Our Guest Marc Lawson
Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah; his name is Pastor Mac Larson, Pastor of Northgate Church, in Woodstock, Georgia. He has reason to be red hot for the Messiah, he’s changed the paradyne of church as normal; it’s no longer looking at the back of someone’s head. It is doing the same works that Jesus has done and even greater. Marc you have a chapter in your book that we’re featuring this week, the title of the book is quite a title it’s called “It’s the End of the Church as We Know It.” And may it rest in peace, that’s not in the title I just added that. There’s a popular phrase, “What Would Jesus Do?” Well, if Jesus came to the church today what would He be doing? We want to do the same things.
Marc: Well, the Bible’s real clear Sid that we’re called to live and walk as He walked as it says in 1st John, that we are to walk. If we say that we know Him and we’re to walk as He walked and what He would have a show like Extreme Makeover, and fix up somebody’s home, or pass out Turkey’s or hand out water or. I think that if He’s on the streets right now, in the 21st century suburban America, or urban America, I don’t think that he’d hand out wristbands, give out sandwiches; even though feeding the hungry is important. Pass out cold water, I don’t think that He’d do that; I don’t think that He would necessarily demonstrate against having abortions; I don’t think that He would necessarily go on television; I don’t think that He would necessarily pass out tracks. Because everything that He said that He would do He said, you see me doing, John 5:19 He said, “Truly I say to you the Son can do nothing of Himself unless it’s something He sees the Father doing.” And what He saw the Father doing is He healed the sick, He raised the dead, He cast out demons, He preached to the poor and those that needed life, He released life to them. So His priorities were clear. What would He do today? It says in John 4:23 it says “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.” A lot of us when we think of good works we think well that means going downtown going to the shelter and helping people. Now I think that’s noble, I think that’s wonderful, and I think it’s awesome and it has a place too. I mean it’s common sense kindness to show kindness to people, but that’s not necessarily ministering, like Jesus said to do. Jesus when he saw a demonized person he cast the demon out of him. And He saw most of this happen in day to day life in the marketplace, He did see it in the synagogue a few times but most of His ministry happened on the way to other things. You can even look and see most of Jesus’ miracles and ministries happen on the way to something else; on the way to other event a miracle came His way. If you study in the scripture the time it says “And on the way,” you’ll see dozens of opportunities where Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead. There wasn’t a funeral that Jesus went to that He didn’t mess up. He stopped it!
Sid: You know in your book you say the church concentrates more on issues and diseases rather than sin and demons, comment.
Marc: Well, I mean there are some churches; and that what I’m saying it’s the way we do church and I’m speaking as one who’s put on thirty years in full time ministry. Twenty-eight full time, thirty years on the staff of a church, thirty-one years on the staff of a church and then pouring my life out in ministry. I’ve seen the paradigms and the charismatic world, and I’ve met thousands of pastors in my entire life ministry meetings, church meetings. I was invited to a meeting with a thousand pastors this morning on my email here in Atlanta. But we’ve been doing things, we’re just doing things and a lot of them are well intentions, but they’re just not Biblical. You know the Bible tells us to cast out diseases; to cast out demons, but we have support groups that prop up. We have cancer support groups; instead of healing people of cancer we have cancer support groups. I’m not saying it’s not good to get input from people that know things about that and are going then going through what you are going through, that’s what the purpose of that is. But I think a better way is to heal the diseases. All that energy and time to have that support group hey, why don’t we train people in healing the sick? And of course you have denominations that don’t believe God heals today. They believe He answers prayer, most of the denominations believe He answers prayer, but the Bible’s real clear, the body is to do this. Ezekiel 37 talks about that, that great army that’s being; it says “Can these bones live?” The Son of man talked to and you see this being taught to Ezekiel and says “You look at these bones and this valley and what do you see?” He said, “I said, I see that they are very dry.” And he said, “You prophesy to them that they will live; and he prophesied to them and they became exceedingly great army.” That’s what I feel like, this book hopefully will do. I feel like, one of the prophetic words I heard about this book was to wake up the church that we’re not dry bones and washed out dead religion. We’re called to raise the dead heal the sick, we’re called to change our culture. The church is to be the light of the world, the hope of the world, because we have Christ in us, and we have to retrain ourselves. What is the church for? We are to go and bring the Kingdom wherever we are. Now I have testimonies here, just testimony after testimony. Just the other night, here’s a good one, you’ll like to hear this a girl named Sarah, eighteen year old girl goes to a football game. When football season begins here we start sending people so we send numbers of people into twos, out like Jesus sent them out in Luke 10 He sent them out in twos. So we have this eighteen year old girl and another seventeen year old girl with her that they go to a football game. They see a girl with a brace or a cast on her, one of those snap on casts, and she’s not able to walk well. It was a gymnastics accident, she had entered gymnastics she’s about fourteen, she’s at the stands of the football game going on a bus. So this girl Sarah says, “We’ve seen a lot of success with this, can we pray for God to heal your injury with your foot there?” And she goes, “Yeah, you can pray for me.” She goes, “Well, what kind of pain level are you at?” She said, “In at a lot of pain, because I really hurt my leg here so I can’t do any gymnastics, I can’t do anything until it’s healed, they told me that it will be several weeks.” And so she said, “What is the pain level?” And the girl said, “Nine, nine of ten.” And the girl said “Well, let’s pray for it.” She said, “In Jesus name be healed, be command the pain to go.” So once they prayed they said, “Okay how do you feel now?” And she stands up and says, “I think I can move on it.” “Well, what’s the pain level?” “Well, it’s about a three.” So the pain’s nearly gone Sid. So she said, “Let us pray again.” They prayed again and they said “In Jesus Name all pain go, be healed.” She said, “See if you can walk on it now.” She walked on it; she goes, “There’s no pain at all.” She goes “Try taking off that cast. So she unsnaps the cast; walks all over the place and she goes “Wow, this is amazing, I’m healed.” She goes, “What happened, how did this happen?” She goes, “It was Jesus that healed you.” So she leaves them, the girl that just got healed, leaves and goes get’s her friends, she goes and leaves Sarah, and this other young lady from our church. The girl comes back with a number of her friends a dozen, two dozen friends. And they start praying for them and prophesying over them. Before it’s over Sid that one healing of the girl’s leg, and getting it out of that cast, produced kids getting born again! And when we get them born again at these things we tell them get on your knees, bow your knee and declare that Jesus is Lord and King of my life. And they did that, twelve kids at a football game here in suburban Woodstock just five days ago.
Sid: Do you find that the miracles are progressive? What I mean by that is the more people are out there praying for the sick in Wal-Marts, and the football games, or wherever the greater results they see?
Marc: Absolutely and the more we do it the more, the more skilled it is. We do have to learn how to break out of our comfort zones into boldness. But this girl Sarah has been doing this for four years, two to four times a week for four years. Our young people, this is what they do for fun; they do this because nothing is more exciting then to heal the sick, raise the dead, preach the gospel and get people saved; and changed and delivered. And so we love football season because we’re going to see…one year Sid a few years ago there was a football game, 600 people probably in the stands she and about twelve others in groups of two started preaching to people underneath the stands a few years ago; I think that it was about two or three years ago, and they literally emptied the stands of the kids there were so many kids down below getting prayed for by our team. We had eight of our team there and each of them had a line between twenty and fifty kids. And I’m not, I’m not exaggerating, this is evangelistically, and they had dozens and dozens of kids getting born again. This little girl named Aaron had eight big old football players from other teams in that area they were coming to watch that game that night. They got born again, I mean big old college boys submitting to a little girl whose probably 5’2” and she’s saying bow your knee and make Jesus King. They say the signs, they saw the miracles and they saw and heard the prophetic word and it so moved them. Listen everybody wants the power of God and I think if we can get God out of the church building proper only where He’s operating and get Him out in the streets in the highways.
Sid: How would you like Pastor Marc to pray for you and pray for you to have a Spirit of boldness and tell you what to do when you go out so you’ll start seeing results.
