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We've entered into Pentecost season. Pentecost literally means the 50th day—50 days after Easter or after the ascension of Christ. First fruit comes from a Hebrew word which means a promise to come. So 50 days later, God symbolizes a promise to come.
I want to speak to somebody right now that's been waiting on God. He might not come when you want him, but he's always on time. Sometimes it takes God a long time to do something in a hurry. God seems to be moving slowly, but just when you think it's over, suddenly God shows up.
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"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, when the day of the promise fully come, they were all with one accord."
One accord—it's vitally important this morning that we all get on one accord. When we're all on one accord, we put ourselves in a position that causes God to enter into the space where we are. Just because we're in the same place doesn't necessarily mean we're on the same page. That's a problem in many of our homes today. He's saying one thing, she's saying another thing. But in this season of Pentecost, it's vitally important that we get in the same place with one accord.
I'm looking for a suddenly moment. I'm looking for God to move unexpectedly. I'm looking for God to show up when things are dark and dismal. The Bible says, "and suddenly there came a sound." That word suddenly means quicker than just a moment ago.
I want to deal with four little words: "There came a sound." Individually speaking, each word doesn't carry much power. But syntactically speaking, when the words are married and joined together, it creates a possibility that's beyond the norm. When words are married together, it puts you in a position to receive from God that which was impossible a minute ago.
Sound does not only accompany great power, but sound precedes great manifestation. Whenever God is about to do something great, there's always first a sound. Did you know that a lion's roar can be heard 5 to 10 miles away even though the lion is right next to you? The greatest earthquake at the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883—the sound was so great that it was heard 4 to 500 kilometers away. Sound accompanies great power but it precedes great manifestation.
For somebody in this room, you don't know what's going on in your life, but you've been hearing things late at night. You've been hearing something around you at weird hours—3:33, 4:17. Out of nowhere, you're just hearing something and you don't know what's going on. Can I give you some clarity this morning: God is up to something. God is about to bust a move. Can I tell somebody that God is about to open a major door in your life? God is about to turn some things around.
"And suddenly there came a sound like a rush of a mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting."
Notice that the sound came into a room where people were sitting. Nobody's moving around. Nobody's running to and fro. There wasn't a great praise going on at this moment. They were all sitting down.
Can I suggest to somebody that this next move in your life, it's not about your stand, but it's about your stance. This next move of God is not about what's in your mind, but it's about what's in your heart. This next move of God is only going to work for you if your heart is in the right place.
It came in as a mighty rushing wind. Wind is consistently used to symbolize the movement and presence of God. But not only did it come in as a mighty rushing wind, but it gave them clothing tongues of fire. Fire symbolizes God's presence—the greatest event of the day.
Can I tell somebody in this next season, God is about to bring in a clothing tongue? Clothing comes from the word cleave. That word cleave means to wrestle with. In a marriage context, it means: "Shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife?" That means she's been at her daddy's house used to doing things the way daddy does it. She's used to following the rules that daddy had. But now she's married to a man, and he wants her to follow his authority, and she doesn't do it voluntarily.
But watch this: God is giving them cloven tongues. The tongue is already cloven—it's not going to have to wrestle with you. And not only is the tongue not going to have to wrestle with you, but it's not going to have to wrestle with bringing to pass the thing you release out of your mouth.
God is about to usher you into a season that when you speak a word and release a word, you're going to begin to see the thing that you spoke. If you can see it, you can seize it.
Start saying crazy stuff like:
In the realm of reality in which we live, there's always a sound before a sighting. God used sound to create everything we see. He did not form light—He spoke light into existence. Maybe you don't have the stuff that you think you're supposed to have because you're not saying the right stuff.
Watch this: The first seed in the earth was not a grain. The first seed in the earth was a sound. It was a vibration. God released a vibration into the atmosphere.
God said, "My word cannot go out from me and return unto me void, but it must accomplish the thing whereunto I sent it." Jesus picked up the conversation that his father left off. Jesus said, "When you pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
If the will of God in heaven is done by God releasing a word, and Jesus says, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," then the only way the earth is going to birth what I'm looking for and expecting is I've got to do like God did. I've got to talk to it. I've got to open my mouth and release. I've got to say something.
Find your partner. Now speak something over your partner. If you see a hand up, speak a financial blessing over the person with their hand up. Anybody need a healing in your body? Speak a word of healing over that person. When you spoke that word over the person that you spoke to, you did not speak the word into them. You released the potential that was already there.
Whenever you read and the word of God came unto me, that means the potential and propensity and proclivity to overcome any force that's working against the vision that God has given me. I've been impregnated with the power to destroy it. Every time God has given you a word, He's giving you what you need to overcome what's working against you.
Romans 10:17 makes an amazing statement: "So faith cometh by hearing. But hearing comes by the word of God." Faith comes by hearing. Hearing something does not automatically produce faith. Hearing anything and everything don't produce faith. Some of us are not living at the level God wants us to live at because we're around people who's talking that can't get us there.
Take an inventory of your crowd right now. If you show me 10 of your best friends, I'm going to show you who you're going to become. You can never grow past the level of the conversation you're surrounded by. Your hearing is the birth canal of your spirit. You can never be anything bigger than the small, minute, minuscule conversation that negative minds keep discussing in your hearing.
Jesus said, "Let thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God said, "I'mma go ahead and tell my sons: The heavens belong to me, but the earth have I given to the sons of men."
Hold your hand out. Picture the world in your hand. If I got the world in my hand, why am I hungry? If I got the world in my hand, why am I sick? If I got the world in my hand, why am I lonely? It's because I'm not saying to the world what the world needs to hear in order to release what I need.
When I read "hath he given," I discovered that phrase is written in a present progressive form of the verb. Which means He's given, but He's still giving. He's blessed but He's still blessing. He healed but He's still healing. He delivered but He's still delivering. He made a way but He's still making a way. The problem is He's giving but you ain't asking for it.
David said, "I don't want to have the world in my hand and don't do nothing with it. I'm going to hide this word in my heart." Why? "That I might not sin against God." I'm going to hide this word in my heart so I don't say the wrong thing out of my mouth.
It's not about your stand. It's about your stance. When you get the word in your heart, it builds up springs of living waters down in your belly.
Whenever you're confronted with a situation, a condition, or a circumstance and you say anything less than a winning statement, what do you remember God having said about you? Here's the formula: If you will learn to say what you heard, God will allow you to see what you said.
What promise have you heard God make you? What promise has God said about your family? What promise has God said about your finances? I need some folk that got a promise down in your heart. I need somebody right now waiting on God to do something miraculous. Waiting on God to do something out of the ordinary. I dare you to open your mouth and release a word.
Keep this formula close: If you will learn to say what you heard, God will allow you to see what you said. This is not about making empty declarations—it's about releasing what God has already placed in your heart.
What promise have you heard God make you? What promise has God said about your family? What promise has God said about your finances? God is looking for people who have a promise deep in their heart, waiting on Him to do something miraculous, something out of the ordinary, something that's never been done before. I dare you to open your mouth and release a word.
Proverbs 18:21 tells us that God has placed power in our tongue—but understand the word carefully. The Scripture does not say He put life or death in your tongue; it says He put the power. That word "power" comes from the Greek word exusia, not dunamis. If you're carrying a gun, that's dunamis—raw power. But if you're wearing a badge, that's exusia—authority to use it. God is saying, "I put authority in your mouth."
Whatsoever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. And whatsoever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.
You can't even get the revelation to say something unless God first put it in your spirit. Everything you prophesy over yourself, the only reason you prophesied is because God placed it in your spirit. Life is not lived by hearing what you saw. Life is lived by seeing what you heard.
In Genesis 1, the phrase appears over and over: "And God said." "God spoke." Everything in creation responded to the voice of God. The earth we live in responds to the sound that comes out of your spirit.
When God created you, He did something with you that He did with nothing else in creation. The Bible says, "And God breathed into man's nostril." Listen carefully—when it says "God breathed," it literally means "God spoke." It's impossible to release a word without releasing a breath. When God spoke, He left but He stayed at the same time. He was leaving and staying simultaneously. How could that be? Because He's everywhere at the same time. He's in the coming and the going.
When God breathed into man's nostrils, man became a living soul. What could God say in one conversation that He would never have to repeat? What one word could He speak? He spoke one word. The Greek word for "one" is uni. The Greek word for "word" is verse. When God breathed into man's nostril, He released into man the universe.
If God released universe into you, then whatever you need doesn't have to come from around you. It can come from within you. That's why James said, "You have not because you ask not." What's in you is lying dormant. I dare you to begin to open up and release out of your own mouth everything you ever heard God say concerning you. The moment you release it into the atmosphere, the world is activated to respond to what you said. It's got to give you back the thing you say.
God only speaks into things where He's already placed potential. If God is speaking into you, it's because He knows what's in you. There are seasons when God is speaking into you where you've got to stop wondering, "Can this really happen? Are you really talking about me, God? Can you really do this?"
Stop trying to convince other folk what you heard. There are going to be people in this world who can never understand the things you hear because they can't hear it. It's for you.
Mark 11:23 makes a powerful statement that pertains to you:
Truly I say to you, if you say to this mountain...
Notice—God didn't say "if you say to all mountains." He made it clear: if you say to this mountain. God wants you to understand, "I'm going to fix the thing you're dealing with." Don't speak in generalities. Speak directly to the problem in your life.
Anybody dealing with mountains in your life? Stuff that just won't yield, won't give up, holding you back from everything God wants for you?
If you would say to this mountain, "Take up and go. Throw yourself into the sea.."
You might wonder why God throws the mountain into the sea. God says, "I want you to cast it into an area that's deep enough to cover it." When you learn how to release the right word, God is going to sink your problems so deep you can't see them anymore.
I need somebody right now bold enough to turn around and wave goodbye to everything that's been holding you back. Wave goodbye. Maybe you need to go through your cell phone and send a text message. All I want you to say is: "Bye."
If you're working on a dead-end job—bye. If you're working with folk that don't want to let you become what God said you'd become—bye.
I want to talk to somebody living in a situation that doesn't match what's coming. I'm living in a rental house in Central Park. I'm driving a church van that doesn't belong to me. But God told me not who I will become, but who I was. Even in that moment, I would put my family in that van. We'd go to church. We'd get to the fellowships. All the other pastors and bishops would pull up in Cadillacs and nice cars. They'd jump out one door, wife out the other. They'd walk in church, walk away from their cars, and hit the little thing: beep beep. The doors would lock.
I'd pull up in the van, jump out my side, grab the step stool, run around the other side, help my wife down, let my kids out. We'd be walking into church, and by faith, I'd make a sound out of my mouth: beep beep.
I want to talk to somebody who's got a beep beep in their spirit. You're still catching the bus, but you've got something down in your spirit. I said, "Baby, don't be embarrassed. Stick with me because I'm pregnant—pregnant with the word, pregnant with a sound. There's something in my spirit that tells me I can do what I want to do and have what I want to have. I have authority in my voice."
Matthew 16:19 says:
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Keys are designed to lock up or unlock. God is saying, "I'm giving you the keys that unlock the kingdom of heaven." But here's what you don't understand: the kingdom of heaven is not necessarily a place. The kingdom of heaven is God's way of doing God's stuff—anywhere God wants to do it, any kind of way God wants to do it, anytime God wants to do it, through anybody God wants to do it through.
God is saying, "I will give you the authority to how God does what God does. I'll give you the authority to do what God does, the way God does it, when God does it, like God does it, through whomever God wants to do it."
I said, "Baby, we're in a van today. We're living in a rental house today. But I'm speaking over our lives that the days are coming where we're going to live where we want to live, drive like we want to drive. Right now, every day we're going to join hands, look up toward heaven, and start saying what we heard, and God is going to allow us to see."
Write these three things down. First, this sound represents promise fulfilled. God made a promise. In Acts 1:8, He said:
You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.
Here's what blows my mind: God is not giving you the power of the Holy Ghost just to be churchy. He said, "You shall receive power, and that power will give you what you need to be witnesses unto me." I'm giving you the authority, the power to witness who I am.
I really thought at first that when God gave me authority to become a witness, it only meant telling other folk about Jesus. But here's what I discovered: I won't get the opportunity to tell everybody. So the folk I can't tell, I've got to learn how to show. All I've got to do now is speak the things I have not and allow God to give them to me. For everybody that can't hear me, they're going to know it's God when they see me.
I wish I had folk right now who left the neighborhoods with nothing, but now I want you to ride back through the hood. Every now and then I like to go back to the projects. Every now and then I like to knock on old doors and say, "Hey, baby, how you doing?" And they say, "Mike, is that you? The Lord has been good to you."
God is about to bless you so good there ain't going to be no doubt that nobody could do this but Jesus. God is about to heal you and can't nobody do it but the Lord. This next move God is about to make—can't nobody do it but the Lord. I need folk right now that'll start jumping up and down because God is blessing you right now and can't nobody do this but the Lord.
There's always a sounding before a sighting. You can't get the authority until after you've heard the sound. How many of us are hearing something right now? You don't know what it is, but you just know you're hearing something.
The vibrations that heaven is making right now—I'm prophesying they're about to shake the very foundations of the world you're in. Everything that's holding you locked in is about to shake. The vibrations are going to be so strong that anything holding you back from your promise is going to have to break off you. Chains are about to break. Shackles are about to break. Doors are about to sway open. You're about to walk in what God's been prophesying over your life.
Secondly, the sound indicates the posture we should have in fellowship. Notice what Acts 1:14 says: they all joined together. We're in a season where the Holy Spirit doesn't want to come into the house and skip about and move intermittently. The Holy Spirit wants full free course. They were all joined together.
On the day of Pentecost, they all were joined together in one place. They were all saying the same thing. It was so powerful that men outside the room who weren't even present began to hear these boys worship God in a native tongue. I'm trying to tell somebody: in this next season, there's about to become a closeness in Rock City. There's about to be a tightness that all of Hoover, all of Birmingham, all of Alabama is about to see and hear a new sound going across the country.
The hand you're holding—feel the vibration. All I want you to do is begin to pray what you're hearing from heaven. Just begin to pray what you're hearing. This room is going to have a move that you ain't seen. Something's about to sweep through this room.
David practiced this thing faithfully. Every time they came together, Luke shows us four specific things that took place when they began to practice being a Holy Ghost-filled church, when they began living in the Spirit of God.
First, it became a learning church. You're about to learn things you never thought you could learn. God is about to anoint you to do things that you don't have an education for. God is about to teach you how to go where you've never been. God's about to teach you how to receive what you've never had.
Second, it became a caring church. Right now, you don't even understand the difference you're making in somebody's life. You're holding the hand of a person who's been contemplating suicide. You're holding the hand of a person who's wanted to give up and quit. You're holding the hand of a person wrestling with depression, suppression, and oppression. You're holding the hand of a person who doesn't know where the next meal is coming from.
Third, they practiced worshiping. They practiced how to worship. They practiced how to hold their hands up. They practiced what to say. They practiced what to do. If you ain't sure, watch the person next to you. Look at the power of God.
There came a sound that changed their lives forever.
When they left that room at Pentecost, their lives were changed forever. There came a sound that changed their lives forever. This was not just noise—it was the manifest presence of God moving through a people who had learned to practice worship, practice caring, and practice learning together.
Everything that God has said is already yours. The principle is simple but powerful: You have not because you speak not. If you will say it, He will allow you to see it. It's not enough to believe in your heart; you must be bold enough to declare it with your mouth.
When you speak into the atmosphere, you are speaking into the same currency that your money travels in. Your words carry weight and authority in the spiritual realm. If you open your mouth right now and call something different, if you make a decree right now, by the time you come back to church next Sunday, your no will be a yes.
I bought my first house, and the bank told me no. But God told me yes. They said I needed to wait, that I didn't have time—but I said, "No, God told me."
One day while I was driving with my wife, my cell phone rang. A law firm had found my number because I had been injured in an accident years before. They called to tell me to come by their office because they had six digits waiting for me. When I went to pick up that check and got back in the car, my phone rang again with news about the house. There had been an error in their paperwork, but now the situation had changed—my no was becoming a yes.
When I got to the closing table, the attorney said, "Mr. McClure, I want to apologize. They've made another error, and if you close today, you're going to need an additional $45,000." I said, "Here's a check." Why? Because on the way to that closing, I had stopped by and picked up six figures. So $45,000 wasn't anything to me that day.
I don't know why they told you no, but if you'll open your mouth and speak into the atmosphere, by the time Sunday comes, your no will be a yes.
I'm talking to someone in this room or watching online. In the past 48 hours, you were given bad news on a doctor's report. Something about your liver. Right now, I speak life over you. I decree the word of God that you shall not die, but you shall live.
I'm talking to several people who put in applications for homes and got told no. If you'll open your mouth under this atmosphere and declare a thing, if you'll make a decree right now, your situation will change.
I'm talking to somebody who got a no on a job, a promotion, a relationship, a business deal. Whatever your no is, speak into it. Name it. Call it something different. Declare what God promised you.
When you give your seed, release a word over it. Speak to it. Name it. Call it something. Money is currency—it moves in the earth realm. When you speak into the atmosphere, you are releasing power in the same realm where your blessing is traveling.
