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Watch 2022-2023 online sermons » Leon Fontaine » Leon Fontaine - Living Powerfully

Leon Fontaine - Living Powerfully


Leon Fontaine - Living Powerfully
TOPICS: Lifestyle

Hey everybody, so good to have you with me. I love the Word of God. There's something about God's Word that it gets inside of me that just oh man, peace and passion and joy. Just, you can keep it going, if you just stay in God's wonderful Word. So today, I'm going to talk about living powerfully. And it's probably going to take me two or three messages to walk out four verses, that have changed my life. And I want them to impact you like they've impacted me.

You know, years ago when God called me to the ministry, I was a teenager in my late teens and I was kind of running from God because to me, pastoring was we had to kind of just put up with all the whiners and the complainers and the betraying board members and the things of that, can see a little bit about church and other pastors. And I just kind of ugh, I don't want to do this. Yet deep inside knowing God had called me to be a minister of the Gospel. To equip the saints, to raise up His church. And, that's something that you don't decide. Only Jesus can call the five-fold ministry and I knew He had called me.

And so I just told Him, I said, if I'm going to be a minister of the Gospel, I want, and I had some of these, I want to be powerful. I want to see God's you know, I want to see leadership. I want to see signs and wonders. And, God just dropped in my spirit, of course, of course. And my passion has been, to get the church of Jesus Christ to where Jesus designed it, powerful, influential, miraculous, loving, soul-winning, influencing politics and business and education. And medicine. And in order to do that, it requires us to be contemporary and relevant while being filled with the spirit of God. So we call it Spirit Contemporary.

In 2 Peter 1, are four verses that profoundly impacted me as a young man. And, as a minister of the Gospel. It says, and I'll start with verse 1, Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained precious faith. You know, there is a difference in faith after the cross, and in faith before the cross. Here, Peter is talking, and by the way, Holy Spirit, He is the one that inspired the writing of the Bible. He's the author, not Peter, not Paul. Those are the writers. But it's Holy Spirit, okay, who is the author. And here He is saying, that this faith is precious. That word 'precious' means so valuable. Something you're cautious with. And it says you've obtained it with us, through the righteousness of God, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

When you go into Romans 5, there's something new that's taken place since the cross of Jesus. And that is, that righteous, is a gift from God. There is a, a gift of righteousness that has come to us. And righteousness means, that you are right with God. Now. You can say Leon, I've got failures, I've got an addiction. I'm dealing with some stuff, I've got, I've got stinkin' thinkin'. Oh, I get that. But because righteousness is a gift, your position with God is that you are righteous because of Jesus. And we're always growing, renewing our mind, making our body a living sacrifice, for the rest of your life you're going to get better and better at that if you stay in the Word. But are you righteous?

If you've given your life to Christ the answer is yes. And so now, if you want to see miracles, it's not a works righteousness, it is a faith righteousness. If you do not believe that you are righteous because of Jesus, you will never see incredible miracles. And you will never walk in a, a consistency of the miraculous. You will not even be able to keep your emotions and the strength on the inside of you consistent. You will be up, and down, vacillating, double-minded. Oh, you are going to struggle with the, for the, with the rest of your life if you don't understand the very first thing it teaches here, and that is that you have a precious faith. And how does this faith stay strong in you? Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Through the righteousness of Jesus, you cannot have strong faith. You can't have this kind of precious faith, the faith of Jesus, that just believes and mountains move and diseases fall off and finances come in, and families are restored and churches rise up, and whole countries are touched by the power of God. It takes something called faith, and this faith, I'm talking about a previous faith. There are people of God rising up around this world, who have a precious faith. Who are locked on to, "I am righteous because of Jesus. I am the righteousness of God, in Christ".

And I want to challenge you today. That the enemy will always attack you. In the area of your failures. He's going to attack you in the area of your thought life. The Bible says that Satan is an accuser, a liar, he causes confusion, he is, his arrows are fiery, they're always attacking. And they always bring pain. You know the one thing about fire, is that you can't touch it even for a second without feeling pain. So when these fiery darts are coming at your head, when they hit and you accept them, okay, it's the pain of guilt. The pain of condemnation. It's fear, it's all of these negative emotions that you were never designed to even experience in the Garden. And so, like precious faith.

The Bible says in Ephesians 6, that, that faith, and it gives us a look at faith that a lot of people forget. It's a shield. When you begin to believe that you are righteous because of Jesus, then the fiery arrows the enemy attacks you with to make you lose the miraculous edge. Lose that miracle that you're praying over your child. Lose the miracle you're believing for in your marriage. Lose that miracle that you're believing for in your career. Fiery darts, whoot, whoot, just arrow after arrow coming in. And the shield of faith, when it is up, it's ching! They're just bouncing off the shield. Ting, ting, ting, ting. It doesn't even get to you. If the lies and the deceitfulness and the accusations are still going on in your head, then your faith is not precious enough.

You need to focus and everyone's going I've got to focus on my faith. Actually it says, focus on your righteousness. It says, you've obtained like precious faith and this precious faith is through the righteousness of God, and Jesus Christ. So if you are struggling, and you feel condemned and you've given your life to Christ, but any time you try to stand up and believe God for a miracle, it rarely happens.

All around the world I meet people, two kinds. The first kind is they just have never really seen the miraculous, they're so full of doubt and unbelief, and they always say things like this. I'm just a sinner. Saved by grace. Now what they're saying, is they're making excuses for all of the sin or the things that aren't where they should be in their lives. And it's a defeated comment, I'm just a sinner. Saved by grace. And they go to certain verses and they pull it out. Now, we understand that your behavior and your thinking is not perfect yet. Which is why Jesus died on the cross for you. And He gave us a gift of righteousness. You are in right standing with God because of Jesus.

Man, when this thing came alive in my heart, I would go to believe God for something and whether it was a miracle in my body or my child's body, or in Sally or in our church, or needing millions of dollars somewhere and we're believing, and I'm speaking and declaring and prophesying to the wind, and declare, and speaking the promises of God. That the attacks of the enemy would be well, you know, you really haven't got things together here yet. He would attack any little thing. Even if I got angry, somewhere. Or if I was in traffic and I didn't do things just right. He would try to attack my mind and I'm always growing and changing like you.

But I begin to settle in on this hugely crucial doctrine. I am righteous because of Jesus. And because I am righteous, Jesus has qualified me for every promise that I need. It starts on this thing, when I gave my life to Jesus Christ. Yes, I am a new creation. But what's beautiful about this new creation is that all of the behavioral things I'm working on, all of the things that get me off track, aren't the things that qualify me for the miraculous. It is this gift of righteousness. It is Jesus that has qualified me for healing, prosperity, peace. For it is Him that has qualified me to walk out my destiny. To live largely. It is Him that has qualified me to walk in peace, to walk in joy.

None of it have I earned, and when I figured this out and just got this rock solid on the inside of me, then every time I was believing for something. I wasn't getting double-minded. See, here's what people will do. What, let's pick on healing. I need a miracle in my body. And the Word says, and the Word says, thank You Jesus, thank You Jesus. And then you start going about your day and a little bit of pain rises up out of that area. And then you realize well you know what? I think I should be kinder and you know I'm still struggling with this and I have angry thoughts over there. And, that's why God's not healing me. And you don't realize it, it's not that God is going to heal you. He's already healed you.

Because of Jesus, I am righteous. And this is probably one of the most major things that has deflected for me, all the darts. Now, darts are thoughts, accusations, lies, of the enemy coming at us. You see, the enemy lost his ability to accuse you before God. Now, different theologians look at it different ways. But we can tell that somewhere, somehow, Satan seemed to have access to accuse people before God. And, that was stopped when you read Revelation how he, he fell and how, he was stripped of all of his power. All of his authority. Whatever that was, he was, Jesus stripped him, he has no authority, no power.

Now, the only place he can accuse you, is to you. He can't go accuse you to God. And cost you your miracle. He can't go accuse you in the courts of heaven, because that's all been shut down by Jesus. That's why even after His death, He went into heaven and it talked about cleansing some things there when it comes to how we stand before God. And those are a whole different teaching, I haven't got time to get into. But what Jesus did on the cross was stunning. It was amazing, it was such a complete decisive victory that it is no longer an issue with God, okay, about the things Satan can accuse you of and find little things or big things that you've done wrong. Because once you lock on, that I have precious faith, because I am righteous through Jesus.

This verse one of 2 Peter 1, needs to be re-read, and re-read, and spoken out of your mouth, and spoken out of your mouth, so that you can begin to pray effectively. So many people watching me today have never developed a prayer life that actually brings miracles. It's a defeated life, it's an unhappy life. It's always begging, bugging, and pleading with God trying to get these things to happen because you're coming from a perspective of, I need God to heal me. I need God to prosper me. I need God to answer my prayer. Guess what? As we proceed through this in the next couple of days, you're going to find that He's already answered every prayer by giving us all things. It's just yours, it's, you know, He's handed us all things that pertain to our lives.

And so everyone thinks that when we pray, that God has to make a decision. And maybe He gets the angels around Him and He says okay. You know, Gabriel or maybe the apostles, Peter, you know, John, come here. Leon's been asking for this. What do you think? Should we give it to him? And well, let's take a vote. Well, the twelve apostles say yes and twelve angels say no. Or we have this crazy picture in our head. But here's the thing. Why Jesus is so incredible, and why I love Him so much, is that 2.000 years ago on the cross, He died in my place. He took the curse of the law, became a curse for me, the Bible says that He took sin, He became sin. And then He has given anyone who believes on Him, this gift of you are righteous.

And so when someone says to me Leon, are you a sinner? I all, and I always say, no. I am a righteous man. Now, if they ask well then are you saying that everything you think and do is righteous? No. No, there's times I make mistakes and the Word sin, the most common word amartia, literally means to miss the mark for God's best. Do I miss the mark for God's best? Yes. And we interpret that as sin meaning that we do, yes we sin every day. We miss the mark every day.

But here's what's interesting. Those missing the marks, those sins that you do every day, aren't costing you unless you're letting this get into your heart. Because, what you believe in your heart and what Jesus is saying, is that it doesn't say you have obtained precious faith through living clean, and doing no wrong. You've got precious faith. No, it says we have obtained precious faith through the righteousness of God and Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Through what? Through this righteousness of God.

There is a great struggle that I notice around the world. I am teaching in churches and conferences around the world, and I'm seeing everywhere I go, that a large contingency of the church have bowed down to the attacks of teachers who are attacking literally righteousness, meaning you are a rotten dirty good for nothing sinner, and you are a sinner barely saved by grace. It's like, you know, even the songs we sing about grace, mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead. That kind of stuff will get you killed.

You see, knowledge is crucial. We're going to, we're going to be talking about this in our next session as well, but people think stuff like well you know what you don't know can't hurt you. That is so wrong. What you don't know is killing you. As you look over the years, of different diseases and things that doctors and scientists did, the things they didn't know was killing them. Even when ships set sail, from the European continent, over from the New World, and if they were too long at sea and these men began to die of scurvy. And it was a brutal way to die. And I mean, they died and they tried all of these things and then at one point they found out which vitamins were lacking. And they began to stack limes and different things on. And a simple little thing kept thousands upon thousands of sailors alive.

When you don't know, it can cost you. The Bible says in Hosea 4:6, my people perish for a lack of knowledge. And so when I dive into the Word of God, I want to know Jesus. I want to know His Word. I want to know me, and what He's done for me. I want to grow in this precious knowledge.

So, one of the first points we're going to share, is that you've got precious faith that works. You know, if I say oh, this is my car. It's precious. It's, in other, the word precious is like literally how do you even put a value on it? It's just like wow. But, if your car doesn't run and doesn't take you very far, and doesn't take you anywhere, it's not that precious. It's not valuable. You're kicking the door going, you piece of junk, you don't even run.

When it says precious faith, it means you've found something so amazing, because it works in your marriage and it works on your body, and it works on your mind. It works between you and God, it works on the generations coming after you. This precious faith, this is the victory that overcomes the world. Even our faith, this faith is precious. It works here on the planet, it works in the spirit world. It works in the mental world. It works in hell, it works everywhere. Faith, this precious faith, works. And we've obtained it through Jesus. This faith that Jesus has, we have this precious faith. And, we are righteous because of what Jesus did.

I want to go on to my other point, but I think I'm just going to close with that area there. That you are righteous. Now, what you need to do every day, is take this verse for the next week, and change it a little bit into a confession. For example, it says here to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Now, how can I say this in a way that it means something to me? Because the word that you speak and meditate on, needs to create new pictures. It needs to have a new thinking. It needs to create new dreams, new visions. The language of Holy Spirit is dreams and visions. When you speak the Word, it should cause you to see your life differently. And so what I do when I, I'll just tell you what I do when I see this verse. I look at this, and I just say Father I want to thank You, I have precious faith. Because I am righteous through Jesus. It is a gift that is mine, and precious faith is mine. And with faith, it changes anything on this planet.

Oh, thank You Jesus, I've got precious faith. Faith that works, faith that pulls down mountains. Faith that changes anything on this planet, because of the righteousness that is mine. It's a gift of righteousness, and just keep saying this different ways. Every day, until this revelation takes a hold of you and everywhere you go you know it's a done deal. What is? I have precious faith. I've obtained it, because I gave my life to Jesus. And, I am righteous. And I am, the Bible says here to the saints of Corinth.

You know, every time that Paul wrote a letter, he didn't write it to the sinners, and Corinth, to the sinners at Galatia, to the sinners in Rome. He always said to the saints. And yet we have preachers that knock us and knock us to say, I'm a saint. Well everybody in the church was saints because of their position in Christ, then we are. And if you'd stop calling yourself a sinner, because that's not your position. Your position is saint.

I have five children. And their last name is Fontaine. When they were young and they made mistakes and they did things that really wasn't Fontaine-like. I didn't remove the name and make them stay outside they can't sleep in their bed, they can't eat with us at the table, no, no, no, no, no. That name is theirs from birth. Nothing will ever change it. Their position is, their identity is, you're a Fontaine.

Now, because you are born again, things don't change. You are in God's family. Born into His family. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. It is by a gift because of what Jesus did, it is His sinlessness, His behavior, His dying on the cross, all that He did, His death, His burial, His resurrection. His ascension to the throne of God, the right hand of the Father. These revelations are what anchor me in, that I've got faith that is precious, remarkable, faith that works. Instead of so many Christians that can't get it to work. We're going to talk some more about this, don't miss the next session.
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