Get Ready, Week 1
Tim Rivers | November 6, 2022
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Transcription
Tim: Man, I am excited to be here. We are kicking off a new series today called Get Ready. I want to address last week.
Congregant: Come on.
Tim: We finished the series called Change is Coming, and I got a little excited, maybe just a little carried away. I know it makes some people feel uncomfortable, but I guess I'm just of the mindset that I refuse to give anything else more praise than God. I love the Cowboys, you know what I'm saying, but they ain't got nothing compared to what God can do. God never loses a Super Bowl. Oh, Lord. I'm going to try to behave today.
Go with me to the Book of 1 Kings Chapter 18. I'm really excited about today because generally speaking, when you hear a message like last week, which is about what God wants to do, we leave out of here and if you anything me, I was on a spiritual high for the rest of the day, really for the rest of the week. I was walking on clouds. At some point between when God speaks and the fulfillment of His word, there's a human responsibility in between. It's not just enough to hear about what God's going to do, but there is a season that you walk through where God is preparing you to receive what He said He was going to do in your life. That's what we're going to talk about today.
1 Kings Chapter 18. Let me just say how cool God is because I really felt led to this passage Scripture which I read last week. Then getting ready, even this morning, I was like, "God, is this the right Scripture?" Then Juliet got up here and went right back here, so I said, "Thank you Lord for confirming your Word." 1 Kings 18:41, here we go. And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain.” Let me move on.
So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” Let me just stop and ask this. Can you see it? Are there any seers in the house? Can you see what you hear? When God say He's going to do something, are you willing to go to the edge of the mountain and look with expectancy to see if God's going to send what He said He would?
And he went up and looked and he said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go again,” seven times. And at the seventh time he said, “Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.’” And in a little while, the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel.
Now we're ticking off the series called Get Ready, because between the time that God says He's going to do something special in your life and the fulfillment of it, there's a season, a moment of preparation. If you're not prepared to receive what God said He is sending you, then when He sends it, you won't recognize it. You have to prepare for what God is getting ready to do in your life.
For the next little while, I want to preach on this topic, Get Ready by Faith. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your goodness and mercy, for your grace that's already here. I pray that in the next little while you would give us ears to hear, heart to receive, and a mind to understand what your Word would say to us. Help us to walk out of here different than the way we came. In Jesus' name, we pray. Everybody say, amen.
Congregation: Amen.
Tim: I want to tell you a little story. This December, Janese and I will celebrate 10 years of marriage.
[applause]
Tim: 10 years. We made it, y'all. It's going to be a good time. We're going to have a lot of fun celebrating. I want to tell you about what led up to us getting married in December of 2012. I met Janese a couple of days into 2011. It was January, I think third, when I met her. We met at a mall, interestingly enough. One day, I'll tell you that story. Our parents dropped us off. No, just kidding.
[laughter]
Tim: I met Janese, and we started to just talk and then we started to date. About a year and a half into dating and courting, we were starting to talk about marriage. We were talking about the rest of our lives and what that would look like, and just making plans around that. During this time, I did what any young man would do when he's wanting to get married. I was saving my money. I was getting prepared to buy her a ring. I'm traditional in the sense that I didn't want to go with her to go choose a ring, I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to surprise her with it.
I'm making these plans to buy this ring, but I'm also an adventurer, and I like to do outdoorsy stuff. I like to ride four-wheelers and dirt bikes and hunt and fish. I used to own a horse. I know that's surprising to some of y'all. Y'all like, "How in the world?" Yes, I did own a horse and I used to rodeo a little bit.
Congregant: All right.
Tim: What? You? Yes. I was in this period of time where I was saving my money to buy a ring, but while I was doing that, one day I'm driving down the road and I see this garage sale. At this garage sale in the front yard, they had a dirt bike propped up. Talk about conflict here.
[laughter]
Tim: I said, "You know what, let me just stop by and see how much they want for it." I stopped by and I said, "Hey, the dirt bike, does it run?" They said, "We don't really know." I said, "How much you want for it?" They said, "$500." I'm like, "Man, that's $500 off the ring. It's probably going to knock an eighth of a carat down. Argh."
[laughter]
Tim: I had choices to make. I said, "Man, if it's God's will, it'll still be there after I buy the ring." I went, and I was talking to Janese and we were talking about, again, marriage and the plans. I said, "Man, I passed by this garage and I saw this dope dirt bike and they only wanted $500." I was testing the waters. She's like, "Oh, okay. Cool."
[laughter]
Tim: I said, "Hey, here's the deal. I really want this dirt bike, but here's the promise that I'll make to you. I will not buy the dirt bike until after I have bought you a ring." That's a fair enough deal, right? I got the blessing from her dad to propose to her, and then I went and I bought the ring. In my mind I was like, "Now that I have the ring, I can go buy my dirt bike." I went back to the house hoping and praying that they hadn't sold it, knocked on the door, "Hey, do you still have the dirt bike?" "Yes, it's in the backyard." I go in the backyard, I look at it, I said, "Hey look, I got $110 right now. I'll buy it from you." They said, "Okay."
I bought the dirt bike on the spot, took it home, and I was happy because I got the ring and I got the dirt bike. I'm like, "God is blessing right now." One day, I've had the dirt bike for a week. I'm super stoked, super excited. I didn't tell Janese that I bought it. She comes over to the house and I'm like, "I'm going to surprise her," some of y'all already know where this is going, "With my brand new dirt bike." She is in the living room and my mom is in on it. I tell my mom, "Hey, listen, I'm going to go set up the dirt bike in the front yard. I want you to blindfold Janese--"
[laughter]
Tim: Young men, don't do this. "-and bring her out." I blindfold Janese. I'm like, "I got this surprise and it's absolutely amazing. I'm so happy about it, I'm so excited." I go outside, I've got my dirt bike set up in the front yard, [laugh] my mom brings Janese out to the front yard. I'm like "Are you ready for your surprise?" and she's like, "Yes, I'm so ready." I said, "Okay." I take the blindfold off and there in front of her is my dirt bike, and she is like, "Yay."
Then at that point, I realized I had royally messed up because I knew that I had bought the ring, but I didn't want to tell her that I bought the ring. I was thinking in my mind that if she sees the dirt bike, she knows that I had bought the ring because I already told her I wouldn't buy the dirt bike unless I bought the ring. She obviously didn't follow that because when I said, "Hey, what do you think?" She was like, "I'm excited for you." [laughter]
Tim: I said, "Oh man." I did what any good Christian young man would do. I said, "Hey, do you want to go around the block on it?"
[laughter]
Tim: I get on the dirt bike and she gets on behind me. She's holding on tight, and she's squeezing a life out of me while I'm trying to drive down the block. Next thing you know, my neck is getting sopping wet. I'm like, "What is going on?" I pull over and when we get off the bike, Janese is crying, and I feel so terrible. Because I know I bought the ring, but I couldn't tell her. She did the right thing because she didn't understand how I told her I would do something but now it seems like I wasn't fulfilling my promise. Needless to say, a couple weeks after that I did propose, and we lived happily ever after.
[applause]
Now I made it right y'all, I made it right. I'm telling you the story because in between the time that I told her I would do something and the fulfillment of what I would do, there was a season of period where she had to trust that I was going to do what I said I was going to do. That's just like what God does to us. Because God will send a preceding sound about what he's going to do in your life and in the life of our church and in the life of your family. He will tell you what he wants to do in your life. Then you enter into a season where it seems like what God is saying and the fulfillment of it, it's ambiguous.
Here's the thing about what God does. When God begins to speak to you, what God says to you is far beyond what your natural inclination and ability has to fulfill it. You can't fulfill what God says he's going to do in your life. God has always been that way. Why? Because his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. The Bible says that the heavens are his throne and the earth is his footstool. When God begins to speak about things that he's going to do in your life, it will seem impossible. It's always been God's MO because God will tell people to do something that they're not capable of doing.
Think about it. He told Abraham that he was going to make of him a great nation. This is during a time when Abraham was 75 years old and his wife was barren. He said, "I'm going to give you a child," but it seemed impossible to Abraham that God was going to do this through him. He told a man by the name of Moses who had a speech impediment to go in and declare to Pharaoh to let His people go.
He told a young man by the name of Joseph that he was going to make him great and that his brothers would serve him, but he was the youngest of his family and so legally he had no right to even be on top. He told a young man by the name of David who was just a shepherd, that he was going to be king over all of Israel. In the natural sense, in the area of realism, what God says to you will not make sense.
I remember somebody had talked about this before, and they said, they asked the question, "How do you know if God is talking to you or you just talking to yourself?" Well, here's the answer. If you can do it without Him, is you. If you can't do it without Him, is God. Because when God begins to speak to us, what he tells us He's going to do is far beyond our own human ability to accomplish in and of ourselves.
This is why I went back to 1 Kings Chapter 18, because last week we preached about what we hear the Spirit saying to us and what we hear God declaring to us as a church and to you as an individual. I believe that God is going to send hope. I believe that God is going to send healing. I believe that God is going to send freedom. I believe that God is going to send purpose. I believe that God is going to give us acceptance. In between what God says and what He will do, there is a human responsibility to grab hold of what God says and get ready. Because if you don't get ready when He moves, you will miss out on what He said He was going to do.
God will fulfill His Word. I promise you that if God said He is going to do it, God is not a man that He should lie. Neither is He the Son of man that he should repent. Has He not said, and will He not do it? Whatever God declares from His mouth, when it goes forth, it will not return unto Him void, but it will accomplish all that he sent it forth to do. The question is, will you participate in what God says, because your level of participation has to do with your level of preparation.
This is why I went back to 1 Kings Chapter 18, because we can run and shout and jump at the fact of God's Word saying, "Hey, I'm going to do something great in your life," but here's what's interesting. Is when Elijah declared to Ahab that the rain is coming, he said, "Go eat and drink." In other words, celebrate at what God is getting ready to do. Once you get done celebrating, now before the promise is actually actualized, I need you to prepare. The word prepare literally means it's the word assar. It means to get ready beforehand for some purpose, use or activity.
Here's the thing about the Word of God. When it goes forth, you have a choice whether to believe it or not. That's the first stage. When God says he's going to do something in your life, you decide whether you believe it or not, because there are those that will not believe and they will not participate in what God said He will do. There are those who will believe, and now they've set the stage, they've prepared themselves to receive what God said He would do.
Here's the thing, preparation sets the stage for God to move. Over and over you are reading the Gospels when Jesus is getting ready to heal somebody. He says, "According to your faith, so be it unto you." Faith is the stage upon which God moves. When I think about preparation, I think about getting ready. There's one character in the Bible that I feel like totally exemplifies what it means to prepare to receive what God said He would do.
That is a man by the name of Noah. Now, in order to understand Noah, we have to go all the way back to Genesis Chapter 1, because Genesis Chapter 1 declares that God has spoken the worlds into existence. He creates in the space of six days, he creates everything that we see by His spoken Word. That He gets ready to make man. He creates man by forming him and breathing into man the breath of life.
Then when Adam is resurrected out of the ground, then God speaks to him and says, "Adam, I want you to be fruitful, multiply, replace the earth, subdue it, and have dominion." These are things that God has declared to Adam to do for the fulfillment of what God wants to do in the Earth. Adam begins to do it. Eve then joins Adam, and they begin to fulfill the call and the purpose of God. While they're doing so, Satan comes to them, to Eve in particular, and tempts her away from the will of God.
We know the story. She eats of the fruit and sin enters to the world. Sin literally means just to miss the mark. When they miss the mark, the consequence of sin is that you are separated from God. Why? Because God is righteous and in His righteousness, he will not fellowship with unrighteousness, but He calls you out of unrighteousness, and He makes you righteous. This is the process of sanctification. It's why we can't play around with sin because when you sin, you separate yourself from God because God will not fellowship with sin being in His court. He will take a sinner and make him a saint. You can come as you are, but God ain't going to leave you the way you are.
[applause]
Tim: I can stop and preach that, but I need to move on.
[laughter]
Tim: Separation happens and when that happens, now sin begins to run rapid within the earth. Why? Because now mankind has a sinful nature. That sinful nature, Scripture even tells us that it is in the heart of man to do evil continuously. If you don't have the Spirit of God in your life, you will always choose wrong. True freedom is the choice to always choose, right. Righteousness is when you choose right all the time, but if you don't have the Holy spirit you're always going to choose wrong. We see this happening over and over and over and again until God says, "It repents me that I made man."
Now, let me just clarify what this word repent means. We think of it in the context of repenting from our sins. That means to turn away and walk the opposite. God doesn't have to repent in that regard. The word repentance in terms of God repenting that He made man is the word sorrow. God was sorrowful at the condition of man when man is tied to sin. The only way that God decides to deal with it is He says, "I'm going to destroy mankind, and I'm going to choose one man by the name of Noah, and I'm going to fulfill my promise. The promise that I made to Adam, I'm going to pass it along to Noah. Only thing I need Noah to do is to obey my words and do as I say."
Now, we have the benefit of context. We can read the story of Noah, and it makes perfect sense to us. Noah, here's God speaking. God says to him, "I'm going to send a flood and I want you to build an ark. Then the rain comes, the animals and Noah and his family are in the ark, all is well, there's a rainbow in the sky, yay, the end. Think about what happened when Noah first heard this. Let's go back and pretend that we are Noah. Noah at this point is 500 years old. Now, I don't like to put an age to the word old, but in this case I'm just going to go ahead and say it, my man was old.
He's 500 years old. He's been doing good all along. He's got family members, he's got everything that he needs, he's been obeying God. God speaks to a 500-year old man and says to him, "Noah, I'm going to send a flood to destroy the world." Okay, up unto this point, it had never rained before. The Scripture tells us that the earth was watered by a mist coming from the ground. All the vegetation and everything that was being watered, was watered from the ground up.
Now, God is telling Noah, "I'm sending a flood." To Noah, he doesn't even know what it means for rain. He has no understanding what God is really saying. Then God goes on to say, "Hey, not only am I sending rain, which you don't know what is, I want you to build an ark." "Well, what's an ark?" "An ark is a boat." "Well, I already have a boat." "No, I want you to build a boat that is so big that it can house two of every type of animals plus your family." "What?"
At this point, Noah is probably wondering how well his mind is doing. He's like, "You know what? I am 500 years old. I have been hearing things, but this takes the cake. I'm not sure if this is right," but Noah decides to believe God. Could you imagine how awkward his dinners were for the next few days? You think you're going to have a awkward Thanksgiving dinner? Some of y'all getting prepared right now. Getting your spirit right before Thanksgiving because you know you're going to have some whack family members at that table.
Imagine Noah at 500 years old, he has just heard God speak to him about what God's going to do, and now he has to try to act normal at the dinner table with his family. I bet Noah did what any good godly man would do, he kept his mouth shut. Noah's like, "I ain't going to tell them jack squat," but while he is being quiet, he's also collecting wood for his ark. You know Ms. Noah was starting to get suspicious.
[laughter]
Tim: At dinnertime Noah is quiet, Ms. Noah's like, "This ain't right. Something's going on. I wonder if it's Helga."
[laughter]
Tim: Ms. Noah starts to talk to Ham, Shem, and Japheth, "Hey listen, Ham, I don't know what's going on with your daddy, but something ain't right. He is never this quiet during dinnertime. I'm wondering if he's sneaking around to Helga's tent. He's too old to be playing these games. He's close to retirement, what is he doing?" Noah's been quiet now for days so finally Ms. Noah's like, "I've had it." She goes, "Noah, now, you need to tell me what's going on because I've been seeing you collecting wood." I don't know why I'm using this voice.
[laughter]
Tim: "I've been seeing you collecting wood and I've been seeing you make plans, but you haven't shared anything with me and I feel distant from you right now." You guys, you men, you husbands, you know that that's trouble. When your wife starts saying, "I feel distance," you better make it right. "I feel distance for you right now. Would you tell me what's happening?" Finally, at some point, Noah has to reveal to his wife and family what God has said.
He ends up telling his family, "God told me that the rain is coming." "Okay, stop, Noah. What is rain?" He said, "It's water that comes from the sky." "That has never happened, Noah. I don't know what you're talking about." Let me just stop and say this, when God begins to speak to you, and when you begin to repeat it to other people, they will not understand. Don't get upset when people don't agree with what God said to you.
If God wanted them to understand it, He would've told them, but He told you, so your faith in God's Word is dependent on you. Not everybody's going to agree with you, not everybody's going to understand. When God says that He's going to take you into places that you've never been, those that have always been with you in their current circumstance will not understand it.
Will you begin to repeat what God is going to do in your life? Just imagine what they thought when Noah began to tell them what God's going to do. He said He's going to send the rain, and He said He's going to cause us to be the righteous ones. He said we're going to build an ark, He said he's going to fill it up, He said we're going to survive this, and He said He's going to continue the lineage through us. God said He's going to do it. What do you do when God speaks to you?
Noah had a choice. Do I build this ark or do I just pass it along to somebody else? The Scripture says that when Noah heard the Word of God, that he went into action. Noah began to gather wood and make nails and he began to get mud for the pitch and he began to make clay. For 100 years, Noah was building an ark and during this period of time, you know people were questioning what he was doing.
"What are you doing Noah?" "I'm building an ark." "Why are you building an ark?" "Because God said He's going to send a flood." "What is a flood?" "It's rain that comes down from the sky." "Why are you doing this?" "Because God spoke to me." "Well, how do you know it's going to come to pass?" Because when God speaks, I know that He will do it. My job is just to prepare. My job is not to make the Word of God come to pass, my job is not to try to filter through what God says. My job is not try to interpret what God says, my job is not to try to add my own human meanings to what God said. My job is just to get ready for God to do what He said He would do.
My job is not to regulate what God is going to do, my job is not to try to interject myself, my job is not to try to be human in the divine plan of God. My job is just to get ready because if I get ready, God's going to do what He said He was going to do. The question is, how was Noah able to keep getting wood? How was he able to keep nailing that wood? How was he able to keep building an ark while everybody around him thought he was crazy?
Scripture literally tells us that while he was building the ark, he was being ridiculed and he was being persecuted and people thought he was crazy. What kind of attitude did he have? The Scripture tells us that Noah was able to do it because he had faith. We overcomplicate faith. We think that faith is us mustering up enough courage to do the will of God that we can somehow psych ourselves up and empower ourselves by "I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe."
We treat faith as if it's something we can manufacture. We come in here and we hear people preach, "You better have faith." I don't know how you grew up, but man, if you didn't have enough faith, we'd keep you in the altar for a good two hours rocking you back and forth. You'd be so tired you start just speaking in tongues and it wasn't even tongues, you just tired.
[laughter]
Tim: We start to move and try to manipulate people's emotions about what faith is, but can I tell you what faith is? Faith is simply you believing that God tells the truth. Here's the thing about faith, faith is not even your job. Your job is to believe that God is true and God's job is to impute faith into you because faith is not predicated on what's happening or your circumstances or how you understand God's word, faith simply says, "If you said it, God, then I believe it because you are God all by yourself."
[applause]
Tim: Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now, faith is the assurance of things, hope for the conviction of things not seen." Faith believes God in spite of what you're going through, faith says God is true and let every man be a liar. Faith says if God promised it, then no matter how long it takes, I know that He will do it. My job is just to prepare the stage for Him to move. The first step of preparation is your faith. Because many of us are in this season, but we've heard God speak and we've heard about what God said He wants to do in our lives.
We have two choices. Either trust God completely with our faith or try to manufacture what God said He would do. Abraham tried that. Abraham heard God speak to him. "I want to make of you a great nation. I'm going to bless the whole world through you. Through you all the ends of the earth are going to be blessed, all I need you to do is prepare yourself."
"How?" "By faith." "Okay, what does that mean?" "It means leave where you're at and go to a place that I will show you."
Abraham has to leave the comfort of security and step into the unknown based on a word. How many of y'all going to sell your house based on a word? How many of us would get rid of everything that we have based on a word? How many of us are at that level to where we believe that God is so right, that we will forsake everything that we own to follow his word? Abraham does it, but because God didn't fulfill it in the timeline that he had, he decides to step in and do it for God. Now, we could talk about Sarah all day long. Well, Sarah made him do it, fam. Abraham was like, "Hey, if you say so." At the end of the day, Sarah didn't sleep with Hagar, Abraham did.
You can blame Sarah all day long. Abraham had a lapse in his faith. At some point, he said you know what? I don't know, I believe that God's going to do it, but let me help God out. Then what ends up happening? There is still war today, thousands of years later, because somebody thought, Abraham thought that he could manufacture the Word of God. He thought he could go in there and accomplish the Word of God by himself. Can I tell you, your job is not to try to make the will of God happen, your job is to submit yourself to the Word of God and keep doing what he asked you to do.
Congregation: Amen.
Tim: How do you know if you're operating in faith? You have to embrace ambiguity. I know you didn't want to hear that. What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to trust God? What does it mean to put your assurance, your trust in God? It means you leave the safety of where you're at and you embrace a season of being ambiguous. When people come and ask you how is God going to do it, all you can say is, I don't know, but I know that He will. What do you do when you're going through a season when people are asking you, "I heard you say you're going to open this business, how are you going to do it?" And you have to say, "I don't know."
That is faith, because faith requires you to live in a season of not knowing. What you're do when you're in that season is you're trusting that God knows, so you have to build your ark not seeing a drop of rain. You have to build an ark, keep collecting wood, keep putting that wood together, keep putting the clay in between the cracks while everybody thinks you are crazy and they think you've lost your mind and then don't understand why you're so committed to a season of ambiguity. Can I tell you, your faith is strengthened in seasons of ambiguity.
Think about Ahab. When Elijah said that, "I hear a sound of a rushing wind, I need you to go celebrate." Ahab say, "Whoa, yes." God's about to move, and he goes and he has some wine in his security board and olives and some almonds, and he's excited about God moving. Then the man of God says, "Listen, the rain's about to come and I need you to prepare for it." Ahab had a choice to make.
Do I embrace this season of really not seeing it, but preparing for it? This is what Elijah tells him, "Prepare your chariot and go down that the rain stop thee not." I always thought this was an interesting observation in the Scripture. Why would the thing that he prayed for be a hindrance to him if he wasn't prepared? Have you ever thought about that? It's because if you don't trust God when it hasn't happened, you won't recognize it when it does happen.
The children of Israel, this is what happened to them. The Word of God was going forth, I'm going to send a Messiah, I'm going to send a Messiah. At some point they stopped getting prepared based on what God said and they prepared for what they thought was going to happen. Then when their Messiah came, they crucified the very Messiah that was sent to save them. Why? Because somewhere in the season of ambiguity, they let go of their assurance in God and they put their assurance in themselves. When you don't embrace faith, you will manufacture your own blessing, and that blessing will actually end up being a cursing to you.
I don't know what season you're in, but I would bet that there are people that are here today, that are watching online, that are walking through a season of knowing the change is coming and embracing the fact that God is sending change. Now you are living in a season where you have a choice to make. Do I trust God or do I begin to manufacture what I believe God said?
I'm here to tell you that the way to get ready for what God is going to send in your life is to leave where you're at, embrace ambiguity, embrace the unknown, embrace not knowing because when you do so, you are proving to God that you trust that He will do what He said He will do. Here's what I love about God, God will do what He said He will do. I'm calling somebody's faith up, I'm calling somebody's assurance up. We're going to read the Scripture in Hebrews 11:7. By faith, Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household.
Can I get practical with you? If God told you that you are to start a business, don't wait for it to just come out of the sky. Start writing your business plan. If God told you that He's calling you into ministry, don't wait for an invitation to come up on stage and preach the word, start studying the Word of God. If God told you that your family member is coming back home, don't wait until they come home, get the bedroom prepared for when they do. If God told you that He was going to do something spectacular in your life, start preparing the ark.
I don't know what it is for you, but I have a feeling that some people in here, you stopped building the ark because you haven't seen the rain. You stopped believing in God because it's been 15 years and it hasn't happened yet. When people ask me about this season that we're in and being called here to lead this church as a lead pastor, they ask me, "How do you feel?"
I tell them I'm living the dream because I was called to ministry at the age of 13. I know you think, "Man, that's really early." No, I literally preached my first message at 13. Was it good? I don't know, I thought it was good. At the age of 13, I began to preach. At the age of 14, I felt God tell me that I was called to be a pastor. I became a youth pastor at 18, then I went into full-time evangelizing when I was 21, and then in 2010 God said, "Go back home."
Now, everything was going great in terms of ministry. Things were happening, I was preaching all over the place, God was moving, revival was happening, and then God said, "Leave that, I need you to go home." I said, "Go home? That don't seem like the plan of God for my life because I'm preaching, I'm doing your will right now." God said, "No, go home because there's something I need to do in you, I need to prepare you, I need to get you ready for what I'm going to do in your life." I went back home and I stayed home and I had to go bi-vocational. I was doing graphics and websites on the side in order to do ministry. I continued doing that in 2015. Janese and I were expecting Zara.
The church didn't have the funds to pay me full time, so I had to go get a job. I had to get a job with insurance and stuff like that. In that season in 2016, I had one of the hardest seasons of my life because I was already wrestling with, "If this is your will, if ministry is your will for my life, God, then why am I here? Why do I feel like I'm working this job and ministry seems to be fading away?"
Then in May of 2016, one of the hardest things that I ever personally went through is when my spiritual father said, "It's over, we got to go our separate ways," and I wasn't prepared for it. Then from there I entered into a season of ambiguity because I didn't have a church home, I didn't have a spiritual father. I lost all of my friends. None of the pastors I preached for called me. No one was available for me, and in that season I wondered if God actually called me.
I stopped building the ark for a season because I didn't see the rain until I went back to God and I said, "God, is this really what you called me to do?" I felt like the Lord said, "Pick up your hammer, grab your nails, and get back to work." God led us to an amazing church, HighRidge, and there I began to build the ark again. I got so caught up in building the ark that in April of this year when Tim approached me about this, I finally saw the rain. But for 12 years, I had to build an ark, I had to trust God, that what He said He was going to do, He would do.
I'm not preaching today some fairytale message that I haven't lived. I'm telling you that many of you are in a season of ambiguity, of hearing a message like last week that God's going to do it, and now entering into a season where it feels like a wilderness. I'm here to preach and tell you that it's in a moment like this, that God is preparing the stage and He's getting you ready to enter into what He has for you.
If you would bow your heads, close your eyes. I don't know where you at right now. I don't know if you're in a season of ambiguity. I don't know if you're in a season of not knowing. I don't know if you're sitting here-- and not everybody's in this season, all right? Some people, your faith is in an all time high, but I would bet that there are some people that are here today and that are watching online that you've heard God speak to you and you believe that God's going to do it, but your faith is waning because you haven't seen yet what God said he was going to do.
I'm here to preach and tell somebody, it's time to get ready. It's time to plug your faith back into God. It's time to go back to building the ark. It's time to prepare the chariot because in a little while, God's going to show up and do what he said he was going to do. See, if you're in this place or you're online and you're like, "Hey man, that's where I am right now," would you just slip your hand up, because I want to pray for you. You feel like you're in the season of not knowing what's next, but knowing that God's called you to next, just keep that hand up because I want to pray for you. If you're online, just put it in the chat right now.
Dear Lord, I pray for every hand that's lifted. I pray for every person that has recognized that they're in a season of not knowing. A season of knowing that you've spoken, but in a season of not knowing how it's going to happen, I pray that there will be an increase of faith right now, and faith being that we trust that you tell the truth. That no matter what's going on around us, no matter if people agree, no matter if people put their stamp of approval on it, all those things do not matter. All that matters is that we trust you to do what you said you're going to do.
That is the attitude at which I pray my brothers and sisters would move forward into this next season with. To understanding that you're a faithful God, you're a good God, you're a holy God, you're a righteous God, you're a fulfilling God, you're a purposeful God. You're a promising God, you're a way maker when there seems to be no way, you're representation when I have nobody to lean on.
You're my friend when I'm desperate, you're my food when I'm hungry, you're my water when I'm thirsty. You're my Jehovah Jireh. You will provide in this season and in the next, so we place our faith and our confidence in you knowing that you will do what you said you will do. We thank you for it. We give your name all the praise and glory in Jesus' name, and everybody shout amen.
