Embracing Limitation

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. This week, I have one more installment on Gates of Change and.

It's in Second King seven.

And I think this story for most of you will be unfamiliar, which is good. It's good because I'm praying that God will use it to speak to you in a personal way and kind of catch you off guard today and create change in your life. Here's what the Bible says, Second King, chapter seven, Verse wan Elisha said, here the word of the Lord. You've been listening to your doubts so long. You've been listening to your dysfunctions so long. You've been listening to your disappointments so long.

But here the word of the Lord.

This is what the Lord says about this time tomorrow a sea of a flower will sell for a shekel, and to see us a barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. And the officer on whose arm the king was leaning, said to the man of God, looks even this joker, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of heaven, could this happen?

You know how certain.

People always want to put limits on what God can do Taylor's secret. I actually love limitations. I know that usually in church they say, you know, take the limits off. I personally love limits. In fact, I'm calling this final bonus message in the Gates of Change series, Embracing limitation.

Embracing limitation.

I think limitation can be a good thing. I think it's a good thing that sometimes we limit our consumption on certain foods.

Say amen, I'm a.

Real strict person on my eating because I'm too wild.

I'm too wild.

I need the I need the uh, I need the what do they call it? The gutters on the I will I will bowl into the gutter every time if I don't have.

Those little guards.

So I actually do it where I'm not allowed to eat past a certain time or before a certain time, but during that certain time I can.

I can do it. But I need limits. I need limits. Are you like me?

Maybe I have no self control? I need limits. I don't even like restaurants with big Menus Cheesecake factory gives me heart palpitations. The menu looks like Encyclopedia Britannica.

I can't do it. I need prozac to.

Make it through my my my order and usually I'll get Holly to narrow it for me. I'll be like, can you tell me just three things that I might like? And can you just narrow the options for me? Because I can't do it. I like limitations. I like to know, even in preaching, when I go somewhere to preach, they'll say, take as long as you want, And I'll say, well, how long are the people expecting me to preach? Because I want to know how long I have to work

Want to preach.

Why y'all clapping about that? That was a little awkward while I'm saying that, Because limitation can be a good thing. It really can. It can be a good thing. And especially one thing that I love is when somebody tries to put a limit on me that contradicts what I believe God has called me to do.

Maybe it's my ego.

Maybe I have wounds from my childhood failed wrestling career that I'm still compensating for. But I like somebody to tell me that I can't do.

Something I do. It fuels my faith.

And when we were getting ready to start the church, one time I sat down with a guy and I was sharing my vision with him, and I was telling him that we were going to start a church. And I didn't have any better sense than to tell this guy my dreams. He was a little older and jaded because he had been disappointed in his life. And it's a dangerous thing you ready to write something down. It is a dangerous thing to entrust your dream to someone

I put that in for Holly.

Holly dared me to put that in my sermon today, and I didn't get it at nine thirty.

So there it is. Maybe you owe me some.

Uh, but it's a it's a dangerous thing to speak.

Something So here's here's what happened.

We're sitting down having lunch, and I'm like, I'm.

Gonna start at church. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be great. We're gonna we're gonna reach the city. We're gonna go to Charlotte. We're gonna we're gonna have church. We're gonna reach people. We'll break the rules. It's not gonna be all this tradition and religion. We're gonna do it. It's gonna be edgy, it's gonna be for church people. We're gonna reach people far from God. We're gonna beima.

And the more I was talking, the more he stuffed his mouth and just smirked at me.

Now scowled at me.

He didn't look mad, he just looked amused. He was just smirking at me. And he's stuffing his face with French fries. You know, Oh, overweight pastor just deepness.

I'm just trying to color the story a little bit. I don't even remember if he was overweight.

But what I remember is I went on and on telling him it's gonna.

Be We're gonna write worship songs and.

We're gonna do worship songs gonna touch the world, and we're gonna write songs that are gonna go around in the world.

Oh and it's not just gonna be a white church. It's gonna be a lot of different kinds of people. It's gonna be white people and black people, and old people and young people and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and atheists and agnostics and just all kind of people and single people and marry people and divorced people. I'm going on and on, and he's just eating looking at me, mm hmm.

To be fair, look down your role real quick and check your role.

And I dare you to shout at the top of your little sanctified Sunday morning voice, somebody shouts happen. And as a matter of fact, I kind of hope that he watches this sermon on television, y'all excuse me for a minute, so he can see.

Black people and white.

People and Hispanic people and Latina people come on and loud people acquire people and big people and little people and young people, and old people and broken people.

And all people altogether. Somebody's shad is happening.

Is something because the limitations you embrace will regulate the blessing you experience. And when you allow beliefs to limit your God, because you're mind set is too small to accommodate the magnitude of His glory, you miss out on the very miracles that have your name on them.

Please follow me for a moment. When the officer said.

To the prophet, look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen? What he did is he closed the gate on the gift that God was giving him. So it was a desperate situation in the nation because the famine had been going on so long that within the gates of the city walls, the people had resorted to cannibalism.

And I debated whether to.

Tell you this, but it's right in chapter six, should you choose to read it, They had started eating their own babies. It sounds extreme, However, I think we can all see ways that at times we compromise the next generation when our value systems get shifted, and so as the value system has shifted within the nation. The favor of God has not been so much withheld as it has been held up.

And here's the difference.

When you read about famine in the Bible, you probably associate famine with drought.

And usually when you see.

A famine in the Bible, it is connected to a pronouncement by a prophet, like when Elijah said, there will be no rain or do in the land in the next few years except at my word to King Aha. And God withheld the rain from the heavens, and God cut off the source of supply so that the people's hearts would turn back to him. Now, in antiquity, people did not regard famine and drought only with agriculture or

This famine started with a siege.

Ben Adad was an excellent military strategist, and so when he surrounded the northern Kingdom of Israel, which was known as Samaria, what he did of common military tactic was that he cut them off from their supply. And when he cut their line to their food supply, it wasn't that he eliminated the food. It was that he prevented

Blocks you from your own blessing.

And King Jehoram had the wrong people around him at this time. We saw it in the text the Officer verse two, on whose arm the king was leaning A side note for all the students, be careful who you lean on. He was leaning on man who would not believe, who would not connect to the prophecy by faith, and when you lean on people who insist on dragging you

This is the word of the Lord.

I'm not saying be mean to people, just don't lean on them. Lean on the everlasting arms, lean on the promises of God.

Build your house.

On a solid foundation, not the shifting sands of people's opinions. And the man on whose arm the king lean said, could this happen? Responded he said, you will see it with your own eyes, but you ain't getting none of it.

That's the new new international version, new.

New I was just thinking how sad that was that it was a day of deliverance and the top advisor to the king starved to death.

As a matter of fact, he didn't.

Even get the chance to start, because look when the people went into the enemy's camp and plundered the enemy's camp in accordance with the word of the Lord. Verse seventeen says, now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned, in charge of the gate. Question, who have you put in charge of your gates?

What regulates your thoughts?

What regulates your belief, what regulates your self image. Look, he put the man in charge of the gate. There's a lot of revelation in this message. I'm gonna give you all of it I can, but you will need to lean into this message because sometimes you have put

Not gonna happen.

But what if I had listened to him, we wouldn't get to hang out today. What if I had listened to him, I would have built me a little white church with some little white people, and it'd be about fifty of us, and we would just preach to the choir, and we wouldn't change anything, and we wouldn't touch anything, and we wouldn't have Epham watching all over the world. The devil is a liar is happening, and it's gonna happen.

Within or without you. You might as well get in on it, because it's here preaching. My watch off my wrists.

So if somebody says, happening and what a horrible thing for it to be happening right in front of you, but you don't experience it. The man on whose arm the king leaned stood in the gate, and while the people were running to the victory, the Bible says, they trampled him in the gateway.

He died in the gate of what was possible. Y'all give me a minute. I don't really know what to do. It's a little too minute. Touch somebody say, get out of the gate till twelve people sucking he it.

My love, Tom, come on, twelve people, get out of the gate.

Oh, nobody coming to help me either. Buck, I don't need you. I don't need you. Buck, and do this myself. I started with week one.

I was saying, get back in the gate, but I heard the Lord saying, this time, get out.

Of the gate. I said, what is it? He said, make a move.

You hear all this teaching, you, hear all this excitement. Ah, that's good, but you got to get started. And he died in the gateway. He blocked his own breakthrough. He saw it, but he did not experience it because he would.

Not believe it.

It is our unbelief that blocks our blessing, not others. Some of us we block ourselves by blaming others, and so we stay locked in prisons of offence and we miss blessings because we would rather blame somebody else than believe God.

See, let me preach this.

You cannot believe God and blame them. At the same time, you can't believe God and blame others.

Either you believe.

That what people meant for evil God means for good, or you don't. If you believe God, it means there's nothing life can do to you. There's nothing people can throw at you. There's nothing they can say about you, think about you, or lock you out of that will keep you from receiving what God is a signed to your life. So here's the announcement, Elisha. You can have your breakthrough or you can have your blame, but you

It wasn't the lord's fault. It was the fault of the leader.

And sometimes we will not lead our own lives and take initiative for our own repentance, so we block our blessings. Boys, do you hear me. We block our own blessings, not the devil, our disbelief. God's going to do it. The other day, a great man of God was encouraging me. Great man of God. If you made a list of the top five people in the world, he would be, in my opinion, somewhere in the top ten. But I respect him so much. Now why I respect him? He

Was talking about someone else.

It was a kind of introduction where he wasn't just speaking like he wrote a book or he pastor to church. He was saying things that he saw in me and how God had called me and our ministry and a voice to the generation, a bridge to reconciliation, just things that while he was saying them, at the same time that he was affirming me, watch this, there was another There was another voice, not on the stage, but inside

See yourself as a grasshopper. It's hard for.

You to come out of a famine when you are living in the depths of your own frustration.

And even when I preach.

Sometimes some of you play me off and hold me off and cross your arms and close your heart and you lean back, and it is your way of shutting the gates.

But you are missing the miracle.

Because you feel unworthy. But God never predicated his blessing on your worthiness.

Perfection is not the price of admission to.

The Kingdom of God, nor to the great works and mighty things that He has called you to do in the earth.

I feel annoyed to tell.

You today, imperfection has never stopped God from blessing anybody. The only thing that blocks your blessing is unbelieved. But I dare you to shout right now, loud enough where that devil can hear you.

I believe I am the righteousness of God. I need you all this shout. My voice is tired. Shout. I believe.

Elijah said you'll see it, but you won't experience it. He doesn't say how he ever, knows how. God doesn't give you a lot of the details. Sometimes I wish he did it be super nice, but he doesn't. All he says is this time tomorrow the famine is going to be over.

How's he gonna do it? What are we gonna get some manna from heaven. A little flashback Friday famine flashback, because remember we're there in willerness the job.

Drop down a man out of heaven and say, a man out of having what's it gonna look like?

How's he gonna do it? This time?

You might be surprised how God bless us and delivers the nation. Because the Bible says, oh, I love this part right here? Can you tell that I love what I do to preach to you? Because I really feel like I've been cooking this all week and we're about to eat something right now.

I mean I smell it. Who smells good? Verse three. Now there were four men.

Everybody say four four four number of creation in the north, south, the east, and the west. You know, winter, spring, summer, fall, four represents creation. So there's a creative miracle on the horiz And now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. Now contrast emerges. I got somebody in the gate who doesn't believe, and then we've got a group of men.

They are outside the gate.

Not because they're coming back from whole foods. This is a gated community in the sense that these men. When the white, flaky spots started showing up on their skin, they had to go to the priest. Leprosy was used to refer to a wide variety of skin diseases in this day, from the most moderate being a change in coloration to bloody sores. And since leprosy is a progressive disease, eventually maybe your fingers start falling off.

But it's also a contagious disease.

So when you start to see the sun and you are pronounced ceremonially unclean, they move you and quarantine you and position you outside the gate. And now your only hope of survival is to beg because you can't even carry on a normal conversation. If you approach somebody, you have to announce your condition before you engage, And so to even get into the gate, you would have to start hollering within about ten or twenty feet.

Unclean, unclean.

Can you imagine if you had to announce your condition to people out loud before you.

Met them, you would have no friends. I'm serious.

If you had to externalize things that people don't know what's wrong with you, some of y'all would have to announce, you know, I don't know, Amazon addict, Huh what if you had to announce everything that was wrong with you you had done a loss perversion?

What would that be like? What would it be like? I talk bad about you the other day, but Hi, how you doing? I can't stand you announce their condition?

And they're outside the gate and they're isolated, and they're desperate, and they're not welcome, and they're starving, and the doggie bags have stopped coming because the people inside the gate are going to take care of themselves first and foremost. And they're outside the gate and there's four of them, like those four men. You remember the New Testament, don't you, because Jesus was preaching. Maybe we'll preach about it in

Church and it's full.

They ripped the roof off of the house and lowered I promise security will wrap you up.

But this was Bible Times. They ripped the roof. I'm sitting an overflow, Yes you are.

They ripped the roof lowered the man down, and the man got healed because of the faith of four crazy men. Now watch the crazy faith so much, say crazy faith.

I'm just gonna say this right now.

I don't mean to offend you, but some of you have way too many limits on what you will and won't do to obey God. You have too many limits, You have too many conditions. You don't want to look weird, you don't want to be different, you don't want to stand out, you don't want people to talk about you.

And so you're starving inside.

But these men, they didn't have the option to stay inside, and they couldn't stay.

Where they were.

The Bible says that they eventually, after many days of this, said to each other, why stay.

Here until we die? What a question?

In other words, it is complacency that kills us. It is our willingness to stay in places where we are starving because we fear the repercussions of our obedience, and so we don't join an E group because we're scared of being seen, so we stay in isolation.

I'm gonna push these E.

Groups today, and we die outside because we won't let anybody in. But they didn't have that option anymore. They did not have the luxury to sit back and wait and see what God would do. They no longer had the luxury of patience. So they said to one another, we can't stay here, and if we say verse four.

We'll go into the city.

The famine is there, so we can't go there, and we can't stay here. So we only have one thing left to do.

Let's go.

Somebody shout, let's go. You didn't shout at shout, let's go. So let's go over to the enemy's camp.

And surrender. If they spare us, we live. If they kill us, at least we die quick. Because I'm hungry. Let's go. Let's go, let's go. We can't stay here.

And we can't go there because we're outside the gate. Here's what I love. If you've ever felt like an outsider, raise your hand right now. If you've ever felt, yeah, like an outsider, that surprises you, right, because where are the insiders? If we all feel like outsiders? That was kind of weird. How more of us feel like outsiders? Here's good news for the outsiders. These men were on the outside of the city gate because of their condition.

And their condition here's what I love. I love a preaching to you. I'm appreciate this whole point just to you.

Their condition position them to be God's secret weapon to save the whole nation. I am trying to say that sometimes the thing that.

You hate is the thing that God will use.

Sometimes the thing that makes people not like you and reject you is the very thing I'm about to fall off the stage that will cause God to select you and choose you and use you for a breakthrough.

Does anybody believe.

Then? To show the pillers rejectives? Way, y'all leave and I'm preaching good. Somebody shouted, you know, God's.

Use an unlikely people.

If they had been inside the camp, they would have died. It was the fact that they were not allowed in the camp that led to them.

Look what they did. This is so stupid what they did. It makes no sense. It makes no sense.

Sometimes, in order to see what God has spoken come to pass, you can't be so focused on making sense. Your senses are killing you. Living by what you see is killing you. Living by what you feel is killing you. Living by what you hear is killing you, and they had no choice. These are not the people who come to church to check it off a list because it's a nice thing to do, and their grandma would be proud if she was still alive today.

These are the people who.

Come to church because I need God to survive. These are not people who come to church so they can get a good parking space, perhaps on Tuesday morning. These are the people that come to church because I.

Can't make it.

I live and I breathe, and I move, and I have my being in Him. And that dusk, before the light came, they got up and went to the camp of the Aramias. And when they reached the edge of the camp, watch this nobody was there. God had already displaced their enemies.

All they had to do was show up.

See, they went to surrender to the enemy, but the enemy had already surrendered to them. When will we realize that when we run from the devil, we are running from a defeated f Oh. See, the Bible says that he is already under my feet. So all I have to do to have the victory in my life is to take another step. Now, I want to apologize to John Gray because he preached so good last week. But he said something that I want to take a step further. He said, these gates are voice activated.

I'm not correcting him.

I'm simply adding in addendum they are not only voice activated, they are motion activated. See God moves when you move, the title runs. When you take your stand, when you put on your sealed of faith, the fiery darts of the wicked one will be quinched. So when when they got to the edge, care somebody say.

I'm moving, I'm moving. I'm moving.

I'm not dying here. I'm not dying like this. I'm not living in this mess. I'm not passing this on to my kids.

I'm not going out like this.

I'm not startling with my God owns the cattle on a thousand, who's not like this? For the Lord had caused the Aramians to hear the sound of chariots and horses. God casts the enemy to hear an army that wasn't even there.

When he lies to release the word of God.

When you make a declaration of faith, it goes before you into your future.

Matter of fact, why not shall right now?

Because when we praise God, the devil gets a.

Panic attash and he has to turn loose. I saw it. I feel like the price.

I'm real sorry if you don't like it loud like this, but somebody is starving in this church today. And it wouldn't be so bad if you were starving and there was no food. But when Christ died to give you life, and the thief came to us, kill, steal, and destroy. I'm sorry, but I can't stand by silent while the devil white silad generation.

I can't stand by silent.

While teen suicide is in an all time I I.

Can't stay silent. The gates of hell won't.

I believe.

If we stay silent, we die. If we hide our leprosy, it kills us.

God nuse somebody who wasn't even allowed in the city to save it. God's gonna use all of you who feel unworthy, and all of you who feel not good enough, and all of you who have been ostracized, and all of you who feel limited.

That's how God works. It's through your limitation.

These men were so diseased that no one was allowed to even touch them.

Come here. He couldn't even touch them. And that's who God chose. So they went in the camp. Let me show this.

They went in the camp, and they saw that the enemy was already gone, because a lot of times what you're scared from got what you're running scared from, God has already dealt with.

But the enemy has you under siege, and.

He puts a spirit of fear on you, because if the spirit of fear ever lives, you will find out who you really are in Christ. But when they got they saw that it was theirs for the taking.

So now the first thing they did wasn't to pray and give God their glory. First thing they did was eat, and they went in. They went in this tent.

And when they reached the edge of the camp, they entered one of the tents and they ate and drank.

No no, no, no, no, no no no, no no no.

And then they started carrying away the spoils, the silver, gold, clothes, vibranium.

This is good, this is good, this is good. But then they went off and hit.

Them, went off and hit them, because that's what you do when you're a leper.

You high.

That's that's what you do when you're ashamed, you high. That's when you do when you feel like an outsider. Remember the man in the parable that said, I was afraid, so I took what you gave me, and I hid it.

The enemy wants to keep.

You in hiding, and if he can, he give you a condition that will cause you to hide your gift.

You hear this word I'm trying to preach to you.

I wish I could sit down one on one with everybody in the church and say, what are you hiding? Because here they are. God has given them the victory and they're hiding it. And sometimes we hide because we are convinced that we are not worthy. And sometimes we hide because we are afraid of what might happen if we let our lights shine. But they had a revelation in verse ten. I believe it is nose first nine, and they said to each you know.

This is not right. Here we are. We don't deserve to be here.

This is a day of good news, and we're keeping it to ourselves.

Now.

If we wait till daylight, if we hold this in, if we keep this to ourselves, punishment will overtake us. What you hold inside. When you don't show your issues, you die. When you don't share your gift, you die. You are dying because of what you are hiding. If we wait, if we sit on this, we die. If we expose our sin, we can be healed. If we hide it, we will die. And here's the thing.

A lot of us are dying on the inside because our issues are.

Beneath our skin. So we stay outside the camp, don't tell anybody. Fine, I'm good, good, good.

We post and we pretend to our thing. But they had a revelation.

God is blessing us now and we have to share what the Lord has done, even though we're lepers, even though I'm imperfect. You know how preposterous it is for me to preach to you when I struggle, Like I struggle, I stand on this stage before you each week by faith.

See what the thing about it is?

What if the reason God chose the lepers to discover the treasure was because they knew how to make an announcement. See, once they found the goodness of God, they said, let's go at once and report this in the royal palace and then look at verse ten. So they went and called out because that's what leopards do. Only this time they were not shouting unclean, unclean.

This time they were shouting let's go, let's go. The only one.

Who can really shout the victory is the one that God has raised from the.

Ashes up defee.

So I want to give you an opportunity. If he healed, if he saved you, if he raised.

You, if he's been good to you, if you have a testimony.

If you are not a say I'm a gospel of Jesus Christ.

All the grateful people south right, thank you for joining us.

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