Latest / Millennial Mustard Seed / S5 123. Carly Tebbs – Real Battle’s, Reflections & Real Revival

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S5 123. Carly Tebbs – Real Battle’s, Reflections & Real Revival · Millennial Mustard Seed

• 0:02
  Hey, brother. So I've been talking to
• 0:04
  Patricia. You sent me her information.
• 0:07
  We've kind of befriended each other.
• 0:08
  Well, not kind of. We've befriended each other.
• 0:10
  We've been talking. And she said something
• 0:13
  interesting to me today that I think would be a good podcast
• 0:17
  topic, whether with me or someone else or just something
• 0:20
  for you to riff on, which is that as she's gotten to know me,
• 0:24
  she said to me today that, hey, you know, when I first heard
• 0:28
  your podcast, I kind of thought, I thought of you as this, like,
• 0:31
  spiritual giant. And I was kind of intimidated to
• 0:33
  talk to you. But the more you share with me,
• 0:36
  the more I realized that we're all just trying to get through.
• 0:40
  Like, we're all just trying to do the best we can.
• 0:42
  And even with people who you might look up to or admire,
• 0:47
  you're still just struggling humans.
• 0:51
  And it got me thinking about how often in Christianity we present
• 0:55
  only our string of victories and we aren't honest about our
• 1:00
  struggles. And if we are honest about our
• 1:02
  struggles, we contextualize them only as past things.
• 1:06
  And now I don't think that it would be super beneficial to
• 1:09
  just have a griping session just constantly.
• 1:12
  Every time a leader or somebody in in the church goes to preach
• 1:15
  and they just start whining about all their life problems, I
• 1:19
  feel like, you know, I remember you asking me, you know, what
• 1:23
  was your process to get here? And I said to you dying, I died.
• 1:27
  I died. 1000 *, I died. And then I died again.
• 1:30
  If you think about the process of death, it's it's really not
• 1:32
  cute, right? Like you lose your bowels, you
• 1:35
  lose all the color in your face, it's ugly.
• 1:37
  And then you begin to stink. Without that process of dying,
• 1:45
  you, you don't ever get anywhere.
• 1:48
  You if Jesus had to die, we have to die.
• 1:51
  So what does that death actually look like?
• 1:53
  And I think sometimes, I don't know, I think it was Elijah
• 1:56
  after the prophets of Baal. And he calls down fire and he
• 1:59
  just, they all get smoked. And then he finds out Jezebel's
• 2:03
  after him and he goes running into the woods like a crying
• 2:05
  little baby. And we look at that and we go,
• 2:08
  what the heck, my dude, What's wrong with you?
• 2:10
  How could you have just done that?
• 2:12
  And now you're this. But that's the reality of the
• 2:14
  situation, though. And like all the awesome things
• 2:17
  I've shared that the encounters with God, the way he's used me,
• 2:21
  etcetera, etcetera, they only come because God showed me the
• 2:26
  depravity of my heart this fast. That Prince that I have been on,
• 2:31
  oh sweet, blessed savior, I it's been dying day after day after
• 2:37
  day. God being like, hey, look at how
• 2:38
  you're a narcissist, Carly. Hey, look at how you idolize
• 2:42
  yourself over me. Hey, look at this cesspool of
• 2:45
  hate you actually have for your marriage.
• 2:47
  Hey, this, this the next thing. The next thing.
• 2:51
  The next thing. And it's been extraordinarily
• 2:54
  difficult and humbling, and it's been death.
• 2:59
  It is I've I've been dying. I'm not sleeping, I'm not
• 3:03
  eating. And I'm constantly being shown
• 3:06
  what a Wretch I am. But that's the reality of it.
• 3:11
  It's not cute. It's not just me going in my
• 3:13
  prayer closet very tidily, reading the word out loud, and
• 3:18
  all the cosmos just coming back into order.
• 3:21
  No, it's not that at all. People think that the zenith of
• 3:28
  spiritual power is the mountaintop with God, but it's
• 3:34
  not. The zenith of power is the
• 3:36
  valley of the shadow of death. It's the wilderness where Satan
• 3:40
  comes to tempt you. That's where it happens.
• 3:45
  That's where things change. And that's when more of him
• 3:49
  abides in more of you, right? That's when the darkness that
• 3:54
  we're been too afraid to look at gets pushed out and he takes up
• 3:58
  residence. And I just think that to present
• 4:03
  our Christian walks as the succession of victories is
• 4:06
  really disengenuine. It's very disingenuine, but
• 4:10
  nobody wants to talk about how ugly they are because obviously
• 4:15
  right. And I just thought to myself,
• 4:18
  man, I don't ever want to be the kind of influence or leader or
• 4:23
  whatever over other people that only presents themselves as so,
• 4:30
  so tight with the Lord and nothing ever goes wrong.
• 4:34
  Because honestly, like as much as I want to be surrounded by
• 4:36
  people who are trustworthy, obviously, right?
• 4:41
  I don't. I don't ever want to be
• 4:42
  surrounded with by people who are loyal to me, not me.
• 4:46
  If we're doing something together, it's because God said
• 4:49
  for you to come alongside and do something with me, you
• 4:51
  understand? Like Prince is often asked by
• 4:54
  the pastor in the church that we serve in.
• 4:56
  What does he want to do? How does he want to serve?
• 4:59
  To give him to give the pastor a scope of like what?
• 5:02
  Why we're here and what we are looking to do.
• 5:04
  And Prince is like, I'm here as long as the Lord has me here and
• 5:09
  I'm I'm here to serve in the way that he tells me to serve.
• 5:12
  I'm not here because of you. I'm here because this is where
• 5:16
  he told me to be. And I'm, you know, we're not
• 5:18
  even there because of the vision.
• 5:20
  We're not there because of the vision to take the city and see
• 5:24
  people cross the line of faith. We're there because God said be
• 5:27
  there. And whatever that looks like
• 5:28
  from day-to-day is what that looks like from day-to-day.
• 5:32
  And to be honest with you, I think that the church has really
• 5:35
  become such a cult of personality that we think we
• 5:38
  need to find people who are loyal to the vision.
• 5:40
  And even if God did give us that vision, it doesn't mean that
• 5:45
  that the people who are loyal to the vision are actually obeying
• 5:48
  God. They just might be gung ho to
• 5:50
  see something change. I was telling God this morning
• 5:53
  in prayer. Lord, I want like bring revival,
• 5:57
  but bring it in the bus stop. Bring it in the target.
• 6:01
  Bring it in the office. Bring it in the house where
• 6:04
  nobody sees. Bring it in somebody's shower
• 6:07
  while they're taking a shower. Bring it in the schools.
• 6:13
  Take it out of the four walls of church where somebody can stand
• 6:16
  up and say, I was pastor when this happened.
• 6:19
  I fasted and I prayed and God answered.
• 6:24
  Because it's really just a very passive way of crowning
• 6:26
  ourselves, let's be honest, right?
• 6:29
  But if revival breaks out in the bus stops all over the country,
• 6:32
  who's gonna take? Who's gonna take credit for
• 6:34
  that? Nobody.
• 6:39
  Anyway, I'm on a bit of a tirade and this is a long message, but
• 6:43
  I think it's worth talking about, you know, Because
• 6:48
  otherwise what ends up happening is people end up looking to
• 6:50
  other people as their source of answers and solutions.
• 6:52
  And there is no formula. There is no three steps to a
• 6:56
  better marriage. You have to get in your death
• 6:59
  with Christ and deal with it. And that's going to look
• 7:02
  different for everybody. Everybody.
• 7:05
  That's not going to be a formula.
• 7:07
  It cannot be a formula because it's only an obedience that we
• 7:11
  that we see breakthrough obedience to God in the moments
• 7:16
  of our lives. That's it.
• 7:17
  Nobody can can make a three-step guide to that.
• 7:21
  Who could do that? How?
• 7:23
  How you need to be humbled by the Lord is going to be looking
• 7:26
  completely different than me. Anyway, thank you brother.
• 7:30
  I got a little heated with this one because it just hit me so
• 7:35
  hard. It hit me really hard this
• 7:37
  morning. Anyway, I hope you have a
• 7:39
  beautiful, wonderful, awesome, amazing day.
• 7:43
  OK. Bye.