THROUGH: Through The Spirit of Revelation

Man, good to be here today. You guys ready to hear from the Lord this morning? You ready to feed on the word a little bit? I'm excited to deliver God's word to you today.

I believe he has a word for each and every one of us. It's gonna change you, it's gonna grow you, it's gonna make you more like Jesus. You're gonna go out here with greater faith and greater understanding of what God has and desires for each and every one of you. Just a quick announcement.

I know a couple went Friday night, Kristen and I, and I know there was one or two from Central, I mean, City Reach last night at Central Assembly, I just wanna plug them a little bit. They're having services Friday night, Saturday night, and this morning, obviously you're not gonna make that, so I'm not gonna let you leave at this point. And then this evening, but I wanna say, if you want to go this evening, at 6 p.m. Central Assembly, they're having a healing evangelist, husband and wife team, and they did some activation the last two nights, but it was really great last night.

And so if you'd like to go that tonight, I'd encourage you to go if you need healing in your body. Or if you just like to just curious about how healing works or like to be activated in the gift of healing or words of knowledge or things like that. So if you wanna do that, just give them a little plug and we, they're partners of our, I know I caught on the central a little bit, but we're really good friends, so, not competitors. Let's see, this week we've got Thursday.

I forgot to ask Pastor Seth, but I'm guessing, am I teaching this Thursday? I just wanna go to bed. All right, what am I teaching on Thursday? Can you at least tell me that?

Oh, we're in Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5, that's right. Seth did Ephesians 5, 1 through 3. If you weren't here this past Thursday night, you need to be, you should have been. Because I told Seth is like, the way that the words that God is giving Seth now, I've just noticed that this man is growing in his giftings and it's exciting to see.

I told him this morning, I said, you've become really a wordsmith of the word of God that he takes these things that God's downloading and puts them into language that's just, a, easy to understand, but it just flows with a grace and a natural beauty that really could just only come from the throne room, so, I just wanna honor you and say, I'll be happy to turn Thursday back over to you, if you'd like. Now, word's gonna be great, Ephesians 5, and we'll just believe that God's gonna give us a great word for Thursday night. And then, next Sunday is our 10th anniversary. So, I cannot believe that.

We're very excited that next week. I encourage you to bring a friend. We're having a little trouble. It could have been a little video clip that Chris and I made.

It's, I don't know, it's supposed to be up yesterday. I haven't seen it yet, but if you get that, I actually should share it just a short, like 30 seconds just inviting people to come out. We're gonna have some giveaways next week. We're gonna celebrate.

I hope to have a testimony or two. Well, we're gonna have, obviously, we'll have some time of worship in the word, and then we're gonna have lunch afterwards. We have an acated lunch, so, what do we have? Like lasagna and chicken parm.

So, I think that'll be really good from Castias. Can I say that? Yeah, Castias. Guys like that from Kaiser.

So, bring people out, we have plenty of money, so it'll be good celebrating Sunday next week. Ten years. Cannot believe that. Yeah, I didn't have great hair back then.

I looked at some of these photos from ten years ago, like gosh, who was that guy? Yeah, that was. Autumn, actually this morning, I had a hair with your name on it Autumn. Yeah, I did.

I did. I was pulling, I pulled these two, I thought they were blonde. I pulled these two blonde hairs off my pajamas. I said to Chris, I'm like, did somebody wear my pajamas?

Cause there's like, and I don't normally wear pajamas, but it's like what I was studying in. She goes, Fred, those are your gray hairs. I was like, they look blonde. I don't know.

She goes, now they're gray. They're yours. So, our mission here, equipping the one that knows Jesus. Equipping the one that knows Jesus.

To reach the one that needs Jesus. See, it's hard to reach somebody if you don't know what they need. And if you don't know the one that they need. And if you don't know the attributes, if you don't know the ways that he works.

And if you don't know his characteristic and his nature, it's very difficult to minister to people from a place of not knowing. And so, today I want to talk to you about the spirit of Revelation. I want to talk to you about how that, there's a connection between revelation and knowledge. That the purpose, let me say it like this.

The initial purpose of Revelation is so that we can know. That God wants to reveal things to us through his Holy Spirit so that we can know things. But that's not the ultimate goal of Revelation. Because Revelation is not for the purpose of just getting smarter and accumulating knowledge.

That there has to be something we do with that knowledge. Deuteronomy chapter 29 verse 29 says this. And this was Moses speaking to the children of Israel. He says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God.

So there's things that God has that he hasn't revealed yet. And if he chooses not to reveal them to us, someday we'll know. But he says the things that the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do according to all the word of the law.

So what he's saying is that if God has something held still in secret and when God hides things, he doesn't hide them from us, he hides them for us. He hides them for the purpose of someday us being able to discover through this relationship with him the things that he has for us. But those secret things he's holding, they belong to us. But once they're revealed to us from that revelation we begin to know him.

But beyond that he says the revealed things belong now to us and to our children. And so I want to encourage you as Revelation knowledge takes place today, it's not gonna stay here. It's gonna be deposited into your kids and into their kids. That's why we say is we want our ceiling to be there floor.

We don't want every generation starting over and starting over and starting over. So he says the things that are revealed to us belong to us and to our children forever. So it's not just one generation, it's successive generations. And he says so that we may do, right?

The Christian life is not about doing. We're not doing in order to get from God but we're doing because of what he's given to us. There's a difference. So sometimes we can take the aspect of grace which I'm a big grace guy, but grace can sometimes lead to laziness.

It can lead to a lazy Christian life. And when you were entrusted with something, as Phil was saying earlier about stewardship, being an active worship, every area of your life, as were stewarded with things, in this case, let's just say God stewards you with revelation. We expect you to do something with it, right? It says, happy is the man who the master finds doing when he returns.

So that God wants to see that you're doing something with what he's entrusted to you. Like if you're not doing anything with the revelation that he's given you up to this point, why would you think he'd give you more? Right? It's a stewardship principle.

The principle of stewardship is that as you faithfully manage that which has been entrusted to you, you get more. Right? You can't deal with more until you deal with what you already have. And so I want to encourage you today.

You're going to get revelation from God's word. God's going to open his word up to you today. He's going to continue to open his word up to you today. I'm going to pray the prayer of the Apostle Paul for you today was that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

And so that's why I say it's about equipping those who know Jesus. You need to know Jesus. You need to know about him. You need to know his nature's character's ways, how he ministers.

If you want to know anything about God, look at the life of Jesus. Jesus came as the perfect representation of the Father. So everything you ever want to know about God, real simple, read about Jesus. All right.

Let's get into it. I want to start with 1 Corinthians chapter 2. It's not our main text today. But I just want to launch there because I want to stay with our theme of the word through.

And then we're going to bounce over to Ephesians chapter 1. So 1 Corinthians chapter 2, it starts out with this in verse 9. It says, but as it is written, I has not seen nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for him. So this tells me from verse 9 that there are things that God has prepared, that he has in advance, put them together.

And it comes from the time back when kings would send somebody ahead of the king to go into a city or an emperor would send somebody into a city to get things prepared in advance for their arrival. And that's what God did for us. You think it would be us doing it for him. But here, the king actually got things ready for us.

And it says that he has prepared things for us. But the things that he has prepared for us are not physically audible. They're not physically seeable. They're not visible.

And they're not conceivable. You can't even understand them. But he has set them aside. And so if you only read the Old Testament where this comes from, that's bad news.

It's got like good news bad news. Hey, God has prepared some great things for you. But you can't know him. He's got these awesome plans for you.

But he won't tell him to you. So it's like great. But so what? If I can't access it, what good is it?

So here's the great thing about the New Testament is the Holy Spirit. It says, I hasn't seen or ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for him. But verse 10, but what? God has revealed them to us through whom?

Through the Holy Spirit. But God has revealed them to us through the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. So that these things that God has for us, he's actually tucked them away.

He's hidden them. He's buried them very deep to keep them protected. But thank God that we have the Holy Spirit. Because the next verse in verse 11 says this.

It says, but for what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him, even so no one knows the things of God except the spirit of God. There's things that are tucked away in your spirit. I'll never know. I can't know them.

Only you and your inner most being know those things. And what Paul saying says, just like there's things about you, I can't know because they're so deep. There's things about God that we humanly can't know because they're so deep. But our spirit knows our things that are hidden in us, the same way God's spirit knows his things that are hidden in him.

And when his spirit is in me, guess what I now have connection to? I have connection to those things that he's prepared for me. And verse 12 says, now we have not received the spirit of the world but the spirit who is from God that we might what? No.

So that God has revealed them to us so that we might know. And I want you to see this connection today between revelation that God gives you and knowing God and understanding God and knowing about him and who he is. And like I said earlier, we're not going to go there today. But the fulfillment of revelation is obedience.

That obedience fulfills that knowledge. It's just not so we have this accumulation of a bunch of head knowledge. Like if I just accumulate revelation here, I'm not stewarding it. It's not a stewardship of what God's given me.

I have to actually do something with it. So we're not going to go that far with this today. But I just want to expose you to three areas out of Ephesians. Paul prays for the Ephesian Church.

And the three areas that God wants to give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation that he uses his Holy Spirit to draw out those deep things of God and impart them to you. Jesus says this. He says all things in John chapter 16 verse 15. He says all things the Father has are mine.

So what does that include? Everything. He says everything the Father has belongs to me. And he says the Holy Spirit will take from what is mine and declare it unto you.

So the Holy Spirit goes out. He goes on a search. So I used to hear people say this. They'd say, the Holy Spirit's the greatest search engine of all time.

But that was before chat GTP. I feel like chat GTP takes Google to a whole new level. Because not only does it search. See, if the Holy Spirit was only a search engine, there's no declaration coming back.

And as I was thinking of that, no, he's not a search engine. He's a chat GTP. Chat God's things prepared for us. He takes them, the things, the GTP, God's things prepared for us.

And he chats them back to us. He actually speaks them back to us. If he only searched them, what good is that? See, when you put something into chat GTP, if you have never done it, it not only looks it up.

But if I wanted to, I wrote a funny song about Curtis one time. I think I said, give me a worship song about Curtis playing in a pair of tights in Pink Ballet Shoes or something. And it'll do it. It rhymes.

And it's really good. Yeah. Yeah, we'll pull it out. I'd have to read it.

I can't sing. I was trying to tell my wife yesterday, because Pastor Phil would give me the worship set for next week's anniversary Sunday. And I was trying to tell Chris in the song, so I tried to sing it to her. And she was like, I've never heard that song before.

So I went and hit play. She said, oh, yeah, that song. I was like, well, that's just what I, she didn't know. Not even close.

It's the words. The words. Maybe if the Holy Spirit sang to me, maybe I could sing better. Maybe I need to work on that.

All right. Ephesians chapter one. So things that God wants to reveal to us for the purpose of knowing. Three things that I have to do with, let me get my Bible here, because I need to want to read it too.

So three things. We have the hope. I'm going to read it in a minute. But we have, let me make this point first.

These are all his things. So when Paul gets through them, it's the hope of his calling. It's the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And it's the exceeding greatness of his power toward us, we believe.

So it's not, it's his calling. It's not our calling. It's his inheritance, not ours. And it's his power, not ours.

But here's the great thing. We're one with him. Right? So all of a sudden we read, well, it's his calling.

Well, it has nothing to do with me. It's his inheritance. What's that got to do with me? It's his power.

What's that got to do with me? What it has to do with you? It says in 1 Corinthians 6, 17, it says, he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with him. It's such this mystery that we come into union with God, that we're actually one with him.

See, when we're talking about victory, you can fail alone. But you can't fail with him. You can be defeated alone. But you can't be defeated with him.

If whoever's doing slides, I can't see. But if you would go to the very last slide, I think I want to open with this today. I wrote this. It says, the most defeated believer and the most victorious believer both have been given the exact same hope, the exact same inheritance, and the exact same power, the most defeated believer, the most victorious believer both are in possession of the exact same thing.

See, the difference is what I do with the revelation that I've been given. Do I submit to it? Do I understand it? And do I act in obedience to what I've been shown?

See, but if you're living in defeat or if you're living in victory, both extremes are living with the exact same possession in them. The only difference is the level of engagement that you decide to move into the revelation that you've been given. Because he's given the access, the availability is the same. All right.

Let's go back. Let's go on. And I'm not going to read the whole prayer, but you can start to think of verse 14. I think we're going to start at verse 17.

Right? Yeah. Verse 17 says, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened, we're going to come back to that in a minute. I want to show you another verse.

That the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know. See the connection again? He would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him that you may know. Right?

So the purpose, initial purpose of revelation is knowledge. Now this word for knowledge is a little different. It's epignosis. It means precise or exact or correct knowledge.

So God just doesn't want you to have knowledge of him. He wants you to have correct knowledge, precise knowledge. It actually means expert knowledge. My truck that I just got, I'm here, I've been driving it for two months.

I didn't realize it'll drive itself. It freaked me out. My partner at work, he said, do you know your truck will drive itself? I'm like, oh, you mean like the cruise?

I'm like, he doesn't know. It'll change lanes and everything. I was like, cool. So I hit the button and I'm 181 last week or two weeks ago and here this thing drives right down the rest, I said, on 84 miles an hour.

Here's my theory. My theory is as long as I'm only going 20% over the speed limit, I'm okay. So if it's 70, I can go 84. That's 20% over.

So anyway, I shouldn't have said that. But anyway, I'm going 84. So but it's just a theory. It's not Bible.

Not Bible theory. But as this thing comes up behind a car that's going 70, it slows down and it waits and then it puts the blinker on and it says looking for an opening and it buzzes this leg and it moves over and it speeds back up, puts the blinker on, buzzes this leg and says looking for an opening and moves over and takes off again. Like I'm a control freak if you didn't know. Like I'm like, like at first I'm like this.

But then eventually I was like, huh, it's pretty cool, you know, but this thing will, it'll find its way. I have some knowledge of a self-driving vehicle, but I don't have expert knowledge of a self-driving vehicle. See the engineer that built that or the technician that went to school to study how to work on it has an expert knowledge that I don't have. Like I can tell you a little bit about it.

We can talk about it. But I don't have expert knowledge. And see what God wants, he doesn't want you to have revelation just so you can talk about it. He wants you to actually have an in-depth understanding of the inter-workings of the spirit world, how he works and how he moves and how he ministers.

He wants you to have an expert knowledge. And so that's this thing about revelation. He wants to take you into the deep things. These prepared things, these deep things that God has.

And so Paul goes on to say that we would, in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceedingly greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. So three things today. One, I want to talk to you about purpose. Number one, purpose, which is the hope of his calling.

Number two, I want to talk to you about possession, which is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And the third thing is obviously kind of self-explanatory power, which is the exceedingly greatness of his power toward us who believe. So we have the hope of his calling, the, excuse me, my mouse a little dry. I told Seth I had nothing to say today and all of a sudden I got all kinds of things to say.

I can't get him out. Yeah, the revelation. The hope of his calling. I just want to talk about that first.

And we want to talk about what does it mean, the glory of the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And this is the power toward us. Purpose, possession and power. All right, first one.

Number one is this. Let's go to the next slide. The hope of his calling that you may know. So all these start out that you may know.

Remember that's the thing. This is what things God wants you to have expert knowledge on that you may know what is the hope of his calling. What does that mean? So let's just break it down.

Hope, we talked about it a few weeks ago. Hope is a joyful, favorable and confident expectation of a future good. A joyful, favorable, confident expectation of future good. Hope is not for today.

Hope is for the future. Hope is for tomorrow. Hope is for something that can't be seen. Hope is for that unseen realm.

Paul says in Romans 8, 24, he says, why would you hope for that which you see? He says, hope that is seen is not hope. Because if I'm hoping for something, you know, like your kid on Christmas morning, they hope they get this certain present, right? And they hope and they hope.

And then you get up and they tear it open. And once they open it, guess what they no longer have? There's no hope. Because once you have it, there's no need to hope for it.

So hope is always for something in the future. It's always positive. It's always good. It's always constant expectation.

But it's unseen and it's for the future realm. So he says, what is God wants you to know what is the hope of his calling, right? It's his calling. Now, throughout the book of Ephesians, Paul talks about our calling.

He said, your calling. Ephesians 4, 1 starts out, walk worthy of your calling. So there's all kinds of instruction about this. But there's emerging of callings.

There's emerging of God's calling and our calling. They're kind of one and the same. But I want to just read this to you. I didn't put this in the slides.

But as I was standing here during worship, God reminded me of it. I think we'll go there for just a minute. So Exodus chapter 3, do you remember the story of the burning bush? So when God's calling Moses, Moses is in the wilderness and he sees a bush that's on fire.

And so he's like, I think I'll go check it out. It's just kind of like burning. And he goes over and the bush starts to talk. Anybody read this story?

All right. Exodus chapter 3, if you haven't read it, I'm just going to read you a few verses. So here's what God says to him. Exodus 3 verse 7.

I want you to think about calling in this. Because one thing I want to tell you about calling is this. Calling is always directed toward people. It's calling is God's answer to somebody's cry that he's going to answer through you.

That when God calls you, I probably shouldn't say this but I'm going to because this is the Holy Spirit. People say, well, God called me to such and such a church. Like I don't think God calls you to attend church. I think God calls you to minister to people.

So if you're going there to minister to people, okay, if you're going there to get away from the place you're in, that's not a call. Like a call is not a run. A call is an invitation to go. All right.

That actually turned out better than I thought it would be. Verse 7 says this, it says, the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. And I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters and I know their sorrow. So he's telling Moses, he says, look, I have seen what my people were going through.

I've heard their cry because of the oppression they're under. And I actually know I can identify with their pain. And in verse 8 I find this curious. Here's what God says.

He says, so I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of Egypt, out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good land, a large land land was explained with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, he's going there. So what God says, I see them, I've heard them and I feel their pain and now I've come down. And here's what he says, he says, I'm going to deliver them. But did God deliver them?

Himself. He sent somebody. But I want you to see God's response was actually his call. He actually responded himself to the cry to the pain and to the oppression that his people were going through.

And it says, he came down and he said, I will deliver them. But then he turns around and says to the list of Moses and verse 10, he says, come now. Is that an imitation? That's an imitation.

He says, come now therefore and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring out my people. So here's what God said, God responds to a cry. And although God initially says, I'm coming down to deliver them, he says the way I'm going to deliver them is I'm going to invite you into my call so that you can be the one that do what I'm going to do. And so when God has his call, his call actually involves you, that he has, he hears the cry of people.

He hears their groanings. He feels their pain. There's people in our city right now that don't even know God, that are crying out to God. That God can hear what they're saying.

He hears their desperation. We don't hear their cry, but he does. And he says, they're tugging at my heart because I've already paid for their deliverance. I've already paid for their healing.

I've already paid for their freedom, but I can't physically do it. I came down 2000 years ago so that the call that I answered then is the one that you can fulfill today. I came down to deliver them, but I'm not going to do it. You are.

Come on. He says, come on Moses. Come on Moses. Now we're not going to go into all Moses's complaints and excuses, but I just really wanted to read that to you to see the call of God meshed with the call in Moses' life.

If I'm truly following God's call on my life, that's his call, like my mission and his mission are going to be the same mission. Remember I said, you can't fail alone, but you can't fail with God? Like if I'm rowing in the same direction as God, we're going to win. We're going to win.

We're going to be successful. Our church will be successful when we partner with him. Your marriage will be successful when you partner with him. Your job, you'll be successful in your job when you part, you can't fail because he doesn't fail.

See, Revelation remembers knowing the nature of God. He's a winner. He's victorious over everything. So if you're struggling in life, I'd encourage you to do a heart check.

Am I rowing in the same direction? Am I partnering with one that never loses? It doesn't mean that you may not have an occasional setback. We all do.

Have them all the time. But it means that in the end, you win. You always come out on top. Even under the old covenant, when God blessed Israel and Deuteronomy chapter 28, and he said, you'll be blessed when you come in, you go out in the city, in the country, you'll be the head and not the tail.

You remember that? He says, you'll always end up on top and never on the bottom. And if you can end up always on the top under the old covenant, why wouldn't we always be on the top under the new? Because we're partnering with the king of kings.

See, you might, and here's the thing, Romans 11, 29 says this. It says, the gifts and the calling. See, it's gifts for all calling singular. The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

Irrevocable means this. It means they're not changeable. They're not alterable. If you have a trust or a will, it can be a revocable one or an irrevocable one.

If you have a revocable will, it's one that you can change up until you die. If it's irrevocable, once you sign it, you can't change it. And this verse says this. It says, the gifts, plural, and the calling of God are not changeable.

Now in context, before you Bible thumpers jump over me, everybody wants to go to the exegesis is Jesus. I'm going to give you context because context is talking about the nation of Israel. I'm talking about this verse specifically in context, talking about even though Israel rejected God that his plan for Israel is still going to come to pass. But the broader application to us is that when God gives a call on your life, he actually supplies gift things to align with the call for you to reach the people that he is placing you in front of.

And when he does that, that doesn't change. Now you may go through periods where you're less effective or more effective. You may go through periods of obedience or disobedience. Why does disobedience get a bunch of laughter?

The call, if you think about the Apostle Paul, it said that God's Paul said this into the church, the Galatians said, God separated me from my mother's womb, that he might reveal his son and me. That when God calls you, it didn't happen the day you got saved or yesterday or to God called you and he turned it, he passed. That he pre-planned things for you and has been sitting there waiting for you to say yes. And so that doesn't change.

Even if you mess up that doesn't change. Even if you don't steward the call, it doesn't change because it wasn't based on your performance to start with. See what happens is, do you ever see somebody live in sin and still operate in the miraculous? That doesn't make it right.

Let me just say that. It's not a good idea. But it can happen because there's a call and even a greater anointing on their life that allows them to even operate despite the fact that they're living a certain way. Now what happens is when you live a certain way and operate still in the call and the giftings, the effectiveness is diminished.

So you'll never be as effective as God wants you to be. So from that standpoint, you're living lower than he wants you to live. You'll only be effective in your giftings and your call and your anointing to the degree that you live a life of holiness, obedience, and ultimately a life of faith that accesses the grace that God used to give it to you anyway. But regardless, if you mess up, the call's still the call.

The giftings are still the giftings. Pick yourself up, repent, get right, and take a step ahead. Get back in. It's still there.

Like it's still there just waiting for faith to appropriate it. And so don't think, well, I messed up too big. You can't. You can't mess up too big ever because God already paid too big.

He already overpaid for your mess up. So you can get up and start walking in that call. See, when we think about the call of God, everybody knows this verse, Romans 8, 28. And we know what?

All things what? Let's go to the next slide. Yeah, we don't ever put it with a verse prior to it. Remember the Holy Spirit's got a partner with this.

So the two verses prior to this verse talk about that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. I guess I don't have another verse 26. The Holy Spirit helps us in our weaknesses that when we don't know what to pray or how we ought to pray that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And then it goes on to verse 27 and says, he that searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

So here's what can happen. As I'm praying in the Holy Spirit, I'm actually releasing things in prayer that I don't even know how to pray because it's a weakness in my life because I have limitations in my mind, but I can release prayer in the Spirit or what we call praying in tongues that the Holy Spirit can formulate for me. I can release and I can know with confidence I'm praying in complete accordance with God's will as it's being released. And in the context of praying God's will perfectly, I can then know because I pray God's perfect will that God's going to work everything out for good.

So often we take verse 28 out of context, but do you see what the word verse 28 starts with? And, and is what conjunction, which means it's connected to the verse prior to. So this is a complete thought. As I begin to pray in the Spirit, as I begin to pray in perfect alignment with the will of God, the Holy Spirit is actually releasing in through my mouth words that need to be released into the atmosphere in order to bring about the thing that needs to pass to make it good, even though I don't know what that is.

And we know that all things work together for good. Here's where a lot of people get stumped up for those what? Well, if you don't love God, this verse doesn't work for you. I've heard so many people beat people up with that.

Don't we all love God? Like, I feel like it's like faith, you know, God meets you at the level of your faith. I think God meets you at the level of your love. Nobody has ever kept the commandment.

Thou shalt love the Lord your God, like with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength. For on this hang all the law and the prophets. Jesus replaced the law and the prophets. He fulfilled them.

God now speaks a better message through his son Jesus. See, we only love him because he first loved us. And so don't get hung up. Well, this verse won't work for me because I don't know if I love God enough.

Do you love God? I love God. Do I love God enough? No.

I just ask God this morning, God, help me love you more. Show me more of your love for me so I can love you more. Show me more of your love for me so I can love people more. But I'm not there.

I'm not going to let that keep me from this promise. It says to those who love God, I think this is a bigger point that nobody ever makes to those who are what called not just called what according to what his purpose. See what happens a lot of times we're living in our purpose and wondering why things aren't working out for good. I love God.

Oh, I love God. I love God. But I'm the one my way and things just are falling apart. But you know what that verse says?

All things work together for good to them. I love God. And I love God therefore, no matter what choices I make, God's going to make it good. And if it ain't good, it ain't over yet.

You know all that. I believe all that. But let's add the last phrase to it to those who are called according to his purpose. See, if I'm living in my purpose that's not his purpose, then how can I expect him to make it good when I'm just dealing with the consequences of my own decisions.

Prophetic words don't come to pass without obedience. Do you know how many prophecies were in the Old Testament about Jesus? I don't. There's a bunch.

For a rhetorical question. Like, I bet you're going to tell us, aren't you? I don't know. Somebody fact check it.

Look it up. Chat GTP. Do you realize when Jesus come he still had to live a life of obedience? He had to search the scriptures to see what prophecies were made about him so that he could live out the life to bring the prophecy to pass.

He just didn't like, oh, you know, it's all going to happen. God's will. God's will. He actually lived a life of obedience.

It brought about the thing that was prophesied about him. And we also often want to live a life of disobedience and wait for God to fix it. Can he fix it? Yes.

Will he fix it? Yes. But does it work better when you're aligned with his purpose? See, this is hope.

This is the hope of his calling. His calling is this. He has a call on my life. He heard the cry of some people.

He saw the oppression of people. He saw bondage that people were in. And he said, I love them. They need me, but I can't physically come, but I have a gal named Jen.

I've got a lady named Terry. I've got a guy named Curtis. And I can go respond to their cry and put my call in their life. And I'm going to put giftings in them that align them with my call.

And as long as they're living in alignment with the purpose I have for their life, I'm going to bring everything up from it, make everything good. And then even if it goes up and down, it'll be good in the end. That's the confident expectation of future good. Like I can be confident in the hope of his calling because he's a winner.

Like his calling always works out good. Doesn't always go great. No, it says in Hebrews, looking to Jesus, the author and finish of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despised the shame. Like in the midst of him going through it, he hated it.

But he looked ahead to the thing at the end because he knew at the end it would be worth it. And that's what we have to look forward to. I think I put a phrase up there, are we living in what? Are we living in the hope of his calling or the hopelessness of ours?

So your calling is only hopeless to the degree it doesn't line up with his. See, why do we fight the calling he's put on our life? Yeah, we're scared. Maybe we don't feel qualified.

Maybe we think we should be called somewhere else. See, God designed you uniquely to minister to somebody, some group of people. It might be your school. It might be your family.

It might be your job. It might be the country, it might be the whole world. Whatever your calling is, is where you find your purpose that God's designed you for. That he has a cry that he's heard and he's placed that in you and he's gifted you to meet that need.

And in that, no matter what the ups and downs are, you can be confident that you know it's going to be good in the end. It's a revelation to know the hope of his calling. Anybody learn anything today? Sure.

Absolutely good. Give curse. If we just begin to say to him, God, I don't understand this. Show me your love.

Show me revelation. And just open yourself up knowing that he's an all-consuming loving God. I'm telling you, he will begin to overwhelm you and share these things with you. He'll begin to open you up and I'm telling you, it's even more exciting.

You just want more. It's like a never-ending treasure chest really. But if you're sitting here struggling with, I don't even begin to know any of this. Just begin to, like Fred said, know he loves you enough to ask him and he's going to begin to reveal to you again.

Thank you, curse. The hope of his calling. Number two is this. The riches of the glory of his inheritance.

That you may know what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the same. So a lot of times when you think of the glory of his inheritance. Now, now people will think of heaven. Or the glory of heaven, right?

I'll get that. But this is not talking about the Jasper walls. This isn't talking about the Pearl Gates. It's not talking about the streets of gold.

It's not talking about the sea of glass or the land that'll light heaven that there'll be no son or mrs. It's not talking about the glory of his inheritance. There. It's talking about a different glory of his inheritance.

So here's what I know that Jesus, when he came, he inherited everything that Adam lost, he inherited everything that God intended for us, that he came as a man to win back the very thing that Adam forfeited, and then he willingly gives it back to us. That everything the Father has belongs to us. And so when it talks about the riches of the glory of his inheritance, this will be taken a couple of different ways. So one way can be this.

Some people read this and say the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. That the saints as a group of people are the glory of his inheritance. That's one way to read that. It would be like this.

If this book Bible, this Bible represented the saints, right? That if I gave this to Kristin, and that was her inheritance, let's just say was she was Jesus, and she's holding the inheritance in her hand. That's how some people read this. I don't read it that way.

I read it that the riches of the glory of his inheritance is in the saints. It's inside of the saints. So it is, and I don't think either one's wrong. I just prefer that to think of it this way, that everything that Jesus inherited, he's placed in me.

He's placed in the saints. That it says Jesus says that the kingdom of God does not come by observation. Luke 17, 21 says, they don't say, where's the kingdom? Is it here or there or there?

He said, no, the kingdom is within you. He says, wherever the king is, that's where the kingdom is. And what Jesus did when he put his Holy Spirit in you, he placed all of his inheritance inside of you. So that his inheritance, now remember it's his inheritance, it now becomes my inheritance.

Why is it my inheritance? Because the Bible says that I'm a joint heir with Christ. Which means that everything Jesus has. That's why this is about possession.

Jesus possesses everything. It says in Colossians, it says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. It says in whom dwell all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That we know the Father owns what it says in the cattle, one of thousands.

So everything, it's just not spiritual. It's material, it's emotional that every need you'll ever have Jesus re-inherited for you. And he's placed everything you ever need inside. In Romans says this, let's look at the next slide.

It says the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and of children heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If indeed we suffer with him that we may be glorified together. So that we're joint heirs, right? We're joint heirs with Christ.

He's placed his inheritance in us. Here's what I want you to see from this verse. Look at verse 18. It says, I consider the sufferings of his present time.

Who likes suffering? Hey, if I like it, I hate it. I hate it. I've been dealing with it a little bit.

That's not fun, right? But there's going to be suffering in the world. But here's what Paul wants to point out. What has he placed in you?

He's placed his inheritance. The riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. It's in you. I am a joint heir with Christ, which means I can have access to everything that he inherited from the Father.

It's in me. Verse 18 says this, I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed. Can we read it to me? In us.

Some translations say to us. Actually, in us. Think of it like this. Let's just say you're going through a difficulty right now.

Let's just say I said on a scale of one to ten. It's a what is it? You say it's a? No.

All right. So it's really bad. You're going through some terrible situation and on a scale of difficulty, it's a nine out of ten. Now what if I told you after you told me it's a nine out of ten, what if I said wait a minute, that's not the right scale.

The scale is actually a one trillion scale. But your problem's still a nine. And what this verse is saying, it says, when we finally get to heaven and we have full revelation. So God's revealing things to us now, but they'll come a day when God actually, we'll know him as we're even we're known.

And what we're going to see, we're going to look back to the things we're going through today. And we're going to get a revelation and fullness of the glory that was in us all along. And we're going to realize the thing we're going through right now, although it seems like a nine out of ten, it's actually nine out of a trillion or quadrillion or infinity. And now that thing that was a nine out of ten, that nine now is so insignificant compared to what we were carrying inside of us all along.

Because what I was carrying was the answer to the thing that I was going through, but I didn't realize it. I just walked around and had no idea. Because I didn't ask for revelation to ask God what's in me, that I can use what's in me to deal with what I'm going through out here. See sometimes the thing we're going through seems so difficult because we don't access the thing that God's already placed in us.

We're trying to get God to do something when he's already done something giving us the answer already, we just have to ask. See, he's always releasing, he's always speaking. He doesn't sleep 24 hours a day, the Holy Spirit's inside of you actually making intercession. And it's not that he's making it, he's not praying it like says Jesus makes intercession with the Father.

I believe when it says that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, it's like making a cake, like he's mixing the ingredients up, he's got it ready. What do we got to do? We just got to release it. Like he's non-stop making something for us.

But we just walk around all day looking for the answer, but all of a sudden it's inside of us all along. And that's where revelation comes in. That God wants to open things up to you that are in his word that he can breathe on and highlight and actually give you confidence to believe what he's saying. We're going to have to really hurry up.

We have this treasure, the prior verse says this, it talks about that we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus, the verse before this. And then it says that's the treasure, the glory of God in the face of Jesus. That treasure we have, but where do we have it? Inside of a frail body.

Inside an earth and vessel. I was going to try to tell the story of Gideon today and there's just too much in. I'm not going to, but if you remember the story of Gideon when he went out against the Midianites and it says they were as like millions of them and he has an army of 32,000 people and God said there's too many, he said if anybody's scared you can go home, 22,000 left, now he's got 10,000 and God said 10,000 is still too many, take him down in the water and whoever lapsed like a dog, keep those, and now he's down to 300 people. And he's got 300 people.

But God told him listening to be in, he says you'll defeat Midian like one man. And so when they go out, what's he doing? He takes all 300, he divides him to three companies of 100 each. He gives them a trumpet in the right hand and he gives them a clay pot in their left hand.

And inside the clay pot, remember what it is? A torch. And the torch is hidden in the clay pot. And they surround the enemy camp and Gideon says when I give the signal, break the clay pot.

And what's hidden while it's in the pot? The torch. But once the pot's broken, what is visible? The light.

And the light drives out the enemies. The enemies actually defeat themselves without them doing anything. They bust the clay pot, they blow the trumpets and they say the sword of the Lord is sword of Gideon. And instead the Midian knights just start killing each other and they take off.

That's a picture of the glory of God that's in your earth and vessel. See if the vessel never gets broken, the glory never gets released. That there has to come a time that when you go through something, the thing that the enemy meant to hurt you, God's using for good to actually use the crack in your skin to release his glory into the area that you live. It says we're hard pressed on every side, not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, not forsaken, struck down, not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.

That's a life of Jesus may be manifested in our body. See the glory he's placed in you, the riches of the glory of his inheritance is in you. But it's not in you to preserve it. He didn't ask you to carry it around in a safe and bring it back to him unused.

It's not like he said, hey go bury this thing in your body for eight years. No, he said I want you to live life. You're going to go through stuff. I've got a purpose for you.