 Hi friends. Hey, good morning. It's Sunday already again. Can you believe that? That was a fast week. You know, when you get my age, they're all fast weeks. I'll tell you that. Welcome to the podcast, Sunday mornings with Brother Mike, 9 o'clock Pacific time, noon Eastern. If you need to get a hold of me, you can do that several ways. You can go to the website, hardcorechristianity.com. You can send me an email, Mike at hardcorechristianity.com. And you can, if you're here locally in Phoenix or Arizona, you can contact me by phone if you want to, 602-636-5800. And you can hear me on the radio every morning, Monday through Friday at 730. I'm on 10, 10 a.m. Christian radio here locally and I'm also on at 7.15 p.m. on the radio. If you happen to live in Arizona, it's not a national broadcast, but you can catch the shows and the archives of all the radio shows on my webpage, on the homepage down at the bottom on the left that has the link to get the archive radio shows. My radio ministry is completely different from my teaching ministry. I do some kind of R-rated stuff on the radio. I handle some of the more difficult issues of the today, putting it in a biblical perspective. So the radio programs are, you know, kind of rough and maybe not be for everybody, 10, 10 a.m. locally. And you can also catch me on my Facebook page, Michael W. Smith. I have a Facebook group called Hardcore Christianity on Facebook. And if you know somebody that's down and needs encouragement and needs to be lifted up just a bit, go to my Facebook page. It's called Blessings, B-L-E-S-S-I-N-G-S. And I post on there all the, some of the remarkable miracles and healings that God does in our ministry. I put a little bio there. I usually put their picture there or something. And we've had some wonderful things happen by the grace of God. The Facebook page is called Blessings. Today, I wanted to go over something with you that again is going to appear a bit unusual. Several years ago, I was attending a mega church in Scottsdale called the Dream Center. It was a spinoff, the Tommy Barnett ministry, Phoenix First Assembly at the time. They call it Dream City now. But the Dream Center is not there anymore. But back in those days, I went down to the altar and there was a young man down there who was kind of praying intensely. So I went over to pray with the guy. And I can't remember where I touched him at. It might have been on the forehead or something. But the guy crumbled to the ground like a sack of potatoes. And it happened so fast. I tried to grab him to keep him from dropping. And I missed him and boom, he was on the ground. Well, God spoke to my heart and told me to mentor that kid. So I met him the next day at Burger King in Scottsdale. And I was interviewing him and going over his background. While I was talking to him, he was telling me about the cooks in the back at Burger King. They were talking about him and he could hear them talking about him. And I said, what are they saying? And he said, well, they're saying bad things about me. And to make a real long story short, he had paranoid schizophrenia, was on eight medications that had been in a mental institution six times. And this was the guy God told me to mentor and take into my ministry. Back in those days, my ministry had just kind of barely started. I was only doing counseling sessions back then. I didn't have the house of healing or anything. So over the years that he was in the ministry, he went from being full blown mentally ill to miraculously healed and anointed in the ministry. He had tremendous anointing for deliverance. And he grew by leaps and bounds over the years. But he was a consistent and chronic failure for four of those years. And it got to the point near the end where it was kind of wearing me out. But the one thing I noticed that was remarkable about that kid, and God taught me a lesson through him. Every time that he would fail and screw up, he would come back to God and repent. And God would miraculously restore him again. This happened every single time I watched it happen all the time. He would fall apart or sin or disobey or do something wrong. He would come back with remorse. He would repent of it and every single time. And this went on hundreds of times, hundreds of times. This guy was a professional and a textbook screw up from A to Z. It was awful. And every time he screwed up and every time he failed, he would get restored. And I had come out of the Assemblies of God religion. And so I had a little bit of that, a little bit of legalism in me. And God used that mentally ill kid to break that concept and show me that if a person is repentant, no matter what they do or how many times they do it, as long as they're still alive, there's grace for them. Even if it's the same stupid thing over and over and over, the grace of God stays with that person and won't leave them until the moment of their death. That's when, obviously, when the whole thing ceases. He never one time, first took that kid. And God was showing me, hey, you got to get that legalism out of you. You know, you got a little bit of performance anxiety. Have you ever had that? Yeah, a lot of us that have had the ED have had that, you know, had a little performance anxiety. Well, in legalism, you have this performance anxiety that if you don't perform properly and you don't meet your standards, someone else's standards, your God's standards, you have this anxiety about yourself and you can't sleep and you have, you're kind of nitpicky of yourself. You're kind of hard on yourself and you kind of sense that God's got some kind of, I don't know, disappointment with you, but he's kind of disappointed in you. Oh, you keep making the same mistakes by, you know, you kind of, I got a heavy heart over you. God showed me through this kid that God's not like that, that if a person is repentant, if they are, okay, now I'm not saying that you turn into a scoffer of the last times. And no, that's not it. Of course, that's a, that's a different Bible study. But this Bible study is about the grace of God for someone who, who will repent and who won't give up and who keeps trying. And that kid taught me so many lessons over the five tough years I had him in the ministry. After five years, I finally had to get rid of him. But he got delivered from paranoid schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, porn addiction. He got completely delivered of everything that was wrong with him with, with the exception of one thing, narcissism. Those demons we, we never could get out of him. And he still has them to this day. He's off doing his own ministry now, but the improvement of this kid was absolutely staggering. It was staggering. And if you look at the Word of God, you can see, you can see Mother Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Greek word is Miriam. Her name was actually in the Greek Miriam. Some of the, some of the old texts have Maria. But anyway, we call her Mary, Catholics call her Mother Mary or, and some other things. But in the, in Luke chapter two, something kind of shocking happened there. Of course, they had gone to the temple for the Passover celebration and then, and then they went home. But Joseph and Mary lost track of Jesus. They didn't know where he was. They thought he was with the other kids because he was only 11, 12 years old then. So they thought he was hanging out with the other kids or that he was in another wagon. When people traveled back in the day, they traveled in wagon trains. So they had groups of people all together because of bandits and robbers and all the dangers on the road. They always traveled in groups. Well, they had gotten a few days out and they found, they couldn't find Yeshua. They're hunting all over for him. And so that they came to the conclusion, he wasn't with the caravan. So I said, Hey, he's got to be back. He got to be back in Jerusalem. Well, you know the story. They spent days hunting for him. They finally found him in the temple and they was sitting there in the midst of, of the teachers of the law of God. The group King James Bible uses the term doctors. It's in Luke chapter two and it's in verse 46. The Greek word is didosculus, which means instructors or teachers, the teachers of law. Jesus was sitting among the teachers of the law and the teachers of the law says they were astonished at him. They could not believe, they couldn't believe his understanding is the Greek trend or the English translation in the King James Bible. Sunesis is the, the Greek word, which means your intellectual capacity to put things together, to make sense out of facts, take a collection of facts and come to a complete conclusion. Intellectual gravity, they couldn't believe his level of intelligence. Sunesis and when, when Joseph and Mary saw him, it says they were amazed, they were amazed. Now remember Joseph had had three dreams from an angel of God. He had been contacted by God directly, telling him to go ahead and consummate the marriage with Maria Miriam, take the child to Egypt, come back from Egypt. I mean, Joseph had a, had a series of miracles about Jesus. Mary had had a series of miracles. I'm talking miracles, miracles you and I have, would have no opportunity to experience. Okay. She saw the shepherds. She saw the wise men. She heard what everyone said about her. She got a visitation from Gabriel personally. She saw what happened to Elizabeth and she heard all about Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy. She knew she had a, a super miraculous pregnancy far greater than Elizabeth. She had a virgin birth miracle. Mary had seen so many miracles that you and I would never have a shot at in a million years. And these are major miracles, major events, right? Right now, down south, there are category five tornadoes dropping down on the ground. One entire town in Alabama, yesterday or the day before, was wiped off the mat. One tornado that hit the ground was three quarters of a mile wide. Now, if you ever experience anything like that, you never forget it. Okay. That is a major, big event in your life. It is huge. Until the day you die, you always remember the tornado you experienced when you were younger. Any major event like that, nobody ever forgets it. They never forget it. Right? Yeah. You never forget the day the earth stood still. You never forget the day the UFOs landed in your front yard and two green guys got out and mooned you. You never forget that. If you're 80 years old and you're on your deathbed, your long-term memory is still there. Your short-term memory is gone. You don't know when you put your socks on. But your long-term memory, bang, I was sitting on the porch. A UFO came down. Two green guys got out and it mooned me. You don't forget supernatural, unbelievable, incredible events in your life. It just doesn't happen. Or does it happen? Hmm. Verse 48, chapter 2 of Luke, when they saw Jesus, they were amazed and his mother said to him, Son, why have you dealt this way with us? What was she saying there? Well, she was hurt and offended over Jesus because he didn't tell them what he was doing. Well, he probably didn't tell him because they wouldn't have let him do it. But she was, she was hurt over it. And then she said, behold, your father and I, your father and I. Pter is the Greek word. It means a human father. Your dad and I, your father and I have sought you and we were scared. We were sorrowing. I do not, is the Greek word for sorrowing there. It means it means to be tormented about something. You're worrying so much. You're tormented. You're petrified with fear. You're scared. Why were you doing that to us? We were tormented hunting for you. We know where you were. She's all emotional while she's talking to him. She's probably crying. Son, what happened? Why did you do this to us? Your dad, your father here and I, Joseph was standing right there during the conversation. And Jesus says to her shockingly, how is it that you sought me and you did not know that I must be about my father's business? Pter, your father, your dad, the person that gave birth to you, your dad, your father. She refers to Jesus' father as Joseph. He's standing right there. And Jesus doesn't refer to Joseph as his father. He refers to Jehovah as his father, verse 50. And they understood not the saying. He spoke to them and he went down with them, came going back to Nazareth and he was subject to them. The Greek word there for subjects means hupotasso. It means to subordinate yourself to someone. You leave them on top and you subordinate. It says, but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. Wow, that's amazing, isn't it? Check this out. Mark chapter two, verse 33. Mark chapter two, you remember this story, right? This is a story where Jesus was being mobbed by a group of people. He was teaching the people there was no way for anybody to get in. That happened to him all the time. He drew massive crowds for obvious reasons. And Mother Mary and his brothers and sisters came to get him because the Bible indicates that they thought he had gone off the rails. And somebody came to him in the meeting, in the prayer meeting in the Bible study, home group, and says to him, hey, your mother and your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you. And Jesus said to them, who is my mother and who are my brothers and sisters? Who are they? He said, here they are. They're right here. And he points around to the people that were right with him and the disciples. Here they are. Anyone who is hearing the word of God and does the will of my father, they are my brothers and they are my sisters. Fast forward now to the cross of Calvary. And everyone has forsaken him except his mother, supposedly John, and some other women. Everybody else was gone, right? What's going on here? Well, something amazing is going on here. Miracles, miracles never replace being born again. And when Jesus said in John 3, you must be born again. He wasn't kidding. A human being can have the most amazing miracles happen to them and still not change. Even miracles so big that you got pregnant supernaturally and you gave birth to the Son of God and you forgot it. The angel Gabriel told her, hey, he shall be great. He shall be called the Son of the highest. The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father, David, and he shall rule and reign forever. Remember that? Yeah. Gabriel told her all about him, but human beings by nature, by their nature, can forget the biggest miracles you could ever imagine when the devil year after year after year sends them trials and tribulations and hard work and exhaustion. Human beings by nature can't survive on miracles. They can't do it. Miracles, they're great, but they're not a cure-all. You must be born again and you must renew your mind. If you go back over, you know, the 20th century, let's do that for a quick second. Who saw most more miracles than anybody? Well, the great faith healers. I mean, I saw so many miracles. Unbelievable. Amy's simple McPherson built a church in downtown Los Angeles. Angelus Temple is the name of it. And once a month, she used to have stretcher day and that was an area right near the church there that was an open field, tall grass, and it was kind of a sloped area. And people would meet there once a month and bring their disabled relatives or their loved ones on stretchers and many of them would get healed. A. A. Allen down in Miracle Valley, Arizona had a healing ministry, second to none. This guy saw every miracle in the book. It was quite literally unbelievable. Many of the miracles were right on TV. He had a TV show, one miracle after the other, people on stretchers, the whole thing, just like Amy. You know, what happened to those two? Amy died of a medication overdose in a hotel in Oakland. A. A. Allen died of alcohol poisoning in San Francisco. You know why he was in San Francisco? He needed another surgery on his knee. Yeah. Hello. You know, Auro Roberts saw every miracle in the book. I mean, it was unbelievable how many people this guy saw healed. Quite remarkable to say the least. Then he drifted off into this seed faith teaching that he promulgated and a guy named, a young minister named Kenneth Cobb picked it up and then took it into the stratosphere. Auro Roberts saw every miracle in the book, left his healing ministry, went into another ministry I'm not going to go into. I don't have that kind of time and came up with the concept of seed faith. If you sow into this ministry, God's going to sow into you and then Kenneth Copeland kind of expanded it and you give me, give God 10 bucks. He'll send you a hundred bucks and that thousand bucks and they're on it, on and on it went. Just, it's ridiculous. The whole thing was asinine. But Auro Roberts, when he retired, handed his ministry over to his son, $40 million in debt. Whoa, what? Dude, in the prophetic movement right now, it is dangerously loaded with Kundalini spirits and these demons do exactly what I'm teaching on right now. They love to give you useless miracles. Wow. They love to give you physical sensations, euphoria, ecstasy, glory clouds, blowing wind, old dust, minerals, gems, weird stuff, useless miracles. They love it. Did you know that those miracles do not help anybody live a holy, sanctified life? Did you know miracles are not a cure all? You must be born again and you must renew your mind because even someone like Brother Mary who saw the greatest miracles you could ever dream of will be standing there someday going, no, no, no. He's your father. This guy right here. He's your father. He is. Joseph, why did you do this to your father and I? And Jesus was kind of stunned at that again as a 11, 12-year-old kid. He goes, didn't you know I had to be about my father's? But he's saying something, translation, after all those miracles you saw, the wise men, the shepherds, the trip to Egypt, Gabriel, you saw all that and you're asking me that question? You didn't know that? What he should have been saying was, I understand. This is human nature. Miracles are not a cure all. They're a splash in the pan. Boom. It's big. It's fun. It's entertaining. It's awe-inspiring. It's amazing. The Greek word terrace is the Greek word used translated wonders. Wonders are supernatural events that create awe in a person. Everybody loves them, including me. I love all of them. I love miracles. But if you do not renew your mind and you're not truly born again, no amount of miracles, no amount of miracles are ever going to get you to heaven. You're never going to get your ministry. You're never going to fulfill your destiny. You're never going to fulfill your call of God on your life unless you renew your mind. Amy Simple McPherson, A.A. Allen, or Roberts, go down the list. They'll see more. Robert Evans, all of them. John Dowey, all of them. They saw so many miracles. You and I would give anything to have seen what they saw and been a part of what they were a part of. It was so spectacular. What happened to them? They all ended up at the end of their lives in a bad place. They ended up in a bad place. Why? Because miracles alone are not good enough. Because human beings, believe it or not, they can forget miracles no matter how great they are. But the grace of God had Mary at the cross. Mother Mary, she was there. And she was there on the day of Pentecost. That's the last time we ever heard her name in the Bible. She was in the upper room. It got filled with the Holy Ghost. And in spite of everybody forgetting about all the miracles surrounding Jesus, God had mercy on them. God forgave. God was gracious. And I want you to understand that the trial you're going through right now, it's right in your face. That trial has caused you to forget all the miracles in the past where God bailed you out. The Holy Ghost pulled a miraculous recovery for you in the past. But because you're in this trial now, you've made the horrible mistake of Mother Mary. You have forgotten what God did for you in the past. Just take a second, pull out a sheet of paper. There you go. Write it down. Oh yeah, he got me a car 10 years ago. Oh yeah, he got me a new job. Oh gosh, I remember when I had this, the bill got paid miraculously. This came through that person. Write them down. Just write them down. And you won't make the mistake of Mother Mary. You won't be standing there confused or lost or oh my God, this is nuts. You won't be doing that. And God will forgive you. He forgave her. Right? Yeah, he will. You're going to forget stuff. It's human nature. The devil's going to try to get you so concerned about your current trial that you're going to forget all the good things he did for you in the past. If you can learn to train yourself and it's possible. Mother Mary didn't do it, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. You can train yourself during tough times when things are rough. You can train yourself to remember the other tough times you went through when he came through for you. And he delivered you and you got healed and your circumstances changed. I have a monthly training class at the Deliverance Center, Fourth Saturday of every month at noon, and you can watch it. We post it, but some guy got up and gave a testimony about how God had miraculously saved him and his marriage. It happened at the end of the teaching of the Saturday teaching if you want to listen to it. I'm not sure that Mike picked it up. I think it did. But this guy was talking about how miraculous it was that God had saved him and his marriage because he was suicidal. His wife had left and everything was going to hell in a porcelain handbasket. And after he was done with that, I closed the meeting and I had him come up because I knew that God wanted to take out several more layers of demons out of him. And sure enough, it happened. He went through wonderful deliverance right there at the end of the teaching. But the point was he got a series of miracles saving his life, his wife's life, and his marriage. Boom. One after the other. And he gave a testimony about all these job offers he got after he had gotten laid off. And so the Holy Ghost just stepped in and just threw a strike. All the pins went down for him. And that's an incident that Mother Mary had. God's miracle moving power. An MMP. Mary had one even bigger than this guy, obviously. She forgot them. I pray this guy will never forget the miracles God did for him over the last week or so. And all the things that God gave him. But he might because it's human nature to forget it. But I'm encouraging you. Things might be tough right now. Trust me, that's temporary. There's a major victory coming for you over through your horizon. You'll take out that piece of paper and write down those past miracles, the ones in the past, where the good Lord bailed you out. You'll get through this one with flying colors. You'll kill this thing. Don't be like Mother Mary. And it's hard not to be. It's human nature. She forgot all them miracles. And it was only 11, 10, 11, 12 years ago. She forgot them within 11 or 12 years. She was completely befuddled at the life of Jesus. She couldn't believe it. And it only happened a short, that wasn't that long ago. You forgot it. You're not going to forget it. Are you? No, you're not. You're going to win this thing. You're going to win. There's no question about it.