Reclaiming Our Inheritance

I believe I have a word from the Lord today. And so if you have your Bibles, let's turn to the book of Genesis chapter 26 and let us stand for the reading of the word of God. Wasn't that a word last night from Brother Myers followed by Brother Morgan? And that panel today, I could listen to that panel all day. All day. It is just so inspiring and so insightful. The wisdom and the insight that these men have. We are so, so blessed. Genesis chapter 26 of verse number 12, I'm gonna read 10 verses, then Isaac sowed in that land and received in the same year a hundredfold and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great and went forward and grew until he became very great. For he had great possession of flocks and possession of herds and great store of servants and the Philistines envied him. For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them and filled them with earth. And a bimilek said unto Isaac, go from us for thou art much mightier than we. And Isaac departed thence and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac's servants digged in the valley and found their well of springing water. And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen saying the water is ours. And he called the name of the well Essek because they strove with him. And they digged another well and strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sitna. And he removed from dance and digged another well. And for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rehoboth. And he said for now the Lord has made room for us. And we shall be fruitful in the land. Amen. I wanna talk to you today on this thought reclaiming our inheritance. Reclaiming our inheritance.

Would you pray with me one more time? Pray for yourself, pray for your heart, put your hand on your heart. Say Lord Jesus we're asking you right now. Lord that you speak to us your word is already anointed. But Father we now ask you to you will anoint your servant and the people of God that you would speak to us. Lord God let the living word preach the written word. Let your spirit move in this house one more time. I pray Lord God that you would have your way Lord God as you anoint the people of God. And we will not fail to give you all the glory in the name of Jesus we pray. Hallelujah we give you thanks and praise right now and we honor you for all that you're going to do. In Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for standing God bless you you may be seated.

I know I stand between you and lunch. So I am going to be mindful to stay on time but not until I share to you and convey what the Lord has placed upon my heart. What such a wonderful preaching we heard from Brother McCoy. The story of David is one that conjures up great thoughts of inspiration. And perhaps when we if we pass the mic around in this room and ask you who your favorite character is I guarantee you that majority of people would say David. Particularly the young man we can certainly relate to his personality but Isaac is not usually one of those personalities that people would often cite as their favorite Bible character. For the most part Isaac is really known more for what he didn't do than what he did do. He's remembered more for the people in his life like Abraham and Sarah and simply the product of the incredible supernatural intervention of God to birth and conceive this child. He was the sacrifice on Mount Moriah and before he can really even gain any limelight in the Bible his twin boys who are just being born and they get more press than he does. He does not strike us or me certainly doesn't strike me as a go-getter as a bold leader. As a matter of fact he is more like one of those in their 30s going through a late adolescence. Maybe this is a little cruel and I'm being a little bit facetious but maybe he is one of those in his 30s living in his mother's basement playing video games all day. In fact he couldn't even get a wife for himself and nobody else had to get that for him. Perhaps it's a little harsh but there's really only one chapter in the book of Genesis that's purely dedicated to Isaac and this chapter did not necessarily begin well in chapter 26.

In verse one the Bible says that there was a famine in the land and beside this Bible says the first famine that was in the days of Abraham and Isaac went to Abimilek king of the Philistines to Girard. There was a, the backdrop of the story was that there was a famine in the land and the Bible says to us shortly after that that Isaac sowed in the land and received in the same year a hundredfold and the Lord blessed him. There was a famine in the land and you would think that the last thing a person would do in the famine is to be able to sow because there was no food at all to give you strength for the sowing but the Bible says he sowed in that land and in the same year he reaped a hundredfold harvest. Amen. He received a return where God blesses him a hundredfold or a hundred times so where he had some flocks, a flock perhaps a 500 head of sheep it would grow to 50,000 head of sheep. If he had a hundred head of goats it would have grown to 10,000 head of goats because the blessings of his father Abraham was upon him so even in the midst of a famine God can still bless his children.

Can I make an inference right here today to tell you though even when the world is in chaos even when there's a famine in the land that Amos says not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water but of the hearing of the word of the Lord. Amen it's not a famine of the word of the Lord but it's the famine of the hearing of the word of the Lord. It's the people don't want to hear the gospel. They don't want to hear the word of God but can I tell you in the midst of this kind of famine the church of the living God, the children of the Lord this is when we ought to be sowing the word of God. We ought to preach the gospel everywhere we go. We ought to open up our mouths. We ought to open up our Facebook, our Instagram, our Lyagram, whatever it is. We ought to use every platform to preach the word of God to sow wherever you go. Sow the seed wherever you are. And I promise you I'm believing God in Australia and here in Florida in the United States. I'm believing God for a hundred fold revival. I'm believing God for a harvest that our churches and buildings are not big enough. Come on somebody you preach it to me. You come to Australia and preach to me about a revival. I don't want to just preach about revival. I want to see it for myself. I want to see the power of God and a harvest because Jesus is coming back. He's going to come back soon like the song we sing soon and very soon. We're going to see the King. Oh hallelujah, I believe it today. I believe the promise of God is imminent to us. Hallelujah. Glory to God.

I've come to remind you today that God is a blesser. He wants to bless us just like he did with Joseph that he prospered Joseph in Egypt to be able to gain a grain in the land of Egypt. So not only was he able to feed the entire world but he was able to sustain his family and he also made Egypt rich by the wisdom and the blessings of God. I've come to tell you that your God is a blesser in your life. The Bible says he gets pleasure. He gets happy when he blesses and he prospers his children. We're not afraid of the word prosperity even though some others have abused it, have misused it. But I believe in a God that wants to prosper his people. He wants to bless us more than we think we deserve to be blessed. He wants to give to us more than we think we're owed because my God is a blesser. Hallelujah. Oh yes. Hallelujah. They've abused that whole doctrine, this prosperity doctrine. But listen, I believe that God wants to prosper us not so that we can hoard it to ourselves, not so that we can just line our pockets and see our bank balances increase. He wants to bless us so that we can be a blesser so that we can sustain his people and so that we can save this world. Oh, hallelujah.

Brother Elm shared a little bit of my story growing up with an abusive home. My father was in the military. He fought in the Vietnam War for the Australian Army and then shortly came to the United States, was educated here and he was one mean person. He raised us in a way and so I had this issue, I had this complex with my father that when I went to Australia, I went haywire, got into all kinds of sin and drugs and alcohol on the streets of Sydney and I was so lost. And then when I got saved, I came to know this heavenly father that I thought maybe he was like my dad for so many years, that I'm always looking over my shoulder thinking that God was constantly looking for ways to punish me and to put me down and I had this depression and cloud over my head, thinking that God was constantly wanting to judge me and God had me had to flick me around the ears and remind me, he said, no son, I already know you're a failure. I've already known that you're gonna make a mistake but I've come to love you, I've come to bless you. I wanna give you good things. You gotta get that out of your mind, brother McCoy. You gotta begin to see yourself as a new creature, a son of God. We are the children of the King. We're not servants, we're not slaves that he puts out. He said, no, you're mine. You are my heritage. You are my child. Hallelujah.

My son, he's 18 but he's got special needs and I've traveled so much and as a superintendent I have to travel all around Australia and I created a terrible habit for my son that every time I come back from somewhere I bring him a present. I bring him a toy and he loves buses and trains. So I come back and I've got a, I bought a train or a bus at the airport and my wife tells me, no, don't give him a toy, he doesn't deserve it. He's been a naughty kid. He's been a naughty boy. And I'm like, I haven't seen my son for days. I wanna just give him this gift and so when his mother's back is turned, like a good parent, I said, come here, Joaquin, come here son, here you go. And you should see his eyes just light up with joy because it's a present. It's it, he hasn't even seen it yet but he knows he's got a gift. But can I tell you, you know who's happier than this boy? His daddy. His daddy gets happier seeing my boy happy. I get happy just seeing his eyes light up and that smile go from ear to ear. I get more joy, I believe that he does, that when I see him and I begin to think that that's what our heavenly father's like, he's not, he doesn't get happy by making life miserable and putting us down and turning us around but he gets happy when we're blessed. That's why the Bible says he gets pleasure in the prosperity of his servants. He gets happy when we are blessed, when we are prospered.

So you need to get that in your mind. You need to get a new mentality and walk with a God. He's looking to bless you, not looking to punish you. He's looking to lift you up, not looking to tear you down.

And so, so Isaac is blessed when everybody else is suffering, here he is, blessed by God, a hundred fold increase. But then he looks around at all of his livestock. He looks at the abundance of his cattle and that's wonderful. But what good is all of that when you don't have the most basic element in this world for survival? You don't have that life giving water to sustain you. What's good is all of this cattle, in just a few weeks they will just turn into carcasses that would litter the wilderness, that would litter the landscape because there's no water to give them. Hallelujah. What good, brothers and sisters, is the blessings of God. If we don't have the blesser himself, what good is having all of this prosperity, is having all of these good things. And yet we are absent, or what is absent from our life is the life giving water of the Holy Spirit of God.

We heard that last night about the ascending and descending. It's about the glory of God. It's about the knowledge of God. We heard it from Brother Morgan earlier about knowing him, about a relationship with God. That's what makes it all meaningful because you can have the entire world. You can have a millionaire. You can drive the latest car. You can have a two story mansion with a pool in the backyard. You can have all of these things. But what good is all of that when you don't have a relationship with the life giving source of the Holy Spirit of God? Hallelujah, I'm telling you, those things will disappoint you. Those things are gonna let you down and they can take away your house. They can take away your job. They can take away your money. Oh, but there's one thing that they can't take away from you. And that's the most important thing. That's the true source of joy is I can go home after a day's work. I can go home from church and Jesus is still there. He's in my prayer closet. He's in my private room. He's in my quiet time. And that is the source of my joy. Oh, would you clap your hands and thank him that we can call upon his name, that we can talk to him and know him.

And so he realizes, Isaac realizes there's no point having all of this unless I've got water, unless I've got something to sustain this livestock. So where does he go? He goes back to where he knows that there's water. He goes back to where he knows that he knows for sure there's water. He does not simply begin to dig anywhere and everywhere, but he goes to the wells that his father had dug. He knows that those wells that his father had dug, because if you have a well, it is tantamount to claiming ownership of land. If you own a well of water, it means you own that land. And so he goes to where he knows it belongs to him, because it was his father's, therefore by inheritance, it belongs to him. Hallelujah. And my God, he knows, Isaac understood that he's got to go and dig, but when he goes to the wells, he goes back to the source. He realizes that it's all covered up, but he understands that even though those wells are covered up, they belong to him. It is his. It is his because he knows there's water there.

I want to remind you here today to tell you that we've got to still go back to where we know it works. We've got to go back to the things that we understand is still works today. And if it was good enough for our forefathers, if it was good enough for the apostles, if it was good enough for our fathers who started this movement, I'm telling you, it still works. Prayer is still the answer. Fasting still works. Preaching the word of God, it's still the answer for this world. It still works. We've got to go back to good old fashioned, apostolic preaching and sacrifice. Whatever it takes, let's go back to where we know it works. Go back to the prayer room. Go back to the streets. Go back to fasting, push back the plates and say, God, I'm not moving here until you touch me. I'm not moving until your power is released upon my life. I'm not moving here. Until God, you do something in my life. I'm sorry, but there's no short cutting. There's no short cutting to get in the apostolic power and the anointing of God.

I think it was Sister Teni who said, we have the apostolic truth, the apostolic doctrine, and we have the spirit of God, but we have yet to capture the apostolic attitude of sacrifice, of seeking after God, of humbling ourselves in prayer and fasting and sacrifice. Can I tell you, there's no other way, but through the same path, it's through the same source. It still works. It's still the answer. In 2025, we still need to seek His face. We still need to humble ourselves. Hallelujah. We just don't make up some formula. And I'm thankful for all the technology that we have. I'm thankful for the talent. I'm thankful for the opportunities of the buildings that we have, the platforms that we use. We use all of them. We use as much as we can. But can I tell you, it cannot substitute. It cannot take the place of seeking God, of a heart and a soul that will seek after the Lord. That's why the children of Kohath, they had to bear the burden upon their shoulders. They had to carry the ark. When everybody else had a cart to put their instruments in, the children of Levi had to carry it upon their shoulders. The Kohathites, because the power of God, the apostolic anointing comes through the shoulders of men. It doesn't come through a program. It doesn't come through a machine. It doesn't come through a strategy, but it comes through good old fashioned prayer by the shoulders of men and women that will seek after the Lord. Hallelujah. It still works. The blood of Jesus still flows. Amen. Calvary, the finished work of Calvary. It still works. It's still changing the lives of men and women today. It still is the answer for the word of God, through the word of God. Like the old song that says, the blood of Jesus shed from me, way back on Calvary. All the blood that gives me strength from day to day, it will never lose its power. It soothes my doubts and claims my fears and it dries all my tears. And the blood that gives me strength from day to day, it will never lose its power. It still has the ability to transform a life, to transform a soul, to change lives. All the blood, it still heals. It still saves. Hallelujah.

In Australia just recently, in the state that I live in, New South Wales is called. And it's now in our three states where it is illegal. If somebody comes to our church and wants to, and is living an LGBT kind of lifestyle, and we tell them that they need to repent and change, I can go to jail. It's now enshrined in our laws that you can't even pray with that suggestion that they have to change their sexuality. We go to jail now. Thankfully, we are protected to still be able to preach it. But if somebody comes and repents, we have to just make hints where here's the Bible says, marriage is just for a man and a woman. But a couple of years ago, young man walked in, well, presenting as a woman. She had long hair, dress, but you clearly could see it was a guy. We say in Australia it was a bloke. You can tell it was a bloke. You know, you put lipstick on it. And still a pig. Put a lipstick and a wig on a pig. And I love our church. We accepted everybody because all sin is the same. Whether you're told a lie or whether you're engaged in that activity, it's a sin. If you commit, if you have sex before marriage, that's a sin, no matter what the world will try to tell you. And we're not trying to be offensive to anybody. And he came and we, everybody accepted and loved him, hugged him. And he was just, you know, it was obviously presenting as a woman and nobody was being offensive. You know, we believe that God loves everybody. And so he gets, we had a guest preacher. I can't remember who it was from the States. Was he a preaching? And the spirit of God was moving and he was just dancing, worshiping. And he loved that, you know? And he came up to me and said, listen, pastor, I wanna get baptized. And I said, well, and at that point, I was kind of taken back. I said, well, I did what any good pastor would do. I delegated to my assistant pastor. I said, Ben, you need to teach him a Bible study. So Ben taught him a Bible study and said, listen, you know, we love you and Jesus loves you, but you have to repent of all your sins, including, you know, this identity, we have to baptize you as a man. And of course, after that, he had to sort of process it and he went back home and he stopped coming for a couple of months. He was coming for a few weeks, stopped coming, didn't see him for a couple of months. And then two months later, he comes back and this time, he doesn't have a dress, but he's got trousers on and he's still wearing a female blouse. And so, you know, he's worshiping and dancing and so on. And after that, God fills him with the Holy Ghost. He gets the Holy Ghost and he comes up to me after the service and say, pastor, I just got the Holy Ghost. Can I get baptized now? I said, well, I was kind of a-ring and a-ming. And I said, but before I could say anything, he said, no, don't worry. I've already had the Bible study and I'm gonna be who God created me to be. That day we baptized him in Jesus' name. He was already filled with the Holy Ghost, still wearing a blouse, but he wanted to join our community choir. I said, pastor, and I still had the long hair. I'd like to join the community choir. I said, you're absolutely, but he says, no, don't worry. I've already made an appointment with my hairdresser, not the barber, the hairdresser, and I'm gonna get a cut short. And so I asked him, what happened? And he tells me this horrible story as a kid being abused and so on. But in the two months he was away, he ended up in ICU because he was taking hormone therapy which reduced his testosterone level to virtually zero. Being having to virtually no testosterone, God, I'm so sick. And when the doctor found out and told him, get off that straightaway and immediately restored his testosterone and just like that, his body was healed. He said, from then I knew what I'm doing was wrong and I had a visitation from God. And when he joined the choir, his hair was short and I'm telling you, this guy is a testimony. In our church still today, two years later, worshiping God, living, he's a work in progress. God is healing him. But I'm telling you, the blood of Jesus is for everybody. It can cleanse, it can wash. It does not matter how deep the sin you're in, the deeper the sin, the blood still flows. The power of God flows. Though your sins be a scarlet, they will be made white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they will be white like wool. The blood has still got the power. It's still the source. Oh, glory to God.

You may be seated for a few moments. And so, you see the enemy saw realized that if they could just stop those wells, then maybe Isaac would go away. If they didn't try to stop Isaac from coming into the land, there was clearly his that belonged to him. But the enemy understood if they can stop the source of water, if they can block it up with rocks and soil, then maybe Isaac would go away. Oh, I come to tell somebody today that the devil doesn't mind us being in the house of God. He doesn't mind us being in the church of God. But if he can stop the flow out of our hearts, if he can stop the flow of the river of living water out of us, oh, he'll be just fine. He'd say he'll be okay. You can sit at a pew. You can stay there all you want. But if you just not have the flow of the Holy Ghost, then he'll be just fine. Oh, can I tell you it's time for us to go back to the flow of the Holy Spirit. It's time for us once again. When was the last time they had to carry you out of the house of God? When was the last time that you felt the power just flowing over you, that you couldn't help, but go and tell somebody. Go and share the word of God to somebody. We need a fresh touch and a fresh flow of the Holy Ghost. We need the power of God. Oh, hallelujah.

So he goes and he starts to dig. Hallelujah. You just can't wait for God to drop it on your lap. You gotta start digging sometimes. You can't just wait for revival. Revival is, yes, it's a move of God, but it also requires some participation from us. Don't expect that God is just gonna grab us by the nap of our necks and say, get on fire. No, there's got to be some digging. So some of us, we need to get out the shovel. We need to get the pick out and start digging deeper and say, yes, Lord, I've gotta go a little deeper than what I've experienced before. It's time for us to get our hands dirty. It's time for us to start shoveling out that thing that's blocking the flow of the Holy Ghost. Whatever it is that's stopping that water from flowing out of your life, it's time to pick it out. It's time to get on our hands and our knees until once again there's a flow of the Holy Ghost. Whatever it is, get rid of that complacency. Get rid of that pride. Get rid of those things that's blocking and hindering the move of God in our lives. Oh, hallelujah. We need the spirit of God. So we've gotta start digging.

That first weld that he dug, it was named Issac, which by interpretation means to strive or to struggle. Your pursuit of the things of God will sometimes be a struggle. Nothing good comes easy. Sometimes you've got to fight. Sometimes you've got to push and you've got to struggle against this flesh, against the things of this world. The Bible tells us in John, these things I have spoken unto you, Jesus said, that in me you might have peace. In the world, he says, you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. He already prophesied that we're gonna have tribulation. He already prophesied that we will have offenses. He says it's inevitable that offenses come, but woe unto them from whom the offenses come. He said it's gonna happen to you. You're gonna have struggle and tribulation in life. And so you might as well make up your mind, amen, that you're gonna fight until the end, that no matter how hard life gets, when Jesus is on our side, it's worth every ounce of energy that we expend. It's worth every blood that we had shed. It's worth every tear that you shed. It's gonna be a struggle sometimes. To get a hold of God, you gotta push through sometimes. You gotta get through and say, I'm pushing through my boundaries. I'm pushing through this mindset. I'm pushing through these thoughts and these ideas that are holding me back until I get a hold of God. You gotta push through. Life is hard.

I went and visited your Kennedy Center the other day. I thought I might have one day to visit somewhere. I heard your dead president, President Link Kennedy, and he said, we do these things not because they're easy, right, but because they're hard. Amen. Come on, nothing good ever comes easy. If you really wanna get a hold of God, see revival in your school. See revival on the job. You wanna see a move of God wherever you go. Sometimes you gotta seek after him and pursue. You gotta push back the plate, turn off Netflix and turn off Instagram. Get off all of these distractions that takes up hours of our lives that can consume us and say, God, let me get to that, which is real. Before Jesus comes back, he's looking for a church that's going to be a witness in this world, that's gonna have the fire of the Holy Ghost that will stand and declare the word of God. We had Brother Tom Trimble in Australia recently for our men's conference and he cited a research that shows that it is expected that, on average, an adult will spend 26 years of their life on social media. 26 years of our lives. How many of you are 26 years and under? Put your hand up. So that's all of your life. Spent on social media. We don't realize how long we are scrolling. We're scrolling for, we thought of just five minutes, half an hour later, two hours later, we're still there. No wonder research also shows that there's a greater level of depression in our society through social media use. People are more depressed today because their whole lives are fixated on this little device. And then we look at other people's coffee and it looks better than ours. Their meals always look better than what we're eating. We're just having fish and chips over there down under. You guys are having all this southern food that looks so good the other night, that was amazing. And we got depressed because their lives look so much better than ours. They seem to be living life, but remember, it's all a lie. Especially the couples are always posting how good their marriage is. Reality, it's like that meme. Have you ever seen that meme of those two cats where they're standing on the bow of the Titanic, like the Titanic couple and the two cats are like this, back to front, back to back, they're like this, just enjoying the breeze. And then the next picture of that meme is these two cats fighting each other. This is reality. That's what you see on social media. The reality is the cats are fighting. So sometimes do yourself a favor and turn off the devices and get your face in the book, not in Facebook. Hallelujah, let them restore your joy. Let them restore what life is all about. Our life is not to be constrained in a little machine that we put in our pocket. We are to live life to the full so that we can reach this world, a world that is filled with loneliness. Loneliness saturates this world like a blanket, even in Australia.

But here, he said, hang on a minute. Those wells are mine by virtue of my inheritance from my father. Oh, hallelujah, I know we've heard it before, but could it be that we'll get to heaven one day and realize and see that we have lived well beyond our privileges, that we have not prayed the prayers we should have prayed? Come on, we've been praying too many small prayers. We need, you need to stop praying. You don't have to be a minister. You don't even have to be in Bible school, but if you were a child of God, if you were at the age of 14 or 94, you can pray the big prayers of saying God, transform my world, change my world. Stop praying just the little prayers. Oh God, I need a parking space. And you know, I know God blesses us with things, but don't just pray those small prayers. My wife and I always used to argue and say, I said, honey, why do you pray for a parking spot, a good parking spot? Don't bother God with something so trivial and petty. Maybe God wants you to park as far as you can so you can get a little bit of walk and done. I love you, sweetie, if it's three in the morning, so she can't watch this. But you know something? She always gets good parking spots. So now I'm parking, I said, Lord, just give me a good spot right here. I believe he's interested in the small things, but he also wants to get his people praying for the more significant things. We need to pray some big prayers. We need to pray, say, God, use me to share the word of God to somebody. Lord, use me, get me out of my fear. Remove all this intimidation. Remove all of this timidity out of my life and help me to speak the word of God with boldness, with freedom. Amen, let me pray, God, a revival in my school that I could start a Bible study in my lunch room, on the job. I could start a Bible study in my community. God, use me, because that is your inheritance. It is given to the church, the five-fold ministry, the nine gifts of the spirit, the apostolic truth. It is ours. He said, Jesus said the works that I do, you shall do also and greater than these. These signs shall follow them that believe. In my name, they shall lay hands on the sick. They shall recover. They shall speak with new tongues. Can I tell you that belongs to you? That belongs to me. It is ours. It is our inheritance that we have the power of God. Oh, hallelujah. It belongs to us. It's ours. If it was good enough for Brother Urshen, it was good enough for Brother Tenney, for Bishop Myers. It's good enough for us. Hallelujah. If they can walk in that anointing, then we have that same anointing that we can walk into and believe that God can use us in the same manner. But we've got to dig. We've got to keep digging. No matter what it costs, we've got to keep digging.

The second well that he had to fight was called Sittna. And that's the same root word as Satan. Because sometimes the devil will try to attack you. Yes, he's real. He's not just an idea. It's not just some ideology or a philosophy, but Jesus said I saw Satan fall like lightning. And the devil's gonna do everything that he can to come against you. This is an idea that Satan is somehow God's arch rival, he is not. They're not even on the same playing field. I saw an image somewhere where Satan is having an arm wrestle with Jesus. And you know, I could see that where he was attacking his flesh and temptation. But in reality, there's no competition. He would have broken his arm. He would have smashed it through the table. Wherever there were arm wrestling, there is no equal. But can I tell you what the devil wants to do is try to get at God's children. He will try to attack us, but you've got to continue to resist what the enemy will try to do in your life. You've got to continue to fight and stand against it.

It's a little bit like Brother Elm said, I boast to be the best tennis player in my church. It was a childhood sport my whole family played. But I still play it. And one day I was playing with some guys. I go just in the club and we play. And some of them are in their 20s and they're fit. They can run all day. And I'm in my 50-something none of your business years old. And so you've got to understand tennis is a mental game. And so it's not just how good your strokes are, but it's how tough you are. And one day I was playing this young guy. He's in his 20s, he's fit and he has beaten me. And he's like the set is like five, two, five, zero. And I said he's about to take the whole set. And so he's looking at me and we're having some long rallies. And he's watching from the other end of the court looking at me to see whether I'm getting tired. Because when your opponent is getting tired, it starts to give you encouragement in your mind. And he's thinking, man, I've got this guy. But just in that last game, I start sending him a different kind of message. I'm not showing that I'm tired. I start jumping around on the baseline, getting ready and said, no, you think I'm an old man, but I can still go. But inside me, my body is hurting. I am hurting everywhere. Even my little toe is in pain. But I don't show that. I jump around and I'm acting like I can do this all day, son. And so I just start getting the ball back. And before you know it, I'm back to six, one, five, one. And then five, two, five, three. And I finally get back to five all. And by this time, he is frustrated because I've gotten into his mind that I'm not tired. I'm gonna be here all day. If you're gonna beat me, you're gonna have to play like a champion, amen. Can I tell you that the devil can't read your mind, but he can read your body. And you sometimes gotta send the devil a message to his brain. Tell him I'm not done. You might've given me trouble. I might be short of money. I might've had a little sickness in my body, but I'm not done. I'm still here. I'm gonna go to the house of God. I'm not gonna wait for my favorite song, but when I walk through the doors, I've already gotta jump. I've already got a step in my feet. I've already gotta shout in my mouth. You've gotta send the devil a message to his brain. Say I'm not done. I'm still here. I'm still gonna lift my hands. Preacher, pastor, you preach it. I'm gonna preach with you. I'm gonna be with you. Oh, hallelujah, would you clap your hands right now and give him praise? Hallelujah. Glory to God. Maybe seated, you gotta send the devil a message. Oh, hallelujah, I'm sorry. It's about 3.30 in the morning for me right now. I'm sleeping in the middle of the day. I'm so jet lagged over here. What a wonderful service, what a wonderful event this is. I truly felt the hand of God ordained this conference because of what it did to our church last year. I just hope we can do it again one day.

But he strives against these men to dig the wells because it belonged to him. And if we could ever wake up and realize what truly belongs to us, what is ours for the picking, it would blow our mind that we are living so well beyond below what is entitled to us, that we have yet to live out the prophecies and the promises of God. They're not gonna grab us like I said, but you've gotta have to put feet on the prophecies that God has spoken over this church, over your life. I'm just gonna end with a little bit of my story and musicians, you can come.

I was born in the Philippines, and the brother Elm said, left when I was five years old, didn't really know my language because my stepfather would refuse to allow us to speak my native tongue. That's something, I am a poor excuse for a Filipino. I go to the Philippines, I can't even preach in that language. And I went to, I left my father at the age of 16, I moved to Australia at the age of 16 because my father was just getting so much more abusive. They stayed in the nation of Sri Lanka. My father was military, he sold guns and armored cars to the governments in South Asia. And when I got to Sydney, I was a bird out of a cage because I was raised like a military. My father would inspect my room every day. And if one thing was out of place, the whole thing would be out of place on the floor. And so I had a lot of issues. I got to the streets of Sydney and I just wanted to lash out, got involved the wrong crowd. I wasn't a tough guy, but I just got around the wrong tough guys, started dealing drugs. For a whole year, one whole year, I was stoned every single day. I don't know how I managed high school. I missed 69 days in the last year of my high school. And I was just so lost. I thought the answer was doing heavier and heavier drugs. And one of my best friends who is my brother-in-law now, big Fijian boy, rugby players, well, he was my number one customer, although he never paid. He's watching this. He was like my muscle. You know, he's now our base player, he's a minister in our church. He comes over to my house, our party house. My house was a party house. Our coffee table was just filled with bongs and bottles, giant bottles of galliano and JDs and all that. You know what I'm talking about. Some of you, you weren't brought up in church either.

And he comes home and he says, man, I don't want to touch that stuff anymore. I said, come on, man, I'm passing him this stuff. I said, no, no, I don't want to touch. I said, what's going on? Man, he says, I've been going to this church. So what church? And you know, he's trying to quote scripture to me. And I was born Catholic, born and raised Catholic. And you know, I think you were taught, you were born Catholic, you're gonna die Catholic. But like a good Catholic, I didn't know any scripture. No offense if you're a Catholic here today. Brother Hoffman always says, I'm a Catholic too. I'm just not Roman Catholic. I'm Jerusalem Catholic. But I didn't have a defense, but I just tried to get him. And all my friends were there. We just got him drunk again. And boy, he just ended up on the floor again that night. Wasn't really strong enough to resist. He was, you know, inebriated, off his face, we say in Australia. And then, you know, he had his Bible with him. The Bible went under my bed. It got lost under my bed. And we would later use it for rollies. But anyway, yeah, I'm sorry, God, I repented of that.

He comes back the next week. And again, this time he had another Bible in his hand. He said, bro, now I don't wanna touch that stuff now. I went back to this church. And he said, bro, it's amazing. You gotta come see it. And I was scared from my friend because I thought, man, he's joined a cult. Their brain washed him. I'm gonna go and see what this is all about. We catch a train to church on the way to church, on the train, he opens up the Bible. All he knew in the Bible was Acts chapter two. So we restart reading Acts chapter two all the way down from verse one, verse 38. And he's reading this to me like it was, I said, man, is that really the Bible? Then he goes to Acts chapter eight, Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 19 about the Holy Ghost.

We get to church, it was a little church, the church that this missionary from the United States started. They sent me right in the front row. And the place was packed. The building was so old. The floorboards, it was occupational health and safety issue because the floorboards were waving like the waves of the sea. But all I could think was these people have lost their mind. They were swinging from the chandeliers. They were climbing the walls, biting the ceilings. But they sent me right in the front where I was a captive audience. I couldn't get out because there were so many people around. That's what you gotta do. If you bring a new person, a guest, don't sit them in the back, sit them in the front. And all I thought was get me out of this place. I was 19 years old. Still, I had the drug still coursing through my system. The preacher preached. He made an altar call. I literally took two steps from the seat down to the altar. I didn't even know how to pray. But I knelt on my knee and I said, God, if you were real. And I said to my friend, what do I say? He said, just whatever comes to your mind. And he was singing this song all day in his head. And it stuck in my head, that old song, I surrender all. So I simply used those words and say, Lord, I surrender all. Within a few moments, I began to imagine in my mind, in my imagination, a door. And there was a light in the cracks of the door. And when I said that prayer, I could just picture this door open and that light came flooding through. I thought it was just the drugs in my system still. I thought, I'm losing things. But within a few moments, I started speaking in tongues as the spirit of God filled me. And all I could think was, this is why I took all of those drugs and all of that alcohol to try and feel and could never feel. And now I've got it. Now this is it. I was speaking in tongues so much. I thought I couldn't speak English anymore and I didn't want to lose it. There was, I was still at the altar praying in tongues for over an hour. There were turning off the lights. There were closing the windows. And my friend said to me, come on, Stan, we gotta go to the closing up. And I just simply pointed to my mouth and I said, what would I do? He said, oh, come on, just put your hand over your mouth and let's go. So I walked out of there, speaking like, speaking in other tongues. But I'm telling you, I was a whole new creature. I was a new creature in Christ. God had done something in my life. Hallelujah.

But here's one last thing about this story. For two years, I was at the altar every Sunday night. I was praying, crying. I said, what is wrong with me? 19 to 21. And I went back to the Philippines. My father, my grandfather passed away, went to his funeral. I left the Philippines when I was five years old. When I was there, I decided to go to my grandfather's nearest United Pentecostal Church. I walked into this little church. It was a cement floor, cement walls. They just had wooden benches for pews. But I'm telling you, when I walked in there and the spirit of God started to move, I started to weep and sob like a baby. Now, if you know anything about me, I'm not a crier. My wife, she cries over watching commercials. She'll cry. For me, and I'll be looking around when the service is going, people are crying. And I'm thinking, what's wrong with me? Why am I not crying? So I started thinking about starving children in Africa and trying to make myself cry. I said, why? But when I went to that church, it's like somebody turned on the tower, we say tap. You say faucet. Somebody, I could not stop crying and I couldn't understand why. And then when I talked to the pastor after the service, he said to me, what's your family name again? And I said to him, my family name is Toledo. Toledo. He said, your aunt used to be a member of this church. It was the same aunt that used to babysit me and my sister. And she used to bring us before my mom married my stepfather. My mom used to work in the city. My aunt, a member of the UPC church in the Philippines in the 70s, used to bring me and my sister and the pastor said, I remember when we prayed for you before you left, we pray that God would save you and that he would use you. All of this time, I thought I was the first generation Pentecostal, but there was somebody in my past, somebody who prayed for me, somebody who believes the Acts 238, the one God message, live in a holy life. I was not a first generation. I was at somebody that prayed for me. Let me tell you, prayers never die. Moms, dads, prayers never die. Don't give up on your kids. Your prayers will be answered someday. Hallelujah.

And it dawned on me. Brother Morgan, it dawned on me. I didn't get saved like my friends in the world. You used to say, you're only a Christian because you're not strong enough to make it in the world. I used to think that that was a shameful thing, but now I wear a badge of honor. I wear it as a badge of honor. Yes, you're right. I thank God I wasn't strong enough to make it in the world. I thank God that I hit such rock bottom that I had to look up. It was the only way I was gonna look up. And I began to realize this is not an accident. That's too coincidental to be a coincidence. God, somebody prayed for me of this Acts 238 message and said, you're saved. I got you. And I thank God for a people that told me you gotta change your lifestyle. You can't keep smoking and drinking. You gotta live a holy life. I'm thankful for the holiness message. If it wasn't for that, I would have never changed. Our holiness is not just for us. It's for a world that needs to know that they can be saved, that they can be like Christ. And so I realized, hang on a minute. I'm not by accident or coincidence, but I've been inherited. I've got an inheritance that belongs to me. Yes, I done all of that stuff. Oh, but when I got saved, I am saved, sanctified. I am verified. I am accepted. And that's what you were hearty today.

And so everybody stand, I'm done, I'm finished. But is there anybody in here that you need to dig up some things? There's some things blocking that flow. Maybe it's a little bitterness that we heard from Brother McCoy so beautifully. Maybe it's some pride. Maybe it's just, we're so institutionalized with the four walls of our churches that all we know about Christianity is this. Maybe it's time to say, God, I need some radical change. I need the power of your spirit to manifest in my life. I need the flow of the Holy Ghost once again. Like that old song that we used to sing, that there's a river of life that's flowing out of me. Hallelujah, I've got a river that makes the lame to walk and the blind to see opens prison doors and sets the captives free. I've got a river of life flowing out of me. Oh, spring up, oh well, within my soul. Spring up, oh well, and make me whole. Spring up, oh well, and give to me that life abundantly. Today, before we leave the service, let's begin to get the shovel out and the pick and begin to dig once again until there's a flow of the river of living water. Until there's a flow of life of the Spirit of God. Oh, hallelujah, come on to the master. Come to me, he said. All of you that are weary and heavily laden, hallelujah, if any man is thirsty, let him come and drink and out of your belly will flow rivers of living water. Hallelujah, let it flow once again. Let it flow once again. Oh, hallelujah, come on, push through, strive, struggle. Come on, push through and dig, dig again until you get that life, it's yours. It belongs to you, it's inherited to you through our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, hallelujah. Lift your voice right here. Say, I'm not to worship the name.