The Gift In The Grind

Hey, this is Stephen Ferdik.

I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast and I wanted to thank you for joining us today.

Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.

Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message.

I have one verse of scripture that I want to preach on today.

I did not choose the scripture. It chows me.

In fact, I would say it jumped up and bit me on, bit me on my neck and told me preach me or I'll kill you. It's just that fierce the way that this verse came to me. It's in First Corinthians, chapter fifteen, verse ten. You know what, though, if we preach on just one verse today, if we preach on verse Corinthians fifteen ten, how's that going to make verse nine feel? And if we skip by verse

They jump up while I'm preaching and stuff. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

You can love Jesus and sit down to It's just you love him more if you stand up. But you can love him a little bit and sit to a sermon. Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain. Would you touch your neighbor and tell them, don't waste it.

But everybody shot. But that's one of the biggest.

Words in the Bible, by the way, I mean, it's a big word, three letters, but it's a big word. Everybody shall butt. I was going down. I thought it was over. They laid him in the ground, and Hell had a party on Friday night. Ask somebody next to you, say, how big is yours?

That's what I want to know.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of.

Them, yet not I but the grace of God that was with me. I want to speak to you for a few moments today on this subject. The gift in the grind, the gift in the grind on your way to your seat, touch somebody and say I'm on my grind. You've seen that hashtag on Instagram. Right on my grind hashtag Jim flow hashtag, humbled hashtag, filter free hashtag, paleo hashtag, CrossFit, bro hashtag, it's every day brostag hashtag.

Oh my grind. No, you're not on your grind, you're on your phone. Put down your phone and just go to the gym.

If you go to the gym enough, you won't have to post about it.

We'll all notice the results. Unless you want to show off your shoes.

Then take a selfie. I mentioned it because Paul is it's coming across a little bit humble braggy in First Corinthians. I know, I know he's the Apostle Paul and everything he says is supposed to be so wonderful. But I will be honest with you. I like the Bible, Like I really like the Bible.

What a relief. It wouldn't matter if I liked it or not, it would be true.

But I happen to like the Bible now more than when I first started reading it. It's just that now I don't like everybody in the Bible all the time like Jonah, because God went through so much trouble to get Jonah to preach a message in Nineveh, and then by the time he preached the message after God had to track him down and dispatch a whale and send a storm and all of this nonsense. That Jonah couldn't just go where he was supposed to preach and say

Right here, Paul is annoying me a little bit, a little bit, just a little bit.

I'm sure he doesn't care that I'm annoyed with this passage that he wrote to the church at Corinth. He's not writing it as a letter to me or to you as his primary audience. He's trying to get the church in Corinth to live out what God has invested put in. That's really the challenge of life is to live out what God has put in. What makes that

I know their vows were beautiful.

But there's some stuff they didn't put in those valves because they didn't know about them yet. But four years into marriage, if they could say the vowels the way they really go, it wouldn't be big broad concepts like.

Sickness and health and life.

And death, because there's a lot of stuff in between life and death called grime. It's called do I really have to remind you to put.

Gas in the car?

You're forty seven years old, and we've been talking about this for twenty one years. Did you really leave the van on empty account? That's why people get divorced. It's not big things. It's seven hundred and ninety three dirty socks left in the room after I told you forty three times. I'm not sure, mom, pick up after yourself.

It's just a grind. And I was confused because I thought people working.

I thought people quit their jobs because big, horrible things happen. And I thought people gave up on themselves because of catastrophic, cataclysmic events. I found out that it's the grind. The grind makes ministers put down their microphone. I think I think they put down their microphone, not because they quit loving Jesus or left their first love. I think the grind makes volunteers quit showing.

Up to serve because it's kind of our fault.

When we sign you up to volunteer, we show you the glory, but we hide the grind.

You see these beautiful.

Women with the welcome team t shirts on there, I guarantee you some people on their team didn't show up to serve that we're supposed to serve today. Now that happens to you enough Sunday mornings when you put aside your Sunday morning to serve and somebody didn't even have the stuff ready that you needed to serve. After a while, you rip your name tag off and you say, I love Jesus, but this sucks, and I can serve God in my own way. I think I'll serve him on the boat. I have a boat ministry.

Jesus. This stuff on the boat. I'm gonna go on the boat too. Lake Norman.

They had seventy volunteers sign up for Lake Norman to volunteer at Lake Norman this weekend. I'm just gonna be upfront with you and tell you what they may not have.

Told you at the campus.

It's a grind. It's a grime. I mean it's a good grind, and God's gonna do great things, but it's a grime. How uninspiring could the introduction to.

My sermon possibly be?

But to tell you that, after you've picked out the baby names, and after they throw you a gender reveal party and a gender reveal reveal party, and a gender reveal reveal reveal reveal party, here comes to grind. The grind of diapers, the grind of long nights, the grind of Red Eyes and Red Bull. But the good news is if you make it through the infancy stage, the grind stops.

After that.

Raising children is easy, no more grind. Just sitting next to your child, tell them you're a grind. I love you. I'm grateful for you. See that's the thing. I'm not ungrateful for what God has given me. That's not why I get a bad attitude. That's not why sometimes don't want to show up.

I appreciate.

I know there are people who would love to have my life, and it makes me feel bad and guilty when you compare my life to somebody else, and I think, well, it could be worse.

And people will say things like when you know.

You could be in the hospital room, if you know somebody in the hospital room would love.

To go to your job Monday, but they're not going. And I am, and I'm in the grind, and I am grateful I have a job. But there's just sometimes that the grind.

Well, Paul is talking to a church that would have been very familiar with the grind.

It's not some little town.

Core is a major city, not exactly a port city, but connected to one that meant they had all the infrastructure of an urban city. That meant that the transportation systems were complicated, so they knew what it was to have a traffic jam. Just the grind, just the grind of trying to figure out how to worship Christ in a culture that is counter christ. Just the grind, trying to figure out how to serve Christ and a culture that is counter Christ from what is culturally normative is

Make you forget what's really important. You know this.

The grind can make you lose a sense of priority that start giving your best energy to your lowest priorities. It's just the grime. Paul writes to them that he understands it. He does it in a strange way, though, And this is where he started to get on my nerves a little bit, because when he said, I want to remind you of the Gospel and the resurrection, which is your hope.

I was with him when he said, if you don't.

Hold on to it, and you don't really believe in it, it's like.

It never happened.

I understand what he's saying, not that God is going to take his grace away, but that sometimes if I don't walk in, at what good is it. I understand why he's saying. This gospel did not originate with me. It just came through me because a lot of people probably worship Paul and saw him as some indispensable gift to the body of Christ. But he realized that really all he was doing was regifting what God had given

Can I preach a little bit.

So I get it when Paul says that I don't have anything that I didn't receive, and I'm with him when he says that.

It's all Gospel all the time.

When he gets to this part though, verse nine, we should look at it again. For I am the least of the Apostles. I'm not buying it, partially because his very name is almost synonymous with apostle.

If I said the Apostle, and.

Then let you fill in the blank, you know who wrote thirteen of the twenty seven New Testament books, the Apostle. See, you didn't say Bartholomew, and he was one two.

But you didn't name your kid that the Apostle, Paul.

And so for him to be saying, oh, oh, and this is not his rookie year, I get it. In your first year, you've been killing Christians, or at least consenting to their murder. They laid the garments at your feet when Stephen was stone, when Jesus Christ gave a standing ovation to Stephen because of his boldness, and you stood there watching it, and not only watching it, but endorsing it and supporting it.

I understand how at.

That point it could take you a little while. But you've been in the game thirty years, planting churches all throughout the Roman Empire, taking it where didn't dare to take it.

And in fact, Peter had.

A sort of prejudice that didn't show itself except when he was around people who he thought were as prejudice as he was.

Paul wasn't that way. Paul didn't talk.

One way in front of one group or one race, and then talk another way when he got around his friends or his boys.

He was just determined to take the gospel to all people.

I just said something right there, one person, all the time. But Paul said, you know, really, I don't feel worthy of this.

I've been in it so long, and I know I'm a legend.

But I don't even really feel like what you think I am. I don't even really feel like I deserve this title. And I'm doing the job and I'm filling the position. But can I be honest with you, Sometimes I feel more like a little boy than I do like a dad. It's the difference between the title.

Others give me and the truth I tell myself.

And Paul knew a truth about himself that caused him to.

Always feel a little unworthy of his title. He said, I'm the least of the.

Apostles, and I don't deserve to be calling apostle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's like the singers who just sing so good and then you're like, oh, you know, that was so good, and try to shut up. You know you can sing, And then there's some other ones who think they can sing and need a friend. I remember the first compliment I was ever given as a preacher, and there was a lesson in it because I preached this little sermon about the time that Peter was walking on the water and he saw the wind in the waves and he began to sing. I was sixteen years old preaching amongst

The gap between your attention and your performance. So they say sweet things, especially in the South.

They might not mean them, but Southerners will say it anyway, and George Altman came up to me after my first sermon and said, you did a good job today. George Altman was a legend at the church. He'd been in the church longer than the church had been in the church. He said, you did a good job today. And when he said it, I felt like that I shouldn't just say thank you, because that felt kind of arrogant that I should say something spiritual back. So mister George said

I'm not even deserve to be an apostle. It's all God.

And he knows he's smart, and he knows he's of the tribe of Benjamin, and he knows he's a Pharisee of Pharisees, and he knows that he studied under the Meleel, who was the Jedi spiritual teacher of Judaic tradition, and he knows all of this.

But he said, you know, I really don't even feel like an apostle. But then he confused me because in verse ten he can't make up his mind watch this. But by the.

Grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, than Cephists, than the twelve, than the five hundred. I outworked everybody that God picked.

Before me, yet not I. But it was the grace of God that was with me. So which one was it? Paul? I worked harder than all of them. I took the gustel where none of them.

Would dare to go, shipwrecks and lashings and accusations. I was on my grind, but it wasn't me, it was Oh God, was it?

Was it your grind? Or was it God's grace?

I don't believe in talking to dead people, but I saw I feel like Paul answered me this week. Maybe it was a holy spirit and said, why do you always try to keep two things apart? Then in the mind of God go together? And I realized that I was doing with the text what often happens even in our own nation.

Is that two things that are really.

Meant to go together get so divided, and now we see as opposites two things that actually cannot operate unless they operate in tandem. So one person will say I want justice and another person will say, but I'm a patriot. But those two are not opposites, because you can't be a patriot if.

There is not justice. It's got to work together. Do you hear me? What God has joined together? Let not man separate.

That's not just a Mariage scripture.

We do it all the time.

So we got some people who want to read the Bible on their couch and say, I'm all about grace. You know you really preciously with your girlfriend.

You should make a commitment to her marriage.

And you probably anybody wou say about something Sharley, No, I am what I am? Got the spirit of Popeye comes over you when somebody starts saying something, Amn, what I am?

I wan what I want? God knows what I want. He even't want me to want it. He should have made me different. Well, he should have made me, should have made me want like all these women. And should you know it's his fault. He made him look good.

I like your awkward laughter where you feel like we got out of church and got into real real life.

The grind, the grind, the grind, the grind, all had the grace of God. You know, I don't go to church, but you know, me and God, we got our thing. We chill over in the game.

See fantasy football is how I connect with God. That's my connection with God because I feel like he's my quarterback and God speaks to.

Me over the game. It's a great thing. You wouldn't understand those of you.

Who like commit yourself to church and discipline you, you just don't get the grace of God. Paul said, no, no, no, no, no, no no, you don't get the grind. Paul said, I got grace and I got grind. Those two are not opposites. I've got grace and I've got truth. Those two are not opposites. I've got grace. But it's not this fake grace, this cheap grace, this phony grace that finds you and just covers you. This is a grace that changes you.

Picks you up off of a thirty Damascus.

Road and gives you a mission, and forgives your sins and cleanses you from your unrighteousness and sets your feet on a rock. When you get this kind of grace, you don't stay on the couch. You walk into your calling determined and committed to be what he calls you to be.

I am what I am because of his grace.

And I will not stay what I was.

I'm becoming what I shall be by the grace of God. Give him a shout of praise. If you got grace, come on.

All the way to the top. Praise Him for his grace. Grace will make you praise him. Grace will make you persevere. Race we'll make you get up and go again. Grace will make you change your ways. Grace will make you say I'm sorry. Grace will make you stick it out.

Did anybody make it by the grace of God? So Paul said, there's two ways to look at this.

I'm on my I'm on my grind. I'm serving God more than all of them. And the reason I serve God more than all of them is because I needed more grace than any of them. This is the part of the sermon where the people who aren't perfect should shout, because when you know that you don't deserve what God has given you, nobody has to make you serve God. You know, every breakfast a gift, every step is grace, every day is grace.

His mercies are new with every rising up the sun.

I want all the unworthy people to shout, all the undeserving people to shout. Come on rock Hill, come on Gaston, come on Lake Norman, come on you see, come on Blakeney.

You might want to jump up on your feet for seventeen seconds and second for his unmars.

And then I got grind.

Oh yeah, And I'm not grinding to get God's favor. I'm grinding because I've already got God's favor.

I got grace in the grind. So I want to make a new hashtag. I want to make a new hashtag.

I want you to post this week hashtag on my grind, but change it a little bit. Sit down, I'll show you.

It says I worked harder than them all. I'll work them all because I'll send them all. I worked them all because of what I knew about me, Not so God would love me, but because he did so much I didn't bust through the front door and annoying his feet with perfume to earn his acceptance. It was because he had already given me his acceptance. It meant so much to me.

So I'm on my grime. But it's not really me, it's his grace to me.

And perhaps here a distinction would be helpful between the common grace of God that is given to all men, the saving grace of God which brings us into right relationship with Him, and then that particular grace of God that God has given you and no one else, Elijah. God gave me a grace to raise you. Any other Dad in this room would fail at it. But I can do this because I got grace for it, not that I need it. I got grace for it. God doesn't just give you a grace to save you. He

Paul said, it was his grace to me, his grace to me. Verse three. I passed on to you that which was given to me, the grace that God gave me. I regifted it to you. That's all I did.

I get weary when I try to pass on to others what God did not give to me. But when I stay on my grind, hashtag in my grace, that's the new hashtag.

I'm on my grind. Tell somebody say I'm on my grind, but I'm in my grace. Hashtag in my grace. That's how. Give me that bag. Follow me around you follow me with that bag. I want you to go into situations this week. Can I use you? You don't look so sure.

Is those situations in your life that require extra grace those people in your life. One author called it e g R people Extra grace acquired people. Do not make eye contact with the person you came to church with right now. That would be the worst thing you could do.

And I want you to take the situation in your life this week that the grind and in your mind. I want you to see it as a gift. So I got a whole bag of bows and I want you to take the situation this week.

That you've been asking God to take away anymont and when that person comes your way, then tries your soul to the marrow of its essence.

Oh god, how many of you just had a flash image of who they are? Put a bowl on them in your mind. Now, don't do it?

Really?

Then you know I might but that person that you got to deal with and you can't make them go away. But I want to find here.

It is the gift in the grind. Oh, thank you, annoying person. Thank you long drive to work. I've been needing to listen to my audio Bible that is on my iPhone app and you just gave me thirty seven extra minutes to do it.

What a gift. It's the gift in the grind. Oh, thank you dentist office. Just a little stuff, you know, just a little stuff forgiving me the opportunity to meditate. And even though this dntal hygienesi is trying to talk to me while she has an instrument of death in my mouth, why do they do that. I'll take this as a gift. You look better with that. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. Everybody shot it's a gift. It's a gift.

It didn't look like a gift at first, but you know that person that doesn't like you, that God is using to set you free from the need to have people like you. It's a gift. It's a gift. Shout it out, love by faith, it's a gift. Doesn't have to feel good to be good. All things work together.

Of them.

They loved God and are called according to his purpose. So I'm looking for the gift in the grind. I'm looking for the gift in the discouragement. Imagine how much fun is gonna be to go through the boring.

Parts of your week with a back full of bothes, just looking for the grace of God, just looking for the mercy of God, just looking for the gift of God.

Because if I seek, I will find, and if I knock, the door will be open. And if I embrace the grid, I can receive the gift.

Because the Word became flesh.

And dwelt a loove us, and we beheld his glory, the glory, yes, of the only begotten, of the Father, full.

Of grace and truth. Does somebody say, I gotta give. It's a guilt. It's a guilt. That's how I do it. I'm out of boze. You take the bag. I got a gift. I five everybody in your vicinity.

A second.

What a gumft, what a gamp?

My weakness is a gift. My struggle is against God could have knocked Paul off of his horse.

Before he ever consented to the killing of a Christian. But if he had done it too early, Paul would have valued it too little.

I have a feeling.

That when God really wants to use somebody in a great way, just like they took the olives to make the oil that went in the lamps that went in the tabernacle so that they could burn in the presence of the Lord, had to be hand pressed so that there would be no pulp in the lamp that would cause the light not to burn as brightly or as long. I have a feeling that God does to the life, that he really wants to handpick what they would do to those olives, and he hand presses the life to

But I'm in. But it's not me, but it's in me, and I want my grind when.

I'm in my grace. Here's the challenge. The enemy can't stop God from giving you grace, so he wants to stop you from using it. And I want to ask a question of everyone who made the choice to come to church today, have you been wasting your grace?

Paul said, God gave me so much grace.

And when Eugene Peterson tried to translate his version of First Corinthiums fifteen ten in the Message Bible, he had to say it like this, God has been so very good to me, and I don't intend to waste a drop of it. I won't waste it because it costs too much. Waste is relative to value. When you've had so much of something for so long, you lose the value of it, and so you use it and you abuse it because you have lost your sense, I want to remind you of the gospel.

I preach to you, the gospel that God gave to me and I gave to you.

And now you're in this gospel and you're in disgrace, but you're wasting it.

The church at Corinth had.

A lot of problems, not only idolatry, not only sexism, not only divisions in the church, not only sexual problems.

But they had gift envy.

It was a church full of gifted people that were walking around with other people's gift on their wish list. And when you envy someone else's gift, you waste your grace. When you wish that you had what they had, you missed the gift that God has given you. Don't waste your grace because you're wishing for someone else's. Well, if I could be like her, I guess I would. Paul said, I am what I am, and guess what that means.

I'm not what I'm not.

But it's okay because I got my own grace. I got my own grace. I don't need yours. I got my own. How many times have we wasted the grace that God has given us because we have envied the gifts that he gave another. I see people miss the season that they're in because they're waiting on the one that's to come. You will waste the grace of this season if your focus is on the next one. And now you're weary, and now you're burden. Now you want to give up because you've wait, not that you don't

Waiting until you felt worthy.

Paul said, I know what I did, but if I stay in my shame, I will waste my grace. And the price that was paid for me to stand in this grace was too great for me to waste it. I will not waste my grace. The pastes behind me, the crosses before.

Me, and I.

Will not waste the grace of this day. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. I refuse to leave any grace misappropriated.

So I'm done wishing that I was someone else, because I am what I am by the grace of God, I'm done wishing that I was in a season or a situation that you know what. I am done wasting the grace that God has given me worrying about situations that I can't control.

That's it. I'm done.

I have wasted enough time crying over stuff that was over and missing stuff that I was living in.

I will not waste the grace of this day. The Spirit of God helped me minister this message to someone.

You have been wasting your grace, the great grace of God, greater, greater than all of our sin, greater than all of our sin. Great grace, somebody shall great grace, great grace when you don't value it, you don't get it. And you know that grind that we talked about earlier, the stuff that you wish would stop in your life. I didn't want to close the sermon this way, but God told me too, because he said that it didn't matter how I wanted to close the sermon, It mattered what was true.

That grind is what produces the grace.

That's where the grace comes right into that place, right into that insecurity, right into that revolving joys.

Stand up so I can pray for you.

You've been wasting your grace, Paul said, I didn't ever feel worthy, but I was made worthy, and I will not waste the grace of God waiting for a feeling to accompany the truth.

I won't waste ants.

You just lift your hands to heaven if you want to receive a fresh empowering of the grace of God, because I know you need it. Man, I know the grind is real. I know sometimes it just grinds the joy right out of you. Father, And your presence is the fullness of joy at your right hand, pleasures forevermore.

It never runs out.

We thank you today for common grace that's given to all men, your loving kindness, your disposition in favor of the human race that you created. Well, thank you today for saving grace that took away the penalty of our sin, the effects of our shame, and set us free to

I have given you the grace, Now give me a song. I believe God wants you to give him a song today. I believe if you would open your mouth right now, in this moment, the grace of God would invade situation, the grace.

Of God that would invade shame. Thank you for joining us.

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