good morning my friends i'm pastor Steven brooks welcome today to morning glory our midweek bible study i'm so happy that you are here today i want to invite you grab your bible and meet me today in psalm 109 we're going to talk about what happens when you give yourself to prayer praise the lord let's open up in prayer heavenly father as we jump into your word we ask that your holy spirit would quicken would illuminate the scriptures so that they would be alive to us let them leap off the page into our heart and bear good fruit the word producing one hundredfold in our lives now father we thank you we give you all of the praise in jesus name we pray we all agree and say amen we are in psalm 109 verse 1 this of course is a psalm of david do not keep silent oh god of my praise for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have opened against me they have spoken against me with the lying tongue and we are seeing more persecution against christians within our society here in america i do believe the lord has some surprises some good things that he's going to do and i believe the enemy in a sense has overplayed his hand and we're going to begin to see god do some very special things for his people verse 3 they have also surrounded me with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause isn't that fascinating fighting against david without a cause now verse 4 in return for my love they are my accusers but i give myself to prayer now this psalm in a sense many jewish scholars believe it's in reference to a certain person that was very close to david we'll cover that a little bit more in just a moment but it also has overtones that would be messianic of things that christ experienced in his own life such as verse 8 let his days be few and let another take his office so even as david went through a great betrayal at the worst possible time in his life so the lord jesus also ventured through this betrayal with judas that his days be few and let another take his office and we know that the days of judas were shortened that he killed himself and we know that another person took his office his apostolic office was replaced so we see a lot of prophetic shadows of what's coming many of the difficult things that the lord went through the attacks the hatred that was against him but he stayed on his assignment he went to the cross and he got it done praise god and so we are blessed today and we are more than conquerors in christ jesus now again he's talking about all of the hatred all of the betrayal and we also have perhaps what we could call more of the literal contextual meaning of verse 8 let his days be viewed and let another take his office and many of the jewish sages the rabbis believe here that david is addressing the betrayal of a hitherfail and i hit the fail for those of you that are familiar with his story was the king's top advisor i mean this guy was brilliant he was wise he was smart and his counsel it was like if he shared something i mean you could take it to the bank it was like it was almost like on the edge of supernatural type counsel everything that he said to do or would recommend to do it would always work out the right way and so we're talking about a hitherfail but when absalom rose up to betray his father and persuaded enough people to join the rebellion and then the the rebellion went in the full swing mode where uh the conspiracy uh it worked in a sense where he took temporarily the throne and david is on the run for his life with his small group of loyalists while absalom is taken over the throne and in david's most trying moment of his life guess what a hitherfail did he joined absalom and so that was an extremely uh cruel blow dealt to david at the lowest point in his life and so i think it's very important at what we're looking at today to understand that we know the value of wisdom and god places a high priority on walking in light walking in wisdom but i believe that you can still be brilliant you can be even genius level intellect and you can be able to counsel and advise others with good advice but you can do all of that but if you have some areas in your life that are not that are not submitted to the lordship of jesus christ then you can still run my friends into trouble you know it was years back when i ran into a minister a very well-known minister and i met him behind the scenes uh at a television studio and we were both doing some things for tv and uh we talked just for a few minutes and he he appreciated the anointing that was on my life and at the same time i could appreciate the different type of anointing that was resting on him and he said something to me that no other older type minister had ever said he said stephen he said at this stage in your life he said it's very important that you begin to get a good grasp on the wisdom of god and god wants you to walk in his wisdom and i knew when he said that that was something that i had hungered for and i needed to venture further into and so he prayed for me because it was all over his life and he was a very wise man well pastor stephen that's wonderful that's wonderful where's he at today are you ready for this one right now he's sitting in prison you can have a lot of wisdom you can be a pretty sharp smart cookie you can be and a hitherfail where you're advising the king and all of your advice is good but my friends if you focus on some of these areas that can be a uh they're supplemental you can get enthused into these areas where you begin to come lopsided spiritually and if you're not careful you'll start to drift and we never want that to happen that minister was a good man of god but he got off track he had tremendous wisdom but he deviated from something that we want to talk about today and because of that deviation his heart began to deviate away from the lord he began to cheat on his taxes sometimes he wouldn't file or report certain taxes or income other times he made up some of the wildest fraudulent tax forms and filled them out they're all fake and false and turn them all in and he got busted for all of that and he'll probably be in prison for a few more years so we need something more than just wisdom we see something uh that i think is fascinating in the book of ecclesiastes chapter two ecclesiastes chapter two now listen to this concerning the wisest man that ever walked on the earth outside of jesus now when we're also talking about the wisest man uh and we're referring to solomon you have to understand that that wisdom that he had not all of that in a sense is spiritual wisdom a lot of it was natural wisdom i mean he could lecture on all types of things he could lecture on plants and animals but really after you've heard him talk about animals and plants now from today's perspective of being born again which they didn't have that back then of being in the new covenant and having the the life and the nature of christ imparted into you upon the new birth experience you know there would probably be a point where you if you were back in that time and you had this same experience you would probably say now solomon this is really nice i've really enjoyed you lecturing on the hyssop plant and i've really enjoyed your talk on the leopard but can you tell me about kingdom living and how to live and walk in the spirit well no he did not have that type of wisdom and that's the type that we need to have that's the type that is a higher dimension of wisdom and uh it's spiritual look at verse 1 ecclesiastes chapter 2 verse 1 this would be solomon i said in my heart come now i will test you with mirth therefore enjoy pleasure but surely this also was vanity this was a man that had unlimited financial ability to explore anything natural that he wanted to as far as uh you know the pleasure of like i wonder what this is like i wonder what that's like he was able to do all of that verse two i said of laughter madness and of mirth what does it accomplish verse 3 i searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh that is not the higher form of wisdom he's going to explore ways to gratify his flesh with wine he said while guiding my heart with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly so he had this ability to retain that incredible wisdom that god gave him but yet while he's holding that retaining that wisdom he's going to explore folly and he's going to explore how to you know pamper the flesh and things like that and that is what got him into trouble verse 9 so i became great and excelled more than all who were before me in jerusalem also my wisdom remained with me while he's exploring how to gratify his flesh with wine he retained that wisdom while he's exploring how to gratify his flesh by building a new swimming pool he's retaining all of that wisdom so he's indulging in all of these things but he still has this ability to govern the kingdom and to function in a way where he can carry on about business but but he's drifting he's drifting so we need to remedy the shortcoming of being brilliant we need to remedy the shortcoming of being very wise and prudent and even able to help others by giving them the right answers and by the way that's what solomon could do he could tell others what they're supposed to do but yet he himself was deviating from making those applications to his own life now we need to find out what will stabilize us more than what wisdom alone can do and we find that actually back in psalm 109 let's turn back over there psalm 109 and let's go to verse 4. david said in return for my love they are my accusers but i give myself to prayer now let's dig into this just for a moment those of you that are bible students know that when you're reading through the old testament which is written originally in hebrew or if you're reading through the new testament which is originally written in greek if you see something in italics it means that it's not there in the original hebrew or greek the translators added a few words to help bring out the context of the sentence sometimes adding those words helps sometimes it can actually diminish the punch of it because while they're trying to help us to be able to relate it to an english mindset or a western mindset it could miss the thrust of what's being said so let's look at it and what it literally says in return for my love they are my accusers but i notice give myself give myself is in italics that means it's not there in the original hebrew what is david actually saying but i but i prayer but i prayer he basically just moved into a place under this tremendous stress and pressure that he was under with the overthrow of his of his kingship by his own son of all people he just thought lord this this is beyond my ability to fix this this is not good and my son is trying to kill me and so he just became prayer what else could he do he just became prayers praying all the time praise the lord and this really will do some very unusual things in your life when you begin to touch this look at it again but i prayer but i gave myself to prayer but i prayer wow praise the lord he became prayer well what does that mean pastor stephen he became prayer well i i believe he just got caught up in this prayer life with the lord and it was so blessing him that he was able to sail through that difficult time pop out on the other side get his kingdom back get the throne back and then put everything back in order the way it's supposed to be now what if his son solomon had developed a prayer life like his father david had can you imagine what that would have been like with that wisdom coupled with a deep walk with god uh you talking about a golden age of israel that would have been well that would have been very much messianic type overshadowing for sure but solomon had uh incredible natural wisdom he could touch a little bit of that divine wisdom but that is a higher level where it's spiritual wisdom praise the lord and so he could not really in the sense of being under the old testament get into that but david was able to have an understanding of that because of his deep prayer life praise the lord now when you enter into a new level you still encounter the same devil but his tax his attempts to get at you they actually can become more sophisticated and that's why when you are moving into the next chapter or the next season of your life you need to have extra time it might not even be the norm but you need to have extra time where you just give yourself to prayer praise the lord and when you do that when you do that you can get through some very interesting times you know there was a man that lived in the fifth century and his name was saint simeon he lived in what is known today as modern-day syria and he was known as a stylite actually he was the first one and that can be translated as one who lived on a pillar so he started a movement and and the movement really didn't start until uh at the very latter part of his life and at his death but he started a movement of what became known as the pillar saints and although i don't know if there's any today that are actually uh that would have a ministry like that yet in the fifth century there were hundreds literally that followed in his spiritual footsteps but saint simeon he was a hermit monk and he just wanted to get close to the lord and serve the lord he was admitted to a monastery at the age of 18 but his his personal disciplines were so strict that the other monks thought you know what you'd be better living on your own your demands are too high even for us and because his influence was very strong and so he left and eventually had the idea of living on top of a pillar i'm just talking about a tall column and over time over the decades the column the pillar got higher and higher and higher toward the last pillar that he lived on i think that one was about 60 feet tall and he never came down when he lived on these pillars he never came down unless you know like maybe every uh seven or eight years he's moving to a different one but his feet never touched the ground he never came down to use the restroom he never came down to eat he stayed up there day and night 24 7 out in the desert uh with 140 degrees in the summer and freezing temperatures in the winter and day and night he lived up on top of that pillar but he developed a very deep walk with the lord and after a while people began to seek out his counsel and he would preach once in the morning on top of the pillar and then in the evening he would preach a second time and so crowds began to come because of his deep walk with the lord he had he had answers he had wisdom and so kings believe it or not began to show up in that very remote desolate place and they would king would be there with his entourage sitting on a horse talking up to simeon who's up on the pillar saying hey this is my this is my challenge i've got a war with this nation you know what would you advise me do and he was able to have the mind of god to counsel and advise uh these men and many other people many great uh ladies great queens and princesses they also came and so there was quite an unusual following but you know what you can get caught up in it in counseling and advising and doing all of this stuff and you if you're not careful you can start to lose your edge and the enemy please listen to me today he never takes a vacation even if you take a vacation he doesn't take one now there there are the rest of the lord there is psalm 23 where the lord prepares a table before us in the very presence of our enemies so yes we can take a vacation we can sit down we can relax we can eat but at the same time remember he is looking for weak spots he's looking for uh uh perhaps we could call it chinks in your armor and he's not going to attack he's not going to launch something against you when you're at your strongest he's going to come when you're at your weakest and that's what he did to jesus when the lord was right at the end of the 40-day fast he had burned up all fat reserves he had no more he's at a very critical place where the body will begin to start consuming its own muscle tissue if you don't eat it's a very dangerous spot and so that is when satan launched his attack so he doesn't play fair he plays very strategically don't think of the devil as being somebody dumb or stupid he is a supernatural creature now yes he is defeated and yes his place is beneath our feet but you have to walk in the spirit because he can be very cagey he can be very tricky and so you you want to make sure that even if you're like solomon and everything's rolling along really well don't drift stay close to the lord like david did and you'll you'll get through even very difficult times now st simeon uh he got so busy because uh the people are coming from all over the place and they want us prayers and you know and the amazing thing is that when they would give prayer requests and he would take them the ones that he could take they would always the people would get miraculous answers so this guy was very solid and uh one day though while he was up on his pillar and this you know he had had this moment of or the this season of maybe we could call it popularity or fame and people are coming from all over the place to seek his counsel and stuff like that well one day while he was on top of the pillar and this was like in between the crowds so there's there's not really anybody uh watching kind of what's going on he was up on top of his pillar and he was standing up there and uh by the way the top of the pillar that he lived on was no bigger than this desk that i have my bible my coffee cup and my notepad it was no bigger than my desk he could it was not even long enough for him to stretch out his feet hung over the side there was just a tiny little railing about that high that would keep him from blowing off when those desert winds and the desert storms would blow through that way he wouldn't get swept over the side but outside of that he was just up there well pastor stephen how did he eat well they say that he had a little rope and uh he had a uh he had some spiritual disciples that would uh you know they would tie a little bag on the rope and send some food up but uh as far as how he went to the bathroom or whatever i'm not really sure how he did all that but we do know one thing he never came down now one day he was up on the top of the pillar and while he was standing up there a chariot pulled by horses on fire swept down from the high sky swept down came and elijah the prophet was in the chariot and this chariot pulls up next to him while he's standing on top of the pedestal on top of his you know column and elijah says to him step in i have been sent from god to take you to heaven and simeon thought this is it this is what i want and he lifted up his foot to step into the chariot and the moment he lifted his foot up suddenly the chariot vanished the horses that were on fire that were that were pulling the chariot vanished elijah turned into satan and it was satan playing a trick on him who had attacked him at a moment of his weakness when he had been so busy with ministry and satan laughed at him and mocked him and then satan left and simeon who had lifted his foot up to step into the chariot said basically if i could paraphrase the devil got a big one over on me and and simeon was so upset that the devil had done that to him that he'd never put his foot down because he had put he lifted his foot up to put it over in the chariot he never put his foot down ever for the rest of his life glory to god so can you imagine standing on top of a pedestal you know six stories high uh with one on one foot well that's what he did for the rest of his life because he understood that when you're in these certain levels you have to be very very careful because the devil is very very sneaky praise the lord and so you have to become prayer praise the lord there is a time you have to just send the crowds away and say i need to go pray prayer as david discovered it brings peace against what can even be supernatural persecution there's persecution but sometimes there's even supernatural persecution that you know this is not normal this is persecution inspired by the evil one prayer also brings answers to very difficult problems and we see this in second samuel chapter 17. i like this so let's take a look at it second chapter 17 well let me look at verse 15 just for a moment verse 31 then someone told david saying a hithaphel is among the conspirators with absalom and david said o lord i pray turn the council of a hitherfail into foolishness and while the council of a hithophil in a sense was never foolishness god still turned it to something better because because absalom was he was a flesh guy so if you could pamper him and flatter him he's going to go in that direction even if it's wrong decision and that's exactly what happened so i hit the phil again had offered good counsel to absalom basically saying go take out your father right now you could you could end this whole thing right now and it's over with and you can rule and your father you know you just you know have your have your men put him to death and so uh it now if he would have done that uh it would have been the end but of course we know also that god has a covenant with david so it's this is not gonna go well for absalom either way so um david had a man on his side who shy and david basically basically said the hushite look it's going to be better if you stay here stay in jerusalem and pretend that you're going to become loyal to him but see what you can do to basically cause a train wreck and trust me that's exactly what hush i did and we see that over in chapter 17. and whosoever gave his counsel and it was it was a fake council but it buttered up absalom and he loved it and absalom bought that council and uh really i believe a hitherfield could see through it because what took place is when hush i gave his counsel he's buying time for david to escape and it worked and it worked and when a hitherfield saw it he's like uh oh this is not going to work out now the thing's over with before it has hardly even got started and he knew that and so we see in second samuel 17 verse 23 now when they hit the fell saw that it is that his advice was not followed he saddled the donkey and arose and went home to his house to his city then he put his household in order and hanged himself and died he committed suicide and he was buried in his father's tomb my friends david was a man of prayer and david just went in the prayer and god turned the whole thing praise god and i believe that as you give yourself to prayer as you in a sense become prayer god is going to do the most amazing things this year holds tremendous potential for you but you need to get in there and really pray and don't let life distract you we all have responsibilities we have things that we have to do but we also have other other time where we can make choice of how we're going to use it how we're going to spend it and you need to find that extra time and really pour it into prayer you know i was talking with a friend a theologian the other day we had coffee and he used a term i had never heard before and he said this is what some of the other theologians call these guys they actually called them super saints i said i like that that's actually there's truth in that statement and we begin to talk about one of these men for example smith wigglesworth and i'll give you an example but i want you to understand that when you begin to move into the deeper walk of prayer the supernatural does start becoming natural and you can move into it a lot sooner than you think when you really give yourself to this lifestyle walking with god in prayer oh yes wisdom has its place wisdom is going to help you live life skillfully but you're going to need more than just that wisdom you're going to need a deep prayer life or else that wisdom will start to become intellectual only and then it can degrade to even soulish wisdom and then it began to go even further down to becoming the worldly wisdom and we know from what james said in james chapter 3 that the type of worldly wisdom is actually demonically inspired so that's why you can't deviate from your prayer life because you will start to drift from the lord who is your anchor so stay close praise the lord especially in this time where god is lifting you up because i see you scaling to new heights praise the lord and the enemy he also sees that so you must keep your prayer life very very strong don't be concerned about the other christians who are out there running around they're not really concerned about you know one day they'll have to stand before the lord and give account for their life someone some people live their life uh i'm speaking of christians they leave it very very loosely they live it very loosely they give no thought to eternity they're only focused on the carnal realm of this world and getting ahead and success and things like that and there is an awareness of where you you do want to do well in life but the the true blessing and the great joy is walking close with the lord so don't let anything even busyness disrupt that or pull you away from that well we were talking about smith wigglesworth the other day my friend and i and uh you have to understand these were different types of ministers you have saints but then you have others that are just they had something different talk about smith wigglesworth just for a moment did you know that in one of his meetings he prayed for a man that had no feet so at the end of his legs there's stuff there's no feet at all and wigglesworth laid hands on the man prayed for the man and uh said it's done well the man looks down you know at his feet there's there's there's no feet and wigglesworth says it's done and the man had a little bit of a puzzled look on his face but the man had faith but he's trying to he's trying to understand the operation of faith and wigglesworth just looked at him and said it's done so go buy a pair of shoes you understand you can't do that if you're not in that prayer closet you can't you can't give statements like that you're gonna have a lot of people mad at you if you're not really walking with the lord where the lord's gonna back that up and so wigglesworth tells the man with no feet i've prayed for you we believe it's done god's done the miracle so you need to go get a pair of shoes well he gets in his wheelchair the man does with no feet and he goes down to the shoe store where they sell men's dress shoes and he rolls in there in his wheelchair and comes in there in front of the men's shoes and the salesman says um he said to him sir can i help you and the man said yes and kind of looked down at his feet and the salesman said oh okay and the man in the wheelchair said he said i want the color black size nine and a half and the man said okay and he goes to the back gets a pair of dress shoes that are black size nine and a half brings them out kneels down takes him out of the box and when he did feet popped out two feet popped out now try try telling somebody to go do that with no prayer life see do you do you understand there's a place where david knew give yourself the prayer it'll override all this stuff that uh this is god's own stuff this is going to take the lord to make this right praise god and yes we need to walk in wisdom but i've met some brilliant men in my life i've met some brilliant ministers that were brilliant apostolic administrative just they they had a flow but because i'm not really staying really close to the lord in prayer they had some things happen that that even their great wisdom did not prepare them for so that's why you have to walk close to the lord this is helping somebody today praise the lord and i believe that as this company of eagle saints begins to rise we're going to see more of these miracles such as what happened wigglesworth's life where he's touching that area where it takes a lot i would say i would be more definitive it takes everything to maintain an anointing like that you cannot have an anointing like that and go out and just run around and live your own life you can't do it you'll lose the anointing and the miracles will stop here's another one my friend were taught he and i were talking so we talked about smith wigglesworth and then we talked about padre pio another man that just his whole life was given over to prayer and so one time while padre pio was at the um of course he was there all the time you know there at the monastery well one day a lady uh had her son die in a different city and he was a young boy he was he was actually a child i shouldn't say a boy he was a child but the child died and she realized he's dead and she realized the only thing that can that can help my situation is to get him to the man of god i've got to get my dead child the padre pio so uh she lived quite a distance away so that meant she was going to have to take the train so she put her dead son in a suitcase and carried the dead child uh in the suitcase on the train i don't know how long it took her to get there it was a long time it was a long trip eventually she gets to the monastery and uh you know he would have a five o'clock in the morning mass every morning uh there at the catholic uh uh at the sanctuary there at the monastery and people would come and so forth and anyhow she gets there and she's got the suitcase and she opens up the suitcase and the dead child falls out and there were there were witnesses one man who witnessed it said he said if the child had not died you know the previous day when she left on the journey he said i'll tell you one thing he'd have died in that suitcase because there's there'd been no way he could breathe he was just i mean it was a dead body squished into a suitcase and uh when the child fell out of the suitcase she just broke down i guess her faith had reached the limit and she began the weep and the cry and padre pio picked up the dead child and just held him in his arms and the woman's crying and bawling and stuff like that and he said woman would you please be quiet you're going to wake up your son who's taking the nap and everybody looked and the child is breathing and the child's sleeping in his arms child went on to live a long life praise the lord crazy crazy miracles but but these are people wigglesworth or padre pio just can't run around all day and goof off you can't you can't do your own thing though yes they had responsibilities these are men that are working all day they had they had a demand on the anointing all day but in their free time it's what you decide to and choose to do with it that will make the difference of you moving over into the supernatural well the natural becomes supernatural and the uh the ordinary starts moving into the extraordinary and you start seeing god do the most unusual things in your life but yes there's absolutely a price tag for it and again we saw it very clearly in psalm 109 verse 4 but i give myself to prayer so he basically said but i prayer that's what it is in the hebrew he just became prayer and yes that that prayer begins to activate all of that word that you have in you all of those promises from god that you have in you and it all becomes alive praise the lord and it starts moving and it starts moving and it gets going but once it gets going if you want to keep it going like a train going down the track uh even if you turn that engine off it's still going to roll for quite a ways because of the momentum but don't ever turn the uh the engine off don't ever stop praying if you get into that what else is there really that's worth coming out of it for well pastor stephen hurry up and finish the meeting i've got things to do well like like what to like go watch a tv show that's you know full of baloney or something like that people get caught up in some of the most unusual things sometimes and they give god a little snack they give god a little attention and then they wonder why they read bible stories and it seems so foreign that how could that be but my friends god's bringing back the miraculous god's bringing back the super natural and there were those even in the old testament who touched that that anointing touched that deeper walk you had men like david really the only one that came close to david was king hezekiah who was also way up there he he was a follower of the word of god he would i mean to to a t he was a very strict follower of what god said to do because he knew that if if you did it you're going to get blessed and if you knew he also knew that if you do it wrong or you disobey it's going to allow the enemy to come in and cause trouble so he was determined to live for the lord so those two men they had that that special touch but you can move into that special touch it's not like it's something that is uh you know you're born with only and you have it or you don't have it in the realm of horses there are what are called super horses but it's determined at birth and you either have it or you don't and the those that study equine science or the science of horses and their their uh their anatomy and their hearts and so forth realize that the super horses all have what's called uh the x gene it's the super gene and the the world's fastest horse secretariat had the x gene or the super gene man of war they said also had that x gene and so the super elite race horses they have it and what it does it causes an enlargement of heart and that horse may look just like any other horse but what the other horses don't realize and what sometimes people don't realize is the super horse has a heart that can literally be three times bigger than the normal horse so he has ability to uh not have all that lactic acid build up and all of that stuff that causes you to tie up when you run and you sprint real fast he could just keep on going so when everybody else is struggling he keeps on going but that's something that's genetic and it's extremely rare but there is something in the spirit realm even with the super saints if we would put them in that category men women that you have to admit there was a difference there was a difference what does it come back to it comes it comes back to a decision to just spend time with the lord and to stay in that consistency of that month after month year after year and it is it's not easy it's very very demanding one of the great saints i would put him in that category too he was something special was john viene the french catholic priest who had a phenomenal walk with god and miracles just like all the time all the time but he hardly ever slept and about the only thing he ever ate was potatoes and a matter of fact there were times when the demons and evil spirits would get so angry at him because of his uh his purity and the moral lifting that he brought to the entire community that it could be heard others could even hear evil spirits yelling out at him potato eater we hate you you potato eater once a week he would get what we would call a crock pot and he would cook a bunch of potatoes and then once those potatoes were cooked he would just eat a few every day and those that uh saw him said that he would eat so few that the potatoes that were left over usually were moldy or stuff like that because he would hardly ever eat them but then after every week he'd cook a few more fresh ones but he just had zero interest in this world or the spirit of the world or that there was a a train uh a railroad that they put about a mile from the church and back in those days the railroad was like i mean that's like having uh you know uh you know nasa parked next to you where you know with the leading technology and as much as he wanted to see it he never allowed himself to go see it he just stayed in that place a deep prayer that kept that anointing just flowing continually i see those i see those who are willing to pay the price to walk into the deeper life and to touch this area that david discovered where he became prayer and it's a place that turns apparent defeat into the sweetest victory it's a place that turns weakness into strength it's a place that turns not just your life but begins to ready radiate out into the lives of others and affects others wanting to serve god oh praise the lord i see it happening we see it in the new testament here's a closing verse let's go over to acts acts chapter 6 there is with a growing ministry and a growing church and they certainly had it growing in the first century there in jerusalem i mean it was exploding in growth you're having sometimes thousands being added to the church every single day and with that you have all of the uh all of the demands upon the leadership particularly upon the apostles verse 2 then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples and said it is not desirable that we should leave the word of god and serve tables let me tell you something that you need to understand uh it's not right for your pastor to come over and fix your broken door well he he has some carpentry skills pastor stephen he needs to come do that it's not right for the pastor to come over and mow your lawn well pastor stephen he needs to show himself that he has a servant's heart and he needs to be over here mowing my lawn no he doesn't need to do that he doesn't need to be down there washing the ditches the dishes at the church cookout he doesn't need to be doing that what does he need to be doing well verse 3 therefore brethren seek out from among you seven men of good reputation full of the holy spirit wisdom whom we may appoint over this business that would be the distribution of food verse 4 peter says but we will give ourselves we the apostles we will give ourselves continually and that's the challenge that's the challenge continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word now can you imagine if peter just said you know what i think i'm going to take a year off from ministry i'm just tired of having to pray so much i'm tired of having always preach a message and come up with something new to share i just i'm going to take a year off me and john are going to take a cruise oh the enemy would have the enemy would have hit him and uh it would have been able to touch them but when you stay on assignment when you stay in pursuit of the lord and what he reveals to you as your inheritance you stay in a very safe place praise the lord my friends you don't have time to be running around goofing off wasting hours and hours and days doing silly things you must run with the lord and you must press into this now here's here's the thing you will find that you can get into it and there is a pull and i've talked about it before on messages called the slipstream of heaven because when you get into it uh it creates a vacuum that starts to suck and pull you along but it's your choice to stay in it because while you can be pulled in it you'll have everything under the sun offered for you to do usually in sports if you have a team that wins let's say like the super bowl the moment that team wins the super bowl you'll have players usually the stars the ones that help the team get to the super bowl you'll have those those players offered tv contracts commercial opportunities to make millions and millions of dollars and the more the more those members start you know taking advantage of all of that the harder and more difficult it becomes for them to repeat the following year and that's why it's so hard to win back-to-back championships why because the moment you become a champion you have reached a place that very few do but to continue in it where you're consistently right there vying for it every year or winning every year that's a different story but those that maybe we could call them the super saints those that just lived it all the way up until their last breath they they understood what david knew and they also took heed to what the apostle peter said we will give ourselves continually continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word and there was a time later in peter's life when he had let that slip he had let the minister of the word slip he had let his close walk with the with the lord slip in prayer and the next thing you know here's peter the rock compromising the core truth of the gospel which is that the good news is not only for the jews but it's for the whole world and here he is acting like a hypocrite in front of the christians who are not jews and paul has to stand up and paul said even barnabas got swept away with hypocrisy but paul had to stand up and say peter you're acting like a hypocrite and i'm sure the moment paul said it peter knew it was true i think it probably brought peter relief and peter's like you're right you're right i've i've been swayed by all the politics and ministry and i you know i've i've had great success i mean you see him in acts chapter five where he's walking and people are getting healed who just get within proximity of the shadow of his shadow because the anointing coming off of him was so strong at times that when he was under that anointing you got within that shadow range you could get healed of whatever it was so that that's a phenomenal anointing but my friends you see him later you see him later in the book of galatians where paul has to address the situation that that peter was wrong praise the lord so we must continue because the enemy he doesn't take a break and you must stay strong in the lord now our focus is not the enemy our focus is the lord but we must continue on this journey because we're going to see the glory of god praise the lord this is also a breakout year for so many of you so you're going to have to really push these breakthrough anointings and miracles don't happen with just half-hearted have baked type effort you must give it your all you must give it your very best praise the lord let me pray for you heavenly father i pray for those who are watching who are not satisfied because they sense their elements of complacency that would lure them to not make the effort that is required for the task at hand but i pray father god that they be stirred in their hearts to be moving towards this category that others set such a high standard for us to follow and throughout church history and throughout biblical history people like enoch we thank you father god that that door is open for whosoever will for whosoever will push into it now we thank you father god that even though the enemy tries to distract and hinder often through persecution such as we saw with david and the betrayals and these painful things that even the savior went through father we thank you that there is a remedy and that's being close to you in prayer so father we just give you praise we thank you for turning around situations i thank you for those that are in very difficult spots you're going to help them walk right out of it but the wisdom they're going to get is not found in some book that's a secular book written by a so-called wise person it's going to come out of their prayer time and their time with you and it's going to come out of the word illuminate it and they will walk right out of it because you're walking with them so father we thank you we thank you i see dreams and visions accomplished this year hallelujah and father god this this year is a set up year for the next 10 year plan and so we give you praise for what's unfolding hallelujah we thank you father god we thank you also for just being able to enjoy being in your presence because in your presence is fullness of joy thank you father strengthen your people the press in even though there could be a great lack of evidence of seeing it perhaps around them amongst other christians but father i thank you i'm speaking to the eagle saints who are called the sore who are not destined to be just in the chicken realm father we thank you we thank you they're they're called the sore so we thank you they're mounting up with those wings right now to pray we give you praise father god we give you praise in jesus name amen and amen you know kelly and i were together the other day and we were driving somewhere and we decided well we've got a little ways to go let's put a message on let's listen to a message and kelly said let's try this one and she pulled up a message that was kind of like a classic old message that uh was taught by a minister who's alive today but of course he's a lot older today and he has a very large ministry and we begin to listen to the message the moment we listen to the message which was a very old message the moment we listened to it we were just like the anointing on this message is through the roof this is incredible so we were like wow his teaching back then if i could say it maybe humbly the anointing was like a hundred times stronger i mean the anointing and there was a moving of the spirit of course back then too that was riding on that move that movement my goodness but the preaching was just like the anointing was through the roof and today you know sermons were still good but the anointing uh back then was just like i mean it was electrifying even on the old message wow praise the lord well pastor stephen shouldn't shouldn't it still be there that's the challenge for all of us look not just for ministers i'm talking about the anointing for whatever your career field is it's not to just have an anointing that's strong but to maintain it and to stay in that place where it's being very very beneficial to people whoa praise the lord wow well you know when i heard the difference because i'm very familiar with this man's ministry and i heard what it was like all those years back i was just like uh kelly and i were both like what happened to him how do you go from that to what it is today now today the the ministry has all the bells and whistles it has you know it has uh plenty of money and stuff like that but i i mean it put the fear of god in me when i heard when i heard the difference because if you play the modern messages today they're nice but they have they're they're nothing compared to what it was when this power of the spirit was writing on that ministry so what's the what's the difference the difference is that you can pull out of that super category and you can get into a category that's still anointed but um it takes takes everything that's why there's very few that actually get into it and hold it and maintain it at very very high levels and by the way when you do trust me the enemy knows he will do some of the most craziest things you've ever seen they're actually supernatural he can come in supernatural ways i've had him do it to me some of the correct most craziest bizarre stuff uh and even the lord was tested the lord was tested so you have to be ready you don't want to just let yourself go spiritually you always want to be in that very close place every day you can't take a break praise the lord when you get to heaven you can take your spiritual vacation because you're finally in a spiritual place but right here we're walking through what is actually the valley of the shadow of death that is this earthly realm with its fallen nature of man and in which also satan is the prince of the power of the air so you want to stay close to the lord every single day father bless your people thank you thank you in jesus name amen praise god if you're watching today's program and you don't know jesus whoo the great eagle saint hallelujah the the standard setter for any believer for any person who was always on it i mean he pushed himself and there there's an anointing and even paul talked about the energy of god that empowered him to do a level of work that was really beyond the other 12 but my friends you have to understand god has a place for you if you don't know christ today the door is open for salvation but you must receive him by faith if you would like to do that right now pray this prayer after me say lord jesus you died to save sinners and i'm a sinner and jesus you died to save me on the cross you gave your life for me so jesus i choose you now come into my heart wash all of my sins away write my name in your book of life and i give my heart to you and i claim you i take you as my lord and savior jesus thank you for saving me right now i give you praise thank you jesus in your name i pray amen glory to god welcome to the family of god hallelujah you're born again you're washed with the blood of jesus hallelujah now live for the lord develop a prayer life and start serving the lord right where you're at praise god and let's take holy communion together as a church family praise the lord grab some unleavened bread and grab some grape juice you know what you know what i see the lord doing i see the lord making a saint out of you not an ain't a saint pastor steve i just want to get to heaven i'm not really concerned about you know uh anything extra no god wants you to have rewards god the father wants you conformed into the image of his son and that's why you've had unusual dealings in your life that's why your life hasn't been normal because god he wants you to step into this praise the lord i get many emails of those of you who've had unusual heavenly encounters and supernatural experiences and you used to wonder what was it about why why was i blessed to have something like that happen because god is offering you opportunity to step into this and he knows the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak but he's determined to get you into that place he just needs your cooperation but i believe as the light is uh opening it up this path and you see the great value of it and you also see how short life is woo praise god that you're taking it and the journey has begun he's going to get you there praise the lord now let's pray over the communion father we thank you for the bread and the juice we bless it we set it apart as holy and we thank you that this is now the body and the blood of jesus when we look at it we still see a wafer we still see grape juice but father we thank you it is the body of christ under the veil of what would appear to be bread and it is the blood of christ under the veil of what would appear to be grape juice but we thank you father for the body and the blood of christ father as we receive the lord's body we thank you that we proclaim his death until he comes that through his death he made available for us everlasting life thank you father god that we have been born again on the inside and father as we receive the body of christ we thank you father god for that understanding of david that he became prayer and we thank you that you are forming that within us oh god we give you praise we give you praise hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah thank you father in jesus name amen amen you know when i was young growing up i was i would hear about the missionaries who would go to other countries they leave everything behind they leave their food that they liked behind to go eat food that you know they weren't accustomed to and they would leave their culture behind and have to go learn a new language and a new culture and we all felt so sorry for them oh they're made making such a sacrifice and they were making a great sacrifice but the reality was they're over there living a rich intimate life with the lord and they actually felt compassion for us because they knew they had tied into something and you don't have to be a missionary to to encounter this but they knew that through the crucified life that they had come into the deeper life experience of what joy really is whoo praise the lord it's being close to the lord and living for him and having your life laid down hallelujah father we received the body of jesus in his name amen let's partake praise the lord father thank you for the blood of jesus his cleansing power the father we asked if we've committed any sins that you would forgive us and wash all of our sins away thank you father god we thank you that our sins and our iniquities you remember no more we thank you father we ask that you protect us that your force field of protection your angels be around us thank you o god thank you father and father we ask that as we walk with you that you would work through us to bring deliverance to others that are bound in captivity we give you praise that you send us on assignment in jesus name i see you going on assignment hallelujah father we thank you in jesus name let's receive the blood of christ praise the lord praise the lord you know what back when the brownsville revival was really rolling uh down there in pensacola florida um you know the west coast wanted it too so they sent some of their leaders out to the west coast and i remember i was in one of those meetings in orange county that took place and they were talking you know the leaders from pensacola were talking about the revival and the move of god and stuff like that and you know the the need to pray to uh you know to see it uh come forth and all of that and um one of the ladies there in the church i knew who she was she was actually one of the um one of the elders she's she said she asked a question to the pensacola leader one of the leaders she said you know you guys are talking about all this prayer and stuff like that and she said i don't just i don't know how we're supposed to have time to do this do this kind of praying and you know the leader just said he said well i don't know how you're going to live your life but he said i would probably suggest it you know if you don't have enough time maybe you could first start looking at at the television how much time you spend watching television and of course he's not talking about christian tv he's talking about just the hours and hours that most people spend downloading you know worldly movies or downloading all the stuff that the world offers to feed you uh through the eye gate and ear gate and uh there are some people like that lady they're just they're not gonna enter in no matter what even even if all you have to do is pray two minutes they're not gonna do it they just don't have that hunger but i see a different heart in you i see that you're not satisfied with the world because the world can't satisfy and solomon found that out and eventually solomon although he got into idolatry eventually got back to the lord oh my friends that's why prayer is so important because it keeps that open line between you and the lord praise god and i see you in that place whoo praise the lord with very unusual things happening glory to god glory to god you know when i go into meetings as a minister and if if i'm being hosted somewhere and they're they're asking me to come i'm going to go into the meeting prepared i'm not just talking about study notes and things like that all i've prayed i'll have set time aside to hear from the lord and i'll go into that meeting with an anointing but what a difference it makes when those in the meeting are coming and they're prayed up and they have sought the lord and we're all pulling together wow there's nothing stronger than a corporate anointing there's nothing stronger than that see one can put a thousand to flight but two can put not two thousand to flight two can put ten thousand to flight so you enter into this quantum realm when you enter in a corporate unity praise the lord now even in a corporate unity or a collective body there's still leadership but when you're all pulling together the strength just goes off the chart and what god can do in situations like that is uh truly you know it's it's in the miraculous realm i see god doing these greater manifestations of his glory as when we have these times of getting together we all come together ready to pull thank you jesus ready to get spiritually fed yes but also just ready to see god move you come hungry it is very very hard to get a fire started with wet wood i mean you could pour gasoline all over it but um that's that's you know the bottom line is if the wood is dry it's going to burn but if it's wet i mean you're it's hard it's really hard to minister the people that are wet wood green wood but my goodness we need to be ready for the fire we need to be on fire hungry and i see that when you are hungry you have that pursuit of the lord glory to god i see you pressing into that realm father bless your people the eagle saints are rising up and not only is there prophetic anointing that's flowing but the apostolic is going to begin to break forth because there is now going to be a greater emphasis and it's already started to happen upon the apostolic glory glory father we give you praise in jesus name amen amen you know it was maybe i don't know maybe like uh 10 years ago i spent the day with bob jones and bonnie jones's wife and i had this thought i had a thought in my mind and never said it i had a thought that was an apostolic thought and it had an image associated with that thought it had a word picture okay a distinct image and bob jones was standing next to me and he said stephen it's not the time of the and he named that image he said right now it's the time of this well that was 10 or 12 years ago and so the what was in that season at that time it's shifting now and it's going into what i was thinking about you know a decade ago i i was hoping a decade ago we were going into this and he said no he said it's not that and he didn't even know i was thinking about it he just starts talking praise the lord and also doing things like that comes out of maintaining that close walk i had another pastor friend i could just sit around him and he would bring up conversations of things that i had talked to the lord about and usually he would do it at very specific times when it was needed and would always bring tremendous encouragement to me but my friends we're going into uh the greater manifestations that are that are going along with the apostolic get ready it's going to be quite exciting and as it begins to unfold we have to we have to stay in that niche we have to stay in that walk praise the lord praise the lord father we give you praise thank you thank you in jesus name in jesus name praise the lord i've had ministers say pastor stephen how come you don't play golf i just tell them well because i would probably like it that's why i don't play that's that's the last thing i need is another thing pulling at me so that is the challenge we all face maybe for you it is golf for me it's not it's not even a temptation but there's always all these other things life is good but please don't ever forget you'll have all eternity to do this stuff okay so right now make the sacrifices and spend the time with the lord and you'll get into the good stuff which is really the real living father bless your people in jesus name amen thanks for watching see you back next time