Tonight we have a great honor. I've known John Harper for a number of years, not real close, but Assembly God Minister, we would see each other at district functions and different things like that. His wife is down here, Cookie, and she's a great lady, a great prayer warrior, and John and I, in the month of March, are gonna be doing a series crashing the chatter box. It's kind of a continuation of what Pastor has been speaking on hearing the voice of God.
Gonna have John come tonight? Good evening. It's exciting to be here at Calvary Church tonight, or Praise God. It's great to be here with you tonight.
We honor Pastor Mark in First Lady Renee, and Pastor Paul, and we are part of the Calvary family now, I think. Are we in yet? We were close. We went to the interview, we went to the classes, all that good stuff, right?
We said, the induction, all right. We're in for the induction, and then we'll see a lot of us around here having fun with you guys and fellowshiping with you. I'm excited about it. I really am about being a part of it.
Amen. Praise God. I just wanna show a little bit. We do have a ministry called Harper the National Ministries, and I think on the 13th of March, Sunday night.
I'll be doing some preaching and sharing that. Tonight I'm doing teaching, so I'm telling the preacher in me to stand down, okay? So it's hard to tell the preacher in me to stand down, and but you stand down. Don't you come up to me.
Amen. Praise God. It's great to be here with you. I'm excited about the House, aren't you?
The church, and what's going on, are you sickle? Amen, I'm excited. Listen, I wanted to share with you here if you could. I don't know if it's too late to get this, but this is the book, Crash and Chatterbox.
It's one of the finest books I think I've read in a long time. I read it some time ago and I've read it over and over again. I was the state director for a teen challenge, Illinois. And of course, we shared this.
We taught this in there, and the advice was changed and radically rearranged it. So you need to probably get that, get this book, or maybe we can order some, I don't know how that works, but it'd be great to read along with us in the book. I'm gonna tell you, next week, some exciting videos. That was just a little introduction.
But each week we start these series with a little video, vignette, you don't want to miss it. I'm telling you, you just don't want to miss it. It's really exciting. And I think next week, Pastor Paul is gonna be teaching, and I teach the next week, and we're gonna keep it going.
And if you like it, if you like it, I think we're gonna keep going, maybe in another room. Is that correct? Okay, if you like it, so you might say, I don't like it, I don't like that guy, I don't like Paul either, so anyway. But we want to continue to do it, because I think what we're trying to do is just continue what Pastor Mark had already started teaching about hearing the voice of God.
And I think we cannot get enough teaching about hearing the voice of God. It's crucial to hear the voice of God. Now I was debating, because hearing the voice of God above all others, and then on your notes tonight, talk about chatterboxing. I'm not down where to fill in the blankets, or just hold on, about chatterboxing.
And we all have a chatterbox that continues to talk to us, and it continues to talk to us in such a way where we're like, oh my word, will you ever shut up? You ever get into a realm of thinking that you just can't seem to get yourself out of, you know? What this teaching is going to do for you. It's gonna help you to be able to break that cycle, break out of that kind of thinking, and get into something rich.
It will also cause you ability to, what I call subverting the sabotage. Subverting the sabotage, okay? And I want to tell you a neat little story about that. It means that I give you one of my life quotes.
This is one of my life quotes. It says, you'll always move in the direction of your most dominant thought. Sit it with me. I will always move in the direction of my most dominant thought.
So whatever is dominating your thinking, that is going to be the trajectory of your life. That is where your life is going to follow in your dominant thinking. So if your spirit is dominating your thinking, that's where you're gonna go. If your flesh is dominating your thinking, that's the direction you will go in.
You will always move in the direction of your most dominant thought. I want you to seal that in over these next weeks of teaching and sharing. But I want you to also keep that note that you have tonight because I want you to meditate on that, marinating that a little bit because it's gonna really help you in days to come. Well, I was debating about telling this story tonight, but I think I'm gonna tell it.
I run back and forth in Chicago every week. And last night I was coming home and just had a business that I'm in, had finished two sweet deals, just kind of post two sweet deals. And so I'm driving back on I-55 and I'm in the right hand lane and I'm going 60 miles per hour, okay? And I'm just sitting there.
I don't love to tell you that I was listening to Carrie Job or somebody like that. No, I was listening to John Coltrate. That's a jazz guy. And I'm sitting there just kind of cruising, cruising.
And I hit my exit 160 because I'm always really cognizant of my driving now. I'm 62 years old. So I can drive 60 miles an hour in the right hand lane. So I'm driving and I'm driving a couple of years.
You lights me up. Do it, do it, do it, do it. And so I pull over to the shoulder and I'm real smart because let me tell you something, help me get out of the ticket, okay? So I said what you do is you, when they pull you over, you turn the car off.
This is arms to policeman or the officer. He doesn't feel like you're going to drive away and speed off and do something crazy. And so I pull car over and I shut the, and then he says they come to the side. You take your key out of the nation and you put him in the dashboard, okay?
So this really is disarming him, okay? He comes to the side to my right side. I rolled the window down. He says, do you know how fast you were going?
I said, no, apparently you do. He goes, well, what is the speed limit? I said, do you know the answer? I said, I'm fooling with him, you know?
And he says, when I actually do the question, do you know what I said? I said, yes, it's 70 miles per hour. He says, well, why are we going 60? I said, well, would you pull me over if I was doing 80?
I'm not saying that I'm thinking it. So I got my hands on the wheel, 10 o'clock and two o'clock, okay? And so he says, license, do you have a license? Yeah, don't everybody do?
Who drives? And so I didn't say that. I'm thinking it. And so I pull the license out.
I didn't say it, I'm just thinking it. And so I pull the license out. I give it to me, she says, do you have insurance? I'm thinking it, don't everybody do?
I'm going, yes, sir, I have insurance. You know, I'm reaching now into the glove, I did say this. I'm reaching now into the glove compartment, sir. And I'm going to give you the documents in which you are asking for.
He looks at me and goes, okay. So I pulled out the insurance card. He says, you don't need to give me your registration card, Mr. Harper.
I said, oh, you know my name? He goes, yeah, he said, Randy, I'm ready. I said, okay, so I give him insurance card. And he says, he goes wrong insurance card, I said, wait a minute, wait a minute.
I'm going to reach back in here one more time, sir. And I'm going to find the right insurance card because I know my wife always gives me the right insurance card. I said, I pulled over, I reached over, I got the insurance card and I gave it to him. He says, okay, Mr.
Harper, you're going to Springfield, right? I don't, he says, you're coming from Chicago. I go, wow, not only did you pull me over, but you got ESP2, how did you do that? Some kind of psychic ability or some gift to the spirit?
I don't know, how did you come from Chicago? He says, I don't know, I just said Chicago. I said, but you got it right, I am going to Springfield. He says, yeah, I know, that's where you live.
He says, you know what, Mr. Harper, driving 60 miles per hour is going to take you a long time to get to Springfield. A dog? You just interrupted a nice jazz session with John Coltrane.
And I said, isn't it cold out there? Is this the only thing that you got to do tonight? Is it pulling old man off? You know, and I said, I'm not, I'm thinking that.
And I'm going, I'm thinking some other things in my mind too, but I can't say it. So the chatterbox starts going, but it didn't go like it. It would have gone 20 years ago. Can I say that?
20 years ago, that would have been a whole different scenario. And I probably would have been on the outside of the car with my hands up like this. And they were putting me in jail. You know, so I'm like, OK, so I pull off, I'm thinking, I start laughing.
I mean, I just start laughing. I just so thank you for the ability to control what used to be uncontrollable. I thank you for the ability to be able to laugh in the face of it versus it. Then he says, now, don't you tell anybody this what I'm getting ready to do?
He says, this is just between you and me. I said, I know we're going to have a relationship after this. Oh, you coming to my house with dinner? He says, I'm not going to give you a ticket.
I'm going to give you a warning. I said, OK, you pull me over for going 60 miles an hour in the right-hand lane, and you're not going to give me a ticket. I just want to be thankful for this. I said, OK, I thank you for the warning.
I'll drive 65. Where am I going with that story? I'm going this place with it because most of us, we can handle some things and some things become so out of control that we just cannot handle it. Have you ever gotten a dominant thought and you're thinking that you just could not shake?
I'm talking about it controlled your every move, family member situation, circumstances, different things that you're going through in life. And so that's what this book is all about. Now as I kind of go through the teaching tonight very quickly and share with you a few things, I want you to think about your own chatterbox. I want you to think about how yours operate, how there's some things that you just cannot shake.
I am a stage four cancer survivor. OK? And come on, come on, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so it was just last week, I believe it was, two weeks ago, I went to a doctorate at his little Filipino doctorate about this. I just mess with him all the time. I come in and lay hands on him, pray for him, do all of it. I pray for everybody in the office.
He's just like, who are you? And he's like, can you just come back every day and just sit here, you know? And so stage four, so he said, I'm going to give you a pet scan. Pet scan, when they shoot, this nuclear stuff all through your body.
OK? He said, we want to light you up like a Christmas tree. From your head to your toe. You're the black man going in the dark.
All right, so that's never happened before. So let's go for it. This is on a choose day. And then he says, now stage four cancer.
He says, the next Thursday, I go back. He goes, no, it's a strange thing. There's a happy here. He says, we shot you up with this nuclear stuff.
He says, this is your head. He's showing me on the computer. All this stuff. He says, this is your pancreas.
This is your liver. This is your brain. I'm glad it wasn't my brain on drugs like the old days. He said, this is your brain.
He showed me parts of me I've never seen before. And I really appreciate it. I still got it. Because they take quite a few things out of me over the years.
You can live without a lot of parts. You know that? Anyway, so he texted me. He says, no, he goes through all these things.
You know what I don't see? I said, why? He says, we don't see. This is your bone, your skeletal system, everything.
He says, we don't see any cancer in your body. Now if there's anyone in this room that's ever had cancer, I'll get into the lesson right now. But it's a big seed. They call it many times.
It could be a dominant font in a person's thinking in such a way that that's all they think about. Well, they told me that I had it. I went, OK, that was 10 years ago. Didn't start to come back.
And then I said, you know what? I'm going to live my life. I'm not going to be wrapped around my mind around cancer. And after my life, even this last time, they said, hey, you got stage four.
I go, yeah, OK, what about me? I can't go to the Bahamas. And so I went, I want to live my life. And so he says, go live your life.
But here's the secret, folks. I've never wrapped my mind around the diagnosis. I've always wrapped my mind around the answer. And Jesus is that answer.
Do I go to the doctor? Yes. Do I appreciate doctors? Yes.
But the diagnosis was not the diagnosis that I wanted to hear. Who's report? Will you believe? Come on.
I will believe the report of the Lord. Amen? So I asked what a K-Liver 90? 85.
It'll be a good time to go see Jesus. And not even then. He says, I'm her ATM machine. So he said, I can't die.
All right, let's get into our lesson tonight. Here's some questions we need to ponder tonight. Can God's voice coexist with, oh, wow. Are we there?
OK, good. Can God's voice coexist, I'm sorry, with a radical chatter within the same person? OK. And it's like, it gets crazy many times when we're trying to hear the voice of God.
And then rational lies jump in. Same with me, rational lies. One more time, say now rational lies. Now let's just say it's look.
Rational lies. You get it? See, inside the word itself is an answer. Because we continue to rationalize when our thinking has gone crazy, and we have to put it all back together again.
God says, I'm going to give you an answer as a Christian, as a child of God, to hold it together when look like you're living next door to insanity. You ever lived there? All right. And so here's another question.
How can I silence the voice of the enemy when the enemy? Is it me? Now I'm not talking about demon possession or oppression, those kind of things. But those voices that we hear.
I was walking through the mall. You'll see me walking through the mall in white oaks. I got my big earphones on. I don't wear the little ones because I like the big ones.
And so you'll see me walking through the mall. And so I was walking through the mall. And I like reading t-shirts. And you'll see girls will have a t-shirt on a date.
She says, I only listen to the voices that are in my hand. I went, ooh, baby. I won't describe her, but she had green hair going up here. She had her ring nose going through here.
She had these big earrings and ear. And she looked scary to be. But she's a soul that we go after, won't we? Come on, she's a soul and we go after it.
But I said, wow, I only answer to the voices that are in my head. OK, now here's an answer. Everything will change when we begin to realize God has given me the ability to choose the dialogue that I believe against the dialogue I respond to. Can I say that one more time?
Everything will change. OK, down preacher. Everything will change. When I began to realize God has given me the ability to choose the dialogue, to choose the dialogue that I believe against the dialogue I respond to.
Listen to what Paul says over in Romans 7, verse 22. And I'm reading it out of the amplified version. If that's OK. It says this.
It says, why endorse and delight in the law of God in my innermost self with my new nature? He says, but I discern in my bodily members in the sensitive appetites and wheels of the flesh a different law, rule of action at war against the law of my mind and my reason and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs in the sensitive appetites and the wheels of the flesh. Wow. So when I looked at that passage of scripture and in conjunction with that, 2 Corinthians 10 and 5.
But we'll get there in just a moment. I thought of this same question again here that all this answer about this dialogue that goes on in our lives. In a dialogue of what we respond to. Now, like the word rational lies, also you need to hear tonight the word response ability.
Now I say that real slow. But say it with me, responsibility. Now in your mind right now, you've already thought about responsibility. I must be a responsible person.
I must go to work in the morning. I must pay my bills. You must do all those things. But inside that word is also another answer.
Response ability, excuse me. Response ability. What is responsibility? It is my ability to choose how I respond.
Come up here just for a moment, Pastor May's. Stand right here just for a moment. Where's my buddy? So he'll understand this.
Come here, come here, come here. No, no, no. Really, I know Pastor May's it. Just come here.
Now he's not going to take that very long. In fact, he could really come up here and knock me out. But he's choosing not to respond to me. Are you still here?
And how many people you may be seeing? Thank you, friend. How many people push your buttons every day? How many people push your buttons every day?
But now you need to have it sealed in your mind that you're not going to allow them to push your buttons. And you're going to choose how you respond. I've been married to cook you for 40 years. I know her.
Boy, do I ever know her. And she knows me better. I know what button to push, but not the push. Every man said amen.
It's very important. And hearing the voice of God and hearing her voice, the other day we were at a conference. And I didn't see her. But it was, I mean, 100 people inside the vestibule area.
And I could hear her voice over 100 people in her laugh, the donation of her voice. I could detect that it was my wife. Why? Because I spent some time with her.
I spent some time. And when you spend some time with God, he will help you to choose the right response to the outward stimuli of life. And when people start to push your button, husband, wife, family members, all that stuff, you'll know how to handle it. That's what crashing the chatterbox is going to do for you.
So I wouldn't miss Wednesday nights. I'll just say it right now. I wouldn't miss Wednesday nights if I were you. Because it's going to give you some strength and some responsibility to choose your own response instead of allowing outward stimuli make its choices for you.
Now, listen to this, this is for a moment. It's very important. God's voice speaks with precision and power. That's what you do right in your blight.
Sorry we didn't provide answers there for you. But God's voice speaks with precision and power and it invites us into a way of life. Say life with me. Life.
It says that is truly life. This is what I observed when I was in the membership class. And Pastor Don was teaching the membership class. And then I think Calvary's verse is John 10.
So that's why I quit that there. Because it says the thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to what? Destroy. He said, but I'll come that you might have what?
Life? And if you might have it what? More abundantly. Now, when you read the word life, you see the word life in the scriptures, all you're seeing is the word life.
But the word life in many places have different meanings in the scripture. It's because it says life. It doesn't mean just life and it's the same throughout the word of God. So when you look at life in that particular scripture, it is the zoe of God.
It means the God kind of life. It is the refreshing life. It is the abundant life. It's the kind of life that God wants you to live and the God wants you to have.
A life of freedom, a life of power, a life of authority. It is full of the God kind of life. You like that? Then there is bios.
It's also means life in the Greek. That's the stuff here. It gets sick. It gets cold.
It goes to the doctor. It has to have blue cross and blue shielding. Major medical and all that stuff. The physical life.
Well, we see physical life. But there's another word for life in the Greek. It is called anestrophic. And it's not like the other two.
Anestrophic is confused behavior. It is so confused that it's like the man in Mark chapter 5. He is called a legion. And he's lost his identity.
He's cut himself with stones. No man can tame him. Not even with chains the Bible says. But when he met Jesus, something supernatural.
He took place. The Bible says there are three particles there. He says he was sitting. He had never done that before.
He was clothed. He had never done that before. And he was in his right mind. That had never happened before.
Are you with me? So when I started looking at this and unpacking this for myself, because living the way I did before becoming a Christian was wild and crazy. I mean, if you ever see the picture of Jimmy Hendricksch, you also see a picture of me. I have hair.
I have hair. What's wrong with my hair? I mean, it was big. I had the chains on.
I went to all. I was a hippie. I was a black hippie. I missed woodstock by a day, man.
Only because the New York State threw away was closed. OK? So I had this anastrophic going on in my life. It was confused behavior.
Confused behavior. I was in Newtown, Connecticut, in New Town, DeFerefield County, Mental Hospital. I remember sitting in there as a kid, 17, 18 years old, in a straight jacket, in a corner, combing my mind, just trying to remember my name, sitting in my waist, just trying to say my name over and over and over again. That's anastrophic.
OK? Well, I was up to my fifth, 1972. And it popped. Who down, who down, preacher?
Who down, supposed to be teaching? I got a revivalist of me that had to keep him down, stand down, stand down boy. What happened was, I was in church service in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in Teen Challenge, where we went to the church on Wednesday nights. And all of a sudden, my legs started to move when the preacher was preaching.
And I started to get up and go to the auditor. And I cried my way to salvation. Came back to our center, our house that night. And at 10 p.m., nobody in the room with me.
I had never heard anyone speak in other tongues in my life. Good Baptist boy, went to church on Christmas Mother Day in Easter. We would see him and he Christians. I had either church suit or a court suit.
Anyway, but that night at 10 p.m., God filled me with the power of the Holy Spirit. No one was around. Gossolely and kicked in, speaking in other tongues, not five easy steps to speaking tongues. That kind of, I mean, just kicked in.
I ran upstairs and said, what is this? They said, you've been filled with the Holy Spirit. I just got saved. I didn't know what the Holy Spirit was.
I just got saved. He said, you've been filled with the Holy Spirit. I said, is there anything else? He said, well, no, I'm talking to the students.
They didn't know. He said, no, you got it all. But at that moment in time, there was some order that came into a confused person's life. I mean, a supernatural order came in, but I had to continue to work at it because of suicidal tendencies wanted to come back.
I was in the hospital because, and a strophe again, I was in the hospital because on this wrist, you'll see three marks. At the vein, the right one. I was in the hospital that night because I took about a two and a half and a second of all, and carbonic cleaning fluid inside of a pulpit can and drinking all down. I was in the middle hospital because the rest of the normal hospital, and I flatlined on the table in the emergency room.
I was dead. I was dead. I was in the hospital because a doctor came in and says, let's try one more thing. Try one more thing, and he got a pulse.
And I'm standing here tonight because God is merciful and gracious. Now, now, I showed you three kinds of bios, an astrophy. And the God kind of life. Well, I've been living the zoe, the God kind of life, the last 43 years.
And it's good. Oh, come on, guys. I'm talking about the abundant life. It is so good.
You know? And I love Jesus. He said, OK, that's good. I'm glad you asked.
OK, we got a few more minutes. Opposing voices seeks to draw us out of his presence through seduction and deception. There's your voice, all right? Through seduction and deception.
I don't know about you, but there's seducing spirits that exist in the world today. And I want to say also in the church today, if you don't guard your heart, guard your mind, guard up the loins of your mind as the Word of God tells us, you can be seduced out of the house of God, and go back into the world. But I'm glad for the church like God. We church where great teaching goes on.
Great helps of ministry is here for you. Ministries like we're talking about in this study on crashing the chatter box so you can stay in the kingdom of God and in the presence of God. And not be deceived. Don't be deceived because there's a spirit of deception in the world today.
How many know that there's a great spirit of deception in the world today, all right? And it's out to deceive us. Let's move on. Now here, I want to read this because it's so very important.
We can crash the chatter box by launching a counter attack through the leverage and the advantage that we have as God's children through a heavens perspective. There's your boy, heavens perspective, all right? Divine power. What I like about Second Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 4, hey, and he says now, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.
They're not flashlight. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imagination. The Greek word there is a Greek word, La Gizmoi, all right? It literally means vain thoughts.
Thoughts that war against your mind. She says we have not received this freshly weapons, weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they might be through God to the pulling down the stronghold. He says casting down imaginations, every high thing, every lofty thing that would exalt itself over the knowledge of God and bring it into captivity. But what I like about this particular verse says the divine power with divine power, we can demolish strongholds in verse 5.
Demolish strongholds. And so when the chatterbox starts to chatter at you, I mean, you can hook on that one dominant thought and it's not leading you to the place where you want to go in God. It's not leading you into the realm of the spirit, but it's leading you into the realm of the flesh. And what God has said to you says, I have given you divine power and it's up to you to make the choice to choose to use the divine power that I've given you or you go by the way of the flesh.
And we know what the ends thereof of that, whether you're a Christian or not. Are you still here? Listen to me just for a moment. From my heaven's perspective, wow.
From my heaven's perspective, God says, you know what? I've given you the ability to bind and to loose. To bind the powers that's coming against you. To loose the power of God against the thing.
I like what Pastor Mark says all the time. He keeps repeating himself, but I love. He says, you know what? No one can pray for you.
No one can read the Bible. You can read the Bible for you. I love coming to the winds and nights listening to him. I get a whole lot of asking, you know what?
That's right, I know that. Nobody can pray for you. I think I believe, not boasting. I think I'm a man of prayer.
I can use some more, yes. I can use some more. But I want to give my life as to be a man of prayer. From four o'clock in the morning to six a.m.
I'm in prayer. I'm seeking the face of God. I need your power. I need your power.
I even take breaks during the day and take an hour here. In the evening, we watch the will of fortune. Don't we miss cookie? Don't we miss cookie?
We watch the will of fortune. And then after that, I kind of disappear into the prayer room for a few hours. I think we should have four hours of prayer a day. Everybody here should learn how to pray four hours a day.
You say, is this guy coming in? I'm still trying to conquer that 15 minute thing. But wait, wait, wait, wait. Hear me and hear me well.
If you don't pray and seek the face of God, I'm telling you, your life is not going to be able to crash the chat about. All right? Let me finish this right quickly tonight. Because it's very important.
The word of the day is, logo real. Say what the word of the day is, logo real. You said what's that? We got about the book really because it's in the book.
It says, word of the day is logo real, which means pathologically incoherent. Repetitiveness. Lyrism is. They're just weary, weary, weary, weary, weary, weary.
Volubility. The chatterbox wants to inundate us with logo real. Words, dominant words. They keep us on a track of thinking that's not like God.
How do you break that cycle? How do you break the manufacturing of words that continually come into your life? You know what? I heard a lady say this to her daughter one time.
She said this. She says, I wish that you were never born. I wish that you were never born. I said, wow, I'm glad she didn't say that to me.
That was my mom. She said that to my sister. I wish that you were never born. And those words lodged down deep inside my sister.
I think it had an adverse effect on her life. I really do to this day. And I heard them, but they didn't come and penetrate me. Yes, I had a lifestyle that was crazy.
But in 1972, God got a hold of my life. And turned it around. And I was not going to repeat those kind of words to my children. Come on.
I was going to build them up, speak good things in their life, even when they did some wrong things that I didn't understand. Are you still here? All right. Now listen to me, and we're about that.
The mama says amen that loud. That means that I got to wrap it up. How do you quiet the riot? We didn't watch a lot of stuff on television about riots and a strofe, confused behavior.
A lot of stuff is happening in our world today. The shooting, the adjusting of the day at a high school. You know, we know all that stuff. Don't want to bring all that in here.
You watch to do's. That's an astrophy, confused behavior. How do we counteract that stuff with legislation from the government? I don't think so.
But what I do here is the term confession. Says me, confession. Come on, confession. Confession means to say with God.
To say with God. Excuse me. To say with God. What time am I supposed to be?
I don't make sure I get down. A50. To say with God. Let me end this right now.
To say with God. But God says you should learn how to say his word. I close it with this tonight because I want to be obedient. All the things that we're seeing in our world in your life today can be summed up with this course.
So that's why it's very important that you make it to Wednesday nights, OK? To say with God and Steve Frick has already shared this. But God says I am. God says I am.
And this is what God says. I am overpowering the lives of the enemy in my insecurities. God says he will overpower the lives of the enemy in my fears. Don says he has overpowered the lives of the enemy in my condemnation of my own self.
Don says that I can overpower the lives of the enemy in my discouragement. And before we close it out tonight, let me just share this. The definition of righteousness is the ability to stand in the presence of God without a sense of sin, without a sense of insecurity, without a sense of guilt, without a sense of condemnation. But it's also the ability to stand in the presence of Satan, without a sense of guilt, without a sense of insecurity, without a sense of condemnation.
So when your enemy starts talking, you say, you know what? I'm saying what God says about me. What about fear? He says, I'm not giving you a spirit of fear, but what love, power, and what a sound mind.
What about condemnation? Romans 8, verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, for the spirit of the law of life, in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. And what the law could not do in it, it was speak to the flesh, God sent his own son in the likeness of sin for flesh, and he condemned sin in the flesh, and I can do the whole chapter.
Why? Because the word prayer and the power of God reframes your thinking. And the reason why we need to understand why it's important to be your own ways and eyes is to hear this teaching and to overpower the lives of discouragement. One of my favorite passages of scripture is over in 1 Samuel, chapter 30 and verses.
And the Bible says, and David was greatly distressed because the people were speaking of stoning him. Because I can't go through the whole story. They're going to stonom because the amakites came in and burned the glad with fire, took their kids, and took their wives. David got in the face of God and the presence of God and says, what should I do?
What should I do? Should I pursue up with this truth? Will I recover all? But it says this, but David, say with me, but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
Amen? Stand with me. Sorry for four minutes. But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
You're going to have to learn how to encourage yourself. We thank God for the church. We thank God that we're here. We thank for elders.
We thank for deacons and pastors and all that good stuff. But now it's time for you and I to learn how to encourage ourselves and crash the chatterbox. Amen? This is going to be on the pray.
I'm going to release you. The evangelist and revivalist in me just can't resist certain things. So you're going to be free to go after I've said a short prayer. But if you want to come around this altar and have some prayer with me, it won't mean to pray for you and some of the pastors in this house to pray for you for release of the vice grip that's on your mind and a strong hold that needs to be broken.
I'm sure you can stay just for a few moments and do that. Now Father, we thank you right now for the people of God. We thank you Lord that you want us free. You want us powerful.
You want us anointed God. And I pray for this house and Pastor Mark. And I pray for him every morning. God and First Lady Renee and this family, the Calvary family.
I pray for you bless us as we go. Keep us safe. Now be what bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May the Lord lift up his contents upon you and give you his shalom. The Spirit of God that destroys chaos in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you.
Have a good night.