Michael Todd - Crazier Faith - Part 2
Hey, what's going on, friends? I am so glad you joined us right here today. Let me ask you a question. Do you have a backup plan? See, most of us have been told to live your life but then have backups just in case it doesn't happen. What if I told you that part of living in crazier faith was to burn the backup? Now, I know some of you have a plan for the plan of the plan of the plan. But so many of us need to trust what God is saying to us today. And burn the backup plan so we can move forward in crazy faith. Today I'm talking about burning the backup, and I promise you, if you get this principle on the inside of you, it's going to change everything in your life. Are you ready? Let's go.
My question is: will you be found faithful? When I started in this journey of pastoring, I wasn't trying to be a pastor. I was found faithful. You know where I started serving in this church? Behind the sound board. Shout out to Paul. Can we give the sound man a little bit in the back? Got uses sounding real good. The reason I shouted out the sound man because nobody shouts out the sound man. You only yell at him when the mike aren't right. More reverb in the monitors. Shout out, tony mason. All I'm telling you is that your life may be closely connected to where you should be, not where you want to be. And Elisha was found, everybody say found faithful.
Let me keep reading. Elijah went over to him, E. J., went over to him and he threw his cloak across his shoulder and walked away. Do you know how gangster this is? Charles, come here real quick. Elisha is in the field doing his thing. Plow. Just plow right there. Just plow. You look good plowing, bro. He's plowing. And Elijah, something that will change the trajectory of his life, but he's being faithful. He's not trying to be a groupie to Elijah. He's not trying to get close to the pastor. He's not trying to go eat lunch with the boss. He's not trying to make sure he likes and comments everything the people with followers have. He's just being faithful. And E. J. Walks by like a gangster and says, woop. That's how quick favor can come on your life. It was no pre warning, nothing that premeditated it.
It was just one day outdoing what God told me. And favor found me. When you're faithful, favor finds you. Elisha, it's a new weight on him doing an old thing. There will be a day you wake up to go to that job, and the favor will go on you, and you're at that same computer you've been at every day, but there's a new oil on an old assignment. There is a new way, like, hold on. Something is on me. And look what E. J., he ain't even stop to see if he caught it. It says the cloak he threw it across his shoulders, and walked away. I don't got to be friends with you to have your favor. We don't got to go on vacation together to be able to carry favor. He said he walked away, and looked what happens. It said Elisha left his oxen standing over there and ran to Elijah. He said, hold up!
First, hold on real quick. I don't know what you just did to me, I don't know how this happenstance meeting at the baseball game is about to change my life, I don't know why me going to this version one conference is going to change the trajectory of my life. There's people in this room that went to our first conference that now work here and their lives are changed because they had an idea of crazy faith. I don't know what this means but he says, um, first let me go kiss my pop pop and big mama bye. And I don't know why I'm saying this but then I'm going to go with you. I'm going to follow this favor. And then watch what E. J. Says to him, he a gangster in my mind. It's just that Denzel with a broke Pinky, he like standing there just like go on back.
But think about what I've done to you. Go back to your past and make sure you think about the favor I just placed on your life because if you want to stay there, stay there. But if you come back, we're stepping into a new level of living for you. And I don't know who I'm talking to right now, but after this message God is going to tell you go back and look at it one more time and make sure when you come back to next week's sermon, make sure when you come back make sure you think about what I've placed on you, the favor that's on your life. Write this down in a point. Favor is always an invitation to another level of faith. Any time God gives you favor, he's trying to skip you into a place where you're going to be less qualified. And now you have to trust him to be out in the deep.
What is the word for this year, transformation? I said what is the word for this year, transformation? So when God gives you favor, you know how we be praising oh God, they gave me it and I got favor. My credit was jacked up and I went in and I needed a new car, and the Lord just worked it out. Favor, favor, favor. And I walked in and I had favor, and they gave me the want I needed with the things on it and the leather and the blue. God, what you just got invited to is a larger payment. And what people don't understand is the favor always come with responsibility. The favor is an invitation into a new level of faith. If you are favored in any area of your life, God is trying to make you more dependent on him.
When I walked into the platform to be the lead pastor of transformation church, people looked at me life and was like, oh my God, he's so favored. How did he get to do that? Do you know what it was for me? It was an invitation to walk in crazy faith every single day of my life, to get up and pray and say God, I don't know what the heck I'm doing and if you don't do this, it ain't going to get done. God, I need you to show me, and what I'm saying to you is don't pray for favor if you don't want to go to another level of faith. Shut that crap up. Stop asking God to bless you with a bigger house if you don't want, oh, let me stop. If you don't want him to bless you with a higher paying job which means you gonna have higher responsibilities which means you gonna have to manage more and the first thing you gonna have to manage is you. And you know you. Ha-ha. Stop praying for favor if we don't stop into another level of faith.
This is where you just like Elijah is going to have to step out in crazy faith. Do you know what Elisha did? Look at 1 Kings 19: 21. It said, oh, I love this, so Elisha returned to his oxen and slaughtered all them. He killed them all. He used the wood from the plow that he had built his livelihood out of and he used it as fire to roast their flesh. He passed around the meat to the town's people, and they all ate. Then he went with Elijah as his assistant. Do you know how crazy it is to look at the career that got you to the place that you at right now and if God says follow this to go to that career and take an Axe to it and dismantle the things that brought you significance? The way everybody knows you. They know you as Bob the builder. They know you as, come on, somebody. They know you as Rachel the real estate girl. They know you as Isaiah the insurance guy. They know you as Billy the basketball player.
And God says don't just walk away from it because you might be tempted to go back to it. I need you to break it and burn it. Woo-ee! What kind of crazy faith does it take to look at what you think has made you who you are, and then God says can I have it back? Oh, God wouldn't do that? Ask Abraham. When he waited 100 years to have a son named Isaac. He finally gets the promise and then God says when the boy is about 16 or 17, come and make an altar and give me back what I promised you. Do you know how crazy it is to lead your promise up the mountain to kill it? Do you know how crazy it would be to cut off your social media when you are a content developer?
I'm trying to bring it to your regular life. Do you know how crazy it would be that you studied 8 years in that profession and then God told you to go volunteer at a nonprofit that can't pay you? When you walk in crazy faith, write this down, you burn up the backup. I'm trying to get you to crazier faith, but we ain't even perfected crazy faith because you still got so many backup plans. When you walk in crazy faith, we do what Elisha did. We burn the backup. This was his livelihood but he said, I can't go where God is calling me when I always have plan B in my back pocket. And how many of us have our plan B's ready? This didn't work? Ha! Guy didn't like me but, ah!
Hands raised in the chat and here live, how many of you always have a backup plan no matters what happens? Hands lifted. Come on, y'all. Let's be real. Humble, open and trance partners, some of y'all got 2, 3, 4, 5 backup plans. You got a backup husband and a backup wife. That's why you keep theme DM's open. That's why your Facebook is so friendly. It's because you have a backup plan. I'm coming to your house today. And God said if you're going to live in crazy faith, it's time to burn the backup. Some of y'all working at a job that God plans to make you the CEO over, but you're still working that hustle on the side that is your ambition and not anointed by God. And I'm not telling you to not do the things to help you get ahead, but the thing that I am telling you if God told you to focus there, you can't give 100% there while you're working on plan B. And God said you'll never get what I want you to see if you keep working on plan B. And if God didn't give you plan Before, you only go with plan A.
I know they don't teach this no more because they don't want everybody to feel comfortable. Live a mediocre life if you want to. Be 58 talking about oh, I just knew God was going to do more with me but is this it? He tried to 30 years ago. You always needed a stash. Always got my side hustle. My uncle always told me, my cousins always told me keep this, that, and the third. What did God tell you? You got money stashed under the mattress and God is trying to give you a ministry. Burn the backup. I don't know who I'm talking to today, but J, they gotta understand that if you keep going through the life God's called you to walk in faith by and with, and you keep relying on and hoping for the moment where God allows you to get out of this current situation, and you can pull out the hard drive that you've been saving, the phone number that you've been saying, the relationships that you've been saving, some of all still got little black books from college. Burn that crap.
Some of y'all still holding onto boyfriends and girlfriends and notes they wrote you because that was the time that I read the notebook and it was like the notebook when he, that ain't your man! And I need you to, let me stop. Let me help you understand that what God has for you is much better, but you're comparing it to something that ain't ever going to happen. Burn the backup. And I know it's going to take crazy faith to do that because some of us are so comfortable that we couldn't see our life without what we already have. So pastor Mike, practically how do I burn the backup? I need to pray a triple h prayer, and I'm not talking a WWE star with long hair that spits up in the air. This is something different that I'm going to help you understand.
A triple h prayer is the prayer I believe Elisha was praying on the way back to meet and follow E. J.. He said, Lord, let this thing that you're working in crazy faith go from my head, let it be so weighty that it drops to my heart, that it then makes me do something and it comes out in my hand. You don't break and burn something with your hands that didn't go through those 3 steps, that it started off in your head, it dropped down to your heart, it came out in your hands. I feel that thing. I said it started in your head, it dropped down to your heart, it came out in your hands. Can you all help me right now? It's gonna start up in my head, and drop down to my heart, and come out in my hands. One more time. I need everybody. Start out in my head, dropped down to my heart, it comes out in my hands. You'll never give what God wants you to give if you don't start walking in crazy faith so it goes from your head, that's a good idea, I probably should do that.
And it drops down to your heart. I can't shake this crap. And it comes out in my hands. Ah! It don't matter, Elisha could have been crying while he was breaking down the plow. I thought this is what you were going to do with me. God doesn't care if it's emotional as long as you're obedient. You might cry giving away that jacket and that Hoodie he gave you. You know who he is. You might be frustrated leaving the city that you're the man in. God said I want to give you a new journey, and it's going to take crazy faith to do it. You got to burn the backup. Do you know what this means when you burn the backup? You make it final. When you burn something, you don't burn something with the hopes of going back to it. Like this man burned everything he had worked for up to this point, and he made it final.
So I just need to paint this picture. Elijah found Elisha, he found him faithful, okay. And then what? He gave him favor. And then Elisha made it final. Let's go back. If you're going to walk in crazy faith, you have to be found faithful, you have to wait on the favor, and then you, every plan you've had before this you're going to have to make it final. Okay? This man came to this realization that I've had to come to. If I'm always holding on to what could have been, I will never go to what is. And I don't know, there's 103 days left in 2021, and some of y'all still talk about whether you lost in the pandemic. And God said, I'm not back there. I'm up here. And if you're always holding onto what you could have done and what we could have had and what the business should have done, you'll never go to what is.
Romans 8: 18. Let this encourage you. I prophecy this over you right now, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth or worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. What's up ahead ain't worth me comparing what could have been. Somebody needs to hear me say this. It's better up ahead. Woo! I felt that thing, j. It's better up ahead. Some of all have been looking at what you lost, and God said would you follow me out here in crazy faith? Would you be found faithful? Would you wait on my favor? Would you burn the plows and make it final? Because its better forward. Your family is better forward. Your finances are better forward. Ah!
The thing that God wants to do in your life is better forward. Elisha leaves everything and goes forward with E. J.. And he walks in crazy faith. This ain't even my message. It's because Elisha lived in crazy faith that you can read all throughout the kings that Elisha was doing miracles, watching, him and E. J. Was like a tag team going around, miracles happening everywhere. All kinds of stuff was happening for them, and then it comes to the ends of e. J'.S life, and now Elisha is about to carry the mantle of living in crazy faith which I believe God wants all of you to do. 2 Kings 2: 9. It says that Elisha wanted a double portion of the favor, anointing, and miracle working power that was on E. J., okay? When they came to the other side, look at it, Elijah, E. J., said to Elisha, tell me what I can do for you before I die? Elisha replied, please let me inherit a double portion of your spirit and become your successor.