Double the Portion

Good morning.

Man, let's uh let's pray.

Daddy, we do want more of you.

Uh thank you for desiring to give us more of yourself.

Um that's really all we need.

We just need you in our lives.

We need you in every part of our lives, in our marriages, our jobs, our families, our friends, every every place in life.

We just need more of you.

More of you fixes everything, makes everything great.

And so this morning we ask that you would give us as much of you as we can handle.

And we pray all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Have you ever had uh a moment in your life that you had an opportunity to just go for something?

An opportunity where if you wanted to, you you could pull out all the stops and just go hard 100% to experience something in the best way it could be, and you and you did that.

Has anyone ever had an experience like that?

It's one of the best experiences in life.

One of the things that comes to mind in my life, this is kind of a silly one, but uh, I've grown up a big fan of Duke basketball, and you can boo if you want to, it's okay.

I'm used to it.

Um, they lost yesterday, we're good.

I've grown up a big fan of Duke basketball my whole life, my little brother and I both, and uh it wasn't until I was about 23 years old that I had a chance to go see Duke play at Duke.

And if you know college basketball, it's kind of a big deal.

Cameron Indoor Stadium is where they play.

It's a it's a really legendary, historic stadium, and their fans are known just to go crazy.

They're called the Cameron Crazies, they paint their bodies blue, they look like idiots, and it's awesome.

And it wasn't until I was 23 years old that I had the first opportunity to go see Duke play at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

So here I have this opportunity, I'm gonna go with my brother.

And the question that we both had over the phone was, well, should we should we paint ourselves blue and all that?

And the answer was like yes, absolutely.

Otherwise, we would have felt like like we we left it short.

You know, we would have gone, we would have had the experience, we would it would have been great, but but we had to go, we had to go the whole way.

We had to go all out.

We couldn't, we couldn't hold anything back.

So we did that, and we went all out, we were painted blue.

Um, and it was honestly it was kind of embarrassing because we were we were actually a little more like geeked up than all the students, which is weird when you're not a student.

And so they were kind of looking at us like, oh okay, and we're like, we're just we're just big fans, you know?

It was weird, but it was great.

I have no regrets.

I have no regrets from that experience because I went all the way.

Same question, but a but a little twist.

Have you ever had a similar experience where you had an opportunity to go all out and give something everything you had to experience the most out of it, but you left it short.

You got nervous, you got anxious, you just thought of excuses, and at the last minute, you just kind of left it short.

You don't have to raise your hand, because I know we've all had experiences like that.

One one actually comes to my mind as well, it has to do with when I propose to my wife.

And God has blessed me.

I have an incredible wife.

She's amazing.

She's beautiful, she's smart.

She uh in fact, some of you guys that have started helping out with the nursery or the garden, rather, over in our kids' area have gotten to know her because that's something that she's doing.

And uh, and and just as an aside on that, uh, did anyone have a chance to check that out last week?

Is that not amazing?

Man.

God did some incredible things to pull all of that together, used uh used a ton of great people.

And one thing that we wanted to throw out there this morning is that what's happening over there with the kids each morning is amazing.

The vision that we have is the vision uh of Jesus talking about a mustard seed and how a mustard seed is the smallest seed, but it grows into a giant tree.

And it blesses all the birds and everything.

I mean, it's a tree that they can rest in.

And those kids are our mustard seeds, and every morning over there, they're getting watered with love and with the truth about who God is and and how much he cares about them.

And what we need is is we need more people to be the gardeners, to be the ones that are that are pouring love and truth and all those things into them.

And so if you can't, if you can do that, if that's something that excites you when you hear about that, you want to be a part of helping a ton of young kids experience God and go their whole lives knowing him, uh head to the info desk once we're done this morning and give us your name and information because we we need more people because we got a lot of kids and they need to know how much God loves them.

They need that.

So please do that if you can.

But but but that was an aside from me thinking about my wife.

I fell in love with my wife in high school.

Uh I actually, first time I saw my wife, I was 16 years old and she was 15.

We both played basketball for our school, and uh and she was on the girls' team, and I saw her from across the bus.

You know, it was a very romantic experience, a school bus and smelled funny and all that.

And uh and I remember I'd never met her before, but the girls played before the guys, and I was new to this school and new on the team, and I'm sitting in the stands watching the girls' game, and as high school guys would do, we're in a very deep conversation about which girl on the court we happen to think was the prettiest.

Um and I was actually in an argument with another guy because I thought that she was by far the prettiest girl on the court, and had no idea at that time that I would end up marrying her.

It's great, it's wonderful, it's romantic, it's it's awesome.

I fell really hard for Megan, and when I was a senior in high school, um we started dating.

I only had a few months until I was leaving for college and I was going a thousand miles away, which I'm sure her dad was really excited about.

And so I knew I had to act fast, I had to move.

And so I pulled out all the stops.

I mean, I was like, I mean, it was dates three times a week, and I spent a ton of money on them for for you know, a ton of money for high school.

You know, we went to Macaroni Grill, and it was like, this is fancy, this is this is great, that's a good place.

But but I I just I pulled out all the stops.

This one night in particular, I uh I stayed up really late, went to her house, drove there, and and in front of her house is this uh this huge you know driveway, and with with chalk, I wrote the words Megan is beautiful in huge block letters, you know, filled it all in, spent like an hour and a half doing it, and then I called her and I was like, hey, you need to look outside.

And she looks outside, and you know, I was like, oh my gosh, you're the sweetest guy in the world, you know, and all this kind of stuff.

And and I slowly over time lost that reputation, but I'm trying to get it back.

But but she was blown away by that, okay?

So fast forward, fast forward a few years, three or four years, and Megan and I went to college together, still in love, knew that we were the ones that that you know God wanted to be together in our lives, and I knew I was gonna marry her.

So I had bought a ring and I had planned a proposal that for her would have been really special and really big.

And what it was is I was gonna wait until school was out that year.

We were both still in college, and I was gonna wait until she went back back here to Georgia.

This is where she's from.

We went to college in Missouri, and so she's gonna come back to Georgia, she's gonna be at home for the summer.

I'm gonna be up in Missouri working, and I was gonna drive down unannounced late one night, and in the same exact spot in huge letters that were longer than her entire house, I was gonna write, Will you marry me?

Just like I had done three or four years ago with with Megan is beautiful.

And then she was gonna come outside and see it, and I was gonna be there with the ring, and she was gonna say yes, and it was gonna be great.

Right?

That would have worked, I think that would have been good.

I'm I'm not the most romantic guy in the world, but I I think the sentimentality of that, I mean, girls, would that have would that have been okay at least?

Yes, thank you.

So wait till you hear how I actually did it.

I proposed to begging in my dorm room on Valentine's Day, having gotten chilies to go and eating it in the dorm room.

I look at it now and I'm like, what?

What happened?

Why how did that happen?

And I can tell you how it happened.

This is what it was.

I had this whole plan, I was excited about it, I couldn't wait, and I just got I got impatient.

You know, I couldn't wait a couple extra months, and it was Valentine's Day, and which is you know a super surprising day to ask someone to marry you, and so I was like, Well, I I I'm just gonna do this.

And so I ordered chilies to go, and I picked it up, and I had it in my dorm room, and we ate it, and then I proposed.

And she said yes.

And it's awesome.

You know, and and even though that's a funny story, I uh like realistically, that's that's one of the biggest regrets I have in my life because I love Megan, and I I really believe she deserved an over-the-top proposal.

She deserved a big one.

I really believe that.

And and I, you know, for whatever excuses I had, I didn't do it.

You can't dwell on that kind of stuff and live on it, but I do regret that.

Because that was my, I had an opportunity, right?

That was one chance to ask her hand in marriage.

And I could have gone all out, pulled out all the stops, and done it in a big way, and I just I didn't.

For whatever reason, it doesn't matter what the excuse was, I just didn't.

And I really wish I could go back and do it differently.

And if they invented time machine, that is the first thing I will do.

I wish I could do that.

This morning, um, there's a story from the Bible that Steve shared about four years ago.

I grew up in church my whole life.

I never heard this story.

So when I heard it four years ago, it really jumped out to me.

It was something that I thought was really cool.

And it has sort of a similar bent.

And it's a story of a prophet from the Old Testament named Elisha.

And some of us, you maybe you've heard of Elijah.

Elisha and Elijah were closely related.

They were not like blood related, but they were they were kind of contemporaries of one another.

Um, Elisha was actually mentored by Elijah.

And Elijah was an incredible prophet.

He did some things in the Bible that are still some of the biggest stories that you know we tell you to kids whenever they're growing up learning about God.

There's a famous story of Elijah challenging, having literally throwing it down to all these other prophets of a false God named Baal.

And they meet up on this mountaintop, and Elijah, there's like hundreds of these prophets, he's the only prophet of God, and he says, okay, let's do this, let's let's put a sacrifice on this altar, and you guys ask Baal to burn this altar up and send fire from the sky.

And I mean, if he's God, if he's Baal, he'll do it.

And then I'll ask God after you're done.

So they get up there on the top of the mountain, and uh the prophets of Baal, man, they're they're screaming and yelling and dancing, and all 400, however many of them there were, all yelling out, and Elisha starts to Elijah starts to make fun of him and says things like, you know, maybe he's asleep.

Um, actually literally says, Maybe he's maybe he's using the restroom.

I'm sure he'll be back in a minute.

He says that.

And then he stands up and he says, you know, now it's my turn.

I want to show you who my God is.

And he actually says, Why don't you guys go ahead and pour water and just drench the entire altar?

Let's make this as tough as possible.

I don't want you to have any excuse and say, oh, it's a it was a dry day, and you know, that happens.

It was a fire, it has other explanations.

He says, No, I don't want there to be any question that this is God.

And so they do that and he he prays to God, and then instantly, fire from the sky burns up the altar.

Everyone's amazed.

That was Elijah.

So you can imagine doing things like that.

Elijah had a big reputation as someone who was close with God.

In fact, he's one of only two people in the Bible that we learn never ever died.

And God sent a chariot of fire, is what the people saw, and it picked Elijah up, and that's it was like a heavenly taxi service, and he's just there.

That's good.

That was very epic.

Elisha is a man who followed in his footsteps.

And there's this uh there's this story of Elisha later on in his life.

He's been a prophet of Israel for a long time.

And he has a last encounter.

This is really the last moments of his life.

And he spends those last moments with the king of Israel at that time.

A man's name was Jehoash.

And this is found in 2 Kings 13, 14 through 20.

It says, When Elisha was in his last illness, King Jehoash of Israel visited him, visited him and wept over him.

My father, my father, I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel, he cried.

It's kind of an interesting thing to say.

Elisha told him, Get a bow and some arrows.

This is a weird conversation so far.

Get a bow and some arrows.

And the king did as he was told.

Elisha told him, Put your hand on the bow.

And Elisha laid his own hands on the king's hands.

And then he commanded, Open that eastern window, and he opened it.

Then he said, Shoot.

So he shot an arrow.

Elisha proclaimed, This is the Lord's arrow, an arrow of victory over Aram.

For you will completely conquer the Arameans at Aphak.

And at this time Israel was under duress, had been attacked by this other nation, and they're kind of in trouble.

And then he said, Now pick up the other arrows and strike them against the ground.

So the king picked them up and struck the ground three times.

But the man of God, Elisha, was angry with him.

You should have struck the ground five or six times, he exclaimed.

Then you would have beaten Aram until it was completely destroyed.

Now you'll be victorious only three times.

Verse 20, then Elisha died and was buried.

Those were his last words.

You'll only be victorious three times.

This is such a strange story.

Because at first glance, it looks like this king does exactly what Elisha asks him to do.

He gets the bow, he shoots it, he gets the arrows, he strike him on the ground.

He's like, okay, done.

And when he strikes him on the ground three times, Elisha looks at him and goes, What are you doing?

Three times?

You should have struck five or six.

Why did you leave it short?

Now Elisha's anger almost seems inexplicable.

Seems kind of crazy.

But it's until you know more about Elisha's story that you understand why he got as angry as he got.

Because we said earlier that Elisha followed Elijah.

And in 2 Kings 2, 7 through 14, we learn the story of when Elisha took the reins as God's prophet, so to speak.

It says fifty men from the group of prophets also went and watched from a distance as Elisha and Elijah stopped beside the Jordan River.

Then Elijah folded his cloak together and struck the water with it.

The river divided, and the two of them went across on dry ground.

When they came to the other side, Elijah said to Elisha, Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken away.

Elijah knows that his time has come.

So he says, What can I do for you before I'm taken away?

And here's what Elisha says.

Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor.

You've asked a difficult thing, Elijah replied.

As they were walking alone and talking, suddenly a chariot of fire appeared, drawn by horses of fire.

It drove between the two men, separating them, and Elijah was carried by a whirlwind into heaven.

Elisha saw it and cried out, My father, my father, I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel.

And as they disappeared from sight, Elisha tore his clothes in distress.

Elisha picked up Elijah's cloak, which had fallen, and he was taken up.

And then Elisha returned to the bank of the Jordan River.

He struck the water with Elijah's cloak and cried out, Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?

Then the river divided, and Elisha went across.

The reason that Elisha got so frustrated with the king was because the king was in the same exact position that Elisha was in years before.

Elisha's time was coming to an end, just like Elijah's was.

And Jehoash was the one that was going to replace Elisha.

And so he comes to him, and what does he say to Elisha?

He says the exact same thing.

The exact same thing that Elisha had said.

When Elijah was taken away.

The king said, My father, my father, I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel.

You can imagine that when Elisha heard the king say that, his eyes lit up.

He remembered exactly what he had said when that happened, and he says, Oh, yes, this is it.

He's the one that's going to take over from me, and he's going to lead Israel, and Israel's going to be victorious.

He was excited, and he gives the king the same opportunity.

Albeit in a little different way, but the same opportunity that he had.

But instead of being like Elisha and saying, I want more.

I want double.

The king just settles for less.

And Elisha was furious because the king could have had more.

He could have had a complete victory.

But he held back.

It's amazing how often, you know, we have moments in life where if we want to, if we really grasp the fact that our God, our daddy, wants more for us.

And we just ask him for what he already wants.

We could have it.

I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this.

I know I have, where I pray, and I almost feel bad asking God for something that to me feels big.

Like I'm being selfish or like it's a big thing to ask.

The first experience I ever had in my life of God answering a prayer in a way that sort of made me go, oh wow, okay, this is okay, God's real.

Was actually when I was I was here about probably about four or five years ago.

And at the time, the arena, which is what we call our student area, because you know it sounds cool, um, we didn't have any furniture in the lobby.

And we really wanted to make it a place where the students would come in and just be like, man, this is awesome.

We want to hang out here, we want to be here, we wanted to have that vibe.

And and and as a church, you know, we don't spend tons of money on stuff.

We're we're we're really budget conscious, and we just didn't have it in the budget to spend all this money on furniture.

And so um I prayed about it.

I was encouraged by someone else to just pray and ask God for what we needed, and I had looked up some stuff that I wanted, and I thought, you know, it would take about$3,000.

So I prayed that.

I prayed specifically,$3,000.

If it's your will, God, can you give us$3,000 for the for the youth?

And I even wrote it down.

I don't really do a lot of journaling, and it's something I've tried to do at different times, and I just don't stick with it that often.

But at that point in time I was doing that.

I was journaling prayers and stuff, so I actually wrote it down, I wrote the date.

Well, months go by, and I honestly had forgotten about it.

I didn't talk to people about it, I didn't even tell my wife about it.

About three or four months later, I was here at the church one day, and this letter comes in the mail, and it comes from this woman who had a student in the youth group at the time, but I didn't know her very well at all, never really talked to her.

And she just said she was praying, and she really felt that God was leading her to give um some money to the youth group specifically.

And I open it up and it's a check for$3,000 exactly.

Okay.

My first, my my first thought was like, yes, I agree.

I had the same reaction, I was blown away.

I was like, man, this is I never had God answer a prayer like that before.

It was really, it was really amazing.

My second thought was why I didn't ask for$10,000.

You know?

I had the opportunity, I held back.

$3,000?

Oh.

And I, you know, I say that, I say that half joking because uh God gave exactly what he wanted to, and it was it was a huge blessing.

And um the the part about that that's not joking is that honestly at the time, I felt, I felt weird asking God for$3,000.

I would have felt, I would have felt so unworthy or just wrong to ask him for$10.

That would have been ridiculous to me.

And the sad thing is, it's taken me a long time, and I'm still learning this.

It's just like a daily thing, that God wants more for me than I want for myself.

You know?

He wants my marriage to be better and more free and more romantic and exciting than I want it to be.

He wants my son to be more successful and more healthy than I even want him to be.

He wants this church to be stronger and closer to him and more of a family than even any of us want it to be.

He wants more for us than we want for ourselves.

Elisha understood that.

And it's not crazy to ask God for big things.

To Elisha, it was crazy to hold back.

It was insanity to him to not ask for more.

Because he had experienced God giving more.

Right before Susan walked off the stage and you know, singing this song and talking about God giving us more.

A couple years ago on the on the youth road trip, that was our theme for the week.

It was two two years ago, actually, on our our annual summer road trip that we take all the high schoolers on.

Our theme was the word more.

And we challenged and asked our students, said, please, if you want more of God, ask him for more.

And I actually felt kind of like I was taking a risk saying that, which is really funny for me to think about that now.

But the thing about it was we didn't have this big emotional moment planned.

We didn't have this night planned where we were really gonna pull hard at their heartstrings and kind of create an environment that might make them have this emotional, you know, moment where they're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna do this.

We just said, God, we believe that you want them to have more.

Because I wanted them to have more of God, and if I wanted them to have more of God, of course God wanted them to have more.

So we just said, okay, God, we believe you want them to have more, so we're just gonna ask for more.

We're gonna ask them to ask you for more, and now it's on you to give them more.

So the first night went by, nothing big happened.

In fact, the only thing that really happened was I had a lot of students come to me and express frustration because they were asking God for more and they were getting nothing.

And I'm kind of like, God, you know, please do something.

And the last night we were there, the last night we were there, the very last song of worship, something just erupted with that group of kids.

And all of a sudden, this group that never really worshipped much before, we would do worship and they would kind of sit there and a few of them would sing, but it was pretty calm and quiet.

And there's nothing wrong with calm and quiet, you know, but teenagers are rarely calm and quiet, so that's that's actually scary.

If you walk into a room full of teenagers and they're all calm and quiet, you're like, What happened?

What happened?

Okay, so they're supposed to be crazy.

The last song, God just showed up and they just erupted, and it was it was it was amazing.

I I was actually taken aback.

I was in the back of the room and my eyes were open, and I was just like, I've never seen this happen with these kids.

And then they came back and they brought it in.

I hear all the time people say that the high school students, when they worship, it really blesses them because they're so into it.

And that happened because they asked for more.

And God gave them more.

That's why it happened.

That's God.

So, what does that mean for us?

I'm guessing that in this room there there's a pretty good percentage of us that either want to have a better marriage, better relationship with our kids, better job or a better situation at our jobs, better financial situation.

We want freedom from an addiction.

All of us have something like that.

And it's a new year.

It's a brand new year.

Make this the year that you ask God for what you want and actually ask him more.

It seems crazy to us.

You know, if someone was a basketball player and they asked God to be twice as good as Michael Jordan, people would be like, that's asking a lot.

Because if you if you just ask to be as good as Michael Jordan, great.

That's gonna go really well for you.

You know?

If if you're starting a company and you and you're like, I want to be twice as visionary as someone like Steve Jobs.

Like twice as visionary as Steve Jobs?

Have you seen the iPad?

Come on.

It's cool.

Just be okay with being just as visionary.

Twice as visionary, that's greedy.

Right?

If you're a loving person and you want to impact people, you're like, God, I want to I want to be twice as loving and giving as Mother Teresa.

That just that's blasphemous.

You know?

What are you, who are you to ask such a thing?

But Elisha asked to have a double portion of the Holy Spirit than a prophet who had done more things than really any prophet before him.

I mean, at least as much as as much as any prophet.

I mean, he was a legend.

In fact, today they they still leave a seat.

You know, Jewish people will still leave a seat open for Elijah for his return when they when they get together for Passover and things like that.

It's that's how big of a deal Elijah is.

And so Elisha has the audacity to ask for twice that.

But guess what happened?

He got it.

He got twice.

He got what he asked for.

I know it's easy for me in my marriage to look back at a time when we were younger and you know whatever, and say, God, I wish it was like it was back then.

Has anyone ever thought that to you?

You don't have to raise your hand because you're sitting next to your spouse, don't do that.

But but you've ever looked back and say, God, I can can our marriage just be as good as it was 10 years ago when we first got married?

Don't ask that.

God can, can my marriage be twice as good as it ever was?

Whenever you think about your family and your kids and your finances, your job, all those things, don't ask for it to be as good as something you've seen.

Or as good as you think it could be.

Ask for double that because you gotta trust that what you have thought of as being the best is not what God has thought of as being the best.

What he dreams for you is bigger than what you dream for yourself.

So ask him for what he desires for you.

And just trust that twice as good as what you've ever desired is probably safe.

But it might even be more.

That's how much he loves you.

Because he's your dad.

It's hard to do, though, isn't it?

It's hard to ask.

But Jesus said we have not because we ask not.

This is gonna be a big year.

I believe it's gonna be a big year at this church, and I think it's gonna be a big year in all of our lives, especially if we just start asking God to give us what he already wants to.

Double what we have ever expected for ourselves.

So let's just pray and go to him right now and ask for exactly that.

In fact, if the worship team wants to come up.

The last time I did this, the worship team didn't come up, and I said that.

Is the worship team doing that this morning?

Are you guys?

Yes! Yes, all right, worship team.

Oh Daddy, we love you so much.

And uh, remind us every single day that we are your children.

We are your kids.

And all of us who are parents know that we desire more than our kids even desire for themselves most of the time.

And remind us that you're the same way with us.

You love us, you're crazy about us.

You came, you died for us, you would do it again in a heartbeat.

You would have done it if it was just for one of us, and you you would do it all over again.

You love us that much.

I pray that this morning you would give all of us the courage, because it takes courage for us for some reason, the courage just to ask you.

Not for what we think would be good, but for twice of what we have ever hoped for or dreamed of.

In our marriages, in our finances, in our jobs, in our families, our relationships with our kids and our parents, in school, for those of us that are students, in an area of our life that we we need more self-control in, that we need to be freed from something.

Give us the the courage and the and the freedom to just ask you for twice what we've ever asked for ourselves.

We love you, we trust you.

Amen.