February 9, 2025 • 58 mins
If you’re looking at what’s next and feeling nervous, remember this: What God has done in your life is only the foundation, not the finish line. He’s a creative God, still at work in ways you’re not expecting. Let go of your plan so God can show you His purpose.
Scripture References:
Isaiah 43, verses 16-19
Hebrews 1, verses 1-2
Mark 8, verses 22-26
Mark 10, verses 46-52
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hope this inspires you.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
in your life.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Isaiah forty three, Isaiah Chapter forty three, Isaiah Chapter forty.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
Three, Verse number nineteen, nineteenth Anniversary.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
The nineteenth verse.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Of Isaiah Isaiah forty three, Verse nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
See I am doing a new thing.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Now.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Pastor Holly already told you we're entering our twentieth year
of ministry today, but before we go to year twenty,
the Lord wants to give us something from verse nineteen. See,
I am doing a new thing. Everybody shout the next word.
Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I
(01:39):
am making a way in the wilderness and streams in
the wasteland.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Today.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I want to talk to you from a formal sounding topic,
but I'm going to make it really plain in just
a few moments I have. I want to talk to
you on our nineteenth church anniversary at Elevation as we
enter our twentieth year of ministry about our future and
our former, our future and our former. And I don't
(02:11):
know if that title is going to hit like I
wanted to, So let me give you title number two.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
New number, same name, new number, same name. Father. I
thank you for your word.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
As it goes forth, May it go forth with penetrating
insight with Holy Spirit power. May it go forth with
healing medicine to those who need it, who are standing
on the brink in the precipice of the new season
of their life, asking you what's next, and feeling nervous.
Perhaps they're concerned for one of their friends, one of
their children. Perhaps they're concerned for their mother, their father,
(02:47):
someone who's not in this room with them. Perhaps they're
concerned about their own health. Perhaps they're thinking about this
job that they've just taken and whether it was the
right one, or whether they're going to get the call back.
Perhaps they're praying their way through a season of loneliness
those needs. But from this place, this pulpit that you
have entrusted to me for these moments, I decree and
declare that the eternal wisdom of Almighty God will go
(03:09):
for it. It will not be checked by a demon
it will not be hindered by Satan. It will break
through and penetrate the life that it was intended to effect.
And I give you the glory in advance because it
is your word, and it is your work, and it
is your church, and so it is your praise in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Amen.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Amen, you may be seated. Of all of the questions
people ask me before a church anniversary, this has to
be the dumbest. I say that lovingly when they say,
(03:56):
if you could go back and start all over.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Again, would you do it?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
No? And sometimes they say it even more extreme than that.
Don't you just sometimes want to go back to the
early days and start the church all over again. No,
don't want to do that again, back to those days
when you weren't here. It was terrible before you got here.
(04:20):
Let me tell you, it's terrible before you got here.
Till a person next to you, This church sucked before
you showed up. Tell them that on every location Riverwalk
University City. One of the things that I always aim
to do as I stand before you, and I hope
that you sense this.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Is give you a good grounding in.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
The context of this scripture before moving to the application
because I understand that you can pretty much make the
Bible say something that it never really meant to.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Say or was intended to say.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
And although I read you that verse about I'm doing
a new thing for verse nineteen, and I am going
to preach that verse today.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I thought'd be.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Helpful if we establish a little bit of context and
go back to the top of this to get a
sense of who is Isaiah and why is he saying this,
and who is he saying it to. So I want
to back up to verse sixteen. I gave you to
verse fifteen in the back, but I'm going to go
to verse sixteen for now. And this first sentence, this
(05:27):
is something I really feel strongly about. He said, This
is what the Lord says. Now, I think you should
circle that in your Bible or highlight it or something,
because that's what we're trying to get to every time
we come together as a church. This is what the
Lord says. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's
(05:48):
never been harder to hear from God, not because we
don't have access to his word, but because we have
so many voices attacking his voice, to the point where
many of us are confused and we can't tell what's
God and what's the algorithm. Sometimes we can't tell what's
(06:11):
God and what's just us worrying and calling it prayer.
The biggest wrestling match of my life standing before you
each and every week, is to figure out what comes
after this phrase.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This is what the Lord says.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Notice that the text doesn't remark this is what the
Lord said.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It would be one thing.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
For us to just gather together weekly, have a short
history lesson on people who lived in the past that
is designed in order to keep us from ever feeling
challenged to bring the Word of God into our everyday life,
so that God just remains a mere superstition in our life,
someone that Grandma used to talk about that we run
(06:59):
to for comfort when our lives feel unstable. But the
cutting edge ministry of gospel preaching is to come with
the Word of God, timeless and eternal, written in the
pages of Scripture, not to be altered, taken away from,
or added to. Not one jot nor one tittle from
this thing is supposed to be altered, and to bring
it into the contemporary experience of a diversity of personalities ethnicities.
(07:24):
This is what the Lord says, and I never feel
ready to preach just because I have three points. I
never feel ready to preach just because I have a story.
I never feel ready to preach just because my voice
feels strong. I only feel ready to preach when I
can feel you getting what you need from your God.
(07:45):
When that happens, get out of my way. Get out
of my way, because once I sense that God has
given me what he wants you to have, Once I
sense that God has put something in my hear it
for your situation. This is what the Lord says, and
(08:06):
Isaiah goes on. We're going to follow his thought pattern
for a moment before we come to my main point today.
This is what the Lord says, he who made a
way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters,
who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and
reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Snuffed out like a whit.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Now we've gone two verses and we still haven't gotten
to what God says. Think of Isaiah as someone who
is introducing a guest speaker. If on our anniversary today
I was coming to bring up a guest speaker, I
would come before you, and I would begin to give
background information on that speaker. The reason for giving background
(08:56):
information on the speaker you might lean in to hear
what they have to say, especially if you don't know
who they are, because I want you to know, Hey, no,
Pastor Steven's definitely my favorite preacher. Pastor Holly's my second.
I'm saying this facetiously. By the way, I don't care
who your favorite preacher is. It matters what God says.
(09:17):
Anybody God wants to use in your life, that's fine
with me. But I would want to build credibility for
a speaker that you were not familiar with. So I
might say they've written three best selling books, or they've
done amazing work with the homeless community in their city,
or they have been recognized and regarded as one of
(09:39):
the premier experts on or they've pastored their church thirty
seven years and they've been married thirty four years, happily
married for thirty two of those thirty four years. And
I would begin to build your interest and your confidence
in the speaker by giving you a bit of their background.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
He says. This is what the Lord says.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Go back to verse sixteen briefly for me, please, I
want to break this down. And he proceeds not to
give the direct word of God, but indirectly he begins
to describe the works of God at a time that
was at least seven hundred years in the past. Now
every Bible student will know that this is a flashback
(10:23):
to an event in the scripture called the Exodus. This
is when God brought his people out of Egypt. They
did not get all the way to the Promised Land.
Their unbelief blocked them from that. But God brought them
through raging waters the Red Sea. He drowned the chariots
of the Egyptian pharaoh, and all of those chariots lay there,
(10:47):
never to rise again. It's as if Isaiah is bringing
God into the frame for the people to hear from
and he says to them, the Lord has a message
for you. And before I tell you what he says,
let me remind you what he does. This is not
one of the gods of Babylonia who was crafted by
(11:10):
human hands. This is not one of the gods of
Assyria that was dreamt up by a human imagination. This
is the God who's about to speak to you, who
made a way through the sea a path through the
mighty waters.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I'm about to preach, who drew.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again. So before
you hear what God is about to say to his people,
remember what he did to their enemies, so that you
have confidence that the God that is fighting your battles
today has been here before. God has been here before.
(11:49):
Even if you haven't been here before, God goes ahead
of you into everything you call today. In fact, when
you talk about the future, God doesn't have a word
in his vocabulary for that. That's in your dictionary, not his.
God doesn't talk about future. God talks about eternity. And God,
who sits out of time, gives you a box called
(12:11):
time so you don't go crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And he allows you to think about.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The future because you cannot compartmentalize well, and so he
allows you to think of something called tomorrow, even though
to him God, tomorrow is already history.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Let me remind you that God.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Who has already been into your future, has proven himself
faithful in your past. And that's what you'd expect me
to preach about on an anniversary Sunday, right, Look what
the Lord has done. Right, that's what I want to
preach on an anniversary Sunday, because what he's done is
(12:47):
comfortable and comforting. What he's done, I have a frame
of reference for I never understood why people shouted over
Isaiah forty three nineteen. In verse nineteen, he says, see,
I am doing a new thing, and everybody shouts, And
(13:07):
I think that's strange. In a couple of weeks, we're
going on elevation nights and we'll be sharing in different
cities the Love of Jesus and the Gospel of Jesus,
and we'll.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Be sharing songs.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And you know how to really lose a crowd in
an arena like that, Just tell them we want to
share a new song with you, the one you never
heard before.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If they cheer for that, they're being polite. They don't
want a new song. I even see y'all do it
on Sundays. Poor Chris.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Can we give it up for Chris, the real Chris Brown,
Our Chris Brown. I'm just getting to the point in
my life where I thank God for consistent people.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
And Chris is so consistent.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Every week I'll watch him out here and and he
has the hard line, the hardest line, to say, you know,
we just finished singing.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Graves into gardens or gyra or.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Something like that, and now he has to look you
right in your eyes and say, are you all.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Ready to sing a new song? Church?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
And y'all are faking it too, because you're you're.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Polite and nice.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Yeah, we want to sing a new song. New doesn't
always feel improved at first, does it? New doesn't always
feel improved at first. One of the things about God's
(14:41):
word that is so wonderful to me is that although
it's foundational and does not change, it is always fresh.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Therefore, it's always relevant.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
When God gets ready to speak to you about a
situation in your life, he will remind you of some
of the roads that He's already led you through.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
But he doesn't stop there.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Because after Isaiah reads the resume of this God we've
come to worship and serve, mentioning the central event in
Israel's history, the one that they couldn't stop celebrating about
seven centuries later. The first time that he speaks on
behalf of God, because that's what prophets did. He says
(15:25):
a word we would not expect to hear in this context.
For after he says, God drew your enemies out into
the water, killed the horses and chariots of those who
were chasing you, gave you a great and mighty deliverance,
made your way through clean so you could praise him today.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Right after he says that, in verse.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Eighteen, he gives the first instruction from God. And it
is counterintuitive, and you are forgiven. If it's surprising to
you forget, well, then why are you mentioning it? Why
are you mentioning what I'm meant to forget? And that's strange.
I love studying the Bible with y'all because we would
(16:06):
just read write over this right.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
God is doing a new thing. I'm gonna have a
new wife. I'm gonna have a new kid when I
get home. I read a book one time. It was
called how to have a new Husband in twenty one days. Hey, y'
to talking about taking the same husband.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
And if you do this, you can change him, and
you can manipulate him and just compliment him when he
carries the groceries in, and he'll think he's strong and
he'll carry the groceries more.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
How to have a new husband in.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Twenty one days, that is not Isaiah's message. In fact,
Isaiah is saying, now that I have reminded you of
all of these former things that God has done, Forget
the former things.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Say that real quick.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Forget the former, Forget the former Forget the dress you
used to fit into, the people you used to want
to see at the party. Forget the drugs that you
used to get high on. Right, that's what he's talking about. No,
he's talking about things God did. Now, I get it
(17:09):
if he's saying, forget the things that you used to
sin with.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
But he's actually.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Saying, forget the things that you used to celebrate. And
I studied it, and I studied it, and I said, well, Lord,
should we not celebrate the anniversary? Should we not put
up all the old pictures of when you made a way?
We had no money and we had no.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Connections and you built this church? Is it a sin
to celebrate what you did?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
And so as I read it, it became clear to
me why so many of us stay stuck in the
past and we cannot grow. By the way, there is
one thing that you can do that God can't do.
Grow grow you do, Graham said to me one time recently,
(18:05):
He said, corn dogs fell off.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I said, what does that even mean?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Can you say that in English? He said, corn dogs
used to be so big. Remember when corn dogs were
big they fell off.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And I told them they didn't. Corn dogs didn't fall off.
You grew up. See the difference. He thinks corn dogs changed.
Corn dogs don't change. Corn day dogs. This is the
Bible says it. Corn dogs are the same yesterday, today,
and forever. But you changed. You changed. And as we
(18:45):
are being.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Changed by the glory of the Lord, we see more
of his glory as we are changed by him, and
we begin to realize that a lot of what we
call growth is forgetting what we thought we knew. So
a lot of what we call going forward we will
forget what we thought God had promised as we learn
(19:10):
what he really promised. A lot of our problem is
when we overlay our preferences on God's promises. And I'm
going to take that further, so you better let that
one sink in. When you overlay your preference over God's promise.
But here's the even worst part. You lay your preference
(19:30):
over God's promise and then you attach God's promise to
your plan.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And that's not how this works.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
So Isaiah is speaking to people about the exodus, which
happened seven hundred years ago, and he's speaking to them
about their exile, which they're currently in because they're in
a place called Babylonia and they were taken there by Nebekinezer,
but they're going to be led.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Out by Cyrus.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
And he says, I'm doing a new thing, but I
want to remind you of the old thing. But no
sooner does he remind them of who is speaking than
he says, this is what the Lord says, forget.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The former.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
And I don't think this means that we can't go
shopping for Iron Maiden t shirts, as some of us
are wont to do. I don't think that God is
against nostalgia. I don't think that God is against memory.
But I'm very conflicted about those of us who are
staying stuck in a stage of our spiritual growth and
(20:37):
calling it our whole story. Remember, the Red Sea was
not the finish line for the people of God.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
It was the foundation.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
And is it possible that you've been taking something in
your life that was meant to be a foundation and
treating it as a finish line. And I'll tell you
some of the things that we say when we're trying
to take foundations. Nobody sees a foundation of a house
and then pays the builder.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
The full amount, unless you're a fool.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
If you're building a house and they put up the foundation,
keep a little of that money back.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Because they've got still more to do.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
And when God lays a foundation in your life and
you call it finished, you end up crossing the Red Sea,
getting through the waters, and spending forty years in a wilderness.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
So I hear.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Christians often say things like I'm just a sinner saved
by grace. I saw a bumper sticker one time that
said Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. Now I understand the
heart of that. We're saying we're not better than you.
It's not like we don't cuss our kids out, we
just don't do it in church.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
This is the praise in church. I forgot.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
But when you say Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven, if
that helps you to receive God's grace for where you're at,
that is a wonderful truth.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
But if it causes you to.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Remain or the way the prophet Isaiah put it, he said,
don't dwell on it. Don't dwell on the past. Let
me show you this in verse eighteen. It's right there
in the text. He says, forget the former things.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Do not dwell on the past.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Then why did you spend two verses telling me about
the past if you don't want me to dwell on it?
So God says, I gave you those experiences to draw from,
not to dwell on. The difference, I gave you those
experiences to.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Draw from, not to dwell on.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
To dwell in it is to live in something that
God intended to be temporary.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Okay, when there is.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
A truth spoken over your life concerning what God has
given you, concerning who God has called you, concerning who
He has, who He has made you to be, let's
get that phrase embedded. Who He has made you to be.
When God has planted that truth inside of you, that
is a foundational truth. But the foundation is not meant
(23:19):
to be the finish line of your faith. And so
then if you just imagine this, you're building a house,
they pour the foundation, You set up tents and pay
them full price, and you have no indoor plumbing, and
you certainly have no marble countertops, and you paid for
him and you got no run in water and you
(23:41):
paid for it is paid for, but you're.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Not living in it. It's paid for, but you said no,
I'm a live in this tent.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
See a lot of Christians and they don't realize what's
already been paid for. So now I'm living down in
something that Jesus' glood already purchased more than. But I
can't see past what I've been through. So I figure
this Red Sea was meant to be the result. The
(24:11):
Red Sea was just the road to get where I
was going. It wasn't the place I was meant to stay.
So I'm gonna fight every single one of you that says,
men the good old days of Elevation Church, back when
we used to be at Providence High School.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Providence High School.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
If you think the good old days of Elevation Church,
you were not setting up at Providence High School or
tearing down. All that shows me is you were in
a volunteer. That's why you thought it was the.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Good old days.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
It is a perspective of praise that you get when
you see, Oh God brought me through that, but he
did not lead me to that as my destination. I
declare over your life today, that everything you have seen
God do was a foundation. He is not done building
(25:08):
in your life. He is not done building in your
blood life. He is not done building on your experience.
He is not done building through your pain.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Forget how far you've come. What I thought I was
supposed to remember how far I've come.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
And last week I did a good little message because
I preached on look forward, not far, and I was
illustrating that when we tend to get too far out
ahead of ourselves. Man, I prayed before our twentieth year
of ministry started, I said, Lord, let me give him
the plan for the next twenty years of the church.
I started praying that in January. I was praying it
up till.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Nine twenty nine.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Church started at nine thirty. And the lawyer said, Nope,
not twenty years. How about twenty minutes. How about twenty minutes.
Get up and preach the word. This is what the
Lord says for your current situation. You know why we
want God's plans to be so far in the future,
because we're not committed to His presence in our daily life.
(26:16):
This is what the Lord says. This is what the
Lord says. Now, the Lord's going to speak to you
in many ways through your life. I didn't give them
Hebrews one one, but it came up in my spirits.
So I'm gonna find it in my own big fat
bible and read it to you right now, my small
print bible, my bible that I could read nineteen years
(26:39):
ago when we started this church, back when I could
find the Book of Hebrews chapter one. It begins our
twentieth year ministream. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors.
I'm not being this is the scripture for really. In
(27:02):
the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets
at many times, in various ways. That's what I want
you to get at many times, in various ways in
the past verse two. But in these last days he
has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed
heir of all things, and through whom he also made
(27:23):
the universe. Now what that makes me think is God's
been doing this a long time. He's consistent. Say that
out loud. God is consistent. Put it in the chat.
God is consistent. The worlds were framed by the word
of God. So when Isaiah says, this is what the
Lord says, God didn't just start speaking, you just started listening.
(27:47):
He's just waiting for us to tune in when we
start our worship service at church bridges joining of what
Heaven is doing around the clock. Because he's consistent. He's
consistently holy. That's why the angels call him Holy, Holy, Holy.
When you say it three times, it underscores not only
the significance of it, but the consistency of it. God
doesn't take an off day from doing the right thing.
(28:10):
Jesus was without sin, and yet he was made to
become sin so that we who had sinned could become
the righteousness of God through him. That's what he means
by his son, who created the universe. Jesus did not
become God when he was born. He was always God.
He will always be God. He is Alpha and Omega.
He's consistent. He was there from the foundation of the world.
(28:33):
The world was framed by the very word of God
that is coming into your heart today.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
He's consistent. Say it again. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
He didn't just start feeding his people when he gave
them manna in the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
He's consistent. He'd been feeding them all of their life.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
He's consistent. God can find so many ways to feed
his children. If it's not manna in the wilderness, it
will be the fruit of Canaan. But I'll tell you
one thing. He's consistent, and he'll feed you. Whether it's
ravens bringing you food which were considered unclean, bring into
a Hebrew prophet a bird that was considered unclean by
the Jewish religion. God can feed you anywhere you are,
(29:14):
and he can find you anywhere you are, and he
can fill you anywhere you are because he formed you. Now,
whoever forms you knows what to fill you with. Whoever
forms you knows what to fill you with.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And the one who.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Knows your future formed you before your future begin. Because
the prophet Isaiah said, and excuse me, the prophet Jeremiah,
his buddy, said, in Jeremiah chapter one, verse five, before
you were born, I formed you in my mother's womb.
I was knit together because he was formed. And so
all of my days he has been faithful all my life.
He has been so so good. That's the consistency of God.
(29:52):
He is a consistent friend. He doesn't duck out when
it's a liability to know your name or your number.
He's a consistent stint friend. He's a friend that sticks
closer than a brother. He knows how to celebrate your
wins with you because he's consistent. He's not intimidated like
some of your friends when you're doing good, and they
only want to come around when you're doing bad, because
(30:14):
misery loves company.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
He'll step into your good moment and he can be
proud of you pass the point where other people can
because he has no insecurities. He's consistent, he has no insufficiencies.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
He doesn't run out of energy. He doesn't get tired
of carrying you. He doesn't say, because you pray to me,
tomorrow is kind of late right now, and I'm not
really a night person.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
He's not waiting for you to get the eyeboogers out
of your eyes. He's a morning person too. He's consistent.
He doesn't sleep, he doesn't slumber. He's consistent. He doesn't
come off his throne when one party wins an election
or another one wins the next one. He's consistent. He's
Israel's king and your creator. He's consistent. He is consistent,
so consistent that he'll walk with you, not only through
(30:59):
the joys and the outain tops of your life, but
in the sorrows of your life. He's not ashamed to
be associated with you. He's consistent. If you hadn't caught
any fish, he'll tell you where to throw the net
out again.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Because he's consistent.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
He's so consistent he's worthy of praise when your feelings
are telling you that you're not worthy of his love.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
He's consistent. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
He relates to you on the basis of what he
did for you, not what you do for him. So
even if you hadn't done it right lately, he's consistent.
When people walk out of your life, they walk out
of your life for different reasons. He stays in your
life for one reason, because you're his. He's consistent. He's
a good father. He's consistent. If your father wasn't a
good father, he'll pick up where your father and your
(31:40):
mother forsake you, then the Lord will take you up
because he's consistent. I'm celebrating today that he's consistent that
I've never seen the righteous forsaken, nor is seed begging bread.
He's consistent, So there's never been a time that I
called to him, and he was busy with another one
of his kids that he liked more. Even when I
(32:01):
was trying to run away to Tarsus, she got me
to nineveh in the belly of a whale, because he
has many vehicles to get his voice to where he
wants it to go.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
If there is one thing I love about God is
that he's consistent. How many have found him to be consistent,
and you can testify and come into agreement that he's consistent.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
But he's also creative.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
And I don't know if you know any creative people,
but sometimes creativity and consistency don't get along so well.
If you've ever lived with an artist, sometimes they don't
know how to.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Make their bed up.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
If you've ever lived with somebody who was creatively gifted,
sometimes they're a little sporadically wired. God is consistent, but
he's also creative. And I was praying, Lord, give me
something special to show them today. This is our anniversary,
it's the beginning of our twentieth year of ministry.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I want us to have a twenty twenty vision. Come on, Lord,
And what he spoke to me was something beautiful.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
He began to speak to me as I was falling
asleep and waking up, and he took me to a
text because I think at my heart I'm a storyteller.
If you ever do the math on my sermons, a
lot of them are based around stories. And so the
prophetic declaration of Isaiah and the story of the people
coming through the Red Sea, and the mention of the
author of Hebrews about the supremacy, the superiority, the efficiency
(33:35):
of Jesus Christ, our Savior, it all kind of finds
a unity point in my mind in two of the
miracles that Jesus did, and I won't belabor them, but
I do want to show them to you in their entirety.
In Mark chapter eight, Jesus heals a blind man. Now
what drew me to this passage initially was the Lord
(33:59):
told Isaiah.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
See, I am doing a new thing.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
And so I started realizing a lot of us don't
have a supply problem, we have a site problem. It's
not that God hasn't spoken, we just can't see. And
realizing that one of the most frequent miracles that Jesus
performed in the scripture was the healing of blind eyes.
I went and studied different people that he healed of blindness,
(34:25):
because I believe we all have spiritual blindness, blind spots,
things that we say, Well, if I could go back,
i'd do it different. But I didn't know that five
years ago. I didn't know that I was hurting my child.
I was trying to discipline them. But now I see
that I was too harsh.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I didn't mean to. I was trying to.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I was trying to provide for my family, but I
ended up kind of abandoning them emotionally and in an
attempt to give them what I didn't have, which was
money growing up, I didn't give them what I did have,
which is love. And I'm looking back, and I was
blinded by that. And so the healing of the Savior
and the new thing that God is doing often brings
restoration of spiritual sight what Paul called the eyes of
(35:02):
your heart being enlightened. And in Mark chapter eight, there
is a mention of a man I don't believe we
get his name in the scripture, but Jesus did something
amazing for it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I don't know when you're watching this, but if you're
about to go to lunch, this might ruin your appetite.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's kind of gross Mark Chapter eight please.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
They the disciples in Jesus came to Bethseta, and some
people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged Jesus
to touch him. Pay attention to every detail that you can.
It will reward your attention if you'll pay attention to
every detail in this little story. He took verse twenty
three the blind man by the hand let him outside
(35:47):
the village. When he'd spin on the man's eyes and
put his hands on him, Jesus asked, do you see anything?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I told you this is.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Not a very appetizing miracle. I need to read that again,
because you didn't even react to it. And it's so weird.
When he had spit on the man's eyes, we just
glossed over that, like that's just something people do, like
he did a hail Mary over him or something. He
spit on the man's eyes and then put his hands
on him, and Jesus asked, do you see anything.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
He looked up and said, you did pretty good. I
see people.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
They look like trees walking around. Now I'm gonna point
out to you real quick. The fact that he knew
what trees looked like means that he had been able
to see it sometime in the past, so he's restoring
his sight some things.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
God wants to bring.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
You back to you really do know what it means?
And he said, I see it, but it's blurry. Have
you got any blurry blessings in your life right now?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I see it, but it's blurry. It's working, but it
seems a little off. Can can you?
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I don't want you to spit on me again, but
can I get a second touch?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Can I get a second touch?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
The Bible says something very powerful once more, Jesus put
his hands on the man's eyes, and then his eyes
were open. His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Jesus sent him home, saying, don't even go into the village.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
What a great story.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
If that were the passage we were preaching from, we
would say every miracle is messy, Every miracle is messy.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Spit in your eyes is messy.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
We would also say that many miracles in your life
happened over the period of time because there were two
touches involved. But we're not viewing this miracle in isolation,
because Jesus is consistent, but he's also creative. And here's
what I mean. Go to Mark chapter ten. Another blind man,
(37:54):
this one whose name we do know. Give me my
Mark ten.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Please.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Then they came to Jericho. Is a different town, beth
sta mark a Jericho Mark ten. As Jesus and his disciples,
together with the large crowd, were leaving the city, a
blind man, same condition. Bartimaeus which means son of Timaeus,
was sitting by the roadside begging next verse when he
(38:20):
heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. He could hear,
but he couldn't see. He began to shout because he
could shout though he couldn't see. He's using everything that
he has available.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Jesus. He calls the name, son of David, have mercy
on me.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but
he shouted all the more, Son of David.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Have mercy on me.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I'm using restraint because everything in me wants to preach.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Don't you let them shut you up. Don't you let
them shut you down. Don't you let them call you crazy.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
They tried to do it to me for almost twenty years,
and if I had listened to everything they said about me,
I wouldn't be here preaching to your beautiful self, I
should dare miss what God has for you down the road. Man,
y'all are easy to preach to today. Come back next week.
(39:12):
Somebody in here is making a difference. What verse were
we on? Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet,
but he shouted all the more, son.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said,
call him.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
So they the disciples, you're ready called the blind man
called the blind man, share up on your feet.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
He's calling you. Throwing his cloak aside. He jumped to
his feet and came to Jesus. What do you want
me to do for you? Jesus asked him, and.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
The blind man said, Rabbi, I want to see now.
I can't prove it in the text because the text
says that the blind man threw his cloak. I can't
prove it in the text because the text says that
he shouted loud. I can't prove it in the text.
But I think when he said I want to see,
Peter and the other disciples backed up a little bit
because the last time Jesus did what he's asking him
(40:16):
to do. And maybe they even said to the God,
hey man, you might want to. You got a change
of clothes, you know, just to prepare you. This can
be kind of traumatic if you're not expecting it, just
to let you know.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
But watch this. Jesus is a healer. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
He doesn't tell the man Now I don't feel like healing.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Check back Thursday.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Thursday is my healing day because he's consistent. But the
same Savior who is consistent is also creative, which means
he is not constrained, which means he doesn't have to
do the same thing this time that he did last time,
which means.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
That he's gonna heal the man. But this time, watch,
it's a little different. Jesus just said, go verse fifty two,
your faith has healed you. And immediately he received this
side and followed Jesus along the road. And barthol of
(41:22):
You and.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Andrew and John and James and Peter are like, wait, Jesus,
you forgot to spit.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You gotta spit.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Remember the chapter eight when Jesus did, I mean, when
you got to spit on him like that, He's not
gonna work if it doesn't spit.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I mean, you spin on that guy and you still
had to do it. Twice.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
If you're taking notes of as a disciple, here's what
you're writing down, because you've never seen anything that's amazing before. Right,
she's walking on healing blind eyes and stuff. So you're
keeping notes. Okay, we're gonna have to do this without
him one day.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
So what does he do? Okay?
Speaker 4 (41:52):
So he spits and then the first touch doesn't really work,
so you got to do it twice, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And then Jesus walks right.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Up on this man name Bartimas, and the man's screaming,
and they're like, you're not supposed to scream, and Jesus like,
I don't mind him screaming, don't bother me.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
And the man throws his cloak, and Jesus like, let
him throw off anything he wants to.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
And Jesus looks straight at that man and heals him
how he wants to, how he chooses to. He's healing you,
but maybe not how you want him to, maybe not
(42:33):
how you're used to. Isaiah said, remember when the sea split,
it's not gonna split this time right instead, Verse nineteen.
I'm doing a new thing. Even now. It springs up
the song you're singing from seven hundred years ago. The
(42:54):
sea split.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
This time the water.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Isn't gonna split, It's gonna spring, but it's still water.
And I wonder, is this not the wisdom of God?
Because he knows we'll get addicted to miracles.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And not be dependent on him.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
So he says, you wanted me to do it like that, Nah,
I'm not splitting to see this time. This time is
coming from a different place. Now you assume that God
isn't speaking, I wonder, are you just not seeing?
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And he's speaking?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Because the same Savior that spit in the man's eyes
didn't spit this time. This time he just spoke because
he's creative, so he doesn't have to spit. He can speak,
he can spit. He can spit while he speaks. Like me,
(43:50):
A lady told me one time, I sit on at
least the fourth throw because watching you preaches like be
in a sea world. I gotta get out of his
flash zone. She said, you spit when you speak. And see,
God doesn't always have to spit when he speaks. He's consistent,
but he's creative. And sometimes the fact that he is
so creative causes you to forget how consistent he is.
(44:13):
Because while you're waiting for him to spit. He's just
speaking one word. Go, one word from God. This is
what the Lord says, Go. And I came into the
first weekend of our twentieth year of ministry to declare
to you that not only is this the praise Church,
(44:33):
but this is the proclamation church. This is the proclamation Church,
where the word of the Lord reaches beyond the barriers
of a physical campus or location, beyond the demographic of
a certain socioeconomic stratus or class, beyond the backgrounds that
we've all experienced up to this point. God said, forget
(44:55):
all of that. I am not defining your life by
the former. This is the most beautiful thing he gave
me in so long, because after he said forget the
former thing Verse twenty, he said, even the wild jackals
and the owls know how to honor me, because I
provide water in the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
The sea is not splitting this time.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
It doesn't need to the same people aren't going to
call you this time.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
They don't need to. It's not going to feel the.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
Same way this time. It doesn't have to. He said,
I provide water in the wilderness, and so the animals
honor me, and waiting for the verse to come back
up so I can finish it out and streams in
the wasteland to give drink.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
To my people. Watch this, my chosen.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
That's who you are, my people, my chosen Verse twenty one,
the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Praise.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Leave the verse un let's splash around in this water
for a minute. He said, I want you to forget
the former because you are the people I formed for myself.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
And since he is God and is not limited by time,
he formed you for a future that only he knows.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
So everything you feel insecure about let it go is
not going to matter.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Because he is your former. What do you mean former?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
The same Hebrew word that Isaiah uses for former is
translated as potter and planner. So what's he saying? Let
go of your plan so I can show you my purpose.
Let go of every plan that you made without God.
(46:58):
Let go of every plan that you made by consulting
your past. Let go of every plan that.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Was limited to the people you have around you.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
Right now, there's new rivers, new streams, new blessings, new wells,
new beginnings.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
And what has stayed the same for.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Twenty years now in this church is the name, the
name of Jesus the Great. I am in flesh, incarnate
in action the name of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
The numbers have changed, The numbers have changed greatly. I
used to preach to a room full of nineteen people.
My passion wasn't lower. I didn't talk softer.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I'll scream louder because I was desperate and youthful.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Nothing changed about that when the numbers changed. But it's
an amazing thing.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
How sometimes God is speaking to you but you.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Don't recognize him because it doesn't come from where you
expect it.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
I have one friend in my life who changes his
phone number about every ten months. Every time he changes
his number, and he knows exactly who he is. I
don't even bother anymore to replace his old name with
his new name. I just put a year out beside it,
(48:46):
and let's say his name is is John. I have
John twenty nineteen, John twenty twenty, John twenty twenty one,
first quarter, John twenty twenty one, second quarter.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
In my phone.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
I got his name like fourteen times, but he hasn't changed.
Just where he's calling me from.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Same name, new number, same name, new number.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
I commit to you afresh and anew on this the
beginning of our twentieth year, and anybody who needs to leave,
I'm gonna give you a second to do it before
I close this message. Thank you so much. Now, y'all
look at me.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I don't care how many or how few God sends us.
There is one name that is able.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
To save in this ministry. There is one name that
is able to heal in this ministry. There is one
name that is able to get your kids off drugs.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
In this ministry. There is one name that is able
to put your arn't back together in this ministry.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
And as long as the name of Jesus is being proclaimed,
this is what the Lord says. There will always be
a current word over this house. There will always be
a fresh word over your life. And Father, I just
thank you today for your word in our wilderness. You
(50:26):
showed me before I stood up to preach God that
this is what you have to say to this people
on this day, and you gave me a word for
this occasion.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
But I don't believe it was just for our church anniversary.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
I believe in my heart because I know you to
be good, that you are too consistent to ever change,
and you are too creative to do the same thing
the same way twice. So we thank you that although
our world feels unstable, unsteady, and changing all around us,
never been a more important time for us to look
(51:05):
toward your faithfulness.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
With your head's bowed and.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Your eyes closed, there's somebody here that God is calling
to for salvation. I would like to give you the
invitation today, whether online or in the room, to receive
Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord. There is no
more important decision than this. There is no more important decision,
(51:29):
not where you're gonna live, not who you're gonna marry,
who your heart belongs to, who you trust in for
the salvation of your soul. This is the most important
decision you will ever make. This has always been a
church where people are welcome to come as they are,
But it's also a church where God's not gonna let you.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Stay that way.
Speaker 4 (51:49):
He wants to change you called you chosen, so right now,
heads bowed, eyes closed. If this is your moment and
you're ready to commit your life to Christ or recommit
your life to Christ, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Lead you a prayer.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
This prayer is not magical, but the power of God
when you pray this prayer is miraculous. And right now,
in this moment, if you're ready to come to God
and be forgiven of your sins, I want you to
repeat after me, and the whole church is going to
pray with you. Pray this Heavenly Father. Today is my
(52:24):
day of salvation. I am a sinner in need of
a savior. And I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God and the savior of the world. And
today I make Jesus the Lord of my life. I
(52:45):
believe he died that I would be forgiven and rose
again to give me life.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
This is my new beginning. I am a child of God.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
If you pray that, sh at your hand up on
the count of three, one, two, three, and we're praising God.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
With you, praising God with you.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
Awesome man, awesome on every location. We celebrate you on
every come on. This is the praise Church.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
This is the praise Church.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
You know, we gotta do right.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
You know what we gotta do right. We gotta give God.
Speaker 4 (53:32):
The biggest praise we've given him in our twentieth year.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Five four three, twenty seconds to break brow pass those
bibles around.
Speaker 4 (53:56):
Yeah, take that Bible, man, get in it. Find out
this is what the Lord says. Never wait till you
get to church to hear what the Lord says. The
devil follows you around all weeks, so don't wait till
Sunday to suit up. What a privilege, What an honor.
I love being your pastor. Holly loves it too. Coming
(54:16):
up with me, Bebe, I got you.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
I'll tell you one.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
More story I left out of my sermon, and then
I'll let the campus pastors all close.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
You mind if I close here? Okay, take this for
me real quick. I was going to tell you this,
but I feel like maybe it was for this moment.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
When we were in Los Angeles a couple of years
ago doing one of our elevation nights, I found myself
on the brink of something like what I've heard a
panic attack is before I went out to preach.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Now, I begin to understand.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
That because of the adrenal fatigue of doing that so
many nights in a row, I really have to manage
my energy.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
But there was a moment before I went out to preach.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
To the people of God, and I thought, I'm not
going to be able to do it tonight. Combined with
fatigue was the fact that I was a little bit
awe struck by how many people were coming to be
a part of the ministry. And it blew my mind.
And it didn't make me think I'm the man, look
at me now. It made me think, God, what in
the world am I doing here? And I began to
remember my past almost so vividly that, although I'm thankful
(55:23):
for it, it kind of became a limitation on what
I thought the Lord could do through me, because what
is a boy from a town of six thousand people
doing preaching to fourteen thousand in LA And it kept
getting worse because they kept telling me about different people
that were coming that night, and some of them were
very well known. And as I was just freaking out
(55:43):
with God for a moment, hollywalked in.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
When she did, I.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Had a sort of flashback of all of the ministry
that we've done together since we were eighteen years old,
and all of a sudden, I was no longer in
Los Angeles, California, preaching to fourteen thousand. I was back
in a little town called Loris, South Carolina, preaching to
fourteen I was no longer in California at all. I
(56:09):
was in Cowpins, South Carolina, preaching to six and I
realized something in that moment that gave me confidence that
I've held on through many situations in my life, and maybe.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
It'll bless you too.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
I realized that although the numbers are much bigger, the
faithfulness of God has always been the same. And as
I looked at Holly and I began to remember all
of those times that we stood and saying, Lord, I
lift your name on high, and every move I make
in you, I make in you, make me move Jesus,
(56:43):
and Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary. And as
the deer panted for the water, and I realized I
got the same girl and the same God. So after
(57:04):
I say this, I'm going to dismiss you, So campus pastors,
you better take.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
It right now.
Speaker 4 (57:09):
I don't know what this new season of your life
is intimidating you with, threatening you with. I don't know
what's in your past that haunts you or what you
wish you could go back to.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
But I declare Isaiah.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
Forty three nineteen over every man, woman, boy, girl and
family in Elevation Church today. See I am doing a
new thing.
Speaker 1 (57:33):
Now it springs up. Now it springs up. Do you
not perceive it? And what's what God is doing? I
am making a.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
Way in the wilderness and streams in the way slang.
So everybody believes that the God who was with you
then is with you now. Give him an eternal praise.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I love you, God, bless thank you. Let's do this
twentieth year right. God is with you.
Speaker 4 (58:05):
God is for you. Have a great day. Happy annivers
for Church.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more
information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
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Speaker 2 (58:32):
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Speaker 1 (58:38):
Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
God bless you.
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hope this inspires you.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
in your life.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Isaiah forty three, Isaiah Chapter forty three, Isaiah Chapter forty.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
Three, Verse number nineteen, nineteenth Anniversary.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
The nineteenth verse.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Of Isaiah Isaiah forty three, Verse nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
See I am doing a new thing.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Now.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Pastor Holly already told you we're entering our twentieth year
of ministry today, but before we go to year twenty,
the Lord wants to give us something from verse nineteen. See,
I am doing a new thing. Everybody shout the next word.
Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I
(01:39):
am making a way in the wilderness and streams in
the wasteland.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Today.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I want to talk to you from a formal sounding topic,
but I'm going to make it really plain in just
a few moments I have. I want to talk to
you on our nineteenth church anniversary at Elevation as we
enter our twentieth year of ministry about our future and
our former, our future and our former. And I don't
(02:11):
know if that title is going to hit like I
wanted to, So let me give you title number two.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
New number, same name, new number, same name. Father. I
thank you for your word.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
As it goes forth, May it go forth with penetrating
insight with Holy Spirit power. May it go forth with
healing medicine to those who need it, who are standing
on the brink in the precipice of the new season
of their life, asking you what's next, and feeling nervous.
Perhaps they're concerned for one of their friends, one of
their children. Perhaps they're concerned for their mother, their father,
(02:47):
someone who's not in this room with them. Perhaps they're
concerned about their own health. Perhaps they're thinking about this
job that they've just taken and whether it was the
right one, or whether they're going to get the call back.
Perhaps they're praying their way through a season of loneliness
those needs. But from this place, this pulpit that you
have entrusted to me for these moments, I decree and
declare that the eternal wisdom of Almighty God will go
(03:09):
for it. It will not be checked by a demon
it will not be hindered by Satan. It will break
through and penetrate the life that it was intended to effect.
And I give you the glory in advance because it
is your word, and it is your work, and it
is your church, and so it is your praise in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Amen.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Amen, you may be seated. Of all of the questions
people ask me before a church anniversary, this has to
be the dumbest. I say that lovingly when they say,
(03:56):
if you could go back and start all over.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Again, would you do it?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
No? And sometimes they say it even more extreme than that.
Don't you just sometimes want to go back to the
early days and start the church all over again. No,
don't want to do that again, back to those days
when you weren't here. It was terrible before you got here.
(04:20):
Let me tell you, it's terrible before you got here.
Till a person next to you, This church sucked before
you showed up. Tell them that on every location Riverwalk
University City. One of the things that I always aim
to do as I stand before you, and I hope
that you sense this.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Is give you a good grounding in.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
The context of this scripture before moving to the application
because I understand that you can pretty much make the
Bible say something that it never really meant to.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Say or was intended to say.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
And although I read you that verse about I'm doing
a new thing for verse nineteen, and I am going
to preach that verse today.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I thought'd be.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Helpful if we establish a little bit of context and
go back to the top of this to get a
sense of who is Isaiah and why is he saying this,
and who is he saying it to. So I want
to back up to verse sixteen. I gave you to
verse fifteen in the back, but I'm going to go
to verse sixteen for now. And this first sentence, this
(05:27):
is something I really feel strongly about. He said, This
is what the Lord says. Now, I think you should
circle that in your Bible or highlight it or something,
because that's what we're trying to get to every time
we come together as a church. This is what the
Lord says. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's
(05:48):
never been harder to hear from God, not because we
don't have access to his word, but because we have
so many voices attacking his voice, to the point where
many of us are confused and we can't tell what's
God and what's the algorithm. Sometimes we can't tell what's
(06:11):
God and what's just us worrying and calling it prayer.
The biggest wrestling match of my life standing before you
each and every week, is to figure out what comes
after this phrase.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This is what the Lord says.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Notice that the text doesn't remark this is what the
Lord said.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It would be one thing.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
For us to just gather together weekly, have a short
history lesson on people who lived in the past that
is designed in order to keep us from ever feeling
challenged to bring the Word of God into our everyday life,
so that God just remains a mere superstition in our life,
someone that Grandma used to talk about that we run
(06:59):
to for comfort when our lives feel unstable. But the
cutting edge ministry of gospel preaching is to come with
the Word of God, timeless and eternal, written in the
pages of Scripture, not to be altered, taken away from,
or added to. Not one jot nor one tittle from
this thing is supposed to be altered, and to bring
it into the contemporary experience of a diversity of personalities ethnicities.
(07:24):
This is what the Lord says, and I never feel
ready to preach just because I have three points. I
never feel ready to preach just because I have a story.
I never feel ready to preach just because my voice
feels strong. I only feel ready to preach when I
can feel you getting what you need from your God.
(07:45):
When that happens, get out of my way. Get out
of my way, because once I sense that God has
given me what he wants you to have, Once I
sense that God has put something in my hear it
for your situation. This is what the Lord says, and
(08:06):
Isaiah goes on. We're going to follow his thought pattern
for a moment before we come to my main point today.
This is what the Lord says, he who made a
way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters,
who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and
reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Snuffed out like a whit.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Now we've gone two verses and we still haven't gotten
to what God says. Think of Isaiah as someone who
is introducing a guest speaker. If on our anniversary today
I was coming to bring up a guest speaker, I
would come before you, and I would begin to give
background information on that speaker. The reason for giving background
(08:56):
information on the speaker you might lean in to hear
what they have to say, especially if you don't know
who they are, because I want you to know, Hey, no,
Pastor Steven's definitely my favorite preacher. Pastor Holly's my second.
I'm saying this facetiously. By the way, I don't care
who your favorite preacher is. It matters what God says.
(09:17):
Anybody God wants to use in your life, that's fine
with me. But I would want to build credibility for
a speaker that you were not familiar with. So I
might say they've written three best selling books, or they've
done amazing work with the homeless community in their city,
or they have been recognized and regarded as one of
(09:39):
the premier experts on or they've pastored their church thirty
seven years and they've been married thirty four years, happily
married for thirty two of those thirty four years. And
I would begin to build your interest and your confidence
in the speaker by giving you a bit of their background.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
He says. This is what the Lord says.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Go back to verse sixteen briefly for me, please, I
want to break this down. And he proceeds not to
give the direct word of God, but indirectly he begins
to describe the works of God at a time that
was at least seven hundred years in the past. Now
every Bible student will know that this is a flashback
(10:23):
to an event in the scripture called the Exodus. This
is when God brought his people out of Egypt. They
did not get all the way to the Promised Land.
Their unbelief blocked them from that. But God brought them
through raging waters the Red Sea. He drowned the chariots
of the Egyptian pharaoh, and all of those chariots lay there,
(10:47):
never to rise again. It's as if Isaiah is bringing
God into the frame for the people to hear from
and he says to them, the Lord has a message
for you. And before I tell you what he says,
let me remind you what he does. This is not
one of the gods of Babylonia who was crafted by
(11:10):
human hands. This is not one of the gods of
Assyria that was dreamt up by a human imagination. This
is the God who's about to speak to you, who
made a way through the sea a path through the
mighty waters.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I'm about to preach, who drew.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again. So before
you hear what God is about to say to his people,
remember what he did to their enemies, so that you
have confidence that the God that is fighting your battles
today has been here before. God has been here before.
(11:49):
Even if you haven't been here before, God goes ahead
of you into everything you call today. In fact, when
you talk about the future, God doesn't have a word
in his vocabulary for that. That's in your dictionary, not his.
God doesn't talk about future. God talks about eternity. And God,
who sits out of time, gives you a box called
(12:11):
time so you don't go crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And he allows you to think about.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The future because you cannot compartmentalize well, and so he
allows you to think of something called tomorrow, even though
to him God, tomorrow is already history.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Let me remind you that God.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Who has already been into your future, has proven himself
faithful in your past. And that's what you'd expect me
to preach about on an anniversary Sunday, right, Look what
the Lord has done. Right, that's what I want to
preach on an anniversary Sunday, because what he's done is
(12:47):
comfortable and comforting. What he's done, I have a frame
of reference for I never understood why people shouted over
Isaiah forty three nineteen. In verse nineteen, he says, see,
I am doing a new thing, and everybody shouts, And
(13:07):
I think that's strange. In a couple of weeks, we're
going on elevation nights and we'll be sharing in different
cities the Love of Jesus and the Gospel of Jesus,
and we'll.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Be sharing songs.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And you know how to really lose a crowd in
an arena like that, Just tell them we want to
share a new song with you, the one you never
heard before.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If they cheer for that, they're being polite. They don't
want a new song. I even see y'all do it
on Sundays. Poor Chris.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Can we give it up for Chris, the real Chris Brown,
Our Chris Brown. I'm just getting to the point in
my life where I thank God for consistent people.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
And Chris is so consistent.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Every week I'll watch him out here and and he
has the hard line, the hardest line, to say, you know,
we just finished singing.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Graves into gardens or gyra or.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Something like that, and now he has to look you
right in your eyes and say, are you all.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Ready to sing a new song? Church?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
And y'all are faking it too, because you're you're.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Polite and nice.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Yeah, we want to sing a new song. New doesn't
always feel improved at first, does it? New doesn't always
feel improved at first. One of the things about God's
(14:41):
word that is so wonderful to me is that although
it's foundational and does not change, it is always fresh.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Therefore, it's always relevant.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
When God gets ready to speak to you about a
situation in your life, he will remind you of some
of the roads that He's already led you through.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
But he doesn't stop there.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Because after Isaiah reads the resume of this God we've
come to worship and serve, mentioning the central event in
Israel's history, the one that they couldn't stop celebrating about
seven centuries later. The first time that he speaks on
behalf of God, because that's what prophets did. He says
(15:25):
a word we would not expect to hear in this context.
For after he says, God drew your enemies out into
the water, killed the horses and chariots of those who
were chasing you, gave you a great and mighty deliverance,
made your way through clean so you could praise him today.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Right after he says that, in verse.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Eighteen, he gives the first instruction from God. And it
is counterintuitive, and you are forgiven. If it's surprising to
you forget, well, then why are you mentioning it? Why
are you mentioning what I'm meant to forget? And that's strange.
I love studying the Bible with y'all because we would
(16:06):
just read write over this right.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
God is doing a new thing. I'm gonna have a
new wife. I'm gonna have a new kid when I
get home. I read a book one time. It was
called how to have a new Husband in twenty one days. Hey, y'
to talking about taking the same husband.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
And if you do this, you can change him, and
you can manipulate him and just compliment him when he
carries the groceries in, and he'll think he's strong and
he'll carry the groceries more.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
How to have a new husband in.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Twenty one days, that is not Isaiah's message. In fact,
Isaiah is saying, now that I have reminded you of
all of these former things that God has done, Forget
the former things.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Say that real quick.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Forget the former, Forget the former Forget the dress you
used to fit into, the people you used to want
to see at the party. Forget the drugs that you
used to get high on. Right, that's what he's talking about. No,
he's talking about things God did. Now, I get it
(17:09):
if he's saying, forget the things that you used to
sin with.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
But he's actually.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Saying, forget the things that you used to celebrate. And
I studied it, and I studied it, and I said, well, Lord,
should we not celebrate the anniversary? Should we not put
up all the old pictures of when you made a way?
We had no money and we had no.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Connections and you built this church? Is it a sin
to celebrate what you did?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
And so as I read it, it became clear to
me why so many of us stay stuck in the
past and we cannot grow. By the way, there is
one thing that you can do that God can't do.
Grow grow you do, Graham said to me one time recently,
(18:05):
He said, corn dogs fell off.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I said, what does that even mean?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Can you say that in English? He said, corn dogs
used to be so big. Remember when corn dogs were
big they fell off.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And I told them they didn't. Corn dogs didn't fall off.
You grew up. See the difference. He thinks corn dogs changed.
Corn dogs don't change. Corn day dogs. This is the
Bible says it. Corn dogs are the same yesterday, today,
and forever. But you changed. You changed. And as we
(18:45):
are being.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Changed by the glory of the Lord, we see more
of his glory as we are changed by him, and
we begin to realize that a lot of what we
call growth is forgetting what we thought we knew. So
a lot of what we call going forward we will
forget what we thought God had promised as we learn
(19:10):
what he really promised. A lot of our problem is
when we overlay our preferences on God's promises. And I'm
going to take that further, so you better let that
one sink in. When you overlay your preference over God's promise.
But here's the even worst part. You lay your preference
(19:30):
over God's promise and then you attach God's promise to
your plan.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And that's not how this works.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
So Isaiah is speaking to people about the exodus, which
happened seven hundred years ago, and he's speaking to them
about their exile, which they're currently in because they're in
a place called Babylonia and they were taken there by Nebekinezer,
but they're going to be led.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Out by Cyrus.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
And he says, I'm doing a new thing, but I
want to remind you of the old thing. But no
sooner does he remind them of who is speaking than
he says, this is what the Lord says, forget.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The former.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
And I don't think this means that we can't go
shopping for Iron Maiden t shirts, as some of us
are wont to do. I don't think that God is
against nostalgia. I don't think that God is against memory.
But I'm very conflicted about those of us who are
staying stuck in a stage of our spiritual growth and
(20:37):
calling it our whole story. Remember, the Red Sea was
not the finish line for the people of God.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
It was the foundation.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
And is it possible that you've been taking something in
your life that was meant to be a foundation and
treating it as a finish line. And I'll tell you
some of the things that we say when we're trying
to take foundations. Nobody sees a foundation of a house
and then pays the builder.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
The full amount, unless you're a fool.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
If you're building a house and they put up the foundation,
keep a little of that money back.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Because they've got still more to do.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
And when God lays a foundation in your life and
you call it finished, you end up crossing the Red Sea,
getting through the waters, and spending forty years in a wilderness.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
So I hear.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Christians often say things like I'm just a sinner saved
by grace. I saw a bumper sticker one time that
said Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. Now I understand the
heart of that. We're saying we're not better than you.
It's not like we don't cuss our kids out, we
just don't do it in church.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
This is the praise in church. I forgot.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
But when you say Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven, if
that helps you to receive God's grace for where you're at,
that is a wonderful truth.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
But if it causes you to.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Remain or the way the prophet Isaiah put it, he said,
don't dwell on it. Don't dwell on the past. Let
me show you this in verse eighteen. It's right there
in the text. He says, forget the former things.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Do not dwell on the past.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Then why did you spend two verses telling me about
the past if you don't want me to dwell on it?
So God says, I gave you those experiences to draw from,
not to dwell on. The difference, I gave you those
experiences to.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Draw from, not to dwell on.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
To dwell in it is to live in something that
God intended to be temporary.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Okay, when there is.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
A truth spoken over your life concerning what God has
given you, concerning who God has called you, concerning who
He has, who He has made you to be, let's
get that phrase embedded. Who He has made you to be.
When God has planted that truth inside of you, that
is a foundational truth. But the foundation is not meant
(23:19):
to be the finish line of your faith. And so
then if you just imagine this, you're building a house,
they pour the foundation, You set up tents and pay
them full price, and you have no indoor plumbing, and
you certainly have no marble countertops, and you paid for
him and you got no run in water and you
(23:41):
paid for it is paid for, but you're.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Not living in it. It's paid for, but you said no,
I'm a live in this tent.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
See a lot of Christians and they don't realize what's
already been paid for. So now I'm living down in
something that Jesus' glood already purchased more than. But I
can't see past what I've been through. So I figure
this Red Sea was meant to be the result. The
(24:11):
Red Sea was just the road to get where I
was going. It wasn't the place I was meant to stay.
So I'm gonna fight every single one of you that says,
men the good old days of Elevation Church, back when
we used to be at Providence High School.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Providence High School.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
If you think the good old days of Elevation Church,
you were not setting up at Providence High School or
tearing down. All that shows me is you were in
a volunteer. That's why you thought it was the.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Good old days.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
It is a perspective of praise that you get when
you see, Oh God brought me through that, but he
did not lead me to that as my destination. I
declare over your life today, that everything you have seen
God do was a foundation. He is not done building
(25:08):
in your life. He is not done building in your
blood life. He is not done building on your experience.
He is not done building through your pain.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Forget how far you've come. What I thought I was
supposed to remember how far I've come.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
And last week I did a good little message because
I preached on look forward, not far, and I was
illustrating that when we tend to get too far out
ahead of ourselves. Man, I prayed before our twentieth year
of ministry started, I said, Lord, let me give him
the plan for the next twenty years of the church.
I started praying that in January. I was praying it
up till.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Nine twenty nine.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Church started at nine thirty. And the lawyer said, Nope,
not twenty years. How about twenty minutes. How about twenty minutes.
Get up and preach the word. This is what the
Lord says for your current situation. You know why we
want God's plans to be so far in the future,
because we're not committed to His presence in our daily life.
(26:16):
This is what the Lord says. This is what the
Lord says. Now, the Lord's going to speak to you
in many ways through your life. I didn't give them
Hebrews one one, but it came up in my spirits.
So I'm gonna find it in my own big fat
bible and read it to you right now, my small
print bible, my bible that I could read nineteen years
(26:39):
ago when we started this church, back when I could
find the Book of Hebrews chapter one. It begins our
twentieth year ministream. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors.
I'm not being this is the scripture for really. In
(27:02):
the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets
at many times, in various ways. That's what I want
you to get at many times, in various ways in
the past verse two. But in these last days he
has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed
heir of all things, and through whom he also made
(27:23):
the universe. Now what that makes me think is God's
been doing this a long time. He's consistent. Say that
out loud. God is consistent. Put it in the chat.
God is consistent. The worlds were framed by the word
of God. So when Isaiah says, this is what the
Lord says, God didn't just start speaking, you just started listening.
(27:47):
He's just waiting for us to tune in when we
start our worship service at church bridges joining of what
Heaven is doing around the clock. Because he's consistent. He's
consistently holy. That's why the angels call him Holy, Holy, Holy.
When you say it three times, it underscores not only
the significance of it, but the consistency of it. God
doesn't take an off day from doing the right thing.
(28:10):
Jesus was without sin, and yet he was made to
become sin so that we who had sinned could become
the righteousness of God through him. That's what he means
by his son, who created the universe. Jesus did not
become God when he was born. He was always God.
He will always be God. He is Alpha and Omega.
He's consistent. He was there from the foundation of the world.
(28:33):
The world was framed by the very word of God
that is coming into your heart today.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
He's consistent. Say it again. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
He didn't just start feeding his people when he gave
them manna in the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
He's consistent. He'd been feeding them all of their life.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
He's consistent. God can find so many ways to feed
his children. If it's not manna in the wilderness, it
will be the fruit of Canaan. But I'll tell you
one thing. He's consistent, and he'll feed you. Whether it's
ravens bringing you food which were considered unclean, bring into
a Hebrew prophet a bird that was considered unclean by
the Jewish religion. God can feed you anywhere you are,
(29:14):
and he can find you anywhere you are, and he
can fill you anywhere you are because he formed you. Now,
whoever forms you knows what to fill you with. Whoever
forms you knows what to fill you with.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And the one who.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Knows your future formed you before your future begin. Because
the prophet Isaiah said, and excuse me, the prophet Jeremiah,
his buddy, said, in Jeremiah chapter one, verse five, before
you were born, I formed you in my mother's womb.
I was knit together because he was formed. And so
all of my days he has been faithful all my life.
He has been so so good. That's the consistency of God.
(29:52):
He is a consistent friend. He doesn't duck out when
it's a liability to know your name or your number.
He's a consistent stint friend. He's a friend that sticks
closer than a brother. He knows how to celebrate your
wins with you because he's consistent. He's not intimidated like
some of your friends when you're doing good, and they
only want to come around when you're doing bad, because
(30:14):
misery loves company.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
He'll step into your good moment and he can be
proud of you pass the point where other people can
because he has no insecurities. He's consistent, he has no insufficiencies.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
He doesn't run out of energy. He doesn't get tired
of carrying you. He doesn't say, because you pray to me,
tomorrow is kind of late right now, and I'm not
really a night person.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
He's not waiting for you to get the eyeboogers out
of your eyes. He's a morning person too. He's consistent.
He doesn't sleep, he doesn't slumber. He's consistent. He doesn't
come off his throne when one party wins an election
or another one wins the next one. He's consistent. He's
Israel's king and your creator. He's consistent. He is consistent,
so consistent that he'll walk with you, not only through
(30:59):
the joys and the outain tops of your life, but
in the sorrows of your life. He's not ashamed to
be associated with you. He's consistent. If you hadn't caught
any fish, he'll tell you where to throw the net
out again.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Because he's consistent.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
He's so consistent he's worthy of praise when your feelings
are telling you that you're not worthy of his love.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
He's consistent. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
He relates to you on the basis of what he
did for you, not what you do for him. So
even if you hadn't done it right lately, he's consistent.
When people walk out of your life, they walk out
of your life for different reasons. He stays in your
life for one reason, because you're his. He's consistent. He's
a good father. He's consistent. If your father wasn't a
good father, he'll pick up where your father and your
(31:40):
mother forsake you, then the Lord will take you up
because he's consistent. I'm celebrating today that he's consistent that
I've never seen the righteous forsaken, nor is seed begging bread.
He's consistent, So there's never been a time that I
called to him, and he was busy with another one
of his kids that he liked more. Even when I
(32:01):
was trying to run away to Tarsus, she got me
to nineveh in the belly of a whale, because he
has many vehicles to get his voice to where he
wants it to go.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
If there is one thing I love about God is
that he's consistent. How many have found him to be consistent,
and you can testify and come into agreement that he's consistent.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
But he's also creative.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
And I don't know if you know any creative people,
but sometimes creativity and consistency don't get along so well.
If you've ever lived with an artist, sometimes they don't
know how to.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Make their bed up.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
If you've ever lived with somebody who was creatively gifted,
sometimes they're a little sporadically wired. God is consistent, but
he's also creative. And I was praying, Lord, give me
something special to show them today. This is our anniversary,
it's the beginning of our twentieth year of ministry.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I want us to have a twenty twenty vision. Come on, Lord,
And what he spoke to me was something beautiful.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
He began to speak to me as I was falling
asleep and waking up, and he took me to a
text because I think at my heart I'm a storyteller.
If you ever do the math on my sermons, a
lot of them are based around stories. And so the
prophetic declaration of Isaiah and the story of the people
coming through the Red Sea, and the mention of the
author of Hebrews about the supremacy, the superiority, the efficiency
(33:35):
of Jesus Christ, our Savior, it all kind of finds
a unity point in my mind in two of the
miracles that Jesus did, and I won't belabor them, but
I do want to show them to you in their entirety.
In Mark chapter eight, Jesus heals a blind man. Now
what drew me to this passage initially was the Lord
(33:59):
told Isaiah.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
See, I am doing a new thing.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
And so I started realizing a lot of us don't
have a supply problem, we have a site problem. It's
not that God hasn't spoken, we just can't see. And
realizing that one of the most frequent miracles that Jesus
performed in the scripture was the healing of blind eyes.
I went and studied different people that he healed of blindness,
(34:25):
because I believe we all have spiritual blindness, blind spots,
things that we say, Well, if I could go back,
i'd do it different. But I didn't know that five
years ago. I didn't know that I was hurting my child.
I was trying to discipline them. But now I see
that I was too harsh.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I didn't mean to. I was trying to.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I was trying to provide for my family, but I
ended up kind of abandoning them emotionally and in an
attempt to give them what I didn't have, which was
money growing up, I didn't give them what I did have,
which is love. And I'm looking back, and I was
blinded by that. And so the healing of the Savior
and the new thing that God is doing often brings
restoration of spiritual sight what Paul called the eyes of
(35:02):
your heart being enlightened. And in Mark chapter eight, there
is a mention of a man I don't believe we
get his name in the scripture, but Jesus did something
amazing for it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I don't know when you're watching this, but if you're
about to go to lunch, this might ruin your appetite.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's kind of gross Mark Chapter eight please.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
They the disciples in Jesus came to Bethseta, and some
people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged Jesus
to touch him. Pay attention to every detail that you can.
It will reward your attention if you'll pay attention to
every detail in this little story. He took verse twenty
three the blind man by the hand let him outside
(35:47):
the village. When he'd spin on the man's eyes and
put his hands on him, Jesus asked, do you see anything?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I told you this is.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Not a very appetizing miracle. I need to read that again,
because you didn't even react to it. And it's so weird.
When he had spit on the man's eyes, we just
glossed over that, like that's just something people do, like
he did a hail Mary over him or something. He
spit on the man's eyes and then put his hands
on him, and Jesus asked, do you see anything.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
He looked up and said, you did pretty good. I
see people.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
They look like trees walking around. Now I'm gonna point
out to you real quick. The fact that he knew
what trees looked like means that he had been able
to see it sometime in the past, so he's restoring
his sight some things.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
God wants to bring.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
You back to you really do know what it means?
And he said, I see it, but it's blurry. Have
you got any blurry blessings in your life right now?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I see it, but it's blurry. It's working, but it
seems a little off. Can can you?
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I don't want you to spit on me again, but
can I get a second touch?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Can I get a second touch?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
The Bible says something very powerful once more, Jesus put
his hands on the man's eyes, and then his eyes
were open. His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Jesus sent him home, saying, don't even go into the village.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
What a great story.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
If that were the passage we were preaching from, we
would say every miracle is messy, Every miracle is messy.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Spit in your eyes is messy.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
We would also say that many miracles in your life
happened over the period of time because there were two
touches involved. But we're not viewing this miracle in isolation,
because Jesus is consistent, but he's also creative. And here's
what I mean. Go to Mark chapter ten. Another blind man,
(37:54):
this one whose name we do know. Give me my
Mark ten.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Please.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Then they came to Jericho. Is a different town, beth
sta mark a Jericho Mark ten. As Jesus and his disciples,
together with the large crowd, were leaving the city, a
blind man, same condition. Bartimaeus which means son of Timaeus,
was sitting by the roadside begging next verse when he
(38:20):
heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. He could hear,
but he couldn't see. He began to shout because he
could shout though he couldn't see. He's using everything that
he has available.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Jesus. He calls the name, son of David, have mercy
on me.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but
he shouted all the more, Son of David.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Have mercy on me.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I'm using restraint because everything in me wants to preach.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Don't you let them shut you up. Don't you let
them shut you down. Don't you let them call you crazy.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
They tried to do it to me for almost twenty years,
and if I had listened to everything they said about me,
I wouldn't be here preaching to your beautiful self, I
should dare miss what God has for you down the road. Man,
y'all are easy to preach to today. Come back next week.
(39:12):
Somebody in here is making a difference. What verse were
we on? Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet,
but he shouted all the more, son.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said,
call him.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
So they the disciples, you're ready called the blind man
called the blind man, share up on your feet.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
He's calling you. Throwing his cloak aside. He jumped to
his feet and came to Jesus. What do you want
me to do for you? Jesus asked him, and.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
The blind man said, Rabbi, I want to see now.
I can't prove it in the text because the text
says that the blind man threw his cloak. I can't
prove it in the text because the text says that
he shouted loud. I can't prove it in the text.
But I think when he said I want to see,
Peter and the other disciples backed up a little bit
because the last time Jesus did what he's asking him
(40:16):
to do. And maybe they even said to the God,
hey man, you might want to. You got a change
of clothes, you know, just to prepare you. This can
be kind of traumatic if you're not expecting it, just
to let you know.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
But watch this. Jesus is a healer. He's consistent.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
He doesn't tell the man Now I don't feel like healing.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Check back Thursday.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Thursday is my healing day because he's consistent. But the
same Savior who is consistent is also creative, which means
he is not constrained, which means he doesn't have to
do the same thing this time that he did last time,
which means.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
That he's gonna heal the man. But this time, watch,
it's a little different. Jesus just said, go verse fifty two,
your faith has healed you. And immediately he received this
side and followed Jesus along the road. And barthol of
(41:22):
You and.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Andrew and John and James and Peter are like, wait, Jesus,
you forgot to spit.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You gotta spit.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Remember the chapter eight when Jesus did, I mean, when
you got to spit on him like that, He's not
gonna work if it doesn't spit.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I mean, you spin on that guy and you still
had to do it. Twice.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
If you're taking notes of as a disciple, here's what
you're writing down, because you've never seen anything that's amazing before. Right,
she's walking on healing blind eyes and stuff. So you're
keeping notes. Okay, we're gonna have to do this without
him one day.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
So what does he do? Okay?
Speaker 4 (41:52):
So he spits and then the first touch doesn't really work,
so you got to do it twice, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And then Jesus walks right.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Up on this man name Bartimas, and the man's screaming,
and they're like, you're not supposed to scream, and Jesus like,
I don't mind him screaming, don't bother me.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
And the man throws his cloak, and Jesus like, let
him throw off anything he wants to.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
And Jesus looks straight at that man and heals him
how he wants to, how he chooses to. He's healing you,
but maybe not how you want him to, maybe not
(42:33):
how you're used to. Isaiah said, remember when the sea split,
it's not gonna split this time right instead, Verse nineteen.
I'm doing a new thing. Even now. It springs up
the song you're singing from seven hundred years ago. The
(42:54):
sea split.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
This time the water.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Isn't gonna split, It's gonna spring, but it's still water.
And I wonder, is this not the wisdom of God?
Because he knows we'll get addicted to miracles.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And not be dependent on him.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
So he says, you wanted me to do it like that, Nah,
I'm not splitting to see this time. This time is
coming from a different place. Now you assume that God
isn't speaking, I wonder, are you just not seeing?
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And he's speaking?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Because the same Savior that spit in the man's eyes
didn't spit this time. This time he just spoke because
he's creative, so he doesn't have to spit. He can speak,
he can spit. He can spit while he speaks. Like me,
(43:50):
A lady told me one time, I sit on at
least the fourth throw because watching you preaches like be
in a sea world. I gotta get out of his
flash zone. She said, you spit when you speak. And see,
God doesn't always have to spit when he speaks. He's consistent,
but he's creative. And sometimes the fact that he is
so creative causes you to forget how consistent he is.
(44:13):
Because while you're waiting for him to spit. He's just
speaking one word. Go, one word from God. This is
what the Lord says, Go. And I came into the
first weekend of our twentieth year of ministry to declare
to you that not only is this the praise Church,
(44:33):
but this is the proclamation church. This is the proclamation Church,
where the word of the Lord reaches beyond the barriers
of a physical campus or location, beyond the demographic of
a certain socioeconomic stratus or class, beyond the backgrounds that
we've all experienced up to this point. God said, forget
(44:55):
all of that. I am not defining your life by
the former. This is the most beautiful thing he gave
me in so long, because after he said forget the
former thing Verse twenty, he said, even the wild jackals
and the owls know how to honor me, because I
provide water in the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
The sea is not splitting this time.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
It doesn't need to the same people aren't going to
call you this time.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
They don't need to. It's not going to feel the.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
Same way this time. It doesn't have to. He said,
I provide water in the wilderness, and so the animals
honor me, and waiting for the verse to come back
up so I can finish it out and streams in
the wasteland to give drink.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
To my people. Watch this, my chosen.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
That's who you are, my people, my chosen Verse twenty one,
the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Praise.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Leave the verse un let's splash around in this water
for a minute. He said, I want you to forget
the former because you are the people I formed for myself.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
And since he is God and is not limited by time,
he formed you for a future that only he knows.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
So everything you feel insecure about let it go is
not going to matter.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Because he is your former. What do you mean former?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
The same Hebrew word that Isaiah uses for former is
translated as potter and planner. So what's he saying? Let
go of your plan so I can show you my purpose.
Let go of every plan that you made without God.
(46:58):
Let go of every plan that you made by consulting
your past. Let go of every plan that.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Was limited to the people you have around you.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
Right now, there's new rivers, new streams, new blessings, new wells,
new beginnings.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
And what has stayed the same for.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Twenty years now in this church is the name, the
name of Jesus the Great. I am in flesh, incarnate
in action the name of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
The numbers have changed, The numbers have changed greatly. I
used to preach to a room full of nineteen people.
My passion wasn't lower. I didn't talk softer.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I'll scream louder because I was desperate and youthful.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Nothing changed about that when the numbers changed. But it's
an amazing thing.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
How sometimes God is speaking to you but you.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Don't recognize him because it doesn't come from where you
expect it.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
I have one friend in my life who changes his
phone number about every ten months. Every time he changes
his number, and he knows exactly who he is. I
don't even bother anymore to replace his old name with
his new name. I just put a year out beside it,
(48:46):
and let's say his name is is John. I have
John twenty nineteen, John twenty twenty, John twenty twenty one,
first quarter, John twenty twenty one, second quarter.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
In my phone.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
I got his name like fourteen times, but he hasn't changed.
Just where he's calling me from.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Same name, new number, same name, new number.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
I commit to you afresh and anew on this the
beginning of our twentieth year, and anybody who needs to leave,
I'm gonna give you a second to do it before
I close this message. Thank you so much. Now, y'all
look at me.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I don't care how many or how few God sends us.
There is one name that is able.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
To save in this ministry. There is one name that
is able to heal in this ministry. There is one
name that is able to get your kids off drugs.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
In this ministry. There is one name that is able
to put your arn't back together in this ministry.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
And as long as the name of Jesus is being proclaimed,
this is what the Lord says. There will always be
a current word over this house. There will always be
a fresh word over your life. And Father, I just
thank you today for your word in our wilderness. You
(50:26):
showed me before I stood up to preach God that
this is what you have to say to this people
on this day, and you gave me a word for
this occasion.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
But I don't believe it was just for our church anniversary.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
I believe in my heart because I know you to
be good, that you are too consistent to ever change,
and you are too creative to do the same thing
the same way twice. So we thank you that although
our world feels unstable, unsteady, and changing all around us,
never been a more important time for us to look
(51:05):
toward your faithfulness.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
With your head's bowed and.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Your eyes closed, there's somebody here that God is calling
to for salvation. I would like to give you the
invitation today, whether online or in the room, to receive
Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord. There is no
more important decision than this. There is no more important decision,
(51:29):
not where you're gonna live, not who you're gonna marry,
who your heart belongs to, who you trust in for
the salvation of your soul. This is the most important
decision you will ever make. This has always been a
church where people are welcome to come as they are,
But it's also a church where God's not gonna let you.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Stay that way.
Speaker 4 (51:49):
He wants to change you called you chosen, so right now,
heads bowed, eyes closed. If this is your moment and
you're ready to commit your life to Christ or recommit
your life to Christ, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Lead you a prayer.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
This prayer is not magical, but the power of God
when you pray this prayer is miraculous. And right now,
in this moment, if you're ready to come to God
and be forgiven of your sins, I want you to
repeat after me, and the whole church is going to
pray with you. Pray this Heavenly Father. Today is my
(52:24):
day of salvation. I am a sinner in need of
a savior. And I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God and the savior of the world. And
today I make Jesus the Lord of my life. I
(52:45):
believe he died that I would be forgiven and rose
again to give me life.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
This is my new beginning. I am a child of God.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
If you pray that, sh at your hand up on
the count of three, one, two, three, and we're praising God.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
With you, praising God with you.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
Awesome man, awesome on every location. We celebrate you on
every come on. This is the praise Church.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
This is the praise Church.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
You know, we gotta do right.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
You know what we gotta do right. We gotta give God.
Speaker 4 (53:32):
The biggest praise we've given him in our twentieth year.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Five four three, twenty seconds to break brow pass those
bibles around.
Speaker 4 (53:56):
Yeah, take that Bible, man, get in it. Find out
this is what the Lord says. Never wait till you
get to church to hear what the Lord says. The
devil follows you around all weeks, so don't wait till
Sunday to suit up. What a privilege, What an honor.
I love being your pastor. Holly loves it too. Coming
(54:16):
up with me, Bebe, I got you.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
I'll tell you one.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
More story I left out of my sermon, and then
I'll let the campus pastors all close.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
You mind if I close here? Okay, take this for
me real quick. I was going to tell you this,
but I feel like maybe it was for this moment.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
When we were in Los Angeles a couple of years
ago doing one of our elevation nights, I found myself
on the brink of something like what I've heard a
panic attack is before I went out to preach.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Now, I begin to understand.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
That because of the adrenal fatigue of doing that so
many nights in a row, I really have to manage
my energy.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
But there was a moment before I went out to preach.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
To the people of God, and I thought, I'm not
going to be able to do it tonight. Combined with
fatigue was the fact that I was a little bit
awe struck by how many people were coming to be
a part of the ministry. And it blew my mind.
And it didn't make me think I'm the man, look
at me now. It made me think, God, what in
the world am I doing here? And I began to
remember my past almost so vividly that, although I'm thankful
(55:23):
for it, it kind of became a limitation on what
I thought the Lord could do through me, because what
is a boy from a town of six thousand people
doing preaching to fourteen thousand in LA And it kept
getting worse because they kept telling me about different people
that were coming that night, and some of them were
very well known. And as I was just freaking out
(55:43):
with God for a moment, hollywalked in.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
When she did, I.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Had a sort of flashback of all of the ministry
that we've done together since we were eighteen years old,
and all of a sudden, I was no longer in
Los Angeles, California, preaching to fourteen thousand. I was back
in a little town called Loris, South Carolina, preaching to
fourteen I was no longer in California at all. I
(56:09):
was in Cowpins, South Carolina, preaching to six and I
realized something in that moment that gave me confidence that
I've held on through many situations in my life, and maybe.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
It'll bless you too.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
I realized that although the numbers are much bigger, the
faithfulness of God has always been the same. And as
I looked at Holly and I began to remember all
of those times that we stood and saying, Lord, I
lift your name on high, and every move I make
in you, I make in you, make me move Jesus,
(56:43):
and Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary. And as
the deer panted for the water, and I realized I
got the same girl and the same God. So after
(57:04):
I say this, I'm going to dismiss you, So campus pastors,
you better take.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
It right now.
Speaker 4 (57:09):
I don't know what this new season of your life
is intimidating you with, threatening you with. I don't know
what's in your past that haunts you or what you
wish you could go back to.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
But I declare Isaiah.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
Forty three nineteen over every man, woman, boy, girl and
family in Elevation Church today. See I am doing a
new thing.
Speaker 1 (57:33):
Now it springs up. Now it springs up. Do you
not perceive it? And what's what God is doing? I
am making a.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
Way in the wilderness and streams in the way slang.
So everybody believes that the God who was with you
then is with you now. Give him an eternal praise.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I love you, God, bless thank you. Let's do this
twentieth year right. God is with you.
Speaker 4 (58:05):
God is for you. Have a great day. Happy annivers
for Church.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more
information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
God bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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