Sunday Morning Pastor Ronny Hooks Don't Get Knocked Down

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Times, Ye'll continuously be in my mouth. Our soul will
make her boast the Lord, the humble, share here that
of and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together. God bless each
of you that are joining us today on Facebook Live.

(00:20):
I'm Pastor Ronnie Hooks of the Word of Life John
one fourteen Church located in Troy, Alabama. Halen Lujah, And
the Word became flesh and we beheld as glory that
have they only be gotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth. And that is our endeavor to be
led of the Spirit, to impart into God's people the

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Word of God, the Word that is spirit, the Word
that is truth, the Word that will come alive in
you so you can be not just hearers of the Word,
but doers as well. God bless each of you that
are joining us from all across the country, and even
those that are listening to us on Hope Gospel Radio Station,
iHeart Radio Station and in Jamaica and in the UK

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that will are listening. We thank God for you are
a Facebook family. Hallelujah. We thank God for el Beth
el Betham. Yeah. I want to put a shout out
for them. They're doing their convention and today's Lady Greta's
birthday shout out to them. Right quick, let's have a
word of prey before we get ready to go into

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more than worship. Father, Thank you you said in all things,
give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.
So Lord, we thank you, and I give you brave
and I give you glory. I pray Lord that first
of all, that my heart is sincere, and my heart

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is not manufacturing a prayer, Lord, to just satisfy doing it,
but out of the fervency of the Christ that is
in me, hallelujah, and the need for our relationship to
You to flourish. I pray Lord that your will be

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done in my life and in the lives of these
your people. I pray that the Word finds a home
in every heart that hears, that they too can grow
thereby and their souls be saved. I pray Lord that

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not my will, but think will be done you this
vessel of clay, that you will be lifted up and magnified,
and the people's needs will be met. Hallelujah. We come
against principalities, powers and spiritual wickedness and high place. We
bind them right now because You've given us that authority.

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We bind them in the name of Jesus, hallelujah. And
we come against our the works of our own flesh,
our own distractions, our own corner on mine, own thoughts
and imagination that would take us away from hearing the
word of God m hm. And we become deceivers of

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our own selves. Forgive us Father for our sins, periade
us from my iniquities, and blow out our transgression for
us in thy Son Jesus' name, I do pray, Amen
and Amen hallelujah. I want to us stay up special
prayer right for my wife who is not feeling well

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on today, Sister Sandra Marie Hooks. I want to pray
for her, that the virtue of Jesus Christ continue to
flow in her body and heal her and deliver her.
Many of you have her seen me post on here
recently about her being a travel agent. Now, so give

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her a call. She can help you out. All right,
we wanted to talk about today. Let me give you
go to the Book of Acts. Go to the Book
of Acts. My mind is going back to childhood. Those

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of you who are tuning in and going back to
childhood and all the things that we used to get
into as children. And sometimes my parents would have to
get aggressive with us to get us to listen. They

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didn't mean no harm. A lot a lot of them
that I grew up with didn't mean no harm. But
that's why they dealt with things. They got a little
excuse me, aggressive with us, and they would say things
as if they were talking to a grown up. Not curse,

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but say things that if they were talking to a
grown up. One of the things that was said, I
can't remember. I don't remember if my mother ever said it,
but don't let me have to knock you out. Don't

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let me have to knock you out. And when I
was inquiring the Lord what to preach about, the title
he gave me is don't give it to you where
he gave it to me. He said, let God tell

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you your sin. Let God tell you your sin. And
I can see why that's important, because we don't naturally.
Coronal minds is the enemy of God, and we can't
do the deeds of the work of God because it's

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a direct enemy to God is love, God is truth,
So our coronal mind whether you want to believe it
or not, is directly opposed to the truth, directly opposed
to the truth. And don't get into why. And that

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was the first under revealing of the title that he
gave me for the Today's and then he gave me
the rest of it on just a couple of days ago,
excuse me, just a couple of days ago. And it

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says don't get knocked down, don't get knocked down. In
quotation marks or in preferences, it says, let God tell
you your sin. Don't get knocked down. Let God tell you your sin.

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Don't get knocked down. Let God tell you your sin.
To keep doing what you to. Keep that in mind,
don't reference before I would listen to what I was
doing wrong in life thirty years thirty years a little
over thirty years ago, when I was in prison. God

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had to get my attention before I would listen to
him so he could tell me my sin. Let's get
let's go to our listen and make this little cluck
a lot clearer. Go to act Book of Acts, write
this down, or go down with me. Go to the

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Book of Acts. Y'all know we some stubborn people. We
want to do things our way, even though when we
know that's right, what's right. We want to say what
we want to say, even though we know that we
shouldn't say it. We want to think what we want

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to think, even though we know we shouldn't think it.
Why because life and death is in the power of
the tongue. Hey, man, y'all, don't have to say that.
Don't don't meet your devices. As a man thinketh so
is he. These are warnings to us. We know that Christians.

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I'm talking to the saints. Now, when you come into
the body of Christ, you have to we have to
learn how to keep ourselves. Toller Louiah, Act chapter nine.
We're gonna read the first seven first seven verses, and Saul,

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yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of
the Lord, went unto the high priests and desired of
him letters to Damascus to be to the synagogues, that

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if he found any of this way, whether they were
men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.
Talking about Christians bringing them bound to Jerusalem. So he
went to the priest high priests and got letters to

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go to Damascus and find Christians Halleujah verse three. And
as he journey he came near Damascus, and suddenly there
shined round about him, alight from heaven. And he fell

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to the earth and heard a voice saying, unto him, Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me? And he said, who art thou Lord?
And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.

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It is hard for THEE to kick against the pricks.
And he trembling and started, said, Lord, what wilt thou
have me to do? And the Lord said, unto him,
arise and go into the city, and it shall be

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told THEE what thou must do. And the men which
journeyed with him stood speachless, hearing a voice, but seeing
no man, don't get knocked down. Let God tell you yourself.

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As I was reading this, because God gave me the
scripture first, and then he gave me the title, I'm
looking back over my life. You know. There were times
in my life that I said, God, please help me

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deliver me from what I'm doing, from what I'm going through.
There are times when I needed God's attention, I needed
him to show up and do something about what I
would was doing to myself and to those that are
around me. I needed him too. I remember this that

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that one particular time before I started this journey of
my life, I was standing in the middle of the room.
I don't know, I guess it was right after sunrise.
The sun had just come up, and I'm getting ready
to go out and uh to do whatever. And I
looked up to heaven. I'm tired of myself. Right about now,

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I'm tired of myself. And I looked up to Heaven.
I said, God, save me. You said you was gonna
save me, thinking about when I was a child and
I got baptized in Jesus Christ. Is my accepting Jesus
Christ's Lord, my Lord, save me. Now. Some of you
all ain't understand us, and some of you don't even
believe that that God doesn't this way, but this way

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he did it with me. I got saved at the
age of between ten and twelve years old. I received you.
I knew what I was doing. I knew what I
was doing, but I did not show any signs. I
had no power to live, saying, up until that time,

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until I was about forty, had no power. And that
day when I asked God to save me. In other words,
come and make the change in me. That was the
day I got knocked off my horse. That was the
day I got knocked down because what had happened to

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me was I went out anyway. See, I didn't have
the power to resist what I felt like doing. I
just know that God was a savior. So I went out,
getting ready to go do what I was going to do.
And while I was walking down the street, I was

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approached by police officers that start questioning me. Well, one
thing that to another. I got arrested, never thinking about
the prayer I just prayed, never thinking about it, and

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I'm pleading with the officer not to take me in
because I'm possibly looking at twenty the life because this
is my third time being caught and this is what's
going through my mind, but never thinking about what I
just prayed. And I tried to bargain with him and said, no,

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you should have thought about that before you made the
decisions you made, did the things you did. So I
got taken down. Never thought about that. Long story short,
it was in that condition that I was met the Lord,

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the one that had saved me, and he completed the
process of filling me with the Holy Ghost so I
could start learning how to live the life that I
was yearning after. Now, mind you, I'm at least forty

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years old. I don't have one k I don't have
a retirement plan, I don't have a house, I don't
have a job to speak of. I don't have anything.
I got the background, don't get me wrong, I got

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the background, all the things that it would have that
it it would take for a person to gain those things,
But those things were not working for me. School, college, military,
It weren't working for me. And don't forget the prayer.

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I hadn't thought about it. I hadn't forget. I still
hadn't thought about that prayer. But none of those things
are working for me. Now now I'm to my lowest point.
In any age. They would say, you have to you
have to hit the rock bottom. Why is that my
rock bottom? I'm tired of myself, tired of the decisions

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that I'm making going forward. One of the things that
come up to my mind that all of us do
is well, I'm not the only one, right. We try
to still blame on other people, you know, we try
to blame people for why we make the decision that

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we make or why we do what we do are
Their lifestyle has the ability to rule my decision making
only if you let it. I went that route too,

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But ultimately it was the knocking me down that brought
me to my senses, or brought me to the awareness
that's a better word. Brought me to the awareness of

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God that I had played to the God that saved me.
I said, God, you said you are going to save me.
The Bible said this, if you confess with to mouth
the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

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Thou shalt be saved. Reading for yourself Romans ten ninety ten. Okay,
not realizing that in order to get the things that
God had planned for me, I had to go through
that process of denying myself. And many times we won't

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deny ourselves. Paul said this in Romans chapter eight. He said,
for the call of mind is the enemy of God,
need indeed, will it do the will of God. In
the chapter before that, he states that the things that
I want to do I don't do. But the things

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that I don't want to do is what I end
up doing. Anyway, So who's gonna save me from this
body of death? He realized that there was something going
on within him that he had no control over. Hallelah.
Sometimes God got to knock you off your hollowly, knock

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you down color lo love to God. And it was
in that, in that state of humility, realizing that there's
nothing that he could do about being delivered from that

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that behavior apart from Christ. He states in the last
verse he said, I will serve God in my mind
with the law of Christ my flesh to low sin.
And then he says the second verse of Romans eight,

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he says, the spirit of life that is in Christ
has made me free from the loss in death. The
spirit of life, Jesus is the embodiment of God's love.
Jesus is the embodyment of God's love. He is the

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Word that was made flesh. He is the truth. Hallelujah.
And only the truth will make you free. In that
same chapter seven, Paul talks about the law, and he questions,

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he said, have the law come to kill me? God forbid?
But through the Law gave me an avenue to see
for I was wrong. Let God tell you your sin.

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Thou shall not steal. Thou should not commit adulphriy. Thou
should not phonicate. Thou should have no other God before me.
Thou shalt not come. It all right, The thing come
as much when we allow the Holy Spirit to come

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into our lives. And then it's to our heart and
teach us after we've been knocked down a peg or two,
and tell us and show you who you really are.
You might think that I'm the best thing since Madre

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I smell, I'll come, I'll go, I spread on bread,
smooth as oil. But in reality, But in reality, my
heart is corrupt, evil. The motives of my heart are evil,

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even from my youth, is what God told Moses. Man's
heart is evil, even from his youth. Hallelujah. Except I
had not. If I had not, and that was by

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the grace of God, prayed to him that morning, h
ask him to save me. Lord knows where I would be.
He began to show me my sin, just like here

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in verse and verse nine and verse four of actions nine.
And he said, and he fell to the earth and
heard a voice saying, unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecuted
thou me? Saul did not know that he was doing

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wrong until he heard the voice of Jesus speak to him.
He did not He did not did that did not
have compassion for Joseph for life at all, because he

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thought he was doing will of God. Hallelujah. And he said,
who are without Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus.
Boom thou persecutors. Now my conversation was a little bit

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different being locked up. Mine was this. This was my
conversation when I knew that there was a possibility of
me doing life imprisonment. I said, well, Lord, I got
sober and got all that stuff. Been there for a
little while. I thought I could handle things for a

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little bit. I said, well, Lord, let me out so
I can take care of some business. And then before
I do this, for I go and do this. I
kept asking that, knowing God showed me. Let the Lord
tell you about yourself. In an open vision, I seen

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myself walking down the street headed to my parents' house,
headed home. All I had to do is make a
right turn to go to my parents' house would have
been home. In that vision. I got right there to

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the corner, could have made a right but I made
a left turn to go to someplace that I didn't
need to go, and I immediately, when I see myself
in that vision, make a left turn. I said, no, no, Lord,
that's not what I want to do. Don't you know
that sain is bound in the flesh. When you would

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go do it, when you would do good, evil as
present with you. I said, Lord, that's not what I
want to do. That's not what I want to do.
And I told him then, I said, I see now
that there's nothing good in me. My flesh wanted to

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kill me. I seen what Paul was talking about the
chapter seven of Romans. I can see it in me.
I could not trust me. So I've learned to be
content in the state I was in, sitting at the

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feet of Jesus, to be learned to be taught the
word of God. Now you might be saying, well, that's
not my story. Well listen, Romans three twenty one through
twenty three says this. But now the righteous the righteousness

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of God without the law, is manifest being witnessed by
the law of the prophets, even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all, unto all,
and upon all them that believe. For there is no

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difference for all that sin and comes short the glory
of God. In other words, let me read it in
another way. It says this now the way to receive
God's approval has been made plain in a way other
than by the laws and the scripture. Moses teachings, and

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the prophets tell us everyone who believes has God's approval
through faith in Jesus Christ. That's why he says that
we should confess the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in
your heart and God thu shall be saved. There is
no difference between any of us, Greets, you make no difference.

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Anyone can ask Jesus. And that's what I did that morning.
I asked him to help me. I wanted to be
saved because all people have sin and falling short of
the glory of God. There's no difference. Not one of
us is exempt from this. So if I think or

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so many running too, someone that thinks that they are
a little bit better than you, and they have not
done this or that or that or this, don't get
angry with them. Pray for him. They don't realize yet
that all have sin and comes short of the glory
of God. But Christ, But for Christ's sake, we are sin,

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we are cleansed. Excuse me, we are delivered, We're made free.
Listen why. Romans five nineteen through twenty one says this,

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for a boy one man's one man's disobedience, many were
made sinners. Talking about Adam one man disobedience, many were
made sinners. So by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous talking about Jesus his obedience, jesus obedience,

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Adam's disobedience. More Over, the law entered that the offense
might abound once you know that there is sin in
your life. It will abound now because you know it's sin,
because how to be delivered from it you don't have

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it those who are new converts. It will abound. It
will get greater now you're aware of it. Now you
wild up within yourself like I did a hatred. I
don't want to be this way anymore. I don't want
to act like this money anymore. I don't want to

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think like this anymore. I don't want to talk like
this anymore. I don't want to walk in those ways anymore.
I want to be delivered. Once you come into agreement
with God, hallelujah. Sin becomes so sinful hallelujah in your

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life that you get tired of it. He says that
as sin has reigned unto death, hallelujah, even so might
grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life. By Jesus Christ,
our Lord, by your obedience to every word that comes

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out of the mouth of God. Sometimes you got to get
knocked down before you allow God to show you your sin.
Sometimes God has to knock you flat down. We have

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the tendency to be stubborn self and we are self
willed without God. Don't What I mean by self will
is that that spirit of death that's in you makes
you cater to yourself, not realizing that it's the lie
that you're living by, not realizing that you're following after

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the dictates of the mannerism of Satan, and you think
it's you, it's the devil in you. Hallelujah. But through
grace and the mercy of God, God has shown forth

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his son Jesus to Christ, who demonstrated righteousness before us
and said this. When he went on the cross, he said,
it's finished, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.
Anyone who calls up on the name of Jesus shall

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be saved. Anyone. It's just that simple, for by grace,
always saved through faith, And it's a gift from God.
Can't any of us boast. Can't boast about it. It's
a gift from God. Sometimes while you're looking up, you

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feel like you've been knock down, you're in your hardest times,
and nothing seems like it's going to No one seem
like it's going to save you. And it just seemed
like nothing uh doing right. It might just be God,

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get your attention. You might want to do like Samuel
Eli told Samuel, Eli went to Samuel went to Eli
after awakening, he thought Samuel he thought Eli called him.
Eli said no, it wasn't me. Say go back to bed.

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Samuel heard a voice again as a child. He went
back to Eli. Did you call me? Said no? He said,
what did you say? And he told him what the
voice said? And Eli told him the next time you
hear that void, say yes, Lord, what would you have

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me to do? That's what Saul said, What would you
have me to do? Lord? What would you have me
to do? Instead of looking up complaining about the situation
that you're in, ask God what would he have you
to do. Let's pray. Father, it's in thy son Jesus name.

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We do prayer. We thank you, Lord. We understand that
the world was framed by your word, and that your
ways are not our ways. Need all your thoughts, our thoughts,
but hide the heaven is from the earth soil ways yours.
There's much in us, Lord that is not pleasing to you.

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But Lord, we we we have within us a force
that cannot be denied, and it cannot be dealt with
properly except we receive Jesus Christ into our hearts, and
as Lord, not just Savior. As Lord, being the supreme Master,

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teaches us. And by the streets of truth, you guide
us so that we be made free from the bondage
of sin and death. That was to recognize ourselves the
way we really are. And Lord, if it takes knocking

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us down, knock us down. Don't let us die and
go to a devil's hell. Don't let us continue to
desire to live in sin to gratify the desires of
the flesh. Save us home today. Lord, deliver us, no

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matter who we are, for all that sin, it comes
short of the glory of God and thank you to
give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Now, those
of you for not saved, to want to be saved.
Romans ten ninety ten says that I'm mute. That says

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that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ,
and believe in your heart that God raising them from
the dead, thou shall be saved. If you want to
be saved, repeat after me, Father, forgive me. If I
have sin, it comes short of your Lord. I asked

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you to come into my heart and be my lord
as well as my savior. Hallelujah. I ask you to
forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Hallelujah. I
believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord. I believe that
he is the son of God. I believe that he

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died on the cross from my sins. I believe that
in three days after death, hallelujah, he was raised from
the dead by your spirit. And Lord, I need you
to give me your spirit that it should dwell in me.
In Jesus' name, I do pray. Amen and Amen. Now,

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if you believe in that prayer, and you believe that
Jesus come into your heart, you are now an heir
of God, a joint heir with Christ. And as you
go through life, you have the opportunity to call upon
Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and to help
you through your trials and tribulations to get through this life. Now,
I encourage you to get into a Bible a spirit church.

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You're welcome to join us. We're virtual church. We meet
on Sundays and Wednesdays and Thursdays in the evenings. I'm
available anytime you want to talk to me via email.
You can reach me on my website www dot pastor

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Ronniehooks dot com, or Facebook Ronnie Hooks or YouTube Pastor
Ronnie Hooks. You can reach me. You can also find
the schedules to our ministry when we're meeting and the
classes that we do have. Our Sunday School is in

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two parts, why so you can get an understanding Sunday
morning and Wednesday evening. We do Sunday School in two
parts that where we endeavor to help you to get
an understanding of what the world of God is talking
about so you can live a life free from sin. Hallelujah,
all right, we thank God for you masked God to

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bless you, to continue to bless you and keep you.
Hallelujah in the name of our Lord and saving Jesus Christ,
God bless you. Amen. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen Amen