Transcription
Welcome to this. Sometimes it's not the sermon I prepared a sermon, but I feel the Lord wants to really, you know, when we talk about the fire, for some people it's not real. You wonder what the fire means. The fire is passion. The fire is zeal. And you know, some of us had that fire when we gave our lives to Christ. But when a fire is kindled, when a fire is lit, if you don't stoke the fire, it will dwindle. A lot of people here are carrying weight that is dead weight. And when the fire comes, it burns the debris, it purifies, it sanctifies, it brings power, it brings presence, it brings passion. I'm going to pray for you, but I'll teach you about the fire, and then I'll pray for you. You're going to leave. The Lord wants you all to leave here revived, reignited, and the Holy Spirit will come upon you today like cloven tongues of fire.
You know, when the fire dwindles, let me tell you another thing that happens. You begin to call sin righteousness, and that's what quenches the fire. When we don't have fire, you begin to call a lie a story. You begin to call a fib a tale. You begin to call a lie an exaggeration. When the fire dwindles, you have lethargy and apathy for the things of God. So Elijah had that problem with Israel. The people in Israel, Jezebel had brought, Jezebel had brought her prophets, and they were 850 or more everywhere. Jezebel was the princess, the daughter of the king of Sidon, and God had warned the Israelites not to intermarry. This is not the sermon I brought this morning, but you have to also know that I am a, I'm a voice of a prophet. Mia, today I stand as an [Music] El me as I speak. The revival is penetrating into your [Music] spirit, and then I am also preaching into the atmosphere to the spirits that hold you captive because Jesus died for you, because Jesus shed his blood to redeem you, you will be free from the bondage of sin and death in the name of [Music] [Music] [Music] Jesus.
So Elijah went to Israel and said to Israel, how long would you falter between two opinions? Because Israel, from the demonic influence of the prophets of Baal, no longer saw God. They were torn between the God who led them through the wilderness in His faithfulness and the ones that Jezebel was, was presenting to them. You see, with Jezebel, they could see her, they could see her prophets, and she was the king, the king's wife, so she ruled and reigned. But Elijah was on his own, a voice sounding in the wilderness. Follow him. And so Elijah came and said, why are you neither hot nor cold? Israel was in sin, the sin of idolatry, the sin of adultery, fornication, pornography, and immorality, stealing, corruption, and everything was rife in the nation of Israel. And God looked and thought at these, my people, because He loved Israel so much, He would cry in His, in His delivery through the prophets. He would say, "Where has Israel? What have I done to Israel? I nursed them, I nurtured them, I carried them through the wilderness." Through the wilderness, and the people were watching Elijah. They wanted a demonstration of God's power. And Elijah began to arrange the wood and arrange the water, and what was left was to be the fire.
Why do we talk about fire? Fire represents God's presence because He came to Elijah in fire to revive Israel. Today, He wants me to tell you, He's here with fire to revive you. Why is fire so important? He led Israel through the wilderness by a pillar of fire. The pillar of fire represented His presence. And then He led, He led Moses by the fire in the wilderness. When Moses was there at the back of the desert, like some of us are today, he'd done 40 years, and he wondered if that was the end of his life, and what was he going to do next? He'd run like a fugitive from Egypt. And the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and Moses, the bush burned, the fire burned, but the bush did not burn. And Moses beheld the sight and thought, "This is a wonderful thing." Today, the Lord visits you with the fire of His presence. And Moses said, "What is going on here?" But when the fire came, it brought a transformation of the cycle of Moses' life. Today, the Lord wants me to tell you that there is a cycle that has been broken by the lighting of His fire today in the name of Jesus. If you are here, plagued like Moses in the back of the desert, and you're wondering if that's the end of your destiny, no. He says to tell you that the fire, the problems that you are encountering are the, the signal, you can sit down. Thank you. The signal of the fire. So He needed Moses to see the fire to be drawn to Him for the next assignment. He says, "What you consider the problem is a fire He's lighting to redirect your attention to Him and your destiny."
And so Elijah, so I was telling you that fire is a presence of God. And when on the day of Pentecost, the fire came, the fire came to revive because God needed the disciples to have the fire to take on the world. Today, God is depending on His children to take on the fire that would change the world. So the fire came. The fire we are talking about is real. It's real. That's why I'm standing here, not by my grace, but by the power of the fire. And it's available for everyone. When we sing, "Lord, set my heart on fire," it means set me ablaze. Do you know that the Arab Spring revival, in their way, that began to lead to the uprising, was because a man set himself on fire? Do you remember that? Yes. The devil copies God. That man set himself on fire, and the eruption began. Today, God wants to set humans on fire for Him, and you don't need to struggle. What else does the fire do? It brings passion. When the fire of the Holy Spirit comes, and it is on you already, you will be so passionate for the things of God that you will wake up with songs, singing another person alive in you, singing because you've hit the place of the water of the overflow. I've come to challenge you today. God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent. What He says He can do, He will do it. It's not about we are chasing after the wrong things. You don't need to fight enemies. My God, that's elementary. It's because you don't have His fire.
He told Abraham, He said, "Abraham, come here. I need a friend. If you would be my friend, I would be your defense. I would be your provider." It's first friendship. So when we talk about the fire, we mean stay in His presence. If you are praying 10 minutes, you need to pray 30. If I'm not one to give mathematics, but you know you cannot pray, Pastor Tony said you can't pray five minutes to train children because we are battling demonic powers concerning their lives. You cannot pray 30 minutes to keep a marriage. I'm sorry, I don't care what any preacher tells you. But when you carry the [Laughter] fire, I pray the Holy Spirit interprets it to you, you will be passionate. Nobody will have to tell you to come to church because it's raining, because that's your life source. Nobody will have to tell you to wake up and pray. The Holy Spirit will wake you up because you're on fire. So Elijah said to Israel, "If God be God, serve Him. If Baal be Baal, serve Him." I bring you that challenge this morning. Jesus said, "I don't like it when you're hot, you're not hot, you're not cold, you're just in between. Make up your mind today where you want to be." You cannot come to the altar to receive for He says, "What you sow, you will reap." Come on. No, we are giving God a bad name. He told, He told, He told Abraham, Abraham, "You just be perfect, walk in righteousness, and I'll be your shield, your enemies will be my enemies, my enemies will be." Do you know what that means? One day I was sleeping, and I saw like a person trying to come into the back door of the place where I was, like an evil presence. And in my sleep, I said, "If I take you on in the spirit, you won't survive." In my sleep. And I woke up. That's God fighting for me. You go from campground to campground giving God a bad name. What He's asking you today, He's bringing you. Bring first, come back to me through the purity and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He cannot bless what doesn't please Him. He may do so out of mercy because in the world that Elijah lived in, the Israelites were compromising, even in their business practices. In the world that Elijah lived in, because of the prophets of the world, the compromise of the systems of the world, the men were marrying and having girlfriends outside. Because of the compromise in Israel at the time, they were marrying foreign wives and heathen wives, and they expected the rain to fall. But the rain only fell after Elijah had come with them before God. They were lying, and it's us. We were lying. We were in idolatry. We were in immorality, and we questioned the ways of God. And some of us were discouraged because we had waited long. There are some people here, they've done everything and they've been waiting and saying, "But God, it doesn't seem to have made a difference." Yes, it has. You know, God spoke to me once. He says, "You need to thank Me when we had absolutely nothing." Say, "You need to thank Me for the mercies you don't see." Say, "I am not on your case. If I were not on your case, you would have been consumed, for My mercy keeps you daily, keeps you daily."
I round up with this. In Matthew, I believe it's Matthew 13, it's the parable of the wheat and the tares. Jesus told a parable to His disciples. He said, "A farmer went to plant. He planted a seed, then the seed multiplied, and as the seed grew, the tares and the wheat, the seed, the wheat began to grow, sprung up, and then as the wheat sprung up, the tares began to attack the wheat and wrap themselves around the wheat." And there was intense compromise. They couldn't tell who is the wheat and who's the tare. The two were growing alongside. So the servants came and said to the master, "Did you not plant wheat?" Said, "Lord, did you not say your church will be strong? Did you not say that we'll be more than conquerors? Why are we about to be consumed by the tares?" And then the master said, "While you were asleep, the enemy planted the tares." We have been asleep as a church, the body of Christ, and the enemy, while we slept, planted tares. And then the master, the interesting thing as I close, the master did not fret. He didn't panic. He said, "Let the both of them grow," because He was so confident that the wheat was built to overcome the tares. Today, God is so confident in you because in you is His glory, in you is the overcoming power, because from Zion will come His fire. He said, "When the harvest comes, there'll be a maturation of evil, but that's what I'm waiting for, because there'll be a maturation of My glory." And He said, "When it is time for the harvest," the interpreted the scripture, He said, "When is the time of the harvest?" The angels would come to work alongside the workers and to glean the harvest.
As I round up, I want to tell you something. The devil was created by God. A baby doll created, given to a child cannot be stronger than the child. So you spend time on the baby doll because we don't know the power of God. Today, I pray that God will open my eyes and yours to see into His holy of holies and to know who He is. For those that know their God will be strong and will do exploits. We, none of us can be strong in our own might or power, but when the Holy Spirit comes, He made timid Peter a bold apostle. So Jesus is not worried about what is going on in the world. He's worried about the wheat. Do they know that they have the life to overcome the tares because they were built to overcome? The wheat. So He said, "Take the tares, burn them. Bring the wheat into everlasting power." Today, rise up with me. The choir can come back. Thank you.
Today, why is He not worried? Four reasons, and that's what we're going to pray [Music] for. The reason why God is not worried about the tares is because He expects the wheat, His children, to have His presence, to have His passion, to come into purity. The fire brings His presence, releases passion, purifies us, sanctifies us, such that you will just hate iniquity and love righteousness because the seed of righteousness has been found. You will see sin and you will say, "No," because I've got the glory. You will see money that is unholy and you will see, you will say, "I'd rather have the glory." You will see purpose that is not yours and you will say, "I walk away," because I'd rather have the glory. And then the power, the purity and sanctification that we carry releases His power. And what shall we do with the power? We are to preach the gospel. You want to remember presence, passion, purity releases power. What am I to do with the power? Touch another life for Christ. Touch another life. Easy. Whether in the office, whether you're walking, whether you're in the aircraft, whether you're in the bus, open your mouth and tell the person, "Once I was blind, now I can see." That's all He needs. He will touch the person. For the revival has come. We're going to sing Hosanna again, and then the fire in [Music] our kinging [Music].
The first prayer point: Ask Him for His presence. Say, "Lord, empty me of everything that doesn't please You, and then fill me with Your Holy [Music] presence." After every prayer point, we will sing Hosanna, and the Hosanna is a prayer. "May You be lifted high in my [Music] life." Open your mouth and ask Him for His presence. When you pray, pray for the children, pray for the children that they may be filled with the Holy Ghost and power, they may be filled with the presence of God. And the next prayer point: Pray that the Holy Spirit will ignite passion in you. "Passion, Lord, consume me with passion. I want to be an Elijah for You. I want the heart that You gave David. I want the heart that You gave Abraham." Oh, the highest, let our King be feeling high. Hallelujah. [Music] [Applause]
Your next prayer point is for the fire to purify you, and ask the Lord for the grace to live a righteous life. Ask the Holy Spirit to minister areas to you where He wants you to make amends and to change your heart. I pray that prayer constantly, and I can tell you at every season what the Holy Spirit is dealing with me on in my life. Holy Spirit, today, bring me to the place of conviction that this fire that they speak of, I may truly walk in it. And if you're here and you're sick, ask the fire as the fire comes to sanctify and purify to heal you. "Lord, burn away impurity in my life. Sickness cannot stay in this body." I pray and plug into the sanctifying fire of God that is able to keep me in healing and [Music] wholeness.
Your last prayer point is for power. If you will lay your hands on your head, we will pray for power that as it was in the day of Pentecost, the power will come upon you, the power to live a sanctified life, the power to be prosperous, the power of His presence, the power to get wealth, the power to heal the sick, the power to preach the [Music] gospel. Holy Spirit, Spirit of the living God, come and freshen us. Come and freshen us. And if there's anyone who doesn't pray in the spirit, just where you are, asking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It comes with fire and power. [Music] Out of your belly shall begin to flow rivers of living [Music] waters. Try singing in the spirit. [Music] For, for. [Music] Hosanna in the highest. Let my life. Let [Applause] [Music] our Lord Jesus, I lead Your congregation, oh God, before You in the power of Your Spirit, in the power of Your sending. You said, "If You be lifted high, You will draw all men to You." Lord Jesus, on the altar of God, in the fire of Your presence, I bring everybody under the sound of my voice, those watching online, those who would listen to this message one day. I pray that the fire of Your presence from Your altar of glory will penetrate every life here. I present everyone under the sound of my voice on Your altar as living sacrifices. Jesus, I pray that they will not leave here the same, not one. So that when the trumpet of eternity sounds, oh God, that everybody that hears this message will make it into eternity. But I pray for us today, Lord, that the fire will purify, the fire will release passion, the fire will sanctify, the fire, oh God, will cause us to preach the gospel, that we will be consumed with zeal to do Your work from this day forward. Holy Spirit, You are given to be our helper. We pray that You will help us, for of our own, we cannot. In our strength, we cannot. But Lord, I'm a product of Your mercy. I'm a product of You, oh God, Your mercy. I pray today that the mercy would increase upon us all, and that You will give us Your grace to do Your will and to live lives that glorify You. In Jesus name, we pray. [Music]