One of the things that has always amazed and even perplexed me is how excited the church gets when we start talking about going to heaven. We seem to get more excited about songs and psalms that talk about going to heaven than we do about anything else:
- Going up yonder to be with my Lord
- Soon and very soon we are going to see the King
- Oh I want to see Him look upon His face, there to sing forever of His saving grace
- Some glad morning when this life is over I’ll over, I’ll fly away
- Caught up to meet, joy and happiness will be mine
- The King is coming
When one looks at the church it would appear that our philosophy is that the Lord saved us strictly to get us to heaven. We seem to get excited and shout and rejoice about going to heaven; we spend more time thinking about heaven than we do thinking about earth.
It’s the same thing that happens here in this text—the event of the story—it’s post-resurrection—Jesus has been around for some 40 days or so. And now He’s getting ready to go back up into heaven. And the word of the Lord declares that—as He goes up—the men that He had been talking to were gazing (verse 10) into heaven. They were gazing; they were caught looking up into heaven.
And the Lord revealed to me that one of the things that is wrong with the church of the Living God is that every since that day that that is what we’ve been perfecting—GAZING into heaven, waiting to go and be with Jesus.
And every since that day of the ascension of our Lord all we’ve been concentrating upon is GAZING instead of GOING.
- All we appear to concentrate upon is getting caught up into Heaven/be with the Lord/in our mansion/in the streets that are paved with gold/when the wicked shall cease from troubling and the weary shall be at rest.
But the problem is that we are so enamored and caught in gazing at heaven that we are not paying attention to the hell being raised on earth.
• I believe that one of the reasons that the city is going to hell in a hand-basket is because the church is too busy GAZING.
Gazing (emblepontes) which denotes gaping, gawking, intently looking, staring and watching.
• The reason the drug boys are taking over the corner is because the church is too busy gazing.
• The reason young girls are getting pregnant at ages earlier than ever is because the church is so busy gazing.
• The reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is because the church is so busy gazing.
• We come to church, sing and shout, and declare that we are on our way to heaven—but then we walk by people who are homeless; we walk by persons who can’t find jobs; we walk past teenagers who are getting high on the corner—because we are so busy gazing that we are not going.
But I have come to declare a prophetic word upon the body of Christ today; and that is what Jesus said to them in that day
- He has not called us to be gazers; He has called us to be witnesses.
- He has not called for us solely to shout about going to Heaven; He has called for us to talk about going into the world and telling everybody that there is a Savior Who can save you from your sins.
• You and I are not called to GAZE, we are called to TESTIFY.
To testify means to show, to confirm, to live out, to bear out, the demonstrate, to exemplify and to give evidence. It means to give confirmation, outer affirmation, substantiation, and verifiable proof and logical support.
• It’s about your life AND your lips.
• It’s about your words AND your works.
• It’s about your worship AND your witness.
David put it this way: The redeemed of the Lord ought to ‘say so’. The words, ‘say so’ in the Hebrew tongue is aw’mar which meant to tell, make known, make public, to advertise, to publish, to broadcast, and to GET IT OUT.
The problem is that MOST within the body of Christ are so enamored and narcissistic, laissez-faire and caught up in themselves and their comfort and convenience—that we don’t GET IT OUT.
• And I know that this is not where the church runs, shouts, dances, jerks, hoops, slides, dips, and does the electric slide—because we want to be CHURCH-GOERS and not WITNESSES.
The very idea of witness stems from the word ‘Martur’as’ (where we get our word martyr).
• It means we have to come as a servant, not a celebrity
• It means we have to come saying, ‘Just as I am’.
• It means we’re traveling to the cross EXPECTING to bleed.
• It means we live on the altar and NOT on the throne.
• It means we live as an army and not as if we are the audience.
• It means that our chief aim, purpose and desire is the PLEASE HE Who is our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Because that is what it means to be a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I just came by to let you know that:
- He didn’t just call you to be a Baptist, He called you to be a witness.
- He didn’t just call you to be a preacher, He called you to a witness.
- He didn’t call you to be a gossiper/slanderer, He called you to be a witness.
- He didn’t call you to only holiness, He called you to be a witness.
And He said, “I’m giving you power so that you can be a WITNESS to those around you.”
It is very interesting that when they started to talk to Him (verse 6) they said to Him, now Jesus we’ve got a question for you, now WHEN are you going to restore the kingdom?
In their Judaic mindset the Kingdom was about political position. Jesus says to them, ‘You all’s problem is that you are more worried about POSITION than you are about POWER.’
- Because you can have POSITION and not have POWER.
- But when you have POWER God can move you to a place where you don’t need POSITION.
How many of you have ever been in a place where you didn’t have the position but you knew that you had the POWER?
- You may not have the title but you have the character.
- You may not have the name on the wall but you have the anointing that is on your life.
• Deliver me from people who desire the position but aren’t in line and in tune with the character and ways of God—to where they possess the POWER.
After all:
- Anybody can shout in the spotlight
- Anybody can smile when your name is on the program
- Anybody can rejoice when everybody knows it was you
- Anybody can celebrate when you have a following crowd and a bank account that’s full and complete
But character is developed
- When you can rejoice in the back of the line
- When you can shout and testify when your name is never called Elder, Dec. Brother Pastor or Prophet
- When you can smile when you KNOW you made the contribution and you were deliberately overlooked and ignored—but you showed up anyway.
Deliver me from sensitive, self-centered, boujisitc believers who want the position but no power.
• Real power is more than just the casual fling I have with God during the week; but real power is when I’ve been in the WORD to the extent that the WORD is IN ME!!!
• Real power is more than telling somebody where you go to church; but real power is the outpouring and the overflow of joy unspeakable that lets others in your proximity smell the aroma of your relationship with the the Most High God—that it causes you to celebrate, rejoice and testify about how good the Lord has been to YOU!!!
I’m talking about real power. Because when you have power others around you can keep the position.
Because when you walk in the ways of God, He’ll give you
- Power to walk/talk right
- Power to live/love right
And that should be your testimony: I don’t have the position but I do have the power.
He says in verse 8, “I’m giving you power to BE a witness”.
Now let me tell you very quickly:
- You cannot be a witness and be a HATER.
- You cannot be a witness and be a GOSSIP
- You cannot be a witness and be JEALOUS/Envious/Hateful/Liar/Deciever
Because if you are called to be a witness but don’t ACT LIKE a witness, you don’t have the character OF a witness. And when you don’t have the character OF a witness, you will force Jesus to treat you like a hostile witness. And the one thing that I don’t want is for Jesus to treat me like a hostile witness. Because one thing that Jesus will do is He will whip me until I get the point.
• Has Jesus ever had to whip somebody in here; because you weren’t acting like the person that you were called to be?
• Has He ever had to slap you around; put pain in your life; take people out of your life; rearrange some stuff in your life—because you weren’t doing what He called you to do?
Don’t make Jesus treat you like a hostile witness simply because you’ve decided to resist your testimony and deny your witness with your character and your spirit and your bitter ways of contempt, envy, hatred and jealousy.
• A witness is somebody who has been called to testify because they have evidence of a truth they didn’t learn by somebody telling them; but they learned by experience.
This is the time you have been called, commissioned and debutized to be a witness.
Do you know why you missed your shout?
Because if a witness is somebody who testifies because you’ve got evidence, that means that this season MUST be your season to get blessed. Because you can’t be a witness UNTIL you get a blessing.
Which suggests and infers that—
- Some of you are going to get jobs/increase/promotion/get healed/get delivered/get breakthrough/restoration.
Because you can’t be a witness until you have something to witness about.
THIS IS MY SEASON TO GO ON THE WITNESS STAND FOR JESUS CHRIST.
Because I’ve got tangible, verifiable, undeniable evidence that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly….
So I want you to raise your right hand….do you promise to tell the truth….so help you God.
Will you say, I DO!
- Do you promise to tell how He healed you?
- Do you promise to tell how He paid your bills?
- Do you promise to tell how He dried your tears?
- Do you promise to tell how He fought your battles?/how He opened doors for you?/how He made your enemies your footstool?
Because this is MY SEASON TO BE A WITNESS!!!
You’re going to be so blessed before this year is out that the Devil is going to be scared to cross-examine you!
Cross Examination is defined as, and I quote: a close questioning of a hostile witness in a court of law to discredit or throw a new light on the testimony already provided in direct examination
But there is only one way to be a witness.
Verse 8 says, ‘but you shall receive power WHEN the Holy Ghost has come upon you’. The inference is that you don’t get power until you get the Holy Ghost.
• We need somebody who knows about the power of the Holy Ghost.
‘You shall RECEIVE power’…which means that the power that you get, you can’t earn it/doesn’t matter how much you come to church/how many crosses that you wear---the reception of the Holy Spirit is a gift from God for you to have power.
• And it doesn’t say to make you shout, make you speak in tongues, didn’t come to make you run…to make you fall out at the altar—but the Holy Ghost came to give you POWER to be a witness to the glory and honor of the Kingdom of God.
…when the Holy Ghost COMES upon you…
Greek, ‘come upon you’, is the same word that Gabriel used when he talked to Mary. That the Holy Ghost is going to IMPREGNATE you with POWER—which means that the Holy Spirit can’t be taught to you to the extent that somebody is going to take you to a back room and you got the power. ‘Come upon you’ means that you place yourself in a subservient position to submit to the impregnation of the Holy Ghost to make you pregnant with power to give birth to a witness that you could not do without the power coming upon you.
• It is NOT a filling or baptism, as we call it.
You had to be filled to confess.
This ‘coming upon you’ is a visitation to effectively give you power to WORK in the kingdom. I’m already filled with the Spirit when I’m feeding on the Word, coming to bible study…doing my part. But every now and then I need a visitation.
Is there anybody here who can declare: preacher I know I’m filled…but…
when somebody gets on my last nerve—I need a visitation
when I start having thoughts of suicide—I need a visitation
when I feel like giving up—I need a visitation
He says, ‘you’re going to get power to do some stuff in the earth’. You’re going to get power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you/when the Holy Ghost visits you. And you will be my witness in Jerusalem.
- He said that the reason that you are going to need power beyond YOUR power is because the first place that you’re going to need to change stuff are in the areas closest TO you.
• And it’s hard to change what’s close to you.
• HE says that the first place you’ve got to change is HOME space.
He says I’m not just talking about your zip code and your address…I’m talking about people in your family who are possessed with the demonic, people in your friendship circles who have a warped psychological complex.
• HE said I need to give you power to change some stuff with the people you’re hanging out with.
Because I’ve come by to let somebody know that some of you can’t get free because some of the people that you’re hanging out with don’t mean YOU any good; don’t mean the Kingdom any good; so He put you there to WITNESS and not to partner with their trifling mess.
He said you’ll be witness in your home, but then also Judea. Those are people that you’re familiar with but aren’t necessarily family with.
• You need power to keep your witness on a job full of demons
• You need power to keep your witness around church folk who act more hellified than saved.
You need to keep the power to be a witness in areas you’re not familiar with; but then you’re going to need power—because He says I’m going to take you to ENEMY TERRITORY (Samaria), and I’m going to give you power over enemies who tried to shut you up but couldn’t do anything to back you up.
How many of you have some enemies that keep trying to shut you up, but you keep on smiling, rejoicing, praying for them—that’s because you have the POWER of the Holy Ghost. And how many of you can witness, that the more your enemy tries to shut you up and tear you down—the more POWER that Jesus gives you?
Because He prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies.
And I need somebody here today who knows how to go to enemy territory with a smile on your face and declare you are more than a conqueror—because you’ve got POWER!!!
Here comes my fresh word!!!
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria…He said, preacher, those are levels and dimensions. Locations and levels.
- Levels of blessing; levels of impact.
The order that Jesus speaks them is the order to which they do them in the book.
Watch this:
Jerusalem is chapters 1 through 7. Seven is the number of completion. Jesus said that the first thing I’ve been trying to do is keep you in some areas where you are until I COMPLETE you some of the stuff I want to complete; I was not going to let you go to the next location until you have completed your job where you were.
- God says I’ve got some stuff for you to do on the job where you are; which is why you keep praying for deliverance but I haven’t moved you yet
- I’m not letting you out of that marriage/relationship/situation—until I complete something.
But then Judea and Samaria are chapters 8 through 12. 5 is the number of Grace and Favor. God told me to tell somebody that when He finishes working with you at HOME; HE’s going to start blessing you in areas that you don’t deserve it.
• When He gets through blessing you with stuff you ought to have; He’s going to start blessing you with stuff that you never thought that you WOULD have.
How many of you know that you have blessing that you never thought that you would have?
“In the uttermost parts of the earth”. Why did you say this Jesus?
Because I’ve got places that I am taking them that are too numerable to be numbered.
• I’ve got more in store for them than they can even think about.
• So the only way for me to describe everything I’ve got left for them…
The uttermost parts of the earth are chapters 13 through 28.
GOD HAS MORE FOR YOU THAN WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY HAD BEHIND YOU!
- There’s more left to get than there is left to receive
- God’s got more before you than what you’ve had behind you
- Your dreams are greater than your memories
- Your future is brighter than your past
• God’s got a blessing you haven’t even thought about
• God’s got a house that you haven’t even thought about
Turn to your neighbor…’O magnify the Lord with me…..’
Because we’ve got POWER to be blessed/walk/witness/save/heal….
Is there anybody in here who knows that you’ve got the evidence that…
He IS the Christ/nissi(banner)/rophe(healer)/shalom(peace)/
tsidkenu(righteousness)
I’M A WITNESS THAT HE IS ABLE TO DO EXCEEDINGLY, ABUNDANTLY ABOVE ALL I ASK/THINK
- Go home/work/church and be a witness.
- Go to your enemies/family/hooker/drug dealer/gang banger/alchoholic/divorcee/abuser and be a witness.
- Be a witness on your way—do you know him/have you tried.
Because since I met Jesus what a change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart; floods of joy oh my soul…let the sea billows roll.
- Since I’ve met Him, He cure my liquor/drug/sex/gossip/lying habit
- But He gave me a new habit. I’ve got a habit to shout, run, dance, testify!!!
