It's Not About You | Ps Steve Graham | 6th March 2022

it's great to be here we've been doing this series uh go big and um i don't know about you but i love the fact that so often over the last two years we've been doing these kind of crazy counter-intuitive series like two years ago it was like wide open doors and the whole world shut down you know and then in december last year uh when people are like man i'm just hanging out for the end of the year i can't wait to get through and we're doing unlocking creativity like we're going to blow this thing open and then right now this year we don't like go big maybe it feels like the only thing that's going big as omicron but we're like no no we're going big and i think i'm kind of joking but it's like i think this is really important because we're called actually to live by an opposite spirit we're called not to come under the spirit of the world but to kind of break out into something really different and so i love that this time of the year we are talking about let's go big and i want to kind of follow that up today because i want to talk about the god of the impossible and i feel like that could be like that could just blow up your world and your mind where things have kind of got small because i don't know about you but i think for a lot of us over the last two years our worlds have kind of got really small so if you've got family you know maybe you just had plans to travel overseas well they've been canceled maybe you've got family in australia or other places you're planning to visit haven't been able to see them we've got a we've got a a a new kind of coming up for seven month old grandson we didn't see him until he was over four months old my wife christine's only visited him once it's like our world's just got smaller and so there's something that says no we're going to break out of that and and it's not just our an external world it's also our internal world uh when we did the series on unlocking creativity i did some research around this guy and professor george land who's a professor of innovation and he talked about creative thinking and over on the far right you can see that's a brain scan of someone who's engaged in creative thinking and all the red and oranges where your brain's just light lit up and thinking about things and dreaming of possibilities and he contrasted that with when you're engaged in logical thinking the middle one which still a bit lit up but but less and and he wasn't actually talking about this but he said now i've got some really bad news for you the one on the right on the left here is when you're locked in that fight or flight response when you're stressed and fearful and it's really low brain function and really small and it's like it feels like a lot of us have got trapped in that kind of man just getting through i wonder what the next announcement is going to be and something just to break out of that and like man i'm dreaming of how we're going to go big in 2022 and uh and along with that my wife and i lived in christchurch during the earthquakes and about a year after the earthquakes they started talking about this thing of earthquake brain and this this is some research just published last year so it's still there 10 years later and it was like people just were forgetful and a bit numb and distracted but also extreme emotional reactions and hyper vigilance and and it was interesting a year or so ago and my wife and i were just talking it's like this feels like christchurch 10 years ago not earthquake brain but covert brain kind of and and it's like yeah we need to break out of that and there's this whole thing this this woman was saying yeah we need to break out of fear to start start thinking logically but then even beyond that start to think about new possibilities and so that's the kind of context that i want to talk about in a series go big i want to talk about the god of the impossible because once your thinking shifts to that your brain is going to come alive your spirit is going to come alive with oh my goodness i wonder what you could do this year god in my life and my world so if you've got a bible we're going to look at we're going to look at a significant passage about this it's found in genesis 18 and and it's an incident with abraham and this is not one random story i've plucked out of the bible this is like this is a defining moment abraham is the father of faith the father of jewish faith and therefore the father of christian faith and this is a decisive moment in the launch of this whole trajectory of faith and it just says this the lord appeared to abraham near these great trees while they're sitting at the entrance to his tent abraham looked and saw three men standing when he saw them he hurried from the entrance to his tent to meet them so he gathers these people in that are some kind of encounter with god and and he prepares a meal for them and then down a few verses they ask a question where is your wife sarah they asked him there in the tent he said then one of them said i will surely return to you about this time next year and sarah your wife will have a son now you need to understand the context of this they were promised that they were going to have a child and that would lead to having a raising up a whole nation and possessing this land and it's like they've been waiting almost 50 years for this and and now this this encounter with god he says this is definitely happening next year you have waited 50 years but it is going to happen now now i don't know about you but we often talk about this thing with faith faith is like kind of holding this object out and it's easy at the start but after a while it starts to feel heavy not because of the weight but because of the time you've held onto it and it's like yeah in the first year yeah i believe this is going to be great but you know that the years rolled on and the decades rolled on and suddenly it's like oh my goodness do i still believe and you know the concept of little faith is not about little amount it's about a short duration like peter walking on water he had faith for a moment but he couldn't sustain it so here's the question for sarah like you've been you've been holding this promise for 50 years and now god says it's going to happen we're launching this thing i wonder what her response would be and it says this now sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent which was behind him and here's the here are the facts of their situation abraham and sarah were already very old and sarah was past the age of childbearing it's physically impossible for them to have a child so her response is this so sarah laughed to herself as she thought after i am worn out and my lord is old will i now have this pleasure it's kind of that it's kind of like the year right life it's like yeah right god like seriously like yeah 50 years ago i could have believed it 30 years ago 20 but now you're right and and this laughter is really important to god because the next sin the next verse is this the lord said to sarah to abraham why did sarah laugh and say well i really have a child now that i am old and verse 14 is a key verse is anything too hard for the lord you always know you're not in trouble but you you know if when god asks you a question it's not because he doesn't know the answer he's trying to he's trying to evoke what's coming out of you he's trying to draw something out of you and we all know what the right answer we're supposed to give to that is anything too hard for god it's like no but but here's the question even right here today 2022 what comes out of your heart what's in the depths of your spirit with some dreams you've held with some promises you've believed for with some things that you saw for your future and if god says do you still believe is anything too hard for god is it like ah i don't know god i've i've believed and i've hoped and i i've been disappointed and and you know and then that's when he said i will return to you at the appointed time there's so much in this yeah there's a promise but god has an appointed time for his promises to come to pass and and it's like yeah you had this promise 50 years ago but now is the appointed time and and just to show you this is a big deal sarah was afraid so she lied and said i did not laugh but he said yes you did laugh like god really if this is the trajectory of of jewish and christian faith god wants to establish something now he wants to he wants to break through on something down nothing is too hard for god this question is anything too hard for the lord he wants to put something in our spirit that says no god nothing is too hard for you what i hadn't realized when i read this is sarah's not the first person to laugh at this promise if you go back to the previous chapter it says when abraham was 99 years old the god the lord appeared to him and said i am god almighty there's another key how powerful is your god how big is your god in your world and and god starts to unpack to abraham this covenant that he's going to live under walk before me faithfully be blameless then i'll make a covenant between me and you and so abraham falls falls down and god starts to unpack the details of this thing as for me this is my covenant with you you'll be the father of many nations carries on as for you you must keep my covenant abraham's all good with us yeah yeah yeah yeah and then it gets to sarah the same issue god also said to abraham as for sarah your wife you are no longer to call a sarai her name will be sarah and i will bless her and will surely notice this this surely definitely this is going to happen i will surely give you a son by her i will bless her that she will so that she will be the mother of nations kings of peoples will come from her notice abraham's response abraham fell down and he laughed same thing and the same rationale and said to himself will a son be born to a man of a hundred years old will sarah bear a child at the age of 90. and and it's like oh god that like that's in the too hard basket and he has an interesting response he said if only ishmael might live under your blessing and you know he'd had this other son with this other woman and he's like he's like this and i think we do this it's like do you know what i ca i could kind of see that that could work my best case scenario within the realms of possibility you could take this boy that's already here and you could raise it's not quite what i was expecting but but i could see that but this one that that's in the too hard basket and i want to i want to kind of challenge you like what have you put in the too hard basket for god maybe you've got some children away from faith and it's like yeah this one is kind of reasonably soft to it and they just need an encounter with god but i could see them coming back but this one that has they're so anti-like that could never happen and and that's the mindset that god wants to break because as i said this is the foundation for everything i mean christians are people who believe that we got saved because a dead guy came back to life we are people who believe that god became a baby and a manger we are people who believe that people who are spiritually dead with an encounter with god's word and a spirit they become spiritually alive if we don't believe in a god of the impossible we ain't got nothing but we believe in that in fact we believe a third of our new testament was written by a man who was the main opponent of faith and in a moment did a did a complete turn around the apostle paul and became the mind the main apostle of salvation to europe like we believe in the god of the impossible and so but the challenge is over time hey when the faith starts to drop a bird and to go no no god put that back in my heart here's the interesting goes on to say yes your your wife sarah will bury you a son and you'll call him isaac i don't know if you can see a little letter a at the end of isaac that's where this translation gives tells you what the name means god told abraham to call his son isaac what does isaac mean he laughs see this is a big issue god wants to deal with the boundaries we've put around possibility and and he wants to change something and then if you fast forward just a few chapters you get the fulfillment of this promise genesis 21 and again there's so much in here now the lord was gracious to sarah as he had said and the lord did for sarah what he had promised we're not talking about some genie in a bottle god that you just rub it and he just gives you a wish and whatever you want or we're not talking about a fairy godmother god we're talking about what he has said what he has promised that you're still hanging on to god you you promised me my family would be all together in faith god you promised to me there's a call on my life god you said this god reawaken that so it says sarah became pregnant and bore a son in his old age this at the very time god had promised him these are all key things it's about god's appointed time it's about what he has promised what he has said and it says abraham gave him the name isaac and this is sarah's response now isn't this amazing sarah says god has brought me laughter and everyone who hears about this will laugh not at me but with me who would have said to abraham that sarah would nurse children yet i have borne him a son in his old age do you know what i think happened this about laughter the life of disbelief disappointment disillusionment hurt and cynicism had turned into the life of delight and wonder at what god had done and i believe god wants to do that transaction in all of us and our mind and our heart and our spirit because this is the fountainhead of everything of faith is anything too hard for god if he said it if he's promised it i don't want to hide in the laughter of yeah right i want to have the laugh of the wonder oh my goodness it's happened what i believe for what i hope for what i dreamed for what god said it's actually happened if you think i'm kind of overstating this a bit i wanna i wanna read some stuff from a guy walter brugerman he's a significant old testament scholar and he writes in very kind of academic language so i'll try and explain what he means in kind of normal english but this is what he says about these passages the narrative or the story proposes an alternative epistemology that just means the whole way that we know anything is true and how we know and what we know and what is within the bounds of possibility he says this is not just a random incident of a of a elderly woman having a child this proposes a whole different way about thinking about what's real and what's possible in the world and this criticizes every other way of knowing which accepts definitions of the possible given by the dominant culture we've been raised in a western world that defines what could happen hundred-year-old men do not have babies with their 90 year old wife but when you factor in the god of the impossible see what's in your world that your world tells you is beyond the realms of possibility is outside your best case scenario but god said it and god promised it and how does he want to challenge that goes on to say the response of the narrator and of sarah this establish the incongruity that means it's a complete mismatch between the known world of abraham and sarah we know that we cannot have children and the anticipated reality of the speaker at this time next year you are going to have a child you cannot reconcile those two the promise of verse 10 is an assault upon their worldview their epistemology that's their way of knowing and the definition of reality the story the narrative rejects those reigning definitions of what is possible god wants to break up that little box that's been formed in your head and your heart and your spirit and has got smaller and more restricted over the last couple of years god wants to break that open again and redefine what is possible the question of pella that's the the hebrew word for impossible or too difficult this is a big statement he says poses the primary epistemology or not knowing issue of abrahamic faith like this is not a peripheral this is the key issue because if god can cannot do anything he couldn't save us from our sins he couldn't bring spiritual new life to people he couldn't change people's lives but once we accept the god of the impossible is within our frame anything is possible change is possible hope is possible freedom is possible because of this and finally in second sentence is a bit of a normal sentence it asks whether the power of god is contained in the best assessment of worldly possibility what's your best case scenario oh well i could kind of believe with this god wants to smash that and go have you factored in the god of the impossible says this it asks if there is an identity or at least a correspondence between human imagination and divine gift not just what you see but your best case that you could imagine it does that define what god could do in your life and he said no or if there is a disjunction which expects from god even beyond human imagination it asks about the freedom of god in the face of accepted definitions of reality where you where have you embraced what our world says limits your life god is bigger than that and an interesting kind of conclusion about this the question is anything too hard for god the narrative does not answer it neither sarah nor abraham responds at all but the question persists and again this is a this is a powerful sentence and that question put concretely and poignantly and even scandalously is the question that abraham tradition has unleashed on biblical faith from abraham onwards is anything too hard for god is anything too hard for god that's the primary issue to wrestle with that's why it's so good that we're saying go big you know he just finishes by talking about how this got locked into these psalms and hymns and songs and talks about this the song of miriam which is the song they sang again after a whole nation escaped from slavery after plagues came down on their oppressors after moses parted the red sea like impossibilities this is what they sung who is like the o lord among the gods who is like the majestic and holiness terrible and glorious deeds doing this is a literal translation doing impossibilities more common translations say this who among the gods is like you o lord who is like you majestic in holiness awesome and wonder awesome and glory working wonders i stand with my jaw drop and wonder like i cannot believe he's done it oh my goodness what we hold on to it was impossible but he's done it he's brought that family member back to faith they've had an encounter with god he that promise he gave me about business or about ministry it's actually happening if his language is all about flowery bill johnson puts it real simple you know your mind is renewed when the impossible looks logical why does it look logical because i've facted in the god of the impossible so of course it could happen um walter bruggeman said this has got unleashed on the whole story of the biblical faith so you see this in the new testament you know there's a famous encounter where jesus says to his disciples truly i tell you it's hard for someone rich to enter the kingdom of heaven again i tell you it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who's rich to enter the kingdom of god the disciples like they're just like oh my goodness well this is impossible then for anybody like who could be saved i love this verse 26 jesus looked at them like he's really wanting to zero in on this he's really wanting to challenge something because as we said this is a key to faith with man this is impossible but looking them in the eye with god all things are possible come on how's your discipleship around this issue i believe i actually believe this may be impossible for people but with god all things are possible apostle paul picks this up with this great prayer now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine what are the limits around your imagination apostle paul goes god can do immeasurably more than you could even imagine come on go big break out of the confines of what you think is possible start to dream again start to see wide open doors start to see opportunity because we serve the god of the impossible paul actually refers back to this incident with abraham he says this about it yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of god but this was strengthened in his faith where his faith had started to drop it's like no no i still believe i still believe god you've promised you promised me these things you promised me those kids coming back to faith you promised me a house you promised me ministry you promised me business god i believe you are the god of the impossible i think we've seen this recently in new zealand many of you know pastor paul deyoung from life church was diagnosed with quite serious cancer a few months ago and you know he said yeah these are the facts but this was his little statement that they've run with as a church but god yeah this is what my world defines as possible but i put god in that box of what's possible and everything changed yeah this is my reality but god yeah these kids seem far away from god but god yeah it seems like those ministry doors have closed but god seems like business is hard looks like this business might even fail but god there's still a future there's still a hope i wonder where you need to be encouraged today to let god break open the box that you put around your future to to go big and to think with god the god of the impossible in there what could happen so you know it's interesting when you look at this passage we've been looking at around the series isaiah 54 there's this whole thing you know you're gonna unlock these instructions enlarge the place of your tent stretch your tent curtains wide don't hold back lengthen your cord strengthen your stakes it's like get ready to go big prepare to go big make room to go big but this is verse two and three and verse two and three only happen because verse one has happened which is a spiritual encounter sing barren woman this is an illusion back to this passage with sarah sing barren woman you who never bore a child burst into song shout for joy you who are never in labor because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband here's another shout of joy here's another laugh and i reckon between the laughter of disappointment and disillusionment and the life of wonder there's a life of faith like oh my goodness that's actually impossible but god you said it i don't know how this is going to happen but it is going to happen because you said it and i pray that god would plant in you something today of this laugh of faith that goes well if you said it god i don't know how i don't have to figure out i don't have to navigate to make a way within what i define as possible i just need to have faith that with you nothing is impossible and so it's going to happen it's going to happen when you when your time has come when and when you say we're ready it's going to happen and this morning where that where that laugh of faith has been robbed and it's dropped back into that yeah right laughter i pray it comes alive again but there's something interesting also about this passage and and it's kind of where we're landing this series you know we've talked about a big god and how our thinking needs to get bigger and we've talked about because of that then we make room but the final thing we're talking about is we grow younger and if you look at this here's the challenge for us and here's where the spirit wants to engage with our mind and our heart because if you notice the whole context of going big is not so that i can enjoy a whole lot of stuff it's because there's kids on the way it's because there's another generation coming you never bore a child you are never who are never in labor more other children there's children coming there's another generation coming we're not going big out of grandiosity we're not going big out of building empire we're going big because there's another wave coming and we want to make room for them and we want to think about that and we want to understand a big god who thinks generationally now even the next passage you will spread out to the right and the left your descendants it's actually about what the next generation will do not about what you will do we get the privilege of having this adventure of faith and the joy of faith that creates room for what the next generation is going to do and and jesus was pretty pretty strong about this it's not about us it's not about you you know he told the story about a guy who was going to go big told this parable the ground of a certain rich man yelled at an abundant harvest he thought to himself what will i do i have no place so he thought i know what i'll do i'm going to go big i'll tear down my barns build bigger ones and there i'll store my setless grain and i'll say to myself here's his motivation you have plenty of grain lead laid up for many years take life easy eat drink and mary he was going big but it was all about him and jesus response you fall you fall you fall it's not about you because your very life will be demanded of you what we need to be doing is being rich towards god thinking about what god is doing and the next generation he's going to do there's a famous passage in malachi 4. in the english bibles it's the last verse of the old testament this is the promise of the new testament this is looking forward to the fulfillment of what jesus is about to do and then the outpouring of his spirit and this is what he says see i will send the prophet elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the lord comes he will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of their children to their parents or else i will come and strike the land with fate total destruction the turning point of a genuine new testament move of god is this a generation of people their hearts go down to the next generation and they go it's actually not about me it's about raising up this next generation god we want to go big god we want to create room not so we look good but so there's something for the next generation to step into you know i love that this is so much part of a quipper's culture pastor bruce monk wrote a book title pave the way subtitled embracing a life of legacy i always knew that the next generation was a thing i didn't realize it was the thing for equippers it's all about this you know i had the privilege of going down for one night to summer revolution you know i love the fact it's not it's just a given now that we have a movement amongst kind of 15 16 year olds and now it's like no let's get the 11 and 12 year olds in that space because it's all man we're constant we're not just talking about old men oh maybe that person in their 40s or 50s could go i was like no no we want a movement of 15 and 16 year olds so for that we want a movement of 11 and 12 year olds and and i i attended the 5 pm service at the end of summer revolution it was crazy back here at it was nuts it was a whole service pitched at like 15 year olds like and it's like this is the strength of who we are and i love the fact that a a young girl uh hannah cave 16 years old stood up gave her testimony about summer revolution and do you know what her main point was obviously her family had gone sometime she talked about seeing her six-year-old sister worshiping god and i i'm pretty sure she explicitly said this phrase it's great to see the next generation coming through like that's nuts right when the 16 year olds are excited about the six year olds coming through that shows this is so deeply in our culture and so you know when we think about the god of the impossible when we think about going big when we think about making room when we think about our thinking changes it's not about us it's not like oh great i'm going to get that million dollars i'll grade i'm going to have this platform ministry that the whole world oh great i'm going to make all this business it's like no god you're going to use me to unleash something for the next generation and i'm so excited to serve the release of the next generation you know i was thinking about this whole thing yesterday and i and i kind of want to say this prophetically i literally heard this this sound of bubbly voices a massive crowd of bubbling happy voices i was like what is that about do you know what i think it is i think it's prophetically it's the sound of the next generation coming through that's going to be bigger that's going to do things that we had only dreamed of maybe that's in your business maybe that's in the ministry maybe that's in church but can i tell you there's a wave coming [Music] and so we don't go big for ourselves we don't make space for ourselves [Music] we're creating room for a story of the god of the impossible who's weaving his story throughout time who's going big who's reaching down who's stepping down to a next generation and i i don't know i feel god's presence talking about i pray you feel it if you're watching at home or wherever it's like man i want to buy into this god i want to give my life to go big for a move of god a genuine new testament revival where it's all about growing younger and releasing the next generation hey i'd love to pray i don't know what it looks like for you maybe you're at that person who's in the year right laughter maybe god wants to just take you out of that and back to the life of faith god i dare to believe because you said it but i want you to reimagine the purpose of the life of faith it's not so that you can get what you want it's so that you can set up a move of god for the next generation increase blessing favor scale the sound of a wave of a whole lot of people being drawn into a move of god let's pray father we welcome your presence we thank you that you're here god i want to say with people i believe [Music] god i believe may that come out of everyone's spirit i believe i believe in a big god god i break out of the confines of my thinking and these last couple of years gonna start to make room god i start to feel the joy when i hear the sound and the spirit of another generation coming through god we believe we believe we believe for significant encounter we believe for a significant wave of people coming to faith and salvation and god we are going to need some buildings for that and we are going to need strong businesses to be growing and we are going to need significant new ministries but it's all not about us it's for another generation and god we say we welcome that and we we surrender to that may you be exalted is anything too hard for god no nothing is too hard for god god bless you this morning

Channel: Equippers Church

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Id: N_4P8RVvq7o

Length: 32min 44sec (1964 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022