August 9, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, "These Walls of My Way," we're grabbing a divine sledgehammer and taking aim at the self-made prisons of "Illegitimate Trust" & "Finite Understanding." We'll dive into Proverbs 3:5-6 to learn what it truly means to stop trusting our own flawed blueprints and surrender to God's master plan. It's time to trade your confusion for His clarity and your struggle for His straight path.
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God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
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Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
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If this message resonates with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it and don't forget to subscribe to our socials, we would love to hear from you!
Join: Brothers In The Word | Facebook
6 pm CST: Wednesday
8 am CST: Saturday
God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
🎧 New episodes drop every Friday | Available on: Spreaker, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio
👉 Like, Subscribe, and Share
Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
Brothers In The Word - Facebook
Brothers In The Word - YouTube
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you so much, Dandy and family. Welcome to this
special pop out edition of Brothers in the Word. If
this is our first time meeting, allowed me to introduce myself.
My name is Tim Smith. I am the youngest child
of the amazing Claire Jones. Welcome to another episode. As
Damn mentioned of our series These Walls. I want to
(00:21):
thank each and every one of you who are now
streaming on our different streaming platform Speaker iHeart, iHeart Radio,
Amazon Music and Spotify. Just like George and Weezy Baby,
we moving on up today. We are at a divine
intersection and this is a place where our will and
(00:45):
our wants collide with the wisdom of God. And I
know you've been there before, when God says no and
you say why not. Many of you listening right now
are standing at this crossroad. And when you're at this crossroad,
it causes some confusion, it causes some weariness, and sometimes
(01:05):
you can even feel trapped at this crossroad when you
want to go one way and God to say no,
go the opposite way. So I want you to understand
this first and foremost. You're not listening to this teaching
by accident. The Lord has orchestrated this moment. He has
ordered your steps to be here in this digital sanctuary.
This word is a divine appointment. This word is a
(01:27):
holy summons for those who have been building and toiling
and striving, only to find that the very walls you've
built for your protection have actually become your prison. So
this fortress we build, these fortresses, we think they're providing safety,
and actually what ends up happening, these fortresses actually become
(01:50):
a dungeon. So today, by the power of the Holy Spirit,
we're not here to renovate these walls. We're not here
to redecorate these walls. We are here to execute a
divine demolition. I need you to get your Bible. I
need you to get something to write with. I need
you to meet me over in the Book of Proverbs,
the Book of Wisdom. We're going to be in the
(02:12):
third chapter of Proverbs, and we are going to anchor
our hearts in verses five and in verse six. Title
for our conversation today is simple, but yet profound. These
walls of my way, these walls of my way. So
(02:32):
now let me give you a mission before we begin.
Your mission, should you choose to accept, it, is to
identify the prison walls you're built in your own life.
I'm going to need you to surrender those blueprints to God,
and then you're going to have to take up the
divine sledgehammer of his word to begin the demolition process.
(02:52):
So the very charge of God for this hour is
founding Proverbs, chapter three, verse five and six. Let me
go ahead and read it for you. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on
your own understanding. Here it is right here in all
(03:13):
your ways, somebody say, all in all your ways, acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your patht let's read it
one more time. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Pay attention to the language, and do not lean on
your own understanding. And all of your ways acknowledge him,
(03:38):
and he will make straight your path. Now let's break
down the architect of our own rebellion. We're going to
look at these walls. I believe we're gonna have about
four walls tonight that we're going to look at wall
number one. If you're taking notes, please write this down.
Oh and please share this. Those of you that are
watching listen, get active in the chat, please share, Please
say hello. So we can acknowledge you before we get
(04:00):
about here tonight. The chat is yours. Dana's the moderator,
so glad so appreciate him being here as well. So
let's have a real conversation about these walls that we're
going to look at. These walls are my way wall
number one, the wall of illegitimate trust. Taking notes, I
(04:20):
need you to write that down, the wall of illegitimate trust.
The text is uncompromising in its opening command Proverbs chapter three,
verse five A, Solomon says, trust in the Lord. There's
(04:40):
so many things that we find ourselves trusting in, people
that we find ourselves trusting in, systems that we find
ourselves trusting in. But of all of the things that
we look to trust in, Solomon points to the one
and only person that you and I should truly trust in.
It says trust in the Lord. So we have to
(05:03):
pull over right here. The modern Church has neutered the
word trust. And this is what I mean by that.
We have domesticated it. We have made it a safe,
tained and a very manageable suggestion. Now the Hebrew word,
because I believe that when you read the Bible, you're
going to have to go underneath some of these words,
(05:26):
and so to go underneath the word trust. The Hebrew
word is but talk, and it's spelled b tach but talk. Now,
let me give you some insight about what this word
actually means, because when Solomon uses this word trust, this
is not a synonym for hope. So it's not a
(05:47):
gentle intellectual agreement. That's not what Solomon is writing about. No,
but talk is a violent, desperate, all or nothing act
of the will. It means throwing yourself down to helpless
and expose to be utterly and completely dependent on another
for your next breath. But talk is the posture of
(06:09):
an infant who cannot feed itself, cannot change itself, cannot
protect itself. But talk is the posture of a soldier
on a battlefield who is out of ammunition, bleeding out,
and who can do nothing but collapse and wait for
the medic. Biblical trust begins where you end. Remember that
(06:33):
Biblical trust. If you're going to trust this word, you're
going to have to end where your trust begins. We
built the wall here. We built a thick, high, reinforced
wall of illegitimate trust. This is what I mean. We
say trust in the Lord, but you know what we do.
We purchase spiritual insurance policies. We say trust in the Lord, Lord,
(06:57):
I trust you with my future. But you know what
we'll do. We'll end up manipulating and scheming to try
to do a work around. We're trying to force open
doors that God has closed, terrified that God might lead
us somewhere that we don't want to go, or have
us to do something that we don't want to do. Family,
This is not trust. This is a manipulation. This is
(07:19):
a negotiation. And when we do this, it is an
insult to God. We're treating a sovereign Lord of all
creation like a questionable business partner, demanding that he prove
himself worthy of our limited investment. So we end up
giving him ninety percent of our heart, and we call
(07:41):
that surrender. You give him control over the convenient areas
of your life, and you call it lordship. But God
is saying to us, right here and right now, I
will not be a consultant in your life. I will
not be a co pilot in your life. God is saying,
I am captain or I am nothing. God is saying
(08:03):
I am Lord of all, or I am not lord
at all. You have to decide. If these walls could talk,
they would scream out agonizing weight of your own self reliance.
Think about this. In First Samuel, chapter fifteen, King Saul
(08:27):
is given an order. He's given a directive by the
prophet Samuel. Samuel is the only man in the Bible
who is both priest, prophet, and judge. So Samuel speaks
the very word of God. So the prophet Samuel gives
a direct command from God to the king. And this
(08:49):
is what he tells the King. He says, go and
devote destruction to all that they have. Do not spare them.
King saw for total, unconditional trust and obedience for how
he is to deal with an enemy of Israel known
as the Amalekites. The Amalekites attacked Moses and the children
(09:13):
of Israel all the way back in Exodus, I believe
it's chapter seventeen. They attacked them from the rear. At
the rear of the line is where the women and
the children were. So it was a very cowardly thing
to do. And this is the battle where you see
where Moses is sat on the rock and Aaron and
her hold his arms up and as long as his
(09:34):
arms are being held up. The Bible says that Israel
was winning the war, but when his arms came down,
Israel would lose the war. So Joshua was leading the
army into this battle against the Amalekites. So when they're
done fighting, God tells Moses to do something very particular.
(09:54):
He tells Moses says, write this down and rehearse it
in the ears of Joshua. He said, I will utterly
destroy the Amalekites off the face of the earth. So
in First Samuel chapter fifteen, God brings this back up.
Now this is five hundred years have transpired since that happened,
but God is bringing it up just like it happened yesterday.
(10:16):
Because God made a promise that He's going to deal
with this nation. So He's going to deal with this
nation through King Sault. But like many of us, Saul's
illegitimate trust kicked in because Saul was given very implicit instructions,
kill everything. Kill the sheep, killed, the goat, killed the men,
(10:41):
kill everything moving. But this is what Saul did. He
didn't destroy everything like God told him. He spared the
best of the sheep because he wanted that. He spared
the best of the Oxen because he wanted that. He
even spared the enemies King King Agang. So here's what
(11:05):
we have. King Saul obeyed mostly hear me. Partial obedience
is still disobedience. King Saul trusted to a point. He
set a limit to his trust. And what will Samuel's
(11:27):
response to King Saul's partial obedience? Oh, please hear the
word of the Lord. First Samue, Chapter fifteen, verse twenty two,
twenty three, and Samuel said, as the Lord has great
delight and burnt offerings and sacrifices as an obeying the
voice of the Lord, behold to obey is better than sacrifice,
(11:52):
and to listen than the fat of rams verse twenty three.
It gets worse, for a rebellion is as the sin
of diven a nation, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Here it is because you, King Saul, have rejected the
word of the Lord. He has also rejected you from
(12:14):
being king. Heaven is declaring to us right here and
right now, that partial trust in God is rebellion. Your
plan B is idolatry. You're bounding down to the idol
(12:35):
of your own contingency plan. Let's talk about Paul, the
apostle Paul, a man whose resume could put all of
us to shame. Paul understood the demolition process. Over in
Philippians chapter three, Paul writes these words to the saints
and Philippi. And he's talking about his credentials. He's talking
(12:58):
about his resume. He's talking about all of the things
that he earned, all of the things he earned in academia.
Paul his PhDs, had PhDs. There was no one on
this man's level. But I want you to listen to
what he says about everything that he gained before Christ.
He said, but whatever gain I had, I counted as
(13:23):
loss for the sake of Christ. What was his gain?
Paul had no equals his religious pedigree, his education under
the greatest Jewish teacher, Gamellia, his flawless observance of the law,
his burning zeal. Paul took his entire portfolio of all
of his human achievements, the very things that made him somebody.
(13:48):
And you know what he declared it as he called
it refuse, He called it theces, He called it garbage.
Why he said, so that he might gain Christ. Hear me,
and hear me loud and clear. You cannot gain Christ.
(14:09):
Until you are willing to lose you. If you're not
willing to lose you, you cannot gain Christ. You have
to decide who's going to sit on the throne. Are
you sitting on the throne or is Christ sitting on
the throne? A question for examination for all of you.
(14:31):
What does the plan be that you currently have right
now in your life that is usurping the lordship of
Christ in your life? The plan be that's not allowing
God to come in and do a complete renovation in
your life. I want you to name it, name it.
(14:52):
You don't have to name it in the chat, but
I want you to name it, call it out. And
when you call it out, confess it to God and
remove that plan B and only settle. Only allow yourself
God's plan A. Because God's Plan A is greater than
(15:14):
anything that you can ever think or imagine. Ie. First Corinthians,
Chapter two, verse nine and ten. Write that down wall
number two. Now let's look at the wall of finite understanding,
because now the scripture is starting to pick up momentum,
and I'm gonna show you exactly what I'm talking about.
Proverbs chapter three, verse five B. So we looked at
five a trust in the Lord. Now let's look at
(15:36):
five B. With all your heart again. What the Bible
doesn't say is as important as what it does say.
He says, with all of your heart, not some of
your heart. Not your heart when you go to church,
not your heart. When you have a joy, joy moment,
with all of your heart. And get this, do not
(15:57):
lean on your own understanding with all your heart. The
Hebrew word is lev a lev. What that means is
when he says, with all your heart, that's your inner world,
that's your will, that's your will, that's your mind, that's
your emotions, that's your drive, that's your ambition. God lays
(16:22):
claim to the entire territory, and then he issues the
command that is repugnant to the twenty first century mind.
He says, do not lean on your own understanding. To
lean means to prop yourself up to use as a support.
(16:43):
Use your logic, use your reason, use your education, your
past experience, and your gut feelings, your hustle, your grind.
God says, that's a broken stick. Don't put your weight
on that. Why Because your understanding it's finite. Your understanding
is falling. Your understanding is fatally flawed. Why, because your
(17:09):
understanding has been infected by the virus of sin. So
to lean on your own understanding is like asking a
blind man for directions. This is the wall of intellectual idolatry,
and to me, it's the most sophisticated, respectable, and deadly
(17:29):
of all the walls that we build in our lives.
If these walls could talk, they would speak of all
of the divine appointments. You have reasoned your way out
of the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Remember what Jesus
said about the Holy Spirit of John chapter sixteen. He said,
he will lead you and guide you into what all truth.
(17:55):
But because you're trying to reason in your mind, and
because it will and logical to your mind the command
that God gave you, you rejected it because it didn't
make sense to you. You've built an echo chamber echo chamber,
a polished sound proof room where the only voice you
(18:16):
can hear is your own. The whispers of your past failures,
the shouts of societal expectations, the murmurs of your deepest insecurities,
the confident pronouncements of your own intellect, that all just
bounced from the wall of illegitimate trust to the wall
(18:37):
of finite understanding, and it's like a tennis match. It's
just bouncing back and forth off of these two walls.
And every time it's bouncing, it gets louder and louder,
it gets more distorted, it gets more convincing with every echo,
and before you know it, you can't hear anything from God.
You have become your own trusted counselor. And guess what
(19:02):
your counsel will lead you to the edge of a cliff.
The God who spoke galaxies into existence, the God who
holds time in his hands, is standing on the other
side of that wall. And this is what he is declaring.
Found over in Isaiah chapter fifty five, verse eight and nine.
(19:22):
This is for all of us when we're trying to
rationalize with God, when we're trying to negotiate with God,
when we're trying to bargain with God. I need you
to hear the word of the Lord, found in Isaiah
chapter fifty five, verse eighty nine. Please put this in
your notes. God says this. He says, for my thoughts
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are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
declares the Lord verse nine. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth. So are my ways than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts. Do you see the
distance between us and God? Do you see the distance
(20:05):
between your thoughts and his thoughts? He said, as high
as the heavens are above the earth. So this isn't
just a statement of fact. It's a declaration of war
against your intellectual pride. God is not asking for your consultation.
God is not seeking your opinion. God is commanding your consecration.
(20:30):
God is demanding your surrender. Come out with your hands up.
And this is the danger of the familiar. We're addicted
to what we know. We like routine, We like to
know and advance what's going to happen before it happens.
What we can predict, what we can control. But God's
(20:53):
ways are, by definition, outside of our little box. God's
ways are foolishness to the world. So guess what we resist.
We fight to stay in the comfort of our own understanding,
(21:13):
rather than stepping out into the terrifying freedom of His will.
There's a prophet found over in One Kings, chapter nineteen.
Prophet by the name of Elijah. Elijah is a powerful,
powerful prophet. I believe it's in Mark chapter nine, when
Jesus is on the mount of Transfiguration, Elijah and Moses
(21:37):
meet with him. Elijah represents the prophets, Moses representing the Law,
and Elijah had a moment where he's running for his life.
This man is depressed, this man is even suicidal. So
(22:00):
goes to the mountain of God. He goes to the
mountain of God and he's expecting a spectacle, and guess what,
he gives one. But it wasn't the kind of spectacle
that he was anticipating. So he's on this mountain, he's
in the cleft of the rock, and God has a
(22:22):
little demonstration for him. So the first thing that happens,
a strong wind tears the mountain, breaks the rocks, breaks
the rocks in pieces. But the Bible says, but the
Lord wasn't in the wind. Then after the wind, there's
an earthquake. Can you imagine an earthquake on a mountain.
(22:43):
But guess what the Bible says. The Bible says, the
Lord was not in the earthquake. And then after the
earthquake there was a fire. You guessed it. The Lord
was not in the fire. And after the fire, here
was the revelation. After those three supernatural events. After the fire,
(23:08):
the Bible says, there was the sound of a low whisper.
A still small voice spoke to Elijah. It was the Lord.
Here's why this is important for you and I to
see this. Your life is filled with the wind, the earthquake,
(23:34):
and the fire of your own striving, of your own building,
the noise of your hustle, the shaking of your anxiety,
the fire of your ambition. And you wonder why you
cannot hear God. It's because you cannot hear a whisper
in the hurricane of your own making. You have to
(23:57):
come to the end of your noise. The first act
of wisdom is to admit your wisdom is bankrupt. The
first step to hearing God is to silence yourself. If
you want to hear God, you have to silence yourself.
(24:17):
You have to silence all of the outer noise. When
was the last time you just sat in silence? When
was the last time you just went in the room,
closed the door, didn't even bring your phone in the room,
and you just sat in silence to hear from God.
You put the hurricane out, you put you put the
(24:40):
wind out, You put the earthquake out, You put the fire,
you put all of that noise out, and you just
sat to hear from God. In Genesis chapter eleven, verse four,
we find the DNA of all self reliant projects. It
(25:02):
is amazing to me when you think about what these
people were attempting to do. In Genesis chapter eleven, verse four,
they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and
a tower with its top in the heavens, and let
us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed
(25:25):
over the face of the earth. I don't know how
familiar you are with this event in Genesis chapter eleven.
This is after the flood. This is the Tower of
Babel of Babble, and these people had got together and
they decided that they were going to build a tower
and go right up into the heavens. Imagine that this
(25:51):
is the prehistoric scin and this is what I mean.
Let us build for ourselves. Nowhere in their conversation that
they mentioned a thing about God. It was all about them.
Let us make a name for ourselves. You know what
that is. That's humanism dressed up in religious activity. The
tower is built with the bricks of illegitimate trust, You've
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been building a tower to heaven on your own terms,
with your own strength, with your own for your own glory,
and what was the result At the Tower of Babel.
God had to come down from heaven and confuse the
language of the people because as long as they were
all speaking with one voice, guess what, they were going
(26:36):
to build their tower and go into heaven. God had
to come down and confuse their languages so they couldn't
understand each other. He introduced confusion. The name Babel babble
literally means confusion. The confusion you feel is not an accident.
(27:02):
It's the divine consequence of using the wrong blueprint. You
have been building your own tower of Baby. And you
wonder why your life is filled with confusion. Why does
it feel like my prayers are just hitting the ceiling
and bouncing back. Why can't I understand what God is
doing in my life? It's because I'm operating from a
(27:25):
blueprint of self glorification, and God will always confound a
plan that seeks to usurp his glory. When we try
to circumvent the will of God, God will release confusion
into our lives. Why because He loves us and so
(27:46):
the result of trying to build from this kind of blueprint.
It's a life of unnecessary friction. You know where friction
is the right. Friction in your finances, friction in your marriage,
friction living single, friction in your family, friction in your conversations,
friction on your job, friction in your business deals. You're
(28:09):
trying to run against the flow of God's sovereign will,
and every step you take is a struggle. Seems like
everybody else has got smooth selling. Everybody else is in
the express land. You over is stuck on ninety four
and it's traffic. You ain't going nowhere. Guess what. You
get exhausted, You get frustrated. Why not because the journey
(28:35):
is hard, but because your way is hard. That business
that felled, that relationship that ended, that diagnosis that you received,
that plan that fell apart. You saw it as the
end of your world. But hear me, hear me, by
(28:55):
the spirit of God, it was the loving, holy sabotage
of God Almighty, taking a divine sledge hammer to the
walls of your prison. God loves you too much to
let you try to complete your Tower of Babel. He
loves you too much to let you stay in the
prison that you're decorating. So you know what God will do.
(29:19):
God will interrupt your little plans, why so that He
can introduce you to his purpose. I live this thing.
I live this thing God I want. Get your mind
somewhere and sit down. Think about Jacob. Jacob is an
interesting case study for what we're talking about. Just start
(29:41):
with his name. We haven't even gotten to some of
his antics. But just think of his name. If you
from an old Sunday School studying kind of person, his
name means supplanter. That's what Jacob's name means. Let me
go further. That means deceiver, that means trickster, that means
(30:06):
con man. Jacob was the first thug in your Bible.
Forget this. Jacob comes from a good lineage. His father
this Isaac. His grandfather is Abraham. Do you know who
Abraham is? Abraham was known as the friend of God.
(30:31):
That Abraham. Yet Jacob, his grandson. His entire life was
built on his own cunning and his own effort to
lean on his own understanding. But then something happened to
him in Genesis chapter thirty two. Something happened in Genesis
(30:53):
chapter thirty two that would change Jacob forever. He spent
a night wrestling with God. But it wasn't a fight
against God. It was Jacob's final desperate fight against himself
because his whole life, that's what he had been doing.
(31:16):
He had been fighting against himself. And in this battle,
he's asked a question, what is your name? And he
yells out Jacob. In other words, I'm the one that's
to deceive. When Jacob is born, he's a twin. His
brother Esau is the oldest. When Jacob is born, the
(31:38):
Bible stops and let us see Jacob is literally holding
the heel of his brother. He has his brother's heel
as he's coming, as he's being born. And you know,
Jacob would later trick his very own brother out of
his birthright, and his brother decided he was going to
kill Jacob. So Jacob has been on the run and
(32:00):
he is coming to wits end with himself. And so
there's this fight that he has with God. Many of
you are fighting with God right now about something. And
what was God's interruption in this fight? God touched the
socket of Jacob's hip, he wounded him. He gave Jacob
(32:25):
a permanent limp, and in that moment of breaking. That's
when Jacob's life was transformed. He had to be broken
by God in order for him to be transformed. He
walked away from that fight with a new name. You
know what his new name was Israel. Israel means he
(32:48):
who strives with God. So he leaves with a new name,
but he also leaves with a new walk. His limb
was a lifelong sermon. Every time somebody would ask him
about his limb, he could give a sermon of how
he received that limb, because it was a constant physical
reminder to never again lean on his own strength, but
(33:13):
to lean on the God who was strong enough to
wound him. Sometimes your greatest wound, sometimes your most painful interruption,
is God's invitation to a new identity and a new
way of walking. But we have to learn how to
(33:35):
stop cursing the interruption and start realizing that this is
holy ground. We're standing on holy ground, and this is
where God's straight path begins. Let's look at wall number three,
the wall the revolution of acknowledgement. Wall number three, the
(33:57):
revolution of acknowledgment, because this this is where this verse
begins to pivot, and everything pivots with this revelation. This
is where your entire destiny can turn if you can
pivot right here in Proverbs chapter three, verse six eight.
In all your ways acknowledging, let's be honest, think about
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the last five major decisions that you have made. And
with that same honesty, I want you to point to
which one of those last five decisions you acknowledge God.
It's so easy for us to get up and get
busy and run. I gotta do this, I gotta do this,
I gotta go here. I got a call, I got
an email, I got a text. I gotta stop. In
(34:48):
all your ways acknowledge who God. See, the problem is
we acknowledge some of everybody else instead of God. We
usually acknowledge God when we come to the end of
our room. We usually acknowledged God when we've made a
mess of things. But this is, in my opinion, the
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revolutionary act that shatters that echo chamber we talked about
in all your Ways, not some This takes discipline, not
the convenient ones, not on Sunday at church. It's easy
to acknowledge Him at Sunday on church and the air conditioning,
the music, and you're feeling good and look one tear
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rolling down your eye. Yeah, that's cool. But he wants
you to acknowledge him in your secret thoughts, in your
financial planning, in your parenting, in your web browser history.
He wants you to acknowledge him all. The word acknowledge
comes from a Hebrew work, y'all, YadA. So what we
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get here? This is not a polite nod at God.
It's the most intimate word for to know in the
Hebrew language. It's the same word used to describe Adam
knowing his wife Eve, same word used for Abraham knowing
(36:20):
his wife Sarah. It means to know by experience, to
be an intimate, ongoing, vulnerable relationship with This is the
act of handing God the keys to every single room
in the house of your life, especially the doors that
(36:40):
you've blocked because you're ashamed of what's behind those doors.
You don't want nobody to know what's behind those doors.
God said, I need you to give me the key
to that as well. And when you do this, when
you finally stop fighting like Jacob, when you surrender your blueprints,
when you advocate abdicate the throne of your life, then
(37:01):
and only then does the glorious Earth shattering promise of
God erupt into your reality. Let's look at this last wall,
number four, the miracle of intervention. This is the payoff
if you made it this far, this is the payoff.
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Proverbs chapter three, verse six begin this is what we
all need right here, and he was he God, and
God will make straight your paths. He will do it,
not you. This work is not yours to do, it's his.
(37:45):
Can I tell you what your responsibility is. Your only
responsibility is to trust, to not lean, and to acknowledge.
That's it. That's your response. These walls are my way.
Here's your responsibility. Here's your marching orders. I am to
(38:08):
trust God. I am not to lean on my own understanding,
and I am to acknowledge Him in everything that I do,
every decision that I make, everything that comes across my mind. God,
what do you think about this? God? Lead me in
the path of your righteousness for your namesake. See the
(38:29):
problem is sometimes we run ahead of God. We become impatient,
and so we start freestyling in our life. We start
freestyling with our decisions. God said, I am the Lord,
the God of all flessure. There anything too hard for me,
Give it to me. God's sovereign responsibility is to make
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the path. The Hebrew word is yashah yas hr. It
means to make smooth, to make right, to clear the debris,
to remove the obstacles. God doesn't hand you a map
and wish you good luck. You know what God does
(39:14):
is he goes before you with the divine bulldozer of
his grace and power. He demolishes the walls of opposition.
He fills in the potholes of your past failure. He
straightens the crooked, winding, friction field paths that these walls
of my way have created in my life. For many
(39:34):
of you, you've been the king of your own kingdom,
and your kingdom is in ruin. Your kingdom is crumbling
all around you. You're buried in the rubble of your
own good ideas and your own flesh and strength. Today
is the day that we all must surrender. Today is
(39:54):
the day that we abdicate the throne of our heart.
Today is today will we take the crown of self
rule from our own head and we cast it at
the feet of the one and only true King Jesus.
Because he's standing at the gate of the prison that
(40:16):
you have built and he holds the key. But hear me.
Hear me clearly, the Lord will not force his way.
He will not force his way in. You must, of
your own volition allow him to enter. Cast all of
(40:38):
your cares on the Lord. Why, Peter said, because he
cares for you. Stop leaning on who you think you are,
Stop leaning on who people think you are, start trusting
and who God is. The King is here and he
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wants to reclaim his throne in your heart. Now we're
standing at the wall of divine action. I believe that
this word demands a verdict, and I want to charge
each of you with a threefold call to actually ready
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what you write these down. If you're watching on Facebook,
if you want to copy the notes from what Dana
is providing, please do that as well. But I want
you to have this. I believe it's important. We talked
about this early Exodus chapter seventeen. God is first time
God ever told somebody to write. He told Moses, he said,
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write this down and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.
There's some things that you just need to write down
and rehearse in your ears so that it gets into
your heart. King David said, thy word have I hid
in my heart? Why, he says, so that I might
not sin against you. So here's your call to action.
You ready, Number one, abdicate, abdicate, Write down the name
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of the wall that that has imprisoned yet. Is it trust?
Is it understanding? Is it the Tower of Babbel? Name it?
Confess it? Then I want you to give it to God.
And when you give it to God, you're not going
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to take it back. When you give it to God,
you're not going to go back the next day and say, God,
let me get that back. No, you're going to cast
as the Bible says, all of your cares upon God.
We can't stay here, family, we cannot stay on the
throne of our lives. Over in the Book of Revelation,
(42:56):
the fourth chapter John the Beloved Disciple, he has already
written the first three chapters of Revelation, powerful never before
seen revelation that he's providing for the church. But when
he gets to that fourth chapter, guess what Jesus says
to him, come up hither. In other words, Bruh Sus,
(43:19):
there's levels to this, and if we're going to go
to the next level in God, we have to see
him high and lift it up. So you're going to
have to evacuate the throne. And that means what trust
in the Lord? Trust in the Lord, That's what that means.
(43:40):
I'm going to trust you God. I'm gonna trust you,
no matter what I'm going to hold on, I'm gonna
trust you, all right. So that's number one. We're going
to give it to God. We're going to advocate the throne.
Called Action number two announced. And here's what I mean
by announce the revelation that you're receiving right now, the
revelation that you've received in this session, in this conversation,
(44:01):
it's not a private treasure. We're called to be vessels
of honor. Think of a vessel. A vessel is only
good when what's inside of the vessel, inside of the container,
it's being poured out, it's being used. So what's being
poured into you has to be poured out into someone else.
(44:25):
So the revelation that you're receiving, it is not a
private treasure, it's a public trust. You are now an
ambassador of this treatment. Who do you know that's still
building their own prison? Who have you been in conversation
with that you know is struggling because they keep getting
ahead of themselves. They keep making decisions and decisions and decisions,
(44:49):
and they're just rah and they're just anxious, and they're
just announced to them the good news that the King,
the King of all Kings, the Lord of all Lord,
he has a better blueprint. And all I ask you
to do, share this message, each one, teacher, Let's get
in the habit of sharing. You know, if you go
(45:09):
somewhere and you eat something and it's good, you'll recommend
others to go to that same restaurant. If you watch
a good movie and you enjoyed it, you'll recommend somebody
to watch that movie. This is what I want every
one of you to get into the habit of doing,
because again we are expanding our reach. Get in the
habit of sharing. Those of you there streaming now, I
(45:32):
want you to start sharing it as many people as
you can. Just share it, Just share it, Just share.
Because we have some POWs, we have some prisoners of war,
and it's incumbent upon you and I to go and
get those prisoners, to go behind those walls and get
those prisoners. We have some mia, some saints that are
missing in action again and it's incumbent upon us to
(45:57):
go and get those that are missing in action. Okay,
so I want you to share this message. Then number three,
here's the third call to action. Advance. You got to
advance because demolition leaves a void. You have to advance
into God's plan for your life. Your prayer is no
(46:19):
longer what is my way? But Lord, what is your way?
And I want you to begin to pray and seek
God and ask God what's the next step on the
path that you have ordained for my life. I want
you to begin to advance into His will. Whatever you've
(46:39):
been doing, I need you to go further than that.
I need you to challenge yourself. There was a man
who came to Jesus one day. His son was tormented
by a demon. And the man had brought his son
to the disciples, and they couldn't do nothing with him.
(47:03):
This is in fact, when Jesus was up on the
Mountain of Transfiguration and he had Peter, James and John
with him, when he came down off of the mouth,
and here's this father, and he tells Jesus, look, I
brought him to your disciples. I brought him to them.
Church folk over there, they couldn't do nothing with him,
and so he tells Jesus, can you help me?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Jesus said, whw long has he been like this? And
he's like, man, he's been like this his whole life.
But then the man says something that really gives us
up the x ray of his heart.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
He said, Lord, if you could do anything, and Jesus
had to correct them. He said, no, it's nothing about it.
If I can do, he said, if you can believe,
and the father yells out. He said, Lord, I believe,
but help my unbelief. And I wish we all can
just have that kind of an honest moment with God. God.
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I believe you, I know you a miracle worker. I
know what you can do. I've seen it. But God,
I'm struggling to believe that you will do it in
my life. And Jesus looked at the boy and he
told the father, he said, listen, you got to go
to another level. He said, this right here, this demon
that you're dealing with right here, and your son. He said,
(48:29):
this can only be dealt with by a prayer and fasting.
And Jesus of course called a demon out of the boy.
The reason why I'm sharing that with you is that
many of you are dealing with some things that are
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very serious, very serious issues, some very serious things, maybe
even with your own children, maybe with some family members,
and what you have been trying to do is not enough.
This kind only comes by prayer and fasting. So I
(49:10):
want to challenge some of you all here that's listening
right now, begin to seek God about prayer, begin to
seek God about fasting. We don't talk about this enough
in the church. We just try to go to church
and name it and claim it. But there are some
(49:30):
real issues out here, some real spiritual forces that we're
up against. Paul names four different hierarchies of spiritual forces
over in Ephesians chapter six, verse eleven. He says, for
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.
So I want to encourage you, challenge yourself to go
(49:52):
to the next level of your walk. Don't stay where
you are, don't get comfortable. It doesn't matter who's not
coming with you. God is with you. And as long
as God is with you, you're in the majority. So
that's all I have end this supposed it's by word
of prayer. Father, we thank you. We honor you God
(50:15):
for this time of gathering in this digital space. God,
we've made a mess of some things. God, we're standing
in our own rubble right now. God. But God, I
thank you that you're standing in the rubble with us.
I thank you God that you're helping us to rebuild
according to your blue print. Except the Lord builds the house,
(50:37):
they labor in vain to build it. And so God,
we submit ourselves to your will. We submit ourselves to
your way. We submit ourself to your wisdom. God, help
us when we're weak. Help us God, when we're cast down. God,
your word says, a just man fall seven times, but
rises back up. So God, I pray that you will
(51:00):
give us the boldness and the audacity to get right
back up on our feet, regardless of how many times
we fall. In God, we know that there is nothing
too hard for you. And God, we thank you for
your promises. So, God, help us to be who You've
created us to be. Help us to walk in purpose,
(51:20):
Help us to walk in our calling. Help us to
be vessels of honor for your glory, for your goodness,
for your grace. And it's in Jesus name that we
do pray ay man okay, so as always remember get
into the word of God, and the word of God
will get into you. And I'll see you Saturday morning
at eight a m. God Us Peace,
Thank you so much, Dandy and family. Welcome to this
special pop out edition of Brothers in the Word. If
this is our first time meeting, allowed me to introduce myself.
My name is Tim Smith. I am the youngest child
of the amazing Claire Jones. Welcome to another episode. As
Damn mentioned of our series These Walls. I want to
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thank each and every one of you who are now
streaming on our different streaming platform Speaker iHeart, iHeart Radio,
Amazon Music and Spotify. Just like George and Weezy Baby,
we moving on up today. We are at a divine
intersection and this is a place where our will and
(00:45):
our wants collide with the wisdom of God. And I
know you've been there before, when God says no and
you say why not. Many of you listening right now
are standing at this crossroad. And when you're at this crossroad,
it causes some confusion, it causes some weariness, and sometimes
(01:05):
you can even feel trapped at this crossroad when you
want to go one way and God to say no,
go the opposite way. So I want you to understand
this first and foremost. You're not listening to this teaching
by accident. The Lord has orchestrated this moment. He has
ordered your steps to be here in this digital sanctuary.
This word is a divine appointment. This word is a
(01:27):
holy summons for those who have been building and toiling
and striving, only to find that the very walls you've
built for your protection have actually become your prison. So
this fortress we build, these fortresses, we think they're providing safety,
and actually what ends up happening, these fortresses actually become
(01:50):
a dungeon. So today, by the power of the Holy Spirit,
we're not here to renovate these walls. We're not here
to redecorate these walls. We are here to execute a
divine demolition. I need you to get your Bible. I
need you to get something to write with. I need
you to meet me over in the Book of Proverbs,
the Book of Wisdom. We're going to be in the
(02:12):
third chapter of Proverbs, and we are going to anchor
our hearts in verses five and in verse six. Title
for our conversation today is simple, but yet profound. These
walls of my way, these walls of my way. So
(02:32):
now let me give you a mission before we begin.
Your mission, should you choose to accept, it, is to
identify the prison walls you're built in your own life.
I'm going to need you to surrender those blueprints to God,
and then you're going to have to take up the
divine sledgehammer of his word to begin the demolition process.
(02:52):
So the very charge of God for this hour is
founding Proverbs, chapter three, verse five and six. Let me
go ahead and read it for you. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on
your own understanding. Here it is right here in all
(03:13):
your ways, somebody say, all in all your ways, acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your patht let's read it
one more time. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Pay attention to the language, and do not lean on
your own understanding. And all of your ways acknowledge him,
(03:38):
and he will make straight your path. Now let's break
down the architect of our own rebellion. We're going to
look at these walls. I believe we're gonna have about
four walls tonight that we're going to look at wall
number one. If you're taking notes, please write this down.
Oh and please share this. Those of you that are
watching listen, get active in the chat, please share, Please
say hello. So we can acknowledge you before we get
(04:00):
about here tonight. The chat is yours. Dana's the moderator,
so glad so appreciate him being here as well. So
let's have a real conversation about these walls that we're
going to look at. These walls are my way wall
number one, the wall of illegitimate trust. Taking notes, I
(04:20):
need you to write that down, the wall of illegitimate trust.
The text is uncompromising in its opening command Proverbs chapter three,
verse five A, Solomon says, trust in the Lord. There's
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so many things that we find ourselves trusting in, people
that we find ourselves trusting in, systems that we find
ourselves trusting in. But of all of the things that
we look to trust in, Solomon points to the one
and only person that you and I should truly trust in.
It says trust in the Lord. So we have to
(05:03):
pull over right here. The modern Church has neutered the
word trust. And this is what I mean by that.
We have domesticated it. We have made it a safe,
tained and a very manageable suggestion. Now the Hebrew word,
because I believe that when you read the Bible, you're
going to have to go underneath some of these words,
(05:26):
and so to go underneath the word trust. The Hebrew
word is but talk, and it's spelled b tach but talk. Now,
let me give you some insight about what this word
actually means, because when Solomon uses this word trust, this
is not a synonym for hope. So it's not a
(05:47):
gentle intellectual agreement. That's not what Solomon is writing about. No,
but talk is a violent, desperate, all or nothing act
of the will. It means throwing yourself down to helpless
and expose to be utterly and completely dependent on another
for your next breath. But talk is the posture of
(06:09):
an infant who cannot feed itself, cannot change itself, cannot
protect itself. But talk is the posture of a soldier
on a battlefield who is out of ammunition, bleeding out,
and who can do nothing but collapse and wait for
the medic. Biblical trust begins where you end. Remember that
(06:33):
Biblical trust. If you're going to trust this word, you're
going to have to end where your trust begins. We
built the wall here. We built a thick, high, reinforced
wall of illegitimate trust. This is what I mean. We
say trust in the Lord, but you know what we do.
We purchase spiritual insurance policies. We say trust in the Lord, Lord,
(06:57):
I trust you with my future. But you know what
we'll do. We'll end up manipulating and scheming to try
to do a work around. We're trying to force open
doors that God has closed, terrified that God might lead
us somewhere that we don't want to go, or have
us to do something that we don't want to do. Family,
This is not trust. This is a manipulation. This is
(07:19):
a negotiation. And when we do this, it is an
insult to God. We're treating a sovereign Lord of all
creation like a questionable business partner, demanding that he prove
himself worthy of our limited investment. So we end up
giving him ninety percent of our heart, and we call
(07:41):
that surrender. You give him control over the convenient areas
of your life, and you call it lordship. But God
is saying to us, right here and right now, I
will not be a consultant in your life. I will
not be a co pilot in your life. God is saying,
I am captain or I am nothing. God is saying
(08:03):
I am Lord of all, or I am not lord
at all. You have to decide. If these walls could talk,
they would scream out agonizing weight of your own self reliance.
Think about this. In First Samuel, chapter fifteen, King Saul
(08:27):
is given an order. He's given a directive by the
prophet Samuel. Samuel is the only man in the Bible
who is both priest, prophet, and judge. So Samuel speaks
the very word of God. So the prophet Samuel gives
a direct command from God to the king. And this
(08:49):
is what he tells the King. He says, go and
devote destruction to all that they have. Do not spare them.
King saw for total, unconditional trust and obedience for how
he is to deal with an enemy of Israel known
as the Amalekites. The Amalekites attacked Moses and the children
(09:13):
of Israel all the way back in Exodus, I believe
it's chapter seventeen. They attacked them from the rear. At
the rear of the line is where the women and
the children were. So it was a very cowardly thing
to do. And this is the battle where you see
where Moses is sat on the rock and Aaron and
her hold his arms up and as long as his
(09:34):
arms are being held up. The Bible says that Israel
was winning the war, but when his arms came down,
Israel would lose the war. So Joshua was leading the
army into this battle against the Amalekites. So when they're
done fighting, God tells Moses to do something very particular.
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He tells Moses says, write this down and rehearse it
in the ears of Joshua. He said, I will utterly
destroy the Amalekites off the face of the earth. So
in First Samuel chapter fifteen, God brings this back up.
Now this is five hundred years have transpired since that happened,
but God is bringing it up just like it happened yesterday.
(10:16):
Because God made a promise that He's going to deal
with this nation. So He's going to deal with this
nation through King Sault. But like many of us, Saul's
illegitimate trust kicked in because Saul was given very implicit instructions,
kill everything. Kill the sheep, killed, the goat, killed the men,
(10:41):
kill everything moving. But this is what Saul did. He
didn't destroy everything like God told him. He spared the
best of the sheep because he wanted that. He spared
the best of the Oxen because he wanted that. He
even spared the enemies King King Agang. So here's what
(11:05):
we have. King Saul obeyed mostly hear me. Partial obedience
is still disobedience. King Saul trusted to a point. He
set a limit to his trust. And what will Samuel's
(11:27):
response to King Saul's partial obedience? Oh, please hear the
word of the Lord. First Samue, Chapter fifteen, verse twenty two,
twenty three, and Samuel said, as the Lord has great
delight and burnt offerings and sacrifices as an obeying the
voice of the Lord, behold to obey is better than sacrifice,
(11:52):
and to listen than the fat of rams verse twenty three.
It gets worse, for a rebellion is as the sin
of diven a nation, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Here it is because you, King Saul, have rejected the
word of the Lord. He has also rejected you from
(12:14):
being king. Heaven is declaring to us right here and
right now, that partial trust in God is rebellion. Your
plan B is idolatry. You're bounding down to the idol
(12:35):
of your own contingency plan. Let's talk about Paul, the
apostle Paul, a man whose resume could put all of
us to shame. Paul understood the demolition process. Over in
Philippians chapter three, Paul writes these words to the saints
and Philippi. And he's talking about his credentials. He's talking
(12:58):
about his resume. He's talking about all of the things
that he earned, all of the things he earned in academia.
Paul his PhDs, had PhDs. There was no one on
this man's level. But I want you to listen to
what he says about everything that he gained before Christ.
He said, but whatever gain I had, I counted as
(13:23):
loss for the sake of Christ. What was his gain?
Paul had no equals his religious pedigree, his education under
the greatest Jewish teacher, Gamellia, his flawless observance of the law,
his burning zeal. Paul took his entire portfolio of all
of his human achievements, the very things that made him somebody.
(13:48):
And you know what he declared it as he called
it refuse, He called it theces, He called it garbage.
Why he said, so that he might gain Christ. Hear me,
and hear me loud and clear. You cannot gain Christ.
(14:09):
Until you are willing to lose you. If you're not
willing to lose you, you cannot gain Christ. You have
to decide who's going to sit on the throne. Are
you sitting on the throne or is Christ sitting on
the throne? A question for examination for all of you.
(14:31):
What does the plan be that you currently have right
now in your life that is usurping the lordship of
Christ in your life? The plan be that's not allowing
God to come in and do a complete renovation in
your life. I want you to name it, name it.
(14:52):
You don't have to name it in the chat, but
I want you to name it, call it out. And
when you call it out, confess it to God and
remove that plan B and only settle. Only allow yourself
God's plan A. Because God's Plan A is greater than
(15:14):
anything that you can ever think or imagine. Ie. First Corinthians,
Chapter two, verse nine and ten. Write that down wall
number two. Now let's look at the wall of finite understanding,
because now the scripture is starting to pick up momentum,
and I'm gonna show you exactly what I'm talking about.
Proverbs chapter three, verse five B. So we looked at
five a trust in the Lord. Now let's look at
(15:36):
five B. With all your heart again. What the Bible
doesn't say is as important as what it does say.
He says, with all of your heart, not some of
your heart. Not your heart when you go to church,
not your heart. When you have a joy, joy moment,
with all of your heart. And get this, do not
(15:57):
lean on your own understanding with all your heart. The
Hebrew word is lev a lev. What that means is
when he says, with all your heart, that's your inner world,
that's your will, that's your will, that's your mind, that's
your emotions, that's your drive, that's your ambition. God lays
(16:22):
claim to the entire territory, and then he issues the
command that is repugnant to the twenty first century mind.
He says, do not lean on your own understanding. To
lean means to prop yourself up to use as a support.
(16:43):
Use your logic, use your reason, use your education, your
past experience, and your gut feelings, your hustle, your grind.
God says, that's a broken stick. Don't put your weight
on that. Why Because your understanding it's finite. Your understanding
is falling. Your understanding is fatally flawed. Why, because your
(17:09):
understanding has been infected by the virus of sin. So
to lean on your own understanding is like asking a
blind man for directions. This is the wall of intellectual idolatry,
and to me, it's the most sophisticated, respectable, and deadly
(17:29):
of all the walls that we build in our lives.
If these walls could talk, they would speak of all
of the divine appointments. You have reasoned your way out
of the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Remember what Jesus
said about the Holy Spirit of John chapter sixteen. He said,
he will lead you and guide you into what all truth.
(17:55):
But because you're trying to reason in your mind, and
because it will and logical to your mind the command
that God gave you, you rejected it because it didn't
make sense to you. You've built an echo chamber echo chamber,
a polished sound proof room where the only voice you
(18:16):
can hear is your own. The whispers of your past failures,
the shouts of societal expectations, the murmurs of your deepest insecurities,
the confident pronouncements of your own intellect, that all just
bounced from the wall of illegitimate trust to the wall
(18:37):
of finite understanding, and it's like a tennis match. It's
just bouncing back and forth off of these two walls.
And every time it's bouncing, it gets louder and louder,
it gets more distorted, it gets more convincing with every echo,
and before you know it, you can't hear anything from God.
You have become your own trusted counselor. And guess what
(19:02):
your counsel will lead you to the edge of a cliff.
The God who spoke galaxies into existence, the God who
holds time in his hands, is standing on the other
side of that wall. And this is what he is declaring.
Found over in Isaiah chapter fifty five, verse eight and nine.
(19:22):
This is for all of us when we're trying to
rationalize with God, when we're trying to negotiate with God,
when we're trying to bargain with God. I need you
to hear the word of the Lord, found in Isaiah
chapter fifty five, verse eighty nine. Please put this in
your notes. God says this. He says, for my thoughts
(19:42):
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
declares the Lord verse nine. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth. So are my ways than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts. Do you see the
distance between us and God? Do you see the distance
(20:05):
between your thoughts and his thoughts? He said, as high
as the heavens are above the earth. So this isn't
just a statement of fact. It's a declaration of war
against your intellectual pride. God is not asking for your consultation.
God is not seeking your opinion. God is commanding your consecration.
(20:30):
God is demanding your surrender. Come out with your hands up.
And this is the danger of the familiar. We're addicted
to what we know. We like routine, We like to
know and advance what's going to happen before it happens.
What we can predict, what we can control. But God's
(20:53):
ways are, by definition, outside of our little box. God's
ways are foolishness to the world. So guess what we resist.
We fight to stay in the comfort of our own understanding,
(21:13):
rather than stepping out into the terrifying freedom of His will.
There's a prophet found over in One Kings, chapter nineteen.
Prophet by the name of Elijah. Elijah is a powerful,
powerful prophet. I believe it's in Mark chapter nine, when
Jesus is on the mount of Transfiguration, Elijah and Moses
(21:37):
meet with him. Elijah represents the prophets, Moses representing the Law,
and Elijah had a moment where he's running for his life.
This man is depressed, this man is even suicidal. So
(22:00):
goes to the mountain of God. He goes to the
mountain of God and he's expecting a spectacle, and guess what,
he gives one. But it wasn't the kind of spectacle
that he was anticipating. So he's on this mountain, he's
in the cleft of the rock, and God has a
(22:22):
little demonstration for him. So the first thing that happens,
a strong wind tears the mountain, breaks the rocks, breaks
the rocks in pieces. But the Bible says, but the
Lord wasn't in the wind. Then after the wind, there's
an earthquake. Can you imagine an earthquake on a mountain.
(22:43):
But guess what the Bible says. The Bible says, the
Lord was not in the earthquake. And then after the
earthquake there was a fire. You guessed it. The Lord
was not in the fire. And after the fire, here
was the revelation. After those three supernatural events. After the fire,
(23:08):
the Bible says, there was the sound of a low whisper.
A still small voice spoke to Elijah. It was the Lord.
Here's why this is important for you and I to
see this. Your life is filled with the wind, the earthquake,
(23:34):
and the fire of your own striving, of your own building,
the noise of your hustle, the shaking of your anxiety,
the fire of your ambition. And you wonder why you
cannot hear God. It's because you cannot hear a whisper
in the hurricane of your own making. You have to
(23:57):
come to the end of your noise. The first act
of wisdom is to admit your wisdom is bankrupt. The
first step to hearing God is to silence yourself. If
you want to hear God, you have to silence yourself.
(24:17):
You have to silence all of the outer noise. When
was the last time you just sat in silence? When
was the last time you just went in the room,
closed the door, didn't even bring your phone in the room,
and you just sat in silence to hear from God.
You put the hurricane out, you put you put the
(24:40):
wind out, You put the earthquake out, You put the fire,
you put all of that noise out, and you just
sat to hear from God. In Genesis chapter eleven, verse four,
we find the DNA of all self reliant projects. It
(25:02):
is amazing to me when you think about what these
people were attempting to do. In Genesis chapter eleven, verse four,
they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and
a tower with its top in the heavens, and let
us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed
(25:25):
over the face of the earth. I don't know how
familiar you are with this event in Genesis chapter eleven.
This is after the flood. This is the Tower of
Babel of Babble, and these people had got together and
they decided that they were going to build a tower
and go right up into the heavens. Imagine that this
(25:51):
is the prehistoric scin and this is what I mean.
Let us build for ourselves. Nowhere in their conversation that
they mentioned a thing about God. It was all about them.
Let us make a name for ourselves. You know what
that is. That's humanism dressed up in religious activity. The
tower is built with the bricks of illegitimate trust, You've
(26:14):
been building a tower to heaven on your own terms,
with your own strength, with your own for your own glory,
and what was the result At the Tower of Babel.
God had to come down from heaven and confuse the
language of the people because as long as they were
all speaking with one voice, guess what, they were going
(26:36):
to build their tower and go into heaven. God had
to come down and confuse their languages so they couldn't
understand each other. He introduced confusion. The name Babel babble
literally means confusion. The confusion you feel is not an accident.
(27:02):
It's the divine consequence of using the wrong blueprint. You
have been building your own tower of Baby. And you
wonder why your life is filled with confusion. Why does
it feel like my prayers are just hitting the ceiling
and bouncing back. Why can't I understand what God is
doing in my life? It's because I'm operating from a
(27:25):
blueprint of self glorification, and God will always confound a
plan that seeks to usurp his glory. When we try
to circumvent the will of God, God will release confusion
into our lives. Why because He loves us and so
(27:46):
the result of trying to build from this kind of blueprint.
It's a life of unnecessary friction. You know where friction
is the right. Friction in your finances, friction in your marriage,
friction living single, friction in your family, friction in your conversations,
friction on your job, friction in your business deals. You're
(28:09):
trying to run against the flow of God's sovereign will,
and every step you take is a struggle. Seems like
everybody else has got smooth selling. Everybody else is in
the express land. You over is stuck on ninety four
and it's traffic. You ain't going nowhere. Guess what. You
get exhausted, You get frustrated. Why not because the journey
(28:35):
is hard, but because your way is hard. That business
that felled, that relationship that ended, that diagnosis that you received,
that plan that fell apart. You saw it as the
end of your world. But hear me, hear me, by
(28:55):
the spirit of God, it was the loving, holy sabotage
of God Almighty, taking a divine sledge hammer to the
walls of your prison. God loves you too much to
let you try to complete your Tower of Babel. He
loves you too much to let you stay in the
prison that you're decorating. So you know what God will do.
(29:19):
God will interrupt your little plans, why so that He
can introduce you to his purpose. I live this thing.
I live this thing God I want. Get your mind
somewhere and sit down. Think about Jacob. Jacob is an
interesting case study for what we're talking about. Just start
(29:41):
with his name. We haven't even gotten to some of
his antics. But just think of his name. If you
from an old Sunday School studying kind of person, his
name means supplanter. That's what Jacob's name means. Let me
go further. That means deceiver, that means trickster, that means
(30:06):
con man. Jacob was the first thug in your Bible.
Forget this. Jacob comes from a good lineage. His father
this Isaac. His grandfather is Abraham. Do you know who
Abraham is? Abraham was known as the friend of God.
(30:31):
That Abraham. Yet Jacob, his grandson. His entire life was
built on his own cunning and his own effort to
lean on his own understanding. But then something happened to
him in Genesis chapter thirty two. Something happened in Genesis
(30:53):
chapter thirty two that would change Jacob forever. He spent
a night wrestling with God. But it wasn't a fight
against God. It was Jacob's final desperate fight against himself
because his whole life, that's what he had been doing.
(31:16):
He had been fighting against himself. And in this battle,
he's asked a question, what is your name? And he
yells out Jacob. In other words, I'm the one that's
to deceive. When Jacob is born, he's a twin. His
brother Esau is the oldest. When Jacob is born, the
(31:38):
Bible stops and let us see Jacob is literally holding
the heel of his brother. He has his brother's heel
as he's coming, as he's being born. And you know,
Jacob would later trick his very own brother out of
his birthright, and his brother decided he was going to
kill Jacob. So Jacob has been on the run and
(32:00):
he is coming to wits end with himself. And so
there's this fight that he has with God. Many of
you are fighting with God right now about something. And
what was God's interruption in this fight? God touched the
socket of Jacob's hip, he wounded him. He gave Jacob
(32:25):
a permanent limp, and in that moment of breaking. That's
when Jacob's life was transformed. He had to be broken
by God in order for him to be transformed. He
walked away from that fight with a new name. You
know what his new name was Israel. Israel means he
(32:48):
who strives with God. So he leaves with a new name,
but he also leaves with a new walk. His limb
was a lifelong sermon. Every time somebody would ask him
about his limb, he could give a sermon of how
he received that limb, because it was a constant physical
reminder to never again lean on his own strength, but
(33:13):
to lean on the God who was strong enough to
wound him. Sometimes your greatest wound, sometimes your most painful interruption,
is God's invitation to a new identity and a new
way of walking. But we have to learn how to
(33:35):
stop cursing the interruption and start realizing that this is
holy ground. We're standing on holy ground, and this is
where God's straight path begins. Let's look at wall number three,
the wall the revolution of acknowledgement. Wall number three, the
(33:57):
revolution of acknowledgment, because this this is where this verse
begins to pivot, and everything pivots with this revelation. This
is where your entire destiny can turn if you can
pivot right here in Proverbs chapter three, verse six eight.
In all your ways acknowledging, let's be honest, think about
(34:23):
the last five major decisions that you have made. And
with that same honesty, I want you to point to
which one of those last five decisions you acknowledge God.
It's so easy for us to get up and get
busy and run. I gotta do this, I gotta do this,
I gotta go here. I got a call, I got
an email, I got a text. I gotta stop. In
(34:48):
all your ways acknowledge who God. See, the problem is
we acknowledge some of everybody else instead of God. We
usually acknowledge God when we come to the end of
our room. We usually acknowledged God when we've made a
mess of things. But this is, in my opinion, the
(35:10):
revolutionary act that shatters that echo chamber we talked about
in all your Ways, not some This takes discipline, not
the convenient ones, not on Sunday at church. It's easy
to acknowledge Him at Sunday on church and the air conditioning,
the music, and you're feeling good and look one tear
(35:32):
rolling down your eye. Yeah, that's cool. But he wants
you to acknowledge him in your secret thoughts, in your
financial planning, in your parenting, in your web browser history.
He wants you to acknowledge him all. The word acknowledge
comes from a Hebrew work, y'all, YadA. So what we
(35:58):
get here? This is not a polite nod at God.
It's the most intimate word for to know in the
Hebrew language. It's the same word used to describe Adam
knowing his wife Eve, same word used for Abraham knowing
(36:20):
his wife Sarah. It means to know by experience, to
be an intimate, ongoing, vulnerable relationship with This is the
act of handing God the keys to every single room
in the house of your life, especially the doors that
(36:40):
you've blocked because you're ashamed of what's behind those doors.
You don't want nobody to know what's behind those doors.
God said, I need you to give me the key
to that as well. And when you do this, when
you finally stop fighting like Jacob, when you surrender your blueprints,
when you advocate abdicate the throne of your life, then
(37:01):
and only then does the glorious Earth shattering promise of
God erupt into your reality. Let's look at this last wall,
number four, the miracle of intervention. This is the payoff
if you made it this far, this is the payoff.
(37:21):
Proverbs chapter three, verse six begin this is what we
all need right here, and he was he God, and
God will make straight your paths. He will do it,
not you. This work is not yours to do, it's his.
(37:45):
Can I tell you what your responsibility is. Your only
responsibility is to trust, to not lean, and to acknowledge.
That's it. That's your response. These walls are my way.
Here's your responsibility. Here's your marching orders. I am to
(38:08):
trust God. I am not to lean on my own understanding,
and I am to acknowledge Him in everything that I do,
every decision that I make, everything that comes across my mind. God,
what do you think about this? God? Lead me in
the path of your righteousness for your namesake. See the
(38:29):
problem is sometimes we run ahead of God. We become impatient,
and so we start freestyling in our life. We start
freestyling with our decisions. God said, I am the Lord,
the God of all flessure. There anything too hard for me,
Give it to me. God's sovereign responsibility is to make
(38:52):
the path. The Hebrew word is yashah yas hr. It
means to make smooth, to make right, to clear the debris,
to remove the obstacles. God doesn't hand you a map
and wish you good luck. You know what God does
(39:14):
is he goes before you with the divine bulldozer of
his grace and power. He demolishes the walls of opposition.
He fills in the potholes of your past failure. He
straightens the crooked, winding, friction field paths that these walls
of my way have created in my life. For many
(39:34):
of you, you've been the king of your own kingdom,
and your kingdom is in ruin. Your kingdom is crumbling
all around you. You're buried in the rubble of your
own good ideas and your own flesh and strength. Today
is the day that we all must surrender. Today is
(39:54):
the day that we abdicate the throne of our heart.
Today is today will we take the crown of self
rule from our own head and we cast it at
the feet of the one and only true King Jesus.
Because he's standing at the gate of the prison that
(40:16):
you have built and he holds the key. But hear me.
Hear me clearly, the Lord will not force his way.
He will not force his way in. You must, of
your own volition allow him to enter. Cast all of
(40:38):
your cares on the Lord. Why, Peter said, because he
cares for you. Stop leaning on who you think you are,
Stop leaning on who people think you are, start trusting
and who God is. The King is here and he
(41:00):
wants to reclaim his throne in your heart. Now we're
standing at the wall of divine action. I believe that
this word demands a verdict, and I want to charge
each of you with a threefold call to actually ready
(41:22):
what you write these down. If you're watching on Facebook,
if you want to copy the notes from what Dana
is providing, please do that as well. But I want
you to have this. I believe it's important. We talked
about this early Exodus chapter seventeen. God is first time
God ever told somebody to write. He told Moses, he said,
(41:44):
write this down and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.
There's some things that you just need to write down
and rehearse in your ears so that it gets into
your heart. King David said, thy word have I hid
in my heart? Why, he says, so that I might
not sin against you. So here's your call to action.
You ready, Number one, abdicate, abdicate, Write down the name
(42:11):
of the wall that that has imprisoned yet. Is it trust?
Is it understanding? Is it the Tower of Babbel? Name it?
Confess it? Then I want you to give it to God.
And when you give it to God, you're not going
(42:33):
to take it back. When you give it to God,
you're not going to go back the next day and say, God,
let me get that back. No, you're going to cast
as the Bible says, all of your cares upon God.
We can't stay here, family, we cannot stay on the
throne of our lives. Over in the Book of Revelation,
(42:56):
the fourth chapter John the Beloved Disciple, he has already
written the first three chapters of Revelation, powerful never before
seen revelation that he's providing for the church. But when
he gets to that fourth chapter, guess what Jesus says
to him, come up hither. In other words, Bruh Sus,
(43:19):
there's levels to this, and if we're going to go
to the next level in God, we have to see
him high and lift it up. So you're going to
have to evacuate the throne. And that means what trust
in the Lord? Trust in the Lord, That's what that means.
(43:40):
I'm going to trust you God. I'm gonna trust you,
no matter what I'm going to hold on, I'm gonna
trust you, all right. So that's number one. We're going
to give it to God. We're going to advocate the throne.
Called Action number two announced. And here's what I mean
by announce the revelation that you're receiving right now, the
revelation that you've received in this session, in this conversation,
(44:01):
it's not a private treasure. We're called to be vessels
of honor. Think of a vessel. A vessel is only
good when what's inside of the vessel, inside of the container,
it's being poured out, it's being used. So what's being
poured into you has to be poured out into someone else.
(44:25):
So the revelation that you're receiving, it is not a
private treasure, it's a public trust. You are now an
ambassador of this treatment. Who do you know that's still
building their own prison? Who have you been in conversation
with that you know is struggling because they keep getting
ahead of themselves. They keep making decisions and decisions and decisions,
(44:49):
and they're just rah and they're just anxious, and they're
just announced to them the good news that the King,
the King of all Kings, the Lord of all Lord,
he has a better blueprint. And all I ask you
to do, share this message, each one, teacher, Let's get
in the habit of sharing. You know, if you go
(45:09):
somewhere and you eat something and it's good, you'll recommend
others to go to that same restaurant. If you watch
a good movie and you enjoyed it, you'll recommend somebody
to watch that movie. This is what I want every
one of you to get into the habit of doing,
because again we are expanding our reach. Get in the
habit of sharing. Those of you there streaming now, I
(45:32):
want you to start sharing it as many people as
you can. Just share it, Just share it, Just share.
Because we have some POWs, we have some prisoners of war,
and it's incumbent upon you and I to go and
get those prisoners, to go behind those walls and get
those prisoners. We have some mia, some saints that are
missing in action again and it's incumbent upon us to
(45:57):
go and get those that are missing in action. Okay,
so I want you to share this message. Then number three,
here's the third call to action. Advance. You got to
advance because demolition leaves a void. You have to advance
into God's plan for your life. Your prayer is no
(46:19):
longer what is my way? But Lord, what is your way?
And I want you to begin to pray and seek
God and ask God what's the next step on the
path that you have ordained for my life. I want
you to begin to advance into His will. Whatever you've
(46:39):
been doing, I need you to go further than that.
I need you to challenge yourself. There was a man
who came to Jesus one day. His son was tormented
by a demon. And the man had brought his son
to the disciples, and they couldn't do nothing with him.
(47:03):
This is in fact, when Jesus was up on the
Mountain of Transfiguration and he had Peter, James and John
with him, when he came down off of the mouth,
and here's this father, and he tells Jesus, look, I
brought him to your disciples. I brought him to them.
Church folk over there, they couldn't do nothing with him,
and so he tells Jesus, can you help me?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Jesus said, whw long has he been like this? And
he's like, man, he's been like this his whole life.
But then the man says something that really gives us
up the x ray of his heart.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
He said, Lord, if you could do anything, and Jesus
had to correct them. He said, no, it's nothing about it.
If I can do, he said, if you can believe,
and the father yells out. He said, Lord, I believe,
but help my unbelief. And I wish we all can
just have that kind of an honest moment with God. God.
(48:07):
I believe you, I know you a miracle worker. I
know what you can do. I've seen it. But God,
I'm struggling to believe that you will do it in
my life. And Jesus looked at the boy and he
told the father, he said, listen, you got to go
to another level. He said, this right here, this demon
that you're dealing with right here, and your son. He said,
(48:29):
this can only be dealt with by a prayer and fasting.
And Jesus of course called a demon out of the boy.
The reason why I'm sharing that with you is that
many of you are dealing with some things that are
(48:49):
very serious, very serious issues, some very serious things, maybe
even with your own children, maybe with some family members,
and what you have been trying to do is not enough.
This kind only comes by prayer and fasting. So I
(49:10):
want to challenge some of you all here that's listening
right now, begin to seek God about prayer, begin to
seek God about fasting. We don't talk about this enough
in the church. We just try to go to church
and name it and claim it. But there are some
(49:30):
real issues out here, some real spiritual forces that we're
up against. Paul names four different hierarchies of spiritual forces
over in Ephesians chapter six, verse eleven. He says, for
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.
So I want to encourage you, challenge yourself to go
(49:52):
to the next level of your walk. Don't stay where
you are, don't get comfortable. It doesn't matter who's not
coming with you. God is with you. And as long
as God is with you, you're in the majority. So
that's all I have end this supposed it's by word
of prayer. Father, we thank you. We honor you God
(50:15):
for this time of gathering in this digital space. God,
we've made a mess of some things. God, we're standing
in our own rubble right now. God. But God, I
thank you that you're standing in the rubble with us.
I thank you God that you're helping us to rebuild
according to your blue print. Except the Lord builds the house,
(50:37):
they labor in vain to build it. And so God,
we submit ourselves to your will. We submit ourselves to
your way. We submit ourself to your wisdom. God, help
us when we're weak. Help us God, when we're cast down. God,
your word says, a just man fall seven times, but
rises back up. So God, I pray that you will
(51:00):
give us the boldness and the audacity to get right
back up on our feet, regardless of how many times
we fall. In God, we know that there is nothing
too hard for you. And God, we thank you for
your promises. So, God, help us to be who You've
created us to be. Help us to walk in purpose,
(51:20):
Help us to walk in our calling. Help us to
be vessels of honor for your glory, for your goodness,
for your grace. And it's in Jesus name that we
do pray ay man okay, so as always remember get
into the word of God, and the word of God
will get into you. And I'll see you Saturday morning
at eight a m. God Us Peace,
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