Spring Cleaning | Ps. Keith Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you so much for listening today.

We hope it encourages you and inspires you.

Here's today's message.

All right.

If you if you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to join me in the Gospel of John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

The Gospel of John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

We're gonna continue in our flourishing series.

We've been in this series now for the past uh several weeks, and and each week has kind of been building on uh the previous.

So if you missed any of the weeks, please go back and check it out.

And and just really the the cliff notes version of it is ultimately flourishing, is is really us living a life of abundance, a life of of thriving, a life that really reflects the image that God has for our life.

So each week we've been unpacking the different things that we need to do in order to do it.

And and what's important for us to grab a hold of is that when we think about flourishing in the context of a garden or any environment where we see something that's vibrant and beautiful, it doesn't happen without effort.

It takes work.

And anyone who has a green thumb knows that nothing just happens, it takes work.

And so the same way for our very own lives that there's nothing that just happens, that it takes work to cultivate and to develop the atmosphere where we can actually thrive and to be successful.

God has a vision, but we have to work in conjunction with that vision.

And so last week, um, my wife Megan, she preached such an incredible message on what it means to be good ground.

Come on, let's give it up for my bride for preaching such a good word on how to cultivate so that we can actually be good ground for it.

And so I hope that I can do even a fraction of how good that she did.

Looking at the Gospel of John chapter 15, starting at verse number one, here's what Jesus is communicating to his followers and those who were just intrigued by his messaging.

John 15 · chapter mention

He says this He says, I am the true vine, and the Father is the gardener.

Every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes it.

And he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit.

You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you.

Remain in me and I in you.

Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

The one who remains in me, and I in him produces much fruit, because without me, you can do nothing.

If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers.

They gather them, they throw them into fire, and then they burn.

But if you remain in my words, in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever it is you want, and it will be done for you.

First number eight.

There's so many things that Jesus has said in here.

We can look back and see the many times that he uses the word, remain in me, abide in me, stay connected to me.

I am the source.

So you can go and do a whole word study and just highlight how many times Jesus says that in all of the Gospel of John, chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

I think he's trying to send us a message when we're looking at scripture.

Repetition is always a strong message that God is trying to send.

Remain in me, stay connected to me.

If you're not in me, you're gonna be it's gonna be hard for you to produce the life that you really think and that you're supposed to have.

But I love what it says here at verse number eight.

So I want to repeat it again.

My father is glorified by this, that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples.

I know a lot of times we can ask ourselves, what is it that God wants from me?

Like, okay, Jesus died on the cross, I'm in a relationship with him.

What does he want from me?

What is this relationship supposed to look like?

I think verse 8 beautifully summarizes exactly what he wants from you.

He is glorified by this, that your life is a reflection of a relationship with him, and that you've proven to be a disciple.

That's a beautiful image, but it's a challenging image that we are called to be a reflection of the character and nature and love of God to a world that desperately needs it, but it takes work to cultivate it.

Today I want to continue our conversation on what I consider to be a very vital aspect of growth, a very vital aspect of what it looks like to really evolve and grow into what God's calling us to do.

And here's something that I want to ask us to do.

I want to ask you to listen with your spirit.

I want us to listen with our spirit.

Don't don't listen with your ears, don't listen in a very practical way because there's moments where we can misappropriate what God is saying and it can cause harm.

But I want us to listen with our spirit, and this is why.

The Bible says regarding itself that it is powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword.

Here's ultimately what it's communicating is that God's word is not only a tool that is meant to be used to help us to navigate the things that are in front of us, but the second edge of that sword is also meant for it to do some surgical work on us as well.

I believe that today's message is an opportunity for us not only to use it as a tool to help us to clear the way and some things that could be a distraction outside of us, but it's also meant to do some personal deep inventory work on the inside of us as well, so that we can thrive and flourish the way that God has intended us to do it.

So as we listen with our spirits, and I want you to take this down because of course we take notes in celebration, Orlando.

This is how we engage the presence of God.

I want you to write this message titled Spring Cleaning.

Yeah, we go in there today, yo.

Let's let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you, God, for the opportunity for us to gather in your name.

And Lord, our expectation, God, our posture is that we want to receive everything you have for us.

So, Lord, I just pray that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear you, open hearts to receive what it is that you want to speak to us today.

Holy Spirit, you're welcome.

And we invite you, we ask you to to breathe on every every aspect of what we're about to hear, Lord.

I pray that anything that's not like you remove it, but everything that is truly from you, I pray that it is rooted deep in our hearts and our souls, and that it challenges us, it inspires us, it it cultivates something inside of us that we can never do in our own strength.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

The way that my mind is wired is I love to appreciate the end result of things, but I also love to appreciate the work that went into the end result.

I I know that we're entering into the the spring season for whatever that is, and and in Florida, but but I recognize that it's typically in somebody's catching that slowly.

Like I recognize that it's when we are able to see, like whether it be the beautiful flowers and all the things that we're recognizing that is a representation of the season we're in.

That doesn't just happen.

There's a lot of work that happened in order for things to look the way that they look.

It's the same way with anything.

Whenever I appreciate anything, I'm like, man, like that's a beautiful outcome.

I wonder what it took for it to do that.

I wonder what's happening behind the screen that helps it to look the way that it looks.

So I've always been wired in a way where I love to appreciate the end result of things, but I also like to reverse engineer so I can understand how we got there.

And so um earlier in my ministry uh career, I remember taking a uh a selection of staff members so that we can go and visit uh one of the amusement parks.

And when we went to go visit it, we actually got um a behind-the-scenes tour.

We got a chance to go and see like what happens behind the curtains, what's going on behind the scenes.

And I just love seeing all the work and energy that goes into what we were able to appreciate on the front end.

So as we're looking at the way that certain rides function, the way that certain things operate, I gotta tell you, the thing that I geeked out the most about was when they took us to like the garden area.

And you wouldn't think that that would be something that I would be excited about, but yeah, I like flowers, so what?

Yeah, give me my flowers, like I'm all about it.

So I I loved when we got a chance to go to this nursery environment that was behind the scenes and seeing all the meticulous work that happens behind the scenes so that when we go to the amusement park, we're able to appreciate all the beauty and all the decor and all the work.

But I was not prepared for everything that I saw.

When I was there, I saw these meticulously maintained separate ecosystems and rooms and temperatures and things like that because they were very delicate in how everything was going to be handled.

But the thing that fascinated me the most was when we went into this one area where they had all of these cutouts of the characters of the amusement park.

And these cutouts were already structured, they were already there.

And so what they would do is they would go in and it would plant seeds in the structures.

And so what would happen is as the trees and as the things began to blossom, they're already blossoming in the in the structure that was already provided.

And so it's a beautiful way to kind of fast track how you can make sure that things are growing the way that you want them to grow.

And so as they began to grow, what then the gardener would do is when things began to grow beyond the structure, he would just walk around and cut it off.

Because the structure was already provided.

That structure provided the boundaries for growth.

And when anything began to overgrow it, it was easy for the gardener to just go and say, This doesn't fit into the structure.

It doesn't fit into the vision of what we want this thing to look like.

So they would just come around and prune off the things that didn't fit the intended outcome.

I wonder what it would look like in our lives if we began to operate that way.

Where we just began to literally get a blueprint, get a vision, get a structure for what we want our lives to look like.

And we began to invest in that.

We plant seeds in that, we water it, we position it so that we can grow, and then when things enter into our lives that don't fit the structure that we've developed, we cut it out.

When things overstay their welcome because they can't be contained inside of that structure, they cut it out.

Imagine what our lives would look like if we had such a vision of what success and thriving was that when things entered into it, we were able to measure and say, this doesn't fit, this isn't a good look for me, this doesn't work for me, and because I have a vision that I've already predetermined, I'm going to cut it out.

I know that that sounds a little bit transactional.

I know that sometimes that can seem a little uncomfortable when we begin to really think about this process of doing inventory inside of ourselves, things that are happening outside of ourselves and asking ourselves the difficult question: does this fit with the vision for my life?

Does this fit with the outcome that I know that I need in order for me to thrive and be successful the way that God has intended me to be successful?

But what we recognize it's in these moments, I truly believe that our unwillingness to audit what's happening in our lives is what's keeping us in emotional debt.

I believe it's our inability to recognize the things that's a drain on us that's creating the deficit that we're all still struggling with.

I believe that it's in these moments when we can truly take that moment to evaluate where we are because here's what we know growth demands that we let some things go.

It requires it.

It demands it.

It is a requisite of growth that you have to let some things go.

See, in a plant kingdom, it's so simple.

They call it pruning.

And what pruning is, pruning is the process of cutting away dead or overgrown branches, stems, or buds so that you can produce health.

See, a a tree, a plant has very limited resources.

And so because it has limited resources, it's diverting energy to every bud and branch that's there.

So in order for the entirety of the tree to blossom, there are some things you need to cut away so you can divert the energy into something that is actually going to flourish the way it's supposed to.

I think sometimes for us that we don't recognize that we are finite beings that have limited resources and limited energy.

So we love to multitask and spread ourselves so thin that we're trying our best to maintain so many different things, and unfortunately what's happening is it becomes a drain on our system and nothing thrives the way it's supposed to.

Maybe if you ever have looked and seen that there's a moment when you're on your computer and it begins to slow down and you're not quite sure why why is my computer going slow?

And if you look hard enough, if you look long enough, my wife, God help us, she's she's very guilty of this.

If you ever look at my wife's browser, this is not hyperbole.

This is not this is not exaggeration.

She probably has 30 tabs of different websites which are just running in the background.

When I look at it, it literally just makes me get anxious and just shut the screen.

Like, I can't, I'll do it on my computer.

I don't want to look at yours.

Like, I just want to go in and fix it.

Like, why do you have all these things running in the background?

It's draining your energy, it's actually pulling energy and resources from it.

And then you ever see that moment where sometimes it'll say, This web page is consuming a great deal of energy.

It's so clear, right?

What if we had that same radar inside of ourselves?

That we got so many tabs open, so many things that we still got running in the background, so many things that we're trying to maintain at the same time that we don't even realize that if you click on that tab, that was three years ago.

Why is that still up?

I don't even got to preach this.

Y'all are making it so easy for me.

But but but watch this.

What would happen if we began to prioritize what was important and then begin to evaluate where we're investing our time and energy?

See, the apostle Paul connects maturity with the ability to let go.

We know he says, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I behaved as a child, I acted as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

What Paul was saying is that there's a season where I have to prune some things out of my life if it's going to truly be a reflection of what God is bringing me to.

See, there was a season when it was appropriate for my precious baby boy here to walk around with his blue little blanket that he would have in his mouth and that you could not pry out of his hand if you had every ounce of strength in you.

There was a season when that was appropriate.

There was a season when he was six months old and that was cute.

There was a season when he was one, it was like, okay, like this is getting a little bit old.

And then Megan said, Okay, you're about to turn two.

We we gotta pull this thing away from you.

I'm like, man, like Megan, are you sure?

Like, he's growing up.

We gotta get this thing off of him because at some point, when he starts going to school, he can't carry this little blanket with him.

So we're gonna have to prune this out of his life.

If we didn't do that, imagine right now, Caleb Joshua Pittman is 18 years old, sitting front row at church, and he's sitting there with his little blanket still and still sucking, like it would look ridiculous.

But how many of us are doing that emotionally?

How many of us are still holding on to childlike relationships and behavior that we don't even recognize that you're an adult now?

It's time for you to prune that thing so you can grow into the maturity.

Maturity requires us to let go.

There are some things that we have to let go of, and unfortunately, many of us aren't maturing, we're just aging.

I'm trying to tell y'all, man, I'm coming.

I'm coming.

Time allows us to age, the seasons allow us to mature.

What God wants us to do is to recognize the season so we can truly mature into what God wants us to do, so we can truly thrive the way that God wants us to thrive, so we can truly cultivate.

Here's what we got to recognize.

I know that we love the message of Jesus, grace and truth, and all this hippie love, but let me help you to understand.

Jesus was surgical when it came to pruning.

He was masterful when it came to pruning.

Watch this.

They said he was full of grace and truth.

Grace was the invitation that I want you to be part of my family.

Truth was him pruning you so you can actually look like me.

You're all invited.

Grace says you're invited.

But let me hit you with this truth.

He's walking around and the Pharisee's like, Lord, what are you doing?

Hey man, you're invited.

But the truth is you're very legalistic.

We need to prune that out of your heart right now.

We need to deal with that.

Rich young ruler, Lord, I love people, I love God.

What's missing?

Yeah, you're invited because of grace, but the truth is greed's gonna really detour your life.

So I need you to actually surrender that so you can start to follow me.

Jesus was surgical that when people truly came to him and inviting him with grace, but understanding that the truth is you gotta make some adjustments.

Nicodemus came to him at night, like, Lord, listen.

You're seeing some good stuff, man, but I don't want the people to see me.

So what do I really need to do to be a secret disciple?

Well, Nicodemus, man, I I feel you, but the only way you can really be a follower of mine is that you gotta be born again of water and spirit.

Let me translate what he was saying.

You have to have a public declaration that you're following me.

You can't follow me at night and actually consider yourself a follower of me.

Truth.

Pruning.

Come on, we just getting started, y'all.

What about the convenient disciples, the ones that followed Jesus when he was doing the miracles, but then when he can switch around and said, like, hey, if unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you're not really a follower of mine.

And people backed away.

He didn't chase after them, he didn't alter his message.

He said, Let me tell you something, you're all invited.

But the truth is, if you're not ready to sacrifice, then you're not really a follower of me.

Jesus was surgical when making sure that we understand that pruning is an important process of actual growth and development.

The thing is, though, we're aware of that.

We understand that cognitively that we can't bring everything with us.

We understand that there are moments in our life that we have to make adjustments, so why don't we do it?

What's the struggle?

I believe that it all comes down to fear.

I think fear is the main thing that keeps us from truly pruning and removing things out of our lives that we know that should have been gone a long time ago.

We're afraid that what is it going to communicate?

What are people going to think about me?

We see this with with business owners and people that have invested a lot of money into different things.

You've invested a lot and it just continues to not produce any fruit, but you're afraid that if I what happens if I stop it and and I stop too soon, so fear keeps us from pruning.

I think a lot of times what also can keep us from pruning some things is that we're fair, we're fearful that we may need it.

I don't I don't want to get rid of it, but I actually end up needing it.

I don't want to cut that thing out, but then I actually end up needing it.

This is why half of our garages don't even have cars in them right now.

We just got so much stuff because we're afraid that we may end up needing it.

Or the ultimate one, like the I'm gonna get around to it, the procrastinators.

I'm gonna get to it.

We all have the I know people in our life, like, hey man, uh, you know you need to, I know, I know, I know.

Do you?

Because I don't see it.

Anyway, um the I know people, I'm gonna get around to it.

So we procrastinate, we we keep delaying it, we keep putting it off, and then ultimately we don't recognize that procrastination paralyzes progress.

Then we have the ones that's just just pain, it's gonna be uncomfortable because when you really begin to prune things, it's never comfortable.

When you begin to remove things out of your life, old habits, old environments, it's it's never comfortable.

So the pain and and and those things keep us from moving forward.

But I want you to understand the difference between short-term pain that's leading you somewhere and just suffering for no reason.

See, short-term pain means my tooth is hurting, I'm gonna go to the dentist and let them remove it.

That's short-term pain, but it ultimately is gonna lead to relief.

Suffering is staying in an environment that just doesn't get any better.

And sometimes we're afraid to prune things out of our lives because we don't want to deal with the short-term pain, but we end up suffering for the long term.

I'm trying to help y'all.

I promise you, I promise you I am.

I promise you I am.

We have to understand the difference.

The other one is often we just feel conflicted.

This is my favorite.

This is the one that I can wrestle with sometimes, is that we feel conflicted because we have misplaced loyalty.

We all love that phrase of loyal, ride or die, man.

I'm with you all the way to the end.

And I'm I'm all for I love being around loyal people.

I love being around people that are with you, people that you know that have your back.

That is so, so important.

But we also have to remember loyalty is a two-way street.

And if I am loyal to you and you're not loyal to me, we're actually not going anywhere.

Sometimes we're loyal to a season, we're loyal to historical references, but if we really were to take deep evaluation, this has not served me well, this has not moved my life forward, this has not helped me, but I'm loyal to what it used to be.

But I can't continue to romanticize the past and expect to have a faith-filled and flourishing future.

It is so difficult to flourish in the future when I'm rooted in the past.

But the reason why we don't want to prune is because we're idealizing something that God is clearly trying to move you on from.

I know that when we have these moments, we deal with that tension of what will people say?

I can't believe that you're doing this to me.

I want to equip you with the appropriate response to that.

I'm not doing this to you, I'm doing this for me.

I need to begin to make some decisions that's gonna help me to flourish and to thrive to the fullest of my God-given potential.

Because as long as I make you the center focus, I'm not gonna blossom the way that God wants me to.

Jesus speaks these words to us in the Gospel of John.

He says, That I am the true vine, that I am the source.

You've got to stay connected to me.

And if you stay connected to me, you will truly produce the fruit that I want you to produce.

But I want you to understand that just because you're connected to me, it will also require some things to get removed from your life.

If you really, really want to thrive.

He says in verse 2 that every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes it.

But he also says, But even the ones that do produce fruit, he prunes it so that it can produce more.

God is not content with where you are.

Why are you?

God wants more for you.

Why don't you?

I believe that there is moments where we get so comfortable, and so what I believe when we look at This text, there's a couple of things I want to extract that I think can help us.

Here's the first thing I want us to understand about pruning.

Pruning keeps us from settling.

It keeps us from settling.

What happens in the plant kingdom is that ultimately that trees, plants, bushes, rose bushes, whatever, they're going to produce more buds than the plant actually has the energy to sustain.

And while that's happening, the energy is being diverted to every bud that is still there.

So you may have this bush that's okay, but it's not great.

It's not maximizing its full potential.

You'll look at some buds that are on there and they're good, but they're not great.

Jim Collins says it this way that good is the enemy of great.

Because it's possible for us to be content with things that are good and not recognize that yeah, it can still be better.

So we end up diverting energy to a bunch of good things and we never actually develop the great things.

We end up spreading ourselves so thin with a bunch of good relationships instead of having fewer, but having great relationships.

We end up spreading ourselves so thin with doing so many different things that we don't become great at anything, we just become a jack of all trades.

We don't actually flourish and thrive the way that we're supposed to.

So what a gardener does is when he's looking at a tree, when he's looking at a plant, he's looking at the things that are good, but he's saying good isn't good enough, and he cuts it because I can use that energy for something that can go even greater.

What are the things that we've gotten so content with?

The things that we're like, I'm good with this, without recognizing that if I were to take that same energy and put it into something else, it could be great.

Sometimes we're spread a little too thin.

I I remember just a couple of years ago in the beginning of this whole pandemic thing, that that we also, because we came here from our DC location, we were in a season where our pastor in DC had transitioned off staff.

We knew we didn't want to install a new pastor in the middle of a pandemic with people who didn't know.

So Megan and I took the task of literally pastoring in two different locations.

And it was good.

We began to travel back and forth, and it was good.

We we tried to bring stability to church up there, and it was good.

We were bringing stability to our church here, it was good.

Things were things were good.

It was a nice delicate ecosystem, and it was good, but what I began to recognize is we're finite beings.

So we didn't have an endless reserve of energy.

So what I would have to do is I would have to budget my energy.

There were people in our community that I couldn't connect with because, hey, I'm traveling on Thursday.

There's people that we couldn't go and spend time with because we had to reserve that energy because we had output there, and what ends up happening is we had good environments in two locations, but nothing was great.

We didn't have great relationships.

Our family was good, but it wasn't great because we didn't have all the energy that we needed every time when we got home.

I recognize that our daily dinners as a family began to dwindle down.

Our family was good, but it wasn't great because I didn't have the energy to invest in my family because I had to reserve it for the areas that I was invested in.

What I can tell you is Orlando deserved great.

DC deserves great.

My family deserves great.

And I knew that we could never accomplish great as long as I was maintaining good.

So we had to cut some things out.

We had to release the DC church so that it had the space that it can become great, but also so that we can maintain and make sure that the things that's in front of us can become great as well.

What I'm saying to you is pruning doesn't always mean pruning things that are bad.

It can be good, but it just may not be great.

And what I believe God wants for us is not to settle with mediocrity, he wants us to thrive and thrive in greatness.

The first thing that I believe God wants us to understand is that pruning keeps us from settling.

Here's the second thing that I want us to walk away with.

Pruning helps us to face reality.

It helps us to face reality.

What a gardener does is that after I've pruned the ones that are good, but they're not great, so I have to sacrificially let it go because I could use that energy somewhere else.

The next thing that we have to then do is I now have to evaluate the things that are unhealthy.

With every tree, every branch, every rose bush, there's always the there's always the branches that have a lot of potential, but they're unhealthy.

So you know what a good gardener does?

They recognize it, they see it, and they begin to nurture it.

They put more fertilizer on it, they put more water on it, they position the plant differently, they try to give it all the resources that it needs in order for it to be successful.

But at some point, that gardener has to accept this reality that this is as good as it's ever going to get, and that's not good enough.

I believe that there are things in our life that we have invested energy into.

We've done everything we can to restore them, we've done everything we can to strengthen them, we've done everything we can to build it up, and guess what?

It's just not getting any better.

When we really live a life of understanding the big picture and the structure that God has for us, it forces us to accept the reality that it's not getting any better.

Many of us are connected to unhealthy environments and it's not getting any better.

Many of us are doing our best and hoping and praying that these relationships are going to get better and it's just not getting any better.

We're connected to people and we're hoping and praying that somehow that with enough prayer and fasting that this is gonna override someone's free will and it's just not getting better.

But when I begin to live a life of pruning, I understand that I have to accept reality that it's just not getting better.

Now, I'm not talking about discarding people.

I'm not talking about getting rid of people, but what I am talking about is that hope is not a strategy.

With that, if you don't have a vision, if you don't actually begin to see progress, that's not hoping, that's just wishing.

I might as well just throw a penny in a in a pond of water.

What hope is, hope has substance.

That means that my hope is built on the progress that I am seeing.

And because I'm seeing progress, I have hope that I will continue to see progress.

When I'm talking about pruning things and accepting reality, that means that there's no progress.

We've done everything we've can and there's just no progress.

We've invested every ounce of energy we have and there's just no progress.

I believe what God is challenging us to do is to accept the reality that we're spending so much energy chasing down relationships and people that aren't even extending it back to us.

And what God is saying that that is not the calling that I have on your life.

I made up a decision a long time ago.

I don't have the stamina to chase after people.

If you don't want to be in relationship with me, I'm not gonna chase you down.

If you're not gonna reply to my text messages, I'm not gonna text you.

If you're not gonna reply to my calls, then I'm not gonna call you.

Why are we extending so much energy trying to chase down people who don't want to be in our lives?

Sometimes you just have to accept the reality that I'm not gonna put my energy into that anymore, and I'm gonna invest in people that wanna be in my life.

I'm gonna invest in people that do reply by calls, I'm gonna invest in people that are connected with me.

It's coming to the reality that everybody that's in your life isn't actually for you.

Everyone that's in your life doesn't better for your life.

And sometimes we have to accept the reality that this is as good as it's ever going to get, and I have to divert this energy into something that's gonna become greater.

That's what God wants for us.

Here's the third and final thing.

Pruning makes room for what's next.

It makes room for what's next.

See, when we look at a when we look at a tree, we look at a plant, you have those things that are good but not great, so we gotta prune it to reserve that energy.

When we look at a plant, we're we're looking at the things that are just not getting better, they're unhealthy, and we gotta remove it so we can divert that energy to make it better.

But there's also those things in our lives that are just dead and taking up space.

You ever seen like those trees where it's just like the branches are just dead and it's just taking up space?

And here's what we know about the plant kingdom that in order for a bush to really, really flourish, it needs the space to grow.

And when you have things that are dead and taking up space, the plant is forced to adjust around the dead things, and it can never flourish and thrive the way it's supposed to because you have dead things that are taking up space.

What are the things that we're holding on to that are just dead and gone?

It's just taking up space.

We're just we're just holding on to it, and it's not allowing us to have the room and the capacity to thrive and flourish the way that we're supposed to.

See, for me, man, I know you guys may have heard, but man, like I was too small to play football.

So the way that I play football now is on my game console.

Yep, I'm a gamer and proud of it.

Um the way that I'm able to, the way that I'm able to ensure that the Orlando Magic actually win a championship is if I play it on 2K, because it's not gonna happen in reality.

Um it will, it will, in Jesus' name, by faith.

But didn't I talk to y'all about hope has substance, otherwise it's just a wish.

Anyway, moving on.

Here, watch this, watch this.

So I that's what I do.

I'll I'll occasionally hop on a game, and and that's how I'm able to download, that's how I'm able to have fun.

But watch this.

And an update came to one of my games, and as I was about to play it, I needed to download it, but I didn't have any more room on my hard drive.

So as I'm standing there looking at all these old games that are sitting on my hard drive, trying to literally figure out well, what am I going to delete?

I was standing at my screen for no less than 10 minutes.

Comatose like, well, I don't want to delete that, man.

I might want to play that.

Like, well, uh what if I need that?

I don't want to get rid of that, man.

Like, and so my son just casually walks downstairs.

He looks at the screen, he's like, just delete that one.

You haven't played it in three years.

Shut upstairs.

Watch this.

It required an outside perspective to come in and say, Why are you keeping space for something that you're not even engaged in anymore?

That's keeping you from getting a fresh download and to act and to actually help you to move forward.

You're holding on to something that is actually taking up space for the thing that you want to do.

I believe if you could only recognize there are so many things that we're holding on to, that's preventing us from having the space and capacity to do the thing that we're called to do.

We're holding on to old relationships, we're holding on to old habits, we're holding on to old behaviors, not recognizing that this is taking up space, and I don't have the room and the margin to thrive the way that God wants me to because I'm holding on to something in the past.

But if we can only allow Jesus truth to do the surgical work and begin to move those dead things out of our lives so that way we can begin to rise up and thrive the way that God is supposed to have us thrive.

I want somebody to understand this right now.

God doesn't want you holding on to dead things.

You need to make room for what he wants to do next in your life.

God doesn't want you holding on to old behaviors because it's keeping you from moving into what God has next in your life.

He doesn't want you holding on to old relationships that are toxic, that are dragging you down, that are not allowing you to thrive.

It's time for you to cut it out so that way you can begin to thrive and come to the fullness of what God has for you.

There's a vision, there's a structure, there's a blueprint.

And as long as I'm connected to these old things, it's taking up space and not allowing me to thrive the way that God has want me to.

But I prophesy over this church right now that we will not be those people, we will not live lives that we're just content with mediocrity, but we're gonna be the people of God that are thriving because we're willing to do the difficult task of removing the things that are not allowing us to thrive the way that God wants us to.

We have to remove those dead things.

But I also realize that there's another side of this coin.

Because as we are pruning the things on the outside of us, what do you do when you're the one that's been pruned?

What do we do when we are the one that's not best for someone else?

What do we do when we're the ones who've been let go?

I want you to hear me.

That's not your identity.

What you don't recognize is that it frees you up for the future.

Sometimes we can be so connected to the past, and we're trying to hold on that when somebody removes us, it gets uncomfortable, but we don't realize that that actually helps us to thrive where God is calling us to thrive.

One of the things that I've learned over the past couple of years has been that, man, life is tough.

We're filled with challenges, and certainly this pandemic didn't help.

The proximity and convenience of relationships was thrown out the window.

And so there are moments when the vision, the idea, what you thought life was going to look like, it begins to radically shift.

I know for every organization, churches included, I've talked with so many pastors, and they've talked to me about just the lonely and difficult road that it has been to serve a people that you don't know where they are.

You look up and people are gone and you don't understand why.

And the most responded thing that pastors would say is like, this is just the nature of it, and people are gone and people leave, and you just can't take it personal.

And it's really hard to not take it personal because ministry is not it's not like anything else.

Because I personally prayed for you, I personally pastored you, I personally walked with you when you lost your family member.

So when people just leave, you feel like you're being pruned and you don't understand why, and you're trying your best to wrap your mind around it.

But in that season, God took me to Judges chapter six.

It's the story of Gideon.

And Gideon had such a profound assignment.

His assignment was ultimately to stop the oppression that was happening to the people of God.

He was already the smallest of his tribe, he already didn't have a lot of people around him.

But but when God called him and said, I'm going to use you to bring freedom to my people, Gideon got away with God.

He confirmed that God was speaking to him and then he got to work.

I need you to get this.

When God was speaking to him, he got alone with God, he confirmed the calling, and then he got to work.

Bookmark that.

So when he was like, Okay, let's go, God's like, hey, hey, man, um, I know you're about to go out to battle.

I'm glad that you're about to do it, but man, you you got too many people with you.

What are you talking about, God?

Like, I I only have 32,000 troops and we're going against so many more.

I know, I know, but I need to prune some of that out of your life.

You may not understand it now.

And you know what I love is that Gideon didn't have an existential crisis because he'd already confirmed that he had heard from God.

So even when God was telling him that he needed to remove some things out of his life, he'd already had confirmed, I've heard from God, so I trust him.

So God said, I need you to remove every single person that is afraid.

So Gideon puts out a speech like, hey man, if you guys are afraid to go into this battle, um, y'all can leave.

22,000 said Deuces.

I was waiting for that opportunity.

Imagine that.

32,000 soldiers ready to go to war.

Who's afraid?

22,000 of them dip.

He's left with 10,000 people.

That you could feel that.

But watch this.

God was communicating to Gideon where you're called to go.

You can't be trying to win a battle when you're diverting your energy trying to deal with people's fears.

So I have to prune that out of your life so that you can have the energy to fight what's most important.

Man, all right, man, let's go.

We got 10,000.

Let's read your rock.

God's like, hey man, that's so quick.

Um, see, see, you got 10,000 left, but if it's a couple of these dudes that's here, man, they're not really about that life.

They're not real soldiers.

So God said, I want you to watch them.

You're gonna see some characteristics in them that let you see that they're not really, really ready for war.

As Gideon looked at them, God said, Remove all the ones who are not being alert.

That was 9,700 of them gone.

At the end of the day, Gideon was left with only 300 people left.

He went from 32,000 to 300.

But watch this.

God was communicating to Gideon, you can't be successful as long as you're still sending energy to fear, and you certainly can't be successful as long as you're still trying to send energy to people that aren't really ready to fight.

Because you'll be so focused on trying to help people get up and trying to help people get themselves together that you won't have the energy that you need to actually fight the real enemy.

The biggest lie that I believe we believe is this: there is strength in numbers.

There's strength in God.

And if God be for you, who or what can be against you?

The lesson that Gideon had to learn, the lesson that I have had to learn.

You can do more with less when you got God than you can when you have an abundance, but you got a steward and serve everyone's feelings and everything else that's going on.

I've seen this in my own life.

I believe it for your own.

That some of us are wishing that we had 30 best friends.

You don't need 30 good friends when you got three great ones.

You don't need to have an abundance of people around you when you got the right people around you.

What I believe God is speaking to some of us right now is we're spending energy on trying to sustain so many different things, and we don't have what we need when we really need it.

God wants to prune those things out of our lives so that we can thrive the way that He wants us to.

Let Him do the work.

With every head bowed and every eye closed, I want to ask you this question.

I want to go into a moment where we take about just 10 seconds because I realize with messages like this, God begins to kind of stir some things up.

And I'm gonna ask the worship team just for the next 10 seconds, we're gonna get out of here.

Is I want them to lead us.

And I want us just to have a moment we just ask God this Lord, what are the things that I need to prune?

What are the things I need to prune?

Let's take the next 10 seconds and ask that question with a heart of sincerity and let's see what he begins to bring to the surface.

And I want you to do that when you get home.

But what I want to do is I want to pray that as God reveals, as He's been revealing, the things in your life that are unhealthy, as He's revealing the things in your life that are good, but they're not great, the things in your life that are just taking up space, that you have the strength and capacity to begin the process of pruning them so you have the energy for the right things instead of just being content with good.

Lord, I thank you.

I thank you for your presence.

I thank you for your grace, and I thank you for these moments where we're invited by your grace, but we're challenged by your truth, where you can surgically come in and begin to prune the things in our lives that are not allowing us to thrive the way that you intended us to.

Lord, I pray that we get a vision, a blueprint, the structure of our lives that you want us to have, that we water it, that we cultivate it so that we can thrive the way that you want us to, and we can recognize the things that are not allowing us to thrive the way that you want us to.

Lord, we ask you to give us the grace and capacity to begin to prune and remove the things, the behaviors, the environments, the people leaving God, that are not allowing us to flourish and to be our best God.

Father, I pray for displaced loyalty, God.

Father, I pray for those areas that are a distraction to us that if we only could recognize if we can invest our energy into the things that are actually going to help us to thrive, that we can actually have a better environment and culture for our lives overall.

So, Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that you give us the strength, the grace, the peace, and capacity to prune the things that are not like you.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

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