Carter Conlon emphasizes the importance of not drawing back from faith, urging believers to trust in the power of the cross and the supernatural work of God in their lives. He recounts a personal experience in Nigeria where, despite overwhelming fear and doubt, he was encouraged to rise up and fulfill God's calling, leading to miraculous outcomes. Conlon warns against the allure of human effort and religious trappings that can distract from the true power of faith in Christ. He encourages the church to embrace their identity as new creations in Christ and to rely on God's strength rather than their own. Ultimately, he calls for a commitment to move forward in faith, trusting in God's promises and the supernatural life He offers.

Galatians chapter 6, please if you'll turn there in your Bibles in the New Testament, book of Galatians chapter 6. My message is simply entitled, Don't Draw Back. Don't draw back. Father, I thank you God, Lord, for coming and visiting us so powerfully this morning. Thank you for the simplicity of the cross of Jesus Christ, for the amazing power of God that was won for us on that day. Oh God, would you help me to deliver this and help all of us to hear it and move us forward in faith in this day in which we're living. God, I thank you with all my heart. You said that whoever bleed on you out of their inward parts would flow rivers of living water. And so I'm asking you this morning to flow out of this vessel, give everyone here that water to drink who needs it. Those that are thirsty, those that are weary, those that have fought and they don't know where their next strength is going to come from. God, let this be the day, the deepest cry of their heart is answered. I ask it in Jesus name. Galatians chapter 6, Don't Draw Back, beginning to read from verse 14, the words of Paul the apostle, but God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Don't Draw Back. I was thinking this morning as I was praying of several years ago, we took an outreach team and went into Jos, Nigeria, at that time being the red line between forces of Islam and some form of Christianity that were fighting with each other. The last time that they had been allowed to publicly assemble, the figure I was given was that 6,000 people died. And it was an area of deep division and deep trouble. We felt led of the Lord to go there to conduct an outreach. And I remember after we got to Nigeria, people telling me the difficulty we were about to face, the things that could go wrong. There's always more people willing to talk about what could go wrong than what could go right. Have you ever noticed that? And then you add it to the frailty of your own heart and suddenly the problem has a capital P and Jesus has a small J. And you're magnifying the problem and not the one who overcame every obstacle we'll ever face. And I remember I was in my hotel room and I was laying on the floor and suddenly it was one of the very, very, very few times in my life that I almost turned and went the other way apart from faith. And I remember thinking I've taken on too much here. I've come here presumptuously. Half a million people are going to be gathering and there's going to be an outbreak of violence. It would have taken one gunshot in the place where people would have died. Numerous numbers would have died. And I remember thinking I've taken on too much. I'm out of my league. I know what God spoke to my heart back in New York City, but maybe I misinterpreted the fullness of it. And I'm on my face and I'm having a real, real spiritual pity party. At that moment, Brother Chooks, one of our elders comes walking into the room and he says, what's wrong? And I poured out my heart to him. And he didn't, you know, his counsel was rather abrupt. He just said, get up. So God sent you here to do a job, get up and get it done. That's all he said. And so those of you who know Brother Chooks, you just simply do what he says. It's amazing how a few well-spoken words can change the course of a person's future. And these are my words to you today. Don't draw back. God called you to do something. God called you to be something. And he promised that he was going to do it through you and for you. Think about what would have happened had I succumbed to the unbelief of that moment that was trying to get a hold of my heart. Had I gotten up and think about if the counselor coming into the room had presented to me an alternate plan, maybe we can go home. We'll cancel the event. Maybe we'll come back some other time. Hey, we could do this on video. It'd be a whole lot less dangerous. You know, just all these alternate plans that could have been. And if I had gravitated to that, I dare say that this would be a different church today. It would look a whole lot different than it does today. And this in effect is what Paul the apostle is talking about through this whole book that he wrote to believers that were known as the Galatians. They lived in a specific area of the world at that time. And he's writing to these people and because people were coming into them and offering them an alternate way other than faith. Now it had religion all over it. Alternate ways always do. They're filled with religion. They're exciting quite often to the flesh and they present a lesser difficult course than the one that oftentimes is required by faith and all of the methodologies, of course, because God's not on that course. Then what has to come with it is a whole bunch of human effort to make it happen. Human zeal, strategies, steps, plans, committees, all these things have to come when we've walked away from faith. Remember the writer of Hebrews said these words on God's behalf. If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. If anyone draws back, remember that God defined himself. He said, without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he that comes to God must believe that he is, and he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He is conqueror. He is the victor. He is the one with the keys to every prison. He is the one with the lamp that shines on our path and leads us into the future. He is our resource, our strength, our power, our guide, our guard, our provision. He is all of these things. As we seek him, these things begin to sovereignly, by the power of God, begin to be known in us and through us. God's people on the earth were always destined to be a supernatural people. We are to walk with him in a way that cannot be, it can be imitated, but it can never be achieved by human effort. There's a huge difference. When you start walking in the flesh, everything changes. I think of Abraham for a moment. When he presented Israel, remember he ran out of faith at a certain point. He's given this incredible promise. Abraham, Genesis 15, go look at the stars in the sky. And this is how numerous your descendants are going to be. More than can be counted. Now Abraham's getting older. And as he's getting older, the promise is not being fulfilled. And then finally gets to the point where he starts to fear that the promise is not going to materialize. And so he succumbs to a plan and creates a wild man. God said he's a wild man. He creates this guy called Ishmael and said, he's a wild man. His hand will always be against his brothers and his brother's hands against him. And it's amazing when you begin to see, and I can see Abraham presenting Ishmael to the people. Here's Ishmael. And you'd have to have people with signs time to clap, time to rejoice, because it's a work of the flesh. It's something created by human effort. And it always brings about its baggage, its entourage. But think about years later, 13 or so years later, when he presents Isaac, the child of promise, that which could not be born apart from the miraculous working of God within Abraham and his wife, Sarah. And the scripture says it was laughter. There was laughter there. There was rejoicing because only God could have done this. Oh, I thank God that God's plan for you and I is to cause us to laugh when we go home, to cause us to look in the mirror and say, God, only you could have taken this and done something with it. God's plan for you and I is that we'd be constantly in awe of him, constantly coming into his presence, saying, Lord, I'm excited about meeting with you again, because every time I meet with you, something new happens. Morning by morning, new mercies. Morning by morning, I'm taking places I couldn't go. I'm giving words that I know don't come from my natural understanding. I'm giving things in my heart that I've never possessed, abilities that could only come from the spirit. And it makes this walk with God an awesome walk, an incredible walk. Oh God, help us to never draw back. It's sad for any pastor having seen new believers in Christ, and I've seen it over and over throughout the years, and they find this incredible life in the spirit, which God freely gives only to, for whatever reason, draw back into the hopelessness of human effort, and the seeking of exterior signs to prove that they still belong to God. That's exactly what happens. I remember years ago we had the so-called revivals in North America, and I remember how sad I was in my heart, because when God's people are seeking an exterior sign to prove his presence, they have lost touch with the supernatural at that point. When we're seeking the supernatural outside, it means there's nothing going on inside. I didn't have to go anywhere. I don't have to run. If somebody tells me that people are able to jump 18 feet off the ground in some meeting, I don't really care. I don't have to go to see it, because I can jump 18 feet in my spirit and my prayer closet at any time off the ground. You understand what I'm saying? The supernatural work of God is inside, so I'm not looking for something outside. This is what Paul was fighting against, because those that would always draw the church of Jesus Christ back into powerlessness always were there and always will be among us. They're quite often exciting. Their words are good. They're marvelous speakers. They're positive, but they pull away from the cross of Jesus Christ, the victory that was won by another, and they start infusing into their audiences the sense that we can do this. You can do this, and I can do this. We all have this inheritability in ourselves to be godly. The Bible tells us that God brought the law into existence in the Old Testament to prove to the descendants of Abraham that that is an impossibility. We can't be godly in our own strength. We can't do the things that God only can do through us, no matter how high we try to jump or how loud we sing or how much we look into the mirror and say, oh, you're just great and grand today. No matter how many times we do these things, we cannot produce the supernatural life of God that his church requires, and more so in this hour. This is a dark season in history. The Bible says that we are a light set upon a hill, and this light that's supposed to be in you and I cannot be hidden. It must not be hidden. We must not be a people that can be imitated by anything in the flesh or the world. When those 120 new believers came out of that upper room and they burst into the marketplace, standing before them were 3,000 plus people encased in religion and religious works. They had all the exterior markings as they saw to belonging to God. They had the garments, they had the hats, they had the boxes of scripture on their foreheads and their arms and all the trappings that go with religion, but they saw 120 people, common people, supernaturally possessed by the spirit of God. When they looked at that, they said, we have a lot of stuff, but we haven't got that. Whatever you have, that's what we want. We're willing to cast off these robes that we might find this life that God promises through Jesus Christ. The tragedy in the church of Jesus Christ always has been that there are people always willing to pick those robes up and find a new crowd to put them on. This was what was happening in Paul's day. People were coming in and they were standing up against the gospel that Paul had preached. He had preached to them about the completeness of Christ, the full victory of the cross, the power of the resurrection and the free giving of forgiveness in life that could belong to any man, any woman, anyone who came to God with an honest heart, they could be changed and become a new creation. But those tried to creep back in among the people of Paul's day and instill in them markings of the flesh, things on the outside that would identify them as belonging to God and bringing them back into a pattern of trying to work to obtain the favor of God and working to prove to their society that God was indeed among them. Paul, the apostle warns a young pastor called Timothy in second Timothy chapter four, verses three and four. He says, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. That's the time is our time. He's talking about the last days beginning in chapter three, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. That's an interesting, it's not that they've left religion. They've just embraced speech that has no power, stories that don't do anything. They're not the word of God. They're man-centered, they're man-focused. They have a semblance of freedom, but they bring no life. They can move the hearer to tears. They can bring the audience to their feet, shouting and clapping, but they're fables. There's no power in it. The scripture tells us that they will have people's attention and they will have people sitting in admiration because they're very, very gifted speakers. You think about Jehoshaphat and Ahab the day before they were about to be defeated in battle. 400 of these prophets are standing at the throne of Ahab and Zedekiah, the son of Janiah says he made horns of iron and he's telling the king Ahab with these, he said, you're going to push the Syrians. You're going to push the Syrians. You're going to push them until they'd be driven in the sea. In other words, human effort, human effort, human effort. You're going to make it. The man is one day from death and here he has voices, positive voices, 400 of them shouting, go and prosper, go and prosper, go and prosper. Strangely enough, there's one man left in the crowd and in his heart he's got a sense. Oh, I don't know. I believe see Jehoshaphat was a righteous man in measure. And I believe that he knew this spirit of schmoozing when he heard it. He knew that these men were prophesying for their own advantage. They wanted access to power. They wanted access to people's hearts. They wanted access to the King's court. And that's what causes him to say, is there anybody else after 400 voices? He says, is there anybody else out there? Remember Ahab says, oh yeah, there's one guy, my kid, but I hate him. He never tells me what I want to hear about myself. He's the kind of a guy I don't hate you brother jerks, but he's the kind of a guy that says, get up from where you are. There's a job to be done. God's called you to do it. Let's get at it. Let's get going. He says, he never tells me what I want to hear. And Micaiah comes in and says, I saw the people of Israel scattered as sheep without a shepherd. In other words, I saw what happens when men listened to the voices of other men and they stopped listening to the voice of God. Most of this theology that they bring builds up the fallen nature and leads people to believe that apart from Christ within us, that we have the ability in ourselves to be as God is. Remember the original sin Adam sowed, not Adam, but Satan sowed into the human race through Adam and Eve was that you can be as God's and no good as an evil, that we in our own strength like Abraham did can produce what God only can give to us. It's an amazing thing. Paul identifies these teachers as man pleasers in Galatians in chapter one verses nine to 10. He says, we've said before, now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you, then that you have received, let him be accursed. For now, do I persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I still please men, I would not be a bond servant of Jesus Christ. Paul identifies this voice that comes to try to put these old robes back on the body of Christ. They come as men pleasers. They'll tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear, but what you want to hear. You, you want to hear your sin nature wants to hear how, how lovely you are. Your sin nature in yourself. I'm not, I'm talking about apart from Christ in you, the sin nature wants to cause us to believe that we can climb mountains. We can walk the seas. We can conquer the valleys all in our own strength and all with our own reasoning and all God needs to lead. Not all Satan needs rather to lead the body of Christ into error is a man pleaser. Somebody that will not tell you that if you continue in willful sin, that you cannot call the kingdom of heaven your home. They will never tell the people that they will not talk about the cross. They will not talk about the blood. They will not talk about sin. They will not talk about repentance. All the elements of salvation will be thrown out of their theology. My friends, would you please beware? Would you please hear me on this and beware of what we are facing in this generation? The biggest assault we're facing against the church of Christ is not necessarily liberalism and all of its things that it brings into a society. The biggest assault against the church of Jesus Christ is always from within. It's the raising up of voices that do not speak for God, but they profess to speak for him. They lead the people of God away from the spirit because these men and women don't know anything about the spirit of God. Paul says in Galatians again, chapter four in verse 17 says, they zealously court you, but for no good. Yes, they want to exclude you. In other words, they want you to be set apart that you may be zealous for them. In other words, they draw to themselves, folks. It's not hard to pick them out. They're man pleasers. They draw to themselves. I'm telling you, if you walk out of this church speaking my name and not the name of Jesus, I have failed you. I have drawn you to myself. No, if you're in a place where God is, you should be walking out that door and you should be saying, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, what you have done for my heart. Oh Jesus, how wonderful it was to worship you. Thank God that pastor. What's his name was on holidays today because Jesus, I came to meet with you. I didn't come to meet with the pastor. I didn't come to meet with the preacher. I came to meet with you in Galatians five 26. Let me read it again. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. There's a youth movement that I've been told about that is starting to happen. It's probably been going on for a while now. I had some pastors here from Brazil telling me the youth are being drawn out of their churches and they're going into these worship sessions that last four and five hours and they just sing these syrupy songs that really are not theologically even accurate in many cases and they come out of these worship sessions and they come back and they're become the critics of the church. They're full of rebellion. Folks, it's another spirit. We're being attacked on every possible front in the church of Jesus Christ in this generation. We've got to pray for our young people like we've never prayed before. We've got to pray you and I that God give us a supernatural working of the Holy Spirit again in the church of Jesus Christ that would cause our young people to come in in droves into the house of God where the spirit of the Lord is. There's liberty where the spirit of the Lord is. There's freedom where the spirit of the Lord is. There's a song that everybody wants to sing where the spirit of the Lord is. There's supernatural workings of God that bring us out of mediocrity and bring us into this incredible life of Jesus Christ. Again, Paul says in Galatians 6.12 says, as many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised only that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. They're both afraid of the opinions of people and they are ashamed of the cross. If you are listening to anything and the cross is not the center of it and Jesus Christ and his shed blood are not spoken often and repentance and turning from sin is not part of what they are expounding. My brother, my sister, you run from that thing like you'd run from a rattlesnake. You get away from that. You get out of there. This is a message that is going to turn you from the place that you're on, cause you to draw back. You begin to live in the flesh. You're going to lose the power of God that you and I are going to need in the days ahead. I tell you with all my heart, we are a church here in New York City that are not ashamed of the cross of Jesus Christ. We are not ashamed. We don't have to be more brilliant than everybody else around us. We don't have to have an argument that causes people their heads to spin. We love the simplicity of Jesus Christ. Christ died. Christ is risen. Christ is coming again. Christ said, whoever turns to me, I will not cast him out. He promised forgiveness and he promised in my inward parts would be a river of living water. If I would believe in him, if I would trust in him, he would come and he would do what only God could do in my life. Hallelujah to the lamb of God. That's why Paul said, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision. In other words, you don't need any exterior sign because you become a new creation. That's what he says in verse 15. None of this stuff avails anything but a new creation. From now on, he says, let no one trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul says, I don't need marks on my body. I bear the impressive Christ inside of my body. I have him inside of me. That's why in Galatians 2, 20 and 21, he said these words, he said, it's no longer I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life, which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who died and gave himself for me, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ is dead in vain. Second Corinthians 5, 17, Paul says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old things have passed away and behold, all things have become new. Philippians 4, 13, Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Oh, I thank God for that with all of my heart. How did Paul know that? In second Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23 to 28, he says, are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am more in labors, more abundant in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews, five times I received 40 stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. How many would like a testimony like that this morning? A night and a day I've been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. And besides the other things, what things come upon me daily? My deep concern for all the churches. That's why Paul says in Galatians, don't anybody try to persuade me of the value of exterior displays of righteousness or good standing with God, for I bear inside of this body. I have been kept through fire. I've been kept through flood. I've been kept through trial. I was brought out miraculously, and by God's grace I'm going to be brought in miraculously. I've come too far to turn back now. I don't care how many spies come out of the promised land and try to put on me robes of unbelief and get me back in human effort. I've come too far to turn back now. I'm going the whole journey right to the finish line, and I'm going there by faith. By God's grace, by God's grace, I'm going by faith. Whether or not you've seen what God's promised to your heart this morning, I'm telling you that God is able. God is able. He's not a man who can lie. The things he spoke to your heart, he's going to do. The places he said he's going to take you, he's going to take you. The children he said he's going to bring home, he's going to bring them home. Hallelujah. The provision he said he's going to give to your life, he's going to give to you. Everything he said he's going to do, he's going to do. How powerful is God, you say? There was a king called Hezekiah, and Hezekiah got sick, and he turned, and he faced the wall, and he began to pray. And God says, I'm going to heal you, and I'm going to give you 15 more years. Hezekiah said to the prophet Isaiah, how am I going to know that God's going to do this thing? Isaiah said, which is easier for God to do, to turn the clock ahead or turn the clock backwards? He said, well, anybody can turn it ahead. I don't know where he got that, he said, but it's harder to turn it backwards. And so the Lord has prayed, and the Lord, if you understand the way the universe works, the whole thing was spoken from his mouth. It's all moving forward to a prescribed end. And God drew the whole universe backwards 10 degrees, whatever that is. What is it, an hour? I don't know what 10 degrees is. Maybe somebody can help it. I just know he brought everything to a stop, and he drew it backwards just so one person praying could know, I'm going to heal you, and I'm going to give you 15 more years in your life. This is the God that we serve. So I don't need anybody drawing me back into the flesh. I don't need anybody telling me this is the way to do it. Here are the steps, and this is how it's going to be accomplished. I don't need anybody putting on me robes of religion, because I am not ashamed of the cross of Jesus Christ and the victory that was won there. I'm not going to turn back. Paul said, O Galatians, having begun in the spirit, are you now going to be perfected in the flesh? Answer me this. He said, the people who do miracles among you, do they do it by the hearing of faith, or do they do it by the works of the law, or in other words, human effort? Human effort can only produce that which human effort can produce. But the heart of faith gazes hold of God and begins to know something that only God can do. I'm not going to draw back for the rest of my life. So help me, God, as God gives me help. I'm not going to draw back, and neither are you. We're not going to draw back as the church of Jesus Christ. Don't trouble me, Paul says, with all your exterior trappings of belonging to God. Don't trouble me with all your signs and all your wonders, because I have the only sign and wonder I need inside my body. I've been kept where nobody else could have kept me. I've been taken where nobody else could have taken me. I have known victory when only God could have given it. And so don't trouble me. And that's why Paul had such a zeal for the church, for he saw these voices coming in, trying to draw the bride of Christ back into human effort again, back into clever stories, back into words that don't profit, sitting there with notepads and glassy faces, listening to the flesh and not even knowing what they're listening to. It all sounds so good, but folks, it's powerless. There is no strength that comes from it. Go to the cross of Jesus Christ. You lay hold of that victory that God's Son won for you. Walk in that victory. Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. Walk in the Spirit, and you'll be taken into a supernatural life that can only come from God. This is supposed to be an exciting house, not because the preacher's excited, not because the band gets it all right or the choir hits the right note. It's an exciting house because you are walking in, and throughout the week, you've had experiences with God that only God could have brought into your life. And you know it as you know it. You know it. And you don't need us to lead you into worship. You need us to stop you from worshiping in the house of God. Think it through. That's why I asked you at the beginning of this message, all the things you had to face in the beginning, the trials in your mind, the struggles, the unbelief, the hopelessness, the despair, the addiction, the broken relationships, the powerlessness to turn from sin, all of these things where you started. And you know that when you turn to Jesus, God did for you what you could not do for yourself. It was only the beginning of a miraculous walk with God. It was only the beginning of what God wants to do. If you could only see the plans that God has for you, each one here, he's got something specifically crafted for you in heaven itself that only God can fulfill. You can't do it in your own strength, and you'll lay on the floor, and you'll turn away. If left to yourself, you'll turn back to where you came from. You'll turn back, and you'll end up with religious robes, religious words, religious markings, religious trappings, religious affiliations, but you will have lost something so precious. It's simply the power of God will have left you, and you'll be left to your own resource to try to work out your own salvation. Oh, but thank God for the simplicity of faith. My brother, my sister, we've come too far to turn back now. We are now right on the edge of, I believe, Christ's return. I don't know exactly when, but he's coming soon. I know that in my heart. We're so close to that moment in history. We're so close to everything the scripture has ever promised us. It's not time to turn back. It's not time to look for an easy way. The days ahead are going to be hard, but Christ in us will give us the strength. God's Holy Spirit will give us the power to walk through fire, flood, difficulty, and trial, and he will never leave us. He will not forsake us, and every tongue that scorns us and rises against us in judgment, we have the power to condemn it. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. Don't try to win the battle in your own strength. If you try to win it in your own strength, your whole life, the course of your life, will take a different turn. I look back on Nigeria, and I remember getting on that platform that first night, and all of a sudden, the rains start coming from every direction. Two hundred witches have been chanting in the field and cursing the meetings, the devil himself trying to procure, destroy these meetings, and produce another round of violence, but I remember we stood there. The rain came. We stood in the rain. We didn't move. We began to bind the powers of darkness in the name of Jesus Christ. In the natural, it was hopeless. It was impossible, but in the spirit, remember, with God, all things are possible. With God, we began to pray. Then we began to worship, and I remember that night, a hundred thousand hands at least were raised to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior for the first time. Miracles began to happen. By day three, people were the five hundred thousand standing and milling and just waiting for the first sign of violence. We're now seated on the grass, nominal Christian or new believers in Christ and Muslims. I know some Muslims came to Christ for sure. I got a letter from a vendor, and the Muslim vendor who was at the event, he said, I was forced to leave. I was compelled, he said, to leave a God I could never find for one who had so clearly revealed himself. I am, from this day forward, a loyal follower of Jesus Christ. Listen to what he said. Please pray for me. I will most likely be killed by my Muslim brethren. That's a conversion, my friends. That's a conversion to Jesus Christ. The miraculous began to happen. I remember walking into a tailor shop during one of the days, and they had about, I forget the number, 12 to 15 tailors there. They all came from their machines, and they gathered around me, and they said, man of God, would you pray for us? They're all Muslim, and I said, listen, you understand I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and they said, we know that. And I said, when I pray, I pray in Jesus' name alone. They said, we understand that. And I said, what do you want me to pray for? One man looks at me, points to his heart, and says, we have no peace. We have no peace. Our folks, miracles came. I saw it. The governor of Plateau State, Nigeria, after this conference, this outreach, he flew to New York City, and he said, I was away. When I came home, I've never seen the likes of it. There was peace in my towns, peace in my cities. I've never seen it in my tenure. And he said, oh, he flew here to New York, and he says, I want on the platform, you lay your hands on me. And he said, because I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Would you pray that I can be a follower of Jesus Christ? What if I had not gotten up off the floor? What if another counselor had come into that room? I want you to think of all that would not have happened in those moments. And you better thank God if you're in a church where you are provoked to faith. You're provoked to turn away from what you want to do in your own heart. And you're provoked to believe God and to go into those places of impossibility. And if you'll listen to what I'm telling you this morning, in the days ahead, there'll be fruit born through your life that you never believed was possible. You didn't believe it. God put it in your heart, and you decided to simply get up and say, God, you've given me a job to do on this earth. I'm going to get up and in the strength of God alone, I'm going to, it's going to be done, not in my strength, but in the strength of God within me, this job is going to be done. I challenge you with all my heart, all your declarations of love and loyalty, all your efforts to be something other than what you naturally are. For many here have failed you. You're tired of trying to win the battle in your own strength. But today, I want to invite you to come unashamed, to lay hold of the victory of another, the promise of new life that was won for you on the cross 2,000 years ago, to lay down your attempts to change, lay down your plans to go forward, your strategies for life as you see it, and say, I'm going to lay hold of the victory that Jesus won for me 2,000 years ago. That's going to be my strength. It's going to be my song. It's going to be my life, and it's going to be my victory. I'm not going to draw back. I'm going to press in in faith. I'm going to believe God for everything he has for my life, even though it looks impossible in the natural. As a matter of fact, it is impossible in the natural, but it's possible to God. I'm not going to be sold short on this journey. I'm not going to die in my final moments of life with a bunch of if-only's on my lips. No, I'm going to take the journey now, and at the end of my days, I'm going to say, thank you, Lord God, that you didn't let me turn back. Thank you that you kept me going forward. Thank you, Lord, that you didn't let the testimony of your life inside of mine be diminished by my circumstance. You gave me the strength and power I needed to be the person that I was called to be. My other call is so very simple this morning. It's for all those who are tired of fighting this battle in your own strength. You're tired of trying to figure out you've come this far by faith, and now fear wants to take its place, and you just don't know how you're going to get through. You're going to get ahead. You're going to proceed from here. You will by just simply laying hold of God by faith. Lay hold of the victory that Christ gave you 2,000 years ago and begin to move forward. That's the cry of my heart. Don't forget his benefits. Don't forget what he's done, and let him be your God in the future. Let your life be a supernatural life. Let nobody in the natural be able to imitate what God's going to do in you. That's the cry of my heart, and if that's the cry of your heart today as we stand up together, I'm going to ask you in the annex to just step between the screens in the main sanctuary, slip out of where you are in the balcony, go to either exit, the main sanctuary, just come down to say, I'm tired of fighting in my own strength, and I'm not going to back away. I'm not going to draw back. I'm going to move forward by faith and by faith alone. Let that be the cry of your heart today as we worship. Just come, please. You know, the devil doesn't mind the church being in this society as long as the church is not supernatural. It's the naturalness of the testimony of Christ in our generation that has brought the nation to this point of powerlessness, but all it takes, I remind you, is 120 people that are gripped by the Spirit of God who know they're facing impossibility, but they're willing to let God perform those things that he has promised in his Word through them. Thank God for you. I do with all my heart. Thank God. This is the hope for the future. It's always been this way. Search the scriptures. When God wanted to bring a prophet into the world, he sought out a barren womb. When he wanted to bring his son, he sought a virgin. When he wanted to deliver Israel, he looked for an old man who's 80 years old who'd lost all of his natural strength, that no flesh can glory, that the testimony has to be only God could have done this. Only God could have done. And so my encouragement to you today is there's a job to be done. Get up. God has determined to do something through you. You're not just an observer in the kingdom of God. That's not what you're relegated. You're not just a person that just comes in and feels bad about themselves every week. God has something supernatural for you, something sovereign, something that he's going to do through your life. You let him do it. And that's all you're doing this morning. You're not making promises to him because you can't keep them. You're saying, God, your promises to me, that's all that matters now. I'm going to go out. And we went out from that room and stood on that platform and all hell broke loose, but all heaven came down. Thank God. Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters at this altar today. Lord Jesus Christ, we're not here to present anything of ourselves to you. We're here because you gave yourself for us. And we simply open our hearts and say, Lord, take us into the victory that you promised would be ours. Help us to look away from our own strategies, our own plans. Keep us free from those that would lead us back to the flesh. God, we thank you, Lord. This is a supernatural kingdom. It's the hungry heart that gets the victory. And so, Lord, we simply press in, in all of our weakness, with all of our trials and all of our struggles. And we remember how faithful you have been to us. We remember you brought us out when we couldn't get out. And you brought us in when we couldn't get in. But, oh God, now you call us to do something for you, Lord, that is so far beyond our own ability. So, God, help us now just to embrace it by faith and not to look to our resources in either pocket because we don't have what it takes. It's only you inside of us that will be the victory. So, guide us and guard us, Lord, from everything that would take away our strength. Bring us into that place of victory that will truly bring honor to your name, that our testimony could only be, only Jesus could have done this. I know it could never have happened without him. Let us not produce an Ishmael but an Isaac, when we call our friends together and laugh and clap our hands and dance and say, only God, only God, only God could have done this. Father, we thank you for this. Oh God, I do pray for my brothers and sisters. Help us, God, not to slip into the flesh. Help us, Lord, not to make the mistake of having begun in the spirit then going back to human effort to try to find the way forward. Help us to lift our hands and our hearts to you, Lord, and to believe that the promises you gave us are true. You will not let us down. You will not leave us down. Father, I thank you for this, God. I ask you this morning at this altar to be healings, God, that only you could bring into our bodies and our minds, healings in our homes, our situations, our families, that only you could do. And though all hell seems to break out, help us to stand there and put our confidence in you, for you yourself told us to be still and know that I'm God. So, Father, we make the choice this morning. We will stay in the spirit. We will believe you for the miraculous. We will trust you for the way forward. God Almighty, I thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you. Show each man, each woman at this altar what you want to do through their lives. Show them. Give them that upper room experience where they came out. They knew. They didn't know how, but they knew what you'd called them to do. And it could only happen by faith. Oh, Jesus, I thank you with all my heart. I praise you and give you all the glory in your precious name. Amen and amen. Praise God.