So I am glad that the ones that are here are here. I want to take a minute to address something that I have repeatedly, since I became pastor here, I have talked about. I will mention it in my message, but I need to remind you of something, and that is your responsibility regarding this church. Now only God can do the drawing, the bringing of souls, or quote-unquote: “the winning of souls,” God does that. You could be the most eloquent orator and have the gifts that mesmerize people, but that will not draw people into the kingdom of God, only God does that, that's His job. But as I look around every single week and I realize that this ministry, not just in my time as pastor, but I look back at the time from when my late husband was wrestling with the very same thing. Although in his style, the way he dealt with people's lack of faithfulness, lack of fidelity on the part of the things of God is he just walked out and left. Any of you remember that? (Yes, Ma'am.) Of course you do. But there's people out there, the ones who are the onlookers who don't remember the many Sundays when Dr. Scott would come to the platform and would leave, because attendance was bad, or how many times he sat on his set, and knowing we were not going to make budget and he'd get up and leave. Quite novel if you think about it, to just leave an empty chair for hours on end to, to torture you. And it did just that, because people managed to get their commitments in and, you know, they wanted Dr. Scott teaching, and they wanted him back live, they knew what to do. Now I've told you, maybe because of my history and background, and the way I, quote-unquote: “came” or “was found,” I have no desire to put something, I want to call it, an attempt at bringing you by my attempt to bring you to some conviction of what you ought to be doing, I've told you; if God's not doing it, I don't want to do it for Him. I really believe this is God's work, I really believe that there are a great amount of people in the sound of my voice who in their heart of hearts desire to help in some way and in some capacity. And what happens is the desire is there but the flesh is much stronger most of the time and the thought of actually having to put yourself in an uncomfortable place makes many people coil back, or they blame me and think I'm teaching some foreign doctrine of works or something. The church from its inception has always been a place where people spoke to other people about the things of God. That's never changed, what has changed is time and technology. Time, as in over the eons, over the days, the existence of the church, where from perhaps the dark ages people could be hoodwinked rather easily into going to church, at least on the days where they had to, at least from the Catholic perspective, “pay and save.” Now the days of being hoodwinked are not over. I watched a link of a female evangelist, who may actually be somewhat known, talk about Firstfruits. And it was so mangled that I thought to myself, “If you're fool enough to get hoodwinked by listening to the twist on that”━it's either, Firstfruits and you bring it, or it's not Firstfruits. The twist was for then, if the teaching is Firstfruits, but then for “Your best gift of fifty dollars, you're best Firstfruits gift of fifty dollars.” Well, how can that be Firstfruits? So if you're going to teach something, teach it! If you're going to teach the word, teach the word, it's the consequences belong to the Lord. And when it comes to the building and the spreading of the word, God gave gifts to the ministry. That doesn't mean that those people are special outside of the place that God has placed them to do a certain thing. Ephesians says, “God gave some,” and Paul describes those who are gifted to the ministry for a purpose: to equip the saints, to bring them to completion in Him, in Christ. So I understand that there are people, when they hear these very serious things that I say, they have to find fault with what I say, or they must find fault with me, because it couldn't possibly be that you have a responsibility. Now this is an indictment, not just on this church but on every church where people feel uncomfortable, or ashamed, or they, they say, “Well I'd love to”━you know I have people that call in that say, “I'm claiming a full house!” Well, that's one thing to claim the full house, but it does take the initiative on the part of those people just like in the days when Christ walked the face of the earth, and I'll talk about this today. There were some who heard but they did not, it didn't latch on to their heart and it didn't, it wasn't as though they, they, they went and they heard Christ and than suddenly a great multitude followed Him. The only reason why the great multitude followed Him for the, for the most part was free food. There was, there was, there was always some something happening if you look where the multitudes are, and the true church, it was just a small band. So I am not suggesting that the church of Jesus Christ and His work become some grand, we have to have this numbers game where people are counting people through the door and therefore the success of any ministry is the number of people it brings in. If you have bought into that, you are sadly mistaken. Jesus Himself said that many are called; few are chosen. Let's not try and define what the few is. He uttered that, “few are chosen,” we've got to put it down there to say, there's a vast multitude who are called and very few who are able to respond. Without the power that God gives to each believer, to each faither, you cannot do these things in the flesh. You can't even try to think about doing them. I think about Peter and what he could not do before the day of Pentecost. Christ knew what he was capable of, that in denying Him and failing. But it was only made possible, the latter part of what Christ says, when you, when you turn, “when you turn back, go and strengthen your brethren,” He knew that was only possible after the Spirit had been poured out. So I'm not asking you as a congregation to do works, or to engage in efforts, but I'm asking you to faithe about something and understand that God has given you the dunamis, the equipment and the ability. If this is God's work, then you are part of His work, you are His workmanship. If this is God's work, then He requires laborers. And I've had too many people say, “Oh well, the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few,” and the excuse is, “Well, what makes me a laborer?” Well, if you're able to hear and receive it means you're able to labor. But the greatest tragedy about this church; and this is not my message, I intended to do something else but I'm looking at the attendance so it must be said. The greatest tragedy will be when we stand and give account. You see the luxury for some of us; I say some, is the knowledge whether you were somewhat good in life or you were the greatest whore, the knowledge of where you would have been without Christ, where you were going to, and ultimately your final destination without Christ. A person then comes to the knowledge, the saving knowledge of Christ and this ministry has been a wealth of teaching for people to feed on and off of. But what's sad is when people who have been rescued from the pit of hell don't look at the on-looking, or the rest of the world and their hearts are not filled with grief to look at people, who perhaps they know and perhaps they don't, you're nobody's judge and neither am I, but if they had the revelation minimally of the knowledge of the state they are truly in, or were in, then it becomes something of, you looking upon somebody who's just about to get swept away in rushing waters and although you're not trained as a paramedic or as a fireman or as a search and rescue team, that initial spirit kicks in that sees someone about to be, or at peril of death and recognizes the need. Everywhere I go, to the people I don't know who I have never talked to, to the people who are the cruelest, vilest; people I've never met by the way who, they just like to hate on me, I look on them with sadness, not judgment; sadness. Because obviously they don't know Jesus Christ like I have known Him to be a loving, forgiving, caring, real person in my life giving me guidance, comfort, peace, and most importantly the knowledge that I am His. Now, I don't know what it will take for some of you to realize I don't expect you to fill the church up and have the church to where everybody every week has a guest. I don't expect that; that's, that's not reality. In fact that's down right impossible, unless you're inviting people to church to promise them a lunch or a dinner, and for that pretense I don't really want them here. It takes time, but more importantly than time, it takes the recognition God has given each one of you not only a measure of faith but the gift of His Spirit which is what I've been teaching on these many weeks. That means you may, you may go along your daily life and your daily business and you may not encounter anyone, and maybe six months from now the Lord will place somebody in your pathway, that one individual that perhaps only you might have the capacity, just as some of you only Dr. Scott had the capacity to reach. Don't think just because he was a preacher; it wasn't an accident. God uses the human conduit the same way on all levels. Once you cross that hurdle in your mind it's not about trying to force people to come to church, because in the bigger picture, let me speak on the bigger picture, the bigger picture is not about this church. The bigger picture is about the kingdom of God, and quite frankly how you see the people around you in the kingdom of God. This church, this church was, the walls were reinvented from a place that was an insurance company that then became Faith Center that is what it is now, and all it will be will be walls, that's all, it's just a building. But in eternity, what God will see is what was said from behind these walls, from within these walls, and quite frankly what people did in their hearts; not works, in their hearts with what was said both from the teaching of Dr. Scott and myself, and as I said we'll each stand and give account. This is not said to make people scared, this is said to say there's a reality about the things of God. Now I worry about this church. I'll tell you why I worry, because I do not burden you, and I have not; I figured the last, the last real big wallop that you could endure, quite frankly was Dr. Scott's promotion. And through the last solid 12 years, I say that “solid 12 years,” I've shared very few burdens with you. Even my health, I've told you the Lord will see me through. The devil tries to figure out new ways to get rid of me, and I just keep going back to the Lord, crying out, “Save me! Heal me! Help me! Deliver me! Keep me and preserve me for as long as You will to have me here for this purpose.” I'm not expecting you to be stoics, I'm not expecting you to do the impossible, but I'm looking at a church that slowly but surely, not just since my time in the pulpit, I can tell you this goes way back. Those of you who have history here who actually were here, not the people out there who think they know: the Cathedral was never filled. The only time that there was the greatest crowd in the Cathedral was the first day Dr. Scott was down there and the day of his home-going. And in between, all you've got to do is listen to the tapes, the CDs, the sermons that play and watch the camera as it pans the room to see. The Church of the Open Door, the footage there; how many of you remember? There was a great gathering, and then it just kind of petered out, the same thing; couldn't fill the building. How many of you actually saw the tape and saw empty seats? How many of you saw Dr. Scott leave? The problem is still here, maybe all the bad leaven is gone, but the problem is still here. And the problem with most churches is everybody thinks, “It's somebody else's problem,” beginning with the pastor. And I've said to you, I have no problem in just having an internet broadcast, but this has been a church of people that God has called, what Dr. Scott called, “uncommon.” Now there've been a lot of common people come and go through this door here, and when I say common, they're like the common people who don't really care about too much except themselves, still stuck in the flesh, and it's all about them. I do not believe the people in the sound of my voice are caught up in that. And the big problem that I have is if action is not taken, we're not talking about the church is going to close down, lest, you know, my enemies out there revel in that. You're pretty foolish if you think that. I've said from the beginning, only God could━you know, if you, if you were writing a screenplay, only God could come up with this thing that has unfolded over forty-plus years here at this church; only God could do that. Anywhere else it would be So-and-so that had a son that groomed his son, and then his son had children, it'd be like the white picket fence and everything just seems to look absolutely perfect; which usually is not God's doing, it's all the oddities. This church is like the David, but don't leave off Bath-sheba and Uriah. This church is like Joshua over the years having seen many Achans. This church is like Christ and His disciples, but don't forget Peter or Judas; it's no different. Now there has to come a point, and I'm now speaking to those of you who are within driving distance, able to be here, there's got to come a point where you realize that this is either an important live service during the week; and I'm now speaking to churches across the country, who don't understand why there is a lack of attendance here. But it has to be addressed because this seems to be a continuing pattern, and whether there have been people who leave the church or not, folks that just germane to the ministry; people come and go, people's cell phones go off; it's just germane to the ministry. People come and they're excited for a little bit and then they leave, just as Christ said, then persecution and troubles come. Usually it's people from the outside saying, “Why are you going to go there? Why? Why do you want to go there? You know, there's a greater attraction to go to a church that offers you 20-minute sermons, where you leave feeling like you just had a spiritual smoothie poured down the back of your throat and somebody rubbed your feet while you swallowed it!” And I'll take Bunyan's understanding with what he laid out very clearly as Pilgrim on a journey with lots of different deviations and lots of different characters to lure you away, and the one following, Pilgrim, looking to the Evangelist pointing him on. I'll take that any day, unpleasant as it is with all of its pitfalls, over the smoothie and the foot massage. I'm asking you, please, not just to pray and take into consideration, really make this a matter that this really will be single-handedly a church that has a live service with a congregation, or it will be an internet church; there's lots of those. And I can make my way across the country to the various churches, who have actually made this their church. When I say “their church,” they tune in for service. They have a pastor during the week and the pastor has basically made the congregation tune into this time, and just travel around the country to, maybe if it's a dozen stops and just broadcast from wherever I am. We don't need the expense of a building; we don't need any of this. But I don't want to take it for granted and I think right now I've got a lot of people who just think it's just not their problem. And I'm not; I'm not telling you that I'm going to leave here. I'm angry. I've been standing now since I've come out talking to you, no music, no nothing right now, simply saying to you I'm asking you to consider something in the bigger picture. And again I digress to it's really not so much the church, that's where people get locked in, “I gotta, I gotta get somebody to come to church with me” No, it's called dialog about God, and the more, the more you have encounters with people, the more you find out that it's not as easy; you can criticize me for not being that articulate, it's not as easy to stand and have a discussion about God and be clear and concise, especially to a varied, varied audience of people, and leave them with something that they can masticate on, meditate and process, and perhaps say, “I, I need to hear more of this.” Most people think all you've got to do is, you know, get them to, get them to come with you, you know invite them along, get them to come in the door and I'll do the rest. It doesn't work like that! You're going to meet a whole host of people in your lifetime, if you haven't already, the minute you start talking about God, or they might even tell you about something about God, it goes to hell in a hand basket within about 30 seconds; they don't want to know. There are people that God will out in your pathway, if you believe this or not, fine by me. There are people God will put in your pathway to show you what you don't know, not to tell them about God or to invite them to church; to let you know what you don't know. And I can tell you God taught me a lesson, and I'm not saying He's finished, but He taught me a lesson in the early days when I started going into the prisons with individuals who have nothing but time to be in the word, to know how much I didn't know about humankind. The lesson was taught there probably for me I could say invaluable, more importantly it also taught me that you can bring people and it doesn't mean that they're actually there because of God, and that becomes works as well. It's the very reason why I started this series on the Holy Spirit to try and tell you there's something that God has given to you and to me to enable us we ourselves are not doing. And if this fruit, if this person and fruit is to come forth, does a tree consume its own fruit? Answer me. (No, Ma'am.) That's what I thought. But for the longest time I think most people think the tree consumes its own fruit and that's why many, many trees are fat, you get it? Spiritually fat. The fruit is not there for someone to come in and inspect. It is the fruit of the Spirit belonging to Him flowing through you! That's what I've been trying to communicate. There is something that needs to happen here. It's not going to happen today, it's not going to happen tomorrow, it's not going to happen in a month, but careful consideration of this will open up something in the heart that says, “Wait a minute.” We are not a people who run away. There are people and I've seen them over the years of ministry, the minute a crisis comes they run away. They have absolutely no spiritual spine because they do not trust that God is able. Let me ask you a question, I don't want you to answer if the answer doesn't come automatically and spontaneously, but do you think; I'm not asking you if you know, do you think God is able to solve this problem? (Yes, Ma'am!) Well, let me ask you, if you think He's able, and the vast majority of you said yes, then tell me. He could very easily just by a wave of the hand from the heavens, open a floodgate and people could come and magically they could appear and you'd say, “We don't know where these people came from, but they're here! Isn't that a wonderful miracle; it's a packed house!” Or, He can put something in your heart; not your doing, not the machinations and creativeness of your mind, but the reality of One who is with you that quite frankly (I'm going to say something dangerous), will place the opportunities for you, and they are abundant, and you will either open your mouth or you won't. And you won't be trying to impress people with the great wealth; you know, I've watched some of the people that Dr. Scott over the years, some of these that went out and you know, they have this, it's some oracular magnificence about their own voice that they get enamored with that the guy who used to do the Bible tours, and he'd walk around, “Grea, rudda, rudda, guh, gah, gah.” He wasn't interested in educating you, he'd, “Oh, my voice is just━can you, can you hear that? Are the angels rejoicing at the sound of oh, gah, gah, gah, yeah!” No, the angels were all, all their heads were over the banister of heaven, they were all holding the bags and going, “Oh, tell him to stop! No more Bible tour: we surrender!” God's not interested in the perfect formation of words coming out of your mouth, but He is interested that you're interested. And that might be the most important thing that I've just said because disinterest or drawing back, and putting it on my back, creates something very unusual for me because I think to myself, I will serve the Lord, whether it's here, or whether I go teach━I've told you I got offered a good job at a university, which I turned down because quite frankly there's just no way that I want to be put in that box, but if I had to, it's there for me. There're plenty of options, but I choose to be here; I like seeing your faces. Some of you don't look too happy right now, I prefer it if you look like happy faces. I look at this church and I don't see “institution,” I see a foundation that my late husband laid down, which not only have I been protecting, but I've been trying to promote and propagate. So I'm asking you to just pray about everything I've said. This is not━if anybody has understood human works, you didn't hear a word I said, or the messages that have come all these weeks about what God is doing through you. And it's not all about you, although we are being conformed to the image and likeness of His Son, it's not all about you! It's not all about one individual's interaction and it's all about, “Well, the fruit that comes out of me, and therefore I consume that fruit. It's not even, it's not even visible fruit anymore because I make sure that all the fruit that comes out is all about me, and it's for me and I take it all in, and therefore”━there's something more. But something has to happen here. And lest you think I'm discouraged, this is probably ties in greatly to something I said last week: when we are rendered weak, broken, when we know we cannot and we ourselves are not capable, then comes the strength of God, and then we turn around with the absolute knowledge only God could have done this thing. You talk to somebody who begins to have interest, you, you don't think, “Oh, I must have said something good.” You realize aforetime you were like a peanut butter-mouth not being able to get too much out. Then you realize, “Well, God will help me do this thing, because it's God's work, God's wisdom; He'll enable me.” And when the time does come it won't be, “I did this thing,” but rather, “God, God did something through me,” you'll know it. Just as I stand here today and tell you I can't ever; somebody said to me, “Well, you know, you've, you've studied and done these things.” Everything that I have that pertains to this work is from God, and I can take no credit when somebody says, “Well, but you taught yourself languages.” Well the gift of, the ability to learn, that comes from God, and the ability to stand week in and week out when I see lack of fidelity, the patience, the longsuffering, the love for this work, the love to endure all the junk that comes with it. That includes people who are, if I may say, in the midst of perishing that I might be trying to help, but see me as the enemy. And yet God manages to get me to a place where I realize I'm not taking it personally. I've told you I have no ego in this. Anybody who has an ego or thinks it's about them, they need to vacate the pulpit. This is about God and His work, this about you when you shall stand, whether its tomorrow or 50 years from now, when you shall stand. It's about that which is eternal and not the walls. Yes, attendance is important, but what good would it be if we had a full house and every, there's not, there's not room to move and I have to have two or three services and the people that are sitting here are really not interested in hearing the word; they just came because we have a guest singer today, and the guest singer is somebody they really like and they came to hear the guest singer. “Well, won't that help them maybe get interested the message?” Probably not. That's like the people that came for the free food when Jesus was doling it out. Everybody loves Santa Claus; everybody loves something for free! So what I'm saying to you is I really need your prayer and faith put into action on this most difficult subject because it is very much the future of this ministry, I've shared this with you since at least a solid 12 years this is a problem. And it's the problem because it's our human nature to coil back. It's our human nature to be afraid to be rejected. How many of you, I ask you, how many of you have had conversations with people or you thought this, this individual and they reject you and what you say? Show me your hands. Okay, let me tell you something. If you take that personally, you're a lunatic! They're not rejecting you; they're rejecting Christ. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. Before you came to the knowledge of Christ, would you have ever talked to somebody about the saving power of God? Absolutely not, in fact, if somebody talked to me about it, I'd be like, “Uh-huh, huh, huh, huh, huh! Yeah, save it.” But my point is you don't take it personally. And I'm the expert, I'm the one, I'm permitted to say that. You see, every week, I have a sheet that tells me how many people will be attending for the first time who watch on television. Do you know how many of those people actually show up? It's a very small number. Now this is traditional, this is not just me, this also happened with Dr. Scott. It's always a small number. I've had people I've invited that don't show up. I don't take it personally, you know why? It's not about me. It's not about you. “Oh, well, I wasn't eloquent enough. I don't━oh no, they just didn't want to hear me.” No, it's not about that. And when you get out of that you'll start to get on the same page with me. Really, when you look around at the people around you, I am against, so we're clear, I am against people approaching other people where you, you've been laser-beamed out of the crowd and “That one! I'm going to talk to that one, because he, you know, just a sitting duck over there. I'm going to, I'm going to come over there and I'm going to nail you, because I know you look kind of like, you know, you might be a little bit of a loser and you might need some help, and you know, you look like you had a bad day, and I know I can say something encouraging that will get you to come to church and know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior!” I'm not asking for that, in fact I, if anybody did that I'd probably say please don't come here. This is a church of intelligent people, I think of educated people, and that doesn't necessarily mean you have a degree. You're educated in the things of God and God's ways. And if the heart is set on the things of the kingdom of God, believe you me; the Lord will open the doors. And you may plant the seeds and people will say, “Talk to the hand because the ears are not listening,” and seeds may have been planted that you don't know about. Does it have to do with this place in particular? Well, for this conversation, yes, but in the bigger picture, no. And if that makes any sense to you, then I'm asking you to reflect on what I've said and pick up the side that you need to pick up. I can't carry the load by myself and recognize God's called you to do something here. You're not just a bump on a log. There's a whole world of people out there, not just the places where you go where you meet people. I've told you it's in the weirdest places that I have met people and it's the people I never thought in million years, because I didn't actually even invite them. I didn't invite you, did I? I didn't━I'm talking to you. I didn't invite you. She asked me, I didn't say a word; in fact, I wanted to go the other way. I tried to skirt it a few times, but that's the type of thing I'm talking about. It's not anything more than you implicitly trusting the Lord that this is His work. And He'll use the conduits that are yielded to Him, not still thinking that they have to come up with what they have to come up to do what they've got to do. There'll be people in your pathway, and maybe in your lifetime it might only be one, but that's the one that God chose you to speak to and to lead into the kingdom, if it's just that one. Now I don't know when and how. I don't. I can't tell you the exactness. There's people that write books about how to win souls, and I'm not interested in that concept. That, that's God's responsibility, only He can open up the receiver. Now if you think I actually don't have a message, we're going to take up one offering, but not right now. I'm going to ask to just place all your stuff down. Don't remove that. Just step down for a few minutes, because I'm just going to stand here and do what I'm doing because it's the right thing to do. Let me just tell you something. Part of the problem with our fallen human nature is the noise and static that hinders us from being able to receive from God. The noise and static if you've ever━our shortwave radio is a perfect example. I don't know if anybody uses the old style radio anymore, because everything's by digital, but you know, that static that's in-between. You've got to be right on there to hear. You could be right at the edge, listening, but not able to clearly hear until you're right there. That noise and static is our fallen nature that hinders our ability to receive and have clear reception as to what God is saying. We are the worst interpreters of His message. And I say “we” as in every, every humankind, fallen humankind. What's even worse, you know, this is why I, I take from this book and I realize if the lessons are not made to us today, they're just Bible stories, “Aw, I read that Bible story.” The prophets of old, they foretold in different times in different ways of the coming of Christ, of something about His person, something about, if you think about it, God gave to different men at different times inspired, God-breathed through the Spirit, to write down pieces of information prophetically about the Christ. Those who were learned men read those passages and they knew about God, but they did not know God. Maybe that's the right message for today, because I'm not here to tell you about God. My prayer is that, if you haven't already, you know Him, not about Him. That's like saying you read about something online, a little spattering here and there. But you come to know Him and His ways and the way He works even in your life. And the greatest tragedy, if I think about this church and I make some applications here, I can kind of make a beeline to the thought process of all this. Think of what Paul said in Philippians 3, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection.” How many a wretched soul has cried that, but has grappled through “and the power of his resurrection”? I've told you until a moment of clarity came when I realized that this power of God, albeit faint, works in every single believer that is born from above of God. We just tend to think it couldn't be us. In Jesus' day, as I said, those learned men, they knew the writing about Jesus, they━the foretelling of the Christ, and yet think of it like this. Like you may be inviting somebody to church and it's that one in a million, how, how is it that a great multitude is gathered around John the Baptist at the Jordan, here comes Jesus, the culmination of all the prophets' voices foretelling bits and pieces; here He is in the flesh. John the Baptist is the only one who knows and recognizes who He is and he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” Tell me how could that be that so many learned people, who knew about God, could not know God when He stood in their midst? John says, “I'm simply the voice. I'm not even worthy, essentially, to carry His shoes,” and yet, they didn't know Him. Think about it. He went about healing people and feeding people, even raising the dead, and yet they knew Him not. I'm telling you God still has the same problem today: people who know about God, but they don't know. And the great arguments that will be made about “Well, this is a Bible story, like the burning bush that just, that's just a type of something,” and failure to recognize that behind the burning bush, there was the burning heart of God. And behind some fallible mouthpiece are the words that God gives to those who He has called to stir them up in every age. And you can know about the words of God and say chapter and verse, or you can know God and say, “This, this is of God.” Not this; this, the things that come from this book. Now I don't know, maybe, maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe there's a little bit of fear that stepping outside of the box to actually say, like Isaiah, “Lord, send me” will result in “Well, they won't hear you.” Well, that's not your problem. Was that the prophet's problem? Did the prophet take it like personally, like, “Well, no; well, I said 'Send me, Lord,' and nobody heard me. Well, I must be a failure. I'm not any good.” Well, who said you had to be good? The Lord's words Himself, “Only God can be good,” well, then if God has put a piece of Him in you, that portion, that earnest, that deposit is what is operating to accomplish His purpose, not you. You're just the yielded member. I hate to say that; that sounds awfully, hmm, it sounds a little cheap. You're just the yielded member. I'm just a yielded member. Now I've seen people who, they run their church groups or their entities as though they've got a little banty rooster at the forefront, the superb and supreme ruler, who is dictating and seemingly never sheds a tear about the state of souls in front of them and around them. Yet I read about Jesus, the Lord of glory coming in the flesh, and it says, “Jesus wept,” and He just didn't go somewhere to make a spectacle of Himself. He lamented over Jerusalem, “How oft would I have gathered, but you would not.” He wept over it, but did He take it personally? Did He say, “Wow, they rejected Me. I came to My own people; can you believe that! And they just, they wouldn't have Me. Now I, I don't think I'm going to do ministry anymore, because I just can't take being rejected,” the words of somebody's interpretation of what they think Christ might have said. The Scripture says He came to His own and His own received Him not. And in this day and age, we still have the same problem, except it's exacerbated. It's exacerbated by the charlatan nut-bags out there who will make merchandize out of people. It's exacerbated by the people who will not lay out the foundations, the most important thing that eyes are fixed. Hey, you might just be turning 18 today, and God forgive me for saying it like this. When I was 18, I thought to be 40 was; had to be (and I didn't know who Methuselah was, but now I'm looking back thinking that's Methuselah), “I've got a long way before I get that old. Not me,” right? But how much closer even to the one turning 18, how much closer to the one turning 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, because that's all we have, a very short time allotted to get to know Him. What was Christ's prayer: “That they may know thee,” and Christ was the declaration. He said, “When you've see Me, you've seen the Father.” The problem I think a lot of times, and God forgive me for this, there is no sense of urgency. There is no sense of “God picked me out a sea of people that maybe He didn't pick; I'm going to treat this with care.” Maybe you do for a while, but that only lasts for a little while, and then the old nature kind of kicks over and autopilot kicks in and it's no big deal. Let me ask you a question, and again, just it's time for us to have this kind of straight talk here. How many of you, while Dr. Scott was alive, might have missed a Sunday or you might have missed a couple of Sundays where you weren't there, you just missed hearing him? For whatever the reason, not your fault; it could have been you were sick, anything. Did you miss a Sunday? I did. I missed a Sunday. Don't you wish you could turn back time and take that, get that one Sunday back? How unfortunate that we can only look on that in the past because it is no more and we can't make that a reality, but how about counting today and the rest of the days that you have, instead of treating it as “I wish I could have,” “I did this; this one thing I did do, I was there, I came with an open heart and an open mind and whatever it is that the Lord put on Pastor's heart.” I'm not here for social issues. I'm not here for social justice. I'm not here to talk to you about whether you should smoke pot or what the choice of your food is, even though I made a reference and somebody said they would like to title the message last week 'McDonald's or a Salad.' And I'm not looking down there, either. To know God and not about Him means you begin to care about the things that He cared about. You know, the whole idea that people thought they could become Christ-like by imitating Christ. You can't. Christ in you, working in you, there brings the conformity. If you read the rest of that verse I quoted out of Philippians, oh, “That I might know him, and the power of his resurrection,” Paul goes on to say, “and the fellowship of his suffering.” There was never a promise said: it's going to be easy, that the church is going to have it easy. There was never a promise given to us as a people called of God, that God would just pave the way and somehow remove the barriers for us in the work. Now let me talk about this for a second. What do you think it means in Ephesians? Paul opens his letter with saying, “Blessed with all spiritual blessings from the heavenlies,” what? What do you think that is? The spiritual blessings, pneumaticos, from the word pneuma, which is the word we've been looking at all of this 16-whatever weeks it's been. The Spirit of God: blessed with spiritual blessings, not “Ooooh!” that type of spiritual. Spiritual blessings from above, the very thing that I have been taking us through, blessed with spiritual━I prefer to say it in the Greek, because it's attached to pneuma; pneumaticos. Blessed with, with pneumaticos, each and every one that indeed Paul calls a saint; I'm a saint and you're a saint. And a saint is not somebody that has lived their life in the church, dies, and then they become a saint. You're a saint when God chooses you, spoken, having spoken your name from the beginning of time, from before you were, chooses you in Him and separates you out, that's all that means: for Him. So let me go back to the, probably the thrust of what I think, instead of preaching the message I planned, I'll just tell you. I think that there's a big gap here. And I say this; I say this with the absolute care and love of a pastor, not someone who's standing here saying, “Hey! You know, I'm speaking down to you.” My calling in life is not to be loved by the world. My calling in life is not to hold a Kleenex box for you. My calling in life is to open up the word, and for some people scales come off the eyes, which only, by the way, God can do; to bring you to know Him, and know that He did not call you just for the sake of, but for His sake and for His purpose. And if there is an eternal purpose in calling you then He has indeed begun, but if you've been here some time, He has equipped you for the task at hand. My calling, at times, I'm telling you, I love the fact that somewhere before I was born, before I messed up my life; somewhere back there, God said, “I want that one.” And I realize I live most of my life not deserving to ever have a word whispered into my ear, never to even have the eyes opened. If I would have stayed blind and dumb from where I was coming from, it would have been befitting for a person like me. But once the eyes are opened, and I don't care what people think about me, I'm telling you what I'm telling you that comes straight from the heart. What the people can tolerate or not tolerate, understand or not understand; my calling has been to get you know God, not know peripheral play games, not know these side issues. That, those are all great, but to know about God working actively and daily in your life, even when you do not think so and you cannot see Him; that is my calling. My calling is to make sure that you are awake, not sleeping. And I'm not talking about laying down, I'm talking about awake in the spirit to know that God has given you the power. The last word in the book of Revelation: “to him that overcometh,” we are more than conquerors. So why is the church so━not just this church, but all churches so weak and impotent? And even where the name of Jesus is named and the words are preached, why is it we seem to be without strength and without power? Oh, believe me, in the, in the sound of my voice, there are people here who desperately, I know you want to help me. You hear the pain and the care that I have and you want to. I don't think it's everybody's not doing anything. There's a lot of people here who earnestly, they have gone at this and wracked their brain, and probably got a little sore knees in prayer about how, what, and why? And let me say it like this. That, I believe, the Lord knows; God knows, I don't, I can't see it, but equally knows He's given to each one, beginning with me, and that goes straight to everyone in the sound of my voice who's not in this room, the dunamis, the same power that raised up Christ from the dead shall so dwell in you, the power to overcome; it's the power to look upon, not in judgment and not with a critical spirit, it's the power to look upon and feel a small degree of sorrow for what people don't know or don't understand or haven't come to the reality of; and may not if God doesn't open their eyes and if He doesn't do the drawing. It's a big thing when you hear people say, “Oh, I'm interested in learning about God.” Well, I'm interested in you coming to know Him. And you can't know Him through entertainment; you can't know Him through a church service where the sermon is 10 minutes long. You can't even know Him in your own darned language; sorry to tell you that. This, this book, albeit bestseller of all times, still has its issues with communicating the concepts that even if it was in the most precise language, even then it falls short because God in His perfection and man in his imperfection cannot ever meet at this point where this horizon, the sky and the land have had a perfect straight line in symmetry. Because of our imperfections we're not able to, but as close as we can come as studying the book. So when I say it's my calling and I feel this burden, I'm not just here because somebody said, “Well, you're going to succeed me and thus-and-so.” I told you years ago, only a fool would have stayed here to put up with the stuff I've put up with. It must make me a fool, but I'll be a fool for Christ any day if it counts in eternity, no matter what is said. I may be asking you to do the same. I may be asking you to do something that in your lifetime, you didn't think you were able to do. My prayer━oh, here it comes, and you're not, probably not going to like this. My prayer is: Lord, please send somebody into my life, into this ministry that I might have clarity like Dr. Scott did when he laid hands on me and ordained me. Lord, please give me the clarity. Why? Because I believe this work isn't, doesn't begin and end with Dr. Scott or Melissa Scott; it continues until He comes. That requires that I either live until Jesus comes or that the Lord send somebody. I'm going to bank on a little insurance policy here, just in case, to be on the safe side. I started asking years ago: Lord, please be merciful to me and put someone here and give me the clarity Dr. Scott had when You gave him the clarity about me. So I take this work very seriously, and every single week when I see people not being faithful, I ask myself, “Are these people who even,” oh, you may be insulted; I don't care, do you even know the honor? I'm not talking about coming to Faith Center. If you think that, like I'm some megalomaniac, do you even know the honor of being called with a sea of people out there that don't care and will never care, because God will not turn on that receiver? That should make the whole mindset change. Just on a strictly human level that should change the way we view everything about God. You know, in my lifetime, I desire to know about Him. And I've seen enough in this church to know, not just in as my time here as pastor, but while Dr. Scott was alive and pastoring the church, the nature of people. We tend to think we've got lots of time. We tend to think there's no urgency. We tend to think “Next Sunday; I'll do it some other time. I'll call in at some other time. I'll be there at some other time.” Now this is not meant to drag you down. This is meant to just kind of put it out there and maybe today you'll, you'll hear my heart. I'm asking you to hear my heart and maybe the Holy Spirit will grab hold of what I'm saying and place it in your heart as deeply as it is in mine, or at least give you the understanding of where I'm coming from when I say this has to change. And it has to change because otherwise this church ends up being, as I said, I can sit with the camera from anywhere. The thing that I love is that I look around and I see faces I've known here for years. I see faces in front of me, for the most part, for the most part I know your family, I know a little bit of your history, I know some of the sacrifices and the tragedies of the cost of being here. For some it's cost them husband or wife deciding they can't be here while husband or wife has stayed. I, trust me, and I look at you and I don't think, oh, it's just a butt in a seat. I look at you and I think these are God's people that God has placed here under my care or my stewardship and I would be a derelict if I didn't tell you it pains me to see the lack of faithfulness. Now something's got to change. And for the people that say, “But I know about God and I, I even know God,” a subtle difference there, a distinction from knowing about and knowing, then you'll know that God probably is grieved as well because we are one of the few. I'm not going to say we're the only one; we're one of the few ministries that this all that happens here is the word of God. There's no attempt to bring in world ideas and to have you morphed into the world. We have to combat it constantly, and that's not like I'm happy with being archaic. That's saying I want to stay with, try and stay within the confines of what we have, which is the Bible. We're one of the few. And there's even people who used to be here, who are so caught up in, what I've called second and tertiary subjects of the universe and other things that they have forgotten the prime reason for this church existing as the heralding, the sending forth of the light of gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. You and I have this wonderful knowledge of, we're like the people who survived the plane crash or we were, we had the parachutes; but not everybody. And then you start looking at it as a tragedy, not as just “these are numbers.” This is what I'm asking you consider when I share my heart with you today. And the whole series on the teaching of the Holy Spirit, the person and work, should become clear to you that I really think there is a vast majority in Christendom who don't even believe that this Person is actually A) a reality and secondarily a reality in your personal life, acting and helping you to carry the load in your prayer to give you the understanding as the word goes forth or as you listen to a message that something clicks and you, “Ah! I didn't see that before,” as in progressive revelation that is helped by the Spirit that you have the guidance of the Spirit of truth that you're able to discern. Let me put a final note here before I'm done, because I think all of this, what I've said, is long overdue. Well now, lest there be people, and there always are, there are people who misunderstand me, I will tell you about the Jesus I know from this book. Jesus went out and He found Philip; Philip didn't find Him. Jesus, it says, found Philip. And this one that He found, Philip, goes to tell Nathaniel. He says, “We found the one who fulfills both the law and the prophets from the time of Moses until now.” If you read that passage again in John, you're going to notice something. Philip did not try to sit down and reason with Nathaniel. He simply said, “Come and see.” Christ revealed Himself to people then, today He reveals Himself, prevenient grace, the Spirit of God at work, and this is how a whole pattern in set in the Bible of God, as God the Father, clothed in a tent of human flesh as the Son, being the exegesis and revealing Himself to us. But He finds the individuals. To the woman at the well, He found her; He spoke to her first. He found her. And all the people that say, you know, “I found the Lord!” Well, they don't read pretty, pretty good, because it's the Lord that's always doing the finding. And while the Lord was in the flesh and alive, He did the searching out; He saw Zacchaeus, He talked to him. Mary Magdalene is another one. He found these individuals. He went along and He called certain ones by name and said, “Follow Me.” They didn't find Him. And the ones that found Him on their own, by and large didn't stick around. Just, just to tell you how I understand I don't think you're going to go out into the world and save the world. The Lord has to do the finding. The Lord has to do the calling; that's His work. Anytime we try and usurp His work, it will be a failure. That's His work of finding the people; He knows who are His. If you move away from Jesus and go into the New Testament and look at these other accounts, it is always someone coming upon somebody else. It was indeed Philip, again, coming upon the eunuch. This is the way God operates then from that time forward, sending forth people who will be finding others. And it's not simply just going out and finding; it's at an intersection. God creates that for us. Most of the time we walk around like this and we really don't━we're not looking, we don't see, we don't care. But that's the Lord's responsibility. It will never be yours and it will never be mine. So you, just, I want to be clear, when you leave here you know where I stand. So a whole universe out there of people that say, “You go out and you go find the people that need to saved! YOU go find them and bring them in! You, you do the catching and come into the church and we'll do the cleaning.” Bleh! That's not a good thing. It's not, not a good deal there. How about God does the catching and God does the cleaning, and He does all that. He still uses the surrendered vessels, we faltering ones. That's not just the minister in the pulpit; that's every individual. Please don't go out of here today and think, “Well, you know, Pastor wants me to do something I can't do.” Then you didn't hear what I've just said for the time I've been standing here. My late husband used to; it's First book of Scott: “Whom the Lord calls, He enables.” There couldn't be a truer statement. Although we looked for it for a long time in the Bible, but the reality is if the Lord has called you, it doesn't mean He's called you to preach, it doesn't mean He's called you to teach, but every single individual should carry that burden if they really, if you have come to know Christ, then this, this is the thing of seeking the kingdom of God first, and you realize that at the forefront of everything, the church is not a money machine, the church is not a prosperity machine; the church isn't even a healing machine. The church is a place of His people gathered, called-out ones brought to a place where God has called an individual to help equip the saints to make the journey. And ultimately, not just get through another day, but step into His presence and hear the words uttered, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” So I think, unfortunately, I didn't get around to doing what I wanted to do, but this may be the thing that the Lord needed for the ears and the hearts today. And you know what I'm asking for? I haven't asked you, the congregation, I haven't asked you for anything. I haven't asked for anything personally from you. As I said, I haven't burdened you with 12 years-worth of battles and insanity behind the scenes because I've told you I believe that as long as I'm trusting and leaning on the Lord, you have enough distraction in your life. If I would come to you every week and tell you for the last 12 years every burden for this ministry, it probably would empty the building out. What I'm telling you, actually what I'm asking you, I'm asking you to leave here today and consider what I've said and think long and hard about your place in eternity. The very fact, as I said, I don't care how good you've been or how bad you've been, the very fact that God called you says He looks on you as special and chosen. The fact that you're still sitting here and the fact that you've been here, some of you have been here for 20, 30 and some 40 years, says you're not afraid of what's going to come from God's book or from His person because I'm not here to do something for myself. I haven't asked you for something for me. Most pastors come and there's always some petition for something for them. Oh, you know, they want to have somebody come in and do their preaching for them for a month so they can━or a sabbatical time. I haven't asked you for that, in fact, I don't want one, although there's times when I do. But the things I've asked you for have pertained ultimately not to this building, or filling this building, they pertain to you and the place that you've been put in as a human conduit and a person with human responsibility. While the rest of the world is acting recklessly and while we have to contend with a thousand other things that go on, including the charlatans and the pea-brains that call themselves the church of Jesus Christ and do not care one iota of whether or not you make it in, just as long as they can meet their goals. We haven't met our goals in a long time. When Dr. Scott was alive and I started working in the office about 1996, 1997, somewhere in that window, whenever that was, we weren't making budget. We haven't made budget since that time. Are you kidding me? And yet, somehow, we make it. Somehow there, the Lord makes a way and I, I've come to know it can only be the Lord. One day when, I remember one day when we only had a few pieces of mail come in, but somebody sent in a very large check. Had it not been for━how many times━don't, everybody's looking at me, I want to hear from the back of the room: how many times has that happened? I'm talking to an individual sitting in the corner there. (Many times.) Uh-huh, very little mail, but somebody, that one day where there was little mail, somebody sends in a very large check and you have to look at that and go: the timing. I don't control the postal service; are you kidding me? That would be a miracle. The timing of that that on the day when we had the least amount in terms of volume, the Lord made it so that that day that particular check came in that made it so we could go through another day. I've come to depend on the Lord that way. I've come to depend on the Lord to do the things I know that He can only do for you and He can only do for me. And when you leave here today, that's what I'm asking you to think about, the Lord will do when we place our trust and our faith in this is His work and this is His way. He will never put a whole, large pot, you know, you need like the woman you need some oil, He's not going to place a whole large pot there so that somebody can steal it or rob or make it evaporate. He'll put just enough there that each day or each time you're required to go back and in faith expect that there'll be enough for whatever the Lord has for you to do for Him. That provision doesn't just stay in the pocketbook and it's not to just the pocketbook and the bank account, that's in all things. I had to have the faith that the Lord would make a way for me to stand here every single week and talk to you, not just blah, blah, blah, blah, but something that has substance. And I can only look back and say the Lord, the Lord enabled me all this time. The Lord has helped me. The Lord gave me when I didn't have, because I knew I didn't have and had I had, I would have said, “Oh, isn't that great? Didn't you like that? Didn't that sound good? Was it spirit-u-al?” It's His work. God, to You I give the credit and the glory, including the people in front of me, the ones I see and the ones I cannot. I'm asking you today to take what I've said, this is not what I planned to do today, believe me. I'm asking you to take what I've said and take it to heart. I'm praying that there will be a change here that is not one of effort, human effort, human works, but the reality that this great and precious gift God has given us with us to help us has already given us the power, the dunamis to do what we know we cannot. And therefore, we, we hopefully, some of us have that little extra knowledge today that says, you know, whatever the Lord puts in front of me, I know He's enabled me to tackle. And that includes the problem that we seem to be having here of people not being too faithful and the lack of people really taking it seriously when I say we need to at least understand we do have a problem here with the attendance and people's commitments. Now it grieves me that I didn't; you know, that's the flesh probably talking; that I didn't get to do what I came here to do today, but I think I came to do and just said to you what I think the Lord wanted me to bring to you, which is we're not some disgraceful person that's been put to the side. This is God's work, and if it is God's work then we honor God. And that begins with we have a responsibility, something at least beginning that you take to prayer and think about and earnestly, maybe change will come when we begin to realize I'm a privileged child of God. And if there's something the Lord has placed in my heart or placed in my pathway, I won't try to avoid it. I'll tackle it because I know when He's helping me along and I'm not doing it, He's going to get all the glory and that in turn results in something done for Him for real, not in the flesh, not by works, but simply by faith. That's all I ask you to do. That's all I have to say. Come on up. You may be seated. We're going to take up one offering only. There's one thing I, one footnote I want to say. In my years of being here and since I told you mid-'90s until now, there is a Scripture that I relate to. I'm not speaking of you, by the way, so don't think this is to you. This is to the people who, when I first came, like Christ coming in and they cried, “Hosanna!” and they celebrated, right: “Hosanna to the King! Hosanna!” right? And this is the same voices that just days later cried, “Crucify Him!” There will be people like I said to you, when I came, they sung my praises, they loved the fact that, you know, I seemed to make Dr. Scott smile and happy and everything, but man, the minute they had to face the reality that I'm not here to play games and this is all I am about, a little turn of attitude. Now I'm not begging for people to be here. Just like my late husband, I'm looking for uncommon people who understand the call of God and desire to get to know God, not about Him; get to know Him, because the more you get to know Him, the more you realize two things: you don't know as much as you think you do, and that's me too, and that getting to know God makes everything a little bit more clear as to the real purpose and meaning of Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now hopefully, as I said, you'll take this all to prayer and hopefully there will become prayer that turns into an action of faith that God will honor and we'll stand back together collectively and say only the Lord could have done this. Only the Lord could fix such a problem. And what does my God do? He specializes in things that are thought impossible. So while the naysayers and the enemies and the idiots out there are busy, you know, foaming at the mouth and, you know, rolling their hands and saying, “Oh, goodie, goodie!” my God can absolutely do anything and if you're ready to witness and behold, then I suggest you turn your faith loose and realize that God is able to do anything. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
