(audience applauding)

- Lord you are great

and you are worthy of all of our praise.

Now be with us, give usyour thoughts Lord God.

Your word says that wehave the mind of Christ.

Lord may we think like you

and may we act like you

and may the meditations of our hearts

and thew words of our mouthsbe acceptable in your sight.

Be with us now

for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen, you may be seated.

I don't have a changer up here.

Do you guys have the slides I hope.

Can I get the first one up?

Okay, today I want to lay down the law

(chuckling)

so I've entitled this message"The Law of Speaking."

And we all know that thepower of life and death

is in the tongue, but Ireally want to focus in

on what Jesus says about it

and then for us as Spirit filled believers

what does this mean and how can we

really modify what we're saying

and get a whole new perspective

on the impact that our words have.

So let's just jump into it.

This comes out of Mark chapter 11.

My father has written about this verse

as the key to miracles.

He put it in a book

and so I have literallygrown up with this.

And Jesus has, to give you the context,

he has gone into the temple.

He observed everything there.

He rode in on a donkey and received

the accolation of the crowd.

And as he's departinghe goes by a fig tree

and figs weren't in season,

but for whatever reasonJesus is expecting some figs

and he goes to it andsees there aren't any figs

and he says to the tree,

"Let no one eat figs from you ever again."

And then he goes off to Bethany,

presumably to have a nice meal

with Mary and Martha and Lazarus,

get ready for some prettytrying days ahead of him.

They come back the next day

and they pass by the same fig tree

and his disciples areamazed because the fig tree

has overnight withered from the root.

So that's the context here,what Jesus said to a tree

caused it to wither and we can get into

some real interesting conversations

about do trees hear us,

but he pauses and gives a teaching.

And in the teaching he laysout how to get a miracle.

And number one is have faith in God.

I can talk a long time andhave talked a long time

about what that verse means,

but so often we have faith in ourselves,

we have faith in our prayer,

we have faith in howmuch we read the Bible,

we have faith in howoften we go to church,

we have faith in how much we tithe,

we have faith in our behavior,

we have you know faiththat we observe the Torah,

have we done these things properly

in accordance with the Bible,

and at the end of all of that

I'll sum it up as so oftenwe have faith in our ritual.

You know did we do it the right way,

as if miracles were somehow dependent

on magical incantations,

that these things just happenif we follow the right steps

and so give me the steps to miracles,

give me the way and ifI follow these steps

then these things will happen.

The entire law ofmiracles can be summed up

with have faith in God.

And when you contemplate his will

and you contemplate heaven,

you see what God really wants

and then "Okay how do I appropriate that?

"How do I command thatthat his will would be done

"on earth as it is in heaven?"

Have faith in God.

It's a mystery to me as to what

this has to do with fig trees.

You know as if it's God'swill to wither a fig tree.

Now theologically I know this is a symbol

and it's a symbol for the nation of Israel

at that point in time.

Jesus appears to them,he's expecting fruit

and he's finding no fruitand so it's a symbol

of what's getting ready to happen

to the entire nation,

the destruction that's goingto happen within a generation.

So I'm with you on that,

but here's the next key.

If anyone says to this mountain,

"Go throw yourself into the sea,"

and does not doubt in their heart,

but believes that whatthey say will happen

it will be done for them.

There's two things here, oneis do not doubt in your heart

and the next thing isyou have to announce it.

You have to actuallyspeak to the mountain.

I've been around Christians all my life

and there are a lot ofsort of recurring themes

that you can get from that.

I've heard Christians say,

"I knew that was going to happen,"

and then I will think in my heart,

"well then why didn't you say something?"

If you knew that then why do you say it.

You can't prophesy without announcing it.

It's one of the keys.

You can't have a miraclewithout praying out loud.

God does not

necessarily respond to the meditations

and the secret wishes within your heart.

He's looking for you to act.

He's looking for you to announce it.

So it's a two fold thing.

I believe therefore I spoke

and it's when those two things line up

that an incredible miraclepower gets released.

When you know the will of God,

the will of God is in your heart

and you do not doubt that will.

You do not think thatsomething is happening

because it's God's judgment

or there's some sort of reason

for the suffering or whatever.

You're not conflicted asto what is the will of God

in this situation and you just announce it

powerful things can happen.

And so it's what'scoming out of your mouth

that is determining.

It's the certainty in your heart

and then speaking it forth

that causes these things to happen,

it causes mountains to move.

You get the next slide.

Proverbs talks about two sides of this

and because it repeats

I want to underline it for us today.

Anytime the Bible repeatsa particular thought,

particularly close together it's something

to really pay attention to.

The wicked is ensnared by thetransgression of his lips,

but the righteous willcome through trouble.

A man will be satisfied withgood by the fruit of his mouth.

Let's go to the next onewhich is Proverbs 13.

A man shall eat well bythe fruit of his mouth,

but the soul of theunfaithful feeds on violence.

So there's two sides to this.

What you speak and announceand what you talk about

literally becomes what you feed on.

And because the wickedare feeding on violence

what is going on is within their heart

and certainly what they're talking about

is talking of violence.

I moved back from the Philippines in 1999.

The month I moved back Columbine happened

and for me I was having a lot of trouble.

There was a real cross-cultural shift

coming back into American culture

and I was like "What have I walked into?"

And as a nation what were we walking into?

If you can go back to Columbine

and remember the shock of that

and how a school becomesa shooting gallery

and how the shooters were trained,

had trained themselvesin how to do head shots.

You know just the horror of that.

And now we've seen in almost,

I mean 20 years later,

and we have had so many of these

that literally itdoesn't phase us anymore.

I mean if this happens in our own backyard

like it did in Virginia Beach this year,

yeah that impact us.

But we've literallygotten to a stage where

it's the size of the body countthat makes the difference,

how many people died in the event.

And we're not realizingthat what's going on

is that as the rise of unfaithfulness

happens in our culture

we increasingly as a culture

are going to start seeing violence.

You can blame it on mental illness

and yes there is a profile here

that shooters tend tobe single white males.

So you can look at that.

There are variants.

Virginia Beach was a variant from that.

But what is it about our culture today

where we're feeding on violence

and why does that happen?

Now, as Christians I'm not speaking to you

about "please don'tbecome a mass murderer."

What I am saying to you is

with the words of yourmouth are you expecting

God to judge America?

And look at that.

You know there's a phrase

that was attributed to Ruth Graham.

She tried to retract it.

"If God doesn't judge America,

"he's going to have to apologize

"to Sodom and Gomorrah."

I would submit that perhapswe should not do that,

that perhaps we are going to feed on that

and the more we ask for judgment

the more we're literallyprophesying a negative future

over our own countryand over our own lives.

Here is something thatis an absolute truth.

When judgment comes upon a land

it falls upon the righteousand the unrighteous.

I don't know about you.

I don't particularlywant to live in judgment.

So what should we change?

Can we change what ourhearts are thinking about

and can we change what thewords of our mouths are

so that we're speaking positivehope and positive truth

and we're prophesying "thereis a God who can change this."

We don't have to accept the status quo,

but if we start saying, "Wellthis is all God's judgment

"and this is the way it's going to be,"

and I lump myself with the group

of transgressors on this one.

I have said from the set of the 700 Club

one of the curses in the Old Testament

is you get the leaders that you deserve.

And so I look at Washington D.C. today

and regardless if you'rea Democrat or a Republican

or an Independent or none of the above

you know am I rejoicing

that we have the leaders that we deserve?

That you know that myannouncement has come true.

No, I repent, "Lord can yougive us righteous leadership?

"Can you do these things for us?

"Can we have wisdom in leadership?

"Can we have people thatreally acknowledge you

"and acknowledge theirplace in time and in history

"and aren't constantly campaigning?

"Please don't give usthe leaders we deserve.

"Give us the leaders that you deserve,

"and can we have that?"

Can that be our utterance,"Lord God almighty

"please give us your leaders,

"not the ones that we deserve.

"Give us your leadership.

"Give us what you have for us."

I'm not here to talk about politics.

I am here to talk about the church.

I want to turn our attention to Ezekiel

and this is the next slide in this deck.

Ezekiel has been written aboutas the first charismatic.

I know I'm talking to alot of charismatics today.

I'm also talking to peoplewho are not charismatic

so just bear with me.

Ezekiel lived in a very unusual time

and if you can imagine

both Ezekiel and Jeremiahwalking the streets of Jerusalem

at the same time, that iswhat's going on in Israel.

Ezekiel was a priest.

He served at the temple.

He went in to exile and partof his prophesy is in Babylon

and part of his prophesy is in Israel.

Because he's called the first charismatic

you look at these two versesI'm getting ready to show you.

One is the Spirit enteredme when he spoke to me

and set me on my feet and Iheard him who spoke to me.

That is a charismatic experience.

When we talk about theinfilling of the Holy Spirit.

God spoke, God breathed andhis Spirit entered into me.

The next one's from Ezekiel chapter 11.

This is verse five, the Spiritof the Lord fell upon me

and he said to me, "Speak!

"I know the things thathave come into your mind."

So the Spirit comes and he'sgiving two illustrations

that charismatics absolutely identify

because you've had a similar experience

where you know that you have been baptized

in the Holy Spirit.

You're not guessing about it.

This is something thatit was a physical thing

that happened to you.

You felt the presenceof God come into you.

When we are slain in the Spirit

is because the Spirit has fallen on us.

We have become overwhelmedwith his presence.

That's what's going on withEzekiel in these verses.

And literally the Spirit hasto come to raise him back up,

to stand him back up.

So as the first charismatic

he's sort of at the intersection of

the school of the prophets, which is full

of these kinds of ecstatic experiences

and what are called the writing prophets

who are writing for the whole nation.

So he's in that sort of in between

and oddly similar tocharismatic preachers of today.

He receives an unusual prophesy

and an unusual message from the Lord

in the third chapter of Ezekiel

where he says, "I've called you,

"not to a nation of unfamiliar speech,

"but to your own people."

And then he warns him, "Theywill not listen to you."

So he's assigned to go speak,

but he's also told in advance

"Well they're not going to pay attention."

They're gonna say thatthat's a nice sermon.

Their ears are going to be tickled

and then they're going to go back

and they're going to get intothe same behavior patterns

and as Ezekiel 11 verse five says,

the same things are coming to their minds,

that they're dwelling on these things.

They're dwelling not onthe things of the Lord,

but on the things of the flesh

and they're doing thingsthat are not pleasing

in the sight of the Lord.

So tough assignment for Ezekiel,

an assignment to prophesy

that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed

to not just prophesythat but go through that

and then be carried away as an exile.

Now in America today

what do we expect when we go to church?

This is a rhetorical question

so I'm not looking for an answer.

I'll tell you the answer.

I think today we're lookingfor a good teaching, aren't we?

Are we looking for anencounter with the living God

or are we looking for a good teaching?

If we're looking for that good teaching

well there's good things to that.

Good doctrine is wellgood doctrine, it's good,

but if all we're looking foris our ears to be tickled,

to have some kind of aha moment,

"I didn't know that was in scripture,"

and have that and say "WellI've done my part for God today

"and now I get to go backto have the same behavior

"and have the same things occupy my mind,"

what has changed?

So our effort to have that good teaching,

if it's not leading to change in behavior

and if it's not leading to anencounter with the living God

I would purpose to you that it's identical

to what Ezekiel went through,

that he was known as areally good Bible teacher.

He was known as a really good speaker

who could illuminate things in the word

that people would hear,their ears would be tickled

and then they would goback and do the same thing.

Now, I'm talking about the law of speaking

and so that speech, thosesermons that Ezekiel was giving

weren't doing anythingand there's a reason why.

The reason why is Godhad already told him,

"They're not gonna listen,"and I would put to you

what enables you to listen?

It is the Holy Spirit thatenables you to listen.

It's the Holy Spirit thatquickens words into actions.

It's the Holy Spiritthat changes your heart,

changes your values,changes your behavior,

changes your world view.

And so if you're just hearing sermons

and you're not asking for the Holy Spirit

"What is this for me?

"What is this that I need to change?

"What is this that I need to do?"

That's the difference point.

Now, same prophet, same time period

and it's Ezekiel 37.

God brought this to myattention two weeks ago.

I can't count the number of times

that I have read Ezekiel 37 and 36 and 38,

gone through them and gone through them

and gone through them.

The reason I've gone through them so much

with such detail is I'mlooking for keys about Israel.

This is a specific prophesyabout the restoration of Israel,

the dry bones coming to life again,

the modern day miraclethat we have experienced

starting in 1948 and wejust celebrated in 2017

the 50th anniversary of thereunification of Jerusalem.

We've recognized Jerusalem as the capital,

undivided capital of Israel.

We're living in prophetic moments

and I'm looking at these chapters,

what are the keys, what do we do now

and I'm literally praying,"Lord bring peace to Israel."

That's one of the keys to Ezekiel 38.

Israel has to be at peacewith all of their neighbors.

They have to be dwellingsecurely in their own land.

They're not doing that now,so that's the next thing.

So when God tells me, "Goback and read Ezekiel 37,"

me being all righteousand holy and everything

I argue with God.

"God I already know that chapter."

You ever do that?

I already know that one.

I literally said to him, "Ican't count the number of times

"I've read that chapter.

"What are you going toshow me in that chapter?"

I always lose my arguments with the Lord

and these days he doesn'teven have to respond.

All I had to do was hearthat come out of my spirit

and go, "You are really dumb."

(audience laughing)

If God's asking you to dosomething please do it.

So I went to Ezekiel 37

and we all know these verses.

God asks Ezekiel a question,

"Son of man, can these bones live?"

So I answered, "O Lord God you know."

And so Ezekiel's being humble.

He's saying, "I don't know, but you do."

Verse 34, he said to me"Prophesy to these bones

"and say to them 'O dry bones,hear the word of the Lord."

Now, same question, askedit earlier about a fig tree.

Can a fig tree hear a voice?

Can bones hear a voice?

I think they can.

Something's hearing it.

Hear the word of the Lord.

Ezekiel 37 verse five,

thus says the Lord God to these bones,

"Surely I will cause breath

"to enter into you and you shall live."

Now, prophets are calledupon to do unusual things

and engage in unusual acts.

So imagine that you're in Ezekiel's vision

and you're looking at avalley filled with dry bones

and are you feeling really confident

as you're prophesying to the bones?

Ezekiel apparently did.

Verse seven, so I prophesiedas I was commanded

and as I prophesied there was a noise

and suddenly a rattling

and the bones came together, bone to bone.

Now if you have ever beenannouncing the word of the Lord

and you start to see a stirring

I can tell you from myown personal experience

you are greatly encouraged.

Yah, God is showing up.

Faith I spell it R-I-S-K.

You hear from God, you repeat it

and as you repeat it you are taking a risk

and in that risk what's going to happen?

Is the word going to fall on deaf ears?

Well let this word encourage you.

It can fall on a bone and the bones

are going to start to rattle

and they're going tostart to come together.

But then all of Ezekiel's hopesare dashed in verse eight.

Here the prophesy was I willcause breath to enter into you,

but in verse eight indeed as I looked

the sinews and flesh came upon them

and skin covered them over, butthere was no breath in them.

Now if you're Ezekiel what do you do?

Do you complain to God?

"You said that you will cause breath."

The rabbis have an interestinginterpretation here

and their commentary is prophets of God

do not have the power to give life.

I will dispute them on that

because there is a prophetnamed Elijah that brought life.

So what is this?

Why is there this seeming fulfillment

and yet non-fulfillment?

We are engaged in a cultural battle

and much like Ezekielwas seeing this vision

and prophesying of atime where this vision

wouldn't be fulfilled in 1948.

You saw the stirrings of theZionist movement in the 1890s.

It took a generation from that to 1948

for that to really come together.

There is a prophetic fulfillmentthat the rabbis long for

where this spirit ofprophesy will be restored

to the nation of Israel.

They do not claim that yet.

That has not yet appeared.

There are stages in this andwhen will Joel chapter three

be fulfilled for the nation of Israel

where "my Spirit will be on all flesh,

"I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh."

So there's these inbetween times and in that

we need to take Ezekiel 37:9 to heart

that it's precisely at this moment

when we need to prophesy more.

And this is the versethat God really wanted

me to look at two weeks ago.

He said to me, "Prophesy to the breath,

"prophesy son of manand say to the breath,

"'Thus says the Lord God, comefrom the four winds O breath

"'and breathe on theseslain that they may live.'"

As I was reading that

I got a picture in my mind,

what are the bones of America today?

What are the bones of our own culture?

I got a picture that the bones

that we're dealing withright now are our churches

that they're together, they've got form,

they have flesh, they havesinew, they have all these things

but they need the breath of God.

If we want to turn our culture

it's not from "O Lord send judgment."

Can the fruit of our lips be,

"O Lord breathe on your churches again,

"breathe on them."

Regardless of denomination,when you get back

to the root of every single denomination

operating today in theUnited States of America

you will find the Holy Spirit.

Those branches are in place,those vines are in place,

all they need is a big dose of sap

and they will come back to life

and they will bring fruit.

And how often have I driven by a church

and not just prayed for it,"Lord God revitalize them.

"Breathe on them."

And here's, it's anamazing power given to us.

We can literally prophesyto the Holy Spirit.

That's what Ezekiel is doing.

Prophesy to the breath.

"Come breathe on theseslain that they may live."

Come breathe on them.

Verse 10, so I prophesiedas he commanded me

and breath came into them and they lived

and stood upon their feet.

Will you stand with me right now

and let's pray for our churches,

let's pray for our denomination.

Let's not give them up for dead.

Let us breathe life into them,

let us prophesy together.

So join with me, Lord Godalmighty we speak to our churches.

We speak to the four winds.

We speak to your breath and we ask

Lord breathe on your churches.

Breathe on your people Lord God.

Fill us to overflowing withthe spirit of righteousness.

Do wonders, do miracles.

Let our meetings togetherevery Sunday be anointed.

Let your presence be there.

Fill us to overflowing Lord God.

Breathe on us once again.

Revive us again Lord God.

Start here Lord God, start with me.

Start with each individual here.

Breathe on us again.

Let us not go into despair, despondency,

let us not awake judgment,but let us go forth

to bring righteousness to our land.

Let us pray for every church we encounter.

Let us pray for every Christian.

Let us pray that the breathof God would be on them,

in them, all around them.

Fall on them Lord God

that we may once againbe one nation undivided

indivisible with libertyand justice for all.

But most importantly maywe be one nation under God.

Breathe on us Lord.

Breathe on us.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

God bless you.

(audience applauding)