Persistent Faith

Hey, we want to celebrate something. We want to celebrate something. Tyler and Elise, come on up. Tyler and Elise, Meyer, come on, come on.

These guys are amazing there. Deacons in our community. How long have you been actually at every day? 2018, okay.

It's longer than we've grown a lot since then. So you've been kind of through things here, but one of the things that we love doing, if this is your first time, we always make space in our service to celebrate what the Lord's doing. And both Tyler and Elise have something that they want to share with us. So let's listen up here with that to say, go for it, man.

Hey, family, how are we doing? We are just so excited to be part of a community that celebrates what the Lord is doing. And so through sharing these testimonies every week, just build up our faith as a community together. And I'm really excited to share a story, just what you were saying, Ben, about testimonies.

And it's everything that we were just praying into and we're shipping about. I feel like there's something very specific that Elise Spirit wants to highlight through this story today. So I'm just really excited and really stirred up by that. We really believe that this testimony is going to be something that builds up our faith.

And we specifically feel like Holy Spirit wants to encourage those of you that are sitting in the tension of not seeing the breakthrough yet that you're looking for. And so I feel like everything we just talked about about Jesus as our friend, that he's the intimate creator. These kind of two extremes is so important. And we just really believe that this testimony is a prophetic word over our community.

This is going to be multiplied over and over in our community. Yeah, yeah. So just to give you a little context, for the last 10 years or so, I've dealt with different digestive and gut issues. And I've had severe fatigue and just debilitating cramps.

And so pain so bad that at night I'd be curled up in a ball unable to sleep or I'd be hunched over like this because I was in pain all day. And fatigue and exhausted just from doing day to day tasks or feeling faint just by standing up. And then cramps so bad that at times I would be throwing up or have to pull over while driving. And so it was affecting my day to day in every way.

And tried all the things, all the natural things, saw doctors, natural, pathic doctors, specialists, all who told me that I was fine because they couldn't find anything wrong with me. And tried different diets and tests and natural supplements. And none of it made any real change. And so it kind of came to the point of accepting that that would kind of be my day to day.

That would be my life. And it would be a lifelong struggle to learn to manage the pain. It was around this time that we started coming to every day and we started to renew our minds about our identity in the finished work of the cross. What jumped started that for us was attending the gospel class.

If you haven't attended that, it changed our lives so you need to go to that. We also were just sitting underneath teaching from everyday sermons both that we were sitting in a person and going back on YouTube and the recordings and just sitting underneath truth and then diving into scripture and renewing our mind through that. So we were really anchoring ourselves in scripture that says your stripes we have been healed, that he already bore our sickness and disease and that believers will lay hands on the sick and they will recover. And we were believing these things but we weren't seeing them line up in our life and in Elisa's body.

And so what really helped us understand that was the spirit soul body that is taught here every day, that we are a spirit that has a soul that lives in a body, that those things are true even though we're not seeing it line up in our bodies. Yeah. What we really started to do then was to renew our minds on that. So rather than what we see determining what we believe, we stood in what we believed and wanted that to shape what we were starting to see in our bodies.

So we were believing that at least had been healed by the Lord already and that was kind of confusing to have that mindset when we weren't seeing that. So it was a long process. It was months and months and months. But practically what that looked like is we changed the equation.

So anytime that pain entered Elisa's body it actually sprung us into connection with the Lord. So pain would enter Elisa's body. We would sit down and renew our minds and thank the Lord for the promises of what he's already done. And we'd enter into Thanksgiving of saying, Lord, thank you that you've already healed Elisa.

Thank you that you're the intimate friend that's walking in this with us and that you're close and that you actually care about our bodies. And from there we lay hands on Elisa's body and speak to the pain with the power and authority we believe God's given us until the pain to leave her body and remind her gut that it's healed. So to settle down, you're okay. You don't need to be in pain anymore.

And that was actually stretching for us. That was new. We weren't used to that. That was awkward language.

And that became second nature. Exactly. And so because like you said, it was months and months there's this process and this tension of like, I'm renewing my mind on this truth and standing in this truth but I'm not seeing it because I'm still experiencing pain for every day, for months. And so in this process, we learned this rhythm of like you said, connecting with the Father.

Any time there was pain, it was, okay, we're gonna connect with the Lord. And through connecting, it was shifting our focus to be on him rather than on my pain. And so over the course of months and months, like I said day after day of still experiencing pain through the process of connecting and changing my mindset that I've actually been healed and I'm fighting off sickness. I'm not a sick person fighting to be well.

And so in the process, my body came into alignment with that truth and I didn't even notice until friends and family started asking like, how have you been feeling? And I was like, oh, when is the last time I felt like I was gonna pass out? When's the last time I couldn't sleep because I was in so much pain? And so confidently I can say today that I've been healed of those chronic pain in my stomach.

And I think another thing that is just important to highlight here is that the Lord cares so instantly about us, that even the small things he actually cares about. And so something that happened, I actually experienced healing in my body too, even though we were focused on Elise. I was lactose intolerant my whole life. And I woke up one morning with a very random thought I've never had before but it was very clear and I believe it's Holy Spirit speaking to me.

And he said, you've been healed of lactose intolerance. You don't need to take the medicine that you take with every meal anymore. And so I said, okay, and I walked out in faith and I stopped taking it and not once in the Senate, I had pain in my stomach from lactose. So I think it shows the power of renewing your mind but specifically we were asking Holy Spirit, what do you wanna share through our story?

And it was going back to the word of the year, the one, two, three, four alignment, that we were valuing the connection with the Lord more than the outcome to the point where we didn't even notice change until much later. It became the second thing that we were worried about. The one thing and so the word of the year, just alignment, that we see alignment in our life as we make the Lord our one thing, our one desire and our treasure, that is we pursue him and seek his face. Things are gonna come into alignment including embodies.

And so we just want it to be an encouragement for those who have not seen the breakthrough yet. We know it can be painful to hear a story of someone seeing breakthrough and you haven't seen it yet. We want you to know that the Lord is so intimately close that he's walking with you in it and that you have a story and a testimony of connection before you have the story and testimony of healing. That's gonna come but the connection is what you're seeking and he's walking with you in that.

Come on, let's go. Man, I had a message prepared. No, I had a message prepared on the soul. But I actually feel like we're supposed to follow this bunny trail right now.

And so you can turn your Bibles to Luke 18. And we're just gonna roll with what Tyler and Elise just shared and I'm gonna take a stab at walking us through just biblically what I was hearing in their story. And I think what Tyler and Elise just shared was a story of faith. And oftentimes when we understand faith, we look at the Hebrews 11 passage and we see in Hebrews 11 that faith is being confident of what is hoped for, right?

And we see and we start reading in Hebrews 11 and we start seeing the heroes of faith. And if you start looking at the list of the heroes of faith, you start realizing they endured. And the greatest theme of Hebrews 11 is actually endurance. And when we look at Tyler and Elise and their journey of what they actually gave themselves to, it was an endurance of renewing their minds.

And that word renew in Romans 12, it's talking about getting lifted up. It's this rising above. And so as Tyler and Elise are declaring healing over their body, turning it into connection, what they're doing is they're rising above their circumstances, like Romans 12, it talks about being renewed in your mind and it transforms your life. And there's actually a metamorphosis that happens.

There's a transformation. So what was a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. What is taken and it's crawling on the ground actually turns into something that's flying and it's beautiful. What's taken is kind of this weird looking animal that's ugly a little bit, right?

And it's got a lot of little legs and stuff and it's kind of ugly, right? And the Lord takes ugly things and he morphs them into beautiful testimonies and things and it's all done through a renewing of the mind. And that's what they were doing. They were renewing their minds, changing the way that they're thinking.

I don't know what I was gonna talk about a little bit in the soul, but they're changing the way that they're thinking and they're thinking higher. They're thinking higher. That's what that word in the Greek. And maybe we should just turn to Romans 12 really quick here.

Romans 12, we've heard this many times. I appeal to you there for verse one. Brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Holy, I love that to present your bodies.

Remember last week we talked about bodies that we even present our bodies as living offerings and sacrifices to God. And it's actually a spiritual act of worship. And then he's talking about worship. This is actually a worship issue.

So what happens is Tyler and Elise are confronted with these issues and they're actually turning it into connection and worship, right? They're confronted with a caterpillar situation and all of a sudden they're turning it into a different perspective worship scenario, right? Everything, when there's something going off in your body and your body isn't lining up, the last thing that you feel like doing is worshiping. Is that right?

Have you ever been sick? You get the flu and you're vomiting or whatever? Things are happening. How many of you know you don't feel like worshiping, right?

Whenever you're sick, whenever you have pain in your bodies you don't feel like worshiping. And all of a sudden they're actually going, I'm gonna not be conformed to this world. That's what verse two starts with. Because being conformed to this world means that you're being fashioned and shaped by this world's perspective and how the world thinks and how the world sees things.

And the Lord is going, I don't want you to think how the world thinks and how the world sees things because it results in only gratifying the desires of the flesh and it results in depression and discouragement and pain and disorder. And what does he say? He says, but I want you to be transformed. That word in the Greek is metamorpho or metamorphosis.

That's like what I was talking about with the butterfly, right? But be morphed and transformed, changed by making new your mind or putting your mind above to think differently in the heavenlies, to think from God's perspective. And that's what Tyler and Elise were doing. They're going, I've been sitting in the perspective of the world for many years.

And even how the church thinks for many years of, I got the diagnosis, I'm going to accept the diagnosis. But what's worse even than not getting the diagnosis is not having the diagnosis. How many of you know that with chronic pain when you can't find a diagnosis, that's even worse than getting a diagnosis, right? And at that point, it's hopeless in multiple different ways, right?

Because you realize the world can't offer me any prescription and now I don't know what to do. And now I only have one plan and it was planning the whole time, right? It was him the whole time. And what I'm not saying, I'm not what I'm not preaching on is we should never take medication.

So we shouldn't take medicine. I'm not saying any of that. Just want to be clear. I take vitamins.

I wear into remedies and all that stuff. God uses things and brilliant minds to actually create medicine to heal bodies. He used our minds and we actually created the Band-Aid, right? And that's like the Band-Aids are a great invention, OK?

OK. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. So he's going, hey, this is how you actually understand the will of God. What is the will of God?

What God wants to do, his desires, right? So we get to have revelation of God's desires when we start thinking the way that he's thinking. And we start looking at things and going, is that what you want? Is that what you want?

And we start asking him the question. That body isn't in alignment with what you said in Isaiah and what you accomplished on the cross. Is that what you want? Do you want it to be like that?

There's a testing here. So now we're putting things to the test. Is that how you want it to be, Lord? Right?

And then we get his perspective and we start thinking the way that he thinks and then we partner with what he wants to do. And we do it like the persistent widow. Let's look at Luke 18. We're going to read Luke 18 and then we'll just go into ministry time.

Are we OK? Man, I spent time on the message. I really did. I got notes and everything.

And OK. Yeah, we'll use it. Like we'll for sure use it. OK.

Luke 18, and he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. Wow. So Jesus is giving us this story so that we don't give up, so that we don't lose heart. Lose heart, losing heart, looks like discouragement, depression, and hopelessness.

So that your thought patterns and how you think is, I just hit up against a wall and there's no changing that. I just hit up against a mountain, and I'm not going to be able to scale it. That's what losing heart means. And Jesus is going, I want to tell this parable.

I want to tell this story so that when I'm done telling the story, that when you hit up against the wall, and when you face the mountain, that you're not going to be discouraged, and that you're not going to enter into hopelessness, and that you're not going to enter into depression. Because what is natural for the world is to hit our circumstances and have our circumstances dictate how we're going to be doing so that we lose heart. How many of you have been going through difficult circumstances? These issues that are surfacing, where it's like, man, my finances are a total mess.

My body is an experiencing healing. My relationships are out of alignment, and there's chaos in my relationships and disunity. And it feels like a mountain. And he's going, this parable is actually for you.

This parable, I'm telling this parable so you don't lose heart in the midst of the fire, because I'm a faithful friend. And I'm not going to leave you, and I want you to know how to respond to the discouraging, depressing conflict of your soul mountain that you're facing. And he said in a certain city, there is a judge, who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to this judge and saying, give me justice against my adversary.

For a while, he refused. But afterward, he said to himself, though, I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps on bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And the Lord said, hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not God give justice to his elect, his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?

I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? He's going to give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, when he returns, when Jesus rides on the clouds and approaches Jerusalem, riding on the clouds, will he find faith on the earth?

Will he find faith when there's shakings? Will he find faith when there's conflict? Will he find faith when there's difficulty? Will he find faith when there's darkness covering the earth?

Will he find faith when the churches may be pushed underground or into the corners? Will he find faith when it's inconvenient? Will he find faith when it doesn't seem to line up with my natural mind and how I'm thinking about things? When it doesn't match up with what my body is demonstrating and showing, and he's going, will he find faith?

There's a rhetorical question, and the answer is oftentimes, we naturally go like, well, I don't know. But I think Jesus is reminding us that the reason why he's telling us the parable is so that we won't lose heart and that he will find faith. He's actually giving this to us as a gift, because he's going, I'm gonna find faith in my bride. I'm gonna be, I'm hoping all things.

Don't you remember, it's not, I'm not gonna find faith. He's going, I'm telling this parable so that I do find faith, and I'm telling you this, I will find faith. I will find faith because I hope all things. I'm a God of love, right?

As we look at this story, maybe some of you have heard this many times, but as we look at the story, he's going, I'm not like that judge, right? I'm actually a good judge. I'm a loving kind father and judge and friend. But even a bad judge who's probably been working with the mafia, who's taking bribes, all these things, bad judges that there's actually injustice in their hearts and their judging.

And the Lord is going, I'm a good judge. But even the bad judge is gonna get worked down. It's like the persistence is like you keep on hitting it again. It's like the mustard seed.

How many of you have heard the mustard seed message where the mustard seed is the strongest seed in plant that Jesus could even describe in the nation of Israel in that context naturally? Because what would happen is there was mountains, rocks that would move on the mountains of Israel because the mustard seed was this invasive plant that would actually push over boulders because of its persistence. And Jesus is saying, this is the type of faith that you need to step into, faith that keeps on hitting it. And I just wanna encourage us to be a people again that keep on hitting it.

That even when I don't see it, I'm gonna keep on hitting it. Even when I'm not seeing the breakthrough, I'm gonna keep on hitting it. I'm preaching to myself right now. Even when I don't see the breakthrough in my kid's life, I'm gonna keep on hitting it again.

I'm going to be a mustard seed faith guy, okay? I'm gonna be a person that's persistent, like a persistent widow that keeps on hitting it. I'm gonna wear that thing down and that sickness, that disease, that whatever is attacking, I'm going to just make sure that it knows I'm not gonna stop. I'm just gonna keep on, I'm like the energizer bunny in faith, okay?

The Lord is redeeming the bunnies, right? And he's giving us faith and faith is gonna multiply. And he's going, I'm taking back the image of the bunny because I'm gonna energize the people of God to actually multiply rapidly in faith. And I'm gonna take Tyler and Elise's testimony, I'm actually gonna multiply it and we're just gonna keep on hitting it again.

And how many of you know that those Hebrews 11 heroes of the faith, some of them, this is not encouraging. Some of them didn't see the breakthrough. What do I do with that? Like we have to acknowledge that.

That there's stories in the room where some of us, we were practicing persistence and we were actually walking out. Like I thought I was exercising mustard seed faith. Now we see in part, okay? And some of us think that we are operating in faith and that there's hundreds of people that were praying for this person.

And most of the people were probably in fear rather than in faith. Of they hear the story and they go, oh man, oh man, cancer. And they pray from the place of fear rather than the place of faith, right? Bad, scary cancer doesn't have anything on the blood, okay?

But oftentimes when we hear the report of cancer, we think cancer is more powerful than the blood or our faith, right? And so I don't want, just because we've experienced, this is where the rubber meets the road, we've experienced a loss and we were praying and we thought we were in faith. But listen, we're all in process. We're all in process.

I'm looking around the room and I see people that have actually experienced healing in their body and then not and then it came back. And these are brothers and sisters that we have in our family and I'm going, we're gonna hit it again. Even when I don't get it, I don't understand, but I'm in process and I'm not gonna let my process actually dictate what is true, okay? Just because you've experienced pain from the place of not seeing the breakthrough, the Lord wants to heal that place and then go let's get up again and hit it again.

And this is actually gonna be ground that I'm gonna redeem. I'm gonna take that disappointment and failure. How many of you have heard Dan Mueller or Todd White talk? And like Dan Mueller, he's coming in November and just love Dan, he's amazing.

And his brother passed away, okay? Dan Mueller is a man of faith. How many people has Dan Mueller seen healed? Like literally, how many people has Todd White seen healed?

How many people have we seen healed in our community? And then I'm at a funeral a couple months ago and he didn't get out of the wheelchair from this community and we didn't see the breakthrough. What do I do with that? I go, I'm not fully stepping in to what I know I have access to.

I'm not putting it all at my feet and saying, it's all my fault, but I'm sure as heck not gonna put it on the person that's sick or the person that needs to break through. I'm not gonna put it on them, like so many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches that actually ostracize the people that are struggling and paying and saying, why don't you have faith? Do you think Jesus walked into cities and said, oh, leper, why don't you have faith? Do you think Jesus didn't even care if they believed in him and he was healing people.

He was healing people that weren't born again, that weren't church people. And we actually cast judgment on the people that are struggling in their bodies with sickness and saying that they have lack of faith. No, we're accepting responsibility for it. We are the family of God, we're the people of God, we have the Holy Spirit, we have authority and power and we have that persistent mustard seed faith that says, I don't ever give up.

I keep on hitting, even to the last breath, I'm gonna keep on it and even when the last breath happens, I'm gonna keep on hitting it again because there's resurrection power inside of me. I think there's a resilience coming on the inside of his people that go, but we're supposed to be deadraisers. Listen, we are going to step in as a people into mustard seed, persistent widow, hit it again, hit it again because what happens is then demons don't like coming around, around persistent people. Sickness doesn't like it either.

Sickness is like, ooh, that's unpleasant. I don't like getting pushed out of bodies. Do you know demons don't like that? Demons don't like persistence.

Demons don't like faithful, gritty faith. Oh, they hate that. Infermities hate that. It's unpleasant for them.

It makes them uncomfortable, okay? And we think we're uncomfortable in our persistence. I'm telling you what, that sickness and that lack of breakthrough is getting uncomfortable right now because you're rising up in faith. Because you're getting a mind that's gonna start thinking differently and higher and there's transformation coming.

There's transformation and it's actually gonna result in worship. Let's all stand. I just wanna worship a little bit together. Jesus, we believe that you're gonna find faith on the earth when you return.

Jesus, we thank you that even in our faith, we don't have to get riled up and we don't have to shout. We don't even have to be really good at praying. We don't have to pray the right thing anymore. Lord, I thank you that I don't have to say it the right way.

That I don't have to come up with the exact spiritual language. Lord, I thank you that there's a bunch of uneducated disciples that came back rejoicing because bodies and demons had to submit to their voices and they're a bunch of high school kids, bunch of teens, 13, 14 year olds, 16 year olds, that you gave authority and power to. And you said, these are the disciples that will actually change the whole planet. Lord, thank you that I don't have to go to Bible school.

I don't have to go to seminary. I don't even have to be following you for 20 years, 30 years before I get the authority and the grit and the faith that you've given to me freely. This is what you did to me. You just did this to me.

You gave me a spirit of power. You gave me a faithful spirit. You gave me a persistent spirit. You gave me a bounce back spirit.

A bounce back kid is who you made me to be. Even when I don't see it. Even when I don't feel it, I'm a man of faith. I'm a woman of faith.

I'm a son of faith. I'm a daughter of faith. Do you know my dad? Do you know my friend?

Do you know my big brother? Do you know my helper? Do you know the warrior helper? The azer helper that's inside of me.

Father, I thank you that you're giving us a militant perspective when we approach things that aren't in alignment with your kingdom. You're giving us a resilience to go. That's out of alignment. It's coming into alignment right now.

I'm gonna keep on hitting it again until it's one, two, three, four aligned. Because even that body is actually treasured by the Lord. Even that circumstance, God says it's got value. That relationship, it's got value.

That breakthrough that's needed. He's more passionate about it than I am. And he wants to bring wholeness. That's what shalom means, it's wholeness.

Shalom peace, it's wholeness. He wants to take, that's what dominion is, taking what's in chaos. And that's our destiny is taking the chaos and bringing it into wholeness and peace. Bringing it into alignment.

And we're the people that will in persistence bring it into alignment. When our bank accounts empty like the widow. When we don't have anybody to advocate, we've got an advocate in you Lord. The cross is our advocate.

The cross speaks a better word. The blood speaks a better word. It speaks a better word when guilt tries to hit us and when sickness tries to hit us and when dreams in the night try to hit us. Oh man, you better not give me a demonic dream.

You know what happens every time that happens. I go on the offensive. I go into alignment mode. I go into persistent mode.

I go into offense mode. Oh, you're always gonna have to play defense when you come over to my house. It's alignment. It's the kingdom always advances under my roof.

Father, you're giving us some mentality. You're giving us the spirit like a lion. That's on the prowl. That's pacing back and forth in strength.

Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Let's just spread out. We're gonna go into a time of worship.

I don't know what we're gonna do. You know that. I don't know. This is all just happened.

So don't have any expectations on if I know what to do. Holy Spirit's got to guide us. Thank you Lord. Lord, we're just following your leadership.

We're following the leader. We love following the leader. You always have our best in mind. You take what the enemy meant for evil.

You turn it for good. You're gonna multiply Tyler and Elise's story. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.

Thank you Lord. What do you wanna do Lord? What are you speaking Lord? We're just leaning not on our own understanding and we're acknowledging you right now Holy Spirit.

What are you saying? What do you wanna do?