An Overview Of Your Future

Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.

I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast.

I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.

Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message. Now.

I want to share the Word of God with you, and I want to ask you something. Would you be terribly, terribly inconvenienced if I spent just one more week talking about functional faith? I promise you this will be the last week. After this, I will never bother you with the subject of functional faith again. But I want to use one verse today that I think is appropriate for what we've been singing about and what we're experiencing right now. And it is in the Book of Revelation, chapter four,

How many of you.

Are blessed to have your sins forgiven? I said, how many are blessed to have your sins forgiven?

Me too?

I'm always blessed by Mike and Brian to see you guys.

Love those guys. They stand out head and shoulders above the rest.

And look at this verse real quick, just one verse, just one verse, but very powerful, very powerful, John says, after this, I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven, and the voice I had first heard, speaking to me like a trumpet, said, come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this. Now that's the only verse I want to read you today. I'm gonna double down on it, read it again, just to make sure we've got it.

Show you what must take place after this.

So, in this final installment of Functional Fate, praying about it, God said that he wanted to give you an overview of your future.

Are you ready?

God said that he wanted to speak to you today very specifically and give you an overview of your future.

Now, I need you to.

Nudge your neighbor and tell him I'm getting ready for something. I'm getting ready for something. God is preparing me for something. And today God wants to give you an overview of your future. I need you to hear me in Rockhill because Jeremiah said that he knows the plans he has for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Paul said, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through

In Christ Jesus.

Jesus Christ themselves said, in.

The world you will have trouble.

But take heart, I have over come the world. So God wants to give you an overview of your future. Would you hug seven people and tell them it gets better from here, It gets better from here.

It gets better from here. You may be seated. Thank you.

I feel like the atmosphere of our hearts is ready and the word can be depositive.

Let's go.

To the Book of Revelation four verse one. Now some of you are expecting me to bring out my charts of the end times, because the Book of Revelation is, of course an apocalyptic book. This is the genre to which the Book of Revelation, written by John the Beloved, belongs. It is an apocryphal there's an apocalyptic book, not an apocryphal book. You know what, I'm not much of I'm not I'm not really an apocalyptic guy.

I'm i tend to be more on the practical side.

So I guess you could call this not an apocalyptic but in apocalyptic message.

Ay man.

My wife can't stand to hear people preach about the Book of Revelation and act like they know, you know, when.

Which president represents which beast?

And and I'm I'm kind of with her. My my oldest son, he's he's pretty sharp in a lot of ways.

When where he gets it from. I was just kidding.

He's a he's at a Christian school. So he asked me the other day, do you understand the Book of Revelation, Daddy? I said, uh no, I said, nobody does. Elijah, I said this, you know it's really it's a.

Symbolic book in a lot of ways.

A lot of what they write, what what's written there is poetic and.

And so some of it is not meant to be taken literally. And I mean, it's a very it's a very serious book.

And he said, well, one of my friends in the class said that his dad understands the Book of Revelation, and and he's not even a preacher. So I said, all right, well, okay, well, if it's like that, let me give you an overview of the Book of Revelation.

We win.

Come on, somebody, I need you to look at the person next to you and some marise the outcome of their current battle.

Look them in the eye, like you know what you're talking about.

Look like you're Marty McFly coming with a sports almanac from another year. Look at him and say, I don't know what you're going through, but you win.

In the end.

I did take a seminary course on the Book of Revelation.

The professor said, after.

Studying the Book of Revelation for over forty years, I have come to this overview. Evil is real, God is greater, I said man, because he told us this at the end of the whole class. And I said, we sat here for three and a half months. I paid tuition for that. You could have tweeted that and have twitter back then. Now, what I want to do today is a little bit different than kind of telling you everything

Lessons for us to learn.

But I just want to go not necessarily to what John saw, and now I want to I want to talk first about how he saw it, and I'd like you to write down a few key thoughts today.

And the first one is attention.

Attention, because John says in Revelation chapter four, watch this. After this I looked, and you know, it's interesting because everything that happens after that wouldn't have happened without that. Everything that John saw after this would not have been revealed if he didn't pay attention.

So I bring it up because sometimes we're asking.

God to reveal his presence in our lives, his provision in our lives, his purpose in our lives, and sometimes we even pray about it, and we pray like we're trying to get God's attention. But I've come to believe that prayer rightly done is less about me getting God's attention and more about Him getting mine. See, I live my life from the foundational belief that I already have

Attention.

John says, after this, I looked, and there before me was a door.

It was open in heaven.

I want you to know today that you have a standing invitation to experience God's presence, but you have.

To pay attention.

You have to pay attention because attention creates access. Let me teach you a little bit. Attention creates access. So if emotions have access into your heart, it's because you gave those emotions your attention. If memories of pain and hurt dominate your thought life, it's because those memories.

Have your attention. How can a memory hurt you It already happened.

It can only hurt you if it has your ap preaching good. And there are some things that you've been giving your attention to that if you would turn your attention from them, you would take the power of them. God wants to know today, what has your attention? John said after this, I looked in There before.

Me was a door. It was there all along, but I saw it when I looked. And John could have been looking at a lot of things.

I mean. The guy was an exile on a little tiny island called Petmus. He had been sent there because of his testimony of the Word of God. He calls himself a fellow sufferer and a patient endurer in the Kingdom of God. It's interesting to me that God gave the greatest revelation of himself to a man who was in exile.

I want to stop for a moment and announce.

That God is a god of access in exile. He is a God of access in exile. It means that even if you feel like you're on a little island today, all by yourself, you still have access to the presence of God. There is nowhere that life can take you that God's presence cannot reach you. There is nothing that people can do to you to keep God from getting to you. So we see a pattern in scripture that God is a god of access in exile. Ask Moses, he was a Midian in exile running from his act

I know you've been in this desert a long time.

I know you've been on this island by yourself. I know you feel like nobody hears you. But I am the God of access in exile. You're not alone. You're never alone. And the God who was, and is and is to comis with you.

In this moment. Asked Daniel.

He was a Babylonian exile, and he saw a revelation of Jesus Christ before Jesus Christ was born. Daniel saw him, and he saw him in exile. And I thought that might encourage somebody to know that you have access even in exile. But you got to pay attention. You gotta pay attention, he said. After this, I looked, and there was a door. After this, I looked in there was a door. The door represents the revelation that God gave him. After this, I look, and there was a door. I

After this, I looked, and there behind me was a door.

See, the open door is never behind you.

Who who's this for?

You've been stuck in regret. You've been stuck in what happened? You've been stuck in what was John said? After this, I looked, and there before me was a door. The open door is always before you.

It's before you look.

Unto Jesus, the Author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endoored the cross, despising his shame, the open door is before you. The open door is not in ten years ago, the opportunity that was missed.

I know there's some stuff behind you that you can't get back. I know there's some things that happened to you that.

Weren't fair, But you're not gonna get access by giving your attention to what happened back there. The open door is before you, it's in front of you. Your best days are not behind you. What God has for you is in front of you. Look ahead, help me preach. Find three people say look ahead, it's right in front of you.

It's right in front of you.

Maybe we've been at a baseball field too much, Coach Dave, because I keep telling I keep telling Graham.

What I hear you tell him.

You's always telling him keep it in front of you. This is what Coach Dave tells Graham because he coaches some eight year olds, and eight year olds don't have the best attention span, and so they'll be standing out.

There in the field in the fifth inning.

Acting like the ball's not gonna come to him. And so then when the ball does come, the gotta come back like this. But Coach Dave said, I want you on your toes so when they hit the ball, you be it. And I've seen not every pastor can do a lateral movement with that velocity.

You ought to feel blessed to come to church here. Can I do it again?

He said, I want you to be ready because he got a better chance to stop the ball.

If you keep it in front of you.

You know you got a better chance to have joy and a better chance to have success, and a better chance to have hope if you keep it in front of you.

That's what Coach Dave's.

And I heard the Lord say, where one door shuts, another door opens. They might have you on an island called Pantmost.

But you're not stuck.

Here because if you can't find a way out, God, I'll give you a way up. Come on, tell somebody say, we're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher, We're going higher.

I might be down here on this island in my body. I might be down here on this job. I don't like it in my body.

I might be in a bad situation in my back account. But you can't change my mind to the crown. I'm coming up higher. So let's talk about altitude.

Altitude. The invitation is to see the.

Open door before you, before you and I heard the voice. Your life is moving in the direction of your vision and your voices. So it's always what you see and what you hear that determines how high you go. John's revelation is interesting because in apocryphal apocalyptic literature, when they saw a vision of God, they had to go through

John's vision is.

A little different because he says, I didn't get there by effort.

I got there by invitation. And the invitation goes like this.

It was a voice like a trumpet making an announcement, and it said, come up here, and I will show you what must take place.

After this act.

Once I was in the spirit, you know how quickly God can lift you if you let him. I mean, he really can't. He really can't. John didn't say that he went into a trance for forty three minutes, because see, I'm doing some practical work on my life right now. I'm just trying to be a better person, not a better preacher. I mean, I want to be a better preacher too, but I think that a better person makes

Am Eastern Standard time.

And another thing is that not only do I kind of start my day sometimes in that grumpy place, but I notice I end my day in an anxious place, and just observing my patterns, lately.

I figured that that can't be the best.

Way to wake up and go into my day and then in my day.

So I'm working on that. I'd like you to work on it.

Too, because your altitude is going to determine your access. So where you start your day is kind of important. Where you start your day really does matter. So you got to start your day with some caffeine. The Lord said that you could. I shouldn't tell you this, but I drink a cup of coffee every morning. That's not the part I shouldn't tell you. The part I shouldn't tell you is I chase it with a diet mountain dew because I like the contrast of the warmth and the cold carbonation.

It blesses my soul.

Don't judge me, go away, but it helps me. It helps me think about higher things. Anyway, then I've been practicing just the voices that I.

Pay attention to early in the morning.

Can we talk not apocalyptic, Let's talk a practalytic.

Because it's real easy to get excited.

About Jesus comes on a horse and wipes out the world. But what about till he gets here? What about till that happens? Because he left us here in the meantime, so we can't do his work if we're at the wrong level.

So I gotta get up in the morning, even if I'm mumbling when I first start, even.

If I got that stuff in the corner of my eye, gotta flick it out when I get out to bed, I gotta flick.

That stuff on the devil's head and say, I'm awake. He should have killed me. I'm my asleep.

I'm awake and I'm blessed. I'm awake and I'm a blessing. I'm awake and I'm a river. I'm awake and I'm a giver. I'm awake and I'm alive. I'm awake, I'm redeem, I'm awake.

My eyes are open, I'm awake, my heart is open, I'm awake, my soul is ready. I've just been trying to dip myself up to a higher level because I need some runway, because I.

Don't know what I'm a run into when the day gets started.

I don't know what kind of crazy person is gonna be driving in traffic trying to cut me off. And if I'm at the wrong level, I might might not pray for him. So I gotta I gotta.

Get a little runway. I gotta come on up higher.

Isn't that what the announcement said, come on up here to a higher place.

Now.

I know we don't have the same invitation John had to see the unfolding of end time events and the.

History of the world before it happens.

But we do have a standing invitation in Heaven that anytime we want to lift our eyes to the hills, we can look to our help. We can look to our God, we can look I'm gonna stop screaming in a minute. You gotta understand. I'm just excited about the invitation that God has given me to come up high. Does somebody say come on up? When I was a boy, they used to have a show called Price is Right. Now they still have a version of it, but it's not Bob Barker.

So it's not the real show. Can I get a witness.

Bob Barker had that skinny little mic, and when Bob Barker would throw it to Rod Roddy, y'all remember Rod Roddy and Rod Roddy. All these people are in the audience and the difference of prices right is at any moment, you might go from the crowd to the front and if they call your name, you might win a washing machine. You might win a vacation trip for two four nights, all expenses paid to can Coo. You might win a new car. So when Rod Roddy grabs the mic, people listen and they lean forward.

And Rod Roddy had this thing he used to say.

I don't know if they say it anymore, but Rod Roddy used to announce a name and he would say, Stephen Ferdick, come on down, you're the next contestant on the price is right now. Rob Roddy wasn't available for church today, but the spirit of God is here, and I hear him saying, if you want to listen in Providence, if you want to listen in Matthews, if you want to listen at Butler High School, if you want to listen at Blakeney, if you want to listen in Lake Norman.

Child of God, come on up.

Come on up.

This is rob Roddy in reverse.

Come on up, Come on up where the piece is.

Come on up where the blessing is. Come on up.

You see that sun.

Rise, my mercies with every rising off the sun, and I wanna let you know.

You get come on up.

Somebody shot up coming up. Now you gotta shout at like a trumpet.

I'm coming up. So I'm gonna start my day at the right altitude.

And and everybody say and touch them, say but wait, there's more. Yeah. God said he wanted to talk to you today about your future.

He said he wanted to give you an overview of your future.

He said, come up here, and then I'll show you what happens next.

I want to give you an overview of your future.

I don't want you to look at your day through the lens of everything that might go wrong.

I want you to get up high.

See, sometimes when we travel, we take these little planes.

We probably shouldn't take them, they're.

Probably not safe, but sometimes we have to get somewhere real quick, and we take a little plane. And when we take that little plane, I always know that if the weather is too bad, they're going to cancel the flight because the plane isn't big enough to get me above the weather. But when I fly with Delta or US Air, I might have to go through security, and I might have to shove my bag in the overhead bend.

No, I need you to know that the size of your faith might not change the weather, but it'll get you off.

I was in the spirit on the lrdstack and A saw a visit of Him who.

Is and was and is to come, And I see my future from Heaven's perspectium.

That fifteen seconds of praising for your future.

Come up, prison, Come on, you want to praise in Concord.

You are a prison.

You are to prise him up town, Come on, pras and blake me Let's get up higher. Let's lift them up, he said, if I they left it up, how tall man left him up?

Let him up.

I see the Lord seated on the throne, the train of his robe fills the temple. Let's get practical. I want to start my day at the right altitude.

And I want to finish my day on a note of praise.

I see. I figured that the way I start my day will determine how I experience my day, and the way I end my day.

Will determine the way I start the next one. Sit down, I got to show you something. Everybody say, practice.

This takes practice because we are used to living at a low altitude.

We're not used to coming up. We're not used to the air up there.

We're not used to interpreting people through the idea of grace. We're not used to coming up. We're used to having our stomachs all tied up in knots. We've learned to depend on it. Anxiety is like our needle. We need it. We need it. We're almost at the end of the day. We almost put the welcome matt out for the devil to just take over.

The next one.

Okay, going to bed, thinking about everything that went wrong. So I just had enough of it. And a little while back, I saw in the kitchen this this little notebook my mother in law gave me. She gave me like five of them, and they were just sitting around, and I picked up this orange one because it's the color of God. And it says that she got this notebook for seven dollars and forty nine cents. It was

And I picked a.

Small notebook so it wouldn't be very intimidating, just one page on this little notebook. How many of you are already planning your trip to Target.

Or Walmart because you need one of these. You need one of these.

I just at night. I've been doing this. It's been helping me a lot and that's why I thought i'd share it with you. Is just I write at the top of the page gratitude practice.

Just to run mind myself that I don't have to feel grateful to be grateful.

And sometimes the pen doesn't start writing real quick. Sometimes it takes me all of the first five minutes to even get the pin moving. But it's amazing. Once I get the pin moving, what I remember from that day, it's amazing. It's like giving me a different overview because I go to bed so focus.

On what might happen tomorrow, what didn't get done today. But it's just been helping me.

If you want to try it, you can and then put your picture on social media and I'll see your little journal and you can we talk about it and you can hashtag it.

You can hashtag it.

Come on up, you can hashtag it, you can hashtag it. Overview, because when I'm looking my day over I want to look at it from the perspective of all the things that I might have missed.

And didn't pay attention to that day that God did for me.

Because what that's going to do is when I start tomorrow, I'm not going to start down here.

I'm gonna start it up higher. Now.

If I start tomorrow here, maybe I can end here. And maybe if I end that day here, I can start the next one up there. He's taking me from strength to strength and glory to glory.

So I just write down little dumb stuff.

It's nothing fancy, it's nothing poetic, it's nothing they're going to publish if I die. It's nothing that anybody's gonna read at my funeral.

Just little old dumb stuff. Just stuff that wouldn't mean much to you.

Just stuff that I remember from the day open doors, ways that God.

Made, moments that I had a.

Car wreck that I didn't get in, you know, all the stuff that didn't happen. Sometimes is a good reason to praise God.

Too, just little stuff.

Christy brought me a coffee yesterday before I preached.

I thank God for the coffee.

I thank God for a new season of show that I wanted to watch.

Well, why not thank him for it? Why not? I can praise him over flicks. You don't have to, but I can.

Every good, imperfect gift comes from above. Maybe that's a stretch I put down. This sounds kind of cute. Some shells in the ocean that my kids brought. Amen, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that all because I might have missed that.

I might not be paying attention. Just to remember that.

Your kids are healthy and they played on the beach today. And while I'm at it, why don't I thank God for the ocean. You know, the ocean was there before I got there. It's gonna be there when I'm gone. And while I'm at it, why don't I thank God that he's.

Bigger than me.

And why don't I thank God that I have windows? I just thank God for whatever you can think of. If you sit there and try to make it too fancy, it won't work. I thank thee thou, Lord God, that thou didst create the heavens and the stars, and by thy mercy was the firmament.

No, none of that.

I thank God for My new book that I read is called Shoe Dog.

About Phil Knight from Nike. I enjoyed it.

Saw put it in the notebook because I wanted to remember something good that happened that day.

Amen, I could just go through.

This notebook and I'm not beating the devil with some big rocket grenade lunch or you know, I'm just gonna beat them with some paper cuts. I'm ana beat. I'm a beat depression with some paper cuts. I'm ana beat despair. I'm gonna make my way up a little bit at a time. I'm gonna increase my altitude, one thought at a time. I'm gonna do it, one night at a time, one day at a time. Touch somebody say, I'm coming up, I'm coming up. I'm coming up higher. I'm coming up higher.

And I see my situation. I see my situation from above. And when I see it from a per I noticed something. I notice something about authority.

After this I looked in There before me was the door you got nine minutes.

That's all I need to tell you about authority standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me was still speaking to me. And the door that was opened for John is still open for you. Jesus Christ opened to heavens. They haven't shut. Abby came to me the other day and said, Daddy, this door is broken. We were at a store and it had automatic doors, and she said, the door is broken. She's five, so I had to explain to her baby, the door

After this.

I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I first heard said, come on up, and I will show you what must take place after this. He saw a door because he looked ahead. He heard a voice because he got above. So preach my sermon to your neighbor. Tell him look ahead from above. As you look at your future, look at it from God's perspective. Even as you think about November,

Because the next thing that John saw will.

Set your heart free from anxiety.

Can I give it to you.

We're down to seven minutes, so we'll have to work quickly. But he said, I saw a door and I heard a voice, and at once I was in the spirit, and there before me, before me, was a throne in heaven. I wish I had time to tell you about this throne. Man, I do I have time to tell you, because there's a whole other group that's coming to church. I would tell you about everything that's around the throne. There is a rainbow around the throne of God that encircles the

The Lamb has washed us clean.

And I would tell you, if I had time, about the four living creatures who are sitting around heaven one day, and one of them looks like an ox, and one of them looks like a lion, and one of them has a face like a man, and one of them has wings well, in fact, all of them have wings. They have six wings each, and they're covered with eyes because they can see God perfectly. And their job is to get around the throne. And they wrote a song for God one day and they said holy is the

He's holy, Holy Holy. He is the God who stands in.

Your future, redeeming your past from your present. He is Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God Almighty.

I wish I had time to tell you about the throne.

I would tell you about the seven lamp stands that are before the throne, that represent the seven spirits of God that have gone out into the earth.

I tell you about.

The sea of crystal that's before the throne, clear as crystal. Because God sees everything that happens on earth from his vantage point in Heaven. There's no tear, you cried, He hasn't seen there's no heartbreak you've suffered that he didn't witness.

There's nothing you're going through he's not aware of. He sees it from the throne.

I wish I had time to tell you about ten thousand times ten thousand angels. You'd be so excited if you could see those angels. They're not stressed out in heaven. They're looking at the future and they know that God is on the throne. I wish I could tell you about the throne. Is anybody grateful but there's still a problem. Come on, I need you to thank God.

For the throne, where mercy rains, where love rooms.

I'll tell you about the throne. I would tell you.

About how from the throne of God, John heard the peals of an earthquake and the flashing of lightning and the rumble of thunder that came from the throne, because that lets me know that God is awesome. And when he stumps his foot and when he puts his foot down, the earth shakes. John said, I saw the future from the throne, and it changed the way I thought about it. And now I would like for you to stand because I'm closing my message.

And I'm closing my series.

But I want to tell you my favorite thing about the throne. And this is for all of you who have anxiety in your heart about your future. Okay, what's gonna happen to you? What's gonna happen. Faith is anticipation minus anxiety. Faith gives me the ability to say, whatever's next.

I'm ready.

If it's Hillary, if it's Bernie, if it's Donald, I'm ready. Because they might sit behind the desk, but they don't sit on the throne.

Come on, charts. We don't watch the polls. We watch the throne. Gets their eyes up.

Look ahead, get your eyes up, get a bow.

And the last thing I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you look ahead, get a bath, and step aside, because John said.

I saw a throne and watch this. This is my favorite part. This is my message. This my message, just my message. Ready.

Verse two, I saw a throne.

With someone sitting on it. And here's the good news. There is a throne, someone is on it and it's not you. Well, I thought you'd clap over that.

You've been staying up late worrying about how it's gonna happen.

But God just gave you an overview. He wanted to let you know about your future.

I rule, I ray, I am, I rule, I am, I was, I am, and I will be forevermore.

There is a throne, I'm not on it.

And whatever is on the throne of heaven needs to be enthroned in my heart. So if Christ is enthroned in heaven and nothing that happens on earth happens without His permission and his purpose, then that means there are some things that are on the throne of my heart that have to go.

So look at fear. How long has fear been on the throne in your life.

You need to make an announcement to fear, and you need to do it today, and tell Fear get off the throne. This seat is taken. You got it, and don't ask nicely. This seat belongs to the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Come on, lift your hands. His presence is here, and thrown him in your praise. Some of you need to look at failure. You've been dominated too long by what's behind you. God brought you here to give you an overview of your future. I hope you're standing.

The king is here. I hope you got your hands lifted. I hope you got your hotel. The King is here. We enthrone you on our praise feelings.

Get up the throne, selfishness, get up the throne.

He who is and was and is to come is sitting on the front, and we crowded gown.

Come on, crowding gowd. Thank you for joining us.

Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.

You can share it with your friends.

You can click the share button, take a screenshot and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.