How Long Will You Keep Limping? By Phil Chapman

The answer is not to go home today and just try harder. You cannot do the surgery yourself. Jesus took the fire. Jesus brings the rain. Jesus is the great physician. He is the only one who can heal your heart. So stop pretending. Individually, stop pretending. Stop trying to fix it yourself. Take all that stuff and lay it on the altar and trust in the sacrifice that Jesus Christ has already done for you. How long will you keep limping? [00:30:17] (48 seconds)  #LayItOnTheAltar

You've been trying to keep one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in this culture all about you and you're exhausted. I am tired of doing this over and over and over. Mount Carmel was just a shadow of a greater mountain. On Mount Calvary, Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, he stepped onto the altar. He became the sacrifice, The fire of God's holy justice, it fell entirely on Jesus so that you and I could receive the reign of his grace. [00:29:34] (44 seconds)  #JesusTookTheFire

Four more. So now they've got eight jars of water poured on top of this. He goes, you know what? Let's let's be sure. We've been having a drought for three and a half years. Let's drench this thing. And so he puts four more jars of water on it, 12 jars of water just to make sure no one could expect anything. There was no trickery here. He stacked against against himself, against his god. Faith doesn't need a head start. [00:18:27] (33 seconds)  #FaithNeedsNoHeadstart

God didn't just burn the sacrifice. He burned the rocks. He burned the wood. He burned the dirt. He evaporated all the water. It was an overwhelming, undeniable display of God's supremacy. And finally, the deafening silence that we we observed in verse 21, finally, that is broken. Verse 39 says, and when all the people saw it, what did they do? They fell on their faces and they said, the lord, he is god. The lord, he is god. [00:20:06] (39 seconds)  #TheLordHeIsGod

See, they knew Elijah was right. They knew he he was right in what he was saying. They understood it. But they were scared. They were paralyzed. They figured, okay, if I answered this way, okay, that's good for God almighty but you know what the culture is telling me? Look at 450 prophets and you guys all agree that Baal is good. So they didn't know what to do. But if the people won't speak, the altar will have to do the talking. [00:09:47] (35 seconds)  #LetTheAltarSpeak

They wanted Yahweh for their history and for their traditions and for their Sabbath. But you know what? They wanted Baal because Baal promised that they were gonna have rain, that's comical. That they were gonna have unbelievable crops. Baal promised that their bank accounts would be huge. They were trying to walk two different paths simultaneously. You can't keep one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in culture. Eventually, it's going to tear you apart, you're going to be spiritually crippled and you're gonna start limping. [00:08:12] (44 seconds)  #OneFootInTwoWorlds

But under the new covenant, friends, our battle is not against flesh and blood, we're not called to take up swords to people. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for them. But hear me in this, we are to be as ruthless to the idols in our hearts as they were to the false prophets. As ruthless. We need to be digging into it and and dealing with it as much as possible. [00:22:25] (38 seconds)  #RuthlessAgainstIdols

The physician had to put me into surgery. He had to get his scalpel out and he had to cut out what was happening with my big toe. I was utterly powerless to do it myself. that's the exact same thing with us spiritually. You cannot fix your own limp. You cannot fix a divided heart by just giving more willpower. I'm gonna try harder. I'm gonna try harder. I'm gonna sweat more. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna I'm gonna rely on my human effort. That's exactly what the prophets of Baal did. [00:28:05] (40 seconds)  #SurgeryNotWillpower