Go and Occupy

Well, I am grateful to be here with everyone.

Believe it's going to be an incredible day that God is going to speak to us all.

Um, as he said, we are down in Houston.

It's been incredible.

God's done some incredible things, obviously, getting Pastor Leland as our worship pastor, but he's really brought some incredible people around.

I just can't say enough.

Thank you to everyone here from Gateway Church because for sending us out into that area.

Really, the thing that we hear constantly from people that is it's been an answer to prayer.

So we're just so grateful to be here, but I'm also excited to be back in my home, away from home, coming back to Dallas, and I'm grateful.

Uh, even though we are in Houston, we still watch my pastor every single weekend.

I will say we gather around the TV as a family, and the candlelight service was incredible, but it's a little bit awkward standing in your living room with a candle by yourself, passing it around to your kids.

But we got the hang of it by the end of it, but we're excited to be here.

And especially because it's the last weekend of the year, but it's also the last weekend of the decade.

And as began to think, and I'm sure if you sat down and reflected on the past 10 years, 10 years ago, I was single, no kids, and working in sales.

Ten years later, I'm married, four kids, and that happened really fast.

And now starting a church.

So God really has been faithful throughout the whole entire process.

He's made many promises, but he is a promise keeping God, and we're so excited for that.

And our children are adjusting, being into a new place as well, being in Houston, they're loving it now.

I even tell everybody that I talk to, God has given us a supernatural love for the city, given us a supernatural love for the people.

He is yet to give me a supernatural love for the traffic or the weather, though, because it is a nightmare down there.

And I don't know if that one is ever coming.

But for the past nine months or so, we've been traveling around, learning from as many churches as we can about church planning.

And well, before we travel, we sit our kids down and tell them, hey, mommy and daddy are gonna go on this trip, here's what we're gonna go do.

And they're like, Okay, great, we'll send you out, go have fun.

Well, this was probably our second conference to go to.

And our daughter Addie, she's our oldest one.

My wife was talking to her and she said, Hey, we're gonna go to a church planning conference to learn how to plant the church.

And she's like, Excuse me?

You don't already know how to plant a church?

This is your second time going.

My wife felt like it was as if she said, You mean to tell me you brought me all the way to Houston and you don't know how to plant a church?

That's it.

Take me back to Dallas because Papa knows how to plan a church and he knows how to start a church and he knows how to build a church.

So take me back to the big church, is what she calls this.

But they've done a great job adjusting, and it's been really incredible.

Well, if you have your Bibles with you, if you're on your phone, go to Deuteronomy chapter 1.

Deuteronomy 1 · chapter mention

And the title for today's message is Go and Occupy.

Go and occupy.

And I want to give you a little bit of context around this passage.

Deuteronomy means a copy of or reiterating the law.

Moses is the primary writer, and it's really, in many ways, his farewell address to the people.

They're on the cusp of entering into the promised land that was promised long ago to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And while there's a lot of excitement around this time, Moses really lays out the first time that they were supposed to go into the promised land, and that's where we're going to focus.

It's also in Numbers 13 and 14, but Deuteronomy, he's retelling the story of a journey that should have been much shorter, but because of the hindrances that they walked through or didn't walk through, they ended up on a much longer journey.

So we'll start in verse 20.

And this is Moses saying, He said, I said to you, you have not reached the hill country of the Amorites that the Lord our God has given you.

Look, he has placed the land in front of you.

Go and occupy.

It is as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

Don't be afraid, don't be discouraged, but all you all you came to me and said, First, let's send out scouts to explore the land for us.

They will advise us on the best route to take and which towns we should enter.

This seemed like a good idea to me, so we chose twelve scouts, one from each of your tribes.

They had headed for the hill country and came to the valley of Eshkol and explored it.

They picked some of its fruit and brought it back to us, and they reported, The land the Lord our God has given us is indeed a good land.

Verse 26, but you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God and refused to go in.

You complained in your tents and said, The Lord must hate us.

That's why he has brought us here from Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to be slaughtered.

Where can we go?

Our brothers have demoralized us with their report.

They tell us the people of the land are taller than we are, they're more powerful than we are, and their towns are large, with walls rising high into the sky.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.

But I said to you, don't be shocked or afraid of them.

The Lord your God is going ahead of you, he will fight for you, just as you saw him do in Egypt.

And in verse 34 and 35, when the Lord heard your complaining, he became very angry, so he solemnly swore, Not one of you from this wicked generation will live to see the good land I swore to give to your ancestors.

So today, I want to talk to us about three hindrances to occupying the promises of God.

And the first one is this fear.

Fear.

The people, as they were on the cusp of entering the land, wanted to first see the land that God said that He would give them.

Now, to most of us, it would make sense that you would want to see something before you go into it.

But if you look back at this story, this is actually a subtle QQ of fear that they had that the land may not have been exactly what they thought it was going to be.

That they were actually scared to go in there and just simply take it and that God wouldn't move in a way that He had moved prior to that.

And here's why.

Because most people think that seeing is believing.

But I want to submit to you today that actually sight can be the greatest enemy to your faith if you're not careful.

Many people would say, hey, if I just got the chance to see all those specifics that God had laid out for my life, then I would say yes to it.

But as we see from this passage, for 40 days they traveled through the land, yet they came back and they refused to go in, is what it said.

God had already told them what the land was like.

Moses had told them what the land was like.

And instead they decided to question God.

And I want to say this there's a difference between asking a question of God and questioning God.

All throughout the book of Psalms, David asked plenty of questions about God.

But whenever you question God, it's actually a veiled accusation.

And Satan actually did this in the Garden of Eden when he said to Eve, has God really said?

He's ultimately coming against his character.

God doesn't mind when we ask questions because questions are so that we can receive information.

But when we are questioning, it's a veiled accusation.

So this is the place where they are at, and it was because of fear that they were there.

Once again, it's seldom that God chooses to lay out all the specifics for our lives.

But I will say this the longer you walk with God, the more comfortable you are not knowing all of the details.

Because you've seen the same God that came through yesterday will also come through today and will come through in the future in the same exact way.

There's a trust factor that grows in you.

And you come to believe and you come to know that insight is actually better than eyesight.

It's better that you would get a word from God than you would see all the specifics lined out for you to be able to walk the path before you make a decision.

So, whenever I was growing up in high school, I went to a small Christian school, and the reason why I say small Christian school is because that meant that if you were a male and you could run and catch, you were on the football team.

It was as simple as that.

You were on the football team, and they were actually starting 11 and 11 football for the very first time.

I was proud to be on our girl team.

We're excited, we're pumped, we're going to our first game, and then we see who we were playing.

And that brought a lot of fear onto us.

They were bigger than us, they were stronger than us, they were faster than us, their mascot was better than ours.

Every detail that you could think of, they had better than us.

But we're like, hey, it's our first game.

We're excited, and I wish I could tell you this was an underdog story.

We came out and we beat them, but they annihilated us.

The score was 70 to 7.

And I don't even know how we scored the touchdown.

But during one of the plays, I played wide receiver.

Uh the quarterback threw the ball, it was a little bit low.

I wish I had caught it, but I didn't.

But I dove to catch the ball, and I dropped the ball, and I was walking back to the huddle, but my hand felt a little bit differently.

And my teammates, whenever they saw my hand, they were just pointing at it, saying, Hey, you need to get out of the game.

And it's because my pinky finger had actually gotten stuck in the ground for a second, and this part of my finger had moved back here.

So it was dislocated, yes, it was pretty nasty.

But the weird part was it was so numb, the nerves were shot, so I didn't feel any of it.

So I walked off the field and was taken out of the game.

But here's the truth, and I want to relay this when it comes to fear.

Fear desires to dislocate you from the purpose that God has for you.

Too many believers, too many Christians have dislocated themselves from God's plan and God's people because of fear.

And it's really tragic how many dreams, how many hopes lay dormant because of fear.

Because when you look at the spies, they all agreed on one simple thing, and they say God and what he said was true.

But God already knew that.

That should have been all the evidence that they needed, but they still weren't willing to go in.

Because here's what we need to realize: there's a difference whenever we see evidence between what we think we see and our perspective.

Our perspective isn't what we see, it's ultimately how we see.

And two people chose to look at it through the lens of faith, Joshua and Caleb, while the ten chose to look at it through the lens of fear and ended up ruining things for an entire generation.

And here was their ultimate problem: is that whenever they looked at the obstacles and the opposition that they were going to have to face, they looked at themselves.

They looked at themselves to say, How are we gonna perform?

And they were built up with pride and ultimately insecurity because they realized they didn't have the strength for the victory instead of ultimately coming to a place of humility and following through in obedience for all that God had done.

Because if they really took the time to reflect and take inventory, they never did anything under their own power.

It was always God.

And it's the same thing for us.

We need to realize that we can't be in awe of the strength of what's ahead of us.

We need to be in awe of the strength of our God.

So Moses tells them, go ahead, don't be afraid, don't be in fear, because God is going ahead of you and he will fight for you.

Here's why, as we move into this new year, we don't need to be afraid.

Because we know that God is already in the future.

He is there, he is fighting for us, and he is making a way for us.

And we can trust him in that.

My daughter Addie, the one that I told you about at the beginning, sometimes she's a little bit more hesitant and a little bit more fearful than the rest of our kids.

Um, I try to instill a little bit more fear in my son sometimes as he jumps off the bed and jumps off other things.

But this past summer, we were on vacation and we went on a boat ride, and there was a uh, I guess a ski tube, a beginner ski tube, that they'd be able to get behind, they'd be able to ride behind the boat.

And she was a little bit hesitant, but we talked her into getting out there.

So she's out there, and we start the boat, we're going slow at first, and I'm holding the rope in my hand, and I'd let out little by little, by little.

But one thing that my wife has always done is she's tried to teach Addie scripture so that anytime fear would come up, that she would know how to respond.

So as we're letting, I'm letting the rope out more and more, she's holding on, she's just terrified, wouldn't really enjoy any of it.

And then we saw her mouth, and here's what she was mouthing.

God has not given me a spirit of fear, but a power of love and a sound mind.

God is not giving me a spirit of fear, but a power of love and a sound mind.

That was all the evidence that she needed.

She needed, she knew that she needed to simply reject the fear and receive the power and the love and the sound mind that only God could give.

And for us, we have to come to the same place to where we trust the scriptures and what God has to say versus what's going on in our circumstances and our situation.

Amen?

So that's the first thing fear.

The second hindrance is this discouragement.

Discouragement.

Now, this is big for a lot of people, and one of the greatest tactics the enemy uses against believers, and here's why.

Because when you are a threat, that also makes you a target.

When you are a threat to the enemy of darkness because you are the light, he is going to target you and try to discourage you and try to get you to stop following after the promises and the plans of God and trusting in him.

And this is what happened for the children of Israel.

They received one negative report.

And how many of you know bad news happens to travel a lot faster than good news?

It says it traveled throughout the camp, and they were discouraged and demoralized, which means their heart melted.

You have to think of the word discouragement, it literally means to take courage out.

Their heart melted, they had no more left.

And this is what it says in Numbers 14.

Then the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night.

Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron.

If we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness, they complained.

Why is the Lord taking us to this country only to have us die in battle?

Our wives and our little children will be carried off as plunder.

Wouldn't it be better?

Think of this accusation against God, wouldn't it be better for us to return to Egypt?

They plotted, then they plotted amongst themselves, let's choose a new leader and go back to Egypt.

So, how can you tell if you're in discouragement?

Whenever you talk about something, it's negative and it's exaggerated.

This is how you can tell.

And here's why, because discouragement distorts your view of reality.

You see things in a certain way, your perspective is skewed, and your vision is clouded.

This is why we need each other.

Because there's times when I've been with my friends where I've been discouraged and they've been able to speak truth into that situation and help me get out from where I was.

We need to be surrounded by other believers.

This is why we have groups, this is why we have places where you can get involved.

So that in those times where you're having hardship, and just so you know, no one is immune to discouragement.

As a matter of fact, as you walk around, and even the people that you're sitting next to, I bet there are some people here that can use encouragement today.

So we need to be mindful to be able to do that.

Because if we're not careful, discouragement that's not dealt with would ultimately turn into complaining against God.

Because we're not trusting him.

And this is what happened here.

And they began, truth be told, to bear false witness against God and his character to the point where they were saying, it would have been better if God would have never brought us out of Egypt.

Now, if you read through the Exodus story, you know that they were working seven days a week.

They were enslaved, they were in bondage.

And many times as believers, we begin to fantasize about what the past was like.

Whenever there's discouragement and the enemy comes and brings it, it's like, why don't you just stop following God?

Because they had reached a place where they were ready to get new leaders.

But it wasn't against Moses and Aaron.

You have to understand, God put Moses and Aaron there.

So they were ultimately rejecting God.

And this is what discouragement can do in our lives.

As we've been down in Houston, God's clearly done some incredible things.

Uh, but there's been some hardship at the same time, too.

Things that we thought were gonna come together a lot faster didn't come together as fast as we would have liked them to.

I was telling people anytime they asked me, hey, how's it going?

I tell them it's been a great three weeks and a long 11 months.

Because truth be told, a lot of things happened at the last second that we never saw.

And I wish what God would have told me earlier, but he was like, No, you're gonna have to walk this process out.

Because so many times we want it to be easier when God's trying to say, I'm actually trying to make you stronger.

Because in the future you're gonna have battles, you're gonna have opposition that you need to be stronger in order to be able to face.

Because when adversity comes our way, it actually exposes what we believe about God.

It exposes those things in our heart.

And for us, as we navigated through it, we were trying to find a location.

We were trying to find the spot to hold to have services for the church.

There was a church that had been there before, but they hadn't had a church for four years, and we really weren't getting anywhere.

And through a series of divine appointments, God opened the door for us to be there, and it's incredible.

It's uh the school that, believe it or not, whenever three years beforehand, we actually said that would actually be a great place to have service.

I actually didn't remember that.

My wife pointed it out.

So God really brought it back full circle.

But in the middle of discouragement, I couldn't see anything clearly.

I was like, is this ever gonna happen?

We're gonna have to have church in our house.

Our house might not be big enough to hold everybody, but this is these are the things that go through your head.

It's like, hey, it would have might have been easier to stay back in Dallas, Gateway Church, one of the best churches in the world, should have stayed there.

But God provided every single step of the way and let us know, though, no, I have you in the right place.

And so many times for us, we need to realize even though we are discouraged, that God has us in the right place where we need to be.

So I want to give everybody permission to do something.

Uh, Pastor Matt Osgood, he's down there with us at Gateway Church Houston, and he was really the one who showed me this idea.

And he says, Ethan, I have an I want to quit folder.

And I want to tell everyone here and at all of our campuses, you too should have an I want to quit folder.

Now I know what you're thinking.

There's a pastor that's here that's telling us that we should quit some things.

Now, there may be some bad habits that you do need to quit, but that's really not what I'm talking about here.

In that I want to quit folder, here's what he has: he has prophetic words, he has words of encouragement, he has notes from people, and he has scriptures that help put in courage in his life during these times.

Because once again, we're all gonna have those times where we're going to need courage.

So I encourage you to get, and I want a quick folder for those times that hey, you journal, whatever works for you, but we need to have that place where we can come and remind ourselves.

Because here's the truth Satan would love for us to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember.

He would love for you to forget that you are a son and a daughter of the Most High God.

He would love for you to forget that you have been bought with a price.

He would love for you to forget that you are victorious in him.

He would love for you to forget that he loves you with an unconditional, unfailing, undying love.

And he wants good for you.

He would love for you to forget these things, that you are made in the image of God and you have significance, and God is always with you.

And he would love for you to remember your past.

But as Paul said, forgetting those things which are behind, we need to press toward the mark for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

So don't let discourage discouragement rob you from what God wants in your life.

So that is the second hindrance.

The third hindrance is this unbelief.

Unbelief.

This generation had reached the end of their faith.

And unbelief often presents itself as something that's really factual and really down-to-earth.

But at the same time, it doesn't believe that anything could change.

Truth be told, for some of us, if we would have known some things ahead of time, we might not have stepped into them.

The things that we prayed for for so many for so long may also be moments of frustration.

Many people that were single prayed and prayed and prayed that God would give them a spouse.

And then they said those vows for better or for worse, not realizing that the worse would come before the better.

So many people prayed and prayed to have these kids, and then there's frustration that rises up within them whenever that child comes to their bedside and wakes them up at four in the morning because they're thirsty and they want a Capri son.

Not that that's ever happened in my household.

But truth be told, it could be a job.

It could be a business, things that you didn't expect to go that the way that they're going, and you could lose all belief that God actually called you to this thing.

But we need to have perseverance and trust him and what he's calling us to.

But because of their unbelief, here's what it says in Hebrews 3.16.

And who was it who rebelled against God?

Even though they heard his voice.

Wasn't it the people Moses led out of Egypt?

And then verse 19.

So we see that because of their unbelief, they were not able to enter into his rest.

Here's the dangerous thing about unbelief.

One, it kept them out of the promised land, but unbelief will actually keep us from coming to God.

Because it's hard to truly believe in someone that you ultimately don't feel loves you.

It's hard for us to come to that place.

And unbelief will ultimately turn into rebellion because it always leaves open the door for temptation to disobey.

And if we're not careful, unbelief will lead us down the wrong path.

But for them, it actually causes an entire generation for God to say no to the plans and the purposes that He had for them and the promises that He had laid out many years before.

He was ready to give them, but they weren't ready to receive them.

And my hope is that it's not, that can't be said about any of us today, that God's ready to give us some things, but because of where we are, because of our heart, because of our attitude, we're not able to receive the things that God would love to be able to give us.

And because of their unbelief, they wandered around for 30 plus more years and they wondered what it would have been like had we trusted God.

We could be in the promised land, which he described as sorry, he described as milk and honey, the land of milk and honey, sorry.

He described it as that.

It would have been a plentiful land for all of them.

Yet they wondered what it would have been like because the next generation was going to be the one to inherit it.

But the sad part was the rebellion was not done.

After they said no to God the first time, and God said no to them entering the promised land, they tried to enter in under their own power.

If you read the rest of the story, they tried to enter under their own power and got annihilated.

And here's what they need to realize, and it's something that we can learn too that it's you can't have the promise of God without the presence of God.

Those two things always come together.

So this is why it's important for us to believe Him, because if we're gonna step into the things that God has for us, we're gonna have to be able to believe Him.

And God has a place of rest for us.

This was supposed to be a place of rest for them.

But they wandered for most of their lives, never experiencing that rest.

And my hope is that it's not the same for us because we have an answer to that.

Jesus gives us this invitation in Him to find the rest that we need.

In Matthew 11, verse 28 through 30, he says this this is Jesus, come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28–30

Take my yoke upon you.

Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.

I want you to notice something here.

The first thing he says is, Come to me.

It's a call to intimacy, not a call to activity.

He isn't calling us to say, Hey, I have something for you to do.

The first place that we need to realize is that God is calling for us to be in relationship with him.

I think it's incredible that the thing that the church is coming together to do is read through the Bible in a year.

If you've never done it, I highly recommend it.

I've done it many times.

But this is coming to Jesus, letting his words pour over you, cleanse you, heal you, whatever it may be.

We need to have the ability to be able to come to him.

Because truth be told, there's a lot of believers that are weary.

Their pace of life is not sustainable, but God wants to give you a pace that's sustainable, moving to the rhythms of his grace.

And there's many people that are carrying burdens that they were never meant to carry.

Expectations from others, parents, whatever it may be.

Jesus says, Let me take those off you.

I want to carry them for you.

Then he goes on to say, I am gentle of heart.

Take my yoke upon you.

Now I know we don't live in an agricultural society, but what would happen is an ancient farmer would get a yoke and he would actually attach an experienced ox with one that they were trying to train how to plow.

So when he says, My burden is light, here's what he's really saying.

The reason why God's burden is light is because Jesus is the experienced one that's walking alongside you, teaching you the way that you should go.

And the reason his yoke is easy is this word comes from a Greek word krestos, which really means well-fitting.

In our language today, we would say tailored.

It's tailor-made for you.

So the yoke that God has, the reason why it's easy for you to bear is because it's made specifically for you, which is why it makes no sense and is unwise whenever we see someone else's yoke that God has given them, the gifts, the callings, whatever it may be, and we try to alter our yoke to go fit theirs when God has something unique for every single one of us that no one else can step into.

So it's important for us to go with the yoke that God has for us and believe that He knows what's best and believe that He has something good for us.

I'm gonna share one more story about my daughter Addie because she's so much fun to talk about.

We were riding in the car one day for all of our kids' birthdays.

We try to go the healthy route and we get them donuts for their birthday, and they ride with me and choose which one they want.

So in Houston, I don't know most of the city, so I was using my maps and she didn't know where we were going either.

But she's riding, I'm in the driver's seat, obviously, and she's behind me to my right.

And we're about to pull up to where the donut shop is.

She can't see it.

So I see and I said, Hey, Addy, it's it's right up over there.

So she looked, but she actually could not see it.

And during these moments, I call them car ride theology because my daughter teaches me so much about my relationship with God.

She said a very profound statement that is still stuck with me to this moment.

And she said, Daddy, even though I can't see it, I still believe you.

Even though I can't see it, I still believe you.

As a father, that puts a smile on my face.

I want to tell you today that we have a heavenly father.

That it would put a smile on his face to know that his children would say, I may not see everything that's in front of me as we go into this new year.

I may not see how I'm gonna get out of this situation, I may not see the things for my life, my job, family, marriage, whatever it may be, but I believe that you have something good planned for my life.

Because he does.

At all of our campuses, I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes with me.

In every single weekend here at Gateway, we ask this question What is the Holy Spirit saying to me through this message?

Because he wants to speak to every single one of us.

And we have a chance right now to respond that every single campus there'll be people from the prayer team, pastors and leaders that want to have the opportunity to pray with you.

I can't think of any other way to enter into the new year with prayer.

And we should never be embarrassed to come down to receive prayer.

You don't have to be a member of Gateway Church to receive prayer.

But in a moment, I'm gonna pray.

We're all gonna stand.

And if you need prayer for anything at all, health, finances, something you're going through in a family relationship, we want to have the opportunity to pray for you.

So let me pray for us real quick.

Father, we just thank you.

We thank you that you love us, that we don't have to walk in fear.

We thank you that you desire to give us the courage to be able to walk out whatever you call for us to walk out.

And we thank you that you love us so that we can believe in you and trust in you fully because you are a promise making God.

But we believe today that you are a promise keeping, God.

And I pray right now that you would draw every single person at every single campus that needs prayer.

So in Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.