After some remarkable worship from Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, Andrew Wommack wisely asked Ashley Terradez to receive the offering. Ashley said the first thing this morning that hit me so hard and made me think: if a ministry has helped you and changed your life and you are not partnering with it, there is something wrong with you.
Imagine being part of a church and not giving. Imagine a church helping you and not giving. Imagine being blessed by a church and not giving to that church! I cannot imagine that, and I cannot understand people who think like that, but it was very true that many people in the room had been helped by Andrew’s teaching and did not even give to him! What a revelation! Give to where you are fed, people!
Then Pastor Duane took the floor (literally – lying down at one point to illustrate that we are dead in Christ) and he started with a powerful prayer asking God to guide us into truth and mix our faith with the Word. He preached on identity, and how we must look to the rock that we have come from – that our identity comes from Jesus and Jesus alone!
Duane made a very strong Biblical case that we are not dying daily, and that idea is both religious and false – and also unhelpful to us. We are not dying daily, because according to the Word, we are dead in Christ. Duane showed from Romans 6 that if we do not see ourselves as dead, we will never see ourselves as walking in the new life! We have one nature, and our problems are not caused by the old nature as that is dead, it is caused by ignorance! Powerful teaching indeed.
In the afternoon, Mike and Carrie kept going on the same line – showing that the enemy wants to distract us from our identity by looking at other things, such as our critics, or other plans. Mike said something that really got a hold of me – that authority is a synonym for permission. We have the authority to be children of God – we have the permission to be children of God. We have the authority to cast out demons – we have the permission to cast out demons. That reframes a lot and I will be thinking about that for a long time. Then Carrie said that permission leads to privilege – in that the more we know who we are and what we are allowed and permitted to do, the more we will do! What a word!
We have full access to the entire kingdom of God. All of Heaven is inside us – and all we need to do is be led by the Spirit.
Then in the evening, Andrew Wommack continued his powerful teaching on humility. He told us that God resists the proud because the proud do what they want, and God resists that in our lives because His will for our lives is much better. What a truth! That’s powerful. God has a plan for all of our lives, a great plan, but He will never force us into it, so we must yield. That yielding is humility.
Pride of course is thinking you are better than everyone. But just doing what you want to do without listening to the Lord is also pride. I could see this impacting people all around me. Andrew said: never ask God to bless what you are doing, rather do what He is blessing. He clearly knows what he is talking about – Andrew is humble and blessed, so I have decided that’s my approach now. I will never ask God to bless me or bless what I am doing, I will just do what God is blessing.
Andrew said that to live that way you need a spine, most Christians are like water, they fill the shape of whatever environment they are in and they just go with the flow. He also mentioned that there is no humility without submission to others on earth, especially in the context of church. The reason people do not go to church according to Andrew Wommack is pride. I agree.
Andrew finished such a powerful and helpful message by explaining that anxiety is a form of pride. We are trying to solve our own problems rather than casting the care of them onto Jesus! Selah!
All in all a very powerful day! I think I will do it again tomorrow!
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 