SERMON: What God Put In You Will Come Out of You | Pastor David Flores

What God Put In You Will Come Out Of You

In this message, Pastor David Flores explores Acts 1:15 and the moment Peter stood up among the disciples.

Peter's courage didn't appear out of nowhere. It was the result of years of Jesus pouring truth, faith, and purpose into his life.

This message is a powerful reminder that God is working in us even when we don't see immediate results. The seeds He plants through His Word, prayer, worship, and community are producing something beneath the surface.

If you've ever wondered whether your faithfulness matters, this message will encourage you to keep trusting God's process.

Key Themes:

• Peter's restoration
• Faith that doesn't fail
• The power of God's Word
• Sowing and reaping
• God's grace in our imperfections
• Being ready when God calls

📖 Scripture: Acts 1:15

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So let's get our Bibles. We're going to make a confession of the Word. I'm going to start my timer. I already got my other things going on because we want to get something into you today. Now we started last week. So let's make our confession of the Word. Ready? Here we go. This is my Bible. It is God speaking to me. It is alive, powerful, sharper than any judged sword. It's revealed to me by the Holy Spirit. I'm a believer, therefore I'm a receiver. Who the word says I am, I am. What the word says I can do, I can do. What the word says I have, I have. I believe everything my Bible says. And today I do receive absolutely everything God has for me. I'll never be the same. Never, never, never. I will be changed, rearranged by the anointing of God's word working in my life right now, right now, right now. Praise God for his word. Give the Lord a praise for his word. Amen. Praise God. Open your Bibles to the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, Acts chapter 1. And again, we started last week and just kind of touched on it, kind of introduced some things. We're going to get a little bit deeper into this. And uh the title of this series of messages called And Peter Stood Up. Peter Stood Up. And we look at Peter, and you can do some studies on your own and historical things about Peter. And uh, but you can read all so well in the Gospels and Jesus' interactions with Peter. But Peter is one that we can all relate to because all of us have opened our mouth and said the dumbest things. We've all been there. That's what's Peter. Amen. All of us can say, I'm going to be super spiritual today and say something that is way off. That was Peter. All right. And so, but then there was Peter who denied Christ. But I want you to know we can relate to this because Jesus prayed for Peter. He prayed for his faith. He didn't pray that Peter wouldn't sin. He didn't pray that Peter wouldn't mess up and make a mistake. He didn't pray any of those things that we would all normally pray. Father, Pastor, pray for me that I don't do this. Pray for me that I don't do that. Yeah, those are nice requests. All right. What did Jesus pray? Peter, I pray for your faith not to fail. I pray for your faith not to fail. Pastor Doris and I, we pray for your faith not to fail because every opportunity, the enemy presents us with the opportunity for our faith to fail. And the only way our faith can fail is if we give up on it, if we quit on it. All right. And we'll have opportunities. And so Jesus prayed for him in the gospel of Luke. I pray that your faith not fail, but that when you what arise up, when you get back up, amen, you are going to be a blessing and convert many with your life, with your testimony. And sure enough, that was a prophecy fulfilled. Peter did fail the Lord in his actions. He did deny him. And I've got a good teaching on that and why that was possible. How could that happen? Being so close to Jesus for three and a half years, being poured into, being mentored. Sure, I'm sure he had hands laid on him, all kinds of things, seeing things that not everyone got to see and witness. Yet he got confused. Yet he got disillusioned. Yet he still had his own agenda. Everybody say, own agenda. We're human beings, and because of Adam and Eve, we got our own agenda. All right. And if you're not careful, your own agenda will take you off the path of Christ. Your own agenda will cause you to look for something that God said, don't look that way. Don't look for that. Look for something else. And Jesus knew Peter. He knew what he put in him, and God knows what he's put in you and what he's put in me. So when we read Acts chapter 1, verse 15, simple verse, but take it to heart for yourself personally. And in those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and he said, and the number of them names were about 24 and 120. So 120 people, but I'm just going to say this: he stood up. The moment's going to come for you to stand up. God always has a moment in your life that you're going to stand up. And I don't want you to be afraid of that moment. Amen. But I want you to anticipate it. I want you to prepare yourself, okay? By praying in the spirit, by reading your word and just living for God with joy and gladness and serving the Lord and doing all you know to do. Amen. And one of our great Bible mentors always would say, we got to do a couple of things. Number one, we got to pray. Number two, we got to read our Bible. Number three, we got to go to church. Number four, we got to tithe and give. And number five, we got to forgive, right? We got to forgive. I remember one of the greatest pastors ever would say, these are five things you need to start concentrating on, okay? And so, uh, and and then I'll tell you what, the last one he said was forgive, but I'm telling you, I moved from the forgive up to number one. Learn to forgive. Learn how to let it go. Pastor Doris, one of her most, I'll use the term, most famous popular messages. Because even today, when she would go to a certain church, they would come up and say, I can't forgive up and forget that message. Drop it, leave it alone, and let it go. Praise God. I go to the church and they say, I can't forget that message, Pastor David. I remember you preach, and the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he closed the book. You know, those are words that God gave us years ago, years ago to live by and continue to live by them. So Peter, in the midst of all that he went through, in midst of his failures, being rebuked by Jesus, seeing Jesus, you know, hearing that he was crucified on the cross, put in a tomb for three days and three nights, said he's just gonna go fishing. I'm done with this. The next thing you know, he hears that Jesus is raised from the dead, and he races John, the apostle John, to the tomb to get there. And uh, John, the Bible says, kind of got there, and then and then, but Peter, the Bible says, he went in and looked. I think most of us would probably go inside and look. Not just because we want to verify that Jesus was really gone, but we just got this thing in us that I just got to see more. That's what Peter did. He reminds me of Moses in that way when Moses out in the wilderness, Moses already exiled from Egypt, Moses running from the law, he was a fugitive, he had committed murder, and Moses decided I'm gonna take off and have another life, another identity. And uh he walks by a bush that is burning but not consumed. And the Bible says he stopped, he turned, and he looked. And to me, that was a defining moment for Moses. To me, for Peter, here's a defining moment. And Peter stood up. Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples. Now, there's a powerful truth about this because Peter stood up before Pentecost. Peter stood up before the rushing mighty wind. Peter stood up before the tongues of fire, he stood up before all the stuff we know happened because we have a word of God, the Bible to read. He stood up before all of that. What was in Peter that made him stand up? What was in Peter that made him decide, you know, we've got to rectify this problem. We were 12 and now we're 11. Let's fix this thing. Why? Because of what Jesus has deposited into him for three and a half years was beginning to come out of him. And I'll tell you right now, every moment you've spent in the word, every moment you spent in prayer, every moment you spread hearing the word, every moment you've been in the in the house of God, and you've been in church, and uh you've heard the word, you've heard the worship songs, the praise songs. I'm telling you, God has been putting inside of you. You cannot escape the power of God and his word. And as we can read in the book of Isaiah, that word never returns void. And so constantly you're hearing because Jesus deposited into him for three and a half years and now is beginning to come out of him. What God puts in you will eventually come out of you. All right, I made that statement and also make this next statement. What God has put in you is greater than what the devil has tried to put into you. You always got to have this idea, this thought, this truth. God is greater than Satan. Period. Period. Period. No discussions, no questions, no round tables. You know, God is greater. So what God put in Peter through Jesus Christ's ministry is greater than what the devil was putting into his minds and his thoughts, even to cause him to deny Christ three times. What God put in you is greater than what the devil's been trying to put into you all of your lifetime since you were born. Been trying to put things into me all of my lifetime, putting things in you all your lifetime. But God's word is greater. When they say one word from heaven can change your life, because all it takes is one word from God to eradicate everything the devil's been putting in your life for over 30, 40, 50, 60 years. One word from God. Received, believed, and allowed to impact your life. One word, that's it. One word can change everything the devil's done against you for all of your lifetime. One word. So when you come into your relationship with Christ and you realize one word has changed my life. What God puts in you will eventually come out of you. You may not see today, and others may not recognize it today. Not everybody sees you, as they say, I want to be seen. Not everybody sees you. They don't see what's inside of you, they don't see what's been around you, they don't see where you've come from and come out of. They don't even see where you're going, okay? They don't see it. Others may not recognize it today. They may not recognize what you've come through. They may not recognize the victories that God has placed in your life and the breakthroughs you've had. And they may not recognize the struggles. Some people don't ever know that you went through anything. Either you're a really good actor, you know, or you just, you know, you just stay, you avoid all the questions. They just never know you went through anything. You know, praise God. But God has a way of shielding you from certain things that people never see things until it's the right time for them to see. It's the right time for them to ask you. And that's what we're talking about a little bit today. When that moment comes, people who don't even understand what God has been doing in you and has done in you, that moment comes, a demand is going to be made upon your life. A simple question. A simple question. So have you always done done this in your life? Oh, so have you always been in this church? You've always been born again, whatever the question might be. Suddenly that question makes a demand on you, and you can't stop it, and you feel compelled to say, you know, I wasn't born this way. You know, this is where I began. You know, just like that question the other day. Have you ever played basketball, Dave? Suddenly it came out of me. I haven't told anybody about this, I haven't told anybody about that. You know, my brothers probably forgot about this. My mom will remember me. You know, remind me, and one time she reminded me 25, 30 years later, after Hassan says, you know, if you would have accepted that scholarship to the Naval Academy, you'd be retiring right now. That's what my mom. You'd be retiring right now. Thank you, mom. You're right. He says, Why didn't you take it? Mijo says, I didn't want to leave you, mom. I didn't want to go live in the cold in the East Coast. I didn't want to miss all the Mexican food that's here in California. You know, I wanted to stay close to home. And the other line was, I never wanted to go anywhere else but USC. That's where I wanted to go since 1967. That's where I wanted to go. You know, something I watched on TV, an athletic contest. You see at USC beating UCLA, and it's like, I want to go to that school. I want to go to that school. I want to play in that band. That's where I dropped into me. People don't know these things until it's asked, and finally you release those things and you relinquish your walls and you pull them down and you realize there's a demand made on you, and this person of this generation needs to hear this. And you share it. And you share it. And so that's what's going to happen, okay? That moment that a demand is made upon your life, what God has planted in your heart, will rise up. Not just your life experiences, also the word of God that you've allowed to impact your life. One day somebody asks you, So why do you go to church? You know, maybe you've never rehearsed that answer, but suddenly what God has put inside of you will rise up in a way that can communicate to that person because God has orchestrated that moment in your life. Peter found himself in the group of 120. Peter, like I said, he ran away. Peter said, I'm going to go fishing. You heard that Jesus was uh raised from the dead, so he comes back and rejoins the group. Then, you know, they go back to the house because that's Jesus said, you know, in his final instructions, I'll see you at the house. So they went to the house, and there was Jesus. And you don't hear anything about Peter in those couple of days and weeks, except for when John questions him or when Jesus, what you hear about is Jesus coming to Peter in front of everybody, saying, Peter, do you love me? And Jesus, and Peter says, Lord, you know. How many ever told God he knows? I did. I told God, you know God. Oh, God wants you to respond. He said, Lord, you know. And so Jesus says the next question, Well then, uh, feed my sheep. And so Peter has to, from somewhere in here, say, Okay, I'll do that. Second time, Peter, do you love me? Do you love my sheep? Do you love without me? And Peter says, Lord, you know that I love you. Why are you asking this question? He says, Feed my lambs. That's him a third time, Peter, do you love me? And Peter rises up inside and says, Yes, I. I mean, I you can imagine Peter, right? I've got to make this emphatic. I gotta make sure Jesus understands. Maybe he's hard of hearing. You know, he did go to hell and back, and that could have affected his thinking. I don't know what's going on with him, but he's asked me the same question three times. Everybody say three times.

unknown 13:44

Three times.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Well, how many times did Peter deny Christ? Three times. Well, Pastor, do you mean if if Peter denied Christ seven times, would Jesus have done it seven times? I believe he would have. Because remember, it's Peter who asked Jesus when Jesus was teaching about how to deal with offense. Luke 17, how to deal with offense? Peter's the one who asked them, Well, how many times do I gotta forgive? How many of us have ever said that? Well, how many times do I gotta go to church? How many times I gotta read my Bible? How many times do I gotta pray? How many times, Lord? As a pastor, I've heard that question so many times. Well, Pastor, how long do I have to pray? Well, Pastor, how many scriptures do I need to read? Well, Pastor, Pastor, that's human nature. We always want to know what's the bare minimum. I went to college, okay, I went to university. What do I need to get this degree? Here's the prerequisite courses you got to take, and here's the ones you got to take your second year, here's the ones you got to take your third year and your fourth year, and you get that degree. Did anybody here take extra classes? Not if you didn't have to. No. Especially at the rate, you know, there's that somebody asked me how much did your education cost? Well, I had a full ride, but at that time, my education probably cost a little between two and twenty five hundred, two thousand and twenty five hundred. That was my education, and that was a lot in those days because I could probably go to a state school for almost free for 500 bucks, 100 bucks a year, you know, whatever. Today, that's over half a million to go to school. But I'm telling you, $600,000. $600,000 to go to the Naval Academy. That's how much or the Air Force Academy. I heard that the other day. Right, full right. So you know, I will everything's uh you know, relative is the time period. But you know, back then I wasn't thinking I'm gonna take an extra class because no, I didn't have 50 bucks or 100 bucks for another two credits. If I don't need it, I ain't going. How many like that, right? I don't need it, I'm not going. Okay, what's the required minimum? I'm taking those classes. Well, that's how it are human nature. How long do I have to pray? How many scriptures do I have to read? How long do I gotta fast? We all ask these questions. So Peter asked the question, how long, how many times do I gotta forgive? And Jesus said, do the math, seven times 70. If they do the same thing to you in one day, how many of you have ever been offended 490 times in one day? Not by different people, by the same person, 490 times. And Jesus said, if they come to you and they are sorrowful and they repent, well, the blinding class mind says, Well, if they've repented, why they do it another, you know, 489 times. Who are you to question people's repentance? Who are you to judge? And that's another message I get out of uh of the Apostle Paul's teaching. You know, who are we to question somebody's repentance? When did God step off the throne and make you the supreme judge and you judge if people are repentative or people are quote unquote sincere? I love that one. I love when people tell that. Well, I don't think they were sincere. I want to, I've never shot that because it hasn't made a demand on me. But when it's demand on me, guess what? That's when Pastor David says stuff, and he steps back to let it have let it ride. I say, I don't think you're sincere, brother. That may happen, it hasn't happened yet, but I'm I'm thinking sincere. You know, because we think we're all that in a bag of potato chips. That's who we are, it's human nature, it's what the devil has put in us from the moment Adam and Eve sinned. We all got this little DNA gene called the sin nature, and we just think we know it all, and we can do a better job than God. And if I was God, oh Lord have mercy, I'm glad you're not God. So we've got to understand this. Peter was doing and going along with the program as best as he could, but he was flawed. He was flawed. So I've been talking about meeting Peter, right? Jesus at the boat and all the fish that came in. You know, Peter, God was working in Peter long before Peter knew what was happening. He didn't know it. I didn't know what God was doing to me. You don't know what God's doing in you. Long before you said, Yes, I'll I want the Lord in my life. There was a time period where God was sowing seed, God was preparing you, God was rescuing you from death. For that moment, you said, Christ, I need you. And you may not even remembered anything that came up to that moment when you said, Lord, save me, forgive me of my sins. You may not think, what does that have to do with this moment? From here on I have a new life and I forget all that. But you don't realize, as I've told my story for the last 20 years, how many times the enemy tried to kill me from birth to five years old, four or six years old, eight or ten years old, jumping off a moving truck. I haven't told my cousins that story. Jumping off a moving truck because I loved my grandpa so much, I didn't want him to leave my house. So I jumped in the back of his truck. He didn't know it. Went down the first corner, went down the long straightaway. And I decided, and then I had the thought, everybody have that realization, mom is going to bust me up big time. When I call from my grandpa's house, that she has to come pick me up. So what did I do? Before he got to the freeway, I jumped out of the truck in a moving truck, thinking that as a cartoon character that I love the Flintstones, when they were running, their feet were going, hit the road, and keep going. Well, I did that, I hit the road, I rolled over, and uh came back with bumps and bruises and torn knees, whatever. I come back, and my brothers are laughing at me, saying, Hey, I was crazy, didn't even realize that I'm scraped and bleeding, and I got bone chips in my elbow now that I still can move today sometimes and remind me that's the day you jumped off the truck. But God spared my life. We don't think about these things. We live sometimes just in the moment or without acknowledgement. So Peter sowed his boat before Jesus, he even knew Jesus was who he was. Peter told him to get away from me because I'm not worthy of this guy, he's doing miracles. I wasn't worthy of a miracle. But here's the thing just like a farmer plants a seed in the ground, and if you haven't ever planted anything, or you didn't realize you were planting something, but it started growing in your refrigerator, okay, and you open it up, something's growing in here. You you plant it, you don't see anything in the morning, you don't see anything the next day, or maybe a week, but beneath the soil, life is already working. Something is germinating, something is coming forward, something's about to come out. That seed is producing long before that harvest ever appears, and that's how you and me are here today. Somebody sowed a seed in your life before I, Pastor Dorset and I ever met you. Somebody sowed a seed in your life before you said yes to Christ. Somebody sowed a seed. They sowed a seed, and that seed was producing before the harvest. And Peter sowed a boat, and he reaped the boatload of fish. So we need to understand this the law of sowing and reaping never stops working in our lives, even when our attitude is not perfect. Our attitude, we think, can cancel us and disqualify us, but the seed of God is bigger. I would say God is bigger. Maybe that's a concept, a truth we need to just underline. And God is bigger than the devil. I was thought, you know, veggie tales, God is bigger than the boogeyman, all right? Uh, you know, and then God's word is bigger than the devil's word. Everything about God is bigger. We sing songs that none can compare. But when we really think about it in our everyday life, that nothing compared to God and what he said and what he's doing, and this book has been almost fulfilled. All been almost fulfilled. It's in here, almost fulfilled. But if we ever think for one moment, as I grew up and I used to love to watch horror movies on Saturday morning, I don't know why, but I just got intrigued by horror movies. And when uh the werewolf was going about the great Lon Cheney, they came out with a silver bullet and a cross and some garlic. And I'm just laughing. And you know, that werewolf, he don't very he just always swiped it when he saw the cross, he swiped it and calculated the same thing. Because you think for that one moment they write in these movies. That there is a chance that these things aren't going to protect you. They're not going to stop the evil and the wicked. And they knock it over. And, you know, the guy has to shoot the silver bullet. And the other guy he has to put the knife into the heart or the cross. And, you know, that's how I was raised. That's how I grew up. I was listening and watching those things. Of course, I had nightmares. Of course I would sleep next to my mom and dad's bed at night. And then finally, finally, when I started understand the word of God, I would just go on purpose and watch TV. And I would see Dracula come in. I'd start rebuking Dracula, you foul demon. I'd start speaking to those, you know, religious people that have the cross and they're shaking. Like, do you ever believe this cross is going to stop Dracula? So you at least use the cross to hit him over the head or something, jam it in his heart. I mean, just speaking words, and I just would love to watch horror movies and say, nope, I would rise up and say, I'd bind that devil, I'd bind that demon. You're not bigger than God, you're not bigger than truth and righteousness. So even when your understanding is limited, God's still working. Even when you don't realize that you deserve or are worthy of anything, God's honoring your faith and God's honoring your generosity before you fully believe it. So sometimes God blesses us because His triple, His principles are working even while He's still working on our hearts. So don't think that truth, that truth that's been spread out, that's not truthful. That you got to check every box and you got to be totally perfect for God to do anything for you. If that was true, you know, none of us would be here. None of us would be here. We're all here for the grace. Everybody say for grace, it's for the grace of God. That's why we're here, the mercy of God. Don't be tempted to fall into that trap of the enemy. So Jesus saw Peter and what Peter could not see in himself. I'm going to get deeper into this because I want it to be resonate inside of you that the opportunity is coming. Because I've been preaching this for going on, what, 38 years, 39 years? 36, 37, where said 26, okay, three more years, 37 years. So we're preaching on this for 37 years, and but the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, and the moment's gonna come when God's gonna make a demand on it. When some hungry soul is gonna make a demand on you. Some hungry soul who's painfully can't live from day to day, who has no hope, doesn't know where to go, and they run into you, they work beside you, they're in the next cubicle. And a demand's gonna be made on what's inside of you. And guess what? I pray that you're not just ready for it, but I pray you'll just allow it to flow. Just allow it to flow. But Pastor, I don't I have the scripture, Pastor, but I didn't know where it was found. Who cares? I've been many places without knowing the directions of the address. Just figure it out, you get there. Right, Tom, we used to have a Thomas Guide. Man, we didn't have GPS, we had a Thomas Guide. Look it up. Then the next decade or so we had Google Maps. Oh, I gotta put it in the computer, print it out. Now we're so codependent on it, we forget. I told my wife the other day, I know how to get from downtown LA home. I know at least 25 ways to get home. Some will bring me by a restaurant, some will give me by this taco place, some will bring me by this ice cream shop. I know how to get home from LA. All right, that's just how life has been. Remember, that word is inside of you. Stand up with me today. That word's inside you, it's germinating, it will not return void. We can quote the prophet Isaiah as he's giving the word of the Lord. The prophet Isaiah he says in the 54th chapter, one of the last parts of that scripture, he says, the word is like the rain or the seed that is sown, and the rain comes down and waters it. And I loved it because in the end of it, he says, You're not gonna get thorns and thistles. You're gonna get exactly what the word is designed to produce in your life. And you might think I've been living in thorns and thistles, things not coming out like I believe and thought they were gonna happen. God's word is true. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word today. We thank you, Lord, that you're giving us insight. We thank you that you continually pour into us, continually sow into us, Lord, your wisdom, your grace, your mercy, and your love, and your true character and who you are for us and in us. And so, Father, we thank you. And we just say, let the word have its free course in our lives. Let the word produce what it's designed to produce in our lives. And Father, give us some awareness and some insight, if you will, of what you're doing and how we can walk in it even more, more closely and more confidently. But by faith, we believe, God, your word is working in us right now. Your will will be accomplished in our lives. And the moment and the purpose that we were put on this earth for will soon enough come to pass and be reality. And along the way, you have been using us, and we're grateful and thankful for that. I pray for every person here, Lord, every person watching, Lord, that they will be blessed by the word of God and know that God's working in them to do both, to do both things, to do his will and of his good pleasure in us. In Jesus' name. Amen.