Saving Souls

And when my brother says, “I need you,? there’s something about our family, you can count on our family. And he said, “I need you to be there at a quarter till eight.”  Now I was getting a little second thought at that point.  But he said, “I need you at my house at a quarter till eight, and bring Richard.  I need him to drive because I can’t drive.”

When my brother says, “I need you,? I didn’t ask him one question.  I showed up.  And I knew we had a nine o?clock board meeting, so I knew whatever we had to do, we had to do it quickly.  He gets us in the car.  He gives Richard directions.  We drive down to 40 something and Memorial.  I had no idea-Cheryl and I are talking as usual and paying no attention.  And we got in and we pulled in, and this man that I hadn’t seen since that night, who happens to be here today, handed me the keys to a brand-new Lexus.  (Response)

Now my car was not a Lexus.  My car was eight years old and it had 65,000 miles on it.  And I must tell you that this is exceedingly abundantly far above anything I could ever ask or think.  Everybody in the Lexus dealership thought they put that great big fat L on everything for Lexus.  I knew God put it there for Lindsay.  I’m even monogrammed.

Because I had a golden opportunity to act like a shark or count it all joy, and so do you.  I’m not saying you’ll get a Lexus.  I’m not saying you’ll get a car.  I’m not saying you’ll get a dog or a duck.  I’m saying when you count it all joy, God will leave you entirely whole and wanting nothing.

What do you have need of today?  What do you have need of today?  What have you been swimming in the shallow end for?  Are you in ankle-deep?  Are you in knee-deep?  Are you in shoulder-deep?  Honey, take the plunge.  Get under the water.  Get under the spout where the glory comes out.  And it’s not so you’ll get a new car.  Honey, they will come and they’ll go.  But when you get a relationship with Jesus Christ and He is your rock-and there is life in the Word. It’s health to all your flesh.  It’s life to those who find them.  It’s anything and everything you have need of.

What do you have need of today?  Jump in.  Jump in. Stop grumbling.  Stop murmuring.  Stop whining.  Stop griping.  How do I know those words?  Practiced them.  Stop all that flesh stuff.  Don’t fight in the flesh.  It’s the same as Super Gluing your coffee cup to your leg.  We’re not smart enough to fight in the flesh.  You get into the Word of God.  You get into the Spirit of God.

And then, then you get to the big weapons, and satan starts running around and you feel like, “No matter what I do?-I won’t even go there.  And you get the pool of self- pity, poor, poor pitiful me.  God never told you to do that.      

So let me tell you what you do.  You begin to realize that satan doesn’t fight fair, and you need to fight smart. How do you fight smart?  With the Word of God.

I remember years ago we did a program, here in this building, in fact, called Richard Roberts Live.  It was at nine o?clock in the morning.  All of you who know me know that I look exactly like that green bathrobe in the morning.  There is no qualms about it.  That is what I look like in the morning.  I don’t do mornings, never did do mornings, don’t like mornings.  All the people who know me know, “Yes, she’s telling you the truth, Jack.”

And, I tell you, we had this crazy program, nine o?clock in the morning, live.  Now do you know what happens at nine o?clock in the morning live when the program comes on?  It comes on whether you’re there or not.  That’s the beauty of live TV.  It comes on at nine o?clock.  And if you’re not there, it’s not the TV?s fault.  So all of the sudden you get there or you don’t get there-you’re on the air.

And I use to come in, and one thing I do not do now, but I did then, was drink coffee because, I mean, something had to pry my eyeballs open to be there live, dressed, pressed, and with my mouth open at nine o?clock in the morning.  So I did coffee.

Well, one thing about our television crew, of which Harry was the leader, is that that early in the morning you’ve got to do a lot of things to keep the crew interested and to keep them motivated that early in the morning.  And so we did a lot of practical jokes.  I think you’d call them pranks.  And we would do them on each other at the most inopportune moments.

And one of the things that the crew did to me one day that I’ll never forget was, they took my coffee cup and they put Super Glue on it on the bottom.  And they handed it to me.  And I had this habit of going in and sitting down on the sofa, and there was like a covered cloth arm of the sofa.  And I put my coffee cup on my little covered arm of the sofa, and I went to take a drink and it-and I realized I’d Super Glued my coffee cup on the bottom and it was stuck to the sofa.

RR: I’m getting a signal that there are 100 seats, not 200.  I beg your pardon.  There are 100 tickets left because of the readjustment of the building.  Is that correct?  Okay.  Carlton.

CP: Well, clap your hands one more time just to get the blood circulating.  (Applause)  Close to 27 years ago, almost shortly after I arrived at the campus of ORU, I met the young man who shall come and speak to us.  We became fast friends.  I remember sitting late at night in our dorms.  Oh, we haven’t collected the applications.  Okay, let’s collect.  Are you ready to collect? Give us some happy music, brother.  Sing a little chorus and let’s collect.  As the ushers collect, we’ll just pass them as if this was an offering.  And put it in there and make sure you’ve written not in tongues so we can explain it.  Start expecting to hear from us immediately following the conference.  Come on. (SINGING “Ancient of Days”)

Hallelujah!  Glory to God!  Amen.  Make a complete circle. Just do like real good, those of you who are standing.  Do it back the other way and just make yourself a little dizzy.  Then you can sit down.

One of the first people I called when I fell in love with Gina was Myles Munroe … (blank place on cassette) … I said, “Yes.”  He said, “How do you know you’re in love?  Give me some reasons.”  And I said, “That’s the catch.  I have no reason.”  He said, “Good.  Then marry her.”  I said, “What do you mean?”  He said, “Well, if you have reasons why you love her, you might have some reasons why you don’t.  Because reasons lead to expectations or conditions, conditions lead to expectations, expectations almost always lead to disappointment.  So try to love her unconditionally like God loves you.”  That one word has been powerful.

He’s one of the most intelligent, I think, provocative, deep thinking.  God has given him a tremendous concern for Third World mentality, Third world people, to bring Third World thinkers. The French Industrialists who coined the phrase “Third World people” meant those people who did not benefit directly from the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century.  Most of those are people of color all over the planet.  He’s from Nassau.  He was born and raised in the Bahamas.  I’ve been there when his ministry first started.

We traveled with the Souls A’Fire Choir.  We traveled together in this country, thinking and dreaming and in our own mind hearing God.  And now we’re adults, grown, with children, and when I went on my honeymoon, Myles preached at my church to help bring peace.  He set the house in order apostolically that day and has preached many, many times, especially has given the most prophetic and apostolic word in our Azusa Conferences.  He is one of my favorite teachers.  I quote him almost constantly. Would you give a nice warm welcome this morning to Dr. Myles Munroe.

He helped prepare my wife, my wife listened to his tapes before she ever met me.  Thank you for getting my wife ready for me, man.  She heard the whole series.  You are her favorite. Come on, the one and only, Dr. Myles Munroe.  (Applause)

DR. MYLES MUNROE: Praise God.  Remain standing, please.  If you’re not, please stand with the persons next to you.

However, if you don’t let them go.  I found out something about people that hurt you.  You’re the victim.  That makes them the sinner and you the sinnee.  But if you don’t let them go and you begin to harbor that, guess what the Bible says?  You become the sin-ner as well.  You’re committing sin by harboring bitterness.  Okay, so you try and get it out and they do it again.  You pour it in.  It’s like a perpetual cycle.  But there’s a way to get that broken.

And so I’m praying everything I can think of.  I’m getting really frustrated, and I am sick and tired of these perpetual acts happening again and again.  I thought, “I’ve got to break this in the Spirit realm.”  Well, I forgive them, thinking that’s going to release them.  And then I say it.

You know what?  My mother writes down a word from the Lord. And when my mother speaks, heaven moves.  I know it.  And so she said, “I got a word for you on this.  I really know that God’s going to release you if you receive this word.”

Well, see, you know, I was hoping it was going to be, you know, David and Goliath, chop off their head, you know.  I heard Kenneth Copeland say one time, “Satan, if you had skin on, I’d whip you myself.”  So, see, I was in that mentality.  This one had skin on, I was going to whip her myself.

So my mother said, “I’ve got the answer.”  And she sent me a pantyhose cardboard.  I said, “Ma, this is a pantyhose cardboard.”  She said, “This is what the Lord said to me, and that’s all I had, so I wrote it down.”  She said, “The Lord spoke this to me, “You have every reason to be bitter, but you have no right.”

And the Lord showed me I need to do two things.  And if you’re carrying any kind of bitterness or harboring anything against anybody, you’ve got excess baggage, excess distractions. You’re wrapped up in the wrong thing and you need to let it go. Because will not put new wine in old wineskins.  It’s like a shopping trip.  If you go with your cart full of all your old junk, you can’t get any new stuff.

And I was carrying around baggage and I’d let it go and I’d pick it up and I’d let it go.  And the Lord showed me to do a two-step process.  Number one, release them with more than spiritual lip service.  Say, “I forgive you.  I release you.  I let you go.”

But you know what the Bible says?  You have to bless those who spitefully use you.  Well, I don’t know why, but in my mentality I got this idea that blessing them meant, “God, give them a new house.”  I don’t know why.  You know, I pray they get new kids or I pray they get new shoes, I don’t know why.  But in my mind, I felt like I had to pray blessing of things.