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I want to just begin to honestly open up a can on the kingdom of darkness. I want to begin to walk into what God has for us. I'm telling you, the spirit of the living God is going to touch you according to your expectation. And one of the things that happens in prophetic meetings or meetings where we start moving in the Spirit is sometimes people, they hang on to a form of godliness, a form of religion, and they don't leave with results. Because the only thing worse than no teaching is bad teaching. So what we've got to do is get into a place where we can receive. It's time to clear the mechanism and receive. Receive. God wants you to win even more than you do. God wants you to have breakthrough more than you do. God, as I was speaking, and he wants you to hear his voice more than you want to hear him. So it's going to be great. We are going to have a meeting like the Apostle Paul would have had. If he's here and you say, man, the Apostle Paul, what kind of meeting would that be? Well, I'll take it a step further. We're going to have a meeting as if Jesus was here. And you say, wait, what do you mean by that? Well, I'm gonna say it this way. He is here. He's here because you brought him. And I'll say it even further. You don't need Paul. We're here, and I say that because we have the same Holy Spirit he had, and we're working in that and we're moving in that. And you've got more power in your life than you even realize because of Jesus Christ, the hope of glory within you. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk tonight about how to get a supernatural reaction. How to break out of where you've been getting what belongs to you in the Spirit and taking it into the natural. You know, most people have everything they need. They have everything they need. You have everything you need in the Spirit. What we're lacking is a revelation of what we have. We need to have a revelation of what we have, and God wants to wake that up and bring it into the natural. That's what miracles are. That's what prophecy is. People think we're begging and pleading to get Jesus to do something, and he did it 2,000 years ago. Every gift works this way. Every gift. So we have a long story, Heather and I do, where we come from. And, you know, Heather's been through a lot of things. She broke her neck when she was A kid went to visit Jesus, came back to life, and is here to tell us about it. She's been through kidney transplant, dialysis, all these things. And I'll tell you, we've been through a lot of things. And if we did not stand on these promises, the gifts of the spirit would not work the same. God's done it all. It's how we access it that matters. I have to say, I believe we're getting another round by the grace of God. How many of you know you're the ekklesia? That's what Jesus said. And he said, the gates of hell will not prevail against you. That means as long as we stand up and show up and do what we're called to do with the gospel, with the word of God, that means that we will begin to hold off the tsunami of evil. Yeah. And I mean that globally. Thank you, Jesus. Praise God. We're gonna go into something here. I want you to consider this. The Lord wants you to win. He wants you to break through. He wants you to have clarity. And many people ask me often, how do my gifts develop? How do I get what God has for me? You've got to get the revelation that everything that's provided for you already is. You're not begging and pleading to get God to do it. It's done. But the issue is, it's our mind, it's our process, it's our belief system. We think God's just gonna go down and do it for us. And that's not the case. We've gotta access what he's done for us in faith, draw on what's done and pull it into the natural. You know, have you ever. So if you've been around faith, you hear these kind of words. Like, some people got extreme with it, where you get a broken arm years ago, and then you say, I don't have a broken arm. You been around that? And you're like, well, actually, I'm looking at the arm. It's busted. It's like, right, you got the broken arm. And then you start saying to people, I don't have a broken arm. I don't have a broken arm. Well, what we should say is, by faith, my arm is healed. Right? And we've gotta get that mindset. And it works with every gift. This way, most people think if they plead and beg with God, that they're gonna get something from him. And he's saying, answered. It's been answered for 2000 years. You need a revelation of what I've done to Receive that now wor. And this is a now word. It is a present truth that Jesus is always present. The word of God is always a now word. And when you put your faith to it, it begins to work through the process. So this is a fundamental way we begin to understand prophecy and everything else. So let me go to the board. We realize, First Corinthians, chapter 15 and verse 46, it talks about that the natural is first, not the Spirit. It says, the Spirit is not first, but the natural is first. Now, if you were to ask somebody and you were to say, okay, I'm walking in the Spirit, I'm trying to learn the ways of God. And they said, what comes first, brethren? The natural or the Spirit? Most believers would say, oh, Jesus, the spirit. Right? Mmm. Mufasa. Right. The Spirit comes first. Ah, right. That's how a lot of people view it. But we realize this is talking about Jesus and Adam and that whole dynamic. But the principle in this, when we're understanding it, is that there is a spiritual reality, let's call it, we are saved by grace through faith. Grace is the finished part of what God did for you. Your faith is how you access that. Your faith is how you access grace. Does that make sense? Now, this has everything to do with the prophetic. It has everything to do with receiving miracles. It has everything to do with angelic invitation. It has everything to do with the realm of the spirit invading the natural. We might call it heaven invading earth. Okay, so First Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 46. Let's say that this circle here represents the known world we live in. This is our whole experience. Let's say there's a line between it and this line between. It represents a division or a separation of what we could call the natural or. And the spirit. Amen. That's probably Jesus. Okay, so we're looking at this, the natural and the spirit. We recognize something about it. We could say this is the area of grace. This is the area of faith. That's why Jesus said, blessed are those who believe without seeing. Okay, so if we're going to step into all that God has for us, we got to recognize what is in the realm of the Spirit. Well, in the realm of the Spirit are these two things where we realize it's sozo and soteria. If you combine these two words together, they give you about seven parts of salvation. You're saved. Okay? Saved from hell. You're delivered. You are preserved, you're protected. Psalm 91. You are provided for. You could say, prosperous. You are also healed, past tense. And you are whole. When you put these seven in order, you begin to recognize that this, combining these two words is really. You get the fundamentals of seven parts of your salvation. When you get born again, you have about seven parts of what God's provided for you. So when you understand this, that all of this is in the realm of the spirit. Okay, you with me? So when you say, I need God to speak to me, I need to know what God wants me to do. I need to know what's happening, you realize everything that's here is here in the spirit. You came in with the answer. You're fully loaded. And believers walk around like, we don't have anything. It's like, I'm trying to get this or that. But you have it. It's a revelation you need. Right? And look, we've been through battles. Everybody's been through battles. We've been through long seasons of battle. It's not always just a snap of the fingers and there it is. You have to contend in the natural to see the spirit invade that space. This is important now in the natural. This is where we're filled with our five senses, right? This is a five senses scenario. Five senses. The five senses is overcome. According to Hebrews, chapter 5, verse 14, where it says, those who, through reason of use, exercise their senses to discern good and evil. I believe when we exercise our senses, we're exercising our five senses to believe the Bible, to believe the word of God. When you begin to believe the word of God above what you're experiencing, that is where faith starts to really activate. Now, it's not about saying, the arm is broken. And then you're like, no, it's not. That's not faith. The real thing that activates this is to say, I read the Bible until the Bible starts talking back to me. That's how long you read the Bible for. I love working with Rick because he'll ask me almost every day, have you read your Bible today? And so it makes you read your Bible every day. And the other classic is, have you exercised today? Have you been close to your wife today? You know, it's wonderful. But listen, please, when you recognize what God is saying, he is saying this. Now, between the two is the soul. Okay, this is our five senses scenario. We're talking about the soul. Or we could call this the veil. That is why so many people have a hard time receiving the things of God is because our soul is so loud, Our five senses are so loud, we are so dulled down by the spirit of the age. We're so dulled down by a social media environment. We're so dulled down that suddenly you know what the antithesis of faith is? It's really fear. And then in addition to fear, it is carnality. Carnality is not necessarily sin. It is the root of sin. I'm just trying to get you a foundation before we get into the crazy stuff. Don't worry, we'll get there. But when you realize that what God has for you is everything he's provided, but yet we have to find, fight through our own carnality, our five senses, the world screaming at us. How about sickness? You get sickness in your body and suddenly it is talking to you. It has a voice when you're in a difficult place financially. It has a voice when you're in a difficult place with anything this world throws at you. It's like a voice is talking. But this is why we got to read the Bible until it starts talking back to us. This is so important when you do that. Here's what begins to happen when you begin to take the Word of God. You take the Word of God for all that it is. You take it by faith. You don't just read it with your head, you read it with your heart. You begin to step into a place where now you see this in the Word, you're in the natural. And let's take healing, for example. You say, I know the Bible says I'm healed. So what you do is you pray. It's a natural act of faith. You pray. And when you pray, it doesn't make sense to your five senses or your logic, but you do it by faith. And faith breaks the veil. You go into this realm of the spirit. You go into the realm of the spirit, and suddenly it starts a reaction in there. You start to get a reaction in the realm of the spirit. How many of you know John 6:63 says the word is spirit, right? We know Galatians 5, 16. It says, Walk in the spirit so you don't fulfill the lust of the flesh, right? When you recognize, you begin to go here. What's going to happen is you're gonna get a supernatural reaction. And if you keep standing, you keep believing, suddenly this reality becomes more of a reality through the word of God than this reality. And then this reality will trump this reality. It will come out of this realm and break into the natural. And you will get a miracle. You'll get your miracle. Everything works this way. Let's talk about sowing and reaping I remember the first time I ever sowed a seed. Ever, ever. I sowed a seed. The bucket came and I was like, well, here we go. I was very young, I put something in it and I watched the bucket go away. I could still get it back. You're just giving to man anyway. It's just going to a man. I used to think that way when I was young, you know. But you gotta realize it's a supernatural action. We have to do natural things for healing, laying on of hands. There's nothing with laying on of hands. But you lay hands on in faith according to the word of God, and you're activating a spiritual law. You sow seed. You're not doing anything but giving somebody something in the natural that should make no sense whatsoever. But when you do that, you're activating a spiritual law. When you step out and God gives you a word for somebody, you start to activate a spiritual law when you stay in the confines of the scripture. That's why we have 1 Corinthians, 4, 6. It says, Learn from us. To not go beyond what is written. That should be a tattoo on every prophetic minister's arm. I knew that would bless somebody. But anyway, when we're looking at this, you gotta see this whole setting here. And now we come from a place where there's all this strange prophetic stuff, all the things that have happened. And this whole process here has a shortcut. There's a shortcut to this. There's a shortcut God gave you. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of things the enemy has fought the church with. Some of it is the economics that God wants the body of Christ to walk in. Because we're called to be the number one superpower to get the gospel around the world. To do that, we're called to move mountains and break stuff up with radical generosity. We shouldn't have government subsidies taking care of all these victims and things happening. The church should be showing up. I'm telling you, that is the foundation of part of what we're called to do, to go help the poor. As a matter of fact, the prophetic is tied to that. When Agabus prophesied it and he cried out and said, a famine is coming, a lot of people today would say, man, Agabus, you're negative. That's a negative confession. Agabus, you remember Agabus, right? Book of Acts? The man who wears this belt will be bound by the Jews. Remember Agabus, he must have been a blessing. Gonna Be bound. Agabus actually prophesied that Nepal was bound by the Romans. So according to some people's theology, Agabus should have been stoned. If they believe that prophets have to get every little minute detail right every time. That was true for the Old Testament, not the New. Although you better get it right. They wanted to have a rock concert. If they believe that, let's get rocks, stand around them and let's rock, whatever, okay, but we've got to recognize something about it. When Agabus prophesied, a famine's coming, a famine's coming, a famine is coming, a lot of people would say that's negative. You can't prophesy that way. Well, the early church, they didn't go, oh no, what are we going to do? It's so bad. It's so bad. What are we going to do instead? You know what they did? They got empowered and they sent aid through the word of the Lord. And then the famine came in the days of Claudius Caesar. When you look at that picture, you understand something, that when God is speaking, it's always redemptive. Prophecy is always redemptive. Unless you're talking to the devil, there's no redemption there. But prophecy is redemptive. It's never thus saith the Lord. It's going to be worse than you think. You know, nothing's worse than the thousand yard prophetic stare. It's not bad, brother, it's worse. That's not good, right? I'll tell you, when we started prophetic meetings years ago, we had a great time. I was around great leaders, great speakers, everything. But sometimes unique people come to prophetic meetings. When you announce the word prophetic meeting, it's like a dog whistle goes off and the only ones that can hear it are the insane. Not here tonight though. Amen. Nobody. We were in prophetic meetings years ago. And I remember the pageantry, the flags ministry, which I love all those things, by the way, when it's anointed and good, but anything can get carnal. And I'm in a meeting and I'm watching people, you know, Betty, you'll remember this, but people are dancing around in bedazzled jeans and stuff. I'm like, wow, it's amazing the dancing, you know. And some of the people, they're like, you know, in their 50s and 60s and stuff. And they like, you know, have, you know, party in the back, long hair and nothing up front. I don't know what you call that. A mullet? A bullet. Bald mullet. I don't know what you call that, but they're like, they got the jeans on, they're back, they're like, woo. Pajamas and stuffed animals and stuff. And I'm like, wow, this is prophecy. This is prophetic ministry. I'm looking in the back and they're dancing in the pageantry. I'm like, oh, this is wow, amazing. Jammies, bedazzled jeans, 50 something year old guys dancing around. I was like, whoo, Mufasa, I don't know what to do with that, Lord. And so one day I'll never forget, I'm in this meeting, I'm looking there, I'm at the pulpit just like this, looking back there. And finally I just said, holy Spirit, come here for a moment, sir. Come here. I'm looking back there. I said, holy Spirit, do you see that right there? And I asked him, what is that all about? I'll never forget it. He said to me, I don't know, I have no idea, Joseph. That's when I learned people just do things, anything. The only thing worse than no teaching is bad teaching. And so what we gotta do is instruct so we can get breakthrough. But some of the most potent things, the shortcut that has for us is the ability to step into the spirit instantly. Because we're a very, very analytical society. You think about that, you know, you go to other cultures and they believe things, they believe in miracles. But here in this nation, there's a lot of analytical stuff. That's why things are so sarcastic today. Have you noticed that on social media, how many have been blessed by social media comments over the years? Yeah, a lot of them are like kids in their mom's basement. Mom, I need another hot pocket so I can nail this person. Right? Nobody. Okay, and so that was too much. That was too much. Okay? But you recognize this, that in that setting, in that setting there's a lot of sarcasm, there's a lot of analytical process. It is more like we're pushing out the supernatural, embracing weird stuff, but not getting real horsepower, not getting the results. But God gave believers a shortcut. He really did. And the shortcut is so you can't mess up what he wants to do with your finite brain and your thinking. The shortcut is like a superpower that many believers think is just something they can do, or if God graces them to do, or maybe they can do it. But God's made it available for every believer to step into this shortcut. And the shortcut closes the gap instantly between the natural and the spirit. Because your Mind can't understand it. And the shortcut is called speaking in tongues. So when you begin to speak in tongues, you begin to release that faith of God. And your mind's saying, what? What's happening? It's the only thing that you can't mess up. You start speaking in tongues, and you're suddenly in the spirit. You just. You're there and your brain's going, huh? And you're like, not for you. That's not for you. Yeah, me and Jesus right here. Right there. You don't get to participate. I was talking with Dr. Avery Jackson. He's a great man friend. I know Rick knows him all this, but we were talking. When a believer prays in tongues, he's a neurosurgeon. And when believers pray in tongues, it's as if their mind is not even activated. Something activates or something's taking place that. That. It doesn't even make sense. It's not supposed to be happening. In other words, it bypasses logic, it bypasses science, and things are happening that they can't even quantify. And it's important. So let me show you what it does. When you pray in tongues, you begin to get breakthrough. So praying in tongues is a lot like this. You start praying, and it takes you instantly out of the natural. You're praying in the spirit. All of a sudden you get back into. You know, you're in the natural right now, and suddenly you pray in the spirit. You go into the realm of the spirit. You're having a great time, right? You're doing. All of a sudden you're like, wait, wait, wait. The bills. Oh, my goodness, the bills. Oh, Jesus. What are we going to do? Oh, wait, you're going back into the realm of the spirit. Oh, Jesus. Oh, I love you, Lord. I love you, Lord. And then suddenly like, wait, soccer practice. Oh, Jesus. Mom, I need you. You just come back, but you're gonna just go right back into the realm of the spirit. You just keep going, praying in the spirit. And eventually, if you keep doing this, praying in the spirit, praying in the spirit, praying in the spirit, you'll learn to just bypass all that distraction and you'll just eventually go right into the realm of the spirit, where you can step in there. And a lot of people are neglecting this gift. You say, well, it's just gibberish. It's only gibberish. Cause your mind can't comprehend it. And God made it that way. So you can instantly get in the realm of the spirit. If you want to grow in Spiritual discernment. You want to grow in the gifts. You need to have a tongue's life where you are praying in the Holy Ghost and you mix it with the Word. I remember the first time my gifts opened up to me. Well, there's many times, but this one time was really more word of knowledge oriented. And I took a whole day. I was a pastor at the time, youth pastor. And I'm praying, and I thought, I'm gonna take today and I'm gonna do nothing but read my Bible and then pray in tongues. And so I read my Bible till my head hurt. And so then I switched over to praying in tongues. And I went back and forth like that until like, something 12, 15 hours went by. I thought, I'm doing this. I'm doing this thing. I wanted an angel to appear to me. I thought I was gonna have that, ooh, Mufasa moment. I have come to thee, O favorite of the Lord. I was waiting for that. I thought for sure that was coming. What I got was tired. So tired and hungry. I thought, well, this isn't working. So the next morning, I get up, we had a staff meeting, and we had guest ministers in. And we're all sitting down, right? We're all gathering together. And I get into this meeting and I sit down. As you do in leadership meetings sometimes. You're in a big circle talking with people. I sat down, and as soon as I sat down, another man walked through the door. And I could see the fight he just had with his wife and what he had for breakfast. And I thought, that's different. And then another guy sits down. I saw similar things with him, and I saw similar things with him. And suddenly things began to open up. Not just like arbitrarily or when the Lord just says things to you. It opened up in a focused way where the Lord began to elevate the gift I had. And it works for every gift. Just like that. Praying in the spirit. You're sowing into your future. I like long drives alone, because you can pray in tongues for a long time. And if you'll do that, you're sowing into the future. And then all of a sudden, a week or two later, something happens. And you're like, how'd that happen? And the Lord says, you were asking me about this. You don't know it, but you were. So this is an important thing that the Lord wants you to move into, and he wants you to begin to elevate and come to that position. Now, I gotta tell you guys this more than ever we need to have discernment. We need clear eyes and clear mindedness. I believe this is what God wants to do. He wants to raise up an army of clear eyed, clear minded supernatural reformers. We're not weird, too weird. But we just begin to move in the power of the Lord where we get results and horsepower. We begin to see breakthrough taking place. A lot of believers today are running around and they have what I call the rake anointing. You know the rake anointing, right? The rake anointing is where people are walking. Well, when I was a kid, you know, I walked through this tall grass and I was out in the field and I was near my garden, our garden at the time, and I'm looking down and I stepped. And you know what? Those garden rakes with those claw rakes, you know what I'm talking about? The real hardcore. Maybe the younger generation has no idea what I'm talking about. But. But it's the claws, right? They're there. And you know, I stepped on one of those and I had an encounter, man, I'll never forget that encounter. And I thought, I shouldn't do that again. But some people, they like it, right? They like it. It's the rake anointing. They step on a rake and they're like, oh, that was amazing, I think I'll do it again. And they just keep going. And then some of them like to run and do it. And then when they come back around to you, they're looking at you and their face all messed up and you say, hey, maybe you don't step on that. That looked really painful. And they say to you, don't judge me. You haven't walked a mile in my shoes. And you want to say, you're right. And I don't want to. Right? It's like this thing. And so what you gotta do is realize we need to avoid that. How do you avoid it? You avoid it through good teaching. You avoid it through getting in the word of God. You avoid it by becoming who God's called you to be. Clear eyed, clear minded. And here's something else. In the realm of the spirit, in the realm of the spirit, we need more discipline, man. I need to say this. If we can't control our eating life, you can't control the gifts of the spirit very well. Is that okay? Meet me at dq. No, I'm just kidding. But like, people, a lot of people get down that. Okay? Yeah. But if we begin to discipline ourselves, we discipline our five senses, we discipline our lives. I'm Telling you something begins to happen where you can take authority and start walking in that force of the spirit. As a matter of fact, if we ever get a revelation of this, we'll begin to live, move and have our being in a tremendous way. I believe it's time. Now listen. If you have needs, if you're hurting, we are so here for you. If you're going through a hard time, we are so here for you. We have so much compassion. But there comes a point in every believer's life where you need to rise up and overcome. You must, you must. And we love you if you don't. But you must. Otherwise you will not fulfill your part in the body. Your role in the body is this. Let me draw this very quickly. This is important. You need to see this. This is so vital. People talk about, we're the bride, we're the bride, we're the bride. I believe we're becoming the bride. Amen. We're becoming the bride. But right now, we're the body. The body of Christ. And this is made up of 21 gifts. You got First Corinthians 12. You got Romans 12. You've got Ephesians 4, 11. This is the 5, right? This is the. We got the 9 and the 7. It's 21 gifts of the Spirit. This is the body of Christ. These are the fundamental gifts altogether. There's 21 gifts that work among us. And each joint supplies. We need each other. And so when we don't have things in place and in discipline, when God begins to call us to do something, and these are the weapons we have, we don't fully access this part. So what we gotta do is step into the fullness of what he has for us. I call this the five. The governmental gifts governing themselves and the body. The 521 gift spectrum. People, if you begin to pray and you begin to read the Word until it talks back to you, you're gonna find yourself moving in one of these or several of them. And you can have majors and minors. And when you do this, I'm telling you, you're being primed to take over in your life. You're being primed to push darkness back. Darkness may come walking over, but it will limp back. It'll limp back. People always talking about all these supernatural experiences and encounters, and we have them all the time. But here's the thing. We need the word of God to begin to rise up in us. The biggest thing the devil wants to do is stop you from knowing who you're called to be. And where you're called to go. John, chapter one, verse 12. For as many as have received him, how many have received Jesus? The rest of you need to get saved. But how many have received him? Right, that's past tense. As many as have received him. To them he gave the right to become sons and daughters of God. That's converts and disciples. That's those who received him. But many people received him and they stay there instead of developing in what God called them to be. You know, Jesus deserves to see something. I'll say it better. The church and the world deserve to see something. They really do. The church and the world, they both deserve to see something. They deserve to see mature believers, fully trained Jedi. Amen. Gonna be ready to do what God's called you to do. To push back the darkness, to be anointed like God's marked you. For when you read the Bible till it starts talking back to you, you'll start to get over the silliness of it all. You really will. You'll move in what God's called you to have and what God's called you to do. Thank you, Jesus. Praise God. I wanted to say a very special thank you to our partners. Partners, thank you. Whether you've been a partner with us since the very beginning, the early days, or whether you've recently become a part of our partner family, I want to just simply thank you. Because of you, we're able to do so many things that we could never have accomplished without you working with us together. We're so grateful for you and from the very bottom of our hearts, we wanted to say thank you to you and we pray for you every day and we stand with you and we're believing God is going to do magnificent things through this partner family in the coming days. As a matter of fact, I have a promise from the Holy Spirit about it now. If you want to become part of our partner family or you're even on the fence about it, thinking about it, I would encourage you to do so today by going to josephz.com or you can text the keyword give to 719-25-90029. Your partnership helps us advance the gospel and it helps us fulfill the commission God's given us to raise up a million to reach a billion that's lives a million clear eyed, clear minded reformers to go win a billion. A million for a billion. And we know we can do it with your help. I believe with your help we can impact the world and we're looking forward to stepping into this at a greater capacity than ever before. I just want to say thank you and invite you to the family by going to JosephZ.com today. Spiritual darkness is not simply meant to be pushed back and held at bay. Rather it is meant to be punished. That's why I just wrote this brand new book called Punishing the Darkness. Spiritual Warfare that works. You know the thing people don't get many times is that God calls you to win every time he calls you to results based believing. And when it comes to the powers of darkness that are trying to take over this world, mutilate our children, run this world into the clutches of the devil, God has called you, his believers, to stand up and punish these forces by your faith. When you read this book, it's going to give you effectiveness and the horsepower to push back, even punish the darkness. And it talks about breaking cycles of anxiety, offense, fear, spiritual fatigue, things where it's warfare in the mind, witchcraft, all the things that is happening in the culture. And you've got to recognize that God wants you to rise up and begin to destroy those things of darkness that are trying to destroy your family and you. Even on a bad day, you are anointed to be the very best there is. I hope you get this book Punishing the Darkness, Spiritual Warfare that works@josephz.com today. The prayers of the righteous that have come forward in 2020. The prayers of the righteous in America. The way we've cried out to God. I heard the spirit of Lord say, I'm going to finish what I started. And when we walk these things through, there's one more round he's bringing and it's going to be revival. It's going to be awakening, it's going to be all these things. I actually believe we're stepping into the precipice of a great awakening.