Do The New You

It's gonna be amazing. Yeah, we coordinated that awesome. But make sure you go get your tickets right now. Elevation Nights dot Com. These nights are seriously like the best, the best. Can't explain it. I wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't amazing. You have to experience it. It'll be me you Elevation Worship and you we'll see at Elevation Nights. Elevation Nights dot Com. Get your tickets today, let me know if you're gonna be there. You all ready for the word sit down. I'm teaching today from

Ephesians chapter four, fourteen through twenty four. I really will only talk about one verse but you got to hear all of them, or else it will sound like some kind of Pinterest thing or like some little cute little quote. But I'm not trying to do that today. I want to teach a little bit. I am excited when you come to church. You know you get here. I know you leave the house and have to fight and all that.

I'm already here for five hours. So the main thing I have to do when I start my sermons is tell myself, ferdict, slow down, let the people wake up. So that's why I had Zeke sing a little bit so I could slow down and just get ready to preach to you what I have been studying for the last several months. Ephesians chapter four. This new series is called Do the New You. Ephesians chapter four. Do the New You. Oh, We're going to talk about that a

whole lot in the month of January. Ephesians chapter four. I'm happy to see you. I'm happy you're here. Look at you getting in a good church rhythm at the beginning of the year. You have perfect church attendance so far this year. Tell the devil that put a gold star in the devil's face and tell him I showed

up for church. Ephesians, Chapter four, verse fourteen. The apostle Paul says, then we will no longer be infants, to lost back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching, and by the cunning and craftiness of people. You got to watch out for people. Wouldn't life be wonderful if it wasn't for the people that get in the way. You could do everything God spoke to you. If it wasn't for people.

It's really easy for me to obey God in church, and then I have to get out there and run what He showed me in the playbook. So Paul says here that we need to get to a point that we are grown past the opinions of people in their deceitful scheming, whether it's a marketer or a newscast, or

a political group or any of that. Whether it's something you've been taught in church that's wrong, Paul says, I want you to grow past that into this watch verse fifteen, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head that is Christ, from him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. Boy Pastor Stephen, you picked a cheerful scripture

for the new Year's sermon. Listen to this. It's about to turn that, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, and to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on last verse the new self created to be like God in

true righteousness and holiness. Clap your hands for the word of God. When people give you advice that isn't helpful, what do you do? Smile at him? Yeah, I pray about that. A dude was telling me the other day, I need to preach a series on bitcoin. I said, I pray about that. Thank you for the input, and then I went on about my business. But when somebody you respect, then it's different, even if you don't like what they say. And when my dad was diagnosed with

ALS about ten years ago. He was diagnosed about twelve years ago, and he went to heaven about ten years ago. We went through a horrible period as a family, and some of it I can laugh about now, But man, we would get on the phone and try to talk to each other and we couldn't even speak. It would turn into a shouting match. And then I'd get up and preach Sunday and then getting a shouting match on the phone with my dad Tuesday, and feel like a hypocrite about it. But I couldn't figure out a way

past it. I try and do all this and that and the other. But the point of the story is this pastor calls me and somebody that I really loved and respected and said, I heard about what you're going through with your dad, and I've been praying about it now. He only talked to my dad about it. He didn't talked to me about it. So he heard what he heard from who he heard it from. He said, I heard what happened with your dad, and I just called to ask you one question, Stephen, what would Jesus do?

And you know what, I thought, Jesus would heal him. And I'm not Jesus. I might lay hands on him before it's all said and done, so you could take your little WWJD wisdom. I had the bracelet to when I was sixteen. But it's not that I don't know what I want in this relationship. I want reconciliation. I want to be by my dad's side. I want us to be able to take care of him. I mean, that's the reason why we moved them to Charlotte is I wanted to be a part of that in any

way I could. But it wasn't really knowing what to do. It was doing what I knew in the face of something in real time that was complicated. In the passage I just read you. I don't know how much the apostle. Paul sounds like that pastor that called me to you because he's telling you things to do. Then on the surface sounds so simple, and in the way he starts it, it's so Paul, is so Paul. Paul's like in verse seventeen, He's like, so I tell you this, give me verse

seventeen and insist on it in the Lord. Well, now, what can I say back to you? Right? So I tell you this, Okay, tell me and I insist on it. Okay in the Lord, just say it. He says that the way that you have been living that has been limiting you is not a product of the person that God has called you to be. It is a product of the patterns of the world that you have copied

unconsciously until now. But Paul says, I give you, in this moment of your life, to the Ephesian Church, and I believe he he says it to Elevation Church as well, at the beginning of a new year. A command, not a suggestion, on the authority of God's word, not the advice of somebody that you follow. This is not TikTok truth, This is not a tip. This is not nineteen ways

to get it. This is something that God says from his own heart to you through the apostle, echoing through the eons, and right now this word stands in front of you. There comes a point in your life when doing you isn't working, and there becomes there comes a challenge to become what you've really been all along that has been buried. I believe this year is my year, in your year to see some things manifest in our lives that we don't even have the faith to for

anymore because it's been one way so long. I believe this is your year in your life to see character development at a level like you thought was only possible for other people before. You're gonna become the kind of person that you've admired. This year, you're gonna become someone that you can trust in this year, You're gonna become someone who keeps commitments that they make in secret in public under pressure. This year. How do I know is possible?

Because God would not command it, if he would not resource it. If God told me to do it, He'll show me how. All right, Feel good? Now I got my preach back. Now I've been a couple of weeks just in here by myself and hanging out with the family and been thinking about this. This thing that people say, do you It usually is a phrase that gives us permission to be different, even if what we're doing like this, like this, like oh you're gonna wear that? Well? Do

you you like those? Oh? Yeah? Do you? It means I wouldn't Hey man, do you you wanna you wanna buy it? Buy it? Yeah? Man? Do you? Or or or or it could be kind of like, man, don't listen to them. Do you you have to do that what they're they're doing over there? Do you? And I wonder like, is that advice helpful? And when this is what we're gonna consider for the next four weeks, So I'm giving you fair warning should you decide to skip, we are going to evaluate the point at which check this.

We use authenticity as an excuse for immay. Nobody in here wore a diaper to church unless they were carried and unless it's covered. I hope yet, at one time that's what you ran around the house in should you do you? Nobody in here that I'm aware of over the age of eighteen is going to eat their meal only with their hands today unless it's a sandwich and a bag of chips, But at one time you did should you do you? Nobody in here today over the age of twenty one is going to go home today

unless there's a physical ailment. And I understand that. And there's exceptions to everything I say. Nobody is going to go in their lunch today and expect to be spoon fed something that's mashed up. But at one time you needed that should you do you? Should you? Because that's what I hear a lot now it's like, do you We almost have elevated authenticity to the level of ultimate authority in our lives to give ourselves permission not to

make progress in areas of our life. I just went through several physical examples that were awkward on purpose that at one time you wore a diaper, at one time you couldn't chew your food. But yet people still come to church and they say, I want to be fed when I come to church. And that's fine because Jesus did tell Peter feed my sheep. But guess what you have to chew? I insist on it in the Lord. It's so funny how many people don't get strong from sermons.

They hear because you get fed. I left that church because I wasn't getting fed. Maybe or maybe you didn't chew it. Maybe you didn't do it. The Bible says that he who comes to me and here's my words and doesn't put them into practice. It's like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. Wait a minute, he heard the word. Shouldn't he be stronger from the word that he heard, not if he didn't do it. One country preacher said, the word of God is like

a can of paint. The value is in the application. So I hear Paul all in Ephesians one through three, and Holly and Britain. The team did a study that you're gonna get January twenty second for the e groups where they go into Ephesians. And I didn't even tell her that the Lord gave me a sermon from Ephesians

because I wanted to surprise her. So surprise here, I am all the way in Ephesians chapter four, wherein one through three Paul is telling them what God did through the Gospel, and then he makes a turn in chapter four where he starts talking about now that God did that, you do this because you can one of the things that he says in this passage were interesting to me.

Look at verse fourteen. He says that when we grow up through the unity in our faith by committing ourselves to God's community in his process, that we will no longer be there it is infants. We will no longer expect to be fed without doing any chewing of our own. We will no longer be immature. But when I saw this connection, it kind of surprised me. He said that when you are stuck in spiritual infancy, check this out.

You are tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching, and by the cunniness, cunning, and craftiness of people in their deceitful excusing. So isn't that true? Haven't you found that

to be true? That immaturity always manifests as instability. Can you notice that, like in your own life, when there is an area in your life where God is trying to grow you, or life is trying to grow you, or challenges are trying to move you, and you refuse to move past what God is trying to teach you to do, it will always result in instability. Now, notice that he talks about the waves and the wind, which are both external metaphors for the things that happen to

us in our life. But what he says in the passage is not that our spiritual maturity guarantees the elimination of wind and waves. He says that your spiritual growth and maturity will guarantee that, because God is your strength, your source, and your firm foundation, that you will have a stable place in any storm. When I prophesy over your life that God is going to do great things this year, I am not prophesying the appsence of any external challenge, for that is above and beyond my pay grade.

What I am prophesying in the name of Jesus is that there is a seed of the Word of God inside of you trying to come up out of the soil that will enable you to see life everywhere you look this year, and you will not be moved anymore by all of the happenings of life like you were in the past. So I want to ask a question for you to consider. How has your instability in life been caused by an area of immaturity in your life? What waves are you blaming for the way you are

right now? When the real problem is within what wind? Are you cursing because you avoid dealing with the storms inside? And this is how the Lord led me to start the year to tell you that you get to choose this year whether to grow into what God has called you or continue to be stuck in the rut of what was because of what you saw, because of what

you've been through, and because of what you've known. One reason I don't believe in the saying do you as a general piece of advice is because it assumes that you know you and you don't. Why are y'all making me break this down so much? Find one of these church people that's in here today lifting their hands praising God, follow them to their kids sporting event, and see if they are the same that they were on Sunday, Because see, I met some of y'all in other locations than church,

and I was surprised what I saw. You were lifting your hands, your whole hands in here, and then you were lifting individual fingers when I saw you at your kids basketball game. So I can't figure out. So if I tell you do you, I don't know which one it's going to show up for the audition for the role. And maybe clear the room. That's bad advice. One time a preacher told me, hey, man, come preach for us. And I said, okay, and he said, and just be you. I said, oh no, that's the last thing you want

to tell me. I need to get with God. If I show up me without God, your church will split. Now I'm not saying I got multiple personalities, but I'm saying I'm a fan by things I'm affected by. I'm affected by moos oh for me in the morning. It's not to me I want to send into my week. Let me talk a little bit about this topic, how to defy your default setting. I'm just setting you all up this week. I hope you're gonna stick with me for January because a lot of us accept our default

setting in a situation as our destiny. When I wake up in the morning, my first thought isn't great as I've hit from this o God. My father. One man said, I don't wake up in the morning and say good what he said, good morning Lord? I wake up and say good Lord, it's morning. That's me. That's mourning me. Not only is my breath bad in the morning, my beliefs are bad too. Y'all brush your teeth. I have to brush my beliefs in the morning. I have to.

I promise you, I have to. If I don't do that in the morning, it's going to be a meltdown by ten am, maybe two in the best case scenario. But what I'm learning not only from my life, but from this passage as I study it, is that the awareness of how I start doesn't have to become indicative of where I end. And watch this. I cannot use authenticity as permission to sin. So I can't just wake up and think a certain way and act a certain way if I belong to God and just call it

being real. He didn't say be real, he said be righteous. Oh no, Well, I'm just saying what I feel. Who told you to do that? I'm just speaking my mind. What a horrible book to be speaking from the book of your mind, the book of your brain, which has been, what the Scripture says, corrupted by deceitful desires. That's the problem. Do you which me, the me that wants to be happy right now at all costs, or the me that will thank me in ten years for the decisions I

made right now? Which while? Do you which one the one that's gonna kick my butt if I keep acting like this for the next five years. The me that I don't want to see reproduced in my kids. That one. Just do that. Yeah, just do you? Just do me, just like my dad did him and he did him. No, I believe that there is a power in for you to decide that. I don't want to be like what I came from. I want to be like I was creative for saw. I wake up in the morning, I

gotta get some of God's word. I can't start responding to the text first thing in the morning. I can't touch the screen and start telling people what I think and what I feel first thing in the morning. I gotta get to Douteronomy chapter seven and see what God says. Then maybe I can say something. I got a little

gratitude journal. I gotta write some things down I'm thankful for in the morning, so I'll just start thinking about what I need today, because I'll start the whole day in the deaficit, all day down around, run around, thing like I don't have enough strength. I don't have enough energy unless I start somewhere else. Now, just do you. I'm not doing that anymore. I did mean it almost killed me. I didn't me, but I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. I didn't me. That's too small of an

apartment for me to live in. That apartment has roaches, that apartment doesn't have any electricity. That thing is corrupted, corroded, and deceived by sin. So I came with the New Year series to tell you, not me, but in the Lord, that you are being called this year to do the new you. And you are not supposed to like new when you first start doing it, and you don't have to like it at first to do it. I went up bucking counted two thousand, one hundred and something workouts

I did since we boot the Pound. That's the little workout room at my house. Two thousand, one hundred something workouts. When we met, I was so inconsistent in working out. I was like, you know, man, I'm just really not one of these guys that comes in and works out consistently. I do it when I can get around to it. I told him that I was doing me. I told him how I would and wouldn't exercise. But you know what, they got in there and helped me, and it kept

me accountable. And then I counted It's been eight years now, eight years that I've done my workouts like five times a week, and y'all don't even care. I'm not bragging. No, You're like, why are you bragging? If you work out, workout, don't come up here bragging about it. Preach the word. Man, i't need to hear all this. I'm telling you. I saw myself as a certain kind of person for all my life, And even the other day I was telling somebody I'm not one of these people who just likes

to work out. I thought, yes, you are. I did the math. If I've been doing that for like eight years, and you're not supposed to really start working out until you're how old, Matt fourteen probably is about the earliest you want to lift weights. That is a good like thirty percent of my life that I've been doing it. So I am a person who likes to work out. Imagine that my default wasn't to do that. But my default is not my destiny. My decisions are. How about that?

Paul says, to put off the old way of seeing yourself and put on what he calls the attitude of Christ. What does that mean? To put on the new self? I can't see it like a jacket. I can't see it like a hat. I can't see it like a raincoat. I can't see it like new balances. I can't see it like it's in my wardrobe. It lives within me. But I have the decision to make every day of my life which one I will choose? Every day, every hour, every moment. I am deciding, and you are deciding, which

you will you do this year? Do you the one that was made new in the attitude of your mind? Put on the new self. Now we're going to do some study in the text here. In verse twenty four, he says that the new self was created to be like God, and then in verse twenty three he says that the old self is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.

Let's really look at both of those verses. This is the nexus of Chris and practice in order to see ourselves as God sees us is not a matter of abstract ethereal and philosophical debate, as a matter of practice. So watch this. He said that the old self is being corrupted verse twenty three. Please give me that is being corrupted. Everybody say, corrupted by the deceitful desires. What you think you want, what you want right now, what

the world tells you you should want. What people spend millions of dollars on ad campaigns to get you to think, if you had it, you would be happy. All of the images that you see of the life that you imagined that would actually make you happy. That is really empty at the bottom of it, if it doesn't have God in the middle of it. Right, So he says that that self is being corrupted. Everybody say corrupted, and to put on verse twenty four the new self which

was created. Everybody say created. Oh, I like that They both start with the same letter. I can preach this

one is being corrupted and one was created. So when you have an outburst of anger, or for when you reach for the pills because that's the only way you know how to escape your pain, or for when you manipulate situations, or for when you spend till three point thirty am looking at porn and then you can't connect in real life, or for when you find yourself holding on to grudges and trying to pay people back, or for when you do those things which are very common

in the world, and you say that's just how I am. And then Paul says in Ephesians four twenty four that at the heart of the New Testament is the fact that you were created to be like God. And then verse twenty three that you are being excuse me, verse twenty two. Yeah, verse twenty two, that the old self, the former way of life, is being corrupted. That means my daily decision is corrupted me or created me. You

got it. Now. Why this blesses me so much is that it lets me know that at my core I'm a child of God, that at my core, I'm a new creation at Christ, in Christ. If you cut me open, Christ would be there. If you ripped open this frame, if you ripped open this body, if you ripped open this physical appearance that you see at the core of that would be Christ. Because I was created twenty four, I was created, a new self, recreated. Give me twenty four. Please,

y'all stay with me. These are my verses right here. Stay with me. Verse twenty four, Verse twenty four. Created to do what be like God in true righteousness, not self righteousness, not the appearance of righteousness. Created to be like God, not to be God. That's a whole different thing. That's what some of us have been trying to do that keeps us so stressed out. We keep trying to be God over our lives. We keep trying to decide

what can I do, what should I do? And then when it doesn't work, and then when we're weary, we come running. But God said, you weren't created to be God. You were created to be conformed to the image of God who made you. You were created to be new. But you are being corrupted by the patterns of the world.

And when your mind has been corrupted long enough with patterns of thinking and patterns of speaking, which Ephesians four addresses very clearly, you begin to identify with the issues you struggle with more than the image of the God that you were made in. So now when you act up in sin and miss it, you think that's just me. Now you are using self awareness as a permission slip to stay stuck in sin. And Paul gets right up in the middle of it, and he's like, I got

one question, what would Jesus do? And I'm like, Paul, i am not Jesus. Jesus is the pure, spoltless lamb of God, alpha and Omega, the first and the last. I'm not even a letter in the alphabet. He's the first one, the last one, the Omnikron, He's all of it. I can't do it without Jesus. And He's like, exactly. So that's where I want you to go to get your truth, the truth that is in Jesus. I am sending it back to the pit of Hell. This phrase that got popular in our culture a few years ago.

Live your truth to Hell with your truth, your truth, it said. The truth is in Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the life. You can't come to the Father without him. You can't be right with God without him. You can't be clingsed without him. You can't make it without him. It is his breath in your lungs. It is his hand on your life. It is his grace that justifies. It is he that raises up one that brings down another. The truth is in Jesus. Stop me.

I don't speak my mind. I speak Jesus. I'll speak my dear. I speak Jesus what I see. I live by faith in the Son of God. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. So I'm doing me but it's not the me you see. It's to me that's kicking on the inside. It's to me that's coming up alive. It's to me that trauma couldn't kill. It's to me that drama can't distric It's to me that this world can corrupt. So do you the new you? Yeah? The

new you, the one that apologizes when you're wrong. That one, not the one that takes three weeks to come around and see it either, the one that says in the middle of my sentence, Oh, I'm sorry. I don't talk like this. I'm sorry, y'all. That's not me. That's not to me I want to be. That's not what God's calling me into in twenty twenty three. It's a new me twenty twenty three. Yeah, rhymes, it's good. I'm a preaching, I'm flowing in it. This is your year to break

away with everything you told her. What self? What's true? Guys? There is I knew you and guess what. The new you is the one that God knows. Imagine yourself free. God knows that you imagine yourself whole. God knows that you imagine yourself able to wait and be patient and not respond to every feeling that passes through your central nervous system. God knows that you. When I see myself how God sees me and come into alignment with the word that He spoke over me. It's new to me,

but not to God. It's new to me, but not to him. One time he was calling this prophet named Jeremiah, and the prophet Jeremiah was full of excuses, just like you, just like me. I met this fellow last year on Elevation Nights named Brendan Burchard. He does a great group for growth online. Look him up, and he was saying these three things that we say to ourselves all the time, and I identified with every single one of them. You ready, this is the excuse that you use to do you

at the lower level. One you say, I don't know how, Two, I don't have it. Three I'm not like them. Let's break it down. Number one, don't know how. How many of you had a challenge in twenty twenty two and you excused yourself from embracing it that God was calling you hire, but you didn't go because you didn't know how. Raise your hand. My hand was the first one up, and the rest of y'all are hypocrites because you either didn't listen or you just want to lie about it.

I don't know how to do that. I don't know how. Second one, I don't have that. Raise your hand. If you made that last year, I'll have that. Yeah, you could say that about money, time, energy, health, education, what else? Y'all probably got something that I hadn't thought of. Y'all are way more dysfunctional than me. Give me some material here, No, I promise you that's not true. That's a very sarcastic what is it? All? Right? So I don't know how to I don't know how to to resist it. I'll

be consistent. I like to resist it better because that's what I think, right, Like greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I don't know how to fight this. When you've been given into something and you can just you can just nod like you don't know what I'm talking about. When you've been given into something since you were ten, it's really hard for you to really believe that you can overcome that. And listen. You don't have to admit that that struck

a chord what I just said. Just do you pretend like you do. You don't struggle with that. You're such an angel, and I respect you and admire you. I don't know how to resist. I don't know how to be consistent. I don't know how well for me. When I started my workouts, I put a this is so corny. I put a chart on my wall where I could put stars every time I worked out, because I thought that would reinforce the behavior. I looked like I was

seven years old down there. I'm a grown man with a beard putting stars on a chart, and I still do it. And I filled that sucker up this year. I ran out of blue stars and had to start using the gold ones this year. That's how good I did it. Because I'm changing. I'm changing. I'm changing. Oh I'm not one of these workout people. Well maybe I am. Maybe I can be one, Maybe I can get a chart. Maybe I am consistent. I'm consistent in this area. Why can't I be consistent in that area? I'm growing up

in every respect. I control my tongue in this situation. Why can't I control it in that situation? I made a good decision Monday. Why can't I do it again Tuesday? Why can't I do it again Wednesday. Looks like you know how to be consistent. You're here at charts on the first Sunday of the year. How you do it? Not do it again? And do it again, and do it. I just talked to you a whole sevenar consistency. That wasn't true. You know how to be consistent, you know

how to do it. It is not knowing what to do. It is doing what you knew that you didn't do last time. Not fussing at you, I'm just saying I don't know how to be consistent in some areas of my life either. I struggle with it, but by showing up, God's strength is released. I don't know how. I don't have it. I don't have that intellectual ability. I can't do that like that. Don't you think I felt like that trying to teach each of my kids about sports. I don't know how to teach you how to do this.

I got to like the basic level in all the sports that I played, and nothing beyond that. So if you get good, I'm done. All right. Well, I don't know how. Why know how to support you? Why not show up? I know how to demonstrate in my area of competency, what you need to demonstrate, the discipline you need to demonstrate in your area of competency and giftedness and calling. So I do know how, And if I don't know how and I need to do it, I'll learn.

I'll look it up on YouTube. I could look up anything. I'll ask a friend. I've got a lot of smart friends. And then the biggest one of all, the biggest live of all. I'm not like them. Man. They have a good marriage because their parents had a good marriage. I can't do that my parents, my dad wasn't around. I'm not like those people who grew up there. They know how to deal with money because they grew up around money. I don't know how to deal with money. They know

how to pray because they grew up in church. I don't know all these Bible stories. Some of you were here for the first Sunday of this year, and the whole time you've been feeling here, you've been feeling like I don't fit in. I don't know these words, I don't know these songs. Why are people standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down, And how long does this sermon last anyway, I like these church people. Oh, we are

all corrupted. Go with them in the parking lot. You might catch them cussing before they even get off the church property if I preached long enough and let the traffic get backed up. Don't let anybody intimidate you, make you insecure, because you just got to grow into what God gave you. We're all struggling. We'll talk about it sometime one time. I'll tell you all my stuff, and you can tell me all yours, and then we'll cry and get all over it, and then we will say, Okay,

that's where we're starting. That's not where we're staying. So God wanted Jeremiah to go preach. And the Bible says in Jeremiah chapter one, verse four, that the word of the Lord came to me. The word of the Lord existed before the world existed. In the beginning, was the word, you know. The book of Genesis says, in the beginning God. The book of John says, in the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. So when Jeremiah says the Word of the Lord came

to me, it wasn't just advice that he got. It wasn't just an instruction that he got. It wasn't just something he thought he would try for his new year's goal. It was God himself showing up and saying, Jeremiah, I've given you an assignment. There are invaders coming from the north, and I want you to preach to my people and warn them and instruct them, and do it through your tears. And there's going to be crying involved, and there's going to be challenges involved, and there's going to be self

doubt involved. But he said, before you were born, before I formed you in the womb, I I knew you before this world got a hold of you, before depression set in and put you in the bed, before you got in this state, this emergency situation that you don't know how you're going to get out of. Before you were molested, before you were abused, before you were left, before any of that happened to you, before the mistake, before the failure, before the dumb idea, before the addiction

gripped you. Put it back up. God said, I knew you, he knew you, he knew you'd be in trouble, he knew you'd be thirty six in single. He knew you'd be struggling. He knew you'd be sad, he knew you'd be melancholy. He knew you'd need a job. He know you'd be behind financially. He knew they'd walk away. He knew you. You didn't know it. God knew it. You didn't see it coming. He saw it coming. He said, I know the lands I have for you. Before any of the crap happened. God said, I had intimate knowledge

of your intellect. I see your integrity, even when it falters. I see the man you're gonna be if you don't leave and walk away. I see if you submit to the process, how strong you're gonna be. I see the testimony you're gonna be telling your kids ten years from now, talking about here's what God did in our home, Here's what I almost did. A cod brought me back in twenty twenty three, and he brought me inserts to tell me do it. To do you. I knew you. I

created you before you were corrupted. So I want you to take off what happened to you. Take off the way you've been thinking about it. Take off the story you've been telling yourself. Take off that guilt, Take off that shame, put it all at the foot of the cross, and cast it all on the back of the Christ who paid the price for your sins to be forgiven. It's under the blood. Now we're going forward. Now we're not talking about that for the rest of your life.

We're turning it into something miraculous. It's time to bring it out. The oven. Baby, it's ready. The eyes that flying rupts you. The elevation. I bring you up. Come up, Come up, Come up, Come up, Come up to do it. Come up in establish this, Come up and start it. Come up there, say say, come up, they break here, come up. Do it? Do it? Do it? Do it? Do it? Do it till us second nature. Do it. Tell us how you think. Do it till it naturally colomes out of your mouth. Do it till it's not

so hard anymore. Do it awkward? Do it clumsy? Do it over? Do it over? Sorry I messed that up. Let me try again. Do it? Do it? Do the knew you, the one God knew, the one that people don't always see. You're a good person. You got a better heart than you've got habits, And what you've been calling your personality is just your patterns. If we change your patterns, God is about to release potential in your life this year that you didn't even think was possible.

This is what the Lord said before you were born. Play softly helped me close before I formed you in the womb. I knew you. You think you know you. You You don't know you. God knows you. You know what you've experienced, You don't know you. How many of you don't know the person you're sitting next to. Raise your hand, every hand, better go up. You don't know what they would do. They don't know what they would do in a situation they haven't been through yet. You don't know

what they could be. You've only ever seen them in the shackles of their past. You don't know them. God knows them. That's the one I want to do this year, and it's going to be hard for me because I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty opinionated about myself now. This is how I am. I don't do that. Somebody asked me for a meeting the other day. It was important, and they said I can only meet at six fifteen am. I said, I'm not a morning But I never read in the Book of Ephesians about the morning people and

the night people. All they read about the old self and the news south And I cut myself off mid sentence. I said, I'm not a more. I see it's six fifteen, because it's important to me. I got up forty five minutes early, did a lot of coffee, and I did it. Imagine that you could just do that. You could just do that. It would be amazing, It would shock you. Now.

The thing I got to get you to see is we're going to have to really work on this and work through this, because your first instinct is going to be always to hold tight to what feels the most familiar. So if that's anger, if that's complaining, if that's blaming, if that's diminishing yourself, if that's criticizing others, if that's how you always bond, then that's what you're gonna naturally

think you should do. But what feels the most natural isn't the truest thing about you, what God has put within you and spoken over you, the truth that is in Jesus. That's you. And then when you find yourself outside of that, you go, oh, that's not me. That's not how I want to respond. Oh, I'm just a late person. No, you're not. You're a person who doesn't know how to calculate how long a task will actually take and tries to get too much done before you leave.

You are actually a very efficient person who just hasn't learned to be realistic in their efficiency. Give God a praise all of the formerly laid people. That's all that is. So I'm going to break it down. But watch what Jeremiah said when the Lord said, I've called you, I've chosen you, I created you to do it. I got a job for you. Now watch Jeremiah's response. This is what we must move past. In verse six, he says, a last sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak.

I am too young. He did all three of the things in one sentence. I don't know how. I don't have the experience, and I'm not like these people who have wisdom and can speak. And that's what's been going through your mind all of last year that kept your stuck. So his answer was in his excuse if he had stopped talking. Verse six, A las sovereign Lord. That word means he's in charge, not you. That word means he knows what's in you, you don't. That word means that

his assignment is always accompanied by his enablement. Sovereign Lord, his plan, his purpose, Sovereign Lord. And then the Lord told Jeremiah verse seven, don't say I'm too young. You must go to everyone I send you and say whatever I command you for say. Do not be afraid of them. This is the word of the Lord. Receive it, for I am with you. That's what you need to know. At the beginning of this year. The truest thing about you is that God is with you. I am with you.

And look at this. After he gave him the promise, he gave him the provision. This is so beautiful. Thank you Holy Spirit for showing me this. I am with you. I will rescue you, declares the Lord. Verse nine. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said, I have put my words in your mouth. Now speak it it now to create. Now do it. Now, go for it, Now begin it. And God is going to give it to you as you go. He's going to show you how to do this. I know you

don't know how. I know you don't have it. He touches your mouth after he gives you the command. It is in obedience that potential is realized. Right now, all over this room there are new beginnings trying to crack through the cement of layers and layers of corruption. What we want to do right now is set the atmosphere in our hearts and our homes for whatever God wants to do this year. I want you to join hands or make contact on the shoulder of the person on

either side of you. I want you to spend the aisles. I don't want anybody untouched on either side unless you're at the end of the row. I want everybody joining up. Everybody joining up at every location. Now, look at me. Every location. Elevation, Matthews Elevation, Uptown, Blakeney, Riverwalk, University City, Gaston, Toronto, Concord Lake, Norman, Raleigh, Roanoke, Melbourne, so Random, Winston, Salem, Ashville, Morrisville, Columbia, Greenville, Durham, Orlando.

Watch just Valentine Etham online all over the world where you're from. Look at that. Can I tell you something real quick? I want to close my sermon this way. I was going to open it this way, but for some reason the Lord wouldn't let me. And it must be because of now. I hope you like their hand because you're going to be holding it for about two more minutes. Hope their palms aren't too sweaty. Look at me, Look at me. Yesterday I went to watch Graham Russell

at porter Ridge High School. That was our first second campus of Elevation Church. So we were meeting at Providence High School. It got full. A man came to meet with me named John Butler. John Butler was a Baptist minister, so I always called him John the Baptist and he thought that was funny. But he comes to me and says he was attending the church at the time. He was also employed by the Baptist Convention. He said, the church is full, that's amazing. And he said, but you

need to keep growing. He said, you can't just contain it. And if you tell people invite their friends, but there's nowhere for their friends to sit, that's a problem. So you need to open another campus. I said, cool. He said, I've got three hundred thousand dollars in the Baptist Convention account that I will give you to start the campus. I said, great. I got a friend named Travis. I'll call him and tell him that you're looking for a church planter. He said, no you, I said, but I can't.

Do you know I'm preaching at one, I can't preach at the other. He goes, I'm talking about you on video appreaching. I looked at him and said, that's not me. Elevation, Matthews Elevation, Uptown Elevation, Blatant Elevation, Riverwalk Elevation, University City Elevation, Gaston Elevation, Toronto Elevation, Concord Elevation, Lake Norman, Raleigh, Melbourne Elevation, Weston, Salem Elevation, Ashville Elevation, Morrisville, Columbia, Greenville, Durham, Orlando, Valentine.

He found Argentina, Seattle, Arizona. I didn't know we could reach this many people. He knew, and then looked at me and said, Pastor, you can do this two ways. If you try to follow God and get ahead of him, he'll shut the door. If God says follow me and you won't, he'll pick somebody else. Do you want to do it? Do you want to break the curse in

your family line? Do you want to be in a position five years from now where you can help somebody else through the same dang thing that's been torment in you. Let's do it. Then, let's do it every week. God gives me strength. I'll be up here helping you drag your tired button here and slippers if you have to,

and I'll preach to you log on when you're not here. Father, in the name of Jesus, I release the potential of your children in Jesus' name to become everything they were called to be, until we grow up, until we grow out of our guilt, till we grow out of our grief, till we grow past it and become vessels of honor fit for the Master's use. I thank you that addictions will be broken under the path of your word this year. I thank you that poverty will be eliminated from the

cycle of families this year by your word. I think you've had lost children who aren't living for Jesus are coming home quote in scripture this Christmas in Jesus' name, I thank you no when no way will be possible to unstabilize and destabilize your children. I think you are churches growing into new communities, your kingdom expanding recession. You can do what you gotta do but to all the Shiah is looking over his children. We trusted in God,

We trust in the Almighty. He is able to do im miserably more that we ask, or think or imagine. Get God. Twenty three seconds of great pray. Come on, that's not good enough, that's not good enough, lived up, a shout of He's right. Let's sign up right, let's sign up right. Well. If you enjoyed today's podcast, there are a couple of things I'd love for you to do.

Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. You can also help us reach others by investing today at Elevationchurch dot org, slash give and thanks again for joining us on the Elevation Podcast