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When he got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. This encounter in Mark 5:2-3 is critical because it teaches us about expectation—a foundational concept for how we live our lives.
There are two types of expectation, and this distinction is essential. Natural expectation is reactional—it comes from circumstances and past experiences. If people have let you down in your twenties, thirties, and forties, you develop a pattern. Now, even if God sends someone who will truly support you, you cannot appreciate them because you expect to be let down.
Biblical expectation, by contrast, is rooted in God's word, God's character, and His promises. The homework this week is simple: discover, research, and remember His promises. There are so many in the Bible it may take three or four months. But here's the key: don't tell me what you expect if you can't show me where He promised it.
When you have biblical expectation in a circle of people with only natural expectation, they look at your circumstances and think you're crazy when you don't act according to what the situation suggests. They don't realize that circumstances say one thing, but faith says it will turn out differently.
God is not just Gyra, not just Roa, not just Jehovah Rafa—He is a rule breaker. When people step out of boats, gravity says they sink. But when God is with you, He breaks rules. When people are thrown into fiery furnaces, fire should consume them—but God keeps you safe. When you have no money, things should be repossessed—yet somehow you still have what you need.
I'm not shouting just because He's a way maker or miracle worker. I'm shouting because He's a rule breaker. If anybody here has seen God break a rule in your life—when you should have died in a car accident but didn't, when you should have lost your mind three years ago but didn't—touch five people and tell them: He's a rule breaker.
This is critical: circumstances change, but God's character does not. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The reason you don't know how to properly expect is because you keep treating God like a variable. God is not a variable—He is a constant. Your circumstances don't change God; God changes your circumstances.
The foundation of natural expectation is probability. I had to tell my son, who hasn't played much varsity football and has no scholarship offers, that based on probability, getting a scholarship as a senior would be difficult. But I said, "When God breaks it, your praise will match what He broke." That's why people don't understand the way some of us praise God. When you know the circumstance and realize the rule God had to break for you to be where you are, you can't have cute, educated, sophisticated worship. You have to give God a crazy praise.
What emotion is attached to natural expectation? Uncertainty, anxiety, doubt. What emotion is attached to biblical faith? Hope, confidence, trust. When you find yourself in a season where you're not trusting God, maybe it's because your biblical expectation isn't solid. You're trusting your pattern and your circumstances instead of trusting God.
I was convicted by my own message recently. My expectation had become: if I'm not here, if certain leaders aren't here, this will be rough. Then young people got up, started worshiping, and the whole atmosphere changed. My hope should not be built on me—my hope is built on God. When I have biblical expectation, I can have church by myself on nothing less.
What I'm trying to do in this season is give you language. When life gets thick, I want your language to be right. Don't say, "Well, I hope it's going to work out." Instead, understand that some of your greatest detractors to your dream aren't the people hating on you—they're the people who love you. They don't want to see you hurt. The quickest way to stop detractors is through language.
Instead of saying "I'm praying it goes well," say "I got biblical expectation." They won't even know how to respond to that. When someone tries to discourage you with negative words, remember: what you have to say doesn't trump what God said. Expectation is based on what people say. Biblical expectation is based on what God said.
Last week I taught you: your tomb will not be your testimony, your past pain will not be your permanent place, your trauma will not talk you out of your transformation, and revival is not for perfect people.
We met a man in the tombs. A tomb wasn't just where he was—it had become a part of who he was becoming. It wasn't just his location; it was becoming his identity. He lived in a graveyard and acted dead. Here's what I want you to understand: location becomes identity.
Physically, location is obvious. Spiritually, location can become a spiritual place. But organizationally—here's my concern—on your job, you act like your location. "They don't pay me enough for that." "That's where I'm going to stay." When you have mid-level people with a mid-level mindset training you to be like them, you end up where they are.
When I worked as a night auditor at a hotel from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., I didn't act like my location. I arrived early, set up my station, and left messages of encouragement above the time clock: "Today will be a blessed day. Walk in freedom." People started looking forward to those messages. Then I stayed until 10 a.m. to work in the sales office, reaching out to UAB and schools to bring business to the hotel. People said I was doing too much. But here's the truth: there are three types of people. Some don't care and settle. Some do just enough to not lose their job. Then some of us have an innate ability—wherever we go, people feel our presence. I'm not going to act like my location. I'm not over these ministries, but if I see something wrong, I fix it. Don't act like your location.
There are five things that we turn into tombs:
On unhealed memories: Philippians 3:13 says, "But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead." We keep rehearsing the pain instead of releasing it. Some of you spend too much time rehearsing. I'm not saying you shouldn't deal with it—you need to get healed from it. But we're three years in, ten months removed from it, and you're still talking about it.
Here's the critical truth: tombs are often built from memories we refuse to mourn properly. In church, we don't talk about this enough. It's hard to properly move on if you don't mourn. A lot of you are moving on but aren't mourning.
Mourning—the expression of deep sorrow for someone or something that has died—is essential. It represents a new beginning and a fresh start. You have to take your mourning season.
It's hard to properly move on if you don't mourn. A lot of you are moving on but aren't mourning. Let me give you PMJ's definition: the expression of deep sorrow for someone or something that has died.
Now, notice something interesting. The word "mourning" (M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G) and "morning" (M-O-R-N-I-N-G) are remarkably similar. Morning represents new beginnings and a fresh start. But mourning is the deep sorrow that must come first.
Here's the critical truth: new beginnings will never feel new if you haven't properly dealt with what was old. Some of you keep taking your morning into your mourning—you're trying to start fresh without first grieving what's passed. You have to take your mourning season.
Victory and failures are both traps. Tombs are often built from memories we refuse to mourn. This is why we have to start mourning victories. For many of you, victory is a trap—because victory can lead to complacency. You're so busy reliving the glory days that you're stuck there.
Failure can lead to fear. Either way, you're building a tomb. The worst thing for some of you is your last win.
The second tomb we must deal with is toxic relationships—those that drain, demean, and distract from God-given purpose. The key trait of a toxic relationship is that it consistently leads you away from your wholeness and health toward dysfunction.
We stay connected to dysfunction because it's familiar. When we hear "toxic relationships," most people think about who you're dating. But the number one most toxic relationship is often your family, friends, or co-workers. Stop minimizing relationships to just romantic ones. The reason you keep picking certain people is because something was never healed in your family relationships.
We'd rather deal with a predictable pain than step into unknown healing. The tomb becomes the space where we confuse comfort with captivity. If we're not careful, we'll think that because we're comfortable, we're safe. But comfort doesn't equal safety.
Consider this: if you're standing outside in the rain under a roof, you're dry and comfortable—until a tornado comes. Many of the places in your life that bring you comfort are only built for comfort until something really happens. Many of us don't even know we're held captive until life happens.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)
I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. (John 11:25-26)
We stop believing in the future because the past disappointed us. This is the third tomb: dead dreams. When disappointment comes, we bury our vision, creativity, and hope. But buried does not mean broken beyond resurrection.
You may be in a season where God is calling you to resurrect things you buried. Who's been finding yourself lately tripping on old ideas and dreams you said you were going to do?
In my early twenties, I felt called to be mayor of Birmingham. I wasn't going to tell anybody I wasn't going to do it. A city council president named Carol Smitherman spoke life into me and let me come into the city council chambers. I sat in the mayor's seat. I had flyers made, a whole campaign going. I practiced my speech. I was ready. The title may not be the same, but the spiritual responsibility is.
I've also always wanted to do standup comedy. I felt like I'd be good at it. I wanted to act. I wanted to do R&B. I used to write music for people under another name that none of you know about. But I had to bury it.
Here's what I want to free you to understand: sometimes you bury dreams because you realize that's not what God has for you. Other times you bury dreams because you ran out of time and something in you made you shift. Just because it's buried doesn't mean God can't resurrect it.
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. (Matthew 15:8)
I desire mercy, not sacrifice and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6)
The fourth tomb is religious routine. We substitute real transformation for ritual. We go through the motions, sing songs, lift our hands, but our hearts are still in the grave.
I don't want religious ritual where we go to church, sing two slow songs and one fast song, get preached to, go home, and nothing in us changes. This is critical because revival doesn't come to maintain the tomb. It comes to empty it.
I'm teaching on revival because I feel it happening. It's not coming—it's happening. And it's not going to be four nights of church. It's going to be transformation in your life personally in such a way that you're never the same.
The fifth tomb is internal labels. We accept identities given to us by trauma, culture, and failure. That's an internal label.
People say, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." That's a lie. If I break my wrist, it hurts, but they put it back in place, put a cast on it, give me some nice treats. I'm never going to feel that pain again. I can laugh, joke, be happy. But when somebody says something that cuts you deep, you don't want to eat. You don't want to be seen.
Frederick Douglass said it like this: "It's easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men." Internal labels set us up. "I'll always be this way. I'll never get out of this."
I had to repent to my staff. I didn't do anything bad, but in building this church, I started at twenty-five, and I was sort of a tyrant. It wasn't because I was mean; every weekend was an emergency to me. If they sang a song wrong, we had a meeting after church. Why did you hit the note wrong? We practiced all week. In my mind, if we did anything wrong, God would take his hand off us and none of this would have happened. I was psycho about my vision.
I would walk through and if there was a piece of paper on the floor, I'd gather the whole staff. "How many times have we walked past this paper? Is it not personal to you?" I was crazy. I would vacuum the sanctuary because I didn't think anybody would do it right. I would sit in rehearsal watching every moment. Every weekend was an emergency. Every week, I felt like if I disappointed God, I would drop dead on the spot.
Because of it, I started creating internal labels in my organization that now I have to destroy. I'd say, "Nobody leads a song but this person." I created internal labels where now if you don't feel like you're a superstar singer, you don't even want to sing.
What labels are you creating in your house? What label have you called your child so long that they're now walking around with a fear of being called it, which creates an internal label? That's critical.
God is not waiting on you to come out of the tomb. We're in a season where he's coming out to get you.
1. It's time to evict the grief from your mind and give God your memory. It's critical that we release what we've been rehearsing.
2. It's time to walk away from graves wearing people's names. There's a difference between a tombstone and a statue. One marks death; one celebrates accomplishment and inspires. A statue is a monument built to inspire. When you walk up to a statue, you think, "Wow, look what they accomplished." But most important isn't the day you were born or the day you die—it's the dash in the middle. Don't become a tombstone in someone else's cemetery.
3. It's time to resurrect dreams you gave up on. I receive that.
4. It's time to exchange religion for relationship. Stop going through motions and begin going through transformation.
5. It's time to bury the label and rise in your identity.
Revival must begin from the tomb. Revival won't break loose now that you're whole—you'll miss God. Consider the demon-possessed man who saw Jesus get off the boat. If he had said, "I can't let him see me like this," he would have died possessed.
How cold-blooded is a demon? Scripture opens by saying every night he was cutting himself, yet he hadn't bled out. The demon was cutting him in places where he couldn't bleed out because a demon needs a body to function. A demon will let you do everything but kill you. When Jesus cast the demon out, it jumped into the pigs because demons need bodies. They have to be attached to something living.
Some of your friendships aren't free friendships. Some of your friendships aren't friendships at all—they're demons trying to attach to something that's living because there are certain places they can't get to without your favor.
Your tomb will not be your testimony. Your past pain will not be your permanent place. Your trauma will not out-talk your transformation. Revival is not for perfect people. It's for people who are still reaching for God. This is where revival must begin—where people have forgotten dreams, forgotten how to feel, and forgotten how to believe.
I'm witnessing real transformation in real time. This weekend, a brother I grew up with lost his son—an 18-year-old who passed away from what doctors are calling a freak accident while lifting weights. He went home tired, took some pain medicine, and said they'd go to the doctor tomorrow. He never woke up.
I think about how many times my own boys have come home from football practice hurting, and I've said, "Here, take some medicine. If it's still hurting in the morning, we'll go to the doctor." If we ever needed God, we need him right now.
God is so much more than paying your bills. It's deeper than needing God to give you a job, heal your body, or pay your rent. I need God to function. I want us to reach a place in our lives where we don't function without him.
I want people to call you super spiritual. When they ask what you're going to eat, you're praying. They say, "Why are you praying about food?" But I don't know if there's food poisoning in there. I don't know what might happen at that restaurant. I want to be in a place where I trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding. In all your ways—what I'm going to eat, where I'm going to go, where I'm going to live—I want everything submitted to him.
