Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdik. I'm the pastor of Elevation
Speaker 1: Church and.
Speaker 2: This is our podcast.
Speaker 1: I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
Speaker 1: this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
Speaker 1: gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 3: There is a passage of scripture that has always fascinated me,
Speaker 3: and I knew it was the one to start this
Speaker 3: series with because most of my sermon ideas come from
Speaker 3: a text, usually a text in the Bible. But this
Speaker 3: whole series came to me through a text on my
Speaker 3: phone and somebody texted me, but I didn't have their
Speaker 3: number in my contacts, but they had texted me before
Speaker 3: and their name was in the text. So you know,
Speaker 3: Steve Jobs is so smart, even from beyond the grave.
Speaker 3: He made a suggestion on my iPhone and he said maybe,
Speaker 3: and then it said it could be this person. And
Speaker 3: when I saw it on my phone, I realized that
Speaker 3: that would make an amazing way to spend several weeks
Speaker 3: in the Word of God talking about those times where
Speaker 3: we don't know if it's God or not, and so
Speaker 3: we're trying to lead our families some of us, or
Speaker 3: we're trying to get our education, or we're trying to
Speaker 3: decide about jobs or dates, or trying to decide about
Speaker 3: moving to a new house or new apartment, or just
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what it is that we were
Speaker 3: put here on earth for. But the series is called
Speaker 3: Maybe God, Maybe God. We worship a God who can
Speaker 3: be best explained as mystery, and yet we live in
Speaker 3: a culture that worships certainty. And so I want to
Speaker 3: talk about that for several weeks with you. And I'm
Speaker 3: so glad you're here. Touch somebody and say he's so
Speaker 3: happy you're here. That preacher, That preacher is happy you're here.
Speaker 2: That's true. I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 3: And what I need you to do right now is
Speaker 3: give your attention just to this text in First Samuel,
Speaker 3: chapter three, where we will encounter a young man who's
Speaker 3: encountering God. And I pray that we will encounter God
Speaker 3: in the process today. First Samuel three, verse one. The
Speaker 3: boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days,
Speaker 3: the word of the Lord was rare. There were not
Speaker 3: many visions. One night, Eli, whose eyes were becoming so
Speaker 3: weak that he could barely see was lying down in
Speaker 3: his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet
Speaker 3: gone out. Touch somebody say, there's still time, There's still time.
Speaker 3: I know you might have got off track in your life,
Speaker 3: but there's still time. I know there might be some
Speaker 3: things out of order in your house, but there's still time.
Speaker 3: I know you might have wasted some years chasing your
Speaker 3: own ways, but God brought you here because there's still time.
Speaker 3: God left you here because there's still time. If you're
Speaker 3: still breathing, there's still time. I got a friend named
Speaker 3: Perry Noble. His favorite quote is, if you're not dead,
Speaker 3: God's not done.
Speaker 2: And I just believe that. I believe it.
Speaker 3: So the light had not yet gone out, and Samuel
Speaker 3: was lying down in the house of the Lord, where
Speaker 3: the ark of God, which symbolized the presence of God was,
Speaker 3: And then the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel answered, here
Speaker 3: I am. And he ran to Eli and said, here
Speaker 3: I am. You called me, but Eli said, I didn't
Speaker 3: call go back to sleep, man, wake me up in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. I didn't call you. Go
Speaker 3: back and lie down. So he went and lay down again.
Speaker 3: The Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went
Speaker 3: to Eli and said.
Speaker 2: Here, I am.
Speaker 3: This is really strange, right like, because you expect when
Speaker 3: God calls it'll sound so deep.
Speaker 2: So baritone Samuel apparently it sounded.
Speaker 3: It sounded so much like what he was used to
Speaker 3: being around that he ran to the place where he
Speaker 3: normally went and he was like, here, I am, you
Speaker 3: called me, my son, Eli said, I did not call.
Speaker 3: Go back and lie down, but you need an ambient,
Speaker 3: a weighted blanket, some.
Speaker 2: Milk or cookie. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord.
Speaker 3: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed
Speaker 3: to him. A third time, the Lord called Samuel, and
Speaker 3: Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, here,
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: You call me.
Speaker 3: I know you're messing with me. Then Eli realized that
Speaker 3: the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel
Speaker 3: go and lie down. If he calls, you say speak Lord,
Speaker 3: for your servant is listening.
Speaker 2: The title of this.
Speaker 3: Message is something that I have heard people say to
Speaker 3: me of all ages, of all ethnicities, of all econo
Speaker 3: status positions. And I want you to look at the
Speaker 3: screen for the title of my message. It goes like this,
Speaker 3: I'm confused about my calling. I'm confused about my calling.
Speaker 3: I love God, and I love my family and I
Speaker 3: want to make a difference. But look at somebody next
Speaker 3: to you and say you look confused. Tell them I am,
Speaker 3: I'm confused about my call. Lord have your way, speak
Speaker 3: your word. We're listening in Jesus' name. Amen, Now be seated.
Speaker 3: You are forgiven. When I say calling, you roll your
Speaker 3: eyes a little bit. It is one of these terms
Speaker 3: that is so popular in culture that it almost means
Speaker 3: nothing anymore, and it can be frustrating the older you
Speaker 3: get when people talk about lofty ideals like finding your calling.
Speaker 2: You need to find your calling, and you know, well, for.
Speaker 3: Most of us, that's way outside of the realm of
Speaker 3: our everyday life where we're trying to pay bills. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, you need to find your calling, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm doing good to find my keys in the morning,
Speaker 3: and you want to talk about finding your calling. And
Speaker 3: as much as I understand that, I also understand that
Speaker 3: there's a reason that the majority of questions that I
Speaker 3: have been asked as a pastor in these thirteen years
Speaker 3: going on fourteen years, the reason for it is that
Speaker 3: there is something inside of you that wants to find
Speaker 3: the thing that you were made to do, and you
Speaker 3: will never be satisfied with anything else. And no matter
Speaker 3: how much sex you have, money you make, friends you meet,
Speaker 3: no matter how big the house is that you build,
Speaker 3: no matter how many cars you park in the driveway,
Speaker 3: there will always be something unsatisfied in you until you
Speaker 3: find that thing that we call a calling.
Speaker 2: And yet, and yet, so much damage has.
Speaker 3: Been done in popular culture by the concept of calling
Speaker 3: that it actually makes us discontent with our lives, because,
Speaker 3: rather than understand the real nature of a calling, we
Speaker 3: have a concept of a calling, and often we spend
Speaker 3: our lives wishing that we were doing something.
Speaker 2: That God did not tell us to do.
Speaker 3: The Bible says in verse one that in those days,
Speaker 3: while Samuel the twelve year old who was apprenticing in
Speaker 3: the tabernacle because his mother Hannah, prayed that she could
Speaker 3: have a son, and she had trouble conceiving, And when
Speaker 3: she finally had the son, she dedicated him to the Lord,
Speaker 3: and she dropped him off at age four and only
Speaker 3: saw him once a year, and she put him under Eli,
Speaker 3: who wasn't doing a very good job. He was letting
Speaker 3: his sons run around in the tabernacle and have sex
Speaker 3: with women at the entrance to the tabernacle, and he
Speaker 3: knew about it, but he wouldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 3: And he was letting his sons beat people up who
Speaker 3: had brought their sacrifice to the temple, and they brought
Speaker 3: their sacrifice to God, but the priests took it for themselves.
Speaker 3: Hofney and Phineas Eli's sons would send their messenger out
Speaker 3: to the tent and say, hey, Hofney said, you got
Speaker 3: to give him the fat portion. And the people who
Speaker 3: came would be like, well, that's for the Lord. They
Speaker 3: can get the portion after it burns off.
Speaker 2: That's the priest portion.
Speaker 3: But they had gotten confused about what it meant to
Speaker 3: honor God, and they had started honoring themselves and their
Speaker 3: opinions and their desires, and they started treating God as common.
Speaker 3: And so the Bible says something interesting in verse one.
Speaker 3: It says, in those days, with all of that going on,
Speaker 3: the word of the Lord was rare because they treated
Speaker 3: the Lord as common. The word of the Lord was rare.
Speaker 3: Because we live in a day where it is so
Speaker 3: easy to get information but so difficult to get truth.
Speaker 3: I figured this verse would apply to us. Would you
Speaker 3: agree with me? That we are drowning in information, drowning
Speaker 3: in opinion, drowning in agenda, drowning in projections, but starving
Speaker 3: for truth. You know I'm right about it. It's such
Speaker 3: a crazy time. You don't know who to trust anymore.
Speaker 3: You don't know if it's real. You don't know if
Speaker 3: it's fake, you don't know if it's inflated. You don't
Speaker 3: know if it's a statistic. And let me give you
Speaker 3: a statistic. Eighty three percent of statistics are made up.
Speaker 3: That's a statistic. I made it up. It's a time
Speaker 3: where truth is hard to find. And it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that there wasn't access to the Bible. God knows we
Speaker 3: have access to the Word of God. You could pull
Speaker 3: out your phone right now and a British person will
Speaker 3: read you the Bible on the Bible at that made
Speaker 3: me think of something real funny time Graham asked me,
Speaker 3: do British people find American accents soothing?
Speaker 2: Probably not.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing about it. It's not access to
Speaker 3: the Word of God. It's our attitude to the Word
Speaker 3: of God.
Speaker 2: It's our attitude.
Speaker 3: It's why some people can come into church and look
Speaker 3: narcoleptic in church It's why some people can come into
Speaker 3: church and leave during the invitation because God forbid it
Speaker 3: takes you seven minutes to get the cracker barrel. It's
Speaker 3: why some people can click around to different sermons and
Speaker 3: be like, Ah, I don't know Fredi's not on today.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go over here to this one and that one.
Speaker 3: And that's what seeing. When the word of God becomes
Speaker 3: common to us, we will have access to the Word
Speaker 3: of God, but it will not have impact on our life.
Speaker 2: And so the first thing I wanted to mention is
Speaker 2: the culture.
Speaker 3: The culture in Eli's time was a culture of neglect,
Speaker 3: a culture where the value of who God was.
Speaker 2: And what he said was negotiable.
Speaker 3: Therefore there was an absence of that special presence of God.
Speaker 3: The word of the Lord was rare because the Lord
Speaker 3: of the Word had become common. And I just want
Speaker 3: to say to you today that many of our cultural
Speaker 3: concepts of calling are really just self help, individualistic, ambition
Speaker 3: oriented delusions dressed up in Christian cliches. And because you
Speaker 3: got a trophy when you were seven does not mean
Speaker 3: you get to play Major League Baseball. And the culture
Speaker 3: of our day is kind of like instead of worshiping God.
Speaker 2: We worship our idea of God's will.
Speaker 3: And rather than being in relationship with God, we want
Speaker 3: God to be a resource who is more like Siri
Speaker 3: than he is like a savior. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you'll come back next week the way I'm starting to
Speaker 3: discern him, but we need to get something straight right
Speaker 3: off the bat that until I treasure the voice of God,
Speaker 3: value the voice of God, hearken to the voice of God,
Speaker 3: make time for the voice of God.
Speaker 2: Consecrate myself. I can't get it by skimming.
Speaker 3: I can't get it by just you know, running around
Speaker 3: to this person and that person. It is the revealed
Speaker 3: will of God that we're after. It is the revealed
Speaker 3: will of God. Now, when I was in my twenties,
Speaker 3: I did all this tea and preaching. And now you know,
Speaker 3: now that I'm wiser, I turned forty next year. You'll
Speaker 3: better start working on my gift now, because it's a
Speaker 3: big one. It's kind of cringey for me to look
Speaker 3: back on the way I spoke about calling in my
Speaker 3: twenties that probably left people feeling at the very least confused,
Speaker 3: at worse frustrated, and maybe even full of resentment. Because
Speaker 3: the way it happened in my life is different for
Speaker 3: all of us. Here's Samuel who is receiving a revelation
Speaker 3: of God. And in my life, I never heard anything
Speaker 3: audible that God said to me. I never, you know,
Speaker 3: the Lord never said, for Adich Steve, what God called you.
Speaker 2: By your last name for something?
Speaker 3: But he said, He never said, you know, preach to
Speaker 3: me out loud. There were desires, there were opportunities. I
Speaker 3: noticed some effectiveness. It's the weirdest thing. When I first
Speaker 3: got up to pray for Pastor Mickey, who asked me
Speaker 3: to pray at a Lions Club meeting, I noticed that
Speaker 3: people seemed to be blessed as I prayed, and they
Speaker 3: connected him. And it took Pastor Mickey to explain to
Speaker 3: me that that was the hand of God.
Speaker 2: All my life I didn't know that. If he hadn't been.
Speaker 3: There to guide me, I would have maybe thought I
Speaker 3: was just a charismatic speaker. But he helped me to
Speaker 3: see that there was something supernatural involved. And I was
Speaker 3: sixteen years old, and I had someone who had been
Speaker 3: around long enough to see some things to tell me
Speaker 3: it was special. Otherwise I wouldn't have known him. Now,
Speaker 3: Here's what I did with that knowledge. I preached in
Speaker 3: my twenties that just like God called me to preach,
Speaker 3: God has called each Christian.
Speaker 2: To do something.
Speaker 3: You agree with that, But here's the part that I
Speaker 3: think was incomplete. While I'd be up there saying to people,
Speaker 3: you need to find your calling. You need to find
Speaker 3: your calling. You need to find your calling. You need
Speaker 3: to find your calling. You need to find your calling.
Speaker 3: You find your calling. You need to find your calling.
Speaker 3: You need to find your calling. You need to find
Speaker 3: your calling. You need to find your calling. You need
Speaker 3: to find a calling. Because he gets annoying after a while, right,
Speaker 3: It's like I'm just trying to like, I need a job, man,
Speaker 3: I don't know about a calling.
Speaker 2: I've seen a raise right now?
Speaker 3: Is that it makes it sound as if it's something
Speaker 3: that you can just get and just know. And yet
Speaker 3: did you notice in the passage that even Samuel, who
Speaker 3: was the link between the period of the Judges and
Speaker 3: the monarchy of Israel a thousand years before Jesus, that
Speaker 3: even Samuel, who none of his words fell to the ground,
Speaker 3: even Samuel didn't get it right the first time.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but that.
Speaker 3: Encourages me just reading this little story to know that
Speaker 3: there's someone that God used to do something great, and
Speaker 3: he called him and he chose him. But even this
Speaker 3: great prophet didn't get it right the first time. I
Speaker 3: want to set you free today from the feeling that
Speaker 3: you have to find your calling. That's a cultural concept.
Speaker 3: It's not a biblical one. You don't have to find
Speaker 3: your calling. In fact, if the text is correct, if
Speaker 3: Samuel is an illustration, then I don't have to find
Speaker 3: my calling because if I will serve the purpose of
Speaker 3: the season that I'm in in my life right now,
Speaker 3: watch this, get ready to shout, my calling will find
Speaker 3: me in that good news, Christian soldiers, aren't you glad
Speaker 3: to know that when Samuel heard a voice and he
Speaker 3: didn't even know whose voice it was.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing about it.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the culture, and then I
Speaker 3: want to talk about.
Speaker 2: The contact, the contact.
Speaker 3: Because when he first heard the voice, it sounded like
Speaker 3: something he had heard before. Have you ever noticed is
Speaker 3: hard to know the difference between when you're speaking to
Speaker 3: you and when God is speaking to you.
Speaker 2: And watch out for the Christians.
Speaker 3: Who are running around so sure that it's God speaking
Speaker 3: to them. Those are the weird ones. Those are the
Speaker 3: crazy ones. I mean, I'm serious. You gotta watch out
Speaker 3: for them. And they're here at Elevation, just like they're
Speaker 3: at every church, and they'll find you in the bathroom
Speaker 3: and they'll have a word from the Lord for you,
Speaker 3: and they don't even know you.
Speaker 2: And it's weird because it's the bathroom. Can I wash
Speaker 2: my hands? If God spoke to you, he'll do it
Speaker 2: in the lobby. Now, let me finish using the bathroom.
Speaker 3: I'm serious because I'm a preacher and people always think
Speaker 3: I want to be spiritual, and people will stop me
Speaker 3: in the bathroom sometimes at a restaurant and give me
Speaker 3: a word from the Lord.
Speaker 2: But if it was really the Lord, he would have
Speaker 2: told you it's weird to.
Speaker 3: Talk to people in the bathroom and wait till a
Speaker 3: man gets outside, because there is such a thing as
Speaker 3: and God doesn't cancel out terms. I don't want your
Speaker 3: prophetic word. Well, I'm trying to so, but because he
Speaker 3: gets weird, because he gets weird, we still have to
Speaker 3: realize that the only way that the will of God,
Speaker 3: or the word of God or the voice of God
Speaker 3: can be recognized. That's what the Bible said that Eli,
Speaker 3: who was old, who couldn't see physically. I've been on
Speaker 3: this thing lightly that we really need people in our
Speaker 3: life who are older than us, who have been along
Speaker 3: the journey, and to respect the price that they paid,
Speaker 3: and to not just think that because they don't go
Speaker 3: on SoundCloud or because they don't have a lot of
Speaker 3: Instagram followers, that they have nothing to teach us. I'm
Speaker 3: really seeing the value and people who they may not
Speaker 3: have the physical vision that they used to have, but
Speaker 3: they can discern spiritual things. And Eli wasn't even a
Speaker 3: perfect priest. In fact, God was in the process of
Speaker 3: moving him out of the way. And even in that transition,
Speaker 3: because the whole passage is about transition. It's Samuel transitioning
Speaker 3: from a boy to a man, from bois to men.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking, you know, it's hard to say goodbye.
Speaker 3: But when Eli is transitioning out and when Samuel is
Speaker 3: transitioning up and he's ultimately stepping into the thing God.
Speaker 2: Created him for.
Speaker 3: God deals with Samuel, but he does it through Eli.
Speaker 3: And whatever God is going to speak in your life
Speaker 3: is going to come in the context of relationships. And
Speaker 3: I chose the word contact to describe it because whoever
Speaker 3: you put around you the most will start to affect
Speaker 3: the voice inside of you that speaks to you. And
Speaker 3: have you ever noticed that God's voice sometimes in your
Speaker 3: life sounds like your wife. Sometimes for me, it sounds
Speaker 3: like my kids. Sometimes in my life I've noticed that
Speaker 3: if I am not selective about my contacts, I will
Speaker 3: start hearing I don't mean like out loud voices. I
Speaker 3: don't want you to send me off after I preached
Speaker 3: today or anything like that, I mean the voice in
Speaker 3: my mind. A lot of times, when when I was
Speaker 3: going through a counseling session to try to understand myself better,
Speaker 3: the one thing that the therapist would keep saying is
Speaker 3: whose voice is that?
Speaker 2: You know these things you say to yourself. You go like, uh, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I'm so stupid and you never get anything right,
Speaker 3: and well, of course you screwed it up, you screw
Speaker 3: everything up, you know all that.
Speaker 2: And she keeps saying whose voice is that? Whose voice
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 3: And I didn't know she was just trying to get
Speaker 3: me to say, you know, it was my dad.
Speaker 2: You know. Oh, like the point of all therapy. My
Speaker 2: diapers are too tight? I bet it. But what I
Speaker 2: realized is.
Speaker 3: That most of us who are not clinically insane, don't
Speaker 3: actually hear voices. We process thoughts, right, so we say
Speaker 3: the voice of God? How does the voice of God
Speaker 3: come into your life?
Speaker 2: Through thoughts? Through thoughts?
Speaker 3: And that's why Samuel was confused, right because he heard something,
Speaker 3: so he went where he knew to go. And I
Speaker 3: want to point out something about this. He did the
Speaker 3: right thing. He did the right thing. He ran. I
Speaker 3: noticed the Bible said that when he heard his name
Speaker 3: called Samuel. First of all, it didn't sound it didn't
Speaker 3: sound strange to him.
Speaker 2: It sounded like what he was used to. So he ran.
Speaker 3: Because that's what he did, because he had the right passion.
Speaker 2: But he ran to the wrong person. Some of you,
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: You have the right passion, but you're running to the
Speaker 3: wrong person or the wrong place. Now, this is not
Speaker 3: only true in the case of Samuel. It was true
Speaker 3: of Moses. God called him to deliver his people from
Speaker 3: the Egyptians. Moses had the right passion, but where he
Speaker 3: messed up.
Speaker 2: Listen to this. You see when.
Speaker 3: He killed the Egyptian it was the right passion, but
Speaker 3: it was misplaced.
Speaker 2: He tried to do it his way.
Speaker 3: He didn't get it right the first time, and some
Speaker 3: of the things that you've gotten wrong in your life,
Speaker 3: some of the mistakes that you've made, it was God
Speaker 3: stirring you up. But it was Eli that you ran to.
Speaker 3: You ran to the thing that God was trying to
Speaker 3: remove out of your life because that's what you were
Speaker 3: used to. You ran to the thing that you were
Speaker 3: familiar with because it's all your mind could understand. And
Speaker 3: so God gave you a gift, but you used that
Speaker 3: gift for you for a little while until you found out,
Speaker 3: unless I offer the gift back to the giver, it's
Speaker 3: going to come back empty. But God brought you here
Speaker 3: today to let you know that was my voice calling you.
Speaker 3: That was Me that gave you that talent. That was
Speaker 3: me that made you good at that. That was me
Speaker 3: that opened the door for you. That was me that
Speaker 3: gave you that responsibility. That was me that gave you health.
Speaker 3: That was me that gave you strength, That was Me
Speaker 3: that gave you that connection.
Speaker 2: It was Him the whole time.