Make Room For The New

I was icing my heel between the nine thirty and the eleven thirty. I stomped him too hard and he bit me or something. My heel is bruised all week. Somebody said, welcome to your forties. You're gonna start getting all kinds of stupid injuries. What a way to get injured, huh, stomping the devil's head for the glory of God. Come on, I've got hurt a lot stupider ways than that. It's hilarious. It's hilarious to me. It was funny to me. I used to get hurt punching walls and stuff out of anger.

I'd rather get hurt annoyed anyway. The Bible said that he will bruise your heel, but you will crush his head. That's a scripture verse. Y'all aren't ready for this. I want to tell you something that happened to me last summer. I have a friend who lives in another country, kin Costa. He's originally from South Africa. He resides now in London, England. He travels the world. He comes to see me once a year. Just turned seventy. It's a good man. He

has a book out called Joseph of Arimathea. Free Plug for my friend, because he gave me the scripture that I want to use to frame our message. Not necessarily to preach the scripture, but to frame the message. And I figured I owed him a book plug, So check it out on Amazon, Kin Costa, Joseph of Arimathea. Now that that's out the way, when he comes to see me, he will usually bring three or four scriptures and we'll

read the scriptures together. He jot them down. This is the paper that he brought me in July when he came to see me after my break family break this summer, and he brought me these scriptures. We sat on the porch and we looked at the scriptures and the first one was Exitus fourteen fourteen, and we read it together and he said, that's the wrong one, and so we moved on. He gave me Joshua three four, Isaiah forty

two sixteen, and then Leviticus twenty six ten. I probably should admit this, but I normally skip Leviticus on the Bible reading plans. It's not my go to book to fight discouragement. But we looked at it and we read it together. Put that one on the screen. Leviticus twenty The Lord says you will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. And we read that together and I said, well, what does it mean? He said,

I don't know. I put it in my Bible, and a few weeks ago it fell out of my Bible. On a Friday night, I started looking at it again and I texted it over to Bishop td Jakes. I said, what does it mean? He said, oh, that's a good one, and he preached about it and that was good. Well, the phrase that I want to use and put it up there again is where it says, make room for the new. And the Lord told me to tell you today,

make room for the new. This is a word from the Lord for somebody who is in this room or at one of our campuses. Come on, let's thank God for all of our locations. From Lake Norman all the all the way to Matthews. We are spanning South Charlotte with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and beyond Melbourne, Florida University City. You wouldn't believe it. Raleigh, North Carolina is even joining us. I gotta admit I didn't see that coming. So y'all drove in for make room for the new.

This is a word for you, make room for the new. You know I'm getting into old stuff now. I've got about eighty records upstairs in my office at my house in a turntable vinyl. Something about getting up and having to only listen to three songs at a time is preferable to having ever song in the history of the universe on my phone at my fingertips. For some reason, I would rather listen through a scratchy analog representation of the music than a digital recreation of the music that

fits in my pocket. I think there's something comforting about something that you used to touch and hold old. You know, I used to like something and be attracted to it if it was new, But now I like old stuff. It's just I like I like old. I like old, I like old songs, I like smashing pumpkins. I don't need any of this new stuff. I don't need any of the I like the old stuff. The hymns that I used to yawn through in church are the ones that I now write songs around as as a grown man.

And so a lot of things come full circle in your life that you don't appreciate at the time. But the the the challenge now to hold on to the old to the exclusion of receiving the new. When I shared with you last week, we were given a picture of Peter who was having to fight against the traditions

and the customs of the well meaning circumcised believers. And one thing that it is difficult for us to appreciate about this community is that they were receiving from God an entirely new system by which to relate to him. Imagine that at one point you had to atone for your sins with the blood of bulls and goats, and now instead of shedding the blood of an animal, you

were trusting in the blood of Christ. That's a very difficult thing to apprehend when you had something tactile, something you could touch, and now you have to believe something by faith. The paradigm of justification. We call it justification by faith, but it's actually justification by grace through faith. See, it's not how much faith you have that saves you,

it's how much grace God has that saves you. Because if it was about how much faith I had, I would be going to heaven one five minute period, and I would be bound for the same hell as a serial killer in the next five I don't always have that much faith, sometimes high, sometimes low. And depending on whether you catch me at nine am and I've had my coffee, or whether you catch me after one of my kids said something disrespectful, I might have a lot

of faith or a little bit of faith. The point is not how much faith that I have, it's who I have my faith in. Y'all ain't gonna help me preach a bit today. This Bible says that it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works. So that no one can boast and think about this. God's people had always related to God through a covenant that was based on works, that was based

on keeping the law. And now all of a sudden, in the passage I shared last week, not only are they learning to relate to God by faith, which is the hardest thing in the world, to just take it by faith. We talk a good game when it comes to faith. We say we're trusting in the Lord with all of our heart and leaning not to our own understanding. But it still creates a tension, which is how much should I trust God? And how much should I try myself?

This tension is written into the very script. The nascent days of the church were filled with this kind of tension. So the community God's people, they are now learning to relate to God in a brand new way. Touch somebody say, make room for the new. And just about the time they're getting used to this paradigm of grace, here come the gentiles, who are the ones they were supposed to stay away from. And the point guard of the New Testament all star team, Peter is going in eating with

these people who are contagious. I use that word for reason, because when I told you that they wouldn't associate with gentiles, you're like, well, that's wrong. You know, it's easy to recognize a truth when you're not living in the tension of it. It's easy for us to look back on certain issues of racial segregation now and say why in the world. But when you're living in the tension of it. When you're living in the tension, you can lose sight

of the truth. And in the tension of the New Testament Church, there's not only grace versus works, but there's this exclusive idea that God is blessing a select group of people. And then now get this tension with me. They have to try to figure out how to protect what they've been entrusted with at the same time that they don't hold it too tightly. Every parent can relate to this. How do I protect my kids while not putting my kids in some sort of bubble where they

won't be prepared for the real world. How do I I'm thinking this about Abby right now. She's probably going to be pretty. She's already pretty nine year old, probably going to be a pretty thirteen year old. Then there's probably going to be some thirteen year old boy that wants to come up and talk to her about something. And how am I supposed to let her out of her room and trust a thirteen year old boy when I've been one? How will I do that? I don't know.

But what I do know is this. You ready. This is the first thing I've said that you probably will want to write down today, but hopefully not the last. Okay. Your tolerance for tension determines your potential for growth. Your tolerance for tension determines what I say, your potential for growth. And we don't like tension when it comes to Christianity. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Let me tell you right now, brother, it doesn't matter if

you believe it or not. God said it. That settles it. You can just take the middle of it right there out. God said it. That settles it. But wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait minute, wait a minute, to sit with the tension of what God actually said as opposed to the tradition of what we heard God said through the filter of personal preference and prejudice. It's the gift of tension. If you hire a trainer at what's the

name of a gym, Planet fitness. If you hire a trainer, I don't even know if you can do that at Planet Fitness. But if you hire a trainer at the gym, they are going to at some point teach you about the gift of tension for the building of muscle. If you hire a trainer and they do not employ tension in the training regimen, you should fire the trainer because time under tension is the formula for growth. And yet

when it comes to our movies, we love tension. When it comes to our television entertainment Netflix binging content, we love tension. I don't want to watch a show about somebody who had a good day. I want to watch a show about somebody who ended up on drugs and had to fight a whole gang single handedly and almost died in the process, and got a divorce and went bankrupt. But what makes for a good TV show is the kind of stuff we try to pray away from our lives.

So I started the year praying something really weird. I said, God, increased the quality of my problems. Lord, I want higher quality problems in twenty twenty. The reason I prayed that is because I tried asking him in previous years take my problems away. That was an ineffective prayer. He did not seem too interested in answering that prayer to take

my problems away. In fact, it seems as if some of the things that came into my life in one season as a problem, some of the things that came into my life as opposition, were the things that God used to create opportunities for me to know him and make him known. So what's crazy? What's crazy? Everybody say it's crazy. What's crazy about Leviticus twenty six ten is it can be interpreted as either a blessing or an inconvenience, because the scripture said that if you live in alignment

with God in an agreement with his covenant. This is the old covenant, which was by works. Remember they had to conditionally receive the favor of God through certain behaviors in community. And so as Moses is giving them all of this law, they've been out of Egypt only for a very short time. They've constructed a tabernacle, which is a space where they can meet with God. And he says in verse nine, just get a running start at it. I will look on favor with you and make you

fruitful and increase your numbers. And I will keep my covenant with you old covenant, the covenant that was established through obedience and works. It was still grace, but it was grace measured out through behavior. Can I teach the Bible on this particular worship service? So then when he gets to verse ten, he says, if you will keep your end of the covenant, then you will still be eating last year's harvest when we have to move it out to make room for the new. I'm so glad

that I am not under that contract anymore. I really am. I don't want God to give me what I deserve. I don't want God to be fair to me. I don't want God to relate to me on the basis of how much I prayed last week. I really don't. I don't want him to I don't want him to treat me according to what my lifestyle would merit. And so we understand now. I think most of us in this church understand that this is the old Covenant, but

it's the same community. They have progressed from a point where they were wandering in the wilderness until we get to acts chapter eleven, and now they are becoming a church. Now in that setup, I want to go back into Acts chapter ten, and I want to read the story to you again, or as we said last week, the whole story. You never really know the whole story. That's why you got to keep living. That's why you got to keep praying. That's why you got to keep believing.

That's why you got to keep trusting. That's why you got to keep swinging. Because you don't know the whole story. That's why you can't kill your kids. It might grow up and pay for your retirement or something like that. Because you don't know the whole story. That's why you

can't judge anything too soon. And you're going to see this in the scripture right here, is that in the midst of great tension, a great truth was shown make room for the new Verse one says the apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the gentiles had also received the Word of God. The gospel is spreading, it's spreading. I guess you could say, grace is going viral. It's just out of control, can't stop it. It's just all

over the place. And they didn't like that because they are in the tension of trying to protect the old, and when you are protecting the old, what's new looks like a threat. When I asked my dad one time, are you threatening me? He said something, I'm sure you've heard this before. He said, it's not a threat, it's a prom. I was like, oh, he was six two. I was like, got it, I'm good, No further questions. It's not it's not a threat, it's a promise. He

said that it's not a threat, it's a blessing. They were threatened by the blessing because they did not recognize it and it did not remind them of what they were used to in their religious routine. Are you threatened by your very own blessings? Come on, Raleigh. They get used to it. I know y'all love the Word of God and Raleigh, and so they are. They are being blessed.

The church is growing. That's exactly what they want. And sometimes God can be giving you exactly what you want, but the tension that it takes to produce the growth is super uncomfortable. We don't like tension in our Christianity. Rapture me Jesus and get me out of here. In the meantime, you need to pay your taxes and change your oil and do all this stuff just in case he doesn't get you out of it. You need to

learn how to bring God into it. And so as the message is going to the gentiles, they're not the Jewish people. They're the gentiles, all of us who do not have a Jewish ancestry like these people. And they didn't want to let him in the church. So next time you don't want to let somebody in church because something about them offends you, just to remember that by that standard, you wouldn't be here either. So the circumcised believers criticized him. Is a criticism that is birth out

of ignorance. And they said, you went into the house of uncircumcisedment and ate with them, And starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story. He said, I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheep being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I saw something being let down from heaven and it came down

to where I was. When I read that the Lord said to me, I'm going to bring it to you when you are positioning yourself according to the peace and the purpose of God, and when you are present in the situation where He has placed you. God said all the other things that people run after, I'm gonna bring it to you. If you want in on this word, shout, God's gonna bring it to me. Come on, Tell the person next to you. I don't have to chase it, stress about it, cheat to get it, violate my morality

or my ethics. God's gonna bring it to me. This is the Covenant of grace. Watch this. I tried to get to God, I couldn't. So he ripped open Heaven step down to come inside of me so that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. No, I cannot achieve his holiness. But God's gonna bring it to me. Heaven's gonna come to my house, Heaven's gonna come to my mind, Peace is gonna come to my marriage.

God's gonna bring it to me. I wanna shut the whole sermon down for a minute and give God praise by faith that He's gonna bring it to me. What's your need? He's got it. God's gonna bring it to me. God's gonna bring it to me. When I praise him, blessings come down. God's gonna bring it to me. I don't have to begging. God's gonna bring it. Peter wasn't looking for a vision for his life. God brought it to him. All he did was go to Joppa. Can

we talk about Joppa for a minute. Joppa, everybody say Joppa. I thought about calling this message the Opportunity of a Lifetime, but that was corny. Yeah, I'll scratched that one out real quick. You can have it. That's not a good title for a message. But it got me that he was in Joppa because I was like, Joppa, Joppa, Jappa, Jappa, Jappa, Choppa, Joppa, support city. I know that they put the timber there. They take the timber, and the timber came there when

they built Solomon's temple. I think I think they brought the timber from Lebanon to Jappa because it's on the Mediterranean coast. They brought a timber there and then they sent it to build the temple. Oh, maybe Japa is something where God takes the raw materials. Joppa. No that's not it. Chop A Jappa, Joppa, Joppa. Why does it say over and over again he was in Joppa. Go to acts ten, verse one. It says it a couple of times, because remember Peter got in trouble. He didn't

have to go looking for trouble. Trouble came looking for him. Well, y'all were shouting a minute ago, we just we just killed the vibe. I think we killed the vibe. Peter wasn't looking for controversy, wasn't looking for conflict, wasn't looking for problems. He was in Joppa because there was a woman in the church at Joppa who was very important to the believers there. And he was in Lida raising people from the dead, you know, just the stuff you do.

And when he was in the middle of this crazy revival in Lida, which wasn't too far from Joppa, this amazing e kids volunteer died. Her name was Dorcas, her Greek name was Dorcas. Her name was also Tabitha. And they asked Peter if he would come to comfort them. And he got there and he saw how important she was to all of them in Joppa, and he started looking at all the clothes that she sewed for widows,

and she had a ministry to the poor. She cared about people she served on the parking team, she cared about people she worked on production at Raleigh Durham. She was They hated to lose Dorcas. And Peter got kind of bored. You know, he was a man of action. So he's like, this is cool, like taking a tour of everything she did. But y'all leave the room. Check out this scripture real quick. I know I said Axe ten, but I want to go back to Ax nine real quick.

I want to give you the whole story because we know what happened when he got to Joppa. How did he get there? It's important. He went to jop A to visit Dorcas. Give me nine forty. Peter sent them all out of the room. She's been washed and placed for burial in the upper room, and as they're memorializing her, he got down on his knees and prayed, and turning toward the dead woman, he said, Tabitha, get up. Peter's like, we can have a funeral or we could have a resurrection.

Peter was Peter was bold. He tried it like Jesus one time Jesus did the same exact thing, but it was with the little girl. This little girl was dead. And Jesus sent everybody out of the room because he knew that if they stayed in the room that their doubt might make it impossible for faith to really do what faith can do when it is unencumbered by doubt.

What's the title of this message, make room for the new And when Jesus sent them all out, he said something in Aramaic, Talitha kom It means little girl, get up, Little girl, get up? Now watch Peter, imitating his master. He sent them all out of the room and turned towards the woman and said, Tabitha, get up. It's almost

like Talita is just one letter different. And he thought something, if he did it, if Jesus did it, and if his spirit lives in me, I came with a message for somebody, Make room for resurrection, make room for things in your life that you were just about ready to bury to Breathe again, Tabitha, get up, and she did. She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. Well, I guess, so she sat up. And he stayed in Japa a little while, and they liked him. He was

very popular in Joppa. Peter could have run for mayor of Joppa because he demonstrated great power in Joppa. Joppa Jappa. It's a place where where it's a place where you don't expect anything great to happen, but something does. Jopa Joppa is like your job Jaba Joppa. He was just doing his job, just going to see it in a miracle happened. He was just going to see it in a miracle happened. He was just going to see it and going to comfort them and going to do what

he did in a miracle happened. Joppa, Joppa place where God puts stuff together Joppa. While he was in Joppa Joppa, it's kind of familiar. Who else went to Joppa in the Bible? I was trying to remember. I was talking to the interns this week, and I put him on the spot. We had such a good time then with I said, who else went to Japa? They went through every character in the Bible, guessing zach Kiyas, Bartimaeus, Luke, Matthew, And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no no,

it's somebody in the Bible. I'm gonna give you a hand. It involves a fish rhymes with corona. Jonah went to Joppa. But watch what he did in Japa. You ready? Jonah won? Three says Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. God called him to Ninevah, but he resisted it. He resisted going to Ninevah because those were not the people he expected God to bless. He resisted what he did not understand. He resisted what

he could not conceptualize. He resisted what he had no frame of reference. Four, He went down to Joppa and boarded a ship heading away from the Lord. So now I've got a contrast, and I want to ask, what will you do in Joppa? Will you be like Peter who when he got to Joppa and God send him an opportunity to say, Peter, I want you to make room for something new. I want you to believe that I can break a barrier in your life. I want you to believe that I'm about to do something that

your mind has not conceived. Will you be like Peter who went with it? Or are you going to be like Jonah who ran from it? Peter went to Joppa. While he was in Japa praying, he saw something amazing that he didn't expect. And he looked and he saw a sheep from the four corners four corners representing the four corners of the earth. God's like, I'm about to break off all of your barriers. I'm about to break through your unbelief. See, we talk about making room for

the new. You want to go have a yard sale or something like that, or put everything on It's not about closet space. It's not about it's not about clearing out your closet. It's about the transformation of your mind. Do you have room for the new in your mind? Because they didn't. Peter didn't when God showed Peter what he was about to do, Like, this is the way it always is. When God shows us something, we compare it to our previous point of reference and then we

start consulting our resources. And God wants to bring us new relationships. But watch this, if you're not ready for new people in your life, you will bring the same patterns to the new relationships that you brought to the old relationships. And we literally keep people out of our lives that God wants to send because we are holding on to the hurts from the one who have already left. I feel the spirit of God breaking barriers as I preach right now, because you're like, what is this message

you have to do to me? I'm not getting on an airplane and going to preach to somebody in cessareea like Peter did. You don't have to. All you have to do is dare to believe that God is making room for the new in your life right now. And even sometimes when it was painful for me and I thought I was losing things in my life, I wasn't losing it. God was moving it. Who is this for? I just need to know, probably about twenty people, you didn't lose it God, he said, you will still be

eating last year's harvest. When you have to move it out, somebody shall move it out. God. Anything that is in the way of me being who I need to be in this season, get it out of my heart, get it out of my mind, get it out of my habits. You can have it, God, I don't want it. I want what you've got. So you can't receive new miracles with old mindsets. Make room for the new. It looks like this, emptying yourself, humbling yourself and asking God, what

do you want to do in my job? Or you can run from it and resist it, and you can keep remembering when the kids were so cute. They are forty three now they stop being cute. Quite a while ago and the church was trying to figure out how do we protect what we loved while we embrace what is new. And I don't know, I think there are at least three lessons in this text. Y'all got a minute, make room for the new number one. God says this, don't limit yourself by labels. The first thing God told Peter,

he said, you've got your nice little neat categories. Because when the sheet came down, Peter saw all kinds of animals, and y'all need to know. In this culture, they respected visions. This was not like Peter's hallucination or you know how some people now are so weird and they're like, well, the Lord showed me a vision of us walking on the beach. It's like, bro, you need to ask her out and stop trying to embed it in this weird spirituality.

So Peter actually saw something. But remember there's sometimes a tension between what you thought. God showed you it's at tension, and that tension is a real gift because that's where growth happens, where it's like God, I thought. I thought I was going to be married to her the rest of my life, but I'm not. I'm not married now, and that's painful. But what you do with it becomes your japa, which determines do you run from God's purpose for your future or do you run toward it. That's jappa.

And the word God gave me was don't limit it with the label. Because the first thing he told Peter, he said. Peter said, in verse six, acts eleven, I looked into it and saw four footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds. And then after he saw the pigs in a blanket, he said, I try to keep y'all awake. Then I heard of voice telling me get up, Peter, kill and eat. Now when I read that, I said, God was trying to get Peter to go hunting. No,

it wasn't about the animals. He was about to sind Cornelius, whom Peter saw as an unclean gentile, so he was using this. It wasn't about bacon. It was about barriers, mental barriers. So when he said get up, Peter, kill and eat, it wasn't that God wanted Peter to kill a pig. It was that he was trying to kill Peter's categories. In this season of your life, God is trying to kill your categories. He's going to use people you did not even like to grow you up and

mature you. There was one person the other day that shared a Bible Verse with one of my kids, and they left our church years ago. They didn't even like me when they left. But when they gave a Bible Verse to my kids, I said, God, I don't care who hands them the script. I'll take a cold cup of water in the pit of hell from anybody. I don't care who hands it to him. Use who you want to use. God, do what you want to do,

kill my categories. As a matter of fact, when we say all things work together for the good, what we mean when we quote Romans eight twenty eight out of context because Romans eight twenty eight is connected and conjoined incidentally to Romans eight twenty nine, which says according to his purpose, So what it means by good is this going to fulfill his purpose, not my preference. Y'all can shout right now. What it means is, I can't categorize. That's God's job. It is God's job to know what's

best for me. It is God's job to know what needs to happen. It is God's job to know what experiences I need to get. So God says, stop limiting it by labels. Labels. Labels can apply to a group of people. He said, look what the Lord said when he said, arise, Peter killing it. Peter says, surely not, Lord, Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth. Now watch what God said in verse nine. Those are your categories,

not mine. The voice spoke from heaven a second time, saying, do not call anything impure that God has made clean. Stop limiting God with your labels. Most people that live in Charlotte weren't born in Charlotte. So you come here and it's like, I don't really like Southerners. Well, you stuck with us for this season, So do not overgeneralize the people that you have to live with. Now, the same thing can be said of any group of people, a northern or southern, or anything. We want to mention,

this is the problem. We are all so prejudiced. We stopped realizing it a long time ago. You're like, I'm not prejudiced. I'm not prejudiced. Prejudge. You do it all the time. I do it all the time. We think we know what is and what isn't going to be good all the time. We even think we know who is holy and who is not holy by what they wear. You know, even with people, we think we know who is important and who is not. You have no idea.

You have no idea. And then we size up opportunities by how public they are to see how significant they are. But Peter was in Joppa doing something that was off the radar when God led him to Cornelius's house to take the Gospel to the gentiles, and I just wanted to say, don't limit your life by labels. Don't limit what God can do through you through labels. Somebody say you single, Say, well, first of all, i'm saved, sanctified, and then i'm single, But don't put that as my

first label. There's a whole lot more to me than what's going on on one finger on my left hand, So please do not limit me. Preach Pastor Stephen Ferdeck, I am one guy said to me. He was like, you're preaching has gotten more Pentecostal these days. All he meant was I yell more. And the only reason I yell more now than I used to is because when the church was small, I needed people and I was didn't want to scare them off. Now we got enough.

If we scare a few off, a few more will come and I can holler like I want to, I can break It's like I feel it, not theological stylistic. So don't be limited by labels. I'm white, but I'm not only white. I'm black, but I'm not only black. Please do not prejudge me based on something I had no control over. I want you to get to know my character. I want you to get to see the God in me rather than labeling me. So don't judge me by mine. Ask little nas X ask him about labels.

Is it country? Is it wrap? I'll tell you what it is. It's a billion streams, it's a Grammy, and it's multimillion dollars. You could take me, write out this box and drive me to the bank. And God wants to do something bigger, but you will limit yourself with the label, and you limit others the label. Who you can and can't receive from, who God can and can't use in your life, What God can and can't use in your life. Oh well, they're insulting me, are they?

Or is God using them to instruct you? I don't like it, doesn't feel good, So don't limit yourself with labels. And number two, don't be loyal to a lie. I don't have time to show you. But the passage and acts ends with Peter and the counsel there the deacon board that called him in as a Baptist flashback I was having right there when they called him in. By the end of it, I said this on Sunday. I didn't say it on Saturday last week. It said that

it started with protest and ended in praise. When they brought him in, they were protesting like we always do when God is doing something new in our lives. God, I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. Now everybody that hears new will hear something different when I preach. People will quit their jobs over this marriage. People are over this message. People will put

their marriage over this message. Some will quit their job and their marriage over this message, and they're missing the point, because what I mean is make room for the new in you, so you don't have to find out after you move to five different cities running from yourself, that sometimes the environment is not the issue. And what we will do a lot of times is we will hold on so tightly to a lie because it's familiar, that we will miss what God is bringing to us by

faith because we don't like how it feels. Don't be loyal to a lie. And my third one is don't be late. Don't be late. One thing the Spirit told Peter that I wanted to say to you through the power of the Holy Spirit today. Yeah, you got it. They're so good in the back they anticipated my verse I love them Acts eleven twelve says that the Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them.

Don't be late, because if you hold on to what's old, the way you thought and what you wanted and how it was, you might miss today's miracle trying to hold onto yesterday's blessing. What am I holding that's old? It's keeping me from receiving what's new, what's now, what's your I don't mean that we don't value tradition and experience

and continuity. That's not my message, but the scripture said in Leviticus twenty six ' ten you will still be eating last year's harvest, that's the old, when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. It's not that the old was bad, It's just that the new is here, a new covenant, a new day, a new season. Some of you are really destabilized right now. In life, we all go through these seasons of instability

that really test our faith. And God gives us this tension in these moments to see what will we do in Joppa? Run from God or run toward God? And if that's where you are today in Joppa, I mean in a psychological sense, obviously, not a geographical sense or a spiritual sense, an emotional sense, trying to figure out, God, what are you doing in my life. I've never seen this before, I've never felt this before. I've never been in my forties before. I wonder what you will do

in Joppa. The thing about God's blessing is it rarely checks your schedule to see if this would be a

convenient time. In fact, Leviticus said as they were giving all the instructions for worship and the covenant to set up the community, and how to deal with diseases and poverty, and how to deal with indebtedness and how to be a people, And as they were adjusting and acclimating to be out of Egyptian slavery and coming into a new place, before God made them the promise, he said, you need to know that you're still going to be eating last year's harvest when you have to move it out to

make room for the new. This is how it works. You're not even used to it yet, and here comes something new, and you have to learn to multitask your miracles. You have to learn to multitask your miracles. You have to learn to move between things and to trust God and keep giving, keep going, keep trusting, and keep believing by faith, or else you're going to find yourself missing today's opportunity because you are too attached to yesterday's blessing.

I wonder what new mindset God is creating in me in this season. I want to know. I wonder what barriers He's going to break through your life. I want to know. He said, you will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. That's what repentance is. It's a change of mind. It makes room for the new, new way of thinking. You're doing it the old way. You keep manipulating, keep forcing, and keep getting angry. That's

the old way. That's not how you do it anymore. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. There's a new way to do this, a new way to live, a new way to love, a new way to serve, a way that seems upside down but is actually right side up. And God said, if you'll make room for the new, you will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out. Father, I thank you for your word today, the power of it,

the precision of it. You are so on time. I trust you. I trust you that it will not return void. What you spoke in this place today is not just about Peter. This is not a history lesson or an agricultural lesson. This is a word from Heaven for someone's life. Make room for the new. I pray for your people, Lord, whatever they're holding on to that is old, that needs to be moved out to make room for the new.

Maybe all their life they thought they had to earn acceptance, so they're stuck in performance and they think you are like that too. I pray that today that grace would clear the way to make boom for the new. I thank you today that strongholds in our minds are being broken by the power of the Spirit of God. We thought we had to We thought we had to run to something else to get our needs met. That's the old way of thinking, that's the old way of living,

that's the old way of coping. But we came into your presence today to make room for the new. We thank you that you're doing something in our life right now. We never truly know the power of this moment until it's over. We never fully understand the reason for this season until we're in the next one. But I asked that you would grant unto us the gift of faith, so we can trust you for what's next. Everyone's standing,

no one moving. If God brought you here today and you've been holding on to something old, maybe it's an a fe or regret, could be a pattern of habits, or just a way that you get your own way. God knows I have plenty, and you want to release that. Right now, in the presence of the Lord, I invite you to just lift your hands to Heaven like you're letting something go, and just keep your hands up, Just keep them up, because I don't want to miss it. God, I don't want to miss what you have for me.

We don't want to miss what you have for us because we were afraid, because we thought we were smarter than you. You are the potter, we are the clay. We ask you to mold us and fill us and make us. Oh Lord, touch each heart, each mind, lift the burden, break the barrier. Whatever they think you can't do, do it. Show them what kind of God you are. Show them how you can raise the dead. Show them how you kill categories and make ways, and do stuff that human minds cannot innovate or imagine. Do it in

our lives. God, do it through our children. Do it in our generation, do it in our world, Do it in our church. Do it in this movement. Create in us a clean heart, make room for the new. We're letting go of what it was. We're letting go of what we thought. We are embracing your ways, for your ways are higher than our ways, and your thoughts are higher than our thoughts. And we came in this place today as your tabernacle to make room in our hearts

for you. Lord. If there's someone here today who needs a new beginning, who needs to be saved, who needs to be brought into the family of God, right now, in this moment, would you touch their heart and bring them to faith in Jesus Christ so that they can

be saved and forgiven and set free. Right now, at all of our locations, I'm going to give an invitation for someone who wants to receive the grace of Jesus Christ for your life, who wants to say, God, I'm giving up my life to you and I'm embracing your life and your plan for me. The Bible says that it is by grace you are saved, not of works. No one can boast about it. It is the gift of God. So for everyone who wants to receive this gift. The scripture says that we were dead in our sins,

and Christ died for us. He didn't just die for us to be good people. He died to give us life. He died to give us a new beginning. He died to make us brand new. So right now, if this is your day, and you have felt God speaking to you while I've been preaching, and you have felt God calling you home, and you are ready to make room for the new in your life, I want you to repeat this prayer after me. We pray together as a church family. Repeat after me, Heavenly Father, today is my day.

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. And today I make Jesus the lord of my life. I believe he died that I would be forgiven and rose again to give me life. I receive this new life. This is my new beginning. I am a child of God. On the count of three, shoots your hand up. If you prayed that one, two, three, shoot him up, Shoot him up. God, Bless you, God, bless you. Come on. Let's celebrate new life.

Let's celebrate new beginnings. Let's celebrate new stories. Come on, Church. Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now or visit Elevationchurch dot org. Slash podcast for more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it

with your friends. You can click the share button, take a screenshot and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.