The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries.

In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

Stir Up Your Hunger

Years ago when Jodi was a baby, my brother and I took our families to the beach. We ate a big breakfast before we left and we enjoyed ourselves so much that we never gave snack time a thought. We forgot that toddlers are like little puppies: you have to feed them a lot. Even if you fill them up at breakfast before a day at the beach, they need a snack an hour later and lunch after that. Because, lets face it, a fistful of sand just wont cut it! Well, the kids got hungry and because we were all spread out on the beach, Cathy and I didnt notice that Jodis little cousin, Michelle, had been given a piece of bread to snack on...but Jodi noticed it! She toddled over, saw a little piece of bread still hanging from Michelles mouth and decided to take a bite...of the bread and Michelles lip! Of course, Michelle started crying, Jodi looked shocked, and Cathy and I felt just terrible about not feeding Jodi. Every now and then I remember this story and it reminds me of the power of hungerits a driving force. Its an important part of life. It is a signal to get up, get moving, and get filled! If you dont listen to the signal, youll get irritated. My wife, Cathy, says that Im like a seagull when Im hungry. She says she feels like shes got to fling chunks of cheese at me just to keep me from squawking while shes trying to figure out what were really going to eat. Shes done with cooking. The woman says she was delivered from that bondage the day Jodi left home. Her cooking is picking a restaurant for me to drive to. Thats fine, but I need snacks.

My daddy was the same way. Mama would cook but she didnt want Daddy to touch any of it until it was on the table. So, he had to come into the kitchen and make small talk and wait for his opportunity. Sure enough, Mama would turn her back and Daddy would slip a chicken leg into his front pocket! Hey, a man has to do what a man has to do!

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

I Want to Be FULL
This world isnt easy and its not the time to shrink back. We need Jesus in our lives every day, not just on Sunday, and thats a fact! The more we commit to get into His presence and the more we connect with Him, the more we are going to accomplish on this planetfor our family, for our friends, and for the world. A hunger and thirst for righteousness should be our driving force because only Jesus can change our hearts and our circumstances. He has promised to never leave us empty if we will just get close to Him. And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain: and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him: And He opened His mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Matthew 5:1-6 Notice that Jesus never said that if we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we might be filled. No, Jesus said that we shall be filled. In other words, He doesnt want us to live in lack, or to be empty and deprived. We need the bread of life every day. We need the cup of righteousness every day. Every day we need to get full.

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

No Lack, No Irritation!
Full people are content people; hungry people are irritated people. Thats just the way it is! This same truth applies both to the physical and the spiritual. For years, people told me that I had to live in the ditch of lifebut that caused me nothing but irritation! They told me the devil could whip me anytime he felt like itbut that brought me nothing but irritation, too. I was not created to be smacked around by a lying devil from hell. I was created to have dominion, end of statement. When I read the Word, I found out that I dont have to live an empty and irritated life. This is good news to me because I dont want to go hungry. Sure, Ill do it to lose weight when I gain a few pounds, but if you think Im going to deprive my spirit-man, youre living in a dream world. Jesus said that if I seek, Ill findthats abundance, not lack. If I knock, the door is going to be openedthat means Im going somewhere with Jesus. Im not on the outside of His house. Im inside. Im with the Man! And Hes filling me up with Himself and His righteousness, day after day, as I am faithful to walk in His presence. Its a place of no lack, a place of no irritation!

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

The Empty Cup of Religion

Ive stopped fighting the devil. I learned a long time ago that I dont need to put on boxing gloves and go into the ring with SatanId have to take him out from under my feet to fight him. The Word says, ...Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). So, I resist him. But the reason Im able to resist is because Im not weak from depriving myself of Jesus. Im eating at the righteousness buffet and its good! You see, Ive learned that you cant quench your thirst by drinking from an empty cup. I tried that for years. I sought a sleek and satisfied religion. I tried it as a Catholic. I tried it as a Baptist. I tried as a Methodist. I tried it as an Assemblies of God. As a schoolboy, my friends used to ask, What religion are you? Id say, Pick one, man, Ive been there. I knew what it was like to eat the host of the Catholics and I knew what it was like to drink the juice of the Protestants. The Protestant churches gave you a chopped up Saltine cracker, but the Catholics gave you a host. You werent supposed to bite it because it represented the body of Christ, so everybody left church trying to get the thing unstuck from the roof of their mouth. When I got to the Protestant church, they gave me a cracker and a little cup of juice to drink with it. I thought it was wonderful! But I was confused. I didnt know God. It was all just tradition to me. Of course, it wasnt pleasant to realize that Id been seeking a sleek and satisfied religion. One day, I realized that I couldnt quench my thirst from that empty cup. Why? Because the churches I went to fed me religion, not Jesus, and religion is nothing but an empty cup. There is a vast difference between religion and meeting Jesus, the great I AM. He is God and He will fill youpressed down, shaken together, and running overuntil you hardly recognize yourself. I dont look anything like I did before I knew Christ. He has changed me from the inside out!

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

Good and Going to Hell

I know a lot of people that hunger and thirst after goodness. They have a form of godliness, but thats a far cry from righteousness. A lot of very good people will split hell wide open. Before I got saved, I couldnt understand Cathys need for God. I said, Cathy, youre a good person. Youre a good girl. You dont drink. You dont smoke dope. Youre good. Jesse, she said, I wasnt going to hell for any of those reasons and neither are you. I was going to hell for rejecting Jesus. You arent going to hell for drinking, smoking dope, or snorting cocaine, because He forgave those things before you ever committed them. Youll go to hell for rejecting Jesus. Thats the only reason anyone will go there. Sin cant make it into Heaven. Thats why we need Jesus. Hes the only One Who can make us righteous. When we accept His sacrifice and recognize Him as our Savior, God draws on the blood of Jesus and uses it to wash our sins awaywe become righteous and clean before Him. But, unless you die the second after you say the sinners prayer, youre going to need to keep developing your relationship with Jesus because theres a lot of dirt in this world. Youre going to have to walk around the dirt, through the dirt, and over the dirtand nothing shakes off the effects of living in a sin-sick world like being in the presence of pure righteousness.

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

Dont Let Your Cup Run Dry

When you continue to hunger and thirst for righteousness, its NOT because you need to get saved over and over, its because you flat out enjoy Jesus. You know that you need Him and you dont want your cup to run dry. You want it to overflow with all the blessings of the new covenant. Jesus removes burdens. Jesus brings peace, joy, and an innersatisfaction. He is not only our Savior and Lord, but He is also our Friend. The more time you spend in His presence, the more you think like Him and see things His way. You start to see Him as your Provider, your Healer, and your Counselor in all things. After a while, youre so in tune with righteousness (with whats right) that you have a hard time sinning. Temptations arise, but because youve disciplined yourself to get full, you can resist it. Im not saying it becomes effortless, but it gets pretty close! The more you sow to the spirit, the more your spirit will take precedence over your natural, carnal flesh. You see, nobody ends up in full-blown sin unless theyve been drinking from an empty cup for a whileand thats true whether you just got saved or youre behind a pulpit every week. You may be a Christian, but you might be spending more time with Chris than Christ. Dont do that! Youve heard me say it before: Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and charge you more than you want to pay. It will seem like nothing in the beginning, but, in the end, itll take everything youve got. How can it happen to a religious person? Simple: Religion doesnt convict your heart of sin; the Holy Spirit does that. But, if a Christian stops talking to Jesus, theyre going to come up dry at some point. I dont care who they are, if they let their hunger and thirst for righteousness dry up, theyre going to start feeling empty inside, and thats a fact. Theyll start living in the flesh, instead of crucifying the flesh. Theyll let their mind run wild, and temptation will get harder to resist because being carnal has become normal to them. They may even get to the point of negotiating the Holy Scripture in order to justify their flesh. Theyll make it go from black and white to their own personal shade of gray. Thats empty-cup living, man! Thats living on the fence: appeasing the flesh while maintaining the appearance of righteousness. Theres only one way to go if a person stays in that situation too long, and thats down.

Thats one fall thats no fun at all. The devil is a thief. If you want to grow and excel in life, start getting more tuned in to the subtle ways that he deceives people. The wiser you are to his ways and the more you rely on an everyday habit of drawing on the righteousness of Christ, the better your life will be. Youll avoid the pitfalls of sin and go to a higher place in life.

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

Only Jesus Can Make You FULL

One of the lies that Satan tells believers is that they cant really get full just by being in the presence of the Lord. He tries to tell us that we need something else and that well never be full without whatever it is that hes sellingbut hes a liar and hes empty. The devil is spiritually dead so all he can offer you is something based on the carnal flesh. He promises satisfaction, but you cant trust his advertising. What he dangles in front of your eyes wont satisfy you. I dont care how much you eat, drink, or drug yourself up; youll still feel hungry, depressed, and bored. Why? Because its all an empty cup. You can sleep with every man or woman you know and youll still end up feeling unloved, undesired, and unexcited because its an empty cup. You can dive headlong into work and make more money than you ever dreamed of, but youll still end up feeling like its not enough, like you need more, and that something is just plain missing because its empty. Every trapping of life will leave you empty because you cant fix a spiritual hunger with a physical habit. Its impossible. Bad habits dont fix anything. They just distract you from seeing the truth. What you need is more of Jesus. You are hungry for His presence and dont even realize it. If you keep trying to fix a spiritual need with a physical habit, youre just throwing yourself down deeper in the hole. The devil is a liar. If you want the lowest aim in life, set your sights on him. Thats as low as it gets! Hunger for Jesuswhich is pure righteousnessand you will get full. Make Him a habit and Hell cancel out the bad habits. You wont find yourself looking for another woman or another manor another drug, or another sandwich. Instead, youll be looking for another nugget of Gods truth something that is satisfying to your soul and not just your physical body. Instead of wasting time thinking about your past, youll start thinking and talking about your future in Christ. You start living forward by stirring up your hunger for more of God. Colossians 3:2 says, Set your affection on things above, not on things on the Earth. Why arent we to set our affections on Earth? Because everything on Earth is going to perish...it will pass away. Thats why I stir up my hunger. I stir up my thirst. I intend to complete my destiny! People think that I just naturally want to go to church all the time, but theyre wrong. I dont have a supernatural infusion of spiritual hunger any more than you do. Just like you, I have to stir up my own hunger and thirst. There are times when I want to stay at home. There are times I want to call the pastor where Im scheduled to preach and say, Put on a DVD. Im staying home. But feelings have nothing to do with itnot for me, and not for you.

Tomorrow when you wake up, you may not feel married, but you are. You may not feel like going to work, but you do. You cant go by your feelings in any area of life. If you do, you wont make it. Youll try and that wont work. Trying never gets anything done; youve got to do something. Youve got to stir up your hunger. If you starve yourself spiritually, youll go into survival-mode and youll stop noticing those hunger signals. Its like fasting: The first few days are rough, but after that, the hunger signals seem to shut down for a while. Yet, youre shrinking away all the while and your body is in a state of deficitits surviving. But if you go too long, your body will literally give out because it was created to be filled.

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

God Will Do the Work

Ive heard people say, You know how God is. Sometimes He does, and sometimes He doesnt. Thats an insult to the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says you can ask anything of the Father. Which are you going to believe, religion or God? Religion says, Lets not get carried away with this. Lets ask for little. Those people are living on Christian fifteen-calorie bouillon cubes when they could be eating filet mignon! Why do some people expect so little of God? Its because they expect Him to deal with them according to their performanceand they know how they perform even if no one else knows. But God doesnt deal with us according to our performance so much as He deals with us according to His promises. All we have to do is draw closer to Him, get in His presence, and let His righteousness flow through us and work for us. He does the work! We just have to spend the time. We have to stir up our hunger and thirst. He does the rest because He does the filling. The blessings of God come when He finds someone who will seek to believe Him and obey Him. Thats why He said, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. People are always asking me why Im so blessed. Ill tell you why. It isnt because of my performance. Its because God looks in my heart and sees that Im seeking to obey Him. Im hungry and thirsty for righteousness. When anyone seeks, obeys, and believes, they will be blessed by God. Its a promise from God.

The following article is taken from the September 2012 publication "Voice of the Covenant" - Jesse Duplantis Ministries. In my ever, ongoing task to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD

When Nothing Excites You... Run to Jesus

Ive heard people say, Ive seen it all. Nothing excites me. Thats a slow jog on an easy road. Those are the words of a person who has lost his hunger. We are called to run the race that is set before us and we need spiritual strength to do it. The Apostle Paul was a powerhouse for God. He said, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14). He was 60 years old when he said that and still going strong. People stoned him, he was drowned, starved, frozen, and snake bitten, but he just wouldnt quit. In those tough times, Paul said, But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24). How could he be so focused? How could he do so much for God? Because he remained hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Christ was faithful to keep His promise and keep Paul full and strong, even through persecution. When he fulfilled his destiny, Paul said a wonderful thing: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, (2 Timothy 4:7). You are on a course in this life. If you want to excel in life, get thirsty. If you want to go higher in life, get hungry. God has prepared a full buffet of His best for you! Be determined to stir up your hunger and stay full so you can finish your course with joy!

Receive the TRUTH and be FREE

John 14:6 says I am the way, the truth, and the Life: no man cometh to the Father, but by Me. If you dont know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the Greatest FRIEND youll ever have. Simply open up your heart to Him, and Heaven and all of Gods amazing promises are yours. If you are ready, pray this prayer now. Open your heart and let these simple words be your guide. When you say these words and believe them with your heart, you will be born again Jesus, come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. I ask you to cleanse my heart and make me a new person in You right now. I believe that You are the Son of God and that You were sent by the Father to die on the cross for me. Jesus, I want to thank You for loving me enough to die for me. I accept all that Your shed blood bought for me on the cross and I receive You as my Savior and Lord. Amen. If you just prayed this prayer, congratulations! You are a new creature in Christ and, as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new. Friend, you have a brand new victorious life with Jesus to look forward to and a whole new relationship with the living, breathing, creating, omniscient, omnipresent God of the Universe, starting right now. Please let us know of your decision to follow Christ and we will send you a free booklet, Understanding Salvation, to help you begin your new life as a believer. You can use the order form that came with this magazine or email us at prayer@jdm.org. Remember, Christ is thinking good things about you and He wants the best for your life!