After This

Praise the Lord everybody. How exciting this is. Has God been good to us or what? Amen. And I want to uh first give honor um of course to our our pastor and his first lady and our first lady. Um I know they would never say that say this, but I believe and I know that you believe that they deserve what's happening tonight. That man and that woman, I believe they deserve to be the pastor of this great church. I know they feel honored, but I believe it is a deserving. They came from young people in a Christian school. got the Holy Ghost in a Christian school. Got baptized in a Christian school. Pastor Carpenter, Sister Carpenter, First Lady, love you so much and we honor you tonight for this great accomplishment in this first phase of this of this wonderful church. Um, I give my my wife and my daughters honor tonight and they uh work so hard uh to make this church what it is in administration. My wife is a is a a incredible administrator and I thank her for everything she does and she's a wonderful wife on top of that. To our to our elders, to our ministers, to our ministries, um we have the greatest church in the whole world. I believe that. And I I know I'm a little biased, but I believe that we have the greatest. Um and God has been so good. And um it is my honor tonight. It is my honor tonight for five minutes to get to preach on the first night of our first phase of this building. Would you all help me? Can I just preach for five minutes? I promise just five if you'll give me five minutes when five minutes is of you to sit down and just act like I'm not up here. Can we do that? But as pastor said, I want to just cast a little vision. So turn with me. Stand to your feet. Turn with me. I'm not the main event. I'm just I'm just one of those one of those one ones that come before the main event. All right. But John chapter 5 and verse one, you're going to see how short of a message it's going to be. This gonna be the shortest text ever. John chapter 5 and verse one simply says, "After this," that's all I want to read. After, say that with me, after this, you may be seated. There will be an after this. And I might take this a little bit out of text and out of context today, but I promise you it's going to preach for five minutes. Let me preach this. After this, after this, sometimes I feel and sometimes it feels to the church body that it's an eternity that we're facing when we're in the middle of this. I've already lost some of you. Some of you are like, "Okay, I thought he was going to sing and now I'm Sometimes it feels like an eternity. I'm going to preach about after this. I'm going to cash vision about after this. You see, we've been working a long time to come to this. Everything's been focused. All our ministries, all the work, money, finances, we have been focusing on this. But not only that, but there's a lot of this. And a lot of us are facing, and I feel that God gave me this word just for us tonight because there's a lot of this going on in this house. Last night at choir practice, we began to rattle off the prayer requests that we have. We have we have saints of God, elders who are losing mother, lost their mother. We have we have choir members that that fathers are sick and and we have choir members who fathers are close to death. We have a pastor who has a brother whose whose brother is close to death. We have all these this moments that are happening in our life. But I want you to know there is hope after this. There's going to be a promise. I promise you, there's going to be victory after this. There's going to be joy after this. Whatever your this is, you might be facing something tonight that you've never even told anybody else about because you're going through such a storm. But let me tell you, there is hope. There's joy. There is peace after this because it's a new season. It's a new day. It's a new campus. It's about to be a new year. God is going to do great things. There's going to be fresh anointing. We sang it tonight. Fresh anointing is coming our way quickly. John chapter 5 begins with a with a statement after this. And then it goes quickly into the story of the lame man at the pool of Beth of Bethesda in in verse four of chapter 5. It says, "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. And whosoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatever disease he had. Let me quickly finish the story. For 38 years, we have a man who is trying his best to be the first one into the pool. And there's all kinds of seasons going on. The Bible calls it a certain season. But then a man named Jesus shows up to the city and he doesn't give a certain season. He gives a new season and he says, "I can heal. I don't have to carry you into any water. There doesn't have to be an angel. It doesn't have to be a certain season. All it takes is just my touch. All you got to do is be willing to be healed." And God said, Jesus said, "I will heal you." And he said, "You got to rise to your feet. Take up your bed. Carry it. I know it's the Sabbath day, but carry your bed out of here." I want you to know tonight, whatever season you're in, Jesus is offering us a new season. He's saying, "After this, I can make a way." Listen, don't give up right now. Don't give in right now. Church family, it seems like December is always the hardest month of the year. But don't give up because a God who loves us so much and cares about us so much is saying, "After this, I'm going to give you a season of joy. I'm going to give you a season of peace. I'm going to give you a season that you're not going to be able to count the blessings uh that fall from the windows of heaven. You're not going to be able to believe the healing that takes place. Brother Macintosh, I'm believing in Jesus name for your healing. We don't know what it is. We don't know what's causing you to be sick. We know that cancer's gone. You're in remission. But in Jesus name, we're believing that he's going to be healed and strength is going to come to his body and he's going to be able to eat the way he needs to eat. In Jesus name. In Jesus name. Why don't you stand your feet? If you believe that you're about to go into a new season, why don't you just give him praise and give him glory and give him honor. Come on, somebody. I believe God has been so good. I believe God has been so great. We can't help but say thank you. And Lord, we're looking forward to what you're going to do in our new season. Put your hands together and give him praise tonight. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.