? He loves you. He wants to hear from you.

  292. I'm so glad that the person who led me to the Lord about a week and I asked him, how do I pray?

  293. Or did I say, what is prayer? And he said, it's picking up the phone and talking to your best friend.

  294. And that's set me free. That statement actually in the beginning of my Christianity set me free to walk

  295. on a road of intimacy and not being timid because so many people are intimidated of prayer.

  296. I don't want to bother him. I know he's busy and he's so big and so strong and powerful and who am I?

  297. So they quickly come in with their grocery list of prayers, say, amen, and peace out.

  298. Now open up your heart. You know what the Psalmist said?

  299. And pour out your complaints before him.

  300. So although we're to speak victory and speak positively, there is space for you to tell the Lord

  301. how you're feeling, how you're doing. Tell the Lord your questions about life, about him,

  302. about your faith. Open up to him and watch what he does. But you have to say it out loud.

  303. You have to speak to him about these things. You have to. There was something about our words

  304. giving permission to the Lord. Are you hearing me? Yo, who? Blast for me? Blast for me? The Lord

  305. doesn't need our permission. Many times he won't violate his own word and his word has said, you still are

  306. a sovereign agent. You know the story of how the Lord saved me? Many of you do just came crashing

  307. into my life and wasn't really looking for him. He put a hunger in me. Just rescued me. I always tell

  308. that story, but there's another story that happened about six years before then that I don't

  309. often share because it's odd. It was in the mid 80s, like 86, 87. No, more like 85, 86.

  310. And my father was going through a very, very difficult time in his life.

  311. He thought he was very ill. And he was watching a TV preacher by the name of Jimmy Swagger.

  312. And I thought he had lost his mind. And my mom was like, he'd lost his mind. Coming from

  313. Yugoslavia, there are two terrible things that can happen to you when you move to America. Any

  314. Eastern European country, there's two horrible things, two snares in America. You have to look out

  315. for as an immigrant. One drugs, two religious fanaticism. Those are the two awful things. Not the

  316. fornication, not the sex, not all that other degeneracy, but religious fanaticism and drugs.

  317. And so we're looking at my dad like, this is his proof. He's lost his mind.

  318. And he calls me and my mom over. And he says, he's going to say this prayer at the end. Let's all come

  319. in and say it. So my mom and I, he's now have tears running down his face and we huddle

  320. and we say a prayer. I don't even know what I said. Later, I realized that it was the prayer at the

  321. end of the TV show, at the end of the preaching segment. It was a type of the sinner's prayer.

  322. And but I didn't even know the word. I didn't even know what I was saying. I just mouthed off some

  323. prayer. And then that ended and we never talked about God ever again for years. My dad didn't

  324. continue. My dad didn't read the Bible. It was just because when the crisis lifted his pursuit for

  325. God lifted. And it was just like business as usual, like it never ever happened.

  326. But what, six years later, the Lord came crashing into our lives through me and then my parents were

  327. one. I've often wondered, could it be that the reason he came crashing in so aggressively, violently

  328. into our lives was because six years before, even though we didn't know what we were mounting off,

  329. we legally asked him to. We legally opened up our lives for him to invade. Words matter. You were saved

  330. and forgiven of all your sins by the words of your mouth. You confessed with your mouth and

  331. believed in your heart. We in that prayer only confessed with our mouth. We didn't really believe

  332. in our heart, but there's still some kind of power to words. So be careful when you say,

  333. I'll never do this again and it's something you know you should do, something the Lord is calling

  334. you to. You can bind yourself up legally speaking with your words. Don't curse your life like that.

  335. Hallelujah.

  336. I'm feeling like we should sing a song to Jesus.

  337. The Lord wants to just breathe fresh on you. Our church is in a special place.

  338. You know how I know? I just know. I just know. It's like when you go outside and you smell the air

  339. and you know it's going to rain, I just know there's some shift happening. Somehow it's tied to

  340. this whole house thing that happened. It happened. I wasn't believing for it. I was impressing

  341. in for it. In a space of nine days, we went from flooded Brooklyn, Kondo to making an offer in a

  342. house miraculously. And then we had already planned on vacationing overseas and then we make an

  343. offer in the house. And the first question Emily had was, are we still going on vacation? Because

  344. this is not a time to be leaving the country. There's so many things that can go wrong with a deal

  345. like this. I looked at her and said, in Jesus name, we're going on vacation. Yes, we are.

  346. And I got crazy calls and emails while on vacation and there was so many things that could,

  347. you know how it is, so many things. And then it went over. I had the interest rate lock at a

  348. delicious 6.1. And that was like 7.3 or something. And so I went over that because the deal kept

  349. being put into the future. And now the mortgage company is like already $2,500 if you want to

  350. extend it another two weeks. I mean, that's a no-brainer. Finance wise, but now I'm just being

  351. extorted, but okay. And then right before the closing, I do the house inspection and they,

  352. I keep, do you mind if I say what you do? He's a man of many talents, but his primary

  353. professor in attorney. And he focuses on real estate, Brian Anderson there. And right before the

  354. closing, I do the final walkthrough and they took all the mirrors down in the bathroom. Now my lawyer

  355. had explained the way that works is if you take a house, flip it upside down, whatever comes out,

  356. they can take, but whatever sticks, I mean it was like fixed to the wall. Now there's no mirrors.

  357. And I had a great attorney and he was like, you know, we're going to get those daily, the

  358. compensator work. And I'm like, you know what? I don't have the mirrors. I don't want to

  359. frustrate this at all. I don't want to mess with it. That's just closed because it was so many.

  360. It was a mirror and we just closed on Friday. Why am I saying all this? One, it was a major victory,

  361. but I feel because of the way God did it. This wasn't me just thinking about something,

  362. talking about something, saving for something, believing for something. And it was supernatural.

  363. It was absolutely supernatural. Our lives have completely changed in just a few months.

  364. And I just want to encourage some of you. How does that saying go? There's weeks where nothing

  365. happens and then days where years happen or something like that. But I think I'm like, you know,

  366. Lord, it's been a quiet year really. I always want to see you taking me, Lord, from glory to glory.

  367. I want to look back and say, look what the Lord has done. But sometimes you'll just have a quiet

  368. year. You'll have a quiet several years. And nothing is happening. And then all of a sudden in three

  369. months, and you're at a whole nother level. I believe the Lord did it as a sign to me about what he

  370. wants to do with city light church. And I sense it in the air. There is a hunger here.

  371. And sometimes you're just entering and there's stuff that you can't put into words because it's too

  372. deep for us. There's just a chiro's moment. You know that word chiro's? It means the time, the time.

  373. Not the time. That's chronos, chronometer. But chiro's is where time and destiny collide.

  374. When you're in the appointed time, the set time of the Father,

  375. Jesus came at a chiro's moment in human history at the time appointed by the Father.

  376. And I believe we're just entering into a chiro's moment for city light church.

  377. This is the city light church podcast. If you've missed any part of today's message,

  378. or if you would like to find out more about Pastor Boyan Jansik in city light church,

  379. visit us at citylightnyc.com. That's citylightnyc.com. Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime.

  380. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today,

  381. that you have been reminded how much God loves you, and that you are surrounded by grace.

  382. Thank you for listening. Make sure that you subscribe to city light church podcast wherever you find

  383. your favorite podcasts worldwide.