The Divine Setup 1

The Lord provides for all of our needs:

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work”

 

 

 

The testimony about being called to school and then getting laid off from my job and starting community college.

 

Well I ended up getting my old job back at a very large local A/c company and they put me at the Port Orange Halifax remodel. Now when I used to work with them before I was a wild, wild kid who ran his mouth all the time and was angry and hard to be around.

 

Now I go back almost a year later and I am completely changed. I mean completely. I was enrolled in college, I was a youth pastor, I had been delivered of so many things and the Lord was daily growing me and teaching me.

 

Could you imagine the people I had worked with for years previously when I came back and was a totally different man. Unbelievable experience.

 

The Lord began to teach me so much. I really began to get deeper and deeper in the knowledge of the word of God and it was in this time that I truly learned how to hunger for God in His word and in Prayer.

The Lord put me with the man that years earlier that would come up to me and tell me, God had a plan for me. This man Henry Rivera would begin to pour into me a passion and desire for more of God and to trust God and His word. FAITH!!

 

Matthew 13:3-9

 

“Then Jesus told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”

 

• The Sower- The Son of Man/Any one sowing the word of God
• The Seed- THE WORD OF GOD
• The Soil- The hearts of people, (PATH, ROCKY, AMONGST WEEDS AND THORNS, GOOD SOIL)
• The Supernatural- A great return on the harvest would be 10 fold, but here Jesus says that when the WORD of GOD lands on the heart prepared for it produces a supernatural crop, a supernatural return. 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold

 

My friend Henry would sit with me in the car at break time, at lunch time, before and after work and pour this verse in to me. He would really show me what it meant to sow the word of God in to peoples hearts for you never know what God is going to do. He would say, “BE LIKE JOHNNY APPLE SEED!

 

He kept saying this parable over and over again because the truth is God’s word does not return void. God’s word does produce supernatural results in the life of the one who have prepared their heart to receive it by faith. The problem is not in the seed, nor the sower but the ground in which it lands. This is the one and only area we can do something about.

 

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:12 “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day^”

 

 The Apostle Paul is saying, “To know JESUS is to TRUST HIM!” You have to know HIM! YOU HAVE TO KNOW HIM! FOR KNOWING JESUS IS TO TRUST HIM!

 

The Lord brought brother Henry into my life to sow the seed of salvation and then years later to sow the seed of faith and fire. You see after I surrendered my life I would felt called to go to new heights. Go to the Bible College, to do this and to do that, but it was all so far out of my league out of my level of comfort or normalcy. That time with brother Henry was a time of preparation. A time of getting a hunger to KNOW JESUS, and to KNOW HIM is to TRUST HIM!

 

One day during lunch we both had been fasting and praying and seeking the face of God. I mean the Lord was freshly pouring out in that car that day. All of a sudden Brother Henry looks at me and said, “God is going to enlarge your borders, He is going to bring you to places you never thought you would go, and He is going to use you to preach to the nations. A international ministry!”

 

I remember sitting there overwhelmed by the Lord’s presence but feeling as though what Henry was saying was far from what I could ever accomplish. Some 17 years later here I sit, having preached in nations around the globe, having a International ministry where we serve as missionaries to the nation of Vietnam and train national pastors and leaders. What Henry saw that day was God’s seed of purpose for me, what I had that day was a heart filled with good ground.

Everyday of our life we have to hunger for Jesus, we have to thirst for His word and we have to know Him. For knowing Him is trusting Him! Trusting Him and His word brings a supernatural return. 30, 60, 100 fold.

 

Never in a million years would Brother Henry had known that the 18 year old, drop out, hung over addict, who was so angry, doing construction A/C duct work that he kept sowing the seed of the WORD of God in would become a Dr. in ministry, serving in a closed nation where generations will be impacted with Gospel message through that ministry.