Samuel Rodriguez - The Fate of the Next Generation
The presence of God changes everything. We have to experience. We have to be recommitted to facilitating an environment where every single individual will have an encounter with Jesus through the presence of the Holy Spirit. We have to be recommitted, not just to having great services and gatherings and conferences, but we have to facilitate an environment where the presence of God definitely is present. And lives are transformed with the presence of Almighty God. It's not about being weird, it's about being wired. Because the presence of God does change everything. The presence of God changes absolutely everything. God invades a room, God invades a Starbucks everything changes. Your caramel macchiato will never taste the same. There are presence, let me put this, and I related to this last April a little bit, but I, and it's not, I've been in the presence of the most powerful people on earth, by the grace of God, way beyond me, God's assignment.
I've been in the presence of all, a bunch of former presidents with the exception of Jimmy Carter. I've been in the presence of George Bush, the father who passed away. I've been in the presence of Bill Clinton. I've been in the presence of George W. Bush. I've been in the presence of Barack Obama. I've been in the presence of Donald Trump. I've even been in the presence of Joseph Biden. I've even been in the presence of pope Francis. But nothing! God bless all of them, but nothing compares to the presence of Almighty God! Whoo! I was inspired by them, but I was set free by his presence! I was inspired by them, but I was delivered with his presence. Are you with me right now? I was inspired with their presence but I was filled with his presence! The presence of God changes everything! And the now generation must once again teach the next generation that even broken people have access to the presence of God.
Let me explain. This has a little different dynamic, because Jesus on his way with this guy to see this girl, a member of his generation, a woman, shows up. Not part of the program at all. Unscripted. Unsolicited. A woman comes up with an issue of blood, she's hemorrhaging. She interrupts the journey. Jesus is with this guy, going to see her. This woman shows up from his generation who is broken. And she understood, "If I am in his presence, all things are possible". The now generation must teach the next generation that broken people have access to the presence of God. The now generation, even though we may be bleeding we must show the next generation that our brokenness does not disqualify us. There are those that believe that only the perfect have access to the presence of God. There are those that believe that only the pristine have access to the presence of God.
The pharisees state that if you're broken you can't come into the presence of God. The religious class will state that if we are broken we can't get into the presence of God. Thematic constructs teaches that if we are broken we don't have access to God's presence. But who do you think Jesus came in for the first place? He came for the broken, the marginalized, the wounded, the hurting and the suffering. He did not come to promote the perfect, he came to bless the broken. Psalm 147:3: "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds". "For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost". Luke 19:10. God is about to do great things with broken people. Let me repeat that. God is about to do great things with broken people. If your children are broken, if your loved ones are broken, if there are people around you that are broken stop whining and put a smile on your face. God is going to do some of the most unbelievable things through some of the most broken people.
I hear the Lord say, "I'm gonna make history with broken people. Not because of what they did, because of what I am about to do with them and through them". So get ready to go from broke to blessed, from overwhelmed to over flow, form having nightmares to dreaming visions, from I can't do anything to I can do all things through Christ. The presence of God changes everything. Nothing can compare to the presence of God. Presence equals power. That woman that broke through the order here, she had the audacity of touching the hem of his garment, and power came out. The other woman, whoo, whoo, she, this is crazy. She, whoo, if I can touch him, watch this. Do you think it took coincidence that the now generation touched Jesus before Jesus touched the next? You missed it. The older generation touched Jesus because it could. The next generation was already dead. This generation must touch Jesus in order for Jesus to touch the next generation.
Now we're speaking to you prophetically and I hope you get it. Jesus was surrounded by a crowd the Bible says. Once again we attempt to surround Jesus with ideologies and constructs and teachings that may very well suffocate his presence, not permitting the true Jesus to encounter this broken world. And sometimes religious people suffocate Jesus. The crowd on occasion, don't get this wrong. Many religious sectors, even with good intentions suffocate Jesus with interpretations that are outside the norms of orthodoxy, that are not legit to his sovereignty and who he is in his nature. So we suffocate him and we surround his, and hence we make it difficult for a broken generation to have access to him. But I am praying in the name of Jesus that we stop suffocating Jesus! That this is the generation that will say, "Jesus, go get them. We're not gonna surround you, we're gonna be surrounded by you". Because I do believe that when your generation and my generation break through the crowd, break through the hype, break through all of that and touch Jesus, Jesus will then touch our children and our children's children.
And one more thing, let me repeat the words of Jesus, "You may think the next generation, that your children and your children's children and the next generation is dead, the next generation is not dead. The next generation is sleeping". And guess what? It's about to wake up in the name of Jesus. We have to be careful. I am witnessing a generation that is comfortable with his presence but not comfortable with his power. I am witnessing a generation that is comfortable with lifting up their hands but not comfortable with the laying on of hands. Even in the spirit empowered, charismatic, prophetic, thoughtful world, we seem to be "Hmmm". We're a bit too sophisticated for that now. I am witnessing a generation that is comfortable telling God, "Fill me". But not willing to tell the devil, "Get thee behind me".
Mmmm. We need a church, we need pastors, apostles, prophets, evangelists, teacher, prophets. We need cultural architect, reformers, innovators, doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, writers, influencers, generational definers, who will dare to say, "We want to step into your presence and step out with your power". The most powerful people on the planet are God's children. We need to act like we have the power. And again we have a few minutes here. Randy, again I love you so much, I hope I get invited again but if I don't it is what it is. We gotta stop this whole whining Christianity. This is what the church looks like if, with all the majority of social media postings and articles written, it looks like the church is in a fetal position.
Oh, I can't believe what's happening. Oh, look what they're doing to us. Oh, I can't believe they're coming to get, look what they did, oh, for crying out loud. Would the powerful church please rise up and stand up and declare? Jesus never said, "I will give you potential". He said, "I will give you power over all the powers of the enemy and nothing will harm you"! Will the powerful church please stand up! There is power in the presence of God! Power in the name of Jesus! Power in the butt of the lamb! Power in the Word of God! There is power when we pray, power when we worship, power when we praise, power when we live holy, power when we forgive, power when we give, power when we speak truth, power when we love! There is power when we do justice, when we love mercy, when we walk humbly before God! Are there any powerful believers in the house here today?
Stand with me for a second. You are. Look up here for a second. Power came out of presence. If we can only be fully committed. Oh. If we can only be recommitted, to those iconic words. If your presence does not accompany me, I'm not going anywhere. We were filming and one of the film sets from one of our movies, y'all saw the breakthrough movie, there is another one now. But the breakthrough movie, when that one was being filmed, without anyone, there were no prayer meetings. It's Hollywood, it's union workers Hollywood. You know, scripts and all the different teams involved in a movie production with a major studio. So it's not like we got together, "Oh let's pray right now in the name of Jesus. Glory be to God. Oh, son of the", nope, never happened. Never happened. Not in that kinda setting. I would pray with some of the, you know, major, just the families and so forth, but.
One of the days, we're filming the part about John Smith resurrecting, if you saw the movie. If you didn't see it, spoiler alert. About the kid resurrecting, right. And when we're filming that, without praying, telling anyone, saying like, you know, "This is a spiritual scene we should be respect", none of that. It's Hollywood. Ready, camera, roll, action, boom! And we're filming about the resurrection. The glory of God just descended. So the camera people that are non-believers, and there's people there. And we saw on the set non-believers just, they start crying, and they start breaking down. And they're looking around going like, "I've never done this". And they're all unleashing the same sort of wording, "What is this? Why do we feel something here? What's happening here"?
Oh, I'm here to tell you the presence of God unleashes the power of God. You are a Carrier of God's glory according to Romans 8:30. You carry the glory. He has given you right standing, he has called you, chosen you and placed upon you his glory. The apostle Paul, writing in 2 Corinthians 3 speaks to that ever increasing glory. Exceeding even the glory that Moses experienced on the mountain. We're about to see now, now. A fresh encounter with the supernatural, with the presence of God, it's gonna be powerful. You're gonna step into that Walmart, Target, and if you're Boujee Neiman Marcus Nordstrom. You can step in there and the glory of God will be upon you so strong, that the person in the counter will start breaking down and say, "I have no idea who you are, but I need you to pray for me right now". We're talking about massive encounters. The presence of God unleashes the power of God, it changes absolutely everything. If you believe that just raise your hand. It's the presence and the power.
Okay, this is it. Lower your hand for a second. As you stand with me let me close with this. I was traveling, speaking last year. We were out in one of our conferences, I got a call from my, one of our campus leaders in Sacramento. One of our campuses la in Sacramento. And the call went something like this, "Pastor Sam, we normally wouldn't call you for this, cause we have a campus pastor. This is not like in your portfolio, but. And the fact that you are coming back this Sunday to speak and you like things to be pristine as it pertains to sound and audio and all that 'rumors have it, I'm OCD". Right now I'm having like an anxiety attack because of the papers on the floor. So they say, "We're just giving you a heads-up so that you won't get upset. Listen, we had a power surge, massive power surge in the building". I go, "What do you mean? 'the sound system, it just", I went, "What do you mean? 'I said, wasn't the system off"? And he went, "Oh, absolutely".
This is the explanation, "The sound engineer came in, electrician came in. Even though our church system was off, when the power hit the building and the grid because everything was connected, as long as it was connected even though it was off it still received the brunt of the hit. As a result many of the items and components burst". I go, "But it was off"! Again they explained that as long as it was connected even if it's off, if it's connected even if it's off, when the power hits it will receive the outcome of the power! There are people and children, and generations that may be off but it they're connected to you when the power of God flows through you, they maybe off but they're still connected, which means the power of God flowing through you will end up impacting them! If you receive that raise your hand. Yeah.
Alright. We're done. Raise your hands let me pray for you. I can't leave you behind, cause then it would be really bad, on so many levels it would be so bad. So this is, as you stand this is real quick. You're crazy, according to scripture you're just, what? This is so controversial. It sounds like Jesus compared a woman to a dog. Cultural context is important. It was a phrase that meant, "You're not my priority right now". That's all it meant. "My daughter is demon possessed". Jesus is a table, "You're not my priority right now". You know, let the dogs eat from the ground, I eat and then you comment is pretty wild. "Even the dogs eat from the crumbs that fall off the table". Right? This is what she's saying, "Hey, dear Jesus, you're saying it's not my season? Well guess what, even though it's not my season I'm not going anywhere until I get my break through". We need a church that rises up right now and say, "I know we're in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic, and I know it looks like the world's going to hell in a hand basket. It may not be the best season but we're not going anywhere until we see the next generation set free by the power of God"! When the now generation encounters the mercy of God the next will experience the goodness of God. Let me pray for you:
Heavenly Father, I pray for every single person here, I pray that all of us today walk out fully cognizant of the fact that the faith of the now generation will determine the fate of the next. Lord help us understand that when we encounter the Word of God the next generation will see and experience and learn the will of God. When we encounter the presence of God the next generation will be transformed with the power of God. And when the now generation embraces the mercy of God the next generation will experience the goodness of God, the favor of God. Help us understand that what we do matters. Help us understand that our children and our children's children will walk upon the ruins of what we bring down in our generation. Help us understand that the faith of my generation will determine the fate of the next, therefore I will not drink the Kool-Aid, I will not be silent, I will raise up with apostolic authority in the name of Jesus, and I will declare, look what the Lord has done. In Jesus name.
If you receive it and believe it for you and the next I want you to give God the best multi-generational praise you've given him. Give God the best kind of praise you can possibly, shout unto God with the voice of triumph! If you receive that word raise your hand. We're gonna do this, we're gonna see this, we're gonna make it happen. We're gonna see it. Close your eyes for one second. 11 minutes and 58 seconds. Close your eyes. Oh. Yeah, yeah. I sense the Lord. Can you just look up here real quick, real quick? I'm gonna give it up. Pastor Randy, who do I give this to real quick. Who's next? Jeff who's next? Can you look up here for a second real quick? They walk in together to her room. There were a bunch of people there that were laughing because Jesus said, "Hey, she's sleeping".
The Bible says that Jesus cleared the room. Can you just raise your right hand? I'm asking God to clear your surroundings from unbelief. God's gonna surround you with people that believe with you what God has declared upon you. I sense the Lord, that's just the word of the Lord right now. God's gonna remove the unbelief, clear the room. The reason why you're not seeing, the reason why you're not seeing the break through and the miracle and the healing and the outcome is because there, it's not you, it's that there are people around you that are occupying your room that do not believe what you believe that God has declared upon you and yours. But I sense the Lord.
I'm telling you right now get ready. You're hearing this word because by the time you get home God will supernaturally remove the elements of skepticism and unbelief from around you. I'm prophesying to you right now. The people that will surround you and your call and your ministry and your mandate will believe greater things than you believe for yourself! If you receive that say, "Amen". If you really receive it say, "Amen, amen". And one more thing, who is the next person? Come here, come here. I like you, you're my favorite. Come here. Real quick, real quick, real quick. One more time, just lift up your hands. Oh, man. Oh, whoo. This is a word for someone right now so I'm gonna say it. Here it is. I love that, the Word of God, the presence of God changes absolutely everything. The mercy of God.
In the Old Testament there was one prophet who lived out these three things in his own narrative. His name was Elijah, and he went through a moment, he went through a moment in obedience to God's word, the Word of God, presence of God, mercy of God, literally. There came a moment in 1 Kings 17, there came a precise moment where God said, "I'm gonna feed you with the ravens".
I here to tell you, I'm gonna prophesy to you right now. Ravens don't feed, they don't provide, they take away. God told me to share this with you right now so I'm doing it. And I say that with fear and trembling. I'm here to tell you that God has the power to change the configuration, the coding and the algorithm of whatever comes your way. Are you hearing me right now? Whatever is coming your way right now, it will not destroy you, it will develop you. It will not bring you down, it will take you up. God's about to feed you through unlikely sources as you grow in the word, in his presence and in hid mercy! If you believe that word for you and your family right now give God one more shout of praise as we speak. God's not done with us.