Personal Conquests
These are very interesting times. From north to east, from west to south – we are scattered from tears to joy, from dance to contrition. This is wonderful! Our Lord is so great, wonderful, and somewhat predictably unpredictable!
Today here one of the dimensions that the Lord wants to give us is to renew our strength. And although few of us labor really hard, we are still tired of cyclicality. Sometimes cyclicality brings total contextual fatigue. This is clear to me.
But there is a freshness of the Spirit that the Lord always brings – like a green leaf from a bud – it opens up and is always fresh. You can’t see a tired leaf. The Lord promised that “they will walk and not grow weary and will renew their strength.”
I desire that we be renewed in strength, that we receive this freshness of God – such clear spring water – and receive the equipment and sanctification of God.
They made a research and found out that after ten years of pastoral work many leave the ministry. I have been in ministry for thirty years. But in some areas of my life I feel better than before. It is amazing. I learned that life comes from the Spirit. It flows from the Spirit. And when you move from the Spirit, you are joined with the Spirit and live harmoniously in the Spirit, then from there it goes into the body, it completely illuminates everything around, it gushes like a fountain, and everything around turns green. Because the Lord first created the heavens, and then the earth. Heaven first puts everything in its place.
It’s incredible how powerful a man of God can be! How powerful he can be, unbending, tireless, tirelessly giving life, strength, revelation to others. You have no idea what power is hidden in the inner man if he walks with God! Apostle Paul prayed for this, so that God would open our eyes – so that we could comprehend this incredible power of God’s Spirit in us. I want and continue to comprehend this.
Honestly, I’m not tired of ministry at all. How can I get tired of love?! Refresh yourself here, drink some water! There is water, it’s here! It’s all alive. I’m a witness.
I would like to continue the topic of the second blessing. This is such a poetic thought, but at the same time functional.
Wesley believed in the second blessing – in his understanding it was that a man receives a blessing from above, he accepts Christ, but this is only the initial stage – he must further be zealous for the Holy Spirit for a believer – to provide for his ministry, to experience the second wave of blessing and to receive the Spirit afresh – a second time – in order to have power for ministry, so that this power can “pay for” all that he has to do in Christ. In other words, he needed the first wave to get born, and the second – for ministry. He had such tools for understanding this direction, such theology. He called it “the second blessing.” Wesley said that every Christian should obtain the second blessing. This is a prophet. Because Jesus taught that “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!” That is, we see how the disciples received the Spirit, but the Lord told them that they were to wait for what was promised. “It is not enough that I breathed on you and you received Him.” They had already raised the dead, they had already healed the sick, but they still needed a second blessing. It’s amazing how all this works for God’s people!
Yes, we call this baptism of fire or baptism of the Spirit. Second time. But God’s Word teaches us that we need to be continually filled with the Spirit. Again and again. To be filled more than once, to be baptized, so that later you can keep the radiance and keep getting new waves.
I don’t know what the wave count is today, but I know that the Lord wants to change the wave today. And we must move from one wave to another. I challenge you today: you surfers of God, change the wave! This present wave is being blown away, it will be blown away anyway, it doesn’t carry you properly anymore! I encourage you to leap and take risks!
This is what needs to happen here. As a testimony to this you will be fresh. If you leave tired, you haven’t changed the wave. I feel the freshness coming. The dew is coming. I feel the coolness and dampness of the dew. From afar. I feel its coming. I feel this wave, it’s here, it’s coming. And those who have ears to hear, let them hear. I will repeat the words of Christ: only those who have ears to hear let them hear! May God bless you. And for them I came here.
I want to talk about the second blessing in a global sense. This is the blessing of another generation. This is not about youth. This is when spiritual children are granted their personal blessing in the Lord, not just when we introduce a new generation of children.
At the end of the eighties I began to near Christ, and in the nineties I already served the Lord and dedicated my life to Him. And I am very happy that it was so. And when people went from here, they became the second generation. They are a little younger. But this was a generational difference in faith. This is what I call the second generation, the second wave. And the next generation came – these are young people. They were born in the Internet age. This is a completely different generation, not a transitional one.
It is surprising, but we have no gap between us; we are connected very harmoniously. Because we move with them and live according to the Spirit. And through the Spirit we are harmoniously connected, although our thinking and perception of the world are different. We have also reformatted, and there are no problems with that. When Caleb entered Canaan with Joshua, different by several decades in age, they were brothers – they knew how to clean the vineyard and did everything fine, without any problems.
This ability to switch from wave to wave like a surfer is a very important ability. This is the spirit of Caleb. Caleb was able to rearrange. He was under Moses, it was a thorough, classical school – how to believe, how to read the Bible, how to walk with God in holiness, how to observe tradition, how to read the Lord’s Prayer, how to switch from the worship hymn books – into mysticism – all these things. And Caleb could do this. He calmly rearranged, changed waves. This is the ability of God’s people. It means to humble yourself, to be flexible and jump over, jump over barriers, do the steeplechase.
And when you lose this ability, it means that old age has come, it has “covered you.” Because one of the striking characteristics of old people is their inability to change, their inability to renew themselves. And as soon as this happens, no matter how old you are, you get to the end of your life, because you store things, you are focused on preserving, and not on gaining. You keep your traditions, they can be neither good nor bad, and then they cannot be good – they are only bad. And you keep bad things, you keep bad things with all your might – what doesn’t work. And when you store, you store bad things.
I don’t want to play these games. I don’t want to stand even close. I don’t want to move with those who are in this. I leave them and move on – with those who are renewed. It doesn’t matter what connected us in the past. Nothing personal. I serve the Lord and I have not come to you, but to Jesus. I am His servant. God is on the move – I follow Him. He runs – I follow Him. He flies – I fly after Him. That’s it! I can’t “detach” me from Him, I will be with Him.
Jesus had friends. But as soon as God moved, He moved with Him. He could not stay for the sake of man in the city or at sea, He did not allow Himself to remain, He moved because God moved.
This is approximately how development occurs, this is how persecution is born, this is how friendship is torn, this is how new friendship is found – at a higher level. And this is how the leading of the Spirit of God happens. I love this stuff, it’s amazing! This is the highest creativity! This is the highest form of life! Do not look at people, but look only at Him and be faithful to Him, regardless of faces. These are the prophets.
This is what a real prophet is like! This is normal. When children go stronger and further than their parents. Why? – Because they have more time. They saved where you made mistakes – they stand on your shoulders and become taller. It’s amazing.
I am not talking about children of the flesh today. I’m talking about the next generation, the new wave. They’re better. And this should not cause envy, malice and revenge – it should cause joy in those who are pure in heart, it should cause great encouragement to cause it. Apostle Paul says: “I charge you, I give you the best things – I lay hands on you and give you an impartation so that you do what I didn’t manage to do, you must finish what I didn’t manage to do. He gives Timothy a will so that he can finish what he didn’t have time to do. Can you imagine what an impartation it is! What trust! This is one nature.
The Lord once said to a man of God who was just gaining strength, just beginning his journey, he receives these words from the Lord:
“Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’” (Second Chronicles 7:15-18).
This is the second blessing! I want to pray about it and find it. – When the next generation has its own blessing, not yours. When the next generation of my sisters and brothers will not have my blessing, but their own! When I don’t withdraw my blessing, I leave it with you. But you can add your own. And God will become not only the God of Abraham, but the God of Abraham and Isaac, and then the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because all threefold, “shaken down” blessings will be with you.
This is how it works in the spiritual world. That’s why I call it the second blessing – when sons and daughters receive their own earned blessing.
“Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold: so the Lord blessed him” (Genesis 26:12).
A hundred times! Abraham didn’t receive that much. Isaac got a lot! This is the Bible! That is, add two zeros to your annual earnings. The Lord blessed him so much!
“The man became great and increased more and more until he became very great” (Genesis 26:13).
This is what I wanted to talk about today. So that we don’t just pray, but convey it, so that we don’t envy, but rejoice that a new generation is rising. And they know that I give them the best things. The best things, so that they are to be better than me.
And we will give them this impartation so that this blessing comes and it becomes a springboard to receive theirs.
Isaac received not for Abraham’s sake, but for his own sake. These were his achievements, and he received his hundredfold `.