Pastor Troy Brewer, OpenDoor Church, Oct. 10, 2021
Proverbs 19:15 – Laziness will cast a man into a deep sleep and idle man will suffer hunger.
One translation says, “An idle man will not see the harvest.”
One of the worst things that can be said about anybody in the Kingdom is that you’re idle/
No passion, no ability to overcome, no vision, no motivation—just comfort. An ability to see the chance to honor the King and His Kingdom ….
Kingdom people are not like that.
In the 1970s, there was a boy in east Sussex, England named Billy Broad. Who would not do his school work and his school teacher sent a note home to his parents with one sentence.
Billy is idle. BILLY IDOL was idle. He was unmotivated. He was a crude dude in a rude mood and he didn’t feel like doing any school work.
One of the worst things that can be said about you is that you’re idle. You refuse to move forward. There is no progression in your life.
It’s a curse to be idle and the church is saturated with people who will not get up and move forward. And like the curse that was put on Ruben, they will never progress.
Genesis 49:4 – Unstable as water, you shall not excel
THE CURSE WAS NOT THAT HE WAS GOING TO GO BACKWARD. THE CURSE WAS THAT FROM THAT POINT, HE WOULD NEVER GO FORWARD.
The sin of idleness is a big theme throughout the Bible. In the Word, there are two fields that God commands us to never be idle in:
The Battlefield and the Harvest Field
The battlefield is the first one. It was BECAUSE of the sin of idleness that spun David off into a nightmare that would affect him for the rest of his life.
2 Samuel 11:1 – It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel;
For the rest of your life, you’re going to be a warrior. Christians do not retire from being warriors.
There’s not a one of us in this room that’s ever gonna stop being a warrior because there is not a one of us in this room that’s ever gonna stop being a winner.
Always the warrior – Always the winner.
Fight for your freedom, your marriage, the supernatural presence of God. Fight for your peace, your sanity and the impact you make in the lives of others around you.
The other field that God commands you to never give up in—to remain vigilant and proactive in is
The Harvest Field
Proverbs 10:5 – He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.
You will never live and honorable life of impact if you do not fight for the harvest field.
If you are upset because a lot of true Christians are selflessly and fearlessly demonstrating redemption and the goodness of God, you can fear and tremble over the approval of men in your quarantine crate. The rest of us will will the kingdom stuff and see the harvest!
This is the new normal!
Genesis 8:22 – “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
In other words, seedtime and harvest —“sowing and reaping”—are as unchangeable and predictable as day and night.
Engagement, work, the boldness to intervene. Accepting the permissions and the commands of the King. Living life forward… these air themes for the harvest.
You can never take it for granted that a harvest is just going to happen. You have to be willing to work towards and participate in the supernatural.
There are three main parts to bringing in a harvest for the Lord:
1. Partnering with God through seasons
2. God is a great rewarder
3. It’s all about multiplication
LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING THAT WILL MOTIVATE YOU TO DO BETTER, REACH FURTHER, GO HIGHER, ADVANCE, CONQUER AND DOWNRIGHT BE A WINNER IN ALL THINGS OF YOUR LIFE.
GET A REVELATION OF STEWARDSHIP OVER OWNERSHIP
FRESH FROM THE BREWER By Troy Brewer
THE OWNER OF THE HOUSE
Back in 2009 in Marbella, Spain, a group of burglar punks broke into a mansion in a very ritzy neighborhood behind a gated community. After beginning to ransack everything they found the Mama of the house hiding and terrified. She tried to get away from them but they caught her, tied her up and began taunting her like punks that break into houses do. Things were excavating from really bad to extremely bad when all of the sudden, they dropped everything and ran for their lives.
They didn’t take a single possession. They just ran out as fast as they could and nobody has seen them since.
The game changer was not a big dog or the arrival of the SWAT team. They had come across a family picture on the mantel and a revelation dawned on them. The owner of the house they were trashing and the husband of the wife they had tied up and terrified was Dolf Lundgren.
Dolf Lungren, 6 foot five, muscled up actor and pretty much world famous genius. Yes, that Dolf Lungren. He claims that the rumors of his I.Q. being north of 160 are exaggerated. His degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering and the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship he received to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest he’s just being modest. Plus, he speaks seven languages, though “only” three fluently.
A disciple of Kyokushin karate, Lundgren won the European championships in both 1980 and 1981 before taking down the Australian championship in 1982. Yes, that Dolf Lungren.
They guy who nearly killed Sylvester Stallone in the making of a movie. Yes, that Dolf Lundgren.
During filming, after Stallone had the idea to stop faking it and fight for real for just 15 seconds or so of film footage, Stallone got pounded so hard, it put him in the hospital.
In a 2006 interview, Stallone revealed that he was at a London hospital for nine days with life-threatening injuries to his heart. The insurance company backing the movie didn’t want to pay Stallone’s claim because they said the injury was more in line with a head-on car crash. “I said, ‘Well, have you seen Dolph Lundgren? That’s a truck. That’s a steering wheel. That’s a head-on collision,'” Stallone told Entertainment Weekly. “They honored the insurance claim.”
Once they decided they understood who owned the house they got a revelation that it wasn’t OK to ransack it.
One of the key principles of my life is the principle of stewardship over ownership. The revelation that I really don’t own anything but that God has trusted me to steward with what He actually owns. Its huge. It keep me focused and sometimes it even keeps me from doing really stupid things.
I don’t own my family or my marriage, I am just a steward. A guy who has been trusted with such an awesome gift. when I stop to consider that God Almighty actually owns all things, my life, my ministry, my marriage, my body, my mind…I get a whole new revelation of how I am supposed to take care of things instead of ransack it.
We all know what a King is and when we hear the term King of Kings that makes sense to most of us. But have you considered the term Lord of Lords? A Lord is an owner of land that other people are on. Lord of Lords means the One who owns everything.
As a Pastor of a church I know that I don’t own anything there except the responsibility to make sure His house looks more like heaven than it looks like hell. Someday I will hand it back to Him and there had better be a good return for His investment.
But I want you to know that it is that way in all things we have our hands on. We were all born making a fist and we all die with our hands relaxed and open, with nothing in it to take with us. Who is the Owner of the life you and I are now Living? Jesus Christ, Yes that Jesus Christ.
Revelation 19:16 – And He has a name written on His robe and on His thigh: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
What do you mean when you say God owns my money, He owns my life, my marriage, my thinking, etc. How can He?
When we say that God owns everything, we are acknowledging His rights as creator in accordance with the Scriptures. The Bible says,
Psalms 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it”
Whatever we have has come from the Lord’s hand, and only indirectly by our earning it (1 Chronicles 29:14).
Our LIFE belongs to us in the same way that a child’s bedroom belongs to the child. The room actually belongs to the parent, but the child is given temporary, accountable charge over it.
TEMPORARY ACCOUNTABLE CHARGE
This is especially the case for Christians, who have been bought at the price of Jesus’ death (1 Corinthians 6:20). Our lives and all our stuff is utterly at the disposal of the God who bought us.
THE VINEYARD BELONGS TO THE LORD
THE WORKERS BELONG TO THE LORD
THE HARVEST BELONGS TO THE LORD
LET US HUMBLE OURSELVES UNDER THE INCREDIBLE TRUTH THAT OUR LIVES DO NOT BELONG TO US.
WHEN WE SUBMIT TO JESUS WE ARE MERELY ALLOWING THE OWNER OF THE CAR TO HAVE THE STEERING WHEEL.