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Experience the life-changing messages from the Church of God’s annual Winterfest youth gathering. These are the sermons, moments, and voices that have shaped generations of young believers — now available anytime, anywhere.
If you have your Bibles, turn them to 2 Kings chapter 22.
2 Kings chapter 22.
Everybody still good with your phone on the floor?
Everybody good?
If you see somebody pick it up, kick them.
Just you tell them that Bishop Brian Yawn from the Church of God said it was okay.
That's what you do.
You tell them that.
2 Kings chapter 22.
We're going to look at this guy named Josiah.
Josiah. Josiah.
Let me read some verses.
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem.
His mother's name was Jadita, the daughter of Adiah of Boseka.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David, his father.
And he did not turn aside to the right or the left. My man is eight years old and he becomes the king
Anybody got a eight-year-old brother sister anybody? Yeah a couple people stretch your hands in that direction right now in the name of Jesus
We pray that the Lord would give them a spirit of patience
Can you imagine when your parents leave and they leave your little brother in charge?
What that would be like an eight-year-old he's an eight-year-old and he's king and this is the thing
He hasn't really had a good history. His grandfather was wildly wicked
His grandfather was really crazy. His grandfather not only abandoned God. His grandfather built other gods to worship
His father wild and out his father dies after two years of being king. So at eight years old
He's left with the kingdom his father was assassinated and
And he's raised by his mother named Jadita.
Sometimes I read the Bible and I'm like,
am I making this up?
It says some good things about this guy, Josiah.
It says that he walked in the way of David, his father.
He did not turn aside to the right or left.
This guy, Joe, King Joe, King Josiah, he was a good dude.
He did a good job.
You know why he did a good job?
'cause he had a mother named Jadita.
Listen, I'm from the South, I'm from Middle Tennessee.
Let me tell you about what I picture
when I picture Jadita.
This is a white girl who goes to Target
with curlers in her hair.
She got a sister named Marlene
and another sister named Bobby Joe.
I'm telling you about Jadita does not play games.
Jadita did not care that he was a king.
Jadita will snatch you up.
How many got a mama like a Jadita?
Your mom got some Jadita energy about her.
Yeah, everybody talking about the spirit of Jezebel.
Nuh-uh, mom, I was raised by a Jadita.
You didn't have the spirit of Jezebel,
we had the spirit of Jadita in my house.
Every time I try to date somebody,
the spirit of Jadita and my mother will call them down.
My mother, her name is Colleen.
Do you know what Colleen is short for?
Jadita.
Of course he was good.
His mother was named Jadita.
Josiah, eight years old, he's a king.
His father was killed after two years.
It's a tough time.
Do you know what his kingdom was like?
His kingdom had all the right pieces.
It has a temple, they worship God,
they have priests, they do the sacrifices,
they have what looks to be everything that they need.
The problem is they have Yahweh, they have a God,
and they have a bunch of other stuff too.
in their temple.
It's not just God that lives in their temple.
His grandfather has created other idols
and put them in the temple with God.
They've got a God for everything they want.
They got a God for the harvest.
For rain, they have a God, that's God, Baal.
They have a God for fertility and sexuality,
that's a God they named Asherah.
They have a God for when they wanna know the future,
it's the astrology and the stars.
They have God, Yahweh, our God, Jesus, the Godfather.
They have God and they have a bunch of extra stuff.
And this is what he was born into.
He does not have to go out
and search for false gods to worship.
He's born into it.
Let me just talk to the youth leaders, youth pastors,
grandmas, memaws, pop-alls, all the Jaditas in the room.
Our kids, this generation, if they are worshiping idols,
they are idols that we built.
This generation is not worshiping idols that they built.
They didn't build TikTok.
We so mad that they're on Snapchat all the time.
They not, one 12 year old in this room,
smart enough to create Snapchat.
They did not create these idols,
but they're worshiping them.
Because listen to me young people,
You were born into a culture with opportunity
to worship all of these gods along with Jesus.
Josiah is born into this time.
He's born into the opportunity
to worship all these other gods.
You have an opportunity to do the same thing.
Our culture is very similar.
It's not that they hated Yahweh.
It's not that they hated Jesus.
They just wanted Jesus, they wanted Yahweh,
and they wanted the other stuff too.
I think most people in this room,
we definitely are guilty of some idol worship.
But it's not that you hate Jesus.
Most of us, it's not that you hate Jesus.
I doubt there's many people in this room
that came to Winterfest because you thought
it was you were gonna debunk the entire religion.
He thought, I know what I'll do.
I'll sneak into Winterfest and convince them
that Jesus is not real.
No, those people, they don't go to our church.
Like they're part of some Illuminati stuff, right?
You find them on conspiracy theories with your Jadita
and that's what they stay up and watch all night.
That's not real.
Most people in here, you like Jesus.
You like Jesus, but you also like having sex
with your girlfriend.
You also like the other stuff too.
Like you like Jesus, but when you get real stressed out,
you also want smoke and blunt.
It's I want Jesus and I want this other stuff too.
And that's what he's born into.
And I'm afraid to say,
I think my generation has taught you how to do that.
It's Jesus and it's all of these other things.
And Josiah is eight years old and he's born into it.
Young people, you were born into idolatry.
You know what his mother, you know what her name means?
Jadidah, you know what it means?
It means beloved.
See, his grandfather, his name was Manasseh.
Manasseh means forgotten or forgets.
His grandfather forgot who God was.
His father was named after like an Egyptian God.
But this man, Josiah,
he has a mother whose name means beloved.
He's brought up in somehow, he's brought up to be saved.
He's on the throne for a little while
and then something happens.
He decides to do a renovation.
He decides for a remodel.
He decides the temple should be renovated.
And he goes to this temple that has all these gods.
It's got Jesus, it's got this, it's got that,
it's got all these gods and he sends them in there
for a renovation and everything changes.
I think a lot of us have come to Winterfest
because we know we needed some renovation.
Because we have Jesus and we're living the Jesus plus.
We have Jesus and we have Kendrick Lamar.
We have Jesus and you have this.
And I'm sorry, my generation did it to you.
Listen, parents, they didn't create the Grammys, we did.
We created this idolatry of the worship of celebrities.
That was happening while they were just babies.
And now you've been, I'm telling you young people,
you've been born into idolatry.
And I came with some jadita energy this morning.
I came with the kind of energy
that wants to snatch a generation up
and offer you something that will break
what was never intended to hold you.
This is what happens.
By chapter 23, by chapter 23 of 2 Kings, Josiah, this eight year old has grown up and in growing
up he brings reform to the nation.
This is what he does to all of those idle gods.
In verse three of chapter 23 it says this, says the king stood by the pillar and made
a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies
with all of his heart and all of his soul to perform the words of this
covenant that were written in his book. And all the people joined in the
covenant. The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priest of the second
order. He says, "Bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal,
for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem
in fields of the Kidram and carried their ashes to Bethel. This man utterly
destroys the idols of his grandparents. I think we need to be honest. If we search
our temples, there are idols in the temples. I do missions work and I get to
travel around the world and I travel to one particular country in Asia and they
have temples everywhere and I walked into one of the temples and met one of
the priests at this temple and in this temple there were no less than a hundred
gods on the shelves. There are furnaces where they offer sacrifices to all of
these gods and when you tell them about Jesus they say this sounds wonderful, will
you give him to us so we can put him in the temple beside all of our other gods.
So you see we have the same thing and the New Testament teaches us that our
bodies are the temple. And so we worship Jesus and we worship Pornhub. We worship
the altar of our sexuality. Our sexuality has become an altar. Here was the plan of
the enemy in their day. All of the gifts that God had given them, the enemy taught
them to worship the gift instead of the giver. God is the giver and instead of
of worshiping the giver, they worship the gift.
Let me just say this, let me just talk to you like an unk.
Is that okay?
Right?
Sex is not the enemy.
It's a gift, right?
It's a gift, and the church is not trying to tell you
never have that, that that's some terrible part of your life.
It just needs to live in the right container.
It just has to live in the right container.
Nobody's against this.
Nobody is against this.
It's just that they're living in a right container.
Like for example, in my house, we have a fireplace.
Fireplace is awesome.
When it gets cold, it's great.
We put a fire in the fireplace.
It's great, nobody has a problem with it, right?
I could cook on that, I can roast marshmallows.
It's great, it's fireplace.
It's where the fire lives.
If I start a fire in the back seat of my car,
there's nothing wrong with a fire.
I just put it in the wrong container.
Nobody's trying to tell you that sex is the enemy.
It just needs to live in the right container,
and the container is one man and one woman
for the rest of your lives.
Then when it comes to sex, go crazy.
Just let it live in the right container,
but that container is not your phone late at night
because you feel lonely.
Pornography is not the container,
but sex was the gift, and now our culture,
We have started worshiping the gift. At this point now, culture, sexuality is
equal to identity. It's bonkers. You are not your activities.
Play volleyball great, but you are not volleyball player. You are not your
cravings. If you are your cravings, you know what I am? I'm Mexican food. That's
line me up, I happen to be Brian and I identify as Mexican food because it's
what I crave. Like really I could go for some queso right now, Pollo Loco. Y'all have
those up here, right? Y'all do the Pollo Loco. Every Mexican restaurant in the
south, we all have the same menus, right? You're not your cravings, you're not your
activity, you get your identity from the one who created you. But what they were
doing is they were worshiping the gifts. They created idols and worshiped the
gifts. And so now we worship the gifts. We worship celebrities, we worship music,
and we worship sexuality, and we worship pornography, and we have all these idols.
And I'm telling you, you're gonna have to clean the temple out. But what I'm afraid
What we're doing is we're trying to clean the temple out
prematurely.
We leave Winterfest and we try to go tear down all the idols.
This guy, Josiah, my man was crazy.
You ever watch, anybody in here got a mom
that like angry cleans?
No?
Okay.
My poor son, Memphis, he was up here.
My wife, she angry cleans.
She gets mad, she starts cleaning.
And then when she angry cleans,
she also starts throwing stuff away.
Like, I think she kind of was raised
around a hoarder mentality.
So my wife will throw good things away.
She starts angry cleaning,
she'll pull a sandwich about my mouth, throw it away.
Angry cleaning.
Josiah, this man was angry cleaning out his temples.
Not only did he remove stuff,
he destroyed it so much so it could never be used again.
Do you know what some of the sins of their days were?
They were killing the innocent.
Innocent children were being sacrificed on these altars
and he destroys them so much.
He takes the idol and grinds it into dust
and then takes the dust of that idol
and spreads it out over graveyards.
My man starts a crematorium to burn these idols up
Because God does not want to share you.
And we act like that's intolerant.
We act like that's an issue, right?
But the truth is, the more you love something,
the less you wanna share it.
If you don't really love it, you don't mind sharing it, right?
If we go to the Mexican restaurant after this,
if you want some of my mushrooms, you can have 'em.
'Cause I like 'em, I don't love 'em.
But if you dip your chip in my queso,
I'll throat punch you.
If you touch up on my guacamole,
I'm telling you, I'll put you through a wall
'cause I love that stuff.
Isn't it wild that the world is willing to share you
and God wants to keep you, but we call God the evil one?
Why is the Lord Almighty evil for loving you so much
He doesn't wanna share you?
That's the reason.
This story is so relevant today.
He gets aggressive with destroying the idols in the temples.
And if all we do is raise you up
to try to be idol destroyers, we've missed it.
Because yes, he tore down all the idols,
but it wasn't until something broke.
Turn your Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 22.
Go ahead and have our musicians come back.
They're in the middle of renovating a temple, right?
It's not spiritual, nobody's fasting and praying,
no worship team playing soft music.
They were not being spiritual.
God showed up anyways.
See, God wants to show up.
We're not begging God to come.
God wants to be with us.
They're not really being spiritual.
They're being responsible.
And they show up to this temple and they find this ancient book in verse number six, Hilkiah
the priest said to Shippon, secretary, I have found the book of the law in the house of
the Lord.
He gave it to the priest and the priest read it.
And eventually they take this book, the word of God, they take it to this King Josiah and
it says, when he heard verse 11, when he heard the words of the book of the law, he tore
his clothes and the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Haakim the son of
Shippon and Akwir the son of Micaiah. Go verse 13 inquire of the Lord for me and
for the people of all Judah concerning the words of this book that it has been
found for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our
fathers have not obeyed the words of this book.
Oh, yeah, man, Josiah, he was awesome.
He tore down all the idols.
Listen to me.
Listen to me.
Sweetheart, I didn't come here to tell you
that it's your responsibility to tear down
every bad place and bad thing.
Young man of God, I did not come here to tell you
that it's your job to tear down every evil thing
that exists in this world.
because before something broke in the temple,
before he was breaking idols,
this man hears a word from the Lord
and something in him breaks.
See, if you go home and all you do
is try to stop doing bad things,
this host, all of us gonna mess up, you're gonna fail.
If your goal is to stop doing all of the bad things,
you're gonna miss it.
because it's not all about what you don't do. It is about what you do. It
wasn't that somebody came and demanded he clean the temple out. He heard a word
from the Lord. Listen to me. I was about your age. I was a junior in high school. I
two-week trip to Lee University. I was so broken. See, when I was a young person, I
was groomed and abused by an older lady in our church. And when I want, the one
time I went and told an adult, you know what they said to me? They said, "Don't you
ever tell anybody it'll ruin the church."
And so I thought that was something I have to protect. So I took this awful
thing and I put it in my temple and it became something I worshiped. I literally
worshiped at the altar of the trauma. It became who I was secretly. It lived
inside of my temple. It didn't matter how much I worshiped, didn't matter how many
conferences I went to, something always was broken in me. And I was real good at
saying no to the world. And I was never good at saying yes to Jesus. At Lee
University of Summer Honors, Jerome Hammond was the leader.
On the last night, he invited somebody to speak.
I don't even know who it was, I wish I could find them.
They shared a story about being a runner,
which obviously I relate to.
As a runner, all you laughing,
y'all can shut up in Jesus' name,
what y'all can do right now.
I bought running shoes, that makes me a runner.
He shared this story.
about being a runner and about running in like a relay race
and how they, one person hands another person's baton
and now they're all running together.
I wasn't even paying attention, you know why?
Because I started saying yes to the world.
At the time I was probably high.
I took those two weeks and I said yes
to anything that felt good.
And this guy walks up to me,
I was way off on the side stage, he walks up to me,
he hands me his baton and he looks at me
and he says, "Jesus just wants to go with you, son."
You see, I thought my whole life, I thought Jesus was all about telling me where not to
go.
And this man came.
And even though I was going the wrong way, he said, "Can Jesus just come with you?"
You know what that was?
That was a word from the Lord.
See when a word from the Lord penetrates your heart, everything changes.
A song cannot break the yoke. A sermon in itself cannot do it. But a word from the Lord will
break the yoke of the enemy. And this king hears a word from the Lord.
That broken young man who was hiding that idol of trauma and abuse in him.
I started following Jesus that way. I started actually following Jesus because for a while
I was mimicking Jesus.
All right, I'm gonna pick my man right here on the corner.
What's your name, sir?
Right there, blue shirt all the way on the corner.
What's your name?
Greg?
Reg?
Did I say it right?
Don't make me look foolish.
Reg, Reg.
Yeah, okay.
I want you to mimic me, right?
Mimic me, okay?
See, he's mimicking me, and by mimicking me, he can stay where he's at, and he's doing
what I'm doing, but he doesn't have to leave his place.
And too many of us hear me, Holy Spirit help me right now, too many of us, we're trying
to mimic Jesus.
And Jesus doesn't say mimic me.
He says, "Follow me."
And if I say, "Follow me,"
that means if I'm going to the Mexican,
you're going to the Mexican with me, boy.
If I say, "Follow me," that means when I get
into the little corolla, you're getting in with me.
'Cause I ain't saying, "Mimic me, I should follow me."
And Jesus is not asking you to mimic him.
'Cause mimicking Jesus will leave you powerless.
But that 17-year-old kid, that junior in high school,
I started following Jesus.
And for years I followed Jesus
and that idol still lived in my temple.
I was a grown man.
I owned my own house.
I had a 14 acre little farm.
I was outside working in the dirt and I broke
because I still feel like what,
I still felt like what happened to that kid was his fault.
I was grown and I still felt like it was my fault.
I walked into the house where my wife was.
I'm covered in dirt, I'm weeping.
My wife is angry, cleaning in the house, right?
She's a woman of God, she reads the Holy Spirit
and she says, "What's wrong?"
And I said, "Why does it still feel like it was my fault?"
She looked at me and she said,
"Brahun, you were a kid."
God did not approve of that.
That was not your fault.
You know what she was doing?
She was speaking a word of the Lord.
I came to this morning to say, "What you need, what you need is a word from the Lord."
I was a director of a psychiatric unit in Tennessee.
The most violent person that ever was on our unit, I worked with sexual predators and violent
crime offenders.
the most violent person on our unit,
most violent criminal I had ever encountered.
During his phone calls, I hear a scream.
He runs into the room where I am.
He lays down over me weeping
because his grandmother had died.
The last person in the world that loved him died.
He's weeping on me.
And that person who was abused
was holding an abuser.
I whispered down that young man,
I said, Jesus still loves you son.
It was a word from the Lord.
If you go try, if you go try to conquer all the idolatry
without a word from the Lord, it'll never work.
If you go try to conquer pornography and lust and drugs
and addiction, you try to conquer all of the idolatry
without the word of the Lord, it won't work.
Before Josiah ever conquered the enemy,
he first found the Lord.
You need a word from the Lord.
You guys know what this is?
Is there a camera on me?
Y'all know what that is?
Hit me with the light show here.
Y'all know what this is?
Everybody know?
This is a little glow stick, right?
It's a little glow stick.
Help me out, guys, know what the light's here.
Y'all see it? Everybody say yeah if you see it.
Say I see it. Y'all see this? Alright.
Bring the lights back up for me.
Y'all see this one right here?
You know what the difference between this one and this one is? Kill the lights.
You know what the difference between this one and this one is?
One of them hasn't been broken yet.
See, it has all the right pieces.
It wasn't created wrong.
It's not missing something.
It has everything it needs.
It just has not been broken yet.
This hasn't been broken yet.
Listen, some of us, you come and you're like, why don't I feel anything?
And why is it not working for me?
And why is it that there's still idols living in your temple and you haven't been broken
yet?
We're trying to live with Jesus and all the other stuff.
God's too jealous.
He doesn't want to share you.
He doesn't want to share you.
He loves you too much to share you.
Some of us in this room, until this happens,
all right, y'all ready over here?
Help me out, somebody catch that right there.
When you catch it, lift it up.
Right there.
You know what the difference between him and everybody else there?
He's been broken.
They could all raise their hands. They could all mimic.
They could all look like it.
But that right there, it's been some brokenness.
See, the Lord wants to break sin in your life.
And when you let him have rule, help me out, lift it up.
Yeah.
When you let him start to have some rule in your life,
oh yeah, we're gonna kill each other, that's cool.
I'm cool with it.
I'm super relaxed.
They got liability insurance, I'm good.
Lift it up for me.
Now, this one though, I can lift it up,
but it ain't been broken yet.
So it's a glowless glow stick.
You can see what it was created for.
It just, this one has never received a word from the Lord.
I came to tell you, you need a word from the Lord.
Where's my youth pastors at?
Anybody got one, break it open, lift it up.
Youth pastors, stand up if you got one of these.
Kill the lights for me.
Look around here, young people, you see these youth pastors?
You know what makes them powerful?
They've been broken.
Sin was broken in their life.
They had idols in their temples,
and then somewhere in their life they were broken.
The word of the Lord came and gave them a better truth,
gave them the real truth.
♪♪♪
♪ Feel it in this room ♪
♪ Holy Spirit move ♪
♪ 'Cause when you have your way ♪
♪ Something has to break ♪
(soft music)
Young people,
if you're here and you know,
I believe in Jesus but there's still some things in me
that need to break.
I believe that you're gonna come down and we're gonna pray
and that God is gonna give you a word
that you need from him.
You know what, I think there's some people in this group,
Young lady, you need to hear your life's not over.
I've been praying for weeks about this message.
I really believe that there might be a young woman
in this room and that you're pregnant
and nobody knows you're pregnant.
And you're debating on whether to have an abortion or not.
'Cause you feel like your life's over.
I came with a word from the Lord to tell you
your life is not over.
Don't you do that.
You come up and you tell your you pastor,
your life's not over.
Don't you let the enemy, I got a word from the Lord,
your life's not over.
You go see Lee University, we got online classes,
we got all kinds, somebody called Dr. Phil Cook
and tell him, listen, we'll help you.
Your life is not over, don't you buy that lie young lady.
Don't you believe that lie?
That lie is the very thing that's in you
that needs to be broken.
♪ ♪
If you're here, I want you, everybody in the room,
I want you on the balls of your feet.
I want you to feel the front of your toes.
'Cause if you know that there are things
in your life that need to break this morning,
we're gonna pray.
God's going to give you a word
from His lips to your ears
that will transform and give you the strength to go and do what needs to be done.
Holy Spirit, what a sermon can't do, what a song can't do,
what only you can do in your power.
Something has to break.
Something has to break.
Listen, I'm going to count to three.
And if you know I need something to break in my life and you're you
pastors up here I want you to get to them as fast as possible don't you stay
there living broken living messed up we're gonna worship and we're gonna
allow God to do what he can do ready one two three get here