← Dufresne Ministries Podcast
Dufresne Ministries Podcast
Skillful Faith | Edwin Anderson | Holy Ghost Meetings 2020 | World Harvest Church | Murrieta, CA
01:09:59
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Is everybody blessed today? Amen. Amen. Well, shake hands with somebody. You can be seated. Praise the Lord. You know, I've said this before, but when I preach here, it's just like preaching at home. My wife and I, I'm not going to make her stand up. We so love this church and the dufresne family. Pastor Nancy, Pastor Morgan, Pastor Stephen and Grant. Where is Grant? It's here somewhere. And just the family, the grandchildren. You know, Pastor Morgan was talking about our church and how we've been. Been there 40, almost 40 years. We're halfway into our 40th year pastoring. And, you know, when you've been pastoring one church as long as I have, you know, some things that aren't theory anymore, They're a matter of actual history. And we started our church in 1980, and at that time, I think I was 20, 27 years old. That tells you how old I am. And, you know, a church, a lot of times will gather people that are approximately the same age as the pastor. And the people that we first started with were a little bit older than us. But the people that my wife and I began to reach out and started coming to the church were people about our age, maybe a little younger than us. And they were young married couples, either with children, maybe one child, or no children yet. And that was our first generation in our church. And, you know, they started raising their families, and their children grew up. You know, we dedicated their babies and baptized them. And Morgan was in that second generation. Her parents were one of the first couples, you know, that came to our church. And Morgan and her sister were born there in our church, and she's got cousins in our church. And now all of that generation has grown up and they're having their children. And it reminds me so much of the church that I grew up in, because I grew up in a church like that. My grandparents on both my sides of my family were instrumental in starting the church, Pentecostal Church I grew up in. And then they raised their children, which was my parents. And it was a larger church than ours, about 700 people. And back in the. In the 50s and 60s, a Pentecostal church, 700 people, was enormous. And they built their home, their family life was built around the church. Everything was related to church. Everything else in life, job, every school, everything was secondary to church life. And they Built their family lives around the church. Well, my parents were in that generation, were raised like that. And so all of my, I had a lot of cousins because my parents on both sides of the, you know, mother and father had lots of brothers and sisters and they were all raised up in the church. So we had scads of cousins in the church, you know, and then other friends our age. And then, you know, we were that, that we came along. We were the third generation. And after all of these years, I'm still in contact with a lot of people that I grew up in. Cousins and just friends and for the most part, going strong for God, active in church, raising our families. Here I am, you know, I'm a third generation Pentecostal. My children, my grandchildren. And we see that same thing being repeated in my church. And in my generation, we grew up and moved out different places, but most, for the most part, we're in church and serving God. Many of my group, age group are in ministry today. And that generational blessing and heritage is not possible outside the local church. It does not happen. It can't happen. It is that type of generational passing of the torch that only can come when people assemble together and become part of a family church and it becomes their life, it becomes everything. And that blessing is being passed down. And so we're thrilled today, you know, to be witnessing that in my church. But I've noticed this too. Not everyone was faithful. Not everyone who's ever been to my church remained faithful. And being young, you know, growing up in church, I wasn't aware of all of the adults and what they did. But I'm sure the same thing was true in the church that I was raised in. But I can tell you this. The families in our church that have been there for 35 years raised their families. And like Pastor Nancy was talking about, it wasn't just a theory. They lived the Word. As my wife and I preach the word and teach the Word. There are people who 35, 40 years ago, got ahold of that Word and they actually practiced it. They actually lived it in their homes. Those families are still serving God. Those people are witnessing their grandchildren being filled with the Holy Spirit, worshiping God, living right, living clean, applying the word of God, living by faith. It doesn't happen outside the local church, but it only happens inside the local church as people are diligent to put the word into practice. Amen. And I'm telling you, I, like I said, I've seen it. And it's a wonderful thing to see. Praise God. And I so appreciate Pastor Morgan and the hand of the Lord. I want you to come up here, you and Brother Stephen. Honey, come up here and help me. Glory to God. You know, I've seen your faithfulness that was in your parents, was passed down to you, and I see it in your children. And God has just begun in your life to do what he's going to do. And I just saw myself when we were worshiping the Lord, that I just saw myself laying hands on you and ministering to you. And so I just want you to know God has so much for you. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. The beginning has been wonderful, and you've rejoiced in your heritage and you've been thankful and your heart is filled as you've seen my plan unfold in your life. But there are new vistas, new places of revelation, new places of ministry and of understanding, of my call upon you that you have down in your heart and you're aware of it. You know it's there, and you've seen in measure. It takes shape. But there is going to be an increase in the speed. The rapidness, if that's a word. In the quickness is a better way to say that. In the quickness. I'm going to bring you into the place that I picked out for you before time began, and I'm going to usher you into that place. And there's going to be so much certainty and so much surety and so much validation in your own heart, you're going to say, yes, that's it. That's what I've known. And it's coming into your understanding in a greater degree. And the fruit. Oh, my. The fruit. The fruit will not just satisfy you. It'll not just satisfy your heart. It'll be fruit that will carry people, lives changed, people who will rise up and call you blessed. And they'll say, thank God for my pastor. Thank God for my leaders, those who took me by the hand and led me and gave me direction and inspiration. And you're not just charting your course, you're charting the course of those who are coming behind you, says the Lord. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father. Amen. Praise God. Well, praise the Lord. Glory to God. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your blessing. We thank you, Father, for the opportunity to not just come together, but the opportunity and the honor to be called together. We were called to this place today, each and every one of us. And Lord Jesus, you called us here. If you called us here, you certainly have a purpose for us being here. You have a plan for this service. And Father, it's our heart's desire to yield to that and flow with that. And by your grace and with your help accomplish what you want accomplished in our lives today. We submit ourselves to it. We yield ourselves to the Spirit. And we thank you, Father, for what you have for us. And we all agree together that none of us will go home today the way we came. But we will be edified, helped, strengthened, taught. We'll receive revelation and understanding today. And we'll go out, Father, and be more skillful doers of the Word than we've ever been before. And we give you all the honor and the praise for it. In Jesus name, Amen. Hallelujah. I want you to turn with me this morning to Matthew's gospel and turn to the 13th chapter of Matthew. In the 13th chapter of Matthew, Jesus began to teach the multitudes by parables. And I'm going to make reference to one parable in this, but I'm not going to be teaching on the. On the parables per se, just making some references to them. I want to talk about what he said in between the parables, in between after he gave the parable and his explanation of the parable. But what he said to the people about hearing, about the importance of hearing in chapter 13, verse 10. Now, in the first part of this chapter, Jesus gave the parable of the sower. And in verse 10 it says, the disciples came and said to him, why do you speak to them in parables? Jesus answered and said to them, because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them it has not been given. For whoever has to him more will be given, and he will have an abundance. But whoever does not have even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive. For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed. Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart and turn, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For assuredly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men Desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Now, I want to go over some preliminary things that are going to be sort of basic things that we know, but I'm going to lay this foundation to get back to this passage so that our thinking. So we channel our thinking in the right direction. Okay, the first point is concerning faith. We know that faith is not static. It never just exists, it never just stays like it is. Faith is either growing, it's either getting stronger, or it's diminishing and getting weaker. Faith has to be maintained. You know, I grew up in a day when you had to tune your car about every 12, 15,000 miles or you just wouldn't run. But today, I think automobiles, you can drive nearly 100,000 miles before you get a tune up. But back in my days, you know, when I first started driving and my wife and I were first married, we didn't have any money to, you know, to take the car to garage. To the garage. So I had to learn how to do these things myself. Now, I'm not a mechanic, but I pretended to be. And, you know, I had to adjust the points and the plugs and the, you know, and replace the condenser. And I'd even, you know, adjust the timing and even did, you know, adjusted the valves, you know, a little bit. And I mean, that's as far as I got. And. But what would happen is when I would take the spark. Now, it seems, if I remember this right, it's been a long time since I've done this. It seems like spark plugs, the gap grew wider and the points, they grew narrower. You mechanics, is that right or is it the other way? No mechanics in here. Is that. Am I right? Okay. So as the automobile was driven, it would get out of adjustments. The spark plug, you know, had to have a certain gap on it. But the longer you went, that gap started getting larger, and then it wouldn't fire right. And then the points would start getting. They would start burning and get a little pit on them. And so that gap wasn't there. And so it would make the car just, you know, wouldn't drive right. So ever so often you had to tune it up. You had to take those parts out and file them down, put them back in or replace them. Well, you know, faith is sort of like that. It has to be maintained. Now, today, we all have devices that have to be maintained. You know, we have to have our upgrades and our updates on our computers and our Phones and our tablets. And if you don't, and if you don't update them, they'll stop working. Faith is a lot like that. It has to be maintained. It has to be updated because we want our faith to be ready. We want to be, we want to be ready for every attack because the enemy will attack us. That's not a surprise to anybody. That's a, that's an obvious thing. But because of that, we need our faith to be firing on all cylinders, all the time, every day. Second thing is, without faith, we know this, that without faith it's impossible to please God. You remember that Hebrews 11:6 says, without faith it is impossible to please God. Recently I thought about that statement again. I thought that's a very powerful statement. He didn't say that God is not pleased if you don't have faith or you don't live by faith. That's not what he said. He said it's stronger than that. He said, without faith it's impossible to please God. Now we know that there abides faith, faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. So love is greater than faith. But without faith, it's still impossible to please God. You, you couldn't even know love without faith. You couldn't experience God's love. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God loves every creature, every person on this planet. But sadly, a lot of people will never contact that love because it's a faith problem. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. The natural state of man, man's problem is twofold. Number one, man is sinful. I'm talking about ordinary common man, unregenerate man, and sometimes Christians. But man is sinful, sold out to sin. And the second problem of man is he's unbelieving. In fact, unbelief is the worst sin. Unbelief is the worst sin. Everything we have in the, in the new covenant comes on the basis of believing. Believe. But see, natural man and even people who are Christians can fall into this trap as well. But natural thinking wants to do it his own way. I have my own thoughts, I have my own ideas. I. This is the way I have it figured out. And that's why people are going to hell. Because they think they have it figured out and they refuse to believe. They refuse to believe the gospel. I've heard people say this, this one particular person I'm thinking of, person that I've known since I was a little boy. And recently he made the statement he's not in our church. He's not saved. And he made the statement. He said, I admire Christians. I admire the way they live. I can see that Christianity produces a good life for people. And he said, I would love to believe in God. I would love to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, but the problem I have is I simply don't have faith. Said I just don't have faith. Well, the truth of the matter is his problem is not a lack of faith. If he's heard the gospel, and he has, because quite a few people have ministered to him, witnessed to him, faith always comes. His problem is not a lack of faith. His problem is a refusal. Refusal to believe. Because it doesn't measure up with the way he's got it figured out. And the same thing happens where believers are concerned for any material need, healing or whatever it might be, because our senses tell us one thing. And so we've got it figured out but one way. And when the Bible says it's a faith requires us to abandon our ways and our thinking and agree with God, even when it looks like nothing God says is true. That the whole idea that the Bible is presenting to us is wrong. We can see it's wrong all around us. Our bodies are not. Are not giving evidence. No one can see that I'm healed. Everybody knows I'm sick. But God said by his stripes you were healed. And you can apply that, you know, across the board. So without faith, it's impossible to please God. You just can't do it. You can't love people without faith. Some people requires a lot of faith to love them. Amen. Number three. Faith. We know this. Romans, chapter 10. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. That's the only way faith comes now other than the gift of faith. But that's a different transaction altogether. Regular faith that you receive in order to believe God and receive his blessing in your life. That kind of faith. Faith only comes by hearing, doesn't come any other way. No hearing, no faith. I was thinking about that, and the Lord drew my attention to all of the things I do in an ordinary day. You know, our lives are so busy. Think about all you do from the time you get up in the morning until you. You fall asleep at night. Think about all the things you do. I mean, we have places to go, people to see, people to annoy, right? We have a lot to do and we have a lot that's required of us, we have to do. You can't just not do it. Think about how many hours 24 hours in a day, how many minutes? Think about all you do. And none of those things produces an ounce of faith except hearing the Word. Nothing, Nothing you do during the day will produce an ounce of faith except hearing the Word of God. Wouldn't it behoove us to carve out? To carve out, to make a determination, to discipline ourselves, to let nothing else interfere with a segment of time in our busy day, to carve out, to make sure we hear the Word of God. Because nothing else we do gives us any faith. And we need faith for all the other things we do. Hearing is so important. That's why it's vital that we intentionally and routinely hear the Word of God, that we develop good spiritual habits. And one of those spiritual disciplines is hearing the Word. Now in the parable of the sower, like I said, I'm not going to teach on it, but just make some references to says that in Mark's Gospel, you know, this is in the 13th chapter of Matthew. It's in Mark, chapter four, and it's in Luke, chapter eight, Mark's version. When Jesus explained that parable, he said, the sower sows the Word. And these are those by the wayside where the Word is sown, he said, and immediately Satan comes and steals that word. Now, Satan is after that Word. He's after it. He wants to get the Word out of us. But there's a reason he wants to get the Word out of us. Luke's version of that says that the devil comes and steals the word out of their heart. And. And then it says, lest they should believe and be saved because faith comes by hearing the Word. Satan wants to take. He wants to steal the Word. You know, he always comes to steal the Word. He always comes. He, Satan always comes to church. He's here today. He's looking at you. He wants to see what you're going to do, how you're going to respond to the Word. And if you don't respond right, he's going to steal it. But the reason he wants to get to steal the Word out of you is, is he wants to stop your faith. He wants to get faith out of you. Because he knows if you let that word get rooted in you, you believe it and you will be saved, you will be healed, you will be delivered, you will prosper, you will have your needs met. You will live the Christ life. He knows that's the result Word. And so he's there to try to get that Word out of you, to stop your faith. Now, we don't we don't fight the devil. Jesus has already fought and defeated the devil, so we don't have to fight him, But we do resist him. That's what we do, we resist him. That's not the same thing. My youngest son, he has his three children in martial arts and they take cho kwon do is what they're involved in. And his oldest son, a 16 year old, his name's Jack, he's a third degree black belt. 16 years old, he's been doing this since he was about five I think. And now his brother, younger brother and his younger sister are both first degree black belts. But I noticed this early on, I don't know what belt Jack was at, but fairly early on I discovered that I had lost the ability to put my hands on him. If he didn't want me touching him, I ain't touching him. I mean I didn't intend to, you know, test this but you know, he's my grandson, I kind of, hey, how you doing? And if he, is there anybody in here that is involved in martial arts? Do you have any black belts in here? Back here I go because you know, my son has been, he's had his kids in this for so long now that he and my daughter in law, they've gotten tired of going to the training session. But I go, so I go when I can and I watch the kids, you know, go through their, I don't know what you call it, but their practices, you know. And I wasn't intending to test this out but if I had been paying attention I would have realized what was about to happen. At some point I came up to Jack and I started to grab him, grab him and you could see the expression on his face without thinking. It wasn't something that he kind of, you know, analyzed. Well, what am I going to do? There was, I saw some, some movements out of him that were just, they were, they were, they were in him and he resisted. I mean he had these moves, you know, and they're all, they're all defensive moves. And I'm trying to get my hand and I can't get my hands on him. And he's not sick. This was several years ago. I couldn't put my hands on him. He had learned to resist an assailant and the, those I've noticed now he's a third degree black belt. Now when you get up through the first degree, when you get in, particularly in the second degree, once you get the first degree and go into the second and the third, you start learning If I'm understanding this, you start learning more offensive techniques. But I've noticed this. Every time I go to one of these, one of these sessions, they start at the low belts and they go through all of those moves and they do them repeatedly. And the instructor will say, okay, I want you to do green, you know, this and that. And they. And so they start. They. It's a building process. All of those moves are built one upon another. And you never get. You never get beyond those early moves. You just build on them. You don't leave them. And, you know, a couple of years ago now, Now Jack is 16. I guess he was. It might have been a year ago or a couple of years ago, Maybe he was 14 or 15. He's, you know, he's in the youth department. And Jack is. Is he about my height? Maybe a little taller than me? A couple years ago he wasn't. He's slender built. And one night, you know, at the youth meeting, you know, one of the kids coming to hadn't been coming very long. One of the young people there, I didn't even know the kid because he only comes on Wednesday nights. I didn't see this, but I heard about it. This boy is big. He's tall, like 6ft tall. Big, husky guy. Now he's. He was a good kid. He wasn't trying to be mean, but you know how boys are. They heard, well, Jack, you know, he's this, you know, martial arts guy. You know, he's a black belt. And. And so I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, you know, see what I can do. And he went to. Now, what I've. What I've seen watching these guys practice is none of those moves that they do are intended to coddle assailant. They're not. They're not intended to be nice. There's nothing soft or easy about what they. They're intended to defensively to, to stop an attacker and, and, and if the person continues then to take him out. In fact, about three years ago, one of the students. Now I think one of these students that this happened to was a grown man, but came to session one night and found out that one of the students in Jack's class, there had been an attempted assault somewhere. And this Choi student, he went home on his own two feet. His assailant left in an ambulance. So it's really serious. And so I discovered real quick that, wait a minute, I can get hurt. Well, this kid at the youth meeting, he grabs Jack and he's a Big old boy just grabs him. I don't know if he came up behind him, in front of him, but picked him up off the ground, he's got him. Ah, you know, what you going to do now? And so his dad asked Jack after he said, why did you let him do that? Jack said, you know, Daddy said, I could have stopped him, but I would had to have hurt him. You know, that's not the best thing for your youth ministry. Pastor's kids send somebody to the hospital. You know, he knows, knew that the fellow that was messing with him was just horsing around. He wasn't mean or anything, but he said, I could have stopped him, but I would have hurt him. So I just kind of let him, you know, mess with me. Well, you know, we, we resist the devil and we're not fooling around. What did you say? What did your dad say? Don't play with God. Don't play with God. I'm not playing with the devil either. The Bible says resist him steadfast in the faith, because he's not playing around. He's not playing around. He wants to destroy our lives. So we're not playing around with him. So we have these spiritual moves, the fight of faith. We fight the good fight of faith. The fight of faith is believing, speaking, acting and praising. That's what the good fight of faith is, believing, speaking, acting on our faith and praising God. And those defensive measures that we use to keep ourselves in a place of faith is those things take place up here. See, faith is of the heart. Faith is of the heart. We don't believe God with our minds. We believe God with our spirit, man. Jesus said, if you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe you receive them. That means believe in your heart that you receive them. We don't believe with the natural mind, but we do renew our mind. Because the renewing of the mind is an important companion to believing with the heart. It's sort of like, you know, with, with the United States. All of the, all of the foreign wars the United States has ever fought, none have been fought at home, but they were fought for home. That's right. We renew our minds. The battle is in our mind, but it's not for our mind, it's for our heart. That's why we renew our mind to keep that faith and that word in our heart. Because if we don't continually renew our mind, like I said, the battle is up here. We resist him and we resist him with the knowledge that we have. But what we want to get into Is. It's not ordinary knowledge that we have. It's revelation knowledge. Brother Hagin, when he was 16 years old, was on the bed of affliction. You know his stories. Paralyzed, had a deformed heart, and all through his chest, you know, his organs were deformed. Incurable, blood, disease. And he was reading Mark 11:24, and he would read that, and he said that he would pray, you know, whatever things you desire. He said, I desired to be well when you prayed. He prayed, believe you receive it. He believed he received it. And he said he would feel like he was healed, just felt good, like God had hurt him. And then he would. He would look at his body, feel of his heart, and his heart's still not beating right, and he still can't move his legs. And then he would get discouraged. And he said one day he was laying there and he said, dear Lord Jesus, if you appeared to me in the flesh and stood right before me, and you said to me, lord Jesus, the problem with you, son, is you don't believe. He said with. With tears, not in arrogance, but in sincerity, he said, I would have to say to you, dear Lord Jesus, you're lying about it. I do believe. And Jesus said to him, that's right, son. You do believe. As far as you know. You believe as far as you know. He went on to say. Brother Hagin went on to say. He said, a person cannot believe beyond actual knowledge. Can't be done. But he's not talking about ordinary knowledge. He's not talking about head knowledge. He's talking about heart knowledge. He said, you cannot believe beyond actual knowledge. And so he. He felt like he was believing. And Jesus said, you're believing, all right, as far as you know. His believing was not perfect. Then Jesus said something else to him. He said, you're believing. You believe me, all right, as far as you know. Then Jesus said, but the rest of that verse goes with it, and you shall have them. Now think about that. That's all Jesus said to him, and you shall. Well, it wasn't like Brother Hagin had never read those words, and you shall have them. He had read that he had mental knowledge. But when Jesus said that to him, he said, the rest of that verse goes with it, and you shall have them. Revelation came. The revelation came. And he said, I see it, I see it, I see it. He said, I've been believing it, but then looking at my body, and when my body didn't look like it was healed, I felt like I hadn't received. He said, now I see. I have to believe. I receive it before I have it and then I'll have it. What a simple revelation. But it was life changing. And not only did it change his life, it changed my life and your life. We cannot believe beyond actual knowledge. But it has to be revelation knowledge. It has to be revelation that the spirit of God brings. Amen. Now, before I go further, resisting requires skill. Resisting requires skill. My. My oldest grandson, My oldest son's two boys, 20 and 17, they've been playing classical piano since they were five years old. They're classically playing very talented musicians. And of the 20 year old now, he plays just about everything. He's like a virtuoso. He plays the drums, the guitar and the piano and bass and just, you know, he just plays everything well. You know, Jason and Billy, my grandsons, they didn't get that way by watching videos on playing the piano. They got there by hours, days, weeks, months, years of practice. Go over with me to Hebrews Chapter, Hebrews, Chapter 5, Hebrews 5. 12. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. That word oracles means sayings. That's what this is all about, the sayings of God. There's faith in his sayings. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is those who by reason of use. The margin says practice, by reason of practice, by reason of practice have their senses exercised. And that word literally means trained. They have their senses trained to discern both good and evil. My grandsons are skillful on the keyboard because they've proven, practiced and they've trained their senses. They've trained. There's something called muscle memory. And on that keyboard they can go and hit chords that I would have to take several seconds and figure out how to place my fingers. They don't do that. They have their senses trained in good keyboard sounds and evil keyboard sounds. They know what to avoid. Well, those who. Solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is those who by practice have their senses exercised or trained to discern good and evil. It is. It is. It is possible and necessary that we train our senses. Not everything I see do I believe. Not everything that I hear do I need to believe. I'm training. You're training your senses to recognize what is in line with the word and what isn't. And I might feel one way, but if God's word says it's another way, that's an evil feeling. That's an evil feeling. Or I might not feel a particular way. I might be. I might be elated about something. Somebody tell me, oh, that's exciting. Really, is it? According to the word, whatever the Bible says, whatever things are just. Isn't that right? Whatever things are just whatever things are lovely is one of them. Pure, good report, praiseworthy, virtuous. See, with the word of God, we're training our senses to discern what's right and what's not right. Amen. Praise the Lord, because that's what develops skill. We need to be skillful. Word of righteousness. We need to be skillful in resisting the devil. If you are in the habit of not resisting him, if you, if you're in the habit of putting up with things that you shouldn't put up with, aches and pains, lack bad attitudes. If you're in the habit of putting up with things that you, in other words, not resisting, then you're developing. Your skill level is low. My grandsons, they've gotten in the habit of just without thinking, you try to grab them and they're just. You're going to be deflected. They've developed skill because they've practiced it. Thankfully, my grandson was gentle with me, and thankfully I had enough wisdom to back off because I knew that I could be hurt. But see, that skill level was there because it had been practiced and drilled into him. And that's what the Lord is leading all of us into is this daily practice of faith. This daily. And, and like I said earlier, the. You start out the most fundamental thing is hearing. Hear right and hear a lot. Hear a lot. I'm not saying spend five hours a day, but it's going to take longer than five minutes. Because if the only thing that I do during the day that will put any faith in me is the hearing is hearing the Word, then I'm going to make sure, come what may, I'm going to hear some word. Amen. Praise the Lord. Well, glory to God. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. I know I took a little bit of extra time kind of setting this up, but I did that for a reason. Let's go to. And I won't go a whole lot longer this morning, but let's go to Matthew 13. Matthew 13 years ago, this used to bother me. Jesus spoke these, these, these parables, and he spoke this first one, the parable of the Sower, and the disciples came to him and Said, why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered and said, because it's been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. Now, the word mysteries means hidden secrets. The word mystery is the same word the Greek word was used by the false cults, the secret societies of the day that had their secret wisdom and, and their secret teachings and doctrine and stuff. And if you weren't in that cult, if you weren't initiated into that society, those secrets were kept from you. Well, that was the same word that was used that Jesus used. The only difference is the mysteries are secret truths, but they're not kept from us, they're kept for us. Now, Jesus said, it's been given to you disciples to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them, well, them was all those other people, the multitude, thousands of people. He said to them, it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and whoever. And he will have abundance. But whoever does not have even what he has will be taken away from him. That bothered me for a long time. To me that sounded like sovereignty, that God had selected certain people and certain people, the disciples had been sovereignly selected to know the deep. That's revelation. Knowledge is what he's talking about. The mysteries, that's, that's revelation. Understand, it'd been given to them, but they, but to these other people, they were locked out. Well, when I got over to the, to the fourth chapter of Mark's Gospel, I found out something very interesting. In the tenth verse, after he finished this parable, it says, when he was alone. Now notice those around him with the 12, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parable. And he said to them, to you, it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside, all things come in parables so that seeing, they may not see and not perceive and so forth. Those around him with the 12, any of that multitude could have been in that number. Any of them. Most of the people left, you know why? They'd had enough. They were satisfied. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, they were satisfied. Now, if you had been in that crowd, if you were part of that multitude, heard Jesus teaching, it would have. Can you imagine being on the mountainside and hearing the Master preach and teach the word? You could not come away from that without an impression. You just could not. And the multitude left no doubt stirred, no doubt something happened in them, but they, they had all they wanted. They were Satisfied? Years ago, this was in the 1970s, brother Copeland would come to. I've lived in Jacksonville, Florida. Brother Copeland would come to Jacksonville every January and he would conduct one of those believers seminars. Yeah, it wasn't one of the conventions, one of those just three day things. And he taught. The very first time I ever heard Brother Copeland teach in person. He was teaching on the parable of the Sower. And I'm telling you, the revelation that flowed out of him. All of us young men, we were there, you know, we got there to try to get a seat up as close as we could. And this was like 1976 or 77. It was just so fascinating, the amount of revelation that he had. We were thinking, where does this man get this stuff? I read that and I didn't see all of that. And I didn't hear Brother Copeland say this, but I heard it said about him. Someone asked him in those days, brother, Brother Copeland, how is it that you get all of this revelation? How does that happen? You know what he said? He said most preachers, when they get through preaching, like he's talking about on the road, like traveling ministers. He said most preachers, when they get through preaching, they go back to their hotel room and turn on the television. He said, I go back to my hotel room and I get back in the Word. What does that, what does that indicate? Never satisfied with what you have. Always hungry for more, to see it clearer, to have. That's how, that's what was wrong with these people. Had a great meeting. Hey, they were in one of Jesus meetings. Touch me. I didn't stay home. I went to the meeting. But there were, there were a handful of, I don't know how many who saw that Jesus, they could get more, they could have more if they just, they. I'm not leaving. He's still here. I'm going to, I'm to going stay and if he lets me, I'll go home with him. That's the kind of hearing, that's the kind of hunger we must have if we're going to press in for everything that God has for us in this time, in this revival that we're in. And we are in it. But this is, this is an informed revival. This is a revival of people who have revelation knowledge. It's not revivals. In the past, a lot of times have been excited revivals and there's been a lot of excitement and there's nothing wrong with that. But like I've said so many times before, excited faith will carry you about halfway through the battle, informed faith will take you all the way through and see the manifestation. And I'm not talking about. I'm not talking about just mental information. I'm talking about revelation, knowledge. And it comes by how we hear. Amen. And I tell you what, we were so blessed. We've been blessed. I. I mean, we could say. Brother Hagin used to always say this, oh, this is so good. We could all just go home right now, and it would have been a great meeting. But thank God we didn't go home, because the next service, there was more. Well, we've been ministered to by Kenneth Copeland on the covenant. And there's more. There's more. Amen. And the reason people, I imagine probably all of us have been in this boat before. What I'm about to describe, probably, I know I have. There have been times in my life where I had a need, and I went through the process, scriptural process, got in the Word, built up my faith, laid hold of it, claimed it, believed. I received it, spoke it, declared it, thanked God for the answer. And after a little while, sometimes a little longer than other times, but after a while, somewhere along the way, I turned loose of it. Just didn't. It just seemed to be something that just wasn't changing. And I held my confession, and I was happy and thrilled for a while, and then I turned loose of it. Probably not the only person like that. The reason that happens. I'll tell you exactly why that happens, is no longer here. Hearing. I stopped hearing. So we want to look at what Jesus had to say. Jesus had some. Some really important things to say about how we hear. And it's hearing and hearing and hearing. And when we hear and hear, what we're doing is we're keeping that faith and that Word in us so that the root goes down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Amen. Well, praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Let's stand up. Glory to God. Thank you, Father. Hallelujah. Glory to God. This revival is a revival that is carried on the wings of informed faith revelation. And I'm telling you, we were treated to some highbrow revelation the last three services. There's more. Brother Copeland made the statement because it was something that's in my notes, but he said it a little differently. Something to the effect that we can know it all. We can know it all. There's not any revelation that we can't have. There's not any. There's not any revelation you can't have that you need. There's no revelation you nor I need that we can't have. There's nothing there's. There's. It's not in heaven too far away. It's not in hell too far away. There's no. There's nothing we need that we can't have. And I believe everything we need, we will have. I'm talking about. I'm talking about revelation, understanding in the heart. There's nothing in these last days that we. That we cannot have. And I believe we will have. Ordinary folk like you and me, ordinary people walking in things that the prophets looked and longed to understand. The average Christian is going to know it just like its first reader. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Amen. Are you ready to go there? Well, we're going. We're going. Amen. Thank you, Father. Glory to God. We bless you today, Lord. Father, the entrance of your word gives light. And we're so grateful, Father, for the light we have, the light we've received, the light we've maintained. But we know there's so much more. There's so much more enlightenment, so much more development, so much more. Thank you, Mahasu Manisha Mahika Papapa rebeda tedecha tadia for rampa dineranda suprufe. So much, so much, so much, so much, so much more. Not a little more, a lot more. So much more understanding, so much more to see because there's so much more to do. There's so much more to have than what we've had. There's so much more to see, to have to lay hold of. And it's coming. It's coming. In these last days, revelation, knowledge is being poured out upon the hungry. And those who are on the outside, they'll not receive because it's not been given to them who hunger not. It's not been given to those who do not have a desire to know the things of the Spirit, but to those who stir themselves up and determine in their own hearts that I will know, I will have, I will do, I will lay hold of all of those things for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me. Me I will reach until I lay hold of them. To those there will be no denying, great revelation and understanding will come. Those of the hearers will have more than they've ever had. And they'll be able to help those. They'll be able to inspire and encourage those around them who've not been reaching, to begin to reach for more. And a standard will be raised in these last days. A spiritual hunger, a spiritual reach. And it will gather people together. And people who ordinarily wouldn't reach will begin to reach for more, because they'll be inspired by the exploits of those who have a heart to go. We thank you for that, Father. Glory to God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Pastor Nancy, there's. There's something different about this Holy Ghost meeting, I tell you. I mean, I've heard Brother Copeland preach many times and teach many times, but this was something else. Yeah. Yeah. Hallelujah. The Lord is setting us up to go way deeper. And I'm not talking. I'm not talking about weird stuff. I'm talking about knowledge of how this actually works. And he left a little bit with us. But there's more. There's more. Praise God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. Glory to God. Pastor Nancy, we trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us@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.