Scripture referenced 14 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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Isaiah 61:1 quoted in the video as the spirit of God being on me, anointed to preach good news to the poor and heal the heartbroken
1 The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me; because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to those who are bound;
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Keep this verse
Psalm 40:1-3
quoted in the video about waiting patiently for the Lord, who put a new song in the mouth so many will see and trust
1 I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry.
2 He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh.
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John 6:45
they shall all be taught of God, everyone who has heard and learned from God comes to Jesus
45 It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who hears from the Father, and has learned, comes to me.
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John 14:6
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through him
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
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John 16:8
the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment
8 When he has come, he will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment;
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Matthew 22:37-39
love God with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, described as the will of God
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
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Matthew 28:19
the mandate for all believers to go and make disciples
19 Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
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Matthew 6:33
seek first his kingdom, taught as an all-day every-hour practice
33 But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
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Matthew 6:10
your kingdom come your will be done, applied to kitchen bedroom and daily conversations
10 Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
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Acts 1:8
power will come when you receive the Holy Spirit, referenced in relation to the book of Acts
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
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John 15:4-5
abiding in the vine, you can do nothing unless you abide, connected to the cherry orchard pruning illustration
4 Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me.
5 I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
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John 14:12
he who believes in me will do greater works than these
12 Most certainly I tell you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also; and he will do greater works than these, because I am going to my Father.
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Acts 8:26-39
Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip heard God on a dusty street and was transported after the baptism
26 But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert.”
27 He arose and went; and behold, there was a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship.
28 He was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.
29 The Spirit said to Philip, “Go near, and join yourself to this chariot.”
30 Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
31 He said, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” He begged Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. As a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he doesn’t open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who will declare His generation? For his life is taken from the earth.”
34 The eunuch answered Philip, “Who is the prophet talking about? About himself, or about someone else?”
35 Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him about Jesus.
36 As they went on the way, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Behold, here is water. What is keeping me from being baptized?”
38 He commanded the chariot to stand still, and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.
39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, and the eunuch didn’t see him any more, for he went on his way rejoicing.
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Matthew 7:22-23
many will say they did wonderful Christian things but Jesus says depart from me I never knew you
22 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’
23 Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Norris Williams, a longtime missionary supported by First Baptist Jackson, spoke about the disciple-making movements he has helped build across the Middle East, Nigeria, and Korea through his organization Novo (formerly Church Resource Ministries). He described what God is doing among ordinary people in some of the world's most dangerous places, and called the congregation to take seriously their own role in making disciples wherever they live.
What was said
Norris opened by describing the work of NEO, the Near East Organization launched in 2005 with a Lebanese businessman named Nadim Costa. Starting with a small team, NEO now has over a hundred Arab staff, more than a thousand volunteers, and has seen over 200,000 Muslims come to faith in Christ across thirteen Middle Eastern countries. A video showed the ministry reaching abused women, disabled people, and children through simple discipleship and church planting, with leaders coming entirely from within the communities being reached.
The same approach is being applied in Nigeria through a ministry called Healing and Transforming Leaders, led by Ben Akpera. Norris described teams operating in areas where Christians are being killed and tortured by Boko Haram, and told the story of a training session where a house full of sick and dying people was healed over the course of a week and sent out as disciple makers. He also described Dan Zaggy, a Muslim-background believer whose parents set him on fire when he converted at eighteen, who now leads ministry to Muslims in central Nigeria.
A thread running through everything Norris described is the deliberate choice not to bring books, manuals, or professional presentations. Whatever is given to a team has to be something they can immediately do and pass on themselves. Because some team members cannot read or write, everything is taught orally. The goal is that people learn to hear from God themselves, rather than becoming dependent on outside experts.
Norris grounded this in a simple framework of kingdom roles: God draws people to Jesus, Jesus brings them to the Father, and the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. The job of the disciple is to love God with everything and to make disciples, not to do God's work for Him. He used his own orcharding background to illustrate pruning, noting that peach trees only bear fruit on new first-year growth, and saying that God seems to work the same way.
He pressed hard on the question of time. Movements, he said, do not happen because people have better techniques or more biblical knowledge. They happen because people pray and pay the price in time spent with God. He pointed to a Wednesday morning prayer meeting in Cashmere, Washington that began six years ago with a handful of people and has since spread across the valley, drawing together members of a dozen different churches. He told the story of a woman named Lisa at that prayer meeting who heard God say that the pace of her transformation was not on Him but on her, and how that word brought the whole group to repentance.
He closed by naming what he sees as one of the enemy's main strategies: keeping believers busy meeting with each other and away from the harvest. He asked the congregation to think of the five people in their lives who do not know Christ, and said the mission field is already right there. The kingdom, he said, belongs to everybody, not just pastors or professionals, and the only path forward is abiding in Christ and bearing fruit.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Norris said that God's job is to draw people to Jesus, the Holy Spirit's job is to convict of sin, and our job is to love God and make disciples. Where in your own life have you taken on a job that belongs to God or the Holy Spirit, and what did that look like?
- Norris described training teams who present everything verbally and without manuals so that people cannot disqualify themselves by thinking they lack the expertise to replicate it. What assumptions do you carry about what you need to know or have before you can make disciples?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 7,879 words
1:34
Thank you. You may be seated. As the ushers come forward. So this morning, our body is scattered all over the world. We've got a large group of, our church in Israel this morning.
1:46
Of course, that's where pastor Ray and Tanya are and Pascal. And, and we've got a lot of people on spring break everywhere from, Florida, spread all around. Carl's in Florida too. So this morning in their absence, we have Norris Williams here. Norris has been one of our missionaries that we've supported here at this church for years.
2:08
I don't actually don't even know at least ten years I think, somewhere around there. And he's was with CRM which was Church Resource Ministries. They're changing their name to Novo. Novo is Latin for new, make new. And he's gonna tell us a little bit about what he does and maybe some stories about what God is doing around the world to make things new.
2:30
And one of the things that he has in in talking with him in the last few hours of few days, I should say, excuse me, that God is always wanting to do something new, and, he's always speaking to us. And the question is, are we listening? So this first offering is going to Norris completely to to his work and what's being done, in The Middle East and around the world, and, he'll give you a little bit of update on that. But we just wanna ask God to bless it and multiply it this morning. So let's bow our heads and do that.
3:08
Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity to be a part of your work. We thank you. We we can we acknowledge to you that all that you have given us is yours. And, Lord, so what we put in this play that's we're not we're not giving you what's yours. It's all yours, and we're just returning a portion of it.
3:26
We're asking you, Lord, to bless it. We're asking you, please, through your Holy Spirit, would you attach to each penny that is given this morning? Would you attach the gospel of Jesus Christ as it goes to many various places around the world? And would you allow it to fall upon ears and hearts that are ready to receive the good news that you have made peace with man and that you have you are drawing men to yourself from all nations. Would you use it, Lord, to bring to build your kingdom, to bring people into the kingdom, and and then to just start fires around the world that will cause that to go further and further.
4:04
Grateful, Lord, for this church and the generosity of the people here, and we just I'm I'm pray, Lord, that you would bless them and bless them abundantly with yourself. Pray your spirit would rest upon Norris as he speaks to us and give us ears to hear, anoint him with what you want him to say, but give us ears, Lord, to hear and eyes to see how you are moving around the world. In Jesus name we pray.
6:55
Well, that was beautiful. Really beautiful. Thank you for that. Well, I'm excited to be here with you. I started coming here when Laura and I looked like this.
7:11
So that's back in 1980 when, and my sister Lane married Norris the same year. And so that's when we started coming here to Jackson, long time ago. Of course, this is what we look like now. Thirty nine years later, we're married thirty nine years this May and we've been missionaries for thirty five of those thirty nine years. And we have four kids and nine grandchildren.
7:42
We have one more than that was born after this picture was taken. So what I do? Missionary with Novo, make new. My job is to find, serve, and raise up national leaders who can build these things called kingdom movements, the gospel of the kingdom movement. So these movements are fueled by rapidly reducing disciple makers who multiply the gospel into their natural social networks.
8:17
The momentum that this creates can sweep through nations, cities, neighborhoods, businesses, schools, and families with the ability to create thousands of churches in a relatively short period of time. These movements are also referred to as movements of the gospel or disciple making movements. So 2003, I made my first trip into The Middle East, and I was in cooperation with Holy Spirit as we walked through those nations looking for the man or the woman that God had prepared to be the leader in that part of the world. I met Nadim Costa in 2003. He was a businessman and the Holy Spirit said to me, pay attention to this guy.
9:02
He's gonna be the guy. So for the next couple years, just spent time with him starting to build a team. In 2005, we launched NEO, Near East Organization. And now, you know, was that sixteen years later, fifteen years later, we now have a 105 Arabs on our staff, over a thousand volunteers, and we've seen over 200,000 Muslims come to faith in Christ across 13 different Middle Eastern countries. So this same process that we're doing, we believe God wants to do it everywhere, in every city, and in every nation.
9:43
So I've been going to other nations trying to build those same teams and we've got a team now in Nigeria that I'll show you some pictures of here in a minute but I wanna just start right now with this video. It's a video of the latest, developments in The Middle East. We have churches that are being run by disabled people, abused women, formerly abused women. The whole church is all made up of women. I mean, if you can imagine a scene where an entire hotel building is filled with all abused women and handicapped people worshiping God together and God healing people right on the spot because they don't know any better.
10:29
They just believe God can do anything. And it's just fascinating to see God taking the most broken things of the world and bringing himself glory. Most broken things. So watch this video about what's going on here, please.
10:50
The spirit of God, the master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners.
11:17
The ministry started in 2005 when God called a group of passionate followers of Jesus to serve the region of the Middle East. God has been taking this ministry in unexpected directions and to many new places.
11:37
When, you see people's lives changing because of what Jesus is doing, when, you give them hope, when you help people in a physical, way to see that kind of transformation and, you know, to be able to bring a smile into their faces.
12:02
In Psalm 40, it says, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord. And I believe that that is what we're doing at NEO. We're, we've been pulled out of the miry clay and, we're helping also to do the same for others.
12:27
Jesus honored women in so many ways, and I want us to do the same. So I believe reaching women with the gospel eventually leads to equipping their families and consequently the community. And we do so through developing, training, coaching and teaching women from different nationalities and different backgrounds. Women are a major catalyst of change.
13:48
God has opened a new door to start children's ministry based on a weekly clubs. We started doing clubs in Lebanon and in Egypt, and we had like more than 50 clubs running in these two countries. And we are hoping and aiming and praying that God will open new doors in the all Middle East and North Africa region.
17:40
God is so merciful to let me to see the beginning of a church planting movement in Lebanon and in the region.
18:00
And it's a privilege to be able to work on this level with people and see their lives transformed. My dream is to see a movement of church planting in The Middle East and the Near East area that is sweeping across those nations.
18:38
We are experiencing a great movement of God, an unprecedented adventure. We are chasing what God is clearly doing throughout the entire region. As we start our fourteenth year of ministry, I can look back and clearly see the hand of God working in supernatural ways. The spirit of the Lord is sweeping every segment of society, every community, in every nation. The gospel is proclaimed boldly and obeyed boldly, and God is raising a whole new generation of passionate followers of Christ who are the servant leaders of the multitudes.
19:24
My vision, my passion, and my dream is to see the name of Christ proclaimed among all nations. So the kingdom of God is embodied and expressed.
19:42
Some of you have met Nadim. He was here at this church a number of years ago. So the reality is God's on the move. And there are ways that we're engaging with him around the world and we're training people on how to do very, very simple things. During the break, one of the guys asked me, so so what do you how do you actually begin?
20:08
What do you actually give people? And one of the clear things that God taught us early on is that whatever we give them, whatever we come with, they have to be able to go and do. So most of the time we won't use PowerPoint, we won't bring we don't bring manuals, we don't bring bring books because if they somehow think that they can't do it, they'll disqualify themselves. And they may tell you, oh, this is wonderful, but they will do nothing. So everything has to be presented in a way where it can be replicated by the people on the ground.
20:43
So we don't come with professional stuff that they can't do. We come and do everything verbally. Some of our teams can't read and write. They have to be able to do it orally. So everything is done in an oral fashion.
20:57
People who can't read and write memorize really well. And they hear the word and they obey the word. But, people that can't read and write can still lead because God has prepared them to lead. And what you saw in this video, every one of those people that were speaking were taxi drivers or teachers or business people. There was no professional ministry people there.
21:23
All the leaders have emerged from the harvest, which when you think about the book of acts, where did the leaders come in the book from in the book of acts? They didn't come from seminary. They came from the harvest. And there are leaders all through the harvest in every city in Jackson that God is prepared to to reach some place in Jackson or where I live in Wenatchee, we're doing the same thing. How has God prepared people to lead out there?
21:54
Because if the only leadership we model is we want them to come and listen to us, that's not leadership development. Leadership development is building leaders that replicate out into the harvest. One of the other places that we've been going is Nigeria. Been going there about six years now with the same idea in mind, finding and serving the national leader. The guy to he's on my right to your left.
22:22
That's Ben Akpera. And he leads our team there. The Lord did the same thing with him on my first training. He was in the audience and the Holy Spirit said, that's gonna be the guy. And now he leads our team.
22:35
And the name of the ministry there is called HTL. In The Middle East, it's called NEO. And and we don't call it Novo. We don't call it church. We we call we let them lead it.
22:45
It's their organization. Our job is to serve them as leaders. We don't take ownership of it. So healing and transforming leaders is what their ministry starts with because they said every person needs healing. Every person.
23:03
So wherever they go, healing is how they lead, especially in these broken tore war torn places. Some of you have been hearing about Nigeria in the news a lot lately. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Thousands of them. People on our team are being tortured.
23:23
He went to a town, and in this town was a a house that they gave to him to do his DMM training. When he gets there, the house is filled with people who are sick and dying. That's where they were sent. So these people all roll are rolling up their beds to leave as they, you know, they got roll up mattresses on the floor. And Ben and Lydia said, no, you guys stay here and be a part of this.
23:45
And by the end of the week, every one of them had been completely healed and trained as disciple makers to move back into their city. It's happening. And and I meet people that say, oh, God doesn't do that stuff anymore. Yeah. Sorry.
24:00
He is. He really doesn't need our permission to do what he wants, you know? Doesn't have to fit within our boxes. He just is doing new things, great things all across the world. The other guy that's there is, his name is Dan Zaggy.
24:18
He's a Muslim guy. He's 60, the same as well. I just turned 61. Might be a little older than him. When he was 18, he came to know the Lord as a Muslim.
24:26
His parents set him on fire as punishment. So, his all his legs are scarred all the way up. But he's one of the most joyful men I've ever known and he has a ministry to Muslims in in the middle of Nigeria there. This is, Ben and Lydia, and then the guy in the stocking cap, that's coach Bright. We've started discovery Bible studies among street kids using soccer, and he does the he leads it.
24:56
And when those kids come, they have to agree to learn how to do discovery Bible study and to do it with other people. So all of their recruits are coming from the streets. This gal, also was on one of the teams, she just got signed by the national Spanish team to be a striker for them. And they're actually coming to Nigeria now and scouting these teams that we have in the middle of Jaws. And all of these young men are trained as disciple makers.
25:25
Here's one of the I was at this match. It was a tournament where they invited teams that were Muslim teams from around the area. And they coach Bright has them do a discovery Bible study and then you can see all the groups and each one of them are go are sent out to do a do a Bible study with the visiting teams. They're all trained how to do this. This is another guy.
25:50
His name is Solomon Wakawa. He was born in Borno State which is in the Northeast part of Nigeria. He was born where Boko Haram lives and it was just when I walked into the room, he waited for us for two hours. It was like bumping into the Holy Spirit with this guy. He just was so humble and filled with God's spirit and he and his wife are going back to work amongst the Boko Haram where all the killings going on.
26:20
And we just sat and prayed for about three hours together, listening to Holy Spirit and let him teach us about what he was gonna be doing. These are these are some of your teammates and there's more. And these kinds of things are happening, but they're also happening. I mean, we I've been in Korea recently. We've got another guy that the Lord highlighted.
26:42
His name is Young Cho. His wife is named literally so young. He's young. She's so young. And they he was my interpreter when I was doing a training in Korea and the Lord said to me, he said same thing.
26:57
Pay attention to this guy. And he's now gonna be our we call him the the the of Asia. And he and I were on the in the NG on the North Korean border, training people. And he is he's now he was a pastor in Bellevue. He's left his church and they live in in Korea.
27:18
And he's gonna begin working with the refugees coming out of North Korea. There's stuff happening. No matter what you hear in the news, God is at work no matter how things sound. So one of the things that we are very clear, in when we do training and those of you that take notes, I just want you to know I'm gonna go fast here because I got a lot of scripture here and you can have it all. So everything that's on here outside of the pictures, I'll take those off because I don't want those to be spread around but everything that's on here, you can have and they'll they'll be able to get it to you.
27:56
So, don't worry. If I'm if I'm going too fast. So, we wanna make sure people know who they are, what their identity is in in the kingdom of God. This thing called the kingdom of God. Because we believe and we train people that the kingdom of God is our current reality.
28:13
Jesus came to preach the kingdom. He said more about the kingdom than almost anything else. The kingdom of God has come among you and the and this this reality is that I'm now in the kingdom, meaning that there's a king and it's not me. There's a king and he's there with me all the time and I get to I get to walk in the spirit in the kingdom of God while I'm here on Earth. K?
28:40
And you can you can search the scriptures. What I'm telling you is true and I'm gonna show you some. But what is what are the jobs that God gives us in his kingdom? Well, let we we first let people know what is God's job. So this passage, and they shall all be taught of God.
28:57
Everyone who has heard and learned from God comes to Jesus. So right away, we train people that say, you don't have to bring people to Jesus. God does that and he's better at it. You gotta get them to a place where they can hear from God. So, it's not your job to do it as God.
29:17
What's Jesus job? He's the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the father except through him. So, he brings people to the father. So, we need to get people to hear from Jesus. What's the Holy Spirit's job?
29:29
When he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. That's not your job. Don't go out and try to convict people of sin. That's not your job. It's the Holy Spirit's job.
29:42
K? So then what's our job? This first passage was one of the foundational passages that God taught me through my father. He said, because I was wondering about the will of God. And he said, Norse, the will of God is not a mystery.
29:58
It's the same every day. Love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor yourself. You do that, you'll always know what to do. And we teach people, this is walking in the kingdom is loving God, being in his presence and loving him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's kingdom living.
30:19
And then going and making disciples. This is a mandate for all believers. We are to make disciples. Around the world, especially in cities and especially in The US, people say to me all the time, I don't have time to make disciples. I'm too busy.
30:37
Where am I gonna fit it in? I've got all these meetings I'm going to. How do I have time to make disciples? I said, well, then you gotta you gotta prune something out of your life because this is a mandate. These were some of the last words Jesus spoke on earth.
30:56
And it's for all of us. It's not just for your pastors. It's for you. It's for me. When I became a believer at 13, I was trained this way to go and make disciples.
31:07
I was required in my training to go and make disciples of my teammates, And we did. And back when I was in high school, a movement erupted around our little school, and we had hundreds and hundreds of kids. I was baptizing kids when I was in high school because we were we just we're a bunch of dumb kids. We didn't know anything. But we'd sit there and, okay, this is what he says to do.
31:36
Let's go do it. We didn't know any better. We just believe God could do these things, and he did. And he wants us to to be in the game. The kingdom of God is for everybody.
31:49
Everybody gets to play. It's not just for the experts. Seek first his kingdom. Seek first the kingdom of God. And we train people, seek his kingdom first all through the day, every hour of the day, every minute of the day, not just when you're at church, but all the time.
32:10
Your kingdom come, your will be done. Folks, the Earth is not your responsibility, and it's not mine. So we teach people to pray this prayer like this, and Laurie and I do this at our house. Your kingdom come, your will be done in our kitchen as it is in heaven. And we look at each other.
32:31
Okay. Are we in the kingdom right now? Because that didn't sound like it, you know. And we help each other because kingdom living is our current reality. Your kingdom come, your will be done in our bedroom.
32:43
Your kingdom come, your will be done on this drive to school. Your kingdom come in this conversation. Your kingdom come, your will be done because he wants to tell us what his will is in this moment. He wants to tell us, but we're not listening. But he wants to tell.
33:01
He wants to have that relationship. Power will come to us when we receive the Holy Spirit. All through the book of Acts, you you read all about the the apostles being filled with the Holy Spirit. Another one that he is this abiding in the vine. You you most of you know I'm an orchardist.
33:20
Some of you have eaten my cherries. We have a certified organic cherry orchard in Cashmere, Washington. We have 420 trees. We used to bring our cherries here. How many people ate my cherries back in the day?
33:33
Yeah. Some of you were here. My kids used to that's how they went to college. Thank you very much. They came here and sold their fruit and it went into the college fund.
33:44
And so with my trees right now, the day before I flew here, I was pruning trees because you have to prune the suckers out every year. And every branch that is a fruit bearing branch, what does the scripture say? It's also pruned so that it bears more fruit. And the reason is because if let's say you've you've pruned all the suckers and now you're back to your fruit bearing branches, And you can see the clusters of cherries already forming. And you take your loppers and you lop the end of that branch off so it can no longer push growth away from the fruit.
34:26
All the fruit, all the energy gets pushed back into that into those cherries. And you have to do that with every branch. On our peach trees, this is something else, and I was telling Steve about. I'm wrestling with this because I'm learning all kinds of new things with these peach trees because what I found out, peach trees only grow peaches on new first year growth. They don't grow on the old growth.
34:58
So I just was saying, okay, God, what are you showing me there? Because you have to you have to take out all the suckers because they grow suckers. And then you've got all this new growth, and you have to you have to train the tree to grow produce good fruit. And then every one of that that was new fruit bearing branches, you have to cut the end of it off so it pushes. But it it it what we train people is God wants to do new things.
35:25
He's not growing fruit on the old stuff. He likes to grow fruit on the new stuff. Anyway, take that for what it's worth. So abiding in him, you can't do anything unless you're abiding. You can't do anything.
35:40
Movements don't happen unless we're abiding in the vine. We're spending time with the father. So we say if we are truly people of the Bible, then we should be biblically filled with the spirit in living in God's kingdom. The Bible provides the path for this, and that's all that we that's all that we take. We don't take books and manuals and CDs.
36:02
We come with our bibles and we say, here's how you can discover God together. You ask questions. You don't need an expert, and you can solve problems. And they say, will you tell us tell us what to do next? And we say, no.
36:16
God wants to tell you what to do next. We don't give him answers because then what does that do? It creates dependency on Norris. And I'm a cherry farmer from Cashmere. I don't live here.
36:31
You have to learn how to hear from God yourself as a team. And we take him to the passages of scripture where Joshua went into the tent of meeting. He got the big strategic goal of retake the land. How did he know what to do in each battle? How did he know?
36:51
He went and listened to God. So he goes into the tent, and God says, okay. In this battle, we want the band to lead. Get the trumpet section out, and you're just gonna march around the walls and blow these horns. And can you imagine what his military commanders thought when he comes back?
37:09
They're going, what? What about the swords and spears and stuff? Go back and listen. That can't be what we're supposed to do because it made no military sense. Nobody had ever done it before.
37:26
And every time they went to another battle, he had to go into the tent of meeting. And that's the difference between strategy and tactics. The Bible's full of big kingdom strategies. He says, I wanna reconcile all men to myself. That's a big deal.
37:43
Right? That's a big strategic objective that God has. Well, how's he gonna do it in Jackson? How's he gonna do it in Jos, Nigeria? And they want me to tell him.
37:55
I said, no. You're gonna go before the father into the tent of meeting and say, God, this is what our problems are. What do you want us to do? And then he'll tell you because he is speaking. He never stopped speaking.
38:14
And people are learning how to listen to God and how to hear from them themselves. In this passage, truly I say to you, he believes in me. The works that I do, he'll do greater works than these, and we're seeing it. And what you heard from Ben, there's another you you guys heard the or you've read the story of, Philip, right, with the Ethiopian eunuch. Where was Philip when he heard God say, go stand by that chariot?
38:48
It's okay to talk. Where was he? He was he was on a manure dusty filled street. He was not in church. He was just walking along the street and God said, hey, go stand by that chariot.
39:02
Alright. What do want me to do next? Well, he goes, just go stand there. And then you notice this. Hey, well, you know what you're reading?
39:10
Well, come tell me. He's going along the chair, and then he baptizes the guy and disappears. And in that chapter is a full presentation of the gospel. Well, there's an Ethiopian guy, and somehow he got somebody sent him that chapter of the Bible. That's all he had of the gospel.
39:38
And he he would live near this mountainous area where nobody had ever gone yet. The gospel hadn't gone. So these missionaries finally show up in every village they go to. They say, yeah, that guy, whatever. I can't remember his name.
39:53
That guy Steve was here. How did he show up? I said, we don't know. He just showed up. And they went through village to village to village, and Steve had been there.
40:04
And they'd all become followers of Jesus, and they get to Steve's house. Steve, how did you get to all those places? He goes, well, I I was reading right here. He goes, this Philip just got transported. I just asked God to transport me there.
40:21
And they said, you you mean you just Yeah. Isn't that the way all Christians do it? Because that's all he knew. He had nobody to tell him you that doesn't happen anymore, and it's happening right now. We're the ones that put limits on God.
40:46
Those things are happening. You can I tell those stories to my father-in-law and he says, God, I have to see it? I say, well, glad God doesn't work that way. He doesn't really work on whether you believe he works or not. He's kinda omniscient, you know, does all that.
41:02
Does what he wants. And he's doing it in gospel kingdom movements. We train and disciple men and women into a biblical path for living in God's kingdom and walking in the fullness of the spirit every hour of every day, period. That's it. We have no other way forward.
41:24
This is the kingdom life, and it's the life for all of us. Every man, woman, and child on the earth can play and live and work and sleep in the kingdom of God and every bet everybody has a role to play. And when you look at the book of Acts and the epistles, the guiding power and presence of the Holy Spirit was there. And there are some people who come to me and say, God doesn't do those things anymore today. They're wrong and I'm sorry for them that that's what they believe.
42:01
They're wrong. Got some some things here I've written down that you can have. Well, don't worry about writing them. I just I I I'm running out of time here, but I that that second one, those who spend the most time with the Jesus see the most disciples. This really is a spiritual battle.
42:26
Prayer is the is what's happening. We must dedicate and discipline ourselves to one central idea. The work of Jesus being glorified among people who do not know him. As other pleasures, all other pleasures, prayers they may be must be subservient. And I gotta tell you church, and I'm speaking to myself here.
42:52
We are pruning out of our lives all of the times that we're we're spending with believers. Because we're called to go and make disciples of the lost. And we think one of the enemy's agendas is to have us meeting together as believers regularly. And not out in the harvest. You know, everyone of you, if I was to ask you to make a list of the five people in your life that you see every day or every week that don't know Christ, you'd have them.
43:30
You don't have to look very far for the mission field. It's right there. And in Wenatchee, we, I did a training there where I live in Cashmere six years ago and I said, I know that statistically, most of you will do nothing with what we we present here. That's just the way it is. I'm okay with that.
43:49
We only need a few. We only needed a few in The Middle East to reach the many. You don't need to go and have massive things. We go when I go there, I train just a few people and they replicate it all. And in fact, they have such high accountability that whatever we train them in, if they don't replicate it with two people or or two two teammates within that month, they're off the team.
44:15
They're kicked off. I love that, to be honest with you. But I don't have high mercy gifts. So, you know, I think God expects us to bear fruit. I don't waste time on my trees if they aren't producing fruit.
44:32
I jerk them out and plant another one. I don't care about the tree. I care about the fruit. I wanted that tree to bear fruit. And that's what we're asking.
44:43
We're asking, are we willing to pay the price to bear fruit? Every place that we see people praying a lot, going willing to go through hardship, God starts doing stuff. So in this training in Wenatchee, I said, what I'm really looking for is a team of people who are willing to pay the price in prayer. Now, six years later, we meet every Wednesday morning at 6AM and that prayer meeting has spread across the valley into different places. We only have one pastor that it comes comes occasionally.
45:18
But out of that prayer meeting, we now have pastors across the valley meeting together to pray together, working together to build God's kingdom. And we have been praying against the spirit of competition amongst churches competing with each other. This has no place in the kingdom of God. There's no competition in the kingdom because the king gets everything. We all serve and glorify the king, and we bless everybody else.
45:50
If you want kingdom results, you have to use kingdom weapons, and you have to have kingdom leaders. Just bottom line. So that's what we do. If we want kingdom results somewhere, we're gonna use kingdom weapons, and we're gonna give kingdom results. Imagine this.
46:09
We're in The Middle East, and we're training on kingdom weapons and one of the kingdom weapons, in fact, maybe the most powerful kingdom weapon that Jesus said was, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Bless those. And I'm telling you, there there's a lot of pain. Everybody there has had somebody tortured or mutilated or killed.
46:35
It's it's hard. I mean, some of you have people you haven't been willing to forgive. If you want kingdom results, you have to. You have to be willing to do it. And you should see the freedom that comes when people forget.
46:55
It just works because it's it's not this kingdom. It's his kingdom. And then kingdom results start happening, and you see people getting free. Spending long hours of time with the trinity, prepared them for times of darkness and seasons of silence. I don't have time to really this the bottom one of the middle ones, their strategy and tactics were to make much of Jesus.
47:33
The more overwhelmed they are, the more energy they gave to centralizing Christ in their thoughts and answers. Most of the time when we're overwhelmed, we just look for more answers. They just look for more Jesus because they know because here's the truth and this is what we train him. Jesus is never scratching his head going, man, I don't know what to do. He's never had that thought.
47:55
He's never going, oh, no. What now? He never does that. He always knows what to do. He's never afraid.
48:08
Do you notice in the scriptures that they could they could beat Jesus? They could torture him. They could kill him. They could never bully him. Jesus couldn't be bullied because he knew who he was.
48:23
He was son. When God said, you're my son. He knew who he was. They could they could do everything else to him, but they couldn't bully him. We really believe that bullying would end if people knew who they were.
48:38
Who they really were. Nobody can bully you when you know who you are. No matter what they do, it doesn't take me out of my game. I know who I am. And there are times my life is completely out of control.
48:56
I don't know what to do. And I sit there and I have a one sentence statement that tells me who I am. And I go right there because nobody takes it from me, and nobody can take it from you. And you got if you wanna know who you are, you gotta spend time with the one who knows who you are. He'll tell you.
49:21
He'll tell you how much he loves you. Prayers aren't are these these movements happen by prayer, not because we have good techniques. You can have the worst techniques in the world but if you pray three hours a day, I promise you stuff's going to start happening. You can know nothing. All kingdom works are planted by prayer and faith.
49:53
You want a kingdom work across Jackson? You gotta be willing to pay the price. And that price isn't learning more Bible. You guys know the Bible. I know the Bible.
50:09
That's not what does. It's not father, son, and holy Bible. Father, son, and Holy Spirit. And it's a work of God to start a move. And I have been humbled by by men and women who can't read or write.
50:31
They only know a few scriptures, but they obey him and they trust God and God's doing miraculous stuff. And I look at all my education and all my knowledge and all my and I go, this man, this woman's faith dwarfs me. And you take you lose all your pride in what you know. I'm telling you, it just happens. You sit with people willing to die for what they believe, everything changes.
51:06
So I'm just telling you, it's not about learning more. In Matthew seven, it says, many will say to me on that day, didn't I not do all these wonderful Christian things? Even casting out demons and doing miracles and he says, depart from me, I never knew you. I knew all about you. I didn't know you.
51:31
It's this knowing God that we Our knower needs to change. I don't know how else to say it. How do we know? How do we know him? It's by spending time in in what you read right there, and you can have all of this.
51:51
Every person I read about in history, every person I know now, they're spending time with Jesus. Jesus is downloading stuff to them. It's just happening. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear fruit, and your fruit will remain. There's no other path, ladies and gentlemen, to movements than spending time and paying the price.
52:22
And now six years later after we've been praying, we're seeing things happen. We're seeing miraculous stuff happen right there in Kashmir, Washington, little town. And it's a team of people made up of probably a dozen different churches. And then we meet together, and the Holy Spirit leads us. And I'll finish with this story.
52:47
This happened Wednesday. Last Wednesday, at our time of prayer, 6AM, Wednesday mornings, people drive. We get there, and we don't have we're not praying for people's physical needs or any of that. We come there to meet with Holy Spirit. And we ask him, we ask, so what's he been saying this week?
53:09
And there's a gal that her name is Lisa, and she's always seeing stuff. She she's just a mom, homeschools her kids. And so the Holy Spirit said to me, goes, ask Lisa. Ask Lisa what she heard. So I said, okay, Lisa.
53:25
What'd you what'd you hear this week? And she goes, what do you mean? Do, like, what did I buy at the store or what? You know? And I said, no.
53:31
What did God tell you? She goes, well, it's pretty hard. She goes, I was asking God, why, God, is this transformation of my life taking so long? I just thought it would happen quicker. She said, and I was just praying.
53:49
The Lord said to me, he said, make no mistake, Lisa. I've been transforming you, and I'm doing it. But the time it takes is on you, not me. Because your you get to choose how you spend your time. And the Holy Spirit just fell on our whole group about 20 of us there.
54:12
We just all begin to repent. As we started to look, how much time we spend doing things? And the Lord kept, okay. You can you can choose here to spend time with me or choose this. That really is our choice.
54:36
He's a gentleman that way. He doesn't make us. So we spent an hour and a half just praying about that, and the Holy Spirit moved around the room, brought scripture out, brought examples out. People were weeping just but it was precious. It wasn't it was the Holy Spirit.
54:57
Do we want movement? Are we willing to prune away the things that take our time? And are we gonna hold each other accountable to do it? In love. And it just that's that's where God has us.
55:12
And he's doing those things around the world. So, father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you that you are using the ordinary things of the world, ordinary men and women to shame the wise, to show what you can do and how you want to glorify yourself. So do it, Lord.
55:50
Do it here amongst these these people in this church. I pray that they would have the courage to lay everything that's happening on the altar and and ask you, should we still be doing this? How do we get into the harvest? What do you want us to do? You wanna tell them, Lord.
56:14
I pray that they would have the courage to ask you and listen to everyone in this church because you are speaking through everyone, not through the experts. You're speaking through everyone. You spoke through Lisa this week, and you brought your word to all of us through her. That's what you wanna do. That's how you you want to get the glory.
56:39
You wanna build your kingdom. Forgive us for building our own. So I pray, Lord, right now that the these men and women would listen and hear your voice, your precious, loving voice. We thank you that your voice never produces fear, guilt, or shame. That's always the voice of the enemy.
57:06
You are always the one that loves us no matter what. We can't sin our way out of your kingdom because you say nothing separates us from your love. Hell cannot separate us from your love. So, Lord, help us to know in our knower how much you love us and how much you wanna speak. In Jesus' name.
57:48
Very good. I enjoyed it very much, and I could feel the Holy Spirit speaking. Yes. Praise God. Amen.
57:58
Will you please stand up and let's worship together?
59:46
If you yeah. Let the ushers come forward. You can sit down. If you did bring, or would like to put something in for the general fund, we're gonna take another offering. I know most of you have not, and that's fine.
59:57
But if you did, we wanna give you that opportunity to be doubly blessed this morning. Let me just pray and oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
1:00:07
Thank you. Thank you. Tonight at 05:30, there's gonna be an informal time down in the fellowship hall with Norris. And if you are have something planned that you can get out of, I highly highly recommend and encourage you to get out of it or bring that person with you and come. It's gonna be informal time of question and answer.
1:00:28
We're gonna listen to more stories of what from Norris that what God is doing around the world. And I guarantee it, you will be blessed, blessed, blessed if you come. And, so 05:30 tonight, Fellowship Hall. If you can come, please come. Let's pray and then you guys can take the offering.
1:00:50
Heavenly father, what a fitting song, the end of that message. And Lord, please give us ears to hear and eyes to see what you want us to do. Forgive us, Lord. We are so easily distracted from the things of the kingdom by things of the world, and help us to refocus our attention to to hear your voice, to seek you, seek your word, Lord. Seek your your words in in prayer and and to spend that time in silence, Lord.
1:01:27
I know this is something that you have been really convicting me of and just listening. Lord, give me ears to hear you. And, Lord, we do pray for your spirit to work among us. We pray that you, through the authority that you have given us, Lord, that you would silence those around us, those evil things around us that steal our attention, steal your voice. And, Lord, even those things in our lives, in in our flesh, Lord, that steal away your voice.
1:02:01
I pray that you'll silence them. Lord, we thank you for the blessings that you have given us, and we return a small portion that is already yours. And we ask, Lord, that you would send it out around the world to bring people to you. And, Lord, we thank you and we praise you. And, Lord, I just ask that you would make your face to shine upon us, that you would be merciful and gracious unto us, Lord, that you would guard us all around, that you would acquire for us, Lord, your provision, health, strength, courage, and peace, Lord.
1:02:42
Your shalom, we pray that you would give to us. In Jesus name, we ask. Amen.
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