Sunday Recap @ da Chapel
Pastor Joshua Goodin
Matthew 8:1-4 (NIV)
“A Moment Like This”
You are better today because you had someone in your life criticizing you. Don’t get revenge when someone does something wrong to you, and turn the other cheek. In life you run out of cheeks, sometimes you want to smack someone back. Fasting is between you and God, go wash your face, don’t look like you’re hungry. Don’t worry about tomorrow, you have enough troubles, enough worries, today that you don’t have to be concerned about tomorrow. Too many of you spend time thinking about tomorrow and don’t finish the business of today. It’s never a problem until it comes to your community. In 2021 people are still being treated like they have leprosy, which is a societal problem.
There have been blizzards and it has been hot, but Philadelphia has never seen the floods that happened this week. If you looked at it with your natural eyes, you missed what God was trying to say. God can speak through earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis to get people’s attention back to the place where they are supposed to be. Anytime you endure flooding and fires the land needs some healing. Don’t allow the floods to distract you from remembering you are still losing lives every day through 2 pandemics. One with Covid and one with guns. Wake up and see the severity of your plight, and recognize the power you have, because of who you possess. What would the world look like if more people operated in the power of the Holy Spirit? It’s a tough feeling when you are pushed out. Good news, even when you push everyone away you can still hear from the Lord. Thank God for the isolation, because it was building you up and bringing you closer to him. Thank the Lord for the quiet time, you thought you were abandoned, but the Lord left you by yourself to remind you that he can hold you, keep you, and be a friend to you that will stick closer than any brother, that he is one that will keep his promises. Have you had some one-on-one time with the Lord? Even when you think you are alone, you’re never alone. Sometimes you don’t want to accept you are never alone because there are some things and some places you know you don’t want God to be with you in. Even when you think you’re escaping God’s presence, you can’t escape his presence. Even in the places that you think you leave God outside the door, he loves you so much he will protect you from yourself.
*If you’re going to have a moment like this you have to move beyond pride and show desperation. You know you are in need of help, but you allow your pride to paralyze you from asking. Everyone needs help sometimes. Understand that there is no one else that can heal your situation but the Lord. Stop wasting time going to people for solutions to your problems knowing they cannot solve them, and they cannot fix them. The only thing they can do is tell other people about them. When you recognize that the Lord can work it out, desperation is a good place to be. In your times of desperation, you are at your lowest. God honors you at your lowest moments. You have to get low in order for God to raise you up, your problem is you don’t want to stay low. God does his best work in low places. God does his work underground in low and dark places. Can you say that you are rooted under the ground? When problems come, annoying people come, betrayal comes it can’t move you or shake you. It may blow you but you have resilience on the inside of you, that when you get knocked down you get back up. Sometimes you have to break the rules to get your healing. How desperate are you to get an answer from the Lord, to break the yoke, to regulate your mind, restore your family, fix your marriage, or rebuild your finances? How desperate are you, you have to use what you got to get what you want?
**If you’re going to have a moment like this don’t mistake the can for the will. Just because you bring it to Jesus, doesn’t mean that Jesus wants to fix it. Sometimes the Lord has to keep you in broken places until you come to a point where you realize that his will has to be done in the situation. You may not like what the Lord took away from you, but in spite of what he took away from you, it was still a part of his will. Whatever he wills he can fix, restore and make it over again. You’re still crying, going through, and grieving what you lost, asking God to give it back, but he said it is not part of his will. He took it away from you to teach you how to lean on, rely, and depend on him alone. You have to be ok if the Lord says I’m not willing right now. You have to be ok when God says no and appreciate the fact that at least he responded.
***If you’re going to have a moment like this what’s known doesn’t have to be said. You have been waiting so long that you get discouraged, so God will do something immediately. Has God ever done something for you immediately? When you went to bed you had the problem, when you woke up the problem was gone? If you have something that you need God to move immediately stand up and turn around. As fast as you turn around is as fast as God can fix your situation, heal your brokenness, and change the plight of your predicament because you serve a God of turnaround. What the devil meant for evil God turned it around for your good.
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