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Embracing Limitation

2025/2/21
logo of podcast Elevation with Steven Furtick

Elevation with Steven Furtick

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我个人喜欢限制,我认为限制有时是件好事。例如,在饮食方面,我需要限制来控制我的行为,因为我缺乏自制力。我喜欢有限的选择,因为大菜单会让我不知所措。在布道方面,我喜欢知道我的时间限制,以便更好地控制听众的注意力。 他人的限制反而能激励我的信心。将梦想托付给他人失望的经历是危险的。你所接受的限制会规范你所经历的祝福。限制你的信仰会让你错过上帝为你准备的奇迹。 我们有时会因为价值观的转变而损害下一代。撒旦无法阻止上帝赐福,只能通过精神围困阻止我们获得祝福。我们有时挨饿不是因为上帝没有供应,而是因为我们无法获得他所供应的东西。要小心你依靠的人,因为他们可能会限制你的成长。我们建立的支持系统有时无法承受上帝对我们说话的分量。有时我们需要限制接触,只与相信的人相处,倾听正确的声音。 你将过去经验置于未来之门的掌控,会让你停留在无法容纳上帝旨意的生命阶段。如果我听了那个人的话,我的教会就不会像现在这样成功。撒旦是个骗子,上帝的计划会实现,无论你是否参与。不要让自己被过去的经历或他人的意见所限制。要开始行动,不要停留在原地。我们的不信阻碍了我们的祝福,而不是别人。你不能同时相信上帝并责怪他人。相信上帝意味着没有什么能阻止你获得上帝为你预备的祝福。有时我们不会主导自己的生活,也不会主动悔改,从而阻碍了我们的祝福。 有时我们无法接受他人的肯定,因为我们的内心被封闭了。只有完全了解你的人才能无条件地爱你,那就是上帝。当你觉得自己很渺小的时候,很难战胜困难。我们有时会因为觉得自己不配而错过上帝的奇迹。上帝的祝福并不取决于我们的完美。唯一阻碍我们祝福的是不信。有些人对服从上帝设置了过多的限制。自满会让我们丧命,害怕后果会让我们停留在挨饿的地方。 上帝会利用我们感到不舒服的处境,将我们定位在正确的位置。我们讨厌的事情,上帝可能会用来帮助我们。有时为了看到上帝的话语实现,我们不能只关注事情是否合理。当我们逃避魔鬼时,我们是在逃避一个已经被击败的敌人。大门不仅是声音激活的,也是动作激活的。上帝会在你行动时行动。当你采取行动时,魔鬼就会逃跑。信仰的宣告会先于你进入你的未来。当我们赞美上帝时,魔鬼会惊慌失措。上帝会使用那些感到不配、不够好、被排斥和受限的人。许多时候,你害怕的事情,上帝已经解决了。敌人想要让你隐藏你的天赋。隐藏你的问题会让你死去,分享你的恩赐才能让你活过来。上帝选择那些知道如何宣布胜利的人。

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Chapters
Pastor Steven Furtick shares his unique perspective on limitations, highlighting how embracing them can fuel faith and provide structure. He uses personal examples, like his disciplined eating habits and preference for concise menus, to illustrate his point.
  • Embracing limitations can be a good thing
  • Limitations can provide structure and self-control
  • Overcoming self-imposed limitations fuels faith

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Toyota trucks are built to last year after year, mile after mile. So don't wait. Get yours today. Visit buyatoyota.com for deals and more. Toyota, let's go places. Hey, this is Stephen Furtick. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life. Enjoy the message.

This week, I have one more installment on Gates of Change. It's in 2 Kings 7. I think this story, for most of you, will be unfamiliar, which is good. It's good, because I'm praying that God will use it to speak to you in a personal way and kind of catch you off guard today and create change in your life.

Here's what the Bible says. 2 Kings 7:1, Elisha said, "Hear the word of the Lord." You've been listening to your doubts so long. You've been listening to your dysfunctions so long. You've been listening to your disappointments so long. But hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord said. It's about this time tomorrow. "A seah of flour will sell for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate."

Samaria. The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of heaven, could this happen? You know how certain people always want to put limits on what God can do? Tell a secret. I actually love limitations. I know that usually in church they say, Take the limits off.

I personally love limits. In fact, I'm calling this final bonus message in the Gates of Change series, Embracing Limitation. Embracing Limitation. I think limitation can be a good thing. I think it's a good thing that sometimes we limit our consumption on certain foods. Say amen. I'm a real strict person on my eating because I'm too wild.

I'm too wild. I need the gutters. I will bowl into the gutter every time if I don't have those little guards. I actually do it where I'm not allowed to eat past a certain time or before a certain time, but during that certain time I can do it. But I need limits. Are you like me? Maybe I have no self-control. I need limits. I don't even like restaurants with big menus.

Cheesecake Factory gives me heart palpitations. The menu looks like Encyclopedia Britannica. I can't do it. I need Prozac to make it through my order.

And usually I'll get Holly to narrow it for me. I'll be like, "Can you tell me just three things that I might like?" And, "Can you just narrow the options for me?" Because I can't do it. I like limitations. I like to know even in preaching, when I go somewhere to preach, they'll say, "Take as long as you want!" And I'll say, "Well, how long are the people expecting me to preach?" Because I want to know how long I have to work before they tune me out. Because they won't... I can preach as long as I want, but they might not listen as long as I want to preach.

Why are y'all clapping about that? That was a little awkward. But I'm saying it because limitation can be a good thing. It really can. It can be a good thing. And especially one thing that I love is when somebody tries to put a limit on me that contradicts what I believe God has called me to do. Maybe it's my ego.

Maybe I have wounds from my childhood failed wrestling career that I'm still compensating for, but I like somebody to tell me that I can't do something. I do. It fuels my faith. When we were getting ready to start the church, one time I sat down with a guy, and I was sharing my vision with him, and I was telling him that we were going to start a church. I didn't have any better sense than to tell this guy my dreams.

He was a little older and jaded because he had been disappointed in his life. It's a dangerous thing. You ready to write something down? It is a dangerous thing to entrust your dream to someone else's disappointments. A lot of times that's what happens. We share our dream, Joseph, and we show our coat to people who are not really ready to receive something.

What we speak and so then if we receive their doubt they will dis our appointment I put that in for Holly Holly dared me to put that in my sermon today, and I didn't get it at 9:30 So there it is baby. You owe me some but it's a

It's a dangerous thing to speak something. So here's what happened. We're sitting down having lunch, and I'm like, I'm going to start a church. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. We're going to reach the city. We're going to go to Charlotte. We're going to have a church. We're going to reach people. We're going to break the rules. It's not going to be all this stuff.

Tradition and religion. We're gonna do it. It's gonna be edgy. It's gonna not be for church people We reach people far from God We're gonna be and the more I was talking the more he stuffed his mouth and just smirked at me not scowled at me He didn't look mad. He just looked amused He was just smirking at me and he's stuffing his face with french fries, you know, oh overweight pastor just deep

I'm just trying to color the story a little bit. I don't even remember if he was overweight, but what I remember is I went on and on telling him, "We're going to write worship songs, and we're going to do worship songs that are going to touch the world, and we're going to write songs that are going to go around the world. It's not just going to be a white church. It's going to be a lot of different kinds of people. It's going to be white people and black people and old people and young people and Presbyterians

and Pentecostals and atheists and agnostics and just all kind of people and single people and married people and divorced people. I'm going on and on, and he's just eating, looking at me. And when I finished, he looked at me and said, Not going to happen, bud. Not in the South. Not in the South. Not going to happen. Look down your row real quick and check your row.

I dare you to shout at the top of your little sanctified Sunday morning voice, somebody shout, it's happening. As a matter of fact, I kind of hope that he watches this sermon on television. Y'all excuse me for a minute so he can see black people and white people and Hispanic people.

and Latina people, come on, and loud people, and quiet people, and big people, and little people, and young people, and old people, and broken people, and whole people. All together, somebody shout, it's happening. It's something because the limitations you embrace will regulate the blessing you experience.

And when you allow beliefs to limit your God because your mindset is too small to accommodate the magnitude of his glory, you miss out on the very miracles that have your name on them. Please follow me for a moment. When the officer said to the prophet, "Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?" What he did is he closed the gate.

the gift that God was giving him. So it was a desperate situation in the nation because the famine had been going on so long that within the gates of the city walls the people had resorted to cannibalism. And I debated whether to tell you this, but it's right in chapter 6 should you choose to read it. They had started eating their own babies. It sounds extreme. However, I think we can all see ways that

At times we compromise the next generation when our value systems get shifted. So as the value system has shifted within the nation, the favor of God has not been so much withheld as it has been held up. And here's the difference.

When you read about famine in the Bible, you probably associate famine with drought. Usually, when you see a famine in the Bible, it is connected to a pronouncement by a prophet. Like when Elijah said, "There will be no rain or dew in the land in the next few years except at my word to King Ahab," and God withheld the rain from the heavens.

And God cut off the source of supply so that the people's hearts would turn back to him. Now in antiquity, people did not regard famine and drought only with agriculture or weather conditions. In antiquity, people regarded the rain as a sign or a symbol of the presence and blessing of God.

Because blessing was associated with life and life with blessing and without rain there can be no life And so where there is no blessing there is no life where there is no rain There is no food where there is no presence of God where there is no worship. There can be no life No strength no hope however This is a different kind of famine that was not created by a drought this famine started with a siege and

Ben-Hadad was an excellent military strategist, and so when he surrounded the northern kingdom of Israel, which was known as Samaria, what he did, a common military tactic, was that he cut them off from their supply. And when he cut their line to their food supply, it wasn't that he eliminated the food, it was that he prevented them from accessing it. And so since the devil cannot prevent God from blessing you,

His only alternative is to put you in a state of spiritual siege so that you cannot access the blessing that God has freely given you. Sometimes we are starving not because of something that God did not supply, but because of something he supplied that we cannot cease. When the enemy puts you in a state of unbelief, it blocks you from your own blessing. King Jehoram

had the wrong people around him at this time. We saw it in the text. The officer, verse 2, on whose arm the king was leaning. Side note for all the students. Be careful who you lean on. He was leaning on a man who would not believe, who would not connect to the prophecy by faith. And when you lean on people who insist on dragging you into their dysfunctional way of thinking...

This might be only for five people, but sometimes something you lean on in one season that props you up can paralyze you in the next season. Sometimes we build in our lives support systems that are unable to accommodate the weight of what God is speaking to us. So be real careful who you lean on. Ask somebody, "Can I lean on you?" Because, see, I don't want to get in the middle of a famine and be leaning on someone who doesn't have faith.

For the life that I'm trying to live, I can't just be surrounded by people who refuse to believe that better days are ahead and that greater things are in store. So sometimes I have to restrict access, and I can't just be around anybody, and I can't just listen to anything. And I cannot believe everything I see, and I certainly cannot believe everything I think.

So sometimes I've got to shut it down. And sometimes I've got to mute some people. And sometimes I've got to spend some time in the presence of God because my signal-to-noise ratio has caused me to miss the provision of God because I'm leaning on the wrong people and listening to the wrong voices. This is the Word of the Lord. I'm not saying be mean to people. Just don't lean on them. Lean on the everlasting arms. Amen.

Lean on the promises of God. Build your house on a solid foundation, not the shifting sands of people's opinions. And the man on whose arm the king leaned said, Could this happen? Look how Elisha responded. He said, You will see it with your own eyes, but you getting none of it. That's the new New International version. New, new. I was just thinking how sad that was, that it was a day of deliverance.

The top advisor to the king Starved to death as a matter of fact he didn't get the chance to start because look when the people went into the enemy's camp and plundered the enemy's camp in accordance with the word of the Lord Verse 17 says now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate question Who have you put in charge of your gates? What regulates your thoughts what regulates your belief? I?

what regulates your self-image. Look, he put the man in charge of the gate. There's a lot of revelation in this message. I'm going to give you all of it I can, but you will need to lean into this message, because sometimes you have put a past experience in charge of the gate to your future. Listen, and when you let your past experience

regulate access to your future, you will always be stuck in a stage of life that can no longer accommodate what God is speaking in this season. Not going to happen, bud. What if I had listened to him? We wouldn't get to hang out today.

What if I had listened to him? I would have built me a little white church with some little white people and it'd be about 50 of us and we would just preach to the choir and we wouldn't change anything and we wouldn't touch anything and we wouldn't have EFAM watching all over the world. The devil is a liar. It's happening and it's going to happen with or without you. You might as well put it because it's here, baby. Preaching my watch off my wrist. Some somebody say it's happening.

And what a horrible thing for it to be happening right in front of you, but you don't experience it. The man on whose arm the king leaned stood in the gate, and while the people were running to the victory, the Bible says they trampled him in the gateway. He died in the gate of what was possible. Y'all give me a minute. I don't really know what to do. It's a little too much. Touch somebody and say, get out of the gate. Tell 12 people so I can have it.

I'm gonna buy a little time. Come on, 12 people, get out of the gate. Nobody coming to help me either. I'm sorry. No, Buck, I don't need you. I don't need you, Buck. I'm gonna do this myself. I started week one. I was saying, get back in the gate, but I heard the Lord saying this time, get out of the gate. I said, what is it? He said, make a move. You hear all this teaching. You hear all this excitement. Ah, it's good, but you gotta get started. And he died in the gateway. Wow.

He blocked his own breakthrough. He saw it, but he did not experience it because he would not believe it. It is our unbelief that blocks our blessing, not others. Some of us, we block ourselves by blaming others. And so we stay locked in prisons of offense and we miss blessings because we would rather blame somebody else than believe God.

See, let me preach this. You cannot believe God and blame them at the same time. You can't believe God and blame others. Either you believe that what people meant for evil, God means for good, or you don't.

If you believe God, it means there's nothing life can do to you. There's nothing people can throw at you. There's nothing they can say about you, think about you, or lock you out of that will keep you from receiving what God has assigned to your life. So here's the announcement, Elisha. You can have your breakthrough or you can have your blame, but you can't have both. When the king came to Elisha, he said, "'This is God's fault that we're in this famine.'"

It wasn't the Lord's fault. It was the fault of the leader. And sometimes we will not lead our own lives and take initiative for our own repentance. So we block our blessings. Boys, do you hear me? We block our own blessings. Not the devil. Our disbelief. God's going to do it. The other day,

A great man of God was encouraging me. If you made a list of the top five people in the world, he would be, in my opinion, somewhere in the top ten. But I respect him so much. Why I respect him… He has longevity in ministry. He was introducing me to speak. He had invited me to speak. He got up to introduce me, and the things he was saying about me were so nice and encouraging. I thought he was talking about someone else.

It was a kind of introduction where he wasn't just speaking like he wrote a book or he pastored a church. He was saying things that he saw in me and how God had called me and our ministry and a voice to the generation, a bridge to reconciliation, just things that while he was saying them, at the same time that he was affirming me, watch this, there was another voice, not on the stage, but inside my soul. You ever had this happen like,

Somebody is trying to affirm you, trying to love you, trying to validate you, but you cannot receive it because your gates are blocked. There is something in the way called you that will not allow you to receive the love that God is trying to give you through someone else. And while he was saying these things about me, it's almost like the more he said good about me, the worse I felt. Because what I thought is, he doesn't know me.

The problem with you is you've got too much dirt on yourself. And the problem with you is you think you know yourself better than God does. The moment the revelation hits your life that the only one who knows you completely is the same one who loves you unconditionally, you will be unstoppable in the kingdom of God.

And while he was sitting there affirming me and saying things about me, the devil, that old Slytherin serpent that came crawling up to Eve talking about did God really say he was placing limitations? It was my own limitation. It's hard for you to take on giants when you see yourself as a grasshopper.

It's hard for you to come out of a famine when you are living in the depths of your own frustration. And even when I preach sometimes, some of you play me off and hold me off and cross your arms and close your heart and you lean back and it is your way of shutting the gates, but you are missing the miracle because you feel unworthy. But God never predicated his blessing on your worthiness. Amen.

Perfection is not the price of admission of God, nor to the great works and mighty things that he has called you to do in the earth. I feel anointed to tell you today, imperfection has never stopped God from blessing anybody. The only thing that blocks your blessing is unbelief. Would I dare you to shout right now loud enough where that devil can hear you? I believe I am the righteousness of God.

I need y'all to shout. My voice is tired. Shout, I believe! Elisha said, you'll see it, but you won't experience it. He doesn't say how. You ever notice how God doesn't give you a lot of the details sometimes? I wish he did. It'd be super nice, but he doesn't. All he says is, this time tomorrow, the famine is going to be over. How's he going to do it? Well, we're going to get some manna from heaven. A little flashback Friday. Famine flashback.

Remember when they were in wilderness, because I dropped down a man out of heaven, so you can drop down a man out of heaven? What's it going to look like? How's he going to do it this time? You might be surprised how God blesses and delivers the nation, because the Bible says, Ooh, I love this part right here. Can you tell that I love what I do to preach to you? Because I really feel like I've been cooking this all, and we're about to eat something right now. I mean, I smell it. I smell it.

Oh, it smells good. Verse 3. Now there were four men. Everybody say four. Four. Four. Number of creation. The north, south, the east, and the west. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Four represents creation. There's a creative miracle on the horizon. Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. Now a contrast emerges. I've got somebody in the gate who doesn't believe.

And then we've got a group of men. They are outside the gate. Not because they're coming back from Whole Foods. This is a gated community in the sense that these men, when the white flaky spots started showing up on their skin, they had to go to the priest. Leprosy was used to refer to a wide variety of skin diseases in this day, from the most moderate, being a change in coloration, to bloody sores. And since leprosy is a progressive disease...

Eventually, maybe your fingers start falling off, but it's also a contagious disease. So when you start to see the signs and you are pronounced ceremonially unclean, they move you and quarantine you and position you outside the gate. And now your only hope of survival is to beg because you can't even carry on a normal conversation. If you approach somebody, you have to announce your condition before you engage. And so to even get into the gate, you would have to

Start hollering within about 10 or 20 feet unclean and clean Can you imagine if you had to announce your condition to people out loud? Before you met them you would have no friends. I'm serious if you had to externalize things that people don't know What's what's wrong with you some of y'all would have to announce? You know I don't know Amazon addict

What if you had to announce everything that was wrong with you? What if you had to announce lust, perversion? What would that be like? I talked bad about you the other day, but hi, how you doing? I can't stand you. They announce their condition, and they're outside the gate, and they're isolated, and they're desperate, and they're not welcome, and they're starving, and the doggie bags have stopped coming because the people inside the gate are going to take care of themselves first and foremost, and they're outside the gate, and there's four of them.

Like those four men. You remember the New Testament, don't you? Because Jesus was preaching. Maybe we'll preach about it in my next series. And so many people were in the house. Nobody could get in. But there were four crazy men who were a friend to this man. And so they got creative.

Don't you try this if you come to Elevation Church and it's full. They ripped the roof off of the house and lowered the man down, and the man got healed because of the faith of four crazy men. Watch the crazy faith. I'm just going to say this right now. I don't mean to offend you, but some of you have way too many limits on what you will and won't do to obey God.

You have too many limits. You have too many conditions. You don't want to look weird. You don't want to be different. You don't want to stand out. You don't want people to talk about you, and so you're starving inside. But these men, they didn't have the option to stay inside, and they couldn't stay where they were. The Bible says that they eventually, after many days of this, said to each other, Why stay here until we die? What a question. In other words, it is complacency that kills us.

It is our willingness to stay in places where we are starving because we fear the repercussions of our obedience. And so we don't join an e-group because we're scared of being seen. So we stay in isolation. I'm going to push these e-groups today. And we die outside because we won't let anybody in.

But they didn't have that option anymore. They did not have the luxury to sit back and wait and see what God would do. They no longer had the luxury of patience, so they said to one another, "We can't stay here, and if we say, 'We'll go into the city,' the famine is there, so we can't go there, and we can't stay here, so we only have one thing left to do. Let's go."

You didn't shout it. Shout, "Let's go!" So let's go over to the enemy's camp and surrender. If they spare us, we live. If they kill us, at least we die quick. Because I'm hungry. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. We can't stay here, and we can't go there because we're outside the gate.

Here's what I love. If you've ever felt like an outsider, raise your hand right now. If you've ever felt like an outsider, that surprises you, right? Because where are the insiders if we all feel like outsiders? That was kind of weird how more of us feel like outsiders. Here's good news for the outsiders. These men were on the outside of the city gate because of their condition. But what I love is God was using their condition

to position them in the place so that they would not be comfortable enough to stay

Their condition here's what I love. I love preaching to you. I'm a precious whole point just to you their Condition position them to be God's secret weapon to save a whole nation I am trying to say that sometimes the thing that you hate is the thing that God will use Sometimes the thing that makes people not like you and reject you is the very thing I'm about

If they had been inside the camp, they would have died.

It was the fact that they were not allowed in the camp that led to them. Look what they did. This is so stupid what they did. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. Sometimes in order to see what God has spoken come to pass, you can't be so focused on making sense. Your senses are killing you. Living by what you see is killing you. Living by what you feel is killing you. Living by what you hear is...

Killing you and they had no choice These are not the people who come to church to check it off a list because it's a nice thing to do and their grandma would Be proud if she was still alive today. These are the people who come to church because I need God to Survive these are not people who come to church so they can get a good parking space perhaps on Tuesday morning These are the people that come to church because I can't make it alone

I live and I breathe and I move and I have my being in him and that dust Before the light came they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans and when they reached the edge of the camp watch this Nobody was there already Displaced their enemies all they had to do was show up see they went to surrender to the enemy and

had already surrendered to them. When will we realize that when we run from the devil, we are running from a defeated foe? See, the Bible says that he is already under my feet, so all I have to do to have the victory in my life is to take another step.

Now I want to apologize to John Gray because he preached so good last week. But he said something that I want to take a step further. He said these gates are voice activated.

I'm not correcting him. I'm simply adding an addendum. They are not only voice-activated, they are motion-activated. See, God moves when you move. The devil runs when you take your stand. When you put on your shield of faith, the fiery darts of the wicked one will be quenched.

So when they got to the edge, somebody said, I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm moving. I'm not dying here. I'm not dying like this. I'm not living in this mess. I'm not passing this on to my kids. I'm not going out like this. I'm not starving when my God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Not like this. For the

the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses. God caused the enemy to hear an army that wasn't even there. When Elisha released the word of God, when you make a declaration of faith, it goes before you into your future. Matter of fact, why not shout right now?

Because when we praise God, the Devil gets a panic attack and he has to turn loose our sword. I'm real sorry if you don't like it loud like this, but somebody is starving in this church today. It wouldn't be so bad if you were starving and there was no food, but when Christ died to give you life,

And the thief came to kill, steal, and destroy. I'm sorry, but I can't stand by silent while the devil wipes out a generation. I can't stand by silent while teen suicide is at an all-time high. I can't stay silent. The gates of hell won't...

If we stay silent, we die. If we hide our leprosy, it kills us. God used somebody who wasn't even allowed in the city to save it. God's going to use all of you who feel unworthy and all of you who feel not good enough and all of you who have been ostracized and all of you who feel limited. That's how God works. It's through your limitation. These men were so diseased that no one was allowed to even touch them. Come here. He couldn't even touch them.

And that's who God chose. So they went in the camp. Let me show you this. They went in the camp and they saw that the enemy was already gone. Because a lot of times what you're running scared from, God has already dealt with. But the enemy has you under siege and he puts a spirit of fear on you. Because if the spirit of fear ever lifts, you will find out who you really are in Christ. But when they got there, they saw that it was theirs for the taking. So now the first thing they did wasn't to pray and give God their glory. First thing they did...

was eat. They went in this tent, and when they reached the edge of the camp, they entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and then they started carrying away the spoils, the silver, gold, clothes, vibranium. "This is good. This is good. This is good." But then they went off and hid them, because that's what you do when you're a leper. That's what you do when you're ashamed. You hide. That's what you do when you feel like an outsider.

Remember the man in the parable that said, "I was afraid, so I took what you gave me and I hid it"? The enemy wants to keep you in hiding, and if he can, he'll give you a condition that will cause you to hide your gift. You hear this word I'm trying to preach to you? I wish I could sit down one-on-one with everybody in the church and say, "What are you hiding?" Because here they are. God has given them the victory, and they're hiding it.

and sometimes we hide because we are convinced we are not worthy, and sometimes we hide because we are afraid of what might happen if we let our light shine. But they had a revelation in verse 10, I believe it is. Notice verse 9. "And they said to each other, 'You know, this is not right. Here we are. We don't deserve to be here. This is a day of good news, and we're keeping it to ourselves. Now, if we wait until daylight, if we hold this in,

If we keep this to ourselves, punishment will overtake us. What you hold inside, when you don't show your issues, you die. When you don't share your gift, you die. You are dying because of what you are hiding. If we wait, if we sit on this, we die. If we expose our sin, we can be healed. If we hide it, we will die. Here's the thing. A lot of us are dying on the inside because our issues are beneath our skin.

So we stay outside the camp. I don't tell anybody. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. We post and we pretend and we do our thing. But they had a revelation. God is blessing us now. And we have to share what the Lord has done. Even though we're lepers. Even though I'm imperfect. You know how preposterous it is for me to preach to you? When I struggle like I struggle, I stand on this stage before you each week by faith. See, but the thing about it is...

What if the reason God chose the lepers to discover the treasure was because they knew how to make an announcement? See, once they found the goodness of God, they said, "Let's go at once and report this in the royal palace." And then look at verse 10: "So they went and called out, because that's what lepers do. Only this time they were not shouting, 'Unclean!' This time

They were shouting, "Let's go! Let's go!" The only one who can really shout the victory is the one God has raised from the ashes of defeat. So I want to give you an opportunity. If he healed you, if he saved you, if he raised you, if he has been good to you, if you have a testimony, if you are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

All the grateful people, shout right.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.

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