Charles Metcalf’s Introduction
- The presence of God is in your room right now
- His favor is there
- What the enemy meant for evil, God is turning for good
- The spirit of God is coming to bring hope and restoration
- Next week we’re back with a brand new sermon series
- Tomorrow we start 7 days of prayer and fasting
- We will take time to focus in on God and silence all the other voices and distractions and hear clearly from God
- Ask God what He would like for you to put away to hear from the voice of God
- We need wisdom from the Holy Sprit
Jeremiah 17:5-8 New Living Translation (NLT)
Wisdom from the Lord
5 This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
who rely on human strength
and turn their hearts away from the Lord.
6 They are like stunted shrubs in the desert,
with no hope for the future.
They will live in the barren wilderness,
in an uninhabited salty land.
7 “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
and they never stop producing fruit.
Anecdote: In high school, Charles ran track. He did a triple jump, long jump, then ran a 4 x 1, i.e. 4 people running 100 meters each. He was decent. The coach said the guy who normally ran the 4 x 2, i.e. 4 people running 200 meters each, was out and needed Charles to stand in. When Charles started running, he started really, really well, and then for the second lap, he started slowing down and felt like extreme weight was pulling him behind. He started in first and ended up in 6th place by the time he handed the baton to his team member. He realized his legs could only take him as far as his heart could carry him. The strength of his legs was connected to the source, his heart. He was running a race that he wasn’t conditioned for or prepared for. Your external strength is always connected to your internal source.
1. Your External Strength is Always Connected to Your Internal Source
The year 2020 is about testing your internal source, not your strength. This year came to expose our sources – it has tested what we really put our hope in and whom we really trust.
We may have realized that our thoughts and roots aren’t as deep as we thought. We may have realized that our marriages were not as strong as we thought.
If you don’t check your source, you’ll make changes on the outside that don’t affect anything.
God wants to do something deep in your life. You can’t post your character on Instagram. You can’t post your deliverance online.
God will heal you on the inside and the outside will be totally different.
What if God is using this year to condition you, and prepare you, for what He has ahead for you?
2. Your Season Always Exposes Your Source
There are some trees that are green dependent upon seasons. Maple trees and pine trees are built different. During the winter, the maple tree responds poorly. The pine trees are green regardless of the season. We need to be green regardless of the season.
God wants to be your source so that in every season you can be green. The economy can be good or bad, but you’re green. Regardless of who is in office, you’ll still be green because you have a different source.
What exposes the source of these two trees is that they’re built differently.
Some trees are just built different, therefore they respond differently even when they’re in the exact same season.
You’re built different.
The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives on the inside of me.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
You are built different; the season is exposing who our source is and whom we put out trust in.
When you read your bible, don’t skip over what you don’t understand. Some of us did that in school and maybe that’s why we do it with the word of God.
Get your roots in the word of God and allow God to give you a deeper revelation that allows you to be rooted in God regardless of the wind.
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength”
The natural state of our world is fallen. Sin entered the world after the original sin in the garden of Eden. Our world’s natural state has a bad bend. When you don’t surrender to God, He doesn’t step in to change the way the world will naturally bend – the natural pain/loss.
A curse is God saying if you don’t acknowledge Me, you’re left to your own devices. You’re left in the natural pain you’re born in. It’ll be a bad deal if you’re looking to other people, the government, etc., if you put your trust in humans for things only God can help with. For instance, putting your trust in people for peace. You can’t wait for the pandemic to end to put your full trust in God.
“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord, and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.”
You have to make the Lord your hope and confidence.
For Charles, there have been moments where he spoke to God and declared that God is his source. He heard God saying, “you’re saying I’m your source but I can see your fruit”.
Many times, we say God is our source but our fruit looks nothing like God. For example, our fruit is anger, worry, and confusion. If you walk up to a tree that says it is supposed to be an apple tree but it has oranges on it, then you probably can’t separate what you see from what is being said about the tree.
Many times, what God does, is that He says, that He hears what you say, but He also sees what you’re doing.
He can see that many times our peace comes from what we have made up, and from what we control.
Pieced together peace: – many of us, instead of going to God to get peace, we piece together our own peace. We can be in tough seasons and instead of going to God, we start creating scenarios, e.g. “I read my Bible, I tithe, etc.” – we start piecing together all types of stories that make us feel better about our situation. God wants to give us the true, real, and living peace that surpasses our ability to understand. He wants to be our source. We can have a peace that doesn’t need to know the outcome – i.e., when is it going to happen, when will the pandemic end, etc.
For us, many of our sources are on the surface or situational. Sources of peace, joy, hope are on situational. For instance, as long as “it’s going good”, or “my business is doing good,” then “I have the peace of God”. If your peace is in Instagram and whether or not people like you, and what they think about you, that is a peace put in mere humans, and is controlled by outward sources.
What if God brought you this year in order to bring you a peace on the inside?
3. Your Fruit Exposes Your Roots
You can say you’re rooted in God, but your fruit exposes what you’re rooted in.
Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
When thinking about this year, Charles’ desire to finish strong was accompanied at the same rate by a desire to finish first.
He realized that many times, our desire is to finish first, not finish strong.
The temptation to finish first will inhibit your ability to finish strong.
When we think about finishing first, we’re not thinking about the end and the need to finish strong.
This is why we have decided that we’re going to finish strong.
The temptation is that you want to finish first. Many times, God’s desire is for something deeper, which is for us to finish with fruit.
Message Title: Finish with Fruit
What if this year wasn’t to finish first? For instance, finishing first with your business, school, and relationships.
What if God said, “what if this year you don’t finish first, but you finish with fruit – more joy, peace, patience?”
What if we ask God to finish us with more fruit – more joy, love, and peace in our lives?
If we’re going to finish strong, we need to finish with more fruit in our life. We should want to finish with more joy and grace in our life.
4. Fruit is a Focus, Not a Feeling
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – these are not feelings.
This year, God used the toughness of the year, the changing of the year, all of these different things to allow us to push past what we feel and ask what we’re focusing on? Pushing past our emotional, surface level things we’re focusing on, hard things, or feel excited about, etc.?
The fruit of our life truly comes from what we’re focusing on. It comes from who our source is.
The goal of this sermon today is to ask you:
Who is your source?
What is your source?
Where have you placed your hope?
Where do you get your peace from?
What is your life rooted in?
This year has gone different than what many of us planned, thought, or desired.
In the middle of disappointment and plans changing, God is producing fruit.
What would it look like if we submit to this process because we know God is building fruit in our life – something deeper and more than a surface level thing in our lives?
Illustration: Charles had a sense of God giving him a new level of focus and discernment when he was heading back to work. When he returned to work, he didn’t have words in the first meeting and felt confused like God lifted His hand off of his life. He was confused because he thought he would have more wisdom, speak better, and be on a new level. He was frustrated with God. He heard God say in the still small voice, “I did it, but you’re looking in the wrong place. I did it, but it’s not a new level, it’s deeper.”
Many times when we look for the fruit of God’s anointing on our lives, we look for the higher thing. We look for the new thing/the thing that feels “above”. The power of God is not only in the things that are higher, but is also in the things that are deeper.
When God gives you something so secure, so rooted in Him, then no matter what comes on the outside, we are rooted in Christ.
When God does something deeper, there are things we will have to work through, get past, work around, and be forced to deal with to get to what God has done. When He puts this thing deeper into who we are, it’s not on the surface and we won’t have to deal with all of the internal issues. He did this to force us to deal with the things that are not like God, but allows us to find what is truly rooted in who God is.
God wants to do something deeper in your life.
This year was not random; it wasn’t an accident.
Hebrews 12:7-11 New Living Translation (NLT)
7 As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? 8 If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. 9 Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever?
10 For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. 11 No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
God’s discipline is painful, but afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
Hebrews 12:12-13 New Living Translation (NLT)
12 So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. 13 Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.
What you’re going through right now, the pressure, the current state of your life versus the picture of where you thought you would be, might be frustrating, but you may not have the perspective to see what God is doing.
Allow God to give you a new perspective; He is producing a peaceful harvest, despite it not being enjoyable.
Prayer: God I trust that you are developing a fruit in me. Something that the wind and the waves can’t change, that the government and education can’t change. Something so strong, deep in my life, and beyond my circumstance. Holy Spirit, we invite you in and ask that you expose the places where our lives have not been rooted in you. The places where our source has not been God, but has been other people, ourselves, and other things. Thank you for exposing our roots and what has not been like you. We thank you Lord God that we are making a decision to put our trust, hope, our lives, and everything in you. We thank you for perspective and allowing us to see that you are developing something in us that is so much deeper even though it may not be enjoyable. Thank you for giving us perspective for the pain, frustration and allowing us to see your grace, peace and anointing in our lives.
Altar Call & Prayer: Focus on your relationship and see where you are with God. You may have been shaken this year and you have realized that your source hasn’t been God, maybe your spouse, your job, other people etc., but today you want to put your hope and confidence in Christ. You may not be here just to hear a message or a sermon, but to surrender your life to Jesus and have God as your source to. If you have put your hope in other things, today, you can put your hope in Jesus to change your life forever. I believe that something miraculous will happen in your life. If you believe in your heart and confess in your mouth that Jesus is Lord then you will be saved. You will find what you have been looking for, everything that you go to other things to find, God can give it to you in this moment. Right where you are, if you want to accept Jesus in your life, repeat this prayer, dear Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me, dear Jesus, I admit that I have made mistakes. I pray that you would save me, that you would change me, and that you would make me new. In the name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
- Text ‘Saved’ to 918-992-7623 for resources and content to help you to keep God as your source
You can still get “Relationship Goals” the book and study guide today for additional relationship support:
Latest Arrivals in Merch
SUMMARY NOTES
- Your External Strength Is Always Connected To Your Internal Source
- Your Season Always Exposes Your Source
- Your Fruit Exposes Your Roots
- Fruit is a Focus, Not a Feeling
Link to full Video: TBD
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Abby Olurin Dames
I love Jesus, my husband, Will, my toddler daughter, Sola, and the beautiful friends and family in our lives. Me and Will are from the Bahamas, but we currently reside in Austin, Texas. We joined TC Nation as online members of Transformation Church in 2017 when we moved to Austin from Miami, Florida. In 2020, we also happily took on a more active role with the E-Fam of Elevation Church by fellowshipping with other married couples and were pleased to have the opportunity to join TC Beta Belong Groups. I believe that representing God doesn’t have to be done in “traditional spaces”. After listening to Pastor Mike's sermon, "Who's the Minister Here?", it became my mission to shed light on Christ in all arenas, including, but not limited to, corporate America, marketing, technology, and finance. I'm not perfect, but I'm progressing. I am a marketer, but first, I am a Christian, and the aim of this blog is to publicly share my sermon notes as a form of stewardship. I hope that these message notes can bring clarity to anything you may be seeking and help you to experience the peace and glory of Jesus Christ. I'm happy to pray for you as well if you ever wanted to shoot me an email. The effectual fervent prayers of many of you have helped countless circumstances in my life and in the lives of those around me. Thank you! Also, for any Amazon specific links that you see, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
