"Leaving Lo Debar" | Guest Speaker Charlotte Gambill

our hope is for you to know god find freedom discover purpose and make a difference after the service begin that process by connecting with a leader and joining one of our many small groups or teams but for now sit back and enjoy this message from our good friend in england charlotte gamble what is up substance make some noise wherever you are at you made it to church my name is pastor carolyn haas and i'm so glad to see all of you could you give a warm welcome to those joining us online and those of us we've got people joining us from campuses and locations all over the world so we love you we're glad you're in church today we have such a special treat we are actually going to hear from one of my favorite favorite preachers her name is charlotte gamble she's from england her and her husband passed her there and i heard her preach this message a few weeks ago and i was like peter we have to share this message at substance so we did some back channel communication we got formal permission and i am telling you church this is a word so i'm asking you lean in get your phone out to take notes or if you're old school write it in the notebook but god is going to speak to you so would you give a warm substance welcome to charlotte gamble i'm ready to preach the word to you today i want to talk to you really about a subject that i think we all can identify with some maybe more than others this morning you'll find this resonates but i want to talk about a season and aspect of our life that we need to know how to navigate and that's the area of the season that i'm calling unfair unfair have you ever said over this past few weeks months you know it's just unfair is it just me that has said that well it's unfair i can't do vacation it's unfair that the plans for the birthday got cancelled it's unfair that i can't hug on all the people i want to hug on it's unfair that i couldn't get to church services it's unfair i'm in a service with a mask on my face have you ever said in this season is just unfair i think we all have used that term and for others it's a lot more serious because in this season some have thrived for example if you have a business that makes hand sanitizers this has been a good season for you right you're doing well right now but for many others this season that they didn't ask for we didn't see it coming it's been unfair it has meant that businesses have struggled it's meant financially people have found themselves in a place they didn't expect to be it's meant relationally our world has shifted and changed and it's the best way i can describe it is it's just unfair you didn't ask for it you didn't want it you didn't see it coming we're just now having to navigate it right and if you're a parent in here and you raised your kids you will know that there's times in your household where your kids will tell you it's not fair right and every parent in here will have said these words back to your children life's not fair we've all said it life's not fair so get used to it buddy life's not fair and it seems a strange thing to talk about but i think we need to talk about it in the church we actually need to talk about the fact that life isn't fair not everybody gets the same start in life not everybody gets the same kind of deal in life some people have to deal with terrible illnesses other people don't some deal with terrible loss other people don't we all have different things we have to navigate and you know god told us that in this life we were gonna have trouble never seen that promise on a fridge magnet not once but it's still a promise it's just not a very popular one but you know he tried to let us know there's gonna be times gonna be seasons when you're gonna have to deal with things that actually just are unfair and you're going to have to find in that place of unfair a language a vocabulary a tenacity of faith that gets you through that season and right now we are surrounded by people as pastor chris reminded us last week people that desperately need to hear the gospel of jesus christ people that need hope in their hopelessness and if we as the church don't know how to navigate unfair how can we help the world and so i want us to consider that in the word this morning because there's something else the good news today is there's something else that is also unfair and the unfair favor of god is the hope that we have in the midst of our hopelessness the unfair grace and kindness and goodness and mercy that followed you when you got out of bed this morning even though you didn't ask for it or deserve it it follows you the bible says why because god in his kindness and in his justice and in his mercy is so over the top generous towards us and it's unfair because we couldn't earn it we don't deserve it and we have to remind ourselves of that when we're in these seasons that we have to navigate in life i read the bible and so many of those that we would say were heroes in the faith to us they had to navigate unfair it's not fair that moses was born in a time when all baby boys were supposed to be murdered it's not fair they had to be on a pat put in a basket and sent away from his family but how many of you know the favor of god navigated where that basket needed to be it's not fair that jay bezzer's mother named him that name jabez his name meant pain imagine that with your siblings your mother calls you hey steve come down for dinner heidi come down for dinner pain get out of your bedroom and come for dinner that's not kind that's not fair that out of all of the siblings you're called pain but i love what jabez did what did he do he went to god and said look my name's not fair so could you do me a favor god and could you enlarge my territory and could you change my name and god says yes i can so i don't know where this finds you today maybe you have had something happened to you that wasn't your fault something happened relationally or circumstantially and you're like it just is unfair well i want to teach you how to live and how to move forward from that place and that place i am calling today lo da ba everybody say lo daba it's just a cool thing to say low debar sounds cool but it was not a cool place it's an actual place that existed a place where people lived it was a town a place where people did life but lo de bar was not an attractive place on zillow to search for a house lodibar was not up there with where you would want to be moving into the neighborhood the name lodibar explains exactly what the place was like lodibar means this a place of no pasture a place of no words and a place of no thing low debar was a place where people didn't sense they had a place to lay their head a place where they felt a sense of security no rest no peace no pasture a place where they didn't feel that they had a voice where their voice had been removed from them that was one of the meanings of lo daba a place where actually there was a disconnection and a dispossession from the things that maybe they once had so now they feel in low debar it is a place of no thing maybe that's a place that you can identify with maybe you entered this year with great hope and great expectation and now you find yourself in a place where you feel there's no pasture the things that i plan for they're not happening the job that i expected to get i never got the promotion never came my business never took off in the way that i thought and you feel like you're living in low daba well i want to talk about someone that did live in lodiba his story is recorded in the book of two samuel and his name is mathibashev mephibosheth lived literally in loeb dubai but that was not where he began his story or his story had such great potential his story was a life that should have looked so different and we find about his story and how it turned literally overnight into samuel far maybe you feel something happened to you and your world literally overnight changed that is methiboshet's story but if there's hope today for mephibosheth there is hope today for you and god did something in this man's life that god will also do in your life and that's what i want us to learn from today but let me show you how his world literally was flipped upside down within just a few hours it says in 2 samuel 4 that jonathan the son of saul had a son so his father mathimsha's father was jonathan and therefore his grandfather was saul now when he was age five news came to him about saul and jonathan from jezreel the news that came to him at age five was that his father and his grandfather had both been killed in battle so suddenly this young boy who doesn't understand what's going on has the most unfair hand dealt to him in life where he's left fatherless he's left without his dad without his granddad overnight that oftenness is enters his world he didn't ask for it he didn't deserve that to happen to him it was not anything he could prepare for but then after that something else happens because now he can't stay in his home because people are coming to try and take over the palace and so now he has to run for his life so the one that was supposed to be in charge and looking after him she picks him up as a young boy and it says she begins to run with him to flee the house and as she runs with him and hurries to leave she drops the boy and he fell and in his fall he became disabled his name was mephibosheth talk about life dealing you an unfair set of circumstances this young man went from a prince to a fugitive he went from able-bodied to disabled he went from living in a palace to actually moving to where he ended up next which was low daba his whole world changed overnight maybe you can relate to that scenario the news you didn't expect the revelation you didn't know the betrayal you didn't perceive the loss that suddenly came out of the blue all of us face those things that can send us to lo de ba so if you are at lo duba or if you know someone who is right now living in lodibar let me help you with some things that you need to know number one is this your status the status that life gives you does not alter the significance within you let me say that again the status that life gives you does not alter the significance within you listen mephibosheth lost his title but he did not lose his value he did not lose his value you need to hear this loud and clear today because in the shaking of the season that we have been in or in the shaking of circumstances that may happen in your life you often realize that you have put your identity in the wrong places you've allowed your status to be attached to the thing that you draw your significance from so being the head of the business makes you feel important being the pastor of the church makes you feel important being the leader in this area makes you feel important and sometimes when those things are stripped from us we realize wow i've been building on this instead of building on the one who all of this belongs to your status that life gives you the label that people give you does not alter the significance and the value within you you might be an ex-addict but that is not who god calls you you might be a single parent but that's not the label he gives you you might be unmarried and wish you were married but that's not how god categorizes you you might have failed in an area but god doesn't call you by the label that other people choose for you your significance does not change because the value inside of you never depreciated and in lo dabao a lot of us have to figure this out in load about many of us have to realize wow i put so much importance on something that actually god doesn't place an importance on listen if status was the finishing defining significance of people in the bible the stories would lead very very differently what about gideon he said well my status is i'm weakest of the weakest of the weakest of the week there was a lot of weeks maybe you feel in this season man i used to feel powerful i used to feel influential i used to feel important but because of what i've gone through i feel weak and then i feel even weaker than weak maybe that's how you're feeling right now but don't let that become the label that you live under because god's favor did not see weakest and weak god's favor said hello mighty warrior gideon's like who you talking to he's like you i know you're letting all these things around you tell you who you are but last time i checked i created you and i know who you are mighty warrior god began to call him in a way that low debar didn't what about mary her status would have been unwed teenage girl that's not a good status to have in the time where she lived and in the neighborhood where she was from but they saw with their human eyes they failed to see heaven's best perspective which was chosen carrier of a savior how wrongly labeled she was by people around her when god had actually called and chosen her i could go on they even labeled jesus carpenter's son so sometimes we have to realize we have been trained by load of our thinking to allow status to become so important and all the time devaluing the significance that is already inside us your job does not tell you if you're significant or not so if you lose your job you need to tell yourself in the morning in the mirror i still have value i still have worth this chapter will change there is a future ahead for me there are good things on the horizon for me don't allow the world's way of labeling to become the way that you view and see yourself i love what god does because when we end up in lodiba when we end up in this place of feeling we don't have significance god begins to rewrite our story and it's always in god's perfect timing and so what god does is god drops on david's mind this question and so we read that david begins to ask this question the timing of it is all god the awareness in david is all god and if god can do this for me chef i want you to know he can do it for you this is how the unfair favor of god works and so david is just walking around the household into samuel 9 and he said is there anyone perchance that i could still show kindness to for jonathan's sake is there anyone from the house of saul anyone out there you know god can put you on someone's mind as you're sat in this room or on a campus right now or watching online god can drop you into the heart of someone and that person is going to start looking for you searching for you because they are sent of god to get you out of low daba and some of you are sat here right now or watching online and god's dropping on your mind someone's name do not ignore it just like you heard last week that might be the very person you're supposed to search and rescue because they've got stuck in low debate and god's dropping them on your mind for you to ring them call them text them and say hey did you know that i want to meet with you see you because your purpose is not over david said is there anyone left and this servant says well actually yeah there's the son of jonathan and he is lame in both feet and so david says well where is he he said oh he's living in a place it's a great place not called lo da ba and david said send for him here's what you need to know god will send for you but that's where you have to respond see some of you god is calling you out of low deba but you have got so used to living in lodibar you think that pajamas are everyday where you used to be up and at them you used to be excited about the future you used to be getting up and now because you can't do life like you normally do something inside you was gone to sleep and i'm here this morning to say wake up spiritually wake yourself up get to the prayer meeting at 6 00 a.m believe god for a change in your environment and circumstances you got to get up jesus will invite you like david was inviting mephibosheth to leave lodibar but the invitation comes from god but the response comes from you just like the guys in the boat the disciples jesus walks by says follow me what comes next is up to them you can stay all your life in this boat or you can believe me that there's something beyond this boat that actually is part of your future here's what jesus didn't do okay guys i just want you to know i'm gathering this group together and here's the criteria and here's the ones that have already been accepted into the program you might want to read their profile see if you like the other disciples i've chosen if you feel that you have similar hobbies feel like you could get along then maybe you could jump on board and follow me it's like a small team so but you know check it out see how you feel no some of you are waiting for the perfect small group there is no such thing and if there was when you join it it won't be perfect anymore right so you just have to sometimes go i'm in i don't even know what comes next i don't know who's at the group i don't know what they're going to do but i'm in why because i can't live in lodiba anymore i am taking my pajamas off [Applause] secondly i want to say this to you low debar may be your location but it is not your final destination please cancel the amazon order for furniture to be delivered to load a bar stop furnishing loader bar you are not staying there it is not your final destination stop inviting your friends to come and live in low debal with you no don't do it so there's a verse in the bible i think we get it twisted sometimes it's found in psalm 23 you know it well it talks about how he makes me lay down in green pastures and same thing it says that when we come to a valley what do we do we walk through the valley god guides us leads us through the valley and he makes us lie down in green pastures i think in some people's bible reading they got out mixed up and they're like i lie down in the valley and i just run by the pastures no you're not supposed to lie down in the valley you're supposed to walk through the valley and you lie down in the pasture so guess what if you're in a place called lodobar where there's no pasture that means no lying down no lying down no lying down your dream no lying down your enthusiasm no lying down your plans no lying down your commitment to the house of god no lying down you have to keep moving when you're in load about you have to do something to tell your heart and tell your soul i'm keeping moving i'm keeping moving some of you have gone on pause in this season like spiritually you're on pause like well i'll move when i know what's next no no no we keep moving because this is a valley and we don't live in valleys so we keep moving we keep praying we keep worshiping we keep giving we keep committing we keep serving god why because we keep moving in the valley because god has green pastures at the other side this is not your final destination i don't know who needs to hear that today but someone needs to be reminded this is not your final destination don't get so familiar so comfortable see the thing about when you live in lodiba is everybody else that's in lodibar has been through something like you so all the conversations are at a low to bar level all the conversations are miserable they are depressing they are full of anxiety they are full of fear and that's why you can't afford to spend all your time in lodibar because you need the conversation that's at the other side you need to have a conversation that tells you i know you lost your job but you know what that happened to me and god gave me a better one you know what i know this is freaking you out right now but i've realized that god's in charge so i'm keeping moving forward those are the conversations you need around you and they don't happen in low down everybody dresses the same in lodabah they all walk around in their slippers and their pjs shuffling around listen i love a good pair of pjs but i had to have a little talk to myself during this whole quarantine season we have been in like charlotte these are not the only clothes in your wardrobe there comes a moment when you have to spiritually say i'm getting dressed put in on the clothes that god said he's picked out for me and put it on the wardrobe and put on the garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair i'm getting my worship on i'm getting my prayer on because this is not where i am staying this is not where i choose to make my final destination so the invite comes methibosheth even though he feels not dressed for the occasion to go to the palace even though he feels like i don't have much to bring he decides to go and he meets david and i want you to know this final point that plays out in this story number three your infirmity isn't your identity but it can be your authority this young man crippled because of something that happened to him up until this point nobody calls him by name when david asks is there anyone from saul's line the response comes there is a lame guy people referred to him by his disability they referred to him by the injury that life had given him it had become his identity he was the lame he was the he was the guy that couldn't walk very well no one used his name and that had so got on him that when he finds himself in front of david he responds to david in a way that tells you his infirmity had become his identity because david begins to tell him hey i know you've been living in lodiba but things are about to change because god put you on my mind so that he could show you how he rewrites your story and so david when he sees mathibashev he says i will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father jonathan and i will restore to you all the land that belong to your grandfather and you will always eat at the king's table i mean this is a good news day this is a whoa what just happened i just went from lodibar to being told i have a seat at the king's table i just went from everything was lost to everything will be restored but watch his response mathibashev bowed down and said what is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me it's amazing how we can allow seasons of bitterness or seasons of betrayal seasons of pain seasons of hurt seasons of loss to become our identity were always known as the one that is offended or the one that lost or the one that was hurt or the one that failed morally we're always known if we allow it the world will keep us in the box attached to us but your affirmative is not your identity but god will flip the script and make it your authority that's exactly what happens in this story because up until this point no one's used his name but let me tell you something when you're invited to sit at the king's table everybody calls you by name nobody's saying hey lame guy do you want to see that's bowing down and saying mephibosheth where would you like to sit mephibosheth can i bring you some food mathibashev is the temperature okay mephibosheth what can i do to serve you everybody had to call him by name because he had a seat at the king's table can i tell you something about his name do you know what the name mephibosheth means mephibosheth means the destroyer of shame all of a sudden the infirmity became his place of authority that he sat at the king's table and every time they said his name it was like destroying the shame that the world wanted to attach to him it was destroying the shame of the accident that happened to him it was destroying the shame that lo daba had tried to put on him every time they said mephibosheth they were saying destroy the shame destroy the shame destroy the shame and i don't know what you've been through i don't know what circumstance you would say it's unfair i know life is unfair but the favor and the goodness and the kindness of god will find you it is already on its way to you god is putting you on people's minds some of you are in the building today on a campus today watching online today and you know without the favor of god coming after you you would not be living where you are right now but god saw you in your load about moment of no pasture no word no thing and he said don't let this become the place you unpack your life for i'm sending my envoy to you and when my envoy comes to you it will invite you to shake that stuff off and begin to come to the king's table somebody say i can't sit at the king's table you don't know what i've done i can't get in the presence of the king i feel so ill-dressed i don't even know if i would actually be able to be in a conversation other than a low debac type conversation but fiber chef had to fight all those things too but i'm telling you the minute he took his seat he was reminded who he really was the minute he sat back at that palace table where he grown up as a young man the minute he stepped in the corridors where he played as a child the minute he got in the presence of the people that he did life around he began to remember i know this place this is the place where i belong some of you just need to get back in the house get back into community get back into prayer get back into serving and you're going to remind yourself all over again i belong here this is who i am he wasn't the lame guy he was methible chef he wasn't the mistake he was chosen so wherever life has put you whatever load the bar looks like for you right now there's an invitation to leave all across the room in every campus it's going to ask you just to close your eyes i'm going to pray over you and then in a moment i'm going to invite those that really feel they need to leave load about today maybe make a decision to serve god today to pray with me god i thank you for our house for our church i thank you for every incredible individual and family represented here at highlands oh god i thank you that you didn't call any one of us to live our life in lodiba so god today i pray there will be a movement a shift those that felt down would get up those that have felt ill dressed would put on the clothing you picked out for them those who have felt cut off would get committed again god i thank you that you are the one that calls us by name child of god beloved chosen daughter son of the king of kings and the lord of lords reminders of that today god remind every single one that needs to know that your favor finds them that it comes looking for them that it seeks them and it calls them out as our eyes are closed if you're in the room today or you're watching online or another campus you say oh man i i need to know god i don't really know him in the way you're talking about i didn't know that he invited me to the table i but i want to know him i want to know whose i am i simply invite you to pray this prayer of salvation of commitment i'm going to say the words out loud you just say them in your heart right there where you are dear god today i choose to follow you i choose to leave my low to bar god forgive me of my sin today i receive your grace today i identify as a child of god in jesus name amen if

Channel: Substance Church

Views: 4,010

Rating: 4.7468352 out of 5

Keywords: substance church, Peter Haas sermon, cool churches, transformation church, sermons by great preachers, sermons on faith, sermons on trusting God, pastor Michael todd, pastor Steven furtick, sermons 2020, sermons on anxiety, sermons on healing, healing meditation, healing scriptures, sermons on fear, Charlotte gambill, Charlotte Gambill sermons, Charlotte Gambill highlands, Charlotte Gambill 2020

Id: JO7sIxl3gi0

Length: 32min 42sec (1962 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2020