Wednesday, June 26 – Unstuck
Pastor Jerry Sellers
OpenDoor Church, Burleson, TX
God is passionate for you to experience, for you to gain all the Freedom that He gave up for you to have. Yet many believers in this process on the road to reach their identity, find themselves time and time again getting stuck. What if that is you? Or what if you know a loved one or friend who is stuck…Let me ask you this…
Do you understand what Jesus was saying in
John 14:6 (NIV)
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 8:31-32 (NIV)
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
Freedom: The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved; to be loosed from bondage or captivity
So if we discover Truth we understand that it’s not limited to a concept but it’s truly found in a person…Jesus is truth…Then truth discovered gets us unstuck.
Heres what would be good for us to understand about being stuck and how discovering Truth get’s us unstuck…
We become enabled
Ephesians 3:20 (NIV)
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…
We become empowered
Ephesians 3:20
…according to his power that is at work within us..
Truth enables us and empowers us to get unstuck in the processes and the ups and downs to our identity. Cause Truth is not a concept it’s a Person. We have to realize its just not uncovering something new a fresh Revelation, a new teaching or more Bible studies. Those are good and we need to do those things but when advancing in the Kingdom there needs to be a Relational Journey and that this comes in 2 parts
1 There is a great value for knowledge…Truth being made know or aware
2 Then there is encounter…With out a living encounter of the Truth our learning and discovery becomes only Academic and Powerless…which means no fruit or transformation
Disappointment occurs when our experience of Truth is less or below our knowledge of it. People find themselves stuck when they think Breakthrough requires more understanding, knowledge, study, research ….
No matter how good the material is, even when its the bible the word of God, we still have to have relational encounters with its Author for it to bring life breakthrough movement Freedom.
What if our Bible Studies, small group meetings and studies, Worship services and sermons, conferences…
What if they created
What if they manufactured
What if they spurred you on to an encounter of what you are hearing, reading, studying, signing
These encounters are not to be the end all. They are to open each of us up to Taste…To SEE…To experience…To Understand…To desire….To Want More.
We are to Hope; What is another way to say Hope?
To Expect More…
The Moses Principle: More wants more
I think we can safely say that few human beings have experienced God on this earth to the extent that Moses did. From meeting God in the burning bush, to parting the Red Sea, to watching manna fall from heaven, Moses saw much of God. In fact, after Israel’s escape from slavery in Egypt, God made it clear that Moses was the bearer of a special privilege when it came to God’s presence.
After leading the Israelite people to Mount Sinai through the Red Sea and away from Pharaoh’s army, God met with Moses on top of the mountain in a thick cloud.1 Strict rules were given before God descended upon the peak. These rules prohibited anyone from setting an inch of their person on even the foot of the mountain.2 The penalty for such an action was death. No one was to enter into this unique presence of God except Moses. Like one of those nightclubs with a line of people outside waiting to get in, God unfastened the rope from the stanchion and invited Moses into his presence. This was VIP territory.
The thick darkness of God scorched the top of the mountain like a consuming cloud. The people were terrified. But Moses entered in, and he spent time on the mountain with God. Moses experienced what it was like to behold a level and an intensity of the presence of God that you and I cannot even fathom. But the more of God he got, the more of God he wanted.
Even on the mountaintop, more wants more.
God finished giving Moses some instructions when Moses made a unique and audacious request. “Please show me your glory,” Moses said (Exodus 33:18). What? Hadn’t he seen enough? Had the glory of God not been made manifest to him in manifold ways? Was the staff-to-serpent trick not enough for Moses? What about when God defied nature to push the flat and flooded sea up like walls and dried up the perpetually soaked sea floor so that it was like concrete? Was that not enough glory for Moses to behold?
He entered into the cloud of thick darkness on top of Mount Sinai. He went into the places of God where no human being had ever been. He spoke with God like one human speaks with another. He moved from general presence to relational presence to visible presence. After all this, had he not seen enough of God’s glory? Apparently Moses had not.
This is the Moses Principle: more wants more.
The presence of God had tossed the soul of Moses high into the air, and he wanted to sail higher still. The nearness of God tickled the heart of Moses, and he wanted to laugh more deeply still. The more Moses got of God, the more Moses wanted of God. The more we experience of God in this life, the more of God we will desire. That is the Moses Principle.
Most of us have been conditioned to Expect Less not more. We expect to get stuck in the struggle and come to anticipate that life will be hard and relief is reserved for only when we are in Heaven.
Can I make this clear that is not who the Father is? He is the God of
John 10:10 (NIV)
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Philippians 4:19 (NIV)
And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
Jeremiah 33:3 (NIV)
‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God is good and He desires us to continue to have Encounter after Encounter with him.
He desires to flood us in Truth (The fullness of Him) and the Truth of who He is to us and to wash away all our concerns and reservations about yourself that doesn’t measure up to how He views and knows us.
What if on our journey there is 100’s of Encounters for us to have in God with God and so far you have only accessed just a few. What if He has been so creative is His expression that we have failed to realize or recognize many encounters where actually Him.
People become Stuck because they don’t see as the Lord does. I wonder if the Lord is inviting you and me to become unstuck and our encounters and experiences with the Lord are vital to bring us through this process.
What if the new Upgrade goes beyond Questions to having encounters. The Bible is full of normal Ordinary people who had extraordinary encounters and became extraordinary themselves in the process. the qualification or requirement is not bound to age or restrictive to skill or ability or IQ.
Its being receptive at the right place at the right time to discover to be aware new and wonderful in Jesus.
Delight yourself in the Lord share with Him the desires of your heart with the confidence and Joy that it is as stated in
Luke 12:32 (NKJV)
“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Accept His invitation to become unstuck through your encounters with Him.
So let’s unpack How Encounters and Experiences with God occur and how they don’t. Let’s get an understanding 1st… that it is God who is the initiator of our spirituality. Our devotional life is our response to Him to His invitation.
That means the responsibility for the experiences with the Truth in never on us it rest solely on Him. When other say I try to have God encounters but they never happen the reason they don’t ism found in the word TRY.
There is no trying on our part. When we think the responsibility for connecting with the Father is on our shoulders it turns into a life choking yoke. It’s fruit is stress, discouragement, and burn out.
One of my favorite Truths is so amazing. It’s often that I remind myself that Jerry there is nothing I can do that would make The Father love any more than He already does. And there is nothing that I can do to make Him love me any less.
The Father say’s,”I love you because I love you because i love you because that is what I am like, that is my heart and nature toward you.
It’s the same with our encounters with the Father. He will be the initiator and our part is to be present, aware, looking expecting wanting, and in this place we do it with rejoicing.
By doing this we are cultivating a greater sensitivity to how He is always present with us. And at any given moment an encounter can happen. God is the initiator of all spirituality. It’s completely up to Him how He chooses to make Himself known.
We are the responders meant to live a responsive life to His love, His goodness, and His grace. It’s staying in an attitude of thankfulness. Thanking Him for who He is, rejoicing in His potato, kindness, and faithfulness.
Being still in that place and that posture, focusing on knowing that he is God and is also our Good Father. Knowing that Jesus loves you, me outrageously and that we are the Holy Spirit delight. They are all in it together. Its a complete package reserved for you in the encounters. Can’t you see the encounters is what allows you and I to engage in what He has for us and what He wants us to experience.