Ms. Annie led us singing Lord You Are (More Precious Than Silver)
Pastor Ray…
Holy Precious Jesus, the name that is above every other name. We love You. We honor You. We magnify that name, the one and only Jesus and declare You to be Lord. We know that always where there is no way, You always make a way. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Today, You have already prepared the way. Thank You for what You did on the Cross, the blood that was shed for us that we would not be lost. But You made a way. You cleared out that pathway straight to the throne room that covered in the blood we have access to the King of kings and Lord of all Lords. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. You are worthy to receive all of the honor, all of the glory. We give it to You. We worship You. We honor You. We do magnify Your name. Hallelujah, thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Father. Hallelujah.
A lot of times when Ms. Annie starts worshiping like that and playing, I just want to lay down on the platform. I am sorry but… Maybe sometime we’ll bring our pillows. It doesn’t have to be a My Pillow. It could be your pillow (ha, ha, ha).
First of all, thank you for coming today. Speaking of Jesus, Sandy and I were driving yesterday. The car in front of us came to a stop at a stop light. So we are 10 feet maybe behind the car. The car has a license plate frame and it said “Are you following Jesus as close as you are following me?” (ha, ha, ha) That is a dangerous thing to have on the back of your car. I told Sandy, “Well, we’re following Jesus really close. Let’s get up right on her bumper.” (ha, ha, ha)
We are following Him. Right? That’s it. He is all it.
So, one more time, the three points that we have gone over twice now.
- Pray and hear from God.
- Once you have heard from heaven, confer no more with flesh and blood.
- Get your assignment done at all costs.
I love it. This will go along with that, in the beginning of James from the Message Translation.
Scripture focus (James 1)…
(5–8) If you don’t know what you’re doing,
That would probably refer to all of us at some point anyway. When we don’t know exactly what to do or what we are doing, we have a plan. Pray it to the Father. We pray to the Father in Jesus’ name of course.
…pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help,
And that is good news. That is one of the reasons why we pray.
…and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought.
That is the ultimate prayer. That’s the way we should be. We pray it, ask Him. We know we have access to Him. We lift it up, bring it before heaven, believe what we say based on what the Word says will come to pass, and then we don’t have a second thought about it. “Well, I wonder if that really…” No.
People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
(9–11) When down-and-outers get a break, cheer! And when the arrogant rich…
I want to stress that part. When the “arrogant” rich, not just the rich but arrogant rich.
are brought down to size, cheer! Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it. You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers. Its petals wilt and, before you know it, that beautiful face is a barren stem. Well, that’s a picture of the “prosperous life.” At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing.
God wants us to be prosperous in every way, spirit, soul, and body.
(12) Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.
I like how the Message puts that. Just be loyal to Him, stick it out.
(13–15) Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
(16–18) So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
(19–21) Post this at all the intersections, dear friends:
This is our license plate frame today (ha, ha, ha).
Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue,
What we hear from heaven, we speak it forth, right. We declare it.
and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
I like how that sounds. What is a salvation garden? What does that look like?
Cleansed by the blood, clean, righteous, doing everything we can do to be loyal to Him.
(25) But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action. James 1:5-21, 25 (MSG)
Pastor Ray…
Delight and affirmation in what He has called us to do really. Okay. It’s quiet in this chapel.
Ms. Annie…
Hallelujah! Amen! Preach it! Preach it Brother Ray! That’s good preaching! (ha, ha, ha).
(Spontaneous Praise!)
♪ He’s God on the platform, He’s God in the pew!
He’s God in the Amen corner, He’s God in me and you!
I know God is God I know God is God, and God don’t ever change,
I know God is God, He always will be God ♪
I am the Amen corner over here. You are the Amen corner over there (ha, ha, ha).
♪ He’s God in the Amen corner, He’s God in me and you!! ♪
Pastor Ray…
Ms. Annie will be live here tomorrow in case you want to catch up on another round (ha, ha, ha).
But God is here and He is alive today and the power of the Holy Spirit is here in this room to help us to know what it is to say. I like that last little paragraph. Even if we “catch a glimpse” of who we are in Him, catch a glimpse of it and then we stay faithful like that third point. Do everything we can do to do what He has called us to do. I know there is a prophecy that Brother Kenneth Hagin gave years ago about more, more, more. There is more, more, more. There is more.
We arrived at this time in our destination for more and the things that He has called for us to do, called for us to do, when? Right now. Because He is a right now God.
Maybe, a lot of times, we think back. He did things for us, you know, in the past. There is not one person in this room that could not say “God has been faithful in past times.” It could be years, months, weeks, days. And we know He’s faithful out into the future. He’ll do what He said He would do. His Word is true. But it’s up to us to believe Him to do what He wants to do NOW, right now.
Ms. Jeani…
When I was standing up at the altar, He said to me, “You have been running this like a marathon.”
I thought, “Well, aren’t we supposed to endure?”
But then He said, “What if everything you’ve contended for is about to come to pass in May? How would you run your race?”
So, sometimes I think we get so accustomed to pressing in for breakthrough that we stop expecting it to happen now. If you are running a sprint, you give it all you got because you know the finish line is right ahead of you. But if you are running a marathon, you pace yourself. So, there is sometimes a place in God where we risk it all and sprint in our expectation.
Pastor Ray…
I have a natural picture of that. I ran a marathon, the Twin Cities Marathon, several years ago.
You pace yourself. You preplan, get yourself ready, train up. You do what you have to do. And I actually ran that far to prove to myself I could.
You are in the race with thousands of people. You take off. You are pumped. You get weaving around through Minneapolis, the lakes. You are doing great. When you cross over the river in St. Paul, there is a hill that is stoppable. And people were falling by the waysides. Some of them were people I knew and their legs were just cramping up and they were falling out. For me, I couldn’t look at that because I would fall out too. The pace had slowed and toward the end it was like there was an enormous wind that was blowing against me. But when I got to the Cathedral, there was a man standing on the side of the road with a bagpipe playing Amazing Grace. It just sent adrenalin into me and I sprinted down the next hill and across the finish line.
I felt help from heaven. There is help for us. We are in a race but we have to keep up our pace and it’s not mental but spiritually speaking.
We started this off by reading that If you don’t know what to do or when or whatever, ask Him and He’ll reveal it to you. And if you need help to get through, He is the One that will get you through. Amen.
Ms. Jeani…
So, when Peter was chained in prison, they were praying for him to be released. And then he shows up at the house. They thought it was his angel. So, here they are praying for him to be released and the answer comes and they don’t recognize it. Could it be that easy? It’s that easy.
Pastor Ray…
Thank You. I know, Father, I know. I know it. We know it. There is not a weapon formed against us that can prosper. We get that You’ve called us further; You’ve not called us to barely, barely, barely drag ourselves across the finish line. But You’ve commissioned us. You’ve called us. You’ve anointed us. You’ve filled us. You’ve empowered us, strengthened us with that strength from within that brings a supernatural, it’s a supernatural joy that lifts us and propels us. So in our minds, we take thoughts of defeat but when our spirit overrides our thoughts and our minds and our thoughts that say “defeat, lack, sickness, symptoms,” we allow our spirits to override those words, those lies from the enemy and we compete and we move further and further and take our steps and take Your plans and take every…
Thank You, Father. We shake ourselves free from every… If there is any kind of debris, any kind of low place, we know we can take our place, declare, and believe that You’re there. You are with us. You said You’d never leave us. We are above and we are not down beneath. You put us out in front and we believe to stay there. Like the singers of old, we get out front and we lift up our voices and we praise the King of kings and Lord of lords! We lift up the name that is above every other name. Jesus be glorified today! Thank You, Father.
I want us to see that it’s not us. It’s Him through us and in us getting us across that final line, that final destination.
Money is involved in it. Money is involved in that overcoming way. It’s not looking to money. It’s looking to heaven. Heaven has provided prosperity for the saints.
Ms. Annie led us singing Worthy of it All
Pastor Ray…
Hallelujah. Thank You. You are worthy of all praise. Thank You.
I believe when our President declared that our Embassy would move to Jerusalem, something happened in the realm of the Spirit concerning the United States and Israel and the connection between the two. But then when he carried it through, like no other President had ever done, and actually moved it, had an appointed time, in the destiny of our nation and the nation of Israel. It cemented it. It made it to be so truly seen by every nation on the face of the globe. Some, of course, were for it and some were against it. But no matter what is done in these days, the times we are in, not everyone will always be in agreement. But when we as members of the body line ourselves up to what the Word has declared, we’ll be on the right side.
That decision has helped this nation move more toward actually supporting the nation of Israel. There has been a shift, a shift, a shift! A shifting, and there is momentum today as we see on the world stage things happening, some not ever before. That decision has by the blood of the Lamb put us together forever more. We will not be divided against Israel. We will not be. We are unified together. We hold Israel. We lift Israel this morning. We come by the blood, plead the blood, we cover every border. We especially go along the northern border of Israel and Lebanon. We cover that. We apply the precious blood of Jesus over the border. We declare the plans of the enemy will not enter there. No weapon formed against Israel will prosper. We speak as citizens of heaven and citizens of the United States, “No weapon formed against Israel will prosper there.”
Ms. Jeani…
For Israel:
(13–15) “Yes indeed, it won’t be long now.” God’s Decree.
“Things are going to happen so fast your head will swim, one thing fast on the heels of the other. You won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once—and everywhere you look, blessings! Blessings like wine pouring off the mountains and hills. I’ll make everything right again for my people Israel:
“They’ll rebuild their ruined cities.
They’ll plant vineyards and drink good wine.
They’ll work their gardens and eat fresh vegetables.
And I’ll plant them, plant them on their own land.
They’ll never again be uprooted from the land I’ve given them.”
GOD, your God, says so. Amos 9:13–15 (MSG)
Pastor Ray…
Thank You for Your Word which is true. If you’ve traveled to Israel, years past especially with Sister Byllie, you personally planted vines. Those vines are growing. They are producing.
Israel is one nation that shall not be divided. And we stand on the Word this morning and we declare it to be so in Jesus’ name. All around the borders of Israel we cover with the precious blood of Jesus. We pray for the protection of that blood all the way down around that southern border facing Gaza. We declare this morning other works that were planned, other decisions that were made to come against Israel, they will come to nothing. They will come to nothing.
We pray over our president, President Trump. We declare an absolute strength from heaven to stay strong to what we just heard Your Word say. Stay strong to the Word. And we pray for those that are speaking into him, that they speak the right words based on what You’ve said, Father, in Jesus’ name. And we declare over every single leader, beginning with our president, wisdom from heaven, boldness, courage, and a belief knowing what they ask of the heavenly Father in the name of Jesus, it shall come to pass. Thank You for it, Father.
Now let’s just wait right here, just be quiet for a few minutes.
I heard this. “Over the months and months and months that we have taken authority and held the blood and the name against the lies that have been spoken against the president or against our nation; the media that portrays things opposite as to what they really are, it’s working. It’s working and there is beginning to be some breakthroughs.” But what I heard was “The lies that you heard somebody say to you, that somebody else said about you, do not receive it. Do not receive it but set your face like a flint and stay strong to what God has called you to do and do everything, as we read this morning, that you can do to fulfill it.
For those things that people speak, that somebody else they heard say, most of the time it’s not true, most of the time it’s not accurate. But the Word is accurate and the Word is true and it always will be for He has never changed so the Word doesn’t change. The Word is true. Our Father, our Father God, by His Spirit has put a call within me and within you to do some things despite what others might say or think. So, stay steady, stay strong. In your heart, in your heart by the Spirit will be the words that you must listen to.”
And your eyes, our eyes today, I pray over our eyes, our spiritual eyes, that we would continually just look at Him, look at what He said, look at what He’s told us to do, look at what He said we could do and stay strong and hold fast to that. And in that we individually but you know it all works together so we want to be the part that we have been called to be so that we fit in the body the way He has called us to fit into. Thank You, Father. Thank You, Lord.
Okay, let’s stand up before we go. Ms. Annie, one more song to lift Him up.
There is just nothing better than magnifying who He is, not just because of what He’s done but because of Who He is. We love the Lord. We love You, Lord. We love Who You are. We are so thankful and grateful for what You have done, what You are doing now, and like we said, what You’ll do in the future.
Ms. Annie led us singing You are Great
Pastor Ray…
Thank You, Lord, for the power of Your precious Spirit. We believe to be being infused with more of You as we spend these times together lifting You up, get out of our natural thoughts, and into more of our heart and what You’re saying to us.
Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. You are good! You are worthy of all of the glory and honor. Thank You this day. We are blessed. We believe what we set our hands unto, there is prosperity there. We thank You for it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
