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Dufresne Ministries Podcast
Peace & Righteousness | Morgan Dufresne | World Harvest Church | Murrieta, CA
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. Turn with me, if you would, this morning. I want to go back to some things that we were on a couple weeks ago. We've got Pastor Nancy's book, of course, this month, worship. Got it. Still got it. This book came by God ministering to her regarding the revelation that Brother Norval Hayes had on worship. And God instructed her, if you'll teach his people how to worship him, really, he'll be able to work for us in ways that those who don't know the importance of worship. He's limited. When we were, you know, worship is not replaced by confession. You cannot replace worship and praise. And we see that when Paul and Silas were in the prison confession, they didn't confess their way out of that. That difficulty. They praised their way out. They prayed, but then they spent their time singing praises. There is a flow of worship and praise in our life before God and a type of fellowship that can only be accessed through worship and praise that cannot just be accessed through the preaching and teaching or meditating. Yes, that is fellowshipping with God and His will and who he is. But God wants you personally. The Word of God is for us generally, and the Holy Ghost will minister to us specifically through it. But worship is just you and God because no one else can worship for you. No one else can. Fellowship, that's something you can do anywhere, anytime. If you don't have access to a book or a Bible, you can worship Him. And it says in the Scripture that he is looking to and fro throughout the whole earth for who he can manifest Himself through in a strong and mighty way. And when those. When we begin to worship him, it's gaining his attention. He inhabits the praises of his people. And so oftentimes we are wanting God to move, and we're expecting God to move, and we are declaring God to move. And we are maybe sometimes not realizing we're hoping God to move. But when you begin to worship God, what it does is it stops looking for his movement. And it looks to him in the middle of looking at him and worshiping Him. He's moving. And you're not having to make him move. You're not having to try to get him to move. You're just looking at him, and his movement takes place at your attention. Amen. So that book is out there. We want to be reading that together. But Isaiah, chapter 26, and we were looking at this, the Spirit of God had brought me to this passage in meditation, and I wanted to look at some things. Verse one. We'll start in verse one. In that day shall this song be sung. In the land of Judah we have a strong city. The Lord sets up salvation and walls as bulwarks open the gates that the uncompromisingly righteous nation which keeps her faith and her troth with God may enter in you will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace, whose mind, both its inclination and its character is stayed on you because he commits himself to you, leans on you, and hopes confidently in you. So trust in the Lord, commit yourself to him, lean on him, hope confidently in him forever. For the Lord God is an everlasting rock. The rock of ages. What is man looking for in. In life? No one ever says, I want to be unstable, right? No one ever says, I want to live on rocky ground. No one ever says, I. Even people who like adventure, you know, they still want to have all the money, you know, their health, their mind. No one ever says, I'd like to live out of my right mind. No one ever says that they want to move forward in their job and have it be. Start a business on uncertain ground, you know, and uncertain times, and goes, oh, wow, you know, this is so much fun. No? What do people do? They plan. They educate themselves. Maybe they go to school. Maybe they work as an apprentice. They do so much to build themselves before they step out, to make themselves secure in the direction that they move for in life. Because nobody wants uncertainty. Nobody wants to buy a home, you know, when they're not sure of their monthly income. Nobody wants to, like I said, start a business in the middle of nowhere where there's no customers, and they aren't sure if they're gonna get any. What do they do? They strategically plan. They locate where the market is. They get all their advertising together. And this scripture is talking about being firm in God. God is the only firm foundation, the only firm foundation, because, as you know, you can look at even education. What happens with education? It becomes obsolete, right? And I'm not against education. There are careers and jobs that people are anointed to go and get an education and fulfill those assignments. Believers should be involved, you know, in so many different aspects of this world, and God will assist to go into the world and fulfill these positions. We're not called to be hermit crabs, you know, we're called to be preachers. Not pulpit preachers, but preachers with our lifestyle. Preachers of the pulpit of life. That's what we're called to do so. But the only way to have proper fulfillment and proper stability and is to be able to know where that stability and that foundation and what your foundation is in. Because like I said, even with education, you know, for, for 10 years, they say this is the way it is. And then before you know it, somebody discovers something new and you know that's obsolete. And now this is the way it is. And then, you know, in 20 more years, technology changes and you're what you know is obsolete. Even there's inconsistencies or a lack of stability even within man's knowledge, in man's world. And you want to know why? Because God created and he is infinite in wisdom. And when he spoke, he spoke by faith. And those words are still producing and man is just trying to keep up. They'll never catch up until, until we get common to the full knowledge. Even then we're still learning. Even then we'll still be developing in our authority, in our knowledge and our wisdom. But see, God's words, we know this. The universe is still multiplying, is still growing. And man will not, in their own wisdom, cannot catch up with God. But if we choose to receive and walk with God, walk in his plan, receive his plan, and live as we talked about, live righteous. And this is what sets apart. You have three groups of people, really. You have the unsaved people say no, there's two. There's the saved and the unsaved. Well, there's the saved, the unsaved, the saved, and then there's the saved that choose to live in God's plan and the saved that are trying to make it on their own. So within that one, there's two groups. Amen. I want to be found in the group of people that is wholehearted in my pursuit of his plan. That is doing what it says here, being the uncompromisingly righteous. That means there's a righteous man that will compromise. There's a righteous man that will put into question God's instruction and choose to take his own way and his own instruction, follow his own plan. We don't want to compromise. It's the uncompromisingly, uncompromisingly righteous nation which keeps her faith and her trust. So here it says that in order to be people of faith, we have to be uncompromising. We talked about righteousness being, yes, we were created right, but we also were created to live right. And we had said that presentation matters, doesn't it? How we present ourselves. Present yourself. Go with me over there real quick. Romans, chapter 12. And we'll. We'll put our eyes on this passage. 12, verse 1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye. What is it? Present. Everybody say present. Present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. That doesn't presenting yourself to God, presenting your body, meaning presenting your manner of living. Pastor Nancy was talking about that this morning there at emic. Presenting your body, a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service. Notice you do not get a special cookie or prize because you lived righteous. That is your reasonable service. When Jesus had to live and experience his own father, Jesus had to become unrighteousness. He had to become sin. He had to become sickness. He had to suffer. And then the worst part about it is his own Father had to turn his back. So when it comes time to making right decisions in life and doing the right thing, Pastor said something this morning I love. She said, you know, who you are is what you do when no one's looking. That's really who you are. It's who you are is not what people see. Who you are is what people don't see. And so it's our reasonable service, our spiritual worship before him. Can I say this? Righteousness is a requirement. That's not something we're giving to God to make him feel better about, you know, what he did for us. It's not a courtesy nod. Oh, here, God, I'll. Do you know what I did right today? I deserve to receive what I'm believing for. No, no, no, no, no. When Jesus went through and took all your sin and wrongdoing, all your sin, your pain, your symptoms, every disease, every illness, every suffering, and then had to go through God having to turn his back on his beloved and experience that, then it is everything to me to keep my life right before him. He became wrong so I could become right. I became right. Therefore, I will live right. This is. Again, this is not something you get to pick and choose. And God should feel good when you do the right thing. It is a reasonable service. And oftentimes people think they can pick and choose how and when they want to live according to the word of God. You cannot pick and choose. You are not your own. You got born again. You gave God your heart. But the problem is people don't want to give them their bodies and their thought life because you really don't live. Most people really don't live out of the fullness of their heart. They choose to live out of the fullness of their mind. And the needs of the body. If you don't discipline your thought life and renew your mind, transforming yourself, that means there's still self to be transformed. The heart became brand new. The heart is now alive unto God, but that body is still very much alive to every desire, every want. The mind is still as doctors said, I was a squirrel before I got saved and I was a squirrel after I got saved. Remember him saying that he was, he knew, he knew his mind, nothing happened to his mind. He was raised in a squirrely family, a home of mental illness, a home of alcoholism. And he said, you know, you become alive unto God so you realize there's power to help get you out of that. But you still have to live in a way that the power can flow. Righteousness is the way we live, so the power can continue to flow. And this is what the scripture is saying. The uncompromisingly go back over with me to Isaiah 26. The uncompromisingly righteous nation keeps her faith and her trust. Verse 3. You will guard him and keep him in perfect constant peace. Whose mind both its inclination and its what character. The amplified says character. What is character? Your behavior. So it's not saying the righteous whose heart was made right. It's saying that when your character is right, when your thinking is right, your inclination, how you think, how you act, your motives have to be right. The world is looking for peace. The world wants peace. That is the ever resounding pursuit of mankind is to have peace. The devil is the one that steals, kills and destroys. And any kind of destruction that we see is from the author, the father of our enemy. But the world desires peace. Man wants, nobody wants turmoil, truly nobody wants turmoil in their home. They don't want fussing and fighting, you know, even those some don't know how to get peace. We see all kinds of ways that man tries to gain and have peace in nations and in countries and the things that they try to do. Men, man, man believes and they have an understanding that they think peace. And this is where we get things maybe like socialism. They believe peace can come through control. Well, we can have peace if we just have control. If we can make everybody the same, if we can do keep everybody equal, then there's no competition and then we can have. It's really a pursuit, a twist, twisted pursuit of peace. It's a twisted. And then man takes advantage of that through gaining power. When really people are pursuing peace. Peace doesn't come through control. Peace comes through surrendering to God through a righteous character. Right thinking amen but man has. Has tried to come up with ways to keep and to hold on to peace, you know. So our responsibility is to demonstrate peace through our relationship with a loving father, through our relationship with His Word, through our lifestyle, style, our character of, of living through His Word. And that really true peace comes from letting go of control of one's life. When I let the control. Let go of control over my life and I let God be the one, he's not just my savior, but he becomes my Lord. What is this talking about? That will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Then when my keep my mind in the kingdom of God and renewed to the kingdom of God, then he keeps me. I don't have to try to fight and keep myself. Thou will keep him in perfect peace. That means there's lesser than peace. There's, we could say not a lesser than. There's degrees of peace. You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace. There it is. Where then you're not wavering. Whose mind both its inclination, its character is stayed on you because he commits himself to you. There it is. He commits himself to you. Part of the issue that especially in this day and age that we live in, there's so much to. So I don't like the phrase, you know, to empower women or empower our children and empower. Boy, I'm not going to make it on empowering myself. You know, we need to empower one another. No, it's his power. His power. And if you're looking to be empowered by man, you will not have the flow of the power of God. Man's power is a failing substitute for the power of God. Because I tell you what, being empowered doesn't raise you up off a sick bed. Being empowered does not pay the bills. Being empowered. We were watching something and my husband and I, and this woman said, oh, you know, I was given this book about how to really. The book was about being submissive, you know, as a wife. Her and her husband were having marital problems. And she said, you know, and they gave me this book about, you know, learning to basically be a help to the husband. And really it was Biblical Principles of Being how to be in a Marriage. And she goes, but that isn't going to work for me as she sits there divorced, with multiple children and in a financial difficulty. And I said to Stephen, well, how did that work out? Obviously, it wasn't very good for her. Why? Because she wanted to be empowered as a woman instead of strengthened through the word of God with His might. With his might. We're strengthened with his might in our inner man by his spirit. We're strengthened with his might through the word of God. So I would rather be empowered through God than empowered through man that will keep him in perfect peace. Whose mind that means, don't try to look for affirmations for your thought life. You know, a positive word. Sometimes perfect peace comes from a perfect correction because it takes you from the damaging place that you're in and brings you into a light. You go, I didn't see that was hurting my life. I didn't see that that was, you know, hindering the flow of God, God's power. To me, I, it was, I was thinking wrong. Wrong. It says both its inclination. That means I got to be inclined to think the way God thinks in pursuit of that. Amen. Both its inclination and its character is stayed. You can have a character that is stayed on God because He commits himself to you. He leans and hopes confidently. And this is what I want to point out. Oftentimes when we're in a time and you see, even with yourself, and we've all been there at different seasons, and you have a need where you recognize there's no way out of this, but through God's divine help, you know, you've gone as far you know. Faith is not to be the fallback. Faith is to be first. Many people treat faith as a fallback, the fallback option. But faith should be the first option. And we find that we go, I, oh, my goodness, I'm facing something that's bigger than me, bigger than what I know, bigger than what I have, bigger than what I can figure out. And we go, and we need to lean on God. We need to run to that strong tower. We need to run and be dependent on Him. But what you did up until that point determines, according to this passage, how much he can keep you in perfect peace and how well you're going to be able to lean and recline and trust in Him. We have a part to play in this. It is his perfect peace. But it's my godly character that allows me to stay in, in that place. Amen. And we, we see this, that sometimes people go, I, they, they face something. And then all of a sudden, we heard Pastor talk about this so many times, Pastor Nancy. She said somebody faces a financial need and they realize God begins to deal with them, how they're walking out, walking in love and their home and how they're treating others and what they're doing with their money. And they say, no, no, no, no. I want God. You know, he shall suppose all my needs according to his riches and glory. And God says, if your mind was on me, if your inclination was on me, you would have been acting like me all along. And my perfect peace could keep you. You know, what comes with perfect peace is really perfect supply. Perfect supply because people who live in you can. Perfect peace is whether the manifestation is there or not. That that's how you know you're in perfect peace. Perfect peace is fully satisfied leaning on him, trusting in him, whether you see it or you don't. Because my inclination has already been on him. My character has already been in him, Like the movie elf. And he said, santa, I know him. Santa hadn't even shown. Christmas hadn't even happened yet. What a buddy. The elf was so excited. Santa, I know him, wasn't even time for the presents. He was so confident. Why? Because he had been raised in the household there with Santa. He was a human. Look at this. Buddy the elf was a human being raised in a mystical world of Santa and the elves. He said, santa, I knew him. You know, how much more as come on as believers. God, I know him. I know him. Here comes symptoms on your body. Oh, God, I know him. I. Here comes an unexpected respected bill. God tells you to step out of faith. Oh, God, I know him. I know him. That's perfect peace. You don't have to try to find peace so you can step out in faith. Perfect peace means it's already there so that you can, at the leading of the spirit, step out in faith. There's no lag time. Perfect peace. There's no. There's no lag time between the time God tells you something and a time you step out and do it because you're trying to gather yourself and get the nerve, you know, And I gotta get in peace over this. Perfect peace. There's. He said that will keep him. That will keep him. That means whether you're facing a need or not, you can be in peace. And then when something comes to try to shake you out of it, you've been there. Peace, I know him. Peace, I know him. Oftentimes we want. We're trying to get leadings from God so we can get into peace. There's a place in peace that you can stay in that whether you hear from God or not, all you need is that still small leading from the spirit. You know, there was before I left on the trip, the boys and I flew out early. Early early Wednesday morning, like really early. I Think we left the house like four something to go be in Dallas and get the rental car before Pastor Nancy got into town. And that way she didn't have to. It's kind of an ordeal there in Dallas Fort Worth to do all that. And so we wanted to be there and get all that done and get her picked up so she could rest. And that night, we had been busy that day. That night I laid down to go to bed and I was just about to fall asleep and fear woke God. Didn't wake me up. Fear woke me up. That don't get on that airplane, something's going to happen. And I mean, you go from like, I'm dozing off, goodbye, you know, I'm almost there to was that God, you know, but the tangible presence of fear was so there. I said, oh, I know you. I know you. And the reason I know you is because I know peace. I. I don't live in fear. I live in peace. So when peace. So when fear shows up, I go, I know you too, because that's not peace. And so I answered it and it was tangible. I answered it, addressed that and said, no, the assignment is to go, amen. And I knew I had peace all up until that point. The leading of the spirit. So I start dozing back off. And here that thought comes again and got very specific about what was going to be wrong with the airplane if I went. I said, all right. So I got very specific about what the word of God said. We are kept by the power of God. God doesn't lead me through this tangible spirit of fear. He doesn't lead me through fear. He leads me and keeps me in perfect peace. I gotta be up at like 3:30. So I spent from time, I went to bed about 11 to about 3:30, about to doze off, to waking back up answering every single time. Why was this? Because there was a divine door coming open to this ministry. The devil's not, as pastor says, the devil's not going to congratulate. And I remember at one point I go, oh, you're really, you are really aware of what's coming and the door that's open and, and the assignment on this ministry and you know exactly what we're stepping into, or else he wouldn't be there to oppose it. But because I knew peace, I then could identify fear. Some people don't know how to identify fear because they have yet to even identify what living in perfect peace feels like. They don't even know what this perfect peace is. But perfect peace starts with Am I living? Righteous? Am I living? And it within all my inclination is to the will of God, to the word of God, to the direction of God. Because we can't find ourselves needing perfect peace. And God is sitting there dealing with us about the fact that we have not lived the way he has asked us, obedient to the things he's wanted us to do. When you know peace, you'll quickly know fear when it shows up and you can answer and address and not struggle. Oftentimes it's. It's not fear that we're struggling with. It's the fact that we've not really stepped into that flow of peace that God has for us and that he talks about in this passage. If you'll make. Instead of trying to get past your fears but pursue peace, you'll realize you don't have to fight and get past. Try to get past fears that come. You won't even notice them. They won't even grab your attention the way they used to. Why do we see most of the mess that we have? Because people are afraid and they're trying to find peace. They want control. They want to make the decisions because they want to have peace. And he says he's. He's addressing here a city, a nation. Open the gates that the uncompromisingly righteous nation which keeps her faith and her troth with, with God may enter in. You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace. Whose mind is stayed on you because he. He commits himself to you, leans on you and hopes confidently in you. The perfect peace comes because you're committed to God and God alone. You want perfect peace? Start making perfect commitments. Keep your word with God, Keep your word with Him. What is a commitment? It's. It's where everything that he asks. When you're committed to someone, then you're committed to whatever they ask. You'll do whatever they need of you. You're committed. I'm committed to helping you. You're committed to helping me. The start of perfect peace is a perfect commitment, perfect humility, perfect submission. Let me say that. Perfect submission to God. Perfect submission. So if you're going to have perfect peace, you're going to have to have perfect submission in your thought life, with your body. Where you go, how you talk, who you fellowship with, what you do when nobody's watching, when nobody's listening. The devil. An opportunity comes when nobody's around. But that's when you need peace the most. He didn't try to show up with fear about going on this Trip when I was busy and trying to get things together and having meetings and getting organized and getting stuff ready to go, he didn't show up then. He showed up when it was still and quiet. He knows how to take an opportune time and turn it into a faith fearful moment. And so but because I've been practiced or we've been practiced in the moment, thinking God's thoughts outside of church, if this is the only time you think God's thoughts, then you will struggle with the enemy's thoughts when you're not here. Amen. So because we've been taught to practice God's thoughts, thoughts outside of these four walls, I've been taught how to practice worshiping God and taking my lifestyle and building my home and my children. And all my inclination is in his direction, and all my heart is in his direction. All my motives are pure and right before him. It was not difficult to recognize an impure motive. The devil had impure motives and he brought those through fear. What's the motive? To keep us out of the fullness of the plan. Amen. And if he can't get her, he'll get the family. And if he can't get the family, he'll get the congregation. Fitly join together, folks. Fitly join together. So perfect peace starts with a sincerity before God to live righteous. The righteous can run into that strong tower. What is that strong tower? I believe that strong tower is peace. Well, I thought it'd be protection from things. When you walk in peace, then the Holy Ghost leads you. You are in his protection. The enemy can't touch you. When the Holy Ghost is leading you right, he will get you to sidestep every trap, every device, every thought. So that strong tower is peace. And that's exactly how the Holy Ghost leads us. Amen. Thou shalt what? Go out with joy and be led with peace. Amen. So we take our leading, we walk out, and we. We could say we step out in faith and joy, but then we make movement with peace. So I believe that strong tower that we run into in God is a tower. It's peace. Peace guards us. That will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on the. It's what we do with our minds. It's what we do with our minds. It's what we do with our minds that is the determining factor for perfect peace. It is not up to God. It is not up to how you were raised. It is not up to what kind of job. It is not up to your paycheck. Perfect peace is dependent on what you do with your thought life. You can have perfect peace today. You can step in to perfect peace today. Amen. How do you say I want to go there, I want to live there, I want to be there. Your children, your family, your household. What defines one man from another? How sound his mind is. You know this because I tell you what. There is millionaires and billionaires who are tormented by devils when they go to bed at night. The scripture, we don't take time to turn there. It says the fragrant. It says, when we live in his victory, he parades us in his victory around. And it becomes a fragrance to those around us. You understand? It becomes a fragrance. And it says those who don't know God and those who do know God recognize about themselves. It says that the really the unbelievable believer, they get a fragrance. What is it they see their own darkness. And then a believer will recognize the fragrance of victory on another believer. Amen. Talks about that believe it's over in James. And so the unbeliever. So what makes the difference? It's not about money. It's not about whether you're, you know, somebody's in. In physically in perfect condition or somebody's not physically in a perfect condition. It doesn't not determined by your education. What differentiates one man from another is faith in God and how much they live in peace. Because we talked about those three categories. And there's a difference between those who live with God in them and those who live for God on them. Don't be satisfied with just God in you. I want to be fully God on me, both to will and to do his perfect work. God is on me. He's fragrant. His victory is fragrant on me. Amen. And so this is the deciding factor. Whether people will turn to you, whether people will listen to you is really determined by your peace level. Amen. And that's both the believer and the unbeliever. And this is the word of God. The gospel that we want to get out to people is you can live in perfect peace no matter what it is that you're facing. Amen. You can stand in the face of Satan himself, unmoved, undeterred, not deceived, discouraged, not down, not derailed. And that the enemy's thoughts over your life have absolutely no control and no power because all your inclination is on him. Amen. Why are you help this morning? Amen. The word is our answer. The word is so good. My mind being on God means my life is on God. You want your life on Course. Get your mind on course. This is the course right here. Stay the course. Stay the course. You want your life on course? Get your mind on course. Hallelujah. Well, we'll go ahead and we'll, we'll close with that. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the instruction in your word. Holy Ghost, thank you for being our helper. Thank you for illuminating the answer to those that are listening, those that are here this morning, those that are watching. And Father, we decide this morning to set our our minds and our thoughts on you. A decisive dedication of our bodies, of our thoughts. Father, you've offered us perfect peace. And with that perfect peace comes a perfect lifestyle, full of joy, full of supply. And Father, we look to you this morning. We look to the Holy Ghost to show us the areas, Father, that you're showing each and every one of us. Maybe an area that our mind has not stayed on you the way it could be. Holy Ghost, show them. Show us. Help us. You're our helper. And so we don't have to hope that you're going to help us. We know you're helping us. And Father, we give you all the praise and all the glory for your word. That is working. It's sharper than any two edged sword. It is dividing through our wrong thoughts, our wrong motives, our wrong intentions, Father, so that we can live in a place that is not just a blessing to us, but a blessing to others. That our faith will work to its fullest and flow to its fullest. Father, we want to be in that flow of faith. It's the flow of victory. In Jesus name. Amen. Hallelujah. 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. This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Dufresne Ministries.