Maybe you ought to stop trying to do your own plan and surrender to God's will and God's way and watch the peace you'll receive if you do it. I don't know about you. There's been a whole bunch of times where I thought I wrote everything out. I thought I had everything. Only to find out that math ain't mathing. But when I said, listen, God, I'm going to surrender all that I have to you, may not be much, but somehow or another, I felt at ease.
Have you ever missed something that could have changed your life? Maybe you arrived too late for a job interview, missed the doctor's call, or let an opportunity pass that you thought would come back around, but never did. Life teaches us that some moments are once in a lifetime, and if we're not ready or aware, we may never get another shot.
Moments ignored become regrets removed. One of the deepest pains is the memory of what could have been. The worst pain is the woulda coulda shouldas that seem to never go away. They don't go away because there's always going to be something reminding you of what you missed, what you didn't try.
While they were caught up in surface level praise, they didn't realize what was truly happening. Jesus wasn't coming to sit on a political throne. He came to bring peace, salvation, and eternal access to God. The problem is, they couldn't see it. Their spiritual vision was clouded. Their ears were deaf to the truth. Their hearts were too hardened to recognize that God himself was walking among them.
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Their inability to recognize what God was doing in real life, in real time, kept them from receiving the blessing that was right in front of them. These are moments in our lives where God is moving, but he might not be moving the way we expected him to move. Because if we're not paying attention, we'll miss what God is doing simply because it didn't come wrapped up the way we wanted it to.
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Spiritual blindness delays breakthroughs. If you can't discern what God is doing, you won't know how to respond when he moves. God has a way of moving in our lives—he doesn't do it according to our will. We are peculiar people. We belong to an awesome, all-knowing, all-powerful God. And God has a way of stepping down and presenting us with some stuff that we will totally miss because it didn't come all nice and wrapped up and packaged and all shiny.
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God has a way of blessing you through hard times. You just have to take off your spiritual glasses that's blocking you from seeing what God is trying to do. It's called changing your perspective. It's called looking at it from spiritual eyes and saying, listen, God, wherever you lead me, I'm going to follow because I know on the other side of it, there's a breakthrough.
[00:49:09]
Peace is often hidden behind surrender. You won't access His peace if you refuse to lay down your plans for His. His way is not our way. He tells us, I know the plans I have for you. The problem is we're too busy holding on to our own plans when we ought to be surrendering to God's plan.
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Distraction is a thief of divine time. The enemy doesn't have to destroy you. He ain't got to take you out. He ain't got to put you down. He ain't got to hurt you. He just has to distract you long enough for you to miss what's next.
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All of us who call ourselves a child of God, all of us who look for a word in this Bible that we carry around and he gives it to us, he gives us direction. All of us have it, a blueprint for what the devil does. He comes to us. He comes in and he distracts you and pulls you away from the word. Distraction is a thing. He ain't got to take you out. As long as he can get your attention just for a little while, before you know it, you'll be trying to figure out how did I end up here?
[00:53:27]
Consequences follow complacency. Here we have Jesus, who's prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem. It's going to happen a few decades later, in AD 70, because the people rejected their Messiah. They would experience the consequences of their hardened heart and delayed obedience. Can I share this with you? God is loving. Anybody believe that? Oh, he's loving. God is so kind. He's so compassionate. He's so full of grace and mercy. He's just such an abundance of blessing to each and every one of us. But he's also just.
[00:54:40]
Just because he forgives you, it's not a get out of jail free card for you to keep on continuing in your sinful ways. He expects a change. Some growth. A step in the right spiritual direction towards him. But we keep ignoring the warning signs. We harden our hearts. And then eventually, we gonna have to face the weight of the missed opportunities that God was trying to give us because we was too complacent.
[00:55:49]
Delayed obedience is still disobedience. Putting off God for another time may cost you more than what you expect. You thought, oh, shoot, I didn't say my prayers. I didn't talk to God today. I'll talk to him later. Then later never comes, as you thought it would. Now you are distracted, and the enemy has pulled you away from God.
[00:56:45]
Neglecting God's voice has a cost. Repeated rejection of conviction leads to spiritual deafness. What do you mean? When the Holy Spirit is talking to you and telling you, you ought to do this or you ought not do that, and you decide you're going to do what you want to do anyway, over a course of time, you will start silencing the spirit from telling you what not to do.
[00:58:30]
This wasn't just a moment in history for them in Jerusalem. It was a moment in eternity. And they missed it. But notice. They missed it. But God still came. And he still showed up. But they missed it. Even in our ignorance. Even in our rebellion. Even in our spiritual blackness. Even when we get to a point where I'm going to do what I want to do. Because this is what I want to do. God still visits you.
[01:03:08]
His visitations don't always announce himself. It doesn't always knock at the door and say hey, hey, hey. Your help is here. It doesn't always knock at the door and say come on in. I got something for you. God doesn't always move in dramatic ways. Sometimes he shows up quietly and requires you to have some spiritual sensitivity.
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The enemy of recognition is familiarity. We can get so used to church. We can get so used to preaching that it becomes routine. It becomes habit. That we miss God in the midst of it. We miss God in the midst of it.
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Grace knocks before judgment walks in. God always offers mercy before he allows judgment. Remember I told you he loves us. He's kind. He's compassionate. But he's also just. He visits before he departs. Don't miss his visit. Don't miss when he shows up.
[01:08:03]
Jesus didn't just pass through Jerusalem. He paused over it. And in that pause, he saw the missed potential of the people of Jerusalem that could have changed their lives. The freedom that they could have had. The experience with God that they could have had. The peace. But they didn't recognize the moment.
[01:10:31]
Don't let the moments of God designed to give you a breakthrough pass you by. Don't wait for a moment that God is trying to give you—deliverance, to give you growth, to give you healing—pass you by because you got distracted. Don't let a moment of distraction make you miss what God is trying to do in your life.
[01:14:13]
Sometimes you have to recognize, just like he was standing over Jerusalem, in your life moment, he's always there. He's always there. He's always there with open arms, saying I'm here. That scripture ain't just there written. When he says, come unto me, all for heaven, he's standing there saying no way. If you just look to me.
[01:15:01]
When you put it in the master's hand, the master makes no mistakes. The master knows what to do. The master knows how to fix it. The master knows which way it needs to go. The master is still in complete control. And when you put it in his hand, you all...
[01:25:35]
