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Part 4 of 8'The Presence of God' Series
Evolve Church Series: The Presence of God
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Part 4 of 8'The Presence of God' Series
Evolve Church Series: The Presence of God
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
God wants you to be part of a community of believers who can help and assist you on your journey and speak life into you, especially during the hardest times. Everything we do here at Evolve Church is in agreement with God's will. We understand that God wants community, and we host our services specifically to help you develop in your faith while keeping you connected to a community of believers.
If this is your first time here, we want to thank you for choosing to be here. You could have been anywhere in this city, but you chose to come today. We believe that God led you here, and we truly believe you will experience something great because God has something in store for you.
God loves a cheerful giver. God is so mighty and wonderful in all His ways, and He makes sure you are blessed. In 2 Corinthians 9:10, the Bible tells us that God gives you seed to sow, and He also provides you with bread. God is saying: "With the seeds I give you, those seeds are meant to advance your life, elevate your life, and help you. I'm also going to give you the necessities, so you don't have to worry about using the seed for those things."
Why do we give? We use our seeds to be generous to other people and to be a blessing to them. The way God proves to you that you are blessed is when you are a blessing to other people. The beautiful thing is that you never have to dig from your own reservoir to be a blessing. God promises He'll supply you with seeds to be a blessing—all you have to do is be obedient and bless others. When you do that, God will continue to offer you ample opportunity to be blessed in every way of your life.
We are in 1 Samuel 14, and we're looking at the story of King Saul. This is part of our series on "The Presence of God," with the subtitle: Mistakes vs. Decisions.
Saul made a rash decision. He said something foolish—that no one could eat anything until they won the war. This was not wise. Saul and his men would be fighting people who could eat while they couldn't eat, making them weaker.
Jonathan, Saul's son, didn't hear his father's command, so he went to the backside of the army and defeated his father's enemies. But while fighting, Jonathan ate some honey because he needed energy. He didn't know about his father's vow.
When Saul tried to pray, he didn't get a response from God. Instead of looking at his own life, he immediately assumed someone else had sinned.
"Then Saul said to his leaders: 'Something's wrong. I want all my Army commanders to come here. We must find out what sin was committed today. I vow by the name of the Lord who rescued Israel that the sinner will surely die—even if it's my own son Jonathan.' But no one would tell him what the trouble was." (1 Samuel 14:38)
Imagine a sinner being this angry about somebody else's sin. Don't that sound like church people? People get so mad: "Oh, there's so much sin in the world." But it's a gathering of sinners, all saved by grace.
Saul demanded: "Tell me what you've done." Jonathan admitted, "I tasted a little honey. It was only a little bit on the end of my stick. Does that deserve death?"
Saul responded, "Yes, Jonathan, you must die. May God strike me and even kill me if you do not die for this."
But the people broke in and said to Saul: "Jonathan has won this great victory for Israel. Should he die? Far from it! As surely as the Lord lives, not one hair on his head will be touched. For God helped him do a great deed today."
So the people rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death.
Here we have the birth of a religious spirit. Saul was willing to kill his own son to keep his public vow, even though his son helped him win the victory.
You have to be careful with super sanctimonious religious people, because they will kill good just to keep their religion. Saul wasn't even thinking about what he was saying. He just said, "We made a vow—whoever did it is going to have to die."
But think about it: His son was trying to help his dad. Jonathan saw his dad losing and said, "I can't watch my dad lose when I'm a good soldier. I have to go fight to help my dad." And his dad was so stuck on his rules with his people that he was willing to kill his own son.
This is why we as parents in the faith, pastors in the faith, leaders in the faith can't be so focused on the rules we put out to the people that we're willing to sacrifice our own kids in the process. We can't kill our own kids in the process.
It's good that you saved, but should your religion be pushing your child away from God, or should your religion be pulling your child closer to God? Isn't it sad that we're using faith as a reason to kill the good in our kids? I've seen this happen so many times.
I was born and raised in church, and I've watched religion actually be the death of families. "They're living a lifestyle I don't agree with, so I can't love them." That's it. You love God so much, but listen to what you're saying: You love God so much that you're struggling to love your child. Maybe our religion is making us kill the good in our kids.
I've seen this happen because we are a very transparent, real, and unedited church. I'm going to be very transparent this morning. I grew up in church where we would force people to get married. You know what I'm saying? If you even thought about having sex, you had to get married. They said, "It's better to marry than to burn."
My family knows this—we're very transparent about our story. I have 11 siblings. I have 10 sisters and one brother. Nine of us got married, and eight of us got divorced—due to religion and forced marriages.
I was 18 years old, proposing. I didn't even know how to spell "propose." I didn't know if "propose" and "purpose" were the same word. But they said, "Did y'all have sex? Yeah, yeah. Y'all got to get married." And we did it. "Just go do it. God going to help you on the way." No counseling. No wisdom. No maturity.
You're killing the good because you're trying to keep your rule.
Can we be honest for real in church for once? What's worse—that this person slipped up and had sex with somebody, or you creating a generation of broken families, divorced people with damaged kids? That's why the divorce rate in the church reached 62%, because we're forcing people into marriage based on religion.
If the church would be honest, we would say: "Hey, maybe our religion is actually what killed our kids." Not the church—the church is just healthy people who love people. Religion is when you're willing to kill the people to keep your rules.
We need to stop and look at ourselves and ask real questions: Are our current decisions proof that we've learned from our past mistakes?
When you look at your life today, you ought to be able to say: "I'm living this way today because I learned from the mistakes of my past." Or are you just replicating the mistakes of your past?
In 1 Samuel 15:1, Samuel says: "One day the Lord told me to anoint you as king of His people Israel. Now listen to this message from the Lord. This is what the Lord of Heaven's armies has declared: I've decided to settle accounts with the nation of Amalec for opposing Israel when they came out of Egypt. Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation—men, women, children, babies, goats, sheep, cattle, camels, donkeys."
God is not playing. This is serious. When God decides to settle accounts, that's a dangerous place. This is why you have to pray for mercy, because if God decided to settle accounts with all those who damaged His people, the whole world is in trouble—including you.
Then Saul slaughtered the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, east of Egypt. He captured Agag, the Amalekite king. But—and pay attention—Saul and his men spared Agag's life and kept the best of the sheep and goats, the cattle, the fat cows, and the lambs. Everything that appealed to them they kept. They destroyed only what was worthless or of poor quality.
God said, "Destroy everything," and they said, "Yeah, we're going to destroy everything. But the stuff we like—we're keeping that."
Notice what they did. They only destroyed the stuff they didn't want.
We look more like Saul and his friends than we think. God said we must put down all sin—not just the sin we don't enjoy anymore. People, it's easy to stop the sins you don't want to do. That's the easy stuff. You can say, "Yeah, I'm going to stop drinking because I can see it's messing me up." But that other thing you enjoy? "Come on, God. Reason with me, Lord. I don't want to stop that."
He's like: "Exactly. You can't just kill the things you don't enjoy anymore. You have to actually put to death the things that you enjoy, but they're representing the sin I'm trying to pull you out of. You have to be willing to kill all of it."
Look at your life and ask yourself: Am I picking and choosing what I'm putting down and picking up? Am I only stopping the stuff I don't like, but the stuff I do like I'm trying to find ways and reasons to reason with God about it?
In verse 10: "Then the Lord said to Samuel: 'I am sorry now. I regret that I ever made Saul a king, for he has not been loyal to me and has refused to obey my command.'"
Saul's constant disobedience made God sorry that He elevated him. I love that He uses the word "sorrow" because that's the proper translation. The King James Version translated it as "repent," which means God changed His mind. But properly translated, it means God's heart broke when He looked at Saul.
God was saying: "It doesn't matter what I do for you—you refuse to be loyal to me. No matter how many times I show up for you, you just don't show up for me. Saul, no matter how many times I bless you and give you everything you want, you still go take more."
Would God regret elevating you right now? If God were to elevate you right now, does your discipline lean more toward you picking what you want instead of being obedient to Him?
If God elevated you right now, would He be in danger of having His heart broken again? Would He elevate you only to find out that when you get to the pinnacle of your career, at the height of your success, you don't glorify Him? You only choose self?
Samuel, Saul's friend, cried all night to God. Samuel was saying: "God, it breaks my heart because I really thought Saul was the one. I thought you were going to use him, bless him."
We see this man of God crying. Sometimes you don't know how much you hurt the people who love you when you make bad decisions. I'm talking to my brothers and sisters in the room. Just as your pastor, and as your friend: You don't realize that when you do that dumb thing, you hurt your whole family. Everybody's hurting because you decided to pick yourself, because you picked your flesh, because you picked your desire, because you wanted to have fun for a night, because you thought it was your secret, because you thought you were just doing your thing.
Everybody attached to you was hurt because he said, "How could you only think about yourself in a situation like this? All you thought about was what you got out of it. You didn't know that everybody attached to you just had their world rocked when your world came crumbling down, because we all loved you."
It hurts all of us.
There's a saying: "The first time it's a mistake. The second time it's a choice. The third time it's a habit—it's just what you do." You don't ever think about anybody else. You just do what feels good in the moment, even if everybody that loves you has to pay the price.
The first time it was a mistake—yeah, it was accidental. I didn't know the outcome. But the second time, I made a choice to hurt you again by choosing what pleases me.
When Samuel finally found Saul, Saul greeted him cheerfully: "May the Lord God bless you. I've carried out the Lord's command."
Here goes Saul again, doing it all over. He's in sin, in disobedience, and happy about it—having a good time.
I was born and raised in church, so I know it's possible. Y'all can't trick me. I know it's dark in here, but I see you. (Hallelujah.)
I've been in church. People would be right in the car, rocking everybody up there, flat out in sin—the whole youth choir doing everything God said don't do. We'd all be leaving, going right to the kickback, going right to your girlfriend's house, right to your boyfriend's house, and then going to church Sunday night and praising Him in the sanctuary just like Saul—full-fledged in sin—and then come to church.
See the pastor: "Hey, man of God, how you doing?" "Yeah, we just finished rehearsing. Woo, we're going to praise Him tonight."
All of us want to pretend we're more obedient than what we actually are.
Saul said: "I did what God told me to do."
Then Samuel asked: "What is all the bleating of sheep and goats and the lowing of cattle that I hear?"
He's like: "You said you killed all the sheep, but I hear a lot of bleating in the background. How did you kill all that? That's people—sounds like sheep now. I hear a lot of goats in the background. What is this that I hear?"
Saul admitted: "It's true that the army spared the best of the sheep and the goats and the cattle. But they're going to sacrifice them to the Lord your God when we destroy everything else."
You try to make it sound better: "We're going to give an offering later, so God should be okay with me stealing because I'm going to tithe. I mean, God, you know—a little eye for eye, a little tooth for tooth. God, look out for me, I look out for you."
Then Samuel said to Saul: "Stop! Please catch this: Stop!"
Sometimes you have to stop people who have bought into their own narratives. You need to tell your sister right now: "Sis, stop. They did not do that to you. You're lying. Bro, stop. You made that whole story up. I was there. Mom did not do that. You literally made that up in your head."
People can tell a lie to themselves so long that they actually believe it. By the time they tell you, they believe they're telling the truth.
I've met people who argue with me that they were telling the truth, and I was there. I was actually there. "You're not telling me the story I was next to you. They did not say that to you. You're making that up."
Samuel tells Saul: "Stop. Bro, you've got to stop lying so much."
Samuel says to Saul: "Although you may think little of yourself, are you not the leader of the tribes of Israel? The Lord has anointed you as the king of Israel."
Here's the real issue, the real problem: Saul saw himself too small. The problem wasn't how God saw Saul. The problem was how Saul saw himself. He didn't understand the significance of his life.
I'm afraid that many of you today are living in that exact same situation, and you just don't know it. That's what makes you angry. You're like, "Man, I only did a little thing, and I feel like every message is whooping me. I did this little bit of thing, and I feel convicted and bad." But everybody else can live in sin and anything I do, it's like God is zoning in on me.
It's because you don't understand the significance of your life. You see yourself as too small. And that's the problem, because God has a big future for you and a big assignment for you. But He needs big obedience from you.
You think you can have these little days off, but God is saying: "No days off from obedience. No days off from submission. No days off from saying yes."
You think too small of yourself. Is it possible that you could be underestimating the significance that God has put on your life? And what if the mistake you make could affect an entire generation, an entire group of people, your entire family?
Saul didn't understand: You're leading a nation of millions of people, bro. You can't just go around here doing what you want to do. God needs you to be obedient.
The Lord says: "I sent you on a mission and told you: 'Go and completely destroy the Sinners, the Amalekites, until they're all dead.' Why haven't you obeyed the Lord? Why did you rush in for the plunder and do what was evil in the Lord's sight?"
God tells you to obey him, but when you go in there, you see so much opportunity to get what you wanted, and you rush for what you wanted as opposed to what He said.
Write this down: You are always in danger when what you get is more important than who you become.
You are always in danger when what you get is more important than who you become. When you're so focused on what you can get out of the deal—the blessing, the big business opportunity, the lot of money—but yeah, but what would happen to your heart?
God is talking to Saul like: "Saul, I gave you everything. I gave you the kingdom. I gave you the people. I gave you the nation. I gave you the success. And still, you disobeyed me to get more things."
How many of us can be honest and say: "Man, everything I have, God gave to me. God has blessed me. God has increased me. And even after all that God's given to me, am I really giving God 100% of my loyalty? 100% of my obedience?"
Saul insists: "But I did obey the Lord. I carried out the mission He gave me. I brought back King Agag, but I destroyed everyone else. Then my troops brought in the best of the sheep, goats, cattle, and plunder to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal."
See what he did there? He blamed the people. That's the problem with weak leaders—they always blame the people that are supposed to be submitted to them. That's like the mom blaming the kids for not being parented the right way.
I can go a little bit further to my husbands. I'm challenging my husbands to be leaders, because you can't blame the wife for weak submission. You have to become a better leader.
Saul had convinced himself that he did what was right, even though God was telling him what he did was wrong. God is using the prophet to say, "What you did was wrong," and Saul is like, "No, I didn't. Uh-uh, I did what was right."
He's like, "No, no, no. God said you did wrong."
He's like, "No, I did. I did what God told me to do."
He had bought into his own lie.
This is the danger of living in your own truth. The danger of living in your own truth is that you never know when you're believing a lie, because the truth can change whenever your feelings do.
If the truth can change based on feelings, then there is no definition for truth or lie. It's just what you feel. Truth is not a movable boundary line.
Please catch this: Truth is not a movable boundary line.
If it were, we would have no definition for a lie. If I can move the boundary line for whenever I want to expand what truth is, that means I'm bringing in more lies and making them truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which then means there is no definition of a lie—it's just saying, "My truth is whatever I believe it to be."
That, my friends, is the definition of putting the whole world under a lie.
This is what Saul is saying. He just moves the boundary line: "I obey God, mostly. Essentially, I just kept most of the things I wanted to keep. Yeah, but that was obedience, still. When you think about it, because I wouldn't have been there if God didn't tell me to go there. And I just kept the good stuff, not the bad stuff. So yeah, that's pretty much obedience."
And that's like you picking which verses you're going to obey instead of studying the word. You can't pick and choose which chapters mean the most to you. It's either we're submitted to the word of God or we're not. I can't black out verses that challenge my life.
In 1 Samuel 15:22: "But Samuel replied: 'What is more pleasing to the Lord—your burnt offerings and sacrifices, or your obedience to His voice? Listen: Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than the offering of the fat of rams.'"
Look at what he says here: He says you keep trying to give your way out of disobedience. You can't do that. You can't live foul and say, "I'm going to give a little offering to the homeless, give a little offering to the church, and I'm good with God." God is like: "That money is trash. I made it. I don't need your gift. I need your obedience."
I work with successful millionaires all the time. I always have to remind them: "It's good that you're a philanthropist and you give to people, but your giving cannot outdo your disobedience. God would still rather your life be submitted in obedience."
Verse 23 says: "Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as worshiping idols."
You don't even understand that when God says for those of you who are rebellious that God sees you the same as a witch. It's in your Bible. "Well, I know they say we supposed to do that, but I ain't going to do that. I'm going to do my own thing."
That's witchcraft.
I know God is telling me to do this, but why do we always have to follow the rule? That's witchcraft, because I'm so rebellious I'm fighting against the order that God put in place. Which means I'm actually fighting against God.
When I start fighting against God, God puts you on the same side as His other enemies—witches and warlocks. God says: "You're not with me. You are against me." I'm pushing y'all all to the same side. When you walk in rebellion, you are already a witch and don't know it.
Say: "Stubbornness is as worship of idols. Why don't we talk about this in the Bible?" You're stubborn when you know God is telling you to let something go, and you're like, "Nope, I'm not letting it go." God said in that moment: You made the thing you held on to your idol.
That's true. Stubbornness is the same as worshiping idols.
God is saying: "Go forgive." But you don't want to forgive. Your unforgiveness just became the thing you worshiped. Whatever makes you leave God is your god.
So maybe it's the drugs, the sex, the relationship. For you it's something else. But you've got to put definition around the lie that you call the truth. What makes you leave God—maybe that's the real idol in your life.
God says: "Because you rejected the command of the Lord, He has rejected you as king. And Saul admitted to Samuel: 'Yes, I have sinned and I have disobeyed your instructions—the Lord's command.'"
Look what he says here: He kept holding on to his lie. God said, "No, I did no. I did what God told me to do." Samuel is like, "No, no, Saul, no. You did not do that." And he keeps going on. He keeps lying. "Okay, since you want to keep going with that lie, I'm rejecting you. You're done."
Then Saul says, "Okay, I was sinning. Um, yeah, I did disobey." Which means he knew the whole time. The whole time he knew he was sinning, but he kept trying to lie to pretend because he didn't want to take accountability for the wrong he was doing.
He didn't take accountability until he lost everything.
Listen to me, my friends: Don't wait to repent until God has to take everything away from you. You don't want to stay in sin a whole time, and then once you lose everything, say, "Okay, God, I'm sorry."
No. Repent while you still have a chance to get it right. Don't wait until the time is so late and you've lost everything—lost all your family, lost all the opportunity, lost everything that God has for you—and now you're like, "God, I'm sorry I did do this."
He said: "The fear of people will always be the thing that destroys us the most." You care too much about what people think and not about what God thinks. You're too focused on what people think.
Some people say in church, "That ain't me. I ain't worried about people. I... I've been by myself. Me, myself, or not. That's all I got in the end. That's what I found out." Quote them on it.
"I don't care about people. All I care about is as long as I got God, I'm good."
I'm like: "You're saying that, but you don't actually believe that, because we say a lot of stuff we don't believe."
How do you know? Proof is this: When you get around your pastor and other good Christians, you become a different person than who you are in your own living room and who you are in your bedroom. But you forgot the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and the evil.
Which means God is not just in the church. God is in your house. God is in your living room. God is in your bedroom. So why don't you act the same at home as you do in church?
Because you care more about church people than you do about God.
And so many of us are there. We know when to behave and when to cut up. It's whenever we think Mom and Dad are not at home. The thing is, they are. You never are alone.
In verse 25: "But now please forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship the Lord."
This is important: If you read the whole chapter, he originally was like, "Just come back and worship with me." He only cared about how people saw him. He originally was thinking: "Just come back with me so that people can see me come back with you, because then they're like, 'Oh, yo, prophet Samuel still on your team,' straight. So that means he still cared more about his image than his integrity.
He cared more about his image. "Just come back with me, and then they're going to still think we're good, and then we just go from there."
Look what happens. In verse 26: "But Samuel replied: 'I will not go back with you, since you have rejected the Lord's command. He has rejected you as king of Israel.'"
As Samuel turned to go, Saul tried to hold him back and tore the hem of his robe.
And Samuel said: "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to someone else—one who is better than you."
And this is one of those scary verses in the Bible. Don't ever forget that God has got somebody better.
This is a wakeup call that God has someone better than you. Grace picked you because that's what God does. He chose the weaker things of this world to confound the mighty, and the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. It means if God picked you, that you were one of the weaker or foolish.
Don't think that God doesn't have anyone better that He could have picked.
This was my own testimony. When God first told me to start this church, it was 2018. I was barbering at the time, and I was praying. I was coming out of my barber shop. I was locking up, and I was just in worship. I was excited. I was like, "God, I get to partner with God. I get to start this," and I was excited.
God showed me a picture of what Evolve was going to become. And when God showed me the picture, I said, "Oh my God, God, You chose me. I'm just so humble, and I'm thanking God."
As I was closing my door, locking it up, God speaks to me. And this is not one of those internal—this is one of those times that God spoke to me audibly, as loud as I'm talking to you right now. That's how much He had to get my attention.
There was nobody with me. I'm in a deep hallway by myself, and God says: "I did not originally pick you."
I'm proud. I'm like, "I'm special. No, Lord, pick me. You understand what I'm saying? Pick Chabi. You understand me? God, like, oh no, son. I... I didn't. I didn't originally pick you."
He said: "The person I originally told would not obey me, so I'm sending you as their replacement."
Now I need you to know how I heard that. It wasn't a celebration moment for me. God was showing me early: If you decide to walk in disobedience, I will replace you too, because my assignment is more important than what you get out of the story. More important than you getting what you want. My assignment is the most important thing here.
In verse 29: "And He who is the Glory of Israel will not lie nor will He change His mind, for He is not human that He should change His mind."
Which means that God doesn't go back and forth or change His mind like us. This is why we can rest in His promises when we walk in obedience.
I tell people: If you're walking in obedience, you don't have to be afraid. Because God ain't going to change His mind the way people change up on us. When God gave you a promise, you can hold on to the promise.
The only thing that gets us to miss the promises of God is when we change our mind and start doing our own thing. If we jump to verse 35: "Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him."
They hurt the Lord's heart. And now the Lord said to Samuel: "You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel. So fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my King."
God does something powerful in this moment. Samuel is Saul's friend, and so even though he had to declare that Saul was rejected by God, there was his ministry at Simon. But he still had a very human relationship with him. He's mourning about his friend because he knows Saul is going to be in a dark place once God snatches this out of his hand. He's mourning for his friend. He's hurting because it did not go the way he planned for it to go. And he's grieving.
And God snatches Samuel out of mourning. Why does God do this? Because God is sensitive enough to give you time to grieve your loss, but He loves you too much to let you get stuck there.
God loves you so much that, yeah, you give Him your loss, and He's sensitive. He's like, "Hey, son. Hey, daughter. I get it. You were not expecting this loss. This is hurting more than you expected. I'm giving you time, but I cannot let you get stuck here."
You put all your money into that business. You gave everything you had. You went into debt trying to keep it open, and then you lost it. So you're grieving. I get it. But I can't let you get stuck in the pain of your past when I still have a promise for your future.
I get it. I get it. Yeah, you lost the love with. And God is like: "I'm not insensitive. I'm going to give you time to grieve and to process because I'm a good God. I'm a healthy God. But I'm not going to let you get so stuck in who you lost that you forgot you've got to live. That there's still a life that I have for you."
You may be hurting because the relationship ended or because of the divorce, and you're like, "God, I emptied myself for this marriage. I emptied myself of that person. I gave everything I had."
So you're grieving.
And God is saying: "Hey, grief is natural. I get it. When you gave all your life to somebody and then they drop you, it hurts. I'm not insensitive. But I cannot let the pain of your past imprison your future."
I've got to get you out of this place. "You've mourned long enough, Samuel. It's time to keep going."
If you get stuck in the pain, you'll never experience the promise. If you get stuck in the pain, you'll never experience the promise.
There was another king that had to be anointed, and Samuel couldn't get back to his assignment because he's still crying that his friend lost it. And God is like, "Samuel, I get it. I gave you time, but you cannot get stuck here."
For some of you, you're still missing what God promised you all because somebody hurt you. This happens all the time. I'm not here to be in your business. I'm just here to talk about it. I'm here to help you.
I just want to preach to you: Some of you are still going around hurting people because somebody hurt you. You're still not opening your heart. You're still damaging other men, other women. You're still giving your body up because you're afraid to actually heal your heart.
You're still hurting people because of something that happened to you at some point. You've got to take some accountability and say: "I can't be stuck in this condition forever."
I love about God: God is not insensitive to your pain. He just doesn't want your pain to imprison you. He's not insensitive. He's not in... He's not looking at your tears and saying, "I don't care."
He's a good father. He's near to the brokenhearted. He's close to the one that's wounded. He comes in close and He holds you. But then after a certain amount of time, God is like: "You've got to get back up, son. You've got to get back up, daughter."
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy is supposed to come in the morning." I can't let the rest of your life be a night season. I've got to prophesy joy over you, but the only way I can get it there is I've got to snatch you out of the pain. Snatch you out of the trauma. Snatch you out of the tears. I cannot lose you in what hurts you.
And I know you've lost somebody you loved, and I know you felt dropped, and I know you felt ignored, and I know you feel like nobody is there with you, and I know you feel like you're by yourself. But don't believe that lie: You're not by yourself. I'm with you. I've been here the whole time. I'm holding you. I've been close to you, keeping you, covering you, pouring strength into you when you couldn't hold yourself up. I'm here.
But you can't get stuck like Samuel. You've got more oil to pour. You've got more people to anoint. You've got more assignment to finish.
And I'm speaking over somebody right now who's been paralyzed in trauma and broken in the place of pain, saying: "What happened to me has been haunting me in my mind, and every time I think about what I went through, it scares my heart again."
But God is saying: "Not so. No longer will you be paralyzed based on what you went through. I'm giving you a picture of your future. Eyes haven't seen. Ears haven't heard. It hasn't even entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for them that love Him."
Father, this is my prayer over these Your sons and daughters. I pray for those in the room who are saying, "God, that's me. I'm the one, God. That I've made a mistake, or I made a decision, and here I am. I'm stuck in the pain of it. That's like I'm trying to get beyond it, but like Samuel, I found myself grieving."
And God showed up this morning to jump in the chat, jump in the conversation, and say: "No, you cannot be here forever. There's more oil to pour. There's more people to anoint. There's more assignment to finish."
The enemy will like you to think it's over. The enemy will want you to feel there's no more hope. The enemy will want you to think that your grief is greater than God's joy. It's greater than God's power. It's greater than God's strength. But it is not.
It is not. God's strength is greater than anything.
And so I pray the strength of God over you. Pray that you'll walk in the favor of God, and that this is the end of your grieving season.
I call an end to the mourning season.
That you say: "Whatever happened was supposed to happen. Whatever happened, I accept it, God. Even if it wasn't your plan, You can take the pain and make it good for my story."
That this is just the 15th chapter. God, You've got the rest of my book to write. There's so much more for You to do in and through me. This is just the middle. The breaking point. The turning over. But God, You've got so much more You want to do.
And we lean into it, and we say, "Yeah, God, whatever You want to do in us, You can do it in Jesus' name. We pray. God, people, say it. Amen."
While you're standing, I want to do two things quickly.
Number one: If you wanted to say yes to God—maybe you're the person where you said, "That's me, Pastor. I'm the person who's been so stuck in the pain and in the trauma of my life. I have never really given God a chance to pull me out of it. But today I want to be different. I want to give God my life. I want to change. I want to actually walk with Jesus, walk with the Lord."
If God can do it, nobody else has been able to do it. Relationships—no partner, no drug, no alcohol has been able to give me the peace I've been looking for. But I want that peace today.
If that's you, I want you to come forward. Don't even think about it. Just step out and say, "You know what, that's me. I want God. I want God to help me, and whatever that looks like, I want to give Him my life. I want to give Him my heart. I want God's strength to step in in my weakest areas. I want God's joy to step in in my sadness. I want God's peace to step in when depression has tried to kill me. I want to give God my everything."
If that's you, just come forward. I'm not going to make you say anything. Can we give God praise for them? Just come forward. Don't worry about the people. Just come on.
Also, if you're looking for a church home, you can come at this time. If you want this church to be a church home, you can come at this time. If you still need God to help you—and maybe you took a while coming forward, maybe you were fearful, maybe you were nervous—and God is saying, "Hey, please don't leave with that pain trapped on the inside of you. I want to help you. I want to heal you."
You are never alone. You are never alone. You are never alone.
Right behind you is Pastor Dugar and Sister Ruby. We have a private place in the back where we pray for you, walk you through this faith journey. We have an entire team ready to serve you.
Jesus said my Father's house is supposed to be a House of Prayer. I don't know what you're dealing with. What I do know is that Prayer Changes Things. It really does. Prayer Changes Things.
So I have prayer leaders coming up front right now. And maybe you're already saved. Maybe you're like, "I'm already a member. I got all that stuff, Pastor. But maybe I heard the message, and I'm like, wow. Maybe I'm more like Samuel than I thought."
"I'm anointed, but I'm stuck in grief. I'm anointed, but I'm stuck in mourning. I'm anointed, but I've only seen the picture of what I lost, and I can't see the picture of what God is about to give me."
If that's you, I don't want you to leave and carry that dark space with you. I want us today to touch and agree in faith with you. Pray over you. That God would give you a better picture of your future. The eyes haven't seen. Ears haven't heard. It hasn't even entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for you because of how much He loves you.
So let me release everybody. God, do what only You can do.
God wants you to be part of a community of believers who can help and assist you on your journey and speak life into you, especially during the hardest times. Everything we do here at Evolve Church is in agreement with God's will. We understand that God wants community, and we host our services specifically to help you develop in your faith while keeping you connected to a community of believers.
If this is your first time here, we want to thank you for choosing to be here. You could have been anywhere in this city, but you chose to come today. We believe that God led you here, and we truly believe you will experience something great because God has something in store for you.
God loves a cheerful giver. God is so mighty and wonderful in all His ways, and He makes sure you are blessed. In 2 Corinthians 9:10, the Bible tells us that God gives you seed to sow, and He also provides you with bread. God is saying: "With the seeds I give you, those seeds are meant to advance your life, elevate your life, and help you. I'm also going to give you the necessities, so you don't have to worry about using the seed for those things."
Why do we give? We use our seeds to be generous to other people and to be a blessing to them. The way God proves to you that you are blessed is when you are a blessing to other people. The beautiful thing is that you never have to dig from your own reservoir to be a blessing. God promises He'll supply you with seeds to be a blessing—all you have to do is be obedient and bless others. When you do that, God will continue to offer you ample opportunity to be blessed in every way of your life.
We are in 1 Samuel 14, and we're looking at the story of King Saul. This is part of our series on "The Presence of God," with the subtitle: Mistakes vs. Decisions.
Saul made a rash decision. He said something foolish—that no one could eat anything until they won the war. This was not wise. Saul and his men would be fighting people who could eat while they couldn't eat, making them weaker.
Jonathan, Saul's son, didn't hear his father's command, so he went to the backside of the army and defeated his father's enemies. But while fighting, Jonathan ate some honey because he needed energy. He didn't know about his father's vow.
When Saul tried to pray, he didn't get a response from God. Instead of looking at his own life, he immediately assumed someone else had sinned.
"Then Saul said to his leaders: 'Something's wrong. I want all my Army commanders to come here. We must find out what sin was committed today. I vow by the name of the Lord who rescued Israel that the sinner will surely die—even if it's my own son Jonathan.' But no one would tell him what the trouble was." (1 Samuel 14:38)
Imagine a sinner being this angry about somebody else's sin. Don't that sound like church people? People get so mad: "Oh, there's so much sin in the world." But it's a gathering of sinners, all saved by grace.
Saul demanded: "Tell me what you've done." Jonathan admitted, "I tasted a little honey. It was only a little bit on the end of my stick. Does that deserve death?"
Saul responded, "Yes, Jonathan, you must die. May God strike me and even kill me if you do not die for this."
But the people broke in and said to Saul: "Jonathan has won this great victory for Israel. Should he die? Far from it! As surely as the Lord lives, not one hair on his head will be touched. For God helped him do a great deed today."
So the people rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death.
Here we have the birth of a religious spirit. Saul was willing to kill his own son to keep his public vow, even though his son helped him win the victory.
You have to be careful with super sanctimonious religious people, because they will kill good just to keep their religion. Saul wasn't even thinking about what he was saying. He just said, "We made a vow—whoever did it is going to have to die."
But think about it: His son was trying to help his dad. Jonathan saw his dad losing and said, "I can't watch my dad lose when I'm a good soldier. I have to go fight to help my dad." And his dad was so stuck on his rules with his people that he was willing to kill his own son.
This is why we as parents in the faith, pastors in the faith, leaders in the faith can't be so focused on the rules we put out to the people that we're willing to sacrifice our own kids in the process. We can't kill our own kids in the process.
It's good that you saved, but should your religion be pushing your child away from God, or should your religion be pulling your child closer to God? Isn't it sad that we're using faith as a reason to kill the good in our kids? I've seen this happen so many times.
I was born and raised in church, and I've watched religion actually be the death of families. "They're living a lifestyle I don't agree with, so I can't love them." That's it. You love God so much, but listen to what you're saying: You love God so much that you're struggling to love your child. Maybe our religion is making us kill the good in our kids.
I've seen this happen because we are a very transparent, real, and unedited church. I'm going to be very transparent this morning. I grew up in church where we would force people to get married. You know what I'm saying? If you even thought about having sex, you had to get married. They said, "It's better to marry than to burn."
My family knows this—we're very transparent about our story. I have 11 siblings. I have 10 sisters and one brother. Nine of us got married, and eight of us got divorced—due to religion and forced marriages.
I was 18 years old, proposing. I didn't even know how to spell "propose." I didn't know if "propose" and "purpose" were the same word. But they said, "Did y'all have sex? Yeah, yeah. Y'all got to get married." And we did it. "Just go do it. God going to help you on the way." No counseling. No wisdom. No maturity.
You're killing the good because you're trying to keep your rule.
Can we be honest for real in church for once? What's worse—that this person slipped up and had sex with somebody, or you creating a generation of broken families, divorced people with damaged kids? That's why the divorce rate in the church reached 62%, because we're forcing people into marriage based on religion.
If the church would be honest, we would say: "Hey, maybe our religion is actually what killed our kids." Not the church—the church is just healthy people who love people. Religion is when you're willing to kill the people to keep your rules.
We need to stop and look at ourselves and ask real questions: Are our current decisions proof that we've learned from our past mistakes?
When you look at your life today, you ought to be able to say: "I'm living this way today because I learned from the mistakes of my past." Or are you just replicating the mistakes of your past?
In 1 Samuel 15:1, Samuel says: "One day the Lord told me to anoint you as king of His people Israel. Now listen to this message from the Lord. This is what the Lord of Heaven's armies has declared: I've decided to settle accounts with the nation of Amalec for opposing Israel when they came out of Egypt. Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation—men, women, children, babies, goats, sheep, cattle, camels, donkeys."
God is not playing. This is serious. When God decides to settle accounts, that's a dangerous place. This is why you have to pray for mercy, because if God decided to settle accounts with all those who damaged His people, the whole world is in trouble—including you.
Then Saul slaughtered the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, east of Egypt. He captured Agag, the Amalekite king. But—and pay attention—Saul and his men spared Agag's life and kept the best of the sheep and goats, the cattle, the fat cows, and the lambs. Everything that appealed to them they kept. They destroyed only what was worthless or of poor quality.
God said, "Destroy everything," and they said, "Yeah, we're going to destroy everything. But the stuff we like—we're keeping that."
Notice what they did. They only destroyed the stuff they didn't want.
We look more like Saul and his friends than we think. God said we must put down all sin—not just the sin we don't enjoy anymore. People, it's easy to stop the sins you don't want to do. That's the easy stuff. You can say, "Yeah, I'm going to stop drinking because I can see it's messing me up." But that other thing you enjoy? "Come on, God. Reason with me, Lord. I don't want to stop that."
He's like: "Exactly. You can't just kill the things you don't enjoy anymore. You have to actually put to death the things that you enjoy, but they're representing the sin I'm trying to pull you out of. You have to be willing to kill all of it."
Look at your life and ask yourself: Am I picking and choosing what I'm putting down and picking up? Am I only stopping the stuff I don't like, but the stuff I do like I'm trying to find ways and reasons to reason with God about it?
In verse 10: "Then the Lord said to Samuel: 'I am sorry now. I regret that I ever made Saul a king, for he has not been loyal to me and has refused to obey my command.'"
Saul's constant disobedience made God sorry that He elevated him. I love that He uses the word "sorrow" because that's the proper translation. The King James Version translated it as "repent," which means God changed His mind. But properly translated, it means God's heart broke when He looked at Saul.
God was saying: "It doesn't matter what I do for you—you refuse to be loyal to me. No matter how many times I show up for you, you just don't show up for me. Saul, no matter how many times I bless you and give you everything you want, you still go take more."
Would God regret elevating you right now? If God were to elevate you right now, does your discipline lean more toward you picking what you want instead of being obedient to Him?
If God elevated you right now, would He be in danger of having His heart broken again? Would He elevate you only to find out that when you get to the pinnacle of your career, at the height of your success, you don't glorify Him? You only choose self?
Samuel, Saul's friend, cried all night to God. Samuel was saying: "God, it breaks my heart because I really thought Saul was the one. I thought you were going to use him, bless him."
We see this man of God crying. Sometimes you don't know how much you hurt the people who love you when you make bad decisions. I'm talking to my brothers and sisters in the room. Just as your pastor, and as your friend: You don't realize that when you do that dumb thing, you hurt your whole family. Everybody's hurting because you decided to pick yourself, because you picked your flesh, because you picked your desire, because you wanted to have fun for a night, because you thought it was your secret, because you thought you were just doing your thing.
Everybody attached to you was hurt because he said, "How could you only think about yourself in a situation like this? All you thought about was what you got out of it. You didn't know that everybody attached to you just had their world rocked when your world came crumbling down, because we all loved you."
It hurts all of us.
There's a saying: "The first time it's a mistake. The second time it's a choice. The third time it's a habit—it's just what you do." You don't ever think about anybody else. You just do what feels good in the moment, even if everybody that loves you has to pay the price.
The first time it was a mistake—yeah, it was accidental. I didn't know the outcome. But the second time, I made a choice to hurt you again by choosing what pleases me.
When Samuel finally found Saul, Saul greeted him cheerfully: "May the Lord God bless you. I've carried out the Lord's command."
Here goes Saul again, doing it all over. He's in sin, in disobedience, and happy about it—having a good time.
I was born and raised in church, so I know it's possible. Y'all can't trick me. I know it's dark in here, but I see you. (Hallelujah.)
I've been in church. People would be right in the car, rocking everybody up there, flat out in sin—the whole youth choir doing everything God said don't do. We'd all be leaving, going right to the kickback, going right to your girlfriend's house, right to your boyfriend's house, and then going to church Sunday night and praising Him in the sanctuary just like Saul—full-fledged in sin—and then come to church.
See the pastor: "Hey, man of God, how you doing?" "Yeah, we just finished rehearsing. Woo, we're going to praise Him tonight."
All of us want to pretend we're more obedient than what we actually are.
Saul said: "I did what God told me to do."
Then Samuel asked: "What is all the bleating of sheep and goats and the lowing of cattle that I hear?"
He's like: "You said you killed all the sheep, but I hear a lot of bleating in the background. How did you kill all that? That's people—sounds like sheep now. I hear a lot of goats in the background. What is this that I hear?"
Saul admitted: "It's true that the army spared the best of the sheep and the goats and the cattle. But they're going to sacrifice them to the Lord your God when we destroy everything else."
You try to make it sound better: "We're going to give an offering later, so God should be okay with me stealing because I'm going to tithe. I mean, God, you know—a little eye for eye, a little tooth for tooth. God, look out for me, I look out for you."
Then Samuel said to Saul: "Stop! Please catch this: Stop!"
Sometimes you have to stop people who have bought into their own narratives. You need to tell your sister right now: "Sis, stop. They did not do that to you. You're lying. Bro, stop. You made that whole story up. I was there. Mom did not do that. You literally made that up in your head."
People can tell a lie to themselves so long that they actually believe it. By the time they tell you, they believe they're telling the truth.
I've met people who argue with me that they were telling the truth, and I was there. I was actually there. "You're not telling me the story I was next to you. They did not say that to you. You're making that up."
Samuel tells Saul: "Stop. Bro, you've got to stop lying so much."
Samuel says to Saul: "Although you may think little of yourself, are you not the leader of the tribes of Israel? The Lord has anointed you as the king of Israel."
Here's the real issue, the real problem: Saul saw himself too small. The problem wasn't how God saw Saul. The problem was how Saul saw himself. He didn't understand the significance of his life.
I'm afraid that many of you today are living in that exact same situation, and you just don't know it. That's what makes you angry. You're like, "Man, I only did a little thing, and I feel like every message is whooping me. I did this little bit of thing, and I feel convicted and bad." But everybody else can live in sin and anything I do, it's like God is zoning in on me.
It's because you don't understand the significance of your life. You see yourself as too small. And that's the problem, because God has a big future for you and a big assignment for you. But He needs big obedience from you.
You think you can have these little days off, but God is saying: "No days off from obedience. No days off from submission. No days off from saying yes."
You think too small of yourself. Is it possible that you could be underestimating the significance that God has put on your life? And what if the mistake you make could affect an entire generation, an entire group of people, your entire family?
Saul didn't understand: You're leading a nation of millions of people, bro. You can't just go around here doing what you want to do. God needs you to be obedient.
The Lord says: "I sent you on a mission and told you: 'Go and completely destroy the Sinners, the Amalekites, until they're all dead.' Why haven't you obeyed the Lord? Why did you rush in for the plunder and do what was evil in the Lord's sight?"
God tells you to obey him, but when you go in there, you see so much opportunity to get what you wanted, and you rush for what you wanted as opposed to what He said.
Write this down: You are always in danger when what you get is more important than who you become.
You are always in danger when what you get is more important than who you become. When you're so focused on what you can get out of the deal—the blessing, the big business opportunity, the lot of money—but yeah, but what would happen to your heart?
God is talking to Saul like: "Saul, I gave you everything. I gave you the kingdom. I gave you the people. I gave you the nation. I gave you the success. And still, you disobeyed me to get more things."
How many of us can be honest and say: "Man, everything I have, God gave to me. God has blessed me. God has increased me. And even after all that God's given to me, am I really giving God 100% of my loyalty? 100% of my obedience?"
Saul insists: "But I did obey the Lord. I carried out the mission He gave me. I brought back King Agag, but I destroyed everyone else. Then my troops brought in the best of the sheep, goats, cattle, and plunder to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal."
See what he did there? He blamed the people. That's the problem with weak leaders—they always blame the people that are supposed to be submitted to them. That's like the mom blaming the kids for not being parented the right way.
I can go a little bit further to my husbands. I'm challenging my husbands to be leaders, because you can't blame the wife for weak submission. You have to become a better leader.
Saul had convinced himself that he did what was right, even though God was telling him what he did was wrong. God is using the prophet to say, "What you did was wrong," and Saul is like, "No, I didn't. Uh-uh, I did what was right."
He's like, "No, no, no. God said you did wrong."
He's like, "No, I did. I did what God told me to do."
He had bought into his own lie.
This is the danger of living in your own truth. The danger of living in your own truth is that you never know when you're believing a lie, because the truth can change whenever your feelings do.
If the truth can change based on feelings, then there is no definition for truth or lie. It's just what you feel. Truth is not a movable boundary line.
Please catch this: Truth is not a movable boundary line.
If it were, we would have no definition for a lie. If I can move the boundary line for whenever I want to expand what truth is, that means I'm bringing in more lies and making them truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which then means there is no definition of a lie—it's just saying, "My truth is whatever I believe it to be."
That, my friends, is the definition of putting the whole world under a lie.
This is what Saul is saying. He just moves the boundary line: "I obey God, mostly. Essentially, I just kept most of the things I wanted to keep. Yeah, but that was obedience, still. When you think about it, because I wouldn't have been there if God didn't tell me to go there. And I just kept the good stuff, not the bad stuff. So yeah, that's pretty much obedience."
And that's like you picking which verses you're going to obey instead of studying the word. You can't pick and choose which chapters mean the most to you. It's either we're submitted to the word of God or we're not. I can't black out verses that challenge my life.
In 1 Samuel 15:22: "But Samuel replied: 'What is more pleasing to the Lord—your burnt offerings and sacrifices, or your obedience to His voice? Listen: Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than the offering of the fat of rams.'"
Look at what he says here: He says you keep trying to give your way out of disobedience. You can't do that. You can't live foul and say, "I'm going to give a little offering to the homeless, give a little offering to the church, and I'm good with God." God is like: "That money is trash. I made it. I don't need your gift. I need your obedience."
I work with successful millionaires all the time. I always have to remind them: "It's good that you're a philanthropist and you give to people, but your giving cannot outdo your disobedience. God would still rather your life be submitted in obedience."
Verse 23 says: "Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as worshiping idols."
You don't even understand that when God says for those of you who are rebellious that God sees you the same as a witch. It's in your Bible. "Well, I know they say we supposed to do that, but I ain't going to do that. I'm going to do my own thing."
That's witchcraft.
I know God is telling me to do this, but why do we always have to follow the rule? That's witchcraft, because I'm so rebellious I'm fighting against the order that God put in place. Which means I'm actually fighting against God.
When I start fighting against God, God puts you on the same side as His other enemies—witches and warlocks. God says: "You're not with me. You are against me." I'm pushing y'all all to the same side. When you walk in rebellion, you are already a witch and don't know it.
Say: "Stubbornness is as worship of idols. Why don't we talk about this in the Bible?" You're stubborn when you know God is telling you to let something go, and you're like, "Nope, I'm not letting it go." God said in that moment: You made the thing you held on to your idol.
That's true. Stubbornness is the same as worshiping idols.
God is saying: "Go forgive." But you don't want to forgive. Your unforgiveness just became the thing you worshiped. Whatever makes you leave God is your god.
So maybe it's the drugs, the sex, the relationship. For you it's something else. But you've got to put definition around the lie that you call the truth. What makes you leave God—maybe that's the real idol in your life.
God says: "Because you rejected the command of the Lord, He has rejected you as king. And Saul admitted to Samuel: 'Yes, I have sinned and I have disobeyed your instructions—the Lord's command.'"
Look what he says here: He kept holding on to his lie. God said, "No, I did no. I did what God told me to do." Samuel is like, "No, no, Saul, no. You did not do that." And he keeps going on. He keeps lying. "Okay, since you want to keep going with that lie, I'm rejecting you. You're done."
Then Saul says, "Okay, I was sinning. Um, yeah, I did disobey." Which means he knew the whole time. The whole time he knew he was sinning, but he kept trying to lie to pretend because he didn't want to take accountability for the wrong he was doing.
He didn't take accountability until he lost everything.
Listen to me, my friends: Don't wait to repent until God has to take everything away from you. You don't want to stay in sin a whole time, and then once you lose everything, say, "Okay, God, I'm sorry."
No. Repent while you still have a chance to get it right. Don't wait until the time is so late and you've lost everything—lost all your family, lost all the opportunity, lost everything that God has for you—and now you're like, "God, I'm sorry I did do this."
He said: "The fear of people will always be the thing that destroys us the most." You care too much about what people think and not about what God thinks. You're too focused on what people think.
Some people say in church, "That ain't me. I ain't worried about people. I... I've been by myself. Me, myself, or not. That's all I got in the end. That's what I found out." Quote them on it.
"I don't care about people. All I care about is as long as I got God, I'm good."
I'm like: "You're saying that, but you don't actually believe that, because we say a lot of stuff we don't believe."
How do you know? Proof is this: When you get around your pastor and other good Christians, you become a different person than who you are in your own living room and who you are in your bedroom. But you forgot the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and the evil.
Which means God is not just in the church. God is in your house. God is in your living room. God is in your bedroom. So why don't you act the same at home as you do in church?
Because you care more about church people than you do about God.
And so many of us are there. We know when to behave and when to cut up. It's whenever we think Mom and Dad are not at home. The thing is, they are. You never are alone.
In verse 25: "But now please forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship the Lord."
This is important: If you read the whole chapter, he originally was like, "Just come back and worship with me." He only cared about how people saw him. He originally was thinking: "Just come back with me so that people can see me come back with you, because then they're like, 'Oh, yo, prophet Samuel still on your team,' straight. So that means he still cared more about his image than his integrity.
He cared more about his image. "Just come back with me, and then they're going to still think we're good, and then we just go from there."
Look what happens. In verse 26: "But Samuel replied: 'I will not go back with you, since you have rejected the Lord's command. He has rejected you as king of Israel.'"
As Samuel turned to go, Saul tried to hold him back and tore the hem of his robe.
And Samuel said: "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to someone else—one who is better than you."
And this is one of those scary verses in the Bible. Don't ever forget that God has got somebody better.
This is a wakeup call that God has someone better than you. Grace picked you because that's what God does. He chose the weaker things of this world to confound the mighty, and the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. It means if God picked you, that you were one of the weaker or foolish.
Don't think that God doesn't have anyone better that He could have picked.
This was my own testimony. When God first told me to start this church, it was 2018. I was barbering at the time, and I was praying. I was coming out of my barber shop. I was locking up, and I was just in worship. I was excited. I was like, "God, I get to partner with God. I get to start this," and I was excited.
God showed me a picture of what Evolve was going to become. And when God showed me the picture, I said, "Oh my God, God, You chose me. I'm just so humble, and I'm thanking God."
As I was closing my door, locking it up, God speaks to me. And this is not one of those internal—this is one of those times that God spoke to me audibly, as loud as I'm talking to you right now. That's how much He had to get my attention.
There was nobody with me. I'm in a deep hallway by myself, and God says: "I did not originally pick you."
I'm proud. I'm like, "I'm special. No, Lord, pick me. You understand what I'm saying? Pick Chabi. You understand me? God, like, oh no, son. I... I didn't. I didn't originally pick you."
He said: "The person I originally told would not obey me, so I'm sending you as their replacement."
Now I need you to know how I heard that. It wasn't a celebration moment for me. God was showing me early: If you decide to walk in disobedience, I will replace you too, because my assignment is more important than what you get out of the story. More important than you getting what you want. My assignment is the most important thing here.
In verse 29: "And He who is the Glory of Israel will not lie nor will He change His mind, for He is not human that He should change His mind."
Which means that God doesn't go back and forth or change His mind like us. This is why we can rest in His promises when we walk in obedience.
I tell people: If you're walking in obedience, you don't have to be afraid. Because God ain't going to change His mind the way people change up on us. When God gave you a promise, you can hold on to the promise.
The only thing that gets us to miss the promises of God is when we change our mind and start doing our own thing. If we jump to verse 35: "Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him."
They hurt the Lord's heart. And now the Lord said to Samuel: "You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel. So fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my King."
God does something powerful in this moment. Samuel is Saul's friend, and so even though he had to declare that Saul was rejected by God, there was his ministry at Simon. But he still had a very human relationship with him. He's mourning about his friend because he knows Saul is going to be in a dark place once God snatches this out of his hand. He's mourning for his friend. He's hurting because it did not go the way he planned for it to go. And he's grieving.
And God snatches Samuel out of mourning. Why does God do this? Because God is sensitive enough to give you time to grieve your loss, but He loves you too much to let you get stuck there.
God loves you so much that, yeah, you give Him your loss, and He's sensitive. He's like, "Hey, son. Hey, daughter. I get it. You were not expecting this loss. This is hurting more than you expected. I'm giving you time, but I cannot let you get stuck here."
You put all your money into that business. You gave everything you had. You went into debt trying to keep it open, and then you lost it. So you're grieving. I get it. But I can't let you get stuck in the pain of your past when I still have a promise for your future.
I get it. I get it. Yeah, you lost the love with. And God is like: "I'm not insensitive. I'm going to give you time to grieve and to process because I'm a good God. I'm a healthy God. But I'm not going to let you get so stuck in who you lost that you forgot you've got to live. That there's still a life that I have for you."
You may be hurting because the relationship ended or because of the divorce, and you're like, "God, I emptied myself for this marriage. I emptied myself of that person. I gave everything I had."
So you're grieving.
And God is saying: "Hey, grief is natural. I get it. When you gave all your life to somebody and then they drop you, it hurts. I'm not insensitive. But I cannot let the pain of your past imprison your future."
I've got to get you out of this place. "You've mourned long enough, Samuel. It's time to keep going."
If you get stuck in the pain, you'll never experience the promise. If you get stuck in the pain, you'll never experience the promise.
There was another king that had to be anointed, and Samuel couldn't get back to his assignment because he's still crying that his friend lost it. And God is like, "Samuel, I get it. I gave you time, but you cannot get stuck here."
For some of you, you're still missing what God promised you all because somebody hurt you. This happens all the time. I'm not here to be in your business. I'm just here to talk about it. I'm here to help you.
I just want to preach to you: Some of you are still going around hurting people because somebody hurt you. You're still not opening your heart. You're still damaging other men, other women. You're still giving your body up because you're afraid to actually heal your heart.
You're still hurting people because of something that happened to you at some point. You've got to take some accountability and say: "I can't be stuck in this condition forever."
I love about God: God is not insensitive to your pain. He just doesn't want your pain to imprison you. He's not insensitive. He's not in... He's not looking at your tears and saying, "I don't care."
He's a good father. He's near to the brokenhearted. He's close to the one that's wounded. He comes in close and He holds you. But then after a certain amount of time, God is like: "You've got to get back up, son. You've got to get back up, daughter."
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy is supposed to come in the morning." I can't let the rest of your life be a night season. I've got to prophesy joy over you, but the only way I can get it there is I've got to snatch you out of the pain. Snatch you out of the trauma. Snatch you out of the tears. I cannot lose you in what hurts you.
And I know you've lost somebody you loved, and I know you felt dropped, and I know you felt ignored, and I know you feel like nobody is there with you, and I know you feel like you're by yourself. But don't believe that lie: You're not by yourself. I'm with you. I've been here the whole time. I'm holding you. I've been close to you, keeping you, covering you, pouring strength into you when you couldn't hold yourself up. I'm here.
But you can't get stuck like Samuel. You've got more oil to pour. You've got more people to anoint. You've got more assignment to finish.
And I'm speaking over somebody right now who's been paralyzed in trauma and broken in the place of pain, saying: "What happened to me has been haunting me in my mind, and every time I think about what I went through, it scares my heart again."
But God is saying: "Not so. No longer will you be paralyzed based on what you went through. I'm giving you a picture of your future. Eyes haven't seen. Ears haven't heard. It hasn't even entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for them that love Him."
Father, this is my prayer over these Your sons and daughters. I pray for those in the room who are saying, "God, that's me. I'm the one, God. That I've made a mistake, or I made a decision, and here I am. I'm stuck in the pain of it. That's like I'm trying to get beyond it, but like Samuel, I found myself grieving."
And God showed up this morning to jump in the chat, jump in the conversation, and say: "No, you cannot be here forever. There's more oil to pour. There's more people to anoint. There's more assignment to finish."
The enemy will like you to think it's over. The enemy will want you to feel there's no more hope. The enemy will want you to think that your grief is greater than God's joy. It's greater than God's power. It's greater than God's strength. But it is not.
It is not. God's strength is greater than anything.
And so I pray the strength of God over you. Pray that you'll walk in the favor of God, and that this is the end of your grieving season.
I call an end to the mourning season.
That you say: "Whatever happened was supposed to happen. Whatever happened, I accept it, God. Even if it wasn't your plan, You can take the pain and make it good for my story."
That this is just the 15th chapter. God, You've got the rest of my book to write. There's so much more for You to do in and through me. This is just the middle. The breaking point. The turning over. But God, You've got so much more You want to do.
And we lean into it, and we say, "Yeah, God, whatever You want to do in us, You can do it in Jesus' name. We pray. God, people, say it. Amen."
While you're standing, I want to do two things quickly.
Number one: If you wanted to say yes to God—maybe you're the person where you said, "That's me, Pastor. I'm the person who's been so stuck in the pain and in the trauma of my life. I have never really given God a chance to pull me out of it. But today I want to be different. I want to give God my life. I want to change. I want to actually walk with Jesus, walk with the Lord."
If God can do it, nobody else has been able to do it. Relationships—no partner, no drug, no alcohol has been able to give me the peace I've been looking for. But I want that peace today.
If that's you, I want you to come forward. Don't even think about it. Just step out and say, "You know what, that's me. I want God. I want God to help me, and whatever that looks like, I want to give Him my life. I want to give Him my heart. I want God's strength to step in in my weakest areas. I want God's joy to step in in my sadness. I want God's peace to step in when depression has tried to kill me. I want to give God my everything."
If that's you, just come forward. I'm not going to make you say anything. Can we give God praise for them? Just come forward. Don't worry about the people. Just come on.
Also, if you're looking for a church home, you can come at this time. If you want this church to be a church home, you can come at this time. If you still need God to help you—and maybe you took a while coming forward, maybe you were fearful, maybe you were nervous—and God is saying, "Hey, please don't leave with that pain trapped on the inside of you. I want to help you. I want to heal you."
You are never alone. You are never alone. You are never alone.
Right behind you is Pastor Dugar and Sister Ruby. We have a private place in the back where we pray for you, walk you through this faith journey. We have an entire team ready to serve you.
Jesus said my Father's house is supposed to be a House of Prayer. I don't know what you're dealing with. What I do know is that Prayer Changes Things. It really does. Prayer Changes Things.
So I have prayer leaders coming up front right now. And maybe you're already saved. Maybe you're like, "I'm already a member. I got all that stuff, Pastor. But maybe I heard the message, and I'm like, wow. Maybe I'm more like Samuel than I thought."
"I'm anointed, but I'm stuck in grief. I'm anointed, but I'm stuck in mourning. I'm anointed, but I've only seen the picture of what I lost, and I can't see the picture of what God is about to give me."
If that's you, I don't want you to leave and carry that dark space with you. I want us today to touch and agree in faith with you. Pray over you. That God would give you a better picture of your future. The eyes haven't seen. Ears haven't heard. It hasn't even entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for you because of how much He loves you.
So let me release everybody. God, do what only You can do.
