Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Fasting in the Wilderness with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Where you are joining us from, if you're at one of our physical locations, if you're here in Holodas or Petrenko, I'm so glad that you came out and you joined us in person.

If you're with us online, I am so glad that we have this online ministry and that you could join from wherever you happen to be.

It is an exciting time here at MetaCurch.

I want to tell you about the next two weeks.

So in two weeks on October 26th, uh, we have baptisms coming up.

Uh we had a record number of baptisms about six months ago.

Our last baptism service, we baptized 78 people across our venues, across our services.

Yeah, so God is on the move.

Now, you know, with uh about a thousand people, uh, a little less than that, who will come on a Sunday, um, probably 1,500 people who would say Metachurch is their home, to baptize almost 100 people and knowing you're baptizing again six months later, at some point you go, we've baptized 500 people in the last six years.

Like, who else is there to baptize, you know?

And God is just so on the move, and you guys are the movement out in the real world.

We don't just meet together, we move together.

God's bringing new people in, and uh, we're two weeks out, and let me just remind you at MetaCurch, we tend to sign up for things about six hours before they happen for some reason at Medichurch.

We are two weeks out from baptisms.

I looked this morning, we already have 73 people signed up to get baptized on October 26th.

So it's a very exciting season.

You cannot miss baptism.

Um, it is the best thing that we do here, and we're really excited about how we're planning our services for that.

Also, uh, next Sunday, October 19th, uh, we have an announcement.

Uh, it's it's a surprise.

We have been dreaming about this for about six years.

We have been planning behind the scenes uh pretty much all year in 2025 for this.

It's a huge blessing.

I think you're gonna be excited about it.

Uh so whatever's happening, whatever time the cowboys are playing next week, it does not matter.

All right, you gotta get to service at one of our venues.

You're not gonna want to miss either of the next two weeks.

And starting this week, we are walking towards baptism.

And God has laid something on our heart that I'm gonna share with you today, and I think it will be um one of, if not the most significant thing we have ever done together as a church.

Uh, I have so much expectation for how God is going to use these next two weeks.

And it really just speaks to the divine timing and the sovereignty of God.

Because uh this is a unique experiment for me, preaching line by line through the gospel of Luke.

Um, the rest of my ministry career, I could tell you specifically what I would be preaching in six months.

I could tell you chapter, verse, and I had probably already started studying it.

Because we are just going so slowly through the gospel of Luke, I'm not always confident what verses I'll be in one month from now, okay?

Like I just have to get there and sit in it and listen to the Holy Spirit, and then we divide it up.

Sometimes I think I'm gonna teach the next 10 verses and I end up teaching the next two.

That's literally what happened today.

I thought I was doing 10 verses.

We're going to do two verses in Luke.

And because of that, it's just all in God's hand, and you're gonna see how God has put together the timing to specifically enable and empower the vision he gave us on our hearts months and months ago.

It's incredible.

That'll make sense to you as we get going.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

We are going line by line through the gospel of Luke.

We've broken it down into sections.

We are in section one that is called the Chosen King.

The chosen king.

And what you need to know is this whole section, the chosen king, is preparation for the ministry of Jesus.

He has not stepped out and started his ministry.

He is not healing, he is not preaching, he is not teaching, he is not raising people from the dead yet.

This is all preparation.

And it's been so important for us and to really take our time in this chosen king section because God is also preparing you.

We start with the belief at MetaCurch that God created every single one of you on purpose and with purpose.

If you believe that, say amen.

I hope you believe that because it's all I've taught for about the last seven years.

All right, it's every sermon.

God created you on purpose, and he created you with purpose.

It is not an accident that you're here on planet earth and he has something for you to do, specifically kingdom-building, gospel spreading work.

That is what God has called you to do, positioned you to do, gifted you to do.

And because we are spending, I mean, by the end of this, it will be like almost 30 weeks on this chosen king section.

We are digging in granularly to see how Jesus prepared for his ministry, where he lived perfectly on purpose and perfectly lived out the purpose that God has set on his life.

And so we're learning from that.

And today we're gonna really slow down and we're going to see this ancient practice all the way back in the Old Testament.

It was practiced all the time by the first church in the first century, and it is a practice that modern Christians, especially Western Christians, especially American Christians, have gotten away from.

And we have to get it back.

And so look, if you've been here, you know how I like to preach, okay?

Intro.

Then I build tension, right?

And I love the tension, and I don't let the tension go because I don't want to lose your attention, right?

Tension builds attention, right?

Okay, so you can put that in your pocket and remember that.

And so I'll build tension, tension, tension, then I go to the text, and then big reveal.

I'm a big reveal guy, right?

I don't like spoilers.

Do not spoil it for me.

If you spoil a movie for me, we're not friends for at least six weeks, okay?

I like the big reveal.

And so I like to build to it, and I don't know why, but the Lord made it clear.

No big reveal today.

I'm gonna tell you exactly where we're going.

Today, where we're going is a call for our church to fast together and to pray together.

That is where we're going.

Now, at MetaCurch, uh, we are a church specifically designed.

We have built a culture for people who are unchurched or de-churched, who are not yet convinced by the claims of Christianity, to come and to find a home here.

That's why we say you can belong here, you will be loved here, even if you don't believe here, right?

We want you to have a space where you can come and wrestle and seek God, because we believe if you seek God, you will find God.

And I and I think we have some proof of that because we baptized 78 people six months ago, and we're gonna baptize over a hundred in a couple of weeks.

So this is what we're doing here, right?

And so you're welcome here, you wrestle here, the Holy Spirit gets a hold of you here, you are born again here, and then you start pursuing your purpose here.

And that's that's what we're doing.

But because of that, we have a lot of people who are not yet believers or who have only been believers for a very short time.

And I don't say this pejoratively, but we have a lot of baby believers.

Now, here's what's true um you can grow very quickly in the Lord because the Lord is supernatural and he will give you gifts.

There are some people who have been following the Lord for 40 years, but they never started growing since the time that they were baby believers.

And so we got some people who have been following the Lord for 18 months and they're more mature than some people who've been following the Lord for 40 years.

So don't get cocky if you've been there for a minute, right?

It is about taking it seriously and denying yourself and carrying your cross.

And some people, man, they they put their faith in Jesus and they go through the waters and they pick up a cross and they never put it down.

And some people, they want to play games and they want to play religion, and so they get stunted and they think they have grown because they can like quote a lot of Bible verses, but they don't live out those Bible verses, so I don't believe you, okay?

So, like, this is about actual growth and actually applying it and living it out.

And and what happens is because we have a lot of people who are new to the faith, and because by the end of today, you're gonna get an apology to me because I'm the leader of this church and we have not been fasting together, and that's my fault.

A lot of us have never done a real intentional fast.

And so this was actually like on page 10 of my manuscript, but I'm just gonna do it now.

That is my fault.

That is my fault, and uh, and I need you to know I am in a season where the Lord just has this hand of conviction on me.

And I will tell you part of that is because the leadership of MetaCurch has been fasting.

And because we have been fasting, we have been hearing from the Lord very clearly, and part of what happens when you start hearing from the Lord is the Lord exposes these blind spots in your life and sometimes in your leadership.

And fasting is imperative, it must happen.

And we haven't been doing that because I haven't been leading that, and I do want you to know that I'm sorry.

And and look, time only moves in one direction until Elon Musk gets us some kind of like time travel machine, you know, we're only going forward, and so as long as we're going forward, here's what we're gonna do.

We get conviction, you need to know this because some of you, uh, the Holy Spirit gives you conviction and you receive it as guilt.

And the Lord does not give you guilt because guilt just spirals you back into the same patterns that you were in.

And you you are so busy being consumed with guilt that you don't make any forward progress on the thing you need to correct.

And so I I I am not under guilt, but I am under conviction.

And time is only moving in one direction.

And when conviction comes into your life, you do something about it, you adjust and follow the Lord.

And so we have not been fasting, and that is my fault.

And I and I, if you could get in my heart for a minute, you would know how sorry I am about that.

Um, but as time moves forward, we are going to fast together as a church.

And we're gonna talk about what that means, and we're gonna see it right here in scripture.

And it's very interesting because we have this whole pattern, right?

We have Jesus in Luke chapter 3, he is baptized, the heavens tear open, the father affirms him, the spirit descends on him, and immediately he is led out and he goes into the wilderness.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

And I want us to look at this because there's so much that fasting is going to do for us.

Now, we are fasting for a specific purpose, which is biblical.

There's biblical precedent for that.

We are fasting to prepare our church and our hearts for baptism and to petition the Lord to fill up our tubs with lost souls who now know Jesus and to blow our minds with the outcome of that and to protect those baptized on the other side of it.

Amen?

But man, God is gonna show you so much more when you start really intentionally giving him this time.

And so we're in Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

I just want to get into it because I want to start pointing some things out in the text.

It says this then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.

Now, he is full of the Holy Spirit, and he's being perfectly led by the Holy Spirit.

Now we know this.

Jesus is God in human flesh.

And so Jesus' life is perfectly animated by the Holy Spirit.

He has perfect connection to the Holy Spirit, he perfectly hears the Holy Spirit, and because he is God, he perfectly obeys the Holy Spirit.

And we are not God, we are very broken, and yet you need to know if you have put your faith in Jesus.

Every believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit.

As a matter of fact, Paul tells the Ephesians, who seem to have some questions about this, that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day of the Lord, when Jesus comes back.

That means the Holy Spirit is like the guarantee that Christ will come back for you.

And like we learned last week, Jesus, who is the firstborn out of the grave, he is the first, he is not the last.

Jesus will come and he will snatch us out of our graves as well.

Amen.

That's good news.

That's good news.

We're gonna learn how to respond here at Metachur.

And he's led by the Holy Spirit.

And sometimes uh we feel like even as believers, we're not really tapped in and we're not really hearing from the Holy Spirit.

And so I'm not all that old.

You get real close to me, I have a lot more white hair than you think I do.

I'm I'm I'm in the generation who was born into cassette tapes and transitioned into CDs, okay?

I don't want to hear about your eight tracks.

I know you're older than me, okay?

I was born on cassette tapes and I transitioned into CDs.

I remember my first CD I ever owned, it was Dwight Yockum, Pocket of a Clown.

Shout out Dwight Yockum, all right?

That was my first CD because I was raised right.

Dwight Yolkum, alright?

Some of y'all don't know who that is, that's fine.

Uh he's the country of us, it doesn't matter.

We did not have iPods, we did not have MP3 players when we finally got portable CD players.

You couldn't put them in your pocket because every time your leg moved, it would start skipping on you, you know?

And so we would get, for like birthday presents, Christmas presents, even even in my back in my day, I can say that a little bit now.

Back in my day, uh, we would get portable radios, and they were not a digital interface.

You didn't click a button and it magically hit the perfect station.

There was a little dial, and you had to dial in your station.

And in between stations is what?

In between stations is static.

And so you gotta have a steady hand.

Boy, if you've got an ADHD like me and you can't really do really small movements, you know, and so you would find your station, and sometimes you could get it on there, you would kind of hear your song, but it would be song and static.

And for some of us, that's how we feel like we hear the Holy Spirit.

There's a lot of static.

And it's like, I'm pretty sure that was the Lord prompting me, but I'm hearing a lot of other things.

And our biggest problem today is distraction, you know.

And sometimes I've I've had Christians even ask me before.

It's like, man, when Jesus was on earth, people were like possessed by demons, you know, and it was just like crazy, and it was like poltergeist all up in here, and we don't really see that anymore.

It's like, look, the devil is smart, and the devil only puts in the work he has to.

And so he's like, bro, I don't have to do all that work.

The demons can just chill, bro.

I'll just put this in your pocket.

I will keep you so distracted, I will fill your life with so much static that you cannot tune into the spirit.

This is part of what fasting does, it pushes away distraction.

Makes us dependent on God, locks us in.

Now that's one reason.

I think this text actually points out another reason that we don't really fully hear, or at least fully follow, the Holy Spirit.

And it isn't because we always can't hear.

Some of you are really in the word, you are really trying to pray, which means not just talking and asking for things, but sitting in silence and listening.

You're really trying to pray without ceasing, or like all throughout your day, the Holy Spirit just becomes a part of every conversation.

So the problem isn't that you're not tuning in, the problem is that the prompting He's giving you is somewhere you don't want to go.

So let me point something out in this verse.

Jesus left the Jordan full of the Spirit, led by the Spirit, and he was led by the Spirit where?

Into the wilderness.

Now, some of you are like adventure, you know, campground, set up a tent, you know.

I will go camping in an RV, maybe, you know, if it's nice and if it's big enough.

Um some of you are if you're like bear grills, you get excited by the wilderness, you know.

For the rest of us, I'm out, bro.

I'm not interested.

And let me tell you, who really, really does not have any interest in the wilderness?

The Israelites.

The wilderness is where their generational PTSD comes from.

The wilderness is where their great-great-great-great-grandparents failed the temptations after the exodus and had to walk instead of a 14-day journey into the promised land, they had to wander for 40 years in the wilderness.

And so they're just not interested.

And you might find this interesting, but Jesus walks into the same wilderness where his ancestors wandered.

They failed the temptations, disobeyed God, and got stuck.

And Jesus goes out.

And we have seen this.

If you've been here in the series, we've spent a lot of time in Luke chapter 3, now we're in Luke chapter 4.

Luke 3 · chapter mention Luke 4 · chapter mention

We've already acknowledged this, that this whole scene is a replaying of the Exodus story.

They passed through the waters of the Red Sea.

Jesus passes through the waters of baptism.

They went out 40 years in the wilderness.

Jesus is going out 40 days in the wilderness.

They were tempted and failed.

Jesus is tempted but will succeed.

It is signaling that Jesus has come to redeem all things, that he is the new and perfect Moses, he is the new and perfect Israel.

All things are coming together.

And yet, we see this and we can celebrate it that Jesus was willing to go into the dry place, into the hard place to do the hard work, and that the Holy Spirit led him there.

The Holy Spirit didn't lead him to the temple, to the synagogue, to the palace, to the all-you-can-eat buffet, to the strip club.

He led him to the wilderness, and yet, when we see that in our own life, we often will reject it.

And you just need to know this.

Jesus didn't hide it from you.

If you want to really follow him, which means following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, you have to be ready every single day to deny yourself, to deny your own desires, your own preferences, to deny your own revenge.

You have to be willing to take up your cross, to willingly suffer on behalf of others, that's what Jesus did, and only then are you ready to follow.

And so often the Holy Spirit will lead you into the very place that you do not want to go.

The Spirit will lead you right into a conversation with the one person that you do not desperately do not want to forgive.

The Holy Spirit will lead you to confront the one sin in your life that you most desperately want to rationalize and to hang on to.

The Holy Spirit will lead you right into the situation where you are forced to learn dependence on God when you so desperately want to try and live life by your own strength.

It is the Holy Spirit when you are most furious with your spouse that is whispering into your soul that you need to go and put an arm around them and remind them how much you love them.

It is the Holy Spirit when you are most furious with your boss who is impressing on your heart and reminding you that your boss does not know Jesus and is not a believer, and you're the only Christian they know, and you've never had a better opportunity than to show them how Jesus actually operates.

And so the Holy Spirit will lead you into the wilderness.

But will you go?

And often we can't hear the Holy Spirit because we are so distracted.

Fasting will help you with this.

But you know what fasting also does?

It is you intentionally deciding to put yourself in a season of suffering.

It is you with intention practicing suffering for the cause of the kingdom.

It is you building a skill set of blocking out the distraction and going through hardship and learning to be dependent on God.

Not only is Jesus led into the wilderness, he is led into an extreme physical fast.

And so we see he was led in the wilderness, verse 2.

He was led there for 40 days to be tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, Jesus was hungry.

Jesus goes into the wilderness.

You notice the sequence, he is baptized, he's led by the Spirit into the wilderness, he fasts for 40 days.

That's an extreme fast.

And then he does battle with the devil.

And what does he do to prepare himself for the ultimate showdown between good and evil, between God and Satan?

What does he do to prepare himself?

He starves himself.

As we go through Luke, man, like we're just gonna see over and over and over that Jesus came and he flipped common sense upside down.

He flipped our kingdoms upside down.

If I'm Jesus' coach and I know he's gonna battle with the Prince of Darkness in 40 days, I'm like, here's the plan, bro.

Uh when we get about 10 days out, we're carbo loading.

All right, right now, 200 grams of protein a day.

Somebody give my boy some creatine, you know, to branch chain amino acids.

Here's what we're gonna do.

We gotta get some electrolytes, Jesus, because I need you hydrated when the Prince of Hell shows up, you know?

It's like we are gonna get you in peak physical condition.

And we think like this because we rely on our own strength and we walk in our own flesh.

What is the actual plan here?

Why?

Why, as Jesus gets ready to start his ministry, does he go to the desert place and starve himself?

You need to remember that Jesus came to earth, yes, to redeem us, yes, to make us new, but as he lived day to day, he came to model for us how we can live life on purpose and with purpose.

And there is a spiritual reality, and it is more real than the reality that you can see and perceive.

And we are spiritual beings who happen to be wearing a suit of flesh right now, and there is a spiritual battle that is going on.

For your soul, for your life, for your family, for your future.

And so, because of this, you need to know that when you step into calling, you can count on conflict.

When you step into your calling, you can count on conflict.

And some of this will feel like all of a sudden my kids have not been eating their Wheaties.

They are just extra bad for some reason.

And some of that may be because you don't say no and you're not setting good boundaries, and some of it could be spiritual attack.

And all of a sudden, old emotions, old people will show up in your life, old problems will resurface.

I've tried to be honest in the last six years, and anytime we do baptism, I tell you guys, we're getting baptized.

Sometimes on the other side of that water, your life's gonna get harder.

Sometimes the temptations will loom larger.

Sometimes the baggage from your past will show back up.

And here's why: because we are spiritual beings and we are living in a spiritual reality, and there's a spiritual battle going on for your soul.

And so when you put your faith in Jesus, bro, you can sit in your seat and close your eyes and be born again through a prayer you say in your head.

It's a personal decision.

But we ask you to go public with it to join us in the battle.

Not just to punch a card for heaven, but to actually take up arms and take ground for the kingdom of God.

And so when you get in the water, you are planting a spiritual flag for the kingdom of God.

And God is not the only one who takes notice.

And this is why I tell you get baptized at your venue.

If your venue is Petrenko, do not drive to Holotus to get baptized.

If your venue is Holotus, do not drive to Petrenko to get baptized.

We are trying to take ground for the kingdom of God.

We are planting flags across our city.

And so, how do you prepare yourself?

Because what you might be thinking is, bro, I gotta get ready, man.

And I gotta like spend time and I gotta get strong and I gotta get my mind right.

Bro, I've been wanting to do it.

You know what?

I'm gonna cold plunge in the morning.

Oh, I'm gonna cold plunge because that's what Joe Rogan does.

It's gonna make me so strong.

I'm gonna be so mentally strong if I cold plunge.

Maybe you should cold plunge, it's probably good for you.

That's not gonna do the trick, bro, because that's that's you in your flesh in your strength.

You know what Jesus did?

Starved himself.

You know what Jesus did?

He went out into the wilderness.

You know what Jesus did?

He allowed temptation to come to his doorstep.

We're gonna spend the next three of the next four weeks looking at these temptations in detail so you can know how to deal with temptation in your own life.

We're gonna come right out of baptisms equipping you how to deal with these temptations because you are stepping into your calling and conflict will come.

If you are going to handle spiritual conflict by your own strength in your own flesh, you might just lose.

Even if you have victory, it will be victory.

Oh, that you will white knuckle for as long as you can until you can't.

And Jesus goes, You want to know the actual secret?

Put yourself in a position to where you can only possibly depend on God.

The writers of the New Testament knew this.

Here's what Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 12, 9.

God said to Paul, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power, God's power is perfected in our weakness.

You want God to have his power explode through your life into your world.

It doesn't come through your strength, it comes through dependence on him.

We're gonna get to the Beatitudes later, probably in like 2034 or something like that, by the time we get to.

And it's just like, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn.

What is this?

All of this is like those who are not depending on themselves but have positioned themselves to fully depend on God.

You know what Paul said to the Ephesians?

You have to know this if you're gonna step into your calling.

He's like, Look, guys, I know you're under it, suffering is coming, like spiritual tension has come, conflict has come.

Paul's like, can I please remind you, our battle is not against flesh and blood.

If you're battling flesh and blood, fight it with flesh and blood.

That's not the battle.

Even the things that seem like they are coming to you in the natural realm have supernatural entities behind them.

And so we fast in part to learn dependence on God.

We fast because this is what Jesus did to prepare for his purpose.

And Jesus is the template, Jesus is the model.

I want to go to uh a really interesting part of scripture.

Where I really want to preach out of today is in the Old Testament.

It's one of the prophets, his name is Joel.

He wrote a very, very short book.

His story is very short, it's three chapters long, but it's important, and I think it mirrors where we are at as a culture in many, many ways.

What Joel teaches us is that suffering is not optional.

You will either surrender your life to Jesus, become completely in tune with the Holy Spirit, and every prompting you hear, you will follow, even if it takes you in the wilderness, even if it takes you in a hard conversation, even if it causes suffering in your life, you will suffer in order to build God's kingdom and to live your God-given purpose.

And suffering is not optional.

So you will either suffer in ways that are righteous and holy and will be rewarded.

And here's what's incredible: when you suffer for the Lord, you will be rewarded right here and right now with a sense of hope and a sense of peace that you simply cannot imagine until you have fully followed the Holy Spirit.

And when you begin to follow the Holy Spirit, you can be living in hell and have the peace of heaven inside of you, and there is nothing like it.

And when you decide you are going to avoid the difficult promptings of the Holy Spirit, you are going to rationalize them, you're gonna ignore them, you're gonna distract away from them, you're gonna self-medicate to forget them, you are going to suffer in the long run.

And you see, the suffering on behalf of Jesus, it is rewarded now, and someday we know that Jesus will come and establish his kingdom on the earth, and we are promised those who suffer for Christ will be greatly rewarded in that kingdom.

And those who avoid suffering, not following, not listening, not obeying.

If you always take the easy path, and you need to know this, sin is always the easy path.

Unrighteousness is always the easy path.

The calling and the paths of the culture, they're always easier.

Satan's lazy, bro.

All he wants to do is give you the easy path that leads to damnation.

If you've put your faith in Jesus, look, your eternity is secure.

But how sad that you can be headed to heaven in eternity and live in hell right now.

You do not get to choose whether or not you suffer, you get to choose whether it is redemptive and righteous or whether you are suffering as the natural consequence of not following the Lord.

And this is what Joel shows us.

So let me give you some context so I don't have to read the whole book.

Here's the context: Joel is a prophet to Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel.

And Judah has started playing games with God.

They're going through the motions, they're going to temple, they're giving a sacrifice, they're saying their daily prayers, they're kind of following the law, but they are not about it.

They do not love the Lord, they do not seek the Lord, they are playing religion to try and play God.

I'm gonna do the little XYZ so that I can demand something of God, and He is on the line for it because I have behaved the letter of the law, even though I don't care about the heart of the law.

And disaster falls upon Judah.

Joel tells us there are four waves of locusts, and by the end of the fourth wave, there is not one piece of produce on one vine or on one stalk in one crop in all of Judah.

Now that doesn't mean a whole lot to us.

It's like that sounds bad, but we get our produce at HEB, you know, so that's not like for us.

For an agrarian society in the ancient Near East, what this means is people are going to die, and lots of them.

They are in serious trouble.

And yet, the famine of food is not actually their biggest problem.

Their biggest problem is the famine of the soul.

They are not connected to the Lord.

And this is a real problem, and it's a different problem than we have today.

We do not have a famine where we are lacking food.

But I want to suggest we are culturally in a famine.

It's not only different, it is the diametric opposite of the problem in Judah.

We have what I want to call the famine of affluence.

We are not starving to death.

As a matter of fact, the number one health problem in our society is obesity.

We are not living in poverty like many of the residents of Judah.

As a matter of fact, we have so much stuff we cannot hold it in our house.

You know how I know this?

Because people are shocked when they find out we actually park our car in our garage.

They can't believe it.

Because we have so much stuff.

Our garage is where we put the stuff that can't fit in our house.

Did you know there are over 50,000 storage units across the 50 United States?

10,000 per state, and new ones being built every single day.

There is one next door to my neighborhood, and there is another one being built a quarter of a mile from my neighborhood because that one is full.

So we can't fit all our stuff in our house, so we put it in our garage, and when it can't fit in our garage, we go pay money to rent another garage to put our stuff.

It is the famine of affluence.

We are never bored.

Did you know that for most of human history, people were bored most of the time?

They had to use these weird things called um their brains.

They had to do this thing.

It's real, I know this is very old school.

It's very old school.

They had to like um uh conversate with people in person.

Isn't that weird?

Like sit down and have a conversation.

If we are bored for 1.3 seconds, it just scroll.

We just scroll.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

It is the famine of affluence, and it happens all of the time.

And so we suffer, not because we're following Jesus, we suffer because we cannot be inconvenienced, and following Jesus will inconvenience our lives.

We live with so much convenience that the slightest inconvenient, we are beside ourselves.

We are on Facebook, like, can you even believe this?

I have been 17 minutes without internet at my house.

Spectrum, what are you doing?

You know?

Does Spectrum hate me?

Is the world against me?

Is the devil attacking me?

No, bro.

It's just we are so affluent, we don't even know how to function.

And so we suffer not because we're being attacked by the devil, we're being attacked by our own affluence.

It's like the devil is probably not just against your marriage, it's just that you have had years and years and years to bring up the differences that you have and have healthy conflict, and you are so far down the line that that healthy conflict is no longer an option, and every time you try to approach it, it just blows up.

We don't want the inconvenience because we can just go find the easy path.

And so you start withholding intimacy, and so, husbands, we just jump uh on pornography and we deal with it that way.

And husbands, you are withholding love, and so wives go to work, and there's a man who treats them pretty nice, and all of a sudden there's an emotional attachment that belongs to your husband that's going to another man.

It's just the easier path.

And what the Holy Spirit is actually calling you to do is the very righteous and very difficult work of building a great marriage, but we don't want to be inconvenienced.

That sounds a lot like suffering.

We will not suffer for the Lord, so we will suffer as a consequence of not following the Lord.

We're under a mountain of debt in our finances, and we're like, Satan is attacking me.

It's like you have spent the last 35 years buying stuff you cannot afford because of an insecurity you will not let the Lord fill.

That is not the devil attacking you.

That is poor stewardship of the like almost endless resources that God has given us today.

And so we don't suffer for the Lord and put him first and say, this money, when it comes in, it goes to the Lord to break the chains of greed on my life.

This money right here is going into savings because I believe God has a good future for me.

This money right here is the only money I have, and it's the only money I will spend because I will not spend other people's money to try and impress people who do not hold my future in their hands.

And all of a sudden we are drowning in our finances and we blame it on the devil, and it is not the devil.

It is us refusing to do the hard work of suffering for the kingdom, and so now we are suffering the natural consequence of not following the Lord.

And it just repeats again and again and again.

And the most heartbreaking part is it is not because we are under-resourced, undernourished, underprivileged.

It is because we are affluent.

Here's a scary thought.

Judah finally came back to the Lord because they ran out of food.

We are overfed and we are spiritually undernourished.

And what's really scary is that we have so much that we believe we are our own gods.

We are one of the first generations in history that wants for nothing.

And when you have some basic wants, you tend to look outside of yourself and maybe even up to the heavens and wonder if there's someone who can provide it for you.

What happens when you have everything you need and more?

And so what happens for us is we don't run out of material resource.

We run out of spiritual resource, emotional resource.

It's the famine of affluence where we are drowning.

We are drowning in material goods, drowning in our food.

But eventually, the hope dries up, and our faith withers on the vine, and our anxiety and depression start rising.

And finally, finally, we're ready to look for someone else, something else, another option.

This is why in our culture today, most people finally find God at rock bottom.

And so God speaks to the prophet Joel, and Judah is in a very difficult position, and I want you to pay really close attention to what God has to say to them.

We are in Joel chapter 2, we're in verse 12.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

This is the Lord speaking through Joel.

The Lord says this, even now, turn to me with all of your heart.

Turn to me with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.

I just want to point out and make sure we don't miss the unbelievable mercy of our God.

That we run so far from him, we play so many games with him, we deny him, we try to live as our own gods, we rebel against him, we spit in his face day after day, and still he extends his arms of mercy to us.

Without that, I would not be here, I don't know where I would be, the path I was on, my guess is dead.

And yet his arms of mercy were stretched out to me as soon as I was ready to turn.

And when I turned, he was there, pursuing me the entire time.

Parents, I want you to think about this.

We know the story of the prodigal son.

You may end up with a kid who is a prodigal son, a prodigal daughter.

And kids don't really understand this because they don't they don't have enough perspective yet.

But as rebellious as the prodigal was, as far as he ran, as much as he rebelled every day, the father climbed the hill and looked to the horizon and stretched out his arms of mercy.

And our kids don't understand.

You know, if you're good parents, you're setting boundaries and you're holding them, and your kids hate you for it, and there's a lot of tension, and they don't understand.

It's like if they would just turn, if they would come back and truly turn around their perspective, their behaviors, you would finally be able to pour out your mercy on them.

But what does he say?

He says, turn with fasting, weeping, mourning.

You know this because you know your kids.

You know when they're behaving because they're trying to play you.

You know this.

You're a good parent, you know this.

It's like your heart is not contrite.

You are not mourning over your sin.

You do not actually regret your decisions.

You are still in your rebellion, but you're playing games with me to try and play me and get what you want.

And God says, turn back, but this can't be how it's been.

Where you go to the temple and you give your sacrifice and you say your prayers, but you're playing games because you're trying to play me.

You're trying to put me on the line to get what you want.

You have to come to me with mourning and weeping and dependence on me, because anything less than that is not change, and I'm not rewarding what has not changed.

And so turn to me, but do not turn to play games.

Turn for real this time.

This is what baptism symbolizes.

We go down, we are buried with Christ, and we die in that water.

Now, if you're new to church, I'm just gonna let you know you don't actually die in the water.

Just so you know this, we're gonna pull you up out of the water.

Spiritually, though, you are dying to your old so you can walk in the new.

You are dying to your sin so you can walk as a saint.

This is what God is asking for, and he makes it very clear in verse 13.

He says, This tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God.

For he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster.

I explained this back when we were talking about John the Baptist.

I actually quoted this verse.

You see, back in the Old Testament, some of the great heroes of the faith would come under conviction, and they would be so contrite, and they would mourn what they had done.

They would weep, they would fast, and they would tear their robes as a sign of contrition.

Now, like so many good things, the temple was a good thing, the sacrifices were a good thing.

All of a sudden, the good things become a game that people play.

So, people now in Joel's time, they weren't actually contrite, they weren't actually repenting, tearing open their hearts for God to transform them, they weren't mourning their sin, but this public act, they would go out and make sure there was a crowd, and they would wail and they would tear their robes, just like David did in the Old Testament.

And it was a show.

They're playing games with God.

I was like, no more games.

Keep your clothes on, bro.

I don't care.

I want to see your heart.

Uh, we're gonna fast together for 24 hours, a true water-only fast.

Can I just tell you, God, God is not impressed by you not eating for 24 hours.

God is impressed with the intention in the heart behind it.

God isn't like, bro, meta church, man.

What a bunch of stuff.

I can't believe 24 hours?

Y'all skip three meals?

Oh my goodness.

No, no, no.

If he looks down and is like, there is a movement who is putting themselves in utter and complete dependence on me, seeking me, praying, petitioning me, serious about their walks, serious about their faith.

Matthew, uh, in his gospel, he quotes Jesus, and Jesus is talking to these people, these same people existed in Jesus' day, who they were playing games with God.

And they would fast, and when they would fast, man, they would like not do their hair, and they put on old clothes, and they would walk around and be like, oh, bro, I'm so hungry, man.

I mean, I'm fasting, I guess, you know, so I'm real hungry, right?

Just getting attention, you know, virtue signaling.

Jesus is like, hey, when you fast, put on some nice clothes, comb your hair, and make it about your heart, not about attention.

I'm just letting you know right now, if during the fast somebody is on Instagram, like pouty face, caption, fasting, hashtag hungry, hashtag I love the Lord, I will lose it, bro.

I will lose it.

This is the wrong intention.

God's not impressed with a fast.

I'm running out of time, but in Joel, he turns a corner, and I knew I didn't have time to go into it because I already know I already just preached too long.

But at the end of Joel, he turns this corner and he stops talking about the locus, and he actually gets a greater sense of.

Urgency.

And he starts talking to them about the day of the Lord.

This is a term used all throughout the scriptures.

And the day of the Lord, we now understand after Jesus references when Jesus will return and will judge the world.

And there is a sense of urgency about this.

And this is partly why I am under the Lord's hand of conviction.

It's so strong on my life.

I'm just letting y'all know I'm not ready to talk all about it.

There are changes coming to how we do things at Metaturch.

Because I cannot stand under conviction and not do something about it.

We are going to begin fasting as a church because we are told to do so.

And that's what the church in scriptures did.

There are other things we are going to start doing.

We're going to get in rhythms that God has asked us to be in because, if nothing else, we are going to obey the Lord.

I don't care what culture says about it.

I don't care what the broader church community says about it.

Can I keep it all the way 100?

I don't care what you think about it.

I care what the Lord thinks about it, and we're going to do what the Lord says.

The day of the Lord is coming.

And I need you to understand this.

There was a prophetic timeline given to us in Scripture.

Every single thing is off the table.

There is nothing left to be fulfilled.

The Lord will come back.

It doesn't mean it is happening tomorrow.

What I need you to understand is biblically it could.

We are in the last days.

Now that means a lot.

That means a lot.

And I'll be honest with you.

We have been in the last days for about 2,000 years.

You know what Peter told his church?

He said, Y'all gotta calm down.

In heaven, one date is like a thousand years on earth.

It's been two days in heaven.

And the Lord will return, and none of us know when.

And if someone tells you they know when, they're trying to sell you a book.

They're grifters, they're trying to make money off of you.

You should immediately separate yourself from their teaching because they are going against what Jesus already said that nobody knows.

If they say they know, they are standing in opposition to the words of Jesus, just cut them out.

You can listen to other people.

Here is our job.

Our job is to have a sense of urgency like it could be today.

And so we gotta adjust, man.

And we gotta take this seriously.

And if you are a believer and you are just living for the world and you're just playing these games, you're playing games with God, bro, you're going to be standing in front of Jesus before you know it.

You are going to answer for how you stewarded the life that he gave you at the cost of his own life.

It is time to take our faith seriously.

If you are an unbeliever, we love you enough to let you know that you are not promised tomorrow and you are not promised your next breath, and there is only one decision that you will make in this life that has eternal ramifications, and it's time to get that right.

Jesus loved you.

You have separated yourself from your heavenly father.

I separated myself from my heavenly father through my sin.

That is what you have done.

And you cannot pay the price for your own sin.

You cannot climb the ladder to heaven.

That's religion.

Jesus did not come to earth.

God's stepping out of heaven and into our reality to offer you religion.

He said, I offer you a relationship, and it is not by your works of righteousness that you will attain it.

You will attain it through faith in the one who did what you could not.

Jesus Christ came, he lived the life that you could not, he died the death that you could not, he walked out of his own grave and you cannot.

But if you put your faith in him, he will come, smack you out of your grave someday.

And so here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna fast.

And we're gonna do this leading up to baptism.

I'm gonna preach about this again next week.

On Friday, the 24th, mark your calendars.

We are going to meet at our Petrenko location.

I want everyone at Petrenko at 7 p.m.

We can't actually fit everyone, we will figure it out.

I want everyone here.

And we are going to pray, we are going to worship, and we're gonna begin a 24-hour fast together at 7 p.m.

on Friday the 24th.

From 7 p.m.

that Friday to 7 p.m.

that Saturday, we're going to go water only.

Now please hear me, and I'm gonna be sending emails, so make sure you're in our database.

Uh, if you have a medical condition, if you are pregnant, you know, if you got something like that going on, then you can't go water only for 24 hours.

So what you need to do is pray and see how strict you can go.

Simple foods, lean meats and veggies, you know, cut out as much as you can to force dependence on the Lord for the rest of us.

We're going water only for 24 hours.

And we are praying together and we are seeking the Lord and we're petitioning the Lord for those who are getting baptized.

Friday night the 24th, 7 p.m.

It is time to show up.

This is another step of saying we are taking our faith deadly serious.

We are not playing games.

We are going to follow the Holy Spirit even if into the wilderness, even if into testing, even if into the dry place, even if suffering comes.

Please hear me.

You don't get to choose whether you suffer.

We live in a very broken, painful world.

You do get to choose how.

You can suffer with Christ, building his kingdom, and be rewarded in ways you cannot imagine.

Or you can avoid and ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

And you will suffer in ways that are unrighteous, that are not redemptive, and that are just the simple natural consequences of living apart from the Lord.

For those who do not know the Lord, if you are here at one of our venues or you're here online, time is of the essence.

My guess is the Holy Spirit has already gripped your heart and is calling you into this movement.

I'm ready today for you to put your faith in Jesus, raise a hand, we will baptize you on the 26th, and we will make the most of the time we are giving because the day of the Lord is approaching.

Let's pray as we close, cross our venues, bow your head, close your eyes.

I want to just leave space here at the end of service for anybody who does not yet have a relationship with Jesus.

What we are told is that we are born again through our faith.

You were born once into this world, a world of sin.

You are a sinner, so am I.

It is only the sacrifice of Jesus that can cover that sin.

And what he asks for is just our faith, becoming convinced and convicted that Jesus is who he says he is and has done what he claims to have done.

And if you believe that, that is all that you need.

And so across our venues, if you are here and you've never made a conscious decision to put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you a chance to do that right now, with everyone's eyes closed.

I want to ask right this second, for a moment of courage, right where you're sitting, to just simply raise your hand.

By raising your hand, this is a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that God sees and accepts your faith.

All of your sins have been covered, and that you've been given eternal life with your Heavenly Father.

What I want to do is very simply help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

And so for those who raised a hand, across our venues, I want to ask you to pray this with me.

And I'm gonna ask all the believers to repeat this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.