ARE YOU WHERE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE OR WHERE YOU WANT TO BE?

The speaker shares a personal experience about how the Lord directed them to spend time with Him instead of pursuing their own plans. They discuss the importance of being where God wants us to be, rather than where we want to be. The speaker emphasizes the need for spending time with God, seeking His voice, and being prepared for spiritual warfare. They also mention some books on deliverance from demons and the power of prayer. The main message is to prioritize spending time with God and following His guidance in order to live a fulfilling and victorious life. Good morning, and this is Norman Goodman here. Today is May the 23rd, 2024, and I tell you, the Lord has been operating in such a way that, in my life, that is absolutely magnificent. Yesterday, I'm driving down the street, and the Lord is just, he's just working. He's just throwing all kinds of ideas in my head. He's just doing his thing. And, you know, and I'm just floored with the, I'm floored with the Holy Spirit. All right, and then he put on me today to do a podcast, and he wanted me to label this podcast, he wanted me to label it as, are you, are you where you're supposed to be, or are you where you want to be? And I was like, oh my goodness, Lord, are you where you're supposed to be, or are you where you want to be? One of those two things are going to give you peace. One's going to give you peace, and one's going to give you static, right? So, this morning, I'm just in my devotion with the Lord. I'm just talking to him for hours. I have, see, in my plan, I had planned to get up early in the morning, boom, and go out and do some gigging, right, because we have the marriage ministry tonight, and I wanted to get ahead of everything. But the Lord, when you get to talking to the Lord, all the plans that you plan go out the window, because what he wanted me was with him. He was like, no, I want you with me this morning, right? I take care of the rest of it. This is where you're supposed to be, not where you want to be. And I was like, he exactly demonstrated to me this morning on what he wanted from me and where I should be based off of the podcast that he wanted me to do for his kingdom today. So, I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and that was with him versus where my flesh wanted to be, and that was out there trying to make some money. So, I had to thank the Lord for that. That was, I mean, he's constantly hitting me with some revelations, man. He's constantly doing that. And so, I'm here to share those revelations with you. I'm here to, hopefully, that this podcast and encourage your walk with the Lord and helping to build up his kingdom before Jesus Christ returns for a second time. But it's this book here that I have, and I started, it's one book that I love. I had to fight to put it down. That was Pigs in the Parlor about deliverance from demons of possession and influences. And so, there's another book, Prayers that Ride Out with Demons and Break Curses. And there's a part of here I want to share with you, okay, because he has several parts of here. I haven't even really gotten really juicy in this book because just in the introduction was just unbelievable in the first couple of pages. But I'm going to read this to you, okay? The Word of God is a treasure chest of wisdom and knowledge. It contains an abundance of revelations for every believer. Every believer who desires to enjoy liberty and victory must take time to study the Word of God and ask for revelations. One of my favorite group of prayers in this section are those called revelations, the prayers for revelations. Peter, it says, when I began to pray these prayers, the results were dramatic. I began to see truth in the Word of God that I had never seen. Revelations is the key to authority. Peter received the keys of the kingdom after he received the revelation that Jesus was Christ, Matthew 16, 16. God has promised to make us joyful in his house of prayer, Isaiah 56, 7. God's house is called a house of prayer for all nations. I believe we should not only pray but also enjoy praying. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Prayer should yield an abundance of miracles and rewards. Those who enjoy the results of prayer will enjoy an exciting life. I mean, listen, this is kind of like piggybacking off the last podcast when I asked the question, when I talked about seeking the voice of God, seeking the voice of God. And this kind of, it's almost like a piggyback off of this. Where are we supposed to be? What does God want us every single day when we start our day off? He wants us with him. We cannot prepare ourselves for warfare and we are in a spiritual warfare if we don't spend time with him. If we're not putting on the helmet, right? Go to Ephesians 6, 10 through 12 and it tells you you're supposed to put on the helmet, the breastplate, the shield, your leg guards, and after you get all that on, the most important thing you take the sword and the sword represents what? The scripture, God's word, God himself. When you go out into the world, you go out in battle. So the Lord had put that on me this morning of, to do a podcast on where you should be. Where should you be? Are you where you should be or are you where you want to be? And here, I'm going to tell you how God works. So I go to the verse, my devotion. I go to the Bible app this morning and what's there? Proverbs 4, 14, enter not into the path of wicked, of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. I'm like, come on Lord. I said, you really drop that? This is what, I'm like, I just, I couldn't do nothing but laugh and praise him because he's saying, I told, this is what I want you to do. This is a podcast I want you to do. And then there it is, Proverbs 4, right here. Are you where you're supposed to be or are you where you want to be? So I'm going to, I'm going to read 13. I'm going to start with 13, Proverbs 4, 13. All right, and not 14 because I think this all ties in together and Proverbs 4, 13 begins like this. Take fast hold of instructions. Let her not go, keep her for she is thy life. 14, enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away. For they sleep not except they have done mischief and their sleep is taken away. Unless they cause some to fall, for they eat the bread of the wickedness of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the just is as a shining light that shines more and more until the perfect day. The way of the way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble. My son, attend to my words, incline thy ears unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine heart for they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh. Keep thine hearts with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a forward mouth and perverse lips. Put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on and let thy eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor the left. Remove thy feet foot from evil. Again, the question is, are you where you supposed to be? Are you where you want to be? See, because the flesh wants to be where we think we're going to have fun. You know, we're going to be entertained. You know, are we getting up in the morning and spending time with God? Like I said in the last podcast? Are we getting up in just enough time to get to work? In just enough time to get to work, right? Is that what we're doing? And then when we get out into the world, we're not prepared for the battles. Every little thing causes us to get agitated, right? Every little thing. Somebody ask you a question, you get agitated. Somebody look at you the wrong way, you get agitated. But you call yourself a Christian. How can that be? Because you did not put on the helmet. You did not put on your shield. You did not put on the breastplates. You did not put any, and you did not take the salt with you first thing in the morning. You didn't spend any time with God. See, when we are going into places that we're not supposed to be, the Holy Spirit is going to tell you, don't go over there. Don't go hang out at that person's house. Don't watch that program. Don't listen to that music. But see, we have a tendency to ignore what God has asked us, or we don't recognize his voice because we didn't seek him out. That's, I think, is the issue with a lot of Christians. We know unbelievers don't know God's voice because they don't spend any time with him. But as a believer, to people who profess to be Christians and believers that don't know his voice, that is a shame. Because then that means that we're not spending time with God. We keep thinking, if we watch a Christian program on television, or we listen to some Christian music, that that's suffice. That's good enough. That's not what the scripture tells us. It says meditate on the word day and night. Right? That your adversary is like a lion seeking to destroy. I know I'm pounding this. I know I'm kind of repeating myself and forgive me for that because I have a tendency to repeat myself. My wife tells me that all the time. But we're called to evangelize and to help each other through our walk with God. The enemy is always sitting out there waiting for you to come out unprepared. Always. Always come out there to come prepared. And we have to be prepared. We have to be floored with the Holy Spirit and we cannot allow anything to come in in the path of us floored with the Holy Spirit. Right? We can't let anybody bring any negative energy to us. When would that negative energy come? We have to rebuke those that principalities because Ephesians 6, 12 tell us that we're dealing with principalities and we have to remove ourselves from the environment. We have to be what we supposed to be what God requires us to be. As a husband, I am married to Annette Rosado Goodman. Right? She's married to Norman Raff Goodman Jr. I am required to be at a place that she expects for me to be. Right? And not to be at a place that I'm not supposed to be and vice versa. Because why? Because my responsibility is to protect my marriage and to protect my wife when she's not in my presence. Protect her honor when she's not in my presence. Right? By being in a place I'm supposed to be by doing the things I supposed to. Right? But by associating myself with people that's like-minded, that's going in the same direction and that's encouraging me to continue my walk with the Lord. I cannot associate with people that are fornicators, liars, that's watching porn, that's in the homosexuality or support homosexuality. I can't be with people that don't around environments that that's not biblical. That's not folks that has that doesn't have a biblical worldview because the enemy is looking for that. See, he's looking to get a little crack. Once he gets a crack, he's in. And vice versa. I expect the same thing for my wife and God expects the same thing from us. He expects us to be what we supposed to be with him first thing in the morning, in the middle of the day before we go to bed. He expects us to spend that time with him because when we spend that time with him, guess what we're not going to be? We're not going to be what the flesh want us to be. Right? We're not going to be there. The flesh would not have it. Those principalities, we like to call it flesh, but I must say it's principalities want us to be outside of the boundaries of God. They don't want us spending time with God. They don't want us sharing our testimony with people. They don't want us following the commandment, right? Because that was the devil said in Revelation 12, I'm going to come against your seed that follows the commandment and then give his testimony. We get in trouble when we're in places that we have no business being. We're listening to music. We have no business listening to. We're watching programs. We have no business watching. Right? Jesus never sent his disciples out one by one. He sent them out two by two to cast out demons. Right? We should never be going somewhere by ourselves thinking we're going to fight for God's kingdom alone. We will not succeed. We will lose. Right? So we have to be what God wants us to be every single day. Are you where you supposed to be? All right. Are you where you want to be? Like I said in the last podcast, you have to see God's voice. If you don't know his voice, then you will be misled by the enemy. The enemy is crafty. He knows how to take that darkness and that light and merge it together and cause confusion. We see it in our society today. We see it in our world today. There's a lot of confused individuals out there that think they are Christians. There are individuals in seminary school that think they are Christians. There are people on the pulpit that think they are Christians. There are people that's going into professions that's not biblically driven thinking they are Christians and using a secular worldview to try to help people versus using the scripture and God's word to help people. The enemy is very crafty in what he does and we have to stay close to God. We have to be exactly what he wants us to be at all times every day. So ponder your walk and your steps every single day. Ponder it. Always look at am I going in the right place? There might be some people you may need to turn loose in your life that's leading you in the wrong direction. Be careful who you call your best friend. If your best friend is committing adultery on her husband or his wife, you can't call these people your best friend. You can't associate with those people. Why? Because it's coming in conflict with your biblical walk. You have to pray for them. You have to minister to them and if you're afraid to minister to them, then you're doing them an injustice, right? If you have a person that you know and you've known for a long time and that person is not following God and not following the scripture and living a life serving the enemy, it's your responsibility to intercede for that person through prayer and send that person scripture or talk to that person and try to get that person to move away from that demonic lifestyle. It's your responsibility to do that with your children, to do that with your spouse, to do that with people you love and people that you don't love, right? You need to really be doing this with people that you don't even know that you come in contact with, right? Where are you supposed to be? And you need to ponder that every single day. Where am I supposed to be at this moment? My mind and my flesh was like, I'm gonna get up early in the morning and go out here and gig and get some money. But God said, I need you close to me. I need you here. I take care of the rest, but I need you close to me. So I ended up in a place where I was supposed to be and that was with him for a couple of hours. That was with him for a couple of hours. And I just, I'm just, I cannot explain how the Holy Spirit just works in me and I'm just, I'm beaming right now, you know, I'm beaming. You know, last week I was driving in my car and the Holy Spirit was just, it was absolutely amazing. I'm laughing in my car. I'm in tears in my car. The Holy Spirit, I just felt the heat, the tingling and God was there and I had to call my wife and share that with her. I couldn't, I couldn't have it and keep it to myself. I had to share it. I had to because the more I spend with him, the more he reveals things to me, the more he spends time with me, the more he's there and that's a wonderful feeling. Like I said before, I'm still young in my walk. I still have a lot of things that I have to learn and I know the enemy until the day God calls me home is going to try to trip me up and I want to encourage each and every last one of you out there is to be what God wants you to be, not what you want to be. If you're in a relationship that's not biblically sound, you need to get out of that relationship. If you're in a relationship where you're fornicating, you need to get out of that relationship. If you're in a relationship the way you're married and you consider and you might commit adultery, you need to remove yourself from that relationship and that way of thinking. If you are involved with people that smoke marijuana, drink alcohol, want to party all the time, okay, you need to remove yourself from that environment because the enemy loves to trip people up. You understand what I'm saying? They love to trip people up. Get to a point to where you know God's voice. It's like a child. It's like I have three boys. They're adults now, but when they were babies, you could put my boys in the middle of a pack of other babies and I knew the sound of my boys cry. Oh, that's mine right there. That's what you want to be when it comes to God. You want to be able to distinguish his voice out of all the noise that's around you. Oh, that's God right there. That's my father. Yeah, he's called. He told me to go home. I'm going home. That way you want to get to that point and right now a lot of Christians are not at that point. Our job is to evangelize and get as many people to know Jesus Christ as before he comes. Not worrying about what's going over in Gaza, not worried about what's on that dummy box that I call the television. I keep telling people stay out of the television. Do not look at legacy news. Do not do that. That's all stuff is demonic and is there to distract you from God. That's what I want you to do. Okay, so I want to end this in a prayer and I want to encourage everybody to be where you supposed to be, what God is requiring you to be every single day. Ignore the principalities, ignore the flesh, be where you supposed to be. Okay, and I'm going to end this in a prayer. Lord, in the name of Jesus, I ask you to give us guidance and wisdom. I thank you for your word. I thank you for the weapons that you've given us to route out demons. Lord, I ask you to give us the courage, the discernment, to be able to recognize your voice in a crowd with all the noise going on, to follow your instructions, to do it exactly the way you instructed us, to trust you without hesitation and because I know you love us and we thank you because you've always been a great father. We may not understand your thoughts because your thoughts are not ours and ours aren't yours, but Lord, constantly keep talking to us and constantly keep guiding us because we know it's for your kingdom and your kingdom only and we just love you and thank you for what you do. We thank you for you, for being you and we thank you for your son Jesus Christ and I pray that everybody out there get to that point that you are putting God first, that you're seeking his voice, that you're exactly in the place that God intends for you to be every single day. Okay, I want you to stay blessed and have a fantastic day. All right, talk to you the next time. Norman Goodman signing out.