Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.
We hope today's message is encouraging to you.
Today is Week 2 of Weeds in My Garden and the the idea of this
series that we keep trying to tell everyone we're totally fine
when that's simply plainly not completely true.
Certainly there's seasons where we're greater than we are at
other times and we're walking and healing and health and other
times we are suffering. And I want you to know based on
last week, which we said it's OK to admit you're not OK, that the
admission that you're hurting is the beginning of healing.
And so we were creating the safe hospital here so that the doctor
can come in. And remember we said last week,
it's the sick that need a doctor.
So this is a safe hospital so that the sick can come in and
say, doctor, I need healing. And the healer has come.
His name is Jesus, praise the Lord, and I want you to believe
that you can be healed. I am living proof, having lived
for years with a mental health issue, and God's healing has
come upon me and not just me. Wait till you hear next week's
message. Somebody else is going to be
here sharing their testimony. And it is profound, the healing.
I hope that you'll be here. Would you agree with me that it
seems like every generation faces tougher battles than the
one before due to rise in immorality, the pronouncement of
harder problems that get harder to manage?
The help seems to be more and more scarce, more and more
confusing. It seems to be harder for each
generation that follows the next generation.
Would you also agree with me that worldwide church attendance
is in decline? Yes or no?
Are we talking or we're not talking?
Good, We're talking. Would you agree that the outcome
of less church attendance is also lessening people's ability
to face what the world has to offer?
OK. Could it be that mental health
disorders, at least partially, are on the rise because church
attendance is in decline? Is the correlation there?
And you've already said yes. Really.
What I'm saying by church attendance is engagement with
the divine, not just attending church, but participating with
the Lord Most High. And if people aren't
participating with the Lord Most High, not entering His house for
healing, then where are they going for help?
And is it actually help? Or is most help secular help,
worldly help, help that just soothes the symptoms but does
not heal the root? And now hear me, there are
seasons of our life where we need to sue the symptoms so that
we can heal the root. I'm not casting out the fact
that we need to sue some symptoms.
For some people, it's medicine for some people, it's
counseling. For some, whatever it is to get
me off of redlining so I can get to the place where I can process
what the Lord has to offer. So I believe that's why we're
doing this series, because it's the local church that breathes
the word of God, that believes in the power of the Holy Spirit,
that offers avenues of healing. It's the local church that is
the hope of the world as it pertains to mental health.
There is truly no other answer. That's why we're doing this
series. I'm glad that you're here.
I hope that you're glad you're here.
Five of you. In Idaho, there's a pastor named
Jim Putman. And in his community, small
community in Idaho, there was an outbreak of suicide.
We're going to be addressing suicide in week 6 of this
series. But a lot of today's message
centers on this. For this reason, Jim Putnam in a
city, the one of the most prominent political figures, the
head of the school board committed suicide.
And in a small town, that's big news.
Right after that, the captain of the football team also committed
suicide. It's rippling through the town
and his gym. The pastor Jim looked around.
He realized especially in youth in their town, suicide was
becoming this mini epidemic in their town.
And as a pastor of a town, it broke his heart as it would
anybody doesn't have to be a pastor is breaking everybody's
heart. And he knew that he must do
something. So he wrote a series and he
entitled it with the inspiration, the Holy Spirit,
irreplaceable. And what he found doing his
research is that there's three primary lies that Satan gives to
people in all mental health and specifically with suicide.
He got this information where he gleaned it was from people who
had attempted suicide but had not been successful.
Their testimony, what they said, what led them to that.
And he researched suicide notes. And as he read these notes and
he did these interviews with these people who had
unsuccessfully attempted suicide, he uncovered these
three lies from the devil. We're going to be addressing
those three lies today, next Sunday and the Sunday after.
Although I need to tell you, if you're looking at the posters
and it matters to you, we swap the next two weeks.
Next week is am I loved, and the following week, the last week is
am I accepted. They're backwards on the poster.
My fault, no one else's. I messed up the schedule.
True story. Thank you for your forgiveness.
So we're going to address these three lies starting today.
Here is the first lie that we tend to believe, and it impacts
our mental health and certainly impacts those who are
considering suicide. My life is meaningless.
My life is worthless, so what's the point?
What's the point? Many of you in this room have
had this thought at some level in your head at some point, and
some of you are sitting here today with these exact thoughts
racing through your mind. I'm a nobody, Nobody cares.
I'm worthless, I'm meaningless. What we want to address today is
where does this lie come from? What's contributing to this lie?
And most importantly, how can we move against it?
Because we can move against it. Amen.
In the 1990s, an era in American history opened up, which is not
a great era. It's the era of school
shootings. You might remember Columbine,
Aurora, Co, Sandy Hook, Texas here in Florida too many to name
Dartmouth College one of the Ivy's as a result of this did a
study. They released it in 2003.
It's called Hardwired to Connect.
They put this study together with the help of 33 experts,
pediatricians, research scientists, mental health
experts, young youth, service professionals, all of these
people. They gathered together,
hardwired to connect. Here's the opening statement of
this research report. What is the crisis?
They're asking why is all of this happening, this sudden
spiral and violence and brokenness?
What is the crisis? They say the crisis comes in two
parts. The first part is the
deteriorating behavioral and mental health of United States
children. We are witnessing high and
rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention deficit,
conduct disorders, thoughts of suicides and other serious
mental, emotional and behavioral problems among US children and
adolescents. The research scientists, the
doctors, all collaborating and coming to this conclusion that
this is on the rise and this is the crisis.
Now, if you read the report and get to the end, this is what
they conclude. The main cause of the crisis in
American childhood and adolescence is a lack of
connectedness. It's the root of this mental
health epidemic. And our kids, and really all
these kids grow up and become US, me.
They say close connections to other people and watch this
connections to moral and spiritual meaning are lost.
This study was not written by Christians.
This is a secular study. Dartmouth College used to be a
Christian place. Now not so much.
And this is their conclusion. Moral and spiritual
underpinnings and community are absolutely critical to our
emotional well-being. Now, of course, underlying this,
it would be easy to see that there are destroyers of these
critical connections. For we can have these
connections and at times you have maybe had these
connections, are searching for those connections today, but
something is destroying them. Let me just name a few.
Won't be big. Aha for you.
These are obvious. The breakdown of the nuclear
family, divorce, busyness of schedules, shallowness of
relationships, a lack of honesty, candor in
relationships, and we live in the most transient time in our
nation's history. People don't do what they used
to do. I was born in one place, raised
at that place, went to high school that place, went to
college, maybe came back to that place, raised my family with my
family and their family and their family for generations and
generations and generate right now, we're moving all the time
and because of it, we're disconnected from family,
extended family and close friends.
We are disconnected when we were wired hardwired, according to
the study, the professionals for deep and intimate relationships.
But because most of our relationships are no longer deep
with each other, with moral and spiritual meaning, then we see
the rise of anxiety and depression.
Between 2007 and 2 thousand, 2017, the numbers of those
suffering with anxiety and depression tripled in teenagers,
tripled. The Journal of American Medical
Association stated people in each generation of the 20th
century were three times more likely to experience depression
than the people of the preceding generation.
Can I just step to the side and say this?
As I read these words? It's almost sounding like I'm
sentencing you to have to experience depression and
anxiety if you're in that generation.
Well, I guess that's what our generation does.
So that's what's coming for me and I want to say to you do not
have to agree with these things or receive them into your
spirit. As you've heard with other
things. You don't have to become a
statistic, right? Here's what I read before For
the power of God. I'm sorry for you're clapping.
Is is it there or not? Sorry.
The Bible says the Lord has not given you a spirit of fear, but
of power, love, and a sound mind.
So I declare that you can be, if you will receive it, a
generation of peace, not of anxiety, not of depression.
So don't have to agree with these statistics.
I'm aware as I'm reading them. It can sound like a death
sentence. Now, of course, our behaviors
contribute to our disconnectedness.
You're going to be tired of me saying this, but you're tired
because you know it's true. But our phone addictions are
ruining us. Absolutely ruining us.
Just getting personally convicted before you.
We cannot shut off our brains because of our addictions to our
phones, whether it's news media, social media, gaming.
Here's what happens from a physiological biochemics,
chemistry kind of standpoint. We overwork the stimulation
network of our brains, the serotonin and the dopamine, and
we get these dumps secretions into our body when we're looking
at our phone and scrolling and scrolling a new story, that
thing and this thing or whatever.
And we overworked this till it's almost burnt out so that a
normal stimulus no longer produces in you what it should.
It's not enough. I need 6 hours of YouTube in
order to get one drop of dopamine instead of seeing a
sunset. And so these systems begin to
shut down or are rarely used. And let me tell you, serotonin
and dopamine are what produced in you joy and peace.
And so for missing the very chemistry that God gave us to
produce joy and peace because we're addicted to our phones,
that's a problem. We are part of the reason we are
disconnected. Not only are we disconnected
because we're losing our serotonin and our dopamine, but
you know that when you're in your phone, you're not with
people. It used to be that we hung out
in the yard and that was enough. Or sat on the porch.
You remember the days where boredom was the genesis of
creativity. Kids making up games, making up
stories, playing war in the front yard.
That's what I did a lot. Or street football, also known
as war, for sure. All of this is contributing, but
today what I want to address is what the world does not address,
the secular world does not address.
That's actually the root of our problems, and we have to
consider it. I would say we even need to
focus on it. It's the spiritual meaning part
of the Dartmouth study. What spiritual implications are
impacting our mental health? If the lie is you're
meaningless, you're worthless. So what's the point then?
Where did that, like, come from? What contributes to it, and how
can we move against it? I'm going to ask you to turn to
Psalm 139, though I'm not going to start there.
If you have a Bible, open it up. If you don't bring your Bible to
church. It's like going to the mall
without your wallet. OK, bring your Bible.
If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand.
We'll bring you a Bible, not a wallet.
Turn to Psalm 139. We're going to get there
eventually. We're bringing you Bible right
here. We're coming.
I'm going to read to you a famous scripture.
When I say that, I mean all the scripture should be famous, but
there's some that are hallmarks in the faith that just stick to
us and help us as believers. This comes from Ephesians
chapter 6. I know you're in Psalm 139.
We're going to get there eventually, but Ephesians
chapter 6, this is what the Lord says to us.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.
That should be enough. Put on the full armor of God so
that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
He's a schemer for our struggle. No, this is not against flesh
and blood, your own flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of
people around you. Rather, our struggle is against
the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers
of this Dark World, and against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly realms, The raps, rulers, authorities, powers,
spiritual forces arrayed at you. I want to be very clear about
this because there is a lot of confusion in the church today.
But Satan is real. The enemy is real.
The battle is absolutely real, whether you acknowledge it or
not. Your life is in the crosshairs
of an enemy, and that enemy is unseen to you, is stronger than
you, bigger than you, and smarter than you.
It's the truth Jesus spoke about your enemy himself, John chapter
8, verse 44. You belong to your father the
devil, and you want to carry out your father the devil's desires.
The devil was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to
the truth. There is no truth in the devil.
When the devil lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a
liar, and the devil is the father of all lies.
Any lie that's going on in your head that is causing you mental
distress comes directly from the progenitor, which is the
producer, the creator of lies. It comes from the devil himself
seeking to deceive you from the truth.
I mean, it's pretty clear the devil is a liar and his lies are
meant to kill you. He's a murderer from the
beginning. He will try to take your life by
a lie, either all at once or typically by erosion, little by
little, one piece at a time. Satan creates a culture of
darkness and death with lies. That's what he do.
That's his job description. He creates a culture of darkness
and death with lies. We are experiencing it.
We feel it and often times we don't attribute it as we should.
This is the work of the devil. This is a trick he's trying to
play on me. It's a scheme.
It's a scam. He partners with our culture, so
where the lies kind of seep into us unbeknownst to us.
It's like our oxygen and we're just breathing in these lies.
It's like mold in the closet that you don't know is there
until you open the closet. Like, oh, I've been breathing
this the whole time. Let's open the closet and expose
the mold. One of the ways that he lies to
us is to our academics and sciences.
Now let me be clear, God gave us the academics in the sciences.
They're good. Physics, biology, chemistry.
They're really, really good. But in the midst of this,
there's a scheme the devil has put into it.
It's called evolution. Now, before you clinch, I want
to show you how the lie works. And then you can make your
judgment. But evolution basically states
that there was a large boom, and then there was rocks that flew
everywhere. Where those rocks came from, who
knows? And one of the rocks happened to
be so far away from this gaseous bulb of heat and light that it
produced a perfect atmosphere to grow water.
And from that water, all of a sudden primordial muck came
about. And you are the great, great,
great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great,
great, great, great descendant of the muck.
It muck turned into something that swam, swam all the sudden
on the land, in the air, and on the land.
All the sudden they went from all the force to standing up.
And then you now. We could argue whether or not
that's true, but let me show you the lie that's right in the
middle of it. Evolution is a lie because this
is what we're taught. You are the product of
randomness, which means that you are an accident.
You were not purposed. You are not special, not
important for sure, and in this universe you are small and
insignificant. This is the lie that is given to
us through the science of evolution.
If this is true, then there's no such thing as a spiritual realm.
There's no divine creator, there's no intelligent design,
and certainly there's no enemy after us, which is perfect for
the devil. Satan loves for you to believe
that he does not exist. What a good scheme, What a good
ambush. Just think what he's able to get
away with just in this one lie. That's just here it is.
If there's no spirit realm, then it's just your own voice in your
own head. There's no God.
There's no spirit speaking. If it's real, then there's
nothing after you die. You just die.
And since you're in pain, why don't you just go ahead and die?
It won't really matter because you don't matter, because you're
an accident. It's a lie.
Another way he lies. He lies to us about the
consequences of our behavior. The devil will tell us that
there's no moral absolutes. The devil will tell us.
The way that you decide truth is get a group of people together
and they decide together what truth is.
And then if humanity has the power to decide what truth is,
then each man or woman, could you just decide for yourself.
Secular humanism, if it's good for you, then do it.
If it's right to you, then do it.
The Bible says that all the Israelites did what was right in
their own eyes, and God condemned it.
So that's going to hurt you. That's going to crush you.
If you want to be happy, you're going to have to make that for
yourself, says secular humanism. And if it's true, then it's OK
to step on others on the way up to the top.
If it's true, then it's OK to bully people.
If it's true, then it's OK to post whatever you want to post.
As inflammatory is or as revealing as it is, just post
away. There's no consequences.
It's OK to have sex before marriage.
Outside of marriage, if you get pregnant, it's just a fetus.
I know that's heavy, and I don't mean it to be condemning.
I mean it to be revealing. How the devil is confusing us
that there is no absolute morality.
It's a lie. It's seeped into our culture.
He lies to us about the nature of who we are.
Essentially, he wants us the devil.
The scheme is that we're all just animals.
Act on your impulses. Act on your innate.
Yes, mine. Take get.
You know what we do to animals? We kill them.
Arby's. We have the meats.
Where did the meats come from? If we're animals and you have no
intrinsic value as a human and we just kill each other, then
why not? Let's kill each other because of
our skin color. Let's say that Social Security
has too many people needing it, so let's institute human
euthanasia. I don't like saying these
things. I can't imagine you like hearing
these things. It's the culture of death and
darkness that is seeped into our reality.
It's a scheme of the devil. Let's get some good truth.
Here's how we stand against it. God, in the opposite of Satan,
creates a culture of light and life with actual truth.
And I want, Yep, go ahead, get in there.
I want God to tell you your true nature, not what the devil is
scheming to try to make you believe about who you are.
You're meaningless. Nothing.
You're just an animal. Kill or be killed and you don't
have to go very far in the Bible for the Lord to tell you your
nature. In fact, it's on page one,
Genesis chapter 1. We're almost to Psalm 139.
I know you got your Bibles open now.
Now then God said, let us make mankind, and when mankind is
there, it's humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that
they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the
sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all
the creatures that move along the ground.
Verse 27. So God created mankind in His
own image. Did you hear me?
In the image of God? He created them.
Did you hear me, male and female, He created them.
A few notes. This is good news.
You are created in the image of God.
Remember at the beginning I prayed that you personally would
receive this. I'm not talking to people around
you. I'm talking to you.
You were created in God's image. What does that mean?
My son, my daughter, and my other son are created in the
image of my wife and I. They look like us.
They have attributes like us. They're like us.
They're not us. They're distinct beings, but
they're created in our image. And God says Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, the three, the two of us made children.
The three of these together made you, which means you have his
attributes. You are like him.
You're not him, distinct beings, but you have qualities within
you like Him, which makes the next part of Genesis chapter 1
possible that you would rule over the earth now without
question. There's only one indisputable
person who has the right to rule, and that's God.
Because He's the Creator and He's all powerful, all wise,
it's Him. He has all authority.
Yet because you are like Him, you are given privilege to rule
over the creatures of the earth, which means we are not simply
animals evolved. We are image bearers of the one
true God. Hallelujah.
And Please note this, this is very important.
I know if you ever put this together, Genesis chapter 1, God
says you're to rule every, every creature that crawls along the
ground. And then Genesis chapter 2 and
three, the devil shows up. Does he show up like an Angel?
Does he show up like another man?
He shows up like a snake who crawls along the ground, which
means from the very beginning, humanity was to have dominion
over the devil, but we messed up.
We're going to talk about that in just a minute.
So note this, and I did already kind of point this out.
God repeats himself three times. And if you and I know what
emphasis means, like when you're talking to your children or
coaching A-Team or whatever, you say it in front of you, say it
again. You're like, are you getting me?
Like this is very important. I'm repeating it to you.
God says it three times and he absolutely knows what emphasis
does to our hearts. And he says, I created you.
I created you. I created you, Trita.
I created everyone. I created all of this which goes
to show that this world is not an accident and that you are not
an accident. You were made on purpose.
You are very special, incredibly special to the Lord.
You have a quality within you that will outlast the world.
Write this down. You are known.
If you're insignificant nothing, then nobody knows you, nobody
cares. If you're an accident, a random
act, nobody knows, nobody cares. You just another flesh BLOB
taking up space, but you are known.
Genesis, excuse me, Psalm 139 verse one.
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
I don't think that we understand what it means that God knows us.
So God continues and says this is how I know you.
I'm going to change the words from what you see on screen.
He knows when you sit and He knows when you rise.
He perceives your thoughts from afar.
He discerns you're going out and you're lying down.
He's familiar with all of your ways before word is on your
tongue. The Lord knows it completely,
which is kind of crazy because we drive on I-4.
He knows those thoughts. God hems you in before and
behind. God lays His hand upon you.
Think of this. We don't let a lot of people
touch us. I mean, the handshake's not a
touch, OK, but like a hug, Arm around, hand on a shoulder, hand
on a head. We don't let a lot of people
touch us. And God says my hand, because I
know you, is upon you. This is how intimate we are.
I'm touching you and I'm this close to touching you.
Such knowledge, David writes, is too wonderful for me, too lofty
for me to attain. Like I can't even comprehend how
well you know me. God, the God of all the universe
knows you intimately. God made you and he made you
uniquely. There's no one like you, no one
remotely like you. You are a masterpiece of God and
he signs his work. Amen.
The psalmist continues. He says, for you created my
inmost being. This is verse 13.
Jump your eyeballs down. You knit me together in my
mother's womb. I praise you because I am
fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.
I know that for well. My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in a secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes
saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me
were written in your book before one of them came to be.
I want to put this gently into the room, so please receive it
gently. Some of our greatest mental
health issues stem from problems we have with our birth parents.
Abusive mom, abusive dad, absent mom, absent dad, the list goes
on. For some of you, that's a
massive reality. And I don't mean this
disrespectfully when I say this. Your biological mother and
father certainly participated in your birth.
But it was God that created you, him, and him alone.
Which means what anyone has done to you, said to you, or not done
or not said to you, pales a comparison to the One whose
opinion matters most. He knows you, He created you,
and He values you. If you ever doubt that He values
you, consider that He sent His one and only Son to die in a
cross and outstretch His arm to redeem you, to save you, to
bring you back to life. That's how valuable you are to
Him. That's how much He knows you.
Consider this also. God tells you the true reality
of your behavior. He creates a culture of light
and life by telling us the truth, and the truth is in
regards to our behavior, that we are sinners.
I have it, you have it, I've done it.
We've all done it a lot. There's no excuses.
You can blame God if you want to about why you're struggling, but
the truth is either you or someone in our history all the
way back to Adam has sinned and so therefore caused this great
cascade of a broken and fallen world that we are now living in.
This is reality, but glory be to God.
The Lord has intervened. I'm wondering if you've seen his
intervention. Isaiah saw it.
Isaiah is a prophet who lives 700 years before Jesus, and he
said this with his own mouth. The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep
darkness. A light has dawned.
Then the apostle John, who knew Jesus himself, kind of finished
Isaiah's thought. He says the light shines in the
darkness and the darkness has not, will not overcome it.
And the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the fact that
he rose from the dead, he proves that he has power over sin and
death, all authority. And because he loves you, he
died and he rose for you. Even though we're sinners, Jesus
can make us clean and new. And it's at this point, usually
in a church service, where the lies start to pop up from Satan.
I don't know if that's true. I don't know if really.
And if it is true, does it count for me?
Because I've been, I've been way off track.
I thought that the way that heaven worked, as you had to be
good enough and then God would receive you.
And so there's a scale up there and there's a good deeds and bad
deeds. And I hope that mine goes like
this. It's all lies from the enemy.
It is by grace you have been saved, and that by faith,
meaning all you have to do is believe and the finished work of
Jesus is applied to you. You are known, you are not a
random accident. You're not an insignificant
speck that no one will miss. You have purpose.
You have a plan to live out here in the earth.
There is a spiritual realm. There is an enemy who's trying
to kill you. He lies to you and surrounds you
with lies. The devil is a liar and he's
trying to disconnect you from the Father and disconnect you
from one another. One last scripture, first John
chapter one verse 5 says this is the message we have heard from
him and declared to you. God is light in him.
There is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship
with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live
out the truth. But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and
the blood of Jesus Son purifies us from all sin.
The Dartmouth study said that we are dying internally because of
a lack of connectedness. They even said they titled the
report hardwired to connect, which when I read the word
hardwired, which I read, is this created by God to connect, It's
in US and the devil spends his entire existence trying to
disconnect us from the Father and front of one another.
And 1st John says that if we walk with Jesus, beginning in a
relationship with him by faith, then we will be connected to one
another in ways that we can't do otherwise, and he will wash away
that which disconnects us from the Father, our sin.
And so connection with one another in connection with the
Father is restored by faith in Jesus.
We've come to a decision moment here for all of us in two ways.
First of all, if you've never put your faith in Jesus to start
a relationship with him, it's a decision that you and you alone
can make. No one else can decide for you
to believe. And the Bible says if you
confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus
is Lord, you will be saved, purified from sin, thanks be to
God, reconnected to the heart of the Father.
If you need to make that decision today, then make it.
Here's the other decision and we'll pray through both of these
yesterday our family we're we practice the Sabbath Friday
night to Saturday night and on Saturday we spend time reading
the scriptures and I was reading out of Joshua Chapter 11 and in
Joshua Chapter 11, Joshua is taking over the promised land,
leading Israel to conquer the land and establish it for the
Lord. And then Joshua Chapter 11, the
the armies of the north up near where Syria and Lebanon are the
far northern part of Israel. They band together make an
alliance to come and destroy Joshua and Israel.
And the Bible records in Joshua 11 that the army was more
numerous than the sand and the seashore, a massive army.
You following along. And Joshua must have been afraid
because the Lord said to him, don't be afraid.
And He said these words, Joshua Chapter 11, verse 6.
By this time tomorrow, they will all be in your hand slain, all
of them vanquished and dead. And church, hear me now, believe
me later, as soon as I read that Scripture, you came to my mind.
And I felt like the Lord wanted me to proclaim over you
something, encourage something in faith that whatever army,
whatever legion, whatever fiery arrows have been pointed at you
specifically in the realm of mental health, by this time
tomorrow will fall out the way of the roadside.
Listen, you don't have to faith this up.
I keep trying to say this like if I just believe enough, God's
going to do it for me. All you have to do is receive
it, His healing upon you. And as His healing comes upon
you, it may look like now and it may look like a door that opens
to the place of your healing. Either way, God is opening the
door that these demons die in Jesus name.
So I'm going to pray first for that, and then secondarily, I
want to pray for those who want to choose Jesus as Savior.
Would you bow your heads, close your eyes?
Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you that we have victory
in you. Thank you that the work is
finished. Lord, we want to be able to
receive the finished work of Jesus.
He has overcome and therefore made us overcomers.
Lord, we're just declaring your word that our enemies will lay
in our hand, slain, dead by the roadside.
These traveling partners that have been with us for years,
maybe decades, gone, dropped off, never to be picked up
again. If that's you here today and you
want to receive this finished work of Jesus, would you just
boldly raise one or both hands and say, I I need this for my
mental health, Go ahead. I know it takes courage.
Come on, Father, for those raising their hands, we loose on
earth the victory of heaven and you promised in your word that
what is loosed on earth will be loosed from heaven.
So Lord, send your victory. Gone is depression, gone is
anxiety, gone is these mental health issues that have been
lingering because of the power of Jesus.
God, I don't know how you do it, but I know that you can and you
will. We declare your healing in this
house. If you receive that into your
spirit, say I receive your healing Jesus, he can put your
hands down. If you're here today and never
received Jesus as Savior, then the whole church is going to
pray this prayer and you prayed along with them.
Church repeat after me saying Father in the name of Jesus.
I recognize that I am a Sinner in need of saving and Jesus is
that Savior. I confess and believe that he is
Lord Jesus. Come and live your life through
me. Thanks for joining us today.
We hope God is speaking to your heart through this message.
If you'd like to connect with us, you can text Connect to 4:07
588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot Church.
Have a great week.