Glorious Way Church
Glorious Way Church equips believers for the work of the ministry and stands for God’s truth in our culture. We serve as a regional center, where people from all backgrounds find refreshing worship and true communion of the saints.
Glorious Way Church
I Will Not Relax My Hold
Imagine standing at the edge of a storm-tossed sea, the winds howling around you, testing your resolve, your grip slipping, yet knowing there is an anchor. In our latest episode, we delve into this metaphor of life's challenges through the lens of biblical teachings. Starting with Hebrews 13:5-6, we explore the power of contentment and the reassurance of God's unwavering presence, a theme that resonates through time and guides us in an ever-demanding world. We promise that by listening, you'll gain insights into how to transcend fear and find peace in the promise that you are never truly alone.
We're going to start off in Hebrews, chapter 13, and in verse 5 it says Let your conduct be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we can boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what can man do to me? And when I look that up, in the Amplified and the context here, it's talking about a financial concern. When we're talking about covetousness, let your conduct be without coveting, like desiring what other people have, looking at what you have and it's not enough, and looking at what somebody else has and it appears to be everything that you ever wanted and you want that. So let your conduct or moral disposition be without that, without the love of money, including greed, avarice, lust and craving of earthly possessions, and be satisfied with your present circumstances and with what you have. For he, god himself, has said I will not in any way fail you nor give you up being covetous of something. And so if you're looking at what you have and then developing a fear on the inside that what I have is not enough, god's not going to come through for me. Now I desire what somebody else has and you're coveting that. So it's all based on fear right there. But this scripture right here is meant to build you up. It's God saying I will not, I will not, I will not in any degree leave you helpless or forsake you, nor let you down, relax my hold on you. Not going to do it, and so that's the title of tonight's message I will not relax my hold. So when Joshua, let's turn over to Joshua. I'm not going to spend a long time in the Old Testament, but this is an Old Testament chapter here that has a lot in it and it's a good example. So, joshua 1, chapter 8. Joshua 1, verses 1 through 8. And I'll read through this, and there's a lot of things to pull out and I'm just going to go through it quickly because I want to be short-winded tonight. Blessed are the short-winded, for they shall be invited back. Joshua 1, verse 1,.
Speaker 1:After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, son of Nun, moses' assistant, saying Moses, my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise and go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel, and every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon. I have given you, as I said to Moses, from the wilderness of Lebanon as far as the great river, from the Euphrates and all the land of the Hittites and the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them Only. Be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do all that is according to the law which Moses, my servant, commanded. You Do not turn from it to the right or the left. That you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night and you shall observe to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success, good success. So I look through here and I see some things.
Speaker 1:God gave Joshua some mandates and then God spoke some promises through here. So, real quick, you can write them down if you want, or you can just listen. But I'm going to pull out the mandates that God gave Joshua and then I'm going to list the promises. Number one he said arise and get up. Number two go over this river Jordan, you and all this people. Number three he was charged to walk and to tread upon the land. Number four be strong and of good courage. Number five you're going to divide this land as an inheritance to the people. And number six be strong and very courageous. The first one is just courageous. Now, be strong and very courageous. Number seven observe to do according to all that is in the law. Number eight do not waver. Do not turn to the left or to the right. Number nine speak and meditate on the word. This law shall not depart from your mouth. Speak it. This law you're going to meditate on day and night. And number that was 10. And then 11 is do all that is written in the law. So here are the promises that I pulled out.
Speaker 1:God spoke his promise to Joshua. He said I am giving this land to the people, so I am giving it to them. But he says I have given this land to you and it's your territory. He called it in there and the purpose for that was to distribute. Number three no man will be able to stand before you. Number four as I was with Moses, I will be with you. Number five I will not leave you nor forsake you. Number six then you will make your way prosperous. And number seven then you will have good success. And number seven then you will have good success. And so Joshua had to do three things he had to believe, he had to speak and he had to act. He had to believe the promises of God, he had to speak those promises and he had to act upon them. And he did that so that he could receive the promises, prosper and succeed. Believe, speak and act so you can receive, prosper and succeed.
Speaker 1:So back to Hebrews 13, about that context. It was about money and it had to do with the fear of not having enough. It was money and earthly possessions, it was just things, it was stuff, and it was based in fear of not having enough. And so fear is overcome by believing and speaking and acting like God is faithful and that he will not relax his hold on you. And so in that scripture, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what command due to me. And the Amplified says I will not. I will not, I will not relax my hold on you. That's the title of the message. I will not relax my hold. And so that's God talking to us. I will not relax my hold. But I want you to look at it this way. In fact, I want you to say I will not relax my hold. Let's say it. I will not relax my hold. Say it again I will not relax my hold. I want you to say I will not relax my hold on you or your word. I will not relax my hold on you or your word. And so that's our confession tonight to God, that's our declaration that we're not going to relax our hold on him or his word. So what does it mean to relax your hold on something? So I'll give you an example and, lee, you've got a photo you can pull up at some time.
Speaker 1:I dropped out of college at one point to go sailing on that ship and I lived aboard that ship for a year and a half. In fact, I volunteered for two weeks. I dropped out of college and volunteered for two weeks hoping to get a job on board that ship and after two weeks of scraping paint and doing some dirty work on the boat, I got hired at $100 a week and I was happy and I had a place to live and we're sailing. We went across the Atlantic and sailed all over the world and it was an adventure. I've been in some deep places and I've seen some wondrous things and I was a little bit of a Jonah moment, running away from God, but I could not hide from God. You know you ever play hide and seek with God. Okay, you go hide. Okay, I see you, I still see you and I still see you. I still see you and I still see you. You can't hide and I couldn't get away. And through all of that magnificent experience the ocean, the stars, everything that I saw I saw God in all of that and I couldn't get away.
Speaker 1:But we went through some storms at sea. In fact we had four days of hurricane-force winds that blew us 800 miles off course and we saw seas that were 35-foot-plus seas that would black out the evening sun as they rose behind the ship and it was just a wild ride. And you see that rig right there. There's three masts on that sailing ship and the middle one is the tallest one. That's the main mast and it's the top of. That mast is 135 feet off the water.
Speaker 1:Now, when we had hurricane force winds blowing us 800 miles off course, with 35-foot seas, we did not have all of that sail up. But we did have some sail up because we still had to maintain control of the ship and so we had to have speed through the water so that we could have steerage and be able to direct the ship in a safe direction. We had to climb that rig and pull that sail in. When it was rough, that means I had to climb up. You see that there was rigging there and we climbed. We climbed up into that rig and we had a safety belt. It was a belt that strapped around my middle and I buckled it up. It was not a true harness, it was just a belt. And then it had a tether that was about three or four feet long and a metal hook on the end, and while I was climbing I had to hold on, and when I got to where I was going, then I could put the hook into something and secure myself to the boat.
Speaker 1:And we had a rule on the boat that there's one hand for you and there's one for the ship. In other words, we've got work to do, we've got to pull in sail, we've got to do stuff to keep this boat going, to keep it safe. If the boat's not floating we're in trouble. So we've got to do everything we can to keep that boat in good shape and go in the proper direction. So one hand for the boat and one hand for you.
Speaker 1:In other words, you don't let go. You don't let go, you hold on, you hold fast, you have a grip. It's a death grip, because if you don't hold on there's probably going to be death. You'll either fall and hit the deck or or or go overboard. And so I had an incredible grip. I never, never, never let go. My life depended on it. And if you did fall and let go for some reason, if you lost your grip, if you relaxed a little bit, that tether would save you. But you would have a little bit of a fall and a sudden stop and it would not be a good feeling, it would be a rough thing.
Speaker 1:And so again, you know, tonight we're saying I will not relax my hold. Derek, come up here If you don't mind, Please, and thank you, all right. So I got a water bottle. I'm not going to spray Derek, but he's going to hold on to this and don't let go. I want a tight grip. I want a tight grip, all right. Now I want you to relax your hold. Relax your hold, all right. So he relaxed a little bit and I got the water bottle that slipped out of his hands and I slapped him around a little bit and he still loves me. So you can still hold onto something and you can still hold on to something and you can still relax your grip and lose your hold, even though he was still holding on. But it relaxed a little bit. A little distraction, a little slap in the face, a little poke in the eye, a little finger up the nose and before you know it, he relaxed his grip and it was all over. We can't relax our grip.
Speaker 1:God has given this church. Let's talk about some mandates. Pastor went over all these this morning and we watched a 13-minute video of 30 years of this church and what God has done. And let's just God called this church and I'm not going to go through the detail of this stuff. In 96, god called this church a regional center and pastor spoke and we began to act as a church. 99, god said wake up the church. Pastor spoke, we spoke, we acted. 2003, god said that there's a dearth of the word in your children. The next generation doesn't know what you know. Teach what you take for granted. So pastor spoke, those things, began to teach what we took for granted and get back to some of the basics.
Speaker 1:2006, he said you're going to build a barn for the harvest and then God qualified that and said and this is not it, speaking about the building that pastor had in mind to build. This is not it. This structure is not the barn for the harvest. Kind of washed over us later, years later. What if God was talking about something that wasn't a building? What if we're going to build a barn for the harvest? That's not a building. Because when you think about it, how big is that harvest? How big a building would you need to contain that harvest? And why would you take the entire harvest of the whole earth and put it in one building anyway? And so God's ideas, his concepts of things are so much bigger but we're going to build a barn for the harvest.
Speaker 1:And then now, you know, pastor spoke those things. Not knowing, noah started to do things. Not knowing God instructed him to build an ark and you know, it took somewhere between 70 and 100 years to build an ark and he just kept, he spoke and he acted, and acted like God's word was true and obeyed God and pastor, kind of the same way. And so 30 years later, after that first one where he recognized it was a regional center, I mean like 29 years later, goodness, that's a long time to be calling this place a regional center and not knowing. But only in the last few years did we begin to recognize what that meant. And now we're going to capitals in different states and waking up the church and bringing pastors into the capitol and hosting church services in these places and speaking the word that there's a dearth of, and making connections between pastors and churches and all over this nation. And now there's kind of a network that's coming together, that's a preserving network, kind of like a barn, and with every one of those pastors comes people, and with every one of those believers that comes, and with every one of those believers that comes in, there's a harvest and there's a network to preserve them, like a barn.
Speaker 1:And so God's idea like you, don't begin to see this stuff until you get way down the road and start acting on it. You believe it, you speak it, you act on it. 2 Corinthians 4.13 says Paul writes. And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believe and therefore I spoke, and we also believe and therefore we speak. And so when God speaks, we better believe what he says. His word is written for us. It was spoken so that it could be written and it was written so that we can continue to speak it. And then we've had rhema, words along the way or mandates along the way that we've got to speak and believe and act on. And that's why a pastor continues to tell these stories, and they're not stories, it's what God showed him along these years, but he'll speak on these things from time to time to keep that out in front of everybody.
Speaker 1:Now, not long ago, I preached a message, a couple of them. One was the window of opportunity, and I think that was right after the election, right after Donald Trump was elected. And then, about a month later I preached one called Get Lit and Stay Salty, and not like get drunk, get lit, but like be light, light your candle, get lit. Both these messages were, and I feel such an urgency on the inside and I still feel this and this is still part of this message tonight. But there's such an urgency that we have got to be busy about God's work and we can't relax, we cannot relax our hold, we cannot relax and say we've got to win. Look at, you know, look at what Donald Trump has done. He's undoing all the things that have been done for years before and everything is fixed and perfect and better. No, in those messages maybe it was the last one get lit and stay salty. Maybe it was a couple of times.
Speaker 1:I don't remember now, but I've given some examples out of history. I'm going to reference those again real quick. I gave one from our founding time George Washington, abraham Lincoln and George Patton. Maybe you remember me talking about some of this. But George Washington, after we declared our independence from Great Britain, now we had to go fight this thing out and first rattle out of the bag. We get stuck up against the East River, long Island, and George Washington is pinned up against the river, 9,000 troops versus the British 32,000 troops. Well, there was prayer and that resulted in some very miraculous things. It was God moving on behalf of this nation In the beginning. He sent a storm to push the British ships back and he sent a fog to hide. He sent a cloud that settled on both camps to hide the escape of that 9,000 troops and we were able to continue fighting in that war. So George Washington prayed and then God responded.
Speaker 1:Abraham Lincoln, you know he takes on his presidency at a point in time when the United States is splitting and falling apart and the Union is dissolving right in front of him. States is splitting and falling apart and the union is dissolving right in front of him, and he calls for a national day of prayer. He called it a national day of humiliation, or repenting and humbling and fasting and prayer and at that point in time his win-loss history, which was, I think, nine losses to two wins, flipped and reversed. It changed the course of that war and then it brought the nation to a point where we could then begin to heal, and that healing process took a long time. It's still going on, but that was a product of prayer and God intervening in that moment.
Speaker 1:And then George Patton. You know we think of him as blood and guts and a foul-mouthed guy, and, yeah, he was all of that, but he did pray. In fact, he called for a unity of prayer amongst our troops. At a point in time when we were on the edge of losing World War II, the momentum was not on our side, it was beginning to shift the other way, and he called for our troops to pray. What his prayer was was God give us four days of good weather, and if you'll do that, we'll send more people, more Germans, than your bookkeepers can keep up with. That was his prayer. Well, god granted him six days and he was able to get the job done, and it changed the course of the war.
Speaker 1:But in all these examples, there was a big win. God moved on our behalf, there was prayer made and there was a big win. But there were still lots more battles to happen after that, and so we can't think for a moment that we've just had a big win and that we're done and we can relax and settle down and enjoy the spoils of the wind. There's a lot more battles in front of us, and so there is no relaxing. God gave us mercy. He gave us more time. That means we need to be busy about His work during the short time that we have how much time do we have, I don't know. That means we need to be real busy about His business, accomplishing His mandates. So this church has some mandates. This is your church. If this is your church, the same mandates that belong to this church belong to you. It's your mission, this is your church and your mission.
Speaker 1:But on a personal side, what has God promised you? You know, maybe you've had some rhema words about your family, about your life, about your future. Maybe you've got some words out of Scripture that are just God's promises for the believer and what belongs to us, and all of those are valid things, and so just think about those things. What has God promised you? What does His Word say about your life, about your family, about your future? You have the promise of healing and good health. Are you a tither and sower of seed? Has the devourer been rebuked for your sakes? Does shalom, which means peace and prosperity and health, belong to you? Are you named with his name? Is your family saved? Is your family serving God? Now look at the Davises. They have a wonderful testimony in the making.
Speaker 1:Flora just had an eye surgery because she had some kind of separation in her eye and there's a risk of blindness there, and so she had to go in and have eye surgery and the prognosis was that she would have to be faced down. The procedure required in the recovery period required her to be faced down for an estimated six to eight weeks. That was their report and I know they didn't receive that report. I know he believed God's Word. They agreed together believed God's Word, they believed and therefore they spoke. They had a spirit of faith, they believed and they spoke. And I know they meditated on God's word and then they acted on God's word and so the report went from six to eight weeks to like four to six weeks and then it was reduced again down to three weeks. And then she went and had her procedure and at the one week mark checkup he said you don't need to be facedown anymore, you're progressing so fast, and this is amazing. The doctors were amazed at the rate of healing and the separation had already closed up.
Speaker 1:God intervenes, and so do you have the promise of healing? Does that belong to you? You know we have trouble when we relax our hold on God and His Word. Now he doesn't relax His hold on us, but you know, if we relax our hold on that, we can have trouble in our lives.
Speaker 1:In Hebrews 10, 23 through 25, it says Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. That means not going to the left or the right we read that in Joshua 1, without wavering why? Because he's faithful, who promised? And then here's kind of a remedy for that, for holding fast. This is how you hold fast. And let us consider one another in order to stir up good love and good works. In other words, we ought to be an encouragement to one another to build faith and encourage good works. And then it also says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another in so much that you see the day approaching, and so assembling yourselves together. You're assembled here tonight. We ought to be assembled together as often as we can and we ought to be a body that's fitly joined together, where you have a horizontal supply. You are a supply to people around you and others are a supply to you. This is a body, this is a family. We ought to be functioning like one, and when we do that it's a whole lot easier to hold fast and not let go, not let that grip slip. Our confession of hope, without wavering, those words ought to be coming out of our mouth. We believed and therefore we speak. We had the same spirit of faith. Therefore we spoke and we believed.
Speaker 1:So, like I told you before, I never got to a point on the ship where my grip slipped and I fell. I never came and fell at the end of my tether and that would have been a painful experience. While we were in the middle of the Atlantic we did, through shortwave radio, have communication. And there was another boat where the sister of one of the crew members on our ship slipped off of her boat on the west coast. She was sailing on a schooner off the west coast and she slipped and fell overboard and was lost at sea. And here we were in the middle of the Atlantic getting that message on a shortwave radio about one of the crew who lost their sister on another boat and she slipped, she lost her grip, never recovered, and it was a very sobering thing and it was. You know, we used that on our ship, one for you and one for the boat.
Speaker 1:Always have a grip, always use your tether, always clip in, always have your safety harness and clipped in wherever you can and take it very seriously. I'm telling you tonight take it very seriously. Stay clipped in to his words, stay clipped in to God. Keep your safety harness on. He will never, never, never leave you nor forsake you. He will not relax his hold on you. So we ought not relax our hold on him. But I know life happens. I know there's distractions. Sometimes somebody pokes you in the nose, slaps you in the cheek, you lose your grip. Let go of the water bottle. Life happens and I don't want you to be beat up for that.
Speaker 1:In Psalm 37, 23, it says that the steps of a good man are ordered by the lord and he delights in his way. And so god has steps for us and they're ordered by the lord. We also know that he's a light to our next step. He's a lamp into our feet, he's light into our path. We don't get to know the whole plan out in front of us, um, and that can be a little terrifying at times.
Speaker 1:I think about what we've done with my God Votes. And I'm an engineer by trade and by education, and I need a drawing and a spreadsheet and several weeks, if not a month or two, to look at this plan and start making edits and revisions to it and make it better. It is hard for me to make a decision because I'm always like, well, I don't have enough information, I need to gather some more information to make a good decision. And you know, when opportunities come and you got to make a quick decision and I'm too stuck on making a good decision and I never make one, then the opportunity is gone. I mean, I've gone that loop lots of times and so I feel so inadequate and so unfit to be doing what we're doing with my God Votes and to just launch out there and go places.
Speaker 1:I'm going back to Maine tomorrow morning. I'll leave the house at five in the morning, come back late Wednesday evening. They're having their I think it was their fourth or fifth church service there. I'm going to go participate in that. I'm going to go give them some testimonies of what's going on in some other states, build excitement for that, and I just want to make sure that the mission is going the right direction, because God gave us something to do and now we've got to attend it and be a good steward over that. And so we're going to go and look over that.
Speaker 1:But when we started in Louisiana, and every one of these places we go, I have to hire somebody who lives there to manage that project there, and I call them a capital coordinator. So we have a capital coordinator in Texas, and we had one in Oklahoma and Louisiana, and we've hired one in Maine and I'm about to hire one in Indianapolis, and after that we're going on to Michigan. So I mean all these things are just happening fast, and after that we're going on to Michigan. So I mean all these things are just happening fast and I have to make quick decisions and know that God has ordered the steps and I know that he has the plan and he won't show me that plan because I'm likely to make some edits to it and mess the whole thing up. And so he's saying nope, let me just tell you the next step.
Speaker 1:And so I remember standing up here on a Sunday morning at the end of service and saying I'm going to Louisiana tonight and I'm going to meet the person we're going to hire, and I didn't know who it was. I had no clue and I got in the truck and headed out and I got on the other side of Lafayette, louisiana, which is about the halfway point, and my phone rang and the man on the other end was a pastor that I had talked to goodness a month or more prior and Claire had heard him pray at an event that we were at and she elbowed me. She said, hey, you've got to go meet him. And so I rushed out the door to meet him. This was a month or two prior and I gave him my five-minute elevator pitch about my God Votes and what a great project this is, and he kind of patted me on the shoulder, said I'll pray about it. That sounds good. I never heard from him. Well, sunday morning I stood in the pulpit, said I'm going to Louisiana and I'm going to meet the person we're going to hire. I make the drive Halfway there, phone rings. It's Pastor Mike Wicker and he said James, you're not going to believe what happened. I said what he said.
Speaker 1:I was in a church service last night, so that would be a Saturday night, which is a little bit strange. He said there was some prophetic ministry there. I didn't know who they were. My wife and I are at the back of the room. He said that man walked from the front of the room to the back of the room, handed us the Louisiana flag and said you're going to bring pastors into your capital. He said so. We're going to be at the first church service tomorrow night, which was Monday, and I hired his wife on the spot.
Speaker 1:Now I could have looked at all the people that were in the room that night for that very first church service all six of them. So that was me and Mike Wicker and his wife, tara Wicker, and the visiting pastor that came and the two people that he brought. So I guess that was that's, that's seven people in the room, and and so we were by ourselves and no legislators were in the room yet, and so I just invited the pastor to start ministering what God gave him and he started into it and then walked three senators, three Democrat, and then walked three Republicans and they all looked at each other crazy like they'd never been in the same room before. But by the end of the night they're holding hands and praying a prayer of agreement for godliness in their Capitol, for righteousness to reign in Louisiana for life. They were playing pro-life prayers in that and we were in the basement of the Capitol, nobody knew we were there. And the next week we ended up on the 23rd floor in the attorney general's office with people spilling out into the hallway and live praise and worship in that Capitol and the praise is bleeding through that place and it just changed the atmosphere there.
Speaker 1:I can't make that stuff happen, but he can order some steps and you can have that in your personal life if you'll just take another step, if you'll just follow the step. And to do that you've got to believe His Word and speak His Word and act on it so that you can receive and prosper and have success. Believe, speak and act so you can receive, prosper and have success. And so in Psalm 37, steps of good way are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way. Verse 24, this is where somebody comes along and slaps you in the face and pokes you in the nose and you lose your grip.
Speaker 1:Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. You got to remember God said I will never, never, never, I will not, I will not, I will not leave you nor forsake you. He said it three times I will not. So I will never leave you nor forsake you. Said it three times I will not, so I will never leave you nor forsake you. I won't relax my hold on you. That's the tether, that's the safety harness. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down.
Speaker 1:Had I slipped in the rigging and fell, I would not have made it to the deck or into the water because I had a safety harness on. I would have fallen to the end of my rope and I would have felt some discomfort, but I would have been alive. I fell because my grip came loose. I relaxed for a minute, for just a moment I relaxed, and that would have been the reason for the fall. But he will not be utterly cast down. The Lord upholds him with his hand. I've been young and now I'm old, yet I've not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging for bread. So if we relax our hold, we may fall short a short distance and come to a sudden stop, and it can feel pretty harsh when you come to the end of your rope. But God is faithful, he won't let go, he'll uphold you in the palm of his hand.