Masks

Brother Andrew teaches us about the masks we sometimes put on in our Christian walk.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thank you, ma'am. If everyone will stand, we're gonna be in Mark eleven, starting in verse twenty-two. So Jesus answered and said to them, Have faith in God. We can just stop right there. Have faith in God. Jesus who came to walk it out as an example for us, showing that we could, he said, have faith in God. And that's the so much. Just trust me. So thank you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for for listening, and thank you, Father, for loving me. Then in verse 23, he says, For assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart. See, right there's right there's the test. Because if you really believe it, it'll happen. But I know for me, I don't a hundred percent. I don't like, no, there ain't no way. There ain't no way. There ain't no way. You just gotta be. You have to be and believe. And does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. We have such a loving father that he knows what we need before we even ask. He goes before us to repair the way. He's always ministering to us, he's always speaking to us. He's a good father. And like Jesus said, just trust him, have faith in him. It'll work out. Hallelujah. There's gonna be QR codes up there on the screen. There's gonna be tithe boxes, there's one in the back, one in the front. Brother Andrew's gonna come and give a good message. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Hallelujah. If it comes out of this book, it's a good message. That's all we need right there. Hallelujah. Will y'all go ahead and sit down or stand, stand in somebody else's chair, sit in somebody else's chair? It doesn't matter. We're still gonna get the word of God. How about that? Pretty excited to continue the series that we've been doing here on Wednesday night about mask and just really breaking, breaking off a lot of lies that religion taught us. And as I was uh studying for tonight over the last week, I found a story that I thought was was pretty fitting, and it actually pulled it two different ways. And then after reading the story, I wrote a little a little thought, and so I want to read that to you before we dive in, but you so you can go ahead and be turning. We're gonna be primarily in Genesis 32, verses 24 through 30. And the story goes like this A little boy was playing ball in the house when he accidentally knocked over a lamp. It crashed to the floor and it shattered into pieces. The boy's heart sank. Oh no, he thought. Dad's gonna be so angry. He ran and hid in his room, certain he was in trouble. A few minutes later, his older brother came in. What's wrong? the brother asked. I broke dad's lamp, the boy cried. I know I deserve punishment. The older brother wrapped his arms around him and said, I'll go talk to Dad. The boy waited nervously. See, Dad's justice required a consequence for what was broken. And when the older brother went and found his dad, his dad began to beat him for what the little brother had did. And he beat him until he was bleeding. The older brother stepped in and accepted the punishment the little boy deserved, because the punishment was carried by another, the boy could come home forgiven. Another way to tell this story is the older brother found dad searching the house for the frightened son. He's hiding, the older brother said. Dad's eyes filled with tears. I've been looking for him. I don't want him hiding from me. So the older brother went into the room, sat beside the boy, and said, Dad isn't trying to get away from you. Come with me. The brother took the boy by the hand and led him back to his father. When the boy entered the room, Dad knelt down, hugged him tightly, and said, Yes, the lamp is broken, but you are my son, and nothing could make me stop loving you. In the first story, the focus is on the brother taking the punishment. In the second story, the focus is on the brother revealing the father's heart and bringing the son out of hiding and back into relationship. Both stories agree that the brother rescues the boy. The difference is what the rescue is rescuing them from. One's from punishment, the other one's from separation and fear. And as I was thinking about that, I started thinking about penile substitution. And you may not know some of the big words, and I'm going to do my best to describe them so that we can actually grasp what we've actually believed most of our life without ever fully understanding what we were actually buying into that didn't free us, but just made us bound. It made us slaves instead of sons. We lived so sin conscious that we didn't wake up sun-conscious. We didn't understand that we were sons of the most high king of kings and lord of lords, and he didn't pay a price for us to one day die and go to heaven. He paid a price for heaven to get into us now. And so I wrote this as if for many of us, penile substitution taught that the cross was primarily about Jesus absorbing the Father's punishment so God could finally forgive us. Yet the beauty of the gospel is far deeper than a transaction. The cross is not the story of divine wrath finding a substitute, it is the revelation of divine love pursuing restoration. What replaces penile substitution is not a lesser view of the cross, but a greater vision of union. Jesus enters our condition, conquers sin, death, and separation, and brings humanity back into communion with the Father. The cross unveils Abba's heart, exposes the lie of distance, and declares our true identity as beloved sons and daughters, rather than satisfying God's need to punish, Christ reveals God's relentless desire to reconcile, restore, and embrace all of creation through love. And so I thought I probably should start off with that tonight before we dive in. Because I like to always try to reintroduce as if nobody's ever heard me before. Because you can live in church for a long time and had the words preached from this book and still get the wrong message. Because I know for me, I grew up believing that I had to perform in order to be accepted instead of understanding that the performance was going to come because I was accepted. I was living from his acceptance. I was living from his love. This is first love that he loved us. I live from his love, from that place of intimacy, and everything flows from he loves me. That'll free you right there. It is enough that Abba loves me. Before the foundation of the earth, he picked me. When I was but yet a sinner, Christ died for me. That's a beautiful gospel. That is the good news. I'm loved. And if I truly understand that, I won't sin. I don't have to be so focused on not sinning so I don't sin. I just focused on being love and therefore I don't being loved, so therefore I don't sin. And then we can come into places not expecting to be loved, but come into places expecting to be love. And then we can't get hurt by people because we wasn't coming for a transaction. I didn't need you to love me. I came in already loved. I came in loved by the Father with an expectation in my heart to love well anyone that gets in front of me, not expecting to receive anything from anybody in front of me. Therefore, you can't hurt me because I'm free from me, so I'm free from you. This is the gospel. This is why Jesus could walk around and love so well because he wasn't tied to anyone. He said, The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me. He has no hold on me. I'm not living from his fallen state and his misunderstanding of God and thinking that if you don't take it, you'll never get it. Because that's what Satan thought, Lucifer, I gotta take it if I want to get it. And Jesus is even right there in the face of Lucifer telling, You missed the point, buddy. It was never about what you could get from God, it was about being present with God. And so we're gonna be continuing down the series here on the mask, where we've been talking a lot about masks that we put on to fit in, mask we put on to hide, things that we've taken that didn't belong to us, pretending to be someone that we're not. And it's just we're just really working through trying to strip all of that away to realize that God made you one of one. And who you are is enough. We don't have to be like anybody else. We have to look at him, behold the Lamb, and let the Lamb of God shine through us. Because the world doesn't need any of us, it needs Jesus. He just chose us to shine through. And that doesn't, we're not worms. We're not worms. He didn't pick worms, he picked sons and daughters. And so I want to talk, the primary focus tonight is gonna be um on Penul. And that that's that's where I told you to go in Genesis 32, starting in verse 24. I'm gonna go ahead and read it, and then we're just gonna kind of walk back through as slow as I can. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of day. Now, when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go for the day breaks. But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, What is your name? He said, Jacob. And he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked, saying, Tell me your name, I pray. And he said, Why is it that you ask about my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Panul, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. So one of one of the I've been setting, even as we started down Jacob's story, I've been setting with Panul for weeks. And just really studying it. And really, the more that I set with it, the more interested that I became in with his story and less with the wrestling that took place. Because that's usually what everybody talks about within this is the wrestling, the wrestling with God, the wrestling with an angel. Was it God? Wasn't an angel? And and and so we we do that in life. We wake up every day, and it's more about the struggle than our breakthrough. It's more about the new name. But what I want to focus on is getting away from all of that and just focusing on one word face. One single word, Panul, which means face of God. And and uh like when you when you look at this, like of all the things that Jacob could have named this place, he he named it face. I don't know about you, but that's not my first pick of any name for anything. You get a new puppy, I'm gonna name you face. Like you you might you might name him tiger because he's striped. You know, you you might name him bull because he's a little bit bigger. You know, you start picking names based on, like if he's a little bit more aggressive, you're gonna give him an aggressive name. And so we start naming things based on transactions. We start naming things based on situations. And and it's like my kids, because we got a we got a ranch and everything is named, and one of the one of the sheep that we have was snotting one day and its name became snotty. Come on now. I mean, that's that's how we name things, right? Like he he he could have he could have named it victory because he won. He he could have named it like transformation because there was transformation that took place. I mean, I don't know about you, but like in a place where I wrestle with an angel or with God and it lets me go because I win, and because I win, it has to bless me. I might name it blessing. This is the place of blessing. But he but he names it face. He doesn't name it Israel. We'd have a different geography if he did. Right? Like we don't we don't understand in these moments, like our history was hanging in the balance of what Jacob is about to name this place. And if he would have named it Israel, if he'd have named it anything, that would have now been its name. You ever think about Adam in the garden? All the animals walking by, like a duck walks by, and he could have named it anything. Then we would have been calling it that. That's a pig. Now the duck becomes a pig. We wouldn't know any better, but it sounds weird now. But like encounters with God with permission to name things doesn't just transform you, it transforms future generations. I don't think you caught that. You need to be careful what you name yourself. You need to be careful what you identify with. You you're the head, not the tail. So stop acting like a tail, calling yourself a head. You can't do that. That's illegal in the kingdom of God. If he says you're the head and not the tail, you better act like you're ahead. But many of us live behind. Come on. Like we Jacob walks away from this most significant encounter of his life and he says, I've seen God face to face. But one of the one of the real interesting things is because if we go back, like his father grabs hold of him. Remember, he puts he puts the hair on his arm. I wouldn't have had to, I got it. But he puts the hair on his arm from the animal to to deceive his father because Esau was hairy, but Jacob wasn't. And his mother put him up to it, and his dad grabs his arm and says, Who are you? And he says, I'm Esau. But right now he's got something grabbed a hold of him, and he says, What's your name? Can I tell you when God gets a hold of you, you can't lie? I might have tricked everybody else, but I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm Jacob. I am Jacob. I am afraid, I am struggling, I feel alone. But we pretend like God doesn't have a hold of us, so we talk the big talk, but we're never actually transformed because God never wanted us to be perfect, He wanted us to be authentic. He wants relationship with sons and daughters that can come and say, I broke your lamp, Dad. Not I broke your lamp, I hope dad doesn't find out. I broke your lamp, I need to go tell dad. Because there's a lesson that's going to be learned, and yes, you broke the lamp, but guess what? You're more valuable than the lamp. Yes, you sinned, but you're more valuable than the sin. Most of us believe that we were sin. We weren't sin, we were just dirty. We just needed a bath, and only the blood could cleanse us. We tried everything else to wash it away. I know I did. Growing up trying to wash it away. If I can just bury it deep enough, maybe it won't be there anymore. And Jesus was so kind that he waited until I would fully receive the blood. And then I got set free because whom the sun sets free is free indeed. We're not free sometimes, guys. We're free indeed. But you can't you can't say whom the sun sets free is free indeed, and act like you're not free. It doesn't mean you're not gonna struggle through it. It means you got a hand to hold while you walk through it. Y'all heard me say this many times. I I understand that it gets some people through the day. And it's the picture of the footsteps, the footprints on the beach. And there's two steps or four footprints, and then it goes to two, and it says, That's when Jesus started carrying me. I don't think it's when Jesus started carrying you. I think it's when you finally started walking in step with him. That's the point. He said, Follow me. Walk as I walk, do what I've done, and greater. We start walking in unison and step with him to where our footsteps are in line with his. Narrow is the way. He says, I've seen God face to face. See, when when we when we hear the word face in in the in the English language, it's face. If you say, I seen Brother Andrew's face tonight, you're actually talking about my face. But when you start to understand Panol and the word face and what he's actually saying, it's presence. He's saying, I had this personal encounter. He couldn't name it Israel, he couldn't name it victory, because the presence of God was more valuable than anything he had ever tasted and anything he would ever taste. He said, This place is going to be known as the place where I saw and lived in his presence. The presence of God will transform you. And the more you go there, the more you get transformed. I don't know where we got it. At some point we've arrived. We never arrive. Like you look at Paul's, it's one of my favorite things that Paul ever says. Like you watch Paul's life. He's like shipwrecked on an island. He's stoned, he's beaten, he's in prison, he's raising people from the dead. He's pulling, he's getting the lame up, he he's preaching the gospel, planting churches, wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. And towards the end of his life, I think he says it like this Oh, my friends, you think I've accomplished something? In comparison to knowing Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection? This is all like dung. You think you think I know him because of what that I've walked out and what I wrote, what you've seen? I'm telling you, there's so much more than what I've discovered. I hear him saying, I just I want to get in the presence of him one more time. I just I want one more encounter with him. Paul Paul said, I could I could go to heaven, but it's better for you that I remain. And I thought about that. What was he saying? A man that's had an encounter with God will have more encounters with God, and the more encounters that he has with God, the more he's able to reveal of God upon the earth. So I think what Paul was actually saying was I could go. And that would be glorious. But if I stay, I'll get to know more of him. And I'll leave a greater foundation for you to know more of him than what I started with. So we don't understand how blessed we are to have this book. Peter didn't have it. James, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul didn't have it. He couldn't go and just study everything that's happened over and over and over and understand that this is a living testimony of who Jesus Christ is, but also who we are to him. And every page says worthy, worth it, valuable, loved, picked, chosen, son. That's beautiful to me. I was like, if I had to write a sentence to really describe what Penul is, what is the face of God? What is what is an in because we we've done this, we've cheapened encounters with God in the church, especially in the charismatic world. Come get hands laid on you, fall backwards, flop a little bit on the ground, get up, not change, and say you had an encounter with God. But he defines it. Not just in name, but in story. Such an encounter with God. Who are you? I'm Jacob. I used to pretend to be Esau. He said, You won't even be Jacob anymore. You'll be Israel. That's encounter. This is what I wrote about Panul. The place where one comes into direct encounter with God's presence and is transformed. Not has the opportunity to get transformed. Is. Is. You have no choice. Me and one of my mentors, we agree on this, and a large portion of the church disagrees. I'm gonna go with my mentor because I found it before I found him, and then he found it before I found him, and then we agreed on it. Does that make sense? You have free will. I think free will exists outside of God. Once you give your life to him, you belong to him. You shouldn't be able to choose anymore. You're his. You should operate like he does, love like he does, and walk this thing out. It doesn't mean you're gonna be perfect, it means you're gonna have struggles, but you lean not on your own understanding, but you keep coming to the feet of the one that knows. I'm gonna tell you, when I had my encounter with God in 2018, I did not have any choice. The moment he touched me, I was transformed and was never the same and have never been given permission to go back. That's an encounter with God. The problem is, is the enemy has infiltrated the church and paraded false encounters so that people will rely on false encounters more than true encounters because if the church doesn't get transformed, then the body of Christ doesn't come alive. I'll just let you offset with that one for a second. It's not enough to come to church. You gotta be the light. You gotta go and tell them. But you can't go and tell them if you haven't been enlightened. You can't be the light until you've been enlightened. I can give you a flashlight all day long if it ain't got batteries in it, it don't work. Maybe as a as a weapon, you can hit somebody with it, but we ain't supposed to hit each other, even though I want to sometimes. Come on now. Come on, y'all are saved, but you ain't that saved. But like we we've got this, we've got this paradox that begins to take place because Jacob is saying, I've seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Yet else, like all the other places in Scripture, repeatedly suggest that God's fullness cannot be directly apprehended by human beings. No one can see the face of God and live. And and I've even taught it and probably even cheapened it by saying, well, he didn't live. Jacob died, and he rose again Israel. And that's good, but we got to go deeper. Like that's great revelation. He did die. He saw God face to face. He said, Who are you? I'm Jacob. You're Jacob's dead now. You're now Israel. You're gonna walk different out of here. You're gonna walk so different that you're gonna walk with a limp. And that limp's gonna let everybody know that you've encountered something greater than you that changed the way you walked forever. That's great. That's powerful revelation, and it's good. But the reality is, is what what we see is Penul becomes this reoccurring biblical pattern that God is both hidden and revealed. You've seen him, but you also haven't. You know him, but you also don't. You've encountered him, but there's also more. That's a paradox. He's he's near, like, but you can't just approach him willy-nilly. Y'all say willy-nilly in Georgia?

unknown 27:43

Willy nilly.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Okay. A couple people say it. Amen. You can't come to him like you you appo you approach you approach the throne boldly, but boldly doesn't mean with chaos. It's with reverence. We we never come into the presence of the king without reverence. I'm a son, but I still walk in with reverence. I still walk in with honor, I still walk in understanding who I'm walking in front of. He's the one. He's he's God is knowable, but he's beyond knowing. Like you're not gonna stand before God and go, I know him. No, he's beyond knowing. You you can never fully ascertain who God is, you can never fully understand who God is. A friend of mine that's a missionary in Mexico, been a missionary his entire life in Mexico, was born there, pretty much. And he was telling me that a buddy of his had a dream. And in the dream, he he was looking at it in a desert. He was standing in the middle of a desert, and in the dream he had supernatural vision to see around the curvature of the earth. And in every direction that he looked, all around the curvature of the earth, all he all he could see was sand. Everywhere he looked, and he and he's spinning in a circle real slow, and he spins all the way back around to where he was, and standing in front of him is Jesus. And Jesus doesn't say anything, he just bends down and picks up one grain of sand and holds it out. The man holds out his hand and Jesus takes the grain of sand and puts it in his hand. And then Jesus takes his hand and he spins in a circle and he says, He says, I want you to know that this is how much you know of God. This piece of sand. And he takes his hand and he spins in a circle and he says, This is how much there is of God. I don't know about you, but when I first heard that, that shook me. All those granules, so much of God. He's knowable, but but you'll never be able to fully know. You'll never be able to fully understand. Because the journey is about knowing him deeper and deeper. Glory to glory. I don't know why we think that when we die and go to heaven, glory is gonna stop. I think it's only gonna be about glory. Glory, glory, glory, glory. I want to walk through this because it's gonna help whenever I start breaking this down here in just a second. Because when when Jacob has this encounter, it doesn't it doesn't resolve all of these contradictions, it preserves it. Panul is is is paradoxical because Jacob is both both encounters God and doesn't comprehend God. So he's he's encountering God, but not comprehending him. I've been touched, but I need to get touched again. I understand. Like it's it's it's the man, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Because in each new journey, each new season, each new time frame of you either reading through the Bible again, each new year that you're saved, you're deepening your understanding of who God is. Therefore, you find new unbeliefs that used to have beliefs attached to them, but because you know the more of God now, you're going to step into that understanding. Are y'all catching? You understand what I'm saying? You your walk with God should be deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And the further you go down the trail, the more you're convicted about things that didn't used to bother you. Not the more you're in sin, the more you're convicted. Conviction means get away from. Sin means I indulged in. That's the difference. Conviction pulls you away from it. That's that's mercy pulls you out of sin. Grace pulls you out of sin. But if I live convicted from his presence, I don't indulge in those things that I'm convicted about. Therefore, as I'm walking through this world, I'm becoming holier and holier by looking at his righteousness. All that matters is beholding him. And then you will be able to say, the ruler of this world's coming, but I'm not afraid because he has nothing in me. And that doesn't mean you've reached perfection. That means the level of understanding that you're walking in, you are walking that outrightly. That's righteousness with God. To the level of which I understand I am walking correctly, but I pray that tomorrow I have more understanding so that I can walk in more righteousness. And then you understand that it wasn't even about you. It's about the person you're going to encounter tomorrow. It's about the person next week that's going to need more Jesus than what you're carrying right now, and the Lord's preparing you to be a vessel and a conduit so that when you stand in front of them, you can light it up. Like he he like if if he completely was transformed, later on when he finds out that Esau's coming, he doesn't give get afraid. But instead, later on, he's got this encounter, everything's happened. He hears about Esau, he's scared, he's nervous. He starts putting on old thoughts and old ways. But that's just permission to come back to Panul. Not the physical location. Whenever you pray, go into your closet and shut the door. What if you ain't got no doors? What if you ain't got no closet? How do I pray then? He's talking about your heart. Your heart becomes a place of transformation because you can turn inwardly as often as you try to express outwardly and be transformed inwardly, so it will be expressed outwardly. What's done in secret, he'll make it known in public. He's gonna reveal it. That's his nature, revealing. And yeah, it goes both ways. You're doing things you shouldn't be, it's gonna be shown. That's mercy. You're living from him, living in presence with him in intimacy, locked eye to eye, nose to nose. People are gonna know it when you walk into the room. Something different about that man, something different about that woman. I don't know what it is. They make me nervous. Good. Find out why. What is it? What is it that's the flesh that's that's made like that's what was happening with Jacob? The old thoughts of everything he had done with Esau started coming back to haunt him, and he lived from the lies. And Esau meets him and greets him, and they kiss. He doesn't kill him. I can't believe you stole my birthright. Can't believe you stole my blessing. The transformation on Jacob got a different response from Esau than what it would have done if Jacob would not have been transformed. When we look at this, like Jacob doesn't he doesn't go and and and have some encounter that births some vision. He doesn't get some sermon. Like he he he gets this living encounter from wrestling. And and the divine encounter comes disguised as conflict. I'm waiting for my encounter. Maybe you're in it. But all I see is conflict, all I see is problems.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

His blessing comes through a struggle. We despise the struggle and miss the blessing.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Oh, all that God has is struggles. No, God has blessings. You're not struggling with God, you're struggling with yourself. You're on need and desire to be right. You're on need and desire to be the man, the woman. You're on desire to need like you need to have control. Jacob's entire life, he's just he's performed to receive and took what wasn't his. He goes and works for with Laban to get a wife. Then he gets cheated and stays and works more to get another one. The one he was supposed to got to begin. All he knows is performance. I think Laban was a gift from God. You're the deceiver, you get deceived. You're gonna work your butt off for what you thought you were gonna get. And I'm gonna see if you stay long enough to get it. And then when he did, he gets blessed. And then things that he touches begin to transform and be better than what Laban has. Because he was, he didn't, it's there's so much to Jacob's story. It's so hard to not chase it. Just a chapter before, like he's he's like meeting Esau and getting kissed, and then he's having this radical encounter, and things are being transformed. When we think about encounter with God, we've got to stop thinking of observation. And we got to start understanding panel is participation. He he didn't he didn't have God fall on him and he just lay there and receive it. He participated in the struggle, he participated in the wrestling. And then he leaves with with a blessing, a new name, and a limp. We want the blessing. Come on. We want I'm fine with the new name. Israel's a pretty great name. Oh, but you gotta walk with a limp for the rest. Oh, I'm out. Now I'll just keep my name the same, and I feel like I'm blessed enough. If we're being real. If we understood, like if they would have came to Jacob, and the angel of the Lord would have come down the night before, and he said, Hey, um, an angel's gonna come tomorrow night. You're gonna have an encounter with this angel, you're gonna wrestle, it's gonna be hard. You're gonna win. Right there, we're in. We're gonna win. Because you gotta win. You're gonna get blessed. I'm in, that's good too. You're gonna get a new name. Yes, that's awesome. Love it. What's the name gonna be, right? That's the first thing we would ask. New name, what's the name gonna be? I need to make sure I like the name. What's gonna be Israel? Oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, and by the way, he's gonna rip your hip out of the socket. And then you're gonna walk with a limp for the rest of your days. I I think he probably would have gone a different direction. But we want to know what's it gonna, what's the encounter with God? That's why we come with the preconceived notion to churches and services. I need an encounter, and you have an understanding in your mind of what you want that encounter to look like. I'm coming to get free. Free from what? I'm sick and tired of these bad dreams. That's great. That's great. That's an that's an awesome thing to come for. But if you come just to get whatever He wants to give you, those bad dreams will go away, or you'll start seeing them through a different lens and see the hand of God in them. I ain't never had a bad dream. I had dreams I didn't understand and called them bad. Then God gave me vision to see things differently, and now I don't see any dream as bad because the voice of God speaks through all things. And if he speaks through all things, I'm listening.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

He gets this wound and this blessing, and they arrive together.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Come on. What was your wound and your blessing?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

And are we despising the blessing because the wound? What was it that hurt?

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Well, I had a bad leader in my life. I got hurt by church. What was the blessing? I guarantee you the blessing was greater than the wound. I grew a Baptist. Talk about church hurt. But you know what I got? The blessing? I don't even talk about it like that. I got a love for this. Because the Baptists love this. Each wound in my life had a blessing attached to it. You get to choose to live from the wound or the blessing. And it matters. Before he steps into Panul, he he's he's this calculating person. Everything's calculated. He's a strategist. He's always walking through strategy in his mind, and he's trying his best to control the outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

But at Panul, that control fails. The struggle remains.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

But then surrender emerges. After, like at Panul, these things happen. After Panul, he becomes Israel. Can can you can you can you walk you you want you want destiny? You want anointing? You want gifting? You want to be used in power?

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Here I am, God send me. Can you handle eating the scroll?

SPEAKER_02 43:49

Can you handle being different? We want to promise. We don't want to win. I didn't come in here to walk away less than what I can. I want it to be enhanced in all things. And I think God looked at Jacob and he said, the biggest struggle in your life is the way you walk. I need to change the way you walk because if I can change the way you walk, I'll change the way you think. You can get a new name all day long, but if your mind's not transformed, it won't matter. Beloved, you are beloved. That's real. But until it changes the way you think, it won't matter. You can call yourself beloved all day long, but if in your mind you're alienated, you won't manifest truth. You'll manifest weakness and you'll put it on others. And then everybody will be one more failure, one more thing that didn't measure up, didn't fulfill, one more job that couldn't get you what you wanted or what you desired, instead of just living transformed and living changed. And it was never about how successful you were, it was about who your God is. I saw God face to face. And now I've got a new name. And now I'll walk different. People are going to know that I had this encounter with God because the limp is real. Like prevailing in his old way. He wins by ceasing to do what he used to do. He wins. You ever notice that the gospel's upside down? He wins by being overcome. He wins the wrestling match, but he's overcome by the presence. That's the transformation. You can't stand outside God and examine God. Why'd God do it that way? I wouldn't have done it that way. I thought by now, why haven't you? We've all asked these questions of God. That's standing outside, examining what's within. Because when you come, when you come in, there's no examining going on. You're getting examined. That's what it feels like to step fully into the presence of Yahweh. Is you start getting so examined that things that are not, God never takes anything. He removes what was never supposed to be. Heart postures, mindsets, ideologies, idol worship. You start getting those things brought to the surface. And he just begins to cut it off. Because he loves you. He loves you too much to leave you the way that you came. The way the world had tried to redesign you and convince you that you were, when he already knows who you are. He already knows your purpose. He already knows your destiny. It's just been covered up with so much junk. If you study this, just study it, you'll remain unchanged. Yeah, I know it. I know atheists that know this better than me. They can quote almost the entire thing completely unchanged by it. But when you have an encounter with the divine, you start being the one that's changed. You don't see this as a book anymore. This is life. Not the pages, not the words, the spirit. The spirit within it. And when you start reading this thing, understanding that you're loved, he picked you, and this is a story for you. Basic instructions before leaving earth. This is a love letter to me. At the great lengths that the Father went to make me realize that he was never disgusted with me, that he was never trying to get away from me. That sin had gotten on me, and he had to stay at a distance until I could be cleansed because to come in his presence with that sin would destroy me. The blood of Jesus made the way so that we can now enter. It was always about restoration. It was always about transformation. It was always about you becoming different than what you are even today.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

From glory to glory.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Coming back to stories like this and getting deeper revelation, deeper understanding. Father, what are you saying through this story that I know so well that I've missed? What transformation, what exposure, what are you saying to the church now through this story that I know so well that I missed or didn't? This is what Jesus said to the disciples. There are many things I long to tell you, but you simply cannot bear to hear them yet. But as they get transformed, they have a foundation to receive it. Paul said, a secret that was hidden until now. He was talking about grace. He was saying that the church didn't have a foundation to receive this yet. But now, now it does. He starts preaching the grace message, goes to the apostles and tells them about the grace message, and they approve it and give him permission to go and continue to preach it. The name, like face, like the face of God is not just about seeing God. It's about being seen by God. When you understand that he sees you, everything begins to change. Depart from me, for I never knew you. You knew me. It's about him. This is first love, that he loved us. Friend, you need to study your Bible and you need to pray and you need to figure out how to love God more.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

No.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

You need to study your word, you need to pray and understand that he loves you more. And from understanding that love, I can then love him correctly because we can never love him with our own love. We love him back with the love we've received. I become a better husband because I'm loving my wife with the love that God has given me. I can love people better because I'm loving people with the love that God has loved me with. None of us fully believe it that we're loved with the same love that the Father loved Jesus with. But we're going to. There is a generation that is coming that will fully believe that. And we'll see a great manifestation of the power of God through the intimacy of God on the face of the earth like we've never seen before, all because people know that they are loved by God. See, Jacob in this story, he goes, you know why he ran there? He was looking for safety. But instead, he gets transformation. He thinks that he's grasping God, yet discovers God has grasped him. And here's the most beautiful thing: his earthly father grabs a hold of him and gives him a blessing. And immediately it's into hiding. I gotta hide what's mine so nobody can take it. I gotta go into a land far away and I'm gonna spend 14 years to earn two wives. So at least I can start growing my own seed. But then the heavenly father grabs a hold of him and blesses him, and it's a completely different result. Completely different. See, when Jacob starts off with Esau, he thinks that he has to become Esau in order to get blessed. But when he comes in a hiding place, he has an encounter with God and understands that all he has to do to be blessed is to be Jacob. Some of y'all need to hear this. You're so busy trying to be everybody but you. Just be you and come to God. Come to God boldly with truth on your lips. Let out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth, speak what's really going on. He already knows, anyways. And he loves you, period. You can't chase him away. His love is not fickle like human love. That's why Jesus could walk with Judas, who's stealing and lying, and still washes feet. We look at it from the earthly perspective. I can never trust anyone like that. Jesus said it was never about trust, it's always been about love. And the Father loves him. And if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. It was about the manifestation of the Father through the Son. And I and I think that one of the the most amazing things is he he names this Pinul from the face that he saw.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

But in reality, it was always about the face that saw him.

SPEAKER_02 56:08

And it saw him first. And it never looked away. God wasn't lingering and waiting. He was close. Panul becomes this archetype of encounters where truth is not mastered by intellect or understanding. But it it's it's it's entered existentially. A reality that can be experienced more fully than it can be explained. Like you can't you can try to explain the love of God and you'll fall short. And my my greatest hope is to leave behind a legacy of messages that people can can stumble upon and read and watch and stop performing to be loved. Stop trying to measure up to be accepted, but just live from that he loves you and everything that you're supposed to be doing, all of this happens by you fully understanding John 15, living connected to the true vine. I don't have to try to bear fruit because I'm connected to love. It happens naturally. Lord, we love you. We thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you for revelation and encounters that will continue to flow like rapids, Lord. Mighty winds of heaven blow in this place. Touch every single place in the people's minds, listening and that will listen, and begin to transform them. Let them think differently because they're loved differently. Let a move of God start inside of them first before it ever tries to start outside of them. Let them have that penal moment to where everything changes again and they walk differently again, never despising what you've done in the past, but being wholly dissatisfied with the level of you that they have in their life, wanting to have more. Lord, we love you in Jesus' name. Amen. Bless y'all.