James Robison – Greatest in the Kingdom

well thank you I believe you I believe you mean it and it really is a joy to be here with our our church family my wife is here Betty Betty would you just stand up and come this way just a little bit and just turn around so the folks and see the beautiful girl that God led me to soon to be fifty-five years ago so the Lord can show a teenager something good you know that you know I really look forward to being with you because this is a an opportunity for me to speak to the family I came in a few weeks ago on their early service on Sunday morning which is where Betty now normally , will come to this one but I came in to announce that I had had eye surgery this is the first time I preached in about 15 years without glasses I keep reaching up every night to take them off I'm laying in bed and I try to take them off I don't have them get up in the morning try to put them on but I don't need them I had the cataracts removed and new lenses put in and I've got 20/20 vision so that's pretty nice but when I came in to just mention that I would be here this weekend I told you that it was a rather sad time for us because on the 16th birthday of our little her little dachshund our little princess and I remember Betty holding with our grandchildren all around her saying Emmy maybe we got to take her home and she held that little black dog sit up and said this is my little princess owner 16th birthday we said goodbye to her she couldn't see she couldn't hear and I commented to Betty she can't hear a teller she can't hear us tell her how much we love her and so help me God whisper in my ear and he said most people can't hear me tell them how much I love and you know I felt a lot of people praying for us over a little puppy when God gives us those little pets it's a gift of love and he does understand when we say goodbye to him but see I understand something far greater than that and I know you really cared and you know I would care about you if you had to say goodbye you know somehow I would care and I would but you see three days after Christmas not quite four years ago we said goodbye to our baby girl we're sick and bye to Robyn there's no way you describe what it's like say goodbye to a child especially when she's been the greatest witness that you've ever seen in your life there are people sitting all over this building that she influenced leaders in our church that she touched three children that are on fire for God today and one of them married and going to have her first grandbaby at the first of the year and she'll see that grandbaby from heaven but you see I knew I knew as much as you could you had your arms around me if you followed my ministry and the minister of your pastor Robert you know that Robert and I preached very forcefully and with great encouragement on the fact that God wants to give us freedom that's greater than anything we ever imagined and by the way that enemy that attacks us and tries to take us captive let me just tell you it's a 73 year old he never retires he's tireless and he's always looking for an opportune time so if you think you're going to reach a point in your Christian journey or in a certainly age said he's going to disappear no it won't be until he's cast in to that place without her darkness in that pit for eternity in the meantime he's going to be attacking us and I'm going to tell you we need the armor of God and the power the holy spirit and the power of prayer but we also need one another we need a family to stand against the force in the fury of this enemy who has fixed the fiercest assault on the family of God and I'm telling you the most beautiful thing about being a Christian is that we are born again into a family of God and He is our Father you don't show up at church to go to church you showed up at a church service because you are the church because you are the family of the ultimate father and we're to spend our lives revealing what it's like to know that father in that same passage that Jesus came forth preaching in Luke 4 he quoted from Isaiah 61 and he goes straight to proclaiming the gospel to the poor and then Luke it moves into talking about the freedom and the captivity and the broken and so forth but over in Isaiah the very first phrase after he says I'm coming to preach the good news is he came to bind up the brokenhearted and you know what's really hit me is an awareness of how many people have a broken heart and see I don't know each one of you here personally and some of you say well I'm glad you don't you probably wouldn't like me no I probably would and probably with all of your aches and pains and problems and issues I would love you because I've had aches and pains and problems and issues and I know what it's like to need to be loved and to be loved and I want to see every one of us during the course of this little meeting here we have this evening and over the weekend with the campuses I want to see this moment in your life become one of the most transforming moments of your life you know that they've been those moments and I know your pastor could tell you this and I know he's told you who are you having experience at an encounter with God that changes everything about you for the rest of your life and I've come here this weekend praying that you would have a moment like that who you have such an encounter with God that when you walk out of here you'll never be the same you won't want to be the same and you won't be the same and you won't be perfect but you will be in hot pursuit of the person who is perfect and who is the Perfector of everything that needs perfecting and when we pursue him with all our heart and we get in on what he has for us everything begins to change not without challenges not without heartache not without times of brokenness loneliness deep hurt sorrow but he'll never leave you you may run from grace but grace will never run from you you may try to get as far away from it as you can but it will never leave you grace is in hot pursuit of you one of the things that I'd like to get across to you is that you make a commitment in your life that I will never never never never give up I may get knocked down many times I may get beat up many times I may fail I may fall I may falter but I'm getting up you know when you get my age you look back you say there any qualities any characteristics that were really important and meaningful if I've gotten one that I know was meaningful I've been knocked down a lot I am determined to get up I don't care how miserably I fail how far I fall how deep the pain how difficult the situation I'm getting up I want you to think about something the moment you fail to commit to get up you have just started working against the one that is kneeling right there by the pit or the ditch that you're in however you got in it you fell in it by circumstances you were thrown in it or you dug it and found yourself in it there is one that is kneeling there by the edge of your circumstances in that miserable situation in that pit and he's inclining his here and with all my heart I believe he's extending his hand and all you have to do is to look up and reach up and he says I lift you up out of that horrible pit and I will set your feet on a solid rock so the moment you decide not to get up you're saying no to the grace of God reaching down to you with all the love that he could pour out when he hung that love on a cross for you and he's now reaching down to lift you up a few days after we had said goodbye to our puppy we had a an exterminator that comes to our home he's quite a nice person and very effective and we said did you know this princess is not here and we had a little sorrow because she's not running around and you know we teared up and he actually teared up a little bit over our dog but then all of a sudden he got very still and Betty said how is your wife she had heard that she was in a challenge some weeks back and all of a sudden tears welled up in his eyes he said we have called the family the family's coming in she's on life support they're telling us we're going to have to tell her goodbye from the puppy to a wife there's no way to tell you what happened to the next few moments when with arms of love we embrace that man it not only held him as close to our heart as we could get him but we tried to pull him up as close to God as we could get when I came here today and it's not prayerfully prepared for this I said God I have no idea of where everybody is sitting out in front of me it's like us talking about a toughy and he's talking about his wife I don't know who you are I don't know where your family is I don't know your situation but I know a God and a father and I know the Lord and a savior that wants to be the best friend you'll ever have and I'm telling you this entire area where we live it's filled with people who have a broken heart and you say Jenny James if we walk out of here as children of the perfect father what does he want of his family you know he always wanted a family when he created Adam and he created Eve and you don't mind created Eve because he saw it's not good for man to live alone you know what one of my board members said at the last board meeting a few weeks ago who lost his life a few years ago and he's a widower and he happens to be crippled he came in a zl-- Stadium to give his life to Christ when I was preaching more than 40 years ago and gave his life to Christ but he said goodbye this wife a few years ago he said if you wonder God knew what he was talking about when he said it's not good for man to live alone he said you just ought to come over and look at my house my wife's been gone a long time and it ain't good ladies you are such a treasure in such a blessing but when God created us he wanted a family he wanted a family that the father could love and the family could love the father and you know what else he wanted and this seems to me one of the biggest challenges he's got he wanted his family to love one another that's what he wanted it's the last part of the Lord's Prayer in John 17 that we would know the father like the son knows the father have fellowship be the family of the Father be perfected by his word not divided and beat up with it not go to war with it and war over it but allow the word to transform our lives and then we love one another like he loves us and then the world will know we're his disciples let me tell you something I've been preaching for more than 50 years I'm seeing Christians today and Christian leaders begin to love one another more than I ever have in my 50 years that's the miracle God's been praying for and let me tell you something this church this pastor and this staff has had a whole lot to do with inspiring the Church of Jesus Christ to behave like the family of the perfect father aren't you grateful for that you all are an inspiration all over the world and you know we live in a very blessed community do you realize that I mean we are really blessed in so many ways but you know what I'm excited about a blessed community and blessed people who go here are excited about being a blessing you know how you bless the Lord you know how you live a blessed life you live to bless others that bless is God and that blesses you you don't have to wait for a return when you just pour his blessings out on others you know what I see happen so often and it happened in my life you've heard our pastor talk about it you've heard other guests here talk about it at times in our Christian life we get defeated depleted sometimes spiritually exhausted sometimes when we throw our hands up a preacher was preaching in our Bible conference years ago I was totally exhausted and I'd gone up and set up in the upper level of the Coliseum and he started talking about about Samson and how powerful he'd been and how effective him and now Samson is blinded and he's been blinded because he was deceived and he bought into the deception and he was vulnerable and he missed God and this will be a god and he's grinding at the mill and this pastor talked about so many Christians they grind it's like they just work all the time and they never get anywhere and I just started trembling and crying and I laid my head on the chair in front of it I said God I'm a preacher and you bless my ministry but I'm exhausted I'm so tired God please help me I feel like I'm just going in circles that was just the beginning of a move toward God in miraculous freedom and deliverance that not only changed my life changed your pastors it changed millions of people because God broke a yoke and the shackles and he opened my eyes where I could see and I began to see what he sees and I see it now and so when I look out at you and I speak to you from the father I want to say to every person it feels like you're grinding or you're just not getting anywhere and you're you're tired I want you to know there's a load lifter there's someone who says I tell you what get in the yoke I've got and it'll suddenly become a light load because I've got it but you're going to have to respond you know how we have to respond to God just like the prodigal responded to the father because all of us in our life we take those little prodigal journeys into the far country someone says James how far is the far country it's one step out of the will of God it's one step away from the direction of God the wisdom of God the protection and provision of God one step you know what that boy did he did what so many people do they come to the Father and they say you know you have so much and you promise so much we'll give it to me give it to me give it to me do you know what many people say I'm a user they spend their lives as users in America they say you got to have connections to be a success God says you got to have connectedness to be a success connected to the body submitted to the head that's how you get ahead but we become users we have a tendency say give me God give me give me give me give me give me I used to talk about how all my grandkids would come running in say I thought let's do this let's go go I lost every federal office we thought Apple used to sit down in his chair I had a little four-year-old every time you'd see me the chair he'd come jump up in my lap he'd get real close to me they'd look at me and say Papa what you want to do and I'm driving down the road one day and god says James I just love the way you come to me now then he pointed me to Alec and how Alec came and God said James you spent so much of your life thought of this father that do this to this he said the James now it's like every day you just crawl it in my lap you just get as close to my heart as you can get and you look at them eyes and you say father what you wanted and you know what I discovered in a short time I got so close to the Father's heart I could feel his heart and then I began to say father what's on your heart let me tell you what happening if you get this if you get little not safe you won't be the same because if you let the father know even though you're aware he wants to hear your heart you can share your heart with him you let him know that more than anything you want to know what's on his heart you know what he'll did he let you in on what's on his heart and once you get captivated by what's on his heart your whole world changes see that's the way Jesus lived Jesus didn't go to the Father because he needed power because all power was given to him in heaven in her and all of the divine attributes of the creator dwelt in him modeling you know why he went to the Father because he loved the father and he wanted to hear the father's heart and do the Father's will and he only did those things that pleased the father because he knew please [Music] because he listens you find out the father will always listen to you but the moment he knows you want to hear him he'll start talking to you and I promise you you can have an ongoing conversation with the father every waking moment you can walk with him and talk with him and you will hear him well this prodigal came to the father and said give me everything that's going to be mine and so he split it up between the two boys and the younger son took everything and as you know went into the far country out of the wind the father away from the house he wasted all of his substance all of his wealth out of his reputation all of his character and he was so spit in riotous wicked living that he ended up of all places for a Jewish boy to end up in a pig pen feeding the pigs and eating what they ate now when we walk out of the father's shadow and we move out of the shelter the Almighty and we move out of his will we will soon be eating the filth the world offers and it can become addicted and it will always be destructive and that's precisely what happened to the boy and he could have stood in that Pigpen and said I never sent left home I'm sorry I left I regret it I hate what's happened and died in the Pigpen but he didn't he said the hard hands and servants have better food to eat than I do I'm going to go back to my father's house and the minute that boy said I'm leaving where I am and I'm headed to the father's house that's the first step in repentance when you decide to leave where you are and all you've done and all you've been and say I'm going to the father's house and by the way if you're a Christian you at least have a glimpse of what the father's house looks like if you are content in the Pigpen you've never been born of the Spirit if you can continue to live in that Pigpen and find contentment and satisfaction aid you need to be born again from above you are not a Christian you're simply going to church and you everything the father gave his son to buy for you as a family member don't miss it but if you're in the Pigpen and you've ever glimpsed the father's house you don't want to live in a pig pen you want to get back in the shelter in the shadow of the Almighty and that boy headed for home now I want you to look at this picture you think that father was standing around all those months however long the one said what a sorry kid what an ungrateful kid how rotten he is not a chance the Bible says Jesus said in the story he saw that boy coming along well you know what I think that father did every moment that boy was gone I believe he went out there on the porch and I believe he looked as far as he could and if that road had a bend in it I don't believe there were many days here in the weeks that that father didn't walk to the first Bend and he looked as if he's coming I think he probably went to the next bend I think every day he said want my boy to come home I want my boy to come home that's the prayer of every parent here children here have you young people in uni AIDS and away from God you're not only breaking the heart your parents and those that know how to love and love you break the heart of the father who gave his son to redeem you in order that you might have all the father wants you to have when that boy was coming that father saw it and just like I said of grace a little while ago grace never runs from it runs to you and that father ran right to him and he grabbed him and he loved him the boy said dad listen to me that I'm not fit to be anything but a hired hand I don't I don't deserve this son I want to I want to be a servant that's what God said I'm not looking for servants I'm looking for sons and daughters I'm looking for family and he put a robe on him and covered all of his field and he put the ring of sonship on him and let him know his family and then he put sandals on his feet and then he killed the fatted calf and had a party my boy that was lost has come home that's how the family that's how the father should always always will respond the board that was at home he was upset because he was depending on his own righteousness there his own goodness his own religion and he was miserable right there at home but the father said son I do the same thing for you even though you're overhearing your own stuff irreligious self-righteous attitude I love you son everything I have for him is yours too boy I want you to know that the father is so anxious to pour his love I don't but now watch what happened the father didn't want to serve Him and yet Jesus says it's not like it is with the world where they like to rule over you and master and boss him be seen in praise and recognized and lord it over you he said the greatest in my kingdom is servant but the father doesn't want servants to serve Him he wants sons and daughters who serve others like his son served us and Jesus said I didn't come to be served or ministered unto I came to minister and to serve and he said as my father has sent me even so send I you now I stand before you 55 years in public ministry most people say James you've had a pretty effective ministry millions of people come to Christ millions of little children's life say millions of people got fresh water people have been set free from sexual trafficking by the thousands you've tried to help put God's arms of love around the world and you all helped us to do it with your prayers and Gateway with the support and many of you with your support and you say James you've been a an effective speaker and you've spoken to millions and you've spoken to leaders church leaders national leaders world leaders my goodness God's giving you a gift greatest among you is not spokes on greatest in the kingdom is servant let me just tell you emphatically the greatest thing is happened in my life it's not preaching to millions or speaking to leaders the greatest thing in my life is serving others do you want to know why leaders listen to me because I don't want anything from them I want to give you everything God's got born and they know it do you know my business leaders have listened to me I don't want their money I hope they give to god I hope they support outreaches but all I want to do is help them be what God's designed them to be I love them I'm serving I like to help people more than anything in the world so when I come in here today I'm saying how can I help you step right into the center of God's will and realize that you can't do anything greater on this earth they go out of percent how can I serve you how can I help you I started out telling you about how I came in here and told you we lost a little puppy I mean we had that little dog 16 years you know what I did with that bit annoyed I started trying to find another one and I didn't know if she was ready she said House of hundred but I worked real hard for weeks to try to find her puppy and I found one little face of one little puppy because I didn't think she wanted to go through the house training everything and this one was house training and I thought I'm going to get her to come to her office in Janice Meyer who takes pictures all over the world of a mission field and goes here well Janice helped me find one and so the lady brought the puppy to my office with my assistants Victoria and Carol and with Janice there who loves dogs so much and here comes two puppy and I sit down on the floor with a puppy and I'm kind of watching the puppy in talking about the puppy and all of a sudden I just looked up at the girl that brought the puppy I just said I don't know if we're here about the puppy I don't know about the dog I want to know about Jesus I'm sitting on the floor I want to know about it how he you care will appear I'm not doing real good my marriage is not just doing as I said that's why we're here it's not about funny it's about you let me just say this we went into the presence of God we took the puppy to the house to meet Betty but really so Betty could beat the girl if you could just read the text I got from last night I'm sure she'll be here this weekend so will the husband that they haven't been together they going to be here she may be here now she said she'd be tomorrow with her with her husband I'm her servant you know what that girl knows a couple a mission photographer two assistants to this servant we're all her servant and you know when she believes Gateway will be her servant because we're the family of the perfect father you see I have lived when my eyes are on Jesus looking through his eyes and seeing an opportunity for the Sun for the Lord for the Shepherd for the shelter for the shadow to show up now here's what God looks for you he wants you today to make a commitment I will be a servant of the kingdom jesus said if you lose your life for my sake that's kingdoms sake you're going to find you try to keep it you'll miss it he's calling every one of you here what happened to me when I was a teenager what happened to me when I was a preacher just like what happened to Robert well we had to come back say Lord being a spokesman being a preacher it's not it if we're not yielded and filled as a servant were defeated and we maybe that commitment he wants every one of you here today to make that commitment I am going to be a servant of the kingdom and that's how be most affected not as a preacher not as a teacher but as a servant and then listen to me closely there many of you here that need to do today with someone where you confess I've got a need with that sweet little girl is when I'm sitting on the floor and partner I got a need in my marriage I need help when we confess our sins we confess our weakness we confess I need then we are healed and that means we need to bring somebody into the game you think Robert doesn't know I could call him into the game you think he doesn't know he could call me into the game you think his family doesn't know that you think it doesn't bless me Josh to know that he named your brother after me I'm sorry you missed it by a year or two because he didn't know me too well but bless your brother's heart he has to struggle with that issue of being angels but you know what that said about Robert I love James James loves me James loved Jesus only name boy James same thing Mike Huckabee said hit Mike Huckabee went ahead and named the brain kid after me he and try that I'll have a few more Josh listen to me today I want to pray for every one of you who say I want to be a servant of the kingdom and the blessing that's on me I believe God says here put on you so if you want that I want to pray it for you but then there are those of you that need to come and tell someone right here a counselor I got a real heavy load I want to share it with you I want every one of you in this building good say James when I walk out of here I know there will be a family member I don't want to be pleasing to the Father I want to behave like the family and the child of the perfect father and I'm at least going to have to enable me to do it and you're going to pray for me happen if you want that I just want you to stand up and I'm just going to pray for you will you stand all over the building you said I want that I want to walk out of here a servant of the kingdom pray for me this statement others of you in just a few moments we're going to need to come forward you're going to need to come to one of these counselors they're going to be right down here in just a moment and you take them by the hand and say I want you to pray with me I got a tremendous need in my life please pray with me father I pray for every single person that's standing here I pray that you will forgive them you will cleanse them and you will fill them to overflowing with your spirit you let them know they are forgiven they are clean they are beautiful and they are your children and they are the servants of the kingdom would you say after me Father in Heaven I'm a member of your family I will be a kingdom servant for your glory and to bless others as you have blessed me in Jesus name

Channel: gatewaychurchtv

Views: 7,968

Rating: 4.8425198 out of 5

Keywords: gatewaypeople, Gateway, Pastor Robert, sermon, Dallas, Texas, Southlake, relationship, Jesus, God, Honor, love, Exposing The Enemy, Exposing the Antichrist

Id: dPZAGEiRJqA

Length: 34min 0sec (2040 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2017