Welcome to Transformation church, its Anniversary Sunday.
We are in week 3 of a series we are calling HERE IS HOLY!
Ps Mike starts the service by asking everyone to look down and he poses the question…
ARE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO BE?
INTRODUCTION:
- The truth of the matter is that most of us are not where where we want to be.
- However, when you start walking in this Christian life, our wants become less and less important, because what matters most is what God wants for us and not what we want.
- What if where you are right now is exactly the tension that God placed on your life for the destiny that He’s trying to prepare you for?
- Ps Mike lets us know that today’s message is not for the faint hearted, it may in fact hurt or offend some of us because Here is the place that God ordained for us to be.
- What if when God wrote out our lives God said, “I am going to allow the betrayal”. Some would even argue that Jesus would never experience that, yet in his own pack/squad he had Judas.
- What if Judas was right in the will of God? After all, if you read scripture, when Judas did exactly what he was supposed to do, it was the only way they could find Jesus. So that Jesus would go ahead and die for our sins. What if them leaving you was part of the plan?
- Ps Mike says the more and more that he continues his walk with God, he recognizes that it was not an attack it was an assignment. Because some things need to be developed and/or extracted within us, that cannot go ahead with us into the next season of our lives.
- Some of us are so fixed on what happened that we won’t let God take what happened and use it to turn us into what he saw from the very beginning. Even, If God didn’t cause it to happen, he can still use it.
- If it looks bad it just means we are in the middle of it, it means that it’s not over.
- Romans 8 tells us; ALL things are working! (WORKING) At this moment, it’s a verb and it’s happening HERE.
- Some of us operate like a location pin on a map. When someone asks for us to drop a pin or our location, we can move that pin to exactly where we are right now, or we can move it to another location, which is a false locator to our real situations.
- Sadly, some of us are doing this with our lives. When we enter a room and claim we are highly favored, yet we were just complaining about life a moment before that.
- Ps Mike asks us, “If here is holy, have you identified what here is for you?
MESSAGE INTRO
GOD doesn’t bless who you pretend to be, HE blesses who and where you really are.
- Your blessing is HERE
We need to stop hiding behind the facade of having Faith or Faithfulness and rather go to God honestly and openly about our actual situations. There is an anointing in authenticity. If we do not identify HERE, God will never do the work he needs to do for you HERE. God does not need your cover-up he wants YOU. The real you, the naked and unashamed YOU.
Ps Mike describes some situations that may help us identify where HERE is for some of us:
- “I am insecure about my future, but I will act like everything is okay”
- “My identity has been in my children, but I am not sure who God has called me to be”
- “I have to be the life of the party, but I am tired of performing”
- “I have more money than I know what to do with, but there is still something missing.”
- “I have been in church all my life, but I do not feel God’s presence anymore.”
- “I am the first one from my family to graduate from college but now I feel the pressure to be successful.”
- “I am everyone’s friend but no ones, companion”
- “I got the keys to my dream home, but I am not happy”
- “The drink used to be a choice but now it feels necessary”
- “We’ve been trying to hold it together for the kids, but I don’t think we are going to make it another year.”
Ps Mike encourages us to write our declarations, because HERE is Holy. Our declarations of HERE are more Holy than anything else we could ever conjure up. What would happen if the church would identify where we actually are?
Ps Mike is setting the record straight with pulpits, board rooms, fitness centers and schools that are stopping people from being authentic with who they are.
I AM HERE & Because GOD IS HERE – HERE is HOLY
- So, will you drop a pin this week?
The thing about dropping a pin is that it identifies where you are. It tells you, and everyone else, where you are. When God asked Adam and Eve where they were, it wasn’t that God had lost them (Genesis 3 9 vs 10). God asked them if they knew where they were.
Are you able to communicate your co-ordinates, can you mark yourself on the map of destiny?
When we spell THERE, HERE is in the word THERE. God is asking us to put the cross before HERE, the “T” in THERE makes up the cross. Remember, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6 vs 33).
Here is the substance of There, the majority of the word There is Here. If we do not focus on here, we may even cost people connected to our destiny to miss their HERE. Don’t wait to get THERE to practice humility; do it HERE. Because THERE will only expose what you left HERE.
Ps Mike gets real with us and says that, “The reason most of us are anxious abut THERE and what the future will hold is because we do not actually trust God, we want to play a saviour instead of having one.”
God says, “If you do not care for HERE, I can’t trust you THERE”. The way we treat what we have here might actually disqualify what we will have THERE. For instance, you may be praying for a new car, yet you can’t even take care of the one you have HERE.
EXODUS 3 verse 4-5 NLT
When the LORD saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush. “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am” Moses replied. “Do not come any closer,” the LORD warned. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.”
THREE HABITS FOR HERE
- When Moses says, “HERE I AM” this was a sign for = Availability
- Are you available to God?
The truth is that most of us are tolerating God’s ‘suggestion’ to us. (Suggestion, because we don’t take Gods commands seriously and we apply them to our lives as if they are just opinions).
You can tell that we are doing this just by how much we have obeyed him in the past 24 months. All throughout scriptures God presented people with opportunities and they either said ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If they said ‘no’ he would not force them. And God would go to the next available person.
God is not looking for the most capable, he is looking for someone who is available!
Availability is not a once off thing, ask Abraham. He still had to be available after God gave him a son and when God asked for that son back. Abraham had to be available (Genesis 21 -22).
When you say, “I am available to God” it is a commitment that you make for the rest of your life.
- When Moses takes of his shoes, he willingly took off his protection which made him = Vulnerable
- When was the last time you willingly took off your protection?
Until we get vulnerable before God and take off the protection, God cannot work in us. The problem is that the walls we’ve built won’t just keep people out, but will also keep God out.
- When Moses was standing in God’s presence, he had = Sensitivity
- God allows certain things to happen so that we can feel the situation.
Ps Mike tells us that he would not have been able to share this word with us as effectively as he has here, unless what happened with him in the previous week (vision message) didn’t happen. He says, God had to take him through a purifier so that he could feel the season he is in and be sensitive to the situation.
SENSITIVITY IS A STRENGTH
After those three acts, Moses’ perspective was transformed. He was standing in the exact same position he had been, before God told him he was standing on Holy Ground. God changed an ordinary moment because he acknowledged HERE.
When you acknowledge HERE your perspective can change in the same position.
- God doesn’t need to give you another job for you to see the miracle.
- God doesn’t need to give you another wife or husband for you to have the marriage that you want.
- You don’t need more money, or more friends, people don’t even need to know your name, God will transform you exactly where you are.
You could be standing in the exact same position and God can turn what was regular into miraculous. Because you can become:
AVAILABLE, VULNERABLE & SENSITIVE.
Ps Mike prays:
“Father,
Thank you for slowing us down enough to hear you here.
And father for any of us who have been addicted to the theology of There, I thank you Father that you can do a work on the inside of us right HERE. That brings us to a place of acknowledging that I am HERE. And because you are here with me – HERE is Holy.
Speak Lord, your servants have slowed down enough to listen, whatever you want to do in this ministry, whatever you want to do in this year, in my life. I am saying, ‘HERE I AM GOD’.
Write this story God. I want to be a part of what you want me to be a part of, dropping the pin here is my job Father, but where we go from here is your job God. I will listen and I will be open.
Because it is all about you God.”
[SINGS: Heart of Worship]
Salvation Message:
“If you are tired of carrying the heavy load and the burden by yourself, today I want you to give your life to Christ. If that, is you and you want Jesus to be your personal Lord and Saviour remember that: 1. You are making the greatest decision of your life and 2. Nothing magical happens at this moment but transformation begins to happen in your life and your name will be written in the lamb’s book of life. By accepting Christ today, you have just located where you are.
Salvation Prayer:
God thank you that you have sent your son just for me right here. Today I give you my life, I surrender, I believe you lived, and you died just for me. Today I am getting vulnerable. Here I am, use me, change me and transform me.
In Jesus Name,
Amen!”
If received Christ today, transformation would like to walk with you through this journey.
TEXT [SAVED] TO [828282]
