The Truth Church

The minister teaches from 1 Timothy 2:1-4 and Luke 18:10-14, arguing that not all prayer is equal and that some prayers accomplish nothing. He contrasts the Pharisee's self-righteous prayer—thanking God he is not like others—with the tax collector's humble plea, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' which Jesus says resulted in justification. The minister stresses that empty, vain repetitions (Matthew 6:7) are ineffective; God is not impressed by wordiness or length. He focuses on James 5:16, breaking down 'effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man.' 'Effectual' comes from the Greek word for energy, meaning active, efficient, and producing results with minimum wasted effort. 'Fervent' means boiling hot, earnest, and impassioned—not lukewarm or generic. The prayer must come from a 'righteous' person, not perfect but one whose character is equitable, holy, and who repents when wrong, as David did. The word 'availeth' means to have force, to prevail, to be of advantage. The minister amplifies the verse: the powerfully mighty and efficient prayer, arising from extreme passion and earnest zeal of an individual conforming to God's standard, has forceful ability to sufficiently prevail. He concludes by urging believers to learn how to pray properly, not just to spend time or say words, but to move heaven and see answers, emphasizing that a life of consistent righteousness and genuine repentance makes prayer effective.

Pastor Hilton opens with Isaiah 59:19, declaring that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard. He uses Revelation 12:1-4 to illustrate that the church is like a woman travailing in birth, ready to deliver what God has promised. The enemy, depicted as a great red dragon, stands ready to devour the child as soon as it is born—meaning Satan seeks to destroy the spiritual promises and revival God is bringing forth. The preacher warns that the enemy uses intimidation, fear, and lies to overwhelm believers, but God has prepared a place of refuge in the wilderness for His church. Drawing from his own experience riding a dirt bike up a mountain trail in a flash flood, Pastor Hilton emphasizes the urgency of pressing forward without looking back. He references Daniel 10 and Job to show that God sets boundaries on the enemy and that prayer battles are won through determination. The sermon climaxes with the call for revival as the standard raised against oppression. The congregation is urged to come to the altar not hoping or begging, but believing, and to strengthen one another in prayer, because God's anointing destroys every yoke and gives believers wings to soar above the floods of the enemy.

Bishop Riggen teaches from 1 Corinthians 12:1, continuing a series on spiritual gifts, emphasizing that believers must not be ignorant of them. He reviews the nine gifts: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, diverse kinds of tongues, and interpretation of tongues, grouped into three categories. The gifts of revelation provide the divine ability to know what God knows; the gifts of power provide the ability to act as God acts; the gifts of inspiration provide the ability to say what God says. Tonight he focuses on the gifts of power: faith, gifts of healing, and working of miracles. He clarifies that the gift of faith differs from saving faith — it is a momentary divine impartation to trust God in a crisis, even when all natural hope is gone, using the example of Paul on the storm-tossed ship and his own youthful illness. The gifts of healing are plural because healing comes through many channels: laying on of hands, anointing with oil, prayer cloths, even shadows. Working of miracles involves a divine interruption of the natural order — miracles can be protective, provisional, or even negative (like Ananias' death or Elymas' blindness), but always for the edification of the church. He warns against seeking miracles for ego; God permits some infirmities (like Paul's thorn) to keep the vessel humble. The spiritual purpose is that the church must earnestly desire these gifts for building up the body of Christ.

Reverend Riley preaches from Jeremiah 31:12 and Isaiah 5:1-2, calling the church to focus on the field—the local congregation—as a cultivated garden where God produces souls. He contrasts the barren, cursed wilderness of the world with God's fruitful hill, which is fenced, stoned, and planted with choice vines. Using his father's garden as an illustration, he stresses that before harvest there must be plowing, breaking up the fallow ground, removing stones and weeds—especially roots of bitterness. After preparation comes planting seed intentionally, not haphazardly. Then comes watering, weeding, and protecting the crop from pests, worms, and locusts. He applies this to soul winning: the harvest of souls grows inside the church, not by rushing into the world unprepared. The preacher warns against complacency, deadness, gossip, and a critical spirit that can torch the field. He urges commitment to work in the garden—to protect, water, and reap what God has planted. He reminds that God keeps the vineyard night and day and waters it every moment. The sermon calls for workers who will consecrate themselves, follow pastoral leadership, and be ready to see revival break out as souls are won and the church becomes a well-watered garden.

The minister uses Jeremiah 2:13 to frame his message, contrasting the fountain of living water (God) with broken cisterns that hold no water. He illustrates this with a childhood memory of carrying water in a leaky bucket to feed livestock. Similarly, believers often receive the Holy Ghost and spiritual victory, only to let it 'leak out' through neglect, sin, bad attitudes, or unresolved hurt. The core teaching is that many Pentecostal Christians come to church, get filled, but then lose their joy, peace, and anointing before the next service because their spiritual 'bucket' has holes. The minister urges self-examination to identify what is draining spiritual vitality—pride, bitterness, criticism, or unconfessed sin. He emphasizes that the problem is not with the church, the gospel, or the pastor, but with the individual's leaky vessel. The remedy is not to find a new bucket (new religion, church, or fellowship) but to go back to the fountain of living water—Jesus Christ—and be refilled, renewed, and patched up through repentance, prayer, and genuine pursuit of the Holy Ghost. The spiritual purpose is to call believers to maintain a full, overflowing experience of the Holy Spirit, which naturally produces the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace) and authentic holiness, preventing the enemy from filling the emptiness with bitterness and sin. The altar call invites everyone to bring their leaky buckets to the well for a fresh infilling.