Michael Todd - Exchange the Stain
Happy Resurrection Sunday! Oh, come on, I dare you to give God the biggest praise you have! He is the reason! Oh, you better come on! I know, I know some of you are thinking, «Sally, is this what your church does every week?» I just want to give you a spoiler alert, okay? Around here, we’re excited, just like people get excited for the Super Bowl or the NBA playoffs, or when they have a baby or get a new house. All of those things are temporary; the thing we’re celebrating today is something that happened eternally!
Today is the day we celebrate our Lord and Savior—not just His death, not just His time in the tomb! I’m getting happy! But on the third day, somebody say, «the third day,» He rose again with all power! So today, we celebrate a risen Savior! Will you give Him praise right now? Hallelujah! You’re probably thinking, «Did that man take Ritalin or something?» No, no, no! I just know where I was when God found me, and His resurrection power impacted me! The difference that separates Christianity from every other religion is that everyone else had a god, but when they died, they died! When Buddha died, they could only make big statues. When Christians die, we only have pictures! Y’all don’t hear me! When every other god died, they died, but when Christ died, He got up!
And today, we celebrate the resurrection of your soul! Just give Him one more shout of hallelujah! Yo, hey, if you are sitting next to someone or around someone, just tell them, «He has risen.» Then say it like this: «He has risen indeed!» I am so grateful that you are joining us for Transformation Church today. There are people watching all over the world, and some of you are sitting at your TV screen right now saying, «I haven’t heard that much screaming in a long time.» Let me slow it down and introduce myself. Hello, my name is Michael, and I have the awesome opportunity of being the lead pastor of Transformation Church. Today, we are celebrating what many call Easter, but we know it’s the resurrection of our Lord and Savior!
All I want you to know is that if you’re watching this right now, we’ve prayed for you. We’ve been praying that something in your life would align, that you would see the promotion, or that someone would have invited you, and you would get here in this moment. Because this entire experience is so you can know about our risen Savior! I want to pull no punches this year. I’m going to do something simple. Usually, at Easter when you come to a church, this is when we have people flying out of the sky, everybody gets tattoos that say, «He is risen,» and all of these different things happen. But this year, I just want to present the gospel to you, and the word «gospel» simply means good news! That’s all I have for you today! Everybody say it: good news!
I know in a world where there’s so much bad news going on right now, and you’re watching things that are making you afraid of tomorrow, I have good news! I’m going to give you a spoiler alert, but I need the Bible to help me! I’m already preaching if you didn’t know! I want to go into this thing, but Revelation chapter 1, verse 17—part A says, «Don’t be afraid!» And I’m speaking this over your life, whoever you are, who has been walking through a season of fear, who has been walking through a season of not knowing if God is in control of everything—the pandemic, the problems, your personal life. You’ve been walking through all of these different things, and I want to let you know right now: God is in control!
Somebody say, «God is in control!» The reason I need you to know that God is in control is because He says in Revelation chapter 1, verse 17, «Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! I am the first and the last! I’m the Alpha and the Omega—I’m the beginning and the end! I’ve been here before the oldest person you know, and I’ll be here long after everybody is gone! I am the first and the last; I’m the living one!» I love this; God’s funny! He said, «I died, but look! I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave!» The spoiler alert is that He has already won the victory for your life! And today, I want to start off letting you know that all I want to bring to you today is Jesus.
I know a lot of people try to play little tricks at the end, saying, «Oh no, today we’re going to talk about a better life,» and then at the end, they want to trick you with Jesus. I’m going to tell you right up front because it’s the one thing that took me from being addicted to pornography, a manipulator, a liar—someone who had no business talking to you right now! It took me from all of that to being not a perfect man, but a progressing man. Today, I want to give you Jesus! So for the next 40 minutes, I need you to stay with me. I promise you this will be engaging. I promise you the friend that you invited to this—if you’re thinking, «Please don’t ruin my reputation with these people"—trust me, I got you! Okay? I promise! This is what I’m called to do; I was born to do this! So I’m going to help you, and I want all of us to receive a new revelation. Say His name with me: Jesus! Can we pray right now? Hands lifted all over the world:
Father, I thank You! I thank You that today is all about Jesus; it’s all about You! Right now, God, I thank You that all of us may have feelings and agendas and may have things that we’re going through, Father. And You care about all those things. Today, I thank You, God, that You sent an answer and a solution to every one of our problems before we even had them! For the person who is wondering how long they will have to be alone in that relationship, I thank You, Father, that today there will be an answer! For the person, Father, who is stifled by the financial debt they are under right now, I thank You that today You’re going to send an answer! Father, for the person who has sins that have been weighing them down and who doesn’t want to do them anymore but is trying to figure out how to live this life in a new way, I thank You that today they’re going to find an answer! For the person, Father, who doesn’t feel seen, who is on their third miscarriage, for the person whose business didn’t get bailed out by a stimulus package, for the person who’s frustrated because they lost a loved one, for the person who’s dealing with a special needs child, for the person who is standing, Father, needing a miracle in their body, and for whom no doctor has an answer, today I pray that You will be the answer! Father, let everything that’s said and done give You glory and use me to help Your people! God, we trust You, we believe You, and we thank You for not just dying; we thank You for the resurrection! Have Your way; and this service today is our prayer. In Jesus' name, we agree!
Will somebody give God one more huge shout? Oh come on, give Him a huge shout of praise! Amen! Alright, I got a message for you right now, and I’m so excited because we have put together this idea that everybody who is born into this world is stained—stained by something, stained by somebody, stained by other people’s decisions, stained by their own decisions. What I’ve found is that many people are living, trying to hide their stains! Now, all of you can be fake if you want, but the truth is there’s something going on in your heart, your soul, and your mind right now that you don’t want me to see! Okay, you’re all going to be quiet right now! I could open some of your phones right now and just see it; it would be right there, and you wouldn’t want Pastor Mike to see it!
The crazy thing is, you care more about me seeing it, but God is there right now! He was there when the stain was made! He was there when you tried to put makeup on it and beat your face to cover up the stain of insecurity! Oh, I’m going straight for it! I don’t even have time; I’ve got to get right to it! He was there when you doubled down on the business because you thought that being successful in that arena would allow you to hide the very deep stains of being overlooked as a child in your family! So now, you’re saying, «I’m going to make them notice me! I’m going to have the money, I’m going to have the car, I’m going to have the woman, and I’m going to have the kids!» But now you’re staining another generation because you’ve been hiding your stains with things and neglecting the ones that God called you to raise.
Everybody say, «Stained!» Yeah, the truth of the matter is all of us have stains—specifically the one talking to you right now! You see, I’m coming to you talking from a place of humility and a place of knowing who I actually am! See, the thing about my stains is if you don’t know them, I know them! I woke up with them! I know the thoughts that I have when nobody’s looking! I know the things that I watch too long on that certain channel when everybody is asleep! I know the deep roots of the things that I do to be seen and to be loved! I know the places I’ve gone—not because I was accepted there, but because I just wanted to feel something! Stained! I know I’m being kind of heavy right now, and there’s somebody thinking, «Pastor Mike, I can’t take 35 minutes of this!» So let me bring it up for you; I’m coming back to you! Just bring it up!
See, I’m going to tell you something you may not know about me: your pastor is a messy eater! Now, if my wife could tell all of you, she tells me all the time, «Don’t eat there because you’re going to mess up the carpet!» Or, «Don’t eat here because you’re going to spill that!» I’ll be like, «Girl, don’t worry about it! I’m going to do it!» Inevitably, for some reason, when I finish eating, no matter how careful I am, there’s always something that spills on the floor! And the reason is not because I don’t know where my mouth is! I’m very aware. You can tell by my waist size where my mouth is; I know where it is! The problem is I like sauces! Does anybody like sauces? I consider myself somewhat of a «saucesologist» right now!
In the comments, I need you to shout out and type your favorite sauce! Come on; let me hear it! What’s your favorite sauce? I heard ranch! I heard sriracha! Polynesian! Oh, Chick-fil-A has some sauces! Chick-fil-A sauce—you can put that on anything, even cereal, and it’s good! Chick-fil-A! That was great! But I’m a sauces guy! One thing about when I eat, and why my eating is so messy, is because when I eat, before I start taking bites, I dip it in a bunch of sauce! And as I’m enjoying those delectable, wonderful, delightful sauce combinations that are exploding in my mouth, many times there’s so much there that a little bit drips off! I started thinking about this one time that I had the audacity to wear all white to an event! I mean, I was clean, though! Don’t trip! Your boy was clean! Period!
I was clean! But they had the audacity to have steak there, and when I have steak, I need my A1, I need my barbecue sauce! This is different for some of y’all! I need my sriracha! I put sriracha on everything! I was dipping and whipping, dipping and whipping—I was doing it! I made it through my whole meal! You know how you eat and then check? I was eating and checking! I made it through my whole meal, got to the last bite, and when I hit that last bite, you know sometimes you just do a little extra whipping and dipping, right? I just put it in my mouth, and it was like slow motion happened! I bit down, and it was like that sauce went all the way down from the top of my head to the side! And it was literally at the beginning of the event, so the rest of the night, when I went in to say, «What’s going on, everybody?»
I looked at their face, and they looked at my stain! I went in and I was like, «Good to see you,» and I knew they weren’t looking at me anymore! What once was very clean had now become very damaged by something they didn’t experience, but they could see the residue of it! And it brought me to how our attitudes, how we medicate ourselves, and all those different things show the stains of what we weren’t there to witness, but the proof is on us! As I begin to look at my life, I look like that outfit; I look good on the outside until you actually get to see my stains! And I know there are some self-righteous people sitting there in your Easter finest at home, and you’re thinking ain’t got no stains, baby; the Bible tells us to write this down: first point, we all have stains.
Somebody say, «I have stains.» Some of y’all couldn’t even get that out because you’re so self-righteous and prideful right now you don’t see it. The thing about me is I did not see the stain the way others saw it; I was walking around with it on me, but it’s evident to me when I look down, and it’s evident to them when they look at me at all. The crazy thing about this life is we’re walking around with people, and many times they see our stains. Today, I just want to let you know that your stains aren’t better than their stains. Yeah, I gotta set it straight from the very beginning because some of you think a little white lie is different from homosexuality. But when you go to the foot of the cross, it says that it is an even playing field.
So, you can be in church lying and talking about people, or living in an alternate lifestyle, and God says you’re still stained. I don’t know what you’ve been stained by, but some of you have been stained by secrets—secrets that are in your family right now, secrets that even as I’m talking to you, they’re touching your heart. Stains from conversations you’ve had with people, stains from the mother who did not validate you because she knew something she didn’t want anyone else to know, so she kept it a secret. What happened to you in that house? Yeah, no, no, I know, I know, I know we don’t want to talk about it for real, but many of us right now are hugging people, secret relationships in the DMs with people—secrets. And the thing about secrets is they left a mark on you.
As much as I try to go away from it and only come back once a month, every time I connect with that secret, the longer it stays alive. The more I try to only do it when I really need it, it becomes a part of me. Now, I go to church on the praise team like this, and I’m raising kids like this, and now I’m trying to do this. The thing is now they’re nowhere to be found. The secrets go away from me in my actions, but I still have proof that they impacted my life. All I’m saying to you is that we all have stains.
Somebody say, «We all have stains.» I know that some of you have run so far away from that childhood past, from that trauma, from that thing that has happened. But I’m telling you, the trauma was never dealt with, and so you have been affected by the secrets, and the secrets have given birth to trauma. Yep, hold on! I didn’t know that it was going to affect me. I’m 35 years old; why is 13-year-old me coming out in the workplace? Hold on, I didn’t know. I thought I would be okay if I just left that denomination or if I just left that church. But the secrets and the trauma have become something that I’ve fought my whole teenage career. I thought that when I went to college and left my family and those people and moved to a different country, it would go away.
The trauma left, but the trauma’s still on me. And now, every Thanksgiving, it walks away for 11 months but comes back every Christmas. Good to see you; I missed you. You’re heavy; you’re awake. Let’s act like everything’s cool. Now the pain I had with my high school sweetheart has followed me into my marriage. We couldn’t talk, so now the person I’m supposed to be with, we can’t talk. Thanks for taking your stains and marking me. See, all I’m trying to let you know is that even the one talking—we all have stains. Maybe your stain didn’t come from secrets, and maybe your stain didn’t come from trauma, but maybe your stain is coming from addiction. It’s only every once in a while. I picked up this little habit. You understand what’s up, bro? Hey man, thanks, bro; that party was crazy last night. It was lit, man; it’s the only thing that made me feel like it was worth it.
Bro, thank you for hyping me up! I’m in college; I gotta do my thing. I’m in high school; I gotta do my thing. Now I’m in the boardroom; I gotta do my thing. Man, thank you for supporting me. It’s the thing that always lifts me up. Whether your addiction is a substance or a person—yeah, we only connect every summer. Thanks, thanks for giving me that high again. Thanks for calming me down. Thanks for being my peace. And what ends up happening is the thing about addiction is it goes away; it goes away, but it doesn’t come back to you; you go back to it. Just needed another hit. Now I’m gonna go live for God. Ah, but I just need to be touched one more time. I need to be held one more time.
Now I’m gonna go get married, but ah, I need to make sure I try to chase that high again. It’s a cycle that many of you right now are trapped in as I’m talking to you, and I know the pain. I know some of you have tears flowing down your face right now because what has happened to you is that the secrets and the trauma have turned into addictions that nobody even knows. But guess what? It left you stained. You know the crazy thing about it? It may not be an addiction, but all of us have idols. Some of you think, like I did, that idols were back in the old school days. No, idols, when you look at the Bible, are anything that exalts itself above God. Some of you—your family is your idol. Take a picture with our family! Your relationship is your idol. Take a picture of our relationship! Our house is an idol; come on, take a picture of us in front of our new house.
Look at us! Our success is an idol. Uh-oh, we just made number one! Number one in the world! We’re the ones who did it though. Your one’s up, another one! Yeah, whatever you make bigger than God has become your idol. The crazy thing about idols is they stain you. Yeah, it was just that one time I thought my degrees would make me better. I started valuing education over my existence. I lost relationships because I’m gonna get these degrees, I’m gonna make this money, and I’m gonna do this. And I’m not saying any of that’s bad, but did it become an idol? Did it take God’s place in your life? The truth of the matter is, it left you stained. I don’t know who I’m talking to today, because it could have been the secrets, the trauma, the addictions, the idols, but it’s on you.
This is the saddest part about it, because none of us asked to be here. None of us asked to be here when our mother and father, whether it was they had love or it was a one-night stand or some horrific situation, we didn’t ask to be here! What ends up happening when you don’t ask to be here and you’re learning from other people with stains is they tried to do the best they could with what they had, but they didn’t have much anyway. We end up getting stained, not just by the things we’ve already talked about, but we also get stained by neglect. Why won’t you dare, Dad? Why didn’t you come? You didn’t know I needed you? And it might be slow interactions, but my coach was supposed to look out for me and then you molested me. I thought you were going to take care of me. You hugged me the same way when we won the game, and now you hug me and abuse me and take advantage of me.
Why did you neglect me, pastor? You saw how I was in the world and I told you I was gonna follow you. Yeah, talk about it! All you wanted was my money; you wanted to use me to make your ministry big. You just wanted to volunteer on your team. You neglected me. Now I’m done with church, I’m done with my dad, I’m done with God. After you, I don’t want anything to do with you. Stop coming towards me! I’m sick of this because you should have been there, and you should have done what their dad did for them, and their pastor did for them, and their leader did for them.
Now I’m walking away from you; I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You can go to your space, but now I’m left with the stains of neglect. As I’m talking to y’all right now, you might have buried these thoughts so far down inside of you that you haven’t even thought about them in years. What I’m showing you is a physical picture of what your soul looks like. Your mind, will, and emotions have been stained. When we got to this earth, there was something that messed us up, and we didn’t even ask for it. The biggest stain of them all, the one you could sum up, is sin.
See, when sin entered the world in Genesis, it was the thing that would stain us forever. «Don’t eat from the tree, Adam and Eve.» But maybe what God has for me is not as good as what culture has for me. Maybe I can do it that way instead of His way. The thing about sin is it comes out in every form. Yeah, it comes out in every form; it comes out in my career, it comes out in my relationships; sin violates you. Yeah, what sin does is it tells you to spread them. What sin does is it pats you down. Sin comes to rob you of everything God came to give you. See, what sin does is it reminds you of your faults and your pain and keeps you in a state of vulnerability. It promises you everything that it’ll never be able to give you. The world is suffering from being stained by sin. No matter what we do, we dap it up with sin. What happens when we dap it up with sin? Give me the other one.
Now, I’m so used to it that I start putting it on myself. I start thinking this is the way to live my life, and now I’m encouraging other people. «Hey bro, come get stained with me! Bro, it’s only one night! It’s your birthday! Yo, oh my gosh, you just got a promotion! Let’s go get stained together! Let’s Netflix and stain! Let’s have children out of our brokenness and stain them!» This is the plight of humanity: we have been, say it with me, stained. I don’t know what your stains are today; I’m not coming to judge you because this is an actual representation of me on the inside. The pastor, Pastor Mike? No, no, this is me! The only reason I got up in here and let them touch all on me is because this is what sin did to my life.
I don’t know why I saw that when I was five years old spending the night at their house, but it stained me and led me to deal with the addiction of pornography. It caused me trauma; it was a secret I kept from my parents, and it became an addiction that followed me into my marriage. It became an idol, and it was something that made me neglect the people that I love. I am stained. For everybody that thinks that you’re outside of this realm and you don’t see yourself up here, be careful that you think somehow you’ve earned this purity position. When you were born into this world, all of us—God. Everybody say it with me, «stained.» Can you write this point down? Sin stained humanity.
Romans 5:12 says, «When Adam sinned, sin entered the whole world, and Adam’s sin brought death; so death spread to everyone, including you, for everyone’s sin.» The thing about sin is it has affected, influenced, touched, and stained all of us. But the truth and the good news that I have for you today is that if you recognize and you are one of those willing to admit that you’re stained, I gotta go with this because somebody is still sitting there self-righteous. Look at Romans 3:23; it says, «For all have sinned or all have been stained and fallen short of the glory of God.» So God, being a perfect God, sees His children since Adam got stained, and He says, «I can’t leave them like that; I’ve got to do something.»
So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to send something to clean them up. What God did is He sent sanitizer, and His name is Jesus. If I was in the middle of a pandemic, y’all know sanitizers—businesses have skyrocketed! I’m about to start a new brand of sanitizer called Jesus. It’s the greatest sanitizer in history; it’s the only one that was poured out one time and would be able to clean the sins and the stains of men forever. I’m getting happy right now. Every sin that you would make, that you have made, and that you will ever make, God sent a sanitizer, and His name is above every name—His name is Jesus. Somebody’s like, «Sanitizer? Bob?» Let me tell you what sanitizer means. A sanitizer is a cleaner that alters something regarded as less acceptable so as to make it more acceptable.
So when I came into this world and sin got all on me, God said, «I’m sending Jesus,» because what’s not acceptable is this sin. But if they ever get touched, changed, and transformed by the sanitizer Jesus, it now gives them the ability to reconnect in relationship with me, and that’s all He wants for you and me. Some of you are saying, «I hear you, but you don’t know how dirty I am, Pastor Mike. You don’t know what I’ve done and how far these stains go back.» I don’t, but God does, and the Bible tells us that before the foundations of the earth, He made this plan so you and I could be clean.
Today, for everyone who woke up this morning and tried to cover your stains, who will go to work tomorrow trying to cover your stains, and who are raising kids with stains all over you, and you’re thinking, «How can I keep going like this?» I’m telling you, you can’t. I’m begging you to understand that you don’t have to. When God put the plan of salvation into play, He said, «I’m not just going to send a sanitizer; I’m going to clean them all the way up.» Look at 2 Corinthians 5:21: «For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin so that we could be made right, or made clean, with God through Christ.» Can I give you the passage remix?
Can I give you the MLT version—the Michael Living Translation? For God made Christ, who had never been stained, to take on everybody’s stain so that we could be made clean through Jesus Christ. Let me show it to you very plainly. Just like my shirt that was white, I have a white shirt that I want the team to bring out—just bring it to me real quick. What I want you to do is picture your life completely clear and clean. Then, picture yourself coming into this world, and then picture what you look like after sin touches your life. I’m going to help you understand this right now, very quickly. When I found my stains, sin came in, jacked me up, and this is what my life looked like—what your life looks like. Yep, a little more, a little more—yeah, a little more, a little more. What ends up happening is many of us run to religion and want to be cleaned up by religion, but all religion does is make everything dirty.
I went to the church, and what were just a few spots on me became my identity. But then God said, «No, no, no, no, no! I’m not just going to let them stay like this.» What we want to do is get hurt, and then we want to hang back up. Forget it! I’m just going to go and get self-help. I’m going to read all the books, manifest everything, light my candles, smoke my herbs, and find peace; I’m going to do all this other stuff. It’s cool because I understand you were jacked up. Then you try something else, and you try to find a place. You’re going to try a relationship to clean you up. «Maybe if I have some kids and take cute maternity pictures, maybe…» Now you can’t even recognize who you used to be. But God says, «That ain’t gonna clean you up! That’s why I had to send the sanitizer Jesus.» Some of y’all are like, «Uh, that looks the same.»
That’s what everybody thought when He died. See, back in the day, crucifixion was a regular occurrence. To kill people, they would scourge them, hang them on a cross, and they would die. It looked regular, but what they didn’t understand was that Jesus wasn’t a regular man. He came here and lived for 33 years a regular life just like me and you, but He had the power of God residing on the inside of Him. When they thought it was finished, all they did was give a platform for Jesus to prove that He was God. Here’s what happened at the cross: Jesus took every one of our stains and said, «This is the thing that I can do. I can take the very thing that hurt you when you were a kid. I can take the very thing that happened to you illegitimately. I can take the same thing that the devil tried to use to take you out, and I can use it.»
This is why we celebrate the resurrection as a testimony of Him making something new. Oh, you see the colors changing? This is called transformation. The reason why our church is called Transformation Church is because this is a sign of what God is about to do in your life. He looks at all the dirt you caused and says, «It’s not enough for you to just get clean. I want to take and pour it out on your family. I want to take and pour it out on your coworkers.» Oh, I feel the presence of God! I want to clean everything that has been damaged. I’m telling you today, with everything in me: if you have been stained, Jesus has come to clean your life up. You’re not too far, you’re not too broken, you’re not too jacked up, you haven’t done enough. You are the only one that Jesus went to the cross for.
The Bible tells us that He would leave 99—99—just for the one. This is the truth of the resurrection: it wasn’t for them; it was for you. At the cross, at the tomb, and when the tomb was rolled away, what Jesus did was take all of my stains and traded me the brokenness that I would have. «Oh, Pastor Mike, I still see a little bit on your shirt.» That’s my testimony! My garment is clean, but I never forget where I came from. The only way I can be excited today is to remember how jacked up I was. So this part I left there to ensure I would never forget that I once was broken, lost, hurting, addicted, and controlled. But through the blood of Jesus, He set me free. The one thing I need you to know is what happened at the resurrection: Jesus stole our stains. The Bible tells us that He defeated death, hell, and the grave. He ripped away everything we would be considered guilty for and said, «I’ll take it.»
When I think about Christ being on the cross, going to the tomb, nobody talks about how long Saturday was. They call it Good Friday; it wasn’t good for Him. Then there was dark Saturday. The disciples had no guarantee He was coming back. Just like you think your situation is hopeless, you’ve got to understand that Jesus has resurrection power. When they looked for Him, He was gone. He had traded the stains of humanity and taken them on so that you could walk in freedom. So my question for you today is: why are you still living in shame? Why are you still living in pain? Can I say it to you very clearly? Why do you keep reclaiming the stains? Why do you keep going and romanticizing the years that stained you?
«If I was 20 again, if I was in college again, if I could do the marriage over again…» Why would you keep reclaiming the stains that He already paid for? Today, I’m asking you to exchange your stains. Jesus has already done His part. According to the Scriptures, all you have to do is receive what Jesus has already done for you. That’s it! That’s the good news I have for you. How are you looking right now? The stains that are all over you are making you uncomfortable. Jesus says, «Exchange me!» Hey, hey, hey! What better day than right now to trade with me? 2 Corinthians 5:17 says it like this: «This means that anyone who is in Christ has become a new person. The old has passed away. Behold! Look! I have become brand new.»
This is the truth I found out, church. I feel this. The truth is that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is the same spirit that will enable you to live. His plan was not just to get you from a place of being stained to being clean. He said, «I don’t want you to be in that place anymore.» So He took the pain so you could be—listen to this: sustained. God is a Redeemer, so He takes whatever you had, adds His super to your natural, and turns your stain into a testimony. It is the thing that will sustain you. How is Pastor Mike up here telling you this? Because Revelation says we overcome him by the blood of the Lamb. That’s the work He did at the cross—the blood of the Lamb and the words of my own testimony. What I was—you know, I was addicted to pornography, I was a bad person, and God says, «That’s all I needed: somebody to accept that they don’t have to wear those clothes anymore.»
Don’t forget the story because what’s going to sustain you is that you take the stain, submit it to Him, and now God will sustain you. It reminds me of my bro Will, who will come up here. Bro Will’s on staff here. How many years ago was it? Six years ago? Six years ago, this man was in jail, addicted to all kinds of things. He was stained. Today, he leads our internship program. The one thing I love about Will is that he didn’t forget that it was Jesus—and only Jesus—who took his stains and turned them into something that could sustain other people. He’s teaching people who want to lead. He was in jail six years ago. What I’m telling you is, you’re not too far! What I’m telling you is, God does not care. He is no respecter of persons. He doesn’t care what stained you before today.
God wants to sustain you. Our worship team, I feel the presence of God right now! He’s wrapping His loving arms around people right now. Our worship team—we wrote a song that talks about what God wants to do for you. In the next few moments, we’re going to play this song, and in your home, in your car, if you’re watching this on rebroadcast, I don’t care where you are, who you are, or when you’re watching this; I believe this is a defined moment for your life, your future, and the generations to come. I want God to reveal to you the stains that you’re going to exchange today—not tomorrow! Don’t turn it off—don’t get distracted! Now is the moment that God is going to transform your life, and I want you to know His promises for your life are about to come true. It’s not dependent on what you do; it’s dependent on what He’s already done. God wants to sustain you! Listen to this moment.