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"Here as in Heaven."
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You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set set on fire for his mission.
Darren Rouanzoin:Thank you, Rouanz. Hey, friends. Saints, how are we doing today? Huntington Beach. Can you guys say hi to Huntington Beach?
Darren Rouanzoin:They're live streaming us right now or broadcasting. Huntington, I'm so glad you're there. 9AM, we're here together. We're gonna open the word of God. If you have a Bible, let me see them.
Darren Rouanzoin:Let's see the the scriptures. Let's hold them for a moment. Got a lot here. I will say Huntington by percentage wise wins. I can't...
Darren Rouanzoin:It's like I get bombarded by bibles. I don't know what it is over there. It's like 90%. So it's okay. You got time.
Darren Rouanzoin:You're only like a year old as a church. It's fine. They're like 18. So acts 19, we're in a series within a series. How fun is that?
Darren Rouanzoin:Like inception. Christopher Nolan, favorite director. Okay. I I gotta get locked in. We're in a series on the book of acts.
Darren Rouanzoin:Started over a year ago and now we're in five weeks into a mini series on chapter 19 on the revival in Ephesus. We're answering the question, what caused the riot and what are the conditions of revival? According to the scripture, so much of the revivals we've seen in the past are simply reruns of this revival. We see that the conditions found in the early church in Ephesus, by the way, the wealthiest, most influential, most pagan, idol filled city in the Roman empire at the time that Paul was alive, becomes headquarters for Christianity. Isn't that amazing?
Darren Rouanzoin:Can I just say that again? The place that most people write off as lost with ideologies and philosophies that don't align with the way of God becomes the epicenter of Christianity. Maybe again, Lord, could Southern California awaken again to the possibility that God wants to breathe again on our culture, on our communities, on Orange County, in Los Angeles County, all over our state. Could you imagine? That's what is behind this vision as a church.
Darren Rouanzoin:We have used acts 19 for GARDEN CHURCH since 2012 as a visionary text for who we are to be as a church. So over the last several weeks, we talked about visionary concepts about what we're after. First, that the revival that took place is the result of a church that confessed and burned its idols. We're not talking about calling out culture. We're talking about the church calling out its idols.
Darren Rouanzoin:That when the church confessed... By the way, confession I was reading this week is almost always in the Greek public confession. It's cool that we want to confess that Jesus is Lord in our private little world, but it's designed to be confessed publicly. Second is that the church has to have a vision for discipleship. No point on seeing the fire of God breathed on a community that doesn't have the vision for what discipleship looks like.
Darren Rouanzoin:It will just die out in one generation or in a couple of years because you burn out. You don't know how to keep the fire alive if you're not a disciple of Jesus Christ. What do I mean? I mean that when you go to your 04:00 job as a barista and you don't have all the amens and hallelujahs of the conference circuits that you've been following all week. How do you remain faithful to a community, to faithful to Jesus when you're all by yourself?
Darren Rouanzoin:You are formed as a resilient disciple to carry the fire into the world. You become, like we talked about last week a river of living water wherever you go. You guys with me? And then the third the third aspect that we talked about is the church is formed by the word of God. That every movement that we've seen has this reimagination throughout the last two thousand years of what it means to simply live the scriptures.
Darren Rouanzoin:That we as the people of God will be formed. In Ephesus, a community formed by false belief systems and ideologies. They spent five hours a day for two years immersed in the word of God. At the Hall Of Tyrannus, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. In the last week, we talked about in order to see the the work of God, we need to be filled with the presence of God.
Darren Rouanzoin:That we have to become the kind of people that are filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, today's message is probably one of my my favorites Because this is the message that's changed my life here at this school. My first intro, no, it was a intro to the New Testament, a mandatory freshman class that I had to take as a transfer sophomore. And the professor was an adjunct professor and, he asked the question the first day of class, what was the primary message of Jesus? And I raised my hand as a sophomore confident in the Lord and said love and he said no.
Darren Rouanzoin:And in that moment I realized that if I grew up in the church, I grew up going to youth group, I grew up going to church on Sunday sitting in the main services But I had walked away from the faith and I had come back and I was on fire for God. How did I not know his message? So today we're gonna look at the fifth aspect which is simply this, the church continues the ministry of Jesus. That's the fifth concept. So what I'm titling the sermon today is the Jesus stuff.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you have a bible, let's go Acts chapter 19. I'll talk about the message of Jesus in a moment. Verse eight. We've read this before. I'm gonna read it again.
Darren Rouanzoin:Acts 19 verse eight. Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. But some of them became obstinate. They refused to believe publicly maligned the way. That was what the early outsiders called the Christian church the way.
Darren Rouanzoin:So Paul, this is a part of verse nine. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years. So that all the Jews and the Greeks who live in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
Darren Rouanzoin:Verse 11. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. This is a new description of the kind of miracles that take place in Ephesus. Luke has to create a new word to describe what is about to happen. Are you with me church?
Darren Rouanzoin:So that even handkerchiefs, and aprons, sweat rags and leather workman's aprons, by vocational materials. Are you with me church? That had touched him were taken to those who were ill and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. Some of the Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke listen, invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon possessed. They would say, I love it, in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.
Darren Rouanzoin:Here's the group of people that were doing it. The seven sons of Sceva. Love it. A Jewish chief priest were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus I know. Paul I know. But who are you? Can't make this up. They did not have main character energy.
Darren Rouanzoin:Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding. The word of the Lord. K. I'm gonna say this sentence over and over again until you get sick.
Darren Rouanzoin:And I want you to say it with me. Same message. Same ministry. Same ministry. Spirit.
Darren Rouanzoin:Same spirit. Let's go back for a moment to the beginning of our series Acts chapter one. Would you go to the very first verse of Acts one. We talked about it back in August 2025 so maybe you forgot But Luke sets the framework for what the book of acts is all about. So go to the beginning of acts.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you have a bible and you went to John you went too far. So take a right. Go to verse one. I'm gonna read this. In my former book Theophilus.
Darren Rouanzoin:Who's Theophilus? He's a gospel patron. Some guy decided to fund Luke's mission to write the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. As a result of the wealthy generous gift that Theophilus gave to Luke and the church. We have Luke in the book of Acts.
Darren Rouanzoin:Amen? Hallelujah? Amen. He says in my former book, what was his former book? Say it the right way, please.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's right. Well done, Luke. I wrote all about, here it is. I wrote all about that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions to the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave them many convincing proofs that he was alive.
Darren Rouanzoin:He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. And when you look at the the work as a literary tool that that Luke gives us in the book of acts. What you have to see is that Luke begins Acts as a recap of the last series. So when we get to Acts it's not this is the beginning. It is the continuation of the ministry of Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:The book of Acts is the same message. The same ministry by the same spirit through the church. That's what you have to understand. So what is the gospel of Luke? The gospel of Luke is the life, ministry of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Darren Rouanzoin:Acts is simply the continuation of that ministry through the church by the power of the Holy Spirit. Are you with me church? So Acts is all about the Jesus stuff. I love the Jesus stuff. What Luke is trying to show you is that this is not a story about Paul.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is not a story about Peter. This is trying to show you that Jesus is still at work. Wearing the church like a body. Acts is all about the Jesus stuff. Now, what is the Jesus stuff?
Darren Rouanzoin:Because there I was as a 19 year old transfer student in Vanguard with so much confidence to my adjunct professor, his message is love. And he said, no. And in a moment, I was like, what is it? What was the message of Jesus? And if you're like, well he died for your sins.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's not what he preached. No. And in a moment I had a theological awakening, you could say. That I had grown up in the church and I had not discovered the message of Jesus. And in a moment, he says without missing a beat beat because nobody could answer the question.
Darren Rouanzoin:He said, the kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God? And this has become a life pursuit because when you get the kingdom, get Genesis to Revelation. You get the role of Jesus. You get the fulfillment of the old testament.
Darren Rouanzoin:You get the fulfillment of the new testament. You get Paul's letter to Romans and Galatians. You get the book of Revelation. You get all of it tied together because you realize, actually, it's one continuous story. It's not about getting you to heaven when you die.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's about God's heaven coming back to earth now. So I wanna give you some quick theology, and we'll go back to verse eight. Is that okay? Because I I wanna make sure if you go to the garden, you know the message of Jesus. So that when someone says, well, what is his message?
Darren Rouanzoin:You say the kingdom of God, and you know what it means. No use on using theological language that you don't know. So, what is the kingdom of God? First, the kingdom of God is primarily an announcement. It's not a Ted talk.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's not advice. It's not a podcast so you can walk around discussing with your friends to hear in the next take. No. It is an announcement of a reality embodied in Jesus. And he begins...
Darren Rouanzoin:Let's go to the first series. Let's go to season one. I'm sorry Luke chapter four, season one. I'm gonna give you, you got it? Contextualization.
Darren Rouanzoin:Remember that we talked about this. We don't read anymore. I mean I'm sorry. We know it's true. We know that reading is just going away but we at this church we read scripture.
Darren Rouanzoin:Yes? Yes. Okay. So I'm gonna give you some definitions then we'll define it. So Luke chapter four, Jesus filled in the power of the Holy Spirit goes back to Nazareth where he was brought up and he stands up in the synagogue in verse 18 of chapter four in the gospel of Luke.
Darren Rouanzoin:He uses, he grabs the scroll of Isaiah and he takes Isaiah 61 and Isaiah 58. He... Because if you read and and remember, I want you to do this. I want you to read this. I want you to highlight this section in verse 18.
Darren Rouanzoin:Then I want you to go back to Isaiah 61 and read the whole chapter. Then I want you to go back to Isaiah 58 and read the whole chapter and go, this has something to do with the ministry of Jesus. This is what he says will pattern his message and ministry. It's Isaiah 61, Isaiah 58 together. He says, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
Darren Rouanzoin:He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind. He's to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Amen? Amen. And then let's go to Luke.
Darren Rouanzoin:Let's see what I have up here. Luke... What's the next verse? Luke chapter four verse 20. He already did that when he he scrolled it.
Darren Rouanzoin:Go to Luke chapter eight. I have some notes. Verse one. I love hearing that. Huntington Beach is racing you right now.
Darren Rouanzoin:So let's get there fast. Luke chapter eight verse one. After this Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. You with me on this one? So this is a summary passage.
Darren Rouanzoin:Luke uses this to let you know this is what he did. What did Jesus do? He went from town to town proclaiming the kingdom of God. Okay. Go back to Luke five.
Darren Rouanzoin:I mean I know I'm at it. I just want to practice your your bible reading and hear those pages. It blessed me so much. This is verse 17. Now in verse 17 it says, One day Jesus was teaching the pharisees and teachers of law were sitting there.
Darren Rouanzoin:They had come from every village of Galilee from all Judea and Jerusalem. Look what it says. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal those who were ill. Okay go to Luke chapter nine. You guys good?
Darren Rouanzoin:I know we are bouncing around. Lots of scripture today. Verse one. When Jesus had called the 12 together he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God, to heal those who were ill and he told them to take nothing for the journey, no staff and he goes on to say to proclaim the kingdom wherever they go. Okay, I'm giving you a bunch of summary texts because I need you to see the work of Jesus because we don't want to miss it.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you are to look at the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts and summarize the ministry and the message of Jesus. It's simply these three things, to proclaim the kingdom of God, to heal the sick and to cast out demons. How you doing church? Okay. So this is this is the message and the ministry of Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:Who continues the message and ministry of Jesus today? The church. How are we doing with proclaiming the kingdom casting out demons and healing the sick? Not good. How are we doing with inviting people to church and giving them podcasts?
Darren Rouanzoin:Great at content distribution. But you are given power and authority to carry the same message and the same ministry by the same spirit of Jesus Christ. So the kingdom of God is the rule, the reign, and the realm of God's effective will becoming reality. It is God's rule. It is his power and authority.
Darren Rouanzoin:It is the position he takes and it's the realm. It's the sphere of his will being enacted and embodied around. So, when we say, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we're essentially saying, we want the way things were intended to be in your presence to be in reality now. And we know because the world is broken, and our hearts are broken, and our minds are distorted, our bodies are aching with illness and pain, that it's not yet reality. That I go to bed lonely at night, that I have problems with eating disorders, that I look at pornography and lust, that I still feel trapped by isolate isolation and depression.
Darren Rouanzoin:We know that in my life. It is not quite yet the reality of heaven on earth. So I partner with you Jesus to see, come Lord now. In the book of Revelation when you hear the word come, it is borrowed from the prayer of the Lord's prayer. It's not release chaos into the world.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's saying, Lord come. Come. Have your way. Come, Lord Jesus, into the places that still disobey in my heart. Come, Lord Jesus, into the family systems that creates chaos every time I'm around them.
Darren Rouanzoin:Come, Lord Jesus, when I look out into the world and I see the next generation riddled with anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation. We partner with him and say, Lord, come. The kingdom is that space. There's I have a couple more definitions for you to walk away with. Go to the next definition if you would.
Darren Rouanzoin:The kingdom of God. Can go to the next slide if you would. Is God's mission to rescue and renew creation bringing the life of heaven to earth. When did this initiate? It initiated in Genesis chapter three.
Darren Rouanzoin:God's redemptive work began the moment we walked away from him. And the kingdom is primarily experienced through relationship Jesus. And hear me on this. So we were designed to live in perfect loving relationship with God. Yes?
Darren Rouanzoin:Genesis one and two. We rebelled and in as a result of our rebellion and our rejection, sin entered into the world along with chaos and the vandalization of Shalom. Shalom being this and this is what God restores back to us through the life, the ministry, the message, the death, the resurrection and ascension and one day returning in the power of the holy spirit now that he gives us. We have access to this relationship of Shalom which is we have loving and hear me on this I'm using this in modern terms. Perfect loving attachment relationship with the Father in heaven.
Darren Rouanzoin:Perfect loving attachment relationships with one another ourselves and the rest of creation. That's Shalom and we get access to that not by performance not by rules not by memorization but by loving relationship with God. We welcome God back, Jesus into our hearts when we confess and believe. Yes? One more definition and I'm gonna keep going because I got a whole other sermon to preach.
Darren Rouanzoin:Could you go to the next slide please? Thank you. The kingdom of God is the life as God intended it to be. The kingdom of God is life as God intended to be. Filled with joy, peace, justice, healing, belonging, freedom and wholeness.
Darren Rouanzoin:Which is that Hebrew word for Shalom. That, so when we talk about the kingdom of God being proclaimed, we are essentially saying these things become reality into the world. Now, I I could teach literally years of sermons on the kingdom. Cause it's the primary message of Jesus all throughout the New Testament we see. If you follow Paul, he goes to the synagogue, he proclaims the kingdom of God.
Darren Rouanzoin:Same message of Jesus and he does the same thing Jesus did. Same ministry of Jesus because that's the point. And if you study the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, 20% of all the stories in the gospel of Luke are healing stories. 20% of what Luke says, this is important for you to understand as a disciple, is the the the demonstration of the kingdom of God being present in the people that come to Jesus. Because Jesus doesn't just proclaim the message of the kingdom.
Darren Rouanzoin:He demonstrates it. Can we go to one more Luke chapter 10 then we will go back to Acts. I am on half a page of three pages of notes. Your kindness Lord. Chapter 10 Luke sends, it says Jesus sends out the 72 disciples.
Darren Rouanzoin:I just want you to see the robust picture of what Jesus does. He proclaims the kingdom. He calls his 12. He gives them authority and power. He tells them to do the stuff and then he calls 72 others and he sends them out ahead of him to different towns.
Darren Rouanzoin:Talks about the harvest being plentiful. The workers are few. Verse eight of chapter 10. When you enter a town, these are the instructions and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal those who are ill and tell them the kingdom of God has come near to you.
Darren Rouanzoin:Why does Jesus spend so much time healing broken bodies in the gospels? I love what N. T. Wright says. He says, No point putting the world right if the people are still broken.
Darren Rouanzoin:In another place he says, when Jesus healed people, he intended it to be clear that this wasn't just a foretaste of a future reality. This was reality itself. This was what it looked like when God was in charge. God's kingdom was coming as he taught his followers to pray on earth as in heaven. Healing is the primary marker of the kingdom of God breaking in today.
Darren Rouanzoin:And that healing comes through spiritual healing, emotional healing, mental healing, physical healing and relational healing. Brothers and sisters, that's what we call heaven on earth. So if you were to look at the ministry of the church, it's primarily announcing the kingdom, healing the sick and casting out demons. Let me just speak for a moment on deliverance, we'll get to there in a second when we go back to Acts. Healing and deliverance is the Jesus stuff.
Darren Rouanzoin:Yeah. Good news is not just good teaching, it confronts evil. Evil is not something that we overcome with good will and better teaching. At its root evil is demonic and it is too strong for us to overcome. This is why Jesus came.
Darren Rouanzoin:He says in first John chapter three verse eight and I'll read it. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. Is that good news? Evil is not defeated by good ethics or morality. It is defeated by the power of God given to us through the Holy Spirit.
Darren Rouanzoin:So when we pray for healing and deliverance for people we become channels for Jesus to heal and set people free. We can set people free. We can set institutions free and societies that are crushed under the weight of evil. I want to preach on that but I'm gonna keep going. Would you would you go to Acts chapter 19?
Darren Rouanzoin:Let's go back to this text. How's this Bible study this morning? Paul entered the synagogue verse eight and spoke boldly there for three months arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. Same message. If you go to the very end of acts, you see the last few verses, it's the same message he talked about Jesus and the kingdom of God.
Darren Rouanzoin:Acts, 19 verse 11, God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. It says that anything that was touched would heal heal the sick and those with illnesses and those with evil spirits would be delivered essentially. It's the same ministry of Jesus. Why is this so important today? Because if you study revival history, see that the early...
Darren Rouanzoin:The churches that are caught up in a sovereign work of God get back to the roots of the ministry of Jesus. It does not exist for the conference. It does not exist to fill the spaces we can gather in. It exists for the mission of Jesus to be re centered again and reworked through the ordinary church. And I'm a part of the ordinary church.
Darren Rouanzoin:We wake up to realize, wait, the plan all along was for you to be filled with his presence, same spirit. To carry the message of Jesus, the same message and to do the Jesus stuff, the same works. He says this in John chapter 14, whoever believes in him will do the things he has been doing even greater things than these. Brothers and sisters, at some point we wake up to this as truth and this is what happened to me. So what happened to me was I was awakened to the message of Jesus and my whole understanding of the bible changed by that one moment in a classroom.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then I went to the... I began to study the gospel of Mark and I began to see that Jesus' primary message is written in one verse in Mark chapter one verse 15. He said, The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is Mark saying the entire message of Jesus in one verse is that. You could spend the rest of your life on that verse and understanding all the fulfillment of that verse and what it represents. But what happened to me was I became obsessed with trying to understand what this meant. And it led to our church plan. It led to all these things and I realized actually, if we're gonna continue in the ministry of Jesus, we need the spirit of God.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's where the presence of God became an obsession for me. It's not enough to talk about Jesus. We got to live like him. We can't do that because we practice things. But we're permeating.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're infused. We're we're overwhelmed and plunged and soaked and saturated and complete in the presence of God. And as soon as you're pickled, your nature's changed. And I realized that if you want the ministry of Jesus, if you want the content of his ministry, you have to live it in his context. And that's where I was I was undone.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's not enough to talk about Jesus on a stage. You have to embody it. Because the context of the miracles, the context of the miraculous is on the go. Show me one miracle story that was part of the liturgy. It's always an interruption.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus is on his way or in the middle of and somebody interrupts. And one time he's interrupted by Jairus and that interruption gets interrupted by the woman bleeding for twelve years. An interruption to the interruption. And I realized you have to live it everywhere you go. So I began to understand that and I began to work towards that and the stories you've heard these stories but they seem like definitions that we need to understand that this is what we've moved toward.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is what has made the garden who we are. This is a visionary series. There was a time when we began to live this context out and I know you've heard this story before, but I need to give them to you. Because they're they're dynamic for how it shaped who we are. I began to believe the Lord wanted me to minister outside of the context of the local church.
Darren Rouanzoin:Local church was guarding being maybe 200 people. But I remember we began to explore ways to live this out. So I began to pray for people on the streets. Anyone do that this week? Let's go.
Darren Rouanzoin:Well done, good and faithful servants. Remember, we all have his ministry. We're just missing the context for it. So I was at Ralph's in Downtown Long Beach where my wife and I lived in Bel Bluff Heights actually and and my son Ezra who's almost 13 now was in he was in a stroller so he was really little. And I was practicing on the go having words of knowledge for people.
Darren Rouanzoin:And there was a woman who was clearly pregnant, which I don't prophesy that stuff anymore. Don't do that. And anyways, so she I share this word with her and the sense that I had, I'm like I could get this wrong is that this is your first time mom and you're nervous. All these things that I heard from the Lord when I looked at her And I just wanted to encourage you with this. She stops me and she's like, I'm a mom of four or five, I forget.
Darren Rouanzoin:I talked about her broken relationship with her mom. Her mom comes around the corner, puts her arm around her. I have a great relationship with my mom like, hey, thanks so much. I grab the cart, I throw it and I run home. I'm not kidding, I text my wife, I left the groceries.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'll see you at home. How much faith did I have? Zero faith. Same day. Same day.
Darren Rouanzoin:I made a relational covenant with my friends that any time we saw people with casts on or or physical signs of physical illness or pain, we'd pray for them. Same day, get a knock on the door, UPS delivery guy with brackets on his arm, like massive things on his knees and on his arms and he hands me a package. I grab the package, put it down and I like crack the door. I'm like, hey, what happened to your body? And he tells me the story.
Darren Rouanzoin:He's going on disability. It it was heading into the holiday seasons. He was he couldn't lift boxes in all this pain. I go, can I pray for you? He says, would love prayer.
Darren Rouanzoin:And I had this, I'm not exaggerating. Door is cracked open. In the name of Jesus, heal my brother. Amen. Close the door.
Darren Rouanzoin:I had just got denied. Like, you couldn't have been more far off at Ralph's. Just the walk of shame home, you know. Left the groceries and my baby. A month later, Eddie is his name, comes into our office at the church because it was the same area that we lived in, I lived in.
Darren Rouanzoin:And he's like, Darren. And he just comes running in. Your prayer healed me. No brackets. He's like, I went back to church.
Darren Rouanzoin:I don't know which he lived in Diamond Bar. I went back to church. I can't believe it. I have no pain. I'm gonna keep working.
Darren Rouanzoin:My wife and I are back at church all because of of your prayer. What prayer? That was the first one for me. And I have failed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times maybe thousands. But I've also seen hundreds of people get healed.
Darren Rouanzoin:And what I do now and this is the difference between someone that's starting and someone that has prayed thousands of times. You just don't care what people think. Because if the same spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives in me then why not be a little embarrassed by Eddie not getting healing in that moment or or perhaps I can say to him the kingdom of God has come near. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Darren Rouanzoin:Yeah? Now, I'm supposed to preach an acts and I got eleven minutes. Verse 11. It says, God did extraordinary miracles through Paul. Who did the miracles?
Darren Rouanzoin:That's right. Luke wants to make sure you understand. The power was never Paul's. It's never mine and it's never yours. It's always God's.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's God that does the stuff we just show up. And sometimes we show up with so much faith and nothing happens. And sometimes, we show up with very little anything. And God does the stuff. And we live in this world of the now, God's kingdom is breaking in and has come, and the not yet, and it's not fully realized.
Darren Rouanzoin:I have seen people get healed of cancer, and I've buried my friends who died of cancer. And, that's the tension we live in until he comes again. And, I'm okay praying for the raised... The dead to be raised after I prayed for them to be healed. But as soon as it's a no, I'm bringing casseroles to the families, and I'm showing up with grief.
Darren Rouanzoin:Grieving that it's not yet fully realized. But we grieve with hope because we're gonna dance again with our brother or our sister. We're gonna sing Hallelujah, Amen once again with our father who passed away, or our mother who passed away, or our kid who passed away. That grief is deep. Praying for healing doesn't get rid of the grief.
Darren Rouanzoin:But we have a God who's raised from the dead. And he says, do the stuff. So if you wanna talk about speculation and theology, that's fine. There's a place for that. But at some point, recognize it's for you and for you.
Darren Rouanzoin:And you just got saved today in the baptism waters. Great. It's now for you. How much training do you need? I just gave it to you.
Darren Rouanzoin:Amen. Go. But I'm just tired of a church that doesn't know the message in ministry we have, and instead we hand it off and we consume. We make excuses. We let our feelings and fear drive the power of God away from people.
Darren Rouanzoin:And they may never hear the message so clearly when you sit next to them on the bus or in your cubicle or as they get their hair cut as a hair stylist because I'm saying that because one of my friends, shout out to my bro, he's an evangelist and he cuts hair. He's brought dozens of families to Garden Church that have been baptized and come to faith because he cuts hair. No, he doesn't. He explodes the kingdom of God. He lavish them with God's grace and love.
Darren Rouanzoin:He can't help but ooze out of himself the reality of the resurrected Christ. Because he's been with Jesus and he knows the word of God. He knows the message. He knows his ministry. So God does extraordinary things through Paul, through you if you let him.
Darren Rouanzoin:And he will use, I love this, the anointing of God soaking. The anointing of God. God soaking into a bi vocational... I'm messing this up. The anointing of God soaking into bi vocational preacher sweat towels.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's what's going on. Is that all of a sudden, and I love this, God meets a superstitious city at the level of faith they had and love them towards a greater truth in Jesus. And what we want to do is we want to obsess over the sweat rags. Don't we? Like okay if it's the sweat rag that healed people let's build a model and ship it.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's no model. It's how God moved in that moment at that time to an anointed preacher. To an anointed community that carried the same message, same ministry and the same spirit of God. And if you want to build a model on it Luke does something to warn you. In the next passage the seven sons of Sceva try to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:So these are Ephesian magicians. And they realize that there's a better app out there. A better password. In fact we have some historians, archaeological archaeologists discovered in a writing found in Ephesus thousands hundreds of years ago. They found writing that says in in the inscription, by the God of the Hebrews comma Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:That they tried to magicians try to use the power and the name of Jesus for like a magical formula and that's what's happening with the seven sons of Sceva. They want the power of Jesus without the person of Jesus. And this is what we want. We want the formula rather than the Lord. And I love this.
Darren Rouanzoin:Look at what the demon says. Jesus I know. Paul I know. But who are you? Hell apparently keeps a spiritual directory.
Darren Rouanzoin:The spiritual realm knows who carries authority and who's carrying someone else's. These seven professional religious folks are not in the directory. So they get beat up and everyone hears about it and this is a power confrontation with the powers that are in the world and I want you to understand you can't live on your parents faith anymore. You can't live on that pastor's podcast anymore. You need your own authority that comes from Jesus, and it comes from a time saturated in his presence.
Darren Rouanzoin:You need a secret history with God that nobody knows about except demons. You might use the borrowed vocabulary from that substack, but you not... You have not learned the language of heaven on your knees. Are you known? Great you have a million followers.
Darren Rouanzoin:Are you known by the enemy? And if your life is not opposed it's not living for the kingdom of God. There is no neutral territory. It's the Kingdom of God breaking in or it's the Kingdom of darkness and I would like to propose to you the problem is you don't have a life worth opposing. I wanna sit down right now.
Darren Rouanzoin:I love in Luke the 72 come back. In Luke chapter 10. Oh, it's so good. Luke chapter 10, the 72 come back and they're like, can you believe it? We healed the sick.
Darren Rouanzoin:The demons, they flee. And Jesus says, I saw satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority over authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you. However do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Darren Rouanzoin:Do you know Jesus? Do you know his message? Do you know his ministry? Do you know his spirit? As a result of this moment in Acts it says the very next verse, When this became known to the Jews and the Greeks living in Ephesus they were all seized with fear and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.
Darren Rouanzoin:The counterfeits will collapse as soon as the church lives the message of Jesus and lives the ministry of Jesus by the power of the spirit. All week I was overwhelmed with burden for this Sunday and for our church. I was talking to pastor Rouan that my prayers are changing so much right now because I feel the need to contend for the church that's under great affliction and attack. Right now, we have staff members who are sick and have been going to the ER, their kids are getting surgery, Derek and Chloe Mack, their baby girl's already had two significant surgeries and she has to have another one on Tuesday. There's financial stuff going on and and that's just with our little staff team and I'm like, man, the leaders in the church, there is an opposition and affliction.
Darren Rouanzoin:There is everywhere we see the kingdom of God breaking out there is a counter movement of the kingdom of darkness and we can't be we can't be naive to the reality of what we're working with and dealing with in our world. So you're moving towards Jesus in your life. You're seeing your faith be be taken more seriously. No wonder finances are hurting. No wonder there's relational conflict to something you didn't see coming.
Darren Rouanzoin:No wonder there's this mayhem in car accidents and plumbing issues. We... And I'm not saying everything is is from a demon. Don't hear... But I I want you to be aware that these are things the enemy is gonna use.
Darren Rouanzoin:We don't fight with flesh and blood. We fight against the spiritual powers and authorities. And so as I've proclaimed the kingdom of God today. As I've clearly demonstrated that the works of Jesus are for today and he wants to move, the answer... The the...
Darren Rouanzoin:Where we're gonna move next is we're gonna pray for healing. We're gonna pray for deliverance. And we're gonna we're gonna give our allegiance to Jesus. In the last several weeks, I've been talking about the consumerism that is a false gospel in the church. And today, the question is, do you know Jesus?
Darren Rouanzoin:Have you publicly confessed your allegiance to Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Or have you been taught to be quiet and make it personal? Make it your individual experience because that's what the enemy wants to do. Keep you isolated rather than welcomed into the family of God. This morning in my when I was reading I had this in Luke chapter 12.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus says, I tell you whoever publicly acknowledges me before others the son of man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. Romans chapter 10 says, if you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. The question I want to ask you is how assured of you. How assured are you of your salvation?
Darren Rouanzoin:How certain that if you died today, your next breath is with the lover of your soul. Without question, I stand here assured of that reality. And I want the same for you.
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