April 25, 2025 • 48 mins
Disappointment is inevitable. But what if your disappointment could be turned into an opportunity? Learn that, when one door closes, there’s always another way.
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Mark as Played
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We have a little fun today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm gonna take you to a Bible passage that.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We can all relate to.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Turn in your Bible or just watch the screen, whatever
you need to do. Let's go together to Mark chapter two,
verses one through twelve. And this passage practically preaches itself.
So God, get me out of the way. Say what
(00:43):
you need to say to your people. Help them hear it,
even if they're hard headed in Jesus name. Amen, that's
an honest preacher's a Two days later, when Jesus again
entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.
So many gathered that there was no room left, not
even outside the door. And the word to them. Some
men came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four
(01:06):
of them. All right, and since they could not get
him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an
opening in the roof above Jesus, and after digging through
it lowered the mat. So we've got four men and
we've got a matt. This is March madness. It's the
final four. Whoa, you're so hateful, You are so hateful.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I worked on that joke for about three hours this week,
and look how you treated me.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'll find me another church where they appreciate advanced humor.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I am one of these days, you're gonna look up here.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's gonna be somebody not as funny as me, taking
my wit for granted. Kidding, I'm kidding. I see some
of the guests look at me. Now, let's get back
to the text. When Jesus saw their faith, he said
to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
What did their faith have to do with his sins?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Is it possible that your life affects more than your life?
Is it possible that your example affects more than your existence?
When he saw their faith, he said, your sins are forgiven. Now,
some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves,
(02:27):
why does this fellow talk like that. He's blaspheming who
can forgive sins? But God alone? Immediately, Jesus knew in
his spirit that this is what they were thinking in
their hearts. And he said to them, because he is
such a savage that he wins an imaginary argument.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
He responds not to what.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
They said, but to what they thought that they didn't
get the chance to say.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So, he knows your intentions.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Touch somebody say, you can't fool You might be able
to fool me, but you can't fool God. He knows
your motivations, and he knows your thoughts too, So he
said to them. He responded to their thoughts, why are
you thinking these things? Which is easier to say to
the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up,
(03:22):
take your mat, and walk, but that you may know
that the son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive sins.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Dot dot dot.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He said to the paralytic, I tell you, get up,
take your mat, go home. And he got up, took
his mat, and walked out in full view of them. All.
This amazed everyone, and they praised God, saying, we've never
seen anything like this. This is remarkable, this is miraculous.
(03:52):
But verse two is really where my sermon hinges. So
many gathered that there was no room left, not even
outside the door. Touch your neighbor, give them my title.
Say I got good news. I know your heart was broken,
I know you lost some things, but I got good news.
(04:17):
There's another door. Turn to your next neighbor, the one
you really wanted to talk to, and tell them there's
another door. So let's lay a principle here, overlay it
on this narrative from Mark chapter four. Here's the principle.
(04:39):
Life's biggest opportunities aren't always obvious. Life's biggest opportunities aren't
always obvious. After the fact, they seem obvious. You know
that it was an idiot that cut Michael Jordan from
the team, But life's greatest opportunities are and always obvious.
(05:02):
Holly paid me a compliment Friday. I think it was
a compliment. She said, I didn't know what I was
getting when I married you. What I took that to
mean is is so much better. What I took that
to mean is it's an Ephesians three twenty kind of thing,
exceeding abundantly above all that she asked or imagined. I
(05:24):
think that's what she meant. I did not clarify. Sometimes
assumption is a beautiful marriage tool. But I just took
it like that anyway. She said, I didn't know what
I was getting when I looked across the North Greenville
University cafeteria and saw that silly boy with a buzz
cut and an extra large Superman T shirt that I
(05:47):
bought for a dollar twenty five at Goodwill. She didn't
know that there was a Superman inside that silly shirt.
I'm just talking a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is what she said.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
She said, I didn't know what I was getting when
I married you. Because life's greatest opportunities. I'm having fun
to enjoy my life. This is scriptural. This is scriptural.
This is thoroughly scriptural. Life's greatest opportunity. Moses deliver a nation.
(06:25):
I am calling you to deliver an entire people group.
So what will you give me as a sign? Your stick,
the stick in your hand that you are using to
shepherd sheep is the sign that I'm going to give you.
But I am going to point to your calling through
(06:47):
something that to you seems common. So God disguises calling
as common. God wraps calling in diapers and allows the
Savior of the world to be born in a barn.
So much so that the people he came for missed him.
Because life's greatest opportunities aren't always obvious. It was interesting
(07:12):
to me that callings can appear common on the surface,
to the point that Gideon was called a mighty warrior
while he was hiding in a wine press. Why would
God hide such a mighty calling in such a wimpy man.
Because sometimes Superman wears a baggy shirt. Sometimes God uses
earthen vessels to release something that has precious value. I
(07:34):
preaching to somebody today who has been deceived about your destiny.
You thought God was going to show up in your
situation looking like Superman. Instead, God shows up in your
situation looking like a mustard seed. The seed doesn't look
like the tree. It shares the genetic code of the tree,
but according to the exterior, there is nothing to associate
the seed with the tree. And might it be that
(07:56):
what God is doing in your life right now is
not obvious. But that does not mean that there is
no opportunity for He says, when I open a door.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
No man can shut it.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
And when I decide to do something through your life,
no season, no person, and no human limitation can stop me.
I was always interested to learn that. After David made
his biggest mistake by sleeping with Bethsheba and having her
(08:26):
husband Uriah killed on the front lines of battles, he
went in and had another baby because the one that
was born from his mistake died. But the next one
he had was named Solomon, who was the wisest man
who ever lived at that point in time. And David's
greatest wisdom was born after his biggest mistake. Now, it's
not always obvious. It's not always obvious that you are
(08:50):
becoming wiser. Usually wisdom feels like dumb decisions. While you
are gaining wisdom, often you have to gain will at
the expense of today for tomorrow. It's very powerful. It's
the principle I preach a lot, and I forgive you
if you're a little bored right now, because this is
pretty much what I try to say every single week.
(09:12):
I try to show you how reward dresses as responsibility.
God is not going to put the reward right in
front of you. He is going to wrap it in responsibility.
David had no clue that Goliath was waiting for him.
He just knew he had bread to take to his brothers.
It was his responsibility that unlocked his reward. If he
had waited for the possibility of an opportunity to demonstrate
(09:36):
his warriorness, if he had waited for Goliath to show up,
he never would have had the opportunity to see what
God could do through him. But it was in his
assignment that his giant was waiting. Now, if this is true,
(09:58):
it gives a whole new meaning to what John chapter
eleven says that when Jesus heard Lazarus was sick, he
stayed where he was a little while longer, because Jesus
is about to show all of those in Bethany that
resurrection is not an event but a person. I am
(10:21):
the resurrection. But if Jesus shows up and heals Lazarus
when they want him to, he will not have the
opportunity to reveal who he is that they don't yet
perceive him to be. And so, in his waiting, which
seems cruel to Mary and Martha, he is actually staging
a miracle so that when he gets there and Lazarus
(10:42):
has been dead, it's a good thing, because resurrection dresses
like death. Sometimes God lets something in your life die,
but don't worry when it dies.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Resurrection is who.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
He is and what he does. And if you can
get the stone rolled away long enough to believe for
a little while, I hear a voice calling Lazarus out
of the grave. See the grave clothes wrapped up the
revelation of who Jesus was. When he got on the
scene and said, Lazarus, come forth, the grave clothes had
no choice but to fall off, because the voice of
the Lord unwraps death to present resurrection. Who he's a
(11:18):
miracle today. I came to priest to you. And the
greatest opportunities are not always obvious. The greatest opportunities are
often hidden. Jesus even taught in parables to hide the
(11:41):
wisdom of God from the people who wanted to understand
it with their human minds. He didn't want the elite
to get it, and so he put.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It in parables.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
He hid it hid, He hid the kingdom. The kingdom
didn't come announcing itself with trumpets and red carpet. It
wasn't obvious. It came looking like conflict now. Mark Chapter
two is the first of five conflict dialogues where we
(12:15):
see this carpenter from Nazareth doing ministry in Galilee. Having
to confront the wisdom of this world to reveal the
wisdom of God. He's teaching one day, and so many
people have come to see him.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The crowd has gathered.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
In Mark's gospel, the crowd is not necessarily a positive thing.
We would think that if Jesus was trying to build
a ministry, he would need a crowd. Jesus is so
savage sometimes if the crowd got too big, he would
start running people off by saying stuff they didn't want
to hear. He really would, and you'll have to read
how he fed people and they were happy. But after
(12:57):
they ate their happy meal, he turned around and said,
I'm not burger king. I know I'm mixing restaurants, but
go with the illustration.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
He said, if you.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Eat my flesh and drink my blood, then you can
have this kingdom. And they say, WHOA. I was into
the miracles, but this, uh, this took a dark turn,
this cannibalism thing, and even the disciples couldn't understand that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
But Peter did. After and when he was recounting to.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Mark so Mark could write this gospel account, he talked
about the crowd. The crowd had gathered and they were
listening to Jesus preaching, and the Bible tells us about
four men who brought their friend and they could not
get in because of the crowd. They had high hopes,
(13:41):
you could say that their hopes were through the roof
ah great expectations. But then they were met at the door.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There are, by the way, there are four.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Doors in this passage that are not obvious, four doors
in this passage, this passage, and in our lives that
are not obvious, because life's greatest opportunities are not always obvious.
So they come to the front door and they can't
get in.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
This represents the door of disappointment.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
How disappointing it must have been that after you have
carried your friend all this way only to find out
at church that not only is there no room in
the main auditorium, but they're not even seating in overflow.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Thank you very much, you can watch live stream.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
These men were met at the door with disappointment. And
so if they had subscribed to the theology that many
of us live our lives according to, they would have
turned around and gone home because obviously everybody say, obviously
(14:50):
it's not God's will for our friend to get healed today.
If it were God's will for our friend to be
healed today, we would have gotten in the door. But
these boys, these boys, I wonder, do I have four
crazy ones? Just four? These boys said, we did not
(15:14):
carry you all this way with your heavy self to
turn around and go home. Now, now I think these
boys had a little bit of a well maybe this
is the Monk's corner in me. But I picture their conversation.
I picture these boys. These boys didn't drive a priest.
That's what I'm trying to say. These boys, they're mad
(15:38):
at the door with disappointment. Not to mention the man's disappointment.
He's learned to deal with disappointment. His entire life is
a disappointment. He can't walk, he can't dance, he can't
do what other people do. But they've come this far.
I said, they've come this far, and they didn't come
this far to go home. So Bubba says the Tommy, Hey.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Man, I was uh, I was looking around. I didn't
see no security cameras right back right around the south entrance.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Man, I reckon, wonder if you could.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Uh Bubba and Tommy and who else? Uh ah rufus.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Ruf rufous, that's the last one, I promise.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
He said, what what do you reckon? If we uh?
If we get around there and they they're they're whispering
because they don't They don't want the man on the
mat to know what they're about to do.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Don't tell everybody all your plans.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Just sometimes sometimes you just got to do stuff. You
don't always ask permission. Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness.
What if we what if we went up? I know
we can't get in, so what if we went up?
(17:19):
Sometimes you gotta change levels. You let me get behind
my pulpit. Sometimes the reason you can't get in that
door is because it wasn't your door. God is calling
you higher.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Who am I preaching to?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Sometimes the reason you got rejected is because it was
the wrong level of relationship. And if those people would
have liked you, it would have actually limited. I'm caffeinated today.
High five. Somebody say go higher. Come on, when they
go low, we go high. He's calling me higher. So
(18:07):
they go up and they do not find a door.
They make a door. Have you ever had to make
your own door? Nobody gave me money to start this church.
Nobody sponsored me officially, I wish they would have, but
you know, I'm kind of glad they didn't because I
had to learn how to dig. And sometimes one of
(18:29):
the greatest things that can happen to you in your
life is to be turned away at the front door
because you discover another door. Somebody shot there's another door.
This is not the normal door. This is not for
normal people. This is not for people who want to
quit because the Wi fi was a little slow, or
skip church because it was forty three degrees. No, this
(18:52):
is for the people who have determined. Somebody shot up determined.
Now we have a fruit through view of faith. We
think of faith as being something to fall back on.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Not Mark.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Mark mentions faith four times in his Gospel, and none
of them represent an attitude.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
They always represent actions.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Faith to Mark is something you can see. Actually, it's
something that you can see in response to something that
you cannot see. Faith is the substance of things hoped
for and the evidence of things not seen. So it
(19:45):
is something that you can see in response to a
hope that you can't see. That's a series right there,
there's another door.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There's another door.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And when Jesus verse five saw saw their faith not
heard their faith. It wasn't that they talked about how
much they trusted God, it's that they refuse to go
home that easy. Yeah, I'll tell you this real quick,
(20:19):
just a little side thing.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Me and Chris were turning to write a song.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The other day, and I said, I know this is
the fifty first revision on this song, but I want
the devil to know I'm gonna keep coming because I
feel like we're supposed to finish this song. Chris Brown
looked back at me and said, if that joker doesn't
know that by now about us, he hadn't been paying attention.
Because I'm gonna tell you something. I'm not always the smartest,
(20:43):
but I don't turn around the first time somebody tells
me you can't come in this story. That's just not
how I'm wired.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's fine, it's fine. If you don't like me, you
don't have to, but I'll find somebody who does. It's fine.
Some people when I started Elevation didn't want to come
because they said it was a cult. And that's fine,
but I'll find another way. See if you just got
four good friends, just four good friends, and sometimes if
(21:11):
you don't have four, father son Holy Spirit and me.
That's four. We're gonna do this. Those boys, those boys
were like, we ain't going home. He's heavy. No, no,
(21:34):
no sermon. We will put him up on that roof
and we're gonna dig through that mud and we're gonna
make a door.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We're gonna make a door.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I'm gonna get through to my kid, one way or another.
I'm not just gonna give up on him. Not that easy.
I'm gonna find a way to get through. I might
have to shut up. I might have to speak up.
If that doesn't work, I'll do the other. I might
have to hug him. I might have to hit I
might have to try some different ways. But now we
come to the to the door on the ceiling. There's
(22:06):
another door. If you can't get in the front door,
go up, it says another door. You gotta make it.
It's to look like a door. You got to dig
through it. There's a door, but you can't see it.
It's not visible, it's not something you can see. It
takes faith. If faith is something you can see in
response to something that you can't see. So make a door,
make a door, Make a door. Tet so much, say,
make a door and make a door, make a door,
and make a door, and Jesus respected their carpentry. Jesus
(22:28):
liked their work. He actually in verse five, he's preaching
and there's a distraction overhead. Now he's not even healing
this day. It's not even on his agenda to see
sick people. Some of life's greatest opportunities are not always obvious,
(22:54):
and some of God's greatest invitations will.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Show up in the form of interruptions.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And he's preaching, and he's probably doing a really good job,
just going off context cluse. He is the word, so
if he preaches what he is, it's probably pretty good.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Got a big.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Crowd, and all of a sudden, Peter says something Matthew
doesn't say.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Matthew describes the incident.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Heh he simplifies in Matthew nine, verse two, Matthew says,
some men brought to him a paralytic lying on the mat.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
what did Matthew leave out the fact that they ripped
off this dude's roof. It sounds so nice when Matthew
says it, It just looks so easy. And they brought
their friend, and Jesus healed them.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Now something, did you hear that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Jesus is preaching? You know?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts
them in PHPs like a wise man to builds house
on the rock.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Ranking down streams rows when blue begets that house, he
didn'tvolvek that foundation on the rock. And right about the
time he's right about the time he's making his point,
here comes a sound. Remember that Mark is writing what
Peter told him to write. And consider that most scholars
believe that it was Peter's house that Jesus was preaching at.
(24:16):
So Matthew remembered the healing, Peter remembered the roof. It's
funny to me, it's perspective. Did you hear that? Keep preaching,
keep preaching, keep preaching. We're gonna check it out. But
about the time that the dirt starts falling from the
from the mud on the ceiling, are you willing to
(24:37):
get your hands dirty, by the way, or are you
too afraid to mess up your manicure to go after
your miracle? I could preach manicures or miracles. The choices yours,
and they had to drop him. You can't get him
all the way down, and here comes the dirt, and
(25:02):
here comes the man.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
We'll call him Matt. We don't know his thing.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Jesus says, I like your style, boys. That's what I
did when I came down, through your dirt, through your shame,
through your sin. I like it boys.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And now.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Rufus and Bubba, Willie and Jimmy all looking in. Now
what's going to happen next? And Jesus leans down and
says to the man, son, your sins are forgiven. And
Willie says, what did he say? And Jimmy says, sounded
(26:01):
like he says something about sins. And Willie says, did
he say anything about healing? And Jimmy says, no, just
something about sins. And Rufus says, that's good that he
forgave his sins. But ken he fix his legs too
(26:22):
while he's at it. Because they did not bring the
man before Jesus to get him forgiven. They brought him
before Jesus to get him healed. So the question is
what do you do when God bypasses what you want
(26:43):
to give you what you need. The most obvious thing
to do is to heal the man, But sometimes before
God can do what is obvious and change your situation,
(27:05):
he wants to work within you so that when He
changes your situation, you will be ready.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
To receive that.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
In the Jewish mind, sin and suffering were highly connected,
so it was often assumed that if you were suffering,
it was because of sin. Jesus dispels this in John
chapter nine, when the man born blind was declared to
be not a sinner, but blind so that the works
of God and the glory of God might be revealed.
We can't always connect situations with behavior. Yet it's something
(27:42):
that he said, before I do anything for you, I
want to do something in you. And that's where it
takes faith, because the substance of things hope for and
the evidence of things not seen to know that God
(28:05):
is working. And you know, I think God for in
this passage. I think God that this man had friends
who believed for him what he might not have been
able to believe for himself.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And if I were preaching this at.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
At what's it called now youth X used to be
called student takeover. I can't keep up with all the names.
I would preach the message around who are your four
that's really important? Who are your four. You got to
have the right four because the wrong four would have
dropped him off at the door.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
But the right for we're willing to put him where
he belonged.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
At the feet of Jesus. Now are they bringing you
to Jesus or driving you away? But to me, they're
not the primary heroes in the passage, because other than Jesus,
the most important people in the passage are the people
who doubted him. I want you to notice something, and
(29:05):
please pay attention to this. It's going to revolutionize the
way that you see some of your resentments in life.
When Jesus saw what the friends did for the man,
he forgave him. But the man was still on the
mat when he heard the thoughts of the critics, or
we might say haters. What the haters thought got the
(29:29):
man healed. What his friends did got him forgiven what
his haters thought got him healed. I thought I'd give
you fifteen seconds to praise God for your haters. You
might want to do it. Did anybody ever doubt you?
Did anybody ever walk away from you? Did anybody ever
(29:53):
stop supporting you? Did anybody ever walk away when it
got a little tight? Thank God? Right? Now because sometimes
God will use judas more than he uses theater. This
is a messy message. This is a message for the
people who are ready.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
To thank God. Not just for the ways he blesses me.
That feel good, But I think it for my pain.
I think it for my heartbreak. I thinking for my disappointment.
I thank him for my opposition. That's the second door.
(30:31):
It's the door of opposition. One time Paul said, I'm
staying in ephesis a little while.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And the reason I'm staying is not because the temperature
is so great and the cuisine is so wonderful. I'm
staying because there is a great and effective door of
ministry that God has opened for me. And you know
how I know there's an open door because there are
many who oppose me. The reason that I know that
(30:59):
God is blessing is because the enemy is so busy,
and he would not be busy if God was not
blessing me. Come on, I'm gonna give you one more chance.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Thank him for the conflict, Thank him for the confusion.
Thank him, thank him, thank him, think him. Thank him
for the thorn his crisis sufficient, thank him for the loneliness.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Thanked for the wilderness, taken for the nose. Somebody say, yes,
if there had been no haters, he wouldn't have got you.
If there had been no weakness, you wouldn't be strong.
(31:46):
If there had been no resistance, you wouldn't be so resilient.
There are many who oppose me, but the opposition, I'm
gonna calm down and say it for all the intellectual people.
The opposition proves the opportunity. Okay, investment terms, the really
(32:13):
good investments you don't know about unless you have money.
It's a barrier to entry. The investments that most of
us can invest in are not the best investments. The
best investments are reserved for people. Now, I'm saying this
about money, but I mean it about battles and trials. See,
(32:35):
the biggest battles are reserved for the people that God
has his hand on, that he put a deposit in,
and you cannot be defeated because if he opened the door,
nobody can shut it. So quit blaming your haters and
(32:57):
write them a thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
No, remember that.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Youth pastor that stood up at inside elevation. Were you
in here? Anna? He said, there's a lot of critics.
I'm just getting started in ministry what do I do
about the critics? I said, That's what I said to him,
said right there, right in that section, sit down this
week and write three thank you notes to him.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
From experience, I know.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That God will use some of that stuff to strip
away your self sufficiency. And if everybody is clapping for you,
the crowd is not always your friend.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
So write them a thank you note.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Because honestly, every time we have a baptism in the church,
I think about it because the only reason we do
baptisms every week instead of two or three times a
year like we did for years, is because of that
new story that they ran about us, where they said
we fake baptisms in the church.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I still don't know exactly what a.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Fake baptism looks like, but I don't care because it
gave me an idea. If you're going to hit us
at the point of our baptisms, what we'll do is
not two or three times a year, But how about
if every single week we put it in the devil's
face that you can't stop when God opens a door.
I don't even care what they say. Let's just let's
(34:28):
while we're at it, let's ban the word hater. Because
most of us don't have haters. We just have people
who don't agree with us, and we label that haters. Okay,
your coach is not your hater because he is not
going to play you right now.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Your coach is a trainer.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
He is teaching you that you are not good enough
yet to get playing time. Timmy. The reason, the reason, Timmy,
you're not playing, tim is because you're not a player yet.
So thank your coach. He's not a hater. He's teaching
you to be a player. So you need to thank
(35:09):
that boss who was hard on you. My boss is
a hater. No, you're late to work. Your boss is
not a hater because she expects you to be on time.
I saw a supervisor. Just give him some praise right
there on the a throw and Valentine, thank God for it.
Because the opposition is the opportunity. I'm so annointed to
(35:32):
say this to you right now. It feels like a
freight train. This word is coming through the roof, is
coming through the teachers of the law. Jesus is preaching.
Jesus is healing. Nothing can stop it. Jesus is preaching.
Jesus is healing, nothing can stop it. And he uses
the opposition to bring the man healing. Now, what is
(35:53):
God using in your life right now that you are
trying to get away from There's another door. There's another door,
and this door, this door is called obedience. The first
(36:13):
door is disappointment, the second one is opposition. This one
is obedience, and it is the kind of obedience that
has to trust God in an impossible situation. See what
(36:38):
the friends did got the man forgiven, but there was
something that he had to do to be healed. And
it is by grace we are saying through faith. It's
the gift of God. It's not of works, but faith
expresses itself in works. Please don't sleep on me, brother,
(37:00):
this is very important. It is your faith express Jesus said,
so that they may know who I am. It's not
even about you anymore. And it's not about your dysfunction,
and it's not about your limitation, not anymore. This is
(37:20):
bigger than you. So I want you to do what
you can't do. I want you to do what you've
never been able to do. And the proof of my
presence is going to be in enabling you to do
something practical. Get up, take that thing that they carried
you in and lowered you down on what you came
(37:42):
in on. You're going out with, but instead of it
holding you, you'll.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Be holding it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Help me, God, help me right now, because somebody's still
lying on that mat. And you got resurrection power on
the inside of you. It's on the inside of you,
but you got to walk it out. That man came
(38:22):
in through the roof, but he left out the same
door that they wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Let him through when he got there.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
And what I'm declaring today by the spirit of God
is if you will get up, you can get up.
If you will forgive, you can forgive, if you will
be whole. I'm not saying the mat will go away.
(38:54):
I'm saying that you will not spend the rest of
your life lying down on it and blaming others for
the condition that you're in. So get up in front
of all of these other people. Think about the courage
that this demonstration requires. Because the people that are watching
(39:14):
this man are not even cheering for him. They don't
even like the fact that he interrupted the service, and
that Jesus thinks he can forgive him. So now he
has to get up and walk in front of people
who don't want him to. Now he has to get
up and take his first steps. When most of us
took our first steps, somebody was cheering us on. But
(39:34):
he has to do it in the face of conflict.
He has to do it in the face of doubt.
He has to do it in the face of critics.
He has to do it in the face of people
who didn't even want him in the room. And I wonder,
are you willing today in the face of adversity, in.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
The face of weakness, in the face of everything that has.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Been against your entire family, our whole life. Will you
get up? Will you?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Will you become a door.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
When God wants to show people who he is, he
picks somebody with an issue.
Speaker 5 (40:30):
And he wants to show who he is through you.
Somebody say, there's another door. This is the door of revelation.
And the people were not amazed when the roof came off.
They were amazed when the man got up.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
They were not amazed even by Jesus's preaching. They were
amazed by the man's demonstration. And there are some of
you that are about to become a door for people
to see Jesus through your life. And here's who He's
gonna pick. The people who were paralyzed, who have made
(41:10):
a decision.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
I may not be able to get.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Rid of my issue, but my issue is not keeping
me from Jesus. See, there's another door. And when you've
done all that you can do, and you've tried all
that you know to try, and self help isn't helping,
and people have stopped believing in you a long time ago,
and truth be told, you've given up on yourself. But
(41:34):
God called me to be like those four men and
carry you today and put you at the feet of Jesus.
Let me tell you about Jesus. Jesus is not your
average preacher. He is the Way, the truth, and the life.
He is the Resurrection, He is the good Shepherd. He
is the true Vine. And in John chapter ten, verse nine,
(41:58):
when he got ready to say who he wants, he said,
I am the door. So if you want to come in,
come on in. If religion locked you out, come on in.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
If your sin.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Kept you out, come on in. I am the door.
And because I'm the door, nothing can come into your
life without first going through me. So I've allowed some
(42:42):
things in your life that you don't like right now,
but don't let them paralyze you another day, because all
I'm asking you to do is walk through this door.
That's all I'm asking you to do. I'm not asking
you to be perfect, but I do expect progress. I
(43:03):
am the door. Your ex husband is not your dad
who wasn't there is not your own opinion of yourself
is not. I am the door. And when I open
the door in your life, no mistake, no sickness, no situation,
(43:37):
even if they roll a stone to seal the entrance
on Friday, I am the door. And when I speak
up the resurrection power come. My praise is a door give.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
There's some praise right now.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Don't you miss this moment? Assist the door. Stand up
at every location. No one leaving shut those doors. There's
(44:19):
another door. And the Lord gave me this message as
an announcement, not as an intellectually stimulating conversation or amount
of log for your entertainment purposes. But you are standing
at an open door, and the door is open. But
(44:40):
it's not always obvious. It doesn't look like a door,
does It looks like a ceiling, looks like disappointment, looks
like looks like teachers of the law, looks like opposition.
It looks like a command to do something you can't do.
It looks like obedience. It looks like Jesus. It looks
(45:00):
like revelation. It looks like the word made flesh. This
is your door. This is your door, This is your door.
(45:23):
I know it didn't work out the way you plan.
I understand that. I know it's disappointing. That's fine. Be disappointed,
but don't die in it. Don't die at an open door.
Something on the other side. There's another door. There's another door. Yes, Lord,
(45:46):
I'll say it again, there's another door. It might not
be who you expected, what you expected, when you expected.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
How you expected. There's another door.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Fill your horn with oil and be on your way.
For the one who has the key of bath and
says what I open, no man can shut.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
And behold.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Jesus said, I stand at the door. That's me knocking.
That's me trying to get your attention through the circumstances
of your life. That's me. And if you open it,
I will come in, heads bowed, eyes closed. There's somebody
(46:38):
in this place who needs a relationship with Jesus.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
That's him at the door.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
That's not a preacher, that's not an emotion that's the
spirit of God. Heads bowed, eyes closed. Right now, if
you're far away from God, you hear him knocking on
your heart today he wants to come in. All you
have to do is believe it's my grace through faith.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Faith opens the door.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
So with hedge about and eyes closed on every location,
I'm going to lead you in a prayer right now.
If you want to come home to God or come
to Him.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
For the first time, this is your moment. This is
your door.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
All praying together as a church family, repeat after me,
Heavenly Father. I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God,
and today I make Jesus the Lord of my life.
I believe in my heart that God raised him from
the dead, and I confess with my mouth that Jesus
(47:31):
is Lord, and I believe I am saved. This is
my new beginning. With head still bout and eyes still closed.
If you just prayed that on the count of three,
shoot your hand up boldly, come forth, one, two, three,
all over this room, all over our campuses, all over
Lake Norman, all over Matthew's online. Right now, let's glorify
(47:54):
God for this new beginning. Somebody just step through and
open door. Somebody just stepped into a resurrected future. I
can't hear your church. Let's praise God like somebody just
came running back home. Thank you for joining us. Special
(48:16):
thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry.
Is because of you that this ministry is possible. You
can click the link in the description to give now
or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information
and if you enjoyed the podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
You can subscribe. You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We have a little fun today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm gonna take you to a Bible passage that.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We can all relate to.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Turn in your Bible or just watch the screen, whatever
you need to do. Let's go together to Mark chapter two,
verses one through twelve. And this passage practically preaches itself.
So God, get me out of the way. Say what
(00:43):
you need to say to your people. Help them hear it,
even if they're hard headed in Jesus name. Amen, that's
an honest preacher's a Two days later, when Jesus again
entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.
So many gathered that there was no room left, not
even outside the door. And the word to them. Some
men came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four
(01:06):
of them. All right, and since they could not get
him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an
opening in the roof above Jesus, and after digging through
it lowered the mat. So we've got four men and
we've got a matt. This is March madness. It's the
final four. Whoa, you're so hateful, You are so hateful.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I worked on that joke for about three hours this week,
and look how you treated me.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'll find me another church where they appreciate advanced humor.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I am one of these days, you're gonna look up here.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's gonna be somebody not as funny as me, taking
my wit for granted. Kidding, I'm kidding. I see some
of the guests look at me. Now, let's get back
to the text. When Jesus saw their faith, he said
to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
What did their faith have to do with his sins?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Is it possible that your life affects more than your life?
Is it possible that your example affects more than your existence?
When he saw their faith, he said, your sins are forgiven. Now,
some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves,
(02:27):
why does this fellow talk like that. He's blaspheming who
can forgive sins? But God alone? Immediately, Jesus knew in
his spirit that this is what they were thinking in
their hearts. And he said to them, because he is
such a savage that he wins an imaginary argument.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
He responds not to what.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
They said, but to what they thought that they didn't
get the chance to say.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So, he knows your intentions.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Touch somebody say, you can't fool You might be able
to fool me, but you can't fool God. He knows
your motivations, and he knows your thoughts too, So he
said to them. He responded to their thoughts, why are
you thinking these things? Which is easier to say to
the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up,
(03:22):
take your mat, and walk, but that you may know
that the son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive sins.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Dot dot dot.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He said to the paralytic, I tell you, get up,
take your mat, go home. And he got up, took
his mat, and walked out in full view of them. All.
This amazed everyone, and they praised God, saying, we've never
seen anything like this. This is remarkable, this is miraculous.
(03:52):
But verse two is really where my sermon hinges. So
many gathered that there was no room left, not even
outside the door. Touch your neighbor, give them my title.
Say I got good news. I know your heart was broken,
I know you lost some things, but I got good news.
(04:17):
There's another door. Turn to your next neighbor, the one
you really wanted to talk to, and tell them there's
another door. So let's lay a principle here, overlay it
on this narrative from Mark chapter four. Here's the principle.
(04:39):
Life's biggest opportunities aren't always obvious. Life's biggest opportunities aren't
always obvious. After the fact, they seem obvious. You know
that it was an idiot that cut Michael Jordan from
the team, But life's greatest opportunities are and always obvious.
(05:02):
Holly paid me a compliment Friday. I think it was
a compliment. She said, I didn't know what I was
getting when I married you. What I took that to
mean is is so much better. What I took that
to mean is it's an Ephesians three twenty kind of thing,
exceeding abundantly above all that she asked or imagined. I
(05:24):
think that's what she meant. I did not clarify. Sometimes
assumption is a beautiful marriage tool. But I just took
it like that anyway. She said, I didn't know what
I was getting when I looked across the North Greenville
University cafeteria and saw that silly boy with a buzz
cut and an extra large Superman T shirt that I
(05:47):
bought for a dollar twenty five at Goodwill. She didn't
know that there was a Superman inside that silly shirt.
I'm just talking a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is what she said.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
She said, I didn't know what I was getting when
I married you. Because life's greatest opportunities. I'm having fun
to enjoy my life. This is scriptural. This is scriptural.
This is thoroughly scriptural. Life's greatest opportunity. Moses deliver a nation.
(06:25):
I am calling you to deliver an entire people group.
So what will you give me as a sign? Your stick,
the stick in your hand that you are using to
shepherd sheep is the sign that I'm going to give you.
But I am going to point to your calling through
(06:47):
something that to you seems common. So God disguises calling
as common. God wraps calling in diapers and allows the
Savior of the world to be born in a barn.
So much so that the people he came for missed him.
Because life's greatest opportunities aren't always obvious. It was interesting
(07:12):
to me that callings can appear common on the surface,
to the point that Gideon was called a mighty warrior
while he was hiding in a wine press. Why would
God hide such a mighty calling in such a wimpy man.
Because sometimes Superman wears a baggy shirt. Sometimes God uses
earthen vessels to release something that has precious value. I
(07:34):
preaching to somebody today who has been deceived about your destiny.
You thought God was going to show up in your
situation looking like Superman. Instead, God shows up in your
situation looking like a mustard seed. The seed doesn't look
like the tree. It shares the genetic code of the tree,
but according to the exterior, there is nothing to associate
the seed with the tree. And might it be that
(07:56):
what God is doing in your life right now is
not obvious. But that does not mean that there is
no opportunity for He says, when I open a door.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
No man can shut it.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
And when I decide to do something through your life,
no season, no person, and no human limitation can stop me.
I was always interested to learn that. After David made
his biggest mistake by sleeping with Bethsheba and having her
(08:26):
husband Uriah killed on the front lines of battles, he
went in and had another baby because the one that
was born from his mistake died. But the next one
he had was named Solomon, who was the wisest man
who ever lived at that point in time. And David's
greatest wisdom was born after his biggest mistake. Now, it's
not always obvious. It's not always obvious that you are
(08:50):
becoming wiser. Usually wisdom feels like dumb decisions. While you
are gaining wisdom, often you have to gain will at
the expense of today for tomorrow. It's very powerful. It's
the principle I preach a lot, and I forgive you
if you're a little bored right now, because this is
pretty much what I try to say every single week.
(09:12):
I try to show you how reward dresses as responsibility.
God is not going to put the reward right in
front of you. He is going to wrap it in responsibility.
David had no clue that Goliath was waiting for him.
He just knew he had bread to take to his brothers.
It was his responsibility that unlocked his reward. If he
had waited for the possibility of an opportunity to demonstrate
(09:36):
his warriorness, if he had waited for Goliath to show up,
he never would have had the opportunity to see what
God could do through him. But it was in his
assignment that his giant was waiting. Now, if this is true,
(09:58):
it gives a whole new meaning to what John chapter
eleven says that when Jesus heard Lazarus was sick, he
stayed where he was a little while longer, because Jesus
is about to show all of those in Bethany that
resurrection is not an event but a person. I am
(10:21):
the resurrection. But if Jesus shows up and heals Lazarus
when they want him to, he will not have the
opportunity to reveal who he is that they don't yet
perceive him to be. And so, in his waiting, which
seems cruel to Mary and Martha, he is actually staging
a miracle so that when he gets there and Lazarus
(10:42):
has been dead, it's a good thing, because resurrection dresses
like death. Sometimes God lets something in your life die,
but don't worry when it dies.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Resurrection is who.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
He is and what he does. And if you can
get the stone rolled away long enough to believe for
a little while, I hear a voice calling Lazarus out
of the grave. See the grave clothes wrapped up the
revelation of who Jesus was. When he got on the
scene and said, Lazarus, come forth, the grave clothes had
no choice but to fall off, because the voice of
the Lord unwraps death to present resurrection. Who he's a
(11:18):
miracle today. I came to priest to you. And the
greatest opportunities are not always obvious. The greatest opportunities are
often hidden. Jesus even taught in parables to hide the
(11:41):
wisdom of God from the people who wanted to understand
it with their human minds. He didn't want the elite
to get it, and so he put.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It in parables.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
He hid it hid, He hid the kingdom. The kingdom
didn't come announcing itself with trumpets and red carpet. It
wasn't obvious. It came looking like conflict now. Mark Chapter
two is the first of five conflict dialogues where we
(12:15):
see this carpenter from Nazareth doing ministry in Galilee. Having
to confront the wisdom of this world to reveal the
wisdom of God. He's teaching one day, and so many
people have come to see him.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The crowd has gathered.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
In Mark's gospel, the crowd is not necessarily a positive thing.
We would think that if Jesus was trying to build
a ministry, he would need a crowd. Jesus is so
savage sometimes if the crowd got too big, he would
start running people off by saying stuff they didn't want
to hear. He really would, and you'll have to read
how he fed people and they were happy. But after
(12:57):
they ate their happy meal, he turned around and said,
I'm not burger king. I know I'm mixing restaurants, but
go with the illustration.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
He said, if you.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Eat my flesh and drink my blood, then you can
have this kingdom. And they say, WHOA. I was into
the miracles, but this, uh, this took a dark turn,
this cannibalism thing, and even the disciples couldn't understand that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
But Peter did. After and when he was recounting to.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Mark so Mark could write this gospel account, he talked
about the crowd. The crowd had gathered and they were
listening to Jesus preaching, and the Bible tells us about
four men who brought their friend and they could not
get in because of the crowd. They had high hopes,
(13:41):
you could say that their hopes were through the roof
ah great expectations. But then they were met at the door.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There are, by the way, there are four.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Doors in this passage that are not obvious, four doors
in this passage, this passage, and in our lives that
are not obvious, because life's greatest opportunities are not always obvious.
So they come to the front door and they can't
get in.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
This represents the door of disappointment.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
How disappointing it must have been that after you have
carried your friend all this way only to find out
at church that not only is there no room in
the main auditorium, but they're not even seating in overflow.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Thank you very much, you can watch live stream.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
These men were met at the door with disappointment. And
so if they had subscribed to the theology that many
of us live our lives according to, they would have
turned around and gone home because obviously everybody say, obviously
(14:50):
it's not God's will for our friend to get healed today.
If it were God's will for our friend to be
healed today, we would have gotten in the door. But
these boys, these boys, I wonder, do I have four
crazy ones? Just four? These boys said, we did not
(15:14):
carry you all this way with your heavy self to
turn around and go home. Now, now I think these
boys had a little bit of a well maybe this
is the Monk's corner in me. But I picture their conversation.
I picture these boys. These boys didn't drive a priest.
That's what I'm trying to say. These boys, they're mad
(15:38):
at the door with disappointment. Not to mention the man's disappointment.
He's learned to deal with disappointment. His entire life is
a disappointment. He can't walk, he can't dance, he can't
do what other people do. But they've come this far.
I said, they've come this far, and they didn't come
this far to go home. So Bubba says the Tommy, Hey.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Man, I was uh, I was looking around. I didn't
see no security cameras right back right around the south entrance.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Man, I reckon, wonder if you could.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Uh Bubba and Tommy and who else? Uh ah rufus.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Ruf rufous, that's the last one, I promise.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
He said, what what do you reckon? If we uh?
If we get around there and they they're they're whispering
because they don't They don't want the man on the
mat to know what they're about to do.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Don't tell everybody all your plans.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Just sometimes sometimes you just got to do stuff. You
don't always ask permission. Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness.
What if we what if we went up? I know
we can't get in, so what if we went up?
(17:19):
Sometimes you gotta change levels. You let me get behind
my pulpit. Sometimes the reason you can't get in that
door is because it wasn't your door. God is calling
you higher.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Who am I preaching to?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Sometimes the reason you got rejected is because it was
the wrong level of relationship. And if those people would
have liked you, it would have actually limited. I'm caffeinated today.
High five. Somebody say go higher. Come on, when they
go low, we go high. He's calling me higher. So
(18:07):
they go up and they do not find a door.
They make a door. Have you ever had to make
your own door? Nobody gave me money to start this church.
Nobody sponsored me officially, I wish they would have, but
you know, I'm kind of glad they didn't because I
had to learn how to dig. And sometimes one of
(18:29):
the greatest things that can happen to you in your
life is to be turned away at the front door
because you discover another door. Somebody shot there's another door.
This is not the normal door. This is not for
normal people. This is not for people who want to
quit because the Wi fi was a little slow, or
skip church because it was forty three degrees. No, this
(18:52):
is for the people who have determined. Somebody shot up determined.
Now we have a fruit through view of faith. We
think of faith as being something to fall back on.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Not Mark.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Mark mentions faith four times in his Gospel, and none
of them represent an attitude.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
They always represent actions.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Faith to Mark is something you can see. Actually, it's
something that you can see in response to something that
you cannot see. Faith is the substance of things hoped
for and the evidence of things not seen. So it
(19:45):
is something that you can see in response to a
hope that you can't see. That's a series right there,
there's another door.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There's another door.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And when Jesus verse five saw saw their faith not
heard their faith. It wasn't that they talked about how
much they trusted God, it's that they refuse to go
home that easy. Yeah, I'll tell you this real quick,
(20:19):
just a little side thing.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Me and Chris were turning to write a song.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The other day, and I said, I know this is
the fifty first revision on this song, but I want
the devil to know I'm gonna keep coming because I
feel like we're supposed to finish this song. Chris Brown
looked back at me and said, if that joker doesn't
know that by now about us, he hadn't been paying attention.
Because I'm gonna tell you something. I'm not always the smartest,
(20:43):
but I don't turn around the first time somebody tells
me you can't come in this story. That's just not
how I'm wired.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's fine, it's fine. If you don't like me, you
don't have to, but I'll find somebody who does. It's fine.
Some people when I started Elevation didn't want to come
because they said it was a cult. And that's fine,
but I'll find another way. See if you just got
four good friends, just four good friends, and sometimes if
(21:11):
you don't have four, father son Holy Spirit and me.
That's four. We're gonna do this. Those boys, those boys
were like, we ain't going home. He's heavy. No, no,
(21:34):
no sermon. We will put him up on that roof
and we're gonna dig through that mud and we're gonna
make a door.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We're gonna make a door.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I'm gonna get through to my kid, one way or another.
I'm not just gonna give up on him. Not that easy.
I'm gonna find a way to get through. I might
have to shut up. I might have to speak up.
If that doesn't work, I'll do the other. I might
have to hug him. I might have to hit I
might have to try some different ways. But now we
come to the to the door on the ceiling. There's
(22:06):
another door. If you can't get in the front door,
go up, it says another door. You gotta make it.
It's to look like a door. You got to dig
through it. There's a door, but you can't see it.
It's not visible, it's not something you can see. It
takes faith. If faith is something you can see in
response to something that you can't see. So make a door,
make a door, Make a door. Tet so much, say,
make a door and make a door, make a door,
and make a door, and Jesus respected their carpentry. Jesus
(22:28):
liked their work. He actually in verse five, he's preaching
and there's a distraction overhead. Now he's not even healing
this day. It's not even on his agenda to see
sick people. Some of life's greatest opportunities are not always obvious,
(22:54):
and some of God's greatest invitations will.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Show up in the form of interruptions.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And he's preaching, and he's probably doing a really good job,
just going off context cluse. He is the word, so
if he preaches what he is, it's probably pretty good.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Got a big.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Crowd, and all of a sudden, Peter says something Matthew
doesn't say.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Matthew describes the incident.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Heh he simplifies in Matthew nine, verse two, Matthew says,
some men brought to him a paralytic lying on the mat.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
what did Matthew leave out the fact that they ripped
off this dude's roof. It sounds so nice when Matthew
says it, It just looks so easy. And they brought
their friend, and Jesus healed them.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Now something, did you hear that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Jesus is preaching? You know?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts
them in PHPs like a wise man to builds house
on the rock.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Ranking down streams rows when blue begets that house, he
didn'tvolvek that foundation on the rock. And right about the
time he's right about the time he's making his point,
here comes a sound. Remember that Mark is writing what
Peter told him to write. And consider that most scholars
believe that it was Peter's house that Jesus was preaching at.
(24:16):
So Matthew remembered the healing, Peter remembered the roof. It's
funny to me, it's perspective. Did you hear that? Keep preaching,
keep preaching, keep preaching. We're gonna check it out. But
about the time that the dirt starts falling from the
from the mud on the ceiling, are you willing to
(24:37):
get your hands dirty, by the way, or are you
too afraid to mess up your manicure to go after
your miracle? I could preach manicures or miracles. The choices yours,
and they had to drop him. You can't get him
all the way down, and here comes the dirt, and
(25:02):
here comes the man.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
We'll call him Matt. We don't know his thing.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Jesus says, I like your style, boys. That's what I
did when I came down, through your dirt, through your shame,
through your sin. I like it boys.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And now.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Rufus and Bubba, Willie and Jimmy all looking in. Now
what's going to happen next? And Jesus leans down and
says to the man, son, your sins are forgiven. And
Willie says, what did he say? And Jimmy says, sounded
(26:01):
like he says something about sins. And Willie says, did
he say anything about healing? And Jimmy says, no, just
something about sins. And Rufus says, that's good that he
forgave his sins. But ken he fix his legs too
(26:22):
while he's at it. Because they did not bring the
man before Jesus to get him forgiven. They brought him
before Jesus to get him healed. So the question is
what do you do when God bypasses what you want
(26:43):
to give you what you need. The most obvious thing
to do is to heal the man, But sometimes before
God can do what is obvious and change your situation,
(27:05):
he wants to work within you so that when He
changes your situation, you will be ready.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
To receive that.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
In the Jewish mind, sin and suffering were highly connected,
so it was often assumed that if you were suffering,
it was because of sin. Jesus dispels this in John
chapter nine, when the man born blind was declared to
be not a sinner, but blind so that the works
of God and the glory of God might be revealed.
We can't always connect situations with behavior. Yet it's something
(27:42):
that he said, before I do anything for you, I
want to do something in you. And that's where it
takes faith, because the substance of things hope for and
the evidence of things not seen to know that God
(28:05):
is working. And you know, I think God for in
this passage. I think God that this man had friends
who believed for him what he might not have been
able to believe for himself.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And if I were preaching this at.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
At what's it called now youth X used to be
called student takeover. I can't keep up with all the names.
I would preach the message around who are your four
that's really important? Who are your four. You got to
have the right four because the wrong four would have
dropped him off at the door.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
But the right for we're willing to put him where
he belonged.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
At the feet of Jesus. Now are they bringing you
to Jesus or driving you away? But to me, they're
not the primary heroes in the passage, because other than Jesus,
the most important people in the passage are the people
who doubted him. I want you to notice something, and
(29:05):
please pay attention to this. It's going to revolutionize the
way that you see some of your resentments in life.
When Jesus saw what the friends did for the man,
he forgave him. But the man was still on the
mat when he heard the thoughts of the critics, or
we might say haters. What the haters thought got the
(29:29):
man healed. What his friends did got him forgiven what
his haters thought got him healed. I thought I'd give
you fifteen seconds to praise God for your haters. You
might want to do it. Did anybody ever doubt you?
Did anybody ever walk away from you? Did anybody ever
(29:53):
stop supporting you? Did anybody ever walk away when it
got a little tight? Thank God? Right? Now because sometimes
God will use judas more than he uses theater. This
is a messy message. This is a message for the
people who are ready.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
To thank God. Not just for the ways he blesses me.
That feel good, But I think it for my pain.
I think it for my heartbreak. I thinking for my disappointment.
I thank him for my opposition. That's the second door.
(30:31):
It's the door of opposition. One time Paul said, I'm
staying in ephesis a little while.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And the reason I'm staying is not because the temperature
is so great and the cuisine is so wonderful. I'm
staying because there is a great and effective door of
ministry that God has opened for me. And you know
how I know there's an open door because there are
many who oppose me. The reason that I know that
(30:59):
God is blessing is because the enemy is so busy,
and he would not be busy if God was not
blessing me. Come on, I'm gonna give you one more chance.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Thank him for the conflict, Thank him for the confusion.
Thank him, thank him, thank him, think him. Thank him
for the thorn his crisis sufficient, thank him for the loneliness.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Thanked for the wilderness, taken for the nose. Somebody say, yes,
if there had been no haters, he wouldn't have got you.
If there had been no weakness, you wouldn't be strong.
(31:46):
If there had been no resistance, you wouldn't be so resilient.
There are many who oppose me, but the opposition, I'm
gonna calm down and say it for all the intellectual people.
The opposition proves the opportunity. Okay, investment terms, the really
(32:13):
good investments you don't know about unless you have money.
It's a barrier to entry. The investments that most of
us can invest in are not the best investments. The
best investments are reserved for people. Now, I'm saying this
about money, but I mean it about battles and trials. See,
(32:35):
the biggest battles are reserved for the people that God
has his hand on, that he put a deposit in,
and you cannot be defeated because if he opened the door,
nobody can shut it. So quit blaming your haters and
(32:57):
write them a thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
No, remember that.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Youth pastor that stood up at inside elevation. Were you
in here? Anna? He said, there's a lot of critics.
I'm just getting started in ministry what do I do
about the critics? I said, That's what I said to him,
said right there, right in that section, sit down this
week and write three thank you notes to him.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
From experience, I know.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That God will use some of that stuff to strip
away your self sufficiency. And if everybody is clapping for you,
the crowd is not always your friend.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
So write them a thank you note.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Because honestly, every time we have a baptism in the church,
I think about it because the only reason we do
baptisms every week instead of two or three times a
year like we did for years, is because of that
new story that they ran about us, where they said
we fake baptisms in the church.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I still don't know exactly what a.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Fake baptism looks like, but I don't care because it
gave me an idea. If you're going to hit us
at the point of our baptisms, what we'll do is
not two or three times a year, But how about
if every single week we put it in the devil's
face that you can't stop when God opens a door.
I don't even care what they say. Let's just let's
(34:28):
while we're at it, let's ban the word hater. Because
most of us don't have haters. We just have people
who don't agree with us, and we label that haters. Okay,
your coach is not your hater because he is not
going to play you right now.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Your coach is a trainer.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
He is teaching you that you are not good enough
yet to get playing time. Timmy. The reason, the reason, Timmy,
you're not playing, tim is because you're not a player yet.
So thank your coach. He's not a hater. He's teaching
you to be a player. So you need to thank
(35:09):
that boss who was hard on you. My boss is
a hater. No, you're late to work. Your boss is
not a hater because she expects you to be on time.
I saw a supervisor. Just give him some praise right
there on the a throw and Valentine, thank God for it.
Because the opposition is the opportunity. I'm so annointed to
(35:32):
say this to you right now. It feels like a
freight train. This word is coming through the roof, is
coming through the teachers of the law. Jesus is preaching.
Jesus is healing. Nothing can stop it. Jesus is preaching.
Jesus is healing, nothing can stop it. And he uses
the opposition to bring the man healing. Now, what is
(35:53):
God using in your life right now that you are
trying to get away from There's another door. There's another door,
and this door, this door is called obedience. The first
(36:13):
door is disappointment, the second one is opposition. This one
is obedience, and it is the kind of obedience that
has to trust God in an impossible situation. See what
(36:38):
the friends did got the man forgiven, but there was
something that he had to do to be healed. And
it is by grace we are saying through faith. It's
the gift of God. It's not of works, but faith
expresses itself in works. Please don't sleep on me, brother,
(37:00):
this is very important. It is your faith express Jesus said,
so that they may know who I am. It's not
even about you anymore. And it's not about your dysfunction,
and it's not about your limitation, not anymore. This is
(37:20):
bigger than you. So I want you to do what
you can't do. I want you to do what you've
never been able to do. And the proof of my
presence is going to be in enabling you to do
something practical. Get up, take that thing that they carried
you in and lowered you down on what you came
(37:42):
in on. You're going out with, but instead of it
holding you, you'll.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Be holding it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Help me, God, help me right now, because somebody's still
lying on that mat. And you got resurrection power on
the inside of you. It's on the inside of you,
but you got to walk it out. That man came
(38:22):
in through the roof, but he left out the same
door that they wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Let him through when he got there.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
And what I'm declaring today by the spirit of God
is if you will get up, you can get up.
If you will forgive, you can forgive, if you will
be whole. I'm not saying the mat will go away.
(38:54):
I'm saying that you will not spend the rest of
your life lying down on it and blaming others for
the condition that you're in. So get up in front
of all of these other people. Think about the courage
that this demonstration requires. Because the people that are watching
(39:14):
this man are not even cheering for him. They don't
even like the fact that he interrupted the service, and
that Jesus thinks he can forgive him. So now he
has to get up and walk in front of people
who don't want him to. Now he has to get
up and take his first steps. When most of us
took our first steps, somebody was cheering us on. But
(39:34):
he has to do it in the face of conflict.
He has to do it in the face of doubt.
He has to do it in the face of critics.
He has to do it in the face of people
who didn't even want him in the room. And I wonder,
are you willing today in the face of adversity, in.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
The face of weakness, in the face of everything that has.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Been against your entire family, our whole life. Will you
get up? Will you?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Will you become a door.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
When God wants to show people who he is, he
picks somebody with an issue.
Speaker 5 (40:30):
And he wants to show who he is through you.
Somebody say, there's another door. This is the door of revelation.
And the people were not amazed when the roof came off.
They were amazed when the man got up.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
They were not amazed even by Jesus's preaching. They were
amazed by the man's demonstration. And there are some of
you that are about to become a door for people
to see Jesus through your life. And here's who He's
gonna pick. The people who were paralyzed, who have made
(41:10):
a decision.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
I may not be able to get.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Rid of my issue, but my issue is not keeping
me from Jesus. See, there's another door. And when you've
done all that you can do, and you've tried all
that you know to try, and self help isn't helping,
and people have stopped believing in you a long time ago,
and truth be told, you've given up on yourself. But
(41:34):
God called me to be like those four men and
carry you today and put you at the feet of Jesus.
Let me tell you about Jesus. Jesus is not your
average preacher. He is the Way, the truth, and the life.
He is the Resurrection, He is the good Shepherd. He
is the true Vine. And in John chapter ten, verse nine,
(41:58):
when he got ready to say who he wants, he said,
I am the door. So if you want to come in,
come on in. If religion locked you out, come on in.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
If your sin.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Kept you out, come on in. I am the door.
And because I'm the door, nothing can come into your
life without first going through me. So I've allowed some
(42:42):
things in your life that you don't like right now,
but don't let them paralyze you another day, because all
I'm asking you to do is walk through this door.
That's all I'm asking you to do. I'm not asking
you to be perfect, but I do expect progress. I
(43:03):
am the door. Your ex husband is not your dad
who wasn't there is not your own opinion of yourself
is not. I am the door. And when I open
the door in your life, no mistake, no sickness, no situation,
(43:37):
even if they roll a stone to seal the entrance
on Friday, I am the door. And when I speak
up the resurrection power come. My praise is a door give.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
There's some praise right now.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Don't you miss this moment? Assist the door. Stand up
at every location. No one leaving shut those doors. There's
(44:19):
another door. And the Lord gave me this message as
an announcement, not as an intellectually stimulating conversation or amount
of log for your entertainment purposes. But you are standing
at an open door, and the door is open. But
(44:40):
it's not always obvious. It doesn't look like a door,
does It looks like a ceiling, looks like disappointment, looks
like looks like teachers of the law, looks like opposition.
It looks like a command to do something you can't do.
It looks like obedience. It looks like Jesus. It looks
(45:00):
like revelation. It looks like the word made flesh. This
is your door. This is your door, This is your door.
(45:23):
I know it didn't work out the way you plan.
I understand that. I know it's disappointing. That's fine. Be disappointed,
but don't die in it. Don't die at an open door.
Something on the other side. There's another door. There's another door. Yes, Lord,
(45:46):
I'll say it again, there's another door. It might not
be who you expected, what you expected, when you expected.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
How you expected. There's another door.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Fill your horn with oil and be on your way.
For the one who has the key of bath and
says what I open, no man can shut.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
And behold.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Jesus said, I stand at the door. That's me knocking.
That's me trying to get your attention through the circumstances
of your life. That's me. And if you open it,
I will come in, heads bowed, eyes closed. There's somebody
(46:38):
in this place who needs a relationship with Jesus.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
That's him at the door.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
That's not a preacher, that's not an emotion that's the
spirit of God. Heads bowed, eyes closed. Right now, if
you're far away from God, you hear him knocking on
your heart today he wants to come in. All you
have to do is believe it's my grace through faith.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Faith opens the door.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
So with hedge about and eyes closed on every location,
I'm going to lead you in a prayer right now.
If you want to come home to God or come
to Him.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
For the first time, this is your moment. This is
your door.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
All praying together as a church family, repeat after me,
Heavenly Father. I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God,
and today I make Jesus the Lord of my life.
I believe in my heart that God raised him from
the dead, and I confess with my mouth that Jesus
(47:31):
is Lord, and I believe I am saved. This is
my new beginning. With head still bout and eyes still closed.
If you just prayed that on the count of three,
shoot your hand up boldly, come forth, one, two, three,
all over this room, all over our campuses, all over
Lake Norman, all over Matthew's online. Right now, let's glorify
(47:54):
God for this new beginning. Somebody just step through and
open door. Somebody just stepped into a resurrected future. I
can't hear your church. Let's praise God like somebody just
came running back home. Thank you for joining us. Special
(48:16):
thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry.
Is because of you that this ministry is possible. You
can click the link in the description to give now
or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information
and if you enjoyed the podcast.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
You can subscribe. You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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