 Church, turn to your neighbor and say you look good, to your other neighbor and say you look even better. Turn back to your other neighbor and say, don't be jealous. It's okay. We want to welcome every person in this place to a hundred generations. You came to the place of vision. You came to the place where we see God's face, where we pray a lot, where we see God's face. We seek the answer of God for our city. God has placed a great burden on our hearts for our city and we want to see our whole city come to know Jesus Christ. We want to see our whole city being exposed to the true Jesus Christ, to the healing work in power, to the one who says, to the one who sets people free, to the one who loves people unconditionally. Amen. And so our conference is coming up once again in 23 days and we want to challenge every person. You have to bring at least one person to the conference. We want to see this place packed from the people of our city. This conference is not for people outside of our city. This conference is for us. This conference so that we can cultivate the vision, so that we can get more passion, more fire to go win our city for Jesus. And so the people that will come from outside, they will come, they will learn, they will go back to their places, they will catch the fire. But we want to, with each conference, with each miracle catch, with each service, we want to take next step forward in our vision. We want to take next step forward at knowing and getting deeper with relationship with the Holy Spirit and reaching out our city for Jesus Christ. Amen. Our church has a great vision. Our church has a great purpose and that's the purpose that was given to us by Jesus to win souls and make disciples. Revival, like Brittany said, is the will of God for tri-cities and we don't want to settle for anything less than what God has for our city. We don't want to let any person let go that God is already accounted and give us grace for. We want to make sure that every person in our city hears the gospel and has a chance to respond to it. Amen. Amen. I want you to turn with me to Romans chapter 5 and we'll read verse 20. And it says, Today I'm going to talk on a subject of increase of grace. And from this scripture that we read, I want you to see the mindset of God. I want you to see how God thinks. I want you to see how God plans and what is his plan for our lives, for your life, for your family, for your business, for your marriage, for your our generation and for our city. This scripture said that God increases his grace or sin abounds. To understand God's grace, we have to first understand sin and the consequences of sin and what sin does to our lives, how it destroys our life and how it corrupts us and what it does to us as individuals and the consequences that it carries in order to have an understanding of God's grace. It says that the law was brought in so that transpasses might increase. It's a weird scripture if you think about it because as you know that God has given to Moses, he's given him the law. And so why would God give something that would increase sin, would increase transpasses? Have you ever thought about this? Well, Bible says in another scripture that from the foundation of the earth God already prepared the plan of salvation. He's already prepared Jesus. He's already prepared grace for us. But in order for us to understand grace, we had to see how deprived we are as humanity, how evil and wicked we are as humanity and how lost we are without God. And that's why when the law was given, it wasn't given for our salvation, it was actually given us to see how short we fall of salvation. It was given to reveal to us how wicked we are, how cunning we are, how lying and cheating and our sinful nature without God we are hopeless. The law was also given to reveal the character of God and who God is and his eternal principles. The law was given to us so that we could appreciate grace. Because think about it, if you don't know where you say it from, you won't never appreciate it where you say it from. You know, Pastor's friend in Spokane, some of you have seen his brother Ivan, sometimes he comes to visit our church, this old, mean looking Russian dude with his big old beard. He's just straight up out of Russia. That's how he looks. And so he's a pastor in one of the churches, really cool, really awesome, older gentleman, very loving guy and he likes to go fishing. So one winter he decided to go fishing, he didn't have anybody go with him, so he decided to go all by himself. And as he went on a frozen lake to fish, as he was fishing, the ice broke from underneath of him and he fell under the ice with all of this warm clothes, with all of that, you know. So imagine and the current starts taking him underneath and he's trying to get out but you know if you ever, I fell before in the river under the ice and I know how it is to try to get out of it. It's pretty much you trying to pull yourself up but as you try to pull yourself up, ice keeps breaking, it keeps breaking and sometimes if the river is strong enough, the current can actually take you under. So anyways, this brother Ivan, he keeps trying to get out of that lake. And so he keeps pushing himself, pushing him, he's trying to get out and he knows as he was driving into that place, into that lake, he doesn't remember even one car there, he doesn't remember anybody around. So he's thinking that's it. If somebody just buy miracles, not gonna come by right now and rescue me, I will be dead. And so he fights as hard as he can, as long as he can and he just decided, okay, this is just, I'm gonna try to do one last push and that's all I got strength for and I'm gonna die. As he was trying to do that, he comes up and he sees a car driving by, so he starts yelling, screaming on top of his lungs. Fortunately that car actually hears him somehow, they stop, they throw a rope, they pull him out and his life is rescued and he says this. And he said, I wanted to thank this man for rescuing my life but I couldn't find the words to say it. I wanted to repay him with something, I wanted to give him something, maybe to give him some amount of money or do this or... But I couldn't find enough value in things that I wanted to offer to him, to be thankful, to show him the gratitude for what he has done for me. Why did he receive that? Why did he recognize the value for life, the priceless value for life? But he, because he wasn't a verge of losing it. See, unless we understand the consequences of sin, unless we understand what sin does to our lives, we will never be able to appreciate grace in what God has done on the cross for us. Sin is destructive in its nature. Sin, when sin comes into our life, it destroys us. Sin offers pleasure with the right hand, but with the left hand it robs us off of the very thing that we depend on. Sin never offers anything to our life, even though in the beginning it might offer some pleasure, in the beginning it might offer some satisfaction. But at the end of the day, it would always leave us empty, broke, busted and disgusted, in shame and in guilt. Adam and Eve, they were living in a perfect world, it was paradise, it was perfection to its finest. There was no better place to live than in the Garden of Eden, but sin came and made paradise into hell. Every time we allow sin into our life, it will turn our life, it will turn our paradise into hell. Anytime we allow sin into our marriage, it will turn our marriage into hell. Anytime we allow sin in our finances, it will destroy our finances. Anytime sin crawls into our character, it will destroy our character, it will destroy our morals and it will destroy our life. We have to understand that sin, even though it's enticing and offers pleasure in the beginning, at the end it's poisonous and it kills. And it's goal to separate us for eternity from God. Number one goal of sin is to separate us, ultimately to separate us for eternity from God. But if sin fails to separate us from God, at very least it wants to keep us living miserable and keeping us living in hell in this life. We have to understand that what sin can do, Satan can do. When we allow an open door for sin in our lives, when we continuously sin, when we choose a path of sin, this path, sin opens the door to Satan. Whatever sin can do in our lives, Satan can do in our lives. You have to understand that Satan can't operate in our lives, demons and clean spirits cannot operate in our lives unless there is an open door and that open door is sin. And so if we found ourselves in situation in our life where we see that we are defeated in certain areas or in every area of our life, we have to examine our life to see if there is sin lying at our door and like God sent to Cain, he said, rule over it, take authority over it, close that door and we see that in the story of Cain, Cain wasn't able to do that and sin destroyed Cain. It destroyed, it cast him out of the relationship, it cast him out of a family and let him to kill his own brother. Sin, sin is, sin is so invasive. If you decide to joke with it, sin will cost you more than you're willing to pay and will take you further than you want to go. And there's a saying that if you give a Satan an inch, he will take a ruler. We have to be careful in our lives that our life will live in holiness, will live in partnership with the Holy Spirit, will live with God because with God there is blessing, there is healing, there is prosperity. Everywhere where there is sin, there is distractions, there is robbery and there is death. So in our lives, if we allowed sin in any area of our life, in our marriage, in our relationships, in our finances, in our life, in any area of our life, we need to make sure to get rid of the root of the sin, get rid of the consequence of sin by the blood of Jesus Christ and we can live victorious and blessed life. Amen. Because sin was such a problem, because sin was an issue that man couldn't solve, God, he came up with a plan and that plan was to send Jesus Christ and he sent his only son to die on the cross to forgive us of our sins. When he forgave us of our sins, he once and for all dealt with the consequences of sin because as we already discussed, every sin has consequences and those consequences are destruction and death. And so by sending his Jesus Christ on the Son, Jesus removed sin, he removed the guilt of sin and he removed the consequences of sin and from that point, we receive our grace in our life and that's why now looking back, looking back on how destructive the sin is, looking back what sin does in our lives, looking back how low sin can bring a person, we begin to appreciate what grace is and what Jesus has done in our lives. Amen. Jesus died on the cross for all of us. There is no sin too big or too great. There is nothing that we've done that grace doesn't have power to conquer and to cover. Every sin Jesus took on the cross and today we can live in freedom and victory if we rely on his grace. Grace is not a license to sin. Grace is simply power to live above sin. Amen. Grace is a power to live above sin. Thank you God for your grace. Amen. Coming back to this, coming back to the scripture. What I want to concentrate more on this is not on sin and just kind of laying background so that we appreciate the grace. But I want us to concentrate on the vision that God has for our city, the vision that God has for our life and the vision that God has for our church. He says where the sin abounds, grace abounds even more. And I have each translation that I read to you, but where sin increases, grace increases even more. Last Wednesday, Pastor Vlad, he was speaking to us and he said this one profound quote as he was talking about Mordecai and Esther. And he said that the scope of Satan's plans reveals the scope of Satan's plans reveals to us the clue of the size of our vision. Well, as we read the scripture, we begin to see the scope of God's grace is determined by the scope of sin that abounds in our lives or in the life of our city, in our generation. We have to see that God, when God looks at our city, when he looks at the sinners, when he looks at people that are strain on drugs, when he looks at the broken marriages, when he looks at people that are at the end of themselves, when he looks at people that are on anxiety pills, depression pills, when he looks at those that are suffering in sickness. When he looks at all of this, God says, as you look at all of this, it's overwhelming, it's big, it's great, you look at it, how in the world can this be solved? God says that when sin abounds, I have grace to abound even more. God has his grace for our city. God has his grace for our lives. God has his grace for our church. And God's vision is never, sometimes we view God and we view Satan from a perspective of good versus evil. And this is kind of like the general thing, Satan is bad, God is good and we say good versus evil always battle. And of course we always know that good always wins. But that's actually not a correct statement, it's not a correct perception of God. Because this puts Satan and God on the same level. This puts Satan and God in the same league. For example, you know, right now the basketball season is starting and there's like a summer league going on and all the rookies are playing and they're all like still making a bunch of mistakes and then there's a regular league where all the professionals play and you can definitely see the difference. And sometimes by presenting good versus evil, God versus Satan type of a thing, almost seems like that God is kind of like and Satan are in the same league. Well Satan is lower because God always wins, but it's something of that sort. But this is not the case. It's not the case. We know that God is an illegal by himself. There is no champion, there is no contender to challenge him. Satan is not even a challenge to God. Bible says that in the last days, God with his breath will not even his word with his breath will defeat Satan. And so sometimes when we look at this world, when we look at the sin, when we look at how much there is corruption in this world, how much there is pain and suffering and as though it seems like Satan is succeeding and Satan is winning and here are there a few Christians, poor Christians fighting on behalf of God or not even fighting in some cases even just trying to survive and keep the faith. And we bring the scripture like the Paul says, I kept the faith and we, this is kind of our motto for Christians as long as we can keep our faith, that's as best as we can do. But the thing from the scripture we learn about God is God says, well there's sin abounds, there's more grace, there's increasing of grace. God is never threatened by sin. God is not threatened by challenges. God is not threatened by sicknesses. God is not threatened by corruption. God is not threatened by the problems that we face that we see in this world. God says I have enough grace to cover it. I have enough grace to overcome it. If there is so many drug addicts in our city, God says I have enough grace to save all of them. If there is so many broken families and divorces in our city, God says I have enough grace to restore every marriage, to heal every broken heart, to save and set every drug addict, every alcoholic free. I have enough grace. These problems are not a challenge for me. And we have to, as a church, we have to embrace this mindset of God. We cannot, if we want to see revival in our city, if we want to see our home groups grow, if we want to see our church grow, if we want to see our city get better, if we want to see people change, if we want to see people being set free, healed and delivered, if we want to see joy and peace, we have to embrace the mindset that God has. We're sin abounds, grace abounds even more. We see, we see in the ministry of, we see in the ministry of Prophet Ebi Joshua, the ministry that we closely follow. And we see how God's grace operates in the ministry of Prophet Ebi Joshua upon Prophet Ebi Joshua and how every challenge that he meets, any sickness that he meets, even people that died, he prayed and they were resurrected to life. We can see a good example from his life, from his ministry, that we're sin abounds, grace can abound even more. We're looking at, we're looking at the life of Dr. Yon Guchon. We talk about him a lot. And I mean, in the past of a lot, we're actually, in November, we're going to South Korea to Seoul to be at their church for one, for one week, be at the pastor's conference and sit at the feet of these men of God, women of God, and learn from them to get the vision that they receive from God, to stretch our mindset, to see the way God sees it. Anyways, this pastor, Dr. Yon Guchon, he started out in his, he started out in the city, in South Korea, he started out as very poor, he started out in the village, he started out with only a few people, but he began, he embraced the mindset of God. He embraced that anywhere where there is sin abounds, the grace can abound even more. He grew his church, one church to 10,000 members, then he grew another church to 10,000 members, then God told him to move out, start another church, and then he grew that church to 5,000, 10,000, and then he began to push limits, he began to embrace, to receive that revelation that anywhere where there is sin, there is no grace to cover it. He began to grow, his church began to grow to 30,000, 60,000, 100,000, 300,000, 500,000, and then he thought, you know, this is as much as I can handle, this is as much as I can do. But God said, no, as long as there is sin in the city, I have enough grace. Go push for the, so he set a goal to have a million member church, and sure enough, there was enough grace for a million members. And the thing is, not only that he raised the church up to a million members, but all the pastors, all the leaders that he released, all of them in South Korea are nothing less than 100,000, 100,000 members. He taught them to think the way God thinks. He taught them to see the way God sees. And the way God sees, if there is sin still left in our city, there is still grace to cover it. If there are still drugs running rampant in our city, there is enough grace to set every drug addict free and put an end to this epidemic. If there are still families being broken apart because of alcohol, because of immorality, God still has grace to cover it. If there are still marriages being broken apart by perversion, there is still grace to cover and to break, to restore the broken. And so, we have to, if we want to be a church that sees a great revival, we want to be people that see great things in our personal life. If you see in your life there is poverty, there is limitation. If you see in your life that you come out of place, out of a family, out of a family tree where no marriage has succeeded, where family was broken apart, there is no proper relationship. Where there is poverty, I want to tell you, receive the revelation from God today, where there is sin abounds, grace can abound even more. More in your life. You can have greater things than what sin has done in your life. In order, so how do we, how do we see the increase of God's grace in our mind? Number one is first we have to renew our mind. We have to renew our mind according to the word of God. We have to see the way God sees it. We must think the way God thinks. We must align ourselves to the word of God. If we see a challenge anywhere, we have to accept that there is God's grace to overcome it. If we see a problem anywhere, we have to know that God has enough grace to overcome it. If we face sickness in our lives, we have to know that God has enough grace to overcome it. If we face addiction in our life and we can't break that cycle of sin in our life, we have to understand that God has more grace to overcome it. God is always superior. His grace is always greater. There is no power of sin. There is no bondage. There is no sickness. There is nothing that can stand on the way of God's grace. First thing is we have to renew our mind. We have to accept the thoughts that God has towards us. We have to accept the thinking that God has. To the degree that we think the thoughts of God is the same degree we will walk in the power of God. You say, okay, you know that sounds great. I want that lifestyle. I want that grace. I want that increase of God's grace in my life. How do I have it? I have these issues in my family. I have these issues in my life. I have these addictions. I have these issues, these problems, the challenges that I'm facing. How do I get that grace? To live victorious. How do I get that grace to overcome? It starts with aligning our mindset with God's. Aligning our thinking with God's thinking. And to the degree that we allow God's thoughts to become our own thoughts. To the degree that we allow God's desires to become our desires. To that level, we will walk in the power of God. See, it will not just come automatically. Bible has over, some say 5,000 promises, some say 7,000, some say 9,000 promises. Regardless of how many of them there are, there's plenty enough for every single day, for every single problem, every situation you have. But many Christians still live defeated. Because they don't take the promise of God and make it their own. They don't take the promise and think it, think it so long. Think it on a consistent basis so that it becomes part of who they are. And when it becomes part of who you are, then you can walk in that power that the promise has. And the promise of God for us is the increase of grace in any area. Where sin brought damage, where sin still reigns. Still reigns. We are the sons and daughters of God. And if God reigns supreme, if God reigns victorious, we need to embrace, we need to accept what God has for us. We need to accept the position and the authority that God has for us, amen. And when we do that, we will be able to walk in the grace of God in our lives and defeat every challenge. You have to understand that your thoughts, your thoughts are like railroad tracks. Your thoughts pave the way for God to move in your life. If you have a negative thinking, if you have a defeated thinking, if you have a thinking that I can't amount to anything. It's always been like this in my family. That's how I was. That's who I was. I mean, I can't break this addiction. I can't go past this. This is who I always was then. This is as far as we allow Holy Spirit. This is as far as we allow God to move in our lives. But if we embrace God's kind of a thinking, if we embrace what God says about us, by this thinking we build these tracks for Holy Spirit to move in our lives. And as far as we build those tracks, that's as far as God can move in our lives. So number one thing is that we have to renew our mind. We have to get into the word of God. That means we have to surround ourselves with the right kind of teaching. We have to surround ourselves with podcasts, with audio messages. We have to surround ourselves with right kinds of books that will challenge ourselves, that will challenge our mind, that will renew our thinking and will help us to build a kind of mindset so that we can agree with God's word. Amen. Number two is that we have to be consistent if we want to move in the increased grace. Of God in our lives. We have to understand that the relationship with the Holy Spirit is forever. Relationship with Him, relationship with God is forever. We can't live a victorious life. We can't live a victorious life if we hope one day in, two days out. One day in, one week out. One day we're in church, the next day we're at the party. One day we come to morning prayer and one week, the next week we sleep in and we don't come, we don't come, we don't pray, we don't spend time with God, we don't do anything. We have to understand that if we want more of God's grace, the increase of God's grace to operate in our lives, for greater grace we must stay consistent. In John chapter 15, Jesus talks about bearing fruit. And then he goes on to say bearing more fruit and then bearing much fruit. But if you see what, what comes before of bearing fruit and bearing more fruit and bearing much fruit is one thing that comes before is abiding. Abiding is consistency. Abiding in me. He said abiding me, my word will abide in you and you will bear more fruit. In you will bear much fruit. If we want to be consistent growing God's grace, walking and victory with God. If we want to see the increase of God's grace in our church, in our city, we must be consistent in the relationship with the Holy Spirit. We must be consistent in our prayer. We must be consistent, consistently spending time with Him, consistently spending time in His word. In the story of Elijah and Elisha, it was Elijah was a prophet, Elijah was a mentor, and Elisha was a mentee. He was following Elijah. And we can see that Elijah was the man of God and Holy Spirit was upon him. And we see that the reason why Elisha received a double portion of anointing is because Elijah refused to be inconsistent. It's because Elisha, he refused to leave Elijah. It's because he planted himself with him. And even towards the end of the days of Elijah, even 600 prophets came out to him and said, Elijah, leave Elijah alone. He's going to be taken away from you. Even then he refused to leave. Elijah himself said, leave me alone. I'm going to go by myself. Even then, Elisha refused to leave. And then when Elisha saw Elijah be taken out by the chariot, when God came to take him, he received that mentorship, he received that increase of God's grace in his life. So I wanted to encourage us. I want to motivate us. I want to tell us to spend time with the Holy Spirit, spend time in God's Word, to spend time renewing our mindset, to spend time if we want to walk in victory in our lives. If we want to walk in a greater grace in our lives, if we want to walk with more in our lives, let's be consistent. Let's spend every day with God in prayer, in reading of the Word. We have every single day from Monday through Friday, we have morning prayers in our church, our door is open from as early as sometimes, it's 3 o'clock, but 4 o'clock for sure, 4 till 10 to 11, this church is open and the music is on. Come, bring your Bible, bring yourself and spend time with God. Spend time seeking God's face. If you can't come here, spend time at home. Every single morning, spend time with God. When you spend time with God, God will begin to increase his grace over your life. God will begin to give you power to overcome every sin, every challenge, every sickness, anything that storms in your life. In conclusion, I want to share a story of this pastor, Kesh Luna, a pastor that I really much adore and I read his books and I follow him closely and he is a man of God that God uses in Guatemala very, very mightily through miracles casting out of demons, healing of the sick, people that are mental, receive freedom, people that even died, even just members in his church, prayed for people that died and they were brought back to life. God is using him in a very, very mighty way and his book and the honor of the Holy Spirit, he describes his path, how God began to use him and how God began to use him in his ministry and in his personal life. And he spends, for 12 years, he spent anywhere from an hour to three hours every single day praying, seeking God's face, spending time in God's word and asking God to increase grace in his life, to increase anointing in his life. For 12 years, he started out when he was broke, he didn't actually have a place to live and a friend of him gave him a room like towards the attic and he just had one of those cults where you just kind of, army cults where you just sleep on it and he had his guitar and just a place to sleep and place to put his Bible and he started from the place, being nobody, nobody knew him and he began to play his guitar, worship God and spend time in prayer and then when he got married and God gave him his own house, before he left that place, he said, God, I don't want to leave this place if you're not going to go with me to my house, if you're not going to go with me to my new house and every time he went, when he had first church, he said, God, I don't want to go without you unless you're going to go to the next church with me and he was always, he dedicated his life to be with God. He spent every single day in the fellowship with the Holy Spirit and one day, God came to him and told him, he just gave him certain instructions, they were really weird instructions and through that moment, this one encounter with the Holy Spirit changed his life completely, changed his ministry, changed his life and changed thousands and if not millions at this point, lives of other people through him, millions of people got healed through his crusades millions of people got delivered, millions of people got saved through his life, he impacted his city, he impacted his community and now is well known all throughout the world because simply a person that decided to consistently spend time with God with the Holy Spirit, he decided to consistently allow the word of God to renew his mind and as he was doing this, God was increasing grace in his life, God was increasing grace in his life. As a church, we have a great vision, we have a great things that God has in store for us, we have a great future, but that future will come only as a result of us seeking God's face. That future will come as a result of us committing to continue to renew our mind, to continue to allow the word of God to stretch ourselves, to stretch our mind and to continuously spend time with the Holy Spirit, to spend time every single day without a break, without skipping out, be consistently plugged in. Bible says that we are a branch and he is divine and Jesus says to be connected to him and only then we bear fruit. Fruit comes automatically when you connect it. Your life, you will walk in victory in your life, you will walk in health in your life, you will walk in freedom in your life, you will walk in wealth in your life, but if you are connected to the source continuously, God wants to bring an increase, God wants to bring more grace into every area of your life where sin destroyed your family, destroyed you, destroyed everything about you. God wants to bring an increase, but increase comes only when we begin to spend time with him, when we abide in his presence. If you are in this place and you say, you know, sin has destroyed my life, sin has destroyed my family, sin has destroyed everything about me, where do I start? I want to tell you, you start with relationship with God. Today there is going to be opportunity to give your life to Jesus. This is where you start. If you have been coming for some time and you see that your life is not moving forward, you just feel like you are stuck. If you commit your real life God will bring breakthrough in your life and God will take you to another level. You know, there was a point in Dr. Yungi Cho's ministry when he got to a certain number, he got in a certain, I believe it was like two or three thousand people in his church and he was working exhaustively. He was working so hard. He literally, five days out of the week was spending time in church sleeping because he was so busy. He was pushing so hard for church to grow. He was pushing and asking God how much he could naturally and he was exhausting himself and he was coming to the end of himself and then in a vision God came to him and he said, he brought them an example of quails in a wilderness when Israelites came out and they were hungry. He said, suppose Israelites would gone out in a wilderness trying to catch quails on their own. How much quails would they catch? Well, and his response was they probably wouldn't catch a lot. They probably would die out of heatstroke and then God told them, well, how much quails, how hard was it for them to catch quails when I send the wind? He said, it wasn't hard at all. They were dropping on a tent. All they had to do just pick it up and eat it. And so God said to him that when my spirit comes it's like the wind to your sails. The increase of grace comes. It overrides every limitation. It overrides every sin and overrides every pattern of sin and we as a church we want to live in that moment. We want to live in that increase of grace. We want to live where God sails what God wind blows into our sails where people run into the altar called receiving salvation where there is such an atmosphere of healing, of freedom where people just stepped their foot on this place and they feel it and they leave this place without even praying for sickness for their sickness and they leave healed without even praying for their addiction but because of such a saturation and the presence of God in this place that their addiction gets broken and they are free and they live the life for Jesus. We want to live in the increase of grace. We want to live where Holy Spirit blows into our sails where Holy Spirit carries us where Holy Spirit lets super to our natural so we can live in supernatural in Jesus mighty name. Amen church. Amen.