Scott Shelton | Session Two: M.E.A.T. Meeting Annapolis | May 2021

don't you love the lord give honor to bishop thank the lord for him sister wright pastor wright and all the staff here we've honored all of them honored all of you i want to read um acts chapter 12. i don't know why i'm going to read this verse it just popped in my head a few minutes ago i felt to read it acts chapter 12 verse 11 now this this i mean this has been one of those verses that in the last year has worked me over quite a bit and uh and when peter was come to himself he said now i know of a surety now i know of a surety that the lord hath sent his angel and hath delivered me out of the hand of herod and from all the expectation of the people of the jews i've thought a lot about that verse since the lord and i've i've talked a lot about it in different times and in different settings i am i would have in fact i did argue with brother right a long time because he was trying his best in my early tutelage with him to beat a few things out of me some of those things he was trying to beat out of me i didn't know needed to be be beaten out of me and thank god for relentless beating and the brother left me on the curb in california one time it ain't today [Applause] i'll stop talking about it well i'll tell you this it's not a i don't say it in in the context of woe is me it was probably one of the greatest things he's ever done to me or for me and when when i realized he wasn't coming there was a little diner down the street from the hotel and so sister wright was all upset at him for leaving me on that curb and i thought well he'll be back in a minute once he gets her settled in the room he's going to come back out here and put that big arm around me and talk to me and and it's gonna be okay well the brother never came back and so i thought i could see that little diner down the road i thought well i'm gonna go down there and i'll wait on him down there he'll come find me i ate an entire pecan pie that's the truth before god i ate the whole pie and drank coffee all night long waiting on him and finally about daylight i went back and got in my room and brother franklin howard came and picked me up for lunch about 11 o'clock and i said where's bishop where's brother right he said oh god they've gone to play golf like you abandoned me on a street curb and you down there playing golf somewhere in my english but that day that night and that day were probably some of the most profound moments of my life and it began it began a revelatory time for me in realizing exactly some of the things we need most desperately in our lives and i didn't appreciate it then like i do now having somebody in my life that could say no and would say no you you don't have a whole lot of peace and confidence with the pastor in your life if they can't or won't say no and um i have come to the conclusion brother wells that we need two things for sure in our lives and ministries a hammer and an anvil the anvil in your life will be the situation or the circumstance or whatever season you're going through and god takes you as that thing he's trying to shape and mold and lays you across that anvil the hammer in your life will be the spiritual authority that god put there that works on you and sometimes it's a gentle tap and a nudge and sometimes they've just got to lay the thunder to you but as i said last night paul's prayer was my little children of whom i travail again and birth for you till christ be formed in you and that that forming sometimes is gentle and it does not hurt it's not it's not hardly even noticeable but then there's other times that it is highly visible and very noticeable and even i could say painful but the hammer doesn't measure pain and the anvil doesn't register pain they only know when you fit they only know when you're where you're supposed to be and when that hammer finally meets a solid spot it knows i've shaped him there i formed him there and the lord never backs off until we reach those places where he's finally got us formed you know the verse of scripture i believe it's in malachi somewhere in through there the scripture talks about as a silversmith the refining of the silversmith and likens us to all of that this lady i read this article a ladies prayer group had read that verse in their devotion and wanted a more full grasp of what that really all meant so one of them said well i know a man that owns a jewelry store i'll go talk to him because we're talking about the silversmith and the refining of silver let's go talk to a jeweler he'll know the answer so she goes and she told him what she wanted to come talk to him about and he said that's fine i'll be in my shop whatever day i'll actually be working with some silver so just come on and i'll answer your questions best i can well when she got there she starts telling him all this well he had set his burner up and he had that ladle and he put all those silver nuggets in it and he had some molds set up and he put that fire on and and started the heating process and while that was going on he was getting some other stuff ready talking to her and there came a point she said that as she talked to him he quit looking at her and he got to where all he was looking at was that ladle of silver and she kept asking her questions and he's answering it but he never took his face off of that and finally in the middle of their conversation he grabbed that ladle and began to pour she said now how did you know when that was ready he said well the scripture that you're talking about the only way of a silversmith or or anybody that works with jewelry and precious metals the way to know silver is finished and ready to be molded is when i can see my reflection in the surface of it and god leaves us in stuff in ministry in life he leaves us in it until he can see himself in us then when he can see himself in us he begins to apply us to the kingdom and he pours us into whatever shape and mold he wants us to be in and therein lies our value when we're able to be shaped and molded when peter was in prison i've talked about this a lot in various places but when peter was in prison i mean the little brother was he had a lot of peace now i can just go and tell you without shame had that been me laid up in the joint and they're gonna lock my head off at first light old chunky would be up travailing and all kinds of stuff if i ain't sleeping these two jokers i'm chained to not gonna sleep either it's gonna be miserable for all of us tonight but little pete had so much peace that when the angel came and the light shone down in the prison cell with him he was so asleep he didn't know the light had been turned on and and it was so much so that the angel had to put a foot to rib to get the little brother to wake up and then when he wakes up he still saw out of it the angel says to him son you have got to get a hitch and you giddy up you got to get up we don't have much time you know the rest of that story he's delivered right out the front door of the joint and then the scripture says i think it's in verse 10 9 or 10 that he wished not what was going on he wished not what was happening to him he thinks up until verse 11 he's thinking i'm having a vision or dream he does not comprehend with the cognitive mind i've been set free but then after that supernatural experience and angelic visitation he comes to the second intersection or the first crossroad after the prison gate and the angel leaves him then he says now i know for a surety that i've been delivered from the hand of the king and from the expectations of the people of the jews he could have left that second statement out but it was so significant and necessary for us on today that it was put in there i've been delivered from prison and he equates his second deliverance with that of being delivered from a physical prison i've been delivered from what pharaoh was going to do to me and i've also been delivered from what people expected of me people's opinions i'm free of that now i don't know how it's possible for us to be truly apostolic and truly used by god and still be imprisoned by what we are afraid people are going to think of us and one of those things that bishop has helped be the hammer in my life for was that very issue getting to the place that i don't worry about what people think about me anymore i'm not going to tell you the thoughts never crossed my mind i have not yet ascended to that height of spiritual maturity i'm trying to get there but even though i think about it sometimes i do i mean i know this sounds my wife's so so wonderful she tries to help me speak a little more pleasantly but i really just i i guess i've just gotten to i can't tell you that i don't think about it anymore but i don't care um that's kind of become my new mantra in a lot of ways i don't care i don't like you i don't care you get on my nerves i do not care i'm going to learn to say it multiple languages but i have looked around in in in my lifetime and not just mine but a lot of our lives we are a prisoner as much to what people think of us as we are to a physical prison we will not be used of god one of the things that has grieved me and i think is grieved the holy ghost too over a period of time we we've gotten to the point that apostolic ministry has been so marginalized that in a lot of settings even among we preachers if you say and you all know this to be the facts you cast the devil out of somebody on sunday well tuesday if you tell that to 10 random preachers nine of them may look at you like a mew looking at new gate and and i've had them say i had i had a member of a district youth committee was in arkansas call me and said brother shelton i just stepped out of the altar because there are two kids down here with demonic possession going on and everybody thinks they're just bad behaved children are kids teenagers but they're possessed and i just told the rest of the youth committee that's saying what do we do for them that these kids have a devil and they need to be delivered and and i've just been laughed at and told to get out of the way that i'm causing confusion and that's been our mindset for apostolic ministry it goes back and i know this is an old hat but it goes way on back to the latter rain and the problem was in the latter rain they you had amy simple mcpherson catherine coleman a.a allen jack coe and william branham now they all had some some similarities and commonalities among them one of them was they were all very powerfully very gifted people very spiritually sensitive people two they had a lot of visibility they they were highly recognized people uh three there were a lot of results that took place in their ministries jack coe was once arrested in florida for practicing medicine without a license the medical establishment hated him because everybody that went to his revival meetings those tent meetings was getting healed and it was costing the doctors and the hospitals and all these communities he was going to costing them revenue because the little brother they getting the money check from every week for you know a head cold he's praying for him god's healing them so the state of florida arrested him one time and charged him with practicing medicine without a license that was all they come up with but again another one of those common traits that these guys had william branham was so sensitive brother barnes had a vision about him one time a night vision he called him and the lord spoke to him and gave him a very specific word for william branham and he said lord i don't know william branham i don't know how to get through to him and the lord said well i believe he was going to be in shreveport the lord said he's going to be over there doing that crusade you go and tell him what i've told you and he told the lord he said well i'll go i'm going to obey you but there's no way i can get to him he's got security and he's got all the staff and when he gets through they usher him off because he just collapsed from exhaustion they're not going to let me back to him so you're going to have to have him call me out and and send a personal invite for me to come back there they won't let me go so he gets over there to the meeting and william branham is doing his deal and he stops and brother barnes at that time had a white stetson hat he wore not like a clint eastwood cowboy hat but a stetson and more of a gentleman's hat and he sat in there with that hat and branham stopped what he was doing he said you back there in that white stetson uh two nights ago you had a dream about me the lord showed you some things and told you to come tell me something but you said you couldn't get to me because of he said so my staff will come get you when we're through and bring you to the back and and i need to know what the lord told you that's how sharp his gifting was well they get him back there and he tells brother branham what the lord showed him and he had seen him going along and then he went into a deep pit and the lord said to him he he has prophesied his own death for so long that if he don't stop it's going to come to pass and that's not my will for him and there was some other things involved so he he tells william branham that and branham looked at him smiled thanked him and sent him on his way and he went into all the false doctrine he went into and he died when he said he was going to die now the the thing that most people don't know is before william branham died he did go to an apostolic man in louisiana and repented for all the false doctrine he had taught and god restored him but a.a allen same issue he had issues in his life the moral fabric of his life was not quite what you would need it to be jack coe basically died from depression he hid in a hotel room one time prayed for god to kill him the same guy that was arrested for practicing medicine without a license and these guys were they they were competition with one another really they had probably three of the largest tents that america had ever seen used for church services and tens of thousands of people showed up month after month after month their crusades uh amy i think it was amy simple mcpherson who faked her own death at one point they were on vacation and some were down close to mexico and she faked her own kidnapping they had a funeral for her weeks later and then after the funeral she came walking out of the desert somewhere up nevada or something and talking about how she had been taken captive and the lord had delivered her and transported her to there but the problem was she didn't look like she'd been in captivity for months and the clothes she was wearing certainly didn't look like she just made a mad escape from somebody but it was all a pr stunt catherine coleman oh you know and if you if you get online and look at them you it don't take long to watch some of those old black and white videos from their ministries to come face to face with two or three stark realities one there was a lot of faith in those meetings probably as much faith or more faith in the people than in the person with the mic and god did a lot of stuff in those crusades because of the faith of the people not the ministry of the dude that had the mic which proves god will do a whole lot of stuff in spite of us but uh then here you know however long later comes little benny hen and little benny goes out to i believe it was amy simple mcpherson's grave or catherine coleman whichever one i can't remember right now one of them she only wore a white dress i can't remember which one of them it was is mcpherson yeah amy sample mcpherson in every crusade service she did all she wore was a white dress and she sang all the same songs that little benny sings well ben hen comes along and he admitted that he goes our wood and in time past he was going out to the cemetery where she was buried and would lay on her grave and talk to her and there would be great anointing that would transfer to him and he caught her spirit out there at the graveyard and so he starts singing the same songs in his crusades that she's saying in hers singing them singing them the same way she sang them and it's all a pr stunt it's all and then when you get to our day in that time you've got these guys like that and uh others that the sensationalism of their ministry you know and we've all said it and asked it how do how is it that the biggest nut jobs in the world have some of the biggest followings in the world well believe it or not humanity likes a good dog and pony show and we are easily duped and mesmerized by sensationalism um and and but yet we do finally reach a point where our palate is no longer satisfied with sensationalism and we're we're hungry because it's not feeling i love chinese food but chinese food don't fill you up like a good steak from down there taste of texas in houston the moment of silence would probably be an order for that but i like good chinese food the problem with it is you're hungry in 30 minutes even if you just demonstrated gluttony 30 minutes later you're hungry again well sensationalized church is exactly that um sensationalized anything kingdom is exactly that it tastes good for the moment and you enjoy gorging on it but it really doesn't last it's not feeling to the point and it's not it's not something that that keeps you content well a few years ago among us there were a group of men who didn't have the guts to do it until the elders had passed on who had been vanguards of truth for us for a long time they began to jump nuts and go after this emergent mess and we're going to be the emergent church and we're going to be relevant well and and i said that vicariously but the truth of the matter is they did not have the guts or the courage to do that while some of those elders were alive because they would have grabbed them by the shirt collar and drugged their behind to an altar and told them you're going to stay here till you pray past this mess this is heresy and we're not putting up with it and thank god for a generation of men who were not afraid to say no fencers are not to keep everything out it's sometimes to keep some stuff in but with the decay of our fence lines we have allowed the enemy through cunning craftiness to bring what we thought were good church growth initiatives and good great ideas even some of their music we've allowed them to bring that mess into the house of god thinking this is going to enhance our reach to the lost when really what it was was a it was espionage it was a coup the enemy figured out how to seduce us and get strange fire on our holy altars part of the reason that he's managed to do that in the last decade or 15 years is because we we have we really have gravitated as a people by and large away from fixed points with resolute voices that will tell us no we don't want to be told no i tell pastors all the time they want me to do a leadership deal talk to their leaders whatever i hack all the leaders off apparently because i tell pastors all the time if you want to know the motive that any one leader in your church has and they've come to you with some new idea about what they want to do tell them no five minutes before church and if they sulk and suck their thumb all the way through church you made the right call but if their worship doesn't indicate a refusal at all they pass the test cut them loose we we have we have experienced a season and a time among the apostolic church where we we didn't want that though brother middleton we didn't want somebody to tell us no that man has told me no i asked him he may have blocked this out but he one time i asked him i said bishop um and i don't even know why i wanted one my daddy never would let me have one he was scared of him but i said bishop because i had hair at the time and i thought man that wind blowing through my hair on a motorcycle son i said bishop i've been looking at something i remember the table we were sitting at and he was to my right and i said what would you feel about me getting a motorcycle absolutely not just like that okay he went on to explain why later but somebody said something to me not long ago um brother you ought to get a motorcycle a rent one i've got one you can borrow like well first of all sparky it would take like six months of practice before i was willing to get on it secondly i can't well why not because like a hundred years ago the bishop said no and it's been over 20 years he said no then and if he felt like that had changed he would certainly let me know that and it hadn't changed so there's no need for me to go back and ask him again i'm not going to go ask him again because the answer is going to be are you kidding me no i told you no and it's still no you just heard it it hasn't changed authority i stood right here in this platform we got back from singapore and i knew i shouldn't have done it but i i felt like he had something to say so i told everybody just to hug one another and visit for a minute and i looked at him i said do you are you do you want to say something yeah i do and he got up and came and i was trying to give him the microphone and just go sit down and he put that arm around me and held me i'm talking about grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me right up he said god said that he showed you three people in this room and to deal with them and you're trying to figure out how not to deal with them publicly but you're going to deal with them publicly and nobody's leaving this room i don't care if it's daylight tomorrow nobody is leaving here until you obey god well that was done publicly and you could feel the tide of sympathy and compassion that was trying to be birthed and then the bishop said and don't you feel sorry for him either two years ago i got a shellac and in houston in front of 200 people brother sister elms were there just laid the thunder to me i felt it coming when i said what i said i knew he was coming i turned and looked and out of the corner of my eye here he came had his own mic that time and then made me teach two more hours on top of the two i had just gone now i'm saying all that somewhat funny but you you will never know how thankful to god i personally am knowing that there is an authority in my life somewhere that will not long ago that man picked the phone up and called me this year he said what's going on man i say hello he says what's going on what do you mean i can't feel your spirit where are you at what there's a disconnect between us what is it what's wrong it wasn't anything between us it was just i was kind of shut down from the whole world i just kind of hit the end of a rope and run into a wall and so we talked about it and he helped me and gave me some direction about a month ago my phone rings early in the morning and two hours later i had some more direction well i'm 53 years old i am not a child nor a novice neither is this heaven and i still need somebody with their hand on my life not just a voice in my and i appreciate people saying well i'd like you to be a voice in my life no no no no i just want to know who the authority in your life is and we have created a culture where it's cool to have voices in our life but we don't want authority in our life god is going to stir the gifts up in the body of christ in these last days beyond what the latter rain ever saw we are going to see miracles take place in our churches in our church services in our homes on the job in the street on a level that mankind in our lifetime has never seen before but if we're not going to end up bankrupt and messed up and a bunch of rocks doing our job for us the missing length that we must have that the latter rain movement did not have is accountability you cannot be accountable to spiritual authority while being a prisoner to people's expectations you can't do it if if my addiction is your expectation i'll never submit to authority but when you are finally submitted and i didn't know this up front and if the brother would have just told me early on it would have saved me in him both a lot of conversations but submission to authority is what ultimately freed me from the expectations of people there are a lot of churches that i have gone to one day phone rings we're driving along in our little honda odyssey kids are asleep the phone rings i'm looped into the bluetooth on the van and it's the bishop and i started laughing and i told my wife i said get your phone out pull up my calendar she said why i said because he's about to cancel six weeks worth of stuff she said no he didn't i said yes he is you when when we start talking you just start deleting okay hello hey man i get i get a little juiced up when they start out like that hey man yes sir i said yes sir what are you doing i'm driving home where you been i told him how long are you going to be home i looked at jennifer and winked i said three days where you going after that i muted the phone i said get ready i took it off mute i told him how long are you there i told him when you're coming home how long are you going to be home after that i told him where you going after that i told him this went on i don't i doubt very seriously he had a calendar in his hand but brother simpson my hand to god six weeks exactly from that that moment he stopped asking me questions and then he said okay cancel all that i said yes sir now this one right here you will never preach for him again do you hear me never he has wandered away from the truth he has walked away from truth and the only reason he's got you coming is so he can feel what he's not willing to pay to have himself and you're not going there and these two over here you can preach for them when i tell you to not until six weeks now to those who travel full-time brother baptist we understand what that means when people cancel six weeks of our junk the human mind says that's six weeks of paychecks but obedience i said it last night obedience is the threshold to the supernatural he's done that twice now and in both occasions within hours of hanging the phone up i've had one time i had a man show up at my house and said i'll have my secretary send you a check for and it was several thousands of dollars he didn't know what was going on he didn't know i just cancelled all my he had no clue phone ring hey the lord told me to send you a check hey the lord another call another call another call and more money came in during both of those seasons of of sitting down because my authority told me to the revenue stream went up and god sent more money my direction than what i could have earned on my own efforts obedience says to god i can trust him refusal to obey says i can't trust him yet and so back to the grind and the breaking process you go but these gifts and these ministries that god has trusted us with and called us to be good stewards over they require something from us and it is surrender and submission to authority there are perils and pitfalls to apostolic ministry it's it's not all and i know you know this but it's not all about the next pulpit or the next engagement or the next meeting or the next whatever sometimes it's about the seduction of people the kindness of people it has and and people want to be a blessing to you they want to do something they want to be kind they want to whatever and on one hand you feel the need to let them do whatever because you don't want to hurt their feelings but on the other hand you know and you've heard bishop talk about this on the other hand we know you better not get comfortable with the kindness of people to the place you begin to expect people's kindness because you'll leave jesus and look for people every single time i don't care one day i was talking to the lord and to anybody else it may have sounded like i was griping and complaining apparently it sounded like that to him too but a friend of mine owns a plane and he's constantly praying and believing god to give him a jet so he can just fly me and a few other guys around all the time just i just feel like that's the will of god well i'm gonna tell you what i feel peace about that too and i don't care if you compare me to kenneth copeland i don't care who you compare me to i've heard people trash private planes i'm like you've lost your mind chunky will be unapologetically sitting right up in the first bucket seat i can find on a private plane should the lord ever decide to send one to me and somebody to pay for the fuel and to fly it but sometimes your schedule just becomes so arduous that it's it's like oh my god i don't call people i don't try to fill dates on a calendar i only go where he tells me to go and that's the truth before god but the problem is like this week friday saturday saturday night sunday morning i was in chicago flew home sunday night got up tuesday morning drove to houston drove home wednesday morning taught a class wednesday night in fort smith flew here yesterday leave here tomorrow get to little rock drive to win arkansas preach and win arkansas sunday morning back to little rock sunday afternoon and finally home well a jet would be nice i could just near about be in my bed every night so one day i was driving along putting miles on that vehicle and i just began to thank the lord for that beautiful truck i have man of god gave me that truck and i've been so thankful for it but i still have to drive it and so there are days that it's it's every windows down the sunroof's open and music's real loud and you're spritzing your face with water and trying to stay awake it was one of those days and i said lord i release a jet right now in jesus name again tell him just how badly i needed one and he so kindly spoke back to me and he said i know what you need and if i thought you needed a plane i'd have already seen it we don't always realize that the process of getting from point a to point b prepares you for the endowment of the holy ghost that you're going to have to function in when you get to point b if you're riding in leisure and comfort and being pampered and babied all the way to point b and you get to point b it's easy to start thinking this happened because of me and i deserve the travel between point b and point c because of what i did at point b authority and the submission to that is the greatest safeguard any apostolic ministry will ever have submission is not required or demanded it's it's given it's voluntarily participated with and i've said it a long time ago and and i tell people all the time that brother wright becomes their bishop i've had them call me and say you got any advice as i start this new season of life yes speak bishop become fluent in the language of bishop for instance an unreturned text message is a text message that is loudly responded to you've got to be able to interpret it voicemails that go seemingly unrecognized have actually been answered but you're not bilingual you've got to learn to speak the language and so now then different ones will call and they'll say hey i want to check my language here uh i sent this text to bishop and this is what did or did not happen happened in response am i interpreting this right yes you may go to the next level because submission not only links you to the verbal command submission does not just link us to the visual instruction submission links you spirit to spirit who got to lead israel when moses time was over was it the warrior caleb no it was little josh because he had caught the spirit of moses joshua got to go halfway up a mountain that was meant for moses alone because he had taught the spirit of moses joshua got to be on the same side of the fence that moses was on without being killed because he was so submitted he didn't have to cross any lines to line up with the man of god in his life and when moses built that fence joshua was on the same side moses was when the fence went up if he hadn't been god would have killed him because he's not a man that he can lie not the son of man that he should repent and he told moses when you build that fence i'm gonna kill anything or anybody that goes across it i'm gonna kill it yet joshua didn't get killed which means he had to have been standing right beside moses when moses said this is the line boys may have even been involved in helping erect the fence for all i know and then when the lord speaks he says to joshua as i was with my servant moses so also shall i be with thee i'm going to do for you what i would have done for moses the scripture says that the lord spake to moses as a man speaks to a friend and the lord said to joshua because you've called his spirit i'm going to have that same relationship with you i have watched this happen over and over and over and over people who are under someone's ministry and yet they'd never have the same relationship with god that the elder in their life had and i think it's because we don't die enough to self to fully submit well what is submission submission is the voluntary surrender of my will to authority that god put in my life the bible says that enoch walked with god and was not for god took him now in our terminology today we might say yeah well i you know when was the last time god translated somebody the the principle here is not for me to walk with god until i disappear from your sight the principle is that i walk with god until my will disappears from his sight nevertheless not my will but thine be done thy kingdom come thy will be done in earth that word earth is not talking about the planet it's talking about the individual he remembereth our frame that it is but dust so if we pray that prayer in modern english we would say thy kingdom come thy will be done in me as effortlessly as it's done in the heavens the height of spiritual maturity brother barnes said is when we get to the place that god can do anything he wants to and love anybody he wants to through you without us arguing with him before it happens god i'm not not long ago the lord spoke to me for someone and i said it's like two o'clock in the morning brother elms i'm like this has got to be gas or something there's no way god's telling me to tell this person this and because to my natural eye this word didn't fit them what i knew of them this word didn't line up with them and the lord spoke to me and he said i kid you not he said if you can get past yourself for just one minute that man has entered a season of time where he will actually hear my voice and i am going to speak through him and i am going to do it through you now submit yourself to my will and do what i've told you to do well as it turns out the lord knew exactly what he was talking about but that submission you know you've heard this phrase a lot gifts of the spirit spiritual ministry all this stuff it's not taught it's caught i guess probably at least to me one of the most biblically accurate representations of that that statement would be when paul told timothy to stir up the gifts that were in him paul's paul's authority and role in timothy's life was a catalyst to spiritual things in timothy's life david david was connected to these 400 men and i don't know the scripture that i know of the scripture doesn't indicate that he wanted to be around any of them he was just whistling through a valley one day and the lord joins him and these 400 together they were already soldiers they had already been veterans of many wars and that's all they were at that point but once they're connected to david then they become mighty men now throughout the evolving of the church and our intellectualism and our desire to be humble and to be non-prideful and not think more highly of ourselves than we ought and i get every bit of that there has been a departure by us from some biblical principles and spiritual authority is one of them if not the chief one of them it is one of them we have men now among us with tremendous authority but with a hesitancy to acknowledge that but remember what i said an hour ago about those guys that went off after the emergent church and this relevant stuff they didn't have the guts to do it until the vanguards of truth had passed on and when there was a day when some of these guys billy cole being one of them a friend of mine preached at general conference and i forgot which service it was maybe mission service preached at general conference during the day session was at a restaurant eating at a buffet for lunch brother cole came in he said i'm standing there with a plate full of southern cooking fixing to go sit down at the table and he and brother cole came up to him and got right up in his face and started jamming his finger in his chest you think you're something don't you you think that just because you got to preach at a general conference meeting you are something special well i'm here to tell you right now you're nobody special and he he got his plate of food the whole time he was issuing that shellacking went to that guy's table sat down with him across the table and he told me he said that man rebuked me so violently until the mashed potatoes he was eating were spewing across the table into my plate he said i couldn't even eat and when he got through with that whipping my friend was sitting there weeping and he said at that point brother cole said now if you'll stay in that position right there if you'll stay just like that stay in that condition god will use you forever what was it that david and peter had in common i mean that's scallywag david and then the lord is going to say of david he's a man after my own heart really and peter i mean come on little pete done took a knife to prayer meeting in the garden for goodness sake we get mad at somebody having a pocket knife in their pocket at church pete took a sword to prayer in the garden of all places and then when somebody come up in there going to do something to his pastor he done whooped his blade out and i've heard people talk about oh peter was such a he was such a swordsman he just surgically took the devil is a lie peter missed the mark he was the first one to miss a mark he was trying to cut that brother's head off and was probably enraged at the fact that all he got was an ear and may have been drawn back to go back for seconds for all i know and the lord got involved like son pump the brakes there son just a minute then pete wasn't done there they get into town and and the people in town are like oh you're one of his we know by the way you talk there was a time people knew who we were by the way we talked and what we said but when they got to making fun of us we did what pete did that story is in that book for a reason you're on the brink of one of the greatest most powerful spiritual outpourings and manifestations of the will of god ever in the history of your world and you're going to change the way you talk right here at the last minute and i'm going to tell you something about the changing of speech you act like you speak there's a statement that to tell us when we was kid dress like you feel you'll feel like you dress unless you dress like you feel you want to be mopey and depressed just wear your little bathrobe pajamas and slippers all day long and listen to podunk country music you'll just go stick your head through the first wall of sheetrock you can find but if you wake up feeling a little depressed put on something different change well the enemies figured some stuff out about us if i can get them to be conscientious of what other people are saying about them why do you why do we think for or do we think about the fact that there was a day we were the church across the tracks there was a day it was a badge of honor for us to be made fun of by everybody in the community but pride always comes before destruction and a holy spirit always comes before fall and that's not just for an individual that's for the church too and the enemy knew there's going to come a point that the lord's really going to fulfill his will he's going to do in the earth what he said he was going to do and if i'm going to get them to not be a part of that i've got to start incrementally changing some things one of the things he did was he messed with the process that god gave us to get into his presence enter into his gates with what and into his courts with what every time the priesthood went through the process and the ceremony that god gave them it was law every time they obeyed him he always met them in the holy of holies it was him that took them in there anyway they couldn't get in there on their own and so the enemy knew a long time ago i've got to get them not to abort the doctrine and everybody that's gone off with this emergent mess and this relevant crowd they haven't just totally puked up and said okay we're no longer in in compliance with the doctrine no no he starts messing with us in the laws of process and method and ceremony and he said if i can get you to alter your process i can change your destination if i can get you to alter the ceremony and the procedures that god's given you he won't meet you when you get through you'll get to the end of what you can do and so the scripture says that having done all to do but stand stand therefore there is and the enemy knew that the enemy knew there's a point god gave us a if you break it down the tabernacle there were three parts to it the outer court the holy place and the holy of holies so if i i'll let y'all go ahead and do the sacrifice stuff out here and i don't mind you doing in the holy place what you doing there but i'm going to change motive i'm going to change inflection i'm going to make some changes i'm going to tweak the process but i'm going to do it over a long period of time but before i can really start doing that i've got to start the process the first thing the enemy did to the apostolic church was bring about delusion the enemy will never bring you as an apostolic to a place of decision without first taking you through the process of delusion he will always incrementally dilute your absolute commitment to truth and process because then if he can get us seduced enough we'll make the choice to leave the process which is the doctrine of balaam let's get them to integrate things that shouldn't be into their world and to get rid of those things that should not be there they'll have to get rid of the people that they love and because they're not going to kill the people they love they'll keep the things they shouldn't have so get them to marry strange women bring their strange gods they'll have children with them and then the women will seduce the husbands and letting them raise their children to worship false gods which is what we've done in the apostolic church the enemy was so smart he got us to think that the apostolic life was not as attractive as it had always been and he made it ugly with the latter rain and he found five at least people in the latter rain season that he could work through to alter our perception of what the bride of christ should be he made what they did so abhorrent that those in leadership among us at that time said we will not look like that we will not act like that we will not talk like that we will not be like that so we divorced ourselves from supernatural ministry and we began to incrementally realign ourselves with academic ministry and it's hard to have an apostolic ministry and an academic ministry at the same time now the scripture does say study to show yourself approved but it's not talking about it we built ministries and and organizations and religions and everything else off of head knowledge because the enemy knew the first step to getting them to walk away from true apostolic ministry is to separate them spiritually from him so i'm going to take the most spiritual ministry that they've got and i'm going to separate them from it and they're going to be okay with being separated from apostolic ministry because it's ugly i'm going to make apostolic ministry ugly and they're going to walk away from it because and and then with the advent of technology and tv and radio then you've got some of these whack jobs that have ended up on the tv and on the radio and you know just quite honestly i realize that we do a lot of live streaming and whatever now but we don't video that well when we're behaving like we should but the problem with all these cute cameras we've got in our churches nowadays they have driven us to a place of being conscientious of things we should never be worried about i mean you just get on tv and look up some wall-eyed apostolic church service where people are falling out flailing about hopping around like they are just rolling holy rollers on tv are you kidding me peter pop off and all of a sudden the whack jobs that have used sensationalism see we didn't realize that but when we got to the point that we thought apostolic ministry was unattractive we began to equate apostolic ministry with all this abhorrent sensationalism well i don't want to be like him and i don't want to be like him and we're not going to act that right there is ridiculous yet some of the things that we've seen as theatrics among people who don't have full truth were actually pure conduct among us who had truth and one time had the freedom and liberty and peace to respond to the holy ghost there was a day that unexplainable behavior in the apostolic church was expected now it's an anomaly now it's used to everybody looked at the one person that wouldn't move now everybody's looking walleyed at the one person that will move we've gotten to a place that we're not offended with what we've become because we did it to ourself nobody did this to us nobody trained us to do what we're doing the enemy just altered our perception to see our pure apostolic identity as something to be ashamed of and embarrassed of and to separate ourselves from so here we set now on the cusp of again one of the greatest outpourings of the holy ghost what was it that qualified little peter to lead that upper room experience on that day what was it that got him there it certainly wasn't his brotherly love it certainly was not his peacekeeping strategies it certainly wasn't his refusal to cuss because he did every bit of that what was it that made the little brother so qualified to be called to lead that up why wasn't it john the beloved for goodness sake pete is out here cutting somebody's head off or trying to in the garden he gets the nod to lead the upper room outpouring but john the beloved who's laid his head on his chest don't you be don't you be fooled by everything you see i'm going to tell you what i think it was and bishop can correct me if i'm wrong but or you can but i think the thing that david had and that peter had and they had in common that made them so qualified for the adoration of god and the favor of god in their lives in spite of everything else that was there was their ability to take correction jesus did not call any other disciple satan but one and the same one he called satan he told one day now this how unruly little pete was he was so out of order that the lord finally told him in a stern rebuke i'm about to turn you over to your body over to satan so that your soul can be saved and that's the dude he let lead that upper room experience that's the dude whose leadership everybody else submitted to and followed that maintained their vigil in that upper room until the holy ghost was poured out what was it that set david and peter are so apart in my opinion it was their ability to take correction and rebuke and direction and not lose their way with god over it when the prophet says to david this guy did this and all this guy did that and david said oh who's the one you're the one david named his son after that prophet that's how far his submission to authority went and that's how much he had appreciated the man of god in his life he named his son after that old prophet what was it that got david in trouble with bathsheba anyway don't be putting it all on little david either that trashy thing up on the housetop in the middle of the day taking a bath as negative she could be knowing full well he was looking what in the wide world was she thinking i want us i want to i want to be in that palace run me a bath on the roof there's almost always going to be a season of seduction before failure david was not first seduced by her he was first seduced by the expectations of the people closest to him his generals his leaders oh david you're the star of israel you're the light of israel you can't go into this battle you can't go into battle anymore oh great king if you die all is lost stay here and that little brother would have never seen that trash up on the roof if he'd have been out there fighting where he's supposed to be she wasn't his first seduction the people closest to him were you better be scared to death of people that like to stroke your ego because it isn't going to be them that fall it's going to be you you'll be waking up i don't even know how i got here yes you do you listen to all that garbage they had to say about you you don't need to pray and fast to be spiritual you need to go start fast right that minute i've taken cues from my bishop i'm i'm allergic to compliments when they when they get through with me and god gets through with me in a church service i'm not trying to be rude and if i've preached for you brother helms will tell you when i'm done and when god's done with me i go to his office he's got snacks in there a lot of them a whole lot of them and coffee it's not a root or an arrogance issue with me i just don't want to go to hell one of the things we lost among us in the apostolic church one of the nature the characteristics of godly nature that we lost was our ability to be honest with ourselves about ourselves when we become image conscious we lie to us about us we get so upset about other people lying on us because we've been lying to ourselves for so long that what we think was a lie by somebody else was maybe just a glimpse of some truth they had about us but we didn't like it and so it comes across as a lie oh they lying on me i ain't like that well if we had the right nature and characteristics of christ we'd be in an altar saying lord are you using this mule to speak to me look we think that the voice of god always is thus sayeth the lord i remember in the old building before it went down over there brother simpson one of the early meet meetings we had i'd never been around this guy ever before but he'd been here preaching on the weekend and bishop had him start that first monday night off i'm i'm between a couple of rows of seats over there praying i was man i was in a place and i hear this voice as he begins to talk that's the first time i'd ever heard danny hood but i thought it was the audible voice of god and i sat straight up in them pews on my knees and turned because i thought it was god and it was danny hood but if we're not careful we will imagine in our minds that that's what the voice of god always sounds like but sometimes the voice of god is a whale a worm a stick and a mule sometimes it's a harlot a two dollar hoe hanging out here in the edge of town but we are so focused on thus saith the lord we don't know that this heathen is about to stay with me now y'all know it's the truth that's what she was she about to hang a red scarf out the whole window and everybody in the in the camp is going to be saved because of it that's why i said what i did last night the landscape of the church is going to change and and and we say stuff like well 400 years of silence i'm i am available to be corrected all right i really am and if i'm in error please somebody love me enough to tell me but i just find it hard to believe there were absolutely 400 years for the lord just refused to talk i am firmly convinced that there has been at least 400 years where we refuse to listen but when you look at how hard he searched the land out to find just one you can't tell me that he spent 400 years not even looking for someone god has never been just interested in finding someone to talk to he's really been looking for someone to talk through scripture talks about us being judged for every idle word that's those words that god gives us but we won't repeat you're going to stand before god someday and answer to him why didn't you say what i told you to say why didn't you prophesy what i put in your spirit oh well god the people would have thought i was crazy so you see why back to that verse it's important for us to not just be delivered from some natural bondage but from the bondage of the expectations of people to be aligned with spiritual authority to be fully submitted to spiritual authority because that in my opinion is one of the most if not the most critical element to me being free from the expectations of people is being submitted to spiritual authority i don't know about everybody else but for me knowing he would know if i did or didn't obey god makes it easy for me to obey god and offend you because i don't want to have to answer to that man our god about why i didn't do what i was supposed to do what's the benefit of that well one you can be saved but two whatever it is god's trying to do with and through you at that point now others have benefited from your submission as we move forward in time here i don't know how long it's going to be before jesus comes and i know we've been saying this for like you know 7 000 years but he's coming and we're closer now than we were yesterday and if you can't look around at the world we live in and the condition of the church we're part of corporately globally and know that jesus is close to coming then you're just blind as a bat but for god to trust us with everything that is already in us we don't get more of god we release more of god and if we were filled with his spirit then it's all already there well then why don't i see more because i don't release more brother barnes told me one time he's talking about a certain function and activity he said i don't do that i said yes sir he said now you've never heard me preach against it and you never will he said but for me it's a heaven or hell issue because if i let that in my life he made one of the most profound statements he'd ever made to me i know tom and if i let that in my life the space in my world that god takes up is going to be lessened because of that because i can't control that that will consume me and i'm not willing to give up one square inch of relationship with him to have that there was a time that that generation among us were the the ones that i've had including bishop that i've had an opportunity to be around the one thing that i have noticed most common among these elders that we talk about so much was their pursuit of god not miracles not signs not wonders not gifts of the spirit none of that those were all residual blessings that were a natural product of that relationship but the one thing that all of them that i've ever had the honor and privilege to spend any time with the one thing they all have had in common was their pursuit of a relationship with god every last one of them they just wanted to be with him they wanted him to speak to them as he spoke to moses friend a friend i've told some stories about him before but brother marvin cole was one of those unique experiences in my life to just be around him just a little bit and watch god interact in his life it was like nothing i'd ever seen and you know you look at him and he even at this point he you know he's he's got some i think some dementia starting to set in some now but not long ago a man and his wife went to see him and you know him but they went to see the him and in the fog of what's going on in his mind now he was still able to interact with them but when when they knelt before him and asked him to lay their hands on them and start praying for them he said man something happened and and those gifts started firing off in that man but he he he didn't he he just had this ability to demonstrate his relationship it wasn't something he said i have one he lived it he demonstrated it i've told the story some of you have heard me tell it but we we went and and a friend of mine went with me we went down and we're in his pastor's prayer on tuesday morning at the end of that we're going to go eat lunch with him we get in the van with him it's cold he's setting up his little gloves on rubbing his hands he's got his little hat and the van's warming up and we're ready to go and he said oh lord where do you want us to go now lord there's that lubiz there's the black-eyed pea oh lord don't forget now they've just opened that cotton patch restaurant what oh yes we'll do it and he turned and looked at us he said he said to go to the cotton patch we're going there we'll get to the cotton patch restaurant it was day one opening day they're hard opening they were opening it up there is a line of people out on the parking lot trying to get in there we pull up me and my buddy are fixing to get out of the van he said my lord wait a minute brethren just because we know where to be we don't know what we're doing here now lord why did you tell us to come eat here yes we were so dull even after prayer meet we couldn't hear but one side of the conversation all right yes we're going to do it i'm going to tell her oh i'll say it just like that okay i'm going to do it and he turned around and told us our waitress's name will be and he told us and she and her husband are both away from god but he's been drawing them trying to get him to come back but their marriage is on the brink of collapse they're just days away from divorce and the lord said to go tell her to ask her husband one more time to go to church because she don't know how hungry he is to go back but he's afraid she won't go back and the lawyer's fixing to have the divorce papers in front of them they're drawing them up right now but this is their last chance well i hear this and i'm thinking that's precious but how in the name of time are we going to even get in the place we get out of that van we walk to the front of the line to tell the hostess how many is going to be at our table and before we get to her she looks up and sees us coming and she walks out into the parking lot she said how many are in your party brother cole said who there's three of us she said come with me we walked past everybody and boy we got some looks brother wells we got some looks hate mail was coming we go in the place there's one four top table left she took us to it and i'm like oh you have got to be kidding me because i'd heard stories they bring our menus out she said your server will be with you in a few minutes well i remembered her name because he just told us in the parking lot who it was going to be so i'm looking at all these servers in this area and none of them were her because they were all him and the only woman i saw was way over here in the front corner she was busy so i'm like she ain't the one well in a minute the kitchen door opens up and another lady comes out and she's working back here in this corner and then she came straight to our table and i'm like i gotta look i gotta look i can't look oh i can't do it i gotta do it but i can't oh god help me she walked up and stood right behind his left shoulder now he's got his little hat on he's got his little menu and he has not looked at her not one as i'm watching her brother he ain't looked at her she said gentlemen this is not my area but we're running short-handed on opening day and they've asked me if i would take your table for the lunch hour at this point i'm like there's no way god got his wires crossed and i looked and so help me it was her had her name right on that little badge now the man of god hadn't looked up yet she said can i get your drink order he said oh not yet she looked right down on the back of his head because he's looking at the menu he called her name he hadn't seen her badge i'll just go with the name jessica just for the sake of this conversation he said jessica before we tell you what we want to drink i need to tell you what the lord says you want you want your marriage to be fixed and i looked at her face and she went and the little short prophet hadn't looked up yet he said you're just days away from signing those papers aren't you yes he said how long has it been since you and your husband walked away from the church if you had hit her in the head with an axe handle it wouldn't have affected her any more profoundly she fell down on her knees in that restaurant floor beside him he never looked at her tears are dripping out of her eyes to the floor that restaurant is packed people are just gawking she told him how long he said the lord said for us to come eat here to tell you we're here for this reason to tell you to invite your husband one more time to come back to church he wants to go worse than you want him to and if y'all will go god's going to restore both of you and your marriage will stay together will you do that he said will you do it he always enunciates if the word ends with a t he really puts an enunciation on it will you do it she's sobbing and balling she said yes all right i want some of this coffee right here that was the end of it i'm like surely he's going to lay hands on her no no he did exactly what he was told to do god didn't tell him to lay hands on her well why wouldn't god want me to pray for her because sometimes we pray hunger off of people if he had prayed for her the lord would have no doubt touched her right there in that restaurant and she would not have gone home and told her husband anything close to what the lord told her to say but it was her hunger and desperation that had not yet been satisfied that generation lived in that world the freeman's brother billy cole sister frazier in mississippi she's she was she was completely blind one day jj born another one from that generation he was frustrated where he was pastoring and he said he had told his wife that day get some boxes and start packing we're leaving and about that time sister fraser called from jackson mississippi she said jj born yes sister fraser put them boxes down unpack them god didn't send you there to quit you're going to do what he sent you there to do and she hung up on him they lived a life not where they were talked to more but where they heard more it's not the apostolic disciplines that we live by we look at holiness and we say all they're holding their standards these are disciplines we call them standards because it negates the importance of them they're negotiable if it's a standard it's negotiable if it's a discipline it's non-negotiable these apostolic disciplines that god gave us about things that we're supposed to not participate in are things that if we do participate in them they dull our senses brother barnes said we need to pray every day for a miracle of the mind the ears the eyes the emotions and the heart let this same mind be in you that was also in christ jesus my sheep know my voice and another they will not follow he didn't say my sheep hear my voice he said they know my voice there are a lot of us that hear his voice but don't know it apostolic disciplines take out of your life every voice that's not his leaving only his training you then to what his voice sounds like feels like looks like leads like my sheep know my voice and then another verse talking about that says and i know them you want god to know you then get to know him their eyes we need a miracle in the eyes when the prophet comes the servant comes into the prophet he says hey man we're surrounded on every side they have found us and we're we're done for the lord prays for two miracles to be done on that day one that they be blinded it was the same miracle manifested two ways blind them but give him sight blind them to what they see as a natural issue against us open his eyes to what's a spiritual advantage to us his first request was change his perception if the lord had just changed the circumstances the servant would have never understood the value of seeing the kingdom nicodemus comes to the lord and little nick he's wanting to know something he said what do i have to do and the lord said except a man be born again he can't see the kingdom sequential order in scripture is important the lord's telling him if you want to see what i'm doing in the earth you got to have the new birth but if you don't have the new birth and the new birth have you and you get to where you can see my will being done in the earth you're not going to the next time he says it except a man be born again of the water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom the implication here is and the law established is if you want to ever enter the eternal kingdom you better get to the place you can see my earthly kingdom being done my will being done in the earth if you want to go to the eternal kingdom with me you better be able to see what i'm doing here and be a part of it so we've got to have a miracle of the mind his ways are above ours his thoughts are above ours as high as the heavens above the ocean well we've used that as a cop-out for decades that's not a cop-out that's a principle he's telling us my way is your ways here's where yours are here's where mine are he never says in there that we can't know his mind or his thoughts or know his ways he's simply saying if you're going to know my ways and thoughts you're going to have to get up from this low level existence you've got where you see everything through the carnal eyes you think everything through the carnal mind and if you have a miracle in your mind you can understand why i'm doing what i'm doing well i just don't understand why god's doing that that's because you haven't had a miracle in your mind you don't you don't have the mind of christ the mind of christ was able to understand the will of the father so we have a miracle of the mind a miracle of the ears a miracle of the eyes and a miracle of the emotions tossed about by every wind of doctrine we we are we are an emotionally driven people and and if we're not careful in ministry you're weeping with somebody who lost a loved one at 8 a.m and rejoice him with someone who had a baby at 2 p.m and our emotions in this kingdom because of of in the kingdom because of our expectations others expectations failures successes etc etc etc results responses all of this stuff if if we're if we're not if we have not been inoculated emotionally and given that miracle to where we're not just tossed and thrown about by everything that comes along then the enemy is going to even use elation sadness and sorrow in the kingdom to make us unstable people that are unstable there's going to be one of two things that they're mentally or emotionally unstable that's what we say when someone's behavior is so erratic oh they're mostly unstable children they they're emotionally immature so we need to have a miracle in our emotions and finally we need a miracle of the heart that we can love him in him only above all else it is impossible to be able to love anything or anyone without god he is love so as we move forward in this kingdom if we will ever learn the value of submission nevertheless not my will but thine be done thy kingdom come your will be done in me as effortlessly as it's done in the heavens if we can figure that out there are three things that i am endeavoring and i say this everywhere i go i guess but there are three things that several years ago the lord told me he said if you'll if you will pursue these three things in your pursuit of me as a way of pursuing me your life will be a lot easier because i didn't want to live and i don't think god wants us to live this life where we cross over into the presence of god then back out here then back in there and back over here and it's just unstable and so i was praying about that lord how did i walk and that's that's around the time that brother barnes i walked in his office and i was on a 14-day fast because i didn't like the disciplines that he left us mortify the deeds of your flesh i'm wondering that i didn't want to tell myself no about anything very often so once in a while i'd feel guilty and go on a bends fast like some people benz eat i fasted out of guilt and i fasted out of desperation because i couldn't hear his voices clearly i had enough sense to know that the veil of my flesh had gotten thick enough i could not hear what was being said in the spirit on the other side of that veil so to get that veil thin enough i'd go on these long fast so i could hear his voice with the problem with a 14 day fast or i was on a 21 day fast this time a 14 day fast 10 day fast you know the first three to five days you're mad i don't care how sanctified you act you mad then the bad breath sets in and that nasty taste in your mouth sets in i don't care if you drink scope it's not going to change it it may temporarily relieve the misery but the nasty is coming back and your tongue will be coated with like a eighth of an inch of just stomach bile i guess i don't know where it comes from and so you don't pray a lot during that time because you can't stand the smell of your own breath well then the last several days of a fast you're not hearing from god because all you can think about is every menu you're gonna cook and every restaurant you're gonna go buy something at so the benefit of a long fast sometime really was marginal and i walked into the barnes's office one day and he said all right boy we're going to eat down at the buffet it was a chinese buffet and i was so happy and bitter at the same time and i said well now brother barnes i know what day are you on that's what 14. yeah we're going to eat that's well i'm actually on a 21 day fast it don't matter hadn't done you any good i said i begged your pardon he said am i yeller yes sir well you've been without food 14 days and you're no more submitted than that all you've done is make yourself hungry and then he said i can do more in one day than you'll achieve in 21. you have my attention if you can do more in one day than i'm going to do in 21 i'm all ears how and he left me with a principle i tell myself no he said about something every single day if it's a second plate of food i tell myself no if i'm going to eat food and dessert then i say no to second plate and eat dessert if i don't want dessert then i can have the second plate of food but i got to say no to dessert he said sometimes i may eat one plate and then cut everything on that the quantity in half or leave one food item on the plate and only eat one bite of it but leave the rest of it say no to yourself about something every day keep the flesh able to be told no and he said eventually at that time i had a habit of chewing i've got real thin fingernails and so they break easy but at that point i was chewing them all the time and my knuckles i had my fingers were bloody up to the first knuckle most the time because i i look like a hungry beaver he said well look at them fingers boy yeah i miss you're on the fast you're eating your fingernails you ain't fasting [Applause] he said you can't even say no to bringing pain to your own body and that has elevated you to a place that you are able to say no to the one that created that body you going to tell somebody no was one of the lessons i got out of that day and if you're saying yes to you you are absolutely going to say no to him but if you get to the place you're willing to say yes to him i have no problem saying no to me but it's going to be one of the other and so that day began my tutelage he said fasting he said the flesh is like fog and fasting is either the sun burning that fog up or a wind coming through and blowing it out all fasting does is get the flesh out of the way so you can hear what the spirit's saying all the time anyway he said some people say well i'm fasting for so and so he said boy that's impossible your fasting is not for them they may benefit from your fasting because you may actually hear a word from god for them that helps them but you fasting is not going to help them be saved they're not going to feel to repent just because you're hungry fasting is for you and he said then he named two other guys off he said you and these two y'all competition fast but when he said that i'm like you're absolutely 100 right and i hadn't even thought about it but the three of us compared notes on who was fasting how long we had been fasting it wasn't anything for each one of us to do multiple 21 day or 30 day fast a year for the simple fact that we were able to one-up the other one again i said it last night and i'm going to land the plane here fasting you know what do they call it now intermittent fasting daniel's fast i don't know about that daniel business that particular fast just makes me mad daniel my eye i'm just not eating lentils and beans are you kidding me i'd just rather be hungry and no temptation than to be hungry while i'm yet eating daniel's menu but those disciplines keep us conditioned so that nobody has to stand around and tell us 24 hours a day you can do this and you can't do that if what i want most is a relationship with him then living a life of discipline for the sake of that relationship is not a problem if you're married happily or striving to be happily married you you have you have already learned that principle there are certain disciplines that you take on as a spouse that you didn't have to have as a single person you might have looked at another girl walking by and said as a single man whoo she's pretty i'd like to know her name but sitting right up here holding precious by the hand i guarantee you're not gonna say that now are you do because there are no more pretty girls in the world only one that's a discipline and you sing you women don't be acting all sanctified about it i like you don't look at a brother and think um lord you did well you did well when you're married you're in a relationship you've got to change verbiage you've got to change what you see you've got to change what you look at you've got to change what you listen to if you're going to be married you're going to have to change who you listen to and i'll just tell all the brethren in here for those of you that don't know it sometimes the voice of god and the voice of your wife sounds just alike sometimes sometimes that rhema comes and god says did you hear me yes i heard you and then he says okay i'm going to speak to you again i want to see if you can hear me on this other frequency and she speaks and if you're quiet enough and listening he says did you hear me then remember what i said earlier on about the voice of god doesn't always sound exactly the way you think it's going to but god said well remember this everything is a test that man taught me that there's always a test yes i spoke to you here and said do this i prove that you can hear me there now i'm going to speak again concerning maybe even the same thing and i need to know if you're listening here too well if we are embracing these apostolic disciplines like we should they will condition us to hear him these three things we must try to master learn his voice the only way to learn it is to spend time in the word search the scriptures for there they which do testify of me the second thing you've got to do we should do is listen for that voice learn it listen for it thirdly most importantly because if you don't do this the other two steps are waste obey it learn it listen and obey it there are a lot of people that have learned his voice and they have listened for it but they have not yet been delivered from the same prison that peter was the expectations of the people they're preaching to therefore they don't obey his voice because it's not always about just saying what god said say sometimes it's also about saying that how he said say it remember that lesson i told you i learned right here in this pulpit i was trying to figure out how to i was trying to figure out how to say what he said without saying it how he said say it and at least three souls could have stepped into eternity lost had i said it differently than how he said it to me learn his voice listen for it obey it apostolic disciplines submission to authority all of these things condition us to the place that god can trust us the ultimate goal of conditioning is to be able to stand with me is to be able to be trusted by god with what his kingdom his will in the earth the end time because all of it is is we we are hurtling ever quickly more every day toward the return of the king and he's doing everything he can to get the church ready for that season and that time and that ultimate labor that we're called to the kingdom for lost we have proven for i don't know a good three decades now that our schemes and gimmicks don't work and so now our hunger is no longer for a chinese buffet but our hunger is to return back to a place of deeper commitment and consecration to find something that lasts beyond a church service something that guides me monday through friday saturday and sunday when there's no music no prayer no sound no nothing i can hear his voice when the world's falling apart and i'm being assaulted on every hand still i can hear his voice i'm in the ministry right now sir still i can hear his voice i'm going to give you just a little while here i'm going to lay the mic down bishop will come get it when the lord leads him to but i won't you just find somewhere to spend a few minutes with him ask him to seal whatever you've received into your spirit this morning that we can become what he wants us to ultimately become

Channel: Apostolic Iron

Views: 1,192

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: Apostolic, Apostolic Iron, Jesus, Prayer, Pray, Praying, C.M. Wright, Bishop Wright, Pentecost, Pentecostal, UPCI, Call To War, God, Lord, Preaching, Apostolic Preaching

Id: XA-to_NIFAQ

Length: 102min 13sec (6133 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021