Dharius Daniels - The 5 Areas God is Stretching You

It is a diet of spiritual sugar, filled with religious rhetoric and church colloquialisms that have no theological grounding and make no logical sense. Turn around three times, do three cartwheels, scream, and sow a triple, triple, quadruple breakthrough seed, and now everything in your house is going to be set free. I have to leave my brain in the car to hear that we don’t have calves literally, but we have calves metaphorically. These iterations that God has to expose and then stretch us out of. So, here are just a few examples. Number one is a narration called crisis Christianity. This is when our spiritual commitment is crisis contingent. Did you hear what I just said? It’s when we are only spiritually committed when we’re in crisis. Did you hear what I just said? It is when things have to go really bad for us to get spiritually serious. And watch this now: I’m not hating on this type of Christianity, because most of us came to Christ because of crisis. He is a God that will meet you in the crisis. He met Bartimaeus in a crisis; he met the woman with the issue of blood in a crisis; he met the woman at the well in John 4 in a crisis; the man in John 5 at the pool of Bethesda in a crisis; the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter needed an exorcism in a crisis. He is a crisis manager, but it shouldn’t take crisis to keep us committed. See, crisis Christianity means you’ve learned to trust God, but it also means God can’t trust you. He says you want me to throw you into this season of blessing, but I can’t trust how you’re going to behave when things go well. I can only trust your behavior when you’re in crisis. But am I talking to anybody who’s honest enough to admit, «Lord, I don’t want you to have to keep me in crisis to keep me committed. I want to be just as committed when the windows of Heaven are open over my life. I want to be just as committed when you’re doing what my eyes haven’t seen and my ears haven’t heard.» Pull me out of crisis Christianity. And maybe, maybe not that, maybe not that, maybe not that. The next one is consumeristic Christianity. This is when people incorrectly assume that their spiritual satisfaction comes only from their consumption and not their contribution. This version of the faith assumes we can have spiritual satisfaction without communal responsibility, when the truth of the matter is you’ll never get spiritually full just receiving. See, the way the kingdom works is it works in reverse. In the Kingdom, you don’t go up by going up. In the Kingdom, you’ve got to go down to go up: humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt you, come on, in due season. In the Kingdom, you don’t get to get; in the Kingdom, you give to get. So, you will never be spiritually satisfied just consuming. God has taken your fulfillment and hidden it in your contribution; and so, it is only when you start contributing and utilizing that which God has placed inside of you that you will actually experience the fulfillment that you are looking for. However, if we simply treat God as a vendor of religious services who is no different than my accountant, then you end up robbed of the highest form of compensation, which is fulfillment. And God’s like, «I want you to understand contribution because it keeps you from being a person of exploitation.» He says because you’re not going to treat them better than you treat me. If all you do is consume and do not contribute in your relationship with me, then you’re going to get in relationships with others and do the same thing to them. And they are not God, so they will not handle your consumption the way I do. I’m God, so I have an endless supply, and I can’t be bankrupt. But because they’re not God, if you keep staying in a relationship with them and all you’re doing is making withdrawals and you’re not making deposits, at some point that relationship is going to go bankrupt. Y’all ready to go? Here’s another one. Number three: carnal Christianity. This is the version of the faith that accepts Jesus as Lord cognitively but refuses to submit to his ways practically. It is, come on, come on, what Dallas Willard calls vampire Christianity. It’s the version of the faith that wants Jesus’ blood but nothing else. I want you to forgive me on the back end, but don’t tell me what to do on the front. I want you to be my savior, but don’t be my shepherd. However, this version of Christianity robs you of the benefits of shepherd leadership, because if you’ll let Him be your shepherd, you shall not want. I have to go; the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. If you let Him be your shepherd, He’ll lead you to green pastures. If you let Him be your shepherd, He’ll lead you to still waters. If you let Him be your shepherd, He’ll restore your soul. If you let Him be the shepherd, you can say, «Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.» Let’s go; it’s 2:05; we’re out of here. Can I give you another one? Cognitively challenged Christianity. This is a version of the faith that is characterized by a zeal that is absent of knowledge. It is charismania. Y’all aren’t talking to me. I said it is Mark 12:30, which says, «Love the Lord your God with all your heart.»