The Enemy in Your House

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I want to give you guys a pretty cool testimony of something that happened this week. You know, a lot of times we just make it through the week. You know, we're just in that space where it's like, well, hey, we punched our ticket to survival. And this week, it was not much different than that. But there was a cool thing that happened on Thursday morning.

It was our time to do a prison ministry down at the Cleveland County Detention Center. And for those of you who don't know anything about the Cleveland County Detention center, it is a pretty diverse place. You've got people waiting to go to various different prisons. They're waiting to be sentenced, they're waiting for trial, all those things. So you can have everything under the sun, under that roof as far as what they are accused of and.

Or potentially even what they have been found guilty of and just not sentenced. And yet we've been going in there, I don't know, about a year with Norman Bible Church, and we've been doing services for the ladies and services for the guys. The services for the ladies is always a little bit smaller than the services for the guys. There's normally multiple services for the guys, but it is a big, gigantic concrete room. So you basically get ushered into this, like, maze of hallways, and there's these huge metal doors that have, like, a little peephole.

Like, you know, think of, like, Silence of the Lambs. There was, like, a full sheet of glass where he's like. And like, kids don't want. Oh, kids are in kids class. Okay.

Okay, good. Not getting called by the elders today on that one. But they have the door where they open and they talk to them, or they have the little thing where they, like, shove them their ramen or whatever it is through the thing. And so they get to come out for the hour, hour and a half, long time of church, which is just a concret. It is just cinder blocks, concrete floor, guessing 40 foot tall, and then nothing but heavy metal mesh at the top that you can see out of.

And then in the middle of that space is a little orange plastic pool that matches the orange jumpsuits of the prisoners. And get in. We do a song or two of worship, and then we do a little bit of a gospel message. You know, what does it mean? Why are we getting baptized?

What's happening here? And some of the people are rededicating their life. They already gave their life to Jesus Christ at some point in time and made a bad decision, or maybe 10 ended up in there and are rededicating their life. Others, they've never heard of Jesus Christ or they've never accepted Jesus Christ as their salvation. And so we're in the middle of.

The ladies went first. It was super awesome to watch. All the ladies super excited. Normally, the ladies are the ones that, like, you would think you're in a prison with, like, these big, like, 5XL, like, jacked up men. No, the ladies will cut you.

Like, the ladies are the scary ones. Like, little bitty lady comes in, it's like, oh, she'll shank you to death. Like. And the big guy's like, hi. Hi, Pastor.

I love you. Like, it's crazy. It's the juxtaposition, like, as Brent likes to say. But so we're standing there in the guys, and Pastor Elder Scott from Norman Bible Church is the one who's preaching this time, and he's talking about Mark's gospel, when Jesus goes and gets baptized by John the Baptist. And Jesus goes into the water, and when he comes out, there's an audible voice from heaven where Yahweh says, this is my Son, of whom I'm well pleased.

And then the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and then sends him out into. Thrusts him into the wilderness. So Scott's making the point that, based upon where we're at, it's highly unlikely we're going to see any doves, but we might get pooped on by a pigeon in that part. And so he's making a joke. He's just kind of like, you know, keeping it light while talking about Christmas.

And all of a sudden, prisoners are going like this and like this and this. And I kid you not, there are white doves flying over the prison yard in that moment. I'm not talking about once or twice where it was just like. It was like. It was a prolonged moment of like, ha, ha, okay, you know, God is here.

God is revealing. And it was an aha moment. And we had people who literally on the spot in that room at that time. I don't think they came in planning because their name was not on the list for baptisms, but at that point in time, they then professed Jesus as their salvation, went through a prayer of repentance, and decided to go through the water. And so a lot of times we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the world, but we have to remember that we have a lot of freedoms and there's a lot of things that we get to do in life.

And here are these individuals who maybe made one bad mistake. Maybe they've made a series of bad mistakes and. And they're in prison. And yet in prison they could be hard and they could be mean and they could be angry, but they're crying out to God. And I don't like to use the word revival because sometimes it's just overused as a hype term.

But there is a revival of spirits happening in the Cleveland County Jail right now of individuals who have professed Jesus as their salvation and turned from their repentance. And so through Bible studies and some of the other things, we're hoping to disciple and to walk through life with them as some of them are now getting to the place where they have had their cases thrown out and pretty cool. So how was your week?

Well, some people just laughed. Mason gave me a hoorah back there and then others had a rough week. Okay, so. Well, good. We're all going to bear each other's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ.

So if you had a really good week, seek out somebody who had a really rough week and let's swap stories, do that whole like lean on me type of thing. So I am not here the next three weeks. And so I don't say that with any joy in my heart, but I do say it with joy in the tone of my voice. I'm going to enjoy going to watch one of my close friends, first child get married. I'm going to enjoy going home and spending time with my family, maybe get to see some snow in Ohio, watch my football team continue to be one of the worst ever.

It's just a consistent. At least they're steadfast. They have the Holy Spirit with them. They are steadfast in being bad. For all my life they have been faithful to be bad.

So we just pulled worship songs in with the Cincinnati Bengals. So I will repent of that later. But we are almost done with the Kingdom in Action series in Matthew chapter 10. I'm going to teach today on Matthew chapter 10. Next Saturday, Cam is gonna wrap up chapter 10 and then he's gonna preach the first two weeks of a four part series through Matthew chapter four called the Kingdom Messiah that's coming up.

Then Brent will be on the pulpit once in December and I will be kind of wrapping up 11 and 12 and that should take us till the end of January. In the end of January. We won't be meeting here in February. I don't know where we're gonna meet in February, but we do have another elders meeting this weekend to kind of go over that. And kind of look at what our options are right now.

I can tell you that it seems like God is telling us what our options are not. So a closed door is also an answer from the Lord. And so we are moving forward with that. And so we're going to just tackle as much as we can and then let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit does. And then, like we sang today, we will thank God for what God does.

So we do need God to open up some doors. I mean, you know, we do need that. Otherwise we're meeting in houses or we're meeting in event centers. But even then, he's opening doors because, I mean, you're not going to walk in anybody, go through walls. If you do, come see me after church.

I have a special assignment for you. All right? We're going to be In Matthew, chapter 10, 32, 39, the enemy in your house. Last week, Jesus had reminded his apprentices of the cost of the kingdom mission. This comes after the Tour of the Kingdom series, also known as the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus preaches his testimony and then comes down the mountain and starts to put that in action.

He teaches them that faith should conquer fear, and that the only fear that's worth keeping is the holy reverence of God. He warned them not to partner with those who would minimize their calling, and while promising them that they weren't going to be able to do it on their own, just like they weren't ever able to do it before on their own. But he was going to send what Paul calls the spirit of Jesus to have the indwelling. And it was through that power that they were going to have the opportunity to join him on the kingdom on mission. Now Jesus shifts his warning.

He shifts them from what were external threats to internal threats. So for I think it was 10 years, somewhere around there, I ran the largest feast of tabernacles in the United States of America. There was, I think the lowest year was somewhere around 1100, if I recall correctly. And I think that was Covid and I think maybe only like 900 and change actually showed up. And as a part of doing that, we built a city in a park, so we built tents and we had our own security force that worked with the police, and we had our own medical and we had all these other things that were there.

And it was a lot of logistics. And there was an individual who was in the military who was getting a higher level degree in the military. And they specialize in threat assessment. And they said, hey, look, we have to have we just have to do a project on something. And so we would like to do a project on this gathering.

And they did, they went and he did an entire threat assessment of what is the highest level of threat, what's the lowest level of threat to this event as a project? Well, I found it fascinating. I'm not in the military. Shocker. I found it fascinating that somebody with a logistics mind came from a security type of standpoint, not just X's and O's.

As I'm reading this lengthy report, one thing dawned on me that I had to question because it didn't make any sense to me. And so I called the individual who wrote this report and I said, hey, can I talk to you? Can I, can I flesh this out a little bit with you? It was that out of all of the threats in the world, and there's all kinds of threats in the world, like out of all of them, there's, you know, you could get sick and there could be a virus, there could be all kinds of stuff, you know, from little to even really, really scary ones. The greatest threat to anything like that is not external.

It's what's already inside the kingdom.

This should cause us when we read the scripture and where we come from, we're Torah loving individuals. We love the feasts and the festivals. We love the Sabbath day. We're here on the Sabbath day. We love Jesus, we love all of those things.

This should cause us to always look internally first before we're talking externally. We've reached the season of the Gregorian calendar where everybody's got opinion about what other Christians should do. Meanwhile, I can promise you they're not internally focused on the threat that's at hand, you know, like bitterness or anger or all those things. So as we go through this, Jesus is shifting from the external expectations of conflict. You know this, Daniel, when I show up in Stillwater, Stillwater's gonna hate me and they're gonna run me out.

And what do you do with that? He's now shifting the threat to external things, to internal things. And he's saying, what are you going to do with it? So today we're going to look at 32, 39. Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.

But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father in heaven. Jesus had been publicly proclaiming the kingdom mission throughout all of the towns and even through the smaller villages. Now he tells his disciples that it's their time to do the same and that they should understand that the Confession of Jesus by preaching the Gospel is not just a confession, it's a covenant. Your testimony testifies to who you are loyal to.

What you confess with your mouth and you model with your life reveals which kingdom you belong to.

There's only one king in a kingdom. Just remember that this is why you didn't have Moses and David reigning at the same time. This is why even in the story of Solomon and Saul, there's all of these things that are happening. There can only be one king of one kingdom at a specific time. And who you testify your Lord loyalty to and who you confess with your lips, then you should be in covenant with them and you should walk out the covenantal responsibility.

If your testimony denies the king, then heaven will deny knowing you. Jesus prayed in John 17 that his followers would walk in unity, just as the Father and the Son were one. One I in them and you in me. Jesus prayed, the world may know that you sent me so that I, Jesus, would be in us, and vice versa. That we would be together and that God would be together so that they would know when we walk and we testify and we do these things, that we are Jesus.

We belong to that king and that kingdom.

The world may know that you sent me. How does the world know that he has sent us? Jesus is in us, and thus we testify of Him. The purpose of the kingdom is reconciliation. This isn't a gospel New Testament concept.

God was reconciling or at least attempting to reconcile his people's humanity back to him since the moment of the fall in the garden, he's trying to reconcile them back, but after a period of time, he realizes that they're going to do exactly what they did. They're going to spiral into bad decisions. So he's going to have to do exactly what he did, which is conquer and create new. So just like Abram, whose name turns to Abraham, of who we have our heritage of faith. As Paul says, just like Abraham was put to sleep, God walked through the pieces of the covenant.

Jesus is here to walk through the pieces of the covenant for us. It's not just a New Testament thing. It is a reconciliation of the patterns that we see throughout the entirety of scripture. God didn't wake up one day and he was like, let's just go with something new. This was always a part of his plan.

New creation, reconciliation. The gospel doesn't divide because it's broken. It divides because it exposes what's broken in us, in our world. And the unity in the Spirit is not the same as having Comfort in our flesh. The kingdom unifies the redeemed while dividing the complacent.

Remember, God calls us to do something for his kingdom. And remember, when we act like we have peace without total surrender to the king and to the kingdom, it's actually just polished rebellion.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but I came to bring a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against his mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's enemies will be those in his own house.

This would have absolutely rocked the audience's ears for first century Jews. Why where we are at as 21st century Americans, we have a little bit of loyalty to our family, but not a lot. In fact, it's almost the opposite. There comes this age bracket for men and women where they're in their late teens, early 20s, where their parents are literally like, they fell out of a tree and landed on their head. That's how, like, not okay.

They are in their brain where they're gonna forge their own path. And if mom and dad say something, it's almost like they want to do the opposite. Because I have to establish my own home. I have to establish my own thought process. Me, me, me.

We are a narcissistic society. And even though you might not be clinically diagnosed as a narcissist, we do have narcissistic traits. And we have to go through this time until we do enough life where right around our 40s up, and we realize, my mom was actually right, my dad was actually right. Hopefully we can get there before our 40s, but a lot of times it takes us to our 40s, and some people literally never get there. They hold a bitterness and resentment against their parents for a really long time.

This is our modern culture, but this is not the biblical culture of which Jesus is talking to them. You did not disrespect your parents. It was an honor shame society. We don't live in an honor shame society. You honored.

You did not shame. You honored. You did not shame. You honored. Your mother.

You did not shame her. You honored your father. You did not shame her. You honored the religion and the practices. You did not shame.

This was the culture of first century Judaism. And so when Jesus is saying, hey, guys, as a rabbi, I did not come to bring reconciliation to the Smilovici family. I came so that you guys would fight each other more. It's like, whoa, no, no, thank you. Our bloodlines have what kept us alive, Judaism.

Part of how they've been able to survive the atrocities of humanity is to stay together.

You know, remember when people used to have each other's backs? Judaism does that very well to this day, and it's how they've survived. And so Jesus shatters the idea that the bloodline is the covenant line any longer. This would be shocking. I would venture to believe potentially even some considered it to be blasphemous.

What do you mean? I am a Frankie, and the Frankies are third descendants of Aaron. And as third descendants of Aaron, I have the right to the Levitical priesthood. And Jesus is saying, I came to bring division to the family.

Crazy. He's declaring a kingdom that is a family that is not defined by our ancestry but by our allegiances.

You didn't just get to be born Aaron's cousin, and now you're automatically in this. You had to do something. Now you had to profess the kingdom. You had to do something. The phrase blood is thicker than water collapses under the blood of the lamb.

You are not saved by the blood of your family. You are not saved by. By anything other than the blood of the Savior.

Sometimes the enemy isn't operating in your city. Sometimes the enemy is operating in your circle. Sometimes that can be in your family. The peace Jesus speaks of isn't an absence of conflict. I see this a lot in marriage counseling, where people are like, oh, we don't fight.

But you can tell there is no peace. They're not together. An absence of conflict doesn't immediately bring a spiritual peace. You see, the concept of peace under the word shalom is the presence of wholeness that cannot happen without the presence of God. And it's also not achieved by compromise.

It is achieved through covenantal relationship. It's not a passive peace, but it is what God does. It is an act of restoration. When you pledge allegiance to the King, don't be surprised when those who love the world consider you, see you, and speak about you as a traitor.

You are a traitor. You chose to break familial lines of the cycles of generational trauma and choose your heritage in Yahweh through his son Yeshua, as the book of Hebrews tells us, was available for all from the garden till the end of the time. So you are a traitor. You're saying, I'm not going to hang my head on the fact that the Frankies are all it. I'm going to hang my hat on the fact that Jesus is all it and the Frankies need To get on board under the bloodlines of the Lamb.

Guess what? I have to do the same thing that the Stropes family does, that the Juarez family does, that the Judah family does, that all of us do. It doesn't matter. I was born this way. You have to be born again.

I was born a Frankie. You have to be born again as a son of Jesus, Yeshua Hamashiach. You have to be born again as a daughter of Jesus, Yeshua Hamashiach. So all of the generational things that have happened, good or bad, in the end, they do not even come close. Just think of it this way.

Some of you in this room have lived through generational trauma. There are things that have happened to you that you witnessed either your parents or a relative or a family friend do that has caused you to have to go a different direction in your life, to really try to heal, to try to go through those types of things. But on the other hand, some of you grew up in a really stable household. There was good parents who loved you, who sowed into you. You had good financial status.

When you got to be a little bit older, you didn't have a lot of needs. It doesn't matter which side of the coin you're on or anywhere in between. Jesus is telling you that you are going to have to choose. Not that family or that family. You're going to have to choose my family.

And all families have to choose that.

Not another family.

37, 39. If you love your father, your mother more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.

Okay.

Been doing this a long time. This portion of the Scripture in Matthew is where a lot of individuals will come and they will justify. Well, see, because I stopped doing this or because I changed my faith walk, my parents have turned. And now my parents are against my faith. And they're like, see?

I'm justified. That's not right. That is an incorrect observation of the text. You and how you live your life can be what bear fruit of the Bible. Paul writes extensively about this, of how the Holy Spirit, there's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.

There's all these really wonderful things that exist, or you can do exactly the same thing, and you can bear bad fruit. You can bear good, malice and wickedness and all of these other things. I've told myself many, many times in my covenantal walk with God when I decided to take a different liturgical calendar from meeting on Sunday mornings to starting to meet on Saturdays and keeping the Shabbat and doing the feasts and the festivals and that how I went about it bore the fruit that Paul says, God was not with me. So we gotta be honest with ourself as feast loving Hebrew people. It wasn't that the Bible was wrong.

It was what I did was not in line with the Holy Spirit. Which means we have to adjust now. Thank God he's been gracious enough to me to allow me to repent three years ago and to go through this process to get myself a little bit more stable than where I was before. But when we're going through our life, you should not be looking to dishonor your parents, to be at odds with your parents, just to justify, well, I must be on mission with Jesus. No, you being a meanie.

What is the cotton ninny, whatever you say, like ninny muggin or whatever it is, cotton ninny muggin or whatever it is, like when you choose to be that to somebody, you can't turn around and see Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in me. No, you should teach, preach, testify. Through love, through mercy, through steadfastness, through joy, not through bitterness, not through anger, not through all of those things. Take it as a guy who did it that way for many, many years, almost 20 years, you will die, you will spiritually die because the Holy Spirit won't be in you. You could do everything right, you can think you're right, but you will die.

If you love your father or mother more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. Or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. Whoever clings to his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The call to follow Jesus is not sentimental, it's sacrificial.

We talk about in our core group of what we do as a church, we talk about the sacrifices as kind of like there's something that were and maybe what is in the future. I mean, we'll argue about that at some other point in time, but we're forgetting that Jesus uses the temple imagery. He uses the Jewish things that were around there, the Hebrew context, to remind us that this thing we're going to do, this kingdom we're being invited into, this new covenant that's happening. It is not sentimental. You didn't get a free pass just because you were born that way.

He's telling you you're going to have to live sacrificially, which means you're going to have to Put your whole life on the altar.

That got real quiet. When you put your whole life on the altar, it hurts. We like to sing about, you know, set a fire down in my soul. You don't want God to set fire. It's gonna hurt.

It's gonna refine you like gold, but it's gonna hurt. So when you ask for something, you need to understand. When you set yourself on an altar, it was all burnt up. Every bit of the altar had, or the sacrifice had a purpose. So if your life is now going to be sacrificial, he's telling you, you can't just.

I can't cling to my father's faith. I can't cling to my wife's faith. I can't cling to my child's faith. You've gotta sacrifice daily for, for my kingdom. You have to put your life on the altar.

And he's going to burn it up. And when he burns it up, all the things that are of us, that are of this world should go and all the things of him should be imparted into us. And I can tell you this, you're not the same. In the most simplest of terms, a raw steak is not a well done steak. It's not the same.

One is like my belt, the other one you can eat. I'm just joking. For all of you who are taking me out for steak dinners, which hasn't happened yet, so everybody's like, oh, Pastor Chris goes out for steak dinners all the time. No, I cook steaks at home. Why?

Because it's cheaper.

Pick up my cross daily. I'm just joking. Literally, it's a joke. Which camera's on before YouTube, all the comments, like getting the emails. The cross isn't jewelry, it's execution.

We think of now. And even myself, I put on this cross every single week. And it does mean something to me. And it reminds me to remember that I am supposed to die daily. I'm supposed to put myself and pick up my cross and carry it with me every day.

What was the cross? Well, the cross was the means to one of the greatest things that ever happened in our life. If you don't have the birth of Messiah, you. You don't have the life of Messiah. If you don't have the life of Messiah, you don't have the ministry of Messiah.

If you don't have the ministry of Messiah, you don't have the death of Messiah. That's where we get the cross. But if you don't have the death of Messiah, then you don't have the resurrection of Messiah. If you don't have the resurrection of Messiah, then you don't have the ascension of Messiah. All of those things are important for us.

And so we have to look at this isn't jewelry. It's execution of a sacrificial lifestyle. It is going to cost you something. Guess what? It's going to cost you all things if we're truly doing it right.

Spoken as a guy who spent many, many years playing faith, playing religious faith. When you put your life on the altar, when you put yourself on the execution stake, it will cost you something and you better be ready for it. But what will come as the reward is better than anything you could ever imagine. When the Holy Spirit imparts inside of you and you no longer have that lust or that addiction or that thought process in your mind, when you've gone from just abstaining from something into full deliverance, everything else ceases. But you can't do it on your own.

You can get to your abstinence part on your own, but the deliverance has to come from a renewed spirit of a renewed mind and a renewed heart, which Ezekiel tells us only God can do. It's a sacrificial lifestyle. Jesus doesn't ask for your weekend attendance. Some of us struggle with that. Some of us struggle with even being more participative in functions on a regular basis.

He's not even asking for the weekend attendance. He's demanding. If you're going to be on mission with me, I want your full allegiance.

That's on Sunday. That's on Monday. That's on Tuesday. That's on Wednesday. That's on Thursday.

That's on Friday. That's on Saturday. That's on Facebook. It's at the restaurant. That's why you lay in your bed while you sit up when you talk.

Full allegiance. Every idol in your life must die. Including the idol of yourself. Your comfort, your ego, your money, your safety net, your pride, your bloodline. We've seen all of this in Matthew, chapter 10.

It all has to go. Because what is here is something that's better than all of those. The invitation is not to follow me and feel better. It is follow me and die to everything that keeps you from truly living Self help Christianity. Just come to Jesus.

He'll fix everything. No, Jesus will walk with you through things, but you still have to do something. That meme we twisted the passages into some sort of self justification that the more we're hated by our family members or other people around us, somehow the more holy we are. This is no different than what the Pharisees and Sadducees were doing with the scripture. This is not what Jesus is asking us to do.

Jesus is not glorifying dysfunction and chaos. He is demanding devotion.

Don't weaponize scripture to validate your own narcissism. Use the Bible to crucify every bit of yourself that is not like Christ.

It's hard, I get it. It's hard, I get it. But you don't arrive at a destination, you're invited to join the journey.

And we're over here complaining about like, oh, what do you think the Israelites felt?

Some of us in this room haven't even been alive for 40 years. But what happened the first generation that came out of Egypt who should have had the testimony of seeing the sea part, the Egyptians vanish, dude, fire from heaven. That would have been viral on TikTok like the cloud. By day they saw these things and the whole first generation, with the exception of two, ceased to exist in the wilderness. They never made it to the promised land.

Why? Why? Because they didn't have a different spirit. He's demanding, Jesus is demanding an allegiance to his kingdom, his family, and he's saying you're going to have to do that over your own and it's going to stink and it's going to be hard because the world wants you to stay there. And he's trying to offer you to go there, but when you get to where you're going, it's going to be beautiful.

He's not calling you to destroy relationships. He's calling you to surrender control. When you choose to pick up your cross, you're laying down your knee to win every argument, to control every outcome and to preserve every comfort. He's calling you into fight, not flight. I've testified about this with the craziness of happened when I left international ministry, I would have ran, I would have chosen flight if it hadn't been for the Sabbath that my family had taken in Florida.

And even though the Lord was definitely not being kind to me, he was being honest to me, but he wasn't being kind to me about the reality of what good is building all these multimillion dollar ministries when families homes are broken? And what good is it to say that you're Torah observant when you're not actually Torah observant? Because the way you speak to each other like what good is it that your tzitzit lengths when all these other things, all these things that are out there, if he hadn't told me tabernacles, I would have taken the very next job that was offered. Which came the day I was. I was told that I was going to be let go and I would have moved and I would have ran.

And I'm going to testify of what I think it's an opinion. Obviously, I made a different decision. If I would have done that, I probably would have replicated the same patterns of behavior that I had already replicated in other places. And so all of that chaos and all that Exodus moment was actually an opportunity by the grace of God, for me to understand that he was giving me another chance to make a different choice, do something different. He didn't say, hey, dude, you've really, really failed at this.

You've really, really been not good at this. So I'm done with you. Come find me when you're willing to fess up and repent and do all those things. No, he was gracious to give me another opportunity into the same invitation that I already knew I was invited into, but I spent 15 plus years running from. And it's changed my life, it's changed my marriage, it's changed my family life.

And I've testified to you, where we had all those things were good, we weren't in debt and we've got a nice house and my kids are awesome and, you know, my wife is amazing and so like. But he has literally changed all of that for even better. And I didn't think it could get any better. I thought it was already really good.

He can do so much more. When you stop trying to preserve your comfort, you stop trying to control everything, and you get to a place where you decide, I'm going to get in the mud and I'm going to fight my own issues so that Jesus can be lord over all areas of my life, not just a couple.

What you overcome today, you will be set free from tomorrow. And, and what you tolerate today, you become enslaved to tomorrow. If you cling to the version of your life that you have now, you will lose it. If you surrender to his vision, you'll finally find your life. I came to give you life and a life abundantly.

When we look at our lives and we're honest with ourselves, do we consider our life now to be a life of abundance in all areas? Because if the answer is no to even one area, then that means that there's at least one area. We have not turned our life over to God or we've not surrendered control to Him. And I'm not saying that that's going to be easier. You should just go home and be like a yo yo.

And you should go from one extreme to the other. But Jesus is promising life abundantly when you get on mission with him. And it takes a process of time to get there. The gospel does not divide because it's broken. It divides because it exposes what's broken in us.

The world preaches peace through avoidance and the kingdom brings peace through the allegiance to Jesus. When the world will say, don't rock the boat, Jesus says, get out of the boat and walk. These things are not the same.

His peace doesn't come through silence, but it absolutely requires, requires surrender. And it doesn't avoid conflict, it redeems it. True shalom isn't the absence of tension, it's the presence of the King in the tension. You're going to have tensions in this life. True biblical peace with the Ruach hakodesh, the Holy Spirit is not that the peace or that conflict never comes into your life.

It's that you have wholeness of the peace of Jesus in the middle of the tension of your life. It's different. Worry, anxiety, all these pressures, or I don't have an answer, but I know Jesus is going to show up and give me one. It's a different thing. The cross wasn't decoration, it was execution.

And the kingdom in action isn't polite. It's a revolution of loyalty to Jesus Christ. It requires exposing the loyalties in your life that aren't to Jesus, repenting of our sins and reconciling our thoughts and our actions to the kingdom of Christ, not to the kingdom of self worship. Team, you can come back.

Your confession is going to cost you.

Your allegiance will divide you and what you're willing to crucify on the cross of your life will define you. If you're not willing to crucify the areas of your life that Jesus isn't the Lord over and to make an adjustment, they will define you. Because sooner or later you have to recognize the culture of your life and says more and testifies more about what you tolerate than what you profess. I profess Jesus as my Messiah. And if you watch my life and my interactions with people in the church and in public when I walk into Walmart, if my life doesn't testify that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, then what I'm tolerating in behavior in my life testifies more about the culture of what I believe than what I say with my own lips.

But if you're willing to do the Hard work with Jesus. If you're willing to lose this world, you will gain eternity. If you're willing to lose that family crest, you will gain a family heritage more rich in abundance than anything else. And I'm not even talking about finances. A lot of times you got to define that nowadays, because America is all about money.

Can anybody in this room use more joy? I could. It says it's a fruit of his spirit. I could use more joy in my life. So, like, that's a generational heritage that I want.

I want more joy. Could anybody use more peace? I could. Even in the peaceful times, I could use more peace. You know, all those people get together and, like, and they're looking for peace, and they don't get any.

And they have to go, like, twice a week or four times a week or whatever. Jesus Christ and the spirit of God can give you better peace than that. And you don't have to sit down on little weird mats. It's like toddler time for adults. Come on.

If you lose your life and you give over control to Christ, you will finally find it. If you lose your comfort, you will gain your calling. If you lose your approval, you will find your peace. Because following Jesus doesn't just change your destination. It changes your definition of family.

You are no longer who your family says you are. There's a lot of people in this room who my wife and I have been meeting with, and we have to say over and over and over again, that does not define you. That does not define. Define you. That does not define you.

That does not define you. We have to speak affirmation into their life because they're listening to the testimony of the adversary, not to the promises of the King.

You are no longer who your family are or what your family did.

You have been adopted into the greatest family ever. The one. The one where the dad didn't spank out of anger.

The one where the. The dad didn't speak out of. Out of anger. I failed that one. The one where the dad didn't bless out of malicious obedience.

I failed that one. I think I'm a decent dad. She's like, I don't know. She shrugged your shoulders. That's the one that would, too.

Jesus doesn't fail.

He does not fail. And that's part of the kingdom on mission. You are who your Father in heaven says you are. If you get nothing else from this message today, you are who your Father in heaven says you are.

And that is a son or daughter of the most high that he loves so Much that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him believeth. If you're in the King James shall not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send his son into the world to judge the world. He sent his son into the world to save the world. I don't know about you, but I still am a man in need of being saved.

You are no longer a slave to the things that have happened before or happened in the present. Because the moment Jesus comes down, the moment he comes down in your heart, in your mind, in your life, the moment you you fall on your knees, the moment you confess that you're a sinner, the moment you confess that you are struggling, the moment you confess that you need him, he comes to you and he offers the opportunity to break the cycle, to break the chains. And you're no longer a slave to this world. You're a child of God.

When I look in the mirror, the world tells me I'm a middle aged man.

My dad says I'm a middle aged man with a mid age crisis because I won't cut my hair. When I look in the mirror every morning, I don't see what I used to see. When I looked in the mirror and I went to do international ministry, I looked in the mirror and I was like, man, you're really good at what you do.

Man, you're really good at what you do. I think I probably thought like God was lucky to have me. Like God, you hired the right guy. Like when I look in the mirror in the morning, all I see is a child of God who is, is just doing the best I can do every single day to get closer to Christ and to help other people get closer to Christ. I know I'm a failure.

I know I don't know everything. I know all those things. And God came down and changed my outlook and changed my perspective. So that no longer do I feel like I have all the answers. But I know that I have one answer that is the most important.

I don't need to have all the answers because I have a direct pipeline, just like you have a direct pipeline to the One who does. And when you give your profession of allegiance to that kingdom, it doesn't matter how awesome or how bad your family was, it doesn't matter how awesome or how bad those people are. You are what welcomed home to a safe house. A house that provides blessings and power that we cannot imagine, power that we cannot operate in.

And so I don't care how long you've been honoring the Sabbath, you've been eating kosher, you've been doing these things. If you've been doing that and walking around believing the lies, that somehow you are not worthy of God or worthy of his power, worthy of his salvation, or worry worried about whether he is going to give you forgiveness, then it's time for you to get on your knees to repent of that, to tell the devil, I rebuke you for what you are saying in my brain and get on mission with Jesus Christ. Because Jesus came to a place, to a culture that was so enamored with their bloodlines. And he says, it doesn't matter how you were born, you have to be born again. Again.

Sorry, I'm going to be gone for three weeks. I'm a little passionate about this topic.

Some of the people in this room are brand new and I've never seen you before. And some of these people in this room, I pray for you every single day to the best of my ability.

I'm not Jesus, Chris, not Christ.

But I love you so much that I need you to understand that I can't even touch a fraction of how much Jesus loves you. And so when he is talking about, you're going on mission with me and it might mean that you might not have the greatest of marriage, why? Because, hey, you're a Levite, you're supposed to go to the temple. And he's saying, no, I need you to go into the wilderness outside of Galilee. Or, hey, by the way, dad, let's start our own Mason business where we can do stones and all this stuff.

You know, I know the. I know Elijah's friend over here. And he says, no, I've been called to go eat locusts in the wilderness. This is where we're going in Matthew. We're going to a place where the spirit of Elijah came to save.

Something different is here. And some of us have not grasped onto that.

And just like these disciples in Matthew needed to make that decision, some of us need to make that decision too. It's not that we don't know Jesus. It's not that we don't know the Torah. It's not that we don't know the prophets. It's that we have not made Him Lord of our life.

And when we have not made Him Lord of our life, we have not turned over every aspect of our life, our bloodlines, our finances, our prayer life, everything to Him. And he's asking for sacrificial service that everything you have is his so that he can come in and take care of every area of your life.

And so while I am on vacation you have homework. I know like everybody, every school teacher ever. I'm going to take a teacher's work day and you guys are going to have to come back with three book reports. I'm not going to ask you to write book reports. This is 2025.

You'll just chat GPT it. Anyways, as we transition into Matthew chapter 11 and we start looking at John the Baptist and the relationship between Jesus and his cousin, ask your yourself this question in your prayer time. Is there an area of my life I would venture to believe all of us have? One that I love more than I love letting go to Jesus. In over three weeks 1% growth.

When you think of something or you go to partake in something or whatever it is, you have a 1% growth in the amount of times you would have acted out of yourself versus you allowed Jesus to come in a 1% growth. Because we have to become a family on mission that understands the expectation of Jesus Christ is that we would join his family, not continue to try to ask him to fit into ours.

This is the power of the gospel that Israel, the Greeks, even those Romans could all be saved and set free. And that is the Jesus way. Well stand with me. Let's respond.