Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Karma Chaj podcast.
Wow.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Stay standing for a minute, if you will.
Let's just make eye contact with Jesus for just a moment.
Just open your heart to the truth of his word, Lord, we know that your Word transforms our life.
Your Word gives us light.
So we ask, Lord, as we look into scripture today, that you would enlarge us inside, Lord, that we could carry this incredible message of Jesus to a world that needs it so badly. Lord, bless each one of us in Jesus name, Amen. Hey, have a seat, everyone.
It has been such an amazing weekend. I'm here with my wife Diane, so Diane, you can. And We've been married 45 years, and we have seven children that we raised on the mission field of San Francisco.
We have 11 grandchildren. So we've been blessed with an incredible abundance.
Be fruitful, multiply. We took that to heart and replenish the earth, you know, Anyway, but it's been such a great weekend with Paul and Sue Manwaring, and as well with your amazing pastors here, Steve and Juliet. We've been so blessed to be part of this weekend, minister ministering with leaders from all over the region, actually all over the nation and beyond. It's been wonderful.
And we've been. I think we've been here two other times.
And I just want to say how much I love this church.
I love what God is doing here. I love to see the growth. I love to see the salvations. In fact, you know, as I think about what I love about this church, most of all, it is the salvations.
I mean, obviously God's doing miracles and healing. There's a great worship that's happening every time you gather.
But I'm loving the fact that there's so many of you that have come to Christ in recent years, and there's so many of you that are just in those early stages of your walk in the Lord. And that just enriches my heart so much. Those are the. Those are the indicators, the seeds of revival.
You know, as we look at that banner that's poking to the outside there, the land of revival, I believe that that declaration is absolutely the word of the Lord for this house.
And so what we're going to talk about today, if you grab your Bibles, open them up to Acts 19, we're going to talk about seven keys to regional revival. We're going to look at aspects of the scripture and particularly focusing on one particular church, which was the Church of Ephesus. And if you understand about the biblical times that there were three churches that rose up as primary.
And these three churches, one was Jerusalem, and that's where Jesus began in his resurrection and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The church was born there. Peter was the initial leader. But over a period of time, other leaders rose up. And particularly by Acts 15, you have Jesus, half brother James, principal leader in that church. But then you have Peter sending Barnabas up to a city called Antioch, because the believers had been scattered in persecution, and they went to the different towns, and God began to move in Antioch. And Peter said, wow, we need to have a leader up there. So he took this amazing man named Barnabas and sent him up there. Barnabas was in Antioch and he heard about this amazing salvation. A man named Saul, who was persecuting the church, had come to Christ miraculously. And it was so amazing. And after a couple of years, he sent for Paul. He said, please, come join us. Be part of our team. And then you find Acts chapter 13, where they're gathered together, worshiping and praying. And the Holy Spirit speaks to them and says, separate Paul and Barnabas. Send them on a missionary journey. Let them plant churches. And that's what the conference was about this weekend, is raising and releasing and sending people to extend the kingdom throughout the region.
Just a profound and powerful thing. But now we find the third church, where we have Jerusalem, Antioch, and now Ephesus.
And Ephesus was an amazing center, a governmental center. It was a center of commerce and economy.
It was a center of religious belief.
And yet Paul got it in his heart. We're going to go there. We're going to bring transformation to that city. We're going to bring salvation to that city. And that's where we pick up the story in Acts chapter 19.
You know, as I think about this issue of salvation and the issue of just even the songs that we've been singing about that initial encounter with the Lord where we. Where we've been saved, we've been born again.
I think about my own history a little bit. It was around 52 years ago that I prayed to receive Christ.
And it was crazy because I was raised in a hippie household.
I was raised around sex, drugs and rock and roll, New Age philosophy.
I didn't have a clue who Jesus was.
I began traveling, and it was in that process where I got rides with Christians and they would preach the gospel to me. That was a standard evangelism methodology back in the day.
You pick up somebody hitchhiking, you have a captive audience until you let them out.
And so there was one ride where it was 26 miles of arguing with this woman about Jesus. And at the very end, she said, would you like to pray with me? And my heart yielded. And it's interesting, the prayer I prayed wasn't, oh, Jesus, I'm a sinner. Forgive me. It was this prayer, jesus, if you're real, make yourself real to me.
I don't know if you've ever prayed that prayer.
I've prayed it a lot in my life.
But there was this moment about three or four days later where I was doing my morning meditations, and I had an encounter with the Lord.
And in that encounter, I felt like I heard a voice that said to me, michael, are you ready yet?
And I thought, I don't know if I am.
Because I realized that Jesus was for real. That if I was going to serve him, it was going to be my whole life. It was going to be something real. And then all of a sudden, I had, like, a vision, and I saw Jesus on a cross. And it was just. I don't know if it was open or not. I think my eyes were closed. But I saw him. He's like 20ft high, and he was looking at me. And he had a crown of thorns of blood coming down, and his hands were pierced and his feet were pierced, and he looked at move his lips. But I heard a voice that said this.
When you follow me, it will be to your death.
And I realized the severity, the seriousness of this decision.
And here I am, you know, a few decades later, still walking this out. It's kind of crazy, because my family thought, oh, this is just a phase. He's been through three or four of these phases. He'll do. I thought it was maybe a phase. I thought maybe. And when I met somebody who had been a Christian for a couple of years, I said, how did you do it? How did you follow Jesus this long?
And here I am at the other end of that spectrum, saying, wow, when you follow me, it'll be to your death. And I just feel like, thank you, Jesus.
He's kept me, and I know he's kept all of you, and I trust that he will continue to keep you in the hollow of his hand. But the question is, we know we've been given this incredible deposit.
God's heart, his love, his salvation, his cleansing. We're new creatures in Christ. What do we do with it? Well, it's time for us to sow it back into the community and to see that thing that we've been calling revival, to see it happen. How do we See it happen. Well, I believe that this city is destined as a land of revival.
Amen. Can you guys say that? Amen.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: And.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: But it's going to take a little bit of a focus shift. We need to say, okay, let's look at the scripture and see what God has to say about revival. In Acts, chapter 19.
I'm just going to read 10 verses, okay? So pay attention, focus. Read it in your scripture and then we'll talk about it a bit. It says, and it happened, verse one, while Apollos was at Corinth, and that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus.
Now stop there for a second. I believe that there's something special about this church and this region. I believe that this is not a Jerusalem area. This is not an Antioch area. This is an Ephesus area. God's about to do something. This is one of the greatest revivals that occurred in the entire Bible. And I want you to pay attention. It says, and he found some disciples there. And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
And so they said to him, we have not even so much as heard that there's a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, into what then were you baptized? So they said into John's baptism. And then Paul said, john indeed baptized you with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who was to come.
And in that process, he said, when they heard this, they baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them. And they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now the men were about 12 in all. And he went into the synagogue and he spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom. And when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them. He withdrew the disciples to, and he reasoned daily in the school of Taranis.
And this continued for two years so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. Now look at verse 10 for a moment.
Can you imagine? He's talking about the realm of Asia, which is now Turkey. The whole region of Turkey was literally almost 4 million people. And the what God did in Ephesus was so profound that everyone in that region heard the gospel.
Okay, we're talking about a major move of God. We're talking about a massive impact of the Holy Spirit.
Isn't that exciting?
And it's possible at this time, that there was maybe around 300,000 people in Ephesus. Again, it was a economic, governmental, and religious center, and a lot was going on. But it's estimated that by the time that Second Timothy was written, which second Timothy was a letter to the bishop Timothy in Ephesus, that it's estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 believers in that city.
Hello.
Does that excite you guys? I mean, come on. This could be the reality of this region around Lester.
In other words, you could see God move at that level. But what are some of the keys? We're gonna actually distill a few of these keys. We're gonna look at them together. We're gonna say, okay, Father, show us exactly some of the things that happened that actually led to this level of incredible impact. Okay, so first of all, I want to focus in on verse five.
It says this. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Now, the first point that I want is that ultimately, these individuals that were reached were already pursuing God.
They were already involved in the baptism of John. They had already had an intention towards the Lord, but they were still stuck in religion.
Now, many of you know what that feels like, where you've tried to serve God with your life. Maybe in some form of Christianity, you were trying very hard to pursue God. Or maybe you were involved in some other religious belief like Hinduism or Islam, and you were involved trying to pursue God. Well, guess what? Religion, although many times we put it down, it's actually man's best effort to interact with God.
But that's something different than what Jesus brought.
Jesus brought God's effort to reach us.
Hello.
That God brought his effort. In other words, religion is our best efforts, but our best efforts will always fall short. Short because of sin, because of brokenness, because of the woundedness of this world.
See, he moved them in this verse 5. He moved them from religion to relationship.
And this is where all of us, or most of us in this room have been moved. We started out pursuing God. I was. I was a pursuer of God. I was trying to understand truth. I was looking in different religions. I was practicing yoga. I was doing mantras. I was, you know, doing occult things, trying to find God. But ultimately it wasn't working.
I remember one night I was coming home from a jam session, you know, playing guitar, and I was walking in the middle of the night, and I was looking up at the stars, and I said, I was reviewing my life and thinking, wow, it's not working.
I'M not getting better. I'm still a selfish pig. I'm still, you know, being harmful to people in my attitudes and in my behavior.
I remember looking up into the heavens and seeing the stars, and I just said, God, why didn't you make a religion that could change me from the inside out?
Come on.
Little did I know that's exactly what Christianity is. My parents told me, no, Christianity is a bunch of rules. It was invented by an evil king to control the masses. And I believe them, okay? Little did I know that the new covenant was all about. God says this in Jeremiah 31. He says, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Jacob. Not like the covenant I made, which they broke when they came out of Egypt. But this is the covenant I will make. I will write my law on their heart.
And Ezekiel says, I will take their heart of stone and I will put in a heart of flesh, and I will cause them to walk my commandments.
Isn't this amazing?
Come on. The Bible says, you know, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
Can we just give a moment? Praise to the Lord. Come on, you guys. Just lift up your voice and say, thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus.
We're so grateful, God, that Jesus came, that you made a way.
You made a way for us. So that's. Number one is Jesus, the Lord Jesus. And the number number two is that they received the Holy Spirit. Look at verse six, it says, and when Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them. How many of you received the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Come on.
Yeah, see, he is the presence. His power, his person is actually dwelling inside of you.
And so look what it says. It says the Holy Spirit came upon them. They began to speak in other tongues. They began to prophesy. So there was supernatural activity. And I know many of you have experienced this supernatural reality of the real presence and person of God at work in your life. But look what it says. It says also it says that there were about 12. It was only a small group at this time, but God was at work in them in a powerful way to reveal Himself.
See, the Holy Spirit actually works inside of us to transform us, to change us into the image of Christ. The Bible says he changes us. He transforms us from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.
And each one of us is in this incredible transformational process right now. And it's really about yielding to the person of the Holy Spirit working inside of us.
But he also gives you sort of A fringe benefit, which is not just his presence changing you, but it's also his power empowering you.
In other words, you have been given power. That's what Jesus said to the disciples in Acts 1:8. He says, you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world. In other words, we've been called to share Jesus, but we've been called to also do so in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And this is where a key to revival, the second key, is that we've been brought from first from religion to relationship. Now we've been brought from relationship into the very presence of God living in us. Look at number three. Number three is in verse eight. If you go there with me, it says, and they went into the synagogue and they spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the Kingdom of God.
Now, let me just say the Kingdom of God is an incredible message. In fact, it's the message that Jesus spoke. Remember when Jesus was confronted by the enemy in the wilderness?
And it says that he overcame the enemy and he came down and he began to heal the sick and cast out demons and proclaim the Kingdom of God.
Now, what is the message? What is the Gospel of the kingdom? Well, it's a little different than the Gospel of salvation. Now, it includes the Gospel of salvation. In other words, we were sinners and we were separated from God by sin. That ultimately if we died in that sin, we'd be separated from God to eternity. But Jesus came, manifested himself. He died for our sins, and by his blood we've been cleansed, we've been filled with the Holy Spirit. We are now new creatures in Christ and we're going to spend eternity with Him. And that's called the Gospel of salvation. And that is an essential message that we believe.
But that message sits inside of a larger message called the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. And one of the keys to revival is to move beyond simply the salvation message to understand that Jesus came not just to save my soul and but to transform and bring reformation to the entire planet. That Jesus is on a mission to restore God's eternal purposes.
He's doing battle against the forces of evil. He's eradicating them from this world so that ultimately righteousness will reign and goodness will be the reality of this planet.
But that takes effort on our partnering with him for that outcome.
And so what's amazing about this is that I don't Believe it'll happen fully until Jesus returns himself and he is coming back. You guys, okay? And we get to be part of that ushering group that welcomes him here. But here's the deal, is that this is part of our message. We have to understand the gospel of the Kingdom, because that means that if you're an educator today, you can bring the kingdom of God into your university or school you teach in. If you're a medical professional today, you can bring the kingdom of God into that hospital that you work in. If you're a business person, you can bring the kingdom of God into the business realm. If you're a civil servant, you can bring the kingdom of heaven into the realm of your activities.
We're called to be ambassadors for the kingdom and the king. And so this is part of the revival keys is to be able to say, how do I do that? How do I personally take responsibility for my opportunity to bring the kingdom of heaven? So that's. That's number three. Let's look on a little bit further to key number four is in verses nine and ten.
It says, when some hardened their heart and did not believe and spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and he withdrew his disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. The key number four is that they focused their ministry towards the emerging generation. Now, this is something you have to understand that their pattern was to normally go to the synagogue and share the Gospel of Jesus there. But then when there was resistance, they would just step away. They'd say, okay, you guys aren't ready to hear this. But in this case, what they did was they actually decided to relocate in a local university.
But you got to remember, this university was secular. This university was probably teaching certain occult things and certain issues of magic or Wicca or New age philosophy. This university was mostly young people, and they moved their whole center, their whole.
Sounds a little bit like you guys. You guys are record, you know, hopefully, you know, relocating to a university.
And there's so many university students that are coming back in this next week or two to be here.
In other words, God has positioned you as a church with an incredible influence in the emerging generation.
Do you realize that in most revivals throughout all of history, and we're talking about. Many of them happened here in the uk. I mean, we're talking about the great Welsh revival, We're talking about the Hebrides revival. We're talking about the first Great awakening that you call the Methodist Revival.
I mean, so much of what God has done throughout the earth has had its basis here in the uk. In fact, you know, Wesley and Whitfield all spent time up in Leicester, in fact. And so what we're dealing with is we're dealing with a deep well of revival here that is part of your heritage as men and women of God. In other words, you're walking in this in a wonderful way. But throughout history, most revival takes place about 80% of those that come to Christ come to Christ below the age of 30.
Now that doesn't mean us old folks, you know, are irrelevant or obsolete. I mean, I still feel like I have a role. And if you're an older believer here in this room, praise God, because we need mentors, we need spiritual mothers and fathers, we need spiritual grandfathers and grandmothers that can actually bring the mature perspective to the emerging ones.
But we also need to honor the fact that the emerging ones are going to carry a vitality and a power and a presence into their world that's going to be catalytic for revival. Amen. And so again, these are keys that we can find in this passage about how revival works. And then finally, verse 10, we're here, and it says, and they continued for two years so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word. I mean, we're talking about a time where they didn't have newspapers, you guys, they didn't have any social media at the time. I mean, this just went word of mouth to word of mouth. And you find that as you go through this chapter that you find that they actually had great impact in the religious world. They actually impacted a certain industry that was creating these idols that, that were being sold all over. And part of the influence that they had was that the people stopped buying the idols.
And a whole riot occurred around that. And they had to appeal to their magistrates to deal with the situation because the impact of the church was so great.
Now when you think about Paul in Athens, he didn't badmouth the other religions. He just presented the God they said, the unknown God. I'm going to show him to you. I'm going to reveal him to you. He didn't have to put down the other religions because when he lifted up Jesus, there was no comparison. Amen. See, this is the key, is that we need to draw all men.
See, Jesus is an equal opportunity savior.
He loves every single person from every single tribe and tongue and kindred and creed and thought.
He wants to bring them all to himself.
Now, again, you know, they got rejected and that's part of what happens in this world, we get rejected from time to time because our message is fairly exclusive. I mean, Jesus said very plainly, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by me.
So we know that this is the key to salvation.
It's not all roads lead to Rome. It's not all beliefs are all the same. No, it's not.
However, each belief system is human effort to try to find God.
Well, thankfully, God has revealed himself now and we can bring God to them.
Amen. Okay, so let's go to point number five. Okay. They operated in the supernatural power of God.
If we want to see revival spread throughout this land, we need to step into a greater expression of the presence and power of God. Look what happens in verses 11 and 12. Here it says now God worked unusual miracles by the hand of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons were brought from his body to the sick and diseases left them and evil spirits went out from them.
I mean, come on, you guys, I can kind of grasp, okay, I prayed over a handkerchief. It was brought and God healed your back or whatever it is. Praise God. But a demon actually being cast out by its handkerchief, I don't know. That stretches my faith, but the Bible says it's true.
Now why is it true? Because we are serving a supernatural God. And that supernatural God longs to use his people to break the power of the enemy's work in the land.
This is who we are.
This is what we do. But I'll tell you something, there can be a gap there.
Diana and I have had the privilege of walking in the power of God for so many years and seeing many beautiful healings and deliverances. But there's been seasons where we've had lulls where we haven't seen the same level of power that we enjoyed maybe at a previous season.
You know what it takes? It takes determination, it takes consistency, it takes risk.
You need to step out. I'm so blessed by this church, the way that you're healing the sick. Every service when the presence of God is most tangible at the end of a worship set, and you guys are calling the sick down and praying for them, and you're seeing real results.
Praise God. But I encourage every one of you to step into that. Every one of us needs to walk in the power of Jesus. Okay, point number six.
Go there.
Verse 18. Turn over there. We're going to skip a little section here, but. But I want you to go to.
It says, and many believed, came confessing and telling their deeds. In other words, As a result of all that we've talked about, moving from religion to relationship, moving to the presence of the Holy Spirit within you, moving. Moving to a place where you're understanding the kingdom of God. Moving from a place out of conflict, focusing on the harvest that God is doing, moving in the supernatural power. Each of these things that are outlined in this passage of scripture now culminate to the fact that many who believed came confessing and telling their deeds.
See, ultimately, if our salvation doesn't change our lifestyle, it needs to be questioned. Was it really. Were you really born again? If you're still living out the old life, Are you really born again? If you're still hanging out with the same friends without the intention of sharing the gospel with them?
The question there is, who's evangelizing whom?
Are you reaching them for Christ? Or are they drawing you back into a worldly dynamic?
Or does your longing for that special someone, and you've been waiting for a year now for a Christian man or woman to come along that would meet your needs. And, and, and they haven't come yet. So you're going to sell yourself short by hanging out with somebody who doesn't have faith.
See, again, we have to see that the lifestyle has to change if we really want to walk this out. Because ultimately, people are going to measure our faith by the life that we live.
And so in this situation, it says that they came confessing. Oh, God, I blew it. You know, I have some problems here. Please help me. They came with humility. They came with vulnerability. And God began to bring transformation. It says also many of those who practice magic brought their books together and they burned them in the sight of all, okay? And they counted them up the value, and it totaled 50,000 pieces of silver. I was talking to Pastor Steve about this today, and he said that could be as many as £5 million.
In other words, we're talking about a massive move of God where literally hundreds and hundreds of people that were practicing magic brought their books and burned them as a testimony against the enemy and a testimony for Jesus.
I mean, come on, you guys. We're in a situation where we have to be bold in our stance of faith. We have to be bold to declare Jesus. And sometimes that means standing strongly against the forces that used to rule us.
What were you involved in?
Have you drawn some lines? Have you. Have you stopped watching those shows? Have you stopped listening to that music? You know, I remember just the amount of albums, you know, vinyl albums that I threw away or the amount of occult books that I Had that I just, you know, trashed because I didn't want. I didn't. Not just. It wasn't just about the influence.
It was about the statement to the heavenlies, I'm a new man, I'm following Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.
And then we hit the final point, which is key number seven.
It's in verse 20.
So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. I mean, it seems like just a little caption at the end of the end of the passage, but I believe verse 20 could be the most important key in the entire chapter.
Okay, look what happened? The word of God grew. What is the word of God?
Come on, you guys, what is the word of God? Can you hold up your Bibles? Can you hold it up high? Because again, this is our source. This is our amazing center of truth and belief and faith and practice, you guys, this is at the center.
And one interesting thing that happened about 18 months ago was I had a dream.
And in this dream a well known preacher came to me. Some of you might know the name Kenneth Hagin.
But he appeared in my dream. And again, I don't think about this guy. I don't know, you know, I've never really met him.
But he shows up in my dream and he comes in and he walks right up to me, like right face to face and he's looking in my eyes and he basically rebukes me for being wishy washy in my faith.
Says, michael, you become double minded, Michael, you have a problem. You're not. You used to be bolted down to the word of God. You're not bolted down anymore.
And I was shocked by this because, wait a minute, I read the Bible all the way through every year and I've done it for about 40 years.
Okay.
I'm dedicated to the Word. I defend the truth of the Bible regularly. I'm doctrinally square, you know, I'm really committed to this book.
But he wasn't talking about that. He was talking about my internal life that I drifted.
Like the way I kind of likened. It was like if you drive a really old car and it takes about a quarter turn of the steering wheel before the wheels begin to turn.
My relationship to the word of God was like e.
Okay, you know, I wasn't bolted down. I wasn't fastened to the word of God like I once was.
And I began to think about that. I listened to some of his teachings about the authority of the Word and I began to start to feel a little strength coming into my being. I Began to pray, pray about this Father, what's gone on? And the Lord began to point to the areas of disappointment. I mean, we've healed the sick many times, but now we hadn't seen a dramatic healing in a long time. Or we had cast out demons and seen incredible miracles in the past, but now it's like coming against the powers of evil was, was a little wishy washy. It just wasn't as firm and as solid.
And then two weeks later, Diane was diagnosed with stage four cancer.
And I realized that dream was preparation.
God says you're going into a battle.
Your wife now has lymphoma in about six areas. There's tumors. You're going to have to stand in the word of God. You're going to have to refasten yourself, retake a stand, to say, wait a minute, do you really believe?
Because it's a life and death moment.
And God was with us to help us. We began to pray together. Well, first of all, we went to the elders of our church, which is Jesus culture. They prayed for us powerfully. And then we went to our global eldership that we're part of with Catch the Fire, the ministry that began out of the Toronto Blessing. And those amazing saints came around us and began to pray for us. They had prophetic words for us that empowered us and enabled us. It was just an incredible, incredible moment in our lives.
And then we went through all different treatments. The treatments failed. At some level, we said, no more treatments. We're going to stand in the word of God. Because the Word of God says, by his stripes we are healed. Right? The word of God says, forget none of his benefits. He heals all our diseases. And it's really challenging when you know that the end result if it fails is somebody dying.
But gosh, we're trying to learn how to walk in the fullness of the revelation of the Word of God.
And so as I close right now, I just want to ask you this question.
Where are you in relationship to your personal revival?
Are you thriving in the relational connection? Are you basking in the work of the Holy Spirit in your life?
Are you able to embrace the gospel of the kingdom? Are you seeing the sick healed? Because that's what we saw that ultimately at the end of the story, after four months of saying no treatment, we're just going to wait on the Lord, the doctors finally said, we have to do a biopsy. We can't let you wait. And so we did the biopsy to the tumor, the two biggest tumors in the liver and they said, back to us. No disease detected.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
But again, it's not our massive great faith. It's really the beauty of Jesus breaking through through our limited oh God, I believe, help my unbelief kind of faith. You know what I mean?
Where are you in your journey?
Maybe you're here and you've never met the Lord.
Well, this is a great day to begin the journey. This is a great day to be introduced to him. Maybe you're here and you've been part of a different religious group or whatever. You've never experienced the Holy Spirit. Well, today that could change.
But most of all, I want to close with this.
We need to re anchor ourselves in this book like Pastor said earlier. He said, you know, we're not praying for the sick, we're healing the sick because Jesus said, heal the sick, cast out devils.
These are things that he has declared.
So I'd like to just have you close your eyes with me. I want to just pray for you as we close.
If you found that you've been disappointed because you prayed for somebody, they didn't get healed or you've experienced some other kind of problem, I just want to pray a blessing over you. And then Pastor's going to come up and lead us as we close.
But can you just hold your hands out before the Lord right now?
Hold your hands out before him, Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray right now that you would touch each person in this house, that you, Father, would reveal again, that you would refresh their connection to you, that you'd refresh their experience in the Holy Spirit and that you would begin to wipe the rust off of their sword. The sword of the Spirit is the word of God that you'd begin to sharpen again. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. You begin to anchor them deeply to the person and presence of Jesus in the word of God. And that, Lord, the word of God would become the absolute anchor of their faith and of their practice in Christ.
So, Father, bless my brothers and sisters in Jesus name.
Amen. Thank you guys so much for being together.
God bless you.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge podcast.
If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.