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
Walking In The Light
Focused on the importance of being led by the Holy Spirit through the inner witness rather than relying on external signs, emotions, or reasoning. Drawing from personal experiences and biblical references, the emphasizes that spiritual guidance comes from within—through the Word of God and a cultivated relationship with the Holy Spirit. Encouraging believers to develop their spiritual sensitivity through scripture, prayer in tongues, and obedience. The message is structured around the acronym “L.E.D.”: Look to the Word, Edify your spirit, and Do what you’re led to do.
Your Bible's up and let's wave them around. Make Jesus glad, the devil mad. Let's say this together. So, heavenly Father, thank God for Wednesday night. I'm here to top off the tank. I want to stay filled with the Holy Ghost, stay full of the Word, so that when trouble comes, I've got the answer and I've got the victory. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:All right, let's turn in our Bibles. I got three verses, three places. The first one is 1 John 1, 7. We'll start with that one, and then Romans 8, and then Proverbs 20. 1 John 1, 7,.
Speaker 1:John is speaking to the church and he said but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. Everybody say walk in the light, all right. And then Romans, chapter eight All right. And then Romans chapter 8, verse 14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Verse 16, the Spirit itself or himself bears witness, with our spirit, that we are the children of God. And then Proverbs 20, 27,. The spirit of man is a candle of the Lord. My margin says lamp of the Lord, enlightening all the inward parts of the belly. Our spirit is a lamp. Our spirit is a lamp that is lit by the Holy Ghost. So tonight I wanted to share a simple message, a walk in the light, and it's really a very similar message to what James preached last week. James talked about being led of the spirit, and this is really the same subject, just coming about it a little different way.
Speaker 1:I like to teach on this subject a lot because it's one of the major failures that I had in my development as a Christian to identify the witness Many times. As a businessman and you know, I read my Bible every day I had a prayer life and a word life, but yet even with that, my reason would often trump my witness and I would reason things out. I would, you know, figure things out, and it took a while to get the hang of really. In some areas it was easier than others. To me, the hardest place to really to discern the witness of the Holy Ghost was in the area that I knew best, which was building houses. You know, when you know a lot about something, you don't lean on the wisdom. You know the Holy Ghost is a genius. So if you think you know it all, you don't lean on him as hard as you should. So I'm just that's. There's no extra charge for that confession. You can just go ahead and criticize me later. But anyway, praise God.
Speaker 1:But we need the word and the spirit to be led by the spirit. I mean, you know, if you, if you, if you're, if you're always searching to hear from God and know, and then you don't have the Word working in your life, well you're going to miss His leading. And vice versa, when you just word, word, word. I know people that know the Word backwards and forwards, but they really don't know how to walk by the Spirit. And so the Word is a very important component to being led by the Spirit. You know Psalm 119, the Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. I mean that Word is our spirits, are lamps that are illuminated by the Holy Spirit when you take in the Word, the entrance of His Word giveth light. And so many times I can't count the times when I got leading from the Spirit through the Word, which is called a rhema, a God breathed word. I mean it happened many, many times over all these years and, uh, it's a very, very important part of being led by the spirit is is having the word of God uh active in your life.
Speaker 1:Romans 8, 16, you know it says the spirit. You know verse 14, as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. The converse is true as many as are sons of God, they are led by the spirit of God. So it's not a matter of whether you're being led, it's a matter of whether you're following, which is means walk in the light. You know, we can either walk or not walk, we can either obey or not, and so the clearer that we can make these things in our hearts and our spirits, the more accurate we'll be able to be in our decision-making.
Speaker 1:You know, 1 John 5, 10 says that we have the witness in ourselves, and so he does lead us by the witness. In fact, that's how we all know we were saved. Originally, we, we had a. The spirit of god witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of god, and it's by that that we say abba, father, and here I mean you know, and daddy I. I mean he becomes daddy the witness. Did we see him? No, did he appear? No, for most of us he didn't. You know he appeared to Paul. I mean it's not unheard of for Jesus to appear to people, but it's rare. I mean most people get saved because of the witness in their spirit.
Speaker 1:It's a supernatural. It's just as supernatural as a vision, supernatural as anything else that we can think of. So, as a matter of fact, my experience in pastoring all these years, and even before that, when I ministered to people including myself, we many times will stumble over the supernatural looking for the spectacular. Now I learned early on that that was not the right way to go, and so I can't say that that was me. I didn't go around looking for visions and dreams, I didn't go around searching for voices, and so that's a positive. But at the same time, you know it's important to learn the ways of the Spirit and to walk in the light. And so when you stumble over the supernatural looking for the spectacular, I mean you know the spectacular, as I said, is visions and dreams and those types of things. They might happen a few times in a lifetime or maybe never. I mean it's not guaranteed that we're going to see and have those kinds of revelations. But be that as it may, I mean we don't need to go around looking for somebody to prophesy to us. We don't need to go around looking for somebody haveesy to us. We don't need to go around looking for somebody. Have you got a word about my situation and all that kind of stuff? No, you know, the word and the spirit working together in our hearts are enough.
Speaker 1:Now I wanted to talk about a subject that I've come across over the many years, and it's called the fleece, and there's a lot of Christians that are fleeced by fleeces, you know, and so they get it from Gideon. You know, gideon was a young man and the Midianites had invaded Israel and they were severely oppressed, and God chose Gideon to be the deliverer, and he was an unlikely God. Most of the time, he just chooses the most unlikely people to use, and Gideon would not have risen to the top of the heap as far as anybody's short list of a deliverer, but anyway, god chose him and appeared to him in an angel, you know and all that. You read it there in the book of Genesis. And so he, he said now, lord, if this really is you talking to me and this is really something you want me to do, well then I need some further proof. I'm going to take this fleece and I'm going to put it on the ground and tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and the ground is going gonna be wet with dew and the fleece is gonna be dry. And then I'll know that you are taught, it's indeed you talking to me and and it's the way it was, and you see, and so then he said, okay, well, don't get mad at me, but I'm still not convinced. So now, this time I'm gonna wet this fleece. It's. I mean, I want the fleece wet and the ground dry. In the morning I get up, you have the fleece wet, the dew only hits on the fleece and the ground is dry. And it happened just like he said. And so from that he knew that he was indeed called to be the deliverer.
Speaker 1:And you know, brother Hagin tells a story in the younger days and early in part of his ministry he, you know, in 1941, so he'd been preaching about four years or so, just a young Baptist boy preacher, and then he got married, and now he's still young, he doesn't know all about these things. That later on he finds out you don't know what you don't know. And the Pentecostals, he knew, kind of talked about fleeces. So he, he said a fleece. There was a church that wanted him to be the pastor and somehow he knew inside him it really wasn't right. But he put a fleece out. He said, lord the way, I'll know what you is if they, they vote 100%. If they vote 100% for me, then I'll take it that it's your will for us, you know, for Aretha and I, to move to this little town and pastor this church. And they voted 100%. And he said, you know, they got fleeced. And I got fleeced Because it was not God's will.
Speaker 1:And he found that out the very first time he got in the pulpit and there was no anointing for him to preach. Yeah, I think most preachers I know would drug up. You know what it means to drag up, put in your resignation. But he didn't. He swore by his own hurt and changed. Not, he gave him a year, year commitment and he spent his year struggling and and and toughing it out. And they toughed it out because they weren't getting very much out of him. I mean, you know, when you don't have the anointing, you don't have anything, you just got a bunch of words.
Speaker 1:And so both sides of that equation learned a terrible lesson about fleeces and about why is that doesn't work? Well, it doesn't work because we're in the New Testament, we have the spirit of God on the inside of us and we have no excuse to use natural things to determine what God is saying. We're supposed to know in our knower. We have a knower, it's called our spirit, and so, you know, we to to to train our spirit up and get sensitive to those things, and then we'll uh, we won't feel so exposed when god tells us to do things that don't make any sense.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things god says sometimes it don't don't make natural sense, but if you've got, you know, faith to operate according to the witness. It's that's part of this message is to give you the faith to operate according to the way it takes faith, takes faith to operate by the witness, because you don't have any other evidence, and so then that's that pleases God. And really that's why I think he chose that method to lead us, because every time we follow the witness instead of our outward evidence, we please him. He just gives us a way to please him. So, uh, praise god for the witness. So, uh, and then you know, later on, in his ministry, oddly enough, they wanted him back and he went back and pastored that same church, but that time it was by the witness. That time he was able to help them in some areas that he wasn't able to help them originally. And all of that and help them mature in the area of giving and receiving finances Back in those days. Those are depression days giving and receiving finances back in those days. Those are depression days and people needed to learn how the supernatural works in order to survive when the economy was so bad. So, anyway.
Speaker 1:So one point I want to make is not everything that you need to know specifically about your life is necessarily written in the Bible. You know there's lots and lots of subject matter that you're going to cross and it's not going to be written down for you to take hold of and say, oh, here's the will of God. You know this is, you know, we say this all the time, but I say it again this is the general will of God. We need to get it in us. But then the Holy ghost can take a verse that doesn't even really mean in the context what he will turn it into to speak to you. I've had him do it over and over again.
Speaker 1:One one. One evidence of that was flora davis was given her testimony and and she talked about, you know, praying about about her eyesight. She had high, she had glaucoma level eye pressure and she had already had eye surgery and they were preparing her to do another surgery and she'd drawn a line in the sand. No, sir, I'm healed, I will not have that surgery. And I mean they were trying to apply for the insurance to cover it and all of that and she was having to stand against that.
Speaker 1:But one of the verses that she had was in Proverbs. It says the eye of the generous feeds the poor. And so she's been involved in charities and feeding the poor and right now she works for an outfit, american Association of Christian Jews I don't have the exact name, but Christians and Jews and they're doing a lot of work in Israel right now. I mean they are needed there. They can't even get in there. Their airport's closed. There's going to be a pent-up demand for aid, food aid and every other kind of aid when all this is over there in Israel.
Speaker 1:And I think about her. She's a very big part of that ministry and God used that. You know, what does generous eye have to do with eye pressure. See, she just took it as a rhema. I've got a generous eye, it's healed, it doesn't have high blood pressure. Glory to God. You know I love how God can take a rhema word and speak it.
Speaker 1:And so you have to learn how to follow the witness. Then, when you don't have the specific will of God, the witness is specific. You know it wasn't in the Bible to start this church on January 29th 1995. You know it wasn't in there anywhere. It wasn't in the Bible to rent the building on 6827 FM 1960 West.
Speaker 1:I tell this testimony quite a bit because it was all the witness and thank God I had begun to get victory over my lack of being able to follow the witness in that time. Two years before that I missed the witness and started my last house that got foreclosed on right before the church started. So that was a big, that was a big mistake, that was a big right there where the witness. I went against the witness and I gave and I gave in to pressure and started a house when I should have started this church two years before that. Unless the Lord builds a house, labor and vain and build it. So that's heavy on my mind when we're starting this church.
Speaker 1:And I'm paying close attention to the witness of the Spirit, very close attention, because nothing I'm dealing with is definite, it's not written down. I have to know, I have to know I have to maneuver. And so in the 14th of December 1994, brother Osteen gave me his full blessing. He called me on the phone, talked to me about something he said by the way, john, I've been wanting to tell you. He said if now or at any time you decide to start that church, you have my full, unqualified blessing. And you know, that was big news to me. And so I went and told the guy I was working for. I said well, I'm giving you my notice, I'm fixing to start a church and I'm going to be taking off some afternoons and you want to dock my pay? Well, that's fine, but I can't hang around. I've got to go find a church building and I've got to get ready because I want to get started right after the holidays. I want to get started in January if possible. And it's already middle of December and you've got Christmas and New Year's and how. You know, that house was sold on the courthouse steps on January the 3rd. You know that's hanging over my head.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I start looking and driving up and down 19th I don't know how to describe it, but I knew it was supposed to be in the Champions area. I just knew it by the witness witness. And so I would drive up and down 1960 between roughly between Stubner and 249. When I got to 249, all the peace would leave me and I'd turn the car around and go back the other direction. When I got to Stubner, airline, all the peace would leave me. I'd turn back around. It just went back and forth.
Speaker 1:And in the process of doing that I thought about an old building that I used to Big Ben's Barbecue. I used to drink beer and eat barbecue at Big Ben's Barbecue with my builder friends and it later went out of business and became a fancy seafood place and it went out of business and I'd kind of lost track of it. Fancy seafood place, and it went out of business and I'd kind of lost track of it. And the reason it'd go out of business? Because it's set off the road and you couldn't see it clearly and people would drive right past it without seeing it. And that was the building I was looking for and I kept driving right past it and I didn't see it.
Speaker 1:And so one day, you know, we had our first organizational meeting, I think on the. I wrote all this down for you. The seventh, on the seventh of january, we had our first organizational meeting. Who was that? Well, the people that had told me they wanted to be part of my ministry and they invited a few extra folks. There's about eight or ten people there and we talked about the church, talked about, well, save your tithe. In fact, I'd already told them to save their tithe. If you're going to be with me, you better save your tithe, because we're going to need an accumulation of tithe just to get off the ground and it's not coming from me, because my tithe is zero, because my tithe is zero, and so I didn't even have a credit card. I think I got a credit card a week before the church opened and I used that to turn the power on. Yeah, so then, somewhere, then the 15th was close to my birthday, so that was a bigger meeting. It's about 30 people there at that meeting.
Speaker 1:Eight days later, spread, things had spread, people had heard about it and they're there, and I had people calling people and somebody baked me a birthday cake and we celebrated my birthday and I had the second meeting organizational meeting, you know and that's when God told me you're going to lead the worship. I had a guy there that was very qualified and, lord, let me know, he is not your worship leader, you're going to worship. You do not let anybody lead the worship, you're leading the worship. I thought, okay, that's just what. I need something else to do. I can preach and I can lead the worship. Okay, so that was that meeting.
Speaker 1:And then, two days later, later, one of the people that at that meeting said pastor, wanted to tell you, we live in champions park and there's a vacant building for lease in the center, right across from champions park, and that's the building I'd been looking for. That was the building I'd been looking for for weeks, two weeks, three weeks, and I drove up to that building, had a big old sign on it I call the broker and he happened to go to Champion Forest Baptist. He's a big Baptist deacon for Champion Forest Baptist Church and he was real nice. He said, oh, this guy, he's desperate. It's been on the market a year, it's been vacant a year. He hadn't gotten anything out of it.
Speaker 1:He said he, he, he'll take an offer. I said, well, will he? Will he come down on the? Oh, he won't come down on the rent, the rent, the lease. He's asking for 60K a year. Can you imagine what that sounded like to me? I mean, you know I'm broke and he's saying 60K a year. I mean it's like a million dollars. It's like it's so far beyond.
Speaker 1:But what did I have? I had the witness, I had the witness. You know, prosperity is going to be scarce until you learn how to follow the witness, because you're going to miss all kind of opportunities, you're going to miss out on all kinds of things that God has for you, because you're not able to tune into his frequency. So I said, well, that's 5,000 a month. There's no way. I mean we're just starting out.
Speaker 1:He said, well, make him an offer. If I were you, what I'd do? And he just told me how to structure the offer. And he's the. He is that guy's broker. He's not supposed to help me, I'm supposed to have my own broker, right, and they're supposed he used NC. That's another, another mark of the blessing of God, the favor of God. The favor accompanies the witness. So he said he told me how to structure the offer. So he said he told me how to structure the offer and we went back and forth a couple of times and finally Shane Moussa was his name. Shane signed the deal and we signed the deal and we were there three years. He never went up on the rent. Never went up on the rent in three and a half years $5,000 a month. We started off small, like $2,000 a month for three months and we upped it a little bit the next three months. In the final six months we added the whole amount it took to end the year where he had $60,000 in his pocket. And that's what we did the first year.
Speaker 1:Come on, lift your hands right now. Thank God for the witness of the Holy Ghost. That's how this church started. It started on the witness of the Spirit, started on the witness of the Spirit. And so here we are.
Speaker 1:Last minute I mean I finally get the power turned. I get a credit card. I don't even remember how I got one, got a credit card. I used it to give it to Houston Lighting and Power $5,000 power deposits, what it took to turn the power on 5K and I put it all on that Visa card and used up. I used up the card on the deposit and, thank God, I didn't have to ask one of my members and I did not want to do that. I did not want to ask one of my members to do that and I didn't. I mean, god supplied everything. And so then we got the keys.
Speaker 1:On the 28th Saturday morning, I got the keys to the building and we came in there with an army of people and we started cleaning that nasty place up and vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms, and we got it ready for sunday morning service and, uh, the rest is history. We had 103 people at our very first service and, uh, we took off from there. We never looked back. Praise god, thank god for the holy ghost. Uh, just this message. I've got three things to leave with you about this. Looking at it from this standpoint a little different than James, but it's all valid, every bit of it. Um, leds are popular now LED, uh light bulbs, and they're real bright. I've I've redone my house with a lot of LEDs. We've got LEDs in here a lot of places, and so LED is light emitting diode, and so we're going to use the LED as the first word of our three points.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you three points tonight. Number one. First one is L. First point look to the word. Look to the word in all of your dealings with walking in the light, being led by the spirit. Look to the word. It's your spirit nourishment. It's for your lamp, it's energy for your lamp. Your spirit is your lamp. If your spirit's weak, your lamp is weak and then you can't see.
Speaker 1:I used to go gig and flounder with my dad. My dad loved floundering. I'd go with him and it'd be an all-night thing. You don't do floundering in the daytime, you do it at night, usually the middle of the night. And you got to have these Coleman lanterns, know, and you and they've got a handle on them and you hold that cold and lantern in the left hand, because I'm right-handed, so I, the lantern, has got a handle on it that that tilts it so it shines down into the water. You're waiting in less than knee-deep water, usually about right below the knee, and if the tide is right, the water is clear enough. Where that lamp shows the outline of that flounder, just lay it in the sand and you take that gig and you gig that flounder and it goes and you reach under that thing and pull that thing. Well, when you do that a time or two, your lantern is messed up. It's got salt water all over the glass, all over the reflector. So you know, every little while, every 20, 30 minutes, you've got to take time, get a rag out and kind of clean up the lamp so you can really see down there to gig the flounder. No extra charge for that story.
Speaker 1:Praise God. You know, give the word first place about your situation. You know if you're needing to hear about money, we'll start meditating and looking in the scriptures concerning finances and whatever the situation is that you're seeking the Lord for answers on. Get in that part of the word. You know if you need healing, I mean you don't need to search in the finances. So get that word working in your spirit, in your lamp. Everybody say look to the word. I mean thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. The entrance of thy word giveth light. Psalm 119,9, 105 and 130. All right, the next one is e, l, e, e.
Speaker 1:Edify your spirit by praying in other tongues. First, corinthians 14. For he that prays in an unknown tongue edifies himself, builds himself up. Jude 20 you're building up yourself on your most holy faith, praying, praying in the Holy Ghost. Who's yourself, your spirit, what is your spirit? It's your lamp. So when you're praying in other tongues, you're giving power to your lamp and the illumination of that lamp, so that that lamp can become a search light. It can become like they have in an operating room. You know, when you walk in an operating room that light is not just you know some little old bulb on the side of the thing. It's like brighter than daylight. It has to be so bright for the surgeon to see the disease, to see problems that he's operating on. It's the brightest you can get. And so that's what we need. We need illumination, and to get that illumination it takes lots of praying in other tongues.
Speaker 1:When you pray in other tongues, your spirit is active, your spirit is praying and your brain is unfruitful, your understanding is unfruitful. How is that? Get your reason out of the way. See, I'll tell you, you'll talk yourself out of the blessing, you'll talk yourself out of God's plan. So easy if you just let your mind wander. If you don't pray much in other tongues, you just pray a little bit and read your Bible a little bit.
Speaker 1:Next thing, you know you're going to make a dumb decision. Look, you're going to have to get serious about it and give yourself time. I mean, if it's worth making a good decision, it's worth preparing for that decision. So edify your spirit by praying in other tongues. You charge, you brighten your lamp and then the final one D is do. The last one is do, do what you know to do down in your knower. At some point you're going to know. And there is the last area of disconnect, because sometimes you can know and then not do. You can know and you're afraid to do. You can know and you can pause and you can talk yourself out of it. You can say, oh, it's too hard. You can say, oh, that's just too fantastical, that's an outer space. I mean, that can't be. No, I'm telling you, you know, once you know it's time to do so, I've got John 11 for you. Let's look at that one. That's what Jesus did.
Speaker 1:We're going to show what he did there with Lazarus. Lazarus was sick unto death. They sent for him Mary and Martha. He loved all three of them, brothers and sisters, but sick unto death. And it says verse 3 therefore, a sister sent unto him saying lord, behold he whom thou love is to sick. Jesus heard that. He said this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of god. The son of god might be glorified. Therefore, thereby now, jesus, thereby Now, jesus loved Martha and his sister, lazarus, and he loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Speaker 1:When he had therefore heard that he was sick, he abode two more days where he was. He I mean, he did not, you know, he didn't, he didn't have an emergency, he didn't rush down there, waited two days while his friend is dying. And then, after that, he said to his disciples let us go again into Judea again. Let us go to Judea again. His disciples say unto him Master, the Jews of late sought to stone me and goest thou thither again. Are you serious? They want to kill you, don't you understand? You can't go down there. I know you love the guy, but he's probably dead already.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying See, that's how I read my Bible. I get into it, I put myself on the scene. How did it look? How did it feel? What did Jesus have to go through? Did he have to argue with the disciples? Yeah, go through. Did he have to argue with the disciple? Yeah, he did. They trying, they're trying, to get him off track. He's determined to go. And so how'd he answer?
Speaker 1:Jesus answered verse 9. Are there not 12 hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth, not because he sees the light of this world. See, we're talking about walking in the light. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbles because there is no light in him. So why?
Speaker 1:What was he saying? He's saying look, I didn't have a witness two days ago. I wouldn't. God did not illuminate me to be there two days ago. He's telling me now's the time, and really, by the time he got there, lazarus had been dead four days. Lord, if you'd been here, my brother had not died. I mean, he had to put up with that. He had to put up with all this condemnation and this shamey, shamey. How come you didn't come when we called you? I don't guess you loved him as much as we thought. I mean people always.
Speaker 1:You know, jesus, listen, not everybody's going to understand you when you walk by the Spirit, when you walk according to the witness of the Holy Ghost. That's why you've got to be strong in your own faith, strong in your own spirit. Is this helping you today? You know, god always gives you enough light to take another step, always gives you enough light to take another step, and then sometimes after that, there's no more light. So then you better not keep walking, just wait. Well, but there's a deadline. Well, there's no deadline when God's involved. God's in charge of all deadlines. The more pressure you put on yourself to meet some deadline, are there deadlines? Yeah, I've seen a lot of deadlines come and go. I've had a lot of loss financially over deadlines, but what I'm trying to give a principle is you just follow the witness of the Spirit and you can't lose. You can't lose, lose, you can't lose.
Speaker 1:And so this is the surest way really to be led by the spirit, because it's really this way. The witness of the spirit is hidden from the devil. The devil really can listen, he can have people, prophesy lies to you. He can have, he can. He can appear as an angel of light. He can fool you with bad dreams that are not from God. He can deceive you with voices that are not him, but the witness of the Spirit is inviolate. He can't really interfere with it. Once you get developed and fully strengthened in that and have a habit of walking according to that, you're bulletproof from the devil and you're going to have success. So walk in the light, come on, lift your hands and receive tonight Hallelujah.