Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast and 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.
I have an exciting word to present to you today. Okay, okay, well let's do it. Then let's get in Philippians chapter one together. I'm just going to share two verses that introduced two different sections of Philippians chapter one, and then I can come back and fill it in. I so enjoyed Holly's message last week. She was preaching on James and Ruth and just everybody. Old Testament, New Testament. She helped us, she instructed us, she inspired us.
Look good doing it. I'm not gonna lie to you.
I was a little distracted at times and not thinking about Jesus at all.
But the Lord is good. Touch somebody say he's good.
The Lord is good, and so I want to keep on going in the flow that I've been in on functional faith. I've been hearing people that have been with me like nine ten years saying this.
Is my favorite series you've ever done.
I mean, I'm not saying the other ones weren't good, but this was really helping me. So I figured, well, you know, if you've got momentum in an area, just stay on it. So I'm going to stay on this idea of functional faith for however long it takes you to start living it out.
We might be here a while.
Look at Philippians Chapter one, verse twelve, and I am bogged down in this chapter. Can't do it justice in the time that's allotted today, But I do my best. Where Paul says, now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.
That's one heading. And then go to verse twenty.
He says, I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always by, Paul's really sticking his neck out here, isn't he He's facing a trial before Caesar, and.
He's boasting of the power of God.
And he said, you know, I have a feeling that whatever happens to me, that God's going to use it. And so I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, just like God sell me through before to show himself strong on my behalf in this situation too. Now as always Christ will be exalted in my body,
whether by life or by death. Rather than a title today, for the message, I'm going to be teaching a little bit more than I'm going to be preaching. So I want to use a question to get your thinking today. And the question is are you headed in the right direction? Are you headed in the right direction? And we'll do our best to consider that and take a look at it. But let's pray before we sit down and learn. Lord, open our hearts. Your word needs good ground if it
is to grow and produce. So we ask you till us open us and make us receptive and ready.
Somebody say I'm ready. Tell the Lord say I'm ready.
In Jesus' name, Amen, you may be seated. Thank you, band. I just love our worship teams so much. I love our production teams, parking teams. I love our children's ministry teams. Somebody told me that the e kids album might have been a Billboard album on the chart or something like that. That's pretty cool on the Billboard charts with the kids album. I didn't verify it, but it sounds cool, so I just thought i'd say it.
We'll look it up later.
Look here because I want to I want to teach today and I need a little bit of grace.
See about my handwriting.
It's gonna make you question whether or not you can sit under a pastor with the level of intelligence that my handwriting indicates. I have sent people birthday cards before, handwritten birthday cards because I'm a I'm a good man, I'm a thoughtful person, and they didn't have any more courtesy than to respond to me talking about my handwriting on the handwritten birthday card.
Never mind what.
I said, the words of life that I spoke into their soul. They say things like, wow, do you do you do you get your kids to write the birthday cards for you? I write that for you, and well, that's just mean. So I figured that you're not that type of people that you are loving and accepting. And the message I want to use today requires a little bit of writing. I want to write some words on
the board and kind of teach from that standpoint. So I want to plead for your forgiveness of my handwriting, if you'd be willing to forgive me for my handwriting in advance and for anything that I misspell, because there's no spell check on a whiteboard, and so we're going to try to do it, but you know, just kind of to break it down. And I want you in the posture of a learner today so the message can last past when I finished preaching it and go into your week with you. So you may want to write
some of these things down. And the first thing that I want to mention from the text and really from life is progress. Because they say, they say anything sounds official if you started with they say. They say that one of the basic elements and requirements of human happiness is a sense of progress.
You can't be happy in a sustained.
Way if you don't feel like you're making progress in life and in different areas of your life.
And I think that's true.
Maybe I'm a little bit more ambitious than most people.
I don't know, I'm not most people.
I'm me, but I certainly need a sense of progress to stick with something. Yeah, I don't show up for something that's not working. I don't just show up again and again and again and again. If it's not working, I'll just stay home. And by the way, that's why some men quit their marriages because it feels like they never get back to that original state of love that they had, and so it feels like they're going backwards
in the relationship. And a man won't show up to play a game that he never can win at and women too. I mean, it goes both ways, but we all need a sense of progress. Everybody say progress.
Yeah, you sound good today, you sound like you want to make progress. I sat down with some of.
Our staff members this week and coached them for different areas.
You do know that I work between Sundays.
Yeah, so in leading the church one of the things that I am privileged to do, not as much as I would want to, but sometimes I get to do a one on one session or a group session of coaching. And three of the staff members who are in their twenties asked a variation of the same question. I thought it was interesting, and the idea was I do a lot in ministry and I work hard, but it's hard for me to tell am I making a difference? Or is it effective? And essentially they're asking, am I making progress?
Because I don't mind working hard. I'm a hard worker, but I need to know that it's working. And in ministry that's hard to tell sometimes because you don't often go home with a checked off list. It's not like you mode seven lawns today and you can see the progress. And so it's very difficult to see ministerial progress. And Paul certainly knows something about that, who's writing in the Book of Philippians. If progressed, then is essential to human happiness.
And if we can't feel satisfied and fulfilled in our lives without progress, either as moms or as husbands, or as employees in a church, or as business owners, or as students or as Christians, then then how do we make progress? And so you would say to me, and you would be correct, that effort is essential to progress. It amazes me by the way how something that sounds so simple and seems so obvious seems to have skipped a whole generation. Talk to me, how in the world
do you expect progress without effort? How you expect to ace what you didn't study for? How you expect to burn something off when you won't move what you got touch. Somebody say effort. So I need effort if I'm going to have progress, right, I need to push towards something I need. I need to move towards something I need. I need effort. It's gonna take effort. However, what I would suggest to you today kind of my thought pattern is that effort alone does not produce progress.
Effort alone is not enough. Now you know this.
If you've had a kid with a learning disability, and some of you are school teachers, you can give.
A kid more and more and more and more work.
But if they are not learning correctly the way that they need to learn, they'll eventually conclude I'm not a good student because they're not making progress and the effort doesn't help it.
Can I tell you another thing.
You won't make progress just because you're passionate about something. Passion is not enough for progress. You can sincerely want to make something better. I see people who sincerely want to get in better shape but never learned how so we don't just need effort.
Because you can see p people who go to the gym six days a week and don't look like it.
Oh it's quiet. It's quiet because you've been there. Effort alone does not produce progress. I give you a little bit fuller equation. Effort plus direction equals progress. I thought y'allould say amen to that. I mean, I know it's real. Common sense on one level is that in order to make progress, I got to know that I'm headed in the right direction.
I preach from Charlotte.
If we want to go to Columbia, South Carolina, or Miami, Florida, and I head north, I might get there quick, driving ninety miles an hour, But is it progress? Progress is determined by destination and my proximity to the destination. I'm trying to say that if you get turned around the wrong way, you'll get there fast. But when you get there, you'll realize this ain't Miami, this ain't Columbia because I didn't have direction.
Now, I mean, I drove hard.
I had my hand on ten and my hand on two, but I woke up in the wrong place. Because progress is more than effort. Progress is effort in the right direction. Now I bring it up because could it be in your life that you've been pointing your effort in the wrong direction, Feeling tired, feeling frustrated, feeling stressed, feeling feeling burned out, feeling like it didn't matter, feeling like it didn't work. And sometimes all you need is somebody to
come along and point you in the right direction. As your neighbor, where are you headed? As the other neighbor, Where are you headed? It's an important question, and I'm grateful that Paul get gives us a picture, a picture of how he sees progress. How cool is it that we not only get a narrative of Paul's missionary exploits in the Book of Acts, but we have the letters that he wrote. Because in the Book of Acts we see what Paul did. In the letters that he wrote,
we saw how he thought. And to me, that's really a privilege to get inside the head of one of the greatest thinkers in the world, in the history of the world, let alone one of the greatest Christians, one of the greatest minds, and we get in his head and he's writing to the Philippian Church. You know, he started this church in eighty fifty. He was going through on a missionary journey and Philippi was the first church
that he found. It, well, was the first one that he preached in in Europe, and so he goes through there and starts a church, and he visits, and he stops back by a few more times.
But by the time he's writing the Book of Philippians.
There has been a turn of events and Paul is in prison. Scholars debate as to whether Paul was in Cesarea or whether he was in Rome. I take the view that he was in Rome, and in Rome he rented a house where he taught everybody who came to him. He was under a form of house arrest for preaching the gospel, and the Philippian church knew that he was
in prison. But these latest developments had the community at the church at Philippiles shook up, and they're saying that there has been a setback for the gospel because Paul, who's kind of like the point guard for their team, is locked in prison. That's kind of bad when your point guard is on the bench in the championship and they're worried about it. And so Paul writes to them and he says, I need you to know something.
About what has happened. What had happened was Paul might say.
He says, we need to talk about what has happened and in that phrase, that that phrase right there, for everybody in the room would have a different meaning depending on the time in.
Your life or the area of your life.
You apply it to what happened when I was young, what happened in my first marriage, or what what happened that caused me to leave that job, what happened that caused that relationship to fail? What what everybody say?
What happened?
Well, what happened was Paul got moved from his house arrest to the palace guard where they would keep the prisoners while they were waiting for the trial. And so the church at Philippi is hearing secondhand information. There wasn't good journalism in that day, very different than the day we live in where the journalism is accurate. But Paul said, no, I want you to hear this straight from me, what
has happened. But then it's interesting because he doesn't go on to detail what happened to him, which is weird. He goes, I want to talk to you about what has happened to me. But then and I love this and I'm excited to share it with you. I was telling him the last time I preached this, that this is one of those sermons that if I wrote it just for myself, it was worth the time. I preach
this stuff too. I watched this in the imax theater of my own mind before I present it to the general public viewing audience, and it got to me that Paul, instead of going on to describe what happened to him, which is he's falsely accused, he's been in prison for his faith, he doesn't describe so much what has happened, but instead he gives, and this is so important, an interpretation not just of what has happened, because life really isn't about what happened to you. Life really isn't about
what has happened. Life is more about what it means to me. And Paul is not gonna spend the next fourteen verses describing in detail what happened to it. He makes a swift transition, can I teach this message? He makes a swift transition to say, instead of going into the details about what has happened, which is largely outside of my control.
Because there's a lot of things that happen to you that are in your control.
But sometimes you get in a situation where there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
And so Paul said, since I can't change.
The what, let me talk to you for a moment about the why. And he starts talking about the very first thing that your kids want to know, the moment they start learning to use their words to ruin your life, and what they want to know about every decision, every bedtime, every curfew, every rule, is why. And then you get to invoke that great parental privilege of the response that every parent ought to use every chance you get while you can. And it starts with because, and it ends with.
I said so. And it feels good just to look at.
Your kids and say, cause I this is not a courtroom, this is not a negotiation. I do not have to structure logic to help you understand my decision. It has been implemented by the highest court in the lean.
I said, so, lest why pick it up?
And they asked this question because it's the most important question of life.
Why why?
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Why?
And of course we grow out of this. We never ask God why when we go through anything. That's only children that do that. And so Paul says, life is less about this and more. You don't realize how long this word is until you write it in front of twenty thousand people. He said, let me give you instead of a description of my current state, let me give you an interpretation of my state. You know what faith is. Faith is an interpretation. Faith is an interpretation. Paul's faith
didn't change this, It changed this. Paul's faith didn't affect.
This, it informed this. Now.
One of the things I love about the Holy Spirit in my life is that he is my interpreter. He helps me take a situation and instead of starting with what, I start with why. Instead of instead of starting with what, I start with why. Here's the secret. You can survive any what if you have a good enough why. The reason people quit when all hell breaks loose is because they didn't have.
A strong enough why when they started.
The reason that people get so confused when they get thrown in prison is because they didn't determine.
Their purpose before they were behind doors.
I can't tell that this is getting through to you.
So help me and touch somebody next to you and tell them.
You need a why. You need a why. And see, here's the thing. You can't depend on God to give you the why. He's already given you the why. I put you on earth to glorify Me. So whatever happens to you, you already know the why before you see the why.
Here's the key.
Decide why before the what. Decide the why before the why. Decide the why before the why.
I'm gonna repeat it. I'm a redundant preacher. Decide the why.
So if I go into a situation and I don't know what's gonna happen, I already predetermine the why. I'm not waiting to find out why. I predecided why. I'm here to glorify God. I'm here to see his goodness revealed.
In my life. That's my why. Teuch, somebody say, you can't take my why.
You can throw me in prison, but you can't take my why. You can disrupt my financial situation, but you can't take my why.
You might even mess.
With my marriage, but you can't take my why. You can mess with my car, but you can't take my why. My why is my why. You can't have my why. I've got a deep motivation, I've got a sense of purpose. My life has a larger context. I'm here for the Gospel. I'm here for his glory. I'm here to bring him pleasure. That's my why. That's my why. That's my why. There's no what in the world that can defeat you if you know your why.
I got my why. That's how I survived. I survived on a why.
The devil threw a lot of what at me, but I had my why intact before the what started.
Happening, and I can.
Make it through the what if I got a good why. So let's look at how God might want to adjust our interpretation.
Touch somebody say why why? That's the question. My dad had this funny thing he used to do.
He would always interpret someone else's silence as judgment. So he would tell me about somebody in the church and he would say he thinks he's bitter than me. And I would say why why do you think that? And he would say, because he walked right by me and didn't even speak to me.
Did you consider that perhaps he had something on his mind? And my dad would hate you for seven years.
In fact, the lady stopped me at the baseball field the other day and I had taken one of our kids to the bathroom, and I was walking out of the bathroom trying to get back to the field to watch my kid play. And the lady said, well, just walk by me then, and don't even ask how I'm doing past her. How many want to know My response, I simply said, right now, I'm dad more than i'm pastor. I don't care if you like it. That's what I said.
I said, But hello, I didn't notice you. I was going to the bathroom is private, but hello, it is interpretation. I wasn't not thinking about her, I wasn't not speaking to her.
I was going to the bathroom. Would you please stop.
Drawing thought bubbles over other people's heads.
This was part of Paul's issue.
There were these other preachers who wanted to use his imprisonment as an opportunity to kind of like get ahead of Paul, and so they were preaching, but they were preaching with bad motives, and Paul said, it doesn't even matter. Doesn't even matter to me. The important thing is they're preaching christ. Paul said, I'm so focused on my own motives. I don't have time to worry about anybody Else's A good marriage requires interpretation. Oh yes, it is a cross
culture or relationship, and you need an interpreter. You do, and the Lord will help you interpret it and say, you know, she didn't really say that because she's mad at you.
She just under a lot right now.
And the Lord will help you with that, and it'll help you to forgive offenses and it'll help you.
I'm telling you.
Interpretation is everything in relationships. Interpretation is everything when you face conflict. I can't count the number of times that I wake up on a Monday and two things go wrong and I go, guess, it's going to be that kind of week. So I'm interpreting as an inconvenience, as an omen that the universe has conspired against me with the help of Lucifer himself, It's gonna be one of those weeks. Now, that's an interpretation. You are not experiencing life.
You are experiencing your interpretation of life. Interpretation is the ability that Paul has to say, watch this.
I know you're hearing a lot about what has happened to me and.
The church at Philippi apparently viewed it as a setback, and it may be corny, but it's true. Paul said, It's not a setback, is a setup because it has actually served give me verse twelve on the screen. It has actually somebody say, actually, actually, if you have the right interpretation of what I'm going through, it has actually served to advance the gospel. The word advance is interesting in the original language because it denotes making headway in spite of severe blows.
It means I'm rolling with.
The punches, but I'm still making progress. How many of you have had to roll with the punches to make progress. Yeah, it wasn't a steady straight line. It wasn't a path that was unencumbered. You weren't walking along smelling flowers, but you had to light uphill. But you may progress. And Paul is saying, don't get it twisted. I may look chain, but these chains on my ankles are actually serving to
advance God's purpose. Sometimes you got to look at what's on you and realize it's subject to what's in you. And God is doing something in my life. Right now, I'm speaking to somebody by the spirit of God. It looks like I'm going backwards, but it's propelling me forward.
It looks like a setback.
It's a set up.
Touch somebody say, it's a set up. You got to get involved in this message. Touch somebody say, I'm moving forward.
I know I might not.
Look like I'm moving forward. I might be slow and steady like the tortoise. But as long as I inch my way in the right direction.
I cannot be stopped.
I will not be blocked.
The gospel cannot be contained. Get happy about the praisers. You got a new interpretation. Oh it's really hard, Well, God must be in it. You'll keep thinking, if it's really hard, it must not be God. Jesus didn't get to the cross with that line of logic, and you won't get to your destiny either.
But you have to have a faith interpretation.
Is as helpful. All right, don't get nervous, But that's my introduction. Sit down, I'll be quick. But what really got me is this shift that Paul makes after talking about after talking about his why, he said, I'm in chains for Christ. And he said that around here, man, he said, I got a captive audience, and I'm preaching to all of them, the guards, the other prisoners. He said, don't even worry about it. I know y'all think this
is a bad event. But faith is an interpretation of event that sees progress even in pain.
My God, this preaching is rich.
I feel like I need to go on the elevation app and watch it back on Monday myself to get the fullness of this message that God gave me. You know, somebody wrote me online one time and said, you shouldn't say that you're preaching good when you're preaching, because you know, I'll stop preaching every once in a while and say, ah, I'm preaching good. And what I wanted to say is if I don't like it, why in the world should you. I mean, I want to preach something that I need
and that I like. But anyway, by the way, most people who criticize you are really just showing you that they don't like themselves very much interpretation though, and when you see it that way, you can have compassion and say, okay, well they must really be going through something.
How can I help? He makes a shift.
Everybody say shift happens.
When he does it. I want to walk you through it.
He picks up in verse eighteen, and the Bible is put in these verses for us. But originally there weren't like verses breaking up the different letters.
It was just there so we can find it.
But sometimes it jumps in in a weird place. And I think that happens in verse eighteen, because Paul says, verse eighteen, but what does it matter? And that's a phrase that you should use as well. What does it matter? What does it matter?
Y'all pray for me that I.
Would get better at that because I take little things really seriously.
So he holly laughed when I think that point. That's a good sign. And he says, you know, what matters?
The important thing, the priority is that in every way, whether from false motives or true through Christ is preached.
That's what matters to me.
And so everything that serves that purpose is fine with me, whether I like it or not.
In the moment, that's what matters to me. What matters to you?
What matters to you, because what matters to you will determine the direction that you point your life in.
What matters to you, that's your destination.
So Paul says, what matters to me is that Christ has preached, and that's happening. So you know, whatever they're saying about me, that's fine. For the important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.
Because of this, I rejoice.
Now this next phrase to me should be a different verse they put it right.
In the same verse.
But when Paul makes this next statement, he goes into a completely different mode. He goes in a different zone. And what I want to show you is the next skill that Paul teaches us. And this is not the skill of it interpretation. This is the skill come on, say it when you got it, anticipation. It feel like we'll a fortune up in here today, trying to buy a vow.
Figure out what I'm writing on this court.
He shifts and he says, now that I've given you my interpretation of what has happened, let me give you my anticipation of what.
Say it of what happened.
And on one level, Paul says, I don't know. They might kill me. I might live. I'm not sure about that part. But I want you to notice the frame of mind and the state of consciousness that Paul engages over these ten verses, starting with eighteen B where I read to you, where he said yes and I will continue to rejoice.
He uses the word will. He's shifting.
Now, I've spending off time talking to you about what happened.
That's over.
Can't control it, can't do anything about it. Okay, I've acknowledged it. I've interpreted it. That's that.
Now I'm moving forward.
Now I want to tell you what will happen, and I want us to do an exercise, okay, on every campus. So this is for those of you at Butler High Score Matthew's campus temporarily homeless.
This is for our uptown location.
This is for Weddington, This is for University City, this is for Lake Norman.
This is even for those in Raleigh.
North Carolina, and Toronto, Canada who had record attendance last weekend. I want all of you, whether you're good at math or not, I want you to count with me the number of times that the word will is used in these ten verses that start in verse eighteen. There's the first one. You already got it, so put your hand up. Is one, he said, I will continue to rejoice.
Count out loud. That's next verse. I know he's.
Confident about this that through your prayers and God's provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out.
For my deliverance.
I eagerly expect and hope that I in no way be a shame, but have sufficient courage so that now as always, Christ be exalted in my body.
Whether by life or by death.
I don't know what, but I know why. And so for me to live as Christ and to die is gain. If I'm to go on living in the body, this mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose?
I do not know.
I'm torn between the two. I desired apart and be with Christ. Would have put up with anything anymore, be a lot betterfies than heaven, much more necessary that I remain in the body for you. The midst of this, I know that I remain, and I continue with all of you for your progress. Maybe sometimes our life is meant to be more about somebody else's price, rest in our own.
Come on, let's keep counting.
And I just wanted to point that out because I was talking about progress, and I wanted you to know sometimes it's not all about you, so that through my being with you again, you're boasting in Christ. Jesus abound on account of me. Whatever happens, what has happened, whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a minute word of the Gospel Christ, and one that come see your on and hear about you my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit. Now, only about three of you counted
with me through the whole time. But if you counted ten, you counted right. Ten verses and ten times. He doesn't say has, he says will. He doesn't say maybe, He says will why because he has an eager expectation. Did you see it in verse twenty? And this is what we need? Okay, he said, I eagerly expect and hope. How many are enjoying the Bible lesson today? He said, I eagerly twenty expect and hope. I eagerly expect and hope.
I was interested to learn Jody Jennings that in Greek eagerly, expect and hope are not verbs, but they're nouns, and they're joined together by the word kai in Greek means and, and they have within them the idea.
And this is where I really need you to focus, because.
I flunk Greek in college, and then I took it again in seminary.
And I passed with a C plus.
And I'm only telling you that for full disclosure, to let you know that I don't typically.
Walk around my house quoting Greek.
But when I saw this in the text, It was worth bringing out because when Paul says.
I eagerly expect.
He uses a word here's what's crazy, that has never been used before. He made up his own word to describe the kind of hope that you have to have to survive in a situation.
Where there seems to be no way out.
Paul said, this is the kind of hope that there is no vocabulary for. So Paul had to take three words and put them together to make a new word to describe the kind of hope that can make you look at your kid on drugs and your husband acting crazy and your money low and your emotions erect, and say I still have an expectation.
And I still have a hope.
And so he looks through his vocabulary he goes, I can't even I can't even think of.
How to tell you how I feel about it right now. I can't. There's no word. So I'm gonna I'm gonna make one up.
And uh And he makes up this word, and I'm gonna give it to you right now, and you're gonna use it this week. The word in Greek is it's made up of three words. Yeah, come on, let's say it together. On the ground kind of three one two three, All right.
We're gonna need some remedial classes. Apo carra.
Dokia Appo carra Dokia, apacarra, appercara, donkia Come on, apacar do you.
Opo?
It means to turn away with concentration, ignoring other interests.
That's the prefix.
You know. Paul is good because I could preach a whole sermon just on his prefix Appo. He said, I'm in a situation right now when if I look to my left, I see prison walls. If I look to my right, I see prison walls. If I look to my feet, I see a prisoner's chains. So I gotta turn my head intentionally from what's over here and what's over here. Everybody said, Appo, sometimes you got to turn your head from what's here and what's here and what's here. And so we said, I turn my head on purpose,
ignoring what I could be focused on. Apo apo apo apakarra Karra means head. It doesn't require much explanation. It literally means head. Apacara Pacara Dokia company that was originally founded in Sweden that sells ready to assemble home furniture and appliances and accessories dokia. Dokia originally means I'm trying man to stretch forward.
So when you put it together, you get this meaning. And I'm gonna teach this to.
You and we are gonna break it out on whatever situation comes up in your life this week that tries to break your focus or steal your faith. You need a little bit of apocara dokia, which means stretching the head forward.
You missed it. I'm coming to this side. He said, I'm in a prison cell right now and I can't move. I wish I was a better preacher.
If I was a better preacher, you'd get excited about apple caara dokia because he said, I can't move my feet, I can't move my body, but I'm stretching my head forward toward the future, and so I will rejoice because I'm stretching my head forward. Would you touch three people, tell him stretch your head, stretch your head. See here's the problem with a lot of people. A lot of people. We have our heads so far up our past that we.
That we caiss.
That we can't see our future.
But God brought you to church today that gets your.
Head out your past and give you a little apple, kara tokyo.
And ignor expectation.
I'm stretching my head toward what's next.
I'm not stuck in what was, I'm not.
Worried about what's gonna be.
I'm stretching my head toward Monday. I'm stretching my head toward next year. I'm stretching my head toward retirement. I'm stretching my head toward fullness.
I'm stretching my.
Head toward healing. And I'm stretching my head toward my mission. Let's practice. Jump up on your feet. This is a series called functional faith. Shove your neighbor, tell them stretch your head. If you're gonna be fit, you gotta stretch. If you're gonna have faith, you gotta stretch. If you don't stretch, you might break.
So let's stretch.
Come on, let's stretch our hand strings. First of all, I know how to stretch my hand strings. I know how to stretch my hand strings. That's about as far down as I'm willing to go in this tight suit to demonstrat it to you.
Bad things, man, bad things. But I know how to.
Stretch my hand strings. I know how to stretch my back. I know how to I know how to stretch my body, but nobody teaches us how to stretch our head. Appercrudokia. Stretch your head, Appercrudokia. There is a brighter day. Appercrudokia. It does make a difference. Opper Carudokia. God is working in my situation. Come on, say it, Appercrudokia. Tell the devil what you got. Tell him devil, I got that, Appercoradokia.
And the next time you run up on me with discouragement, you need to know. I'm turning my head and I'm stretching my neck.
Apa Cardoki, all the dample.
Come on.
This is better than Brazilian jiu jitsu. This is better than taekwon though. This is gonna teach you how to stick your neck out. And I got good news for you. Paul said, it doesn't matter if they kill me or they let me live, because this is not a situational interpretation. This is not a situational anticipation.
I feel like preaching this. I'm gone teaching now. I'm in full all preaching mode. On the count of three, when I say three, I want you to start with your head to the right. You're of the right. And when I say three, I want you to turn your head.
And the symbolic of all of the distractions that aren't going to distract you this week, and all of the cynicism that you're not even going to pay any attention to this week, I want you to turn your head.
I want you to give them an APPO on three. This is your APO. What two three? Turn it? You missed it?
One't quick enough? Turn your head to the left. Come on, we got a practice. I am your spiritual trainer.
I'm trying to teach you what to do when life gets stuff and I'm not here for you. And you look into the right and you looking to the left.
On the count, I want you to jerk your head forward and give yourself whiplash.
One two three APO. Do it again. Head to the right.
You're looking at that person, trying to see what they think of you, looking at that situation.
Trying to see how that's gonna turn out. But on the count of three, we got some APO for the devil.
On the counter three turn your head, shout OPO one two three. That's the first step. Now we need the donkie Everybody say donkyo. Now we need that thing where you stretch your neck like a giraffe, where you look forward to your future and smile at it, where you look forward to problems and difficulties and say, I got something for you called the Spirit of God for me to live.
As Christ and to guy is game?
What's Paul saying?
He's saying, either way this turns out, I'm coming out ahead.
You missed it, he said.
I don't know what's gonna happen next, but I'm headed in the right direction. Somebody shout, somebody shout, somebody shout, somebody's shout, somebody shout, somebody's shout somebody. I'm not there yet, but I'm headed in the right correction. I got my focus on, I got my brave on, I got my courage home, I got my whole pong, I got my faith on.
Get your hands out your pocket.
And when I say three, I want you to stretch your neck towards your future.
W two three strategy.
You missed it.
Let's do it on every campus.
Come on on the counter of.
Three, stretch your head.
I put Carl.
Tokyo and tell the devil I'm coming toward my future in faith.
What two three again? What two three what two three?
I pull?
What two three? Dora? What two three?
Donkyo?
What two three?
What?
Two three? You got it? You got it, you got it, you got it, you got it, you got it.
Clad like you got it, Shout like you got it, Rejoice like you gotta.
I will, God tell you to rejoice thord to.
Me, I feel cud about it.
To live is Christ the dying guy, And I'm coming out ahead. Yeah, wha two three? Whoa two three?
This your new cadence this week. You're not going into this week like thinking about what happened when you were thirteen. I got some for regret. It's called applecara, donkia turn.
My head from that. If I think about that too long, I get depressed.
If I think about that too long, I start get bitter. If I look over here, I might get jealous. If I look over there, I might get discouraged. So I got stretch my head toward my future in faith.
I will, I will, I will riduals now. Stretch your hands to heave it. You stretch your head now, stretch your hands to let the Lord know.
That what matters to me is what matters to you. I have an eager expectation Applecarudokia. My expectation creates my hope. And I don't know what, but I know why, and I can survive the why when I know the why. Lift your hands, Lord, We thank you for the word that you gave us today. We thank you for the instruction that you gave us through Paul. He told us that we got to stretch our heads forward.
Forward, that we.
Can't do anything about the time that we've lost. We've got to forget what's behind us and strained toward what's ahead. That we got to get our eyes fixed on where we're headed, to get our lives headed in the right direction. And I pray it over your people now in Jesus' name, that they would experience this week significant steps forward.
Everybody, say forward forward, look at me for a moment.
I asked a race car driver one time, if you were going to teach one thing about driving that people wouldn't know, what would it be? He said, You've always he's got to keep your eyes where you want to go. When you're on a track, you tend to look at what you don't want to hit and what you don't want to happen. He said that will always cause you to crash every single time.
What was he talking about? Applecaradokia? Stretch your head.
Forward.
Forward. I can just see it this week that you're going to preach this back to the people that.
You love, and you're going to preach it without words when they start talking about what went wrong, And I just want.
You to look at him and like a turtle coming out of his shell.
Just I want moms to do this to your daughter this week, But most importantly, I want you to do it for yourself. I've already been practicing this in my own life as I've prepared to preach it to you, and it's amazing how just a quick shift stretch of the head can get you out of discouragement, can get you out of defeat, can get you out of despair. Forward, everybody, say forward. That's where I'm looking. I'm looking forward. I can't go into this week like this. I can't go
into this week like this. How am I going into this week? I'm going say it forward? Are there any forward thinkers in the house?
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