WHAT YOU EXPERIENCE IS YOUR CHOICE

We challenge the idea of a distant heaven and show how posture—how we set our heart and mind—determines whether we experience the Kingdom now. Using Jesus’ parables, we map the move from striving to awareness, from fear to freedom, and from crowd energy to personal transformation.

• the kingdom as present reality, not distant place
• posture over performance as the catalyst for change
• the sower’s four soils as a mirror for the heart
• inclusion: one seed offered to every kind
• hidden treasure as discovery, not achievement
• mustard seed faith as restful trust, not grind
• leaven as inside-out transformation over time
• dragnet as discernment without exclusion
• practical ways to live heaven here and now

Chapters

• 0:00 The Kingdom Is Here, Not Distant
• 3:20 Posture Over Circumstance
• 8:40 Parables As A Simpler Lens
• 10:50 The Sower: One Seed, Four Soils
• 17:20 Hard, Shallow, Thorny, Good Ground
• 25:00 Inclusion: Same Seed For All
• 30:00 Hidden Treasure: Discover, Don’t Achieve
• 35:00 Mustard Seed: Rest As Faith
• 39:00 Leaven: Transformation From Within
• 46:00 Dragnet: Inclusion And Discernment

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Because whether you realize it or not, the kingdom, you know, the kingdom is all around us. Um it's it's already here, it's already at work, but a lot of people, you know, walk through life every day almost like the kingdom's invisible. Uh some people are sitting in it and don't even know it. And there's other people that's that's that's striving and working every day to try to get to a certain place that they understand as the kingdom and they just can't seem to get there. Because they have this mindset that this is what the kingdom is. For a lot of people, if you ask about the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, it's a faraway place that I'm gonna go one day when I pass from here. Listen, that's not the kingdom Jesus preached on. That is not what the kingdom that Jesus taught his disciples to go around and teach. And when I think about this, I always like to kind of give you a little background of where where this is coming from and why we're talking about it. Um, you know, like I said, some people sitting in the kingdom and they don't realize it, they don't recognize it. Other people is running around chasing something and can't seem to get it. Uh, because the difference, you know, you look at that, it's not God. It's not our circumstances, it's our posture. Now think about that just a minute. Our posture, what does that mean? Your posture is how you position your heart, how you position your mind toward the things of God, toward kingdom principles. There's a lot of people that you can say something and they say, Well, I don't necessarily believe that for me. I've seen other people do that. I've seen other people prophesy, but I just don't know if I can do it. You're positioning yourself to not be able to walk in that kingdom principle of prophesying a word because you've made up your mind that you don't have the anointing somebody else has. So this is what's really been on my heart lately is how are you positioning yourself? We're teaching a lot of stuff about finished work. We're teaching a lot of stuff about what it means to include people in the kingdom of heaven. But how do we begin to walk this thing out? How do we make it make sense outside of these four walls? When we walk out into the community, every day when we're in our workplace, when we're around other family members who maybe is not in the same position we are. How do we live this thing out? So when you think about that posture, it's how you position your heart, how you position your mind toward what's already true, determines whether you live in the kingdom or whether you just watch it pass by. And that's kind of a hard, hard to say that, but it's the truth. How you position yourself is going to determine whether you live out and experience kingdom principles in your life, or whether you just sit back and watch everybody else be blessed and wondering why you're not. It's not because God's selecting certain ones and not selecting others. He says in his word, he says, I'm not a respecter of persons. It's not because one person's doing good and the other person's doing bad. It's not because one's more blessed or one more holy than the next one. It truly is the way that we posture ourselves towards the things of God. So today we're gonna talk about what it looks like to posture ourselves to stand the right way so that heaven can actually meet you where you're at. That's we're not waiting to get to heaven, we're not trying to claw our way into heaven, we're not trying to barely get by and hope we slip in, as you hear people say all the time. How do I position myself right now to where I have heaven here, heaven now on this earth? It's not just about dying and going to a place, but it's about experiencing kingdom manifestation right here in our life. And I think one of the things we do sometimes is overcomplicate what Jesus meant when he talked about the kingdom. We make it so difficult. So I want to take a fresh look today, and I want to look at it through some of the parables that is so familiar. Every one of you guys could probably just, when you have to open your Bible, you could just quote these parables. But I want to go through them because they're so simple sometimes that we overlook the important things in them. We overlook when Jesus spoke these parables, what kind of kingdom principle was he laying out in this? And sometimes we we look at them and we think that's just a principle. It's just Jesus was just teaching something. Yes, he was. But are we missing what he was teaching? So I want to slow down and look at a couple of these parables and really see what was he trying to say in this, and what is he saying to us today? So I'm gonna start with uh the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13. I'm gonna read verse 3 through 9. Again, everybody knows this uh parable, but I want to read it. Um verse 3 through 9 says, Then he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places where they did not have much earth, and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. I say that to you today. She said, Prophesy, I'm gonna prophesy to you today. If you have ears to hear, you need to hear what we're saying today. Because this is gonna put you on a path of not just hearing this and saying, Well, that sounds really good, but it's gonna put you on a place of understanding to how do I begin to incorporate this into my life? How do I begin to actually walk this out and see these principles manifesting in my life? I want to skip down just a little bit to verse 18 and read 18 through 23. Says, therefore, hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away that what was sown in the heart. This is he who receives seed by the wayside. But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Verse 23, last one. But he who receives seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it. Listen, I don't want to preach a sermon and somebody walk out and say it just sounded good. I mean, I think what we teach is the Bible, and I take pride in what we teach, but I don't want it to be just classified as a good-sounding sermon. It's got to be understood. He who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces some hundred, some 60, some 30. I ain't even gonna get into that right now. That's a whole nother sermon. But you know, if you look at 30, 60, 100, which one do you want? It's your choice. If you get stuck with 30, it's your choice. Going back to the title, it is up to us to choose what we're gonna live in, what we're gonna manifest, and what that God has given us or we're gonna see in our life. And here's the main thing we need to realize about this parable right here. There were four kinds of ground that it talked about. There was one seed. Four grounds, but one seed. See, the difference wasn't what was given, but it's what are you receiving? It's all up to us. So the question isn't is Pastor Brian preaching a good sermon? Is Pastor Brian preaching something that that is relevant? The better question is what kind of ground are you? Because I'm throwing seed out. What kind of ground are you? Are you gonna be good ground? Are you gonna receive it? Are you gonna be able to understand it? Are you gonna be a type of ground that's hard, that's distracted, that's uh thorny? Those are the types of ground who can't receive the word. That's why we started out reading this parable. That's what Jesus was teaching them. Is that's that's why you can preach a sermon on a Sunday morning, and you got somebody on one side of the church that's getting it, man. God is just speaking to them, and you got somebody on the other side that's sleeping. You know, and they walk out with nothing. Same word was taught, but the same word wasn't received. What kind of ground are you gonna be? So I want to break these four down just a little bit and look at them. You had the hard ground, the shallow ground, the thorny ground, and the good ground. Think about being a hard ground. That's somebody that's got a closed off heart. They're hard. I know a lot of people that's been hurt by the church. And then when they do come back to the church, they got a hard heart because they've been hurt by a pastor. They've been hurt by Christians, they've been hurt by other people, and their heart is hard and it's closed off. Religion and pride and pain, it's made the surface tough. And it's become so tough in some people that the truth and the word cannot penetrate it. Just boom, falls away, falls away, falls away. And I think that's the kind of people that you see, and I'm not gonna call names, we've all seen these kind of people that run from church to church to church to church looking for something, and they keep saying, Well, this church ain't it, and that church not it, and that pastor's not it. And they never sit down and say, it may not be the church or the pastor. It could be me. I've been there now. Tell you that from experience. Sometimes we have to take a look at ourselves and say, what kind of ground am I? The person that's shallow. I don't we're not talking about intelligence. We're not talking about they're slow. We're talking about they're shallow because they have an impulsive heart. They're excited at first. You can look around a church when you're preaching something and you can see some people. You may not notice it here, but sometimes I feed off of certain ones. I look at certain ones more than I do others. Because you can see they're like a sponge. They're just absorbing everything that you're saying. And those are the kind of people that you want to preach to because they're getting it. But they're very excited at first, but they there's no depth. It's shallow. They want the thrill of the kingdom without the transformation. Because the kingdom is thrilling. It's fun to prophesy. It's fun when God, man, I'm telling you, the prophetic is so an anointing in it, but it's also just contagious. When people start prophesying and a prophetic anointing arises in a place, it just stirs everybody. Even that prophetic gift that's in somebody else that's never prophesied before, it starts stirring on the inside of them. That's just the way it works. And it's exciting and it's fun. And it's so it's so amazing to speak a word into somebody and to know that that had to come from God because there's no way that I knew that. And it's so amazing to watch their face and just light up because God has used you to speak a word into their life. It's so amazing and it thrills people, but it doesn't thrill them enough to step into that place and allow themselves to be totally transformed. See, a shallow person just gets excited. And you love those people for a little while because they they build you up and they push you and they motivate you. But then when you really gotta have it, there's no depth to them. Now don't get mad at them. I'm not pointing anybody in here. I'm asking you to question yourself. Okay. I'm not saying anybody in here is shallow. I'm saying this morning I want you, it got quiet. I want you to question yourself. You might be that person that's a a thorny, a thorny person. That seed that was sown on a thorny ground. This is what I look at as a distracted person. They know the word. They're eager to learn the word. They connected with the message. They understood it, it made sense to them. But it got choked out. They worry about too much that's going on on the outside. They worried about their family, they're worried about their job, they're worried about what others are going to say. They're worried too much. Everything that comes along distracts them. And they focus so much on the things of life that it chokes out the word to come. Listen, if you ain't been a part of each one of these grounds, you ain't lived long enough yet. I can tell you, I've been a part of every one of these at some point in my life. Every single one of them. And I hope and I pray that what I'm stepping into now is being good ground. Okay? Because the good ground is that receptive heart. It's somebody that is so eager to hear the word. They're so uh they're like a sponge. Like I said a while ago, you know when you're saying it, they're getting it. They're taking it in. They may not understand everything right then, but they're taking it in. They're writing it down. They're storing it away, and they're going home and they're studying. And they're checking behind me, and they're saying, Let me see what God shows me on this. It's a receptive heart. That posture says, Let it be done in me, Lord. Bring it on, God. Send me. I know there's people that need this. Send me, Lord. Teach me, Lord. I don't want to just be surface level anymore. Take me deeper. That's good ground. And man, when you can start sowing seed on good ground, we start seeing fruit come up. We start seeing something spring up. See, the kingdom doesn't just come to the right people. And that's something I think people's been taught for a long time. Get in a certain kind of church, get in a certain denomination, get around the right people, dress a certain way, use a certain kind of vocabulary, act like you're, you know, this and that, and all of a sudden, you know, you think the kingdom's just going to fall upon you. Listen, God does not just send it to certain people. It's recognized when you get in the right position. It's there. You begin to see it and recognize it. There's some really amazing points that I think we need to see in this parable before we leave this one and go to the next one. One of them is the seed. And I said this while ago, the seed, there's one seed. The seed is the same for every single person. It's the word of God. The seed that we sow is for every single person in here. The sower in this verse, in this, in this parable, is the same. It's Jesus. He's offering grace to every single person that he's talking to. I don't know who was when he was given this parable. I don't know who was standing around. But I can guarantee you that if if they was within hearing distance, it was for them. It was for everybody. If you have an ear to hear, hear what the word is saying. So the difference is how each heart receives it. Some hear and accept it. Some hear it automatically reject it. And some hear it, but they're so distracted, they're confused by it. What kind of ground are you? Again, this is this is something you got to search yourself. I want you to notice in this parable, too, what's not happening. God is not selectively choosing who gets this seed. He's not saying because you've been in church a little bit longer than this person that you must be more anointed, so I've got to give it to you. You dress a little bit better. You've always been in the right kind of church, the right denomination. You got a better prayer life than that person does. It's open to everybody. Now, some people may argue this, and I've talked about this before. This is inclusion. This is inclusion right here by the basic definition, which says everybody is included. And some people will argue that inclusion theology. They'll say, no, everybody's not included. You got to be at a certain place, you got to pray a certain way. You got to be this or be that. No, Jesus said everybody is included. And they may argue this. Listen, the kingdom is extended to everybody. It's not picking and choosing, it's extended to everybody equally, regardless of your background, regardless of your past, regardless of whether you think you deserve it or not. It's extended to every single person. What changes and what varies is the response. It has nothing to do with the offering. He's offered his life to everybody. Every single person in this room he died for. And he's offered redemption. He's offered salvation. He's offered everything. It's done. It's complete. That's why he says it's finished. But are you going to choose to receive it? Are you going to reject it? Are you going to be too distracted to even worry about it? Or you're going to be good ground and receive it. Matthew. Let's look at Matthew 13 and 44. This is another parable right here. Parable of the hidden treasure. And this is really what it's looking at as a posture of discovery. Hopefully, you want to discover something. I hope I pray there's nobody in this room that is content on your level of understanding. And that you want to go deeper, you want to go further. Matthew 13 and 44, look what it says. It says, Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid. And for joy, for the joy of it, he goes and he sells everything that he has just so he can buy the field. We're going to stop right here. Because I want to dig into this a little bit and see what this verse is really talking about. This is one of the first verses years, years ago, many years ago when I first started preaching. This is one of the first verses I ever preached on. Because it spoke to me. And there was a lot of things in it that just that made sense to me. The treasure was already in the field. You got to see that. Now, there's a part of here that says, uh, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid. He found the treasure and he hid it. So some people take it and say the man put it in the field. The man found it in the field. And then he put it back. The treasure was already in the field. He didn't have anything to do with it. It was there before the man found it. This is huge. You gotta see this. What does it mean? The kingdom isn't something we create, earn, or bring into existence. It's already present. It's already there. It's already true. It's already made whole. Just like the man didn't place the treasure in the field originally, we don't make the kingdom real by our efforts. Some people think they will only sing the kingdom when they get to a certain status. You'll only experience the kingdom when you only pray a certain way. That's not biblical. I don't care what pastor says it. That is not biblical. And this parable right here is showing that the man did not place the treasure in the field. We don't make the kingdom real because of what we do, it exists independently of whether we're aware of it or not. There's a lot of people who is living in the kingdom. I said this earlier. You're living in the kingdom right now and you don't even recognize it. It don't change the fact that it's real because you don't see it. I used an example a couple weeks ago. I said I could sit up here and I can put a blindfold on. That don't mean you're not here because I can't see you. It just means I choose not to see you. The kingdom is here. The kingdom is real. The kingdom is among us, even if I choose not to see it. Don't change it. The man's role here wasn't to achieve, but to perceive something. His only action was discovering what had been hidden in plain sight. This speaks to the spiritual life. The journey isn't about climbing up to heaven one day or performing well enough that I can get some divine favor. It's about recognizing what's already been given through me, through Christ. What's already present in my life right now. Sometimes we want to create things. We want to make it happen. That's what church has taught us to do. Be good enough that you can step in. Be a good enough Christian where you can experience certain things. And that don't change the fact that I believe that maturity level and everything takes us to different levels. And we experience things as we go from one level to the next. But all that's doing is that means our eyes are opening up to it. It's already created. It's already finished. In Matthew 13, 31, and we're staying in Matthew 13, but verse 31 and 32, another parable here. And I'm just I'm pulling out ones that you're used to hearing. I just want you to see a couple of things in them. This is talking about the parable of the mustard seed. This is a posture of faith. In verse 31 and 32, it says, another parable he put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed into his field. Which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it's grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree. So that the birds of the air come and nest in his branches. The mustard seed isn't about mustering up faith, it's about recognizing the divine life that's already planted within us. That seed is the smallest of seeds, but it brings so much life out of it once it's planted in good ground. There is so much on the inside of you right now. And if you can look at yourself as good ground, if you can begin to see yourself as good ground, I'm not seeing myself as just an old sinner that's not good enough. That ain't good ground, that's a messed up mindset. But if I can see myself as worthy, if I can see myself when I look in the mirror and say, God, you can do this through me. I am worthy. I am good enough. You can do this work through me. That's good ground. See, the posture of faith is rest. It's not it's not work. Faith is not about working, faith is about resting. It's simply it's simply trust that the life of the kingdom will grow and express itself. It's like when the smallest of things gets planted on the inside of me. Sometimes it ain't gotta be a powerful earth-shaking message. Sometimes it's just a simple thing. Just a simple prophetic word that somebody speaks into you, or that the word that God speaks into you. And then all of a sudden, because you're good ground, that little tiny seed that word that's like a mustard seed gets in there and boom, takes off. That's what it's about. The kingdom doesn't come by observation. It says in Luke 17 and 21, but the kingdom of God is within you. See, we got too many people sitting back waiting on the kingdom, looking for the kingdom. One day, one day I'll get to it, one day I'll experience it. Why not today? Why can't we just say, Today I'm gonna experience this? It's not about going somewhere. Another one I want to look at is Matthew 13 and 33. The parable of the leaven. This is a posture of transformation. There's another parable he spoke to them. The kingdom of heaven is like the leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leaven. We know this story. I'm not gonna go into it. Here's the key point I want you to see in this the the leaven was unseen, but it was unstoppable. The woman doesn't force the leaven to work. She couldn't do anything to force it to work. She simply placed it in the dough and trust the process. What are you gonna place? What are you gonna pull back up? See, some of us has let go of some things. When she started prophesying this morning, I'm telling you, some of us has let go of some things that uh has been prophesied into your life from years ago. And because of circumstances, because of situations, you've let go of some stuff. It's time that we get that stuff back and we let it arise back in us again and realize that it never left you. It never left. Your circumstances didn't change it, your mindset did. So it's time to do what? Repent, change that mindset back, get to a place of recognizing the things that God spoke into you. Transformation is not behavior modification. We say that all the time. It's not about changing a behavior, it's the gradual unveiling of what's already been done. Here, changing my mindset. How can I begin to see this thing differently? How can I look at my life and begin to see my walk with God differently than what I have before? The kingdom is the divine nature of Christ already within us, already within humanity, already working silently until it's fulfilling everything. There's not a person here in the world that says there's not a person here that God wants to be lost. It's his plan that everybody be saved. So much so that he sent his son to save us. And guess what? He accomplished We got people that's awake to that. Our posture is not striving for transformation but yielding. Actually yielding to what's already been done. Trusting that the leaven of grace is doing its work in us. It's time we get some things stirred back up in us. We've talked long enough, we've sit long enough. It's time that we've stirred some things back up in us. The kingdom transforms from the inside out. I use this example all the time. This is not an outside thing, and we're trying to fix everything out here so that something on the inside of me can change. This is realizing that it's already changed on the inside, and now it's pushing it out. And the things on the outside, they begin to change themselves. Something on the inside of me begins to manifest on the outside. I don't go where I used to go. I don't do what I used to do. I don't talk like I used to talk. I don't hang out in the places I used to hang out. Not because I'm better than they are, but just because my mindset's different. And then guess what? I've even said this before. It's okay if you go back and hang out in some of those places again. Because I believe that God brings you in, transforms you, and then sends you back. Because now you're going to influence it. It used to influence you, and now you're transformed to influence what used to influence you. He sends you back into those areas. But everybody can't do that. That's why you don't see evangelists sitting in the bars. Great place to go evangelize. But you don't see a lot of them doing it. Why? Because their mindset is that's a no-no, I can't do that. I can't be around those people. It might say more about what they think about themselves and what they think about those people. That maybe I'm not strong enough to resist. Never know. I think we should be going back into some places. I think we should be able to go back around some people and transform you know the atmosphere. Change that atmosphere. Last one I want to show you, last parable. Then we're going to put them all together. In Matthew 30, 13, verse 47 through 50, the parable of the dragnet. This is a posture of discernment. We all got to be able to learn to discern things. Because again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some some of every kind. Which when it was full, they drew to shore, and they sat down and gathered the good into the vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age, the angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be welling and gnashing of teeth. I went ahead, I I could have stopped at 48, but I went ahead and I wanted to pull these out of here because these are the verses that we get our hell from. We went from pulling up fish in a net to you're gonna burn in hell. It's the only reason I read both of those verses with it. Don't even make sense. Don't even fit. And I remember years ago reading this and saying, wait a minute, now we're pulling up fish in a net. This is a good thing. So now we're burning. How did we get from pulling up fish to burning? And I looked and I said, that don't make sense. I've got to be misinterpreting that. And I was. And if you're reading it like that, you are too. And we'll go into that later. But you got to pay attention to these verses. There's got to be a little bit of discernment within us. Lord, am I understanding what I'm reading here? The net gathers fish of every kind. I'm going to pour a couple of good things, the good news out of it. The gospel message. It gathered every kind. The good fish didn't swim into the net and the bad ones run away. When he threw the net down and poured it up, it had everything in there. That's sort of the way our churches show. It ain't like that a lot of times. We're gathering certain kinds. We want certain kinds. No, I want every kind. Right. I want every kind. The kingdom isn't about exclusion, but it's about discernment. We've been excluding for too long. Learning to separate what's true from what's temporary, that's separating love from law. This is what I'm talking about, discernment here. Somebody's responsibility when they pulled this net up was to separate what was not good from what was. They had to have some discernment in this. They didn't just get people who wasn't fishermen to come up and do this. They got people who understood these fish. So to live postured in the kingdom is to see through the lens of inclusion. I don't care how hard you try. I know I've heard people say inclusion is not biblical, inclusion is from hell. Inclusion is. Those people's not reading the Bible. Clearly. They're not understanding the words of Jesus because Jesus was nothing but inclusion. I know they're reading the Bible. I'm making a joke there, but what they're doing is they're taking inclusion and they're giving the wrong definition. And they're taking a definition and saying, oh, he's talking straight about salvation. So therefore, because we're saying salvation, he's wrong. That's not biblical. That's from the depths of hell. And they're missing so much truth because of wrong, one definition, a definition that's wrong. That's it. Jesus was inclusive in everything that he done. There's no way you can read the Bible. There's no way that you can read the parables and say Jesus was not inclusive. There's no way. Recognizing that God's grace is already gathering all creation into himself. He said, I chose you before the foundation of the world. And it said that God was in Christ doing what? Reconciling the world to himself. Bringing all the people back into relationship, restoring them back. He didn't say certain ones. He didn't say I'm in Christ reconciling 144,000 back to me. You know, because that's what's going to go in the rapture and everything. There's only a certain few. This stuff doesn't even make sense. But we teach it as as biblical theology. We teach it as it's the gospel. And I want us to get to a place of we can just have enough discernment to say that's crazy. That's not even God. That's not biblical. So let's put this together. I'm going to get ready to end right here, but I want to take these. We talked about four, four or five different parables here. So what's the point talking about this? What's the point of looking at it? We often make the kingdom seem distant or complicated, but Jesus' parables show us that in reality it's very simple and it's very powerful. He did not overcomplicate this. Part of the reason he told parables is because he would tell his disciples, they would say, We heard you talking out there. You were sitting with these people and you were talking. We didn't understand it. Can you explain it to us? He'd say, Well, the kingdom is like, and he would shoot off into a parable. So what was he doing? He was simplifying it to his own disciples and saying, I know y'all didn't get this. Y'all didn't understand this. So let me break it down to you. So that's what we need to do today. We need to just keep it simple. Look back at the parables and say, what was Jesus trying to say? The hidden treasure reminds us that the kingdom is priceless and already present. Our role is to perceive and recognize its worth, not to try to earn it. It's already done. The mustard seed shows us that even the smallest of faith, the tiniest awareness, can grow into something so big and something so huge. If we trust the kingdom, we're going to see things that we never seen before. We're going to grow. Our faith is going to grow into things that we've never experienced before. We're going to get to see things in the kingdom that we just thought was going to happen one day in heaven. We're going to experience them here. We have. There's people in this church. We've seen the healings. We've seen blind eyes open. We've seen paralyzed people walk. We've seen legs extend. I mean, I know there's some people in here that's probably saying, okay, he's losing his mind now. No, we've seen these things. We've experienced these things. But I think we've stepped into a place where the church has begun to reject these things. Because we're saying one day. One day it'll happen. And see, that mindset pretty much says, because it's going to happen one day, I don't have faith to believe it for today. And we've stepped back, stepped out of it. Why don't we see it as much anymore? Why? Take off to a mission field, you'll see it tomorrow. Because their faith level has not been diminished like ours has. And this is not a let's get on, everybody. This is saying let's stir this stuff back up. It ain't went nowhere. It's still here, it's still relevant. It's still happening. We've got to stir it back up within each one of us. The leaven teaches us that transformation happens from the inside out. God's life within us works sometimes silently, sometimes gradually, changing every part of who we are from the inside out. Listen, it's got to happen here before it can ever happen out here. It's got to happen in my mind. I've got to see it on the inside. The dragnet, the last one we talked about, shows the posture of discernment. We watch, we perceive, we respond, but we got to do this faithfully. Trusting God's timing and what aligns with his kingdom. Everything's in his timing. But see, there's some things that we have used that as an excuse, too. Some people's lived in the valley for so long and they're waiting on God to get on mountain. God's sitting there saying, I never put you there. I never told you you had to build a house down there. You should have just had a little sleeping bag, took a nap, and walked on out, and you built a house now. And you're living in that place. Why? Because you choose to. I've got so much more for you. There's a mountaintop up here. But you're so far down you can't even see it. That's your choice. God's not forcing you to do that. He's never said you're stuck down there. He wants to bring us out. Our choice, what we experience. So across these stories, these parables, one truth stands clear in every one of them. The kingdom is not about striving, performing, working, or controlling. It's about awakening. It's about waking up to what's already present, trusting the growth in ourselves, yielding to the transforming power and responding with awareness and discernment. When we posture ourselves in this way, we live in the kingdom here and now. It's about the way we posture ourselves. The kingdom is not a reward for right behavior, but a revelation for right being. This is not about doing something. This is about recognizing who you are in Christ. And when I got reading this and looking at it, I realized something. Jesus never presented the kingdom as a prize for good behavior. Nowhere in the Bible will you see that. He revealed it as something that was already present. Something that becomes visible when we awaken to who we truly are in Christ. So right behavior, it doesn't lead us to the kingdom. I want you to do good. I want each one of us to make the right decisions, but you've got to understand this too. Right behavior does not create kingdom in your life. Kingdom's already there. It flows from living in alignment with what God's already done. Jesus didn't come to, he didn't come out and hand out little gold stars every time you do something good. I mean, if you we need, some people need that. Some people need that little star and that little pat on the back. I know that. We're human. It motivates us sometimes. That's why we do it with kids. We put the thing up and we put stars on it. Why? Because it's motivational for them. That's why we say to say good things to people, motivate them, pick them up, push them along. But that's not what he came here for. He came to restore sight to the blind. He came to give sight and give vision back to the ones who were walking in darkness. What is the darkness? I got a blindfold on and I don't see who I truly am. He came to take the blindfold off and say, Let me show you who you are. Let me show you your purpose. When you posture your heart in grace, you begin to see that heaven is not a destination. I started to take this part out because I said, Lord, I'm opening up a can right there. Now somebody's going to say, Oh, he done said he don't believe in hell. Now they don't even believe in heaven. No. Not what we're saying at all. I'm just saying that heaven is not the destination. That's not what he came for. It's a dimension that we have the opportunity to live in and have access to right now. Ain't got nothing to do with taking that away from you. Nothing at all. It's just saying we have the ability to have it early. So final thought right here. These truths aren't just theological. We got to begin to see this more than just theology. This is life. These are transformational things that can change our life. They invite us to stop striving and to start seeing ourselves differently. To move from effort to awareness. Being aware of who I am, being aware of what God created in me. Being aware that He said, I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you. Being aware that He says, I chose you before the foundation of the world. And if you slip up and do something wrong, I will not leave you. I still love you. I'm not fixing to cast you out into the outer banks of darkness because you slipped up. I chose you. I created you after myself. Can we move from a place of fear to freedom? This is when the mindset shifts when I don't worry about messing up anymore. I'm not saying that I develop a mindset of just go out and do what I want to do. That's not what I'm saying. But messing up is not a fear anymore to me because I know who I am. I'm free just to live in the understanding of who I am. I didn't say I'm free to live in sin. I'm free to live in the understanding of who I am. Big difference in that. The kingdom has never been about proving yourself. Not what it's about. It's about knowing yourself. It's about truly understanding who I am, seeing your true identity and living from that place. We got too many people that's down in the valley, and that's where they're living from. They're living there, and that's they they see themselves from that place. It's time that we pick ourselves back up and realize he never, he never, number one, he never put you there. He never put you in that place. I used to, man, I used to hate people when I heard them say it. Well, God's just got me here. He put me here for a reason. No, it was our dumb decision that put us there. I made a bad choice. And guess what? When you make a bad choice, there's consequences. Sometimes I'm going to end up in a place that God never destined me to be at. And he's sitting there saying, come out. Come out. That's not who you are. Get out of that place. Get out of that mud and come back to the Father's house. He never destined the prodigal son to play in the mud. He never said, go out there and spend your inheritance on all the stuff that you spend it on. Yes, it was fun for a season. There was pleasure for a season. But he never put him in that place. And I always go back and when I hear people say that, and I think to myself, it's an excuse. And I don't mean that negative, but I'm saying if we keep saying to ourselves that God put me here, then why not just settle there? If God put me here, why fight against it? If God put me here, why not just be content until God decides to take me out? That's not a godly mindset. Because he never put me there. Now, does God allow some things? Absolutely. But God didn't do it. God didn't cause the waves to crash over the boat when the disciples were in it, when Jesus got up and said, Oh, ye have little faith. And then he got up and he rebuked the storm. I use that example all the time because that's one of the first things that taught me this. The storm comes and everybody says, Oh, God done it. God's testing them. And then Jesus got up and rebuked the storm. So are you telling me Jesus rebuked the Father? No. But he didn't bring the storm. You know what, brother, storm, Mother Nature? We're probably going to have another hurricane at some point. Somewhere along here. I'm not saying us, I'm saying in the world. God's not doing that. Do we really worship a God who's sitting there saying, okay, I'm going to stir this thing up to kill thousands of people today? Do we really I mean, is our mindset that messed up? That's all this is about is changing the way we think. Changing the way we think about things. And truly looking at the Bible and saying, I know who I am.