Annie led group in worship…
Pastor Ray…
Luke 18:7 says, “And will not our just God defend and protect and avenge His elect.” This is the Amplified. “His chosen ones who cry to him day and night.” That doesn’t mean we’re whining. We’re praying. We’re asking. “Will He defer them and delay help on their behalf?” Question Mark. “No.” Verse eight says, “I’ll tell you He will defend and protect and avenge them speedily.”
I love it. That’s like “right now.” So I found this principle that’s in the Word. I love it. I had to read this scripture and think of it this way. Charles Finney… This is a principle that he wrote about. And a couple other things he said, “When the spirit of God is upon you and excites strong desires for any blessing, whatever that might be, you are bound to pray for it in faith.” You know, if you really, really have the desire, you will use your faith. “You’re bound to infer from the fact that you find yourself drawn to desire such a thing while experiencing the joy and holiness the Spirit of God produces that these desires are the work of the Spirit. People are not likely to desire with the right kind of desires unless they are inspired by the Spirit of God.”
He uses Romans 8:26. “Likewise, the spirit also helps in our weaknesses or inability.” We know that means our inabilities to know how to ask, what to ask for. “For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
“So it’s evident that the prayer of faith will obtain the blessing because our faith rests on the evidence that it is the will of God to grant that thing. Okay? So the scripture is not evidence that something else will be granted, but that this particular thing will be.” All right, so then he says, “People often receive more than what they pray for. So we’re praying for some specific thing. So here’s his point. “Solomon prayed for wisdom and God granted him riches and honor in addition. Similarly, a wife can pray for the conversion of her husband and if she offers the prayer in faith, God will not only grant that blessing but also convert her child and her whole family.” And that’s based on Acts 16:31. “And they answered, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Give yourself up to Him. Take yourself out of your own keeping and entrust yourself into His keeping and you will be saved. And this applies both to you and your household as well.”
So then he says, “Blessings sometimes seem to hang together so that if a Christian gains one, he gains them all.” We’re asking for some certain specific thing, but He’s got a whole lot more that He’ll give us. I like how he said that they hang together. “Blessings hang together.” And then he gives some examples. He said “I could name many individuals who decided to examine the Bible on this subject, who before they were through with it, were filled with the spirit of prayer. They found that God meant just what a plain common sense man would understand Him to mean. I advise you to try it. You’ve got Bibles, look them over, and whenever you find a promise that you can use, plant it in your mind before you go on. You’ll not get through the book without finding out that God’s promises mean just what they say.” Thank you, Lord, for the Word. And then he says, “You must persevere. You’re not to pray for a thing just once, and then that’s it. Then cease and call that a prayer of faith. Look at Daniel. He prayed 21 days and did not stop until he obtained the blessing. He set his heart and face toward the Lord to seek his answer by prayer and supplication. He held on three weeks and then the answer came. And why did it not come before God sent an Archangel with the message? But Daniel didn’t receive it because the devil hindered him.” We could read that. We don’t need to right now. “See what Christ said and the parable of the unjust judge and the parable of the loaves. What did He teach us by them? He taught that God will grant answers to prayer when prayer is persistent. Shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night. Once again, Luke 18:7.” I looked up the word “persistent.” It means dogged, insistent, patient, persevering, and tenacious. Just be tenacious.
And, I have an example just personally. More than 40 years ago… Living Word has been here for a little over 40 years. We just celebrated last year a 40 year anniversary. And so before this church ever existed, it didn’t exist. It didn’t exist before the college, before there were 12 or whatever it was who first gathered together in a hotel in Plymouth, Minnesota. Before that. My mother-in-law was born again. She got baptized in the Holy Ghost on her own when she read it in the Bible. She read it in the Word and she just believed God for it and began to speak in other tongues in her home, about four blocks from here. And then she got ahold of some Kenneth Hagin books. She found out what he taught and she began to pray for a church that would teach the full Gospel. She began to pray for it before all of this whole area where we are was just a field. And so their house was pretty new and they were right on the edge of a gravel road. And beyond that, it was just all fields. And so she didn’t just pray for a Holy Ghost filled Pentecostal church. She prayed for it to be close to her house. And she actually started praying for Pastor Mac and Lynne before they ever knew they were coming here. And so somehow she got at the hotel meeting in Plymouth where there were 12 people and she was one of them. And then that’s it. She never quit. She never stopped. And so, because she was tenacious in her prayers, she was persistent in believing God for a church that would teach the full gospel, but that it would be close to her house. Like I said, maybe five blocks away from here. And so because of her persistence, then she took Sandy to a Bible study where Pastor Mac and Lynne were teaching. And so Sandy got filled and baptized with the Holy Ghost. And I didn’t, cause I didn’t go. I didn’t want to go. I was afraid to go there. Guess what they did? Oh, hallelujah! Praise God. They’d raised their hands. I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” You know? I totally remember so clearly; I’d drop her off and pick her up like two and a half, three hours later. I thought, “what are they doing in that basement?” And when I’d do that, I’d see somebody going and they’d be like, Oh, hi! Hallelujah” like that. I’m like, “Oh boy.” So anyway, I’m just saying that because my mother-in-law was faithful and tenacious in her prayers and she believed God for it, then our whole household, all of us, our children, her great grandchildren were all in the light. We’re all serving Him. All of our grandchildren love the Lord. They’re going to Maranatha. Our kids went to Maranatha. All this took place because of one person’s tenacity to pray out what God had given her to pray out, real close to here. And then she had the privilege to sit under Pastor Mac and Lynne in the sanctuary over there. And she’d always have a smile on. I mean if you looked her way, she’s smiling huge because she was blessed to be sitting in the place that God had led her to pray out. Ah, you can’t make this stuff up! The Word works. And so let me just read this one more time, this principle.
“So Solomon prayed for wisdom and God granted him riches and honor in addition to wisdom.” So he got more. “Similarly, a wife can pray for the conversion of her husband, and if she offers a prayer of faith, God will not only grant that blessing, but also convert her child and her whole family.” This is an awesome principle. “Blessings sometimes seem to hang together. You get a breakthrough and there’ll be more. Let’s just take it by faith today. Okay, so they hang together so that when a Christian gains one answer, he gains them all. Thank you, Father, for your great faithfulness. I think that’s the principle that, you know, we can ask, but we can’t ask big enough. Because there’s so much more that He knows that He has in store… so much greater is the plan that He has for us that we have to go according to Romans and just pray it out and believe to pray it out by the Spirit, because we don’t even know how it all will look. I could never, ever look ahead and know how it would be here in 2021.
So the other principle is just to persevere and one of the words given for that was dogged. What does that mean? Well, if you have a dog, you know. We have a little dog, and that dog is dogged. If that dog wants bacon, he’s going to get bacon. Okay? So if he wants to go outside, he’s going to go outside. And he’ll whine at you until you take him out. He’s dogged. That’s the way they are. And that is a perfect word for pray-ers that will contend no matter what they see in the natural. And that’s what we’ve been called on to do, pray things out that we’ve not seen yet and call them as though we do. Thank you, Lord.
Pastor Roxanne…
I am pastor Roxanne. And I came today because I have a counseling appointment, and I wanted to come to early morning prayer. I just needed to hear the word of faith again. You can let it get lazy on the inside of you. You just quit persevering. And I remember back after we all got saved, I remember my sister was the first piano player when Lynne and Mac started their church. And her and Sandy started the bookstore. But we learned faith and we learned from brother Hagin, John Osteen, Norvel Hayes to stand on the Word and don’t give up no matter what it looks like, what it feels like. I stood against rheumatoid arthritis. They told me I’d be in a wheelchair in three years. Never have kids. And all I knew was that God was my healer. I was a baby Christian. I couldn’t have told you where the scripture said “by His stripes I’m healed,” but I knew it was in the Word. I knew the nature of my Father. I knew His heart. So the Lord led me. He said, “I will teach you divine healing if you let Me.” I just sat on my sofa at home by myself and said, “Lord, I’m letting you.” And I started a journey. And my first son that was born was… well, first of all, he wasn’t supposed to be born because I had a birth thing that didn’t work. And so I did conceive and I went in and they removed it. And then they said, you will lose this child within 24 hours. You will miscarry. And I went home and I said, “Lord, this is a spirit person. This is a person, and I’m not giving this up.” And I walked my living room all day long, standing that we’re redeemed from the curse. That’s a finished fact. It’s already done. It’s not something that has to be done. I am redeemed from the curse and this child’s going to be born. And today he is a radiologist serving God. But when he was born, he had a birth defect and I took him in one time and it sounded like maybe surgeries and braces and never be right. I went home. I never took him back to the doctor. And I started standing for a whole year I stood. And when he got to be 10 months, we could not take them out in public because people would gawk at him. We tried to take him in at a year old to get a pair of shoes and the woman stood up and just went ballistic in the shoe store and embarrassed us so bad we had to just pick him up and leave the store. But the next Sunday, our pastor was preaching on faith in the name of Jesus. And I was back in the nursery and the Lord said to me, “your faith is full.” After the end of the service, when the pastor asked if anyone wants prayer, you go up. So I picked up Roman and down the aisle I went and my husband was sitting there so he joined us. I plopped him in Al’s hands and I had been standing for a whole year against. It kept getting worse and worse. And I just wouldn’t consider what his body told me. I’m not going to consider what I see. I refuse it. And there were times I got down. I would not speak anything. I would just cry, but then I’d get up. Nope. This is what Jesus provided. I’m not going to waste one minute of your suffering or one drop of His blood. I’m having it. This is mine and I’m having it.
And so when they started praying, I started praying what I’d been praying for a whole year. I could have cared less what the pastor prayed or what my husband prayed. And Roman’s back was up against my husband’s chest and his legs were out front. Of course they were praying for him. And, all of a sudden there was a crack and it went out over the pastor’s neck mic and the whole congregation heard the crack. And so when we put him down, I thought he would be perfect, but he wasn’t. It was still all twisted. And I said to Al “I don’t care. I don’t care what it looks like. It’s done. It’s still done.” And in six weeks, we watched his hip and his leg and everything come around to perfect. He’s perfect and has always played basketball and whatever he wants.
Now this is the one thing that I need to share, Ray, because I’m standing right now for the right home for me. And I needed this today because I’ve been discouraged. And it looks so impossible. But I know that I have it, and I’m going to have it. And I just want it to encourage someone else that you have faith and your faith works. You have to work it. Norvel Hayes said one time as he was walking out of a hospital room where a man was in a coma. He was only taking a breath once a minute. And they told his wife that shortly, it would be the last breath. And as Norval Hayes walked out of the hospital door, the Lord said to him, “Mark 11:23 would work for him if someone would work it.” Think of that. The Lord said to him, Mark 11:23 would work if someone worked it for him. He went back in, told his wife what to say. And he said, “when you have to use the restroom, use the restroom. If you have to eat, have people bring your food, bring you something to drink, but you keep declaring.” And he gave her a scripture that my husband will live and not die and he’ll declare the works of the Lord. And she did that for days, day and night. She said, when she had to rest, she rested her head on him and then she’d wake up after 15 minutes and continue. And he started breathing more and more and more. And when he went back to that church two years later, that man came up to him and said, “I was the man in the coma and you taught my wife how to save my life, how to act.” We activate God’s power by our faith.
I want to share something that happened to me back in 1985. We were pastoring in Brookings, South Dakota, but we were taking another church in a different state and different city. And we needed to sell our house. And there was a drought and depression in South Dakota. I don’t know if any of you remember it, but it was a time when a couple of farmers shot a sheriff and a banker because they were coming to take their farm. I mean, it was a deplorable situation in South Dakota. It was terrible. And you couldn’t sell a house. People around us were advertising their home for sale. And they’d say, we’ll give the motor home too. They were giving everything away just to sell their home and taking terrible losses.
And we had to sell our home and we sold five homes for sale by owner. And not that I’m against realtors, I would have loved to use a realtor, but we needed the money and I’d have realtors call me. And they were mean, and they were nasty. And they were saying, no one is selling a house right now. You for sure won’t. We can’t, you won’t. And they would pretend they were a buyer and so on and it went on and on. And finally this one that was really harassing me called again one day. And I said, “Sir, I wish I could have you sell my home, but I can’t.” And he said, “Well, you’ll never sell.” And he got real angry and was hollering at me. And I said, “Sir, anybody can sell a home. You just watch.” And I had to trust God.
Well, it finally got to the point where I had to take the kids, go to that state and city and get them in school. And we had two days left and my sister and brother-in-law in another state said, “We’ll put our names on there and rent the house to us until you can sell it. Nope. Al called me. He said, “Let’s rent it, Roxanne.” I said, “No way.” I received the buyer eight months ago. I have my buyer, the right buyer that are going to love this house, pay for this house, and this home is going to be a blessing to them. He said “Roxanne, everything’s packed up in the Uhaul trucks. I have to leave. I’m under contract to the new church in two days.” I said, “I don’t care. That house is sold. And I have my buyers.” The next morning he got up and he received a telephone call about noon. And this woman was on the phone and she was hysterical. She was crying and he couldn’t understand her. And he thought it was somebody calling him because he was a pastor. And he said, “Please, I can’t understand you. I can’t help you if I can’t understand you.” And she was crying and everything. And finally she quit. She said, “You didn’t sell my house, did you?” He said, “Are you talking about our home here?” “Yes, that’s my home.” She said, “I saw it the very first time you put it in the paper. I wanted to come and look at it. I wanted to come to all your open houses. My husband wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me even step in your house or come to an open house until I sold my house and my house sold last night and I’m coming to get my house.” And she came over and bought our house and he left the next day.
That is God! He is so faithful, but He has set the principles of faith because He’s put it in His Word. He wants us to live on His Word, stand on His Word, depend on His Word. And you can’t just get it in your mind. Your mind will talk you out of it. Satan will talk you out of it. Your friends will talk you out of it. Your relatives will talk you out of it. No, you’ve got to meditate on it. Meditate it. Brother Hagin used to say “meditate, talk it, speak it.” God told him where people miss it is not so much in the believing, but in the speaking. When you speak it, you hear it. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word.
You know, I think it’s Mark Hankin says “never run at a problem or the devil with your mouth.” Speak the Word. It says Jesus is coming back on a white horse with a sword coming out of His mouth. The Word is the sword. He’s going to be speaking the Word. God is so wonderful, but He has set the principles and He demands faith. And I’m so thankful I came this morning because I really needed that, Ray. Thank you.
Woman shared…
We’re believing God for harvest, but as DJ was saying yesterday… he said, it’s not just us believing God for harvest. Every household needs their harvest, every single one. And so here’s a confession you can say for your harvest.
So you can agree with me or I’ll speak it out here. And, when you guys are at home, replay it, write it down, so you can have it because this stuff, like she said, it works and we speak it. So here’s what it says.
Harvest
Father in the name of Jesus, we come before you. And right now we’re calling in our harvest.
[Well, this is not only souls. This is for finances or even a harvest on our children and our grandchildren.]
We’re calling in our harvest right now. Our harvest is crying for us now. It’s our time to reap the harvest, sweatless victory. In the name of Jesus, we stand firm in faith, believing our seed has worked. It’s producing a bumper crop. There’s a great harvest out there in the name of Jesus.
Harvest, you come to me right now. We’re calling it in. We’re calling every cent, every penny of our harvest to come through. We believe our seed is working. It’s producing a bumper crop. There’s great harvest out there in the name of Jesus. Harvest, you come to me in the name of Jesus. I reap my harvest. It’s producing a bumper crop. Our harvest is producing a bumper crop by faith.
Satan in the name of Jesus, we’re binding you. You may not steal our harvest. You may not have what’s ours. We bind debt in Jesus’ name. We bind poverty. We bind lack. We bind deception in our children. You’re not having what’s ours. Release our harvest. You have no part in our harvest. We take authority over you in Jesus’ name.
Harvesting angels, I send you forth into the fields right now, into the orchards, into the corn fields. Go! Bring in my harvest right now. Harvesting angels, gather up the harvest, and bring it to us in Jesus’ name.
New house, come to us. Gather up our harvest and bring it to us in Jesus’ name. Thank you, Lord. Praise the Lord.
And then you praise the Lord because it’s done! Our mouth works. We praise the Lord. We’re reapers. That’s what we are. We’re reapers. We go get it. It’s ours. You don’t stand around and cry when it’s harvest time and say, “Where’s my harvest?” Get on your harvesting machine and go out there and get the harvest.
Massive harvest is coming to us. It’s coming to our ministry. It’s coming to our church. Massive harvests. The fields are ripe. We call a new realm of super abundance. It’s over and above. It’s beyond any natural realm, super abundance. I believe it. I receive it. I take it. I have supernatural over and above degree of harvest, an abundant return. More than you can ever experience. I believe for the glory realm. Super prosperity, super harvest, super abundance. This is a harvest of unprecedented return provided at the speed of glory. Supernatural celebration of harvest and abundance. Financial miracles are part of the glory of God. In our scripture, we stand on is “we set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your ways, keep His commandments, and then you will live and increase. And the Lord your God will bless you. That’s Deut 30:15 and 16. Now here’s another confession.
Our greatest blessing is coming to us today because great grace is upon us. Everything we are believing God for is coming to us today. Now I’m expecting greatest blessings ever. My greatest harvest ever today because great grace is upon us. Hallelujah. Then have a party and eat cake.
