Hello, a big welcome to the We Are Zion sermon podcast.
We are a church based out of Chennai, India.
We are thrilled that you tuned in today and hope that you will
be refreshed, revived, and energized by what you hear.
Our desire is that you will live life with a renewed sense of
purpose that stems from a vibrant faith in Jesus.
The year 2025 is 1 where we will be positioned by God to possess
our promise. As you listen in to today's
sermon, a surgery and a christening, you will be drawn
deeper into Abraham's life and the big destiny that God
unveiled to him. We pray that you would be moved
to give God greater access to your heart and that you will
allow Him to breathe afresh over every area of your life.
Hi Church, What a joy it is to bring God's word to you.
We continue to look at the life of Abraham.
As you know, the theme for the year is positioned to possess
the promise. And we've been looking at
Abraham, the original promise receiver from God, someone who
got such a big promise, and yet the unfolding and the unveiling
of that took years. And God was with him every step
of the way, just like he promised.
And today we're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 17.
It's a very pivoted passage because it's literally the cusp
of Abraham and Sarah receiving their promise child.
They were just on the horizon, though they didn't know it yet.
Isaac was just around the corner.
And it must have felt felt interminable, the wait, you
know, because they've had like 24 years of following God out of
their comforts, his, you know, zone.
And it says that now Abraham is 99 years old when he left, or he
was 75 and here he is at 99. And and what has happened in the
intervening time is that Sarah got, I'm guessing, tired of
waiting. And so 13 years before this
moment, Ishmael was conceived in, Ishmael was born.
And how was Ishmael born? He was born to Isaac through
Sarah's handmaid, who was Hagar. And so was this God's plan for
them? No.
Was it His will? No.
But they chose to do this because I'm guessing like any
human, the way it got too long and Ishmael happened.
And so Ishmael is 13 years old, Isaac is 99.
And that's when God brings this fresh promise to him.
Now, is it fresh? Yes, it is because there's more
direction and clarity that God is giving to the original
promise. If you notice in the beginning,
he just gives him a sevenfold blessing and says this is what
I'm going to give you, follow me.
And it says Abraham followed. And then we saw how God promises
him land, the land of Canaan, and he confirms it to Abraham
because Abraham is unsure how will I actually take up this
territory? And then God gives, you know,
makes this covenant with him where he himself sends this
torch. And you know, through the
sacrifice, God moves it to show that he is marking his standing
as as a guarantee for this entire covenant.
And now we come to Genesis 17 where Abraham doesn't know it
yet, but but his promise is just about to come through the
promise of this child. And yet I'm guessing Abraham had
come to this place of just saying, maybe this is my life.
Maybe you know, Ishmael is the one who will carry the promise
forward. Maybe this wealth that I have,
this is what I have and this is where God is taking me.
Maybe that's what he had come to.
And so God comes with this fresh word of promise.
And that's where we're going to take up our reading from Genesis
chapter 17, verse one onwards. When Abraham was 99 years old,
the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk
before me faithfully and be blameless.
Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will
greatly increase your numbers. Now if you look at this, there's
so much more specificity. Specificity.
God is telling him if you would do two things, then I will make
my covenant and then I will greatly increase your numbers.
It didn't feel so conditional up until now, but you have to
understand a detour had been made.
Ishmael had come into the picture and so there was a
position that he needed to take and the position was a 2 fold
thing. 1 He had to be faithful to God and he had to be
blameless. And God does it so beautifully
when he's not pinpointing his sins or his faults, but he's,
he's giving him his overarching guardrails and he's saying, Hey,
I, I will keep my word, but you need to be faithful and
blameless. And when we look at through this
year, when we look at position to possess the promise, we need
to remember that the promise that God has given you and me is
real. The promises he makes, the
promises and his word that we stand on and we claim for
ourselves are real. But there is a position we need
to take up spiritually, physically, emotionally.
And that in this case was one of faithfulness and blamelessness.
God calls us in his place of being positioned so that we can
actually receive what he has promised.
Many times we become unfaithful. We say, you know what God, maybe
this is not it. We turn our backs on Jesus.
We we go the other way. We choose what is comfortable.
We choose the old roots. We choose to live a life that is
less than blameless. We we we indulge in things we
absolutely shouldn't. We live a lifestyle that is
detrimental to ourselves and to generations to come.
We spoil our legacy intentionally thinking, well,
nothing's anyway happening. But I want to encourage you that
these conditions are actually guard rails.
They they help us know the heart of God.
They help us know the character of God and they help us to live
in a way that aligns ourselves with him.
And so if you have to understand that this season for Abraham was
one where Ishmael had happened, 13 years of enjoying this little
son, he's now freshly a teenager.
And as I have a teenager, I know just how pivotal that season is
when a little boy becomes a teenager, It's like, you know,
becoming a man. And I'm sure Abraham was
rebelling and enjoying that. And that's when God meets him.
And it continues in verse 3, Abraham fell face down, and God
said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you.
You will be the father of many nations.
No longer will you be called Abraham.
Your name will be Abraham. For I have made you a father of
many nations. I will make you very fruitful.
I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between
me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to
come to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
The whole land of Canaan where you now reside as a foreigner, I
will give as an everlasting position to you and your
descendants after you, and I will be their God.
So now he's actually confirming what Abraham is going to become.
Abraham on his own, his name meant exalted father, and he had
this. He was a Chieftain.
He was in later chapters, we'll see.
He's called a prophet by God. So he basically had this
influence right in his home, in his household.
He was the lead leader of his pack, so to say.
But here God was giving him a new name and saying you're going
to be Abraham, father of many nations.
And it's interesting because the when you look at this passage,
you realize that God is giving Abraham.
He's moving him from a local destiny to a international
global destiny. He's moving him from small town
impact to large scale impact, all in the change of a name.
You may think, You may think, what are you saying?
Is this Abraham to Abraham? No, the addition of this one
letter of the Hebrew alphabet changes his complete destiny.
And the letter that is being added in is the 5th letter,
which is he. HEI, it's just said like a
breath. If you can just pronounce it
with me. Hey, it is the most effortless
gentle letter because you literally don't have to move
your lips to say it, but this letter adds this precious
syllable into the word from Abraham to Abraham and it
changes his destiny because now this letter has just so many
intonations and, and meanings to it.
OK, now you have to understand that the Hebrew lettering,
apparently each letter doesn't is just not a letter, but it has
so many deeper meanings, so many spiritual meanings.
And basically this letter in the Hebrew alphabet represents
gentility and spirituality, OK? And it's it's meaning is to look
or to behold. So basically it indicates
spiritual revelation. And basically what God was
saying was I'm breathing into you Abraham.
Abraham, I'm now giving you, making you Abraham.
And it was for it was such an important thing that this letter
was being added in because it was literally God breathing
newness into Abraham and Sarah. They were Abraham and Sarai.
They were being changed to Abraham and Sarah.
What did this actually mean? So when you say the word, when
you say the letter, hey, you're actually breathing out.
And interestingly, this letter actually denotes spiritual life.
It denotes the breath of God. It is the essence of all
creation. Can you believe it when we read
Psalm 33 verse 6, this word feed this letter features there.
It says by the word the Lord the heavens were made their starry
hosed by the breath of his mouth.
The power of God is in his mouth.
He spoke the words into existence.
When you see in in Genesis chapter 1, he spoke and said let
there be light and there was light.
He spoke and said let that, you know, let the earth team with
livestock and it happened. The breath of God is so powerful
and God was literally breathing upon Abraham and saying now is
when I'm going to give you your larger destiny.
It came after 24 years of following God faithfully.
Did he make mistakes? Yes.
Did he take his own vetoes? Yes.
Did he, did he fall off the wagon of faith now and then?
Maybe we don't know, but this is what God did.
God was breathing afresh into him and I want to just go down
to where he actually talks to Sarah, especially Genesis
chapter 17 verses 15 to 17 says God also said to Abraham.
Abraham, As for Sarai, your wife, you are no longer to call
her Sarai. Her name will be Sarah.
I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.
I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations,
kings of people will come from her.
Think about Sarah's plight the last 24 years.
Her husband gets a promise that he's going to have a child.
He's going to have more children.
And I think at this point Sarah thought maybe I'm not the root
for those children because there was no mention explicitly that
it would come from Sarah. And here is this beautiful
confirmation of God saying it's coming from Sarah.
She's the one who's going to bring the promised child forth.
And I want to just encourage us that those of us who are feeling
forgotten by God, God, you're answering everyone else's
prayers. They are having the healing they
want. They're having the family that
that I wanted. I want to encourage you today
that God doesn't forget you. Sarah may have felt forgotten.
I'm sure when she watched Ishmael run and play in the in
the camp, her heart must have ached because heart of hearts,
Hagar was his mother. And I want to just remind you
that none of us are forgotten. Every promise he has spoken over
you, he remembers. He remembers.
And it is at that moment, at that time that He comes through
so beautifully, so powerfully coming back up.
If you notice, both of them have this syllable, hey, this letter
being added. It was like God was breathing
upon Abraham and Sarah and saying, now is the time when I
am giving you your destiny. And when God breathes upon
things, something changes. Imagine if He created the words
by just a breath of his mouth. How much He can do with our
lives if we just would allow Him to breathe afresh upon us.
I remember that a beautiful hymn that we have sung in our old
Methodist Church, Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life
anew. And that is what God's the
breath of God does. God was literally breathing into
them and saying now you're going to live out this bigger destiny.
You know, so many of us are living these very small minded
lives. It's all about us.
It's about our job, it's about maybe our family, and it's about
establishing ourselves. But God wants us to move from
the selfie culture where it's just about me to this panoramic
view. I was just this week out of town
and I was in the airport of this state and there was this
beautiful frontage. And so I thought, well, you know
what, I'm alone. I should take a picture and send
it to the kids and my husband. So I stood in front of the
frontage. I took a selfie and it looked
terrible. I first of all, looked terribly
tired, but then also I didn't do justice to the view.
So what I did was I got out of the picture and I took a regular
snap, you know, in a, you know, wider frame.
And it looked so beautiful. And that's when I realized so
many times our lives are like that.
We, we want to be the center of our own lives.
We make ourselves the center, my plans, my dreams, my ambitions,
my purposes. But then I forget, forget that
I'm actually part of a larger plan.
God has a huge destiny. I play a role in it.
And sometimes we need to get out of that picture, take a step
back and ask Him to show us the bigger picture.
And that is what happens when God breathes upon us, when God
breathes upon our lives. One breath, one syllable
representing a spiritual life, a new spiritual life, the essence
of God Himself changed their destinies forever.
No longer was she called Princess.
She was now a mother of nations. God was speaking into their
destinies. We continue with verse 9 in
Genesis chapter 17 and we see what God is now asking of
Abraham. Now up until now, God stood as
the guarantee. God met him.
Abraham sacrificed those creatures, but God sent the
torch and He sealed the covenant.
Now God is going to ask something of Abraham, Genesis
chapter 17 verses 9 to 14, after changing his name, this is what
happens. Then God said to Abraham, As for
you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after
you, for the generations to come.
This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you.
The covenant you are to keep. Every male among you shall be
circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision
and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you for
the generations to come. Every male among you who is 8
days old must be circumcised, including those born in your
household are bought with money from a foreigner.
Those who are not your offspring, whether born in your
household, are bought with your money.
They must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to
be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who has
not been circumcised in the flesh will be cut off from his
people. He has broken my covenant.
What is the deal with circumcision?
But I didn't, I had to read up so much to understand this more
from a ritualistic standpoint, from a, you know, a Mesopotamian
culture. What was what was the need for
this? Now, whatever the need may have
been, God was doing something wherein he was actually making
this covenant and God had already stood guaranteed.
Now he was asking Abraham to step forward and do his side,
you know, fulfill his side of the bargain.
And the way he did it was that there are these two parties.
God is on one side, Abraham's on the other.
Abraham now had to literally put skin in the game.
Forgive the terrible pun, but that's what it was.
Many times we talk a great game, but we don't actually put our
money where our mouth is. I see.
I love you, Lord, but would I give up certain things to serve
Him better? Would I give up certain ways of
thinking? Would I give up certain
lifestyle choices in order to love him more, to demonstrate my
love for him? God is calling us into a place
where it has to cost us something.
The circumcision would cost Abraham and the men of his
household something. There was going to be bloodshed.
There was going to be pain, there was going to be
discomfort. There was going to be a season
of healing and just resting and God was calling him into it.
Verses 15 to 17 talks about God said to Abraham.
Like I just read it's about Sarah's, Sarah's name changing
to Sarah. But then it's an interesting
response that Abraham has for this.
He says Abraham fell face down. The guy who fell face down
before God in worship right at the beginning of this
conversation now fell face down. He laughed and said to himself,
will a son be born to a man 100 years old?
Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90?
So before we go any further, I want to highlight one of the
most common struggles we all have in our journeys, in our
walk with God, is doubt. We doubt and our unbelieving of
what God has spoken to us. For 24 years, God has been
telling him, I'm going to make you a great nation.
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.
You're going to inherit the earth.
Your your children are going to be as countless as the sand on
the seashore. And yet when he says, no,
Sarah's going to have a child, he laughs.
Will a son be born to a man who's 100 years old?
He's discounted himself. He's discounted the wife.
Even though God is clearly talking now.
No more in riddles. God is talking directly to him.
And sometimes, you know, the wait gets so long.
The wait for that spouse, the wait for that child, the wait
for that increase, the wait for that restoration, the wait for
that recompense, the wait for, for, for healing physically wait
for that mental healing. And we come to this breaking
point where we start to laugh ourselves out of the promise.
We start to make jokes and, and make light of what God has
seriously promised to us. I want to ask you, have you been
doing that with because your weight has seemed so long?
I want to encourage you to hold on.
I want to encourage you not to make light of what God told you
in all seriousness, Maybe you've come to this place or just being
so cynical. Like, you know what?
Yeah, God says these things, but he doesn't come through.
Coming to verse 18, this is what it says.
And Abraham said to God, if only Ishmael might live under your
blessing, then God said yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a
son, and you will call him Isaac.
I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting
covenant for his descendants after him.
And As for Ishmael, I've heard you.
I will surely bless him. I will make him fruitful.
I will greatly increase his numbers.
He will be the father of 12 rulers, and I will make him into
a great nation. But my covenant I will establish
with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.
When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from
him. It's incredible this whole
conversation, because Abraham is on.
He's a friend of God and I think after 13 years of having this
little boy Ishmael in in his camp, Abraham's so content with
that. He's like, if if the promise has
to come through through this boy, I'm good.
And so the second struggle we all have, one is doubt.
One is unbelief. But the next thing is sometimes
we just settle for the formula and the plan we have.
Well, this is going well. The status quo is nice.
I don't want to rock the boat. Let's just go with this.
Sometimes we have this, you know, well made plan for our
for, you know, our future, for our carrier, for our family, for
the generation to come. And we try to squeeze God into
our plan. We're like God, this is going
well. So you come alongside me and
bless this. But God is very clear.
He hears Abraham, he says, I hear you.
I'm going to bless Ishmael because for no fault of his, he
was brought into the world. He was engineered into this into
this situation. And so God says I will bless
him. I will make him mighty.
And when you look later on in the New Testament, we understand
how these, and I think it's in the book of Galatians where he
talks about two kinds of covenants and he explains it
using Ishmael and Isaac. He talks about the new covenant,
the one with grace where it comes through Jesus alone.
And it talk compares that to Isaac, the promised child.
And when you look at that, you realize how necessary the season
was. But then the important thing is
to not settle with the plans we have made.
It is important not to settle with the status quo and be like,
you know what? This plan I have made, it seems
to be working out for me. This lifestyle choice I've made,
it's working out. I wanted a family.
I didn't get it. I, I wanted a spouse.
I didn't get it. So I choose to live in you.
You decide that this I, I don't have the intimacy I'm looking
for. So pornography replaces that.
It's fine. We have conditioned ourselves to
settle for what we have made our choices.
When God is saying no, I'm going to ask you to rearrange things.
I'm going to unsettle you. And so God was saying Ishmael
will be blessed, but no, the promised child will come through
Sarah. I'm going to bring that child
forth and I'm going to establish the covenant through him.
And it says when he finished speaking, God went up.
I don't know what form God came and spoke to him.
But look at the length of this conversation where God over a
series of years has become more and more clear in his
communication. It's not like he was wanting to
be mysterious. It's just that there was a need
to know basis at the beginning. Abraham needed to know this
much. After 24 years of following God,
he gives him Full disclosure. He's almost Full disclosure
because he didn't tell him what he was going to do with Isaac a
couple of years later. But Ishmael was a Plan B option
that they took. It wasn't God's original will or
plan, but God obviously knew this was all going to happen.
And so God didn't reject Ishmael.
And I want to encourage you if you've been walking with guilt
and shame, oh, I made this D2. I took that decision.
I stepped out of that commitment, whatever it is.
I want to encourage you that, you know, he's a God of
decompense. He's a God who redeems.
He can redeem anything. But the call on our lives is to
live deeply circumcised. Before you get scared, let me
explain that. See, circumcision when it was
asked of Abraham was a way of proving Abraham was actually
demonstrating when he obeyed. And it says Abraham and his
whole house were full of men that very day, got circumcised
that very day. And it says Abraham and Ishmael
got circumcised on the very same day.
Ishmael was 13. Abraham was 99.
Look at the obedience. Look at the implicit obedience.
But what circumcision actually represented was the cutting off
of an old way, the cutting off of unclean things.
It also represented no longer trusting in the flesh to bring
forth the promise, but actually trusting wholly on God.
It was demonstrating a dependency on God and not on the
flesh. That was what circumcision was
doing. It was basically Abraham saying
I trust you God. I don't control my destiny.
I don't control the coming of this chair.
You will control it. You will do it because up until
then, on so many levels, Abraham and Sarah had controlled the
narrative. But now it was coming to a place
of surrender. It was important that Abraham
there would be the spilling of blood to prove that he loved and
was completely loyal to God. And the beautiful thing is today
we don't live in this covenant, we live in the new covenant
where Jesus, his perfect body, sinless body, the blood was
spilled from that for yours and my sake, He has covered it all
for us. Jesus was, he became sin so that
we would be made whole, even though he was sinless, right?
And so we don't have to do the physical circumcision that is
not required of us. But there's something deeper
that happens when the minute we come into a relationship with
Jesus. And this is where I want you to
really listen in. We've looked at circumcision.
We've looked at christening. Abraham was rechristened.
He was given a new name. Sarah was given a new name.
And then there was an ask of them.
And Abraham obeyed, right? But in this new covenant that we
live, God is calling us to live with circumcised hearts.
And what does that look like? The prophet Jeremiah talks about
it as well, wherein you know, the hardened parts of our hearts
God will circumcise and remove so that we have hearts that are
softened to God. But what are the practical
implications of that in the book of Deuteronomy?
Interestingly, Moses speaks this to the people.
Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 6, it says the Lord your God will
circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants so
that you may love him with all your heart and with all your
soul and live. It's so interesting because when
I come into a relationship with Jesus, he begins to do a heart
surgery on me. It's like an open heart surgery.
God in his boundless love and grace begins to work on me.
His spirits work is deep within me and my heart which was maybe
up until then broken, my heart which was scattered, my heart
which was just completely numb, now begins to have feeling
again. It's begin to actually pulsate
with joy, is able to feel emotions.
This heart that was so distant from God is now starting to
pulse in the direction of God. This heart which was so weakened
by loss and trauma is starting to regain strength.
All of that is the work of God deep within us.
And there's a 2 motives in which God actually circumcises our
hearts, right? When he circumcises the hearts,
when he does the heart surgeries for two things.
It's so that we can love him as he deserves to be loved and so
that we can live as we are required to live.
What does it mean to love him as he deserves to be loved?
God wants to be loved with all our heart, mind, soul and
strength, right? You know, you know, the the 1st
and the greatest commandment is that what does it mean?
A lot of times it's just lip service.
Oh, I love Jesus. I love Jesus, but you know, the
Hebrew understanding of this was it goes deeper.
It was demonstrated with every fibre of their being.
Their soul was committed to God, their mind, their emotions,
their will was surrendered. They spoke about it then they
lived it up. And so God is calling us into
place of loving him. And you know, coming back to
that original struggle that we often have when we are in the
throes of the weight, when the throwers of just seeing the
promise of how we tend to doubt, but it's hard to doubt the one
that you love with all that you have.
And so I believe that we need this heart surgery so that we
begin to love God as as he deserves to be loved.
God is is pure. His motives are pure.
Even the stuff that he carries us through sometimes is so that
all of the other drawers falls off so that he can circumcise
those hardened, deadened parts out.
And so that our heart is so fleshy that can actually accept
him for who he is. It's hard to be doubtful.
It's hard to be unbelieving of someone that you love so much.
And heart surgery is required so that you can love God.
And anything you do out of do for God comes from that deep
place of love. You know, a lot of times we
choose not to serve God because we don't actually feel that kind
of depth of emotion towards him. But I've seen over years of, of
serving God in different capacities, as I'm getting
older, I realise that I serve him because I just love him so
much. It is just the outpouring of who
he is to me. When I choose to serve someone
who is in need, I do it not because I have to or should,
because it's the right thing to do, but because God, you've done
so much for me. I just, I want to repay you in
some way. So I'll do it through this.
And you know, that is, I think a lifelong process.
There are days when we don't actually open ourselves up to
loving Him, and that's when we withhold ourselves from even
loving others, that that's when we actually limit ourselves in
how we express our love to people in the way we serve them.
Anything we do for God has to stem from a place of a deep love
for Him, and that's where the heart surgery is required for
God to remove the parts of us that are withholding us from
knowing Him and loving Him as we should.
The second part of this heart surgery, you know, it says so
that you will live. And when you look at the deeper
meaning of that word, live, it is not the Zoe life you were
talking about. It's a renewed life.
It's a revived life. And the interesting thing is
that, you know, when we live with this place of, of loving
God so much, it automatically effects how we live.
When I begin to love God, the way I live is transformed.
People begin to see that, you know, and and like I was saying,
sometimes we have these plan B's, we have these we've charted
out the course of our life because of disappointment.
We've taken D to us. We're living a certain kind of
life. We are we're making certain
choices. We are settled for certain
things. When we're living in the
confines of that, we're not able to actually live this renewed
and refreshed and revived life. But God is calling us into a
place when we allow Him to work in us, when He circumcises our
hearts, removes the things that are hardened and broken.
As we begin to love Him more, we begin to live in a way that
honors Him better. And you have to understand, the
circumcision that was done on all these men was done in a
place which was not visible to anyone, but they could feel it.
They knew it was done to them. And the thing about the
circumcision of our hearts is very similar.
It happens in the deepest recesses of our lives.
It happens in the moments you least expected.
It happens in the moment of disappointment.
It happens sometimes at the heights of success.
But as God is working on you, no one can see it.
But the evidence isn't the way you live.
The evidence isn't the way you love God and how that is
demonstrated to others. Because others will start to see
your renewed life God. Others will start to see.
She thinks differently now. She used to be cynical and
hardened and and complaining. But something has changed.
She's quieter. Or maybe when she speaks, she
brings out so much of faith. Or maybe he is no longer as
angry as before. There's something that has
changed. The renewal and the refreshing
and the rejuvenating of our inner man happens when God is
allowed to do heart surgery on us.
And I want to explain something deeper on this.
On this note, even as I start to wrap up, we have to understand
that as we accepted Jesus, for those of us who know Jesus, who
are walking in his ways, we have the Holy Spirit living in US.
But have you allowed the Holy Spirit to breathe afresh upon
him? It's like having those old
perfume bottles. You know those perfume bottles.
Only if you lifted the lid would the aroma actually fill the
room. And many of us have the Holy
Spirit in us by virtue of accepting Jesus, but we haven't
opened the lid on him, so he hasn't been allowed to permeate
every part of our lives. He's there, but he's put a
muzzle on and God is asking that we would experience the new
creation life, and the way we do that is uncapped the Holy
Spirit. We're saying Holy Spirit, no
holds barred, feel free to move in my life.
It's a surrendered life where He starts to breathe into our very
being. And it's incredible how He
begins to do that. He starts to breathe afresh upon
our ambitions. He starts to breathe afresh upon
our life. He starts to breathe afresh upon
our mind. He starts to breathe afresh upon
our relationships. He starts to breathe afresh upon
our decisions and it changes how we live.
It changes how we love God. But the call on us is to give
him that room to breathe upon us.
It's allowing the breath of God to come in and transform us
because we live the new creation life just as Abraham changed to
Abraham, Sarai changed to Sarah. You and I are a new creation in
Christ. The old has gone, the new has
come, but many times the old remains because we haven't
uncapped the Holy Spirit and said, have your way in me.
Feel free to circumcise my heart.
Lord, feel free to move as you see fit.
Feel free to to remove those dead end parts because you know,
many times we retain the dead end parts of our heart to
protect our hearts. Many times we retain the weak
parts because you know what, we can play to our advantage.
But God is saying that the Holy Spirit comes and he's a Spirit
of truth. He leads us into all truth.
He will remind us of things that we need to be reminded of in
order to heal us, in order to help us.
And I wonder if you and I would remove that cap and say, Holy
Spirit, just have your way, Breath of God, Ruach, take over
my system. Maybe you're someone who's been
going through a health issue and you've been so caught up with
just being treated, receiving treatment, treating yourself.
What if it's time? Did you allow the Breath of God
to come in and give you revelation about what's
happening, what you must do, where you need him to move?
Remember that letter here, The breath of God that created the
starry host today is available to us.
It just requires that we make room.
It just requires that we surrender.
So when I say close, I want to read this, this few verses from
Revelation chapter 1. It talks about Jesus in
Revelation as the most beautiful image of Jesus for me
personally. Revelation chapter 1, verses 12
to 16. I turned around to see the voice
that was speaking to me, and when I turned I saw 7 golden
lamp stands, and among the lamp stands was someone like the Son
of Man, dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet and
with a golden sash around his chest.
The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and
his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze
glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of
rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven
stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp double edged
sword. His face was like the sun
shining in all its brilliance. I love this thing, it says.
In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his
mouth was a sharp double edged sword.
We have to understand that from the mouth of God is the breath
of God which created life, but from his mouth is a sharp double
edged word. And I believe that's the word of
God. And remember that that verse in
the Bible which says the word of God is powerful, living, active,
powerful to dividing joints and marrows and revealing the
intents and attitudes of the heart.
And that is how heart surgery is performed on us.
If you're wondering, the process is very simple.
When God breathes upon us, when he speaks into our life, when
his Word is just being washed over us, it does the work
automatically. All I have to be is yielded.
All I have to be is surrendered. All I have to be is open.
A heart surgery requires that the surgeons can open the chest
cavity so that the heart is exposed and they can work.
Even in the case of laparoscopic surgeries, there has to be an
incision that is made, an opening that is made.
Have you given God an opening in your life?
Too many Christians are living today without the power of the
Holy Spirit. We go to church on a Sunday.
We do your 10% tithe. You think you've sorted it all
out. God is calling you into a deep
dependence on the Holy Spirit because you cannot do this new
creation life without the Holy Spirit.
Who's the agent, Who's the facilitator of that renewal?
He's the facilitator of transformation.
Jesus requires that we open ourselves up so that His word
will penetrate our hearts, breaking off the things that are
no more, no longer necessary. Maybe they were necessary in a
past season, but God is calling you into such a deep dependence
on Him. God is calling you to to live
with such a deep love and reverence for Him.
God is calling you so that your life would be so different.
Your life would speak volumes. So let me reiterate, even as I
close, what would it look like for you and me to undergo an
open heart surgery at the hands of God?
It would mean that before Him I would admit my struggles, that I
would admit the idols of my heart, that I would admit my
weaknesses, my automatic rude reactions, my responses, the
stances that I take, the opinions that I hold and
surrender them all to God and say Lord, this is who I am.
I'm human. But saying Lord, will you work?
It's I'm capping the spirit of God in my life and saying fill
my whole being up spirit, soul and body, Fill it all up Lord.
And as he does that, the word of God will start to work.
It'll start to do it's life work in our lives.
God is calling each of us to be blameless and faithful in a
crooked and evil perverse generation.
You may have made mistakes, you may still make mistakes.
We're human, that's OK. But God is calling us to His
position and posture in our heart where we keep turning back
to Him and saying, Lord, make me blameless.
Help me to live a life that is pleasing to you.
Help me to stay faithful till the very end.
Lord, it will require that you intentionally walk before God.
God is desiring for you to live the new creation life, to give
you that new identity in Christ. But for that, He needs to be
able to breathe into your situation.
Maybe you're holding the shambles of a marriage.
Maybe you're holding the the wreckage caused by the loss of a
loved one and you don't know what to do with the pieces.
Would you allow God to breathe upon it?
Because this breath of God is so powerful, it is so life giving.
It is so transformative. It is renewing.
Would you allow Him to breathe upon it?
And remember that when you allow God to do a circumcision of your
heart, it's for two reasons. So that you would love him as He
deserves to be loved for who He is.
And that you would live in the way that you are required to
live. You can't live in a way that
anything goes. Oh well, they live like that's
why I can do the same thing. No, God is calling you to live a
consecrated life. God is asking you to cut off the
things that need to be cut off so that He can bless you.
You cannot doubt a person that you love so deeply.
And so that's why the circumcision of our hearts is so
essential. You know, this year, as much as
we are positioned to possess the promise, and it feels like the
promise is the biggest thing, I believe that our love for the
promise giver has to be the largest thing.
That is the position we need to be.
We need to be in this position of deep love for Him.
Abraham on so many levels was like us.
But when you see the way he obeyed God that day, it's not
like he went back to his tent, probably mulled over it.
You know, sometimes when we're trying to delay, you know, our
delay tactic with God is God asked me to do something and
say, Lord, I'll pray about it. And you know, I'll take three
days to pray. I'll take seven days.
I'll pray for a month. Abraham and his entire family,
his whole household was circumcised that very day.
The way you obey God is evidence of how you love him.
And I want to ask you this, finally, has your life thus far
been all about you? You know that selfie picture I
was talking about? Because the grand picture is
beautiful, and the minute we get ourselves out of it, we see it
with greater clarity. Abram, Sarai, God breathed upon
them, making them Abraham and Sarah.
It was a new season. It was fresh perspective, fresh
revelation of what God was going to do in them just around the
corner. Their promise was coming
through, but it's required a cutting away.
It required a cleaving and a dependency on God.
Are you willing for God to cut away the parts of your heart
that are? That are so broken, that are so
hard and that are so dead in that it's detrimental to you
growing in him. It is detrimental to you living
the fullest life possible. So even as we close, can we just
lean in and ask God, Lord, I, I need you.
I want more of you. I want to live completely
dependent on you. God, as much as I'm preaching to
you, I'm preaching to my own heart that I would not become
doubtful, I won't become unbelieving, that I will not
diminish in my love for Him, that I won't settle for the
plans I have, but I will be open to the plans God has.
Can we just lay down before him? Lord?
Every dream, every ambition, every plan, every, every plot
that I have done, every dot that I think I'm joining Lord right
now. I take my hands off the drawing
board. If you said you will do it, you
will do it God, and the way you do it, you can do it anyhow you
want. Can you just take your hands off
and say, Lord, I'm going to stop planning it to the last detail
and allow you to do your thing. Can you just open your heart up
right now and say, Lord, I just ask that you will perform a
heart surgery on me that you will work on the deepest
recesses of my life. You know the trauma that I have
walked through. You know the loss that I have
walked through. You know the hardships I have
endured. You know the the joys and
sorrows I have experienced. But God do with my heart as you
will. If my emotions have been leading
me, forgive me. If my will has been so stubborn
and unbending, forgive me. If my attitudes have been
displeasing to you, God, forgive me.
If I've been so biased that I lost the plot of the big story,
I'm sorry God, we just want this panoramic view of our life's
destiny. We don't want to live so small
minded that it's only about us. But God, give us the bigger
view. Give us the larger view.
God, we love you. We thank you.
Spirit of God, breath of God, would you breathe upon us right
now? Breathe upon me.
Breathe upon every person who is here that you're renewing and
restoring. Transforming breath would just
fill our lives, saturate us. Spirits, souls and bodies will
be renewed, will be refreshed, will be rejuvenated.
God that lives and ambitions and dreams and desires that are
being breathed upon will take up fresh direction.
We'll have a fresh list like never before.
And that Lord, you will direct us in this new season of God.
We love you, we thank you, we glorify.
In Jesus name we pray, Amen, Amen.
God bless you as you desire to live this life, this new life,
this new creation life, you will need to be very dependent on the
Holy Spirit. You cannot do it without him.
It's not enough that you just believe in him.
You need to actually activate him.
You need to actually unleash Him in your life.
And when you do that, all you have to do is just say, Holy
Spirit, I'm giving you access. Do with me as you will.
It's a very simple thing. It's nothing complex.
I just want to give an opportunity for those of you who
don't know Jesus, those of you who don't know what we're even
talking about, and you're saying, well, you're talking
about the Holy Spirit, but I don't know who Jesus is.
Jesus is the Son of God. We came to earth to save mankind
from their sins, because as you know, our sins are many, our
sins are huge, and these sins separate us from God.
But Jesus was sent to earth, He became one of us, died for our
sins, and then it didn't end there.
He rose again on the third day. And today he's alive and seated
in heaven. And he gave us the Holy Spirit
to live within us, to guide us on our everyday so that we live
a life that is honoring to God and live a life that blesses
others in the world. And if you are saying, well,
that sounds like something I need, I would encourage you to
make this very simple prayer because it's as simple as
inviting Jesus into your life. It's admitting that you are a
Sinner, saying you need Jesus. He comes in and when he comes
in, he overhauls our life in the most beautiful ways.
Those of us who know Jesus, we are testaments to that.
He doesn't. He loves us too much to leave us
the same way. So if you could repeat the
simple prayer after me, Jesus, I believe in you.
Thank you for coming to earth. Thank you for dying on my
behalf. I believe that I'm a Sinner.
I'm in need of forgiveness. Thank you God, for dying for me.
Thank you for rising again from the dead.
Thank you for the gift of hope that I have in you.
I accept you into my heart. I thank you for your Holy Spirit
who now lives in me. I give Him full access to my
life. Help me God to live as a child
of God, knowing how loved I am, knowing how forgiven I am,
knowing how cherished I am. Help me to be a blessing in this
world. In your powerful name I pray,
Amen, Amen. God bless you.
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