Vision to Reality

Transcript of message by

Bobby Gums

02.15.15

2Pe 1:1  Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

2Pe 1:2  Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

2Pe 1:3  According as his divine power hath given

unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness (G2150), through the knowledge (G1921) of him that hath called us to glory and virtue (excellence) :

2Pe 1:4  Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

G2150 Eusebeia: From G2152; piety; specifically the gospel scheme: - godliness, holiness.

Scheme: a large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some particular object or putting a particular idea into effect.

You mean, the Gospel Scheme: is not that I be saved from the flames of hell?!

I don’t think we have to spend any time here, because I believe every one of us have come upon this place out of a knowing that there’s much more to the “life in Christ” than merely getting our ticket to heaven.

Rather the whole Scheme of the Gospel, in context to 2^nd Peter, is that I might become God-like in my character, holy in heart.

A very important question we must answer right away: Who is “us”?  Who is this group of people that the Holy Spirit, through Peter, reveals as being eligible to receive this god-like character, this holiness?  Who are these people that have been given exceeding great & precious promises whereby they may become “partakers of the divine nature”?

 

2Pe 1:1 . . . them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

Can you say, “have I truly been born again through faith in Jesus?

If your answer is yes, then you are included in the “us” that are now eligible to become one of these partakers of the divine nature.

Well, if we have met the eligibility requirements of having “obtained this like precious faith”, then how do we obtain this “godliness, this holiness”?

Verse 3 tell us . . . that the Lord Jesus, according to his divine power hath given unto us all things unto godliness (or holiness).

The next word in our text that I want to bring our attention to in Strong’s Dictionary is the Greek word for “given”.

This word “given” is described as something that is “gratuitously bestowed”.

We’re talking about yet another thing we don’t deserve that the Lord Jesus desires to give us.

Don’t we have a word for that?  Let’s see, what is it?           Grace!

      

You mean I can’t earn this holiness?!  No!

Well, can I read and study and grow and grow and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ until I become holy?!  No!

No more that you can become “righteous” by doing good works.

The truth is, if you are ever to become holy, then:

You must and you will, under your own volition, humble yourself before the King of Glory and consecrate your whole life to Him – past, present and future – and allow Him to sanctify you entirely –body, soul, and spirit – where in you move past knowing Him only as your “savior” and you humbly crawl off the throne that is your heart and give Jesus His rightful place in your life as your Lord and your King, thereby enabling the Lord Jesus to gratuitously impart His holiness to you!

You will either be made holy or you will not be holy.

And the only requirement is that you have truly been born again!

Listen, it’s only upon being born again, in which the Holy Spirit for the first time, sheds abroad in your heart “the love of God” – that’s the love of God towards you and your newly found love of God towards Him – that you have the capacity and the information needed to make the choice of whether you will go on to make Him your Lord or if you will continue on, only recognizing Him as your Savior.

It is not even possible to make two separate or distinct transactions with the Lord in the exact same instance.  Being born again is obviously a “birthing experience”.  But today we’re talking about a “dying experience”; death to all of your rights to yourself. 

Remember that song, “I surrender all, all to thee my blessed Savior . . . .

Well,

It’s a choice!  Your will must be engaged at every point, in every transaction with the Lord.

He’s not going to sneak anything in on you.

Because in making Him Lord, you are giving up all of your rights to your “self”, declaring that you are in full agreement with God and His word that says that you have been bought with a price – the high price of the blood of Christ – and that you are not your own.

There are some things I want to tell you throughout this message. 

One is that the Pastor told me, quite some time ago one night in bible study, for me not to let anyone or anything prevent me from doing what God sent me here to do.  And he’s never asked me once before he gave me that charge what I felt the Lord sent me here to do.  He simply said, “son, you do exactly what the Lord has sent you here to do”.

I tell you right now as I stand, that I don’t know all the reasons the Lord sent me to Supply.

But I do know two of the reasons: one is to preach this message to anyone who will listen as often as I can, and in as many ways as the Lord gives me revelation to say it. 

This I know for sure.

And you might be tempted to say, well we heard that message all our lives, all them “topics” in the bible and you can’t find anything else to talk about?!  So just in case you’re thinking about cornering me after church with something like that, I’ll just go ahead and tell you now, what I will be telling you then and save you the trouble:

If you have ever humbled yourself again before the Lord, since the day you were born again, to allow Him to perform this work of grace in you, then Brother, you never get tired of hearing this message. 

I don’t know that I’m aware of any sweeter words that can be said, than for someone to expound on the beauty of holiness unto the Lord.

And then I might follow up with this question: brother, are you sure this message is not for you personally this morning?

And we always have new people coming and going that may have never heard this message.

And we’ll always have young people growing up that will be coming into greater understanding as they grow in the Lord that desperately need to hear this message.

Why must we keep preaching this message?

Because it’s foundational to our relationship with God the Father through His Son!

It’s not I get born again and then ten, twenty, or fifty years later I finally experience my own personal Pentecost.  No this is simply (if I can say “simply”) laying the proper foundation of our salvation!

You can go on and memorize the entire bible from cover to cover, without ever having laid this proper foundation in your life with Christ.  What you’ll pretty much have is a lot of head knowledge, but very little heart knowledge, very little experiential knowledge in the faith.

You cannot grow into this experience.  You will either receive this heart cleansing by faith, making Him the Lord of your life, the King of His Kingdom within you or you will remain on the throne of your heart.

It’s one or the other.

And just a side note here: we’re not talking about the experience of speaking in tongues here.

We are talking about the purification of the heart at Pentecost – being wholly (w-h-o-l-l-y) sanctified in body, soul, spirit, past, present, future.  And Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it! (The Word says).

You will humbly and willfully receive this gift of cleansing from the Lord with and from a deep desire in your heart, a hunger and longing in your soul, to be like Christ and to be pleasing to Him above all else or your relationship with the Lord will be continuously stunted.

Why must we keep preaching this message?

(I may not say this very well, I’ll say it the best I can)

We must keep preaching this message because this “church” – this local fellowship – has a heart to move, has had a heart to move for decades, with a “corporate anointing”, into dimensions of the Kingdom of God that we have only yet hoped for, dreamed about, and prophesied of!

We must be faithful to preach this message boldly in the face of any and all naysayers because if we will not allow God to have His way in our hearts in this manner, all we will ever do is continue to hope for, dream about, and prophesy of a reality in Christ that can and should be our reality today!

WE MUST BE WHOLLY SANCTIFIED – MADE HOLY IN HEART AND SET APART FOR HIS HOLY PURPOSES – BAPTISED IN HIS HOLY SPIRIT! . . . . .

So we can move on to maturity in Christ, and be about our Father’s business in the ministry of reconciling this lost world to Christ, leading them to an infinitely better way, as they see that we actually do believe what we say, because they see His Kingdom principles are indeed alive and working in our lives daily in very practical ways.

And pray God, in some supernatural ways!

I don’t want to scare you or freak you out, but it may be that in our not too distant future, we will come to the place where we will finally trust and rely on the “Supernatural” provisions of the LORD more than do the natural, and that out of necessity.

But I say to you today, my family, why would we want to wait . . . (on the economy to collapse, or for the one-world gov’t to take over, or for the Chinese Red Army to walk up on the beach out here demanding the 21 trillion dollars we owe them . . that’s just a few of my “devastation scenarios”.  Feel free to fill in the blank with your own!), but why would we wait to walk in this “corporate anointing”, when the power and provisions of the Kingdom of God are ours now?!

Wouldn’t we all be better off?  Wouldn’t our families be better off?  Wouldn’t our church be better off?  Wouldn’t our community be better off?

Because, isn’t there a Kingdom Principle in God’s Word that assures us this is true?

Deu 32:29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

Deu 32:30  How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?

Can I say it like this?  How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, BUT GOD?!

Pastor Bobby preached on this not too long ago.

There’s not just an addition taking place, there is an exponential increase!

If ten of us came together, if twenty of us came together, if thirty of us came together, with that understanding, what   would   God   do!

Why did God send me to Supply?

I’ll tell you the second reason here in a moment.  But a third reason came to me while I was studying for this.  What you . . . have been hoping for, dreaming of, and prophesying about, for the last thirty years, I am here to tell I want in on it.  Count me in! 

I don’t know maybe a couple of months ago, my precious wife (Sherry), the Lord revealed to her in prayer that we do not have thirty five more years for this wonderful, Holy Spirit inspired vision the Lord gave you, to finally become a living reality!

Come on, I don’t know, we may not have another year!

And it wouldn’t make any difference if we believed the time is right, that the time is now!

Would it?  Because we would do something about it, wouldn’t we?

That brings me to the second reason that God brought me to Supply and specifically to New Life Christian Fellowship.  And you’ve probably heard me hint at this before.  God wants me to remind you that you are not yet among that “great cloud of witnesses”.

If I could be so bold for a minute to presume to say a word on behalf of all of us “newcomers” around here, to you that have been here for twenty, thirty, and thirty five years; we need you!

You, that have been here and that have been a part, at any stage, of laying this foundation for all these years, you need to know that all of your labor has not been just a “wearing effort”. 

Don’t fall down now!  If you have stumbled or fallen, please get up!  We need you!

I need you!  I would not have been able to just seemingly waltz in here upon that which you have been building, according to the vision the Lord gave you, and began to grow and flourish in my walk with the Lord to a greater understanding than I have ever had of who God is and of His will for His people and His divine ways in which He means for us to carry out His will, if it weren’t for the years of labor that you have put into the foundation of this place long before I knew who you were, in 25 years of coming down this road passing this house with my fishing rods.

I have no doubt that you in the past have experienced, in some measure, this “corporate anointing”.  We need all of you at this time, in this hour.  We need to hear from you.  We need the benefit from your wisdom.  We need your leadership. We need the encouragement that we will derive from your worship.  Show us how to truly be free in the our worship of our God.

If it weren’t for you (and when I say “you”, some of you are not here today in this building, you’re missing) many of us would not be here! 

Is that too obvious of a statement that the momentousness of what I’m trying to express is lost?

I pray not!

If it weren’t for you, where would I be?

I don’t know because before I met you I was in a very solitary place.  I had become a little island unto myself and the water was quickly rising around me!  And it was definitely salt water because it wasn’t drinkable.  I found myself in a place that was so dry that I became spiritually estranged from my mother, who was my primary example of a disciple of Christ, even after I had become a Christian.  Who, still to this day, is up at like four o’clock every morning studying her bible for hours before the sun comes up.  I had become spiritually estranged, for years, to the woman that was responsible for praying me into the Kingdom because of wrong thinking! 

You, and certainly my wife Sherry is included in this you, helped me to come out of that dry sun-scorched land! 

From the bottom of my heart, Thank You!

But GOD!  One of the most beautiful truths found anywhere in the scriptures, for me at least,

Ps 68:6 God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains:

The NIV renders that, “he leads out the prisoners with singing”.  Praise God!

Lest I be accused of not preaching the whole counsel of God, the last part of that verse reads,

not But God, “but the rebellious dwell in a dry land”.

I am not here to puff up your ego this morning. I’m here to rouse you!

Long before I came here, the Christ in you was ministering to me and now that I am here I need the Christ in you more than I ever have before!

Sherry and I have been praying for you, the “founders”, if you will, for a long time.  We have seen answers to these prayers.  A couple of weeks ago at Sunday night bible study we were privileged to witnessed direct answer to our prayers in living color.

As James, Carol, and Angie came in with the Holy Spirit all about them. Testifying and giving God praise, tired of just “doing church” and tired of being “in the rut”, allowed God to source them that Sunday afternoon and what do you know, people were ministered to and God was glorified everywhere they went!

That’s what I am talking about when we say we need to hear from you.  We need you to lead. 

We have no desire to come in here and take off in another direction than that which you have already been moving for the last three decades.  We just want to join you and we want to see this thing kicked into high gear!  What about you?

Do you feel like we do?  Do you sense in your spirit that all your years of labor – your prayers, your dreams, and your Holy Spirit inspired prophetic words –, that, just maybe this is the time, the very hour of their fulfillment?!

If not today, when?!  For today we eat and drink and tomorrow we die!

If I understand Brother Ronnie’s dream and our church history correctly, when Pastor and Ronnie entered into that old theater and were allowed admission by a very large angel, and upon the stage of that particular theater was a play that was being performed, over and over again.

Pastor had rowed over to a little island and started to sing “the song of the Lord”.  And there was an encampment or a facility, across from where the Pastor was singing the song of the Lord, full of every kind of problem, disability, every kind of trouble known to man was represented there.  And they were shouting for help, pleading for the song of the Lord to be sung clearly and loudly.  Because they knew it was that song that would at last set them free.

But every time the song of the Lord was being sung, a vehicle (of some kind) would start down the hill along side of that facility with those people in it, towards the direction in which the song of the Lord was being sung, and the people in that vehicle would start making such a noise (and as Brother Ronnie said, that noise was without content) that it would drown out the song of the Lord every time.  Then there was that woman Ronnie saw inside the adobe – mud brick – house that ask him, why can’t the people of this generation maintain a relationship with their God?

And then Pastor and Ronnie would start back up the other side of that hill in their golf cart or little jeep (whatever vehicle they were in), while the people in that facility cried and wailed in torment as they were still held captive.

Is that how we want it to end here, after all of your labors?

Are we going to allow all of our labors to be reduced to mere “wearing efforts”?

Are we really going to settle for just “whatever”?

I’m here to tell you, by the power of the Holy Spirit invested in me, that whatever vehicle the noise makers show up in, from now on, will be met with vehement resistance!  And I speak directly to the spirit world right now, if you don’t think prayer is much, then bring it on and we’ll just see about that!  And they’ll bring it.  They been bringing it for 35 years haven’t they?!

But is “greater is He that is in me than he that is in this world”, true or not?

Look, I pray that this word try you for everything you are worth this week.

And it will.  Because since you’ve heard it, you have to accept it and receive it, or reject it.

But since I opened my big mouth this week and brought it, what do you suppose my upcoming week is going to be like?  How much more responsibility do I have?

 But ya know what; the enemy cannot touch me unless the Lord God allows it. 

If He does allow it, I’ll be looking for what He wants me to gain from it.

Since my coming here, I have realized that I have given that old devil a lot more praise over the years than he ever deserved.  But whatever form in which my adversary comes – it may be the Holy Spirit!, it may be myself, or it may be that old devil – regardless, the word must be tried in me.  The word must be tried in us, for the Lord to have His desired effect in our lives.

How else can we obtain the experiential knowledge necessary to make us fit to minister?

So thank God for my adversary.

“Trying circumstances”, I see in an entirely new light these days.  I have greater understanding of Romans 8:28 that I ever have before.  All things (the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between) work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

Can we do this thing y’all?!  Who could possibly stop us?!

Roman 8: (37) Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. (38) For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, (39) Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Again I ask you, who or what could possibly stop this move of the Lord?  In view of the Word of God, who or what could possibly stop the vision the Lord gave us all those years ago, from becoming our reality?

You know what I have always found conspicuously missing from that list right there?

Me, Myself, and I!

I don’t see any where in the scriptures that God ever strips me of my free will, even after I am born again.

I have the power to derail the move of God in my life.

You have the power to derail the move of God in your life.

Is there anyone or anything at all that you have allowed to come in and hinder your walk with the Lord? 

I declare, according to the Word of God, you, nothing, or nobody else has the power to derail the move of God in my life because I refuse to give you that power.

Again I declare to you, any noise makers that seek to make a big commotion with the intent of shouting down the song of the Lord, it ain’t happening no more!

Well how can you be so sure of all that “big man”?!

Because I am fully convinced that the vision the Lord gave you all those years ago, He fully intends to move you into the reality of that promise!

And when He does, I’m getting in on it with you!

Just please don’t begrudge me a part in it if you happen to see the landowner giving me the same wage he gives you, although you’ve worked a whole day and I only worked a couple hours .

All I can do is promise you I will do my best from now on, but the strength and power of the Spirit that works in me, to hold up my end.

Now I’m going to give you my opinion:

I believe every word of this or I absolutely would not have said it. 

And I believe that if we are going to (can I say it this way and you just know I’m not trying to be base in any way and that you’ll just know what I’m talking about when I say), if we are going to “do this thing”, if we are going to allow our God to bring us into the reality of the prophetic vision given you so many years ago, then that fire is going to take hold in and through the Wednesday night “corporate prayer meeting”.

How can we move into a “corporate anointing” if we don’t believe in or care to participate in the “corporate prayer meeting”?

And yes you heard me correctly when I said, “if we allow God to bring us into the reality of the vision”, because if we’re waiting on God for something I don’t what it is.  I mean didn’t Jesus say, “It is finished”?  I believe the Lord is waiting on us to get in line with His Prophetic Word to us, so that we are in position to receive from Him _____, the corporate anointing . . . Yeah?!

How about ev-ery-thing we need to carry out His purpose?!

Is that not what the Word says?!!!

Lord, would you not destroy the city if we can find ten!

What if we had twenty or thirty?  What of the exponential increase?!

Just maybe it would be said of us, if a handful could come together in unity with no other motive than God’s glory, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also”!

And we need to daily uphold our leaders in prayer, Pastor Bobby, Brother Greg, and Ronnie Coleman, as they pray for us, teach us and lead us in the way.