Next Generation Pour In

There's a story in second Kings two, and I'm just going to. This is just going to be like a prelim. The word isn't about this. But this leader from Jericho, he goes to the prophet Elisha and he says, we have a problem. He says, the land has so much potential.

It is well situation, it is well situated, but the water is bad, therefore the land is unproductive. So you have to understand, this is Jericho. This is a land of miracles. This is the land where the walls came down with a shout. This is where with the school of the prophets.

And yet there was a problem with the water. Jericho means place of fragrance. And Elisha recognizes the problem. He recognizes that the problem is internal. There's nothing wrong with the land, but what's flowing into the land is not good.

It seemed that every time the water would flow and the fruit was about to give way, there was a miscarriage, so to speak. So he. He says, get me a new bowl. Get me a new bowl. Get me an empty bowl.

And then he pours salt and in the bowl. And then he pours the salt from the bowl into the water. And the Bible tells us that the water was healed and the city was saved. So the salt healed the source. The salt is a type of the Holy Spirit.

It's a picture of an indwelling life of God. And the salt makes what is unproductive, productive. So. But you can't put this kind of salt in an old bowl. God needs a new bowl.

God needs an empty bowl. God needs a new vessel in order to pour that salt in so that the city can be healed. So this is my prayer. Let's put our hands on our heart and say, God, I'm giving you a new bowl tonight. I'm giving you a new vessel tonight.

I'm emptying myself of myself, of every preconception of what I think about myself and the opinions of the world so that you could pour the salt of the Holy Spirit in my heart. Because I want to change my city in Jesus name. Amen. Matthew 5:13. Very familiar passage of scripture.

He says, you are, and this is Jesus. He's talking to his disciples. He says, you are the salt of the earth. But then he says, but what good is salt if it loses its flavor? Can it be made salty again?

Now, I know in this culture being salty is not a good thing, right? It's like, she's salty. Like, she's rude, you know, she's like, easily offended. You know, she. She snaps back at you.

But biblically speaking, God wants us salty. So he's speaking to his disciples and he's saying to them, listen, I have purposed you to change the earth. I have called you to be agents of change, My representatives, influencers on the earth, my ambassadors. And whenever Jesus speaks, you should always try to look up the context, because he doesn't waste words. Salt was considered a treasured commodity.

Nowadays, salt is nothing. It's in a box. But you had to dig. You. You ought to go to the salt mines in order to get salt.

And it was a treasured commodity. It was valuable, it was expensive, it was crucial. It was needed. The Greeks called salt divine, and Romans used it as currency because of its many uses. And wherever salt was added, there was change.

In ancient days, salt was placed on the wick of a candle to increase its brightness. In other words, salt made the brightness blend brighter. Salt was a healing agent. It was used by physicians to carry it around in their medicine bag. It was a prescription for all dis eases.

Anything that was not eased was. Salt was used. If there was a wound, they would put salt on the wound. That's where we get the phrase, you're putting salt on the wound. Because salt would burn the.

But yet it would stop the wound from festering. Salt was used as an antiseptic to disinfect. It's designed to increase the potential of food. You know how food tastes without any salt. It's lifeless.

But salt, you add a little salt and it's able to do what it's not, what it wasn't able to do without it, right? In Leviticus, all sacrifices required salt. And salt functions as a preservative to keep the food fresher longer. There's no substitute for salt. There are facsimiles thereof.

But really nothing takes the place of salt. And I want you to recognize that when we are the salt of the earth, we can be overbearing. We don't ever want to put so much salt where we are choking people, right? You need the right amount of salt. You know how salt is when it's too.

When. When food is. When it's too salty, it's. It, you know, kind of like. But think about this.

When you're salty, a thirst is created, right? When you eat too much salt, you're thirsty. When we're salted with the Holy Spirit, we have more desire to drink of his word. And the salted ones are called to be influential because the influencer, the Holy Spirit, lives inside of us. So we are valuable, have potential to do far beyond our Natural abilities because of the power of God in us.

He's the change agent. We are his containers. We are salt shakers, so to speak, that carry around the medicine of the world. And the destination of salt is the earth, right? We should shake it out wherever we go.

We should sprinkle it around and, and so the salt must leave the salt shaker. We are to the earth what salt is to food. And we are to leave the taste of God in people's mouth. We not only have God's favor, we carry God's flavor. We should make people thirst for God when people are around us.

You may not even give a scripture, you may not be holding your Bible, but there's something about your life that causes somebody to inquire about the Lord, right? But what happens when salt loses its flavor? When we lose our ability to be in influencers? So I oftentimes say this. I have so many sermons because I have so many issues.

I am the woman with the issues. And I got this sermon from an experience that I had. I was leaving a conference and it was in a small town. And I go to the airport and they have this little greasy luncheonette, right? I don't know if you have them here in North Carolina, but in these little no name towns, oftentimes like everything sticky, you know, But I was starving.

I was starving, so I didn't care how sticky and anything was. So I order french fries and fried eggs. Very, very healthy. So the, you know, the, the waiter brings over the fried eggs and the french fries and I'm starving and I grab the fry and I put it in my mouth. But something was missing.

So of course what do I do? I reach for the solution and I pour a little salt on and then I take another bite. But it still wasn't, it still didn't have any flavor. So I shook and I shook to no avail. At first I couldn't grasp what was happening.

There's never supposed to be a problem with the salt. I mean, salt is the fixer, right? But the salt wasn't salty and that's an oxymoron, unsalty salt. Salt is supposed to be salty. The pepper was right next to the salt.

But the pepper is no substitute for salt. The truth is there's no substitute for salt. So I had in my hand a salt shaker, a container that represents salt. But the contents didn't coincide with the container. The contents were flat and they were powerless to change the food.

How does salt lose its flavor? Well, I of course went home and Did a study on that. Because Jesus says, can salt lose its flavor? Absolutely. So on every box of salt, there's a use by date, right?

There's an expiration date. But if it's left in the box too long, it becomes flat and tasteless. So we're given opportunities every day in some way, shape or form to be an agent of change. But if we don't use it, we lose it. The opportunity expires and the Salt becomes useless.

2. Climate Atmosphere matters. When it comes to salt, do you know that cold makes the salt flat, Dampness makes it sticky. And if the air isn't crisp and clean, then dampness will set in. And when you try to shake it out, it's clumped together in the salt shaker.

So I say this. Be careful where you place your container. Be careful of climate change that dampens your faith and takes away your joy. Be careful of the other containers you hang out with in the cupboard.

Be careful of the yeast of the Pharisees. Be careful of critical people. Do you know the only thing that can stop yeast is salt from. From spreading? So we need to be salted so we stop the lies of the enemy that's maybe going around your school or maybe going around the church.

You need to be salted, and you need to put some salt on that. And the only thing that could kill yeast is fire. So here's the lessons I learned that day and how symbolic they are in our spiritual lives. Although we place a major emphasis on packaging, the truth is, packaging isn't as nearly important as the content. I'd rather have a plain old box of salt that delivers the good than a fancy salt shaker that doesn't.

The church at large has concentrated more on the aesthetics rather than the content. There's nothing wrong with the presentation as long as we have his presence. As long as we don't substitute the presence for the presentation. Right?

The presentation should only enhance the presence, not overshadow it. Right? This is not show business. This is God's business. We're never supposed to go to church and be enamored with the preacher or enamored with the singer.

We love great singing, we love great preaching. But if you don't leave church and you say, didn't our hearts burn within us, there's something missing in the meeting that you're sitting in.

I have a true story. I've been invited to this church in Hawaii, and it's inspired church, and it's a massive church, and they do this huge conference, this women's Conference. And the first time I was invited was probably 20, 21, and they have since invited me back. So anyone that would go to this conference would say, oh, my goodness, I've never seen anything like this. They literally add additions on the platform, and they have at least 15 singers on the platform all spread out.

But then they also have these ropes coming from the middle of the sanctuary, and it's on this huge swing, like a big board, and people are singing facing this way, facing this way, and facing the platform. It's like Cirque du Soleil. Like spiritual Cirque du Soleil. Honestly, you would have envy if that's what you were looking for. So they invite the biggest speakers.

I don't know why I was invited. Somebody recommended me. The other speaker was Charlotte Gamble. She's massive. And honestly, it was a good conference.

But, like, in my heart, I felt like. I don't know, Like, I was never brought to the end of myself. I was never like, cut to the heart, where I would say, God, I'm desperate for you. So Lisa Kai, she's become a very dear friend of mine. She invited me back, like, two years later, and she said to me, she said, the reason why I invited you back, she said, and I say this with all humility because I'm not the best speaker in the world.

But she says, the reason why I invited you back, because there was something about you that made me want to thirst for God. And she says, and I can't figure out what it is. And I talked to her about the Holy Spirit. So now the first night. So this conference is so massive.

They do it from Monday to Thursday, and they repeat the same conference Thursday to Saturday, right? That's how many people come. And it's exactly the same. So because they can't fit all the women that come, they come from all over. So she talks to me, and usually the first night, she gets up and she speaks, and she's very precious, good speaker.

But this time, she gets up. And this is online. I mean, there's literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people watching, never mind in the room. And she gets up, and instead of speaking, she says, I have a confession to make. She said when I started this conference 15 years ago, she said I didn't know what I was doing.

She said, I felt like I was dancing with the Holy Spirit. Every single move. I would say, God, what do you want to do? And she said, and I would obey the Lord, she said, but something happened. She says, I learned how to do it.

I learned how to do it. I got good at it. And she says, in front of all these women, she says, I left the Holy Spirit dancing in the corner by himself. And she says, I just want God. And she invites me up and I speak about the Holy Spirit.

And she had given every woman and a little bottle of anointing oil. And at the end, she asked everyone to turn to their right and left and just anoint, you know. And when she was speaking to me before the conference, she said, you know, I just want a move of God. She says, I don't even know what that looks like. She says, my singers, they're so programmed, and they never do anything unless they practice it.

Like, I don't know if they're going to be able to move in the Spirit. So everyone's praying for one another. And I am telling you this. This holy wind came in the room. It was unbelievable.

And she had a pitcher of oil, and she handed it to me, she. On the platform, and she wanted me to pour the oil on her head. I didn't dare pour at all, but I did pour some on her head. And all of a sudden, the singers, the ministers, because they're more than singers. They're psalmists.

They're ministers. What they're singing is the word of God. And that's why during a worship time, we never have our hands in our pocket. Like, I don't like that song. I mean, we're in the presence of Almighty God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, he's in the room, and all of a sudden, the singers, the worshipers, the ministers of the Word, they start to sing.

And I promise you, for the next six hours, there was never an overlap of anything. Who sang what? A hymn of this or that. And we literally were on our faces in the presence of the Lord. And I believe it was all because of her hunger.

And she admitted. She admitted I left the Holy Spirit dancing in the corner. And I don't know about you, and this isn't my word, but I don't know if maybe you've left the Holy Spirit dancing in the corner by himself. Maybe when you first gave your life to Christ, he's. He was everything to you.

You even said, God, what do you want me to wear? You know, help me, Lord. But now you. You know how to do it. We know how to do church.

And this is what's happened with churches. They become so overproduced. And God forbid the Holy Spirit moves. He's not even allowed in his own house because, you know, it's not on the card. It hasn't been rehearsed.

And may God deliver us from this thinking. Because he's the speaker of the House, is he not? You know, in the government, when the speaker of the House comes in, everyone stands and the gavel goes down. Because it's the speaker of the House that sets the tone for the meeting. Number two.

This is another lesson I learned. If something is dull and flat and stale and adding more of the same doesn't change the equation. We've got to empty our containers and get to the salt mine. And do you know how salt was harvested? Hebrew people would pour salt, would pour seawater from the Dead Sea into pits and they would let the water evaporate until only salt was left.

So let's have the water of God's word fill the empty pit and let it form salt in us until we're thirsty. Once again. Ask the salted one to make us salty. Listen, salted Christians are irreplaceable. There are great communicators out there.

There are people. They could, they could preach words that are like, they just dazzle. But is your life changing? Unsalty believers are an oxymoron. In 60 AD, just before it was 27 years after Pentecost, the church, the Church of Ephesus lost its saltiness.

And they needed a wake up call, right? Awakening. They needed a wake up call. They didn't lose their salt, they lost their salty ness. Because the Bible tells us in the book of Revelation, they left their.

Their first love. They didn't lose it. They left it. They left the Holy Spirit dancing in the corner. They left their first love.

So allow me to explain because a lot of times there's confusion around the Holy Spirit. The difference between being salted and being salty, right between the indwelling and the filling. Every born again believer is salted or indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The moment you receive Christ, Christ comes into your heart and something divine, right? Because you've asked Christ in your heart.

Now the Holy Spirit comes and he comes into your heart and all of a sudden you feel a difference. One way you will one day. The thing you weren't convicted about the day before, all of a sudden you're like, I don't know. That doesn't seem right. As soon as we receive him, the guide, the counselor, the convictor, the teacher, the assistant, the helper comes and dwells inside of you and starts to change us from the inside out.

You become a salt depository container, a salt shaker, a deposit from Heaven has been made into your vessel just because you believed, right? Galatians 3:2 says, you received the Holy Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ, plain and simple. You didn't work for it, you didn't try harder. It was just by believing. And Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to all who believe.

The indwelling isn't for a select few. It's for all of us. Now, there's a huge contrast between the initial indwelling and the filling, right? Between being salted or salt tea. Although every born again believer is indwelt, not every born again believer is filled or full of the Holy Spirit or salty.

When the Bible speaks about being salty, right? It means to be completely yielded to God, right? It's if our container or our salt shaker is cluttered, filled with other things, the Holy Spirit is still in the salt shaker, but it's suffocating underneath all the other stuff that we have put in the container, right? Causing our salt to lose its flavor. There's no longer an ability to pour it out and to be an agent of change.

So I want to give you a visual that the Holy Spirit gave me. He said, imagine, let's picture this room. When they built this church, this was meant to be a chapel, right? And the architect came and made plans for the room. The engineer came and wired it for sound.

The color scheme was chosen, the chairs were chosen. I mean, this room was meant to, to be an agent of change, to change people's lives. It was meant to be influential, so to speak. But what if this room, and you could put them up, was filled from front to back, top to bottom, side to side with all these boxes. It wouldn't matter if you have the architectural plans.

It wouldn't matter if it was wired for sound. It wouldn't matter if you had the color scheme or the chairs. It wouldn't matter, not if it was filled with other things that would prevent the purpose, the true purpose of that room to be used for what? If it was used with self pity or self hatred or jealousy or disappointment, unbelief, resentment, vengeance, depression, greed, slander, sexual immorality, low self esteem, bitterness, complaining, discouragement, unforgiveness, manipulation, rage, profanity, unkind words, Has to be cleaned out.

It wouldn't matter how much we desire to use the building. Tozer said this. God can fill what he can't have has to be cleaned out. I wrote this. God can do anything, but he can fill what's already full.

Think about this. You just started a new Season, and you got new clothes, and your closet is only but so big. There's only so much that your closet could hold. So you go in, and you start to realize that you got stuff from last fall, and you can't put the new stuff in because there's the old stuff. You have to clean the closet out.

You have to clean it out. So you go in, and you're trying to fit the new stuff in, but it's kind of wrinkling because the old stuff is taking up room. So I suggest we need to go in our closet and say, you know what? That grudge. That grudge does not belong in this closet.

I got to get rid of that grudge. I got to get rid of that attitude. I got to get rid of all the gossipy stuff and the bad attitudes. Oh, the shame. Oh, the shame.

I got to get rid of the shame. That shame has taken up a lot of room. A lot of guilt. A lot of guilt. Guilt has taken up the room.

I got to get it out. And I suggest to you to. Don't just put them in garbage bags. You know how we clean our closet and we put them in garbage bags and we leave them in the corner of the room. What happens?

We're so tempted to go back in, and all of a sudden we start peeking in, and we go, yeah, that one wasn't so bad. Let me, like, put that back in the closet. Let me put that back in the closet. I would say once God starts to deal with you, to clean out your closet, you have to put it on the sidewalk and watch the sanitation guy take it away. You got to get rid of it.

You cannot leave it in the house. So another. Another thing I was thinking of. And we got to hurry up, but my husband and I, we were asked to do this marriage retreat. So the people, this church thought it was a great idea to put us in this lake house.

They told us it was a lake house, but it was really a lake room. And so we come in with our suitcases. So we were doing this thing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then Sunday was service. So we needed, like, a lot of different change of clothes.

So we get into this little room. I promise you, I don't think it was bigger than this half up to here, right? And the people, they had every plaque in creation in this room. They had oars on the wall. They had fish, you know, like a netting for fishing.

Everything to remind you you were on the lake, right? There were candles. I mean, you name it, but there was no room to Put our clothes. There wasn't a closet in the room. And in the bathroom there was no place to put toiletries because even on the sink there were plaques.

There were plaques on the sink. It was like. And I thought to myself, you know, a lot of times it's not bad things that fill our room. It's just clutter. It's just like sports or, you know, or whatever, maybe, you know, some series you're watching or whatever.

They're not necessarily sin, but they're cluttering up the room. And there's no room for God to be God in your life and cause you to, you know, really be an influence. So he says, wake up, O sleeper in Ephesians 5. Why is he telling them to wake up? Because they had competition.

If you read it, they had bad attitudes, temper tantrums, anger, stealing, unkind words, profanity, sexual immorality, and making unwise choices. They weren't living up to their potential. The Holy Spirit could have easily said to the Ephesian Church, forget you. Forget you. I'm starting a new church down the block, that's forget you.

You guys are a mess. No, he doesn't say that. He just says, wake up, oh sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ, I will shine on you. Be very careful how you live. Not an unwise, but wise.

Make the most of every opportunity. Wherever you go, start to sprinkle me out. And the Apostle Paul is, is, is basically saying it's possible to be a believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but you got a whole bunch of stuff on top. You're in a comatose state, right? He says, don't get drunk on wine.

In other words, stop trying to fill your life with earthly substitutions, you know, cheap imitations, temporary fixes. No, instead you have a choice. Be filled, Keep on being filled. Be empowered by, dominated by, controlled by, under the influence of. In other words, be spiritually intoxicated.

And think about this. A person doesn't get drunk by looking at an advertisement for liquor. They get drunk by drinking. And once they're under the influence, they walk different and talk different and think different and see things differently. And the Spirit filled doesn't have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on them.

Right? I want to just end with the story. I want to show you what a spirit filled life looks like. You've never heard of this woman? She doesn't lead a ministry, she doesn't preach, she never wrote a book.

She's not cool by the world standards, but her husband left her when she got sick and she's in a wheelchair and she's twisted and contorted from Ms. She's paralyzed. Yet she is the freest woman in the world. She is salted with the flavor of God, an agent of change. So many years ago, she saw me on Christian tv. She lived in Ottawa, Canada, and she saw me and she thought to herself, wow, maybe Maria could come to Ottawa, Canada.

We're just a little town. She says, you know, joyce Meyer, she would never come to Ottawa, Canada. You know, we're like nobody. But she, she got my assistant Penny's number and she calls Penny and she says, penny, you think Maria would come to Ottawa? And Penny said, you know, if it's God, she'll come.

So the woman says to her, well, you know what? I only have five people. And Penny said, no worries. If it's God, Maria will come. So the woman doesn't wait for us to call her back.

Penny did say she'll pray. She'll pray. So of course I'll pray. Because I have turned down big events, I've turned down little events. I have to be led by the spirit.

And let me just say this, I heard somebody say this, and boy, this minister to me. Slaves strive. Sons are led. Stop. Stop striving.

Sons are led. So the woman calls back the next week, she says, would Maria come for 10? Would she come for 10? And Penny says, you know, I really don't know. She's, she's really praying about it, and if it's God, she'll come.

So the next week the woman calls back. She was very, very persistent. She says, would she come for 15? I said to Penny Tenor, tell her I'll come. Come.

What I don't know is that her name was Judy Little. This woman has great faith. I know nothing about her, but I told Penny, tell her yes. So we go to the airport and Judy Little's 90 year old father picks us up from the airport. I mean, he can't even pick up our luggage, right?

So it's me and Penny and we're like, we don't know what we're getting into because a lot of times I get off the plane, I've never met the people. I don't know what, what I'm getting into. I don't know the church, but I know if God tells me to go, I go. So we go and now we meet Judy Little. And Judy Little is paralyzed, she's in a wheelchair, she's all contorted.

And she says, tomorrow is the event. But what Judy Little doesn't tell us is what she did in order to promote this event. She called every radio station Christian and secular. Secular. And she got free airtime.

She's also prompted by the Holy Spirit. She sends every church in Ottawa, Canada, the link of the TV show, the Christian TV show I was on, right? She sends it to the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Catholics, the assembly of God, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Church of God, the Church of God in Christ, the First, Second and Third Baptist, the Pentecostals, the non denominationals, the denominational. She sends it to all. So the next day we pull up and we pull up to this huge reception hall.

I don't know anything is going to happen. But Judy Little filled this place with almost 1,000 people. Judy Little in a wheelchair. She was a brand new believer. But she said, God.

See, she salted. She's salted and she's salty. And she wants people to know about the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And I go in, she doesn't have music. She doesn't know anybody that she doesn't know.

A band. But her son was in a band, but he wasn't a Christian. She taught him Amazing Grace. And they play Amazing Grace and I give my testimony. And hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people raised their hand to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Now, this is my point. Judy Little could have been filled with a closet full of bitterness, rage, unforgiveness, self pity, shame, anger, fear, stress, low self esteem, hopelessness. She could have been drunk with hate and slander and profanity and vengeance and resentment, cursing the day she was born, complaining. But instead she emptied herself. She emptied her salt shaker, her container.

All the clutter, all the disappointment, all the blame, the shame. And she gives the Holy Spirit a new bowl. And she allows him to salt her. And now he salts her and he fills her with grace and courage and boldness and revelation and concern for others because she made room for him. She had every right to be bitter.

Come on. But she chose not to be bitter because she knew that the architect had a different plan for the room. In her heart, he had a different plan. He wired her to be an influencer. And when I look at Judy Little's life, I say, man, whatever I'm holding onto isn't worth the space it's taking up.

You know, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, in the beginning of Jesus's ministry. And at the end, he cleans the temple. I know we think that it's one time, but he cleanse, cleanses the temple in the beginning in John 2. And the second time is Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 14. Why does he clean the temple twice?

Because stuff seems to find its way back in. The stuff we cleaned in the beginning has now found its way back into the closet. And God, it's time to clean the closet. I mean, this is a new season. We want to, we want God to fill our closet with his robes of righteousness and his power.

So the question is, what's in your closet, God? We want a brand new wardrobe. We want you to fill our closet. We want to get rid of all our rights because we have rights, don't we? We have rights to be angry.

We have rights to be hurt. We've been abused, we've been betrayed, but that's going to stop the salt from flowing in our life.