Highlights from Pastor Jerry’s February 11 & 18 Messages…
Wherever I go I can tell people how Jesus came into my life and showed me how a lot of things were broken down in my life – things from my past that were causing me difficulties.
We all need to read the Bible, examining the Book of Nehemiah, for we see in Nehemiah a picture of the Holy Spirit – the Comforter. We see how God uses Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem, a city in rubble and help the people realize the mess they were in, and we see how the Holy Spirit wants to do for you and I what Nehemiah did for God’s people back in his day.
God wants us to have a boldness, not only in our faith in God, but a place of sincerity in the Lord, a place of wholeness and completeness in Jesus, that we might be all that Jesus wants us to be.
We have to realize that the residue, memories from the past, creep back in and we start doing the same things we did before. We have to be on guard against the enemy. The Book of Nehemiah gives us a picture of how the Lord wants to restore the walls of our personality and fortify us with the spiritual weapons of our warfare. He wants to reprogram our life so that we can be functional people.
Listen… It is one thing to have our relationship restored to the Lord; it is another thing to have your personality restored to you. Our relationship with the Lord is simply established by an act of faith coming to the Father in the name of Jesus. The Lord puts His Spirit within us, and we begin to do a “new thing.”
We entered 2024 with God, relying on the promise that He is going to place ‘open doors’ before us that we would go and experience new things we have not experienced before.
In John 4:10,13 Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water… “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Jesus was saying that anyone who believes in Him they will have life like a well – a well flowing with healthy water to drink – a well that gives us the purposes of God. If we have His Spirit within us, we will have His Spirit flowing out from us to others.
It’s living water! It will be His Spirit within us flowing out until it becomes a full envelopment of our personality. God said that He would open up from the inner being of man the Spirit within and it would flow out until there is a complete development of personality. Foul language gone, doubt gone, fear and anxiety gone!!
Pastor Jerry shared a testimony of how he confronted a man who used fowl language in his presence. The man apologized and said no one ever told him how offense it was. Years later he met the man, and he gave testimony how he had been convicted that day and said, “I don’t do that anymore! I believe in your Jesus!”
Matthew 14:34-36 says, “As many as touched Jesus, were made perfectly whole by the saving power of God who works through their whole personality.”
The Lord intents to go about restoring us so that we become like Nehemiah and saying to people in love (and not condemnation), “Do you see the mess we are in, the difficulties we have?” and edify them and build them up! Say to them, “Jesus is the answer! Have you asked Him to change your speech? Have you asked Him to build you up? Have you prayed in the Holy Spirit? He will build you up!”
Back to Nehemiah… Nehemiah had done the survey after dark and saw where “we” were in a terrible situation: our walls of our city (our personality) have been attacked by the enemy and must be rebuilt. Our ‘eye doors’ and our ‘ear doors’ must automatically close when darkness comes and would try to get in.
We have to get the dominion of God established within us. We must let people see that we are “Jesus possessed.” There is to be no allowing of bondage or past residue to come with a fresh encroachment operated by the powers of darkness.
Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “…I do not condemn you, go and sin no more!” He was saying, “That is not the lifestyle you want to live.”
Q. Many people ask this question: “Is it possible for demonic powers to torment and oppress a Christian in the area of their mind, soul and personality?”
A. Once Jesus Christ takes up residence in a person the Spirit of Christ possesses that person, but it doesn’t mean that there cannot be a lot of “roomers” that need to be kicked out of the house. The difficulty is this – you have problems that could drive you to extreme unless you DO NOT ALLOW THEM to have any sway in your life whatsoever, because “you do not do that anymore.”
Pastor Jerry shared how while getting a hair cut a man he knew came in and picked up a porn magazine. When he saw pastor, he was so embarrassed. Later he told Pastor Jerry that his presence so convicted him and that he no longer goes to that barber shop and makes sure he doesn’t that he doesn’t pick up distasteful magazines in the grocery line anymore. The Light in me convicted him. I didn’t have to condemn – all I had to do was pray.
Luke 18:1 says, “Let a man always pray!” We can be praying for people wherever we are (i.e. while waiting to be seen at hospital). The Holy Spirit will direct you as to God’s purposes.
Two words in the Bible are translated as ‘affliction.’ It carries the idea of the emotional part of your being affected by afflictions (such as depression, condemnation). “It was depression that led me to seek salvation. The doctor found nothing physically wrong, so he asked if there was anything bothering me.”
Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37 that our first priority is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength;” and in, Matthew 6:33 to “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…”
The enemy will come in and do everything in his power to keep you from aligning with God’s priorities and speaking God’s Word into your life, to keep you from praising and worshiping God and from thanking God that you are blessed.
But 2 Timothy 1:12 says, I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”
There are so many truths in the Book of Nehemiah. Make sure you are standing guard against anything the enemy would do that would prevent you from operating in and carrying out in your life the truth of the Lord our God! He wants to prevent you from having total liberation!
I recommend that you read the Book of Nehemiah and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you where you are being tested or where you are failing and let your Light shine!
Make this confession: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and Jesus loves me! I know there is power available, and I know the promise … the joy of the Lord is my strength.”
I pray that you would have the power and authority to let your little light shine! Amen!
Highlights from Pastor Jerry’s February 18, 2024, message…
Remember in John 16:7 Jesus said to His disciples… “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
Rev. Billy Graham once said that if the Holy Spirit was taken from the earth at midnight on Saturday, church services would go on as usual on Sunday morning!
Pastor Jerry shared how while at the Celebration of Life service for Pastor Caldwell in St. John last week he met a lady named Wanda with the wide brimmed hat and how they had talked and joked together; and how shocked he was when two days later it was reported on the news that she had been hit by a bus and was killed. “We never know when!”
This led to an E. B. Hill story: While ministering to young people he asked them what their future plans were. Some said, Doctor, some Teacher, etc. He wished them well but remarked. “Someday you will die, there will be a funeral and we will all come back and eat egg sandwiches.” He repeated this with each one. After the final illustration the congregation finally said, “We’re getting it!”
There are 2 scriptures from the Book of Nehemiah that people need to know…
· Nehemiah 8:10, “… the joy of the Lord is your strength!” and
· Nehemiah 8:8-12 – “do not mourn nor weep; do not be grieved…”
“There is therefore now, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1).
The Word of God also says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit!” (Ephesians 4:30)
Nehemiah chapters 8 & 9 will cause you to think. There will be no successful church without commitment to the Holy Spirit. In these chapters the more they people of God hear the “DO NOT DOS” more they fear God. Nehemiah says, “This is good news – God is a restorer and a lover!
We know in our own lives all the things we did wrong., but there came a day when we gave our hearts to the Lord.
Nehemiah 9:16-21 the people confess their sins. “But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. 17 They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and, in their rebellion, appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore, you did not desert them, 18 even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.
19 “Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. 21 For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.
We have to welcome the Holy Spirit into this place. We have to thank Him for His generosity and His patience. He prompts us to have good actions, good thoughts. He is our Sanctifier, our Intercessor!!
We must yield to His influences – obedient to the influences of the Father!
God is gracious and ready to forgive the sins of repentant people. Be diligent to follow God’s ways each time He convicts you. He will bless you as you do!
Comments