The Cure for Autopilot | The Hidden Wound Controlling Your Life | Kingmaker | Apostle Mike Signorelli

What is going on?

Church?

I'm so excited to be here with you.

Last week we talked about this broken thermostat.

How many of you received that word last week?

Do you remember?

Okay, if you weren't here, get caught up.

And we talked about how past wounds in your life, they live in

your nervous system and they become part of what's called your

default operating code.

And we called that autopilot.

Can y' all say autopilot?

All right, good.

You're awake and heavily caffeinated.

We sat with the man at the pool of Bethesda, who for 38 years,

38 years, sat there unable to help himself.

And Jesus asked him this surgical question.

Remember, we're talking about the heart.

Would you like to get well?

Turn to your neighbor and ask him, would you like to get well?

Come on, wives.

This is your opportunity to ask your husband, would you like

to get well?

You turn to the other person on the other side that you ignored

and ask them, would you like to get well?

It's a question.

And that message has reached a very large number of people.

If you're tuning in right now, drop a comment, let us know where

you're tuning in from.

Because, man, I got so many messages of breakthrough.

But we got more.

Now, I want.

If you're a note taker, this is gonna be a teaching.

So lock in with me.

There are three ways that this wound runs your life.

And if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down.

This wound that you have, it causes you to fight, flight, or freeze.

Fight, flight, or freeze.

And your wound causes you to do that.

But basically, we ran out of time.

Last week, I don't know if you remember, I had my gym mat, and I

was flailing it around wildly, screaming, you know, like a crazy.

I don't know if you remember that in Manhattan, because it's Pride

Month, I was waving that mat saying, you have a.

They have a flag, but we have a mat.

It was powerful.

Like, man, Manhattan was packed out with missionaries.

Last week was crazy, but we ran out of time.

So I wanna get to the remainder of this message.

So we're gonna go very deep into this teaching.

Are y' all for it?

Are you with it?

Okay, so today we're gonna jump back in.

And here's what's different about today.

Last week, we diagnosed the problem.

Today we're gonna meet the cure.

So if you thought last week was good, today is the we're gonna

meet the cure.

And the cure is not a strategy.

The cure is not A practice.

It's not a 30 day plan.

The cure is actually a person.

I'll just let that sit in the room because to a heavily medicated

generation doesn't mean that some of it's not necessary.

To a generation that goes to chatgpt before they go to Jesus Christ

of Nazareth.

The cure is a person.

And the way that he healed.

And this is, we're gonna look at this.

The life of a man.

He's the most famous flight.

I'm like, lord, bless my tongue.

To be able to do this message, flight, fight and freeze case in

the entire Bible.

It's gonna wreck you in the best way possible because that person,

and if you've been a member of this church for years, you know,

I love to preach on this person.

His name is Peter.

And Jesus is about to do something really to address some

wounds that he had in his life.

And it's so intentional, it's so precise, it's so surgical, and

it's loving that it only could have been planned by God Almighty.

And so let's jump into Peter.

This is a case study of fight, flight, freeze, which is a central

nervous system response to a wound.

And I want to introduce you to a man in a span of roughly 18 hours.

This is crazy.

When you look at scripture, he demonstrated all three trauma responses

in that sequence.

And once I saw this, I could not unsee it.

And I want you to notice something as we go through these.

Peter is not a bad person.

He's a wounded person whose wounds have been driving him without

his permission.

And that's how I want you to understand.

Like most people in your life, they were not heroes, but they were

also not villains.

They were wounded people who were being driven by the wound.

And what they did to you is the consequence of that wound.

So you tell the story about how this villain abused you.

But if God were to come in and rewrite that story, what if I told

you it was a wounded person that in search of some sort of comfort

for that wound, operated in fight, in flight, or in freeze, and

their abuse or hurt to you was the unintended consequence of their

reaction to a wound?

Are y' all with me?

So this is important because fight, flight and freeze does not

mean that you're evil.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they were evil.

It means that you're human.

It means that something was broken.

And that protective system, because I want you to think about

fight, flight and freeze as a protective system.

And we actually need this system.

It's not something that you should indefinitely dismantle and

turn off.

But it's something that if it's unregulated, if it's hyper vigilant,

if it's always on, you're never gonna live your life in peace.

And Peter in this story is not a villain.

How do we know that?

He starts as a disciple, he ends as an apostle.

He clearly was not the villain.

Even though Jesus said, satan, get thee behind me.

Jesus was dealing with the root system because he was trying

to get Peter to go through a process to fulfill his destiny to

some of us need to become like Jesus and stop treating people like

demons.

Stop treating people like demons and start dealing with the

root understanding that Peter needed help to get to the finish

line.

So we're going to go through the first one.

The first one is fight in the garden.

This is John chapter 18, verse 10.

John 18:10

Okay.

Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck that high

priest servant and cut off his right ear because homie, don't play.

The servant's name was Malchus.

Right?

So in it's the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus has just finished,

I mean really one of the most anguished prayers that we ever have

recorded in all of human history.

The soldiers arrive with torches.

They got weapons, they got a mob.

And.

And in an instant, before anyone even has a chance to react,

the first person to react is Peter.

And Peter said, make my day folks.

Step up to the line.

Boy, boy, let's go, son.

You don't want this.

I'm just.

This is what he's doing.

He draws his sword and he.

Actually this is the craziest part.

It was attempted murder.

You all understand that he wasn't aiming for the ear, he was

aiming for the head.

And so notice this is Malchus moved in time and the sword grazed

his ear and took his ear off.

You know, that's not self defense.

That's murder.

That's not strategy.

That's a fight response.

And here's what the fight response always looks like.

And I want you to write this down in your notes.

Disproportionate force.

Disproportionate force.

Their reaction is disproportionate to the action.

The way they respond is much greater than the action that necessitated

a response.

It's disproportionate.

In other words, the threat does not match the reaction.

And there are people that are driving on the highway and their

reaction to what happened in traffic is disproportionate to what

actually happened in reality.

And we know what we call that road rage.

And it has little to do with the traffic, and it has everything

to do with this wound and this internal thing.

And it's like the person in New York City is just like, let's

go.

Let's do this thing.

The thing is, they're looking to fight.

They woke up waiting for what they thought was gonna be sweet therapy

when they knock somebody out.

And it has everything to do with them.

What if I told you that most of what you're dealing with when

you're interacting with people is not the action?

It's the disproportionate response to an action based on a

wound?

Let's talk about tattoos.

If you get a tattoo and it's underneath your sleeve and somebody

doesn't know that you got a tattoo, that thing is an open wound.

It's bleeding, it's oozing.

And they come up to you and say, hey, what's up, man?

How you doing, buddy?

How you doing?

And they give you one of those.

How you gonna respond?

Ah, what'd you do?

Why?

Because there was something under your sleeve.

Wounded.

And their action could have even been a friendly gesture, but

the wound created a disproportionate reaction.

As a matter of fact, somebody might get mad at you for being friendly.

Oh, come on, somebody.

Welcome to the local church.

Oh, welcome to V1 Church.

Yeah.

You're fake.

Would you like to join my group?

Oh, yeah.

You're not using me here.

Can we film your testimony?

No, I don't participate in propaganda.

Yeah, you know what?

I've been praying, and there's something wrong with that apostle

Mike.

Well, let me just help you.

There's a lot wrong with me.

Ask my wife.

And it's just like I said last week.

As long as you have your eyes on my humanity, you can't be fixated

on Jesus beauty.

Because your eyes, both eyes, only go one direction if they work

right?

So what that means is you can't be looking at man and looking

at Jesus at the same time.

So if you are looking at somebody to have something wrong

with them, you're always going to be right.

But for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory.

But all of us are here to look to Jesus.

But the problem is, when you're wounded, you'll have a disproportionate

response.

And even when somebody's doing a friendly gesture, you will interpret

through skepticism.

And it says nothing about the gesture and says everything about

the wound.

Matter of fact, it's hard to discern the world around you.

With an open wound, Peter could have grabbed Jesus.

And Peter could have ran.

He could have negotiated.

He could have even prayed.

Let's pray.

But instead, he went for the head.

Think about that.

Because I believe, and I can't prove this, but the evidence is there.

Peter had a wound.

And we see it earlier in this narrative.

This is the man who he boldly declared, lord, I'll follow you to

prison.

I'll even follow you to death.

This is how people talk.

This is Luke, chapter 22, verse 33.

Luke 22:33

And what that's called is bravado.

For those of you taking notes, bravado is when you talk a big talk.

Bravado is, hey, baby girl, you know, I think you're my wife,

girl.

That's bravado.

It's like, no, no, no.

You're trying to sleep with her, homie, and you're just talking

the talk to try to get.

Get with her like that.

And, you know, people do the same thing.

Oh, Pastor Mike, you're my pastor.

I'm not.

Listen, I'm your pastor when I promote you, but not when I correct

you.

Am I really your pastor?

And it's like when people get into a relationship, oh, I'm wife

material when you want to sleep with me, but not when I tell

you to go get a job.

See?

Come on, somebody, for what happens.

Peter had bravado.

He said the right things when he was in the dating phase, but didn't

understand covenant.

And that was going to be challenged by Jesus.

But what I love about Jesus is he tolerated the immaturity, knowing

that if he could get him healed, he could turn immaturity

into maturity.

Are y' all with me?

So someone who is terrified as being seen as weak, someone whose

identity is wrapped up in being the strongest one in the room,

is going to have the most bravado.

Oh, yeah.

Men of valor, my ride or die.

Oh, yeah.

It's the bravado.

It's the person who doesn't want to be perceived as weak is going

to be the person who talks the most talk.

But how many of you know the.

Lord's gonna challenge that now?

Because faithfulness is maturity.

And the Lord is checking that in Peter in this moment.

And when that identity is threatened, because the arrest begins

to expose Peter's helplessness, the wound begins to

fire up.

And what does Jesus do?

He tells Peter, put that sword away.

And then this is really crazy.

Jesus picks up the ear and he heals it.

Luke, chapter 22, verse 51.

Luke 22:51

And that very act of violence that Peter performed It's Jesus absorbed

it.

Listen to this.

He reversed it and he healed it.

So he absorbed it, he reversed it and healed it.

In every story, there's a Peter.

Not a villain, just a wounded person.

But in every story, there also must be a Jesus who is a reconciler,

who says, I didn't do it, but I will absorb it, I will reverse

it, and I will heal it.

Oh, is somebody with me right now?

So what that means is in every relationship, whether it's a church

relationship, whether it's a marital relationship, Julie didn't

do my sin.

We.

But Julie in the story was the Jesus figure who reconciled and said,

I'm not the alcoholic.

I'm not the cheater, but I am going to absorb it.

I'm gonna reverse it, and I'm gonna heal it, believing that Mike

can go from immature to mature, and all the bravado that

he told me can turn into real covenant language later on.

Y' all with me?

Y' all with me?

Cause the real test of whether or not you're men of valor is whether

you stand for your church when there's heat, not when it's all good.

The real test of whether or not you're with somebody is not when

they're sleeping with you.

It's when it's fidelity and when it's covenant and when it's.

Come on.

Purity.

See, the thing about it is, Jesus was like, peter, I'm not gonna

rebuke you for talking the talk.

I'm gonna test you.

He didn't get rebuke.

He got tested.

And I believe that the.

I'm speaking prophetically right now.

I believe the body of Christ is being tested right now.

We talk unity, but are we unified?

We talk building the church, or are we tearing it down?

We talk evangelism, but do we lead stones?

We talk generosity, but do we actually give?

Then the Lord is not rebuking us.

He's testing us.

But how many of you believe that we're going to go from immature

to mature?

And how many of you believe we're going to stop responding out

of a wound, and we're going to allow Jesus to absorb it, reverse

it, and heal it so we can be the real deal?

Anybody want to be the real deal with me?

Come on.

So right there in the chaos, before anything's resolved, before

even Peter learns his lesson, God heals.

Listen, what our fight creates, aren't you thankful for

his grace?

He heals what our fight creates.

That's how good he is.

But we've got to let him in the next one is flight.

It's the courtyard.

This all happens within 18 hours, which is crazy to me.

Peter is jacked up.

I think he is.

So that's why I love him as an example, is because he's one of the

few people in the Bible that has more trauma than me, apparently.

So look at Luke 22:54.

Luke 22:54

Peter followed at a distance.

The guards lit a fire.

Now, if you have your Bible and you're comfortable writing in

your Bible, circle the word fire.

The guards light a fire in the middle of the courtyard, and they

sat around it, and Peter joined them there.

And then a servant girl, not a woman.

A girl noticed him in the firelight and begins staring at him.

And she said, this man was one of Jesus followers.

But Peter denied it.

Woman.

He said, I don't even know him.

As a matter of fact, this will preach.

The Bible says she's a servant girl, but Peter calls her a woman.

Your wound will always graduate your problem bigger than

it really is.

That's biblical revelation.

The Bible calls her a girl, and then Peter calls her a woman.

Your wound is always gonna make it.

Bigger than it really is.

Let's stop there.

Then he says, I don't even know him.

And a few.

This is a few hours after the sword, by the way.

He is failing big.

He just did the sword situation.

Now he's already doing this.

And the fight response didn't work.

The mob arrested Jesus anyways, and now Peter is alone by

himself.

And the little servant girl, the most socially powerless person

in that courtyard, points at him and says, you were with him and

Peter hours ago.

Who's gangsta with this glock?

I mean, he's getting ready to pistol whip somebody.

He's like, he's coming out full Tupac.

Like, this dude is like, yeah, do it.

Come.

He's ready to take them all on.

Now, hours later, he is in another central nervous system dysregulation

called flight.

Because why he learned the that fight doesn't work.

So what happens when people join a church?

In their previous church experience, man, it got quiet, didn't

it?

In their previous church experience, they fought.

I'm gonna try to stay.

I'm gonna fight.

I'm gonna talk to the pastor, I'm gonna talk to the leaders.

And then what happened is the hurt multiplied.

Things didn't work out right.

And then they say, you know what?

I tried to set to cut the centurion's ear off.

That didn't work out.

I'm gonna try a new strategy.

I'm gonna run.

I'm just gonna leave.

We do this in relationships.

We fight for the relationship.

We fight with the person.

We think we're doing the right thing.

I mean, this is the story of Peter.

It's right versus right versus right.

Peter thought he was helping Jesus.

When he swiped the ear, he thought he was helping somebody.

This is how church life is.

Nobody thinks they're the gossip.

They think they're the truth teller.

Everybody's swinging their sword, cutting ears off.

Everybody thinks they're the one doing right.

Oh, I'm gonna mess your whole world up today.

This is how it is in a marriage.

I've never met a married couple on the verge of divorce who's.

And the husband sits there and says, this whole thing's my fault.

It's always that woman, and she did this.

And if she would have done that.

And it's the woman blaming.

So this is right versus right, not right versus wrong.

But the Bible says that there is truth with a capital T. So it

can't just be your version of right versus someone else's version

of right.

It is the Bible's version of truth.

And let every other person be a liar and let God's word be the

only standard.

Can somebody say Amen to that?

That's why we need the word rightly divided like never before.

Because he's not physically still standing there, but emotionally

and relationally and spiritually, he flows.

And this is why the church is so divided across America.

Because we come in wounded with previous experiences.

And when fight didn't work, we switched to flight.

This is why the divorce rate is more than half amongst married

couples.

Because we just.

We.

When fight didn't work, we flight.

This is what we come on.

And so this is the first denial, then the second, then the

oath, then the third.

This is the flight response.

And it doesn't always look like running, though, because I want

to make sure I give you a complete understanding of this.

Sometimes it looks like disappearing in place.

Y' all gotta catch this.

There's a phenomenon that's happening where people are not quitting

their jobs, but they are protesting by not working on the

clock.

And what happens is they say, I'm not going to physically move,

but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I'm disconnected.

They do it on the job.

There's people who said, you know what?

I used to be really involved in V1 church.

I tried interpersonal conflict happen.

I didn't see eye to eye with leaders.

And so I'm not gonna leave the church, but I'm gonna silently remain.

And I'm in a flight response where I'm gone, my energy's gone,

my talent is gone, my treasure is gone, but I'm physically there.

And this is what you see from Peter is Peter leaves the presence

of this girl.

He's still in Jerusalem, but, but he's checked out as a disciple.

He's like, Jesus, you're not getting my energy.

You're not, I, I tried for you, Jesus.

I swung my sword.

I walked with you all over the Galilee.

I, I, I was a part of the ministry, but now I'm gonna, I'm,

I'm not gonna fit physically leave Jerusalem, but mentally, emotionally

and physically, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go into

a freeze response where I'm just a warm body in a geographic

location.

It's like a marriage where you haven't had sex for years.

I'm not gonna get a divorce, but I'll be sleeping in the other

room.

It's like a marriage where you, you say, well, I'm not gonna

get a divorce, but I don't even want to attempt to have a deep

con, no emotional depth.

There's no mental depth.

There's no but there's, there's a physical presence, but

it's, it's just a warm body, everything.

I'm not going to put effort into this marriage.

And why do I keep juxtaposing a marriage with the church?

Because we are the bride of Christ.

So you're not doing it to V1 church.

You're doing it to the groom, who is Jesus Christ.

And so no church, the true church of Jesus Christ, can be built

in.

If there are people who are in a fight response thinking that they're

right in their fight, when Jesus is like, I didn't tell you

to fight that way.

Or a flight response where you're physically attending, but

none of your other facilities are attending, just like a marriage.

And it doesn't surprise me that more than half of marriages

end of divorce.

Because you see that same fragmentation in the body of Christ

with the bride and the groom.

Can I bring it home today, y'?

All?

Is this helping you?

It's like a surgery.

You're like, I don't know, I'm bleeding all over this table.

I'll tell you later if this helped or not, but I love you.

And I love you enough to tell you that if you keep living your

life in response to a wound, you'll accomplish things that you

call success, but the kingdom calls failure.

And this is what God is trying to do is heal you.

Because if he can get you on the other side of this, whom the

sun sets free is free indeed.

And here's the thing.

When you are in this flight response, disconnecting from that

thing that matters most to you, it feels like, well, that's

too dangerous.

So I'll compromise.

And that fight wound said you can't make me feel powerless.

You can't make me feel powerless.

I'm gonna fix this church, I'm gonna fix this marriage, I'm gonna

fix my workplace.

That's the fight response.

But the flight wound, the flight wound says I would rather

lose everything than be exposed.

As a matter of fact, if I just stay here in this church and don't

do anything, nobody can expose me.

If I fly under the radar at the job, my.

They can't expose me if I just do the bare minimums.

And that is what that is.

It's basically I can't be exposed.

And these, these are, are not different people.

This is literally the same Peter.

So we all have tendencies to switch it up.

Because fight and flight are often the same wound, wearing different

clothes on a different day.

Both are fear driven, both are self protective and both are automations.

Not a choice.

That's what I'm trying to help you understand.

You think that you're choosing it.

It's like you don't know you're doing it until you suffer

the consequences of what you did.

Like Peter, when he swung that sword, he did that on automatic because

he was the first one to react when he ran from that girl.

He did that on autopilot because he just jumped up from that

fire pit and he just walked away.

And notice where Peter is standing during all three of those

denials.

This is why I told you to circle it in your Bible.

He is standing by a fire.

Now the Greek word.

I want, I want to show you this.

The Greek word for that particular fire is anthracia and

it's a charcoal fire.

Now this is very, very intentional.

Now as a matter of fact, if you're a note taker, you might want

to write that word down in your notes right now because we're

going to come back to it in a few moments.

And it's the single most important word in this entire sermon

because it's once you understand.

This blew my mind.

I just got done doing master's level Greek and it whooped my butt.

But this sermon is the gift, it is the reward of getting my butt

whooped by master's level Greek.

Because once I saw this.

It absolutely blew my mind.

No pun intended.

Okay, you ready?

Freeze is the last one.

Let's look at freeze.

Freeze is the empty boat.

This all happened within 18 hours.

John, chapter 21, verses 1 through 3.

John 21:1–3

Simon Peter said, I'm going fishing.

Well, come to, and we'll come to.

They all said as a matter of, oh, can we look at this?

Simon Peter said, I'm going fishing.

I'm leaving V1 Church.

I'm starting a Bible study.

I'm starting my own ministry.

I'm going to a home church.

I'm.

I'm deconstructing.

I'm going back to lgbtq.

I'm going to Catholicism.

I'm going to Orthodox.

I'm.

Are y' all following?

What?

Are you picking up on what I'm putting down?

I'm stepping down from serving.

I'm quitting my tithe.

I. I'm just bold enough to say it.

See, the thing was, Peter had an undeniable grace on his life to

lead.

And even when he was in a freeze response, he was leading people

into the wrong direction because they said, we'll come too.

We'll go to your Bible study too.

We'll go to your home church, too.

We'll go to the church down the street, too.

But Peter was out of pocket.

And God doesn't bless action outside of his will.

Jesus said, I don't do my will.

I do the will of my father.

But what you see Peter do is when he cuts the ear off, that was

his plan, not God's.

When he runs away from the little girl to save his life, that

was his plan, not God's.

And his fishing trip, he even recruited.

People to as well.

You will always recruit people to carnal decisions.

You never go fishing alone, man.

Are y' all hearing me?

Whatever it is, you recruit people to it, we'll come too.

And they.

They all said, demonic unity.

Don't ever underestimate the power of carnality and demonic unity.

It's funny, because you'll call a prayer strike at the local

church, and.

And only 4% come, and most your leaders don't.

But you call a gossip dinner to talk about people from the church,

and everybody's like, I'll be getting off of work early for this

one.

Am I right?

This is important to tell you, though, because look at the phenomenon.

And many have never even understood this was happening.

But when you understand fight, flight, and freeze.

And this is my own.

This is like 10 years of my home therapy.

I paid for this sermon.

Let me Tell you.

Cause I am Peter.

It's why I see it.

I'm the subject of every sermon I ever preached you.

So if you think I'm talking to you, I'm talking to a version of

myself that I discipline into somebody who could preach this with

authority.

Y' all ain't even preaching back to me today.

So quiet.

The resurrection has happened.

Jesus now has appeared.

The tomb is empty.

Everything changed.

And Peter has not changed.

Resurrection power.

Jesus is fully alive from the grave.

And yet Peter, he goes fishing.

There's no excuse for it.

He chose it.

A church could be in revival and people can still go leave to

fishing.

The resurrection power of God could be in this place with healings

and deliverance, and people will still go fishing.

This is a message.

You could be in marriage with a woman that every other guy wants,

but you don't want her.

You want to go fishing?

Come on.

I'm talking to somebody right now.

You could be working a job that somebody else put 50 applications

and still didn't get the job.

But you want to go fishing.

This is the freeze response where we don't want to deal with

life and we have to learn how to regulate our central nervous system

system said no Pentecostal preacher ever.

This is the freeze response.

I think it's quiet today because I'm the first pastor to ever

lead you like this.

And I don't care if you go to our church.

This church is already 50 times bigger than we ever planned.

My wife and I planned for a.

We would have private conversations where we.

We on our pillow talk, husband and wife.

And we'd say if we get 150 people Disciple in New York City,

Metro, by the time we die, we did a good job.

Am I right?

So this is not.

This is not a ploy to get you to do things for us.

This is not manipulation.

This is the word of God.

And what we see in the life of the disciples is Jesus walking them

through healing processes.

But because they were not physical healings, y' all missed

it.

We need the emotional healing.

We need the mental healing.

Am I right?

And this is the freeze response.

And of the three, I think it's the most dangerous because it looks

like the most reasonable.

Peter's not raging.

He's not throwing dishes at the.

He's not punching a hole in the wall.

He ain't lying anymore like he did to that little girl.

And some of y' all are liars.

And you know, you know we got a lie and pro.

He ain't lying no more.

And And.

But now he.

He's just going fishing.

I'm just doing my own thing.

It looks the most reasonable.

But this is it.

Come on.

Even the babies recognize this sermon here today.

And when shame goes deep enough, when the failure feels too

total, the freeze response doesn't make us lash out.

It doesn't make us run away.

It makes us go backwards.

Are you hearing me?

It makes us return to an identity that we thought we left.

And this is what it tells you in a real quiet voice.

You had your chance.

You already tried at other churches, you already tried in other

relationships.

You already tried at other jobs, and you blew it.

And nothing you did made it better.

This is always how it's gonna be anyways.

So just make your own little comfortable life within this and

freeze and don't try at all.

And Peter.

This is the crazy part.

Peter catches nothing all night because God doesn't bless alternative

plans.

The house churches, they fold up.

The Bible studies disband.

I'm telling you this because I've seen it for years and years

and years.

The gossip circles.

They first start feasting on someone else, and then when they

run out of someone else's flesh to eat, they turn on each other

and they cannibalize and eat each other.

And so I've never had to mess with any of that stuff.

Because those people, they see, what happens is.

Let me make it biblical for you.

Peter swings his sword on the soldier.

But if all those people keep swinging their swords, everybody

ends up dead.

That's why Jesus said, if you live by the sword, you revelate right

now.

So Jesus is like, you don't understand, Peter.

Your action will cause a consequence, and everybody here ends

up dead.

Somebody's got to reconcile.

So when you think that you're righteously doing something, if God's

not in it, it always fails.

That's why we don't have to be the ones who enact justice.

Because if they're feasting on friends, if they're feasting on leaders,

if they're feasting on pastors, and it's only a matter of

time till they feast on each other.

They're like piranhas in a pool without something else to eat.

They eat each other.

And I just.

Some.

Sometimes what you got to do is step away from that mess.

And the man who left everything to basically go back to

fishing, he's in that boat.

He catches nothing.

His ministry doesn't succeed.

None of it ever succeeds.

That's why I've watched it over and over and over again.

I'm leaving to do my own thing.

I'm going here.

And did the Lord commission you to do this?

And there's no grace on it.

Just like this fishing.

He goes back to the thing that he was even an expert on.

But there's no grace on expertise.

There's grace on spiritual authority.

Am I preaching too deep for you?

There's.

There's the.

When David killed Goliath, there were military experts that

were shaken in their boots.

It wasn't about the means by which David killed the.

The giant.

It was by the anointing that he did it.

Because the grace is on the anointing.

So people will leave a relationship saying, I'm an expert

on relationships.

But every other relationship fails because there's no grace on

that division where it started.

There's people that'll leave a church, but.

Everything they start is mediocre and fails.

Because the anointing is not on expertise.

The anointing is on authority.

The anointing is on a person's life.

You can't skip the way.

And God was trying to tell Peter, I have an anointing on your

life.

Don't use it to lead people astray.

Don't use it to hurt people.

Submit to my authority.

And some of us have to stop submitting to our own plans, our

own strategy, our own college degrees, our own wisdom.

The wisdom of man leads to death.

But the way of God is life.

He wants to give you life and life more abundantly, but you got

to submit to God and say, am I living in a fight response?

Am I living in a flight response?

Am I living in a freeze response?

But I got one more F for you.

It's Father, am I living in the Father's response?

Whatever the Father tells me to do, wherever the Father tells

me to go, whatever the Father tells me to give, whoever the Father

tells me to submit to, I respond to the Father.

Not my central nervous system, not my wounds, not my past.

I respond to the Father.

The Father response, you ain't going to get that in most therapy

sessions.

There's the fight response, the flight response, the freeze response,

and then there's the father response.

And I want to respond to the Father.

I feel this in me 38 years at a pool.

Last week we talked about, now we got a career fisherman going back

to the boat.

The same autopilot, a different face, the same fate.

But there's only one answer.

The man at the pool of Bethesda has to look at the face

of the Father through Jesus, not at the Pool of Bethesda.

Not at the people who's not carrying him in the pool.

Not the victim mindset.

But he has to look at the face of his Father.

And if he can have an encounter with Jesus, that encounter

will tell him, pick up your mat and walk.

Stand up, Pick up your mat and walk.

But if your encounter is with people, you're gonna stay in that

mat.

If you're trying to get into a pool instead of getting into his

will through obedience, you're going to stay on that mat.

And now we got a new man named Peter.

And Peter is always taking matters into his own hands.

I'll start the 501C3.

I'll make the website, I'll write the book.

I'll make the song, I'll go here, I'll do that.

He's always taken matters into his own hand.

But Jesus said, upon this rock, I will establish my church.

Not your idea, not your strategies.

I will establish my church.

And see, what was happening was that Peter was being demanded

by Christ.

Have a father encounter.

You are not the Father.

Learn how to be a son.

And that is the problem, is everybody wants to be a father.

Nobody wants to be a son.

Everybody wants to be a teacher, Nobody wants to be a student.

Everybody wants to be a disciple maker.

Nobody wants to be a disciple.

But the story is a story of encountering the Father.

And Peter kept getting big on his britches.

Isn't that all of us?

This is probably the area of the most submission in my life.

I'm telling on myself.

The thing that keeps recalibrating this church.

Me asking the question, Mike, was that a fear response?

Was it a flight response?

Was it a freeze response?

Or was it a father response?

Man, I'm preaching to somebody.

Is this helping anybody?

Can I.

Can I end this message.

Now?

Let's talk about that charcoal fire.

John, chapter 21, verses 4 through 14.

John 21:4–14

So let's look at this at dawn.

Jesus.

Man, this makes me want to cry.

Once I saw this, I couldn't unsee it.

At dawn, Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn't

see who he was.

He has been there the whole time, the risen Christ.

He's literally standing on the shore watching seven disciples in

the boat who spent the entire night trying to prove that they can

do it without him.

And.

And they caught nothing.

He is the vine.

We are the branches.

Apart from him, we are nothing.

You can't fish, even as a professional fisherman without him.

He is everything.

And he doesn't confront them.

He doesn't Lecture them.

He calls to them.

Throw your nets on the right hand side of the boat and you will

catch something that you cannot contain.

153 fish.

The net didn't tear.

And then in John 21, verse 9, when they got there, they found breakfast

John 21:9

waiting for them.

Fish cooking over a charcoal fire and some bread.

And there it is now again.

Anthracia, the charcoal fire.

18 hours before, he's sitting with the centurion soldiers.

This word shows up only two times in the entire New Testament.

Think about how mind blowing this is.

It shows up when Jesus denies.

When Peter denies Jesus in front of soldiers.

And then.

This is crazy.

He makes this breakfast.

Jesus Christ, the risen savior, makes this breakfast on the

shore.

Think about what I'm saying.

In all four gospels, in Paul's letters, in every letter ever written,

there's only two times the occurrence of anthracia.

The courtyard where Peter denied Jesus three times, warming

himself by a charcoal fire.

And then John 21:9, the breakfast on the beach where Jesus

John 21:9

meets Peter cooking over a charcoal fire.

And I don't believe that this is a coincidence because the Bible

leaves nothing to coincidence.

How many of you believe every word of the Bible is intentional?

Jesus did not meet Peter on some random neutral territory.

He did not choose a comfortable new location.

He didn't say let's go to the new church.

He didn't say let's marry a new person.

He didn't say let's go get a new job.

He chose the same sensory environment where Peter had failed.

Why?

Because smell is the most powerful memory.

Trigger in the human brain.

So.

So Peter would have walked up to that shore and smelt that fire.

And his brain would have triggered him back to his worst failure.

And Jesus Christ said, oh yeah, do you smell what I'm.

What the rock is.

Okay, come on.

He was.

He was basically saying that's I am triggering you on purpose because

I always heal in the same place where you were hurt.

I brought you back to the charcoal fire.

I want you to see it.

I want you to smell it.

I want you to experience spirit because my healing will.

Oh, come on.

I wish somebody would help me preach this sermon and give God a

10 second praise break.

If you're thankful for him triggering you, bringing you to the

place of change in.

You.

Understand?

Three times he denies Christ with a fire, a charcoal fire, anthrachia.

Then Jesus 18 hours later.

Hey, come down here.

I've got breakfast for you.

And Peter unknowingly steps down and walks into an encounter

with the Father.

He's Smelling it.

This is just like the environment where I failed.

This is just like where it didn't work out.

Oh, yeah.

Jesus.

Take a seat.

Let's eat.

Let me just tell you, if you keep running from your triggers,

you are not avoiding your triggers.

You are delaying your healing.

Because wherever you go, there you are.

There you are.

Oh, I'll go to a new church.

Your trigger is going to find you there.

It's just a matter of time.

I'm going to go to a new relationship.

Oh, that new chick, she's going to trigger you too, homie.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Let me tell you why.

Because step one is you come out of Egypt, but step two is Egypt

has to come out of you.

If you come out of Egypt, but Egypt doesn't come out of you, then

you will make Egyptian culture in the promised land and undo the

promise.

What if I told you it's less.

About the environment on the outside and.

More about the environment on the inside?

What if I told you that there are people that are in a far worse

external environment, but on the inside, their thermometer and

their thermostat is working because they've been healed of a

wound and the place that you cursed has become a paradise for

them.

Because the Prince of Peace, remember I told you it is not a 30

year process.

It is an encounter with a man, a person named Jesus Christ.

And when you have an encounter with him, he will fix that thermostat.

And then what happens with the thermostat is you stop complaining

about the atmosphere and you start changing the atmosphere.

But you don't change them, you change yourself.

It's the power of a praying wife.

Not a nagging wife, not a begging wife, not a complaining wife.

I can't have my husband praying, but I'm gonna pray.

I can't make him fast, but I'm gonna fast.

I can't change my pastor, but I'm gonna pray for my pastor.

I can't choose the way he's at.

Come on.

This is an anti Jezebel sermon.

This is an anti Ahab sermon.

This is how you end witchcraft in the church.

When you say, God, I'm gonna stop, control them.

Give me control over myself.

Reinstall that thermostat.

Understand?

New York's not the problem.

I'm the problem.

V1 ain't the problem, I'm the problem.

My spouse ain't the problem.

I'm the problem.

Come on, stop being a victim.

This message is going to change somebody.

I got to show you one More thing.

I got to show you one more thing.

And Jesus cooked breakfast.

Anyways, how many of you see the grace of God in this?

As we close every step of the way, Peter cuts that ear off.

And Jesus absorbs it, reverses it, and heals it.

Then Peter goes back to fishing and Jesus shows up.

The grace and the mercy of our Father is evident in our failures.

He just keeps coming back.

How many of you are so thankful he hasn't given up on you?

See, the only way to increase in pride is to decrease in your awareness

of his grace towards you.

Come on.

Am I talking to somebody?

The only way you can become prideful is to.

Is to decrease in your awareness of your salvation.

But the more you meditate on his grace, the more you remind yourself

of what he saved you from.

You'll see he was there the whole time.

God does not heal you away from the memory of your failure.

He heals you in the middle of it.

I'm done, y'.

All.

John, chapter 21, verse 15.

John 21:15

After breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter.

Now watch.

There's a sequence here because the fire, remember that word,

only comes up twice in the New Testament.

So Jesus said, after.

Now, this is the altar call.

So after the breakfast.

So he done had the food.

It's like, I'm ministering you now.

We're going to do the altar call now.

I'm going to give you a chance to respond.

And after breakfast, Jesus asked, simon Peter, Simon, son of

John, do you love me more than these?

Yes, Lord, Peter replied, you know I love you.

Then feed my lambs, Jesus told him.

Jesus repeated the question.

Simon, son of John.

Watch.

He doesn't call him what?

He doesn't call him Peter.

He calls him Simon.

I missed this many times reading the text, but Jesus was saying,

I gave you the name Peter, but I have to go back to the childhood

name to deal with.

With what came before I named you.

Oh, come on.

And so he says, I'm gonna call you Simon because I'm gonna go back

into your past.

I'm not calling you Peter.

I gave you the name Peter.

But I need to heal Simon so Simon can become Peter.

I'm gonna call you by your old.

Name so that you can own the new name.

Because what happened is I gave you the name before I changed

the nature and see what happens.

Come on.

I'm about to.

God will sometimes give you a prophecy before you even have the

character prophecy out.

It doesn't make the prophecy false.

See, what happened was the name was true, but the nature was

Still a liar.

God has brought some of you to V1 church not to get a name change.

You already got your new name.

But it's time to get a new nature God.

Change me, break me, mold me.

I need a nature change so I can walk in the power of that new

name.

So look what he tells them.

Simon.

Simon, I'm going to tell you your childhood name, then a third

time.

Everybody say a third time.

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the third time.

And he said, lord, you know everything.

You know that I love you.

And Jesus said, then feed my sheep three times.

Three times.

Three times.

Peter says, yes.

Three denials become three declarations.

Three denials become three declarations.

Three denials become three declarations.

I'm gonna keep on saying it for as many times.

As you've cursed something, you gotta learn how to bless it.

For I'm.

I'm taught three denials become three declarations.

If you curse your husband three times, I dare you to bless

him three times.

If you curse your city three times, I dare you to declare over

your city three times.

When Julie said, the courtroom of heaven is open.

Every courtroom functions not by violence, not by flight, by freeze,

but by the word you speak.

The word.

The word of a testimony, the word of an affirmation.

So three denials must turn into three declarations.

First century Jewish law established that something declared

three times before witnesses was covenantal, and it carried legal

weight.

And so Jesus was not being repetitive.

He was formally, legally, and irreversibly reinstating Peter before

witnesses in the courtroom of heaven.

And there's something even deeper that happens in that language.

Simon, son of John, Son of he.

You're about to miss it.

So this is it.

Simon, son of John.

Remember I said it's not about expertise, it's about authority.

Even Jesus was saying, who's your head?

I'm speaking to the authority over you, which is your biological

father, Simon, son of John.

I'm acknowledging your heritage.

I'm acknowledging the lineage.

Do you love me?

What he was saying is, I'm trying to transfer the authority,

and I'm trying to bring you out of John's covering, your biological

father, and bring you into the covering of the kingdom so that Abba

can become your father.

And this is the only way Peter becomes an apostle, is that if he

shifts authority, he can no longer just be the Simon, son of

John.

It must be Peter.

Oh, come on.

Son of the living God.

He's switching lineages.

He's being provoked.

But he has to speak to that false thing.

And so I got one question left for you.

How many of you are gonna say, pastor Mike, I am now going to acknowledge

that if I curse three times, I'm blessing three times.

If I spoke an ill word three times, I'm declaring three times.

How many of you are going to.

Rise up with me and say, if I broke a covenant three times, let

it be reestablished three times?

Is there anybody who believes what I'm.

Talking right now, that sometimes you gotta switch from the

false authority of a biological father to the heaven's

authority as our spiritual father?

If you believe that with me, Is there just three people will jump

to their seat right now and say, I'm ready to do this thing with

you.

Do you smell the coal fire burning?

And do you know that God took you to the very place you didn't

want to go?

You know how I got free from alcoholism is I was in a multi step

process with a counselor.

And he said, mike, I want you to visit every place in northwest

Indiana where you were wounded.

And when you go to those places, I want you to ask God to

tell you, where were you when it happened?

I went all over a tour of the houses where I was physically, mentally,

emotionally abused.

I stood in the front yard, the backyard, the porch.

I didn't care who lived there because I was in a battle for my

life, literally a battle for my life, and just completely enraptured

by alcoholism.

And I'll never forget the very first place I showed up.

I still was drunk, by the way.

I was in the process of sobriety.

And I stand on this place totally drunk out of my mind.

And I say, lord, where were you?

That's how I said it.

The crazy guy.

You ever hear those dudes yelling in New York City?

I was one of them because I was just so destitute, so so much

pain.

And I'll never forget, even drunk, he made that fire, that charcoal

fire for me and said, mike, I made you breakfast.

I'm gonna feed you in the same place where you were wounded.

I know that this triggers you.

The smell, the sight, the visual, the experience of this fire.

But see, some fire burns to destroy.

Some fire burns to cook and to nourish.

Same fire, different application.

One will kill you and the other one will keep you alive.

So the fire is not the problem.

It's what it's who's stewarding that fire.

That first fire was being stewarded by Roman soldiers.

That second fire was being stewarded by Jesus Christ.

And Jesus said, Come sit in the very place you're triggered.

Because I am the authority here.

And when I'm the authority, this fire is not for denial.

It's not for destruction.

It's for nourishment and healing.

And I stood in that yard literally on my knees, and the Lord

said, I'm still here in the past, and if you give me permission,

I can heal the boy so that the man can be free.

I never saw this before.

I studied this for this message this week.

The reason why I noticed that Jesus called him Simon, not Peter,

is because I stood in the front yard of a place where I was

abused and the Lord called me Doolittle, not Michael, because he

wants to deal with the past so you can actually have a faith future.

I want to show you one more thing.

Let's put it up on this back wall.

Here's the problem.

We could have an altar call right now across all of our campuses,

and we can puke demons out and we can pray and speak in tongues

and shout.

And that is important and that's a part of it.

But then the value of that is it's a moment that turns into momentum

when you connect it to a process.

So what I showed you today in this sermon is that with Peter, it

was 18 hours.

It wasn't a moment, it was a process.

And then that process extends all the way to Acts, Chapter two.

Do you guys have that with the QR code?

And here's the thing.

I want to tell you this in all sobriety, because right now, a message

like this bring the prayer team.

Let's go crazy.

Yeah, praise God.

But I know some people that puke out demons here and then invite

them back in when they leave.

I know people who put their drugs on this up on this altar and

go buy more the next week.

Am I right?

It's a process.

It's a process.

So the Lord convicted me and he said, mike, I want you to take

your congregation through a process.

Now here's something crazy that you may not know.

There are almost 2,000 people across America, in the cities and

the neighborhoods where we have physical campuses that follow

me online that have signed up to go through six weeks of going

through all of these cycles and all of these patterns and breaking

them.

And they literally live within a 10 mile radius of the physical

campuses of all those churches.

And I just used my voice and I used my platforms and I said, hey,

if you've been following me online and you want to be deeply

discipled and you want a radical life change this summer,

My team and I are going to take you through a six week journey.

And I'm not kidding, almost 2,000 people who live within driving

distance of Long Island, Miami, all of our physical campuses,

who don't even go to our church said, hey Mike, I watch your

sermons.

I'm gonna count me in.

Now, right now at our church, we have 10, 85 people that are, that

are currently in small groups being discipled and having deep fellowship.

But there's another 1200 people in regular weekly attendance

that are in no groups at all.

But when I hear group, I hear process.

So what I did is I got my best leaders, my best pastors, and I put

together this process that we're going to go through.

And whom the sun sets free.

Let me ask you a question.

Are you free, but not free?

Indeed.

Are you free from some things, but not everything?

Are you free from some.

Some wounds, but not all wounds?

I believe that 18 hours can happen in six weeks, a couple hours

at a time.

And that's why once we're gonna do a weird altar call right

now.

The altar call is who will take out their phone at every campus

and scan this QR code and sign up.

Because July 12, the week of July 12, we're gonna do this together.

And if the Lord spoke to you during this sermon, I wanna ask that

you would do this and say, sign up.

There's groups all over the country and I empowered them.

We had a big meeting.

I had over 400 leaders show up and I gave them the message.

I said, listen, If I bring 2000 through my channels and we bring

2000 from V1 Church, if we can get 4000 people to go from man, I

feel the anointing.

If we can get 4,000 people this summer to go from Simon to Peter,

and each One of those 4,000 are connected to five people, that's

over 20,000 people.

That's a city's worth of people.

Then we can say that we changed.

A city's worth of people.

But it has to be now.

It has to be more than another altar call.

It has to be a process.

It has to be God.

I'm submitting myself.

I'm not going to go back to fishing.

And after this, you'll write the book.

And after this you'll have the ministry.

And after this you'll preach.

Because God wants those, those things for you.

But how you get to that destination determines whether or

not those things destroy you or they bless you.

Because Paul said, I desire that you would prosper even as your

soul prospers.

So get your soul right and your bank account will follow.

Get your soul right, and your ministry will follow.

Get your soul right, and everything else will follow.

We're going to work on our soul this summer.

So I want to pray over each and every one of you because I saw

phones.

I don't know what it's like at the other campuses, but I saw phones

going up.

Did you guys see it?

Did you guys see it?

Phones going up?

You said not enough.

I felt that.

I like that holy expectation in you.

Girl, you about to get promoted back there.

She said you must be discipled by Nana Moses.

Come on, take your phone out, scan that QR code and sign up.

And I want to pray for each and every one of you.

Yeah, come on.

Let it sit in the room.

You know what's funny is Peter convinces everybody to go fishing.

And you know what's amazing is after he convinces everybody, go

fishing.

Jesus heals him, restores him.

And then in Acts, chapter two, there's language I didn't get time

to get to, but filled with the Holy Spirit, there starts to be these

accusations from the crowd.

And this is what it says.

It says, peter, standing with all of the apostles, steps forward.

He doesn't step back anymore.

He doesn't run and hide.

He steps forward.

Here's the question I have for each and every one of you like Peter,

will you step forward with me?

Will you step forward into healing?

Forward into restoration?

Forwarding?

Will you step forward in your marriages?

Will you step forward in purity?

Will you step forward in sanctification?

So right now, I want to pray over each and every one of you as

you prepare to step forward.

And then I want you to just sing a chorus so everybody gets an

opportunity to respond.

But right now is not deliverance day.

Right now is decision day.

Deliverance comes after decision.

We need to make a decision.

Matter of fact, the Bible says that if you get seven demons cast

out of you, if you do not seal that place, if you don't deal with

what caused those demons to come in, it said that they will come

back seven more sevenfold, you'll end up a roach motel for demons

going through a cycle of deliverance because you never broke

that, that cycle with decision.

So today is not deliverance.

Today.

Today is decision day.

But how many of you know a decision is gonna lead to a deliverance

that lasts?

So let's just pray right now.

Lift your hands towards heaven with me, and we're going to begin

to pray.

Come on, shout this with me.

We're going to do declaration to all of my fighters, to all of

my flighters, to all of my freezers, we.

Are now going to make a declaration.

Say this with me, heavenly Father, today I choose to bless and

not curse.

My relationships are blessed, my finances are blessed.

My future is blessed.

And Lord, I covenant to you to do your will.

Don't just change my name, change my nature so I can live out

this name in Jesus name.

Somebody shout, let it be so.

Hallelujah.

Come on, let's worship.

Sam.