When you don’t know where to turn...

You are not blessed based on the word of God

that you hear or the word of God that you understand.

You are base blessed, and your life is changed in

accordance with the word of God that you apply, obey,

and act on. That's why you can hear thirteen years

of teaching and still be mean as the serpent in

the garden of Eden. No, that's why you can hear

a lot of teaching about love. But if you don't

make the decision to forgive, the teaching about love will

be snatched up by the birds of the air and

will not take root in your heart. So verse four

becomes really important if we really want to change, if

we really want to get beneath the surface, and you know,

not just have a skin deep spirituality and a skin

deep relationship with God where we can fake it for

a little while, and we create stages to impress people,

and we have armor that we put on to go

out into our job, but we come home and feel

like miserable, miserable people to live with, or we feel

like we don't know how to be in but we

know how to be impressive. And so as long as

people only see us from a distance, they don't really notice.

We're starting to cover our skin and cover our souls

and things that are just leaping.

Out of us at all the wrong time.

Verse four says that Naman went to his master and

told him what the girl from Israel had said. And

this took courage, and it took humility for Naman to

go to his master and show his butt, to show

his vulnerability when he was a man with so many victories.

I just want to stay there for a minute.

Because sometimes I feel like we use prayer as an

opportunity to read God our resume, you know.

And while I think it's.

Great to celebrate all the Goliath that we killed, sometimes

the giants in us are kicking our butt and we

don't say anything about it until it's too late. And

I'm getting bolder every year I passed her, as I

commit more and more to preaching to the part.

Of you that you would just as soon.

Hide and never mention, because I think that's where real

help is found. And Naman went to his master and

told him what the girl from Israel had said. I mean,

this is a servant girl. And Naman is what a

great man, a.

Great man, He's a great man, but he's.

Got these spots that are starting to spread, and if

he doesn't do something soon, there's no telling what might

happen next. And since there are no essential oils for

this particular form of leprosy at this point in antiquity,

Naman has to take the advice of a little girl.

And now we have a great man going to an

enemy nation in Israel because of the advice of a

little girl. Are you willing to obey God even if

he speaks through.

Something that seems smaller than you, because I notice a

lot of us won't.

A lot of teenagers will listen to me preach and

roll their eyes at their parents. And I don't understand

that because I'm not paying for your college or your bracests.

I'm not even buying you ramen noodles.

And sometimes I've noticed that men will listen to me preach,

but their wife knows them better than I do and

could say some things that would actually help them.

It's getting quiet, and even the women left me out

on that one.

It's like that I'm a cancel reflective, y'all, don't help

me with this sermon. It's something about exposure and when

a spot in your life. Everybody says, spot a leprous

spots something that is consuming you that others can't see

when it is exposed by an experience.

That's the second stage.

I wanted to mention this experience because things will happen

in your life and you'll come up upon situations that

will expose something that you would prefer to hide, and

what you do next determines whether you get healed. So

Naman went to his master and told him what the

girl from Israel had said. Verse five says that the

king said, by all means go, I will send a

letter to the King of Israel. So Naman left, taking

with him ten talents of silver six thousand shekels of gold.

That's like seventy five pounds of each. So Naman is going.

To Israel with his resources to attain healing.

He's gonna deal with this like he always deals with things,

because he's a great man.

He's a persistent man, he's a prepared man, he's a

powerful man. These other things that start with the letter

P as well, and the letter that he took to

the King of Israel read with this letter, I am

sending my servant naming to you.

So that you may cure him of his leprosy. There's

all kinds of stuff wrong with that sentence. It's like

the telephone game we used to play when you pass

a message along to somebody and it starts out, we're

having Joe chicken for lunch, and it ends with I'm

dying of cancer, and you pass it down and it

only takes three people. This chain of communication has polluted

the message itself because number one, the servant girl didn't

say the king can heal him.

It said the prophet can.

And sometimes we run to the wrong people because we

have our own ideas about where our help comes from.

Talk to me, and it's not the king that is

going to have the faith to get him healed. It's

the prophet. His name is Elisha.

But the king sends the commander to the king because

you know, this is to me, the most logical way

to get him healed will go straight to the top.

But watch the king's response.

And this is kind of interesting because when the king

gets the letter and Naman shows up with all of

the accumulated wealth that he believes it's gonna take to

get him healed. You know how we have our own

ideas about what it's gonna take to make a change

in our.

Life, and I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna get my degree. I'm

gonna go back. I'm get my degree. I'm gonna eat.

I'm gonna eat so much kill it's gonna be coming

out of my nose. I'm not eatning gluten again until

twenty twenty four. I'm gonna do hot yoga and cold

yoga and powerlifting.

And I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it all

Mariema Bible.

I'm gona delete every social media off my phone. I'm

never going on Facebook again. I'm I got my face

in the book. And he shows up with all of

stuff that he thinks you can need to get healed.

But as soon verse seven, as the King of Israel

read the letter, he tore his robes and said, am

I God, you want me to do what? I got

This friend, y'all. His name is Alex Early. He was

my college roommate and he used to make prank phone

calls in college and they were hilarious. Most of them

were clean. We were Christians, but he had the ability

to push people to their breaking point. He was a

big fan of a guy at the time who did

prank calls named Roy D Mercer, and this guy was

famous for taking people right to the.

Edge, and so we would laugh.

And we still have these phone calls recorded and one day.

I'm going to release them on SoundCloud.

And these phone calls to me just bring me joy

at times in my life, because everybody's reaction was the same.

He make up a million scenarios. You know. He would

use this name, this alias Dwyane McGraw du wai Ne

and put a thing over the e because it's French.

My name is dew Wyane McGraw. And he'd say, my

boy Bobby is throwing up all over the shag carpet

because I came to a grocery store and I bought

bad milk. And they would always say this no matter

what scenario he made up. One time it'd be Bobby's

throwing up on the shag carpet. One time it'd be

I took my trousers to your laundromat and they shrunk

up and now they're coming up around my thighs and

I look like a European and you know, but whatever

scenario he would bring up, their response was.

Generally the same, what do you want me to do

about it? The King? The King is like, you brought

me a leopard. Do you think I'm God? I'm not

a doctor. I'm a king. Have you ever felt like

life brought you something that was above your pay grate

to handle? God?

They're doing that thing again where they sit there and

look at me like they always have it together and

they have all the answers. Because I looked at my

kids the other day and said.

I am not Google. I am not a search engine.

I do not know. Furthermore, I do not care. Get

out of my face.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night

and replay things.

That I've said to my kids and.

Feel so bad that I have to get up and

baptize myself in the baptop.

And get saved again, just as I am without one. Please, Oh,

Lamb of God, what do you want from me? I'm

only a man? And the King says, I know what

this is? This man? Watch can I kill and bring

back to life. He's triggered because he.

Is confronted with a situation that he is unable to transform,

and whenever life presents.

You with something that you were not equipped for. So

you got to be a dad and you didn't have

a dad.

You've got to pay a bill, but God didn't give

you a job. You've got to step into something that

you've never seen before with the faith to believe that

it's already done. And it can be exasperating. To the

point watch this that you allow your past experience to

contaminate your perspective the present moment.

Remember what I said.

The King of Aaron, Benedett the second would often go

and invade Jehoram's land Jahorms, King of Israel. And so

when he gets the letter saying, hey, can you help

my guy name in can you heal my guy?

Naming?

It triggered within him a traumatic memory of the last

time he was attacked, and so he goes off, not

because of the situation that he's experiencing, but because of

past experiences.

Do you ever wonder why you go off?

And it's inexplicable, like the level of the offense does

not match the level of the outrage, and you wonder

why what was that all about?

Hell?

You ever with the Elevation Church sticker on your car

said some words that weren't blessed the Lord, Oh my soul,

And wonder.

You know how y'all think Holly is so sweet?

What time in college she was singing a worship song

in her Ford contour, and the song said I was there,

I was in the passenger seat. The song said, you

are so patient with me.

Lord.

She didn't get to Lord before she was screaming.

At the at the dodge ram that pulled out in

front of her. And she is loud. Holly is like

when she's up here, A reflects, She'll be smiling. But

I'm gonna tell you something about Hollyford.

What what is that all about? Where did that voice

come from?

We?

And then the devil starts telling you, oh, well, you

know you're not a real Christian.

You're hypocrite. Some of y'all are gonna lose it before

that day is over.

Because of your fantasy football lineup. No, not because of

anything significant to anything having to do with real life

in any way, because of other men that have absolutely

no effect on you other than one hundred dollars at

the end of the season.

And you wonder, why did I go off like that?

It's understandable because we live in not only the age

of anxiety, but if you noticed, we live in the

age of outrage too. How trendy it is now to

just get mad about anything that you don't like the

first time you hear it.

Well, you aren't going to like this part of the sermon.

I don't think too much, But.

Can I be honest with you, I don't really care

what shoes you were to church today. No, my perspective

is different, but I spend too much time seeing people's butts.

To care about what.

You have on your feet today. So I don't have

time when teen suicide is at an all time high

to check and see if you're wearing a Didas or Nike,

if you got yeezes or you want to just do it.

I don't really have time to debate with you about

a sluice or a commercial or getting mad about I

really don't have time for it up here when people's

lives are on the line. I really don't have time

for it in here, when people are on antidepressants in

a rate that's making them more depressed, but they don't

know where else.

To turn, And we're run into all.

Kinds of places that are leaving us empty.

But we want to fight.

There will be at least one comment on this YouTube

video about the holes in my jeans.

Are you for real right now? But it triggers something.

You're not fighting me over shoes, You're not fighting me

over jeans.

One moment told me until you save your beard, I

can't watch you anymore. This is psychotic, she said, I'm

praying for you.

I want to say I'm praying for you. I'm a

fast forty days. If you're that messed up, I don't

know why I went off. I think like for me,

this is just what I'm working through, and so this

makes you think I'm crazy.

You're right, but I'm going through this season of my

life where I don't want to keep blaming my environment

or consulting things that happened in my life, because the

Cross of Jesus Christ gives.

Me a new reality.

And it really changes everything in the sense that all

of my life has to be viewed through that lens

of what He did for me and who he says

I am.

If I'm not careful, I'll be like the King, who, when.

Confronted with an impossible situation that reminded him of a

past hurt, he inflicted.

The opportunity of his present moment with the pain of

his past. Do you see what I'm saying he projected.

See every time he dealt with AERM, it was an attack.

And now it's an opportunity for this man to be

healed and see what God can do. But if what

you went through isn't healed by what Christ did for you,

you will treat the opportunity.

Like an attack. Hey, thank you for watching.

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Thanks again for watching.