All In, All Flame | Pastor Leisa Nelson

Welcome to the Rock Family Sermon of the Week.

For more information about our church, please visit therockfamily.

Now join us for a message from Pastor Lisa Nelson.

I do want to give a little bit of a disclaimer.

When they asked me, I was like, okay, good.

You know, it's been a while.

I'm gonna give, I just God, let me give them a fresh word.

I just wanted something fresh.

And then I could not get away from where our series has been.

So it's a little bit of an apology, but then I don't apologize because I feel like God's given me something that I can add today.

If there's a title today of the message, it's Unrecognizable Transformation.

In the cross and in the flame.

Over the past several weeks, Holy Spirit's been leading us somewhere.

And I want to make something very clear.

And I know that everybody that has stood here has said this.

This wasn't just a sermon series.

This is the standard and the banner of our congregation.

It's actually on our building, if you've not noticed.

It truly is where we're living from and where we're living into.

So every powerful message, every invitation, every yes has been preparing us.

So today, as a congregation corporately, we're stepping in deep as a community of believers.

All in is not about just trying harder.

All flame is not about emotional intensity, although sometimes you can't get near the flame without it making you emotional.

They're both the fruit of one decision.

Those words and our yes says that every one of us in this room are stepping into surrender.

Jesus is the destination, but surrender is the doorway.

Because where self ends, Christ begins.

The call of Jesus was never come and be comfortable.

The call of Jesus was come and follow me.

And the path that he walks led to a cross, it led to a resurrection, led to a fellowship, and it led to a flame.

In today's message, I want it to be like a toolbox, and here's what's inside.

You may hear some recap because even when I haven't been here, I've watched the messages online.

We're going to talk about suffering.

We're going to talk about surrender, being the salt and light.

It's about fire.

It's about nothing wasted at altars.

It's about redemption, radical Holy Spirit transformation.

And Pastor Christian's quote: a spirit-filled church is a unified church.

The awareness of his proximity, it's his pursuit of us is relentless.

Pastor Scott and I did not talk this morning, but I'm telling you, the Lord is in this message today if we truly want to be transformed.

He will go to great lengths to get our attention.

And all of this culminates.

Everything that you have heard over these last few weeks culminates in this single purpose.

And this is where I want to land today.

It is about the restoration of the image of Christ Jesus in his people.

And that is only available through surrender, a cross, and us choosing to remain in the fire.

This image was birthed in the garden, and the journey looks a little bit like this.

The God had said, we're going to make man in our own image.

But sin and the fall marred the image.

The cross redeemed the image.

The Holy Spirit reforms the image.

But the fire purifies the image.

Until, as Paul said to us in Romans 8, 39, we are conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.

This is the question that every believer has got to ask themselves today.

What is God actually trying to accomplish in us?

Not just to bless us, not just to heal us, not just to prosper us or to use us.

The purpose is to reveal Christ in us.

Galatians 2.20.

It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ who lives in me.

It's not less of me.

It's not me praying for a better version of me or a more disciplined me.

It's Christ instead of me.

Romans 6.6 says, our old self has been crucified.

Colossians 3.3, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

2 Corinthians 5.15, we no longer live for ourselves.

Romans 6.11, we're dead to sin, but alive to God.

Romans 8.10, if Christ is in you, then your spirit is alive.

Colossians 1.27, the mystery.

It is Christ in you.

You are the hope of glory.

The goal of the Christian life is not simply to make a better version of ourselves, it's to become so surrendered that Christ is revealed instead of us.

We are kingdom carriers.

There's a positioning in him of greatness that has nothing to do with our ability, our accomplishments, but it has everything to do with what and who is inside of us.

He is not into just making us great.

He is all about freeing up in us what he's already placed in us.

His people becoming the conduit to display the kingdom of God, his greatness, his purposes, his power, and his glory, not mine, his glory revealed in the earth.

Jesus established a new order.

My kingdom is not of this world.

We have been invited to house his kingdom within us, bringing heaven on earth.

But we cannot build his kingdom if we're busy building our own.

And we cannot bring heaven if we're full of everything else but heaven.

So let it be said of us.

If he truly reigns within you and me, then his kingdom is what leads my thoughts, it directs my decisions, it governs my responses, and it touches every single person I encounter.

Every one of us in this room is releasing something into the earth.

I want to say that again.

Every one of you sitting here, you are releasing something into the earth.

We spend so much of our lives asking God to change our atmosphere or our circumstances around us because it's making us feel uncomfortable.

But what if heaven is asking a different question?

What if heaven is asking, what are you releasing in the atmosphere?

Every room changes when someone walks into it.

It's not whether you influence the atmosphere, it's are you self-aware that you're releasing something?

Father waits for his people to be willing to carry his presence and his kingdom.

So today, let it be said of us that heaven was in us before we were ever in heaven.

If we truly are Christ's followers, then there is something that distinguishes us and it sets us apart.

Do you believe that?

We carry the culture of heaven into the condition of the earth.

That's what you get to step into if you choose to either become a foster family or to step up and support foster families.

We are here to change the conditions of the earth.

We have the authority to shift atmospheres in an instant, just by walking in a room.

Not because of who you are, but because of who he is in you.

What we carry is what we release.

2 Corinthians 2.15 says, we are the fragrance of Christ Jesus.

To some, we are the fragrance of death, but to others, we are the fragrance of life.

When Paul wrote this, he was writing this in the culture of Rome.

Fragrance was a part of the culture of war and their worship in the temples.

When a battle was won, the sign of victory was the entrance of the army entering the city.

But before they ever got there, incense was burning ahead of them.

So before the people ever saw the army, they knew that there had been a victory because of the fragrance.

Equally, that fragrance spoke to a captured enemy, saying to them, You have lost, and there is a fate that awaits you.

Can I just pause right here?

If a people of God will shake themselves, choose to be all in, choose to be all flame, so that that smelling aroma not as just speaking to the people that are around you.

But let me just tell you a little secret.

It also speaks to the enemy because when you wake up every day and the aroma of your life smells like the presence of Jesus, the enemy is reminded that he's lost, and it reminds him of what his fate is going to be.

That part was for free.

Let me give you another little example.

How many of you, how many of you love fall?

I just love fall.

I cannot, y'all, I cannot wait for the bonfires.

I cannot wait to roast hot dogs and cook hamburgers.

But what about s'mores?

Now listen, my life was changed the other day.

I had a s'more the other day with a kit cat, and I thought I'd gone to heaven.

Oh my gosh.

But let me tell y'all something.

When you go, listen to me.

I'm about to get real honest, and y'all know that mama loves you, but I'm about to call you out.

Okay?

I'm gonna call you out and call you up.

When you go to a campfire and you gather around that fire, you might stand there by the fire for just a few minutes, but when you go home or you walk in a room after sitting around a campfire, nobody has to ask you where you've been.

Because the smell announces where you've been and who you've been with.

Your hair smells like it, your clothes smell like it.

You don't have to convince anybody that you were near the fire because the evidence of the fire clings to you.

It clings to you.

It's one of those things that when we used to do it, or like it, you know, it's kind of like when Rusty chooses to get his little his little chainsaw and he's chopping trees down, and he just I'm like, he just needs something to do today.

He's out there making a bear or something.

Ladies, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but there's something about that that I'm like, uh-uh.

The gasoline and the smell of smoke and the smell of that tree going everywhere is gonna stay outside.

So go down in the basement, put those clothes right.

Are you following me?

Don't take those clothes and put them in the laundry basket with the clothes I've been wearing to work all week.

But hear me.

In the same way, when we remain in the presence of Jesus, we begin to carry evidence of where we've been.

We don't have to manufacture his image, we don't have to perform being holy.

We just simply step in and we choose to stay in the fire.

And his fragrance replaces ours.

That is living all in, all flame.

Some of you have been listening to this for however many weeks we've been doing, and you didn't get it until just this moment.

Just think about a bonfire.

It's all in or it's all flame.

I'm gonna say one more time, I love you before I say this.

But did you know that you can choose to simply stay in instead of all in?

You can be in the room and still remain a spectator.

You can show up to the cookout and stay in the house or sit on the porch or remain in the outskirts of the activity, being in the vicinity of the activity.

You can tell everybody that you went to the bonfire.

You can be a participant of the overflowing blessings of the bonfire and eat the burger and make the s'more and stay in the house and sit on the porch and simply be in with no evidence that you've been there.

None.

Is that where you want to live?

Because he died for more.

I wonder have we mistaken blessing for intimacy?

Have we exchanged the blessing for what it literally actually is gonna cost us to walk in an intimate relationship with him?

That we say yes no matter what.

We don't have to think about it.

Blessing may come in a moment, but his image is formed in the fire.

We are his image bearers, his image, not ours.

A price was paid his life on a cross for us to be able to look just like him today.

This requires disdaining self-promotion, self-righteousness, and self-preservation.

We just have to choose to display to the world that which is equal to what we carry.

What are we willing to do for his glory?

What are we willing to leave behind?

Do you want to be a spectator or do you want to stay in the fire?

All in, all flank.

Paul wrote it this way in Philippians 3 7.

But whatever things were gained to me, those things I've counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be lost in the view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things, but I count it as garbage so that I can gain the knowledge of knowing Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through the faith in Jesus Christ, that righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, and that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and know him in the fellowship of his suffering.

Paul does not separate what we like to separate.

We want the power, we want the breakthrough, we want the anointing, and we want the resurrection.

But Paul says, I want to know him in the power of his resurrection, but I also want to know him in the fellowship of his suffering too.

Miracles will introduce you to the power of Jesus, but the cross introduces you to him.

That is why Paul never said, I want more miracles, I want more powerful speeches, I want larger crowds.

Paul simply said that I may know him.

That word know, to know him is the Greek word gonosco, and it means by experience, by encounter, by intimacy, not head knowledge, not intellectual agreement, not theological understanding or secondhand revelation, but experiential knowing, an encounter with Jesus Christ that leaves you undone.

Undone.

You can know about him through sermons, through books, through somebody else's testimony, but to gnoscco him, to experience him and to encounter him says, I have walked with him.

I have felt him.

I have been changed by him.

I've encountered him in the real places of my life.

Because there are places in your life where theology will not hold you, the people cannot carry you.

The answers to all your questions do not satisfy you.

And it's in those places that he reveals himself.

You don't really know him until you have met him in places that you could not survive without him.

Can I say that again?

Anybody in this room know what I'm talking about?

You don't really know about him, but to know him is when you know him in the places that you know you wouldn't survive without him.

And that fellowship, that knowing him also in the fellowship of the suffering, that Greek word is koinanea, and it means a partnership, it's a participation, and it is a sharing in.

This is not observing suffering, this is sharing in the suffering.

It means you don't stand at a distance from the suffering of Christ, you step into it.

This participation means that when we join with him, we forgive like he forgives.

We endure like he endured, we obey even when it costs us everything.

Paul didn't say from prison or while being chased, beaten, flogged, hungry, and shipwrecked.

I want to know why I'm in the middle of these circumstances.

Do I have any why people on my team?

Just make us just three of you are in agreement with me.

You just want to know why.

I want to know why I'm not asking, I've even asking you to fix it.

Just tell me why.

Paul did not ask why, or even to understand it.

He said, No, I want to know him and I want to participate in his suffering.

Because intimacy is never developed just in moments of victory and applause, it's developed in moments of surrender.

So, what is the fellowship of his suffering?

What does that look like for a believer?

Let me put it to you in this explanation.

Let's talk about a medical fellowship.

How many those of you in the medical community here or doctors?

Any doctors in the room?

Where are all of our doctors?

They must be working at the hospital today.

A medical fellowship is a season of deeper training where a doctor moves beyond the general knowledge of being in the classroom and into specialized formation.

It's where they choose what they are what they're gonna do.

They're gonna be a pediatrician or they're gonna be a heart doctor or they're gonna become an orthopedic doctor.

They move from just being in a classroom to what they're going to do.

It changes how they think, it changes how they serve, who they become as a physician.

And though this fellowship ends, its imprint remains with them for the rest of their lives.

And here's why they go from observing the way to do it, they watch a doctor and how he interacts.

And operates ministering, talking to a patient, it's kind of like ministering, talking to a patient, and thank God for those who who are surgeons, they go from watching a surgeon do it to picking up the scalpel themselves.

That's a fellowship.

When you step into and move from, Paul uses the same word with eternal significance.

That I may know him and the fellowship of his sufferings, he's not speaking of merely enduring hardship, he is speaking of being admitted into a deeper, lifelong partnership with Jesus Christ.

Once you enter into this kind of fellowship, you never graduate from Christ fellowship.

Because every trial and every victory, every surrender and every season becomes another opportunity for us to know him deeper.

It's right here where everything in us that does not look like Christ begins to die.

Resurrection power is glorious, but fellowship with him is personal.

Anybody can celebrate an empty tomb, but very few want to walk the road that leads us there.

When you say yes to this invitation, yes to all in, and equally yes to all flying, you aren't crushed to destroy you.

You're being formed to release what heaven placed on the inside of you.

Jesus explained to his disciples that he himself must suffer.

Matthew 10, Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 9, Luke 14, John 12.

If anyone wishes to come after me and be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it.

If you want to cling to your life.

Whoever does not carry his own cross cannot be my disciple.

This word deny literally means the word is a Greek word, Arniamei, and it means you refuse to follow yourself.

Let me let that sink in.

To deny yourself.

You refuse to follow yourself.

Let's think about it this way.

Jesus was simply saying stop telling yourself no.

I'm sorry, he was saying tell yourself no.

He was also saying stop telling yourself yes and being your own Holy Spirit.

The cross is not punishment.

It's surrender.

It's not something we wear, it's something we carry.

Jesus was making something mistake irresistible mistakably clear.

The cross is the way.

So what does that look like?

And I'm gonna pause right here.

Over these last several weeks, I have taken in this notebook.

I'm a note-taker in church.

Anytime I hear a word, I have to make it ask the Lord, what are you saying to me to make it personal?

Jesus made it very beautifully simple to us.

Our posture when we carry our cross is one of outstretched arms.

It is total surrender.

It forces us to put down everything that we've been carrying in order to pick up a cross.

It renders us incapable of picking back up everything that He asks us to put down.

I can't hold on to offense.

I can't cling to my own agenda.

I can't grasp for recognition.

The cross keeps my hands occupied with surrender.

I'm no longer looking to the left or to the right.

I'm no longer comparing my journey with somebody else's journey.

I'm no longer measuring my calling against somebody else's calling.

The cross keeps my eyes on Jesus.

My arms are fully extended that I no longer have a hand to point the finger.

It produces humility, it produces mercy, it produces compassion.

The power of the cross is for the world to encounter.

It's not about my ability to display it.

The fellowship of the cross is deeply personal.

It's where intimacy is formed.

We've made the cross comfortable.

We paint it, we wear it, we decorate it, we admire it.

But when we carry our cross, the fragrance of Christ follows behind us and it rests upon our lives.

The cross becomes the tower I run to, the shatter under which I abide.

It's the weapon that I wore over my family.

The cross reminds the enemy that the blood still has power and the final word has already been said.

And it reminds my heart that I belong to another kingdom.

Jesus never told us to admire his cross.

What he said was pick up yours, wear it, and follow me.

The cross is where myself finally loses its voice.

In his message, the royal way of the cross, John Wesley said these words.

Anything displeasing to our nature.

Either we take up our cross or we must turn aside from the way of God.

In the cross is salvation, in the cross is life, in the cross is the perfection of holiness.

Catch this fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn.

That is revival.

In the weeks of this series, all in all flame, we have corporately heard, I believe, some of the deepest biblical revelation that I've heard in a while.

But when we hear a word like that and we walk out of this building, it is our responsibility to make that word personable.

We're all held accountable and we are all responsible.

As I prayed over this phrase, over this phrase, over this phrase, and asking God, what are you saying to Lisa?

What are you saying to me?

Am I all in?

Am I all flame?

And if I'm not here and I'm not here, what do you have to do to get me in both of those places?

And he whispered to my heart, and Pastor Scott, I'm not adding to our banner.

I'm just telling you, this is personal for me.

This is what he said.

All in.

All flame.

All him.

Because that is the purpose of the flame.

It's not simply to test us, it's not merely to strengthen us, it's to remove everything in us that is not him.

Everything.

The cross is the prerequisite for the flame, it's the connecting bridge.

The cross takes us from all end to all flame.

The cross takes us from the flame to representing all of him.

Jesus never invited anyone into the fire before he first invited you to carry your cross.

Because the cross teaches us how to surrender, and surrender is what sustains us in the fire.

Without the cross, the fire will feel like punishment.

Without the cross, the fire becomes transformation.

The goal has never been that I survived the fire.

The goal is that when I come out, I look more like Jesus than when I went in.

That's why Peter wrote, don't think it's strange concerning fiery trials.

The fire is not evidence that God has walked away or he's abandoned you.

It's evidence that the refiner's fire has started his work within you.

This is the invitation.

All in, all flame, all him.

We were never intended to just bear the flame or carry the flame, but to become the flame.

The worship guys would help me right now.

I'm going to say that again.

We were never intended to just bear the flame or carry a flame.

You know why?

Because you can put that down.

You can choose to put that down at any time that you want to.

But when you are consumed and become the flame, I'll say it again.

There are places where theology can't hold you.

People can't rescue you.

You can have all the answers in the world.

But until you meet Jesus in a place where, unless he shows up, you will not make it.

That's when you truly know it.

Some of you have been asking God, where are you?

Have you ever felt like in a season of life you've asked God, where are you?

Are you hearing my prayers?

This feels more like abandonment than you coming through.

Have you ever felt that way?

I don't know about you, but I have.

And in those moments when we surrender, he whispers these words.

I'm in the very place that you've been trying to escape and avoid.

Because if you'll stay right here, you're about to learn a part of me that you've never known.

You see, we want rescue.

He wants intimacy.

We want answers.

He just wants our surrender.

We want the miracle, but he wants all of our heart, not just a part of it.

Don't waste your suffering by only asking God to remove it.

Instead, stay there and say, reveal to me who you are in the midst of this.

For years I've asked the Lord in praying for revival, Lord, send the fire of your spirit.

Anybody ever prayed that?

Send the fire of your spirit and begin with me.

But I wonder if sometimes we ask for the fire without embracing our own cross.

The cross and the flame are not competing works of God.

The cross and the flame are completing works of God.

The cross teaches me how to surrender.

The flame teaches me how to remain surrendered.

The cross empties me of me.

The flame fills me with him.

The cross says, not my will.

The flame says, now let my spirit consume what remains.

The cross is where I lay myself on the altar.

The flame is God's response to a life that has been completely yielded at the altar.

The cross makes surrender possible.

The flame makes transformation inevitable.

The cross renders me incapable of ever presenting myself.

The flame renders me unrecognizable only presenting him.

All in all flame.

All him.

We don't carry our cross to survive.

We carry our cross because the cross prepares the altar upon which the fire of God transforms surrendered lives.

Romans 12.

Present your bodies as living sacrifices.

One is going to teach me to die.

The other is going to teach me how to continuously burn.

I'd like the altar workers to come forward and help me.

Let's not be a church that wants a crown without a cross.

Glory without fire, calling without cost, anointing without crushing, desiring the kingdom without surrender, authority without obedience, revival without repentance, resurrection without death.

Heaven has never changed its pattern.

If there's no cross, there's no resurrection.

If there's no surrender, there's no transformation.

There's no crushing, there's no oil, no fragrance.

And if Christ is not being formed in us, something else will be.

Whatever fills us is what overflows from us.

And without his rule, another kingdom begins to influence the atmosphere.

And here is where I want you to listen to your heart because some of you need to come forward today.

You need to make an exchange.

You need to lay some things on the altar.

Because you see, when hell enters a room, fear increases.

If bitterness walks in, division follows, and unity is fractured.

Rejection walks in and identity shatters.

Comparison walks in and contentment leads.

Judgment walks in and mercy leads to another door.

If you carry a fence, bitterness takes root.

When you walk in pride, humility has no place to rest.

When you walk in control, peace disappears.

When you walk in shame, you hide.

When you walk in hopelessness, faith shrinks.

But hear me, here's the call.

Have you ever noticed when Jesus entered any space he was in?

A stable, a house, the temple, a field, a hillside, a synagogue, and a faroon, a road, a river, the wilderness, the atmosphere never stayed the same.

If Christ is truly being formed in us, then why should our lives be any different?

If we remain all in, all flame, all him, when Christ is revealed through a surrendered life, here's what happens.

When heaven enters a room, kingdom perspective rules.

When love enters into a room, fear loses its voice.

When acceptance enters a room, belonging is tangible.

When healthy expectation enters, faith begins to rise.

When mercy enters, chains fall immediately.

When grace enters, shame no longer has the final word.

When humility enters, unity is restored.

When forgiveness enters, bitterness has nowhere to live.

When joy enters, my strength is renewed.

When truth enters, deception is exposed.

When hope enters, people begin to breathe again.

When he is revealed, chains fall.

The weary find rest.

The hungry are fed.

The forgotten are seen.

The orphan finds a home and a family.

The broken discover they are not beyond redemption because the kingdom of heaven has come on the scene.

That's you.

Rock family, that is you today.

We don't have to wait for his kingdom to come.

Let it be said of us that heaven was in us before we were ever in heaven.

Every time we choose surrender over self.

Every time we carry our cross, every time we choose the altar and the flame, heaven is revealed.

Would you stand to your feet right now?

This is the call for you today.

And I want you to come to the altar.

Here's the call.

I want you to lay down every version of yourself that you've been protecting.

Lay down every version of yourself that you feel like has been misunderstood.

Lay down every version that you feel like has to be recognized.

Lay down every version that has to win.

Lay down every broken place so that we can step all in as we're stepping into these next two weeks.

August 16th, Vision Sunday.

We're building a road to say yes because of where we're going.

And a people who need us to be ready.

All in, all flame, all in.

We hope and pray this message was encouraging and impactful.

Join us live on our website or Facebook on Sundays at 9 and 11 a.m.

You can stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at The Rock Family.

Have a Jesus filled free.