Thanksgiving Creates Heaven On Earth by Pastor Sam Adeyemi: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Heaven Invading Earth

Acts 16:25–26 — "Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening. Suddenly there was a massive earthquake and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open and the chains of every prisoner fell off."

When you become a Christian, one of the basic things you discover is that you can superimpose spiritual realities on physical realities. Our world works in dimensions. A higher dimension dominates and subsumes the lower one. The three-dimensional dominates the two-dimensional. The two-dimensional dominates the one-dimensional.

There is a God dimension — a spiritual, eternal dimension. That dimension dominates the physical one. But that eternal dimension is invisible to physical eyes.

Genesis 1:1–3 — In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void — chaos and darkness everywhere. But the spirit of God was hovering upon the face of the waters. And God changed everything. Heaven dominated the earth and turned that formless, dark space into a place of beauty.

Then God created us to do the same thing. Genesis 1:26 — "Let us make man in our own image and likeness, and let them have dominion." Let them have the capacity to turn earth into heaven. Man is a miracle — both spiritual and physical at the same time. An angel is a purely spiritual being. The human can relate with both the invisible world and the physical world. Therefore, we were designed to take realities from the invisible world and use them to dominate the physical.

Something went wrong. But John 3:16 — God gave His only begotten Son. In Christ, that capacity is restored. Eternal life — not so much about its length as about its quality. It is the life that flows in God. The quality of life that powers God. That is what you receive when you are born again.

1 John 5:4 — "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world." The moment you accept Jesus, your status changes on the eternity dimension. The higher dimension now dominates in you.

Never Accept Physical Realities as Final

Jesus taught His disciples to make it a habit never to accept natural or physical realities as final. In Mark 11:20–23, after the fig tree dried up, He said, "Have faith in God. Whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he says will come to pass — he will have whatever he says."

A mountain is a symbol of stability — it communicates permanence. Jesus said: you must never accept any physical reality as being final. You come from a superior dimension. You must always dominate physical situations.

The centurion in Matthew 8:8 understood this. He said, "Just give the word. I'm a man under authority and I have soldiers under me. When I say to this one, 'Go,' he goes. When I say to this one, 'Come,' he comes." He was acknowledging that Jesus operated from a superior dimension and that a spoken word from that dimension would dominate the sickness. Jesus marveled at his faith.

How Thanksgiving and Praise Create the Atmosphere

Thanksgiving and praise create the atmosphere of heaven around your life. Through them, you invoke the presence of God. The presence of God activates the flow of revelation and the power of God. With those two things — revelation and power — you dominate natural situations and circumstances.

Psalm 100 — "Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him singing with joy. Acknowledge that the Lord is God. Enter His gates with thanksgiving. Go into His courts with praise."

Whenever things are not working in your favor, saturate your life with thanksgiving, gratitude, and praise. Because when you saturate your life with gratitude, divine intervention becomes your default mode.

In God's presence you have joy. When you enter with thanksgiving, everything starts changing. The first thing that changes is your perspective — the way you see things. You remember Isaiah 55:8–9 — "My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. As the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways above your ways." Once you have the consciousness of the presence of God, revelation begins to flow. You will begin to see things differently.

Somebody said: the problem is not the problem — the problem is the person confronting the problem. Life is not fixed. It is the way you see it. And what you see is what you get. You will always have two people looking at the same thing, seeing two different things. In Genesis 1:2, the earth was without form, void, and dark — but the spirit of God was hovering. As dark as it was, God was there. If you are looking for darkness, you will find plenty of it. If you are looking for the spirit of God, He is also there.

David's Example

In 1 Samuel 30, David and his men returned from battle to find Ziklag burned, all their wives and children taken captive. They wept until they had no power to weep. Then verse 6 says: "And David encouraged himself in the Lord his God."

What made that possible? He shifted to gratitude frequency. He remembered what God had done before — the God who delivered him from the paw of the lion and the bear. And on that frequency, he also noticed what the enemies had done that they didn't do: they killed no one. God had created room for gratitude even in the middle of the catastrophe.

As soon as David shifted, revelation came immediately. He said, "Get me the ephod." He inquired of God. Instant answer: "Pursue them. You will overtake them. And without fail, you will recover all." (1 Samuel 30:8)

Gratitude frequency unlocks what confusion locks.

Paul and Silas in Prison

Around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. The other prisoners were listening. When Satan pokes you and is expecting to hear defeat — let him hear praise. Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake. The prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open. The chains of every prisoner fell off.

You cannot imprison God. When God showed up, stocks broke. Chains broke. Doors flew open. And they carried all the other prisoners along with them.

The message is this: why are you dealing with the situation alone? Bring God into the situation by entering His presence through thanksgiving. Then see what happens.

• Someone's chains have arrived at the point of breaking today.
• As you shift to gratitude frequency, divine ideas will come to you that did not come throughout this year.
• In the place of confusion, direction will come.
• What was buried — buried career, buried relationship, buried opportunity — is coming back to life.
• Everything God ordained for you that seemed delayed — the power of delay is destroyed.

Heavenly Father, as a family and as individuals, we say thank you. Thank You for life, for health, for protection, for the times we did not spend a single coin treating sickness. Thank You for going out and coming back safely when others did not. Thank You for everything You did that we did not even pray for.

Father, as we go on the gratitude frequency in these remaining days, release a fresh flow of revelation. Open our inner eyes and inner ears. Let us see what we have never seen and hear what we have never heard. Father, I receive for everyone connected to this service: open heavens, recovery of all, and change of status — announced publicly. In Jesus' mighty name, amen.