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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message tonight. I just had. I had something when I was on the road that just kept kind of rising up on the inside of me. And that's about this word consecration. And that's one of the things that for me personally, I will get up and of a morning, not every morning, but many mornings, and I would say, God, I consecrate myself to your will and to your plan. And I noticed this, that the more I said that, it's like the more he showed me, the more light I got on it. And I will say this. Through all the years of ministry, I've not heard a lot of sermons on the subject of consecration. And I don't know that too many people really have. Have a clear hold on that of what it means to consecrate. The Bible says that we are sanctified. I mean, Jesus, by the price he paid for us. Part of our inheritance is we're sanctified, we are set apart. But in my thinking, consecration is our response to being sanctified. So consecration is something that's on our part. God does not consecrate us. We're the ones that consecrate ourselves. So we don't say, oh, God, consecrate me. No, he sanctified us. He set us apart. And when we're consecrated, to me, that is our response to being sanctified, that it's our part, our side. And so I know this, that dad Hagin would talk about. That consecration was a emphasis and a flow of past generations that current generations haven't spotlighted as we ought. And he talked about that. That's why they had deeper flows and deeper moves of God because of their consecration. That you think about John the Baptist. John the Baptist, a very unique man, to say the least. I mean, he lived out in the wilderness. He lived a fasted life. The Bible said that, you know, that he ate locusts and wild honey. So he didn't have the date, the diet of your standard city man, right? Or even your. Your rural living person. I mean, he lived out in the wilderness and he lived a fasted life and he lived separated. And he didn't separate himself so that he could isolate himself from people. He was living in a place where he could hear from God and how important that was to his mission, to hear what God was saying, because he was the voice preparing the way for Jesus return. So we see that he took so seriously and he was so interested in what he was born for that he didn't live in a place where he could be distracted. And consecration does not mean living a solitary life in the sense of just separating yourself from people and the rest of life. Because I mean, our ministry is among people. People need our ministry. They need your supply, they need your encouragement, they need the things that flow out of your heart into them. But consecration is really focusing upon really the what God has for your life and to, for us to finish our race. And I mean, of course, in Hebrews chapter 12, it talks about it starting in verse one, talks about all these heroes of faith. These are a heritage of faith that are listed in chapter 11. They're watching us in running our race. And so it says, lay aside the weights and the sins. That's the part of consecration that we lay aside that which is not going to assist us and accelerate us in our race. And I made, I made this. I made, I make statements to myself and then I write them down. And this is some of the thoughts I had in my consecration. I set aside all that will distract me from my call and not enhance it. If it doesn't assist me in my race, I choose to cut it away, no matter how legitimate it may be. And so we see here that there are things that are legitimate, but still, do they help us? Do they assist us in what we're called to and what we're born for? One of the things that just came up in my heart that when I was on this last ministry trip was this phrase, the joy of consecration. Now think of that. So many times people look at that word consecration as a negative, that something's being taken away. But really it's a joy to consecrate because your heart, I don't care who you are, whether in five fold ministry, ministry of helps every believer. Your heart longs for the fulfillment of the plan of God. That's what your spirit longs for. And there is a joy to filling our lives with that which is going to satisfy and fulfill the longing of our heart. And so when we give ourselves to things that really don't matter, not necessarily even wrong things, but they just really don't matter in the scope of our race. You lay down in bed at night and you go, I'm not fulfilled with how I spent my day today or what I spent myself on, because did it bring me closer to the fulfillment of what my heart longs for and the plan of God? So when you consecrate yourself, your insides, your spirit becomes so fulfilled because you're not wasting yourself on what doesn't matter. And so that phrase came up that in my heart, that it's the joy of consecration. It's not a negative. It's not stopping something you enjoy. It's you love. You love the plan of God so much that you don't want to. You don't want to exchange it for something lesser. You don't want to sell off the plan of God to distractions in life. And so there is a joy when you are really having your insides fulfilled instead of just your appetites fulfilled, just your. Your natural side fulfilled. And I wrote down this, some. This in the, in the, in the flow of consecration here, this statement that I will not rob people of receiving from God by how I spend my time. So basically, whether or not I'm consecrated is going to affect how God can use me and it's going to affect what God can do through me. The more we give ourself to his plan, the more we're going to grow in skill and we're going to be able to be used in a stronger way. And so in thinking about that today, I was writing this down. Consecration is not mingling the carnal with the spiritual, for the carnal dilutes the spiritual life. Now, we know there's a natural side to life, but I'm talking about the carnal side. Carnality is being body ruled, being ruled by the five physical senses. There is a natural side to life, and we have to be skillful with the natural side as well as the spiritual side. I mean, naturally, we have business to carry on. We have homes to run. We have a ministry to run. You have children to raise. The natural side of things are present, but we can. Those natural things can be filled with a spiritual flow. But a carnal life is different. A carnal is when the unimportant gets the wrong place in our life, when it starts taking the lead and taking our times, and we're giving ourself to that. And so consecration is deciding, you know something? I'm not going to mingle in carnal things into my life because it will dilute my spiritual effectiveness. Dr. Sumrall made a statement. Statement. He made this statement that is so, so sobering. He said, the love of the world is the barricade keeping the church out of the supernatural and the miraculous. So he's basically saying what we give ourself to is going to determine the measure of how God is going to be able to manifest through us and for us and he says the love of the world is what is going to keep us out of the higher, deeper flow. And so consecration is setting aside the distractions. And you know, the thing is, all distractions aren't evil. They're just a distraction. So I would say this to you. What is God dealing with you about in different seasons of your life? Have you noticed that at different seasons he deals with you about different things of consecration? You know, when you first get born again, he begins dealing with you about giving Him a place in your, a place of fellowship in your life, that you spend time praying, you spend time in the Word. And those are some of the first things that he'll deal with you about in your life of consecration. But as you go into a different season of life, he will deal with you about more and more and more. But he's not the one that consecrates you. You consecrate yourself. And when you think of a hot air balloon and when they want that balloon to rise, they'll cut away the sandbags. You know, the sandbags hold it down. And when they take away those sandbags, that thing is going to rise. That's what carnal things are to our life. They weight us down so that we really don't come into the higher places, higher flows that God has for us to operate in. You know, the Word says that many are called, but few are chosen. Now notice it's not up to God whether or not we're chosen. He called us. It's up to us whether or not we're chosen for some of the things that he for the things that he has authored for us. The reason many are called but fewer chosen is because few will consecrate themselves to what he has called them to. And I'm not talking about just a five fold ministry. Everyone is called to something to fulfill. And so I would say this to you. Check on the insides. What is God dealing with you about? Because he's not dealing with you about cutting something away so that something can be removed from your life. It's so he can bring you into something more. Consecration is about having more, not about being robbed of something that's important to you. It's about bringing you into something that's really important to your spirit and something that your heart longs for. So I want to encourage you in that consecration. You know, Jesus had to make consecrations all through his life. And we see at the Garden of Gethsemane he was in the garden consecrating himself to what lay right ahead. Of him. And the thing that I see about it when I see consecration, he consecrated himself to the. To that which God was bringing him into. In that season of his life, he consecrated himself. No doubt that he would pay the price as a savior of the world. But it's in the Garden of Gethsemane that we see that consecration played out. And he sweat great drops of blood. There was a. There was a battle going on against him saying yes, and fulfilling that and walking that out. Well, there are many things that battle against our consecration. Sometimes it's distractions, sometimes it's just certain responsibilities that we have. But I love something Brother Copeland said. When we were at Southwest Believers, he made one statement that went off in me and he said this. He said, I, he. He was talking about how he had had some physical situations in years past, not current, but in years past. And he says, I got into physical difficulties because he said I was too, too busy to obey God. Well, that is such a telling way of stating it because it's so typical of every one of us that we can get so busy with distractions and responsibilities that we're too busy to do what God told us to do. So consecration is deciding that what God's told us to do comes first. And it's not the only thing. You know the Word says seek ye first in Matthew 6:33. Seek ye first. The kingdom of God. Notice it doesn't say seek ye. Only he knows this, that there are other things you're responsible for. You can't just sit at home and pray and read your Bible all day long. All day long. When you've got children to raise, you've got a business you're responsible for, you've got a household to run. But it's about first. And consecration is saying, I'm going to put first and keep first what God has instructed me to do do. And when you do that, you'll find that other things just don't trip you up the same. So I just so appreciate that God has more to bring us into, but it takes our cooperation. And consecration is part of our. As part of our cooperation into this sanctified life that he has made ours. And so I want to encourage you in that, and I thank you for joining me tonight. And I want to remind you that we have our midweek service that Morgan will be preaching, and that's at 7 o' clock Pacific time. So join us if you can. We'd love to have you tune in, and I look forward to seeing you the next time I'LL get to see you is at the Fredonia Miracle Crusade. So make sure that you join us. We'd love to have you watch and if you. If you can't be there in person. So I love you, God bless you and we will see you. See you soon. Bye Bye. We trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us at defrainministries.org to learn of our upcoming meetings, share your testimony, become a partner or visit our online store. 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