September 20, 2026

Praise the Lord.

Are you ready for the Word of God?

I'm ready to preach, and so I can go home and think about what I preach this morning.

I like to think about it after I get through.

I may remember last week that in Ephesians we we learned that we are the called out ones.

Amen.

We're the church.

And we have gathered here today, not by accident, but we are here by divine appointment.

And God's been speaking to my heart here lately.

I've been seeking the Lord for the direction that God wants us to go as a church.

And he has brought some things to my attention, and I know it's the Holy Spirit.

And over the next few weeks, we're going to be dealing with what we are called to do as a church, right?

And somebody said, Oh no, we got an assignment.

Well, you've always had an assignment.

Amen.

You've always had an assignment.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded by the Holy Spirit what our assignment is.

And I believe there's going to be specific things and unique things, just like Sister Debbie said about Mr.

Mr.

Billy Ford and how he is, how they're not able to, Mr.

Arts, they're not able to get out and venture.

How many know it's a chore sometimes to go to Walmart?

It's a chore to go to church.

And it it takes more for some.

My mom and dad, they came in, they didn't complain, but I know it took a little bit more for them to get to church today than it did 10 years ago.

And so thank God for that.

But there are people who are shut in and they want to be in the family, but they're not able.

And there are going to be some of us that are going to be able to go by and to check on them and to pray with them and to minister to them.

You don't have to stay all day, right?

But but they do need us and they are part of the body of Christ.

And that's one thing.

Thank God for that, that we have the ability to do that.

Amen?

It's a bygone era now today.

We see each other from Sunday to Sunday and sometimes midweek, but we really don't have what we used to have.

Amen.

And so what God's going to restore some of that, I believe.

Now we're not going to harass anybody.

Look at your neighbor, smile at them real big.

He will not harass us.

Yeah, he's not going to chase me down to Walmart and ask me where I've been.

He's not going to, but we're going to check up on people.

Amen.

And we're going to make sure that none of our wounded are left behind.

Amen.

So let's get into the Word of God.

Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

If you have your Bibles this morning, I always encourage you to bring your Bible.

Make sure I'm staying in the Word of God.

Right?

I'm going to do my best to.

I'm not going to preach some off-the-wall thing to you, but it's good to be able to underline.

How many underline things in your Bible?

I said that to someone one time, and you thought it was sacrilegious.

They said, well, that's the Bible.

Yeah, it's a Bible, but it's also our manual, study notes.

And I always say you can't write think without ink.

And it's better to write it down because you'll forget it if you like me and you'll need to remember it.

So write it down, underline it, highlight it, put notes in your Bible.

And when somebody, if you leave this world, they receive your Bible, they're going to receive all the wisdom and some of that stuff that God was teaching you.

Amen.

Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

We'll start at verse number 14 when you have it, say amen.

It says, And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.

And there he went, there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.

And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up for to read.

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah.

And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written.

Verse 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

And he closed the book and he gave it again to the minister and sat down.

And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Today, the scripture of God is living, is moving, it's breathing, it's active.

Today, the word of God is as powerful as the day that Jesus spoke.

Do you believe that today?

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for the word of God.

We thank you for the anointing of the Holy Spirit that's in this house.

We thank you, Lord, for worshipers and seekers and lovers of the truth.

God, I ask you today, Lord, that you would anoint our ears to hear.

God, that you would anoint be a minister, Lord, to be able to speak the word of God with clarity, with simplicity, Lord, in such a way that it'll be received and put into our hearts to grow and bear fruit.

We ask it in the mighty name of your son Jesus, and we thank you for it.

Amen and amen.

There was a young man who worked in an aquarium.

Now we we used to go to aquariums all the time.

We had fish and it's tranquil, it's peaceful, you can watch them.

But there was a young man in an aquarium that explained that one of the most popular fish is the shark.

Yeah.

People want these exotic fish.

They don't just want a goldfish, they want all the exotic.

And the most popular, one of the most popular fish is a shark.

And he said if you catch a small shark and confine it to a tank, it stays a size proportionate to the aquarium.

What does that mean?

It means that you could have a fully mature shark that is only six inches long.

It doesn't grow beyond its habitation.

And but you can put that same shark in the ocean and it can grow up to six feet long.

And I believe today what God has shown me is that there are a lot of small places in our mindset as Christians that we have not matured or grown to what God has really in the Word said that we should.

And I'm not being specific to you, I'm talking as a whole in the church.

I'm talking about throughout the church age or the church of today in all denominations and fellowships, what we see are Christians who have not fully matured into the respect that God wants us to.

And what we're seeing is the effect of that in our churches, in our homes, in our communities, in our governments.

Everywhere you look, it is a testimony of the strength of the Christians in that community.

Do you believe that this morning?

What I believe is the stronger the church is, the stronger the family is.

The stronger the family is, the stronger the community is, the neighborhood.

What we see today is a crack in the structure of what humanity's become, but it was not what God intended us to be.

When Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, what the enemy did was he tempted him to take a shortcut.

He tempted him to worship him, and he could give him all the kingdoms of the world if he would just bow down and worship.

He didn't have to go to the cross.

He didn't have to lay his life down.

He said, if you come to receive the world, I'll give you the world.

Just make me your God.

And there are a lot of people today that have given themselves to everything and anything.

And God is, if he's in the list, he is way down at the bottom of the list.

Amen.

And what we see is a result of that today in our churches, in our families, in society as a whole, that we are a fractured nation.

Amen.

But I believe what God has done, He has strategically set churches throughout the parishes and throughout the nations who have a heart for the Word of God, a heart for the kingdom of God, that He is beginning to blow the winds of the Spirit back upon us.

And he says, What you have not done in the past, the old things, the old landmarks, some of the things we should have been doing the whole time, God has said we need to restore and repair the breach that has happened in the churches.

When the church becomes strong, our families will be strong again.

Do you believe that today?

I believe God's given us a mandate to reach the least of these, to reach the lost, the hurting, not just to have numbers and have a full church, but that people can be the people who God created them to be.

That people can finally find out this is what it means to be a Christian.

And I believe it takes care of the whole man, the whole woman, body, soul, and spirit.

Amen.

The church is so long focused on the spiritual and we have neglected the natural.

Amen.

The Bible says if you see someone hungry, you don't tell them to go and be filled, but you give them what is required that they could be filled in their body.

You give them, as Spurgeon said, if you give them a track and they're hungry, make sure that you wrap that sandwich with a track.

Amen.

You just make sure that you give them the gospel, but you give them also the necessary things that they need.

And the church, we have tried to give people the necessary things that they need without giving them a gospel, and the person that's left in the same state that we found them, they're now just fed.

God wants to bring the whole man to a place of restoration.

Do you believe that today?

Jesus read from Isaiah 61, this is a messianic prophecy, and six things he declared.

He has anointed me to preach the gospel or the good news to the poor, to the beggars, to those who can't help themselves, to those who are in need, the poor.

He sent me to preach the good news to them.

I was reminded in Leviticus chapter 23 that the Bible says that God gave a commandment to Israel.

Leviticus 23 · chapter mention

He says, When you plant a field, and he says you go to reap that field, he says, on the out edges of that field, he said, don't harvest the whole field.

Leave some for the for the poor and the and the strangers or foreigners is coming in.

And he said, when you're picking the crop and you drop some on the ground, he says, Don't go back and pick that up.

What is he saying?

He says that God's heart is for the poor.

God cares about those who have a need.

And he is, the Bible says that he is uh sensitive to those needs.

I'm reminded what Tozer, A.W.

Tozer said, that the problem is always an inward issue.

And that inward issue is what Christ came to address.

But a lot of times what we see on the outside that we think is the outside issue is simply an heart issue that has brought an effect.

Amen.

We can't see the heart, but God sees the heart.

We don't know what man is thinking, but God knows the thoughts of man.

We don't know the pains.

You could be standing in Walmart with someone who's at their wit's end, and they may be having a casual conversation, but in their mind, they're wondering, how am I going to make it through this struggle?

How am I going to make it through this problem?

My life is falling apart at the seams, and we don't know it unless the Spirit gives us understanding and revelation of that.

Let's bring it to the church.

We can come to church and we can praise God.

We can sing and put an offering in, and we can be broken and no one knows it, but God knows it.

And we can leave the same way that we came, wondering how am I going to make it?

How can I make it through this situation?

I'm here to just take the lid off of it and say there's nobody here that doesn't have a problem.

Amen.

We all have something we're dealing with.

We have insecurities, thoughts, worries, fears.

And Jesus says some places that you're not able to provide for yourself.

He said, God's anointed me to preach good news to you who can't help yourself to know that He is rich in mercy, He's rich in grace, and He can help us right where we are.

Hallelujah.

That's the message of the church.

I mean, God is calling people to come to Him.

Amen.

He's anointed us to preach good news.

You say, Me?

Absolutely you.

You have the good news.

You have the ability to tell others of what God has done in your life, how He's helped you when you could not help yourself.

Jesus goes on to say, He sent me to heal the brokenhearted.

And that is almost a commonplace in our lives now to see people that are so broken.

Amen.

We must remember that Christ, when he taught his disciples to pray, he took care of not only the spiritual needs, but also the physical needs.

What we're dealing with is that Jesus said, When you pray, pray this way.

How many pray?

Sometimes my prayer is just one word, help.

Right?

Help! Somebody said, You must be a great prayer warrior.

No, I've just been saying help, right?

Help me a lot.

But God helps us when we call upon Him.

But in that prayer, that we pray every Sunday morning, the Lord's Prayer.

It's actually the disciples' prayer, but Jesus teaching them to pray said, pray after this way.

And in that prayer, he says this give us day by day our daily bread.

Give us everything we need.

God, we need you to take care of our physical man.

Have you ever been around some Christians that is everything's super spiritual?

And you're just trying to catch up with where they're at because you feel like you're a mile and a half behind them.

But I promise you, when they get sick and they go through trouble and they go through, they've got to cry out for God to help them in their physical man.

They're not saying, Lord, strengthen me in my spirit.

Their spirit man's not sick, their spirit man's strong, but their physical man needs to touch.

When we're weak, we need his strength.

When we're worried or bring ourselves under a load that we feel like, God, I can't make it mentally.

Then we need to cry out, God, would you deliver me?

You know, the doctors will tell you that stress will kill you.

Have you ever heard that?

Worry will make you sick.

There's a scripture that says envy will rotten your bones.

That's a physical ailment.

That there are certain emotions that we can be wrestling with, and we if we carry them to Jesus and begin to ask Him for help, He desires to help us in that.

That doesn't mean that you won't be sick.

Somebody say Amen.

I'm thanking God for the good days, and I'm crying for help on the bad days, right?

We will have sickness, we will have trials, we will have all these things, but we pray because God can help us.

Now I'm going to take this over to those who aren't serving Jesus.

They're trying to help themselves, right?

They're doing everything they can in order to be better, and they're falling short.

But I'm I'm telling you, it may be momentarily that they get some relief, but they let's talk about people that are trying to drink their problems away.

That's a reality in life that there are people that are gonna go down to the local pub and they're gonna drink until they don't remember their problems anymore, and they're gonna go home and they're gonna go to bed, and they're gonna wake up in the morning and they're gonna find out that they still have the same problems that they had the night before when they forgot about them because they numbed their thoughts until they couldn't think about it anymore.

But the problems didn't leave because it was a temporary fix.

But when I bring that to Jesus and I say, Jesus, here's my problem, here's what I'm going through.

Peter tells us, and casting all your cares upon him, for he careth for you, I can leave it there.

But the problem I have as a believer is sometimes after I leave it there, I go back and I pick it back up.

Because the time that God's working in it isn't on my timetable.

Has anybody ever been there?

God, why can't you do it now?

Because God says what I'm doing is working in you, the process that what I'm doing is I'm working on that, I'm working on you.

And I believe that the church is here as a light to tell people I'm not perfect.

Anyone here perfect?

No, but we're being perfected.

I'm not the man I used to be, and you're not the person you used to be.

God is changing us.

But the world needs to see that lighthouse that we sang about.

They need to see Jesus in you.

He says, You are the light of the world and you are the salt of the earth.

Be salty in a good way.

Amen.

And so what we see here is that people, God is going to bring people into our path.

And we have the answer, and it's the good news.

Do you believe that?

I ran into an old friend at Walmart yesterday.

Walmart didn't have what I went for, and I'm looking around in there for it, and I lo and behold, bumped into someone I haven't seen in a while.

And we began to talk.

Let me tell you, God will God will do it.

He'll put people in your path.

We sat there and talked, and I was there when this man gave his life to Jesus, and he's not living for Jesus.

He said it.

He said, We stood there, we visited, and he said, I'm not where I need to be with the Lord, but I listen to preaching on my phone.

I listen to Christian influencers all the time.

And he said, I'm listening to him and I'm asking God to help me.

And I didn't rebuke him.

I said, keep doing what you're doing, keep listening to preaching, keep praying and ask God to help you.

Come as you are to God and let God change you.

Right?

Then I invited him here to the church after we talked a while.

Come in your overalls.

I don't care.

Come to Jesus.

You'll find out that what he's done for us, he'll do for you.

How he's helped me, he'll help you.

What he's doing now, he'll do for you.

I heard a pastor say, People are not our enemies.

People are our assignment.

I just felt the light bulb come on.

I I had some people and I thought they were my enemies.

Have you?

Oh my lord.

I thought they were akin to the devil.

Sit by the devil.

But you know what they were?

They were my assignment.

They were put in my light so I could pray for them.

Jesus says, Pray for those who persecute you.

Oh God, are you serious?

See somebody on the floor in a picture, and they had like 15 Bibles out, and they were going through all the Greek studies, and they found out really he meant pray for your enemies.

And she's like, Are you serious?

And he is serious because they are our assignment.

You're the salt of the earth, and you will make a difference in their life.

I was encouraged about this meeting in Walmart, and I encourage them to keep listening.

Come to God as you are, and let Him change you.

We try to clean the fish before we catch them.

Amen.

We can't clean them until they make a commitment.

Then we can decide on them.

We're gonna have people that are gonna visit the church and they're just looking, right?

I'm not saying that about Sister Davy K.

Sister Debbie K is here.

She told me she was coming.

But we're gonna have people that are gonna come in, they're gonna be checking us out.

And we don't have to impress anybody.

Look at your neighbor and just just breathe a sigh of relief.

We're not called to impress people, we're called to love people.

Amen.

How's my time?

Is it 12 o'clock yet?

Seven minutes.

I can do seven minutes.

Have you ever heard the saying that hurting people hurt other people?

Anybody have heard that?

Well, I wrote this down.

Heal people love people.

If hurting people hurt people, heal people love people.

That means that when God does a work in your life, you have the ability to love.

And God is concerned with every detail of our life.

And E.M.

Bounds, if you ever heard of E.M.

Bounds, he is a great man of prayer, he was.

And he wrote this temporal matters are of a lower order than the spiritual, but they concern every one of us greatly.

What is he saying?

When your body, your hip, your back, your leg is hurting, it concerns you just as great or greater than anything else.

And he says, not to leave God out of the largest sphere of our being.

That means both body and soul are dependent upon God.

And prayer is but the crying expression of that dependence.

The ministry of Jesus, when he said, He has sent me to preach or proclaim the good news of salvation and to redeem those who repent and turn to him.

Are you saved today?

Is simply because you came to Jesus.

Right?

He did the saving.

He did the miracle of making the old man new by giving us a new heart.

And now it is up to God to change us into the new man as we allow the Holy Spirit to help us.

Nobody was brought in here at gunpoint today.

Amen.

Nobody is being held hostage.

You could get up and leave at any moment.

You're here because of your choice.

And when you allow God to work in your life, you're simply saying, God, here I am.

I want you to work in my life and show me.

And he may show you some simple little thing that is going to be paramount in changing the person that you are and releasing joy in your life.

See, God identifies with the needy, and God identifies with our needs as people.

And I want to share this illustration as I come to a close trying to get there.

The woman who had the 12-year issue of blood, Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

This woman, the Bible says she went from physician to physician to physician without getting any better.

The Bible says, matter of fact, the scripture says she suffered many things from many physicians and had spent all that she had and was nothing bettered but grew worse.

She's worse off than when she saw when she started.

She's not only still sick, now she's sick and broke.

Right?

She spent every dime she has, and they have not helped her.

But the Bible says in the next verse, but when she heard about Jesus, she found the answer.

She was in a position for a breakthrough miracle.

Verse 28, she said, if I can just touch his clothes, I know I'll be made well.

And it says, straightway or immediately, the fountain of her blood was dried up.

She felt in her body that she was healed of the flesh.

Why?

Because she heard about the one who was able to help her.

All these others were just hearsay.

He may be able to help you.

He's a good doctor, he's a good physician, he's got this new routine.

You need to hear about it, man.

It's the best thing going right now.

It only costs$29.95.

And that's not dollars, that's thousands.

We can set it up in installment plans if you need to pay it.

We take insurance, credit cards, care cards, anything you got, we'll take it, and we hope that we can help you.

That's what she went through.

And she's left with nothing in the bank, probably a credit that she owes.

And she's not better until she heard about the man who can.

And I'm here to tell us today that there is a community that is broken.

They're going through looking for anything they can, and they just need to simply hear about the one that we've met.

His name's Jesus.

Here's the truth: His power to heal, deliver, and restore is just as available today as when Jesus walked on the earth.

Do you believe that?

There's a doctrine that says all the gifts have ceased.

That's not so.

Just because you've been praying for your healing and it hasn't come yet, don't quit praying.

Don't quit believing.

Don't quit seeking.

We don't know when the breakthrough might come.

It may be in the last minutes of the last hours that God breaks up.

He does his best work when we're at our least ability to do anything.

Somebody needs to say amen to that.

Amen.

So I I came across this this morning.

I want to say this.

This is a quote.

It said, sin whispers.

Was it whispers?

It whispers, you are ruined.

That's what sin says.

It's over with.

But salvation shouts, you are redeemed.

What people remember about your part may be part of your story, but in Christ it does not have to be your identity.

That's what the world needs to hear.

They may be broken, they may have been the talk of the town.

They may have gone through all kinds of terrible ordeals and have a have a stigma to them, but that's not their identity.

When salvation comes, sin may have written painful chapters in your past, but God is writing new chapters in your life now and for the future.

I mean, if we don't have this testimony, we don't have this type of hope, then we as a church are most miserable.

Amen.

I don't get up every day and say, it's going to be a crummy day today.

I just wish I could just stay in bed because you know this is going to be the worst day ever.

I get up with expectancy that there's going to be some good in my day.

Not that it's all going to be good, but I'm going to have the ability to get started, to keep going, and make it through.

And when I lay down at night, I know that I have accomplished some things in my day, and God is touching me physically and spiritually and helping me be able to do what I need to do.

And I'm going to take it a little bit further.

Jesus said, Don't worry about tomorrow.

I mean, don't you make plans to go on vacation about tomorrow, but don't worry about tomorrow because tomorrow it's got enough things to deal with when tomorrow gets here.

What is he saying?

He says, You're going to have to learn to trust me with tomorrow.

Just like you trust me with today.

You see, our testimony is not one of defeat, but of victory and salvation.

As a believer, we're not just scraping by.

Yeah, we got lean times and fat times.

Somebody say amen.

There are times when we're broke, there's times when we're doing well.

Most people.

But our testimony is that we're saved and we have victory because he come to give me good news.

He came to heal my brokenness.

And what he did for me, he will do for you.

Church, do you believe that?

Am I saying something that's not scriptural?

I believe that God is saying to us today, our testimony as a church is not that we meet here two or three times a week and we worship God, is that we are testimonies, living testimonies of the fact that God is present in our life, that he is helping us, and he'll help you and your family also.

What he did for me, he will do for you.

Any of us brokenhearted?

Are any of us needing deliverance?

Do any of us need our eyes restored or recovery of sight or freedom from trauma?

So that's what he said.

He came to give liberty to the bruised.

I began to think about that.

I said, you know, someone that's been battered is bruised.

And it's traumatic.

You know, they can't move forward because they're they're they're they're they're caught in that mindset that everything else is gonna happen the same way, not so with Jesus.

Job is the prime example, one of the prime examples that we all recall, that after Job had gone through all that he had, went through, and his amigos came and talked for God to him and said things that sounded good but was not right at the end of it.

When God was through letting the enemy try Job, he said, it's enough.

He's passed the test.

And it says in your Bible, in my Bible, and God restored the fortunes of Job.

God restored more than he had in the beginning.

Now, I can't say what God will do for your life, but I can say what he does for your life will be better than anything that you go through, because the God that we serve always makes recompense for the bad that you go through.

He says, with all these tribulations, he says, I'm gonna bless you with tribulations, but what I'm gonna also do is I'm gonna give you retribution for what you go through.

Amen.

So what Jesus is saying today, and we need to have this testimony for the world, not that we're barely getting by, not tell them a lie.

I'm not saying tell people lies, but I'm saying find the good that God has done for you and begin to magnify what God has done and watch how God begins to minister through you to those people who are broken.

Amen.

It's the good news.

And it's in you.

Grab your hand of the one next to you.

We're gonna pray.

If you need prayer specifically, these altars are open.

We'll pray with you today.

If you need a touch in your body, you need a touch in your spirit, a touch in your mind.

If you need someone else that you love that needs prayer, we'll pray for them.

But let's pray together for this church.

Father, God, would you make us the lighthouse for Jesus Christ?

God, there's so many broken people, Lord, in this parish, God.

There's so many families, Lord, that are hanging by a thread.

There's so many people that have been in season after season of discouragement.

They've tried everything they could do, but Lord, they have not got better.

They've gotten worse.

And God, we know today that your word is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

You do not change, Jesus.

And we're praying right now for everyone in this house, Lord, that our testimony is a testimony of salvation and victory.

God, I bind the lies of the enemy that He's spoken over us right now.

Lord, we take authority over every lying spirit.

God, we take authority over every accusing spirit that has said things that are contrary to what you would say about us.

Father, we cast down every imagination and every high thought and every lie that the enemy is trying to bring against us.

And Lord, the the the barriers that he's trying to put in front of us to keep us from being the light of the world.

You said the light is not hid, it is placed on the mantle to light the whole house.

So I ask you today, Lord, let the light of Jesus Christ come upon our lives and in this church in such a way that we will shine for you in this lost world.

I pray, God, when people come in that you would help us to love out of a pure heart, to love them, to be concerned about them, to talk to them and to listen to them, Father, and make us aware, Father, of things that we need to pray about.

Lord, don't let them lead the way they came.

But I pray when people come in broken that they will find healing, not only for their spirit, but for their homes, their families, their bodies, their minds, and that their eyesight will be recovered.

They could see clearly what the Lord has provided for us.

God, give us strength for tomorrow, and we'll trust you as we go on tomorrow to help us as you have today.

We thank you for it.

We give you all the praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Does anybody need personal prayer today before we leave?