This sermon emphasizes the importance of prayer groups and accountability within a community. It encourages regular prayer partnerships and highlights the need to combat the influence of worldly culture by prioritizing time with God. The speaker urges the audience to focus on becoming more like Jesus, to resist condemnation, and to understand the difference between conviction by the Holy Spirit and condemnation by the devil. The message stresses surrendering all authority to God and finding assurance in His protection and guidance, especially in challenging times.

Okay, this is my last session. We had a couple of outstanding items. Becoming a group of prayer and my intention was for nobody to be unaccounted for. What do we got to do to get that to happen? We started working on it yesterday. How close were we to getting done? Some people said five minutes. The purpose of this is for everybody to have somebody they can pray with once a week. Can somebody speak from each group of how you guys were doing? Okay, is it? Do you get to come? Are you guys as sisters comfortable that everybody is accounted for? Yes. Anybody feeling left out? How about from the brothers? I know there were two groups. Do you get a general sense of that? Everybody has somebody that they know that they can reach out to once a week? Okay, and Selvam, were you in your group? We thought that we could make a smaller group because of the size. Yes, that's right, absolutely. We thought it based on a geographic area and we made these groups accountable. We have a mutual accountability and we committed ourselves to the group. We have not decided what the groups are, but we decided that if we committed, we will say that we are coming. Okay, now look, the way I look at it is it's important enough for me for this to happen that I'll give up five or ten minutes of my speaking time for this to get addressed and resolved. But if it's going to take more than ten minutes, then we can, we got to separate to do it some other time. Do you think that both you guys can get some kind of resolution in ten minutes? You think so, Robbie? Okay, let's do it. Let's try and get it to be there. I don't have a whole lot to cover. So let's go and do that. And we'll come back. So ten minutes. Take ten minutes. Be very efficient, guys. We've got to be disciplined about this. Ten minutes. Get a good understanding of who's going to be going where. So each, you need to know, everybody needs to know, I'm going to be meeting with these other people. I'm going to give you a warning at five minutes and then at two minutes. More often, the more often you make the time to meet, the more you're going to be reminded of your goals. You're going to be encouraged. So once a month works, do it. Don't do something impractical. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Make sure nobody's unaccounted for that. Anybody who everybody here has fellowship needs can be. All right, guys, we got to wrap up. Wrap it up. Okay, so let's let's keep going so that I can finish on time. Here's my rationale behind what I'm doing. I feel that we are bombarded by culture and the perspective of the world and the ideas and worldview of the world every day from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. We see it on advertisements on the road. We see when we talk to people, when we listen to people, we are bombarded by it. And a lot of us struggle with the discipline of even reading the Bible for five minutes on any particular day. So just think about it. You've gotten 12 hours of the world hitting you, telling you this is how you should be. This is how you should be. This is how it should be. This is how you should dress. This is how you should act. And you not even have five minutes to counter that. Okay, and you multiply that every day. 12 times 7. That's 84 hours of the world. I'm just saying if you only allow the world to speak to you for 12 hours, 6 to 6, you got 84 hours of the world hitting you, telling you conform to the world, conform to the world, conform to the world. And I'm saying maybe meet once a week to counter that. And I know schedules are difficult. I know this work is busy, but the stakes are pretty high too. Because 2009 December will come and go and say, I still haven't made any much of a difference. So I'm not telling you how often you should meet. I suggested once a week because that's the culture I'm kind of in. I feel like at least once a week. Now we're thinking of meeting in where the group that I'm in in America. We're trying to meet more than once a week because we just know how we get bombarded by culture. This is not an empty group to fulfill a promising. I met once a week, so I'm holy. Not at all. I'm just trying to counter 85 plus hours of the culture hitting me. So that's the perspective you must have and saying, how do I counter that? Now, if you are diligent to read the word every day and you're talking to God, maybe it's a little easier. You don't need to have fellowship as often, but most of us struggle with that. We've made New Year's resolutions every year and still mess it up. So that's why I'm saying it helps when you get people together and you talk about it and you just pray. No preaching, just praying. No counseling, just praying. No advice giving, just praying. I find that among us young people when we have eliminated advice giving. Hey, I think this is what you should do to solve your problem. We're able to pray so much better for each other. Lord, just help him. He knows the verses. He knows the Bible as good as I do or better. Just help him. Help him to see you. Help him to see his Holy Spirit. Help her. She's feeling down. Help her. Give her a word and God meets with us. The other point I wanted to address real quick was reaching the younger generation. One of the deep desires of this camp was to grow to a level of maturity and of accountability. For us who are in our 20s and 30s, the people we can reach our best to are people who are in the church. As we heard that verse, don't go to the Gentiles just yet, just go to the Israelites. Okay, so these are the people in the church and it's very hard to reach out to people older than you. But it is easier to reach out to people your age and younger than you. And we've established how to deal with people your own age through these kind of groups. You pray for them. Reaching the younger generation is slightly different because they are not of the same mindset as you. They may not have the same desire as you. They have different struggles than you do. Now you used to have those struggles. Hopefully you kind of dealt with some of those struggles. But they are in the midst of some of the struggles that maybe you didn't even have when you were in that age. You know how quickly the culture is changing. But we have to reach them. We have to do what we can to try and reach them. So what I want you to do is, again, go to the middle of your book. Or you don't have to go to the middle of the book. Go to a free page that you can tear out. If it is in the middle of the book, that would be preferable so that you don't mess up the Bible. But go to a free page in your book. And without looking at your neighbor's book, write down the name of one person who is at least six years younger than you, approximately. And hopefully are in their teens and not in this group. Now I'm sure there's going to be commonality because there may not be as many people there. But write down one person's name. Just one. Just one person's name you're going to write down. If you don't know anybody, don't sweat it. Not a big deal. Maybe just write down your wife or your friend or something like that. If you know the teenagers at CFC or you know somebody, just write one person's name and this is what you're going to commit to doing. So before you write that person's name down, maybe it's the person that you think nobody else would pick. Maybe that's the one you pick. Maybe it's somebody you already have a friendship with. But this is what I want to try and suggest that you try and do in 2009 too. Pray specifically for him or her every week. Now that could be in the group meeting where you guys are meeting. That you say, hey, listen, I just want you to know that Rahul is on my mind. He's a young person. We know who he is. I'm praying for him. I'm praying that the Lord meets with him. I'm praying that the Lord will bless him. I'm praying that the Lord will give him favor so that he can see God as a good God and shrewdly pursue them. This is what I mean by that. You know how it is not that simple to just say, hey, come over here. I need to pray for you. It's not going to work with them. You have to be shrewd about it. Jesus says, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Be shrewd as serpents. We have to use our creativity. Your creativity has been on full display this weekend. In almost every activity that you've done, you have demonstrated a very strong creative powers you've got. Please use that creative powers to see how you can pursue them. And that picture you have on that book is also a picture you have, you can use in terms of how you pursue them. It's like a shepherd who's reaching out to a sheep over the cliff but doesn't want to scare the sheep because the sheep, if it gets scared, may back off and fall off the cliff. So you want to reach out to them without scaring them. That usually means don't throw so many Bible verses at them. Usually scares a lot of people. Still scares me, even at my age. When somebody comes with a lot of Bible verses at me. Shrewdly pursue them. You know the verses, they know the verses. Shrewdly pursue them. Creatively, come up with a way. Find out what they like. And go and do what they like. Take them out to a meal, on you. Go watch a cricket game, I don't know. I don't know what they enjoy to do but find out maybe first what they enjoy to do. And try and organize something. Maybe they like to play music. Organize something where you can help them play music. Those of you who are musically talented. Come on, bring all your instruments and we're just going to jam. And you bring whatever music you want to play and we'll play it. We'll try and play it and I'll teach you a couple of songs. Creative. Creative. Use your God given talents and brains which are plentiful. In this group, that's for sure. Bring it up in the group where you're praying. I've had these five people on our hearts. How do we reach them? Creative. And let me give one last warning with relation to that. Don't make those people more important than your own walk with God. I hope that goes without saying. Don't be so committed to reaching them that you yourself end up doing the same things they're doing that are not very wise or ungodly. Sooner we find out somebody has to go reach you too. I think you guys know what I mean with that. Now again, we don't share this to people just to anybody. We share this to people who want to grow into maturity and into responsibility. That's the theme of this weekend. So we take care of ourselves. We have these small groups. We have these prayer groups that help us stay committed to our love for Jesus. And as we do that, and as God gives us grace to pray for each other, we include in those prayers the younger generation. And this is not a short-term goal. This is something that may take a year. That's why you have to be shrewd. It's like a salesman who knows it's going to take him a year to close the deal. But every week he's talking to them. Slipping a note under that thing. Hey, this is on sale. It's going to be really on sale in July. You know, you shrewdly... You guys can discuss a lot more of this and I'm sure you can come up with some brilliant ideas. I have one final thought that we can do and then we'll do a review. Robbie, what time does this session end? 4 o'clock. Okay, we've got 25 minutes. How many of you remember this picture? I don't know if you can see it. Okay. Hold on a second. So, you know who this is, right? Do you know what this is? It's the movie, The Passion of the Christ. So, there's Jesus. Pilate holding up a sign. Jesus, Nazareth, King of the Jews. Are we good? Okay. And you see he's pretty beat up. And if you saw the movie, you saw how beat up he was. And again, there's Jesus talking to Pilate. And my question is, do you know what Jesus was telling Pilate? You may not know. We read it in the scripture and we lose the impact of it, but I only realized the impact of it when I saw the movie. I saw this and I saw Jesus beat up. And he's beat up and his right eye is shut because the whip has hit Jesus on the eye. His eye is completely closed. He can't even open up his eye. He's got one good eye with which he's looking at Pilate. And Pilate has told him something and Jesus responds with something. Yes. So, Pilate said, you do not speak to him. Do you know that I have the authority to release you and I have the authority to crucify you? What does Jesus say? You don't have to imagine the scene because it was portrayed for you. Can you imagine this man, king of all the Jews, or king, Roman, he was the governor of all the Jews, standing there saying, do you know I have the power to release you or to crucify you? And Jesus, beat up, barely living at this point, looks at him, square in the eye, with the only one eye he's got left. Because the other eye has been beat up and, with an assurance, looks him in the eye and says, you have no authority over me unless it had been given from above. Do you understand the impact of that statement? Do you know how big that statement was? So what's that got to do with us? This is what I think it's got to do with us. Do you recognize this? I was in a coffee shop in Portland when this happened and I was watching this live. It was in the morning my time. This is the Christian's response. This is what I feel is my response to if I look and if I see something. Somebody like this coming at me. I have to understand in this day and age where the devil is trying so hard to create fear. And we experienced it in September 11th and now you experience it now in November 26th or whatever the day was. The devil is out to get you to be afraid. And we don't get over fear by becoming tough enough. Some people think you can. I don't think I want to be tough enough. I don't think I can be tough enough to face this. But I can face this if I have an assurance that you have no authority over me. Unless it had been given to you by my father. Do you see how important it is to get that God is your father pretty well before something like this happens? If this happens to us, we have to know that we have a father. And that nobody, not your boss who harasses you, not a terrorist who attacks you, not the robbers or the mafia, not the peer friends who tell you it's so cool, you have no authority over me. This is how Jesus would have responded at the Taj. Even if they beat him up. One eye shut, he would have said, you have no authority over me. Unless it has been given to you by my father. I share this verse to you because this verse struck me so powerfully when I watched the Passion of the Christ. And I understood how important it was for me to understand who had the authority over my life. And I don't say that God has authority over everybody's life. We have to give him that authority. Jesus said, I do nothing of my own accord. I only do what the father tells me to do. Which is why it is so important, these concepts of surrender and knowing God as a father, because then you can come to a life of Jesus where you look him in the eye and say, you have no authority over me. Yes, our heart will get troubled. Yes, our heart will start beating faster. But then the Holy Spirit will come and help us. And he'll remind us of our father. And we'll be able to say, like Jesus, you have no authority over me. You can't touch me. And that applies to your work, that applies to your property, that applies to people who are trying to push you down. You have no authority over me, because I don't have authority over myself either. I gave it to my father. Therefore, brethren, because of the great mercies of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Piece by piece. Chop it all up. Put it on the altar. Authority given to God. And you say, no, I want some of my own. I want to control my life. You could do that. But then these kind of things, you're on your own. I don't know what word to give you for that time. I don't know what word of scripture to offer you at a time like this to give you solace or to give you strength. But I do have a word to give you if you are committed now in the time of peace, in the time of spiritual harvest, so to speak, as we heard about in the morning session, in the time of spiritual harvest, to invest into this kind of attitude. There will come a time, there could come a time, when you can't meet and fellowship as often and as easily as you can now. But you can now. Invest in each other, invest in yourself, so that you get this principle down. The saints went to the stake. The saints were eaten by lions, and they said the same thing Jesus did. We can do it too. This is not Jesus much holier than I. We will never get to that. There were saints just like us who worshipped Jesus, who gave him all authority, and looked at the lions, and the lions ate him. And the terrorists could kill you. But it can't happen unless the Father gave him the authority. And there's such a security that we can have because all authority has been given over to God in your life. I don't know if that is true or not. I don't know if that's true. Has all authority been given over to Jesus in your life? I don't know. But if you have, God has it. And no terrorist can take it. No evil person can take it. No manager can take it. I want you, whenever you think of this picture, whenever you see this picture flashed on the news, whenever you see these kind of things, this is what I love, guys. I love to take pieces of the culture that they throw it at me, and I say I got something to do with it. I'm going to inform it with scripture. I love doing this kind of stuff. I love taking all these things that scare other people, these pictures that should create fear in me, and I say now I'm going to flip it around. I've got a verse for that. So that's my little point. One final thought I wanted to leave with you. As we enter perilous times, we've talked about the last week of Jesus. We've talked about the last days. The stakes are getting higher. It's much more important now to get this concept of authority down. Very important. Okay, let's do a review. We've got about 13 minutes. Three days, 1,500 rupees. No, 2,500 rupees was how much you gave me, and you gave each other. You shelled out 2,500 rupees each. Was it worth it? Well, you tell me that next year as we said. You tell me in 2009 December if it was worth it. How are we going to ensure that we are a success in life? Look, I don't want to make you think that this being like Jesus is such an unattainable task that you're going to beat yourself up. If that's what you think I meant, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to have misled you. Jesus is the goal, and I have the assurance to tell Jesus, Jesus, please keep me on this earth because I have a ways to go to be like you. So please, if you can do this, don't take me away just yet. Because I look at this and I say, I got a ways to go to be conformed to Jesus. Not because I'm going to have children. Not because I want to be old enough to see my grandchildren or to walk my daughters down the aisle. No, really, no. I want a few more years because I see success in life, and I got a ways to go. So I'm not trying to say by 2009 I'm going to be like Jesus. I think that was pretty clear, but if it wasn't, let me make it clear. I'm not telling you the next time you see me in January, in December 2009, I'm going to be like Jesus. Please. We can spend our whole lives, but we'll never really get there. We won't fully be like him. But he who has this hope, 1 John 3 verse 2 and 3, purifies himself. Only if you have that hope of being like Jesus, will you purify yourself now. In that lusting, in that anger, in that bad attitude, in that bad spirit, whatever it is. It's only if you have that hope. And that's all I'm appealing you towards. Have that as your goal. And start moving. Start moving. And if you don't make any progress in 2009, say, I'm a failure. I was a failure in 2009. I got an increase. I got an increase in my salary. I got an increase in my job. I got to visit 3 different countries. I got married. But I'm a failure. Because I'm no more like Jesus than I was last year. If you think you agree with me, then you adopt these as your success. If you don't, make your own success metrics. And live by them. These are my success metrics. If I have a child in 2009, if I get a $100,000, $100 million promotion, if I start a big church and lots of people come to it, if I write a best-seller book that sells out and becomes in the top books sold of all time, but I'm not more like Jesus, I tell you something, I'm a failure. Look, it's crystal clear to me. Because I've made that my metrics. You make your metrics whatever it is, and let that drive you. Let that drive you every day as you wake up. Session 1 was about the donkeys and the horses. I heard some people talk about it, so I think it got through. The Lord has need of you. And I'm not saying your gift is like a donkey compared to a horse. It's just that it looks to you like a donkey. That's the problem. God sees something completely different, but you evaluate yourself and say, that looks like a donkey to me, can't be used. And that's when you just need to let it go and let God get on it and use it. Am I willing to submit to his needs? Session 2 was about house hunting. When God is house hunting, then you'll either find a house of prayer or a den of robbers, don't be a thief. If you get together in your prayer groups and say, this is going to be part of the way, I'm going to not be a thief. I'm not going to steal from God. The opposite of stealing is praying. There's unimaginable things that can be done through a group of people who pray together. Maybe that should sink in so that it becomes such a high priority. Especially among young people. We'll do anything but pray together. We'll even evangelize rather than pray together. Your final answer, do you love God with everything in you? It is the question that dispels the devil. The devil will stop oppressing you. He'll still attack you, he may still try to get at you, but this is what he's getting at. He's got everything to you, he's got everything to you, he's got everything to you. Do you want God plus something else? I'll give you this, I'll give you that. I'll take away this, I'll take away that. The only question he's asking is, God everything? And God has told you, he'll never leave you nor forsake you. He can't take away that. So if that's all you need, you'll have joy, you'll have rest. Because the devil can never take away God. And God is all you want. And I love God with everything I have. Session four, the Holy Spirit, I think that was one thing that I wanted to stress. I hope that condemnation won't be one of those sins that besets us in 2009, this church group at CFC. I hope that the CFC group here will not deal with condemnation as a besetting sin. Not that it may be not something you have to fight with, but it'll be something where you make astronomical progress is in condemnation. I would really like to come back next year and say this really helped me address condemnation issues. Very few times did I wake up in the morning or go to bed at night feeling condemned. I may feel disappointed, I may feel convicted of sin. Let me make one point here. Maybe important for you guys to remember this. What is the difference between conviction of the Holy Spirit and condemnation of the devil? What is the difference between conviction of the Holy Spirit makes you feel terrible, right? You messed up, there was sin in your life, and condemnation of the devil. Same thing, messed up, you're terrible, that was terrible. You know the difference? I'll tell you the difference and I've understood it. Conviction of the Holy Spirit gets you quickly back to Jesus. Because the Holy Spirit is an exalter of Jesus. So He comes and tells you, you did something wrong, but look at Jesus. He quickly shines the light from your sin onto Jesus. So if you have been beat up because of a sin and you're not looking at Jesus and you're not enthroned with how beautiful and perfect Jesus is, you're listening to the devil. Conviction, good. Embrace it. But remember that the Holy Spirit comes with the conviction to exalt Jesus. To tell you that the person who just disciplined you was your father, not an angry God. That's the Holy Spirit who will tell you that. The devil will tell you that's an angry God who hit you because you sinned and broke the law of God. The Holy Spirit says that was your father who disciplined you. Because He who He loves, He disciplines. And He helps you saying, don't give up. Get back up. Let's do this again. Let's try and get it right this time. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is like that little dove standing above you showing you Jesus. And this one, you have no authority over me unless it has been given to you by my father. If there's nothing else, if you want to just take these five, maybe these six slides. Success in life. Session one. Session two. Session three. Session four. All right. Time to make it official. This is where you guys have to do the work. I want you, now you may not have the time to do it now, but this is where I want you to do this. We've got a couple of minutes. But I want you to do this maybe later on. I've given you exercises in each session. Session one was, this is the donkey that the Lord has kneed off in my life and that I allow to be used. What is that gift? What is that ability? This is what we will do to help each other become a group of prayer. Seems like you finished that exercise right now. Maybe distribute it among the different people. Session three was your final answer. I'd like to kind of finalize this so that each of you guys have it on a page that you can put in your Bible. So I don't know whether you want to do it later on tonight or after the next session or whenever, but finalize this. This is what, if anybody asks you from CFC or anybody else, what happened in the camp? You can show them this. This is what I got from the camp is these two pages. Any questions? These were all already displayed in each of the sessions, so you don't have to worry about it. This should all have already been done in yesterday. Those two sessions and this morning and on Friday night. Any questions? No? Okay. We will end with prayer. Are we going right into the next session? No. 15 minute break. Okay. So let's pray. And let's ask the Holy Spirit to seal what has been written, what we have decided. Father, you know what a joy it is for me to minister to my home church, people who I've known since I was, as long as I could remember, people who have been gripped, people who love me so much. It's such a joy and an honor to be able to share God's love with them. Lord, I'm also so thankful for how much they love you. They clearly do, Lord. There's no doubt in my mind about it. They have such a sincere desire to follow you and I rejoice in that, Lord. I'm inspired by that. We're not where we want to be, but you've given us a map and a compass and you've given us the way forward. We thank you for that. We thank you, Lord, that you've given us a little bit more tangible steps that we can take in 2009 to help us to get to our goal. Lord, we are so frail. We are so limited and so deceitful in our hearts. We need each other. Lord, please help us to not let 2009 be a year we try to make it on our own. Help us to use these brothers and sisters who you've given to us as partners in this journey, as people who can give us company, who can tell us not to miss the sunrises that we will see in this journey, to see all these beautiful parts of God's creation as we're walking in this journey. The handiwork of your creation, Lord, as you walk through us, as you make miracles in our lives, as you answer prayers. Give us company, Lord. Thank you for this company. Help us to use it that we may share our joy with them and we may weep with them as they cry over their troubles too. So, Lord, I pray for your Holy Spirit to seal this, Lord, these decisions that have been made. Give them an assurance, Lord, based on what we've talked about, that your Holy Spirit is, will be with them and that they would just surrender their lives to you. That they will walk without fear, Lord, that all authority will quickly be given over to God. All authority. That they will only desire you so that we need fear nothing in these days, Lord. No matter what happens, we will be able to look people in the eye and say, I respect. I have respect for you, but I do not fear you. I fear only one person. We may treat everybody in the world with respect, but we will fear only you. And we will give all our authority over to you over our lives. Lord, do these in this year of spiritual harvest. That if times change and we can't meet, if times change and we're not able to meet as often as we can, that these words in this time of spiritual harvest will be utilized to build the right foundation, to get the right principles into our system. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.