Pound for Pound with Mike Kai

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hellohi everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Thank you for listening to pray dot com Radio.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Mike Kai, the.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Senior pastor of Inspire Church in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I'd
love for you to check out my channel here on
pray dot com. I'd also like to invite you to
come and visit us at Inspire Church. We have multiple
services online and in person in Hawaii and in the Philippines.
For more information, head over to Mike Kai dot TV.
That's m I k E Kai dot tv. And now

(00:29):
enjoy this message as we close out this series on
the Overcomers?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
What does an overcomer look like?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Last week last series was the I ams that Jesus said,
I am the Great. I am I am the Door,
I am the Gate, I am the Good Shepherd. I
am the Way, the Truth and the Life. And in
this series we talked about what it means to overcome.
It's we need to overcome because we have been overcome
for so long, and now it's time for us to
overcome and overcome our barriers, to overcome our insecurities, overcome

(00:59):
everything that holds us back from becoming the true kind
of church that God wants. I think comfortable Christianity is gone.
I think being laissez fair about our faith is over.
I think that you're proving by coming to church and
going through all of everything that you already had to
fight before COVID do my football team, you know, or

(01:21):
fight my schedule, or fight through work, or fight that
somebody sick, or a fight through the fight you had
on your way to church. You know. I'm talking about
all those different things were already difficult anyway to get
into the House of the Lord. But now you throw
on everything else that makes you not might not want
to come, and a lot of that is fear. I
think comfortable Christianity is done, and I think that we

(01:43):
are warriors more than ever before.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
In Jesus name, can I get an amen?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
And so as you and I are stepping out and
trusting and believing that we are overcoming. There's one message
that I wanted to preach today that I don't think
I've ever preached it before. I might have done it
to with my team, with our staff, I don't think
I've ever preached this message before. I want to preach
a message today about staying or what would look like
when you are hedged in, hedged in what do I

(02:11):
mean by that? I think we oftentimes pray, and maybe
we don't understand where the prayer comes from. But I
wanted to give you where this comes from. You probably
already know this, but we always pray. Lord, I pray
a hedge of protection around my family. God, I pray
a hedge of what does a hedge looks like?

Speaker 1 (02:26):
A hedge? Back in those days?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
A biblical hedge would be something that they would get
all these thorns, and they'd get these bushes, and they
would create a fence. The shepherd would bring his sheep,
not into necessarily a sheepfold where you would have, you know,
nice white picket fences, or you would have a barn.
It was in the outdoors. It was in exposed to
the elements, and there was enemies. The enemies we were,
they other shepherds. The enemy could be lions and sheep,

(02:53):
wolves and sheep's clothing. There were lions, There were bears.
There were coyotes. Now I don't think their coyotes back
in the Middle East, but you.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Know what I mean, there were wolves.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
And when you look at all of this, you had
to protect this. So how did you protect it? You
build yourself a fence. What kind of fence a hedge?
You'd grab thorns, you'd get chaoffy bush. You would tie
them all together and you'd create this and you'd put
your sheep into it. And then what would happen is
the shepherd would lie down in front, thank you for sweeping.
This would lie down in front of the doorway, the opening,

(03:26):
and he would be the gate. That's why Jesus says,
I am the good shepherd. The shepherd lays down his
life for the sheep. He's not the hired hand. Than
when the wolf comes, he runs away. He says, I
am also the gate. I am the door, so the
enemy can't come in when we are hedged in.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
So to have a biblical hedge on well, that hurt.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
But when you get a biblical hedge on your life,
you are hedged in. As a matter of fact, the
Bible tells us in one Peter five, verse eight nine.
You probably already know this, but I'm gonna share it
with you anyway, says Stay alert, steal alert, be sober minded,
says the NIV.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Be alert.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Watch out for your great enemy, the devil, who prows
around like a lion, seeking whom he may devour didn't
hit me till yesterday. Jesus is the lion of Judah,
the lion of Judah. But Satan prowls around like a lion,

(04:27):
a counterfeit lion, seeking whom he may devour to steal,
kill and destroy. So he's trying to act like a lion.
He's trying to pose like the lion of Judah. But
when he comes, let me tell you what it says.
He says, so stand firm against him. Everybody says, stand firm.
You gotta stand strong, You gotta stand firm. You have

(04:47):
to hold the line. And when you do, it says,
stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith.
And remember that your family of believers all over the
world is going through the same kind of suffering that
you are.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
That's the good word from Peter.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
So when we look at the hedge, because the enemy
is trying to get into the hedge, it's also not
just what God wants to keep out of the hedge.
It's also what he's preventing from you leaving that hedge.
And if you've got holds in your hedge, and you
might have thought I'd never thought about a hedge, well
I want to help you today and help all of

(05:21):
us either shore up a hedge or continue to believe
that you have a hedge of protection around you. A
hedge of protection is so important. As a matter of fact,
the Bible tells us in Job chapter one, and it
was written in the period of the Book of Genesis,
be after creation, and after the Tower of Babel, and
after the flood, then the Tower of Babel after that,

(05:42):
and then there is a period where you now start
to read about Abraham. And scholars believe it was in
that period between Genesis chapter nine and Genesis chapter ten,
in that timeframe that the Book of Job was written.
And the Book of Job tells us about Job, who
was the wealthiest man that was on that earth or
that part of the world at that time. He had livestock,

(06:03):
he had herds. As a matter of fact, it was
worth money if you had, for instance, if you had
a sheep, that was worth about a thousand bucks. If
you had to go, there's about three hundred. If you
had a cow, really God, and if you had a cow,
and a cow was worth about five grand. And Job
was so wealthy, as a matter of fact, he was
so wealthy that it irritated the devil. The devil was
so irritated by Job's blessing. And it says in verse six,

(06:26):
there was a day when the sons of God came
to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came
among them. Online and watch this, and then the Satan
also came among them. You see this heavenly picture. God
is giving us a picture into the heavenly realms. He's
showing us what heaven looks like at this moment, and
the sons of God, the angels are appearing before him,

(06:49):
and Satan makes his way into the throne room and
before before them. And then the verse seven, the Lord
said to Satan from where have you come?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Where have you come?

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Satan answered the Lord and said from going to and
fro on the earth, and from walking up and down
on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you
considered my servant Job, that there is none like him
on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears
God and turns away from evil.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Look at this.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
This is a good man, a blameless and upright man
who fears God and turns away from evil. Then Satan
answered the Lord and says, does Job fear God. For
no reason. Have you not put a hedge around him
and his house and all that he has on every side?

Speaker 1 (07:35):
This is the hedge I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
You have blessed the work of his hands, and his
possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your
hand and touch all that he has, and he will
curse you to your face. Think about this for a moment. Hedges,
spiritual hedges are powerful things. It made job blessable and
totally untouchable. When we pray hedges over people, when we

(07:59):
pray hedge over our lives, when we pray a hedge
over our church and over our families, and over our
everything that's important to us, we have to shore up
the hedge. A spiritual hedge is three things. Number one,
it's a barrier of protection. Praying a barrier of protection
of spiritual hedge. Number two, a means of promoting prosperity

(08:20):
in your life physical blessing, spiritual fruit, physical, spiritual, and financial. Yes,
God wants you to prosper God does some people have
a problem with the word prosperity. Well, how about the
word poverty? Oh, we don't like that one either, Okay,
So all right, wait, why are you guys quiet? What's
going on?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
What happened to me? You're taking notes? I get it.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Think about this for a moment. God's blessing over your life,
that he wants to protect you. He wants to bless you.
And here's the third thing. The third thing that is
important is that it's a way of bringing alignment to
God's plans. When you have a hedge around you, a
hedge of protection around you, you want to protect that hedge.
So you want to make make sure that your hedge
doesn't have any holes in it. So if you're looking

(09:03):
at your life, ask yourself right now in this moment,
what are the holes in my hedge?

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Because if the enemy can.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Go after any part of let's talk about family, he'll
go after the most vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
He'll go after the most exposed.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
He'll go after the one that is susceptible to either
the enemy's lies, or has going through in a difficult
emotional time, has had a breakup, or is going through
a relationship issue, has been hurt, has been offended, and
that's when you've got a hole in your hedge. One
of the biggest things that I notice and what I've

(09:39):
seen in our own lives, and in pasting for over
twenty five years, twenty seven years, is I know that
we can expose ourselves and leave ourselves susceptible to the
enemy's attack. Whenever our hearts are in the wrong place,
whenever we are struggling in different areas of lives, we
are susceptible to the attack. So when I look at Israel,

(10:02):
and we're going to talk about Israel for a moment,
you have the Prophet's Isaiah, you have the Prophet's Ezekiel.
They were calling back Israel to return to God, always
calling back Israel. Israel had turned their backs on God.
Of course, they had followed the detestable practices of the
neighboring nations. They had sacrificed to children in the fire,
their form of abortion. They had turned their backs on

(10:22):
the governing body of the church or of the Temple.
And then they had decided that they would worship other
gods by having prostitution cults. Listen to this prostitution cults
in the temple and on the temple grounds, No wonder
God was upset. No wonder Yahweh was very disappointed and
had warned them. Prophet after prophet after prophet, and they

(10:46):
even killed some of their prophets who showed up to
stop them from.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
What Israel was doing.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
And Jeremiah stood outside the city walls as the nation
and as the city of Jerusalem began to burn, and
he cried outside of the city because he had warned
them so many times. Jeremiah warned them, Ezekiel had warned them,
Isaiah had warned them. And so in Isaiah chapter five,
verse five to six, this is what looks like when

(11:13):
God begins to remove his hedge of protection, says in
verse five, he says, Now, I will tell you what
I'm going to do. In Isaiah chapter five, I'm going
to tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard.
What are you gonna do to your venue? Know how
long it takes to grow a vineyard, a minimum of
three years. Sometimes it takes five years to even produce
any type of level of fruit, three to five years. Now,

(11:33):
I will tell you what I'm going to do to
my vineyard. I will take away its edge and it
will be destroyed. I will break down its wall and
it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland,
neither prune nor cultivated. And briars and thorns will grow there,
and I will command the clouds not to rain on it.
This is a devastating thing. The prophet Jim Leffoon for

(11:54):
more notes that I want to give to you. I'm
just gonna give you a lot of notes. I'm gonna
throw it up on the wall. Stea what sticks? Okay,
So here it is five things about divine protection and
what that looks like. Number one, it's the purpose of God.
When you've got the purpose of God, you know God's purpose.
You know why you're here on this earth. If you
don't know, keep on asking. God will reveal it to you.
When I became a young father at the age of

(12:14):
nineteen years old, that was a long time ago. I'm
fifty three right now, so that's about thirty something years ago.
When I became a young father, I quit the University
of Hawaii. I went straight to work at Pizza Hut
and at Shell Service station. I wanted to be a
pilot in the Air Force. I wanted to do a lot,
but I couldn't do it anymore. I lost my purpose.
When I lost my purpose and I didn't know God,
it became dangerous, dangerous to other people dangerous to myself.

(12:38):
But when I gave my life to Jesus at the
age of twenty one, when I turned to God at
the age of twenty one, in that two years of
heartbreaking devastation, when I came to him, he changed my life.
That he gave me a purpose greater than the one
that I ever wanted or ever expected. God can give
you purpose. I want to say to every young man
in this place, every teenage boy in this room, here today,

(12:59):
God has a place and a purpose for your life.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Don't matter if.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
You messed it up along the road, along the way,
you can get back on. But do not lose a
purpose for your life. You are here for a reason.
You are here for a purpose, and God's got a
purpose behind your own purpose. In Jesus name, somebody say Amen,
number one, it is the purpose of God.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Then you've got yourself a hedge that you're building.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
You're building yourself a hedge when you have the people
of God in your life. When you have the people
of God in your life, You've got people who are
love you, who are with you. You've got pastors, you've
got leaders, You've got people who are with you.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
You've got connect group.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
You've got that such important element to church. It's not
just sitting in a seat, it's actually serving in a
community that changes the lives of other people. I talked
to the director of Core Ridge up here, that new community,
that all these homes are going up. Man, I remember about,
like in two thousand and three, when I would go
up in that property we would shoot video, believing that would

(13:57):
be a future home. I still believe that's possibly a
future home for us in call Ridge. So I called
the director. We hadn't talked in years. It's the same
person I talked to in two thousand and three. It
is still working there. In twenty twenty one, she said
to me. She says, Mike, I've been watching your church
all these years, and I love what you guys do
in the community. You know why, because most people don't

(14:19):
know what's going on inside this building. And so when
we are out in the community, you find your purpose,
you will discover your passion because it's with the people
of God.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Here's number three.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
You've got yourself aheage when you've got the presence of God,
the presence of God, you've got that shield of prayer
over your life. You've got that shield that you are
building to in the spirit realm. You've got yourself a
shield when you live by the principles of God. When
you live by the principles of God rather than by
tradition or why the way the culture tells you to live.

(14:53):
When you live your life according to the Word of God,
you are living according to the principles of God, then
you've got yourself aheage. You've got yourself a really good hedge.
Let me tell you when you have personal purity with God,
when you've got the personal purity of God, when you
are pure and sexually, when you're pure in thought, when
you're doing the best even though you've got a lot

(15:14):
of junk coming in, you process that the right way
and you get rid of that. Let me tell you
you've got yourself a hedge. But let me tell you
what it looks like when you've lost your hedge. Let
me tell you what it looks like to a nation
when a nation has no hedge. The Bible tells us
in the Book of Judges, one of my favorite books.
Remember the common theme in those days Israel had no king,

(15:36):
so everyone did what seemed right in their own eyes.
They wanted a king, but they had no king, so
Israel had no king. So everybody did what was right
in their own eyes. The culture was leading them, you
do you, I do me. That's your truth, this is
my truth. I'll speak power to truth, you know I'm
talking about. Everybody was trying to figure out what was
true truth. And there was no true truth unless they

(15:59):
came back to Yahweh. And so they would always repeat
the same practices. They would do all the things on
the vicious cycle. And while they were on that cycle,
every time when they would hit the bottom, and then
they would finally cry out to God, and God would
raise up a deliverer. It was a Judge, It was
Deborah at one time, it was Gideon at another right,
it was Samson for a long period of time. And

(16:20):
when God begins to use men and women who finally
say I will be used by God, and when God
puts his hand on them, there's nothing the devil can
do against them. But instead of studying Gideon, I want
to study the time before Gideon. And in Judges chapter six,
verse one to six, it says the Israelites did evil

(16:40):
in the Lord's sight, so the Lord handed them over.
Look at this the Lord handed them over to the Midianites.
The Midi knights were their long lost cousins. If you
remember Moses, Moses was in the desert of Midian. His
father in law, Jethro, was a priest of Midian, and
Midian was an important place. But now these cousins are

(17:01):
not close anymore. And so the Lord handed them over
to the Midianites for seven years. And the Midianites online
were so cruel. Watch this, so cruel that the Israelites
made hiding places for themselves in the mountains, caves and strongholds.
Imagine us having an enemy outside, and thank God for
our us military, thank God for our veterans, thank God

(17:23):
for them.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
We're going to celebrate them all month, all month.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
And when you look at this, they had to hide
in mountains, caves and strongholds. Imagine if we had to
hide in the colaos because our oppressors were so strong.
Then it says verse three, whenever the Israelites planted their
crops because they had no stores, marauders from Midian Amalik
and the people of the East would attack Israel. That
would be places from Jordan modern day Iraq right the

(17:53):
Sinai Peninsula that region, and they camped in the land
and destroyed the crops as far away as god So,
all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Then they left
the Israelites with nothing to eat, taking all the sheep,
all the goats, all the cattle, and all the donkeys.
You see the you see the progression. Sheeps, I'll eat sheep,

(18:15):
I like. I like rack of lamb. I'll have some
rack of lamb. But then goats when you're hungry. I
don't know if I'd eat a goat, but I think
it would called ding by gold.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Cattle, I'll have cattle, no doubt. The cattle should be
at the top of that chain. Donkeys. When you're starving,
donkeys begin to look good. But they're all gone. So
you have no transportation. Because they took the donkeys, you
have no protein. Bas it took all the food and
now they destroyed all the crops. They didn't just want
oppression over the enemy. This could have been their cash cow,

(18:48):
feeding their armies. But they hate the people so much
that destroy their food source. As a matter of fact,
in my trip to Israel, they cut down all the trees,
any tree that they could cut down, they cut it
down because they want to.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Make it a waste slam back then.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
So when Israel got repopulated in the nineteen forties to
become a nation all over again, prophesied in the Book
of Ezekiel, and all the planes kept flying back. And
Ezekiel prophesied an airplane, although he didn't have the word
for airplane.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
He saw silver birds.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
That's what he called him four thousand years ago, and
this is what he said. And it repopulated Jerusalem in Israel,
and then they started to turn the wasteland and turn
it into an oasis by planting trees all over again.
As a matter of fact, Israel had become a swamp.
It was a swamp. It was mosquito written. There was
Nile disease there. It was horrendous until the ingenuity of

(19:38):
the people of Jerusalem, or actually the Jewish people coming
back after the Holocaust and repopulating their home country. And
now to this day, there are only two countries in
the world. And although we've gone secular, and we pray
that we haven't gone secular, are two countries in the
world that claim God's blessing like no other country. And

(20:01):
there are two no other countries in the world that
have enjoyed the peace and prosperity of God's blessing, like
the United States of America for almost two hundred and
fifty years and Israel for a very long time. That's
why America, the United States, Israel are very, very key

(20:22):
to what.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Happens to the rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
That's why when I did my series called The Way Back,
I wasn't fooling around. I wanted to teach our church
while they were trying to rewrite history about how the
country is founded. It goes all the way back to
the Magna Carta in the fifteen hundreds. It goes all
the way back to the Book of Deuteronomy during Moses' time.
The principles that we were founded on, although not perfect
by any means, a lot of mistakes and a lot

(20:46):
of blemishes, but still lining up another country with this one,
God has shed his grace on the And so because
we need a revival, and because we need God to
do something, we need strong heads, we need strong hedges,
We need.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
God to do something. He needs to revive the Dad,
to bring it back to life. He needs to bring.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
It awakening to a people who may not be even
concerned or even care.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
But he's going to if he could do it.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
With the hippies in the nineteen sixties, with Chuck Smith
having a heartless, old bald guy goes out and preach
in Manhattan Beach, California, up in Redondo Beach, California, having
compassion for all of these lost acid tripping hippies, and
now they all come to Christ, one of the greatest.
A great revival happened that we are the overflow of

(21:32):
that revival to happen in the seventies. That's happened to
us here. We're part of this, out of that overflow.
But it's time we get another one, and it's time
that we need another one. And we have to be
praying for revival and awakening. And so it has to
happen in the church. First, it has to happen with me,
It has to happen with you. And we gotta have
the kind of life that backs up a hedge, not

(21:55):
so that we can hide behind the hedge. That's what
we could be fearful what's outside of the head. No,
the hedge is something spiritual. It's spiritual, it's not actually physical.
And when we realize that this is what God is
going to do. That God wants to do something powerful.
But I want to tell you what happens when this
is what happens with Israel, and it can happen to America.

(22:16):
I've been reading the newspaper for twenty something years. I
started getting the newspaper being a subscription, mainly because I
wanted the sports page. And then lately I've been getting
the newspaper because I want to see what play they're running.
Not that you watch football team, but.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
What kind of play they're running.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
So why I tell you about the newspaper because cal tom,
a syndicated columnists out of the Los Angeles, had been
writing for years very conservative viewpoint. And of course I'm
going to lean conservative because I read my Bible. So
now when I'm reading my Bible and I'm leaning conservative.
And he said in his book that America or any country,
any great, great civilization, really had two hundred and fifty

(22:54):
years of strength, and after that they became a shell
of themselves. He talked about the Persian Empire, he taught
about the Greeks, right, He talked about all the different
civilizations that were great. Their great years were for two
hundred and fifty years. And after that they lost their
core values, they lost what they were all about. They
crumbled from the inside, and then the enemy came from
the outside. America's right at two hundred and fifty years,

(23:16):
that's where we're at. So who's gonna stand in the gap.
Who's gonna pray for this country? Who's gonna believe for
even greater things? And we're not gonna step outside and
look at the culture and yell at the culture and
everything that's wrong with the culture. We're not.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
We have to love. We still have to love them.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
They're not gonna come to church because we're because our
long finger of condemnation. They're not gonna come to church
because of that. They're not gonna come to Jesus because
we are so judgmental. No, I'm just telling you what's wrong.
So in nu On we can pray right because you
know the play they're running. So let me give you
three painful lessons that we find in Israel that could

(23:54):
be happening to us. Number one, three painful lessons when
your heads fails. Number one, you get snake bit. What
I mean by that. Ecclesiastes chapter ten, verse eight says
he who digs a pit may fall into it, and
a serpent may bite him who breaks through a wall.
In other words, when we are on the attack, an
unrighteous attack or attack is coming against us. If we

(24:17):
have a hole in our hedge, then if we will
make ourselves susceptible to a snake attack. So in other words,
when you look at in Esther, chapter seven, verse ten,
the book of Esther is incredible, This woman, beautiful, who
had to finally reveal that I am Jewish to her
husband the king, and she lives. And her uncle Mordecai,

(24:41):
who raised her as she was a little girl because
she was an orphan, loved her, raised her and said,
do not be silent for a time like this. Do
not think that you will escape what's going to happen
to the Jews, because all the Jews were going to
get killed all in one day, in one day, because
Hayman's evil plot. He says, Oh, don't think you're escaping,
because you're in the palace that might be your hedge.
But I'm telling you, you'll even come to you. And

(25:03):
so God begins to turn the tables on Haman and
Hayman is a picture of wickedness coming after the believers
of God. That's what Haman looks like for us today.
And it says, so they hanged Hayman on the gallows
that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's
wrath pacified. Number one, you get snake bits, So Hayman

(25:28):
got snake bit. Here's number two. You get drained. When
your hedge fails, you get drained. What I mean by that,
I mean that everything that you've built, all of a
sudden can no longer hold everything that you have, everything
that you've hoped for, everything that you dream for, because
you have holes in your hedge could fall completely underneath you.
The people of God were coming back years later to

(25:48):
rebuild the destroyed temple.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
They were given money, they were.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Given resources, they were given safe passage through the Middle East.
They had papers, they had passports, they were able to
go through. And Bible tells us in Hagi chapter one,
verse two says, this is what the Lord of Heaven's
army says. The people are saying, the time has not
yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Then
the Lord sent this message through the prophet Hagi, and

(26:14):
Haguy says, why are you living in luxurious houses while
my house lies in ruins. I mean, you missed your priority.
Why do you think I rescued you?

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Why do you think I allowed this generation to come back?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
You lost your priority, You lost your focus. He says,
this is what the lords of heaven armis. Look at.
Look what's happening to you. He says, You've planted much,
but you harvest little. I'm okay with babies, you guys,
babies are good. I like them. Yeah, let them cry. Okay,
there's a different kind of church. Two years ago I said,
get that baby out. No mind, not the same two

(26:51):
years ago. Now, I'm like, let him cry, Just just
hug them. It's all good. Stay inside, stay inside. I
love our ushers. They do a fantastic time. Can we
thank the Lord for are ushers? And the poor oshers
are probably goarding. I think I'm getting a mixed message.
I feel like I'm getting a mixed message fast and
I'm like, no, no, if it's good.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Here we go.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Okay, get back to the word. This is what he says.
Look at what happens to you. He says, you planted much,
but you harvest little. You eat, but you're not satisfied.
You drink, but you're still thirsty. You put on clothes,
but you can't keep warm. Your wages disappear as though
you were putting them in pockets filled with holes. He says,

(27:34):
you're losing it all because you lost your priority. He says,
this is what the Lord of Heaven's Army says. Look
at what's happening to you. Now go up into the hills,
bring down til timber and rebuild my house. Then I
will take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord.
You hoped for rich harvest, but they were poor. And
when you brought your harvest home, I blew it away.

(27:54):
Why because my house, my temple lies in ruins. The
original purp are brought you back for, says the Lord
of Heaven's Armies. While all of you are busy building
your own fine houses, God is not saying I don't
want you to have a fine house. What he's saying is,
do not lose your priority. When you lose your priority,

(28:17):
you leave your hedge wide open. Here's number three, you
suffer drought. Drought goes on to say in verse ten
of Hagi chapter one, it's because of you that the
heavens withhold the dew, and the earth produces no crops.
Pastor Frank can come up. I have called for a
drought on your fields and hills, a drought to wither

(28:38):
the grain and grapes in the olive trees and all
your other crops. A drought to starve you and your livestock,
and to ruin everything that you've worked so hard to get.
You suffer drought. I just can't. I can't say enough,
but I will. I'm gonna just say just as much,
just enough. America is on the clock. And if you

(29:03):
might think, well, good, we need to reset. No no, no, no, no,
it's gonna be bad if God doesn't reset it.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
We need God to reset it, not us, not man.
We're on the clock. We need God.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
We need him to build up our spiritual hedge.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
This is greater than a wall on the border.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
This is a spiritual hedge that we need, and each
and every one of us when we look at this
hedge that we need to build together, we're gonna build
it together. We're gonna do it through prayer and we're
gonna do it through action. Think about this, how do
we build a spiritual hedge? Think about your life? Think
about your family. The enemy will go for the most vulnerable,

(29:52):
the weakest, the most exposed.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
It'll be in the.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Season of their life, it could be the most vulnerab
time of their growth. It could be it could be
any time. And the enemy is always looking. In Luke
chapter four, verse thirteen, I think he's looking for the
opportune time to attack. He's waiting. The devil is patient.
The devil's crafty. The devil did that to Jesus. Jesus

(30:21):
came out of the desert of forty days of fasting
and prayer. And when he comes out of fasting and prayer, says,
then when the devil had finished all his tempting, he
left him until an opportune time. I feel like I
just want to give you a little bit more. You're
not in a hurry, right, Your brunch is going to
stay warm. Right, you got brouns? How many you got

(30:42):
bruns coming? How many you got lunch coming? Must be nice.
I got a word. Think about this for a moment.
Think about this for a moment. There are three things
that are going to happen to every believer. Number one, temptation.
You put that scripture back up. The devil is waiting
for an opportune time. After he had finished all his tempting.

(31:02):
What did he tempt Jesus with? He says, you can
have all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus already had it,
but he wanted to give it to him. Now Jesus
had to go to the Cross in order to get it.
Although he came from the Father fully God, if fully mad,
you still had to go to the cross, his journey
three and a half years to get there.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
So I'll give you all the kingdoms of this world.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
The temptation to have goods, the temptation to look good
is jump off of this cliff. And if you jump
off this cliff, even the angels will command your bless
They will take charge over you. He quoted scripture, but
misquoted it on purpose. The devil knows scripture too. He
knows scripture. The temptation to look good, right, the temptation

(31:47):
to have goods, and the temptation to feel good. He goes,
eat this bread. You must be starving. How you like
this mollucada? Right about now? Forty days you didn't eat
It's not keto. Don't even worry about it. You deserve it. Oh, no,
go ahead. The temptation to look good, the temptation to

(32:11):
have goods, and the temptation to feel good.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
The devil is tempting him.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Second thing, that you and I are going to experiences
trials Jesus, and in this world you will have much tribulation,
trials and tribulation. The third thing, though, God will take
the temptation and he'll make it a test. He didn't
cause the temptation, He never will cause a temptation, but
he will use it as a test. Can you pass
the test? Can you pass that one? When you got

(32:38):
that look, when you got that ping? Can you pass
that test? Of course you can, because greater is he
that is in you than he who is in the world.
Of course you can. Of course you can't look at this,
he says, no, how do you rebuild a spiritual headge?
If your heads has been torn down? If you'll if
you've allowed gaps, if you might have been the missing
link now, if you might have been the weakest link

(32:58):
or not the missing link link, if you might have
been the weakest link. Some of you from Children of
the eighties you know what I'm talking about. And wrestling Hawaii.
So anyway, when you think about this for a moment.
Missing link anyway, Moving right along, look Judges, Chapter six,
verse six says, so Israel was reduced to starvation by
the Midianites, and then the Israelites cried out to the

(33:19):
Lord for help. Then number one, if your head is broken,
Number one, repent, repent, that's sin, repent. What do I
mean by repent? You're heading on this direction? Now go
the other way already. You might need counseling, you might

(33:39):
need deliverance, prayer, you might need to process this with
connect But man, just make that turn already, make that
u turn. Don't take so long. Don't take so long.
Go to your healing. Go to your healing. Number two.
Number two stand in the gap. No, no, no, that's number two.
Number two is you need accountability. You need accountability, accountability, accountability.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
I'm accountable. I'm accountable.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
I have a connect group, and I meet with that
connect group every Wednesday morning, and I find this place
that I can be honest and I like that, but
I can be vulnerable. We've built that. It's taken a
year and a half to get there, and here we
were there. So I praise God for that. One of
my closest friends I have. Pastor Chris Hodges is my pastor,
but he lives six thousand miles away. I can call him,

(34:34):
but who's gonna look me.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
In the eyeballs.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
My good friend Dave Barr, pastor of New Hope, Windward.
He's one of my close friends. We have great conversations,
we have great talks. My wife keeps me accountable, Like
we'll go walk to beach, and we'll walk to beach
and I got to bring something up. I'm like, oh
my gosh, here it comes. But I'm glad you because

(35:00):
there's a Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and Lisa,
and I praise God for my wife.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Thank you, honey, thank you.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
I like that you've learned to finesse things that serve
it up on the platter.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Thank you so much, baby. It means, it means a lot,
and I love you. I love you for it.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
I do. I really do.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
I'm not just flirting with you from stage. I really do.
Here's number three accountability. Do you have accountability? Is there
anybody in your life that can tell you no. If nobody
can tell you no, you don't have accountability, or you
might be faking your accountability.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
You might be going through the motions in your connect group.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Going, yeah, this is good, good, good, good, good good good.
Accountability set you free. Accountability is awesome. It really is,
it really is. Here's number three, number three, stand in
the gap. This is what I wanted to say, Ezekiel
twenty two, verse thirty. Look at what he's Ezekiel said.

(36:02):
And I sought for a man among them that should
make up the hedge and stand in the gap, make
up for the lost in the hedge. I was looking
for a man who'd make up for the loss in
the hedge. I was looking for a man who would
make up the loss in the hedge and stand in
the gap before me for the land that I should
not destroy it.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
But I found none. Couldn't find a man stand in
the gap. Couldn't find a man to stand in the gap.
I know that there are men in this place who
are willing to stand in the gap. I know that
there are men in this house, and in this church
and online who is standing in the gap. But I
know that there's some of us who have been shrunk
back because of what all of the fear that has

(36:44):
been sent men. And I tell you what, and maybe
because you made unpopular decisions, or you made calls that
were personal that you needed to make.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
You went before God and you made that call. And
I tell you right now, and you paint a little
bit of a price. Now your voice is a little
bit quieter than it used to be. I want you to.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Step up and in that gap and stand up for
your rights. Come up, don't give up.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Don't be so easy to give up that liberty that
these men and women fought for. Don't be so don't
give it up so easily that these guys shed blood.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
For and still do to this day and still do.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
From Scholfield, from KBA, from Hickam, from Shafter, come on
from pro Harbor. They serve, they serve to defend what
do you think they serve so they can go any
x and get a discount. They deserve it, and that's
not why they serve. They serve to preserve freedom. Freedom,

(37:39):
and you can't give it up that easily.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
How many of you have traveled in the last three months.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Raise your hand, Raise your hand. I've traveled in the
last three months. I've gone off this island and then
you come back different. Right, It's different out there, It's
different out there. They don't talk about it like like
our media talks about it. They don't spread it like
like ours does. Wow, it's real, it's real. But I
tell you right now, God is God is going. We

(38:07):
gotta pray. We're gonna pray because I need somebody. God
needs somebody to stand in the gap. And here's number three.
And here's my last one. Here's number four. Here's my
last one. Number four.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Plead the blood. Plead the blood.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
How many of you come from an old Pentecostal background?
Pleaded the blood? Oh, we gotta plead the blood. We
gotta plead the blood. I tell you right now, I
believe in that. I'll tell you right now. I need
to pray a hedge of protection and I need to
plead the blood. I need to plead the blood. What
do I mean by pleading the blood? Completing the blood
of Jesus over my house, over my family, over my life.
And think about this right In Exodus, chapter twelve, verse thirteen,

(38:41):
it says, but the blood in your doorpost will serve
as a sign marking the houses where you are staying.
When I see the blood on the doorpost, what is
he gonna do this? I will pass over you. This
plague of death will not touch you. When I strike
the land of Egypt. God told him to sacrifice the lamb,
take the blood, get the again, get to hiss a
branch and painted all over the doorposts and all the

(39:04):
Israelites and all of their home, over a million people.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
They didn't go to home. Deepot, We'll get a brush.
They got a bush, you know I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
They got a branch and they dipped it in the
blood and they put it over the doorposts so that
the angel of death would pass.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Over their house.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
But it still would touch the Egyptians, first born males,
of flocks, of herds and of suns at the same time.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
And that's why they were able to leave.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
That's why they were able to have their exodus, because
they pleaded the blood. Come on, we gotta build a hedge,
and we got to plead to plead the blood.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Would you close your eyes and bar your heads with me? Please? Father?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
We ask right now, on a we on many levels,
right now, that you would show up the hedge of
this country, Father, that you would shore up the spiritual
gaps that have been lost due to sin, due to comfortability,
and maybe too much prosperity and too much good, such

(39:59):
a good life. And Father, sometimes it can be nothing
but hard times, said, actually, you will make us turn
back to you. And Father, we prayed that you would
stave off those times. And Lord, we prayed that it
would not happen. But Father, I pray that as we've
plead the blood over the country, and plead the blood
over our lives, over our kids, over our marriages, over

(40:20):
our families, that we would stand in the gap between
heaven and hell, and stand right there in the gap
in the middle of that heads and said, devil, you
cannot even come into this family.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
In the name of Jesus. You're not even allowed up
to this property of my house. In Jesus day. You
can't even come into this apartment. In Jesus day. Get
away from my kids.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
In Jesus Day, I plead the blood over my son.
I plead the blood over my daughter. I plead the
blood of it his family. And God, I pray right
now that you're blessing and protection and favor would come
upon us now in the name of Jesus. And everybody said, heymen, Amen, Amen,
hey everybody, thanks again, thank for listening to pray dot
com Radio. Check out my channel right here on pray

(41:03):
dot com search for Mike Kai, where you'll find more
inspirational messages and other great content. I'm also personally inviting
you to come and join us for our online or
in person services at Inspire Church. For all service times
and location information, go to www dot Inspire Church dot live.
Have a great weekend and aloha