Australia Church Mov't Leader Tells 1,300 People to Have Bigger Godly Vision Through Faith
SAN DIEGO. Calif. – Over 1,300 people heard Australian megachurch pastor Russell Evans speak on faith and fear during the second day of The Heart Revolution conference at Cornerstone Church of San Diego on Wednesday night.
The Planet Shakers movement leader, who is based in Melbourne, gave an empowering message focused on embracing the authority that leaders have been given to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth and the importance of eliminating fear to gain faith in order to understand the power they hold in their hands.
"Faith is the place that you get attacked most in. If the devil can get you not to believe, he stops you from being effective. That's why prayer and worship is so important to a leader," Evans said to The Christian Post.
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He said the only way to overcome the lack of faith is by being in constant worship and communion with God because it positions an individual in a place where they become believers by default.
"Worship changes your perspective. The key is creating an environment around you that actually helps build your faith because you don't need help not to built it," Evans said.
As the visionary leader of a church that has campuses throughout Australia and Cape Town, South Africa and with a membership over 8,000, Evans knows a lot about faith. His church, Planetshakers City Church in Melbourne, began with merely 12 core group members in 2004 and flourished to the megachurch that it is now because he simply believed it was possible to experience a growth of such magnitude.
Evans' faith in seeing beyond the reality has allowed him to place his sight and disposition in the belief of the holy spirit's intervention within the church. During Wednesday night's gathering, he gave prophetic declarations to the crowd while announcing that faith could be the precursor to change their situations, if they are willing to believe.
"There is someone on my left that came tonight with a spine curvature, you are being healed in this moment. There's someone who came today and couldn't breathe, you will breathe again, and someone here came worried because they have bills this high, don't worry, he will provide," Evans said.
When people began to worship and praise, the entire venue became spirit filled. Many began to weep and speak in tongues while he emphasized that people need to not just believe in the manifestations but in the manifestor Himself.
He said once people allow fear to dictate their mindset, they automatically place their faith in the devil as fear is the complete opposite of faith. He also noted that oftentimes, this mentality hinders an individual to fully understand that they do have the power to speak life against their negative circumstance, which only happens when faith exists within their hearts and thought process.
"Your attitude sets your altitude. If you have an attitude of faith, your altitude will be higher," Evans said.
In addition to embracing fear instead of faith, Evans told CP the reason that many people do not understand the width and depth of the power they have been given by God to walk in their faith is because they are unbeknownst to its magnitude.
"The Bible says don't be ignorant of spiritual gifts so sometimes it's out of ignorance that people don't understand the capacity of the power they have," Evans said.
Drawing from an example of a time when he held a gun while his hands were shaking uncontrollably because he was afraid while at a Dallas shooting range, Evans spoke about the comparison to people who have been given power by the holy spirit and even then they do not grasp the vastness of that spiritual gift.
"Sometimes we're scared to use the power that we have because we don't understand what we have," Evans said. "The devil has lied to us, he's given us a picture of how it shouldn't be done so instead of doing it the right way, we run from it."
In the same way that God spoke light into existence while He was creating life on earth, Evans said it is imperative to take hold of that authority bestowed upon people and use it to triumph over any circumstance.
"There was no such thing as light when He spoke it into existence, He just spoke the word," Evans. "To discover to speak, you need breath so the word with breath, which represents spirit, brings life; it takes things that aren't into things that are."
