Answering The Call || Victory Church [Book of John #5]

Hey, let's take a moment, I just wanna take a moment. If you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter one, John chapter one, we are in a wonderful series. I'm really, I don't know about you, but I'm really excited about this year because this whole year, Pastor Johnson has decided we're gonna stay in the book of John for the entire year. And anytime you stay in a book, you go a little deeper. How many of you are ready to go a little deeper? We're gonna go a little deeper into something today that, to be honest with you, this particular message could change the direction of your life. So we're gonna take a moment, I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes for just a moment. We're gonna just kind of be contemplative for a moment because I wanna quiet your soul, shut out all the things that are going on in your mind around the world, and focus right now on what you wanna hear from God. God, we wanna hear you speak to us. We don't wanna hear just man speak to us, we wanna hear you, Holy Spirit. And so we just invite you into the room to have your way with us. My prayer is that everyone that's here, everyone that's at all of our other campuses, everyone that's watching us online, everyone that will watch us in the future, that in this moment, you're going to speak a word that will alter our hearts and our directions

and draw us closer to you. We invite you now into this part of the service to open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and our heart to receive what the Spirit of the Lord is saying, in Jesus' name. And everybody said amen. Amen. When we started this journey in the book of John, the first chapter kind of sets the tone for everything. It describes Jesus in a different way. It talks about him as God, not just as the Son of God, but as God, the Word made flesh and dwelt among us. And then along the way, we unpack different aspects of who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from our lives. My favorite so far in the series was the message that Pastor Johnson preached on grace and truth, how to balance those two incredible, major revelations together. So many people are either one side or the other side, and it divides us, and how many of you know it's grace and truth? It takes grace to be able to hear the truth, but it also, when you hear the truth, you don't wanna be spousing this truth without grace when you give it out, amen? This week, we're gonna talk about something that is really near and dear to my heart. We're gonna talk about the call of God on our life. We're gonna talk about how to answer that call. And we pick it up here in John chapter one,

and I'm just gonna read several verses. If you'll stay with me, I'm gonna read it out of the Amplified version, but I like it in the Amplified version because it gives us a little more kind of explanation of what God is saying. Verse 35, he says, again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked along, and he said, look, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus, and Jesus turned and saw them following him, and he asked them, what do you want? Now, here's what I wanna just pause for a moment. I want you to think about this. This morning, you got up, and you came to church. You took a step of faith. You got out of your comfort zone, and you came to church. You put up with the traffic. You put up with all the lines and children's ministry and everything, and you're here, you're in the room. You're now trying to find out what God has to say to you, but let me just ask you a question. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want from God today, this moment? That's what he's asking them, and they answered him, and the rabbi, which is translated teacher, he says, where are you staying?

They diverted the question because it brought their heart up, and they didn't wanna deal with their heart at that moment, so they said, where are you staying? And he said to them, come, and you will see. So they went with him and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the 10th hour. One of the two who heard what Jesus said, as a result, followed Jesus, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first looked for and found his own brother, Simon, and told him, we have found the Messiah, which translated means the Christ. Andrew brought Simon to Jesus, and Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of John. You shall be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. I think that's just an amazing moment where God looks at Peter, who's gonna be apostle that starts the whole movement with the other apostles and he says to them I'm about to change your name you don't even know who I am yet and I'm gonna change your name and then the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee and he found Philip and said to him follow me as my disciples accepted me as your master and teacher and walking the same path of life that I walk follow me and that's what he says as my disciple don't just follow me as my disciple accepting me as your master and teacher of walking the same path of life that I walk now Philip was from Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter and Philip found Nathanael if you notice how each time they find Jesus they go tell somebody else you heard that from pastor Kervin last week that when we find Jesus if we really find Jesus we will tell other people about Jesus we will have

this revelation of what Jesus is and who he is and we will tell other people if you're not telling other people you don't know Jesus you have never really truly met the full power of who Jesus is in your life and then he says here now Philip he says we have found the one who Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote about Jesus from Nazareth the son of Joseph according to the public record Nathanael answered him he says can anything good come out of Nazareth Philip replied come and see and Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him and he said to him here is an Israelite indeed a true descendant of Jacob in whom there is no guile nor deceit nor duplicity no guile means there's no treachery in his heart there's no evil in his heart there's no deception in the way he functions and no duplicity he doesn't live two lives he doesn't live one life in front of God and another life when he's not around God around people that know God way too much duplicity in the church way too much is it hard to lead two lives it's a whole lot easier to leave one life be the same person behind the scenes as you are in front of people talk about living for God inside inside yourself but then also living it out in the way that you live before people that's who Nathanael was and Nathanael said to Jesus how do you know these things about me can I just tell you something God knows every single thing about you maybe people don't know but God knows Jesus answered before Philip called you when you were still under the fig tree I saw you I want you to understand something that God has a way of getting through when he needs to get through he's trying to communicate right now listen I know maybe you can live in this world and nobody sees you but I see you we all need somebody to see us don't we and Nathanael answered rabbi teacher you are the Son of God you are the King of Israel Wow Jesus replied because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree do you believe in me you will see greater things than this and then he said to him I assure you that most solemnly say to you you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man the bridge between heaven and earth he just revealed to these men what they already had read about concerning Jacob's ladder

Jacob had a vision of angels descending and ascending on a ladder from heaven to earth and he just got through saying I am the one who opens the door for those angels I am the pathway for the ascending and descending in between heaven and earth I am the bridge between God and you the only way you can get to heaven is through me not through Muhammad not through Buddha not through humanism not through New Age there's only one way everybody say one way there's only one way to get to heaven it's through Jesus it's through Jesus don't believe what people tell you about Jesus how there's many paths to God there is only one way and this infuriates people that don't want that way they want their own way right there he asked them what do you want what do you want today come and you will see what he's doing is he's calling them he's calling them out of the life that they've been living their whole life into a whole new life he's calling them now I started thinking about about this whole concept of calling. And as I'm reading through there, I came across this scripture that was, I've always been fascinated with how does God call. And there's a scripture in Jeremiah where God speaks about Jeremiah and speaks to Jeremiah as he's calling him to be a prophet. And this is what he says in Jeremiah 1.5. He says, before I shaped you in the womb, I knew you intimately. Now, have you ever thought about the fact that God knew you? That's just why he's God and we're not. He knew you before you were even in the womb of your mother. He knew you. And then he says here, I have divine plans. Everybody say divine plans. We have earthly plans, but God has divine plans.

And there has to be a time when you come to Christ that you realize I have to give up my earthly plans and embrace God's divine plans for my life. And then he says, I have divine plans for you before I gave you life and I set you apart and I chose you to be mine. You are a prophetic gift to the nations. In the book of Romans, Paul writes about calling and here's what he says in Romans chapter eight, verse 28. And we know that in all things, everything that goes on in your life, God works for the good of those who love him. How many of you love God? Love him and who have been called according to his purpose. In other words, it's not just enough to know that God has loved you, but you also have to know that he has called you with a heavenly, divine plan called his purpose. And then he says, for those God foreknew, in other words, he foreknew that you would surrender your life to God before you were ever born. And he says, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, being like Jesus and that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters and those he predestined, predestined simply means there is a predetermined plan that God has set in motion from before you were ever born for your life to live out. There's a predetermined plan. You may or may not be living in that plan right now

because it's your will. It's your will to choose to follow his plan. But it's not his will that you would perish. It's not his will that you would miss the plan. He wants you to know what the plan is. But most people have already chosen their plan and then they choose Jesus. And then they ask Jesus to bless their plan instead of what is your plan, Jesus? Not my will, but your will be done. So he says, for he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn and those he predestined, he called. Those he called, he also justified. In other words, he made you right with God because you couldn't come and do what God's called you to do unless he forgave you of your sins, unless he changed the nature of your heart, unless he changed the heart that you had for God, you couldn't do it. So he justified you by going to the cross and taking your place on the cross and bearing your sins upon his body so that you could walk with him and live before him without guilt, without shame, and all of your sins can be forgiven and cast into the sea of forgetfulness as far as the east is from the west

and where God remembers them no more. Once you become a new creation, whatever's happened in your past is old. And it says old things pass away and behold, all things become new. God is not rehearsing your past. The only thing that rehearses your past is your mind and the devil. The devil will remind you of your past every moment he can. He will make you sit in condemnation and think how bad that you are and you'll try to escape the presence of God because of what you did in the past. But I'm here to tell you, your past is over once you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior. And here's what Paul would say about your past. This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind me and I press forward towards the upward call of Christ Jesus in my life. The reason so many Christians are not living in their calling is because they're living in their past. They're holding on. to the things that happen to them, the hurts, the wounds, the fears, the anxieties, the trauma, whatever it is, and I'm just telling you, you're never gonna go forward if you keep living backward. At some point, you've got to move forward. So he's saying, I'm calling you, I'm justifying you, I'm glorifying you, and

you have a heavenly calling. Everybody say, I am called. Have you ever said that over your life? I am called. I'm called. Now, what is calling? What does that mean, I am called? I believe there's three stages to the calling of God. Three stages, and let me give them to you real quick, real quickly. First of all, you're called. The first calling is to believe in Jesus, to believe in Jesus. Let me just see, how many of you actually believe in Jesus? You, you believe in Jesus. Most of you that are here in church today believe in Jesus, but there are some of you, maybe you're still wondering, do I, do I really believe in Jesus? Maybe you're checking it out, trying to see if this is something that you believe in. But when you start to believe in Jesus, you start to move towards your second call, and that's the call to surrender to Jesus. Your first call is salvation, the second call is sanctification, where now it's no longer you to live how you want to live, but now you're coming in contact with the holy God, and the Bible says when you come in contact with the holy God, he asks you, not asks you, tells you to become holy, to live holy now, to stop living like you used to live, to allow me to come into your life and surrender your life to me to the point where you're no longer living like you used to live. If you're still living like you used to live, listen to me, you've not surrendered to Jesus. But when you surrender to Jesus, you're getting to some dangerous territory with God, because now that you're in surrender, you go to the third level of calling, which you're calling to obey God, to obey his will for my life, not my will, but your will. This is the calling to service. Have you ever thought about how many people call themselves Christians, start to follow Jesus, and then they find out what they have to surrender to, and they just kind of keep it at a distance from surrender. They go to church, they try to be a good person, but as far as surrender to God's will for my life, when you come to this place of surrender, and then God begins to speak to you in a still small voice, he begins to speak to you about his will, a lot of people, they have an interest in it, and I'm sure you have an interest. Let me just ask, how many of you have an interest? What is God's call for my life? Let me just say, you have an interest. What is your call for

my life? Instead of asking, what is your call? What if you came to God and say, God, whatever your call is, I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to do it. It's not the same as, what is your call? It's a different posture that you have with God when you say, what is your call? And this is why so many Christians, listen to me, can't hear the call. They don't know what they're called to do. And I hear all the time, I'm trying to find my call, I'm trying to find my call, but I can't seem to hear what God's calling me to do. And I usually just think to myself, there is a person that hasn't fully surrendered yet. When you fully surrender, you're not asking what God's call is, you're just saying, God, whatever your call is, I'm ready to do it. So let me see now, how many of your hands go up now? Whatever you want, God, whatever you will, whatever you desire, not my will, but your will be done. Let me see how many would just say that to God. God, I want full surrender to your will. What if it's different from what you're doing right now? What if it's different from what you have called yourself to? I think most Christians, they choose a path, they're trained by their parents to get an education, to get a job, to get a career, to go this direction or that direction, and they feel kind of leaning towards this or leaning towards that. And this is the way I was. When I was young, I was the same way. I went to college, I got out of college, I wanted to do business, I started a company with my father, and we started making money, and then I got saved. I answered the call to salvation. And over a process of time, maybe six months to eight months, I was in the process of surrendering my will to God's will, until I finally came to the place where I remember just having this conscious statement. with God. God, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I want to do something that makes a difference, and I'm willing to do whatever you've called me to do. I think when you answer that call, some things begin to happen. Your life begins to take shape, and I think you can usually tell when a person is obeying the call. You can usually tell because when they first start off, it's very uncomfortable. It's a place you're going into you've never been before. It's a lifestyle you've never lived before. It's a willingness to

move towards God, even when your flesh is fighting against God. Has your flesh ever fought against God? All right, so a lot of people disqualify themselves from the call because they think, well, I don't have what it takes. I want you to think back about the Scriptures we just read, the text in John, where Jesus is calling these different people, and so many people, they go, well, you don't know what I've done. You don't know how bad I've been. Have you ever read the Bible? In the Bible, look at these people God calls. He calls people who murder people, people who commit adultery, people who are prostitutes, people who are thieves, people who have done all kinds of deception and lying, and God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. You don't come to Jesus with it all together. You're just coming in full surrender. Whatever your will is, I will do it, and that's what happened. These guys were just ordinary people. In fact, Paul writes about it in 1 Corinthians 1. He says, remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you are wise in the world's eyes, are powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose the things considered foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise, and he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in his presence. What made these men stand out to Jesus? What makes people stand out to Jesus? I don't know about you, but I want to stand out to Jesus, don't you? I want Jesus to pay attention to me. I want him to call me, and so I remember as I'm reading through this scripture, I'm really, okay, these guys, they're just tax collectors, they're fishermen, they have their own path that they've already chosen, they barely have met Jesus, they just get to know him, and something in them just responds to Jesus. And when they respond to Jesus, I remember this, I went through this myself back in 1982, of just responding to Jesus. I'm driving down the road on Interstate 85 between Atlanta, going back to my home just outside New York, and as I'm going home, I'm driving about halfway there, I feel the presence of God just come into the van. A man had been witnessing to me on

the street in a couple weeks before that in Richmond, Virginia, and he planted the seed, but I had not let the seed get germinated inside of me. I fought with him, I argued with him, every time he talked to me about Jesus, I would push back and fight with him, and also say to him, I'm not ready to go that route with my life, I'm enjoying my life too much. I had a great job, making lots of money, lots of friends, traveling, I didn't have, there was nothing in my life going wrong, except something in my heart was empty. And what I've learned in the past, over the time, is that no matter how hard you try to fulfill your life, in your personal life, in your career, or whatever, you will never be fulfilled until you surrender to Jesus. You will never have true peace internally until you surrender to God. And when I surrendered to God, I remember, I'll never forget it, I gave my life to Jesus. Nobody in the van with me, I'm just praising God, driving down the road in a van. I was not a Christian before, and now I am, and I'm ready to surrender to God. And so I stopped to see my friend in Richmond, who'd been witnessing to me, because I knew it would bring him joy to know that I'd come to the Lord. And as soon as I told him I came to the Lord, he just smiled at me, and stood right to me, face to face, and started prophesying over me. And he said to me, he said, Dennis, he said, you are called to be a pastor of a great church, and you're gonna have a very unique church, something that's different than other churches. And he goes on in detail about what kind of church I would pastor, and how I would be a leader, and that many people would be saved, and blah blah blah. And I remember just thinking to myself. Are you crazy? How many of you understand that when you first come into your calling you cannot really Contain everything that God wants from you at the very beginning You have to grow into it. I Held on to those words But I didn't think they were real and I went back to my job and I went back to my career path And I found myself six months just living for God reading the Bible But not going to church and he would send me tapes from his little church in Richmond, Virginia

And I'd listen to those and feed my spirit until one day I'm sitting at the breakfast table, and I hear the still small voice of God say to me This is not what I've called you to do And I heard the Lord say to me you're good at it you're good at business You can do this, you know how to make money, you know how to run a company You're a good leader, but he said that's not what I've called you to do. Even though you can do it Even though you have the ability to do it and I argued with the Lord just briefly just argue with the Lord Lord I'm good at this. I can make money for your kingdom This is what I believe that you've called me to do and the Lord said yes you can but that's not what I've called you to do He says I've called you to sell your business and move to Richmond, Virginia and start your life all over again in this little church that you've been getting tapes from and help this pastor grow his church and You have called to do that and be faithful over that and once you do that, I'll tell you what the next step is Can I just tell you what what a lot of people don't realize is the reason their life is not working is because God already spoke in the past and He's waiting for them to obey what he already spoke to them And they're just launching forward and they're saying God bless this business bless this career path bless this choice of mine Bless this not your you know, I know it may not be your will but I want you to bless it anyway So I asked the Lord I thought okay I'm doing this message on calling take me back to to the process of answering the call What is it? What did it feel like? What did it look like? What did you go through? And what were the characteristics that? Seemed to be present in my life that I didn't even know were present in my life after Jesus, but Jesus put those Characteristics in me. I didn't have those characteristics before Jesus, but I started developing them afterwards And he says if you will just yield yourself in certain areas of your life You will answer the call and you'll fulfill what I've called you to do So the first thing he said to me is the first principle of answering the call is humility a Willingness to admit it's not your choice It's God's choice

It's a willingness to admit that you're not all that In fact without God you are nothing you can do nothing You you you really don't make matter if you're gonna live your life without God your life really isn't going to matter You can accomplish a lot of great things He said that he said to me the devil will pay you to get out of the will of God You can be successful but that won't necessarily be where God's calling you and I realized right then and there that My pride was coming face to face with Jesus's humility Now I I will freely admit that I still have pride. How many of you have pride? Let me see your hands you have pride and anybody didn't raise their hand. You're full of it. You are full of it You're so full of it. You can't even see it in yourself We all have pride Pride is the original sin It's the sin that caused the devil Lucifer when he was an angel in heaven to start believing more think of himself more Highly than he ought the thinking he was equal with God and tried to make himself equal with God That is what humanism is humanism is believing you as a human are equal with God that you are in essence God yourself and Humanism is a rampant belief system in the world today The secular world really believes in humanism more than they believe in a creator Once you go down the evolution path, you can't help but go in humanism once you think that the earth just kind of came out of out of nothing you believe the cake the world came out of nothing and You believe that it came from an amoeba cell an amoeba than a fish than a monkey and now you It takes faith to believe that Scientists will tell you it takes more faith to believe that than to believe in a creator who had a divine design for the earth, divine design for your life, and a purpose for your life. Jesus was the model of humility, and I'm sure it took humility for these disciples to say yes to Jesus. It's the beginning point of everyone's relationship with God. You cannot come to Jesus without humility, without a willingness to admit that you need a Savior,

that you need forgiveness of sin, that you need a new life that is not the life you've been living, that your life is not where you want to be for the rest of your life. And pride, because pride is such a rampant thing in the earth, Satan comes to the earth. The Bible says he's cast out of heaven, and it says, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, for he knows he has but a short time, and as we get closer and closer to the return of Jesus, the intensity of evil heats up. Anybody recognize that yet? We're in an intense season of evil right now, an intense season. And I'm telling you, the world is just intense with evil, and it's about time the churches rises up with the same intensity of their belief in Jesus to match that intensity of the evil of this world. It took humility on Adam and his disciples' part to follow him and to embrace what he had for their life, to be willing to leave their jobs, their careers, and do whatever God called them to do. I don't know that God is always going to call you to leave your career or your job, but you should ask him instead of just think that's what you're supposed to do. It would be a humble thing if you have really accomplished a lot before you're in the natural to just say, God, I've accomplished a lot, but is this truly the path that you have called me to or is this just I'm good at this? Maybe there's something else. I was good at business. I didn't have any inkling about ministry. I had nothing in me that wanted to minister or thought I would be a minister, and I remember when God said to me, go sell your business, go move to Richmond, Virginia, be a part of this little church, it took humility to do that. I had to say, God, not my will, but your will be done. There is a breaking point in the calling. There's a breaking point where you break, where you begin to break in the sense of, God, I'm falling on the rock instead of letting the rock fall on me. I'm going to say yes to you regardless of whatever it is. Whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to do it. The first thing that God spoke to me after I got down to Richmond, Virginia, the first thing he spoke to me was I was out on the street one night sharing Jesus. My wife and I were just dating at the time, and we were doing this outreach to our community in the city of Richmond, and we led a homeless person to the Lord. We brought him in, and I clothed him, and I fed him, and he spent the night in my home. I know that sounds crazy in today's life, but back then, we just took homeless people in our home, and then I helped him get into a rehab center.

Then after he got out of the rehab center, I got him a car, and then I got him a place to live, and then I got him a job. I remember just every Sunday, we'd go to that same rehab center in an old cargo van and pick up 15, 16 homeless men, pile them in the van in lawn chairs, and we'd drive them to church. Every time we'd go around a curb, they'd all fall over because they're in a lawn chair. We don't have seatbelts back then. There was no seatbelts, no bicycle helmets. There was nothing back then. You just roughed it, man, and you hope you made it. They'd come waltzing into the church, and all these people would be looking at him like, what are you bringing these folks in here for? I remember the Lord say to me, will you be willing to minister to homeless people for the rest of your life? I remember talking to Colleen. We were dating at the time, and I said, Colleen, I know we're thinking about getting married, but would you be willing to minister to homeless people with me? Would you be willing to do that? I feel like God maybe is speaking to me about that, that we're maybe supposed to open up a homeless shelter, maybe a halfway house. I don't know that we're going to do that forever, but I think we're supposed to do that. She said, I'll do whatever God calls us to do. If that's what you feel God's called us to do, then we'll do it. We started the homeless ministry, and eventually we turned that over to someone else as we moved into some other dimensions of ministry. What the Lord said to me was, I just wanted to know, would you do it? Would you do whatever I called you to do? do it. Well it got quiet in this Presbyterian Church. You say, I didn't know this was a Presbyterian Church. It's not. But it feels like it when I say things like that. Whoa. See what I'm talking? You feel that? You feel that? Would I do that? I don't know. I don't know. See it starts with humility God. I'm nothing without you. I can do nothing without. Whatever you want me to do, I will do it. And this is the challenge that we have. John would say it this way in John 3 30. He says, he must increase and I must decrease. All right. So the first thing is humility. The second one is faith. Everybody say faith. Every person in the Bible have one common characteristic. They believe God when everybody around them didn't. Faith is not something that everybody believes that everybody's going with. In fact, faith is usually like swimming against

the tide. It's usually going in the opposite direction. It's moving against the influences of the world. It's moving against what's popular. It's moving against what's cool. It's moving against all those things. This is now known, since we transitioned five and a half years ago, it's gotten younger. This church has gotten younger thanks to Johnson and Sommer. And they only wear tennis shoes. They wear tennis shoes most of the time. This has become the tennis shoe church. Whatever the pastor wears is the tennis shoe church. And so this morning I had my tennis shoes on and I said, no that's just not me on Sunday morning. I'm gonna go against the tide. I'm gonna wear regular shoes while all of you have tennis shoes. My faith would not allow me to go with the trend. Come on somebody. I'm almost 70 years old, all right? I can wear whatever I want to wear, wherever I want to wear it. I don't care about tennis shoes. When we started this church though, the Lord began to show us that as you're moving into your faith, again step by step, it's move by move, and the Lord began to speak to us out of Acts 1a, the vision of our church, building families, transforming communities, reconciling cultures, and impacting nations. And of these four things, I would say that the majority of the Christian community will embrace three of them. They'll embrace three of them. I mean, most of you, when you came to this church, you may not have known the depth of what we're trying to do here, but you would embrace, I want a strong family. I want to help the community. I want to reach the world, but when it comes to reconciling culture, 89% of the church is still one race only in America. Most churches don't even have it on their radar screen to do that. They don't think that that might be God's will for the church, that we could bring people from other nations together, other races together, break down the walls that have separated us and segregated us. As Martin Luther King said, on 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. And I grew up here in the South with Martin Luther King. I was alive when he was alive, and I remember those words, and I remember his frustration with the church when it came to this concept. And when the Lord spoke to our hearts that Samaria in the book of Acts 1a is another culture, and the

Lord said to me, you're going to build a church of many nations. And I remember saying out loud to my wife and to anybody who would listen, we're gonna be a church of a hundred nations. At that point, I had never seen it. I'd never seen it done. I didn't know if it could be done. It seemed impossible, but of course it really seemed impossible in the state of Georgia. We got some history here, folk. We got some serious history. How are we going to break down those walls? How are we going to get people of all these different tribes and nations and cultures and languages to come to one church? Most people just gravitate towards their people, my people. Who are your people? Let me tell you something. You are my people. You are my people. I hope I'm your people. But we tend to group with people that we're just like, that we have likenesses. It even happens in this church on Sunday morning when we go up to the lobby to say goodbye to everybody in the lobby, and we watch people huddle in their little groups, their little tribes. Where are you from? Jamaica? I'm from Jamaica, man. Let's talk. What about you? I'm from Nigeria. I'm from Nigeria. You know, you talk like that, you know, you do part of your culture. I remember telling my pastor friends, we're going to start a church and we're going to have a hundred nations. I remember standing up before the six. We only had six people. We started the church, six lily white, young people had no money. And I'm talking to them. I said, we're going to be a church of a hundred nations. And they looked at me like, have you lost your mind? I don't know how we're going to do it. How many of you know that when you step out in faith, you don't know how it's going to be done. You don't know how it's going to operate. You just have to function with what God has called you to do.

And if God's called you to do it and you step out in faith before you actually see it, then God is pleased with you. He says in, he says, here's what faith is faith. And in the book of Hebrews says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen. If you can see it, you don't need faith for it. For all by the elders obtained a good testimony by faith. We understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. And then he says this in verse six, and this is the one that rocked me. He says without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. The big question is, can I step out in faith and trust God to do something that is beyond my ability? Well, can I tell you something? When you start to walk with God, what pleases God is when he speaks something to you that's beyond your ability and you step out in faith and move towards it. You step out in faith and move towards it. And I'm here to tell you 36 years on the other side of it, I'm standing in a church with 139 nations. We are all worshiping God together, worshiping Jesus together. We can do it. If you step out in faith, you can do it. God will honor his word. There's something about a person that lives by faith that God will pass over a thousand people to get to that one person. I want to be that person. Do you want to be that person? Do you want to be that person? Lift your hand.

That person, God, I want to be the person that walks by faith and not by sight. See, when you're walking by faith, you're not worried about what's going to happen in the world. You're not spending all day long listening to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, social media, all these false prophets on all these social media platforms telling you the doom and gloom of what's going to happen because of the war we're going through right now. Brother, I've been alive through several wars. The wars will come and the wars will go, but Jesus never falls off the throne. His will will always be accomplished and he will use even things like that to bring people to Jesus. I say it this way, bad times in the world are good times for the kingdom of God. It's when God's people suddenly wake up in the middle of all this stuff and they turn to God. There's more rightness in this world for people to come to Jesus than ever before. While we sit on our blessed assurances, they're not finding out about Jesus. Come on, get up off your lazy boy and go out there and tell people about Jesus. Tell people. Bring them. Say, come and see, come and see. We have a big vision here at Victory. Pastor Johnson announced this several years ago when he took over that Lord spoke to him about 100,000 people in our church and 900,000 people that we plant with, that we're connected to. In order for that to happen, that's a huge vision. In order for that to happen, we're going to have to step out in faith. I told him about a year ago, I saw 12 campuses around the city of Atlanta that that's the starting point of where we're going to see this happen. How many of you believe that we can see at least 12 campuses around the city? We're about to launch our fifth one in August. We just planted a church up in Marietta with Darius and Melba about to plant another one

at the end of the year with Vance and Gabrielle. I'm telling you, God is moving in this church. You better get on this wagon and go with us. You better help us by faith to do this. And in order to do this, I need people. We need people. Pastor Johnson. Many people that are called and answering the call of God on their life Stepping out of faith and then finally the last one and we'll just kind of wrap this up real quick is the word surrender You know, I don't know I grew up in in the church I was a Baptist when I was younger I just went to Baptist Church I didn't really know Jesus, but I went to the Baptist Church and we used to sing this song Maybe maybe some of you are there older remember this song. I Surrender all Come on, let's sing it together. I Surrender all all to Jesus I Surrender I Surrender all now that let's fast forward into the year 2026. I Surrender some I Surrender some Some to Jesus some to me I That's the song of the modern-day church right now Can you imagine what a church would be like if everyone in the church surrendered all All in everybody say all in what if you were all in? There comes a point where you have to make a decision. I'm all in How much am I willing to sacrifice for the call One of the things I've learned about God's call is it's little by little It's little by little He tests us with little things first to see can you be faithful over this little thing first? Like can you just join a church? Can you serve in a church?

Can you tithe in a church if you can't even do that? You will never answer the call of God in your life If you can't even serve in a church or give in a church Then you are not answering the call. The call is gonna be a lot higher and a lot more Challenging than that. I'm gonna tell you right now But once you start down that road and you start to commit yourself to whatever you say God what your word says I will do it when you start to do that. That's exactly what happened to these disciples They begin to realize that my life is no longer mine to choose whatever I want It's your choice God and I just have to surrender to it and when I surrender to it Then God turns me into a different person He gives me abilities anointings that are not natural Natural I went to college and I had to take a speech class Anybody ever had to take a speech class where you have to get up before people and take give a speech? And I'll never forget I was just so nervous standing up in front of these students I was not a Christian I and I gave this speech and the whole time I was talking like this I had a fear of speaking in front of people. They said the number one fear in America is public speaking Number two is dying So Most people are they're more afraid to be the person giving the eulogy than to be the person in the coffin I'm not a speaker in my natural abilities most of us aren't Most of us are intimidated by that whole concept But some point I had to step up and speak at some point my pastor asked me to speak on a Sunday morning I was very nervous, but I did it and here's what I've learned about God when you when you surrender to him And you step into something that you're uncomfortable with you're nervous about and you say God I can't but you can I need your anointing and when you depend on him He puts his hand on you and he turns you

Into a person that can do things you couldn't do before Listen to me there are gifts and there are talents Lying inside of you that you have never discovered yet There are abilities that you didn't even know God was going to do in you and God is waiting for you to step out And surrender to whatever I've called you to do so that he can release those gifts and abilities through you The power of the church is not the gathering on Sunday morning The power of the church the glory of the church is not how many people sit in chairs and listen to a sermon on Sunday morning the power of the church is when people take what they're hearing and Activated outside the church by faith in full surrender to Jesus The power of the church was never about the gathering the power of the church was being trained in the gathering to go in into the world and preach the gospel. Preach the gospel into the whole world. What would it look like if this church fully surrendered to God? The anointing and the power that's upon you would increase exponentially. You would step into places that you never knew you would do. I never saw myself doing what I'm doing. I couldn't be able to contain what I've experienced over the last many years. But I know that when I stepped into the first step, and I obeyed it by faith, and God anointed it, I knew that I could do the next step. I knew that I could do the next step, and I knew that I could do the next step. That's why we have one step in our church, one step. You just step one step, and then you step another step, and then you step another step, and the next thing you know,

you are in the full-blown calling of God in your life. Meanwhile, I have a lot of people, I just don't know what I'm called to do. Do you serve the church? No. Do you give? No. Well, you're never gonna find your calling if you can't even do simple biblical principles of the church. Y'all all right out there? Yes. What would happen if everybody could do those? I'm gonna wrap it up with this. The Bible says that there's three prongs that we have to go through. It says there's two different grounds that the seed is sown. There's the stony ground, there's, I'm sorry, shallow ground, there's the stony ground, there's the thorny ground, and then there's the healthy ground. It says the stony ground, the seed comes in, I'm sorry, shallow ground, that immediately Satan comes to steal the Word. And there are people in every church, as soon as the Word is sown, they go out and nothing affects them, nothing. And then there's others that emotionally react to God in the stony ground,

and then something bad happens to them and they fall away. But the real navigation is the third level. And he says in this third level, you gotta navigate the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things. I don't have time to unpack it, but if you would take those three things and ask yourself, where are they hindering me in the call? Am I worrying, am I in fear? That's the cares of this world. Am I caught up in making money and money's my God? That's another thing that keeps you from your calling. Am I entertainment, is that my whole focus, is entertainment social media? Am I gonna spend all time looking at that stuff? That's the desire for other things. All lust is is a desire for something other than God. That's all it is, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life, those are all just desires for other things. I wanna do something else that's not permitted in the kingdom of God. What would happen if you just navigated those three things? Realize he comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy. He's trying to get into your life to hinder you from following the call. So, this morning, the big question is, will I not just answer the call, but will I say this, God?

I'm not asking you to tell me what the call is, I'm just telling you, I will do whatever you tell me. I will do whatever the call of God is. I want you to stand up to your feet. We're gonna do something we don't do a lot in the church, I think we have done it in the past over the years, but for the sake of time, sometimes it's hard to do it. We're gonna give an altar call. But this is not a normal altar call, this is not just an altar call to receive Jesus. This is an altar call to answer the call. It says, God, I'm hearing this. Some of you, your first response is, I need to receive Jesus. Some of you, your first response is, I've received Jesus, now I need to surrender to Jesus. And some of you, I've surrendered to Jesus, now I just need to make a full commitment to obeying the call. I will do whatever you've called me to do. So, here's what I wanna do, we're gonna sing a song, and while we're singing the song, I'm gonna call you out of your seats, if that's you, if you're in any one of those three things. Maybe you're already in your call, you don't need to come. But if you're not in your call and you're saying, I will obey the call of God in my life, or I will fully surrender to Jesus today, I will come to Jesus for the very first time, whatever it is, that you just step out of your seats

and come down to this altar. Now here's what I know, there'll be a lot of you coming, there'll be a lot of you coming, so come up close so we can allow room for people to come. And as you start to come, the rest of you that have already answered the call or you're not ready to answer the call, you just pray for those people as they come. let's sing this song and as we sing this song let's worship God we we want to spend it all on you God and we just invite you to meet us here at this altar as we begin to step into this calling that you placed upon our lives we thank you Lord as you call people out of their comfort places out of their places of anonymity into a new place with you that today will be the beginning of a new day for the rest of their life that they'll never look back on this is the day I I answered the call I came to Christ I surrendered to Christ and now I'm ready Lord to obey you whatever you call me to do I will obey you let's answer the call thanks for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app we hope this content was a blessing to you but we want you to know that you're not done yet because we want to hear from you so send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life how we can pray for you or even content that you would like to see us create in the future we just want you to know that we see you you're important to us and we'd love to continue to create some things in the future that will bless you so send us a letter and we hope to hear from you soon