Pastor Tim Dunn "Mountains Move" Part 2 (Sunday 5-7-23)

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 hurding,

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 as we continue in our Mountains move series. As you're standing,

if you have your BIBLESZT invite you to turn to the Book of Jeremiah,

chapter fifty one, and we're gonna read verse twenty five and twenty six

of these of this chapter I'm reading from and what you're going to see as

the new American Standard Bible version. And it says in verse I am against

you, oh destroying mountain. Okay, this is God talking. This is

God talking to Babel. Okay. He said, behold, I am against

you, oh destroying mountain, who destroys the whole earth, declares the Lord.

And I will stretch out my hand against you and roll you down from

the crags. That's the sharp edges of the mountain, that's the sharp peaks.

And he says, and I will make you a burnt out mountain verse

twenty six. They will not take from you, even a stone for a

corner, nor a stone for foundations, but you will be desolate forever,

declares the Lord. Would you bow your heads and let's pray. Lord,

We love you, We thank you for what we feel in this place today.

Thank you for your word. I ask that every one of our hearts

be open to what you want to say to us today. We love you

and we give you honor today. Thank you for allowing us to be here,

giving us the strength to be in your presence, one with another,

in Jesus name and everyone cit amen. Hey man, you can be seated

this morning. Thank you for standing again. How many of you like mountains?

Goat like going to the mountains. I like going to the mountains.

I like going to the Rockies. They're beautiful. The Rockies are a mountain

range trout that spans thousands of miles. The northern point of the Rockies is

up in Northern Alberta, Canada, and the southern tip of the Rockies is

down in New Mexico. So that's quite a long stretch from New Mexico up

to Northern Alberta, Canada and the highest peak of Rockies. The highest peak

of the Rockies is fourteen thousand and four hundred feet, so they stretched white.

Northern Colorado made a statement about living in the Rockies. They said,

you know, when the morning light hit it just right, it looks like

one massive mountain, just one huge mountain. And they said, but in

the evening time, as the sun is you know, shifted across the sky

and light hits the mountains a little different way, from a different direction.

It says, you realize that what looked like just one mountain now is several

mountain ranges with valleys in between. And that was an interesting deal because that's

how sometimes our life feels. We wake up some mornings and it feels like

just one gigantic mountain, and then another times from different directions, different seasons

in our life, it feels like one mountain after another. A man,

an want to say, A man, all right, I was hoping it

wasn't just me. Sometimes when we've been and I do this quite often,

me and my family travel. We don't take a lot of road trips.

We're not those road trip type get in the car and drive for umpteen hours

across the country. Um, that's not how we enjoy it. Some of

you love that stuff, and more power to you. UM, I don't.

UM. I drive to Dallas and I'm done. Um. Probably more

like because it's Dallas, you know now I can drive out west. If

I go toward Abilene, I'm good, you know, because there's nothing but

grass and and no people. That sounded bad probably for a pastor talking to

a bunch of people, didn't it. I apologize about that, nor do

I like, as many of you may have seen, getting into a ten

can called an airplane with two three hundred other folks crammed in right beside you.

I'm like, that's the dumbest invention ever. It's like, then,

my wife, we're sitting there. We get on this plane. You know,

when you're when you're flying as a couple, you put that middle seat

empty and you cram all the stuff on top of it. So hopefully nobody

sits right there right Well, the guy irritating guy that's got the microphone,

he's I'm probably that guy sometimes. Um. But the irritating guy that's got

the microphone, he's he's back there going it's a full flight, folks.

That middle seat's gonna get taken. I'm like, I didn't watch bubba um,

but Anyways, so my wife makes this wonderful to get suggestion as she's

sitting against the window and I'm out in the aisle so I can stretch my

legs. She goes, hey, won't you move into the middle seat?

What like we've been married night is it nineteen eighteen nineteen years and you're wanting

me to move in the middle have some random stranger sit where I can't move

my legs, somebody that's claustrophobic. Do you not know me at all?

And I'm like, that's not a good plan. And so I convinced her

to move in the middle. Um, she was real happy with me when

we got off that plane. Um, but at least I had leg room.

So anyways, great, great trip, wonderful trip. No it was,

it really was. That was the worst part of it. Um,

going there and coming back. But uh no, we we had a wonderful

time. But no, anytime we got I I got all messed up.

So yeah, she's already told me, you know, I'm not going with

her again. Um, so anytime we drive up into the mountains, I

always it's always this thing. And I grew up with my dad reading Louis

Lamore books. So the wild West and exploration and all of that was just

always intriguing to me. I loved it. Um. I loved our time

in DC. You know, the history and people doing new things. That's

that's excites me. I love that stuff. And so we're driving up anytime

we're in the mountains, I always wonder the same things. What was this

like the first eyes that ever set foot, or the people that saw it

first? What did they see? What was it like before roads and all

the pathways and all this stuff was created. I wonder what they thought.

Well, there was a writer, his name is Irving Stone, and he

wrote a book titled Men to Match My Mountain. And in this book he

wrote about a man named John C. Fremont and John C. Fremont,

in the year of eighteen forty four January nineteenth attempted something that had never been

done before. Him and two other men were gonna cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains

in the winter. Now eighteen forty four. They didn't have planes, lucky

for those guys. You know it it was on horseback, it was on

foot, whatever the case was. So in the dead of winter, these

three men set out to cross the Sierra Invada mountains and I'm seventy miles.

In the History of Exploration, it says John Fremont suffered from snow blindness,

he suffered from hypothermia and starvation, near starvation, even to the point where

they ate their dog. That's a bad day when you have to eat your

dog. I've got three of them, and I barely like them, much

less to eat them. But I mean, that's that's a whole new level

of desperation in it to eat Fido. But in the end, in the

end, after this journey, three men, Kit Carson, broken Hand Fitzpatrick,

and John C. Fremont made it over the mountains. And when they

did, the last barrier to westward expansion had been breached. So this was

the deal. Those mountains were no longer impassable or impossible because somebody had done

it. And I love the phrase that Irving Stone used when he described the

moment that these men had experienced enabled his book The Men matched the Mountain.

The Men matched the mountain. There are a lot of mountains here this morning.

There. What am I talking about? It's those large obstacles of life

that loom over you, seeming impassable or impossible. Whatever it may be.

It may be addiction, It may be fear, anxiety, guilt, shame,

It may be a number of things. It may be relational and may

be emotional, maybe physical. A mountain can be anything. The truth is,

though, that your mountain, whatever it is, has already been passed

over. Do you know that your mountain has already been moved by someone before

you? Somebody has faced the same mountain you're facing today, and you know

what they live to tell about it. Somebody has faced that large obstacle that

you faced today, and you know what they conquered it. Amen. So

why am I telling you that there's hope? It's not impassable, it's not

impossible, because we understand with God, all things are possible, right Amen.

But it's not just a God thing. God's already done it for somebody

else. Whatever your problem is, whatever you're facing today, it's very likely

in this build sitting in a seat near you or around you, that's already

walked through that mountain, already seen that mountain broke up, already seen that

obstacle brought down flat as a plane. As it says in Zachariah, somebody

here has already done that They've already walked that road. And so this is

my message to you, you can too. It's not impossible. What you

face is not going to destroy you. Like God spoke to what we read

in Jeremiah, he spoke, Oh, destroying mountain, that destroying mountain that

you think this is the deal that you think. Even the mountain knows it

can't destroy you. So what it does is it tries to fool you into

thinking it'll destroy you. And that's half the battle. And because you believe

it destroy you, it's already won. But when you understand that somebody,

with the power and the help of God has already defeated the same mountain that

you face, it helps you understand that if they can do it, i

can too. Why Because it's not about me. It's the God that is

the same, yesterday, today and forever. And if he did it for

them, he can do it for me. Amen. If he can break

their chains, he can break my chains. If he can flatten that mountain,

he can flatten your mountain. Amen. And so the question that we

all have to answer is can you match your mountain? Can you let me

ask you a different way, Can your faith match your mountain? Can your

faith because we know that it doesn't take great faith to move a great mountain.

Right. We understand that we know what the scripture says, the size

of a what mustard seed. We all know that we've heard that preached up

down, sideways, left, right, you know every which way, and

it's good. Little faith can do great things. We know that, we

understand that it's fickle. Unfortunately, because what I've seen and I've lived it,

I've experienced this in my own life. What I see is how easy

it is for faith to get shifted from what we know to what we see.

Because this, I know that God is faithful. I know these things

I find in the word. But you know what, I'm living with this

mountain every single day. I see it in my life. I feel it

in my life. It's real, it's tangible. I can touch it,

I can taste it, I can I can see it. I feel the

effects of it. I feel the fear, I feel the anxiety, the

shame, the guilt, the addiction, whatever it may be. It's very

real. It's something that's real and active in my life. And so it's

very easy for our faith to shift from a God that we may not always

see or feel to something that we do see and feel on a regular basis,

and we wonder why why won't my mountain move? Is because our faith

has shifted from what we know about God to what we see of our mountain.

And now our faith is in the presence of the mountain instead of the

power of God, and we start living in the shadow of this thing that

we now believe will always be there. I'll always deal with this, this

is just a part of my life, instead of understanding that the power of

God, no matter what I feel or what I see, the power of

God is able to deliver me and to bring down that mountain flat in your

life. Amen. And so that's the reason we can't move mountains, because

we simply believe that it's always going to be there. And when we picture

our future, we see it with the mountains still there. We read in

scripture in Jeremiah fifty one, how God is speaking about Babylon and he's speaking

about his revenge that he's going to take upon her. Last week we read

from Zachariah, a man that was born in Babylon. He was sown in

Babylon. Okay, it was the meaning of his name and so God calls

out and is speaking to Babylon, Oh, destroying mountain. And let me

say this, the longer you allow that mountain to stay in your life,

the more it destroys. Amen. And so the number one thing it wants

to destroys your faith in God. That's what it's after because if it can

destroy your faith in God, it's got access to everything else. Amen.

And so the longer it stays there, the more destructive it gets. That's

why God speaks to Oo, destroying mountain. But it's time to match the

mountain. It's time to turn the impossible into possible. It's time to understand

that what I thought was impassable has already been breached. I can pass through

it, I can conquer it. Ronnie said it read the scripture this morning,

that we are more than conquerors. We are able to overcome. That's

what you have to believe, not necessarily about yourself, but about your God.

It's not what I can do, but what God can do through you,

And what God can do through you is infinitely larger than what you can

accomplish on your own. And so that's why it's we have to understand that

my faith has got to be tethered to the power of God and not the

presence of an addiction, not the presence of an anxiety and fear, guilt

and shame, emotional hurt, wounds, spiritual things. It doesn't matter what

the mountain is. My faith has got to be constantly tethered to the power

of God in my life. And that's where the Word of God comes in.

If you ever put this down, it disconnects the tether from the power

of God and it moves it to the mountain. That's why. That's why

Jesus said, I am your daily bread. Amen. The Word became flesh

and dwelt among us. He said, I am your daily bread. Amen.

I cannot be spiritually nourished if I'm not specially in the Word of God

on a constant basis. If I ever disconnect from this, my faith is

the first thing that gets hindered. Amen. Anybody testify to that email.

Well, that's true. Ami, I love what God declares in Jeremiah.

Check this out and this is this is the thing. This is what struck

me about this scripture. He says, they will not God speaking, they

will not even take from you. I'm sorry, they will not take from

you, even I put even in the wrong place, messages. Whole thing

be Take even a stone for a corner. Did you catch that the cornerstone

was the most important piece of the foundation. Everything started from the cornerstone.

Oh my God, I hold somebody catch this. Everything started from the cornerstone.

And so God was setting the record straight, and God said, God

said, your bondage may have been long, but it is not lasting.

Your bondage may have been long, but it is not your future. And

so when God began to speak to the mountain, he began to speak to

Babylon, which was a mountain of bondage for the children of Israel. He

said, their future will not be founded upon a stone from the mountain of

bondage. What I have for them is not built upon something that is destructive.

He says, I am going to be Jesus Christ is going to corner

stone. And so this is what I want to tell you. When God

sees your future, your mountain is nowhere to be found. Your future is

not built upon one single stone from your mountain that you face. Amen,

it's not Amen. There's not a single stone from your addiction that God will

use in your future. Amen. Can somebody testify about that? Amen?

What God has for you the anxiety, the fear, the guilt and the

shame, the relational damage. That is the mountain in your former life,

Not even a stone is going to be used to build your new life in

him. Amen, Not even a stone, he says, You're there's not

easy, says. They will not take from you even a stone for a

corner nor a stone for foundation. They're not going to use a single thing

from this. I am going to deliver them. I am going to overcome

this. They will not use a thing from this for what I have for

them in the future. Amen. Your future is so much brighter than the

darkness of your past. Amen. Whatever that addiction is, whatever that pain

is, whatever that hurt is, whatever that relational issue is. God has

the ability if you will just allow him to bui with Jesus Christ as a

chief corner stone. Amen. That's where it starts. God wants some of

you in here, is why I wrote down. God wants some of you

in here this morning to understand that your mountain may have been there a long

time, but the stones of that mountain are not what your future is built

upon. And I know right now you may be looking at this as thinking

this will always be with me, and that's alive from the pit of hell.

Amen. That's a lie what you're facing now. If you'll let God

do it, it will not follow you into what God has for you,

Amen, his future, his promise. Amen. You know why. I

know that I've lived it. But you know why. I also know that

because I see it all over this building right here, from life to life

to life. I see it. I see where addictions have been broken.

Amen. If God has delivered you from an addiction, I want you to

stand and lift your hands and give God honor right now, hallelujah. Amen.

Look look around you, Come on, Hallelujah. That mountain has been

crossed. Hallelujah, that mountain has been passed. Amen. What you thought

was impossible is possible. Why because God's already done it before you. Amen.

If you've overcome fear and anxiety, I want to stand and lift your

hands and give God honor and praise right now, hallelujah. Fear is not

what God has given us. Anxiety has not given us a spirit of fear

or anxiety, but a power of love and of a sound mind. Amen.

Amen, hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen. You tell me what's impossible,

I'll show you what's possible. Amen, Anything is possible. It's not just

a scripture to stitch on a pellow or put on a sign of overhead board.

A man hateps into your life, and when you give him free reign

in your life. I'm not telling you to treat God like a buffet.

It's all or nothing, baby, he says, I want everything you have.

Give me your mountain, give me your faith, give me your whole

life, and I'll let you walk in promises and power and anointing and authority.

Hallelujah. Amen. You gotta get tired of the mountain, that's the

deal. You gotta get sick of it. Amen, you gotta get sick

of sin. Sin is destructive. You can't flirt with it, you can't

play with it, you can't tolerate it. You give it an inch,

It takes a mile. Amen, it'll take you further than you ever thought

you would go. Anybody testify to that. Amen. Amen. Almost pulled

a ham me on that little move. Amen. Yeah, next time,

I don't have to stress that out before I do any calisthenics or whatever.

That was. It's almost like a cheerleader. Move toe touch. Amen.

God's future for you one thing in it. Freedom, freedom, Freedom.

He wants you to be free. He wants you to be free. He's

not satisfied with you living in any remnant of bondage, no matter what the

bondage is. He wants to break those chains. He wants to destroy that

mountain in your life. Because your future, your today, your tomorrow,

it's not meant to be built on that addiction or that fear, or that

hurt, that pain. Jesus Christ is designed to be the cornerstone of your

future. That's what he wants for you. Amen. That's what Peter said

in First Peter, chapter two, verse five. He says, you also

as lively stones. Come on, somebody. We're called to be lively stones.

Amen. We're not called to be dead and and and and just laying

there. We're called to be lively stones. He says. You're built up

as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer of spiritual sacrifices,

accept to God by Jesus Christ. He says, wherefore, also it is

contained in the scripture. Behold I lay in Zion, a chief cornerstone,

and he's elected. I have chosen him for your life. He is precious.

He is a precious stone. And he says, and he that believeth

on him, there's our faith shall not be confounded, he says. You

will not be put to shame if your faith is tethered to him as your

cornerstone. Hallelujah, hallelujah, in the presence of your mountain, because it

can be moved. He is unchanging, he is unmovable, he is all

powerful. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Why don't you give him praise right

now in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Thank you

Jesus. Your futures built on him. And if you can have faith in

that, you will not be put to shame. Does your faith match You're

mountain? Hallelujah. This past weekend, after my wife finished her professional duties,

we had some time to spare on Friday, and so we meandered around

DC and we found our way over to the National Archives. And as I

stood in the rotunda where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill

of Rights are displayed, I was kind of in awe. There's a lot

of people out of commotion, some irritating teenagers that were on a field trip.

I wanted to kind of kick them, but I was standing there and

I shouldn't go out in public. It's not good. Um yeah, as

my mama's as drum. And so I was standing there and all of these

unbelievable historic documents are on display. And I don't know about you. You

may walk through that and it'd be like, oh, that's cool. I

just there's something that comes over me when I just think when I standed,

I stood there in the middle, and I was just like, man,

it was just just to think what our founding fathers went through and dealt with

and those that were written there. But as I was looking through it that

I began to realize that these men they faced down a kingdom of tyranny.

That's what they were facing. Only one of them decided, Hey, we're

gonna be free from this tyranny. No, it was It happened because they

were able to make that mountain of tyranny a plane because they stood united and

then they stood together. Did they have some differences, absolutely, but this

is what they did. Those men are founding fathers of this great country,

and despite what other people say about it, it's still great. Amen.

And the founding fathers they for a moment and for the betterment of our country,

they put aside the little differences they had, and they said, we're

gonna unite on this idea of liberty. We're gonna unite on this idea of

being free. And that's what they did. Amen. And in this building

today, there are no doubt, many many differences among us. Amen.

The person sitting beside you has differences than they have areas of differences. And

so we can choose to focus on our differences, or we can choose to

understand what the greater picture is, what we're truly seeking after, and that

is the spiritual freedom of souls on this hearth, Amen. And if we'll

give our life, that can use us to make a great eternal impact into

somebody's life. We can change a city, we can change a county.

Hallelujah. Nothing is impossible, Amen, But we have to understand it's important.

That's why Jesus or that's why the scripture says. He says they were

gathering in one place, in one accord, and that wasn't a Honda.

That was one mind, one spirit, one passion, one focus. What

are we here to do? We're here to see the power of Heaven come

down on earth. We're here to be endued with power from on high so

that we can spread the Gospel Church. What are we here to do?

It's not about what makes us different. It's about what unites us. And

what unites us is the power of the Gospel. It's the power of His

death, burial, and resurrection. Because there's freedom in that. There's liberty

in that. Hallelujah Amen. As as as we was going through their reading,

iPad needs a windshield wiper. As we was going through there and I

was reading, I read these things about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and

all these guys, John Hancock, all these guys. There was little little

letters and things there. You've probably been there. Statement from George Washington,

it said liberty. Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a

plant of rapid growth. You know what George Washington was saying. When you

taste true liberty, am you never go back. When you're truly free,

it creates, it begins to spread the spirit of liberty. The spirit of

freedom begins to grow in your life. Ronnie, Am I telling the truth.

When you truly get free of that mountain? Roy? Am I telling

the truth? When you really get free of that mountain? There is something

that you taste to that liberty, and you there's a resolve that begins to

grow in you like a plant taking root, and you're determined, I'm never

going back. I'm never returning to addiction. I'm never returning to that prison.

Hallelujah. They tasted, they had a taste of that liberty, and

they were not willing to relinquish themselves back to any thing else. Amen.

And all of those documents, I get fired up when I read them.

Man, I'm like, I love that stuff. I'm a history I love

history, Um, and I just I get fired up. But I read

this. It was really cool. And you history teachers or whatever, you

guys probably know this stuff. Um. Thomas Jefferson had a motto, and

his motto was this and this is in um Latin. So I'm gonna butcher

this completely, Matt, you know Latin. No, all right, So

I'm on my own here, all right. It says ab ao libertus aquo

spiritus okay, not butchered. Is this the spirit comes from him from whom

liberty comes, or, in other words, he who gives life gives liberty.

He who gives life gives liberty. That's what it's all about, Amen.

That's why the baptism of his spirits is so vital in every single life,

because he who gives life gives liberty. Hallelujah. I want my wife

to come or I'm gonna be up here all day, amen, because I

feel that anointing. I feel the unction of the spirit moving in this place.

Amen. These founding fathers understood that their future was not going to be

built upon stones from the mountain of tyranny, and that was not where they

were going to return. Amen. And so you have to set it in

your mind today, I'm never going back. I'm never returning. You gotta

draw a line in the sand. My dad, he was big with the

sand, lines in the sand. He did everything. One day, me

and him were at it and he says, if you feel froggy, boy,

and he drew a line in the sand. He ever tell you that

at him? He said, you feel froggy, jump. I didn't feel

nearest froggy as I thought I did. Nope, I'm a lizard. I'm

gonna go o no jump in this frog. You gotta get a line drawn

in the sand within your spirit and say, I'm never returning to that thing,

because I know what it means. How many know what it means to

live on that to the line. And I've got a taste of liberty.

I've got a taste of freedom, and I love how it feels, and

I love how it taste, and i love my life and liberty, and

I'm never returning to that. And this is what Paul said. Paul said

a Galatians five one. He said, stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith

Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of

bondage. Paul said, set it in your mind that you're never going back.

Hallelujah. Why don't you stand with me this morning and lift your hands

to Heaven all over this play feel the power of the Holy Ghost in this

place. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Thank you Jesus, Thank

you Jesus. You have to get fed up, fed up enough that you

under you, you get some resolve in you and that you make a stand,

say God my faith. He's gonna be always, constantly, daily,

tethered to your power and your spirit. I didn't know what they were seeing

in this morning. I didn't know what song. She didn't send me the

list. But I have a scripture that I have written down, my last

scripture of the morning. And I'm gonna use this scripture to double down on

what Thomas Jefferson's motto was. Second Corinthians, Chapter three, verse seventeen.

Thomas Jefferson lived with the motto of he who gives life gives liberty. Paul

wrote to the Corinthian Church in chapter three, verse seventeen of his lit Now

the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is,

there is liberty. There is liberty. Hallelujah. And so today I ask

you, are you ready to live in that liberty? Are you ready to

draw a line in the sand and say, I'm I'm never walking back into

that area, I'm never revisiting that mountain. I'm gonna let God speak to

that mountain, oh destroying mountain. No stone is gonna be used for a

foundation for my people. Hallelujah. If that's your resolve today, if that's

your hunger and your desire. Today I open up the front of this building

and I invite you and anyone that wants to to come step out of your

seat today, make your way up around this front and draw a line in

the sand that I'll never return to that life. I'll never go back to

where God free. 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 Mylife City Church dot org, or you can

contact us at info at Mylife City Church dot org. Thank you once again

for joining us, and we hope you have a great week.