I Will Surrender: The Twelve I wills.
I will surrender to the Holy Spirit.
After we confess with our mouth Jesus is Lord,
and believe in our heart God raised him from the dead,
we have to surrender to his plan and purpose for our lives.
So many artists and creative people
believe that being a Christian means
that God is going to use you
and you will fulfill your destiny.
Yes,
you will fulfill your destiny.
In the Kingdom
your destiny
is not about you.
It's about Jesus.
Too many people think
that because they are Christians
God is going to help them be successful.
Yes,
some of you will be successful.
And some of you will be called to other things.
Success and faithfulness are not the same.
Many of us are secular humanists,
and we forget that your reward in the Kingdom
may or may not be in this life.
I would rather have a big reward in eternity
than one that will eventually decay away.
I would rather be remembered in heaven
than here.
Today's readings
talk about the Key of David.
God is going to give to the Messiah
the key
and no one can open what he shuts
and no one can shut what he opens.
Hundreds of years after Isaiah spoke these words,
an angel appeared to a virgin in Nazareth.
And this young woman
is told that the Holy Spirit will
overshadow her
and the power of the most high will come upon her
and she will conceive in her
womb,
and the child to be born will be called Holy.
He will be great,
and he will rule and reign over the house
of his father David.
But here is the rub,
she had to make a choice.
And in that moment,
she said:
Let it be to me
according to your word.
The fiat.
Everything else,
Bethlehem,
the water into wine,
the feeding the five thousand,
the raising of Lazarus,
the cross,
the resurrection,
Pentecost,
all the missionaries,
moves of God,
churches,
and all the art,
music,
buildings,
hospitals,
schools,
and on and on and on,
would have never happened,
if she had said
"no thanks."
Sounds a bit inconvenient.
Instead,
she said "yes."
Surrender is the key of David.
You cannot be a warrior artist
unless you surrender
before you go to war.
We are promised that we will be victorious,
regardless of how things seem to go.
But in order to be victorious
we have to first surrender
to the Holy Spirit
and rely on his supernatural help.
In other words,
if you want to do the impossible,
you have to let God lead you into impossible situations,
and then God will give you the way out.
You have to surrender every step of the way.
This is where most people mess up.
They will surrender,
and then God will give them directions.
And then,
they run ahead
and either use conventional thinking to make it happen,
or they try to do it with their own ability or strength.
Both will fail.
As I said a few weeks ago
there is no course called,
"Five easy steps to walk on water."
Peter walked on the water because Jesus said
"It is I, step out on the water."
Peter didn't step out on his own,
and put himself in danger.
He responded to Jesus.
And then the miracle happened.
Peter only sank when he looked around and began to trust his own resources.
He got out half-way between Jesus and the boat.
Not too shabby.
You try it.
Many, many people come to me
and they have amazing promises from God.
I knew a wonderful woman
who had a promise from God
to get a house and build a house of prayer.
We became friends,
because God told her about her house
around the time he spoke to me about a house.
As I said,
she was a wonderful woman
and I spoke at her house many times.
And a lot of good came out of that friendship.
But there was a problem.
Instead of waiting on God
for the process
she ran ahead.
She thought she knew how God got people houses.
And so she found a house that she thought she could afford.
And then she went to the bank
and she took out a mortgage.
And then about a year later,
the housing bubble crashed,
and she was underwater
(which means her house was worth a lot less
than the value of her debt).
And then she learned something you learn
in professional fundraising
(this is not from the Lord,
this is from my years of working in fundraising)
You cannot raise money
for debt.
Fundraising to pay off a mortgage
is never an option.
Nobody will give to that.
They will say,
you shouldn't have been so stupid
to take on the debt if you are a non-profit.
(This, by the way, is why a lot of
churches are in continual building programs.
They build new things to actually pay off old debts,
they just never say that part out loud).
In the end,
she lost the house,
lost the house of prayer,
and learned a very painful lesson.
God's ways are not our ways.
God's thoughts are not our thoughts.
Listening to the Lord
is about getting God's strategies
not blessing our strategies.
Especially in a time of change and transition,
you have to trust God,
because conventional wisdom is about
what worked a few years ago,
not about what works now.
Stories like this
have been a blessing to me,
because my methods are a bit
unconventional.
When I see the wreckage
of people who tried to do it the "right way"
it is a reminder to me
to stay the course.
We are debt free.
We have continual,
very slow,
growth.
When my friend was losing her house,
she said something beautiful.
She said she learned that "she was a house of prayer."
She was a house of prayer.
It was never about a building.
It was about her heart.
And we pray for a house.
That house is the House of David.
And we are focused on New York City in the next season.
I have asked
people not to pray
or give me words about houses and property
for the time being.
Because people get into "group think"
and they think we need a building.
Yes,
a building would be helpful at many levels.
But our house is bigger
and we cannot get caught up in
the momentum
that a building gives.
There are a dozen abandoned churches
that I have now found in New York City.
Several are falling to ruin,
because they are on the historic register
and they cannot be repurposed.
It's a reminder
that we need to surrender.
We have to ask a question.
What is it that you want Holy Spirit?
Knowledge is a form of false faith.
We have to surrender to the Holy Spirit
and rely on his supernatural help.
This is the solution for every problem.
There is always a solution.
And many of you are very gifted and talented
and many of you are under employed,
or not doing what you think God wants you to do.
The only way to get to where you need to go
is to listen to God,
and then surrender to that word,
and let him show you how to carry it out.
Surrender.
Next week
I will attend to the Breaking of Bread and of prayer.
I will believe and Love.
I will surrender and depend.
I will attend.
I will stay.
I will saturate and allow.
I will listen and do.
I will pursue and continually choose.
I will go low and trust.
I will become.
I will express.
I will embrace.
I will live.
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