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So God Created Man · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was thinking uh when we were singing that last song about the sure foundation and and there's and the storms and the the house that's built on the foundation and and so on.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I thought, you know, I've I've had house destruction spiritually speaking.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've had storms blow through and blow my house down, and and I'm really glad that that happened, because it was built on things that were less than uh Christ Himself.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're all growing, and we're we're gaining in revelation knowledge and growing in the knowledge of Him and understanding Him, knowing Him as the person of God Himself.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, we also find ourselves knowing us, knowing who we are, because there's because of that union.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But in this growth that I have had, and I don't know nearly everything at all, and nobody does, and nobody's cornered the market on the knowledge of God.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to admit that we have grown.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have to admit that I have changed in some things.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have grown in a way that's benefited me to where as I've come to fall in love with the God who is totally in love with me, it has changed what I think about him, what I think about myself, what I think about you, and how I look at life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you can begin to sort of, I call it zooming out, and you look at life, even when you're dealing with hard things, and there is no so-called perfect life where there's no hard things or there's no pain or anything like that.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is our human experience.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can be heavenly minded and see the goodness of God in all this so that you can feel safe and secure and know that you're loved and know that you're cared for, even if storms happen, even if things get get difficult at times, if you can zoom out and be heavenly minded, you can have peace in the midst of virtually anything.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes from, I believe it comes from discovering the beauty and the goodness of God and his love for you, where you can feel confident and safe and secure.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's the thing that has me enthralled.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have tasted the goodness of God, and I want and I love getting up here and sharing whatever it is I have to share because all I know is whatever it is, it's going to say something good about God because that's all I have to say.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: He loves, he loves me, he loves you.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have found that out.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's more than a cliche, it's more than just a verse of scripture.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It has impacted my heart, it has changed my existence, and uh, and we want to share that with people.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about the goodness of God here today.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to start off by reading a uh passage of scripture from 2 Corinthians chapter 10.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to use this to uh to justify what I want to do here today.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 4, it says, we use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know Paul is writing this to the Corinthian church.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Notice there it says that we use these weapons, whatever they are, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently there's a lot of human reasoning that's happening that the writer here, Paul, is going contrary to.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, there's a lot of human reasonings.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, there were there were a lot of humans, so there's going to be a lot of human reasoning.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever that human reasoning was, according to Paul here, is that those things were false things that needed the truth to come in.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they needed to be combated, if you will.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: They needed to be be addressed.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, we use these to knock down those human reasonings.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there are human reasonings that can that we can have that get in, and they very much get in the way of God Himself, of what we think about God.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know in the King James Version, it says, tearing down strongholds and every high thing that has been erected or exalted against the knowledge of God, like a wall being put up and causing people to not really see who God is.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And John chapter 1 says that, you know, introducing the coming of Jesus says that no man had perceived God at any time.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of human reasoning.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of talk about God, there's a lot of reading about God, there's a lot of debating about God, there's a lot of preaching about God, there may be a lot of seeking to understand God, but there's a lot of human reasonings that have been erected against the knowledge of God.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So people are having a very hard time, to say the least, a hard time perceiving God.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, what we have can knock down human reasoning and destroy false arguments.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now notice it says arguments.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's reasoning, then there's arguments.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the arguments come because we're convinced of our reasoning.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so when someone comes against our reasoning, we will push back and fight because we believe that what we have reasoned is correct.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: We are pretty much convinced, so we will argue or debate.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so these things are going on.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 5, he says, and we destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole point here was to take people from reasonings and arguments into knowing the person of God Himself.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to take you on a little bit of my own personal journey, and I think a lot of you may be able to relate to this, but I want to talk about God.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a picture here.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have a uh we I think I think we have a picture that if we can put that up, the first picture that I have is okay, I want to talk about God.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now this is not him, but there was quite a bit of time when that was an image that I had.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody else must have had that image too, because they painted it.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was Michelangelo, wasn't it?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that's that's sort of the image.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so my image, actually from a very young child, God was he was a punisher.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was vengeful, he was wrathful, he was punitive, he was obsessed with sins and rules.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there might have been some good things that people would say about uh about him.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about in my own upbringing, but in my mind, what was predominant was that God was up there, God was watching, and he was watching me, and because he was so obsessed with sin that he was watching me so closely that if I sinned, I would pay for that in some way.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I believed it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was conscious of that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was obsessed with sins and he was obsessed with rules, and that was my idea of God.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: How many think that was a correct idea of God?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it was strongly in my mind, it was a stronghold.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was vengeful, he could get very angry, and he seemed to get angry pretty easy.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what he was mostly angry about was a lot of the stuff that I did.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: He certainly was punitive.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the idea that I that I had of God.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was afraid of God.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even as I got a little older, people could say, Well, well, Jesus loves you.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was hard for it, didn't it couldn't register with me because I had this image and it was a stronghold in there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew the Bible said Jesus loves me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: This I know before the Bible tells me so, and we would we would sing that, but that didn't connect with all these other things that I thought about God.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And most of those things that I thought about God were there because they were told to me first.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what a lot of us do with the Bible.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the the reasonings or the strongholds or ideas that we have about God that we find change later on, usually it's something that's been told to us or presented to us, but then we also can find it somehow and verify it somehow in the Bible.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: How many found that out?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you can you can prove just about anything from this book, no matter what side of any issue that you're on, you can find scripture to verify your reasoning about it, your idea.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously, there were verses in that in the Bible that backed that up, or it looked like it did.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly in the time that Jesus came and in the time that these letters were written, there there were ideas of God.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was religion going on, and a lot of it was like this.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus came.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the primary things that we find out that he's done is he revealed the Father.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: No man had perceived God at any time, but the Son, who's in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him to us.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we see love dying on a tree, and we see a sacrifice on a cross, we see a death on the cross that speaks the language of Old Testament sin with sacrifice and blood, bloodshedding and all that, and it takes care of that whole thing to tell mankind that there is no barrier between you and God.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: There is none of this stuff.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: God is not obsessed with this stuff.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the Bible says things like he removes it as far as the east is to the west, cast into the sea of forgetfulness.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not an issue at all.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then I start getting active in church, and I see God not just as wrathful and vengeful and just angry and easily set off, but I do see him as a judge.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I saw him as a judge.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And but we called him a just judge, a righteous judge.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: His judgment, whatever it was, was correct.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And basically his just his judgment, even though it might not have seemed right to us because his was correct, his judgment was that all of you are deplorable, all of you were created and born horrible and deserving of eternal torture, and that's what's going to happen, except the judge knows a loophole.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you find the loophole, then you can escape all that.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Other words, otherwise, this just or righteous judge will do what the law demands because God, in our my mind, was bound by something higher than himself, which was law and legalism.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And even though they said he does love us, he hates to do this, but his hands are tied and he's bound by law because it's all about judicial.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we looked at the cross as a court case.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I got good news for you this morning.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You were never just a court case to God.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: God so loved you.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You were never just a judicial uh case at all.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You were someone that God has always loved from the beginning.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the Bible says that he chose you in himself, chose you in Christ from the beginning of things, from the foundation of the world.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: God created man.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And my Bible says that when God created man, God knew what he was doing, and he looked at everything and he said, it all, he said, it all is very good, very good.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he was happy and he rested.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why did he rest?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because he got it right.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But man fell, man sinned, and all that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he got it right, and he made you, and in this creation, he created me and you, weak and foolish vessels, insufficient of ourselves, but very, very sufficient with him in him and in his love.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way this was always supposed to be.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And my Bible tells me that that there's a restoration and that there's the times of restoration of all things, and that he would gather all things unto himself, and we mankind would go on this journey, but we would, but we would return home, we would come to God.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible uses that language all the time, but we don't we used to see him as just judicial.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't see him as somebody that loved mankind.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Love didn't even have to have anything to do with this.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: We say he did love us, but a lot of good it did because the law was higher than that.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even though he loved you, he had to condemn you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so those were reasonings that we had about God.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of, we made it make sense.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We put theology together to make it all fit.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I see, I'm talking about myself.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: People would would argue with me about that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: But because I had been taught and I had been studied and I knew where the verses were, I could pick them out and put them together, and I could argue back.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: But this is who God was.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so my personal life reflected that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: My personal life, this was the God that was on my mind there again.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was up there somewhere, and he was like this.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I could say, yeah, he's very loving, but it doesn't matter because he's just and he is a judge.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then I get past that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, we grow in Revelation and I start to understand God's God's better than that.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's not just judging me all the time.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Christ.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: He loves me.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's I'm going to heaven.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm his child.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: He does care about me.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: He even gave me his very spirit.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the spirit of God to me was mostly for a while.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: What did the Holy, what, what did the Holy Spirit, what was his job in me as this believer in God?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: What was his main job?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I thought, my reasoning was he was a convictor.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was someone who followed me around and he was correcting me to make me better.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd walk along and walk my life, and the Holy Spirit's with me, and it'd be like, uh uh-uh, that's wrong, boy.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh, don't do that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's wrong.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we would talk about it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: We say, yep, the Holy Spirit convicted me yesterday.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit convicted me today.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit convicted me.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Convicted me, convicted me, convicted me, convicted me, convicted me.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then we find out that that very word that that meant something in those days in the King James means something different to us now.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we find out it means he would convince us.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we we read where Jesus Himself says, when the Spirit Himself comes, he will convince you of righteousness.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we were always talking about convicting of sin, convicting of sin, convicting of sin, convicting of sin, convicting of sin.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said he would convict you of righteousness.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't care.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: We did we skipped over that because that didn't seem to matter too much to us.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We picked out the part that said, convict you of sin.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because we also were sin conscious.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is why today, if it's still, if that sin consciousness is still working, you can find the verses will jump out to talk about sin.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about God's love and grace, and what'll happen is is some verses will pop up and like, yeah, but what about this?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says that.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've got verses in there that can that can back up just about anything, but do not neglect, for God so loved the world.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And do not neglect the living word in us that is speaking to us and revealing that goodness and that love and the power of that love that changes us and ultimately could change all of humanity if it would spread.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing about this, and the reason I use this picture, is because the idea of God as the convictor of sin, here's what it did to me.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was convicting me of sin, convicting me of sin.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds doesn't sound too bad, but what it did over years was it was like a thousand paper cuts.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and I sh I struggled.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I could never be good enough for God or even for people, for that matter.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was always convicted of me of sin.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was so aware of sin and thinking about sin and trying to live a life where I he didn't have to convict me of sin, but I didn't seem to be able to escape that.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was there was something always wrong with me.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: There was something always not good enough.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and and then when I would try to to ask God for things, pray for healing, or pray for, you know, some kind of blessing that that I wanted or needed, um, there was always in my mind I'm talking about, there was stuff in my way.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't quite good enough.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed like there was always something I needed to do.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I went to prayer, prayer one time because there was it was a healing I I wanted in my body.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why is it not why is it not happening?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's just must be some reason.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And because I was sin conscious, I came up with this reasoning that I I thought was God.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought of three sins.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I found three things bad about me, or three things that I was doing that were not right or good.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, if I can get rid of those three things, then my healing will come.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to church Sunday and I said, God told me, as I was praying, that if I'll get rid of those three sins, then he'll heal my body.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And people went, Hallelujah, praise God.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd found the key.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And see, we had that sin consciousness, and I was never good enough.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was all I was always lacking, there was always something else I needed to do, living like that.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I, you know, eventually I wrote a book called Fullness, and I mentioned how it seemed like I was just reaching for this carrot on the end of a string that was right in front of me, no matter how far I walked, because I never was quite good enough, because every time I turned around, I was being reminded of something bad that I had done.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible tells, I find out later on, the Bible mentions this, it talks about how Jesus purges your conscience from sin.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Purges it, not reminds you of it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, but in those Old Testament sacrifices, the reason it was insufficient is because it could never make the sacrificers perfect, because there was always a remembrance of sins.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: How much more, he says, will the blood of Christ purge your conscience from sin?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's that mean?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: No sin consciousness.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have a love consciousness.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's that mean?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you saying that that that you never that you never have to change now, that you just go ahead and live with your sin?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, I say when you do something bad or wrong, it hurts somebody, it hurts you, and it's not good.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And like I, you know, hopefully you got enough sense to say, you know, I don't want to do that again.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: God, I'm sorry about that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Help me with that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or apologize to the person, say, I'm sorry, I that was very selfish what I just did.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be like that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't go around with the consciousness of a sinner that's not good enough, because what happens is the Spirit of God can does, like the Bible says, convinces you of righteousness.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Convinces you of judgment, it says, I'll go ahead and mention those if you're wondering why, if uh you know, it says he'll convince you of righteousness, judgment, uh, righteousness, sin, and judgment.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those three.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: We jump on the sin part.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: He convinces you of righteousness because of what he has done.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says, he'll convince you of sin because they didn't believe on that, believe on him.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, people that don't know the good news, the gospel, of course they're going to be convinced of sin.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're doing is they're having an error because they're following something, a religion, or some other kind of way, instead of doing what Jesus said, believe on me.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in me.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: That'll take away that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, conviction or convincing of judgment because the prince of this world's already been judged.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you can get convinced of that.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you hearing that?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can get convinced that that's already a done deal and it's taken care of.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a whole other message there about the devil being after you all the time.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God that's gone.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I lived a life there again, as part of this.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I lived a life where it was like there was a voice of the devil or a demon or something.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed like it was right here all the time, fighting that thing.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm walking around.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm walking around.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you listen, you could hear me.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: People, strangers in public could hear me sometimes.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Shut up, devil.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Shut up, devil, shut up, devil.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: We'd have that thing going on all the time.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: After I began to have an awakening of God's love and his graciousness toward me, I I don't, it's been decades.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you the last time I heard a devil speak to me personally.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've heard him speak to other people or but that thing is gone.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did it go because I finally got my life to where I do everything right and I don't make mistakes anymore?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Far from it, right?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where did it go?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It went because of the truth about who I am with God and in God and who he is with me and in me.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Walk after the Spirit.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: After the Spirit.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Rejoice, arise.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love you.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're righteous.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're mine.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: My mercy endures forever.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Spirit say?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: See, we can we you know we are our we get in the head and our mind tries to tries to sort out these scriptures and you can you'll do it forever and never get it completely sorted out if you're just in your head, because they'll they'll they'll fight each other.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the spirit the Bible says it's peaceable, is approachable, it brings fruit of righteousness.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's it has no hypocrisy, or that word is prejudice.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't judge people the way it used to, the way your mind used.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing too.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I love how my eyes are changing towards humanity.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love a feeling that feeling that I get when I look at humanity, and it's so much different than looking through the eyes of that punisher or that judge or even the convictor.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thousand paper cuts.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Had this child of God, whom God loved so, so very, very much and cared so much about, had me walking around apologizing to God for being who I was.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then I continued to pursue and I go to school and I learn and I continue to read and study.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And God was more than that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: God was a blesser, and God could give you a good life, an abundant life.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And all you had to do was just figure it out and just get in here and learn.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Learn the keys, learn the strategies, learn how to unlock things, learn how to get God's Learn what motivates God, learn, learn how to receive, learn all these things.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so God became a code for me to try to try to figure out.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: He became a code to solve.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: He became a puzzle to solve.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if I could just get the right combination, then I would always have everything good going for me.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was the idea that I got.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: There again, that was a reasoning that I had obtained.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I got it from people teaching me that, and they showed me in the Bible where it verified that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we did like what Matt was talking about last week.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned that if, you know, if I could, if I'll say certain things and if I'll do certain things and read certain things and do this, that it'll all work out.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the little things in there would drop in the right place and boom, boom, boom.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just have nothing but divine health and divine money is just coming to you all the time, and everybody loves you, and your and your ministry will be will be the most amazing, popular thing in the whole world, and it'll all be good if you can just work the word correctly.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that was an image of God that I had.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent years trying to work the combination.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there again, it's like after a while, I'm like, God, this ain't enough.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I heard something else.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was more to it than that.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was too mental.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's spiritual, they said.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, it's encounters, it's it's in power, it's seeking.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's so so then God became a power for me to seek.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm not just trying to find the code here, I'm seeking.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: People would I'd be in church services and they'd say, Well, let's all let's all just spend spend a little time seeking God right now.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I almost wonder, like, well, okay, you said he was with us always.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where's he at?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is he under the chairs?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Seek God.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: I like the scripture that says in Hosea, this is where we get that, says, For it is time to seek the Lord.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of it says, until he comes and reigns righteousness upon you, which is Jesus.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he's done that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I I use this.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a chapter in a book that I wrote called Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, because I was on this yellow brick road.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was seeking.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, if I can seek and if I can have this, have this encounter that I've heard people talk about, if I can just get there after all these years, I haven't had that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can just get to this place and and and get into the presence of God so deep and and have this experience and encounter, man, I'm gonna have to get such an anointing on my life that boom, everything goes right.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody will love me, all my dreams will come true, and all of that stuff.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason I don't have it now is because God's sitting there in his spot and he's been waiting for me to try to find my way to him so I can have this encounter.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I get on the yellow brick road.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And all the munchkins, I mean, all the church people told me to go on this, on this, on this, this, this trip, and they said, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I went.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I felt like I did experience on the way, the flying monkeys.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I got demonized.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went through, went through wars and went through all kinds of hell and and you know, lions and tigers and bears, and and and I, and and and but but I was seeking, and I, I mean, I started having my encounters.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my my church meeting, I was pastoring a church at the time.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: It got, I mean, because I was seeking these things so much that I'd found a lot of it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: We would have meetings.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people get so every every 15 years or so, people want to have revival.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: They get excited like it's never happened before.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We would have, we, we, we were having what what you'd call revival meetings, where literally, without solicitation, there were times when every person in the house fell on the floor without anybody telling them to or anything like that.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just we were having experiences.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: We called it the glory.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a glory.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm on this journey.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: More, Lord, I need more.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't enough, more.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just like the Wizard of Oz, if you remember the movie, they finally get there.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: They get through all the doors that are locked to them and everything.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: They pursue, they press on, they press on.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was me.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they finally get there and they meet this one who at the beginning of the journey, you know, Dorothy says, Well, is he, is he, is he, is he evil?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's and and Glenda the Good Witch says, No, he's very good, but he's very mysterious.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so they go and they get there, and and when they get there, it's like the first, like that first face of God that I showed.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's this big, scary, intimidating thing.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Boom! Just like Mount Sinai, there's fire and vapors of smoke, and boom.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Silence! We came because we've come so far, and we want these things that we need.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what does he do?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: After all of that, he sends them to work again.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Go get the witch's broom.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're not good enough yet.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Prove yourselves.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: They've gone through flying monkeys, they've gone through the wilderness, they've gone through the woods, they've fought everything, knocked out with the opium poppies, and they and they get there, and nothing is good enough for this guy.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Go bring me the witch's broom.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they go and they do that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fight the witch, they almost lose their lives, but they come back with the witch's broom, and then he says, Go away and come back tomorrow.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Good night, it's never enough.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then wonderful Toto pulls back the veil and they're like, This is nothing but flesh.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And just to make the point, thank you.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just to make the point, you find out everything they were looking for.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: They already had, didn't they?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dorothy asked Glenda said, Why didn't you tell me?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: She said, You had to find out for yourself.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It had to be your, you had to know.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But they always had it the whole time.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have to go on the yellow brick road.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't have to go on that journey, chasing that carrot on the stick, because in God and Christ, I had everything I need.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the revelation that began to turn everything around for me.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: That everything I was looking for, I had it right here.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like a blind man in front of a feast, a table with a feast, and I was begging God for food.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I saw it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I saw it now.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that everything that I that I that I wanted, I had in him, and because I had him, I had everything.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I also realized that everything that I thought that he was demanding from me, he was demanding nothing.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't demanding that I become strong.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to be my strength.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't even demanding that I love him or else.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted me to know that he loved me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I began to find out as the veil is removed.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was not those things that I thought in my reasonings.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: That good old verse that had been there the whole time, God is love.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he that knows love knows God.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God loved me and he loved me the way I was.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there were many things that were going to change, but he loved me.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he loved me implicitly and completely and with no end.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I started to believe it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like he got really, really big inside.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt loved for the first time.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if if if you had if any of you know any background or had it like mine, I I lived all of those years, even in pursuit of God and the knowledge of God, never believing that I was really loved just for who I was.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I always needed to get better in order to be lovable.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Saw him and stopped that.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't demanding anything.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me just like I was.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: We love him because he loved us.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I fell in love finally with God.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: This person, mysterious, big, whoever, however he is, but he loved me.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when that thing went away.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because no matter yeah, but you don't do this and you didn't do that, and you don't I know you're right, I didn't do that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Probably should have done that, but he loves me.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Fell in love with the one that loves me.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: For many years I asked God, help me to love you more.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says to love you.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, I want to love you with all my might, all my soul, all my strength.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Help me.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't prayed that prayer since I fell in love because he loves me.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: God is love.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he's more than a punisher, a judge, a convictor.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a code to solve, he's not a just a power to seek.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's love for God so loved the world.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then I found out that wasn't it either.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that was him, but it wasn't him outside of me.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was closer than that.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: I found out it's cr this mystery is Christ in you, your true hope of glory.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we finish with Colossians 1 26, which is the verse that talks about that so sweetly.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he's not up there, he's not out there, he's not even right here.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's one with me, he's in me, he's walking with me, he's feeling with me, he's experiencing with me, he's loving me from the inside.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's he'll never leave me or forsake me because he's here.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's the grace that's teaching us godliness and his ways and to see through his eyes, and he's daddy, and I'm the child, and we're together forever, forever.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And nothing I do is gonna make this go away, see.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And all of my flaws and all of my weaknesses, nothing separates me from this.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a divine mystery, a secret surprise that's been concealed from the world for generations, but now it's being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for every holy believer to experience.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: This mystery of Christ embedded within us becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is our message.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: We preach to awaken hearts and bring every person into the full understanding of truth.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: It has become my inspiration and passion in ministry to labor with a tireless intensity, with his power flowing through me, to present to every believer the revelation of being his perfect one in Jesus Christ.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: For as he is, 1 John 4, 17, so are we now in this world.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Would you all stand?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I love your spirit with us and in us, and I love these people here, Father.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what everybody's dealing with in their day-to-day lives, but oh, how you can assure that you are with us.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how you can assure of safety and security and love and care.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how you can do mighty things, oh, how you can direct things, oh, how you can give a peace that passes understanding.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you, Father, because I believe that by your Spirit every one of us can have it settled in our hearts.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Even as we go out of here today with a new song in our hearts, a spring in our step, and a glory of God on our face and a smile upon us, I thank you for the surety and the knowledge of your reality within us and all that that begins to say to us, that things open up and that cause people to grow by leaps and bounds in the knowledge of who each one of us are as your child, and what does that really mean?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean for your creation?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: All that is in your hands.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank you for a trust.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you for a joy that comes from that peace and that trust.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank you for the power to live that comes this truth, and let everyone hear and let everyone know.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Loved absolutely forever and ever, and nothing, nothing shall separate us from your love that's been revealed to us in Christ.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we thank you in Jesus' name.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Can you all say Amen?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your time this morning.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have a wonderful day.