To Recieve Your Blessing, You've Got To Be Faithful Series

Good evening church truly blessed we are to be here on tonight. And just before I get started I would just like for you all to bow your heads with me as I got into prayer.

Dear gracious father I thank you for this day that you’ve allowed me to see. I thank you for waking me up this morning and lying me down last night. I ask that this word that I speak tonight may acceptable to you. I ask that you use me and guide me in your way. In Jesus name I pray Amen.

One day while I was at school just sitting and thinking to myself in class, the Lord came to me and said, “To receive your blessing you’ve got to be faithful.” I started wondering and asking what he was trying to get across to me. For many nights I prayed and asked God to show what he was trying to tell me. Well is just happened that one night after I’d just come out of bible study Min. Lisa gave me a call asking me if I would speak for their youth revival. I thought about it for a day and then accepted and furthered my study into the sign that in which God had given me. As for the youth tonight, I would just like to tell you that to receive your blessing you’ve got to be faithful.

Tonight, I will focus mostly of on the tenth verse of the second chapter of Revelation. And as we look at this tenth verse we find that John is giving the first warning to the church. At this time the church is going up against persecution. John’s second warning comes later in the letter to Pergamum. Smyrna around this time was suffering at the hands of the synagogue of Satan. These people of the synagogue of Satan where local Jewish citizens who opposed the church, meaning that they didn’t agree with the practices of the church.

Now many of you here tonight know my family, “The Carters” and some of the troubling situations we’ve been through. There have been times were the Lord has tested our faithfulness to him with death. Many know of the situations where my grandmother has been in and out of the hospital and yes there was one particular time where we all thought that she would be dead. But, through our faithfulness to the Lord he has kept her here. And as I look at the tenth verse of revelation the 2nd chapter I find the question showing up, “what does it mean to be faithful?” Well through the past experiences of my family I find that being faithful means to be committed. Committed to what you might ask? Why staying committed to the church and doing all the things that God wants you to do. Meaning being willing to go out and do things that you wouldn’t normally do.

I think about the times when church is over and it’s time to clean up the church (and I know that many of the younger youth aren’t accustom to cleaning) and how easy it is for the youth to mess up the church but we don’t want to clean up what we messed up. If we’re going to stay committed to God then we’ve got to respect his house, no matter what your house or bedroom may look like, we’ve got to keep his house clean. Like one of the members at my church use to sing “Get your house in order”. I always think about my other grandmother telling me that I’ll miss out on my blessing if I’m not faithful. For in Hebrews the 3rd chapter it says that “Moses was faithful as a servant in all of God’s House...but, Christ is faithful as a son over God’s House.” We’ve got to be like Moses and be faithful as a servant in Gods House.

We can see that in this world today many of our youth are trying to turn the church into a hip hop scene. That’s cool in all, but we come to church for one purpose and that is to serve God. Yeah, we can serve God through many different other ways, but we’ve just got to make sure we’re not sending out the wrong message to other youth. We see that today that there many gospel rappers that are coming up in the church and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just the other night on TBN Pastor TD Jakes was discussing about the up in coming Mega-Fest and how many of the youth’s life were being changed after they left Mega-Fest. But later on in the show one young man came on and he started rapping and everyone was really into his rap, they started dancing and shaking all around. I was quite shocked when some of the older people in the audience started dancing close to how most of the youth dance today. What I’m trying to say is that what they was doing because they was doing it for the Lord, but we’ve got to watch how much of that stuff we do in church because then we’d be attracting the wrong crowd into the church. I also have begun to see how many of us feel rejected from the church simply because we may not dress a certain way or act a certain way. We can’t let other get into our heads, we don’t come to church to impress others, we’re there for one purpose and that is to serve God. We’re missing out on our blessing because we’re thinking about what other people think.