October 24, 2025 • 36 mins
Have you been trading God’s truth for what the enemy has said?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
in your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message. In Romans chapter one, verse twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
There's a scripture I've been thinking about for quite a
while now, and I've been looking forward to the opportunity
to preach it, and this weekend Live as the appropriate time.
And God has really been using it this weekend. You're
not the first group that I've seen this weekend, and
yet I believe that God has saved the best for
last and that He desires to minister to you in
a specific way today. And I'll read this verse and
(00:44):
this will give you the premise for our message. And
it's found in Romans chapter one, verse twenty five. It
says that they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator who is forever praised Amen. They exchanged the truth
(01:05):
about God for a lie. And as people say that
the Bible is not relevant to today's culture. But let
me read this again. It sounds like it was written
on Twitter last night. They exchanged the truth about God
for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather
than the Creator. Have you ever got your priorities mixed
up and started serving something that God gave to you
and forgotten about the God who gave them?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and
began to serve created things rather than the Creator who
is forever praised.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Amen. The subject heading I want to use today is.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Trading truth, and I want to talk to you on
this topic Trading truth. Lord, I thank you that your
word is truth. Illuminate it now and help us to
receive it with courage to obey it. In Jesus name, Amen,
you may be seated, God bless you. I lie in
my cai. Sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes, you
(02:07):
know what we're all doing in they were taking a nap.
Sometimes it's just for their own while it was the
door locked safety dangerous criminals. You have to do it sometimes.
Don't look at me judgmentally. You if you never lied
to your kids, you haven't had them yet. But sometimes
(02:32):
it's really a matter of survival.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And even a few days ago, we were at the
beach for the kid's spring break and they had talked
me out into the ocean.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
They talked me out of the hot tub into the ocean.
I'm too old for this crap. It was a fifty
one degrees outside. But I'm hey, hey, I'm Dad of
the year. Don't worry about it. I already got the
I'm Dad of the Year. I went out in that
cold ocean with all three kids, and Abby was hanging
(03:06):
onto my arm the whole time, just every time. It
was really it was a really rough ocean, but it
made it kind of fun until until it wasn't fun anymore.
You know how it is when you're kind of playing out,
you kind of stepping.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Further and further out, and you don't even know how far,
how far out you've gotten, and then you kind of
get carried away, and you don't really realize how far
you've been carried away until you're looking and kind of
look at the original point where you were, which would
be a whole sermon in itself, but that's not what
I want to preach about.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
What I wanted to tell you is we're kind of
getting carried away, and then the undercurrent got really strong
and started just pulling all of us, all four of us.
The only one who had good enough sense to be
in the house was Holly. She's not as committed to
parenting and making memories as I am. She was on
her phone, and I'm out there realizing in this moment, wait,
(03:59):
nobody else is in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It's just us.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Everybody who knows anything about safety in the water is inside.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right now, this is dangerous. And then it really got scary.
I couldn't touch the bottom, and Abby's on my arm,
and her being on my arm and is a problem.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I can curl her all day long.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
She's just very well below my curling maximum weight ability,
trust me. But when she's on my arm and I
can't touch, and then Graham jumps on my back and
we're all simultaneously being pulled, and I realized, like, well,
we're way further out than I intended us to be.
And Abbey's on my arm and Graham's on my back,
(04:37):
and I'm like, Graham, I love you, dude, but you got.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
To swim right now. It's every verdict for himself right now.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I need to take at least two of us back
in the house for your mom. We start swimming back in.
Abby's on my arm and Graham's swimming. Now Elijah's the
bravest one. He's out way past all of us, and
he's screaming at me to come get him or something,
and I can't come get him.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
His sister's on my arm and it's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And so I just kidding, I kidding, but this calmness
came over me, or at least I pretended that it did.
I said, Elijah, it's fine, son, And secretly I'm looking
at him, thinking this is our last time talking together,
(05:28):
you know, But I knew I had to keep him swimming.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
It was just a leadership instinct that came over me.
I'm like, it's fine, just swim, You'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's not that bad here where we are if you
can just get here.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Meanwhile, I'm dying, you know. And so we made it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We made it back to the shore, aren't you glad?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Thank you for praying me through.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And then Elijah said something really funny to me. I
thought this was really really profound. He's like, you didn't
even seem scared. Were you not worried about me. Were
you were you just gonna let me stay out there?
You know, well, of course I was. Your sisters only
had eight years to live, you've had thirteen. And it's
(06:11):
just but but I I think he was.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I think he was amazed.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
He was like you, you just didn't even seem worried
about it, And to which I told him, well, son,
I was lying. I was lying for your own good.
I knew if you knew how bad it was, you'd
stop swimming. And so the best thing I could do
for your survival was to lie to you. It's like
(06:38):
a rahab lie. It's a lie for the purposes of God.
Don't judge me. Don't judge me. But sometimes I lie
to myself. It's a survival instinct. It's just that sometimes
my feet can't find the bottom, and life it's a
(07:00):
little bit turbulent, and I find myself drifting and in
the new reality that I'm trying to embrace according to
what God says I am. Sometimes what I used to
be feels more solid, more stable, and more comfortable. And
sometimes it's easier for me to lie to myself and
tell myself a story. I got good at it, even
(07:25):
as a little boy. It wasn't that my childhood was
bad or anything like that. But all of us experience
things in life that teach us to lie to ourselves.
When we read a scripture like Romans chapter one, verse
twenty five that says they exchange the truth about God
for a lie, a part of us says, who would
do that? Who would trade a perfectly good truth for
(07:49):
a lie? And yet the fact is, there are some
lies that we have learned so well that they feel
true even more than the truth does. Can I preach
like I've been out of the pulpit for three weeks
and I've got something to say. I want to show
you today an illustration from the life of Jesus, and
(08:12):
I want to show you how sometimes the enemy doesn't
sabotage your life with a lie. He tells you a
truth and he twists it just enough. And I believe
that the Lord desires to set us free today. But
only by the truth can we be set free. You know,
(08:34):
Jesus knew the truth because he was the truth. He
knew the word of God because he was the word
of God. And when the enemy came to Jesus and
Matthew Chapter four in the Wilderness, to Timptim, he made
the crucial mistake with the son of God of debating
the word of God. And it's a bad idea to
debate the word of God with the word of God.
(08:56):
John chapter one says, in the beginning was the Word,
and the word was with God, and the Word was God.
He's not arguing with someone who knows about the Word
of God. He is arguing with the embodiment of the
Word of God. And it gives us a pure picture
of the principle that is illustrated in Romans one twenty five,
but only in reverse in Matthew chapter four, verse one.
(09:17):
Our perspective is immediately challenged because it says that Jesus
was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil. And that is a strange construct,
that Jesus was led by God to be tempted by
the devil. If you've been told that God won't lead
you into difficult situations, you've been lied to. If you've
(09:38):
ever been told, or it's ever been implied or inferred,
that the will of God will always lead to the
path of least resistance, you've been lied to. If you've
ever been told that the proof of the favor of
God on your life is that situations become less difficult
and more agreeable. You've been lied to because Jesus, before
his ministry was fully announce was let into the wilderness
(10:01):
to be tempted by the devil. And yet I want
us to see that this passage is as much about
trust as it is about temptation. Now let me say
this real quickly. It's not the truth that you can quote,
it's not the truth that you know mentally, but it
(10:23):
is the truth that you do that guides your life
to its ultimate outcome. I will never forget watching y'all
when I was a kid with the Jane Fond to
work Out DVDs, eating a bowl of ice cream watching
(10:46):
the Jane Fond to work Out DVDs. And when I asked,
why aren't you doing the DVDs? I'm only like eight
years old and my mom and dad are eating briars
watching Fonda. They said, well, we've got to know what
to do before we can do it. But sometimes if
(11:07):
you would do what you knew, I might get it
worth it for me. After fasting forty days and forty nights,
he was hungry. I nominate this for most obvious verse
in the Bible. The Tempter came to him at his
(11:29):
weakest moment. The tempter came to him in the area
of his appetite. The tempter came to him at a
place of great vulnerability and said, if you are the
son of God, tell these stones to become bred. And
how many times in my life have I been tempted
in this exact way. It's a good thing Jesus knew
the truth. It's a good thing Jesus had just been
(11:51):
baptized by John and the Jordan River. It's it's a
good thing that Jesus had just heard his father say,
this is my beloved.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Son, and whom I'm well pleased.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It's a good thing he had just been told the truth,
because when you just encountered truth, when you know who
you are, when you have a full understanding of who
you are in God's eyes, you don't have to prove
it in anybody else's.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
How many times have I been.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Susceptible to the temptation to prove who I am by
what I do? But when you know that who you
are is not dependent on what you do, your value
is not assessed by others. Then you don't have to
post stuff to prove stuff. You're going to set somebody
free today. You don't have to post stuff to prove
(12:41):
stuff when you know the truth about it. And Jesus answered,
it is written men shall not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
One of the hardest years of my life was twenty thirteen.
My dad was our church was under heavy criticism in
(13:02):
the media, and I was going through so many things
at once. I felt like Rocky when he said, I
don't know which one to hit. I see three of
them out there, and they said hit the one in
the middle. And there were so many things going on
around me. I didn't know what to do. But it
was really comforting to me that the things I had
preached to you I was able to live off of.
(13:24):
For me, the proof that something is true in your
life is not that you can understand it or say
amen to it, but that you.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Can live on it. That you can live on it.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sometimes we're too impressed with cliches, and sometimes we think
something is true just because it rhymes.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I found out in preaching sometimes you can make something
rhyme and.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It can be totally totally opposite.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You know, you can make something start with the same letter,
curiosity killed the cat.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's good, meow amen.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Actually, the original saying wasn't curiosity killed the cat.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It was care killed the cat.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And it was used to mean that they fed the
cat too much and he died because he was too fat.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
They cared too much.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And then they changed it from care meaning they over
fed him to care he was too worried. So now
it means that worry killed the cat. But then one
day it just became curiosity killed the cat. Now there
are no statistical evidences of dead felines based on inquisitive natures.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But it just sounds good. And some stuff sounds good,
but it ain't true.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it is. Just
because it rhymes, just because it is aligned with your
life experience up to this point doesn't make it true.
Just because it's the way it's always been for you
and your mom and it doesn't make it true. And
so then we get really bad advice and we say
really bad things that that sound good on the surface,
(15:01):
but beneath them they're really bad belief systems. I thought
about calling this message what's your BS for belief system?
What's your belief system? And I wanted to call it
that because that's what's driving your life. They say, live
(15:24):
your truth. I heard that before. Live your truth. That's
the important thing. Just live your truth. And it sounds good.
But what if my truth is a trap? What if
your truth isn't the truth? Do you have to stay
(15:45):
stuck in a story and call it the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Let me go back to Matthew four.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Jesus said it is written men shall not live on
bread alone, but on every word.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
That comes from the mouth of God.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So then the devil he does something that I was
very interested to study this out. And if I've preached
on this passage ten times before, I apologize to the
other ten that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I never pointed this out because I never saw it.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We always assume that the enemy comes to us with lies,
and then we quote the word of God, which is
the truth, and then the lies go away.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Okay, fine, whatever, But.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Many of us love God too much to just believe
a lie if we see it as a lie, and
so then what the enemy does is he presents you
not with a lie, but with a truth. The next
(16:53):
thing the enemy does to Jesus. Remember he's hungry. He's
in a week in physical state. He's on the verge
of three years of ministry that will shake the world
and overturn the Roman Empire. He's in a period of preparation.
He knows who he is. He not only knows truth,
(17:16):
but he is truth. And so the enemy knows that
the only way that he can fight truth is with truth.
And I promise you I'm not just trying to be confusing.
A lot of times, what the enemy will attack you.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
With is a truth, a truth.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And in this particular instance, the devil took him to
the Holy City verse five and had him stand on
the highest point of the temple. If you are the
son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written.
The enemy doesn't attack Jesus with a lie. He attacks
him with a Bible.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Verse.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
He quotes to Jesus this Psalm ninety one, verse eleven
and twelve. He quotes the word of God to the
Word of God.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
For it is written.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
He will command his angels concerning you, and they will
lift you up in their hands, so that you will
not strike your foot against a stone. That's true, That's
actually true. This is not made up. This is not imaginary,
it is It is the word of God.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
It is the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So here's what I'm realizing in my life. A lot
of times I'm not deciding.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Between a lie and the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
A lot of times I'm stuck between two truths. One
is the truth of my situation and one is the
truth of my revelation. I told you, Holly, this was
going to be the best one. That's the truth of
what I'm going through, and the other is the truth
(19:04):
of who's standing with me in the fire as I
go through it. So I've got two truths. I've got
two truths. And what Jesus said was so powerful. When
the enemy tried to get him to turn the stones
into bread, he said, it is written because he knew
the temptation to turn something into something that it's not.
(19:27):
A lot of times we try to do this with relationships.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
We try to turn them into something that they're not.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
We turn people into our God, and we need their
approval more than we need God's approval. And then when
they disappoint us, we lose our hope because we tried
to turn stones into bread. You know, some of us
try to turn money into security, but your trust was
never supposed to be in resources. Your trust was supposed
to be in the one. Your help comes from the source,
(19:55):
you are supposed to lift your eyes to him. Your
trust was never supposed sposed to be in the stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Your trust was supposed to be in the source.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
But when you don't know the truth of who you are,
you will try to turn stones into bread, and you
will try to.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Live off of people's compliments.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And then so you die by their criticism because you tried.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
To turn it into what it was not.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
And you trade the truth for a lie, and you
trade the truth of God's God's assessment of you for
someone else's opinion of you, serving created things rather than
the creator who is forever blessed a man Roman's won
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I love what Jesus said. I never saw it before.
Did you ever see it this before? I appreciate it
A nine thirty.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I never saw it because first time he said it
is written, But this time he said something different. He said,
verse seven, it is also written. You just said, is true,
But I know something truer. It's true I made some
(21:14):
mistakes in my life. But it's also true that my
greatest mistake has the potential to become my greatest miracle.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It's true, but it's also true.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Somebody's shout, it's also true. Come on, shout it from
river Walk to Roanoke. It's also true, Paul said, I'm pressed.
It's true, but I'm not crushed. See, I know how
to stand between two truths. One is what I'm thinking,
(21:51):
One is what I'm feeling. One is what the doctor said.
One is what I'm experiencing. But it is also true,
not crushed. I'm persecuted. It's true, but I'm not abandoned.
It's also true. I'm struck down for a minute. But
it's also true. I'm not destroying. I'm lonely, but I'm
(22:14):
not alone.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I'm weak but he's strong. I'm poor but he's rich.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I'm It is also written, I've got a better word
on the situation. I did it, but I'm not it.
(22:41):
I got a new truth. I got a new truth.
I've got a new truth. That means I know the
difference between my truth and my story. So when Jesus
was confronted by the Jews, he had a conversation with
(23:03):
them about truth, and it says that many of the
Jews had believed in him because of what he did,
but they didn't fully understand who he was, and they
were putting their faith in him, but they were still
attached to.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The old story. The old story. You know, the old story,
the one you.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Tell yourself about why people reject you. And you did
it as a means of survival, because it is sometimes
easier for you to reject yourself in advance than to
put yourself out there and risk rejection again. So when
you can't touch the bottom, you tell yourself a story
for survival. It's called prejection. It's when instead of dealing
(23:46):
with the reality of rejection and healing from it, you
begin to tell yourself a story about how worthless you are.
And now you stay alone because to really be loved
requires vulnerability for the sake of connection. So you would
rather stay stuck in an old story than embrace a
new truth. And Jesus said to the Jews who believed
(24:08):
in him, watch this In John eight thirty two. He said,
you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free. Now see the second part of that does
not work without the first.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You will know the truth.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
This is not a propositional statement. This doesn't mean you
will be able to quote the truth. To know the
truth is not to quote the truth. It's to trust
in it. It's to trust in the truth. And what
you trust in is what is true to you. What
(24:46):
you trust in is what is true to you. That's
why he wouldn't turn the stone to bread. It wouldn't
have been a sin for him to do it have
been a substitute.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I don't live by that. I don't trust in that.
That's not my truth.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
And when you know the truth, and a lot of
times we think we know the truth better than we do.
We think we know what other people are like because
we've never traded truth with them.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
We think, we think we know what we would do
if we were them.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Sit down with a single mom. You know what you
would do if you were them. You would have a
pill addiction. You wouldn't make it out of bed in
the morning. You wouldn't you wouldn't be strong enough to
do it.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, if I were them, well, i'll tell you what
right now, if I was running that elevation church, i'd
do a few things differently. I'm sure we'll say that
right now. Jesus trading truth. Oh, it is written.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It is also written Okay, I'm accepting it, but it's
not It's not my truth.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
It's just my story.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Sometimes you can live in a story so long that
you become a slave to it. Have you become a
slave to your own story to the extent that you
now think it's the truth? The Jews had Jesus said,
you will know the truth, and the truth will set
(26:33):
you free. And the next thing they said, the response
that they had to that shows us just how embedded
their identity had become.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
In their story.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Because you gotta remember, these are people who had spent
four hundred and thirty years in Egypt as slaves making
bricks without straw under Pharaoh.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
They had been taken captive by the.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Babylonians the Assyrians multiple times before Jesus came onto the sea,
and when he said you will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free, it offended them. So
they looked back at him in verse thirty three and said,
we are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.
(27:16):
The same people who had spent centuries as slaves had
told themselves a story that had become so true to
them they.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
No longer knew the difference.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
A lot of times in my life, I've lied to
myself so much that my lies.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Became truer than my truth. It is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I don't willingly exchange the truth for a lie. It's
just that certain lives I tell myself. I've learned a love.
I like self pity. It's comfortable. It's my snuggie for
my soul to feel sorry for myself.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
No one's checking on me, No one cares about me.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
You know why, because I don't want to check on anybody.
So rather than face the fact of the truth that
I'm not checking on anybody, I would rather tell myself
the story that nobody's checking on me. I've never seen
every collective head nod in the church like it just
happened at Valentine. When you become a slave to your story,
(28:39):
you die a death between two truths. I'm preaching to
somebody today who's standing between two truths. One is the
old story, the way you always saw yourself. You know,
if David had stayed stuck in his old story, he
never would have thrown that stone at Glide's forehead, because
the way his brother saw him was, You're just down
here to make trouble and you didn't even get anybody
(29:01):
to keep the sheep.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
There comes a.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Time when you have to challenge your old stories so
that the truth can set you free. They used to
train us in evangelism that we would ask people, how
do you know if you're going to heaven when you die?
And when they said their answer, you were to ask
them the follow up question, if you were wrong, would
(29:26):
you want to know? What? A powerful question if the
story you've been telling yourself about where you are and
why you are, and what you can and what you
can't remember the Israelites stayed stuck in the wilderness, not
for forty days like Jesus was tempted forty days. They
were there forty years, all because of the story they
(29:49):
told themselves. They're bigger than us, they're stronger than us,
they're greater than us. None of it was true. But
when it becomes true to you, it will keep you stuck.
And you are not stuck in your reality, You're stuck
in your story. But if the sun sets, you free,
If you get this truth, you will be free.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
Indeed, so I want.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
You to stand up on your feet right now, because
the spirit of the Lord is in this place and
where the Spirit is, there is freedom. Where the spirit
of the Lord is, there is freedom. And the Spirit
of the Lord is leading you today into the wilderness
to set you free from the story you've been telling yourself,
perhaps your whole life long. And I realize sometimes it's
(30:45):
easier to tell yourself a story of why you fail,
and tell yourself a story that you're a disappointment, because
then you don't have to actually step out and try,
because you've already told yourself a story that I'm a disappointment.
But that's why Jesus went into the wilderness, not only
to be tempted by the devil, but to rewrite a story.
(31:08):
What Moses couldn't do in forty years, Jesus did in
forty days. He wasn't just fasting, he was directing a
new story. The Gospel is a new story. The Cross
is a new ending. And you don't have to turn
(31:31):
stones into bread, and you don't have to trade truth
for lies, and you don't have to own the story
that you were handed if it does not match the
reality of what.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
God has spoken. Not another day, and.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
We say things that locate us and let us know
that we've embraced our story and turned it into truth.
Than bad happens, and we say us the story of
my life. This is the story of my life. This
is the story of my life. You need a new editor.
(32:19):
You've been letting the enemy edit the story of your life.
But it is also written. It is also written this
tension between two truths. Well, I feel in what I know,
(32:40):
what I was, and what I'm becoming. This tension between
two truths is exactly how faith grows. I've been waiting
to preach this message for a year and a half,
and today was the day that God wanted me to
preach it, perhaps so that you could hear it and
(33:05):
be set free from your old story. Are you trapped
in an old truth when God has given you a
new one, a higher one, a greater one. You know
the Law was true all of sin and fallen short
of the glory of God. But in Jesus was given
(33:29):
grace and truth. Both are true. I don't deserve the
blessings of God. Nothing I could do could earn it.
But it is also written that I am the righteousness
of God in Christ, through faith and helm. God brought
(33:54):
you here today to give you a new truth and
to receive your new truth. You're going to have to
let go of your old story. You let go of
that old story, you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free. With your head bowt and
your eyes closed at every location, no one moving and
disturbing this moment. What is the story that God needs
(34:17):
to set you free from today?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
The key is your belief.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That it is also written and that the blood of
Jesus has spoken a better word. There's a new covenant,
a new baptism, a new reality.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Father.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I thank you for each person who you brought here today,
whether they're physically in a church building or watching on
their phone, whether tears are streaming down the face because
they're facing a situation right now that's too great for them,
or whether they're in a place in their life where
they've actually accepted the lie and no longer even feels
(34:55):
like a lie anymore.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I pray that you would disturb.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Places of disbelief and dysfunction in our lives so that
we can know the truth and be set free. We
choose the unpredictability of freedom over the comfort and the
certainty of slavery. Today we want to be set free.
Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for
speaking over our lives a true identity. I ask now
(35:26):
Lord that in this moment, that you will speak your
word in that personal way, whether it's an area of
bitterness or resentment, or maybe it's something much more subtle
than that that we've been telling ourselves to keep ourselves
in a cycle of failure.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
We believe that you have called.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Us overcomers, and we will only overcome as we embrace
that truth.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
For more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you
can subscribe. You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
in your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message. In Romans chapter one, verse twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
There's a scripture I've been thinking about for quite a
while now, and I've been looking forward to the opportunity
to preach it, and this weekend Live as the appropriate time.
And God has really been using it this weekend. You're
not the first group that I've seen this weekend, and
yet I believe that God has saved the best for
last and that He desires to minister to you in
a specific way today. And I'll read this verse and
(00:44):
this will give you the premise for our message. And
it's found in Romans chapter one, verse twenty five. It
says that they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator who is forever praised Amen. They exchanged the truth
(01:05):
about God for a lie. And as people say that
the Bible is not relevant to today's culture. But let
me read this again. It sounds like it was written
on Twitter last night. They exchanged the truth about God
for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather
than the Creator. Have you ever got your priorities mixed
up and started serving something that God gave to you
and forgotten about the God who gave them?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and
began to serve created things rather than the Creator who
is forever praised.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Amen. The subject heading I want to use today is.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Trading truth, and I want to talk to you on
this topic Trading truth. Lord, I thank you that your
word is truth. Illuminate it now and help us to
receive it with courage to obey it. In Jesus name, Amen,
you may be seated, God bless you. I lie in
my cai. Sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes, you
(02:07):
know what we're all doing in they were taking a nap.
Sometimes it's just for their own while it was the
door locked safety dangerous criminals. You have to do it sometimes.
Don't look at me judgmentally. You if you never lied
to your kids, you haven't had them yet. But sometimes
(02:32):
it's really a matter of survival.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And even a few days ago, we were at the
beach for the kid's spring break and they had talked
me out into the ocean.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
They talked me out of the hot tub into the ocean.
I'm too old for this crap. It was a fifty
one degrees outside. But I'm hey, hey, I'm Dad of
the year. Don't worry about it. I already got the
I'm Dad of the Year. I went out in that
cold ocean with all three kids, and Abby was hanging
(03:06):
onto my arm the whole time, just every time. It
was really it was a really rough ocean, but it
made it kind of fun until until it wasn't fun anymore.
You know how it is when you're kind of playing out,
you kind of stepping.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Further and further out, and you don't even know how far,
how far out you've gotten, and then you kind of
get carried away, and you don't really realize how far
you've been carried away until you're looking and kind of
look at the original point where you were, which would
be a whole sermon in itself, but that's not what
I want to preach about.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
What I wanted to tell you is we're kind of
getting carried away, and then the undercurrent got really strong
and started just pulling all of us, all four of us.
The only one who had good enough sense to be
in the house was Holly. She's not as committed to
parenting and making memories as I am. She was on
her phone, and I'm out there realizing in this moment, wait,
(03:59):
nobody else is in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It's just us.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Everybody who knows anything about safety in the water is inside.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right now, this is dangerous. And then it really got scary.
I couldn't touch the bottom, and Abby's on my arm,
and her being on my arm and is a problem.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I can curl her all day long.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
She's just very well below my curling maximum weight ability,
trust me. But when she's on my arm and I
can't touch, and then Graham jumps on my back and
we're all simultaneously being pulled, and I realized, like, well,
we're way further out than I intended us to be.
And Abbey's on my arm and Graham's on my back,
(04:37):
and I'm like, Graham, I love you, dude, but you got.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
To swim right now. It's every verdict for himself right now.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I need to take at least two of us back
in the house for your mom. We start swimming back in.
Abby's on my arm and Graham's swimming. Now Elijah's the
bravest one. He's out way past all of us, and
he's screaming at me to come get him or something,
and I can't come get him.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
His sister's on my arm and it's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And so I just kidding, I kidding, but this calmness
came over me, or at least I pretended that it did.
I said, Elijah, it's fine, son, And secretly I'm looking
at him, thinking this is our last time talking together,
(05:28):
you know, But I knew I had to keep him swimming.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
It was just a leadership instinct that came over me.
I'm like, it's fine, just swim, You'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's not that bad here where we are if you
can just get here.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Meanwhile, I'm dying, you know. And so we made it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We made it back to the shore, aren't you glad?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Thank you for praying me through.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And then Elijah said something really funny to me. I
thought this was really really profound. He's like, you didn't
even seem scared. Were you not worried about me. Were
you were you just gonna let me stay out there?
You know, well, of course I was. Your sisters only
had eight years to live, you've had thirteen. And it's
(06:11):
just but but I I think he was.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I think he was amazed.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
He was like you, you just didn't even seem worried
about it, And to which I told him, well, son,
I was lying. I was lying for your own good.
I knew if you knew how bad it was, you'd
stop swimming. And so the best thing I could do
for your survival was to lie to you. It's like
(06:38):
a rahab lie. It's a lie for the purposes of God.
Don't judge me. Don't judge me. But sometimes I lie
to myself. It's a survival instinct. It's just that sometimes
my feet can't find the bottom, and life it's a
(07:00):
little bit turbulent, and I find myself drifting and in
the new reality that I'm trying to embrace according to
what God says I am. Sometimes what I used to
be feels more solid, more stable, and more comfortable. And
sometimes it's easier for me to lie to myself and
tell myself a story. I got good at it, even
(07:25):
as a little boy. It wasn't that my childhood was
bad or anything like that. But all of us experience
things in life that teach us to lie to ourselves.
When we read a scripture like Romans chapter one, verse
twenty five that says they exchange the truth about God
for a lie, a part of us says, who would
do that? Who would trade a perfectly good truth for
(07:49):
a lie? And yet the fact is, there are some
lies that we have learned so well that they feel
true even more than the truth does. Can I preach
like I've been out of the pulpit for three weeks
and I've got something to say. I want to show
you today an illustration from the life of Jesus, and
(08:12):
I want to show you how sometimes the enemy doesn't
sabotage your life with a lie. He tells you a
truth and he twists it just enough. And I believe
that the Lord desires to set us free today. But
only by the truth can we be set free. You know,
(08:34):
Jesus knew the truth because he was the truth. He
knew the word of God because he was the word
of God. And when the enemy came to Jesus and
Matthew Chapter four in the Wilderness, to Timptim, he made
the crucial mistake with the son of God of debating
the word of God. And it's a bad idea to
debate the word of God with the word of God.
(08:56):
John chapter one says, in the beginning was the Word,
and the word was with God, and the Word was God.
He's not arguing with someone who knows about the Word
of God. He is arguing with the embodiment of the
Word of God. And it gives us a pure picture
of the principle that is illustrated in Romans one twenty five,
but only in reverse in Matthew chapter four, verse one.
(09:17):
Our perspective is immediately challenged because it says that Jesus
was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil. And that is a strange construct,
that Jesus was led by God to be tempted by
the devil. If you've been told that God won't lead
you into difficult situations, you've been lied to. If you've
(09:38):
ever been told, or it's ever been implied or inferred,
that the will of God will always lead to the
path of least resistance, you've been lied to. If you've
ever been told that the proof of the favor of
God on your life is that situations become less difficult
and more agreeable. You've been lied to because Jesus, before
his ministry was fully announce was let into the wilderness
(10:01):
to be tempted by the devil. And yet I want
us to see that this passage is as much about
trust as it is about temptation. Now let me say
this real quickly. It's not the truth that you can quote,
it's not the truth that you know mentally, but it
(10:23):
is the truth that you do that guides your life
to its ultimate outcome. I will never forget watching y'all
when I was a kid with the Jane Fond to
work Out DVDs, eating a bowl of ice cream watching
(10:46):
the Jane Fond to work Out DVDs. And when I asked,
why aren't you doing the DVDs? I'm only like eight
years old and my mom and dad are eating briars
watching Fonda. They said, well, we've got to know what
to do before we can do it. But sometimes if
(11:07):
you would do what you knew, I might get it
worth it for me. After fasting forty days and forty nights,
he was hungry. I nominate this for most obvious verse
in the Bible. The Tempter came to him at his
(11:29):
weakest moment. The tempter came to him in the area
of his appetite. The tempter came to him at a
place of great vulnerability and said, if you are the
son of God, tell these stones to become bred. And
how many times in my life have I been tempted
in this exact way. It's a good thing Jesus knew
the truth. It's a good thing Jesus had just been
(11:51):
baptized by John and the Jordan River. It's it's a
good thing that Jesus had just heard his father say,
this is my beloved.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Son, and whom I'm well pleased.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It's a good thing he had just been told the truth,
because when you just encountered truth, when you know who
you are, when you have a full understanding of who
you are in God's eyes, you don't have to prove
it in anybody else's.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
How many times have I been.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Susceptible to the temptation to prove who I am by
what I do? But when you know that who you
are is not dependent on what you do, your value
is not assessed by others. Then you don't have to
post stuff to prove stuff. You're going to set somebody
free today. You don't have to post stuff to prove
(12:41):
stuff when you know the truth about it. And Jesus answered,
it is written men shall not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
One of the hardest years of my life was twenty thirteen.
My dad was our church was under heavy criticism in
(13:02):
the media, and I was going through so many things
at once. I felt like Rocky when he said, I
don't know which one to hit. I see three of
them out there, and they said hit the one in
the middle. And there were so many things going on
around me. I didn't know what to do. But it
was really comforting to me that the things I had
preached to you I was able to live off of.
(13:24):
For me, the proof that something is true in your
life is not that you can understand it or say
amen to it, but that you.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Can live on it. That you can live on it.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sometimes we're too impressed with cliches, and sometimes we think
something is true just because it rhymes.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I found out in preaching sometimes you can make something
rhyme and.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It can be totally totally opposite.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You know, you can make something start with the same letter,
curiosity killed the cat.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's good, meow amen.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Actually, the original saying wasn't curiosity killed the cat.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It was care killed the cat.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And it was used to mean that they fed the
cat too much and he died because he was too fat.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
They cared too much.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And then they changed it from care meaning they over
fed him to care he was too worried. So now
it means that worry killed the cat. But then one
day it just became curiosity killed the cat. Now there
are no statistical evidences of dead felines based on inquisitive natures.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But it just sounds good. And some stuff sounds good,
but it ain't true.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it is. Just
because it rhymes, just because it is aligned with your
life experience up to this point doesn't make it true.
Just because it's the way it's always been for you
and your mom and it doesn't make it true. And
so then we get really bad advice and we say
really bad things that that sound good on the surface,
(15:01):
but beneath them they're really bad belief systems. I thought
about calling this message what's your BS for belief system?
What's your belief system? And I wanted to call it
that because that's what's driving your life. They say, live
(15:24):
your truth. I heard that before. Live your truth. That's
the important thing. Just live your truth. And it sounds good.
But what if my truth is a trap? What if
your truth isn't the truth? Do you have to stay
(15:45):
stuck in a story and call it the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Let me go back to Matthew four.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Jesus said it is written men shall not live on
bread alone, but on every word.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
That comes from the mouth of God.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So then the devil he does something that I was
very interested to study this out. And if I've preached
on this passage ten times before, I apologize to the
other ten that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I never pointed this out because I never saw it.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We always assume that the enemy comes to us with lies,
and then we quote the word of God, which is
the truth, and then the lies go away.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Okay, fine, whatever, But.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Many of us love God too much to just believe
a lie if we see it as a lie, and
so then what the enemy does is he presents you
not with a lie, but with a truth. The next
(16:53):
thing the enemy does to Jesus. Remember he's hungry. He's
in a week in physical state. He's on the verge
of three years of ministry that will shake the world
and overturn the Roman Empire. He's in a period of preparation.
He knows who he is. He not only knows truth,
(17:16):
but he is truth. And so the enemy knows that
the only way that he can fight truth is with truth.
And I promise you I'm not just trying to be confusing.
A lot of times, what the enemy will attack you.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
With is a truth, a truth.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And in this particular instance, the devil took him to
the Holy City verse five and had him stand on
the highest point of the temple. If you are the
son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written.
The enemy doesn't attack Jesus with a lie. He attacks
him with a Bible.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Verse.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
He quotes to Jesus this Psalm ninety one, verse eleven
and twelve. He quotes the word of God to the
Word of God.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
For it is written.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
He will command his angels concerning you, and they will
lift you up in their hands, so that you will
not strike your foot against a stone. That's true, That's
actually true. This is not made up. This is not imaginary,
it is It is the word of God.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
It is the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So here's what I'm realizing in my life. A lot
of times I'm not deciding.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Between a lie and the truth.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
A lot of times I'm stuck between two truths. One
is the truth of my situation and one is the
truth of my revelation. I told you, Holly, this was
going to be the best one. That's the truth of
what I'm going through, and the other is the truth
(19:04):
of who's standing with me in the fire as I
go through it. So I've got two truths. I've got
two truths. And what Jesus said was so powerful. When
the enemy tried to get him to turn the stones
into bread, he said, it is written because he knew
the temptation to turn something into something that it's not.
(19:27):
A lot of times we try to do this with relationships.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
We try to turn them into something that they're not.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
We turn people into our God, and we need their
approval more than we need God's approval. And then when
they disappoint us, we lose our hope because we tried
to turn stones into bread. You know, some of us
try to turn money into security, but your trust was
never supposed to be in resources. Your trust was supposed
to be in the one. Your help comes from the source,
(19:55):
you are supposed to lift your eyes to him. Your
trust was never supposed sposed to be in the stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Your trust was supposed to be in the source.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
But when you don't know the truth of who you are,
you will try to turn stones into bread, and you
will try to.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Live off of people's compliments.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And then so you die by their criticism because you tried.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
To turn it into what it was not.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
And you trade the truth for a lie, and you
trade the truth of God's God's assessment of you for
someone else's opinion of you, serving created things rather than
the creator who is forever blessed a man Roman's won
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I love what Jesus said. I never saw it before.
Did you ever see it this before? I appreciate it
A nine thirty.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I never saw it because first time he said it
is written, But this time he said something different. He said,
verse seven, it is also written. You just said, is true,
But I know something truer. It's true I made some
(21:14):
mistakes in my life. But it's also true that my
greatest mistake has the potential to become my greatest miracle.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It's true, but it's also true.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Somebody's shout, it's also true. Come on, shout it from
river Walk to Roanoke. It's also true, Paul said, I'm pressed.
It's true, but I'm not crushed. See, I know how
to stand between two truths. One is what I'm thinking,
(21:51):
One is what I'm feeling. One is what the doctor said.
One is what I'm experiencing. But it is also true,
not crushed. I'm persecuted. It's true, but I'm not abandoned.
It's also true. I'm struck down for a minute. But
it's also true. I'm not destroying. I'm lonely, but I'm
(22:14):
not alone.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I'm weak but he's strong. I'm poor but he's rich.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I'm It is also written, I've got a better word
on the situation. I did it, but I'm not it.
(22:41):
I got a new truth. I got a new truth.
I've got a new truth. That means I know the
difference between my truth and my story. So when Jesus
was confronted by the Jews, he had a conversation with
(23:03):
them about truth, and it says that many of the
Jews had believed in him because of what he did,
but they didn't fully understand who he was, and they
were putting their faith in him, but they were still
attached to.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The old story. The old story. You know, the old story,
the one you.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Tell yourself about why people reject you. And you did
it as a means of survival, because it is sometimes
easier for you to reject yourself in advance than to
put yourself out there and risk rejection again. So when
you can't touch the bottom, you tell yourself a story
for survival. It's called prejection. It's when instead of dealing
(23:46):
with the reality of rejection and healing from it, you
begin to tell yourself a story about how worthless you are.
And now you stay alone because to really be loved
requires vulnerability for the sake of connection. So you would
rather stay stuck in an old story than embrace a
new truth. And Jesus said to the Jews who believed
(24:08):
in him, watch this In John eight thirty two. He said,
you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free. Now see the second part of that does
not work without the first.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You will know the truth.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
This is not a propositional statement. This doesn't mean you
will be able to quote the truth. To know the
truth is not to quote the truth. It's to trust
in it. It's to trust in the truth. And what
you trust in is what is true to you. What
(24:46):
you trust in is what is true to you. That's
why he wouldn't turn the stone to bread. It wouldn't
have been a sin for him to do it have
been a substitute.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I don't live by that. I don't trust in that.
That's not my truth.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
And when you know the truth, and a lot of
times we think we know the truth better than we do.
We think we know what other people are like because
we've never traded truth with them.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
We think, we think we know what we would do
if we were them.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Sit down with a single mom. You know what you
would do if you were them. You would have a
pill addiction. You wouldn't make it out of bed in
the morning. You wouldn't you wouldn't be strong enough to
do it.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, if I were them, well, i'll tell you what
right now, if I was running that elevation church, i'd
do a few things differently. I'm sure we'll say that
right now. Jesus trading truth. Oh, it is written.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It is also written Okay, I'm accepting it, but it's
not It's not my truth.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
It's just my story.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Sometimes you can live in a story so long that
you become a slave to it. Have you become a
slave to your own story to the extent that you
now think it's the truth? The Jews had Jesus said,
you will know the truth, and the truth will set
(26:33):
you free. And the next thing they said, the response
that they had to that shows us just how embedded
their identity had become.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
In their story.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Because you gotta remember, these are people who had spent
four hundred and thirty years in Egypt as slaves making
bricks without straw under Pharaoh.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
They had been taken captive by the.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Babylonians the Assyrians multiple times before Jesus came onto the sea,
and when he said you will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free, it offended them. So
they looked back at him in verse thirty three and said,
we are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.
(27:16):
The same people who had spent centuries as slaves had
told themselves a story that had become so true to
them they.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
No longer knew the difference.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
A lot of times in my life, I've lied to
myself so much that my lies.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Became truer than my truth. It is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I don't willingly exchange the truth for a lie. It's
just that certain lives I tell myself. I've learned a love.
I like self pity. It's comfortable. It's my snuggie for
my soul to feel sorry for myself.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
No one's checking on me, No one cares about me.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
You know why, because I don't want to check on anybody.
So rather than face the fact of the truth that
I'm not checking on anybody, I would rather tell myself
the story that nobody's checking on me. I've never seen
every collective head nod in the church like it just
happened at Valentine. When you become a slave to your story,
(28:39):
you die a death between two truths. I'm preaching to
somebody today who's standing between two truths. One is the
old story, the way you always saw yourself. You know,
if David had stayed stuck in his old story, he
never would have thrown that stone at Glide's forehead, because
the way his brother saw him was, You're just down
here to make trouble and you didn't even get anybody
(29:01):
to keep the sheep.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
There comes a.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Time when you have to challenge your old stories so
that the truth can set you free. They used to
train us in evangelism that we would ask people, how
do you know if you're going to heaven when you die?
And when they said their answer, you were to ask
them the follow up question, if you were wrong, would
(29:26):
you want to know? What? A powerful question if the
story you've been telling yourself about where you are and
why you are, and what you can and what you
can't remember the Israelites stayed stuck in the wilderness, not
for forty days like Jesus was tempted forty days. They
were there forty years, all because of the story they
(29:49):
told themselves. They're bigger than us, they're stronger than us,
they're greater than us. None of it was true. But
when it becomes true to you, it will keep you stuck.
And you are not stuck in your reality, You're stuck
in your story. But if the sun sets, you free,
If you get this truth, you will be free.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
Indeed, so I want.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
You to stand up on your feet right now, because
the spirit of the Lord is in this place and
where the Spirit is, there is freedom. Where the spirit
of the Lord is, there is freedom. And the Spirit
of the Lord is leading you today into the wilderness
to set you free from the story you've been telling yourself,
perhaps your whole life long. And I realize sometimes it's
(30:45):
easier to tell yourself a story of why you fail,
and tell yourself a story that you're a disappointment, because
then you don't have to actually step out and try,
because you've already told yourself a story that I'm a disappointment.
But that's why Jesus went into the wilderness, not only
to be tempted by the devil, but to rewrite a story.
(31:08):
What Moses couldn't do in forty years, Jesus did in
forty days. He wasn't just fasting, he was directing a
new story. The Gospel is a new story. The Cross
is a new ending. And you don't have to turn
(31:31):
stones into bread, and you don't have to trade truth
for lies, and you don't have to own the story
that you were handed if it does not match the
reality of what.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
God has spoken. Not another day, and.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
We say things that locate us and let us know
that we've embraced our story and turned it into truth.
Than bad happens, and we say us the story of
my life. This is the story of my life. This
is the story of my life. You need a new editor.
(32:19):
You've been letting the enemy edit the story of your life.
But it is also written. It is also written this
tension between two truths. Well, I feel in what I know,
(32:40):
what I was, and what I'm becoming. This tension between
two truths is exactly how faith grows. I've been waiting
to preach this message for a year and a half,
and today was the day that God wanted me to
preach it, perhaps so that you could hear it and
(33:05):
be set free from your old story. Are you trapped
in an old truth when God has given you a
new one, a higher one, a greater one. You know
the Law was true all of sin and fallen short
of the glory of God. But in Jesus was given
(33:29):
grace and truth. Both are true. I don't deserve the
blessings of God. Nothing I could do could earn it.
But it is also written that I am the righteousness
of God in Christ, through faith and helm. God brought
(33:54):
you here today to give you a new truth and
to receive your new truth. You're going to have to
let go of your old story. You let go of
that old story, you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free. With your head bowt and
your eyes closed at every location, no one moving and
disturbing this moment. What is the story that God needs
(34:17):
to set you free from today?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
The key is your belief.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That it is also written and that the blood of
Jesus has spoken a better word. There's a new covenant,
a new baptism, a new reality.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Father.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I thank you for each person who you brought here today,
whether they're physically in a church building or watching on
their phone, whether tears are streaming down the face because
they're facing a situation right now that's too great for them,
or whether they're in a place in their life where
they've actually accepted the lie and no longer even feels
(34:55):
like a lie anymore.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I pray that you would disturb.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Places of disbelief and dysfunction in our lives so that
we can know the truth and be set free. We
choose the unpredictability of freedom over the comfort and the
certainty of slavery. Today we want to be set free.
Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for
speaking over our lives a true identity. I ask now
(35:26):
Lord that in this moment, that you will speak your
word in that personal way, whether it's an area of
bitterness or resentment, or maybe it's something much more subtle
than that that we've been telling ourselves to keep ourselves
in a cycle of failure.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
We believe that you have called.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Us overcomers, and we will only overcome as we embrace
that truth.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
You can click the link in the description to give
now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
For more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you
can subscribe. You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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