The Divine Law Of Attraction

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 2002 · The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA Topics: Faith · Giving · Healing and Miracles

Jeff Arnold — introduced by the host as the slob from Gainesville, Florida, who needs no introduction (the introduction and its applause seamed out of the span, packet.md) — opens with thanks and goes straight to his texts, and he reads every one of them aloud himself. First Exodus: in the process of time the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant (the reading runs from verse 23 into verse 24, packet.md). Then Deuteronomy chapter 8 from verse one: all the commandments, the forty years in the wilderness to humble and prove them — and verse three, which he reads twice over: God humbled them, suffered them to hunger, and fed them with manna, to teach them that man does not live by bread only but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord (the wording ships as Deuteronomy 8:3, the text he is reading, packet.md). The warning that follows in that chapter — lest, when they have eaten and are full and their herds multiply, their heart be lifted up and they say my power has gotten me this wealth — he preaches in paraphrase as the sermon's shadow side: prosperity is what makes people forget why God does what he does. Then his title text, Luke chapter 5: Levi's feast, the publicans and sinners at the table, the scribes and Pharisees murmuring "why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners" — and Jesus' answer, into the middle of which Arnold interjects his own gloss, "it's the Divine Law of Attraction," before the reading completes it: they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (the interjection is his gloss inside a located reading, disclosed in packet.md). Need, he tells the house, attracts God.

Scriptures: Exodus 2:23-24; Deuteronomy 8:1-2; Deuteronomy 8:3; Luke 5:29-31

The platform God builds.

The sermon's story reaches back two years: at this same conference a moving appeal raised money the church needed — a denominational headquarters paid off — and Arnold went back to his motel room grieved, because God had wanted to do something about the law of attraction and the moment was missed. The mechanics of the world, he says, can raise money with need-lines and fried-chicken seed-faith offers, but God does not respond to programs and gimmicks; God responds to need. His witnesses are the Bible's needy: Hannah, whose need drove her to weep and pray until the priest thought her drunk; blind Bartimaeus, whose need would not let him hold his peace. What attracts God's presence is a platform of genuine need, and the tragedy is that our security keeps building the wrong platform — houses, land, insurance, a nest egg — until God has to place a need in a life to get its attention, as he did for Arnold himself in a motel room where success felt like an anchor. Arnold is unsparing about his own kind: church junkies, he calls them — if you're going to be an addict, be addicted to the presence of God — and he works the figure hard: the sheep who know the Shepherd's voice and answer it back, the lambs who will not preach at their shepherd, the church that does not need God for anything and so gets nothing. The Holy Ghost was given for the needy — for prostitutes and drug addicts and destitute people — and secure, resource-trusting religion repels the very presence it advertises.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

Proof texts and the valley.

Arnold performs his proof text himself: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" — and the earth was without form and void, no fish, no fowl, no vegetation, darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved on it: God's presence was attracted by need before there was anything else (the Genesis reading ships at its performed extent, packet.md). The tower builders and Noah preach the same law from the other side — men with resources get no visitation. The long central movement runs the Elijah–Elisha cycle as a need clinic: the still small voice after the wind and fire, the widow's oil multiplied into borrowed vessels (hold on — Elisha's "borrow not a few" sounds inside the narration and is priced, not indexed, packet.md) — and then the valley of ditches, where Elisha, with the hand of the Lord on him after the minstrel played, speaks the word himself: make this valley full of ditches, for you shall see neither wind nor rain, yet the valley shall be filled with water (the wording ships on the named-sayer line, packet.md). Paul and Silas worshipping in the jail preach it too. Then the giving word at the sermon's core: quit trying to get God to bless your resources and tell him the truth about your situation — "what did he say to Philippians? My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (book named, wording entire, packet.md). You cannot get God to supply what you will not admit you need.

Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-2; 2 Kings 3:15-17; Philippians 4:19

Locked doctrines and an open throne.

Arnold closes where the doctrine bites. He tells of healing meetings where people were healed because God responds to needs that are presented — but God, he says, does not respond to needs that are locked in little "acts 238 Doctrine," his phrase for truth gripped so tight it is never carried to a hurting world (the verse named as a label and priced out on the standing label line, packet.md). Against Laodicea's "I am rich and have need of nothing" he sets the house's own silence: money, wife, kids, ranch, two cars, a boat — when our stuff steals our shout, we have too much stuff. The need God puts in a life is not the devil; it is a platform he has orchestrated, and Arnold says it over his dearest friend in the room, whose wife God took despite agonised prayer: the sorrow, the pain, the unanswered questions are all a platform God has built, because he is coming in a special way. He prays over a brother by name, exhorts the men to hold their families closer than their ministry, and lands the whole sermon on a valley text — if God has to dig ditches in your life and take things away, it is so the water can run — and on the throne of grace, closing with the words that we may come boldly to it to receive help in time of need, voiced as the recording ends (the closing voicing is adapted and runs out mid-phrase at the upload's end and is priced, not indexed, packet.md). The greater the need, the greater the manifestation of grace.

Summary scripture index (the exact union of the sections above): Exodus 2:23-24 · Deuteronomy 8:1-2 · Deuteronomy 8:3 · Luke 5:29-31 · Genesis 1:1-2 · 2 Kings 3:15-17 · Philippians 4:19

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)