| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Spirit of Offense Rampant
00:06:40
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| As you travel around the nation, what's the primary concern you hear from pastors and ministers? | |
| Well, right now, there's a great divide. | |
| Not just in our country, there's a great divide in the church. | |
| If a pastor stands and make a decision or makes a statement from the word of God, in return, he comes under an attack or she comes under an attack for just speaking the truth. | |
| So now they're saying, I'm tired of being fired at. | |
| You know. | |
| Yeah, you've said that the spirit of offense is rampant in the church. | |
| It's one of the number one spirits that you're going to see come to the surface in the last days. | |
| When you see the spirit of offense running rampant as we do today, it's a sign of the end time. | |
| Now, we deal a lot and have dealt a lot with the pandemic, and it's obvious. | |
| We're all still dealing with it. | |
| But what we're missing is the spirit of offense. | |
| Matthew chapter 24, verse 10 says, and many, notice what the scriptures say, not a few, but many shall be offended. | |
| And it goes a little bit further, and they shall betray one another and then finally hate one another. | |
| But the spirit of offense, this is what I'm hearing the pastor say, you can't even bring correction to anyone without them getting offended. | |
| You can't talk to people anymore without the spirit of offense rising up. | |
| That's so true. | |
| Is that one of the biggest problems you see as you travel? | |
| Oh, it's a huge problem. | |
| And not just being offended with one another. | |
| And here's the ultimate. | |
| Now many people are offended against God. | |
| Oh. | |
| Yes. | |
| They're offended because if they lose a loved one or something, even during this COVID, I've heard so many people say, well, if God is such a loving God, why did he allow my child to die or my mama to die? | |
| I've heard this so many times. | |
| That breaks my heart. | |
| But it's a reality. | |
| And when I was thinking about this, it seemed like the Lord just dropped this scripture in my spirit. | |
| When you deal with in the book of Ruth, Naomi was her mother-in-law. | |
| And Naomi experienced multiple losses, her husband and two sons. | |
| And the Bible says when she leaves Moab, comes back to Bethlehem, the women say, hey, Naomi is here. | |
| And her reply was, don't call me Naomi. | |
| Call me Mara, for the Lord has dealt bitterly against me. | |
| See what I'm saying? | |
| She allowed a circumstance to define her relationship with God. | |
| And there are people today that have turned bitter as a result of what they've gone through in life. | |
| That's right. | |
| There's nothing worse than bitterness. | |
| That root of bitterness. | |
| What great people become bitter and become nothing. | |
| Well, Pastor, there are stages of offense. | |
| You know, the first stage is anger. | |
| When someone gets offended, they get angry. | |
| Then it turns to resentment. | |
| Okay? | |
| And if you don't deal with the anger and the resentment, guess what? | |
| The next stage is bitterness. | |
| And what comes after bitterness? | |
| Unforgiveness. | |
| And the churches are filled and packed with people that are bitter and they will not forgive because they don't deal with the spirit of offense in its Genesis stage in the beginning and during its inception. | |
| You've got to deal with it. | |
| When that spirit starts coming up on you, you have to cast it down and take authority over it because if you sit there and let it fester, then guess what? | |
| Wounded people will end up wounding people. | |
| Right. | |
| Yes. | |
| It's so powerful. | |
| It's so necessary to live in forgiveness. | |
| You can't just forgive. | |
| You've got to move into it. | |
| And I'm sitting here today because I had to move through stages of forgiveness, and I'm still living in it. | |
| Yes. | |
| And God told me that I would not be released from prison if I did not forgive. | |
| From your heart. | |
| Well, that was the second phase. | |
| I had to do it from my heart. | |
| I started forgiving. | |
| Then he said, no, you've got to forgive from your heart. | |
| You have to mean it. | |
| You can't just mouth it. | |
| And you know where the biggest attacks are coming from now with the spirit of offense? | |
| It's from family members. | |
| It's true. | |
| I can't begin to tell you, just, you know, doing funerals in these last few years and while you're eulogizing the deceased, there have been families that have come in and sat on separate sides of the church aisle because of the spirit of offense. | |
| And because of something someone may have said, or the losing of a loved one, where family members are fighting over items left in a house. | |
| I mean, over and over again. | |
| Well, you won't be surprised because I tell people, when you're in ministry, you're not surprised about a lot of things. | |
| You see a lot of things that happen. | |
| But there are so many family members that are not speaking right now because someone's carrying a spirit of offense. | |
| And here's the sad thing about it. | |
| Even when you go and try to rectify it, some of them don't want to hear it. | |
| They don't even want to talk about it. | |
| And, you know, instead of putting it on the table, dealing with it, it goes into chaos and to confusion. | |
| I've seen people get literally sick unto death by not forgiving. | |
| Oh, absolutely. | |
| It's happening every day. | |
| But they say they have the love of God operating in them. | |
| You know, when you deal with the spirit of offense, it's all through the scripture. | |
| And I was thinking about the prodigal son. | |
| Most preachers that preach about the prodigal son, it's interesting because they always preach about the boy that strayed. | |
| But nobody preaches about the one that stayed. | |
| The boy that strayed, now you have to see the love of a father. | |
| The father was right there anticipating his arrival. | |
| Every day he's waiting. | |
| This could be the day that my son's coming home. | |
|
Preaching Love, Missing Grace
00:00:30
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| And the boy acknowledged that he had done wrong to God, to his heavenly father, and to his earthly father. | |
| And his father said, hey, bring me a ring. | |
| Bring me a robe and kill the fat calf. | |
| Give me a pair of shoes. | |
| But the boy that stayed in the house said, you never done that for me. | |
| Why are y'all throwing a party? | |
| See what I'm saying? | |
| And right now, we preach the love of God, and we talk about the love of God. | |