Dharius Daniels - RESET - Part 7

I’m excited about all that God is doing! I’m also excited each week to share God’s word with you and continue in this teaching called «Reset.» I want you to know—I want you to catch this—the quality of your life, listen to me, is largely impacted by the quality of your decisions. Your decisions are the way you partner with God, listen to me, in building the life you’ve been destined to build. I want you to catch this now: your destiny is decided by God, but you participate with God in designing it. I’m going to say that one more time: your destiny is decided by God, the ultimate purpose God intends for you, but it is designed— you help partner with God in designing it. Somebody put «facts» in the chat right now! Yeah, and so one of the ways we partner with God is through our decisions. The quality of my life is largely impacted by the quality of my decisions, come on! The quality of my decisions is largely impacted by—listen to me—the quality of information. You can’t make good decisions with bad information. This is why we teach the Bible, because I believe when it comes to your life, the Bible is the most reliable source of information. The one who created life can tell us how to live it, and so we are using the most reliable source of information available to us, which is the Scriptures, to help us orchestrate resets.

Now, watch this: you’re in one of three spaces. You’re either coming out of a reset, in the middle of a reset, or on your way to a season where you will need a reset. Everything, at some point, will need a reset. If your bae or your boo has been with you and you’ve been with them for any significant period of time, you know that something’s going to hit your life where that relationship will need a reset. Watch this: sometimes that relationship is going to need a reset because of external circumstances, and other times it will need a reset because of internal circumstances. Tim Keller says this: no matter how well you think you know someone, if you’re in a relationship with them long-term, you’re going to hit a season where you wake up and roll over to a stranger because people change, and they can change in ways that you don’t predict, and that we oftentimes don’t expect. So relationships may need a reset, finances may need a reset. Things may be steady and stable; there may have been a season where you were thriving. Maybe the pandemic adversely affected you, but just because— I want you to catch this, please catch this—just because things may be headed in a downward trajectory does not mean God cannot orchestrate an upward turnaround.

So there are times when we need resets, and we’re using the book of Romans to help us do that. On tonight, or whenever you start watching this, I want to talk to you about how to reset your expectations. I want to help you. We’re going to look at the most reliable source of information—that’s the Bible—and we’re going to learn from the book of Romans, chapters 7, 8, and 9, regarding this area. If you’re ready for tonight, I want you to drop some fire in the chat! I’m looking right here, I’m waiting to see.

So here it is: resetting your expectations. Let’s unpack this a little bit more. All right, somebody write this down, type this—whatever note-taking device you utilize: expectation is an expression and an extension of faith. So when I talk about resetting your expectations, I want to frame what I mean by expectation. Expectation is—watch this—an expression or an extension of faith. Come here! If you really believe it, you expect it. Did you hear me? If you heard me, put «heard you» in the chat. No, no! If you really believe it, you will expect it, because expectation is an expression of and an extension of faith. Jurgen Moltmann says this: he says faith and hope—hope is the word the Bible uses for expectation—he says faith and hope, listen to this, are inseparable companions; that the absence of one indicates the absence of another; that wherever there’s a hope problem, there’s a faith problem. And this is why—you better catch this—this is why it’s important to recognize, not just to recognize but to receive what the Apostle Paul said is truth when he calls Satan subtle in the book of Ephesians. He says that we need to be prepared to withstand the wiles, or the methods, of the enemy. Satan is a strategist, and because he’s strategic, one thing he’ll do is try to get to your faith to get to your hope, or he’ll try to get to your hope to get to your faith.

But let’s make some affirmations here. I’m going to spend some time—probably in the fall, I’m going to do a series on Sundays called «I Said So» and I’m going to deal with biblical mouth management. I think sometimes some movements, whether it’s the «name it and claim it» or «blab it and grab it,» can have extremes in one area that can cause us to have knee-jerk reactions and avoid something that’s actually biblical. If we keep it balanced, your mouth matters; the power of life and death…