Steven Furtick - What God Left Out
How many want to receive the word of God today? How many want a fresh-baked Bible lesson today? All right! If you're not standing, stand up for a moment. If you are standing, remain that way, in the upright position, and we're about to take off. Look at Exodus, chapter 12, with me. Thank you for your Spirit, Lord. Welcome all over the world. Let us know where you're joining from, where you're worshiping from. Not watching…worshiping. I'm a participator. I'm not a spectator. I want to get in on what God is doing in this season. I don't want to be left out.
Look at this Scripture. I mentioned it last week. I told you last week when I preached on Comfort Food I had a Tupperware anointing, so hopefully your fridge has been stocked this week and you've been able to nibble on what you need. That's the goal anyway. I want to go back into one of the passages I mentioned and really see what God is saying to me. Please help me, Lord. As you lavished your Word on me, help me to access it now for your people who need it.
Exodus 12:37: "The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. Many other people went up with them, and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. With the dough the Israelites had brought from Egypt, they baked loaves of unleavened bread". Lean into this. It's getting good. Do you smell the bread? "The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves. Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord's divisions left Egypt. Because the Lord kept vigil…" That means you don't have to watch all of the things all the time.
"The Lord kept vigil". The Bible said he doesn't slumber or sleep, so that means you ought to get some rest. Take a nap. The storm will still be there when you wake up. "Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come". I wanted you to get the full context, but really, I want to go off of verse 39 where it says, "The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves".
I want to give you two titles you can choose from. The first is more descriptive. On this title we could say What God Left Out. If you like your titles a little on the spicy side, we're going to call this little sermon Flatbread Faith. Serve your Word to the people and use me as a waiter, God. In Jesus' name, amen. What God Left Out. You never really tell anybody everything, not even yourself, not even God. Self-awareness is an ongoing process. You tell yourself the story you can live with, the version of events you can live with, but in our own little way, we're all revisionist historians. When we compile how certain things went down in our lives, we do it in a way that will accommodate our pain or our fear.
Revisionist history. It's like you leave certain things out. You say a certain part, you leave a certain part out, and you kind of stack it in a way that makes you feel better about it. Everybody does this. I do it. You do it. I've done it before. "Oh, that staff member left because they were [this and that] and underperforming". Well, I'm still salty about it, so what you are getting is me seasoning with the details that I like, and then they will say a different… "Well, my season was over". I'm like, "No, you were just lazy and quit and didn't want to stick it out". Then they're going back, and they're like, "No, this was going in my life, and that was going…" We're all working off our point of view. That's very important to realize. When it comes to how we understand our lives, we are all doing a revisionist history.
Another thing, we're all reductionists. That's when we take something that's incredibly complicated and make it sound so simple. You know, taking something that's so big and difficult to understand and just trying to boil it down to something that… Especially preaching. I'm going to talk a little bit about preaching today because, hey, that's something I care about. You want to boil it down, make it rhyme, make it start with the same letters, and all that. I do that. I like that. But sometimes I have noticed I oversimplify what is actually very complicated.
So that's one thing, but then I also sometimes overcomplicate what is really pretty simple. Both of those can get me in trouble. When you read the Bible, the biggest mistake you can make is to think you already know what you're reading. You miss all kinds of stuff when you take out the parts (revisionist) that make you feel uncomfortable, take out the parts you don't initially understand, or when you try to boil it down to something that is palatable. You can't take all of the tension out of the truth. Well, you can, but you're not going to have a strong faith that way. You'll be weak. Then anytime something happens that doesn't clearly fit your version of the truth, you won't have any shield to protect you from the attacks of the Enemy. We all do it. I tell people sometimes how our church started, but I don't tell them everything, because you can't tell everything.
First of all, it would take forever. You can't go all the way back. Secondly, there are some things I don't even remember. It's like I blocked them out. I had this memory come back to me when I was preparing this sermon of how Holly and I went to this place one time, and Nicole went with us. We drove about eight hours, and we drove to preach at a camp. Adrian Despres asked me to go tag team. Adrian is this big, intimidating guy. He used to throw chairs around in his sermon illustrations. You had to wear a motorcycle helmet to go to an Adrian Despres sermon. Great man of God. Great passion. I looked up to him. He had this one sermon. He would put sticks down his pants. I still don't know what the thing was about, but he would go gather sticks and shove them down… Anyway, he's a very powerful man of God. I blocked some of this stuff out, but it came back to me.
He told me, "I want you to meet me at [such-and-such] and tag team preach this camp with me". That was a dream come true for me. I thought, "Well, that's like getting to play with LeBron," or something like that, for me at the time. So we drove out there, eight hours. When we got there, y'all, it was the weirdest situation. When we got there, they said, "Welcome to hobo camp". I said, "Hobo camp"? They said, "Yeah. Tomorrow is the hobo parade". I don't know if it's politically correct to say hobo anymore. I might get shut down, canceled all over this, but I didn't make it up. I didn't know it was a hobo camp.
I just knew Adrian asked me to go. He said, "Meet me out there". I drove out there, and he wasn't even there. I asked the lady… The lady running the camp was 90 years old and legally blind, and it was in her house. It was a whole campground, but then the meeting was in the house. The lady was so nice. I didn't know it was a hobo camp. I didn't know they were divided… We went to eat in the cafeteria the first day, and the kids all start banging their glasses on the table in unison, because they all come back to the same camp every year. It was my first time. They start banging their glasses on the table, and they start singing…
I remember the song. How do I remember this? Hatfields, Yokums, and McCoys and Kettles Have gathered together for some fun, fun, fun, fun! Some have come by boxcar, some have come by walking Others have traveled by their thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb! Though we roam a thousand miles away We'll return here for convention day! I don't remember the rest, but I remember that much. I was so freaked out, and Adrian wasn't even there. So I went to the lady running it and said, "Where's Adrian"? She said, "He doesn't get here till Sunday".
So, he gets there Sunday. I'm waiting for him. I'm like, "Man of God, you left out the part where it was a hobo camp and a hobo parade. You left out the part where I had to do the first two sessions by myself. I didn't even have a sermon ready. You left out…" He said, "Yeah, I left that part out, because I thought if I didn't leave it out you wouldn't show up". Y'all thought I was just having a random flashback. Like, "Pray for Pastor. He's overcaffeinated". No, no, no. It came back to me for a reason. He left it out.
Today, I don't want to talk to you about what God brought the Israelites through: the Red Sea. I figure you've heard that part before. I don't want to talk to you about who he struck down, the firstborn of Egypt, to cause Pharaoh to let his people go with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, because I figure you've heard about that, and it's really scary too. Instead, I wanted to mention something that happened when they were leaving that you can skip over. You can skip over it so easily, but it really speaks to me. It said that when they left Egypt where they had been 430 years…
By way of review, they were not in Egypt because of something they did wrong. They were in Egypt because that was the place God provided for them. When God finally brought them out, as their situation had changed from one of provision to imprisonment, the Bible records an important detail that says they left with bread… One verse says it was wrapped in their clothes on their shoulders, and the bread was unleavened. It says, specifically, the dough was without yeast because they had to leave so fast. They didn't have time to prepare food for themselves. I was thinking. If God had the foresight and the planning ability to get them ready to get all of the clothes of the Egyptians, all of the jewelry, all of the things they took…
If God could plan out all 10 plagues to get his people out, surely he could have had them bake the bread the night before. So, the only thing I can think is that God didn't want them to take yeast from Egypt into the place of their promise. When we're praying over a new year… I told you all I was going to focus on room to receive. That's why I give God a great big praise. I want him to have a whole lot of room to run around and do what he wants to do. I found out sometimes you can have a big room that's cluttered. You can have a big gift that's cluttered. You can have a smart mind that's cluttered. You can have a good relationship that's cluttered. But God is doing something in this text that I wonder if he has been doing it in your life, my life, this church, this ministry. Rather than God demonstrating his power through what he adds, he gives his people a lesson in leaving it out.
He said, "Get up in a hurry out of Egypt," and they didn't even have time to let the bread rise. That's what the yeast does. It makes the bread rise. Before the bread could even rise, they had to get out. They didn't even have time to prepare for a global pandemic…I mean, for the exodus. Sometimes my mind goes back and forth like a duet on TikTok or something. It's going back and forth. I want you to ask a question today: "What is God leaving out in my life right now to lead me to where he called me all along"?
I want to do it under a couple of different headings. I want to talk about it from disappointments, I want to talk about it through deficiency, and then I want to talk about it through deletions. They left Egypt with bread with no yeast, and they went into a place where they had no knowledge of how to survive. Remember? They went into the wilderness. God gave them manna. All of that is awesome. When I read the Bible sometimes, I think the more important things we learn are in the spaces where nothing is written. I want to give you a few examples of that. In your life, a lot of times, it will not be the obvious things that will leave the greatest clues to what God has called you to do.
One example of that I thought of was when God told Moses his name, he said, "I Am". I figured out over time that God didn't get tongue-tied about what came next. He wanted to leave it open. We want to limit God. We want a picture of God we can hang in our kitchen. We want a picture of Jesus that looks just like somebody with our same last name. But when God left that blank, he wanted you to know he will not be confined to something you can call him with human language or a picture your eyes can perceive. Let me show you this in the New Testament. Acts, chapter 1, is kind of like Exodus 12, because it's a picture of a nation in transition. It's the same thing in Acts 1. It's the same thing in the New Testament.
Jesus is leaving, the Holy Spirit is coming, and life is happening in that transition. Life happens in the transitions. Life happens in the car. Life happens on the way to stuff. Life happens with something that came up on your caller ID and you don't even know what number that was. Life happens good and bad in places you didn't know to look. This is a parallel God gave me. They were coming out of Egypt. God was bringing his church out of a religious system in Acts, chapter 1.
So, they're standing there talking to Jesus, who they've walked with in Acts 1. Look at verse 6: "They gathered around and asked him, 'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?'" But God was not going to restore what they had before. He was going to replace it with something much better. God is not going to restore the earlier version of your life. God is not going to make things back like they were. He doesn't do that. That's not his thing. I'm not saying Jesus was ADD or anything like that, but he couldn't do the same miracle the same way twice. He's spitting and touching and speaking. It's not going to be like it was.
Now, when they asked him this, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel"? I want you to notice what he said back to them. "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority". He reveals his power not by the details he puts in but by the details he left out. He could have told them the answer to that. Do you think he didn't know, that he didn't have a plan for it? Do you think God is like, "Oh, I didn't see this thing happening over there in China. This is a real game changer. What are we going to do, Gabriel? Hey, Michael, get your war clothes on. I really got caught off guard. It's an ambush". No, no, no. That blank space right there is the place where we learn to believe.
See, if we know something, we don't have the opportunity to believe it. I don't have to believe what I know. I have to believe what God spoke. God is often revealed by what he leaves out more than what he puts in. When they talk about Abraham in the Bible, he's known as the father of faith, the father of many nations. It gives this little reductionist verse, revisionist history. It says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness".
For someone who has been studying the Bible, like I have these 20 and some years, he did a lot more than believe God. He lied about who his wife was. He had sex with Hagar, who was supposed to be cleaning the house. He did a lot more than… Y'all don't like the real Bible, do you? Oh, you like that airbrushed… You want me to leave the stuff out that you don't like about your Bible heroes. No. Here's the thing about it. All that was left out when Paul wrote Romans, and I was going, "Why? Why did God leave that out"? I figured out that Abraham's life was not defined by his failures…not by God. It was defined by his faith. Are you getting it?
So, when Paul gets ready to describe Abraham, he doesn't mention the things we might mention. "Oh, then they went bankrupt, and they're kind of this over there". He mentions none of that. He said he believed God. That's what counts. That's what matters. That's what will be said after the fact, even with the ups and downs. Leave it out. Last week, I was preaching about the Prodigal Son, and I was mad at the dad in the story because the younger one took his money and wasted it. Let's go to that passage. Luke 15. I love the Word of God. My hardest part isn't finding out something to preach; my hardest part is figuring out what to leave out, because this thing is so good to me.
I told Abbey last night… She came in. She said, "You got your sermon ready"? I said, "No. I've got three". She said, "You'll find one verse to bring them all together. You always do". She was a prophet. I didn't know what it had to do with yeast and bread and the Prodigal Son. I'm like, "I guess they both have food in them, but what else"? Watch this. Luke 15. The younger brother goes out, and he's doing his younger brother stuff. He's out there spending everything he had, trying to be independent from the father. "I want my freedom". It's not really free. When the Devil tempts you, he leaves a lot of stuff out about what it's going to cost you. You think God is the only one who leaves stuff out? The Devil has the same strategy. He will tell you all about the feeling. I have to go back real quick. When they were saying, "We wish we were back in Egypt…"
Remember from last week? They said, "We had fish in Egypt". You also had an unreasonable quota of bricks you had to make with not enough straw. You left that out. There's a way our memory gets selective. "Oh, the good old days". You remember how the fish tasted, but you forgot how the Pharaoh treated you. You're leaving something out. You're leaving the wrong stuff out. So, the younger brother is like, "O God, I'm hungry. I remember my father. We used to eat around there. We ate good around there. I'm going back to my father. I'm not going to beg like this anymore". You get there. Right? You're like, "I'm going to do this different. I'm going to set some priorities. I'm sick of this. I don't want to live this way".
When we say, "Go back to your father," what does that mean? I don't want that to be abstract for you. It means going back to who you truly are, being known by your identity, not seeking after it by trying to add status and stuff and layers and personas and busyness and think that's somehow going to fulfill your life. It's not. You gain the world and lose your soul. That's what it meant when he came to his senses and came back to his father. He had a speech ready. He wrote a whole speech. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants". Luke 15:20: "So he got up and went to his father". Watch what happened. "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son…"
Can you believe this undignified decision of a great, wealthy man who has hired servants to run toward his son who wasted his money? I see the son getting his speech ready, because he didn't expect to see his father until he rounded the corner, but before he could get all of these things out of his mouth…"I'm not worthy. Make me a servant. I'm so horrible…" Before he could get to any of that, the father said to his servants, "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet". "Wait. I have a speech to give you where I'm going to list all of the bad things I did". I hear God saying, "Leave that out. That's not what this moment is about. That's not why I'm convicting you: so I can just crush you under the weight of bad decisions".
I know you have a lot of those thoughts too, but if I'm hearing God right, he's saying, "Leave that out". "I don't know you by those things you identify yourself by. Leave that out". Stop introducing yourself to the next season of your life with the résumé of your regrets from the last one. Leave that out. You know when you go in your mind and you're like, "I think God is calling me to…but…" Leave that out. Go back to the first thing you said, make a little sandwich with the last thing God has said, and leave out whatever you put in between, because that's the space for you to believe. "I thought you were going to talk about disappointment". I am talking about disappointment. The father had every right to be disappointed in the son, but he left that out.
I wonder why we are so quick to put stuff back on people that God is leaving out. God doesn't talk to them like that. God doesn't see them like that. God doesn't judge them like that. And we do? Leave it out. Next time this week you get a little something in you that feels real good… You're going to say something bad about somebody. You know, "Oh, well, they're good, but do you know what I heard"? Leave it out. I hope y'all make a meme out of me. "Leave it out". Put your little speech up. Put your little self-righteous thing… We don't know what to leave out. God is trying to send us the Holy Spirit, but we need too many details. Because we will not leave the details in the hands of God, we cannot receive what he has given us for this moment.
So, there come moments in your life… I wonder if you are in one right now. God is saying, "I'm calling you out of Egypt, but you can't wait for the bread to rise". You can't wait for everything to be perfect. You can't wait for everything to be convenient. You can't wait for everybody to cheer you on. You can't wait until it makes total sense. You can't wait until it comes on paper. You can't wait until you have the facts. You can't wait until you have more strength. You can't wait until you have more wisdom. You can't wait until you have the trophy. You have to celebrate right now! You have to go right now! You have to have faith. Flatbread faith.
I almost said flatbed, like a big truck backing up. Beep! Beep! Beep! With the blessings of God. But does he have anywhere to put them? Flatbed faith. Flatbread faith. I don't know what to call this sermon, but do you have anywhere for it? Or are you scrolling at the same time I'm preaching, and you don't even have a place in your heart? The thorns are growing at the same time the seed is hitting the soil. It's amazing what God sends to your life. Do you know what he does before he sends? He takes something away. In between, your job is to believe that something better is coming. Jesus said, "I'm leaving you in the body. I'm sending my Spirit". He said, "Wait for the Holy Spirit".
Leave a blank for the part you don't know about right now. "O God, how is my kid going to turn out? What college are they going to go into"? They're 3. Your baby is 3. You can put Duke jammies on them all you want, but they might go to UNC. You can't control that. (That's a regional joke.) Acts 1:13: "When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room…" Why did they go to the room? He said they went to the room to receive. Do you have room to receive? Do you have the right people in place? I do want to preach a sermon one of these weeks early in the year about seasonal people. I will, God permitting. But let's start with the place. You're the temple. It's crazy to me.
However many times I read the Scripture, I just miss it until I make more room in my heart to receive it. I read this verse a million times where it said, "You are always with me; all that I have is yours". And I love that verse. "You are always with me; all that I have is yours". It's a great thing to pray. "God, you are always with me. All that I have is yours". When J.J. and Greg and them… They had their campus pastor meeting the other day, and I Zoomed on. When I was talking to y'all, the verse came to me. "You are always with me; all I have is yours". When I told you that verse, I left something out. I left out who said it. It sounds like something we say to God.
I wrote a song with some friends, but I started it in my basement one night. I don't like the way my voice sounds that much. Sometimes it sounds good in a certain range, but then other parts I just don't like to hear it that much. But it's okay in a certain range. I said it that way on purpose, because one time I said on stage, "I'm not a singer," and Holly said, "Next time you talk about that, leave that out. Don't you ever say you're not a singer again". I got scared, like God might give me nodules or throat cancer or something if I said it again. I was like, "Okay. I'm going to leave that out". But the fact is I have to go in this big, echoey room to sing, and then I'll send these memos to Chris and different people. I wrote the thing that said, "I am available. I hear you call; I am available". It wasn't many notes, but it was just a thought.
A little while later, we got together with some friends, and some different things came together, and the song is something we recorded. We sang it earlier in the service I was in. The part of the song that really touches me says, "Here I am. You can have it all". That's a great prayer. In fact, right now, where you are, just put your pen or your phone down and just lift your hands like this and say, "Here I am. You can have it all". That's a song of surrender. Now put your hands down. I left something out. In the text, that wasn't something someone said to God; it was something the father said to the son. When I show you this, it's going to flip how you're going to be living this week.
In Luke 15:31, the father said to the son, the older brother, the one who wouldn't celebrate…not the one who wasted money, but the one who was wasting his life… He said, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours". So I was thinking. The next time we sing "Available," we can sing the same words, but we can sing them instead of with our hands like this, "Here I am; you can have it all…"
I want you to do this with me. We can sing it with our hands like this, because that's what the Father is saying to you. "You are always with me, and all I have is yours". Some of the clothes Elijah wears are from my closet. That's all right. All I have is yours. The ones in your closet are mine too if you want to get technical about it. It changed my thing, because I always thought it was this. Like, "You can have it, God". And God is like, "Yeah, that's a real good deal for me". "You can have it all, God". God is like, "Thanks. What a bargain. My blood for your broken…" But if you flip it and you say, "Here I am. You can have it all…"
What if God is saying that to you while you're saying it to him? The power of that point was in what I left out. I didn't tell you that the father said it to the son, so you thought you were supposed to say it to the Father. No, no, no. It's by grace. God is bringing you into a grace space. Everything that's being removed is making room for you to receive. There was no yeast in the loaf. God didn't want Egypt's yeast in your life for this next season. He wanted them to eat it. They eat the Passover meal every year to remember, not only what God brought them out of, but it was to remind them to have flatbread faith. If you don't have enough, that's all right. You can still eat flatbread. Y'all are too luxurious. Y'all need a bubble bath blessing.
Some people need a yeast roll word of God. It has to be buttered like you want. Have you ever gone to Quincy's with the big fat yeast roll? Some of y'all need the yeast roll blessing. Some of y'all need the Krispy Kreme blessing. But how many of y'all have flatbread faith? I didn't have enough, but somehow… This is the fish and the loaves in the New Testament. This is David with… I see David showing up to the battle lines. I see you showing up to your life with one stone, 5'7", looking small next to a nine-foot Philistine. But I have flatbread faith. I have cheese and bread for my brothers, and I have a rock that'll knock out a bear. I have a praise that will stun depression. Flatbread faith. You think we're praising him because of what God gave us. We're praising God because of what he took out, what he removed, what he pruned for more fruit. We have flatbread faith. We're going into Canaan. Egypt is not our emotional home, and the wilderness is not our destination. Flatbread faith.
What God leaves out is what makes you a masterpiece. It said 600,000 left Egypt, and they didn't count the women and children or the rabble, but it was the rabble they didn't count, what they left out of the number, that cost them in the wilderness. Do you see how it works? It's what God leaves out. "I'm not a great singer". That's awesome I'm not a great singer. It made me surround myself with great singers. See how it goes? We had a board meeting the other day where we oversee the direction of the future of the church, and it was amazing to celebrate what God has done. In a global pandemic, with the inability to open most of our campuses to full capacity, God still grew us. How? I don't know. He left out what I thought we needed, and he gave us what we didn't know to ask for. That's true for you too. It was all of these numbers.
Chunks is our CFO. Chunks and Amy started the church with Holly and me. I was telling Holly afterward how my eyes went blurry while he was going through the numbers. I was blurry with the blessings of God. A little zoned out too. I like words more than numbers. That's another thing I said one time preaching. I said, "I'm not a businessman; I'm a preacher". Holly said, "Leave that out. You are a businessman. You're everything God called you to be. You built a great ministry. God has anointed you".
So I never said it again… until just now to tell you I never said it again. It's not true. I was telling Holly… We went on a walk just to decompress before I started getting into the sermon. I said, "Holly, it's amazing that God sent us Chunks and Amy". I told her this. I said, "Even what makes him get on my nerves is what makes him so great for us to partner in the gospel". Sometimes he'll run up to me talking about… I'll be working on a book or a song, or something, and he'll be like, "Are we ready to put it on Spotify"? I'm like, "On Spotify? I haven't even finished the verse yet. I don't even have a second verse". That's what makes us great. What God left out of me he put in him.
Now don't get me wrong. You're complete in Christ. If a person leaves you, God is always faithful. That's not what I'm saying. But when we said the disappointment, when we said the deficit… That's just the way you frame it. The place of the deficit will be the place of deposit. That's why we carry the unleavened bread. That's why we still eat it: just to remember. "Well, I didn't have yeast in the bread then. I don't have money in the bank now. I don't have this wisdom here. I don't have this experience here". That's why you carry around that bread, and that's why you eat it: to remind yourself that God's presence is often most evident in what he left out.
We love to celebrate what he gives us. If he gave you a new house, praise him. I've received God's blessings in my home, in my cars, in all of those things, but sometimes what he left out makes it special. Sometimes you have to leave with what you have. I don't mean leave your church, leave your marriage, leave your home. Y'all quit misinterpreting my Scripture before I can even post it on Facebook. I'm saying that in you, that's the grace space. What is that space for you? "I'm not good at that. I didn't learn that. I didn't have a dad to teach me that". That's the grace space. What God leaves out.
I think of it musically. You know I'm a songwriter. It took me a long time to say that, because I didn't think I was good at everything, but God surrounds you. LJ came from Toronto. I needed someone who came and knew all of the hymns. God sent us LJ. Praise God for him. He's amazing. All of the people who used to sit on a piano playing when I was preaching were great too, but then God sent an LJ, and he's awesome. Play a major scale. What key is that? D. What are the actual notes? Let's just do the numbers. I can play the notes. I just don't always know what to call them. That's the major scale. Play one, two, three, four again. That's the first four notes of the major scale, key of D. Play the one and the four. Play five and six. Drop the five. That's the six. Do the six, one, four, six. That sounds like something. "Amazing grace…" Do all the notes again. That's a scale. Leave out the other ones. Do the one, four, six. That's a song.
What turned the scale into a song wasn't what we put in; it's what we left out. God said, "I brought you out of Egypt, out of shame, out of sin. Leave it there". Leave the rabble there. Leave the regret there. Leave it out, for Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. So now let us eat the unleavened bread. First Corinthians 5:7: "Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch…" Here's the anointed part: "…as you really are". All that other stuff… Somebody make this confession: "That's Egypt. That's not me". All that pig slop that's on you when you come… Leave that out. Take that off and leave that out. For this next season of your life, all you need is the robe from your father's closet, the ring on your finger.
Somebody get ready for some unleavened bread, because I am about to feast this year on the faithfulness of God. How many of you have that flatbread faith, that "one stone" faith, that "I know who I am and I'm chosen" faith? Yeah. That little boy with five loaves and two fish… If you have flatbread faith, if you have a praise that is not dependent on a circumstance, give it to him right now. It's a grace space. That's where grace goes. That's where the anointing goes. That's where the wisdom of the Spirit goes. Right there in your ignorance…that's the space for grace. Right there in your uncertainty…that's the space for grace. Right there in your addiction…that's the space for grace. Right there in your heartbreak. They left you because they were not of you, and God is bringing something better in the grace space.
The grace space, that "You are always with me, and all that you have is mine, so whatever you didn't put in me, you want to fill it yourself? Let's go! No, I don't have enough yeast, but I don't even want Egypt's yeast. I'm moving forward toward Canaan's grapes". I told you last week there is always a funeral before the feast. What God is removing from you right now was just taking up too much space. I'm not driving a Mack truck of a Bible verse over your pain. I would never do that. Yes, we cry. Yes, we hurt. Yes, we struggle. I'm doing some of that right now in my life. I call that grieving Egypt. That's all right.
So now I'm going to let the grief of Egypt cost me the grapes of Canaan? No. Nuh-uh. There are hired men in my Father's house with food to spare, and here I am starving to death? Get it out. Get the resentment out this year. Yeah, they treated you badly. They treated you like crap. What are you going to do? Beat them up in the mental gymnasium of your own misery, and eventually they're going to get a transported signal that you're mad? No. You're going to get an ulcer…an ulcer and a doctor bill. So, all the rabble, all of the things we mentioned… When God is bringing something that we love, that we want, we lose something in the process, but all that he has is yours, so you lack nothing. Lift your hands right now, everyone standing.
I think we need to receive this message actively. Yeast is an active ingredient. Activate your faith for a moment. I'm serious. Your imagination is so crowded and cluttered. It's ridiculous. God gave you a big life, a big vision, but some stuff has to go now. I don't know what flesh what I'm about to say will wear for you. Every time God makes space in your life to do what you asked him to do, why do you fill it right back with something he didn't give you before he can send it? Why do you keep cramming your day like that? What are you doing? You're starving to death. Your Father has plenty of food. Just make room. Why are you already leaving the service in your mind? Why are you already closing YouTube? Why not let this be a grace space?
I think we need to receive this message actively. Yeast is an active ingredient. Activate your faith for a moment. I'm serious. Your imagination is so crowded and cluttered. It's ridiculous. God gave you a big life, a big vision, but some stuff has to go now. I don't know what flesh what I'm about to say will wear for you. Every time God makes space in your life to do what you asked him to do, why do you fill it right back with something he didn't give you before he can send it? Why do you keep cramming your day like that? What are you doing? You're starving to death. Your Father has plenty of food. Just make room. Why are you already leaving the service in your mind? Why are you already closing YouTube? Why not let this be a grace space?
"Why are you standing looking into heaven"? Jesus asked the disciples. The angel said, "The same Jesus is coming back. You're focused on the wrong thing". Why do you want to go back to Pharaoh's fish when you can have Canaan's grapes? But in the meantime… This is where we are. We're in between. We don't have it yet. He promised it, but we're not really experiencing it yet. That's all right. That's why he gave you the flatbread. Flatbread travels better. You can eat it and remember that the kingdom of heaven is inside of you. Lift those hands again, but not like you're giving God something. Lift them like you're reading it from his perspective, where heaven said, "All that I have is yours". I want you to keep your hands lifted. We rush so bad, and our rush robs us of our revelation. God is trying to show you something right now. I want one of my singers to begin to minister to you right now, whatever is in your heart. Make a throne. Make a space. Make a praise. Thank you, Lord.