Piece In The Storm - Pastor Stephen Chandler

[Music] turn your bible acts acts chapter 27 acts chapter 27 verse 39 and it reads it says when it was day they did not recognize the land but they observed a bay with a beach unto which they planned to run the ship if possible and they let go of anchors and left in the sea and meanwhile loosing the rudder's ropes and they hosted the mainsail to the wind and made for sure but striking a place where two seas met they ran the ship aground and the prowl struck fast and remained immovable but this stern was being broken up by the violence of the ways let me pause and catch you up just in case you missed last week and by the way if you missed last week make sure to subscribe to union church on youtube every message is posted online like three minutes after church is over and you never have to miss even if you're out of town but last week we picked up this story about paul the apostle he's one of the most influential christians in the entire new testament god was using him in a great way matter of fact he was on a journey to rome to preach the gospel of jesus christ to the most powerful person on the planet who was caesar we was there and as he was going on this trip that hit a storm matter of fact it was the first hurricane ever recorded in scripture and as they're in the ship it says literally the ship is breaking apart they are despairing of life itself paul wasn't even sure if he was going to live through the storm an angel appears to paul and said hey don't worry you have purpose on your life somebody say there's purpose on my life i ain't even a man or preaching this is why i've been fit somebody said there's purpose on my life come on prophesy to somebody somebody say there's purpose on your life you can't die of this cancer this divorce can't be the end of your story this bankruptcy can't be where it ends this season of boredom there is purpose on your life and here's what i've discovered when there's purpose on my life i can't drown in a storm when there's purpose on my life i can't drown in depression when there's purpose on my life anxiety can't paralyze me because there's purpose on the other side of this storm so they can see the shore they run aground here's what it says and the soldier's plan was to kill the prisoners yo if the storm ain't gonna kill me somebody else is trying to kill me it says any of them should swim away and escape but the centurion wanted to save paul he kept them from their purpose and commanding those who could swim should jump overboard first and get to like do you understand how hard it is for a preacher to finish the message on time every time you read the bible you see something you've never seen before the bible says the centurion kept the soldiers from their purpose there are people whose purpose is to stop your purpose the enemy has purposed other people to stop your purpose but god has purposed people to stop the enemy's plan against you so even if there's people against you you don't have to fight your own battle because god has ordained people to fight for you can i preach that a little bit further so all you self-reliant people will you let a church fight for you will you stop being so self-sufficient that you don't let anybody else know when you're going through a battle god's placed some people around you that will fight for you if you let us but if you one of them god is good all the time and all the time god is good christians god's good you're not what's going on we ready to fight not against you for you okay let's finish up and the rest and some of the boards and parts of the ship so they grab on the pieces of the ship and they swim the shore so it was that they all escaped safely to the land father god we're grateful we're thankful for this awesome opportunity in your presence god this is not just church this is a collision between heaven and earth god you're here and if you're here miracles are breaking out as we speak hope is being restored sight is being god you're building our faith god will be ever so careful as you move us forward to point to you and give you all the glory all the honor all the praise and the match this name of jesus we pray somebody shout amen as they say when you get on the airplane don't worry about the slight delay we will make up time in the air we started a series last week called shipwrecked on purpose ship wrecked on purpose and the whole heart of the mindset behind this series is storms are just a part of life financial storms health storms relational storms emotional storms the bible says that it reigns on the just and the unjust alike the only difference between an unbeliever and a believer a child of god and someone who has not surrendered and stuck to god is what the storm does to you for some people the storm will break you for some people this storm will make you it will pull gifts talents abilities anointings out of you that you didn't even know were possible it all depends on your perspective in the storm last week excuse me we we had three services it was amazing and after service third service i get out of church and i'm out in the lobby trying to get all my merch how am i doing by modeling by the way i'm trying trying to be my best union church model i possibly can but i went outside and i'm in the merch line and this lady comes up to me and and she looked pretty disturbed and if you're in one of the servers today yes i'm preaching about you but i won't use your name so nobody knows that you she walks up to me and she just she looks she didn't look like she had a good time in church and you gotta understand as preachers we a little sensitive i'm not gonna lie we absolutely sensitive like i'm preaching but i'm looking at you and i'm trying to read your body language and and if those of you that are sitting in this room and you're sitting like this you're not helping me because i'm trying to preach trying to hear from god trying to remember my notes and then i'm also thinking what's your problem am i not preaching good is this not for you like what's the sit in the back anyway she comes at me and she says so what happened to the end of the story i was like what do you mean well what happened to you and your wife if you hear last week i told a story about me and my wife we on our third day of our honeymoon we had just got married we waited to marriage we only got to do to do for three days and we got stranded out to sea stuck in a boat a mile off the coast of dominican republic with a captain by the name of coca-cola i didn't know how we were going to get out of it i was like coca-cola what's going to happen they said they're going to send a rescue boat as soon as they realize we're missing i said what are they going to realize well he said it was a six-hour charter so about seven hours from now they're going to realize that that we didn't come back she said you didn't finish the story i didn't hear a word of the whole message you said because i'm just wondering did y'all drown at sea i'm slicing the story a little bit i said well i'm here she's here clearly we made it but to finish the story because some of y'all ain't gonna hear my message on our facebook story we're out to see we only had to wait four hours not seven we literally donated all of our insides to the ocean we just figured we don't need these omelets let's just give it to the fish i actually have pictures but i don't want to show them because i'm too embarrassed i look i mean green purple pink every different color except the one god made me it was a mess we're out there for four hours and then finally another ship comes and actually realized that we were missing and i'm telling you it was like out of the movie castaway or something like that that ship came right [Applause] jesus save us the ship comes and the hey are you okay no you think we're sitting here it circles around us and then it parks about 20 yards away and i'm looking at this situation like oh this is messed up you expect me to swim over there 20 yards now when i say i can't swim some of you people judge me i mean you people you people who think swimming is like riding a bike like i mean three-year-olds can swim listen i can swim okay i can swim with little floaties in my arms i could swim in in the little waiting boy i could swim at the ymca there's a difference between swimming at the ymca and swimming a mile out to sea with four foot waves and all you people that think you can swim you can't swim a mile back to shore so don't look at me with them judgmental eyes unless you're a marine then you can you can look at me anyway you want but anyway somebody's looking at this one i can't swim with that but next thing i know off of the boat they drop what all i could tell was a bathtub with a motor on it it was the smallest little skiff i've ever seen in my life and this guy jumps into that thing and he rides from that boat to this boat but he parks his boat two feet away and he said the waves are too big for us to bring the big boat over here they'll crash you gotta jump out of this boat into that little bathtub have you ever been in a situation where you were saved but not really you could see hope right there it's 20 yards away and it might as well be four miles and they're literally like if you don't jump into that little boat you won't be saved i'm promising you i've discovered in that moment that trust doesn't happen in the first three days of marriage it takes about 30 years because i nearly pushed my wife out the way i said babe i just wanted to make sure it was safe for her so i said i'll jump first and then you could come when we come back god is my witness i know we lost my marriage on the third day so we jump into the boat we made it safely we get to the other boat we go back to shore this has nothing to do with the message but i still have unforgiveness in my heart you know we got back to the shore and expedia didn't want to refund us for our trip they're tight well you were gone for six hours i mean if you didn't catch any fish it's not really our problem coca-cola wasn't there to defend us because we left him out to sea i realized my wife had the spirit of god and she had another spirit too and it was the other spirit that come up on experience i i just i just i just let pg do what pg does but anyway [Applause] all right let's get back to the word here it is paul was in a storm of his life the only hurricane recorded in scripture it's looking like they're going to lose everything the next thing you know an angel comes to paul and he said there's purpose on your life you and everybody around you will be saved come on how many people would love an angel to come to you and tell you everything's going to be all right your business is going to be saved your marriage is going to be saved your help it's all good paul stands up and tells everybody we're good god's for us and you know what happened the storm continued to rage they got a word from god and the storm didn't stop for three more days they were stuck in that storm and then finally they saw the shore they saw hope they saw what they were if we could just aim for that shore we'll be saved and as they're targeting the shore they hit a sand bar out to sea that they didn't see coming the ship runs up on the sand and it begins to break apart paul goes from stuck in a ship in a storm to now stuck in the ocean in this earth what happens when a storm won't end what happens when you can see the finish line and it's so close that you can touch the next thing you know the next wave comes i'm not gonna lie to you as a pastor that's kind of what this little delta airline variant that's going on right now is kind of done to my hope i mean i i was so ready to be done with this panoramic i'm just like listen it's over everybody got vaccinated we're ready to come on out get rid of this mask let's go everybody coming back to church and the next thing you know delta's come out i'm sorry i had to no shade forgive me i just stick to the word stick to the word i'm gonna get in trouble so many emails coming email us at i don't care at theunionchurch.com anyway it's like we were almost out here comes the next wave the next issue the next problem here's what i've discovered and hear me i've got to get this theologically correct god does not cause storms in our life but he does use them god doesn't cause sickness don't give me this oh it's my thorn to bear this is god's will for my life no no no he said by his stripes you have been healed with long life he will satisfy you sickness is not the will of god for your life god does not cause storms but he does use them for his purpose every time a storm comes there is a purpose in it that god is trying to bring to pass in our life the bible says the purpose is always for our good it will always take us to more in god than less of life but here's what i've discovered god will not let a storm pass until he gets his purpose out of it and the longer it takes for god's will to be done in a storm the longer the storm will last some of us have been in storms for years and it's like one after another after another and i've discovered because god's trying to get something done in that storm that hasn't been done yet and if i could just figure out god what are you doing in this storm hear me you can accelerate the pace of your storm by working with god instead of against him i won't give you just three quick thoughts three crystals first thing is like this write this down storms bring us to brokenness one of god's purposes in a storm is to bring us to brokenness the bible says that they ran up on the sound bar and the ship began to break apart even though god said he was going to save them things were still breaking apart here's what i've discovered brokenness is what god wants for my life brokenness is what god wants for your life now there's the world's definition of brokenness and then there's god's definition of brokenness the words world's definition of brokenness is i've given up hope there's no more fight in me i've surrendered to my fate that's where depression comes in anxiety and panic attacks and even suicidal thoughts i've i'm broken there's nothing left to live for that's not god's will for you that's not the brokenness i'm talking about the brokenness that god has for us is i've broken all self-reliance and self-sufficiency come on bwi help me preach somebody say make it plain here's what godly brokenness is my faith is no longer in my degree my faith is no longer in my bank account my faith is no longer in my charisma or my work ethic or my ability to get myself out of any situation i'm in my faith is no longer in my family or in my relationships i have finally come to the place in life that there's nothing around me that can get me to where i need to go that's where god wants us to be the bible says in psalm chapter 51 verse 17 the sacrifice of god are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart baltimore county god does not want us to be self-reliant or self-sufficient he wants us to be god-reliant and god sufficient and here's what the bible says it's that type of brokenness that god is attracted to now everything in god's word is for us somebody say amen everything in god's word is going to take us to a better experience here on earth and in heaven but not everything in god's word is going to get us excited so some things that god's word is going to make you want to shout scream stand up slap your neighbor and have a good time other things in god's word is going to make you want to walk out of church saying i don't know if i like that message today and by the way i don't know i like the little skinny preacher either i don't know about like any of it that's what i know the message was good can i give you something to shout about for a second and i'm not being facetious this is actually god's word and over your life you are on the verge of a breakthrough god is getting ready to break open a new level of influence a new level of joy a new level of purpose a new level of wealth hear me if you are breathing and on earth you're on the verge of a breakthrough because god has so much more for you i just wish i could wake up some people that have been in an emotional coma for the last three or four years i'm believing that i can wake up some people that you haven't dreamed a dream in a long time it's time to dream again because you're on the verge of a breakthrough can i tell you something that you're not going to want to scream about you are on the verge of a break through you know if you preach it right you can get people to scream about stuff they should be crying about you're on the verge of a prayer i'm about to break through did you just hear what you just said you just said i'm about to break through here's what i've discovered god cannot trust me with more influence until i've gone to a new level of brokenness and before i could step into the more that god has for me i gotta say it but there has to be less of stephen alive it it's literally like this the influence that god wants to use you for if you're still that confidence in you you'll mess it up the marriage that god has for you if you still think you're all that in a bag of chips your pride come on anybody who's been married logan in three minutes is gonna mess it up if you think you're right about everything and you can't fail ever your lack of wisdom is going to mess up the new level of influence that god has for you and god says before i can make you man i got to break you can say something that people may not like to hear in church there's nothing attractive about timidity there's nothing attractive about people who who i'ma get in trouble that's okay that like to be invisible i i i don't know how we could call ourselves children of god and we say we like to be invisible when he said you are a city on a hill a light to be attracted to so that you can point to the glory of god not to be hidden under a basket god doesn't make invisible people god doesn't make timid people god doesn't make rejected people god makes confident people there's something attractive about confidence there's something attractive about someone who holds their head up straight who looks you straight in the eye who speaks with confidence but not all confidence is truth some confidence is a lie there's people that are confident in their own ability they're confident in their education they're confident and they're smart they're confident in the fact that they can always make somebody laugh at the right time you're confident but your confidence isn't a lie because your confidence is in something that is limited your confidence is something that is finite and at some point no matter how good you are you will miss a shot jordan some people say he's the greatest he didn't make every shot lebron we all know he's the greatest i mean we have the mind of christ clearly we know these things he don't make every shot in our own human strength we're going to miss shots but there's a confidence that supersedes self-confidence and it's a confidence that's not built in a lie but is built in the truth himself and that is no i'm not smart enough educated enough wealthy enough or connected enough but i'm connected to the one who is i'm connected to the one who has never failed i'm connected to the one who has never lost i'm connected to the one watch this who has never been cut off guard do you know that god has never been in a situation where he said it occurred to me god has never said it just crossed my mind because it was on his mind before it was on the earth and god says to walk in the blessing that i have for you you need a god confidence but before you can have a god confidence i gotta break off of you this self-reliance romans chapter 12 verse 1 says this paul the word beseech means i beg you paul said church i beg you based on how good the mercies of god are that you would prevent present your life watch this as the living dead what does that mean wake up every morning being alive but being dead in self-reliance being dead in confidence that you have what it takes he said present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable to god skip over to verse 2. he said only then will you prove that god's way is good acceptable and perfect he said if you want to walk in all the promises of god you got to bury yourself and live only in a reliance on god by the way you know what that's what's water baptism is the bible says in the book of galatians that water baptism is you attending your own funeral water baptism is a symbol of joining with christ when jesus was placed in the tomb as dead he laid there for three days but he didn't just lay there the bible says he got up he went to hell and he snatched the keys of hell death in the grave from satan and then on that third day he walked out of the tomb in the victorious power of god the bible says that when your water baptized you are burying the old you the old way of doing life but just like jesus you receive keys of victory over addiction and over depression and over sin and over shame and over anything that can hold you back and you're coming up a new person here's the way paul said he said this life that i live i'm now living it through christ so i've discovered that god will let a storm drag on until it breaks me sometimes god will send sickness allow sickness because he'll break me sometimes god will allow job loss because it will break me some god times god will allow certain people to walk out of my life sometimes i like this one i'm lying but i need it like this sometimes god allow people to lie about you and other people to believe them sometimes god will allow your public character to be destroyed to get you to a place of what do you really care about do you care about what they think about you or do you care about what i think about you because the second their eyes mean less to you than my eyes do then i can take you to somebody say there's a breakthrough there's a breakthrough with my name on the second thing is this write this down write this down brokenness is not destruction god wants to break you but he doesn't want to destroy you god's desire is that we walk in brokenness not that we walk in despair it says that they were on this ship and they ran onto that sandbar and next thing you know the ship begins to break apart i've discovered the second thing that god is trying to do in a storm he's trying to expose false faith a lot of times when we think we have our faith in god we actually have our faith in what god is using we think we have our faith in god but what we really have is our faith in our job you know i'm tenured now i've been here for 15 years i can't get fired i'm provided for i'm good question for you who's your provider is it your employer or is it your savior here's what i've described you you have a carpenter and then you have tools you have a carpenter you have tools the carpenter can be working on one piece of furniture and he'll pick up one tool and she'll put another tool down but pick up one tool and then and they'll use different tools to create what they're trying to create but no matter what tool they use the purpose does not change the bible says that jesus is the great carpenter and he is shaping your life he's shaping your purpose he's shaping your destiny and watch this sometimes he'll use certain people and then other times he'll put those people down sometimes he'll use certain jobs and other times he'll put that job down sometimes he'll use certain seasons in certain places in certain cities and he'll put that down but he has not stopped working but we get so attached to the tool that when the tool goes our hope goes some of us are so attached to people that when they walk out of our life we have no vision for our future because we had no concept of what life would look like without them some of us are so attached to our jobs or so attached to our skills or ouch and we get in trouble so attached to our physical ability i think that's why this pandemic has hit harder than almost anything in our generation because it attacked the one thing that all of us have been able to put our confidence in i'm healthy and i'll be able to show up if nobody else is there for me i'm going to be there for me because i know how to work i can get i pull myself up by my bootstraps i've just stopped saying that because i realize if i say that god will take my boots now what you're going to put yourself up on you're going to let me pull you up now here's what the bible says in psalm chapter 20 verse 7 it says some trust in chariots summon horses can we have a little bit of fun some in donkeys summon elephants and then some are independent [Applause] but we will remember the name of the lord our god hear me don't ever put your faith in the tool that god is using to bless you because it's just a tool but it's who's holding that tool that is bringing a past the breakthrough in your life deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 18 says this and you shall remember the lord your god for it is he who gives you power to get wealth that he may establish his covenant watch this which he swore to your fathers as it is to this day hear me you being financially blessed isn't it about you it's about the promise god made to your father's father's father's father and so what you lost your business so what you lost your job so what the economy is turning it was just a tool that jehovah jireh your provider was using and watch this don't get nervous because he switched tools it was always about the carpenter in the first place can we get real just for a second we're gonna get fake in a second but can we get real just for a second some of you you're new to union church maybe you joined a baltimore county campus last four weeks or this is only your second week in church you you came on welcome home sonny and you're new here and you're just there this is great i love union what you don't know is you're new and we're new because union is new th this isn't something that's been happening for the last 20 years this is something that's been happening the last like five months union church became one church on easter sunday of this year but before union church there was destiny over there and there's i-5 over there two different churches impacting this area for the glory of god and then god spoke to me and pastor jim and he said hey i i think i want to do something with you all together and we begin bringing the two churches together and i'm just gonna say what you know but you don't know boy if you knew the way people started talking you gonna do what you wanna join now how that's gonna work i don't know about that everybody was nervous ah because god was blessing old tools i'm having fun y'all having fun and because i'm at bwi i'm gonna talk about columbia y'all gonna be all right my destiny folks were like we ain't gonna be destiny no more but i love destiny i don't know about this union stuff wait wait wait didn't god download destiny on your heart didn't he speak to you about wasn't that your calling hear me that was never my calling it was always my tool i'ma get y'all in trouble being the senior pastor of this church is not my calling it's my tool it's something that god is using for this season but my calling has not changed it's to transform people and appoint people to the glory and the power of god he may use one tool today and another tool tomorrow he may use one title today and another title tomorrow but regardless of the tool that he's using it's the carpenter and the hand of the carpenter that moves us forward and what i've discovered is that if i put too much faith in a tool god will break the tool so that i could understand i was using that before that see there's a guy named samson samson got something a little funky position he was by himself and he was fighting two thousand soldiers from the country of philly the philistines and he was a prophet of god he was anointed and he had anything around him all he found was the carcass of a donkey the bible says he took the donkey's jawbone yo and he whooped 2 000 philistines forget sparta i need to see a movie about that i'm listening i mean if it was a lion's jawbone i can get that if he had like a giraffe neck or something like that no no no he he had a donkey's jawbone i i wish i was old enough to preach from the king james but i'm not i ain't 50 yet but one day i will i'll be cussing all up in church he had the jawbone of it you read king james too you heard them all preaching like look at your neighbors gotta use the jack i'm not old enough to preach like that though so i ain't gonna go there but watch this samson takes that job up he wins the greatest battle of his life and he drops to jawbone and he walks into the next season of his life how many of us god used a relationship in our past to bring us to a place of joy and purpose and now it's time to drop that relationship and a walk into the next thing that god has for us and we are dragging this stinking jawbone trying to make it work when the anointing has departed can we just talk for a second how many reconciliation breakfasts are you gonna have how many times are y'all gonna meet a silver diner and say i forgive you do you forgive me i didn't mean the things i said about you to your mama and i mean i didn't mean to trash you at work and you know i you played such a big part in my past and we're just grateful and you you hug and you're crying you forgive and you get up and you think the relationship's gonna go and then you still can't seem to mesh you can't get your schedules to line up you're always missing each other why because the season has passed he's done using that tool i'm not bitter i'm not angry i'm not resentful but i am moving on because god is [Applause] and some of us are holding on to things that god has used in our past stronger than we're holding on to god and he said i will not let this storm pass until every tool that you've put your faith in has broken apart oh cause i'm not using destin anymore i'm using union i'm not using that employer anymore i'm using your own business i'm not using that circle of friends that you met in college i'm using a new group of people in your connect group that are going to push you into all that god has for you oh if i could preach i'm not using credit cards anymore i'm using cash would you mind stepping it [Applause] somebody look at your name and say just drop the jawbone just drop the java just i can't wait brian until we stop screaming about what we approve for we start screaming about what we can pay for all right write this down write this down let's run okay i finish this message you can ride brokenness to purpose god give shawn the look we done so here it is paul is in the ocean yo god gave pieces of wood for paul to float to shore because paul could swim either must be a man of god thing here's paul in the ocean looking to grab god help me preach this a piece of brokenness so that he can get to the purpose and the promise that god had for him [Music] god prom god sent an angel said paul you're not going to die you have to go to rome you have to preach there's purpose on your life paul you're good this is stephen that's paul over here he's godly there's stephen god's still working on me when i get a word from god i expect a miracle i don't know about you but if an angel shows up i expect the sky to split next i want the same chariot that picked up elijah fire horses whole deal i want you to scoop me up the ocean leave everybody else let them swim but i got the vision from god i want you to take me i'll throw my little cloak my little union merch double blessing i mean i won't keep the anointing to myself if i had a word from god i'm expecting a rescue from god i'm expecting jesus to show up like he did for peter peter cussed jesus out and jesus still quieted this storm for him i'm expecting jesus to say peace be still here here's what jesus said paul said you're going to be saved but you're going to be broken paul's in that cold ocean and all he can grab is a little piece of brokenness and it's that little piece of brokenness that's gonna take him to purpose as i'm reading this i'm just like god that's not fair god that doesn't make sense paul deserves better than that he deserves heaven to show up and all you did was give him a piece of wood i felt like the holy spirit said that little piece of wood was more powerful than some angel showing up because if i sent an angel the angel would have done what paul didn't know he had the power to do himself you see here's the thing we think big storm is a big problem for god we don't realize how easy it is for god to fix our problems we don't realize how it was a problem for us isn't a problem for god at all and he says here's how you get out of your storm take hold of your brokenness [Music] you ride your brokenness to purpose i realize i've been looking at this thing called life wrong all along i've been spending my life trying to be whole trying to be perfect [Music] trying to be educated you see how i'm doing there and everything i need just you know put together and it looked like the part god said don't you know it's not what you are that i can use but it's what you're not don't you know it's not my strength that's made perfect in your strength it's my strength that's made perfect in your weakness it's not our wholeness that reveals who god is it's our brokenness that does the only reason i can tell you that god is a healer is because my mom was sick and my sister was sick and my other sister was sick and i saw jehovah rapha the healer show up and supernaturally do what man said was impossible the only reason i know that god opens doors that no man can shut is because i'm standing here and i stutter and i'm not the most extroverted person and i don't have it all together but yet when god said you're blessed you're blessed it's my brokenness that has taken me to purpose so many of us were ashamed of our brokenness i realized if we don't learn how to take hold as paul said of that which christ took hold of me for here's what the bible says in galatians chapter six says christ has redeemed us has rescued us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us don't miss this for it is written cursed is everyone who is hung on a piece of wood that the blessing of abraham might come upon the gentiles in christ jesus that we might receive the promise of a spirit through faith let me say it one more time christ has rescued us from brokenness by becoming broken for us because it's written broken as everyone who's hung on a tree the blessings of abraham might come upon the gentiles in christ jesus that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith what am i saying the peace that we're taking hold of is not just a piece of wood it's a piece of the cross it's the piece of wood that bought us our freedom it's not that when i say i'm perfect i have it all together it's that i admit yeah i was a liar but i took hold of his forgiveness yeah i wasn't cheap but i took hold of his forgiveness yeah i was insecure and rejected but i took he said when we embrace what we're not he can be all that he needs to be in our lives it's when we're broke that we walk in the fullness of who god is i have a simple question for you today union church where's your faith is it in how long you've been in church is it in the fact that you're educated or wealthy or well-connected is it in the fact that you own the business so you can't get fired or you don't really go to the hospital you've been healthy your whole life [Music] or is your faith in the fact that i've taken hold of the cross of jesus christ that he has broken off of me anything that can keep me from the purpose that he has for me because his hand is all my life victory is guaranteed because it's from that place of brokenness that god says that breakthrough is now in your future and we use you in ways that you never thought possible let's pray together father god we are grateful god that everything in our life that we're maybe ashamed of or want to forget about god you're actually using that to prove to you how much you love us how much you called us care for us have a purpose for us father god i pray right now for every single person in the sound of my voice god those of us that are broken god that should make us whole those of us that are self-reliant god that should break us in the best way possible so that we can be god reliant just where you are with your eyes closing your head bad if you could pray this prayer with me say holy spirit what are you saying to me just give god a moment to make this time to make this message personal to you i want to speak particularly to those of you that say pastor if i'd be honest with you i i haven't been 100 god reliant i've been self-reliant and self-sufficient but i want to put all my hope all my faith all my trust in god in this moment if that's you you couldn't be making the better decision of your life ever the bible says that's actually the place where life begins so i'm getting ready to do is i'm going to pray a prayer and i'm asking that you would repeat after me and it's not some ceremony where you say vows it's literally make this prayer the cry of your heart as you invite god to be the one that you put your weight your hope your trust your reliance on this moment the bible says he steps into your life takes you to the purpose and the plan that he has you say lord jesus thank you for being broken that i can be whole for dying so that i can live today i surrender i give you all of me today i repent i turn from my sin and i receive your forgiveness use me for your glory for your honor in jesus name amen and amen and amen come on church can you celebrate for every single person [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Union Church

Views: 3,803

Rating: 4.955801 out of 5

Keywords: breakthrough, breaking, new season, promise, purpose ahead, storms, message about promises, message about breakthrough, God's promises, breakthrough prayer, shipwrecked, Paul

Id: YhA2abN4RQo

Length: 47min 6sec (2826 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021