(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

I believe that God's gonna do something powerful today, and I keep on praying that He'll give me like one of those warm, fuzzy messages of encouragement, but in the words of Benaiah Karazalis, not today, not today.

But I think that most people, we've been in this series about the Holy Spirit, and I think that most people get the wrong idea about the Holy Spirit.

It is not a Holy Spirit, it's not just a spirit, it's the Holy Spirit.

It is the third person of the Trinity that lives inside of your body that is God.

I was laying in bed with my wife probably a week ago, and we're talking to our five-year-old because he still sleeps in my bed, and I used to be a better parent.

To his older brother and sister, we were better parents.

This one, he's different.

It's the baby.

But every night she reads him the little kids' Bible thing.

And I'll tell you what, man, it's amazing.

Ask her what brand it is or whatever, but the way that they word things for kids in there, not only is it incredibly accurate, but it is in a way that they can receive, they can understand.

And so often, I'm sitting there, and I'm just touched.

I'm like, man, that really gets it.

They simplify it, shorten it a little bit, but that really gets the thought-for-thought aspect from the Bible for him.

But she was explaining to him, and he was asking who the Holy Spirit was.

And I'll make it as simple for you as my wife did.

He is God living inside you.

He is not some Jiminy Cricket being there to give you a conscience.

Hear me for a second, because I think that's how it gets portrayed sometimes.

Jiminy Cricket is what makes you kind of feel things.

People who are headed for destruction have consciences too.

But there are the ones who have been called out of the darkness into the wonderful light, the set-apart ones, the ones that God calls his bride.

They have the Spirit indwelling them.

That means that the God of the universe has taken up residence in this raggedy old busted up body.

He sits right here inside of me.

And I want you to understand today and get the responsibility, everybody say responsibility, and the power that is inside of that.

My worry is that if we as a church don't get who he is and what he is to us, we are also headed for destruction.

The church today is filled with deception, religion, do-gooders, but very few who truly live in spirit.

I myself have not yet grasped this in its entirety, but God has had me focused on it more and more the last few months, but so is the devil.

I got way too much going on here.

If you were to ask me how I know this about the church, I'd tell you that because less than 10% of the congregation and 90% of churches serve in their church.

Less than 10% are involved actively in the mission that the church is.

Less than 20% tithe to the church.

I'm not making this about money.

I'm just saying that where your treasure is is obvious.

I'm just saying, and I'm going to tell you this from experience, I tithe too.

I make an offering with my tithe.

We teach this in kids all the time.

A tithe is 10% of whatever you make.

An offering is anything above that.

I promise you, you will never outgive God.

I dare you to try and so does he.

I promise.

In fact, in the Bible itself, God dares you to try.

He says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse of the Lord and I will open up the floodgates of heaven.

You will not have room to store the new grain.

But that's a problem.

Less than 15% even read their Bible enough to quote a scripture.

Many in the church are more committed to television shows and football teams than they are to the finished work on the cross of Christ.

I'd wager that if I began to tell you the truth about the darkness in your life and in your home and began to speak out about the ugliness that is surrounding your life, half of us would walk out the door, but let's find out today.

Can we get real today?

Can we be direct?

Can we talk about the spiritual battle that is happening inside me and all around me day after day after day?

I've been commissioned by the living God to sound an alarm, to wake up sleepers.

So if you came today for a warm, cushy message, you must have missed the sign when you walked in that says valorous.

We are a place of valor.

You are not in some wonderful sanctuary, you are in an arena.

We are a people of valor.

And that means that we get up, we get on mission, we come in here every Sunday, we armor up, we sharpen our sword so that we can walk back out there into the battleground and start making dents Monday through Sunday, so we can start showing people the goodness of God, the beauty that God is.

We are a city on a hill.

We're meant to puncture the darkness, to chase hell back by knowing who our God is and who he says we are.

Living on mission daily, I came to you today as a broken man because we have to stop putting pastors on pedestals.

I am a man.

I am flawed.

I am in need of the blood from that cross as much as you and every somebody in this place.

I am as in need of that blood as anybody else.

But the moment that we begin to put people on a pedestal, we begin to forget all about the God that lives inside of me.

The ministry is about people.

It is about loving people, lifting them up.

And I'm going to say, I heard a pastor say it this way one time, I can't find anywhere in the Bible where we're called to humble one another.

We're called to encourage one another, but I am called to humble myself.

So I'm standing here today and I'm going to tell you that I am broken.

I am not, I haven't arrived in all of my Christianity.

My walk of sanctification is not over yet.

He's still repairing things in me and he will be until I get on the other side of heaven.

Does that make sense?

All of us will be healed one day, whether it's on this side of the grave or this side of the grave, but one day, and I long for the day, as Paul said, I long for the day that I am separated from this flesh because my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.

All morning long.

I didn't want to come preach it.

I don't want to do it.

You'll see why in a minute.

There was everyone that was going to get me shot, but it's the truth.

We're going to be in the book of Zachariah today.

Zachariah is another that was an alarm.

So if you got your Bibles with you, go ahead and turn to Zachariah.

It's a short book.

You won't be too far off when we get there.

My first point is in our lives, if we're going to start living in the spirit and not living in the flesh, if we're going to start living in the way the Holy Spirit wants to guide our lives and not just as a conscience, but as a guide to my life, a connecto.

Connecto, this is the Hebrew word that was used for Eve in the garden to Adam.

It is the same word that is used as our connecto.

It is the same phrase that is used for God and Israel, the way that he helps them.

The Holy Spirit makes me something that I wasn't before.

Men, look at your wives.

If you've got a godly one, she makes you something that you weren't before.

Wives, look at your husbands, smile at them, be nice to them.

But I think that sometimes we don't talk about the enemy enough.

I think that we are not prepared as a church to fight because we don't know our enemy well enough.

The enemy has been after you since the moment you were conceived.

He has studied you carefully and he is far from alone in his attempt to lull you to sleep.

His greatest deception was making the world believe that he didn't exist.

My first point is to rebuke deception.

He's not some dummy, some mute spirit.

I want you to think about this for a second because the first sin that was ever committed didn't happen in the garden, it happened in heaven when this angel, who was apparently the most beautiful of all angels, and I wanna be really real with you for a second, because in the Bible, what describes Satan and how he got here, all that is very, very small.

You'll find some in Ezekiel, you'll find a little bit in Isaiah, but all of these thought processes that we have, most of them are fabricated.

We know that he parades as an angel of light, as an angel of life.

He is like a roaring lion.

He is not a roaring lion.

I serve the roaring lion.

I serve the lion of Judah.

He is just a loud sound.

But my God, when he speaks, when my God speaks, things change.

But he's not some idiot.

He convinced one third of God's army, one third of them, to follow him.

They had sat underneath the glory of God, God and the Father, in all of his glory, day after day, millennia after millennia, and he convinced them to leave and to follow him.

About a third of them.

Sounds kind of funny, a third.

They're still here, but we don't like to talk about it.

We like to talk about Jesus and all that stuff, and that's great, but I'm going to tell you that the devil is as real as Jesus is.

And the devil is very aware of who Jesus is.

There's this place where, I can't remember if it's Paul or if it's Peter, and there's this guy who's trying to cast out demons, and the demon speaks to him and says, Jesus I know, Paul I know, but I don't know you.

And I'm not being crazy or anything, but I wonder how many demons know your name?

How many demons shudder when you wake up in the morning?

How many demons shudder when you open your Bible at night and in the morning?

How many demons know who you are?

Third of God angels, they're still in your ear, in your TV, in your mind, praying on your children.

I know how spiritually oppressed these children are, because we as parents aren't teaching them.

We allow YouTube and Miss Rachel to teach our children.

Drop them off on Wednesday night, hoping the pastor can make it in, and I'm in two hours, I get them for two hours, I can't fix that in two hours.

I'm not being mean, I'm just being real.

We as a society have become so busy that we don't have time to read together, pray together, we can't even get a dinner together.

I'm not trying to beat you down, I'm trying to wake you up.

Halloween just passed, and the amount of children that I saw dressed as darkness, and their parents call themselves believers, that was shocking.

If that makes you feel uncomfortable, there's a reason why.

Let me tell you, if you're turning your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 6.14, this is a prescriptive text.

This is a text that tells you how you ought to live your life.

Paul says to the church in Corinth, do not be yoked together with those who do not believe.

For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness?

Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

We are deceived into a separation from God.

We leave God at church and wonder why we're spiritually anemic.

We allow it.

We say, oh man, they're just kids.

I mean, God knows their heart in it.

God knows our heart in it.

But your actions matter.

What we do matters.

My kids, and I'm just telling you, and I know that I'm radical, and we're going to cover that in just a second.

I know that I'm weird.

I'm a freak of nature.

In fact, to the world, I am a stench.

They can't stand me.

They hate me because the gospel is offensive.

The gospel to the world is offensive because they don't want to wake up.

But what I've been called to do is kind of like walking through a town, and you see this big apartment building that's on fire, and all of the people, you know there's people in there, and they're all asleep, and nobody's going to wake them up.

Most people in the world are just going to walk on by.

Well, I'm sure the fire department's going to be there.

Somebody else will.

Somebody else will do it, just like somebody else will serve in that ministry.

Somebody else will tie up.

Somebody else will do it.

But God called me to go inside and wake them up.

God called you to get up, go out, wake people up.

They are deceived, but you can't be deceived at the same time.

The Bible, it says that if the salt loses its saltiness, how will it be made salty again?

The spirits you're allowing to operate aren't holy.

Christians have no business associating with anything occult.

That means that in my house, my children don't watch horror films because that doesn't represent my God.

We don't listen to secular music and secular rap.

I used to, but I'm gonna tell you, there's some awesome...

Christian rap in the 90s was terrible.

Now it's good.

They've got it down.

They figured the beats out.

It's good stuff now.

I don't know if one of Dre's people got saved or something, but something happened.

There was a shift.

Just like Christian music now.

When I was growing up, it was all like case news.

That's what I call it.

It's really good to fall asleep to.

And now, I don't know about you, but maybe it's just me.

I love victory songs.

I love songs that talk about who I am because of what God did that gets me fired up, ready to go out and take on hell with a squirt gun.

But I can't have anything to do with the occult.

I can't have anything to do with any of these things.

And I know what you're thinking right now.

I know how psycho I sound.

But I started thinking about it because like, and there's so, and listen, the church is not in any shortage of wackadoodle do's and weirdos.

Okay.

And the problem is, and this is what the devil has crafted over the last several hundred years is there is so much fake.

I've seen the fake, I'll push it.

You pushing at a demon from across the room and somebody falls down the other side.

I believe that about as much as I believe that, you know, Hillary's innocent.

Oh, I said that out loud.

I didn't mean to say that out loud, but there's a lot of fake out there.

That doesn't mean that all of it is, but God has given you a spirit, the Holy spirit that allows you to discern what's fake and what's not fake.

See back in the Bible, you know, like I've heard people say all the time, well, that's a spirit of Jezebel.

And I'm like, that's weird.

Don't say that.

Okay.

That was like Ahab's wife.

She was a psycho.

She fell out a window, dogs ate her or something like that until I see it in revelation when Jesus talks about it.

Now, when Jesus talks, I sit down, shut up.

I started listening.

He's got something to say.

So apparently there must be these other spirits that are impacting the world around me that are impacting my wife, that are impacting my kids, that are impacting my kids and all of your kids too.

And if I don't stand up and fight, who the heck is going to, if I don't get my butt up, if I don't crack open my Bible, if I don't become a ferocious being in the spirit, how will they be protected?

But in Zechariah chapter 10 verses two and three, I'm going to turn there.

God says to Zechariah, for the idols speak falsehood and the diviners see illusions.

They relate empty dreams and offer empty comfort.

Therefore the people wander like sheep.

They suffer affliction because there is no shepherd.

My anger burns against the shepherds, so I will punish the leaders for the Lord of armies has tended his flock.

The house of Judah, he will make them like his majestic steed in battle.

We are called to shepherd church.

We, the ones who are called out of darkness into the wonderful light are called to shepherd.

First, our families, and then bring sound doctrine to the rest of the world.

But if you are not shepherding your family, if you are not shepherding your wife, your husband, your children, if we are not shepherding those things, then you don't have any business shepherding anything else.

Go and get your house in order first.

Go to your house.

See my faith, my walk, my movement has to start at 247 Park Street.

That's where it's got to begin.

And then after that, because God has given me a really simple list of priorities and my relationship with Jesus is number one.

I love Jesus more than I love my wife.

And one of the most beautiful things about her, one of the sexiest things about her to me is that she loves him far more than she loves me.

Number two is that woman.

She's number two.

Before my children, I love my children with all of my soul.

They are not going to stay with me for the rest of their lives.

I got a 15 year old who can't wait to get out right now.

They are going to leave.

And my grocery was going to go down.

Number three is the rest of my family.

Number four is Valorous Church because this is the house where God has planted me.

This is the house that he has put me underneath the leadership and the authority of this house, this place where he is doing God's work.

And if you are called to Valorous Church, I'm going to tell you that we are not like the other churches.

This is a weird place.

It is a different place because we're going to actually call you to mission.

We're not just going to preach to you this daddy God that is all cuddly and wonderful because God gets angry.

God hates sin.

He doesn't hate you.

He loves you right where you are.

You are good enough for God where you are right now, but he loves you far too much to leave you sit.

And so do we.

So if you want to sit down and be a bystander, you are in the wrong place today.

The church should be impacting the world, not with megaphones, but with radical change.

That's the second thing I wrote down.

Be radical.

I have two boys, fifth, 13 and five.

It's hard raising boys.

You know what I mean?

Like for wives, you know, typically boys are easier.

I hear that a lot.

For guys, girls are easier in a way because I'm not directly responsible for the kind of woman that she's going to become.

Tasha is, but I am directly responsible for the kind of men that these boys are going to become.

One of them I'm terrified for right now, but he's little.

We got time.

But also I mentor several young men, and I'm just gonna use this as a plug.

And in March of 2026, Valorous Church is going to have a strong men's ministry.

God has called me to this.

There's going to be a men's ministry and a women's ministry called Unshakeable Men and Unshakeable Women, because I believe that in the church, we as men have got to stand up and lead our families.

Now, I'm not leaving the ladies out.

I'm just saying that, and I think it was Joby Martin that said it.

He said, from the empty graven to today, women really haven't been the problem in the church.

They've been the backbones.

They've been the committees and all the different stuff.

I don't put all those flowers out there.

Maddie does.

But we, as men, we've got to step up.

And I'm not saying this is some ignorant thing, like, oh, you got to step up.

You got to do more, you know, like on Father's Day.

Like Mother's Day, it's always like, moms are so awesome.

They're so wonderful.

And Father's Day is like, you better get up, boy.

But I am saying that men need men.

Men need brothers.

And so many of us in this area have moved from somewhere far, far away, and we don't have brothers down here.

And I know that men need brothers because God in the flesh, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, when he was about to go to the cross, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane and he took his boys with him because he needed them.

He was in a bad spot and it hurt and he was going through it.

And just to be clear, and this is a caveat, Jesus was not terrified of a cross in that garden.

Listen, this will help your spirit a little bit.

Jesus wasn't afraid of being nailed to a cross, beat with a castille on which I'm probably saying it wrong.

He wasn't afraid of all of that.

What he was afraid of is drinking the cup of wrath.

What worried him is drinking down all of the sin and the consequence of it because God gets angry.

There is wrath because you can't have love and you can't have grace without justice.

But men need men.

Women need women.

Y'all are just better at it.

But I teach them a couple of things.

If they want to be radical men in 2025, it's easier than ever.

Number one, shake people's hand and look them in the eye.

Number two, tell the truth all the time.

Number three, be able to walk up to a girl, tell her your name and ask for hers and you are already an alpha male in 2025.

You are the top 4% of all men in 2025.

But in Zachariah, God tells Zachariah in chapter 8, verses 16 and 17, this is another prescriptive text.

These are the things you must do.

Speak truth to one another.

Make true and sound decisions within your city gates.

Do not plot evil in your heart against your brother or neighbor and do not love perjury for I, what's that word?

Hate all this.

And just to make sure you know who's talking, this is the Lord's declaration.

He is not just a cuddly God.

The world teaches us to believe the world and faith, but you can love the world, you can love faith, just don't go too far in either direction.

The Bible teaches us to abandon the customs of the world, put on Christ, seek him in his ways all the days of our lives.

We call people who have truly done this, kooks, crazies, over spiritual.

I've talked about this before.

How many of you have ever used that phrase?

You ain't got to raise your hand because I'm gonna make it weird if you do.

But I've called somebody, oh, they're just over spiritual.

I pray to God that one day somebody says he is over spiritual.

I pray to God that one day I am so in tune with the Holy Spirit living inside of me that people just smell him on me, that people feel him when I walk into a room, when I walk into a dark place, I don't even have to reach for the switch that just gets lighter.

That's what I pray.

I pray that this happens, but I pray that it happens for all of us.

How are we going to be a city on a hill?

How are we going to be a light into a dark place if we're not accepting the light in us, if we're trying to balance things?

Because we don't want people to think we're crazy.

I hope people think I am full-blown Jesus freak, lost my mind.

I've gone off the deep end because one day, no matter what you believe, one day a trumpet's gonna sound.

And when that trumpet sounds, I guarantee six foot, eight foot, 27 foot won't keep me down.

I promise.

Because I'm just that kind of crazy.

But we call them that.

In fact, I've become increasingly leery of folks that refer to themselves as the prophet.

Because there are a lot of crazies.

It's true.

There are a couple things that my kids hear all the time because of what we are.

And I want you to understand because I want you to know who you are in Christ, but I also want you to know what you are as a Christian, what I am.

So here are some of the things that my kids hear regularly, all of them, the boy and the girl, boys and the girls.

Number one is I love you.

They hear that a lot.

We overuse that in my house.

We don't go anywhere.

I don't care.

Even if Tasha's mad at me, she still tells me that she loves me before she leaves.

Number two, I'm proud of you.

Number three, no.

Practice it.

Everybody can just try it out right now.

No.

You can say it to your kids.

You can say it to your boss sometimes.

You can say it to a lot of people.

Sometimes no is just good because sometimes we as a body of believers and even as just people as a whole, we look at success and we think about all these things we need to add.

It's coming up January 1st.

I know everybody's going to have a New Year's resolution, something that we can already suck at by January 15th.

We're going to add things.

I'm going to go to the gym.

I'm going to start eating good.

I'm going to start doing.

I'm going to start.

What if you just started taking out things?

If you want to be truly successful in anything in your life, let me tell you how to start.

Start removing stuff first.

This has got to go in.

This has got to go in.

This has got to go.

Start purging things from your life.

First of all, I'm only going to listen to music that glorifies my God.

Second of all, we're going to pray and we're going to pray out loud.

And if my kids don't like it, okay, sit down.

I love you.

Sit down.

I'm proud of you.

Sit down.

Daddy, can I have this game on my phone?

No.

Number three is no.

That's a really important one.

They hear it a good bit.

Number four, they hear prayers out loud.

Number five, they hear scripture.

Number six, they hear turn that off.

Number seven, they hear let me have your phone.

Parents, because we are called to shepherd our children, I want you, I'm not saying I'm not a perfect parent.

I am far from it.

I am figuring this thing out.

I'm not even sure if I'm doing good.

I mean, like, they're not getting in crazy trouble.

Another one, if you have daughters, you're not wearing that.

You're not.

I love you.

You're not wearing that.

They have seen me and their mama pray through this house and anointed with oil many times because our spirits were uneasy because it's real church.

Then one night, I'm going to try to say it without joking up, but one night we hear some commotion upstairs.

I get out of bed.

She does too.

We walk out and I see my 15-year-old and my 13-year-old.

My 13-year-old has his Bible open and they are praying through the space because they felt something.

That's what leading does.

That's what shepherding does.

It teaches them and now they're not afraid.

They'll speak to the demon because when Jesus, when he met Legion, he didn't ask that man what his name was.

He asked the demon what its name was.

And we as the church, if you don't start talking, and I used to think all this was crazy, but a few months ago, God gave me a vision.

I didn't even think that I'd ever experienced something like that.

I had heard the audible voice of God a couple of times at least I thought I did.

It's hard sometimes because there are three voices in my head.

I'm not schizophrenic.

One is me.

I know one is God.

And then the other is definitely not me.

It's the devil.

The problem is, is that all three of them sound like me.

And I don't know about you.

And if you say you don't struggle with it, sometimes I'm almost say you're probably not being honest.

Sometimes it's hard to hear what God wants you to do.

Sometimes it's hard to hear what guidance he has given you, but I'm going to tell you that he gave you a leg up.

It's called the Holy Bible.

I tell the students all the time, you want to hear the voice of God, read the Bible.

If you want to hear it out loud, read the Bible out loud.

God will speak to you through it.

So stop being more committed to your television shows than you are to your Bible.

Stop being more committed to what Donald Trump is doing or whatever the government is doing than you are to your Bible.

Stop being more committed to your phone, to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

Stop it.

The devil is lulling you to sleep and he's eating your children for it.

That's all your children do too, because how do we raise them now?

Here's an iPad, baby.

Here's the remote.

And I'm not saying I'm void of it.

There are some times when we got something to do and Ellie is just going to watch the show for a second.

Outdoor boys on YouTube, that's his thing.

But what I am saying is that we can't let that be all of it.

God says to Zachariah in chapter four, verse six, he answered me, this is the word of the Lord.

Not by strength or by might, but by my spirit.

Just so you're not unsure who said it, says the Lord of armies.

God said to Isaiah in chapter 30, verse 15, for the Lord God, the Holy one of Israel has said, you will be delivered by returning and resting.

Your strength will lie in quiet confidence, but you are not willing.

Quiet confidence.

It's not about being loud.

It's not about being crazy.

It is about knowing that you know, because you have read the scriptures.

You've been through story after story.

You've been cover to cover, cover to cover, cover to cover.

There's never a time in your life when you are not reading the Bible.

And I understand some people are thinking about it all wrong.

They're like, but pastor, I can't remember what I read last week.

I'm not retaining it.

I don't remember what I had for lunch last month, but it's nourished my body.

This is not a book so that you can retain it and memorize it.

You know how many people have memorized scripture and are going to hell?

That's the truth.

See, the devil doesn't care if you memorize scripture.

The devil doesn't care if you come in here.

The devil doesn't come in here if I preach about Jesus.

He knows Jesus is good.

He knows he's the king of kings.

He knows he's defeated.

The devil cares if I come and I start calling out sin.

If I start exposing his work, the devil cares about those things.

But if we become a well-read people, not a well-listened people, a well-taught people, and we eat daily.

That's how I got so pretty.

I eat a lot.

Church, if you don't catch anything else from me ever and anytime that I speak or I teach in this arena, please hear this.

Open your Bible.

Read it every single day like it's your job.

Read it like your life depends on it because, so help me God, it does.

It does.

Because if you do not know where you stand, if you don't know what you stand for, you will fall for anything.

You will believe anything is true.

And it leads me to the last thing I wrote down.

What we're called to do is fight in the Spirit.

I'm not called to fight physically.

You are no match for sin.

You're no match for the lowest devil, no match for the littlest demon, but the Spirit that is inside of me, but the Spirit that is inside of me.

Let me tell you what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10, 3-5.

For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful.

Everyone say powerful.

Through God for the demolition, everyone say demolition, of strongholds.

We demolish arguments and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

That one word is what we're missing in the American church so often.

Obey.

Obey.

Because there's nothing in all of your Bible, if you read it, that will tell you that it is not a call to action.

I can't read the word so that without saying so that.

Now, I want you to understand I'm not being legalistic.

You can't balance the law and a covenant of grace at the same time.

Here's what I teach your children on Wednesdays.

There are three types of law in the Mosaic covenant.

There is moral law, there is civil law, and there's criminal law.

Of those three, there is one that you are required to continue to pursue, to continue to keep, the moral one.

I'm not under that covenant.

I'm under a covenant of grace, but our greatest weapon against sin and darkness is submission, submission to the Holy Spirit, to humble ourselves and not each other, called to encourage, build up, correct, and support the body of believers.

We wage war with love.

We wage war with fasting.

We wage war with prayer.

We have prayer warriors, and I know they're warriors because they've cleansed this building over and over and over again because a church ain't a building.

A church is a people, and the devil comes and he sits right beside you here too, but we have prayer warriors.

We have vanguard before services to make sure that this place, that anything that comes in here knows where it is and knows that it has messed up and it needs to get on out of here.

It needs to go outside because if it stays up in here, things will change for it that it will not like.

That should be your house too.

If you call them, I bet they'll come to your house or you could.

You could tap into the power that is available inside of you because you have a shepherd.

Not with slander, arguing over stupid things.

We have to remove anything that is not Christ in our lives.

It is through this submission and recognizing his voice that I and we become unstoppable.

The closer I get to Christ, not by what I do, but through a real relationship through his word, we begin to understand the power that is inside of us through the Holy Spirit.

It is not because of what I do or what I don't do or how well I know it, but it's because I am in relationship with the living God.

All the religions in the world, ours is the only one that's still alive.

Ours is the only one that's real.

There is one true God.

There is one name above every name.

There is only one way to get to heaven and it is by leaving the past behind, being crucified with Christ, picking up my cross daily and this is how I fight my battles, with callous knees, because I pray through every situation.

Every pain that comes against me and my family, I'm in prayer.

Every pain that comes against this house that I love, this house that I'm called to, I am in prayer.

We just went through 30 days of fasting in prayer and it was life-changing for a lot of people.

What if it wasn't because the church told you to, but because you listened to the Holy Spirit tell you to and you did it consistently?

What if you were just always in some period of fasting and prayer?

What if you started fasting anything that didn't remotely look like Jesus Christ and you started praying through your days, asking God to reveal it to you?

God, reveal anything inside of me that I have not yet submitted to you.

God, help me to get it underneath of your leadership.

God, help me to submit it deeper with you because God is with me and I have nothing to fear.

That's why the Bible called Jesus Emmanuel, God with us.

He's not distant.

He's with me.

He's in me.

And we have to stand up for our families and look Satan in the eye and let him know that maybe you forgot who the hell I am, but I know who I am.

I know that God has called me a holy nation.

I know that God has called me a set apart.

I am set apart.

And you better start shaking when I wake up in the morning.

And when I crack this Bible open, every darkness inside of this place will begin to flee because I'm tapped in.

I'm tuned in.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

It is not optional in my house.

If you come visit, you serve the Lord that day too.

I want to invite you to get on a mission though.

Start serving His kingdom.

Begin to find out who He's called you to be.

But you won't find it out on a couch.

You ain't going to find out in a pew either.

You're going to find out when you get to work.

When you pick up your cross and you start impacting the world around you, less than 10% serve.

This wasn't all just a volley to set this up.

If you can serve, great.

If you can't serve, okay.

But I'm going to tell you what will happen if you do.

If you do decide to get involved in this mission called Valorous, we will ask more of you than you were willing to give.

I just wanted to park cars.

That's it.

I just wanted to wave people in.

And then things changed.

But you'll find out who God says you are.

You'll find out what your spiritual gifts are.

Because most of the problem in the world is that we have an identity crisis.

We don't know who we are because we don't know who Christ is.

We don't understand that when he died on that cross, when he climbed that cross of Calvary, when they pierced his hands and he allowed it, somehow that counted for me.

And we don't understand that every single time I pray, I pray on an empty tomb that has been empty for the last couple thousand years because my God is alive.

His ears are wide open.

His hands are open.

And he is willing.

He is able.

He is more.

And he wants me to be more too.

In a minute, they're going to come out and they're going to play a song.

And I want to invite you today, if you don't know Christ, or if maybe you're just mad right now, you can't wait to get out.

Okay.

That's all right.

It's not my job to convict you.

It is my job to teach you the word of God, the spirit.

He does what he wants and I ain't telling him what to do.

But they're going to come out.

They're going to sing a song.

And I'm going to ask you if there is some kind of business in your life that you need to do with Jesus, that you do it today.

If there is some darkness inside of you, if there is something that you have not yet surrendered to the cross of Christ, I'm going to ask you to do it today because I don't know if you're promised tomorrow.

I'm not trying to scare you.

And we're not selling fire insurance in here, folks.

I'm selling the love of Christ.

That's the truth.

What I'm saying to you is that a couple of things will happen.

One, I don't have to worry about you on judgment day.

But number two, you will step into the most beautiful part of your life.

You will become more than you ever thought you could.

Your kids will see a different daddy, a different mommy than they've ever seen.

He will fix generational curses.

I know that you've been doing things that were tradition in your family, but those traditions were handed down from people that didn't believe what you believe, from people that didn't understand what you understand through the Holy Spirit now.

And there have been generational curses on your family, and I beg you today, come break them.

You don't have to come down here if you're not comfortable.

Pray where you are.

God hears you no matter where you are, no matter how you say it.

If you say, man, I'm not good at praying, you don't have to be, I'm not either.

Just talk to your Father.

And if you feel that nudge in your heart today to get involved with the local church, because that's what we're called to, that's what the church is, it's why we gather together, so we can link arms and we can make a difference.

When you walk out today, you'll see a whole bunch of tables set up.

I think we got about everything under the sun covered.

And we're not just looking for warm bodies to fill spots, we're really giving you an opportunity to step into more, to find out who you are, find out the light that's inside of you, and we're going to ask you to truly, honestly be a city on a hill.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much for today.

God, thank you for this opportunity that you give us every week to gather together, to worship you, God, to give you glory.

God, thank you for the men and women who have fought, and though some have died, Lord, to give us this opportunity.

God, I ask that you would bless this day, that you would bless every man, woman, boy, and girl in this room, that they would glorify you, Lord, that they would begin to remove the things in their life that are not of you, that they would cling to your Holy Spirit, Lord, and the helper.

In the word, you say that he is a helper, that you will send one to guide us, to shepherd us, Lord, and we will know his voice because we know your voice, Lord.

God, I ask for a radical change in this place.

God, I ask for a radical change in this world.

I ask for you to help us to be a light.

God, we love you.

We praise you.

All God's children said, Amen