Facing the Giants

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   you God to go deeper, Lord, and and to be filled to overflowing with your Holy Spirit, Lord. We invite you here, Lord. Speak to us. Lord, those listening by internet radio, speak and touch their lives. Lord, we sense your presence here today, Lord, and I believe you're preparing us for a new thing, for a new season, for a new time. Lord, we pray today, Lord, open our hearts, open our eyes to see what is out ahead of us and to grasp it by faith and to obtain it. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. And amen. During worship, God gave me a word for us now, and it's Isaiah 52 verse 1 through 6. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion. Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For henceforth, there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust, arise and sit, O Jerusalem. Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus saith the Lord, you have sold yourselves for naught. Ye shall be redeemed without money. For thus saith the Lord God, my people went aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there, and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now, therefore, what have I there? What have I here, saith the Lord, that my people is taken away for naught? That they rule over them that make them to howl, saith the Lord. And my name continually every day is blasphemed. Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak. Behold, it is I. Amen. Amen. You know, I know that's a word from the Lord right there for us. Because as we were in praise and worship, the Lord spoke to me very clearly to tell you something. Now, even though we've been through a wilderness and even though we've been through a battle and even though though we've been through some difficult times as a church, as a ministry, I really feel from the Lord that he said these words to me, that you are very near a revival. And what I mean by revival is not a few days of special meetings. I mean where God opens heavens and pours out his

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   spirit in a special way beyond what we could ask or think. And I'm I've been sensing this now for about a week. And I remember it was even probably a few months ago that the Lord told me we were going into a new season. But let me just say, whenever you begin to transition from one season to the next, there's always in between that as you're moving into that transition, there's always going to be a spiritual attack from the devil and his and and the forces of darkness because the devil hears what God is saying to you and he sees where God is wanting to take you, and so there's an attack to try to stop you from getting there. So, I can just tell you that I know that I know that I know that God is about to do some very special things. And when I say pour out his spirit, and this is something that's been on my heart for some time because I've shared with you that, you know, I spent a lot of years, even before I went to Montgomery, here in this area, in Auburn-Opelika area of Alabama, I spent a lot of time in fasting and prayer for revival here. I mean, years. And I'm talking about fasting for weeks at a time and praying that God would open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing that would bring conviction of sin and bring people to repentance. That would bring forth the true miracles of God in the place. And And sometimes you just have to sow a lot of seed. Amen. Sometimes it's just a lot of sowing, and there's a lot of planting, there's a lot of plowing the ground and sowing the seed. And sometimes, you know, you plow the ground and then it rains and then the sun pops out and you realize you got to go back and replow it again. And it's just work sometimes to get where you want to go. But one thing I've learned about the Lord, rarely does God ever do anything quickly. We want it quickly. We want everything right now, right then. That's why people end up in witchcraft because they're promised power and they're promised things right now, right now, right now. Do this spell, do that thing, and you'll get what you want, you know. Uh but God is not like that. God wants to build in us character. He will allow us to go through test and trials and difficulties to see if we will persevere because let me just say this, if you can't handle the trials and the test and the difficulties, you will not handle success. I remember Dr. Larry Lee. Now, many of you won't remember Dr. Dr. Lee, but Dr. Larry Lee wrote the best-seller back in the late '80s called Could You Not Tarry One Hour? Uh Dr. Lee uh came out of uh Dallas Theological Seminary. He got saved during the Jesus Movement, baptized in the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit. Uh God used him to lead many people to the Lord. He He uh He was getting many people filled with

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   the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues at Dallas Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas back in the '60s and '70s. And he has professors and people who like him very much and all. But anyway, he left there with his I think his ThD and his DD and doctorate of divinity and doctorate of theology. Anyway, spirit-filled brother, good brother. And he wrote a book and he began to develop a prayer life. God really convicted him to develop a prayer life. And so he began to pray every morning at 5:00 a.m. using the Lord's Prayer not as a repetition, but as an outline to pray over many things. And that's what God dealt with him. So, in 1980, in January of 1980, he started a church in Rockwall, Texas um with about, I don't know, 50, 60 people in a house. That was in January of 1980, but that church was a praying church. All right? And he said he had all the church, they were praying and they were praying for God to move and they were praying for God to pour out his spirit, for God to send revival. And he taught the church how to warfare, how to bind the demons and resist the devil and all those things. And it took a little while, but around, I don't know, 1983, '84, a few years, the Lord spoke to him and he said these words. And this is very important. I'll never forget it because I used to actually went to that church for a while. Lived in Dallas for a while. And I remember he spoke these words to Dr. Lee. Right before God poured out his spirit and that church went from just a few people to thousands of people. Right before that happened. And I'm not talking about just numbers. I'm talking about people getting saved left and right. All right? Right before that happened, the Lord spoke to him and said, "I'm about to give you the most dangerous thing that I can give you. I'm about to bless you with the most dangerous thing that I can give you." Success. He told him, "Son, everything you touch turn to gold. Everything you do will work." And do you know that it became his downfall? Because Church on the Rock went from just at that point, you know, about 100 members or so, in just a few years by 1987, it was 6,000 members. I went there right after they built the new sanctuary that seated 8,000 and they had a total of about 12,000 people. The services were so powerful in the spirit of God. I remember sitting out in the parking lot there in Rockwall, Texas before the service and the glory and the anointing of God was so strong that it would almost overwhelm you sitting in the parking lot before the church. And I'll tell you why, because that was a praying church. They were unified, they were focused, and they were a praying church. Now, just to give you a little of the story, Larry got in trouble because once God blessed him with success, his book became a best seller, Could You Not Tarry One Hour about

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   Prayer and Developing a Prayer Life. Then his book, The Hearing Ear, about learning to hear God's voice, Wisdom, and then he had another book, The Weapons of Your Warfare. I want to tell you, to me as as uh Christian and as a minister coming up back in that time period, he was one of my favorites. I mean, the man was a preaching machine. He was a praying machine. He was a godly man. But there were issues that came up. Success got him off course. So, I say all that to just say that just because uh just because you go through difficulties and trials and sometimes God doesn't do things that he tells you that he's going to do, but he doesn't do them immediately, is really a good thing. Because he he's putting you through the test, the trials, the difficulties, the spiritual warfare against the enemy, so that when you get the breakthrough, when you get the answer, when people are listening to you, when people are listening to you through your witness and your life, when you're casting demons out of people, or you're beginning to see God heal the sick through you, you don't get prideful. You remember the time of dryness. You remember the time of difficulty. You remember the time when it wasn't easy, when you had to pray and you had to fast, and you had to fight. Because I'll tell you what, you'll go through a season, and this is I've seen this in my own life. Seasons where God begins to move in power, and a lot of people start getting saved, when you start casting demons out of people and seeing people delivered from the powers of darkness, I'm going to tell you, after a time of success is going to come another wave of attack to stop that. Matter of fact, the devil actually likes a minister or church to become successful. If he can't stop that, then he becomes successful, and then he makes them fall, and to make it all, you know, once it gets in the limelight of everybody. And that's what happened to Larry Lee. Um and you know, these are things that I know because I had friends I had a friend of mine who was on staff at that church. They had 30-something pastors, paid staff in that church. So I and I and I watched it. The Lord sent me there to watch it unravel. And to see why it unravel. But folks, you got to be hungry. And I think that we're at a point now where so many things are going to converge in the world, end time prophecy things. So many things are going to converge at one time. And I believe in 2014 is going to be probably one of the most interesting That's a And then of course I You have to put that in quotes, interesting years that we've seen in a long, long time. That's what I preached about last week, of course, 2014. What we could see, the things we could see happen. But there's also good

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