Mother's Day! Sister Laurisa Dunn "Mountains Move: Even the Ones You Don't See" (Sunday 5-14-23)

Welcome to Life City. This podcast was created to celebrate what God is doing

and what protects us. Our vision is to reach the hungry, the hurting,

and the hopeless. God has given us our heading. Join us today

as we listen to the Word and we pray that God speaks to you in

this message today. I also text my crew and said, I am extremely

nervous. I'm today is going to be a little bit different. I had

my husband kind of looked at this and he was like, this is different.

So I started panicking. I'm like, oh my gosh, never mind,

you do it? So um, if you do, guys, don't

mind. I'm gonna go ahead and dive into what God placed in my spirit

today, something that is raw, something I fought him about and quickly realize

that he had already won that argument. I am so glad that it's a

day to celebrate all the wonderful women in here. I truly am the women

represented in this building since this ay. This day is to celebrate my friends.

They represent bold women where it's all my bold women at But what God

has placed in my spirit is not for just the women in this place.

Today. I look around and see the incredible faces, the beautiful stories.

Obviously his whole thing from me. He's like, look around and see all

the you know, the whole pastor thing. And I'm like, be quiet

about to give everything away? No, but I do. I want you

to do it again, because honestly, he saw this first, so he

got it from me. I want you to look around and see these incredible

faces. I want you to see the beautiful stories in this place and unmatched

strength. But I've also been privileged and honored to sit on the other side

of the table, and I got to hear stories of fear and doubt and

unworthiness. There's pain and shame, some brokenness and unforgiveness. So this brings

me to the title of today. Yes, Pastor has been preaching mountains move,

but what about a mountain? You cannot see all those things that I

listed out, the doubt, the fear of the unworthiness, the pain,

the shame, the brokenness, unforgiveness. It can go on and on and

on. Right, All those things I listed out are things that you necessarily

can't see. It's not something you hold in your hand and able to toss

out the window. It's not anything that is tangible that you can put in

a pretty place, set at the altar, and see that thing that keeps

beating you to the ground. Now, people could have caused here's the tangible

part. People could have caused those pains and certain situations, addictions could have

brought you to those things. But I'm talking about today, the stuff that

takes root deep down in your soul that you necessarily can't hold those mountains that

we are supposed to move, but I don't even know that they're there.

So I sat down on the couch last year and said, God, you

have picked the wrong girl for a story like this. I can't do this.

This is too hard. I was at a point where I struggled on

the daily with fear, and I mean the fear that cripples you. Things

I thought I was actually good at were brought before judgment and said, Nope,

you're not good enough. My health and battles in my mind were exaggerated.

The enemy tried to come after my kids. I even came to the

point of questioning if God loved me or loved what I did for the church.

I told you today is going to be raw. I'm going to take

you to a story in the Bible of a great female leader. Her name

is Anna. She only gets three verses in the Bible, but pretty powerful.

There was I'm reading from the New Living Translation, but I can follow

along. There was also a prophet Anna, the daughter of Phenal I don't

know, daughter of somebody, and the tribe of Asher. We'll just stick

with that. She was very old. She had lived with her husband seven

years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty four.

She never left the temple, but worshiped nine and day, fasting and

praying, coming up to them at that very moment, and I'll give you

the backstory of this. She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child

to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. So she was

married, and I'll give you the backstory here in a minute. If she

was married around fourteen, that's usually that was common back then, and was

married for seven years. Anna would have been twenty one years old when she

was a widow. The text reads that she was a widow until she was

eighty four years old, but commentary and different people interpret the text to say

that she was a widow four eighty four years, which would make her around

one hundred and five years old when she met the family of Jesus that day

in the temple. Just three verses making such a huge impact, and I'm

going to cover some of them. So for one for eighty plus years,

she could have taken a different posture. Because she was widowed at such a

young age. Something happened to her life was not fair to her. I

can almost guarantee she had fear of the future, she was broken from loss,

and she had a pain down deep. But she also came to the

temple and worshiped. In that text, worship means to serve, So she

poured herself into people and hung out in the presence of God. See her

dream was, I'll see the salvation of Jesus. She wanted to see Jesus,

so she went. Every day she served, She worshiped, she prayed,

she fasted eighty years, she persisted, and she waited daily. She

entered into that temple daily she was in his presence. See waiting and persevering

are not popular words by any means, hate them. Nobody is really excited

about those moments either. But Anna was a woman full of hope and purpose

because when she comes into the temple, on the day Jesus is there,

she saw what others could not. The moment she arrives, she begins praising

God in telling about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of

Jerusalem. She started speaking and preaching on the redemption of Jesus. She shows

us what it could look like for us to rely solely on our maker.

She modeled her life with discipline and prayer and fasting and serving and telling the

goodness of God to others. She persevered in the waiting and in a place

she could not see her mountain. She stayed in the waiting and in his

presence, where finally redemption came and that dream that want came to life.

See there's multiple times in scripture that shows a strength in the waiting. One

of those is Isaiah thirty and eighteen says, and therefore will the Lord wait

that he may be gracious unto you, And therefore will he be exalted,

that he may have mercy upon you. For the Lord is a god of

judgment. Blessed are all they that wait for him. Another scripture that we

all know Isaiah forty and thirty one. This is a popular scripture, But

they that weighed upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up

with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they

shall walk and not faint. So in that waiting in those mountains we can't

see, he will not let us become weary. We shall walk and not

faint. So he's telling you, I need you to stand and wait.

Hey, I'll do the work for you. But when you see the red

sea part, go on and do your thing. Right after that, he

tells his people, I want you to be trained in war. You have

seen my providence. You have experienced my presence. I hovered over you like

a cloud of day and a pillar by night. I have provided everything you

need and ever wanted. And so now I want you to raise up those

shields and swords to speak the word of God. Let me tell you you

hold God's promises. Wonder how you can fight with everything that is going on

around us. It's right here. You hold it against the lies of the

enemy and against things you have been holding onto those unseen mountains, those lies

of not being worthy or good enough. You don't have the right words.

Oh, you can't be a leader. When the enemy lies to us.

He doesn't do it in a way that we can see it coming. You

know, He's like, Hay, Larissa, you are such an extrovert with

very high metabolism. Y'all. We saw that one coming because we know that

ain't true. But that's how the enemy operates. He takes a grain of

truth and weaves it into this toxic poison, and it sounds reasonable to us

because there's just enough truth in it. And it usually and it's usually big

jerk from a really painful chapter in our lives where we may not have applied

God's promises. So we go, oh, yeah, yeah, you're right,

that's about right. So sitting on that couch that day, after I

said I don't want to do this, I can't do this, I said,

oh yeah, okay, I can rely on my husband to carry this

because I can't. So I unfairly put something on someone else that was my

unseen mountain. So that's what I did because I did not believe the promises

that God had for me that day. But let me tell you, this

book says didn't Posture of perseverance is not a passive thing at all. But

adore to your miracle. God is telling you if you will stand and go

no matter what is going on in your life. I am still good.

He is still faithful and sovereign and merciful, and no good thing will he

withhold from those who walk in righteousness, or who often stumble sometimes but still

pursuing him. God, you are still good, and I believe you are

going to do whatever I need at that moment. So what are you standing

for? What are you waiting for? What miracle is on the other side

of your perseverance? So what does that look like? How do you do

that? How do you fight that unseen mountain? Be like Anna. You

go and do, and you serve, and you be faithful, and you

pour into people because guess what, we need you. There's somebody in this

place that needs you. We cannot reach everybody, We cannot be everything you

need us to be or be that. But there are a ton of people

in here. That is your Anna, that will help you with your unseen

mountain. So you must start removing those things that have taken root. You

must make them tangible and know that God is in control. That mountain you

cannot see becomes a mountain that is visible and movable. Move it from your

life and remove that thing from your mind. Let me tell you something else.

Did you know Anna not only means grace, but it means favor.

When you remove those unseen things out of your life, you have room for

God to replace them with something way more, something unimaginable. So I started

saying, okay, hello to peace and joy and love, to strength and

hope. And I said goodbye to fear and doubt. I rebuked those things

that I had taken root in my life. And when I did that,

God started placing me. He started placing me in situations and in jobs and

in places and in front of people that overflowed my cup. It was placing

me in things that I cannot explain on my own. It was only a

God thing. And if I told you some of those things that I finally

said, Okay, God, I want to be that girl. Give it

to me. I'll take it. When I started doing that and started removing

those unseen mountains, and even in my waiting and even in those times that

the enemy was after my children and after things that just a rough year,

I started making those unseen mountains tangible because I wanted to place them right at

the altar and said you can have them, because let me tell you that

Favor is what opens up doors no man can shut. Favor is what puts

you in places you know that you have no business being there. Favors what

sets you in positions that you know you may not be qualified for. Favor

is what makes it so that you are exactly where you are supposed to be

to accomplish exactly what it is God has set for you. So Anna spent

time in prayer and in fasting. It's no coincidence that she walked into the

temple at just the right time. The more time you spend in his presence,

the more you will walk in his perfect timing and his favor. She

was where she needed to be to preach redemption to those looking for it.

When you don't even have the connections, you are just where God has opened

the door for you to be in. Even when people are trying to push

you out of the way. You cannot be moved, not because you manufactured

your way there, but God's spirit placed you there. The Holy Ghost in

your life is what makes it so that you do not have to market yourself

because you have already been marked by the presence of the Almighty God. So

there's more to your story because it becomes history in your life. Here is

that this life is all that there is. So we live in fear that

God's work is not complete in us. But I want you to know that

the pain that you face, the worry you live with, the doubt that

hangs over your mind is all temporary, because every believer that is washed in

the blood of the Lamb will get to live again. How many of you

know this is not the end because you are a child of God. I'm

not going to be long today. In fact, I'm ending y'all can go

hand, come up. My brain can't comprehend his waist. Someone told me

not long ago, in this very church, they had no clue what I

had dealt with last year. And if I told you some of the things

that we dealt with, some of you been there, done that, bought

the T shirt, bag of chips, whatever you want to say. It

was rough. They had no clue. Someone came to be my anna.

Someone came to show me about redemption. They said they woke up in the

middle of the night towards the morning, they went outside and they saw my

face. So they started interceding for me that morning, and of course it

was on a Sunday morning. After church. They waited for everyone to leave.

They put their arm around me, and with tears streaming down their face,

they said, God told me to tell you he loved you and to

testify. So today I testify. I testify of my healing. I've actually

never said those words. These are my unseen mountains, and if you have

some of these unseen mountains, I want you stand with me because I want

you to testify. So when I touch on something maybe you're dealing with and

want you stand with me. I testify of my healing. I testify that

the fear inside left and is never to touch me again. I testified that

I'm going to persevere during my waiting. I'm here to testify that the enemy

can try his best, but my faith will never waver. I testified that

I will be a light in a very dark world, that when I enter,

and when I walk the streets of DC and into the corporate world and

down the streets of Weatherford and Parker County, that we will become lights.

I testified that this church is in revival and that will shake this city and

this world. I testified that the mountain that us called deep roots inside my

soul are moved and will never return. But then again, I speak joy,

I speak peace, and I speak love. I speak compassion and passion,

not only to the souls of this church, but in my marriage and

in my children. I speak a hunger for the people of Life City,

that they will go into the highways and the byways. I speak life into

the dead things, because fear is not my future. God, you are.

Sickness is not my story, he is. Heartbreak is not my home,

but you are. And death is not the end, but you are.

Thank you so much for being with us today. We hope you were

blessed in some way by the message. To learn more about us, check

out www dot my Life City Church dot org, or you can contact us

at infoet my Life City Church dot org. Thank you once again for joining

us, and we hope you have a great week.