 Hi there, this is Pastor Vlad, and before we go into this week's content, I would like to invite you to become a part of what God is doing at Hungry Generation today. This year we've seen a great blessing of the Lord, an anointing of God, God's healings and salvation and deliverances, and in 2019 I know that God wants to take us further. And many of you who are watching this video right now and watching this message, you've been receiving from Hungry Gen, you've been growing, your world has been changing, and we give to God all the glory. But we would like you in 2019 to become a part of what God is doing. And you can do that by sowing your best gift into this ministry, or maybe doing something monthly, like a partnership, a reoccurring gift. This will help us to go further in 2019 and bring more of what we're bringing to you, to many, many more people. Me and my wife, we do that every single year. Our church does that every single year. Well, once a year we give a special offering to God, and then we also become partners of this ministry by our monthly contributions. And I give you that opportunity today to become our partner and to become somebody who contributes to what God is doing today. Below is a link where you can make that happen. So why don't you ask God what would God have you give this year to this ministry to help us go further in God? And now let's go into this message. Good morning church who is excited to be here. We welcome each person who is new today. Maybe you came to watch one of your friends or your family member getting baptized. We want to welcome you and we are so glad that you are here. I also want to welcome the people that are watching us online. We love you. You're our family. We are praying for you. Comment below where you're watching from and how long you've been following Hunger Generation. Let us know. We are with you right there online. And I'm fully aware that there is a game going on guys. So I have a short message. So don't you worry. Don't we look at your phones at this course. But when you see a transit bus, on the transit bus, there's always on the front of the bus. It always says a street name and a destination where that bus is going. And so you don't usually get on the bus if you don't want to end up at a certain place, right? If you're going to a grocery store, you're going to pick a transit that is going to go to the place where you want to go. And so you'll pick the certain bus that's going to carry you to the place where you want to end up. And in this church, we want to be clear of where this bus is going. We always put a new face right behind us, thousands locally and millions globally. And it's not just because we're bored or our pastors don't have nothing to do that we come up with this vision that we know that as we are still continuing talking about the encounter with the Holy Spirit. And when you encounter God, God begins to give you a vision. And today I just want to remind you and myself of where we are going. Where is our destination? Where are we going to end up? And I want to tell you this, the thousands people that we are praying for every single Sunday and every single month our church takes a day three days too fast. And we are praying and we are asking God, God, not just the thousands locally, but every soul to be healed, every person that walks through those doors, if they have broken family, the family will be restored. If they have a broken marriage, their marriage will be restored. If they have cancer, cancer will disappear in this place. And if they roll in in a wheelchair, that they will hop out of their wheelchair in seconds. Amen. And this is where our bus is going. This is where we are heading. And so if this is where you want to go, buckle up and commit yourself and commit your life. And let's be people that God that search and want to encounter God for that purpose. God take us to the place that you have showed us where you want to take us. And so we are the church that we want to empty out God's account. That account where Jesus paid the price for all the people to be healed, for all the people to be saved, for all the people, people to be set free from curses and bondages and the chains that bind them. We want to empty out that account because in heaven we're not going to need healing, in heaven we're not going to need salvation. We're going to have it. We're already going to be, you know, all used up there. So buckle up. We welcome you. If you've been looking for a church, this is a vision of a church. This is what we are always drilling. This is what we're always preaching. And this is what we are always praying for. Yes, we will have great ministries, but our main goal is to win souls and make disciples and see lives being changed like we saw this morning. Amen. And so as we're going to continue talking about encountering the Holy Spirit, I want to concentrate on the story from the Bible of 10 virgins, 10 wise and 10 foolish. And I just want to in quick summary, give you a summary just in case you don't know the story. So what happened? They were all getting ready to go meet the bride's groom. And so all of them took their lamps. I brought you visual here. All of them got the lamps and they got oil with them. But the difference was the wise women, they took extra oil with them and the foolish did not. And so they went and so they were waiting on this bridegroom. And this bridegroom was late as usually, men are late. It's biblical. So as he was delayed and he as he showed up, they began to scream. There were screams of he's coming. And so they all got up and the oil was ending in the foolish lamps, the five foolish. The oil was going down. And so the foolish asked, can you borrow us some oil? And they said, no, we can't because we're not going to have enough for us. You go ahead and buy it at the market. And so as they went to buy it, as they returned, the bride's groom already took the five wise women and they left. And so this is, I want to encourage you, but I also want to give you a reality of encountering God, of encountering the Holy Spirit and having a relationship with God. All of us have lamps. All of us have a life that we live. We have a passion for God and it burns and we're all together. We come and it's burning like a fire. Consume us with your fire and we're just going all out. It's our passion that's burning. But one thing by the lamp, you don't know how much oil is inside. I got the one that's on the battery so it's not going to burn me. You don't know how much oil is on inside of this lamp. Just like by looking at the person, you don't really know and you can't really grade someone else's passion and someone else's relationships just because you're looking on the exterior. But to know how much oil is in here and how long this passion and how long this pursuit after God is going to last, you just have to set them on fire. You just have to put them in the place where they have to wait, where things don't come their way, where things don't turn out the way they wanted to be turned out and you just see how much oil is inside. And today I want to encourage you but also give you a reality that sometimes when you are passionate, your passion ends. Your passion burns down just like the foolish women. Their passion was ending and they were flipping out there and when they all started out it seemed like there was no difference between them. It looked like they were all the same. There's nothing, you know, there was no difference between the foolish and the wise. And maybe today you're going to church and you're praying and you're interceding and you're asking God and you're pursuing God. And it seems like, God, there is no difference between me and that fool because I am pursuing you and I'm going after you and I'm waiting for you but there is nothing happening in my life. And today I want to encourage you that there is a difference between the wise and the fool. It's how you think and how you prepare yourself when your passion burns down. When you're going to come to the end of yourself when you're like, I don't feel like God is near me. I don't feel God's presence anymore. There is a difference and God is going to show the difference and it's the time that shows the difference. You just wait. Just wait on God and when the bridegroom is going to come, when the Holy Spirit is going to come, He is going to show the difference between the fool and the wise. The fool woman, men, they only think of what's now. They thrive on parties. They thrive on conferences, just fueling with God's prophetic words. They only thrive on the good times. They don't think of the bad moments. They don't think of the nights. They don't think of the times when God is not going to show up. They don't think of the times when God is not going to heal them, when they're not going to receive the promotion or the healing or the thing that they're praying for. They only think for the good times. They only got their oil for the day. They didn't think of the future. What is going to happen ahead when things are not going to churn out the way as they planned? Foolish women or men, they think that when I'm going to hang out with a Christian, with a true Christian who is on fire for God, that somehow I'm going to be able to borrow the oil. That somehow I'm going to inherit the relationship. I'm going to inherit the presence. But as we know in the Bible, they didn't. They had to go ahead and buy it for themselves. And foolish women, they always think that it's going to burn. It's never going to burn down. But we know that in that story it says that the fire burned down, that their oil ended in their lab stand. But the wise woman, they knew that there's something like passion burns down. That a lot of times you're on fire for God and a lot of times that fire stops. And they knew that they have to bring something extra. They have to bring extra oil and it appears very unattractive because it's called discipline. Because to have a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit, you have to have passion and it's great when you are going after God and everything is great. And it is so easy and so effortless to pursue after God. And he is here and he's always talking to you. But at times there will be a night time in your life when you don't feel like searching God. When you don't feel like waking up. When you don't feel like opening your Bible. But when you have extra in your pocket that is called discipline and discipline it is being able to force yourself to do something in spite of what you feel. And I can talk to you about discipline for a day. It hurts, it's unattractive and I'm going to bore you. And as they say that picture can show you or tell you thousand words. So that's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to show you a picture. A difference between discipline and passion. Passion is what you see in January at the gym. Bunch of people in the treadmill. And discipline is what you see in March. You don't even have to wait till December. March will show you. And so that's what discipline is. That you continue doing when the feelings faded away. That you continue going after God when you don't feel that fire because all they had to do when their lamp lights started going off, all they did they just poured a discipline to their lamp and the fire started burning again. All you have to do is sometimes just sit in the moment in God's presence and when you don't feel anything just because you don't feel him doesn't mean that he is not there. And for us not to be driven by emotion, by this drive that like, oh, I don't feel God anymore. That means he's not around me or he's not there. Feelings a lot of times they misguide us, but when we don't feel him, when we don't have that passion, we don't have that desire that's burning, let's put on some discipline. Let's go off to God even if we don't feel like it. Let's fast even if we don't feel like it. Let's read a Bible even when you don't want to open the Bible. There's nothing that is from me right now. God has shut down his heavens on me. But God, but when we wait on him, he shows up and he shows up in his timing. By the way, he doesn't have a watch, so he's always on time. It's weird the one that set the bar for him. And one of the things that they also did as they as they woke up to me the bridegroom, they trimmed their wigs. It's when the fire burns, there's like a string of material. Anyways, they trimmed them so that the fire continued burning brighter. And what happened was, what happened that a lot of times if you want your fire to burn, if you want to be going after God and you want to encounter the Holy Spirit, sometimes you have to trim things out of your life that stop you from going after God. A lot of times you have to put away the music that you're listening to, that there's no presence of God. You have to put away movies, you have to put away some people in your life, you have to trim things. If you want to continue, keep going forward and encountering the Holy Spirit, there's some things that gotta go because God and sin cannot stay in one place. And God will always excuse himself. Holy Spirit will always give you the right to choose what you want in your life. Holy Spirit will always honor your decision and your choices, how much of him you want in your life. And so it said that they trimmed their wigs. And so, and then when, when the foolish women, they asked, can you borrow us some oil? And I want to remind you that your prayer life cannot be inherited from some your grandma that been praying all her life. Your oil, your discipline cannot be inherited from a friend. It's something that you cannot borrow. It's something that you have to go and pay yourself. And this is where you go and you begin to deny your flesh and you begin to deny your will and your desires and say, it is not me, but it is you. I'm going to continue doing in spite of what my body's telling me to do. And so just to remind that that when we're going after God, when we want to encounter God, that we have to have passion. And God wants us to be passionate. God wants our fire to be burning, our light to be shining. But he also wants us to have discipline when there is no light in the room, when there is nobody showing up to prayer, when there is nobody fasting around you, when nobody is watching you free to pick up the Bible. And God wants us that because with that we can encounter him. We can see his face, we can touch his presence, we can enter into the promise land that he has for us. Amen. Can you imagine having a relationship with God where God is about to destroy a city, Sodom and Gomorrah, and he is seeking out Abraham who is always walking with him and he is consulting and he's asking him, what should I do? How much city should I burn? Can you imagine when we are encountering God face to face, when we are going after God? God is looking for your opinion. God wanted to know what did Abraham think of the Sodom and Gomorrah? And Abraham, as we know, he began to negotiate with God. He began to say no, God, but if you find fifty, if you find ten, if you find five, can you, can you stop, can you don't do that? God wants to, God wants to have a communion with you. God wants to consult with you. And we know that how this church started, we know that our pastor, he encountered God. And God gave us a vision. It's not because he was bored and he had nothing to do when he moved here to America. And the vision of this church was to win our city, to win our city. And he drilled up from the very beginning. This was the goal. This was, this is what we are going for. And everything else is going to be to the side, that we are going to reach the city. There was a story. As a salesman, he was new. He moved into a town and he was very lonely. And he wanted to get himself a dog, but he couldn't because he worked long hours. So he decided to get himself a goldfish, an exotic goldfish. And he got himself a fish tank. He put it next to his bed. And so a lot of times he would come home and he would talk to the fish. He would share his day because he was very lonely. And there was one day, one night, that the thermostat went off and that fish was boiled to death and was swimming, all swollen at the top of the tank. And he wakes up with tears in his eyes and he is so devastated. All he had was that fish and it was gone. And he asked himself the most bizarre question. He said, I wonder if they were screaming when I was sleeping. I wonder if they were calling my name when I was asleep. And he was so broken. And today we live in the world and when people commit suicide, we say, we never saw it coming. All this, when the marriage fell apart, we're like, we never saw it coming because people are screaming and we are sleeping. Because when we don't encounter the God of universe, when we don't encounter God's presence, we don't know the hearts of people. We don't know what is going on in our city. When Moses was in the wilderness with his sheep, day in and day out, day in and day out, and God stops him. He gets his attention and he encounters Moses and he said, Moses, I know you here, but let me tell you something. I hear something else that you can't hear. And maybe today you are here and you are screaming and you are boiling and you're hot waters. And you're just saying, I wonder can anybody see the things I'm going through? This is 2019 and my day already started low. It is not, this plane is not lifting up like everyone says. It's going to lift up. And it's been not a year. It's been a decade when my life is shattered into pieces like a puzzle and everything in your life is a chaos and you don't even know where to begin. I want to let you know something. Just because your neighbor is sleeping doesn't mean that God can't hear you. God hears the cry of his people. God hears the cry of sinners and he wants to wake someone up because when he encounters your heart, your heart changes because you begin to change your destiny and no longer you pursue your vision boards. No longer you pursue your goals, but you begin to pursue the heartbeat of God and that is his people. No longer you begin to hear the motivational speeches and all the things you can do to advance your business, but you begin to hear God's heartbeat because God is saying, Moses, I hear something else. You've been hearing this wilderness. You've been living your comfortable lifestyle, but I hear my people. And today, maybe if you've been going after God and you only shine around other Christians and your light is burning because you're worshiping around everyone else, but I want you to also turn on the discipline in your life, in your private life. When no one sees and we begin to see God and say, God, I don't want to be the person that is sleeping when the world around me is screaming. When world around me is cutting and they're in the addictions, they are in their chains. God, I want to encounter you. This is why we need to encounter God because he changes our hearts. When he changes our hearts, he changes the direction of our life. And when our direction of our life is changed, the generation gets to be delivered. And Moses goes out there and he delivers a nation that's been in bondage for 400 years. Can you imagine if he wasn't there on that field that day and got your up and he wasn't there? And so I want to encourage you this morning, afternoon now, that when you have moments in your lifetime and you will, I've been Christian for a while and you will, there's times that you don't feel like going after God. There's times that you don't feel like praying that you go in because that might be that time where God touches your life. That might be the time when God reveals himself in your life will never be the same. That's why we are preaching and we are praying for thousands locally. It's thousand voices that going up to heaven and God is searching for a man that he can use and God is searching for his people. Can somebody stay awake? Can somebody stay awake so that I can show them my heart, that I can reveal them myself and the things that I see that their eyes don't see. And today, let's get on our feet. I'm done. And we're gonna begin to search and we're gonna begin to ask God, give me your heart. But also help me to have discipline. Help me to go in and go into your presence when I don't feel like it. Because I know that there is a generation, there is a nation that is waiting for salvation. For the very thing that Jesus went to the cross for is for their salvation. And let's begin to open our hearts and God take me into the place where nobody sees me and begin to reveal your heart to me. And because I want to encounter that it's the encounter with God that changes our destiny. Not our goals, not our plans. It's when God shows us his heart. Amen. Thank you for watching this content. I know this was a blessing to you. We would like to ask you to subscribe to our channel and click on the bell on our channel so that each time we upload something, you can be notified. Don't forget to share this content with your friends and family and on social media. We're so thankful to you. Better is not good enough. The best is yet to come.