Make Your Day Count

None of us were there 2,000 years ago when Jesus was crucified on the Cross.  We didn’t see what He endured that day when He was beaten and reviled and hung on a cross to die.

The Bible calls Jesus the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).  This was God’s plan:  before we were ever born…before the world was even created…Jesus went to the Cross for you and for me.

Jesus Paid the Price

When I went to see Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, I wept through nearly all of the film.  As I looked around the theater that night, I saw that most of the audience was weeping too. 

I think we were completely overwhelmed by the love of God that was so accurately and powerfully portrayed in the movie.  We couldn’t help but weep when we saw that God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to pay the price for our sin. 

Think of the love Jesus had for us in taking the terrible punishment that was inflicted upon Him.  He paid the price that we deserved to pay so we could be free from sin. 

Thank God, Jesus never has to go through that terrible torture again!  As He hung there between heaven and earth, He declared, It is finished (John 19:30).  The price was paid once and for all!  And He believed that you and I were worth the price He paid.

Healing Is Yours!

In those days, a sentence of 40 lashes was virtually a death sentence.  So the authorities gave Jesus 39 lashes, just one lash short of killing him, and the beating left Him virtually unrecognizable. 

But the Bible says that every one of those stripes was for our healing: he [Jesus] was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 NIV).  And you can receive that healing today.

The greatest way to show your gratitude for what Jesus did on the Cross is to receive His gifts—including healing and salvation—in every area of your life.  I encourage you to give total control of your life to Him today.  Lay everything down before Him at the Cross and receive everything He’s done for you. 

If you’ve never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you can do it now by praying this simple prayer with me:

Lord, I repent of every sin, and I lay my sins at the Cross where You bore it all for me.  I denounce the devil and all his works.  By my faith I receive Him as my Savior, my Healer, and my Deliverer.  I declare that I am born again!  Amen.

    Down the road from my house there is a big yellow Humvee—or “Hummer”—sitting on a pedestal outside a large bingo hall.  Close by there is a huge billboard declaring that you can win the Hummer, and how much money has been won at the bingo hall. 

Basically the sign is saying that if you come in and play their games of chance, the reward system they have set up will work for you.  Of course, it doesn’t say how much money has been lost, or what effect it has had on people’s finances and their lives.

You Can Succeed Every Time

All across America, people go into gambling establishments—or bet on horses, or buy lottery tickets—and when they come out, they often don’t have money for milk or diapers or house payments.  It is a reverse reward system that has an enormous amount of failure, risk, guilt, and devastation that never gets displayed.

But God has a reward system, based on His eternal Word, in which you can succeed every time!  

God’s system is planting your seed for a harvest.  And Galatians 6:9 NKJV says, Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.  Notice it says we shall reap—that means when you believe and act on God’s Word, you can win every time!            

But with God’s system we don’t always win at the exact moment we want to win.  And  if we don’t get a miracle in 24 hours, on our own timetable, we may start doubt God and speak negative words.  Before you know it, we’ve poured gasoline on our seed.

The devil hates it when you plant your seed, because he knows a harvest is on the way.  He bombards your mind with doubt.  He tells you that God’s reward system is a lie.  Even though God tells us Give and it shall be given unto you (Luke 6:38), the devil will tell you that you have a better chance hitting the lottery or some other system that involves the luck of the draw.

Get Bolder!

God’s system works.  We just have to keep our eyes on our Source, His supply, and His perfect timing.

That’s what Peter did in Acts 4, when he was being threatened not to preach in the name of Jesus.  Peter didn’t doubt God.  He didn’t rehearse the problem by thinking on it or talking about it.  He just said, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servant to speak your word with great boldness. (v. 29 NIV). 

Instead of focusing on the problem, Peter focused on the solution and prayed for boldness! 

When you face trouble and discouragement, don’t give up—just get bolder!  Don’t let the devil talk you out of your seed-planting…or he can rob you of your harvest.  Be bold in sowing for your miracle, and in believing God for the harvest.  According to His own Word, His reward system is sure.  And in due season, you shall reap if you don’t lose heart!

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And that’s a picture of you and me when we refuse to give up in the midst of our problems!  That’s you and me, declaring by faith, “I may fall down, but I won’t stay down!”

No matter what you’re going through, God is faithful.  If you’ve fallen, you can get up and dust yourself off.  If somebody has slung mud at you, don’t try to wipe it off while it’s still wet.  Let it dry.  Then you can just flick it off!

If someone has done something horrible to you, give them to God.  Say, “God, forgive them.  They don’t have a clue about what they’re doing.”

That’s what Jesus did that dark Friday afternoon as He forgave those who had put Him on the Cross…as He hung there for you and me.  Then He rose again on Sunday to purchase our salvation and—through His Spirit–to give us the power to overcome anything that comes against us.  For we are more than conquerors, Romans 8:37 tells us, through [Christ] who loved us.

Go To the Source

If you’ve never made a full commitment of your life to the One who died for you and whose power can make you an overcomer, I encourage you to pray this prayer with me right now:

          Lord Jesus, I ask You to come into my heart, forgive my sins,  and turn my whole life around.  Lord, help me remember that it’s not about me. It’s about You… and the Resurrection power You give me to overcome life’s problems.  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.

LR: Let’s get into feelings.  We’ve got just a second, and I’ve got to ask Christy this.  You have to stand up, open the service.  You have to open the atmosphere, really.  The first thing out of the buck and chute, there you guys are.  Okay, you don’t feel like it.  Maybe you’re not in the mood, okay?  Maybe you’re not ready for a large number of people to be drawing on your anointing when you’re like, “Where is my anointing?”  How do you shut the flesh down and say, “This is not the time for the flesh.  This is the time for the supernatural to kick in”?

CH: Well, you know, I think the thing for me that I always remember is, when we get out and we get on the stage, we’re here for Jesus.  We’re here for the kingdom.  We’re here to worship, so everything else has to take a backseat.

And, you know, she was talking about Peter, you know, and we think about he started looking at the winds and the waves.  And the Bible says in Hebrews 13 that, “We look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, because for the joy that was set before us.”  So when we get our focus onto God, everything else that’s going on around us, I don’t care how emotional, how hard, how rough it is, when we get our eyes on Him, it takes the focus off of the disruption.  It takes the focus off of our emotions.  And, you know, your emotions many times, they’re going to tell you the wrong thing.  They’re going to interrupt what you ought to be focusing on.

And in Psalm 121 it says, “I lift my eyes to the hills where my help comes from.”  And I am telling you, every time we look to the Lord and we draw upon the strength of His power, the strength of His anointing, we realize it’s not about our own strength anyway.  And it really does become a much easier road to walk, even though sometimes we do have to fight it out.

LR: Sometimes we think, How could I be even put in the same term as the word supernatural?  That’s the Holy Spirit residing within you, and it’s there.  We might not recognize it.  We might not know it but, I’m telling you, God put it there and it’s for us, for our good, for our benefit. All we have to do is stir it up.
BK: Well, and I will say this, I’m going to just say just a ditto and follow up with what she just said.  Some of our most challenging times come right before you either have to walk out on that TV set and you’ve got to minister and do—

LR: I tell you, it is.

BK: And you’ve got to go right out, you’ve got to preach, you’ve got to minister to somebody.  And God as my witness, you think, God, I don’t have it in me right now.  This couldn’t have come at a worse time, right before that big crusade or whatever.  And, Lindsay, God as my witness, those have been the times I’ve seen the most miracles. 

We were in one country, a lady was healed of AIDS.  And, I mean, we were exhausted.  And I thought, God, I don’t have it in me.  It’s in you, and it just needs to be released and to flow.  It’s not based on how you feel.  You walk out there, and you minister by the power of God to whoever.  If you’re in the grocery store or wherever you are, you can be on the bus, you can be at the shopping mall, you can be at work, and that supernatural—you don’t have to go by feelings—but you just manifest God.  And you go in there and you be a spokesman for Jesus, and people’s lives are going to get changed.

LR: The book is called The Supernatural You.  I’m going to give you a website, ovm (One Voice Ministry), ovm.org.  This one’s by Brenda.  We’ve got the books by Hank.  Oh, my goodness, the secrets that are revealed in the latest book, The Revealer of Secrets, is literally God’s revelation through prophecy.  I want to encourage you, all you have to do, go on their website, ovm.org.

If you need prayer, 918-495-7777.  You can go on-line at Oral Roberts Ministry website, orm.cc, or like I said, go to the telephone, 918-495-7777.  Or you can write Richard Roberts and Lindsay Roberts, Tulsa, OK 74102.  I encourage you to get their book.  Thank you guys for being here.  Whatever you do today, I want to encourage you to make it count for the kingdom of God.

CH: Well, Pastor Hank and Pastor Brenda provide an incredible atmosphere to minister in anyway.

LR: See, it is a hand and a foot and an eye.  And, you know, your ushers were wonderful.  Now my husband, Richard Roberts, when he’s praying, there’s—I want to call it a healing line.  All I can tell you is, there were masses of people getting healed, and it was like, “Oh, mercy, what’s going on?”  It was like a wave and a rush of healing.

BK: Oh, we had a good time.
LR: But you know what?  It was so controlled.  And the Holy Spirit was moving, and here are the ushers taking their rightful place and rightful seat of authority.

The Bible talks about doing things with decency and order.  And I do believe that there is an order and a decency that when we follow the line upon line of the Bible, something begins to happen supernaturally.  It’s like we open that wellspring and say, “Here’s a place where You can now take over, Holy Spirit.”

BK: And there is a place, Lindsay, for every member of the body of Christ.  You’re probably sitting at home and you’re thinking, What’s my part?  I feel like the pinky toe, is my favorite saying, the pinky toe of the body of Christ.  I’m not even sure I have an important part.  No, you are supernatural.  You have a supernatural anointing to do just as much.  You are a part of the miracles of Jesus.

And so every one of us has that place.  And when we get in our function—don’t try to be somebody else.  You don’t have to.  You’re supernatural by yourself.

LR: The other day I had what could have bee chaos in my house, a disaster.  Mostly it was just me.  And, you know, my husband is out of the country and half my family was gone somewhere else, and Jordan’s in Africa.  Actually, I think Jordan was on her way to Africa.  Richard was on his way to Israel.  I mean, it was one of those days.

So here something comes up, and I texted Brenda.  And Brenda’s response was not something out of Brenda.  She said, “I’ll take some time and pray about it.”  Well, that’s the best kind of prayer you can ever have.

So in the process of that, instead of answering with some fleshly answer, she was giving me, “I’ll pray about it.”

Now that’s wonderful, like the Abundant Life Prayer Group, to have someone in prayer connect.  Okay, now what about the times when God isn’t going to let you prayer connect when He’s requiring you to mature?  And now everybody needs a kick.  Everybody needs a boost, a prayer partner, a power of agreement, I understand it.  But what about not relinquishing what part is our responsibility, where God is requiring us to dig into that well?

BK: I will honestly say, the first person I think of, hands down, is Peter.  Peter was the one who always forged out with God and then, you know, he ended up kind of in a heap sometimes.  And so he’s a great example for all of us.  But you remember in Matthew 14, he got out of the boat, and he was going to walk on water.  He was going to forge out in his moment of faith.  And, interesting, the Bible kind of gives a little bit of a progression there, but it says, Peter, he got out of the boat to walk on the water.  He went to walk to Jesus, and so that was the process of faith.  That was God taking you into your destiny.

But in the process, the Bible said, “The wind became boisterous.”  And you remember this.  And he said the wind started to blow.  That was the disruption.  That was the divine disruption.  Peter’s responsibility was to keep walking, but he started to look at the disruption instead of the Lord and he lost out on the miracle that God wanted to produce.

And Jesus, you know—I love Jesus.  You know, He didn’t turn and He didn’t say, “Oh, my sweet child.  I understand where you’re coming from.”  That’s what we want to hear God say.  “O God, do you see what I’m in?” 

He turns and says, “Why in the world did you doubt, oh you of little faith,” you know.

LR: While he’s down there drowning.
BK: Give the man some credit.  He tried.  But the truth of it is, that God wants you to forge forth in the destiny, even while there are distruptions, because there’s always a miracle that you are able to produce when you follow the direction of God.  Even when the wind’s blowing, stay on that path.