It's so good to see all of you here today..
Heavenly Father,
We give You thanks and praise for the shed blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which has brought us near to You and allows us to approach Your throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and grace in time of need.
We thank You that we can worship You because we have been justified by faith and we now have peace with You Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank and praise You, In Jesus' Name
Amen
I recall a story of a doctor, his name was Potter.
It's a story of a young man who stood at the bar of a court of justice to be sentenced for forgery. The judge had known him from the time he was a small child, for his father had been a famous legal light and his work on the Law of Trusts was some of the most exhaustive work on the subject in existence, still today.
“Do you remember your father?” asked the judge sternly, “the father whom you have disgraced?”
The prisoner answered: “I remember him perfectly. Whenever I went to him for advice or companionship, he would look up from his book on the Law of Trusts, and say, ’Run away now, boy, I am too busy. ’ My father finished his book, and here I am.” The great lawyer had neglected his own trust, and with awful results.
I want to boldly declare that our Father in Heaven is not like that great lawyer.
Jesus Christ won’t turn you away, but some just won’t stop running away from Him.
And that makes it difficult for Him to bless you.
You can run, but you can’t hide!
Say that with me,
You Can Run But You Can't Hide!
The Holy Spirit of the Lord has come today to tell somebody, You can run, but you can’t hide!
You are here for a reason, and God is getting ready to show you what that reason is!
"When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.”
Mark 5:6-7
"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son."
Luke 15:20-21
These two passages of scripture, though different, have something in common:
The man with the unclean spirit, who lived in the tombs, ran to Jesus from a ways off.
The father also runs to the prodigal from a ways off. They both run and when two people run to meet each other, they soon meet.
When a sinner is running to Jesus, and Jesus is running to the sinner, there will be a joyful meeting before long!
There will be joy in Heaven, and joy on earth too!
In the case of the demoniac, it says, "When he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped him."
This gives us a symbol of the sinner’s place.
The sinner is afar off from Jesus Christ!
When the Spirit of Almighty God begins to open up his eyes to his own true condition, one of his greatest difficulties in his way is the realization of his distance from his Savior!
Something within him begins to cry, “O, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat!”
There may be somebody here today, or you may know someone who may be afar off from the Savior. It is not necessary for me to describe your past because if you are the one whom Jesus has come for today, you are going to feel it!
Jesus is reaching out to you!
He wants to bless, heal, and restore you!
He wants to offer you salvation and eternal life!
Understand that if this be true, then you are probably also under the conviction of the Holy Spirit right now, but He is going to use that conviction to draw you to repentance, and repentance will turn into deliverance, and deliverance will turn into thankfulness that you have been set free, and your thankfulness will turn into praise and worship and your praise and worship will bring the Father very close to you and you will be filled with His Spirit and when you are filled with His Spirit!
That is the Biblical way!
You can run, but you cannot hide from Him!
It grieves His heart to see you on the run, but believe me, He has not given up on you!
The very fact that you are hearing this message, is witness to the fact that the Father has not given up on you!
If you are looking at everything through the fog of your past guilt, then consequently everything looks dark and dreary to you! You're not alone!
Nearly every single one of us here today, can relate to your position!
Perhaps you are here and you feel very far away from the Lord right now.
Jesus is holding out the hand of hope to you.
Even when this world breaks your heart in two.
When your life is consumed by your fear and your doubt,
You’ve got to know that there is still a way back to Him!
You see, only God is perfect.
We as sinful human beings are full of imperfection.
We must come to Jesus to find peace and satisfaction.
He is just and we as sinners are unjust.
Jesus is meek and lowly in heart, but we sinful humans tend to be loaded with pride and self-centeredness.
This is what separates people from God.
It is not God who created the separation, but rather it is our sin that did the dirty work, but God has conquered sin, death, hell, and the grave!
Perhaps you have really messed up!
You are sitting here and you just don’t feel worthy to be reconciled to God, let alone to ever be in the same Heaven with Him.
You must realize that as far away from God as you may feel, that is how far He is willing to come running to you when He sees your heart begin to soften towards Him!
Perhaps you are here and your mind goes back and you can remember a day when you were more sensitive to the presence of the Holy Spirit. You used to weep during the preaching of the word of God, but now it is easier for you to sleep during a message now. I may be speaking to somebody who has grown weary and cold of holy influences. There may have been a time in your life when your Christian friends meant something to you and you spent time caring, but now you do everything to avoid all association with Christians.
Perhaps I am speaking to someone who is moaning inside right now because this is the last thing you want to hear right now...
But let me just tell you that it may be the last thing you want to hear, but it is the first thing you need to hear! You need to hear the truth that there is still hope for your soul, but you also need to hear the truth that if you keep running away from the father, there will eventually come a day when you will be so far away that you wished you had not kept running away.
This is a call for you, today, whoever you may be, to turn around right now and start running back to the place in Jesus where you used to be. It can be done and if you want Jesus in your life badly enough, there are not enough devils in hell to keep you from running to Him!
I may be speaking to somebody today who is so far away from Jesus in that they know very little about Him. You have heard His name, but mostly you have heard it used as a curse word in vain.
Perhaps your parents, or even you have said it..
But in this day, when America has so many churches, it is absolutely ironic that so many people right here don’t really even have the foggiest idea who Jesus Christ really is!
What a terrible tragedy to realize that there are very talented and highly skillful people all around us, who know a ton of information about every other aspect of life and yet they know very little about the most important aspect of life!
It is time to Run to Him!
You see, You can run, but you can’t hide!
You may hide for now, but the day is quickly approaching when no on will be able to hide!
A day when "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Philippians 2:10-11
Perhaps I am speaking to that person who feels like no matter what you do, you just can’t get to Him. You say, well, even if Jesus were here and I could have a face to face conversation with Him as with anybody else, and I could see Him and look at Him in the eye, I would reach out and embrace Him, but somehow I can’t seem to break out of this person that I have become.
There is someone, hearing this message, right now, that is living your life in a spiritual cocoon and the Holy Spirit is calling you out of it!
He is calling you to emerge a beautiful butterfly!
A New Creation in Christ, ready to experience the Liberty in a new found relationship with Him!
In closing....
We are living is some very challenging and confusing times...
Let me reassure you, they are only going to become more and more challenging and even more confusing in the coming days, months and years ahead!
The Bible prophecies that there will be a one world church.
It is going to happen, IT IS HAPPENING
But the powers that be in America are also behind the coming one world religion.
This is not a time for casual Christians.
This is not a time to be lukewarm in your relationship with God.
It is not a time to be confused about what you believe.
It is not a time to be chasing after the world.
America is badly confused by the conflicting messages of the day being preached in many churches, but you don't have to stay confused.
In fact I believe that God has placed you where you are for this day...and for this time.
God wants to give some of you a crystal clear understanding of the Scripture so that you can shine the light of His Word into the darkness of this confused world.
In the coming days, we as Christians, are going to witness to more people than we ever have before.
We are going to share our testimony with more people than we ever have before.
We are going to reach out more than we ever have before.
Church, the Bible plainly and clearly teaches us that we must be prepared to answer every person who asks us about our beliefs.....
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. "
1 Peter 3:15-16
The hope that we have in us is Jesus Christ.
The hope that we have is salvation.
We must be able to answer every question that people have about Jesus Christ and salvation.
"Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one."
Colossians 4:5-6
The most critical aspect of our salvation is knowing Who Christ is.....
Knowing Who Jesus is.
We know what the Bible says....we know that it is all in Him.
BUT WE KNOW!
The world doesn't know!
The world is confused.
The world is misled.
The world has heard that there are many ways to God.
I don't want to be misleading you today...
I don't want you to think it is difficult to share truth...because it is not.
I want you to realized that you must have an answer and you must share that answer.
Everybody can have an answer!
You can do this!
This is what God has called you to do!
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries