Lose The Leaves - Pastor Stephen Chandler

mark chapter 11 [Music] verse 12 and it reads colombia y'all ready baltimore let's do this those online now the next day somebody say the next day when they had come out from bethany he being jesus was hungry about to find out a million jesus was hangry and seen from afar a fig tree somebody say a fig tree somebody just say that's me fig tree having leaves he went to see if perhaps he would find something on it when he came to it he found nothing but leave somebody say nothing but leaves for it was not the season for figs in response jesus said to it let no one eat fruit from you ever again his disciples heard it skip over to verse 20. read this it says now in the morning as they passed by they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots peter remarked and said to him rabbi look the fig tree which you cursed is withered away so jesus answered and said to him have faith in god for surely i say to you whoever says to this mountain be removed and be cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart but believes that those things he says somebody say those things he says those things he says how many people know that prayer is good prayer is amazing prayer is important prayer pushes back the enemy prayer happens every saturday at 9 00 a.m you should come to prayer somebody said amen prayer is good but sometimes say the message and you have to work this out in your own theology sometimes prayer is lazy because sometimes prayer is us wanting god to do something that our faith should do and when we put it on god if he doesn't do it we can say he hasn't answered our prayer we don't have to face the fact that maybe my faith didn't produce it he didn't say whatever you pray he said whatever you say will be done you will have whatever he says here comes prayer therefore i say to you whatever things you ask when you pray believe that you receive them and you will have them father god we're grateful we're thankful for this moment of miracles this isn't church this is an encounter between heaven and earth god you're here you're in you're colombia baltimore and bwi every living room every kitchen every car that's tuning in god you've come to move in our midst demonstrate your power and god we say half your way in the mattress name of jesus we pray somebody shout amen amen and amen we are starting a brand new series today called mature mature come on say when somebody say mature yes what does that mean it means i'm a jar kind of sometimes it depends on how you catch me depends on my thumb hurts or not my wife will tell you i'm the biggest baby when i'm not feeling well like a three year old but i'm a grown man when i'm not in pain so it's all the way good we're telling a series called mature is talking about what it means to be mature in christ and before we do i know you're getting settled you're pulling out your notes to take notes and all that i do need you to scream two more times and then i'll preach y'all ready here's the first time to scream so as you know over the last four weeks three weeks ago was welcome home sunday and our focus over the last four weeks was helping people who have not found a home and say hey union church can be your home and more importantly if you haven't found a savior jesus is looking for you watch this in the last four weeks 133 people have surrendered their life to jesus have made a decision that i am going to become a follower come on somebody celebrate as if someone's life was transformed that's a golf clap and y'all chilling that's all right i'm gonna give you an opportunity don't respond with that weakness on this one from the beginning of this year 1166 people have made a decision to follow christ have crossed from death into life hear me that is why we exist as a church people that were lost that are now found people that were dead that are now alive in jesus somebody say amen i've said it a few weeks ago and you know it our church is one of the most diverse churches on the planet we have over four different generations that are represented here at union church and it's not just age diversity but culture every ethnic background and consonant is represented and all that other good stuff but hear me the diversity is not just age and ethnicity the diversity is in people's walk with christ at union church we have people that are in every single stage of their journey with christ we have people at union church that you ain't saved i'm like oh shout out about that you shouldn't but you're not i know you're not your mama knows you're not but it's all good we're glad you're here hear me union church is a church where you don't have to believe before you belong it's the place where as you're working your faith out as you're figuring out what you believe still come this is not a place where you're going to be judged this is not a place where you're going to be looked down on this is not a place where you're going to say why don't you have it together yet hear me nobody here has it all the way together we're all in pursuit in process somebody say i'm in process so don't test me in the parking lot because i'm in process and i might process all over you so just stay out of my way we have people that haven't come to christ yet we have people that have been saved for two weeks for three weeks for 10 weeks we have babes in christ we have people that have been walking with god for some time now and then we have some people that they haven't just walked with god they've proven god hear me there's a difference between walking with god and proving god walking with god is hey i've read in my word that god is a healer proving god is hey god has healed me walking with god as i know that he's a provider proving god is let me show you where he has provided for me in my life i'm not telling you a bible verse i've memorized i'm telling you a bible verse that has come to pass in my life you can't shake my faith you can't wrestle with my face i don't care what the archaeological digs you go on and which bones you bring up i have seen the goodness of the lord in the land of the living somebody say process and just as a natural baby grows in maturity so us in faith we must grow in maturity you're not born a super saint by the way there's no such thing as a super saint we're all growing in our maturity now here's the problem if our understanding and our mindset of discipleship is this my goal is to be like jesus then it doesn't matter how long you've been saved you ain't there yet come on help me preach i'm having fun today look at somebody next to you just tell you ain't there yet come on come on just just be ignorant just just you've been wanting just tell you you ain't there yet you're on your way you're on your way you're moving you're processing you're progressing you ain't jesus and because we are not fully formed to christ by the way you will never be there until you make it to eternity there's always more growth that god wants to do in our life here's the problem some of us think that we've arrived because our goal was never to be like jesus our goal was only to outrun our past some of us when we got saved we got saved at rock bottom and we were so exhausted with the drama so exhausted with the wretchedness so exhausted was drinking ourselves to sleep and crying ourselves to sleep and all that that we were running from our only focus was i want peace i want joy i want to get away from that the problem is if that's your motivation as a christian at some point you will get to a place of peace at some point where you get where you don't even remember being ratchet because it was so far ago you're like i don't even remember that so you look you look at pictures and you look at yourself and you don't even recognize yourself because it was so long ago it seems like a distant life you will get to a place where you have more than enough and you can be generous on every single occasion and if your only goal was peace you'll stop there you feel like i'm good no you're not like jesus you're just not ratchet anymore some of us our goal is not to be like jesus our goal is just to be better than come come on come on now there's things they won't tell you in church everybody has that person that they judge i don't care who you are i don't care how same you think you are you have that person you just like they struggle with this and they be cussing their kids out and hate this at least i'm not and we feel good about ourselves because we're not like some of y'all could put that name right there right now here's what paul said he said you're in error because you compare yourself by yourself another human being is not my competition and it's not my comparison we look up to generals in the faith like bishop or pastor ron or bishop jakes or or tony evans or bill you know all these different type of people but hear me even the great men and women of the faith they are not our goal jesus is and because jesus is my journey of faith my journey of maturity should never you ever heard the saying that age and maturity travels together but sometimes age travels alone you know you can get older but not more mature come on i know some of you are what we consider older and it'll take you a bit but go back to your childhood do you remember the moment that you realized that not every adult was mature you remember that moment maybe you were 12 maybe you were nine that moment where you realized they are five times older than me but i'm pretty sure i'm more mature than they are i remember my mom i was 12 years old i was at the dmv with my aunt in tallahassee florida paris thought it'd be a good idea to send us to florida for the summer it was a anyway but um lord help us it's in this dmv the air conditioned broke i mean his country is hot everybody's miserable and we're sitting there for hours waiting for her to change her driver's license or whatever it may be and this woman gets up and i don't mean to be judgmental but it's what i do for a living she um she just looked she looked like life had gotten the best of her i'm not gonna lie she looked like she got in a fist fight with life and life one and lester i mean she just you know some people you just you know you look to me you don't look like what you've been through some people do look like what they've been through she gets up and she walks over to the vending machine and she takes out one of them dollars that looks like it's the last one she got she puts it in the vending machine and i remember what she got doritos m ms or whatever but the vending machine started to turn and that thing got right about to drop and it got stuck and this woman she was probably i don't know i was 12 so you know for me old people at 12 like 35 i don't know how old she was i just know bruce lee had nothing on her she started going up this i mean throwing hay makers of that vending machine i mean kicking it shaking and she's cussing the vending machine cursing it from the roots up security dragged her out and i'm like oh that's how adults act okay i'm good here at 12. i sometimes you can get older but not more mature and the harsh difficult reality is some of us can sit in church for decades but not mature in our faith hebrews chapter six verse one here's what paul said about maturity he said therefore leaving the elementary teachings about the christ here's what paul said he said i'm tired of preaching the basics he said i'm tired of preaching the baby lessons over and over again he said no we need to move on to maturity he said not laying again a foundation now i've got to set you up because last service he looked like pastor there was nothing to shout about this is nothing to shout about so we're going you're gonna be all right you good he said here's what the basics are the foundation is the repentance from dead works faith towards god instruction about washington another translation said baptisms by the way do you know there's not one baptism there's three there's baptism in salvation there's baptism in water and then there's the baptism of the holy spirit this word washings is plural it says laying on of hands repents from dead works faith towards god instruction of washington laying on his about the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment paul said here's what the basics of our faith is you need to be able to theologically explain how the laying on of hands works he said here's the basics you need to help people understand how there is no more works that can get you in a relationship with god what's the whole point of reading i'm looking at paul and i paul that's not elementary paul that ain't basic i'm a preacher and i preached but i don't know if i could totally explain eternal judgment i don't got that one all figured out of revelations i've read revelations like eight times i think i need eight more times before i understand the white horse and the dragon the tongue and here's what paul was saying he said hey hey hey hey hey hey hey this is something that we have to grow in guys but like it doesn't happen just through osmosis it doesn't happen through just sitting in a church like we have to be intentional about i want to become more like christ every single day this passage that we were reading jesus had just rode into the city of jerusalem it's called the triumphant entry it's when he was on the donkey and they began to scream and shout and said hosanna glory to god in the highest they took palm branches and they put it on the ground and they took their cloaks off and they let them ride in and after all that would happen jesus was hungry and he was tired and they were making their way over to where they were going to spend the night it says as jesus was walking it says he saw a fig tree with fig leaves on it a tree with leaves now for the sake of time let me just give you this revelation every time you see a tree in the bible it represents a person the bible says in psalm chapter 2 that we will be like trees planted by streams of living water it talks about the trees of lebanon it's referring to people so jesus looks at this person prophetically he looks at this tree and he sees leaves and the bible says that he's hungry so he walks up to the tree to see if the tree has anything to nourish him here's a side point jesus actually desires something from you you actually have something that brings jesus joy that brings him fulfillment that brings him purpose your worship your praise your relationship your intimacy with god your desire to partner with him in the advancing of the kingdom he is not just an island on himself saying i don't need you he doesn't need us but he wants us so he walks up to the street it says he looks for figs and he sees no figs it was a beautiful tree it was a tree that was full of leaves it just had no fruit i don't know what happened to jesus i don't know if he skipped breakfast and lunch and it was dinner time but for some reason jesus was hangry and he looked at this fruitless tree that is beautiful and has all these leaves and he said be cursed could you imagine the disciples may no one ever eat from you again peter was like gosh it's good i can just imagine the moment because when it all went down nobody said anything you remember with your mama when you were young and when your siblings got wild out it was the quietest ride home ever i'm invisible i'm invisible you can't see me the disciples were like okay let's not talk to jesus today clearly he's having a bad day they walked by the next day and the tree was completely withered i'm reading this and i'm like holy spirit you gotta help me why'd you get so ticked off why did you curse the truth here's what i really don't understand jesus cursed a tree that had no figs and it wasn't even fig season the bible says it wasn't even the season for fruit the tree was not supposed to have fruit now i'm confused why are you so angry at the tree and got no fruit and his name was supposed to have fruit as i did some research here's what i discovered columbia that that fig tree was the type of tree that naturally produced fruit before it produced leaves if you know kind of in dc they have the cherry blossoms and all this other kind of stuff there's all these different trees and plants that they'll blossom flowers and then the leaves will come in second well this fig tree was the exact same way it was designed by god to have fruit first leaves second so when jesus saw that it had leaves and knowing that the leaves should come after the fruit he said because there's leaves there better be fruit and if there's leaves before there's fruit this is out of order somebody say preach it already here's god's love a desire for our life as a believer that we produce fruit before we look the part amen can i talk for a second the only problem is i don't know if church really cares what you produce i think church only cares about how you look and because we're church we've been taught to look saved to talk saved to dress safe to to respond saved uh um how you doing i'm so blessed i'm too blessed to be stressed well them shopping bags under your eyelids tell me that you you stressed you may be blessed but brother you stressed god is good all the time and what happens is we learn church you learn when to shout you learn when to say amen you learn when to say god is good you learn when to post a little bible verse online and let everybody know you're right on track with your bible reading plan even though you're 60 days behind just like your past is and all that [Applause] we learn to look the part and the bible says that jesus cursed that tree and here i said god you got to help me out he said here's why he said that was out of order he said it's fruit first leaves second and he said anything that is out of order causes chaos and confusion and he said wherever there is chaos and confusion people cannot see jesus he said i can't have people walking up on a tree that has leaves and no fruit because they're going to be confused about the creator that made it and here's just my thought i'm wondering are we having a bunch of christians in our country and in our world where we have the leaves of salvation just not the fruit of salvation so i know you just bought a union sweatshirt and i'm so glad you did and you're wearing your sweatshirt all proud and your baseball cap everywhere you go but i'm just wondering do we have a hat that says union but no heart that has joy are we posting stuff online that says god is good but crying ourselves to sleep every night from worry of how's this gonna turn out here's the thing that god said he said i need you to produce it before you demonstrate it watch this if he had walked up to that tree and it had no leaves and no fruit jesus would have left it alone he's not concerned about your process you're allowed to be in process he said i don't want you to live a faith that you've learned i want you to live a faith that you've experienced genesis chapter 2 verse 16. you remember the god of eden god makes this beautiful garden for adam and eve and he said i'm going to come this is a place of relationship this is a place where i want to be with you every single day jesus said i'm going to come down i'm going to walk with you jesus he ain't like the heat sees i'ma come in the cool of the day i ain't gonna come with hi he's outside it's humid i'm gonna mess with my hair i ain't gonna do that but but i'll come down in the cool of the day so here's my only rule in verse 16 and the lord commanded the man saying every tree of the garden you may freely eat but there's one tree you can't eat from it's the tree of the knowledge somebody say knowledge knowledge of good something good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat it you shall surely die now here's what i've discovered baltimore we read the bible but we superimpose what we've been trained not what it actually says so here's what i promise you most people think that that verse said most people think that the verse said god put adam and eve in the garden he said you could do whatever you want you can eat from any tree just don't eat from the tree of evil i want you to eat from the tree of life most of us think that we put that he put a good tree and a bad tree an evil tree and a tree no no no he said i don't want you to eat from the tree hear me of knowledge let's talk about this what's wrong with knowledge what's wrong with education what's wrong with enlightenment what's wrong with learning something he didn't say the tree of the knowledge of evil he said the tree of the knowledge of good i'm a god didn't want you to learn what was good huh charlie i mean i mean he wants me to be good right you know he said i don't want you to know about good and evil i want you to know me he said i want your faith to come out of a relationship with me not from an understanding of rules because if all you know are rules your faith will be intellectual it will be learned it will not be experienced and so many of us i don't mean to be up in your living room but so many of us have an intellectual faith where we just know good people do this and bad people do this and if i want to be good i need to do this and if i'm bad i need to do this so every time i do this i feel bad about myself anytime i do this i feel good about myself and hear me if you are living a good and evil knowledge-based faith your life will forever be a wrestle struggle and surrender to sin because knowledge was never enough to empower right living you know where right living comes from i so love my savior that i don't want to do anything that disappoints him or upsets him or lets him down so i don't know all that lets him down but whenever i figure it out imma walk away from it because he is the one that i desire i'm living from the tree of life not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can i help you out if you're struggling with sin it's not sin's problem it's relationship problem you're struggling with gossip you're struggling with lying you're struggling whatever you're struggling with if you're struggling with sin it's not because you don't want to do good it's not because you don't desire to be good paul one of the greatest apostles he said the good that i want to do is that i don't know he said the exact ratchet thing i said i will never do again he said that's what i end up doing hear me right living doesn't come from understanding what's right and wrong right living comes from being so in love with god that you said god whatever it is that pleases you that's what i want whatever you desire you remember puppy love back in the day when you first started dating and you started liking movies that you used to make fun of your friends over liking just cause she liked it you sitting there watching the notebook like a punk crying at the titanic and all that kind of stuff just because you fall in love with what the person you love loves god said i want you to learn a bunch of rules i want you to fall in love with me here's the thing jesus was okay with the tree not having fruit because it wasn't the right season jesus is okay with you not being a perfect christian because you're in process the key is that we just need to be in process just as a natural child when they're born there's a process there's a childhood that infancy and that in that infant stage is when the child is establishing the foundation of their life from zero all the way up to about 17 18 that's when a child is discovering their their faith their foundation their discipline honor obedience that's where the foundation of a child's life is established from 18 probably up to about 35 that's that young adult stage that's that stage where you're not just discovering morals and character but you're discovering your own gifting and ability and you're you're blossoming in all that god has placed inside of you and you're beginning to develop who he has made you to be then you have adulthood from 35 up to 50 60. i don't know you could plan somewhere around there but but that's harvest season that's the season where you begin to reap all those seasons of discipline all those seasons of stewardship all those seasons of pouring into something that's the season when you begin to receive and then you have that season of 60 plus that senior adult where you're no longer thinking about your harvest but you're now thinking about generations you're now beginning to think about when i pass on i want to make sure that my impact on earth touches my children's children's children's children that this might be a parenting message along with a discipleship message one of the problems is sometimes people skip stages they don't learn morals character and discipline as a child so now you got to learn it as a young adult and a lot of young adults you're 22 and you want to harvest when you should be sowing so you're buying cars that you can't afford and you're trying to move into neighborhoods that are outside of your league and what you're doing is you're eating your seed so when you get to harvest season at 45 and 55 there is no harvest to be had and then because you miss the harvest season you're trying to harvest from 60 plus so when you should be thinking about the next generation and who's coming behind you and who you can sow into you're only somebody say there's a process just like there's a natural process there's a spiritual process there's a season when you're a babe in christ and hear me be a babe it's okay to not have it all together i was watching they don't make tv like they used to i was watching living single back i mean years back in the day i think that gut show was made by god but anyway you never heard it before google it it's one of the classics but khadijah she was going to church you're going to church for the first time she went down to a thrift store she bought a big old bible and she said i can't go to church with a new bible because they don't know i never read it before so she takes this big old thrift store by when she runs it over a couple times to the car she rips a couple pages out she she's just coloring random things like my bible gotta look like i've read listen if you've never read a bible come to church with your brand new bible that looks like it's never been open at least you're here at least you have one at least you're looking it's all right to be obey here's what it's not all right to do it's not all right to pretend like you've arrived when you have not arrived don't put on the leaves before you have fruit and here's my promise to you you attended church that we're all right with you not having leaves as long as you're on the way to producing fruit young i was preaching easter sunday and up it was probably my favorite sunday ever and somebody cussed in the middle of the service i mean everybody's saying amen amen oh that is good i said that's the type of amens i want sometimes [Applause] i said it is good isn't it they was just like this is good i don't know what to say in church i just know they shout back to this is good listen that's okay just don't be saying that after coming to church for three years but you've been in your first sunday you concussive church that's just perfectly okay i was preaching this other study all this happened this year by the way i was preaching this other sunday i nearly got a contact high there was so much marijuana i could smell from the front world i just i'm like i don't know if anything i'm preaching is getting through but i'm so glad you're here you are lit right now but if you they're in church they're here in the hope of god this is where people need to be and it's all right if you don't have any leaves just don't fake because if you try to pretend like you have it all together you'll skip the process here's the thing about being a babe in christ and don't worry i got three points i give them to you in three minutes we gonna get out here on time he preaching is a long intro he ain't going to point number one yeah he's about to mature us all in one day is that what we're about to being a babe in christ and by the way that's what we're gonna do next four weeks today's about being a baby in christ next week we're gonna talk about being a young adult in christ an adult in christ and his senior adult in christ so it's gonna be a great series of player but here's the thing about being a babe in christ this is the season when your foundation is being laid can i just can't just talk to you for real for real but some of us grew up in churches where we had to look more safe than we were and we had to act safe even though we we were barely saved you out there faking tongues and you even know what you're saying so you're just like about a honda but i bought a suzuki ow you just faking they're bucking can we just be real for a second you know that wasn't the holy ghost when you fell you just you you just you just want to make the prophet feel good you didn't want to be the one person that didn't catch the holy ghost come on you you don't lie to me you fell out on your own that wasn't jesus but some of us grew up in places where we had to look the part before we were actually the part here's what happened you skipped being a babe in christ and here's the thing about being a babe it's the foundational season and you don't get to skip putting in a foundation the problem is a faulty foundation is never exposed in good seasons it's not until you put pressure on that foundation that you find out what the foundation is made of and hear me i've discovered that you can walk with christ for 10 years before a loved one passes away you can be saved for 20 years before you have a financial you can go some time before pressure gets applied to your life and it's not until the pressure gets applied that you realize i can speak in tongues but i don't have the basic foundation of my faith and i'm not able to make it through this season listen there's nothing wrong with being a baby if you're a babe in christ hear me if you're a babe in christ just don't skip that season because if you'll skip it it'll come back to hurt you three quick thoughts three quick thoughts about being a babe in christ the first thing is this i must be born again this going this is going to be so basic this is going to be so lame as you can be like huh i knew that i must be born again we we did child dedication last week and i was looking at a platform old baby's getting dedicated listen union church is going to grow we're going to grow by hook or by crook we're gonna make members or we're gonna find members but we're gonna look like y'all been busy through this pandemic it was just as if we couldn't go nowhere ain't no vacation somebody's gonna party at home anyway i'm with you i made one too anyway if you see everybody that's having children now especially with instagram social media all kinds of stuff people get really creative on how they announce the gender of their baby there's all these different you know you shooting cannons in the sky and balloons popping and all that my wife when we have my son roman he's like i want to do one of those and i know you like golf she got a golf ball that had blue dye in it we went out to driving range and she takes the slow motion video and i swing the club and a golf ball explodes and all this blue powder goes off we posted online oh my gosh it's a boy like you're going to name him steven no no stephen jr it's my name get your own name i made someone this name i'm gonna give you my name it's not that easy go do your own so here's what happened when we announced to the world that we were having a son everyone's like wow it's a boy congratulations we're excited for you hope he looks like his mama hope he looks like his dad you know what nobody said nobody said where is he nobody said can i see him nobody said can i hold him because why because everybody knows that there's a gap between conception and birth when you announce a conception everybody knows there's a process before it comes to life there's the moment when you're impregnating but there's a moment when you give birth and they're 10 months apart and during those 10 months you're you're you're incubating that baby you're nourishing that baby you're taking them vitamins and the prenatals and you're going in every four weeks for a sonogram when you get closer it's every two weeks they're making sure that the growth is happening the way it's supposed to happen but the birth has not taken place yet do you know faith can grow in you but you not be born as it is in the natural so it is in the spiritual you can have faith growing in you but it has not yet birthed salvation y'all know how i preach we're gonna shout amen at the end can i get up in it just for one second there's a lot of people that we call say that they're not saved all they've had is the word of faith planted in their heart and it's beginning to grow and if it can grow unencumbered at some point it will birth into salvation but just because faith is growing in me doesn't mean i've come to the place where i have been born again matthew chapter 7 verse 21 says this not everyone who says to me lord lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will of my father and hannah heaven watch this many will say to me in that day lord have we not prophesied in your name somebody say leaves cast out demons in your name done many wonders in your name then he will declare to them watch this i never knew you you learned how to prophesy but you never knew me you you can learn how to do church without knowing the god of that word new is the word of intimacy it means to have a physical encounter with can i get in trouble i'm so tired of some of these funerals where we're lying to people saying man they've gone on to a better place they lived the most ungodly life there's no evidence that they ever surrender to jesus but because we're more afraid of people and we want to comfort family members we'll lie to a congregation of people say they're in a better place they may not be some of us are calling our loved ones friend my son's saying my daughter's saying why because they come to church and i know this is tight but i'm telling you it's going to help you what do you want do you want peace of mind or do you want a surety do i just want to be able to sleep at night and seeing everybody i know what say so i'm good or do i want to be certain that they are a son or a daughter of god hear me there is a difference between god's word is exploding in my heart i'm starting to get with this church thing i'm starting to believe that this is the way that i want to live my life and this is good and i'm gonna come to church and all that kind of there's a difference between that and god i surrender to you i make you the lord of my life i'm no longer the controller i'm no longer the dictator as i live i'm living through you i belong to you that is the moment of being born again why am i saying that because some of you need to be born again today because someone lied to you and said because you're sitting in church that makes you a christian if that were true you heard a little preacher joke if you were sitting in a garage that would make you a car being in the right place doesn't make you a christian being in a position of surrender what does that mean for the so those of us that are christians it means that it's our job to care for those that have faith growing in them the same way we care for an embryo we're making sure you don't bump in anything we're making sure you have all the food that you need that you're having all your care and you're going to the doctor and all that other good stuff because we want to make sure that nothing aborts this journey and that that baby gets to full conception that's what god has called the church to be he's called it to be a place that as people are on their journey of salvation this is a safe place for people to be formed and develop and to grow in christ this isn't a place where we're going to judge them because their skirts too short or the pants blow their butt or whatever we got prayer cloths for you don't be offended just put it on and love jesus hear me this is a place where we are going to walk people to the place of salvation not judgment before they get there i'll make you shout in a second but can i get a little bit more serious all over this country i know about other countries but i have friends all over this country churches of every size there is not many churches probably not one that is back to a hundred percent attendance after the pandemic has before the pandemic most churches are seeing about 40 percent of the people in physical attendance than were before the pandemic now some of the people that have not returned it's been a health concern i i have somebody in my house that that is you know susceptible to sickness or whatever it may be and i just want to be cautious and safe and all that good stuff and by the way if that's you there's nothing wrong with that it's important to be safe some of y'all just heard hey you only get the vaccine and i don't know what you're doing but anyway but everybody's just you know they're just kind of doing their thing but that's not where the 60 percent is at if i were yes i would say there's about 30 people that haven't come back to church to have a legitimate reason because of health i would say this so there's about 30 of people that haven't come back to church because they were never saved in the first place i i literally had friends that they were in church for three months before the pandemic hit they were coming every sunday they're growing they're reading the bible and faith was growing in them but it had not yet birthed into salvation and that pandemic hit and just kind of threw life cycles off and it aborted the process of faith that was working in them that's why it's our job as a church to pray people to the place of salvation to love them to encourage them to protect them to cheer them on until they get to the place where they say god i surrender to you the second thing of this infant stage is this i gotta learn to trust the father i must learn to trust the father have faith in god i can't i've only been saved for three weeks you ever thought about something we tell you you're doing church and like i don't know how to do that just trust god to provide i can't i don't really know my son roman he he's daring he's all boy right now like i mean if he's on a stair and you're walking by he's jumping he ain't worried about you looking he's not concerned about if you can catch if you're athletic whatever you want cause he's learned to trust i taught him to do that and if i knew he was going to start jumping off of tall things i would have never taught him but from when he was one as soon as he could stand up i'd put him on the kitchen counter top as a human and i'm like pray for me i'm a dad i know i was the best dad sometimes i push him and i'm like you gonna learn to trust me boy cause i'm your dad and i'd push him and he fall and i got him then he laughed then i put him back up there and he went and jumped i pushed him and he fallen and i catch him when he laughs but after a while he learned and he figured and he wouldn't quite jump he just because infants aren't born with trust you notice my babies cry right because they don't trust you to feed them hey hey hey i know it's three in the morning you sleep but i'm hungry i don't know if you're gonna wake up so i'm gonna wake you up feed me they got trust issues they don't trust you to change their diaper i mean come on look at you you ain't gonna check i'm not gonna check hey hey check me they learn trust just as a baby learns to trust their father so a christian must learn to trust god proverbs chapter 3 verse 5 says this trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your path you learn to trust him in all your ways you don't just pop out trust in them how do i learn and treasure you can't trust somebody you don't know you can't know somebody you don't spend time with the more time i spend with him reading his letters to me reading his love to me reading his promises to me the more i realized there's not one problem i could face that there's not a problem he's not given me there's not one thing that i can encounter in life that he can't be trusted to move through in a season where people don't trust the word anymore i know that's what the word says but it's 2021 in 2021 no no no no no no no no no the word super secret supersedes the year because the word is not a book the word is the dna of our savior and he is trustworthy he has never failed i love when david was struggling to trust god he would kind of check himself and say why so downcast oh my put your trust and he said he would remind himself of how faithful god has been and david would literally be having a pity but i said stop he defended me from the lion he defended me from the bear he defended me from goliath why am i worried about absalon or why am i he's trust worthy i got to learn to trust the last thing is this i must learn who i am in him before you can graduate from the baby stage of faith first you got to be born again first you got to learn to trust god there's a lot of people that want to be anointed but you don't trust god a lot of people that want to title but they don't trust don't skip stages learn to trust them learn learn to trust them with your money stop checking your bank account every morning just like is this is it still there it's still calm now i'd do the same thing ain't true trust god i just don't trust postpartum calm down i learn to trust but i gotta learn who i am in him if you play i'll end if you don't play i'll preach for another four hours so go ahead and play we're going this way growing up my dad was pastor he would go to his pastor's conference he would take me with him and i used to hate these pastors cops because they were long and boring wooden benches talking about stuff i know the only thing is if i went he'd take me out to eat after so you know suffer for three hours go to state restaurant i'm down and we'd all sit down like bishops are still like and they'd pay so i'm like i'm real down i'm getting whatever i want but i walk into my dad's side of friends you want to come like no i'm not sitting in front you can't play legos up front you play legos and back nobody's looking back so i go sitting back and i walk in i'd walk in and just mind my own business and someone would say i know you and i'm a little ignorant of the killing you don't know me like no i know you i don't know you you're wrong son aren't you i'd be like i am yeah yeah that's for that oh man you look just like your dad i remember when you were born i was at your christian boy you're gonna be a preacher one day like no i'm not gonna be no preaching in my face now walk a little further that's ron's boy right there they call me ron's son so many times i don't even know what my own name was i thought my name was ron's son at 12 years old you're just like oh leave me alone by 16 y'all walking in converse like hey wrong son's here how you doing how you doing hey good to see you good to see you nice to nice to see you i'm just at why because it finally clicked with me that my daddy was somebody and because my daddy was somebody even though i hadn't done jack squat in life i was his son and that made me somebody because of who he was i wish i had some infant christians that can learn it's based on who my daddy is not based on who i am and some of us are walking through life like you don't know me no no don't open that door for me i haven't earned it yet no no i don't need favor i got to work because we have this carnal mindset that you only get what you work for that's when you don't have a father that has set you up but when you have a father that sets you up you don't start from scratch you start from where your father left off he said don't you know you've received a spirit by which we cry abba father daddy we are co-heirs with jesus and children of the most high god which means everything that he was i am everything that he has is mine i don't pick up where i've earned i've picked up where he's left off so because he's king over cancer i'm king over cancer because he's king over poverty i'm king over poverty because he's a priest i'm a priest because he's the head i'm the head because he's not the tale i'm not the tale if only we understood i am who i am by the grace of god not by my attendance record not because of my tenure in church not because i've been in your little dumb growth track and i didn't join your dream team and now i earn respect from god no because i'm a son and a daughter the most hear me union church that's the basics like the basics is learning how to spell your name so many people that have been in christ for 40 years and you don't know that your last name is king's kid you don't know that your last name is child of the most high aka don't mess with me because i know who my daddy is let's not skip steps we'll be mature eventually but today god i just need to learn how to trust you and this is a need to learn that i'm a child of the most high god which means i will lack for nothing father god we're grateful we're thankful god that the bible says you have adopted us into your family we are orphans no more we're not on our own anymore we're going to pull ourselves up our bootstraps or make something of our lives you've made something of us you said that you jotted down every day of our lives in a book before we even walk one step so god i pray for a security to come over every single person to the sound of my voice and a surety and anchoring in the fact i'm covered where you are with your eyes close your head about if you could pray this prayer with me say holy spirit what are you saying to me and just give god a moment to make this time to make this message personal to you man i want to pray particularly with those of you that call spade a spade you're not a christian you're on a journey faith has been exploding in your heart you've been coming to church or watching online and you believe in god but believing in god doesn't make you a christian surrendering to jesus or giving him control of your life does man i want to pray for some of you that you learned church before you met god you got all the leaves of religion but you don't have the fruit of a relationship i don't got to push you the holy spirit's tugging on your heart right now hear me if that's you this is your moment this is the moment that you're going to be born again and we're going to pray your prayer but it's not just this ritual that you repent the repeat this is a moment that as you surrender to christ life is exploding in your heart can you pray this with me in every room that you're watching say lord jesus thank you for being patient with me thank you for not judging me thank you for wanting me thank you for dying on the cross so that all my sin all my mistakes can be erased and today my response is surrender i give you all of me every decision every direction everything that i am now belongs to you be my lord be my savior thank you that today i am born again in jesus name amen and amen and amen come on church can you celebrate

Channel: Union Church

Views: 524

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: maturity in relationships, spiritual maturity, how to grind, how to grow, miracles season, how to get miracles, God's blessing, how to grow in my faith, faith building, maturity

Id: eIiyRMWGQNs

Length: 53min 51sec (3231 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021