But God, in His great kindness, reminds me during those times that I need to call on hope by recalling His truth. And I would love to help you call on hope tonight.

Isaiah 26:3 reminds us, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”

If you are needing His peace tonight, here is a declaration based on Isaiah 26:3 that you can speak out loud …

Life may be swirling all around me, threatening to steal my hope, my peace, my joy. But I am declaring right now that I will not be swept up into a storm of fear and wild emotions. The Lord has promised me that He will keep me in perfect peace when I fix my mind on Him. I very much recognize I will steer where I stare. So I must watch what I fixate on. If I keep staring at the wrong things, I’ll go in wrong directions. I am choosing to place my attention on the Lord in this very moment. I am choosing to focus on trusting Him and believing His promises. And as I steer my attention more and more toward Him, His peace will come and flood my heart and settle my anxious mind.

We have the applause of people and our selfies are perfectly lit, and we have a whole bunch of friends and
a whole bunch of Instagram likes, and people are far owing us, and the enemy is thrilled because we have sacrificed holiness on the altar of impressing people.
You gotta live for the applause of heaven.
You gotta decide. I will not be politically correct. Before I will choose to be holy.
You cannot fathom what god has in mind for you.
The reason why I can say that with that much boldness is because while there are thirty thousand of us that are gathered together in these three arenas and the nodes that are on the other side of the screen in their homes.
Thirty thousand sounds like a big number unless you consider the fact that with seven plus billion people on the planet, The fact that he’d let us be the ones that are recipients of what he’s done over these last few weekends, really, it’s just or last few days, really, it’s just a drop in the bucket.
Thirty thousand sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of all the people that could have been here y’all, he chose us.
That means he intended for you to know, you’re an arrow.
That your ex expectation is that you’re getting ready to go places, the likes of which you could never imagine.
Oh, I like y’all. Y’all talk back to me.
I go to that kind of a church where they talk back.
You know, I go to the kind of church where if the preaching gets really good to us, we might throw something at the pastor.
A shoe, a baby, anything might go flying up there. Y’all are my people.
Y’all came to have church. So I have three boys.
It’s a little bit scary to me that they are nearly, and we’ll be very soon.
In the next few years, we’ll be about your age three sons.
The distinguishing characteristic about my boys is that they are giants. They are huge boys.
My fifteen year old is six foot two inches tall. He wears a size fourteen men’s shoe.
My thirteen year old is about six one. He wears thirteen men’s shoe. And, uh, they tower over me.
I have a nine year old who’s coming up in the ranks with his brothers. They are tall boy.
Somebody come help me feed these people.
And one of the distinguishing characteristics about or or what makes their size work for them rather is that they do love sport.
So whatever sport is sort of in season, that’s what we’re playing at the time.
My second son for a lot of years, he’s in a basketball now, but for a lot of years, Baseball was a thing, and I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed baseball season. I liked going out there for spring ball.
I liked spring ball because you go sit in the cool of the evening while your kid is practicing.
I remember all those years of of little league when he was just coming up and we’d sit out there in the cool of the spring evening under the lights of the bleachers watching in practice and enjoying just, uh, that that whole atmosphere, a light spring ball so much.
The only problem with spring ball is that it is going to become summer ball.
And I don’t know what happens where you live wherever you’re coming from, but I can’t tell you in Dallas, Texas, which is where I still live, and where I was born and raised in Dallas Texas in the summertime.
It doesn’t warm up slightly. It gets hot. I’m talking about slap your mama hot. That kinda hot.
The kind of hot where you feel like the sun must be mad at you about something.
Like, you did something to the sun and the sun is trying to get you back all summer long.
That’s what it feels like. And you’re sitting out there at a game trying to enjoy your kid’s game, and it really still is okay when there’s just one game.
The problem is that at the end of every season, there’s a tournament.
So you gotta be out there on a Thursday at eight AM and ten AM and noon and two PM.
And then depending upon how your kids team did, you’re gonna have to come back on Friday at eight AM and ten AM, and then they give you a little lunch break, but you gotta come back.
For the two PM game, the four PM game, and then if your kids team had the nerve to do well, you gotta come back again on Saturday for the eight AM game and ten AM and and noon and two with Man, you’re sitting out there under the blazing sun, trying to be happy that your kid is doing well.
Really, you’re wondering if it’s ever okay to pray they lose so you can go home.
I will never confirm nor deny that I have ever done that.
But I will tell you that we were sitting out there at a tournament just several years ago.
Sun was blazing. We were so excited for the lunch break just because that meant we would be able to go to a restaurant where there would be air condition, and ice water that actually had ice in it.
We got refreshed. We came back.
We drove our SUV up into the parking lot, opened up the back of the SUV so that we could pull out all the gear that we needed to go to the next game in the tournament.
We were three days into the tournament, hot, sweaty. They were doing well.
We were trying to be excited about it. Ready for the next game.
I was walking behind my son to get from where we had parked the car over toward the dugout where the next game was gonna be played.
And so I gathered up all the stuff, you know, the ice chest that you have, and the, um, the umbrella that you might have to go over your head, and, you know, the water bottles, the the backpack, the the baseballs, the mitts, all that stuff.
And I was following behind my son. My second son, Jerry Junior is a fairly gregarious personality. He’s outgoing.
He’s excited for a challenge. So I could see that in his step as I followed behind him.
I could see a skip in his step. His chin was up. His shoulders were back.
He was excited about the next game. And I gotta tell you, he’s pretty good in baseball.
He has a natural knack for it.
I remember at ten years old was the first time he got a good hit and sent it sailing over the fence line at ten years old.
And I think it’s partly because of his size, just a lot of power behind his swing, a great as a first baseman.
So we were really excited about his success in baseball and And I watched him as he kind of hopped and skipped over to the next game, just excited about the next challenge in the tournament.
But because I was following behind him, I had my eyes glued on him, and I could see when something changed.
I could see that as we took the short walk from where we’d park the car over to the dugout, I could see that his shoulders started to hunch over in his head hung down.
I could see that that that skip that had been in his step had changed.
He was kind of walking like he was nervous. He was wringing his hands a little bit.
Saw that he was looking around his eyes darting and looking a little bit sketchy.
I was trying to figure out what happened to my boy. It was a short walk.
From where we parked the car over to the dugout, and all of a sudden his countenance had completely changed.
So I started looking around trying to figure out what was going on, why did he look so insecure and fearful all of a sudden.
I realized that as we were going toward the dugout, we were walking past some kids from another team.
They were all laying on the grass underneath the shade of an oak tree getting ready for the next game.
As I passed them, I could see this was the team we were about to play next.
Kept walking, and I kept getting a look at these boys.
And when I looked at them, I realized what my son’s problem was. We had faced this team before.
We had faced them earlier in the season.
And when this team had played my son’s team earlier in the season, they had annihilated us.
It had been a complete embarrassment, a complete up set.
This team right here y’all, they were serious baseball players, but we had to walk right by them to get to the dugout.
As we walked past, there were two players. They were talking to each other. One was whispering to the other.
I think he thought he was whispering, but we could hear He leaned over to the other one, and he said, there goes that big kid from the red sox team.
Is he the one that hit the ball and it went over the fence?
Yeah. He was the one at first base, the
one that caught any of the outs that we got in the game. That was him.
So that’s Jerry shire?
When my boy heard his name, crossed the lips of the opposing team members, Those shoulders that had been hanging down.
All of a sudden, I watched them pop back again. I watched his chin go up.
I watched him get a little swag back in his step as he headed over toward the dugout.
In fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the game started.
It’s amazing really how your continents changes when you really overhear and understand what the enemy thinks about you when he sees you coming.
It doesn’t mean that the challenge goes away. It means that in the face of it, you’re different.
Your stance is different because you recognize that when the enemy sees a daughter or a son of god coming his way, he’s shaking in his boots, not because of you, but because of the Holy spirit of god that lives on the inside of me.
I came to tell somebody today that even if you don’t believe what it is that the word of god declares to be true about you.
You need to know that the enemy does.
He knows that every single thing that god’s word declares to be true about you.
Every word that has been declared over you in these last few days of this even if you’re not convinced about it, the enemy is.
He knows that you have been forgiven.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
He knows that you have been given the victory.
He knows that you have been made competent by the spirit of god.
He knows that there is therefore, now no condemnation for you, or for me, no shame. No guilt.
He knows that you have not been given a spirit of fear.
But a power and love and of a sound mind. And y’all, he knows that in the end, we win.
And I’m saying what a shame it would be.
For the enemy to believe more about your potential than you do.
But ashamed it would be for us to go out of here.
With all of this inspiration that we have been given this investment of god’s word that he has gathered us together over the course of these days, to worship and spirit and in truth and to hear his word declared true over our lives.
What a tragedy it would be for us to walk out of here and still live like we were before we came through these doors.
So what the enemy will do is scatter challenge in front of your life.
Because listen, you’re going back home to challenge. Y’all do know we going back home in a little while. Right?
And don’t we wish we can wake up to this every single day.
Don’t we wish that we could have god’s words spoken over our lives with this much authority and power every single day and be in the presence of leaders who can lead us into the presence of god and worship every single day like this, but the reality is We’re going back home.
The challenges of your university campus, the challenges of your home, your relationships, your friendships, on your job, those challenges will be sprawled out in front of
you when you get home.
And let me tell you something.
What the enemy hopes is that the sight of them will cause you to shrink back in so much fear and insecurity that you’ll never step up to the plight of being who god has called you to be.
Listen, if you’ve placed faith in Jesus Christ, I hope you know that the enemy understands he cannot destroy you.
He knows his chances are over of destroying you.
So he is going to spend the rest of his time and the rest of his energy just trying to discourage you.
Trying to distract you so that you’ll shrink back in fear and insecurity and not step up to the plate and be who god has called you to be.
It is at least in part to this end that the apostle Paul gives us a passage of scripture that has become a lifeline for me.
In fact, I was talking with, uh, Christine yesterday.
Chris and I have known each other for a very long time, very close friends, and she was asking me what I was gonna speak on, and I had several thoughts of directions that I was, uh, leaning toward.
But in the end, we, as we were talking, the question came up.
If there was only one thing you could say to them.
If there’s only one message that you ever have the opportunity, to tell these students, these young people that will be gathered together on this occasion, what would that message be?
And there was one thing that immediately popped into my heart and my mind for you at the end of this year’s passion’s passion conference The words of the Apostle Paul.
He writes them in the book of Ephesians.
Listen, Let me just tell you quickly before I read this passage.
You got if you if you’ve not read the book of Ephesians, you’re gonna have to read the book of Ephesians.
Y’all listen. It’s it’s like for real.
The apostle Paul y’all know he was a bad boy.
He gave us most of what would become the new testament.
Letters written to first century believers that now disciple us and help us to mature as believers and as the body of Christ.
And scholars say that of all of Paul’s writing, really, the cream of the crop, the cherry on top of the cake is ephesians.
Because in the book of Ephesians, y’all, he just spends the first half of the book just rehearsing who you are as a daughter or a son.
He wants to make sure you step up to the plate rise to the occasion of who you’ve been recreated in Christ to become.
Those of you who placed faith in Jesus Christ last night who stood to your feet at the end of pastor Lewis’s message and you placed faith in Jesus.
Listen. The old has gone, and the new has come.
You’re a daughter, you are a son, and you have full rights and privileges that have been granted to you.
The apostle Paul wants you to know what is the hope of his calling and choosing you.
He writes in the first and second and third chapter about the treasure that you have.
He wants you to know about the mercy that has been lavished upon you.
The grace that has been given to you.
He wants you to know that if you’ve been rejected by everybody else, you’ve been handpicked chosen and adopted by the one true god.
He wants you to know that if you’ve dug a pic of sin for yourself, that is so deep, you can’t find your way out of it.
That the mercy of god is so great and so grand that it can reach down into any pit and snatch you up out of it once and for all.
In fact, Paul gets so worked up that by the time he gets to the middle of the first chapter, he bursts out in a prayer and he says, I’m praying that the eyes of your heart would be open so that you would just know what is the hope of his calling and choosing you.
And after going over and over and on and on about the lavishness, the richness, the grace, the mercy goodness, the adoption that has been poured out over us, the forgiveness that has been granted to us.
He’s trying to figure out how do I close this letter make sure they step up to the plate.
How do I put a exclamation point on passion twenty eighteen to make sure that what god has given them, they don’t hand over to the enemy as soon as they walk out the door.
And the apostle Paul writes these words to us in Ephesians chapter six, beginning in verse ten.
He says, finally.
You be strong in the lord, and in the strength of his might, He says, put on the full armor of god so that you may be able to stand firm against the scheme.
Somebody say schemes. Against the schemes of the devil. He says, we wrestle not.
We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers.
I can the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness that are in the heavenly place He says so, therefore, you might as well just go ahead and put down all the weapons of this world that aren’t working for you anyway and take up some weapons that I actually have some power.
He says take up the full armor of god so that you may be able to resist in the evil day.
And having done everything to stand firm. He says you ought to just stand firm, therefore.
And these few verses of scripture, the apostle Paul begins to introduce to us a concept that has not been at least in the context of thus far in church development at that time had not been as overtly described as it is right now in Paul’s letter.
He brings up the topic of spiritual warfare. He says, you have an enemy.
He says I wanna make sure that it’s loud and clear.
There are other places in the Old Testament and throughout throughout the new y’all where we can infer that we have a spiritual unseen battle going on.
But this is the first time that an author comes right out and says, you have an enemy.
And he is scheming against you.
That when you leave this place in just a little while, when I leave this place in just a little while, You need to know that there is an enemy.
He is against you. He is not for you.
He plans to do anything and everything in his power to stir up challenge in your life enough to cause you to shrink back and not rise up and stand firm in the victory that you have been given.
In Christ Jesus. That’s why the apostle Paul says, stand firm because you have an enemy.
An enemy that wants you to think that just because he is invisible, he is also fictional.
He wants to be chalked up to nothing more than a caricature a cartoon picture, a myth, a a character for a kid’s nursery run.
He doesn’t want you to recognize the influence that he has over your life possibly to to cause you to never walk into the full expression of god’s grace and goodness in your life.
He is sinister. He is a master illusionist, and he is a deceiver.
And he hopes to cleverly disguise himself behind life’s most pressing problems to where you will forget he is even there.
He wants you to point fingers at him or at her, at your boss, at your parent, at that particular professor, or your RA in your dorm.
He wants you to think it’s that adviser, it’s that financial problem.
Anything flesh and blood, because he knows, as long as we’re looking at the flesh and blood, we will direct all the wrong weapons at the wrong corporate.
We’ll think our money will work. We’ll think our rationale and logic will actually work.
We think that the diploma we’re about to to achieve and receive.
We’ll think the diploma will be work worth it. We’ll think that the connections will work.
Anything natural cannot take care of the supernatural.
When your problem is unseen and spiritual, you need weapons that work in that realm.
So the apostle Paul says you gotta know first of all that your enemy is not the person you are sitting next to today.
That your enemy is not your parent at home.
Your enemy is not that professor that is difficult to work with your real enemy is not your boss on your part time job.
Your real enemy is unseen. He is hoping y’all that we will forget he’s there.
He is the master deceiver.
So there’s a little church around the corner from my house in Dallas.
I’ve been taking my kids there since they were little, uh, to harvest festival.
That’s basically this church’s answer to Halloween. So we will go there for harvest festival.
And this church has a good old fashioned trunker treat.
Does anybody know what I mean when I say trunker treat? Okay. Alright.
So trunk or treat for those of you who are not clear on what that is.
That’s when members of the congregation volunteer.
They volunteer to bring their cars into the parking lot on harvest festival night so that they can open up the trunk of their car.
So you go into the parking lot, all the trunks are open, and each person has basically crafted a carnival game or some sort of fair game out of the trunk car.
So kids line up one trunk after the other, they play whatever the game is.
And then most of the time, whether they win or lose the person that owns that car gives them whole bunch of candy and sends them home.
We’re always so grateful. So we stand in line.
One car after the other, waiting on bags of candy. And we play one game after the other.
A few years ago, the biggest line, the longest line at carnival wasn’t behind a a car.
It was behind the bed of a truck. It was really clever.
A huge truck had been, uh, parked in the parking lot, And they put a step ladder right at the bed of the truck so that a kid could walk into the bed of the truck.
They had attached a tabletop, which was about the same size as the bed of the truck, They had attached it to the side of the truck, cut six holes into it, put some fabric, some drapery over it, and out from those holes every few seconds, a puppet would pop through.
They gave the kid a huge plastic mallet and the job of the kid was to run up and down the inside of the bed of the truck as he tried to hit the puppets on top of the head.
It was a homemade whack a mole game is what it was. And it was the longest line.
Me and Jude, at the time, he was like, four, Judith is my youngest.
Me and Judith standing in line were waiting on our turn. Behind us, there was another kid.
He’s with his his mom. He’s probably four or five as well, and y’all, he was hysterical.
Because he was annoyed at this whole situation and he was making sure she knew it.
He was first of all annoyed because, mom, I don’t understand why stand in this long line.
Didn’t we come to the carnival to have fun? This ain’t fun, standing in line ain’t fun.
I have an idea, mom. How about this?
How about I go play all these other names while you stand in line and hold our place?
And then when turn, I’ll come back and join you in line.
But he was not only annoyed about the line.
The four year old was also annoyed because mom, I don’t even understand this game.
Why in the world would I waste all my energy running up and down the inside of that truck to hit the puppets on the top of the head?
If when I hit them on the head, they’re gonna disappear, but then they’re just gonna come back as soon as I hit them on the head, what the point of this game.
So everybody in the line is laughing hysterically because this four year old, this five year old is talking so much about all of his frustrations.
Finally, he gets so frustrated that he works himself into a frenzy to where all I saw out of my peripheral vision was a four year old flash running past me as he ran forward, and he grabbed the drapery off of the tabletop and pulled it clean off.
Underneath, there were three adults with puppets on each hand.
That day, we all got a good laugh, but we also got a good lesson.
There is always something you can’t see influencing what you can.
And if you spend all of your time, your energy, your effort trying to hit at what you see popping up in your life, you’re gonna be so frustrated.
And by the way, exhausted. Because as soon as you take care of one thing, another one is coming back.
Unless you do what the apostle Paul says, pull back the curtain and let the enemy know we got our eyes on you.
And we’re gonna use some weapons that I actually work back there behind the curtain.
Y’all, I wish I had learned this when I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one years old that that person, that physical problem, isn’t really where you need to invest your energy, pull back the curtain, use the weapons that actually have power.
The apostle Paul wants you to know that the tactics of the enemy are serious business, and so he uses a specific word to describe them.
He says, schemes. Listen to me. He knows your weaknesses.
He knows how to dangle what carrot at the right time in the right way to make sure you are snagged in particular.
Have you ever wondered or found curious that particular carrot is always dangled in front of you when you are most tired.
When you are most vulnerable, when you happen to be most hungry, most alone, most weak, that particular carrot, the one that wouldn’t mess with your because it’s not her deal.
It’s not his deal. He’s not enticed by that.
But the one that entices you always shows up at the right time. Y’all, that’s not coincidence. That’s a scheme.
The enemy is trying to derail you.
He’s trying to make sure that you don’t walk in a manner worthy pleasing of the lord that you come in here, but that you don’t go out of here.
The the purpose to live For the glory of God, he’s trying to trip you up.
Not only for his own benefit, but because he does not want you having access to everything that you are privy to as a rightful heir to the king of kings and the lord of lords.
It’s a
scheme. So if he’s got tactics, we need tactics.
The apostle Paul outlines them for us.
I’m just gonna read them to you because he says in verse thirteen, you need the full armor, and here’s what they are.
Verse fourteen, He says, make sure that your loins are girded with truth.
Then he says, you need a breastplate and the breastplate is called righteousness.
And then he says in verse fifteen, you gotta have something for your feet if you want any hope of being able to move forward successfully So your feet need to be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
And then not only that, but he says there are some flaming missiles of the evil one.
That he fully intends to send sailing into your path.
You gonna need a shield, and the shield is your faith. And then you know there are lies.
There are strongholds that he’s going to try to erect in your mind.
You’re gonna need something to protect your mind. He says you need a helmet and the helmet is your salvation.
But not only that, he says that you are going to need a sword, really a dagger of the spirit.
It was about eighteen inches long or so, the one the Apostle Paul is referring to.
You need a dagger so that when the enemy is all up in your space, you’ve got something close at to make sure that he stays at bay.
You need a dagger of the spirit, and the dagger is called the what? The word of god.
But y’all, he doesn’t stop at those six. Can I just say that there is one more in eighteen?
Verse eighteen, traditionally, it’s taught as six. I really believe there are seven pieces of armor.
Because in verse eighteen, he says, pray.
It says pray.
Not like, you know, a prayer a day to keep the devil away.
Not like a prayer over your meal, just because that’s what your mama did and your grand mama did, and that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Not something quick and casual, fervent prioritized prayer.
Y’all, you can’t have victory if you don’t pray.
Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
Prairie is the key that unlocks the resources of heaven so that they can be unleashed on planet Earth.
Prior is the key he’s actually given you to get all the good stuff down here.
Cause I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna wait to get to heaven to experience all that god has for me.
Any bits of heaven, he plans to give me on earth. I want it right now.
Prairie accesses the bits of heaven he intends to give you now.
And prayer, listen, prayer is what pushes the kingdom of darkness back. It’s what pushes it back.
That’s why Jesus said my house shall be called, not a house of good preaching, not a house of good singing, not a house of great spotlights in production, Not a house of great cafes.
I hope you have all of that. Enjoy it.
But Jesus said at the end of the day, my house better be called a house of prayer.
Because spotlights and fog machines and great singing and great preaching, that won’t necessarily push the kingdom of darkness back.
But when my people who are called by my name, when they will humble themselves, and when they’ll pray, he says that I’m gonna hear from heaven.
I’m gonna heal the land. The enemy will have to bend the knee at the name of Jesus in prayer.
So pray.
There’s one other piece of armor I couldn’t get by without talking to you about it for a few moments.
Y’all still awake? Everybody gain? Yes. It’s in verse fourteen.
He says, put on a breastplate called what? Righteousness.
Jerry and I live in a fairly rural part of Dallas Fort Worth.
We like it that way. Close enough to the city, we can get there quick.
But it’s quiet and lazy. We live on a little two lane, sleepy road, somebody’s got some horses over there.
There’s some cows over there. And one of my closest friends lives across the street. That’s why we like it.
Because she’s got a pond in the front of her property.
So I’ll get the boys and the two fishing poles I bought on sale at the local Walmart I have a tackle box too that I got on sale there because, and, you know, we need things.
We need extra hooks because the boys always lose the hooks.
Extra bobber thingies, you know, cause we need extras of those.
I also have gloves in the tackle box because y’all know I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t finna actually touch no fish.
So we walk across the street with whatever hot dog meat we’ve got left from the week because, you know, we’re professional fishermen, so our hot dog meat is our bait.
We walk across the street.
We stand in this little cove underneath some trees and we fish just right there most of the time.
Just little sun perch, stuff like that. We can catch quick.
In an hour, we can catch like ten or twelve fish. Just a little quick, easy, little fishing trip.
Every now and then though, I’m feeling adventurous.
What that means is is that we will get into my friend’s little rowboat. They bought on Craigslist.
It’s metal. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a little it’s seaworthy. It can hold us up.
That’s all we need. I’ll swim we’ll, uh, grow out into the middle and we’ll fish from there every now and then.
But I always think twice before I do it, and here’s the reason.
Because in order to get in it, we first have to turn it over.
They leave it upside down as they should to drain water while nobody’s using I gotta turn it over to get in it.
And what I do know for sure is that when I turn this thing over, something is either gonna hop out from underneath it, Something’s gonna waddle out from underneath it or worst of all.
Oh, something’s gonna slither. Out from underneath that boat because the environment under there is moist and damp and perfect for critters.
Do you know what I’ve noticed every single time we turn it over, something comes out?
And never once have I had to write a golden sealed invitation and send it into the brush nearby to invite the critters to come and join us at one o’clock today.
You’re welcome. Never once have I had to invite them because the environment created by the upside down boat is invitation enough.
Righteousness is right side up living that invites the sunlight of god’s favor and brossing upon your life.
Unrighteousness is upside down behavior that is out of alignment with the truth of god that you’ve been sitting underneath for the last few days.
It’s behavior that is out of alignment with the truth of god to where you don’t have to invite the enemy and come and lay himself at home in your life.
You just keep living upside down, and the environment created by upside down behavior is invitation enough.
Listen to me. You can pray against the enemy till you’re blue in the face, but if you wanna leave passion and we do not walk in holiness, We do not live in a lifestyle that is in alignment with the truth of god.
We will have wasted our breath in prayer. Harl says somebody’s gotta live right.
It’s flat out straight up. Holyness. Holyness.
It’s a word that our our grandmothers and our grandfathers back in the good old days when you went to church and you sat on a wooden pew.
It’s before some churches became so pre seeker sensitive. I remember y’all, I went listen. I’m off track. Listen.
I went to a church, and they said, we are a pre secret sensitive church.
And so we actually want to sort of, uh, in a way they said dull down the actual literal name of Jesus just so we can get people In first, then we will we will be more direct later on.
I said, oh, you haven’t invited the wrong person.
Because there used to be a day in time
where it was just black and white, where there were fewer gray areas and tolerance.
Yes, come as you are, but don’t stay as you are. Holyness.
Brothers and sisters, I implore you by the mercies of god.
To walk in a manner worthy of this calling by which you have been called, that every bit of truth that you have received this weekend, to align your lifestyle to it.
To not determine that you will still dig your heels into the ground and live immorally or speak immorally or do the things happen and lifestyles, and choices on relationships that you know are outside of alignment with the truth of god.
Turn the boat right side up. So that you can invite the favor of god on your life.
The apostle Paul says righteousness is your breastplate. The Roman army in the first century.
They had many pieces of armor as you know, but the breastplate would have been one of the most critical.
The reason why was because it obviously protected the most vital organ they had, their heart.
The heart is the lifeline for your physical well-being all of the blood flow, the vitality, the energy that you need to function in every level of your life comes from the vitality of your physical heart.
What the physical heart is to the physical life. Your spiritual heart is to your spiritual life.
All of the vitality that energy that you need to be, who god has created you to be, to have fervency in your prayer life, to follow him with passion and with fire to read the Bible and not just be ink on a page, but you hear his voice speaking to you to have clear receptor between you and the Holy Spirit, you need a vital spiritual heart.
That’s why if I were your enemy more than all else I’d be after your heart.
Because one shot to the spiritual heart will wipe you out.
Your spiritual heart is comprised of four things, your mind, the way you think, your emotions, the way you feel, your ambitions, what you purpose to do, and your Your conscience is not the voice of god, but your conscience is like this wiring that helps this microphone amplify my voice the the conscience is the microphone that the Holy Spirit uses to help you hear the voice of God.
So if I were your enemy, I’d be after your heart because if I could get to your heart, that would mean I would have automatic access to your mind.
Now I could tinker with your thinking. I automatic access to your emotions.
I can mess with the way you feel and make sure they’re out of alignment with the truth of god.
I can mess with your ambitions to where what you wanna do is totally out of alignment with what god wants you to do and more than all else.
I’d wanna make it sure I have a shot to your heart so that I
can short circuit the wires between you and the Holy Spirit.
Now you can’t even hear God speak to you because you didn’t have a breastplate on.
The apostle Paul says holiness is your breastplate.
Holyness blocks you from a full frontal attack of the enemy.
Holyiness keeps the enemy at bay to where when he comes looking around for some people that he can infiltrate some upsound side down environments that he can fester him.
He can’t find that with me or with you because we’ve chosen right side up living.
Aligning ourselves with the truth of god, breastplates in place securing us against the schemes of the enemy.
Holyness is your breastplate. I came to tell you to live right.
I came to tell you not to just have heard all of this.
To go home and live in accordance with it. Yea. Holy.
Not by your power, not by your might, but by the spirit of god.
There is no relationship you’re in that if it is out of alignment with the truth of god that the Holy Spirit himself won’t help you to sever.
So that you can walk in holiness.
There is no lifestyle you are living that is too, uh, that you’re too wound up in that you break free from no matter how you feel in this moment,
you can walk in holiness.
There is no way you have been speaking, no addiction that you have, no habit that you have been festering in your life, that you have been harboring in your life that the Holy Spirit won’t empower you to break free from so that you can walk underneath the banner, the favor of holiness in your life.
Be ye holy. Y’all listen. Listen. Back in our grandmama and our grandparents days.
Great grandparents.
They wanted to honor god more than they wanted to impress people.
See, the problem with Instagram and Twitter and social media there’s
a problem y’all the problem is, we want this.
We wanna be impressive.
And if I’m worried for our generation, it is that
We are impressive, but we don’t have breastplates on.
It is that we have the applause of people and our selfies are per and we have a whole bunch of friends and a whole
bunch of Instagram likes, and people are following us.
And the enemy is thrilled because we have sucked ifies holiness on the altar of impressing people.
You gotta live for the applause of heaven.
You gotta decide. I will not be politically correct before I will choose to be holy.
I will not be impressive
before I will choose to be holy.
I may not be the the person that everybody wants to be around.
I may not be the most impressive, but what I will be is holy because a time is coming y’all where we are gonna see our savior face to face.
And when we see him, he will not ask us how many Instagram followers we had.
He will not ask us how many friends liked our post.
He will not want to see the selfies that we took when we see him face to face.
He’s gonna ask us, did we do business with his son, Jesus? Christ.
And then?
And then we’re gonna give an account.
And I don’t know about y’all.
But I’m looking for a well done. I want a well done.
I want Jesus to look at me and say, you did the thing, girl.
Not because they bought the books. They bought the Bible study. They saw the movie.
No, you did the thing because you honored me.
Whether with an audience of one or an audience of thirty thousand, you honored me.
I came to tell you brothers and sisters. Walk with integrity.
Be in the dark who you are in the light.
Everything that your god has entrusted to you over these last few days The enemy does not mind.
He doesn’t like, but he doesn’t mind that you heard him. He didn’t mind you came here.
What he minds is if you leave here and live by what you Crazy father.
If you’re here, If you’re in this room, stay standing.
If you’re in this room or one of the other arenas that were at home, and you know you were living in a way that is out of alignment with truth of god.
Your breastplate is not in place.
You are open to full frontal attack by the enemy because you haven’t girded yourself with holy living, and maybe you’re in a situation where you’ve been trying to live right.
But by your own strength and power, you just can’t seem to pull it off, and you need
the Holy Spirit to do what he does.
To set you free, to empower you, to rise up in victory, to step up to the place and hit a home run for the kingdom of god.
Y’all remember y’all remember in the Lion King?
Cimba’s messing with the hyenas, and he’s like, and they’re like, seriously.
And he does it again. And they’re like, You gotta be kidding. He does it again.
And they’re like, no, you’ll never take down. You’re too weak. You’re too small.
You’re too puny by yourself. He tries it one more time.
He lets out his best roar, but it sounds like something big and giant, and it echoes off of the mountains near and the enemy enemies go running away, not because he was the roar, but because his daddy had come up behind him.
New Foster had let him a great roar. The roar of the father is behind you.
Walk in victory in Jesus’s name, amen.