Rev. Heath Ferguson - More is Better

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] your side just over in the glory land [Music] just over in the glory when thou join the happy angel just over in the glory land just over in the glory land there with the mighty host i'll stand just over in the glory land i am on my way to those mansions spare just over in the glory land there to sing god's praise and his glory shared just over in the glory land just over in the glory land i'll join the happy angel man just over in the glory land [Music] just over [Music] what a joyful thought that my lord i'll see just over in the glory land and with kindred save the therefore land just over in the glory land i'll join the happy angels [Music] [Applause] [Music] amen we'll sing one more verse we'll ask our ushers to come uh during the chorus [Music] [Music] land [Music] glory land [Music] land we'll take the offering first tonight then we'll have our uh time for prayer requests at that time everything you give tonight's going to go to brother heath ferguson so good to have brother heath with us he's doing the the youth revival this week at our school and doing a great job so everything you give tonight goes to support his ministry brother henry would you pray for us this evening tonight is so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] hey this is our wednesday night prayer meeting and we have several who are uh in need of prayer so we want to remember those if you have any prayer requests tonight would you give that in at this time and then we'll ask everyone that will that would come around the altars to to pray for those who are are sick any any requests tonight yes all right let's remember that yes all right let's remember that this evening let's remember kathy hockaday she's in real need of prayer and so we we need to remember her alan o'keefe needs our prayers as well uh dixie harrell uh is is in rehab at this time and uh so let's remember her and and brother tom got to talk to him a couple nights ago so let's remember those as as well what's that the shambles remember brother ken chamblin is in need of prayer tonight yes brother mike yes yes casey all right yes all right let's remember that let's remember that family brother rick amen any others yes yes amen amen praise the lord yes well so ronald ronald came down with it so let's remember ronald and patty's doing much better so let's remember continue remember both of them in prayer any others yes all right let's remember that request amen any others yes all right all right let's remember that yes all right let's remember lori in our prayers any others all right we'll ask jeff to come and sing sweetheart prayer all that will if you'll come for we have several that need prayer uh tonight and so we're we're coming on behalf of many of them uh to pray this evening all that will come up as as he leads us and we we sing sweet hour of prayer [Music] my [Music] of distress and free [Music] me [Music] of [Music] thy [Music] is [Music] is [Music] while [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] our remember all these requests tonight so many who are sick if you'll join us tonight as we go to the lord in prayer um be able to be here tonight and i greatly appreciate the opportunity to come and to be able to speak in the school and that's a that's a great privilege and i've had the privilege of doing that several times over the last about 13 or 14 years and i greatly appreciate it i love the opportunity to be a part of that ministry and to spend some days here i am going to be in second kings chapter 2 for just a few minutes tonight but i want to share with you man as many of you know as this church knows we have i've been involved in a church plant in in houston texas just north of houston texas for the last several years and god has allowed us to see some really cool things have really great things happen we want to give you some of the progress that we have made and just share some things with you if we can and so i i'm sorry that my family's not able to be here tonight my wife jamie my oldest daughter caitlin who is 15 my youngest daughter ashlynn who is 10 years old we have a 10th grader and a 5th grader and i'll throw their picture up there on the screen this is us this is actually in san antonio this is not near where we live but this was the most recent picture i had of my family and i thought i'd throw that up there and let you get to see them i debated whether or not i would share this picture with you i didn't want you to feel bad about how ugly your kids are but ours this is my beautiful family right here i appreciate them and love them they i love when they get to travel with me but this time they weren't able to they've got school and so forth uh but we've been serving in in the north houston area for a few years now i i believe we're in our eighth year serving and god has blessed us and we're to the point now where right before kovit decided to change our world we were like we're going to build a building and now it's time and we're very excited about that and then cove it happened and we went online for a few weeks just like so many churches did and then we were able to go back into a meeting in person again and we had two services so that we could kind of spread everybody out and then easter sunday was our last split service we brought everybody back together and since that time god is just really blessed and so you know we said you know what it is time let's go ahead and start the building process last time i was here we were having you pray about us selling the three and a half acres that we owned and we have three and a half acres that's paid for on a four-lane divided highway and we were praying that god would sell that for us we were very excited about the potential of selling it it was worth about one and a half million dollars and we thought we'll sell it we'll move relocate and uh we'll go from there and over the last couple of years it just became very clear that god said this is the spot where you need to be and every lot around us was getting sold all over the place except for ours and so it's like okay lord i it's my fault i'm the one that's in the way we'll build right here so december 1st of last year we knocked down our first tree and i think we've got a picture of the trees being knocked down there and so it's kind of cool like we were very excited the first day they're out there they i know look i understand how construction pictures are they all look the same to you right okay so but i want you to know i've known this church since it was this tall all right so these are very exciting pictures to me so they've knocked down and so they started clearing out our entire three and a half acres and i think there's a picture here they started doing our retention pond that's in the back of our property and so things started to get real and it was like this is really going to happen and so then they poured our parking lot and that was one of the first things that they did so we've got this huge parking lot and no building and so there's like hey man we need to we need we got to buy the steel so we go to buy the steel and sure enough covet happens and steel gets covered y'all y'all didn't know that did you so steel got covered and they were like hey man we're gonna have to wait for about three months for our coved steel to get healed and come back to us so we're sitting on this piece of property like this for a long time we're just waiting on steal so that's like okay we've got that squared away well how many of you know that steel prices started going up and we signed a contract with the builder and the builder said this is how much your building is going to cost and then all of a sudden everything starts to go up and i start to get afraid i'm like you know i don't think that the lord knew what was going to happen now anybody get that feeling sometimes like lord you didn't know that the steel was going to get sick and so all of a sudden the builder comes to me one day and he said he the steel company told us that the steel that we purchased and we've already paid for has gone up ninety three thousand dollars in price and uh he said well that's not good we have a contract with you and the steel company told my builder this he said listen you can take the steal and pay 93 000 or you can leave it and so he said heath we wrote a check for 93 000 because we want this deal and then he said but i signed a contract with you and you don't have to pay that 93 000 and i thought man i knew that god sent us the right builder and so every step along the way god just keeps proving to us that this is the right guy this is the right builder north winds construction out of north houston so we were so excited about that so then they poured a slab and in houston i don't know what kind of summers you guys normally have it rains here every day is that right it doesn't rain every day where we live i i've enjoyed sweating here in seffner for the last couple of days it is so humid here it's unbelievable we usually have pretty dry summers we needed three days of no rain for us to pour the slab so we had to wait three months to find three days in a row of no rain it rained the entire month of march all of april it rained 21 days in may it rained 20 days in june and it rained the first 19 days of july and i mean the kind where you couldn't pour slab and so this picture right here is a picture of some of the slab is there another slide pictures it's the only one this might be the only one here uh all right i'm sorry that's the other one then so sorry that's the only picture i sent up of the slab what you can tell if you're looking at this slab is not a whole lot except there's some white pipes that are sticking up there you can see those white pipes that's a restroom and that may not mean much to you but we meet in a store front where we have one toilet for our entire church so we now have seating for six and we're very excited about the seating for six that we have in a bathroom and look y'all don't take it for granted you know what i mean when you go into your nice restrooms here just thank the lord that you've got that kind of seating so we're so excited we can't wait to get in this building so then the steel arrives and it starts to go up and it was very dramatic we started seeing all the structures start going up and i'm out there taking pictures and i'm asking them if i can drive the trucks around and everything else they wouldn't let me do it but so then the steel structure just keeps forming and it keeps taking shape and these pictures are now a couple months old and so let's see what's the next one there so they started wrapping the front of the building and they started wrapping the sides and so the building actually started to take shape and i'm not sure what the next picture is but i think it's a picture of that's looking into what would be the front of the church as you would walk in from the parking lot we have a very large lobby area very excited about that as well and i think my family we decided what we were going to do one day is go and in the in the process of doing this we're going to start writing bible verses and we're going to ride them all over the walls and my kids are writing bible verses on the walls and misspelling stuff and i was like come on girls you at least spell the bible verses right you know what i mean so we were writing bible verses all over the place and this was one joshua 24 15 as for me in my house we will serve the lord and it's our family signed it and that is right behind where my desk is actually going to be at the church and we wrote some where the stage is we wrote some on on the team room we wrote some in the in the children's church room and so forth and here's the thing we want to surround our church with the word of god even in the walls even in the stuff you can't see we want to be surrounded by the word of god and everything that we say and do and i'm not sure what the what the next one is right there this is just a picture this is actually our lobby all of that there that's open will actually be glass and it'll be a very nice very open area we're just really so excited about what god has for us and so i think the next picture is the is it the full thing so eventually this is what we're going to have in about 80 days from now november 30th is the hand over the keys date and uh we're looking forward so much to this uh building that god has allowed us to have team space children's space adult space uh and so it's about 11 500 square feet and uh the day that is turn over the keys date november 30th that is 365 days from the first picture that i showed you where they knocked over that first tree and it was supposed to be a six month build uh six to seven months and they missed it by a couple months uh but we're not complaining you know what i mean and here's the thing you either trust god or you don't and so this whole process has done nothing but strengthen my own personal faith and i'll give you an example uh our builder is such a great guy again this is the right guy that god has sent our way and uh uh as as we were going through this process they start saying okay now we got to pay for this we got to pay for this we got to pay and one of the things we had to pay was what's called a water impact fee and that's a fee that you pay the water company to take water to your property that's already on your property right that's what you do you pay money so that you can tap into their water they're gonna put a valve there it's gonna be great and so i'm like okay you know we're about to write our first check for this entire project right here right now and they said listen man it could be anywhere between twenty thousand and eighty thousand dollars and i was like for the what like if you'll tell me where it is i'll tap into the water like i'm not even sure why we gotta pay this so they they called me and said yo about eight fifteen thousand dollars i said okay and so we wrote the check fifteen thousand dollars and i'm like lord now we're at the point where we're no longer saving money now we're spending it and and for a pastor that knows like you know this is a this is a a project this is something that's that's been heavy on my heart for years and years and years but how many of you know there's an uneasiness that goes with all of it it's a church plan and what's going to happen and covet and the bricks are sick now by the way they had to get us different bricks so we have time to get in all that but so here we are like like my my stomach is churning and i'm like okay we wrote the check and we gave it to them and later that afternoon i got a text message from a pastor friend of mine and he said heath i want you to know i forgot to tell you this this weekend we took him an offering for your church we're going to send you 20 000. and i was like i just wrote a check for 15. he's going to send me a check for 20. that's amazing how god does that i thought well let me write another check to somebody like i don't know what i don't know who's going to send me another text message you know it's going to work out so just god has just been so good so this week like we picked out all the the carpets and you pick out the colors and all the stuff that you're gonna yeah everything's involved in a church and think about this everything that you take for granted in church we don't have yet so like chairs like we don't have chairs you know so we're working on getting chairs now we're working on getting like toilets you know just different things very exciting so we picked out all the carpet so i got a phone call this week the builder calls me and he says hey i got good news for you now that's a great phone call because they don't all start that way sometimes like bro i've been waiting i didn't want to make this call he calls me says heath i've got good news for you he said the the guy who's doing your carpet he's working on a hospital and he called me and he said he had too much carpet said he wants to just donate it to the church if you'll write him uh like a donation slip i'm like absolutely i'll write him a donation how much carpet he's got he said he's got enough to cover near about the whole church i said well let me see it you know what i mean because i'm afraid he's going to give me shag carpet or something like i don't want shag carp in the sanctuary you need a rake to to clean it up you know i don't want that so have you remember shag carpet by the way all right it's not everybody does in the room but google it if you don't know what it is so i was like i'm afraid so look they pull out the carpet i'm like it's almost identical to the one that we chose and i said we want it so here's what he said he said well now your price of your building is going down because we got free carpet and i'm like okay lord you know what else do we need so i told the builder i said listen when it's all said and done we're gonna owe you about one and a half million dollars i said i'd be happy to write you a donation slip for 1.5 million dollars we just won't worry about the rest of how much it costs you can do whatever you want but god just proves himself time and time and time again how good he is god proves how much we don't have to worry about stuff and he just continues to do that over and over again and so the whole process has just been this beautiful one story after another he called me a couple weeks ago and he said uh heath uh we need to meet uh and so we met and uh while we were in that meeting he slid me an invoice and it was a twenty-two thousand dollar invoice that the fire marshal said we wanna move something down to the street that is up at your building and it's gonna cost you twenty two thousand 000 and i was like all right and i didn't say much i just kind of took it and i said i don't like this so he calls me the next day and he said what do you think about the invoice and so i think it stinks like what like i don't know what you want me to say like like i i just gonna be honest with you i don't really like it i think we did our homework ahead of time we wouldn't be doing this right now and he said well he said i could ask the fire marshal if he'd reconsider he said do you think you know he said it's 50 50. he said would you do you want me to do that i'm like 50 50 is better than 22 thousand dollars absolutely go do that so he calls the fire marshal he says listen man you pray about it i'll go talk to the fire marshal so i prayed about it he calls me the next day he said he that thing we talked about yesterday did you pray about that and i said i pray about this stuff every day he said well i'm thinking about going to vegas and playing the slots i want to know if you'll pray for me while i go do that because the fire marshal answered your prayer and i was like i don't know if i'll pray for that but the guy said it's fine we'll just do it the way you have it cost us nothing and what i'm saying is this god is working in things that we don't even know that we need and god is doing things behind the scenes that we have no clue what it is that he is up to and here's the thing we can just stop and just trust the lord so this whole process i'm just getting excited after after event after event after event and i'm so thankful to be able to share this with you and i appreciate your prayers this church has been so kind to us in allowing us to share and and supporting us and praying for us and we just greatly greatly appreciate it and i wish i could take a victory lap you know when the building is done and when we're self-supporting we can go around to every church and just say thank you uh but in the meantime what we're going to try to do and that's what i told our church that when this is done in about 82 days when this is completed this is not the end that a building is just a tool that god allows us to have that we can meet together and then send people out into the world to change the world for jesus christ but that is what we're here to do we're here to see people saved see and baptize and teaching the way the bible says they ought to live and that we are not here to build a building and then just relax in this beautiful building that god's allowed us to have what god does is he provides for you things that you can use for his honor and glory to train and reach and impact people with the message of the gospel for the lord jesus christ and for his glory and friend that's what we want to do this building it's it's not the excitement of a building it's the excitement of the potential impact that you have in a community and that's what everything's all about anyway when all of this life is over nobody's going to stop and say did you see the beautiful building the building is never going to stop and say hey thank you for building me you're wonderful that's never going to happen but there may be somebody who says i'm on my way to heaven because of the impact of that church and friend that ought to be the prayer for every single church we just have the opportunity to do that in north houston you have the opportunity to do that right here in seffner and so i'm just so thankful for what god has done for us i have no idea what time it is now i have no clue what time is it 7 28 all right who's counting you're counting you just told me exactly what time it was so he's interested in what time it is second kings chapter 2 is is where we want to be today what i want to do is really just share with you what is what has been weighing very heavy on my heart in the last several weeks and at my church i am preaching a sermon series through the book of mark and a few weeks ago i said we're going to take a pause on the book of mark for just a moment and i want to share with you something god started to speak to my heart about and i just wanted to share it with you tonight i shared it with our church and it's it's something that it doesn't matter how long we've known jesus christ that it is relevant to every single one of us and a matter of fact the longer that you have been saved the longer that you've given your life to christ this concept becomes even more important and it is the idea of more it is the idea of more and here in america we have we have figured out the idea of more so i said it to my church like this if some is good more is better that's what we say we invented that concept in america if ten dollars is good twenty dollars is better well we believe that to be true in every area except our own spiritual lives we will pour more of ourselves into everything else except for our own spiritual lives and i want to draw your attention to second kings chapter two verse number nine now we could read verses 1 through 15 and i don't know that we're going to read all of them tonight but i want to draw your attention to verse number nine and it came to pass when they were gone over that elijah said unto elisha ask what i shall do for thee before i be taken away from thee and elisha said i pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me elisha had the opportunity when elijah says to him ask ask me what you want like like tell me what it is that you're desiring of me ask what i shall do for you before i go and he said this he could have said anything but he said this i want a double portion of the spirit he's saying i want more and we'll talk about what all that means in just a little while i want to show you a picture of a guy's name is donald gorski maybe you've heard of this guy in august of this past year this man set a new guinness world record now you may not recognize him you may not even know who he is anybody anybody know who this guy is donald gorski he holds the guinness book of world records for eating a big mac hamburger the most days in a row and he's eaten the most big macs according to guinness book of world records anybody want to guess how many he's eating you wanna take a stab thirty thousand thirty thousand he's eaten at least one a day since the day that he got his driver's license when he was 16 years old he said i drove to mcdonald's i got my license i drove to mcdonald's over to three big macs i ate them and i said and look there's a video that goes along with this i should have showed tonight he said i there's there's there's three big i ate those three big macs and i knew right then i'm going to eat this sandwich every day for the rest of my life what like he he and the way they know how many he ate he saved the boxes and now he he actually has them in files in his home and he has the receipts for every big mac he's ever purchased i wish i was making this up but you can and so he takes the box and he labels what the date is and he has all the boxes and he says i'm keeping all of these boxes for my sons to know when i finally passed away i ate this many big macs and this is how many big macs will kill you this is this is the number right here i'm saving all these boxes my kids will know that's unbelievable he married this this lady she had no idea about his big mac situation that he had going on they get married he loves the big macs what he eats every day he used to go every day and buy one now he only goes mcdonald's twice a week he buys four big macs at a time takes them home saves them warms it up for the next day let me tell you they're not running out of big macs you can go back tomorrow but he goes twice a week now and buys four how many of you've eaten a big mac 12 minutes after they made it it's disgusting try three days later you know what i mean just to keep your record going i don't think so so this guy's eaten so many big macs he loves it and he would think his cholesterol's bad he said look it's the only thing i eat like there's nothing like i don't eat anything else i don't snack i just eat how many of you are totally disgusted by the way like how many of you love a big mac and you're like i think i can catch them you know what i mean how many of you think you can catch them i love a good big mac matter of fact i shared this my church and that day for lunch i went to mcdonald's and i got a big mac and i took a picture of and i said those of you that know no and i just ate the big mic i absolutely love it here's the deal this guy has has really capitalized on the idea that if some is good more is better it just may not be the more that you're looking for the more that you want he breaks down the sandwich it's a really great video i need to send it to you so if we're looking at second kings chapter two what we discover is that elisha has been appointed to be the next prophet of god we see that in first kings chapter 19 verse number 16 and this passage that we're looking at today is going to recount the events leading up to elijah's departure and in that in that departure that elijah's going to do in the and we don't have time again to read and walk through all of it but they travel to gilgal together and then they travel to bethel and then they go to jericho and then they go to the jordan river and if you look back into into the old testament if you look back in joshua chapter one through eight they are retracing the first steps of the nation of israel in the promised land and so as they go through that elijah tells elisha i want you to stay right here and elisha says listen as long as i live i'm not leaving you i'm going to go with you look what it says in verse number 2 and elijah said unto elisha terry here i pray thee for the lord hath sent me to bethel and elisha said unto him as the lord liveth and as thy soul liveth i will not leave thee so they went down to bethel the bible tells us in verse number four he says the same thing i pray thee stay here he says for the lord hath sent me to jericho and elisha says the lord as the lord liveth and as my soul lived i will not leave thee so they came to jericho the same thing happens in verse number six they're going through that path they go to the jordan river they're going to cross the jordan 50 different people see them cross over the jordan river elijah and elisha and now they are alone by themselves and elijah senses elisha wants something and he turns to him and says after they get alone on the other side of the jordan he says ask me what it is that you want to ask me and so elisha does what i want to do is i want to take a look at three different things in this passage and then draw some truths from that that have to do with us i want to share some things that our church is doing for this concept of more let me first say that contentment is the enemy of more elisha looked at the situation and i believe elisha was a special man i believe he was he was a good man i think he wanted to be where the lord was he wanted to follow the prophet of god but when he looked and he got the question ask me what you wanted me what is his response he's saying i need more i need more of the spirit he's not asking for more things he's not asking for more stuff he's saying listen i need more of the spirit of god and what makes you say that but you are discontent with where you are and here's what i'm saying if you're here tonight you've been saved for a long time and you're probably doing really well then you've probably reached the maximum of where you want to be and you're good and the problem is that contentment is what's going to hold you back it's irrelevant how young or old we are we can desire more of the lord we can desire more of the spirit of god and so i want us to notice the first thing here is that elisha wanted to remain in the presence of the prophet and the lord three different times elijah tries to tell elijah listen man stay put don't follow the bible tells us elisha's not having any of it he's saying i'm not staying here when you're going over there you're the prophet of god he said i want to be where you are staying with elijah meant being close to the presence of god as we know in the old testament as the way that god spoke to people elisha didn't want to miss anything he didn't want to miss anything that elijah had to say he wanted to stay right there real close and follow and we know then that there was something special about elisha but let me say this it's not insignificant that he had this mentality he said i'm going to stay with the man of god i want to be close to when he hears from god i want to hear from him i'm not going to stay away from him he had a strong desire to be close to the man of god so let me ask you a question and be very honest with yourself where is your desire for your personal relationship with god what satan will say in your mind in your heart right now is you're doing great you're at church on a wednesday night in covent time you're doing great when the truth is you know in your heart what the reality of your relationship is listen there's been times in my life when i've been spiritually in the highs and there have been times in my life when i was spiritually low and if we were all honest with ourselves there were times in our lives when we spiritually didn't care when we were here because we're supposed to be we didn't feel like it the person up there talking as soon as he gets done i'm going to leave and i'm not going to remember anything he's going to say anybody been there before and so if we're all honest with ourselves we've had highs and lows but let me ask you where's your desire right now if your desire level is to just stay right where you are then friend you're missing the whole idea of this passage elisha's saying listen i i want more i need more of the spirit of god so he wants to remain in the presence of the prophet and the lord i want you to notice secondly verse number nine and ten elisha desired an extra amount of the spirit you see what it says in verse number 9 elijah saying to elisha ask what i shall do for thee before i be taken away from thee and elisha said i pray he let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me and he said thou hast asked a hard thing we'll talk about that in just a minute nevertheless if thou see me when i am taken from thee it shall be so unto thee but if not it shall not be so i want you to notice here in the process of elisha following elijah elijah senses he must want something so he asks him what is it that you want and so elisha says hey i'm going to share with you my my full internal desire he says i want that double portion of the spirit and let me say this that reference would have been completely understood by the entire audience that read this first see we look at it and we say oh he just wants more the idea of the double portion was a pretty big deal it's an inheritance situation you remember the story of the the prodigal son and he goes to his father and he says give me the portion that belongs to me and so his dad gives him the portion that belongs to him and he goes out and he wastes all of it and then he comes back and then the older brother's there as well that's that's the part that we always forget is the older brother and he shows back up and and now his his the son the younger son has returned and the dad kills the fatted calf and he starts giving him stuff and the older son gets mad why'd the older son get mad because now he's cutting into my inheritance now he's taken from me and he said i want the double portion and listen all of those people would have understood the double portion that was reserved for the firstborn that was the one that this you're you're the special one you're the anointed one you're the one that's going to get the double portion everybody else going to get less than you but you're going to get double of that and here's what elisha is saying to elijah i want to be i want to be the firstborn after you i want to be the prophet that god uses i want double portion he's not saying i want to be better than everybody else what he's saying is this i want god to use me in a similar way that god has used you and he said listen i'm not content to be one of those guys on the other side of the jordan i want to be one of the guys making a difference for the lord right here like you did i want the double portion and that's why elijah looks at him and he says listen you've asked you've asked a hard thing elisha recognized that elijah had a special relationship with god and he said i want this same kind of relationship he said i want more his passion was for more and it was more than the normal he wasn't content with be with being where he was and the key to all of this is being discontent with where you are if we were all honest with ourselves tonight we would all say i should do better i can be better i can have more god wants us to have more god desires for us to be the kind of people that he can bless and god desires for us to be people that has more of his spirit so let me ask you this question and finish this statement you can never have too much blanket now what would you fill that in now let me say this it depends on the context of where you are now where i live we have a lot of tex-mex restaurants i love tex-mex right how many of you love tex-mex food right do you have tex-mex food here do they do they like do you call it tex-mex here no it's just mexican food is that what you call if you're at the if you're at the tex-mex place where we live there's a great one by our church it's called seven legwass we go there love it and it's phenomenal when we go there how many of you know you can never have too much salsa and chips how many of you know that to be true you're sitting there you're talking they're like let me take that basket from you and they're like should i bring you another one and you're like i don't think yeah go ahead you know that's fine bring us another we'll just nibble on it you know i probably won't eat any and then it's empty you know a few minutes later right and if they keep bringing you baskets how many of you keep eating the baskets and then your food arrives you're like why are we even eating here right now i'm not even hungry anymore like anybody ever done this like we do this our salsa back home they warm it up so like when it comes to your table it's warm they don't do that here do they you get cold salsa you should move yeah that's terrible so you just can't have too much but that's in the context of that restaurant you can never have too many sauce and chips if your kids though have moved away to college your context is different you can say you can never have too much time with your children you see how the context changes so look at your look at your spiritual life your relationship with the lord your walk with lord right now let me say this you can never have too much of the spirit of god elijah and elisha he was laser focused on what it is that he wanted and it was just i need more of the spirit i want you to notice the third thing here verse 14 and 15 take a look with me if you will elisha and by the way okay let's look at verse number 12. elisha and elisha saw it here comes the cherry to fire right and he and he cried my father my father the chariot of israel and the horsemen thereof and he saw him no more and he took hold of his own clothes and he rent them into two pieces or that moment that elisha was waiting for the moment when the chariot was coming to get elijah it finally happened and elisha saw it it says in verse number 12. in verse number 13 he took also the mantle of elijah that fell from him and went back and stood by the bank of jordan and he took the mantle of elijah that fell from him and smote the waters and said where's the lord god of elijah and when he had smitten the waters they parted hither and thither and elisha went over and when the sons of the prophets which which were to view at jericho saw him they said the spirit of elijah doth rest on elisha and they came to meet him and bowed themselves to the ground before him i want you to notice the third thing elisha's more was noticed by those around him elisha after elijah was taken up he took up the mantle and he parts the waters of jordan with that mantle exactly the same way that elijah did just before that and here's the thing when others saw him they said the spirit of elijah is on elisha we see it we notice it and friend i'm going to tell you this when you have the spirit of god on you people will see people will notice in other words it was evident that god had blessed elisha god had given elisha the more that he desired and let me say this and i believe this with all my heart the greatest result of our more the greatest result of our more is the impact we can have on the lives of other people the greatest impact that we can have is when we have more listen friends i want to tell you this your family needs more of you spiritually your grandkids need to see more of you your children need to see more of the spiritual side of you a godly side of you this church needs all of us to be more to have an impact on this community if we remain the same if we don't have any more of the spirit if we don't desire it let me make this statement if we keep our spiritual status quo then we are making the exact impact that we will ever make right now and no more if we keep the spiritual status quo then we are making the exact impact that we will ever make right now and no more and as i'm saying this to my church i'm thinking to myself i hope that our impact grows because if it stays the way it is we'll never reach the world for christ we'll build a building we'll have comfortable seats but we won't have an impact for christ it won't be any more than what it is so i want to experience more of the blessings of god i want to experience more of the spirit of god i want to have the same desire here so let me share with you three truths very quickly number one more starts with personal desire more starts with personal desire i can't want it for you you have to want it for yourself you can't force anybody to want jesus christ i can't force you to desire more of the holy spirit i can't do it i'd beg you to do it but i can't make you do it and it starts within yourself and so if you're here tonight you say i'm not even sure what we're even talking about i don't even know what we're talking about about the holy spirit what we might need to do is get on our face before the lord and say lord help me to have a desire for you the second truth is more is discontent with our personal status quo so we have to get over where we are right now and look there's no doubt in my mind some of the greatest christian people that i know are in this room i believe wholeheartedly that your staff here at church and your staff at school are some of the best servants of the lord jesus christ i think some of you are some of the greatest servants of the lord jesus christ but are you content just to be where you are because it starts with discontent in your own personal status quo and then i think more involves the disciplines of our passions he said what do you mean by that i think it's doing what needs to be done because it is truly what we want doing what needs to be done because it is truly what we want earlier today i um i do this every time that i get to come the chapel band that sings for chapel i try to get them donuts and kolaches uh and so there's a place right down the road here called a hole in one and uh yeah oh hole in one got it amen that's serious business man it's a good place so i go down there and the first time i ever went down there this was several years ago now i go down there and i noticed they had kolaches now they all don't know what kolaches are it's a pig in a blanket by the way now and i had an argument with kevin scales he's like it doesn't say collage i'm like bro in the case it says kalachi so i asked the people and come to find out the owners are from texas good people great people we're everywhere just so you all know so here we are we're in there i buy these kolaches and i get them and today i go in there i'm going to buy donuts and kolaches for these kids to eat after they practice and all that kind of stuff and i see this on the board they're inside of hole in one there so do we have the the picture there here we go first free will baptist church tampa freewill dot com you are invited and i'm sitting there that's on the board inside hole-in-one and i'm looking at it i'm like that is the coolest thing ever and i look y'all i've been there probably 15 times i've never seen that card there and maybe it's been there and i just haven't seen it but today i just happen to be looking around and i see this card and i'm like i got to take a picture of this card like this is the coolest thing ever and here's the deal i know that your church wants to have an impact in the community that's why that's there it's it's apparently it's the greatest donut place in on planet earth and everybody goes there and so i went there today and i'm buying donuts and you want to have an impact inside hole in one and so i see that there and i say you know what this is a church that wants to make a difference this is a church that wants to do something so the desire is there but let me ask you a question is that the extent of evangelism i had to find it there's got to be a story behind the track there's got to be a face behind it of somebody who actually put it there and i don't know who it was and i probably should have asked before i put the picture up there but thank god for the person that put it up there but here's the friend here's the truth friend we can't let this just be the end of it we need more if we had more of the spirit then we would have more of the lord and we wouldn't be content with that maybe we'd have to have a conversation with somebody that's uncomfortable well look friend here's the thing remember what elijah said to elisha you want the double portion of the spirit he said you've asked a hard thing that's not that hard right there now where's the uncomfortable conversation that goes with it that's the hard part so here's the deal don't be content with where you are do more want more desire more so here's what my church is doing what what are we going to do to have more well the things that i mentioned to my church these are hard things they require effort they require sacrifice and again it doesn't matter how old or how young we are these things require us making choices for the sake of our families spiritual lives above other things there's a lot of things that distract us in our world today that gets in the way of our spiritual lives and these things require us to make those kind of choices so here's what our church is trying to do we're trying to have more one-on-one discipleship meetings mentor relationships with people because i feel like that's the greatest way to grow there's somebody in your life that poured into you that you learned from that you spent time with and you say you know what i am who i am today because of that person's investment in me you know what that takes time it takes effort it takes vulnerability where you stand in front of someone and share with them your thoughts and your heart and you learn from them and you say things like i don't know and i don't understand but i'd love to know more and you have that mental relationship and so we're trying to do one-on-one discipleship meetings we're trying to begin and get involved with smaller connection groups so that we can get more intimate with one another and i think settings like this are phenomenal i think they're great but i know that one of the ways that people connect now is in a smaller group where they can talk and have discussion about the word of god the third thing we're doing is we're doing increased accountability with our own personal walks with god i've told my church everybody in the building has the the right the ability and they are encouraged to text me and ask me have you read the bible today have you prayed today i've got i've got friends of mine who who i i've got them promised to tell me that when you can no longer preach i need to know that so text me and say hey it's over man go go do something else or i hope you've saved some money but you can't preach anymore that's accountability and so you find these people in your life that you trust and you say listen i want you to ask me the hard questions have you looked at something today you shouldn't look at have you put yourself in a compromising position with somebody else that's not your spouse have you lied to me these are the kind of questions that if we want more we need more accountability we need increased accountability that's good for everyone the last thing we're doing is we're trying to find areas of service of ministry that fits people's abilities and desires and puts them together god created you for a purpose whatever that purpose is he created you to fit perfectly into that ministry it's the worst thing in the world when you have the ability to do something and and you don't have the opportunity to do it that's the worst you get sad because you'd rather do something else but it's the worst thing in the world as well when you have to do something and you don't have the ability to do it you get burnt out you get frustrated i can't do the thing that they want me to do so you match up ability and desire and you put them together and you say you know what that's how we have more because i think more of the spirit of god is tied to our service to our lord you want to have more of the spirit serve the lord there's one time in my life that i remember wanting something more than any other time in my life i lived in amer mississippi and we had a christian school we took our kids on a school retreat to trinity camp in alabama with a young man in our youth group he was our pastor's son and he didn't know how to swim his name was jonathan and at trinity camp they would everybody would jump in the deep end of the pool they would swim to the other side and that was the swim test and if you could pass that then you could swim and jonathan wasn't a very good swimmer he said he didn't know how to swim but he jumped he's very athletic young man he jumped in he kind of doggy paddled his way to the other side and everything was fine some of you already putting pieces together so we're there we're goofing off i'm sitting there next to to my brother-in-law and we're sitting there in just these chairs by the pool and the boys are all in there swimming and a boy comes up and he says jonathan's in the bottom of the pool and i stood up from the chair i was in and sure enough his body was in the bottom of the deep end i thought this is not going to go well two boys go down to the bottom of the pool and i ran over they started to pull him up and i ran over to the other side of the pool and i don't remember all the things that took place the boys said when they got to the side of the pool that i grabbed jonathan i pulled his entire body out of the pool and i laid him down on the side and his his face was completely purple he was not breathing he was not responsive it looked like the worst scene in any movie that i've ever seen in my life and the boys there's 18 boys in the pool and you could hear water dripping off their chins they were completely still and one of the boys his name was jason he said guys we got to pray at that time ashley kulp who was the the camp director he still is the camp director at trinity he gets up and he runs over to the side of the pool and he looks at jonathan he starts doing cpr right away and i'm like please please cough please and i'm begging god and it's going through my mind the words that jonathan said before he jumped in the pool because i was his youth pastor and he looked at me and he said brother heath if i get in trouble will you jump in and save me and i don't know what happened i don't know how he ended up in the bottom of the pool but i remember hearing his voice says i'm sitting there looking at his purple face and his lifeless body saying oh god let him breathe i didn't know what else to say oh god let him breathe thank god he started coughing and i knew then there was air getting down to his lungs and and as brother ashley was doing cpr and doing compressions and blowing into his mouth and so forth he finally spit up and he finally started breathing and the color returned back to his face the way that it should and to this day i've never wanted anything more than to hear that boy breathe never i've got two girls at home i've got a 15 year old a 10 year old i've never had anything happen to them that i wanted more than that right there we had to call his dad who was our pastor and tell them what happened we took the kids we spent that night there we had our services and we went home but i'll never forget that moment in my life my prayer is that god would make my desire for the spirit of god to be like i wanted to hear that young man breathe god i want your spirit like i wanted him to breathe and there may be something in your life that you've seen that scared you completely to death and you've looked back on that point in your life and you say oh god and until we want the spirit like that you're making the impact you're ever going to make now i don't want that your church doesn't want that your god doesn't want that your god wants you to have more and to desire more i'm going to ask you to go lord in prayer with me i want to thank you for listening so much i want to thank you for being here tonight but i want to ask you for just a moment to just be honest with yourself no matter where you are in your personal walk no matter where where is your desire do you have a desire for more of the spirit of god i want to hear great stories of what comes out of people's lives but we can't do anything without god we can't do a thing nothing special happens in houston texas without god god can change me in and out and put somebody else in there but without the spirit of god nothing happens and so i want to ask you on your journey with god wherever you are right here right now what's your desire [Music] if you're here tonight you would say brother heath would you remember me in prayer god has spoken to my heart contentment has gripped me and i need it to be changed and i need more of god you say brother heath that is me would you remember me in prayer is there anybody that would lift up your hand and say that's me thank you so much thank you so much all over the place on top even thank you so much [Music] i don't know how you typically end your wednesday evening services in just a moment i'm going to hand it over to your pastor i want to say thank you for listening thank you for being here but my heart's desire is not for us just to leave here but for us to be changed but you're here tonight and you say brother heath would you remember me in prayer my family i've got something going on in my life and it doesn't have anything to do with what you spoke about tonight i would just appreciate your prayers thank you so much i see you right there thank you man all over the place thank you i want to invite you some have already come but if you need to slip out from where you are and come down here and pray on this altar on this prayer evening service i want to invite you to do that right here right now and in just a moment i'm going to turn it over to your pastor but if you want to come pray i believe there's probably time for you to do that i'll pray for you to desire more of the word of god of the spirit of god if you'll pray for me to have more desire for the spirit of god you raised your hand tonight you have a need tonight you have a request tonight the altars are open i pray that you would submit to the holy spirit's call god we love you we thank you for the message tonight those who've responded continue to have your way this evening in jesus name we pray amen as we sing if you need to come would you come come on ask the elders to come forward at this time [Music] to follow jesus [Music] i have decided to follow jesus [Music] still i will [Music] me [Music] the world behind me the cross before me the world behind me the cross before [Music] no turning back [Music] i have decided to follow [Music] have jesus to follow jesus i have decided to follow jesus [Music] [Music] me [Music] still i will follow no [Music] still i will fall no turning back [Music] amen enjoy that message this evening let's give brother heath a hand thank you brother heath thank you for that message for all those who responded i'm asking him to make his way back to the vestibule if he would i have a couple announcements i want to remind you this sunday is sca day having our our staff uh the teachers some kids will be here we're asking all of those 55 and under if you would park out towards the the gymnasium at the overflow parking over there so we can leave our parking spaces open around here for our guests our visitors so we're actually do that we'll remind you we'll send out that little text this weekend but if you could remember that sunday morning at a park out there that would be a big help usf football game in a couple weeks if you're interested see uh brother aaron to sign up for that i know we got like 30 or 40 going right now and that's probably the biggest crowd usf we'll have all season and we're being a part of it so if you'd like to go to that uh just see brother aaron and we'll sign you up for that and then the sca golf tournament is september 17th so if you're interested in that you can see me hoy andy's back there you can see him and be a part of that all right any other announcements for dismiss yes yes prayer breakfast men's prayer breakfast saturday saturday september 18th starting at 8 30 a.m yes this saturday the bus is leaving at 4 30 for the young at heart headed down to sarasota all right amen amen all right thank you for coming tonight make sure you get my brother heath tell him what a great job that he did brother west would you dismiss us in prayer you

Channel: First Free Will Baptist Church

Views: 211

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Heath Ferguson, Tampafreewill, First Free Will Baptist, Church, Tampa, Seffner, Florida, Jesus, Jesus Christ

Id: j7IQjltICbo

Length: 69min 22sec (4162 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021