Paul Daugherty - How You Finish Is How You Start
Summary
This end-of-year sermon emphasizes "How you finish is how you start." The preacher urges reflection on 2024 to finish strong—washing off bitterness, regret, and wounds through forgiveness and the blood of Jesus, while pondering God's goodness like Mary did. He shares stories of releasing the past (David washing after loss, personal encounters) and poses four reflective questions: What happened to you? For you? In you? Through you? The goal: enter 2025 cleansed, thankful, and expectant for greater things.
How You Finish Is How You Start
I want to welcome our online campus, Victory North, Victory Manford. As I think about this idea of finishing, we’re going to get into the Word here in just a moment. I think about how I heard this sentence from a pastor many years ago. I was preaching in Australia at this man’s church, and I asked him, I said, “How did you start your church?” He said, “I started it by finishing my previous season at the church I was at.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I was serving another pastor for 20 years. I was working with him, helping him, and God started birthing a dream in my heart to start a church about 100 miles from there.” He said the Holy Spirit convicted me and said, “Before I start dreaming and strategizing and planning what’s next, I need to finish this season.”
He said so many people, when they know they’re going to start a new job, and they’re still working at their old job, they check out mentally. They might physically walk into their company, but mentally, they’re already checked out into what’s next. The same thing goes with years. As you’re coming to the end of a year, you can already mentally and emotionally check out and start thinking about next year while you’re still finishing this year. But he said this: how you finish something will determine how you start something. If you finish something with a lazy attitude, you’re going to start something with a lazy attitude. If you finish something being mentally and emotionally checked out, you’re going to start something with that same mental and emotional fatigue and mental and emotional fog. Being checked out, but if you finish sharp, if you finish on time, if you finish with the spirit of excellence, you will start with the spirit of excellence. If you finish with a determined attitude, not a defeated spirit but a victorious spirit.
This weekend I wore my running shoes; these are my Christmas running shoes. I was going to wear boots, but I was like, “No, I’m running into this next year.” I’m not finishing sitting on the couch, giving up on life, acting like it was a bad year. No, I am finishing this year with victory in this place. Come on, Jesus! Some of y’all need to take a Rema run in this Victory Church. You need to take a victory lap around the Rema parking lot. What I’m trying to say is the enemy would love for us to finish with a sense of doom and gloom, a lack of expectancy, a sense of frustration, listing out our woes, our problems from this year, what went wrong, our wounds, our scars. But I hear the Lord saying it’s time to shake off whatever the enemy tried to throw at you, and it’s time to get ready to run into what God is going to do through you. How you finish is how you start.
This pastor said to me, he said, “If I finish with an offended spirit towards my current pastor, I will start a church with an offended spirit. I will attract the spirit that I carry. If I finish this season bitter at all the people I worked with, I will start the next season with the bitter spirit, even with the people that are with me.” How many people are carrying their past into their future? How many people are still carrying the wounds and the bitterness from their ex in their previous relationship, punishing their current spouse, their current partner for what somebody else did 20 years ago? It’s time to finish well. It’s time to break the cycle.
Mary Pondered – Positive Reflection
In Luke 2:19, the Bible says that you could shout if you want to. Luke 2:19, woo! We shout for the Word of God in this house; we believe it’s more powerful than anything else. But in Luke 2:19, it says Mary treasured all these things in her heart; she pondered them in her heart. The message I’m preaching to you today requires some pondering; it requires some reflecting; it requires some investigating of the soul. What Mary did is she began to treasure what she had just walked through. She began to ponder and reflect the wise men, the shepherds, her and Joseph’s relationship, the baby that she conceived and gave birth to, Jesus.
She began to ponder it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Even Herod’s attempt to try to kill her child, she was pondering it; she was reflecting; she was taking in a tally of what happened in the last nine months. She was looking back on everything that had just happened in her life. As we come to the end of the year, one of the best ways we can finish is to finish with reflection in a positive direction. How you reflect will determine how you expect. If you reflect with a negative attitude—now there are two ways to reflect; there are two ways to look back. Reflect means just to look back, to kind of take some time to ponder what just happened.
When I think about the two ways to reflect, I look at Luke 17:32 where Jesus tells his disciples, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Remember Lot’s wife! It’s the only time where Jesus actually tells his disciples to remember an Old Testament character. He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.” It’s one of the shortest scriptures in the Bible; the only other one that’s shorter is “Jesus wept.” But this three-word scripture right here, “Remember Lot’s wife,” Jesus was saying this woman was looking back not with the sense of faith, not with the sense of “I learned some lessons.” See, there’s two ways to look back. Mary looked back with a reflective heart of positivity, but Lot’s wife looked back with a lustful heart of what she was missing. She was missing her past.
You can look back and learn from the lesson; you can look back and learn from what happened in 2024. You can look back and go, “Man, God did some things this last year; I’m grateful for what He did and I’m expecting Him to do greater in 2025.” Or you can look back like Lot’s wife. Jesus said, “Anyone who clings to what they have in this life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will preserve it.” What was He saying? He was connecting this scripture to Lot’s wife. He was saying if you cling to your past, you’ll never embrace your future. If you cling to where you came from—see, some people look back with a sense of gratitude and they go, “Thank God for what He did. Thank God for what He brought me out of. Thank God for where He’s taken me. Thank God for the lessons I learned this past year.” But some people look back and they go, “I miss the glory days.” They look back with a longing spirit of what was once there—the friends they once had, the relationship they were once in, the person that they lost, the grief of losing a loved one, a father, a mother.
Wash Your Face – Release the Past
I remember when my dad passed away, I had this sense of sadness. There was a serious long season where I was looking back and I was longing for him to still be around. I was moving forward physically, but I was mentally and emotionally still stuck in my past. I was even spiritually still stuck on what am I going to do without my dad? He was such a rock, such a compass for my faith. But I felt the Lord saying it’s time to release what you can’t change, which brings me to my point about washing your face.
In Ruth 3:3, there’s this moment where Ruth is getting ready to meet her future husband. She’s already talked to him; she doesn’t know God is about to connect her and a man named Boaz. Any Bible scholars in the room? How many of y’all know Boaz? Yes! So Ruth meets this guy Boaz, and before she’s about to have this crazy moment that I won’t get into, she goes to his house without an invitation, and she just lays down in his bed. It’s weird—don’t get any ideas from this right now! But before she does this, her mother-in-law, who is kind of bitter—her mother-in-law, her name was Naomi. Naomi had lost her husband; she had lost her two sons; she had been through a bad year.
I’m not going to ask who in the room went through a bad year because I don’t want to make it worse by rubbing it in your face. But the truth is all of us went through some bad things and some good things this year. Every year is filled with both good and hard things. And so Naomi had allowed the hard things to harden her heart. She was bitter; she even wanted to change her name. She said, “Call me Mara because God has dealt with me in a bitter way. I’m disappointed. Things that I hoped for, dreams that I dreamed, prayers that I prayed didn’t work out. I’m disappointed in life; just call me Mara; I’m a bitter woman.” But Ruth started giving her hope; Ruth, her daughter-in-law, stayed with her even though Ruth’s husband had died and she had no reason to move in with her mother-in-law because there was no more connection there; they didn’t have any children. But Ruth said, “I want to go where you go; I want to stay where you stay. Your people will be my people.”
So Ruth is living in Naomi’s hometown, and Ruth is gleaning in the field. She meets this guy Boaz and Naomi starts to get a little bit of hope, and Naomi says, “I’ve got a plan.” She was a matchmaker. She says, “Ruth, you’re going to go and talk to Boaz. You’re going to go meet him.” But before you do, watch what she says in verse three: “Wash your face, girl! Girl, wash your face!” That’s kind of a mean thing to say, but what was she saying? She was saying, “Wash off whatever you’ve collected over the last several years, whatever you’ve collected in the pain of losing your husband. Wash yourself of the muck.” How many of y’all have a nightly routine of washing your face? All right, we need more hands to go up in this place! Some of y’all, it’s been a while.
Now I would wash your face for you, but that would get a little awkward on stage! But I think about how washing your face—right? Taking that water, that towel, it’s getting into the pores of your skin; it’s pulling out the stuff that’s collected throughout the day; it’s getting your face clean before you go to bed. This is what Naomi was telling Ruth; she was saying, “Wash yourself.” And then she says, “Anoint yourself; take some stuff off of you and then put the right stuff on you.”
I’ve got some anointing oil. As we finish this year, we need to finish this year washing ourselves of the shame and putting on the grace of God, washing ourselves of the regret and putting on the forgiveness of God, washing ourselves of even the personal hurt and anger towards ourselves and towards people that have let us down, and putting on the oil. She says, “Wash yourself and anoint yourself.” Jesus even told his disciples, “When you fast, you should wash your face. Don’t be like the hypocrites who carry gloom on their face. Don’t carry this depression into your next season. Don’t carry this sadness into your next season. Don’t carry what you’ve been through; you should have the glory of God on your face.” As Christians, we do not serve a defeated God.
Now we can grieve, but we don’t grieve like the world grieves. We don’t grieve in a hopeless sense like God’s never going to do anything redemptive in our future because of the bad things. We grieve with a sense of one day there will be no more weeping, no more sadness, no more sickness, no more sin, or darkness. We grieve with the sense of hope that one day God is going to make all things new. So we wash our face in the midst of our grief, and we thank God for what He’s brought us through.
How many are you thankful for what God has brought you through? You’ve been through some stuff, right?
David's Example: Get Up and Wash
So, Naomi was looking at Ruth and saying, “Ruth, I know you’ve had pain. I know your first marriage didn’t turn out the way you were hoping it would, but don’t carry it with you into this next season. I know not all your prayers were answered; I know not all your dreams were fulfilled. I know you’re living in a foreign land, but wash your face, because if you don’t, you’ll carry your past into your present. If you don’t wash your past, your past will ruin your future. If you don’t learn to receive, when we were worshiping, we were washing ourselves. When we were singing to God, I was watching different brothers and sisters down here at the altar just pouring it out to God, just saying, 'God, have it all.'
David was really good about this in 2 Samuel 12. One of the most painful moments in David’s life happens. David has committed adultery, and the woman he slept with is pregnant. His pastor comes and calls him out. Pastor Nathan says, “David,” and if you read 2 Samuel 12, it’s a painful chapter, but it’s also a healing chapter because Nathan looks at David and says, “David, you’ve sinned, and you’re about to face the consequences of your sin. God loves you. God will forgive you. You’re going to get through this, but you’re going to walk through some painful consequences because of your own choices.”
And you know what David does? David doesn’t fight it. He doesn’t say, “No, God’s so mean.” David calls out to God, and he accepts it—he accepts it even with the spirit of faith. The Bible says that David goes into the house of the Lord; he gets on his knees and begins to weep before God, owning his sin. Psalm 51 outlines this for us. He says, “Oh God, against you and you alone have I sinned. Oh God, I am so sorry for my sin.” David begins to weep in brokenness over his mistakes, over his dark sins. Then he pleads with God, “Oh God, please save this baby,” because the baby was still alive; the baby was sick. Bathsheba had just given birth to the baby they had out of wedlock in adultery. Right? David’s praying, “Oh God, please save this baby, spare this baby’s life.” Days go by; David fasts, he prays, he doesn’t leave the temple, doesn’t wash himself, doesn’t clean himself. I mean, he is just sitting in the sweat and in the tears of his sadness and brokenness. His own friends and servants come by, and they’re like, “David, get up, man, you’re the king! You shouldn’t be acting like this.” David refuses food; he refuses a shower; he refuses anything clean. He says, “No, I am in a broken state over what I just did,” pleading with God.
But then something happens. In verse 19, he finds out that his baby dies, and something happens that shocks his servants, his friends, and his family. When his baby dies, instead of weeping in depression and sadness and staying in the temple, verse 20 says, “David got up.” He got up. Everybody say, “Get up.” He gets up from the ground, and look at this—the next thing he does is wash his face; he dries his tears; he wipes off the muck of the shame and the regret and the personal hatred he has towards himself. He begins to wash himself of it; he puts on lotions; he anoints himself; he goes into the house of the Lord this time after he’s taken a shower and cleaned up—he worships again. Then he sits down in his own house and says, “I’m ready to eat.” Now, his servants are confused. So, in verse 21, they ask him, “David, why are you acting like this? When your child was alive, you fasted, you wept, you prayed; but now that your child is dead, you get up and eat? You wash your face? Why?”
And David says this: “While the child was still alive, I fasted and I wept, and I thought, ‘Who knows? Maybe God would change His mind; maybe my kid will live!’ But now that he’s dead, why should I go on fasting? I can’t change the past.” Now this is a word I think we need to ponder at the end of the year because some of us look back at 2024 in reflection, and we go, “Oh man, I said some things I shouldn’t have said this year. I did some things I shouldn’t have done this year. I reacted in ways I’m not proud of in my family, in my marriage, in my relationships. I didn’t live with the greatest level of excellence in ways I could have lived. I held on to some wounds that hurt me this year from some people. I didn’t always welcome the strangers like I should have. I missed opportunities to witness when I could have.” And we start living in this “shoulda, coulda, woulda” game. And David says, “Listen, once I realized that what I was hoping would change wasn’t going to change, I decided if I can’t change my past, I’m going to wash my past off me. If I can’t change what I’ve been through, I’m going to wash what I’ve been through off me.”
Do you hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to some of you today? You go, “I don’t know, Paul, I don’t know if that’s theologically correct.” What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. They overcame the devil by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. My friends, I’ve been washed by the blood of the Lamb. We are not saved because we have done enough good deeds to make up for our bad deeds. We are not redeemed and justified with God because we’ve tithed enough, prayed enough, fasted enough, done enough kind righteous acts. We are saved because of the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ on the cross—His blood poured out for our sins.
When I take communion, I’m not remembering what I’ve done; I’m remembering what He did. And because of what He did, I can face tomorrow. I can face tomorrow. Friends, as we finish this year, we need to finish washing off the stuff we’ve been through.
Four Reflective Questions to Finish Well
Now, some of you are not guilty of your own wrongdoing in your life; some of you have been the recipients of David’s wrongdoing. And so you watch David wash off and you’re like, “Well, how does he get to wash? What about me?” All of us in this room have either hurt someone in our life or we’ve been hurt by someone in our life. We have a choice—we can live with the hurt that other people caused us. We can live with the hurt we did to other people—shame, bitterness. You can kind of sense a resentful person; you can hear it.
I started reflecting last week just over this past year, and one of the ways I reflect is by looking through my photo stream. So I was looking through my photos of the kids this last year, and I can pinch in and zoom in, and I can look at months of the year. So I started looking at January, and I was like, “Oh, January was a good month. We had a Victory conference here this year and Sammy Rodriguez was prophesying on stage, and Bill Johnson—people got healed.” As I started reflecting, I was like, “January feels like 12 years ago. That was 12 months ago.” Then I went to February. In February, we celebrated Grand’s 100th birthday right here on the floor, and Uncle Jack was here with all the cousins and uncles and aunts. I started thinking, “Man, February was a good month.” Then I got to March.
You know, here’s what can happen—some of us look at our photos, and if we haven’t washed ourselves, we start seeing faces we haven’t seen in the last six months, and we’re like, “I hate this person!” We start reflecting with a negative spirit. We’re like, “Oh, that memory? I’m not happy about that memory,” or, “Oh, we spent too much money on that situation. I’m still angry at myself for spending that money.” This is why we really need to wash our hearts—to receive forgiveness. David said, “Cleanse my heart, Lord. Create in me a new heart.” “Create in me a clean heart, Lord. Forgive me of my sins. Help me to forgive myself.”
I started scrolling back, October, looking at August. As I’m looking at that, I started looking through my notes because in my phone, I keep notes on sermons. I keep notes on movies; I take notes on memories. I’m a note-taker; note-takers are history makers. So I was looking through my notes—oh, y’all had like 35 notes in September—mostly good notes. You know, a couple of negative notes in there—things that I wanted to say that I didn’t say that I might say—then I go back and erase the note. I’m not going to say it. But then I looked in these notes, and I had songs that I wrote this year, sermons that I listened to other people preach. I started looking at Revival night sermons, Russell Johnson’s message. I started going, “Man, God, this was a good year.” This is what the enemy doesn’t like. The enemy doesn’t want you finishing a year well because how you finish is a running start into how you will begin the next year. If you finish with a sense of victory, “My God has been faithful, my God is good, my God brought me through the valley of the shadow of death,” the devil tried to take me out this year, the devil tried to make me discouraged this year, tried to make me feel overwhelmed, tried to stress me out, tried to cost me some years, but I got through.
Come on, how many of y’all got through the valley of the shadow of death? You walked through it in Jesus’ name. So I want to give you four questions to ponder, four questions to reflect, four ways to finish your year in reflection because how you reflect is how you expect what God’s going to do next. So reflect on one: What happened to you? Now, that might not sound like a positive question, because you might be thinking, “Man, there are some bad things that happened to me,” but you can’t proceed with success into the future unless you remember what got you here in the present. Memory is a powerful thing. Maybe you need to go through your photos. Maybe you need to look at your notes. Maybe you need to just take a moment to look back through your journal and go, “What happened to me this year? The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
And you go, “Paul, I don’t want to remember the ugly,” but if you can remember it, you’ll remember. Number two, the second question: What happened for you? Because the ugly things that happened to you produced some godly things that happened for you. See, Romans 8:28 says God works all things together for good for those who have been called according to His purpose. Anybody for God in the room? Anybody know God is for you? If you’ve been called according to His purpose, He’s going to work it all for good. So my second question is, “What happened for you?” What happened for you? God used some things—He used some difficult things to bring some blessings into your life, to bring some new perspective into your life.
If God allowed you to go through some stuff, if God allowed some things to happen to you, it doesn’t mean He sent it, but He’s going to use it all for His good in your life. God will even use painful things. Someone gave me a book a few years ago called “Necessary Endings,” and the book was basically saying that the same God who opens doors closes doors. He’s called the Alpha and the Omega, which means He’s the God of new beginnings, but He’s also the God of endings. And sometimes it takes just as much faith to accept an ending as it does to pioneer a new beginning. We all get excited to start new things—woo! New year! Starting a new company, launching a new ministry, doing something new, pioneering new—but that’s not always a spirit of faith. Sometimes a spirit of faith is doing what David did—accepting an ending of something that was painful and not getting bitter over it. Saying, “God, I trust You even though this wasn’t easy, and I walked through it and it was difficult.”
I want to finish this with the spirit of faith. I want to wash what David didn’t know is on the other side of washing himself—Bathsheba would conceive again, and that second child would become the next king of Israel. In fact, that second child would be the legacy of King David, and Solomon would go on to be the wealthiest, wisest king and build and expand the empire of Israel in a greater way. You don’t know what’s on the other side of reflecting and releasing what happened. Number three: What happened in you? What happened in you? Mary pondered what happened in her. What did God do in you—the deep things in the soul? Sometimes you need to do some investigative work in your heart.
I’ll never forget going to the doctor at the end of a year. This was a few years back. I had an injury; I was playing handball with a group of guys, and we were out in the gym here at Victory, and something just hurt on my heel—like really bad on my right heel. I fell down and it was just this stinging pain and it had been growing the last several weeks, but that night it was just so bad I couldn’t keep going. So the next day, I went to urgent care.
He said, “Take your shoe off.” He said, “Take your sock off.” I said, “It’s going to stink!” He said, “I can handle these things; I’m a doctor.” And he starts feeling, putting pressure—he says, “Does this hurt?” I said, “No.” Then he went to the heel, and I said, “Ah!” I screamed, and he goes, “That’s not normal.” He looked closely and said, “Paul, there’s a black dot in here.” I said, “What?” He said, “There’s a dark black dot in your skin beneath your skin.” He said, “Did you step on something? It looks like a very thick splinter.” I said, “No.” He said, “Nothing in the last few weeks?” I said, “No.” He said, “Nothing in the last few months?” I said, “No.” He said, “You didn’t jump into a river or lake? I know you like to cliff jump. Did you jump into something and accidentally step?” I said, “Oh, yeah, back in like April.” He was like, “That was eight months ago!”
I said, “Yeah, back in April, I jumped into a lake, and it wasn’t as deep as I thought it was and my foot hit the bottom. But I thought I was okay because it only hurt for like an hour and then went away.” He said, “That’s what most guys do; they press through the pain of initial injuries but the longer they carry that with them, the more it affects how they walk.” This is what most guys do—we press through our initial wounds from a person early on in our life, and we never deal with it. But as we get older, it affects the way we walk. Man, I started thinking about how many splinters I’ve been carrying in my life. He said, “Paul, you’ve got to get this out ASAP. If you don’t get this out now, it’s going to make things even worse in your future.”
I started thinking about splinters I had encountered from my dad, unintentional splinters from family, from friends, siblings—things that I thought I had gotten over because I was like, “It’s not a big deal; it only hurt for an hour,” and I’m over it. I don’t want to talk about it. But if we don’t investigate it enough in our soul, it goes with us, and if you don’t wash yourself of the past, you carry it with you into your future. And so right then and there, he was like, “Do you want to wait until we get…” I said, “No, we’ve got to get this out now.” So we got some needles and tweezers, and I started digging into my skin. We pulled that thing out—it was this long, dark little log, this splinter—and it hurt at first. We poured alcohol on it, but it cleaned it, and within a few days, I was totally fine. I could run again; I could walk again. I no longer had that thing in my foot. I wore my running shoes today to remind the devil I still got the victory.
I’m running; I’m doing my Victory lap this year; I’ve released the past. Some of us need the Holy Spirit to pull some stuff out of us. Who hurt you? Who hurt your kids? Who messed with your spouse? Who did some things to you that you go, “I don’t want to talk about it; I’m just over it, Paul,” but the Holy Spirit said, “No, no, no, you’ve got to wash that off. You’ve got to wash that off. There needs to be some spiritual surgery; we’ve got to get that out. That’s poison, my friend. That poison will mess with the rest of your future.” You’ll step into a new year, but you’ll bring the old year with you into it. You’ve got to break the cycle; you’ve got to finish this year well.
The fourth question is: What happened through you this year? Now, this takes some digging, thinking about what did God do through me this year. For some of you in the room, God used your generosity to lead someone to Christ. Because of your giving, thousands of people came to Jesus this year at Victory. Because of your serving, hundreds of people have encountered discipleship, made friends, been in community.
A Fresh Salvation Story & Altar Call
Something crazy happened through me last night. I thought God was done with what He was going to do through me this year. This weekend, I was like, “All right, I’m going to preach my last sermon of the year; that’ll be it; I’ll pour it out.”
But last night something crazy happened, y’all. This is a crazy story. [The preacher shares the powerful story of picking up a distressed man on the road, praying with him in the car with his kids, and leading him to surrender his life to Jesus.]
Last night, that man gave his heart to Jesus. Last night, something powerful happened in that moment!
I haven’t even gotten through all these notes, but I know this: I want to finish this year with more moments like that. I want you to finish your year in surrender. I want you to finish your year in faith! Finish your year in the Word of God. Finish your year in that place of humility, saying, “God, thank You for what You did. You didn’t have to do it; I don’t deserve it, but You did it. You brought me through another year. You’ve been gracious; You’ve taken care of my health; You’ve taken care of my family. We have way more to be thankful for than we do to complain about at the end of the year, and we have way more reasons to forgive the people that hurt us than we do to hold on to resentment. Bitterness gets us nowhere, so we forgive and we receive forgiveness.”
Some of you need to take communion this year before the year is over. We don’t have it here in the service today, but you should go home, take some bread, get some juice out, and say, “Father, forgive those who sinned against me and forgive me of my sins. Lord, I remember that You laid Your life down for me. Break the bread, eat it with your family, drink the juice. Lord, thank You for the blood of Jesus that washes away my sins.”
You know, one of the ways that we can finish strong this year is in the Word of God. At the end of your rows, there are Bible reading plans that look like this. I want you to pass them down; we’ll dismiss in just a few minutes. Take one of these; take two of these. I keep a couple of these in my car, in my office, at the house. I want to get the Word in me. This is a Bible reading plan to help you finish the Bible in a year. Every day there are three chapters you can read—Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Matthew chapter 1—you’ll go through the whole Bible.
So take one with you; finish in the Word of God. Finish in prayer this year before the year is over. Take some time to pray and reflect. Write down what God was teaching you this year. Write down what God was doing in you, for you, through you, to you this year.
How you finish is how you start. Finish in prayer; start in prayer; finish in faith! Finish in faith; get your goals set for 2025. I believe 2025 is going to be the greatest year the church has ever seen in the history of the church at Victory and worldwide! I think we’re going to thrive in 2025! I think there’s going to be an open heaven in 2025!
Ashley’s Testimony: Communion & Supernatural Release
[Ashley shares her personal story of taking communion at home to release offense and experiencing supernatural peace and freedom.]
That is available to every person in this room... sometimes we wonder, “If I respond right now in this moment, what’s going to happen?” Well, let me tell you what happens—we take steps in the natural, and God does what we cannot do in the natural—He does it supernaturally.
Final Altar Call
Would you stand on your feet all over this place? ... If you need to wash some things off, if you need to finish this year in surrender, I want you to just leave your seat, come and meet me at the altar. ... Just leave your seat. Maybe you want to come down by yourself, come with your spouse, come with your kids, come with your family... But if you know the Holy Spirit needs to wash some stuff off you, you need to release some stuff, you need to forgive, you need to surrender, you need to finish this year, telling the devil, “You do not have the final say in my story!”
[Powerful worship and prayer at the altar ensues, declaring freedom, healing, forgiveness, and victory in Jesus' name.]