One of my favorite stories in whole bible was the story of Nehemiah, when he  was called by God to rebuild the wall. He got this revelation of His brother, who  saw the walls were torn down, and he prayed and sought God, went to the king.  He's, you know, he great, the book of Nehemiah is a great story to help us know  how to fulfill a vision. May help you as you're planting a house church, look at  what he did. And he got the vision from God. He really got it through his brother.  He didn't get it directly from God. Guys, God used his brother. And then he he  prayed and sought God and and obviously the Scriptures. And then went to the  king his authority and was released, and he didn't go tell everybody. He's went  step by step. You know, he went at night with a few people, and they walked  around, you know, saw the walls down. And that is really important. You may say you're called a plant a house church. You don't need to go tell everybody. Just  tell a few. Start with a few. And otherwise, you get the naysayers that people will  say, well, it will never happen. Why are you doing that? Well, they say, why  aren't you moving faster? You get all these opinions. You start with a few. Get  intercessors and people you trust to pray. And then they, you know, they started  building the wall. Of course, there's a lot of opposition. We know that they obey  God. They had a sword in one and a saw in into on the other hand, you know,  he had all these families said all over the wall. He was, he was a master  delegator and and Nehemiah was just a real man of integrity. And 52 days, a  wall was built. But in the midst of it all, they had some real issues with some of  the enemies of God. We have Sanballat was an enemy of God, and His enemy,  their enemy, and he would constantly try to tear down the work. And here's what  he did. And I find that many people today experiences in chapter 4 of Nehemiah, in verse 1, says, When Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he  became angry. It was greatly incense. When you take a step of faith and plant  and start a house church, there will be people who probably will not understand.  They might say things about you that aren't true. Well, what's wrong with him?  He's gonna split our church or whatever. Say all kinds of things. And the Bible  says he ridiculed the Jews. And in the verse 2, in the presence of his associates  and the army of Samaria, he said, What are these feeble Jews doing? Just put  them down. What do you think you're doing? He says, You In other words, in  other words, he's doing all he can to stop the work of God. He said, What are  thesepeople doing? Will they restore their wall? They gotta do that. I never do it,  though. When people say, you'll never plant a church, they'll never plant a  network of churches. No, it won't do that. But if God's called you, and you have  these few people in your life who are affirming you and standing with you, and  God's building a team around you, continue to obey God, step by step by step,  then he says, Will they finish in a day? Of course, they were trying to finish a  day. Took them 52 days. They were obeying God. Then he said, this, can they  bring the stones back to life from these, those heaps of rubble burn as they are.  In other words, all these stones had been burned. The wall was down. They 

were taking these burn stones and placing them back on the wall. He says he  can able to do that. Can they actually take burn stones and bring them back and put them on the wall in the midst of this rubble and and the truth is, the answer  is yes, and it actually happened. And they built this amazing wall around  Jerusalem, and God's blessing was there. And God used Nehemiah and the  others who work with him. They each found their place on the wall, and it really  happened in 52 days. But what is to look at is this the devil today, I believe, is  doing the same thing. He's telling God's people, look, you're a burned stone.  Yeah, you were doing well in the past, but you got burned. Something  happened. Somebody burned you. Somebody hurt you. You're burning stone.  Do you think that God can ever use you? You've had a problem, maybe in  marriage problem, maybe in family problem, maybe at work problem, in a  church, problem, in relationships problem. And maybe there's areas of sin and  you've repented of it, but the devil keeps trying to bring it back in condemnation,  even though Jesus sets you free because of his cross. Well, you're burned  stone that can you live? Can God use you? The answer is yes, God wants to  use you. You can plant a house church, or do whatever. Be the spiritual mother,  father, he's called you to be. So I want to read you again. I Peter 2:5, did you  also like a living stone? That's you are being built into a spiritual house to be a  holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus  Christ is, yes, you're a living stone. You're being built together into a spiritual  house. So when we come to Christ, we're alive spiritually, and God's building us  together. And in your case, as you're taking this training, you're praying. Say,  God, are you calling me to start a house church? You say, Could I really do that? Am I too burned with the more burned you are when God restores you, the  stronger you're going to be. You know, sometimes we get burned in  discouraged. You know, the devil says, how you think you can function with all  the baggage you carry around. You had a broken relationship, or you made too  many mistakes. How can you help anybody out? The devil is the. Accuser. He's  accusing us day and night. God is the restorer. He's redemptive. He's saying,  Yes, I will use you, turn your heart toward me. I will cleanse you. Have people  pray for you, Confess your faults, one to another, and pray that you may be  healed. It's powerful, but so we can, yes, we can be set free. So what we have  to do is this, we must believe God and not the lies of the enemy. It's so easy to  believe the lies of the enemy. No, we need to believe God instead. And you  know you might feel unable to fulfill God's call in your life right now because  something has happened. But I want you to know that God is for you, and that  God loves you, and he wants to take a burn stone, and he wants to make it  stronger than ever before. Burn stones were charred. They looked useless, but  God's people chose not to look at those visible circumstances, and they saw  that wall built, and you'll see your house church built, or house church network  built, or wherever God's called you to walk in. Another great example is 

Mephibosheth. Remember him, Mephibosheth in II Samuel 9. For many years,  he believed a lie. You know, he was of the lineage of Jonathan, and Jonathan  was the lineage of Saul. And in those days, you know, David became king. And  with Jonathan and his father, Saul, were killed in battle, and David became king, and Mephibosheth realized he better flee, because in those days, they would  decapitate the families of anyone who's left of the former regime. And so he  lived it. Lived in this little place, this place called Lodobar, and he was he was  told someday David might catch up with him, he might find you. He will kill you.  It's just a matter of time. And one day they saw him as distant soldiers coming  from David, from David's palace. And he thought, This is it. It's over. And they  came and they took him. They took him before the king. And when they took him before the king, Mephibosheth, the Bible said, he said, I'm a dead dog. He fell  on the ground before, before David. David said, Get up. Get him up. Help him  up. He used to sit at my table. He said, your father and my father made a  covenant. See, our Father in Heaven has made a covenant through Jesus  Christ with us. And he says, No, regardless of what happened, he wants to us to pick us up and get us started again and sit us at his table, and we can do the  things that he called us to do. So I find so many people have been burned or  dropped. Maybe you know Mephibosheth. He had been dropped a nurse when  they were running out of you, when they realized that the David's armies were  coming, just a little boy, she dropped him. And you know he was, he was lame,  and he walked with a limp, and he thought, well, how you know this? Terrible  things happen to me and where David finds me, where David found him. But he  said, Look, you're going to sit at my table, and you may walk with a limp. say,  man, I've been dropped and somebody hurt me. Maybe a pastor dropped you.  Maybe a parent dropped you. So to speak, spiritually, speaking, you've been  wounded emotionally, but God says, I want you to know that I'm going to heal  you. There is a covenant. In the covenant, praise God for the covenant,  Abraham, we understand in the covenant Jesus on the cross, and because of  that covenant, we can walk in freedom. You know, I have a friend in Uganda, my friend, Ephraim, and he's a precious man of God, very close friend of mine. And  Ephraim helped plant hundreds of churches all over Uganda, and there's a  missionary from North America who've been working with him, and he found one day the missionary was using him to raise money in a way that was unethical,  and Ephraim had to leave that ministry. And it's terrible. What happened this  man who is a quote, unquote missionary using money instead using money for  for self, selfish gain, rather than building the kingdom, and actually sent thugs to  his house to burn his house down. And he was, it was so, so devastated. And he found, he found a group called Fear fund in England, and that Fear fund gave  him money to get more education. He went to Nairobi be Kenya. He enrolled in  Daystar University. While he was there. One of his professors was my friend  Ibram on Monday, whom I've talked about a few times during this. Course, he's 

a man of stature in that part of the world, and Ibram invited him to his church  and and you get involved in a house fellowship. And he somehow, he somehow  experienced God and experienced love, experienced fullness and and healing in a way he never had before. And eventually, I remember when I met him, and I  was so devastated by what I heard. It when I heard his story. Have someone  from my continent, he could do something like that to this precious man. I  remember I wept. I don't cry easily. Remember I wept and I said, I'm so sorry. I  will stand in the gap for this person. I don't know who did this from my continent,  I'm so sorry. And God brought healing to him and healing to us, and he went  back to his country and began to plant churches. Today, there are more DOVE  International churches in his country than any country in the world at the time of  this taping, because God restored him. And even though he was dropped, God  took him and put him back on his wall of service. Most Amazing, amazing Way.  He's now helping many others. So if you've been burned or you've been  dropped, I want you to know that God loves to restore you know, Paul said it like this when he wrote to Timothy. II Timothy 4:7, I fought the good fight. I finished  the race. I've kept the faith. And, you know, near the end of his life, and all those  who left him, he still said, I fought the good fight. I finished a race, and I've kept  the faith, and may we do the same. There's this little scripture in in the book of  Numbers 5, starting in verse 11, and I won't read it here, but it's a story of when  a man and his wife are having problems, and a man is convinced that his wife  has committed adultery, and she said, No, I have not committed adultery. And  they, you know, how do they know what really happened? And the Bible says,  There he and I paraphrase. They go to the priest, and they go the priest, and the priest hears their story, and the priest then gets a cup, and he gets a cup, and  he goes down the floor and puts dirt in the cup, and then he gives it to the wife  to drink, because she said, No, I have not committed adultery. He says, Yes, you have. And she drinks it. And the Bible makes it clear, again, I paraphrase this  Bible makes it clear that if she is guilty, her thigh will rot and she'll probably die,  but if she's not guilty, she'll live and be fruitful and have many children. Now,  what is the moral of the story? The moral of the story is either way she has to  drink that cup. And there's times we have to drink the cup. There's times people  lie about us, people abuse us, people hurt us, we simply drink the cup because  God will vindicate you. I've been vindicated many times. We're ever trying to  vindicate myself, it doesn't work. Please trust God. Just trust Jesus. You trust  him. Sometimes it's taken 10 years, 15 years, sometimes even longer. But you  know, I've had a man in my life who he left our church. Is a man in leadership.  He left our church and and he believed lies about me and and years later he  called me the phone. He said, Can we sit down and talk? And sat down with  another one of our brothers in the Lord. And he said, I want you to know that  God showed me something. He was now part of another church. He said, What  the Lord showed me is this. He said, there are two ministries before the throne 

of God. One is a ministry of intercession. The others a ministry of accusation.  Obviously, Jesus is ministering, ministering intercession for us day and night.  The devil is accusing us accusation day and night. Then he said this. He said, I  realized I was in the wrong ministry. I was in ministry of accusation rather  intercession. So I'm so sorry. Will you forgive me? I said, Why forgave you years ago, of course, that man today is one of my personal intercessors, praying for  me as I'm giving this teaching here that's going throughout the world here  through CLI Now, why is that important? Because God's a Vindicator, and  because I had to for many years, I knew some things were happening behind  the scenes, we simply have to drink the cup, and you allow God to vindicate  because he is a Vindicator, and you can trust him to do that. So I thank God for  His grace, and I thank God for His vindication. Let me just give you a couple  steps to be restored. I find this is work for me. Many times I mentioned  Galatians, 3:13, and in the and another setting, you know, Jesus became a  curse for us. Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse. For us, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. I  John 3:8. And you know, I just want you to know that God is the one restores  because the curse has been broken. Here's some steps of help me. It's faith that unlocks the door. It's just believing that things can change. You know, a friend of  mine in India many years ago, a pastor said, the Bible says faith comes by  hearing and hearing by the Word of God. He said, in my part of the world, I can  see that. He said, faith comes. I see it coming. It's coming. I read the word, it's  coming. It's coming. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.  We spiritual fathers and mothers impart truth and faith into our sons and  daughters by the word of God. And secondly, we need to stake our claim.  Joshua 1:2-3, God promised the children of Israel. He given the land they had to walk on the land. We need to stake our claim and to take it from the enemy.  Number three, receive prayer from someone you trust. Ice mentioned a few  moments ago. James 5:16, confess your sins to each other. Pray for each other. You may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and is effective.  So find someone you trust, have them pray for you that God would heal them  the memories of what you've been walking through and again, this is if you've  been, if you've been somehow hurt, because you've got to be free to be a house church planter, free to help people find out Sure. I mean, the skies are limited to  what God was to do in your life in your life in the future. But we need to find  freedom so we can walk in that freedom and then be patient. It doesn't happen  overnight. Hebrews 6:12, imitate those who, through faith and patience, inherit  what has been promised. I learned something years ago tonight, the people  really It hurt me. And you know, I thought, I kept thinking, Man, this is so painful.  I wake up every day I think about these people and things, as they said, and  then I read how the Corrie Ten Boom, Corrie Ten Boom was in a concentration  camp, remember in Holland, years ago during the II World War, and how, after 

she was out, after the war was over, and her sister, you know, they were  persecuted and and her sister was badly hurt by this, this, this certain general,  or there is certain soldier, I'm sorry. And she saw this soldier years later at a  Christian meeting here. He was a believer now, and something rose up in her  heart, and she said, I had a hardest time forgiving this man. And can we forgive  people? Because Jesus forgive us. We forgive people so we can walk in  freedom. And even though we don't feel like, I never feel like forgiving people, I  do it because Jesus forgave me. I do because if I don't forgive others, God can't  forgive me. You know, Matthew 6:14-15. And so she said, I learned something  that day, and I call it the bell theory. She said, I learned when you pull a bigger  church bell, she didn't, we have people pray for you, and you receive healing,  she said, and you ask God to heal you the memory, it might come back the next  day, but you pull that bell, it's really loud, bang, Clang, Clang, Clang, but less  and less, she said. So I say the next day I was healed yesterday in Jesus name, and the next day, the memory comes back with a little bit less. And say, I was  healed two days ago in Jesus name, she's I continue to do that, and so I can still remember what happened, but the pain is gone. I found this work in my life  many, many times. I call that the bell theory and something no like you apply to  your life in house, church, ministry, but you can also help other people in the  same way, find the same freedom in their lives, and then keep your branches  going over the wall. Genesis, 49 you know, Joseph was a man of moral and  spiritual strength. He was like into a tree who's branch is going over the wall.  What I mean by that. Keep reaching out to other people. Refuse to just end up  being by yourself. Trust that God will use you because you will be stronger. I  remember when I almost quit in Christian leadership. I went to Steve, our staff  counselors, a very close friend. I said, I'm having problems in leadership. Will  you counsel me and help me? And He is very kind, and he prayed with me. He  said, I give you in those days, it was cassette tapes long before podcasts and  everything we have today. He said, I want you to listen to this will help you. So I  got in my car one day, about two weeks later, took this little cassette tape, put it  in, and the speaker was speaking to leaders, the pastors and future pastors,  about the Messiah Complex. They don't try to be the Messiah, only Jesus is the  Messiah. If you try to be the Messiah, you try to fix everybody. You can't. Only  Jesus can fix people. And listen, this sounds so familiar, and all of a sudden I  realized it was me speaking. He gave me my own message. I've been trained  pastors about a year or two before gave me my own message. He was a crazy  he thought it was really funny. His Craziest thing. But I will tell you what I learned from that. I learned that Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so I  learned through that time that all the matters is that I'm loved by God, and I'm  secure in him, and I am healed, and I can be stronger than it ever was before.  And I want you to know it doesn't matter now what people think or don't think,  what matters to what God thinks. And the same is true for you. Whatever you've 

walked through, he is giving you the grace to go step by step by step, to walk in  His healing and His grace and His blessing, so you could be the house church  leader. He's called you to be 



Last modified: Monday, October 7, 2024, 9:44 AM