Taking Charge | James Buntrock

In this message, James Buntrock, filling in for Pastor Greiner, teaches on taking charge of the authority God has given believers. He builds the case from Genesis, where dominion was first delegated to man, through the centurion's recognition of Jesus' authority, to the storm on the Sea of Galilee, using his own sailing background to illustrate how Jesus expected his disciples to handle the ship rather than wake him. He unpacks Psalm 8's picture of humanity crowned with glory and made a little lower than God himself, framing believers as reigning kings with delegated authority over their homes and families. He warns of the enemy's targeting of children and the covenant of marriage, shares a testimony of his daughter's car accident where peace and spoken faith carried the family through, and contrasts King Asa's fortified peacetime strength with David's recovery at Ziklag as two models of standing ready against attack.

Transcript

Opening Faith Confession

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Pick up your Bibles and we're gonna make a faith confession as we oftentimes do here. But just lift up your Bibles and say, Heavenly Father, my heart is open. I'm ready to receive everything you have for me. Holy Spirit, breathe on this word tonight. Make it come alive to me. I receive it gratefully, and I'll be a doer of it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Y'all can be seated tonight. My name is James Bunkrock. In case you don't know, I'm one of the pastors here at Glorious Way Church. And uh it's an honor to get to bring you God's word. And uh Pastor is home tonight. There's a scheduled time off for him. We rotate through a schedule here, and so uh um it's an honor to get to do this, and I don't take it lightly, I don't take it uh casually, I do take time to prepare, and uh and the Holy Spirit still, with all my preparation, he can still take things wherever he wants to, and I'm just along for the ride. And so, you know, that could happen. We'll just see, but uh I've got a message for you tonight. Title of tonight's message is Taking Charge. Could have called it a lot of things, but uh taking charge charge seemed like a like a good one. Um in uh in Psalm chapter 47, verse 2, it says, For the Lord most high is awesome, he is a great king over all the earth. How many know God is sovereign? God is sovereign. In Colossians, I've got a lot of scriptures tonight, and I may just rapid fire roll some of these out tonight, and some of these we may slow down and pick apart. But in Colossians chapter 1, verse 15, it says, He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible. And in Hebrews 1, 3, it talks about Jesus being the express or the perfect image of God. Called him the firstborn over all creation, and it said that by him all things were created that are in heaven and on earth, both the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And so that speaks to Jesus being on the same level as God the Father. You know, we have God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. They are one and the same. Yet they are different. And uh, but they were all present in the beginning, and they are omnipotent, they are omnipresent. The Spirit of God is omnipresent, he's everywhere and anywhere. Now Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, so I know that God the Father and Jesus are seated in heaven, but the pre- the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit,

Sovereign God And Human Responsibility

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is omnipresent. He dwells on the inside of us, but he is sovereign. And yes, God is, while he is sovereign uh and ultimately he is in control, uh that that is to say, he will get his way in whatever thing he will get his way ultimately. Um but I don't know anywhere in scripture where it says that God is in control. Like literally, I can't find a scripture that says God is in control. And yet that is a very common phrase that people like to say. You know, they're going through a circumstance, there's something they don't understand, they're going through a tough time, a trial. Well, God is in control. And really, that is just a cop-out phrase for somebody who doesn't know what is going on or the why behind what's going on. And really, God allows, and then people wonder, you know, why does God allow these things? Well, his thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and his ways higher than my ways, and so I just have to trust that he's got a really good reason why I fill in the blank. Just got into a car wreck, something bad, lost my job, can't pay my bill, somebody got sick. There's a good reason why, and and and God is in control. And why does he allow these things? I don't know, but he's a good God. And so there's this question mark here. He's in control, and why does he allow? Well, the truth is God allows everything that we allow. And that he has put the controls of our life in his hands. In other words, I don't exist up here with puppet strings, doing everything that God yanks on my string to do. I am not a puppet. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman, he is gentle in his guidance, but he is not forceful in his guidance. And so we can follow or not, we can do things or not. And uh and and so in that way we are in control. Um, God has delegated his authority to us, and

Dominion Delegated From Genesis

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this happened in Genesis chapter 1. You were to go there in verse 27, it says, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them and said to them, and talking about male and female, and let me just break away real short, why does he call them and refer to them as one? Um, God created Adam, and it says, From Adam's side, he created woman, and so he took a piece of Adam, and and the literal word there is not rib, it's side. He took, you know, whether it was split in two or not, I don't know, but he took Adam's side and created woman from Adam's side. And so there was one being, and it was Adam, and it was that that word is humankind. So there was one humankind and the pairs of animals all over the earth, but there's one humankind. And God took the humankind and split it into two parts. Whether they were equal or not, I don't know, but he split it into two parts, and he had two from one. And then under the covenant of marriage, they come back together in unity, the way God designed, there's a covenant of marriage for a man and a woman to come together, and when they come together, it says that they become one in God's eyes. The covenant brings the two back together and makes them one. And when the two come together under the covenant in marriage and procreate and produce after their own kind, which is in the image of God, they're reproducing God images in their children. And so here we've got man and woman, and he created them, and it says in verse 28 that he blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. He charged man in the very beginning to do those things. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. Over all the earth, over all the things, the fish, the birds, the things that uh walk on the earth, the creeps that creep on the earth, all the things. God gave man dominion and authority to rule and reign over it. And so God has delegated authority to us from the very beginning. Now you know the fall of man, and that um there was sin introduced and it broke fellowship with God, and then we've had all kinds of trouble since then. And so we'll fast forward through all of the trouble and uh and just understand that Jesus came and brought us back to an original intent, brought us back to an original condition under the covenant of his blood. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about authority so

Authority And Great Faith Explained

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that we understand authority, because we're the title of tonight's message is taking charge, and that requires some authority. So let's understand some things about authority. In Mark chapter 4, verse 35. Um this is where Jesus gets in the boat with his disciples and says, Let us cross over to the other side. Um, there's three accounts of this uh story of crossing over to the other side, and in Matthew 18, um let's see, Matthew 8, there's another account of this, and it's a much shorter one, it doesn't give all the detail, but it's in Matthew 8, where the wind and the waves obey Jesus, and I think it's about verse uh 23. Um, but if you back up a little bit, in verse 18, no, Matthew chapter 8, verse 5, there's a story of the centurion and his servant. And so the centurion approaches Jesus and is pleading with Jesus, saying, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed and dreadfully tormented, and Jesus said, I will come and heal him. And so we're talking about authority here, so I'm about to talk about the wind and the waves obeying Jesus, but prior to this, so his disciples have just witnessed this. The centurion approaches Jesus and says, My servant is really sick and paralyzed. Jesus said, I'll come heal him. And the centurion says, No, you don't have to come under my roof. I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof. Send your word only. And it blew Jesus away. I mean, absolutely floored him. And the centurion explained, he said, I am also a man under authority. In other words, he recognized Jesus had authority because he was under authority from someone higher that is God, his heavenly father. So he recognized Jesus had authority, he was under authority, and the centurion says, I say to this one go and he goes, and this one come and he comes. Whatever you say is going to happen because you're under authority, I get this authority thing. He's a military guy and he gets the line of authority. And so Jesus said, I have not found such great faith in all of Israel. Called it great faith. And so here we are

Peace Be Still And Expectations

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back to Mark chapter 4, verse 35. On the same day, when the evening had come, he said to them, Let us cross over to the other side. Now, when they had left the multitude, they looked, they took him in the boat that he was in, and other boats were also with him. And it says, A great storm arose, and the waves beat into the boat so much that it was already filling. But he, Jesus, was asleep in the stern on a pillow. And they awoke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Then Jesus arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But he said to them, Why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, Who can this be that even the wind and the seas obey him? Um, how is it that you have no faith? Well, what were they supposed to have faith in? Like, what were they supposed to do with this storm? How what was his expectation? Why was he so disappointed? Because he gave him a very clear instruction. He said, Let us cross over to the other side. These were not novices, these are guys who had been around boats, been on boats. These are qualified sailors. They knew what they were doing. They had been around Jesus, they had experienced what Jesus had done, they had experienced the supernatural things and the way about Jesus, and he just expected, whatever comes up, you guys handle it, I'm gonna go take a nap. And that's what he expected. So they should not have woken him up in this position right here. He expected them to handle it. Just handle it. And so Jesus is the master of the ship, and he delegated his authority, that is the operation of the vessel,

Taking The Helm Without Fear

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to uh these these sailors with that instruction. Let us cross over to the other side. So I have spent time on lots of different sailboats. I'm familiar with that. I've had a captain's license. I used to get paid to take people sailing and to teach sailing, and I've sailed all over the Gulf of Mexico, and I've been on a tall ship and sailed across the Atlantic. Gulf of America, thank you very much. Well, at the no, I so it is the Gulf of America right now, but at the time that I sailed around, it was the Gulf of Mexico, and I'm glad it's the Gulf of America, but I have never been sailing on the Gulf of America, and I think it's high time that I leave and get back to sea. So I'm gonna go. I haven't sailed the Gulf of America. I'd love to. So I've I've been on ships and boats and been around the water. And you know, during my time sailing on a tall ship, when we when we crossed the Atlantic and been to all these different countries all over, um I was not the captain. We had a captain, and and uh the captain was the captain of the ship. Uh in fact, he was he was the master of the ship because he had a master's license. And so he was the master of the ship, and he didn't operate the ship 24-7. It took us 29 days to cross the Atlantic the first time. And the first time we left and were four days out from Boston, and uh we encountered a pretty significant storm where we had hurricane force winds for about four days straight in 35 foot plus seas. And we're a sailing ship. And we had sails, and we, you know, it was all we could do to just keep the ship upright and turn and run and let the storm roll over us. And he did not fret, he just went to bed. He would be up during the day and he would give some directions and some instructions, and there I am at the helm of the ship, and he said, You got this? I'm going to bed. Now, I was I was just the helmsman at that point. I was still not in charge of the watch. There was, you know, we had a first mate, a second mate, a third mate in charge of the three watches. But I'm the I'm the helmsman. And when I come on watch, there's there's another helmsman standing there, and I would ask questions and then he would give a report back to me, and then I would put my hands on the helm and I say, I have the helm, and he would release it, and he's off watch and he can go. And I have the helm. And so that was my response. I have the helm. If you're a pilot, you know, there's a similar thing with aircraft. There's a pilot in command, he's the one who's responsible for the aircraft, but he may not have his hands on the controls 24-7 or however long the the flight might be. You know, there's a co-pilot, somebody else could have their hands on the controls, and and and that person puts their hands on the controls and says, I have control. And the pilot in command says, All right, you got this. I'm gonna take a nap. You're good. And so that's kind of what Jesus was expecting. He was saying, Okay, you got the ship, I'm gonna take a nap, cross over to the other side, handle it. And so the the expectation was that they should be able to do this. How is it you had no faith? Well, they expected, I guess Jesus, it it's a little bit, I won't say it's unreasonable because he's God and and he can reason what he wants, but I would have been kind of in the same position, I'll admit. Like storm would have come up and boats filling, and we're not, I'm gonna wake him up. So it's not wrong to wake up the master of the ship. In fact, the master of the ship would say, if the wind conditions arise to such and such point, if the wind direction changes, if the depth gets shallow to this point, wake me up. So he would have some standing instructions on when it's okay to wake up the master of the ship. And if what you're doing is failing in life, then I encourage you to wake Jesus up. Wake up the master of your ship. Cry out to him. The Holy Spirit is there. He is a very present help in time of need, okay? It's okay. So don't feel bad for waking up the master. But I just want you to know that there's some lines of authority and things have been delegated to you, and you can do some stuff far more than you think you can do. And so we're going to get into that tonight a little bit. Thank God we have the Holy Spirit on the inside of us, and He's our guide. Uh, Psalm chapter

Crowned With Glory And Dominion

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8, verse 1 says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who have set your glory above the heavens, out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength because of your enemies, that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. And here we get into the meat of this. Verse 3, it says, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him. You know, many times on that ship in the middle of the Atlantic at night, maybe when we weren't in such extreme stormy conditions, I could see so many stars out there that I have ever seen. It was just amazing what you get to see when there's no anything around you. And I felt so small and insignificant, and yet I was still aware of the presence of God and that he cared for me, a small, insignificant nobody on this little speck, on this little boat, on this giant ocean, on this globe, in this vast expanse of universe and space. And what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visited him. I thought about these things. Not knowing this scripture, I thought these thoughts right here. And then it says in verse 5, For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor, and you have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth. That's kind of reminiscent of what we looked at in Genesis chapter 1, where dominion was given. And so here the psalmist is going over what he had dominion over. But I want to look at verse 5 and 6. For you have made him a little lower than the, and the Hebrew word is Elohim. For you have made, and Elohim is the Hebrew name of God. It's used like a lot in translation in the Bible. It's like 2,300 times. I had to look that up. Thank you, AI, for telling me. How many times is the word Elohim used? 2300 times. There you know. Um, and it is the plural of gods. And the reason it's the plural of gods is because he is a three-part being. God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And that is the that is a name of God in our Old Testament, in Hebrew. And it says here, for you have made him, and so I just wanted to differentiate that. We are not made a little bit lower than angels, angelic beings in that sense, but we have been made a little lower than Elohim, a little lower than God. And you think about the role of angels, angels don't get salvation. They're curious about our salvation that we have. They weren't adopted as sons and daughters. They don't get to call him our most high heavenly father, our father God. They don't get to call him that. They are described in one place as ministering spirits for us, for our benefit. They hearken under God's word when we speak it. They're getting assignments from God through our mouth when we speak God's word, when we speak things, they're like, I gotta go do that. So we are not lower than angelic beings, but we are a little bit lower than God. And he created us that way. So we're not God, we will not ever be, I'm not now, we cannot ever be, but we're in the God class of being. He's given us a measure of the creative power of speech and what we say. We can shape the world around us, we can cause things to happen, we can cause things not to happen by what we do and what we say, and we've been given his authority to operate uh in this earth that way. And and and and and the creation responds to us. We're at the top of the chain, as people have been saying this for a long time. If there's a chain, we're at the top of this chain. We are not subservient to any other thing in creation, and so God made us that way. And so I want you to know that when we're talking about our authority here. In Romans chapter 5, verse 17, it says, For if by one man's offense death reigned through the one, talking about Jesus, much more those who received the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, talking about us who received this grace, will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So it's talking about us reigning in life. In the Amplified, um, it says that we reign in as kings in life. Because of what Jesus did, so breaking this down, uh, because of what Jesus did, we can reign as kings in this life. And we're the kings, he is the kings of. He's the king of. And so there is an authority that we can operate with, and that was the original plan from the very beginning.

Vigilance For Kids In A Dark Age

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How many know that there's an enemy out there that's working against the kingdom of God? And that enemy, the devil, is working to keep you out of position. If he can, he will marginalize you. If he can, he will shut you up. If he can, he'll make you ineffective. And if possible, he will kill you. He wants to kill you. The devil knows that his time is short, and the devil, of all the things that he hates, he absolutely hates the image of God. And so he is warring with everything he's got, with his time being short, he is warring against the image of God. You and I are the image of God. We are image bearers of God. So he hates us. He hates the covenant that we have with God, he hates the covenant that God has created. Hates the covenant of marriage that produces more image bearers. There's this covenant where a man and a woman come together and produce more image bearers, and the devil hates that. And so the devil is continuously working to destroy those very things. To destroy the image of God, to destroy the covenant of marriage, to destroy what's produced from a covenant of marriage. More little image bearers. The identity of a man and a woman, the devil is working to destroy these things. And so I don't have to make the case to you. You see it. I hope you see it. If we have to make the case, I can make the case. But it is prevalent and it is evident in our culture and our society. So let me ask you, dads out there, if you knew, Andrew, if you knew that uh that there was a child predator coming for your kids, and you knew what this child predator looked like and what they were driving and when they'd be rolling up onto your house. Now you don't have to say what you would do to this child predator, but I got you. I'd do the same thing. I'd get real happy about it. There's a special place in hell for child predators. But there are child predators. There is a predator coming for your children. The devil is coming for your children. Now I'm not going to show this video clip. I'm about to show a video clip. Actually, I'm about to have our person in the sound booth show a video clip, but I'm not going to show this one that I'm talking about first. So in 2021, there was uh something, San Francisco Gay Men's Choir. Maybe some of y'all have seen it and heard it, but it's a choir of uh gay men talking about how they are coming for your children and they will convert your children. And that they'll do it little bit by little bit, and you won't even notice. And and it's just it's demonic and it's awful to watch. And so I just didn't want that part of the message tonight. I think I have shown that in here, but it's just really disturbing to see that they're literally coming for your children, and they said this, and they sang this, and they did it with a demonic smile on their face, and it's pretty evil. 1 Peter 5 8 says that we need to be sober and vigilant, keenly aware, constantly watching parents watch your kids with just extreme vigilance right now. Extreme vigilance. Why? Because there is a predator, a child predator, walking about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He's coming for your kids. He's coming for the next generation. He's been devouring generations because people are letting this happen. And it is so critical, parents, pray for your kids, pray for your family. I am a product of prayer. I had parents who prayed. I'm alive today because I had a mom who prayed. There were times in my life, and I'm trying to think, like, I I so there's been a couple of times, but there there was a there was a time when I'm driving from somewhere in in Ohio. Oh, I was working in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I'm driving to visit my sister in Ohio, and it I'd worked a really long day and a really long week, and I'm tired, and I'm driving down the highway, and I came to in the grassy median. Like, I don't think I went to sleep, but maybe I did, I don't know. But I'm driving down like 70 miles in wet grass, and up ahead are the pylons that support the bridge structure in front of me, and I've got to get back on the road. Like I just came to in the middle of that, and I had drifted off. Um I had my mom and sister praying for me and called to checkup on me sometime after that. Like they just had an urgency to pray. Don't pass up those little urgencies to pray for your kids. And so, and and and be vigilant about these things. And so uh speak over your kids, have good things to say over your kids. Don't launch them out in the day, don't send them to school without declaring some things, without saying, you know. We we used when when when our kids were a lot younger, um, we would we would quote Psalm 1 over them. Blessed are Thea and Benjamin and Anna who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seed of the scornful. Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law do they meditate day and night. Their leaf also should not wither, and they should be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, whatever they do will prosper. The leaf also should not wither. Anyway, so we're we're saying scripture over our kids. We're we're laying our hands on them. Whatsoever you do will prosper. Yes. So we're speaking these things over our kids. It matters what you say. And I'm gonna give you an image here. So if we got that video ready, this is how much it matters to speak and pray over your kids.

Prayer Covering That Stops Attacks

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There's a technique that Titanists use to put thought into children and to other people's minds, and then they sit back to see what happens. But those Titanists, the teachers, would come back to satanic rituals at times and say, they're certain children that we cannot project to. And it is like they have a blue circle of fire, like a torch, a blue torch around them. So later we figured out those were the children that their parents were praying for. Those were the children that the parents were praying the blood of Christ over those children every morning as they leave the house. So those children can't be touched or projected to, you see. Um, and these are the things that that parents need to know and what their authority in Christ is.

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Alright, so that was a former Satanist who now is saved, but he's describing the scene. They would have some technique that they project things into the minds of kids. And then when they run across these kids with the with the blue halo around them, and they're like, we can't project into their minds, we can't access their minds, we can't do this satanic ritual that we're accustomed to doing. Some kids it works on, this group of kids it doesn't work on, and then they meet in their their have their satanic club meetings and they talk about these things, they figured out those were the kids whose parents were praying for them every day. They couldn't access them. And so by praying over your kids, over me and my house, my kids will serve the Lord all of their days. With long life, they will prosper and you will show them your great salvation. They will have long life, they will fulfill the plan of God on their life, they will not veer to the left or the right, they will follow your plan for their life. And so we speak these things, we say these things, and there's a protection around them. And demonic people realize this, but I don't think Christian people realize the measure of protection that that provides for your kids. And so, you know, we're we're we're here doing war against an evil thing, against child predators here in particular. But and we're talking about authority tonight, and and again, the the title is taking charge, and so and we're we're kings, we ought to be reigning as kings. And so let's let's take time to look in scripture and look at two kings. We'll consider two of these tonight. Not that we're in 2 Kings, but two individual kings.

King Asa And Peace Through Strength

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So the first one is King Asa. And uh King Asa, and this is in 2 Chronicles chapter 14. Um let me flip over there and find the whole scripture there. I'm gonna skip through, I'm not gonna read the entirety of this. 2 Chronicles 14. And in verse 2, it says that um, and I'll paraphrase some of this, Asa did what was good and right in the sight of God. He commanded the people to obey the laws and the commandments. He took time to fortify and build cities and fortified cities, and he built towers and walls and bars and gates and built weapons, and and and he had an army of uh a total of it, it was 300,000 from one tribe and 280 from another. Some of those came with shields and and uh and and spears, and others had had arrows and bows, and and and so these were mighty men of valor. He had 580,000, and he took time to build his cities, fortify his cities, and and do all of these things, make sure that people were doing right, following God's laws, and it said that he had 10 years of peace. He lived in a condition of peace for 10 years, and that's a fine example of peace through strength right there. So that's a good example if you want to have a nation and have peacetime. We ought to be a really strong nation, well fortified and well armed. And it doesn't say that trouble won't ever come, it just says that you have peace through strength, people won't mess with you, and when they do, they'll be sorely defeated. And so then the time came in verse uh nine, it says, Then Zira, the uh Ethiopian, came out against the uh against them with an army of a million men, and 300 chariots came, and so a million men, and they had three hundred chariots compared to five hundred and eighty thousand. They're way outnumbered. So what did Asa do? Asa went out against him and set the troops in battle array in the valley of Zarephath. So he positioned his troops, he set the battle in array. He didn't let the enemy do things first. He saw that they were coming, he was prepped and ready, and he brings his troops on the offensive, ready to take the enemy on right here. He didn't hide in the city. And then it says that Asa cried out to the Lord his God, saying, Lord, is it nothing for you to help, whether with many or with those who have no power? Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest in you, and your name we go against this multitude, O Lord. You are our God. Do not let them prevail against you. That's putting the conversation in array, too. Don't let them prevail against us. God come say, He had a perspective here that was unique. God, don't let them prevail against you. We're standing here representing your name. And if they destroy us, what are you gonna look like? Whose name do you bear? Are you Christians? Okay, so you bear the name of Christ. Are you gonna let the devil come and destroy Christians? No. And so he set the battle in array and he knew how to make the appeal to God. And in short, that army was very much defeated. And it says, the Lord struck, in verse 12, it says, The Lord struck the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. And Asa and the people who were with him paused there at Gerar, so that the Ethiopians were overthrown, and they could not recover, for they were broken before the Lord and his army, and they were carried away with very much spoil. So it turned out rather that Asa spoiled the enemy and came out of there with a lot of good stuff. And so it wasn't a loss, it was a gain. And so the preparation there was to recognize that we have enemies out there who want to kill you, who want to destroy your family, who want to destroy you. And let's go ahead and fortify things. Let's go ahead and build walls, let's make things make sure things are strong around your family. Let's make sure you are well fortified and well armed. It is not wrong to be well armed, especially in the day that we live in. So fortify yourselves. Don't let your kids watch just anything. Don't let them raise themselves. Free-range parenting is not a thing. We train up our kids in the way they should go, so when they're old, they'll not depart from it. Set that battle in array. When you are confronted with trouble, you determine the terms of this battle, where it's going to be, how it's going to be, how it's going to play out, and whose name you represent. To put the battle in array is to strategically arrange your troops and your weapons against your enemy. God will give you strategies for this. And so let's be strategic in how we do things. Let's not let things happen to us. The other example is

David At Ziklag Recover All

SPEAKER_01 34:55

King David. And so this comes out of 1 Samuel chapter 30. Most of y'all probably know this story, but King David and his men were out meeting the Philistines over here, and uh, and they left their wives and children behind at Ziklag. And the Amalekites came in behind David and they attacked the area at Ziklag, and they took the women and the children and the servants and all the stuff, and they burned Ziklag and stole everything else and took them away. So that when David and his men came back, they were heartbroken, they were defeated, their women, children gone, everything that they cared for was gone. And the men were so uh distraught, um, they were ready to stone David. And uh and David was about to give up, but it says that he encouraged himself in the Lord, and then he had to find out from God, shall I pursue? And so he asked God, Shall I pursue? And the answer came back, you shall surely pursue and recover all. Now it doesn't talk about the mistake here. Um and I've never really even thought about this because we know that the enemy is evil and he comes in and he sneaks and he does things and he does things illegally, and so I don't want anyone here feeling beat up because you know, you got attacked. David got attacked. But there's a difference between what Asa did and what David did. Now, David wasn't the king of everything yet. I'm calling him King David because he was about to become king. What he did, um he strengthened himself in the Lord, he inquired of the Lord, they pursued and they recovered all, and then 72 hours later he became king. And so that's how that played out. But the difference between Asa and David at that time was that Asa had a place to strengthen and fortify and build up and have weapons and build his military. David wasn't quite in the same position, and he left his most prized possessions, his precious things vulnerable. He didn't leave anybody with him. He just left them alone. He took his mighty men over here and was doing something else, and when he came back, the vulnerability, and so we can't leave our family vulnerable. You can't leave your kids vulnerable. There's a domain that you have around. And you know, you got your domain, your family. That's where your highest level of authority is, around you and your house. That's your highest level of authority. Outside of that, we've got regional authority or city authority. You know, we've we we can we can put one in and we can take one out. We can vote for this and we can vote against that. We can do things here. We don't have to let things happen in our region and our nation. And so those are different levels of authority right there, but at home, that's the highest level of authority, and we've got to pay the most attention to that. And whatever you tolerate at home, or anywhere for that matter, in our culture, in our society, whatever we tolerate in your workplace, whatever you tolerate or allow will become the standard of what is normal. Think about the things that are allowed now that would be shocking 10 years ago. And now it's just we kind of shrug it off. Well, that's just kind of how it is. It's just kind of normal. That's what we got to deal with. It's horrendous what we got to deal with. We're dealing with what we're dealing with now because we didn't put a stop to it back then and it became normal now. And what we gotta do is make God's word normal. We gotta make Christianity normal again. We got to make the covenant of marriage normal again, we gotta make life normal again, we gotta make a marriage between one man and one woman normal again. We have to make sexes normal again, that the fact that there is a man and a woman and that there's nothing else. We have to normalize that. That's so it's bizarre over, but we have to do that. And so if we're if we're gonna reign as kings, that means that there's a kingdom that we're reigning over, and again, the the the region is one level, but your family and your home is another level. And so let's look at you know, you know, how do we rule

Keys Of The Kingdom And Offense

SPEAKER_01 38:59

there? And in Matthew chapter 16, let's take a look at these verses here. There's a reason um God uses the analogies of of kings and and and kingdoms. Um Matthew chapter 16. This is where uh Jesus is talking to his disciples, and Jesus asked his disciples, Who do men say that I am? And they responded to him, and they they said, Well, John the Baptist, some say John the Baptist or Elijah or or maybe one of the other prophets, Jeremiah. And Peter said, Jesus said, But who do you say that I am? And Peter piped up, and not Peter piped a peck of pickle peppers, that's different. Simon Peter spoke up and he said, You are the Christ, the son of the living God. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. That was revelation knowledge from heaven. He recognized Jesus was the Son of God. This is really the first time that anybody had really said that out loud. So Peter said, You're the Christ, the son of the living God, and Jesus answered him and said, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, which means you're a small rock. And on this rock, he said, big rock, um, I will build my church. And so he's just trying to draw the comparison there. Uh, you're a little rock, but I'm gonna build a really big one. And on this revelation, uh on this rock of revelation knowledge, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Um, on this rock of revelation knowledge, what is the rock of revelation knowledge of who Jesus is? He's the Son of God, the Son of the Most High, living God. So the Holy Spirit revealed this to Peter, and then Jesus said, I'm gonna build my church, my ecclesia. That was something that didn't exist. People didn't go to church, they went to synagogue. They had a different thing. Jesus said, I'm gonna build my ecclesia. That was a Greek word. And ecclesia was a political body. It was it was the the leaders of the city or the town that would meet in the square, that would meet in the gates, and they made decisions for the for the for the town right there. They had the power to wage war or to declare peace. They could do either one. So they had authority. Jesus said, I'm gonna raise up my decision makers, I'm gonna build my decision makers, and then it says something strange here the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When's the last time you've ever been attacked by a pair of gates? I mean, you're doing, you're living your normal life, and here comes a pair of gates down the street, and they're just accosting you, giving you a hard time, and beating you up. I've never been beaten by gates, I've never been approached by a gate. That means that it's not an offensive thing. Gates are not offensive, right? That means we gotta go somewhere and approach some gates, and the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against us coming through those gates and taking some things back that have been lost. That means we got to be on the offensive here. So his ecclesia are to be offensive people, not just stationary, stagnant, living my life, me and mine, me and my four, no more. We've got to be going places and taking some stuff back. There are some things to take back. There's some ground that's been lost to the gates of hell, and we've got to bust through those gates and take some stuff back. Next verse. And I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Here's the kingdom again. I'm gonna give you the keys. In other words, you are authorized to do stuff in this kingdom. You have authority. He says, where whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you lose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Notice it starts in earth, in the earthly realm. So I want you to think about these. We've got the physical, the earthly realm, and the heavenly, the spiritual realm. Whatever you allow in the earthly realm will be allowed in the spiritual realm. Whatever you disallow in the earthly realm will be disallowed in the spiritual realm. We're not fighting a war against flesh and blood only, but against principalities and powers and dominions. We're fighting a spiritual warfare here, but there is a physical component to everything that we do. And when we bind things on earth, we put a stop to things on earth, it shuts things down in the heavenlies. It shuts demonic activity down in the heavenly. And when we stop it here, when we allow this stuff to happen, it allows it to run rampant. And we're here to do war with this stuff. We're here to set this battle in array. And so we've got to understand our authority and where we can operate with this. And we've been authorized to do some stuff. We have the keys, we can break through the gates, we can take some stuff back. All right, I won't get all the way to the end of this, but I'll get far enough down the road here. So David left the most precious and vulnerable things behind, and he could have been just beating himself up saying, Oh, I. Turned my back and my wife and my kids and my family. And we were doing this thing over here, and I could have been like Asa, and I could have fortified, I could have left some reinforcements behind. We wouldn't have to be in this mess, and he could have just been a mess and folded up and quit. But he inquired of the Lord, he encouraged himself. And you know, we've got to encourage ourselves. You're not immune from attacks. We live in this world, Jesus said you will have trouble. In the world you will have trouble, but in me you will have what? Peace. That means, and that peace right there is a Greek word, irony, which means that you are exempt from the rage and havoc of war while being in the middle of one. In other words, you are not distressed with all of the trouble and the turmoil going on around you. You're in the middle of this, but you have this peace and this strength and this ability to just keep going.

Car Crash Testimony And Peace

SPEAKER_01 44:57

And so I've given this before, but our daughter Thea was in a terrible car accident. And uh she was broadsided by a pickup truck going about 50 miles an hour on 2920 while she was turning into our neighborhood. Um we've trained her up to do some things. Apparently, I didn't train her up well enough on the driving side, and I could beat myself up over that one. You know, I left my kids and my family in a vulnerable position, and I am a terrible dad, and I could just beat myself up over that. But she knew how to do some things right. So she's driving home and she recognized she had this weird feeling, what if I get into a car accident? And she had this uneasiness about her, and so she prayed and asked God for protection. You know, we prayed, Claire and I prayed. And if you pray at the time of the emergency, and that's all the praying you'll do, you're way behind. If you fortified your house ten years ago and then the enemy comes, you're way ahead. Remember that blue glow that the demonic people see about your kids because you pray for them, they can't touch them. My kids dwell in the secret place of the Most High. If they're in the secret place, then the devil can't find them. How about that? So she's driving home and she recognizes this feeling. What if I got into a car accident and I she prayed and asked for help and the feeling didn't go away. And so the Holy Ghost is trying to guide her, like you need to do something different. And so she did the next best thing. She put on praise and worship music, sang along. And she still got in the turn lane and she felt trapped, and the nice lady in front, right here, waved her through to turn through the traffic, and she turned through the first row of traffic and didn't see the truck coming on the other side, and he just destroyed her Kia and folded it in half and destroyed the passenger compartment. And she was found at the scene, unconscious. And uh the fire chief there um called the helicopter and life flighted her because he saw the signs and symptoms of traumatic brain injury. When Claire and I got the call from him, we were just about a mile and a half down the road. And so we turned and start heading for the hospital where she's gonna go. We got to watch the helicopter flying over us at 290. I'm driving 100 miles an hour, literally, trying to get to the hospital. I want to see my baby girl. What we didn't do is we didn't let fear have a voice. You can have fear, feel the feeling of fear on the inside, and you can have the right things coming out of your mouth. And that's not gonna come out of your mouth if you don't hide God's word in your heart, if you don't get filled up with that on the inside. And so Claire and I are encouraging each other in the Lord, and she calls Pop and he says it's not as bad as it looks, so he's encouraging us. So if you can't encourage yourself in the Lord, find someone who can. Pick up the phone and call somebody who can encourage you in the Lord. And then start speaking the right things over it, speaking what God's word says over that situation. Bottom line is we got all the way to the hospital, and she came out of there with a band-aid and a Tylenol, and no signs of traumatic brain injury, and she was fine the next day. And here's the miracle of it. So, how many have been in an auto accident before? All right, so you when you go home, you relive that, you can close your eyes and relive the impact of that. You can hear the sound, you can smell the stuff, you can relive that experience. It's hard to get back in the car after a car accident without feeling that nervousness. Here's what she remembered. She said, That nice lady waved me through traffic, and I made the left turn, and I saw that truck coming, and I just gave it some gas and pulled in through our gate, and I was in our neighborhood, and I was just fine. That was her memory. Something that never happened. She did not have a memory of the impact of the airbags coming off, coming at her, the glass flying. She did not have a memory of any of that. She didn't have a sound, a smell, nothing. She got back in the car and has been driving since without an issue. God protected her brain, he protected her memory, he protected her mind, and that didn't come because we started praying in the middle of an emergency scenario. What we had was we had the right to peace and exemption from the rage and havoc of war in that scenario. And I wasn't feeling very peaceful. But we got to say some things and set that battle in array and put things in order. We were setting things in order that were in disorder, and we were doing that with God's

Resist The Devil And Take Back Ground

SPEAKER_01 49:17

word. And so, number one, fortify your home, get determined to rule as a king in your home. Operate with that delegated authority. Um, it's it's it's exusia and dunamis, all wrapped up into one. The Holy Spirit is on the inside of you and he backs you up. And so have a fortified house and a well-armed house, and don't let the devil come in. Don't give place to the devil, don't make room for that. Um defense into offense. If we're always defending what we're doing, if we're always backing up and having to defend, defend, defend, then you're never taking new ground. We've got to go from defense into offense. And we got to bust through the gates of hell and start taking some things back. We've got this normalcy that's absurd and horrendous and evil, and we've got to make the good things normal again. And so let's get back onto the offense. We're, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation. Now, thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph. Jesus is leading us into triumph, he leads us into triumph, and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place. And so wherever we go, in every place, that's everywhere we go, we're diffusing the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ in every place. Some people are going to receive it, some people are going to hear it, and it's going to be a fragrance of life. To others, it's going to be a fragrance of death, and they're going to refuse it. That's not our problem. Our job is just to diffuse the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ in every place. Let's take back some ground that's been lost. Um, I said it before, but in the middle of those things, encourage yourself in the Lord. Do not let your heart be troubled. Jesus said it, let not your heart be troubled. Why did he say let not? Because you can let it be troubled. And so the letting is on our side. Remember who's in control? We're in control. He is sovereign. Ultimately, he's going to get his way, but I'm in control with what happens here and now. And I can let or let not. I can allow and I can disallow. And so let not your heart be troubled, only be strong and very courageous. Jesus said, Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Jesus has overcome. You're more than a conqueror. I mean, you can use this scripture to encourage yourself in all of these situations. Find out God's perspective in whatever you're going through. Whether you've got a well-fortified city and well armed and you're able to go meet the enemy way out there, far away from your home, or whether he snuck in the back door and got in your house and stole some stuff that doesn't belong to him. Number one, encourage yourself and find out God's perspective. He'll give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation knowledge. Your eyes, the understanding of your eyes, can be enlightened so that you may know, so that you can know some things, so that you can know what the hope is of the situation. Find out what his perspective is. That's what David did. Shall I pursue? He said, Yeah, you shall pursue and overtake and recover all. Get out of the natural position and into your spiritual position. You once walked according to the course of this world, but now we are light beings. We walk according to the Spirit of God, according to the things of light. Not according to the God of this world. All right, so what is the God of this world? If I were to look in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, it talks about the God of this age and how the God of this age has blinded the minds of people who are perishing. They're in a perishing state. Their minds are blinded. They don't receive what you have when you give it to them because they're blinded. It's not that there's no hope for them, it's just that they're not ready to receive that right now. God, you know, we can pray for people. If they're in your own family, pray for them. If they're blinded by the God of this world, take your position, operate from your position of authority in your domain, and start doing some spiritual warfare on behalf of your kids and beat the devil off of them when they're not in a condition to do that and exercise that authority. But the God of this age, uh, the way Pastor describes it, is all that floating mass of thoughts and speculations, the opinions, the maxims, the hopes, the impulses, the aims, the aspirations that are at any time current in the world. And so those things are just shifting and moving in a direction that we'd like to not see. That's the God of this age. But the God of creation is greater than the God of this age. And his word always accomplishes the thing wherein to it is sent. So we've got to send his word. And finally, in James chapter 4, in verse 7, it says that we should submit to God and resist the devil, and he will flee from you. He will flee when we resist. Remember, we're not dealing only with the amplified says only with physical components. The King James just says we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. Amplified says flesh and blood only, uh, but spiritual components. They're both involved, and again, with the earthly and the heavenly realms and what we allow on earth and heavenly, uh, there's a wrestling in both places, but we wrestle against the spiritual powers, and we do that through spiritual actions. And our spiritual actions can be physical actions mixed with faith. And so I don't want you to get so hyper-spiritual that says, well, I can't do anything about this. I just have to pray and handle it spiritually. No, there's a doing or an allowing or a disallowing that we can do, and it has spiritual consequences or spiritual effects, uh, but it is truly a spiritual warfare that we are fighting. Uh and finally, um, and I said finally, but finally, finally, um, get real comfortable with being on the offensive. Uh it's not always comfortable for people to go on the offensive, but um there's a lot of ground to take back, and the gates of hell will not prevail because God has given you the keys and the authority. So if you've lost something, let's go get it back. If you're under attack, let's go meet the enemy way out there. Let's not wait till he gets inside our kitchen before we go to war against the devil. Uh let's reign as kings, let's let's let's keep that battle in array and let's take charge of our lives with God's authority.

unknown 55:27

Amen.