Burn The Plow | Mike Braddock

But man, if we've not had the privilege of meeting, my name is Mike. I'm the experience director here at Transformation Church. Well, at least for one more day. And man, it's just so amazing to be here. I'm so glad if it's your first time that you came today. Welcome home. So glad that you're experiencing the transforming power of Jesus alongside us here at Transformation Church today. Whenever I preach, I love to start off by celebrating. And today I wanna celebrate 100 hungry men at Liberty CI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I wanna just say, guys, I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for your steadfast hearts. God is changing your lives day by day. This past week, we had right around 90 guys in there, several salvations. And I'm telling you, if you're looking for somewhere to take a step, that's a great place to go. Because it is impact that is immediate impact. Every single week that we're in there, you're seeing guys that are hungry, first-time guests that are coming, and their lives are changed by the time we leave. We're there for three hours and God rocks, not only us, but rocks their life. If you want more information about that, you can go to the groups tab on the tap dot in front of you

and sign up for the prison ministry group and we'll get you moving and shaking. But hey, before we get too crazy, I got a question for you. I got a question I wanna ask you. And by a show of hands, yeah, I'm gonna make you do that. By a show of hands, how many people in the room live a very structured and rhythmic life? Very structured and rhythmic life? You can look at your calendar and almost to the minute, okay, that's about half of the room. About half of the room. I am the same exact way day in and day out. I follow a rhythm that is pretty regular. You can probably catch me via GPS in the same place at the same time most days of the week. My rhythm looks like this, not that you care, but my rhythm looks like this. I wake up, I get my wife and kids out the door for school when school is in, so whenever school's out, I get that extra hour of sleep, hallelujah. Make a cup of coffee, watch SportsCenter, take a shower, I put on the clothes that I ironed the night before. I hop in my truck, I take the same route to work. I take 90 to I-10 to Monroe to right over there to that beautiful road that's been closed, Stone Street forever, back to Old Bainbridge. I park in the same parking spot every day. I back into the spot by the light pole

on the north side of the main parking lot. I go into my block schedule for the day. I follow my day repetitiously from Monday all the way through Thursday. I go, I clock out, I come home, I make dinner, get the kids in bed, sometimes I throw a little Nerf battle in there with my little boys because they love to shoot me with Nerf darts. And then I do the dishes, and then I spend some time with my Firefox of a wife, hallelujah, praise God. And then I pick out and I iron my clothes for the next day because, hey, if I can pre-decide what I'm wearing, it's one less thing I gotta worry about in the morning. Then I go to sleep and I rinse and I repeat. I feel like a robot sometimes, I'm gonna be honest with you. My life is rhythmic, I get set in my ways, but I also feel like this strange feeling that I might have a little bit more discipline in my life than I did in my younger years. Little bit more structure, little bit more flow, and it's a wrestle because I feel kind of like I'm boring, but I also kind of feel like I'm productive. Anybody feel that way? And I ask myself, why am I like this? Have you ever asked yourself, why am I like this? Maybe not about this topic, but this isn't group therapy, so we'll move on. Maybe for me it's because my parents were both military people, both of them served

for a dozen years in the US Army, both staff sergeants. My mom was a little bit higher than my dad, she still holds that over his head. Or maybe it's the fact that I grew up on a produce farm, and my grandpa, during the summer, I didn't have a summer. At 5.30 a.m. I got a knock on my door, I said, get ready, boy. And I got ready, and I took a chock full of nuts can with some very toxic fertilizer, this is probably why I'm crazy, with no gloves on, no mask on, and I would throw fertilizer under 1,600 orange trees every summer, and the farm life is very regimented. Actually, indeed, a good friend of mine, his name is Freeman Hertzler, grew up on a cattle farm, and one day I was talking to him about, hey, where does your family like to vacation? He said, we're cattle farmers, we don't take vacations. Them cows just keep coming, looking for grain, looking to get milked, and looking for all the things. But man, why am I such a robot sometimes? You know, it demands so much attention, the day-to-day life, but I was sitting back and thinking about this last night as I was preparing for today, and I was asking some bigger questions. It's gonna get deep for a second, but we're gonna have fun today, I promise. But I was asking questions like, does our loyalty to order hold us hostage to the ordinary?

What about this one, is there power outside of the predictable? What about this, is the supernatural often found in being a little spontaneous? My wife's over here like, I wish you would be spontaneous, you're such a robot. Is there extraordinary beyond ordinary? What about this, does our infatuation with having a rhythm and having a schedule inhibit or prohibit our walk with Jesus? I don't know about you, but sometimes I can block schedule rhema moments out of my day, because I'm so worried about hitting the task and running the block. And I think it's worth kind of contemplating this big question, right, is there more beyond our ordinary? And through this, I was reminded, as I thought about it, of a person that we see in the Bible. He was a young cattle farmer like my friend Freeman that probably felt the pressure of staying on task every day. He didn't really deal with cows, he dealt with oxen. And then one day, everything changed. So if you've got your Bible today, digital or paper, peel that joker open, 1 Kings chapter 19 is where we're gonna start out. And I wanna talk about this cattle farmer who was regimented, who was ordinary, just an average Joe like me and you and the 50% of the room that raised their hand today.

Who was stuck to a schedule, who knew exactly what he needed to do and when he needed to do it. But then one day, everything changed, and God divinely disrupted his day. And he moved from ordinary to extraordinary. You might be asking, who am I talking about? I'm talking about one of my favorite characters in the Bible, his name is Elisha. Elisha was what they would call a major prophet, meaning that he had influence over a large part of the area in which he lived once he stepped into his calling. And we pick up today in 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 19. If you don't have your Bible, it's okay, it's gonna be on the screen today. And it says this, so Elijah, pause, I don't want you to get confused, because Elijah and Elisha are two different people. Elijah is actually another major prophet who, passage before this, was so depressed that he asked the Lord to take his life, but God said, get up, drink some water, eat some bread, take a nap, I got some work for you to do, and the first thing he asked him to do was to go and anoint his predecessor, which is where we find ourselves in 1 Kings 19. It says, so Elijah went and found Elisha, the son of Shaphat, plowing a field. There were 12 teams of oxen in the field, and Elisha was plowing with the 12th team.

Elijah went over to him, didn't say hi, didn't say how you doing, and he threw his cloak across his shoulders, and then he walked away. Awkward. Elisha left the oxen standing there, ran after Elijah, and said to him, first, let me go kiss my father and mother goodbye, and then I will go with you. Elijah replied, go on back, but think about what I've done to you. So Elisha returned to the oxen and slaughtered them. He used the wood from the plows to burn a fire to roast their flesh. He passed their meat around to the townspeople, and they all ate. Then he went to Elijah and followed him as his assistant. This is a wild turn of events. Here he is, Elisha, in the middle of his block schedule, pushing the plow, ordinary day, and all of a sudden, this stranger. There is no recollection that Elijah knew Elisha before this moment. Out of the blue, he's on a plow, behind an oxen, and this dude throws a cloak on him. It'd be like standing in line at Target, and somebody walks up and puts their jacket on you. How weird would that be? You're like, excuse me, not my size, number one, not my style, number two, and why are you putting a jacket on me?

I don't even know you. But he immediately knew by the Spirit this was important. You know, I think sometimes we can read the Bible, and I'm not sure if many of you guys have ever really dove into this passage specifically, but a lot of times, we can read the Bible for the miracles. We can read the Bible for the great accolades. We can read the Bible for the iconic stories, David and Goliath, and parting of the Red Sea with Moses and the Israelites, but we just brush right past these moments of the Bible, and here's the deal. If you've read the Bible, you know Elisha, man, he's done some stuff. He's done some stuff for the Lord. He encountered many miracles through his ministry. He divided the Jordan River. He cured the poisonous waters of Jericho and lifted the curse that killed so many in their city. Here's a good one. On the way to Bethel one time, he ran into a group of 42 little punks standing in the city ruins that wanted to fight him and talk trash about him, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. It's kind of fun to know you can curse somebody in the name of the Lord, right? Let's the hood side of me feel like I'm a. Okay, you know, he cursed him in the name of the Lord. And the Bible says almost immediately,

two bears came out from the wilderness and devoured all 42 of the kids. You know what that means? Don't you mess with your pastor. He might curse you in the name of the Lord and two bears might come from out of nowhere and just eat you up, bro. You better watch out now. He raised the dead. He spoke to the poisonous stew and it was purified. He raised the lost axe head from the river and recovered it. He was wanted by the government for prophetically exposing corruption. And they sent an army of thousands to him, but he called on angels armies and they actually blinded the thousands of troops. And then there's my favorite miracle. He had so much power that one time a soldier was killed and thrown on top of his grave. And the power emitted so greatly from his grave, the soldier resurrected and returned to battle. Years after he was dead. You see, he lived an amazing life. He had an amazing ministry, but it all began by God finding Elisha, stewarding an ordinary life. When Elijah found him, he was working an ordinary job, tending to a bunch of oxen. And this shows us one thing that could be hopeful for you and I today,

is that the miraculous often manifests on the other side of being found faithful, doing the monotonous. Sometimes God will use your faithfulness in one season to set up fruit in another. You see in verse 19, Elisha's plow in the field, monotonous daily ground. Running the plow, looking at ox bottom all day. I ain't talking about the neighborhood you live in. I'm talking about these ox's bottoms. Back at a plow, staring at them things. Talk about an ordinary, boring, robotic life. Maybe that's how you feel today. You clock in and you stare at the same spreadsheets. Look at the same sales quotas. Tackle the same tasks. Live in the same cyclical anger, frustration and tiredness. Dealing with the same crazy kids. Hallelujah, somebody said amen. Maybe you're in liberty today and you go to chow. You go to yard. You go to chow. You go to chapel. You're just in this rhythm. You're in this boring cycle day in and day out. And the devil would love to tell you to believe that you've reached the limit of the capacity of your calling. But I'm here to tell you that God wants to divinely disrupt your ordinary.

Just like he did for Elisha, he wants to do it for you. So God shows us that he uses ordinary people like you and I to do extraordinary things. And Elisha's life shifted from ordinary to extraordinary in the bleak of an eye. And he didn't even bat an eye. It was unexpected but it was the biggest moment of his life. And I believe the word that the Lord has given me today through this passage and this story will stir our faith for the miraculous and the extraordinary and divinely disrupt our ordinary if we just let it. I'll title today's message, if you're taking notes, burn the plow, burn the plow. And I believe that there's two distinct actions that Elisha took that the Holy Spirit is gonna use to help us take, to have a plow burning faith like Elisha did for the extraordinary in our lives. Come on, are you ready? You ready to lean in today? It's gonna be good, I believe it. We find the first action in verse 20 but I wanna start back in verse 19. It says, so Elisha went and found Elisha, the son of Shaphat, plowing a field. There were 12 teams of oxen in the field and Elisha was plowing with the 12th team. He was a servant leader, he was with the last team. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak across his shoulders and walked away. And look at these distinct words, Elisha left the oxen.

He didn't stand there on the plow, think about it for a minute, what just happened? What am I doing, who is that guy? What is this jacket, what is going on? He left the oxen standing there. He ran after Elijah and said to him, first, let me go kiss my mother and father goodbye. And then he said, I will go with you. You see, the first action we see associated with a plow burning faith like Elisha had is that it requires us to respond immediately. It requires us to respond immediately. Elisha didn't hesitate, he didn't take tons of time. He responded, he didn't need time to pray, time to fast, time to think about it and think happy thoughts and sing Kumbaya Indian style in the floor of the barn, Kumbaya. No, he didn't even have to think about it. And listen, I'm not saying prayer and fasting and those things are a bad thing. We do them often, we should, they're spiritual disciplines. But sometimes there are moments where God. God is asking for our immediate obedience, our immediate step into what he has for us. No calculation, no details, no pros and cons list, immediate, simple obedience. And Elisha was in, all in, instantly. The yes came before the how. The yes came before the why. The yes came before the what.

Full obedience, little understanding, big faith. You know, you and I are like Elisha, and sometimes we're faced with the weight of making decisions when God tells us to move. And we like to look at our responsibilities. Well, Mike, you must not realize that I have three kids, dependents is what the IRS calls them and I have this job and I have this degree and I have to do this and I have to do that. And what we'll do is we'll talk ourselves out of acting quickly on the things that God's asking us to move on immediately. And here's what can happen. We can trust the weight of our responsibility in our hands or we can choose to trust the God who holds all of our responsibilities in his hands. You see, Elisha wasn't irresponsible in how he responded. He was working a lucrative business with crews and equipment, cattle. He was a proven leader with tons of responsibility. The weight of the responsibility was heavy, but the weight of the call was heavier. And he knew that he had to move. It's exactly what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians when he says that we're supposed to walk by faith and not walk by sight. A lot of times we will look and stare at the thing that God's asking us to do and we rationalize ourselves out of making the decision that it would cost us to do it. And if we're gonna live in the extraordinary,

we have to respond immediately in obedience and in faith, not based on what we see, what we feel, what we understand, what we don't understand. And listen, sometimes that means you gotta be comfortable with being a little bit uncomfortable. You know, here's the deal. When I was a young child, my mom used to always tell me, Michael, you got this gift where you can come in and you can comfort the afflicted. You can come in and just like put an arm around somebody, pray for somebody, love on them. So, but you got this other gift too sometimes that I see where you love to afflict the comfortable. You like to come into rooms of people who are just okay with status quo and say, come on, there's more, come on, there's more. And I believe this passage is telling us, hey, come on, there's more. There's more for you and I, we just gotta be okay with being a little uncomfortable sometimes. We have to do what Luke 9 says and we gotta continuously choose to die to ourself, a continual dying to comfort, a continual dying to fear. And here's the deal, we can either choose to allow fear to dictate our direction or allow faith to determine our destiny, but we can't do both. It's either fear or it's faith today. And just like in Elisha's case, faith responds without details. Look at it, it's all through the Bible.

Many of God's people that he's called to greatness had no details. He called Abraham and he said, hey, with none of your stuff and no details, follow me. Moses, in a season of despair, God simply says one word to him, go. Jesus on the water calls out to Peter. You can barely see him and he only uses one word, come. No details, not hey, the wind's blowing at 17 knots northwest and maybe you should, no, it's not. Just come, because faith doesn't need details to be obedient. How about you today? Maybe your marriage is struggling, but God just says stay. Maybe your health is waning, but God just says trust. What about this one? Maybe you're wrestling with a new business idea that you feel like you wanna start and God just says, start. Start somewhere. This is our family right now, four and a half years here at this incredible church, going through my ordinary block scheduling, walking out of the prison ministry several weeks ago and I have a notification that says, can we talk? It's from my former executive pastor. And I was like, sure, we can talk. Well, that turned into a one hour phone call, that turned into an opportunity for our family to relocate to Lakeland, Florida.

And at first I was like, I wish I could tell you that I responded immediately, I was like, yes, Lord, I'm in. I was like, what? I got a house, I got a bunch of these kids, I got in-laws that live here, life's crazy. Have you seen gas prices? But the longer time went on, I knew that no was disobedient. So I wish I could tell you that I immediately responded. But when I did respond, I felt the peace that passes all understanding. Listen, there's gonna be times where the Holy Spirit calls us to do something that don't make any sense, but it gives us the opportunity to do it. opportunity for it to make faith. In the unknown and the gap of immediate response and blessing, here's what I do know. Obedience is our job. The outcome is God's job. Sometimes we just gotta respond immediately and trust God with our yes before we have any details. But it doesn't end there. After we respond immediately, with plow burning faith requires us to take one more step. And I'm gonna be honest with you, it's harder than the first step. Harder than responding immediately, why? Because it has a cost. Let's hop into verse 21. It says in verse 21,

so Elisha returned to his oxen and he slaughtered them. It didn't say that he spared 10 or 12. He slaughtered them, all of them. He used the wood from his plows to build a fire and roast their flesh. He passed around the meat to the townspeople and they all ate. Then he went with Elisha as his assistant. You see, the second action that we have to follow to have plow burning faith is we have to follow sacrificially. We have to follow sacrificially. See, Elisha knew being all in wouldn't let him store the plow as a plan B. Elisha knew that being all in required him to burn the plow. Not just burn the plow, but to slaughter the oxen. Elisha clearly had a successful life. 12 crews of cattlemen, largest in the land, family, status, wealth. He built comfort. He built legacy. He had an enterprise. He could have handed the farm off to one of his coworkers. He could have handed it off to a family member. But no, because then he would have a plan B to fall back on. You see, Elisha responded immediately and he said, I have to give it all up. How many times do we keep a plan B in our pocket just in case we don't think God knows what he's doing? I'm just gonna maybe disassemble the plow

and put it in the barn to where if this Elijah guy who threw a random jacket on me is senile, and God may not know what he's doing, maybe I'll just, just in case. You know, maybe I'll hold on to this friendship with this person who sucks the life out of me because I just don't want to be lonely. And just in case all my other friends turn their back, I'll at least have him. Maybe I'll just continue to lean in to this job, this J-O-B. And maybe try to do something on the side. And maybe try to do something on the side. With what energy? Just in case. My dream of starting this business doesn't work out. You see, sacrifice, it's not easy. But total sacrifice is necessary to fulfill the significant calling that God has for you. And hold up, right when I said the word significant, you're like, significant. What does that even mean? It means that God has a calling for you amidst your ordinary to do the extraordinary. And it may not happen from stages and platforms and on a YouTube channel that goes viral or from a TikTok that goes viral with millions of followers. All of that is rubbish at the gates of heaven. The only thing that remains is when you stand before the Lord and say,

I respond to it immediately. And I followed sacrificially and I burnt my plow. I love how John Maxwell says it, easy and significant, they're not compatible. The path of least resistance, my friend, can also be the path of least reward. And so I'm not asking you to quit your jobs and sell your house and be a vagabond and live in a van down by the river, right? That is not what I'm asking you to do. But what I am asking you today is to look deep inside of yourself and say, what plows am I white knuckling that I won't give up, that are keeping me from what God has for me? Church, could I have stayed here after that phone call? Yeah, I could have. But me here serving in disobedience, I'm no good to this church. More importantly, I'm no good to my calling. So I had to release the plow and burn the plow, slay the oxen and say, Lord, you can have my yes before I even know the how. Here's the truth, friend. and it's time to burn the plow. What sacrifices today are you avoiding to ensure your comfort over your calling? What does your plan be today? Burn the plow. I love how Jesus said it to the disciples in Matthew 16. He said, then Jesus said to his own very disciples,

if any of you are to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. Every sacrifice attached to the calling God has for you brings about kingdom reward. But every moment you grip the plow of what's comfortable, you lose rhema moments that God has in store for you. What do I mean by rhema moments? Right now moments. Moments to step into something that you don't feel qualified for, something that scares you, that keeps you up at night, but you know that you have the peace of God that passes all understanding to step into something greater than you and to be a vessel. Maybe today taking up your cross looks a little bit more like burning your plow. You can't hold your plow and your cross at the same time. What would happen if we burned the plow of comfort and convenience today? Maybe you're gripping the plow of a relationship that has no reward and it's time to release it and burn it. Maybe you're gripping the plow of a career that's robbed you of your calling and it's time to let go and pursue God's call for your life. Maybe you're gripping the plow of comfort

that is prohibiting you from stepping into the commission that God gave you and it's time to let go. So I ask you simply today, what's your plow? What's your plow? What's your plan B? What is holding you back from responding immediately to the thing you know God's asking you to do? What is holding you back from giving up all of the peripheral ancillary stuff to say yes even when it doesn't make sense? I've not gotten this perfect but I have learned that there's reward on the other side of burning the plow. So in this moment, I want you to begin to ask the Lord to reveal in your heart what are the plows that you've been holding on to and preserving that has kept you away from all that God has for you? And today I declare it's the day to burn the plow. It's the day to burn the plow. Come on, would you bow your heads with me today? Maybe today you walked in and the plow that you're gripping, you're white knuckling, you're holding it so tight. It's self-reliance. You think you can do this thing all by yourself without a God in heaven who sent his son to die for you who loves you. And that self-reliance is a plow to you

because you feel like without it, you're weak or you're vulnerable or whatever. And you've never actually given up and followed sacrificially the call of God of salvation on your life. And today is the day where you feel that nudge of the Holy Spirit. I wanna encourage you, if you feel the nudge of that Holy Spirit, don't think about what it might cost you, what friendships and what lifestyle it might cost you. I want you to respond immediately today and lift your hand if you feel called to give your life to the Lord today. Come on, if that's you and you know it's time for you to get right with Jesus in this room. Come on, I see the hands in this room. Today's the day to burn the plow of self and to step in to the plow of salvation which is way more effective. That's the plow that Jesus says that you will hold on to and look forward and not look back because you would be unfit to look back. Come on, if that was you today, I wanna encourage you after service to take a bold step, to stand up, to gather your belongings. You can even go now, there's people in the prayer corners that would pray for you. But I encourage you to take a bold step to the prayer corner and say,

hey, today I choose to burn the plow of myself and to pick up my cross and to follow Jesus for the first time. We wanna help you find some next steps to really foster this relationship with the Lord the right way. But I wanna pray over this room, every single person under the sound of my voice and here in Liberty and Commons, I wanna pray over you for a supernatural boldness to fall upon you, to give up the easy, to step into what's right for your calling, to begin to take inventory of what you've kept in the barn far too long as a plan B for your life and to burn the plow and say, Lord, it's all yours. Take me as I am, I'm all yours. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, make sure you subscribe. Also, if something spoke to you in a special way, share it with a friend because you never know how it could transform someone's life. If you're interested in checking out our service times, make sure you go to our website at transformtlh.com. And we hope to see you at TC on a Sunday. Thanks so much and have a great day. Transcribed by https://otter.ai