Michael Todd - Crazier Faith - Part 3
Hey, what's going on, friends? I am so excited that you joined us right here for this message today. And I know a lot of us have experienced some level of faith in our lives. Some of us a little faith, some of us gigantic faith, but in the last several years God has been teaching me and calling me into another level of sharing how to live, love and learn about crazy faith. And maybe not just crazy faith but I want to say crazier faith. God wants to take whatever level of faith you have right now and take it to another level, and I believe all of us can experience more faith. The Bible says when the son of man returns the one thing he'll be looking for is faith. Will I find faith and the answer when it comes to you and me will be yes. So get ready for today's message.
2 kings 13:14, "When Elisha was in his last illness, king Jehoash of Israel visited him and wept over him. 'My father! My father! I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel!'" And this is what happened in verse 15, Elisha said man, quit all that. I'm about to die, man. Stop crying. Get and bow and some arrow. That's crazy. That don't make no sense. But I've watched you lived your life in crazy faith. Where's some bow and some arrow? Let me just, thank you. Elisha, I got the bow and the arrow. I was faithful to follow the instructions. Remember what I talked about in crazy faith, you have to be faithful to follow instructions. You have to find favor and you have to make it final. Watch it right here. He's trying to do the same thing in somebody else's life and I'm trying to get it to go down into your heart. He was faithful to follow instructions.
Do you know how dumb it will look right now when your boy is dying, I'm crying, my army out there getting they tail whooped and I'm standing here, I'm the king? With a bow and arrow. How does this make sense? It's a crazy faith instruction. Look at verse 16. Elisha told him put your hand on the bow. Okay. And then look what he says to him. Everybody don't worry. I'm not going to shoot you. Everybody in the front row is like, we're about to die. And then watch this. Dad, come here real quick. Real quick. And then watch what it says. It says and Elisha, watch the symbolism, laid his own hands on the king's hands. Come lay your hands on my hands. Act like you shooting with me. So now what just happened is the favor came onto his life. I want you to see the symbolism. He told him to pick up the bow and arrow. He did it. He obeyed. He found himself faithful.
Then the prophet put his hands on his hands. He now had the favor of the one who can give him a double portion, and then look at it. Verse 17, then he commanded him, open the Eastern window. And he opened it. Why the Eastern, not the western? Shut up and obey me. Sometimes that's what God says. Why go to this company and not this company? Shut up and obey me. Why did you tell me to go to Wendy's and not McDonalds? Shut up and obey me. You don't know at Wendy's I got a blessing for you. There's somebody you gonna meet there. This ain't a plug for Wendy's, but if you want to hit your boy up, hit me up. But what I'm saying to you some of y'all just need to just shut up and obey. Why the Eastern window? It don't matter. And then what did he say? Shoot your shot. Make it final. He pulled that thing back.
Dad, don't do it because I'll kill rob right there. Don't... thank you. And what did he do? He took what was just a moment of crazy action and he made it final. The arrow is gone. That was crazy faith. That seemed completely dumb, but what did that do for me? Look at the promise that comes after he made it final. He was found faithful. Favor was put on him. He made it final. This is how you know you're walking in crazy faith. Elisha proclaimed this is the Lord's arrow. And an arrow of victory over Aram, that's who was kicking his butt, for you will completely conquer the Arameans at Aphek. Do you mean that simple move from the apartment that I liked to be at to that apartment that was on the other side of the town to God told me to move to that I had to lose my deposit because my lease wasn't up, you're telling me because I obeyed you to do the thing that sounded crazy that you about to give me victory in an area I don't even have to fight?
Do you all know that when we came to get this building in crazy faith, there were victories that we won because we obeyed God that we didn't even know was against us. We always praise God for the victory that we know about, but some of us need to take a moment and praise God for the challenges and the opposition that never even made it to our front door. Obedience will make you be able to circumvent battles. Ah! The victory is in your obedience. This man was obedient and he found victory in crazy faith. But the name of this series is not crazy faith. What's the name of this series? Say it with your chest. It's crazier faith. So any time you live in crazy faith, God follows it up with an opportunity for crazier faith.
Look what the next thing Elisha said. Then he said... That ain't what you told me to do last time. Shut up and obey. I'm trying to help you get because you just won victory doing it one way, and God is giving you another instruction that doesn't even require the bow. He didn't ask for the bow this time. He didn't ask for, he didn't ask for you to write a paper this time. He didn't ask for you to go network this time. Pick up the arrow. Okay. Strike them against the ground. That's sometimes how crazier faith looks. Keep doing a Bible study and nobody is coming? Keep serving at that ministry and they haven't recognized my gifting yet? And watch this scary moment. I obeyed you. I did it. So the king picked them up and struck the ground three times, but the man of God got so angry with him. You should have struck the ground five or six times! Then you beat an arrow until it was entirely destroyed.
Now you will only have three victories because that's what you had the faith for. Could it be that when God gives you a command sometimes he leaves space for you to fill it with your faith? Strike the ground. That felt good. Did it, God. He said, you did. That's all you get because that's all you had faith for. Did I give you a number to stop at? Did I tell you you only can have one house? Did I tell you you only could touch one city? Did I give you a limit? Ah! Did I say, but you thought three was enough. Thought that was enough? You thought the college degree was enough? I wanted to let you be president of the organization but you settled for a plaque on the wall instead of walking in purpose. Let me calm down by playing a game. I'm going to put a picture on the screen, and I need you to tell me what's in between these two images.
Could you put the first picture on the screen? Um, tell me what is between, gust go ahead and put it up there? What is between earth and mars? Say it louder? Say it one more time. Okay. You got one right. Put this woman's beautiful smile up on the screen, okay. What's between her 2 front teeth? Say it louder. Okay, one more picture. I just want to make sure because some of y'all are remedial so you don't know what the answer is for all of them so just cheat off your neighbors. Put the next picture. What's is between these 2 parked cars? What is between the vision God has shown you in your heart and living it out in crazier faith? Space. What is when you're walking in crazier faith, you have to fill the space with faith. That's all I'm trying to get you to know, because you can fill that space with anything.
Might think fill it with fear, and that's why you're watching the news all the time. It's killing the purpose over your life because you got this space where God says you're going to be a successful business owner, and all you hear on the news and the Dow is down, and the stock market has dropped and the real estate industry is done. And God said I called you to come in there and tear that mug up. I'm setting the stage for you to come up and do something never been seen before, but you filled the space with fear. I want you to do it in series, and some of y'all this is going to take us chipping away at the hard places of your heart and the pessimism of your perspective, but I'm telling you right now if you stick with me for these next 14 years, by the end of this you will fill the space of your life with, somebody shout at me, "Crazier Faith". Say it like you mean it!
See, there's a space between instructions and belief. And this is the thing that messed me up. Ah. When Elisha was told to pick up the arrows, that man could have done something that nobody had seen. He could have went and picked up all the arrows that was left on the ground that other people left. He could have got stuff people left from generations before. Oh, y'all didn't want to walk in the blessing of God like that? Y'all didn't want to actually, no, no, no. We're not leaving nothing on the table. This is the type of gangster I'm about to live as. He said, uh, strike the ground. I gave him, watch this, a command with no cap. That's the title of this message. A command with no cap.
This next level of crazier faith you're about to live in you need to be so close that you can listen for God to give you a command and don't put a limit where God didn't. This man literally when he said strike the ground with the arrow, you know what that man could have done? He could have been like pow! Pow! Ah! No more left. Some of y'all were laughing because I looked crazy to you but that was your purpose, that was your family, that was your finances. Woo! That was victory over the cancer. That was victory over depression. That was victory over every lie of the enemy. That was victory over doubt, over poverty. Three arrows was crazy faith. Six arrows would have been crazier faith. Three arrows would have been obedience. Six arrows was abundance. Three arrows wasn't bad. But 3 arrows wasn't God's best.
Could you living below God's best? He was trying to do the bare minimum. And God was trying to do something beyond belief. Everybody say beyond belief? Say it again. One more time. That's the season we're walking in. Charles, we're going beyond belief. Ray, we're going beyond belief. Natalie, we're going beyond belief. They're going to look at our life and say how did all of that happen? And all we're going to say is that we obeyed the command with no cap. Don't put a cap where God has given you the audacity to live in crazier faith. What could God do with your life? Could God be asking for the whole city where you only circled the block? Could God be asking a little church from North Tulsa to impact the whole world when all we were trying to do was get a building? Could God be calling you to run the largest real estate firm in the nation when all you were trying to do was do a housing development?
Could God be trying to bring the entire family in your life to Christ and you were just trying to get them to come to Easter? This story plays out in my life and the life of this church in a real way. God says crazier. Somebody shout at me crazier. One more time. I thought it was crazy when God gave us this building. And 37 days after I became the lead pastor of this church, I wrote this thing down. And God's doing this. We got the building, but there's like 11 other things that are on here that he said that he would do.
Me and Natalie became the lead pastors of transformation church February 1, 2015. Didn't know what we were doing, but God said you walk by faith and not by sight. And I'm going 20 do something crazy in your life. What ends up happening is miracle after miracle after miracle. Relationship goals, goes out and this young lady named Ashley posted on Twitter. 2 million people watched it in 48 hours. It brings all this attention. We didn't have a working web site at the time. Stuff was all crazy. All we had was an obedient step God told me to do. He said buy new cameras with the $80.000 on black magic cameras and people left the church over it because I was doing too much.
That young pastor don't know what he's done. Spending all that money. And for two hours nobody watched it except my mom and my aunties and my prayer groups and all those people. Only 50 years every week. But I was found faithful. Oh. Didn't care how many views I was getting. He cared that I was being obedient. This young lady posts this series in December. Boom! Like wild fire, everything starts growing. In 2018 we go from one service to five services in a converted grocery store in the hood of Tulsa. We had white people that had never been passed downtown traveling to North Tulsa like, Jan, watch yourself. It's kind of crazy out here. Like they were, but they didn't even care. They were driving Buicks, Cadillacs and Mercedes to North Tulsa. And it looks like a melting pot of white, black, brown.
There were people everywhere, and God said that he was going to grow this thing. This wasn't us looking for this. God found us faithful. And bishop put his favor on me. People told him he was crazy for trusting me but he put that coat, and he didn't like kind of put his favor on me. He let me run it. And he said, and if you mess up, I'm right here. Today I gotta stop. I gotta honor you Elijah. E.J. Is in the building, y'all. Bishop, we have to honor you. Thank you, sir. He put the coat on me, Joe. And when he put the coat on me he said now you going to have to trust God for yourself. You can't do it the way I did it. You gotta trust God for yourself.
And we started trusting God and giving when we needed and being a blessing and doing the sermon series that God told us to do and doing all this other stuff. This thing blows up and I'm about to die because we're doing five services in one Sunday. I said God, you gotta do something. He said I already gave you the plan. He said, I already gave you a vision. Can you see it though? And I began to close my eyes, that's where it says I gotta see it before I see it. I came over here with bishop.
We broke in to this arena. And we took a picture in the lobby of this place, and I declared this place would be transformation church, not because I said it, because God said it. Be careful when you start walking in crazier faith. And God did not cosign what you committed to. We'll talk about that another week. Can I just make a long story short? God did the miracle. September 2019, I believe or August. Was it August or September? August 2019, I stood up and I said we got the keys, the keys, the keys. We shouted. We jumped. We danced. Six months later we paid the building off. 10.5 million dollars, completely debt free. It's only crazy until it happens.