 So this morning I want to speak to you a message that I will title assembly required. So we can we can put that on the floor. I want you guys to hold this the whole time. So but I'm going to borrow both. Just the two guys, two of you guys right here. Yeah, I want you to stand here. So we're going to keep this one here. I'm going to give you a knife. Do not cut each other or me. All right. Assembly required. This is not from Amazon. This is from Walmart. The reason why it's pink, my sister bought it. So I have a son that's going to be coming out. Not a girl. So I'm not yet into the pink stuff, but my sister bought this. I want you to see this. When you buy a package online on Amazon, anywhere, it comes usually in the box like this. And gentlemen, we can start opening this and start assembling it. It comes in the package like this. The item that you need is broken into pieces. It's broken into different parts. It has the as this a cushion. It has some other metal parts. It comes in in different pieces. And usually you have it somewhere there that says assembly required, meaning you can't sit on this. Now, some of us can, but this is not the chair. This is the box that the chair is in. The chair is not actually in the box. The chair is disassembled. And in order for this chair to be a chair, everything is there. But what you have to do is you have to take all these pieces and you got to do what? Come on. You got to do what? Second century? Assemble it. Assembling required. As these young men are assembling this chair, I want to remind you that chairs are not the only thing they need assembling. We do as well. In Hebrews it says, do not forsake assembling of yourselves. Which tells me you and I are just these in the box called Christ. But we don't make a difference in this world until we start assembling. Until we start assembling ourselves. At the end of this fast, what I desire for our church to grasp a revelation of is one of the greatest decisions you can make for your family this year is to come to church every weekend. Oh, but my child has a practice on Sunday morning. You're in charge of your child's schedule. Change it. It's important that as a Christian, now if you're not a believer and you're visiting us for the first time today, this doesn't necessarily apply to you. You can go to church whenever you like. You don't even have to go to church. You're on a different team. I'm speaking right now to people who call themselves Christians. If you're a Christian, you're in the box. We're all in Christ. But on this earth, we are members of the body. There's a common thing going on among Christians today is this. I really started to see this popular during COVID. I am the church. No, you're not. You know why? Theologically, biblically, scripturally, it is wrong. The word church in Greek means ecclesia. You know what the word ecclesia means? It's an assembly. Ecclesia means a gathering of citizens. Ecclesia does not mean a citizen. It's like a supreme justice getting up and saying, I am a supreme court. No, you're not. My finger saying, I am Vlad. No, you're not. You are not the church. We are the church. You are a member of the body of Jesus. You are not the body of Jesus. You are at peace in the chair. You are not the chair. If we don't assemble, we're not the church. That's why when the government came against the church and said, you cannot assemble, why? Because we have COVID. You can go gamble, just not assemble. You can go to a strip club. Yes, you cannot assemble. You can have a million people protest Black Lives Matter, but don't you assemble? We, as the church rose up and said, we are a church. We cannot be a church if we don't assemble. And Zoom doesn't cut it. Now that COVID is over, without assembling, we cannot be who Jesus called us to be. Can somebody say amen? A local church is an assembly. If the church never assembles, it's not a church at all. Reject this nonsense. Burn the t-shirt that says, I am a church. It's not theologically and scripturally accurate. It doesn't even line up with the Greek definition of the church. We are the church. Not I am the church. God saved us individually, but he put us in a corporate assembly called his body. The body does not consist of one part. You yourself do not make up the church in its entirety. It's the togetherness of individual believers that make up the body. Hebrews 10.25, as I mentioned, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together, as it is a manner of some, meaning some people have a habit of saying, I don't need to be assembled. Me and Jesus and my favorite YouTube preacher. Me and Jesus and my favorite Facebook prophet. Me and Jesus and my favorite podcast. Me and Jesus and my favorite Beth Moore Bible study. Me and Jesus and my favorite Tony Evans study guide. Me and Jesus and Pastor Vlad's YouTube channel. That's all I need, my friend. You don't need just to be in the box. You're in the box. I'm not saying you're not saved. I'm not saying you're not in Christ. What I'm saying is you have a role to play on this earth and the Lord wants you to be assembled together so that we together can accomplish a purpose that you yourself cannot do that at the couch of your own home. You see how long it takes to assemble things? That's how some of you guys, some of us, it takes us a while to get really into the church, get really into small groups. Worshipping Jesus together at a church is powerful. Where two or three are gathered in my name, that I am among them. Paul is writing to churches that regularly gather together. He used phrases like, when you come together as a church, the whole church comes together. It was not this evangelist, individualistic thing where it's just me and Jesus. Yes, we all go to heaven individually. We all get saved individually. The Lord matures us individually. There's a lot of individual relationship God has with us, but the Lord deals with us at churches. Look at the book of Revelation. Jesus talked to churches, not to individuals, mainly to churches. The church in this city, the church in this city, Jesus dealt with churches. Paul also would tell us, instruct the churches to do activities that can only be done by meeting together, teaching each other, singing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, reading scriptures publicly, encouraging one another, sharing the Lord's supper. None of these can happen in a vacuum. Now, I understand some of you are like, well, yes, it can happen in a vacuum. I have a video camera and I preach to the world. I take bread, I drink wine. That's my communion. That's your version of New Testament Christianity. It doesn't really line up with the Bible. Scripture was not, God didn't make us into lone wolves. You're not a Superman. We're all part of the body. Think about it. It's the way that we were created. When you were made first in the mother's womb, you already were placed in an environment where a family was there. Your mama carried you. You were not a Tarzan, raised up in a forest. You were raised up at home for 18 years. Somebody washed you, somebody fed you, somebody took care of you, somebody provided you. So you couldn't even be you today with that. Now, some were like, well, the streets raised me up. Well, that's why you're crazy. That's supposed to be the streets that raise you up. You're not a Tarzan. You're not supposed to grow up by lions and monkeys and the forest. You're supposed to grow up in a family. You naturally supposed to grow up in a healthy environment. Spiritually is exactly the same. God doesn't want you to be a lone wolf. An island to yourself. He wants you to belong to a spiritual family. You may say, well, the spiritual family is full of gossipers. You know, the spiritual family is full of hypocrites. Absolutely. There is room for one more. The church is not perfect. You know why? Because it's made out of people that are not perfect. If you find a perfect church, do not join it because you'll ruin it. So this idea, that's why the Bible says iron sharpens iron. You know what happens when you sharpen an iron? Heat, friction and noise. A lot of sparks fly. So for those of you who join the church where there is no heat, friction and sparks, how will you be sharpened? How will you be grown together? Thank you gentlemen. Let's give this young man a round of applause. See now, this is an assembled chair. You're supposed to be a Christian that is part of an assembly. This is what Jesus is looking for. You know that there are organs of the body that they keep in the bank. Now, not the Giza Bank or Bank of America. I hope they do not keep organs there because that would be illegal trade. There are banks for organs. They freeze them there and they keep them there in case somebody needs an organ. How many of you know that organs in the bank do not make the body function? There's still organs. They just don't make the body function. Let me ask you a question. Are you an organ in the body or are you an organ in the bank? I'm not doubting that you're a genuine believer. I'm saying is the impact the Lord wants to make into this world and how he wants to grow you and I cannot happen in a bank full of eyes. We have to be connected to other body members. There will be frictions. There will be misunderstandings. There will be disagreements. There will be even some fights. But it's necessary. Did you have a normal family? I hope you do. Now, some of you are like, no, my family is not normal. It's crazy. But it's to your family. And that family helped you to rise up and you were shaped by it. We all need a church family. And one of the best decisions you can do this year is make a commitment. Commitment. Not like we'll see on Sunday morning we'll wake up how we feel and then we'll decide if we go to church. Stop that nonsense in Jesus name. Because the devil will always come on Saturday night. Give you a movie to watch. Some friends that will come on Sunday morning. You will wake up. I don't feel like getting up and everything. And the reason why I'm speaking this at the end of the fast instead of some holy ghost shout, you know, jump around your Jericho wall thing is because the real change in breaking generational curses is going to come in starting generational blessings. You cannot start generational blessings if your family doesn't make a commitment to the Lord by being a part of an assembly. You cannot break those curses like that because one of the things that happens when you come to a local church and I was looking at some statistics and my brother David helped me to find some the frequent churchgoers more than once weekly experienced 55% lower all cause mortality risk than non-churchgoers. You live longer by coming to church regularly. And this is by Vanderburt University. Older adults active in religion, particularly in service attendance and private practice tend to have lower blood pressure. I don't think your doctor has prescribed that to you yet compared to less religiously active peers. But this does not apply to religious media consumption. So watching TBN, Daystar, God bless all of those networks. Your favorite YouTube channel does not have this effect on your blood pressure as actively attending a local church at least once a week. This is international journal of psychiatry in medicine 1998. A 14 year study found that regular attendance at religious services is linked to 50% reduction in later life divorce rate. And this is Harvard University. Think about it. 50% of all Christian marriages get divorced. Lie from the pit of hell. Lie from the pit of hell. You know why they call them Christian marriages? They are Christians in the box. Casual Christianity. Attending church when I feel like it. They don't sit under biblical teaching. They're not a part of life class destiny training. They've never went and got inner healing and deliverance. They've never committed to biblical teaching on marriage and purity and righteousness, endurance and suffering. Yeah, those kind of Christians, there's no difference between them a lot of times and non-Christians. They've never been assembled. Yeah, they don't live like Christians. Of course they're not going to have the same results as Christians, but those that are assembled together, those that come together, those that make a priority of I will come to church regularly. I will read my scriptures together. We will practice Christian faith at home and at the church. We will bring our family together into it. I'm not going to give my five year old an option. Do you want to go to church or not? What does he know? And then there's seven you're asking, what gender do you want? Are you kidding me? Well, next time we'll just let him drive a semi truck. Well, you won't let him drive a semi truck. Why would you let him have a surgery that will forever alter them? Or make them make a decision. Will they want to go? So if your five year old decides not to go to school, what would you do? Yeah, I understand. Your feelings got hurt. Yeah, don't go to school. No, you're gonna pick a belt. I'm sorry, not a belt. Maybe just time out. You say, come on. I don't want to offend all of you. Because when I was raised, time out. Are you kidding me? Time out was heaven. I was delivered through a belt. That's not abuse. I'm not talking about no abuse. Just talking about good old school, naked birds, spanking, and I never did it again after that. And so anyway, the Bible does say don't spare the rod. And so when it comes to that, what we want to do is this is I want to encourage you for the sake of the health of your marriage to commit to the local church, commit to the small group and commit to the fellowship. I look at my parents' marriage. I look at my grandma's marriage. I look at my pastor's marriage. I look at the people that are around me, that I've been married, been married for a very long time, happily married. My grandma, who sits right here, has 16 children. One man. This time we're like, I got 16 kids. Yeah, but you got 16 kids for like 20 different nations. That's not the same. One man. And one marriage. This is not to disrespect or for those of you who've been through very difficult seasons and now you have a second marriage. What I want to encourage you is do it the God's way. And one of that ways is stay in the local church. Now, the temptation that will be for some of us is to stay in the local church until honeymoon comes to an end. You know, you come for first six months. Oh my gosh, everything remains in the past of life is incredible. Worship gym is incredible. Everybody's so lovely. After six months, you begin to realize, I'm not sure if everybody's amazing. Pastor Vlad ignored me three Sundays in a row already. Not sure. I watched a few videos on YouTube about him. Yeah, I'm not even sure about him. Hungry Jen. Yeah, honeymoon is over. Stay in the church when your honeymoon is over. The Bible says those who are planted in the house of God will flourish like palm trees. Some of us replant ourselves every five months. Stop that nonsense. Find a church. No church is perfect. Find the best imperfect church for you. Plant yourself there and stay there until you bear fruit, till your children bear fruit in the youth ministry, until you begin to see your grandchildren bear fruit there. Stay longer than you've stayed before. Come on somebody. Believers were baptized and added to the church. Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day. So people who say, I don't need to be a member. I just love Jesus. Biblically speaking, when believers were baptized, they were added to the church. It was such a distinction between those who were in the church that the scripture says, Herod persecuted those who belong to the church. How would he know to persecute those who belong to the church if they never belong to the church? They didn't just believe they also belonged. And when those people who belong to the church, like Peter, were arrested, the scripture says, the church prayed for Peter. See, if you don't belong to the church, Herod won't attack you. And if you don't belong to the church, the church won't know you being attacked. That's why you be DMing every pastor on Instagram and Facebook, pray for me. And why do you do that? Because you actually don't have anybody who can pray for you. Now this is not 100% applicable to every desperate person online, but it honestly breaks my heart to see so many people today in the box. And when a problem happens, nobody prays for them. And they message every pastor and every preacher who actually does not read their messages. Someone needs to know you're in jail. Your family is in a hospital, Instagram. It has to be a person in your city, in your town. Why? Because the church knew somebody know you're gone. Somebody know you disappeared for six weeks. That cannot be someone on Instagram and Facebook on YouTube. It has to be somebody that actually knows your name. That knows your children's names. That knows what you do for living. The church prayed for Peter when he got arrested. Why? Because Peter belonged to the church. Herod attacks those in the church, but the church throws a call or attack to those that the devil attacks by praying for them. So for those of you, this is what I usually know. When everything is fine, everything is fine. Stuff hits the fan. Pray for me, pray for me. Where is your life group? Your life group is the place where you bring the prayer requests and you have these brothers and sisters press in. And a lot of times the life group will pass it on to other life groups, will pass it on to other leaders and other pastors. We begin to pray, we begin to fast, we begin to stand in the gap here. But if you're only in the box, no one knows you're being attacked. Oh, my pastor doesn't care about me. Maybe perhaps you ignore the culture of the church where you're supposed to be together and the church cares for you. My head doesn't always tie my shoelaces, never ties my shoelaces. Different members are involved. If your idea of the church is the church you came from where maybe there was very small amount of people and your pastor did everything for you, it's one of the reasons that church stays small. Our church, the pastor, is not the belly button, but everything is through him, by him, for him, and through him. It's the body. I'm just a brother in here. I'm just the disciple of Jesus Christ. I'm not a celebrity. I might be known around the world, but in here I am known by my brothers. I'm known by my sisters and I know some. I pray for some. The rest of us, we pray for other people and we try to make sure everyone is connected, known, and cared for. And that cannot happen by one person. It has to happen by the body because we're all different parts. It's not just one part. It's not the pastor. It's the different members of the church take care of different members of the church all together working, flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. All of us encouraging the body of Christ. Why? Because we're members of the body. I'm not the body. I'm not the Lord. And nor are you. We're all part of this body. Can somebody say amen? Let's give the Lord a clap offering. Now I'm wrapping this up. As a pastor, I only have one time that I can say I'm wrapping this up. So continually and daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness. Oh, thank you, Lord, for food with gladness and the simplicity of the heart. I want you, now I'm going to move toward and conclude this. Not just being a part of a local church, but I want you to take one step further. And I want you to be a part of a gospel community that we call Life Group. Where is this idea of life groups came from? Why do we need smaller groups? It's biblical. They met in the temple and from house to house. Now for those of you who advocate, let's go back to the book of Acts, I don't think you want that because they met every day. You have a hard time coming once a week. Secondly, they gave all of their money. You're still debating about tithing. So let's maybe not book of Acts. Let's just slowly move towards just principles of the gospel and hopefully one day we become mature enough they will get the book of Acts. But as of right now, what we want to establish in our local church that we've been establishing is believers to gather together on Sunday morning. We invite our non-Christian friends. We make our environment in such a way where if you're a non-believer, it's a non-threatening environment. Now we will not apologize for believe what we believe. The same way, if we go ever to your club, you're not going to stop doing what you're doing because we're there. We're never going to stop doing who we are because somebody comes to church. But with that said, we always understand our church is not an aquarium of exotic fish. We exist to draw the lost people to salvation. We will give call to salvation and we'll present the gospel and whatever message we preach in a way that even an unbeliever can gain some grasp of it as well. But the second component is not only gathering, it's us meeting in homes. When COVID happened, we all realized that a government can take buildings. They can shut down assemblies against their will and we can try to oppose it. But during communism, you could oppose it and all end up in jail. When you end up in jail, the church scatters. Have a good friend in Vietnam. That's exactly what's happening right now. Pastors fields are being burned out. Houses are being confiscated. They're being locked in jail. What would happen if our Sunday morning is removed because the pastor, the preacher is gone? Our church, if it does not have small groups, we're not persecution proved, pandemic proved. We are not a church that will survive what's coming. And we're not biblical because the biblical church did not just have Sunday morning events. In fact, some people say for 300 years, the church didn't even have an official cathedral to meet. They all met in homes. Christianity spread like wildfire through small groups, through home groups. This is why it's not honest. Like, yeah, if you really have time, have nothing else to do, one of those Christians really want to go deeper, go into it. But if you're a busy husband, wife, businessman, yeah, that's not for you. Sunday morning is enough. I want to destroy that idea and to say that this is essential to us as believers to be connected to a smaller community. The other part that I need to highlight is as you're noticing, our church is getting bigger. More and more people come. We're going to move into a new building. By the time we move into a new building, we're going to have thousands of people. The church gets bigger. We have to remain smaller. The only way we remain smaller is not by saying to all of you, leave our church and don't ever come back. That's not right. The best way to stay smaller as God is growing our ministry is to break the church in small groups. Amen. New years, new resolutions, I truly believe that your goals are not as important as your groups. You can set up a goal. I want to have this and I want to have that. But statistics says you will really be what your five people that you surround yourself with are. If you're extremely overweight and you want to lose weight and all of your five friends love junk food and drink Pepsi five times a day, your goals don't matter. Period. If you want to have a healthy marriage, your five best friends are divorced or single. Your goal doesn't matter. I'm going to tell you right away, it won't work. You'll be divorced or single. That's based on statistics. You may say, but I'm going to try hard. It's difficult to try hard. Why? Because the environment you're in makes good goals, kills them. The same way as if you go to Alaska and say, I will plant a banana tree. It's a joke. It will never work. Why? The environment is not conducive to the desire that you have. But if you go to Jamaica, you can plant a banana tree. Your environment is your group. It's your social circle. You can have fantasies and dreams. If your social circle is not a healthy environment, your goals won't really work. So this year, instead of saying, I want to have right goals, instead I want you to say, I want to have a right group where goals can flourish. I want to have an environment where people are hungry to grow. People are hungry to be holy and to be righteous. The Bible does not exaggerate when the scripture says, do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. If your group is evil, your good habits will be corrupted. Proverbs 13 20, it says, he who walks with wise will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. Your course, your character will be affected by the kind of friends you keep. But the other reason you need to join a life group is because while we are stuffed with information, we lack meaning and connections and groups provide that. Life groups provide changes that happen in relationships. You probably don't remember my last five sermons. Don't judge you. I don't remember my last five sermons, but you will remember five people that impacted your life. Small groups provide fellowship, evangelism, learning, ministry, and training. Abraham had a small group. His small group was slightly large, 318 soldiers. He trained them there. They were an army, but that was his group. Moses divided people into small groups for administrative purposes. Groups were as small as 10, got anointed these small groups to help Moses with ministering to the rest of the millions of congregation. Jesus had a group of 12 men that he discipled. When it comes to our homes, Jesus healed in the house, discipled in the house, held the communion in the house, Holy Spirit was poured out in the house, the church started in the house, people were saved and baptized in the house. We spend too much money on church buildings and too little focus on turning your home into a holy place. And that's what our church is on a mission to do. This year, I felt strongly in my heart the purpose or the mission for this year is twofold. Reignite prayer in our church. That the 5 a.m. prayer is not going to be for those like it's for Jose, it's for other people, but I know Jose. You might not be a Jose, but you're part of a church. Jesus says this will be my house of prayer for all nations. Our church is a praying church. Our church is a fasting church and our church will have every nation represented in this church. But also our church is a small group's church. We're not a church that has small groups. We are a small group's church. We believe what you see here today will one day be our leaders meeting. And when you drive by the Toyota center, that will be our normal church service. But for that to happen, we understand our goal is not to attract a crowd because we can have a crowd of 10,000 people, but it will be a babysitting club. We want to raise an army that will push back against the kingdom of darkness, that will walk with the power of the Holy Spirit, that will heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, win souls and make disciples. And to do that, we have to be intentional. That's why our Monday nights, we train believers to be disciples and disciples to be disciple makers. That's why we have life class. That's why we have destiny training. It's not because we have nothing else to do. It's because we are committed to the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not raising a church that's simply weak, spineless snowflakes. He's raising mighty men, mighty women who've been healed from hurt and trauma, who've been delivered from demons and curses. And now they are set on fire for God to win souls and make disciples. If you are that person, rise on your feet right now and give God some praise.