Complete Freedom

Hi everybody, welcome back to Ignite. I want to talk to you about freedom and this may be the most exciting part of honoring God and loving those around us as we love ourselves and living for His purpose and moving everybody every day closer to Jesus. It's freedom. It's complete freedom as you realize God is control of everything. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. That's God's promise to you. When you know the truth, when you know the truth, the truth will set you free. Who the sunset's free is free indeed. I reminded of the of the scripture in Isaiah. The only scripture I found about explains why He wants us to share our faith. Why is it that He's mandated, commanded, commissioned, risen, bastard? Why has He shouted at us? Share your faith. And why is it that 99% of us don't do it? Satan doesn't want us to do it. Why does he want us to do it? It's secondary to win the lost. It's primarily to win you. Isaiah 43.10 says, I use this all the time. It's so important. Let's say it's the Lord. I point to you as my witness so that you will believe. So that you will believe. Well, if we just sit there and don't trust him pretty thing, you won't know if you could believe him or not. It's only when you get out there and start pushing the limit that you had to get an understand that God is there. I mean, the best example is Job, right? I mean, think of all the trials and tribulations. Job lost everything. But you know, none of that happened. I should say all of that happened with God's permission. Satan had to go to God first to get permission, right? Before he could do that to Job, Satan can't touch you unless he gets God's permission. He can't. He cannot do that. So when you're in problems and things are going wrong, it happens to all of us. I mean, so he's the God. Where are you? He's right there. I heard a message this morning for God named JD Faragody. He was talking about how if we knew what God knew, we'd be doing the same things for us that he's doing for us. What? He says, in fact, you would not only be be understanding that God's in control. You'd be thanking him. Thank you God for doing all this to me because you're perfecting me and you're taking me to another level. So we start thanking him in advance. Karen, I have gone to the point now. We don't ask, I don't think we ask for anything anymore. Everything we come across, we just are like, God, we can't wait to see how you're going to get us out of this. We can't wait to see how the conclusion of this is, this is a testimony. You're in the middle of your testimony. When I when I talked to people so often in the middle of trial, this is your testimony. Document it right now. Explain how you're feeling right now and that you trust God and you know, God's going to get you out of it because he always will. I was close friends with David Wilkerson. Some of you may remember the name, but for you wrote the book, The Cross of Switchblade. And for 40 years, he was one of my closest friends and so many of his sermons impacted my life. But one of them, I'll never forget and you can, Google it now. Go on YouTube and you go down right song, wrong side, right song, wrong side. I'm with the children of Israel. Of course, they escaped. They got down to the water and now they were all happy. And now they're not happy. In fact, if you read what they're doing to Moses, we could have died in Egypt, right? But no, no, you got to sit here in the middle of the desert. We're all going to die. They're so mad at him. And Scarce Moses puts the staff in the water and the water not only parts, it's dry land. I mean, it's a total miracle, right? They walk you the side and you know the story. So what do they do? They rejoice. They build an altar and they're seeing songs to God. And Dave said, right song, wrong side. Think about it. Where are you and your problems today? Are you singing the song before the is so much fun to thank God in advance and then see how he does it? And I have a million testimonies to that. I don't have time in the short podcast. But he directs our steps. He's always there. He's always direct to your steps. Trust the Lord your whole heart and lean not on your understanding. Don't depend on your own thoughts. Ignorance him in everything. Ignorance him in the good stuff. Ignorance him in the bad God. I thank you. I don't like what's going on. I don't like this at all. It's I mean, it could be real scary. But God, but I know you're there and I know you're going to give it to us. I acknowledge you guys. You're allowing this to happen. You would have perfect me or you're going to use this as an opportunity to for read a minister to other people, okay? When I was dying in the hospital in Monterey, they gave me up for dead. They said, we can't save him. I told God, you know what? Okay, there's got to be purpose to this. So if I'm going to die, I'm going to die trying to lead as many people to you as I possibly can. And so it became like a game to me. I mean, I see you. And a lot of the time I didn't have the thing done my, my throat when I was at I see you. And whatever I didn't, I was thinking this one. How can I move everybody? The next person through this door, closer to Jesus, when I got out, I had a 23 different doctors and nurses that I had serious conversations with about God. I wouldn't trade those moments for anything. And I thought if just for one of those, he put me in the hospital and I just so I could reach one of those people, it's worth it. You look through God's eyes and everything, changes. It's just amazing how he works. It really is. He loves this so much. And when we, this I started to tell you with the scripture and Isaiah 43, 10, let me go back to it out. It's so important. He says, I appoint you as my witness so that you will know and understand and believe that I am God. And how is that? It's because there's no other way to enter into the intimacy we have with God that we have when we go in with nothing with no preparation. And we have these kinds of conversations with people. And God's there and he just uses us. And he's giving us words to say, I was, I was at a restaurant a few days ago. And you know, it's fun, but it's hard to explain it, but you're in full time and you move everywhere. So that means everybody. That means people walking by you. If you catch eye contact, say something to them, joke with them. And then just say, have a good day and God bless you. If you do nothing else, just do it all day long. And then you have something to come back to you in this beautiful couple. They were a black couple. Okay. I say that because you have all the racial things which are stupid. God loves us all the same. And this lovely black who are just finishing their meal and I saw them in their most smiling. So I stopped and talked to them and said, Hey, that bacon looks pretty good there. Yeah, that's great. And so I do it. Just wanted to have a relationship. And I say, well, have a wonderful day, guys. And God bless you. So we walked out to the parking lot. And as it happened, we stayed out in the parking lot for a few minutes. We just had a board meeting for the Benedict Castle Concord, which is a car show. My daughter started it and they have this fabulous committee keeps it going. I was in on the committee meeting. So we're standing on the parking lot. And this couple drives by in a convertible. They're leaving the parking lot, the young couple that I saw in the restaurant. And they go I real slow. And so it was an extra opportunity to say, Hey, love you guys. God bless you now. Guy, they drove off. As it happened, this meeting in the parking lot went longer than I wanted to. I had another event to get to. But it stayed a little bit longer. And guess what about Tim and this couple drives by again. Same couple. And they looked at me and said, Can we talk to you for a minute? I said, of course, I ran over to the driver side. He said, We feel like we should talk to you about what? Well, we don't know. We just moved from Columbus, Ohio. And we don't know anybody here. And we're trying to start a company. And we just checked our son into Cal Lurther. So I told you, Oh, they must be Christians. And we're just praying. And as we drove by, when we first talked here in the restaurant, we felt a connection. And when we drove by with that, we need to go by, we were supposed to talk to you. I said, Well, I took a little business, made a little bit bigger because I know something about business. But more of that, I know God, I can tell you how I build a trusting God is we need to talk. I said, Okay, I will be back in California for about three weeks. I got there. No, we're going to get together. Well, that was just because I would just be nice. Somebody just walking. You follow my, my drifts? We went to breakfast a few days ago. And I got a, Karen got out of the car and I was driving Karen's car. And she wants to park just perfectly. She says to me, restart the car, pull up about three more inches. Okay, I do that. So I did that. Had she not done that, we would have missed this opportunity. As it happened, we worked, we walked from the car, perfectly there's a two buildings coming together at a very small passageway. And had we been 30 seconds later, we would never would have met this couple. But because, see, God direct the stats, because she had to be correct by a parking space, it delayed me an extra minute. And it got us right to that place and they had a dog, a mental wall security dog way. We want to call it. And it just happens that we're getting one. And he looks like the one we're getting. So we asked, so hi, good morning folks. Everybody, hey, tell us about your dog. And they explained, I said, well, we're getting one. And in a couple of months, he's being trained right now. They said, well, he's not here. He's not in California. He's over here. So we're from Arizona. Who's your trainer? And so I gave him the trainer's name and he said, you mean Jimmy? You know our trainer. That's where we got our dog. Is your dog's name of your dog? Deek. Yeah. Oh, we know your dog. Come on. They live in Arizona. We live in Arizona. And does he not direct our steps? Now stay tuned. And this couple may see this podcast. I don't know. And if they do, maybe we're even helping. But we did not meet by accident. We had a great conversation that I just reached out to him a couple of days ago. And we're going to get together. And I suspect God has something in mind. When you when you do that, you realize, God's moving all the time. Do you follow him? Do you follow my drift? It's just amazing how he he does. And when you know that nothing can happen to you, nothing. I finished with this. And there's a long passage, scripture. Most of us know it. But I've read the scripture throughout my entire life. But it means so much now. When when you trust God with your heart, remember, Isaiah says, I point you to my witness so that you will know that I am God. Okay. How do you get there? By loving God and living for his purpose. You fall, you fall in progression here. Okay. So the path to getting to where you're reading no God. And he says it nicely at 4310 is when you're a witness for him. And he's intimately working through you. And you know that you have intimacy with God. And when you get to that place, you live where I live. Okay. Let me read this. This is amazing. Most you heard this before. But in the context, particularly in light of what's going on today. All right. Those who live in the shelter of the most high will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. We all need rest. Thus I declare about the Lord. He alone is my refuge. My place of safety. He is my God. I trust him for he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. Get this. We haven't worried about COVID. I mean, we're very we're not foolish. We take Iver Mecton. We take hydroxychloroquine. We take zinc. We eat well. We sleep well. We wash your hands. We do all the right stuff. But we walk into crowds almost every day. And we're hugging, shaking hands and being a part of this. I heard this statement. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of not living. I look at those Christians who have huddled for two years. I look at now. How they've aged. That's that's how to fear folks. That's that. That's not what God say. When you trust me, when you share your faith, you'll trust him. Here's what he says. The benefit of doing that. It's complete freedom. It's freedom. Listen to these words from God. He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the tears of the night. No, the arrow that flies in the day. Do not dread the disease that stocks in darkness. Wow. No, the disasters that strike at midday. There's there's disasters all around everywhere you look. There's disasters saying don't dread them. Though a thousand fall at your side, though 10,000 are dying around you. People are dying all around. They are now. These evils will not touch you. This is the Word of God to those who trust him. This is to the elect, if you will. I use that term different than most people do. The ones God knows are his first love Christians. All right. Wow. Just open your eyes and see how the wicked are punished. If you make the Lord your refuge, when you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the most higher shelter, if you keep him as your first love, nothing separating you folks, it's so consistent throughout all the scriptures. If you make the most high your shelter, no evil will conquer you. Hear this. It may overcome you, but if it does, the only one God allows it and brings him glory. Okay. Well, no evil can conquer you just for the sake of conquering you and destroy it. Can't happen. Whatever happens, you'll be for God's glory. This is so exciting. No evil conquer you. No play will come near your home for he will order his angels to protect you wherever you go. This is freedom. Subject of this podcast is freedom. This is freedom. This is so precious. They will hold you up in their hands. So you won't even hurt your foot on a stone. You you will trample fun lions and covers your fresh fierce lions and servers on your feet. The Lord says, I will rescue those who love be first love. It's so consistent. The scriptures are so consistent. I'm not making this stuff up. This is not just some form I can't wait my life. This is the word of God. It just happens to care and I have discovered it through the years that are living it and bear testimony that it works. And we know hundreds and hundreds of people across the country have the same experience and testify that I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call me, I will answer and he does. He does. He does. I give you a million examples of that. He's always there. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. When they call me, I will answer. I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue them and honor them. I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation. Wow. That's freedom. And you know how you get there by moving everybody every day closer to Jesus. It's so easy. See you next time.