Do You Have a Limp or Are You a Wimp? Pastor Ellis Benus

Good morning, CFA. It’s good to be here this morning. It’s really, we’ve got quite a few visitors’ faces. So visitors, first off, as Ms. Jenny said, please don’t run off at the end of service. There’s a lot of people that say, I don’t feel very welcome at that church. And I always remind them, you came in five minutes late and you left before anybody got a chance to talk to you. So hang out with us a little bit. Please spend some time in here and we just, we want to get to know you. We want to, we want to get to talk to you and fellowship with you. So Jenny, you did not know this, Jenny Ragsdell, you didn’t know this, but your word lined up directly in line with what I’m preaching about today. And I didn’t tell my wife anything about what I was preaching about, but it was so cool because the last song she picked, which we’ll sing at the end of service, also perfectly aligned with what I’m preaching about this morning. So we can see God in these little miracles in our life, right? Like somebody could just write that off as just, oh, it’s just happenstance or, oh, it’s just circumstance. No, like the Lord’s hand is in something that little. Real quick, I want to do something a little different. I want to open up in prayer because I guarantee you at least one person, and I may or may not be that person, probably had a really rough morning this morning coming into church. Either you got in an argument with your spouse, your kids ticked you off. That couldn’t have been me. And whatever it was that you’re dealing with this morning, I just wanted to pray over that so that as we go into the service this morning, I always pray a prayer when we’re in the back that I just ask that the Lord would silence the voices of the enemies in our minds, that we could just hear the voice of the Lord for a little bit this morning. So if that’s you, if you walked in here already in a bad mood, you just came to church anyway, first, thank you. You already overcame some opposition this morning. But second, let’s just pray over that this morning as we open this service, that I want you to have just a clarity of mind, a clarity of focus. I want you to be able to receive something from the Lord this morning, not from my voice, but whatever the Holy Spirit has to speak into you. So if that’s you, let’s just leave it aside. Let’s throw it away, cast it down, and let’s just press into the Lord this morning. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much that we even have this opportunity to come and worship you. We have brothers and sisters in Christ today who are under opposition, who are under persecution, Lord. So I just glorify your name that we have those freedoms now. I pray against the voice and the attacks of the enemy this morning, Father. In the name of Jesus, I pray you would seal these doors with the power of Christ. I pray that you would just silence the voice of the enemy in every single one of our minds this morning, that no matter what happened this morning, no matter what we were dealing with this week, that in the name of Jesus, your power would just wash over us today, and that we could hear from your Holy Spirit. I praise your wonderful name in Jesus’ name. And all God’s people said? Amen. Remember, the louder you are, the faster I preach, the sooner you get to go to Golden Corral. So give me those amen. There we go. Yeah, bring it out. Come on. And I said this to somebody in the vestibule. We do not mind babies crying. I actually love it, because it is a voice of youth, of youngness, of life in the church. So do not ever feel bad if there’s any voice, especially little Salma over there. I love her little voice when she speaks up. This morning, I am preaching, do you have a limp or are you a wimp? All right? I don’t think that’s ever been used for what I’m preaching on this morning, but Pastor Tom has been going through a series called Branded, and I had this message that I’ve been working on, and I was like, hey, this is perfect, because he was branded with a limp. Jacob was branded with a limp. And so I was like, this goes right in line with everything that he’d been preaching. And super funny, because I was also using Tom’s kind of title verse that he’s based kind of the whole branded thing on, Galatians 617, for that branded, that we have been branded for Christ. So Galatians 617, again, Apostle Paul says, I bear on my body the brand marks of Jesus. And every single one of us should. That’s what I’m preaching on this morning. Every single one of us should have a brand mark. As Jenny was talking about, we bear scars, we bear stings, we bear harm. We’re supposed to. So I’m going to jump in to Genesis 32. We’re going way back. That’s the first book in the Bible. So if you’re flipping through, it’s the very first one. All right, real early on in there. It’s Genesis 32, 22 through 31. Could we stand for the reading of God’s words real quick? It’s just under 77 verses. It won’t be very long that you’re standing. I’m just kidding. It’s just a handful. Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint. Pastor Tom has triggered this morning as he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then the man said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. And Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But the man said, what is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place, Peniel, saying, for I have been, I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel limping because of his hip. You guys can be seated. Thank you so much for that. Now, if we start out just here, Jacob sounds like kind of a, like a cool dude, right? Like he wrestled with God face to face and it was from night until the break of day. So this wasn’t like a five minute bout, right? This wasn’t UFC. They walk in a couple elbow blows to the face and they’re out, right? This was hours and hours that he wrestled with this unknown man. As you can see, I’ve got some wrestling dudes up there. So if we start here, it looks like Jacob’s like really cool, right? But let’s rewind in time a little bit. I want to take from my title text and we’re going to go kind of back a little way. So first I’m going to start off with Jacob’s birth. It was a drizzly Tuesday. No, I’m just kidding. The Bible doesn’t give us that. But when he was born, he also had a brother. Does anybody know Jacob’s brother’s name? Esau, right? Esau was the eldest. He was born first. And as he emerged, there’s a heck of a visual for you on a Sunday morning that Jacob had a hold of his heel. So Jacob’s name is actually heel grabber or deceiver or supplanter. So poor guy, as we pick out our names for our kids, right, we normally don’t start off with deceiver, supplanter, heel grabber. That’s kind of harsh, right? But that’s where he was branded right out of his gate. His original brand was a deceiver. But that’s not where he wound up. So first off, let’s go through just kind of like Jacob’s resume, right? His CV as we go through the scriptures from early Genesis until a few chapters later. First off, like I said, he was born as the heel grabber. Next, his starving brother, again, his name was? Perfect. I just like the audience interaction. Stick with me here. Make sure you’re still awake. His starving brother comes to him and instead of him just being a gracious brother, what does he do? He makes him give him his birthright, right? What a wimp. Not a wrestler, not an awesome guy here, right? Jacob later played dress up. There’s a different way to say that, but that’s how it resonates with me. He played dress up and stole his brother’s birthright or his blessing from his father, right? Then because he got scared of the thing that he just did, he fled his homeland to go to his uncle’s house. Again, what a wimp. This isn’t the same guy that we read about in 35, right? In 32. So while he was fleeing, God spoke to him. So even in the middle of his disobedience, even in the middle of, I don’t know if it’s called illegal, but I mean it was really low life thing to do. While he’s running away, then God speaks to him in that moment. And then he calls that place Bethel. That’s a very common name. Hopefully you’ve heard that before. That comes from Jacob. Now he goes to work for his uncle, whose name was Laban. He prospered, but while he was there, after he married, you guys know, hopefully you know, there’s two wives, all this stuff, a really cool story. If you dive into that about how his uncle tried to cheat him, but he kept flip-flopping the herds. Super cool. So go back and read that if you want to. But while he was there, God told him to return to Bethel. Well, instead of being a man and walking up to his uncle and saying, Hey, God told me I need to go back to where I am from. And originally where he blessed me and spoke to me, what does he do? He sneaks out in the middle of the night, like a pansy, right? Again, what a wimp. He didn’t even have the hard conversation, not even a text message, nothing, right? He just skates out of the night. All right, again, what a wimp. Then he hears that his brother, Esau, who he stole from basically twice, is coming towards him with 400 men. So Jacob being the man of God that he did, he sent all of his family and all of his flocks and everything in front of him. And it was like, Hey, give away all this stuff to Esau so that he’s not as angry. I mean, he doesn’t kill me whenever I wind up to him. What a wimp, right? What kind of a guy hides behind your servants, your flock and your own family, right? He’s like, yeah, you guys go. Cause he, he won’t kill you. I’ll stay back here. Right again. What a wimp. Well, that is the night that night when he sent his family forward, he was left alone and he wrestled with God. And that’s where God changed his name to Israel. So it was wrestling. All right. Now he’s not such a wimp. The next morning he flips the script. He actually walks in front of his family, bypasses everybody that he sent ahead, all of his herdsmen, all of his flocks. And he meets Esau face to face like a real man. All right. He did it with a bit of a limp, right? Cause his hip is still out of socket. His hips still jacked up and hurting from just the night before, but like a man he walked out and then he just stayed an awesome man of God. Right? Right after that. Yeah. Nope. All right. So he disobeys God’s order. Didn’t go on to Bethel and stops and I might mispronounce this. So ask Tom for the right way, but it’s Shechem. Did I get that right? Shechem. All right. So he stops outside of the city on his way to Bethel. Keep in mind, this is not nice air conditioned cars where you can drive 70 miles an hour or 75 now in some parts, if you look at the new laws passed. Um, no, no, this is with sheep and children and women and servants. So I get it, right? It’s a hard journey, but he stops partway at Shechem. Shechem was a lot like Columbia, Missouri, just, you know, morally bankrupt, absolutely terrible town. Right? So while he’s there, his daughter gets attacked by somebody. I won’t go into details there. This is one of my favorite verses or one of my favorite stories in the Bible. So go back and read this. Just look for Dinah. Different from the song, but you know, that’s his daughter. So because of that attack, his two sons, Simon and Levi go out and just slaughter the men of the city. Again, I really liked this story because if you touch one of my daughters, you’re going to hope that Simeon and Levi are coming after you as opposed to dealing with me. Right? Men with daughters, we know, right? You’re not going to mess with our girls. And so I get it, right? I’m like, Hey, all right. They took care of business. What does Jacob do? He panics and he’s like, they’re going to come kill me. Let’s run away again. That’s what he does. So he had this awesome experience with the Lord. But again, he’s a wimp. He’s a wimp. He’s a wimp. Well, finally, he makes it back to Bethel. He sees God’s call. God tells him to get rid of all of the idols in his house, which he purges. And then he receives public confirmation of his name being Israel. So this is an important distinction. In 32, God was with him alone and he changed his name to Israel. Well, then three chapters later, there was a public proclamation where God spoke out, spoke over him and again, changed his name to Israel. Hold on to that point because I’m going to come back to that here in a little bit. So God took that man branded as a deceiver, branded as a heel grabber, branded as a supplanter, and he changed his brand to Israel. I don’t know if you guys have heard that word before, but then he went on to father all 12 tribes of Israel. And that’s still the name of the country today. That change happened here in Jacob by the power of God. He took that brand, washed it away like only the Lord can, and then changed his brand and his name to Israel. So when you look at this, you just have to ask, you’re like, how did this guy turn out to be such a wimp? Right? Look at, I want to look back through with some timeline facts that kind of broke my brain as I started researching about Jacob because he had some amazing people around him. So real quick, Noah was just 13 generations before Jacob. I won’t say how many greats that is, but that’s not a super long time. It had been just over 2000 years since Adam and Eve were out of the garden to Jacob’s birth. That’s from Jesus to now, like that’s how close it was to when the garden, when they were cast out of the garden, it had only been 600 years since the flood that Jacob was living again for an entire flood to wipe out the earth. That’s not that long ago for in, in the time of when they’re going through here, when Jacob was warm, do you realize Shem was still alive? Shem, like the son of Noah, who was literally on the ark when everything was wiped out. Not only was he alive, he lived until Jacob’s was 50. Now there’s a Jewish tradition. This is really interesting. There’s actually a Jewish oral tradition that Jacob actually spent time with Shem and Eber, which was Shem’s great grandson. I won’t go off into this, but it actually, that he studied under him. So Abraham died when Jacob was 15. So it wasn’t like he lost him at a young age. He had this, again, the Abraham, like Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, right? That guy, that was his grandfather, Isaac, the kid that was almost a human sacrifice, right? That was his dad. Then he gets to hang out with a dude that literally survived the flood. And then he was 97 years old when he wrestled with God. Now for us, that’s pretty impressive. I don’t know about you guys. I don’t know a lot of 97 year olds that are wrestling overnight. I’ve never seen a 97 year old get into a UFC ring or a boxing ring. So that’s pretty impressive. But just look at the powerhouse of godly men who were still around when Jacob was alive. These are men, his grandfather and father watched God perform countless miracles, right? He had a literal living eyewitness testimony to the flood. You want to talk about the power of God. And then Jacob and he saw his own birth was a miracle. Rebecca was barren and Isaac prayed for 20 years. Does anybody know somebody that had like a miracle baby and they never stopped talking about it? I guarantee you Rebecca, every time she talked to you, you guys are my little miracle babies. You’re just my miracle babies, right? I know that’s exactly how that conversation went. Even if it was a few thousand years ago, he had repeated contacts with God himself. Again, how many of us, I’ve always wanted to hear the voice of the Lord. I’d probably die. So I’d see him right after anyway, but you know, you’ve always wanted those like power moments and Jacob didn’t have one of those. He had seven of them throughout the course of his life. So you’re just like, how, how did this guy act like such a wimp with just this lineage before him of amazing men of God? How could he have turned out this way? Well, I tell our youth this all the time. You cannot make it to heaven on any of the people that came before you use call. You cannot make it to heaven on anybody else’s salvation, anybody else’s merits. So it did not matter who came before Jacob. He had to step into his call. He had to step into his brand. He had to make the choice to live for the Lord and to do what he was supposed to do. All right. I breezed over Genesis 32 and 35 pretty quickly with a wimp, not a wimp tirade as I was going back and forth. So again, in 32, this is a private encounter. Okay. It was just Jacob and it was just God. He got his name changed to Israel, but he didn’t tell anybody about that. Right? This is the exact same thing for us today. You can encounter God and then refuse his blessings and keep living life the same way. I talked about this on Wednesday night that God could have made robots, right? I was like, I could have, I can make a computer program that every day I wake up, it’s like, good morning, Dave. And it tells me how amazing I am and how smart I am and how much it loves me. But that’s basically meaningless, right? I mean, it’s just a computer program that I programmed. That’s not what God wanted from us. He didn’t want a robot that just parroted back to him. So he gave us free will. So you can have that encounter and then you can choose to walk away. God’s not going to force you. You can encounter God, walk with that limp and in righteousness, and then you can choose to go back to your old ways also. Right? Again, it’s your free will. This is not a one-time decision. It is a lifetime. So you can encounter God, walk with your limp, wear your scars, like Jenny talked about this morning. You can change your brand and stand proud. And Jacob could have done that. So Genesis 35, the public confirmation is where he is at Bethel again. And I’m going to read this. You don’t have to stand because it’s a little linkly. But God said to Jacob, arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. So Jacob said to his household and all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. I’m going to pause there real quick. So that’s 35 verse for 35. He had to take all of these foreign gods, that his servants, that his people that were with him, and he had to throw them away. Idols, right? These little idols. If you knew the guy who was on the boat when God wiped out the whole freaking earth, I don’t think I’d be messing around with any other little statues, right? None of those things had any of the power that you had eyewitness testimony to. So that verse just jumps out at me. I was like, how could he tolerate that? Well, how easy is it for us to tolerate when we experience a real move of God, when we feel that power of the Holy Spirit wash over us and like the nasty verse says, like dogs, we just return to our own vomit. How easy is that for us to do? And I’m not saying that to call you out this morning. I’ve done the exact same things. It is a continual choice that we have to stay in that brand of Christ. Let me move on. Let us arise and go to Bethel so I can make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had, the rings that were in their ears. Jacob threw them all into the Terebinth tree that was near Shechem. As they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. He came to Bethel, the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And there he built an altar and he called the place El Bethel because their God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. God appeared to Jacob again. And when he had come from Padomarem, he blessed him. And God said, your name is Jacob no longer. You are now Israel shall be your name. So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company you will be. Kings shall come from your body. God went up from him in the place where he spoke. Jacob sat in the pillar in a place where he had spoken to him on a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering, poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel. God publicly renamed Jacob to Israel. And he finally stepped into the one which lives up to that name, struggles with God. Now again, Jacob was born that deceiver, that heel grabber, and he lived up to that brand for years, even in those decades of his life. Again, he was 77 years old when he fled to Laban’s house in Haran. You read that and you’re like, oh, then he goes and gets married and stuff. You’re thinking he’s like a 20 year old kid. Like, no, the dude was seven decades old when he ran away like a little wimp, right? Oops, sorry. Lose my notes here. Thankfully, I’m done with that page. When we’re thinking about that, that he didn’t live into that brand, how many of us were branded with things that we didn’t like and then we lived up to them? Was anybody called the clumsy kid and then you find yourself stumbling over everything all the time? Was anybody told that you weren’t very smart and then things struggled with you? Was anybody told you’d never amount to anything? Those are brands that can be labeled on you, which we have to make a choice to shirk off of us. People can label us with stuff and then we can either choose to live into that or we can choose to live away from it and live out of it and walk out of there and live in the presence of what the Lord gave us. How many of us know that God can change your identity? Whatever that identity may be, God can change it. People always say like, oh, well, this is what’s natural. I don’t want to be what’s natural. I want to be what’s supernatural, right? It is not natural for us to put aside our own selfish desires. It is not natural to fast. It is not natural to sit in quiet and focus on the Lord. I don’t want the natural. I want what God has to offer. It’s so powerful for us to realize he can change every single one of us. Again, I keep coming back to Jacob could have walked out of that Jabbok River after fighting the Lord and he could have declared to every single one of his people that his new name was Israel. That’s what they were going to call him. God spoke to him and then he was going to change. He had that choice right there in that river. God had to do it again publicly to get him to start living into that. Again, it just terrifies me how often that the Lord speaks into us and then we’re scared of that brand. We’re scared of that new identity. We’re scared of living in to what God has placed on our lives. And again, this is me. The Lord told Jenny and I to become pastors and I was like, that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t want the label of pastor. I’ll be completely honest with you. I’ve shared this several different times. I didn’t want somebody to hear that I’m a pastor and then look at me like a rainbow vacuum salesman that when I recommend rainbow vacuum, they’re like, Oh, you have to recommend it. You sell these. This is how you make your living. I didn’t ever want that brand on me that made people just dismiss my faith, but I did what the Lord told me to do. Jacob walked with a limp literally for the rest of his life. He encountered God and it says when he died in Hebrews 11, he died at 147 years old. He blessed all of his son and it said he was still leaning on his staff because of his hip and pastor Tom’s pretty spry. Now he’s jumping up and down and walking up and down here. He’s doing great, right? Jacob never recovered. That experience that he had with God made him walk with a limp for the rest of his life. We’re supposed to show those same battle scars. When we have those stings of the enemy or the brands of the Lord, it’s supposed to change us. We’re supposed to live differently from there on out. We’re supposed to show that limp and not hide it. We’re supposed to earn those battle scars. When you see a, we like watching like animal stuff and things like that. My kids are obsessed with all these animal shows. When you see this massive great white shark and you see there’s none of them that get that big that have pristine flesh all the way down the sides of their bodies because there’s always some young interloper that thinks I’m going to take that guy out or there’s a killer whale that’s three times your size and you have to fight it off too. Every single one of them have scars. They have tears in their flesh that never healed. They have wounds that are showing. If I can harken back to one of my old messages, when you see a great bull bison where the scars have torn through them as they’re facing the horns or they’re facing the teeth of things trying to kill them that the fur never grows back over those scars. You know they saw battle and they survived. How many of us are sitting here this morning in just pristine, clean clothes, everything perfect. Now it’s church so we’re supposed to be. But if you see a guy with a pressed shirt, nice pants, clean shoes, you know he hasn’t done any hard work that day, right? When I worked in landscaping I always said I really earned my shower today because by the end of the day I was sweaty, I was nasty, I smelled terrible, I was dirty head to toe. I was like I really earned my shower today. There’s some days where I don’t really feel like that. I was like guys, the AC did not work very hard in my office today. It was just I sat for so long my legs went numb. It was a rough day. Rough, rough day of work. I don’t really think I earned my stripes that day. We should not be striving to make heaven with zero scars. Let me say that one more time. It’s not our goal, it shouldn’t be our goal for us to make heaven with no scars, with no cuts, with no wounds. Because if we did it means we never saw battle, we never did anything worthwhile and we have nothing to show for our time here. There’s so many of us that are trying to make it where it’s like I don’t want to offend anybody. I don’t want to upset anybody. I’ve got to be really careful. Well, if I invite them to church I might upset them. If I invite them to church I might get fired. That’s not true. We’ll deal with employment law some other time. But if we’ve never seen any battles, when we walk up to those gates it’s going to be a very different conversation. The Lord called us to win fights. The Lord called us to wrestle, to fight, to push. All of the early church and all the way through all of the records that we have, they were offensive. And I don’t mean in a hateful way. I mean they were counter cultural even in their moment. For the first 350 years of the church that we still serve today and the Jesus that walked this earth, they were killed for their faith. And there’s still people that are facing that persecution today. If we escape with no scars, we’ve done something wrong. We’ve done something wrong if we’ve never been stung, if we’ve never had any kind of fear for the Lord. Even in America where we think we have all these rights, we should, we do, but there’s still a fight that you’re going to have to face. Are we sitting here pristine and clean? Are we sitting here where, like I said, I don’t want to get my shirt dirty. I’m not going to go do landscaping in this, right? Although I hate these pants. They have the highest pocket I’ve ever seen. I’m going to throw them away later, but whatever. Maybe I will in these because I’ll tear them up. But you’re not going to do it in your Sunday best and that’s okay. That’s why the Lord says put on the full armor of God. And I kind of joked about this, but let’s face it. We live in a pretty evil city, okay? But we’re here. This is where we’re supposed to be. All right, this isn’t Shechem where we stopped halfway. This is our home. This is where we live. You’re supposed to vote on Tuesday. Make sure that you do that. I’m not going to talk about what you should vote for or who, but I’m saying make sure you do that and flex your voice. But we live in this city. It’s our home. We are almost as close to downtown as we can get. We are right across the street from a battlefield with a thousand kids walking in here every day. We don’t have the right not to try to earn those scars. Are we going to fight for that? I’m going to share, this is a funny little, again, I never see any randomness in what God does. This is just a cool little illustration I had this week. I have my little lawnmower, which is electric, and I’m really happy about it. If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll tell you for hours. And so I was sitting at the edge and I transplanted these trees. I love trees. When we bought our house, that place had four trees. So I’ve literally been planting trees every year that we live there. So I had these three cute little trees that are out there and it’s kind of on a little bit of a hill on our property. So I’m sitting on my lawnmower because I was too lazy to walk out there. And I was just holding the water hose onto the things, right? Well, I realized as I was sitting there that I was just kind of edging forward. Just rolling a little bit, right? I was like, what on earth? And I realized I was kind of a little closer on that hill than what I thought. And the Lord gave me just a little illustration of that moment. You’re rolling in your stillness. Now I was sitting still. I wasn’t moving, right? I wasn’t choosing to move, but the thing underneath me was moving. So there’s so many times that we think we’re just sitting still. There’s so many times where we think we’re just being silent. But in those moments, you’re still rolling in your stillness. You may think you’re not going anywhere, but there’s only two paths folks. There’s either closer to the Lord and farther away. And if you’re sitting still, I guarantee you, you’re moving down the wrong one. I want you to think about that on this week. You’re rolling in your stillness. Just let that resound into your mind that it’s like, if I’m sitting still, if I’m not actively moving and pressing on and pushing, if I miss a couple of days of Bible study or several days of prayer, you’re rolling in those moments. You’re making a choice even when you think you’re not. I want to talk about that. I don’t want us to hide these scars that we have. It’s kind of natural. If somebody has a face scar or an arm scar, there’s a lot of times that we try to cover that stuff up. It’s an imperfection that we may not be so proud of. But a lot of us are trying to forget these moments and it’s easy to, I’ll raise my hands and admit that I’m doing the exact same thing. There’s times where we’ve all lied or cheated on something, whether it’s a test or whatever. There’s something that we’ve done wrong in our lives. Most of us, many, many, many, many, somethings. It’s very, very natural to want to just kind of paper over those to just focus on, oh, I’m a good little Christian. I’ve done everything right my whole life. It’s very, very, very desirous to do that. When you look at the social media community that we have today, that is everybody’s highlight reel. You’re seeing right now everybody on vacation. You’re a little bitter about the fact you’re not on vacation. You’re seeing, oh, he got a brand new car or brand new truck. It just means they’re in more debt than you are. All of this just comes back to, we want to put out the best persona that we have, but can I tell you, you’re actually doing a disservice to every person around you because of that. That seems weird, right? You’re actually harming the people that are around you by not sharing the scars of the faith and the scars of the life that you’ve gone through because people need to hear when somebody has stumbled and then that the Lord has brought them out of it. My wife gives me a hard time that a lot of times I’m a little too open with just the stuff that I’ve struggled with, with the issues in our marriage, especially when talking to youth, I got to be kind of careful about some of that stuff. But one of the things I want to say is that openness shows that I am a flawed human being and I desperately need the brand of Christ to change what is on me. And I want you to feel that same fullness and sureness. Again, we’re not celebrating sin. That’s not what I’m talking about here. But what I’m talking about is there are too many times that people look at Christians and they think, oh, you’ve lived this perfect life. Oh, you’ve never done anything wrong. And if you have, that’s amazing. Praise God. You’ll still have a witness and a testimony. I guarantee it. I love brother. Phil Brighthop always talks about the fact that he was never an alcoholic and never a drug user. And he witnessed his entire life to people who were alcoholics and drug users, right? It does not preclude you or prevent you from being able to witness to the people around you. But if you are hiding all of the stuff that you have gone through in life and never sharing that with somebody else, then you’re actively hurting them. Jenny and I have people call us constantly that are saying, hey, you almost got divorced and you somehow worked through it. I was like, shouldn’t you talk to the people that actually had a good marriage and didn’t go through this stuff? But there’s a relatability there that allows us to connect. Every single one of you has had a struggle. Maybe it was just a parent issue that you went through. Maybe it was a family problem that you’ve had. Maybe it’s losing a job, right? Chris’s testimony is amazing that he went without a job, but he lived it and he worked it and he never stopped. And the Lord blessed him with an even better job. He could hide that in shame and never want to talk about the fact that he got laid off. He didn’t do anything wrong. Idiot executives did stuff wrong, right? But that’s so easy for us to take that personally and try to hide all of these things. But when he gets to go to witness to somebody who has also experienced a job loss, there’s an immediate connection there. Every single one of us has felt that, oh, you’ve experienced the same thing I have. And there is an immediate connection right there. There’s a bond that you’re able to form with somebody who will now talk to you that might not talk to somebody else. But if you’re hiding all of that, if you’re whitewashing all of it, if you’re papering over all of it and pretending like it never happened and you’re just like, I’m just a good little Christian on Sunday. Like, well, then why’d you need to be saved? Let’s be honest. If you’re perfect and everything has gone so great for you, then do you really need Jesus? Well, good people just go to heaven. That’s true. Except there was only one that’s ever walked the face of the earth and that ain’t us. So every single one of us has a scar. Every single one of us has something that we have gone through, that we have done, that we have sinned. And that’s what Christ saved us from. And that’s why we need him. He didn’t come to help all the righteous. He came to help all the rest of us dregs that are down. Such a worm is I. Great line from a verse. It makes you feel really good about yourself. Such a worm as I, we need to tell people about why we needed Jesus, because then they’re going to see why they need Jesus. It is so, so, so important that you share those stories. The world doesn’t need to see this pristine buttoned up. Everything’s perfect actor, right? They need to see wounded warriors pursuing Christ. When you look at a guy that’s wearing a military uniform that’s got scars, I just went through the story of Desmond Doss. Does anybody else know this story? Hacksaw Ridge movie. Amazing, amazing man of God and a super cool story. He didn’t walk out of that with no scars. And I just have to think about that for us. We are supposed to be warriors for Christ, not desk jockeys. We have to be out there doing what we’re supposed to do. If you’re offended by that, I’m a desk jockey too. I’m talking about spiritually, okay? We are supposed to be warriors. We’re supposed to show those scars. We’re supposed to walk with that limp proudly because that limp, every time Jacob took a step and it caused him pain, and every time everybody looked at him weird the first time they met him, I guarantee you that he told them the story about the fact that I walk with a limp because I stood face to face with the almighty God and I wouldn’t let him go until he blessed me. We have that same power today, folks. You can stand today face to face with the same one true God and you can say I’m not moving here until you bless me. I’m not moving here until you work the situation out. I’m not moving until you bring them to Christ. There is nothing wrong with that. Hey, wow, you read my mind. You already put that up there. Three last things I want to leave you with. And like Tom, I have seven points under each one of those. I’m just kidding. I love you, pastor. Number one, stop hiding your limp. Stop pretending like you’ve never struggled. Stop pretending like you don’t still struggle today, right? You’re not less of a Christian if you admit to somebody that you still have these struggles today. That doesn’t make you less of a Christian. Remember, temptation is not sin. Everybody get that? When you are tempted, you have not yet sinned. It is not until you fulfill that temptation, step into it, that is then sin. You are not a bad person who has sinned. I talk to guys from teenagers all the way up to adults all the time. I was like, there’s two kinds of guys in the world. Those who struggle with lust issues and those who lie about it. That’s it. That’s the only two there are. It will never go away. I have talked to men into their 80s who said it has never gone away. It is a struggle. But if we fight against those things, that is us winning for Christ. We have to live out these principles and let people know, yeah, I still struggle with this. There are some mornings that you wake up that you don’t want to read the word or you don’t want to pray or you don’t want to spend time lifting up other people in prayer. That’s okay. You can be open and honest and vulnerable in those moments. Don’t make somebody earn the ability to just learn more about you. I had somebody years ago say that to me. They were like, well, it really takes me a long time to open up to people. Why? What are you scared of? How are they going to hurt you if you are just sharing what you have gone through with Christ? Again, it drives my wife nuts some. It’s not like I walk up and say, hi, my name is Ellis. I almost got divorced a few years ago. Right? Well, 12 now. Praise Jesus. Thank you. That’s not how I open up my conversations, right? But at the same time, when those conversations are open and possible, I don’t shy back from those moments. I don’t make somebody get to know me years and years and years before I’m able to share my life story. It’s so important that you do that. We are evangelical Christians. Evangelical means evangelize, means tell people about Christ, means tell people the struggles you’ve gone through, means tell people the stuff you’re still dealing with today and telling them how you can pray with them, stand with them, help them and walk them along this path that we are to be warriors. We are not to stand back. We are not to sit back. We are supposed to wear our scars proudly. Jesus did, right? He didn’t wear gloves for the rest of his life. Granted he wasn’t here for much longer after that. All right. Number two, don’t settle at Shechem. If God called you to Bethel, don’t stop halfway. Again, I still to this day don’t really know. I know I’m preaching today, but I still don’t understand because I could have done this without a piece of paper. I don’t understand why God was pushing me so hard on this, but he did. He said, you need to get your credentials. I need you to go through this. I need you to learn. And I wasn’t, I was literally writing down I-70 quite a while back. And the Lord literally not spoke to me audibly, but he spoke into my mind. He was like, you’re not going fast enough. He did not mean writing because I guarantee you I was doing that. Well, what he meant was I wasn’t going fast enough in what I was doing. And I felt kind of like how many served in the army, right? Hurry up and wait, right? Any military person knows that. Hurry up, hurry up, wait. I felt kind of like that with God because it was like, all right, hurry, hurry, hurry. What was, all right, I’m here now. What do you want me to do? Right? It might just be stay in Bethel, but don’t stop in Shechem. If God calls you on, don’t stop halfway. Don’t give up. It’s going to be hard. You don’t have to drive animals and walk in sandals in the fricking middle, Middle Eastern heat, right? You have cars with air conditioning, most of you. So don’t stop halfway, push on. And again, it’s not a final destination in terms of a physical location. A lot of the times there is a spiritual place that he wants you to get to. There is a mental place that he wants you to get to. There is a salvation place. There is a testimony place that he wants you to get to. Don’t stop halfway because you never know when he’s going to knock your hip out of socket because you didn’t go right. You never know when you’re going to get attacked because you’re someplace you’re not supposed to be right. I don’t drive into downtown East St. Louis. I keep going through there because I know that’s not where I belong, right? You can get attacked when you’re in the wrong places. Keep on pressing on. Don’t settle at Shechem. Wear your battle scars proudly, just like Paul in Galatians 6. Let our life be marked by the fight for righteousness. And here’s an idea this week. Go pick a fight, Manny. I don’t mean argue with somebody on social media, right? I don’t mean just literally walk up to somebody and slap them in the face. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is pick a spiritual battle this week. Maybe that’s something you’ve been dealing with that you haven’t pressed in hard enough. Maybe there’s somebody that you haven’t prayed over hard enough. Maybe there’s something that you’ve been dealing with or somebody else that you could be ministering to. Maybe you haven’t spoken to anybody about your faith in years. And maybe you have the excuse like, well, I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do anything, right? Well, it’s COVID now. You’re allowed to. So go out there. Talk to somebody. There was a brother in Christ who’s gone on to the Lord, but I loved him to death because if you ask him to pray for you in Walmart, he would drop to his knees and pray as loud as he could right there in Walmart. I don’t want you to be a reproach, but I want you to pick a fight this week. Either pick a fight on your knees or pick a fight face-to-face that you want to speak into somebody’s life. And that fight can be the absolute nicest conversation you’ve had all week. Just to let somebody know I’m praying for you. I’m going to give you one more challenge. If God puts somebody on your mind this week at any given time, do not wait. Do not pause. Do not think about it for a while. I’m going to pick on my wife a little bit. Don’t agonize over the contents of the text message you’re going to send for a half an hour. Even if you’re an introvert, type it out, hit the send. Because if God puts them on your mind for a moment, that means he needs you to do something, right? Reach out in those moments. Take that time. Pick a fight this week. If we could have the worship team come on back up. I’m so proud of my son today. That’s the first time he’s ever played drums. How many have kids that you thought you were good at something and then they started doing the same thing and you realize they’re way better at you? I know we’re supposed to celebrate that, but it’s a little hard when they’re way better at you at everything, but it is what it is. We couldn’t be more proud of them this morning. Some of us walked in here today acting like wimps. Probably going to offend you. That’s okay. I don’t mind. We’re probably running from our past, running from our fears, or maybe we’re just sitting in comfort. Maybe you think you’re sitting still, but you don’t realize how fast and how far you’re rolling. And that’s okay if you came in here like that. Let’s make sure you don’t walk out of here the exact same way. That’s your choice this morning. You have the option this morning, right here, right now, not to stay in Shechem. Whether that’s a sin issue that you’ve been struggling with, whether that’s a health issue that you haven’t been praying over, whether that’s somebody else that you haven’t lifted up, whatever the situation is that you’re dealing with, you don’t have to stay where you’re sitting right here, right now, this morning. But God’s not going to shackle you, grab you by the nose, and drag you down the aisle this morning. That’s not the God we serve. Again, I was trying to use that example with our youth the other day where I was talking about that robot concept. I was like, when the guys get a little older and they’re interested in girls, I was like, it’s not love if you kidnap her, lock her in your basement, and say she’s now your wife, right? That’s not love. That’s not the way this works. And God’s not going to do that to us either. He gives you every ounce of your free will. So you have every right and every power to just stand up and walk right out of this door and do absolutely nothing with whatever the Holy Spirit is telling you this morning. That is your right. That is your power. That is your gift of free will that the Lord gave you. But I’m going to beg you not to do that. If you’ve got nothing you’re dealing with this morning, then I guarantee you somebody sitting within just a few paces of you is. So stick around for them. And let’s press in. I guess I just beg you guys this morning. I don’t want to leave here pristine, right? I want to have a fight whether it’s just the scars on my knees from spending time there. I want God to change my name. I want him to change my brand. I want him to wash away the brand of a bad husband, of a bad dad, of bad decision making, of everything that I’ve ever done in my life. So as we’re praying this morning, I just ask that you would come down, whether you’re limping, wrestling, or you just want a touch from the Lord. This is that moment. You can do that today. Whatever you’ve been dealing with, whatever you’ve been struggling with, whatever’s going on in your life, you don’t have to walk out of here dealing with it the exact same way. And I guarantee you, you will not pray here alone. If you just ask the person sitting next to you, pray with me this morning. You don’t have to tell them. You can just say, I have an unspoken request. Let them pray over you this morning. Please don’t waste these moments. When the Holy Spirit walks into this place, that is God bringing his power to us. Don’t waste these moments, please. I’m going to go back up here and play, but I want you guys to come down to the altar. Anybody that wants me to, wave me down. I’ll be happy to come pray with you. Don’t waste these moments. Let’s don’t stay in Shechem. Let’s pick a fight today. Thank you. The story of Jacob. So good. Amen. Reminds us that God is in the people changing business. I want to encourage you to open up your hearts to the Lord. Dig into the word of God. God wants to change you. He doesn’t. I’m so glad. I like that word, Pastor Ellis, about natural versus supernatural. There’s so many natural desires, natural tendencies, natural areas of my life that God has never intended that I would operate in that realm or that I would lean into that part of who I am. God wants my identity to be in him, yes, in his word. And so let’s open up our lives, say, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Father God, change me, help me to become the person that you want me to be. And it’s a struggle. It’s a journey. But if you’ll press into the Lord, he’ll change you. You’ll come out on the other side of that wrestling match victorious, more than a conqueror. Thank you, Lord. Lord Jesus, thank you for this day. Thank you for this Sunday. Thank you for the word of God that came to us from Pastor Ellis and the story of Jacob. Lord, we pray that you would be with each person, each household, each family. Go with us now today, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you and may his face smile upon you and give you peace. Hope you have a great week. We’ll see you Wednesday or we’ll see you next Sunday. God bless you. Hi, I’m Pastor Tom Ragsdell. I’m Pastor Ellis Benus. And we’re from Columbia First Assembly of God church in Columbia, Missouri. We are a church that’s on mission with Jesus. Our vision is simple. We want to make Jesus famous in your heart and in our community. Absolutely. Thank you so much for connecting with us online. We would also love to connect with you in person. We are located at 1100 North 7th Street, right in the heart of Columbia, Missouri, right across the street from Hickman High School. So if you’re in the central Missouri area and you’re looking for a home church, come hang out with us. If you’re just connecting online and you’re nowhere near us, then please connect with us in the comments. If you have a prayer request, if you have a question, if you’re if you’re wondering anything about the Lord or Christianity, please let us know and we’ll be happy to engage with you in the comments. We believe God’s doing something special at our church and we want you to be a part of it. We’re a multi-generational church. We have people from all different backgrounds. We’re a church of the word. We’re a church of the spirit. We believe Jesus can transform your life. That’s why we’re on mission with him and we want to help you know God. We want to help you grow in God and we want to share hope in our community. So connect with us and we want to connect with you