Michael Todd - Overflowing in the Ordinary
Welcome to week six of a series we’re calling Living in the Overflow. If you’re going to live in the Overflow, give God one big shout of praise! All right, we’ve gone through a bunch of weeks of this series, and if you haven’t caught any of them, I need you to go back and watch the other five because they lead up to today’s message. I can’t take a lot of time, so I have to cut straight to the point.
First point: Overflow is connected to ordinary. The world lives their life in spectacular and sensational ways, but the Bible talks about how God pours out His Spirit on ordinary people doing ordinary things consistently in obedience. Great, and so many of us want the Overflow of God, yet He says, «Because you won’t do the ordinary, I can’t release the Overflow.» Uh-oh, I just felt people get tight in here, so I’m going to break this down.
This is a fun analogy: Natalie and I got to go to one of the playoff games in Dallas a week ago. Anytime I go to a game or anything like that, I’m representing Transformation Church, so I get a text from my friend that says, «We see you!» I was on ESPN. I don’t have any shame! I turned it around and showed them Transformation Worship, and all the people were reposting it. You know what I’m saying? If I’m going to be somewhere, I want them to know who I represent.
Yes, sir! In the last 30 seconds of the game, I’m on there with my represent sign, cheering for Oklahoma City. D lost. Anyway, prayers! But then somebody commented, «It must be nice to go to date night courtside at the game.» The answer is yes, it is really nice. Let me be clear: it’s top tier. But thank God for the person who gave us those tickets; it was a blessing!
You know how much those cost? You don’t know what’s going on, but anyway, the truth is that was an extraordinary date night, but most of our date nights are ordinary. There are 52 weeks in a year and 52 date nights for us, but only about four of them are extraordinary. The rest of them are us sitting in the car outside our house, eating food that we just drove to pick up and talking about what we desire to do when our children are out of the house. It’s ordinary, and it’s the backdrop of ordinary that makes our love extraordinary.
It’s the backdrop of taking the trash out and actually saying, «I’m sorry,» and, «Hey, are you good? Do you want the temperature down?» It’s okay; I’ll freeze tonight, Natalie. That’s my life every night. It’s the ordinary, yes sir! And I have to bring this to our church because if we do not fall in love with the blessing of ordinary, we despise most of our life.
The goal of life—watch this—I’m going to really offend a few people right here, but I need you to hear me: the goal of life is not goosebumps. Oh, I felt that! Oh, that was so good; they gave me goosebumps! The church has done a bad job with this. You come to this Sunday experience, which is a sensational, amazing presentation of what we do with creativity, singing, excellence, production, programming, anointing, power, and prayer for two hours once a week. But this is not where you develop as a believer.
Some of y’all want a gold star for showing up to the game, but you never show up to practice. Or let me reverse it: you want a gold star for showing up to practice. This is practice! The Bible says this is to equip the saints to go out and minister to people, and you never show up Monday through Saturday at the game—at your job! You went to church; you went to practice and haven’t made one shot in the real game.
Well, I don’t want to offend them, but they’re dying! They’re lost! They’re in a lifestyle they don’t want to be in. They dress it up to make themselves feel better and get likes on a social media platform, but they’re waiting for someone to have the boldness to step across the line of comfort and tell them that there is a Jesus who loves them unconditionally and they were in the same spot that they were at.
Don’t be fooled by what I look like today, because I was a wretched mess before Jesus found me. Where are the real people in this building? But if you’re looking for goosebumps every time God moves, you’ll miss God because the Overflow comes out of the ordinary!
Romans 12:1 is our foundational scripture as a church when we talk about Transformation Church, but I want to read it out of the Message version today. It says: «So here’s what I want you to do: God helping you, take your everyday, ordinary life—you’re sleeping, you’re eating, you’re going to work, you’re walking around—and place it before God as an offering. What if the greatest offering you give is not an amount of money? What if the greatest offering you give is how you eat, how you sleep, how you go to work, how you show up, how you love your ordinary life?»
He said, «Place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.» Embrace what God does for you: the love He has given, the grace He’s shown, and the ability to speak and tell others about the Gospel. Embrace what He’s done for you; it is the best thing you can do for Him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking about it. This Bible verse was eating me up. Some of us are so adjusted to how culture does things that we just do them without even thinking about it. A trend is going on, and you just go along with it without considering what it means.
There was a trend that I saw while I was in Egypt. I was about to sing, and I did the thing, and then somebody was like, «Does he know what the song means?» I was like, «I have no idea! I don’t know what language that is; I don’t know what’s going on.» I was just going along with what was happening in culture. Oh, a pastor shouldn’t talk about his own issues and God checking him—that’s good! I was just going with it without even thinking about it. Why am I saying this? Because it can happen to anybody that we can become so ingratiated into the culture of money, the culture of business, and the church culture that we go along with things without even thinking.
He said: «Don’t go along like everybody else.» He said instead—somebody say «instead"—"fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed or transformed from the inside out.» You’ll readily recognize what He wants from you and quickly respond to it. Obey, unlike the culture around you, which is always dragging you down to its level of immaturity. God brings the best out of you, developing well-formed maturity in you. It sounds like God wants us to have mature fruit! Come on, the word of the year at Transformation Church is fruit. The only way you get good, juicy fruit is that it matures. It’s not undone; it needs to be ripe so that it can have fullness and people can taste and see that the Lord is good. But that means we have to be okay with the ordinary.
How many days does a fruit, an orange, sit there and nothing changes? It’s the same as yesterday: same sun, same rain, same sun, same rain, and then one day it gets mature enough to be heavy enough to fall off the tree. That’s when it gets harvested. That’s when the harvest comes, and then it gets shipped out all over the world. So many of us want to be shipped out all over the world, yet we have not stayed in the same place long enough to have enough weight to actually be dropped off anything! Do y’all hear what I’m saying? So what I’m telling you right now: write this down—our job is ordinary; God’s job is Overflow. If you do the ordinary thing, keep showing up, keep getting the kids ready for school, keep serving on that team, keep saying «I’m sorry,» keep asking for clarity. When you do the ordinary, God provides what? Overflow!
I said when we do the ordinary, God provides! Most of you have been annoyed with ordinary. You despise it, you disdain it. You don’t like it. What are y’all doing this weekend? Oh, I’m trying to turn up; I’m trying to be outside! You need to be doing the ordinary right now: wash your clothes. You’re going to buy more clothes because you can’t find the clothes you already bought because they’re dirty. What happens is if you would do the ordinary—it’s a small example—but think about how much we lose by not doing the ordinary. I just think about—do you have my phone? Where’s my phone? I brought that up here. I’m just thinking about how ordinary things turn into overflow. Like how very simple moments.
Remember, I just said ordinary is our job; overflow is God’s job. Just give it to me. So this is what I found: I found the original recording of me in my car at around 6 a.m., literally humming the melody of «Overflow» for the first time. This was August 15th, 2022. And this is how this song started. Watch this: «In my soul, oh God, flow overflow in my soul.» Let me show you the pre-chorus. Watch this; the first time I sing it. Watch, watch, it’s crazy! Like ordinary—I was in my car; nobody was singing it in stadiums in Africa; nobody was jumping around; nobody was in the studio. Nobody was asking for this song. But in a moment of me being intentional with what? The ordinary, I got the melody!
God said, «Capture it!» Like, ordinary is my job. See, the reason you don’t believe this is because I have 75 other voice notes like that! And none of them are world-renowned songs because I have mastered the art of doing the ordinary. Great! And if I do the ordinary, when God breathes on it—when God says that one—when God uses the moment, yes sir! Overflow is His job!
The reason I’m telling you this—watch this—because at some point, overflow does become ordinary. Come on! There was a time when I was believing God to preach at a big church—2015—oh God, if you would just allow me to just be invited to one! I was dealing with insecurities; I wanted people to know I was gifted enough. I was struggling with not being able to go to school and seminary, and God just ripped me into this thing like a Paul-to-Saul conversion, then going and preaching the gospel. I’m like, «What are you doing? Go! I need to be affirmed!»
He’s like, «Yeah, you don’t need to be affirmed.» He said, «You’ve been verified by Me.» I say, «Well, Lord, that’s great, but could you tell somebody else that you called me as well? Maybe with a big following?» Oh, y’all are going to leave me out here by myself? Come on! And when I was in that season, the Holy Spirit said, «Yeah, I’m going to do all of that.» The Spirit Bank Event Center will be Transformation Church! 37 days—people don’t really realize what I’m saying—37 days into me being a pastor, He told me to write down that vision in Crazy Faith. When I did it, He told me, but I was still looking for affirmation and confirmation from somebody else.
Now, we meet in an arena every Sunday. Watch this, and the scary thing is it’s normal now! What used to be the cry of my heart is now normal. Yeah, yeah! And so if you do not learn how to be content in whatever season you are in, when God does do the big thing, it’s just a matter of time before that thing becomes not enough. And if you don’t know how to manage and be content in whatever season God puts you in, you will despise looking for the spectacular and outstanding. And God says, «I have now made the Overflow ordinary.» Some of y’all are despising where you are, but it is the place you prayed to be!
And I came to help change your perspective right now. I feel this thing in my toes that God is requiring you to be okay with ordinary. Write it down like this: Ordinary is okay! Y’all, this is a tension in my life. I have people in this room that could expose me for how much I want to go and do and impact the world for the kingdom’s good. That’s my energy! But God gave me a wife that wants to stay at home, raise kids, and go to the park, and I’m like, «We could go to Peru!» And she’s like, «Park!» There’s a tension there because every day I’m like, «Let’s take over the world!» and it was like taking out the trash; I’m not playing, y’all, and I believe it’s the best thing God ever did for me, sir, 'cause I would live my life in the realm of the spectacular had God not given me a buffer to appreciate the ordinary. All my kids, my Bella—oh God, y’all pray for me 'cause she’s turning into a tween, and stuff is starting to happen. She’s starting to want to look cute, put on lip gloss, and ask, «Mom, would you slick my edges?»
Let them be frizzy! Let them be free! Pray for me! But the truth is, my daughter was with me the other day, and she just looked at me and said, «Dad.» I was like, «What?» She said, «I just love you.» If I had been out doing the extraordinary, I would have missed the ordinary. I found out that when people get older, they don’t want extraordinary. After you’ve done all the extraordinary, the ordinary things are what bring you the most joy. This is why we can’t fall into the trap of culture—where they’re going on vacation, what are they doing, how many businesses are they ten X-ing? How many ten Xes are going to lead you to having an ex-wife? I’m just saying, how many times are you turning it over, flipping it, and making it bigger until that hole on the inside of you is filled? I’m in people’s business right now, so I have to go. Okay, if you don’t embrace the blessing of the ordinary—watch this!
I need everybody to write this down: if you don’t embrace the blessing of the ordinary, you’ll live most of your life frustrated with most of your life. I’ll say it one more time: if you don’t embrace the blessing of the ordinary, you will live most of your life frustrated with most of your life, 'cause 90% of your life is going to be ordinary. It’s going to be, «Father, help me today.» That’s right! As I go into this job, help me not to kill anybody and not to say anything that incriminates me. Lord, give me peace to talk nice to that man—it’s your husband, but you call him «that man.» And, Father, give me grace for all of those kids that look like me. There’s no «y, y, y,» hey! Oh, my prayer life doesn’t look like that every day; it’s an ordinary giving. It’s ordinary for me. It’s not a «$1,000 line» that the prophet tells me to come and give to.
Today, I feel God in this vicinity; there’s a $1,000 miracle. Everybody in this line who stands up for $1,000, God is going to—it’s manipulation! What needs to happen is the Holy Spirit leading me today on what to give. God is my witness; before we walked out here, what did I tell you? I said, «Go to the bank, give me $500; I have to give it to somebody.» I just wanted to use the bathroom. I’m telling you, I just wanted to go to the bathroom, and the Holy Spirit said, «Give that young man that money today.» I looked in my wallet, and I didn’t have it. He said, «Go get it.» That was no offering line; nobody was asking for it from me.
Generosity is ordinary, and this is where we miss out on the blessing 'cause we don’t put it on the backdrop of the ordinary. Yes, sir! What are you doing consistently that doesn’t have to be spectacular but allows God to produce the overflow in your life? Okay, we have to get out of here. The only reason I can say this is because Jesus picked the ordinary for his message to overflow. That’s so good! The Bible tells us that Jesus chose ordinary guys and said, «Y’all are going to be the ones to take my message to the whole world.» Wow! He didn’t pick people who were in high government—if it were me picking, I would have chosen the greatest entertainers of the time. I would have picked people in government; I would have picked the finest, the strongest—all the people who could actually lead others. Jesus was like, «You fish, right? Right! Come on! You, a doctor—not a good one, your practice is okay—come with me!»
Think about it—ordinary! I’ll prove it to you: Acts 4:13. This is after John and Peter had healed a man because they had been given dominion, or authority, by Jesus. They went to heal people, and then people got mad about it because they were like, «How are y’all doing this?» And this is where it picks up: the members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were—watch this! —ordinary men! The power of God is shown on the backdrop of our ordinary lives. They were amazed not because they were extravagant men; they were amazed that they were ordinary. When’s the last time somebody was amazed that you were ordinary? Wow! Wow!
Think about that! Amazed by your ordinary consistency, amazed by your ordinary practices, amazed by your ordinary principles that you instill in your kids. Great! Great! It says they were amazed 'cause they could tell they were just ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures, but they also recognized that those men had been with Jesus. You want to be extraordinary? Be ordinary and be with Jesus. That’s your message today! You want to do great things where people can be like, «How in the world did they do that?» Be ordinary, be with Jesus, and people will be amazed! This is why, no matter who comes or goes, because God’s called me here, yes sir, I’m going to show up. They’re going to be like, «Is M Tod still pastoring here?»
I thought the spit was going to take him out! Baby, I am going to be right here doing this ordinary preaching. Thank you! My time? That was my timer! I’m going to be right here doing this ordinary preaching over and over for whoever wants to hear it and pointing people to Jesus and taking long worship breaks. Why? 'Cause I love God and I love music, and maybe somebody that’s in Europe will be watching on YouTube, and maybe almost eight years later, you’ll get to meet them in person! They’ll kind of look like Adele—for everybody watching online, that’s someone who really hears, and maybe the transformation that’s happened in their life was the amazing thing that God did 'cause we were ordinary and we got with Jesus. Will you stand all over this building? Jesus has never needed outstanding to do overflow. That woman in Second Kings with the oil—oil and jars are ordinary!
David and the sling—a slingshot back in that time was ordinary! Moses with the staff that turned into a snake and then back into a staff—did y’all see the miracle? Everybody thinks the miracle was the staff going into the snake, but when it started moving, most people would have slithered away! The real power was when that crazy thing turned back into something ordinary! The fish and the loaves—ordinary! A baby being born in a manger—ordinary! The cross at that time—ordinary! A tomb—ordinary! The Bible even says that Jesus was an ordinary-looking guy. I know y’all see all the Brad Pitt pictures of Jesus, and that is not what he looks like, but you’ve got it in your house—blonde hair, blue eyes, he did not look anything like that! What I’m saying is we think he’s walking in like «Fabio—look, the king is here!»
The Bible says he looked so ordinary that Judas had to kiss him to be able to identify which one they were supposed to take! But the overflow comes out of my obedience in the ordinary. Today, all I want to do is pray that you would embrace the ordinary. You would embrace your family dinners, the walks in the park, and the phone calls to loved ones who live in different cities, and the date nights in the driveway with takeout! What if I told you, you could enjoy more of your life and it doesn’t have to change? Think about what I just said: if you would embrace the ordinary things, some of my single people in this room are like «I can’t wait to be married!»
Enjoy turning on whatever you want, having the degree set to whatever you want, walking around in whatever clothes you want to or no clothes! My little kids—I can’t even be naked in my house; they’re like, «Cover up, Mom!» But you could really embrace the ordinary and find so much more joy right now instead of wishing for the other thing. You may not need to cut off access to everybody else’s ordinary, 'cause the quickest way to kill something is to compare it to something else. You could have joy in your life until you see they went on vacation this week, and you had a staycation. It was like, «But that was okay for you!» Yeah, great, until you compare it to somebody else’s. Could you lift your hands all over the world?
God, help us all! God, I am up here preaching this message needing your help with it right now! Help me embrace the ordinary, 'cause I know you want to overflow in my life and in every life that is listening today. Father, we’re asking that you would give us the ability to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, because the truth of the matter is, we will never be able to quench that sensationalism desire on the inside of us, 'cause it keeps growing until we change the goal, until we change the focus to you! So, Father, we can hope for a bigger house, but let us fall in love with the one we got! Yes, God! We can believe for a better relationship, but God, let us treat the relationships we have with intentionality and love! God, I can want more members in this church, but Father God, let me value the ones I got right here! God, would you overflow out of our ordinary? Our ordinary prayers, our ordinary worship, our ordinary offerings, the things we do consistently. Father God, would you make us more consistent in them? But then would you, just on the backdrop of us doing and falling in love with the things you ask us to do, would you just do what you do? Amen! Do the exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask, think, or imagine! The ordinary is our job, but the overflow is yours! So we step out of your position, God, and we stay in ours! Yes! Today, God, I thank you that you are going to do something amazing in the lives of all your people! Yes, God!
Even in that same attitude, there are some people in here that don’t know Jesus, some people watching who may not know Jesus, and I need our church to begin to pray right now 'cause there are souls in the balance! It’s so crazy that our Savior was an ordinary man who did an ordinary thing but with supernatural instructions. It caused freedom for anybody who would believe! Now it’s so crazy that God would allow our eternal salvation to be hinged on something very ordinary. If you confess and believe—those are two very ordinary things—but according to Romans 10:9, if you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and you believe that in your heart, you will be saved! This is not an extraordinary ritual or process he makes us go through; it’s something very, very ordinary!
So today, I want to offer you the overflow of God’s goodness, grace, mercy, healing, deliverance, and correction! I mean, it’s an overflow! I could list all the things God will do for you when you come into salvation, but it happens with something very ordinary! And on the count of three, if you want to make Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior, I want you to just shoot your hand up in the air! This is the thing that took me from being a liar, a manipulator, addicted to pornography, somebody who had a lot of bad things in their heart and was headed on a path of destruction, and I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior! It did not change everything in my life; it gave me the one who does change everything in my life!
And today, the man I am—I’m not perfect but I am progressing, 'cause I did the ordinary step of saying, «Lord, I can’t do this alone; will you come do it with me?» If that’s you, I want you to raise your hand in the room or online! One: you’re making the greatest decision of your life! Two: we’ve been praying for this day for you for a long time, and your name is going to be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life! Three: I want you to shoot your hand up in the air! I see you! I see you! I see you! I see you! Oh my goodness, I see you! I see you! I see you! I see you! Come on, church, thank you, Lord! I see you! And even if I don’t see you, God sees you! And at Transformation Church, we’re family—nobody prays alone! So, would everybody just lift their hands and say:
God, thank you for sending Jesus just for me! Today, I believe he lived, he died, and he rose again for my freedom! Change me, renew me, transform me! I’m yours! I’ll do the ordinary, and you do the overflow! In Jesus' name, amen!