David: The Practical Powers of Prophecy - Pastor Denny Duron

I am in uh a series on uh the life of David, just pulling some truths from his life, and so the pastors, our pastor pastoral staff here has been kind enough to allow me to have that freedom so that I can kind of after they finish the last series, then I can slip in and do one of these.

So it'll probably only take me about four years to finish.

But uh I am just so, so happy to be in the house of the Lord.

You know, that that phrase, the house of the Lord.

The church is the answer for the world.

I said the church is the answer for the world.

I read some startling statistics this week.

I was just curious to know just how much difference the Church of Jesus Christ makes in America.

When I began to read that the church in America handles up to$14 trillion of services to the average citizen, it blew my mind.

I mean, to think that the church has fed so many hungry people, has counseled so many addicts back to health, has provided shelter for so many of the homeless, and then all of the great schools, from universities on down to daycares across America, multiplied thousands of educational institutions where people are paid far below their value as teachers so that they can take on the mission of reaching kids.

And I was so impressed with it that I went into my office and we have one of those grease boards, you know, and I just wrote down the facts there just so that I could walk through and see those and not forget them.

I um am so happy, so proud to be a part of the church of Jesus Christ.

And for those of you that aren't here every Sunday and you don't know the way that we feel about the church, we're not talking about this location.

We're talking about all the churches, all the churches in the world that are naming the name of Jesus Christ.

And can you just right now give the church at large a great round of applause?

I um can remember moments in my life where I absolutely heard from God.

You say, why?

Well, because of the way it worked out.

I know that sometimes we think we're hearing a word from God, it's just the enchiladas we ate last night.

But what I can tell you is that there have been times in my life that I know for certain I've heard from God.

Um I remember so clearly as just a kid, like 14 years old, working out in a field by myself, and actually hearing that loud thought that came from the Father deep in my spirit, ask this question, What have you got in your hand?

And I happened to be just out working out by myself on this field, and I had a football, and I said, Well, Lord, it's a football.

And the next words I heard, I know, were from God.

He said, If you'll give it to me, I'll use it.

Because he's used it my entire life.

I remember another word that I received from God that really I never even identified it as prophecy.

Can you believe that?

Until just recently.

But one day I was catching some balls from the quarterback at Louisiana Tech, where I was on a football scholarship and I was going into my junior year, very excited because I was in the rotation, which meant I was gonna play at wide receiver.

And wow, how I loved playing wide receiver.

I loved catching that ball, and I especially loved being way out there on the side away from all those big guys.

And the coach walked up to me and he said, Duran, you're throwing that ball better back to him than he's throwing it to you.

We're gonna give you a shot at quarterback tomorrow.

And I thought, well, you didn't ask me about that.

I I don't want a shot at quarterback, I want to play wide receiver.

So I went back to my room, closed and locked the door, and got on my knees and I said, God, please do not let them move me.

Please don't let me them move me to quarterback.

And I know that I heard a prophetic word from God in that moment, because this is the word I got.

I have ordained that you be the quarterback of this team.

And I am going to give you an undefeated season for the first time in the history of Louisiana Tech for my glory, and you will use that to share Christ with all of your teammates.

And that's what I heard.

I mean, it was a a real word from God.

So I just said, okay, I I receive it.

Now, the first game, the next year, I was a quarterback.

I I had won the job.

The first string guy had left in the middle of the night to go be a bartender in uh Austin, Texas.

I don't know where that came from.

The next guy quit in the middle of practice, and he was a good hand.

The third guy couldn't run out of sight in a day.

So when I say I won the job, I got it by forfeiture.

There was nobody else.

So I start the game, and I am feeling great.

I'm feeling confident.

My arm is alive, man.

I'm I'm finding receivers, but I completed three out of 16 passes.

And for you ladies, that's really bad.

Three of 16.

And yet I wasn't down because I knew I'd received a word from God.

So I went into my coach's office, my offensive coordinator, and I said, Coach Slaughter, I said, I know I was bad on Saturday.

I said, but don't move me.

God's ordained that I be the quarterback and we're not gonna lose a game.

Now, we had just we had just barely beaten the worst team on our schedule.

They were they they weren't gonna win hardly any games.

And we had some real water moxins on that schedule that we were gonna have to play.

And he uh later said, in fact, I have it on video of him saying it, he said, I thought he was a nut.

I thought he'd lost his marbles.

He said, I couldn't wait to get him out of that office.

And uh they kept me there for one more week.

And um we played against the University of Southern Mississippi with their great punter, Ray Guy, who also played free safety and a couple of guys that were going to go to the NFL.

Nobody gave us a ghost of a chance, but we were all, as the first string offense, sitting on the bench by halftime because we were ahead 35 points.

And we breezed through the rest of our schedule and went 12-0 for the first and only time in Louisiana Tech history that we were undefeated.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I had decided later that that was my story, that would be one thing.

But there are so many that can testify to the fact that before I ever had a good game, and before we ever got on that streak that I had already declared prophetically, this is the word of the Lord.

So from the early days of my life, I have experienced the advantage of something called the prophetic.

The prophetic.

How many of you have ever experienced the advantage of the prophetic?

Raise your hand.

Some of many of you have, the advantage of the prophetic.

Now, prophecy is simply when God lets you in on something he alone knows.

He's the only one who knows it.

And he allows you to get in on it.

In the book of Ephesians, the fourth chapter, the Bible says this that there are gifts that God has given to the church.

And he says, He's given these gifts so that we might resemble a complete man.

Now that's very confusing language until you study to see exactly what that means there.

What that means is that Jesus is the manifestation of the Godhead, the power and might of God.

And Jesus had all of these gifts that are listed here.

Now, here are the gifts.

One is a pastor.

See, Jesus was the great shepherd of the sheep.

He's the best pastor ever.

Amen.

How many of you know that he's pastored you in some very difficult times?

When you lost a loved one, when kids weren't doing well, when you lost that job, moments of crises, he's always there, isn't he?

The great pastor.

And then it says it's the gift of the teacher.

That's what he did most.

All of you have read the Sermon on the Mount.

Wow, what an amazing speech that was.

Covered just about everything that the human race needs to know in just a few paragraphs.

He was a great teacher.

Also, the Bible says that we were given the gift of the apostle.

And of course, Jesus is the great apostle of the church because apostle refers to one who is given the responsibility to set the church in a place where it doesn't exist.

So an apostle of a church would be somebody who had the overall, the final say, the great responsibility to establish a church in a place where a church had not existed and to be the overseer, the final word.

There's a man by the name of James of Jerusalem, who was the brother of Jesus Christ, who was the overseer, the apostle of the church of Jerusalem.

His word was final.

How many of you are glad that you serve the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the great apostle of the church?

And no matter how the devil comes against the church, no matter how atheists and agnostics try to destroy the ideal of the word of God that our apostle will always prevail.

When the smoke clears, the great apostle will still have his church.

And then there is the evangelist.

Jesus was also the great evangelist.

How many of you remember that wonderful, poignant, powerful, compassionate conversation that he had with the woman at the well that day?

Just loved her right into the kingdom of God.

And he was the great evangelist.

And then he was also the great prophet.

Remember Jesus' powerful prophecies?

How will we know when this temple is going to be destroyed?

You talked about it being destroyed, Jesus.

How do we know when that's going to happen?

And also, while you're at it, can you tell us how we will know about the end of the age?

And Jesus, very quickly, what we would say off the top of his head, just began to lay out the plan that would usher in his second coming and also the destruction of the temple that he had talked about.

He was a prophet and he never ever missed.

Here's what I want you to understand about all those gifts, and I want you to hear me with your heart.

You're supposed to be operating in them.

They are not just for the guy in front, they're for you.

They are the practical powers of God.

Now it's a shame that the majority of the church of Jesus Christ in America and around the world does not preach that the supernatural is practical.

But it is.

Based, listen, on the prophetic power of God that works in you.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

This morning, there will be some of you that will walk out of here already have opened, having opened a door to the prophetic, and you will begin to operate in it by the time you get to your automobile.

Because you're just that open and you're just that full of faith.

For others, it will be a greater struggle because this is new to you.

But don't give up.

Because let me tell you, the power of the prophetic is worth having.

And you don't have to look like some church or spiritual guru to operate in it.

You don't have to speak in the King James, these and thou's.

Thus saith the Lord.

No, no, that doesn't happen now.

Shouldn't.

That was a translation into the King James Version.

We right now, we're new international version Christians.

Our prophecies sound like conversation.

They sound like prayer.

And many times they happen in silence.

Sometimes is my precious daughter right here.

They happen in dreams.

She's a prophetic dreamer.

Let's get started.

Say, man.

Martha, I thought he was half done.

Well, you hadn't been here much, have you?

My subject today is David.

The practical powers of prophecy.

The practical powers of prophecy.

Prophecy is a sure word from God that number one calls us.

Calls us.

It had to happen that way because I was not interested in preaching.

My dad was a preacher.

That was fine with me.

But we went to a little church in Minden, Louisiana, and it was a tiny church.

This platform would have been twice as big as that church.

That's the truth.

And it was so small, and yet we had this religious identity that was prevalent at that time and prevailing at that time, where every pastor that was there sat on the platform.

So the people were right here, and then the chairs for the preachers were right here on the platform.

And what these weren't folding chairs.

In those days, they felt we needed thrones to sit on.

So they were wonderfully handmade wooden thrones.

And so we all just sat on these thrones as the preachers or the guests for that night.

Well, I'd made a deal with God, of course, that I would sing for him, but I didn't want to preach for him.

And uh I just determined that, you know, God was going to agree with me in that.

So I was going to keep my end of the bargain, and he would keep his.

And so I went with my dad to sing at this little meeting that he was doing in Minden, Louisiana.

And so, you know, the platform is here, the pulpit is here, uh, you would stand here, the thrones were here, and then the choir was right behind you.

You could high-five all those people back there that were just right behind you, and here we were.

So I got up to um to sing.

Now my dad was sitting here on this throne, and so he just reached up and grabbed my coattail and went, just went, he goes, say something.

Well, that didn't bother me either because I had memorized um several of the testimonies of the little ladies that gave their testimonies on testimony night every Wednesday.

I just thank God for saving me, filling me the Holy Ghost, put me on the road to heaven.

Blessed be his holy name.

Pray for me as I endure to the end.

I I had them, I had all three of them down.

So they I was good for three nights at least of saying something.

So my dad goes, say something.

So I I started to give one of those testimonies, and suddenly I began to tremble.

I began to shake.

Now, let me just tell you, that's not what's gonna happen to you.

I was a hard case.

God had to shake some of the pride and fear out of me.

So I started to tremble under the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and then I opened my mouth and I couldn't stop talking.

I began to speak with a rhythm that was like a preacher, like what I told God I wasn't gonna do.

I began to quote scriptures that I never took time to memorize.

I arrived at truths that I'd never arrived at until that very moment.

I gave an invitation for those people to come forward and give their lives to Christ.

I went for 20 minutes, took the service right away from my dad.

He just sat there on the throne and I took it away from him.

Next night, the same thing happened.

And I realized that I had experienced, listen, a prophetic call.

Now, that is not the way it's going to be for 99.9% of the people in this place, but you must have a call and you must hear the voice of God at some point in your life that you are called to do what you do.

Let me just say this to you.

You will diminish the power, the presence, and the practicality of God's will in your life if you continue to think it's just you in your space in life.

It is not.

You are called to do what you do.

I don't care if your daddy, your granddaddy, and your great granddaddy did what you're doing.

You are different because you are not just in their lineage, in their line, you are in the lineage of the Holy Ghost, and you are called to do what you do.

You're called every morning to get out of bed and to get out of bed with joy.

Here's what I say Lord, I thank you for this day.

This is the day the Lord hath made.

I will rejoice and be glad in it.

This is going to be the greatest day of my life, but not as good as tomorrow.

I make a declaration because I understand that I am called to live a practical but prophetic life.

You see, the fact is, the preacher is not the answer for the city.

Those that are hired to professionally assist him are not the answer for every department of this church.

Those that are over outreaches are not the answer for those that we want to reach.

We, the people, have access to the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And we are filled with the spirit of prophecy so that we hear the word of God and we speak the word of God and we arrive on time.

Somebody give the Lord praise.

Amen.

David's call was prophetic.

1 Samuel 16.

This is what the word of God says about David.

Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him.

Who was David at this point?

He was a shepherd boy who took care of sheep, and that's all he did.

Anointed him, the shepherd boy, in the presence of his brothers, who, by the way, were all warriors in Saul's army.

And from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.

Why?

Because this was not a job interview.

This was not the old prophet Samuel coming into David's house to just do a nice interview to see if maybe there was a possibility that he had promised to be a politician.

No, he received an anointing from God that was supernatural.

It was a prophetic call.

I love it when Sarah talks about her calling, her first calling.

She can take you to Rodney Duran Chapel right now, and she can show you the spot where she was nine years old, and she for the first time felt the supernatural call of God to preach the gospel.

And by the way, if you haven't noticed, she's one of the finest preachers on the planet.

David, at that moment, when Samuel came.

And who was Samuel, folks?

Say it with me.

A prophet of God.

Say it with me.

A prophet of God.

Here's what you have to understand about David's entire life.

If you are a David fan like I am, and you have read his story dozens and dozens of times, what you find is that he from this time on was never a non-profit organization.

He always had a prophet with him.

He believed in the covering and the security and the adequacy of the prophetic word.

He consulted those that he knew could hear from God.

There are rock and roll bands that have witches that travel with them.

They're very open about it.

There are businessmen that consult spiritualists.

There are ads on Fox Radio that on serious radio.

Seems there are dozens and dozens every day about the California psychics.

People are interested in the prophetic.

But if you get the prophetic from any of those sources, not only are you getting a limited version, you're getting a version that eventually will lead you into bondage and not freedom and failure and not success.

But we have a God who, when he prophesies, prophesies from understanding the end from the beginning.

A God who has never failed in his word and who says, My word will never return void.

It will never be worthless.

It will always accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.

And ladies and gentlemen, I've discovered that means me, my life, my future, my purpose, my health, and my blessing.

And it means the same for you.

David had a word from God to hold on to.

Because his calling had been prophetic.

Can you imagine?

God saying, This is what I'm going to do in your life?

Telling you you're going to be a king.

And then that not fully happening until over 20 years later.

What do you hold on to?

That's what the prophet said.

Prophetic word from God.

Right now, some of you are waiting.

Just hold your horses.

The times and the seasons belong to him.

I uh dropped my son off at the Shreveport Country Club one day.

Uh Denny Rodney was playing golf and he was a little bitty.

He was about 10, 11 years old.

And I didn't want to leave him at the public course because there was more security at the private course, and a gentleman was kind enough to actually get our family uh a membership there at that country club.

And so um I dropped him off one day, and as clear as I'm speaking to you, this is what I hear in my thoughts.

I'm gonna give you this place for my glory.

Okay, now what I just heard from God was I'm gonna give you the country club.

May I say I hadn't asked him for it?

I'm gonna give you the country club.

So 15 years later.

Hey, Daddy.

I love you, buddy.

How are you doing?

Fifteen years later, a gentleman in this church who's the CPA was on the uh ownership group of the country club.

He said, You know, Denny, he said, you know, you could you could buy this place for four million dollars.

They want to get out of it that bad.

I said, No, I said, I'm not gonna buy it, y'all are gonna give it to me.

And he looked at me like I lost my mind.

Because I had a word from 15 years before that I knew was the word of the Lord.

He said, What are you talking about?

I said, Well, here's what I want you to do.

You're CPA.

I want you to create a plan to show them how they'll make more money giving it to me than if I buy it for four million dollars.

He said, Okay.

Well, the plan was so good that they tried to give it to a professional golfer, Hal Sutton here.

And he got so excited about it, he began to create plans to make it an Augusta.

But he went through a very difficult time and wasn't able really to focus on that.

And so they went to the city and said, We're gonna give you this, and this is the plan, and we'll be able to get this right off.

And the city said, No, we have enough golf clubs, we can't operate that one as well.

So they called me just before the presidential um inauguration, and they said, Look, we're gonna give you this, but you got to take it right away.

And I I just wanted to make them sweat at just a little bit, so I said, Okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow.

And tomorrow came, and I became the owner of the Shreveport Country Club.

You say, Why was that important?

Well, I'll tell you why.

Because I was able this past year to sell off some of the assets of the Shreveport Country Club and to help my pastor get to a place, and it was something he had in his heart wanted to do.

I helped him get to a place where he's going to be able to pay off the vision of his grandfather within the next five years.

Well, how'd that happen?

A practical, say practical word of prophecy.

Right now, Mark Pittman is getting ready to see a word that he received come to pass.

When he lost the love of his life, when he lost one of his two precious boys, Cole, he determined that he was going to, as the prophets said, make beauty out of ashes.

And that's what he's been doing ever since.

And then God began to prophetically speak to him.

I want you to do a book, it'll help people.

If you'll write a book about being a father and your relationship, and it's helped hundreds of thousands of people, and then God spoke to his heart so clearly and said, and I want you to do a movie.

Well, come on, folks.

That's that's not like you know, having a church social or something.

I mean, you're gonna put on a movie?

You're gonna do a movie?

Are you kidding me?

And we're so happy to have the young man who's gonna be playing Cole Pittman in the movie sitting here with us today.

You see, prophecies come to pass, but until you believe that the power of prophecy is practical, then you will never be the beneficiary of it.

You say, well, Pastor, I don't know.

That sounds that sounds strange to me.

It's not strange.

It is it is natural, beautiful, practical, and available to every one of us as believers.

And we should operate in it all the time, all the time we should operate in the prophetic.

God's gonna speak to us.

We're going to know it's gonna be beautiful to see how He moves you into places you never dreamed of going, how that you were able to accomplish things you were never ever able to accomplish before.

Just because, listen, you want to know the definition of prophecy?

Here it is.

My sheep know my voice.

And a stranger's voice.

They will not hear.

Stand with me, please, all over this place.

Amen.

Can I come back and finish this message sometime?

Is that all right?

I just got to point one.

I mean, what in the world?

Listen to me.

God needs some Holy Spirit-called people who do what they do, not because it's a living or it's fulfilling or it's the culmination of a goal, but because they've been called by his prophetic voice.

You should be proud of being a called servant of God in your space.

And don't do this all shucks kind of act.

You need to stand up with a backbone like a crowbar and your eyes full of the fire of God, and you need to be proud of being his called man on mission.

You need to walk in with the authority of Jesus Himself because he is in you, and he is greater than anything that is in the world.

Now, please hear me, because the next few minutes, I'm gonna boil this down to something that you probably need to respond to.

Hear me?

The reason that much of this doesn't occur to us, or we don't even have thoughts about it, is because we aren't in a place of intimacy with the master that we need to be.

Some of you have over the last few months and years even found yourself going through the motions.

You aren't in a place where you are in close proximity enough to hear the voice of God.

I had a friend of mine who came to the Lord after being pretty much a prodigal.

I said, What was it that turned you around?

He said, Well, he said, I was talking to my preacher daddy one day, and I looked at him and I said, Dad, I said, I don't want you to keep thinking that I'm called into the ministry of any kind.

He said, I'm not.

He said, I have no, I God's not called me.

And he said, My dad looked at me and with such kindness, he said he just looked in my eyes, he said, Son, I'm not sure you're close enough to Jesus to hear him call if he did call.

What I want you to understand is that some of you have been shutting out the call of God because you've gotten father and father and father away.

So that call has become faint.

But today, it's the day, it's the time, it's the place for you to embrace the possibility of a prophetic life.

How many of you say, I'll have that, Pastor?

I want that.

I want to embrace the possibility of a prophetic life.

Raise your hand right now if I'm talking to you.

You'll say, I want to embrace the possibility of a prophetic life.

Then everybody needs to pray this prayer with me.

We're gonna go all the way to those that maybe don't have a real understanding, and we're gonna pray with them.

Right now, lift your hand and I want you to say this with me.

Lord Jesus, today I acknowledge you that you are the king, you are the Lord, and you are my Savior.

I give you all of my life.

I open my consciousness to you, my heart, my mind, my emotions, and I say, speak to me, oh God.

Call me, I will answer.

I love you, God.

Show me how to love you more, how to serve you more.

And Lord, I pray that you will use me in every context I'm in, every single day as a representative of your love in the world.

Now just listen, listen, listen, listen.

This is the second thing.

After surrender comes listening.

You should have a time when you get in the car and turn the radio off and turn your thoughts off, and you listen to see if God wants to speak to you prophetically about your calling.

God, allow this to happen, I pray.

The holy name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for connecting with us today.

The first step to a new life in Christ is receiving the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

If you have never received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, repeat this prayer after me.

Jesus, I believe you died on a cross and rose again for me.

I ask that you come into my heart and be the Lord of my life.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

Whether you committed your life to Jesus for the first time today or are already on your journey of faith, we would love to stay connected with you.

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And remember, the best is yet to come.