Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone. Welcome on this Wednesday morning.
Lord, take me up in your elevator of revelation…
This morning, I was reflecting a little bit about the hope that is in Jesus. And I was just reminded of this passage in Romans 15:13. It says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing…” I like that. “In believing.” In the New Testament, it says in the New Living Translation that we live by believing and not by seeing. That’s good. If there ever was an hour when we need to live by believing rather than seeing, it’s now. And I don’t know about you, but I am purposeful in my journey. And I’m always searching in my heart and asking the Lord, “Take me up in your elevator of revelation.” Because there’s no end… God’s kingdom and His knowledge and wisdom is infinite. And each and every day, He gives us an invitation to step into that elevator to go up in His understanding and perspective. And I’m convinced that while we’re gaining in our understanding each and every day, there’ll be a day when we step over this line of reality into the next. We’re going to see and recognize and say, “Oh my, I didn’t quite realize all that I had an influence on, all that I could change, the trajectories that I could affect.” The history that we as the church can make… the forces of darkness that we could repel simply by the exercise of our authority, simply by being passionate about prayer.
We need to “jack up” our hope…
And so I love this passage here in Romans 15. “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” So if you’re logging on this morning and you don’t feel so hopeful, you haven’t maybe seen some changes, you’ve been at your prayer post for your nation or the leadership in your government or a situation in your personal life and nothing seems to be shifting or changing, I want to encourage you to hold onto hope this morning. As brother Copeland says, we need to jack up our hope. Jack up our earnest expectation, our forward-looking earnest, positive faith-filled expectation in God because He is faithful. And He is coming through for us today.
We are the people who will see the goodness of God…
He’s such a good Father. As I cited yesterday, we are that people who can hope… we are that people who can expect that we’re going to see the goodness of God in this land we call the land of the living. You’re going to see it today. Changes are going to begin to precipitate. The clouds are going to open. Shifts are happening as we speak.
“But I don’t see it, Ken.”
Well, aren’t you glad that we’re called to live by believing and not by seeing, by faith and not by sight or our physical senses. We can be informed on the inside by the hope of the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus isn’t just for somebody far from Jesus so that they can get ahold of some fire insurance for eternity. The Gospel is as much for us as believers as anyone because it’s chalk full of that heavenly DNA… chock full of hope.
Receive the end of your faith…
Romans 15:13 says “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy.” The Bible says rejoice with joy unspeakable, and be filled with the glory of God receiving the end of your faith. That means the answer to your prayer, your breakthrough, your healing, your promotion, your next step, whatever it is! As small as it may seem or as big as it may appear to you, receiving the end of your faith even the salvation of your soul, the restoration of your soul. Hallelujah. I believe that’s one of the things God is doing right now and why His hand is extended so profoundly and so evidently in this generation.
Don’t let the enemy inform you…
Don’t let CNN inform you as to what God is doing. Be aware and be alert. We are in the midst of a visitation from heaven.
“Oh how can you say that, Ken?”
Because I know my God. I know what His Word says. And so should you. I sense His Spirit. I see the brooding of God the Holy Spirit on this generation in this hour. He is alive and well on planet earth. He is on the rise and His glory is filling the earth. Make no mistake about it. And all He’s trying to do each and every day with us, you and me and the church at large, is just get us to agree with what He’s saying in His Word, through the mouths of the prophets. In your place of prayer, He’s speaking, He’s enunciating. There’s a clarity to the voice of God right now.
Every day we come and we gather, there’s something really specific and usually really clear that comes from me or someone else. God is enunciating and declaring that His glory is filling the earth. He’s enunciating and declaring as loud and clear as possible that He is the God who’s restoring the souls and the hearts. He’s putting back people’s emotions. He’s touching people’s bodies. The miraculous is just getting started. We’re going to see the final chapters of the book of Acts written in this time. Hallelujah.
God just wants us just to agree with Him…
And when we agree with Him and we say the same thing and we declare victory and announce the goodness of God, not only over ourselves, but over situations and things that He has you watching over on the walls of the outpouring, it gives Him permission. Hallelujah. There’s something about God and His nature that I’ve learned, He likes to be egged on. He’s looking for a people who will come right up into His face and be bold. And plead your case. He loves that. He loves us.
Grab hold and choose to agree with what God is saying…
That’s just a really good verse. Just grab a hold of that this morning. If you’re looking for hope in Romans 15:13 “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” All you need to do is grab hold and choose to agree with what God is saying and say the same thing over your soul. It says in the Psalms, King David found himself in a real negative situation, in a real dilemma, in a place where he was battling thoughts of oppression and fear. And he took it upon himself to speak to his inner self. He said, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” Yeah! Why are you downcast? Or down within me Oh my soul. “I will put my hope in God.” All that simply means is I’m going to give attention and focus and priority to what He said. I’m going to put my hope that now may the God of hope fill me with all joy and peace because I believe that I may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Our words affect atmospheres…
Make no mistake about it. Your words affect atmospheres. Your declarations, announcements, your exercise of authority, your prayers in the spirit have an effect on the atmosphere around you, beginning with your inner self, beginning with you on the inside, your interior. Glory to God.
We may be facing some challenges in this generation, but understand God, of course, does not author adversity, does not send sickness or challenges or insufficiency or a problem of some kind. It’s not even a part of His kingdom or part of His nature. There aren’t even words for those things in the heavenly dimension. Of course, we know the author is the enemy of our soul. Right?
Adversity gives us the opportunity to expand our capacity…
But my point is that adversity is an opportunity for advancement in promotion. It is resistance, just like you lifted a barbell or a dumbbell, and it breaks down muscle mass so that it can multiply. So too adversity when we hit it and face it head on with the grace of God, with the hope of His promise, with the help of the Holy Spirit, it gives us the opportunity to expand our capacity, to increase us on the inside. And so I found that every opposition, every challenge, every dark night of the soul is not intended to take you down or be the end of you. But instead God sees it as an opportunity for us to rise, for us to grow stronger and be prepared for the character of Jesus to come into a flourishing display in our lives. Amen. To be an overcomer, right?
Pastor Terri…
You got to remember, first of all, that He saved you to the last. He had faith in us. God saw us, all of us, and He had faith and He held us to the last. He didn’t have us in the pioneer days. He didn’t have us in those days, but He held us to the very last because He knew we could endure. And David, when he remembered… You know, you have to remember your past victories when you’re facing that giant again. You got to remember that this happened and you had the victory. You got to remember that you had a 22-week old grandbaby born and he’s five years old and flourishing. You got to remember that you had a son that was addicted to heroin who they say never comes off. And now he’s five years and flourishing in the church. So you got to remind yourself of that. And God is looking for overcomers. If you look in the book of Revelation, that’s what He gets the biggest joy out of … overcomers! So without adversity, you’re not going to overcome. So I’m telling you, Satan is the god of this world. But you overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony. “Now listen, Devil. He did it here. He did it there. And He’s going to do it again!”
Pastor Ken…
Remember to practice gratitude…
Thank you! So we’re going through today. Just keep taking those steps. Keep taking advantage of what our dealer of hope, our Heavenly Father is offering us every day. And that is a different reality and a different perspective and a different outlook. In fact, I was reminded what Pastor Terri said is so good because I was reminded this morning that one of the things that can open the door of the enemy, honestly, is by us not being grateful… by not practicing gratitude. That’s clearly a principle and something that we’re admonished and commanded to do throughout the scriptures … is to be thankful … to be grateful.
Don’t give the enemy a place…
Ephesians says don’t give the enemy a place. It literally means one square inch of terra firma, or ground in other words, in your life. So you can give Him place. Or you can not give Him place. And one way that we don’t give Him a place in our souls, in our emotions, in our minds, in our circumstances as Pastor Terri was reminding us, stirring up in us a remembrance of who God is and what He’s already done for us and how good He is. I mean, one form of prayer is just sit down and write down and rehearse and worship God with a list of things that God has already done.
David reminded himself of God’s goodness..
David reminded himself how God empowered him and enabled him and was right there with him on the day when he faced off with the lion and he faced off with the bear. And before he went out on the plain of Megiddo to deal a death blow to that giant, he reminded himself and stirred himself and was grateful for the fact that God had always been with him all through the years.
And He’s still with you this morning. He’s still with the church this morning. His power is great and exceeding toward those who will believe and belief is not possible without us grabbing hold of His Word and reminding ourselves what He said and what He’s done.
Pastor Terri…
Mark Hankins says never run at your giant with your mouth shut. You run at your giant with your mouth open. Tell him what’s going to happen.
Pastor Ken…
Yeah! Never run at your giant with your mouth shut. Run with your mouth open. And if you’re dealing with a struggle or your emotions are sideways, or you’re feeling like you’re going down a rabbit hole of circumstances and problems, that is really the best time to get on your knees and lift up holy hands. And begin to declare things the way they should be. It’s like… who was it years ago who the Lord spoke to him on his porch one day when he was praying. It was Charles Capps! And the Lord spoke to him in no uncertain terms and said, “I’ve told My people they can have what they say. Instead they are saying what they have.” They’re just seeing and saying what they have. Well, then you’re going to have more of the same because you’ve been created to be in the image of God.
In other words, you’ve been created as a speaking spirit. There’s real power, real authority, real influence in the spirit dimension that’s released through your words, to you putting the hope of God in your mouth and releasing it into the atmosphere of your home and your city and your church and your relationships and your finances. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t show up in the natural in a day or a week or a month. No! We know God is true to His Word. He’s not a man that He should lie. So if He said that your words will work for you if you’ll use them properly and you’ll speak the right things, then it will be so. And you’ll see the results. And you’ll see the faithfulness of God. And you’ll see the goodness of God in the land of living in your life.
Helping God get His way…
And that’s really a big part of how we help God get His way, which I define as prayer. One definition for prayer: helping God get His way. How? One way is to just say what God has said about us. Say what God has said about our nation. Say what God has said about the lost and those far from Jesus and how He desires that all would come into salvation. Say what He has said about your body and your physicality. Say like David said about your inner life: “Why are you downcast, depressed, feeling hopeless, or even having thoughts of suicide?”
“Oh my gosh! Is that possible in church?”
Hey! As long as we’re in this world and there’s an enemy who wants to come against us, there’ll be all kinds of crazy chaotic things. But we don’t have to take it. We don’t have to put up with it. We don’t even have to cope with it. We can get on the offensive as concerning the works of darkness and the work of the enemy. A weapon may be formed against you, but it’s not going to prosper if you’ll align yourself and say the same thing that God has said. Even out of the mouths of the prophets and the writers under the Old Covenant, it’ll produce results. It’ll bring change. It’ll send the enemy scurrying and running far from you.
I remember a minister who had an experience in heaven…
When he was in the heavenly dimension, he got a bit of an education during that time he was there. He understood that in the spiritual realm as a human… that in the spiritual dimension around us, or I call it the parallel universe, that a believer who walks in his or her authority and steps into the fullness that’s been made available to us in Jesus, that actually you can create a… I don’t know what you want to call it, almost like a boundary or a bubble around you where the enemy won’t even come near you up to like 30 or 60 feet, or something like that, that you can hold the enemy at bay when you just simply step into your rights and privileges, step in with your words, get your mouth hooked up to your spirit and hooked up to what God has said about you. It pushes back darkness as Pastor Lynne has taught us.
