Gateway Church's Podcast
Missions Emphasis
A Gateway Sermon
to Genesis chapter 12, and I'm going to read to you this morning from verse 1 to verse 3. The church is the church of destiny. God's people have a destiny, and what's more important is, I believe that our hour of destiny has arrived. I believe this is the time that God wants to fulfill the promises that He has given to His people. Somehow when the millennium changed, I was in Norway at that time. We were just standing outside in the snow. There were fireworks going that had a celebration at this conference that I was ministering in. But as I stood there, I was somehow oblivious to everything that was going on around me, and there was such a strong feeling and sense inside of me that our hour had dawned. Our time had come as God's people. This was our millennium. This was the time when God would fulfill the promise and His inheritance in His people, and that began to grow in me, and God just began to show me things and reveal things to me, and I want to share just a few of those things with you this morning. I really want to challenge you and encourage you in the Word of God this morning so that you yourself can rise up in your hour of destiny. I want to tell you something about destiny. The moment that you grasp what God wants you to be, don't think that everybody's going to necessarily agree with you. In fact, I found just the opposite. I found when I truly understood what God wanted for my life, everybody tried to tell me it wasn't such a great idea. I had six children. How would I support those children? How are you going to raise the mission ministry in Africa? That's near impossible. How will you educate your children? Everybody had hundreds and hundreds of questions, but I want to tell you something this morning that if you know your destiny in God, if you know your calling in God, if you know what God really wants to do in your life, the Bible suddenly jumps up and says, "I am true." Amen? And every part of that Bible starts to witness with your understanding and every fiber that is within you, suddenly versus like with God, all things are possible. Become the thing that begins to drive you. I'll pause to sit this morning that God's word will reprogram your mind. It'll do that, but it'll do more. It'll transform you out of the natural kingdom into the supernatural kingdom of God. It will take you from being bound by what you are naturally and what you can achieve naturally, and it will literally transport you and transform you into the supernatural potential of God himself. And that is why the Bible declares that with God, all things are possible. I want to tell you something this morning. If the church of Jesus Christ would know who they are in God and who God really is, we would have taken this world long ago. But I believe with all my heart that our time has come. We are beginning to see. We are beginning to realize. We checking away those denominational nonsense that have kept us apart, that has allowed the enemy to break us up in little, ineffectual groups and circles. But today, God is changing that. There's a new mood in the church. I don't know if you've noticed that. People want to work together. People of all denominations. I have just signed an alliance with the South African Council of Churches for us and them to work together in an alliance to solve the emergency relief problems that we have in our own nation. Ten years ago, that would have been a total impossibility. But the season has changed. Hallelujah. God is raising us up in a new spirit, a spirit that understands. We are one body. We are baptized into one church. We have one God, one Christ who died for us all. And that we can actually rise up together and fulfill our potential as the nation of God. Amen. I hope I'm preaching you excited because I'm doing it to myself right now. Genesis chapter 12 and verse 1. Now the Lord had said to Abraham, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house. Check out your tradition, my friend. You know, throw it away. See, I want to tell you tradition. It's the greatest enemy of God. And I'm saying traditions don't have value. I'm just telling you they're an enemy of God. Because traditions, whether they'd be religious or anything else, they can so form our understanding and build strongholds in our minds that it limits what God can actually do in us as a people. And God says to Abraham, I want you out of that. I want you in a new thinking. Amen. I want you in a new mode. He goes on. He says in verse 2, I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. And you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And I will curse him who curses you. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Whose promise is this? It's a promise that's being made to Abraham, but was it to Abraham only? Was this promise for that moment or for that time? The New Testament teaches us that that is definitely not the case. And I want to build that foundation just before I come back again to this promise and look at it in more detail. Come with me to Galatians chapter 3. And I want to read to you verse 29. And it's important that you see what it says here. I think it's so exciting. It says, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Isn't that amazing? Who are the seed of Abraham? The Bible says the two sons of Abraham are those who are of the faith. The Apostle Paul says here, if you are Christ, if you are in Christ, if you have given your life to Christ, then you are the seed of Abraham. And you are heir to the promise. What promise? The promises which God made to Abraham, of which the one we have just read, is probably the most profound promise. Look what it says. Let's go back there. Because there's five important points there that that promise makes. First, he says, I will make you a great nation. He's not talking about the nation of America or Germany or any other European nation, African nation. He's not talking about a nation that has geographical boundaries. He's talking about a nation under God. He's talking about a nation who calls Christ their king. He's talking about a nation who is filled with the spirit of Christ, who knows the power of God. He says, I will make you a great nation. And I want to tell you, for me it's so exciting today that we're beginning to learn that. We're not any longer beginning to uphold our little tribe within the kingdom of God. You know, man has this tribe mentality. You see it from the beginning of time. When you've got a continent like I live in and come from where it's still a very undeveloped continent, every place has tribes. Every country in the African continent is full of tribes. Why? Because this man's nature to have tribes. We want to relate to groups. We have this group mentality. It's something that is born into our very being. And we've done it in the church. We have the tribe of the Baptist. And we have the tribe of the assemblies of God. And we have every other kind of tribe. And we've defended these tribes. And we've had our chiefs in these tribes. But at last, these tribes are beginning to come together and say, we are one nation. Hallelujah. We are one nation under Christ. You see, it is so important to understand what it means to be great in God. It's not the same as being great in man's kingdom. It's different. It's very different. Firstly, being great in God means walking in God's authority. And exercising that authority in our lives. But not only in our lives, in those lives that don't have Christ. You see, if you read the Bible, we are the little keepers of creation. It is a calling of ours to protect our nations, to protect our people by the authority of God. When Jesus sent out the church, one of the first things he said is, those who believe on me, in my name, they shall cost out demons. Amen? Why does it say that? Because we are given the authority. We are given that authority in Christ so that we can set people free. There are thousands and tens of thousands of people in this nation who are bound, bound demonized, bound drugs, bound alcohol, bound lust. Who's going to set them free? The psychologists are not going to set them free. They try to help them, but you know what? Their success rate is minimal and it's not their job people. They've taken that job because the church is not walked in its authority. God has made us a great nation, a nation who can take dominion on this earth and begin to establish the kingdom of God as it should be established in his power and in his glory because you see the second point he makes is he says, I will bless you. Amen? You know what it is? To be blessed by God? To be blessed by God himself. It is so much more than money. You see so often we in our modern lifestyle and careers and everything else we have begun to look at blessing as money. We've begun to look at blessing as material things and of course there's a part of it that is. Jesus recognized that to the point where he said if you will seek the kingdom of God first all those things would be added unto you. Why should you worry about what you eat and what you wear? He says don't you know that God knows you have need of these things but if you will seek the kingdom of God these things will be added to you. So God doesn't leave that from the blessing God looks at that as a necessity for our lives but I want to say to you this morning that the blessing from God if it's God's blessings is so much more than money. Number one it's the authority of God because that is the first thing he's going to bless you with is his authority and his power. It's the compassion of God. He'll give you his heart. You see when you look at the battle and you look at the gifts of the spirit and you look at the fruit of the Holy Spirit the fruit is God's nature it's God's heart the gifts of the Holy Spirit is God's power it's his ability and those two things together reflect who God is and what God can do and what God will do in you and I through the Holy Spirit that's why the Bible says that we're the spirit of God is there's freedom and that God is busy with us transforming us step by glorious step into the image of Jesus he wants us to be like him he wants us to walk like him. I have an ability to destroy stages that's why I don't like those little apparel mics because they fall off they rub up and down on my jacket and they just restrict me I can't stand a microphone with a cord that's like being in bondage. Amen. He says I will bless you. I was three weeks old in the Lord Jesus Christ. I came from a non-church background non-Christian background God wasn't on my agenda. Retirement was on my agenda. I was going to retire by the time I was 40 and everything was on track was looking good and then my dad had a double heart attack and I'm not going to take time to go through that this morning but God supernaturally healed him. I was as far from God as you can imagine and so was my father and God supernaturally healed him and it amazed me. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that God would do this for me and I never done anything for God. It led to my salvation a month later in my house. Both Anne and I got saved in that very same night. We didn't even have a Bible in our home. I went out the next day and bought Bibles for our whole family and I began to read the Word of God for the first time in my entire life and I was 35 years old and it was amazing. I couldn't get enough of it. In the first six weeks I had already read up to the end of the Gospel of Mark but let me not run ahead of what I want to tell you. After three weeks I couldn't handle the fact anymore that the 142 people who worked for me on my tobacco farm. So I was a tobacco farmer when I got saved. I produced 65,000 kilograms that's probably about 140,000 pounds of first grade Virginia and tobacco on that farm. Probably enough to kill a big part of your city. I smoked 70 cigarettes a day myself and my claim to fame was that I could drink a half a bottle of whiskey and walk out as if I was sober. And then I got saved. Three weeks later I looked at the labor on my farm and I thought these people are going to know about this Jesus who's come into my life. So I told him this Sunday we have church and we moved some bales on the siding out tobacco barn and that Sunday I went to church. I listened to exactly what the pastor preached. I wrote down all these scriptures. I went straight back to the farm and I preached a very same message. I was so stupid that I didn't even realize that the Sunday morning message in an assembly of God church was not a gospel message. But you know what? In three weeks we had 40 people saved on a second hand message by a three week old baby. You see I want to tell you something and I'm only sharing this with you because I want you to understand the principle here. When God begins to bless you it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what inadequacies you have. It doesn't matter that you lack experience. It doesn't even matter that you lack knowledge. If God begins to truly put his hand upon you you are going to be amazed to begin to see the results that God can actually bring through you. It is the most amazing thing to experience the full supernatural blessing of God on your life. In the sixth week I told the people in that little church of ours that I wanted to pray for them for healing because I got to the 16th chapter of Mark and it said if you lay hands on the sick they will recover. And I read the whole chapter about three times the rich chapter 15, chapter 14. I was looking for something. I wanted to know what qualified me for this. What did I have to do? How long did I have to be a Christian? What were the qualifications? Who was this actually before? I couldn't find anything. All it said was it's those who believe in my name. And I decided I believed. So that Sunday I told the people if you're sick come forward. And I laid my hands on you and God's going to heal you. And they came forward. And the first person I went to pray for was an old man. And I laid my hands on his shoulders because the Bible doesn't say where you should lay your hands. And I've never seen people being prayed for like that. For the sick side just laid my hands on his shoulders. And I went to pray and I've been rehearsing my prayer the whole week. So I went to pray in Jesus' name because it said in Jesus' name you will lay hands on the sick. So I said in Jesus' name and as I touched this old man he fell down as though he'd been struck by lightning. Well it frightened us off to death. We picked him up. We ran outside with him. I took my jacket off. I began to fan him. I thought he died. I was praying saying Lord I prayed for this man to be healed. Please don't let him die. My wife had been a nursing sister. She was there feeling his pulse. She was encouraging me. He's not dead. He still has a pulse. Finally he came around. He wanted to go back inside. I wouldn't lie back inside for three weeks. I said no. You're an old man. It's hot inside that shed. You must have fainted from heat exhaustion. I didn't pray for anybody for three weeks because quite honestly I was scared. But after three weeks this thing that was inside of me wouldn't leave me alone. So I told him again and they came up and I decided that day I'm not going to stop for anything. The first five people, God did exactly the same thing. They were all struck by God's power. But then I realized in my heart this is only God who is doing this. And we saw miracles that Sunday and we were nine weeks old in the Lord. And hold on for this because if you got any religion in you it's going to challenge you. I was still smoking 70 cigarettes a day and God did supernatural miracles through me. Now I want you to understand something. God didn't leave me there. It was in fact only three weeks after that God spoke to me audibly and told me to stop smoking and to get baptized. And I want to tell you I got the fright of my life. My wife was so kind of you know excited about the fact that God speaks in our kitchen. She went and told the whole church God actually spoke to Peter in the kitchen. It didn't have that effect on me. I want to tell you my knees were literally shaking. I had a cigarette in my mouth when God spoke to me. I just took it out like this crumpled it up and dropped it behind me. I didn't know if I thought God couldn't see me. But that's the reaction that it had on me. Man if God begins to speak to you audibly you're going to stand up and you're going to say yes sir. But yes the point I'm wanting to make if God begins to put his full hand of blessing upon us as a church it is going to have ramifications across this earth that will change this earth forever. My friends I want to tell you something this morning this is a great nation. Don't let the devil make you know mileage out of what he achieved on the 11th of September because maybe he did somehow hit a big shot. But I want to tell you how God is bigger than that and the authority that we have is bigger than that. And the reason God wants to make us a great nation is that we can stand against that kind of bevelish behavior that has come to steal and to kill and to destroy. I will bless you the Lord says. Hallelujah. He says I will make your name great. He said he'd make us a great nation but he says I will make your name great not great for five bodyguards not great for limousines not great for five star hotels you stay wherever you like that's your business but I'm telling you that's not the greatness God is talking about great because you can tell the devil to go to hell great because you can speak to the blind and they see great because you can tell a crippled person in the name of Jesus rise up and walk and they walk great because you will have the wisdom of God and you will have words of knowledge that will save your nation in future great because every single aspect of God is operating in your life. I kind of feel at the moment like I'm preaching a science fiction message you're the way you're looking at me but I guess what it means is I'm challenging you I'm challenging you to say today I want to be the Christian that God has raised me to be I'm not going to take anything else in my life that's my commitment I'm not going to go to heaven having lived in this earth my whole life and get to heaven and find out my God I didn't even live in one third of what God had for me God has such an incredible potential for me and I missed it I don't want to I'd rather get to heaven and Jesus said to me man you just about ran past me I want everything that God's got for me I want every little ounce of authority that God's got for me I want every ounce of power that God's got for me I want God's heart because you see what comes next is God's heart the fourth thing it says there is and you shall be a blessing amen yes you will be a great nation yes I will bless you yes I will make your name great but I need you to understand something you will be a blessing that's why I'm doing these things amen not so you can be king of the castle so that you can be a blessing because you see in the kingdom of God the greatest who are in the kingdom of God there are servants that's what Jesus told his disciples he said if you want to be the greatest yeah then you better be the biggest servant of all because that's how works in the kingdom of God so he's not talking about great in my ivory tower he's talking about great in the compassion at heart of God he says in you shall be a blessing you know sometimes when you live in your kind of society you lose sight of the fact of how important it is to be a blessing or let me put it the other way around how very important it is to have someone who can bless you I live in a continent where that is unfortunately so very very true with our hundreds of thousands millions of children who are literally crying out for someone to bless them not to bless them with the 27th toy but to bless them with food said the one died this week so they won't know what it is to suffer those pangs of hunger until finally they die now in 1984 I experienced a change my whole life up until then I was serving God in my calling he called me to evangelize I bought a tent we were crusading 10 crusades a year two weeks at a time we were working like beavers and I tell you it was a joy we were seeing people save the tent was always full but that's what I was doing and that's all I was doing in 1984 I went into Mozambique wanting to preach the gospel but that was impossible because at that time they were following a Marxist doctrine and I asked them what I could do to help them God told me to do that and they said our people are starving we were the neighbors we left right next door to them and for most South Africans we didn't even have a clue that in the first three months of 1984 400 000 people starved to death and I was told to come back in two weeks in the government aircraft would take me to go and have a look at the situation they flew me up to a place called Pumbara and they were going to take me up in the morning it was a Sunday they were going to take me up in the morning bring me back in the afternoon when the aircraft dropped me he said he just had to go refuel in another city and he would be back in the afternoon and you know as he left I had his funny feeling I guess it was just fear that he wouldn't come back I don't know but he didn't he didn't come back for 10 days I didn't have any food I didn't have a change of clothing I didn't even have any toiletries I worked in that camp for 10 days there were over 30 000 people there and they were all starving to death it's it's hard to understand what that's really like I can tell you but it's very hard to understand because when you got that kind of situation and you got people like that dying every day I was hoping very more than 30 people a day these people were all starving they were weak I was helping them dig the graves who were just digging these long little shallow trench graves in the sand and I was helping very more than 30 people a day there wasn't a normal funeral service these people were in a condition to be able to do and the children I mean it was just I didn't know I was an emotional person I thought I was very practical person I thought my wife was the emotional but I want to tell you after a few days my emotions were pulling every trick in the book and then on the Thursday they came my old man across the clearing and he was stumbling he was so weak I went to help him I half carried him and set him against the tree and I told him I'll go and get you some water and I came back not even five minutes later and he seemed to be sleeping and I went and shook him on his shoulder to wake him up to give him the water and try and encourage him and his head just fell to one side he wasn't sleeping he died when I was gone something inside me just snapped and I began to shout out to God at the very top of my voice and I said God I don't know why I'm here you called me to be a preacher I can't preach to these people they don't need preaching they need food they dying I said I don't know what your heart is I only know that my heart is broken and God spoke to me and he said to me son he said my heart is like your heart only 100 times more he said that's why I sent you here I want you to help these people I said but Lord you send the wrong person I don't have any money you know I'm at you every month to try and pay the bills in the gospel ministry if anybody knows I got no money it's you you need money to feed people and God said to me you just do what you can do I'll be with you and I want to tell you we couldn't even feed the 30,000 people that we can't we came back with 18 tons of food and when we took the 18 tons to those people I mean we're such an effort to get it together when I got it to the 30,000 people it didn't even go amongst everybody it wasn't enough you know what we didn't stay there within seven years we receive 8,000 tons of food in one year to do work amongst the poor in the country of Angola and it's just kept growing see I want to tell you something this morning church never make decisions by what's in your pocket and what's your ability you make decisions on what God has promised you you make decisions on what God is doing in your heart and God will bless you and fulfill those promises in you because yes yes what I really want to talk about this morning is that very last part of verse three there first he says I will bless those who bless you and he does he blesses those who bless us and he says I will curse those who curse you you know it's the most wonderful thing we don't have to fight our battles in the kingdom someone comes against us God's gonna sort them out we just got to walk in the authority of God amen he says I will curse them but now look what he says in verse three he says and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you in the church amen in the church of Jesus Christ in you all all the families of the earth shall be based amen I want to close by getting to Acts chapter three and verse 25 I want to read something from Peter Sermon he says in verse 25 you are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers saying to Abraham in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed amen God has put a calling upon his church put a promise upon his church he has said that in his church all the families in the earth shall be blessed it is our mission to bless the world amen it is our mission to bless the poor it is our mission to bless every family if you look around your neighborhood and you look at every family in your neighborhood let me tell you it's your promise it's your heritage it's your mission to bless those families but not just in your neighborhood you read it says every family in the earth amen it's like the mission go into all the world preach gospel to every living creature amen we preach it at home first but we preach it every way collectively we do that too it's the same year in you every family in the earth shall be blessed you know I heard my wife sharing with our team just the other day and we've played this game as a family for many many years because it helped us teach our children values and it was also interesting for them growing up you know for us to see where they were at and so on but we would play this game if you were to win 10 million what would you do with it I mean what would you do tomorrow it's a very interesting question and my wife said that to the team you know if you were suddenly to win 10 million what would it do to your calling what would it do to your life tomorrow it's actually an amazing exercise just doing your own mind kind of also helps you understand where your values really are and one of the team you know spoke out because we do a lot of that now chapel anyway and sometimes I think in a church we should have question time are the interactions great and one of the teams said back why what would you do and I mean in an instant she said I would build three biscuit factories and three food factories and we'd be able to launch this million child thrust that we're doing in two years instead of four or five you know what that's just become the motivation of our hearts and I'm not saying that to want to make you think that you know we are actually a good model of anything I'm just telling you that the compassion of Jesus has come to live in our hearts and we don't want to see children suffer anymore I was in Shimoya in 1986 or 87 and we'd been fighting for children at a hospital where we'd set up a little feeding thing with a pediatrics ward because they were bringing in so many malnourished children to the hospital and because they were so weak they were catching every disease inside the pediatric ward so we set up a little tent outside and we were treating these children outside the hospital didn't have any IV intravenous treatment so we used a formula where you boil milk and oil and sugar and stuff together and then you feed the child 10 times a day just three little spoons at a time and it's remarkable you end up with a success rate of about 95% saving those children's lives but this one little child we've really been battling with and it wasn't somehow reacting well and I said to that child for over an hour and just prayed for that child and finally the baby just died in my arms it was one of the saddest things that I think I ever been through but you know it didn't say to me where was God I knew where God was what it said to me was God help us that we can catch these children before this point there was no reason this child had to die if this child just had food just a little while a week ago before this this little child could have lived to become an adult and you see when you really see these things you begin to understand what's in the heart of God that he says I will bless my church my God I'll bless my church and they will be a blessing they will bless these poor people they will look after them they'll take care of the widows and the orphans they'll know what my heart is I'm really pleased to have been with you this morning and to have just been able to share what I believe is so vital in our time shall we bow heads this morning thank you lord thank you lord we sent a song during our worship this morning that said thank you for saving me thank you for healing me God has been so into us tell perhaps there's someone here this morning who doesn't know that goodness of God you've not experienced true salvation you've not known the full true forgiveness of God in your life and the joy and the peace that it brings and the sure knowledge that God is with you you've never experienced that maybe you've been a churchgoer for many years but you've never come to that place where you actually invited Christ into your life you became born of your spirit with a sure knowledge that you are forgiven and that he is with me and if that is you this morning maybe you want to save brother peter I really want to know Jesus I really want him in my life I want to know what I'm saying I want to know why I have been turned alive I want that so bad if that's why we're in an attitude to pray I would ask you just to slip your hand up just so I can identify you and I'd want to pray with you often is there anybody like that you are this man thank you I see man is there anybody else [MUSIC PLAYING]