November 20, 2007

• I’m OK part 2 by Pastor Don

  This message has impacted me very much and I will share how later. I really urge you to read Part 1 if you haven’t already done so.

  Pastor Don continued: There is nothing wrong with accepting the fact that you talk too much. You may feel that you have a mouth full of wisdom and words and everyone needs to hear what you say, NO THEY DON’T. Until you get OK with the fact that you talk too much God is not going to give you wisdom about when to speak. Some of you have been praying for stuff. And think, “Oh, I should be rich by now.” Pastor Don said, Yes you should, you’ve heard enough prosperity messages but you are not OK with Whose (God) you are so how can God take you to where you want to be. You need to be OK with where you are. If we can just realize this, Pastor Don said we think, “Lord, You’re asking me to change my mind. You are requiring of me that I make my mind a living sacrifice, take my mind and slam it down on the altar and say, ‘Lord, renew my mind.’”"Lord, I’m going to get OK with my stuff. I’m going to get OK until all this is behind me because I want everything that you have in front of me. So, I’m going to get OK with it, with my history, with my parents, with my personality.”

  Pastor Don asked, how many people have to tell you that you need to show up on time before you realize you have to submit your mind to show up on time? How many times does that have to happen?

  A high school teacher once told Pastor Don that Pastor Don would never do well in algebra. Pastor Don realized that he never would unless he submitted his mind to learning algebra. He had submitted his mind to doing geometry – he liked those squares, triangles and formulas, but he had never submitted his mind to algebra. He had to become OK with the fact that in order to succeed in algebra he would have to study.

  Most teenagers’ problem is that they don’t know that teachers are paid to teach them. If they are failing in a class it’s not their fault, they need to go to the teacher, slap their books on his desk and say, “Teach me.” That’s what we all have to do. We have to say, “I’ve got to get OK with the fact that I can’t do this, and I have to apply myself.” I have to get OK with the fact that I have these problems. I have to get OK with the fact that I’m an emotional eater. I have to get OK with the fact that I am self-medicating all the time.

  Our planet is filled with self medication. Almost all of us have self-medicated. Most people don’t have a drug addiction, they have an improper self-medication. If the person would get OK with the fact that they are hyper nervous and negative, so they drink, they would then be able to begin to get free.

  So what are you doing? You are self medicating to hide the fact that you don’t want to make your mind go to the altar and say, “God, I’m OK with the fact that I am hyper nervous and I am self medicating. Help me find another medication. All of us self medicate, even the people who don’t take drugs. We all have these things we do to bring ourselves happiness, peace and joy. Some of these things work. Others don’t and we are not OK with that. We have to get OK with the fact that sometimes life gets the better of you. Sometimes your job gets the best of you. Well, why don’t you get OK with that? Because if you get OK with that, the Lord can then minister and help you.

  And then the final thing with most of these things we are not OK with is: WE NEED TO HEAR FROM THE LORD! If we could get a word from the Lord we could get OK with some of this stuff. If we could just learn to hear from the Lord we could be OK.

  Abraham is considered to be the father of faith. God asks Abraham, “Are you OK?” He says, “Well not really Lord.” And God says, “I need you to get OK because I want you to take your family and move everybody, go to a land I’m going to show you and through you is going to come the Messiah. I need you to get OK with this. Are you OK Abraham?” Abraham says, “No, I’m not OK, I have no kids. you tell me I’m going to have an heir and I have no heir. And on top of that Lord, I am a liar. I just get caught in these little white lies along the way. Pressure comes and when I’m under pressure I tell little white lies. Lord, I’m really not OK.” And here’s what the Lord says, “I’m OK with that. I’m OK with the fact that you are 75 years old, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m OK with the fact that you ain’t got no kids, but by the time you are 100, I’m going to do it. You’re going to have a kid. And as a matter of fact, I’ll make you rich and powerful all the while you are waiting. Are you OK with that, Abraham?” Abraham says, “OK, I’m OK that I’m a liar, hey Lord, I’m OK.”

  What about Moses? Moses says, “Lord, I’m not OK. I am a stutterer. I am a murderer and I was an orphan, they didn’t even send me to an agency to put me in foster care. They dumped me in a basket in the water. I’m not OK with that Lord.” And God says, “Listen. I want to use you Moses–through you is going to come the deliverance. You’re going to be a picture of the Messiah. I really want to use you Moses. the fact that you stutter is not a problem to me. I just need you to get OK with your mouth. I need you to get OK with your stuff. I can handle the fact that you are a murderer. Are you OK with that?” Moses says, “No.” Pastor Don then said that God put his butt for 40 years on the backside of a desert until finally Moses says, “Hey Lord, by the way, I’m OK with that.”

  Rahab, what’s with Rahab? She’s a prostitute. God says, “I can use you. I’m going to bring the Messiah right through you. Rahab are you OK with that?” She says, “No, I’m a prostitute. You can’t use me. I’m a woman of the night, a woman of sexual impurity. I have wanted money so bad. I throw away my body to protect my family.” God says, “Yes, you are OK. As a matter of fact, I will save not only you, but your whole family if you will just get OK with it.” Rahab asks, “Wy Lord.” God replies, “Because in the lives of 1000′s of millions of souls that come to me there are going to be women that have sexual immorality that they are going to get OK with. Rahab, I need you to be OK with your stuff.” She says, “Lord, I’m OK, are you OK?” God says, “Yes, I’m OK.”

  Pastor Don says, you can go down the line, down the line, down the line in the Bible. There are no perfect people in the Bible. They’re all misfits, disconnected people who had to get OK with their stuff so God could use them.

  Pastor Don asked if anyone was willing to give God praise. He’s looking for you. He’s looking for you to get OK with your stuff so He can use you, so you can get everything He says. You might say, “But Lord, I got knocked up at sixteen.” He says, “I’m OK with that, are you OK with that?” You say, “But prove it Lord.” He says, “Well, guess what, they accused my mother of having sex out of wedlock.” You just got to get OK with  your stuff, with your shortcomings, your knuckleheaded ideas, with your crazy decisions about who is religious and who is not. You’ve got to get OK with it. He’s not asking for approval, He’s asking for you to just have acceptance so that the devil cannot stop you in anything.

  The biggest problem is that people don’t believe that they can hear from God. If you get a Word from God that He’s OK with your stuff, then guess what, then it’s going to be alright. Well, He’s not going to send you a telegram, he’s going to speak right in here (Pastor Don pointed to his heart).  Whatever comes in here is going to register in your mind as a thought.

  You may say, I want to hear from God. Well, then you need to listen to what your thoughts are.

  There are four major ways you hear from God.

  1. He speaks audibly to your ear, and you hear it just like when someone is speaking to you. This is rare. Most of us will live and die and never hear the audible voice of God or have the impact of the audible voice of God speaking on your ear.

  2. We hear the inward voice of God. We hear God speak on the inside of us. It may be nothing that we are saying and nothing that we are thinking – it doesn’t come in our thoughts. It just comes in the volume of the voice inside of  us. We look around because it felt like it was audible, but we know it was an inside voice of God because our mind wasn’t thinking anything like that at the time, and it registers in here (Pastor Don pointed to his heart area).

  3. Most important, we have the ability to hear the Word of God through the Word of God (the Bible). The prophetic voice of the Lord. Some of us are hearing the voice of the Lord as Pastor Don is speaking, through words that impress our mind. It is not Pastor Don, but the Lord speaking through Pastor Don that is touching you. Or we hear a prophetic word when a prophet like Leon Forte’ (who is coming to our church in December) speak a word of “Thus says the Lord…” and you go with what he says in prophesy because you know that it is a Word of God for you. Other times in your morning devotion a Word of God flies off the page of the Bible as you are reading it, and you know that that is what God is saying to you. And you know that that was the Lord speaking to you.

  4. The next way we hear God is the closest to you and the most available. God wants you to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues so that you can develop an inside witness. God is an inside witness. He speaks to your heart. You know in your inner witness that God is speaking. How do you know it? You don’t know it because you heard it in your ear, or you heard a voice inside you. You just know that you know that you know. This is just some stuff that you are aware if in your relationship with your Daddy (God), you just know. You don’t have to ask Him should I help the Poor. You know that is His desire. You don’t have to ask him if you should buy a lottery ticket to get rich? You should know that His answer is, “No.” You know this answer because you are in RELATIONSHIP with Him. You should know when your children are doing evil. You should know where they are. His voice inside of you will register in here (Heart), and it will pop in your mind as an idea or a sentence, and you will then know that you have to go looking for your child. How do you know you should go and look for him? The voice of the Lord. He didn’t speak to you audibly. It’s a witness. Pastor Don then said, when your husband walks in the door, you can know through your inner witness that he’s had a bad day, and now is not the time to show him your new dress. This is called an INNER WITNESS, and it is the way that the Lord speaks to us the majority of the time. That’s why the Holy Ghost has been given to believers, as a guarantee inside of our hearts. It may register as a thought. You get down on your knees and ask God if I should take that job at the airlines. You pray that you believe that He is going to show you the answer, and you wait on God. You see yourself working there in your mind’s eye and hear, “Yes.” You get up, not realizing you really heard from God, and you say to yourself, “I wish I could hear from the Lord.” And you take a different job that pays more money, but you end up not as happy. Sometimes we get an answer from the Lord and choose not to hear it because we wanted a different answer.

  We can all hear from the Lord, it just that we are so bound. We are not OK with ourselves.

  Pastor Don then asked us to get by ourselves in the sanctuary. If we came with someone to go to a place away from that person and ask God, “Lord is there anything in me that I am not OK with? And Lord is there anything that you want me or need me to get OK with? And if so, Lord, are you OK with me?”  We were to listen and wait on the Lord, and the Lord will tell us what baggage we need to give to Him. And He will also let us know that we are OK with Him in spite of our baggage. Everyone did this, and some did hear from the Lord. Pastor Don asked people to testify. There were many wonderful testimonies of God’s responses.  Some did not hear then, but Pastor Don is sure that God will speak with them later.

  I wanted to share a bit of what I heard, knowing that it will bless some of you. Many of you know my past, if not, you are welcome to read my testimony. Lately God had been showing me some of the roots of the past that still needed to be tended – God has been doing a major pruning in my life, and it is good, but painful. One of the things that God recently showed me through a Beth Moore Bible study, Believing God, was that I had at the core of my being the idea that I was Damaged Goods. This belief has touched a lot of areas – shame where I did sinful things in reaction to my past, shame because my father took away my virginity, and shame because of how long I rejected God. I still sometimes wonder if God really wants to use me or if I am so damaged in my life that I am not really good for God’s Kingdom. I know these are lies from the pit of Hell, but they do at times still color my thinking. God, during this time of prayer at church said to me, “What I have called clean, do not call unclean.”  This comes from Acts 10 when Peter is shown the kosher and nonkosher foods, and that vision lead to him be able to minister to both Jews and Gentiles. But for me that message sunk deep in my Spirit, because God has called me clean – clean through the death of His son Jesus Christ, and I am a new creation IN HIM. And I am not to view myself through the eyes of my past as unclean, damaged goods. I am still processing this, but it was impacting for me.

  I urge you to spend some time with God and ask Him about things you are not OK with, and ask Him what you need to get OK with. I urge you to be honest with your Father who loves you so. I know that He too has a word for you.

  Have a blessed day, and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

  Heather

  • 10:10 am
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