When My Heart Is Overwhelmed | Pastor Jason McKinnies | Purpose House Church

If you have a Bible, I want you to turn with me to two portions of Scripture. This is not a series that I had intended to preach, in fact, about two weeks before we left for our family vacation, I told the team, the Lord downloaded a whole series to me, and I wrote a new series, I usually turn in what I'm going to preach for a year, usually in October, so they've had to scramble to get things together for me. But I want to go into a series called When My Heart Is, and today we're going to start with When My Heart Is Overwhelmed. And so I want to turn to Psalm 61, and then we're going to go, we'll actually start in 1 Corinthians 10, you just turn to Psalm 61, I'm just going to read a portion of Scripture out of 1 Corinthians 10, and then we're going to read a few verses out of Psalm 61. So in 1 Corinthians 10, just to lay a little groundwork for this, the Apostle Paul is writing a letter to a church at Corinth, and I forgot to do something. My buddy wrote a book, he actually gave me a book. I've heard about this book for about 15 years, and he finally did it. So Eric Yule's book is out in the lobby, you'll enjoy it. So I told him I wanted to buy a book because I wanted to hold a miracle in my hand. So anyway, so the Apostle Paul's writing to a church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 10, and he's saying to them, he's trying to encourage them, and he goes all the way back to the book of Exodus. He's quoting what happened in the book of Exodus when he's writing 1 Corinthians chapter 10, he says, moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and here's the verse I really want to focus on, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. So the rock that followed them was Christ. And so while you're turning now to Psalm 61, Moses got into trouble with this rock and how he handled the rock. He was commanded to smite it, to hit it, the first time to get water out of it. Then he was instructed to speak to the rock, because if the rock is Christ, it doesn't

need to be crucified twice, and a lot of us wanting to be crucified again, and we're violating the same command that God gave to Moses, which was, you've hit it, it's been hit, now you need to speak to it. And instead, out of his frustration, he hit it again, and therefore he couldn't go into the promised land. And so we need to speak to the rock and not hit the rock, and so now David is in some trouble in Psalm 61, and he writes this, and I'm gonna read just three verses to you, I'm reading out of the New King James. He says, hear my cry, O God, and attend to my prayer. On the end of the earth, I will cry to you, and when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. And I just wanna focus on that line, when my heart is overwhelmed, then I need you to do something, I need you to lead me to a rock that is higher than I am. You know, life has a real interesting way of pushing you beyond your natural limits. Overwhelmed though is not an invitation to run from God, it is actually an invitation to run to God. So I want to start today with a question, it's not even a theological one, it's not a complicated one, it's actually just an honest one. How many of you have ever felt like you were drowning? You're still standing, you know, there's hands all over the place, you're still standing but you feel like you're drowning. How many of you have ever stood in a grocery store, maybe at the kitchen sink, standing in the parking lot after a doctor's appointment, or maybe you stood right here in this room, you found yourself to be upright, you found yourself to be functioning, you showed up but on the inside something was pulling you under. Anybody in the room ever felt that way? So that feeling has a name. Actually David gave it a name 3,000 years ago. years ago, it's never been approved upon.

He said, hear my cry, oh God, attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth, everybody ever use this term, I'm at my wit's end? From the end of the earth, I will cry to you. And when my heart is overwhelmed, when my heart can't take any more, lead me to the rock that is higher than I am. So he gave it a term, it's overwhelmed. He didn't say he was discouraged, he didn't say he was tired, he didn't say he was frustrated, he said, I am overwhelmed. And there is a big difference. And if you've been there, I believe most of us probably have, you know exactly what David meant. I mean, I may be discouraged, but I'm a discouraged and. I may be distressed, but I'm distressed and. And the only words you can get is I am overwhelmed. Now, today we're gonna talk about three things and we're gonna do altar call a little differently. I think you may be kind of piecing it together, there's a rock on the stage. But we're gonna talk about why the heart has limits. What happens when those limits are hit? What does being overwhelmed do to your vision? What does it do to your memory? What does it do to your faith? And why Jesus is not just the answer, he is the only answer. And he is a ground that is higher than everything

that you're feeling right now. So here we go. The heart has limits. Do you know that your heart was never designed to carry everything? Now, I'm gonna start at the unusual place. I'm gonna dig deep into science. In fact, I read about 12 books. And then all of you married folks, you will understand this. Melissa and I were on a walk and I was going over my sermon notes with her. And she said, well, I read a book and you should read it. I said, but I read 12 books. She said, well, I'm not saying you have to read this book, but it's on my nightstand and it's on my bed. And it's open to a certain page that you probably should read. She's not listening right now. I haven't read it. So I wanna start with science just for a moment. Because I think sometimes we spiritualize our overwhelm in a way that actually brings shame on us. We tell ourselves, and if you don't tell yourself, you'll have somebody on Facebook tell you, if you had more faith, you wouldn't feel that way. And I want everybody here today to understand this. The heart having limits is not a sign of weak faith. It's actually a sign of being human. Do you realize that you are a human being

and not a human doing? You are to be, not just to do. And so the human heart actually beats approximately 100,000 times per day. Melissa walks in the room, my heart skips a beat every now and then. I just put something nice in there. And it pumps nearly 2000 gallons of blood. It is the most tireless organ in the body, but it is not limitless. It operates within precise boundaries. If you push beyond those boundaries, and then the organ begins to fail. This is a design truth, not a design flaw. The heart was made to function within a certain range. When that range is exceeded, the body begins to signal it's in distress. Now this is where it gets a little bit more real, if you will. There is a syndrome that deals with the heart that is called the broken heart syndrome. It's a real documented medical condition. And because I don't speak in tongues in the microphone, I'm not gonna give you the medical definition of it. So this medical condition happens when there is severe emotional stress, like grief, shock, fear, devastating news. And what it does is it causes the heart muscle to weaken so dramatically that it mimics a heart attack. The grief of losing a spouse,

the shock of a diagnosis that you were not expecting, the weight of financial collapse. These things can literally alter the shape of your heart. heart muscle, and the body physically responds to emotionally overwhelming. So when you get overwhelmed emotionally, the body begins to respond. So when David wrote, when my heart is overwhelmed, that is not him waxing poetic. He's saying, this is a physical cry from a system that has hit its ceiling. His body was saying, I can't take any more, I don't know where else to turn, and I can't even remember how to get where I used to be. So I need somebody to lead me to a rock that is higher than I. And your body, like David, was designed to tell you when you are carrying more than you were made to carry. Maybe you're like David. He, in Psalm 61, his heart was overwhelmed by a combination of physical distress, feelings of severe isolation, and he was in imminent danger. It could have been while he was running from Absalom. It could have been during his times of Saul, but whatever was going on, he got to a point where he said, from the ends of the earth, I'm crying out to you. I don't know where else to turn. My heart cannot take any more.

My son has turned against me. My father-in-law is against me. Everything is going on. I can't take any more. Anybody else ever been there? Or maybe you're there right now. So when that happens in the heart, it doesn't just affect your heart, it begins to affect your brain. And it's called the stress response to this, and it also affects your memory. So when a person experiences sustained emotional stress, the brain begins to flood the body with cortisol and adrenaline. And over time, chronic stress actually shrinks with the part of the brain called the hippocampus, not the medulla oblongata, the hippocampus. And it's the region of the brain that is responsible for processing memory and perspective. Perspective. So it starts messing with your memory and your perspective. This is why when someone is overwhelmed, they cannot easily access their past victories. It is not a weakness, it's biology. Overwhelmed, being overwhelmed physically begins to impair your ability to remember that God has come through before. So are y'all mopping what I'm dropping? There are times where you will come under attack physically, and all of a sudden, you are under attack physically,

and everything is going on around you physically, and all of a sudden, a physical war has turned into a spiritual war. And the enemy begins to overwhelm you to the point where everything that is going on around you, you begin to doubt God. Then you show up to church and everything, you're going through the motions, you just can't remember all the things that God has done for you, because the enemy has you so wrapped up in all the things that are coming against you. Has anybody ever been in this spot where all you feel, you're fighting on the front side, you're fighting on the right side, you're fighting on the left side, you're fighting on the back side, and you get to church and somebody says, well, if you just had more faith. If I could remember my faith, if I could remember what it was like when I got saved, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in, but the enemy is overwhelming my heart, and instead of mocking me for my faith, how about you do what David asked of other people, would somebody lead me to a rock that is higher than I am right now? I'm up underneath it, I just need somebody not to criticize me or to make fun of me or to post about me, I need somebody

to take me by the hand and say, let me lead you to a rock that is higher than you are right now. Because if I can get you to the rock, you'll get above all of that. So your brain begins just to be under pressure, your brain's not performing at full capacity. This is not an excuse, it's just context. And it changes how we need to approach when we have an overwhelmed heart. Now, what I love about Scripture, see, some people read the Scripture and all they see is that God got people. I read Scripture and I find that God is putting examples there for our benefit. God did not scrub the record of Scripture. See, there's people in the Scripture that hit a wall. Anybody else ever hit a wall? I mean, you're just going and man, I mean, you're just like, I just can't take anymore. And these people hit a wall. And God did not scrub picture, scrub the Bible of it so he can say everybody was perfect and everybody was wonderful. The Bible's filled with imperfect people. So was the church. And if you're expecting the church to be perfect, you don't understand this life. There were faithful people who ran outside of the margins. Let me show you just three of them.

First, there's David, Psalm 61. It's written in the wilderness, David is a king without a throne, a shepherd without a flock. He's not lacking faith. He is exhausted from carrying what he was never designed to carry alone. And from that place of exhaustion, he doesn't quit, he prays. And he says, hear my cry and then leave me. I cannot get there by myself. Second, there is Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Now think about this day of ministry. It's the greatest day of miracle ministry ever recorded. A fire fell from heaven. I don't think any of us have done that. Fire from heaven, 450 false prophets are defeated. Rain is returning to a parched nation. That's a pretty powerful day of ministry. But Elijah, after that day of ministry, he runs and hides under a juniper tree and he asked God to let him die. Just let me die. That's an emotional crash. It's a spirit of oppression and depression overwhelming somebody after ministry. See, some Christians talk to people in ministry like you talk to people who are in grief. You say stupid things. You say things that you shouldn't say.

People in ministry, you think, man, they're on the mountaintop. I'm just gonna say whatever I wanna say. And you have no idea what the enemy is doing in their head. You have no idea the fight that is going on in the inside of them. You have no idea that when they stepped out in faith that the enemy was right there with his proverbial pitchfork trying to stab them in any way possible because when they stepped out in faith, they're out there and they're trying to figure it out and maybe they messed up. Maybe they didn't do it exactly right. But probably the time to say it is not when you wanna say it. And so Elijah has this great ministry moment and he has an emotional crash. And I've said this publicly, Melissa always guards and protects me. We rarely go out to eat with anybody on Sunday nights because if you don't know, I mean, when you come out of the anointing is one of your most vulnerable moments of life. And this is why so many pastors fall after they get done preaching. You're trying to replace what you feel when you're under the anointing of God and you wanna replace that. And so the best thing we can do is just protect one another.

And so there's an emotional crash. That's why we say never resign on a Monday. The emotional crash of Elijah was total. Now, do you know what God's first response was to Elijah? He did not correct Elijah's theology. He did not rebuke his despair. In fact, he sent an angel. The angel touched him, 1 Kings 19, five, and he said, arise and eat the journey is too great for you. God's response to the emotional crash of Elijah was you need a nap and a meal. You need tidy and a bed. You need to eat something and you need to sleep. And then he doesn't say just once, he just says it twice, two times before God ever has a correction, before God ever says anything, he says, buddy, you need to eat. Go to Texas Roadhouse, get you a steak and some biscuits. Atkins diet's not in the Bible. Get you some bread, eat some carbs. You wouldn't be so angry. Eat something. You need a nap and a hot meal. And so before he ever gives him a single spiritual word, he says, you gotta take care of your physical body. There are a lot of things in church that we're praying for a spiritual healing for and when the fact is, the reality is, is that we are abusing ourselves physically.

We're staying up all night long playing Candy Crush. But if you would go to sleep, you would crush the head of the enemy because God would speak to you in a dream and in the dream would show you everything that's going on in your life. So go to bed. Nothing good happens after, if it was good enough for your kids, it's good enough for you. Go to bed, get something to eat. Then the third person said, David, you have Elijah. The third person is Jesus. Have you ever felt embarrassed? You're overwhelmed. So in Luke 22, 44, Jesus is going through something, Gethsemane, that Jesus is sweating drops of blood. It's a documented medical phenomenon called hematidrosis, speaking in tongues, where extreme psychological distresses causes the capillaries near the sweat glands to begin to rupture. Jesus is fully God, fully man, and yet he is experiencing the weight of what he is about to carry, the distress of what he is about to carry, and he did not skip the human limits. He entered them. He walked straight into the overwhelm so that we would know exactly what it feels like. He would know exactly what it feels like

when you are in yours. He was in all points, tempted and tried. He can have empathy in any area of your life. So you say, he doesn't know what I'm going through. He knows exactly what you're going through. So Jesus didn't avoid being overwhelmed. He inhabited it so that when you cry, lead me to the rock, you're walking to a rock who doesn't answer from a distance. He's a God who's been exactly where you're standing. See, when we get overwhelmed though, the second thing that happens to us is it begins to distort our vision. Overwhelmed distorts our vision. So it doesn't just exhaust you, it begins to distort. It changes the way you see everything. Changes the way you see God. Changes the way you see yourself, your circumstances, and it even changes the way you see your future. Now there is a medical term here, and it's what happens when fear or overwhelm spikes the brains of amygdala. I even have an enunciation key there. The threat detection center essentially begins to override what's called the prefrontal cortex of your brain. The prefrontal cortex, most of us men, we lose this when our team begins to get beat. It's the rational reasoning part of our brain, okay? So neurologists call this the amygdala hijack. It's in these moments a person literally

cannot think straight. Problems begin to look bigger. Solutions disappear. The future narrows to a tunnel. This is not a character flaw. It's the brain in survival mode. Has anybody ever watched these reels where people are losing their minds? Like on airplanes? They're not in their right mind. There was a woman laying on the floor. She's handcuffed, and she's still kicking the police officer and she's like, I'm a model. And that entitles you to the behavior in which you, but the brain has completely shut off. It's a Notre Dame fan when we don't even have a good recruiting class saying we're gonna win the national championship. It's just totally missing. The enemy will overwhelm you so much and put you under such distress that you begin to view things differently than what they really are. Anybody ever had this? I ain't got no friends, and your friends are sitting right in front of you. Nobody loves me, and everybody's hugging you right at that moment. We walked up the hill both ways to school. Your brain is distorted, completely distorted.

When I had a trunk hit my head, it permanently severed. But when your brain gets hijacked, problems start looking completely bigger, solutions disappear, and all of a sudden, your brain is in survival mode, and the overwhelmed heart distorts. And let me just give you three specific ways, and maybe you'll recognize yourself in one of them. It distorts by making things appearing larger. So I'm gonna ask Pastor Michael and Pastor Brennan to come help me. And Pastor Michael was gonna be in one position. Then I saw that Georgia shirt, and my prefrontal just disengaged, and I lost all reasoning. And so here's Pastor Michael. Everything's going good. He just got back from Branson and chilling, eating doughnuts he shouldn't have ate. Those doughnuts hurt, don't they? And I bet your sons wouldn't even order it, the Hertz doughnuts, because they've had a Hertz doughnut from Pastor. Anybody else ever had a Hertz doughnut? Would you like me to, you know, when you take their arm and you twist it? Maybe that's the South Bend thing. Feels like a rug burn. See, everything's going good in his life. He's married to Micah, Marley.

She's gonna be gone for most of the summer, he's gone. And then you got Judah, and Judah's smart as a whip. And you got Eli, and Eli just wants to play tackle football, even when you're playing baseball. Everything's going good. You run, I mean, your Facebook posts are amazing. But what you may not know, listen, the next 45 seconds, not true, I'll make an example. What you may not know is that behind the post, he's really struggling. George is doing terrible. They're horrible. Kirby Smart resigned. The dog, what's the dog's name? For Georgia? Ugga. What is it? Ugga. Do you know scripture as much as you know the mascot's name? Ugga has died. Everything is terrible. The pastor's all over him because he's not responding to people via email. I mean, all these things are going on, and then it's tax season, and now Micah, she wants to go to New York City, and you have to stay home, and you have to put an exhaust fan in, and you gotta do, life just starts coming at you. Then a couple years ago,

Pastor Michael's mom had a medical emergency, and we were together. We were actually having dinner when it happened, and we were away, and we had to get him to an airport and get him down there. And all of a sudden, his perfect life on Facebook all of a sudden starts crumbling. And all of a sudden, the heart begins to overwhelm. So mom is sick, and dad is sick, and now they're moving to North Carolina. They're gonna become Tar Heel fans. God bless them. And all of a sudden, things just start coming at you over and over and over again. And they live in Marion, and the Chick-fil-A's closed on Sunday, and so many things are going wrong in his life. And you think everything's wonderful, but you see him at church, and you think everything is wonderful, but you don't see the weight that he's carrying. And the enemy is good at that. When you start carrying weight, he just wants to add a little bit more. So Brandon, you just come on out, and let's just start stacking weights on him. No, no, you get to carry that one. Just keep bringing them. He's strong. You're curling 150 now?

Huh? Yeah. 160? Then a couple weeks go by, and the enemy just keeps coming, because you all think the enemy wants to be friends with you. Once the enemy starts loading you up, just keep them coming. Yeah, Joey, you can help. Just bring them, because the devil's got imps. Just keep coming. He just brings something else into your life, and he just keeps stacking them, and keeps stacking them. No, no, you can't put them down. Just gonna keep stacking. Now he can't see anything. Struggling to hear anything. All of his concentration, oh, just put them at his feet, and let's just keep him from walking forward. Put that one behind him, but you can't sit on it. Okay, I'm gonna preach another 10 minutes. See, this is what the enemy does. You get your hands full, then you just start stacking. Okay, now we're gonna get ready to sing Holy Forever, Michael, and you're the pastor. So you gotta, hey, you gotta lift your hands.

Can you balance all that and still worship? No, you show up to church, and your hands are completely full, and people are like, I wonder why he's not worshiping. You have no idea how much his heart is overwhelmed. You have no idea what he's going through. Let me just get into, I could change all these things around, and I could say, as a staff member of Purpose House, we'd have planning center, and trying to schedule people during the summer is like fighting Darth Vader with a lightsaber, and he's just blocking it all the time. So you got, trying to schedule people here. You got their marriage problems. You've got their financial problems, and you got all this in your hand as a staff member, and yet people are like, well, you should lead by example, and you should get up there, and you should act like nothing's going on when you're carrying the weight of everything that's going on in your life, and then all the weight of everything that's going on in everybody else's life, and people say, well, you should just give that to God. Do you know how difficult that is to wash your brain out with mothwash every night after all the stuff you've heard all day long? But Pastor Michael. Lift your hands.

Come on, Pastor Michael, lift your hands. Why is it Pastor Michael worshiping? Because he's got all the weight of the world all over him. And then when it comes time to worship, people coming over while we're worshiping and we're trying to get our minds straight and we're trying to get into singing and worship, and they're like, I need to tell you what I wanted to do to a goat last night. Y'all can't see him, but he just rolled his eyes at me because that's a true story. And you're trying to worship and you're trying to figure out what's going on, who's here and who's not here. And they didn't, and they're overwhelmed and they're overwhelmed becomes you're overwhelmed. And then they're like, why aren't we worshiping? Well, because somebody has forgotten to walk over to Pastor Michael and say, here, let me just take some of this stuff off of you. And let me help you get to a place where you need to go in your life. And if you can't get there, I'm gonna help you get there. And I'm gonna get all this stuff out of the way. And I'm gonna lead you to a rock that is higher than what we are, that get all that stuff out of your life so that you can lift your hands and you can begin to pull down the strongholds of your life on your own.

Thank you. See, we misjudge everybody. We mischaracterize anybody. And I know sometimes we talk, well, the parking lot, we're just gonna serve in the parking lot and people are parking cars. The parking lot team, you need to be operating in the gifts of the Spirit. Because when somebody gets out of their car, you see them get out of their car and you think, my goodness, something's wrong with them. How about you walk up to them and you begin to pray for them as they're walking into the building. You're leading them to a rock that is higher than they are. You have no idea what they just went through. So stop prejudging people and start getting in there and say, let me lead you to a rock that is higher than you are. So when we get, fear comes into our lives. And when we get fear, fear just makes problems bigger. Research actually shows that fear alters our perception. You ever heard this line? Perception is greater than reality. People in high anxiety states estimate hills to be steeper, distances to be longer, and weights to be heavier than they actually are. Let me give you a biblical example of this. The 12 spies in Numbers chapter 13, they saw the same land, saw the same cities,

saw the same people, but 10 of them said, we were like grasshoppers in our own sight. And so we were in their sight. So do y'all catch the way that that goes? First, they became small in their own eyes. Then when they became small in their own eyes, the enemy got bigger. So you diminish what you have, and you begin to think that the enemy has something bigger. And so the smaller you make yourself, remember this line with David. David said, oh, magnify the Lord with me. Why? Because the bigger you make God, the bigger you start making yourself. And the bigger your God is, the more confidence you have. And then they didn't even have a conversation with the giants. They're just assuming what the giants are saying. Yep, we're like grasshoppers in their sight and in our sight, and the enemy thinks this, and the enemy thinks that. Can I tell you something? The enemy is not omniscient. He's not all knowing. He is not omnipresent. He's not everywhere, and he's not all powerful. It's what goes on between here. As my science teacher in seventh grade used to say, it's in the smart meat, right here.

What goes on in your brain. So fear begins to write stories before the facts are ever in. And the story is almost always wrong. Two spies, Caleb and Joshua, saw the same cannon, saw the same giants, same walls, different heart. Can tell you the problem didn't grow, your fear did. The diagnosis is the same. The debt is the same debt. The situation is the same situation, but fear has a way of adding zeros to it. Distortion number two, anxiety magnifies storms. Mark chapter four, the disciples are in a boat with Jesus. A storm rises. These are seasoned fishermen. They've been on this sea before. Men who spent their lives on the Sea of Galilee are now going through a storm, and they know storms, but this storm caught them in such a state of overwhelm that they woke Jesus with a question that reveals everything about their heart. Mark 10, verses 30 and Mark four, verse 38. Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Do you not care? Jesus is in the same boat. So if they sink, he sinks. If they perish, wouldn't it stand to reason that he would perish? What do you mean he doesn't care? Jesus is in the same boat, he's right there with them,

and they decided in their overwhelm that his presence and his silence meant indifference. Anxiety doesn't just make you afraid, it makes you forget who is with you. It assigns a meaning to God's silence that God never intended. The enemy will always try to convince you and when you have an overwhelmed heart that God's quietness means God's absence. It's one of the oldest lies in the book. The storm didn't reveal that Jesus didn't care, the storm revealed that the disciples had forgotten who was actually in the boat with them. So I would tell you, don't let a storm rewrite what you know about God. And I tell you, one of the biggest challenges that I finally understood on a personal level was when my dad passed away, it's been eight years ago. When my dad passed away, I had to make sure that I didn't allow the enemy to rewrite God's word. What do I mean by that? Well, we were praying for my dad to be healed and my dad did not get healed the way we thought my dad would get healed. So the enemy wanted me to rewrite that so that I would never preach that by his stripes that we are healed. You have to be careful that when you go through a storm, you don't begin to rewrite God's story. Don't begin to rewrite God's word.

So what happens biologically, chronic stress begins to suppress the hippocampus, the brain's memory center, but it's also not just something biological, but it's also deeply biblical. Israel forgot about Egypt's plagues. 40 years in the wilderness, they began to talk about the leeks and the garlic, but forgot about the whips. The disciples forgot about loaves. The same crowd witnessed him feed 5,000 people and their question the next time people were hungry is where's the food gonna come from? David prayed, remember me, because in his overwhelm, he'd lost access to his own history with God. This is not a faith failure. It is a strategy of the enemy, and the enemy knows that when a heart is overwhelmed, it is a forgetful heart, and a forgetful heart is a faithless heart. So when you're drowning, you need to make sure you don't lose your testimony. But what happens is you start losing access to it. Let me give you a little personal story, and I'm gonna be vulnerable with you. I'm always transparent with you. I wanna be vulnerable with you. The difference between transparency and vulnerability is I can be transparent with you, and whatever I'm sharing with you,

you can't utilize to hurt me. Being vulnerable, I'm gonna give you a weapon that should you not like me, you can turn and use against me. I've had a condition that I have fought physically for years and come to find out, the experts now have come to know that I have cortisol, extra cortisol in my body. So that's why the doctors always tell me, if you wanna get better, quit your job. Why? Because cortisol is a response to stress. If you don't know this, I have a very stressful job. So if I wanna get better, I should just resign as pastor per the Mayo doctors. Just find another job. Okay, well, how many of you would be like, oh, pick me. So I have, I deal with this all the time where all of a sudden cortisol just begins to release out of my body when I get stressed. I can't lose weight because it's not fat, it's actually cortisol. Me and blackberries and raspberries and blueberries, we have a special kind of relationship right now. If you don't know that, those are things that are supposed to be antioxidants who are supposed to help take care of the cortisol. So I'm in the aisle all the time looking for blackberries and blueberries and raspberries and trying to eat my way to a better life because I've eaten prednisone for 23 years. So what happens is, is the enemy knows

that when all of a sudden he can attack and what happens is your brain begins to lose its memory. For those of you that have been here a long time, I used to preach without a pulpit. I never even preached with a pulpit, didn't preach with notes. I would just get up and preach and can memorize it. Now I can barely remember Melissa's middle name. What's happened? I've had so much stress and so much stuff going on in my body that the enemy begins to eliminate my memory and I have to go back to my notes and go back to my notes and go back to my notes. And it's very frustrating for me because I've had a memory, used to memorize all your names and all your birthdays. and some of you are like, well, there's a lot of people here. No, no, that's not it. What it is, is that there's an attack of the enemy against my life and he's robbing me of my memory. And so then, when I can't remember something, Pastor Pete, what does he add on top of that? Yes, your grandfather died of dementia and Alzheimer's and he forgot how to breathe. To which I have enough of a memory to go, shut up, you stupid liar. And some of you are in the stages of this, like I am, where the enemy begins to attack you and you feel like you're losing your testimony.

And what it is, is he's trying to make you lose access to it by robbing you of your memory. But just because I can't remember it the way I used to remember, doesn't mean that the victories weren't real. So I've had to start writing things down a little bit more. So the victories are real. Faithfulness is still documented. But what needs to happen, is you need somebody to just take you higher so you can see them again. Here's the third distortion. Oh, excuse me. What happens to us when we start getting distorted, is when we forget, somebody else has to remind us. We were in Maui, we were just beginning to sit at a table and we were counting our blessings because I got doctors telling me you should quit your job. And I got my family going, but dad, the reason why we have the life we have is because of what we do. And so we were just thanking God for all of you. We're there because of all of you. And we got to see sea turtles because of all of you. We got to swim, even though my mother was mad that I went free diving. And I'm gonna say all that right now because I'm up here and she doesn't have a trunk in her hand. And we just begin to rehearse what the last 17 years have been like

and the amount of baptisms and the amount of salvations and what God is doing behind prison walls. And we just begin to rehearse. And my daughters begin to remind me of stories, things that I had long forgotten. And they just begin to remind me of stories of things that God had done, memories of things that had happened. I mean, we could go all the way down and if I start naming names, but we were even talking about the chicken noodle soup that you made for us, John Gordon. And we're talking about how good that chicken, I mean, that chicken noodle soup is baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire. When you eat it, it cures everything that's on the inside of you. I mean, just Georgia White and how Georgia White helped Zoe learn how to go to the bed. She helped potty train Zoe, but she also gave Zoe a love of money in how she did it. And so Zoe still thinks she deserves money whenever she tells us she has to go to the bathroom. And so she just goes and swipes the credit card and it's just on and on and on. And so what you need sometimes is just to sit down. And if you can't remember, you need to get around some other people that'll start reminding you about the victories because the enemy is good at reminding you

of all the defeats. And then not only does he remind you of the past defeats, he starts telling you about future defeats he's going to do in your life because you've forgotten the testimony of God in your life. And what you need is some people to say, listen, they're still documented, they're still real. Let me lead you to a rock that is higher than you are so that you can get up higher and you can begin to see a whole lot differently because you're down here in the valley and you can't see anything. Let me get you up to a higher level so that you have a different perspective about what's really going on in your life. See, I wanted the rock out here for the whole service because during worship, yes, there's emotions in worship. Did the rock do anything during worship? Now, Ben thought that I replaced him. I said, the only time we're going to know that we replaced you is if that thing starts crying out, then you ain't done your job right. All through worship, all the emotions of worship, this rock was not moved at all. All the problems that are represented in this room haven't moved this rock at all. All the diagnoses in this room haven't moved this rock at all. This rock has stayed right there. It doesn't change.

It's not moved by what you're going through. It doesn't care what the attack is in your life. The rock is what the rock is. It's Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. No matter what you're going through, the rock doesn't change. Oh, I don't know if God can help this problem. The rock is still the rock. It doesn't matter what your children have decided about their sexuality. The rock has not changed. It doesn't matter what addiction is coming against you. The rock has not changed. What has changed is we stopped leading people to this rock, and we've got down in the valley with them and begin to come into agreement with the defeats that the enemy is putting on their life, and their heart is overwhelmed. and they're confessing to you, I'm going through it. My children are doing things I never thought they would do. They're making the prodigal son look like a saint and they're joining themselves as citizens of a far country and they look further away before. Instead of commiserating with them in their misery, what you need to do is take them and lead them to a rock so that they can get a different perspective about what's really going on. The rock, Jesus Christ, has not changed. He can still reach them, no matter what decisions they have made,

no matter what addiction is going on, the rock can still reach them, but you've got to lead them to him. Amen. But let me tell you what the modern church has done. When they're on their way to the rock, we want to check their theology. We want to check everything about them. We want to check, can we just lead them to the rock and let the rock do what the rock has always done? Listen, you weren't a Christian saint when you met him. You were a sinner and needed his grace too. Why are we trying to clean them up before they get to Jesus? How about we just lead them to the rock and let the rock do what the rock has always done? Whom the son sets free is still free indeed. See, the stability of that rock is not emotional. It doesn't shift. You can be an angry at a mountain all you want and the mountain doesn't move. You can be afraid of the ground, the ground doesn't shake. You can scream at a cliff face and the rock doesn't recoil. And the rock David is asking to be led to is not a feeling. It is not a spiritual experience that fades. It's not a worship high that wears off by Tuesday. In fact, we've coined a new little phrase around here, consistency is hard. People get all emotional on Sunday and alcoholic by Monday.

What you've done is you stepped off the rock. The rock is fixed, it's immovable. It's completely independent even of David's emotional state. And notice what David does not ask for. He does not ask for God to remove the flood. Doesn't ask for God to make the storm stop. Doesn't ask to feel better. He says, just lead me to higher ground. David didn't ask God to drain the ocean. He didn't ask to be taken somewhere where the water wouldn't follow. The prayer is not a weird prayer that some Christians pray. It's a prayer of faith in a minute of my heart being overwhelmed. He didn't say take this away, he said take me higher. God does not fluctuate with our feelings. See the Hebrew word for rock in Psalm 61 is a massive immovable cliff face. Not a pebble, not a stone, but a mountain of rock. And the word that they use there for translating meaning higher, it means to be elevated, it means to be lifted, exalted. So David is asking to be taken to a position that his emotional state cannot reach on its own. I needed somebody to take me somewhere that I cannot get by myself. That's a posture of faith. So when you're in crisis, God's not in crisis. When you're panicking, the throne room is not on alert. When your emotions are at 10,

God's steady, he's unchanging. You remember the old song, hold to God's unchanging hand. Isaiah 26 says you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. So peace is not generated by an emotional state. It's peace by trusting in God. So the rock is higher than your panic, it's higher than any problem you have. So let me say this to you and try to explain what's getting ready to happen. The rock has to be higher than you are in order to lead you out and to lead you up. What we have is an altitude problem in the church. We have been satisfied being in valleys instead of climbing the rock. So you have to get to higher ground. The flood is doing what the flood always does. People are doing what people have always done. Doctors are doing what doctors have always done. Diseases are doing what diseases have always done. You can choose to stay there or you can choose to be led to a rock that is higher than you are. The miracle of the gospel is that in the middle of being overwhelmed, Jesus is not asking you to do all the climbing either. He says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle.

and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Come to me." Now, what did he say? Did he say it? Let me put it in church terms for church folk. Did he say, get yourself together and then come to me? Get all this figured out, then come to me. Stop your drinking, stop your carousing, stop your drug pushing, stop all, and then come to me. No, he said, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So when all this stuff is still on you, come to him. And if you can't get to him, our job is to help you get there. He doesn't ask you to climb the rock, he's just asking you to start towards him. You remember this reciprocal promise in the scripture? If you will draw near to me, I will draw near to you. The rock is also not a place of achievement, it's a place of refuge. Isaiah 59 and 19 says, "'So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun. And when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.'" If we can, if we can put that on the screen, I wanna show you how people read that, and then how you're supposed to read it. See, whether or not where your heart is is how you read this.

"'So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun.'" Next part. "'When the enemy comes in like a flood.'" See where that comma's at? When your heart is overwhelmed, you'll put the comma that the enemy's like a flood. But the original text of that scripture, the comma was not after the flood. The comma was after, when the enemy comes in, the comma was after the word in. So it was, "'Like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against him.'" So depending on where your heart is is how you read that scripture. If you're underneath it and all of a sudden you've diminished who you are and diminished who God is, then all of a sudden the enemy is like a flood. But if you've been led to the rock that is higher than you are, then when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against him. It matters where you put the pause. But if your heart is overwhelmed, you say, well, the enemy's bigger and he's badder and the flood, but if you're on the rock and all of a sudden you're like looking down and you're like, the enemy came in, but like a flood, the spirit of the Lord hit him like a Georgia Bulldog tackling a northern quarterback.

He knocked him out and it's over and we win. The enemy's under our feet. Why? Because you've got a different perspective of which way the flood was coming. Can I tell you all of you folks in Purpose House Church, the enemy may have come in, but like a flood, the spirit of the Lord has raised up a standard against him and he's running him out of your life. You've got to get up to a higher level so the flood can do what the flood is supposed to do. It's not meant to overwhelm you. It's meant to take the enemy out of your life. So I want to end with something that's going to sound like both science and theology because it is. Neuroscience has documented that singing communal songs releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone. It reduces cortisol level. So this is my excuse with Pastor Melissa right now. She hates it when I sing with her because I'm usually off. She's like, and I'm like, but listen, the Bible says where two or three are gathered together in his name, he's there amongst them. And I need this communal singing because when we sing together, you guys got to try this with her and see how far you get on the worship team. So Pastor Melissa, we need to sing together because you singing by yourself doesn't reduce the cortisol levels in my body.

So we need to sing together because when we get in community and we start singing, it bonds us together. I can feel her eyes rolling all the way from New York City. And so the bonding hormone activates the prefrontal cortex. It reattaches it. So listen, when I was having my physical situation, the staff can tell you this. I would eat 10 prednisone a day until Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, we would get to church and by the time we started singing, all of the effects, if you would stand, if you believe what I'm saying, just to tell that I'm telling the truth. So I would get to church. I would be completely in a rage in my body. End of worship service, my body was completely cleared up, nothing was wrong. Why, what was happening? When I got into the presence of God, I couldn't get there by myself. I was under attack in my mind, but the worship team got up there and the praise team got up here and they started worshiping and they started praising God and I started praising God with them and all of a sudden, and now listen, it's science, but it's biblical. The presence of God began to overwhelm my body. Here's what happens in heaven.

He doesn't just magically heal all the diseases. What happens is his glory sets in and when his glory sets in, there is not room for anything that is unlike him to remain in his presence. So when the presence of God began to sweep in across this room, it began to flush my body of all the effects and all of a sudden, my brain got reattached. Isn't that amazing? I come to worship and my brain would get reattached and I started thinking about the goodness of God. All week long, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I did everything that I could possibly do to survive, but I got to church and that's why we used to have church services really long around here because it was the only time I felt good. What was happening? When somebody took me to a place that I couldn't get by myself and we begin to worship together and we begin to magnify the Lord together, I was no longer diminished and he was no longer diminished, but I saw how big my God was and I began to look at how little my problem was and that's why it's important that when these things begin to happen, it's even more important that you get together and you sing. We don't need to be singing those sad songs.

We're gonna be singing about how great our God is, how holy our God is and it begins to bond us together. So it began to reattach my prefrontal cortex. The very part of the brain where overwhelm suppresses, it began to fight against it. So the enemy had come in, but then like a flood, the spirit of the Lord raised up a standard. So worship began to restore rational, faithful perspective that stress was stealing. Does that make sense to everybody? So God did not design worship as performance. He didn't design it as a spiritual formality. He designed it as a medicine for the soul. He designed it as altitude. It's the thing that carries your heart to a place that your feet couldn't go. I came in completely under it, but man, Ben started singing. I'm like, whoa, the presence of the Lord is here, holy. And when you begin to just magnify God, all of a sudden it just begins to change the entire atmosphere. And all of a sudden he felt so far away, but now he's so close. And the psalmist said it like this, for the Lord is near to those who have a broken heart. And he's saying such as has a contrite spirit. So my friend, he is not far, he's very near. God is not watching from a distance, he's near. That word in Hebrew means he's close enough to touch,

close enough to hear a whisper. I mean, when you're so far under it where you can't even have a voice, it's like, God, I'm here. I don't even know how I made it here. I was so distracted when I don't even know the route I took to get to church, but I'm here. God is close enough to hear even a whisper. You don't have to shout at God. You don't have to shout. God's meeting you right in the middle of your cry. So just when we close, I just need a moment. Maybe this isn't for everybody, but I know there's a few in the room. You came in here today carrying something that nobody in your life knows about. You got dressed, you showed up. Maybe you even sang the songs, but underneath all that, something has been pulling you under. Maybe it's a diagnosis you haven't told anybody about yet. Maybe it's a marriage that's cracking in places that nobody else can see. Maybe it's a financial pressure that wakes you up at three in the morning. Maybe it's a child you love with everything that's within you and you don't even know where they are today. It's just a weight you can't name, but the enemy is stacking it on you. I want you to know, first of all, what you're carrying is real.

It's not in your head, you're not going crazy, but the heart has limits and you've hit it. You hit your limit, but the rock is still higher. God's not alarmed by what's overwhelming you. He's not disappointed in your exhaustion. He's near to the broken heart. He's close enough to touch. He's close enough to hear a whisper. So just in a moment, I'm going to invite you to do something very physical because I believe in the physical act of faith. There are stones in buckets. There's three here on the stage and there's one at each of our response tables in the back. Let's get a little closer for those in the balcony. You don't have to make it all up here by yourself. If anything that I've learned over the last 23 years of my chronic issue, you know how my, I don't know why I'm going to tell this story but I'm going to tell it, do you know how my chronic issue came into my life? I had pneumonia. I was in the hospital and the city where we were at was flooding. And one of the families in the church was going to lose their home. And I walked out of the hospital, got out against the doctor's wishes and orders and went and got a church van and went to save their home. While I was trying to save their home, the water, the sewer backed up in the city and I caught an infection out of the flood. I was trying to do something good and the enemy took that when my immune system was down and put something into my lungs that has caused my body to freak out for 23 years. And some of you, the enemy, when you were trying to do something good, the enemy used that as an opportunity to inject something on the inside of you and you freaked out about it.

I want you to know today that you don't have to get all the way here by yourself. We're going to help lead you to a rock that is higher than you are. When Jesus was talking to Peter and he said, upon this rock, I will build my church. He used a word for Peter that was a small rock and said, Peter, the only way you're going to survive is if you take your rock and you put your rock on top of this rock. Because this rock can be tossed about with every wind of doctrine. This rock can get caught up in floods, but this rock is unmovable. It's unshakable. Peter, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church at you if, Peter, your little rock is on the big rock. Build your life on the rock. And so here's what I'm going to do. If you'd stand with me and our prayer teams are going to come. If you're in that moment right now of overwhelm, we've asked our prayer teams, first of all, to be led by God's Spirit, to be able to prophesy words of knowledge, words of wisdom, and the gift of healing, the gift of faith to operate in their lives right now. If this is all new to you, welcome to Purpose House. That's why we call it the three-week challenge. But the Lord woke me up just a few weeks ago, laid this sermon into my heart knowing that you would be here today. And if your heart is overwhelmed and your mind is now distorted and your memory has forgotten the goodness of God, then I want you to either go to the response tables and grab a rock, or you can come up here to these buckets and grab a rock, and what I've instructed the prayer team to do is to not pray for you on this floor, but is to lead you up this platform onto a rock so that you can get a different perspective of what the enemy is doing to your life and a different perspective about what God is doing in your life. So right now, with every head bowed, with every eye closed, Holy Spirit, speak now to your people. Father, take my words, and Lord, would you anoint them right now into an ear that has been anointed by your Holy Spirit, and to the hearts that are overwhelmed and they see

no way out, may we lead them right now to you, Lord. Jesus, you're the answer for the world today. Jesus, you're the answer to their marriage problem. You're the answer to their finance. You're the answer to everything in their life. And Lord, today, allow us to be light to lead them to you, in Jesus' name. So right now, as the worship team sings, if you need to be led to a rock that is higher than you are, I want you to come right now. The prayer team. is going to assist you. If you just need to pray, right here in front of me between these two speakers is just a moment for you to pray to God however you feel. You don't need to go to a prayer team member. You can do that right here. Otherwise, if you're in the back, you can go to the response tables. There's buckets there with rocks in them. And I just want you to be led to a rock that is higher than you are today. Thank you so much for joining us. We pray that not only you are ministered to, but you are blessed by the service. If you want to, make sure you hit that subscribe button. That way you're notified when we upload any content or go live. Please make sure to leave a comment. Let us know what ministered to you, where you're watching from, and how we can pray with you. And if you want to help support, click the give button. You're helping us spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, not only across the aisle and across the street, but the message of Jesus Christ around the world. Thank you. We'll see you next time.