Digging the Family Well | Jentezen Franklin

Thank you for joining us today. I'm praying that this telecast will really touch your heart. Sometimes I watch programs on TV and I watch religious programs. And when I flip the channel, I ask myself, why did that touch me if it touched me or why didn't it touch me? And my prayer is when I say God's presence can touch you is that something that is said, something that is done, something that is preached are in a testimony that you're about to hear. Because today's program's very special. We have some incredible people who were baptized in water and you're gonna see that happen live as I baptize them, but you're gonna hear their remarkable stories. These services are unrehearsed. We don't know what people are gonna say, but they are powerful. So stay tuned after the message. The message today has to do with baptism, but it also has to do with you and your family. I'm preaching today on digging a family well that will last for generations. I believe this is a word that every person will find vital in their walk with the Lord. And I'm praying today that you will leave this program when it's over saying, my heart was touched. I have heard from God. I believe that's gonna happen. Let's go right into the service.

Together, we're inspiring people to live for Jesus. If you're looking for more in life, to live with purpose and peace, to make a difference for your family and those in need around the world, Jesus is the answer. And our mission is to simply point you to him. You're watching Kingdom Connection with Jensen Franklin. Genesis chapter 26, and I'll begin reading with verse 18. And Isaac dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father for the Philistines and stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names, which his father had named them. I want you to notice that. And then I want you to notice verse 24. And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, the same night that he re-dug a well that his father had dug. The Lord appeared unto him and said, I am the Lord God of your father of Abraham. Do not fear. I am with you. I will bless you, multiply your descendants. Why? He re-dug a well, notice that, for my servant Abraham's sake. And I'll stop there. And then I wanna go quickly over.

So you have Abraham, whom God recognizes as the whale digger and then his son, Isaac comes along and re-digs the well. If you read the verses before it said, he went off and tried to dig his own wells and all he hit was ultimately dirt. So he came back to his father's well. What a sermon in that. And then John chapter four, verse six. So it started with Abraham. Isaac tried to dig new wells and find water that gives life. He couldn't find it out there anywhere. So he returned and re-dug his father Abraham's well. So that's two generations. Abraham has died and Isaac tried new stuff, but he came back to that well. And then now we have the third generation, Abraham, Isaac, and the same well is described 1900 years later when Jesus Christ showed up, God in skin and went to the well in Samaria. Watch this. Now Jacob's well was there. So there's a third generation. I'm preaching on generational wells. I'm preaching on in re-digging a well or digging a well for your family, a family well. It was a family well. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore being weird from his journey sat by the well and a woman from Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her, give me drink.

And I'll cut right down to this 11th verse. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with. I love this. And the well is deep. Hallelujah. I get happy every time I say that. It is a deep well that we have in Jesus. The well is deep. And Jesus goes on to say in verse 10, and he answered and said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is is talking to you, you'd say, give me drink. You would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The well is deep. So the Bible's full of wells. and wells were essential, wells were necessary for survival. The livestock depended, the crops depended. If a person could not find a well in the holy land that we call it today, they would not last long. It was not just something to have, it was an absolute necessity. And when Isaac split off from his father, after his father died, he left a good well and let it get polluted. The flistings came and poured pollution in to that well and he didn't guard it, he didn't maintain it, he didn't keep it clean and open. He varies off and he started digging new wells and they did not satisfy

and he was forced, listen carefully, by circumstances to go back to his father's well and re-dig them. We don't have a new gospel, we don't have a new message, we don't have, we package it a little different, this is kind of different, but we preach the same, from the same well of the book of Acts. We believe that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. He doesn't just save, he fills with the Holy Ghost. He doesn't just fill with the Holy Ghost, but it's a deep well. It's a well so deep that you don't have to stop by just getting walking down and getting saved and I'm not putting that, that's not a minor thing, but when you really get saved, it's an unending well, a boundless well. It never stops and it's up to you. If you hunger and thirst, you can go deeper and deeper. Some of you need to get your floaties off. You've been in the shallow pool, playing around with your big old grown adult and you still hadn't grown three inches in Jesus. Come on, somebody. At some point, Jesus says, launch out into the deep. You've been stuck over there in that religious rut and I want you to re-dig the wells of revival and prayer and joy and the Holy Spirit and the baptism in the Holy Ghost. Re-dig those wells of revival for your family

because it's not just about you. If you go dry, the family goes dry. The Holy Spirit's well is limitless and deep. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a deep well that's not ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep. It's water to swim in. It'll satisfy you. I tell you, Jesus said, if you drink of this well, you'll never thirst again. What does that mean? That means nothing the world has that I gave up when I came out of the world, it does not have a hold on me anymore. I can truthfully say, I'm not up here thinking, man, I can't wait to get out of this church so I can go get drunk and get high and so I can cheat on my wife. There is nothing in me that wants any of that because I am drinking from something that does not leave me thirsty. That's the problem some of you have. You got that thirsty look, but when you drink of the living water, it satisfies your soul. Hallelujah. I'm saved and I'm satisfied. I don't need anything else but Jesus. I appreciate his blessings, but just the fact that I have eternal life and I'm drinking from the well, I'll be all right.

I might go through some things, but I'll be all right. Hallelujah. Shout if you've got a river of living water. Hallelujah. You gotta keep it clean. You gotta keep it open. You have to keep re-digging it. You can't let it become stale and stagnant. There's a river down there, but if you let the well get clogged up, the river can't flow into that well. So they had to take care of the generational well. And when Jesus showed up, it had been maintained and it had been preserved. It was purposeful. It was a generational well from generation to generation, 1900 years, and it was still flowing. Today, that well is almost 4,000 years old and it's still in the Holy Land and they take you to it when you go on a tour if you wanna go. And it is absolutely historically, no question, it is the well of Abraham from Isaac to Jacob. But now they build a Greek Orthodox synagogue church over it. And. And I can't help but see the symbolism in that. We've replaced living water with ritual worship. And I'm not putting down somebody's religion. There's a return to orthodoxy.

People are wanting return. That's why I started doing communion a long time ago. The Lord said, why do you just do that once a month? And I said, well, that's kind of the tradition. He said, forget the tradition and get the meal that heals out and let me do a work. And that's why we pray the Lord's Prayer. And that's why we still we go all the way back to the book of Acts. We still pray in tongues and sing and worship and shout and glory. If we have old-fashioned prayer meetings and as long as I'm alive, we're never going to stop them because that's what the church did. The Bible said they broke bread daily that that wasn't eating chicken fingers and biscuits. They didn't go out and just sit around and eat meals with other Christians. They would do they would do communion and then they would eat and they would hang out and they had all things common meaning that they you know, it was just a lifestyle. They did life with other Christians. If you don't have any life with other Christians, it's probably cause you're more like the world than you are the Christian and the word Christian didn't show up in the book until the I don't have time to preach this. This well is deep. Hallelujah. You ought to get that meal out and take it as off as you do this.

You do it in remembrance of me until I come. Whoo. That's the next thing. This well so deep. It's going to lift us up out of the grave and it's going to lift us up who are alive and remain and be caught up in the clouds together. It's deep turn to somebody say this rivers deep and getting deeper. For some of you you'll be left behind. Wow. And there will be a Mark of the Beast waiting on you and you can't buy and sell without it. It's deep. But God's in control. Hallelujah. David got so weary from battling the Philistines and they had taken over his hometown called Bethlehem. Where another great person would be born besides King David and that would be King Jesus. But he cried out one day. Oh and in 2nd Samuel 23 in verse 15. He said, oh that I had that out that somebody would give me a drink from the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate. He knew exactly where it was and he sent three of his mightiest men and they rushed through the troops of the Philistines for a cup of water and got a cup of water. And brought it back and this is what I want you to see and then I'm going to move on but I want you to hear this. David held that cup up and he was so moved and emotional about

it that he said I can't drink this because when I think of what this well has cost to preserve it from generation to generation so that I could drink from it. He said these words is this not is it not this the blood of my Is it not is it not this the blood of men that gave up their lives? He said the only reason there's a well there. Is there were men who fought and defended that well and they gave up their lives. They gave up their resources. They they gave up everything they had and when I thought about that I couldn't help but think about the the fact that Free Chapel is a well that wasn't just dug a day ago. If Jacob had to re-dig those wells for the next generation if he didn't the next generation would pay the price and he understood that and when I think about the fact that that every church has spiritual wells that go back to its original source and foundation some some pastor somebody some evangelist some prayer warrior in their kitchen or somewhere started digging a well in the city and that's exactly the story of Free Chapel. We're not a fly-by-night ministry. It's not popular. We never started out to be a mega Church. We don't see ourselves as a mega Church. We see ourselves as a well and it's deep and it's deep enough that the more people come the more we can serve. Hallelujah. We don't run out. We we got plenty of communion and plenty of wine and plenty of bread and plenty of Jesus and Jesus is the answer.

Hallelujah. I thought about the old well Katie Franklin there. She sits ancient of days. Amen. Raise your hand mom. That's the whale right there. That's my whale. Hallelujah. Oh, thank you Jesus. She's still praying. She's still handing out water. Glory to God. And when you get in this water, I want you to know that you are saying, I am starting a whale. Jesus said, this will be a whale of living water. And what this water represents is when they go down, Romans 6 said, they're buried with Christ. And when they come up, they're resurrected, quote, to newness of life. How many of you appreciate the truth of water baptism? Good morning. What's your name? My name is Landon. How old are you, Landon? I'm 18 years old. Come on, 18 and not ashamed. Why would an 18 year old want to get baptized in water? So about four months ago, I was living a terrible life of addiction, battling alcohol, drugs, you name it. And I was kicked out of my house the whole month of November and come around Thanksgiving time. I prayed a prayer. I was like, Lord, I'm tired of this life. Please save me. Deliver me. Remove all this evil from my life, Lord. And the next day I get a call from my mom. She says, we want you there for Thanksgiving. And then the next day I got sent to Goodland in recovery. And now I'm over 100 days sober. And I'm walking with the Lord. Is your mother here today? I live in South Carolina. They're about three hour drive. But I know they're at home listening and watching. I know they're proud of you in this moment. And it hurt them. You heard this when you were a kid. But it hurt them more than it hurt you. Did they put you out? Kind of put you out?

Yeah. They were dying. They wouldn't show it to you, but they were dying. I've been there. I've done that. And boy, you feel like, but sometimes love has to be tough. Yes, it does. It does. And I want to give a big thanks to my good friend, Mr. Witt. He's here somewhere. And I also want to give another big thanks to all my guys in Goodland in recovery over there. Where's Goodland? And stand up, Goodland. And we love you guys. Y'all do great work over there. We appreciate you. Well, I baptize you. You want to say anything else? Praise God. And, you know, anything's possible with God. You can't do it alone. You got to give all the glory to God. And I want y'all to know that if y'all are in here struggling today, you know, just give it to God. Prayer, there's so much power in prayer. There really, really is. And if you just give it to Him, your life will be so much better. So great. I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Let the church rejoice. Hallelujah. How are you? I'm good. How are you? What's your name? Christi. Christi, how long have you been coming to Free Chapel? For two years.

Good. Did somebody invite you? Actually, it's an interesting story. Me and my husband, we haven't been in church the whole time we've been married. I have a nine-year-old little girl. And her sister actually invited her to the Brazelton campus for the Parents Not Out, which was a win for us. So once we dropped her off... So your first deal was to get away from your kid to get a break. And every parent totally understands. But that is wonderful news. I mean, that is amazing. Isn't that something? God uses things we can't even imagine. And after we did that, a couple days later, we got a phone call from you, which was left on our voicemail. And my husband was like, did you get the same message? And I said, I did. And we were like... It's a recording. It is. I knew we wasn't that special. But actually, after we heard that, my husband's like, we need to go to church. So we started at the Brazelton campus, and we went for about a year. And then... Wait a minute. So you get a recorded call, and you hadn't been in church for years and years. And the Lord uses that recorded call to make you want to come to church. And we come here, actually, Easter Sunday, because we wanted to see everything live. And ever since then, it just felt different to us. And of course, I was saved when I was 14 at a small Pentecostal church in Lula. And somebody that's here today is... She's the whale digger.

And that's my grandmother. Where's your grandmother? Where's she at? Raise your hand, grandmother. She's 83 years old. 83 years old, and look, look in the well. There's your granddaughter. Anything else? We're just blessed, and this church, and our relationship with God has gotten closer, and I felt like since I was saved when I was 14, I'm almost 40, and this is something that I need to do. It's truly a beautiful testimony. I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, for that wonderful testimony.