Michael Todd - Crazier Faith - Part 5
Are you ready to experience some crazy faith? Like, no, I'm talking about the faith in your life that can change your situation, it can renew your family, it can redeem what has been lost, are you ready? Because if you are, today I'm going to talk to you about vision, the vision that God has put in your heart, and you never want to be found with vacant vision or empty vision. So today I'm going to give you the playbook, the cheat code to be able to see God do crazier things in your life, let's go.
When you don't see it before you see it, people stop caring I cast off restraint. If you don't see it and get a vision of the prophetic future before you get there, you stop caring about stuff. Some of you all do not care about relationships that are around you 'cause you don't know your future. Those people are supposed to help you in another season, and you're mean to them right now. Oh, so you stopped caring. Well, it don't matter if I forgive them, they're the linchpin to the next thing that God wants to do in your life. But you have no prophetic vision. You don't see nothing up ahead and so you stop caring. There are so many areas of our life, when you find an area where you don't care, it's linked to what the vision is for that area. I'm trying to help you reverse engineer this, some of you all do not care about how you work at your job, you don't care no more, you come in late, you steal stuff, it's just paper-clips, you're never going to be a boss, huh?
I see right now that you'll never be the one signing for everything, it's just sharpies, it's just printing, and you printing out your vision statement because pastor Mike told you to do it on the company's paper. Well it's for God, go buy a printer, go to Kinko's, see I'm getting down to the details because it exposes that you don't have a prophetic vision of stewardship. You don't see yourself owning and leading and doing things that God has called you to do so you stop caring, and if you stop caring about it, that means you get sloppy about how you present, what God has called you to do, and I just feel like we're in an age of the sloppiest Christians in history, who've stopped caring about what your post may do to the kingdom. You don't care.
Well, this is how I feel. The very person you just offended, it was part of your destiny to reach them, but because you don't have a vision of the future, you stop caring today, and the very people who muted you, the message that God was going to give through you six weeks from now, was going to actually minister to them because you don't have a prophetic vision of who God created you to be, and the level of strength you are in the sphere of influence that he's put you in, and that you may not have a big platform, but God gave you a platform to reach people, right where you are, 'cause you do not have a prophetic vision, you stopped caring, and God says, this is why you need a vision.
Look at it in the NLT version, ooh, Proverbs 29:18. "When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild". There are areas that is just wilding out in your life 'cause you have not accepted the divine guidance of God. Just doing what you want to do, how you want to do it, and God's saying, let me just put it in a passage remix, if it's not governed by the word, it's going to be wild, if it's not governed by the word, it's going to be wild. This is why for all my people still searching in relationships, like if you do not allow the word of God to govern your relationship, and you all just living together, and doing married stuff together, and making all the things and doing all the things, you not a bad person, it makes logical sense, but because it's not governed by the word of God, and what he said, what ends up happening is stuff just starts going wild.
Now you actually finally get married after seven years of playing house, and he don't want you to know more, it's not the same, why? Because you were in a season living outside of the submission to the word of God, and now you got what you thought you wanted, but there is no actual exclusivity 'cause I already had that, already been there, and now I smell your breath in the morning, and now I got to deal with your attitude and your family and all that stuff, I'm just telling you, it goes wild when you don't let the word govern your life. I already came and amen myself a lot before this service, so I don't need anybody's help. I am going to give you what is going to help you reach the vision in your life, okay? Let me give it to you in the last message version. And this one jacks me up every time, Proverbs 29:18, the message version. "If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves".
If you don't get a vision to see what God is doing, you are going to keep Tripping. So the way I want to say this in the passage remix is get vision and stop Tripping. A lot of the things you, it's 'cause you didn't clearly know where you were supposed to step. You ever been somewhere and you distracted by everything? That's when you can make a mistake, it's 'cause you had no clear vision. And so today I want to help everybody get clearer vision. I told you a couple of weeks ago about the frame of your faith and like this thing where you go from imagination, put it on the screen real quick, 'cause I want everybody to see this 'cause I'm working a progression all the way to Christmas. We're crazy until Christmas.
By Christmas, I pray, ooh, that God ignites something on the inside of you, that changes you forever. But this is the progression, we go from imagination, which is the spiritual womb, and then we cross over to vision, and that's what we're talking about today. It's the receipt or the evidence of what's to come prophetically that God says, then you move over to hope and hope is the fuel for your faith, and then you move over to a crazy faith, believing God can do it, and then you move over to believing beyond, and that's crazier faith. A lot of us are still way over here in imagining what God could do, today I want you to take a big step, everybody say a big step. And I want us to step into vision.
How do I know it's a vision pastor Mike? Thank God for his word, Habakkuk 2:2. "Then the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it". Write this point down. Vision is not valid until it's written down. It's not vision in your head, if it's in your head, it's not a vision, it's still an imagination, it only becomes a vision when it's what? Written down. Now I ask the question again, what's your vision for your family? If it's not written down, it's your imagination. What's your vision for your health? What's your vision for your business? What's your vision for your family? What's your vision for your singleness? 'cause without a vision for your singleness, guess what you're going to do? Run wild, cast off restraint, stop caring.
What's your vision for your purity? What's your vision for your friend group? What's your, ask somebody right now. What's your vision? No, ask him right now. And the crazy thing about this is why I started off with the vacation. If I told you tomorrow that we were going to Maui, you automatically would have a vision of what you was about to be doing in Maui. How do I know? 'cause you would start preparing and packing based on what your vision was, and what people have not done, is started preparing and packing based on what the vision God has given them is.
Write it down, get in prayer and whatever God shows you, what are you going to do? Write it down. But I'm going to spend time specifically praying this week, and when I get in there and I just put on the top of the paper, family, I'm just going to literally put family on the top of the paper and I'm going to ask God, give me vision for my family, not compared to somebody else, uh oh, not in competition with these idea, God give me vision for my health. I'm going to tell the truth today, January six, I weighed 264 pounds, this year, 2021, and I've always admitted it publicly, I've always had this like teeter totter, see-saw relationship with my weight, if I'm feeling good, I eat, if I'm feeling bad, I eat, if things ain't looking good, I eat, if things is going really, really good, time to celebrate, let's eat, like that was my only options, like it's date night? Eat.
I'm alone in a time of solitude, eat, like, God told me maybe seven years ago, six years ago, that the level of this ministry would only be able to go to the level that my body could take it. He gave me a vision of myself being healthy, but I didn't focus on it, so I stopped caring, and I was like, as long as I can dress my body, your boy be fat and fly, it don't even matter, I'm going to dress it, right, it might be a couple more, blahhh... When I stepped on that scale in January, the conviction of God came over me. He said, I gave you a vision and you just going to ignore it like this? What I want to do in your life, for transformation church and transformation, I gave you a vision and you have literally ignored it, you're the heaviest you've ever been, you're the most unhealthy that you've ever been, and you're the most anointed that you've ever been.
Oh, you know, you can be anointed and unhealthy? Oh, did you know you could be on a big platform and literally eroding the thing that God told you to do? I said, and this was the moment, I said, God, I wrote down health on a piece of paper, I don't know how to do this, will you help me get healthy? And all I did was put a picture of myself on somebody else's body, see, you all trying to be so spiritual, I had to write the vision down, this was me making the vision plain, I found somebody who had the body I needed to have, and I just put my smile, 'cause this could stay, I put it on a different, and I literally wrote, help me God, and over the course, since January, I stepped on the scale this morning, I was 221 pounds, I've lost 42 pounds, you all, 42 pounds.
Now watch, thank you. This is my first time wearing a shirt without a, you know what I'm saying? I can turn all the way around, God bless you. But what I'm saying to you is, this didn't come because I imagined it. The reason that it started moving is 'cause I got a vision, and I'm going to tell you in a second, how that vision helped me all the way through, but in every area of your life, I'm challenging you this week, get a big piece of paper, and write down the areas of your life, and ask God for vision.
Habakkuk 2:2, in the message version, I love this. "And God answered write this, write what you see" that's all God's asking you to do, write what you see. Write it, write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision message is a witness pointing to what is coming. When you write the vision down, it gives it permission to actually come. What is coming, is me being healthy. What is coming, is my marriage flourishing. What is coming, is me actually in a marriage, a shout out to my single people. What is coming, is this church being stronger than ever. What is coming, is me not being addicted to anything. What is... You all don't even hear me. What is coming, is me being able to bless other people the way that God has blessed me, what is coming.
See when you get a vision, it points to what is coming. And for most of us, we don't have a vision. See vision gives imagination permission to exist on the earth. Vision, when you write it down, gives what you saw in your imagination, permission to actually access the earth. I don't know why God did this, but after he created for them six days, he decided he would do nothing else on the earth without me and you's help, me and you's, without our participation.
Now, if I was God, I'd be like, they be Tripping, I tell them to do something, they don't do it. I asked them to believe, they don't believe, so why in the world I'm waiting on them and I'm all powerful. He says, it makes more sense for me to get glory, if I use something that doesn't have the ability to make it happen, and I partner with them, I use the foolish things to confound the wise and I show a testimony through Mike Todd's life? Through Amber lee's life, through Gary Macintosh's life, through Brenda's life, through Lisa's life, through Roberta's life, I'm going to use them? And God says, I'll do nothing on the earth without one of my children.
So he says, take it from imagination and bring it to vision, 'cause when it gets written down on paper, now it has permission to actually show up on the earth. I'm giving you all cheat codes right now, and some of you all are sitting there like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? Write it down! Excuse me, I don't even know how, write it down. If God told you you would be living in a different city and your bills would be paid and you would work at that job in that lo, write it down! And the crazy thing is you all scard, I didn't say scared, scard, you're scard that if you write it down and it doesn't happen, somehow God's not good, or you don't hear God. I'm giving you the cheat code and you scard. And this is the thing you got to understand, the one thing I came to grips with a long time ago, number one, I don't have to protect God's reputation.
Some of you all think you all real strong. God was here before you, and he going to be here after you, and kingdoms have risen and fallen, and the name of Jesus is still being proclaimed all over the earth. You cannot protect his reputation. So take that off your back. And the other thing that you need to understand is that when you walk around scared, it's the only thing that can limit God from doing miracles. When you don't believe, can I prove it to you in Jesus's life? He's doing miracles all over, but he goes back to his hometown, and he literally like, if I'm at my hometown, this is where I want to do the most, like I'm coming home, it's a homecoming, I want to bless my people, this is my people. And because they were familiar with him, ain't that Mary's boy, we know they sisters and brother, they could not get over his humanity, so they missed his divinity.