Sermon Central
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The Circle Cycle
Contributed by Steve Ely on Oct 22, 2013 (message contributor)
Summary: We continue to see the same spiritual scenery. We continue to fall into the same traps and trip over the same obstacles. We find ourselves rounded out. In a cycle of circling. Why? And more importantly how do we line out?
The Circle Cycle
I had witnessed it then in the lives of countless young people as I crisscrossed the nation and now after 6 years of working with our incredible congregation that God has and continues to gather is that so many of us, even after sitting in powerful worship services, hearing powerful preaching, pursuing personal times with God, and even longing for life transformation, continue to circle and circle and come back to the same issues of bondage, and brokenness year after year and often decade after decade. We seem to break free for seasons and then the cycle repeats and we find ourselves seeing the same scenery, the same history, the same shortcomings and issues circle around again! My greatest desire is for us to break free from the cycle of circling.
So by visiting the account of the first circlers (the Israelites) we can learn how to break free. See it isn't enough for me to yearly talk to you about the fact that you were born for freedom and destined for freedom if I fail to equip you to maintain the freedom you obtain in here on the weekend! How many of you know obtaining is easier than maintaining? If you don't know that, then you have never owned a car or a house. If you don't know that, then you have never dated anyone for more than a month or been married more than 2 months. Obtaining freedom is the easy part. Maintaining freedom is much more difficult. And the simple truth is that if you can't maintain, then you haven't really obtained.
Text: Exodus 6:6-9
Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the Lord. And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.
Exodus 6:9 But when Moses delivered this message to the Israelites, they didn’t even hear him—they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions.
I can tell you are born to be free but many of you are so discouraged, so disillusioned, so beat up in spirit by the slave conditions that you have been living in and enduring for so long that you hear the promises of freedom and victory but you can't even believe it is for you!
You can literally sit next to people in the same row who testify to healing, deliverance, and miracles and acknowledge that something has happened for them but never believe the same can be true for you!
The Israelites were not in bondage to the Egyptians. They were slaves in their mind.
I think you have that wrong pastor they were in bondage to the Egyptians. The Egyptians were in fact their taskmasters however, I think I can prove to you that they were in bondage not because of taskmasters but due to their thinking. How? God intervenes and delivers them! Yet, instead of living and operating in that freedom and possessing all that was promised to them these freed folks circle in the wilderness for 40 years. They were bound because of their slave mentality. They were armed for battle, they were dressed for battle, they were mobilized for a takeover and instead because they were slaves in how they thought they acted like slaves and circled.
If you don't change how you think you will experience freedom on Sunday and live in bondage on Monday! Freedom comes not from a changed environment (that is geography)! He sets us free when we get a new revelation or perspective about our environment. If in your mind freedom is dependent on you seeing something change in your environment then you will remain bound. It isn't until you realize that you can be free in any environment if your mind changes about that environment that you will experience freedom. That is why Paul could be chained between armed guards and declare "I am free!"
Listen . . . just because you had a great encounter with God today or in some service last month doesn't mean your environment is going to change! No . . . your environment can not determine or dictate your freedom!
