Deuteronomy 8 warns that the most dangerous time to forget the Lord is when everything is going good.
But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the LORD your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today.
Deuteronomy 8:11 (NLT)
It's easy to get to that place where everything's going good and you kind of forget the Lord. You start thinking, "I got this." So remember not to do that.
For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have multiplied along with everything else, be careful! Do not become proud at that time and forget the LORD your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. Do not forget that he led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, where it was so hot and dry. He gave you water from the rock! He fed you with manna in the wilderness, a food unknown to your ancestors. He did this to humble you and test you for your own good.
Deuteronomy 8:12-16 (NLT)
I wish we could learn easier than being humbled and tested. There have been times I needed it, and it was not fun in the moment. But looking back, I'm thankful the Lord did it, because it changed me.
He did all this so you would never say to yourself, "I have achieved this wealth with my own strength and energy."
Deuteronomy 8:17 (NLT)
I never want to utter those words.
Remember the LORD your God. He is the one who gives you power to create wealth, in order to fulfill the covenant he confirmed to your ancestors with an oath. But I assure you of this: If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods, worshiping and bowing down to them, you will certainly be destroyed. Just as the LORD has destroyed other nations in your path, you also will be destroyed if you refuse to obey the LORD your God.
Deuteronomy 8:18-20 (NLT, verse 18 as read)
God isn't striking you when you disobey; you're striking yourself with your own disobedience.
It's way better to obey, and that's why we encourage each other toward obedience in this house. Continued disobedience will always end in destruction. But God always gives an opportunity to repent, and all those who repent are set right back on track.
I've watched the Lord redeem the time for people who disobeyed God for years and years. They wondered what they had missed, and God said, "Here it is." He just gives it to them and causes things to happen so quickly.
It's like the parable of the workers, where the last one who showed up got paid the same wages as everybody else. That's not fair, and like my mom told me growing up, "Life's not fair." Get used to it, and that'll set you free.
Sometimes we're being subtly disobedient and don't even realize it. We need people in our lives who will come and say, "What are you doing?" just to shake us out of it.
Some people read this scripture and all they remember is what happens when we disobey. People do the same with prophecy. Every prophecy should come with an encouragement, even if it contains correction, because the correction moves you into something great.
Some people read this and say, "If we disobey, God's going to strike us." No, God's not going to strike you. You're striking yourself with your own disobedience, so quit pinning that on God.
Then they go off into their little cave and sit quiet and don't do anything, just in case. But we were told to remember something else in verse 18.
Yes. Deuteronomy 8:18 tells us to remember the Lord our God, because He is the one who gives us power to create wealth.
People are so fussy about this, but the Word says it. God can't be against you having power to create wealth, because He's the one who gives it. So don't just remember what disobedience would do to you; remember that God gives you power to create wealth.
While we remember that, we should never get caught up in a moment of "I created this wealth all by myself." I've been through wilderness and challenge, and I've come to a place of humility where I would never even think to say that. The Lord has a way of showing you how inadequate you are.
It's not to put you down. It's to reveal how much you need God and how much He wants to help you. If you think you've got it, you're never going to ask God for help.
So pray that God shows you your inadequacy, so you remember to ask Him for help. I've pretty much gotten as far as I can on my own. For me to go after the things He has shown me, it's not going to come from anything I can do.
God gave me power to create wealth through Collaborate Worship long before I understood what He was doing; I was simply acting on the power He was giving me.
About 15 years ago I started Collaborate Worship. Today it's a YouTube channel where 100,000 people or more all over the world watch my videos every month. But it started by accident.
I was a worship leader, and my worship leader friends around Owasso would ask, "How did you get it to sound like this?" I'd tell them, they wouldn't write anything down, and then they'd call me and ask again. I'll say it twice, but I ain't saying it three times.
My day job back then was web developer at an agency in downtown Tulsa. So I put it all on a website so they could go refer to it. A year later I looked at Google Analytics, and there were over a thousand people every month reading those five posts.
I didn't know a thousand people. So an idea dawned on me: I wonder what would happen if I wrote every week about sound.
I went to Panera every Tuesday morning, because if you're going to do something every week, you've got to put a schedule on it. If you just say, "I'll get to it," you won't. You've got to schedule the things that are important to you.
Nothing was really happening, but I kept being faithful and kept writing. And it cost me money, year one and year two. Meanwhile, Beth's first job paid $12 an hour, and after three years of working I was still making $8.
She was my sugar mama, paying all the bills, and people were looking at her like, "You married a loser." But we had agreed on it, and it was fine with both of us. Still, there was something stirring in me as a man to provide for my house, and that kind of stirring will motivate you.
Then the sound world went from analog to digital, and we got our first digital board. It was a big challenge to wrap my mind around the shift. Once I figured it out, I thought, "Nobody else should have to go through that."
The Lord said, "Create your first course to teach people how to do this and save them the grief." So I launched X32 Mastery, named after the mixer. I was the first to market with a training resource for it, and now it is by far the most popular mixer in churches.
I was following the Lord every step of the way and didn't even know it. I was just mad at my worship leader friends. Somehow God turned that into something good, because He takes all things and works them together for good (Romans 8:28).
He was giving me power to create wealth. And I was acting on that power, even though I didn't understand what was going on.
When something God helped you build has reached maturity, let it live in its maturity and move on, because what you built in the last season can't take you where God is taking you next.
For the last three years or so, I've been trying to take Collaborate Worship to the next level. It's a great flow of revenue, but we've tried this and that, and it just stays the same, steady Eddie. It took me three years to stop beating the dead horse.
A few weeks ago I finally heard from the Lord. He said, "Kade, that has matured. Let it live in its maturity and move on to something else."
The picture He gave me was a grown man standing here while I tell him, "Come on, grow some more! Why can't you get any taller?" Some things grow to maturity, and when they do, you let them be mature. A business can reach its place of maturity too.
I've been following the Lord long enough to know what He's going to do next. He's going to throw me into something I don't know how to do. That's what He does: "Great, you got good at that. Now let me throw you into something you don't know how to do."
He did that to me with worship leading. I'd led worship for 10 years and could just show up and do it. Then the Lord said, "You're done with that. Go pastor."
I didn't know how to prepare a message, and I didn't even talk for more than five words at a time. Now I've been a pastor for eight years, and it's getting close to that 10-year mark. I like new things and being in that place where you've got nothing else to stand on but the Lord.
When I started Collaborate Worship, I was 18 years old and thought I knew everything, but I was really dumb. So that early success wasn't me. But everything I've done the last three years to try to make it what I wanted, that was me, and that me doesn't get anywhere.
It's God's power that gets us somewhere.
We receive the power of God when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and He has been here since the day of Pentecost.
The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:7-8 (NLT)
We're not still waiting. He came on the day of Pentecost, and He's been here ever since. There was only one assignment for tarrying, and that was for the 120, so you don't have to tarry; you receive Him.
If the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you've got God's power, and according to that scripture, it enables you to be a witness. You can't do it without His power, because it's only the Holy Spirit that draws people to repentance. If the Holy Spirit isn't evident in what you're saying and doing, you don't have a chance.
We love to talk about what His power enables us to do spiritually. It enables us to cast out demons, because people need to be free. It gives us power to lay hands on the sick and see them recover (Mark 16:18).
So why don't we talk about how His power gives us the ability to create wealth? The power in Deuteronomy 8 is the same power the Holy Spirit gives us. Let's talk about the power to heal and cast out demons, but let's also talk about the power to create wealth, because God's power does that if we allow it to.
Electricity is a picture of how God's power works: the power is already moving, and the question is whether we are good conductors of it.
I realized that the Lord gave us electricity in these last days, which we call power, to open our minds to how the power of God works. Everything in the physical realm gives us insight into how God works, almost like a mirror of heaven. The Bible says even nature is calling out who God is.
For power to flow, there has to be a great conductor. Electricity stops when it hits rubber, and we have a really hard time sending it through the air. Most electrical wire is made of copper; silver is actually the best conductor, but copper is only marginally less and a lot cheaper.
On the Monday of our last revival, I had a dream. I was outside with a crowd watching me, and I took a sheet of copper and placed it over an easel, as if I was making a whiteboard to teach. I had no idea what it meant, but when you get the interpretation to a dream, it hits you like a big light of revelation.
Now I understand. I'm putting up the sheet of copper to teach how to be a great conductor of God's power. We don't generate the power of God; it's already moving.
The question is, can His power actually flow through us? Are we standing here like a great piece of copper, or like a floppy piece of rubber?
God's power doesn't flow through people who are insulated from it or whose thoughts are too tied up to be available to Him.
You can touch the outside of an electrical wire without getting shocked, because there's an insulator around it. Even though you have the power of God in you, that doesn't mean it's going to get out. A lot of people are insulators to God's power.
You need to be a live wire, completely stripped down. It's time to peel off the jacket and let the copper show. If you want to lay hands on the sick and see them recover, you can't be wrapped up in an insulator.
What makes copper a great conductor has everything to do with its electrons. Around the tiny nucleus of an atom is a cloud of electrons, and a substance is a great conductor when those electrons are free to move. Picture a room full of people free to move around, versus the same room with everyone strapped to their chairs.
For electricity to move, it has to move around those electrons. Some people are stuck in their ways. Their electrons are tied down with four rolls of duct tape, so the power of God can't flow.
Think of an electron as a thought. Some people's thoughts are so tied up worrying about this and thinking about that, there are no electrons free for God to use. The power of God comes to move and can't find anything to move with.
Being too occupied for God is a miserable place to be. But when you free yourself up for the Lord, that's when the testimonies come: "You won't believe what God did at the grocery store. I was just available." Turns out He uses everybody who's available, because He searches to and fro for somebody whose attention is turned toward Him (2 Chronicles 16:9).
To be a good conductor, our thoughts have to be available and submitted to Him. When God gives you revelation and it breaks something free, that's Him freeing up those electrons. We want Him to do that every day.
Just as lightning turns air into plasma, a great enough degree of God's power can transform something that doesn't conduct into something that does.
Air is not a great conductor, yet lightning travels miles from the clouds to the ground. A lightning strike is hotter than the surface of the sun, around 30,000 amps. As it comes through the air, it transforms the air into something that conducts, called plasma.
If you want to change something that doesn't conduct into something that does, a lot of power has to move. God gives us opportunities for a lot of power to move, break us free, and turn us into something that allows power to flow.
That's why so many people got healed in Kathryn Kuhlman's ministry, in Smith Wigglesworth's ministry, and in the Azusa Street Revival. Those men and women made themselves so available to God's power that they could send a lightning strike, so to speak, into a person. Even if that person was insulated, the power would transform them.
But the goal for us in a church setting is for all of us to be such great conductors that we just brush shoulders and that's all it takes. Touch two bare wires together and there's a spark. Imagine if we all became like the Kathryn Kuhlmans and the Smith Wigglesworths.
I imagine there's a level of consecration involved. Their biographies would probably show a dedication to prayer and fasting far beyond anything we've done. It's not that we're earning God's power, because it's already been given, but there are things we have to do to become a great conductor.
We all need to transform from rubber to copper. Most of us have an insulated wire with one bare strand sticking out, and occasionally we zap somebody. But if you only connect half of a frayed wire, you get a bad connection: power doesn't flow like it should, and it might overheat.
So we need to keep stripping the wire.
God's power is always being pumped in, but you have to turn it on to see it.
When nobody's here, the lights in this building are off. But power is always being pumped to the building. You've got to flip the switch.
Some people say the power of God is no longer here, like they ran out of coal back in the disciples' day. Since they don't see it in operation, they assume it's not there. That's like sitting in a hot house all summer saying, "I don't see the power, so I guess I'll just be hot," instead of turning the air conditioner on.
When you turn it on, you'll realize the power has been there the whole time. There is no cap and no end to the power of God. So the question is who's going to turn it on, and who's going to conduct the power better than they did yesterday.
We pray, "God, I want to see more of your power," and we should want to see more of it. But His power is already in its fullness. The increase comes because we make ourselves better conductors of His power.
There is no comparison between the power of Satan and the power of God; it's like comparing a 9-volt battery to the power station.
"Yes," he told them, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning! Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you. But don't rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven."
Luke 10:18-20 (NLT)
The enemy has some power, but we've been given authority over it. Satan shows up with his 9-volt battery saying, "Put this on your tongue." It gives you a little zap, but it's not going to kill you.
Meanwhile, you're carrying bare copper wires connected to the power station. Imagine somebody walking into the power plant saying, "Turn off everything. I got the 9-volt. This will cover it." Yet so many Christians are intimidated when the devil shows up with his 9-volt battery.
The Lord is raising up His church to respond to the schemes of the devil like this: "Back up, buddy, because I've got the power and I'm about to unleash it on you." That's why at this church we don't let you whine about the devil. We're going to ask, "Why are you letting him? How are you resisting him?"
You're not going to get a pat on the back around here. We don't coddle, because it doesn't do anybody any good.
God doesn't give you pity; He gives you power, and you can have pity or you can have power, but you can't have both.
God never coddles unbelief, and He never coddles pity parties. There's no situation that needs pity, because pity doesn't help anything. Our culture is good at giving it, and people will even bring it to you unwanted, so you have to become skilled at saying, "I don't want that."
You can see it in how Jesus related to His disciples. When they came to Him in a struggle, His response was, "Oh ye of little faith" (Matthew 8:26). That's how we should respond when people come wanting pity: "Where is your faith?" Pity won't get you anywhere, but faith will.
Jesus told the disciples multiple times, "I'm going to be killed, but I'm going to rise from the dead." But when it happened, they lost their faith. Peter denied Christ to a young servant girl, the rest ran for their lives, and Judas took his own life.
If they had believed He was coming back, they would have been throwing a party in the upper room. Sometimes God gives you a promise, and then something comes that doesn't look like the promise. Don't get caught up in the middle; fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12).
When Jesus did rise and met with the disciples, He didn't say, "Oh guys, that must have been so hard for you." He said, "Where is your faith? I told you I was going to be back." He's not going to pat your unbelief on the back.
He's going to say, "I already told you by my stripes you're healed (Isaiah 53:5). Why are you leaning more on what you see than on the words I told you?" Faith comes by hearing, which means faith comes by words, not by seeing (Romans 10:17). So why are we letting what we see talk us out of faith?
Even the disciples did it while they were with Jesus. It's because we need to become better conductors of God's power. He's working in us, giving us the desire and the power to do what pleases Him (Philippians 2:13).
Just like the Lord doesn't pity you, He doesn't cater to your tired, and putting tired on the throne makes you a piece of rubber instead of a conductor of His power.
We say, "Lord, I'll get to that after I'm not tired anymore," or, "I'm too tired for church today. The Lord will understand." But He's not interested in hearing how tired you are. The night before the cross, Jesus was praying in Gethsemane so intensely He was sweating blood, and the disciples were saying, "I'm just so tired."
The Lord's been dealing with me on this for a while. We have all of human wisdom at our fingertips now, especially with ChatGPT, which is just human wisdom compiled into one thing. But God's wisdom will never be found on ChatGPT; it's accessed through the Holy Spirit only.
Human wisdom says we need 8 hours of sleep. If you wake up and calculate you didn't get your 8 hours, it's going to be a bad day. This is a stronghold that prevents us from accessing God's best.
What happens when the Lord wakes you up in the middle of the night and says, "I need you to intercede"? Or keeps you up late and gets you up early, and you get two or three hours of sleep? That's a great opportunity to learn how to live by the power of God.
I'm not telling you not to get 8 hours. I'm saying stop looking at that, and ask the Holy Spirit, "How much sleep do I need tonight?"
When sickness tries to come on me, my response is fierce: "In the name of Jesus, I will not be sick. Cold, go." I don't even subscribe to colds and flus. Then sometimes I get done shouting at the sickness, and the Lord says, "Go to bed," or "Why don't you go eat something?"
That's not always the answer, but sometimes it is, and it's biblical. Elijah was running from Jezebel, sitting under a tree ready to die, and the angel came and gave him a cake. Sometimes you think you're being spiritual, and all you need is a piece of cake.
The more excuses we have, the less we'll see the power of God move. You can show up tired and decide to be a good conductor anyway. I'm not ruled by what my body thinks it wants; my spirit is in charge.
When a church learns to be great conductors of God's power, people get zapped with that power everywhere they go.
This is the beginning of a great thing. We're all making progress toward being great conductors of God's power, learning to be like the Smith Wigglesworths and the Kathryn Kuhlmans.
Imagine if we developed a group of 120 like that. Imagine what would happen to Owasso if we were out there zapping people with the power of God.
Does the Bible really say God gives you power to create wealth? Yes. Deuteronomy 8:18 says to remember the Lord your God, because He is the one who gives you power to create wealth. God can't be against you having that power, because He's the one who gives it; the warning is to never say you created that wealth by your own strength.
Does God punish Christians when they disobey? God isn't striking you when you disobey; you're striking yourself with your own disobedience, so quit pinning that on God. Continued disobedience will always end in destruction. But God always gives an opportunity to repent, and all who repent are set right back on track.
How do I become a better conductor of God's power? You become a better conductor by being available to God, with your thoughts free and submitted to Him instead of tied up in worry, busyness, or old ways. It means stripping off the insulation and letting the copper show. There's likely a level of consecration involved, like prayer and fasting, not to earn God's power but to become a better conductor of it.
Why don't I see more of God's power in my life? God's power isn't lacking; it's already in its fullness, and there is no cap or end to it. The increase comes when we make ourselves better conductors and turn it on, like flipping a switch on power that's been pumped to the building the whole time.
Why doesn't God feel sorry for me when I'm struggling? God doesn't give you pity; He gives you power, and you can't have both. Jesus never coddled His disciples' unbelief; He asked, "Where is your faith?" Pity won't get you anywhere, but faith will.
Is it wrong to need 8 hours of sleep as a Christian? Getting 8 hours isn't wrong, but relying on it can become a stronghold that keeps you from God's best. Instead, ask the Holy Spirit how much sleep you need tonight. Sometimes He'll wake you up to intercede, and sometimes He'll just tell you to go to bed.
How do you receive the power of the Holy Spirit? Acts 1:8 says you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. He came on the day of Pentecost and has been here ever since, so you don't need to tarry and wait for Him. He's already here, and you receive Him.
Is the devil's power stronger than God's power? No. Comparing the devil's power to God's power is like comparing a 9-volt battery to the power station. Jesus gave believers authority over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19), so instead of whining about the devil, resist him.
