Where the Presence of the Lord Is, Demons Flee

Clearly the Lord is telling me, “Tell them about Me, lift Me up”—speaking of Jesus Christ—“lift Me up over the city. I want to cleanse the city; I want to stretch out My arms.” Right now, the image of Jesus on the mountain praying for Jerusalem comes to mind. I imagine that He was looking toward Jerusalem and praying for that city, saying, “Jerusalem, you who stone your prophets, how I longed to cover you as a hen covers her chicks, but you were unwilling.” The Lord wants to cover our city with His shadow; He wants to cover it with His Name.

If cities, if nations, if families, if communities, ethnic groups, and neighborhoods invite Jesus Christ to take control, say no to Satan, and repudiate the works of the devil, the Lord will come in and perform works of cleansing that no institution and no other power can perform. How many believe that? God wants to bless families; God wants to break the devil’s bonds.

Behind every evil, every evil deed, every addiction, and every neurosis, there is a demonic power that wants to harm the lives of human beings, and what is needed is the Son of God, who the Bible says came into the world to undo and destroy the works of the devil. The nations need Him, and I believe this is the time when God wants entire nations, entire nations, to turn to Christ. I believe that in the times God has ahead for humanity, before Christ finally comes in all His Glory to bring history to an end, there will be a visitation from God that will be like a tsunami, like a storm that will cover the Earth, and for a time the glory of God will be seen among the nations.

That is how I sense it, and we must be preparing for it and proclaiming that Jesus wants to enter our cities and cleanse them. The poisonous spiders that control this city will flee when the power of Christ enters, and our part is to sow and prepare the setting for the manifestation of God’s power. And I believe that as we dare to believe, step out in faith as we are doing, and cast the nets in the Name of the Lord, we will have a truly supernatural, miraculous harvest and catch. We must dare and keep that image of Christ before us.

And I believe this passage here speaks to us precisely about that. Let me read it with you. Luke chapter 13, verse 10, says that the Lord was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. I am going to explain it as I go; I am going to use my own outline of the passage itself. It says that the Lord was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. The first thing I see here is that before that great miracle of Jesus Christ takes place—the miracle He is going to perform for a very special woman who is oppressed by the devil—He was teaching.

Notice: there is an order here in the manifestations of Jesus’ nature. First comes His teaching ministry, and then His ministry of miracles and power. I believe that is the order that must be followed in the churches and in our lives. First comes the Word; first comes instructing the people in the Word of God, in the principles of the Kingdom of God, in truths about conduct, and in the spiritual truths that provide a platform for God to work in our communities. We must teach our children to be God-fearing Christians.

I applaud the effort being made with those university students to instruct them in the Word of the Lord. I do not care how the Word reaches them—if it reaches them through groups like that meeting together, the important thing is that they receive the Word. If those young people are going to receive the Word there, sitting together and communicating under good guidance, what does it matter whether they do it here or there? The important thing is for that Word to reach them.

I believe that the Word of God is the answer to every need. If the Word of God enters—I say this because there are churches and movements that put even manifestations of the gifts ahead of the Word, and everything turns into a kind of sensationalism and spectacle in which people believe that they must manufacture supposed supernatural manifestations so that people will come, while the Word of the Lord is neglected.

The Word must be the foundation of our lives. Brothers and sisters, I encourage you to know the Word and study the Word. These discipleship classes we offer and other resources are very important. Instruct your children in the Word; be consumers of the Word of the Lord yourselves, because in the Word you will find the answer you need for your life. In the Word of God you will find counsel and instructions for your marriage, for how to raise your children, and for how to manage your finances. When the Word of God enters richly into people’s minds and hearts, that Word necessarily pushes out and removes everything contrary to it.

Physics says that two objects cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. When the Word of the Lord enters the heart and mind of a family, everything demonic, everything contrary to it, everything neurotic, must flee and leave so that the Word can take its place. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.” Many times, when the Word enters your life and your family, there will not be a great, spectacular deliverance, but deliverance will necessarily take place simply through the natural power of the Word entering your life.

I believe there are many ways in which a person can be delivered. It does not have to involve a person lying there on the floor, foaming at the mouth, with their eyes rolling in their sockets. Sometimes deliverance comes simply because a person gives their life to the Lord, says no to the evil within them, believes the Word of the Lord, and the devil has to flee.

Look at this woman here. This woman is demonized; she is physically ill. If you read the passage—and you can put it up there while I am speaking—the Lord is teaching in this synagogue, instructing with the Word, and there is a woman there who, it says, has “a spirit of infirmity.” She is ill, but she is not ill merely in a biological sense. Her illness bends her over completely, with her head looking down at the floor; she is a woman bent over in a terrible way. The word used in Greek is suncuopto, which means that she was bent over upon herself.

I have seen one or two cases of people walking down the street like that, completely hunched over and bent at the waist, looking downward because their spine has become deformed and they cannot straighten up. It is not that those people necessarily had a demonic spirit. This particular woman had a spirit of infirmity, but no one realized it; it simply looked like an illness. Today they would say, for example, that she had osteoporosis—fragile, hollow bones that had lost their calcium and therefore did not have the strength to support her. That is the biological aspect, but no: behind it was a demonic illness.

And notice something interesting: the Lord delivers her, but He does not attack the demon. This deliverance does not take place through a rebuke, as it does, for example, with the Gadarene demoniac. That is another passage in which a man is so possessed by demons that he is completely insane: he breaks chains and lives in the cemeteries. Sometimes the devil can manifest himself spectacularly, but at other times Satan manifests his work in our lives through very unspectacular forms: through neurosis, through illness, through generational problems, through sensuality, mental bondage, deformities of every kind—a multitude of forms. But many times, behind these things is the work of the devil.

Satan wants, for example, to keep entire families in chains. If you study whole families sociologically, you can see the same things over decades and decades and decades. The problem is that such studies are not normally done: a person lives within their own generation but sometimes does not know what came before; beyond the grandfather’s generation, one does not know what was behind it all. But if someone could conduct a long-term, longitudinal study across several generations, you could see the same things repeating themselves: divorce, illness, cancer, demonization, incest, ignorance, poverty, curses of every kind, witchcraft, Santería, and demonic spirits that keep entire generations under the devil’s power.

Sociologists say, “Ah, that is due to matters such as a lack of money, poverty, and a lack of education.” But what is behind that? Behind it there are often demonic powers carrying out their work.

The point is that this was the case with this woman: she did not appear to be demonized. She was in church; she was in a synagogue. It says that the Lord was teaching one day, as though it were a Sunday, and that woman was there, bent over in an utterly ghostly, horrifying way. She had been in that condition for 18 years. The Lord calls her “a daughter of Abraham.” At the end of this account, if you read it in Luke 13, the Lord says, “And this daughter of Abraham, who had been oppressed by Satan for 18 years.”

She was a daughter of God, perhaps a servant of the Lord, yet she was oppressed by a demonic spirit. Some people are surprised when it is said that a person can be a Christian and be oppressed. I have known such people. I have known people who were baptized, who love the Lord, who tithe, and at a certain point it is revealed that there is demonic oppression in their lives. Right now I do not have the time to teach you theologically why that is possible, but it is possible, and we must make sure that we are completely healed in our own lives. To me, the best way to be fully healed and to undo the works of the devil and Satan’s authority in our lives in the most organic and natural way possible is to fill ourselves with the Word of the Lord.

Let the Word of the Lord flow richly in our homes as we set aside time to have our morning devotions, pray, praise the Lord, gather together, serve the Lord, and learn the spiritual principles that govern human life. The Word of God is full of laws, statutes, principles, precepts, and commandments intended for the life of nations, communities, human beings, and families. If we devote ourselves to studying the Word, there will be no room for Satan.

Because, as I was telling you, the Lord does not enter into a dispute with the spirit afflicting this woman. Notice that in the case of the Gadarene demoniac, the Lord has a head-on confrontation with the demons, the demonic powers within this man, and casts them out. They leave spectacularly, enter a herd of pigs, and plunge into the sea—what could be more spectacular than that? In this case, the Lord simply addresses the woman and says to her, “Woman, you are free.” The demons are simply irrelevant in this case, because where Christ speaks a word of deliverance and life, the demons must flee.

Where the Presence of the Lord is, demons flee. Where God is worshiped, where there is a home consecrated to the Lord, where there is a father or mother praying for their children, consecrating their home to the Lord, and living according to the biblical principles of the order of God’s Kingdom; where there is a mother laying hands on her children, and fathers setting a good example for their sons of how to live rightly and studying the Bible to discover the principles of the Word—those homes will be blessed, and the devil will have no place.

The Bible says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the destruction of strongholds.” The apostle Paul says, “The Gospel does not consist in words, but in the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” I believe in the power of the Word.

Brothers and sisters, I tell you that it is good—all the other things are very important. But the most important thing is for the Word of God to fill your life. Buy yourself a Bible if you do not have one. Do not say, “Oh, I cannot read; I do not understand.” Begin; ask the Lord to enlighten you. My mother was not a highly educated woman, but when the Gospel entered her life, she became a consumer of the Word of the Lord, and wisdom filled her spirit. And, brother, I have known elderly ladies like that at whose feet I would sit at any time rather than sit before one of the wise people of this world, because they have God’s blessing and anointing upon their lives; they have practical wisdom. They have won their families, they have won their homes, they have won their marriages, and they have left behind grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, because the power of God was in them, because the Word of the Lord was at work in them.

And I want to see men like that in this Congregation as well. Men, do not leave to your wife the task of blessing the home through prayer and leadership. God wants you to be a spiritual leader in your family, in your home. Do not hide behind your wife when it comes to the blessing of your home; be the head yourself—not by command and decree, but because you have earned that leadership through your life. Be an example. Let your children find you praying and crying out to the Lord, reading the Word and studying the Word when they get up. Be an example to your wife; lead her. It is important: lead, but do it according to the leadership of Jesus. Consume the Word.

Let us not put the cart before the horse. The Word is the foundation, and I always see that the Lord first taught and then ministered. It is interesting because, for example, in the passage where we see the multiplication of the loaves and fish, it first says that the Lord spent the whole day instructing the crowd that had come looking for Him, and it says that when evening came, the disciples said, “Now send them away so they can go home and buy food,” and the Lord said, “No, you give them something to eat.” And then came the moment to do the miraculous part, which was to multiply the loaves and fish in an extraordinary way, distribute them, and feed the crowd supernaturally.

First the Word and then the instruction. I see that the great miracles the Lord performed, He performed almost incidentally. The miracles complemented His teaching ministry. The Lord came to instruct humanity with the heart and revelation of the Father, and then, to sustain, support, and confirm the Word He preached, and to show them that He came from God and that this Word came from God, He performed miracles, also manifesting His mercy, His love, and His grace toward people who had no Medicare or Social Security, nor access to a hospital, and so He healed them.

The Lord healed the demon-possessed, the lunatics, the neurotics, the paralyzed, the blind, and the deaf as an additional expression of His grace. I believe that is the proper order. God wants our church always to maintain that balance: the Word and supernatural ministry. But the foundation must always be the Word. I always ask the Father that this pulpit would be a source of teaching for the people of God. And wherever you go, do not chase after miracles, ladies and gentlemen; do not chase after charismatic, flashy leaders; do not chase after the shiny seven-hundred-dollar suit and the five-hundred-dollar tie. Pursue integrity and the Word of the Lord, good instruction, good teaching for you and your children—that is the foundation. It contains all the other nutrients.

And then, when the Word is present, supernatural power will also come, because the Word includes the supernatural power of God. But we always want this to be an instructed people. Brothers and sisters, you can have a church in your own home; you can have a pastor in your own home: it is called the Word of the Lord. Feed on that Word. If the Word of God lives within you, is embodied in you, and manifests itself through you, I dare say that you do not need me or a pastor. Now, that is good—pastors are good, we must gather together, churches are good and necessary—but the church is not a substitute for a life of eating directly from the tree, okay? Eat directly from the tree; climb the tree and pick a fruit of the Word of the Lord. Consume it directly.

And when you come to church, come to offer a great symphony of worship and ministry to the Lord. Each of you is a musician, and every Sunday we gather to play together a symphony that we have already harvested during our week of prayer, fasting, reading the Word, crying out, and surrendering to the Lord.

So I see that the Lord was teaching in the synagogue, and it says that there in that synagogue was a woman who was bent over; she was sick, she was deformed. To me, that woman has always been like a symbol of humanity oppressed by the devil. To me, nothing is more graphic than the image of this poor woman doubled over upon herself in such a terrible way. Can you imagine a person like that, walking all the time while looking at the floor, an object of pity, ashamed of her condition? She could not lift her head and look at the stars; she could not perhaps look at her grandchildren or embrace them, or perhaps even watch a sunset, because she was always looking toward the ground, toward earthly things, toward what is beneath, what is underground.

And that is how the devil wants people to be, brothers and sisters. The devil wants to bend people’s gaze downward. There are many people who are not necessarily physically bent over, but they are spiritually bent over. They are always looking down; they are looking toward the earth. They cannot look toward eternity; they cannot look toward the spirit. There are multimillionaires, people who teach at great universities, people who have written dozens of books, and they are bent over. Their kingdom is the kingdom of time, space, and history. They are materialists; they are humanists; they believe in nothing except this Earth, this dimension, and to me they are the most miserable people on the entire Earth.

Unless a man can see into eternity, he is miserable, no matter how much he accomplishes in this tiny little speck here called Earth. And the devil wants the nations to be that way. Right now, this nation is precisely in that position; every day it bends lower, looking farther and farther down. This nation was born through people who always looked toward heaven. They crossed the seas to come here and establish a God-fearing nation, but year after year, century after century, it has increasingly looked downward, and today we have leaders in the White House and in many other places, highly accomplished people who are supporting and establishing demonic laws that do nothing but drive their nations deeper and deeper into the pit and give the devil room to do whatever he wants.

And that is why incidents occur like the one that happened here in Roxbury this Friday afternoon. As I was driving, they said to me, “Did you hear about what happened here in Roxbury, there at Dudley Station? I don’t know how many young people got onto a bus and killed a young girl, I believe it was—a girl?” That is the society in which we live.

You know what? This week I was reading an article in Harvard Magazine about prisons here in the United States. It is terrible. For example, in the African American community, I do not know what percentage it is—I do not want to exaggerate—but it is a terrible percentage of the men in the community we love so much, our African American community, who are incarcerated. It is a percentage in the tens; it is unbelievable. It costs this country billions of dollars to imprison so many people. This nation has more people awaiting their sentence right now; there are about 41,000 people awaiting the death penalty in different prisons throughout the nation. The prisons cannot cope. They have to keep releasing prisoners because they are costing this nation so much.

And all this nation does is imprison, imprison, imprison people. There are more addicts than they can handle, which is why they are legalizing marijuana: because they have to put so many people in prison that it is better for them to legalize it so they do not have to put so many people in prison. Before long, it will be proposed—as is already being done—that heroin and cocaine be legalized, and that these things be legalized, because they say, “If we legalize them, perhaps we will solve the problem; we are not solving it by putting people in prison.” It is demonic logic, but it is a kind of logic. Since they cannot heal them, they move the goalpost—the definition of crime.

Of course they need help, and that is why we must offer those people the only possible help, which is Christ Jesus. I see no other help. On the one hand, this nation develops an incredible amount of technological resources, and on the other hand, the blessing itself drains away into the pit. That is why it has a deficit of trillions of dollars, because just as money is made, it also slips through this nation’s fingers like water. Just as great knowledge is developed, the devil continues to help himself generously in these nations. Why? Because the nation is bent over, looking down.

As it looks down, it develops tremendous knowledge of what it sees. They look at that tiny little hole to which their gaze is confined so much, with such fixation and in such detail, that they know it very well. They know anthropology, sociology, economics, technology, and science very well, but that is not what heals the heart and soul of a man or woman in bondage. The only thing that heals is the deliverance that comes through a touch from the Creator, from the Spirit in their lives. That is what breaks the bonds.

I ask you: let us pray that each day we may increasingly minister healing, salvation, and deliverance to people. That is why we need to give the Lord time, as we did this morning. Churches are needed, brothers and sisters, that can manifest the power of Christ as He did in this passage, and that requires space and time. It requires people to come to church without a watch, to take off their watches and put them in their purses when they come to church, to set them aside.

Why, brothers and sisters? Because it is not that we are going to waste time; it is not that we are simply going to do something to fill space. But I believe that if God is doing something, we must let Him move, and we must give the Lord room. Let us not come to church in a hurry. Let us come to church having said, “You know what? The day belongs to the Lord. I am going to dedicate it to the Lord, and as long as God is moving and legitimate, biblical things are being done, let us give the Lord room.” Why? Because it is during that time that deliverances often take place. It is during that time that people have encounters with the Lord. It is during that time that a family can invite Christ to enter, and then the devil is defeated and has to flee, and blessing comes to that family. Then others come, and others, and others, and deliverance takes place throughout an entire community.

But a price must be paid. We must say to the Lord, “Lord, come and enter our city; enter our communities.” In this passage, the Lord sees this woman, and He has the ability to perceive that behind this woman’s terrible condition there is not simply a bone that is hollow or damaged. No, there is a demon. Do you know that demons delight in only one thing? It is destroying and degrading the dignity of God, the imprint of God upon human beings. The grace of God has departed from them, and therefore their mind is a twisted mind; it is a psychopathic mind; it is a neurotic mind; it is a mind that delights in doing harm.

When I walk through the streets of Boston—for example, on Albany Street, where you have often stood waiting to get to church—you can see people very much like this woman. I have seen them there in a macabre dance, under the effects of heroin and cocaine, dancing in such a way that I wonder, “What could that person be seeing while doing that? What demons might be taking hold of their arms and shoulders and celebrating the destruction of that life?” What sexual abuse did that person suffer when he was a little boy, or what abuse of his mother by a boyfriend did he witness, or how many men passed through his home when he was a child? All of that is part of a demonic plot to destroy cities and communities, and those powers are in the city; those powers are present, and spiritual eyes are needed to discern them. An anointed church is needed.

There are two very interesting figures here. Here is Jesus, and here is the ruler of the synagogue. A synagogue was like a Jewish church. It was not the main temple, but rather a local Jewish community where the Word, the Old Testament, was studied and people were instructed in the things of God. And notice that when the Lord is there embodying the power we saw, for example, last Sunday through His healing of the woman with the issue of blood, the Lord, to me, embodies the power of God in that instance. He is there, available, able to see the world and see through to people’s needs as if with an X-ray.

And the Lord perceives. He can almost physically see a demon bending this woman over and laughing macabrely at the torture of that life—ashamed, destroyed, deformed. That woman might perhaps have been a dancer, or a poet, or a singer, or a scientist, but there she is, bent over for eighteen years, completely doubled over and twisted. And the spirit of infirmity upon her keeps her that way, just as there are spirits of infirmity in this city that keep people that way.

Thus Christ embodies vision; He embodies the power to see behind the surface; He embodies the authority of God; He embodies love and benevolence. But there is a second figure there: the leader of the synagogue. When the Lord heals this woman and says to her, “Woman, you are free from your affliction,” instead of rejoicing over the deliverance of a life, he becomes indignant and jealous, and says so cheaply, “Hey, there are six days on which work is permitted, but on the Lord’s day work is not permitted; healing is not permitted.” Why is he saying that? Because in his macabre and completely twisted theology, he equates the Lord’s healing her with the Lord working as a physician, and so, although the Lord made no effort, he equates Jesus’ healing action with work. Through his Pharisaical, legalistic, and spiritually dead lenses, he accuses Jesus of violating the Sabbath—imagine that—for healing this woman.

And to me this man embodies precisely a powerless Church. Churches filled with the Holy Spirit and the great movements of God throughout history have always had other Christians who attacked them. Jhonattan Edwards, here in Massachusetts in the eighteenth century, when the Great Awakening took place here in this area of Massachusetts in the seventeen-forties, faced a number of pastors from the city of Boston who, when they saw the manifestations of the power of God—people being delivered, people falling to the floor under the power of the Lord, people beginning to preach the Gospel who were not licensed to preach it—became jealous of what God was doing in North Hampton, a town here in Massachusetts, and accused these people of violating the pastors’ protocol and illegitimately taking their position, when it was simply what happens when the Lord distributes His Power: everyone becomes a minister.

When the Lord is present, God activates the gifts that are in every Christian. The Bible was created to make you and me instruments of the Lord’s Grace wherever we go. Every Christian is a minister; every Christian is an agent of the Kingdom of God. When we want to turn the pastorate into a guild and a union where, if you do not belong to the union, you cannot do anything, that is of the devil too.

I believe this man was as bent over as the very woman whom the Lord healed. And he represents a Church where the power of God is absent, where vision is absent, where love for one’s neighbor is absent, where everything is theology, religion, system, and institution. We do not want to be that kind of Church; we want a compassionate, loving Church that looks at a bent-over person—a homosexual who arrives with all his deformities and all his bad habits and all his mannerisms—and sees a man who may one day be a servant of God. That looks at a woman who has had a terrible and sensual past and sees a homemaker, or a university professor, a counselor, a mother who blesses her children.

That looks at a young man with his pants hanging below his buttocks, or whatever you call it, and sees a well-dressed man of God with a blessed family, studying. And let him sit however he wants; nothing is going to rub off on you. Christ is more than powerful enough to cleanse him. Bless him and declare the Grace of the Lord; pray for them. Let us bless them; let us say, “Come, here there is Grace from the Lord.”

Let us build a free Church. This man was a prisoner of the system, of cheap theology, of false order, and the Lord Jesus Christ said: “The Sabbath is for the works of the Lord to be manifested.” And He accused him and said to him, “Hypocrite.” You know, brother, we need a Church that speaks the truth. I believe that churches sometimes sin by being too gentle. Today there is an epidemic of false gentleness in churches that do not want to call things what they are, that do not want to speak God’s Truth, that do not want to preach the Word as it ought to be preached, that do not want to call sin sin. Sin must be denounced in whatever form it takes, whether false religiosity or open and obvious sin. But we need churches that speak God’s truth to people, that shine a bright light on sin and sickness, but do so with love and mercy as well; that see the evil in people, but also see the power to bring out the good that is in them.

We need churches that step outside the box and do the work of God in strange, creative, unexpected, unusual ways, as the Lord did. It is the Sabbath—amen! The Bible says that the Sabbath is when the work of God is done, so amen, let us heal this woman. Look at what He says to him: “If your ox falls into a pit, you hypocrite, will you not go and find three friends, even though it is the Sabbath, and pull it out of there? And is this daughter of God not worth more than an ox? She is a daughter of Abraham, is she not?”

Many times, brothers and sisters, we do not understand what a life is worth, do we? That person lying there on the floor, drooling and foul-smelling, has the soul and seal of God in their spirit. That person, touched by the Lord, can rise and can become the person God designed them to be. Never look only at the outside of a person; look at God’s potential within them. Let us minister to people. Do not give up. Value every person you see, minister to them, speak to them, proclaim the message to them, bring them to Church, invest time in them, make an effort for them, because there is something good in that person.

This community is full of people whom God wants to use. Like the Samaritan woman we looked at some time ago: although she had a questionable life, she became an evangelist and brought her whole village to Jesus Christ. In every person who converts, I see an evangelist, because after three or four years in the Gospel, we no longer know anyone except other evangelicals who speak the same language we do, and it is as though we no longer have the ability to reach anyone else. But new people—their entire family and all their friends need Christ, and they can draw them, draw them to the Lord. They are fresh; they are full of potential. And they can be evangelists who tell them, “Look at what God did for me. He can do it for you too.” And that enthusiasm can be contagious, so bring them, bring them, invite them.

And you, brothers and sisters, as you come to know the Lord and accept Christ, surrender your life to the Lord, and then seek out others; invite others so that they too may become evangelists.

The Lord delivered this woman, and look at how she has blessed the nations. Today, two thousand years later, we are talking about her because He had compassionate eyes to see her in light of what she could do. He did not see the devil riding on her and degrading her; He saw the beauty that was in that woman, a daughter of Abraham. We must prophesy over people; we must prophesy over those rebellious and hard-to-love children, prophesying over them: “You will be a servant of God. I declare the Grace of God over your life.”

We must believe that God has a purpose for our families. I love this city of Boston, and I believe that God has the best for it. That South End, so hostile toward us and the values of the Gospel—I declare that Christ loves it and has good purposes for that homosexual community and that God will bring them in. I declare that God will give us power to minister to them and heal them. We will be able to speak to them about love, and they will see the love of God in us, and God will give us the authority to minister to them in the Power of the Holy Spirit.

And I believe that the Lord will place all these addicts and all these disoriented young people in our hands so that we may care for them and minister to them, and He will say to us, “Take care of them for Me,” as the Good Samaritan said concerning the man who had been beaten by the robbers. He said, “Take care of him for me until I return; look after him, and when I come back, I will repay you for everything you have spent.” In the same way, the Holy Spirit says to us: “Lion of Judah, take care of these people for Me. Minister to them, preach the Gospel to them, disciple them, strive to bring them in, invest time in them. Disciple them and heal them; restore them, because the devil has beaten and battered them. Those thieves of souls found them along the road, threw them to the ground, and left them bleeding and destroyed. But I want you to heal them and care for them for Me.”

“And I will repay you. I will bless your family; I will bless your Church; I will prosper you; I will give you the desires of your heart; I will give you a name; I will make you fathers and mothers of multitudes. My gifts will flow through you, and you will see My Glory and be glad. But take care of them for Me; love them. Do not steal the sheep’s wool for yourselves; no, care for the sheep.” There are many churches preying upon the sheep, abusing them, exploiting them. The Lord wants generous churches, compassionate churches, churches that are hospitals, healing churches, generous churches, churches that sympathize with people, churches and ministers whose only desire is to see people stand on their feet.

Families united, young people functioning, people healed and restored. God will use those churches greatly: churches that love, heal, restore, and serve as a refuge for people. Churches of integrity, churches of love, churches of compassion, churches of vision that can see God’s Grace and potential in every person, even amid all their deformities. I say amen to that vision of God for us.

Let us stand, and once again let us ask the Lord to make us people with eyes that can take an X-ray of the city and see the evil that is hidden, so that we may declare the Word of God with authority. Let us pay the price; let us sanctify ourselves; let us fill ourselves with the Grace of the Lord; let us cry out more; let us fast more; let us spend more sleepless nights. When you are awake at night, take three minutes of that sleeplessness and pray to the Lord and cry out to the Lord. Bless the city; bless your family. Use those sleepless hours to do something extraordinary. While you are there, asleep or half asleep, invite the Lord to enter your home; invite the Lord to enter the city. Become an intercessor, an antenna, a lightning rod upon which the power and grace of God may fall so that you can transfer it to others.

Oh Lord, do Your work. Father, make us radioactive; make us agents of transformation, Lord. Make us people radically committed to Your Kingdom; make us, Lord, an exemplary people. Make us, Lord, a people of pilgrims and foreigners who walk the streets of the city with only one desire in mind: to bring souls to the knowledge of Jesus. Teach us how to be Your Church, Father. Teach us how to honor the Name of Jesus; teach us how to establish the model You have set forth in Your Word, Lord, and preserve us from corruption; preserve us from evil; preserve us from the attacks of the devil. Keep us upright and clean and healthy, with eyes of love to love souls, Lord, knowing that every soul is precious, a treasure You place in our hands that we must care for and value.

They are Yours; they are Your sheep; they are Your property; they are Your treasures, and we must care for them on Your behalf. Lord, teach us how to be a hospital for this city, for this community, and we will give You all the honor, all the Glory. There are bent-over women and bent-over men in the State House and Boston City Hall; there are bent-over women and men in the South End, Father; there are bent-over women in Roxbury, and there are bent-over men in Dorchester. There are bent-over families in Jamaica Plain, Father; there are bent-over families in Washington, but You are mighty. Spirit of Christ, Spirit of power, Spirit whom no spirit can resist, we invite You to take control of the city and establish Your benevolent Kingdom, Lord, over this nation, over this community.

We surrender New England to You; we say: “Your Will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Let Your Kingdom come, Lord, and be established over this nation, over this community, and all the glory and all the honor will be Yours.” Thank You, thank You, Spirit of God.