Creflo Dollar - How to Receive the Presence of God Daily - Part 2
Go to John 1, verse 1 and verse 14. John 1, verse 1 and verse 14. Glory be to God, hallelujah. Mm, mm, mm. I'm praying that people meet the real God. I don't want 'em to die in religion, die playing church, die thinking they anointed and don't even know who God is. Most powerful thing we can do is pray. You know why? Jesus got up and prayed every morning. Now if Jesus got up great, Bible says, "the great time before day," to pray, how do you feel we don't need to do that? Jesus got up to pray before he did anything. I think he got up and had fellowship with the Holy Spirit. I think he got up and got focused in on what was going on. I don't think it's like what we do. I don't think he really got up, I don't think he did all that. I think focus is the key because I now understand that this is the greatest way for the devil to destroy and attack your vision and your assignment.
See, what the devil will do, is God gives you that one vision. What he'll do to try to mess up that vision God gave you is to give you another vision: di-vision, two visions or three or four. What he tryin' to do? Take your focus away from the one that God gave you. And it's gonna require you getting up every day, recalibrating and refocusing on what it is, what you're supposed to do, and who you are, and all that kind of stuff. Other than that, you're gonna open yourself up to a whole bunch of tomfoolery, silly stuff, and miss out on who the real God is. Thank you, Lord Jesus. All is well. All is well. Oh, my goodness, all is well. If I see some of y'all on the side of the street, handling some stuff, I'd pull over on the side and kind of help you out a little bit.
Some say, "Hey, Pastor Dollar, what they doing"? We're handling some stuff. Next thing you know, three or four World Changers. You don't need but 'bout two World Changers, but World Changers everywhere. I bump into 'em everywhere I go. That devil trembling right now. World Changers, don't even know where. World Changers ought to jump out in the middle of a meat aisle and meet you on the cereal aisle and before you know it, when you get on the sauce aisle, that person has been delivered, set free, and praying in the Holy Ghost. That's the kind of church I'm talkin' about. Look at this. He said, "In the beginning was the," what? "Word". Now the Word was in the beginning. He said, "The Word was," what? "With God". And he said, "The Word was," what? But "In the beginning was the," what?
So however you begin, whatever you begin, make sure you begin with the Word. Why would you begin with the Word? Because the Word is God. I said the Word is God. Don't get spooky and try to do stuff outside the Word. The Word is God. Now look at verse 14: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst them, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth". Look what he said. He said, "This Word that you began whatever you're gonna start with, this Word is eventually going to be manifested. This Word is eventually gonna be made flesh. This Word eventually, you're gonna behold the glory of that Word that you've been holding on to".
Satan does not want us to get the Word, he does not want us to want to know the Word. He just wants to do spooky stuff and make it look like he's super-spiritual. It's the Word. Don't get spooky-pooky with people. Don't come up to people, acting spooky. "Oh, I feel the Lord saying to me", ah-ah-agh! Where that at in the Bible? Be coming up doing all spooky stuff to me. "The Lord wants me to rub my hands all over your face". In this day and time? You better back up, devil. Better rub your own face. "The Holy Ghost told me to come up and hug you". You better back up. You better get some information. You ain't gotta get deep like that. Ain't nowhere in the Bible that said you have to hug somebody when you come to church or it said that you had to hug somebody when you see 'em in public somewhere.
I see people in public all the time, and this was before the pandemic. I ain't go huggin' everybody I saw, I don't know where they been or where they comin' from. You gotta be careful not to invent these religious, yeah. And then try to use it to convict other people into doing something that you want done in the name of some kind of fable you came up with and then assigned a Scripture to it. Stop. You can't walk in this deep spiritual walk I'm talking about, playing games. "Ah, the Holy Ghost is on me". And then you go slap somebody. Ain't nothing happened. They've been hurt in that area where you slapped them for the last five years. No burden was removed, no yoke was destroyed, and you with the devil just showed up slapping people with a fable.
God wants us to have fellowship with him, enjoy life, and enjoy one another. He not tryin' to get you to be deep 24/7. "Hey, how you doin'"? "I ain't in the presence right now. Hold on, hold on". God wants you to enjoy life. That's why he wants you to know him so he can show you how to enjoy life and so he can show you how to enjoy one another. But the Church has put so many fables in it that not even Jesus understand when he come to some church. "What they doing"? "Oh, the Lord said". He said, "I didn't say that. I ain't never said that". 'Cause they don't know about him and they don't know him. But you know him. What the Bible say? "For you who are with him and he shall be in you". And you know him. And we gotta help each other out.
Quit sitting there and just tolerating all them fables and all that junkie stuff people doing. And stay out of church gossip. What's happening somewhere outside the church ain't none of your business. That's why you became a member. It ain't none of your business who doing what, how doing what, who got in trouble, that ain't none of your business. Your job is when you hear something, "Lord, I thank you. I send the presence that way right now, Lord. Take care". Y'all better stop. Jesus coming. Jesus is coming. He's coming sooner than you think, sooner than I think. Watch what get ready to happen. You talkin' about people running to God. But we gonna be ready. I want 'em to run. I ain't sitting back, talking about "What you running for God now? Be burned in the name of Jesus".
See, that ain't even God. That ain't God. God ain't saying no, "Be burned in the name of Jesus. To hell with all o' y'all in the name of Jesus. How do you like me now"? 'Cause the key proof of whether or not you carry God is how you treat people. That's the key. Can we see the love of God operating in your life upon somebody else's life? That's the key. That's the key. Oh, I sense his presence. Oh, something good is gonna happen to you, amen? All right, now, I know I had my glasses up here, all right. Now, watch this.
Now think about this. "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God". That same Word, do you know when you open a Bible and study it, you're right there in the presence? You ever done that? Come home tired and just sat down and got in the Word for a minute, and all of a sudden everything started changing? Notice the first thing that came when you got in the Word: peace. And if you stay with it, grace will be multiplied. You get in the presence of the Word. You get in the presence of the Word. Then you open that written Word up, you're in the presence of the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God. And also he said, "This Word will display its glory. You'll see the glory". You know what it means when you see the glory?
See, we've gotten so fable-ized with that. "Ooh, the glory". Well, what does that mean? It's manifestation. It's manifested Word. When you're walking in the presence of God and learning how to live and abide in the presence of God, you're gonna see manifested Word. Some of it you asked for, some of it you didn't ask for. Some of it God did it just to do it. He wants to share his glory with us. He wants to share his glory with us. Well, it's taken some, like I said before, 20 years to do something. Those of us who'll learn how to walk in the manifestation of the presence of God will also walk in the manifestations of his glory. It'll be manifested. And sometimes, people ask you, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How did you get that to happen"? "Man, I just been enjoying Jesus. I'll be honest with you. I just been enjoying Jesus, and stuff been happening". But now what happens?
So now they gonna wanna enjoy Jesus like you enjoy Jesus, and their motivation is so stuff can happen. That's not your motivation. You're not enjoying Jesus to get stuff to happen. You're enjoying Jesus 'cause you enjoy Jesus, and your motivation is Jesus. But a lot of people, they have the wrong motivation. They see what happened to somebody else. You remember the story about the sons of Sceva, the seven sons of Sceva, I believe? They came up, there was a professional exorcist, and these people were demon-possessed. And they decided they gonna come in, they gonna get paid, and they gonna came in, they said to people who were possessed with demons, they said, "We command you. We adjure you and command you to come out by Paul and the Jesus that Paul knew". Them demons stopped, like, ergh! They said, "Wait a minute, Paul we know". And all the demons said, "Oh, yeah, we know Paul". Then they said, "Jesus we know". They said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I do". But then they looked at him and they say, "Well, but who are you"?
Now, the worst thing that can happen to you is you in the middle of casting the devil out and the devil stop and they say, "Who are you"? And I believe the Bible says that those demons stripped them, the professional exorcist, stripped their clothes off of 'em and ran 'em out. You know, that's gotta be sad. They coming up there, trying to cast the devil out, and the devil done cast them out. Look what happened. Their motivation was the professionalism that they could turn this into a profession and get the results of a Paul and a Jesus. Don't let something or somebody spoil and pervert your motive. Always ask yourself why do you do what you do? Why are you here today? Why do you want the presence of God in your life? Is the sum total of it is to fulfill your definition of success and his definition of success is so much greater than yours.
No, when you start experiencing Christ, none of that matters. And yet, all of it matters to God. It's like you're not even, it's like I ain't seeking nothing but you. You know what God say? "And I ain't seeking nobody but you. I want you. I want you. I wanna bless you. I wanna touch you, I wanna heal you. I wanna deliver you. I want your dreams to be manifested. I want you to be happy". Think about, that's the God. You up here trying to make and do all of that, and he wanna do all that already. The Bible says, "Acknowledge him in all thy ways". What that mean? Put him first place, and he'll direct your path. He says, "I know directions to everything you ever wanted in life. Can you please put yourself aside and let me be your God". That's what this is about. It isn't about playing Church. I used to wonder if I preach like this, everybody gonna leave a church, then we're gonna have a bunch of empty seats. I ain't gotta wonder no more 'cause I spent a year and a half preaching to empty seats. I ain't scared of no empty seats no mo'. I ain't scared of 'em no mo'.
If you sittin' up there this morning, God bless your souls. But it don't scar' me. Why? None of that's my motivation. I ain't countin' seats. That ain't my motivation. I ain't countin', that ain't my motivation. My motivation is I got a certain amount of time left and I gotta fulfill that time by doing exactly what God tell me to do and what God tell me to preach to you so we can be carriers of his flame and his fire, so people can see God through us. But if they wanna know Jesus, they ought to be able to look at some of us and say, "That's what he look like, right there. That's what he look, right there. That's not what he look, right there. He look like that and he don't look like that at all. What's your name? Who is you"? All right, let me move on. Let me move on. I wrote this down and I was, like, "Wow, the consequences of not knowing God".
So what happens when you don't know, what happens when you don't have any knowledge about God and what happens, you know, no knowledge about God means you don't know him. I mean, think about that. You know, you're interested in marrying somebody and there's no knowledge about 'em, number one. And you don't really know 'em, 'cause you don't have knowledge about 'em and you've not walked into a intimate knowledge of knowing of them. What happens with Christians every day, Christians who are at home today, Christians who are here today, and they don't know God right? Listen to this. "Your impression of who God is will determine how you receive from God". So if you think God's a judge, that's gonna determine how you receive from God. If you think God's a murderer, that's gonna determine how you receive from God. If you think God is the one that says, you know, I got to make you suffer real hard before I can give you this blessing, that's how you gonna receive from God. If you think God is the God that sends fire down from heaven and just burns people up, no matter what the situation is, that's how you're gonna receive from God.
The question this morning is what is your impression of who God is, because if you have a wrong impression of who God is, that's how you're gonna receive from him. And you know, a lot of that starts with this. If you in a wrong church, listening to a wrong preacher, who don't know nothing about God and don't know God, and proceeds to preach a sermon about God and then gives you the wrong impression, and you're there 'cause your mama went there, and here her mama went there, her mama went there, then all y'all gonna have this wrong impression of God which you proceed to pass down to other people and spread that same fable everywhere and call it the church. "Incorrect concepts about God will determine why your life is going in the direction that it is going in".
An incorrect concept. A guy that you listen to because, I mean, that guy, he can pull it, boy. He can do this, and he do that. Why are we paying so much attention to the man and the image? It can't be about the man and the image. It's got to be about God, 'cause he's trying to make you into his image. And we keep making it about a man or woman. We keep making about a church. We keep making about all this other stuff. We go to the Internet. "Oh, look at this, and look at that". And you don't understand: the farther and farther away you get from God's Word, the farther and farther away you get from him, the closer you get to wrong impressions, and you can't even walk with God. And professing to be wise, you've become a fool. Now, not if you're a member of this church, we ain't gonna let that happen. We ain't gonna let that happen. "Grace and peace is multiplied through," what? "The knowledge and the anointing of God".
So some people try to get grace and peace to be multiplied through prayer. Grace and peace is not gonna be multiplied through prayer. 'Cause God didn't say that, did he? He said, "Grace and peace multiplied through the knowing and the knowledge of God". Why is it that we're always substituting something for God? Why is Jesus never enough? Why is Jesus never enough? Why must we always add to Jesus? He's never enough. I told you last week what he said to me. I said, "Lord, I remember these things you're showing me". He said, "You had all you need when you had me. When those lame people walked and when those miracle took place in those meetings and when that stadium was packed out, what did you have to do with it"? He said, "You already had everything you need in me". I said, "Lord, what happened"? He said, "You left me, trying to get more of what you already had".
Ain't that the truth about most Christians? We even sing songs about more. More of you, God. More anointing, God. More glory, God. More even like, "I don't gave you all you ever need and you still tryin' to get more because you cannot trust that I am enough". Today you have a pastor that absolutely trusts that he's enough. I got all I ever need, I don't need to pray for nothing else. As long as I have him, as long as I bring him wherever I'm going, everything gonna be taken care of. I don't need to go into a five-hour prayer, and I don't need to go into a two-week fast. All I need to go, know, is to make sure I carry his flame, carry his fire, carry his presence, and he'll make sure that I am sufficient in everything that I need. If I go to a board meeting, praise God, I just make sure I invite him into my heart, and walk up in that board meeting with him. Are you listening to me?
"Wrong knowledge produces wrong results. Faith is based on knowledge, and wrong knowledge will produce wrong faith. And if you have a need for healing, if you have a need for prosperity, et cetera, you have a need of understanding who he is. If we knew the nature and the character of God, then unbelief and worrying and fear would not be a factor in our life. If you knew how faithful, how loving, how caring, God is, you wouldn't worry about that stuff. Did you know that if a person really knew God and understood God as the wonderful Father he is, there would be no trouble believing him and believing his Word? So having faith in other people means developing relationship with them, right? To the point where you know them so well you just completely trust them".