The Power of Restoration Part 2: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 Now here it is: “a fool to the correction of the stocks.” A lot of things you do in life are going to bring correction, not just, not just sex and alcohol. You know, you’re going to wind up in jail if you go steal. You’re going to wind up in jail, that’s the bottom line. You want to hang out with a gang, you’re going to wind up in jail, you’re going to destroy your life. Are you with me? See, that’s how sin corrects you. And the amazing thing is that most people don’t [unclear] the correction, they just get harder.

▶ 0:37 Here is Mike [unclear], Fred [unclear], Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Katie Holmes, [unclear] Jackson, and [unclear]. All these have one thing in common: they all have an incurable sexually transmitted disease. It’s incurable. This is just 10 of them, there’s whole kinds of them. Now these people have the bucks and everything else, but they have no self-control. Now, Katie Holmes just married Tom Cruise a few years ago, so guess what? Tom Cruise has joined the ranks. He should have stuck with his first wife.

▶ 1:26 Deuteronomy 21:20: parents take their child to the city officials, the police department, and say, “Our son is stubborn, rebellious, he will not obey our voice, he’s a glutton and he’s a drunkard. Deal with him, he won’t listen to us, maybe he’ll listen to you.” In other words, young people, you start making decisions in your young life to be independent, like these wild horses. Your parents, if they’re any kind of parents at all, are going to come to a place where they draw the line and say, “No, this isn’t going to happen in this house, and you’re going to be corrected.” And if parents were smart, they’d correct it way before it came to this.

▶ 2:07 Can I hear an amen? And parents, it’s the same way. You want to live a loose life and everything else, and then want your kids to do what’s right? They’re going to know you’re a hypocrite. You’re telling me to do one thing and you’re doing another. They’re going to rebel. Your sin will correct you, it’s going to bring problems. In a lot of families, how many here live in a family where there’s dissension and division and separation in the home? Really? That’s... all you guys are lying. Maybe you don’t understand what it is yet.

▶ 2:47 Acts 15:24: “We have heard that some of you went out from us, have troubled you, some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls.” They were in the church there at Jerusalem, and they left without permission, went out and started saying things without permission, and it started causing problems wherever they went. And so Paul got them together and brought them right back down to the church in Jerusalem and confronted them. And folks, there’s people always want to get a hair in their nose, some kind of wind of doctrine, some kind of selfish doctrine, and split the church, divide the church, and make a mess of things and unsettle people and trouble them, and the church has to deal with it.

▶ 3:33 So if you’re a church member and you want to do unsettling things, it’s going to bring destruction to you. I, I would never advise you to say anything about God’s church. He don’t mess around. You can die early, you can get sickly. God can bring things to correct you, and let me tell you, you don’t want that. Hallelujah. And remember, we all need restoration, right? Yes. So there’s people in there that we call hypocrites. They, well, they’re there hopefully because they want to change, and if you had any maturity you’d hang in there and be a source that added to the atmosphere of their change. Can I hear an amen? That was a good statement right there.

▶ 4:26 Hallelujah. But when you got to stay home because there’s nothing but hypocrites in the church, and there’s some people down there that, that you’re one of those people we got to put up with. You, and they do it with words. Watch the words. And also, people want your money and they want possessions. They want you to feel sorry for them and give them things. You should always go through church leadership to give anyone anything. They are parasites that need changed. Hallelujah.

▶ 5:02 Now, the process of restoration. Here we go. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus quoted this from Isaiah in the book of Luke, “for He has anointed me to preach.” What’s the word? Preach, teach, speak. “Good tidings to the poor.” What do the poor need more than money, more than food? The word. They need the word. The truth of God’s word is what they need, because it will change their life tomorrow and they won’t be poor. And beside that, it’s talking about poor spiritually, and I’m lacking spiritual stuff.

▶ 5:40 “Heal the brokenhearted, proclaim,” say the word, proclaim is just like preach, teach, speak, “liberty to the captives.” He’s preaching, speaking, proclaiming, opening a prison to those who are bound, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of the vengeance of our God.” This is the process of restoration. We preach restoration. We preach God’s a healer. We preach God’s a liberator. We preach God as a mender of the brokenhearted. We preach this stuff, and then the word heals and sets free. Can I hear an amen? And you don’t need a recovery group or a 12-step procedure or anything. The word and the Spirit will revolutionize your life.

▶ 6:29 “To comfort and console those who mourn, to give them beauty for ashes.” Now here we go. What can we make out of ashes? Nothing. There is nothing. There, there’s nothing we can do. Now, this partly burnt piece of wood, we could use it for something, even if it was just a stake in the ground, it’s usable. But the ashes are gone. And God says, what, my restoration is so powerful, young people, listen to me, my restoration is so powerful that if you have destroyed your life and there’s not a sign of life in you, I can make your life beautiful, not just like I, not just like it was before, because you weren’t beautiful before, but better than before. I’ll make your life look like mine. Beautiful. Hallelujah.

▶ 7:26 Now, that’s our promise. We, we don’t need psychology, we need the preaching of the word and the move of the Spirit in His church. How many would like beauty for ashes? You know, maybe we’re just partly burned, but you want to be beautified back. Amen. “The oil of joy for mourning.” Oh, you had a rough home and a rough life, and oh man, your mom and dad were this and your mom and dad were that, and the neighborhood you lived in was this and the neighborhood you lived in was that, and it just depressed you and caused sorrow. God says, I’ll give you joy. I won’t even take you out of the thing, I’ll give you joy right where you’re at, then I’ll take you out. It’s easy to lead someone that can smile.

▶ 8:20 “The garment of praise, honor, for the spirit of heaviness.” See, all these people are going to psychologists and everything else trying to get rid of depression. God has that as part of His restoration. Yes, people can cause pain in your life. People can, they can mistreat you, and they can cause you, if you don’t have that oil of joy, if you don’t have that power of the Holy Ghost in you, you can get depressed, you can get cast down. God said, I’ll come along and I’ll restore you, I’ll give you praise, praise and honor for that spirit of heaviness.

▶ 9:01 “And they will be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” 1 Chronicles 16:29: “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” So the beauty that He wants to give you is a righteous life, a life that’s doing what is right. And so there’s two high purposes here, all right. He wants to make you a tree of righteousness, and He wants people to see that and bring honor to God, not you. Are you out there? See, you couldn’t do it on your own, but when you came to Christ, He worked it in you, and your testimony is, “Jesus changed my life.” See, that gives honor to Christ, who then are directed to Him by the change in your life.

▶ 10:01 See, that’s the purpose. And if we don’t get changed, do they want what we got? No, they already got what we got. We got, if we haven’t been changed. But when they see God working in your life and making you a righteous person, a beautiful person, they’re going to want it, and that brings honor to Christ, because they got to come to Christ to get it, like you did. The prophets of restoration.

▶ 10:29 Okay, what does God profit from this? Well, simple. It goes on to say, “They shall build the old ruins,” rebuild them, restore them, “they shall raise up the former desolations, and repair the ruined cities, they will repair the desolations of many generations.” Those that get restored bring honor to Christ and are used by Christ to restore others. Now, don’t you think, church, it’s about time we thought of the full picture, the long picture, that if we can grow in God, other people will want what we got, and we can be a source to bring their life to a place of restoration? That’s the profit God gets out of it. He not only gets honor, he gets people that are really the light of the world, that bring people to Christ just by their life and the way they speak. Isn’t that beautiful?

▶ 11:33 Jeremiah 27:22: “They shall be carried to Babylon, until the day that I visit them, then I will restore them to this place.” God’s ultimate plan is to what? Restore. He corrected, he put them in Babylon, he came and he dealt with them over and over and over again, but his whole plan was to what? Correct them, get them to come to their senses, and restore them back to being better than they were before. Now that’s a great message. Message that God has something more for me than just waiting for Jesus to come.

▶ 12:13 He will also avenge us. Ezekiel 28:25: “The sovereign Lord says, when I gather the people of Israel from the nations where they have been scattered, I will show myself holy among them in the sight of the nations, and they will live in their own land which I gave to my servant Jacob, and they will live there in safety, and they will build houses and plant vineyards, and they will live in safety, when I inflict punishment on all their neighbors who maligned,” mistreated them, slandered them, criticized them, did things to hurt them, “then they will know that I am the Lord.”

▶ 12:56 You see, doesn’t the scripture say, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”? And the Bible tells us not to avenge, but God will come along and, what, he’ll deal with it. See, that’s what, you don’t have to punch anybody out. You don’t have to poison anybody. You don’t have to verbally attack anybody. Just stay calm. God will get them, and let me tell you, he knows how to get them to bring them to him. We can get him, but we cause them to run from him. Man, if that’s Christianity... And don’t get me wrong, you got to stand and confront what’s wrong. Hallelujah. Avenge, pay back.

▶ 13:52 And I want to tell you again, I would strongly advise you, don’t mess around with God’s church. God has some strong principles, and he will correct you. You might be able to brag and say, “I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal, I don’t kill.” But if you are slandering and attacking and verbally doing things to harm his church, I’ll guarantee you he will deal with you, and things will come in your life, or in your children’s life, or in your finances, or something to get your attention. Why? So he corrects you so you can change. Amen. Hallelujah.

▶ 14:37 Now, young people, there is a place in God of safety like this that’s just unbelievable. I remember the Mexican Mafia leader in my area came to me one day, and he wanted to talk to me about Jesus and so forth. I mean, he was one, he, he looked like [unclear] Diamond here, only mean. Diamond’s got a great face here, but he was built like that. I mean, one sweep of his hand, my head’d be knocked off. And he had this tough countenance and tattoos, and that little Mexican Mafia tattoo that they put on there, and everything else. And I gave him the gospel. Most of you know I don’t mess around, I go straight for the jugular, I go straight for the cross.

▶ 15:28 And he’s crying, this big tough guy sitting on my lawn crying, and one of my children were there, and they’re just, I mean, they were at first scared to death for Dad, and now they’re going, here’s this big gangster just weeping like a baby because of the word of God. And I’m asking him to repent and confess his sins, and he’s crying. He says, “But I can’t live it. You know, I can’t get out, the Mexican Mafia, you know, they just don’t let you go.” And I said, “Listen, the Mexican Mafia is not greater than Jesus Christ, and I’ll prove it to you. I will go to your neighborhood on Friday night, the worst day of the week, the worst time of the day, and I will walk from one end of your neighborhood to the other, and nothing will happen to me, because my Jesus will keep me safe. I said, I wouldn’t do this normally, but so you know that there’s power and safety in Christ, I will go down and do it.” Hallelujah.

▶ 16:40 We have a lot of things offered to us. When I was down in El Salvador and the communists found out we were there preaching the gospel, and they hate the gospel, and they would fire into the camp from a long distance of where you were preaching, because you had lanterns and stuff at night, and so we had to go back through the back jungle to try to avoid the guerrillas and being captured as Americans down there. There was not one ounce of fear in me. Why? Because my Jesus sent me there, and he has power to keep me while I’m there. Are you with me? We had to go over this terrain that’s unbelievable, there’s quite an experience, wade through rivers. We came down the road, but we had to go back the hard way.

▶ 17:31 And young people, you can experience this stuff. It’s not what they say on television and everything else. There is restoration in God to become like God. Is God afraid of anybody? No. Does God follow the crowd? No. Does God get depressed because people leave? No. Say it, no. Restoration is powerful and it’s offered to every one of us, and all of us need it in our life. I still need it. I get a burn spot in me, I need God to restore it. Amen. I start doing things that start decay in my life, I need God to restore. I don’t want just forgiveness. See, that’s our problem in America, is we just, “I’m forgiven.” But you’re a piece, or you’re a pile of ashes. “I’m forgiven.” Pile of ashes. No, God wants you to be something that draws people to him. He wants you to be powerful, like this Pharaoh’s horse. He wants you to be one that is well groomed, looks good, and leads people to the King, brings the presence of the King. And when there’s war, he wants you to stand up and fight the enemy and win the battles. That’s restoration, and you can have it all. It’s for you.