Revival Conference 2007 - Part 4

With his own hands, God took him and buried him, Deuteronomy chapter 34, and he said, the scripture says he buried him in a place where nobody could find him, and that's what the Lord will do with our failings. If we are willing to be put into the hand of God, he'll take us and he'll show us all the promises. You see, because it's by these, Peter says, we become partakers of the divine nature. I'm not talking about reading more, praying more, doing more. I'm talking about something that God has to do, and he promises to do it. That's what the New Testament is all about. The Old Testament was a you do, I do covenant. The New Testament is you believe that I will do. That's why it's called good news. It's no longer works. It's no longer what we do for God. It's what we allow God to do through us. Thanks be to God, that was the greatest revelation I've ever had in my life, that I don't have to do this. I just simply have to agree with God and let him do it. Blessed be his holy name. He took him and showed him the promises, and then by his grace, he buried him where nobody could find him. That's exactly what God does with our failings. If we deal honestly with God, he buries our failings where nobody can dig them up, nobody can find them. There'd be no history of them. There's no record of them. He buries them with his own hand, that hand that was nailed to the cross. Thanks be to God. We'll bury our failings and make us into the men and women that God needs in this generation. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. If you hold to this simple truth, it will change your life. If you can put away unbelief and put away having to maintain a religious image of some sort in your church or community or home and say, Lord, I'm open now. God deal with me. You begin to realize this is a work of grace and love. This is not something that comes through God with anger. It's a work of love. You say, Lord, just deal with me. Help me. Change me. And then you begin to realize this incredible grace. Oh, Lord God. You see, I know what I'm talking about. I was saved at 24. I was a police officer actually in Canada. I was saved when I was 24 years of age. When I was 15, I started suffering panic attacks. And if you've never known these, it's the closest thing to hell on earth you'll ever experience in your lifetime. Where you have a sense of doom, a sense that everything, there's no hope for the future. A sense that tomorrow is dark and foreboding. And at 15 years of age, I began to suffer these. And I suffered them until I was 24. I would survive by taking pills, drinking. And I exercised like a maniac to try to keep this tension down that was in my body. I went to college and studied undergraduate law. And I had to take so many pills to be able to just go to class. And if it was a class of 12 students, if the professor would single me out, I had two choices. Single me out to ask a question. I'd either run out of the room or pass out. I had such an entrapment of fear in my life. When I turned to Christ, I began to read this word. And I saw a promise in the Bible. Paul had written, if God be for us, who can be against us? I didn't know anything in the Old Testament. I knew very little of the new, but I was reading it and I believed it. And that one scripture, you see, David only had one stone to take the giant down. You don't need to know the whole Bible to stand against darkness. And one night I felt this attack coming into my life again. I was now a born-again believer in Christ. I went downstairs into my living room and I just stood up to darkness and said, I'm not living this way anymore. I said, Satan, I said, you can kill me, but you can only do it if God allows you. And if he does, I'm going to heaven. So it's win-win for me. I said, so you throw everything you've got at me, but I throw back at what I now have at you. I said, in the name of Jesus, the Son of God, I resist you. That's all I knew how to pray. And I had a touch of God come onto my life. And I was set free that night. That's, well, I'm 54 now, so that's 30 years ago. I have, I'll only say this to you because I don't like to say it. I'll say it to boast in the Lord, but I preached all over the world. I preached the first ever outdoor evangelistic crusade in Siberia, in a city called Novokuznetsk, where Russia sent all the criminals into. I had the privilege of leading, seeing many, many people come to Christ, seeing a lot of soldiers who were sent there to intimidate us, begin to weep as God touched them. I preached to crowds as large as 500,000 in Africa. I stood in difficult places. I've been in war zones. I preached after the Kosovo War in a Muslim village. The interpreter, the deputy mayor was so scared because this was a radical Muslim village. And I made a deal after the war because they lost their bridge to get over to their fields. And I shook hands with the mayor of this town of 8,000. I said, if, if you'll let us, if we build a bridge for you, you have to let me come back and dedicate it. You have to call together the town and I'm going to preach to them in the name of Jesus Christ. Now he shook with me on it. I didn't know if his word was any good, but he was good to his word. And we went to the bridge to dedication. He called the men of this community together. The women couldn't come because they're not allowed out of the yard in this society. So the men came. I brought my own translator. And when I dismissed the translator, that's when fear hit the organizers. I knew their translator would tell the people, he's crazy. Don't listen to him. You know, Allah's great and all this stuff. So I just brought my own translator and I began to preach to them. The deputy mayor shook so bad. He shook the whole platform and he kept hitting me the whole time. I speak, kept hitting me to stop. But you see what I'm saying is I I've chosen all my life now to let God be God. I boast in Christ. As Paul said, I don't have the skill to do what I do. I've never had it. I just simply have let God be God. I've chosen to believe that what he says he will do, he will do. And I've not been afraid to be challenged when my heart is wrong and my attitudes are wrong. If I'm displaying something that's going to hurt the cause of Christ, I'm not afraid to hear it. And I believe him and he's taken me into places. I was in Sullivan prison. These random things are coming into my mind as I'm sharing, but I was in Sullivan prison with about 40 or so prisoners that will never get out. They're almost all murderers. And I was locked in there with this room of murderers, really. And I told them I was an ex-cop, a very, very dangerous thing to do. And I told them, I said, look, I'm not a do-gooder that feels I have to come here and give some hope to you guys. I said, I'm here because of what Christ has done for me. And when I was done speaking that day, there was a lineup of weeping men. I said, let an ex-cop hug you. And these guys survived by being tough. And they all broke down and began to cry. I've been taken by the Holy Spirit into places that I could never go. It'd be hopeless. You talk about a man who passed out when he was singled out. But I know the power of God. I've lived in revival. I've seen God do the miraculous. I'm still seeing it today. And what I'm sharing with you is not a formula. It's something of the heart. What I'm sharing with you is, you see, God has to have all of your heart before you can get all of his. He's got a resource. He's got a wealth. When he stood outside the gates of Jerusalem and he said, oh, that you could have known. I'm paraphrasing, but you know what he said? That you could have known what could have been yours. And I think of the numbers, perhaps who will stand, as Moses did one day before God. And it will not be about heaven or hell. That will be settled. That was settled at the cross. But that Christ would even look and say, if you could have known what I wanted to do.