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[Silence] [Music] [Music] ♪ Hail not to temptation ♪

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♪ For yielding is sin ♪ ♪ Keep faith, pray well and happy ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ I believe in God ♪

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♪ I believe in God ♪ ♪ Praise the Lord ♪ ♪ All I ever need ♪ [Music]

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[Music] [Music] ♪ He is risen, He is risen, He is risen ♪ ♪ Shining over the land of the free ♪

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♪ God's people are never alone ♪ ♪ For the Lord is with you ♪ ♪ He is risen, He is risen, He is risen ♪ [Music]

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[Music] [Music] Who gives you heaven? God gives you the ground. Open your heart, Lord, open and crown.

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He who is a Savior, I speak to you. ♪ Oh, America, here's a husband, he will love you ♪ ♪ That's the thing of the world ♪ ♪ What a stranger that he is ♪

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♪ He is a man of his word ♪ ♪ Oh, he will love you ♪ ♪ That's the thing of the world ♪ ♪ What a stranger that he is ♪

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[music] Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, in a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him,

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but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, "All is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,

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and of the Holy Ghost. Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.

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Amen. I have read to you the 28th chapter of Matthew, the 16th through the 20th verse. May God bless the reading and the hearing of his word.

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- We serve a prayer here in God, and what a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer. As the family of God here at Ebenezer,

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Let us assemble around the altar as we join together in this blessed fellowship. Everyone needs to pray. The scripture says men ought always to pray. More things are wrought through prayer than this world dreams of.

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Take your burdens to the Lord, leave them there. We're privileged to have with us today as our guest the Reverend Norman Washington of Harlingen, Texas. He's the brother of Brother LeBron Washington, and he's going to lead us in our prayer.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, acknowledging that it is a name above everything. We do come this morning to say thank you for thy goodness and for thy great mercy and and the blessings that have been more than we can number.

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We acknowledge, O gracious Father, our weakness in Thou, our Almighty, and that we are only Thy handwork, the sheep of Thy pasture, and Thou our shepherd. We do come this morning because we realize that we need you in every avenue of life. We need you on the highways and on the byways.

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We need you in our homes and in our communities. Then we need you, Lord, in our churches and in our lives, that men might not see us, but they might see you in us. Oh God, we come this morning in a critical period of life when men and women are falling

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by the wayside and their own children are stumbling over them. We come this morning because we need you. Come Lord with the Holy Spirit, kindle a fire of sacred love in these cold hearts of ours. We pray this morning for the flocks that you've made us overseer.

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Guide them and keep them in the path of righteousness. Let them know that you still lives on the thorn and you're yet in the prayer-answering business. So many of the old soldiers are falling by the wayside and leaving somebody stranded

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on the highway of life. We pray this morning for the services here. We pray for everyone, O gracious Father, that's here under the sound of our voice. Bless the preach word this morning.

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May somebody's heart be lifted up. Bless every home, O gracious Father, in town. Many of them are troubled and worried and burdened down. Just lift the burden off of them this morning.

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Lord when this life's uneven journey is over and we are through standing behind the altar declaring thy name. Take us home where we can yield thee perfect praise is our prayer in Christ's name. Amen. [ Music ]

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♪ The Lord is living, ♪ ♪ For you, for you. ♪ [Music] ♪ We pray ♪

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♪ We pray ♪ ♪ That God ♪ ♪ Will bless ♪ ♪ The people ♪

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♪ That's all ♪ ♪ We pray ♪ ♪ When you're gone ♪ ♪ All I want is to be with you ♪

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(music) [Music] (piano music) [Music]

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(piano music) [Music] [Music] (piano music)

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[Music] [Music] [Music] (music)

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♪ You see ♪ ♪ You see ♪ ♪ The land where I was born ♪ ♪ You see ♪

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♪ You sing ♪ ♪ You are proud of your land ♪ ♪ You sing ♪ ♪ You will be heard ♪

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♪ In the rain ♪ [Music] [ Music ] Thank you Lord for the trials that come my way

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In that way I can grow each day as I let you lead And thank you, Lord, for the patience those trials bring. In that process of growing, I can learn to care. But it goes against the way I am to put my human nature down

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And let the spirit take control of all I do For when those trials come, my human nature shouts the thing to do, and God's soft prompting can be easily ignored. So thank you, Lord.

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With each trial I feel inside, that you're there to help, lead, and guide me away from wrong. For you promised, Lord, that with every testing, that your way of escaping's easier to beat. But it goes against the way I am to put my human nature down

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and let the spirit take control of all I do. For when those trials come, my human nature shouts the thing to do, and God's soft prompting can't be easily ignored. So I thank you, Lord, for the victory that growing brings

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in surrender of everything. Life is so worthwhile. And I thank you, Lord, that when everything's put in place, out in front I can see your face.

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And it's there you belong. You belong. Our Heavenly Father, as we come at this point, we are very thankful that you let us get up off of our beds of sleep, though we were not in the same homes nor under the same roof

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or between the same walls. But we are very thankful that the same Spirit woke all of us up, regardless of what part of the world that we live in, you woke all of us up. We are very thankful this morning.

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We realize that we cannot speak at all in your name unless you give us a power of your Holy Ghost that will abide with us and guide us. We pray that you will be with us and that you will be a blessing through us. Everyone that will hear and see, in Jesus' name we pray, we shall forever give you the glory and the honor. Amen.

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very thankful to Pastor Griffin, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, very happy to see Pastor Washington, a fellow laborer in the vineyard of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask that you would certainly pray with us, that we shall try to bring what thus saith the Lord, because I have no message for you.

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If God does not give me a message, I have no message for anyone. I pray that the Lord will speak through us, that we shall attempt to bring to you what Thus saith the Lord. In the book of Saint John, the twentieth chapter, the twenty-second verse reads as follows,

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And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Amen. God's top priority for the enablement of the Church to do His work.

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Amen. We stopped at a colon. Naturally, one would not expect one to stop at a colon. would expect one to stop at a period. But God says stop there because this is the

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main thrust of the message and since this is God's message I must obey what God says. And he certainly has a top priority for the enabling of his church to do his work in his world to save his people that he created in his own image that we might be able as children of God to save his people where God says the fields are white and the

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The laborers are few, and the fields are still white, and we still need God's power to help us to save his people that is out there in his field, which is called the world, and many people out there that need to be saved. Amen.

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We can look all around us, and certainly we cannot say that everyone in God's world is saved. In the world of economics,

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We have two facets. We have management and we have labor. If you're not in the field of labor, you're in the field of management.

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And as a humanist say, if you're not in either one of those fields, then you are between jobs. Amen.

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I can't ever understand the humanist because the way that they put it, I just can't get with them. I was talking to one in Long Beach, California

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the other day and my granddaughter was out of work and I said, I would be so happy when my granddaughter will get another job. And the very fine young man who had just received his degree

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And the humanities said, well, let's put it like this, that she is not out of a job, she's just between jobs. (laughs) I wondered what was the difference.

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Because if you don't have a paycheck coming in, there's a clear indication that you don't have a job. Whether it is in the field of labor it is in the field of management.

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Here the other day, all over this nation, the first Monday in September has been designated as Labor Day. And all over this great nation of ours we had tremendous parades, and they had a very beautiful parade here in the city of Austin that entailed perhaps 10,000 or more people

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that was in the Labor Day parade. In the various cities there were more people than that in the parades of Labor Day. Labor was letting management know that we are not receiving our just deserts because management, you cannot get along without labor.

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If you don't have the labor force to produce what you put out on the drawing board, it cannot become a reality if you don't have labor to bring it into being. And management is telling labor that, "Yes, you are a vital force, but you can't get along without management."

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Management and labor is always in a hassle, in an argumentative state of mind, but not so with the Spirit of God. is that force is one against the other, but the power of God is never against the other. The power of the Holy Ghost does not fight against the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Each one has his job, and when the power of the Holy Ghost does his job, he goes on to sleep or somewhere and the power of the Holy Spirit come into being in God's church. They are both ruling powers and the church must have the power of the Holy Ghost and the power of the Spirit.

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Well, some may say that the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit are the same thing. Not so. Because my Bible tells me that in the beginning, God, and when God made man, he did three things. He made man in his own image, made man out of body, soul, and spirit.

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Was it the three spiritual elements of man is body, soul, and spirit. Man also consists of earth, wind, fire, and water, which is the moving elements and the vital elements of man. When you get those four and three together, they are the whole totality of man.

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That is the whole of man. There is nothing else in man that was to be put in him. God put everything in man when God made him, and he put the Spirit of God in man when he made him. And man did not move until God breathed upon man. And the book says man became a living

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soul. He didn't move. Laying up there with a body, heart, veins, blood, guts, and everything else in him, but he didn't move. He didn't go no way. He laid up there. Didn't move, He didn't move and he didn't breathe and no heartbeat and no blood going through those vessels of his and no breathing, no eyelashes moving, no feet walking and no mouth talking

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until God breathed in him. And the book says man became a living soul. And then he put the other four elements of man. That's a long story which we cannot go into at this point.

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We got this out of the book of John. He is a beautiful writer. The open Bible, the King James Version says, and I quote, "John is both the simplest and the most profound of the Gospels.

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Its language is so pure and simple in the Greek that beginning students are almost always directed to John first. Yet its theological insights are so powerful and far-reaching that the greatest Christian thinkers have never been able to grasp all of its insight.

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This is a remarkable testimony to the divine inspiration of this amazing book." John saw so much that God did. But we can never be able to fully understand the workings of God and what God has for us to do and the moving and motivating force that God has for us to work with until we

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are filled with the power of the Holy Ghost. Many things that I used to not be able to understand in God's Word, and I could not clearly understand it, but when I became filled with the Holy Ghost, a new thing came over me and came in me, and I was able to see things and to understand things and to feel things

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that I had never saw, nor never felt, nor never understood before. It's a moving entity. breathed upon his church and he said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Why did he say the Holy Ghost?

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Some say the Spirit and the Holy Ghost are the same thing. No it's not. The Holy Ghost is a leading and guiding factor. In the Greek it says, uses this word paraklete.

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And paraklete in the Greek means that it's somebody that will walk beside us. I don't care where I go, I have somebody, an invisible entity that walks beside me. And when I sit in the car and drive, I have an invisible entity that's not in me, but it's outside of me and walked with me.

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The song says, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and I know that I am his own." Why? Because he's a walking entity.

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And I know I'm right about it. Power of the Holy Ghost is a moving entity. And the power of the Holy Ghost is given to the Church, that the Church would have a leading and guiding entity that would guide the Church in the things that the Church is to do.

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this world if the Church is going to be a vital entity in the world of God that the Church has to have and be filled with and guided by and know the reality of the being of the Holy Ghost. I know I'm right about it.

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The fields are white. God knew that the Church could not save those out there that is in the field without a moving entity. The power of the Holy Spirit in God's world makes these bones come alive.

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It's an entity that dwells within me. And the prophet Jeremiah put it so beautifully when he said that it is like a fire that's shut up in my bones. And I want to be still, I want to go out into the wilderness and find me a home out there

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and get away from the people of the world, but I can't be still. I cannot be quiet because God's Spirit is like a fire shut up in my bones and I can't be still. Nobody can tell me that if an individual is filled with the power of God, that they are

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going to be quiet when God is moving in the life of an individual. You can't be still. Brethren, I can't be still. I said on a radio show here on the 6th of August on Dr. E. Marie Gilbert's radio show

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when I was a guest on KLBJ, I told the audience at that time that the things that I am into for God, that I have no control over it, that my mama gave me to God. Amen. And, Reverend, I know that. I wonder can I get an amen. We will say this as an aside to this message, that all young women who are aspiring to be

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mothers, pray for that child before you bring that child into the world. that when that child comes into the world that you will give that child to God. My mama gave me to God. I have no control over telling people about what thus saith the Lord.

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Going back to the empowering of the Holy Ghost as the leader in God's church, and let's Let's get this, that God's church does not consist of benches. God's church doesn't consist of rugs on the floor, beautiful organs, beautiful robes that you wear.

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That's not God's church. God's church doesn't consist of television antennas and the invisible audience being able to hear and to see God's church doesn't consist of that because God's church has a more, way more powerful radio station than any radio station in the world.

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Because I saw in the book of Revelation where God's television station was in operation and the book says on a morning, I don't know whether it was a Sunday morning or a Saturday morning and it makes no difference what morning it was, but John said I was on the Isle of Patmos and on the Lord's Day God's television station was in motion and I saw the heavens

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open unto me. You can't get a television station. You don't have the power. I know I'm right about it.

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You don't have the power to tune into heaven. You don't have the power. Now I know I'm right about it. You don't have the power to tune into heaven and get the angel of God on your television

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screen. You don't have that power. Only God has the power. And ever now and then I'm so thankful that God opens up his television station to me

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and I see things that I never saw before. And I hear things that I never heard before. And I feel things that I've never felt before. Why?

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God's priority for His Church is in action. The Holy Ghost should be the moving and vital entity in any church. Amen. Money is not the top priority in God's church.

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Howard Hughes was reported to be one of the world's richest men. Now I can't about to think about several billions of dollars when it takes one thousand millions to make a billion, and I certainly can't think about billions of dollars. But Howard Hughes had billions of dollars, but that didn't move God.

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Didn't move him one iota. Didn't even wake up to see about Howard Hughes. Amen! Amen!

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Didn't even move him, didn't even motivate him, and he didn't even think about him because in the life of Howard Hughes, when we have read about his life and heard about him, I don't know whether he ever mentioned God in any of his vast empires. And with all of the money that he had, it didn't move God.

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God that can save the cattle of a thousand hills of mine, the gold and the silver of mine, everything that moves and lives and has breath and has being in his mind, how is a little dollar going to move God when God holds it in the very heart of his own hand?

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God wakes through us. He wakes through the wind. His moving and motivating power moves the world. How is it going to wake and move God? (All right) (Amen)

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Oh my. moving and motivating power than God said and God breathed upon them. And they became filled with the Holy Ghost. And then in Acts 1 and 8, God said, "You shall receive power."

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After that, not the Holy Spirit. God certainly knew the difference between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit. God would not use the Holy Ghost in one place and the Holy Spirit in the other if they were the same thing.

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God got better sense than that. In Acts 1 and 8 he says, "And you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon The church of God, not the benches in the church house, not the building, not the rugs on the floor, not all of this that we see that's so beautiful.

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That's not God's church. We are God's church. The people of God is God's church. God's church. The people of God is God's church. We are to be a moving entity out yonder in

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the field where that the field is white but the laborers are few. We are to move out from the church and go among the field. Whores and hustlers should be saved out there. Don't be bothered about that word "whole" because it's throughout this book. That's where I first saw it was in this book of God.

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If you don't know that it's in there, you better start to reading because it's in there. Amen, church! addicts and everything else is out there waiting for us to save them. One of the most moving and vital experiences that I've had here in Austin was during the

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Christmas season when a person that was a dope addict told his father to tell me that, "Rev. I want you to talk with me." And when we got to his home, Christmas season, the house filled with people, I said, "Let's ride."

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And as we rode around these streets of Austin, and as I talked to him about the love of Jesus Christ, that Jesus loves you, I don't care about you being a dope addict. That doesn't have nothing to do with God saving power. God came here to save dope addicts.

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He came here to save those that were out there in the fields, in the fields of waiting. God has given us the moving, motivating power of the Holy Ghost to save those out there. And as I talked to him about the love of Jesus Christ and we rode over these streets, I looked over at him and tears was lapping under his chin.

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Tears was just running down. Now this is not a baby, this is a man of approximately 45 or 50 years of age. And tears was running down like a river. And due to the type of job that he had, he had to leave here.

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But he's always calling his family and telling them to tell Reverend Williams, "When I come back to Austin, I want to get with him. God gives us the power of the Holy Ghost, and it is the moving and vital entity in God's house to save those out yonder that lost. Jesus gave it to us. That man that died out yonder on Calvary's rugged brow, he's the

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one that fills us with the power of the Holy Ghost and gives us the Holy Ghost. That's a moving entity. I was looking at the Dallas Cowboys the other day, and I got up and I was jumping and I was hooping and I was hollering, "Run, Darcy, run!

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Run, Darcy, run! Outrun that booger! Don't let him catch you!" Booker, don't let him catch you.

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Now inasmuch as I can hoop and holler for the world, I certainly ought to be able to hoop and holler for Jesus Christ who saved me from my sins, because I was lost one day, Not Jesus found me lost and on my way to hell, but Jesus found me and filled me with the power of the Holy Ghost that I might be a moving entity to those who are lost and unsaved.

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Yes, Jesus loves you. (applause) - Let's all say amen. - Amen.

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- This message certainly is burning on our hearts and as we come down to this most important part of the service, who believes the report? Who believes that the spirit of God is with us?

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The spirit of God moves and that we have the privilege of having that spirit to walk with us and to talk with us and to be claimed by the Spirit of God. So as we sing now, take the name of Jesus with you.

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We invite you to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. Invite you to become a part of the family of God here at Ebenezer. Let us stand as we sing, take the name of Jesus with you.

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(piano music) ♪ Take one piece of Jesus with you ♪ ♪ A love so wonderful ♪ ♪ It will surely come to live in you ♪

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♪ Take it with you when you go ♪ ♪ Precious day of our dreams ♪ ♪ Hope of earth and joy of heaven ♪ ♪ As a slave ♪

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