Glorious Way Church
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Glorious Way Church
Believe The Blessing | Pastor John Greiner
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Pastor John Greiner teaches on believing the blessing rather than waiting on it as some future hope. Moving from Deuteronomy 28, where the blessing is commanded but tied to obedience under the law, he shows in Galatians 3 how that same blessing becomes present tense fact in Christ, appropriated by faith rather than earned. He unpacks three truths, that believers are already blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, that the purpose of blessing is to become a blessing to others, and that no curse spoken over a believer can override what God has already blessed.
Opening Declarations And Worship
SPEAKER_00The Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad. Say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here today. Oh, in the presence of people with like precious faith. It's that corporate anointing that I know is here. Oh, the total is greater than the sum of the individual parts. I'm taking advantage of this miracle atmosphere. I receive the word of God as truth, as seed for my faith, food for my spirit. I overcome all. In Jesus' name. Amen. Praise God. All right, let's all be seated.
God Commands Blessing In Deuteronomy
SPEAKER_00And let's look at Deuteronomy 28 and also Galatians 3. And I'll start reading with verse 1, just the first verse. What Moses is preaching to the children of the ones that were disobedient. Their fathers died in the wilderness, and the elders, the ten spies that brought the evil report, they died right on the spot because they refused to believe God. And so Moses spent 40 years teaching the residual. Deuteronomy means second giving of the law. So he had to pour into them, you know, God's perspective. He had to teach them the word so they could be, once they got into the promised land, they wouldn't just, you know, be defeated. And so he says here in verse 1, it shall come to pass if, everybody shout, if. If you shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord your God to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command you this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. And then it talks about all the blessings. But I want to get to verse uh I want to get to verse 8. The Lord shall command the blessing. Does anybody think God has a problem getting his commands done? It says the Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses. My margin says barns. Plural. Have you got barns? I mean, we ought to have more than just one barn. We ought to have barns. He shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses and in all thou settest thine hand unto, and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Everybody say, promise. Everybody say future tense. See, notice God is gonna do something. God is gonna, gonna, gonna, and he will. He will, he will. So it's future tense for the it for Israel. Are y'all with me? And it's conditional. What? On their obedience to the revealed ways and will of God, which is his word. Are y'all with
Blessing Is Present Tense In Christ
SPEAKER_00me now? All right, now let's turn over to Galatians chapter 3 now. Hallelujah. Galatians chapter 3. I know it's in my Bible somewhere. It was there the last I checked. Hiding from me. Verse 7. Well, let's start with verse 1. I want you to get this. See, I'm teaching, not necessarily preaching. I might do a little preaching, but teach, I gotta get this idea over to you. And some of you have heard this before, but many of you have not heard it, or you haven't put it to work. And so, you know, faith cometh by hearing and hearing. If you've heard it before, then it's water for the seed you already got. And if you haven't heard it, then now it's seed for something that you need to believe. So he says here in verse 1, Oh, foolish Galatians. I mean, he is mad at them. Why? Who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth crucified among you? You all know better. You've stopped pursuing the word of God in the New Testament, and now you've heard false teachers try to get you seduced into following Judaism. You're going back to the law. And he goes on to rebuke them. He said, Did the law give you miracles? And on and on. I mean, he rakes them over the call. I mean, you see this letter. He must have been on fire when the preacher stood up and read the letter to the church. He was not happy. Because they were on the wrong track. And so then let's get on down here to verse 7. Know you therefore, see, it's there for, because of all the previous things. They had forgotten. Don't you know? Did you forget? Know you therefore that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all families or all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed, are blessed, are blessed, present tense, no more future tense, no more promise. It's not a promise. No, no, no. Promises are future. I mean, it's a fact. Everybody say blessing is a fact. To who, see? To those which be of faith. Faith in Christ. Or blessed with faithful Abraham. You know, he cut the covenant with Abraham, but it came over to us through faith in Christ. Now, then verse 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. So that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So today I wanted to share a message entitled, Believe the Blessing. Believe the blessing. I mean, you're not going to be blessed. You're not somebody trying to get blessed. You are blessed. You are the blessed of the Lord. It's not future tense. It's not a promise. Well, God promised a blessing. No, he didn't promise anything. He already did it. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise. It's already done. It's a matter of whether you're going to appropriate it. It says might in there. Might. Might, might, might. When you see might in the New Testament, it's not might God. You know, God's in a bad mood today. He's just not in a mood to bless me. You know, I'm going to have to wait till tomorrow. No, might is on you, is whether you're appropriating his blessing by faith. You've got to believe something and you've got to say something. If you're going to go around like an old hang dog and just talk about how, you know, you hurt and how you broke and how this and how that, your family's falling apart. I mean, you know, the blessing's not going to show up with that kind of language because your faith is not, is not appropriating what Jesus already bought and paid for. His blood is paid for it, hasn't it? So, you know, our heavenly father here commanded the blessing. And it and it went through Israel, and it and it absolutely, the command was answered the day that Jesus rose from the dead. I mean, the command has already been obeyed. God commanded the blessing. The blessing on your life has already been commanded. All you've got to do is what? Believe it and speak it.
Speaking Blessing Over Your Family
SPEAKER_00So, you know, uh, Jewish fathers, they had a, they knew about the blessing. You know, they there in the Old Testament, it was a promise to them. But yet, Jewish fathers would release the blessing over their children on Shabbat, on the Sabbath. On Friday night, they had a big family meal and they celebrated their deliverance from Egypt. And they talked about how, you know, that they were exempt from the death angel and how God with a mighty hand uh pulled them out of Egypt and brought them into the promised land through the Red Sea. I mean, they celebrated this weekly. I mean, we need to have a little more conversations with our children about the things of God besides once every six months. We need to be talking about what we know about the Bible and putting it. You can't just leave it up to our children's church and leave it up to just us. That's just once a week when you show up. No, it ought to be a lot of this kind of thing and this type of conversation going on between parents and their children. That's part of your job, parents. Teach your children what the word says, teach them about their attitudes, teach them about how they uh how how that they're blessed. So um, so they would release the blessing over their children on the Shabbat. You know, I was reading, just reading here recently in the book of Genesis, my normal reading, and I read about how, you know, Jacob uh was, or Isaac rather, just yeah, Jacob, uh had his, you know, he was he was he had sons, you know, and and Joseph was one of his sons, and and you know, they you talk about a dysfunctional family. I mean, they sold Joseph, they were jealous of Joseph because he was more blessed than the rest of them. He had a coat of many colors. It wasn't just Dolly Parton that had that. I mean, he had the first one. And uh, some of you don't even know that she died. Okay, well, I'm giving you a little update. She's a Christian. I mean, it's kind of weird, but she was a Christian. I got tickled. She said, you know, my grandfather tried to preach it out of me, and my dad tried to beat it out of me. Mother tried to talk it out of me, but here I am, you know, she was Dolly, you know, rhinestones and big hair. But she loved God. Did you know that she was worth $600 million and she gave half a billion dollars to charity? I mean, she knew something about giving. Give her that much. All right, enough of that. Coat of many colors. So Jacob, Jacob, uh, you know, Joseph, after he got elevated, he came from the pit to the to the palace, and uh he became uh the basically the acting king or Pharaoh of Egypt. There was a Pharaoh that was higher than him, but he's in the background. As long as Joseph was around, Joseph was the one that was acting. He was the one in charge of everything. And he sent for his family because there was famine in Canaan land, and then they had a reunion, you know, and then they they finally brought Joseph, uh, you know, they finally brought Jacob. By now he'd been renamed Israel, and they brought him to the promised land where he lived out the rest of his days. And uh and then it came time for him to die. And so he just he called all the 12 tribes, all the heads of the 12 tribes, Judah and Simeon and Levi and all of them, you know, and and prayed over them and released a blessing as much as he could. Some of them he wasn't very blessed when he said about them. Judah, he didn't have anything nice to say about. But anyway, when he came to Joseph, he brought Joseph's two kids that were born in Egypt, Manasseh and Ephraim, and he laid his hands, he crossed his hands, one you know, on the older one. You know, he put his his left hand on the older one and his right hand on the on the one that was gonna be greater. And Joseph said, No, no, you've got it wrong. Dad, this one over here is the older. He said, I know its son, I know its son, but he he's gonna serve his brother. And so what did he do? He blessed, he blessed his offspring before he died, and and warned him, said, You you you know, you take me with you when you leave here. And Joseph did the same thing. He he blessed his kids and and he said, So the patriarchs knew about the blessing and knew it could be transferred. Are y'all with me now? The high priest or the priest would declare the blessing and release it by the laying on of hands. But in Hebrews 8:6, the Bible says that we have a better covenant than they do. We have a better covenant founded upon better promises. Y'all are so silent this morning. Everybody say a better covenant. Better promises. I mean, a lot of their promises, we already have them. We're not promises anymore. They're not promises, they're facts. It's a fact of life that you are the blessed. That you've been set above all the rest of the earth. Why? Because we're in Christ. Is he King of kings or Lord of Lords or what? But we're one with him, so that makes us in that same category. I don't mean to say that like you're looking down your nose at people, but let's not get under the load of this world. We're above this.
Breaking Curse Through Redemption
SPEAKER_00Jesus took the curse. He was cursed with our curse. He took it all. See, the the the the new the old covenant had blessings and curses. And so if you go back to Deuteronomy 28, read the whole chapter, there's first 13 or 14 verses talk about the blessings, and the rest of the 66 verses are all talking about the curses. Sometimes when I have there's circumstances that have turned against me, I've got something in my body, or I've got something in my finances, or I've got something that doesn't line up with what the blessing says I have. I'll go back and I'll find it under the curses, and I say, uh-uh-uh-uh. I've been redeemed from that. You can't stay. I mean, you know, you're gonna have circumstances show up that look like a curse, but they're not really, they don't have permission. They do not have permission to stay on you. Most of the time, curses come through our own, number two, ignorance of what the Bible says, or our disobedience. I mean, that's the only way the curse can come, and then it's temporary because Jesus took it. Soon as you identify the situation, soon as you remedy the sin and confess it and own it and get it under the blood, the reason for the curse is evaporated now. Or if you find out that you didn't know something, you're ignorant about something, that's why I teach the Bible. I teach you and teach you and teach you because it teaching is the is helps you to overcome ignorance. I it's my job to watch after your soul as one that gives an account. If you have wrong thinking, my job is to give you right thinking. Are y'all with me now? So uh so Jesus took our curse in the old covenant, they had blessings and curses. When you read uh the old covenant, when they passed into the promised land, it took 40 years to get there. It wasn't God's plan. God's plan was for them to be in there a few weeks. But no, they disobeyed God, did some things, and so God had no choice but to hold them up in the wilderness for 40 years. And finally, when they did uh uh enter in the promised land, there were two mountains, one on Mount Ebel and one on Mount Gerizim, and there's a valley between the two mountains. And all the children of Israel passed through this valley with one of the priests up on the top of one hill speaking the blessings, and the other priest on the top of the other hill speaking the curses. You know, these are the blessings, but if you don't obey God, here's what's gonna happen to you. And the story of the story of Israel is the fact that they abode, they they just lived in the curse instead of the blessing. I mean, they had certain parts of the blessing that they were able to hold on to, but a lot of the blessing, a lot of the curses came on them. Why? Because they just wouldn't obey, they wouldn't agree, they wouldn't believe. You know, believe unbelief is a sin. Let's start, you know, when you have unbelief, unbelief is a sin. It's not it's not something that's just neutral with God. He makes God angry. Why do you think, why do you think uh Paul was angry at the Galatians because God was angry when they turned away from the gospel and turned away from the risen Christ to go backward to the old covenant? And basically said, God, really, Jesus is irrelevant, his blood is irrelevant. What we need to do is practice this washing of cups and saucers, and we need to kill these animals, and we need to have these dietary. No, no shrimp for me, no shrimp creole for me. No, no, no. No shrimp creole. I made a whole bucket of shrimp creole. I love shrimp. I eat all the shrimp I can. I love, I love all the stuff that the dietary laws say that I can't eat. Why? Because I've been redeemed from all that. I don't, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. I don't keep the Jewish law, I don't keep it. Don't try to, don't want to. They don't want to either, but they tried. So uh, so he said, he said, you know, that the blessing of Abraham might, see, the word might again is on us. It's on our. We have to believe the blessing. Look at 3.8. Galatians 3.8. It says here, the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. Who said that? God did. Who did he say it to? He said it to Abraham. What is it called? It's called the gospel. So the blessing is the heart of the gospel.
Blessing Is The Heart Of Gospel
SPEAKER_00I said, the blessing is the heart of the gospel. All these people running around saying, well, I'm preaching the good news, I'm preaching the gospel, and they leave out healing, they leave out prosperity, they leave out deliverance, they leave out protection, and only the only part of the gospel they want to preach is the gospel of whether you're born again and go to heaven. Well, I'll admit that's the most important one, but it's not the only one. It's not the only one. The blessing is the heart of the gospel. Who in the world would want to come to Jesus if we we had no benefits of being saved? I I know we can go over the cliff by telling people all your troubles are gonna be over if you give your heart to Jesus, how everything's gonna straighten out in your life if you just get. I've heard some of that kind of preaching, and I don't, I don't, I think that's kind of stupid. Because just because you get saved doesn't mean that you don't have opposition. In some cases, it means you're gonna have more opposition. The main thing you need to learn is how to overcome that. I mean, once you're saved, now you need to learn something about how to overcome the devil. We haven't given them the whole, we hadn't, we gave them a gun with no ammo. No, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna give you the ammo for your gun. Amen. So uh the blessing is the heart of the gospel. Let's look at Luke 24. Everybody say, believe the blessing. See, I mean, you have to believe it. That means you have to speak and say it, and you have to believe it in your heart. In verse 50, Jesus has uh risen from the dead, he's visited with the disciples, told them to wait in Jerusalem until they be endued with power from on high, and so forth. In verse 50, he led them out as far as to Bethany and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. See, he everybody say he blessed them. And it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. Just get a picture of that. I mean, here he is lifting his hands, and he's blessing his disciples. He's speaking over them, the blessing, they knew about the blessing. They've been raised with the with the words and all of that, but now they've got the reality, and now it's not a promise, it's a fact. And while he's doing that, he's going, he's going up. I mean, he's received up into heaven in a cloud. Praise God. And and uh, and so uh he carried him up into heaven in verse 52. They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. See, that's how you ought to rejoice. You ought to have great joy that you're blessed. You ought to rejoice every day and every night that you're blessed. Quit focusing on manifestations of the curse. You know you're gonna have trouble. You're gonna have curses that try to hang on you. Don't focus on that. Focus on the fact that you are the blessed of the Lord and rejoice greatly. Hallelujah. Come on, let's shout a little bit. Glory to God. I'm blessed. Oh, I've had to live this. I there's tiny times in my life I didn't feel blessed. I couldn't find the blessing anywhere in my life. I broke. Living with my sister, my whole family had to move in with my sister. That's not a blessing. Well, I guess it was a blessing. At least we had we didn't live in a shelter. You know, we had a two-story house to move into. That wasn't too bad. But I'm just talking about, you know, you come, you're independent, you've been a businessman, you've been making all this money for years, and all of a sudden now you find yourself homeless and broke and and without a job, without any income. And I said, that's not that's not a blessing. Well, see, I had to know these kind of things to not get focused on my circumstances. I had to look beyond my circumstances. Well, I'm blessed. The Bible says I'm blessed. I don't feel blessed, I don't look blessed, it don't seem like I'm blessed, but I'm I'm not moved by what I feel, I'm not moved by what I see, what I hear. I'm only moved by what I believe. And I believe the Bible says I'm blessed. Praise God. And those things were subject to change. They started changing pretty quick. Not as quick as I'd like them, but they changed. Everybody wants to go like this and have everything change, right? But faith is a seed. Are y'all with me now? So believe and rejoice. See, I mean, if you're going to believe, you're going to have to put some rejoicing, go along with it.
Blood Blessing Prosperity And Giving
SPEAKER_00So let's look at Webster's dictionary. Blessing is defined as to consecrate by the sprinkling of blood. See, you can't separate the blessing from the blood. The blood was shed so you could be blessed. Was the blood shed? Then it's a fact. See, the blood had not been shed yet in the Old Testament. All they had were the blood of bulls and goats. That was just a temporary thing. It allowed them to have a measure of blessing. It had a, he wanted all the world to see his children and how blessed they were. Most of it manifested in their finances. I mean, you look around even today. I mean, even Jews that don't practice Judaism, they're just Jews by race. They're usually at the top of the list. They're usually the greatest doctors, the greatest lawyers. They have their billionaire, a lot of the billionaires are Jewish. Why? Because the blessing is on them. If they'd only give God the glory. Are y'all with me now? What does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? So it means to consecrate by the sprinkling of blood. It's set apart for holy purposes. When you bless someone, you pronounce them holy, happy, successful, prosperous. You speak over them divine favor, advantage, promotion. I know when you're really blessed, it makes you a target. When you're blessed, there are people that are not going to be happy. They're going to be envious and they're going to be jealous. And if that bothers you, well, then you're going to exempt yourself from being. Why would you want to live on their level when God wants to exalt you? God wants to put you on high. God wants to make an example. I mean, you don't have to take all the credit for how much how good it is. You can give him all the credit for it. Well, I know you're wondering how I got this new car. I tell you, God knows how to take care of me. Glory to God. All I can say is I give him all the praise for it. Hallelujah. I remember when I drove a beater, but now I'm driving a Buick. No, no, not a Buick. Well, maybe a Buick. I don't know if you like Buick's. Oh, Bentley. Now I was a beater, now I'm driving a Bentley. Praise God. That's an English car. You don't know cars. All right. I'm a car person. I know cars. All right. So highly favored, to be envied. See, there's that word. Blessed me to be envied. I mean, do you think it makes God nervous that people envy you and that are jealous of you? No. He's trying to turn something inside of them to say, hey, what you're doing ain't working. You ought to look at them. They're an example of a blessing. But you've got to tell them that. You've got to testify. Don't lock it up and just shine, you know, with all your blessing and don't say anything. No, you're blessed to be a blessing. So Brother Mark mentioned this last week, Proverbs 10, 22, the blessing of the Lord. It maketh rich and he addeth no sorrow with it. I mean, be careful about criticizing rich people. We've got lots of rich people. I hear people, we've got to quit having all these billionaires. Let's tax them into. I mean, it doesn't bother me that people are billionaires. I don't care if they're a trillionaire. I mean, uh, Elon Musk is the first trillionaire, I think. I don't, it doesn't bother me. I don't, you know, I hope he's saved. I pray that he's saved. I don't know that he is. I don't know. But it's, I'm not jealous of that. I mean, God brought this world, He's got everything belongs to him anyway. Just because somebody circles a figure and says it's mine, it doesn't make them theirs, and it's God's. All of it's God's. Don't spend time criticizing wealth. Because you should be wealthy. You should be rich. And the Bible says you are rich. Jesus was made poor that we might be rich. There's that word might again. I mean, if you always identify yourself, well, you know, we just poor people. Well, you better stop saying that because that's not a really a witness, and that's not an evidence of blessing. The evidence of blessing is what? Rich! And rich means having abundant supply. Thank God for Mark. I I encouraged Brother Mark last week, you know, after after the service, we had lunch together out in the back, and and uh and I encourage, I said, I know you think, you know, that you he said, Did I go too long? I said, Well, we don't normally go this long, but it was worth every minute of it. I don't care if we have to get out at 12:30, we don't do that often. But when we have somebody like that that's got a revelation of giving and receiving, that's lived the life, and he shares his testimony out of the word of God, everything goes into you and all the levels start going up. That's my job, is to get the levels of everything going up, the level of the blessing manifest in your life. That's my job to make sure that's always on the increase. So I said, yes, and I said, Your revelation, that's why I have you always have you take the offering. I love for you to take the offering. And by the way, uh, you know, we gave him $40,000 last week. We gave him $40,000 last January when they were here. And that's about double what came in. See, we added to the offering. We I said we added to the offering. Why did we do that? Because we want to sow seed, and we don't want to throw seed, we want to sow seed. And besides that, we come we uh we support that ministry monthly. Every month, we send a check. Every month. So why do we do that? We do it because this church is sowing seed. You saw it, you saw where all these are going. He just got back from Columbia, he's about to go to Bulgaria. Where's our Bulgarians? I mean, I just heard about it. They're in Bulgaria. Well, they might they might cross paths, I don't know. Praise God. He's got, man, it blessed me to hear about he's got he's got books in Iran. He's got underground church in Iran. There's a church that's alive in Iran. And we've got we've got a part of that. I tell you, we're blessed to be a blessing. I thought about that Colombian uh pastor that received a $20,000 offering for Brother Mark. Press that $20,000 check into his hands. Please receive this. I've been all over the world. Nobody has ever given me an offering for being there. Not one time. I've been to Canada, I've been to I've been to the Philippines, I've been to India, I've been to Mexico, I've been, I've been a lot of places, and where I go, I do all the giving. I bring all the money. I'm the one that's handing out the cash.
unknownAmen.
SPEAKER_00But nobody gets a revelation like we have to turn around and say, you know what, he's preaching is right. We need to sew into that. Nobody's ever done it. Even when I got back home, I never got a check from the Philippines. Nobody ever wrote a check, you know, for $10 and said, hey, boy, we hope you come back someday. No, they don't see they just went right over their head and stuck in the wall. This is the unbelief that's out there in the world. And when you hear about a church in Colombia saying, I want to give you $20,000, that means they receive something. That means that they've gotten the gospel. They know they're blessed. And they, and he said, you know what he did? He said, you know what? I appreciate this. I receive it, I bless it. Now I'm going to return it. And I want it for you and your wife and your kids and your grandkids. I want it just for you, not the church. I want it just for you. And you get how he said, you know, how could we do that? Because if you're giving, see, we we give him, we've got him, we keep him full of seed. Are y'all getting this now? We're blessed to be a blessing.
unknownHallelujah.
SPEAKER_00Praise God. We're blood blessed. Everybody say, I'm blood blessed. You know, uh F. F. Bosworth was a uh powerful uh Greek scholar, and I read his book, Christ the Healer, years ago. Big old thick book. It took a while to read it, but it was so good. When I finished reading that book, I never doubted about healing. I mean, it it is so full of Greek language and and Hebrew and the interplay between them. You read that book and you finish it, and you can never doubt about God's will for healing. You never you never entertain the idea that somehow God doesn't want you well. And Christ the healer, oh, it's a powerful book. I highly recognize it. I don't know if it's still in print or not. But uh he said this about the blessing. He said, it's impossible to claim by faith a blessing you're not sure God is offering. See, if you're not sure a blessing is from God. See, some things look like a blessing. They look like a blessing. It may be your company says, okay, Fred, uh, we want to transfer you to $10 too. We're gonna give you a raise, give you a title, and uh, you know, you're gonna give you a hundred dollars a week, more money, and uh ten times of responsibility. We expect you to work seven days a week, 100 hours a week, but uh here it is. Well, you know, a lot of people just follow the money. They've whatever the company says, well, they think it's God. Oh, I'm blessed. I got to increase, I got a raise, I got a promotion. Well, it might not be God. Why don't you pray and let God tell you whether it's a blessing or not? Because you can't, if you don't know that came from God, then when you receive it, you're not receiving it by faith, you're receiving it by circumstances. And that that way the devil has just bought you out from under his will. All he had to do was throw a few pennies at you and a little a little praise at you, and you just flew away from your place. I mean, God and he establishes the boundaries of your habitation. The perfect will of God is for you to be in the church, not just some church. The church and the city. See? Most of you know that, but some of you may be kind of doubting that. Well, don't let the devil take you out of here for some frivolous reason. I'm talking by experience now. Are y'all with me now? So, you know, when you've got a word life and a spirit life, you can prove everything that comes your way and know whether something's a blessing or not. When it is, you can receive it by faith and you can know it's yours. Glory to God. Hallelujah. You can have boldness to claim all that God uh has paid for by the blood of Jesus.
Three Facts And The Unseen Battle
SPEAKER_00So I got three facts I want to share with you this morning about the blessing. Three facts about the blessing. Number one, Ephesians chapter one, verse three. Getting anything out of this today? Praise the Lord. Verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. There it is, past tense. Not a future tense, not a promise. It's a fact. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ. The Norley translation I like. Who hath blessed us with all the blessings that heaven itself enjoys? That's ours. Just think of that. Have we attained? Have we received it all? Have we progressed enough in the Word of God, in our faith, to grab a hold of everything God has got in reserve? See, I don't believe we have. I believe that there's a whole lot of room for growth. I believe there's a whole lot of room for increase. Are y'all with me now? So in Christ, see, that's who we are. We're blessed because we're in Christ. We're not blessed because of our resume. We're not blessed because of our life and what we've done. We're blessed because we're in Him. And we're heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ to everything. Everything on this earth belongs to God. Guess what? Potentially it all belongs to us. Potentially. There's no, I mean, this Democrats are always, you want to raise the taxes on the rich. Well, there's not enough rich people to pay the taxes. You could take all their wealth and it wouldn't be enough. You could take all the wealth and get all of it, appropriate all the billions of dollars they've got. It wouldn't be enough to pay the national debt. Who they got to tax? You and me. It's a lie. They just are liars. That's what they are. They've always lied. So, what confidence we can have in claiming the blessing over our families and our health and our finances, our church, pastor, pastor's family. You ought to be claiming some blessings for me. I know you do, but I mean, claim it. Speak it. Thank God for it. Your business. Your city. Your nation. Amen. Years ago, I had a young man that was a prophet of God. He was a true prophet of God. He would come to town and go to Lakewood. And I got to know him. And so I'd invited him to come stay with us. And he would come. Whenever he came to town, he'd stay in my home, and sometimes he'd be there a week or two. And uh and I got a lot of importation from his ministry, and he helped teach me a lot about uh visions and dreams and and just how to minister to people and prophetically. It was it was a profitable uh uh it was a profitable uh uh friendship, connection, I guess. Association is what I was searching for, a profitable association, divine association. It ended. Uh, you know, some of those associations just were just temporary, just like Paul and Barnabas, the different ones. We parted on good terms, but it was just time for us to go our separate ways. But in the meantime, I before I was in the full-time ministry I was building at the time. And uh when he would at my house, I mean, it was just like an atmosphere where he would just really get visions, dreams, and he'd all he was always just really energized. And uh he came downstairs one day, Gladys had fixed breakfast, and and uh he said, Man, I had a dream last night. He said, In the dream, I had a group of about 15 or 20 people with me, and we were in this beautiful department store. And uh, you know, all this nice merchandise around, you know, like I pictured, you know, like Neiman Marcus or some high-end place, you know, and we were standing by the escalator. And he said, you know, we're gonna go up here on the second floor. The second floor, you you see what all's down here, but there's a lot more up on the second floor. There's lots and lots more. And we need to go up there and see what's available up there on the second floor. So they get on the escalator and they go up all of them, you know, and he's the head of them. He goes up and gets up on the top and gets them kind of in a group. And up there, it looks kind of like a Costco or a Home Depot or a Sam's Club. It's just stacked to the ceiling. I mean, it's just stuff stacked on top of stacked, stacked, stacked, just stacks and stacks. Nothing's out in a display case. It's all vertical going to the ceiling, you know. And uh way back in the back, there looks like a guard tower with got glass, dark glass, and he knew that there were guards up there looking over all this merchandise. So he's turning to take this group down one of the aisles, and this uh security guard, he had a uniform, a little badge on, and he came bouncing up uh to my friend. He says, You can't be up here. Uh you don't have permission to be up here. He says, Oh, yeah, yeah, we we can be here. It's no problem. We're we're we're we belong up here. We're we're able to be here. Oh no, you can't. You're gonna have to go back down. And he said, No, no, we're we're gonna we're gonna circulate through here and look at the merchandise. And the guy says, You have to go back down. You cannot be up here. He got real ugly and rude with my friend. And so my friend then realized, you know, in the dream, he he got kind of angry. He says, Well, what are you gonna do? You gonna call the and he had a big booming voice. What are you gonna do? That's how he talked, you know. What are you gonna do? You gonna call the law on me? You gonna call the cops? I have an attorney. And by that time, the guy's running away from him, looking back over his shoulder, and he woke up. You know, what in the world does that dream mean? Well, see, there are there are there's the heaven where God is, and there's the earth, the heavens right around the earth, but then there's the heavens in between, the second heaven, where demon powers, principalities' powers, rulers of darkness, wicked spirits, and the heavenlies. They hold sway. They've been dethroned. Jesus dethroned every one of them. They have no authority over the church, but yet they do rule from that place over their kingdom, over people that are not saved. They rule over Islam, they rule over Hinduism, they rule over all the false cult religions and all of that, they rule over the atheists, they rule over everybody that's not born again. And so they do not have authority to rule over you and I. If there's any interruption in your blessing, it's stuck up there on the second floor. The devil and demon powers are trying to hold it back, they're trying to stop it from coming down here. It's only good when it comes down here and manifests. You can't use it when it's up there. You need it down here. We're down here, we're not up there. We need it down here. I'm having eternity. Come on, I'm having eternity in his name of Jesus. Oh, come on, shout the victory to them. Glory to God. Tell the devil to get his hands off of your money. Take your hands off my healing. All healing is spiritual. Your healing's up on the second floor. Your deliverance, your protection. Amen. Everything you need for abundant life is up there. Glory to God. Are you getting anything out of this? And then number two, we're blessed to be a blessing. I said it earlier, but it's, you know, in Genesis chapter 12, verse 2, God was dealing with Abraham and told him to leave his house and his family. Go to a place I'll show you. And I will bless thee. And I will make thy name great. And thou shalt be a blessing. So the purpose of us being blessed is not just us, it's so that we can bestow that blessing on through. It's kind of like the anointing. The anointing within is for us. God will give you blessing for you to subsist and to have a nice life, life abundantly, superabundant in quantity, superior in quality. It doesn't, it doesn't uh uh bankrupt heaven for us to drive nice, to live in nice, to wear nice. It doesn't, as long as we live uh without going in, just putting it all on plastic and having a fake wealth. A lot of people just have fake wealth, and everything they've got is they're mortgaged to the hilt. They're living on borrowed money. No, not that God doesn't want you to live like that, but he will bless you. But then after that, there's only so much, and then now God's gonna earmark things for you to pass on to other people. Glory to God. I mean, every time we uh uh we we're a blessing every time we release the blessing in words, in deeds, in giving, in church, in church service, and uh sending the gospel. Now we're big senders. I mean, we've gone ourselves, and we're and some of us still go, but I mean, big, big time we send, we're sending the ones that make the most impact. We just had uh Pastor Mark and Trina here, and then we're looking forward to having the pays back, and they've been in 170 some odd countries. They live in two, they have two houses, one in Belgium and one in America. They travel so much, they have to live half the time in Belgium just to be close to the places that they go to. And then they live in in Dallas area when they're here in the in the States. But man, you talk about uh sowing some seed into rich terror. I mean, this is this is not throwing, this is sowing. Are y'all with me now? So we're blessed to be a blessing. And the third idea so we're all blessed in Christ. Number two, we're blessed to be a blessing.
Uncursable Life Balaam Story And Closing
SPEAKER_00Number three, uh, no one can curse what God is blessed. Don't you ever give a moment's thought for somebody uh talking negatively about you, criticizing you, lying about you, thinking that it's going to interrupt anything. You can't curse what God has blessed. Well, first of all, Jesus, Galatians 3:13, Jesus was cursed. So he took the curse. There's no curse can stick to me. There's no kind of curse can stick to me coming from someone else speaking or doing something to me. Are y'all with me now? Let's quit being victims. We're not victims. So, you know, homework, you ought to read uh Numbers 23 and 24. And I don't have time to go there, but King Balak was the king of uh Moab, I believe it was, yeah. King of Moab. And he was intimidated by Israel. Israel was growing and they were they were getting big and they had a history of uh you know Moab and uh Edom. Edom was uh uh Esau's offspring. I think Moab came from Lot. So they were enemies of Israel. And uh, you know, they started out being friends. You know, Lot was a friend and a cousin or nephew to Abraham, and all of a sudden his offspring are enemies. So that's how the Middle East is. There's lots of enemies that have been ancient enemies. Ancient. Goes way back. That spirit is still around. I don't think there's any kind of peace treaty that's gonna work. I hate to tell you. It's just it's just not gonna work. It might be temporary, little temporary ceasefire, but eventually there's gonna be judgment come of every all these nations that have acted against Israel. And we don't want to be one of them. We want to be one that helps them. We've been pretty good, but we we're walking on some thin ice here lately. So uh, but when you read about uh Balak, he was jealous and he wanted he hired this uh uh low-rent prophet named Balaam, you know, and he was some kind of prophet. And he hired him. He said, I want you to go over here, I'm gonna take you over here and show you the Israel, and I want you to curse Israel. He said, Oh, I can't do that. I can only speak what God tells me to speak. I, you know, real religious. And uh, but he kept after him until he consented to go. And so he gets on his donkey and he starts the journey over to uh meet Balak over here at this valley where he's gonna curse the nation. But he he said, now look, I don't guarantee I'm gonna curse him. I'm only gonna speak what the Lord said. Well, you know, what was he doing? He's tempting God. He shouldn't have ever gone. He should have stayed home and just stayed abite, and look, I ain't going. But he he went, hoping that somehow he'd get to curse Israel. He didn't care. He just didn't want to go against God, but he didn't know what God's will was, really. He's not much of a prophet, is he? So he's going along, and you know, if the donkey doesn't want to go, the donkey goes this way, and he gets, beats the donkey. Get over here in this lane. Gets over here, and then the donkey, you know, he he he leans over to the wall and crushes his foot and he beats him again. And then finally he keeps going along and the donkey just falls down. And he gets out and beats the donkey again. The donkey says, Why'd you beat me these three times? He starts talking to the donkey. I mean, the donkey starts talking to him and he talks back to the donkey. I'm telling you, when you start talking to donkeys, you're in trouble. You're in deep trouble. And so, why did you beat me? You know, if I had a sword, I'd kill you right now. I'm so mad at you. Well, haven't I been your donkey? Haven't I done a good job up to now? I mean, why are you so mad at me? And finally, uh the Lord opened his eyes to see a big old angel with a drawn sword standing right in the middle of their pathway. And boy, he got he got really sober. Then he said, Your your way is is is uh it's wrong, you know. Well, I didn't know. I wouldn't have ever come if I'd have known that. You want me to turn around and go back? No, no, you go ahead, but you don't say one word that I don't tell you to say. That angel stayed with him, and he wouldn't let that prophet uh curse Israel. In fact, the prophet spoke three times and blessed Israel three times. I'm telling you, in Deuteronomy 28, it says that God turned the curse into a blessing. I mean, go ahead and say something bad about me. God's gonna turn it into a blessing. Just get go ahead and be critical. I don't care. God's my source, you're not my source. Hallelujah. Glory to God. We're not intimidated by the naysayer. There's plenty of those. Amen. So believe the blessing so that you continue to be a blessing. Lift your hands and receive today. Hallelujah. Glory to God.