Annie led group in worship…
Pastor Ray…
Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness of it, The world, and those who dwell in it. 2 For He has founded it upon the seas And established it upon the streams and the rivers. 3 Who may ascend onto the mountain of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to what is false, Nor has sworn [oaths] deceitfully. 5 He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, And righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6 This is the generation (description) of those who diligently seek Him and require Him as their greatest need, Who seek Your face, even [as did] Jacob. Selah.”
And then it says, “Lift up your heads, O gates, And be lifted up, ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in. 8 Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle. 9 Lift up your heads, O gates, And lift them up, ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in. 10 Who is [He then] this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.”
Annie…
Lift up your heads O ye Gates and be lifted up you everlasting doors. And the King of glory shall come in. Hallelujah. We lift up the Gates of our city, Lord. Let the King of Glory come into Brooklyn Center to Brooklyn Park, to Minneapolis, to St. Paul. Let the king of glory come into our city! Mighty in battle. The ancient of days! Hallelujah! Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts is this king of glory.
We look not to the things that are seen, but we look to the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are temporal, temporary, fleshly, physical, carnal, subject to change! But the things that are unseen are eternal. We look to you, Father, the eternal everlasting God. We look not to the things that are seen. We look to the things that are unseen in your kingdom. Righteousness, truth, justice is the foundation of your throne. Oh, let your throne have preeminence over all the thrones of man, in Jesus’ name. Oh, let brotherly love continue in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul… Brooklyn Center, and Brooklyn Park, and every city of our state. Let brotherly love continue in Jesus’ name. Hate will never conquer hate. Only love can do that and Jesus is the love who came. Jesus is the love who comes to us now. He lives in us now. And His love is conquering hate. And His light is overcoming darkness in the name of Jesus. Oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for the invisible things of your kingdom. Oh, that will never pass away. Let the King of glory come in. Yeah, in Jesus’ name. You are the King of glory. Oh, hallelujah. Your banner over me is love. A gentle tongue can break a bone. It’s true. So we speak with the gentle tongue of truth and love. And it breaks down every dividing wall of hatred and division. We do not allow ourselves to be overcome by evil, but we overcome evil with good. (tongues) We worship the King of glory… We worship the ancient of days… the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end… the Lamb who overcame… the Lamb in the midst of the throne… We worship Him… Oh, hallelujah. (tongues)
Why do the kings of the earth take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed? He who sits in the heavens laughs… We laugh with Him … (tongues)
Oh, Jesus, we worship you. We exalt you. We exalt your Word above what we see, above what we hear, above what we feel. We exalt what you have said and we choose to believe what you say. And you say that love never fails. Hallelujah. And we walk in your love and so we never fail. And we send the love of God into every confused strife situation. We send the love of God in there to jam the chariot wheels of division, jam the chariot wheels of strife and hate and violence. (Tongues) cause the waters of your Holy Spirit to close over the pursuing armies of death and destruction. (tongues) Oh, the waters of your Holy Spirit that wash and bring peace. (tongues)
Lord, when we feel weak that’s when you are strong. Your power is made perfect in weakness. So your power is excelling now. When it looks like your enemies are winning, they’re losing because you are the mighty God and your Word is settled in the heavens forever.
We choose to believe your Word. We choose to believe what you say. (tongues) Jesus is Lord. It’s the new normal… Jesus is Lord … it’s the new normal … Jesus is Lord… Yeah, that’s normal. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord, in our land. Thank you… healing, healing of hearts… you know, change a change of mind, a change of direction, a shift, a paradigm, a turnaround, healing…
Pastor Ray…
You’re familiar with the scripture, but I went through this again this morning, Ephesians 6:12: “For we’re not wrestling with flesh and blood.” It’s so tempting… to see things and say things, but we’re not wrestling with flesh and blood. We’re contending with physical. Excuse me, we’re not contending only with physical opponents, but against the powers, against the master spirits who are the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly supernatural sphere.” And I read something from brother Hagin this morning. I will go through some of this. Let me read this first part.
The Believer’s Authority
Kenneth Hagin
So in 1952, the Lord Jesus appeared to me in a vision and talked to me for about an hour and a half about the Devil, demons, and demon possession. At the end of that vision, an evil spirit that looked like a little monkey or an elf ran between Jesus and me and spread something like a smoke screen or a dark cloud. Then the demon began jumping up and down, crying in a shrill voice. “Yakety yak, yak, yak, yakkity yak.” I couldn’t see Jesus or I could not understand what He was saying. Through the entire experience, He was teaching me something and if you’ll be attentive, you’ll find the answer here to many things that have troubled you. I could not understand why Jesus allowed the demon to make such a racket. I wondered why Jesus didn’t rebuke the demons so I could hear what He was saying. I waited for a few moments. But He didn’t take any action against the demon. Jesus was still talking, but I couldn’t understand a word He was saying, and I needed to because He was giving instruction concerning the devil, demons, and how exercise our authority. I thought to myself, “Doesn’t the Lord know I’m not hearing what He wanted me to hear. I need to hear that. I’m missing it.” I almost panicked. I became so desperate. I cried out, “In the name of Jesus, you foul spirit, I command you to stop. BANG The minute I said that, that little demon hit the floor like a sack of salt and the black cloud disappeared. The demon lay there trembling, whimpering, whining like a whipped pop. He wouldn’t look at me. “Not only shut up, but get out of here in Jesus’ name” I commanded. And what did he do? He ran off. The Lord knew exactly what was in my mind. I was thinking, “Well, why didn’t He do something about it? Why did He permit it?” And Jesus looked right at me and said, “If you hadn’t done something about that, I couldn’t have.” And that came as a real shock to me. It astounded me. I replied, “Well, Lord, I know I didn’t hear you right. You wouldn’t? He replied, “No, if you hadn’t done something about that, I couldn’t have.”
So he said this to Jesus four more times and He was emphatic about it. And He said, “No, I didn’t say I would not. I said I could not.” I said, “But, dear Lord, I just can’t accept that. I never heard or I never preached anything like that in my life.” I told the Lord, I didn’t care how many times I saw Him in visions, He would have to prove this to me by at least three scriptures out of the New Testament, because we’re not living under the Old Covenant. We’re living under the New. Jesus smiled sweetly and said He would give me four. He said, “I’ve read through the New Testament 150 times and many portions of it more than that. If that is in there, I didn’t know it.
Jesus replied “Son, there’s a lot in there that you don’t know.” So not one single time in the New Testament is the Church ever told to pray that God the Father or Jesus would do anything against the Devil. In fact, to do so is to waste your time. The believer is told to do something about the Devil. The reason is because you have the authority to do it. The church is not to pray to God the Father to do something about that when He’s already done something about it. The church is not to pray to God the father about the devil. The churches to exercise the authority that belongs to it. The New Testament tells believers themselves to do something about the devil. The least member of the body of Christ has just as much power over the devil as anyone else. And unless believers do something about the devil, nothing will be done in a lot of areas.
So it’s up to the church. It’s up to us. And the reason I wanted to read this to you is remember Jesus said, “I’ll not just give you three, I’ll give you a fourth scriptures.” And so I’ve got those circled here. He said, A lot of people believe only certain people have that authority. There are so-and-so or whatever, but Jesus said the least member of the body has just as much power over the devil as anyone else. And when we start believing that, that’s when we’re going to get the job done. He continued, “I’ve done all I’m going to do about the devil until the angel comes down from heaven, takes the chain, binds him and puts him in the bottomless pit.” That came as a shock to me. “Now,” he said, “I’ll give you the four references that prove that. First of all, when I rose from the dead, I said all power or authority is given unto me in heaven and on earth, Matthew 28:18. The word power means it means authority. “But I immediately delegated my authority on earth to the church. And I can work only through the church for I am the head of the church. Your head cannot exercise any authority anywhere except through your body.” The second reference that He gave me was Mark 16:15–18. “He said unto them go ye into the world, preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name, they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.” … Believers have authority over the devil. They can break the power of the devil if he raises his head anywhere in their own life or the lives of their immediate family or loved ones. They have authority there. They’ll be free from the enemy because they’ve got the right to exercise their authority over him. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’ll go down the street casting the devil out of everyone they meet.
We can’t just go down to some problem area and cast the devil out of people. We’re not coming against people and we’re making that clear. We know who we’re coming against. It primarily means you have authority in your own lives. Well, so then He went on to say, there’s one …
I want to get to this one point here because it reminded me of something. So we have authority in our own homes. I can’t go over to Sue’s home and just say, I’m going to take authority. I’m coming in. I’m taking authority, I’m casting the devil out of here. If she doesn’t want me to. You know what I’m saying?
But he did say, you can make the devil desist in his maneuvers in someone else’s life or some other situation. And that just reminded me of brother Kenneth Hagin came here to Living Word. I’m pretty sure it was in this building, and this is a lot of years ago. But there was a ministry in Minneapolis that their whole deal was “warring tongues.” Have you ever heard that or heard about it? A lot of people, here in Minneapolis, there’s the IDS building. It’s kind of the tallest building. You could go up there and look out over the city. That’s hasn’t been open for years. But they would get up in there and just scream and shout in tongues because they felt like they had to get up higher.
But that’s not true. And it got out of hand. And it was kind of going through the church and in our prayer groups, we kept coming against that because we knew it wasn’t right. So here comes Kenneth Hagin. He comes to do Holy Ghost meetings here. He’s in the middle of his message, whatever the Holy Spirit was giving him to give that day. In the middle of it, he stopped. And he took authority over the devil and called he called that spirit… I’m paraphrasing. He called him out of here, called him away from here. These cities here. He just took authority, cast that thing out, commanded it to leave. And some other things he said, and then he went right on with his message. Guess what happened? He left. And that thing left. And it seemed right for a lot of people to do that. Just war against the Devil in tongues. But it wasn’t right.
We do have authority for us today. And always we have authority. And when we see things happening in our cities, we can take authority and call that devil to desist in his maneuvers against the city. We know what he’s doing. We know he’s trying to bring about here in this area, especially now, and in the days and the weeks, you know, there’s a trial happening. Wow.
Think about the power of the blood, the power that has been given unto us, the authority that we have in the name of Jesus, that name is above every other name and we’re not wrestling against people. We’re not wrestling against one race or another race or another race. We’re wrestling against the devil and we win because the battle has already been won. How? On the cross at Calvary when the blood was shed, and then he gave us the church, the authority. Amen.
The third one that Jesus gave him was “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” The understood subject of this sentence is Y O U. You do it. And then He says that authority is yours whether you feel like you’ve got it or not. Authority has nothing to do with feelings, but you must exercise it. Use it.
So after that vision, Jesus gave me that verse from James. My spirit told me the word flee was significant. So I looked it up in the dictionary. It said the meaning was “to run from as if in terror.” So when we resist the devil, he has to flee. And it doesn’t matter if we feel like we have the authority or not. We’ve got to use our faith and believe we have it. So the devil will run from you in terror. And then I knew why that demon in my vision had begun to whimper and cry. He was terrified.
So then he said, “What are we going to do about the devil? Just roll over and play dead. Hide our head in the sand and hope he’ll disappear?” No, no, thank God. Notice what it says as we go on reading the next verse reads “whom resist steadfast in faith, knowing that the same afflictions, tests, trials are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.” The American Standard version says your faith instead of the faith. So it’s our faith. Just believing the Word is true.
The last scripture that He gave him. Jesus, James and Peter tell us to do something about the devil. Paul says in Ephesians 4:27, “Neither give place to the devil.” Don’t open any door. This was the fourth scripture that Jesus gave to me. And He explained, “This means you’re not to give the devil any place in you. He cannot take any place unless you give him permission to do so. And you would have to have the authority over him or this wouldn’t be true.” Do we have authority?
Annie shared…
All power in heaven and earth is given unto me. Jesus said, therefore you go, I give it to you. So He gave us His authority. I receive it. I believe it. I have it. I walk in, I believe it. I receive it. I have it. I walk in it. I believe it. I receive it. I walk it. I have it. I have to say those things out loud. You know, you look around at what’s going on and it’s easy for your mind and emotions to go, “No, I believe it. I receive it. I say it. I have it. I walk in it.” So we have to just open our mouths when we least feel like it and say what the Word says we are. And say what the Word says about the situation. So I’m preaching to myself. Doesn’t it seem like it’s been a very long war of attrition? The enemy is battering away and trying to wear out the saints of God like Daniel talked about. But they that know their God will be strong and do exploits. So we all know our God. So guess what? We’re strong. And we do exploits. And the biggest exploits we do are when we open our mouths and let the sword of truth come out, in Jesus’ name.
Maybe cause I’m a woman, maybe a little more on the emotional side, but you know, my heart is like breaking. My soulish heart, not the heart of God. But you look at what’s going on in the world and it’s easy for the soulish realm to just become overwhelmed with sorrow. There is so much sorrow over the wickedness and brokenness of the beautiful creations that our Father created in each human being. His heart is broken when they reject His Son and they walk in darkness. But such once was I. Paul said, such were some of you, but we’ve been washed, we’ve been regenerated. We sorrow not as those who have no hope, but we have hope in God’s eternal Word that these situations are not forever. They’re turning around by the Word of God, by the word of truth, by the blood of Jesus. We are here as salt and we are here as light and we let our lights so shine that men may see and give glory to God in heaven. So we speak to all these situations that are trying to bring confusion and turmoil and death and destruction and hatred and strife and division and deception and lying spirits and murdering spirits. And all spirits of racism and injustice and intolerance and religious spirits that try to just bring legalism, which is never going to produce the righteousness of God. Oh, but we received the righteousness of God that comes through the blood of Jesus. And we plead the blood of Jesus over the cities and over our state and over the nation in this world and over our minds and our emotions and our thoughts and the blood of Jesus. One drop of Jesus’ blood is greater than all the sins of humanity.
Oh, Father, we trust in Jesus’ finished work. We trust that He split time in half on that cross when He said “it is finished.” Everything went from darkness to light. And now by the authority that you have given us, we enforce the defeat of the devil and all his works. For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil and He destroyed them. And we continually enforce that.
We enforce your defeat, Mr. Devil, you are under our feet. Jesus has put all things under our feet. We worship you, Lord. We believe in you. We trust in you. We let the joy that comes from trusting in you wash over our souls today, wash over our minds. We yield to the forces of your Spirit, Lord, of love and joy and peace. We yield over to your Spirit. Let your Spirit come up inside of us and have preeminence. Oh, in Jesus’ name, we love you, Lord. We worship you. We praise you. We exalt you. We give you glory. We trust in you. We believe in you. Oh Jesus, you are great. You are greatly to be praised. Hallelujah.
We pray that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, that we might know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities, powers, might, dominion and every name that is named. And He has put all things under His feet and He has given Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is us, which is His body. The fullness of Him fills all in all. Hallelujah. For this cause we do bow our knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named that out of the exceeding riches of His glory, we might be strengthened with all might in our inner man by the Holy Spirit that Christ the anointed one may dwell in our hearts through faith that we being rooted and grounded in love may be able with all the saints to comprehend what is the width and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge. Unto Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory, glory, glory in church by Christ Jesus. World without end. Amen.
We trust in Him. We believe in Him. We trust in you, Lord. We believe in you. Hallelujah. Oh, praise you. You are a covenant keeping God.
Annie led group in worship…
Pastor Ray…
You said something when you were praying and it reminded me of… We can watch the news now … we can watch our local news. You can watch the national news and there’ll be giving us news on our local area because it’s in the news. But those are things that are being reported on and that are happening. That happened last year, and then again, the last few days this week. But as pray-ers, we shouldn’t be so totally focused on what happened, but on what’s going to happen. And you said something about it just… I don’t know, the way I heard it was, not to say, you know, Minneapolis is going to be fires and greater riots than ever before and all this kind of stuff. Because if we go out ahead of the news for today and yesterday, if we go out based on the good news, the written Word of God speaks only victory, speaks on restoration, hope. Expectation about how the future will be. So, however, you said that or prayed that, I saw the cities here in Minneapolis, St. Paul restored better than they were before. Just like some kind of absolute renewal and restoration. And it may be that some people that are in charge have to be moved out and others will be moved in, whatever is needed. That that’s how I saw it.
And then also the so-called pandemic, that’s over. We will now be wearing masks forever. As some people have said, you might have to wear a mask for years. No, we’re not. We will not. Because the power of the blood is absolutely working, and we’re to go out forward. He goes out, He prepares a way, the Holy Spirit makes a way where there was no way. In the natural, if you listen locally, you think this Minneapolis is down the tubes. You may as well get out of there. Don’t go there. But in the realm of the spirit, as we lift these things up and declare them to be so, we will see them come to pass. Some things are a progression and it takes time. But we stay with it. We stay on it. We stay speaking the right things and we’ll see them come to pass. Can we agree on that?
Minneapolis is a city of lakes. It has some just absolutely beautiful, beautiful areas. And right now the spotlights are shining on areas that are having some serious problems. But God, by the power of the Holy Spirit is working. And as we read this morning with the Kenneth Hagin and how he thought Jesus should do something about the devil, when He was saying He can’t. He’s already done what He can do, But it’s up to us because He gave us the authority.
We exercise the authority of the blood this morning, that authority that is the blood that was shed on Calvary … through, our precious savior, that precious blood that was shed. And it’s so clearly written in the Word of God, book of Revelations, it says, they overcame by the word of their testimony. And also by the blood. He overcame, and he said, it’s finished, it’s finished. So we’re declaring things today that are already finished in the realm of the spirit. And we are using our authority and lining up with those words with what was done at the cross. We’re getting an agreement and in line with it. And we’re taking authority over things that don’t line up with it … calling them out, just like that little wimp, that little devil that came in the way of brother Hagin listening to what Jesus was saying. And there was some kind of smoke around him. Well, we call for an absolute clearing today, a clearing up and a clearing out that the power of the Holy Spirit… we declare it again, it’s working. The power of God is working now. Changing lives, turning situations around, moving things out that needed to be moved out, opening doors of opportunity for more increase… So, Father, we pray over… I’m reminded about all of the businesses that have lost their buildings and lost their income. Just we lift them … there’s so many people, not just in these cities, it’s happened in city, after city, after city. Can Seattle be turned around? Yes. Can Portland turn around. Yes. Can New York City be turned around. Yes. It’ll take a move of the Holy Ghost. And we know we have your Word on it. You said we listened to sister Billye when she declared it by the spirit, it will not just take one man, one president, you know, a natural person, but it will be a Great Awakening that will change America. So cities that looked like they were going down the tubes businesses were burned out, broken up, messed up. We call for an absolute paradigm, a turnaround, a renewal, a restoration in Jesus’ mighty name. We see it. Let’s just see it.
I’m starting to see a picture in my spirit … cities that were so bad and torn up … all of the homeless. Somehow that’s taken care of. Schools are open. The schools are open in Jesus’ name. So teacher, if you don’t want to teach, don’t teach! Get out of the way for the teachers that want to teach in Jesus’ name. All of the right curriculum that lines up with God’s will, plan, and purposes. Hallelujah, Not like we want to go back to the fifties. We’re not saying that. We want to go back to the way God created it to work. God created and spoke forth the plans over the cities, these people, these hearts, these churches… we pray over pastors, great men and women of God all across the United States and the earth that the church, the pastors will rise up and call the things that are not completely and totally as if they were … speaking words of faith, calling those things, declaring those things. This is the way it is. This is the way it will unfold. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father for the blood. Let’s sing about the blood.
Annie led group in song…
I’m not sure if the camera can pick this up. But for us here in the chapel, we can see one thing right here. It’s a shadow from the Jewish flag because of the lights and because of where they’re set today. Right here. So what it made me want to say is Israel will not, cannot, shall not give up any of its land. It will not. It cannot. No. No. Just in case the enemy has a plan to divide it up. No, we say it again today in Jesus’ name… that embassy is going to stay where it is right now. Jerusalem, it’ll stay there. It’s not moving from there. The land of Israel shall stay in-tact and the United States will stay connected with Israel… strongly connected with the land of Israel. We shall not as a nation back away from Israel in any way. We declare it this morning, speak it forth. We believe it. Thank you for the blood of Jesus. Protect them. We surround the borders of Israel today. Thank you. Hallelujah. So, Lord, we give you glory all of the honor. So thankful for what you’ve done, what battles have already been won, for the changes that we shall see. We thank you for this day. It’s a good day, a blessed day, a holy day. Thank you for coming and tuning in.
