(upbeat music) - Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you. (upbeat music) ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ - Amen.

You can return to your seat, but stay standing with me.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

Are we happy to be in the house of God this morning, church?

Amen. (congregation applauding) Amen.

It's good to be in the house of God.

It's good that you're here.

Let's pray for those that are not here.

We got summer months.

We take a lot of people out of town.

We got three ministries out of town.

We got our children's pastors and our marriage leaders.

They're out in Destin, Florida, along with our hospitality team.

So praise God for that.

This is the time of vacation.

Just be careful.

And if you're gonna go to Florida, be careful for the sharks 'cause they're sharks, man.

They're sharks.

I'm going in a few weeks, but I'm ready.

I told my wife, I'm ready for my swim with the shark experience.

It's all over the news.

Anyways, go with me to Deuteronomy chapter one.

Yes, Deuteronomy one.

We're gonna be reading a little bit, 19 through 40.

I love Deuteronomy.

I think it's a great book.

And it begins with Moses addressing the people of Israel, and he's telling them kind of a brief history.

And he's telling the Israelites what happened to lead them into the wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

He's addressing a new generation.

You know, sometimes you gotta just pause and you gotta reflect on the past however many years so that you can kind of learn from the mistakes that other people made so that we don't repeat those mistakes and that's what Moses is doing here.

He's telling a new generation of people that it didn't have to be this way, but because of fear and because of excuses, this is what resulted from that.

So that's a little context.

If you have it, say amen and bear with my voice.

I don't know, I'm a little sick this morning, but by the strength of God, we're gonna get through it in a little bit of mokos, amen.

It says this, then just as the Lord our God commanded us, this is Moses speaking, we left Mount Sinai and we traveled through the great and terrifying wilderness as you yourselves remember and headed towards the hill country of the Amorites.

When we arrived at Kadesh Barnea, I said to you, you have now reached the hill country of the Amorites that the Lord our God is giving us.

Look, he has placed the land in front of you.

Read that again, look, he has placed the land in front of you.

Go and occupy it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors has promised you.

Don't be afraid, don't be discouraged.

But you all came back to me and said, first let's send out some scouts to explore the land for us and they will advise us on the best route to take and which towns we should enter.

This seemed like a good idea to me and so I chose 12 scouts, one from each of your tribes.

They headed for the hill country and came to the valley of Eshkol and explored it.

They picked up some fruit and brought it back to us and they reported that the land of the Lord our God has given us is indeed a good land.

But you rebelled against the command of the Lord and you refused to go in.

You complained in your tents and said the Lord must hate us, that's why he brought us from here from Egypt to hand us over to the Amorites to be slaughtered.

Where can we go?

Our brothers have demoralized us with their report.

They tell us the people of the land are taller and more powerful than we are and their towns are large with walls rising high into the sky.

We even saw the giants there, the descendants of Anak.

But I said to you, don't be shocked or afraid of them.

The Lord your God is going ahead of you and he will fight for you just as you saw him do in Egypt.

And you saw how the Lord your God cared for you all along the way as you traveled through the wilderness just as the father cares for his child.

Now he has brought you into this place.

But even after all he did, you refused to trust in the Lord your God who goes before you, looking for the best places to camp, guiding you with the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day.

When the Lord heard your complaining, he became angry and he solemnly swore, not one of you from this wicked generation will live to see the good land I swore to give your ancestors, except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.

He will see the land because he has followed the Lord completely.

I will give to him and his descendants some of the land that he explored during the scouting mission and the Lord was angry with me because of you.

He said to me, Moses, not even you will enter the promised land.

Instead your assistant Joshua, the son of Nun, will lead the people into the land.

Encourage him for he will lead Israel as they take possession of it.

Two more verses, stick with me.

I will give the land to your little ones, your innocent children.

You were afraid they would be captured, but they will be the ones who occupy it.

And as for you, turn around now and go back through the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for this word that you've given your servant, Lord.

I pray, Father God, that you would just speak it through me this morning, that I'd be sensitive to whatever you wanna do, whatever you wanna say, Lord, and that we would be receptive to your powerful and impactful word, my God, that it would change our lives.

In Jesus' name, amen.

The book of Deuteronomy, you know, if you read like the very first verse, it begins by telling us that it was only an 11 day journey from Horeb where Mount Sinai is to Kadesh Barnea.

Kadesh Barnea is right just outside of the promised land.

That's the place where God took them and the Israelites encamped so that they could, you know, scout and spy on the best route to enter into the land of Canaan.

And so if you don't know the story, I mean, read the story, it's Numbers 13.

Moses is just kind of summarizing it here.

But the people of Israel who God has taken out of Egypt for the purpose of blessing them as a nation and giving them their own land, they are now refusing to believe that God is actually gonna protect them.

In fact, they start saying that maybe God took us out of Egypt just to give us to the hands of the Amorites, which is just dumb logic, right?

But they're crippled by their unbelief and their failure to trust in God.

And so God says, all right, fine, I'll wait for this generation to die and then the next generation will take it and inherit it.

And so it ended up being a whole generation of people living their lives in a place that they didn't have to live in.

It didn't have to be this way.

This is not how God intended them to spend 40 years of their life, but because of fear and because of doubt, they wound up circling the wilderness when the promised land was just a few days away.

How sad, right?

What a waste.

And so, you know, this message, I don't know if it's gonna be for everybody, but I do think it's gonna be for a lot of people who might be living in a moment of fear when they should be living in a moment of faith.

And so my challenging question to you and also the title of my sermon is, what are you doing there?

What are you doing there when God wants you here?

Because that would have been my question if I was growing up under this fearful generation, I would have had some questions for mom and dad.

Like, why am I growing up in the wilderness when I should be growing up surrounded by milk and honey that the Lord promised to me?

And it's really just down the street.

What am I doing here?

What am I doing here eating manna every single day when there is a rich and abundant, plentiful resources in the land that God promised us?

Why are we here and not there?

40 years is a long time.

Happy 40th birthday, Pastor Brandon.

My bad, I didn't mean to.

What I meant to say is 40 years is a long time to not be where God wants you to be.

It's a long time.

And maybe there's nothing that you can do about the past, but you can do something about your present which will affect your future.

And I think there's too many Christians living today that are too, there's too many Christians not living out their callings.

They're not living out their purpose.

They're too afraid to take a step of faith.

But if you took it, you might see God begin to open up some doors that you never thought would be open.

You know, this is gonna sound harsh, but maybe you could have been further by now.

Maybe you could have been further along in your faith and in your ministry and your career and your relationships had you just trusted God in a moment of fear.

I don't, you know, I don't want anyone out, I don't want anybody to ever miss on what God is calling them to.

I don't want anybody to ever miss, thank you, I wish this was for my sweat, but it's for my nose, so y'all just gonna have to stick with me.

I don't want anybody to miss out on the calling and the gifting and the anointing that God has placed over your life simply because you failed to trust.

I think this is the perfect example that shows us that the opposite of faith really is fear.

Because ultimately the first generation of Israelites who were supposed to take the promised land, they chose fear over faith.

And listen, when I say fear, please know that I mean fear in the context of God.

The Bible says that we should not fear, but I believe that there are things that we should fear.

For example, I have every reason to fear if God is not with me.

I've got every reason to fear if I don't have the blessing of God over something that I wanna do that he's not saying go ahead, do it on.

I have every reason to fear if I'm living a lifestyle of sin and disobedience because Jesus might come back today or I might die today and I don't wanna be found without his presence.

I've got every reason to fear if I'm living outside of the will of God, but if I'm on the path of God, the path that he has set before me and I'm in his hands and on his mind and I'm doing his will, I've got no reason to fear because whatever shows up on the path that God has established for my steps, that has to figure out a way to get out of my way.

But sometimes, man, we're walking down, we're walking down the path that God has set for us only to encounter an enemy and instead of moving forward, we choose to fear the enemy who has set up shop on our path.

How disrespectful.

Imagine if you got home today after church and you just found another family watching TV in your living room.

You know, like you're just gonna be like, oh, I guess, guess it's theirs now.

No, you're gonna fight for it.

You're gonna fight for it.

And God is looking for a generation who will fight for what God ordered to be theirs.

He's looking for a generation who will protect their promise.

He's looking for men and women who will not fear the enemy even when it's bigger and even when it's more intimidating than they are, but you stand firm and you declare that what God gave to me, the devil's got no right to.

The enemy's always trying to get legal rights over things that aren't his.

And so many times we let him, we let him have our joy.

Just take it.

Seven o'clock in the morning, you're already giving the enemy your joy because somebody cut you off.

Take my joy, you won.

We let him have the victory when we're down.

The Israelites, man, they should have known that this promised land, it belonged to them.

It had their name on it.

If God promised it and God said take it, that only means that those who currently possess it have no right to it, but they chose to fear the enemy.

You know, I would argue that in life we're gonna fear something, we're gonna fear someone.

We either fear what we can see in front of us or we fear the God that we can't see.

One or the other.

We're gonna fear what we see or we're gonna fear the God that we can't see and it's easy to fear the thing that we see.

It's natural.

It's natural to fear what we see and doubt what we hear.

So the disciple Thomas, right, doubting Thomas is what they call him.

When he heard about Jesus being resurrected, he doubted.

It wasn't until he saw Jesus that he had the assurance of what he saw.

So when we see our greatest fears and they're standing in front of us and they're taunting us, we have the assurance that it's scary.

And it's not natural to trust in what we hear because of what we see.

I shared a few weeks ago that Laila got a really hardcore nosebleed.

And nosebleeds are common for kids, right?

But as a parent, you kinda wonder, like what's going on?

Is there another reason why she's bleeding from her nose?

And so we plug her nose 'cause that's what you're supposed to do to stop the bleeding, but she's bleeding now for 20 minutes and if you Google it, which mistake number one, 20 minutes is around the time that you gotta kinda start worrying and seeking medical attention.

So 20 minutes goes by, 21 minutes, 22, 23 minutes, she's still bleeding a lot.

And so Laila's freaking out and we're, Melissa and I, we're trying to keep her calm and we're trying to assure her, like hey, it's gonna be okay, this is normal, it's just, it's a little bit more blood than usual, but you're gonna be okay.

And you can kinda tell Laila, she's taking deep breaths and she's trying to calm herself down because she fears what she see and she doubts what she hears.

And all of a sudden, as we're plugging her nose, blood starts coming out of her eyes, out of her tear ducts.

And man, it was like a horror film because Laila lets out this incredibly powerful scream and she's like, it's coming out of my eyes!

And it's, man, it's wild.

And Melissa and I, we just look at each other and we don't say anything, but like, it's like that marriage telepathy thing, it's just like, you're freaking out, I'm freaking out, but we're gonna pretend that we're not freaking out.

That's what we said to each other telepathically.

And so we're there and we're telling Laila, okay, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay.

And now in my mind, I'm starting to freak out because like, I'm thinking, is she bleeding from her brain?

I don't know.

And so now I'm saying, you're gonna be okay, but I'm doubting what I'm saying, I'm doubting what I hear because I'm freaking out over what I see.

And then again, mistake number two, I googled it again, is it normal for nosebleeds to produce blood that comes from your tear ducts because I just wanted the assurance and Google basically told me, no dummy, it's a nosebleed, right?

So I had no assurance from Google, I'm freaking out and we take her to urgent care only to find out that we were plugging her nose a little too hard.

So praise God, praise God.

That's what I'm talking about.

Like we fear, that was a morning, man, it was wild.

Never forget that.

But we fear what we see and we doubt what we hear.

And that is true when it comes even to God's assurance.

Like God has spoken things over you.

God has spoken things over you.

Maybe he's even singled you out before in a service and he said, I need to tell you something.

It happened to me, I know it's happened to many of us.

Where God has given you word, but yet you are not walking in that word because you fear what you see, you fear what's in front of you.

Or maybe you fear what's not in front of you that you think should be in front of you.

Like you're fearful because you think that your finances are supposed to be at a certain point and they're not there yet.

You fear because your career, your business, your ministry hasn't advanced and you think it should be up here and it's still down here.

And meanwhile, we're doubting the promises of God.

And so the first generation of Israel, they had the assurance of God, the promised land is yours.

I took you out of Egypt to bring you here.

I took you out of slavery to bring you here, to give you freedom.

I will give you over to the inhabitants of this land.

Yes, you're gonna have to fight.

Yes, there's gonna be some blood.

No, it's not gonna be easy, but it's yours.

You know, the promises of God, they don't come that easy.

Because oftentimes there are stipulations.

God told Israel, I will bless you, but the stipulation was if you obey my commands.

We forget about that part, we just want the bless you part.

And they were like, well, where are the blessings?

And you've been disobedient your entire life.

He said, I will give you this land, but you're gonna have to take it.

There's people living there.

They're not throwing you a welcome party.

They wanna stay there.

But I'm giving it to you if you fight for it.

So I mean, listen, unless God has told you I'm gonna gift wrap the promise for you, know that you're gonna have to do a little bit of work.

So I started praying differently recently.

I think it really matters how you pray.

I would always pray, Lord, bless my family, bless my church, bless the ministry, bless the season that I'm in.

But if I'm in a season of no blessings, I might start to think, man, God's not listening to me.

Why isn't he blessing me?

I prayed, where's the power of prayer?

So instead I started praying, Lord, bless my hands, bless my words, bless wherever my feet go, bless the preparation of the work that you've called me to do.

Everything that I touch, Lord, I want it to have favor.

Because if God said he was gonna bless me, that doesn't mean that he's just gonna let it rain blessings, it means that he will open doors that I have to knock on.

Knock and the door will be opened to you.

He will give me victory when I fight.

You don't get victory by default.

You gotta fight for it.

God didn't give, you know what, God didn't give Goliath a heart attack.

What did he do?

He gave his servant David a sling and a stone and he said, throw it.

Israel didn't understand that.

And so they chose to fear what they saw and they failed to trust in the God that they heard, the God that said, I'm gonna give you this land.

And so man, we gotta be careful with doubt.

We gotta be careful with doubt.

Because doubt has the ability to produce fear.

Now I also think that some level of doubt is common in the exercise of faith.

Like without doubt you have certainty and certainty is not faith.

Certainty is what you see, faith comes from what you don't see.

So some level of doubt is necessary and is common.

You just gotta be so careful with it because the temptation of doubt is that it produces fear.

You can't think about it too long.

And there's a lot of people who get a word from God and then they analyze it.

They analyze it and they see, okay, well how's that gonna work?

And so the Bible talks about the 12 spies.

They get together and they go and they spy the land and they come back to Moses and they evaluate their doubt.

They say, okay, well what did you see?

Well I saw these giants, man, they're massive.

They're a lot bigger than we are and they work out six times a week and they can destroy us.

What did you see?

Man, I saw these guys, they have some fortified cities.

They've got really, really high walls, impenetrable.

I don't know how we're gonna get through.

What did you see?

I saw really good land that they're not gonna wanna give us.

We're gonna have to fight for it.

And so the problem with this generation of Israel is that they allowed their doubt to produce fear.

I don't know who I'm talking to today.

I don't know what you're doubting.

I don't know what word God has given you that you are pondering a little too long on that now it's starting to produce fear and you don't wanna go anywhere near it.

Fear is the absence of faith.

I'm gonna say it again because you gotta understand something.

The Bible says that it is impossible to please God without faith.

So when you fear, you actually displease God.

When you fear man, when you fear your situation, when you feel the uncertainty, anything that you place over God, you begin to displease God because fear, I'm gonna tell you, fear cripples obedience.

When you're fearful, it cripples your obedience.

You can't give into it.

You can't move forward with what God has called you to do because you're so afraid.

It cripples your trust in God.

And so because Israel gave into their fear, man, what could have only taken a few days took 40 years in the wilderness, wandering in circles, not advancing to the level that God desired them to.

Fear cripples us so much, and I want you to get this, especially if you have kids, fear cripples us so much that many times the ones who pay the consequences for it are the ones that come after us.

Maybe that'll get you to move because when it's about our kids, we take it a little bit differently.

But your fear can set back not only you but the people that come after you.

That's what happened here.

Because we didn't set them up.

Now they have to wait a lifetime to figure it out on their own.

Now they have to unlearn all of these fearful habits that mom and dad carry.

I don't know about you, man, but if I were one of the 12 spies, after receiving the report from God that says you're gonna die in the wilderness because of your lack of belief, I'd have been kicking myself every single day.

Because not only did I fail my generation, I failed my children's generation.

I failed my children because my children, they don't have to be here.

My kids didn't have to grow up in the wilderness and eat manna every day.

My kids could have been enjoying the blessings and the faithfulness of God in the land that he promised, but because of my disobedience, because of my decisions, because of my fear and my doubt, now they're gonna have to fight 40 years later for their lives.

And so God's challenge to you, church, this morning is simple.

Your obedience needs to begin today.

Right now.

I don't know what it is.

I know that's very vague, but I'm telling you, obedience needs to begin today.

I mean, wholehearted obedience, not just a little bit of it.

I said this before.

Obedience in one area does not negate disobedience in another area.

Like, it's everything.

It's all or nothing.

So obedience has to start today, and I believe that God is calling you to remove the things that are keeping you from where he wants you.

And look, I wanna say this with grace.

I wanna say this with grace because I don't, I don't think that we just have a bunch of Jonahs in the house that are just running away from their calling.

I think that we have genuine people.

I still got your attention, right?

I think we have genuine people in here who want to do the will of God because you love God.

You're just crippled by fear.

You're crippled by doubt.

And so you don't call it disobedience.

You call it hesitation.

I don't think the 12 Spies were calling it disobedience either.

I think they were calling it hesitation.

They were calling it reality.

This is what it is, and it's gonna be nearly impossible for us to conquer this land.

And in the same way, there are things that you have not pursued because you think that you've gotta wait for the right time, but if God is giving you the green light and if he's opening the doors, stop hesitating because though you don't realize it, hesitation can be disobedience.

And look, I'm not, it's good to evaluate.

It's good to discern.

It's good to pray on things.

It's good to get other perspective and the opinions of maybe some of your mentors, right?

But be so careful to allow what looks like wisdom to become the paralysis of your faith.

Because you're calling it wisdom.

You're over-wisdoming, I know it's not a word.

You're over-wisdoming and it's crippling your faith.

There's gotta be a balance of it.

What you're calling hesitation could be disobedience.

And I know that this is a broad question, but I just wanna ask you what is, and I want you to really reflect on it, what is keeping you from where God wants you to be today?

From where you know you should be?

Very rarely, if I were to ask you, if I were to ask you what has God spoken of your life and you were to tell me, we were to have an intimate conversation about where God is calling you and I ask you the question, well, what's keeping you from that?

You might say, see, because very rarely do we call our excuses fear.

We call them other things, we call them not enough money.

We call them not enough time.

We call them by a person's name.

We call them by, well, I just had a baby.

We call them the attacks of the enemy.

We call them bad luck.

We call them when it rains, it pours.

But underneath all of that is fear and fear stops progress.

If God has spoken to you, man, if he has opened doors, what are you doing there and not here?

Because God has greater plans than where you're currently at.

I'm gonna have the worship team come up.

In Numbers 13, we hear about a young man, his name is Caleb, Caleb.

And Caleb, along with Joshua, they're saying, man, this is it, this is it.

So they hear the reports of the spies and the spies are like, no, we can't do it.

Now's not the time.

And Caleb and Joshua were like, this is the time.

We got the green light.

God said, go.

God said, look, it's right in front of you.

What are y'all talking about?

And I just imagine the elders saying, Caleb, let the adults talk.

You don't know what you're talking about.

You're naive, you're not realistic.

You're too ambitious, you're inexperienced.

But the Bible doesn't describe Caleb like that.

The Bible says that Caleb had a different spirit.

A different spirit, Caleb had.

And I don't know exactly what the author meant by different spirit, but I know that the Bible says that God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

So I know that the biggest difference in Caleb's spirit was one that was not governed by fear.

That was the biggest difference.

And I'll tell you, church, this is what God is looking for.

He's looking for a people who would rally around his word, not just hear it, but advocate for it.

Like if God said it, it's gonna happen.

If God said it, I've gotta position myself for what comes next, because if he said it, it's about to happen.

That is what God is looking for.

He's looking for a different spirit, a spirit that does not fear, that does not hesitate.

You know, I'm believing for things, man.

We're believing for a lot of things over this church, things that we've seen, things that God has said.

And so because we're believing in it, we have to make certain steps to allow for that to happen.

And so in the boardroom and in the leaders meetings and when I'm working on plans and when we're talking over with leaders, we're working within the framework of God's promises.

Not ours, not our fear.

We're saying, okay, God said this, what's next?

What's next to get us there?

Because I'm not about to spend 40 years wandering around, going in circles, going through the motions, just having nice services.

No, I wanna go where God has said we are destined to go and I want you to go where God has said you are destined to go.

I want you to be doing the things that God has said you should be doing right now.

So obedience has gotta start today.

You've gotta let the fear go at the altar. (soft piano music) I'll close here.

Because maybe you're in a moment where and you're constantly choosing fear over faith.

And a lot of you aren't gonna admit it because there's pride there and that's another sermon.

But there's people that are choosing consistently fear over faith and you haven't taken that step that you know that you probably need to take because you are not where you belong.

And you've been in limbo because you're waiting on a move from God.

That's a cop out.

My God's always on the move.

My God's always working.

My God is trying to advance His purpose.

He doesn't take a day off.

There are people that are dying in the world.

There's ministries that need to spark up.

There's prophetic voices that need to go out.

We don't get a day off.

And so God is on the move and He has spoken things over His church and the church is like, well, you know, let me think about it.

Let me pray about it.

God has already moved.

He's already spoken.

He's already opened doors.

And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying with the snap of the finger, you know, you're gonna be in a completely different spot, but like you gotta start moving in the direction that God has pointed to.

And so because you've been giving excuses and calling every excuse of fear something else, you've been in limbo and you've been in the wilderness and you've been suffering and you've been in lack and there are symptoms.

Please, please let me get the last moment of your attention.

There are symptoms that can prove it.

You have moments of depression.

You have moments where you have no joy.

You have moments of hopelessness.

You have moments where you feel undervalued.

You have moments where you feel underappreciated.

You have moments where you feel unaccomplished and that you provide no value to people or to the kingdom.

You feel like you're behind in life because you've made mistakes.

But see, God never wastes a moment.

And this is where I wanna encourage you 'cause I don't wanna leave you there.

I don't want you feeling discouraged when you walk out of here thinking, "Man, I wasted 40 years of my life."

God never wastes a moment.

He uses the wilderness as a lesson.

And so I love the passage in Deuteronomy eight that says, "And you shall remember the whole way "that the Lord your God has led these 40 years "in the wilderness that He might humble you, "testing you to know what was in your heart, "whether you would keep His commandments or not.

"And He humbled you and He let you hunger.

"And He fed you with manna, which you did not know, "nor did your fathers know that He might make you know "that man does not live by bread alone, "but man lives by every word "that comes from the mouth of the Lord." (congregation applauding) See, the second generation, listen, the second generation of Israel, the second generation, the children, they learned a lesson that their father should have already known, that man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Father, not by what they see.

We walk by faith and not by sight.

They should have known.

But word, the word indicates something that we hear, not something that we see.

And I said earlier that what we hear is often something that we doubt in the presence of what we can actually see.

And so my challenge to you, church, is that you would live by the word that the Lord has spoken over your life, over your household, over your family, over your children, over your ministry, and over your faith. (congregation applauding) Don't be afraid of what you see.

Fear the God that you hear.

So Jesus, we gotta bring it back to Jesus, right?

I'm gonna have you stand real quick.

Jesus, over a thousand years after this, Moses is talking to the Israelites.

He's reminding them that you have to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So Jesus, a thousand years later, the Bible says that he's tested where?

In the wilderness.

He goes to the wilderness.

The Spirit of God leads him there.

And over there he finds the devil, the devil tempts him.

And what does he say?

He says, "If you are the Son of God, "command these stones to turn into bread."

And so Jesus, we have to understand, Jesus is in a very human moment right now.

He's depriving his flesh, his body.

He's on a 40-day fast.

He's weak, he's hot, he's in the desert.

He's probably troubled in spirit because he knows that he's about to embark on a three-year ministry that is gonna result in persecution and hate and hunger and ultimately is gonna lead to his death.

He is in a very weak and vulnerable moment that if any of us were there, we probably would have failed.

And so the enemy sees it.

And he says, "If you are the Son of God, "turn the stones, turn what you see into an easier moment.

"You can do it."

But he remembers the lessons that God taught his descendants in the wilderness that man does not live by bread alone but by every word of the Father.

And so what took the people of Israel 40 years to come out of only took Jesus 40 days because he knew that the wilderness was not where he belonged and it's not where any of you belong.

Those who trust in the Lord, we belong in the promises of God.

We belong in the provision.

We belong in the abundance.

We belong in the blessings.

And look, I'm not talking about prosperity.

I'm talking about plenitude of what God has for you.

God will not have you in a desolate place where his Spirit is not.

But you have to live by the very mouth in the word that comes from the Father.

That's my challenge to you today 'cause many of you are in the wilderness but God is saying begin to trust your way out of it.

Trust your way out of the wilderness and drop the fears and stop being intimidated by what you see because the God that you hear is greater.

We worship your name, my God.

I wanna invite you this morning to have a moment with the Holy Spirit where you begin to lay the fears at the altar and say God, I don't wanna doubt anything that you're doing because if you did it before, I know that you can do it again.

If you made the promise, I know that you will complete the promise.

My God, I pray right now that you activate faith, my God, that it would come alive in Jesus' holy, mighty name right now, Father God.

I pray that no more time would be wasted, Father God, that we don't spend any more time where we don't belong, Father God, that we would plant our feet, Father God, at the position where you told us where we belong.

Hallelujah. - Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

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Thanks again and God bless. (gentle music) [MUSIC]