All right, welcome back.
Here we are, we made it to day seven, congratulations.
We have been on a journey and I am so excited.
I think today is, I know today is going to wrap it up in such a powerful, practical way
for you so that it's not just knowledge, but it's wisdom, it's applied knowledge.
So I want to congratulate you on really investing in yourself and your spiritual life and your
relationship with God and being here, I'm honored to be on this journey with you.
It's been a lot of fun for me.
So let's open with prayer and we are going to dive in.
So father, I give thanks for these seven days.
You've taught us so much Lord.
And I thank you for the breakthrough.
I thank you.
We celebrate the miracles, the ways that you have showed up and showed off.
I thank you for the breakthroughs that are happening personally, professionally, relationally.
And I just, I have so much gratitude for that.
So Lord, I just ask that the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart will be
pleasing in your sight.
I ask that you open our spiritual senses, that we will hear what you Holy Spirit have
to say specifically for us.
May we have today, not just the Logos word, but the Rhema word.
We just invite angels to be here.
We invite Holy Spirit.
We just invite your presence.
And we're so grateful in Jesus name.
Amen.
All right.
Let me put on a, well, I got to remember to share the screen.
That's the first step.
Okay.
So we're going to share the screen and then we are going to rock and roll here.
Slide share.
You guys should be seeing it.
All right.
There we go.
Okay.
So, so here we are day seven, that says day six, it's day seven.
And I didn't catch up on that day seven.
And I'm just really quick because we've got a lot of new stuff to cover.
Just a reminder that this whole journey of partnering with God, it's an inside job.
Yes, there's things we do on the outside, but the whole idea of partnering with God
is to stop being so influenced and become an influencer.
Those of you that want to be an influencer, okay.
It needs to be that the spirit of God living through us, that we are affecting our circumstances,
our environment, as opposed to us being shaped by that.
So we're transformed by the renewing of our mind.
So all week we've been replacing lies with truth.
We've been having God unveil within us, his mighty love, his mighty power.
So that we literally, we empty ourselves of everything else.
And we're so filled with God that we have the richest experience of God's presence.
We become bodies completely filled and flooded with God himself.
So we've talked about different ways that partnering with God shows up.
It shows up in divine direction, a voice behind you saying, go to the left, go to the right.
We see this so many times through scripture, what it means to be led by the Holy Spirit.
We learned about divine timing, about Kairos, God's perfect timing, not just chronos, chronological
time, but Kairos, God's timing.
We learn the power and the beauty of divine appointments.
There's so much to that.
We learned about divine order and, you know, I didn't even get into divine healing, which
is so huge and I was, I woke up just thinking about the miracles that happen when we partner
with God, the healing that happens, the healing in our, in our spirit, in our heart, in our
mind, in our body, the amazing healing.
And so another time we'll have to go deeper with that.
Today I want to touch on the final aspect of just really what opens the door.
And then we're going to go into very practical applications so that you're really able to
experience true lasting transformation.
I want to mention about divine goodness.
And this.
so important. So Psalms 118 verse 1 says, keep on giving thanks to God for he is so good. So good.
I'm going to close my window. Little doggie's barking. Okay. So he is so good. His constant
tender love lasts forever. We were talking before the call about being a people pleaser.
And often we have a hole in our heart where we think that we lack and we feel that we're not
enough. And so we desperately, we have a hole in our heart that is love. It's a God shaped hole.
Only God can fill that. When, when you get this, you start to realize that you don't have to try
to get up. You don't have to try to earn love that actually love lives in you because you're
the temple of the Holy spirit. And so the Holy spirit lives in you. And so love lives in you
and every fiber of you is created in love. So you start coming from a place of love and knowing that
you don't have to perform and you don't have to work. And so I was saying before I was saying,
you know, it's so good to know there's nothing you can do to make God love you anymore. He just
loves you with infinite, infinite love. And there's nothing you can do. You can't mess up bad enough
to make God love you any less. And so I love this where it says, keep giving thanks to God for he's
good. His constant tender love lasts forever. That's Psalms 118 one and then Psalms 145 verses
eight and nine in the amplified translation says, the Lord is gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies
are over all his works, the entirety of things created. Now here's a really big one. Psalms 27,
13. This is crucial. It says, I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, not just in the by and by in heaven,
I would have given up. I would have despaired. I would have, I would have not kept going.
Had I not believed in my heart of hearts, I would see the goodness of the Lord. And so being
motivated, David, no matter what he was going through, he was going through tremendous battles
within and without. And what kept him going was the goodness of God. And I will tell you
that this will keep you going more than anything. Just meditate, study, come to understand the
goodness of God. This is part of those rewiring that we have to get. It's not, it's not like
Santa Claus checking the list. If you've been naughty and nice, you know, it's not like your
parents, you know, I remember I was reflecting on this. I don't know if you grew up in the
introduction of canned foods, but they were really big in my childhood. And there was this thing,
this nasty, nasty, nasty, let me repeat. Did I say nasty thing called canned spinach? I mean,
this canned spinach, I don't care if Popeye said it made his muscles bulge. This was the slimiest,
ickiest, grossest stuff. And do you know that if I didn't eat my spinach at night, which nearly
made me throw up and I love fresh spinach, right? I eat fresh spinach in my smoothies and I grow it
and everything else, but this nasty, slimy stuff. And if I didn't eat it at night, I was served it
for breakfast. You ever had nasty, slimy, cold spinach? You see, that's like this conditional
that you have to behave. You have to conform. That's not the goodness of God. And yet we get
programmed, religion programs us that way. And so despair happens when we do not know or understand
the goodness of God here on earth. If we do not truly believe that God is truly good, then we will
not trust him fully. And so we'll not expect too much. And we will not ask very much. And so do
you remember when we started, part
partnership, partnering with God, you've got to know, that
requires time, you've got to trust, that requires
relationship, God, and you've got to know, and you've got to
come to trust who God made you, who you are with Christ in you.
And so if we don't trust, then we don't expect too much. And we
don't ask. And so Psalms 8411 says, The Lord is a sun and a
shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, and no good thing
will he withhold from those who walk uprightly, walk in
relationship with him. Psalms 35 says, Let them all say the Lord
is great. And he delights in the prosperity of his servants, he
delights in your prosperity, he delights to see you filled with
joy, he came that our joy might be full. He delights that we
have peace, he came that we might have peace that passes
all understanding. Luke 1232, in the Passion Translation says,
So don't ever be afraid, dearest friends, your loving Father
joyously gives you his kingdom realm with all its promises.
This may be new thinking, if you've been stuck in religion,
which Jesus hated religion, by the way, you missed out what
Jesus talked, the number one thing that God that Jesus talked
about was the kingdom, the kingdom of God. And it's here.
And it's now and we have access to that. And if we don't
understand that we don't know what kingdom living is like, you
know, a kingdom has a king, and it's the king's job to provide
he'd be a terrible king, if he doesn't provide a king's job is
to protect he'd be a terrible king, if he didn't. And and our
God is the king of kings, he's the king over all kings. And so
he's a loving provider. He's a loving protector. And he loves
to invite us into the kingdom realm. And the NLT says, Don't
be afraid little flock, it gives your father great happiness to
give you the kingdom. And so we see examples in history, when a
human being would step into that. And we saw earlier in the
study when Moses when when God was in the mountain longing to
commune have communication with his people. And there was thunder
and fire and power in the mountain shook. And the people
said, Oh, we'll pass. They thought God was scary. They
said, I think we're gonna die. Moses, you go ahead. You go
ahead and you translate. And from that time, we've had
priests and we've eaten regurgitated spiritual food
constantly. And I'm going to talk about how not to eat
regurgitated. We're not baby birds. We don't need chewed up
worms. God wants to give you fresh rhema, fresh manna, fresh
revelation, fresh power, fresh insights, God wants to give you
the real thing you don't need chewed up baby food. And so
Moses said, Please show me your glory. And God said, I will make
all my goodness pass before you. And I will proclaim the name of
the Lord before you for I will be gracious to whom I'll be
gracious and I'll show compassion, loving kindness on
whom I will show compassion. Well, the translation of that
actually would be written like this, I will show you as much of
the divine goodness as you can comprehend. And of course, we
know that it was so much glory and that he had to actually hide
him in the cleft of a rock and and cover him as he passed by,
there was only so much of God's goodness and God's glory that he
could take without, you know, all circuits, you know,
crashing. And so for us, it's learning to buy relationship by
time is learning to increase our capacity to receive our
capacity. That's what it's really about. You know, glory in
Hebrew means to be heavy with everything good. It means
weight, it's the weight of goodness. That's what glory
means. And that's what we get to take part in. First Corinthians
two, nine says this is why the scriptures say, things never
discovered or heard before things beyond our ability to
imagine. These are the
things God has in store for his lovers. Are you a God lover? Then what he has for you.
You get to go on this divine exploration as you explore. Scripture says you're seated in high
places with Christ. You get to explore heavenly things. God wants to show you. He wants to show
you things that have never been discovered. He wants to show you things that have never been
heard before. Scripture says that he's going to pour out his spirit in the last days. He's going
to pour out his spirit on all mankind. It says that the young men will see visions and the old
men will dream dreams and that will prophesy. This is the season we're in. If you have taken
any time to study every breakthrough, technological breakthrough, scientific breakthrough,
human breakthrough, almost always it came as divine revelation. The periodic table that we
study, that came in a dream. The understanding of the atom like a solar system with
the protons and the neutrons and the electrons going around it came in a dream. Divine revelation.
The structure of our DNA came in a dream. God wants to reveal to you things that you've never seen
beyond what you've imagined. This is what's available to us as God lovers. If we can slow
down enough and increase our capacity, God, and not just live on chewed up baby food, it's time.
The Bible talks about you can start on milk when you're an infant. You can start on
milk, but God doesn't want to keep you on milk. He doesn't want to keep you on baby food. He says we
don't need to keep going over and over and over the basics that there's baptism and there's
resurrection and that Jesus died on the cross. Those things are the basics.
We don't need to get stuck there. Jesus isn't on the cross anymore. He's resurrected and scripture
says we're seated in high places with him and so we have full access to the kingdom realm and so
we're so satisfied with so little. We're so satisfied with so little. There's a story
back in the time when they would travel from America to Europe by ship and there's a story
of a man that was very poor and he saved up enough money to go on the ship and he packed up
his lunch and so day after day he would see the dining cart filled and it had tablecloths and
candles and the chinking of china and laughter and it just looked so beautiful in there and
he would pull out his little sack and he'd have his dry stale bread and he had it portioned his
dry fish and he would just kind of chew through it and he'd see them in there and finally he made
it through the long journey. He had gone through his sack lunch and as he was leaving the captain
was at the gate. He was greeting everybody, saying goodbye as they were leaving and he said to the
man, he said, I noticed you never dined with us. You never came in and had the wine and the
food you always sat and ate from your paper bag and he said, yeah, I didn't have money for that ticket
and he said, all tickets include that and so he suffered because he didn't have an understanding.
We suffer. We live such a puny, puny, non-miraculous life because we believe in lack,
because we believe in separation, because we believe that we're not enough, because we have
misconceptions of God. You know, like we saw in the parable of the talents, God was the
generous giver and it says he gave according to their capacity so if they could handle 10, he gave
them 10 talents. If they could handle five, he gave them five. If they could handle one, he knows at what
level we're at. You know, we don't put a baby out in the freeway and teach him jogging lessons. We
have capacities and so but he lavishly gave freely but he also wants us to multiply what he's given
to us and so at the end, he comes to see in the one with 10, of course, you know, multiplies, it gives
back 10 more. Well done, good and faithful servant. I'm going to give you even more. I'm going to make
you ruler over 10 cities. Our authority grows as we wisely
steward, our inheritance.
And same thing for the five, and I'll make you ruler over five.
The one had a misconception of God.
And he said, I knew you to be harsh.
And I knew you to get your money off
the backs of hardworking people.
And I was afraid.
Why was he afraid?
Because God was scary?
No.
Because his misconception of God was scary.
And because of that, because he thought he needed,
he said, I was scared, so I hid.
So I played small.
You see, this is a lesson for all of us
to increase our capacity.
And so we do that by knowing the goodness, the goodness of God.
All right.
Let me go back to what I was sharing.
I get so excited I go off track a little bit.
OK.
So this is why the scriptures say,
things never discovered or heard before,
things beyond our ability to imagine,
these are the things God has in store for his lovers.
And Jesus said in John 16, 24, he said, until now,
you've not been bold enough to ask the Father
for a single thing in my name.
But now you can ask and keep on asking.
And you can be sure you'll receive what you ask for.
And your joy will have no limits.
There's a joy in getting miracles.
I mean, those of you that have seen the miracles in this
class, all you got to do is look at her joy
as she's testing God.
And she's opening a heart to increase her capacity.
And the sales in her business are increasing.
And debt is being forgiven.
And there's a joy.
There's a joy in asking and receiving.
And James 4, 2 says, you don't have what you want
because you don't ask for it.
You don't have what you want because you don't ask for it.
And I think about Jabez and the prayer of Jabez
in 1 Chronicles 4, 10.
And Jabez cried out to the God of Israel saying,
oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border,
enlarge my territory, and that your hand would be with me
and you would keep me from evil so it does not hurt me.
And God granted his request.
He asked for an increase.
An increase he got.
All right, so I want to get to the juicy, important stuff.
How are we going to apply all of this?
Because we don't want to just have a theory.
So how do you like my little wrap up?
This is a wrap up.
Okay, so here's the key.
Everything I've been sharing this whole time
is about relationship.
God wants relationship.
He said to the disciples, I have not called you servants.
I've called you friends because a servant, a slave,
or he said, I've not called you slave.
I've called you friends
because a slave does not know what the master is doing,
but I have revealed to you
and I will reveal all things through the prophets.
And so I've called you friends.
I've called you God lovers.
This is about relationship.
Well, relationships like our human relationships
are about communing, about having time.
You cannot enjoy this
if you are not having time with God.
So I want to open with that part
of where do you go from here?
I want to share something I read
and it's really beautiful.
It is from a book that's becoming my favorite,
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
And it's by John,
oh, by John Mark Comer, John Mark Comer.
And it's a beautifully written book and very inspiring book.
And he goes through that one of the key disciplines,
one of the key habits,
one of the key ideas of being able to commune with God
is having silence and solitude.
And he said, are any of you old enough?
Are any of you old enough to remember like being bored?
Or you would say, I'm so bored, right?
Because he says, you're on a plane
and you finished the book early
and now you got to just sit there and wait
or you're in line, waiting for the coffee
and it's going really, really slow.
You see, since the age of technology and our appendages here, we don't have boredom anymore
because we just instantly, you know, we text, we follow up, we check the weather, we talk
to our friends, we leave a tweet, we, you know, we're nonstop, you know, doing this.
And so we are in an era of total busyness.
And that's an era that has no room for silence and solitude.
And the Bible says, be still and know that I am God.
You see, to know and to have that know that you know, that you love, that you trust requires
us to be still.
That means we have to quiet not only our outside, but we have to learn to quiet our
minds, our minds.
And so, you know, he talked about how Jesus, no matter how busy he got, constantly references
him going into solitude, going into solitude and, and having time.
Now this is not isolation.
Isolation is fear.
That's different.
Isolation is loneliness.
Solitude is joy and fullness and relationship.
It's being still.
And I love this, reading some of this stuff.
And I was reading a quote by Mother Teresa when Henry Nguyen asked him what the secret
was and she was just plain and simple.
And she said, well, when you spend one hour a day adoring our Lord and never do anything
that you know is wrong, you'll be fine.
And I thought, wow, that's really good.
Do we have an hour of just loving God, of just being in his presence?
Well, the truth is that most of us don't.
And so look at the consequences of what happens if we don't.
If we don't have that time alone with God, we feel distant from God.
And so we end up living off of someone else's spirituality.
I talked about that regurgitated food.
We live on regurgitated food.
We feel distant from ourselves.
We lose sight of our identity and our calling.
This is, there's such a crisis right now of, of knowing who we are.
There's too many people that are just trying to be someone else.
They're trying to be copycats.
God made you an original.
He never meant you to be somebody else.
But we don't even know who that is anymore because we haven't slowed down enough.
We feel an undercurrent of anxiety that rarely, if ever, goes away.
The sense that we're always behind and always playing catch up.
You see, we lose the ability to be in the present.
This is where life is happening.
This moment, this now, this is where God is in this moment, in this moment.
This is where the miracles are happening.
This is where the healing is.
This is where the downloads are.
This is where the revelation is.
This is where the joy is.
This is where the peace is.
But if we get stuck in the past, looking in the rear view mirror, now we have shame.
We have regret.
We have guilt.
We have disappointment.
We have all kinds, or we have nostalgia where we think it was better and we miss our blessing.
And so living in the past, the past is gone.
It's just a memory in your brain and you can choose to harvest the blessings, learn the
lessons, but release it, bless it, let it go.
It's gone.
You can't change the past.
It does not exist.
It's a memory.
But being in the now is where the joy, the peace, the love, the miracles are.
We get in the future, right?
And now, the past is not here and the future is not here.
And so now we get into the future and now we get fear and anxiety and worry and we get
into what if?
What if this happens?
What if this doesn't happen?
What if I run out of money?
What if I end up homeless?
What if I can't eat?
What if they're, you know, and, and, and, and again, there goes our peace.
There goes our joy.
There goes our love, right?
All that stuff just disappears.
And we're always feeling like we're behind.
That's, that's where striving happens.
Okay.
And I'm writing a book about kind of the end of striving.
And so we then, okay, all of that, then we get exhausted.
it. Then we get exhausted, right? We wake up and our first
thoughts are already, I can't wait to go to bed. And and we
lag through our days, our gift, you know, or we I've heard it
said, you know, my brother used to say, I'm killing time. I'm
like, why would you kill the most valuable thing that we
have, you know, and so we because we're not knowing how to
enjoy and be blessed by the gift of life. And so then we're
exhausted. And so we lag through our days on low grade energy on
loan from our stimulants of choice. Okay, even if we catch
up on our sleep, we feel a deeper kind of tired. And then
we turn to escapes of choice, we run out of energy to do what is
actually the giving for our souls, like prayer. And instead
we turn to the cheap fix another glass of wine, a new
show, streaming online or social media, porn, whatever it is. And
then we become easy prey for the tempter. And then our emotionally
our emotional unhealth sets in. So we start living from the
surface of our life, and not the core. And then even the
smallest thing becomes a trigger. So the opposite, if we
can learn to, to be still, and know that he has got if we will
create time, this is is so so so important. So the key to
everything you've learned about partnering with God can be
summarized with relationship, which can be summarized as
communion, which can be summarized as time with God.
Right, actually just basking in his presence. Just just wanting
to discover the mysteries to become a mystic, the mysteries of
God is talked about all the way through the New Testament. You
know, if you talk to a child, they will tell you love means
time ti me, if you're married, you know, no time together,
there's no marriage. Okay. And so it's the same with our
relationship with God. So we can do that. Of course, it starts
with the private prayer, prayer for wisdom, prayer for direction,
prayer for the opening of doors and prayer for divine
appointments. If you haven't watched the movie war room, went
what she does, the war room is in her closet. Okay. And it's so
powerful. And so you can find that on YouTube, you can rent it
if you haven't seen it already. But the power of having that
time alone with God, and you know, start noticing all the way
in the four gospels, how many times that Jesus would break
away, I mean, no one was busier, or had more demands on
his life, even when he would try to get away, he tried to get to
a boat and go to the coast, they'd run to the other side and
be there by the time he got to the other side. And so sometimes
he'd have to just stay up all night on the mountain by himself
to get away. But he knew that being with his father was more
important even than sleep. And so if you've neglected what you
experienced, your public victory, your public victory is
going to be a result of your private prayer. And so people
ask me, what's the most important, you know, way of
ordering your day, I say, have a morning spiritual practice, that
will affect your health, your finances, your relationships,
your spiritual, everything more than anything else is your
morning routine. Many years ago, I created the prosper
daily plan, you can ask me for it, the top of it deals with the
morning routine. And it's got a place just to remind you about
prayer and meditation, about our words, our affirmations, our I
am because the power of life and death is in our words, we got to
retrain our tongue about our declarations, about about
journaling, I've taught you about journaling about about
visualizing about seeing it in our minds, eyes and allowing God
to give us downloads about about gratitude. So there's so much in
there. And it starts by the first fruits of your morning.
And then you can join together with others and create an
atmosphere of prayer with your staff with your team, with your
friends, you know, with other couples, not ritual, this
This is not about religion, but Matthew 18 says,
I give you an eternal truth.
If two of you agree to ask God for something
in a symphony of prayer,
my heavenly father will do it for you.
For wherever two or three come together
in honor of my name, I'm right there with them.
And so the power of agreement,
you've got to look at your life.
Who or what are you in agreement with?
What are you agreeing to?
Are you agreeing to sickness?
Are you agreeing to disease?
I'll never forget, I haven't had a chance
to talk too much about healing,
but there's so many stories I want to share with you.
Really quick, I want to share two.
One is a man named Walter, and Walter was a painter.
And Walter was beginning to, he was a prophet.
He was a man of God.
He was really starting to get crippling arthritis.
And he went to his doctor's visit,
and the doctor pointed, this is the power of agreement.
The doctor pointed to the wheelchair and said,
Walter, this is where you're going.
This is where you're headed.
You need to start making preparation.
You need to put down the paintbrush
and you need to get ready.
Now, most of us come into agreement with doctors.
Doctors are our highest authority.
We put them above God.
We put them above everything.
If they say it, that's it.
It goes into our subconscious.
We believe it.
But he was a man of God.
He was a prophet, and he did something so powerful.
He walked out the front door and he said,
Lord, I've heard the word of the doctor.
Now, what's your word?
What do you say?
And he got a rhema revelation.
And he said, there's people you're going to meet
that have something that you need.
You're going to be healed.
It'll be part of your healing.
Well, he got home and there was a message on his recorder
inviting him to a worship gathering
where my ex-husband and I happened to be
when we were founders
of a nutritional network marketing company
that had a product that God gave us
that God used for healing.
And long story short, he came
and he recognized us out of the crowd and he was healed.
He was healed.
So sometimes God will use a tool in the Bible.
Sometimes the man had to go into the pool of Siloam
and put mud on his eyes,
or sometimes he would spit and put mud.
Sometimes it requires a physical thing for your healing.
And other times it's just the word of God.
It has a lot to do with your capacity.
I'll never forget.
I had a woman in my Bible study.
I used to do Bible studies in the company
and she was not a believer
but she started coming all the time.
She just loved the environment.
And I found out she had a very bad biking accident
and her ankle was just completely mangled.
And it was huge and black and blue.
And she was on one of those things
where you put your leg on and you stroll along to get along
and she had not been able to put foot on it.
And I said, could we come and pray?
And that was a little scary for her.
She wasn't sure if she believed in all of that
but she agreed.
And so I took a few kids from Bethel
that just have faith sky high, that love to pray.
And we went and we began by just getting in that space
of being in relationship with God
and just honoring God and praising God
and walking in gratitude
and studying the miracles of healing.
Cause we knew we had to build her capacity to believe.
And then we laid hands and I was privileged to put my hands
on this huge black and blue mangled ankle.
And so I was right there front and center.
And as we prayed, the swelling went down
and the black and blue disappeared
and the beautiful pink returned.
You could see her whole ankle and she stood up
and she could put weight on it for the first time,
I think in months.
And so we all were rejoicing.
We left, but like I said yesterday,
got to hold on to your healing.
So I thought I'm going to call or just encourage her,
hold on her healing.
And I called, she goes, you'll never guess where I am.
And I go, where?
She goes, I'm grocery shopping.
I haven't been able to walk through the stores
and I'm just like dancing through the aisles.
And she showed up at the next.
Bible study, she had on cute little heels, and she ended up running a marathon shortly thereafter.
So I want you to remember the power of Christ in you and the power of love and faith and healing
you have not because you ask not. Okay, I get carried away, too many stories. So corporate,
corporate prayer, power of agreement. Okay, and then there's intercessors. This becomes
really important, especially if you have a business. You will see that the church would
often go into a season of intense intercession. That's like having God pray for a person or an
entity, maybe. In this case, it was, I think it was, I think it was Peter. Yeah, Peter was in
prison. And so they're in intense intercession asking God to free him. So here they are,
they're gathered in a room, they're interceding, Peter's in the prison. And the night before
Herod was planning to bring him to be trial, he made sure Peter was securely bound with two chains.
And Peter was sound asleep between two soldiers with additional guards stationed outside his cell
door. We were not going to have a resurrection, right? They did not. They made sure he was
chained, and then he had guards, and then he had guards on top of the guards.
And all of a sudden, look what the intercession did. Verse seven, an angel of the Lord appeared,
filling the prison cell with a brilliant light. And the angel struck Peter on the side to wake
him up and said, hurry up, let's go. So can you imagine, sound asleep. Angels are all the way
through the Bible, by the way. This is something very neglected in our modern church. And so the
angel is there getting them out of there. And so the angel says, get dressed, put on your sandals,
get your cloak, come on, follow me. And so Peter leaves the cell following the angel. And he
thought it was a dream or a vision, because it just seemed so unreal. He couldn't believe it
was really happening. So he thought he was having a dream. And there they go. They walk unseen past
the first guard post, and then the second before they come to the iron gates that lead to the city.
And the gates swung open all by itself in front of them. And they went out into the city and were
walking down a narrow street, when all of a sudden the angel did the job. The angel disappears,
and Peter realizes he's not having a dream. He said to himself, this is really happening. The
Lord sent his angel to rescue me from the clutches of Herod, and from what the Jewish leaders plan
to do to me. That was in Acts 12. So all of that that Peter experienced, Peter was asleep. It was
the intercessors, the power of people praying. And so this becomes super important. I remember when
we had a child abduction right in my neighborhood, and all of us gathered and prayed and prayed,
and they found her. And it was such a miracle. And so also being in the word, you've got to be
grounded. This is how we've been able to erase the lies, right? But you got to know what the
truth is, or you're going to still have these misconceptions, or this regurgitated religion.
And so you've got to be in the word privately, and then even in community. And that's what
we're doing here. So that there's the logos, the written word, and the rhema, the revealed word.
And first Corinthians 14.1 says, pursue this love with eagerness. Make it your goal. Yet earnestly
desire and cultivate the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy to foretell the future, to
speak a new message from God to the people. So pray that you get this rhema word. Pray that you can
prophesy. That instead of being afraid when something happens, a pandemic hits, or an AI, or
any many things that can happen, instead of being afraid, you're ahead of the game, and the Lord
leads you, and you know you're like the sons of Issachar. That you know, you know what is
the season, and what to do in that season. This is what God wants for us. And so, being in the word.
And so we see this all the time. We see in Acts 11, that they could see a great famine was coming, and
they knew what they, what to do. So we see this all the time, that God will reveal. And finally, it's
not meant to be just hoarding, okay? We are meant, like everything in life, to be in flow, okay? Our finances,
We give and we receive. We can't just receive. We can't just give. There is a flow. We breathe in,
and so we breathe in truth and life and prayer and God's presence, and we've got to breathe it
out. And so many women are stuck either in the inhaling, they're just spiritually hoarding,
or they're stuck in the exhale that they're just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving,
until they're totally depleted. And so we are called. We're called to take these gifts
and serve one another, and when we do that, we're doing it for Christ. Matthew 25, 35 to 40 says,
Jesus said, I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.
I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick,
and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. He said, truly, I tell you,
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.
I want you to understand the distinction. It's not giving out of religious duty. Nobody enjoys
that. Do you love it if somebody does something for you out of duty? None of us enjoy that,
right? It's love. It's love, and you know that when you're doing for one of these least. You
know, this morning, I was taking my puppy for a walk before this class, and a man, a homeless man
had his bike, and he had a trailer hooked to the bike, and that thing was so full that it had tipped
over, and so he's trying to manage lifting up his cart and keep the bike from going all over,
and he's really struggling in the middle of the street, and I said, can I help you? Do you want me
to hold the bike? Well, you guys, you've got quite a load there. You know, how do we know that's not
Jesus right there? How do we know? Are we so scared? How do we know? So, you know, 1 Peter 4,
10 and 11 says, each of you should use whatever gift you've received to serve others as faithful
stewards of God's grace in various forms. So we've all been given gifts, and those gifts are meant to
serve, and that's how we steward. We're stewards. We have on loan what the king has given us,
and that's how we manifest God's grace. Each of us shows God's grace in a different way.
1 Corinthians 13 says, if I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love for others
growing out of God's love for me, then I have become only a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. In other words, I've become just an annoying distraction. Look, there's plenty of
people preaching, and preaching is important. How will they know if they've not heard? But if you're
only preaching, and it doesn't get backed by love, we just become an annoying distraction,
and that's how many preachers are looked at. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and I speak a new
message from God to the people, and I understand all mysteries, you know, the New Testament is just
loaded. We're supposed to understand Mysterian. We're supposed to get into the mysteries of God.
We're supposed to be mystics, and possess all knowledge. And if I have sufficient faith, so I
can move mountains, but I don't have love that's reaching out to others, well, the truth is I'm
nothing. If I give all my possessions to feed the poor, if I surrender my body to be burned,
but I don't have love, it does me no good at all. Bottom line, love. Everything that I have taught
these seven days can be summarized in four letters. L-O-V-E. You know, when Peter went through his
journey, and he got scared, and he denied Jesus three times. He denied knowing him. He didn't,
he didn't want to be face across. Three times. And then he remembered the prophecy that Jesus said,
before the rooster crows three times, you're going to deny me three times. And he had so much guilt,
and so much shame. And I think he carried that for a long time, until Jesus was resurrected
from the dead. And Jesus took the time to meet him. And Jesus said,
Peter, do you love me?
Well, Peter was so filled with shame and he's like, yeah, of course, God, you know, I love you.
He said, Peter, second time, do you love me?
And he answered again, very flippantly, yes, you're my friend, not the intimate word of love.
And the third time, it cracked through. He could see the love in Jesus' eyes.
And he was healed three times, he had denied them. Now, three times he could love and say,
I love you. This is one of the most powerful exercises you can do. Just get still.
And just be with God. And remember, I'm in you. Just say that I'm in you because the Bible says
we're hidden in Christ, right? So I'm in you and you are in me. Scripture says we're the temple
of the Holy Spirit, Christ in me, the hope of glory. I'm in you, you're in me. We are one.
We've got to break the lie of separation. We are one. I'm in you, you're in me. We are one.
And then do a Peter. I love you. How many times do you tell Jesus you love him?
I fall asleep at night. I love you. I love you. I love you so much. I love you.
I love you. You love me. In spite of any flaw, mistake, shortcoming,
I love you. You love me. We are one. We are one. Now go forward from that place of oneness. Break
the lie of separation. Go forth. It says we're seated in high places with Christ.
Go forward from that place of love. Let partnering with God be a divine adventure.
How fun can it get? How much joy can you experience? How much love can you give?
How many miracles can you experience? That's the divine adventure that I call
partnering with God in business. I pray that this has just woken up something in you.
The Bible says, wake up, sleeper, for the light of God is shining on you. Wake up,
for the glory of the Lord is upon you. I pray you step into that. I pray that I've made you hungry,
I've made you thirsty for more of God's goodness, that you'll be like we learned today.
I would have despaired if I just looked at the craziness in the world. I would have
despaired had I not believed in the goodness of God. Had I not believed, I would see the
goodness of God. I believe in all the craziness of the pandemic. So much good happened.
I believe in all the craziness of AI and all the disruption that is coming.
So much good is going to happen for those of us that are one with Christ.
Go forth. I pray this is blessed to you.
Let's go ahead and have our mastermind. Let's talk about this together.