Pastor Tim (24:04)
And the angel who was speaking answered me and said, do you know what these are? I said, no, my Lord, he said. Then he said these words. This was his definition. This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. God was showing Zacharias something profound. He was telling him, you see a lamp stand on one side, but you see it connected to these olive trees that are pouring oil into it. He was telling him, if you have the stuff, the infrastructure, the resources, if you have everything there, but it's not connected to the Holy Spirit, it's nothing. It has to be connected to what God is wanting to do. He said, it's disastrous to have the stuff without the Spirit. He said, you see the lampstand, but you need the oil from the olive trees. You have manpower, you have resources, you have finances, but if you don't have the Holy Spirit, that means nothing. There's nothing there. That's what David Wilkerson was teaching. He says, you can have the points perfectly packed together with the right stories and illustrations, but if it's not connected to those olive trees, then there's no anointing. You can have a structure, what is called a sermon, a service, a song. But if it's not connected to heaven, if it's not connected to a fresh touch from God, then it means absolutely nothing. Because it's not by might, it's not by power, but by the Spirit, saith the Lord. For the past two decades, leaders have been running to conferences to get lamp stands and to say, this is our new structure, this is our new model, this is our new saying. These are the things that we do. But, folks, can I just tell you, that means nothing if it's not connected to heaven. It doesn't. We have people that are casting vision, but have never had a vision of God, have never had a vision of the Holy Spirit, but we know how to cast the vision. We know how to package the whole thing and hand it out and put it on a screen. But if it's not connected to those olive trees, if it's not connected to the by my Spirit, then, oh, God, Help us. And that's what he's wanting us to do, to be a by my spirit, people before William Booth, the founder of the Salvation army, died over a hundred and fifty years ago, he had a prophetic word for his generation before he died, and I think it's an enduring word. He said there are four chief dangers that face the people of God. And he says the first one is Christianity without Christ. He said it's. It's having church services where everything gets exalted except Jesus, where Christ has to be the star of it, not the person in a pope, not a personality. Jesus has to be the center of attraction. He has to be the one that men and women are drawn to. He said the other thing is forgiveness without repentance. He says we have people. Everybody's. Everybody is receiving forgiveness, but not repenting and letting God get rid of the things you got forgiveness for. He said, God. God not only will forgive by his blood, but my goodness, he will come and begin to work on what has held you in bondage. He is a bondage breaker, not just a sin forgiver. And then he says, you better be cautious because he says, thirdly, this politics without God, relying on a person, relying on a party instead of relying on the throne of God. He says to have a heaven without a hell. He says, we've missed it in the church. And finally religion without the Holy Spirit. Oh, God, we need the Holy Spirit. We need the power of God again. He said, Booth said, we have all of them. We have lost our vision of God for his holiness, his glory. We approach him lightly, with superficiality in our services. We have lost the vision of heaven and hell. We've lost the deep concern for men and women in, as we've been talking through, of getting ready for, to put on stage here the cross and the switchblade. We've been getting ready for this production. I told the leaders, I said, this is important. You know, there hasn't been a gospel play on Broadway for over 40 years. I said, this, this has. This is monumental. That God may be wanting to do something that would shake this city again, that would begin the story that started this ministry. This church wasn't started from some formula. This, this church was started on his. On hands and knees, seeking God, an open heaven, hearing another voice. It wasn't because it was a formula that you had a lamp stand and go, if we did these four things, then God's going to come. No, no, no, no. It was connected to an olive tree, where it started with what God was gonna do through the life and the legacy of David Wilkerson. And so you began to realize that what we're talking about doing is putting the legacy of this church on stage for the world to see. And there's something powerful happening. I told him, I said, the clouds are seeming to gather together. And I. And I remember mentioning to him, I said, let me just be very clear. I said, those main actors, they all better be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues. I said, I'm just telling you that right now. I said, I don't care about lampstand gifts. They better have the Holy Ghost not by might, not by power, but by the Holy Spirit. And I want to read to you not only what I read to them, the leaders, but I read to everyone that was in the cast. I read to them this passage. Deuteronomy 11. The children of Israel are on the border of the promised land. And Moses is about to challenge this people to be a. By my spirit, people. Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit. Listen to these words. Here comes the phrase. He says to them, for the land into which you are entering to possess it is not like the land you came out of Egypt, for which you came where you used to sow your seed. Here it comes. And water it with your foot. I'll explain that. That is such an important phrase. I couldn't get over that. And water it with your foot, like a vegetable garden. Verse 11. But the land into which you are about to cross to possess is a lands of hills and valleys, and drinks water not by foot, but from the rain of heaven. He said, I'm showing you a contrast of water with your foot or rain from heaven. I'm gonna explain this to you in just a second. He is contrasting the land of Egypt of your past and where he wants to bring you. And he's telling them, you can try to get water with your own strength, or you can trust God to send it from heaven. You can try to do this yourself or begin to believe that God will show. Let me explain water with your foot and what that means. The Egyptians were a sophisticated civilization. The land itself would only get 1 inch of rain each year. And the only way Egypt could prosper was by taking water out of the Nile to irrigate all the sections around their area, their cities, that would provide for the agriculture and give moisture to its parched land. How did they do it? Here it comes. They would use something called foot pumps to get their water day after day, perpetually exhausting continually. They would Use their inventions to pump water from the Nile into the fields so crops can go grow. It was hard work. They would literally use the Israelites to get their foot on the pumps, and they would just keep pumping to get water this way from the Nile. And God was going, your whole life you've been pumping water this way. But I want to tell you, there's coming a time I'm going to send water this way. He says, I'm going to do something that you can't do on your own effort, you can't do by your own strength. Strength. The contrast was water from the foot is really water from your own energy and your own effort. He said, you're going to. It's going to tire you out. You're going to be exhausted as you're trying to make something happen. But water from the foot is a man's way and man's energy without God's blessing. It's thinking that props and lights and screens and smoke will bring the presence of God. I have news for you. You can bring down this curtain. You can shut the doors. And can I tell you, God doesn't need anything that we have. He can show up all by himself. Anything else? If you think. If you think that a screen or a band or a preacher or a pulpit or this theater, the ornate theater brings the presence of God. We serve a God who doesn't dwell in temples made by hands, and he doesn't dwell in theaters, and he doesn't dwell in giant business projects made by hands. He is God. The worlds, the heavens can't contain him. Pastor Carter Conlon, our general overseer, gave me the strangest request that when I came to Times Square Church, it was the only one I can ever remember that he gave to me. He says, tim, you are my pastor. He said, I'm just an advisor. I'll be a general overseer. He said, I will be there for you every step of the way. And he knows his job. We will be praying. He. This church will be fasting for him on August 26th as he goes in for heart surgery. He's got one job, and he can't mess that up to stay alive. That's his only job that he's got to do. And he only gave me one request, one request, and I remember it. He said, please, please. And he had a reason behind it. He said, when you come here, he said, I know we need some updating. Do not use a smoke machine. He said, I'm so tired of churches using smoke machines, pumping smoke out. He said, it's like they're trying to fabricate this Old Testament presence of God. Turn the lights down, send smoke into the place. Turn the lights off on the stage. You can't see anything but one person and you can't even see each other. He says, we don't need smoke in the church. We need the presence of God in the church of Jesus Christ. I already know we're going to get emails and let's see, send them all, send them all and bust up your smoke machines. Just ask God to show up in our services. Ask God to come down in power again. Well, it sets the mood and the atmosphere. No, God sets that. Prayer sets that. The 1980s, when I first started preaching, I was preaching at a youth conference in Canada. When I did the conference, I'll never forget, it was one of the first times I was doing this. I fasted, I prayed, I said, God, we need a miracle. I've never done this before. It was one of first invitation to anything like this. I remember as a young man in my early 20s, going to Canada to do this thing. I remember preaching from the Book of Daniel to these kids. I didn't know what was gonna happen. I remember where I was. I remember what happened. Preached and it was as if God opened up the heavens and we saw this moment where God showed up. These young people that God began to grip hold of their lives. They found Christ, they found. They found the power of the Holy Spirit. God came and did something. And because there was something that happened, they called me next year to come and do this same conference. But instead of waiting for water from heaven, I came in pumping the. Pumping with the foot. And this is what I thought. If that message worked there, I'm preaching the same message. That's what I thought. I said, I found it. That's the message. And I showed up at this thing and with. I'm pumping with my foot, trying to hype things up and trying to preach this message. And nothing was happening. I felt nothing. The heavens were brass, I can tell you. I remember it vividly. I gave an altar call and one person showed up at this conference. And then that's when you start making up stuff. You start pumping harder. If you're here and you want a better relationship with God, just come to the altar and some more. If you're here and you're breathing, come to this altar and just, just if you have hair on your head, come to this altar. It's like you use everything until you can get everything there. And all I did was I Said, pumping and pumping and pumping. And thinking that now I found something. Something. It was me getting in the way of God. It was me trusting my own invention, my own ingenuity. It was me wondering why God didn't show up. And I remember the Holy Spirit saying to me, you're gonna go back to your room and you're gonna repent. And then you're gonna come back to the service and you're gonna repent to all these kids and tell them you miss God. At that point, I was going, I'm going home. I said, there's no way that I'm doing this. And I sat in that room. I remember. I remember where my room was. I repented, started weeping, crying. And all of a sudden I just said, God, I need. I will do this. I said, but I'm gonna leave it up to you. I have nothing else to say. And I sat there on the stage with all these students. And I said. I said. I preached the message. I said that I never should have preached. I did it because it worked last year. I said, please forgive me. I repented before God. And I said, I. I don't know what came over me. I just wanted success. I wanted me to be noticed. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, you repent and just stand there. I'll take over from here. I don't need your help. Stay out of the picture. And I remember just going, I'll just. I said, and please forgive me. And then I bowed my head at that moment, did nothing. There's no music. There's nothing. And all of a sudden, one corner, you hear some young man weeping and shaking. And another part. Another young lady weeping and shaking. And then all of a sudden, young people just started walking up to an altar, weeping and shaking under the power of God and the presence of God. Folks, look at me. I did nothing. There was no ma. I was. I just said, I messed up. And God goes, I got it from here. If you can begin to get your foot off the pump, I will send rain from heaven. I will open up the heavens. I can do that. It's human effort. I was pumping for water in the first service. And then the second service. God removed all the human effort and said, now let me do what I have to do. Let me do this. I realize how important this is. Every year I tried. I have my Bible reading program. It's from an old Scottish preacher named. Named Robert Murray McShane. And he has. You read these certain chapters every day. Old Testament, New Testament. You go through it. And I was always interested in what kind of man this was. Robert Murray McShane. He was an old Scottish preacher. And they said that this man was a praying man. They found by his pulpit. They saw grooves underneath his pulpit where he would come and kneel daily, praying for an anointing from heaven, praying for the power of God. And I was reading the story like we were doing. They were ending the music part of the church service, and it was time for the sermon. But there was no pastor coming out. And the ushers couldn't find. Couldn't find him or the deacons couldn't find him. It'd be like Kareem finishing with the choir. And you're going, where's Pastor Tim? So the ushers then said, we. We don't know where the pastor is. So they said, find him. And they went to his office behind the stage and saw that the door of the pastor's study, which was backstage, was shut. The light was coming out from underneath, but there was yelling going on behind the door. He's supposed to be out there preaching and he's screaming at somebody in the room. I want to read to you what was in the biography. This is what it says. They came back and they said the pastor was telling someone, unless you go into that sanctuary with me, I'm not going. The ushers came back and said, he is convincing someone to come with him to church. Listen to this. And then he said, he's rather aggressive with the person. That person seems to be reluctant to come out with our pastor. Finally the door opened and one, only one person came out. Who do you think he was talking to? He was talking to the Holy Ghost and said, if you don't come with me, I'm not going out of this office. I'm staying right here, folks. I'm telling you, that has to be our cry for this church, for this ministry, for everything that we do. If you don't go with me, we don't go. We don't leave this place. Where does the rain come from? Where does the. Where does it come from? Is it from pumping of the foot or has it come from heaven? That's why this week of prayer and fasting tonight, as we pray over those in education, students and teachers alike, from elementary to. To high school to College to get PhD programs. As we pray tonight at 6pm for all of you tonight and then 7pm on Monday night, we're going to pray for the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And on Tuesday, we're going to pray for miracles. We're going to pray for healing. How does that happen? How does that do it? Heaven has to open up for that to take place. We have no agenda but to pray for rain. The prayer meeting keeps us from thinking we can reign on our own. We can do it ourselves. George Mueller, who was one of the great, great men of faith, founded an orphanage in Bristol, England, was known for his faith and prayer. Rain would come down from heaven because of prayer. And he said these words that I've lived by and have held onto, and I've hoped to live by them. Let me put it that way. At times I have failed. He said, if I have five hours in a day, I will accomplish more if I pray 1 and work 4 than if I work all 5 hours. It's as if God comes down. God moves, God does it, and God begins to get all the glory for what he wants to do. I. As the band comes, I want to share with you. I was this last week, I don't know, I was getting some bread for a sandwich. And as I was getting the sandwich, I was putting. Trying to put that tie back on it to keep it fresh. And I noticed something. I noticed that it was a color. It was a certain color. And then Cindy's bread, which has all these seeds on, was healthy bread. And so it was. And hers had a different clip on it. A different clip. And I learned something new because when you go to the stores, I don't know if you do that when you get sent to the grocery store, you squeeze the bread. Is it fresh? Is it fresh? You don't have to do that anymore because all those little tags on it let you know that bread is sent to those stores five days a week. Each of those tags represent the day it was cooked, that it was baked, that the bread was baked, that it was, that they send five days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, fresh bread is delivered to every store. And they put a different tag on the bread that you know if it was baked that day. Monday was blue, Tuesday's green. Some of you are writing this down, like, this is important. You don't have to write. There's better stuff to write down to go like, I just want to make sure I'm getting good bread. Okay, Just listen. Monday, blue. Tuesday, green. Thursday, red. Friday, white. Saturday, yellow. And it's funny, they put it in alphabetical order. They keep it the blue, green, red, white, yellow. So if you go Monday to buy bread, if it has a blue tie on it, it was baked that morning. And all I thought was This. I said, God, every time I come to this church, I better have a different color tag on me. I said, I better be fresh from prayer, fresh from heaven. I said, no old tags on me. And Willie, we want. We want fresh tags. That we have been in God's presence every single day, hearing from the voice of God. Here's what I've realized. Here's what I've realized that I want you to. I want you to understand. What I've realized is this. I started to ask God, I said, when does a church, when does this place experience the overwhelming presence of God? When does the presence of God come to a church? How do we know when God is showing up? Where the overwhelming presence of God rains down and people want salvation? We've seen that every single week. We've probably seen in both services last week, 50 and 1, 50 and another. These altars were. How does that happen? How does the conviction. Conviction over sin, conviction over where I'm at in God. You know, it's just me. This is just my thought. I was just praying about this. I said, God, what is it? And I felt that God spoke to me, said two things have to be present for me to visit. Two things. And I just felt the Holy Spirit just say this. He just says prayer and Christ centered worship. Prayer and Christ centered worship. Those things bring desperation and humility. Prayer means I can't do it on my own. Prayer means I can't make it if I'm not praying. Listen to me, if I'm not praying, then I'm pumping with the foot, trying to make things happen. I'm gonna pump smoke, I'm gonna pump stuff on the screen. I'm gonna begin to try to hype things up. I just, I've always said this. I've looked at leaders. And I said, when you don't pray, you'll plagiarize. When you don't pray, you'll plagiarize. And then you're gonna find some Nile river on a podcast, the Nile river at some place. And you go, okay, let's preach that. Let's use that. Let's do that. Let's do this. I said, but when you pray, God opens up the heavens. Prayer means God come and speak to us. And Christ centered worship, where Christ is not, is all in all. Christ is seen in everything that we do. Christ is the land of Egypt depended on human resources, ingenuity and human strength. And there wasn't much rain. There was water, but there wasn't much rain. There was irrigation happening. Doesn't mean nothing doesn't happen. But you get exhausted. People trying to figure it out by pumping their foot with human effort. When God goes, you're expending your energy in the wrong place. I'm just telling you the best thing you can do. This is not a shameless plug. The best thing you can do is really to make time for prayer and fasting. It opens up the heavens. God begins to come. The Nile was their source. They would look. I mean, that Nile could be this podcast, this sermon. I'm gonna listen to this thing. I'm gonna read that book. I'm gonna do what this book says. I see it all the time. I've done it, folks. I've done that thing. I've looked. What are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? And God goes, just get on your knees. Just be desperate for me. I'll open up the heavens. I'll come down and I'll speak to you. They would dig trenches with hand and foot, create canals, all by human effort and ingenuity. If you had money, resources and manpower, you had water from the Nile. There was no need for God. There was no need for Jehovah. In Egypt, water was stored by artificial means and feels irrigated by human toil and sweat. And in Canaan, where they were going, the Promised land, rain was going to be a gift from heaven. Make no mistake. I have to read, I have to pray. I have to study. I'm not saying that you don't study. I'm not saying that Willie and Ricardo and Elder, Vicki and Judah and Kareem. I'm not saying we don't practice. I'm not saying any of that stuff. We want to take our gift and use it for God. But to do only that, to do only study, to do only without asking God, open up the heavens. Go, God come down then. We're depending upon our experience. We're depending upon what our gifting is. He says these words, stand with me as I read this. He says, I will give you the rain of your land in due season. The first rain and the latter rain. Those are important words. That thou mayest gather in the corn, thy wine and thine oil. Look at those phrases. He says, there'll be two rains that will come. He says, there'll be an early rain and a latter rain. The early rain is what's interesting. It's what softens the ground. The first rain that comes says, I'm going to soften the ground and get everything ready. It's the latter rain that gets the harvest ready to come. And that's these. These words were used in Joel later on to prophesy what was to come, starting in Acts, chapter two, that the power of God was supposed to come down. Rain would come down, the Holy Spirit would come down, and God would move again and start to shake. See, when we read this kind of stuff, we're not just reading an old story about agriculture. The Bible says these things happened as examples for us. That's what these things were used for. They were just examples that God wanted to speak to us and use those things. I just kept thinking, I'm going, God, do it again. Open up the heavens. Do it again. Do something powerful. Shake this place. Oh, God, we need a miracle. We need for you to come and work a miracle. Oh, God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I'm just gonna stop here for a second. I received permission to tell this story, and we're going to pause and pray because it's so important to this church and to this life. This church received a phone call just a couple days ago. I want to tell you the story, and then I want us to pray. And it was from our founders. One of his grandsons called me up and he said, pastor Tim, he said, my mom. This is David Wilkerson's daughter, Debbie. The oldest daughter is facing her fifth bout with cancer. So she has seen God bring her through colon cancer twice, lung cancer and stomach cancer. Now she's facing stomach cancer again and needs a miracle. They can't operate because there's not enough a prayer, there's not enough a stomach to take out. And so she needs an absolute. Folks, here's my question. What structure, what sermon, what song can Ricardo sing or sermon I can preach that can stop this aggressive cancer from trying to take Debbie's life? Folks, let me just tell you something. You can come up and you can pump all the stuff. You can go and say, let's just send her nice music and nice cars, and all those things are good. What are you gonna do when our city is in such trouble? What are you going to do, like, candles and sing a song together? We need heaven to open up. We need a mirror. Can I give you good news? Cancer can be healed when God opens up the heavens and sends healing to this place. Would you. Could we pause now and ask God to open the heavens for Debbie Wilkerson? Debbie Yonker, right now? Can we just pause? Can you just join with me and believe me? Come on, open up your mouths. Let's pray for A miracle right now, God, we're praying for a miracle for Debbie Wilkerson, Yonker right now, Father. This precious saint of God, the daughter of Brother Dave Wilkerson for Roger and Debbie right now. They need a miracle in that household. So we're standing together, Lord God, we're believing together for you to send a miracle, Lord Jesus. Oh, God, I'm praying for healing for Debbie. The doctors have said this. They have done everything they can with their own ingenuity and effort, and we're thankful. But, God, now a miracle needs to take place. And so, God, we're standing together as a church, we're standing together to believe for a miracle for Debbie. We're asking, oh God, that by your spirit, that we declare today not by might, not by power, but by your spirit send healing. Open up the heavens and come down, God. I pray rain healing from heaven upon her, Lord. Let her feel a touch from God right now. A touch from God on her body right now. We're gonna believe for that, God. We're gonna believe for that miracle. We're gonna believe that you can come, Holy Spirit. Oh, God, open up the heavens. Open up the heavens, oh God, and come down. Send healing in Jesus name name. In Jesus name, In Jesus name church. I'm going to ask you to continue to remember Debbie Wilkerson. I'm going to ask you to remember Pastor Carter as we begin to pray for them. Folks, we were in a time that. I'm just telling you, this is how important this message is, folks. We don't have the resources to heal cancer. We don't have the resources to fix a heart condition. God has to come. God has to do it. But what's scary is when we do have resources, we find ourselves pumping the water into a place, into our own lives when we need God to work the miracle. Folks, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do what God has asked me to do. I'm gonna ask Ricardo in just a moment to sing a song. I've asked God to make this message real. I just asked him to make it real. Some of you have found in your life, whether you're leaders here, whether whoever you are here, your whole life is based on trying to make things where I'm gonna network, I'm gonna get this. I'm gonna get this job. And finally it's time to stop and just say, God, you do what you need to do. You just do. My goodness. What we've done is we've have. We have pushed and pressed and all. And the Danger is. And the danger is some of you have gotten stuff from that foot pumping that you wish you never would have gotten. And we're not being sarcastic here. I'm not being sarcastic. There are single people here that have pumped about, I'm gonna get a date, I'm gonna get a man, I'm gonna get a baby, I'm gonna do. And all of a sudden you keep pumping. You're going, I'm gonna get on this website, I'm gonna go to this mixer, I'm going to this church. Because they have more young people. Times Square Church. I don't like the men that are in that church. I'm going to a church with nice looking men. It's not the truth. All of you men are good looking. Okay, just listen just for a second. I'm just telling you. I've heard the stories. I've heard the stories. And what they think is, it's just foot pumping. It's just you're not going to a church because God's led you there. You're going there to get a man, tell the truth, or to find a girl. Enough, Enough. And then it never works out. And then you find God's leading me to the clouds moving for another. It wasn't a cloud in the first place. It was a smoke machine. That's all that was. It was a smoke machine that shouldn't have been up the first place. That's all that was. Enough. Stop pumping and trying to get this done yourself. I'm getting that second home in the Hamptons. Stop, stop. Open the heavens, God, and tell me whatever you want me to do. Just open the heaven. Just open the heavens. Come down, tell me what you want me to do. Folks. For two weeks, God's trying to get my foot off the pump. For two weeks, he's dealing with my own heart. Let me do it. And I'm asking God over these next three days, God, we want you to come. We want you to move. We want you to do it, God, we want you. We need you, Holy spirit. We need you, Holy Spirit. So here's what I'm going to tell you. We're going to sing. And if God is dealing with you, I want you to get a balcony, main floor. I'm not. That's all you're going to get. I'm not. I'm not pressing you, you know, I'm not going back to Canadian altar calls. If you have hair, come to this altar. If you breathing, come to. If God is moving, if God is speaking to you, to get your foot up. Get out of your seat. Now as we sing. Just get out and just go. God, I'm surrendering to you. I'm surrendering to you. That's all I'm going to say to you. And if nobody comes, I'm good. I've been obedient to God. Let's just come as we sing this. You come. You come and surrender to the Holy Spirit right now. Come on, let's sing this as you come.
