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.
God is not against me, but He's in it with me, working through me, and fighting for me. And it would seem like I would know that at my core and never doubt it. But I was driving to the church to preach. It has been several months ago. It might have been, you know, it might have been a particular Sunday where I felt my message was confusing and I didn't know if I was going to be able to communicate it.
Maybe I didn't sleep good that night.
I don't remember. I just remember pulling in thinking of all the ways it could go wrong. You know you do that sometimes, like you're driving up to something. You're like, I'm probably gonna blow it. These pants feel tight, look at this, my hair is doing this thing. It could be any little dumb thing, and you just start imagining all the ways it could go wrong. Well, I was
doing that about my sermon. And as I pulled into the church, I thought, wait a minute, I'm showing up today to help people, to give them God's word, to share with them what the Lord says the best I know how. And it won't be perfect, and I'll miss some things, and I'll mispronounce some things, and I'll probably make a mess of some of it. But do I not believe that God is for what I'm doing today, that he wants to help these people more than I do. That he wants to lift these people out of the
pit that they're in more than I do. That he wants to give them their next step to fulfill his purpose for their life more than I do. And it hit me, Stephen, You're showing up like God is opposing you, like he wants to trip you, leg sweep you. Why do you believe that? And I just said right there in my car, God is not against me.
Now I've said that sung that thought about that.
It's a core teaching in the scripture that if God is for us, who can be against us? But it kind of hit that time, and then I thought about the consequences. Well, if he's not against me, what is he He's in it with me? Yea, working through me and fighting for me, and from there I show up knowing He's got my back.
Let's do this now.
I think for a lot of people that almost sounds like I have an imaginary friend. My imaginary dad can beat up your imaginary dad.
I don't see it that way.
I really have come to tap into that belief and the times that I do operate in confidence the times that I don't operate in insecurity and inferiority.
So let's talk about that a little bit practically.
Let's get it out of the cartoonish realm where we sometimes put it, and let's put it in the realm of that everyday confidence, walking in the confidence that God is not against me, but he's in it with me, working through me and fighting for me. Hit me with your best stuff on confidence, because you teach this like nobody I've ever heard.
Well, I don't think it's cartoony at all. I think it's a powerful metaphor because I like to tell people loneliness only got you this far.
When you feel alone.
In life, how do you act when you feel like nobody's got your back? How do you act when you feel like no one understands you? How do you act those thought patterns of I'm alone, everybody's against me, no one's for me. That doesn't inspire your courage. But I work with a lot of elite people in the military, and they have that phrase of all is one, right, that moment where if you're on the battlefield and you're by yourself as a lonely warrior, it's terrifying and you
hunker down, you don't charge. But when you're at the line with all the guys, all is one. Yeah, there's a four moment. There's assertiveness to it. It's like we got this, and you got to at some point go we got this.
Yeah.
Because if you're disassociated from your faith, if you're disassociated from God, I just believe you're disempowered. And so there's got to be that element in your life. You know what, loneliness only took me this far. If I don't believe he's here, if I don't believe that someone is fighting with me, I will continue to procrastinate and to blame and be frustrated.
So the metaphor is really powerful. It's not cartoonish.
And when you approach the day of that day.
You swarm the day you don't like hide on the couch, and so I don't think people realize the incredible power of there is strength with you, and there is strength in you.
And there's stuff like swarm the day. Yeah, I'm like put that on it hood. That's a great phrase. Yeah, I mean swarm the day.
It's true, you're either caged in your day or you're charging the day.
And we often talk aged or charging. Yeah, you're you're in the caged life.
Yeah, And the cage life is where you just continually your thoughts continually trap you where you're at, or you're more open and you're more generative and you have higher agency, which means you're charging the day. It doesn't mean you you crush every day and every day is perfect. It means you're moving forward even if you're a hot mess.
You're moving forward to even in doubt. You're moving forward in strength, even though you know you have weaknesses because you're empowered by something higher.
I'm glad you said the part about sometimes you move forward messy because that feeling that God is not against me. It doesn't really mean the most to me when I feel like I'm doing good because I feel Him with me. Yeah, I need this mindset. When I don't feel Him with me, that's the moment where I believe I don't have to feel it for it to be true.
That's where my faith kicks in.
And I think a lot of times when we're having a real proud moment and we feel like, look at me, man, I actually like, actually showed up for that I did. That God is not against me. So I'm like, of course he's not. Who wouldn't want to be on my team? Like, hey, God, come work with me. I'm like a first round draft pick. And then you hit those moments where you go, if I were God, I wouldn't want to be on my team,
I wouldn't want to use me. And not only do all the Bible heroes have this, but there's one in specific that we both love and I use this for probably the central character for this mindset in the book, and it's Gideon. Yes, and the reason I chose Gideon. I'm telling you, Brendan, I had a moment writing these chapters about Gideon that I will never be able to share with anyone because it was so powerful from God
to me. And I've read the story of Gideon, preached the story of Gideon all the way from the Lavigne Senior Center, when we had eighty people in the room. I'm up there talking about Gideon and his army of three hundred and we don't have what we think we need, but if we have God, we're a majority.
Right.
And yet the personal message of it was when I saw Gideon in a wine press threshing wheat, which represents us kind of in.
Hiding in the caged life.
And so he's caged in this oppression of the Midianites, and how they've spent all of these years being subdued by these people, and he's come to believe these things about himself. I'm the littlest, I'm the least, my tribe is the smallest. All of these things that he begins to believe. Right, the Angel of the Lord comes and says, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.
And he says, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?
And I won't repreach the whole story, but what the Lord said to Gideon that was so powerful to me was go in the strength you have love that, because it hit me in that moment that the strength Gideon had was God and he's so focused on I'm the littlest, I'm the least, and you may be too.
I do it all the time, the best singer.
I'm not the smartest person to take a Bible text apart. I'm not really even good with geography, and here I am trying to talk about Midian and Gideon and Israel, and I can barely find where I live on a map. Sometimes, if I stay stuck in that and don't get into the mindset God is in it with me, working through me, fighting for me, then my strength is always limited to my situation. My strength is always limited to my skill set.
The moment that I realize go in the strength you have is a command to tap into God himself, then it becomes unlimited what God can do through me. Why I put three different things behind God is not against me? Is it isn't just God is not against me so I can buy a Lamborghini. Now. He wants to work through me for others, for something bigger than me. He's fighting for me, not just fighting against the people I don't like because I don't like them. He's fighting for
his purposes. He's fighting the make sure that I can do everything I need to do, and he's in it with me.
Even before I change.
He calls me strong and courageous when I don't feel like I am. Yes, So let's talk about separating your confidence from your feelings, because that can be so dangerous.
Yeah, I imagine when you think about Gideon, you imagine him in this wine press, and I'll give you this framework for what's going on in his head.
Maybe because we trap ourselves a lot.
And I always use this metaphor, we zap our success, which means it's just an acronym, zap we zap our success.
And you'll notice your thoughts to do this.
You have momentum, you feel good, and then zap it disappears because you're like, what happened to my confidence?
What's wrong with me?
What happens with zap is zap z sent for zoom. We zoom in to a problem, and we catastrophize. We zoom in and we worry if I take action, I'll be ruined, I'll be rejected, i won't be able to hand the responsibility, or I'll regret it. So I'm just gonna stay right here in this winepress, because if I go out there, I'm gonna get killed.
I'm gonna slow you down and give us the four rs again because I think those are very big.
Will you do them again? Yeah?
Are four primary big fears that prevent action. The first one is ruin, which we just believe if I do something that's going to ruin my reputation, that's going to ruin my opportunities, that's going to ruin my ability to get ahead. Then we go, oh, well, I'm worried if I take action, people will reject me. I'll be ostracized, I'll be abandoned. They won't understand. Then we fear responsibility, which is the one most people forget. It's like we're
scared of more responsibility. If you get that responsibility, I'm not to be able to handle it. I don't know if myself. I mean, I'll burn out, I'll freak out. I'll have too much anxiety and stress. I don't want the responsibilities. It's too much to bear. And then we fear a regret. Well, if I do take action and it doesn't go well, I'll always regret I made that decision to trust her. I'll always regret I made that
decision to try that thing. I'll always regret and that's the form of catastrophizing that we have in a problem. We just zoom in. Oh my gosh, there's gonna be ruined, there's gonna be rejection. I can't handle it, and I'll regret it forever. Why would you take action after that? And then a is we attach ourself to it. This problem is me. This circumstance that I don't like is me.
I'm the problem. I'm the same. We make our psychology the same as the problem, and we forget that our personhood is bigger than the problem, and that the problem is not permanent. The problem is placed there to challenge us to rise above it. And then the p what we do is so we've zoomed in and catastrophized. We've attached ourselves to it, so we feel insecure, and now we procrastinate or we pause or we punish.
What that means is we say, oh, well, I just.
Want to do it, because you know, we start telling ourselves all these stories about why we're procrastinating, Well, I don't have enough resources, or this is going on or that's going on.
Then we punish ourselves.
It's weird, like we're scared because we've catastrophised and we don't feel enough. So now we do all these weird things to punish ourselves. We overeat, we get addicted, We turn to video games all day long.
Nothing against video against but all day long, you know.
We go into social media and we scroll because we're uncomfortable and we're doing these behaviors that are not moving anything forward. And like we talked about previous sessions, you have to learn to flip that thing. Instead of zooming in and catastrophizing, we zoom in.
We ask what if?
What if God actually has my back here and I am being challenged to grow into more of his glory. What if instead of you know, attaching myself to it, I attach spirit to it. Instead of taking it personally, what if I recognize it's part of the world and it's part of a plan that I don't understand, And instead of pausing, then I kind of power up in his faith and I power up and I go, Okay, I know that I have been given these tools. I've been given his faith, his words, And he said, did
I not command you? And so he's saying, did I not command you? This is in front of your life. You didn't want it there, but I put it there, yeah, and then you have to go, oh, and it gives you a different edge. And this is what you always have to realize when you're facing a problem in life, and when you're thinking about this, you know, is God fighting for me or not? If you believe God is fighting for you, have an edge, just like when you were sitting in the car wondering are my pants too tight?
Am I going to do a good job in the sermon today? What's happening there is You're going to insecurity?
Yeah?
And I always want you to hear it's like, am I feeling insecure about something? Or do I feel the edge? The edge is like a forward lean. It's a confidence. And the funny thing, it's the same it's the same acronym.
It's still ZAP.
But now I'm I'm zooming into the opportunity.
Okay, all right, this is what I wanted you to get.
This level of We're talking about ancient warrior in a wine press. It takes some jars and read Judge A six and he goes and defeats Midianites. I'm really really just trying to pay this rent, bro, Like I'm really really just trying to get my kid back off drugs and doing good in school. Like I'm really just trying to recover from this miscarriage.
I don't I like the story. I believe that, Yeah, I believe it.
But how we always used to say Holly's thing was hallelujah? Now, how like praise the Lord He's with me? Now?
How do I have him with me?
Because I can't see him, I can't always feel him.
This is a tool, Zach.
It's a tool for me to know what's happening when I'm shrinking myself, because I used to think that when I shrink myself that magnifies God. You know, I grew up in a great little Methodist church, and I went to a Baptist church to learn how to do ministry, and then I went to seminary, and none of.
My professors taught me this.
They all taught me well, I'm sure that the things they said were good. But somehow I got the message that in order for God to be great, I almost had to make myself little and less. And my feeling about that has changed over the years. And I'll tell you what it is. It's not that, oh I think I can do it without God. Because I know now more than ever, if he doesn't show up, I'm done.
Is that I realized that the children that God has given me to raise, Elijah, Graham and Abbey, the woman that God has given me to love Holly, the.
Church that God has pastor.
They don't need me in the wine press of all my reasons why I'm not good enough.
And the same is true.
Of the people in your life when you think, oh, beating up on myself is kind of like giving God glory because I know that He's holy and I'm not holy.
But didn't he make you holy? Isn't that why Jesus died? If you want to zoom zoom into the.
Cross and see how he paid the price for you, Now zoom back out from that.
Who would he die for? That he would not fight for?
So now I know that any situation I find myself in, I already have evidence. I don't need another evidence. I already have evidence because I believe God sent his son to die for me. And that may not be your belief. Right now, I'm just telling you where my confidence is. It's in the Cross. It's in the fact that after he died he rose again. So now if he went down into the grave for me. What situation will he not get in with me?
Right now?
You're telling me God won't be with me through a divorce when he went to the grave. You're telling me God won't be with me through a bankruptcy when he went to the grave. You're telling me God won't get in the middle of my insecurity and the trauma that I went through and helped me heal through that and then turn around and work through me so I can be a healer of others, so we can give glory to God together. That's what he's all about. That's what I mean. He's in it with me. That's what I mean.
He's working through me. That's what I mean. He's fighting for me. But you don't see any of that if you're zap. I listen to acronyms like most people eat candy.
I'm like hogging into the acronym and we just.
Did so much and it's all going to be right here for you to go back and revisit and go what was that? Or again, what am I doing right now? Which one am I at right now? Or when I'm attaching, I'm attaching what if you'll go through it slowly, and I want to encourage you go back through this masterclass, go back through the ones that you haven't watched yet, get into this truth, and get this truth into you because it gives you a way to tap into the
strength that you have. You have no idea what resource is available to you through your relationship with God when you are accomplishing His purpose. Now, I want to bring up another thing that might be a little difficult to talk about. Maybe if I feel like God is against me, it's because I'm going in the wrong direction. There will be times in my life where I'll feel like, man, God is against me, and it may just be He's closing a door to something because it's what I want,
not what he wants. And we have to be so careful in those moments not to mistake the circumstances that are not favorable for the absence of God. I've always liked to say that the presence of problems doesn't prove the absence of God, right, And so now we want to get into what I call non circumstantial confidence, where we can just know that this is always true, God is in it with me.
What's it fill in the boything?
Yeah, yeah, I think it's so important because you mentioned earlier about how some people you know, minimize themselves or shrink themselves. And you know, a lot of my audience have never heard me speak a whole lot about my faith. Have been telling my car accident story where I found my connection with God. But I often have to tell my friends of faith there's a difference between being receptive of his word and the idea that he might be
powerful and responsibility. You can be recept you can be receptive, or it can be responsible. And I think you have to know there's a spectrum there right. Some people are very receptive, but they're very passive, and some other people are receptive, but their response and what I always got from Gideon, and this was a turning point, I think in our friendship, at least for me, when you told
me the story of Gideon. The way you explained it to me was that you know, no matter what's going on around you, it still do not be afraid, be bold and courageous, yeah, and go in. The strength that you have was so huge to me that I started shouting to my audiences last year, I'm all put their hands.
Up, I'm here, I'm ready, I go in strength. I love that.
And this is after we've acknowledged all the suffering and all the challenges and all the difficulties we have, we can still say I'm here, I'm ready, I go in strength. And I really believe that the huge shift is when we say I'll go and strength forward.
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