You Can Be Satisfied | Lisa Harper | Elevation Church

i really have to tell y'all the first time uh pastor steven and holly invited me to come to elevation i thought they were confused because i love this house pastor tim you fat move like dance i thought he he's only been a believer for a short period of time because that's some that's some bc rhythms and before christ's rhythm right there brother but but the first time really i want like i need a little bit of training between service my my baby can dance but mama ain't got no rhythm the first time i got to come be with y'all i was so excited because you have taught me i've learned so much about jesus through your house and i thought surely pastor stephen has got me confused with lisa bevere now i don't know if y'all know who lisa bevere is but the woman can preach we're about the same age but she has much more authority than i do and she wears leather pants a lot of times when she preaches and i thought uh oh to keep up the charade i might have to wear leather pants to elevation and when i wear leather pants it sounds like ducks are being killed um so i'm not quite as lean as the other lease and i thought oh this is gonna be so uncomfortable so i was thrilled to find out that they lowered the bar that they actually knew i wasn't that lisa and so to get to to get to be with y'all now it's pure grace y'all it's pure grace that i get to come back and run hard toward jesus with this house ah love me some elevation deeply deeply respect that's my cousin right there um i so deeply respect what god has done and is doing through your house through pastor steven holly the whole team here i just i'm in the middle of a 40-day fast on sugar and when chunks called me i was like i'm gonna get some sugar after all baby i get to go to elevation not too many sweeter houses that i've been to in the world i do want to make just a couple of qualifications before we dive into the message um the first is i'm a spitter and so i'm so sorry we're just gonna call it a baptism ephem y'all can breathe a sigh of relief that you're not in the room i will not sprinkle you but anybody with about 15 feet y'all just plan to get wet and um and then my second qualification is for the tech tech team this is the first time i've been to elevation that i actually have a title they always have to make up a title for me because i'm creatively challenged but i have a title so for those of you who are enneagram ones or threes or eights y'all are note takers i know you are heaven forbid um here's the title the title for our message this morning is mick jagger was wrong you with me mick jagger was wrong i'll explain that in a minute um i even have a secondary title bruce springsteen was right mick jagger was wrong bruce springsteen was right now for those of you gen zers who don't know who's sir jagger or the boss who they are y'all need to rectify your spotify because they're they're two of the best but theologically mick jagger was wrong in light of that title we probably need to pray before we dive into god's word and so since we've loosened up a little bit on the restrictions and y'all are sitting next to your beloved reach out and touch them if they're not your beloved don't grope them but let's pray those of y'all who are listening to this online and you're driving please don't close your eyes while you pray jesus jesus jesus jesus king of kings lord of lords the lion and the lamb the lily of the valley mighty god wonderful counselor messiah adonai the christ the anointed one jesus thank you for your mercy thank you for your compassion thank you for your accessibility thank you that what we sang was not just uh inspirational thank you that you actually do meet all of our needs according to your riches and your glory thank you that you stick closer than a brother thank you that we can cast all our anxiety on you because you care for us thank you jesus that when you ascended into heaven and sit at the right hand of god the father you did not leave us as orphans that even during those seasons when we feel missed or marginalized your presence is palpable thank you that when we look back over our lives we don't see your back that you are present that you left us your holy spirit who even this morning reminds us that we have the right to call the god who breathe the universe into existence dad thank you thank you thank you and thank you for your word as chris said we need it lord sometimes we forget it's a love story we forget that we can find ourselves on these paper thin pages and we can find over and over and over and over again that you're a god who condescends to embrace his people that you're not a far away unibrowed librarian you're an up close personal compassionate savior jesus we ask for more of you this morning we ask that you would give us eyes to see more clearly and ears to hear louder and hearts that would really believe really believe um that you love us teach us what it is to know that to rest in that to live out of that reality we ask these things jesus by the power and authority of your name and we ask it for your purposes amen and amen i uh i feel so close to y'all and so affectionate with y'all because you have become like a family of cousins for me holly has become just a dear dear friend i don't like standing next to her because her waist is about the size of my ankle but other than not wanting to stand in close physical proximity i love holly and so i feel safe enough to tell y'all a story that i have never told before publicly um because it's a story that is um well it's just a little too revelatory and it's about one of my most recent uh blind dates gone horribly awry for those of you who've been here before you might remember that i'm old and single i'm 57 my husband is lost and won't stop to ask for directions and i do have a daughter by the miraculous kindness of god i got to bring my baby girl home from haiti the year i turned 50 and she was four so i went through menopause and motherhood at the same time but we don't have a baby daddy and so um i actually told her one day i was teasing with her and she we were talking about prayer requests and i said baby it's okay for us to pray for a baby daddy i said you know god brought you to me but it'd be cool if we had a daddy with skin on in our house and she went right to her little christian school and gave that as a prayer request i got met in the drive-through pick-up line by the headmaster who was not at all pleased that i told a kindergartner to make her pray request i need a baby daddy so anyway be careful be careful who you use that terminology with but but i i've gotten so content that i really have kind of stopped even thinking much about marriage and part of it is i lost all my estrogen after menopause so it's just like life for the most part is really good except i can't wear pants with zippers anymore and so i was explaining this to a friend recently i was telling her how excited i was because i've been dreaming about a john deere tractor for about 15 years we live out in the country south of nashville i've got a little tiny farm at five acres and i've just been jonesing for john deere and i finally found one that was used on sale and i was just so fired up about this john deere tractor so i'm telling this friend of mine who's much more mature in a walk of faith of how i just i feel like i'm finally content because i got my john deere and she said lisa you need help and she began to lecture me about the fact that i i wasn't praying about marriage again that i wasn't that i wasn't praying for a husband and she lectured me so effectively that she finally manipulated me into signing up for a three-month trial membership with a christian online dating organization uh please hear me i'm not dissing them i've seen the advertisements i've seen the cute couples gazing adoringly at each other maybe some of y'all met through online dating which is a cult but other than that i know i i know it can work i know it can work and so she said the reason that i wouldn't even try it was because of my pride and i thought well you know my pride's got me in trouble before pastor tim and so i thought she's probably right i'll sign up it's only 79 dollars for three months and i thought that's that's good you know it's about starbucks you know price i can do it so i sign up and and for some reason i'm set up with a lot of men who who live in their mother's basements and are unemployed not that there's a thing wrong with that nothing at all wrong with that but my preference would be preferent just just preference would be a man who who doesn't live with this mama because we're in our 50s and um and you know if he had a part-time job that would be cool and so i was really excited that one of the men i was matched with had a had a full-time job and had a a place he lived by himself which i thought this is amazing well we start you know just communicating back and forth on email and he hadn't sent a picture but you know we all lie on our pictures we're over 50 anyway you should see my filters um yeah when colleen takes pictures i'm like please stand on a ladder so i can you know have something like you know i don't care if he doesn't have to have hair or money as long as he you know doesn't live with his mama and so he was super witty and i was like oh man this is awesome because humor is just humor's it for me humor's like wits like an aphrodisiac i'm like man this is awesome i like this guy and uh ladies amen me on this he could spell that's amazing i mean to get a guy and guys i love men please hear me i'm not i'm not trying to throw shade at y'all it's just a lot of times on email guys are less than grammatically correct and so if you get a guy who's witty and he can spell i'm like oh my goodness this is like romeo with you know amazing and so i thought i'm kind of starting to feel myself kind of lean toward this fella and so he sent me an email that happens in online dating that is okay let's move to the next step let's meet face to face and i was like well i would love to that would be a delight and then he sent me a disclaimer it was a rather lengthy disclaimer and i won't tell you everything in his disclaimer but i will tell you he explained and this part isn't funny so hear me he explained that he had extreme social anxiety and so he did not leave his home that he worked from home he had not left his home in years except for rare occasions and that i mean that that's not funny that kind of broke my heart and then he said he was also very hesitant to ever leave his home because he really really loved his pets i love my pets i mean i do i have two dogs i don't have you know a t-shirt with a picture on it or anything and don't sleep with them but i love my dogs i really love my dogs and so he went on to explain he loved his pets and he had 38 cats and i was like well you know i mean i really want to be open i don't want to be too picky but um missy my little girl is allergic to cats and i'm very much an extrovert and so i thought to stay inside all day with that many cats i don't think i can do it i don't think you know missy'd be sneezing i'd be bored i just i don't think probably this is a match made in heaven but i wanted to be really careful about telling this guy probably probably this isn't going to go anywhere because i thought i don't want to be unkind or say anything that would be offensive to him and i was thinking about it all afternoon i was really kind of worried as to how to explain to this fella because you don't leave your home and because you're a cat boy it's we're probably not going to connect and and i had to go to my doctor because i had bronchitis and a double ear infection at that time and my doctor gave me um he gave me some pretty strong steroids and then he gave me ambien because he said lisa the the steroids are going to keep you from sleeping so you're going to have to take ambien tonight now y'all may be able to guess the rest of the story um i i took ambien i've only taken ambien a few times last time i took ambien i am signed up for a coffee club that i couldn't get out of it it had an ironclad contract and i almost bought a condo in cabo because i get real liberated when i'm on ambien and so i i took that ambien and then i forgot what i did next i can kind of i can kind of identify with people who party too much because those few little ambients i've taken in my life have just sent me right to the edge of appropriate behavior i woke up the next morning after this sweet man's missive and i woke up in a panic because my ipad was next to me in my bed and i just had this and i thought i think i messaged him while i was ambient loopy and so i just as quick as i could went to that you know christian online dating app and i went to my sent messages and sure enough i had messaged him the night before when i was out of my mind and i i wrote him a dear john letter that was that had bad grammar and um and at the end of the note i said as i was basically saying goodbye i said maybe someday i'll be able to sit on your lap y'all i meant to write maybe someday i'll meet your cats and i don't know to this day i am like i am old have not dated him forever i am not sleazy i do not say certain things like that it was some kind of horrible ambient-fueled freudian slip i meant to say maybe i would meet his cats and when i saw it they were blinking on my screen maybe someday i'll center i just went i just i pinned it i got completely out of the dating app i've never been on one since i was like oh this is just so awful and i had to tell my friend i'm never doing it again as it remember it was so awkward maybe not as awkward as you know renting a plane to fly a banner 1-800-588 please call lisa for a date but awkward nonetheless and i said that just doesn't do it for me i said we were sharing stuff about ourselves but we were sharing it digitally i said even if we had sent pictures they would have been filtered i said that's not the kind of relationship that i'm craving i want a face-to-face relationship i want a real relationship i want an authentic relationship i want them to be able to see the spanx poking out of my stretchy pants i want i want that kind of guys if you don't know what they are don't google it because you can't unsee it but i want i want intimacy i want to be known and the older i get the more i crave that with jesus i don't want uh i don't want a superficial relationship with jesus i don't want to just accrue information about jesus i want intimacy with jesus if you brought your bible or you have your phone turn to genesis chapter one you'll know this i've actually heard pre stephen preach on this multiple times chapter 1 verses 26 and 27 then god said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created him male and female he created them those verses um are what we get the theology imago dei from imago de comes from two latin words meaning image and god and what this basically means is every single one of us here in south carolina listening online in south africa every epham everybody outside of the family of god every single human being regardless of ethnicity or gender or age or status socioeconomically everyone was made in god's image they bear his thumbprint that means they are inherently worthy of dignity and respect and compassion it also means we were wired for relationship because god makes it clear in genesis one that he fashioned us after himself he's a trinitarian god god the father got the son got the holy spirit saint augustine says only the christian god is a perfect community unto himself and we were made in that image that means we were hard wired for relational intimacy we were hardwired for intimacy we were not hard-wired for social media we were not hardwired for distance we were not hardwired for filters we were not hardwired to curate who we are so someone else will approve and i'm not this in social media i'm saying i think we've become content with what we were not made to crave i think we call intimacy what is really merely information both about each other and about god aw tozier puts it like this for millions of christians god is no more real than he is to non-christians they go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle roofing springsteen says it possibly better he says everybody has a hungry heart everybody has a hungry heart blaze pascal who have a massive platonic crush on and can't wait to hug in heaven he was a brilliant physicist philosopher and theologian in the 1800s 1600s he says it best there is a god-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by god the father made known through jesus christ i'm in the latter stages of a doctrine and so i've been reading voraciously because i get graded on that and i've been reading a lot of papers about the spiritual condition of post-post-post-modern society and one of the things that both theologians scholars and sociologists sociologists that's the hard work smart people um have noted is that there has been an uptick in spiritual curiosity so that in this era i would say the modern era there has been an increased curiosity about spiritual things the latest survey i said said that has been increased dramatically as a result of the pandemic because of the isolation people are going i want to have an encounter with something or someone transcendent but those exact same polls those exact same phd papers and dissertations point to the fact that contentment is at an all-time low all-time low that most people feel missed most people feel like no matter how many likes i get on instagram i still feel like nobody really knows my heart we weren't made for that y'all we were made for more than what most of us are living in information about god is a really really poor substitute for intimacy with god i love i love this book i built my life on this inscription revelation but i'm telling you if all you know is this as a rule book or a textbook or an ancient tomb with with morality tales goodness gracious you're not gonna have intimacy at its core this is a love story at its core this is about the compassion of god turn to john 4 i know you know this story you've read it a thousand times if you were raised half baptist like me you have seen it flannel graphed john chapter 4 now when jesus learned that the pharisees has heard now when jesus learned that the pharisees had heard that jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than john although jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples he left judean departed again for galilee and he had to pass that's actually not a great english translation he didn't have to pass he chose to pass through samaria so he came to a town of samaria called sikkar near the field that jacob given to his son joseph jacob's well was there so jesus weird as it was from his journey was sitting beside the well if you are comfortable writing in your bibles those of you have brick and mortar bibles and those of you who don't own a brick and mortar bible this is because i'm old but let me bring an old sister word to you if your only bible hear me if your only bible because i know most of the times we don't bring our bibles to settings like this i'm so happy you have your ipads and your phones but if you don't have a brick and mortar bible somewhere in your home in your apartment that's like an old man in short shorts that's sad um you you need a brick and mortar bible and i'm telling you as an older sister those of y'all who still have tight skin and high metabolisms there will be seasons in your life when you go i got to be close to the promises to remember i need to go back through the pages of my my bible and see the notes i made in my bible and go oh he was there he was there he saw me so no shame no condemnation if you if you're new to the family of god if you don't know jesus yet you're still just kind of circling the church wondering if this is true please talk to somebody in your epham somebody here in brick and mortar elevation and just say i'd really love to be hooked up with the bible because we would love to get you an actual brick and mortar book to take home with you but if you're comfortable writing those underscore underscore that jesus was sitting by the well i'll come back to that just a minute it was about the sixth hour that means it was blazing hot because it was the middle of a middle eastern day there came a woman of samaria to draw water jesus said to her give me a drink for his disciples had gone away to the city to get chick-fil-a the samaritan woman said to him how is that that you jew asked for a drink from me a woman from samaria i won't go into great detail but most of you know that samaritans were considered half breeds in the most goodness the most misunderstood most demeaning way because they were half jew and half assyrian when israel was defeated and northern israel was carried away by the assyrians assyrian warriors married jewish widows they'd killed their husbands and they didn't do that because they loved them they did that to further subjugate them and to water down jewish lineage and so a samaritan was considered by a jew to be just way way way way way way down on the social totem pole and there was even mishna there was even application of torah the jewish bible that said if you have a samaritan in your home for a meal you've heaped coals of judgment on your family's head so the persecution of samaritans was um was like the persecution of some persecuted people groups we've seen in our era so this woman's saying how in the world would a guy like you talk to a girl like me and jesus answered her if you knew the gift of god verse 10 and who is it that is saying do you give me a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water well they go on to have this beautiful discussion about theology which again was highly unlikely this is in the first century this is the era in history that women were considered uh lower than a second-class citizen whether they're samaritan or not one of the most common rabbinic proverbs during the first century was better that torah be burned than read by a woman a woman wasn't even allowed to engage with the jewish bible women weren't allowed in the part of synagogue where teaching happened they could go to the other part and cross stitch and share recipes but they couldn't be in the part where they were talking about how god loves us how he meets all our needs another rabbinic proverb was thank the vowel jehovah who did not make me a woman and so it's highly unlikely for a jew to have a conversation with a samaritan even more unlikely for a rabbi to have a theological conversation with a woman and yet here's jesus he always turns culture upside down here's jesus dawn to someone everyone else would ostracize or marginalize this conversation with her and you all remember later on in in john 4 he talks to her about worship and i know y'all have such amazing musical worship here chris could probably he could probably stand up and recite all of john 4. it's it's one of those kind of orthodox orthodox walls about worship it's foundational but it's even better than we read in the black white and red because when when jesus talks to this woman about worship do you remember any other facts about her besides the fact that she's a samaritan young talked back exactly she's been married multiple times anybody remember exactly how many times five times and what's her current living conditions living with a man who won't do her the dignity of marriage perhaps had cats we don't know for sure but she's living with a man she's living with a man who won't marry her now i've heard from my earliest memories in church i started going to church when i was in utero my mom was there every time the doors were open and so from my earliest memories i remember this story and i remember this woman always being castigated not for being samaritan but for being sleazy because goodness gracious i mean it's like she got marriage mixed up with cinco de mayo and she just gets married over and over and over again and so she's castigated even in modern evangelical culture as being a woman of loose morals y'all we've gotten it wrong if you study judeo-christian history and culture in the first century it's highly unlikely for a woman to be married twice because once a man gave a woman a certificate of divorce it was also a label of shame rabbi hillel who preceded jesus he died i think five years after jesus was born but one of the most authoritative rabbis in jewish history rabbi hillel had such a disregard for women that he taught jewish men it is okay it is okay with god for you to divorce your what your wife if you don't like the way she cooks that's in mishna they they get to divorce their wives and once they divorce her what that man has said to his community is she's not worth it pick somebody else she's not worth it she's been married and divorced five times no jewish man is gonna marry a woman who's been divorced rarely once but two times three times four there's no way that just flies in the face of first century jewish protocol what modern conservative theologians assert is that not only did she not have loose morals it's much more likely that she was beautiful with a tremendous character that's the only thing that would justify men being willing to take the unnecessary risk because they could have slept with her but not given her a certificate of marriage and yet five guys said she's worth it to me she's worth it to me so stop and think she's castigated one of my favorite theologians believes we can't prove this until we get to glory and meet her but believe she probably struggled with infertility because that was also a reason to divorce a woman so stop and think she's been she's been taken for test drives over and over and over again can you imagine at 12 when she got married the first time which was common in their culture and so the for the first time in front of her friends and family she says i do there's no way she would think at 30 i'm going to have been married five times and then i'm going to be living on the outskirts of men with a guy who drinks and beats me because otherwise i would starve or else be sold as a slave there's no way she considered that her lot in life it's so interesting how other people's assumptions often cause us to step back from not only intimacy with each other but intimacy with god this woman is completely completely ostracized she's at the well heat of the day we know all those parts of the story we just didn't know that she may be innocent of a gossip that is maligner jesus engages with her he has an intimate conversation with her he doesn't give her a meme that's you know inspirational he doesn't give her a wwjd bracelet they have an intimate conversation and he talks with her about worship y'all there are ten words in the greek translated into the word worship ten words in the greek jesus jesus one it's pros hunuo it's often translated in bibles as to bow down but it's better than that prose in greek means to move toward anybody guess what canoe means means to kiss means to kiss stop and think about her story she's been married five times every time she hopes maybe he'll see beyond my flaws maybe even if i can't have a baby this time he'll still say i belong to him he'll still love me maybe if i burn his burrito he won't kick me to the curb maybe just maybe this love will last and it never does and she finds herself dried up in her 30s on the outskirts of town and she meets this man named yeshua and he looks into her eyes he doesn't ignore he's not condescending to her and then he essentially says if you'll move toward me with your kisses you won't be thirsty for affection anymore it's so intimate it's so intimate we tend to read scripture as punitive god is holy perfectly holy he gives us parameters for holy lives i give misty parameters when i first brought her home from haiti i told her that she had to hold my hand when we were in the target parking lot and i said baby you have to hold my hand because you're little and so when other cars drive past they can't see you and so if you're not holding my hand they could run over you accidentally and you would be a pancake and she said what's a pancake mama and so i took her home that night and i made pancakes for dinner and i flipped a pancake onto her plate she's like her mama she loves her some carbs and as she was eating that pancake i said baby that is a pancake and that's what you'll look like if you don't hold my hand walking into target i said you'll get flat and she said i'll get flat and i said you will and she said will i get dead and i said you will was i being a hateful cruel mama no i love that kid more than i can wrap words around i i love her more than i knew i had the capacity love god changed the topography of my heart through becoming her mama i adore this child but i am determined to keep her safe i'm going to protect her i want her to live her best life we are not created by a unibrow librarian who's just waiting to step out of heaven and smack us over the head with the bible we were created by an up close personal redeemer who longs for real relationship with us you know when when john explains that she's the first the very first evangelist to instigate a city-wide revival that's in verse 39 many samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony so the whole town is changed by her testimony and then john says that she says he told me everything i ever did do you think she said that with her head bowed in shame it was amazing because he knew what i knew that's how we tend to think god relates to us that he goes lisa i know sometimes in your singleness you've had naughty thoughts and you're tempted to watch sex in the city that's not how he relates to me that's not at all he is holy and he even disciplines me because i need it but he does it with such kindness he puts his hands on the side of my face and he says look at me i'm what you crave you think that guy on some social media site if he said i'm okay you're a little fluffy and you're old but i'll marry you and i'll love your daughter you think that would satisfy you honey it won't because you were made for more than that if he has a husband for me hallelujah if you all have older brothers who are employed hallelujah but you know that's not my hope anymore that's not my hope my hope is intimacy with jesus i want to be able to say like this woman he knows everything about me and he loves me unconditionally when you reveal your sin to jesus it's not because he doesn't already know it it's for our good it's for our healing when we reveal our sin to him and he goes i know honey i know we go oh he still loves me and he knows that jesus knows us completely and yet still loves us unconditionally turn to the end of the book to john chapter 21 to bring you up to speed those of you who haven't heard the story peter who is one of the original 12 disciples he's the one identify with the most because he's always stepping in it always making mistakes always doing stuff before he prays about it he is just like caffeinated 80d and this close to being a prodigal every day of his life just a stinker for jesus and and i love that the stories we read y'all these are not perfect paleo kind of spiritual people i mean they're people who eat too much sugar and who struggle and sometimes say bad words in traffic and i'm not justifying sin sin separates us from god if sin was no big deal jesus could have just done detention sin is a big deal but his grace is greater still he's a kind god he's a good god y'all remember the story you remember the story you remember that peter throws jesus under the bus at the point of jesus most urgent poignant need it's just prior to the cross and first pete falls asleep outside the garden of gethsemane and then peter denies that he even knows jesus he's afraid he's going to get caught up in the uproar and maybe he's going to be martyred as well and he panics and he goes no i don't know the man i don't know the man three times and then he throws in expletives to convince the crowd y'all know this well the next time he meets jesus after throwing jesus under the bus basically it's the coolest story because the first time peter meets jesus he's fishing doesn't catch any fish it's repeated it's it's the exact deja vu moment it's so sweet he's fishing same lake john calls it sea of tiberias for political reasons it's the sea of galilee lake gonna sear it pete's back out on a boat he's fishing hasn't caught anything a stranger appears on the shore and says have you caught any fish and he says nope not a one he says throw your nets to the right side of the boat same exact thing as luke 5 they throw the nets the right side of the boat fish begin to catapult into the net i mean pete even as slow as he was you know pete went this feels familiar something about this feels familiar and then he recognizes it's jesus now remember the context remember the context last time he saw his savior he has betrayed him horrifically this is the next time it's a week and a half later only a week and a half you'd think that pete would go i need to back the bus up i need to get in the 12-step program i need to go to john maxwell conference i mean i need to get myself together before i engage again with jesus that's not what he does instead he dives out of the boat scholars tell us they're only about a hundred yards from shore i mean he could have waited two or three minutes but he doesn't he can't wait to get up close to jesus even though he's carrying horrific betrayal but he knows what he'll find at the feet of jesus he knows he'll find mercy because he spent three years with jesus even though he totally messed up he knows he'll find mercy he gets to jesus you remember the story jesus eats a fish to show it really is me i'm not a mirage and then they have a conversation do you remember the last conversation pete had with jesus it's one of those real familiar conversations in in church jesus says to peter john 21 he says to him when they had finished breakfast simon son of john do you love me more than these he said to him yes lord you know that i love you he said to him feed my lambs he said to him second time simon son of john do you love me said to him yes lord you know that i love you he said feed my sheep he said to him the third time simon son of john do you love me peter was grieved because he said it the third time do you love me and he said lord you know everything you know that i love you now y'all have heard why jesus posed the question three times why have y'all heard jesus pose that question three times talk back louder exactly because he denied him three times we're almost always taught that it's kind of a biblical quid pro quo that because pete denied him three times jesus kind of resets peter's faith by asking the quest oh y'all it's so much better than that we cried at super eco last night talking about the love of christ over this one passage that we tend to miss so often we miss the compassion in god's word the first time jesus asked peter the question on the heels of one of the world's biggest betrayals he says simon son of john pete do you agapeo me three words in the greek for love agapeo means sacrificial love you love him more than anything phileo is a but brotherly kind of facebook friend kind of love and then eros is what i never get to experience that's a frisky kind of love and so jesus says to peter peter do you agapeo me we just translate them all love it's so much better it's so much more intimate do you agape with me do you love me more than anything pete says lord you know me you know i just threw you under the bus you know i totally blew it you know i fella you you know i love you like um like a friend on my best day that's all i've got second time jesus says peter do you agapeo me do you love me more than anything do you love me with a sacrificial love have you laid it all down are you living what you sing every sunday at elevation no sir no sir you you know me jesus a week and a half ago i was flinging the f word and telling people i'd never seen you in my life you know me jesus you know how fickle my faith is you know how many times i've messed up you know me jesus you know i fillet you on my best day all i've got is a brotherly kind of love third time our savior don't you imagine pete now just kind of staring at his feet you know probably wearing chocos and that middle eastern sand he's hot he's grimy just staring at his feet thinking i am the worst of the worst and i imagine jesus i don't know for sure but i always get pictures in my head when i read these true stories and i imagine jesus grinning and i imagine him taking his hands that have recently had spikes driven through the wrist and i imagine him just taking that rough fisherman by the face and tilting his his attention up toward him looking deep into his eyes those eyes that at that point thought no one's ever gonna look into my soul again because all they'll find is failure and jesus saying pete do you fillet me peter goes lord you you know me and jesus says i know i know you and peter right now that's enough i'm not kicking you off the team i'm naming you team captain i'm going to build the new testament church on your shoulders peter i know you and i love you i love everything about you y'all we've been deluded into thinking that our performance activates and accelerates intimacy with jesus and it doesn't intimacy with jesus is not accelerated it's not activated by our performance by our deservedness or lack thereof it's his kindness he closes the gap he pursues us most of what it takes to have intimacy with jesus is just recognizing you can't make it by yourself one of the reasons i love peter so much is my faith has been solidified in failure 12 years ago i lost everything that mattered to me two primary relationships one to death and i was diagnosed with cancer which at first looked very serious all in the same week and i've always been one of those girls who preaches grace but i don't really believe it for myself it's been like what so been hard for me to hang on to and so i talk about it i can throw an acrostic up about it i can even give you the greek about it but i um in the corner of my heart thought that i definitely wasn't good enough for god and i i actually wondered if god was enough for me i thought if i don't have somebody with skin on i'm not really sure i can make it and and i lost hope and i got to a point of such deep desperation disappointment i lived in a little cottage south of nashville by myself that i remember waking up one morning and thinking i've got ambien from the time i was sick i'm going to take two ambien not because i want to die i was too afraid of the mess i'd leave behind for people but i just can't be conscious i just don't i just want don't want to wake up and remember that i don't feel like anybody really knows me and i don't feel like if they did they'd really love me much less jesus and he spoke to me during that season more clearly than he's ever spoken to me i don't know if it was an audible voice i was by myself it certainly felt audible but he said lisa you've been running your whole life you've been running scared your whole life so i'm going to take you to the basement and i'm going to sit there with you in the dark until fear doesn't own you anymore i had already been to seminary the first go-around i could pose that i had intimacy with jesus but most of the time that's all it was i was running scared and i had a lot of information about god intimacy with god i just i couldn't hang on to and it was there in the dark it was there just smack dab in the middle of my failure my ineptitude that jesus held me and i learned how to be held i learned to lean against his breath rest and quit trying to perform for his affection nine weeks ago i was hospitalized with covet and i had a very very severe pneumonia and the first night i overheard two medical personnel they didn't know i could hear they thought i was unconscious i just had my eyes closed because i was so so tired and i overheard them lamenting the fact that they didn't think they could stabilize me and i knew i was in trouble based on the numbers i knew that i couldn't breathe i didn't realize how close i was to death and i thought oh goodness gracious i'm i'm about to die and i'm 57 and i have an 11 year old daughter and i certainly didn't want to die but y'all the presence of christ in my hospital room he was palpable and he held me again and i wasn't afraid because leaning into him is who i am now he's my hope he's my breath he's my joy he's my love he's the reason i get up in the morning [Music] i've been long-winded some people wish i didn't get my breath back after that pneumonia um and i apologize for going a little over but i want to actually end with a question the last thing you sang was i shall not want in mark chapter 10 jesus encounters a man who's been totally missed he doesn't have intimate relationships he's blind he's ostracized he's alone in the dark and jesus puts easter on pause he's walking to easter and he stops and he says bring him to me he's that kind he is that kind he would pause everything for you it's not a corporate grace that you're experiencing at elevation he sees you he knows you he loves you he sings to you in the dark you may not feel it but he is closer than your next breath and he says to bartimaeus what do you need i shall not want some of you are going to sing that i'm going to walk out of service this morning and you're going to get in your car and you're going to feel overwhelmed by disappointment and loneliness you're going to go back to your condos and your apartments and you're going to say i'd love to be with a guy with cats i'd love to have somebody who pursues me i'm tired of carrying the weight of my life by myself i ask how to bow your heads and close your eyes again if you're driving listening to this obviously stay alert but i would ask you the same question what do you need from jesus what do you need from jesus [Music] a veneer of relationship with jesus is not going to satisfy your soul our souls crave intimacy he created us that way he created us to long to be held to long to be seen by him to have ongoing conversation with him every day to walk with him what do you need from jesus thank you for watching the elevation church youtube channel don't stop here join the e-fam our online extended family and join us live every sunday subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single video or live stream and share this with a friend you can also support the ministry by clicking the give now button to help us continue to reach people around the world for jesus christ thank you again for watching god bless you

Channel: Elevation Church

Views: 242,701

Rating: 4.9361572 out of 5

Keywords: elevation church, lisa harper, you can be satisfied, mick jagger was wrong, bruce springsteen was right, elevation church sermons, pastor steven furtick, steven furtick, lisa harper sermons, pastor lisa harper, 2021 sermons, preaching, preacher, satisfaction, relationships, love, community, connection, image of god, intimacy, contentment, healing, reconnecting, authentic relationship, hungry heart, shame, compassion, relationship with god, sermons about relationships, sermons about shame

Id: Z2E_MVIvukI

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021