The Spirit of Might at Work in You

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I call you Jesus, I call you, I call you Savior ♪ ♪ Worthy and glorious forever ♪

♪ Something comes out of your grave, yeah ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name, chains break, trials wake ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name, the gates open, yeah ♪ ♪ Out of hell's shape, every time I call your name, chains break ♪ ♪ Troubles wake, every time I call your name, the gates open, yeah ♪ ♪ Out of hell's shape, every time I call your name, chains break ♪ ♪ Troubles wake, every time I call your name, chains break ♪ ♪ Out of hell's shape, every time I call your name, chains break ♪ ♪ I call you Jesus, I call you, I call you healer ♪ ♪ Risen and reigned in your power ♪ ♪ Something comes out of your grave ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name, Jesus, I call you, I call you Savior ♪ ♪ Worthy of glory forever, something comes out of your grave ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name, chains break, troubles wake ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name, the gates open, yeah ♪ ♪ Out of hell's shape, every time I call your name, chains break ♪ ♪ Troubles wake, every time I call your name, the gates open, yeah ♪ ♪ Out of hell's shape, every time I call your name, I call you, I call you Savior ♪ Hallelujah! There's power in the name of Jesus, amen. I believe the spirit of God is here, and he's ready to bring breakthrough, he's ready to bring healing even as we worship him. Let's allow God's word to set the posture of our hearts as we sing and as we worship today. We're gonna read Psalm 143. I want you to say this out loud with me. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. In you I trust.

Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Deliver me from my enemies, oh Lord. I have fled to you for refuge. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on level ground. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. Let's continue to sing. ♪ Our Father everlasting, the all-creating One ♪ ♪ Our Father everlasting, the all-creating One ♪ ♪ God Almighty ♪ ♪ Through your Holy Spirit conceiving Christ the Son ♪ ♪ Jesus our Savior ♪ Come on. ♪ I believe in God our Father, I believe in Christ the Son ♪ ♪ I believe in the Holy Spirit, our God extended One ♪ ♪ I believe in the resurrection, that we will rise again ♪ ♪ That we will rise again, for I believe in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I believe, I believe ♪ Our church. ♪ I'll judge and I'll defend, suffer and crucify ♪ ♪ Forgiveness is in you ♪ ♪ Descended into darkness, your rose and glorious light ♪ ♪ Forever seated high, come on ♪ ♪ I believe in God our Father, I believe in Christ the Son ♪ I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Our God is three in one. I believe in the resurrection. Now he will rise again. For I believe in the name of Jesus. May the peace of heaven guard our hearts as we sing this. I believe in you. I believe he rose again. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. I believe in you. I believe he rose again. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Come on all together. I believe in life eternal. I believe in the virgin birth. I believe in the saints communion and in your holy church. I believe in the resurrection when Jesus comes again. For I believe in the name of Jesus. I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Our God is three in one. I believe in the resurrection. Now he will rise again. For I believe in the name of Jesus. For I believe in the name of Jesus. For I believe in the name of Jesus. Jesus, I believe. Sing it one more time. Come on, let them hear you. I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Our God is three in one. I believe in the resurrection. Now he will rise again. For I believe in the name of Jesus. For I believe in the name of Jesus. Only your name. Only your name, Jesus. I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the name of Jesus. Come on, this is our profession. For thou, O Lord, art high above all the earth. Thou art exalted far above all guys. This is what all of heaven is singing. Come on. We exalt thee. Come on, sing it. We exalt thee. We exalt thee. O Lord. Sing we exalt thee. We exalt Thee, we exalt Thee, we exalt Thee, O Lord. We bless Jesus. We bless Jesus. We bless Jesus. You were near, though I was distant. Disillusioned, I was lost and insecure. Still mercy fought for my attention. You were waiting at the door. Then I let You in.

Trading Your life for my offenses, for my redemption, You carried all the blame. And breaking the curse of our condition, perfection took our place. When only love could make a way, You gave Your life in a beautiful exchange. So beautiful. My burden You lift. My life You give. There is nothing that can take this love away. Oh, my only desire and sole ambition is to love You just the same, yeah. When only love could make a way, You gave Your life in a beautiful exchange, yeah. When only love, only love could break these chains, You gave, You gave Your life in a beautiful exchange. Yeah. What a beautiful exchange. You gave Your life for mine. Your righteousness for my sin. I am washed by Your blood. I am cleaned by Your blood. Oh, thank You, thank You, thank You, Jesus. Come on, we all sing it out today. Holy are You, God. And holy are You, God. And holy is Your name. ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪

♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪ ♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪ ♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪ ♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪ ♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You're holy, holy, holy are you, God ♪ Sing it out this morning. ♪ And holy is your name ♪ ♪ With everything I've got ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart will sing how I love you ♪ ♪ You are holy, yes, you are holy, King Jesus ♪ ♪ Seated high on the throne, you're worthy ♪ ♪ Oh, you're worthy ♪ Church this morning, just tell Him He's worthy in your own words. ♪ You are worthy, you are worthy of my praise ♪

♪ Yes, you are, yes, you are ♪ ♪ Worthy is the Lamb who was slain ♪ ♪ He's seated on the throne, there's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ The elders and creatures bowed ♪ ♪ Giving praise to Him and Him alone ♪ ♪ We say you're worthy, yeah, you're worthy ♪ ♪ It's the Lamb who was slain, He's seated on the throne ♪ ♪ There's no one like Him, there's no one like Him ♪ ♪ The elders and creatures bowed ♪ ♪ Giving praise to Him and Him alone ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord, there's no one like Him ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord, oh ♪ ♪ There's no one like Him in the heavens or the earth ♪ ♪ There's no one like Him, there's no one like Him ♪ ♪ There's no one like Him, He is worthy, yes ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ We crown You King of glory, we crown You King of glory ♪ ♪ We crown You King of glory ♪ ♪ Oh lift it up in this place, He is worthy, yes ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy, yeah ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy yeah ♪ ♪ We crown you, king of glory ♪ ♪ We crown you, king of glory ♪ ♪ We crown you, king of glory ♪ ♪ We crown you, Lord of all ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy, yeah ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy, yeah ♪ ♪ We crown you, you are worthy, yeah ♪ ♪ We crown you, Lord of all ♪

♪ Worthy is the man ♪ ♪ Who was slain and seated on the throne ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ He'll cleanse creatures now ♪ ♪ Give you praise for healing him alone ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ Worthy is the man ♪ ♪ Who was slain and seated on the throne ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ He'll cleanse creatures now ♪ ♪ Give you praise for healing him alone ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ ♪ There's no one like the Lord ♪ Hallelujah! In Romans 12, Paul has a section that we title Marks of a True Christian. And one of the things he commands us to do is to not grow slothful in zeal. Whereas some translations say, do not let the flame go out. Stay fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. And my prayer for us this week is that we may never just grow into monotony. That we might not just go through the motions, but that we as a church could keep the flame ablaze, as Eugene Peterson says. That we may keep the fire for the Lord lit in us. That our hope for you throughout this series is that what Christ says in John 10,

that he came, that you may have life and have it to the full. Let hope in your marriage, hope in your relationships. He came that we may have an abundant life. And that's what we hope that you continue to experience and that some of us continue to realize real breakthrough in our lives. So Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We thank you for the opportunity that we have, again, to gather in your name. We just do week in and week out what the people of God have done for thousands of years. We worship you, we proclaim your name, and yet here we are yet again, another week in and week out. And yet here we are yet again, another week in to hear the word of God proclaimed. So Jesus, we thank you. Thank you for working in our lives. Thank you for hearing our worship. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Everybody said, amen. Let's give God praise one more time this weekend. Hey, before you have a seat, we move on with the rest of our service this weekend. Would you greet somebody around you and welcome them to our gathering? Thank you. Well, so good to be here with you this weekend. My name is Chris,

and I'm glad that you're hanging out with us as we are nearing the end of our series on Breakthrough. This weekend, we have our founding pastor, Pastor Willie George, with us. We're excited to have him this morning. And then next week, we will be wrapping up our series with a special service, prayer and worship communion, similar to how we ended our series on James. And so excited to be able to wrap this up next week. And then after that, it's Palm Sunday, and we're into Easter. And I'll tell you a little bit more about those times here in just a minute. But I do want to say welcome to anyone who's here for the very first time. In every service, every weekend around here, we have at least one person who's new. So welcome. We're glad you're hanging out with us. If you'll do this for us, text new to 23101. We'll send you a gift card, again, just to say thank you for spending your weekend with us. And then our invitation to you is to be a part of a gathering that we have every month around here called Next Move. Pastor Witt, our entire pastoral team is there to really just be able to share with you how we follow Jesus in this community and how you can be a part of that.

And so if you would like to sign up for that, the simplest way to do it is to text next to 23101. That just lets us know how much food to have as we have lunch and childcare provided. So again, the last Sunday of this month will be our Next Move gathering. we invite you again to sign up for that by texting next to 23101. Well, as I mentioned, Easter is just a few weeks away and our Easter weekend services will have one extra service. This is Saturday and Sunday, where we really celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. So Saturday night will be four and 5.30 and then our normal times 8.30, 10 and 11.30 Sunday morning. I do encourage you, man, if you can come to one of those Saturdays or maybe the early service on Sunday, these last two on Sunday tend to be pretty full on Easter Sunday. So I just invite you, if you can, if it doesn't work for your schedule, come to this service. But if it does, we would invite you to attend one of the Saturdays or the early service on Sunday. And as we do around here, it's gonna become a tradition for us, really for the last seven or eight years. We have a Good Friday service that is completely different from the weekend.

So this will be Friday night at five and 6.30. And this is really a time where we remember the cross and the price that Christ paid for us. We take communion together. It's a lot of music as we really just remember, again, what Christ did for us by going to the cross. And then the weekend is a completely different service. So I wanna invite you. We encourage you to be a part of both of those services that weekend. And finally, as we close out this time in our service here, we take a moment to honor God with our giving. For those of you that would like to partner with us financially, there is a card in the seat back in front of you. The easiest way to give around here is to text GIVE to 23101. I do wanna highlight this weekend, however, our compassion offering. Over the past couple of years, the expansion campaign has really been front and center for us. And as we get near to the end of that, we'll have an update here for you in just a couple of weeks. But this week, Pastor Afaya took some of our outreach team out to Bristow to help with some of the tornado cleanup. And one of the things that enables us to be able to do those types of projects

is your support of the compassion offering. This really helps our outreach and care initiatives here in the local area, but really all around the country and sometimes even around the world. And so we would love to have your continued partnership with that. You can text CO to 23101 if you'd like to partner with us in that way. Well, I'm gonna pray over the rest of our service and then we'll get into hearing from our founding pastor. Dear Lord, thank you. Thank you for receiving our worship this weekend. Lord, we pray over this time in the service. Lord, we pray over the message. Thank you for preparing our hearts to receive what you have to say to us this week. So Lord, we await what you might need to say to us. We ask that we Lutheranians godly thought in the searching absence spirit utilize your church spirits and listen to what God presents for us uniquely this weekend. Lord, thank you for working in us and working in this community. It's in Jesus name we pray, amen. Church families, you help me welcome our founding pastor this weekend. It's here I am, spring break weekend. It serves me right. These are the weekends I used to give wit

when I was the lead pastor. So we're swapping out, so I'm expecting maybe Memorial Day, Labor Day too. All right, we're talking about breakthrough in prayer. Man, and we need breakthrough in prayer. By the way, Pastor Lee last weekend, oh my goodness. What a message. What an incredible message. I mean, they've all been good, but last weekend was really, really special. It was worth the 500 bucks he paid me to say that. All right, now. How can I pray effective prayers? Well, I'm gonna put it very simply. You find a prayer that's in the Bible and you pray it because that prayer, you can be guaranteed was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Now, we're gonna zero in a little tighter. It's important not just to find any prayer. So there are some prayers that are mentioned in the Old Testament and they're good, but what we wanna find is a prayer that was written for us. We live in the New Testament. We live in the age of the epistles, and if you're a new Christian and you started reading your Bible and somebody told you to read the epistles, I sympathize with you because they're not very interesting when you've just come to faith in Christ.

Somebody told me I needed to read the book of Ephesians when I first got saved, and I thought, I can't believe you told me to read this. I can't make heads nor tails of this. I'm a Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John guy. Book of Acts is not bad. And Revelation, I don't understand any of it, but it's exciting, but not the epistles. Man, they just didn't make any sense to me, but I'm gonna tell you, when you begin to learn about what they're really trying to get across to us, it changes everything. And so what we're gonna go to is what I believe are the two most effective. Prayers you can pray if you're a New Testament believer. Here we go. The Holy Spirit is our helper in all things. And we in prayer have to be praying prayers that are intertwined with him. So it's important that we think correctly as to where he is in our lives, what our relationship is, what the nature of it is. And so we're gonna go to Jesus in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 16, where he said, "'I will pray to Father, "'and he shall give you another comforter, "'that he may abide with you forever.'" Abide and forever are two important words. Basically, when he comes, he doesn't leave. That's what he is saying.

In 1 Corinthians, I'm sorry, 2 Corinthians chapter one, verses 21, 22, the apostle Paul sets forth an idea that if the Holy Spirit were to leave us, then it would upset the apple cart severely. It would throw into question everything we know about our relationship with God. Let me show you why. In 2 Corinthians 1, 21, 22, Paul writes and says, "'Now he who establishes us with you in Christ "'and has anointed us is God, "'who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit "'in our hearts as a guarantee.'" In other words, the apostle Paul says the guarantee that we are going to rise from the dead someday, the guarantee that we will spend eternity in heaven with the Lord, or wherever he is, when he rules on the earth, we'll be with him, the guarantee that we get new bodies that no longer have temptation to sin or no longer have any possibility of death, dying, or disease. The guarantee for all of that is the Spirit of God who now is in us. That word guarantee in the King James Bible is translated earnest. Have you ever heard the term earnest money? I learned about that when we bought our first house. We had to put down some earnest money. In other words, we couldn't just say we want your house and come up with the final payment to buy it

30 days, 45, 60 days later. We had to put down some money to show that we were serious. Usually it's 5%, 10%, but the idea is if we put that money down and do not come through, you get to keep that money. That's earnest money. The Greek word for that is erbon, and it's earnest money deposited by the purchaser and forfeited if the purchase is not completed. So if God takes the Holy Spirit away from us at different times in our walk with him, and sometimes he's with us and sometimes he's not, what's missing? Then we just lost our guarantee, and it means that we can't really count on what God said would happen to us as happening because he pulled the earnest money. What if someone came and gave you a contract to buy your house, but 30 days into the 60-day contract, they pulled their earnest money? Would that make you feel better about them closing the deal, worse? Do you see what I'm saying? This idea of the Holy Spirit coming and going to the extent that we as believers have to continually pray, come, Holy Spirit, and please, I'm not trying to knock anybody, but the reason I wanna pay particular attention to this is if you frame your thinking wrong about what he does in your life,

you will never become or realize who you are in Christ. You'll never have it. You see, all too often, we think of God as being out there, his power is out there, and here we are, little old helpless me here, and I'm crying out for an answer. And that's the way a lot of people see their relationship with God. I don't have it, but I'm crying out for it. God doesn't want to deal with you in that way. God wants to continually have you be the answer. In other words, it's like you're on a beach and say you're a little guy, and I used to be a little guy, and there were people that picked on me, and I always wished that I had a hero, and I moved, we moved, and I moved into a new high school, and I walked into the locker room one day. I'm gonna play football. I didn't even make the varsity at the school with 175 kids. Now I'm in a school with 2,600, and I'm thinking I'm looking at logs and tree trunks, but they're legs. And this new football team, these new guys are huge, and out of just sheer survival mode, I paid attention to everything the coach said, and I began to lift weights like a crazy man. It was the only way I knew I was ever gonna survive. I actually put on 25 pounds in one year. My whole body shape changed. My strength changed, and by the end of the year,

I was stronger than anybody in the group. Now, when trouble arose, I wasn't hoping that someone would come and bail me out. I bailed me out. I remember in a football game, there was one guy that I got mad at, and he was just kicking my tail every play. And I looked across the line at him, and I said, I'm gonna kill you. And the next play, pooh, he flattened me again. He'd been doing that all night. I thought, well, that didn't work, so it's not enthusiasm. But when I started getting strong myself, I never had to look at anybody again and say, I'm gonna kill you. I just killed him. It's up to you to figure out what I did. But it's not about talk. It's about strength. Are you with me? This is what God is trying to get across to the church. I am going to deliver you through something that I do inside you, and the help is not coming from out here. Now, why is this important? Because in the New Testament, we have to learn to be God inside minded. David used to say in the Psalms, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.

Have you ever seen the picture of the mountains, and there's that verse in the Psalms? I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. Well, in the New Testament, you don't need that verse, because the help is already inside you. The idea is that God put the helper inside you. In fact, that's the word comforter. He will give you another helper who will abide with you forever, so I don't have to continue to ask him to come back. Now, why do people think that way? I'm gonna tell you exactly why, and I completely understand it based upon the type of church I attended when I first became a believer. We would have services where everybody would get emotional in the service, and I gotta admit to you that it was contagious, and you can now, I wasn't put off by it because it was the only kind of church I knew that I'd gone to my grandmother's church, and it's a very emotional church, but you could feel it. You could feel God. The problem with that was on Tuesday afternoon, you couldn't feel that way. When you're alone and all by yourself, and you're not there with the organ music and the piano and all the people shouting, you're on your own,

it's hard to have that feeling, and so you begin to think that somehow the Holy Spirit came, or as we like to say in those eras, he fell while we were in church, but he wasn't with us on Tuesday afternoon, and so we're praying, Holy Spirit come, Holy Spirit come, Holy Spirit come. When Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would come and stay and never leave, God said he would come and be your guarantee, so we've gotta learn to frame our thinking according to what the scripture really says about him, and so we do it with prayers, and there are two of them, and they both appear in the book of Ephesians, and the first one is a prayer for the very most important thing you can do, and that is to pray for wisdom. Let me read it to you. Paul said, wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him. The very first thing that Paul teaches you to pray, and I didn't give you the whole prayer, but the thing he teaches you is pray for wisdom.

The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, wisdom is the principal thing, it means number one, first order of business. In every situation, the first thing you need to pray for is wisdom, and not just pray for wisdom, because this is more than a prayer for wisdom. He prays that we will have a spirit of wisdom. I give advice to hundreds of pastors nowadays, and it amazes me how, when we're sitting at a table out at our ranch, and I've got eight or 10 pastors sitting around, and one of them has a serious question, and I don't have to think about it. I almost never have to think about what the answer is. It's as plain as the nose on my face. I immediately know what to say. Why? Because it used to be that I got those occasional drops of wisdom, but what God had for me was even better. He put in me a spirit of wisdom. Why? Because I prayed for it. Why? Because Paul told us to pray for it. Pray that God would give you the spirit of wisdom. You're not just getting wisdom here and there as you need. You have a spirit that is prone to wisdom, so you're able to see things almost instantly. Well, I know better than that. That's an easy one.

Why would you think that? You have an ability to see your way through problems, not just because you got a drop of wisdom on that spot. What happens is you develop a spirit of wisdom. See what God wants to do with you is he wants to answer your prayer through you. In other words, he wants to take this thing on the inside of you called spirit, and he wants to empower it, your human spirit, with his spirit, so you have God working with you, not just on occasion, but all of the time. See a lot of people don't know how to answer God's telephone. When they hear the ringing, they run to the kitchen sink, turn on the faucet, and stick their head under the water. God is not going to answer out here. God's answering in your spirit on the inside. He's putting his word in you, so this is where you're going to get answers. The first thing you pray for is a spirit of wisdom, but sometimes that's not enough. I had an idea. I had wisdom. God showed me. It took me three, four, five months to see it, but in the spring of 1987, little by little, God showed me that we were supposed to start a church. I got a little bit of it in February, I got a little bit of it in March, I got a little bit more in April. Finally, in May, I realized, we're going to start a church. In May, I got the date, we're going to start on the 4th of July weekend, worst weekend of the year to start a church, but it's what God told us to do, so we did. I started it in a hotel ballroom where we had only seven Sundays to meet. I said, Lord, we have nowhere to go. After that, he said, don't worry. It'll be taken care of. So we started.

Now, we got six Sundays left. Now, we got five Sundays left. We had approached Union School District, about an eighth grade center, and they said, no, it's already booked, but before we got to the end of the seven Sundays, it opened up and we were covered. Now, when we started in those days, our praise and worship was awful. It was so bad. It really bothered me because I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I dreamed of, and I was traveling in big churches all over America that had great praise and worship, and I would come back to church on the move, and it was awful. There were days we could not get a keyboard player. We had no one to play the keys, none. We had to use a guitar, and I remember one of the guys, bless his heart, he rebuked me one Sunday after praise and worship, and I was giving out a word. I felt like I had nobody to respond to. He said, Pastor, I think God is saying this, and right there in front of God and everybody, he corrected me in the middle. That was what church on the move was like in the early days. It was awful. I wanted a great children's ministry. I walked in the hallway one night in the preschool department, stuck my head in the door, and there were like 25 kids, ages two and three, and the lady who was watching, her name was Becky. I said, Becky, you're all by yourself in here tonight? She said, yes. I said, 25 kids, just you? She said, yes. I said, this has got to be the only time this has ever happened, right? No. She said, pretty much happens all the time.

What? It's like this all the time? Oh, no. I'm telling you, we were hanging by a thread in those days because we were just getting started, and anything that is just getting started is always shaky. So sometimes you can know what you want, and you know the plan, but that doesn't mean you have the power to get it done. So God wants to put his power in your spirit so that you are able to do the things that he has called you to do, which brings us to the second prayer. It is found in Ephesians chapter 3, beginning in verse 14. Paul said, For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by your faith. by His Spirit in the inner man. In other words, we are not praying for the Spirit to come, we're praying that the Spirit will strengthen us inwardly so that we become capable of doing what God has called us to do. God wants you to become a spiritual superman. That is, you have abilities you never realized you had. You can do things you did not realize you could do. That's what God wants to do, instead of someone else always coming along answering your prayer. Now, don't get me wrong, there's always a starter period where you have to have help, and even today I have to have help. But I've learned that nine times out of 10, the answer's gonna come to me in my spirit.

When God called me to publish a curriculum for kids that was gonna cost me $50,000, and I had a salary of $10,000 a year. How in the world am I gonna get this done? So, what am I thinking? Well, I know I don't have $50,000, and I know that it would take me, if I spent every penny I made for five whole years, that's what it would take for me to pay for this. So, my logical conclusion is, somebody who has a lot of money is out there, and they've gotta give me that money. So, I started hanging around the two or three people in our church that had that kind of money. Spent a whole lot of time fellowshiping with them, and when I felt like the time was right, would you be interested in helping? No. They were all kind, but not one of them wanted to do anything. What did I do? I got mad. I started blaming them, because they weren't doing what God told me to do. And slowly, God began to get it over to me, and after over a year, this is what I heard him say. You are sitting on the money. All this time, I've been thinking it's coming from out there, out there, out there, but what God has shown me, it's gonna come to you,

and I began to realize it's gonna come in here. And when I started thinking like that, here's what came. The Lord showed me a class of kids and a Sunday school teacher who was heartbroken because she had no idea how to teach that Sunday school class she'd been given, and she was praying for God to send her help, and I realized I could tell her what to do, but I can't leave my job and go to that church, but I thought, you know, with cassette tapes, I could do it. I was actually teaching a Bible college course on how to do children's ministry, so I converted it into a tape, a six-tape series, and began to advertise it and sell it, and that $50,000 bill shrunk to a $25,000 bill because I sold that many cassette tapes to people all over America who wanted to know how to teach kids. I was blown away by what God did with that, and I started realizing it's gonna come through me. I had no idea it would happen like that, and after another several months, we had all of it paid for, and it all came through ideas and abilities that God put in me. See, when the children of Israel were under threat of invasion by the Midianites, there was one guy named Gideon that God called to do something about it, and Gideon is a nobody.

I mean, he's an absolute nobody. He's never led an army. He has no military background. He has no history of being a hero, but God starts speaking to him, and the angel of the Lord says to him, go in this might of yours. He didn't say, go in my might. He said, go in this might of yours. In other words, when God calls, he empowers. He empowered you to be successful. He empowered you to be stable. He empowered you to have peace, but it all comes into your spirit, and a lot of people don't know how that works, and therefore, they never ask for it, what they're asking for. Instead, Holy Spirit come, and the Holy Spirit is saying, I'm already with you. It's like me telling to Levi, honey, would you come to the house? I'm in the bedroom. I'm in the kitchen. Why would I invite my wife into the house when she already lives there? The Holy Spirit's already in you. Invite him to come back, he's already there. You need to ask him to do something else. Father, I pray that you would strengthen me with might by your spirit in my inner man.

That Christ may dwell in my heart by faith. What does that mean, that Jesus comes into my heart? No, what it means is I begin to realize he's already in there, he's in me, Christ is in me. Instead of looking out here, where's Christ? It's here, he's already in me. I've got him on the inside. That's the relationship we've been called to. We're so familiar with it, we don't take advantage of it like we should. I can promise you this, any Old Testament Jew reading these scriptures and seeing them for what they really are would be blown away. God lives in you? Yes. They didn't know that. God dwelt over them, he dwelt in their praises, he was in their temple, but not in any of them. But in the New Testament age, he's in us. And he's gonna use our spirits to do his work in the earth. It all starts in here. That's why we can boldly say, greater is he who is in me than he that is in the world. That's a thought that I need to have concerning every situation. See, if I'm not careful, I can frame myself as helpless. I'm weak, I don't have enough, I'm woefully inadequate. But God shows me, no, he wants to strengthen me with might. This word might is a Greek word, dunamis, dunamis. Dunamis, we get an English word from that, dynamite.

They're similar, aren't they? We get another one, dynamic. Both words have to do with power, but not just any kind of power. It's called inherent power. Dunamis is inherent power. When God parted the Red Sea, that was not inherent power. That was God working outwardly to blow the waters back. But as we get deeper and deeper into the Bible, and especially in the New Testament age, we begin to see this concept of inherent power. Jesus shows us this in Luke four when he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted. He is saying, I have an inherent power now to do God's work. And so this idea of inherent power is different. Samson is our model in the Old Testament. He's a great picture of who we're to be. You see, Samson had inherent power. The spirit did not come and go on Samson, the spirit came to stay. Now he eventually lost his strength because he broke the conditions that were given to his mother before he was born. But even then, he ended his life with that great strength again. So he began and ended with it. And he was a great victor, but he had inherent power. Meaning that when he was walking down the road

and a lion jumped out, he didn't have to pray, okay, Holy Spirit, give me something to beat this lion. Didn't have to pray that. Before he even knew what happened, he grabbed the lion, tore it apart. When they trapped him inside a city, actually Gaza, they strapped him and closed the gates and they had him locked up. And Samson is now threatened because he's locked in the city. What does he do? He goes over and tears the gates off the walls, puts them on his back and hauls them to a big hill. Carries them on the back of his own shoulders and throws them in the ground miles away. We always, and I'm guilty of it too, when I did my curriculum, we showed Samson great big muscles. There are no muscles big enough to do what he did. What he was able to do was not because of how big his biceps were. It was because there was a supernatural inherent strength in him. We never read of a time where he had to ask for it when he was in danger. It was always there. You see, this is the inherent strength that we pray for. Father, I pray that you might strengthen me with might by your spirit in the inner man. It's dunamis.

And this prayer goes on through the end of the chapter. Now, how do we trigger this dunamis and get it to work? How does it happen? I'm going to show you something about how this dunamis worked in Jesus, and you will see how it connects to you. In Matthew's Gospel, chapter 9, verses 35-36, it says, Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching, preaching, healing every sickness and every disease among the people. There's a flow right there. What is it? It's a flow of the dunamis, the might of God, the power of God. He's healing people, not just because He's Jesus, Son of God. He's healing people because the dunamis, the power of God, is working in Him. He did not have that when He was a teenager. It did not come on Him until He was 30 years old and was baptized in the Jordan River. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove came on Him, and all of the power of the Holy Spirit was put on Jesus then. So there was a flow of power, but that's not the only flow. That's not the only one, and the other one is critical. It's absolutely critical. It says, but when He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and were scattered as sheep having no shepherd. When I moved to Tulsa, took a job at a church, it was a different kind of church than the one I came from. There were all kinds of healings that took place all the time. You know, sometimes you couldn't see them, but we would hear the testimonies. A week later, this pastor laid hands on me, and God healed me. And we were hearing all these stories of just great things going on. And then I would see in the services where there would be a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom, and I so wanted to be used of God like that.

And I heard a message by a man that was used like that, and he said this, if you want to be used in God's power, you first have to learn to flow in God's love because the two of these things work together. And when you see the great miracles on Jesus, it's inescapable. The reason He had all this happen, He had compassion on those people. Jesus loved hurting people. He wanted to help them, and that's why God used Him. See, if you want power for power's sake, you're in the wrong business. You're in the wrong place. But if you want God's power so that you can be a blessing to other people, God will hear your prayer. And that's what this prayer in Ephesians is all about. See if you can hear that. Let me read the prayer to you again, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. In 1 Corinthians 12, we have a list of nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 14, we have a detailed instruction about how to use the gift of prophecy and how it works in the church. But right in the middle of those two chapters is chapter 13, which is all about the love of God and what God is saying, this is how my power flows, but don't ever forget what makes it go is divine love. I saw all this stuff happening in our church, and I thought, I want to be used of God like that. So I got an invitation to go preach in a town just outside St. Louis, Missouri, small town.

My college roommate was a pastor. He invited me to come, and I thought, I'm going to try this out up there. I'm going to do it. And I felt supremely confident because I'm in a church of 2,000, he's got a church of about 35. And so I'm going in as the big shot. You know what a big shot is, don't you? He's a little shot who's away from home. So that perfectly described me. I was a little shot in Tulsa, but I'm a big shot in Warrington, Missouri. And that night when I was in that service, I looked all over that room, and I began to say over each face, Lord, I love that couple right there. Use me, Lord, to help that couple. Let me say something that will bless them. If there's something I need to pray for, Lord, help me to help that couple. Then I'd go to the next step, that old man right there, help me to help that man. I went over. It doesn't take long. When you've got 35 people, you can cover every face in the room. God, let your love flow through me to these people. And I was blown away. way that the Holy Spirit started giving me things that were going on in people's lives. And I had a flow in the Holy Spirit that I'd never had in my life. But what triggered it was love. And then I think back to how I got started. And the Holy Spirit just reminded me of this while I was preparing for this lesson.

He said, do you realize that everything great that ever came out of you, do you realize what prompted it? Do you remember how it all started? I mean, I'm not bragging, but we had a youth ministry called 180 that went all over America. Tens of millions of dollars were spent by churches to reach teenagers with great youth buildings all inspired by 180. We had a kid's TV show that was on every Christian network in America, I couldn't go anywhere in America in the days of Gospel Bill without some kid recognizing me. Five satellite networks, 115 independent stations, countless hundreds of cable systems, break records everywhere we went, every church we went to from Miami to Seattle and from New York to LA. Packed houses, God did that. We built a great Christian camp called Dry Goats USA. We had an outreach there called Christmas Train that in 17 seasons took the Gospel to over a million people. Church on the Move is its own testimony. My curriculum went to 60 different countries. I personally trained over 250,000 children's workers to teach boys and girls. Many of them were men who never thought they had any place in children's ministry, but God used me to grip their hearts. And I say all that to his glory,

but he reminded me of how it got started. And I was in the back of the church one Sunday morning auditorium with about 50 people. The pastor stood up and he said, I need one of you men to go back to the children's church. A couple of little boys that rode the bus are giving fits to the ladies that are teaching. So my pastor looked at me. He wasn't looking at any other men. I knew there wasn't another man in the room he was talking to, it was me. And I looked back at him with a very defiant look. One Sunday. I'll do it once. But if you think I'm gonna stay back there with those kids week in and week out, it ain't gonna happen. I walked back in to that classroom. I looked on the back row. Didn't take me long to see the trouble. They're two little Mexican boys fighting. One of them had another one in a headlock. They weren't mad at each other. They're just being boys. So I went over and sat between them and separated them. I got my arms around them. And after about 15 minutes, it was so bad. I had both them in a headlock, man, it was terrible. That was the most boring class. I thought, this is awful.

And as I had my arms around those little boys, something began to pull at me. I thought, this is you, Willie George, when you were 10 years old. This is you. Will they come back to your church? Will they come back if this does not change? If the teaching is like this every Sunday, will they come back? Are these little boys going to be able to look up to that sweet lady who is effectively not communicating with them? And that whole time, the last half of that class, I sat there thinking about what's gonna happen to these boys. I had a plan. I had a future. I wanted to be a pastor. I didn't wanna do Mickey Mouse stuff. To me, that's what children's ministry was. It's Mickey Mouse. You're doing that because you can't cut it anywhere else. But you know what happened? God kept working on me, and I went to the pastor and said, can I have the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, can I have all these kids? Especially the ones that ride the bus. And before long, I had hundreds of kids. One third Mexican, one third white, one third black. We were the first racially integrated church

within hundreds of miles from where we lived, and it started in a children's church. And I had to do crazy things to hold their attention. I was so glad I didn't have a budget, and I had no experienced Sunday school teachers to talk to. So there was nobody to say, you can't do that. So when I talk about Jesus was the lamb of God, I had a lamb made out of newspaper. newspaper, but nobody knew that he had carob syrup and red food coloring in his gut in a baggie. And I hold that little lamb and pat it, and I talk about how God sent his son, an innocent little lamb, to die for our sins. And I pull down a knife and I stuck that lamb, and the blood went everywhere. And all those little boys said, yeah! It was a hit, and it didn't scare the girls off. Next Sunday, they couldn't wait to come back to see what was going to get killed next. Then I did Samson and Delilah, and I took a styrofoam wig head, and I tore a hole in the eyes and put two marbles in. I painted it and made it flesh-toned, and I put a big wig on it, and I carried it around talking about Samson hanging out with the wrong people. And they took his hair, and I pulled the wig off. And then I took a propane torch and turned it on and heated a spoon red-hot, and I buried it in that styrofoam and plopped out that right eye and plopped out that left eye. And I said, don't you hang around with the wrong people. I did all kinds of stuff like that, but you know what? It worked. But more than anything else, I fell in love with kids. I was 20 years old, and I used to drive all over the Texas panhandle to towns we hadn't been to yet, and I said, Lord, let me come to this town. Give me a bus so I can come to this town.

You know what God answered me with? He said, I've got bigger things for you than buses. I'm going to give you a cowboy hat and a TV show, and God let me go to America. But it happened because I went after the love of God. And if you want power, it starts with love. We want the power of God inside because we love people, and we know that's the answer. That's what God has called us to. God needs you to be full of strength. Instead of looking for strength out here, he wants you to see it's coming in here. This is where it's going to happen. He's going to use your spirit. He's going to use you. He's going to put something inside of you. Some of you are going to be praying for the sick in the not-too-distant future, and it's going to scare the daylights out of you. And a week or two later, you're going to hear that that person was healed because you prayed. You're going to talk to people that others said are totally unreachable, and you're going to hear that they gave their hearts to Christ because God wants to use you. Because there are people you can hear, you can reach, I can't. There are people that you can touch, nobody else can get. God has put you in that world. He's not limiting him. He wants to put that kind of power in your spirit. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for loving people. Thank you so much for sending your Son to empower us, to remove all the barriers, all the hindrances to the Holy Spirit being inside us. You took the sin out of our hearts so that he could come live there. And Lord, if there's anybody in this room who does not yet know Christ, who has not yet surrendered to him, who has not yet asked him to come inside, help us to find those

people. My heads bowed and eyes are closed, you're here today and you say, Pastor Willie, I have not surrendered to Christ. I will admit I have not yet given my life to him, but I want to. Would you raise your hand right where you sit right now, wherever you are. Put it up and put it down. Anybody like that anywhere in the room? Anybody at all? I'm looking all around this room. Anybody at all? Anybody at all? I'm going to pray the prayer anyway. I don't see... Yes, thank you very much. Anybody else? Anywhere in the room? Another one up here. Thank you very much. Anybody else? Anywhere else? Pastor Willie, pray for me. All right, here's another prayer we're going to pray. Pastor Willie, I want God to use me, and I've got to tell you right now that love business is something I need to work on, and I pray that God would strengthen me and my spirit so that I could love people. I want to love people more than I love people today. Is there anyone like that here in this service who said, Pastor Willie, that's me. I need to have the love of God flowing in me. I covet that. I want to be used of God.

I need love in my heart like I've never had it before. Yes, we're gonna pray both prayers right now together. Pray it out loud with me. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus to die on a cross, to be spit on, to have his beard plucked out, a crown of thorns put on his head, to be made fun of. He did this for me so I could be saved. I believe you raised him from the dead so I say, Lord Jesus, I ask you, forgive me, come into my heart, put your spirit in me, let me be like you. Thank you, Lord, for hearing my prayer. Now for the prayer on love. Father, strengthen me with might by your spirit in my inner man. Let the love of God flow through me. Help me to express it. Help me to show it and to demonstrate it like never before so that I can be used to show Jesus to people. In his name we pray, amen. Let's give a big hand clap to all who prayed that prayer. You have been a very, very attentive audience today and I thank you for it. I wanna dismiss you but as you're about to go, I wanna tell you this. If you prayed either one of those prayers and especially if you prayed the first prayer

to receive Christ, people will be standing here at the front of this platform. Don't leave. Come down and just say, hey, I prayed that prayer. They're gonna give you something. Maybe pray for something more specific that you also need in your life but let them help you before you go out the door. We're not talking about an hour, we're talking about 10 minutes at the most. All right? Let's stand up and we'll be dismissed with this blessing. The Lord, let's say it together. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. You're dismissed. Come on, let's bow down our heads in praise for Jesus Christ. He is a mighty good King, he is a mighty Lord, he is a mighty God, he is an almighty thought, he is an almighty translates. Come on, let's bow down in praise for Christ. He is a mighty Lord, he is an almighty thought, he is an almighty soul.

He is a mighty Lord, he is an almighty thought, he is an almighty soul. You