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Relationship Over Religion Series
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I'm crazy about Jesus. I know that I'm crazy—you don't even have to tell me. All you got to do is mention His name. You know what's crazy? We don't even have to talk about God. All I got to do is think on the goodness of Jesus, think about every time He showed up for me, and I get to loosen it because I know God showed up for me time and time and time again.
God's been so good to me. The beautiful thing is I don't have to explain it to some of you because it resonates with your spirit already. You think about it and you start crying. You think about how many times God showed you mercy. God, you're so good.
This praise isn't for perfect people. For those of us that can admit God had to love me through my ugly days—God had to show me grace and mercy. He had to give me both because I know I was messed up. I know I had issues. I know I wasn't seeking Him the way I should. But still, He showed up for me.
For those that your first time here, welcome to Evolve Church. We love God, and we're crazy about Jesus. God's been amazing to us in this house. God's been faithful. God's still moving in miracles.
I got a message this week from someone named Meg. She had to go back to the doctor, and they thought they found cancerous cells that would require surgery. But we had a Sunday where God called people up for healing. She came forward, went back to the doctor, and the doctor said, "Whatever I thought I saw, that first test must have been wrong." God had healed her again.
That's why we're crazy about Jesus. You can't make this stuff up. God is faithful.
We are a Bible-based church. My gift is to preach the scriptures you've heard all your life but make them come alive for you. My calling is so that you can see yourself in the word of God. When you can see yourself in the word of God, then you can start to grow and have a real relationship with God.
If this is your first time here, you are not a visitor—you are our special guest. I will meet you in the hallway after service.
At the end of service, we invite people to come give their lives to Christ. Nobody's going to make you say anything or put a microphone in your mouth. We just want to hug you and take you to a private room where we can pray for you and talk to you, bringing you into the body of Christ.
For those saved here today, I want you to pray during that moment for all people to have a relationship with Jesus. Pray: "Lord, for those that don't know you, I pray that they would know you the way that I know you. I pray that the enemy won't keep them in their seats afraid of stepping up, but they will boldly declare that they want a relationship with you in Jesus name."
We're in the third installation of this series: "Relationship Over Religion." Has this word been blessing you over the last two weeks?
The subtitle for today is Don't Settle. Some of you can get this word and go home already. God brought you to church this morning just to remind you that He made you for more. You've been settling with what people have been giving you. You've been settling, knowing that you deserve better than what you've been receiving. You've let time pass, staying in toxic situations.
God is telling you: don't settle.
Let's look at 2 Corinthians 11:2. Paul said:
"For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promise you as a pure bride to one husband, Christ."
It's powerful when you look at how the Bible explains spiritual relationship. Paul is telling them: "I promise you as a bride that you will be pure for your husband, which is Christ himself."
When the Bible talks about our relationship with God, remember: it's relationship, not religion. It uses the term marriage because marriage signifies the real intimacy—not just religious practices.
When it's just church, you go, you experience it, you go home, but there's no real connection. It's just a building and a group of people. But when you're connected to God and it becomes a covenant, when it becomes a marriage, you start to remind yourself: everything that I do represents Him. I have to make sure I'm moving in a way that honors my marriage, that honors my connection with God.
Notice: our connection with God is compared to marriage, not dating.
Dating means you can date many people at one time. You can be talking to one person, texting another, Facebook and Instagram three more. That's how people do nowadays. And if we're honest, some folks treat marriage as dating—still doing all that stuff.
But here's what marriage is supposed to be: it's with that one person. Marriage is a marriage of decision and commitment.
Some of you have been too dedicated to your boyfriend or girlfriend for too many years. Can I talk to you plain? I'm not here to break up anybody—don't go home and say, "Pastor said it." That's between you and God. But let me preach this:
You've been dating for five years. You've given this person five years of your life, and they still don't know if they want to be with you. How indecisive can you be? You're stringing me along while you keep doing what you do.
I know how the game is played. You've got to decide: have I already given so many years to this person that I want to keep being strong alone while somebody is still trying to make a decision if I'm worth their commitment?
Marriage is when it gets permanent. Marriage is when it gets real.
Don't act like a wife if you haven't been one. Don't act like a husband if you're not being one. I don't have to pay all your bills—I haven't made a covenant with you. I don't have to give you my body—I haven't made a covenant with you.
Until we have covenant, we're just talking. That's the way it's supposed to be.
When you live for one, you have to die to the other. When you live for God, you die to the enemy. You say, "I don't do that stuff anymore because I'm living for God. That's my covenant. I died to the enemy."
It's the same with marriage. When you get married, every other romantic relationship has to die. You may have had other romantic relationships before that person. But when you get married, all of those other romantic connections have to die.
I don't have to worry about what's going on in your life. It's none of my business. If an ex texts, "Hey, I'm just checking on you. How are you doing?" Please don't check on me. I'm good. I'm doing really, really well. I'm married. I don't have to think about past connections because when I live for one, I have to die to the other.
When we're married to Christ, our interest in the world has to die.
Galatians 6:14 says:
"As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. For because of that cross, my interest in the world has been crucified, and the world's interest in me has also died."
Paul says two things are happening:
First: "My interest in the world has died." You've been through this when you've actually made a commitment to God.
There are different kinds of people in the room. Some are here for the motivational speech. Some came because a friend invited them. Some are here out of habit. And some actually made a commitment to God: "I'm living for Jesus. This isn't a game for me. I'm living for Him."
When you start living for Him because you're married to Him, your interests in the world start to die. People don't understand that. They're like, "No, you're acting holier than thou. You're acting different." But you're like, "I'm not trying to have this fight with you. I just don't want to go out anymore. I've lost the interest in that."
Second: "The world's interest in me has died, too."
For those of us who are really saved, you know what I'm talking about. When you really start loving God, people don't text you as much. Some of your phones are dry right now just because you're saved. You got holy, and they got no more friends.
People who wanted to be with you so much started falling back when they realized there were boundaries and standards based on the excellence you have in Jesus. They don't want to hang out anymore. You look up on social media—they're all kicking it together. You thought you were part of the friend group. But when God starts changing you, you stop getting invitations because they were friends with the old you, not the you that now glorifies God with your life and your obedience.
We see this relationship dynamic in how Jesus approached the cross. In Matthew 26:39 and 42, we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Most of the time when we read the story, we talk about when Jesus prayed:
"God, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done."
Essentially, He was telling God, "I don't want to do it."
I love the humanity of Jesus because He was human like us. Jesus, who never sinned, never messed up, never did anything wrong—even He reached a point where God was challenging Him to do something He didn't want to do.
If Jesus, who never made a mistake, reached a point where He struggled with God's will, how much harder will it be for you who's totally flawed, who made a lot of mistakes, who did a lot of wrong? You're going to get to seasons where God challenges you to kill stuff you don't want to kill, to put things on the cross you don't want to put on the cross.
Up until that moment in the garden, everything Jesus did was fine. He said, "I only do what the Father tells me to do. I only say what the Father tells me to say."
But in this moment, we see His humanity. He gets so frustrated that God isn't changing His mind that He goes and gets mad at His friends. He wakes up Peter:
"Man, you couldn't pray with me for an hour at the time I needed you the most?"
That sounds like a lot of us. When we're going through seasons, we get frustrated that God isn't doing what we want. So we start getting mad at our friends. "You ain't texting me. You ain't checking. I'm always checking up on you. But when I go through, where are you?"
You're frustrated because you're in a season where you're being tried. We see Jesus in that season. He's been tried, and now He's like, "I needed my friends to be friends right now. I'm always there for them, but ain't nobody there for me when I'm going through it."
He's human just like us.
But then we see something powerful. This part of the prayer isn't taught on much. Matthew 26:42 says:
"Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed something different. He said, 'My Father, if this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.'"
Look at the power of the relationship in this. This is where we see the relationship.
Jesus realized He was only thinking about Himself and not what the Father wanted. So He came back and changed His prayer.
He realized: "Man, I keep telling God what I don't want to do. I'm never asking God, 'How does it hurt you when I'm not doing what you want me to do?'"
That's the question He asked Himself: "How does it hurt you?"
Jesus realizes in the relationship: "God, I'm sorry. I've only thought about what I wanted. But if I don't die on the cross, think of the millions of people—billions of people—that would die without knowing you."
He comes back to God and says: "God, I'm changing my prayer."
Many of us have been in that space in our own relationships where we realized we were being selfish and we had to come back and apologize to our partner.
Some of you have never gone back and apologized to your partner. That's terrible. That's awful.
Healthy relationships sometimes require you to acknowledge that you've been selfish. "Man, I'm talking to you about what I want from you, but I've never considered what I'm doing to you in my behavior. I never considered that how I'm talking to you may be damaging you. I never considered that what I did to you may have caused you to be so broken—that's the reason you're acting the way you're acting right now."
It's easy to be a victim, but it's hard to take accountability.
Many of us are in a relationship with God where we need to come back and apologize to God. You're used to the church saying you need to "repent." But what that really means is: apologize. Change your way of living. We've been selfish—only thinking about what we want from God, not what God wants from us.
It's so easy to come to church and say, "Lord, I just want you to do this for my family. I just want you to do this in my job and my career. God, I asked you to bless me in this area. God, open this door."
But God is like: "I can't wait for the day for you to pray and say, 'God, what do you want?' I'm calling this thing a relationship, but we being real—you're just taking everything you can from me and leaving me on read."
Paul challenges us in Philippians 3:8:
"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage so that I could gain Christ."
Paul said: "I looked at my life, and everything that didn't match Jesus, I threw it away."
I'm trying to help somebody: everything that didn't match Jesus, throw it away.
Too many of us are settling for stuff the enemy has given us, and it ain't God's best. It ain't God's best for you. God doesn't want you living this way.
You're just settling for whatever people are offering you, and He's like, "No. If it doesn't represent the best that God has for me, I'm throwing it away. It's no good. It's garbage. I'm letting it go."
Some of you are hard to help right now because you've been settling and you don't even know it.
You know the example of the frog? They put a frog in boiling water. The frog jumped out immediately because it knew: this is dangerous to me.
But they put the frog back in lukewarm water. Little by little, they turned up the heat more and more. Eventually, the frog was cooked alive.
That's what happens to many of us. You don't recognize it's dangerous. You just keep being connected to lukewarm people.
When you connect with lukewarm people, you don't recognize the temperature getting turned up more and more because you let people get away with a little bit, a little bit at a time:
It's the little foxes that spoil the vine. It starts off small. You let somebody disrespect you a little bit, and it just gets worse and worse. Years later, you're that frog in the water, being cooked by your situation.
The challenge in this: when you need to have a real conversation, I don't know if you're going to receive it. But my job is to preach it.
In order for you not to settle, you want to know the real secret? You've got to be prepared not to have anything at all.
I know you don't want to hear that, but I'm just trying to help you.
When people know you need them, you start letting people do stuff you would never let somebody do to you. You feel like you need them. You think, "If I don't have them, I'm not going to have any help. I need help with my kids. I've been going through some stuff."
When people know that you need them, they'll play in your face and ask you to take them serious.
The moment you feel like you need something, you will begin to settle for whatever is available. You settle out of desperation.
There are some people who only got you because they caught you when you were desperate.
If you were healthy, they would have never slipped through the cracks. They wouldn't have stood a chance. But because you were going through, hurting, tired of being misused, tired of being alone, tired of going through it—you just started letting people in.
You thought, "I guess I never gave this kind of person a chance." And you settled out of desperation.
Why do you settle out of desperation?
And there's always a reason to settle.
But guess what? There's also always a reason to never give up on you.
Can I give you some reasons?
It's always a reason not to give up on you. It's always a reason.
Paul said in Philippians 3:13:
"No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it. But this one thing I focus on: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead."
He's talking about the goal that he sees in the future—the excellency, the place of perfection that he's chasing.
He says: "Hey, I have not achieved it."
It's okay to say that you haven't achieved it because all of us are chasing something. All of us are going somewhere. All of us see a brighter future and where God is getting ready to take us.
It's okay to say: I haven't achieved it yet.
But notice what he says: "But this one thing I focus on."
Some of you can be free right now. You're trying to do too much. Let me set you free: it doesn't take all that.
You did a lot, and that's good. Congratulations. But you're killing yourself trying to do all this stuff—putting your hand in five different pots, and you can't cook all that at one time.
At some point, you've got to step back and say: "I'm going to focus on just one thing."
"Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead."
The number one principle to make sure you never settle is to forget the past.
Too many of us get caught reminiscing. And when you reminisce, you start to romanticize the past. It'll have you stuck in relationships that are killing you. It'll have you stuck in sins that are killing you. It'll have you stuck in lifestyles that are killing you.
When you start to reminisce and romanticize the past, you forget the trauma and only think of the good times.
You forget that the past had you running into the church broken, looking for God to heal you, looking for God to help you, looking for God to restore you. But the enemy tricks you into opening the door you closed a year ago just to keep yourself safe. Now you only remember and reminisce on the good stuff.
You'll trick yourself into going back to your past.
"They weren't all that bad. There was some good. We did laugh a lot." Yeah. And you cried even more because of it.
In verse 14, he says:
"I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us."
You cannot run your race while looking at who's behind you.
Anybody who ran track knows this: when you're running, you can't look behind you or to the side of you. When you start looking around, you're going to start running outside your lane. You're going to start crashing into other people. You're going to start slowing down.
You're supposed to be looking ahead, but you're trying to run ahead while seeing what's behind you.
Paul said: you've got to forget what's behind you and look forward to what's ahead of you.
God has better for you. He wants better for you than you want for yourself.
God never tells you to put down one thing without telling you to pick something else up. He's never telling you to release something if He doesn't intend to give you something better than the thing you're releasing.
1 Corinthians 15:10 says:
"But by God's grace, I am what I am."
I love this verse because it's so easy to get stuck trying to prove yourself to people.
Let me release you right now: Don't ever try to prove yourself. Don't ever try to prove that you've changed.
People judge me all the time. They don't like the way I dress. They don't like my hair. Yeah, I got braids and dreads. You've never seen it. That's okay. But that's my thing. That's my look.
I know that I'm a pastor. I don't fit the typical stereotype. But because I don't fit the typical, that's why 11,000 people got saved in six years. God called me to somebody different. I ain't trying to look like everybody else. I'm trying to look like the man God told me to be.
By God's grace, I am what I am.
Watch this. This is powerful:
"And his grace shown to me was not wasted."
I want to challenge you this morning: "God, you keep giving me chance after chance, grace after grace, mercy after mercy. I don't want to waste the opportunity you're giving me."
So many of us just waste the opportunity.
God opens doors. God puts you in good places. He gives you ideas, business ideas, business ventures, finances to run ahead. But you're wasting the grace because you're just sitting there and not doing anything with the gift God gave to you.
Some of you know that God called you to preach, and you still aren't preaching because you're just wasting the grace.
Some of you know you deserve better, but you're settling where you are because you're just wasting the grace.
Paul said: "When God gave me grace, I made sure of one thing—that I didn't waste the grace God gave to me. I'm not going to waste this opportunity. God didn't give me too many chances. I should have been dead in my mess, but God forgave me and restored me. I'm not going to waste the grace He gave to me."
Paul said: "Watch this."
"I worked harder than all the others."
Man, this is where the relationship is shown here.
He wasn't just asking God for all the grace. He gave God His all back.
He wasn't just saying, "God, I want all this grace. Thank you for all the grace. God, you're so good. Thank you for the blessing."
He said: "No, God. As much as you've given to me, I'm going to give you my all right back in return."
Why is this important?
Because no relationship is sustainable without reciprocity.
What does that mean? If you're not putting something in and you're only receiving, then you are a user.
If you're not putting anything in and you're only receiving, you are a user. You didn't help make the product—you're just using the product.
And you can never be safe around people who use you because they drain you.
And I want to make sure that at least in this room, we're not just using God when we need a blessing.
Some people just use God when they need God to do something. You be faithful to church three weeks in a row until God brings that miracle check. Then they don't see you for the next six months because they didn't want God—they wonder what He could do for them.
The same way we hate being used—what about how God feels when we use Him for what we can get from Him?
Let me close with one last verse: Ephesians 3:20.
"Now unto Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to the power that is at work within us."
When we read this verse, you grow up and you study the big words. "God can do immeasurably"—that just sounds powerful, even if you don't know how to define it. It sounds like that's something good you want Him to do.
When it says "according to the power that is at work within us," we focus on ourselves. You've got to have some power at work in you. But I really don't think either of those are the most important part.
The most important word in that verse is: MORE.
God can do immeasurably MORE than anything you can ask or think.
I need you to concentrate on the word MORE because it reveals to you that wherever you are in life right now, God's got more.
I'm trying to teach you not to settle once and for all.
If you get too comfortable where you are, you forget that God still owns the cattle of a thousand hills. You forget that God still has a brighter future ahead of you. You forget that God is still doing more in your life—opening more doors, bringing more healing, bringing more favor.
God can do more.
Jesus said it this way:
"The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come that they might have life. They might have it more abundantly."
One translation says: "They might live life to the full."
Some of you in here may feel like, "Man, my life is pretty all right." But you're not living it to the full.
There's a difference. You're doing your own thing, and that's cool. You've got some good days and bad days. Honestly, you've got more bad days than good if you were to be real.
But Jesus said: "It's not just about you having good days and bad days. I want you to live your life to the full. I want you to feel so complete once you have the relationship with God that there is no void. There is no hole. There is no space in your heart where My presence is missing."
Let me pray for you:
Father, this is my prayer: God, that we would be with you, that we would live life to the full, God. We would know what it means, Lord God, to have you and to say, "God, it's not just that I'm living. Living is okay. But I want to live life to the fullest with you, God."
So many of us in this room have settled. We've settled for inferiority. We've settled for less. We just accepted, "God, whatever I'm going through, I'm just stuck here."
No. We are not stuck anywhere. We have liberty through Christ Jesus. We have freedom through Christ. We have power through Christ.
I pray that this message would encourage somebody, God, to come out of whatever situation they're stuck in and to continue to believe you for more in Jesus name.
If you never got a chance to say yes to Jesus and you want to, if you're a person that's saying, "Pastor, I want to live my life to the full. I want to start living my life to the full—not just these pockets of joy that I have, but getting rid of the pockets of sadness that stay deep within. I want my life to be full in God." If that's you, you can come forward at this time.
Any person that wants to say yes to Jesus, yes to God, wants their life to be full—I'm not going to make you say anything, but this is a big moment for you. God's waiting on you. God's pulling on you in this moment. Don't be nervous.
If you're looking for a church home, this is also your moment to come.
If you want to say yes to God, you can come forward. If you want to say yes to Jesus, you can come. If you're tired of settling for a life without God, you can come forward.
There's more. God's got more for you. Do not settle. Do not accept that this is all that you have. God's got more for you.
