Yeah, today I just have a quick prophetic charge for us as a community and I am it's going to be a quick message. If you would, would you turn in your Bibles to Genesis 25 with me? Genesis 25 felt like the Lord was highlighting this passage specifically for many of us in the room as we're going into this new year that God's actually wanting to bring a shift and a change to our posture as his sons and daughters and our perspective as his people and how we carry ourselves when we face opposition, when we face difficulty, when we face surprises that are negative surprises, when we're approaching that issue in our life that's been giving us trouble or when we're faced with risk, when we're faced with unknown and that God is actually wanting to implant a perspective on the inside of our souls that we carry and we just take it on as an identity that's been deposited inside of us and it's just who I am and that's my hope that we carry that throughout the year. I'm going to read Genesis 25 starting in verse 29.
It says this, once when Jacob, so this is the story of Jacob and Esau, some context is Abraham is the patriarch of the faith that we believe in. Abraham received a promise from God and then he had a son and his son's name was Isaac and then Isaac had a son and another son twins Jacob and Esau. These are the twin brothers of Isaac. It says, once when Jacob, so one of the twins was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted and Esau said to Jacob, let me eat some of the red stew for I'm tired and exhausted.
Therefore, his name is called Edom or red. Jacob said, sell me your birth right now if you want the stew. Esau said, I'm about to die of what use is a birth right to me. Jacob said, swear to me now.
So he swore to him and sold his birth right to Jacob. And then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birth right. In the patriarchal system, what happened in that culture is that a father would give an inheritance to his sons and each son got a portion of the inheritance.
And depending on how many sons, there would be an extra measure or an extra portion of an inheritance. The first born son would get double what the other sons got of inheritance. And that first born son, he got the double portion and that double portion came with extra responsibility because that double portion that was given to the first born son, that first born son didn't just get the money, right? He didn't just get double the money.
He got double the responsibility. And as Jacob and Esau are having this interaction, what's happening is Jacob sees value and destiny when he looks at the birth right. But Esau takes that birth right lightly. He takes it with entitlement and he actually doesn't understand the value and the significance of the ancient birth right of his grandfather Abraham.
And what happens in a moment is what happens in a moment for many of us. That we have a destiny and we have a call, we have a purpose on our lives and we exchange those things of God that God has given us, promises that he's given us and we exchange those things from momentary pleasures. And he hits of dopamine that are actually not of the Lord and of the way of the world of Babylon. And the Lord is calling us out of this Babylonian mindset that my stomach is my God and my body is my Lord.
And he's taking us out of God itself, which is the current that we live in on a daily basis. And he's going, I want you to be like Jacob that understood the weight of your call, the weight of your destiny. And you go, man, I'm not in full-time ministry. I'm not getting paid for doing full-time ministry.
No, no, no, no, you need to understand that you have such a great destiny in God. Those that are getting paid, we're like second class compared to the ones that are actually in the game in everyday life. I mean, we get to, you guys are the A-Team. The 97% of the body of Christ that isn't getting a paycheck for ministry, they're the A-Team.
They're the starters. The destiny that got, and listen, you don't go to your job just to get a paycheck to pay missionaries. You're the everyday missionary. You're the everyday believer.
You're the everyday ambassador. You exist as a son or daughter of God to actually carry on a legacy of Jacob's great, not his great grandfather, his grandfather. Abraham, you're going to have sons and daughters and they're going to shine like the stars. They're going to reflect the glory of God.
You have such a destiny and a purpose on your life. And yet the enemy is always trying to just cheapen it. But you are a double portion people that get responsibility. The responsibility of knowing the gospel, knowing the good news.
It's very interesting to me that Esau, he's the manly man. He's the guy, the stud, that should be walking this thing out. If you read this passage a little bit, you'll see Esau's the hunter, the hairy hunter, right? Lots of hair and just masculine, like his dad loves him.
And he just carries that strength. He should be the one that should get the inheritance. He should be the one that gets the birthright. But then his brother is Jacob, the second born.
Jacob is the slimy, deceptive. It says in the passage that he is the son that likes staying in the tent with Mom. Can you imagine having that written about you in the scriptures forever? Jacob, the mom is boy that likes staying in the tent at home.
He was a home body. Can you imagine that being written about you? And for some reason, God chooses Jacob as the one that will bear the name Israel, that will be God's chosen people, and that through this man, this deceiver, this man, he will actually be part of Jesus' lineage. Can you, why would God choose Jacob when Esau is the one that's actually doing the right things?
Esau is the one that actually seems to be qualified, but he chooses the deceiver. If you've known anybody think about the story, you know that Jacob's story is just messed up. And it's because God saw something within Jacob that Esau was not demonstrating. God saw something in Jacob that Esau wasn't living in.
And it's a Hebrew word, and it's called hutspa. And hutspa, or how Jews pronounce it, is hutspa is the difference in the Hebrew culture is the difference between Jacob and Esau. And that word hutspa, I'm just going to say hutspa because it's easier, is this idea, it's this Hebrew word that means that stuff inside of you that makes you a little dangerous. It's that stuff inside of you that is called grit.
It's that stuff inside of you that's called fight or nerve or brass or it's the thing that is inside of you that says I'm going to go get it. It's that fire in you that God's put inside of you. It's the risk takers are the history makers. It's that person that knows that they know that they're going to do it.
And they have bold determination. It's that perseverance. It's the audacity to do what maybe shouldn't be done or what must be done. It's the courage, it's the bravery, it's the nerve, it's to do things that might surprise others.
So, it's not just taking traditions word for it. Sometimes it's rude, sometimes it's shocking. But it's the refusal to be limited by what has always been normal. It's the refusal to be intimidated by imaginary boundaries.
It's the refusal to just accept the diagnosis or the assumption. It's what Jacob had when he was a couple chapters later wrestling with the angel of the Lord. The pre-incarnate Christ. And he's wrestling him and he says I'm not going to let you go.
That's Hutzpah. It's the Hutzpah that's the fight inside of you, that God embedded into your soul. And I see inside of you with the eyes of the spirit that you have Hutzpah. You have the fight.
And some of you go, no, no, I don't feel like I've got that grit inside of me. But by the spirit, by the Holy Spirit, you've got it in there. You've got it in there. You're not going to be the one that rolls over.
You're not going to be the one that just lets life happen to you and is a victim to your circumstances. 2024 is going to be the year of Hutzpah, the year of grit. Why does God like and choose Jacob over Esau? It's kind of like Newton's law.
He has such an easier time guiding somebody that's already moving. It's so much easier for God to move you in the direction that he wants you to go if you're actually already moving. But it can be difficult to get something started or a person started. But if they're already moving, he can just kind of be a bumper and then you just start going the direction he wants you.
But we're so consumed with getting it right. And I want to encourage you, Jacob didn't get it right and God still chose him. Jacob totally screwed things up and then Isaac screwed things up and Abraham screwed things up and somehow God vanished to take their broken story and completely transformed the destiny of the entire earth. God's calling us to not be like Esau and sacrifice our destiny on little pleasures that the way of the world has.
He's going, no, no, no, no. There's so much more. There's such a stronger and greater destiny for you. It's so it's the thing that makes you a little dangerous.
Some of us are reflecting on man. I used to have that, but then I got knocked down. Then I hit some roadblocks. Then I failed.
Then I got hurt. Then I had a failed marriage. Then I had a failed business. Then I had whatever fill in the blank.
And I want to infuse and I charge into you that in that failure, guess what happened? You gained perseverance, steadfastness, and you're still in the ring. Look at you. You're still here.
You're listening to me. What that means is you can go through the hellish thing that you went through and you're still going to go after God. That means that you can go through all of the junk, all of the brokenness, all of the pain and you're undefeated because you kept on showing up. Even when you knocked down, you had hutspa that pushed you forward and said, I know that I know that God is good and I'm going to keep on showing up even when I don't see it, even when it's not in front of me and you need to trust the story that the story is going to turn and God is going to take you and he's going to bring your story full circle.
And you must know that that overcoming is a sign of your grit. Look at what's on the inside of you. Look at the fight on the inside of you. Look at the greatness that's on the inside of you by God.
It's called the grace of God. Look at all the things you overcame, your family overcame, you as a couple overcame, you as an individual overcame, whatever it is, the loneliness, the financial struggle, the unemployment, whatever it is. And he kept on providing for you. You kept on showing up.
You didn't quit and God is with you. He's not far. He's right with you. I counted all joy in my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds.
For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and grit. Let that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, not lacking in anything. What if that brokenness that you've gone through is actually going to result in beautiful things and full refinement and wholeness. Hutzpah is not erratic or unstable.
It's focused, bold, brave, and persistently determined, no matter what has been done before or not. One Jewish sage writes, Hutzpah is royalty without a crown. Hutzpah is thinking like a king without a crown. I want you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew or Luke 11.
I'm almost done here. Luke 11. This is right after Jesus has taught his disciples how to pray. And in verse 5, he tells them a parable.
I want to read the parable quickly here. It says, which one of you has a friend who has a friend will go to him at midnight when everybody's asleep and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to step before him. And he will, the friend that's inside, will think to himself as a better translation.
And he will think to himself, do not bother me. The doors now shut. My kids are asleep with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.
And he's saying that to himself. I tell you though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his hutzpah and his boldness and him moving past social norms and having grit. He will rise and give him whatever he needs. Look at this in verse 9.
And I tell you, ask, it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you for everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds into the one who knocks.
It will be open. What father among you of his son asked for a fish once instead of a fish, give him a serpent or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your kids, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit who ask him? Jesus all throughout the gospels, he's pointing us to have this trait as his people.
He's telling stories going, you got to have that grit that is so bold to ask for things knowing that you're going to get them. That's how kings ask for things. Do you know how kings and royalty think? They ask for something and they expect it.
When they knock, the door is going to be open. When they're seeking a king or royalty do find. Jesus is saying, I want you to have that mindset. I want you to be like Jacob who goes, sell me your birth right now.
I already know it's mine. It's like the Hutzpah that Hebrew word that I talked about said, Hutzpah is in Mary when she moves past all of the opinions of man and finds herself sitting at the feet of Jesus. It's the Hutzpah within Jesus where he goes into the temple and starts throwing tables because he's going to look at the injustice for the nations. My house is going to be defined by connection with God.
It's like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that the king says, hey, worship me and they say, no. Then Daniel when he's praying three times a day and he knows he's not supposed to. It's his grit. It's his desire because he knows that he is going to commit himself to righteousness.
The Lord in the midst of Babylon, in the midst of a culture, the Babylon is this city that is defined by self-protection, self-preservation and self-being God. In the midst of a Babylonian world and a Babylonian culture and hour, God is saying that is not your home. You are built with an ache for a different land, that ache, that grit, that desire. I put it inside of you.
Don't roll over. Don't become passive. Be fueled by the future like Jacob. It's not by our might.
It's by the grace of the Lord. It's not by our strength, but it's by his spirit. It's like Luke 18, the persistent widow. The Jewish sages say that the generation preceding the coming of the Lord will be a generation where Hutzba prevails.
My goodness. Jesus goes, will I find faith on the earth? Yes, Lord. We want to be ones that have resilient faith, persistent faith.
That when we get knocked down, we keep on going. We get back up again. That is going to be the trait of your life. That's going to be the part of you that is not going to quit.
You're going to be that type of person. You're going to be the type of person that goes, yeah, that was tough. Yeah, we got hit. But we're going to get back up again.
You're going to get back up again. You're a fighter. You don't give up. You don't get in.
Some of you have been rolling over when you're alone, and I'm telling you, you got to stop rolling over. There's Hutzba inside of you. There's greatness of grit on the inside of you, and there's a destiny that God's put on your life, and he's going to multiply your story. He's going to multiply the story of you getting back up again.
You're like, what story? The story of what happened then that you think is your story of pain. It's actually your story of restoration that he's going to actually multiply through you. It's going to be a year of Hutzba.
That might mean that there's difficulty. That might mean that there's threats. That might mean that we face things that feel like this is insurmountable. I don't know how I'm going to fight.
I don't know how I'm going to get through this. But hold the line. Hold the line of faith. Keep believing.
Trust the story. Even when it doesn't make sense, he's called you. I want us to stand and just respond to the Lord. That blood has been where our culture has been selling us instant gratification, the quick escape from stress.
But the Lord has a destiny on us. Some of us in certain areas of our lives, we've been caught in a fight. A fight of faith, a difficulty, whatever it looks like. I'm going to name a couple of those examples so you can kind of maybe see what's been going on in your own heart.
Maybe you can relate with some of the things I'm saying. You know more than anybody else what you've actually been going through. The Lord wants to infuse this Hutzba faith. This faith that doesn't quit, is determined, has grit, has persistence, has bravery, audacity, taking no for an answer, has that drive on the inside of you.
Some of you have wanted to get baptized in the Holy Spirit and that passage was for you and you just keep on believing. Don't quit. You're going to keep on believing. God's going to do it this year.
But just speak that over you. Just keep on having faith. Have that audacious faith. That faith that doesn't quit.
Some of you are in the fire with your marriage. There's pain and there's difficulty and there's miscommunication and there's hurt. Some of you are struggling with business troubles. Some of you are struggling with parenting and there's hopelessness that has set it.
Some of you are struggling with traumas that keep on getting triggered. Some of you are struggling with anxiety on a daily basis or addiction. Some of you are wanting to just walk out in boldness in your workplace and you just keep on feeling shy and reclusive. Some of you are wanting to step into building a history of God and having intimacy with God and spend time with him and you just keep on hating the alarm.
It's news. Wherever you're at, whatever you want to see happen, whatever difficulty that you've been facing, God is naming inside of you today that you have that don't quit on the inside of you by the Holy Spirit. I want to call you out of victim mentality like Esau who is very exhausted, very tired. Some of us are feeling that way.
I want to call you out of victim mindset into your destiny to go these little foxes, these little things that are trying to steal your destiny. It's time to actually go on the offensive rather than the defensive. It's time to leave passivity and actually have the hoodsput inside of you that the Holy Spirit has put inside of you and give language to it and go, this is not how it's always going to be. Some of us have just accepted a reality that is not the reality of what God has spoken over you.
Some of us have just gone, well, this is how it is. No, that's not how it is. There's a new way. Maybe you've never seen it done in your family.
Maybe you've never seen it done in your neighborhood. Maybe you've never seen it done, but God has an idea. God has a God idea for you. He has thoughts that he's ready to sow into your soul and he's saying, I see it in you.
You've got hoodsput. Would you just put out your hands? I want us to spread out, get some elbow room and just put out our hands. What I want to do is I want to just ask Holy Spirit to give us a next step.
He's given you grace on the inside to have that grit. He put that fight on the inside of you to not just accept things as they are right now. He put that inside of you and now he's going to give you a next step because you're a person of faith and faith is action. Faith is believing in the call that he's given you, believing in the call that he's given you as a husband or a wife, believing in the call that he's given you as a father or a son or a mother or a business person or an employee.
He's given you these roles and he's actually saying, I've put you in that position and I'm going to give you clarity and wisdom on how to move forward what the next step is. Holy Spirit, would you just, if you know what that space or that area in your life is, I want you to bring that before the Lord in your imagination. You can close your eyes. I want you to bring it before the Lord and I want you to ask Holy Spirit, what is my next step to actually agree with your heart for this topic?
What do I do now? You can ask Holy Spirit that question. He's going to just start speaking through your conscience, through your imagination. You're going to have ideas popping in your mind by the Holy Spirit.
He put that desire in you. He put that drive in you. There's a next step that he's given you. I'm getting five, ten more seconds.
What can happen sometimes is that when Holy Spirit says something, we usually, sometimes we maybe don't like the thing that he said so we start trying to get creative. We start coming up with our own ideas. I want to draw your attention and go back to that first idea and go with that one. I want to commission us out.
You are a people that will have such audacity in your faith that you're actually going to take God's word for it and you're going to obey the Lord when you hear him. Lord, we want to be a people that listen and obey. We want to be a people that have the hoodspa that you had when you sat with tax collectors and sinners. Lord, when you, when you being God in the flesh, we're hanging out on the backside of Israel for 30 years and then you got baptized by John the Baptist.
Lord, you're the God that stood in front of Satan with hoodspa in your soul and you didn't take the bait of immediate shortcuts, fast food solutions. Lord, you didn't microwave the kingdom. Lord, you actually chose the destiny, the fuel by the future, the long-term grit, the faith in the story that you were writing. Lord, we just want to be like you.
We want to be like our big brother Jesus. And so God, we just receive your hoodspa. We receive the grace to overcome the mountains. The mountains are going to move as we just keep on showing up.
Lord, we do multipliers stories in Jesus' name and everybody's sending them in.