Gateway Church's Podcast
Stop, Drop, and Roll
A Gateway Sermon
Just like Pastor Todd, my wife and I are experiencing a lot of first things in our home. We have a six month old daughter, Riley Elizabeth, and this last week she began cutting her first tooth. So the facts and details of that entire experience have been recorded and triplicate for the historical aspect of her life. We will have that in three separate books so that if our house burns down, there's one in the safe in Oklahoma somewhere, and there's also another one in California in the safe somewhere. So we're covered if that stuff should ever burn. But I got to thinking about all of the first time things that I'm experiencing in my life because of my daughter. Some things that I expected to happen, many things I had no idea what was coming. And as I began to think about that, I began to think about some of you men who aren't yet fathers. Maybe you're married and you don't have children yet. Maybe you aren't married and you just desire to have children. So on your behalf as a favor from me to you, I have devised a few simple tests for you to go home and try just to see whether or not you're ready to have children. This is the closest thing to a direct simulation of having children that I could muster up. Okay? Here's the first test. Let's have a look at the mess test. Take peanut butter and smear it all over the sofas and every curtain in the house. Now go outside and rub your hands in the wet flower bed. Then take those dirty hands and rub them all over your wall. Then cover the stains with all 96 crayons in the box. Then place the fish stick behind the couch and leave it there all summer. You can handle that. You can handle kids. How about this? This is a toy test. Obtain a 55 gallon box of Legos. If Legos are not available, you may substitute roofing tax or broken glass. You know where this is going, don't you? If a friend spread them all over the floor of your home, then put on a blindfold and try to walk from your bedroom to your bathroom or kitchen without screaming. How about this one? This is the grocery store test. Barrel one or two small animals, goats preferably, and take them with you as you shop down every aisle of the grocery store. Always keep them in sight and pay for anything and everything they eat or damage. Then here's the dressing test. This is one I really struggle with. Obtain one large unhappy live octopus. Try stuffing that live octopus into a small net bag and keep all legs inside. Then lastly, here's the feeding test. Obtain a large plastic milk jug, fill it halfway with water, suspend it from the ceiling with a stout cord, then begin swinging the jug less to right as far as you can. Try inserting spoonfuls of soggy cheerios into the top of the milk jug while sounding like an airplane. Now dump the jug all over the floor and clean it up. That's what it's like at my house, so if you think you're ready for kids, try all of those tests, call me next week. Have you ever felt like there are so many decisions in your life that it just gets tough? Have you ever felt like you're just not quite sure which direction your life was setting? Have you ever just stepped back and analyzed your entire life and said, "I don't think I've ever been this confused ever?" I asked, many people asked, and this morning we're going to talk about an issue that's one of the most troubling and hot button issues in our society that's controlled. We are a society that hates to be controlled, yet we love to have control. Think about it. Why has the self-employment skyrocketed in the last 11 years? It's quadrupled in 11 years. For most, they get tired of being controlled by one man or one woman, and this morning what we're going to talk about is the real definition of control. We're going to talk about giving up control and allowing yourself to be controlled. We're going to talk about being led by the spirit, and this isn't a message about being led by the spirit in your workplace or in your marriage or with your children. This is a message about being led by the spirit in all things. How many of you know that if you allow yourself to be led by the spirit in all things, happiness is a byproduct? It truly is. Think about the times when you're the most stressed out, when you become so depressed that life gets unbearable. When we step back and analyze why, usually it's because we are white-knuckling certain areas of our lives. We haven't given up control to God, so I want us to open up our hearts this morning into being led by the spirit in all that we do. After Jeff talked last week about getting a word from heaven, well I've got a little secret for you. You can't get a word from heaven if you're the one in control. You'll get an emotion. You'll get a guess. If you need a word for your struggling teenager, give up control, and you'll get that word, but if you're in control of your teenager and God is not, you'll get a guess. A temporary solution that truly needs a permanent solution. So if we allow ourselves to be led by giving up control, just giving up entire control, we will get those words. We will be led by the spirit. Some of you are here this morning and you are under the impression that out of all of the people in your life, out of God, out of your spouse, out of a boss, out of parents, but out of all of those people, you are the most qualified person to make decisions for your life. In fact, if you're a teenager, that's probably the definition of where you are right now. I should know. Teenagers, they feel like they know the direction and nobody else understands, but for some that doesn't go away. And if that's you, I want to read you a verse before we get into this message that kind of gives you a little perspective of your thought process. It's Proverbs 14, verse 12, says this, "There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. There is a direction for your life that you to you, it seems like the right direction. But the Bible says that it ends in death. You see, in my own strength, in my own knowledge, I have no ability to make golly decisions. I don't have that ability. I need help to make good golly decisions. You need help. We can't do it on our own because in our own nine, the direction we would choose leads not to happiness and life, but to death. So if that's you, really open up your heart. Maybe God wants to say something to you this morning. Maybe He wants a little more control. Maybe He wants all of you to be controlled. If you've got a Bible, I want you to turn to Jonah. Some of you are looking like Tammy, like you said, a book in the Bible. Yes, it's a book in the Bible. The book of Jonah is the beginning of the biblical coverage of the life of Jonah. Jonah lived many years before where Jonah chapter 1 verse 1 picks up. But God decided that this story that Jonah's life, this window of time in his life was important enough for you and I to learn something from. So let's read it and see what we might be able to gain, starting in verse 1. The Lord gave this message to Jonah, son of Amatized. Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are. If Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord, I never noticed that. I never noticed that Jonah got up, not only got up and went in his own way, his intentions were to get away from the Lord. You see, Jonah was probably just sitting there under a tree, just kind of relaxing, just kind of waiting to see where he would head next and all of a sudden the word of the Lord comes to him. If you're here this morning and you feel like your life's not going anywhere, I've got great news for you. There's never been a better time for you to be led by the Spirit than this morning. The first thing you've got to do to be led by the Spirit is to stop. You truly have to stop what you're doing. Jonah would stop and God used that as an opportune time to step in and give him a word. Why? Because he could listen better. When you're busy and you're just running around and your time is just full of things to do. It's hard for us to hear God because our minds are just reeling with the things we've got to do every day. But Jonah was stopped and God gave him a word. Now, some of you, I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding about this word stop. Call me crazy, but I have seen too many people at those intersections where there are those red octagonal signs with the four-letter word stop on them be misunderstood. I have seen people at those intersections interpret that word stop as look both ways and just drive on through. So, I'm going to give you the biblical definition of the word stop. Here's the definition, be inactive, be still. And many of us have heard this verse, Psalm 46, "Be still and know that I am God." I feel like there's a bit of a misunderstanding, a little bit of misinterpretation with this verse. See, we kind of have made this a very tranquil, very peaceful, "Be still and know that I am God." Just feel it. Like a warm rays of a spring sun. But that's not the way it's interpreted. I'll tell you how it's rightly interpreted. Be still, stop, stop fidgeting, stop being antsy, relax, and know that I am God. You're not God. I am. You're not the God of your circumstances. I am. And if you just stop, not slow down, but stop, I might be able to remind you of that fact. Be still on the inside and on the outside, become an actress. You know what happens when we truly stop? We always get a word, always. Now does that mean that God's not always speaking? No, he's always trying to speak. But the volume from the other radio stations are going too loud sometimes for us to actually hear God's stations. We've got to turn down the volume of our jobs, turn down the volume of financial pressure, turn down the volume of our marriages sometimes, and turn up the volume of the Holy Spirit. Because when you turn up that volume of the Holy Spirit, guess what? All those other things become healthy. That's why we become led by the Spirit in all things. That's our goal, be led in all things. Little or small, or even smaller or smaller or smaller. The smallest area of your life is an area that God desires the least. The second thing we've got to do in order to be led by the Spirit is to drop. I know this sounds like a fire drill. What happens when you become on fire? The second thing we've got to do is drop. Now the definition for this word drop in the Bible does not have a temporary meaning. When God stops us and he gives us a word and he tells us where he's about to lead us. Our reaction, our response is to drop some things. We all have some weight, we all have some extra luggage called baggage that we carry along with us from day to day that God, when he gives us our destiny, when he gives us a direction that he led, desires that we lay down. Not temporarily, not just for a week, and see in the church we have made a hobby out of hiding our baggage. Let's just get rid of it. Let's just drop it, and this word drop, it's tied to the word repent, and I want to give you one of the best definitions for the word repent that I've ever heard to burn. Do you realize that the word repent doesn't mean to deal with week in and week out. It means to lay aside and to burn up so that I can't ever visit it again. If God gives you a word that he's going to lead you in a certain direction and you lay aside some of those problematic areas of your life, whether it's alcohol abuse, whether it's drug abuse, whether it's spousal abuse, whether it's marital infidelities, whatever it is, whether it's anger issues, if you lay them aside and you desire to burn them so that you could never visit them even if you wanted to, that's the kind of drop I'm talking about, to repent from those things so that when I get to the middle of the journey, there's not a temptation for me to go back because I've already burned it up. This word drop got me kind of thinking about a list of books that I came across, that baby books that never made it to print. These are a list of books that were written and submitted to editors but got immediately burned up and never made it to print. Here's the first book, you're different and that's bad. The boy who died from eating all of his vegetables, here's one a five-year-old should never get their hands on, fun four-letter words to know and share, well you might be careful about that one, how about this one, Kathy was so bad that her mom stopped loving her. How about this one, this is one that my brother would have got his hands on, curious George in the high voltage fence. You've heard of all dogs go to heaven, how about this one, all cats go to hell. Last night that one got a standing ovation. Although that book never made it to print, I am a monthly subscriber of that magazine. How about this one, why can't Mr. Fork and Mrs. Electrical Outlet be friends, this is one that if it were, if it made it to print it would have showed up on my doorstep. You were an accident. And then here's one that might bring a little, a little tear from a five-year-old if this book ever made it to print. Daddy drinks because you cry, see. Now you know why those looks should have never made it to print. Those are things I would never want Riley to get a hold of. But what are those things in our life that we need to drop? What are those problematic areas that we kind of all struggle with? Well the first area that I want to talk about is our intelligence. The first thing we've got to drop is our intelligence. Have you ever been around people who feel like they're just smarter than the average bear? I spend all of my time being around those people. They're called teenagers. And then they turn twenty and they realize they know absolutely nothing and I enjoy being around for those days. A lot of humility going around. But doesn't it get annoying when you get around somebody who just knows everything? They just know everything. It might be something they've never experienced before but they just know what it would be like if they did. It gets annoying, doesn't it? Do you think that our intelligence ever gets annoying to God, that our desire to reason and explain our situation and circumstances ever gets frustrating to those around us? Moses. Think about Moses. Here Moses has thousands of Israelites before him. And on one side of the fan dune he's got the Egyptian army chasing after him as fast as they can. And on the other side of him he's got the Red Sea. Who in their right mind would have thought it was a good idea to start walking into the Red Sea? Don't sit there like you would have thought it was a good idea. If it was me, I would have said, excuse me, did anybody bring a white flag this week? Anybody? And if nobody had a white flag I would have said, excuse me, can we get some quiet here? Any trained diplomat? Any trained in diplomacy head on to the front of the line, I would have tried to explain my way out of the problem. My intelligence would have gotten in the way. But do you realize that Moses wasn't in his right mind? He was in his righteous mind. God had given him a word that he was going to lead him out of Egypt. And he just knew in his spirit that God would be faithful. So when everybody else was probably standing behind and laughing, it didn't matter to him. He dropped his intelligence. The minute God told him he would lead him out of Egypt. How about when Israel was facing Goliath? Who in their right mind would have thought to go through the crowd and look for the tiniest, scrappiest little boy with a sling shot? I definitely wouldn't thought that was an option. If it was me, if I was put in charge of trying to find opponents to face Goliath, I'd have been searching through the crowd for Arnold Schwarzenegger with a bazooka on his shoulder. That's my right mind. God doesn't want us in our right mind. He wants us in our righteous mind. He doesn't desire that we'd be able to explain all of our circumstances. I can't explain all of my circumstances, but you know what? I don't have to. I'm being led by the Spirit, and that's what matters. Not my ability to explain publicly everything that's going on in my life. My intelligence has to be dropped before I can make that journey. The second thing that we've got to drop is our math. We've got to drop our math. My entire life, I've been good at two things, math and the alphabet, and math, some of you are going, "That's sad." The alphabet, he actually uses that, yes. I have an analytical mind. I've always kind of over-processed things, let's just say. My mathematical ability sometimes gets in the way, for instance, I do the grocery shopping in my home, because if I didn't, I'd be broke. If my wife did the grocery shopping, see this is what she does. She sees a commercial that she likes that she thinks is funny, and she'll go to the grocery store and just want to support that business. I can't let her watch the Super Bowl because it cost me thousands of dollars. She just buys whatever she's craving. For me, I go find what's on sale even if it tastes terrible. I'm going to buy it just because it's on sale. I have the uncanny ability to walk through every aisle of the grocery store and get to the checkout line and guess what my total is going to be within 40 bucks. I bought a couple of extra things, but my math gets in the way, and I've realized that my math gets in the way when God tells me where he's going to lead me. Here's what I do, and maybe you do something similar. God tells me, "Press, this is where I'm leading you." My first reaction is to make a list of what it's going to cost me. Well, if I do that, I'm going to have to sell my house and downsize, and I have to go from two cars to one car, and no more PF Chang every day for lunch, and no more designer clothing, I'm going to have to cut down a little bit, and I make a list of all the things that's going to cost me in my mind. When I do that, I get to the end of the list, and I make an executive decision that it just costs too much. That's a sacrifice that's too great, God I'm sorry, but the math just doesn't add up. I'm sorry, Lord, the cost is too great. Wish I could, but I can. I've got to drop my math. I've got to lay it down and just say, "You know what? If you're going to lead me, I know you'll provide." I read an interesting article a couple weeks ago about a quartermaster general of an army who put a pen to what it would have taken the Israelites to stay alive in the desert for 40 years. He started out with the food, and he figured out that they'd need 1,500 tons of food per day just to stay alive, and to transport that food, they would have taken them two freight trains a mile long for one day. To prepare that food and stay warm at night, they'd need 4,000 tons of firewood. Also to transport that, they'd need a couple more trains, both a mile long. How about water? He figured that just for a minimal amount of water, for just enough water, for everyone to stay alive, and just enough water to keep their dishes clean, to keep from diseases, he figured they'd need 11 million gallons of water per day. Now, do you think Moses in his right mind, when God told him he would lead him out of Egypt, lead thousands and thousands and thousands of people out of Egypt, do you think Moses in his right mind would have sat back and figured out what it would have cost? Would it have taken for them to stay alive? I think he would have. I think Moses knew that he needed a small ocean in his back pocket to keep everybody from going thirsty. But he wasn't in his right mind. God had told him he was leading him. God said to Moses, "Here I am leading you." So Moses knew where God leads he will provide. Moses didn't know how. He wasn't sure how God was going to meet his needs, but he knew in his spirit that where God leads he will provide. If God's leading you somewhere, he will provide for your needs, maybe not your wants, but your needs, we've got to drop our desire to reason and explain and to count the cost. Then here's the third thing that we've got to drop, fear. We've got to drop fear. And there are two specific fears that I want to deal with this morning. The first fear is the fear of failure. I think to some extent we all deal with the fear of failure. We all have a fear of failing publicly or privately. Remember when Moses came to the burning bush? Do you remember what God said to him? Moses comes up to a burning bush and it kind of took him by surprise that the things started talking to him. Once he got over that fact and realized it was the voice of God, he kind of chilled out for a second. And God said, Moses, Moses said yes, Lord, said, Moses, I want you to go back to Egypt. I know you're wanted for murder there, I know, but I want you to go back. And here's what I want you to do, I want you to find the Pharaoh and I want you, the king of Egypt, yes, I know, yes, I know he's the most powerful man in the world, but I want you to find him and I want you to set up a meeting with him face to face. And here's what I want you to tell him, I want you to look in the eyes and I want you to tell him, Moses, Pharaoh, you remember all those plays that are working for free, building your pyramids? It's time to let him go for free. And Moses in his right mind at that point says, great idea, that's a great ingenious God. I think he should send my brother Aaron. He was in his right mind at that point. You see what he did, Moses in his mind made a list of all of his inadequacies. All of the things that in his mind would keep him from being led by the Spirit. How many times has God given you a word, a direction to be led? And you feel like you're too inadequate to go there. Moses was afraid to fail, but he got over that fear failure because he knew if God would go with him he wouldn't fail, because God can't fail. Here's the second fear. At some point in most of our lives, whether it's at a young age or even a young adult or maybe even last week for some of you, we have been passionately pursued by someone to be led. Someone has come to us and said, here's where I feel like God's leading us. Here's the direction. They give us a vision. We get excited about it and they begin to lead us. We submit ourselves to them and they begin to lead us, and somewhere down the line on that journey, things get tough and that person gives up and they leave us in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a crisis situation with us not knowing what to do. And somewhere inside of all of us, we make a little mental note and we say, note to self, I will never let that happen to me again. I will never allow myself to be led and left again. And we become so cautious and the next time someone desires to lead us, even God, we are so hesitant because of the fear of abandonment that we don't make the journey. And I'm going to read you a story, and this is an incredible story. When I came across the story, it jumped off the page and it was revelation to me because they're just times in my life when I'll read through the Bible once or twice in a year, and you read all the words, but sometimes some of the words have a greater meaning to you. And that's what happened to me when I read this story. If you've got a Bible turned to Mark chapter 4, I'll kind of set up this story for you. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 and he had a new direction in mind. And that's where we pick up the story, starting in verse 35 of Mark chapter 4, you don't have a Bible son on the screen. As the evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let's cross to the other side of the lake. He was already in the boat so they started out, leaving the crowds behind. But soon a fierce storm arose. High waves began to break into the boat until it was nearly full of water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. Frantically, they woke him up shouting, "Teacher, don't you even care that we're about to drown?" When he woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the water, "And here's how I picture Jesus doing it. He's half asleep, okay? He is conked out. He just said 5,000 and he's slightly tired, okay? He just wants to kind of rest. He's probably really not tired because he's Jesus, but he just wants to pretend like he's tired. He's kind of proving a point to us. He goes to the back of the boat and pretends to shut his eyes. And the disciples run down to him, "Teacher, teacher, aren't you afraid we're about to drown?" And Jesus gets up, comes outside, kind of wipes the sweep out of the dyes. The dyes are still half open. He rebukes the wind and says to the water, "Quiet down." He turns around and goes back to bed. He didn't get animated. He didn't start screaming at the wind. He just says, "Peace be still, quiet down." But then here's what I love about this verse, "This is unbelievable to me." Jesus says to them, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still not have faith in me?" Now think about why Jesus is saying that. Jesus was in the boat already. He made the invitation. He was already in the boat. And listen to the words he used, "Let cross to the other side of the lake." He didn't say to the disciples, "Go to the other side." "Hey guys, I want you to go to the other side of the lake." He said, "Let cross to the other side of the lake." So Jesus took an ask. He knew that it was his will to get to the other side, so he knew what would happen. The disciples weren't so sure of that. When God called me to be a youth pastor, he didn't say to me, "Press, I want you to be a youth pastor." He said, "Let be a youth pastor." Let's make this our team project. Let's do it together. We'll finish it together. When God called you to be a father or a mother, he didn't say, "I want you to be a father or a mother." He said, "Let be a father or a mother." Let's do it together. Let's be a team. I want to help you. He said to the disciples, "You still not have faith in me? I am in the boat with you. What more do you need?" He's in the boat with you this morning, but is he steering the boat for our youth? That leads us to the third thing. We've got to do to be led by the Spirit, to just roll with us. When God gives us that word and we repent of the things that we need to get rid of before the journey, we have got to roll with it. We have got to put all of our trust in God. Let's stop pretending that we trust Him and truly start trusting Him. Well, how do I know if I'm truly trusting Him? Give Him everything. Give it all to Him. Don't hold any part of your life back from God. Not one part. If we want to be led by the Spirit, we have got to give up our right to steer the boat. Not just that, we've got to give up our right to be a backseat driver. You have got to trust that if God is steering your ship, that He knows the best direction for it and He doesn't need your help. He doesn't need you barking out commands, "Hey, I think this would be a good shortcut." Or, "Hey, I see fame and fortune down this way. Let's take a right here." He doesn't need your help. Only once from you is just to roll with the word that He's given you. A couple of years ago, I had a friend who was driving down the highway. He was in the middle lane, there were three lanes, and there were five or six cars in his lane before him, and a couple cars in the lane to his right, and just one car up a little ways in the lane on his left. He felt like God was saying to him, "I want you to change lanes." In my right mind, if I would have sensed that out of thought, God's telling me which lane to change. I mean, I know about being led in all things, but this is a little much. Change lanes? What's next? They're going to tell me to order a king-sized fry over a large, but thank God he wasn't in his right mind. He was in a righteous state of mind. When he sensed God telling him to change lanes, he did it, and he got over, and within seconds, there was a six car pile up in the lane exactly where he would have been, and he saw in the news that night that every person in that accident lost their lives. That's what I'm talking about. Being led in all things, wouldn't it be nice if God was leading our families and we weren't? If we could truly give up control of all of our situations and circumstances. [BLANK_AUDIO]