Contending for the Kingdom of God on Earth: Wisdom Gained Through Our Sabbatical - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

So it's great to be back.

Liz and I called this a vision sabbatical because we felt so strongly that the next 10 years are huge in our country.

It's huge in our life.

We've tended without even having a strategy to it to see decadal things that God does.

And so we're praying for the next 10 years.

What does God want to do over the next 10 years at the road?

And our vision is a kingdom of God revolution.

And our mission is to empower people to change the world.

That I gave again and again to the Lord.

Lord, is that what our vision is?

Is that what our mission should be?

And it was a clear, resounding yes.

That we are to make El Paso County the greatest county in the United States.

We are to make Colorado Springs the greatest city in the United States.

We are to be as much as we can be in prayer and in proclamation and demonstration of the kingdom, a place where the kingdom of God explodes across this state because of what God's doing right here, beginning at the road.

That's why I'm so passionate about working with other pastors here in our city.

That's why I'm passionate about working with our county commissioners.

It's why I'm passionate about working with those public officials that are public servants.

They're public servants.

They serve us.

We don't serve them.

And so when we have public servants that are only serving themselves, we kick them out of office.

I don't care what their political party is.

So we are looking to be a church that's engaged in culture, making a difference in culture.

I pray that Acts 17.9 would be said someday about the road and the work of all the churches in the Colorado Springs area that want to be kingdom churches, that those people who have upset the world have come here also.

We are here to turn the world right side up.

And God's got so much in many of you.

You don't even know what God's put into you because the enemy has lied to you your whole life.

And you've listened to the lies in the scripting that you're a loser, that you're a nobody, that you'll never amount to anything.

And Jesus is going to tell us today as we talk about these principles of the kingdom of God, all that God has for you and the work that He wants to do through you.

And many of you have experienced tremendous failures.

And you are ripe for a work of the kingdom because God does his greatest work in the most defeated people.

Some of you are, I don't know, you're like five, like we call it five-tool baseball players.

My sons came up through baseball, one played college ball, all played high school ball and stuff, and they talk about five-tool players.

And those are guys that have these five key ingredients that make them a great baseball player.

Some of you are like seven-tool people.

And I feel sorry for you.

Because you're so talented and you're so smart and you're so gifted that you'll never experience all that God wanted for you because you depend on yourself.

And I want you to surrender that today.

I want you to surrender that in the days ahead.

And surrender your wisdom.

Surrender your schooling.

Surrender and say, God, I'm nothing without you.

I need your power flowing through me.

Because we need not smarter people, we need wiser people.

Kingdom wisdom comes through surrender to Him.

And the reason I say that is because I'm not one of those people.

I'm not very smart.

I'm not very strong.

I relent to fear on a regular basis if I'm not walking in Christ.

I had to renew my mind today.

Coming in, I had to renew my mind.

Okay, I the joy of the Lord is my strength.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

And you'll understand when I go through the message why I had to do that.

Because life is hard, it's difficult.

So on our vision sabbatical, people asked, yes, I did fly fish.

I caught more fish than I've ever caught in my life.

And it was great.

But the main thing that Liz and I dialed into was just reading the New Testament.

So we read through the entire New Testament, read through several other books of the Old Testament.

And so what I want to share is I'm not going to go into Ephesians.

We're halfway through Ephesians when I left, so we'll start Ephesians next week.

But I want to talk about three things that I gained during the Vision Sabbatical.

And it surprised me.

It really surprised me as I read and I saw these themes running through the New Testament.

And for one who has given my life to preaching the gospel and teaching the Bible, and that's what I love the most outside of my own family and marriage.

The thing I enjoy most is just opening up and verse by verse, going through God's word and empowering the saints and empowering you to be mightily used by God to bring a kingdom of God revolution.

I love that.

But I hadn't read, like in just a short period of time, all of it.

You know, like all of the New Testament.

You know, you have bits and pieces, or you take a year to go through the Bible, but this was just in about a month and a half of just digging in to the New Testament.

So I want to talk about that this morning.

So turn in your Bibles to John 16.

I think John 16, 33 is the seminal passage for the Vision Sabbatical that we had, and I pray it will also be an encouragement to you this morning.

And I just want to say, as you're turning there, that what a great job the pastors and speakers did while I was gone.

I just thought they were excellent.

All the messages were amazing, just amazing.

And uh the worship was amazing.

And it's a real sense of confidence that all of us on the team have, and I especially, as a senior pastor, have here at the road, that we, you guys are just tremendous in the leadership and the servant hearts.

I've never been in a church where so many people serve and so many people lead.

And it just felt great to see how well everything moved along in my absence.

John 16, 33, Jesus is speaking, and he says, This these things I've spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world.

Here's my first lesson from the sabbatical.

Life is about tribulation.

Life is about tribulation.

Now, the word tribulum in the Greek comes from the idea of a large stone that would be driven into a canal where they would crush seed, and an ox would pull that.

I've been to Israel, and they take you to a tribulum when you're in Nazareth and you see how it works, and there's a pole coming out of a large stone wheel, it almost looks like a wheel, that the ox or the horse goes around, the donkey or the ox, and it crushes the seed or it crushes the grapes.

What tribulum means is pressure.

Pressure that crushes you.

Life is about pressure that crushes you.

The New Testament is about pressure that crushes you.

And we've grown up to believe that life is about happiness and that happiness should be the goal.

And I want to say, men and women, that's too low of a goal.

Life is about tribulation because God is doing something within you to make you something that you could not be without the tribulum.

Without the tribulation.

Life is hard, people are malevolent, people are out to hurt you.

Now we see government mandates and pressure and tribulation.

That's life.

That's part of what makes life meaningful.

That you go through tribulation.

We go through tribulation together and we don't quit.

To make happiness our goal is to make an idol in our life.

To realize that life is tribulation.

And that Jesus even told us that's what the world has to offer is the beginning of wisdom.

It's the beginning of true meaning.

It's the beginning of a new life that we have in Christ because of the work that God is doing in our heart.

I'll give you a little hint to the whole heart advance.

My first message at the whole heart advance is along the lines of shame and how Satan has come to just rip you off.

Men.

To demasculize your heart, to destroy the very fabric of what makes you created in the image of God.

The Imagio Dehi in the Latin.

The image of God.

And so life is malevolent, it's full of pain and suffering.

And we've been blessed in this country, so blessed, with so much freedom.

And over the last year, we're seeing it shrink away.

We're seeing employers, we're seeing government officials, we're seeing school systems drive people into a way of thinking and things to do to their bodies through vaccines and other things that are stealing us of our freedoms.

And it's pressure.

Demonic powers are involved in some of it.

And so at the end of the service, we're going to do something really different today, before, after the service, but before the roadmap.

I want you to watch a video for you that want to stay by Rand Paul.

And it's called We Will Not Comply.

Now, I've never put a politician on our screen.

But I felt like that what he was saying is so important, whatever your party or whatever your belief system.

Because when I read the book of Acts, I see a people who would not comply.

Now it wasn't about government mandates related to a shot, it was related to the proclamation of the gospel.

But where do you think this is going, gang?

So while most of the church sleeps, because they're woke, we're going to be awake because Jesus is Lord.

And we're called to a kingdom of God revolution.

And that is not easy.

So for me to preach a gospel, a victory in Jesus, without starting off with the word that life is tribulation, is a travesty.

You've got to see life for what it really is.

And so John writes that the world is in the sway of the evil one.

Are we in the last days?

I don't know.

Someone gave me a document.

I saw it in my file today.

It said, is in it, and the title was about something about the rapture, and then it said, it's going to happen, or is it going to start in the summer of 2021?

That's now, gang.

Everybody look at me.

I don't care.

I really don't.

Nothing, if let's say the seven-year tribulation is starting this summer.

I'm not doing anything different than I'm doing right now.

So I'm committed to the kingdom, and I am not committed to dates.

I'm not committed to projections.

I'm too busy.

I gotta put a voter guide together for the school board elections.

I don't have time to sit there and figure out dates and everything.

Maybe some of you guys do.

Fine, you can do that.

But I'm not interested in your documentation because nothing changes for me.

We're here to make a difference.

We're here to turn the world upside down.

We're here to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And it begins with me loving God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

That's what the whole heart advance is all about.

So just be a wholehearted disciple.

You be a whole-hearted disciple, revival will break loose.

If revival breaks loose, I don't care where it is on the spectrum of the seven-year tribulation.

I don't care.

Here's what I care about.

That when we learn to be the kind of men and women that God wants us to be, we can make an impact in this county and this city that the world is longing to see.

They're longing for the kingdom.

They're longing for the kingdom.

They are.

You're longing for the kingdom.

So life is about tribulation.

And what happens is that we get full of fear.

And some of you have been calling and you've been asking about the personal mandate and the religious mandate for your jobs and stuff.

Many of you, we have a lot of nurses and doctors here in the church, and we've got that ready for you.

We put a whole packet together.

It's available at the end of the service.

Really a good out.

Pastor Al did a fantastic job in putting this all together.

So after you watch the video, we're gonna explain what's in the packet.

Because you guys are getting pushed around against your constitutional rights.

And you've got to stand up and not let these people push you around.

So the information that we're gonna give you has been vetted by doctors, it's been vetted by constitutionalists, it's been vetted by lawyers.

Paul wrote in Romans, we glory in tribulations.

How about that?

Say that with me.

We glory in tribulations.

We glory in tribulations.

We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance.

And perseverance, character, and character hope.

Now, hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

So God's using the tribulum to build character, to build men and women of God, to build a love for Him that we didn't have before.

Because He's pressing us into His character.

Charles Spurgeon said, trials teach us what we are.

They dig up the soil and let us see what we're made of.

So it's when you're going through tribulation that you really find out who you are and what you're made of.

It presses in.

It's like when Liz does her gardens and stuff at our house and she digs down and you see the worms and you see the soil, and sometimes you even see, you know, the plants of the past that are decomposed down in there, and you dig it up.

You don't know what's in there, though, until you dig in.

That's what tribulation does.

Tribulation digs up the soil.

And it's not always so pretty, is it?

Because you get angry and you get jealous and you get hurt and you lash out.

And God's stirring things up because he wants that submitted to him.

It was all under the surface before, but now it comes out and we submit that to him.

I think that's what marriage is all about.

I'm doing a wedding today.

For two precious young people that I had the privilege of counseling, and I'm so excited about their wedding.

I have I sometimes I don't know what I'm gonna say until right when I get up there, as far as the word, but maybe that's a good word.

Marriage is really about soul development.

It's about stirring up the soil.

That's why it's so hard.

That's why we marry these weird people that faked us out during the dating time.

And then the real thing comes.

Ah.

Right?

So it's about soil development.

And so that's what it's about.

Augustine said, trials come to prove and improve us.

To prove and improve us.

So that's number one.

That's the first thing.

So look back at John 16 again.

Look at verse 33.

John 16, 33.

Let me read it again.

These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer.

I have overcome the world.

Secondly, be brave and overcome.

Be brave and overcome.

When life serves up fear, that's the time to be brave, you guys.

So you don't need less fear.

You need more bravery.

You need more courage.

One of my favorite quotes, you that have been with me for all these years have heard me repeat, is Theodore Roosevelt, man in the arena.

But I look back and I was I haven't used this in a long time, so I'm gonna go back to it.

And I'm sure most of you heard it.

But listen closely to what Roosevelt said.

This was given in France, I believe it was 1912.

It is not the critic who counts, that's really important.

It's not the critic who counts.

How many of you would say you've got some critics?

If you don't, then you're not doing enough.

But if you're gonna have critics, but don't listen to critics unless they're in the arena.

Not in the peanut gallery making fun of you because you've tried to do something that was worthwhile.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

And we can all do things better.

We can always do things better.

The credit belongs to the man or the woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.

Those are those people who make a difference, who parent the kids, who work on things, who try to be a good witness, who try to tell the truth, those who go to school board meetings and try to explain what this country was built on, those who run for office, those who tell the truth, those who invite people over for dinner and you try to be a witness for Christ, dust and sweat and blood who strive valiantly, who err, who come short again and again, because there is no effort without error is shortcoming.

But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasms, great devotions, great.

Who spends himself or herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, who at the worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his or her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

So life's not about happiness, it's about adventure.

And adventure means we dare.

Adventure means we we step out into our shame, into the darkness, and we keep pressing in.

We become overcomers.

So you know the story of King Arthur and the knights of the round table.

In that legend, King Arthur tells his men to go out and find the Holy Grail.

And so they all leave.

The knights go out, knights of the round table, and where do they go?

They all go to the darkest part of the woods.

They go to the darkest part of the forest.

What a beautiful metaphor of life.

That valiant men and women go to the dark places.

We go into those places that we fear the most and we overcome in Christ.

Because it's in overcoming in Christ that we discover the adventure.

And what the world tells us is to keep running, you know, run away from those things that make us uncomfortable.

I want you to know that's the key to discipleship.

When we talk about taking up our cross and following Christ, it means we head right into the thing that we fear.

And we rely on Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

I don't want this burden.

I don't want this responsibility.

I don't want the weight of this or that or that or this.

Haven't we said that?

But who's to say that that's not exactly what you were created for?

That you actually were created, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, you can take on responsibility.

And you can carry that way.

We need men today who will be responsible to their wives and their families.

We need young people today who've been mentored and strengthened to quit running from responsibilities and face them.

That's what the church is all about.

We're called to that.

You men in this room are called to that.

You women in this world are called to that.

I'm speaking to the men mainly because I think women get it actually better than most men.

There's something of a relational context that I see in women that often makes them more responsible.

And we men, because of the culture that we're living in and the demascularization of our heart, we've learned to run.

Now I'm speaking to the choir here.

You're not men like that in most cases.

But would you not say that we need each other?

Would you not say that we need a whole heart advance?

Would you not say that God's called you to more than what you've presently experienced, and we're here to equip you to do that.

And so the thing that came out loud and clear during my sabbatical was life is tribulation, but that we are brave when we overcome.

We have to face those things and we become overcomers.

John also writes this in 1 John 5, 4one born of God overcomes the world.

So your very nature by being born again means you can overcome the world.

That's who you are.

This is the victory, though, that has overcome the world, even our faith.

So faith, that substance of things hoped for, that conviction of things not yet seen within your heart is what overcomes the world.

It's not a feeling, it's faith.

It's a conviction.

That's why getting up early in the morning, spending time in God's Word, seeing that as your spiritual workout is so important.

God, increase my faith.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

It's being in God's Word, it's memorizing God's word, it's knowing God's word.

It's stepping out in the things that you fear the most.

Because that's probably what Satan has his finger on.

Is that thing.

Face it.

Seven years ago I had to face stuff in my life.

You want to turn the world upside down?

Turn yourself upside down.

And the way you turn yourself upside down is facing your fears, walking into it, admitting that it's there, and then get it out.

Get vulnerable.

Get vulnerable about it with trusted allies around you.

And the enemy just hates that.

These demons hate that when you start saying, Yeah, you know, I've done this and I've done that, and I'm judgmental and I'm jealous, and I had an affair, and you gotta come out, you gotta say it, you gotta confess it.

That's when healing begins.

That's when you become a man.

That's when you become a woman.

And so what the enemy wants you to do is just stay in that place of darkness, and so it's all right there, and it's just like it's like a sliver.

It's like the sliver, you know, in your heart.

It's like the sliver in your hand.

So I fly fished, you know.

And when you fly fish, you're dealing with these dinky little flies.

And I remember one time I was out with um with uh Ryan's son Sam, and he's this high.

I don't know what his age was.

He's really a little guy, he's now he's this high, but he was that high back then.

And I said, look, we're gonna learn how to fly fish now.

And so I cast it, you know, and I showed him how to do it, and he hooked, uh I hooked it, and I gave it to him and showed him how to bring it in.

He brought it in, I netted it, I'm like man, where'd it go?

That was awesome.

And then I'm sitting there getting the hook out, and he yanks the rod, and the hook goes, I mean, a size 22 hook goes into my my finger here, all the way, barbing all everything.

I'm like, oh, this is great.

And he goes, Oh, I'm sorry, Pastor Steve, I'm sorry.

I said, Sam, watch this.

So I took out needle-nosed pliers and I put it in there and ripped it out.

Blood splatters on both of us, and you know, I don't even have a scar now or anything right there.

Well, what if I left it in?

What if I left it in?

I was no way I was going to some emergency room and ruining a good fishing trip for a dumb little hook.

I'd done that before.

I'm not gonna do it again, okay?

So my point is this you gotta rip it out.

You gotta take spiritual needle-nosed fliers with a blood-stained ally.

Boom, baby, rip that baby out.

So, what happens in the church is we become religious pretenders and religious posers.

I mean, we're just excellent at that.

And so we put on our little neckties, not at this church, but I mean, you put on your little necktie, and you come to church and you smile, and everything's great, and everybody knows you're a liar.

Not everything's not great.

I've asked people, how's it going?

But I won't go through some of the responses I've gotten.

But it's this idea like everything is just rosy and perfect.

And I remember one time this guy took me out to lunch, and I think he was trying to impress me or something, and we go out, and all he talked about was how happy he is and how great Jesus is and all this stuff, and finally I said, Can you just shut up for a second?

I said, Nobody's that happy.

Dude, that's weird.

It is.

And then he actually opened up and became real.

And he was a real brother now, you know.

So life's hard, you guys.

It's difficult.

Be vulnerable and then don't quit.

You keep pressing in.

You're called to be an overcomer.

So in Revelation of chapters two and three, Jesus instructs the seven churches in Revelation.

And you know what he keeps saying to all of them?

He who overcomes, and then he talks about a reward.

He who overcomes, and he talks about the reward.

And he's talking about some really bad stuff in some of these churches.

We're talking about the Nicoladians, we're talking about heresy, we're talking about idolatry, we're talking about really bad stuff in like five out of the seven churches.

And then he says, you can overcome.

So it must not matter that much to Jesus what you've done or the mistakes you've made.

What matters is repent and overcome.

That's pretty cool.

Because that's not what the world says.

The world says, you have blown it, you are a failure, that's who you are, that's your identity.

And Christ says, you've blown it, you're a failure, you've made mistakes, but that's not your identity.

Your identity is in Christ, and in Christ you can be an overcomer.

And in him is your peace.

So life is tribulation.

You're called to overcome.

And then thirdly, the church is called by God to contend for the kingdom.

The church is called by God to contend for the kingdom.

So look at Matthew 16.

Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, one of my favorite verses.

You that have been a part of the road for a while have heard me quote this and read this so many times.

But I want to emphasize it again.

I will build my church, Jesus says, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

Why?

Because I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Jesus is building a church that contends for the kingdom.

He's the senior pastor of the road.

I'm not.

I'm small S, small P.

He's capital S, capital P.

We don't do this perfectly.

Not trying to in any way insinuate that.

But in our journey with Christ, He is the pastor of this church.

He guides us, He leads us.

That's why we pray.

That's why we call out to God.

That's why we have special prayer meetings and things like that all the time.

It's because we don't know what to do and we don't know how to overcome in some of these issues.

We don't.

But we know that he does, and through him we can.

And so we cry out to him and he does it.

And that's what the first century church did.

They turned the world upside down because they had to rely on Christ.

And we're coming to that in our country.

We're seeing more and more pressure, more tribulation coming our way, and that can be the church's finest hour.

So we find out what we're made of.

So Barnes says that because of COVID, now and over the next year, a third of all churches will close their doors.

And I say, good riddance.

Because they're closing their doors, that means the gates of hell won.

And if the gates of hell won, that means that Jesus was not ruling over that house.

I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

So let's let him build this church.

Let's let him build the church in El Paso County and in Colorado Springs.

One of my goals, and I pray it's our goal, is that this would be the best county to live in in our country.

That this would be the best city to live in in our country.

And that takes work.

Man, you guys, I mean it takes a lot of effort.

But isn't that, I mean, I'm I'm gonna be putting, I'm trying to put together a voter guide for the uh school board election.

I've never done that before.

I don't want that responsibility, but that's where we're at.

Somebody's gotta do it.

And so we're gonna start working on it.

Church voter guide.

We did it for the last election, but I'm gonna take it over for this election.

I'm gonna do it.

And I don't know what I'm doing.

First, I'll first want to tell you, I don't know what I'm doing.

But we're gonna figure it out, and in a few weeks we'll start putting it together.

That's what gives life meaning.

What gives life meaning is we don't quit when it's hard.

We don't quit because it's not what we've done before.

But God leads us, He guides us, and when we do it, there's something within us that rises up, and it's that overcomer spirit.

Don't you want that?

That's what the church is.

A church is made up of overcomers.

And and so, and so let me give you some thoughts on that.

Four things, four emphasis this year at the road.

The first one is we're gonna contend in worship and prayer.

Write this down.

Write this down.

August 28th, that's Saturday, August 28th, Saturday a week, we're doing a 24-hour burn.

And what that is, is we're gonna pray every hour.

You're welcome to come.

We're gonna have the church open from 9 a.m.

on Saturday to 9 a.m.

on Sunday, praying for revival, praying for a kingdom of God revolution.

We're gonna pray about education, we're gonna pray about school board elections, we're gonna be praying about politics, we're gonna be praying about the church for revival in the church.

We're gonna be praying about personal stuff in your own life.

But we're gonna come together for 24 hours and we're gonna burn for the kingdom.

And so that's on August 28th.

Number two, we're gonna contend in building disciples.

We're gonna contend in building disciples.

Matthew 28, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

That word nations in the groups in the Greek is ethnos.

It means people group.

We're here to disciple a city.

We're here to disciple our county, to make a difference here.

And so the way we're gonna do that is we're gonna start, we've we've started a public policy ministry, which we have, but we're gonna also start a public, I mean a ministry of health.

We've listened, you guys.

This is crazy.

Our protocol that Pamela Holloway and others have put together, this protocol, we've healed 400 people in this church in the last six months.

Documented.

We've lost no one to COVID through our protocol.

And let me just tell you, that protocol has nothing to do with the mandates that are being put on us.

This is just using supplements, this is using vitamins, healing people God's way by strengthening the immune system.

So we're gonna keep getting better at that.

We're talking about maybe in November doing a conference on health and bringing in some of the best health experts in the United States.

I like this t-shirt that Liz wears.

She says, I'm wearing a mask on the inside.

It's called my immune system.

So people are always like, What?

Number three, we're gonna plant house churches.

We're gonna plant community groups.

So Jerry Forte and Pastor Al are putting together, we're looking for community group leaders.

If in the next year or two they shut us down here, they won't shut us down in our homes.

And we'll have churches all over the city.

Our prayers for a hundred of them to be established.

And on our launch, we'll be hearing more about that.

If you feel called, Jerry, would you stand?

Jerry Forte, if you are interested in starting a group, we just did a training, but we do another one.

Talk to Jerry about that.

Grab him, the good-looking guy over there with a burgundy shirt.

And then number four, we're gonna contend in building men.

Wholeheart advance every other year.

Every man in this room should come.

I will rock your world.

I will rock your world.

And if any of you men are feeling an elbow into your rib cage as I say that, that's the nudge of God.

You need to be there.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to the road.org.

God bless you.