When you say yes, I'm just telling you, first time I met him, this man knows how to dress. He could help me out. Anyway, glad to have you here. We're gonna get right into the word. Charlie, run over here real quick, son.
So that you will know, this morning and before service tonight will be your last opportunity because we have to pack and start driving back tonight and spend the night with some friends in another state.
Artificial intelligence versus God. If you don't have the book, I want to encourage you to get that. It's very detailed about what's about to happen. And we've got, oh, I mentioned this the other day, the Inside Prophetic Briefing. And these are things that we won't tell you on social media or in public because it causes too much trouble.
You'll hear some stories on here that are a little bit mind-blowing that have not been put on national media. The coming battle of the two marks: the mark of the beast and the seal of God. That's in Revelation. Those are out there, and you can see Charlie if you would like. Somebody give Charlie a hand for coming all the way with me.
And my wife would have loved to be here, but she has a case of shingles that's gone wrong. And they're telling her, the doctor is this, and you may be one of those rare people that will have it for one year. And so we're claiming, we don't believe that report. So we just need the prayer warriors to just keep praying and break through whatever that is and help her. She's such a sweet person.
If you don't know her, redeeming the pain. For the next few moments, I'm going to deal with something that the Spirit of God has put on my heart. Tonight's going to be a powerful service. If you've never been in a church, you've never been in a church, you've never been in a church, you've never been in a church, it's going to be a powerful service.
If you've never been in a Sunday night service, it is the best service always of all of our meetings. And I found a message that I did not know I had. So we're going to go into what's going to be great tonight, and just come on expecting.
Proverbs 18 and verse 14. Several months ago, I heard these words. I literally heard the words come out of my spirit: redeem the pain. And I thought, first of all, what does it mean to redeem the pain? I'd never heard that personally taught on. There's probably 30 people that have written books on it that I don't know.
So I want to go with that. And the verse I want to read is this: Proverbs 18:14. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear it? I looked up the word wounded from this passage in the Hebrew, and it means this: to be smitten, to be driven away, to be beat up verbally, or to be beat up emotionally.
One of the things that wounded people do is often isolate themselves, and they separate themselves from people that really care about them or really love them because now they don't trust anymore. They don't trust anybody. So in order to keep from being hurt again, they assume that the best thing to do is live by themselves, act by themselves, drive by themselves, go to the mall by themselves, go to the restaurant by themselves.
But in the time of isolation, what you have is you have a mental battle. You'll fight more thoughts when you are by yourself than when you are with or around people. I have known people that have been wounded in their body by a drunk driver. It's very hard, difficult for them to get over it.
I know people that have been rejected, hated, betrayed, rumors told on them, lies said about them, or even half-truths. So they're wounded by the words that people have said. Others are wounded by actions that they saw growing up.
I want to tell a story. It's very, very personal, and I probably should leave it alone because it's that personal. But my father grew up, for example, in the state of West Virginia. His father was a coal miner. Everybody in my family worked in the mines back in the day, in the 1940s and 50s. Very few of the miners were affectionate men. They were very hard men.
They were tough men. If a boy is caught crying, your daddy might literally take something and beat you until you quit acting like a sissy and grow up like a man. And they would do this to six, seven, and eight-year-old kids. My grandfather Stone, and this is before he came to know the Lord, was a very harsh man.
And when he would hit the kids, he grabbed my dad by the neck one time and kicked him in the rectum till blood started pouring out. And my dad told me this story many years ago, but he never held it against his dad because he got, dad got saved, and my grandfather got saved.
But my dad was from the school of whipping. How many remember the days of, I want to see all the whipping people in the house? Oh really? You must be an older crowd because they don't do that anymore, okay? And you can't do it now because of social services. It's a different day.
But my dad believed in the belt, and I'm telling you, if his temper got upset, and my mama used to say, I think sometimes he took his frustration out on you kids. How many of you sitting here can say, you know what? I think it happened to me too. They took their frustration out, and you're the one that paid.
Well, my dad believed in whipping. One time he went to whip me, and he suddenly realized, he just stopped. I was a kid, but he stopped, and he said, "Perry, for the first time I realized I'm acting out my dad." I wasn't kicking anybody, but I realized that I was doing exactly the same thing my dad did.
That when he would get frustrated, he'd take it out on the kids, and now I'm getting frustrated, and I'm doing the same thing. And so he changed over the years. And of course, if you have grandchildren, your kids will remind you that you discipline them, and why don't you discipline those grandbabies?
Because that's what grandparents are for, to prevent the discipline of those grandbabies. Come on and help me preach if you have grandchildren. They get by with more than your kids ever got by with.
Now here's three things I want to tell you that when it comes to wounds. Some are uninvited. In Psalms 105:18, Joseph's feet were put in chains and irons. He didn't invite that on. It was something that happened. He had no control over.
So uninvited wounds are often things you can't control that come. Then there are self-invited wounds. Genesis chapter 4, 23, a man by the name of Lamech had killed a man, and he said, I quote, "I slew a man to my own wounding and to my own hurt." So he brought it on himself.
And then there is the third level, and the third level are those who do the wounding, and they either choose to wound or they choose not to hurt a person and not to wound.
One really powerful verse in Genesis chapter 31 and 29, Jacob secretly fled from his father-in-law in Syria, whose name was Laban. Jacob took two of the daughters and all the grandbabies with him. Jacob took all the flocks with him.
So Laban gets up and said, "Anybody seen the grandbabies this morning?" "Oh well, they took a trek. They went out of here with servants and animals." And Laban was so mad that he started tracing down Jacob because his idols, Laban's idols were missing.
And so he caught up with him, and right before he caught up with him, listen to Genesis 31 and 29. Laban says to Jacob, "It is in my power to do you harm, but God, the God of your father, spoke to me last night and said, 'Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.'"
So the Lord's saying to him, even though you think he's done you wrong, stay neutral because you don't want to say anything bad about him because he has a covenant with me. You don't really want to say anything good about him because he's a trickster and a jokester, and he's a little bit of a hypocrite sometimes.
So instead of you judging him as a hypocrite, instead of you letting him off the hook because he did a good thing in a wrong way, just don't say anything. Does anybody know that there are times that the best thing for you to do is put your brain and mouth in neutral? Better yet, put it in park because anything that you say or do at that particular moment will be misread, misinterpreted, taken the wrong way, and actually can create a wound.
Now here's where we're going with this. In my opinion, the most powerful wounds that are hard to get over are what I call church wounds or what we would say from the scripture, "Wounded in the house of my friends."
Zechariah the prophet gives messianic prophecies. He's the one that talked about that the Messiah would be sold for 30 pieces of silver. He also predicted that Jesus would return to the Mount of Olives, and the Mount of Olives would split in half. Zechariah 14, by the way, is where that's found.
But in Zechariah 13, the question is asked, "Where did you get these wounds in your hands?" This is a messianic prophecy. As we know, Jesus was crucified, and Thomas saw the wounds in his hands after the resurrection. So it's a messianic prophecy, no doubt about Jesus.
So the question is asked to Jesus, "Where did you get these wounds?" And the answer in verse 6 is, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."
So these are what I call wounds from the house of God or being wounded in the house of God. The reason that a church wound is harder to get over than a wound that you get from an associate that you work with or even a family member is blood is thicker than water. Families will fuss but make up. Husbands and wives will fuss but make up.
I like the making up part. Where's my men in the house? Come on, fellas, help me. I like the making up part, not the fussing part, but the making up part. I can tell you all ain't made up in a long time. I can tell by looking at some of you.
The way you reacted, you had fights and you ain't made up yet. Why don't you make up before service tonight, and you'll come in happy and have a real move of God if you'll make up today.
All right, let's get that going. Let's get some happiness in the house. Now the word house refers to the house of God, the house of my friends. I'm a word study nut, and I looked up the word house of my friends, and I looked up the word friends.
And you may not be aware of this, but in the Hebrew scriptures, there are several different words for friend or friends, and they actually have a different connotation. This is a very important word, house of my friends, because in the Hebrew, it's the Hebrew word Ahab.
And Ahab does not mean a casual acquaintance. It doesn't mean somebody that's in the bloodline necessarily. It means, and here's the exact meaning for Ahab, an intimate relationship which is very close that involves a covenant of some kind.
So we are to be brothers and sisters. Why do we call ourselves brothers and sisters? Because the New Testament calls us the family of God. And part of the family of God, according to Paul, is in heaven, and the other part of the family of God, according to Paul, is on earth. So we're like a family.
So in other words, our relationship is what we call an Ahab relationship. You know the Bible talks about in Proverbs that there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Here's the verse: "For a man to have friends, he must show himself friendly." That word friends there is associates, acquaintances, someone you enjoy. It's a different Hebrew word.
But when it says there's a friend that sticks closer than a brother in Proverbs, it's Ahab. The word changes in Hebrew. So what it's saying is it's good to have people that you like to hang around, and they are friends, but it's better to have someone that you can have a deep, close, love, personal relationship with.
We would say that's got your back, that will stand with you through the good and the bad and the thick and the thin. Thick and the friend, thick and the thin. And that is your Ahab friend.
So Jesus, the prophecy I should say, is saying here that I had the house of God, and I was with God's people, and God's people are my intimate close family. But he says I got a wound in the house of my friend.
Think about this: the treasurer that he appointed, Judas, whom he anointed. Judas, by the way, when it says he sent the twelve out to heal the sick and cast out devils, Judas was in that twelve. I don't know who teamed up with him. They went two by two by two, but this was his friend, Judas.
This is what the Bible says: Jesus says, "Judas, my friend." He calls Judas a friend when Judas has kissed him on the cheek to betray him. "Judas, my friend."
So he's speaking here of not just the physical wounds from the crucifixion. He is saying I had an inner circle man that I trusted with the ministry money. Come on, preach Perry. And this man turned on me, and he betrayed me and betrayed me with a kiss to where I was arrested and put into prison and scourged and later crucified.
One man turned me over. He was my friend. So the wounds that Jesus got were in the house of his friends.
So what I want to say to you is this: David also understood wounds because David said that he was wounded by people that he knew. That Hebrew word in Psalms is often translated to mean a violent beating, striking with the intent to kill or to destroy someone.
Look at Psalms 41 in verse 9. Let me read this to you. This is David speaking: "My own familiar friend, there's that word, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me."
Now he calls this person, we don't know who it was. There's speculation. We do know that Bathsheba's grandfather was a counselor with David and was in David's inner circle. And we know that when David had Uriah killed, Bathsheba's grandfather turned on David.
That's a whole other story that you have to get into and study to see it in the Bible. It might have been him, very close. It might have been one of his three mighty men, one of his 33 mighty men. Somebody close to him turned against him when he did wrong.
He had the affair, she gets pregnant, David has the husband killed in battle. David then takes her to marry, trying to cover the whole thing up. So all this is happening, and yet David realizes that somebody who is familiar, somebody I knew, somebody that understood me well has now turned against me, and I trusted them.
That word trusted is to place confidence in. We fellowshiped. That means we ate at the same table together. And he said, "Which did eat of my bread." They ate at the same table.
Just for a moment, think about the closest friend that you have. Think about someone that's been with you through thick and thin. You grew up together, you went to college together, you went to school together, you're now in your forties, fifties, or sixties, and you still stay in touch with them. You vacation with the families.
Just think about your closest friend, and suddenly you discover they have betrayed you. They've told all the secrets that you told them over the years, and they now don't want to have anything to do with you.
Get that feeling? That's what happened to David. And he said, "This man has lifted up his heel against me." Now that is a phrase that would have been understood in the time of David that nobody understands today.
The lifting up of the heel is a horse or a donkey. It is the animal that the person rides. It is the pet horse. It's the one that they ride to war with. It's the one that they saddle up when they're doing business. They have a favorite animal.
This is what it means: as you are feeding the animal, you go around behind, and it jumps up backwards and takes its back legs and kicks you and wounds you and hurts you by kicking you.
And I saw a wild donkey. I've told this a few times, but I saw a wild donkey in Israel, and he looked so nice. And he was skinny. He looked like he hadn't eaten in about a week and a half, and we felt sorry for him.
And we went up real slow. We didn't know it was wild. We thought it was just a domesticated donkey that somebody owned that had got loose. And so we were kind of petting him on the side, and my buddy went and just took his little rump side, not the tail side, but the rump side, you understand?
And he's rubbing him, and that donkey went nuts. He started spinning and kicking with the back of his heels. And if he'd have hit my friend in the head, he'd have knocked him out, and he may have could have killed him if he'd have hit him right in the head.
So needless to say, that was the last time we ever went after a donkey. Come on, that's the last time. No more donkeys. No more donkeys for the kingdom.
So follow me here because we're going to talk about David. Before we go to this next part, which is very important, so David has a fellow worshiper who's with him in the house of God, his companion, his equal, and something happens.
Now I want to tell you this because I've learned something. When you read the Psalms and you see, you go through it in detail, you study it out, here's something you're going to discover: human nature never changes.
You think after a Holocaust like Hitler, it would never happen again, and it still happens in countries. You would think that people would finally not be racist anymore, and you still got people out there who are.
You would think that people would change over time and they'd get knowledge and they'd turn to love, but I'm telling you, there's a human nature that people have, and unless it gets sanctified by the Holy Ghost, it just don't change.
Now here's what David does. I've got to show you this. This fascinated me. So David says this, and I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't want to show you all the verses. It would take too long.
But here's what he says: now I had a visitor. I'm going through all of this. I have brought trouble on myself. They all know about my trouble, and I'm going to give you a scripture in the Bible.
In the book of Psalms, David talks about a disease he has, and he says, "I have a disease in my loins. I have sores. This is in Psalms. I have a burning, and I have pain, and I can't sleep at night because of the pain."
And I asked Dr. Jerry Mullilly, a legitimate licensed medical physician, to read those eight verses and tell me what disease David had. And he looked back at me and said, "Perry, it's very obvious. It's a sexually transmitted disease, probably venereal disease."
David had so many wives, and some of those wives had been married to other men that were very loose. So in his older years, are you tracking with me? By his own testimony in Psalms, you'll read it and read right over top of it, pay no attention to it if you're not careful.
He had had so much sexual activity in his life that he shouldn't have had, but he did, that he ended up with a transmittable disease that even people today have to deal with, and there was no medicine back then. You understand that? There was no treatment.
So when he got it, he suffered greatly with it. Now, keep that in the context of what I'm about to tell you. David says, "There is a man that I knew, and when I went through all this problem, I'm physically suffering. I have lost a baby through Bathsheba. I've killed a man, and everybody knows it, and they really don't like me."
He would come to see me, and this man would say, "David, oh, David, I know what you're going through, brother, and it just grieves my heart that you have to go through what you're going through, and I just want you to know how much I love you."
This guy would sit in his face in the palace and give him that bologna. Then David said, "When he left my presence, he went to my enemies and said, 'When will God kill him? When will his name be erased off of the earth?'"
And what he tells you that you can find out when you put the two and two together is there were spies being sent to my house by people who did not like me, mmm, who faked like they liked me just so they could see what was really going on in my house.
And they pat me on the back and kiss me on the cheek while they're walking out the door, and they give you this religious line: "We just want you to know that we're praying for you. We just want you to know that the church, you are on our mind and on our thoughts."
And no sooner does Jezebel get out the, watch out now, does Jezebel leave your house? She gets her phone out and starts text messaging and starts saying, "You ain't gonna believe what I got to tell you. She confessed something to me, and I just think we ought to tell all the girlfriends out there what she's really like."
And the next thing you know, you've been betrayed by somebody who was at your table, sitting at your table, drinking your coffee, eating your popcorn, watching a movie with, but they're two-faced. They're double-tongued like a snake, and they're two-faced in their heart.
They have a double heart. They have a heart that's towards you, then they have a heart that's towards your enemies. So in order to keep everybody happy, they're gonna come and love on you. In order to keep your enemies happy, they're gonna come and talk about how bad you are.
And David said, "Let me tell you, I have been through it. You wanna talk about being wounded? I have been wounded by people that I trusted."
I gotta ask one question. I gotta get a confession from this congregation. Has anybody in the house ever been wounded by a friend? Clap your hands and let me hear how many are in this house to know what I'm talking about.
The worst wounds, I'm gonna say it again, are religious wounds. Let me tell you why. Because you expect more out of Christians, and it's really unique. And I'm gonna go ahead and say this, but if you ever have a situation where someone, it can be a noted person, it can be someone that's not that noted, but if you ever have a person who is in a position, can I say it that way?
Let's say a leadership position, and they have a problem, and they fall, you will soon find out who your friends and enemies are. I know a story. This just came to me. I didn't have this in my notes.
In the state of Alabama many years ago, and this happened to be in a denomination called the Church of God denomination, of whom I was exhorted with and licensed with and so forth out of Cleveland, Tennessee. But there was a pastor of a church, and it was a good-sized church. You know, back in that day, 80 members was a good church.
And this pastor went through depression. He never told anybody. And when he went through depression, and it was over a situation, if I'm not mistaken, his wife had gotten real sick, and the church wasn't doing well, and he just got very, very depressed.
And so he didn't know what to do, so he went to a convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes. He used to smoke years ago, quit a long time ago. So he started smoking, and every now and then, some other preacher saw him on the back porch of the parsonage light up a cigarette.
And that other preacher called the state of the district overseer over the district, the state overseer of the state of Alabama. And instead of them going to this man and saying, "Now brother, obviously there's something going on. Tell us what it is," that's how you do it.
You say, "Now you know you never smoked before. Why are you smoking?" "Oh, I'm just depressed." "Well, brother, why didn't you tell us that?" That's how I would do it if I heard it was my friend.
But you know what they did? They went to that man's house and kicked him out of the ministry for smoking a cigarette. And another man ended up taking the church who'd been wanting that church for years.
And it just so happened that's the man that led up the attack on the preacher who smoked a cigarette. Well, brother Stone, are you for smoking cigarettes? No, because it makes your teeth yellow and your breath bad.
And I asked a relative of mine whose husband smoked, "What's it like kissing a man that smokes?" And she said, "It's like kissing a smokestack." I hope I'm not offending anybody, but I'm just being honest with you, right?
But someone said, "Well, you think smoking will send you to hell?" No, but it'll get you where you're going faster because the side packet tells you what could happen. So you might get to wherever you're going a lot quicker, right?
So, but they didn't handle this right. And so many times, you will discover if you can get to a person that's out of church, somebody who got hurt in church, somebody who got offended by people in the body of Christ, you will discover that many times it was that they placed a high expectation on God's people that was never met by God's people.
I expect that when a believer has trouble for the church to surround the wagons. Sometimes folks don't listen. Sometimes folks will go do their thing, and you can't do nothing about that. But surround the wagons and get help and get counseling and find out what the issue is and pray for them.
That is God's way, and that way you restore such one who has fallen. I'm gonna go ahead and say this verse right here. The Bible says, "When you see a brother overtaken in a fault, overtaken in a fault, restore such one in meekness, lest you too be tempted."
That phrase overtaken refers to a rhinoceros who takes its horn and rips another animal open and tears it completely up. And to restore is to take the wound that the rhinoceros has made. This is the whole imagery of that in Old Testament time, New Testament time, is to take the wound and to stitch up the wound, to help heal the animal.
And when Paul wrote about that, those who were overtaken, those that the enemy has hit, those that he has ripped, those that he's trying to eat and devour, be careful to try to help them get out of their trap lest you find yourself in the same trap that you're criticizing them about.
I'll preach on, Brother Stone, I'm going to. Jesus said this: the servant is not above the master, and if they hate me, they will also hate you.
Look at this list. Jesus had critics sitting on the front row cutting him down concerning how he was preaching. We have the same thing today. He had rumors. They said he cast out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. People have to deal with rumors today.
He had an inner circle betrayer. Judas betrayed him and was his treasurer. We see people who are in our inner circle doing the same thing today. He had liars, false witnesses. They went to the trial and said he said if he destroyed the temple in three days, he would build it back up again.
That's not what he referred to. The temple in Jerusalem, he was talking about his body in the tomb. They just completely did a false witness thing on him to get him arrested. He had departures.
Jesus, you know, I want to say this: my first sermon was pretty bad. I still have the cassette tape of it. It was really pretty bad. But I had 15 people there, and nobody left because half of them were related to me, and they showed up to see if Perry can preach or it's just in his head.
But I want to say this: I've never lost a whole congregation. I have waxed eloquent a few times in my ministry, at least that's what I would like to say. And I would say some things, and I'd see somebody get up, and they would leave, or a row of people got mad because I said that secessionism is not a real teaching, that speaking in tongues is real, and they'd get up and leave.
And that's not what they came to hear me preach, but I have never lost the entire congregation yet. I've never had everybody just get up. Jesus on one occasion lost the entire congregation, and every person in the building walked out on him.
And he looked at his disciples. He said, "Are you leaving too?" They said, "Well, we don't have nowhere to go. We gave up the fishing business, and we gave up all of our workplaces and everything that we had, and we're not at home half the time, so I think we'll just hang around because at least you got a treasurer with a money bag that can keep us fed."
Jesus was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. And if you read Isaiah 53, every negative human emotion, grief and sorrow, wounds, he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
What is the chastisement of your peace? To chastise something is to discipline it or whip it or do something to some point that is a punishment for disobedience. So if you chastise your children, you're doing something because of their disobedience.
Peace is of God. There's peace of God, peace from God, and peace with God. There's three levels of peace. And when Satan chastises your peace, he gives your peace of mind a beating. He starts beating up on your mind to rob you of your peace and rob you of your joy.
And Isaiah 53 said that Jesus Christ took on him the chastisement of our peace. Y'all will get that later when you need it. The enemies of Christ would show up in church, and even some were demon-possessed and would start screaming out loud in an attempt to hinder his message.
Yet despite every reason that Jesus could have given up, God so loved the world that he gave. In Isaiah 53, he bore our grief and carried our sorrows. Bore and carried is a phrase that would have been known to the Jewish people for when the priest would lay hands on the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement and transfer all the sins of the priesthood, the Levites, and the sins of the people onto that goat, and they would release that goat into the wilderness where it would eventually be pushed off of a cliff.
And it was a picture of the Messiah coming who would carry all the sins. Hallelujah! Because the Bible tells you he that knew no sin became sin that we could be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
So that's the picture and the imagery that you have of the scapegoat. Now think about this: thorns on the head, stripes on the back, spear in the heart, hands pierced, feet pierced.
So if he's carrying my pain, sorrow, chastisement of my peace, and all these things Isaiah talks about, what do his wounds? Was wounded for our... I wish you'd get this this morning. I need some coffee in the lobby.
Okay, next time we have Sunday morning, say it again. He was wounded for... Say it out loud. He was wounded for... Well, let me ask you a question. If he bore it and he carried it for us, what are we doing with it?
When he took the chastisement, the devil's trying to beat my brains out to chastise my peace, and the Bible says the chastisement of my peace was on him. I hope somebody gets this because it'll change your life if you'll get it.
I'm talking about redeeming your pain. The thorns on the head cover the battle of our mind. The stripes on his back, with his stripes we were healed. The spear in his side deals with the heart. They pierced his heart, and out of the heart proceeds the issues of life.
So Jesus carried every issue that you're gonna have to go through in life and has already taken it to the cross. My God! His hands were pierced for the works that you will do with your hands for him, and your feet represent your being able to walk by faith and walk on a straight and narrow path.
What I'm trying to say, he was wounded for our... Hey Lord! He was wounded for our... If he was wounded for our... Our means he carried it, he bore it, and now we don't have to be bogged down by the powers of the wounds and by the powers of pain if we can learn how to turn it over to Jesus.
Give it to the Lord. Let him take control. Why don't you give it to the Lord? Because there is nothing, oh nothing, there's nothing too big for my God to do. There's nothing too high, nothing too low, nothing too big, and nothing too wide.
Turn it over, turn it over, turn it over to the Lord. Today is redeeming your pain. What is that? Now here we get to the big part. What is the idea of redeeming?
We read about redeeming the time in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 16, in Colossians 4 verse 5. This word to redeem, the idea of redeeming time and redeeming pain is the Greek word ex agoradzo. And here's what it means: to buy up, to rescue from loss, and to make an improvement on a lost opportunity.
That's a big word. It can mean redeeming the time means to get back opportunities that time lost, what you should have done that you didn't do, what you can do that you're about to do, and God turning around.
Let me break it down for you. Let me break it down for you. COVID came, at least in our area, heavy in about February and March of 2020. We had great conferences planned. I canceled major conferences, and thousands and thousands of people that come to our town.
Our town, our mayor got up, our former mayor, and gave a budget report of how many millions of dollars, millions and millions and tens of millions that comes into Bradley County every year. And he said, "In all the counties of Tennessee, Bradley County is the number one successful economic county in the entire state."
Our county, 130,000 people in our county, but we've got Peyton's food, we've got Amazon warehouses, we have got factories. You know why they come to town? Because we give them a tax break for putting their business there, and they all come to Cleveland, Tennessee.
We got Volcker that makes solar panels in Cleveland, Tennessee with 130,000 people. There's no shortage of jobs. I'm not saying everywhere, but you don't need to move somewhere and then look for a job; you get it before you move.
So the mayor says, "This is the city council, this is the Kiwanis club." They're all meeting, hearing the mayor, and he says, "And we are grateful for Perry Stone." Didn't he say it, Charlie?
I said, "What? Perry Stone making this possible? What did Perry Stone do?" He has major conferences, and people that rent his facility for major conferences, and we estimate that with the fuel and the hotels and the restaurants and everything that they spend in the mall, that Perry Stone's crowd brings in 25 million dollars a year to Cleveland, Tennessee.
You got some rich people? We do not have rich people. We like to spend what they have because you're not taking it with you, y'all.
Now, pardon me, I'm on a rabbit trail. A good man leaves his children and his children's children inheritance, so there's nothing wrong with that. But I'm going to tell you something. I told my boy when he was on drugs, "You need to understand something. I'm going to leave you an inheritance if you're sober, and I'm going to leave you an inheritance if you're drug-free because I'm not leaving any money. I'm going to leave you a habit, and me dying supports your habit. So you better understand that if you're going to get anything from mom and dad in the will, you better be living right, full of the Holy Ghost, and doing something for God."
Well, that's just cold. No, it's not. That's called common sense. So some of y'all, you know, you've built up all this money and this great retirement. Thank God for that. But why don't you start enjoying it and spending it in your car or get a bus rented and take a whole bunch of people and get up to Cleveland, Tennessee to my ranch at a Perry Stone conference and hoop and holler and shuck and bunk and hot scream and shout and run around the building and then go and spend some money at a restaurant so they'll brag on Perry saying thank God for Perry.
That's a ton of money. I couldn't believe it. I said, "Where do you get the statistics?" The non-service. I do a prophetic summit where 5,000 people show up, and it's older people, and a lot of them got cash, and I'm telling you, they like to spend, and I wish I had some.
Well, pray about it. See what God says. Better yet, start giving like you should. God quiet now. Several years ago, they started canceling meetings because the state and the federal government, as you know, would not let there be large crowds.
I totally understand that. I totally get that. I'm not complaining about that. But I had three events. I had three Warrior Fests, which were great youth events that had to be canceled. And over four years, almost four years, we did have one, but it was online, and the second was online, and then we just didn't have the crowds coming in because we knew they wouldn't show up because of COVID.
My mom and dad were afraid the kids were going to catch something and bring it back home to grandmother. I totally understand that. But I read in Joel one day, "That which the palmer worm hath eaten, the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar have eaten, I will restore to you the years."
And the word restore is shalom, not shalom. It's shalom, and it means to bring recovery again, to bring about a full recovery, to bring something that if you have fought to an end or a conclusion.
So I started preaching to my people at OCI, Omega Center International, "We're going to get shalom." It's in the Bible. And I said, "The years that we have lost, God, because this was a work of God, it's not the work of a man. This ministry is the work of the Holy Spirit, not the work of man."
And I said, "We're going to get shalom." And God gave me a dream. I'll go into detail about the dream. He showed me how all this was going to work. And then we decided just this year to bring back the biggest youth event that we have, which is Warrior Fest.
And we got great people coming. We have a great youth dance team, drama team, and Jacob's tennis coming, and the girl from John's church, what's her name again? Lydia. Lydia Morris coming. My daughter's coming. Minister Nick Walker's coming. I'm preaching.
We have a Hispanic brother who's known in the Hispanic community. He's coming. We've got Jensen Franklin's daughter, Courtney, who's a holy host. Listen, I shouldn't say this, but when my son was in Lee College, which is a university, and Courtney was there, I think they were smoking pot together because Jensen came and got Courtney and took her out, and my son got kicked out.
It's always good to have a good family testimony. And all you guys that got kids on pot, don't you worry about it. Yeah, my boy, can I tell a funny story? Do you got time for this? You got time? Nod your head.
I didn't know my boy was smoking this stuff. I didn't know where he was getting it. But one night, I wanted to go pray. This is years ago. I wanted to go pray for him. And I said, "Son, I'm going to pray for him." He's just kind of laying in the bed with his arms folded back.
So I lay beside him, and I start praying. And then I hear him say, "Yeah." I'm thinking, "That's the name of Jesus in Hebrew, man. He's catching on in it." And then he started, he got like real spiritual. I mean, the kid's praying. He's got his hands raised.
And I got so excited because he'd been addicted and had some problems. So I'm like, "God has finally come through." And I go down and wake up my wife. "Pam, get out of bed. I gotta come and see Jonathan, man. He's like tripping out in the Holy Ghost."
And I went upstairs, and she looked at him and she went, "Oh Perry, he's smoking dope. I'm going back to bed." And then I said, "Son, have you been smoking some dope?" "Daddy, I don't, I'm not going to get arrested because I don't get enough to get..."
I said, "Where is it at?" And he had a can. I said, "Give me that." He said, "You want some too?" I said, "No, no, I don't want some too. I'm taking this from you."
And that's why all these people smoking dope, "I saw Jesus last night, a white horse came in front of my blazed man, and Jesus said he's coming again." And I saw a false prophet over there, and he had horns on his head shaking like this, you know what I'm saying?
So don't think they're getting spiritual. It might be Colorado Pot. So we started decreeing, I'm almost done here. We started decreeing for God the Shalomus, which is to restore back what the enemy took.
And so I say this for the glory of God, and these numbers will change, and we're going to take it up to I don't know how many, but as of right now, on April 5, 6, and 7 in my building in Cleveland, Tennessee, there are 7,000 young people planned on coming because God said, "I will restore to you the years."
I said, "I will." Put your hands together if you need God to restore something back to you. Come on, clap your hands and praise God right now if you need to show you quickly how God can restore.
On October 7, I was shocked to turn on the news and see where the kibbutz's, some I had driven through, some I was familiar with over the years in southern Israel had been attacked with a very incredible, just terrible, horrible attack by Hamas from Gaza.
When I found the numbers and I started hearing the numbers, it made it even more unbelievable, and I knew immediately that three trips were planned for Israel for us in the month of November.
And I kept waiting because I knew they would end up canceling, so by the end of October, all three trips had been canceled. But anyway, I want to show you what the Lord does. Somebody say what the Lord does.
So I have lost my itinerary for that month, but I received a call, and it was from Jensen Franklin in Free Chapel. He said, "Perry, I'm having a prophetic summit, four speakers. I want you to come on four Sundays. I want you to come the last Sunday and wrap it up."
I said, "Be glad to." I said, "I'm not going to Israel." So you know I preached. It's great. It's over 3,000 people there. I preached. The Holy Spirit fell, and it looked to me like a thousand people ran to the altar. It was unbelievable.
And he whispered to me, "Can you stay the next two services?" I said, "Yeah, I stay." The next two services, and imagine this, the church is going to be dismissed, and you're announcing, "We'll have church tomorrow night."
3,400 people showed up. The place is jammed. The next night, 3,600 people showed up. The next Sunday, 5,400 people showed up. Now that's not a guess. That was clicking as they walked in the door. They had them everywhere, a thousand in the lobby.
They had them in overflow rooms, and we were getting to the point, and it was getting colder weather. We were going to have to put a tent up outside with a video to hold the rest of the people. And that revival went fifteen days.
I could not have done the revival had I been in Israel. Now the reason I'm telling you that is when you have made a plan or you have a goal and it doesn't happen, God usually has something better.
So you don't freak out. You don't sin with your mouth. You don't get angry. You just say, "Well, Lord, you know what? You probably have something different that you want to do, so I'm okay with that."
I looked for land to build on for a year and a half, and I had my attorney in town checking everything in Cleveland, and nothing fit. And I'm getting ready to sign papers on sixteen acres near the interstate, and the Lord says, "It's not big enough."
And I said, "Why didn't you tell me that earlier?" He said, "Because you weren't listening." And I apologized to the Lord. I said, "Lord, you're right. I was just too busy caught up to listen."
And I could not find the land, and one day my attorney said, "Do you know right where your property bumps up to the railroad track? Have you ever thought about that property over there?"
My attorney said, "It's a hundred and four acres. It was an old farm, but it's kind of a rough piece of property in some ways." I said, "Set it up to meet Steve."
Steve was a Baptist. His wife's Pentecostal. That's a real combination in the house, by the way, because he calls himself a cussin' Baptist. I didn't call him that; he called himself that because he gets upset, he'll say a few words.
But I said, "Has your wife ever rebuked you?" "All the time," that's what he said. So anyway, I met with Steve, and Steve was not interested in selling the property until I told him it would be used for young people.
And he said, "Oh Lord," he said, "when I bought this property, God told me that it would be used for young people." And he looks at me and he said, "Do you believe God talks to Baptists?" I said, "Well, apparently so because that's a word from God right there. That's the word I got."
So you got it, yes, he talks to you. Of course, he talks to you. And what was something he said, "Let me go home and pray about it." So he went home and did Bible roulette.
This is my wife's Bible; she prays with it all the time. Now I'm going to open it up and let it fall on a verse. It says, "No man has left houses or lands in his life will not get a hundredfold return in the life to come eternal life."
And he met with me and he said, "Alright, let's make a deal." I said, "You ready to sell it?" He said, "You said you didn't want to sell it." He said, "I didn't want to sell it."
And then the Lord gave me a verse in the Bible. Now I've got to sell it, and I've got to sell it to you. So we bought the property in a recession, and he was an earth mover. He moved dirt; that's what he does.
And I looked at him and prophesied. I said, "Now God's about to redeem you." "What do you mean? I'm safe." No, no, no. God's about to redeem your job. He's about to redeem your business. He's about to bring it all back because you did the right thing, and you gave up something that you didn't want to give up, and you gave it up for the kingdom of God.
Look out for what's about to happen. Folks, you heard me tell this the other night if you were here that man started getting calls from the...
From the BMW, right? Is it BMW? Volkswagen plant in Tennessee that was a several billion dollar plant. And they said, "You moved dirt. Give us a bid," and he won it.
University of Tennessee calls, "We need some parking lots and buildings. Give us a bid," he won it. He won 13 bids in a row. I'm talking big money. I'm talking millions.
He got to the point that he couldn't take the rest of them, so he just overbid by 10 and 20 percent. I'm gonna blow your mind. He started getting the overbids. There were people bidding less. "Ah Steve, we like you. Let's just..."
And he had to go buy two big huge earth-moving pieces of equipment just to take care of the business that he had. I'm telling you, God will redeem your time, and God will redeem your business, and God will redeem your pain.
So here's what the Lord says to say to you. He says to say to you that you, if you have been wounded, people do not recover from a wound because many times they're so hurt they want to wound other people, and they can never get healed.
You can abide in your wound, or you can minister out of your wound. You can use your hurt to hurt others, or you can use your hurt to heal others.
Adam Walsh was six years of age when he was kidnapped and killed. Many of you have heard this story, and it drove his dad crazy that there would be other kids in the future that would be kidnapped, and he wanted to do something about criminals on the street.
And he started, his dad, John, started TV America's Most Wanted, and you see the program constantly, and it was out of hurt. It was out of pain, and God took the pain and redeemed the pain, my Lord, and gave him a way of seeing these very wicked people locked up.
My son fought drugs and alcohol. He never saw us drink, so he didn't get it from us. And my son was suffering, and I knew he was, and I was so angry at the end of me.
And one night, I did not know what he did. He later told me that he took 70 pills, and it should have killed him. And only God in prayer, we called our intercessors. He was in an emergency room hooked up to equipment, and the doctor gave him a little button to push.
And he said, "If you know if you have a chest pain, hit that as soon as you can, but I can't promise I bring you back." And my boy looked at me and said, "Dad, you gotta keep me from dying. I didn't do this to die. I did this to freak out. I did this to get high."
He said, "But his heart was that when we got him to the doctor and they finally got him hooked up, his heart was beating over 200-something beats a minute, and he's not athletic, and his heart could explode."
The doctor told me, "Perry, his heart could quit and explode." He said, "If you got anybody that knows how to pray, 18 kids have died in this hospital doing what your boy did."
And the devil says to me, "Who's your boy? How's he special from anybody else? I'll kill him too. Watch. You got a real testimony. You know you've been up telling people that you're gonna father a generation. You've been up telling people that the Lord told you about the next generation. I'll just kill your kid, and you'll never want to preach to the next generation."
I was hearing it, and then I turned my back to my boy, and I said, "Devil, you listen to me. I'm gonna make you pay. You touched the wrong boy. You touched the wrong family."
And I probably said this, and you're not supposed to do this, but I said, "And I swear that you're gonna pay." And that's when God set me on a track to build a building for a generation called Omega Center International that whose little hall seats 1,000, whose big hall I've had 6,000 in, I've held 5 to 7,000 people, and they come from all over the United States.
We'll forget the first time that we had a youth meeting there, and we had 4,000 young people show up. And guess who was in the back running all of the audio? My son.
And I said, "Guess what, devil? You're paying." And every time we have one and thousands of kids get saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, I said, "You're paying again."
And when we have another one in the several thousand, I said, "You're paying again." I'm not trying to be a devil hunter; I'm trying to be a Jesus lover. But I'm trying to tell you, take your stand because God said, "I will redeem your pain."
And this is my final story. If I've told it here, bear with me because it's fantastic. The Clyde Thompson story. He never went to church with his family because he always was hunting on Sunday.
On this day, he got up with sort of a bad attitude and went hunting. He confronted two other hunters. They got in an argument. He shot both of them dead. He was charged with murder and was sent to Huntsville, Texas, to the maximum security prison there.
He was put on death row. When he was on death row, he killed two men in the prison. He was so angry and so dangerous that they took the morgue inside the prison in Huntsville, and they cleared everything out, and they put him in a room and put bars up and took everything from him except his underwear.
He had no pencil, no pen, no paper, no books. He only saw there was a four-inch square where light came in, and guards could peek in and see him. And the light came through six hours a day, and the rest of the time he was pretty much in dark.
If a guard came close to him, he would open the window. He would spit in their eye. He wasn't insane; he was just bound up by demons. Finally, a guard had compassion on him and said to him, "Clyde, you have nothing to read. I can tell. I know you're just bored stiff. I will give you a Bible if you promise me you will not tear it up."
Well, he was so bored by then he accepted the Bible. He took it and started reading it. He did not have a preacher come by. He had no television, no radio. All he had was one Bible, leather with paper and ink.
He started reading it, and as he read it, when it would get dark, he would try to remember everything that he read. And he got to the point that he could quote scripture after scripture after scripture after scripture, and he started meditating on one.
And then the guard started noticing he's not cursing, he's not hollering, he's not spitting anymore. He's kind. They said, "Can we take him out of that morgue building and maybe put him back on death row?" And they did.
He was so changed on death row and started talking to the other men about the Bible that they said, "Let's put him back in the general population." They put him back in the general population. He started going to a chapel service. He became the chaplain's right-hand man.
Eventually, he was given a lifetime of parole where he checked in and checked out. He began a ministry in the Lubbock County jail here in Texas, which is one of the largest jails, becoming a chaplain in the chaplain program where he died in 1979.
All because just the word. We try everything we can to help people, impress people, deliver people, but when it all comes around, right here it is. Right here it is.
I want to encourage you today. My word for you today on this Sunday morning is to encourage those of you who have gone through a church wound, a church hurt, a family wound, a family hurt, something that you brought on yourself or something you had no control over to tell you that there's an ex agoradzo moment.
There is a shalom moment where God has said, however many years that the enemy has tried to take from you, I'm able to restore that number back that quick. If you've gone through a bad divorce and a bad separation, and there are many people that have, you need to pray for Boaz because he's waiting on you somewhere.
He's looking for you, and you're looking for him. You just haven't been at the right place yet, right time. Whatever you, that's for me, Lord. Somebody's in. Take it. That's good.
That was a male voice, so that must be a Boaz looking for a Ruth. Come on, where are we at here? This may be a setup this morning. I don't know.
If you, I never end by just walking away and saying, "Let's be back tonight." I end with prayer because I believe in it. I believe prayer from a heart of a person that loves Jesus can activate a seed in you that begins something in you.
And here's what I'd like for you to do. I'd like for you, if you've been wounded, stand up to your feet. If you know you carry a wound, you've been carrying something, just stand up. Nobody has to know what it is. You don't have to tell nobody.
As you stand up, I always like to pray in the front because this is where the word has gone forth, and the presence of the Lord through the anointing is where. So if you'll come down here and make your way, I know you have to come out of the balcony, but go ahead and do that if you're physically able and come down here in the name of the Lord and get ready for just a moment as the ministry of the Holy Spirit begins to take place.
Oh hallelujah, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. The Spirit of God says to tell you that you have said with your words, "I'm not trusting anyone again."
Every time I place my trust in a person, it seems that either I get betrayed or I get hurt. So therefore, I'm not putting my trust in anyone. And the Lord says, "Do you trust me? Am I not the one that you should have confidence and faith and trust in?
Do not look at what men and women have done nor what human mouths have said. I have spoken my word, which has all power to restore and help you must begin to speak my word and place trust. Do you trust me?" the Lord says.
"Do you place confidence? I will take care of you," the Lord says. "Restore and renew your trust in me," the Lord says, "because this is how you shall be fully restored and recovered is by complete trust."
Oh hallelujah! Thank you. Let's raise our hands. I'm going to pray over you right now. Let's everybody, everybody raise your hand. Now, Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, as we come together in this moment of ministry in the altars here at this beautiful church in Beaumont, Texas, the word of the Lord has gone forth again in a way that we felt it would.
Every person, Father, under the sound of my voice who is standing before you carries in their spirit, mind, heart, maybe even their physical body a wound that has been created either by something they did, something someone else did, some choices that were made either by other people, perhaps themselves.
But God, we're not concerned about how it got there; we're concerned about getting it healed in Jesus' name. So I want you to ask, Lord, by the Holy Spirit, I want you to speak to the people to no longer put blame on people, to put labels on things, and no longer to say, "Only if I would have, if I would have, if they would have, if he or she would have," because they're stuck in a wound rut.
And they take a wound that's covered, and they pull the bandage back, and they pull the scab back, and it starts reinfecting again. I'm asking you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, God, that you will heal the spirit and the mind and the heart by the blood of Jesus Christ, by the blood of Jesus, the name of Jesus, by the word of God.
Here's our verse, Lord. Our verse is, "He heals the broken of heart, and he will bind up their wounds." I make a decree on this Sunday morning that the Lord is going to bind up the wounds of every person, every age, male and female, and they're going to know it has happened.
They're going to feel in their spirit, their emotions, their heart, the Lord has sent me a word today, and I have received help from him. Now everybody raise your hands and begin to pray out loud. Just begin to pray. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Oh, bless his name, bless his name, bless his name, bless his name, bless his name. You pray it. It's time for you to pray it. Praise the Lord. Oh, hear us, Lord. Open up the windows of heaven. Pour out the blessing that we cannot contain it, Lord, for your honor and for your glory.
Hallelujah, hallelujah. Go ahead, go ahead. Everybody, everybody just let the Lord see your hands, let him hear your words, let him see your heart. Say, "Thank you, Lord, for your help. God, I believe how you're going to redeem the pain. You're going to redeem the pain."
Yes, yes, yes. You're going to lift it from me. I'm going to be healed. I'm going to be whole. I'm going to have peace. Somebody's receiving. I'm telling you, it's going to happen. Today is your day. Amen.
You thought you'd come to church just to come to church? No, you didn't. You came to be touched by the Lord. Just receive it right now in Jesus' name. Just receive it right now. Hallelujah.
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on Feb 28, 2024
