By TIMOTHY L. MELTON
Cherokee Pentecostal Holiness Church
(Transcribed by Myra D. Colgate)
Read 1 Peter 3:15
Opening my bible, I flip it and it just goes right where it’s supposed to. I don’t know how many times it opens to the right chapter and the right verse and just falls open in my hand.
One may ask, “How does that happen?”
I’ll tell you how. We, when we have a need, when the instrument of God, specifically, the Sword of the Spirit, gets comfortable in your hand. How many know one begins to wield it in a different kind of way? Now, somebody says, “Well, that’s wonderful, Pastor Tim, but what’s left?”
I’ll tell you what’s left. It ought to be getting down into one’s heart, one’s spirit man, so that, whenever the enemy shows his head, one can just whack it in a hurry. I used to like to play a game that one could get at Chuck E. Cheese’s called Whack-a-Mole, and when it popped its head up, I’d pop it back down for him. Come o, sometimes it feels like you’re playing a game of “whack-a-ball”. It’s “whack, whack, whack”!
But, let me tell you, you’re not the one eventually, he’s smart enough to realized I’m not going down like that, and smart enough to realize and say, “I’d better leave him alone because he knows how to whack me.” Amen. Yep, look at your neighbor and say, “You need to learn how to whack him!”
I’m going to have to offend some of you. I don’t really mean to, but I’m going to have to because I’ve got to use a word that’s akin to a swear word in the Church. Now, I know you’re so holy, you’re going to just tell me you love me, but I’m just going to get it out of the way and go ahead and say it.
Look at your neighbor and tell him to “plug your ears if you can’t handle it” because I’m about to say it. “Sanctified” is the word. Whoa, ya’ll don’t hear a whole lot about that word because it means that one must make some changes. It means we are not okay in the way we are, that we’re not okay. The world wants us to believe we’re okay the way we are. That if one stays just like one is, one is going to be just fine, but I came here to tell you, one can come as they are, but one is not going to be allowed to stay as they are. I tried to preach it this morning, but ya’ll shouted so loud and took so long, I didn’t get a chance. So, you’re going to have to put up with it tonight. Here’s what He said in 1 Peter 3:15. Read it for yourself now.
Father, I just pray that you’d show up in this house in a mighty way. Holy Ghost, you turn us upside down and right side up and inside-out and outside-in today. And I pray, God, that you’d do it again tonight, but I pray, God, that as I preach over the radio over the internet, O God, that you would just send your Spirit to do the same thing literally around the world. That those, O God, would encounter this Word, that the Spirit of the Lord would use it mightily to change their lives. I pray, God, that sanctity, Lord, will not be a dirty word in the House of God. It won’t be a dirty word, O God, anywhere. When we hear the word “sanctify”, Lord, we will rise up and declare, “Make it to me, O God, I want to walk through the sanctification process. Father, we love you and praise you. Holy Ghost, you’re the real preacher and teacher. Now come and speak a powerful word. Let revelation flow. For that, I give you the praise, the glory, and the honor, and we all say, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
When I was a boy, my grandmother and her friends and the old preacher, they used to get up and they would want to testify. How many of you remember the testifying services and they would go long, and they would go hard, and people would be all excited. They’d begin by saying these words right here, “I thank the Lord that I’m saved. Yeah, sanctified, and full of the Holy Ghost.”
How many of you have memories like that?
