Open your Bible to Matthew chapter number six, and I'll just give you your heads up. I'm not telling you this is about to happen because we try to really be sensitive to the things of God. This is as far as we got in the first service. This is as far as we got.
Next thing you know, people were, it was just, it was just beautiful. I'm going to tell you what we don't need is the last Pentecost. Ha ha ha. We need more Pentecost.
We need more Pentecostal power. You got religious people feeling obligated to explain stuff that you're just supposed to experience. You ever seen a sunset? You're going to take a picture of it, and the only way you could even get close to reenacting that thing is to change the picture.
Well you know, I got to add some color to it because it didn't look like that in person. I got to bring this color down. I got to brighten this area because it didn't look like it. That's what happens when you're constantly trying to explain something that you actually experienced.
You start adding to it, you start taking stuff away. Before you know it, somebody is trying to live off of your experience that is not explained well. Instead of just going outside and looking at the sunset, you and me, we need more Pentecostal power in our life. We need the Holy Ghost more today than we've ever needed him.
We need the Holy Spirit to come and invade this place, to invade our homes. We need the Holy Spirit to wake us up in the middle of the night and tell us a secret. I don't know about you, but you might not believe in that. You have that right.
Praise the Lord. And your life, success or failure will be up to you. But for most of us connected here at tonight's church, I don't want all the responsibility. I want to say, I could have done that.
God did it. If it's all on you, it's all on you. It's all on him. It's all on him.
So there's one other thing that we'll get to our offering message. Don't sleep on the offering message around here. Change your whole family. Change your whole life.
Change your financial situation. You cannot be filled with the Holy Ghost and filled with yourself. You can't be full of God and full of you. It's an either-or.
So you've got to decide what you're going to be. Now the challenge to that, to most people is when you decide to lay your life down like that fully, the enemy will come and test your metal and you'll think testing of metal will mean a giant will come out and you get to throw rocks at him. That can happen. Most of the time he will send somebody to offend you.
Most of the time he'll send somebody to say something that you feel like you are somehow persecuted or invalidated by what they did or said to you and the determination on whether or not your flesh is running the show or the spirit of God is running the show is based on whether or not you feel like you have to validate yourself or if you let God be your vindicator. Because if you let God be your vindicator, you can live in peace. But if you have to constantly defend yourself, well, I would have never said that. Well, are you the measuring stick?
The question is, what would Jesus have said? Well, they should have never said that about me, true, but you should have never said what you said about me. That wasn't me. That was a long time ago.
Okay. Well, just because theirs happened today, you want to hold it against them. What if God said, well, I'm going to hold everything you do against you on your worst day? See, you see how this guy is?
You can't have freedom and bondage. They don't coexist. So you've got to be free. And if not, you take on a facade and a facade is not real.
A facade is what somebody wants you to think when looking at you, when you're looking at them. A facade is not the structure. A facade is what you put on the outside of the structure that hides the fact that it's not real. That's what religion does.
So religion constantly talks you into not being free by taking on a Pharocidical mentality. Pharocidical, I'm taking that from the word Pharisee, Pharisee in the Bible, Pharisees and scribes. Pretty much the only people that Jesus yelled at. Pretty much that and people who talked about giving, not talked about giving as in giving, talked about people who ridiculed giving.
Those are the people that he immediately condemned, immediately spoke against. So why is it in 2022 that we don't see through that lens as clearly as we can see through the Scripture when it comes to people that are contrary to what we already know, not you and me. I'm just talking out loud, but they're contrary to what we already know. And now all of a sudden they want you to spend the rest of your life weighing little insignificant things in the Scripture instead of using the Scripture you do know to set somebody free.
Can I tell you something? The enemy, he almost celebrates your quiet time with God. Because when you're in your prayer clause that you're not witnessing to anybody outside of it. I'm not saying don't pray.
I'm saying don't have a prayer clause. We've got to go get strengthened. But if you think it's all about just you finding this state of Zen with God, then you don't understand kingdom. And he died to reestablish and rose from the dead to reestablish our authority here as kingdom citizens representing the kingdom of God here.
Like it is there. Does this make sense? So so you got to understand the Bible says he inhabits the praises of his people. Doesn't say he doesn't hear us when we pray, certainly he does, but he said he inhabits the praises of his people.
Prayer is easy. Praise is a challenge. Prayer can be this, but praise puts you on the spot and your flesh starts going and you don't need to do all that. Well, what other kings set you free?
You don't need to do all that, but you go to a football game. Take your shirt off, even though you should have kept it all. Take a gallon and a half of your favorite team's paint. Honey, can you can you write some letters on my chest?
Hopefully she doesn't say what chest. He's a grass with it. Whoo. Not you, but then you get to a church or you act like it's like it's a ride at six lags and you're white knuckling the row in front of you.
You know why the Bible doesn't want you to lift your hands? Because the book of lamentations says you lift your heart with your hands. Don't lift your hands. We're saying you got to fix this Lord.
We lift our hands. We're saying, oh, I surrender to you. It's an international sign. It's a render.
You don't even have to speak the language. If you're on the battlefield and you walk out with both hands up like this, the other side knows you want to surrender. So when we lift our hands, we're surrendering. We say, well, that's just your culture.
No, it's all in the Bible. It's biblical culture. It's actually anti-biblical to not magnify God. The Bible actually says, shouting to God with the voice of triumph.
If you go to a church and nobody shouts, I wouldn't go to that church. If you go to a church and nobody shouts and nobody shouts, I wouldn't go to that church. Like when did the ordinance of God become suggestions? You know, worship is only optional here.
If you got to heaven and decide not to worship, you'd be flung like lightning from the sky. So for those of us who've decided that our flesh is not as important as our king, our little insecurity is not as important as our king. We don't understand, I'm not from one of them kind of families. I'm not either.
I've raised methods. This is what church looked like where I grew up. That's what it looked like where I grew up. I'm not mad at it.
That's just the way it was. Got a lot of good information while I was in that thing. But then God touched me. So then what am I going to do?
I tried to go back. I was like, whoa. Y'all singing about him. Y'all singing to him.
Y'all talking about him. Y'all talking to him. Y'all talking to him. No, I felt bad enough before I came in here.
I don't need to feel worse. Can we get some man in a row to come out and make me feel terrible again? Is that possible? Just make me feel horrible.
Or better yet, make me feel safe when I'm lost as a goose in a snowstorm. We need God. We need the Holy Spirit. We need the power of the resurrection.
We need the manifestation of the power of God. We need some bad reports to get out of our life and to be replaced with some good reports. We need the blessing and favor of God to overtake us. We need our children to magnify God and not magnify the devil.
We need our children to turn up for God, not to turn up for the world. We need a church that literally believes that anything is possible at any moment, in time, period. Because if you don't believe anything is possible, you'd still be in Egypt. No, God can't do that.
No, He can't do it for you because of your unbelief. That's why He can't do it for you because He's not going to overtake what He gave you, which is your authority. He doesn't go and take that back. So you're sitting there, it's not you.
But you're stopping the hand of God with your unbelief. And so therefore you got to explain why it didn't work. No, it didn't work. You didn't work.
Your faith didn't work. Well, I didn't believe. Exactly. You stopped believing.
I believed for five years. Well, maybe it was going to take 40. Well, I don't know if I can hold on that long. We don't blame God because you went.
Well, for ten years. One with this year blood was twelve. Well, fifteen years I held on. The man in the gate called beautiful over forty years.
Well, you know what I'm saying? My kid, Jairus, the order was twelve. I'm telling you, you got to hold on. So I just say, hold on.
I feel like holding on and on and breaking out of this place. Somebody's just going to hold on. Somebody's talking the devil. Somebody's talking the devil out of their life right now that he knows it.
He used to say, I'm going to hold on. The devil's like, what? No, no, no, no. I thought you were just about to quit.
I was. But I changed my mind. Bishop, Bishop, T.D. Jakes, free some message a long time ago.
He said, tell the devil I changed my mind. Some of y'all made some promises about it. I'll never go to a church like that as long as I live. You need to tell the devil I changed my mind.
I need the supernatural power of God. I need a manifestation of the Holy Ghost. I need peace that surpasses all understanding. I need his anointing to destroy a yoke off of my life.
That's what I need. I need the power of God in my life. I need the power of God in my life. I need a report to change.
I need to go to the doctor and the doctors get confused. We're going to cut it out, but it's already out. Yeah. Yeah, Jesus did that.
Praise God. Thank you for doing the test though. Are you still going to charge me for it? Because if I say God bless doctors.
I love doctors. I love everybody in medicine. They work towards health. I'm very thankful for that.
But we have a great physician too, you know. He'll just change your whole situation. Some of you need a situation to change at the house. Kind of like the temperature in your home.
You need the Holy Ghost in your house. And we'll give you the recipe. How do you get the Holy Ghost in your house? First and foremost, you get anything that doesn't magnify God out of your house.
Those dream catchers and dream weaver things. They're real cute hanging on deals. Those aren't in the Bible. Any symbolism that is to another religion.
You got a little Buddha in your house. You get it out of your house. The Holy Ghost and Buddha are not buddies. Buddha's dead.
Jesus is alive. You got it. You got it. You got it.
You got it. You got a Koran in your house. Throw it away. Don't give it away.
Throw it away. Don't give it away. Throw it away. Don't let that come with your fingerprints on it.
Get in somebody else's hands. They read it and leave it. Their blood might be on your hands. Throw it away.
Get that stuff out of your life. Read your Bible. Listen to this. It's going to be shocking every day.
You and your wife are struggling. Here's the recipe. This will save you a bajillion dollars in marital counseling. Get on your knees.
Hold hands. And pray and ask God to heal every hurting place in their life. Out loud where they can hear it. How long do you do this?
Every single day until it breaks. Then you live your life in peace. And you never go back. You got problems with your kids.
Kids aren't serving God. Kids don't want to serve God. Well, if they're 18 or under or they live in your house. If they live in your house and suck up your air conditioning, church is not an option.
They come with you. Two church. We don't have any chairs in here. Live.
And they can stand by the wall. A lot of people stand by the wall right now. They come to the house of God. Now we're going to church.
I don't want to go to church. That's your problem. I'm getting the trouble. What?
Well, you know, they don't know anybody here. They don't know anybody here. Well, who did you come for? Jesus or somebody?
Well, you know, my kids, they're just a smart alien. Well, first off, you got to be real clear. Are you a smart alien? Did you plan it?
Now you don't like the harvest? This might take some time to work that out. If you plan it, the first thing you got to do is get it out of your own life. You know, nothing wrong with picking at a certain level and having fun.
But if everything is just sarcasm and smart alien, nobody can tell when you're being serious. And then when you finally say something that hurts somebody's feelings, you go, oh, I was just joking. No, you weren't just joking. You were rude.
Because you showed him a different way to talk. You just don't like it pointed at you. This is the scripture. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
That's what he meant. Don't talk to somebody how you don't want to be talked to. That's the same with your kids. Well, I want my kids to know how smart I am.
The dumbest thing you could have said. I don't want my kids to know how smart I am. I want my kids to know how smart they are. The whole world's going to try to convince them they're dumb.
The whole world's going to try to convince them they're crazy. I don't even know how smart I am. I know how smart I am. I'm going to let that sit for a minute because I didn't misquote that.
I'm aware of how smart I am. I'm aware of how smart I am. The same way that you can go and measure yourself on a wall. Go how tall you are.
If you keep talking yourself out of the things that God has given you to use, you won't use them. It'd be like an eight foot or not slam dunking. Well, I just want to shoot threes. Well, listen, Jack, you're not shooting threes, okay?
You need to get down low, rebound, and pull the rim off the backboard. That's what you were built for. So if you know that about you, you're not wrong. You don't need to enunciate to your kids how much smarter you are than them.
You're probably not, by the way. You probably have just lived long enough to have more data in you. So you never make your kids feel dumb for not knowing something. Because if they don't know, it's probably time-based.
My parents never made me feel dumb. What they didn't do is play trivial pursuit against us kids when we were like eight. It was like, the questions were like, who was president in 1962? And my parents were blurting out the answer, and we're like, sixty-one.
It wasn't that we weren't intelligent children. It's we didn't have the data. They lived longer to have the data. You'd have got to be real careful.
When you're telling go get the half-inch wrench and they bring you a nine sixteenths, that's not time for ridicule. When you say go get me the crescent wrench, you don't look at them go dummy, that's not a crescent wrench. How could they know unless you told them? How could they know when's last time you opened the toolbox?
Let's go over all the tools. This, this, this, this. How else would they know? You're just waiting on them to be wrong so you can tell them how right you are.
That's training by embarrassment. Let me tell you what that'll do. That'll get your kid in therapy. Too much.
That'll get your kid in counseling. So when they're thirty-five instead of setting the world on fire, they're trying to deal with all their problems that you instigated because you thought it was more important to make them feel like they were dumber than you than to raise them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord so when they get old they wouldn't depart from it. This is why America is so jacked up because parents are trying to survive, constantly trying to survive, parenthood and everybody thinks it's cute to put a little video on the internet to celebrate the fact that they're not disciplined. This is me.
The kids went to, this is me. The kids went to school so I'm going to have a big glass of wine. How else looks like a pigsty? This is what's wrong with America.
You got, you got dads that, you know, hide behind work as the excuse to not be a good dad. We decided a long time ago. I'll either have good rest or good memories. My kids, my kids might say they were around too much.
My kids might say they were too involved, but none of my children will ever say that Brian and Crystal, our parents didn't love us and didn't care. I promise you before God they won't say that. It cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. It doesn't have to.
You can do it for free. We like spending money on them. That's what's wrong with America right now. You got children raising parents.
They decided it was cute and somehow they missed out on their life by raising another life. No, that's foolishness. That's foolishness. That's satanic and it's origin.
I missed out on my life raising this life. The devil is a liar. There's not a greater calling than raising a life. And teaching them about children, teaching them about the Lord, having them in the presence of God, having them in the house of God, teaching them what they need to know to succeed.
Well, the school never taught them how to balance a checkbook. Why didn't you? Well, you know, they were at school and this happened and that happened and that happened. Take them out of school.
I don't have the money. Eat macaroni. I thought we were just praying to send them to school. We were.
But if your kid doesn't need to be in school, then you need to be home raising your kid. Well, how do you know when you know? Like, it's harder to stop hearing God than it is to hear God, honestly. Until you get to a place where you're a riverbank.
Nobody in here is that. This is what's wrong with society is we want to shell off all our responsibility. You know what I'd like to see more of? Instead of seeing your picture from six years ago on the internet when you're on a beach.
Or when you're in the mountains. I'd like to just see a bunch of pictures. So here's my family eating dinner again at home, at the table. Everybody's sitting here and we just got done praying.
I don't have time for that. Make time. Well, I don't get home until eight, eight, eight, thirty. Well, that's too late for a kid to eat.
Who said that? Who told you that? Why can't they have a snack and eat with you? You think it'd be more valuable for them to eat alone than to eat with their daddy?
Eat with their mama? One of the things, Crystal's best mother I've ever seen. And I mean that. But anytime I had to come home late, not every time, but plenty of times.
I just said, babe, I'm going to wake the kids up. She'd say, praise the Lord. I just go wake them up. What are y'all doing?
What are y'all doing? We're tired. Well, get up. Praise God.
Get up. My God. We're going to watch TV. He's going to do something.
I love you. Get up. And seeing you like an hour. I miss your face.
I got to leave the house. Get out of the house without four hugs. I love you, daddy. I love you, daddy.
I love you, daddy. I love you, daddy. I come home half of them. If they hear me drive up, they meet me in the driveway.
Hey, daddy, how you doing? I love you. You know how that happened? It didn't happen by saying go meet your daddy.
It happened because their daddy woke him up whenever four. Come on, get up. I've been missing you so much. Oh, my goodness.
What do you want to do? Well, I want to go back to sleep. We're not doing that. Let's go do something else.
I think we might do a series sometime soon on parenting. Or maybe a class. It's one of the off nights of the week, like a parenting intensive. I get so, I get so, it honestly hurts my heart when I see parents so overwhelmed.
You know, at a store or at a restaurant or whatever, because kids, they need that structure and they're not going to hate you for it. They'll actually have a lot more peace in their life because of it. Let me give you one example. Have we received the offering?
I'll give you one. It's 12 o'clock. We've just been talking this whole time, Jake. Who in here has ever been out to eat?
Who in here has ever been out to eat? Who in here if you're married, you've been out to eat with your spouse? When you did that and you looked at your wife and you left the driveway and you asked the question, where do you want to eat? Has she ever been certain?
Oh, don't blame her. Don't blame her because you asked her because you have no idea what you want. Matter of fact, you got an idea what you want. So if she ever does say what she wants, you're going to be like, oh, that sounds good.
What do you think about this? So you don't even know what you want to eat. And you're 21. Think of how stressful that is.
When a little kid's tired and upset, and a parent just keeps going, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?
What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?
What do you want? What do you want? What do you want to eat? It's a dinner time.
You should have decided. You should already fixed it. We're had a plan for it. It's like a throwback in time.
Yeah, all the way 2000 years ago, I'll have it done back then. I'm not going back to the 60s. I'm going back to the Jesus time. What do you want to eat?
What do you want? They don't know. If they do know it's ice cream, macaroni or chicken nuggets. Sometimes, you know, sometimes that's a good meal, baby.
That's an ice cream, chicken nuggets and mac and cheese. Sometimes that's a good meal. So a lot of times parents are feeding into their children's frustrations because the child is not, there's studies out there that talk about the frontal part of your brain is not even connected to your 20s. So parents are putting, you know, it's out of love most of the time, or laziness.
See, their love or laziness are a mixture of both. Where a parent is like, what do you want, baby? What do you want, baby? What do you want, baby?
I'll tell you what that kid could say. If it kind of could get to understanding, it was like, I want you to know what I need. You've been here longer than me. I don't know how the stove works.
I don't know what's in the pantry. I don't even know how to buy a dinner. I want you to know what I need. I'm stressed out because you're putting 9,000 options on me a day.
A lot of times, out of love. That's what happens. And then the baby's sitting there just as soon as they realize that options are always available. Now, if you hand them asparagus, they're not doing it.
There's some kids do that, you know. Shoot, I would do that. You put asparagus in my face too much. But it's bedtime.
I want to go to bed. Yeah, yeah. We are going to bed. No, I'm not.
God is my witness. You're going to bed right now. And I'm telling you this because I've never seen it in my house. Never one time.
Not one time. I'm not up here trying to brag to you. I've been working on it before they started breathing air. Crystal and I didn't come to this thing haphazardly.
We say go to bed. Three kids. Get up. Start passing out the hugs.
Praise the Lord. I'm not saying they're not smart. I'm just telling you they don't buck us. You know, bedtime is bedtime.
Well, I'm not sleepy. Well, here's what we've told him. Come here. I've told you all from the time you were little, you can do two things if you can't sleep.
What have I said? You can pray your sin. Thank you, buddy. You don't have to go to sleep.
You can pray or you can sing. Also let them read your Bible. But it's bedtime. Well, I'm not sleepy.
You can pray. I'm not sleeping. You can do two things if you can't sleep. What have I said?
You can pray your sin. You can sing. Now that they're holding a tree, you can read your Bible. Well, why is that so important?
Because we're establishing the culture of our home and they are in our home. They're a part of our family. They are not establishing the culture. That would be the tail wagging the dog.
No offense. You're not a tail. I'm just talking about the indication of leadership and responsibility. So you say we're going to bed.
It's bedtime. Period. We should have a parenting intensity on that shall go to bed. I've had people ask me.
People who, you know, get so sick of it they'll ask. But then also, you know, people are just, gives their wits in. But most people don't ask because they either don't, they're embarrassed that it's not working well or B, they think that's how it is everywhere. It's not like that everywhere.
There is a better way. There's always a better way. There's always improvement available. They say, well, you know, they're just kids and listen, whatever they do in front of you, you multiply at times a hundred when you can't see them.
Good and bad. Whatever they do in front of you that they do well, you multiply by a hundred. That's what they're doing when you can't see them. So you got to get to the place where the parent is running the house.
The parents are running the house. And if this is all brand new to you and you got to, you know, there's some change that you really know that needs to be made in your household understand, you need to give them some grace in the process of change because if you have not established culture, if you have not established your expectations, you have nothing you can't expect from them. So you can't just walk in and go, okay, preacher said it. Here's what's going to happen, bedtime.
And they're, you know, for the first six years they're like, I want to go to bed. You just been dealing with it. You go curl up on the bed beside them. You'll curl up on the floor beside them.
There's always a place for that. It's time. But if that's every night they're running you, I'm going to preach and I'm going to teach and I'll be honest with you. I know the Bible well enough that I don't even have to have encouragement.
But if you want this to settle in deep on the inside of you, you've got to get past the, well, that's not how we do it here. You've got to decide if you're wanting to do it that way and it's not the best way, then no offense to you and I'm talking to anybody online, mainly. Then shame on you for not wanting the best for your kids and just wanting to survive with your kids. I don't want to survive.
I want thrive. I'm raising up generals, new heights kids. I'm trying to make privates back there. So you can't go and just let your life look like a sitcom.
Here's every sitcom you've ever seen in your whole life. The guy is an idiot, lies to the wife, jokes about it with his neighbor. The wife is the smartest person on the planet just dealing with the idiot that constantly rolls her eyes every time he says something dumb. The kids pit the parents against each other.
The mother begins to talk to the kids about, well, you know, he's just your daddy and we really got to help him out. Before you know it, it's nothing but dishonor in every single direction. The kids are always right. The parents are always wrong in the equation.
I should have let you go to that party. I should have trusted you. I should have this. I should have that.
Instead of saying, no, our household, we don't go to parties where there's no adults. We don't go to parties where there's alcohol. You're for every sitcom you've ever seen. So if you're not strategically using the word of God to figure out how to raise kids, the examples you have in front of you are filled with fallacy.
They're filled with lies. Strategically so because the enemy is the prince of the power of the air who in here has a satellite TV. They're beaming it into your household. So you will watch it on your TV and you will feel a little less bad because boy, that's a really crazy family.
Your family's not supposed to be crazy. You're supposed to be stable in the presence of instability. You're supposed to be firmly rooted on the word of living God. Your kids are supposed to walk into the school and change the school.
Not the school. Change your kids. Your kids are supposed to walk into the teacher and say, can I pray with you today? When the team, when somebody tells them not to pray, you're supposed to have told them, shut no, no, no.
You're supposed to tell them. You can't tell me that. I'll pray whenever I wanna pray. I'm not going to get thrown out of school, maybe they need to get thrown out of school for praying in tongues.
Wouldn't that be a badge? Did you get kicked out of school? Would you do? You had to spit maul on the chalkboard.
Or no, I was just praying all the time. I was witnessing everybody and they wouldn't let me stay. Well, you're just trying to make trouble. All right?
Seems like a pretty decent trouble to me. Everybody in your Bible went to prison. They just didn't go to prison for drugs and alcohol. They went to prison for honoring God.
And when they were pressured about it and they were beaten over it, they prayed like this. Give us more boldness. Somebody doesn't like your Instagram post. Hey, you're praying?
Oh, I'm a persecuting man. I was that kid with a hat. It's so nice. Nobody even likes me anymore.
I would say you're persecuted for my sake, for righteousness sake. That's when you're congruent with God. I'm going to pray over households here this morning. I'm praying over every household.
When I'm about to ask, doesn't mean there's 10,000 things wrong. When I'm about to ask, just says, you know what I do? I want God involved in my family. And there's some areas I know there's some improvement needed in myself.
Improvement areas in my family. And some of you kids are old enough. There's some improvement you can bring to the table. You've been dishonorable to your parents.
You've been disrespectful. I'm going to ask you a real question right now. How are you young people? What's the point?
Think about this for a minute. Did your little BFF? Did they feed you dinner? Respectfully?
Did they wipe your rear end when you were little? Because I'll tell you this. Maybe five people in your life right now on a friend level will be there in 20 years. If that's the case, it's a lot.
And those of us, like myself, who's 21 years old, a lot older than that. I'm 41, if you're wondering. We've lived long enough to see you. The world wants you to put more on us on the temporary relationships of your life than the permanent relationships of your life.
So if your parents said something to you, it hurts your feelings, and maybe they were even wrong, the same Jesus that forgives you will empower you to forgive them. And you stop walking disrespectfully in your house, even if you have a good reason. Because the Bible, one of the commandments in the Bible, out of the top ten, is to honor your father and mother. And you ought to do that.
You ought to honor your parents. You ought to respect them. As long as they're not telling you to sin, you ought to do what they say. And it'll be the culture of your house.
So we'll tell you right now. And it'll take 15, 20 years for this to prove out. But I promise you it's true. What you're sowing right now, you're going to reap when you have kids.
So you act towards your parents. How you want your kids to act towards you. This is how this thing is supposed to work. Because if you can't be respectful to the parent you can see, why do you think you're going to magically be respectful to the parent you can't see?
Back to you moms and dads for a minute. If you're giving them instructions, and then not making them see how critical it is to follow them, how will they be able to follow the instructions of the parent they cannot see? This is how it's supposed to work. See, our father was supposed to connect us to God, not to create a bitterness because we weren't a good father to our children.
It's supposed to connect us to God. It's supposed to breed an intimacy. Does this make sense? Yes.
It's about our head and close our eyes just for a minute. Maybe you're here today and that's you and you're saying, treat your eye. My household, we're right here at the first day of school. First week of school, semester is about to start.
And I need you to, I need the Lord to move in my family. I got some challenges. Don't misinterpret this. Every kid is different, different seasons, different challenges I get.
But it's simple as going to bed. It's simple as saying, no, do this. And they won't do it. You need to deal with that element of rebellion because it doesn't get smaller, it gets bigger.
And deal with it. Don't hear me talking hard. I'm not talking hard. I'm talking about you got to make some changes.
You got to make some changes. And you'll see the change you want in them. You children that are older, old enough to make a decision and recognize how I got some areas in my life. And I can really work on this.
I'm telling you, we need the supernatural power of God in our life. We need God involved. So I'm going to pray over every family that we'd like to be prayed for. That's you.
I got some areas in my family that I need God to move. Just lift your hand right now. You can put them down. It's almost every hand in the room so let's just stand to our feet.
If your family unit is here, or parts of your family unit, and you want to be a part of this prayer. Come out of your seat right now and just meet me right here at the front. We're going to pray as families. Try to stay together as a family if you can.
Say, well, I've never done that at church before. Well, you never had something. You've never done something. You never done.
Thank you, Lord Jesus. Wow. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus.
Thank you, Lord Jesus. None of this is saying that there should be shame involved at all. What this is saying is God, we really do need you and we want what's best for our family for our kids. I want status quo.
I don't want the popular sitcom. I want what you said. Every family here, just grab hands together. Know with your family.
Don't make it weird. Let's pray. Lord, you're so faithful. You're so faithful.
For every family represented here, I'm asking for a new bond of unity. I'm asking for an equipping. Lord, would you let love be our mantle? Would you let love be our banner?
Would you let peace and joy be our hope and our strength? For every household, I speak laughter at the kitchen table and the dinner table in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I speak not an austere negative connotation. I speak obedience over our children.
That they would honor their mother and father. They would hear the voice of their parents in their life. That they would be a part, Lord God, of a constant calibration and recalibration of the culture in our household. That we would never get too familiar with ugliness, rudeness, and bitterness that it becomes our culture, but rather when it shows its head that we would in love deal with it and each personally commit to be a part of the solution that brings about a house filled with kindness and joy and peace and love and hope and strength and virtue.
Now Holy Spirit, the beautiful promise, the beautiful promise of the Father, we're asking Lord God that you would send your Holy Ghost to our homes, that the Holy Spirit would so permeate and saturate our households that joy would become the standard. God, would you give us encounters with you in our homes? Would you fill our children to overflow, Lord God? Would you give us the boldness to read our Bible out loud with our children?
Would you give us the boldness to talk to our kids about how beautiful you are? Would you give our children the strength to share when you've whispered something to them in the midnight hour? Lord, would you let your Holy Spirit just come and wash us one more time in your grace and your peace? We don't want a house of chaos and great pictures.
Lord, we want a house of peace and of love. Let our homes be filled with your presence. The fragrance of who you are. Now keep praying, Church, we're going to go just another moment longer in prayer.
Now I lift up every mother in the name of Jesus. We lift up every mother in the name of Jesus. And I ask in Jesus' name for a better relationship with each one of their children. I'm asking in the name of Jesus for peace that surpasses all understanding.
Lord, you said we can cast our cares on you and that you care for us. So Father, would you remind every mother in the house and every mother tuned into this video that they can cast their cares on you? Do not be overwhelmed, says God. Let the overwhelming one overwhelm you.
Let him bring beautiful peace into your life. Now for every child, I thank you in the name of Jesus no matter the age. Thank you for a fresh commitment to honor their father and their mother. I thank you for it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Last thing I'll bring to you God, every father, every man, I'm asking you to strengthen them. Lord, make every man hard where they ought to be hard and gentle in kind where they ought to be gentle in kind. Lord, the nature that's in us that makes us want to run out to the battle and fight Philistines, let us never use that nature against our family but for our family. I'm not asking you for tame men.
I'm asking you for disciplined men. I'm not asking you Lord God for limp-risted soft men that don't know what it means to run out to the battle. I'm asking you Lord God that men would not see their family as what they are in battle against, but rather what they are in battle for. Give us the anointing to do it.
Young David was out there tending sheep and then the anointing got on him. And he couldn't stand the giant railing against Israel or his family. I thank you Lord God for this anointing on every family. Let it flow through the aisles of his church, the parking lot, and all the way to every household connected.