Kristene DiMarco - Strengthen Yourself In The Lord | Speaking Moment

[Music] thanks thanks ben um i moved i moved here 11 years ago now and i never thought i would ever follow chris valatin and it's kind of funny why don't we just do that today then that man has actually changed my life um it's funny because we can operate as creatives and as worship leaders we can operate out of kind of hiding behind our giftings and talents right we can be known for what we can do and kind of settle for that and i would never forget him calling out who i was just randomly just me and him in a green room and saying who are you anyway you know and that completely changed my life because i realized that god valued me because of what for who i was not what i could actually do and so oh gosh that's so loud um so i'm going to talk about strengthening yourself in the lord today and let's just pray god i thank you for your presence god i know words are just words unless you breathe on them so we just ask you to come i just ask you to come with spirit of wisdom and revelation in jesus name amen so there's a worship school and there's probably a ton of capable people in here and i would say myself being one of them i have i have giftings i have talents i'd say some of them are hidden i can actually bake cakes and paint on cakes and it's not a class that i teach but i could do it and so there's this thing of capability even as a young kid you are born feeling capable you know i'm born feeling capable i could be superman i could be robin hood i could do whatever it takes to be great i can be noble my seven-year-old my seven-year-old daughter lorelei when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she always says princess and you think like by seven maybe we could develop a career or something you know she's like no princess i'm like you know you're already a princess and she said no you know like a real one who makes rules for other people to follow okay and who am i to crush your dreams we'll just hope that changes and um when i first the first time i ever spoke this message my my little sister text messaged me and said i had this dream and in the dream you were writing this song and it was the song of your life and it was titled you are god and i am not and i'm like yeah it's basically the song of my life is that he is god i am not so even in the midst of everything that i can do really really well he is god and i am not and in that statement should actually rest so much hope and so much peace it shouldn't discourage us that should encourage us that he is god and i'm not praise the lord because when i get discouraged it's usually because i'm looking at my limitations and not his limitlessness so even from a young age i had this need to be strong and to be looked at as noble and tough like a warrior you'd follow into battle at any cost i want to be front of the line i want to be the leader of this army that was who i was as a kid and i would i really did want to be robin hood and i would make bows and arrows out of sticks and the elastic from my underwear and i would just like snip and then pull it out and i'd tie it to sticks and i made some really impressive bows and arrows i think for a seven-year-old and i would i would climb up my garage and i'd jump off of my garage my poor mother who never knew this was actually happening but i would swing from pine branches like i'm robin hood i'm save the world and there's something beautiful about believing in our capability you know there's something beautiful about it but then um i believe there was nothing i couldn't do i was the perfect athletic specimen in my own mind as a seven-year-old and uh so as an eighth grader so fast forward as an eighth grader i joined the niagara falls cross-country team as anybody in here ever ran cross country woo yeah yeah i'm running oh and there's there's nothing like running to show you that you actually have limits you know um they should have a slogan for cross-country like running the great humbler of men and so before i even ran my first 5k race i bought all these sweatshirts that said like athlete don't send a man to do a woman's job and no pain no gain and you know pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit and i you can actually buy them they still are available if you need them or want them and so i'd wear all these sweatshirts and and this is what i wanted and i realized during my very first um one mile race that i had bought all of that very prematurely and i was i was struggling i was i was often so disappointed in my ability to endure a 5k race i mean i wasn't i wasn't horrible if you know anything about um running 5k i could actually run seven seven minute miles three of them back to back and that's you know decent at crank out like i think my best time was the 22-30 and but that just that didn't matter because there was this girl her name out we'll call her cynthia there's this girl cynthia and cynthia would smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and um she'd probably she'd put her last one out on the starting line and then she'd blow past me like i was standing still and i'm like gosh dang it cynthia like you just you smoke so much and still i worked so hard and i bought all these really cool sweatshirts and like i can't even beat you cynthia you and your 19-minute 5k and um you know i wasn't bad but i always felt like i was on the verge of death you know anybody feel that when they run yes amen when i run i feel like i'm on the verge of death yes often everybody and so there's nothing more testing of internal strength and character than giving it all you have and then watching someone blow past you with their important talent and uh disappointment can be an incredible tool to bring you closer to the lord if you respond well right this is how you don't want to respond to disappointment so what i would do when uh after cynthia blew past me and i just started thinking about everything i couldn't do um i just decided you know what like i'm just going to throw my body down these hills like we had this i know it sounds really extreme but this is a true story true life story that i did and um i just want you to know that god can use you and i guarantee you most people in the room have not done this so there's the ski hill in niagara falls and we would have probably four of our 12 races a year at this at the ski hill and our coach had taught us to kind of windmill down this hill like this you know this is so you can pick up as much speed as possible and you're running so i'm like yeah and so i'm so discouraged with my ability at this point that i instead of windmilling down this hill i decide to cartwheel down it and i'm falling and from a distance you probably hear me going and um sometimes i would untie my shoelaces and i'd at one time i i did that and fell and sliced my palm open you know what sharing our weakness is really good sometimes and i a discouraged christine was a injured christine back then yeah disappointment shouldn't cause you to take yourself out of a race it should cause you to look around for something bigger than yourself so you get the idea no matter who you are if you pursue christ there comes this beautiful terrible day where you hit the limits of your ability to go on and you have a choice to make that day either quit or cry out i remember so i graduated high school i ended my illustrious running career and i joined with the call did anybody know the call is yeah i love the call lou engel is really dear to my heart he taught me how to dream that man taught me how to dream but if you know anything about the call you know they're not known for their comfort and their ease you know they're more known for hardcore prayer fasting that kind of thing so this is like right up my alley you know i'm like hardcore cut hand open and i'ma bleed so i graduated high school i joined the call i was living in washington washington d.c then i moved to san francisco with a team and i was i began a house of prayer with seven other people that were around my same age so at the time i was 20 our leader was 18. we this is true life real life story and the rest of them were 21 19 all around there and um so we're starting this house of prayer and um since i was the only worship leader i was leading worship for about six hours my record being 13. i'm not joking i feel like i should get a little more reaction from that but that's cool maybe you guys do that maybe you guys just do that all the time i don't know um yeah so i was on my way to nervous breakdown burnout and there was so many moments i'm in i'm in the house of prayer and i'm like must keep going you know like there's no hills to throw yourself down you know and there's a couple moments where i just i would gesture to the guitar player just keep going keep going and i'd get under my keyboard and i'd just scream and i'd cry like out of such frustration and i can't do this i can't i can't do this and nobody noticed because everybody else was screaming crying too and so it felt appropriate and and i'm like god i just can't do this like i don't i don't have like i don't have what it takes and um it just i remember i remember literally in the middle of a prayer set playing the keys so hard i cracked middle d in half and i had a picture on my old sony camera phone that we won't find that ever but a crack middle d in half and even it would always play at the most inconvenient times randomly you know but the very next week we're joining with another house of prayer and there's this guy we'll we'll come by his real name because he deserves recognition for this and his name was enrique and he was he was playing and he he literally sliced two of his fingers open and for two hours he just played in his own blood and i was like enrique like i just snapped the keyboard key clean in half and here you go you know upstaging me bleeding all over like keep playing in your own blood like that's a better way better story in a life story and you're way more hardcore than i am and i can't believe this is happening and um it was just it was really gross i had to play after him true story i remember going up to the keyboard and and being like what like clean it up enrique clean it up and he goes and so he licks a paper towel he's just like so i did i played it i played for two hours after that [Applause] yes thank you very much thank you so there's nothing more initially devastating to me than to realize i did not have what it takes to be noble to be strong i didn't even really know what nobility and strengths really were i was trying to be these things as i liked how they looked i wanted these things he wanted these things for me because he knew that they would bring me life so i got to this place of baroness where there were no ponds to throw myself into there was no hills to go cartwheeling down and to give up but i got to this place where the only eyes on me were his eyes and i think a lot of times god brings us to those spots of baroness where you're like i'm so hidden if i fell off the face of the earth who would care and chris chris was talking about it in his message he's like i'll tell you who cares the the people that have gone before you and the people that are coming after you those are that's who cares and even if you feel completely invisible there's still great cloud witnesses watching you and there's people coming after you and that is i got so i got to this place of bareness it was a time of life i felt most unseen by earth but most seen by god and i lived i literally i lived in this crappy nine-bedroom flat on hate street you guys ever heard of hate street hate in ashbury so i lived on hay street i lived right next to the amoeba records and i mean this place was rough i um just just in passing i'll just mention that i found a human placenta in my refrigerator we're gonna leave that there for you to think about and how i found it and everything and it was real i told that story a lot but i loved the shock value it had so fun um so no like barely nobody really knew we existed except for because it was lou's strategy like we don't want to advertise that there's this house of prairie in san francisco we just want to keep it secret and we want to make sure it's like strategic for the lord and what he's doing and so we even felt i even felt more unseen because nobody knew what that we were doing you know we're just we're just believing that god moves at the sound of our voices we're just there we're just believing that our prayers matter and um and i remember just thinking who am i doing this for his invitation to greatness might be in the hidden place or no one can see but it has eternal ramifications so you can imagine someone who has been cutting corners and the hill throwing and all of that stuff and god just says and the secret place looks at me and says i want you for my army i want you for my army i'm like why you know i'm the one that's crawling under keyboards remember you want enrique who's cutting his his hands open and bleeding all over the place like it's probably what gideon felt in the bible when he's he's hiding and god's like i pick you he's like what you got the wrong guy i'm just here hiding i'd prefer to stay out of all conflict but i could feel when god speaks something how many you can feel kind of this discomfort of this discrepancy between who god must think you are and who you're like but i'm this did you not know that i was this and i realized i needed to change the way i've been thinking about myself or live outside the will of god i know that sounds really extreme but this is the truth you should feel the weight of the call of god in your life this is ultimate truth this is reality this is who you are what when chris is talking about are you living from earth to heaven or heaven to earth you know i like to think of that too it's just i want to constantly be living from heaven to earth i want that it i want god's reality to trump my own so while i was living in san francisco i had this dream and in the dream this uh this grand piano is being delivered to my flat 9 bedroom placenta finding flat on h street so this grand piano this this guy is at the doorbell and he's ding dong ding dong and i look out the window in my dream and there's this massive grand piano right on h street and i'm thinking oh dude you got the wrong house there's no way you're getting that up the stairs and he's not looking at me he just keeps pushing the doorbell when i woke up i knew that this grand piano represented my call and god the holy spirit spoke to me and said this isn't going away this is your call and you need a bigger house you need you need to figure out what reality you're going to live in yours or mine you need to figure this out because this is who you are this grand piano is who you are is not it's not an upright it's not even a baby grand this is who you are but you don't believe it and i need you to believe it this is where i get in trouble with some theologians god doesn't need you i get it god will accomplish his great purpose with or without me but the thing is that god wants so badly to use me but he needs me to say yes and he made me in such a way that he needs me to say yes he gave me free will it is extreme i think you should feel that weight of the fact that you matter i don't think i could look at anybody in this room and be like do you want to not matter really do you want to be insignificant yeah yeah i think so no we we aren't it's not even in our in us to just be like i'm gonna be insignificant hooray so happy that's what i that's what i'm doing here on earth um he uh bill said yesterday just he said he has a habit of asking us to do the impossible so we have to depend on him to be obedient and what my heart ran into in that moment was that i was for his making and not my own he was just looking for this yes and a lot of times our yeses are like yes you know yes sir yes but i believe the holy spirit runs with stuff like that how many of you know that he's like i heard it we're going pack your bags you know he's like i got it we're going he was just looking for that yes there's no other place i've found besides the gospel that has more good news for the week it's just so amazing and i think about that girl that just cynthia blew past and and i just decided i'm just gonna throw my body down hills because what even matters how does it even matter anymore cynthia won it doesn't matter but god looked at that person that person and said i pick you i pick you for my army you let girl screaming underneath her keyboard saying i can't do this anymore and he's like i pick you i pick you and um second corinthians 12 9 he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness therefore i will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so the power of christ may rest upon me and because the more and more i get i get encountered with the strength and the power of god the more what it creates in me is is this thing that i want i want to tell you how weak i actually am without him there's something in me that just says we you can do this too and the fact that even if you feel like i've fallen short so many times how is this even possible i'm like look at my life let me tell you how many hills i threw my body down like i mean we're talking not just physically i'm talking to emotionally we're i'm talking all this stuff that that i've i felt like i was disqualified but god completely qualified me because of the gospel the good news of the gospel there's no other news that is better for the week than the gospel that that let the weak say i am strong that the poor say i'm rich because of what the lord has done while i was in san francisco i wrote a lot of overly dramatic songs as you might imagine being in the house of prayer but there is this one kind of stood the test of time where it says oh the wonderful cross where all my weakness has a place to die oh the wonderful cross and your power i come alive isn't that just such great news just the thing is that we all have these these things where we think i'm falling short here i'm falling short there but i'm telling you there's a cross where all your weakness has a place to die and stay dead so early in the mornings early in the mornings in san francisco i would crawl out of my hole of a bedroom i i picked for some reason i'm like you know what i'm going to pick the room without windows that seems about right i'm gonna pick this room without windows that should stave off the depression and uh yes yes lord for you i will and uh so i'd crawl out of my my little hole and i put on my running shoes and i'd walk up twin peaks into pieces like these these two little hills basically in the back of in the back of san francisco and took about 35 minutes to get up twin peaks and i'd get up there i'd walk up there not run done with running i'd walk up there and one particular morning as i'm walking up i would try to spend time with the lord and he said i want to give you a martyr's view of the city and i'm like great i'm ready i knew this day would come where you kill me on top of this mountain i knew this day would come i knew what come i'm ready i'm ready i got my the right pants on i got everything i'm ready for you to slay me here this is what i've been waiting for put me out of my misery and uh so i get up there and i'm he's to give me a martyr's view of the city i get up there and it's foggy it's windy and if you've ever been there there's there's days where the view is just beautiful and you can see everything for miles but this particular day was just foggy and swirly and fog's rolling around and everything and i there was no physical view but i heard the holy spirit say that question whose reality do you want to live in yours or mine because yours and mine are in conflict with each other because i see you as a mighty warrior and you don't see yourself like that it's going gideon again in the well and god's like mighty warrior huh yes who me and are you ready to surrender your view for mine uh somehow all these questions seemed harder and if god were to just strike me down on the mountain i'm like oh this seems really hard like i know your reality requires me to believe and to let go of a lot of self-doubt let go of a lot of um the discouragement that causes me to sabotage because i need to let go of these things i need to let go of my right to quit you know you have a right to quit everybody in here has a right to quit and i and the holy spirit's asking you can you give that to me during that time i had this jason upton song playing in my really really trashy mp3 player this was like so i mean no i ipods really and it says i don't have the power i don't even have a clue i don't know all the answers i don't even know a few but if if i were really honest and the truth were known of me it might sound a little funny but this is what my prayer would be i don't know what to do but my eyes are on you i don't know what to do but my eyes are on you i lift my eyes toward the heavens i tune my ear to your command help me boast in my condition lord you're the god and i'm the man there's that peace again that i'm for his making and all he needs is that yes yes garcia lewis says every story of christian conversion is a story of a blessed defeat so all my desire to be strong on my desire to be noble to be unshakable we're from heaven i just had yet to discover how my life was to collaborate with heaven to get there how heaven and wow jesus was going to help me get to this place where i knew i was called to be strong i knew i was called to do incredible things i knew i was called to be significant but i needed the collaboration of heaven to get me there that's how i was created one of the first things that god said to me when i crumbled into strength that day and said yes i said yes your reality god he's like you know what you're not one who shrinks back hebrews 10 39 and i'm like okay okay god i'm not one who shrinks back okay uh you know how many hills i threw myself down how many walls i ran into you know how many keyboards i've crawled underneath and how many m m's i've eaten on liquid fasts like a lot guys so many m m's it's the dark corners of the church but god's like hey you you with the eminem packet you're not the one who strings back and i'm like oh good god praise god because i thought i was and you know when jesus died and rose again it says i became an heir of christ and because of him i am inherently good i am inherently noble i am inherently strong it was one of the best news the best things i've ever learned because my personality type is highly profes perfectionistic i guess you could say and uh we're almost always like we could be better it could be better it could be better it could be better and uh and for god just to look at me and say you are inherently good i'm like what i'm gonna try my whole life to be good and i'm just good anyway i mean what great news that is how much peace just rolled over me the fact that because i because i'm an heir of christ i have inherited his goodness romans 8 16 says the spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are god's children and if we are children then we are heirs heirs of god and co-heirs with christ if indeed we suffer with him that may also be glorified with him what good news that is because there was one desire that that stuck with me since childhood was be strong to be noble to be good and i felt capable at one point in my life and then i got disappointed and then i was like who am i doing this for anyway and then the call of god came out came to my life and i realized i can't do that i realized that in my own strength i couldn't do that but then god was like but there's jesus there's jesus and because he died and he rose again you have become an heir and you now inherit everything that he is you're inherently good you're inherently noble you are inherently strong this is such a a good thing because religion tells you the opposite of this and this is the best news i've ever heard in my life because it literally gave me peace it gave me peace it's um there's this song i'm gonna try to get it do you know well you know who stephanie is right okay so she has that song called heroes oh wait no that's amanda wait wait i'm gonna get this song right um my weakness is my honor not my shame that one and i didn't understand what that was i don't i didn't like weakness you know for a really really long time and i'm not even saying that i'm like here's weakness my buddy um i'm just saying that i feel like i understand what what paul was saying when he's like therefore i boast all the more in my weakness because he died and he gave me himself he died and he seated me up there and now he he just handed me everything that i ever strived for he just handed me everything that i ever ever wanted i am an heir of god and co-heirs of christ you just say that over yourself i am an heir of god in co-heirs with christ isn't that amazing so his strength is now mine i wonder how fast i can run in heaven you know we'll see you cynthia bye cigarettes caught up to you it's not a real name it's okay i'm just thinking i'm like what what does christine how fast is christina's spirit how fast i know my muscles are big but how fast um when uh i in closing i just wanted to read something to you but i wrote out i wrote out that feeling of what it felt like to come to the end of myself and then and then be met with jesus and be met with him and i'll just read this to you and then i'll pray for you i remember the feeling like it was yesterday coming to the very end of myself arriving at the end of all my earthly ability i was very aware that though i had done everything right though i had not given up my own perseverance was not ever going to be enough to get me across that void that dark divide between myself and all that i needed to live i heard the gospel preached and i remember much more vividly what it also felt like for the name and the blood of jesus to be enough in that moment to watch as his body was laid down for me like a bridge to that life i watched as my end became my beginning in him the name and blood of jesus giving me a limitless life in exchange for my limits i in no way save myself that day not a drop of my own blood or strength built me that bridge to eternal life it was the love of my heavenly father giving up his only son to get me close to him be aware of anything that says it was you or somehow saved you there is only one who has overcome death in its entirety and through jesus only will you ever and i ever do the same and this the gospel is just great news not for just salvation but for life not just for salvation but redemptive life on earth to fulfill all that is in our hearts to do lou engle used to have us pray this prayer over ourselves jesus do not let me confine myself to a life of insignificance because now because of what jesus did the only thing that stands between me and the call that is on my life is me it isn't the devil it isn't the people around you it is what do i choose your reality god or do i choose mine and i'm telling you today there's strength enough to choose his reality to choose his call to open the door and somehow get that grandpa inside so can you stand with me or just i'm just going to pray over you so it's the last day last full day i consider it an honor to be one of the last voices that you hear as you leave i hope you remember everything i said well jesus i i pray for every single last soul in this room i pray for the gigantic callings that are in this room and i pray that self-doubt and all that stuff will bow its name to the name of jesus i pray that we will not settle for less than who we actually are i pray pray this with me right now jesus do not let me confine myself to a life of insignificance amen yeah thanks guys

Channel: WorshipU by Bethel Music

Views: 57,170

Keywords: Kristine Dimarco, Bethel Music, Bethel Church, Elevation Worship, Elevation Chruch, Bethel, Bethel Sermon, Speaking Moment, Strengthen Yourself, Personal Development, Motivation

Id: Als9JeAp_8U

Length: 36min 32sec (2192 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020