In this series, my goal is to help you know God by exposing fake Christianity. This misled group of people call themselves “woke” because they have discovered that the Bible is out of touch with the modern church.
Yet, how can you even call it Christianity if the Bible isn’t the ultimate guidebook?
The reality is, you’re only a Christian if you believe in and follow Jesus Christ. And the Bible refers to Jesus as the Word of God.
So, when it comes down to it, you really can’t call yourself a follower of Jesus if you don’t follow the Bible.
Woke christianity isn’t Christianity at all. It’s a fake version of Christianity that denies or misuses the Word of God in favor of making sure no one gets their feelings hurt.
I’ll give them this though: they’re clever. They say a lot of things that sound really good and seem right. But almost all of it leads to destruction.
Not on my watch. I’m going to keep exposing wokeness for the evil that it is because I don’t want people to go to hell because no one stood up against the woke false prophets.
I’m here to help you follow Jesus so that we can spend eternity together in heaven and bring a lot of people with us.
In the first week of this series, I explained how Satan is after our kids. We were made in God’s image, Satan hates God, therefore he also hates us. Yet God gave us this amazing ability to multiply.
So, Satan is doing whatever he can to stop the multiplication.
He works to create a culture where kids are a nuisance so people don’t want to have them. He spreads the lie that abortion is a woman’s right.
And the one he’s most proud of, Satan is a pro at promoting homosexuality so reproduction is impossible.
I hope you are able to see what’s going on. Almost all of the challenges we’re up against right now all lead to one thing: the destruction of children.
Satan is working hard to kill, steal, and destroy with normalized sin. So we, as the body of Christ, must work hard to expose the dangers of sin so people are drawn to Jesus and receive salvation and freedom.
That’s what we talked about in week two. Jesus didn’t just give you forgiveness of sin; He gave you freedom from sin. He came to take your sin away.
If no one tells you that Jesus came to take away your sin, you’ll believe the lie that all you have to do is say a little prayer to receive salvation and that’s it.
We might as well just slap Jesus in the face if we are going to weaken salvation to a point where we say a quick prayer on Sunday morning and nothing changes.
When you truly receive salvation by believing in Jesus Christ, the power of God changes your life. Immediately you are forgiven of everything you’ve done wrong.
Not only that, but Jesus reaches in and He takes that sin out of your life. You don’t even like it anymore. You don’t want it anymore. It’s like Jesus has made you a new person, and He has.
It’s not that you’ll never sin again. You will, as we all can attest to. But you no longer keep on sinning. You now live a life of repentance. When sin is revealed, you turn the other way.
Since you believe in Jesus, you follow Jesus. And He leads you down this glorious path to complete freedom from sin.
You must understand that the church cannot tolerate sin. If we do, the power of God cannot be made manifest in our lives. And without the power of God, what do we have?
You know, a comfortable, woke church might draw a large crowd, but without the power of God, it’s worthless.
We can’t lead people to salvation without the power of God present. We can’t heal people without the power of God present. We can’t operate in spiritual gifts without the power of God present.
For the sake of everyone out there who is headed to hell because they have yet to receive salvation, stop tolerating sin in your life. Let Jesus take it away so you can operate in the power of God.
Listen to me. Sin is your enemy. Pull the trigger and kill that sucker. You kill it by releasing your faith for Jesus to take away your sin. He’s ready. You just have to let Him.
Life is better without sin. Because when you let go of sin, you find yourself living in the promises of God. This is what I like to call God Privilege. You don’t deserve freedom, but you get it anyway.
We talked about this last week by comparing the woke counterfeit of White Privilege to God Privilege. God Privilege is available to me, and it’s available to you.
The reason many Christians do not live in the promises of God is because they are too busy griping about how life isn’t fair.
I’ll tell you what my mom told me over and over again, “Life isn’t fair.”
The reality is, there will always be someone who was dealt a better hand in life than you. They have more resources. They are more talented. They have better connections.
But the only person you are responsible for is you. When you get to heaven, God is not going to ask you how someone else used their resources. He’s going to ask how you used yours.
God is not impressed by those who have the most. He’s impressed with those who multiply what they have.
So you have a choice. You can keep griping about how life isn’t fair, how so-and-so has a nicer car than you, how big their house is, how expensive their watch is. If you choose this path, you forfeit a life of God Privilege.
But if you get your eyes off of what everyone else is doing and instead focus on multiplying what you already have, God Privilege will show up and take over your life.
We are going to dive into this in detail in just a few weeks. But today, I need to give you the antidote to the woke church.
For more than a year now, I’ve been talking about things that most pastors are unwilling to talk about. And since you’ve made it this far with me, I’m going to assume you are not a part of the woke church.
Maybe you never were, or you were once “woke,” and God has used this me to shake you awake.
Either way, allow me to officially welcome you to the remnant. We may be outnumbered, but don’t let it scare you. God is a pro at using a small group of people to accomplish great things.
But He does need our cooperation. Don’t sit back and think that God is going to do this on His own. He could if He wanted to. But that’s not how He designed it.
To accomplish things on the earth, God has to work through people. That’s how He designed it.
That’s why Jesus, in His last message to the disciples, said this:
John 14:12 NLT - “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.”
Jesus said this right after He had just explained, for the umpteenth time, that Jesus and God were one. The words Jesus spoke? God’s. The miracles Jesus worked? Yep, it was God working through Him.
He wants you to understand this because it reveals that you can do what He did. And not only that, but now you can do greater things than He did.
But you can only do these things when you realize that it was the Father doing these things through Jesus. It wasn’t because Jesus was super-human. It’s because He fully submitted Himself to the Father.
It was God’s power working through Jesus. Just like it can be God’s power working through you.
But you have to give God full control.
You can’t do this in your own power, just like Jesus didn’t do this in His own power. He worked miracles and spoke mind-boggling truth simply because He submitted Himself to God.
And Jesus wants you to submit yourself to God. That’s why the very next thing Jesus says is:
John 14:13-14 NLT - You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!
Wow! So Jesus just invited us to work the same miracles He did. Then He took it a step further and told us to do greater things than He did.
Now, He’s telling us that we can ask anything and He will do it!
It seems impossible, and I guess Jesus knew we would think that, so He goes on to explain how it is possible.
John 14:15-17 NKJV - If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth.
For clarity, Jesus reiterates the same thing just a few verses down:
John 14:21 NKJV - He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.
Obeying God is a prerequisite for seeing the power of God.
It makes total sense why the woke church lacks the power of God. Obedience to God is not pursued but rather ignored in the name of inclusion.
In case you are still not getting it, Jesus explains it a third time:
John 14:23 NKJV - If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
If you want the power of God to manifest in your life, just like it did through Jesus, obedience to God’s Word is required.
The woke church settled for grace without obedience. And when we choose to tolerate sin in the name of grace, we dismiss the power of God.
The power of God cannot exist alongside disobedience.
After working so hard to get this across to us, Jesus reveals that living a life of obedience is going to cause the world to hate us. (John 15:19)
But wait a minute... I thought we were supposed to try to get the world to like us so they would come to our church?
Well, according to Jesus, if the world loves you, it’s because you belong to it. But if you belong to Jesus, you will obey His commandments. And as you walk in obedience, not only will the world hate you, but the woke church will hate you too. (John 15:18-19)
This isn’t very encouraging, but Jesus reveals these things for a reason: so you won’t abandon your faith when things get tough.
Persecution isn’t fun. It can make you think that you are doing something wrong. But you’re not. It’s actually an indicator that you are doing something right.
When persecution comes because of your obedience to God, be encouraged and keep moving forward.
But you will always struggle with obedience if it is coming from the wrong place. We’ve talked about this several times because I want to make sure you get it. So let’s go over it again.
By default, obedience is a performance. We learn it at a young age. To avoid negative consequences, we perform for our parents.
We carry this into our relationship with God. We perform for Him by doing our best to live how he wants us to.
We think God’s impressed when we get it right. We think He yells at us when we get it wrong. But it turns out, God doesn’t want us to perform.
When it came time to write the book, I set aside a few days in my schedule to go to a secluded cabin and focus. I envisioned getting to the cabin and writing nonstop until the book was done.
I started the day like normal, getting quiet before the Lord. After prayer and reading His Word, I said, “Alright Holy Spirit, you ready to write this book?” To my surprise, the answer was no.
I knew that I needed to spend more time being quiet and listening to His instructions. Only, He wasn’t giving me instructions other than to be quiet.
I sat on the back deck for a while and watched the trees blow in the wind. Then I laid on the deck for a while and closed my eyes. I did my best to eliminate thoughts of guilt for not producing anything while my wife was at home caring for our four young children.
About an hour passed, and I asked again, “Ready to write this book?” The answer was still no.
So I walked down to the lake, sat on the shore, and watched the waves. I could sense the Holy Spirit nudging me to get in the water, but I didn’t want to. The lake is gross.
Then I remembered my goal in life is absolute obedience to what God asks me to do. So I found a clean rock to put on top of the slimy rock and sat on it in the water.
As the waves were rolling over the top of my thighs, I sensed the Holy Spirit say, “Wave after wave of blessing is coming into your life.” I watched as the waves started small and then began to grow.
Then the Holy Spirit said, “Look up.” I looked up and noticed the beautiful, wispy clouds in the sky. As I looked closer, I realized that they were in the shape of three different angels. Immediately, I was reminded of the scripture, “He shall give His angels charge over you.” (Psalm 91:11 NKJV)
After these two experiences, I was overcome with the goodness of God. I sat there in awe of who He is. I was amazed that He chose me to write this book and promised to protect me from the opposition that will come because of it.
Then I heard, “Now you’re ready. You came here to perform. I wasn’t looking for a performance. I’m looking for obedience that comes as a result of knowing who you are to Me.”
For the first time in my life, I realized that obedience to God comes in one of two ways. Either you are performing, or it is an overflow of your identity in Jesus Christ.
We aren’t capable of a flawless performance. But obedience comes easy when we know who we are to God. The only way to find out who you are to God is to get in His Word. Here’s a few examples:
Romans 3:22 NLT - We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.
Romans 5:2 NLT- Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
I could go on and on sharing scriptures about how valuable you are to God, but it would do more good for you to seek them out yourself.
And I encourage you to do so because obedience is your secret weapon. It’s required for the power of God to work in your life and for you to get to a place where you can ask anything of Jesus and He will do it.
Obedience is not something we do; it’s who we are.
When we embrace and live out this truth, the power of God is made manifest in our lives. And we won’t just do the same works as Jesus; we will do greater works.
Who’s ready for greater works? Who’s ready to get to a place where we can ask Jesus for anything and He will do it?
Then, let’s all embrace obedience to God. Even if I’m persecuted, I’ll remain obedient. Even if people say mean things about me on Facebook, I’ll remain obedient.
We’ve talked a lot about eliminating sin from our lives the past couple of weeks. That’s definitely part of being obedient to God. But I don’t want you to get the idea that obedience ends there.
Yes, get the sin out of your life. Sin is your enemy. Pull the trigger and kill it by asking Jesus to take it away.
But obedience is more than just staying away from the things God asks you not to do. You also need to be faithful to do the things God has asked you to do.
To be honest, the American church isn’t real good at doing what God asked us to do.
Jesus said to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples of the nations. Instead, we go into our churches and invite the world to come to us.
This feels kind of like obedience. But is it really obedience when we morph God’s assignment into something that is more comfortable for us? No, not really.
We’ve believed the lie that the only place to do ministry is in the church. When God calls someone into ministry, they automatically think it’s to pastor, or lead worship, or whatever.
But, our assignment is to go into all the world which means more ministry is to be taking place outside of the church than in the church. This rocks our little church world, so let’s unpack this.
I like how Bill Johnson explains it:
“Every believer is in full-time ministry—only a few have pulpits in sanctuaries. The rest have their pulpit in their areas of expertise and favor in the world system.” -Bill Johnson
He also says:
“There is no such thing as secular employment for the believer. Once we are born again, everything about us is redeemed for Kingdom purposes. It is all spiritual.” - Bill Johnson
Whoa. This throws a wrench in the church system. All this time we’ve been elevating the church leaders as the only one’s doing ministry. And because of it, the world is lost in darkness.
Here’s how Lance Wallnau explains it:
“The sober truth is that everywhere the Church fails to exercise her authority, a vacuum opens for darkness to occupy.” -Lance Wallnau
The darkness we see in culture right now is our fault. It’s the church’s fault. We’ve been camping out in the church when we should have been going into all the world.
We knew something was wrong, so we came up with our own solution. Instead of going into all the world, we are going to invite the world to come to us.
But in order for this to work, we have to become more like the world so they feel comfortable in our church services.
Nevermind the fact that Jesus told us to be in the world but not of the world. Instead, we’ve decided to stay out of the world and become like the world so the world might pay a visit.
I’ve been to some really good church growth conferences and was able to take some really helpful things away from them. But there was always one thing that didn’t sit right with me.
They would explain how Sunday services should be designed to reach the lost. So, we should create something that lost people love to attend - a place where they are comfortable.
Since we are called to reach the lost, this sounded really good, but I could never get it to fit into what God was asking me to do here at NoLimits.
If you’ve been through Growth Track, you’ve probably heard me say these things about Sunday services, that we should have services lost people love to attend. Every time I’ve said that in Growth Track, I could sense the Holy Spirit say, “Wrong.”
Even so, I struggled to reconcile this in my head. I want us to be a church that reaches the lost, so it was hard to let go of this idea until God led me to this scripture:
Ephesians 4:12 NLT - [The pastor’s] responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.
What is my assignment as your pastor? To equip who? God’s people. To do what? God’s work.
The purpose of our Sunday service is not to reach the lost. It’s to equip you to reach the lost in your daily lives. See the difference?
If our Sunday services were designed to reach the lost, there would only be one person reaching the lost: me.
But if I obey God by equipping God’s people to reach the lost, then we have lots of people reaching the lost every day of the week.
Which strategy is going to reach more people? The one I learned at the church growth conference or God’s strategy?
Do you see what I’ve been up to over the last year and a half? I used to make sure my messages wouldn’t make sinners feel too uncomfortable. Well, I stopped sugar coating a long time ago.
I’m here to equip God’s people. I’m here to increase your faith. I’m here to push you out of your comfort zone. I’m here to get the sin out of your life so the power of God is no longer hindered.
Who’s thankful I had this revelation about my assignment? Not everyone is. But since you are still here after over a year of me pelting you with hard truth, you must have at least learned to tolerate my assignment to be your alarm clock.
I get it. Nobody likes their alarm clock. But it’s time to wake up. And I am here to wake you up so you can step into your assignment and be a part of the end-time harvest.
Let me recap what went wrong in the church so we know how to adjust moving forward.
The Church lacks cultural influence because we’ve been trying to change the world from within the church rather than releasing the Church into the world.
The goal isn’t to convince the world to come to our church services. The goal is to be a Church who equips God’s people to go into all the world.
Let’s look at this in equation format for all the math nerds.
In 1974, God gave two church leaders the same revelation. They were praying about how to turn the world around for Jesus, and God revealed seven things to focus on:
This is now called the seven mountains of influence. What this means is that each of these seven things have tremendous influence in our culture. They shape how people think and what they do.
In other words, those who are in leadership of each of these seven mountains will determine the culture of a nation. So, when Jesus tells us to disciple the nations, He means to serve in places of leadership in each of these mountains.
The problem is, the church has vacated six of the seven mountains and left the world in charge. And honestly, most churches have given the world the church mountain too because of wokeism.
Now we are in a place where we have to take back the territory we’ve given to Satan so we can make disciples of the nations and get everything ready for the return of Jesus Christ.
This seems overwhelming, but here’s the truth:
I John 4:4 NKJV - You are of God, little children, and have overcome [the world], because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
Satan ain’t got nothing on us. The only reason he’s been able to do what he’s done is because the church has been hiding out in the church mountain.
As soon as we decide to go into the world, we experience victory. We find favor with God and man. God pours out a blessing so much we can’t contain it.
It’s time to invade the seven mountains with the kingdom of God. It’s time to take the children of the devil off their throne and put children of God in those places of leadership and influence.
How do we do this? It all starts with prayer.
Our enemies are not flesh and blood. Our enemies are powers of darkness and spiritual wickedness. So this battle has to start in the spiritual realm.
Pray against the enemy’s influence in these areas. And be specific with your prayers. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you into the specific area you need to pray for.
Most of all, pray in tongues often so you can pray forth those mysteries. None of us are fully aware of what goes on in the darkness, but the Holy Spirit can pray through us.
After we’ve prayed, we must invite God to use us in the sphere of influence he’s called us to, whether it be church, family, education, government, business, arts, or media.
Several of you already know what God is asking you to do.
My prayer today is that you all leave knowing what mountain you are called to. And it’s not that you have to go do something right now. But you do need to start praying for your mountain and asking God to lead you in what you need to do.
Who’s ready to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples of the nations?
This is where we are headed as a church. We’re no longer on the cruise ship of American Christianity. Nope. We’ve jumped ship and are going into all the world.
Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to reveal to each of us what our assignment is.
