It Starts With a Stretch

Well this is week 4 of our series Risk Takers. How about an incredible series we have been having. If you have not been here but have been watching online, you are getting just a glimpse of what is happening. We have been experiencing the move of God in such a powerful way and I am hearing such wonderful things form this series and how it is impacting people's lives.

The series started out about us as a church and who we are and what the culture is here. How we are some risk takers here and the status quo is not enough for us. Then the next week was all about starting to take risk and in order to be a risk taker you have to begin taking risk. There can be no sign of complacency. You have to take the risk on people, on relationships, on church, and most of all on God. Then last week was about moving forward. Regardless of your situation, your circumstances, or your deficiencies. You must move forward. I told you that this series is all about

You taking borderline steps for boundless success.

When we ended last week this line of

You may have doubts about God, but God does not have any doubts about you.

This is is going to be good. We are going to laugh together and have some fun but getting serious about this risk taker thing. Today’s sermon is entitled

It Starts with a Stretch.

I am asked all the time, how I get my sermon ideas and concepts. I think people beleive that pastors sit on the mountain or in their prayer closet and just meditate waiting on the Lord to bring them an idea. Then He finally just says hey, this is what I want you to preach on. That isn’t always the case. Sometimes it is, but not all the time. lol Sometimes it comes from words delivered by someone else, sometimes in devotion time, sometimes people come and ask me the same thing over and over so I just know I need to teach on that.

This time however really came from a toy. It is a toy that most of you are familiar with. Let’s watch this and see if you remember these?

(launch stretch armstrong video)

What an awesome toy. How many of you had one of these? I was going to wear the same outfit to preach in today but my wife stopped me on the way out because she didn’t think yall could handle all of this. lol

But I used to have one of these and me and my cousin would try to stretch this thing as far as it could go. I mean just like most boys, we wanted to destroy this thing. So we would stretch it. Try to wrap him around trees. We would play tug of war with him. He finally just hardened up and we tossed him.

This man right here has the potential to do some incredible things simply by stretching. He stretches 2-3 times his normal size. Some of us do that at Thanksgiving. lol Gotta wear them stretchy pants.

I wish I had this ability. Especially when my back itches. Come on, yall know what I am talking about. When that spot right in the middle starts to itch and you can’t reach it. You look like an octopus mating. I mean your arms are flailing about. One is on top the other coming from the bottom then you think, maybe I should switch them up. That doesn’t work. So you go find a corner or your favorite significant other or one of those long wooden back scratchers just to get that spot. How much more convenient would it be to just be able to stretch around and take care of that.

Or maybe you need something from the top cabinet. No stool required. Maybe you are at a restaurant and your kid sits at the other end of the table and is doing something they aren’t supposed to. No need to get up. Just smack. Right in the back of the head. In fact I believe that moms possess this ability. They can reach any where in the back of the car to get you.

But as I was thinking about this weeks sermon I began to think about stretching. This is crucial to becoming everything God wants you to do. If you are going to be risk taker with and for God, it is going to require that you stretch.

I don’t really know about you and your experience iwth exercise but one of the things that I have always disliked or skipped past when working out is stretching. I felt like it was a complete waste of time. Now people like William do this thing called Yoga which is nothing but glorified stretching and they have poses like this or like this. Oh yeah you didn’t know your pastor could do that huh. I know William, I didn’t do it right. But I don’t care for Yoga. It is not my thing. But my feelings toward stretching and the like changed a few years ago. I totally believe that stretching is important. I was doing some working out and got ahold of this video series called beach body. In beach body they have you do 5-10 mins of stretching before and after. Well of course I skipped that part. Until i got to the abs part of the dvd. I did my workout and then said I am not stretching. I got such a cramp in my stomach. It was absolutely ridiculous. I couldn’t believe how painful it was. If I had to compare it to something it would be the equivalent of alien coming out of my stomach. I have no idea what that feels like but i imagine it would be this pain.

So I have a few things we need to talk about with stretching and why it is important. The first one in your notes is this.

Stretching helps to avoid injury in your life.

You if doing a sport or exercise can avoid some injuries if you stretch properly. There is a phrase in exercising that our coach used to tell us. You can choose your pain. Did you know that? You can choose your pain. You can have a little bit of pain now in stretching or you can have a tremendous amount of pain later when something tears or pulls. See stretching releases your muscles and loosens them to prepare them for the use you are about to do. We do this every morning. The first thing most of us do in the morning as we are getting out of the bed, we stretch. Then we go make coffee. By the way if you missed Coffee and Conversation small group yesterday, you missed some good stuff. But we stretch our arms. We kind of go side to side. We stretch our legs out. We stretch. It just get everything back in place to which it is supposed to be. It is just built into your DNA to do this. With do this, when there is tension in your body your muscle can deal with that tension properly when you have stretched.

So often I believe that we cause so much injury to our faith life because we avoid the stretching part. So we don’t believe for big things, we don’t think God can do what he says or we tried to believe but becuase our faith wasn’t strong enough, we started to doubt which then caused what we were believing for not to come. Why do you think Jesus showed the disciples the withered fig tree before talking about the mountain. Or got Peter a boat load of fish before discussing fishing for men. Because he wanted to stretch their faith before he had them exercise it.

The next thing stretching does for you

Stretching increases your range of motion.

My football coach was so funny sometimes. Other times he was a complete butt whole…but we needed that as kids lol. Anyway he would talk about range of motion all the time and how we had to focus on that even when lifting weights other wise and I quote “we would end up with muscles like this and not even be able to wipe our own butts.”

(insert body builder picture)

But when you stretch, you increasing your range of motion makes the regular motions easier to do. Since really trying to take care of myself and start making the better choices for my life and stretching there are things that I can do now that I couldn’t do or it took great effort to do before. Things like this. Or even doing the splits. Let me just show you. Uhm no I cannot do a split. I will not probably ever be able to a split. I don’t care to do a split. lol Yall really thought I could do one?

When you stretch it pushes you to the limit and expands your abilities therefore making the normal movements easier. We all know those people maybe you are one in which those acts of faith seem so easy. You make it look that way. Do you think that came over night? Not at all. They had to stretch and keep stretching that faith until those came. You didn’t see that pain on their face. You just see the results of it. They give so effortlessly. They love so patiently. It makes you upset because you aren’t like that. But you have to start with the stretching.

The last thing we are going to discuss that stretching does is this

Stretching prepares your body for strengthening

When we go to the gym, we don’t as guys, look for the high five for our toe touch. We don’t expect men to come up and say dude, that was the best back bend i have seen in a long time. No we want to increase the bench press. We give high fives for leg pressing 1,000 lbs. You know but write it down like this

Stretching precedes strengthening.

Understand that the best marriages, the people with strong faith not to be shaken, the people who seem to be able to deal with more problems it all came from stretching.

Say it with me, it starts with a stretch.

Now I would be a horrible pastor if I just gave you the word but did not show you how to put it into practice. So here is what we are going to do.

(Start music “Footloose”)

So everyone stand up with me. You have heard all of the benefits and the things that you can get with stretching. So I have some stretches for you. Everyone take your right arm and stretch it over this way.

There are so many people that I could have talked about today. In dealing with this. There is the hero Moses who was told to do what when was standing at the red sea. He was told to stretch out the staff. Or there was Peter we already talked about that was told to stretch his faith as he was in the boat and asked could he walk on water. There are so many others but those heroes of our faith, I really didn’t want to talk about today. I wanted to get someone that you couldn’t say yeah but that is so-n-so. Of course they would do that.

So let’s look in scriptures.

Matthew 12:9–13 NKJV

Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue. And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—that they might accuse Him. Then He said to them, “What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other.

Matthew 12

Here is Jesus asking this man who has dealt with his problem his entire life. He was born with it. No one in the church had tried to help him. And here comes Jesus saying take a risk on God. Take a risk on me. Right here infront of everyone. We are hiding it. We aren’t doing it in secret. It is you and me. Are you ready. This man could have done anything. He could have told Jesus this was crazy idea. He could have said, I don’t want to do that. I am not going to do this in front of everyone. HE could have said something that we all do and say now Jesus you don’t understand. then we give any and every excuse we can think of. He doesn’t. He takes the risk. The Apostle Paul says it like this

Philippians 3:13–14 NKJV

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

What some of you may not know is that word right here, reaching, is in the greek a word

Epekteinomai which mean straining to reach.

In verse 14 he uses the word press which by definition according to the oxford dictionary says forcefully put forward.

It reminds me of something like this.

(play video of antonio brown stretching across the goal)

God is simply calling us to move forward. To make the effort. To move forward as we talked about regardless of the enemy pressing back against us. It is going to be tough. It will never be easy. But write it down like this

If it doesn’t challenge you, it will never change you.

There was a season a few years ago that the term its a paradigm shift was used on everything. I got so sick of that phrase. Because the truth is it wasn’t a paradigm shift. We all knew what were supposed to do, we just weren’t willing to put forth the effort to do it. It was easier to stay in the comfort zone. We cannot do that. It is time to start stretching. Jesus even said it.

Luke 19:26 The Message

“He said, ‘That’s what I mean: Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag.

He is talking bout the servants who got the talents. Two of them took a chance while the one buried it in the ground and he ended up losing what he had. There is a life that GOd wants for you but you have to take a risk.

This week, I want to give you 3 prayers that I want you to pray until next Sunday everyday. So say 7 days.

1st Prayer: Stretch me to reach my potential.

When is the last time you took a radical step to pursue what God has for you in your life? Think about it. When is the last time you quit a job, went to school, talked to a person.

A life of faith means that you have the courage to step out of a secure place, to a place that is insecure in your life. Like the trapeze artist.

The second prayer is

2nd Prayer: Stretch me to use my possessions.

Moses is at the burning bush, God calls him to leave and go back to pharaoh. Moses gives all these excuses then he ask God a question. How can I prove it was you. God then gives this iconic question back to him. What’s in your hand. David was given all this armor and a sword but Gd wants him to use what’s in his hands to kill Goliath. Use what you have. Don’t beg and cry for something else. Use what you have.

What’s in your hand may seem average but when it is combined with faith and God your ordinary become extraordinary. Your natural gifting becomes supernatural. I have never met anyone yet that says, I have way to much money pastor. What can I do with this. If you have that question, take me to Old Hickory Steakhouse and I can tell you what to do with it. It’s in the bible to take your pastor there. 2nd moses 3:4 Use what you have. Your salary is enough to tithe on. Your giftings are enough to impact this community. Look at what Proverbs says.

Proverbs 11:24 NKJV

There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.

Proverbs 11:

Martin Luther said it like this.

I have held many things in my hand and lost them all but whatever I placed into the hands of God, that I still possess.

The last prayer

3rd prayer: Stretch me to be with the right people.

Relationships matter.

Look at this

Matthew 9:20–22 NKJV

And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment. For she said to herself, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that hour.

Matthew 9:

(play song Joy)