Michael Todd - Bamboo SZN, Unusual Acceleration - Part 1
Hey, friends. I am so grateful that you joined us for today's program, and I cannot wait for you to hear the message today because right now we are in a series called Crazier Faith, and honestly, at one point in my life I thought I knew what it meant to walk in faith, but over the last several years, God has taken me on an incredible journey teaching me what it really means to walk in mountain moving, earth shaking, life changing faith. And there's still so much more for me to learn, so I want you to follow me as I follow Christ as we learn about crazy faith. If you're ready to experience a faith walk you will never ever forget, stay with me because we're about to move towards crazy faith.
This series is to take us from safe living, from the Christianity that really has no level of risk, I know, we try to avoid risk at all costs, but believing God is risky business. And every person I look at in the word that we quote their scriptures and get tattoos of what they said and have it hanging up in our kitchen, all of those people did not live, safe, comfortable, cookie cut lives for Christ. They lived their life out on the limb, and people around them would have called them crazy. And I decided that I wasn't going to talk about it. I was going to everybody say be about it. Have you ever met somebody who acts hard but they soft as medicated cotton? You know what I'm saying? They got big talk.
The old school would say they got a lot of bark but no bite. Like that's what most of the church looks like. A bunch of scripture quotes. No actual results. A bunch of telling people what she should be doing. No actual track record of doing it themselves. And this is why people are like yeah, y'all are hypocrites. Yeah, I can't believe y'all. I decided I didn't want to talk about living a life for God. I wanted to live it so that then people can talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it. You're going to talk about it when you see what God has done. The goal of this is to become a living word. Not something that all of us have to be like yeah, and in 2 Corinthians it says, they should be able to look at first Michael 2. Second Bree. Third William.
See, I need you to be the Bible that people read. And the truth of the matter is if you were the only word that people saw, they would not fall in love with Jesus. Today I'm challenging you to go beyond where you have been and allow God to start putting seeds on your heart and in your life so will make you the living word. Everybody say "Living word". When people talk about generosity, they don't have to go to a scripture in Malachi. They can look at the scripture of Sarah, and every time you come into Starbucks for some reason you're joyful, you're generous, you're encouraged and you left me the same amount of tip that it costs for your coffee? She different. They should be able to be at the sports games with you and your kids who can't really play the sport. And be able to watch how you react, this is where some of y'all get in trouble, when the call goes the wrong way.
Some of y'all lose all of your sanctification and all the words coming out of your mouth are cusses. That's all cuss. What I'm saying to you, would anybody be able to see the fruits of spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control? I just made a decision that for the rest of the series since we're at a place where we can't go back, I'm going to talk to the people sitting at the adult table. The last part of this series I'm not talking to people who are still trying to figure out if they want to live in crazy faith. The rest of this series is for the people who have decided. Somebody say, "I have decided". And maybe this is the 30 seconds you need to decide because I'm going to another level for people who want to actually live this out, and by this time next year see the fruit of the life they have decided to live today. I need you to decide. Somebody say, "I have decided".
You're going to live in crazier faith while you're still sitting here and the bank account is negative, while you're sitting here right now and you're separated from the person you want to be with, you can make a decision right now that you're going to live in crazier faith. You are in a halfway house. You're in jail. Shout out to my guys in Dallas. Mike degrade and my people in Oklahoma city. Y'all, people are watching crazy faith in jail right now. Hold on. Y'all going to let people in jail out praise you and have more faith? What I'm saying is it doesn't matter the situation. God is saying you can decide. Somebody say I have decided. So everybody put on your big boy and big girl britches. Today we're going to another level. Are you ready for another level?
So last week, we talked about faith like a farmer, and I am so proud of you Transformation Church because as soon as that message went out, over 100.000 people watched that message in 48 hours. And it started to be shared and started to go all over, and I started hearing crazy faith testimonies. And I encourage everybody go back and watch that message, but for a three point recap in ten seconds, this is what you need to understand about having faith like a farmer. Number one, sow it before you see it. If you put it in the ground before you see any harvest, that is the place where things start to change. Then you need to sacrifice it before you see it. That means that I'm going to have to make a sacrifice, I'm going to have to give my time, my treasure, my talent before there is any results.
These are key to the kingdom. And the last one is start it before you see it. So many people want to start after you have a guaranty. That's not faith. That is strategy. Most people want their relationship with God to be strategic instead of faith-filled. So if you knew it was going to work, this is just strategy. Duh. That's common sense. It takes faith to be able to start it before you see it. Start the business before you see it. Start the web site before you have anybody that comes to him. Start the book before you have a deal. Start the clothing line when you have nobody to wear it. Start. Somebody shout at me, "Start". That's faith. Stop act being like it's faith when you're at a surplus and you're sitting around like yeah, what should I do now? That's not faith. That is strategic. But God want you to start it before you see it.
And as a church every year we come and bring all of our faith to this moment that we call our crazy faith offering. And I'm encouraging you right now to start praying about what God would have you give in this offering. And I don't care what it is, I'm not looking for anybody's specific gift or anything. I'm trying to get my mind around what God has told me and Natalie to give. I ain't got time to be worried about you. I'm leading the charge. This ain't something y'all do and I am the lead servant at Transformation Church. Not the lead pastor. And what God is asking me to do this year, it hurts.
Me and my wife still have to come to a...See, this is the one thing I'm going to tell you, husbands and wives, pick the right time to talk about what God has told you because y'all can get in real interesting conversations. Yeah, y'all pray for me and pastor ned. But I'm leading this charge because December 5 we're coming herewith our faith, and every year people begin to fast and pray and save and say we are going to give towards the vision of the future of what God is going to do, and y'all, I can't even give you full details until I get a couple of clearances from a couple of people but what I'm telling you you've never seen Transformation Church's vision before. What God is giving me and where we are going is about to blow the socks off anything that we've ever done.
Somebody's getting it by faith right now. Just starting to understand, and I need some people to sow before you see it. What we're about to do is going to take more resources, human resource and financial resource, than anything we've ever done. I bet just like there was a few hundred people that had crazy faith to give for the 80 thousand dollars for those cameras back in 2015 that there's about 30.000 people that will give whatever God tells you. So that we can go to another level in crazy faith.
I want to let everybody know that some of y'all is real crazy. And you're not just going to give on line. Some of y'all are going to actually come to Tulsa. Y'all do it every year, so I just want to make sure to let you know we're going back to where it all started. We have set up our flagship location at 1519. If you've never been to north Tulsa, come on to Tulsa, baby, and we're opening back the doors of our north Tulsa building for us to give our crazy faith offering. And you say, why is that significant? It's from that place that we sowed a seed of 8300 dollars into other churches that broke the back of poverty over our ministry. And the Holy Spirit said, mike, go back to ground zero. And I want people to come and I want them to give on that soil.
Let me tell you about a serial sower that I found out about this week. I'm just trying to stir your faith. That is my assignment today's is to stir your faith. There was somebody that had been believing, a couple that had been believing for a brand-new car. They just had a baby, found out they were pregnant again, and they had one car and they needed to be able to move. They had a couple of different family members come in and see their situation and say, you know what? We got a little extra. We'll buy you a car. You can pay us back whenever. And that was an amazing blessing, except God had told the husband of this relationship specifically I'm about to do something in your vehicle situation. And in the face of people wanting to help he had to look at people he loved and say, I'm sorry.
This may seem crazy. I'm sorry that I can't accept the help you're about to give me. Why? Because God told me he was going to do something specific for me concerning my vehicle. Please don't get it twisted. Every blessing is not obedience. Oh, I just said something somebody, you count every blessing, every blessing is not obedience when God told you something different. This man looked at 2 different sides of his family and told them no, God is going to do something. His wife is looking at him boy, if you don't quit Tripping. But they stood in agreement.
Last week, I was riding with this individual. He said pastor Mike, I got to tell you something. I said, what's up? He said, thank you. Thank you for what? Thank you for living in crazy faith. He said, this atmosphere has changed my faith forever to believe God. I was like oh, great. God bless you. Glory to God. You know you just start saying all the things. No, you don't understand. He said, after telling one family member no and telling the other family no, I got a call two days ago. I said, who was it? It was somebody who had been watching our situation from afar, knew no details but they called and said, I'm on the way to the car dealer, ship to buy myself a new car and I currently have the keys to your new car. Would you meet me at this place?
I've already signed everything over to you and I need you to come pick up the keys to your brand-new fully loaded vehicle. Y'all don't want to shout with me, but you can't convince me that crazy faith season is here! And God has opened up the windows! See, I see the people who are mad and jealous and then I see the people who are in line for the miracle. Because they begin to praise just like it happened for them. I'm telling you there are things that God wants to do right now that require somebody, should be shout at me, "Crazy faith"! Okay. So that was the first confirmation that I had to preach the message that I'm about to preach today. And I got 2 more confirmations with the exact words of what I was supposed to preach today. So I'm going to obey and I'm going to tell you a story about what happened on a Monday night, January 30, 2012. At Transformation Church, we have Monday night prayer.
Some of y'all think that this is what makes Transformation Church great. The sauce our church is prayer, and we pray all the time. My parents, they lead that. They're just praying and praying and praying. Sometime mama come in, y'all know the memes you see of the mom waking you up at 4 o'clock in the morning, in the name of Jesus! That's Brenda Todd. And what ends up happening we were at this prayer meeting, none of y'all was here. This was 2012. No blow up. Nobody watching on Instagram. Nobody, I mean could have been 13 people at prayer that night. And this woman comes up and she says, I have a prophetic word, and anybody who doesn't know what a prophetic word is it's a word of encouragement or warning or correction that is supposed to move you forward. And this woman says, I have a prophetic word. And she was like, pastor Mike, this is for you. Will you just receive this?
And when you know, when it comes to the prophetic some people are just weird. It's not the prophetic. It's them. They're weird. They just start doing weird stuff and prophetic don't have to be weird but, heh. And this woman said, I feel like, and you know I'd just be ready because I've been around prophetic people all my life so I never know, somebody might hit a back flip and do the splits and be like God said, split it open and I'd be like, why did you... I'm telling you there's crazy stuff. I've seen all kinds of stuff so I'm just bracing myself for the, and she says could you lift your hands? I lift my hands. She said, God said about this church that it's about to be a bamboo season. And y'all like, yes, yes, yes. That didn't mean nothing to me. Like, I'm like the bamboo season. Glory of God. Hallelujah.
Church people always trying to make stuff deep and don't know what's happening but when she said bamboo season, I was like great. The bamboo season. She said, God is about to do a new thing. It's going to be like bamboo. I was like, like bamboo? And she said, yes. So sometimes God gives you a prophetic word that you got to go study so I went and I started studying. She said bamboo so maybe look at bamboo, and what I found out about the bamboo plant is the bamboo plant is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. It's sturdy. It's solid. It's strong. It's durable. It's used for building. It is incredibly strong and regenerates itself in nature. So then I was like, okay. God is about to make it a bamboo season. About to be strong, sturdy. I was like let me do a push-up. I was like I didn't know, and then I kept reading. And it said, it takes the bamboo about 3 years after being sown to breakthrough.
Now, last week we talked about having faith like a farmer and we talked about sowing seeds, and I give you a formula, but then when I started to look at this I started to see that there are different ways that different plants grow. And this plant grows under the surface for 3 years. But then when it breaks through, ooh-wee! Scientifically under the right conditions, the bamboo can grow an astonishing 2 inches an hour. Three years under, 2 inches an hour. That means that suddenly when it looked like there was nothing...somebody shout at me "suddenly". Like where it looks like there was no movement, no growth, nobody cared, nobody was listening, nobody had traction, somebody shout at me, "Suddenly". It grows 2 inches an hour. That means the bamboo can grow from nothing to growing 4 feet in 24 hours.
God began to show me, he said "Michael, I need you to tell my church that this is the season of unusual acceleration". I need somebody to hear me. Put up a picture of a bamboo forest. This is a picture of what some of your life is about to look like. Now, everybody don't have to shout because some of y'all don't have faith for this, but the name of this series is crazier faith. And right now what looks completely empty, right now what looks like a vacant desert, right now what nobody has been able to check for, check back with me tomorrow because what God can do, somebody say "It's bamboo season". And I came to prophetically tell you that it is bamboo season and it is the season of unusual acceleration. Somebody say, "Unusual acceleration". No, say it again. "Unusual".
See, the thing we talked about last week was usual growth, and I feel like I had to start you there to let you know that we serve a God that bases things on principles and systems. Like he does things and puts things in place so we can follow them. But there's always moments where God in his sovereignty, this is a word we don't use off but somebody say "Sovereign". That means he can do what he wants with who he wants when he wants to. And see, some of us gets so bogged into the structure and the system that we forget that our God is, somebody say it with me, sovereign.