Welcome to Supernatural Saturday.
If you are new to us and you're new to Supernatural Saturday, this is the session that we do every
week.
I'm usually the leader, little old me, Jackie D, and we are looking to heaven for current
prophetic reality.
My heart is a little heavy this morning, friends, and I'm going to dedicate today's Supernatural
Saturday to our beautiful, wonderful prayer leader, Teresa Sullivan.
She was my student, she was my mentee, she was our prayer leader, she was our team member,
she was one of your sister squad, one of the hopeful brides-to-be, and she went on to be
with Jesus this morning.
And so, Lord, we thank you for Teresa's life, we thank you for the impact that she had in
the years that she had on earth, Lord, we thank you, Lord, that she is enjoying a revelation
of you that none of us currently have, a revelation of your presence and your goodness,
Lord, that none of us have ever seen.
And so, Lord, we thank you, God, we thank you for those that she leaves on earth that
are mourning her.
Grief is not a spiritual failure, it is the proof of love.
It is the proof of love, and we don't grieve without hope.
And so we pray for all of those that she's left behind, including us, that are here,
and they don't see her yet, but a little while, they will see her again, but she is
still with us, she is still with them, Lord.
And so I pray that they would feel your comfort today, your peace today, your joy today, understanding
that her suffering has ended and she has been released into full glory.
Lord, we thank you, God, we thank you, Lord, for her life, we thank you for her legacy,
and we thank you for all the good that is yet to come because she lived on this earth
in Jesus' name, amen.
So friends, I want to talk about grief today.
I'm dedicating this entire Supernatural Saturday to Teresa, she just went to be with Jesus
this morning.
She is the new kid on the block in heaven.
A lot of you have not been allowed to grieve properly, a lot of different things in your
life.
We don't just grieve people that have passed on, that have gone through that curtain, that
have stepped from this current reality into that reality.
You know that reality is all around us right now.
And every once in a while when we're in a real spiritual moment, right, when we're very
spiritually minded, we sense that other realm.
Heaven's not up, friends, it's all around.
It's all around and we sense it.
If you've ever been to a really good worship service or you are talking about something,
some revelation that God's giving you, or you had a dream and you wake up and you feel
all those angel wings, anyone else, raise your hand.
Those heavenly goosebumps, that's what we call them, right?
Some people call it the brush of angel wings, you just feel like something supernatural
is happening.
Something that you just said was in such agreement with heaven that all of heaven is clapping
along with you and you feel the resonance of that.
Anybody else?
You are in a moment of worship and you just feel God's presence like you have never felt
it before.
Some of you, when you met Jesus for the first time, me as well, that happened when I met
Jesus for the first time, I really acknowledged his presence in my life, his lordship in my
life, really surrendered my life and heart to him.
In that moment, I had a very supernatural experience, very, very supernatural experience.
A lot of you have experienced that kind of thing, either when it's the moment of conversion,
maybe it was at your baptism, possibly you have dreams and visions that take you into
that other realm regularly.
There's others of us that when we're in worship, we feel God's presence like never before.
Some of you just walking through nature, that's when you feel like you've stepped into another
otherworldly realm.
You just sense God's power more than you have at just regular days, on regular days.
Well, that is all around us.
And all our friend Teresa did was simply step over fully into it.
I guarantee that as she has been laying in that hospital for the last three or four months,
she has had lots, lots of encounters with that other realm that made that reality so
much more real than this one.
To the point where she's like, yes, even though there were some things that I wish that I
could have accomplished here on earth, she did want to be married.
She did want a partner.
She did want to help raise children.
She did want to do things, but it becomes kind of dim in comparison to that, right?
All the...
I remember when I was a really small child, I went to visit my grandmother in Tennessee
and she was a Pentecostal, if you know what that is.
And I just remember the other kids around that were all little Pentecostal children
that went to my grandmother's church, I remember them saying that they wanted to grow up and
get married.
And let's just face it, they wanted to have sex is what they were saying before the rapture
came.
They were this, this rapture thing that was coming, that was going to force all of them
to go to this place that they didn't want to go yet called heaven.
Let's just laugh at that.
Can we just laugh at the idea of this place that we don't want to go yet because earth
is so much fun and so much better than that.
That just shows you that we're young and immature when we say those things because when we grow
up we realize that our heart longs for heaven and home.
It longs to step over into that other reality.
This world is not our home, we're pilgrims here.
We're just passing through this life.
And where our sister Teresa has gone today, we will all go.
We will all go.
Gladly, happily, we will all go.
I remember when my mom passed away five years ago, we were driving in the car, it was only
a week after her celebration of life and we're driving in the car and we're on a long stretch
of highway and on both sides of the highway there's just trees.
There's thousands and thousands of trees and I'm just have my head up against the passenger
window and I'm just watching all of these trees go by and I'm grieving.
I'm deeply grieving.
But I'm kind of grieving without hope.
You know, we have a choice.
We have a choice to be those that grieve with hope or without hope.
And I was just looking at the trees going by and God spoke to me and he said, Jackie,
he said, you can't see the forest for the trees.
And I said, what does that mean, Lord?
I mean, I know what it means, but what does it mean?
Why are you saying that to me right now?
And he said, because he said, you're grieving your mother as if she's dead, but she's alive.
She's alive.
He said, you're the one who's dead.
She's alive.
And it is true, friends.
We're still living in these bodies that are dead in sin, but they're only alive in Christ.
She's experiencing a type of aliveness that I've never experienced and yet we grieve them
as if something terrible has happened to them, right?
When Jesus came to reconnect us to our royal heritage and inheritance, when he came to
be that sacrifice that did away with sin, it also did away with death, friends.
There is no such thing as death.
Death, where is thy sting?
Grave, where is their victory?
It's been swallowed up in Christ.
There's no such thing as death.
You understand that, right?
Nothing dies.
No one's dying.
They're transitioning to another realm, but they're no longer dying because death has
been overcome by Christ.
Now we do grieve the loss of their presence on earth.
We do grieve the relationship that we had with them.
And in my case, the relationship that I wasn't going to be able to have, I was just getting
to know my mother when she left this earth.
I was just finally able to have connection and communication with her.
I grieved all of the things that we wouldn't do together on this earth, all the mother-daughter
things and the times of intimate conversations and the graduations of my children and their
marriages and their babies and just all the milestones in my life.
I just celebrated my 50th birthday and my mother is not here.
I've never had a relationship with a father.
I know I do have a father.
I biologically understand how that works, but I've never had a father in my life or
a relationship with a father.
So we grieve, friends, and it's okay to grieve.
It's okay to feel sad about what we will not get to experience.
Also knowing that the Lord will take us up.
Also knowing that God will fill those empty spaces, if we give them to him, with people
who will do things with us, that will help us, that will give us advice, that will give
us support, that will give us love.
God places the solitary in family.
So we don't grieve without hope because grief is not a lack of faith.
Even Jesus grieved.
He grieved the death of his friend, Lazarus.
fully knowing that Lazarus was going to be resurrected.
We see Jesus weeping.
We know in the book of Psalms,
God says that he is close to the broken hearted.
He expects us to be broken hearted.
In fact, hope defers, makes the heart sick.
That scripture actually is talking about a broken heart,
talking about being broken hearted.
So grief is not something that we should try to repress.
We should feel it fully.
In fact, oftentimes, just like the scripture says
in Psalm 34, 18, we feel God closer to us in grief,
close to us when we're broken hearted
than we do at other times.
And not because he's further away at other times,
but because we are just not letting down our guard
and our walls.
But when you're grieving, you do,
you're very vulnerable when you're grieving, aren't you?
And so that's why we feel him closer.
So grief is the proof of love.
We don't grieve things that we didn't love
and we wanna heal.
So in order to heal, we have to feel.
Remember all of you, when you went through the heart work,
we have to feel the feels in order to heal the feels.
Feel them to heal them.
So I'm giving you a holy permission today to feel the ache.
For Teresa, for those of you that knew her,
went to her Wednesday prayer sessions
here in this community.
For those of you that got together with her,
a couple of you even spoke to her as potential suitors,
dated her, quote unquote.
There were people that were impacted by her life,
by her journey, by her relentless faith.
She never gave up even till the very end.
I will tell you about a week ago, I was praying for her
because we've been praying for her
every single day on prayer.
And I just felt the Lord say that she was gonna go home
to be with him.
She was gonna step over into that other dimension with him
because he has assignments for her
that are not assignments that she can do in this body.
Friends, when we step into the other realm,
you're not going there to rest for eternity.
That's not your eternal vacation, just so you know.
Scripture is very clear that there are jobs for us to do,
and there are even levels of jobs for us to do.
And what you do on earth will very much indicate
what you will be mature enough to do
right when you get to the other level, to the other realm.
And so what you do after you receive Christ
as your savior on earth matters.
Did you know that?
It matters.
There are far more people getting to come into heaven,
at least the basic level, the introductory level of heaven,
because we will be matured throughout eternity,
just so you know that.
You're not going to arrive in heaven,
yes, you're gonna have understandings
way past what you have now.
You're going to not see through a glass darkly anymore,
but you are gonna see him as he truly is
and as you truly are.
That is gonna happen.
But there are jobs to do throughout eternity.
There's ruling and reigning to do.
And right now we're apprentices on earth.
A lot of people, they just receive Christ,
it's kind of one and done, and they just go off
and they just live their lives after the flesh,
maybe not entirely in debauchery.
I believe that what has been committed to Christ,
he can keep until the end.
And no, I'm not speaking of Calvinism,
I'm not speaking of predestination,
I'm not speaking of once saved, always saved,
but I do know this.
I do know that he says that in the end of the age,
whoever cries out on the name of Jesus will be saved.
If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart
that he is Lord, you will be saved.
There's a lot of denominations of Christianity
that make it real hard to be saved.
We are being resurrected from a sinful nature
and given opportunity to grow in a heavenly nature.
Not everyone's gonna grow.
Not everyone's going to be discipled.
There are some people in other countries
that are not gonna ever know anything.
You guys know that there are people that live on this earth
that are never gonna own a Bible, but you own 20.
Anyone else ever have the problem of a Bible's old
and you just really don't know what to do with it?
You don't really want it anymore
because you have new ones
and you don't know how to get rid of it
because you can't put it in the garbage
because it's a Bible.
You know what I'm saying?
We're blessed to live in a place.
Everyone here, everyone.
I know we're not all Americans here.
We have some Europeans.
is here, but still, we live in free places where we can worship freely for now, where
we can have access to the word.
But there are people on this earth that will never hear a sermon except for the salvation
one.
They will never have access to a Bible, and it wouldn't matter because they can't read
anyway.
Do you guys hear what I'm saying?
And yet, they're going to go to heaven just like you, to whom much is given, much is required.
We have an opportunity.
We are so blessed to get to grow in our understanding of him.
Those people will be taught by Holy Spirit, and that's wonderful and amazing.
Some of the greats were taught by Holy Spirit, including Paul.
But we have an opportunity to gather together, to have community, to grow together, to iron
sharpen iron.
And we did that with our sister Teresa, and she did that for us.
She led us in prayer.
She led us in the one day a month that we get together as prophetic community at the
end of the month, and we speak over each other life.
She spoke so many words over so many of you.
Those are seeds that God used her to sow with her words in you that are going to bear
fruit that are going to be part of her legacy because that came through her.
Those are her works that come from faith.
Those are the jewels in her crown.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Now after my mom passed away, a couple of different people, strangers, friends, strangers
came up to me and were just like, Hey, have you ever heard of the book, Imagine Heaven?
It happened several times.
And so I looked up the book and I finally bought it.
And it's written by a guy named John Burke.
And I actually know John, and I didn't realize that he wrote this book.
But his son, Justin, when I first moved to Texas, was someone that I hired to be part
of a film festival that I was in charge of being the executive producer of.
And one day, John, his dad, John, and his wife, so Justin's parents that pastor a church
here in Texas, they came to watch their son speak at this film festival.
And I met John.
And so I was like, Hey, I know this guy.
Let me read this book.
He had compiled hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of NDEs, near death experiences,
the accounts that people had of what happened after the doctors had declared them clinically
dead.
And he wrote about their experiences in this book.
And all of them had very similar experiences, very similar experiences.
Now, these are all people that were pronounced dead for a couple minutes, for half hour,
for a couple hours.
All of them have different testimonies or different stories, but all of them saw a lot
of the same things.
And I have it written down here because I really want you to grieve with hope.
I want to grieve with hope.
I want you to grieve with hope.
So I want to, I want to just read a couple things that I have here
about these people's experiences.
Nearly all the NDEs describe an overwhelming personal love and light of Jesus himself.
It wasn't judgmental or condemning, but deeply personal and full of understanding.
And we see that in John 8, verse 12.
Many people recount a panoramic life review that focuses not on achievements,
but on how well they loved.
Heaven felt like a familiar place to all of these folks.
All of them said heaven really feels like home.
In fact, a lot of people said that it felt more real than this world.
It felt like this life was a dream.
And then that was reality.
They said that the trees, the rivers, the music, the colors, the cities, everything
that they experienced on earth was more vibrant and more alive.
In fact, they didn't even have words to describe the imagery that they saw.
Kind of sounds like the book of Revelation, right?
Many, if not all of them, spoke of seeing loved ones.
They were greeted immediately by loved ones who had gone on before them.
And those loved ones looked young and vibrant, youthful, whole.
That's talking about these new bodies, right?
First Thessalonians 4, if you want to go and read that chapter.
So it's never goodbye, friends.
It's always, I'm going to see you soon and I'm going to see you without all the trappings
of this body and this earth.
The things that have kept us from really true into me, you see, will be gone.
We will be able to really connect with each other as we truly are.
And friends, if we can see all that, we can see what Teresa sees now, we would never want
to pull her back.
In fact, we'd want to go and be with her.
Am I right?
We would.
Death is not the end of the story.
It's not.
In fact, it's the end of the beginning of the story.
It's that next beautiful, glorious chapter because it's our true home.
And if you ever wondered if heaven was real, it is.
I've had so many supernatural experiences with my mother since she has gone on.
I'm not talking to her.
I'm not praying to her.
I'm not asking her for help.
But I do sense her being part of that great cloud of intercessory witnesses in my life.
And I have had supernatural moments where I know that I'm being helped not only by God,
but by my family that is with God.
It's real.
It's true, friends.
And I think that we don't talk about this a lot because churches are worried that people
are going to get into necromancy.
They're going to get into trying to talk to the dead and, you know, not really releasing
that person into that next season of their life and trying to hold on.
And then oftentimes we grieve for too long because we're still staying connected to someone
who's in a different reality than us.
And I get it.
I get it.
I mean, there's whole denominations of Christianity that sort of idolize, really, literally idolize
talking to people who are no longer here, like the saints, right?
I mean, thankfully, we get to go straight to Jesus.
But if you were raised Catholic, you didn't get to go to Jesus.
You had to like go through all kinds of people.
You weren't allowed to bother Jesus.
I went to Catholic school growing up.
You had to.
You got a problem?
Go find the saint that's in charge of your problem.
Pray to them.
There was a saint assigned to every problem you could possibly have.
So you got to pray to this person, this human that has passed on, that has gotten to this
saint status.
And then if that fails, you can always go to Jesus's mom.
You can talk to her, but you cannot bother Jesus, right?
Thankfully, that's not true, right?
We know that we can, we're not a bother to Jesus, that he is our high priest.
He is our chief intercessor, that he is the one that is sitting at the right hand of God.
He's making intercession for us because he knows what it's like to be human.
He knows our frailties.
He knows our weaknesses.
He knows our pain.
He has been tempted in every way.
And he is the one that will help us make a way of escape, right?
So we've matured from some of the things that we've been taught.
And friends, I really want to encourage you.
Let this be our sister, Teresa's legacy.
She lived her life well.
Even with this health issue that she had for many years, she lived her life well.
She did what she could do.
She put her hands to the plow and she did not look back.
Even in the weakness in her body, she could have felt sorry for herself.
She continued to show up.
We told her when she got very, very weak, very sick, we said, you know, we'll get someone
to replace Wednesday prayer for you.
We don't want this to be too much for you.
She said, oh, no, no, I don't want to be replaced.
I want to lead.
I want to pray.
I want to lead these ladies in prayer.
I want to show up.
And she did right until the end when she went into the hospital to have surgery.
And she never, she never, unfortunately, was able to, to speak from that time because
after surgery, she went into an ICU type environment and she did not, she did not come out of that.
But she sent us her love.
She listened to prayer calls, even in that environment, when she got stronger, even though
she was intubated, she listened.
She heard.
He agreed.
She affirmed.
She never lost faith, even until the end.
And when she felt like it really was her time
to let go of this life and to grab a hold
of what God had for her in eternity,
she still believed in a full miraculous healing.
She still believed in God's word all the way up
till when she felt like God was going to heal her
by bringing her to him.
Because she has an assignment.
She has work to do.
I had good friends, I went to a small group with them.
They were really awesome, really awesome people.
And the woman of the couple, they're older,
they're retired, they're in their 60s,
and they were looking forward
to really doing full-time ministry.
And the woman, she wept.
And she went to Bible school.
As soon as she retired from her job,
the very first thing that she did
is she went to ministry school.
She wanted to learn everything that she could.
And right after she was finished,
in fact, right after she graduated,
and we're celebrating with her,
she was in a terrible car accident and she went to heaven.
Right afterwards.
Like a couple days later.
And I remember praying and talking to the Lord about that
and so confused and didn't understand
and what in the world is going on here, God?
And that's the first time that God ever spoke to me
and said that there were other assignments.
You know, there are people that witnessed that car accident,
and I'm not trying to over-spiritualize anything,
I'm just telling you the facts.
There are people that witnessed it
that actually were pedestrians when it happened.
And when they saw her not braking
as she was coming behind this truck in a commercial area,
but not on a freeway, obviously, there's pedestrians.
A couple different bystanders said the same,
they had the same account and the same account was this.
They said that it was as if she had her hands raised up
and was looking up, like up.
Like she was looking at something up
with her hands raised up.
And such an interesting account, like what was she doing?
Why were her hands on the wheel?
Why would she have her hands in the air?
Why was she looking up?
You know, and not straightforward.
And so I was praying about this,
I was praying to the Lord,
and he was talking to me about those saints
that ride in with Jesus at the coming of the new age.
When Jesus comes triumphantly on his white horse,
true and faithful, there will be those with him.
And this woman, she was a horse woman,
and he said, you know, she will be among them,
you know, coming with him at the return.
And I was like, that's just such a weird thought
to have, Jackie.
Like, Jackie, you're so weird.
You're so weird to have these thoughts.
You know, a lot of times God will say things to us
and we'll be like, well, man, I'm weird.
Woo, it's a good thing other people can't think the things
that I'm, know the things I'm thinking,
because they'd think I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
So I had that thought,
and then the day of her celebration of life,
I'm headed there, and I got a text message from a friend.
And I, of course, didn't tell anyone about this
because I don't want people to think I'm crazy.
So I didn't tell anyone,
but I got a text message from a friend,
and this friend did not know her,
was not headed to her celebration of life,
but simply the text message had a photo in it.
And she said, hey, she said, I just really felt
like I was supposed to send this to you.
She's like, I was out this morning when the sun rose.
She said, and I took this picture of the sky.
She said, doesn't it look like Jesus on his white horse
and all the horses with him coming back to the earth?
And friends, I still have this photo.
It's exactly what it looks like.
On my way to her celebration of life,
another friend sent me a picture
of the clouds looking like horses riding to the earth.
And so that was my own personal.
little confirmation that, oh, hey, by the way, daughter, you're not crazy.
I'm really talking to you about things that are above your pay grade.
You guys, God, if we'll allow him, he will tell us things that we
really don't have much proof of.
And I'm not saying you should move on that stuff.
You should always be able to ground it in the word.
And of course I can in the book of Revelation.
We know that Jesus faithful and true will come again in that exact way.
I'm not off scripture.
I'm not off on some other.
But getting little personal details of that, of that, oh, Hey, yeah.
By the way, there'll be saints with him.
The Bible says that, but we don't think about those details.
And God was highlighting those details to me.
It's important that you let God speak to you that way.
I mean, look at Paul.
Paul was like, Hey, I know a guy.
Whether he was in his body or not in his body, these are
the things he experienced.
Paul was talking about himself, y'all, but because it was so
supernatural and so surreal, he's like, I'm not sure if it was me or not me.
I don't know if I was in my body or out of my body.
All I know is that this happened.
Yeah, I know a guy.
The whole purpose of today is for us to understand that there is so much more
for us ahead in this life and after this life.
But what we do in this life matters.
What we do in this life matters so much.
I used to work for a prominent Jewish man.
He was one of the richest men in Columbus, Ohio.
He owned the biggest house in the richest neighborhood, and he was very kind to me.
When I met him, he was old.
He was already, you know, past, way past retirement, 20 years past retirement.
And he taught me a lot about business.
But he also had five children and none of them came into the
business that he built, none of them worked with him.
And the Jews have a holiday and it comes after Rosh Hashanah,
and it's called Yom Kippur.
And right before Yom Kippur, which is the day of atonement, there are, I think
it's 10 days called the Days of Awe.
And during that time, it's a time to repent.
It's a time to bury the acts.
It's a time to ask for forgiveness or to confess to others
what you've done wrong to them.
And during that time, my boss, Mr.
Elman, he was very old school.
He sent letters.
He didn't send emails, sent letters.
And so he had me come and take a letter.
And this letter was to his son and it had a lot of private information in it.
The son was estranged from him.
This was a son that was not speaking to him and he was not speaking to.
And during this particular time, during the new year and the day of atonement,
he wanted to make amends.
He wanted to extend the olive branch.
And so I took the letter as he spoke it to me, and then I typed
it up and then it was sent out.
Mr.
Elman passed away a week later.
It was sudden.
He had a cardiac situation.
Suddenly I was at work one morning and Mrs.
Elman called and said, I'm sorry to tell you that Mr.
Elman had a heart attack and died this morning.
Now I'm the only person that knows that he sent that letter.
Nobody else, unless he shared it with his wife.
I don't know.
I never asked her, but guess who I saw when we went to sit in the
hospital, when we went to sit Shiva, I was invited, even though I'm
not part of that Jewish community.
I am Jewish, but not practicing, not trained.
Didn't even know that I was until I was an adult and 23andMe came out.
But I came to sit with them in their morning and guess who was there?
That son, that son was there and he came and he greeted me and I said,
I'm so glad to meet you.
I said, you were on your father's heart before he passed away.
He spoke really well of you and long to see you.
And that meant a lot.
So I want to encourage you friends.
Keep short accounts.
A lot of people have gone on to glory, gone on into their reward, gone on into their next assignment
in the last six weeks, especially here in Texas. You know we had the floods. Those little girls
had nine years on the earth. Nine years. Their families had nine years with them on the earth.
Someone did a drawing of these little girls with their little camp mystic t-shirts on,
their little wet feet from the water, hanging all over Jesus. Jumping on his back, being held in his
arms, running to him with joy. And I believe that. I believe that. Believe every one of them was
taken by angels immediately when those flood waters came into heaven. But they only had nine
years. You don't know how many years you have on the earth. You're all here preparing for the future
as we should. We need to make plans. But I don't think any of us would be sad if a moment from now
we were in eternity with Jesus. And if we were, if that makes us sad to think that,
then we don't have a full revelation. God said to me, because I felt like the grieving of my
mom was going on way too long. I was five years in, I am five years in, and I still felt a lot
of weight from it. And I'm like, Lord, am I ever going to feel, you know, differently about this?
Am I ever going to feel, you know, not so heavy about this, not so sad about this? And he said,
yes. He said, you will. He said, when you get a revelation of heaven,
when you get a revelation of heaven, you will. And friends, we all need a revelation of heaven.
Because once again, that's where we all want to go. And there isn't one person here who's not
going to experience that transition, the transition to the next life, to the next assignment, to the
next reality, to the only reality. That's the real reality. Do you know, that's why the Bible says we
can have heaven on earth and that we're here to bring heaven to earth, because we are meant to
be living in that reality. We are meant to be living in that reality every day. It's not a
situation where it's like, okay, I'm living in this reality and this is reality, but someday
I'm going to switch to that reality. No, you can have that reality now. Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Friends, it's a little heavy this morning. We grieve. We're going to miss Teresa's presence.
We're going to miss her gifts. We're going to miss her teamwork. We're going to miss her smile
and her laugh. We're going to miss the times ahead that we hope to celebrate with her.
But also in her passing, I think she would want all of us to remember that this life is just a vapor.
And even during this earth experience that you're having, you're an eternal being having
an earthly temporary experience. You know that, right? This is not your real life. You are having
an earthly experience. Your real life is in eternity. Your real life is in this other dimension
that we're talking about. Even now, the Bible says that you're here, but you're also seated
with Christ in heavenly places. You're in heaven. You're in heaven. You're in heaven.
You're both places.
Wow! You're both places.
And instead of living from earth to heaven, let's live from heaven to earth. Shall we? Today,
let's honor our sister by allowing her stepping into her reward and her new assignment
to sober us, to make the most of our earthly experience, because it does matter in eternity.
What God will trust you with, what you will be doing in eternity, has so much to do with now.
And remember, it is eternity, friends. So we're going to be progressing. We're going to be
evolving. We're going to be growing. Think about it. If there wasn't anything to learn,
if there wasn't anything to learn in eternity, what would you be doing for eternity?
You're learning, you're growing.
This is your childhood if you want to think of it that way.
We are supposed to make mistakes.
We're all gonna fall down.
We're gonna skin our knees.
We're gonna be disobedient.
And then we're gonna come back to understanding,
oh yeah, daddy's way is the best way.
Jeez, I'm so hard-headed.
Yeah, you are.
That flesh you're living in is hard-headed.
But God is full of grace and he's full of mercy,
just like a good father.
And he picks us up off the ground
when we fall off of our bike and he puts us back up
and he says, okay, let's try again.
Let me give you a few tips.
Let me give you some new information.
That's what happens after repentance.
God, of course, corrects us.
The Bible says God corrects those that he loves.
That's what he does.
That's what correction is.
It's not punishment.
It's not him taking out his weapon and beating you with it.
It's him correcting your mindsets, correcting your course,
adding in identity because you're operating
out of broken identity, showing you who you really are,
telling you, hey, that's not the right way to do this.
Move over and let me drive for a while.
Let me show you.
There is a better way.
Amen?
So some of you didn't even know Teresa, that's okay.
I want you to put up in the chat right now
someone that you've been grieving,
someone that you miss,
someone that has gone ahead and they've crossed over
into that other dimension fully
and you can no longer see them with your eye.
Okay, for those of you that's family,
lots of you friends, family, children,
unfortunately, children, we never want to see our children
go to heaven before us.
We don't want that.
God wants to take the sting out of death
for all of us today.
Jesus already did that,
but he wants to do it again right now.
Wants to take the stinger out.
Anyone ever been stung by a bee, stung by a wasp?
You got to get that stinger out, don't you?
You got to get it out because if you don't, it hurts.
So he wants to take the sting out, wants to take it out.
Wants to replace it with hope, with joy, with peace.
In fact, I want to encourage all of you to ask God
to tell you, to show you what your loved one
is doing right now.
What are they up to?
What assignment are they all about?
What's happening in their reality?
I've had dreams of my mom.
Just recently, it took a long time.
It took years.
My little brother and her husband
both started having dreams of her immediately
when she passed.
I didn't.
I don't know why.
But I do know that I've had several dreams here
in the last year of my mom, healthy, whole,
talking to me about things, doing things.
So ask God to show you.
Ask God to tell you.
Ask God to take the sting out.
For those of you that have been caught in perpetual grief,
you can't, can't stay in perpetual grief.
Some of you are not grieving someone who passed away.
You're grieving something else,
but you're still stuck in grief.
You're grieving a job that ended.
You're grieving some sort of loss.
You're grieving the loss of a marriage.
You're grieving the loss of a relationship.
The person is still alive.
But you're estranged.
They might as well be dead.
Divorce feels like a death.
Anybody else?
I got divorced.
I literally felt like the day at court was like a funeral.
They gave us a case number and executed us.
I mean, it was just very rough.
That was almost 19 years ago now,
but it felt like a death.
So let's release peace over you,
release joy over you, release hope over you.
For those of you that have someone
that you really need to forgive,
even if you're not going to be able to speak to them,
even if they've passed on into eternity,
I wanna encourage you to do that.
Take a page out of Mr. Ellman's playbook.
Even though we're not to that time of year yet,
not till the fall, the days of awe,
we can have our own days of awe right now.
Days of repentance, days of confession,
days of forgiveness.
If they are alive and you feel led to,
reach out to them, tell them you forgive them
or ask for their forgiveness, whatever needs to happen.
Friends, we have to keep short lists.
Remember the people that have gone on before us
that came back, the NDE people,
the near death experience people,
that got a glimpse, they got a preview,
they got a taste, a bigger taste
than we even have with Holy Spirit.
Guys know that God gave us Holy Spirit
to give us a taste of heaven?
It's a foretaste of heaven.
Living life in the spirit is getting a preview of heaven.
But those people got a real preview.
They got the deluxe preview.
They got the long form trailer of the movie, right?
They did.
And most of them saw a panoramic view of their life.
But it wasn't about achievements and accomplishments.
It wasn't about trophies.
It wasn't about bank accounts.
It wasn't about beauty.
It was about how well did you love.
There's a famous prophet, Bob Jones,
and he had an NDE and he went to heaven
and he came back from heaven with this message.
How well do you love?
He said the eternity was gonna be all about
how well did you love.
Remember friends, the curse looks different on everyone.
The curse looks different on every family.
We are not all tempted in the same ways.
We're not all broken in the same ways.
And so when you are tempted to point your finger
at someone else's brokenness,
especially like people that we don't know,
a group of people, so to speak,
maybe a group of people that are struggling
with their gender identity,
group of people that are struggling
with their sexual orientation, okay?
A group of people that believe something
politically different than you do.
Friends, come on.
You don't know those people.
You don't know what they've been through.
You don't know what their life has,
what has happened in their life
to lead them to these beliefs and to this point.
You don't know what kind of deception
has been handed down with them through the ranks.
Love.
Love conquers all.
Love.
Love people.
Bless people.
Pray for people.
Help people when you can,
regardless of whether or not you believe
the same things that they believe.
Let's not forget the story of the Good Samaritan,
one of the most powerful parables in the Bible.
You guys, it's one of the most powerful stories.
He had no reason to help this person.
This person represented everything opposite of beliefs.
It's kind of a natural born hatred.
A lot of people are just,
they're raised to hate certain people.
Because of fear.
By the way, hate is a byproduct of fear.
Hate is not the opposite of love.
Fear is the opposite of love.
And all hatred is born of fear.
All of it.
Oh, we're afraid of these people
because we don't understand them, so we hate them.
But he stopped anyway, didn't he?
He helped anyway, didn't he?
He loved anyway, didn't he?
He had compassion anyway, didn't he?
This is what I know, friends,
and this is what I decided a long time ago
when people were like, black, white, wrong, right,
this, that.
I said, you know what?
I'm just gonna choose love.
And the reason why I'm gonna choose love
is because if I'm gonna make a mistake,
I'd rather err on the side of love.
Can't go wrong erring on the side of love.
I'm not talking about enabling, okay?
I'm not.
The people that I'm speaking of that I'm loving,
I don't even know, and I'm not even gonna have a chance
to have any kind of real hands-on.
experiences with them. I'm just going to love them from afar.
I'm just going to bless them. I'm going to pray for them. I'm going to hope the best for them.
When I see people that, for whatever reason, life has put them in the limelight, has put them
famous, they're living in glass houses. Maybe they didn't even ask to be in those glass houses,
but somehow their gifts, their talents, being in the right place at the right time, whatever,
put them in these places. And they have real problems like real people do.
And some of them have problems that only rich people do.
But instead of judging them and making fun of them and
rolling my eyes at them, I pray for them. I bless them. Say, God, hey, help them.
Help them and help everyone like them that's not famous but is actually going through the
same thing. We don't know about those other people. We don't know about those other people.
We don't know about those other people's problems because they're not famous.
But these folks here, we know about them. And we're going to bless them.
We're going to ask you to help them, Lord.
We're going to ask you to have a divine appointment in their lives where they come and know you.
Friends, we have to live this life to the best of our ability. We do. We have to. We have to put
our hands to the plow. We cannot look back. And the way that we do that is by love, by forgiveness,
by confession, by repentance, by making the most of our lives. All of us have things in our life
right now that we do not like, things that we do not want to be true in our reality,
things that we wish would just end, stop, that we could get over, get beyond,
things that we don't have that we want. And every day we wake up and we don't have them
and we feel depressed about it, including spirit mates. I want to encourage you
in celebration of our sister Teresa, make each moment count. Every day when you wake up,
be thankful that you still have an assignment on earth and that your earthly experience is not
expired. Thank God for life. Thank him for strength in your body. Thank him for breath in your lungs.
Some of you are weak. Some of you are dealing with sicknesses. And so you're going to have
to call those things that are not as though they are. Romans 4, 17. Thank you God for strength.
Thank you God for vitality. Thank you God for breath. Thank you God for pain-free body.
Remember friends, we're doing affirmations for those of you that are doing the halftime shift.
Affirmations, make them part of your affirmations. I'm here on earth for a purpose.
I'm here on earth for a purpose. God has a plan for me. He wrote a story about me from the
foundation of the earth. I wasn't an accident. My parents weren't expecting me, but God was
expecting me. And he put me here. He put me here to accomplish his work and to expand his kingdom
in a way that only I can. I have a partner. This is a two-person job, not a one-person job. And I
haven't met them yet, but I'm going to meet them. Our paths are going to cross and we're going to
come together. We're going to come together in the strength of God. We're going to come together
with Jesus as the cord that binds us together. We're going to come together with a divine
assignment that is going to be unsealed and unlocked when we meet each other. We might not
know what it is now, but we're going to know. Because marriage is for ministry, the ministry
of reconciliation in the earth, building lineages and legacies of compassion,
affirmations, declarations. I will not leave this life one moment before my appointed time.
God, you will protect me. You will keep me.
You will strengthen me. You will help me. You will give me the information, the wisdom
that I need in order to live out all of my days. And I will be obedient. I will take care of my
body. You will show me what I need to do and I will do it.
So, Father God, I thank you for this time together. I thank you for your sons and daughters. And I
thank you for Teresa. I thank you for the lessons that we are learning even in her going on to be
with you, Lord. This will be her legacy, the shift that takes place in our hearts today,
that we want to be a part of. We want to be a part of her legacy. We want to be a part of her
legacy. We want to be a part of her legacy. We want to be a part of her legacy.
here well done thou good and faithful that we want to leave a legacy of love that when we see our
life played on the jumbotron of heaven lord that we see that we have loved well that we have chosen
the better part the better part that this life is not about accolades it's not about applause it's
not about trophies not about treasure the only treasure that we can keep eternally is the
treasure that we lay up in heaven and that is people so every one of us with a soberness of
mind from this moment will go forward knowing that the greatest thing that we can do with our
one and only life is give it to you surrender it to you and to allow you to use us to love others
to help others to show people the way to be a light in the darkness to be a city set on a hill
that cannot be hid to take this thing public to make your name famous in the earth lord to love
one another so that people will see us and know that you truly jesus were the son of god
to fulfill all of the things that you've put us here to do in your name we pray in jesus name
amen friends i'm so thankful for you i love each and every one of you and i pray that we will all
be here on earth to meet again but live each moment as if it's your last and you can't go wrong
each and every one of us do that live with intention and live with passion
because that is how god made you i love you all see you soon