September 8, 2024 • 62 mins
Pastor Steven Furtick helps us deal with disappointment and revive our hope in “Rescue Your Testimony.” You’ll be encouraged to tell your story through the lens of God’s faithfulness.
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Scripture References:
Romans 5, verses 1-9
Joshua 4, verses 5-9
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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.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
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. Hope it gives your perspective
to see God has moving in your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
We're about to jump into the message, but before we do,
I wanted to let you know that Elevation Nights is
back September twenty fourth through October third, and if you
live on the West Coast, we might be coming to
a city near you. We're going to be in Seattle, Vancouver, Sacramento,
La Anaheim, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver. It's going
to be an amazing night with Elevation worship and a
(00:39):
message from Pastor Stephen. So go to Elevation Nights dot
com to get your tickets. We cannot wait to see
you there. Now let's go to the message.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
How many came for a word from God today?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
God's doctor.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Your main standing.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
For one moment, I'm going to be sharing today from
Romans chapter five, verses one through nine, and then I'm
going to go to one other scripture as well.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Fair warning, I overstudied this week better than the alternative.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right, y'all, it was real busy.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
I'm just gonna see what the Lord says.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I actually am nervous to try to get this all
out today, but I have you home by Sunday.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Night football nervous chuckles.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Romans Chapter five, Verse one, Ready say Ready. Therefore, since
we have been justified through faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have
gained access by faith into this grace in which we
now stand, and we boast in the hope of the
(01:54):
glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory
in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces this perseverance, perseverance,
character and character, hope, and hope does not put us
to shame, because God's love has been poured out into
(02:15):
our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Who has been given to us.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You see, at just the right time, when we were
still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Tell somebody that's you.
I know you smell good today, but that's you the ungodly.
I know you brush your teeth today, but that's you
the ungodly. I know you've got a Christian t shirt
(02:41):
on today. But that's you, the ungodly. And verse seven
goes very theological. He says, very rarely will anyone die
for a righteous person, though for a good person someone
might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own
love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Died for us.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how
much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?
Speaker 5 (03:20):
One more scripture from Joshua chapter four, and we're going
to get to work.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Joshua chapter four and verse number nine, please, And Joshua
was set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan,
in the place where the feet of the priests bearing
(03:43):
the ark of the Covenant had stood. And they are
there to this day, and they are there to this day.
And the Lord said that we were on a rescue
mission today in this service. And so I'm going to
use as a title what the Lord wants to do today.
God said, we're going to rescue your testimony. Rescue your testimony.
(04:08):
And you know, I like to give little subtitles, sometimes
little weird subtitles. The subtitle tell your neighbor, say the
proof is in the puddles. The proof is in the puzzles.
You may be seated. We're on a rescue mission today,
and go ahead and bring out my teaching screen. I
(04:30):
want to break this all the way down from Romans
chapter five. My favorite word that I read you in
Romans chapter five was the very first one. And put
it back on the screen again, Romans chapter five, verse one. Therefore,
everybody say, therefore.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
One of the most beautiful things that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Holly does for me on a regular basis is to
help me remember what my true values are when I'm
in a vulnerable place personally. And she does this in
the most tactful ways. She says things to me that
sounds so sweet, but beneath that layer of sweetness, she's
actually challenging me, come on, like step it up. And
(05:13):
she says something the other day which sounds like a
compliment until I put it in context. She said, wow,
you really do think of everything. Sounds nice, right, It
sounds like she's given me extra credit for being a
good planner. The context of the statement, she was definitely
(05:33):
saying it out of kindness, but it wasn't compliment. We're
talking about going to do something and I have a gift.
I don't know if you have this gift too, Just
make some noise if you share the same gift.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I have a gift for.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Hypothetical.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I actually would say I am the high priest of
the hypothetical scenario, you know, plays out in many different ways.
On this particular day, I was saying, you know, if
we go here to see this person, we were going
to make a trip, and I.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Said, well, we go, if we go.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
If we go, he.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Might have to work and I hadn't even checked into
his work schedule yet, and we might we might get
sick because he was hanging out with this other person
that was sick the other day and I heard they
might have COVID and I don't even know what that
is anymore, but I heard that they might have had it.
And so, but then, what if we're going, and what
if we And she looks at me and goes, wow,
(06:34):
you really do think of everything, And I said, well,
it's just it could be kind of stressful, you know,
And she said yeah, but you can make anything stressful.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
And it didn't offend me at all. I needed to
hear it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Because she knows that actually what I want to experience
is on the other side of something that I may
not want to do.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
And she knew that if I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Always getting hung up on the hypothetical, there's a sense
in which I would just always stay home. If I
was just left to my own devices, I would just
become a complete hermit, and I would be a hermit
because when I leave the house, this involves other humans
at this point. And so there was a song by
Paramore a few years ago where she said, this is.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Why I don't leave the house.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And I look at Holly sometimes when we get in traffic,
or when I can't find a bathroom, or you know,
something kind of crazy is happening, and I go, this
is why I don't leave the house. And she, on
the other hand, now I'm very hypothetical. I made up
a word to describe her spiritual gift. Okay, I made
this word up. You won't find it in the dictionary.
I am hypothetical. Holly is hypothetical. You like that I
(07:48):
made that up. Let me see if I can write
it on the screen. Hopathetical, everybody say, hypothetical not a
real word, just a word to use for our purposes
in studying today.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
She is hope othetical.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So while I'm stuck in the hypothetical of you know what,
if my phone dies, it's only seventy two percent.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
You never know what kind of situation.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
You're going to run into. Give me a charger.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
While I'm in this situation, because then it spends out
of control even past that.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Like the phone dies and then we're out in the
middle of nowhere. And since we're out in the middle
of nowhere, one.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Of our kids needs us, and because they couldn't get us,
it scars them deeply and it traumatizes them, which is
why they end up on methamphetamines and why we end
up having to go to rehab.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
To visit them.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Hypothetical Holly is hopathetical, and she's teaching me the art
of hopathetical living, and so she tends to go more
like this, where I'm focused on everything that we have
to go through to get there. She'll say something like, yeah,
but it could be fun, and I'm like, well, what
does fun have to do with the fact that we
might get there and I can't find a bathroom? Have
(08:58):
you noticed I mentioned that twice? That's something I'm thinking
about more than now. At forty four but hypothetically. Let's
say I get there and she's hypothetical. You know, She's like,
you're a man, you could you know.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So she's just like, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Let's be all right, And I'm thankful for her hypotheticalness.
How many you have a hypothetical person in your life
for when you tend to get to hypothetical?
Speaker 5 (09:24):
You need one, You need one.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You can't have Holly, she's taken, she's mine.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Everybody says you need a hype man.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Well, you need a hope man, somebody who can remind
you that, Yes, you might go through some things to
get there. Yes, it may be inconvenient. Yes they may
laugh at you. Yes you may put it out and
then nobody sees it. Yes you may do it and
nobody thanks you. Yes you may spend the energy and
it will all be worthless, but it.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Might also be kind of cool. If you don't have
a hope man, you'll never leave the house.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Take it from a hypothetical I mean, even even going
through the scenarios in my mind leaves me with what
I call a hypothetical hangover, not involving alcohol, but involving
all the scenarios that I run in my mind.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Thank you Jesus, all the scenarios.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
They're coming to fix it right now, hypothetically, I hope.
See we're thinking about this different. She's like, they're coming.
This is gonna be great. The tech team is awesome.
I'm like, if they don't get out here right now,
this whole sermon is gonna be wrong. You can't fix
this one, all right, We'll see check one too. That
(10:36):
must mean the Lord wants me to holler and scream
and yell. I said, that must mean the Lord wants
me to scream and holler and yell.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I'm good, I'm good. I'll just hold this.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Now, hypothetically speaking, when things happen that you didn't plan
on happening, how do you handle it? Hypothetically? Paul has
(11:08):
a strategy for that. In Romans chapter five, verse three,
he says, we glory in our sufferings. If you back
up one verse before that, he says, we boast. Everybody,
say boast in the hope of the glory of God.
If you needed an object lesson in boasting in the
hope of something, think of your favorite college football fan
(11:31):
who cheers for a team that this year is going
to be the year that we win at all.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
First of all, who is we? Paul said, we.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Boast in the hope of the glory of God, So
I am already celebrating something that someone else is accomplishing. Secondly,
boasting in the hope is very different than boasting in
the reality. The Bible says, who hopes in what he
has already seen, what he already possesses. Since Holly is hypothetical,
(12:07):
and since Paul in this passage is teaching us something
about hopathetical Christianity, I want to break down for the
next few minutes how to deal with situations in your
life where you are right there in the middle of
a I guess I could call this a flood moment,
(12:29):
and you need faith to move forward in it. And
I'm gonna use three points for this outline today. Write
them up on the screen for you. I want you
to write these down, and I want you to take
notes on this sermon so that the next time that
the devil tries to make you hysterical, you can get hopathetical.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm gonna teach you a lesson on how to be hypothetical.
And it's really three parts to this.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Number one, we want to talk about anticipation. Everybody say anticipation.
Put it in the chat anticipation. And number two, we
want to talk about justification, say justification and everybody in
the e FM online put these right there in the chat.
(13:14):
Number three, I want to talk about demonstration and God
helping us over the next twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Oh you didn't see that, y'all? Pray the Lord will
heal my handwriting? All right? That would be a miracle demonstration.
Did I get them? All right? Can you read that?
Is that distracting to you or does that help you out?
Put three points on it.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Anticipation, the anticipation that Paul mentions in Romans chapter five.
He talks about the hope of the glory of God.
And this thing about anticipation works both ways, doesn't it?
Because I realized a long time ago that what the
devil is actually attacking when he comes to me with
(13:59):
words is my ability to anticipate what God might do,
and that every time I worry, it's a.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Perversion of worship. Worship and worry operate from the same energy.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
They both attach to something that I can't see to
deal with something that I'm going through. Worship attaches to
a God who I can't see now. Faith is the
substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen. Worry attaches to something that hasn't even happened
yet and gives more power to the problem than it
(14:41):
does the promise of God who said he would be
with you through every problem. So now we're beginning to
see that the devil is after your anticipation. If he
cannot get you to fear the worst possible scenario, he
will hurt you so many times when you get your
hopes up that you learn to manage your sense of
(15:02):
disappointment by bringing down your level of expectation.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And this is the truth about a lot of us.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Is that really the reason we go through life with
a kind of bad attitude, with a pessimistic attitude not
leaving the house, is because we left the house one time.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And it didn't work out very well.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
And so now every time that God calls us out
to do something, and it could be anything, God could
just call you to do anything, speak a kind word.
Last time you spoke a kind word, they thought you
were weak and then they took advantage of you. So
now I'm not going to speak any kind words to
anybody anymore, because you know how it is. You just
say think nice things to people and they don't do
anything back. See what the enemy is doing there is
He is trying to inform your anticipation of the future
(15:47):
based on the thing that happened to you in the
past that was poorly processed. The way that we anticipate
our life is a process. Even some times when I'm
talking to Holly about something that could happen bad or
something that did happen bad, or what might happen bad,
(16:07):
or I was going to backfire, I'll tell myself as
an excuse if you ever said this, I'm just processing.
And really, while I say that I'm processing, i am,
But write this down in your notes. Not all processing
is productive. It's not always productive for you to just
(16:28):
process because if you just process but there is no.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
God in your processing, you will end up.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
With a godless thought because you started with the godless process.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's why I think it's important that when.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You process things in your mind for a little while,
you come outside of your head every once in a
while and verbalize.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It in prayer to God.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
The verbal process of praying out loud will actually help
you with the internal struggle of a hyperactive mind. So
for everybody who struggles with an overactive imagination. You can
think more than one thing at a time, you can't
speak more than one thing at a time.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And there comes a time where you have to start.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Speaking things of faith to fight against the spaghetti noodles
of fear. I'm telling you that Satan will spaghetti your
emotional state and get you so tangled up in the
things that you've been through, so tangled up in the
things that you're suffering. I found it interesting that Paul
said we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
(17:41):
I thought that boasting was bad until I read Romans
chapter five, verse two, and Paul said that there is
a type of boasting that is totally appropriate for the
child of God. This boasting, however, does not come from
an anticipation that things will always look the way.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
That you wanted them to look. This type of boasting does.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Not come, for example, from your anticipation that you will
never suffer. Jesus did not die to save us from suffering.
He suffered and died to save us from sin, so
that when we suffer, we're not surprised. He suffered to
(18:26):
save us. Now, he did not save us from suffering.
He saved us by his suffering, and in his suffering,
we have hope.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
High five your neighbors say I have hope.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I have hope not because I think I'll never go
through anything.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
But I'm one of these hope pathetical Christians.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I don't have hope based on the fact that I
will never go through it. So this is not a
naive sense in which I go through life knowing that
it will always be okay. This is not a hope
based on how I know it's going to go. I'm
leaving the house, and I'm leaving my complacency, and I'm
leaving my shell, and I'm leaving this relationship, and I'm
(19:11):
leaving this thought pattern not based on the hope that
is going to be so easy when I leave, but
that he won't be with me as I go.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I have a hope. So do you process with God
what you go through? Or are you processing without God?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
And if you are, you do not have what the
Bible says here in verse one.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have
peace with God. He didn't say I don't have fears
about my future. He said we have peace with God.
He didn't say I don't have regrets about my past.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
He said we have peace with God. He didn't say
I don't have conflict in my home. He said I
have peace with God. I'm gonna go a little deeper.
He didn't say I don't have temptations that are dragging
me back to the Egypt I thought I left. He
said we have peace with God. He didn't say I
(20:24):
don't have bills that I don't know how I'm gonna pay.
He said I have peace with God. He didn't say
I don't have pain in my body. He said I
have peace with God. He didn't say I don't have
issues that I'm going to counseling for.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
He said I have peace with God.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
He didn't say I don't have anger that I don't
even always know where it's coming from. He said I
have peace with God. So my peace with God is
not in the absence of the problem. My peace with
God is not in the absence of the anxiety. My
(21:05):
peace with God is not in the absence of my
shaking hands.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
My peace with God is not in the absence of
enemies who don't like me. My peace with God.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Comes from somebody who won a game.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I didn't even play it. Now you yawning, Am I
being born? All right?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
What I think is good for us to remember when
we have something that we have hoped for and it
didn't happen for us, is that before we can move
forward in pure faith, God often has to heal your hope.
(21:57):
And the first step of healing your hope is changing
what you boast in the Book of Romans was not
written as a pep talk to tell you do better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Get out there, go get them. You got this.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Nobody's slapping anybody on the bottom of Romans except Paul
saying the way you used.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
To boast in was your relationship to the law. Remember
they kept the law.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
They did that through circumcision, which was an external sign
of their faith, and they were trying to go back
to that.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
But Paul says in this passage that what you.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Used to boast in is insufficient to hold your hope
in this season of your life. One reason you can
praise God after you've been through something, tell somebody I've
been through something. Okay, after you've been through something, but
you found that God was still with you after you
went through it. Now you have something to boast about
(23:01):
that you didn't have before. And I saw somebody in
this room You've been like, why am I going through
everything I'm going through? Why does this all keep happening
to me? Why has this been so hard the last
three months? Why did I think I was so far along?
And then I just snapped right back to the previous
place that I was. It seems like nothing has moved forward.
But instead of you seeing yourself as going through something,
(23:22):
I want you to see yourself as getting something from
going through something, getting something from two completely different paradigms.
The focus on what I'm going through is me hypothetical,
(23:43):
the focus on what I'm going to have to go through.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Isn't it crazy that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
The devil can beat you with something that may never
even happen. Ask the prophet Elijah who ran from Jezebel
and wasted days that he could have spent in revival
from somebody who already proved she didn't.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Have the power to kill him.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
You know, when you're going through something, or when you
might have to go through something, your focus becomes only
the pain that it will cost you. And so now
your story revolves around your suffering. How could Paul say
in verse three Romans, Chapter five that we glory in
(24:27):
our suffering.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
We glory in our suffering. Maybe he doesn't mean that
we like it. Maybe he doesn't mean that we ask
for more of it.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Maybe he means that while we're going through it, we
get something from it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And so recently I was telling a friend a story.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You know, we all have these pity party stories that
we tell, and I was sharing it under the pretense
like it was a testimony of something God brought me through.
But in the middle of telling the story, it was
as if the Holy Spirit said to me, and I'm
gonna do a whole sermon one day.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I don't exactly know how I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Gonna do it yet, but it's gonna be called when
you say, God said, because a lot of times when
I'm preaching, I'll say God said this, and God said that.
And a sweet middle school kid came up to me
one time and said, when you say God said, what
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did you hear out loud voice? Did you read a
Bible verse?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What do you mean when you say God said, I'm
gonna do a sermon on that one day?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
But in this particular case.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It was an impression, and I was in the middle
of the story, telling the story, and mid sentence I
stopped telling the story because was this The Holy Spirit
said to me, I'm sick of this side of the
story because you're telling him like it's something you went through,
(25:53):
but you're talking like you're still in it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And if you really believe what you're.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Saying, you believe this is something that I brought you through,
So why are you not through with it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Now? I'm not saying this always works.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Please don't take me out of context.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I hate I hate.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
The thought that we can just cut short trauma by
putting on a happy face.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
That is not my point.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This was not a situation where there was unresolved trauma.
This was a case where there was unreleased bitterness. And
the Lord showed me as I was speaking, I'm telling you,
it was like it was almost like my mouth got
zipped by the Holy Spirit, and the Lord said, I'm
sick of this.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Side of it because all you keep.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Talking about is the story from the standpoint of how
hurtful it was to you. But you know good and
well that what I did through that was something that
I absolutely had to do and you know good and well,
then if it hadn't hurt you like that, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Be here today. So stop telling that story from that side.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Start saying things like, yeah, it hurt, but God healed
me from it.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah it was hard, but I got stronger from it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah I was waiting, but I felt some spiritual muscles
and I got a miracle from it.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
High five.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Somebody say, there's two sides to this story. There's two
sides to this story. There's what you went through, and
there's what you got from what you went through. And
while you're still worried about what you might go through,
you need to pick up something.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Just sit right in front of you. You're about Christian
glad my mic went out.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I needed a big boy mike today. I said I
needed a big boy mike today. I'm glad the mike
went out. Some of y'all need to say I'm glad
about stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
That goes wrong. I'm glad that went wrong.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
That was a redirection because I would have stayed in
this wilderness.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
If the man didn't go away. I would have stayed
in that place.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
If they didn't push me out, how would have stayed?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Stuff is something that I'm so much greater than.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
I am. Because a wind threw it, threw it, threw it,
threw it through it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
That's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Tell your neighbor, that's what the Bible says.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, yeah, he didn't say, watch this.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We have hope because of what might happen. We have
hope because of what could happen. We have hope because
of what probably will happen.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Now the apostle pause says something so much greater than that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
He says, Therefore, I'm about to blow your mind for
everything you're going through, for everything you might go through,
for every hypothetical in your life. Let's get hole pathetical
for a moment. He said, since we have been, you
missed it. He said, we have been. Everybody say I
(29:28):
have been. Now clarify for your neighbors say in English,
have been means past tense.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's behind me, that's behind me, that's behind me, that's
behind me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
That's why it's my testimony.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Because I passed. Because it was a test, but I
passed it. That's what put the money on it.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I have.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Because it happen. It happened. But I'm here it happened,
But hallelujah, it happened. But I have this hope.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I have this hope because I have been justified. Some
of you are waiting for other people to celebrate how
far you've come. But I got news, baby, They don't
live on the inside of you. Jesus does, the Holy
theory does.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
The righteousness of.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
God has been impaled.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
To you by faith.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So that's my second point of discermon is justification justification.
This is for all of your justified. I'll be further
along justified. You know all those regrets. You know I
(31:14):
wouldn't be in this mess justified.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Along comes Jesus.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Talking about you keep going back in your past, but
not far enough. You keep going back in your past,
but you're not going back there far enough. Because before
you even called on me, before you even looked to me.
(31:43):
Jimmy Romans, Chapter five, verse eight, this is the verse
you wanted to shout about a minute ago. Because the
Bible says that we were not good people, we were
not godly people, we were not righteous people. We did
not earned this spot. We did not make the team.
We did not make the cut, we did not live
(32:06):
up to it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
But God but God. So when we go back to
the past, you need to learn a phrase, say I
was but God, sit right there, Sit it right there, because.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Just to show you real clear what the Bible says,
I don't care what I say.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I don't care what you say. I don't care what
your grandmother says. I'm sorry. I'm sure she's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I'll give her a hug if we ever meet, and
all of that stuff, and I respect her and I'll
call her whatever you told me to call her. But
I don't care what you were taught about this, the
Bible says. The Bible says that I have.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That sass. Access is an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
It kind of suggests that something can be there and
you have it, but you can't get to it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Because of what's blocking it. And that's why you died.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
And that's why I have hope, because He gave me
access by faith into disgrace, in which I now stand
and we boast in the hope.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Of the glory of God.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Now, the more you understand this that you have, the
more you will have of this.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And the way that you access this peace.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I need more peace, you need more awareness, you need
more hoypathetical Christianity, you need more. I don't know if
(34:27):
you're gonna like this character, which is an interesting word.
I was studying that word because I thought, well, this
is how it works. This is how God matures us,
matures our lives, and this is how God brings forth
his fruit in our lives.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
He gives us hope through the suffering.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That produces perseverance, and the perseverance the not quitting, produces character,
and then character hope. So in order to get to
the hope, you got to go through some hell and
(35:16):
what it produces. Y'all, I feel annoyed to help somebody today.
I don't even care about anything, but said who I'm
supposed to help today? Because the word character in Greek
is actually a word that Paul made up. It's not
a word that's anywhere else in the New Testament except
when Paul uses it.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And it doesn't just mean character in the sense of, well,
that's just who I am.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
See, that's why some of you have the wrong testimony
right now. You keep testifying about that's just who I am,
that's just the way I am, that's just the way
it is.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
And all of that might be true.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
But this character that God is producing in you is
a certain type of character from a certain word that
Paul made up to describe what happens when you go
through something and get something from what you go through
that you couldn't get any other way. And the word
actually means proven worth, proven worth. And it started not
(36:24):
with the amazing things that happened, but with the pain
that you experienced. So the pain that you experienced produced
the proof of the worth of your faith.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What good is a hope that can't be disappointed?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
What good is a faith that can't be shaken and
not broken? What good is it for me to just
hope that things turn out well and then when they don't,
stay home. What good is it for me to listen
to Pastor Stephen preach for an hour and then go
home and resist the very things that God brings into
(37:05):
my life that will produce the word that he preached about.
What good is it for me to keep just going
through things and never stopping. God said today we are
going to rescue your testimony because you have stopped talking
about what God is going to do. You have stopped
talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
How it can be different.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
You have been disappointed, you have been hurt, you have
been hemorrhaging from what you went through.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
But God wants to heal that.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Place and rescue your testimony, to rescue it.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
That's what Holly does for me. She rescues me from
my hypothetical situations.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I say, well, if we go, something bad might happen,
and she says, but if you don't go, you might
look back the rest of your life and wonder what
would have happened if you did.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And so Paul says, it is the suffering.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
It is the pain that proved that proves the character.
The proof starts with suffering, the proof, do you see it?
The proof starts with suffering, and that's what leads to
the hope, because you know, I can go back to
that and I can remember that God did that for me.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
And so every once in a while.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I screenshot something on my phone just to remind me
in my low moments that at the lowest moments, God
is doing the most. A few years ago, I preached
a sermon to where I left and thought, well, that
didn't go very good. And I don't always blame myself.
(38:45):
Sometimes y'all are just lazy listeners. But I like to
take responsibility, Like, well, come on, I could have done
that better and clearer, and I beat.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Myself up every which way.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
And that same week, my friend sent me a text
of their notes from the sermon, and they said, just
wanted you to be encouraged.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Well I needed to be, so I was thankful for
the text.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
They took six pages of notes on that sermon that
I thought sucked. Okay, so I'm looking at it. I'm like,
this is great, Okay, thank you Lord. Maybe it wasn't
that bad. They wrote six pages of notes. But then
I looked at it again and I saw why they
sent it to me, because I thought, that's kind of weird.
Why did you send me your notes? I preached it,
don't you think I know what I said? But next
(39:30):
to the notes was this little puddle of tears that
they were showing me. And when the text came through
next after the photo, it said, I cried so hard
through your message. I left a puddle of tears next
to my notes before I dried it up. I wanted
(39:51):
to show you. And and that's something that while I'm sitting
there thinking, well, that wasn't any good, and then I
get a picture a proof in the puddle of tears
that they cry because I understand that sometimes suffering is
(40:16):
the starting place for something amazing. Sometimes the absence of
your emotional validation when you are doing the thing that
God has called you to do, maybe not preaching a sermon,
maybe just being a good man, maybe not preaching a sermon,
maybe just keeping your purity as a teenager, maybe not
preaching a sermon, Maybe just showing up to the next
(40:39):
thing that you know you can do. And the proof
I didn't feel it when I preached it. I didn't
see it when I preached it. I didn't know it
when I preached it. But to get that text, that
puddle of tears, to say that sermon that you preached,
that you felt nothing, that word you spoke, that you
felt nothing, that you pray, that you saw nothing.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Here's something, here's something days later that you didn't even see.
You weren't even there for it. But it's proof. This
is the proof that I'm after.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Not the proof of what you feel when you do it,
not the proof of what you see when you do it.
Not the proof of what you know right now, not
the proof of what you think you need to be validated,
not the proof of what you think would make it successful.
It is the proof in that puddle of tears that
you cried while you suffered. But I bet you got
(41:36):
up after you cried and did something, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I bet you got up.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
When you cried. I bet you got up after your
heart was broken and you kept going. So now you
have a testimony, and let's stop talking about all that
it costs you, and let's start talking about how God.
Speaker 8 (41:52):
Has called you proven, character, proven, prove I.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Have hope, say not loud, I have hope. I can
prove it. I have hope, and I can prove it.
So Holly said to me, you really do think of everything.
And I'm like, well, so does God. And she didn't
really accept that as an analogy, but I told her
(42:26):
how God has taken into account. You see, at just
the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died
for the ungodly. So now I want to talk about, finally,
the demonstration. The demonstration.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
The proof.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
That you have hope, and the proof that you have
hope is not that you don't suffer or will never suffer.
And the proof that you have hope is not that
you don't go through. Let me break that down a
little bit more. It is not that you won't ever
feel that way again. It is not that you will
never be let down again. It is not that you
(43:09):
will never experience a betrayal again. It is not that
you will never wrestle with this again. It is not
that it will completely leave your life. That is not
what Christ died to save us from. And the good
thing is, if you feel weak in this moment, that's
the very point He saved you at and he's still
saving so you have proof demonstration. But God demonstrates his
(43:35):
own love for us in this that while we were
still ciners, Christ died for us.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
I read you a.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Scripture from the Old Testament earlier, and you may have
wondered if I forgot about it, but I didn't, because
I want to give you a picture of how God
demonstrates his power in your weakness.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
The children of Israel are headed out of the.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Land that they've known as the place of their captivity
for over four hundred years. They've been wandering in the
wilderness for forty of those years because of the regrets
of their past. I gotta be thinking at this point
something is going.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Through their head.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Justified believe God and gone through the Promised land. Just
if we'd gone through and faced the giants in our
faith and believe the minority report of Caleb and Joshua,
just if we had not brought a complaint to Moses
in the place of where our faith should have been.
But now God is bringing a new generation led by Joshua,
(44:38):
into the Promised Land, and the Bible says that on
the way to where they're going, because you're going somewhere,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
If you feel stuck where you are, you're gonna die.
Where you are is.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Gonna be like it is, But you are transitioning out
of this.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Before they transition out.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Of the land that they've been in, the wilderness that
they've wandered in, the what ifs that they've wasted away in.
Before they transition out of this, God gives a very
strange instruction to Joshua. He says, before you completely cross
and by the way, I think you should commemorate every
crossing in your life, every crossing over. Just start celebrating
(45:13):
stuff when you cross over. So that could be as
simple ass thank you God for a new day. I
lay down to sleep and I woke up again, and
somebody didn't, So thank you for it. Lord, thank you
for another week. Thank you for bringing me to the
Lord's house another day. Thank you for a new season.
Thank you God for a new opportunity. Thank you for
my next breath. Thank You for my next opportunity. And
(45:36):
as they are crossing over watch this, God calls Joshua,
I want you to commemorate and demonstrate what I did.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And here's why four verse number five. I'm ready to
preach now.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Chapter number four, Verse five, and Joshua said to them,
pass on before the ark of the Lord, your God,
that represents God's presence, into the midst of the Jordan,
and take each of you a stone upon his shoulder.
According to the number of the tribes of the people
of Israel. How many tribes were there twelve? How many stones? Twelve,
(46:10):
one for every tribe, one for every trial, one for
every tribe, one for every trial. You ought to get
something out of everything you go through that makes you
stronger in God. I'm not going to cry like that
and not get stronger from it. I'm not going to
suffer like that and not get stronger from it. So
make sure you take something from this. But then verse success,
(46:30):
very importantly, why you're doing this, that this, this may
be a sign among you. So when your children ask
in time to come, what do these stones mean?
Speaker 1 (46:43):
You stop?
Speaker 2 (46:43):
How do you want to answer that question for your
kids one day?
Speaker 1 (46:51):
This is important because.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
He said, I want you to rescue your testimony.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
I want you to stop.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Right now and redefine everything you've been through. And instead
of remembering this as the river that was so hard
to cross, I.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Want you to take something out of it that you
can commemorate how great God was to bring you through it.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So when your children ask, what was it like to
deal with that? When your children ask, tell me about
that time when your children ask did you ever deal
with loneliness? And how did you handle it? When your
children ask, did you ever wonder if you were good enough?
When your children ask did you ever feel depressed? I
want you to have some proof to point through to
(47:47):
let them know God does miracles and I have a testimony.
Whatever you're standing next to exhibit A. So verse six,
verse six, Verse six. When your children ask what do
these stones mean to you?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
It's personal to me. I can't speak for you.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I can't prophesy for you, I can't praise for you.
You can't praise for me, there are some things that
I went through. This showed me who God was to me.
And verse seven says, when they ask you what do
these stones mean, then you shall tell them that the
waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark
(48:32):
of the Covenant of the Lord. Do you want us
to tell them how hard the wilderness was for forty
years for something that we didn't do.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
No, I just want you to tell them that.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
When I got to that Jordan, oh, there was a demonstration.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
And we didn't know how it was going to happen.
But watch this.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
My faith is not in a how. My faith is
in a who. So tell them the Lord. Somebody say
the Lord. Now say but God, Now ask your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Was it hard? Tell him it was? But God? Ask him?
Were you a mess? Tell him I was? But God?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Ask him?
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Were you tempted to quit? Tell him I was? But God?
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Were you a little nervous about how it was going
to turn out? Back there in twenty twenty four? Were
you sitting in church one Sunday morning in September? Were
you thinking about a football game in lunch?
Speaker 1 (49:34):
But God had a word for you. Tell him, I was,
But God?
Speaker 2 (49:39):
See when that man grabbed that microphone and he started
preaching about the flow of the Jordan being cut off.
It reminded me of Calvary. It reminded me of Jesus.
It reminded me of a cross. It reminded me of
my crossing over. It reminded me of death to life.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It reminded me.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Of the blood.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
It reminds to me, a broken says.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It reminded me I was. And I'm gonna show you something, Holly,
that I never saw before, because he said, I want
you to take the stones from what you went through
and tell your children what.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
God did, but I want you to take the stones
to be a memorial forever. And the people of.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Israel did just as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve
stones out of the midst of the Jordan.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Go back to verse eight.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
I wasn't done with it yet, out of the midst
of the Jordan. According to the number of the tribes.
They try to see if I got this thing memorized,
and I don't. The people of Israel, just as the
Lord told Joshua, Just as the Lord told Joshua, just
if I do what God told me to do, I
don't have to justify it any other way than God spoken.
First number nine and I'm closing, And Joshua set up
(50:52):
twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the
place where the feet of the priest stood. Wait a minute,
I thought he brought them out of the Jordan and
put them in the camp where they stayed when they
got through.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
He did. But there was a second set of stones.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That Joshua was set up, not where they were going.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
I know I love it too. I know it makes
me excited.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Too, because God said, I want you to set up
something right here, right here, not when you get through,
but right here and in the middle of the Jordan.
God told Joshua, I want you to make a pile
of the stones in the middle of the Jordan, so
that when your children asked what was it like when
(51:43):
you were crossing the Jordan, you'll have something to point
to that you went through that they can understand how
powerful God is.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
So now you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Right because the stones were in the middle of the Jordan. Now,
if the Jordan is at high tide, then the stones
can't be seen. If the Jordan is overflowing, the stones
can't be seen. And the only way they're gonna see
the stones is if the tide is low. The only
time they're gonna see the stones is if the tide
(52:14):
is low. The only way they're gonna see the stones
is in a dry season. I'm preaching to somebody Austin
who's been in.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
A dry season.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
But I got news. Fa God dries up Jordan rivers
and you got some stones, Messy, you got some stone.
You got some stones at the bottom of what you
fit through. Oh God, I'm closing, but high five by
five to five your.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Neighborhood and say I got stones. Don't think I'm a whelm.
Don't think I'm weak, don't think.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I'm without power, don't think I'm without health, don't think
I don't have a testimony. I'm gonna tell this thing
from the other side. I'm gonna tell the truth from
a higher plane. So I tend to rescue your testimony.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Does it in a testimony? Tell us been tested?
Speaker 2 (53:16):
And before you get baptized today, I want you to
look forward to the low.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Tide times when the Jordan River gets lower, so you
can see where you stood that you thought you would die.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Get that stone out of there, that thing you suffered,
and get that hope out of therese.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
The proof is in the bottle.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Some things, oh God, some things you won't see if
it's not a dry season.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
That is my hope.
Speaker 9 (54:06):
Stones in dry seasons, strength in weak places, for you
see it. Just the right time, while we were still powerless,
Christ died for me.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
And if he justified me justification, and if he did.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
That for me demonstration, then guess what I got back anticipation.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
So now.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
We gotta do something about this. The proof is in
the puddles. God didn't save you because you were on
such a high place. God demonstrates his own love for
us in this while we were still sinners. He got
down in the dirt of my situation. That's how I
(54:59):
know he's not gonna leave me.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
He started this thing in the mud. He started this
thing in the puddle, and the proof is in the puddles.
So don't be so freaked out with the hypothetical situations
of what's gonna dry up. If it dries up, the
stones will still be there. You will still have a testimony.
(55:25):
Now take it back, take back your testimony. Today wouldn't
be too soon. I need a hundred of y'all that
weren't planning on getting baptized today, Get baptized today. Take
back your testimony, give me my camera. Declare to the devil,
I won't die in this dry season. I won't die
in this dry season. God brought me to church today
(55:47):
to repent, to turn from my sin, buy his blood.
If I'm justified by his blood, shall he not much
more save me from.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
His rat So I really don't even want to talk
about Joshua. I want to talk about Jesus.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Jesus who said I thirst is present and stretching in.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Dry places today.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
And you thought I was going to preach this message
about hope in a shallow way.
Speaker 9 (56:19):
N I'm talking about a God who is so deeply
committed to you.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
And now you're wondering, what if it does happen, Well,
God will be with me.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
As hopothetical Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Say, even if it does, we'll be all right.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
So the last season of your life was designed to
show you that. Are you getting that lesson out of it?
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Or did you just run through it and say, oh again,
you know I'm just gonna live this way now I am.
You remember how the philosopher said, I think therefore I am.
Let's put a twist on that. Who said that? Deskhartes, Well,
if you don't know, then I can say it with confidence.
(57:13):
I wish I could preach back in the day where
nobody had chet gpt to fact check the preacher. I
can make up all kinds of good stuff, he said,
I think. Therefore I am. He was trying to see
what can I be certain of? And he realized that
even the fact that I can doubt means that I'm thinking,
and even the fact that I'm doubting proves that I exist.
I think. Therefore I am. Don't you understand That's the
(57:33):
way it works in your life. You think about all
of the things that are going to go wrong. Therefore
you are a nervous ball of stress. I think, therefore
I am. So let's do this, say I have, Therefore
I hope.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
I have.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Therefore, So I'm coming to a Jordan right now. And
here's what I'm coming with Romans five to one on
the screen. Police is it up there? Therefore? What are
the stones? Therefore? That's the question? What is the suffering? Therefore?
(58:24):
What are you there for? Why did God keep you
alive this long? I see you every week? When I
preach you never miss you. Probably wouldn't even know that
I saw you. I watch you so much. I'm a stalker.
You ought to get a restraining order on me, and
it blesses me. And you would never know that. You
never know that. But the proof is in the puddle.
(58:45):
It's the times you don't see, the times you don't
feel coming up to a Jordan river, it.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Looks like it's overflowing.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
But God brought that thing down to a puddle for you,
didn't He didn't he You saw no way to be
right with him.
Speaker 9 (58:57):
You saw no way to put it back together. You
saw no way. But the proof is in the bottle.
What do he already dried up? What are you standing
in front of today? When your children ask you, I
want you to have a testimony, and when they say
did you ever doubt it? Tell them yeah. And there's
some things I doubt that are in front of me now.
(59:20):
And I want to be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
The truth is I can't do it, but.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
The grade can't. That's what I'm pointing out. That's all
the proof we need. I can't do it, but the grade.
How about this? You can dry this short?
Speaker 2 (59:49):
And if I will just step in. I can't do it,
but the Great.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Come on, lift your hands, thank so God, to get
up on the feet and worship Him.
Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
Where you are.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
It may be in your home, it may be in
your sick band dude, it may be in.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
The middle of a panic attack. But you're saying, I
can't do it. That's my testimony the Great. I am kid,
and I know he can't because.
Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
I know he did.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I've been here before. I've been through dry season, I've
been through identity crisis. I've been through nervous nights. I've
been through dark waters. He can split an iceing me.
Ask me how. I don't know, but I know. Sing
(01:00:55):
it again, I can't do it. That's the truth to
by the while, Where were your center?
Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
This is my testimony? Then you cast plead.
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
I can't do it.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevation Church dot org slash podcast for
more information, and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
M
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
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. Hope it gives your perspective
to see God has moving in your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
We're about to jump into the message, but before we do,
I wanted to let you know that Elevation Nights is
back September twenty fourth through October third, and if you
live on the West Coast, we might be coming to
a city near you. We're going to be in Seattle, Vancouver, Sacramento,
La Anaheim, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver. It's going
to be an amazing night with Elevation worship and a
(00:39):
message from Pastor Stephen. So go to Elevation Nights dot
com to get your tickets. We cannot wait to see
you there. Now let's go to the message.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
How many came for a word from God today?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
God's doctor.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Your main standing.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
For one moment, I'm going to be sharing today from
Romans chapter five, verses one through nine, and then I'm
going to go to one other scripture as well.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Fair warning, I overstudied this week better than the alternative.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right, y'all, it was real busy.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
I'm just gonna see what the Lord says.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I actually am nervous to try to get this all
out today, but I have you home by Sunday.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Night football nervous chuckles.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Romans Chapter five, Verse one, Ready say Ready. Therefore, since
we have been justified through faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have
gained access by faith into this grace in which we
now stand, and we boast in the hope of the
(01:54):
glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory
in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces this perseverance, perseverance,
character and character, hope, and hope does not put us
to shame, because God's love has been poured out into
(02:15):
our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Who has been given to us.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You see, at just the right time, when we were
still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Tell somebody that's you.
I know you smell good today, but that's you the ungodly.
I know you brush your teeth today, but that's you
the ungodly. I know you've got a Christian t shirt
(02:41):
on today. But that's you, the ungodly. And verse seven
goes very theological. He says, very rarely will anyone die
for a righteous person, though for a good person someone
might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own
love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Died for us.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how
much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?
Speaker 5 (03:20):
One more scripture from Joshua chapter four, and we're going
to get to work.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Joshua chapter four and verse number nine, please, And Joshua
was set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan,
in the place where the feet of the priests bearing
(03:43):
the ark of the Covenant had stood. And they are
there to this day, and they are there to this day.
And the Lord said that we were on a rescue
mission today in this service. And so I'm going to
use as a title what the Lord wants to do today.
God said, we're going to rescue your testimony. Rescue your testimony.
(04:08):
And you know, I like to give little subtitles, sometimes
little weird subtitles. The subtitle tell your neighbor, say the
proof is in the puddles. The proof is in the puzzles.
You may be seated. We're on a rescue mission today,
and go ahead and bring out my teaching screen. I
(04:30):
want to break this all the way down from Romans
chapter five. My favorite word that I read you in
Romans chapter five was the very first one. And put
it back on the screen again, Romans chapter five, verse one. Therefore,
everybody say, therefore.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
One of the most beautiful things that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Holly does for me on a regular basis is to
help me remember what my true values are when I'm
in a vulnerable place personally. And she does this in
the most tactful ways. She says things to me that
sounds so sweet, but beneath that layer of sweetness, she's
actually challenging me, come on, like step it up. And
(05:13):
she says something the other day which sounds like a
compliment until I put it in context. She said, wow,
you really do think of everything. Sounds nice, right, It
sounds like she's given me extra credit for being a
good planner. The context of the statement, she was definitely
(05:33):
saying it out of kindness, but it wasn't compliment. We're
talking about going to do something and I have a gift.
I don't know if you have this gift too, Just
make some noise if you share the same gift.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I have a gift for.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Hypothetical.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I actually would say I am the high priest of
the hypothetical scenario, you know, plays out in many different ways.
On this particular day, I was saying, you know, if
we go here to see this person, we were going
to make a trip, and I.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Said, well, we go, if we go.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
If we go, he.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Might have to work and I hadn't even checked into
his work schedule yet, and we might we might get
sick because he was hanging out with this other person
that was sick the other day and I heard they
might have COVID and I don't even know what that
is anymore, but I heard that they might have had it.
And so, but then, what if we're going, and what
if we And she looks at me and goes, wow,
(06:34):
you really do think of everything, And I said, well,
it's just it could be kind of stressful, you know,
And she said yeah, but you can make anything stressful.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
And it didn't offend me at all. I needed to
hear it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Because she knows that actually what I want to experience
is on the other side of something that I may
not want to do.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
And she knew that if I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Always getting hung up on the hypothetical, there's a sense
in which I would just always stay home. If I
was just left to my own devices, I would just
become a complete hermit, and I would be a hermit
because when I leave the house, this involves other humans
at this point. And so there was a song by
Paramore a few years ago where she said, this is.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Why I don't leave the house.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And I look at Holly sometimes when we get in traffic,
or when I can't find a bathroom, or you know,
something kind of crazy is happening, and I go, this
is why I don't leave the house. And she, on
the other hand, now I'm very hypothetical. I made up
a word to describe her spiritual gift. Okay, I made
this word up. You won't find it in the dictionary.
I am hypothetical. Holly is hypothetical. You like that I
(07:48):
made that up. Let me see if I can write
it on the screen. Hopathetical, everybody say, hypothetical not a
real word, just a word to use for our purposes
in studying today.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
She is hope othetical.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So while I'm stuck in the hypothetical of you know what,
if my phone dies, it's only seventy two percent.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
You never know what kind of situation.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
You're going to run into. Give me a charger.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
While I'm in this situation, because then it spends out
of control even past that.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Like the phone dies and then we're out in the
middle of nowhere. And since we're out in the middle
of nowhere, one.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Of our kids needs us, and because they couldn't get us,
it scars them deeply and it traumatizes them, which is
why they end up on methamphetamines and why we end
up having to go to rehab.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
To visit them.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Hypothetical Holly is hopathetical, and she's teaching me the art
of hopathetical living, and so she tends to go more
like this, where I'm focused on everything that we have
to go through to get there. She'll say something like, yeah,
but it could be fun, and I'm like, well, what
does fun have to do with the fact that we
might get there and I can't find a bathroom? Have
(08:58):
you noticed I mentioned that twice? That's something I'm thinking
about more than now. At forty four but hypothetically. Let's
say I get there and she's hypothetical. You know, She's like,
you're a man, you could you know.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So she's just like, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Let's be all right, And I'm thankful for her hypotheticalness.
How many you have a hypothetical person in your life
for when you tend to get to hypothetical?
Speaker 5 (09:24):
You need one, You need one.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You can't have Holly, she's taken, she's mine.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Everybody says you need a hype man.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Well, you need a hope man, somebody who can remind
you that, Yes, you might go through some things to
get there. Yes, it may be inconvenient. Yes they may
laugh at you. Yes you may put it out and
then nobody sees it. Yes you may do it and
nobody thanks you. Yes you may spend the energy and
it will all be worthless, but it.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Might also be kind of cool. If you don't have
a hope man, you'll never leave the house.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Take it from a hypothetical I mean, even even going
through the scenarios in my mind leaves me with what
I call a hypothetical hangover, not involving alcohol, but involving
all the scenarios that I run in my mind.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Thank you Jesus, all the scenarios.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
They're coming to fix it right now, hypothetically, I hope.
See we're thinking about this different. She's like, they're coming.
This is gonna be great. The tech team is awesome.
I'm like, if they don't get out here right now,
this whole sermon is gonna be wrong. You can't fix
this one, all right, We'll see check one too. That
(10:36):
must mean the Lord wants me to holler and scream
and yell. I said, that must mean the Lord wants
me to scream and holler and yell.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I'm good, I'm good. I'll just hold this.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Now, hypothetically speaking, when things happen that you didn't plan
on happening, how do you handle it? Hypothetically? Paul has
(11:08):
a strategy for that. In Romans chapter five, verse three,
he says, we glory in our sufferings. If you back
up one verse before that, he says, we boast. Everybody,
say boast in the hope of the glory of God.
If you needed an object lesson in boasting in the
hope of something, think of your favorite college football fan
(11:31):
who cheers for a team that this year is going
to be the year that we win at all.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
First of all, who is we? Paul said, we.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Boast in the hope of the glory of God, So
I am already celebrating something that someone else is accomplishing. Secondly,
boasting in the hope is very different than boasting in
the reality. The Bible says, who hopes in what he
has already seen, what he already possesses. Since Holly is hypothetical,
(12:07):
and since Paul in this passage is teaching us something
about hopathetical Christianity, I want to break down for the
next few minutes how to deal with situations in your
life where you are right there in the middle of
a I guess I could call this a flood moment,
(12:29):
and you need faith to move forward in it. And
I'm gonna use three points for this outline today. Write
them up on the screen for you. I want you
to write these down, and I want you to take
notes on this sermon so that the next time that
the devil tries to make you hysterical, you can get hopathetical.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm gonna teach you a lesson on how to be hypothetical.
And it's really three parts to this.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Number one, we want to talk about anticipation. Everybody say anticipation.
Put it in the chat anticipation. And number two, we
want to talk about justification, say justification and everybody in
the e FM online put these right there in the chat.
(13:14):
Number three, I want to talk about demonstration and God
helping us over the next twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Oh you didn't see that, y'all? Pray the Lord will
heal my handwriting? All right? That would be a miracle demonstration.
Did I get them? All right? Can you read that?
Is that distracting to you or does that help you out?
Put three points on it.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Anticipation, the anticipation that Paul mentions in Romans chapter five.
He talks about the hope of the glory of God.
And this thing about anticipation works both ways, doesn't it?
Because I realized a long time ago that what the
devil is actually attacking when he comes to me with
(13:59):
words is my ability to anticipate what God might do,
and that every time I worry, it's a.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Perversion of worship. Worship and worry operate from the same energy.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
They both attach to something that I can't see to
deal with something that I'm going through. Worship attaches to
a God who I can't see now. Faith is the
substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen. Worry attaches to something that hasn't even happened
yet and gives more power to the problem than it
(14:41):
does the promise of God who said he would be
with you through every problem. So now we're beginning to
see that the devil is after your anticipation. If he
cannot get you to fear the worst possible scenario, he
will hurt you so many times when you get your
hopes up that you learn to manage your sense of
(15:02):
disappointment by bringing down your level of expectation.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And this is the truth about a lot of us.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Is that really the reason we go through life with
a kind of bad attitude, with a pessimistic attitude not
leaving the house, is because we left the house one time.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And it didn't work out very well.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
And so now every time that God calls us out
to do something, and it could be anything, God could
just call you to do anything, speak a kind word.
Last time you spoke a kind word, they thought you
were weak and then they took advantage of you. So
now I'm not going to speak any kind words to
anybody anymore, because you know how it is. You just
say think nice things to people and they don't do
anything back. See what the enemy is doing there is
He is trying to inform your anticipation of the future
(15:47):
based on the thing that happened to you in the
past that was poorly processed. The way that we anticipate
our life is a process. Even some times when I'm
talking to Holly about something that could happen bad or
something that did happen bad, or what might happen bad,
(16:07):
or I was going to backfire, I'll tell myself as
an excuse if you ever said this, I'm just processing.
And really, while I say that I'm processing, i am,
But write this down in your notes. Not all processing
is productive. It's not always productive for you to just
(16:28):
process because if you just process but there is no.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
God in your processing, you will end up.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
With a godless thought because you started with the godless process.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's why I think it's important that when.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You process things in your mind for a little while,
you come outside of your head every once in a
while and verbalize.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It in prayer to God.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
The verbal process of praying out loud will actually help
you with the internal struggle of a hyperactive mind. So
for everybody who struggles with an overactive imagination. You can
think more than one thing at a time, you can't
speak more than one thing at a time.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And there comes a time where you have to start.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Speaking things of faith to fight against the spaghetti noodles
of fear. I'm telling you that Satan will spaghetti your
emotional state and get you so tangled up in the
things that you've been through, so tangled up in the
things that you're suffering. I found it interesting that Paul
said we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
(17:41):
I thought that boasting was bad until I read Romans
chapter five, verse two, and Paul said that there is
a type of boasting that is totally appropriate for the
child of God. This boasting, however, does not come from
an anticipation that things will always look the way.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
That you wanted them to look. This type of boasting does.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Not come, for example, from your anticipation that you will
never suffer. Jesus did not die to save us from suffering.
He suffered and died to save us from sin, so
that when we suffer, we're not surprised. He suffered to
(18:26):
save us. Now, he did not save us from suffering.
He saved us by his suffering, and in his suffering,
we have hope.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
High five your neighbors say I have hope.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I have hope not because I think I'll never go
through anything.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
But I'm one of these hope pathetical Christians.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I don't have hope based on the fact that I
will never go through it. So this is not a
naive sense in which I go through life knowing that
it will always be okay. This is not a hope
based on how I know it's going to go. I'm
leaving the house, and I'm leaving my complacency, and I'm
leaving my shell, and I'm leaving this relationship, and I'm
(19:11):
leaving this thought pattern not based on the hope that
is going to be so easy when I leave, but
that he won't be with me as I go.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I have a hope. So do you process with God
what you go through? Or are you processing without God?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
And if you are, you do not have what the
Bible says here in verse one.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have
peace with God. He didn't say I don't have fears
about my future. He said we have peace with God.
He didn't say I don't have regrets about my past.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
He said we have peace with God. He didn't say
I don't have conflict in my home. He said I
have peace with God. I'm gonna go a little deeper.
He didn't say I don't have temptations that are dragging
me back to the Egypt I thought I left. He
said we have peace with God. He didn't say I
(20:24):
don't have bills that I don't know how I'm gonna pay.
He said I have peace with God. He didn't say
I don't have pain in my body. He said I
have peace with God. He didn't say I don't have
issues that I'm going to counseling for.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
He said I have peace with God.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
He didn't say I don't have anger that I don't
even always know where it's coming from. He said I
have peace with God. So my peace with God is
not in the absence of the problem. My peace with
God is not in the absence of the anxiety. My
(21:05):
peace with God is not in the absence of my
shaking hands.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
My peace with God is not in the absence of
enemies who don't like me. My peace with God.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Comes from somebody who won a game.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I didn't even play it. Now you yawning, Am I
being born? All right?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
What I think is good for us to remember when
we have something that we have hoped for and it
didn't happen for us, is that before we can move
forward in pure faith, God often has to heal your hope.
(21:57):
And the first step of healing your hope is changing
what you boast in the Book of Romans was not
written as a pep talk to tell you do better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Get out there, go get them. You got this.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Nobody's slapping anybody on the bottom of Romans except Paul
saying the way you used.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
To boast in was your relationship to the law. Remember
they kept the law.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
They did that through circumcision, which was an external sign
of their faith, and they were trying to go back
to that.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
But Paul says in this passage that what you.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Used to boast in is insufficient to hold your hope
in this season of your life. One reason you can
praise God after you've been through something, tell somebody I've
been through something. Okay, after you've been through something, but
you found that God was still with you after you
went through it. Now you have something to boast about
(23:01):
that you didn't have before. And I saw somebody in
this room You've been like, why am I going through
everything I'm going through? Why does this all keep happening
to me? Why has this been so hard the last
three months? Why did I think I was so far along?
And then I just snapped right back to the previous
place that I was. It seems like nothing has moved forward.
But instead of you seeing yourself as going through something,
(23:22):
I want you to see yourself as getting something from
going through something, getting something from two completely different paradigms.
The focus on what I'm going through is me hypothetical,
(23:43):
the focus on what I'm going to have to go through.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Isn't it crazy that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
The devil can beat you with something that may never
even happen. Ask the prophet Elijah who ran from Jezebel
and wasted days that he could have spent in revival
from somebody who already proved she didn't.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Have the power to kill him.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
You know, when you're going through something, or when you
might have to go through something, your focus becomes only
the pain that it will cost you. And so now
your story revolves around your suffering. How could Paul say
in verse three Romans, Chapter five that we glory in
(24:27):
our suffering.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
We glory in our suffering. Maybe he doesn't mean that
we like it. Maybe he doesn't mean that we ask
for more of it.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Maybe he means that while we're going through it, we
get something from it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And so recently I was telling a friend a story.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You know, we all have these pity party stories that
we tell, and I was sharing it under the pretense
like it was a testimony of something God brought me through.
But in the middle of telling the story, it was
as if the Holy Spirit said to me, and I'm
gonna do a whole sermon one day.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I don't exactly know how I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Gonna do it yet, but it's gonna be called when
you say, God said, because a lot of times when
I'm preaching, I'll say God said this, and God said that.
And a sweet middle school kid came up to me
one time and said, when you say God said, what
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did you hear out loud voice? Did you read a
Bible verse?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What do you mean when you say God said, I'm
gonna do a sermon on that one day?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
But in this particular case.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It was an impression, and I was in the middle
of the story, telling the story, and mid sentence I
stopped telling the story because was this The Holy Spirit
said to me, I'm sick of this side of the
story because you're telling him like it's something you went through,
(25:53):
but you're talking like you're still in it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And if you really believe what you're.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Saying, you believe this is something that I brought you through,
So why are you not through with it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Now? I'm not saying this always works.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Please don't take me out of context.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I hate I hate.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
The thought that we can just cut short trauma by
putting on a happy face.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
That is not my point.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This was not a situation where there was unresolved trauma.
This was a case where there was unreleased bitterness. And
the Lord showed me as I was speaking, I'm telling you,
it was like it was almost like my mouth got
zipped by the Holy Spirit, and the Lord said, I'm
sick of this.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Side of it because all you keep.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Talking about is the story from the standpoint of how
hurtful it was to you. But you know good and
well that what I did through that was something that
I absolutely had to do and you know good and well,
then if it hadn't hurt you like that, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Be here today. So stop telling that story from that side.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Start saying things like, yeah, it hurt, but God healed
me from it.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah it was hard, but I got stronger from it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah I was waiting, but I felt some spiritual muscles
and I got a miracle from it.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
High five.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Somebody say, there's two sides to this story. There's two
sides to this story. There's what you went through, and
there's what you got from what you went through. And
while you're still worried about what you might go through,
you need to pick up something.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Just sit right in front of you. You're about Christian
glad my mic went out.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I needed a big boy mike today. I said I
needed a big boy mike today. I'm glad the mike
went out. Some of y'all need to say I'm glad
about stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
That goes wrong. I'm glad that went wrong.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
That was a redirection because I would have stayed in
this wilderness.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
If the man didn't go away. I would have stayed
in that place.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
If they didn't push me out, how would have stayed?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Stuff is something that I'm so much greater than.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
I am. Because a wind threw it, threw it, threw it,
threw it through it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
That's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Tell your neighbor, that's what the Bible says.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, yeah, he didn't say, watch this.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We have hope because of what might happen. We have
hope because of what could happen. We have hope because
of what probably will happen.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Now the apostle pause says something so much greater than that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
He says, Therefore, I'm about to blow your mind for
everything you're going through, for everything you might go through,
for every hypothetical in your life. Let's get hole pathetical
for a moment. He said, since we have been, you
missed it. He said, we have been. Everybody say I
(29:28):
have been. Now clarify for your neighbors say in English,
have been means past tense.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's behind me, that's behind me, that's behind me, that's
behind me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
That's why it's my testimony.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Because I passed. Because it was a test, but I
passed it. That's what put the money on it.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I have.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Because it happen. It happened. But I'm here it happened,
But hallelujah, it happened. But I have this hope.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I have this hope because I have been justified. Some
of you are waiting for other people to celebrate how
far you've come. But I got news, baby, They don't
live on the inside of you. Jesus does, the Holy
theory does.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
The righteousness of.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
God has been impaled.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
To you by faith.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So that's my second point of discermon is justification justification.
This is for all of your justified. I'll be further
along justified. You know all those regrets. You know I
(31:14):
wouldn't be in this mess justified.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Along comes Jesus.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Talking about you keep going back in your past, but
not far enough. You keep going back in your past,
but you're not going back there far enough. Because before
you even called on me, before you even looked to me.
(31:43):
Jimmy Romans, Chapter five, verse eight, this is the verse
you wanted to shout about a minute ago. Because the
Bible says that we were not good people, we were
not godly people, we were not righteous people. We did
not earned this spot. We did not make the team.
We did not make the cut, we did not live
(32:06):
up to it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
But God but God. So when we go back to
the past, you need to learn a phrase, say I
was but God, sit right there, Sit it right there, because.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Just to show you real clear what the Bible says,
I don't care what I say.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I don't care what you say. I don't care what
your grandmother says. I'm sorry. I'm sure she's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I'll give her a hug if we ever meet, and
all of that stuff, and I respect her and I'll
call her whatever you told me to call her. But
I don't care what you were taught about this, the
Bible says. The Bible says that I have.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That sass. Access is an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
It kind of suggests that something can be there and
you have it, but you can't get to it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Because of what's blocking it. And that's why you died.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
And that's why I have hope, because He gave me
access by faith into disgrace, in which I now stand
and we boast in the hope.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Of the glory of God.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Now, the more you understand this that you have, the
more you will have of this.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And the way that you access this peace.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I need more peace, you need more awareness, you need
more hoypathetical Christianity, you need more. I don't know if
(34:27):
you're gonna like this character, which is an interesting word.
I was studying that word because I thought, well, this
is how it works. This is how God matures us,
matures our lives, and this is how God brings forth
his fruit in our lives.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
He gives us hope through the suffering.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That produces perseverance, and the perseverance the not quitting, produces character,
and then character hope. So in order to get to
the hope, you got to go through some hell and
(35:16):
what it produces. Y'all, I feel annoyed to help somebody today.
I don't even care about anything, but said who I'm
supposed to help today? Because the word character in Greek
is actually a word that Paul made up. It's not
a word that's anywhere else in the New Testament except
when Paul uses it.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And it doesn't just mean character in the sense of, well,
that's just who I am.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
See, that's why some of you have the wrong testimony
right now. You keep testifying about that's just who I am,
that's just the way I am, that's just the way
it is.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
And all of that might be true.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
But this character that God is producing in you is
a certain type of character from a certain word that
Paul made up to describe what happens when you go
through something and get something from what you go through
that you couldn't get any other way. And the word
actually means proven worth, proven worth. And it started not
(36:24):
with the amazing things that happened, but with the pain
that you experienced. So the pain that you experienced produced
the proof of the worth of your faith.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What good is a hope that can't be disappointed?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
What good is a faith that can't be shaken and
not broken? What good is it for me to just
hope that things turn out well and then when they don't,
stay home. What good is it for me to listen
to Pastor Stephen preach for an hour and then go
home and resist the very things that God brings into
(37:05):
my life that will produce the word that he preached about.
What good is it for me to keep just going
through things and never stopping. God said today we are
going to rescue your testimony because you have stopped talking
about what God is going to do. You have stopped
talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
How it can be different.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
You have been disappointed, you have been hurt, you have
been hemorrhaging from what you went through.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
But God wants to heal that.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Place and rescue your testimony, to rescue it.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
That's what Holly does for me. She rescues me from
my hypothetical situations.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I say, well, if we go, something bad might happen,
and she says, but if you don't go, you might
look back the rest of your life and wonder what
would have happened if you did.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And so Paul says, it is the suffering.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
It is the pain that proved that proves the character.
The proof starts with suffering, the proof, do you see it?
The proof starts with suffering, and that's what leads to
the hope, because you know, I can go back to
that and I can remember that God did that for me.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
And so every once in a while.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I screenshot something on my phone just to remind me
in my low moments that at the lowest moments, God
is doing the most. A few years ago, I preached
a sermon to where I left and thought, well, that
didn't go very good. And I don't always blame myself.
(38:45):
Sometimes y'all are just lazy listeners. But I like to
take responsibility, Like, well, come on, I could have done
that better and clearer, and I beat.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Myself up every which way.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
And that same week, my friend sent me a text
of their notes from the sermon, and they said, just
wanted you to be encouraged.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Well I needed to be, so I was thankful for
the text.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
They took six pages of notes on that sermon that
I thought sucked. Okay, so I'm looking at it. I'm like,
this is great, Okay, thank you Lord. Maybe it wasn't
that bad. They wrote six pages of notes. But then
I looked at it again and I saw why they
sent it to me, because I thought, that's kind of weird.
Why did you send me your notes? I preached it,
don't you think I know what I said? But next
(39:30):
to the notes was this little puddle of tears that
they were showing me. And when the text came through
next after the photo, it said, I cried so hard
through your message. I left a puddle of tears next
to my notes before I dried it up. I wanted
(39:51):
to show you. And and that's something that while I'm sitting
there thinking, well, that wasn't any good, and then I
get a picture a proof in the puddle of tears
that they cry because I understand that sometimes suffering is
(40:16):
the starting place for something amazing. Sometimes the absence of
your emotional validation when you are doing the thing that
God has called you to do, maybe not preaching a sermon,
maybe just being a good man, maybe not preaching a sermon,
maybe just keeping your purity as a teenager, maybe not
preaching a sermon, Maybe just showing up to the next
(40:39):
thing that you know you can do. And the proof
I didn't feel it when I preached it. I didn't
see it when I preached it. I didn't know it
when I preached it. But to get that text, that
puddle of tears, to say that sermon that you preached,
that you felt nothing, that word you spoke, that you
felt nothing, that you pray, that you saw nothing.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Here's something, here's something days later that you didn't even see.
You weren't even there for it. But it's proof. This
is the proof that I'm after.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Not the proof of what you feel when you do it,
not the proof of what you see when you do it.
Not the proof of what you know right now, not
the proof of what you think you need to be validated,
not the proof of what you think would make it successful.
It is the proof in that puddle of tears that
you cried while you suffered. But I bet you got
(41:36):
up after you cried and did something, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I bet you got up.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
When you cried. I bet you got up after your
heart was broken and you kept going. So now you
have a testimony, and let's stop talking about all that
it costs you, and let's start talking about how God.
Speaker 8 (41:52):
Has called you proven, character, proven, prove I.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Have hope, say not loud, I have hope. I can
prove it. I have hope, and I can prove it.
So Holly said to me, you really do think of everything.
And I'm like, well, so does God. And she didn't
really accept that as an analogy, but I told her
(42:26):
how God has taken into account. You see, at just
the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died
for the ungodly. So now I want to talk about, finally,
the demonstration. The demonstration.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
The proof.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
That you have hope, and the proof that you have
hope is not that you don't suffer or will never suffer.
And the proof that you have hope is not that
you don't go through. Let me break that down a
little bit more. It is not that you won't ever
feel that way again. It is not that you will
never be let down again. It is not that you
(43:09):
will never experience a betrayal again. It is not that
you will never wrestle with this again. It is not
that it will completely leave your life. That is not
what Christ died to save us from. And the good
thing is, if you feel weak in this moment, that's
the very point He saved you at and he's still
saving so you have proof demonstration. But God demonstrates his
(43:35):
own love for us in this that while we were
still ciners, Christ died for us.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
I read you a.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Scripture from the Old Testament earlier, and you may have
wondered if I forgot about it, but I didn't, because
I want to give you a picture of how God
demonstrates his power in your weakness.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
The children of Israel are headed out of the.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Land that they've known as the place of their captivity
for over four hundred years. They've been wandering in the
wilderness for forty of those years because of the regrets
of their past. I gotta be thinking at this point
something is going.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Through their head.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Justified believe God and gone through the Promised land. Just
if we'd gone through and faced the giants in our
faith and believe the minority report of Caleb and Joshua,
just if we had not brought a complaint to Moses
in the place of where our faith should have been.
But now God is bringing a new generation led by Joshua,
(44:38):
into the Promised Land, and the Bible says that on
the way to where they're going, because you're going somewhere,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
If you feel stuck where you are, you're gonna die.
Where you are is.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Gonna be like it is, But you are transitioning out
of this.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Before they transition out.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Of the land that they've been in, the wilderness that
they've wandered in, the what ifs that they've wasted away in.
Before they transition out of this, God gives a very
strange instruction to Joshua. He says, before you completely cross
and by the way, I think you should commemorate every
crossing in your life, every crossing over. Just start celebrating
(45:13):
stuff when you cross over. So that could be as
simple ass thank you God for a new day. I
lay down to sleep and I woke up again, and
somebody didn't, So thank you for it. Lord, thank you
for another week. Thank you for bringing me to the
Lord's house another day. Thank you for a new season.
Thank you God for a new opportunity. Thank you for
my next breath. Thank You for my next opportunity. And
(45:36):
as they are crossing over watch this, God calls Joshua,
I want you to commemorate and demonstrate what I did.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And here's why four verse number five. I'm ready to
preach now.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Chapter number four, Verse five, and Joshua said to them,
pass on before the ark of the Lord, your God,
that represents God's presence, into the midst of the Jordan,
and take each of you a stone upon his shoulder.
According to the number of the tribes of the people
of Israel. How many tribes were there twelve? How many stones? Twelve,
(46:10):
one for every tribe, one for every trial, one for
every tribe, one for every trial. You ought to get
something out of everything you go through that makes you
stronger in God. I'm not going to cry like that
and not get stronger from it. I'm not going to
suffer like that and not get stronger from it. So
make sure you take something from this. But then verse success,
(46:30):
very importantly, why you're doing this, that this, this may
be a sign among you. So when your children ask
in time to come, what do these stones mean?
Speaker 1 (46:43):
You stop?
Speaker 2 (46:43):
How do you want to answer that question for your
kids one day?
Speaker 1 (46:51):
This is important because.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
He said, I want you to rescue your testimony.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
I want you to stop.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Right now and redefine everything you've been through. And instead
of remembering this as the river that was so hard
to cross, I.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Want you to take something out of it that you
can commemorate how great God was to bring you through it.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So when your children ask, what was it like to
deal with that? When your children ask, tell me about
that time when your children ask did you ever deal
with loneliness? And how did you handle it? When your
children ask, did you ever wonder if you were good enough?
When your children ask did you ever feel depressed? I
want you to have some proof to point through to
(47:47):
let them know God does miracles and I have a testimony.
Whatever you're standing next to exhibit A. So verse six,
verse six, Verse six. When your children ask what do
these stones mean to you?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
It's personal to me. I can't speak for you.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I can't prophesy for you, I can't praise for you.
You can't praise for me, there are some things that
I went through. This showed me who God was to me.
And verse seven says, when they ask you what do
these stones mean, then you shall tell them that the
waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark
(48:32):
of the Covenant of the Lord. Do you want us
to tell them how hard the wilderness was for forty
years for something that we didn't do.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
No, I just want you to tell them that.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
When I got to that Jordan, oh, there was a demonstration.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
And we didn't know how it was going to happen.
But watch this.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
My faith is not in a how. My faith is
in a who. So tell them the Lord. Somebody say
the Lord. Now say but God, Now ask your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Was it hard? Tell him it was? But God? Ask him?
Were you a mess? Tell him I was? But God?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Ask him?
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Were you tempted to quit? Tell him I was? But God?
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Were you a little nervous about how it was going
to turn out? Back there in twenty twenty four? Were
you sitting in church one Sunday morning in September? Were
you thinking about a football game in lunch?
Speaker 1 (49:34):
But God had a word for you. Tell him, I was,
But God?
Speaker 2 (49:39):
See when that man grabbed that microphone and he started
preaching about the flow of the Jordan being cut off.
It reminded me of Calvary. It reminded me of Jesus.
It reminded me of a cross. It reminded me of
my crossing over. It reminded me of death to life.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It reminded me.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Of the blood.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
It reminds to me, a broken says.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It reminded me I was. And I'm gonna show you something, Holly,
that I never saw before, because he said, I want
you to take the stones from what you went through
and tell your children what.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
God did, but I want you to take the stones
to be a memorial forever. And the people of.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Israel did just as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve
stones out of the midst of the Jordan.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Go back to verse eight.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
I wasn't done with it yet, out of the midst
of the Jordan. According to the number of the tribes.
They try to see if I got this thing memorized,
and I don't. The people of Israel, just as the
Lord told Joshua, Just as the Lord told Joshua, just
if I do what God told me to do, I
don't have to justify it any other way than God spoken.
First number nine and I'm closing, And Joshua set up
(50:52):
twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the
place where the feet of the priest stood. Wait a minute,
I thought he brought them out of the Jordan and
put them in the camp where they stayed when they
got through.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
He did. But there was a second set of stones.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That Joshua was set up, not where they were going.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
I know I love it too. I know it makes
me excited.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Too, because God said, I want you to set up
something right here, right here, not when you get through,
but right here and in the middle of the Jordan.
God told Joshua, I want you to make a pile
of the stones in the middle of the Jordan, so
that when your children asked what was it like when
(51:43):
you were crossing the Jordan, you'll have something to point
to that you went through that they can understand how
powerful God is.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
So now you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
Right because the stones were in the middle of the Jordan. Now,
if the Jordan is at high tide, then the stones
can't be seen. If the Jordan is overflowing, the stones
can't be seen. And the only way they're gonna see
the stones is if the tide is low. The only
time they're gonna see the stones is if the tide
(52:14):
is low. The only way they're gonna see the stones
is in a dry season. I'm preaching to somebody Austin
who's been in.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
A dry season.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
But I got news. Fa God dries up Jordan rivers
and you got some stones, Messy, you got some stone.
You got some stones at the bottom of what you
fit through. Oh God, I'm closing, but high five by
five to five your.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Neighborhood and say I got stones. Don't think I'm a whelm.
Don't think I'm weak, don't think.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I'm without power, don't think I'm without health, don't think
I don't have a testimony. I'm gonna tell this thing
from the other side. I'm gonna tell the truth from
a higher plane. So I tend to rescue your testimony.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Does it in a testimony? Tell us been tested?
Speaker 2 (53:16):
And before you get baptized today, I want you to
look forward to the low.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Tide times when the Jordan River gets lower, so you
can see where you stood that you thought you would die.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Get that stone out of there, that thing you suffered,
and get that hope out of therese.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
The proof is in the bottle.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Some things, oh God, some things you won't see if
it's not a dry season.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
That is my hope.
Speaker 9 (54:06):
Stones in dry seasons, strength in weak places, for you
see it. Just the right time, while we were still powerless,
Christ died for me.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
And if he justified me justification, and if he did.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
That for me demonstration, then guess what I got back anticipation.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
So now.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
We gotta do something about this. The proof is in
the puddles. God didn't save you because you were on
such a high place. God demonstrates his own love for
us in this while we were still sinners. He got
down in the dirt of my situation. That's how I
(54:59):
know he's not gonna leave me.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
He started this thing in the mud. He started this
thing in the puddle, and the proof is in the puddles.
So don't be so freaked out with the hypothetical situations
of what's gonna dry up. If it dries up, the
stones will still be there. You will still have a testimony.
(55:25):
Now take it back, take back your testimony. Today wouldn't
be too soon. I need a hundred of y'all that
weren't planning on getting baptized today, Get baptized today. Take
back your testimony, give me my camera. Declare to the devil,
I won't die in this dry season. I won't die
in this dry season. God brought me to church today
(55:47):
to repent, to turn from my sin, buy his blood.
If I'm justified by his blood, shall he not much
more save me from.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
His rat So I really don't even want to talk
about Joshua. I want to talk about Jesus.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Jesus who said I thirst is present and stretching in.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Dry places today.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
And you thought I was going to preach this message
about hope in a shallow way.
Speaker 9 (56:19):
N I'm talking about a God who is so deeply
committed to you.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
And now you're wondering, what if it does happen, Well,
God will be with me.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
As hopothetical Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Say, even if it does, we'll be all right.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
So the last season of your life was designed to
show you that. Are you getting that lesson out of it?
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Or did you just run through it and say, oh again,
you know I'm just gonna live this way now I am.
You remember how the philosopher said, I think therefore I am.
Let's put a twist on that. Who said that? Deskhartes, Well,
if you don't know, then I can say it with confidence.
(57:13):
I wish I could preach back in the day where
nobody had chet gpt to fact check the preacher. I
can make up all kinds of good stuff, he said,
I think. Therefore I am. He was trying to see
what can I be certain of? And he realized that
even the fact that I can doubt means that I'm thinking,
and even the fact that I'm doubting proves that I exist.
I think. Therefore I am. Don't you understand That's the
(57:33):
way it works in your life. You think about all
of the things that are going to go wrong. Therefore
you are a nervous ball of stress. I think, therefore
I am. So let's do this, say I have, Therefore
I hope.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
I have.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Therefore, So I'm coming to a Jordan right now. And
here's what I'm coming with Romans five to one on
the screen. Police is it up there? Therefore? What are
the stones? Therefore? That's the question? What is the suffering? Therefore?
(58:24):
What are you there for? Why did God keep you
alive this long? I see you every week? When I
preach you never miss you. Probably wouldn't even know that
I saw you. I watch you so much. I'm a stalker.
You ought to get a restraining order on me, and
it blesses me. And you would never know that. You
never know that. But the proof is in the puddle.
(58:45):
It's the times you don't see, the times you don't
feel coming up to a Jordan river, it.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Looks like it's overflowing.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
But God brought that thing down to a puddle for you,
didn't He didn't he You saw no way to be
right with him.
Speaker 9 (58:57):
You saw no way to put it back together. You
saw no way. But the proof is in the bottle.
What do he already dried up? What are you standing
in front of today? When your children ask you, I
want you to have a testimony, and when they say
did you ever doubt it? Tell them yeah. And there's
some things I doubt that are in front of me now.
(59:20):
And I want to be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
The truth is I can't do it, but.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
The grade can't. That's what I'm pointing out. That's all
the proof we need. I can't do it, but the grade.
How about this? You can dry this short?
Speaker 2 (59:49):
And if I will just step in. I can't do it,
but the Great.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Come on, lift your hands, thank so God, to get
up on the feet and worship Him.
Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
Where you are.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
It may be in your home, it may be in
your sick band dude, it may be in.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
The middle of a panic attack. But you're saying, I
can't do it. That's my testimony the Great. I am kid,
and I know he can't because.
Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
I know he did.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I've been here before. I've been through dry season, I've
been through identity crisis. I've been through nervous nights. I've
been through dark waters. He can split an iceing me.
Ask me how. I don't know, but I know. Sing
(01:00:55):
it again, I can't do it. That's the truth to
by the while, Where were your center?
Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
This is my testimony? Then you cast plead.
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
I can't do it.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevation Church dot org slash podcast for
more information, and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
M
Host
Steven Furtick
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