RECAP OF PASTOR PRINCE’S FIRST SERMON OF 2020

I was just reviewing the sermon preached by Pastor on Vision Sunday, 5 Jan. There was this part that he said which was prophetic. I see it coming to pass now. 

These themes are for God’s people, not for the people of the world. The world will get darker and darker but the glory of the Lord will rise upon you (the church) and will be seen on you. The darker it is, the more visible even a small glimmer of light is.

This year, even in the midst of the storms of life, God will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will take refuge (see Ps. 91:4). 

Peace is not the absence of adverse circumstances, challenges, or battles. Peace is assurance and safety even in the midst of these things. We might go through challenges this year, but we won’t go through them alone. The Lord will be with us. 

Be greatly encouraged knowing that even though we may not know everything that is going to happen in the coming year, we are not doing this alone. We are facing this year with our good Shepherd! 

I don’t know if God already showed Pastor about this coronavirus spread but it certainly seemed like Pastor already had the foreknowledge of this event happening. I also remembered Pastor talking about the spiral staircase. That it will cause us to ascend the greatest height in the smallest possible space and in the shortest amount of time.

The secret of the winding staircase is this: it brings you to a higher place one step at a time. Because it’s winding, you can’t see the final step. You can only see the next few steps. 

Pastor also mentioned in his subsequent sermons that at times the spiral staircase may seem to bring you back facing your promise, as if you are going further away from it. Yet the reality is you are not. Because in just a turnaround, you will be facing your promise again. So the key is really to trust the Lord and to take one step at a time.

Pastor also told us this: The first thing to take hold of this year is God’s Word. Don’t depend on natural light for knowledge and direction. The accumulation of the knowledge of good and evil can bring about confusion because there is so much contradicting information out there.

Isn’t this so true about information on the coronavirus in the social media? And the information doesn’t bring life. It brings fear. Hence, we should seek God’s Word. It is reliable, true, and unchanging.

Pastor also said to let this be our prayer this year: that we will not forsake the house of our God and the assembling of His people. Pastor Prince encouraged us to keep coming to church. Don’t just come for one service and expect to be fed for the entire year. That one word you hear will not sustain you for the rest of the year. Get fresh food every Sunday.

Isn’t this word prophetic in the sense that the enemy was coming so hard against the church assembling every Sunday? Since the Lord has given us this exhortation to Pastor, He will see to it that we will not forsake the assembling of His people. We just have to trust the Lord for supernatural protection in times like this.

This outbreak seemed to be taking away time for us all, slowing down the economy’s growth and many business operations. But like what Pastor said, God is in control of time. He will accelerate and restore the years the locusts had eaten. We shall see this acceleration in the days to come. 

WHAT DOES CO-LABOURING WITH GOD MEAN

Recently I had been thinking about this co-labouring with God notion. I was trying to distinguish between those blessings (like our salvation, deliverance and healing) that come to us freely because of the finished work in Christ and what blessings we need to co-labour with God. I believe God is making it more clear to me in the last few years. 

Now it occurred to me that there are things we have to co-labour with God. You may have heard this saying: without God we cannot, without us He will not. I believe one of the things we have to cooperate with Him is in the area of our divine destiny. This isn’t something that will just drop unto our laps by chance. Do you know why?

It is because the enemy will work overtime to stop you from walking in your calling. He will put up a fight. He will try relentlessly to take you out or make you ineffective. That is why some people lost faith in prophetic words. They think that once the word is given, things will just fall into place.

What they don’t know is that there is usually a season of contending for the prophecy. They have to war against the enemy’s opposition and stand their ground. Fight the good fight of faith. So the next question is why does God allow such a time of testing and contending? Why can’t He just deliver us from the enemy instead of letting us face the giants? Why can’t He just wipe out the giants at a snap of His finger?

Well, just like He told the Israelites that the land had already been given to them but they still had to physically take it. God didn’t remove all the giants at once. Instead He was teaching them to rely on Him every step of the way as He guided them in combat strategy to take the land. Unlike the deliverance from Egypt, where God knew the children of Israel would not have the power to stand up against their taskmasters.

Hence He performed mighty works to deliver them and destroyed the Egyptian armies in the Red Sea. Yet that wasn’t His best. He needed His people to grow strong. Even if He killed all the giants in the promised land, there would still be wild animals that the children of Israel had to contend with. He had to cause them to take the land little by little because the population of the Israelites wasn’t populous enough to occupy all the land.

You see, that is why the Lord had to build our faith little by little in order to grow us to the level of maturity to take our own promised land. Because if our character wasn’t strong enough, the success might only be temporary. We might take the land only to have it stolen by the enemy again. In the book of Joshua, it said that when the Israelites took the land but didn’t occupy it, very soon the giants came back to dwell on it.

I have learnt that though this earth belongs to God, the title deed was given to the enemy because of Adam’s high treason. Adam gave over the right of this earth to Satan. But thank God that Jesus took it back for us. Yet in the natural there are portions of this world that still belonged to Satan’s dominion so we have to cooperate with Christ to take it back. So even though we already have an inheritance in Christ, we still need to co-labour with God to take back that inheritance. There is still a part for us to do.

Well then some may ask: isn’t it all a finished work at the cross? Why then do we still have to play a part? Isn’t that works? Not that isn’t works. That is the part about working out our salvation in Christ. (Philippians 2:12) We are not working for our salvation but working it out. Just like all authority has been given to us by Jesus but how many of us are walking in that authority? How many of us are exercising that dominion?

The grace of God is not passive. It isn’t us sitting there doing nothing. It is us actively obeying and working hand in hand to establish His kingdom on earth. To see His will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Some people may say: I am not cut out to be a soldier. I cannot fight. I am not combat ready. I am a civilian. Well, let me tell you this. You will have to learn to fight whether you like it or not.

The enemy would not let you off even if you are not a soldier. He hates you because you are a child of God. As long as he can see the threat of your calling or destiny in Christ, he will take you out before you get to walk in that calling. And everyone of us has a calling, be it big or small. Everyone of us has a part to play in the body of Christ. So I exhort you to go and ask God to show you your role in the body of Christ.

So why it is so necessary for God to train you to a place of overcoming faith. Why is that so important? Once you obtain victory in this area where you had been constantly bullied, God will bring you on to greater exploits in His kingdom. You can then show others how to obtain victory in the area of their bondage. He is doing a hidden work of refining your faith which is far more precious than gold. 

Like how God has proven me time and again that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. All I had to do is to cooperate with His Spirit and success is guaranteed. God is patient with me...He can take as long as is required for this work to be completed in my life. This is more crucial than the manifestation of the promise because then I would be truly set free from the age old strongholds.

THE ILLUSION OF TIME

I read this devotional from ‘Journals of the heart’ in Aug 2011 and found this very profound and meaningful. I couldn’t really understand what the author was trying to say back then but now with hindsight I could relate to it. 

Beloved, don’t you know by now that I am not limited to time and space. I live outside of time. I am the Alpha and the Omega…the Beginning and the End. The past, present and future have all already happened as far as I am concerned. I have always been before the worlds began and I continue to be.

I exist outside the realms and confinements of time; yet, I dwell in your heart. How marvellous is that…to know the Timeless One lives in you imparting all the wisdom and revelation you will ever need. This changes everything in relation to time and its power over you.

Time does pass and those living do pass on: but, that is only the beginning regardless where you spend eternity. All things pass away. The rulers of this age shall pass away, but to where? Not the same place as you. In your case, time goes on, but moves from a limited, finite state to an eternal immeasurable state.

Therefore, I don’t want you to think about time in such a way that it remains confined to what you hold in your hand or what your own personal hour glass contains. I don’t want you to concentrate on what you have missed or what has sifted through your hands. When you do this, you miss what is left…the golden nuggets of truth which cannot be destroyed. When you do this, you miss the new thing…the new grains I am pouring in to your hands…into your life.

Beloved, do not spend time running here and there all the while trying to grab some other portion…some other hand full. Do not be discouraged by how time seems confined to the hour glass of your life. If you see your time and what you do within such a limited finite scope or in such a restricted fashion you will have a tendency to give up or be despondent.

What you do with and in the time given you is eternal and goes on forever. You could say the true nature of who you are and what you do is cloaked in the illusion of natural time. This illusion can tell you there will be no consequences for speaking words of death. This illusion can tell you there will be no long range eternal effects released when you speak as I tell you to in agreement with My Word. 

Whatever the enemy can tell you in relation to the value of your time and words in order to render you ineffective he will. This is why it is so important to understand that there is only one truth for any and every situation, the truth of My Word. Outside of My Word, all else is an illusion as well. There is revelation of the Word but all revelation must be true to the Word as well.

I affected time by listening to My father and doing only as I heard Him say or saw Him do. I took what He gave Me and released it into finite time. As a result, people were healed, delivered and set free from lives of bondage to sin and the devil. People were freed and they became eternal bearers of My light in a dark world.

What happened to them affected generations to come. In others words, what you do with what you hear from Me has the power to affect natural time and infuse it with eternal purpose which in turn continues to grow like a mustard seed until all the birds of the air have a place to rest.

What is time? Time is a period with limits when viewed outside of the supernatural. In the natural, it can be seen like sand sifting through one’s hands or an hour glass as it ebbs away.

What is time? It is to do something in the correct or same rhythm as someone else. It is doing something at a speed or pace which feels natural. The only natural I want you to feel in relation to doing things within the space of time is the supernatural. I want it to become natural to be supernatural.

In the true eternal perspective, time is a place where I deposit revelation and understanding of things once hidden but now revealed into the hearts of man…a place where time is changed from natural to supernatural. I redeem time. Today I am releasing to you some eternal perspectives and answers for your life that have already happened in My heart.

I give them to you. I pour them into your hands. I fill the hour glass of your life with things long hidden. I am opening up a portal of understanding and vision that you might continue to march in the rhythm of My heart for your life and the lives of those you love.

Beloved, all I need is for you to listen and agree. When you do this, the natural time you are experiencing will be saturated with eternal perspective having the power to transform and change. Are you ready to forsake the temporal and set your eyes on heavenly things to get the truth (2 Corinthians 4:18; Colossians 3:2-3). Open your hands wide…give Me all the limitations of your hour glass and see what I will do. Open up and be filled with eternal perspective.

So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men (human philosophy), but in the power of God.

Yet when we are among the full-grown (spiritually mature Christians who are ripe in understanding), we do impart a [higher] wisdom (the knowledge of the divine plan previously hidden); but it is indeed not a wisdom of this present age or of this world nor of the leaders and rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing and are doomed to pass away.

But rather what we are setting forth is a wisdom of God once hidden [from the human understanding] and now revealed to us by God–[that wisdom] which God devised and decreed before the ages for our glorification [to lift us into the glory of His presence] (1 Corinthians 2:5-7 Amplified)

Prayer

Lord, You are an infinite God without end or beginning. Not only are you aware of all I have ever been or experienced, you are aware of all there is to come. In fact, You have already been there and know me…know all I have experienced from moment to moment. You have experienced my life in an intimate way even to the numbering of the hairs on my head. Every detail of my life is important and valuable to You.

Though I am constrained in my thinking as it relates to time, You are not. The greatest hindrance to not living a life outside the constraints of time is to see it limited and unyielding…to see time as having no potential outside of the moment. To do so eliminates all consequences and blessings resulting out of time based actions on my part. Time is eternal and I must see it as such. What I do in time affects the times to come; therefore, it has eternal consequences both good and bad.

Teach me to see beyond the moment into a realm where there is no time so I can put more value on what I do at any given time. Teach me to see everything I do with eternal eyes. As I do this, what I participate in or don’t participate in will change in order to bring about the most effective change.

Lord, when it comes to You, time has no power to stop or hold back anything You desire to see and have done. When Joshua fought in battle, time stood still and the sun did not set until victory was accomplished. Therefore, I say the sands of time running through the hour glass of my life are all subject to You. I will not limit myself by what I see or by disobedience in any way. I will not run to and fro comparing myself or trying to accumulate the sand of another for my own purposes.

The hour glass of my life is not confined to time but is eternal, for when I leave this physical life I simply continue on in You. I step over the boundaries of time which cloak the true nature of who I am, an eternal son of the Most High God.

Instead of being one who is halted or holds back, I am one who hears the Father’s voice and acts accordingly even as Christ did when on the earth. As a result, I am free and others are free as well. In doing this, I have set my eyes beyond the natural to the supernatural where all things are possible…where nothing is limited by time. I am one who is saturated with eternal perspective and the power to be transformed.

I am one saturated with the power of God to bring about transformation. I am eternal and not temporal; therefore, I think in eternal ways when it comes to my everyday life and actions. I am not cloaked in time. I am cloaked in supernatural, eternal glory as a living, manifest representation of Christ on the earth. Amen.