My Own Prison

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This will be our last week of the Remission series. Leading into next week, we're going to transition from remission into the mission, leading all the way into the middle of February for the Sermon on the Mount series. Over the last three weeks, we looked at the renewal of a wineskin for God's purposes for the various seasons in our life. We looked at there was a messenger that was sent to ease the cultural transition and the crisis of belief that would happen when Jesus came into the world. We saw the social revolution of love versus the depravity of human pride, the gift of repentance and the ability to be atoned for once and for all in the heavenlies.

And how Jesus invited us into a relationship that requires intimacy, humility and and the bearing of good fruit. All of that is interwoven together and what it means to be a follower of Christ, what it means to be transformed with the renewing of your mind, what it means to bear his image on this earth. As a reminder from the very first series on the wineskins, I believe the Bible is using the wineskin as a representation of us that when we become old and brittle with holding on with our own wine that we must first pour it out. We must then be submerged in the water. We then must be filled with oil, anointed on the exterior with oil, and then the new wine can come in.

That process is not something that happens overnight. Men. This is not one of those things that you can go to the garage and you can get the task done in one afternoon while having a beer and a hot dog. This is a process that takes a long period of time. Sometimes this is a process that takes a really fast amount of time, but it's happening frequently.

See, yes, I believe the Bible tells everything cyclically. I believe that the Bible shows things multiple times throughout the Scripture. I believe that's just the Lord's way of teaching us to go further, ask, seek not. But not only do we have to be reconditioned through the salvation process, but we have to be reconditioned almost cyclically with the feasts and the festivals and the times and the rhythms of God. We must pour out our old wine.

We must die to our flesh, die to our desires. And then God can create this continual process, this cyclical rhythm in his season and his time for his glory and his well being. As we conclude this portion of the series today and move into the other portion, we have to understand that a lot of churches are saying, what's our mission? We need to be on mission. What's mission?

Church, fam. Coffee, fam. What's our mission, fam? We're all on mission. You don't get to be on mission with the Lord until you have remission first.

The Lord doesn't share his glory with anybody. He doesn't need your talents. He doesn't need anything you have. What he wants is your humility and you to be sold out to his plan and his sovereignty. I might be the greatest at something.

We talked about this last week. I might be the greatest at something until the moment I strike out in the game, to the moment I forget to bring home my emergency pizza when we blew up our chicken, whatever it might be. We think we're the greatest and we're just coming through. We got all these wins until we're not. Jesus never had that knot.

Even in a time where the Romans thought that they were going to win, Jesus was winning. And, you know, if he was more like me and he's not, he probably would have. Would have had that moment of like, they think they've won. But because he was perfect, he had deep compassion for those who had no idea what they were doing. If you're anything like me, you struggle with the times in your life where you rebel against God.

And a lot of us say, well, rebellion is the time that I spend all these years away from the Lord. No, rebellion is when we don't trust that God has our best interest in mind for us, that his plans, his ways, his promises aren't actually what's best for us. We wrestle at becoming new. We wrestle with getting out in front of the plan or refusing to even take part in the plan. We are a people who a lot of times like to live in the extremes.

We live in laziness or we live in ocd. It's not a lot in between. I understand this. I understand this all too well. Because when I try to become more chill, I end up being total chill.

We're talking about, like, just, like, veg out on the couch. You might as well, like, put me down. There's no in between. And this is why I say it's a constant wrestle. Because God's not asking for you to be either extreme.

He's asking for you to be consistently changing through his power, through his might. We lack patience to allow God to teach us wisdom, even when the Lord prunes us from a garden around us. And we struggle to see how he does these things as an opportunity, not only for you, but an opportunity for other people. If God's pruning things from your heart, from your life, from your mind, from your church, from your family. He's not doing that because he wants the death of either party.

He wants both to thrive. He wants you to come to a place where you're fully in bloom. We get caught up doing for God and we forget that it's actually God who does for us. Now, we don't take that as an excuse to be lazy. We don't take that as an excuse to say, well, I don't need to go pray for that guy.

I don't need to go do something. But often we're so busy doing what we call the work of the ministry that we don't allow God to do what God wants to do. And the most important thing we can do is to realize that God is God and we are not. One of my mentors used to say, God is smarter than me. And that's always stuck with me.

Because we live in an age where technology allows you to get everything you can ask AI anything. I found out yesterday while studying with a friend of mine that there's a scholar AI didn't even know such a thing existed. I thought AI was supposed to be scholarly as a whole. Apparently not. Apparently AI bad scholar AI good learned this yesterday.

But we live in a day and age where knowledge is increasing rapidly. But knowledge without wisdom is dangerous. And we continue a cycle, knowing about God, about His character, about his heart, without truly allowing God to become God, without truly allowing God to mold us into his character, and without God being allowed to truly place his mind and his heart inside of us, you shall surely not die. And yet the knowledge of good and evil has forced us to a place where the only way forward for life is for us to be born again into his presence. This is one of the most important lessons that the Lord has been teaching me over the last couple of months.

Yet it's also one of the hardest ones for me to fully grasp. My walk, my beliefs, all the good things I might do, they're all fruitless without his presence. My walk, my beliefs, they're meaningless without the fruit of his spirit multiplying in my life and in the life of those around me. Next week, as we start into the Mission series, we're going to look at obedience and fruit. What's important when God calls us?

I've heard many, many things over the years. Well, the duty of all man is to fear the Lord and keep his commandments. It's to be obedient to the Lord. Yet obedience without the fruit of that obedience is not truly obedience. It means that somewhere along the line, we took something that was perfect, we saw what it should produce, and we convoluted it in the practice.

This is pretty much humanity in general. God is perfection. God tells you what you should see by walking like him. And he helps us along the way to figure out how to do that. And if starting point is A and we're supposed to get to B, if somewhere in the middle things get all jacked up, then we like to turn.

We like to say, oh, well, this is the Lord's problem. Or, oh, the Lord didn't do this. The Lord didn't. No, it's always been our problem. This is why we have to be reconditioned.

This is why we have to be open to seek knock. This is why we have to follow Jacob's example and consistently and constantly wrestle with the Lord. It is not a sin to know your limitations. It is a sin to think apart from God. You have none.

This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn over the last year to two years, is that it's not a sin for me to understand I have limitations. People are like, I can do all things in Christ. Well, that's true, but I can't run three miles. Christ, he can help me run three miles, but I can't run three miles. You know how I know?

Cause I can't run 30ft, so I'm not gonna try three miles. It's not a sin to know your limitations and understanding your limitations and your boundary in those seasons you press into the Lord's, help, the Lord's power, the Lord's spirit, to move you forward. Yet there's all kinds of wise men, there's all kinds of people who are written about in the Torah and the prophets and in the Brit Hadasha and the Gospels. They did amazing things for the Lord. The prophets would actually have visions and hear from the Lord, and the heavens would react with the earth.

And when the heavens and the earth react, they would be the mouthpiece for the heavens and the earth. King David, all the miraculous things he did, wrote the Psalms, Isaiah, the prophet, Jeremiah, Amos, Habakkuk.

Yet we see almost all of them at some point in time, have a great deal of sadness and anguish. See, sometimes people will tell you that your emotions are unhealthy. The Bible is an emotional book. The Bible allows for anguish. There is an entire book.

I'm pretty sure not everybody wakes up in the morning in their daily devotions, and they're like, you know what we should do. We should go to Lamentations. Let's. Let's. The joy of the Lord is my strength with weeping and sorrow.

But there's an entire book and multiple other passages that talk about the emotional wrestle. Isaiah 59:2 says, but your sins have separated you from God. They have caused to him to turn his face away from you, so he won't listen to you. Deuteronomy 31, 17, 18 says, God says he will forsake them and hide his face from them because they have turned their faces to other gods. Psalms.

There's a lot of psalms, so I'm just gonna hit chapters. You go read them on your own. But Psalm 13:27 and 29 all speak of a great anguish because God has turned his face from them, or so the author feels. Habakkuk, chapter 1:13. God's eyes are too pure to behold evil, and God cannot look on wrongdoing.

Some would even suggest in Matthew's gospel, in chapter 27, when Yeshua is on the cross and he's at the end, and he's there and he's hanging, and Jesus has almost given up his life, and he says, my father, my father, why have you forsaken me, Lord? Lord, why have you forsaken me? Some say that the reason why he felt that great anguish is because at the moment he was taking the weight of the world, and he was taking and atoning for the sins and the burdens of everything that we did, we do, past, present and future, that the Lord had, his father had to turn his face from him. In that moment, being absent from the presence and the Spirit of God is like a wilderness. It's a place of trials and preparation.

It's a time where we're being reconditioned, tested, and prepared. John went into the wilderness to prepare for the Lord, the culture, and the empire. As we talked about last week, you had the Essenes in the Qumran community, part of the Zadok family at that point in time, you know, this is about 150, 170 years after Hanukkah was the festival of dedication. You have the lineage of Aaron, you know, the Levitical high priest. And there was 24 families that were there.

Sixteen of those families were from one side of the family, and then there was eight from the other side of the family. And at that time, the Maccabees came in and they said, you know what, Greeks? I'm sorry, we're not going to allow you to do a big roast on our altar. This altar is Dedicated to beef only. We're not doing this here.

And they took up arms and they cleansed the temple. If you've ever read in Maccabees, I know a lot of the Protestant canons don't have the Book of Maccabees in there, but some of the other canons do. And in the Book of Maccabees, it talks about after this had happened, that they had gone up on Mount Zion. And while they're on Mount Zion, they're sitting there and they're ripping their clothes in sackcloth and ashes for the destruction that they see for the house of the Lord, for the destruction that they see in the abominations that took place on the altar. And they go through a mourning period.

And then they get the entire Sanhedrin. It says in the Assemblies of Israel, which is not. It's not like us. We're all part of the assembly of hff. But that terminology would mean that the Sanhedrin, the leaders of Israel, they get all of them together and they declare they're going to dedicate and cleanse this altar.

We get to hear about Russia, we get to hear about Ukraine, we get to hear about these things on the news. This was the empire of the world that they were living in. They didn't get to shoot shotguns from long range or missiles or whatever. Their combat was very, very violent and physical. They had skin in the game.

They had to have skin in the game. This is the cultural crisis of Jesus time. Syrians fighting the Greeks, the Greeks fighting the, fighting the Romans, the Jews fighting each other. Everybody's talking about, were the Maccabees legitimate, illegitimate? They were 100% legitimate.

They were from the line of Aaron. They were 100% chosen for the priesthood. And yet while they're trying to get back to status quo, John goes into the wilderness. John declares, repent, be baptized, for one is coming. He's preparing a way for the Lord.

I would venture to say everybody in this room at some point in time has had some sort of crisis of belief. Whether it's going from being a Baptist to Assemblies of God, or whether it was growing up Catholic and then becoming Messianic, whatever it is, all of the in between, there's crisis of belief. But those are crisis of belief that live in the internal, for the most part. They not only had those crisis of belief in that time, but they had very much the external crisis of belief, of empires constantly surrounding them. And yet the Israelites were coming out in droves to the wilderness to be baptized.

This is no different than when we see the Lord part at Passover, the Red Sea, and lead the Israelites into the wilderness. It was a place to prepare to meet for the Lord on the mountain. And then it was a place to prepare to dwell in the land of the promises that God had given them. It's also a time where we question what we're seeking after. Is it easy to seek God when he's talking to you every day?

Yeah. When I wake up and I feel like the Lord's speaking to me right then and there, and I'm getting my paper out and I'm writing down and I'm taking these notes. It's very easy to be with the Lord. It's very easy to be with the Lord when you're listening to a worship song and the spirit is moving inside of you and you can feel the Lord's presence as you praising, giving, adoration. That's super easy.

But what are you gonna do when he's not giving you those daily revelations? What are you gonna do when he's not talking to you? What are you gonna do when you're walking in your guilt, shame and condemnation and you feel separated from him?

This isn't new, guys. Even the apprentices, after the death, burial and resurrection were told to wait. They were probably hiding. I mean, to be just to be really honest, at that point in time, their king had been killed and they were trying to round them up. They were probably waiting and hiding for the Lord to come and reveal.

But it was a time where they didn't know what to do. It was super easy to do what Jesus told them. He was standing in front of them. What are they going to do now when the atmosphere has changed? What are they going to do when they feel like the presence of the Lord is not with them?

What are they going to do when they go and they're told by the ladies to go to Galilee, and they go to Galilee, and all of a sudden he reveals himself to them again on a mountain. And then he's going to go away again. These are pictures of our own personal walk with the Lord.

Acts chapter seven gives us some insight into what the Israelites were doing in their wilderness. Moses goes up on the mountain, he gets engulfed with what they say are clouds. And this beautiful picture. I don't think we've even seen it. Like, you know, AI now, like, they do all these images and it's like, oh, the mountain was like.

The Israelites were flat out scared to death. So I think the majesty in awe of what they Saw was overwhelming. But yet Moses goes up with the Lord and he's up there for 40 days and 40 nights. And in Acts, chapter seven, we get to find out what was happening there.

The Israelites got impatient. The Israelites thought Moses had left them. In some translations, it's paraphrased like this. Where's this man who led us out of Egypt? Let us create gods that we can follow after.

We don't know where he went. They got impatient, and at the same point in time, in the wilderness time, they saw a pillar of fire in a cloud. So in some points of our life, we see the wilderness as an atmosphere of an absence of the presence of the Lord. The Israelites felt like there was an absence of the presence of the Lord when Moses went up there, even though they. I mean, come on, guys.

Like, they knew he was there. They watched this happen. But they needed tangible things to remind them, because that's what they were used to. They couldn't be patient. We see once the Lord comes down and instructs them to build the tabernacle, and they start moving through the process, the refining process, the reconditioning process, in the wilderness.

You would think that in that time, they see the fire come down at night, and they see the pillar of cloud move by day. You would think that they would be on their best behavior. But no. They're constantly grumbling, they're constantly upset. They constantly want to do it their way.

They constantly don't trust Moses. They constantly don't trust God. They constantly don't do these things. Guys, show of hands in the room. How many of you have seen God move you from place to place by a pillar of fire that you could visually see?

I'm not talking about a vision. I'm talking about you could legit see with your eyes either a pillar of fire or a cloud. And I know it's Oklahoma, but don't say every tornado you've ever seen is a cloud moving. Okay. How many of you witnessed that in your life?

Okay, me either. They did.

And they immediately wanted to go back to create a God that they could tangibly see, they could tangibly touch, they could tangibly operate with. They were more interested and going back to Egypt, whether spiritually, mentally, emotionally, than they were to sit in the reconditioning process with the Lord's presence. What will you do when he says to wait and to dwell here?

Will you long after the things that God is removing or that God has already removed, or are you trying to get out in front of What God's already promised you. Neither one is great.

God's promises, come on. God's timeline come with God's mission. You don't get to just go running for it. It's kind of like my kids. When my mom sends them gifts, they immediately think that this means they've arrived, which means I get to open it.

No, we're gonna wait until the family gets together, we sit down and we FaceTime grandma.

And they can't handle it.

You would have thought that the end of the world was coming for them. You would have thought I was pulling their nails out. The greatest form of ancient torture of children is withholding of the presence for hours. You want something from them that is your maximum capability to get it, they will do it in that moment. Well, guess what?

As we grow up as adults, it's not really that different. We want what we want when we want it. You ever tried to sit in Chick Fil? A, one of the most efficient fast food restaurants, and even then everybody's like, can they be faster? I want my spicy pimento cheese hot honey.

And they're one of the most efficient. We're a spoiled people. Are you going to long for the things that God's removed or removing from you? Or are you going to try to take the promises of God in your timeline? As we're reconditioned, there's a time between the old wine and the new wine.

There's a time where we must be patient, we must adhere to God's timeline, we must adhere to God's calling, or we run the risk that we take the reconditioning process into our own hands once again. We don't have a high success rate as humanity of walking in the grace and the mercy and the compassion of the Lord. He has a 100% success rate doing that at every point in time. I've had many wilderness moments in my life, and honestly, a lot over the last couple years. I told you, I'm kind of an extremes person.

You know, there's moments where the Lord is just literally talking to me non stop. I've gotten 40, 50 pages worth of notes of things. I have no idea what it means. It might be tongues, but in the end, I've got all these pages of things the Lord's revealing and the Lord's showing to me, and the Lord is doing. And then there's times where I can ask and ask and ask, and it seems like the most simple, like, lord, am I doing the right thing?

Lord, I need you to talk to me. About this. Lord, can you just give me a God wink on this one? Just need a little wisdom here. Just a bit.

Just, you know, like Stevie, I just need a tiny bit, Just a tiny bit. And I don't feel like I'm getting the answer from him.

Previously in my life, I would move forward.

All right, Keep seeking, keep knocking. Now I've chosen just to sit there. It's one of the hardest things to do. I'm a type A personality. I do not like open ended things, but that's where I sit and I wait.

Not only should understand what maybe I need to do, but maybe what I need to learn.

I've said before in previous sermons and I think the wilderness time is a proper time for this as well. I look at all conflicts not as what's wrong with the other person. I really don't like a blame culture. I think a blame culture is wrong. We're all going to fall short.

We're all going to make mistakes. I like a learning culture, one where we can learn from our mistakes, where we can be transparent and honest. And so if we have a conflict, Matt, if you and I get in a conflict, I'm sending the elders after you. I mean, that's a joke. It's going to happen if you and I get in a conflict.

I approach this as what can I learn from this situation? God, what are you trying to teach me? One of my favorite worldly mentors was Steve Jobs. I have the same Myers Briggs personality. That should let you know a lot about me.

He would talk about the fact that he loved failure. And the reason why he loved failure is because he knew that with his personality, every time he failed, he would actually learn something. And when he learned something, he could take what he learned and he could do it again. And he would get further along. A lot of times we don't wanna take that approach.

And we definitely don't wanna take that approach in our relationship with God. Well, there's no way I can get over this sin. There's no way I can learn anything else. There's no way I need to do this. I need to do that.

And sometimes God is telling you, I already know you're gonna fail. I need you to go this far today. Fail, learn, move, go this far. What I like to call, my wife likes to call in our counseling sessions, little wins. When you feel like chaos is in your life, when you feel like God isn't speaking to you, Come on, guys.

Like it's not always going to be a burning bush moment. Sometimes you have to look for the still, small voice. Sometimes you have to look for the little wins. And you have to make sure they're actually him and they're not you or they're not other tests and other trials. We should want to be refined.

We should want to be made pure. But none of us have the opportunity to do that on our own. We absolutely can only do that with the power of God. You know, the temple for many, many years was pure and holy. And then Christ came and he says, one is greater than the temple is healer.

And they were still looking at the temple. They were looking at the house.

They weren't looking for the owner of the house. Now, as the walking living temple of the Holy Spirit, are we looking at the house, or are we looking for the owner of the house?

Because you cannot be refined without the owner of the house. His presence, his spirit. He's the one who reconditions. I've learned that I have to embrace the agony of not having the Lord speak to me the way I want. It's a shocker that God won't do what I want him to do.

So what do we do as humans? Do we turn around and then say, well, we're not going to do what God wants us to do. Surely not. That's a toddler. And while we're allowed to have fits, we should learn from our fits.

And this is what the wilderness season is. I won't lie to you. I have fits with the Lord.

What are you doing? Why are you doing it? They're all gonna laugh at me. They're all gonna hate me. But when the Lord says, do something, I can tell you now more than ever, yes, sir.

Say, let's do it. I don't care what happens. And there's a lot of peace that comes in there. It's in those moments of being tested and refined that you learn just how much you truly have changed, Just how much the spirit of God is truly living in you. Was I truly letting God lead?

Or was I only letting God lead when I wanted a day off? At some point in time to fully feel the power and the presence of the Lord inside of you, you have to allow him to lead at all times, not just when you're comfortable. Can I abide in him? There's a word that's pretty popular right now. Abide.

Can you abide in the presence of the Lord even when the Lord says, sit here? Or do you only sit under trees when you're sulking like Jonah?

The presence of the Lord should be Something that you can crawl up into and rest at all times. Look, it's December. It's almost January. People are sick and allergies are happening. And the weather in Oklahoma has maintained a consistency of schizophrenia.

There's all kinds of things to be anxious about and to be angry about or whatever, but can you just sit and abide with the presence of the Lord? We see in Exodus chapter 31 through 33 that Moses did not want the promises of God without the presence of God. Think of that for a second. Everything God promised the Israelites. Let's say he's promised that to you.

Wealth, hair, past 42, sports car, whatever it is, good health, great wife. Let's say he's giving you all those things. That's the promises. Moses says, I don't want any of them if you're not gonna go with me. How many of us are really willing to say that?

How many of us are really willing to say, I don't want your promises? Lord, they sound really, really great. They sound awesome. I would love to have a huge skyscraper in my name. All these things would be great.

But I'm not going unless you go with me. How many of us really have that intimacy in the core of us? This was Moses heart. I don't want your power. I don't want your land.

I don't want anything if you're not going with me.

If you're not going to be there, Lord, I'm not going to be there either. Think of that. That's what I want to continue to aspire to be as a person. I don't want any of your promises. I don't want any of your rewards.

I want your presence. I would rather sit in the wilderness, move from town to town, than just settle without Christ in my midst. What faith, what hope?

A wilderness season can look like a fast from the presence of God. God doesn't do this to exploit you or to abuse you. God is not abusive. A fast from his presence doesn't mean he's not with you. We see this in the story of the Exodus.

They kept saying, like, oh, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But God was clearly dwelling in their midst. We see this in the temple. They would go up daily and bring offerings, and they would go up cyclically and they bring offerings.

And the priests would go continually. They knew God was there, but they were lacking his presence. They were lacking His Holy Spirit. They were lacking his anointing. And it became a rote routine.

Ananias turned it into basically a den of thieves. He would tax the daylights out of him. You want a turtle dove? All right. Price of three turtle doves.

We watched a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Anything with Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be good. But this was especially good. I don't even know the name of it, but like, he's like looking for like a Turboman or something. And Sinbad's in it too.

And he's a male guy. And it's like, I think it's Christmas Eve and they're running around and they're trying to find this toy. This is the toy their children and want and what? Jingle all the way. Okay, yeah, I watched that movie.

I watched that movie this week.

And Arnold goes to all these stores and they're getting fights and they do horrendous things. But he loves his child so much that he wants to find this doll because his child will have this doll. And in the end, there's a Santa Claus. I think he's played by like Jim Bellucci or one of those guys, pretty funny. And he's like, hey bud.

He's got a little elf looking dude. He's like, got a picture of him like with the newspaper holding up the Turbo Man. Riley, I totally could see you doing this for Kobe. And he says, hey man, you want it? Take it.

So he's got to drive him and he drives him to this like sketchy warehouse. And you know, it's Hollywood, so it's the same thing. They open it up and there's all these sketchy Santa Clauses walking around and they're taking and putting stuff in and all this. And. And the guy, the Santa Claus dude tries to like, he tries to like sell it off.

It's like, it's a legit thing. Like if this is, this is above board, this is, this is totally cool. And so he gives him, or they go get this Turboman and it's wrapped up. And he goes, all right, how much do I owe you? And he goes, 300 bucks.

It's like a twenty dollar doll, but because of supply and demand, they can charge him $300. And so he's like, oh, you, you ripped off. It would have been really great if they would have said at that moment, you sit on a throne of lies. But you know, it comes in a different movie at a different time. And so he gives him the $300 only to open it up and realize that it's fallen apart.

And it's the Spanish version. And he's like, no. You know, back when Arnault looked a little bit younger.

And I say all of that because ultimately, in the end, we can take advantage of anything we want in our life. We can take advantage of the Lord. We can exploit. We can be like Ananias was and we can exploit the offering system. We can exploit those moments when the Lord isn't talking to people.

I know what the Lord's saying to you. Come listen to me. But all of them are tests. Can you hear the Lord's voice? Can you feel the Lord's presence in the Lord's spirit?

Are you willing to sit and not move? Are you willing to sit and allow people to not move in their reconditioning process? Are you willing to walk alongside other people whose reconditioning process maybe hasn't started yet, but yours just finished? See, that's the hard thing. It's really easy.

If we're all military style and we just say, hey, here's the leader and this is what you do. If you don't do it, then this is what happens to you. Get in and get out. That's easy. What are you going to do when people are at different spots from you when their wilderness season hasn't happened or their wilderness season is longer?

Are you going to be the one that helps them find the power and the presence of the Lord helps them find the calling so they can help you?

The Bible tells us that the Lord dwells within each and every one of us.

Yet we all need a time of transforming and reconditioning. We all need to be empowered more by God. We all need more of the Holy Spirit every day of our life. I don't care if you laid hands on somebody and raised them from the dead. It's not over until you take your last breath.

You need more of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in you. And that doesn't just come in moments of great joy. Sometimes it takes in moments of great silence. A spirit of delusion, a religious spirit of comfort and self worth will always hold on to what you had or what you've experienced while ignoring what God's doing in the very real, present moment of your life and the lives of other ones. While we constantly see the waiting in the wilderness themes throughout the scripture, when apprentices of Jesus were told to wait for his presence and calling after his death, burial and resurrection, God revealed to them who he truly was.

That what he told them was gonna happen, had to happen. And then he said, God and multiply. This is no longer the time of Waiting, maintaining. It's a time to multiply. Sometimes in our wilderness moments, we want to do for God.

We want God. I want to multiply your kingdom. And God's saying at this time, I need you to sit and heal. Put your roots down. Let me heal you.

Let me fill you. Then go.

While others plotted to protect their positions, their narratives and their holiness, their homes and their influence, God called the twelve to that mountain again. He said, I've been given all authority in heaven and earth. Therefore go and make apprentices of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching your new apprentices to obey all that I taught you. And be sure of this. Even in your wilderness moments, be sure of this.

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Some of you are in your wilderness moments being reconditioned, and you know you cannot do it on your own. But you haven't embraced the truth and the promises of a healthy father who says, I am with you always until the end of the age.

Worship team, you can come back. When we don't embrace the wilderness season in our life, we don't embrace the reconditioning process. We don't allow God to be our God and to do what God can only do, that is to prepare us for the next season. And when we do that, we get ourselves stuck in a prolonged time of reconditioning. Through the reconditioning process, you're being prepared to go make apprentices of the Lord to the lost, to the needy.

But where are you going to be and who are you going to be to that person? If you raced out of your reconditioning process, if you didn't, you didn't heal, you didn't drop out every little bit of old oil. I was ministering to this guy on the street and he gave his life to Christ and he wanted to come to church. But I spiraled out two weeks later because I never really had gone through the reconditioning process.

The church is full of people who are spiraling in and out of the church. Saw a study the other day, I think Bible sales in this last year up 22 to 23%. People are definitely searching.

But we have to embrace the wilderness moments of our life so that in that time of healing, we can go to those people and be those people. The Bible was never given so one person could walk alone. The Bible was given in a community, for a community so that we can walk together. Why? Because even Moses, even Moses, Leading them into the wilderness.

When Joshua was fighting Amalek, when he held up the staff of the Lord has some power. When he held it up, the Lord was fighting the battle on behalf of Joshua and the Israelites, and they were defeating Amalek. But again, Moses was a mere man, just like I'm a mere man, you're mere women. Hands started to fall, got tired. I don't know how much the staff weighed, but I'm guessing it wasn't much.

I'm guessing Moses was not going through Riley and Jensen's routine in the morning. And so as the arm started to go down, Aaron and Hur came up behind him and held up his arms. And as the arms went down, Amalek started to approach and started to win and started to take crown.

Your wilderness season isn't just about you. It's about other people.

I could be the world's greatest, but sometimes I'm gonna need Stephen to hold my arms up. Stephen might be the world's greatest, but sometimes he's gonna need me to hold his arm up. And Aaron and her came and they propped up Moses's arm and they brought a stone behind him, and he set, sat down, and while he could hold his arms up. And Amalek was defeated. Bible sales are up 22 to 23% this year.

That's awesome. The Bible was never given to be read alone and to be walked out alone. It was to be done in a community. Even before the Israelites became a nation, God continued to show them, this is not about you. This is about everyone.

And you have to be wise enough. Whether you're a leader of tens or fives or hundreds of thousands, you have to be wise enough to understand what the time and the calling is. Where does wisdom come from? God and the Holy Spirit.

If you don't spend time in those wilderness moments, how are you going to be filled? To go into the land of the calling? How are you going to be filled? To go in with a promise? Jesus was in the wilderness.

He was face to face with, with the adversary, with the Satan. And it says, as he was overcoming him and quoting scripture and telling him no, no, no, that the angels were cheering him on in heaven.

Lean into your wilderness season because the angels are with you. God is with you. Why? For the calling.

Can I testify to you guys, as somebody who loves you with all of my heart, don't make the same mistake I did. For years, I ran from the wilderness experience. I thought I knew exactly what God wanted. I thought I knew exactly what this Was supposed to look like I thought I knew. And so, yeah, I'd study.

I'd study with everybody to tell how this is very wise. Yeah, I think that's what it means. The Greek means this. The Hebrew means that very wise, very knowledgeable. The reconditioning the Lord has done, the healing that the Lord has done, the visions that the Lord has shown in this season versus those is unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life.

I have heard the Lord talk to me. I have seen the Lord give me visions. I have had peace and clarity on every level. Guys, I'm not a Pentecostal. I didn't even grow up Assemblies of God.

I was a Baptist and I was a Nazarene. We didn't even raise our hand in worship.

And the Bible tells me that I'm not allowed to be selfish. I want you to experience the same things that I have experienced the Lord do in my life over the last two years. I want you to feel that peace and that joy and that freedom in the Lord. As we make this transition from the canceling of debts, the needing of the Savior into studying over the next couple of weeks. What did the Savior say to do and how did the Savior say to do it?

As I went through studying for this in November, I realized just how much I'm not like Jesus. Jesus led from silence. I lead from a task note list on my phone. Jesus started with prayer. I normally come to prayer an hour or two after I started my day.

I realized just how much I didn't walk like Jesus, how I didn't think like Jesus, and how I didn't leave my own life like Jesus. So how can you be on mission to make disciples for the kingdom? How can you be on mission to preach the gospel if you don't actually walk in the most basic ways like Jesus? Now, I can. I can promise you I'm not going to start wearing a tunic to church.

But we're going to look at the character and the practices of how the champion of heaven walked.

And we're going to try to model our church and our life after that. Because if he was the only one perfect and I already know I can't be, the goal is to be more like him. Well, I haven't been able to just like put my hands on somebody and raise them from the dead. So we're gonna start with small things like leading from silence and leading from prayer and what the Bible says. And maybe we'll see what the Lord does when we work up with that.

But God has healed so many things inside of me over the last couple years because I finally leaned into the quiet place, to the wilderness place. And I'd love for you guys to feel what I feel now when I talk to him. And some of you maybe already do, but I'm guessing not everybody in the church does. And I believe even, like, where I'm at now, there's always room to grow. And that's why we have to lean in in the wilderness and say, lord, I need you.

If you would stand with me and let's respond.