Elevation with Steven Furtick - A Holding Pattern (Levi Lusko)

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

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This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Holly and I wanted to say a special hello to our eFAM, our extended family around the world. We love you guys. Hey, before we get into the message, let me tell you about available. This is a special season for our church.

It's a tradition for the people of elevation. Every year we gather, we appreciate and anticipate. And we also give. This is our yearly time for everybody who receives from this ministry to give so that the ministry can go forth. year we've themed it around the word. Available. That's all God has ever wanted is for us to say, here I am, send me, use me. And you have the opportunity to do that. So if you've been blessed

through the ministry, it's good to receive. It's even better to give. If you want to make a donation, a one-time gift or a recurring gift, just be a part of what God is doing here. We are so appreciated. You can get all the details at elevationchurch.org. I'm going to said elevationworship.com. I guess you could go there too, but the giving is at Elevation Church. What did you just do? You have Elevation Worship on your sweatshirt. Hey! But Elevationchurch.org, and you can select available. We use all of these resources to continue to preach the gospel, not only in physical locations like this one, but through the amazing opportunity God has given us to impact the world through technology. And we want to thank all of you who are a part. We couldn't do it without you.

Thank you for being a part of our family. Thank you for being a part of this move of God. Go to Elevationchurch.org.com. If you're not already there and be a part, this is going to be an amazing, amazing season. And Holly and I are believing that your best is ahead. Praise the Lord, church. Oh, I love singing truth with my church. It feels good to declare that this morning, huh?

Are you ready for the Word of God? Are you ready to hear from God this morning? I've got the privilege of introducing our guest preacher this weekend who's going to be delivering that word. He is a great friend of our ministry, hailing from Montana. He's the pastor of Fresh Life Church. Can you put your hands together? Help me welcome Pastor Levi. Let's go to the pulpit. Come on, let's make some noise for Jesus today. Elevation. Man, it is a joy. It is an honor. It is a privilege for my wife, Jenny, and my whole family to be here with you at Elevation. We love you, like family, honestly. Thanks for having us. It's a

way to be here. Pastor asked me to come preach into the available series. I was excited and humbled by the chance. I got a message that God gave me specifically for this weekend, and it's from Acts chapter 9. We've learned about being needers, being feeders instead of needers. We've learned about how to say the second yes, and we now know why. And this weekend, we want to try and figure out what to do when we're in a holding pattern. How do we handle? What do we do with? What about the holding pattern? Acts chapter 9, and we're going to begin in verse 36, in what I consider one of the most important movements in the book of Acts. I realize that's saying a lot, because there's some great stuff in the book of Acts. If you haven't read it, the Bible's awesome. You should check it out sometime. It is really good.

I mean, even just Acts 9 opens with the saving of the Apostle Paul. Even the Apostle Paul at one point didn't know Jesus. So no matter who somebody is, no matter how far from God they seem to be, he hated. Jesus more than anybody until he met him. He's like, turns out I love green eggs in hand. It's crazy the thing. Love the guy. And he spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel. So when I say to you, in a chapter that includes the salvation of the guy who wrote 13 books of the New Testament, if, in fact, he didn't write Hebrews. If he did, it's 14. If he didn't, it's 13. It's still a lot of books of the Bible. How many books of the Bible have you written? So I just said to you that in a

chapter that includes the saving of the Apostle Paul, we are about to read. We are about to read. the story that I consider one of the most important movements in the book of Acts. We should be giving our undivided attention when the text says, at Joppa. Could someone say at Joppa? And now the rest of you. At Joppa. There was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds, which she did. But it happened in those days that she became sick and died.

when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. And since Lita was near Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought him to the upper room, and all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the two. tunics and garments. Someone say tunics and garments, which she, Dorkas, had made while she was with them. But Peter put them all out and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said,

Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat up. Yeah, that's the appropriate response, really. All weekend long, everyone's been playing it cool like you've seen tons of people get up from the dead, but that's a big deal. Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up. And when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa. I'll bet it did. And many believed on the Lord. So it was, yeah, that's a bit bigger miracle, actually, believe it or not. So it was that he stayed many days. in Joppa with Simon a tanner. And Father, we ask that you would speak to us something clear, something special, something powerful, so that our eyes may be opened so that we may sit up,

so that taking you by the hand, we may stand up and rise up to do all the things you called us to do. And we ask that if one person watching on YouTube, listening to the podcast, or here with us today, doesn't know you as Savior, you would draw them to yourself. And we ask this in Jesus' name. And everyone said together, traveling comes with its fair share of unexpected surprises. You don't get to get on a metal tube attached to rockets and travel across the country without some things occasionally going sideways. And I think we live in an era where we now accept as normal what at a previous point in history was deemed impossible.

Prior to 115 years ago, there wasn't an airplane. Thanks, Kitty Hawk, right? Hey, shout out North Carolina, right? There was never such a thing as air travel before 1903. And so we have grown up all our lives with normal what never existed for the vast amount of human history. For Abraham, Genghis Khan, for Abraham Lincoln, never did anybody think about, I want to get from Cleveland and I want to go to D.C. and I'm going to do that by hopping on an airplane. It didn't exist. It wasn't something you could do. I live in an area of the country that was a part of the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know, these two guys who set out with this band of people to go from St. Louis and end up in Oregon trying to find water passage to get furs back and forth for the trade. And they were sent out by Jefferson. And, you know, the voyage was pretty great, straightforward, up to Missouri from St. Louis until they got to where I live.

And then if you look at the map, there's like, zing, zing, zing, zz, ziz, ziz, right? Yeah, welcome to my life, right? Montana, everything went sideways and the continental divide and the mountains and all that stuff. So it took them to all this time, years and years and years to do what we can do in an hour. And we're like, yeah, but the flight was delayed and the internet was so slow. They're like, of course things are going to go sideways, right? And of course, no one likes it, right? There's things that have traveled that are hard.

It comes with a fair share of surprises. I was in Louisiana the other day. and needed to get somewhere. So we called an Uber. And it's already a funny story. West Monroe, Louisiana. It was an F-150 with a gun rack. An Uber.

My wife and I got in this thing and they, do we need to text a friend, leave a note? They may never find us. Diggadoo-d-d-do-do-do-do-do. Right? And I said to the guy, how's your day going? He goes, I'm tired. I'm tired.

I go, yeah? He goes, I said, why? I thought he was going to say, like, up all night, raccoon hunting or something, you know. Fought an alligator. Instead, he said, I just got back from London. I was not expecting this. Camel head to toe, dirty John Deere hat.

It was not expecting, just got back from England. He said, wow, England, that's a long flight. He goes, yeah, but they had beer on the plane. So I drank until I fell asleep and shoot. When I woke up, we were there. It's fantastic. But one of the worst things that can happen on a plane, you can feel it before you even hear about it.

Because the captain will come on and tell you about it, but I can almost always feel it before I hear it, and that is the holding pattern. Because what happens is I'll be dead asleep. And you know, like Spider-Man's got that, what did his aunt may call it? A Peter tingle. It's like, hey, you're embarrassing me for my friends. It's a spikaze sense. Peter tingle.

I'll feel it. I'll feel that. And for four minutes, you're in that loop. It's a minute in the straight, a minute, 280-degree turns, and another minute in the straight. And I'll say my wife, this is not good. She go, what? I go, we're delayed. She said, what do you mean? Do you feel that? It's a holding pattern. And you look out the window and sure enough, you're there, but you can't get there. A holding pattern is when you're at your destination, you just can't get to where you desperately need to be. I could see it out the window.

How many of you understand? There's some things in our life. We can see it. I just don't know how to get there. I've come all this way, and I see right there where I need to be. But it's that last 10%. I just can't seem to get down into the kind of mother I want to be. I see what God called me to do. I just don't know how to feel stuck. I'm in a holding pattern. A holding pattern is full of delays and full of disappointment, and we fear missed connections. That's what we equate holding patterns with. I'm in this holding pattern, and I'm in my head doing the math on how long it's going to take me to get to my gate, how much time I have to eat up. At a certain point, I'm on the Wi-Fi with United or with Delta trying to get on another fly, right? And you missed your

connection. You'll know I'm re-booked. I'm missing that connection. I'm missing the next. I'm afraid I'm not going to get to where I need to be because of the, I'm in a holding pattern. Is that not the mood in Acts 9? All of the dreams about this life suddenly cut short by illness as Dorcas has died. My name's Tabitha. It's the Hebrew equivalent, but it's the same meaning. Dorkas, Tabitha, they both mean Gazelle. Now that, believe it or not, was a compliment. Just like I call my wife, Jenny, my brown-eyed girl. When she calls my phone, the ringtone is my girl. That was what Gazelle meant in that day. It was to say, you're fleet-footed, you're beautiful, you're quick, this compliment, this praise that her parents chose to call her a deer. And in the book of Proverbs, a wife has to be praised, this beautiful and great. graceful as a deer. So to think of this woman who not only had that name but lived that life, what does the text say? I can't remember. She was full of good works and charitable deeds. That's the one that's going to get sick unfairly and die. The one who's blessing everybody,

the one who's going about doing good, full of good works, full of charitable deeds, which believe it or not is true of every single one of you. Every Christian, every person is full of good works. God has planned for it to be so. In the book of Ephesians, we're told that we are all his workmanship, masterpiece, poem, painting, and he has crammed us full of good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So if you could see God, imagine God in his factory planning you before the world was framed. He was grabbing stuff off the shelf, pouring it in, and on all sorts of different kinds and varieties and shapes. and styles, but he crammed your destiny full of good works that he has been dreaming about since

before you were ever born. Now, let me ask you this question. Why is it if every Christian has been crammed full in their destiny of good works? Why is it that not every Christian is living a beautiful life and changing the world like Dorcas did? Because so many of us stopped there, but Dorcas did not. Dorcas was not just full of charitable deeds and full of good works, but the text says she's full of these things, which she, if we don't do, the things that God has planned for us, we end up full of it. A lot of Christians are just full of it. Come on, shove your neighbor, say, are you full of it? Don't be full of it. You see, the problem with spiritual constipation is if you take in, but you never,

ever give out, you just are stuffed and bloated and sick. So God doesn't just give us the strength for willing. He gives us the strength for doing. We must not stop at good intentions. Being willing is not enough. You can say I'm willing and able, but in the event of a water evacuation, someone's got to open that door up. Someone's got to extend the slide out. Someone's got to be there. You've got to do the things he planned for you to do. How long are you going to talk about that business? long are you going to talk about serving? How long are you going to talk about one day I'm going to give? One day I'm going to do this. One day I'm going to write this song. One day I'm going to write this book. Come on, don't be full of it. You got to do it. You got to rise up and take action.

Now you say to me, well, how do you, asking for a friend, how do you, how do you do that? How do you do what you're full of? The answer is in your hand. It's in your hand. The answer to doing what's in your heart is using what's in your hand. It's in the text. Did you notice it? Tabith that changed the world. Dorcas, even a dorcas can change the world, right? Through using what's in her hand. We learned week one in the series that the big movement for being available to availing ourselves to a God who's able, he's endlessly able. God is able to make all grace around toward you.

But why do so many not walk in that grace that he's able to make abound toward you? So many don't avail themselves to that power. Because we get stuck on me. Me. Me. Me, me, me, me, me. Do? Me.

Me. Me. Me. And they never get to sew. So the movement to availing yourself to the power that God's able to give to you is the movement from me to sow. And that's what Dorcas did. Because the text says she made what?

Tunics and garments. She was a seamstress. Our sister had a passion for fashion. And when she had all these dreams in her heart of changing the world, she looked down and she saw a needle. Around her neck was a measuring tape. And she said, I wonder. if. And so listen to me, to get from me to sew, she used a needle-pulling thread. Come on, don't live your life.

Focused on me, a name, I call myself. Use what's in your hand. If it's a needle-pulling thread, fine. Whatever God has given you in your hand, he wants to use that to unlock and unleash what's in your heart. At least that's what doe, a deer, a female dear, dorkas teaches us. Hey, it's a sound of music all up in here. All right. So in Dorcas, we have a holding pattern, a pattern for how to hold. And you can't sew a complicated project if you don't have a pattern. How many of you know you got to go down to Joanne Fabrics? You got to go to Hobby Lobby. You got to get you to Michael's Arts and Craft Supply and buy a pattern. And a pattern is what you lay out on top of your fabric so you know the shape that you'll

cut out before you use your thread to sew. So I believe in Dorcas, we're given a different way of looking at our holding patterns by making sure we understand that we have a pattern, a pattern for how to hold. A pattern for how to hold what's in our hand so God can unlock what's in our heart. For that is God's desire. The problem and the disconnect for us is so many of us look at what is in our hand and we see no connection to what's in our heart, so we do nothing. Think about a crowd of people, and you need to feed them. What's in your hand? Five loaves and do fishes. Well, this can't do anything for that. Therefore, I'll do nothing. What's in your hand? Well, freedom for God's people from the Egyptians. What's in your heart, rather? Freedom from God's people from the Egyptians. What's in

your hand? A staff? If you give God what's in your hand, a staff, he'll unlock what's in your heart. If you give God your loaves, he'll feed the craft. What's in your hand? A cup. What's in your heart, rebuilding the city of Jerusalem. Use your cup, Nehemiah. Use what's in your hand. You give it to God. Don't stop. Don't stop believing just because you don't understand how it's connected. Use what's in your hand. Use your needle. Use your cup. Use your staff. Use your resources. It doesn't feel like it's enough, but God is able to make all grace abound towards you. You just got to get under his plan. Get under his authority. Get under his reign. And so that's what Dorcas did. So in her, find a pattern, a pattern for how to hold, a pattern for how to have a light touch, a pattern for

how to have a longer vision and a reason to no longer give in to the excuses that fill our heart when we look at what's in our hand and we barely see enough for ourselves, much less for how God could do anything else. We get talked out of using our resources to do God's work, don't we? We say stupid stuff. Well, I give my time, so I don't need to give my money. You know what I say to that? I say, available. Available. Are you glad that Jesus didn't just give us his time, but he gave us his blood as money. Come on, blood money. More precious than gold or silver. He didn't come just to give us his time. You know, Margaret Thatcher, she used to be the prime minister of England in the 80s. She said, no one would be talking about the Good Samaritan if he only gave time, but he had money too.

Someone had to pay the bill at the end. Someone had to buy the bandages. Someone had to give the oil and the wine. Hey, listen, if we're going to reach Orlando, if we're going to reach this country, it's going to take money. Ministry takes money. We need to have resources, not just time. Don't fall into it. Available. I got another one. How about this? How about, well, God doesn't need my money. This church certainly doesn't need my money. Look at all this. fancy everything. Vela, say it with me. Bull. Yeah, God doesn't need your money, but you need his blessing. Warren Weirsby said, you know, a God who paves the streets of his heaven with gold does not

ever fear going broke if you don't give. But you might go broke if you don't. Because he has promised to bless you as you lean into his work. Bless you. He said, I'll open up the heavens over you. Just participate. Just trust me. Put me to the test. See if I'm not able to make all grace abound towards you. You just got to get from me to sew. Come on, don't just live your life out for a name you call yourself. Use your needle. Pull some thread. Give it to God. Trust him. Give it. Put him to the test. Available. How about this one? Other people have more. So if I had more, I would give more. Available. You'd be exactly as generous with a million dollars as you are with $10,000.

You'd be exactly as generous with $1,000 as you are with the 100. It's a hard issue. If it don't start small, it's never going to get bigger. I wonder if you thought, I would take my wife on a date, but I don't have enough money. Look, you can make your wife feel like a princess at Costco. Getting the samples, girl. Anything you want. Isle 12, 14, and 19. And then you can work your way up to a hot dog and 20-ounce soda combo. It's a heart thing. There's a lot of people who can afford filet mignon wrapped in bacon who treat their wives like a dog.

It's a heart issue. It's a romance issue. The most important thing is to give her you. And so that's really where it begins. And generosity, like romance, works on any level. And that's why the tide is so fair. And generosity is all over, Tabitha's story. Three things, jot them down.

She gave what she could, which was a lot. Tunics and garments. But that's misleading. Because tunics and garments actually means cloaks and capes. My wife and I just got invited to a black tie event. Had never been invited to a black tie event before. We live in Montana, you guys. We were like, what do you do?

We had to, of course, Google it. What is that even? mean. I learned a lot about things that I don't want to know about cocktail dress versus a formal gown. My wife and I went to this store called Rent the Runway, where you can rent a dress you don't have to buy it. And I sat, thank God they had a coffee shop. I don't know if I would have survived. But all these dresses, there's a lot to it. And that's the stuff that Dorcas was given out. The stuff that would cause a widow to have dignity walking through town. Because uncovered by a cape, Without a cloak, everyone could see. No one took care of them. But you take a widow and you give her a cloak and a cape. She's able to walk through town and feel it just as special as everybody else. That was Dorcas's passion. I'm going to give every woman dignity. I'm going to give every woman the chance to walk through town without anybody looking at them funny.

And so Dorcas had, of course, to have a lot of money, to spend money on the materials to make such things and to be able to do that on top of whatever else she was doing. Above and beyond how she would give. at church above and beyond anything else she was doing. And so I would just say to you, you might go, I can't afford to give like that. Well, God's not calling you to do what she could do. God's calling to do what you can do. The great danger on December 7th and 8th is not that you won't do what someone else can do. It's that you won't do what you can do. He's called you to use what's in your hand, not your neighbor's hand. He's called you to use the resource he's entrusted to you. God never looks at the portion of a gift. He will not be looking next weekend going at just the size of the He would be looking at the proportion of the total that you've been entrusted with that it represents.

He looks at our contribution and measures it against our capacity. You could give $100,000 next Sunday, and some of you should. Some of you should give more than that because the heart and the trust of this ministry over the years, some of you should just really say yes to accelerating the vision. But you could give a $100,000 gift next weekend and God not be impressed with it if it's not something that's going to cost you. If it's like, well, that's what I'll say. spend on landscaping next year. To think of someone who could give a $700 gift and it could cause God to be pushing the angels over because he says, that's going to cost them something. That was a difficult, yes. Out of what they've been entrusted, that means something. So my encouragement to

you would be to say, I'm going to use what's in my hand to have this be weighty. Make sure when you hold that check that it's weighty to you, that it's not flippant to you, that it's not something you can easily do. Make sure it's something that causes you to stretch. I believe so much someone, much in the stretch. And if this church was going to do nothing of the good things they're going to do with this outreach, if it wasn't a 10, 12 percent going to outreach, if it wasn't going to be a million dollars plus given to charity that is not run by the church, hello, homelessness, and giving food out and beds for the home, all that stuff, if it was like, it would be worth it probably just for the stretch in our own lives? Because there's a text that troubles me, and it says this, in the time of

the year that the kings went out to battle, David stayed home. King David, stayed home. He should have gone out to battle every year. There was a time of the year that a king was supposed to go fight. Go to battle. Live on the field, not in the pals, live in a tent, be hungry, go through difficulty. And that kept him on his edge. That kept him scrappy. That kept him from getting fat and lazy. That kept them from getting complacent. In the time of, listen, in the time of the year the kings were supposed to go to battle, David stayed home. Do you know what happened next? Her name is Bathsheba. Kings become fools when they stop going out to war. And we must every year, stretch ourselves and stay on our edge. Come on. It's just a sense in which God's calling us

once again to go all in. Once again, once again to fight. Once again, I believe so much in the heart for this offering, which is to say, let's fight. Let's not get into cruise control. Let's not believe this thing's so big. It'll take care of itself if no one gives. Come on. What if everybody thought that way? Let's stretch. Let's fight. Let's go to war with the enemy. Let's go to war with young people being lost to heroin. Let's go to war with a generation that's cutting itself just to feel something and reach them with the love of Jesus Christ.

She gave what she could. She gave while she could. Second point. While she could. Did Tabitha know when she went to work in her workshop that she was going to get sick soon? Did Tabith have any idea that she was in the final stretch of her life? Do any of us?

Death is a lot of things and comes to us a lot of ways, but tragically often it's a surprise. And we always must live with an awareness of our mortality and therefore the preciousness of whatever time is in front of us. What if she had said, you know, I've got some things happening with my business. You know, I've got this guy, Ralph Lauren, who's going to be buying some stuff down the road, and eventually I'll have more. Then I'll do something for the widows. No, she did it when God struck her with the idea. She did it when God prompted her. She did it when God called her.

She realized God's going to clothe these widows, whether he uses me or not. not. Like Mordecai said to Esther, God's going to do his thing with or without you, honey. Come on. So pony up the courage and get you before the king. God will raise up another church to bless if elevation won't fight. He'll do his work in the earth. He's not dependent on any one of us. So there is no question God's going to do it. But why not you? Why not me? Why not now? We have been brought into the kingdom for such a time as this. Last week, we learned that Mary poured out the oil. and Judas said, why this waste? And Jesus said, stop it. She knows what others don't know. I'm about to die. And she did this in light of my burial. How did she know that? Because she always sat at his feet. And those who sit at his feet know things other people don't know. And she was paying attention while the disciples were fighting about whose greatest in the kingdom to Jesus saying, I'm about to die. And she goes, well, if a king's going to die, he's got to be anointed for burial. So she poured this out and anointed his feet. Listen to me, when Jesus Christ hung on that cross, his feet smelled like myr because of her. It was the only anointing his body ever got.

What about Easter Sunday? The women came, didn't they? Yeah, but he was already risen. So had she not acted when she did, he would have gone to the grave, unannointed for burial. So let me ask you this question. Are you going to miss the opportunity of a lifetime that's passing in front of you

because it's only good for the lifetime of the opportunity? Come on, let's not miss our moment. We were born for this, brought into the kingdom for such a time as this. She gave, while she could. Thirdly, and finally, she received more than she gave. And so it always is, because God will not be outgiven. It just, he's too competitive for that. I can't put it any other way than that. We think we can bless God and we walk away with more than what we gave to him. Is that not in the story you looked at last week where a woman poured out oil on his feet and wiped it up with her,

and walked away saying goodbye, but what was in her hair still? She smelled like what she poured out. And everywhere she went, she was able to shift the atmosphere and change the smell of the room because of what she thought was no longer in her life, but now was more a part of her than ever before. And so it will be for you. You will give saying goodbye to your gift, but things we send to heaven, because that's what you're going to do. We don't give to the local church. We give through the local church. And just like Dorkas' soul went to heaven, and so would come back, because when death enters the equation in God's hands, a soul that we say goodbye to, it's always see you later. It's always until next time. And what's true of a soul is true of a seed. They thought it was

goodbye to Dorkas, but it was until next time. And that's always true with every believer. Whether God races us from the dead on this side of eternity or not, it's always until next time. You might write RIP, rest in peace on a grave, but I'm telling you something. In Jesus' name, it's always raised in power. That's what's going to happen when God gets his last word. So she received more than she gave, because she gave these dresses out, but what did she get? I count three things. Number one, she got resurrection. Would the widows have sent for Peter if they would not have been clothed by Dorcas? It says, when Peter came, they stood there holding these, saying, you got to raise her from the dead. Look what she did. Who's going to weep when you die?

How will you live, like Mark Twain said, so that when you die, even the undertaker, sorry, you're dead? How will you live a life so big and so massive that because of you, while you were alive, hungry people were fed? Naked people were clothed. The gospel was preached to the imprisoned and to the poor. We can live in Jesus' name such a big, beautiful life that there will be people. on this earth who are sorry that we died. And she was brought back and how surprised she must have been? Because normally you die and go to the pearly gates and who do you see? Peter. She left the pearly gates, came back to earth and there he was. But it wouldn't have happened had she not given. She also participated in revival. The text says verse 42 and many believed all around Joppa. Her gift occasioned her death, occasioned her resurrection, occasioned the salvation of the salvation

of the city, many of them. But that's not it, because there's a third R. It's resurrection, it's revival and its relocation. God, it seems, was doing something bigger than anyone could understand, as this all was a part of a bigger plan to get Peter to Joppa. Because the text ends with verse 43. So it was that he stayed there in Joppa with Simon and a Tanner many days. Now Joppa's an interesting word because you hear it, you go, wait, that sounds so familiar. Why does it sound familiar. Well, if you read the Old Testament, you find that it was in Joppa that Jonah said no. God has this thing. Pastor mentioned it last weekend about wanting to reach the Gentiles. It was never meant to stay Jewish. It was never meant to stay in one sect. It never meant to

stay in one country. He was always intending to get it to the whole world, always intending to go global with it. I wrote this sermon without knowing that pastor had simultaneously been writing a sermon about getting a message to the Gentiles. And suddenly God changed him and should be shifted him to Mary, not knowing that this weekend God was going to send me to speak about getting the gospel of the Gentiles. But how did God do something so big? Through a woman who pulled thread with a needle. In her, listen to me, saying yes. She said yes to the dress. She undid what Jonah had done. And you better say yes, or you'll find yourself like Jonah in a different kind of holding pattern. Stuck at SeaWorld.

and her saying yes, she unwittingly played part in a plan to get Peter to Joppa. You keep saying that. Why was it so important to get Peter to Joppa? Oh, you don't know about Acts 10? There was going to be a guy named Cornelius, a commander in the Roman army, and he was going to be praying, believing for salvation, but not knowing if God would have him a Gentile. And in the middle of his prayer session, an angel would show up.

And the angel would say, your prayer is. Cornelius, and your alms have come up. Your alms, your prayers, your gifts have come up before God. He has seen you. And so now send men, say it with me, to Joppa and send for Simon, whose surname is Peter. It was all about getting Peter to Joppa. You see, we're afraid when we find ourselves in a holding pattern, not knowing, I see where I want to be, but I don't know how to get there. We think it's about misconnections. I came to tell you it's about making connections. In your pattern, God is preparing you for what you know not. Come on, we got to get Peter to Joppa, because Peter's got the keys, and the guy where the

keys needs to get brought to the city to meet the guy met by the angel. You feel like God doesn't see you. You feel like God doesn't know you, but you are a certain disciple to him. You are loved by him. He's got plans for you. So use what's in your hand to unlock what's in your heart. At the death of Tabitha, they saw only death. They saw only a grave.

But our God saw a garden, a garden that would extend to Charlotte, a garden that would extend all across North Carolina, and all across the United States to every tribe, every tongue, every language. So let's lean in. Let's not miss out. Let's participate. Let's make ourselves available. Come on, sing it out. All across the church. Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. It's because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give it. now or visit elevationchurch.org slash podcast for more information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe, you can share it with your friends, you can click the share button, take a screenshot, and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.