 And what I wanna focus on today is talking about how not to leak the Holy Spirit or how not to waste the anointing of the Holy Spirit. One of my habits that I have, and for those of you who've ever seen me drink coffee, I do not like lids on my coffee. So I love to see the design and in like a little heart there or anything that has a little bit more design. And then I love when my cup of coffee is full, not overflowing though, but full and it does not have a lid on. But there's a spiritual reason behind that. When you have a cup of coffee that is full, when you walk with that cup, you're very careful. Why? Because you're very conscious of the fact that you don't want it to spill. You wanna protect that because it's supposed to be this coffee is supposed to be something you drink, not something you spill. And I cannot tell you how many times I have stained my shirts. I have stained my pants. I have spilled it in my car. And I still refuse to put a lid on it. Why? Because I have convinced myself it's about getting better at walking with the cup that's full of coffee than about protecting myself from being spilled by putting a cover over it. Now, my reasoning behind that is actually a little bit more spiritual than practical. When one time I did that, I felt the Lord minister to me personally from that example and he said that, look at yourself loud. When you have a cup that's full, you're very careful with how you walk. And you're paying attention more to this cup and less to the rest of the surroundings. And he said, when your cup is completely empty, you're completely careless, you're distracted, you focus on other things, you slam doors, you press and gas really quickly, you press and breaks really quickly, you hit there and there, but when your cup is full, you are very careful. And I felt the Lord minister to my heart and he said that when your life is full of the Holy Spirit, you live more careful. And when you don't live careful, when you don't live your life focused on God, that's one of the signs you are not full of the Holy Spirit. And so sometimes instead of trying to make yourself, man, I wanna live better for God, what we actually have to focus on is get filled with God because as a result of that, we become more conscious of God to please him. The religion says, get your act together, but Jesus says, let me fill you with my spirit and you will begin to live differently. That's why God says, I will make a new covenant with them. I will give you a new heart and I will put my spirit inside of them and they will walk in my statues, meaning they will be careful how they walk, why? Not because they're scared of going to hell, but because they are protecting what I have filled them with. So many of us would live better if we would focus less on living better and focus more on Jesus and staying filled with him. If you focus on being filled, you'll be more free. If you focus on living full of the Holy Spirit more than trying to correct this and correct that, now I am not in any way saying that you should completely ignore working out your salvation with fear and trembling, crucifying flesh and denying worldly desires. The Bible has a place for that, but as a Christian you must understand you gotta live full of the Holy Spirit. That's why Paul tells us in Ephesians, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Why does he tell us to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Because he doesn't say, wait for the Spirit to fill you. He says it's a command and the word be filled there is a continuous action, meaning it's something that we have to continuously be filled with the Holy Spirit. And I'm asking Paul, why do we have to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And Paul didn't say that in the scripture, but I'm just hinting it, maybe perhaps it's because we leak, we spill. One of the biggest areas where we leak, spill, we lose the flow is getting involved in drama, getting involved in war with people, fights with people, feeding on garbage, loving toxicity, spreading gossip, being a part of gossip, backbiting, enjoying the drama online today. And if you don't have enough of it in your life, just get a Facebook account. If there is not enough drama in your circle, have a YouTube channel or follow some YouTubers and you will see there are people online whose whole assignment is to provide you with drama in case you lack of it in your life. And that it feeds your flesh, but it drains the oil. Something happened to me this week. A few weeks ago, me and Pastor Ilya, we were in the coffee shop and talking and he recommended some kind of a supplement he takes to make his brain better. I was like, he's like, man, I don't get like fogging my brain after eating. It's just really good. Some Joe Rogan recommended something. I guess it's healthy. And so I told my wife, I'm like, babe, just order it. So my wife was like, I got it. So she orders it. You know, these things arrive, I won't promote them. I won't mention them because I have yet to test them. And so these brain supplements, nothing, no steroids, not no drugs, just things to help your brain to function better. And I'm like, man, maybe I can write three books in a year if I have some pills instead of one book a year. So I decided to take them. So I take it one time, you know, this prescription on it says, you know, one tablet of this one thing and then two tablets of the other things. So I took it in and I was feeling nauseous afterwards. I was about to throw up. And I was like, well, why is this happening? So something in my brain probably is so like down that these pills are coming in and my brain is like, oh, this is like way too much. So I was like, okay, maybe I took it on an empty stomach. So next day I'm taking it, not on the empty stomach and I feel nauseous again. And I'm like, man, my brain is really just been behind. So this week I take it again after lunch already and I'm feeling so sick, I'm about to throw up. I text Pastor Ilya and I said, Ilya, do you feel sick taking those brain supplements? Cause I'm like, my stomach is hurting from this. He's like, no, man, I'm good. So I decided to go and I, you know, check the bottles. I mean, everything's fine. I'm taking one pill of this, two pills of that. And I checked the other bottle, the bottle of what I was taking two pills and I look for, there's a red writing on it says, for pets only. So it does help with the brain activity. It says for dogs and for cats. And it says in red only. These are the ones I took two off. I was like, well, that probably explains why I'm nauseous. I'm thinking, am I gonna start barking now? Am I gonna start sniffing stuff? I've come to my wife and I said, babe, did you see what you ordered? But it's the same company that makes things for humans and for dogs. So it turns out I've been taking supplements to improve my dog's brain for myself. And it makes me feel sick. Why? Because that food, that supplement is good for the dog. It makes dog better, but it makes me sick. See, there are food that if you take as a born-again Christian, it makes you nauseous. But that same toxic drama makes a person that's carnal healthy. When you're healthy, drama makes you sick. But when you're not healthy, drama is healthy for you. Because it's part of your diet. The Bible says in the book of Noah, in the book of Genesis, Noah's story. Noah's journey of having the Ark of God, the Ark that saved the whole family from the flood. It had two birds there. It had a raven and a dove. We see these two birds highlighted. And I want you to notice the two nature of these two birds. Noah sends out a raven and then he sends out a dove. The raven got sent out and never comes back. A dove gets sent out and comes back. And then the dove comes back and then dove doesn't come back again. And Noah opens the Ark and the humanity, the human family, the new family now comes out of the Ark. And I see this because this Ark symbolizes us. In fact, the Noah's Ark is a very big symbol of a Christian life. The reason being is because this was made out of wood and Christianity is made out of the cross. The Ark saved them from the wrath of God. We are saved from the wrath to come. The Ark had only one door and we as Christians have only one door to God and that is Jesus Christ. The Ark had only one window and we only have one book that gives us the light into the other world and the light from the other world comes here. It's called the Bible. The Ark only had one family and as Christians we are black, white, brown. We are all one family in Christ. That's why racism is a sin because we're one family. But I want you to notice what also the Ark had. It had two different birds. One bird was a raven and the other one was a dove. And Noah released the raven. But I want you to notice something about raven because we have to be very careful as we walk in the Holy Spirit so we don't feed the raven nature or the raven appetites in us. Raven is an unclean animal. Dove is clean animal. A dove is gentle. Raven is a bird of prey. Dove dwells a midlife and raven dwells in rut and decay. Dove is faithful and raven is not. Dove, when they mate, it's one partner for life. Ravens are promiscuous. Shacking up, hooking up, cohabitating, all of that stuff. Raven lifestyle. But there's one thing that I want you to notice about it is dove feeds on greenery and seeds. Raven feeds on dead things. Raven is a scavenger who feeds on dead things. Fallen nature feeds on the fallen world. Raven is an example of Satan because the Bible says about this raven that he went to and fro the earth. And that speaks of Satan in Job chapter one, where Satan went to and fro the earth. It's like raven is that symbolic of that human fallen desire. But the thing about raven is this, is they feed on dead things. If you prefer a diet of drama, division, gossip, talking about other people, always belittling other people, if that is your preferred diet, you might be feeding a raven instead of a dove. You might be eating supplements that are meant for an animal. And my question to you, why does it not make you nauseous? It's supposed to make you feel bad. It's supposed to feel wrong. It's supposed to feel like, man, this is not right. But if you are feeding on something that is deadly, gossip and garbage and not clean, vulgar and immoral, and you absolutely have no regret, conviction about it, you're like, man, this feels good. Maybe your raven nature has been so risen up that the dove is so grieved that it doesn't even make any noise in your life. Anytime we get Holy Spirit moving in our life, we attract drama. I didn't say create, we attract. The moment you get radically saved by God, there will be controversy around you. And usually by people who are your family or closest friends. Mary gets filled with the Holy Spirit and gets a child. Joseph didn't understand it and decide to drive her out and says, you know what, girl, I don't get it. You said it was the Holy Ghost, I have a feeling it's somebody from middle school. And Joseph is like, I don't wanna embarrass you, but yeah, Holy Spirit doesn't do those things. Yeah, I know God, God doesn't do those stuff. He splits red seas, he doesn't make verges pregnant. And so Joseph is like, hey, I'm gonna let you go, I'm sorry, but we can't do this. And there was drama, there was controversy, there was misunderstanding. For those of you who think, if you get radically filled with the Holy Spirit, you start following God, and everyone is gonna be like, bravo, yeah, awesome, praise God, and there will be no misunderstanding, no controversy, and no things people saying about you and drama going around you. I wanna prepare you for something that revival, fire causes smoke, revival causes controversy. Walking with God causes misunderstandings. Even our savior, think of the words we're spoken about him. Wine, person who drank a lot of wine, friend of sinners, mad men, fraudster, con men, criminal, blasphemer. Jesus today is regarded by some scholars as delusional, possessed by demons, and insane, and that his miracles were performed by magic. That's what they said about Jesus. When we just started our church, we were renting a desert streams off of the 240 highway. And it was a Thursday night youth service. We had this, you guys remember those projectors where they had this see-through paper, how do you call those projectors? Transparent papers and the head, how do you call them, head what? Overhead projectors, that's before the LED screens, before all of that, and you actually had to print your lyrics and put them on. So in order for those projectors to work, you would turn off the lights a little bit in the room so you can actually see the lyrics. And then you have a person there, right now we have a person that sits and clicks, but at that time we had to have a person that sits and moves the sheet. So what we did on our youth services, common sense, we turned off the lights so that we can see the words better. The rumor spread, this young church is so into witchcraft, they do, they invite darkness during their worship. I said, what? We were trying to see better. And then another rumor, I remember, just started to spread. When people start getting delivered and they would say that they sing loud here so that the demons can come in and then they can cast them out to show off that they cast out demons. I said, you're telling me demons come in during worship? That's interesting. There's many open doors to demons. I've never heard worship being one of them. The craziest one was I did this series called Keep Your Underwear On. It was for teenagers, youth, okay? It was not for adults. I'll probably bring it back for the adults next year. It had to do with Book of Exodus, God telling priests to put their trousers on when they walk into His presence. And the big idea was this. Underwear is what you wear under what you wear that people see. Pretty much the life people don't see needs to be pure before God. That was the whole series. And that month we were so focused on reaching lost souls, we actually decided to one time do a disco dance on Saturday to bring all the people in our community to come and dance and we can preach the gospel. Now, I can't dance if my life would depend on it. None of us could. So what we did is we bought a disco ball and we were just standing there with Bibles waiting for heathens to come dance in our sanctuary with Kirk Franklin's music, like gospel music, and the moment they finished dancing. Now, nobody showed up, by the way. Nobody showed up. It was just us. We returned the disco ball, never did it again. On our church website, graphic disco dance and keep your underwear on were together. Somebody in a different city here locally starts spreading a rumor that pastor Vlad organizes a dance where he asks people to take their underwear off. My pastor calls me and he's like, Vlad, he's like, I mean, I know we did Fear Factor at church, you brought a pig and a sheep and a motorcycle, a lot of weird stuff. But like, did you ever like, was there anything that has to do with dancing and asking people, and I was like, disgusting, no. I'm like, where would anybody come up with that dumb idea? And then I go on our website and I was like, oh, I could see where somebody who doesn't speak a lot of English and just kind of puts things together. So dumb. But it was real. War breaks out in Ukraine, the first one, not this one where the Yellow, not the Yellow Revolution, the Maidan stuff that happened a few years ago and Tri-City Herald came here, took a picture right here with me and my wife. My wife is Russian, I'm Ukrainian. They took a picture and they put an article in Tri-City Herald on Sunday edition, House Divided. Now the idea was to be catchy, that these two people are from different countries, they're countries that are war and that they are united as Christians, pastors and the fact that their house is technically divided. So somebody reads the headline without reading the article and another rumor spreads, Pastor Vlad is getting divorced and he starts by announcing it in his local newspaper. And so they're calling already, they said, your pastor is divorced. We know because it's all over the internet. He announced his divorce online. And this is just the ones from like 10 years ago. I don't wanna start with the ones that happened a week ago. So this is what I've realized, anytime you begin to move toward God, some kind of controversy will be around you. Somebody will say, well, Vlad, this doesn't relate to me. In fact, if you get on fire for God, your uncles, your aunties, a lot of times your parents, a lot of times your best friends, people will begin to come up with things that they will say about you. When you have fire, you will always have smoke. And the idea is not to try to put out the smoke. I don't want the smoke, somebody will say, I don't like the controversy. I don't like being talked about badly. I don't like to be misunderstood. I don't like to be persecuted. I don't like to be attacked and criticized. Or some people, what they do is they simply focus on clearing their name with everything that attacks them, constantly defending themselves, constantly fighting, constantly going to our say, no, that's not true. You know, that's not fair, you attacking me. No, I'm not a hypocrite. No, I'm not one of those crazy people that you're labeling me to be. No, I know I got on fire for God, but I'm not gonna fall like somebody that you are accusing me of one day will fall. And we begin to defend ourselves. But in reality, what we're doing is this, is we are feeding on drama. It's fine to attract drama because you're on fire for God. But you gotta, what I wanna share today is this. Don't leak the anointing by focusing on the drama that the fire in your life attracted. Because it is normal for any person like Joseph gets a colorful coat, now brothers hate him and they talk about him. He goes in, becomes successful in Potiphar's house and the Potiphar's wife does stupid stuff and then accuses him of all kinds of things. It is normal to be on fire and attract a little bit of smoke. But it's a distraction because the enemy wants to use drama to drain you spiritually. He wants to use drama to distract you from getting bigger fire. And he wants to use drama so that you will no longer feed the dove but you will feed a raven and thus you will lose the fire and lose the controversy down the road. I will rather be persecuted but in the line with the will of God. I would rather be talked about by people but be pleasing to my Lord. I would rather have people talk, misunderstand, falsely accuse, but be pleasing to the Holy Spirit, be used by the Holy Spirit, see people saved, see people healed, see people delivered and see people on fire for God. Come on somebody, if anybody is with me and makes some noise online in the second section, don't feed on drama. Don't feed on drama. Another thing that I want to highlight when we were young, our pastor warned me about something. He said, when you notice in your generation, God doing something different that you are not accustomed to. And everyone shares their opinion and wants to attack it and criticize it because it doesn't fit the methods, mannerism of what they're used to. He said, do not join the mob of Christians, criticizing what God is doing that they do not understand. He said, always be the last one and always zip your lip. My pastor used his own example. When the charismatic movement broke out in the former Soviet Union. Now, in the former Soviet Union, the Pentecostal movement and charismatic were different. Pentecostals were the ones, no makeup, no earrings, no worship, just speaking in tongues. And charismatic movement had worship, worship songs, one main sermon from the pastor and they necessarily didn't focus on the makeup and the head coverings. So the Pentecostal movement, of course, saw the charismatic movement as demonic, heretical. And one of the people who were assigned to be a spy to go into the charismatic movement to find all of its problems was our pastor. He was part of the Pentecostal movement, sent to a different country as a spy to investigate and bring back all the dirt that these guys can now have ammunition. It was demonic, why? Because we have ABCD and we have facts to prove it. So our pastor goes into that. He begins to take notes on everything. And he notices things that he doesn't understand, clapping, worship, drums, loud music, praying out loud, women don't wear head coverings, women wear makeup, like all these demonic things. A lot of demonic things, like earrings, demonic, rings, demonic, you know, a shirt. It's not tight, demonic, everything's demonic. It's pretty much anything that doesn't conform to 1950s demonic. So after he finished writing all the demonic things, he also starts noticing they pray a lot. They're committed to chastity. They're evangelized all the time. They preach the gospel. God heals people. God delivers people. There seems to be a conviction. People who are on drugs come to Christ and he writes all of these things as well because he wants to be very honest with his report. And he goes back home. He has a hard time understanding since when did devil helps people to be holy? Since when did devil gives people a love for God and prayer? So he's having his personal conviction problem. He brings this report to them and he gives the part about the demonic quote unquote and the other stuff that seems to be just kind of weird. Why did they pray a lot? Why did they read the Bible a lot? Why did they evangelize a lot? Why did they come at six in the morning in the frozen weather and they stand and intercede? Why did they give their money? Why did they do that? And they love the Bible and all of the stuff and my pastor started having crisis and the crisis was what if this is not demonic? This just simply doesn't fit into how we grew up. It's not anti-biblical. Maybe it's extra biblical. Extra biblical, for example, extra biblical is what we have right now. We meet in the building. I stand here and we have lights. It's not in the Bible. It's not anti-biblical that we meet on Sunday morning at nine o'clock. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to meet on Sunday morning at nine o'clock. It's extra biblical, but it's not anti-biblical. It's in line with the teachings of the scriptures to gather together. And if we have our services six hours or three minutes, the Bible doesn't tell us how long the services should be. So we have the freedom to stay within the context of the Bible and my pastor started to come back and realize I don't think I can attack and criticize this anymore. And of course, now this group kicks him out and says, you're demonic too. And my pastor then joins this group. And this is what he tells us. I remember I was 14 years of age. We're driving from Seattle because he would take us on Sunday nights to these trips where we would practice preaching and singing as we did on Sunday morning. He would tell us, we were young teenagers. We were just cranky because we didn't want, we wanted sandwiches at 10 p.m. I was all on our mind and he tells us, and I will never forget this. He said, Vlad, Ilya, Nazar, in your generation, God will do things that you will not understand. Don't be quick to judge because he says the people who have revival today usually criticize revival tomorrow. He said, stay so humble. And the way you stay humble is this, keep your ears open and your mouth closed. That's why you will see sometimes people will even attack us and Hungry Jen and say, look, you had this ministry in your church. You had this, you had that. And people say, man, why did you guys do this? Why are you guys into deliverance? Deliverance and all of this stuff, this is controversial, this is wrong. And people will attack us, but one of the things you must understand about Hungry Jen, we love the Holy Spirit. We know that following the Holy Spirit makes us a little bit wild and it could potentially make us weird. We don't wanna be weird, but we wanna be wild. But the other part that we have to be very careful is this, we are not afraid of controversy. We're not addicted to controversy, but if following the Lord, all of the Bible gets us a little bit not accepted by some people, it's a small price to pay to stay close to the Holy Spirit. If me saying like I did last Sunday, that Jesus is a Jewish Messiah, the King and he is the root of Jesse and the Lion of the tribe of Judah and his feet will land on the Mount of Olives and God is not done with Israel, will cause hate things to come in, small price to pay. If us during the alphabet month stood up and we simply said that God wants a marriage between a man and a woman and women should not be in men's bathrooms and men should not be in women's bathrooms, it's a small price to pay. If casting out demons out of people and healing the sick triggers some people and if fence some people, well my savior drove out demons, it's a small price to pay to be misunderstood. I wanna encourage you as a church. Number one, not to be afraid to be misunderstood. And number two, don't ever take it personal. The remaining part of this message is I wanna talk about what the Lord personally ministered to me about this and some of the patterns that we have in our church in dealing with drama that helps us to protect the anointing upon our life. If you have your Bible, I wanna go with you to Isaiah chapter 37, 36 and verse 21. Chapter Isaiah 36 and verse 21. But they held their peace and answered him not a word for the king's commandment was do not answer him. Little background story. In 701 BC, Hezekiah becomes a king at 25 years of age. He reigned for about 29 years. During the reign of Hezekiah, his contemporaries were prophet Isaiah, prophet Micah and prophet Nahum. He repaired the doors of the temple, he cleansed it, he made an atonement for the altar. He consecrated the priesthood, he ordered the observance of the Feast of Passover, he removed idolatry from the land. He supported the priesthood, put priests back on the payroll through tithes and offerings and the nation prospered. This Assyrian king started to attack other countries and Hezekiah does a diplomatic thing, though not trusting God, takes the savings from their temple and gives it to Sennacherim. So the Sennacherim, Assyrian, general will leave Jerusalem and leave them alone. Sennacherim wasn't happy with that. At first he was, he took the money, left, and then he came back. He comes back and in chapter 36, I want you to see a few things that he does. Number one, he criticizes Hezekiah's alliances to Egypt. And he says, well, you're relying on Egypt, Egypt will fail you. The second thing, he's questioning his devotions. The general of the Assyrian army, the general of the Assyrian army takes things out of context like the enemy always does and says, look, you think you're trusting God, but you broke all his altars. Look, you removed his statues. In reality, the king of Assyria is completely stupid. He doesn't understand that Hezekiah didn't remove God's altars. He removed all the pagan altars, but he throws these accusations and because he's loud, they kind of stick. The third thing that he did is, he gives him a way of escape. He says, all you have to do Hezekiah for us to leave you alone is leave Jerusalem and I want you to come out to me and then I will give you horses, I'll give you new vineyards, I'll give you new land. I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just asking you to give up the place God planted you in. Number four, he claims to be used by God. In all of this rhetoric, he says, do you think I didn't come here because God sent me? I got sent by God. Who do you think is blessing all of my efforts to destroy countries? It's your God. So he begins to take God's name in vain and says that he's sent by God. And lastly, he uses a track record of all the people he conquered and pretty much says Hezekiah, you're next on the list and I will destroy you. Now Hezekiah was not a pacifist. Hezekiah was not one of those guys who simply said, no, we're just gonna turn the other cheek. Hezekiah, like the rest of the kings, they were brave men and Hezekiah was involved in many wars during his reign. This time though, he doesn't fight back. This time though, he does not retaliate. In fact, what he does, he tells everybody on the wall, don't answer a word. He says, don't respond, don't talk back. Let him talk, let him do his thing. And Hezekiah doesn't respond. I wanna highlight four simple principles, few simple principles. Number one, when insults are personal, take him to prayer, not to Facebook. The reason why Hezekiah did not attack back is because a Syrian king didn't fight him physically. He only fought him verbally. When the attack is verbal, you are this, you are this, you are this. It's not physical yet. You don't have to fight back verbally. This doesn't mean you ignore it. If it hurt you, if it's personal, got under your skin, touch your nerve, you're like, got all worked up. Go take a shower. Do not use your fingers. Don't pull out your phone and you're like, man, the Lord is speaking right now. I see your revelation. And you go, post, let's see the comments. And then you're waiting for three, for three hours. Who's gonna support this? Or you get their phone number and you go, you think I'm bad, and you go and you're speaking in all the other tongues that are not from the Lord. And you're like, man, I'm gonna let him have it. I'm gonna let him have it. Now give them their medicine. I'll take screen, I have screenshots of the stuff you did. You said, how dare you, you lying hypocrite and you blasphemer and, amen. And you pull the scriptures there as well to cover. Post, ha, justice, mercy. I mean, mercy, just justice. No mercy today, just justice, justice. God is an angry God, me too. I'm angry today. But in reality, what just happened is you acted out of flesh. Because when it's personal, we all need good three days to take it to prayer and let the Lord sort out where is our personal agenda and ego got hurt and where his purpose is affected. And when you take it to prayer, sometimes you realize God's purpose is not affected at all. It's just my pride got injured and I will recover. And if I respond, my pride is responding, not the Holy Spirit. And a lot of times when it's personal, that's what Hezekiah does. It's personal for Hezekiah. He got attacked, he got questioned. They cast all kinds of doubts on his devotion and Hezekiah goes to prayer. He begins to prevail before God. He sends a message to Isaiah. Isaiah, can you, he doesn't say Isaiah, did you hear that? What do you think about it? The Lord say, he says, Isaiah, can you pray for me as well? Meaning he's not looking for a gossip partner. He's looking for a prayer partner. Can you pray for me? Why? It's kind of hard for me. It's affecting me right now. I don't want to reply. I don't want to post because I know that it's gonna come out from a place of hurt. It's gonna come out from a place of ego and my pride. I wasn't attacked physically, but I'm being insulted verbally. I'm taking it to prayer, not to Facebook. When you fight people, get involved with drama. The enemy steals your opportunity to pray and gets you in the whirlwind of ongoing battle that will never end with people. Cause you think the responding back will clear your name, make you write. No, your accuser is better at drama than you are. Here you are worshiping the Lord, honoring the Lord. All they've been doing is drama. They have a PhD in this stuff. And you're literally graduating from elementary school. They will beat you million times. And the best way is not to fight them. Why? Let them think they won. You grow in godliness. You grow in the Lord. Again, there are battles we have to stand up and speak the truth, but we're talking about personal insults that you know are not based on the truth. And if you respond back, it will be out of a personal hurt and it will only create more drama and you will leak the spirit, the anointing, and lose the opportunity to spend more time in prayer. Number two, hold your peace by keeping your mouth shut. I love this. The Bible says God, the king said, commended and they did this. They held their peace. How do they held their peace, keeping their mouth shut? I wonder sometimes by opening our mouth, if we lose our peace, we win the argument though, lose our peace. But man, but I was right. But now you don't have peace. If the price for arguing is your peace, it's too high of a price. How do I know when the Lord is not in it? If you lose peace, getting involved in it. And how I know if I lose peace, if I get into my shower and I'm still arguing. I already sent the message, but I'm still, I'm preparing for the second message already. Oh, but I forgot to do this. Let me just pull, get out of the shower. Let me edit the message. Thank God for the editing button on that, on iPhone right now, because I can change this. And that's when I know, okay, I'm no longer focused on God. I'm arguing in my own head over something that happened a day ago. I'm losing my peace. Sometimes your peace is more important than your pride. All the time, peace is more important than your pride. You can always beat the skunk. You just have to ask yourself a question. Is the smell worth the fight? God didn't anoint you to win arguments. He anointed you to win people. And some of us are not anointed anymore. We're annoying. Why we're annoying? It's because we lost all the anointing, fighting battles we were never anointed to fight. Arguing, drama, feeding, constantly being involved, constantly reliving what people have done. And just literally, everything is not about good news. It's about gossip news. We just, we're literally like, if you want to know the latest, the dirtiest, and the worst thing, come to me because I'm a garbage can of everybody's problems. God doesn't want you to be a garbage can but a temple of the Holy Ghost. You don't hold harbor and collect garbage. You host the Holy Ghost. You host this presence. Keep peace is more important than being right sometimes. And every marriage relationship knows sometimes you got to be more at peace than to argue your rights. Amen. If the enemy cannot destroy you, he will seek to drain you. When you're focused on drama, you leak the Holy Spirit. The less you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you focus less on spiritual things. When we focus less on spiritual things, it's one of the signs we are spiritually leaking. Just because someone is fueled by drama, it doesn't mean you have to attend their show. Toxic people need drama like oxygen. Suffocate their room by not giving them attention. Walk away, completely walk away. Avoid being ahead trash. Don't be a garbage can for anything that doesn't feed your spirit. Refuse to open your mind to other people's trash. Tune out what promotes drama, negativity, division, confusion, blasphemy. Don't allow viruses to get into your mind. And the last thing I want to share. And that is chapter 37 and verse 3. And they said to him, thus says Isaiah, so this is a letter he's sending to, thus says Hezekiah, he's sending to Isaiah. This day is a day of trouble and rebuke and blasphemy. For the children have come to birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth. The last thing I want to share is protect your pregnancy by not getting engaged in drama that does not have a reward. Hezekiah uses this terminology in his writing to Isaiah. He says, children have come up to birth, but there is no strength to deliver them. When you're pregnant and my wife is pregnant right now, there are certain things she cannot do that she would be able to do before. Pregnant people don't fight. Well, they shouldn't be fighting. Some people fight. Pregnant people should focus on protecting their pregnancy, than fighting with anything and everyone. One of the reasons the Lord wants us to walk away from unnecessary drama, why is because when you are birthing something, you have to be careful not to battle in everything that you got invited into. A beautiful example of that is David. David comes on the field, his father sends him on the errand, bring cheese and some other food to his brothers and the general. David is not there. He didn't wake up in the morning and got a reminder. Kill the Goliath. Oh, that's right. 9 a.m. appointment. Goliath, me and Goliath had an appointment. I'm going to go kill him. No, David wakes up. His dad says, hey David, could you go deliver some food to your brothers? They're actually doing the real work and you're just an errand boy. Yes, dad. That's what I want to do. David brings food to his brothers, gives it to the brothers. Hey guys, how's the war? Who's winning? How's the big bad boy Goliath? Is he still standing? Okay, how's King Saul? How's everybody doing? Okay, everybody good. Awesome. And then Goliath comes on. Anybody who will challenge me. And David's like, and he's looking at his brothers and they're all and he's looking at them. He's like, wow, what a bunch of cowards. And David asked this question. I love this about David. David says this, he says, what will I get if I kill him? And of course his brothers are offended by the very fact that first he's seeing them being afraid. Because, you know, they said all these brave stories, how they, you know, slew giants and poor little David was there listening, being inspired, and now he's seeing their cowards. So it hurt their ego a little bit. And now David is asking the most ridiculous question. Not like, is it, how can we kill him? He's not wondering how to kill him. He's thinking if it's worth it. He's thinking, what will I get if I win a battle against him? Because David knows not every battle you should fight. David wants to know what will be the reward if I fight him. And that's the question we have to ask before every time we respond back, reply back, or get engaged in the battle. What is the reward? What will I win? And David asked the question. They gave him a very good reward. No taxes. What, no taxes? That's worth it. Secondly, you get a wife and that's king's daughter. David quickly looked at the pictures. I like her. Definitely worth it. David is like, that's it. I have every reason to die. I mean, to win and die potentially. And guess the moment David asked this question and they told him what David is going to get, money, a wife, and then he's going to get no more taxes for the rest of his life. His family will be blessed. David is like, that's it. This battle is worth fighting. And his brothers, this is what his brothers come. And they said, you of stupid heart. Since when did his brothers became cardiologists? How did they do an x-ray on his heart? Now his brothers are experts on David's heart. You of stupid heart. Where did you leave those little sheep? Why such accusation? What did he do? David's like, what did I do? I brought you cheese, bro. I asked the question. I love this about David. He never responded back to his brother by saying, you think I have a stupid heart? You coward, spineless wimp. How dare you not kill the God. I'm embarrassed that you're my brother. I'm going to tell that about it. David never said that. I would have, that would have been my older brother. Praise God I don't have an older brother. I'm the older brother. But if somebody would have made fun of me like that, called me with all kinds of names, and while they were cowards, I would have them a little bit of their medicine. That's why I didn't kill Goliath. David did. David, the Bible says he walked away from them. Did you think David had nothing to say to his brothers? Oh, he had a lot of things to say. He zipped his lip because he was about to be involved in what God was doing. And you can't kill Goliaths and fight brothers. You can't cast out demons and fight people. That's why Paul says our war is not against flesh and blood. It's against principalities. And if we are engaged fighting with brothers, we leak the anointing, and we don't have any to fight the Goliath. That's why if we want to win real battle, we have to walk away from the battles that we get lured into that do not have every word. We got to ask ourselves a question. If I get involved in this constant fighting and arcing and all of this stuff, what will I get? Will I lose the anointing for the battle I was called for, anointed for, and raised up for? I've noticed this. Those who don't fight Goliaths love to fight brothers. And David walked away from that battle. When you're pregnant with destiny, you can't fight every battle you get an invitation for. Sometimes you have to excuse yourself and say, I can't do it. I'm not going to do it. I have friends who sometimes would gather online and criticize another minister. And I love those friends. They're one of my closest friends. When it comes to criticizing another minister, I disagree personal with as well. I will never join that. And I always would say, I'm sorry. I disagree with that minister. But if he preaches the gospel, if he believes Jesus is Son of God, the Bible is the Word of God, Jesus is the only way to salvation, and I disagree with him on certain things. My war is not against a brother, I disagree. My war is against Satan, demons, and the kingdom of hell. That's who I will spend my energy on. Oh, but he's teaching heresy. Just because he doesn't teach what you teach doesn't always mean it's heresy. Oh, but he said something against tongues. That's not a battle. Now, if you don't have any battle to fight, yeah, of course you're going to fight anything. But if you know you have a Goliath, Goliath's head that you are after, if you know that you got anointed to heal the sick, cast out demons, make disciples, win souls, build a local church, and build people, don't waste your anointing and fighting battles that have no spoil. They steal your anointing, they steal your peace, they steal your focus, and next thing that happens is you win arguments, but you don't win people. You win a battle with people, but you don't slay giants. And David says, I can't fight this and fight that. I'm walking away from that. I love what Nehemiah did when people came to him and they tried to distract him from work, and he says in the Nehemiah chapter 6 verse 3, so I sent messengers to them and I said, I'm doing a great work so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you? I'm right here, guys, he says. Yo, right here. Bickering, fighting, who's right, who's wrong, accusing, all of this stuff. He says, I'm doing a work for God. I'm sorry. I don't have time to come down and do all of this nonsense. I don't do drama. I don't have a degree in it. I don't have an interest in it. You all do whatever you need to do. I gotta build a wall for God. I gotta build God's kingdom. Now, does this mean we never make a statement? Does this mean we don't clarify what's right and wrong? Absolutely no. What this means is that we don't develop a habit where we are constantly feeding on drama. When you come to this church, please, I ask you, get rid of drama from your menu. We are a high-end restaurant. Drama is not on our menu. We don't do drama here. That's not our diet. Our diet is the work of God, the works of God, the will of God, the ways of God, the power of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, to change the world, to win souls, do we fight against the propaganda of the woke culture? Yeah. Do we fight against the ideology that is demonic, that is in our culture? You bet we are. Because those things are contrary to the Word of God. But do we disagree with some believers? You bet we disagree. But our disagreement is not our war with believers. We are on the same team. We are on the same side, targeting the gates of hell and winning souls for Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God that was slain and that is coming again as the lion of the tribe of Judah. I have a dog. And I can tell you one thing about dogs. They bark. A train goes on and dogs bark. We are not a dog. We are a train. We move forward with God. We have a vision to reach thousands local and millions globally. We have a vision to rescue teenagers and to rescue children, build a school. We have a vision and that is to host conferences where hundreds and thousands of people will come and be delivered and healed. We have a vision to write book, write music, write books and music from this house that will touch the world. We have a vision to see people healed, delivered and saved. And we cannot fulfill that pregnant vision, cannot deliver if we're busy battling instead of birthing. This is a birthing house. And some battles we're not allowed to engage in. Why? Because what we're birthing is more important than the battle that we're invited into that absolutely brings no glory to God and it only builds our raven. But it's not a characteristic of a dove. Don't feed undead things. I'm watching this sermon. If this was a blessing to you, would you let me know in the comments below what stood out to you from this message? 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