Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2: I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 2: I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
Speaker 2: this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
Speaker 2: gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 3: Anybody online watching this, remember when you had to buy
Speaker 3: the cassette tape of the sermon. Yeah, man, you have
Speaker 3: to wait. If you wanted a sermon online, you had
Speaker 3: to order it. There was no online. You had to
Speaker 3: call up and order it and wait six weeks. But
Speaker 3: I got good news. You don't have to wait six weeks.
Speaker 3: Welcome to our EPAM all over the world.
Speaker 1: Come on, Balantine, help me. Welcome our EPAM all.
Speaker 3: Over the world. Perchance you missed it. We're celebrating the
Speaker 3: end of the year. We're not dreading the holidays. We're
Speaker 3: just getting ready to give God praise and thanks. Here
Speaker 3: at our church, we end our ye with a year
Speaker 3: end offering. And I want all of you to be
Speaker 3: a part of it. And you say, well, I don't
Speaker 3: live in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: You don't have to.
Speaker 3: You say, well, I don't have much to give you
Speaker 3: don't have to have much to give. I want everybody
Speaker 3: to be a part of it. And our culmination Sunday
Speaker 3: is on December the eighth, So between now and then,
Speaker 3: I want you to pray and ask God how he
Speaker 3: would have you to be a part, and if the
Speaker 3: way that He would have you to be apart is
Speaker 3: just to keep coming to church. I want you to
Speaker 3: know we will always be here for you, whether you
Speaker 3: give anything to this ministry or not.
Speaker 1: You ought to clap about that, because they don't tell
Speaker 1: you that. At the gym.
Speaker 3: You can just come in and lift our weights, whether
Speaker 3: you ever give anything or not. Do that.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you.
Speaker 3: Went to a restaurant and they said, whether you ever
Speaker 3: give anything or not, we'll always have fresh bread for you.
Speaker 3: But the Lord is like that, and I want to
Speaker 3: say something else. There are thousands of people who are generous.
Speaker 1: In this church.
Speaker 3: And they give, and they and they sow, and they
Speaker 3: believe and they're consistent.
Speaker 1: And I thank God for each and every one of you.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to.
Speaker 3: Trust me when I step up to this pulpit. I'm
Speaker 3: never stepping up here by myself. I mean, there's an
Speaker 3: army of people in this church who love Jesus, who
Speaker 3: love the Kingdom, and who are committed to His purpose.
Speaker 3: And so we want to invite all of you this
Speaker 3: is a time to begin giving if you've never done that,
Speaker 3: or to give above and beyond. And I'm excited to
Speaker 3: see what God will do again. That's December the eighth,
Speaker 3: December the eighth, Sunday, December the eighth, and between now
Speaker 3: and then you can give.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, I want to share with you.
Speaker 3: I got all the preliminary out of the way what
Speaker 3: the Lord has given me to say to you today.
Speaker 3: And I have tossed and turned over this message, not
Speaker 3: because it's controversial, just because I want to be very
Speaker 3: sure that I had from God what he wanted to
Speaker 3: give to you today.
Speaker 1: And last night when I went to bed, I thought
Speaker 1: I had it, woke.
Speaker 3: Up at three it wasn't it, And I had the right.
Speaker 1: Passage of scripture.
Speaker 3: But the Lord wanted me to give it to you
Speaker 3: in a certain way, and I didn't know how that
Speaker 3: was yet, but I heard from him now, I don't know.
Speaker 3: A few weeks ago, if you were here when I
Speaker 3: preached on God can use this too. Put that in
Speaker 3: the chat real quick, say, God can use this too,
Speaker 3: And then I preached a follow up message about how
Speaker 3: God will work it in.
Speaker 1: God will work it in.
Speaker 3: And I was talking about how God is a master
Speaker 3: of taking those things in our life that we maybe
Speaker 3: didn't see coming or maybe we wouldn't have chosen to experience,
Speaker 3: and we don't know what to do with it, but
Speaker 3: God does, Like God is a master of improv because
Speaker 3: he's not making it up as he goes, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't take him by so it's a surprise.
Speaker 1: To you, but as strategic to him.
Speaker 3: So we had God can use this to God will
Speaker 3: work it in. And this is going to be a
Speaker 3: little bit like in that same flow or in that
Speaker 3: same rhythm. And I want you to look at your
Speaker 3: neighbor and give them my title. Tell them God's got
Speaker 3: the hard part. Yeah, yeah, yeah, God's got the hard part.
Speaker 1: Father. I thank you for your word. Every time that.
Speaker 3: We bow before your word, we get better. Every time
Speaker 3: we bow before your word, we get better. Now, if
Speaker 3: we just consider it like an opinion, not much changes.
Speaker 3: But if we bow before it like you're a great king,
Speaker 3: we receive so much more than we could ever give.
Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing us here today.
Speaker 3: Thank you for each person, whatever state that they're in,
Speaker 3: whatever they're going through. I thank you that you've got
Speaker 3: the hard part and we believe it by faith in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen, you may be see to tell your neighbor God's God,
Speaker 1: this God's got the hard part. Well, we're going to
Speaker 1: study in Mark chapter four.
Speaker 3: A little story really is a story sandwiched between two
Speaker 3: other stories.
Speaker 1: And it's a made up story. But it's not fiction.
Speaker 4: You say it's a made up story, that's not fiction.
Speaker 1: Well, when Jesus teaches it, it's truer than a true story.
Speaker 3: He used these things when he talked, called parables. Everybody
Speaker 3: say parable, and the parable wasn't so much so he
Speaker 3: could keep it simple.
Speaker 4: I've heard people say that, Well, Jesus told stories.
Speaker 1: To keep it simple. How are you doing. You've been
Speaker 1: coming so faithfully for ten years.
Speaker 3: I am so thankful anytime I see somebody that I never.
Speaker 1: Got to meet you right there but under the camera.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes yes yes, yes, thank
Speaker 3: you Okay, So it's amazing.
Speaker 1: They say that Jesus would teach.
Speaker 3: A lot of times just to say you know, I
Speaker 3: know you can't get it on a deep level.
Speaker 4: So let me just make it surface level. It's actually
Speaker 4: the opposite.
Speaker 3: He taught using parables or stories, so that people who
Speaker 3: were just on the outside trying to misuse his teachings
Speaker 3: or think that they could just apply an external law
Speaker 3: and be more religious and more pleasing to God, they
Speaker 3: wouldn't get it. But he wanted you to have to
Speaker 3: dig for it, so that you couldn't just take one
Speaker 3: of his teachings and use it how you wanted to,
Speaker 3: but you actually had to take the teaching and then
Speaker 3: he has to explain it to you or you.
Speaker 1: Don't get it.
Speaker 3: So what I take from that is that I can't
Speaker 3: just take the teachings of Jesus and be transformed. I
Speaker 3: have to have a relationship with Jesus. And in the
Speaker 3: relationship with Jesus not.
Speaker 1: In a physical body. We don't have him here.
Speaker 3: With us physically today, but through the Holy Spirit that
Speaker 3: he sent, he can take a teaching and transform us
Speaker 3: through it. So you got to wonder when people say
Speaker 3: things like, boy, it would have been nice to be
Speaker 3: a disciple where Jesus could have taught you face to
Speaker 3: face and you could have been with him physically in
Speaker 3: his presence. It really have been as nice as we
Speaker 3: think it would be. When I read about the disciples
Speaker 3: following Jesus. Honestly, to me, it feels like it would
Speaker 3: have been really hard because of what I just told you.
Speaker 3: He's always saying things that make no sense on the surface,
Speaker 3: and then you have to be the one in the
Speaker 3: class who asks, teacher, I don't mean to slow the
Speaker 3: class down, but what did you mean by what you
Speaker 3: just said? Now? One of those situations was in Mark
Speaker 3: chapter four, and I just want to read.
Speaker 1: You these four verses.
Speaker 3: There are three parables or stories about seeds, and this one,
Speaker 3: this one is right in the middle. So it's like
Speaker 3: a parable sandwich that Jesus is giving the disciples, and
Speaker 3: he's helping them to understand what the Kingdom of God
Speaker 3: is like. And this is the second of three examples,
Speaker 3: so it's the meat in the middle of the sandwich.
Speaker 3: So it's a real good one. Look at Mark chapter four,
Speaker 3: verse twenty six. He also said, this is what the
Speaker 3: Kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on
Speaker 3: the ground night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up,
Speaker 3: the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
Speaker 1: All by itself.
Speaker 3: The soil produces grain, first the stalk, then the head,
Speaker 3: and then the full kernel in the head.
Speaker 1: As soon as the grain is ripe.
Speaker 3: As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the
Speaker 3: sickle to it because the harvest has come. Tell your neighbor,
Speaker 3: God has a schedule for this. The schedule that God
Speaker 3: has for your life and for his kingdom is compared
Speaker 3: here to a seed. So go back to the first
Speaker 3: verse and Justin, if you can try it out for me.
Speaker 3: We got a new thing we want to try to
Speaker 3: teach you the Bible.
Speaker 1: Just circle the word where it says.
Speaker 3: He also said in verse twenty six, circle the word also, and.
Speaker 1: Then where it says, this is what the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: God is like. Circle the word like and good. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Look at Justin in the back. Give it
Speaker 1: up for Justin in the back.
Speaker 3: That was good, Like Kirk Curve Street or something. Circle
Speaker 3: and stuff on the screen in real time. I just
Speaker 3: want to see that, because that looks terrible. How you circled. Also,
Speaker 3: by the way, Justin, I guess he's trying to copy
Speaker 3: his pastor's handwriting.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen me, circle stuff.
Speaker 3: But we'll get the bugs worked out. He's trying to
Speaker 3: explain something to them. The Kingdom of God. Now this
Speaker 3: was an original term with Jesus. This wasn't like a
Speaker 3: thing to them. It wasn't a thing. Like when I
Speaker 3: said earlier in the announcements, I didn't plan it, but
Speaker 3: I was talking about cassette tapes.
Speaker 1: And some of you were like, is that a thing?
Speaker 1: Is it still a thing?
Speaker 3: And actually cassette tapes are making a comeback in the
Speaker 3: vintage market, so maybe some of my stuff will be
Speaker 3: worth money. But if you've never seen one, or you
Speaker 3: didn't listen to one, or maybe you even have seen
Speaker 3: one but you don't know how it works, you're like,
Speaker 3: is that even a thing? And the Kingdom of God
Speaker 3: was not even a thing. They knew the Kingdom of Israel,
Speaker 3: but they didn't know the Kingdom of God. They knew
Speaker 3: the Law of Moses, but they didn't know the Kingdom
Speaker 3: of God. So Jesus is trying to take something that
Speaker 3: they haven't seen and explain it to them, a concept
Speaker 3: for which they have no context. And that's difficult to
Speaker 3: understand a concept for which you have no context. It's difficult,
Speaker 3: I guess I would say it's difficult to know what
Speaker 3: something is like when you haven't lived it, when you
Speaker 3: haven't lived it. And see, Jesus did not start existing
Speaker 3: when he came to earth. The Bible says, in the
Speaker 3: beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
Speaker 3: and the Word was God. Now the Word of God
Speaker 3: was made flesh and dwelt among us at an appointed
Speaker 3: time in human history. But Jesus existed before he appeared
Speaker 3: in an earthly body. So now you've got Jesus, who
Speaker 3: has eternally existed from the beginning, speaking to people who
Speaker 3: are moving through time, trying to explain to them what
Speaker 3: it's like to wait for the promise of God, to
Speaker 3: see the fulfillment of the promise of God, to know
Speaker 3: that some parts of the promise of God will never fully.
Speaker 1: Be realized on this earth.
Speaker 3: Some of the things that are wrong with us on
Speaker 3: this earth will only be righted in heaven. But here
Speaker 3: on this earth, How do I get them to see
Speaker 3: what it's like when they've never seen what I saw.
Speaker 3: Jesus was with God in the beginning before there was sin,
Speaker 3: so he knows what sinlessness is. Jesus was with God
Speaker 3: in heaven where nothing is broken, so he knows what
Speaker 3: healing is Jesus was with God in heaven eternally when
Speaker 3: he he was speaking in the world was existing, so
Speaker 3: that things which are made were not made out of
Speaker 3: things which do appear. So in the Word of God
Speaker 3: shows up in human flesh. He has to bridge the
Speaker 3: two worlds together, the one you can see and the
Speaker 3: one you can't see, and he is reduced to something
Speaker 3: that most of us learned in the second grade. Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ has to speak in similes because I can't show
Speaker 3: you what it's really like because you never saw it.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like And he does three stories
Speaker 3: and they're all about seeds. One he tells that seeds
Speaker 3: fall in different places. Some get choked, some get gobbled,
Speaker 3: some get scorched, and some grow.
Speaker 1: Which one do you want to be? He seems to be.
Speaker 3: Saying, because he's saying, I'm teaching, and my teaching is good,
Speaker 3: but it's got to fall on good soil. And then
Speaker 3: after the one I read, I told you it's a sandwich.
Speaker 3: The other piece of bread on the sandwich is a
Speaker 3: a small seed called a mustard seed that is the
Speaker 3: smallest seed that you can see, but it becomes the
Speaker 3: biggest tree where the bird's French. That kind of reminds
Speaker 3: me of our church. You know, didn't start big, didn't
Speaker 3: start big at all. Nothing that God does does I said,
Speaker 3: nothing that God starts starts any other way than small,
Speaker 3: whether that's your life in the womb, or whether that's
Speaker 3: a dream in your heart, or whether that's freedom from addiction.
Speaker 3: It will always start small, say it. It always starts small. Now,
Speaker 3: but touch your neighbors, say it doesn't have to stay small.
Speaker 3: That's up to you. That's up to you. And so
Speaker 3: we see in this parable. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: noticed a partnership. We've got a man who is sowing seed,
Speaker 3: or the NIV says scattering. I like that word scatter
Speaker 3: better because it gets the point across that you have
Speaker 3: to do a lot of it for any of it
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 1: Some of y'all just give up the first time something
Speaker 1: doesn't work.
Speaker 3: The first girl that rejects you, you don't ask another
Speaker 3: one for a date, And now you want to join
Speaker 3: the monastery because the first one didn't work. A scattered that,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how a lot of us feel, right like,
Speaker 3: I'm trying a bunch of stuff and I don't know
Speaker 3: which one's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Let me come to this side.
Speaker 3: I'm trying a bunch of stuff. Come on, I really
Speaker 3: don't know which one's gonna work. I got this going on.
Speaker 3: Some of y'all got so many side hustles and back
Speaker 3: hustles and forward hustles and top hustles.
Speaker 1: And man, it gets kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: But you have to feel for Jesus and the disciples
Speaker 3: because in their unique situation, Jesus is trying to teach
Speaker 3: them about something they've never seen, and they are trying
Speaker 3: to receive something for which they have no frame of reference.
Speaker 3: I don't know which one's harder. Jesus breaks it down
Speaker 3: to a level they can understand. He does what any
Speaker 3: great teacher will do, is that to introduce you to
Speaker 3: something foreign. He speaks of something familiar. The Kingdom of
Speaker 3: God is like a man scattering see. But they don't
Speaker 3: come from where he comes from. They come from where
Speaker 3: they come from. They have their background, He has his
Speaker 3: You think he's going to come down to their level.
Speaker 1: Well, in one sense, he does. He comes in flesh,
Speaker 1: but he wants you to know I came down to
Speaker 1: your level so I could raise you up to mine.
Speaker 3: Oh God, I feel the Holy Spirit all over my
Speaker 3: body right now, running up and down my neck to
Speaker 3: let you know, you're not staying down here in this
Speaker 3: You're not staying down here.
Speaker 1: In what was handed to you.
Speaker 3: You're not staying down here in your grandmother's addiction. You're
Speaker 3: not staying down here in your daddy's way of thinking.
Speaker 3: You're not staying down here in the last three years
Speaker 3: that you wasted. You're not staying down here. He came
Speaker 3: down so I could come up.
Speaker 1: Shop. Come up.
Speaker 3: You're not commanding anybody but yourself. Bless the Lord, oh
Speaker 3: my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his
Speaker 3: holy name, come up and praise him.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to explain what it's like if you've
Speaker 1: never lived with it. So he's using okay, example, me
Speaker 1: and Graham were having a friendly debate the other day.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a heated argument.
Speaker 3: He wasn't being disrespectful, but I was right. And after
Speaker 3: about three and four times back and forth, I don't
Speaker 3: remember what we were arguing about, but it was something factual.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an opinion.
Speaker 3: So we went where you always can go to get
Speaker 3: the truth online, and after about two or three times
Speaker 3: back and forth, I said, well, look it up, and
Speaker 3: he looked it up. And I don't remember who was right.
Speaker 3: I just remember the conversation we had after Okay, I
Speaker 3: said look it up.
Speaker 1: He looked it up, and we were done.
Speaker 3: It was hard for me to explain to him what
Speaker 3: it was like to have a time when.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do that.
Speaker 3: In many ways, it was so much better because when
Speaker 3: they couldn't look it up, you could make it up.
Speaker 3: And it was whoever that was the most confident about it.
Speaker 1: That would win.
Speaker 3: You can't ask Siri, you can't ask chat GPT, you
Speaker 3: just asking, you know, just here's really what I told
Speaker 3: him about it. I can't even explain it to you
Speaker 3: because you have never experienced a time when you just
Speaker 3: had to agree to disagree.
Speaker 1: And somebody may go home and look.
Speaker 3: It up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is a throwback Sunday.
Speaker 3: This is turned it into a real old fashioned church
Speaker 3: service today. Were getting old fashioned today, we got that
Speaker 3: Ald time religion today.
Speaker 1: It's good for paulin Silas, it's good enough for me.
Speaker 1: So listen to this. I said, I.
Speaker 3: Can't tell you really what it was like because you
Speaker 3: didn't live it. You didn't live it. Don't judge what
Speaker 3: people are like if you haven't lived it. I'm just
Speaker 3: talking about some things that I know about. For all
Speaker 3: of you who talk about pastors real bad, come be one,
Speaker 3: Come be one twenty eight days, Come be one for
Speaker 3: twenty eight minutes and talk to me about it.
Speaker 1: And I would say the same about you. I don't
Speaker 1: preach down to you. I never preach down to you.
Speaker 3: I never pretend like your life isn't harder than mine
Speaker 3: because or.
Speaker 1: That you're not wholly like me.
Speaker 3: Do that because I don't believe that, because my King doesn't.
Speaker 1: He's relatable.
Speaker 3: He sees me in my struggle, he sees me in
Speaker 3: the sickness of the cycles of my sin. He doesn't
Speaker 3: stand up there and talk down to me. He comes
Speaker 3: down there and brings me up with him, and I
Speaker 3: am seated in heavenly places with Jesus high five.
Speaker 1: Your neighbors say God's got.
Speaker 3: This all right. So so it's hard to know what
Speaker 3: mental illness is like if you haven't lived it. It's
Speaker 3: hard to know what abandonment issues are like if you
Speaker 3: don't have them. Well, why do they keep pushing people away?
Speaker 3: They learn to It was a survival instinct that was corrupted.
Speaker 1: And prolonged.
Speaker 3: WO.
Speaker 1: That's why I thank God.
Speaker 3: For Jesus teaching me about the seed, to let me know,
Speaker 3: give me my camera, y'all. It doesn't have to stay
Speaker 3: this way.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to stay this way.
Speaker 3: And I know it's hard, and I don't know what
Speaker 3: your heart is, and I don't think we should just
Speaker 3: start comparing different degrees of hardness. I don't think that
Speaker 3: gets us anywhere. So, whether it's hospital visits that you're making,
Speaker 3: whether it's doctor's appointments that you're keeping, whether it's racism
Speaker 3: that you're battling, whether it's classism that you're battling, whether
Speaker 3: it's your own stupid.
Speaker 1: Stories that you tell yourself that you're battling.
Speaker 3: We all come to this place to know that God
Speaker 3: is good, but life is hard, and Jesus is so high,
Speaker 3: but he came down and did something so hard.
Speaker 1: What a savior. I feel like you already got your
Speaker 1: gas money's worth I do. I feel like you already got.
Speaker 3: You just to know that he's not so high that
Speaker 3: he doesn't see how hard it is for you, and
Speaker 3: you ever wonder this is something I think sometimes? Is
Speaker 3: it as hard for everybody else as it is for me,
Speaker 3: because everybody else like dealing with the same level of
Speaker 3: distraction where I pick up my phone to send a
Speaker 3: text and I end up ordering a dress.
Speaker 1: And I'm a man, what happened?
Speaker 3: It's hard to stay focused right now. And he's high
Speaker 3: and holy, but he's humble and meek and lowly. And
Speaker 3: he sent me by to remind somebody today that he
Speaker 3: knows how hard it is for you. He knows how
Speaker 3: hard it is when nobody else sees because you smile.
Speaker 3: And I love him because he sees beneath the surface.
Speaker 3: This is why he gave us the parable of the Seed,
Speaker 3: that this is what the Kingdom of God is like.
Speaker 3: It's what happens underneath now in this parable, it's kind
Speaker 3: of hard for us to get the full appreciation for it.
Speaker 3: Number one, because not only do we not know what
Speaker 3: cassette tapes are, or dial up modems, or when gas
Speaker 3: was ninety eight cents a gallon. I was telling Graham
Speaker 3: about that the other day. He said, what was it like.
Speaker 3: I was like, it was amazing. Gas was less than
Speaker 3: a dollar. There was no caller id so it was
Speaker 3: kind of like Russian rule have to pick up the phone.
Speaker 1: But he never lived this. I was trying to tell
Speaker 1: him what was like, you know.
Speaker 3: And when we pray to Jesus, he knows what it's
Speaker 3: like because he prayed. When we are insulted by people,
Speaker 3: he knows what it's like because he was insulted. When
Speaker 3: we need healing, he knows what it's like because he hurt.
Speaker 3: When we need sustenance, he knows what it's like because
Speaker 3: he hungered. When we're exhausted and weary, he knows what
Speaker 3: it's like because he got tired.
Speaker 1: God could not do that without a body.
Speaker 3: He came in a body to get to you. He
Speaker 3: reigns in power to get you to him.
Speaker 1: And this is the paradox of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And this is why I.
Speaker 3: Love to preach about him and why I love to
Speaker 3: talk about him. But it's hard for us to get
Speaker 3: with this because he is preaching about agriculture and we
Speaker 3: all have microwaves.
Speaker 1: Can I preach a little bit.
Speaker 3: About how to deal with a God who talks about
Speaker 3: farming principles when we just go in a bakery to
Speaker 3: get bread.
Speaker 1: So now imagine this, we're like generations removed.
Speaker 3: Jesus teaches his disciples, this is what the Kingdom of
Speaker 3: God is like, something they saw every day, something that
Speaker 3: they saw every day. Oh yeah, I've seen seed scattered,
Speaker 3: I've seen wheat reaped. I've seen wheat milled, turned into flour.
Speaker 3: And then I've seen the flour mixed with the water
Speaker 3: and turned into bread. Like I've seen that before, but
Speaker 3: many of us have it. Let me ask you a question,
Speaker 3: how many of you make your own bread? So all
Speaker 3: of you are in the advanced class, and the rest
Speaker 3: of us have to do remedial work to even get
Speaker 3: to this level.
Speaker 1: Because we only understand fat fast fat.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, we only understand fast, so how
Speaker 3: can we understand faith? But maybe I said it wrong
Speaker 3: on purpose. We want fat, we want it fat. I
Speaker 3: want to have faith and I want it fat. I
Speaker 3: want to have a job and I want it fat.
Speaker 3: I want to have a breakthrough.
Speaker 1: And I want it fat.
Speaker 3: I want to have six back fabs, but I want
Speaker 3: it fat.
Speaker 1: I want it fath.
Speaker 3: Tell your neighbor, I want it fath. But we are
Speaker 3: not coming to a God who gives it fath and
Speaker 3: it takes faith. So I thought we would celebrate the
Speaker 3: man who Jesus talked about.
Speaker 1: He's not a real man. That's why I can givehim
Speaker 1: a name. He says, like a man who's so succeed.
Speaker 3: So we don't know this man, but we applaud him
Speaker 3: and we celebrate him because he's sewing. He's sewing, he's sewing.
Speaker 3: I admire people who are so wers. I admire people
Speaker 3: who don't have to post everything they sew.
Speaker 1: I admire people. Look, you don't have to post your workout.
Speaker 1: If you do enough of him, we'll be able to tell.
Speaker 3: I admire people who show up and sew, and show
Speaker 3: up and sew, and show up and sew.
Speaker 1: Every e kids, volunteer, Just try and to cast.
Speaker 3: That demon out of your kid right now that has
Speaker 3: been driving you crazy all week long.
Speaker 1: I celebrate sowers. Let's celebrate every sower.
Speaker 3: Every giver, everybody who makes it possible, everybody who speaks
Speaker 3: words of encouragement, everybody who sows, everybody who sows. And then,
Speaker 3: of course there's the fact that he that he reaps too.
Speaker 1: Let's do it like a sandwich.
Speaker 3: In verse twenty six, it says a man scattered seed
Speaker 3: on the ground, Okay, And then in verse.
Speaker 1: Twenty nine, it says, as soon as the.
Speaker 3: Grain is right, he puts the sickle to it, because
Speaker 3: the harvest has come. So in both of these verses
Speaker 3: we see that this is someone who will work.
Speaker 1: He's willing to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I meant to say. He's willing to
Speaker 3: work for it. And you gotta be for anything worth
Speaker 3: having in your life. You've got to work for anything
Speaker 3: that is worthwhile in your life.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 3: How remedial could I be that I read this text
Speaker 3: for so many years thinking that the star of this
Speaker 3: story was the sewer. I thought, well, maybe you know,
Speaker 3: this is a parable, it's kind of a metaphor maybe
Speaker 3: what Jesus means. I mean, I'm digging into it, I'm
Speaker 3: studying it. I'm like, maybe Jesus is always sowing into
Speaker 3: our life. And since he's talking about the end of
Speaker 3: the age here, he's maybe talking about the harvest that
Speaker 3: he's going to bring in. The harvest, and you know,
Speaker 3: those who are saved will be brought in. And I
Speaker 3: thought that we should talk this morning about the sewer
Speaker 3: upon further examination, And you know, I told you I
Speaker 3: went to bed and I thought it was one thing
Speaker 3: I had so much.
Speaker 1: Good stuff to say to you about the value of sewing.
Speaker 1: And I still will teach that and should teach that.
Speaker 3: And it's important to have discipline, and it's important to
Speaker 3: keep yourself accountable, and it's important for you to make
Speaker 3: an effort, and it's important for you to show up
Speaker 3: in those places. I'm not discounting any of that.
Speaker 1: But in this story, the sewer is not the star.
Speaker 3: And that challenges us because I think that we think
Speaker 3: God ought.
Speaker 1: To bless us because of how good we were.
Speaker 3: We think that people ought to appreciate us because of
Speaker 3: how much we gave.
Speaker 1: We think that people ought to promote.
Speaker 3: Us because of how talented we are, and all of
Speaker 3: that has a place, don't get me wrong, but it
Speaker 3: is not the center of this story.
Speaker 1: So what is you say? Jesus?
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, I mean he's the star of every story.
Speaker 3: But did you notice that there was not a mention
Speaker 3: of God in the story that Jesus told. There was
Speaker 3: a process by which a seed became grain, but there
Speaker 3: was no mention of God.
Speaker 1: And I actually want to use that to teach you something.
Speaker 3: Just because you're not aware of him doesn't mean he's
Speaker 3: not there, doesn't mean he's not there. Just because you
Speaker 3: can't see or prove, or sense or feel.
Speaker 1: Or deduce how God is working in this situation in
Speaker 1: your life doesn't mean he's not there. And this is
Speaker 1: a pearable.
Speaker 3: And see if Jesus is using the sower to represent God, well,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make sense, and I'll prove it to you.
Speaker 1: Watch this.
Speaker 3: It says in verse twenty seven about the sower night
Speaker 3: and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed
Speaker 3: sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. Justin
Speaker 3: circle he does not know how. Everybody say he does
Speaker 3: not know how will never find that sentence associated with God.
Speaker 3: So this cannot be that the sower represents God.
Speaker 1: It cannot be. As much as God has given us,
Speaker 1: this is not appearable about how.
Speaker 3: Hey, God has given you a lot of seeds, make
Speaker 3: sure that you developed them, because.
Speaker 1: It says he does not know how.
Speaker 3: So obviously, if he does not know how, we're not
Speaker 3: talking about God here. So I came to ask a
Speaker 3: question today, where is God in this?
Speaker 1: Where is God in this?
Speaker 3: Because I've been sowing, I've been weeping, but I'm not
Speaker 3: reaping yet.
Speaker 1: Where is God in this? You tell me he's here?
Speaker 1: But it's still hard.
Speaker 3: You'll tell me he's here, but I'm still I'm still
Speaker 3: not over the things that you say. He died to
Speaker 3: save me from. Where is God in this? And Jesus said,
Speaker 3: this is what the kingdom of God? God is like
Speaker 3: a man scatters seed. This can't be God on the
Speaker 3: ground night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up.
Speaker 3: Evidence number two that it can't be God.
Speaker 1: He sleeps.
Speaker 3: My Bible says God never sleeps nor slumbers, So this
Speaker 3: can't be God we're talking about in this passage, because
Speaker 3: God is watching over you even as you sleep.
Speaker 1: God works the night shift. God will sit by your
Speaker 1: bed and sit there with you in the most hard
Speaker 1: emotional place.
Speaker 3: So it can't be God that is referred to here
Speaker 3: as the sower. And then I realized that the star
Speaker 3: of the text is not the sickle that reaps the harvest,
Speaker 3: nor the sower that sows the seed. But watch this
Speaker 3: in verse twenty eight, And this is so anointed that
Speaker 3: a chain is going to fall off of somebody's life
Speaker 3: when I say it verse twenty eight. All by itself,
Speaker 3: the seed produces grain. Let's do it all by itself.
Speaker 3: The soil produces grain. Wait, do I say, See, that's
Speaker 3: what we think.
Speaker 1: That's what we think. We think, I gotta do this
Speaker 1: a I gotta make it happen.
Speaker 3: And now we're nervous, and now we got no lining
Speaker 3: in our stomach. And now we got no friends because
Speaker 3: they don't want to hear us complain anymore. And now
Speaker 3: we got nobody else to call because they don't have
Speaker 3: our answers anyway, because we think we've got to do
Speaker 3: this by ourselves. And so there are situations in your
Speaker 3: life right now where you're thinking about how hard it
Speaker 3: is going to be, how hard it is going to
Speaker 3: be in this next season, in this next stage, how
Speaker 3: hard it is going to be. Give me my close camera, y'all.
Speaker 3: I want to preach to the people, give me my
Speaker 3: close camera. How hard it is going to be for
Speaker 3: me to make it through this period that's coming up.
Speaker 1: How hard it is going to be for me to
Speaker 1: go into this meeting next week.
Speaker 3: How hard it is going to be for me to
Speaker 3: deal with my kids when if I can't deal with
Speaker 3: them now, how am I going to deal with them
Speaker 3: in three years? How hard it is going to be
Speaker 3: for me to go through another year like this with
Speaker 3: these unanswered prayers, And after you get done telling him
Speaker 3: how hard it is going to be, you realize that
Speaker 3: you forgot that he promised to do.
Speaker 4: The hard part.
Speaker 3: Because everybody in the text has a job. The sower
Speaker 3: has a job to sew, you should sew. The reaper
Speaker 3: has a job to reap, and you should reap. Both
Speaker 3: of those things are important. But did you notice in
Speaker 3: verse twenty eight that the most important thing that happened
Speaker 3: in the passage happened whether the man was asleep or awake.
Speaker 3: It happened regardless, Because all by itself, the soil produces grain.
Speaker 1: I could preach thirteen weeks on.
Speaker 3: All by itself, the soil produces grain. Yes, it needs
Speaker 3: a seed to pull from, but it is not dependent
Speaker 3: on the seed in any other way. I am trying
Speaker 3: to say that while your part has a part, it's
Speaker 3: not the main part.
Speaker 1: Stop bringing that main character.
Speaker 3: Energy to your prayer life acting like God's gonna lead
Speaker 3: you to speed run all these levels without him.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna do that.
Speaker 3: When you get to the hard part, He's going to
Speaker 3: do the hard part. And even if your part feels
Speaker 3: hard right now and harder than you can bear, I
Speaker 3: want you to think about all the hard stuff God
Speaker 3: is already.
Speaker 1: Doing right now that you're not even thinking about. This
Speaker 1: helps me.
Speaker 4: To realize that while I'm preaching, which is hard. It's
Speaker 4: hard that my my heart is beating. Is said that
Speaker 4: it beats about one hundred thousand times a day.
Speaker 1: I looked it up.
Speaker 3: Grahan used to couldn't do that, so you could just
Speaker 3: make up a number, and it's.
Speaker 1: Sending all that blood all through my body. They said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just looked this up. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's true.
Speaker 3: It is on the internet that it said that that
Speaker 3: there is enough in my body right now that of
Speaker 3: the twenty two thousand breadths I will take today, check
Speaker 3: this out, that will basically process the oxygen.
Speaker 1: It was crazy you.
Speaker 3: Came up talking about oxygen because I meant to mention
Speaker 3: it and that will expel the carbon dioxide. That there
Speaker 3: are three hundred million tiny little sacks where all that
Speaker 3: happens inside of me. So when you say it is
Speaker 3: God's breath in my lungs, your body has three hundred
Speaker 3: million tiny little sacks.
Speaker 1: The good stuff.
Speaker 3: Is getting taken in, the bad stuff is getting taken out,
Speaker 3: and God.
Speaker 1: Is doing all that. And I never heard a worship
Speaker 1: song about it.
Speaker 3: I heard about the lungs filling our lungs with prace,
Speaker 3: but I never heard about the tiny little sacks where
Speaker 3: all the carbon dioxide gets expelled and the oxygen gets
Speaker 3: processed and gets sent back out to the bloodstream.
Speaker 1: I never read about any of that. Because God is
Speaker 1: so good, we take him for granted.
Speaker 3: He's so good, we take him for granted, and then
Speaker 3: we run up on something hard and we're like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's gonna be hard, like the rest of it isn't
Speaker 3: The possibilities that you would be born in this time
Speaker 3: are so infintestibly what's the word infant?
Speaker 1: They're so small, they're so tiny.
Speaker 3: They're so tiny that the fact that you would even
Speaker 3: be here today, with the opportunities that you have, with
Speaker 3: the life that you have, with the strength that you have,
Speaker 3: God has already done that. So what's the next hard
Speaker 3: thing you have in front of you? If God has
Speaker 3: already done a miracle in three hundred million tiny little
Speaker 3: sacks that I didn't see in my body yesterday that
Speaker 3: I didn't even thank him for yesterday, that I didn't
Speaker 3: even know what was happening yesterday, That I'm not even
Speaker 3: sure I'm explaining right today. If God did that for me,
Speaker 3: then bring on this one too. Because God made me
Speaker 3: a promise. He's got the hard part. Let me preach
Speaker 3: this from my soul. We get so anxious when the
Speaker 3: devil roars. We get so anxious playing out our lives,
Speaker 3: and yet we, like the disciples, forget the fact.
Speaker 1: That we have the bread with us.
Speaker 3: Can I teach this like I want to teach it.
Speaker 3: I wish I'll had three hours today. I would tell
Speaker 3: you about how in Mark chapter eight, the disciples were
Speaker 3: heading to an assignment, a ministry assignment, and they were
Speaker 3: stressed out because look at Mark eight fourteen, they forgot
Speaker 3: to bring bread. Jesus had already multiplied to feed five
Speaker 3: thousand men, women, and children. But they were still stressed
Speaker 3: because no matter how many hard situations God brought them through,
Speaker 3: they still forgot what they had in Him, and they
Speaker 3: got focused on the next hard thing.
Speaker 1: I gotta get this across.
Speaker 3: You are focused on the hard thing, the hard thing,
Speaker 3: and when you focus too much on the hard thing,
Speaker 3: you forget your help. The irony of this. In verse fourteen,
Speaker 3: the disciples had forgotten to bring bread except one loaf.
Speaker 3: They had with them in the boat. Next verse, be careful,
Speaker 3: Jesus warned them, watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees.
Speaker 1: And that of Herod.
Speaker 3: Next they discussed this with one another and said, it's
Speaker 3: because we have no bread.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna limit him.
Speaker 3: Pop quiz, who is the bread of life? Who's in
Speaker 3: the boat? So what do you have to worry about
Speaker 3: if you forgot bread? I'm trying to say that your
Speaker 3: sewing is not the most significant thing when it comes
Speaker 3: to the sovereignty of God. I know you didn't get
Speaker 3: some things right. I didn't either. I know there's some
Speaker 3: things you don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I know it's hard to be you,
Speaker 1: me too. But the most important thing in the boat
Speaker 1: is not what they forgot, it's.
Speaker 3: Who they had. How cool Jesus is aware of their discussion.
Speaker 3: He asked them, wait time I have having no bread
Speaker 3: when you have me?
Speaker 1: You still not see or understand?
Speaker 4: Are your hearts hardened?
Speaker 1: You have eyes but fail to see, and ears but
Speaker 1: fail to hear?
Speaker 3: And don't you remember when I broke the five loaves
Speaker 3: for the five thousand?
Speaker 4: How many basketballs and pieces did you pick up?
Speaker 1: Twelve? They replied, and when I broke the seven loves
Speaker 1: for the four thousand, Now.
Speaker 3: Jesus doing a math lesson how many basketballs and pieces
Speaker 3: did you pick up?
Speaker 1: They answered seven. He said to them, do you still
Speaker 1: this is what he wants to say to you to day?
Speaker 1: Do you still not trust me?
Speaker 3: Do you still not know?
Speaker 1: And see, we don't because.
Speaker 3: That thing about the soil that he shared, that's scary.
Speaker 1: It's scary for a seed to be in the soil.
Speaker 1: It is scary to be in the middle of your life.
Speaker 1: It is scary to go through a messy divorce.
Speaker 3: It is scary when they tell you we're not renewing
Speaker 3: your position.
Speaker 1: It is scary when you don't have your next step plant.
Speaker 1: It's scary in the soil.
Speaker 3: But notice that the place in the passage where the
Speaker 3: most happened was the place that was the least visible.
Speaker 3: If the seed stays in the sower's hand, it will
Speaker 3: always be a seed. But if it goes down in
Speaker 3: the ground, it goes down seed, but it comes up grain.
Speaker 1: Five.
Speaker 3: Your neighbors say, I'm coming out different. I'm coming out different.
Speaker 3: I'm coming out different. That's how you'll know that God has.
Speaker 1: Met with me. Because I won't look.
Speaker 3: Like I went in when I come out, I won't
Speaker 3: be like I was when I come forth. This is
Speaker 3: what the Kingdom of God is like a man scattered seed,
Speaker 3: and then the seed is on a trajectory to become bread.
Speaker 1: Which is sustenance.
Speaker 3: But in order for the seed to be bred, first
Speaker 3: it must be buried. I want to talk to you
Speaker 3: for one moment about buried bread. Buried bread, buried bread.
Speaker 3: You say I didn't read any bread in Mark chapter four,
Speaker 3: Yes you did. Jesus said to them he is the bread,
Speaker 3: and he's talking to them about seed, but he is bread.
Speaker 1: He's giving them.
Speaker 3: A picture of what is possible, and he's painting it
Speaker 3: on a level that they can comprehend, and they get it.
Speaker 3: The seed can't stay in your hand and become a harvest.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to tell you, let go, let go, let
Speaker 4: go of.
Speaker 3: Your need to control people and just start adjusting your access,
Speaker 3: Let go of your need to have data make sense,
Speaker 3: and start checking in with God more than you check
Speaker 3: in with grass. I'm saying, let go. Come on, your
Speaker 3: neighbor needs a little friendly encouragement. Tell him you better
Speaker 3: let it go, because if you don't let it go.
Speaker 3: It will always be this. But if it gets in
Speaker 3: the soil, let's go back to our key verse, this
Speaker 3: is gonna be my new life verse y'all until next
Speaker 3: week Mark chapter four, verse twenty.
Speaker 1: Eight, all by itself the soil.
Speaker 3: So the soil represents God. So the soil represents in Him.
Speaker 3: I live and move and have my being. So the
Speaker 3: soil lets me know that when the seed went out
Speaker 3: of sight, it didn't go away.
Speaker 1: It went somewhere to change.
Speaker 3: Everything in your life has to go through the soil
Speaker 3: to become what it's meant to be. If it never
Speaker 3: gets planted, it never becomes grain. If it never becomes grain,
Speaker 3: it will never be bread. If it never is bread,
Speaker 3: it will never be what it was meant to be.
Speaker 3: So before it can be bred, I don't know who
Speaker 3: this is. Far im trying to find you.
Speaker 1: Before it can be bred, it has to be buried.
Speaker 3: You never heard about buried bread because you just get
Speaker 3: it from the bakery. You just look at someone's life
Speaker 3: and say they're so patient, they're so wonderful, they're so amazing. Well,
Speaker 3: before they became bred, let me tell you what they were.
Speaker 1: They were buried.
Speaker 3: They went through something that pulled out, something that changed,
Speaker 3: something that broke through something.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you God has got.
Speaker 3: You in this place in your life because he's pulling
Speaker 3: out something to break through, something.
Speaker 1: To break forth. Bread. It's gonna be bred.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna be fat, but it's gonna be bred.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be bread for your children. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: bread for your community. Touch seven people say it's gonna.
Speaker 1: Be bread is buried right now, but.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be bread. Uncomfortable right now, but it's gonna
Speaker 3: be bred. It doesn't look good right now.
Speaker 1: I can't even see it you're feeling.
Speaker 3: I can't even see anything opening.
Speaker 1: In my life.
Speaker 3: This is not making a difference for everyone who feels disappointed.
Speaker 1: I want you to know that it is not a death.
Speaker 1: It is a stage of development. Just like now, I'm
Speaker 1: not a farmer. I'm not a farmer.
Speaker 3: But when he said all by itself, the grain produces,
Speaker 3: and I thought about how Wow, as much as the
Speaker 3: sower did, he could go to sleep and the soil
Speaker 3: kept working. That's like God in my life that while
Speaker 3: I'm not even conscious of it, he's working well. I
Speaker 3: can't even explain it. He's working it matter of fact,
Speaker 3: go back to verse twenty seven real quick.
Speaker 1: Remind him what the passage said.
Speaker 3: Jesus said, though he does not know how verse twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Though he does not know how. Now go ahead and
Speaker 1: get it out of your system. It'll feel good safe.
Speaker 1: I don't know how.
Speaker 3: Certain processes I don't have to understand because God is sovereign.
Speaker 1: And I thought about d V.
Speaker 3: When we record an album at the church, and we
Speaker 3: sing the songs, you know, we write the songs, we
Speaker 3: sing the songs, we record the songs, and then people
Speaker 3: start asking me, pastor Win, are those songs coming out that.
Speaker 1: We recorded Friday?
Speaker 3: Because they think we can record it Friday and it
Speaker 3: can be on your phone Saturday because they want that
Speaker 3: fath worship. And I'm having fun today? Is it all
Speaker 3: right if I have a good time in the church
Speaker 3: where God is building his kingdom and the gates of
Speaker 3: hell will not prevail.
Speaker 1: Too much tension in the world.
Speaker 3: When we come together, we ought to celebrate the one
Speaker 3: thing we've.
Speaker 1: Got in common.
Speaker 3: We got common grown, we got common grown.
Speaker 1: So where's J Mix? Jy Mix? He's told me be
Speaker 1: here all right, so J Mix?
Speaker 3: How many of you have ever heard Jay mix sing
Speaker 3: a worship song.
Speaker 1: No you haven't, you're lying in chart. I'm a fact
Speaker 1: check you. But before it gets to your.
Speaker 3: Phone, this is so annoyed what I'm about to say
Speaker 3: about him. Before it gets to your phone, it shows
Speaker 3: up in his computer as files.
Speaker 1: When we finished recording a.
Speaker 3: Song the Lord, Oh My Soul, and it's so fun friend.
Speaker 1: A Lord, oh My night.
Speaker 3: And by the time y'all finish jumping, he's already sorting
Speaker 3: the files because on his computer will go over one
Speaker 3: hundred pro Tools tracks. And now he's got to take
Speaker 3: the hundred tracks of y'all singing and clapping and them
Speaker 3: singing and clapping and all of that. And in a
Speaker 3: place that nobody sees called a studio. Jim mikes someonea
Speaker 3: use you to represent God in this illustration, But don't
Speaker 3: get a big head. It's a good illustration to be
Speaker 3: a part in a place that nobody sees.
Speaker 1: He has to do stuff to those.
Speaker 3: Songs that you've never even heard of, so that by
Speaker 3: the time it gets to your ears, you feel that thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's got to go through and you don't
Speaker 1: even know this is a thing. Do you tell your neighbor?
Speaker 1: Is that a thing.
Speaker 3: He has to take the vocals and deep breath them.
Speaker 3: Not deep breath, not like yoga deep breath. That means
Speaker 3: when people are all on the mic, you don't want
Speaker 3: to hear that on your air pods.
Speaker 1: That's creepy. Let everything that has breath but not that loud.
Speaker 1: So he has the deep bread he has to de
Speaker 1: breath it.
Speaker 3: Oh, and then don't even get me started on how
Speaker 3: they have to take the clicks and remove them from
Speaker 3: the mics from when.
Speaker 1: Y'all try to clap but you don't have any.
Speaker 3: Rhythm because we're not sending our churches music out in
Speaker 3: the world with no rhythm.
Speaker 1: I Am not going to be represented by that.
Speaker 3: So they will literally have to move in and remove
Speaker 3: some of the collapse and retrack some of the instruments
Speaker 3: because you know, we change that part and they forgot,
Speaker 3: And then we've got to get this in there and
Speaker 3: we'll witness sound good at that.
Speaker 1: All of that is happening in the mix with J Mix.
Speaker 1: What a prophetic name to be.
Speaker 3: Called J mix, And that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: It's a mix.
Speaker 3: It's a mix by the time he sends it off
Speaker 3: to be mixed, by the time it has sent off
Speaker 3: to be mastered. They have spent months. That's why it
Speaker 3: takes so long. Hey, drop that this Sunday. We can't
Speaker 3: drop it till we do what we gotta do with it.
Speaker 3: And if we do what we've got to do with
Speaker 3: it in development, if we do what we've got to
Speaker 3: do with it in the dark, when it is released
Speaker 3: into the world, it will be a sound that will
Speaker 3: resound and it will have maximal impact. And that is
Speaker 3: what this parable is saying to me, is that the
Speaker 3: soil is where God produces you.
Speaker 1: The soil is where.
Speaker 3: God takes the colapse out because sometimes you don't need
Speaker 3: to move to people's applause as your rhythm. That the
Speaker 3: soil is the studio where God has to debreath some things.
Speaker 3: God has to get you to start start panting after
Speaker 3: His presence in the soil.
Speaker 1: It's the place where God does the hard part.
Speaker 3: And so I come with the prophetic declaration today that
Speaker 3: unless you refuse to be planted, you are not the
Speaker 3: star of this story.
Speaker 1: God will do the hard part. Whatever it is that
Speaker 1: custody thing you got going.
Speaker 3: With your three year old and you don't know how
Speaker 3: are they gonna know me as their dad, if I
Speaker 3: don't have custody of them.
Speaker 1: God will do the hard part.
Speaker 3: He will make sure if you stay planted, that you
Speaker 3: have the opportunities that you need to raise that child.
Speaker 3: And if there's somebody else He needs to send that
Speaker 3: has the gift that they need.
Speaker 1: God will do the hard part.
Speaker 3: But it is scary in the soil, because this is
Speaker 3: the part you can't control.
Speaker 1: This is the part you can't micromanage.
Speaker 3: This is the part where you are so tempted to
Speaker 3: put your death grip on the seed and try to
Speaker 3: tell it what to be.
Speaker 1: Before it can become bred, it has to be buried.
Speaker 3: Every seed you sow has to be surrendered, which means
Speaker 3: that it can only be what's inside of it. Stop
Speaker 3: trying to produce somebody else's purpose. I want to liberate you.
Speaker 3: You don't have to fulfill anybody else's calling. Notice the
Speaker 3: Passage did not start with a seed of grain and
Speaker 3: turn into a vineyard of grapes.
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to.
Speaker 3: And you don't have to produce anything God didn't put
Speaker 3: in you. Get off TikTok, Get off Instagram. You don't
Speaker 3: have to look twenty three when you're forty seven. You
Speaker 3: don't have to produce anything that's not Maybe I'm preaching
Speaker 3: to myself right now.
Speaker 1: These gray hair has got me.
Speaker 3: Self conscious these days hot by somebody say whatever's in
Speaker 3: me will be produced until it.
Speaker 1: Reaches it's full potential.
Speaker 3: Now you need to preach that back to him that
Speaker 3: was week, say whatever's in you will be produced until
Speaker 3: it reaches it's full potential.
Speaker 1: Now, y'all get ready to shout, because I already.
Speaker 3: Told you before it is bread, it has to be.
Speaker 3: God is not doing nothing in your life. This season
Speaker 3: is not insignificant in your life. Nothing about this is random.
Speaker 3: Nothing about this takes him off guard, Nothing about this
Speaker 3: has him nervous. Nothing about this pushes him away. Before
Speaker 3: it becomes bread, it must be buried.
Speaker 1: But watch this. Before it's buried, it's already bred because everything.
Speaker 3: That is coming up out of the soil was already
Speaker 3: in the seed. I can't to declare you already got it.
Speaker 3: Praise it for twenty seconds eight feed seconds, fiftegu seconds gone,
Speaker 3: eights seven six not far so?
Speaker 1: Who did that hit? Just now? If it's one hundred people,
Speaker 1: give God praise that it hits you. If it's a
Speaker 1: hundred people, let's review.
Speaker 4: A so or so to seed.
Speaker 1: It fell on the ground, it went in the ground,
Speaker 1: It went down.
Speaker 3: As a seed, it came up as a stalk. Something
Speaker 3: was happening while it was in the dark place. I wonder,
Speaker 3: is that what you needed to hear, that something is
Speaker 3: happening in your dark place?
Speaker 1: What is the dark place? It's the place where God
Speaker 1: pulls out.
Speaker 3: The potential that is in you, so that when he
Speaker 3: brings it forth, it'll be exactly what He meant for
Speaker 3: it to be. I come against the spirit of comparison
Speaker 3: that is robbing you of your joy. The seed was
Speaker 3: not responsible to produce anything.
Speaker 1: God didn't encode it to produce. God has already done
Speaker 1: the hard part.
Speaker 4: Jesus has already done the hard part.
Speaker 3: Is so hard for you to receive the forgiveness, but
Speaker 3: he already did the hard part. He died to give
Speaker 3: it to you. Is so hard for us to walk
Speaker 3: in his new life. You know what I think the
Speaker 3: passage is trying to say is that God the Father
Speaker 3: is the soil, and.
Speaker 4: Jesus the Savior, was our seed.
Speaker 3: Because he is the seed who went into the earth
Speaker 3: for three days, and when he came forth, he became.
Speaker 1: The bread of life. He was already bred.
Speaker 3: But for us to receive him. And if you have
Speaker 3: spiritual ears to hear what I'm saying right now, I
Speaker 3: am telling you that you have to go through some
Speaker 3: things to.
Speaker 1: Become what God has called you to be.
Speaker 4: But I'm here to also tell you that what you
Speaker 4: need to be, it is already in you.
Speaker 1: It had to be buried to be bred, and.
Speaker 4: It was bred when it was buried. You already are.
Speaker 3: You already are chosen by God. You already are loved
Speaker 3: by him. You say, but I'm broken, So is the seed.
Speaker 3: You say, But I'm dirty, So was the seed. You say,
Speaker 3: But I'm hurting, So was Jesus.
Speaker 1: But I was betrayed. So was Jesus.
Speaker 4: So was the seed.
Speaker 3: You keep sowing and you'll keep seeing that God. God's
Speaker 3: got the heart part. I thought about our relationship, me
Speaker 3: and God. I reckon of the two of us. It
Speaker 3: is easier for me to be in relationship with him
Speaker 3: than him to be in relationship with me.
Speaker 1: How many feel that way? That God's got the hard part.
Speaker 3: When it comes to your relationship, And yet he still
Speaker 3: wants you. He signed up for all of that. He
Speaker 3: checked your whole profile and He put a purpose inside
Speaker 3: of you. And I want to pray for people today
Speaker 3: who are struggling with this, because what the text gave
Speaker 3: me was for your life and for my life, a
Speaker 3: principle and a promise. The principle is that everything in
Speaker 3: your life has to be buried to become bread. Your
Speaker 3: gift is under development, your intellect is under development, your
Speaker 3: experience is under development. All of that stuff that you
Speaker 3: think is dead, it's under development.
Speaker 1: But never forget this.
Speaker 3: It was already bred when it went into the ground.
Speaker 3: It was just waiting for the time to come forth.
Speaker 1: And I think about Jesus.
Speaker 3: He came to earth, he taught his disciples, He taught
Speaker 3: them parables, He taught them many times through his actions.
Speaker 1: But he ultimately came to die.
Speaker 3: And so when it came time for the Passover meal,
Speaker 3: he sat down and he began to eat with them.
Speaker 3: And look what Matthew's twenty six twenty six says about it.
Speaker 4: To give us a picture that God will do the
Speaker 4: hard part.
Speaker 1: He took the bread while.
Speaker 3: They were eating, and when he had given thanks, he
Speaker 3: broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, take
Speaker 3: an eat. This is my body. Shortly after that he died.
Speaker 3: When he broke the bread, it was symbolic of how
Speaker 3: his body would be broken. Now you see why I
Speaker 3: think Jesus was the seed. The seed breaks when it's
Speaker 3: in the ground. Jesus's body was broken on the cross.
Speaker 3: But notice what he said to them, Matthew twenty six
Speaker 3: twenty sixth Please, he said, you take it to eat.
Speaker 3: My body is broken for you. He has done the
Speaker 3: hard part. So whatever comes after.
Speaker 1: This, he's got it. He's got it.
Speaker 3: How shall he who died to give us life not
Speaker 3: also graciously with him give us all things. When the
Speaker 3: seed is out of your hands, it's in his right
Speaker 3: Now bow your head and close your eyes.
Speaker 4: The spirit of the Lord is moving powerfully.
Speaker 3: Maybe in your living room, maybe in your kitchen, maybe
Speaker 3: in your sick bed, maybe in your car, maybe in
Speaker 3: your workout, maybe in your midnight hour, maybe right here
Speaker 3: in this church on the fourth row. God has you
Speaker 3: in the soil. It's not hard for him. It's hard
Speaker 3: for you. It's easy for him, he's God. But it's
Speaker 3: hard for.
Speaker 1: You to know how long, to know what to do.
Speaker 3: And it's okay to be like the man in the
Speaker 3: passage to say I don't know how.
Speaker 1: The how part is not your job, is God's part.
Speaker 1: I declare in.
Speaker 3: The name of Jesus that you are a seed to
Speaker 3: that God is working through your life. That God is
Speaker 3: giving you nutrients that you know not of in this season.
Speaker 3: That God is giving you everything that you need for
Speaker 3: the calling that He's assigned to your life.
Speaker 1: That you, like a mustard seed, might.
Speaker 3: Start out small, but there will be really big branches.
Speaker 3: If you faint not, let us not become weary and
Speaker 3: well doing, for in due season we shall read. If
Speaker 3: we faint not, I declare over your life today that
Speaker 3: this is rich soil, This is good ground. You are
Speaker 3: hidden under the shadow of the Almighty. This is good ground,
Speaker 3: planted in the garden of the Lord. You are an
Speaker 3: oak of righteousness, and this is good ground. Now let
Speaker 3: me pray for your children you're worried about. God's got
Speaker 3: them in good ground. They're gonna bring four things too.
Speaker 3: They're gonna be bred too. They're gonna go through a
Speaker 3: process too. But you just keep on praising right through
Speaker 3: that process. You keep praising while God is doing stuff
Speaker 3: in the studio.
Speaker 1: You keep praising well.
Speaker 3: God keeps producing, And there's somebody here today, who needs
Speaker 3: to give your life to Jesus Christ. You've never really
Speaker 3: done this thing. You've never really given your life to Jesus.
Speaker 3: You've never really surrendered it. You keep trying to do
Speaker 3: it on your own. You keep trying to work your
Speaker 3: way to God. You keep going up and down.
Speaker 1: We all do. That's why Jesus came. It's time to
Speaker 1: let grace take over. It's time to let Grace take over.
Speaker 3: So right now, if you want to give your life
Speaker 3: to Jesus, I'm gonna lead you in a prayer. You
Speaker 3: can repeat after me. The prayer is not magical, but
Speaker 3: the God we pray it to. He is supernatural. He
Speaker 3: has all power, and he came down to raise you up.
Speaker 3: If you want to put your life in his hands today,
Speaker 3: repeat after me, Heavenly Father. I am a sinner in
Speaker 3: need of a savior, and I believe that Jesus Christ
Speaker 3: is the Son of God and the savior of the world.
Speaker 1: Today I make Jesus the lord of my life.
Speaker 3: I believe he died that I would be forgiven and
Speaker 3: rose again to give me life. I receive this new life.
Speaker 3: This is my new beginning. I am a child of
Speaker 3: God on the counter of three. Shoot your hand up
Speaker 3: if you've prayed that one two three. We celebrate your
Speaker 3: resurrection day. We celebrate your new creation Day.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah man, yeah man.
Speaker 1: Come on, let's do a little better. Let's do a better,
Speaker 1: let's raise a little rufus. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
Speaker 2: this ministry.
Speaker 1: Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
Speaker 2: You can click the link in the description to give now,
Speaker 2: or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information
Speaker 2: and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
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Speaker 2: Elevation Church.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening. God bless you.