I can't stay here

Mark 11: 1-3 NIV

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

We are amongst one of the smartest generations to ever live, we have advanced greatly in our technology, we’ve surpassed most of our predecessors in athletics, we are constantly discovering new ways of living and formulating new ideas to help our world, but we struggle in one area and that is discovering who we really are. We are masters of disguise and we have become so comfortable, we have adjusted our lives to where if we don't like what we see we can just put a filter on it and tweak it until it shows others the filtered us and not the real us, but I get it because if they caught a glimpse of the real us we would not get as many likes, our following would go down to just a few people who don't check social media frequently and some people will even delete your number out of their phone just so they won’t be associated with such imperfection and because of this we have created a persona which is different from personality because persona comes into play when you mix who you are with the views of your social connections, in other words

your persona is who they see you to be therefore you can never reveal yourself as anything other than that or you then become a fraud so now your personality which is your identity which is comprised from within and is connected to your genetic make-up and your environment and culture and moral upbringing is thrown in the shadows never to be seen again and now you are struggling with what we call an identity crisis. This is where we have become confused to the point we start recreating genders and sexualities because we have not been affirmed in who we are so we create our own definition outside of scripture which is the foundation of all moral codes, now we have 46 terms that describe sexual orientation and behavior and whichever you decide to follow that becomes your 'truth', now we have to adjust our by-laws to fit your preference when the only preference there is is the Bible which is God's law concerning man. Tell somebody it's a crisis...

So, the question is who stole our identity? What happened, who happened that has betwixt us to the point we can't even recognize ourselves anymore.

You know you don't drink, but that loneliness on the inside of you has stolen who you really are

You know you don't party, but that lack of acceptance has stolen your identity

You know you don't fornicate, but those insecurities have caused you to forget your worth

You know you don't cut yourself, but you're just trying to find a way to remove the agony of not knowing who you are.

You know you don't skip church, but you're too ashamed of what you did

And now we have to ask the question “ADAM, WHERE ARE YOU?”

And some of us in here have been in this place where we let one moment snatch us of our identity and now we are like Paul who said the very thing I should be doing I can’t but that which I'm not supposed to do I find it easy to, O wretched man who is this person in the mirror cuz I promise you that's not the same that was standing in this mirror last year, what happened to that smile that used to be there, what happened to that innocence that used to be there, maybe I’ll close my eyes and when I look again I’ll be back to normal and then I open my eyes and that joker is still staring right at me waving back, tell somebody I'm getting back to myself.

And this is the confrontation it takes for us to get back to ourselves because if we can’t bring our shadows to the surface we will end up snapping on the wrong person one day and make a complete fool of ourselves, our shadows according to philosopher Carl Young are those characteristics in our lives we’ve suppressed to save face and now I'm living a lie because my emotions are hidden in the shadows and all of my responses are based on what I think you think I should say and how I think you think I should behave, but when I can see my flaws and realize it's a part of my personality and my personality is connected to the way God created me to house my purpose I am now able to turn them over to God and say search me o God from the inward place and if you find anything there that you didn’t put there TAKE IT OUT OF ME and wash my clean because I’ve got to get back to me…And I'm wondering if some of us are lost because no one ever told you that God wanted to use you.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is of no value if there is no one to spread it across the world, if there is no one to go into the highways and hedges and proclaim the gospel, if there is no one to go to Jerusalem, all of Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the Earth, we are his hands and feet in the earth and the cry is still going out as it was in the book of Isaiah, WHO WILL GO FOR US? 

But it’s not that we don’t want to be used by God it’s just that some of us realize that it takes more than a good idea to serve God, it takes self denial. 

Paul says in Romans 7:18 for I know that in me meaning my flesh dwelleth no good thing, so when I know how to do right the ability to actually carry it out isn’t there. In other words if im going to do anything good, that ability must come from an outer source apart from myself, this is why it is still not by our own power, nor our own strength, but only by the spirit of God that we can accomplish anything. If you see anything good about me, trust and believe is the spirit of God that allowed me to accomplish what i have accomplished, its the spirit of God that keeps my reputation what it is, its the grace of God that keeps me married, its the grace of God that im standing today, and some of you realize that if it wasn’t for the grace of God keeping you and covering you anytime someone compliments you on your ministry, your family, your attire or your possessions you can look at them and genuinely say TO GOD BE THE GLORY, because if it was up to me and my silly self none of this would be here. So if you don’t thank God for anything else, lets just thank God that we are in our right mind!

And this is why for some of us it took more than an easter Sermon to make us serve God, if we can be honest it took some life or death situations for God to get our attention and let us know we don’t have anymore time to waste, but this is like God because it is through suffering that we realize his hand is on us. This is why we can look at Jonah and even though it seems a bit extreme that he would almost risk the lives of the others on the boat just to get Jonah’s attention, sometimes if God can’t get your attention in private he has to send word through other people to tell you what he’s been saying all along, other individuals tell you you don’t fit in and you’ll look at it as rejection when what it really is God is tired of trying to convince you of what you already know but wont accept because its going to cost you your very life, but he said if any man, woman, boy or girl is going to follow me he must deny himself and take up his own cross, but if you give up your life and your plans for his sake, you will actually save your life. The old song said put your hands in the hand of the one that stilled the water, in other words you're trying to figure out why you’re experiencing so much confusion and chaos on your own, but if you give it over to God he will cause you to come into a place of peace, and you’ll realize the reason he can stop the chaos is because he started it just to get your attention, tell somebody  he’s a jealous God.

And this is all apart of why he came to earth in the first place because he needed to fix what the first Adam messed up, so he came to redeem man back to himself, so he wrapped all of his divinity into flesh and came down in the form of a mere man to be taken up a hill called Golgotha and pay the price for sins we hadn’t even committed yet and he satisfied the debt once for all, but on his way to the cross he had some disciples that followed him and these were not scholarly men who could dissect the Old Testament scriptures because they didn’t make through the classes of the Torah, Talmud, Midrash and Mishnah to become a rabbi so they became carpenters or fishermen as their livelihood. Yet he didn’t look for those who had head knowledge of the text, he chose those who would learn by seeing the Old Testament be fulfilled live and in person, so when you compare yourself to those who seem more qualified than you, just consider God doesn’t call the qualified, but he qualifies those whom he calls, there are some doors your education can’t make it in because it takes faith to see where God is trying to take you, tell somebody It takes faith!

While Jesus is training these disciples he is dropping bread crumbs along the way for those he already knows will fall by the wayside, so for peter he says, Simon, Simon Peter the devil has has asked for all of you, meaning all of the disciples, so that he can sift all of you as wheat, but he says Peter i have prayed for you that even when your brothers faith begins to fail, you will stand strong in the power I’ve placed on the inside of you and once you get yourself together you can then turn around and pick your brother back up and minister to the apostle on the inside of him because some body has to carry this Gospel after I’m Gone. This is why serving God cant be about you and how you feel when you start realizing there is a whole city of lost souls who have lost faith and its you that will restore their faith, but we get so comfortable in our own salvation we are just waiting on that great gettin up morning when he’s gonna crack the sky but if you haven’t helped anyone else get there than your life was more wasted than there’s. Tell somebody their waiting on you.

Jesus was all about symbols, this why he taught using parables becasue he could connect with his listeners at their level of understanding, this why he used agriculture because all they knew was sewing and reaping, counting livestock, so when our text slides in we receive a story of how God came for the least likely, how he came for the counted out, how he came for those who are bound by an owner and left outside. And that’s some of us in here, we feel like the least qualified, the black sheep, the forgotten and the bound up, those of us who feel like we are tied to a situation we will never be loosed from. But God has sent me here to untie you because he has need of you. Tell somebody I'm getting freed today.

He tells two disciples go over to the city and you will find a little donkey tied up that has never been ridden, in other words it has never been used for the purpose in which is what made. You must imagine this donkey seeing other donkeys being untied and used and here is this donkey saying I can do the same thing they can do but no one wants to use me, you say I have a gift just like the next person, I have a calling just like them but can you tell your neighbor, your time is coming. Be not weary in well doing, but keep serving, keep showing up, because your turn is coming. He tells them when you see this Donkey, untie him, and if anyone who never cared about him until now because you do know sometimes people want you to stay stuck and not go anywhere and never go further than where you are now and that’s why anytime you share a dream or vision with them they get annoyed and bothered and say you doin too much or wait on God, but once you get a revelation of where God wants you to be, just tell them what Jesus said, the master has need of me! Untie me and let me go!

But this leads me to a question, how did God know where the donkey was? Because no matter where you find yourself in life, you might be stuck in sin, you might be stuck in addiction, you might be stuck in a relationship, but when God has need of you, he knows exactly where you are, because you belong to him in the first place, David said where can I go from your presence, If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! Because I belong to God, and anything I'm in right now is just temporary, tell somebody this is just temporary.

Story of the donkey and invisible rope.

God has a wok that must be done and if he decides to use me to complete that mission, no longer will you question why are you asking ole imperfect and inconsistent me, not me with flaws, not me with hang ups, not me wit a bad reputation, yes you with the flaws, yes you with the bad reputation, yes you with your imperfect self, yes you with short comings, God needs someone to work for him and he’s not looking for the too busy folk, he’s not looking for the most qualified, he’s looking for the available, and you thought it was a bad thing to be forgotten, you thought i was a bad thing to be left out, you thought it was a bad thing that they left you all alone but it put you in the perfect position for God to see you from afar and send someone to untie you and bring you to him so he can use you to get him where needs to go, somebody shout he chose me! That’s why i cant move from this holding place God got me in because when its my time I wanna be right where God can see me.  

And can you tell the person behind you, Its your time!