Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophecy — Carter Conlon

I'd be seated here in the sanctuary and at home as well. Thank God for you taking a moment to be here with us during this time that we are together. Thank God for that. Remember, you can go to our website at itstimetopray .org and you'll be able to see all of the prayer requests that have come in from up to 211 countries throughout the world.

And you can also indicate if you wanna just pray for somebody, if perhaps a prayer request like this four-year-old child that is being oppressed by the enemy that you can just indicate, I'm gonna pray, we're gonna see the victory for this child.

And you can also be encouraged by the 16 plus thousand answers to prayer that have come in from around the world. And some of them are just astounding. And as you see how God is answering prayer, I know it will encourage you and it will build up your faith, praise God.

If somebody could bring me my glasses, I'd appreciate that. I can't see without them. And I suppose you'd probably prefer that I can't see if I'm gonna attempt to read my Bible here today. Thank you so much.

Praise God, thank you. Pastor Tim Delina spoke a tremendous message on Sunday morning and you really need to hear this. It's one of the messages that I think I'm gonna put a red flag on it and maybe every two or three months, listen to it again.

Because it's a message that spoke about leaving your first love and how to come back to that first love in Christ. And I've listened to it twice already and it really has stirred my heart. And I think I'm gonna carry on on the theme in some measure of that message on Sunday about if we come back or we come to that first love experience, what does that look like?

The Word of God as a Pathway to New Life

And where should it be taking us, taking you and I into the future? I wanna speak from Ezekiel chapter 37 today. If you have a Bible or any kind of advice where you can get the word of God, I'd like to speak from this particular chapter.

A message called Your Sons and Your Daughters Shall Prophesy. So Father, I thank you, God. Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for your word. Your word, God, that has the power to create and recreate life. Your word that shows a pathway through darkness.

Your word that quickens us if we will allow your spirit to make it real inside of us and makes us into a new creation. Your word, Lord, that brings glory to who you are through these earthen vessels as you choose to indwell us by your Holy Spirit and change us as we behold the victory of Christ from image to image and glory to glory even as by the spirit of our God.

So Lord, thank you for the ability to unlock your word today. Help me to make it simple so that people listening can understand it. And God Almighty, we can grow in grace together, especially now at this time when so many are so desperate for truth.

And when darkness is coming in like a flood, you promised you would raise a standard against it. So God, we take you at your word and we yield our bodies to be part of the standard that you want to raise in this generation.

We recognize that you don't need our might, you don't need our intellect, you don't need anything we have. You simply require a heart that believes you. And God, you're willing to raise up your church, your people as a testimony of who you are.

Let it be today. Grant to me, my God, that I may speak this word in a way that honors you. Help me, Lord, in my frailty. Override the frailty of my natural mind and give me your heart and give me your thought.

And I ask it in Jesus' name, amen. I was looking this week. Oh, by the way, we're gonna have communion after this word today. So if you're at home, wherever you are around the world, I'd encourage you to get some bread and some juice so we can share together in communion with reminding ourselves that we are called into the victory of the Son of God to be the people that God has called us to be, not only for eternity, but also here in time.

Jesus himself said, I came to give you life, not just eternal life, but abundant life on this earth too as well, a life that has meaning and purpose. That's the promise of God to you, and we're gonna share that together in communion at the end of this message in about 20 minutes or so.

We got an answered prayer come in this week from Gothenburg, Gatenburg, Sweden. And it just says, thank you so much, Pastor Conlon, for your prophetic words to me. I drank coffee while reading my Bible and praying this morning at my kitchen table.

Now, I remember that call. Just where do you start? Just get up, just get up. Go to your kitchen table and start reading your Bible. And so the inference is I've done that. I'm starting to do that. So I wanna answer you in Sweden tonight and everyone else who has the same question in their heart, and the question is, where will this lead me?

If I make the choice to get up, if I make the choice to make time throughout my day to read the word of God and to trust God for a new life and a new future, what will that look like? Now, we're going to be looking at Ezekiel chapter 37, but before we go there, I want to just read to you from the prophet Joel in chapter two.

Joel’s Promise of Restoration and the Outpouring of the Spirit

And Joel is speaking about a day, a day in the nation of Israel, and a day, of course, that will affect the whole world. A day where God promises to restore things that have been taken away by darkness.

He said, I will restore to you the years the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust. In other words, everything that I, really, God says, I removed my restraining hand because of the casualness, in a sense, of his own people at a certain point in history towards him, and all of these things that are kept back by the presence of God are now allowed to come in and wreak havoc and destruction in their society.

And he said, but I'm going to restore to you these years. You're going to eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God. That's the song we just sang. It was dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be put to shame.

You will know that I am in the midst of Israel. I am the Lord your God, and there is no other, and he says it again, and my people shall never be put to shame. In other words, I will not make promises to you that I don't fulfill.

If you will go to your kitchen table, as this person in Sweden is doing, you begin to read the word of God and let me speak to you, and you start to move towards what I begin to speak to your heart, you will not be triumphed over.

You will not be put to shame. Your confidence in me, God is saying, will not be in vain. I'll be God to you. I will restore to you years that have been taken away from you, and where it seems like the enemy has come in like a devouring lion and he's been chewing up your heritage and your mind and your hope and your future, God says, you turn to me, I turn to you, and I promise you, you will not be put to shame.

Your enemies will never be able to say that he trusted in God or she trusted in God, and yet I was still able to triumph over him or her. And it will come to pass afterwards that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and on my menservants and on my maidservants, I will pour out of my spirit in those days.

Now, those days began on the day of Pentecost. That was the beginning, in a sense, of the end times, 2 ,000 years ago. Peter, the apostle, stood up on the day of Pentecost and said, this is that which God promised through the prophet Joel he was going to do.

120 formerly weakened people came out of an upper room, empowered through prayer and through listening to the instruction that God's son had given them, and they were now empowered by the spirit of God, and the sons and daughters, as it was, stepped out of that upper room and they began to prophesy.

Prophesying as Agreement with God’s Word

Now, a lot of people have taken that concept of prophesying and they've turned it into something it was never really meant to be. They start predicting weather patterns and such like things. And this is not the context of it.

In Joel 2 .28, when he speaks about prophesying, it means, literally, to come into agreement with what God is speaking. You remember Jesus Christ said, when the spirit of truth comes, he will take what is mine and show it to you and show you things to come.

I'm going to the cross, he was telling his disciples, I'm going to win a victory for you. I'm going to take your captivity captive. I'm going to redeem you. I'm going to bring you back into right relationship with God the Father, and I'm going to shower you with giftings, which really means supernatural things, things that you can't produce in any amount of your own strength.

I'm going to give these things to you, and you're going to become my people, and what I require of you is to turn to me with all your heart and begin to agree with what I speak to you. You see, this is what Joel says, your sons and daughters that were maybe under the threat of being devoured, or your families that ran into difficulty, they're going to step out and into agreement with what God is speaking.

That's exactly what happened on the day of Pentecost. These people stepped out, and they were speaking in the Greek, it says the megalious of God, which by definition means the anticipated outworking of the new inward presence of Christ in their lives.

They were speaking this in the spirit. My microphone not working? Oh, it sounds like it's working anyway, and listen, am I that loud? Does it sound like it's still working? All right. So they were speaking in agreement with what God was speaking.

When they stepped out of that upper room, he was showing them things to come, and they were speaking supernaturally about things that were to come into the future. Thank God for that. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy.

You know, I'm speaking to young people here in the sanctuary today, and that is your hope for the future, that God is going to speak to you about something he wants to do through your life. It's not something that you're necessarily capable of doing.

Most times, you're not capable of doing it in your own strength, but he begins to speak through you about what he's, to you about what he's going to do, and then you walk into agreement with him, and you start speaking in agreement with the word of God about what he says your future is going to be.

That's what happens to you who are reading your Bible in Sweden right now. The Lord will start speaking to you, and now on your part, you are required to start agreeing with him as he starts speaking to you, and you start saying things like, well, this is what I am, but this is what God says I'm going to be.

Remember, the apostle Peter says this is what you are, but this is what you will be, and every time Christ met somebody, quite often that context was in the conversation. You are this. He recognized that you're this, but this is what I'm telling you you're going to be.

On our part, it's to come into agreement with God. Yes, this is what I am, but this is what you're gonna turn me into. This is the kind of a person I'm going to be. This is where you're going to take me.

This is what you're going to do through my life. This is where my life is going to go in you and through you into the future. Now, in Ezekiel chapter 37, the scripture says, Ezekiel says, the hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones.

Then he caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and indeed, they were very dry. So here's Ezekiel, and the Lord brings him out, and he's actually looking at a nation, the nation of Israel.

Ezekiel’s Vision of Dry Bones and National Desolation

The people of that time had literally died around their religion. They had formed a religion. The religion had left them distant from God, and they literally died around their altars. And so suddenly, God brings a man of God that he's speaking to, and he's about to speak through, and he's looking at his own nation.

He's looking at his own people. They've died. The decay is so deep that now all that is left around their altars are their bones, and there's very, very many of them, and it's the type of a person that maybe you could say, my family history, my family died years ago.

My great-grandfather died. He became an alcoholic, and died, in a sense, in the hope of becoming anything in the future, and he passed it on to my father, and my father has said, that's what I'm gonna be, and other people have said that about me, and we're just all bones around whatever kind of religion we had, and we're very, very dry.

Then the Lord says to Ezekiel, can these bones live? And Ezekiel answers and says, well, God, you know. You know what you can do, and you know what you desire to do, and I don't know if they can live or not, but you know, and you'll reveal it.

Here's the context is, if you'll speak it to me, I'll agree with you. You know what you're going to do, and I don't presume upon you. And the Lord then said to him, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, oh, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones. Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you, and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live.

Then you shall know that I am the Lord. So God says, here's what I want you to do. I'm giving you my word, and I'm asking you now to prophesy. I'm asking you to speak what I'm speaking to you. I'm asking you to make a public declaration.

You make the declaration. I will speak to your heart, but I'm asking you to cooperate with me. See, this is what God looks for in us, as his people. He speaks to us in our time when we're in his word.

He speaks about things he wants to do. Now, we have a choice when he begins to speak. We either draw back into unbelief, or we stay at the point of just where Ezekiel says, well, God, you know, and we kind of just, we just draw back into a religiousness, but the root of it is unbelief, or we begin to speak what God is speaking.

Declaring God’s Promises over Impossible Circumstances

I don't know how this is gonna happen, but I know that God has spoken to me about something he's going to do. I know, see, this is what happened when the 120 came out of the upper room. They were speaking things that God had spoken to their hearts by the Holy Spirit that were going to happen into the future, and they were doing it with a power that could only come from God.

They were doing it with an assurance that only God could put in the heart. So Ezekiel simply came into agreement with God, and he said in verse seven, so I prophesied as I was commanded. I began to speak the things that God was speaking to me.

You can say, well, I'm a man, you can say I'm a man, I'm an unfaithful person, or I'm undisciplined, but God said he's gonna make me faithful, and you begin to confess that with your mouth. This is what God has promised me.

God has told me he's going to change that area of my life. God has told me he's gonna bring me out of the imprisonment of the torment in my mind or the thought patterns or whatever was handed down to me around these decaying altars that my family used to worship at, and I am now a new creation in Christ Jesus, and no matter what was handed down to me, I'm not living there anymore.

That's not governing my future, and God promises me through the prophet Joel I will not be ashamed, and so now I'm in agreement with God. This is what God says my life is going to be, so this is what it's going to be, and I'm going to stand in agreement with God.

He speaks about my home. He speaks about my family. He speaks about my future. He speaks about my influence, and I'm not going to draw back into unbelief because God promises me that I will not be triumphed over.

I'll not be triumphed over by any of these things that have been allowed to come in and try to devour my future, try to devour the future of others that could be had if I find him in the fullness of what he has for my life, so Ezekiel says, so I prophesied.

Now, you have to understand, he's standing before a valley of bones, and in the natural, it's insanity. These are just bones. They're not just dead. They're dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. They're not even together.

They're just scattered, these bones. You don't even know what bone belongs to who. You can't possibly humanly put this thing back together, but God says, it's not about you. It's not by your power. It's not by your might.

It's by my spirit, says the Lord. All I'm looking for is for you to agree with me. You start speaking what I speak. That's where the authority comes from to stand someday. Many of you are gonna be standing before crowds of people saying, this is what you are, but I'm telling you, by the word of God, this is what you will be.

I'm telling you, your prison doors can't hold you any longer. Your past experience cannot dictate your future. You will not be triumphed over as you choose to trust in the living God. So I prophesied as I was commanded.

And as I prophesied, there was a noise and suddenly a rattling and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them.

Calling upon the Holy Spirit for Resurrection Life

And it's the type of a person like you, tonight in Sweden, you start to read and hope starts coming back into your heart. And as I once did in the early years of my walk with God, when I began to read the promises of God and hear the preaching of the promises of God, I remember sitting on the edge of my chair thinking, could this be true?

Is this possible? And I began to speak the way God was speaking about me, not the way I felt about myself, not the way others had said I was. I began to speak about what I felt in my heart. God was speaking about me.

And as I began to prophesy, that's prophesying. It's talking about something that God's going to do. There's this sudden infusion of hope that wasn't there before. And that's where it always begins. We don't start at the end, we start at the beginning.

And hope comes into the heart, a hope that the scripture says that doesn't make us ashamed. And then he said to me again, verse nine, prophesy to the breath, prophesy son of man, say to the breath, which is the breath of God, the Holy Spirit as we know him today.

Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live. I remember standing on a killing field years ago in Jamaica that we were sent into by the spirit of God to break that spirit of poverty and violence over this community of 100 ,000, 100 unemployed people who lived off of drugs, drug trade, drug deals, and everything else.

An area of total, complete violence. And I remember the first or second night just stepping back from the pulpit and beginning to cry out to God, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, that this will never change by my preaching, there's no chance, but beginning to speak to them about what God wanted to do in each of their lives to break this spirit of poverty and violence in this community, and then stepping back and starting to call out to God.

And I actually prayed the way Ezekiel did because I had this in my mind as I prayed, and I said, oh, spirit of God, come and have mercy on these people. Breathe on these slain. Rows and rows and rows of people lining this 30-acre rectangular field that were too afraid to even come on the field because it was a place of violence.

There had been 800 murders in 30 years on that field. Probably very few charges, if any, convictions for the murders as well. And I remember calling out to God, and this sudden presence of God came. There's no other way to describe it, this sudden, I started weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping for the people.

Then the weeping began with the few that were gathered in the front of me. Then the weeping started spreading through the field, and it started going through the ranks, and it went back to the back of the 30 acres.

And even this guy that had a gun in his belt at the back, a violent person began weeping at the back. One of the ladies that was there told me, said he started crying and wiping his face so he was suddenly touched by the spirit of God.

And we saw the Holy Spirit come and touch an entire community. On that killing field today, there's a church and a playground. On what was a killing field, a place that was plowed down, and you couldn't cross that field unless you were prepared to die or wanted to kill somebody else on that place.

I've seen what God can do. And he said to Ezekiel, prophesied the breath. In other words, call upon the spirit of God. So as you begin to agree with the word of God tonight, then call out to the Holy Spirit of God.

Spirit of the living God, make this hope in my heart a reality. Make this word that you're speaking to me, my hope and my future. Govern my hope and govern my future by your presence, by your life. Give me divine life.

And so I prophesied as he commanded me. So this is the second time he prophesied. This time he's speaking to the spirit of God. Oh, Holy Spirit, I see a future. I see something that you're revealing to me about my life.

I see something that you wanna do that's gonna bring glory to your name. So I'm just saying, come, Holy Spirit. Come and do this work. I can't do it, but you can. And I believe you want to, and I see it for my future.

I see what you wanna do for my family. I see God, people coming out of captivity and darkness and bondage. I see a spiritual awakening. Ezekiel saw a spiritual awakening in a nation. It's what he saw.

I see it, my God, but I recognize that there's no amount of strategies that are ever gonna produce this. It's gotta be produced by you. And so he prophesies again, and he calls out to the breath of God.

And as he commanded me, I prophesied. And he said in verse 10, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and they stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

They indeed say, our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. I love the fact that God just simply found a man who walked in agreement with him, and working together and speaking together.

And as Ezekiel chose to believe God, the impossibility around him became possible. And he suddenly saw a nation arising before his eyes. It was a vision, of course, of the future. In his case, he saw something that God was about to do in the future, and that we will most likely live to see even more in our day.

Believing in Personal Resurrection and Sharing Deliverance

And then he said one more time, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel, and you will know that I am the Lord when I've opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up from your graves.

I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, and you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord. So Ezekiel has to believe in this sense.

It's a type of you and I, we first have to believe for ourselves. We have to believe for our own resurrection life. We have to believe that God's going to raise us up. We have to believe and experience the presence of God making his promises to us, each of us, a living reality in our lives, first in our hearts and then in our lives.

And then by God's grace, every one of us have the opportunity to stand and declare unto others as Ezekiel once did, God will open your grave too. God will do for you what he's done for me. God will bring, you will know he's God because he will open up your grave and he will bring you out and he will plant you in a place that is your own, a land that he has promised you through his son, Jesus Christ.

And you will know that I have done this for you and you will know that I am God, says the Lord, when I've turned back your captivity right before your eyes. And so this is our promise in this generation.

God's about to do something that only he can do. You can't do it, I can't do it, but God promises he's going to do it. And the promise for our time is that your sons and daughters shall prophesy. And so here in this sanctuary at Summit International School of Ministry, we have young people from all over the country and certain parts of the world who were able to get visas during this COVID time.

And so this is for you in our time. We're living in a moment in America, for example, where America is dying around its religion and our hope is being lost and bones are being scattered everywhere. Where families are being destroyed.

People don't see a way forward. Mines are being devoured by the locusts and the canker worm and such things like this. But you are going to be this generation that will prophesy one more time. You will simply start walking in agreement with God.

It will start with you. It will start with what God's going to do through your life and he simply says, I want you to agree with what I speak to you and then call out for the Holy Spirit. And when you have fully experienced my delivering power and my keeping power, then tell others that what I've done for you, I will do for them too as well.

This is your promise. And for you who are in Sweden tonight, this is what God's going to do. You keep getting up, you keep going to your table, you keep drinking your coffee and you keep reading your Bible.

And as you do, God will start speaking to you and then he will ask you to start agreeing with him. Say, you talk about yourself the way I'm talking about you, not the way you have spoken about yourself in the past or the way others speak about you, but you start calling yourself the things that I call you.

If I have called you clean, you don't have the right to call yourself common or unclean anymore. You start speaking the things that I speak. If I've said you're free, don't call yourself bound any longer.

I've broken the bonds of everything that can hold you back and you have the right to walk out of your captivity into total freedom. Call out to the Holy Spirit. Call out to the Holy Spirit. Do it now.

Do it, people that are listening online this evening, start calling out to the Holy Spirit. Call out to the Spirit of God and let God begin to do in your life what only God can do. This is a great hour to be alive.

It's a great hour to be part of the church of Jesus Christ. God is going to do something supernatural in this generation. It should not be marvelous in our eyes. We have the history. We have the word.

We have the promise and by God's grace, we'll now have the agreement to walk with him. Hallelujah and you watch what God's going to do. Remember the promise. My people will never be ashamed. So Father, thank you that as we prepare to go to the communion table this evening, we realize that we have been invited into an incredible victory.

Communion, Salvation, and the Victory of Christ

You died on a cross to bring us back into right relationship with God. Jesus Christ, you told us that if we would believe that we would be saved, that if we would confess you with our mouths, you would confess us before your Father who is in heaven.

So thank you, Lord God, for giving us the grace to understand and admit that we need you, giving us the grace to believe that you took our place and promised us eternal life. Thank you, almighty God, for all that you are doing and all that you're gonna do through every one of our lives in the future.

Give us the grace to prophesy and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. See you in just a moment or two. We'll be back and we'll have communion together.