Pastor Bob’s Blog

My family and I made our annual trip to Fort Worth for Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ Southwest Believers’ Convention.  As always, we had an awesome time.  I highly recommend it for anyone who seeks a week of outstanding preaching and teaching, glorious praise and worship, and intense immersion in the Word of God.  We were also blessed to reconnect with old friends and to make new friends.

We were also blessed to learn that 2774 people gave their lives to the Lord Jesus as a result of the work of Riley Stephenson’s evangelism team, which swept the streets of Fort Worth during the week before and the week of the convention.  The Word of the Lord will not return to Him void, but will accomplish His purpose!  (Isaiah 55:11).

On Saturday, though, I read an online New York Times article about the convention.  Not surprisingly, it highlighted pictures of ushers carrying stacks of offering buckets and of a woman placing an offering on the steps of the platform, and included digs about the speakers’ preaching about prosperity and divine health, and the manifestation of health and prosperity in the speakers’ lives.  The article also quoted a religion professor from the University of California, who attended the convention to do “research” on Word of Faith preachers.  He gave his opinion that the preachers were irresponsible because they barely acknowledged the current economic downturn, and because they suggested that people continue to tithe and give while expecting a financial return from the Lord.

Let me flip open my Bible.  It says that the tithe is holy to the Lord.  (Leviticus 27:30, 32).  My Bible tells me that the Lord considers it robbery to withhold tithes and offerings.  (Malachi 3:8).  The Lord also invites us to test Him and His promise that He will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing for the tither, and that He will rebuke the devourer for the sake of the tither.  (Malachi 3:10-11).

Jesus Himself preached the hundredfold return on giving (Mark 10:29-30) and that the giver will receive “pressed down, shaken together, and running over.”  (Luke 6:38).

Obviously, the Times article didn’t include any such scripture references.

The Times article also missed the the theme of Brother Copeland’s messages during the convention: remaining clean of covetousness.  In an awesome series of teachings, Brother Copeland taught from Luke chapter 12 about covetousness, and about maintaining a right relationship with money and things.  Just like Abraham, we’re supposed to be blessed for the purpose of being a blessing!

I love to tithe and give.  It’s an honor to be able to tithe and give.  The day I stop tithing and giving will be the day I go home to be with the Lord.  And because the Blessing of Abraham has come upon me (Galatians 3:14), I can be like Isaac and thrive in famine.  (Read from Genesis chapter 26).  If I thrive, I can be a blessing to people who are hurting, and to ministries that are spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

We already have our hotel reservations to return to Fort Worth next year.  In the meantime, I plan to implement what I learned at this year’s convention.  I and my family will continue to tithe and give, and to be obedient to the Lord as He instructs us.  I’ll probably preach to Abundant Life Church in Athens some of the things I learned in the convention.  When next year’s comes along, the Lord will have provided more than enough for us to attend and to be a blessing to other people along the way.

I thank God for Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and to the other speakers at each year’s Believers’ Convention.  My family and I are blessed to have heard them!

(If you want to see and hear the teachings from the conventions, you can find them online:  http://www.bvov.tv/kcm/ondemand/2009swbc.php.  Also, you can see the side and back of my bald head in the picture above).

Janet and Craig Watson.

Today I received a Skype call from my dear friend, Craig Watson, the pastor of Eagle Christian Ministries in Durban, South Africa.  Cherie and I have a covenant relationship by divine appointment with Craig and his wife, Janet, and we are becoming closely knit together in the Spirit.  Craig and Janet have been in Athens and have ministered at Abundant Life Church.  Talking with Craig via Skype (a free computer to computer “telephone” call) with web cams was like being in the same room with him.

Craig shared with me that his greatest passion over the last many months has been to live in the presence of God.  For years he has enjoyed daily fellowship with the Lord.  Lately, though, he has been hungry for the Lord’s presence, and has begun to spend each Wednesday morning in prayer and fasting before God.  The result has been striking.  Craig has experienced wonderful times of fellowship and received extraordinary revelation and anointing from God.

To Craig’s flesh, taking Wednesday morning to seek God seemed like a big sacrifice.  In addition to pastoring, Craig and Janet operate an international logistics business that is thriving in famine.  Time is not something he possesses in excess.  But he made the quality decision to make time to seek God, and has reaped enormous rewards, both in the Spirit and in the natural.

Craig reflected, and I agree, that we’re not “professional preachers” delivering a joke, three points, and a story.  We shouldn’t preach just to preach.  Instead, we need to preach from a position squarely in the presence of God.  The presence of God and the anointing that accompanies His presence makes the difference between just a nice message and a rhema word from God that will change the lives of the hearers, open blind eyes, heal bodies, bring deliverance to the captives, and cause miracles to occur.  Like Moses, we should not preach or do anything unless the presence of the Lord goes with us.  (Exodus 33:15).

In your own life, seek the presence of God and let it transform you.  Make a quality decision to spend time in the Word of God, being quiet before the Lord, and hearing His voice.  In your marriage, your job, your health, and every other part of your life, seek first His kingdom – and His presence – and everything you need He will supply to you.  (Matthew 6:33).   And when He supplies it, it won’t be by small degrees.  It will be exceedingly above all you can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20) and according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).

Seek His presence, and let Him transform you!

The Rev. Van Crouch preached at the church last Saturday night and Sunday morning.  He made a point that resonated with me.  Where you go to church can mean the difference between life and death.  He declared that Abundant Life Church is one of those places where you’ll find life and not death.

Why does it make a difference?  How your life goes will depend on your position with the Lord.  If you’re built up in the Word of God and prayer, your faith is maturing and developing, you have a vibrant life of worship, you’re spending time with God, you’re walking in love, you’re living right, and you’re surrounded by people who will love you and stand in faith with you, then you’re going to live an overcoming life.  It’s a spiritual fact.

If you barely give God the time of day, you’re not reading your Bible, if you think God’s making you sick, taking your money, breaking up your truck, leading you out of your marriage, and wreaking havoc in your life to teach you something, and you’re surrounded by people who look at life that same way, then your prayers will be powerless and your life will be a wreck.  It’s a spiritual fact.

It matters where you go to church.  Go where the Word of God is preached – and believed.  Go where faith is preached, and people will pray in faith, expecting their prayers to be answered.  Go where the pastor preaches that God is a good God, and that He wants you to prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers (3 John 2).  Go where love is practiced, and joy is abounding and not sorrow.  Go where God is lifted up, and worship is an integral part of church life.  Go where the life of God is manifest.

I’m honored to pastor Abundant Life Church.  Rev. Crouch is right.  We ARE the kind of church where you’ll find life and not death.  We’re a Spirit-filled, word of faith church, regional in scope, international in reach.  And we’d love to see you some Sunday morning at our 10:00 service and our 7:00 Wednesday evening Bible study.  You’ll find people who will love you and stand in faith for you.  You’ll find intense praise and worship, and you’ll find God present in the church.  I hope to see you soon!!

On April 15, while taping the Believer’s Voice of Victory broadcast with his guest David Barton, Brother Kenneth Copeland received this word from the Lord:

This is the time that has been prophesied about, and at stake here is not only your welfare in the land, but also My move in the end times of a ‘Great Awakening,’” saith the Lord. “And it is that awakening that will save this land and others like it. For it is the time of the coming of the Lord, and you will rise up and you will be My name and you will be My power and I will manifest Myself through you, and many shall come and say, “Surely He is the God of all good.”

Sister Billye Brim had delivered a similar word a few months ago.  Both words bear witness in my spirit.

We must pray for our leaders as we are admonished to do in 1 Timothy 2:1-8.  But political leaders are not the salvation of the United States.  The Lord is the salvation of this nation.  More than anything else, we need people here and around the earth to be convicted of sin and righteousness, to be awakened to the Lord, and to turn to the Lord for salvation.

We in the body of Christ need to be praying and standing in faith for a Great Awakening!  Don’t be moved by what you see.  Pray, believe you receive, and stand in faith for this great end-time move of God!

I’ve been preaching a series drawn from the church’s foundation scripture, John 10:10:  The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.  (NKJV)  Part of that abundant life is divine health.

Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ should not be afraid of the “Swine Flu.”  Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.  (Galatians 3:13 NKJV).  Every sickness and every plague is under the curse of the law.  (Deuteronomy 28:61 NKJV).  Logically, then, Christ has redeemed us from every sickness and plague – including the Swine Flu.  It’s part of why He came.  Isaiah, forseeing what Jesus would do, prophesied:

Yet it was our sickness he was bearing, our suffering that he endured.  We accounted him plagued, smitten and afflicted by God; But he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.  He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we were healed.  (Isaiah 53:4-5 JPS).

Don’t be like Job.  A hedge was around him, but he lowered it by fear.  “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.”  (Job 3:25 NKJV).  We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.  (2 Timothy 1:7).  So keep the faith hedge up.

I recommended to my congregation that they just turn off the TV and close the newspaper stories that sow seeds of fear about the Swine Flu.  Yes get your rest.  Yes drink plenty of water.  Yes get your exercise and eat right.  But spend more time reading the Word, meditating on it, and confessing it over yourself than you do fretting and worrying about Swine Flu.  Christ has redeemed you from it.  So at night, turn off your light, roll over, and fall asleep safe in the Lord.

When my dad died in 1992, one friend told me, “I know you’ll make it through because you live at the foot of the cross.”  That sounded good.  I’ve come to realize, though, that God doesn’t intend for us to live at the foot of the cross because Jesus isn’t there any more.

First, let me say I understand that the cross is critical to all we enjoy in Christ Jesus.  We would not be saved, Holy Spirit filled children of God without the work Jesus did on the cross.

But Jesus didn’t stay on the cross.  He didn’t stay in the tomb.  He is seated at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places, far above all principality and power and mighit and dominion and every name, with all things under His feet.  (Ephesians 1:20-22).  And bless God, He raised us up together and made us to sit together in Jesus in heavenly places.  (Ephesians 2:6).

Christians need to stop focusing just on the cross and begin focusing on the throne.  Jesus was the sacrifice, but now He’s the conquering King.  And 1 John 4:17 says as He is, so are we in this world.  As the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart yesterday, “Most of the body of Christ has left resurrection power in the tomb.”

We do not need to be crying at the foot of the cross, even if we sin.  No.  Gratefully and in faith, we need to appropriate 1 John 1:9, and confess our sins, receive our cleansing, and go on to conquer.  We should not be weeping at the cross in any circumstances.  We are, instead, supposed to reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.  (Romans 5:17).

Jesus isn’t still in the manger.  He’s not on the cross.  He’s not in the tomb.  He’s on the throne.  We need to take our eyes off the cross and fix them on the throne, then go and do the “greater works” He called us to do, bless God!

I’m preaching a series entitled, “Faith That Pleases God.”  The foundation scriptures are Hebrews 11:6 (it is impossible to please God without faith) and Romans 14:23 (whatever is not of faith is sin).

If we drill down through unbelief, we’ll usually find a trust problem.  If I trust God, and if I trust His word, then faith is easy.  If not, it’s hard.

It’s true in our natural lives, too.  If I tell my wife that dinner will be ready at 7:00, she’ll be at the table with her appetite – if she trusts me and what I say.  If she doesn’t, then at 6:30 she’ll be on the phone ordering pizza.

Do we trust God?  Or do we trust the counterfeit?

Hezekiah was one who trusted God.  Let’s unpack his story, which is found in 2 Kings 18 and 19.

Hezekiah became the king of Judah at age 25.  He trusted in the Lord (2 Kings 18:5), and the Lord was with him so that he prospered (2 Kings 18:7).

The king of Assyria attacked Judah and captured some of the walled cities.  Hezekiah tried to appease the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, by giving him gold and silver from the temple.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.

Sennacherib was preparing to attack the seat of the government of Judah, Jerusalem.  He sent a representative to taunt the people and to tempt them away from the Lord.  He told them the gods of the other nations hadn’t been able to save the other nations from Sennacherib, and the Lord couldn’t either.  He promised them that if they subjected themselves to Sennacherib, and gave him a gift, they would “eat from [their] own vine, and everyone from his own fig tree,” and that every one of them would come to another land of grain and new wine, bread, and vineyards.  (2 Kings 18:31-32).  He offered them a counterfeit blessing that looked deceptively like the Blessing of the Lord.

The people of Judah didn’t bite.  They kept their mouths shut.  Hezekiah went before the Lord, and asked Isaiah, the prophet of the Lord, for advice.  Isaiah spoke a prophetic word that Sennacherib would be routed and killed.

Hezekiah and Judah could have bitten for the counterfeit blessing.  But they didn’t.  No, Hezekiah had read the accounts of how the Lord had saved his ancestor David.  He’d read (and maybe sung) David’s psalms, many of which were written when David was under attack.  Hezekiah knew the promises of the Torah, and what was promised him in the Blessing.  He had a prophetic word from Isaiah.  Hezekiah trusted the Lord and the written and prophetic word of the Lord.

Will we bite for the counterfeit blessing?  Or will we hold out for the real Blessing of the Lord?  Will we fall prey to taunts, even by fellow Christians, that God doesn’t really heal or prosper?  Or will we stand on the promises of His Word?

Until you and I trust the Lord and His word, we will never really live by faith.  And if we don’t live by faith, we’ll never please God.

Trust Him.  He is faithful!

I read an article today in Ohio University’s student newspaper. The point of the article was that people are giving less at church because they’re worried about the economy. The reporter spoke with some pastors who reported that their churches’ incomes were down.
The reporter had left a message for me, but I didn’t get it until after the story was posted. I’m sorry about that, because I could have given her a different perspective.
At Abundant Life Church, our tithes and offerings are higher than last year at this time. Why? First, the Lord is blessing our people – just as His Word promises.   Second, our people are not afraid. They take God at His Word. He says He’ll supply all our needs according to His riches in glory, and He promised He would open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing to those who tithe. Our people are tithers and givers.  Maybe you’d stop tithing and giving if you didn’t believe what God promised in the Bible and were afraid God wouldn’t do what He said He’d do. But if you really believe Him, and you understand the laws of tithing and of sowing and reaping, you’ll give more in tough times, not less.
What’s the effect of the economic downturn on Abundant Life Church? We’re becoming more attuned to other people’s needs, and are prepared to live out the commandment of love by giving to others from what the Lord has blessed us with.
For anyone who has no earthly clue what I’m talking about, I’d recommend that you read Malachi 3:8-12 as a starting point. Take what the Lord is saying by faith, expect Him to perform His word, and tithe to your church and sow (give above your tithe), and watch the Lord perform His word!!

Last Sunday, I preached on the first section of the prophetic word the Lord gave me for 2009.  “Rebirth” was the title of the message.  (You can listen to it on the “Resources” page of the church website, or on our iTunes podcast).  One of the points of the prophetic word said we should pray for the reapers and be a reaper.

When it comes to helping people be born again, we can fulfill one, two, or all three of the three roles involved:

1. We can be a pray-er (Matthew 9:37-38; Luke 10:2- pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers to the harvest).
2. We can be a sower of the word of salvation into the person’s heart.
3. We can be the reaper who leads the person to pray the prayer (or make the confession) of salvation.

During my time alone with the Lord this morning, he took me to Amos 9:13, and I got really excited:

“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed. . . “  (NKJV)

What is a plowman?  He’s the guy who breaks up the ground to prepare it for the seed to be sown.  The person who is praying for the sowers and reapers is the plowman – preparing the way in the spirit realm for the Word of God to be sown and for the the person who is the object of the prayer to be reaped into the Kingdom.

The Lord is telling us through the prophet Amos that the whole process of praying, sowing the Word, and reaping souls will be tightly compressed.  Each person will be born again so fast that the reaper (the last one in the process) will catch up with the plowman (the pray-er) as the plowman is praying for the next person!  I believe this is that time!  These are those days!

That means the Body of Christ will be reaping souls left and right in 2009.  Figuratively speaking, the pray-er, the sower, and the reaper will be stumbling over one another trying to keep up with the pace of salvations.  Glory to God!

We’re already seeing it.  Riley Stephenson is the Minister of Evangelism at Eagle Mountain International Church on the grounds of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas.  Brother Riley leads teams of people into the malls, shops, and streets of Forth Worth and other cities where Brother and Sister Copeland have meetings.  The Lord used Brother Riley and his teams to pray, sow, and reap people into the Kingdom by the thousands last year, and the pace will pick up this year.

I expect to see the same thing at Abundant Life Church and throughout the Earth in 2009.  Plowmen, you’d better be praying, because the sowers and reapers are gaining on you!!

This is a word from the Lord I received in parts over the last two weeks:

2009 will be a year of rebirth, renewal, and redemption. People you’ve prayed for to receive Me but have rejected Me will be born again in 2009. This is your opportunity. Don’t give up. Pray for the reapers. Be a reaper.

Things in your life that have held you back from My best will be shed in 2009, and you will be renewed in My glory. But you have to make the first step. You have to make the decision. Forget the past. Press. Press for My best. Don’t accept less. Press. Press!

Things the devil has stolen from you will be given back 100 times over in 2009. Look for it. Put in the sickle. Redeem it with My blood and your words.

Don’t accept defeat. Abide in Me and you will bear fruit. And like My word says, I will come live with you, and we’ll have wonderful fellowship.

Don’t let the world steal your joy in 2009. Even when it’s hard, be joyful by faith. Don’t let the news creep in. Stay in My word. Meditate on My word. See yourself as I see you in My word. Don’t accept the way the world sees things. Accept My word and rejoice!