Michael Todd - What A Time To Be Alive - Part 1
Hey, what's going on everybody. I am so glad that you friends have joined us here, and honestly you're more than friends: you're family now. We have been in a series called Anchored where we are deciding that we are going to live our life in Christ in the deep, but we're not gonna drown because we have an anchor and his name is Jesus. Now one of the things about being a parent, I have three beautiful kids and one on the way. One of the things I have to do is I have to tell my kids something sometimes, and they're not sure if what I'm saying is actually gonna happen. And sometimes my daughter Isbella will look at me and say "Okay daddy, if you say so". And one of the things that I found in this Christian walk is there will be times that God calls you to the deep and you're not going to be able to understand it, you're not gonna be able to reason with it, you're not even gonna have full context of what's happening, but your faith statement is going to be okay God, if you say so. Today I'm telling you the message is gonna encourage you to trust God in the middle of every storm and be able to drop your anchor on God's word. Let's go into today's message.
Is anybody ready for the word! All right, today I want you to get out your smart phones, your dumb phones, your note pads. I need to you get out everything because today God has given me a specific word. I was working on a message the entire week, and last night God switched it up and this morning he refined it, and I am ready to preach to you because we are in week five of a series we're calling help me, Anchored. Somebody say it one more time. We're gonna be anchored. That is the word for this year. How many people have been seeing anchors different places? It's been everywhere because I believe that God is sending confirmation to you that this year he wants us to be tied to something that will not be able to move in the midst of the storm.
I'm telling you so clearly God is continuing to literally just continuing to reveal himself with revelation through this series, and so I'm grateful for everybody who is here today. If this is your first time watching, if somebody told you that you had to watch to date them, that's a good person. You need to probably align your life, marry them. But whatever the reason that you're here, it is a divine appointment. God has been working in your life to make this moment happen, and today through transparency and God's word what we're gonna try to do is present to you a better way of living so that you can be able to be everything that God intended for you to be.
And I don't know who I'm talking to right now, but somebody is at the end of their rope, and they're sick and tired of what has been going on, and you're sick and tired of staying in the same place, and today what God is saying and he's been saying to us for the past four weeks is that he wants to be your anchor. He wants to be the thing that you tie your life to. He wants to be the thing that is stable: not money, not success, not even your relationship. His name is Jesus and he's the rock of ages. He is the one that can take your past and he can use it for your future if you would give it to him and allow him to be your anchor.
So today I want us to be able to take a little further journey because last week we decided that we were gonna be in the deep. And we told everybody, you know what, the shallow is not safer. We are gonna go to the place that God has called us to, and whatever that means, because we won't have control, that's how I'm standing here right now. Do y'all think that I planned this? Do you think that I knew what God was going to do with my life? No. At six years ago I decided to push off the shore and go to the deep, and in the deep God does things that only can be described as miracles.
So today I want to walk with you with the disciples in Luke chapter five verse three. I want you to get that in your Bible. This is about to be good! And this is Jesus. It says Jesus, stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, it's owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. Verse four. When he had finished speaking, the day's over, he said to Simon like he's saying to me and you, now go out where it's deeper. So it's not enough for me just to have Jesus around me. I need to go out where it's, say it one more time. Deeper. And then he gives them a different instruction. He says and let down your nets to catch some fish.
Now I need to give you context to what we're talking about right now. These are professional fishermen. These are people who catch fish all the time. These are people that, according to society and culture, would have some level of success. Okay? And they are in a space, watch this, where God is asking them to deny what they know to follow his instructions. If you're going to go to the deep, what you know doesn't matter as much. Ah-ha! Because some of you are in a place where you think that your education, and your pedigree, and the family you came from, and the college you, "I went to an HBCU," or "I went to an Ivy League school," or "I went to a Christian college". It don't matter! There is a level in the deep where whatever you know don't matter! Ah!
'Cause so many of us are trying to allow our qualifications to be able to anchor us. But your qualifications, I don't care how much money you have in the bank, you can't heal cancer. I don't care how many people have your cell phone number. There are certain doors that only God can unlock. And so many of us have been trying to position ourselves when God is saying hold on, you need me to be with you in the deep. He's asking professionals to go and do something they know how to do. Has God ever asked you to do something that you thought you could do without him? I'm just trying to help you because many of us are about to walk into another space where you need to be able to position yourself mentally and emotionally to be out of control. I'm not saying doing wild things, I'm saying you're not the one that's gonna be making the decisions.
And the reason why God wants us to go to the deep, write down this point, God does the dynamic in the deep. There are dynamic miracles he wants to do that he cannot do with you at the low level of Christianity that you're at right now. There are dynamic things that God wants to do in your marriage, but you still have pride. He says you need to launch out deeper into humility. Oh, you thought this was something that wasn't practical. What God is asking you to do is become more like him, to be not like culture, but be more like Christ, so when they mess you over, God's saying come out in the deep, bless them anyway. All I'm challenging you right now is that God wants you to come to the deep 'cause there's dynamic things.
Do you know why the church seems so powerless right now? It's because we stopped doing the dynamic things in the house of God. We've stopped maximizing the things, the signs, the miracles, the wonders. Prophecy? I really feel this. I've got to say this. I feel like the spirit of prophecy is coming back so strong to this church, and I don't know how else to describe it. And I know some of y'all are like prophecy, what is he talking about? Is that psychic? No, no, no, no. This is divine inspiration and intelligence from God to be able to speak things into the future for encouragement, to let you know God's ready to do some dynamic things, and he's so good that if we would be open to being in the deep, that he would send somebody to tell us what's gonna happen before it happens. He will send you places and things and voice notes and people in his word to give you a foreshadowing.
I'm talking about the dynamic. They don't want to hear about this, Travis. They want to hear about the cool. They want to hear about, the cool don't get nobody saved. It's miracles! It's the signs! It's the wonder. It's your marriage being on the brink of divorce, but God stepping into that thing and allowing you to experience a miracle. God wants to do the dynamic, but the dynamic only happens in the deep. Can I be transparent with them? There is this tension because people in culture can accept my message to start pandering to people in culture from this platform. I'm gonna say something that most people won't like. I will never do what's politically correct from this platform. I will only do what is biblically correct from this platform. So if you don't like it when I say something about the silhouette challenge and being modest and all that other stuff, click it off! But as for me and my house...
I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry that you want me to be politically correct, but I will be biblically correct because I will not stand with you and Instagram followers before God. They missed it. It will be me and Jesus, and he say what did you do with the influence I gave you? And I'm telling you I want the dynamic in my life. I want to be able to speak to stuff that's dying and it comes back to life. I want to be able to tell situations that are trying to wither away to stand up and live. I want to be able to talk to your marriage. I want to be able to write it in book form. I want to be able to put it to music. I want the dynamic, but the only thing that happens with dynamic is it has to happen in the deep. Yeah? Somebody say "Signs". Say "Miracles, wonders". This is what's gonna get the world saved. The millennial generation is like how do I Instagram that? This is the stuff you don't have to say nothing about.
I just feel another sense of authority at this current moment to just speak to this generation. We will not be powerless! On this six year anniversary, I'm declaring to you right now we about to step into the deep. We're gonna see God do things that nobody thought was possible. And I'm calling, this is a clarion call for a generation of people that don't want to just sit around and have Bible studies and then go out and watch pornography and live the same. I'm talking to the people that want to say yeah, I dealt with it, and yeah, it had a control over me, but the power of the Holy Spirit came over my life, and I went to the deep, and something changed on the inside of me, and I became something that was different, and now I have the ability to reach back in grace, to reach back with mercy and bring other people.
I want the dynamic and it only is found in the deep. Can I prove it to them, Charles? When I talk about prophecy, so many people were impacted by what happened last week when we had the water on the stage and all this different stuff that God did, and I was so grateful to be able to do that, but do you know what I found out last night when the Holy Spirit would not get up off of me? He said Michael, there was a woman who came last year and she prophesied to you. And I was like okay, God. He said find that prophecy. I'm literally 10:00 o'clock last night, I call my mama, is this the truth mama? It's the truth. I called her and I said mama, do you remember the lady who came and prophesied? I don't remember what she said, but God ain't got up off me that I need to find this prophecy. I found that prophecy at 10:30 last night.
Oh, I love God! And he said... I want you to listen to it. Me and Natalie are laying in bed, and she says this one line that made my wife that's pregnant sit up, and she said are you serious? And I want you to hear what happened last week, God spoke a year ago in exact form because he wanted me to know that what he's doing in my life and in this church and in your life is going to be dynamic. If you've never thought prophecy was real, I want you to take a listen to this and see that God wants to do the dynamic in the deep. Music can never leave you. It is just in you. It's piped in you. As much as you preach and you keep hearing these songs, you keep hearing and it's getting ready to be a whole production where you actually literally can see yourself preaching, and you've already produced every single thing, the sound, the clouds, the stuff that's going in, it's gonna be to, okay, closest I can see it is that you ever went to Vegas?
And when you go to Vegas, I don't know if you ever seen that when they did that show "O", when they transform the stage to water? It's something, cirque Du Soleil, and they change the stage to water to dry. That's the kind of stuff that you're wired for. And it's gonna be such a major production. Y'all don't even want to see. A year ago, almost to the date, God sent a dynamic person that was in the deep to speak to me and say I'm taking you deeper. I never thought what happened last week would ever happen, but she said even down to the clouds and the water and it's like a big production. We didn't even have this a year ago, but God sent a word to let me know that he was thinking about the dynamic while I was still in the shallow. And I don't know, oh, I feel this thing right now! I don't know who's been okay being in the shallow, but God has dynamic on his mind.
And the dynamic only happens in the deep. Nature even tells us this. There are certain creatures that you will never see until you go to the deep. We want fish that we can put in a tank, but this is what God wants some of our 2021 to look like. Put that picture on the screen for me. This is the type of dynamic creation that God has lying under the surface for you. What if that was your business? What if that was your family's generational wealth? What if you were raised in a certain life, but what if God called you to go to the deep to present something that's never been seen before. I want you to look at this darker picture right here. That's a boat. And that's the tail of a whale. I want you to see that the dynamic God wants to do in your life means that you've got to make a decision to go to the deep. The only reason we're sitting here as a church is because I decided I'm gonna just go to the deep.
"Well, a black person's never done that before". I just got to believe that what he said to me, that we'd be a multi-ethnic, multiplying, multi-generational, multi-campus church, I guess I'm just gonna say it. And I'm just gonna launch out here in the deep. I guess, I guess everybody won't go with me but I guess we'll go. I'm trying to use my life as we celebrate this anniversary as a Marker that there is no qualification that separates me from you. Many pastors want you to feel that they're better than you, but I need you to know I am not better than you. I am at the same level as you on every aspect. I still got to love my wife, I still have to watch out for temptation, I still have to pray to have a relationship, not to study, to be able to have a relationship with God. I still get mad and I still want to slap people who cut me off! Let's be honest! The only difference is that I decided that I'm just gonna live in the deep.
So if God calls the church to 21 days of prayer and fasting then he whispers to me 45 days... But I chose to live in the deep. When everybody in my family doesn't want to get together and reconcile, but God says you go apologize first, and then I say to God "It wasn't my fault" and he says but you're my servant. I've decided to live in the deep. Can I give you another point? I want you to write this down because some of you think that God's trying to toy with you or play with you or just make like, oh, look at them, they're down there struggling. No baby. Everything that God does is with a design, from the very creation of the sun and the moon that comes up like clockwork on different sides of the earth and how the orbit is now in place from one word that he spoke.
God is a master craftsman and builder, and what I want you to know is the deep situation God has you in, the deep situation you even got yourself in, if you would give him control and let him be your anchor, the deep has a design. There is never one time that God called you to the deep that he's not designing something so special. The deep has everybody say "Design". There are certain things that will not come out of you without the deep. And there are certain things that God can't do in you until you don't have control no more. Do you know how daunting it was to step in for bishop Gary McIntosh? Do y'all see bishop? He's white. He's conservative in his communication. He's powerful. He makes wise decisions, calculated decisions. He does all this stuff and then he hand it to me? And at the time, I felt that I had to be like him. If you watch any of my old footage, I had on suits every Sunday. Pink, yellow, blue, green. I had every kind of suit you can imagine because for some reason, I thought if I was gonna be deep, I had to be in his design.
See, what you're trying to do is you're trying to do the deep thing the way God designed somebody else to do it. You're trying to fit into the mold that this church did it, or that company did it, or that brand did it, or that creative did it, and God says my deep has a design for you. I didn't come into who I was until I fully stepped in to the deep waters God called me to. And he said I designed the deep to get something in and out of you. I think I got to give them the progression because a lot of y'all want to go to the deep, but you think you're deep, but you're not there yet, and I'm drawing the parallel off of what God did with the disciples, because it is our ultimate goal to be disciples of Jesus Christ. So let me help you understand the progression of going in to the deep.