So Jesus is about to challenge where the church of His day is at. I wonder in your life, where you are with God? What overflow from your life is touching people? I wonder how intentional the overflow of your life is, to reach people who don't know Christ? It's not easy in New Zealand. It's quite difficult. I love going to these other nations, but I'm very aware that many of these other nations I go to, that there is a move of God in them, and so there's a spiritual environment, and you do see a tremendous amount of things happen in a very short space of time.
So anywhere you go up in Asia, in Africa, South America, you'll find great movings of the spirit of God. When you come to our own nation yes, God moves, but actually you've got to contend and fight for every step of the way. I was talking to an American Pastor who's been working in New Zealand for some time, and he said: oh, I have had to fight every step of the way. He said: any other place in the world, it would be easy compared to how I find it here. He said: I've had to fight to get the breakthroughs, and fight to stand up, and fight to keep my spirit right, and fight to keep a place of faith in my heart; because he said: it's the passivity, and unbelief, and negativity, that seems to blanket the nation. He said: I've had to fight to stand up, but I can go anywhere in the world and the life of God will flow, because I've had to fight and break through all that stuff. I was talking to Bill Subritzky just on Friday, and he said he'd had time with Anwar, and Anwar said he was shocked when he came to New Zealand, how different it is to overseas, to Pakistan. He said in Pakistan, he'd lift his hand, and the power of God would come, people would fall down, and all kinds of miracles happened. He said here he felt like it was suffocating, trying to breathe spiritually, and see breakthrough.
But that's okay, because that means that you've just got to stand up inside, and get big on the inside; every one of us lives in the same environment, so you make a choice. You can choose whether your life gets withered, or you can choose when you rise up. You know Jesus said about the sower and the seed, He said: the sower plants the seed; and it's the heart, the condition of the heart is what determines whether the seed produces any fruit; and so He said: there's some by the roadside; and He said: when the sun comes up, and it beats down on it, it withers away. He said: those that hear the word of God, so they're believers sitting in a church, that are receiving the word of God week by week, but when the pressure comes on, they don't stand; because they haven't let God get deep into their heart. How do you let God get deep into your heart? Have you let your roots go down in prayer, so you're standing and believing God for breakthroughs in your life, holding His word over your life to see change? Or has the pressure caused you to wither, and lose your hope, and your fire, and your faith, in your life?
You have to make choices on these things, and I wonder in your spiritual condition today, where you are at, and if something has withered you. There's many things can wither us, and I'm preaching to myself in all of this. Many things can wither us. Disappointment can wither you, where you prayed and reached out to God, and it seemed like it didn't happen. In fact it seemed like something else happened, and you're left with disappointment, and can't understand why. Setbacks, where you'd had something planned, or had some hopes and expectations, and it didn't work out; and grief starts to set around your heart - that can wither you up. Perhaps you're here today, and grief got into your life, and so instead of being bubbly with the joy of the Lord, Jesus said: My joy I give to you, let no man take it from you. There is a joy that God gives to us. It actually is a gift to us. It comes with the person of the Holy Ghost, as we abide in Him in prayer and the word, and listening and flowing with Him, there is a joy God puts in your heart. Don't let anyone take it from you.