Use What God Gave You

God is about to do a miracle through something that

you don't even think is worth mentioning, something so small

and insignificant in your sight that your.

First instinct is to not even mention it.

But the enemy wants you to despise your oil because

he can't steal your oil. Oil in the Bible is

symbolic of the Holy Spirit. When they would anoint a

king in the Bible, they would anoint the king with oil.

It represented God's empowerment. It represents joy and gladness. It's

symbolic of the Holy Spirit that came on the day

of Pentecost.

To live inside of us.

And so when I preach about oil, I'm not talking

about something that.

You keep in your pantry.

I'm talking about something that you have in.

Your heart, the gift God gave you, the people God

put in your life.

The idea God.

Gave you, the time He gave.

You, the ceason you're in.

If I were your enemy and I knew I couldn't

take your oil, what I would do instead is to

get you to think that your oil was so little

that it wasn't even worth using.

And that's why some people sit in.

Church week after week after week after month after month

after month after year after year, and stay in their

deficiency and never realize that what you've got is something.

Somebody's shout is not nothing. It's not nothing. Feeling in

my spirit today, it's not nothing. Somebody shout, my gift

is something, my life is something, My praise is something.

Not high five.

Somebody say, I got something? How about you? For I've

been comparing my oil with yours.

My oil might not be as much as yours, but

God will hold me accountable for your oil.

We learned this from Elijah.

Go look and see if you see anything in the sky,

and the servant came back nothing. Go look again, nothing,

Go look again, nothing, Go look again, nothing, Go look again, nothing,

Go look again nothing. This is getting really old, Steve.

Can you just get to the point how old would

it get if you were the one running to the

top of the hill to look at nothing, and then finally,

by the time you do see something is so small

you minimize it. There's a cloud, somebody shout, there's a cloud.

The size of a man's hand.

See, it's not the size of the cloud that determines

the size of the blessing. It's not the amount of

the oil. It's not how smart I am, how well

educated I am. It's not even my estimation of myself.

If God calls me and chooses me, nothing on earth.

Shall be able to stop me. Shall if you believe

that in the back of the room, check your oil.

It might not be much, but it's not nothing. It's

not nothing. And I think it's harder than ever to

feel okay about our oil because we got we got

too many ways to check other people's oil, whether it's

their vacation, because that's about to start, you know where

everybody's posting the happiest moments of their vacation this summer,

and it's going to make you feel like a crappy parent,

and it's gonna make you question your oil because they're

gonna all be smiling in the picture. Now, let me

tell you something that happened right before the picture. It

was almost a divorce. Those kids almost went up for adoption.

But they can't put that on the ground. So somebody say,

enjoy your oil. So I'll tell exactly what the devil's doing.

He can't take your gift, he can't take your calling,

the gifts and calling of God, or without repentance, God

doesn't change his mind.

About what he gave you.

If he can get you to think it so little

that you don't use it, he can starve you. I

realize that God gave me a ministry. The devil can't

take the ministry that God gave me. But if I

give up my joy, then I will forfeit my ministry.

If I give up my joy, I will forfeit my marriage.

The devil can't take my marriage.

But if he can get me to despise my oil,

like to make me think I'm not a very good husband,

or I don't have what it takes to be a dad,

then I'll say it's nothing when it's really something. Noticed

by the end of this passage, this woman has a

house full of oil.

It was not until she.

Poured the oil that it became more. And when you

feel poor, you.

Don't poor because you hold on to what you have.

So when you feel like a poor parent, it keeps

you from wanting to try talk to me. And I

can go from here to hear real quick as a.

Parent, real really quick as a parent. You look so

perfected right now.

I can't figure out where one real person in this

whole church is that will say that even and if

you figure out how to change diapers, they stop wearing them.

Doesn't work anymore. So like there are things about me

and things about you that make us feel insecure and

make us say, you know, it's nothing when it's really something, but.

It seems small.

It seems small, and it's overshadowed by something that seems

when the need seems so big compared to the supply,

you call it nothing and you don't use it, and

so it doesn't multiply. You send the crowds away so

they can get something to eat, and you give away

the opportunities God gave you because it's nothing. What you

have is nothing. The need the need is great. And

my marriage just hit a sixteen year milestone. We celebrated

sixteen years of marriage. I love when I do that

because there's always people that have been forty years and

they look at me like, what I think it's significant.

I took Holly to Oak Steakhouse. We dined together. Let

me tell you how good.

The date was. The date was so good.

When we got home, the babysitter was texting us that

the fire alarm was going off in the house. It

was a storm in Charlotte that night and something tripped

the smoke alarm. Abby's freaking out on the porch, and

I had other plans for post date. So I'm driving

fast down the driveway, right, Can.

I talk to y'all?

But the kids are on the porch and the fire

alarms going off in the house and it's not a fire,

and it's the alarm system is bugging.

Out, and she already tried to take the battery out.

So Abby is freaking out, and I'm holding her because

she's seven.

And when I grabbed her, she stopped crying. And I

felt like.

The dad of the decade because I knew what to do.

I knew if I started singing Hamilton from the Hamilton

soundtrack that Abby would stop crying.

And it worked and she stopped crying, and.

I felt like the man for about five minutes until

we had to call the fire department, not to put

out a fire, but to turn off the alarm. What

made it worse was when they got there, when only

the Braves showed up at my house. They're walking down

the driveway. The nicest firefighters you would ever want to see.

Let's hear it for the firefighters.

These men come walking down the driveway and my wife

is the one in the house trying to fix the

detectors because I don't know what to do, and I'm

holding Abby.

And five minutes.

Ago I was the man, and here come the firefighters

and they're looking at me like, really, dude, And I

can tell that the one that's coming in first goes

to the church. He didn't say it, but he had

that look in his eyes, like you're my pastor, and

I'm ashamed of you. You're much bigger on the screen.

What kind of man are you? So I didn't make

eye contact. I just thanked them for their service, and

they got it off and there was no carbon monoxide

and we're alive to tell about it. Isn't it funny

how I was the man one minute?

But then now you.

Got to understand it's little stuff. It's not always some

big shame that the enemy brings to make you feel.

This is where I always got it wrong. I thought

that you had to go through something sexual that cost

you this great traumatic shame to keep you from really

trusting God, or and I thought maybe you had to

go through a season of your life, you know, eight

years in prison or something like that. And then you

would live with regrets. But I found out it is

the seemingly insignificant insecurities that.

Make you feel like I'm not a real man, I'm

not a real mom. Now I'm yelling at my daughter

just like my mom yelled at me, and I'm just

repeating the cycle. And it causes you to despise your oil.

And that's exactly what the enemy wants, is to use

a small little thing to get you to miss.

Your miracle, because your miracle is hidden in what you've

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