The Anonymous Times | Associate Pastor Chad Erickson
by Chad Erickson
First Apostolic Church of Maryville (Maryville, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Esther 4:13, Esther 4:14, 1 Corinthians 11:14, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Isaiah 40:31, Judges 5:6, Judges 3:31

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/chad-erickson--the-anonymous-times
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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praise the lord everyone if you're not already standing please stand with us tonight and it is so good to see so many guests in the house and i love one thing i love about us marching is i get to see everybody in my section i love that i love to wave at people and we have so many guests in our section tonight and i welcome guests in every section and thank you for for making this your place of worship in the middle of the week and i don't know uh i know i might say this quite often but i don't know how blessed uh if we know how blessed we really are to come to a midweek service and have like brother hammond said this kind of a crowd on a midweek because you know there's a lot of people and and you know some you can fault some you can't fault some have to work but i'm so thankful that we found a way to be off work tonight and to be in the house of the lord ready to worship and ready to hear the preached word of the lord so if you will grab your bibles and if you will turn to the book of esther chapter four and i want to um i want to bring a message to you that i've brought probably four or five years ago this is a this is a a message that i i teach in music conferences i teach ministers conferences at leadership growth conferences due to the fact that it is it is a message where people are living and it doesn't matter your age it doesn't matter your occupation it doesn't matter your ministry um there's you're either in the middle of what i'm about to teach tonight you've been through it or you're probably coming up on it and um well i'll introduce the subject just a moment let's read first esther chapter 4 verse 13 says then mordecai commanded to answer esther he said think not with thyself within thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house more than all the jews for if thou altogether holds thy peace at this time then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the jews from another place wow it's like i have never heard an organ sound like that but i am impressed if anybody can make an organ sound like that brother nathaniel can do it what about an organist over here i'm gonna try verse 14 again for if val well let me say this brother andy holland the sound tonight has been phenomenal are we thankful for for a sound engineer i felt him i actually felt impressed to say that before you called me out on it um but uh honestly there's something about just being like coming to a worship service and just everything and i guess maybe it's the musician singer in me that if it's not right brother ferguson it's hard to worship when it's not right i'll just be honest with you some people can come in here it doesn't matter what it sounds like you're just in your worship mode i apologize it has to be but tyler it just has to be it has to sound right and um that's a fault that i have but brother holland thank you so much for for doing an amazing job so back to esther 4 14 it says for if thou this is her uncle mordecai speaking to niece esther if thou altogether hold us thy peace at this time then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the jews from another place he said but thou in thy father's house shall be destroyed and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this and we preach about the time when she came into the kingdom and we understand that esther did what she did and saved her people from annihilation but i want to back up a little bit in esther's life and we may not even get to esther till the end but i want to back up into a time in anonymous time of her life and i just want to just teach tonight simply the message entitled the anonymous times of life let's pray together father we love you lord we're asking you tonight lord god that you would have your will and your way in every life that's represented in this house tonight and all those that are watching by way of the internet father i ask you in jesus name lord that you'll speak to every heart lord you know the seasons of a life that each person is in lord god whether it's in ministry or whether it's a career lord god whether it's even a life lord god of uh before marriage or in marriage lord you know every season that every person is in tonight god i pray that what i speak on today what you've given me for this great congregation will be ministry law god will touch the needs and the hearts of every person in jesus name i pray and everyone sent him in you may be seated tonight the anonymous times anonymous is simply to find lacking distinction lacking recognizability to lack distinction i i believe that everyone in this place goes through seasons in their lives that one could simply call the anonymous times we have we have preachers in the house and if you're a preacher you know all about this anonymous time if you're a teacher in the house if you're a sunday school teacher or a children's teacher a youth teacher an academy teacher here at the academy maybe a preschool teacher singers musicians we have high school graduates college graduates really it's anybody or anyone who has worked hard to get where they are today and then you realize that you're not where you really thought you would be today does that make sense you worked hard to get where you are this message is not for slackers it's not for people who are just kind of laying back in life but it's for people who have worked hard and i believe i'm preaching to a congregation who has worked hard to get where you are today whether it's you went to school or you've you've trained on the job or whether it's that you went to bible school and you worked hard to learn to preach or you went whatever occupation it is i can name a hundred occupations that are probably represented in this place today but you've worked hard to get where you are however maybe you found yourself or maybe you can remember back to finding yourself in a place where you were in obscurity where you were in a place where you just didn't feel like people even understood or recognized you there was no real distinction maybe you felt totally ineffective and i can honestly say i've been in those anonymous times i found myself in the anonymous times when i just said god i know you've got a coin on my life i know you've spoken directly to me i know you've even you've even shared steps with me that i have to take and i've taken those steps god why am i not any further along than i am the anonymous times but we're not alone because many heroes of the faith have felt these same feeling these same anonymous times in their life and they were forced to make a decision number one will i trust in god and wait for him in his perfect will for my life or two will i try to take matters into my own hands and step outside of the will of god for my life that's really the only two options we have tonight we could wait upon the lord or we can force his hand and i don't know about you but anytime i've ever forced the hand of god it's never been a good it's never been a good conclusion to whatever i forced amen there's a story and you've probably heard about this i i've taught about this in our school and i've i've even preached on this subject because it's such a powerful uh story or such a powerful example of a bamboo tree a chinese bamboo tree they say that in china when you plant the seeds of a chinese bamboo tree they say expect nothing for four to five years you put the seed in the ground but they understand you got to keep on watering and you got to keep on fertilizing because they understand that if you will wait and be patient in four to five years that tree will come up out of the ground and it'll grow 36 inches every 24 hours it'll grow three feet check out these check out these chinese bamboo trees now if you look at this and you look at the size of these trees you would probably think that those trees were hundreds of years old but truly that bamboo forest right there is probably only i don't know it could be six months old it could be two years old because they will grow some 90 feet tall in a matter of a month or a matter of two months they grow at such a rapid rate you can you can see when you're looking up through these bamboo trees they look they look as tall matter of fact our steeple on our building is is right around right below 100 feet tall so these trees grow to the height of even our steeple and i'm going to come back to this and matter of fact you just leave that up until we read another verse but i'm going to come back to these bamboo trees because we're going to we're going to relate to them and and how time taken and if we'll follow some procedure and some systems and some steps we too can grow to what god would have us to grow to become and i realized tonight and now i'm going to kind of preach about or teach about seasons of life i i realized today that i probably couldn't teach this session to every church in america because every church in america is not in a beautiful part of the country where we get to celebrate four seasons can somebody say amen can somebody that's moved to east tennessee from another part of the country saying man i i was i was born in albuquerque new mexico my parents uh lived there for quite some time and i still have family in new mexico that i that we go to visit uh often and um there's not a lot of seasons in new mexico matter of fact it's either hot or when the sun goes down it gets cold there's no there's no humidity in in that part of new mexico matter of fact i was i was with my aunt and uncle there and uh they served us iced tea and i remember i was wanting to set the ice tea down on the coffee table and i asked them if they had a coaster i said you have a coaster i want to i like to set this right here and they said we don't have coasters i thought what do you mean you don't have coasters they said there's no humidity here the glass there's no condensation nothing comes out off the glass like we here in east tennessee if you leave your mcdonald's cup out too long within about 15 minutes you have all kinds of bead of condensation coming down you got a ring on your table well well there it's either hot or cold there's no humidity there's nothing in between i see sir yoko we got some arizonians over here they they know how this is there's there's no in between and they just have pretty much one season but you come here to east tennessee and i i can preach this message because i love our seasons here in east tennessee i love winter i love snow days you know right when school you when school gets going on for a while and you're about done you're about the students about over it you know and and you hear on the forecast there's a 70 chance of snow and it's gonna snow it's gonna be four inches of snow and man we get so excited and we go and we go and go to the dollar store and we buy the last sled that they have on the rack and we go try to find a hill which we ought to be able to find hills around here man and you just find it it's the greatest place the greatest time the fire warm your hands the mittens all the the wet clothes no not that so much but everything besides the wet clothes is so much fun right the kids are so excited and good to be out of school and it's winter's a great time but what's so awesome about winter is around here by the time you get over it all of a sudden spring comes along starts warming up flowers start to bloom rains a little bit you know we got some showers coming down but at least the temperatures are getting warmer sun's starting to shine more often you know spirits are up and then once once you start getting sick of the rain and get sick of the mud over time summer comes and then you open the pool and and you start doing outside activities and you go by go to towns and you get on a tube and go down the creek and in summer is great by the time the sun gets so hot and you get those 100 degree days and you're yearning for the fall time when the when the beautiful leaves of the mountains start to turn orange and red like it is about now temperatures start to cool down a little bit to put your sweater back on start to wear those boots again all of our seasons see listen everywhere in the country they can't relate to our seasons here but here in east tennessee i can preach this kind of a message in east tennessee because we understand that there's good thing about every season but it's also nice when you start leaving one season and ends into the next it's nice to leave some seasons behind you know those winter those those winter degrees and when it gets cold and may have to wear all those layers over time you're like you know i'm sick and tired or or when it gets so hot that every time you you get in your car you got your drenched and sweat because it's so hot hot in your car over time it's nice to see the seasons pass i love what first corinthians paul says in first corinthians 11 14 i know this is on a whole other subject but i dislike what he says he says doth not nature itself teach you nature teaches us a lot of things we can we can learn a whole lot from nature itself we can learn that god has a plan of life and there's a natural cycle to life we can learn from this natural cycle that even man doesn't have the ability to mess up aren't you glad that we don't have a choice in seasons if you think about it at first you're like well you know what i i would kind of like it to be 75 degrees all year long i would like it if it didn't rain i i would like it there's no clouds in the sky and it was just always a beautiful sky well over time we'd be living in a desert because we'd be out of water because we messed up the seasons but god allows things to take place there's a sack there's a natural cycle of life that automatically takes place and i'm thankful for seasons of life look with me in ecclesiastes chapter three i want to start with verse one because i most believe that solomon wrote ecclesiastes but but it's very important to understand that there's a time in a season for everything he wrote to everything there's a season in a time in a purpose under heaven a time to be born and a time to die a time to plant in a time to pluck up that which is planted a time to kill and a time to heal a time to break down in a time to build up a time to weep and a time to laugh a time to mourn in a time to dance a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together a time to embrace in a time to re refrain from embracing a time to get in a time to lose a time to keep and a time to cast away a time to rend and a time to sow a time to keep silence and a time to speak a time to love a time to hate a time of war in a time of peace in this whole passage when we sum up this passage it's pretty much saying there's a time that's going to be anonymous there's a time that there's going to be a dormant season in life and there's a time that's going to be a productive season in life because a dormant season you know sometimes the time just isn't right to grow and i think we got to understand there's going to be seasons in life that absolutely rob us a visual life i remember brother brother dempsey uh he does all of our landscaping work and he did such a great job around the church here but i don't know probably four or five six years ago i was wanting a tree in front of my house in front of our house and in ice with dempsey i said help me help me i love those crepe myrtles i just need something in front of the house it's kind of just lawn it's bare it needs some needs something going on in the front of the house i'm i already got the xenders living across the street and they got like garden of eden over there you know i gotta have at least a tree or something in front of my house so brother dempsey brings over a tree that was like i paid i i paid extra money because i wanted to be about 15 feet tall i wanted to be kind of you know i didn't want like a little tree the xender's across the street i want a big tree he brings me this 15-foot tree it didn't have one leaf on it and he he digs a hole puts in my front yard and i remember standing there and i don't like dr seuss is coming to my mind right now but i remember standing there and looking at this branch coming out of the ground and he went on to tell me we're digging we're putting this tree in the ground during the dormant season of this tree he said brother erickson he said trust me he said give it some time this will be the most beautiful tree in your yard and i'll be honest with you sister dempsey i'll be honest with you i i was i had some questions going on i was like you know maybe we could have went to a different place and bought a different tree i don't know but sure enough he was right the next spring buds started growing on that tree and that tree taught me that tree taught me something because i thought you know i've seen a lot of people in life that are where this tree is right now i've seen people that you look at him and you're like that's not what i was really expecting from you with your with your education or with your family tree or or with the heritage that you have that's not really what i was really looking for and wouldn't you know there's some of the same people that i've questioned that about a couple years later all of a sudden you're like oh my look what they're doing now look what god is doing through them look look how god is using them look how god's using their ministry and all along you knew they had it within them but visually dormancy that's the hardest time in life when you just don't look like you feel you should look you're not doing what you what you feel you ought to be doing things in life where you you're focusing on all the wrong things you you say stuff like i've been in church for 20 years and i have nothing to show for it and you look like that barren tree but i began to learn and i began to study trees and every tree doesn't bloom at the same time there's early bloomers there's there's spring bloomers there's winter bloomers and if we look around and judge ourselves and this this is where this is this is where the trouble comes when we begin to look around at other people and judge ourselves according to others and it's really hard like i i'll be honest with you there's nothing that's more intimidating than going to bible college because if you've been to bible college let me tell you something all the trees aren't blooming at the same time i mean and it's not even really fair because man i remember we had we had two or three guys that had already been like through through like secular school they'd already been in their ministry for probably five or six seven years i'm just i'm fresh out of high school you know i i went to university for a little while i transferred an ibc i'm still a young guy just probably 19 20 years old and there's some guys there like 25 and 28 year olds and i remember sitting in chapel and watching some of them preach and just thinking oh my goodness like i i can't even put like a sunday school lesson together and these guys are like preaching like meet him messages and i remember i remember sitting there and beginning and maybe it was the devil i don't know but beginning to allow myself to compare myself to them and thinking to myself man i how could i i'm never going to be with i i ca i can't even put two sentences together i'm never going to be what they are but but i begin to realize that early bloomers they don't bloom very long those trees that bloom really early in the season a lot of times they got these beautiful flowers but they're only bloom they only bloom for about two weeks at a time it was interesting we were we were going through uh to the campus in sevierville and on sunday my wife said hey i saw some a sunflower patch and said we asked paris paris on the way back do you want us to stop there we'll get some pictures and you know girls our girls love sunflowers i don't know what i don't know what it is girls love sunflowers i don't know matter of fact every time we pass her about two or three weeks at a time and there's always a bunch of cars and there's all kinds of girls out there getting pictures some of you all did i saw somebody else pictures but what did you know those sunflowers when we we couldn't well we finally we finally went by there and finally realized that every one of those sunflowers was dead every flower was hung over dried up dead from this beautiful yellow beautiful black and yellow and all the beautiful the sunflowers sarah amber and i see you all the all the sunflowers had all died within like two weeks but that's how it is because a lot of times there's such a short blooming period i'll tell you this brother hammond those same awesome preachers that i would sit in chapel service with my mouth hanging open not believing the stuff that they're coming up with not believing the stuff they're preaching i'm sad to say they're no longer with us i'm sad to say that they bloomed and and and i don't know if it was if it was an eagle thing brother josh i know you and you at ibc i don't know if it was just something that that their head got too big for their body i don't know what happened but they're no longer with us they no longer even believe the essentiality of the holy ghost they don't even believe in one god any longer and then i think to myself you know maybe it was okay that i didn't bloom so early then there's those that bloom in the spring but the problem with blooming in the spring is everybody else is blooming too so you're doing great things but you're just around other great things and so once again there's there's really nothing great when the whole forest is blooming at the same time and people they they they like to be together in numbers and they want to do things together but but then there's those that bloom in the winter time and the ones that bloom in the wintertime are the ones that have the strongest bloom because they are blooming with adversity and so people and i i've noticed and and people are going through my mind even right now people that they didn't bloom early they didn't bloom when everybody else bloom but they waited and they're still going strong they're still beautiful today in their ministry they're still beautiful in what they do today why is it because they could bloom when adversity was upon them when when the season didn't feel quite right they had the strength to bloom so i bring to you today because i believe this is something this dormacy webster defines dormancy as not actively growing but protected from the environment there are seasons in our life when we may appear dead however god is just trying to protect us from the environment that we're in so what do you do during the dormant season let me give you some examples because i know this happening maybe you were prophesied over by a visiting evangelist and he prophesied over you and told you god god's gonna put a great ministry you're gonna have a great ministry god's gonna do great things through you're gonna win many souls you're gonna do this you're gonna be a great musician you're gonna be a great singer and here you are five years later and it hasn't come to pass maybe from a young age maybe you took piano lessons or vocal lessons and you always felt a calling on your life to to lead through music but the door just has never come open maybe you move here in a marvel maybe maybe at your last church maybe it's your last church or maybe you're the choir director or the youth pastor or maybe you're the sunday school director and you come here and we've already got choir drugs we've already got a youth pastor we've already got a sunday school director and you're asking god you're like god i know that you you've called me to do this job and you've called me to lead but but there just doesn't seem to be an opening well i believe just maybe that maybe you're being protected during a dormant season maybe some time right here in your life maybe just because you're in a holding pattern that's not a bad thing sometimes holding pattern is exactly where you need to be because may i got a great story i was flying my wife and i were flying to baton rouge to preach a preacher youth conference in baton rouge and we were about 30 minutes out of baton rouge and we hit the worst weather weather pattern that you can imagine we uh white knuckling is not even that that doesn't even define what we were doing we were holding on to say we were holding on for dear life it wasn't it wasn't just holding on to each other holding on to the to the armrest i mean that plane was falling out of the air and gaining altitude and falling out of the air and dipping one side to the other and everything was rattling and everything was falling open in suitcases everything was falling out it was the worst it was it was about 30 minutes of the worst i i can't even tell you what was going through our minds it wasn't even i don't even know it wasn't even death as much as it was just this is the worst roller coaster ride i've ever been on you know it's just one of those things i didn't really think they were going to die i just thought surely this is going to end and the captain got on and said we're going to have to get into a holding we're going to have to start a holding pattern we're going to just circle around until we can land and we circled and we circled and we kept i mean i don't i can't tell again i can't even explain to you the fear of just what is going what's going to happen next and finally we start coming down in for a landing and there's there was a pilot that was flying with us and he was sitting the seat in front of us and he even he even identified himself he said i'm a pilot and i can't believe we're landing this thing and then i was like we're going to die and he was right because we came i mean we were we're coming back and forth across the runway like this it was horrible and right we were about to land or try to land we went back up in the in the air and just i got to tell the rest of the story because you'd be mad at me if i didn't but finally we landed and as soon as we touched down you know everybody's like whoo you know we're like we're alive and the pilot gets on and says we i've got some good news and i've got some bad news and i looked at found i was like i know what the good news is we're alive you know that was the good news the bad news he's like we're in new orleans and i was like and he's like oh he said but we're gonna get everybody off the plane and then we're gonna wait about an hour we're gonna get you back on the plane we're gonna fly to baton rouge me and fam were like oh no no no no we got an uber stayed at a hotel and we did not get back on that plane like i ain't getting on no play but the holy pet there's listen there's an importance sometimes you don't want to land you think you want to land you know i i want to get to baton rouge but sometimes guys are saying listen i've got you in a hole in pattern because i know i know that everything is not safe there's danger in your life and who knows what that danger could be who knows what god is keeping us from some of somebody in this place tonight you might be single and you might be thinking man i gotta be married i just gotta be married gotta be man gotta find the one gotta be married god and god's like i'm putting you in a holy pattern on purpose because if you marry him or if you marry her listen there's one thing worse than being single yeah let you figure that out don't want to marry the wrong one so dormancy is not a bad thing there is protection in dormancy but three steps to take in a dormant season i i'm gonna move through these because i believe these are important i want to i want you to hear what these are here are the three steps you got to take number one your roots below the ground must be stronger than what people see growing above the ground for four years this bamboo this chinese bamboo tree is doing nothing but growing roots that nobody will ever see because if you think about it if it's growing 36 inches at a time and there's not a good root system you give that thing about five hours you give that thing about one week and there's no way it's gonna stand and so it already has roots as deep if it's going to be a 90-foot tree there's already roots in the ground 90 feet before that thing even comes up out of the ground it's all it's already preparing itself it's already a david in the field watching sheep because god knows what david's gonna have to do to a giant god knows what david's gonna have to do in writing songs and learning how to worship and showing people how to worship and being a worship leader david has a whole lot of stuff to do behind the scenes before he can shoot up out of the ground god help us why we think for why we think that we can i'm going to preach to myself can just graduate from bible school and all of a sudden to step on the scene and do great things and god's saying i've got to grow some roots in you i've got to get something down in the ground so that when you do become something great when you do become a great soul winner it doesn't go right to your head i can't let you falter and fall without roots those same girls same guys that bloom so early they had no roots they couldn't take the test of time they could not survive when the winds came when the storms came because they had nothing under the ground to keep them stable man we think about we think about the man christ jesus how many years did he plant roots before he even even started ministering 30 years i mean for for 30 years he just sunk roots into the ground god ruled in flesh he could have walked right on the scene as a nine-year-old and totally changed the world but he waited until he was 30. he only spent three and a half years ministering and shooting up out of there is like a chinese bamboo man boom shooting about the ground i'm i've come i'm about to establish my my spiritual kingdom right here on earth i've got my followers my disciples i'm about to do some science miracles and wonders but he didn't do that out of the womb he waited 30 years god help us if you're here tonight and you're wondering why don't i ever get used why don't why don't they have me up there doing this or or i want to be a part of kids church doing that come on somebody you've got to allow your roots to go deep enough to where when you are used when god starts moving through you it doesn't just go to your head and you don't just falter and fall god help us to understand got to have roots somebody say roots isaiah 40 31 says they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength all throughout the word of god you have god saying listen you've got you've got to wait you've got to wait and i always thought that that weight meant you you got you got to stop you got to sit down and you know oh lord give me some strength i want to i want to fly like an eagle and i want to run and i'll be that that's not what was being said right here isaiah what was being said right here this was weight was was the word the hebrews used for waiter or he who serves and so simply what he was saying was if you wait if you serve the lord i know that you're in a time right now that it's dormant i know it looks like nothing is going and your ministry is not going where you want it to go but if you will just serve the lord i promise you in due season if you faint not in due season if you'll survey that wage upon the lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint god help us to serve god help us to serve number two we got to use the abilities we have and use the talent that god gave us we got to stop trying to be somebody else stop trying to imitate someone else's giftings stop trying to sing like him or play like i'm a preacher like him listen when i was when i was growing up um lee stone king brother lee stunking he was just coming onto the scene strong we um dad mom we pastored in in upstate new york and brother stone king also was co-pastor in upstate new york and so we we've seen him at a lot of our camps and he would get up and and if you've ever heard him minister i mean he's awesome and he is he is there's no one like him go down clapping i mean just the way he talks and you know i'm saying you know just just the way he ministers it just there's nothing like but it was hilarious because i would see young ministers coming up and they would try to preach like he preached you can you can't do it but they would try and i i remember we had one i'm not gonna name them because you know his name but we had one that would come into our district and even as a young kid as like a nine or ten year old i remember thinking to myself if i close my eyes that's brother stone king up there you know it wasn't just that he sounded like him he was in the whole science miracles and wonders which which was great but but he was i mean he wasn't just sounding like if he was trying to like imitate every part of his ministry and i remember thinking to myself oh my goodness listen god has given so many different abilities to so many different people nobody has to try to copy anybody else's ministry talent abilities we have a j.h osborne when he comes in let's preach him we got the best senior pastor kenneth carpenter he doesn't have to sound like a j.h osborne brother scott graham preacher tonight preached an amazing message i love the way principle we don't need another brother scott grant we got brother we can bring him in to preach every person that gets in this pulpit be yourself every sunday school teacher you don't have to sound like somebody another sunday school teacher or teach like them allow god to work through you and be who you sing listen singers is one of the most man i've and you're going to sound like who you listen to i get that i get that i listen i grew up michael english clay cross um i want to say david feldsph he's probably my age so i can't say david phelps but but all these guys you know what i'm saying i i love and so obviously you're gonna you're gonna take on the your sound but i've heard people get up and sing and i'm like another one like sister mickey mangan she has her own sound and i'll go to camp meetings and i'd hear pete i'd hear women get out there and try to sound like mickey man i'm like you can't do that there's only one right be yourself allow god to minister through you because here is here here's the issue if we're not careful and we're comparing ourselves among ourselves and trying to be somebody else and trying to do it like somebody else is doing it god has already called them to do it like they're doing it and god has called you to do it like he wants you to do it so get in there with everything you are beat listen nothing wrong with wanting to sing like your favorite singer but get in there if you want to be a musician get in there and allow god to work through you and do it the way he wants you to do it some people say well if i just had that kind of talent i tell you what i would i would be a singer too or i'll do this and that and what you don't even understand is some people just take what they have and they work with it and do as much as they can with what they've been given i love the story of sham gar i love to preach about sham guard because because you never who is sham guard he's only in two verses in the bible matter of fact i'm gonna read them judges five and six and he's in judges three and thirty one that's the only two times he's named or referred to in the bible but in those two verses i know so much about this guy it says in the days of shamgar the son of anuth in the days of jael the highways were unoccupied and the travelers walked through byways okay that's kind of the time period he's in now let's see what it says about him now go back into judges 3 31 it says and after him was shamgar the son of aneth which slew this is all we know about him which slew of the philistines 600 men with an ox goad and he also delivered israel yeah cool so so we have one verse that names them that kind of tells them that it was a really bad time when people couldn't even go by the highways they had to go through the byways because there was so many thieves and robbers that they had they had to kind of hide and they had to be in obscurity and then the other verse simply says yeah and this one guy slew 600 men with a farmer's tool and he also delivered the whole nation you know what i'm saying so this guy so so he wasn't given a sword he wasn't given a spear he wasn't given a weapon he took what he was given which was an ox goat simply a stick with a prick it's a prick on the end of it that pricks the ox that's all he had in ox go he had a tool but he took that one tool and he delivered israel from the philistines took one tool somebody here today has been given enough of a voice that you could do something with your voice i don't know what that is now you might look and say well the my voice is not a weapon it's just a tool it's just something i found i found out in the barn out back well take what you found in the barn out back and do something productive with it take it and do whatever you have to do sharpen the end of it do whatever you have to do and defeat the enemy oh my god i think of this one man we only have one verse that really describes what he did but in that one verse it opens my mind to thank god whatever you give me to work with if i can perfect it if i can practice it god you can make it perfect god you can use it for your kingdom and for the ability that i need in order to do something in your kingdom somebody said amen deliver the people and then number three what do you do during the time when nobody knows who you are when you feel like nothing that you do is noticed number three is don't try to force god's will and i love preaching this because i see it happening so often i i see where god i can tell there's a calling on people's life and i see and i too many and maybe outside even outside of this church i go to music conferences and i meet people and i see i see that god has put talent into people and i see that god has definitely put an anointing on people and i kind of got to just watch them and see where they go in life and it never ceases to amaze me that it would appear sometimes that they get they're in a dormant time in their in their music career so they they start looking around to see what everybody else is doing and they feel if they can do what everyone else is doing that somehow it'll get them out of their dormant state the seemingly successful church and this is something that we fight and battle right here at first apostolic because god has given god has given talent to this church we have talent in every aspect oh my goodness our production staff and our musicians and music staff we have we have talent talent talent and if we're not careful we can look to the wrong direction for what we're going to do with that talent if we're not careful you know in a lot of times as you're trying to do the very best you can do there's nothing wrong with looking around and seeing what other people are doing but if we're not careful if you're looking to the wrong leader you start to become what you're following that's why we talked about that's why brother hammond in the last few weeks has been has been honest about if you if you're if you're following the wrong people on social media you become what you're following and so as a church we gotta be so careful because the last thing we want to happen is to lose the anointing of god in our services listen there's there's nothing more refreshing than coming on a wednesday night and feeling what we've felt in this place but all we have to do is get out of the will of god and try to become like some other church and do it some other way and listen i've seen it happen in way too many churches i've seen it happen you've seen it happen to way too many churches you've you've been on facebook and you get on you're like now i thought that church oh that's not what i remember that church looking like that's not how i remember that church acting like and the same thing can happen with us individually if we follow after the wrong leader we become what we don't want to become god help us god help us not to get confused during a dormant state the jewish people i want to kind of come back to this and and i want to come to a quick conclusion but the jewish people celebrate a holiday called purim and we accidentally our junior senior trip we accidentally witnessed this holiday uh brother johnson i i know is brother johnson because he was giving us a tour but the kenny johnson was our bus driver and i know we have i'm sure we have students that are here former students alumni that are here tonight that remember this but he took us through the burros he said i want to take you through a jewish borough here in new york city it was so cool man we come out we come off the highway and come come down into the borough into the high rises and right away we begin to notice something that was very odd because this was probably i don't know spring break time march april sometime and we began to see children dressed up in costumes and i remember i remember the students on the bus were like all like looking out the windows because now all the sudden we felt really odd because we're in this bus already that says you know first apostolic church and we're coming through this borough and and they can see in the bus right because we have like the 25 pastors so they can see inside the bus and we're like looking out at them and they're like dressed i guess we shouldn't have been embarrassed they're the ones in the costumes but they're in the costumes and we're all like looking out like what is going on and then as we drove we began to see them going up to people's doors and of course i knew you know it's on october 31st so i know that there's no trick-or-treating going on you know and but but i see them bringing baskets look like food or something bread or something and they were they were knocking on doors and they were handed to the people they were answering the doors and then the more we looked we saw what looked like bodies hanging by their necks and they had taken like like like sheets and it tied ropes around and they were these bodies were swinging and so of course i got on my phone and quickly googled the date and sure enough it come up purim i'm like what is purim and i started looking down through and what purim is is purim is when the jewish people celebrate the death of haman when he hung on his own gallows and so as i began to look and read down what it was talking about with this holiday i thought well this makes sense they're celebrating that their people were not annihilated that esther stood up and stood up to this horrible man named haman and her and mordecai they saved the kingdom they saved the jewish people from annihilation so as i begin to research into this i was i was researching into the word esther and esther's hebrew name was hadasha it's h-a-d-a-s-s-a-h hedesa in the name hadassah is derived from the hebrew word hadas which means a myrtle tree i thought interesting in the name esther is derived from the hebrew word hester which means hiddenness and so when you put those together you come up with a hidden tree or a dormant tree in esther's whole life and i wish i had time to tell the story of esther but her whole life she is an orphan she doesn't have parents she's raised by her uncle morikayai she she doesn't have anything she's she's pretty much by herself she feels the i'm sure as any orphan would feel the loneliness and feels like like i had a future until i lost my parents and and here i am my my good uncle he's raising me but this is this is all i have in life but a story gets so beautiful when you realize that god took her into a kingdom that was not her own but the bible says for such a time as this that young lady just lived and did what she knew to do and the way she knew to live and the way she was raised by her parents are no longer with her she did everything that her uncle mother ki taught her to do as a young jewish girl and wouldn't you know that she's put into this place where all of a sudden no longer is she a nobody no longer is she a dormant tree but all of a sudden she is the most beautiful woman of the land she is a woman who the king has chosen to be his queen and now she's in a place and she's in a position i i want you to in your minds i want you to see yourself because somebody here today maybe your your childhood wasn't the best childhood and maybe your upbringing wasn't the way you would want to be raised and maybe you're even living today in a state in a place where you would not want to live in but i want you to realize that there's coming a day and there's coming a time when you very well could be put into a position whether it's in your job in your career whether it's in this church this organization i don't know but you could be put into a place where you could save souls because you just lived the way you were taught to live and you just kept on being a good jewish young lady like esther did esther was just she just she wanted to live for god she wanted to do the things of god she wanted to please her uncle she wanted to leave a good name for her family and she just did what she knew to do and wouldn't you know it that god saw that young lady and said i need a willing vessel that's willing to behind the scenes live right because i'm going to take her out of insecurity and i'm going to bring her into a place of power and she's going to save her people from annihilation if you're living in an anonymous time today and listen i i get it i get it i i remember graduating high school and just not knowing being sure where i was going from there i remember graduating from college and just not really knowing i when i graduated from college my my parents were in transition taking a church in memphis and i just didn't feel called to go back home at the time and so i thought you know what am i going to do i'm graduating from bible school where am i going to go i just went my best friend lived in pots camp mississippi and i i thought i'm going to go with him and we're i'll just hang out there until god opened some doors and but you know what i did i was faithful i was at the church working i was doing anything i could do i you need help with the music i'll come i'll help the music you need help digging holes listen i i you're not going to believe this but but in 1997 we were still digging wells in pots camp with shovels who does that brother wilson bishop wilson said patrick need you and chad to come help me dig this whale out i'm like seriously we did it we needed some money we started washing windows did we whatever we had to do i thought you know what whatever i got to do i'm going to do it whatever you want me to use the ministry i'll do it i there's there's there's no job too low for me i'll mow the lawns they have fields uh uh we need i'll do a wedi that's a bad word i'll read it i'll do whatever i got to do but you know what god saw this kid and he slowly began to say you know what i i've got a youth pastor that's open in blue mountain mississippi that needs a youth pastor i got it i got a full-time job there just just through some circumstances that ended not of my fault that ended next thing i know i've got to call somebody saying there's just there's a pastor named kenneth carpenter from from maryville tennessee i'd never heard of kenneth carpenter i've never heard of marvel tennessee i wasn't from here i wasn't from around here i was i was another organization i had never heard of it and once you know and god has brought me to a place where i wouldn't trade my life and where god has taken me for anything in this world but you gotta everybody's gotta start somewhere and you just gotta be patient listen in in some of the worst times of life in the seasons when it's cold when it's dark the sun hasn't come out oh my god i know some of you are living in these seasons i know some of you have lost loved ones recently and you're living in this dark season i promise you just keep on living for god just keep on being faithful to church be faithful to house of god be faithful to prayer be faithful to bible reading and over time just give it some time and god sees the faithfulness when you are all alone when nobody else knows what's going on what you're doing he sees faithfulness and he rewards faithfulness i want you to stand with me and as we conclude this service i i wonder with no music i wonder if we just lift up hands to heaven and we can just say god you know where i'm living lord you know every place lord that i am lord you know every thought that goes through my mind god you know lord you know the dormant sees and i feel like i'm in right now lord you know when the devil tries to talk to me and tries to get me to compare myself lord among myself and others around me lord god i'm just believing lord god i'm going to be faithful to your kingdom come on somebody if you'll just make a declaration right now and say god i will be faithful to your kingdom i won't give up i won't give in i'll be like an esther i'll just keep on keeping on i'll keep on doing the very things lord god that you have taught me though that you put a pastor in my life and i've been led and i've been guided in all things and lord god i'm just gonna do lord god what you've called me to do i'll say yes lord god i'll agree with your will i'll agree with your plan lord whatever you want me to do that's what i want to do oh god and i will be ready lord i'll be ready lord god when you open doors for me lord i'll be ready to walk on through them but until you open those doors lord god i'm going to enjoy the season that i'm in i'm going to enjoy it i'm going to be content right where i am i'm not going to get a spirit of a runaway on me i'm not going to get a spear that says everything's greener on the other side of the fence i'm going to be content right where i am i'm going to live for you lord i'm going to sing in the choir i'm going to sing with everything inside of me oh my god if i'm teaching sunday school i'm going to do the very best i can do teaching sunday school whatever i'm doing god i'm going to do it with everything with all my might everything inside of me lord i'm going to do it and lord however you want to promote me i'll let you promote me i won't promote myself god but however you want to promote me god lord god i'll be ready to do whatever you want me to do and whatever your will is lord in your kingdom come on somebody just love him right now and say that's me lord oh god that's me oh that's me that's me lord i'll be what you call me to be i will be singles with me what you called me to be i say yes lord i agree my desire passionately is to be what you call me to be and that's what i'll be just one more time before we leave i will be what you call me to be i say lord i agree my desire passionately is to be what you called me to be and that's what i'll be come on clap your hands and love them this house god we bless your name o god we thank you lord god for your ways are perfect and they are sure amen and amen