Purpose and Calling

Well, like I'm really humbled right now to be honest with you. You know, I know a lot of people are sitting here because they've seen a change in me in the last couple of years, really last year and a half, but just to make it perfectly clear, the change you see has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the transformation that Christ is doing in me. And the only thing that Mark has done is surrendered, an ego, a life to an almighty God who I've seen, now I know. And like this walk with him, I'm not going to lay it all out because it's difficult to show you all the holy breadcrumbs that God has laid out before me as he's led me into this exact moment right now, but, it's a beautiful moment for me because my God is beautiful and I'm excited to be up here to tie in a message to you that I tried to pull out of what God's done with me in the last year and a half.

And primarily this message is going to be about I call it the purpose and the calling. And the purpose and the calling is intentional, right? The purpose and the calling. Because in our life, as we know, many of us are, chasing our purpose. And a lot of those people that are chasing their purpose have not been born again into their living God. Because when you are, we all share the same purpose. Prior to being born again, we are creation. We have been created by a God whose desire is for us to come into sonship and to become part of his family. But the only way we do that, as we read in the Bible, is we, we hear Jesus speak and he says, that nobody comes to me except for my father who sent me draws them to me, and I will raise them up in the last days.

And what God is saying is, That there's one path, and that's Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. It is God Almighty who came into time to rescue us from this state of death and sin, and give us an opportunity to move in freedom, and an opportunity to have eternal life, and to be clothed in the righteousness of a holy Lord. So our purpose and our calling, the calling I'm going to be speaking to, is the calling that is a heavenly calling. It's not the calling of your normal day life. It's not stewarding your parenthood, your great father, your great mother. We have work to do. We have income to be made and bills to pay. I'm speaking to a higher calling, and it's the calling that God foreordained in your life before you were knit in your mother's womb.

You were intentionally placed in this age, in this time, and in this place for a specific reason that God needs you to grow into. And he's going to grow you into it out of one thing. Purpose. And it's, again, the purpose we all share. Now, when I stand in front of people, my saliva is shy, so to banish my mouth, and it leaves my tongue high and dry. So we're gonna sip, we'll sip water along the way. I don't even need to put the lid on that thing. Watch this. Perfect. So, really quick, let's go to, this is not about finding your purpose. This is about understanding that when you're born again, and born again, I don't know where everyone sits here, so I'm just gonna cover it basically like this.

When you're born, your parents give you a name, you're born into a town, you're born into a school system, a culture, maybe a specific religion, and you begin to develop this self-conscious awareness of who you think you are. And you make mistakes. Because when you're physically born throughout your life until you're born again in your God, you are separate from him. No matter how good you think you are and how, how many good things you do and how loving and kind you are and how much you love your parents and your siblings and all the good things, you are separate from your God. And so in that state of being, you develop an ego and mask and you get trauma and you get hurts and they, you get layers built upon you and you think all of a sudden, this is who I am.

But the moment that you come into a realization that you're not those things and that you need more and that you're imperfect and that there, you need freedom from the stress and anxiety and the things that are built on your life, in that moment you place belief in only one thing and that belief is the way, the truth and the life is Jesus Christ. It's the son of God who literally came here to give you an escape into eternity. And you have to zoom out, and you have to realize that this physical world is not what you think it is. You have to understand, you have to let God be supernatural, and this makes people uncomfortable, but there's more than what meets your physical eyes, and more than what meets your physical hearing.

There's a spiritual aspect and dimensions to this creation that we live in, and God is calling us out of it into an eternal life beyond this little vapor that we think we're living, okay? So I'm speaking to the faith that you would put in Christ, knowing who he is and what he did. You become born again, and God brings into you, to envelop your soul, the Holy Spirit of God. This is God himself indwelling within you, and he, he takes it from there. That's all there is to it. The rest of your life is, is really

about living in the purpose. So we're gonna cover the kind of the aspects of what all of our shared purpose is as born again believers in Jesus. Second Corinthians five seventeen says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. So I'm going to tie this into my life, not because this is about me, but because it's the only experience that I can speak from, like real life, true experience. I'm not who I was. And in, in the, the radical moment of Christ revealing himself to me, I experienced going from the old, all that I thought I was and the trauma of who I was into this new being that still carries the name of Mark.

It's the name they gave it, but I knew in that moment my God had a different name for me. And he calls me beloved. He calls me his son. He called me redeemed. And he's redeemed qualities in me that he uses now for him. And All I needed to do was not run from it, but steward those qualities that he resurrected in him with me, okay? So, so there's a truth to being made new. The problem that I think people struggle with in this specific part of the purpose is that there is your old wiring in your mind, there are scars on your soul from your life, and though you're made new, if you don't begin to own that new identity in Christ, then you fall back into these old habits and these old wounds and these old traumas, and it slows down your growth in that identity, okay?

So, but that's the first purpose. In John 3, 3, Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, you, all of you, and all of those he spoke to then and everyone that he spoke to since, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. If you want to see the reality beyond this one and understand who your God is and come into relationship with Him, you have to be born again. Throughout most of my life, I heard Christians and different people talk about this, and it was a foreign language to me until I've experienced it. Because the born again is the no longer the physical mark, but it's my spirit, the truth of who I was all along in the mind and eyes of my God, born.

And I moved into that identity and went, oh my gosh, I'm not who I thought I was. I'm so much more than that, but I'm only what I am in the eyes of my Father in heaven. I see my reflection in His eyes now. You can see your reflection in His eyes as you live in, in these attributes of purpose. So let's look at loving God, right? So our first one we, as we've seen there, this first attribute, this virtue of purpose, is loving our God. So He says to us in Mark 12 30, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And I want you to pay attention. It's all. Every time it's all.

All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. The important piece to this is this. You have to remember that if you're lost in this understanding of loving a God with all that you are, and you're like, well, I don't even, you have to have felt his love first. Because he first loved us, is why we love him. So have grace for yourself if you don't even, this doesn't make sense to you. It just tells you where you are. And along the way, I want you to take some gut checks, like some truth, some inner, all of this conversation is about your insides. It's about your inner spirit, your inner soul, the walk of your logic and your reasoning.

This is not about this physical world. This transformation is inside of you. So if your mind is the type of mind, an engineering mind, it's not, my insides are imagery, so I wanna, my words try to create imagery for you, so why you see a picture of a tree, because when you're, when you awaken in the middle of that tree, you're part of it, and yet as you be grow from it, you become a branch, you're not separate from it, but you're distinct in it, you follow, so this is the, this is what you're doing in the purpose of your creation as you're born again. So the question you would ask yourself here as we talk about heart posture, loving God, how do you relate to him?

Check yourself here. Is your God a distant God? Do you pray to a God that's out there? Do you, do you picture the image of Jesus on your wall? Is that who you pray to? Is there space between you and your God? Or is your God dwell in you? Do you speak to your God in your heart of hearts when you wake up in the morning? Are you talking to an almighty father, thanking him for your night's sleep, looking forward to a day of walking with him? Is the, there's a, is there a gap between you and the God that you speak to? Because if there is, it's worthy of your attention. And, and I'll tell you right now before I forget, we're all sitting in this room and there's a bunch of people and it's just me talking, but you're gonna find grace and you're gonna find mercy and you're gonna find growth in small little groups of two or three people.

So you're gonna wanna latch onto someone. If the spirit moves in you today and you're like, I need more of you, God, I need to understand you more, I need to see you, I need to comprehend Jesus Christ as like my Lord and savior that reigns over my soul, not the one that I think of in my mind and pray to on a wall like, I need closeness, I feel it, there's something in my life needs to change, it's gonna be important that you latch onto somebody, spirit will lead you to somebody that

understands these things. And they're gonna talk you through it and they're gonna bring you into a better understanding so you can establish this relationship with God who loves you so much. So. Next little virtue here, as far as purpose goes, there's these virtues that exist in us as we sit in, in our purpose in God. So we know that loving him with everything that we are moves us into glorifying him. It changes the lens of our life, how we view our world. So watch this. I used to think this was so cool, my God. I used to hear this stuff, but now I understand now. I'm gonna take a bite of fruit. I taste it now. I don't just eat it amidst the noise and the business of my life and put it down and move forward, but I taste it, and I taste the goodness of God in it, because I know that all things good come from him, that he, he supplied everything needed when he created this earth, and he supplies everything needed when he created us.

And he supplies so much more when we're born again in him and we become part of his family, and you start tasting him in everything. When your wife hugs you, you feel his love in her hug. When the green light happens, you're speaking to God as you're going through it, saying, are you kidding me why you did that? You know, you, you see him in every little thing because you realize that God has woven a tapestry, and he's continually weaving this tapestry that's beneath this physical world, and we're part of it, and we're threading through each other's lives, and if we're listening to the Holy Spirit, and we're going where God calls us to go, things are happening that we don't get to see, that have eternal repercussions that we're a part of, and one day we'll see, but not in this life, because right now we see through a glass darkly.

So we are condensed in a way in time, because we're walking through a lesson that will be opened and unfolded when we enter eternity, only wrapped in the righteous robes of our Lord. You're not going there if you're not there. So your first Corinthians ten thirty one, whether, so whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Again, keywords all, all. Look, initially it might be a little struggle. You might not always be dialed in to your God. You might have moments in the, get caught up in the noise for a minute. And by noise, I mean all that is the chaos of this world, everything that's encompassed in that. Your stresses, your anxieties, your bills, your family drama, your car motor blowing up, all the things that could possibly go wrong.

That's the noise I speak of. But you'll find over time, again, this is walking in the purpose, and we're going to see it here in this next slide, where the third aspect of our purpose is walking in obedience to a, to our mighty God. So, some people get lost in obedience. This isn't a ruling father with a scepter and a, and a lashing tongue and a violent spanking. This is obedience. Out of, what did we cover first? Loving him, because he first loved us. Once you've tasted of God's love, all of this stuff makes more sense, because once you've tasted it, and it's not like our love, his love is beyond any love you could ever imagine. He purifies you.

His love edifies who you are in ways that nobody on this planet could ever do. His love brings a joy and a peace into your soul and your mind that are beyond this world. And when you taste it for the first time, you'll understand, and then you'll begin to pursue it. So the only goal here is, if you haven't tasted it, And maybe you have tasted it, and all of a sudden you're sitting in that pool of wonder, and you haven't moved out of it. But for those that haven't tasted it, only those can get to taste it, to be able to close your eyes and see the God that you can't see. Because our Father in heaven sent his Son, that the invisible, mighty, big God, that was almost too big to comprehend, could become visible and relatable.

And now we can see our God in the form of Jesus Christ. We have an opportunity to read his stories in the Bible, to understand him, and the Holy Word of God comes alive, and Christ in you comes alive too. And the same Holy Spirit that dwells in you when you're born again, it's the same Spirit of God that hovered over the chaos and the deep in the beginning of all creation. He's the same. So when he's in you, you are ancient. You have wisdom that God will reveal to you in the process of sitting in your purpose, loving him with all your might, everything that you have, glorifying him in all of your moments, and walking in daily obedience with just what's right in front of you.

So what does that look like? Well, if the Holy Spirit prompts all of a sudden that you owe someone an apology, you're impatient with your children, you struggle because you picked your husband or your wife apart, it's these little things that the Spirit will bring up, and all you're doing is you're, you're just walking in obedience of the goodness of God in the little things, moment to moment, and from those little things over time grow massive things. So this is a These are lessons, like in school, it might be in elementary and in first grade and second grade and third grade, it's this continual spiritual progression of your maturity, and God needs you to stay committed always in your purpose, this purpose will never change. Because it is in this purpose that your soul and your spirit are fed.

Because Christ in you is the source of all your life, the bread of life, the living water, you need nothing else. So we feed our gluttonous bodies and we eat and we do these things, but when you realize you're a spirit, that you worship your God in spirit and in his truth, you start to feed that spirit. And you feed that spirit through the word of God, you eat scripture. You'll hear me say that, I mean in a weird way, like, I need it. You'll come to hunger and thirst for it. When you get into Matthew five, you'll read the Beatitudes, it says those that when, when ye hunger and thirst after righteousness, God promises you will be filled, like he will sustain you and he'll fill you with things that are not of this world, a truth that doesn't exist in this world, it only exists in those that are sealed and wrapped up in the Holy Spirit of God.

That's the truth God wants us to come into understanding as we go through these things. Ephesians two ten, for we are his workmanship. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Listen, good works prepared by God beforehand means that part of our walk in this life, when we come into God through his son Christ, when we're wrapped up in the righteousness of Jesus so that we have a relationship with our father in heaven, with a relationship that begins to grow. But the works are animated out of him. We don't go before him and do works and bring them back to him. We sit with God, and God inspires us, and the Holy Spirit animates our lives through the work that he sees needs to be done.

Things that might not make sense to us, a three o'clock visit to the coffee shop, you don't know why, but the Spirit said, go, you sit, someone walks in, and there you are, ministering to someone crying in front of you that needed a word from God. That's the works that he's laid out before you. The right time, the right place, the right voice, the right hearing, and you move in action for a God that you love, because he loved you first, and you know his love is, okay? So you'll notice here, we get to all lead to becoming. When we're loving God with all that we are, when we're glorifying him in all that we do, and when we're walking out the obedience of, of the daily life as spiritual beings, Knowing that we've been given grace and things we never deserved, eternal life, righteousness that's been bestowed upon us, we have a relationship with the Holy Father, all of this understanding as we sit in that purpose, we behold our God and our, we become oriented to a heavenly place as we practice these things daily over and over and over.

Our spirit begins to have to look at heaven. Because the ways of this world become nasty and they become life suckers and everything about this world, all of a sudden, you're just, you're over it. God will reshape your community, your family, your friends, he'll reset your whole life. And you might think, wow, it's a lonely walk, but as you're oriented to heaven in relationship and you have your holy Lord walk in the landscape with your soul with you. And the Holy Spirit of God moving you through your life, and you're hearing spiritual things from a reality that you didn't know existed, as heaven reigns on you, because the window is now open to you, and you're oriented to it, you're gonna, all of these aspects are gonna lead you into what I call becoming.

And all that becoming means is Christ forming in you. You are becoming more of the image of the Holy Lord that contains who you are, your identity wrapped up in him. So, so the reborn is just like being physically born, you're first a baby. You have a mom and dad that help you learn to walk, help you through life, you grow up, you do all the things. It's no different. The only difference now is you're born in spirit. Your new identity is in the spirit. You understand heavenly things, and you're gonna be walking with the Father in heaven, and a Holy Spirit that is his that he's put in you to guide you and actually indwell in Wrap up in your sinew, like into your tendons and into your spiritual life, into your mind, into your soul.

Like the spirit isn't just something you talk to. It, it becomes you and is wrapped up in your identity. So when you speak, you speak through it. It's in, it's intertwined in your thinking and in your thoughts. And God renews your mind to think in a way that it never thought before, because you'll see, you'll see things you've never seen before. Your mind will come out of the political clouds. You won't look at it the same. Because you'll be listening to your holy God who's given you instructions and loving you and bringing you joy and peace, and you're not gonna find it there. So you instantly retreat back and you grab a hold of the leg of your Lord, because you're like, I'm, that ain't my thing, God.

Like I don't, I, I see it now, it's nasty, it smells bad. But you smell good. You feel good. He restored lost pieces of who I was. The Bible says he'll restore to us the years of the locusts of Eden. God comes in somehow in ways that just stretch our mind, and he's, when you're born again in him, you're resurrected with him. You get baptized, you come out of the water, and you, the qualities of who you are, your personality, my great wit, he brought it with me. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I get to keep that, but he redeems it in him. So it's used for his

purpose. The abilities that you have, the attributes, the things that matter, God brings along if they matter to his kingdom. The other stuff gets crucified with Christ. Your old nature is crucified with Christ. He lets the dead slough off, the stuff that's not necessary. When you realize this life ain't your life. This world is meant to distract you, but there's heavenly things, another dimension, another place that just doesn't make sense to the mind beyond this reality. There is a God trying to speak to us in this bubble of time. He has things for us to do, because when this little life is squashed out, like eternity's a long time, and he tells us in his holy word, what's going to happen when you get there.

He speaks to us about, if you give your life for me, you can't even imagine the riches in heaven what I have prepared for you. Your eye has not seen, your ear has not heard, nor has your mind even comprehended in any way, shape, or form the wonders and the glories that I have set in store for those who love me. He is waiting for us to hear him through the clouds, through this bubble of time, this fake concept of this is my life, and I'm going to build my empire. He's waiting for us to lay it down. Even as born again believers, we pick it up again. You pick up your old life again. He's waiting for us to lay it all down at his feet. Romans eight twenty nine, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

That's the purpose. That's why we love him. That's why we glorify him. That's why we walk in obedience to him, to be conformed in the image of his son. Who's his son? God almighty, humble, come into this place and took upon himself on the cross the sins and the mistakes and the misery that we are without him, took it all on him in some cosmic way that we can't even comprehend. We can only speak to like the language of men. He was crucified, he died, he got whipped. We try to paint the imagery, but you can't wrap your mind around what it means to take upon the sins of all that were, all that were to be, the sins that you thought beyond the physical sins that you committed.

And when I'm talking sins, I'm speaking to anything that was, that's separate from God. It's anything in your life you choose to do that is not in God's purpose, that's that's the stuff that God sent his son to die for. And so we know that we all contribute to that. And then the beauty of the blood of Jesus, when he, when he was crucified, we're set free. We're set free from the chains of the guilt and the shame of our imperfections, the things that weigh our soul down, when we accept him for who he is and what he is. And then the resurrection that God did. I can speak about that in a minute. So loving God, obeying God, glorifying God, we become, we begin to become like his son.

Even as we are his children, we, our old lives, the old echoes begin to get restored and taken, they catch up to the spirit that we now are. That's the walk of sanctification. That's why God just has us every day. He says, pick up your cross, deny yourself. What are you denying? You're a brand new, new identity. Well, you're denying the part he wants to pull you out of that new identity and into something old and dead and nasty and stinky. So you just come back into the new identity. There's no condemnation in between. If you come over here into Christ, there's no condemnation in your new identity. It only happens when you step into the old, the old dead animal pit.

I call it the valley of dead bones where old mark is, something tries to come up from that place and capture my attention. And I say, oh, I don't like your smell. But I love my God, I've tasted this stuff, and this is what, I want to come sit at the table with my king, and I want to eat the feast that he's prepared for me, in the presence of all my enemies, everyone that's judging, thinking that this guy's a fraud, that all of a sudden has changed, like I have something to gain, when they don't realize for the first time in my life, I have something to give that isn't myself, and I don't need anything in return. And God gets to just pour it into people, and all I do is pray it changes their lives, because I know what it is, and I know it's real, and I know it's beyond mental capacity, it's a spiritual thing, so people gotta get spiritualized and start thinking beyond the borders of time.

Let's take a look at, becoming happens inside of purpose, so this is important. Now watch this growth, okay? Here's the purpose that we all share in, and as we sit and we love and we obey and we walk in obedience, something starts happening, right? There's this growth that comes out of it in our spirit, and that is the becoming, right? So let's take a look. Cause I know I'm rambling on and I don't even ever pay attention to the clock. But it's important to know here, the becoming is Christ forming in you, the purpose is the seed that you grow out of. That seed and what you grow into is the image of Christ, okay? So watch the progression. You're born again, you live in his purpose, and then you start becoming, okay? You don't become first and then step into purpose. It all happens together. So we stay connected and the becoming begins to take care of itself. So let's take a look at what becoming looks like. Let's look, the becoming, moving into the

image, conforming to the nature of Christ in us, let's look at that in action. John 6 56. Now listen, I love this verse. Some people, it's weird for them. I love it because I get it. Jesus is talking. He's got this gathering of people and he says, whoever feeds on my flesh. And he ranks my blood, abides in me, and I, and like, and we went into like horror kind of gory stuff like, and that's what happened back then when he was talking to him. Many of them got up and left because like, well, you're old bro, like we're out, right? They're looking at the physical presence of Jesus Christ, and they know he's holy. They know there's things about him.

Some know a lot more than others. But he speaks these words, but he's speaking these words to us because see, we know him as the risen Christ, and we know him in spirit and in truth, right? So we don't have to look at the image of God in the fleshly nature. We can see, you're the living water. You're the bread of life. Who you are as spirit and as God is what feeds my spirit as a child of a holy father. So I see what you say now is I need to consume who you are, God. I need to eat your word. I need to live in prayer with you. Prayer in the sense of not dear holy God, like there's always a ritual, it's prayer as in I love you, Lord. Wow. Did that just happen, God?

Are you, like you walk into a place, you were, you actually talk to God. What I used to think were stupid things. Walmart or Smiths, Lord. What do you think? Where are we, where are we going? Where are we going? And then he, and, and you hear Walmart. I'm like, what? Like I was, I was really just joking. That's not where I want to go, but okay. Like, like, listen, you hear him. And when I say that, for those that don't quite understand, it's a simple word. It's profound, though, because it's not like you hear his voice. You know he's saying something in a deep place in you. And it's a, it's almost like standing in a river, you feel the current around your ankles, right?

Like it's, it's a feeling and a knowing, it's not a mental thing, it's a spiritual thing. So it's like Walmart, here we go. And then you do. And you, now you're like, okay, God, what are we doing here? And then he shows you. And that's the moment where you're like, oh God, are you kidding me? Like, what are you doing? Like your design and your purpose, like you're there, you're like doing things all the time. And you begin to see it. And let me tell you something, you can't unsee. Once you start to see the functioning aspects of God in your life intimately, you just know, and there ain't nobody gonna pull your attention away. And slowly but surely, you are just a citizen of heaven, walking with the Holy Father, listening to him.

You are in relationship with your Messiah as your king, governing the work of bringing your soul into submission of your spirit, that's the new you. Like, it's this whole thing, right? So, we consume our God. He's made himself spiritually in a way that we are sustained from a heavenly place. The living water now flows, not from here, not from this world, but I look at it like, if I go far enough inside of me, it opens up into heaven. It's like I have this, Jesus has given me an umbilical cord into eternity, and the living water flows, and the joy of God, where he resides, flows, and the spirit that is in me shows me where it's coming from, and edifies me, and makes me know that I am not of this world.

Not in some weird way, he says, be in the world, not of the world, I gotta be here, but now I have a role here. So we're gonna get to that. I will say one thing about becoming an action. You gotta be with him before you try to do for him. So many people, Christians I've seen, I've been saved for a little over a year and a half, I thought, I was going to church with churches every Sunday. After six months of just with God and the Bible and the Holy Spirit, as he's blowing my mind. I go sit in churches, and I just observe, it's not judgment, I'm just watching, I'm like, this is intriguing to me, what do I know, I really don't know much, I was a poser my whole life in this stuff.

But I'm like, there are people that are, they have grown a new ego. In the spirituality that they exist in. So in the middle of this purpose, they equipped themselves with some new archetype, some ego, a new mask that says, I'm holy. And, and you can't do that because all of a sudden when you see you're not holy, but you put a mask to everyone, what do you do now? The only solution is humility. And when you've done that, you're living in pride. And pride is the hardest thing to, to shake off of you to come into the position of humility, because humility requires repentance and confession and vulnerability and softness and all the things that pride is not like.

So be with him before you try to do for him. It is okay to sit with God all the time for a while. And then listen to him. And at some point, he'll take you into what we're about to get into. Be coming in real, in action, die to yourself in real time. Real time. Every moment, every minute of every day, be aware that you're carrying across your denying yourself. So real time is, oh, my kids, oh, you feel it, you feel the little something, and then you just set it aside, and you move in love. Your wife says something, husband says something, it's like, you've had a long day, whatever the reason were, you're right to feel this way before you come up to

justify, you feel it, you throw it in the river on the left side of your soul and let it go out. And then you move out of what? Love, glorifying God, obeying God, being those things. He said to all in Luke 9 23, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. Listen, it's not an option. If anyone would come after me, when you realize that God is real, And you realize that beyond that, he is intimately wants to be involved in your life and wants to love you, and he never stops smiling at you, no matter what you're doing. He, his love does not change. The shape of his majesty is always the same, staring at you from a place of, I love you, kid.

You are my beloved, my redeemed, a son of God. You are, he has names for us. He calls you the light of the world. He says you're the salt of the earth. This is how he's looking at you, even as you're over here jacking things up. It doesn't change. You do. So once again, that's not my life. And you come back into the identity that's oriented towards heaven, and that's where God speaks to you. The Holy Spirit says, that's, that's it. Here we are. This is where we're supposed to be. This is our new life. So let's move to, yes, picks up all my breathing. That'd be annoying out there. Do what's in front of you faithfully. So notice this. The Bible says do not sit and worry about yesterday.

Don't, don't carry regrets. It says do not be anxious about tomorrow. Well, do you see what it's doing there? Like from a cosmic level. God is trying to bring you into this moment. Don't, your mind, the battlefield of the mind, yesterday, tomorrow, he's trying to bring you out of that so you can be right here in the present moment because this is where you hear the voice of God. This is where the Holy Spirit, who again is, is a sweet, soft, sometimes, I mean every once in a while someone gets that, you need to stop this car now. But most of the time it's just this, it's like I call it like the wind that's blowing through the valley of my soul.

Like I, I hear the sound of the breeze. I feel the breeze. I'm like, oh, that's you. He's like, go this way or go this way. It's a, it's more of a quiet. So if we're doing what's in front of us faithfully, Luke 16. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. So we start with the small things. These are small bites. They're little things we can do faithfully. When no one's around, watch your thoughts and transform them into love. And your neighbor that you hate because he didn't pay for half of the fence, you start thinking, wow, about his life and about his wife who died two years ago.

And you love him, and you just reshape your thoughts in every little thing. Who you yelled at, I'm gonna send an apology right now. I'm not even gonna think about it. You're gonna stay consistent, even when it feels small. It's not always a big master thing. We're not always moving a mountain. Sometimes we're just breathing in faithfulness, okay? Becoming in action. Do everything as unto God. You see some similarities in purpose, right? Glorify God in all ways, love him with all that you are, and here in the becoming, conforming to the image of Christ, we're doing everything as if it's unto God, as if he's watching. Reality check, he is. He sees it all, already has seen it, has seen it again.

He's in this omnipresent, omniscient God that is, everything's available to him at all times. So you're not sneaking anything past him. Your little secrets in your soul, the dark corners, heads up, all he's doing is waiting for you to invite him in so he can shine a light on it, so he can restore it, so he can plant a garden in it. So in your deepest traumas and your, the most chaotic places inside of you, he's gonna bring a harvest if you'll invite him in. He'll teach you how to till the ground of your soul so that he can come in and plant, and he'll send heavenly rain, and all of a sudden you'll have this abundance of joy in your life in ways that you never knew.

Because you surrendered yourself and said, who am I? Do I really control things? Are you kidding me? What control do you have? Do you really think you control your life? Listen, I'm not being morbid here. You could die tomorrow. Your wife could die in a car wreck. Your husband could become a quadriplegic an hour from now. Your whole family could die in a house fire. Your truck motor could blow up tomorrow, and you're faced with a catastrophe. And I got one for you, right? You drop your phone on the concrete and it shatters in a hundred pieces, you're gonna forget all about Jesus Christ. In that moment, you're gonna feel like your whole life has just turned upside down.

Like, you don't control anything. And the moment you realize, for me, the beautiful moment was when God said, talking to Jesus as he's taking me to the cross, he's showing me things, and opening up the veil to a spiritual place that I belong in, and forgiving me and redeeming me. And he He's reshaping everything that I am and my whole identity. And I knew in that moment he said to me, do you want me to drive? And I said, are you kidding me? Like if you don't, you only knew the things in me and the jacked up life, my inner world for my whole life. He knew. And he fixed it. He set me free. And then I said, I ain't touching the wheel again. And that's all I'm doing. The only reason I'm

standing here is cause I ain't touching the wheel anymore. I don't want it because I want to understand who my father in heaven is. I want to love on my Messiah, the one that redeemed me and saved me. I want to have relationship with heavenly things. I want to hear the angels cry. I want to hear him say, holy, holy, holy is the lamb. I hear that music in my soul because, because of God. So. Would do everything as unto him. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for man. I don't care what man thinks anymore. I have little moments. Like this has been a lesson where I finally got to, I said, I trust you, Lord. I don't care. Whatever.

It flops. Okay. Here we are. We're just round two, whatever, however. So do everything as for the Lord and not for men. How do you do that if you don't hear Jesus talking to you? How do you, you don't hear him if you're in the noise of this world. And if you're in the noise of this world and you don't have a new identity over here, well, maybe that's why you're sitting here. Like you, there's a reason, there's a, there's a purpose behind sitting here, hearing these words. You might be a Christian who knows Christ in your mind. And it's time to make the journey into the depths of who you are, where you believe in your heart, and you finally start seeing that God is real.

And active, and Jesus is alive and well, a risen God alive inside of you. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward, you are serving the Lord Christ. What is your inheritance? What do you get that you didn't deserve because you got so desperate that you had to believe in something outside of yourself, and that something was Jesus Christ? Your life has now been changed. You brought nothing to the table. I brought nothing to the table. What do you get? Your inheritance. You inherited God Almighty, the Son of God, alive and well in you, the Holy Spirit of an almighty God, alive and well in you. You inherited eternal life.

No longer doomed to an ending in this world. No longer doomed to some annihilation of your soul on the other side. God now has a purpose beyond this life for you. You inherited a righteousness you didn't deserve in the robes of Jesus. Like he draped you in this righteous garb so that now your father looks at you and doesn't see who you are, he sees you as his son or his daughter. Holy, righteous, set apart for mighty things. If you'll start listening and get out of this world and into him. Calling, purpose made visible through you. So now we start getting the good stuff. You see the progression. You're born again, you see heavenly things, and God has now called you a son.

You're walking with the governor of your soul, the king, the Lord Jesus himself, walking on your soul, reshaping things. You're living from a spirit that you never knew you had, a new identity. And now you're born into a new purpose that we all share. We're loving, we're glorifying, we're obeying, and now we start becoming. Christ is forming in us. You're all sitting here because you see me two years ago and you see me post something. All that you're seeing, the only difference is suddenly Christ entered and Christ is growing. And the light, and the light that he is started shining out of the authentic person I was always meant to be and never was.

Who I was in the mind of my God is what he's transformed me into. So your purpose, our purpose is fixed. It's the same. It always will be the same. Our calling is how it's now expressed. See, now we're coming from the whole inner world into calling in the external world. This is how all that is begins to, you notice, oh, you'll see the next slide, like the tree, the branches, the becoming, coming out of the tree. We're part of it, but distinct from it. And at the end of the branch, suddenly, we start bearing fruit. And the fruit is calling. It's the same source. We all got the same source. It's a different expression because of our fingerprints.

We're all unique. God wants to sing music through us, and we all have a different note in his symphony. But your note could be off key if you're over here. You're gonna really sound like garbage in the symphony of, of the holy God and the, the music of heaven, so he's trying to encourage you to move over into this identity. So when the wind of God blows through you, the sound comes out of you. It's pleasing to him because he sees, he hears, it's pleasing to other ears around you. It's, there's just a beauty in it. Calling is the unique expression of your life in Christ, purpose fixed, calling moves. John 15 five, come on everyone, you know this, I am the vine, you are the branches.

This is Jesus right now saying, you, you are the branches, I am the vine. You see the connected? You see the tree? You see the symbology? We're not separate, we are connected, but there is a, we're differentiated, right? Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that there's much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. Do you get that? You're gonna think you're doing all sorts of things, like your mind and your world and this world and your ego, it will all make you think you're doing magnificent things, but when you are apart from God, it's all for nothing. It's trash. And I know that sounds crazy because you're like, oh no, let me show you. Like, this is good. I've got the home if I did all these things. And it sounds funky, but when you're

connected to God, God directs your actions. When you're not connected to God, you guide your own actions. You don't, he'll use all things for his good, don't get me wrong. But we're speaking to abiding in him to grow out of him, to be conformed into Jesus, to have eternal things and heavenly things dumped on us now. And you're not going to do it if you're not abiding in him. It's that simple. So what you're calling looks like, well, it looks like you. It's going to feel like home to you. It's, you're going to talk to God about it. He's going to walk you through it. He might be doing it. He might be starting it. You might be forty years into it.

And you might be resting in some season that you're supposed to be out of five years ago. So you gotta gut check, cause God's not sitting still, he's a moving river, you're in the river, we're all unique currents in the river, and he needs all of us, because we're shaping things for heaven, binding heavenly things on earth. Read that in the Bible before, right? That's what we're doing. But we're only doing that when we're following this progression, in purpose, becoming and conforming to Christ, and moving into calling, so that it becomes expressed. It's just like God, the invisible God, made visible in Jesus. Purpose, under the surface, becoming, made visible in calling, okay?

It's what we put out in the world. Look at what God already gave you. 1 Peter 4 10, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace. What comes naturally to you? Go inside and examine what's natural to you. See, God's not complicated. He's grand and mysterious, don't get me wrong, but he's not gonna create friction in your calling. You're not gonna be doing something, you're like, I hate this. By the time you come into your calling, he's already, that's it, he's rubbed you down, he's reshaped you because you've sat in purpose and you've become, you've conformed to the image of Christ. A constant evolution of sorts, right?

Spiritually, a constant maturity, but by the time you get to calling, it's gonna be music to your ears. You find joy in encouraging people, do folks naturally come to you and ask you for advice? You find yourself being the purpose in a crowd of sad people, you're the lifter upper? You find yourself being an edifier? Like, are you a great encourager? Are you the quiet one? Are you the quiet one that watches and observes and goes home and spends hours in prayer for people that don't even know you're doing it? It all matters, and it's all stuff you take note of, and then as you're taking note of it, you recognize that you're unique, that it's beautiful for you.

It doesn't matter how other people see you. Your fingerprint, your spiritual fingerprint, you're this new DNA of sorts, a spiritual one of a kind, is you. Like, you're one of a kind, and God knows this, and you need to know this, and you need to know you're His, and you need to know He has things He needs you to do, because you matter. You live in a little ecosystem, wherever you are, your job, your home, your location. It is an ecosystem, and it is everything that God needs you to be, He placed you where you are. Man, I'm so time flew. Pay attention to what bears fruit. Now, there are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are a variety of service, but the same Lord.

And there are a variety of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all and everyone. We ain't special. We're all, the only specialness in us is what we see in the reflection of our Father in heaven when we look into his eyes. That's where our special comes from. Out here, I'm pretty insignificant, I've realized that. And I know people are wired to say, oh no, like, you're so good, you need to pump yourself up, believe me, let me give you a self-help, do these things. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. All I want is over here. I don't, the world doesn't give me anything anymore. Heaven gives me everything. It feeds me. The living water flows through me.

The bread of life sustains me. I don't need anything out here. And do you know, ironically, that takes care of it all. Quit looking at where he brings me. So, and then I go back to him, I do things for him, it's a whole new world. So, pay attention to what bears fruit. You're, there's a variety of gifts, we're all unique, you're gonna find your uniqueness as you move into calling. I'm gonna go a little faster pace, cause I wanna get through this. don't just dabble. Once you see it, don't play around with it like a cat in a mouth. Like, dive into it. When you see it, it feels right, you've sat with God, you're coming into calling, like, you just grab a hold of everything he's putting in front of you, and you rock it out.

That's what he wants from you. And you think, well, what if I mess it up? That's what he wants from you. If you, he reads your heart, you move forward in action on his behalf, right or wrong, he's gonna honor it. And he'll, he'll, he'll move you. And you'll, he'll give you a lesson in it. You'll do something you would've never had, even if it wasn't exactly right. So don't be afraid. Start using it even if it's small. This is my favorite, Exodus four two. The Lord said to him, talking to Moses, so Moses is struggling. He's like, surely, like I'm inadequate. Like he's calling out all of the things and the reasons why I can't be an instrument for you, God. And God says, the Lord

said to him, what is that in your hand? He said, a staff. Now you go read about Moses and you see where that staff is in the story. The power of that staff all along the way. He just said, use what's in your hand. John six nine, come on, little guy, the little man. It only makes one little appearance in the Bible. There is a boy here, this is Jesus and the multitudes, they need to be fed, they're hungry. He says, what do we do? And he says, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many? So what's in his hand? It seems so insignificant. What does Jesus do with it? He feeds the multitudes. Five thousand people fed and full.

Not only that, but afterwards he says, hey folks, my disciples go gather the remaining fragments. They go gather them up and it fills twelve baskets. They didn't start with that. Did you see? You see what he's saying? You're not insignificant. What you have, start with it and move forward. He might grow it along the way, but you gotta start with what you have, no matter how small it seems. So let's just really quick, we're gonna, we're gonna stay, let's skip to, the, to the movie poster of David. The seasons of David. So here's a perfect example, right? So let's go to the living epistles. God put in the Bible every character and person, historical, alive and real, was for us.

To go find where you are. In the book of the Bible, where's your journey spiritually? I'm telling you, the holy word of God is beyond anything you can imagine. When the spirit opens it up to you, it is more than a book. There are words behind the words and pages within the pages and dimension. It's a cosmic story of heaven and of what our roles are in it because there's nothing new under the sun. We're reading stories of people and we fit in their lives in different seasons. Look at David. David was a shepherd. Now here's a question. As a shepherd, could David fulfill his purpose, the same purpose we all have? Absolutely. He can fulfill his purpose as a shepherd.

He can glorify God, love him with all his heart, worship and praise and obey him, right? He moves into a position of serving in another man's house. So now he's a servant, right? A musician. Can he fulfill his purpose? Absolutely. If he stayed there, he fulfills his purpose. Trusted in small things, the king starts bringing them alongside of him. Then he steps into a battle and slays a mighty giant, right? Goes into warrior mode. All of these little seasons of his life, even as he's hiding in a cave, running, he learns restraint in a moment where he's a fugitive, still fulfilling his purpose. But what was his calling? What was it? To be king.

Could he fulfill his calling as a shepherd? No. If he stayed as a shepherd, he's not a king. That's a good guess, though. You're fifty-fifty. As a warrior, no. As a fugitive, no. As a servant and a musician, no. But every step along the way, every season was leading him to the calling. In our lives, we all have the calling somewhere, and you have to examine your seasons as you go. Because the seasons are leading you to the place that God wants you to be. So you glorify him along the way, you obey along the way, you do all the things along the way, so that when you get to the way, and you've conforming to the image of Christ, you've grown in maturity from this milk spiritually to this meat spiritually, and all of a sudden God says, here we are, son.

Look at you go. I'm filling you with my wisdom, and you've been faithful, and you've been obedient. Now let me blow your mind, and I'm gonna let you participate in a joy, the same joy you got all along the way, in a whole different way, cause you're gonna walk into an orchard. An orchard of fruit that I'm gonna harvest for my kingdom because of your obedience. It's nothing I did but surrender to God and grow in Christ. When he saved me, we're gonna get to the last little bit here. The, the branch that died on the tree, it died because it was looking sideways. So I'm gonna leave with this sweet caution as we go. We as human beings have this terrible habit of comparing ourselves to one another.

Here's this little youngster Christian right now, standing in a pulpit, and there's people that think, why is he teaching? What has he learned? I'm just telling you, take it up with God. I don't, I don't even know what I've learned. I only know that he owns me, and I mean that because where else am I gonna go now? You're gonna find here that not everyone has the same function. That's easy. We're rolling through a couple of slides so I can get to a point. Sorry, Dave. And that everything you have was given to you. The hardest thing in human nature is realize you ain't special. You're not special. The world wants you to build yourself up and fill all these things, but in the Why do you think that so many brokenhearted and desperate people find Jesus Christ?

Why do they find him in a pile of desperation? Drug addicts, broken, traumatized, why do you think those people are most likely to find Christ? Because you're not gonna find Christ in the middle of your pride. When you think you're the man or the woman, you got this empire and this life that matters, my truck matters, my home, my money, my reputation, it's junk. It's because when you die, it dies. There's no heavenly treasure in the things you're doing here. Only way that works is over here,

humble before God, saying, Lord, I don't need anything. He who finds his life, loses it. The Bible tells us that. He who finds his life, loses it. What does that mean? That doesn't make sense, it's cryptic. If this is your life and you found it, You're gonna lose it, and you're not gonna realize that till you hit eternity when this body goes away, and the veil is ripped open in the heavenly realms, and you stand before God, and you're gonna be like, you gotta be kidding me. That was so short, and now eternity's different, and I missed it. So, you started with nothing, everything was given to you. There's a moment, and I came to it when I went, oh my gosh, it's not me, it's mine.

I don't want it to be mine. It's yours, tell me what to do with it, God. He brings money, he says, do it. He brings time, he says, do this. He brings anything he brings in my life. It can be bad health. He says, now do this. Like everything is a lesson that grows out of it, and it, your faith grows, your obedience grows, the glory of God in you grows, you conform more and more to the image of Christ, and your life changes, okay? For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you'd receive it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Meaning, what are you talking about? Your intelligence and your things, like, that was given to you.

You just might not see where it came from, but quit boasting about your reputation and your life amongst the men great men will puff you up and do the things and they'll come hang out, but men will die and you'll die and there'll be a reckoning. But right now you can have heavenly things, you can have access to a spiritual realm that exists, a God who speaks to you through it, you can go transform lives and you'll realize I don't want any of that. When you see the joy of the Lord and a transformed human in front of you because Christ flowed through you and the light shines in the darkness and people are changed, you get addicted because you experience and participate in the joy of God.

We're almost done. You didn't place yourself, God did. Listen, this is cosmic. Before all of creation, God knew you. He formed you purposely. He set your life in motion in this time and in this place for a purpose. Are you gonna waste it? Like so many people are wasting it. If you seen, if you knew, if you understood that God is real, that Jesus Christ was real, not a fable in a book, but a spiritual, alive and active, holy God that wants to transform your life so you can do things for heaven here, when you see it, you'll understand, you just gotta taste it once. So the, the move of your life is to get into the tasting room with God, to experience these things I'm speaking to.

All you can do, perhaps, some of you right now, is just believe me, and then make the move, because faith comes from hearing. Do you think I'm lying to you? I want, there's nothing you can give me. Like there's, can be no lie in a transaction where there's nothing coming back to me. Why would I be doing it? Because I've tasted and I've seen and I want you to see and he'll change your life. God expresses his glory differently through each of us. We are a unique sound. We make a unique sound when we let God speak through us. We're not all the same. I'm flipping through Dave, I'm at the, so listen, God writes the melody, your life gives it sound.

So if you do nothing for God, I promise you, he's so big and mighty, he'll bring somebody to fill the void. You'll miss out on reaping the rewards. Don't miss out on reaping the rewards. When you see what they are in eternity and you begin to understand as you read and eat the holy word of God, You'll have a much different perspective on why you surrender your life now to him and how short that surrender actually is for the magnificence that he's gonna bring to you when you take your last breath here and your first breath there. It's just a moment and everything comes to fruition in your spirit and you're gonna go, oh, it's like Paul says, run the race, endure to the end.

When you get to that point and you fall across the finish line into heaven and you're looking up and there's, there's your Jesus looking at you going, wow, are you kidding me, son? Like, you gotta understand that that's not, this ain't put on, it's real. And you start living those moments cause the spirit reveals them. You participate in things yet to come. We are vessels being shaped that when God's spirit moves through the valleys and the mountainsides of your soul, we will make a sound that is beautiful and pleasing to God. It's not the music of these ears, but it does land in other people in ways that you, sometimes you participate in how it landed, sometimes you don't.

You just gotta know I'm giving up this life, and I might not know until I hit eternity. The ripple effects. The one kid at the coffee shop saved by the word of God coming out of me because I sat there. That grows up, gets married, and has a kid. Preaches God to him, he wouldn't have otherwise. That kid grows up, becomes Billy Graham, saves a million people in the world on behalf of Christ. God attributes that to you. When you're in heaven, he brings it back, and he shows you all the ripple effects of eternity. And it's gonna matter to you, whether it matters to you now, I promise you at some point, when you leave this world, it's gonna

matter to you. So, last but not least, these last few slides. This is where comparing to one another, we gotta recognize something. God dishes out a measure of faith to each one of us, and I'm sorry, it's not all the same. He dishes out a measure of grace to each of us, and I'm sorry, but it's not all the same. We are all forgiven the same, but how you perceive that forgiveness is different. Quick example, you're drowning in a pond, and you know you're struggling. But you see the shore, you start swimming, and you're thinking, I can make it, but inside you're, but I don't know, can I? Like, you're struggling, and somebody swims out to assist you.

Like, you're grateful for that assistance, right? But the other guy that's struggling the same way in the pond goes under a couple times and drinks a little water, and he's going, oh my God, I'm gonna die. And he's feeling his muscles go, and he's trying swimming to the shore, but he's like collapsing, and he knows he's about to die. Now someone swims out. And brings it ashore. Who loved who more? See, the same situation, but the perspective of the one that's saved, the woman who was a sinner, five hundred denarii versus fifty, the man, the money lender forgives him both, his who will love more, well, the one that was forgiven more. So he looks at the woman that has sinned, I'm skipping ahead on scriptures, but in, this is in Luke seven verse forty-seven, he says, because even though her sin is much, she is forgiven much, because she loved much.

He who is forgiven little loves little. So there is this difference in our capacity. So we gotta recognize we're not all the same. When I was saved, he planted faith in me, grace in me, and even the very surrender of my life grew out of those two things. I was compelled, the amount of grace that he placed in me compelled me to be his. My life, my soul, while I was unburdened by the weight of the shame, the guilt, my life, my season, the freedom that he gave me, and the grace that he filled with compelled me to move into his world and out of mine. So, all right, thank you so much for having me. I'm gonna pray. Oh, you wanna close in worship? Can I, I pray through your closing worship.

Sweet Abba, Holy Father God, your magnificence and your majesty, Lord, is something we wanna gaze into daily, God. I pray for encouragement in our lives, Lord. I pray for, I pray for divine moments in each of our lives, that if we don't willingly see you and examine who you are and fall into you, Lord, that you would force feed it to us in some way, God, to make us desperate for who you are. Because to not have you in the long run just can't be an option, Lord. I pray that in this world, in the chaos that it is, that your light would permeate into the darkness and in the midst of people that know you, God, that are due to grow in you, Lord, that the light might shine from them, that people will notice the light shining from them, that they'll be intrigued by the light of Christ in them, God, and that you would draw them to the right people at the right time to change their lives, Lord, and to bring them into eternal salvation, to bring them into the peace that surpasses all understanding, God, to show them heavenly things, Lord, to let them recognize that this is not their life, that you will redeem them out of it, and you will come and restore all the years of the locusts as eaten, God, that you will recover their soul, the lost echoes of their life, you'll bring them together, that you will tune the note that each person is especially unique, God, you'll tune it, that it has a sound, God, that the world can hear, That the world can be impacted by, Lord.

We thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for your eternal works. We're blessed by you, God. We are blessed by you. We glorify you and give you all the honor. In Jesus' mighty name, amen. Real quick, you know, messy can be very deep in our hearts, especially in our hearts, and if you don't know Christ, this is the time to receive Christ. If you're here for the first time in your life, I don't know, anything he said, just ask Jesus to come into your heart. Because God will do the grants, and that's why we want pools of worship, because you might need some prayer time. Might be able to say, you know what, I need God to pray, take them up.

I need prayer time, I need God to minister to me, not just speaking into our ears, but to receive what God said to them. Because you should never go home empty handed. You should take so much more of what he wants to do it. The only way you do that is say, God, I'm in. That's what it's about today, is being in. Giving your life to Jesus, and not saying it, but doing it. So as we worship, and if you need prayer, this is the team, come up and we can pray.