God is good, everyone, and I’m so grateful to be here. I want to take a moment here — we had our meeting we do twice a year. It’s called Gatekeepers, and we were there with a small group, about fourteen people, and then Pastor Conia and I. We had such a blessed time. Three days of just seeking the Lord, getting into His Word, and seeking God about what the next steps are and what this quarter holds and how we prepare for what’s coming in 2027. Everyone told me they got a different way of thinking. They saw things differently. Their mindset changed. Transformation happened within them. And another cool thing: we had a time of prayer, and four people were healed that day. They came up and got prayed for and got set free from what was attacking them.
I was listening to Brother Bill Johnson yesterday, and one of the things he shared is that when we worship the Lord and God’s presence comes, the gates of heaven are open. We’re experiencing heaven here on earth, and here on earth we’re sharing with heaven. Then he said, when you pray over people and they’re healed, the gates of heaven have opened. What we don’t realize is there’s a gate between heaven and earth. As we enter into God’s presence and seek Him in worship and prayer and in the Word, heaven’s gates open. The verse we pray a lot is, Father God, I pray that Your kingdom come and Your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Well, guess what? That’s what we did this last week at Gatekeepers. And that’s what we’re doing this morning. The gates of heaven open, and heaven is coming on earth, and His will is being done here as it is in heaven. So we get to participate in and experience a part of all that God has for us.
Have you ever been in a time of worship, and the peace of God just rests upon you, and nothing else matters? The chaos of life is out there, but you’re in that place of peace. One of our friends, Kevin Williams — he’s ministered here before; he’s off ministering this weekend over in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge — Kevin said he had been seeking the Lord, and he got a dream. There was this lake or ocean, and it was just chaos. The wind was blowing, the water was churning. But there he was, sitting in a boat in the middle of all that, and around him it was perfect peace. And the Lord spoke to him and said, “Kevin, I’ve got you. No matter what’s going on in your life, no matter how chaotic it is, I’m right there with you, with peace that passes understanding.” That’s how much God loves us.
And it’s time for us to love Him this morning and worship Him with our tithes and our offerings. I want to share a little offering devotional with you called, “The God of Increase.” God is not just a God of addition. He is the God of increase. From the very beginning, He blessed man and said they would increase. Genesis 1:28, from the Amplified Classic: “And God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.’” That word “multiply” means increase, and the word “fruitful” means to be productive, to produce something. So it could have been translated: be productive and increase, and fill the earth. Increase is the natural outflow of God’s blessing upon a life, and it is in His nature to multiply what we commit into His hands. This morning, as we’re giving our tithes and offerings, we are committing this seed into His hands, and He will increase it and multiply it. The power of our giving is not in the amount; it’s in God’s ability to multiply it. We give out of what God’s blessed us with and what He directs us to give, and then He takes it and increases it. John 15:5 in the Passion Translation: “I am the sprouting vine, and you are my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you. And when you live separated from me, you are powerless.” The power for true increase and multiplication is within us in Christ. He is the vine; we are the branches. Giving and planting seed originates in the heart and streams outwardly from within you. Then God brings the increase. Second Corinthians 9:10: “Now may He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you’ve sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.” That’s what God promises us. He will take our seed sown and multiply it and increase the fruits of our righteousness. And in the process, people will glorify Him and give praise to Him. What an honor we have to participate and partner with God and His kingdom as we sow here in the earth, so that His message can go forth and touch the world.
There are several ways you can give today. You can go to our website, EmergeInternationalChurch.org, and there’s a Give button in the top right-hand corner. If you’re here live with us, we have an offering basket up here for checks or cash, or there’s a QR code in the corner of your bulletin if you desire to give digitally. We thank you for sowing into Emerge International Church and partnering with us to see God’s kingdom come here on the earth and His will be done. Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Father, we thank You for the opportunity we have to sow into Your kingdom. We bring our tithes and our offerings before You today, and we give them with a grateful heart. We come rejoicing in the opportunity to sow. And so, Father, as everyone sows today, we pray and believe for a hundredfold return, a big harvest. Thank You for meeting every need and supplying all that everyone needs, Father. We give You praise and glory for it, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
A couple of weeks ago, we started looking into who we’re created to be, and today we continue with that. This is Created To Be, Part 2, even though this would officially be week three — last week we talked about transition. Our key scripture is Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Let me say this again: you, all of you listening today, you are a child of God. You were created to walk with God, representing Him and His kingdom here on the earth. God designed you with a purpose to be who He created you to be. He has a plan for you. He has a future for you. Don’t let the world system, people, or the enemy tell you, well, I’m just here, this is all I am and all I’ll ever be, I don’t really have a purpose. No — God has more for you. We saw in Ephesians 1:4-5 that before time began, in His love, He had already thought of us, chose us for Himself, planned for us as His children with intentional design. Before you ever came into this earth, God had already thought of you, thought of a plan for you, a design for you, and He loved you. He knew you were coming. He loves all of us that way. God has already placed within you and made available to you what is necessary for you to fulfill His purposes for your life. You have been created and designed by God to fulfill His purpose, His dream for your life. God’s purpose for my life is to share this with you and help you know and understand who you were created to be, so you can go forth and be all He’s created you to be.
Christ, our Lord and Savior, is our complete source of everything required for spiritual growth, salvation, and daily living. That word “Christ” in the Greek means the Anointed One — the anointing, the power of the anointing. So we could say: the power of the anointing on Jesus is our complete source of everything required for spiritual growth, salvation, and daily living, because God has transferred that same anointing, that power that’s on Jesus, onto us. God has already placed within you what is necessary for you to grow into all He has called you to be. You have a God-given identity. You are not an accident trying to find significance. You are a creation of God, designed with significance. Your purpose does not begin with what you achieve; it begins with who God created you to be. You have God’s potential within you. God does not merely call people to assignments without also equipping them for those assignments. There is within you gifts you have not discovered yet, abilities you have not developed, courage you have not exercised, and wisdom you have not yet acquired. By His purposeful design and divine power, the potential and provision for all of this resides within you in seed form. And we talked about last time — the power of a seed. Pastor Mark Batterson says: your potential is God’s gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to God. As we closed out last time: are you ready to maximize all God has put within you for His glory? Are you willing to get up every day and say, God, I surrender all to You. I want to maximize all that You’ve put within me for Your glory today, in everything I do, everything I say, with everyone I come into contact with today. We could just go home right now.
So today we will continue to look into all God created us with, so we can represent Him and His kingdom here on the earth. Saying that God has put within us everything we need to be all He created us to be speaks to the image of God within us. Genesis 1:27, the Amplified Classic: “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.” You’re not God, but you are God-like. This means you, His child, were created with the capacity for creativity that reflects your Father God. You have within you the ability to create, to reason, to love, to cultivate, to lead, to steward, to communicate, to make meaningful choices. The power of choice is one of the greatest gifts God’s given us, and we make choices every day without even thinking about it. You are not God, but you were created to reflect Him, to share His heart, His love, His insight. He has invited us to partner with Him in bringing heaven to earth. That was Adam and Eve’s assignment: bring heaven to earth, recreate heaven here in the earth. God’s creative intention is embedded in your design. Even in a fallen world, we still have the opportunity to open those gates and bring heaven to earth every day.
The fact that God has placed everything within you that you need to be all He created you to be also speaks to spiritual resources. For the believer, God has not left you empty or unequipped. When you came into relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, you got it all. First Corinthians 2:12: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” He’s not making you work for it or earn it or purchase it. He says, here — all I have is yours. A part of the Holy Spirit living within us is to give us insight, understanding, wisdom, and revelation. He reveals to us what God has given us. Second Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” A mind that makes wise and right choices. Power — that’s inherent power. Power for performing miracles. You have power within you right now for miracles. Moral power and excellence of soul. Power and influence which belongs to wealth and riches. Power and resources arising from numbers. Power consisting in or resting upon armies, forces, or hosts. That is what is within you by the power of the Holy Spirit. You have love, a spirit of love within you — affection, goodwill, benevolence, brotherly love, expressed by choice, not just by emotion. The God kind of love: agape. And you have been given a sound mind. It means discipline. You may not feel like you’re real disciplined, but God has given you the capacity to be disciplined. It’s the power of self-control. I use it every day — I only get about one ounce of dark chocolate every morning instead of ten or twelve ounces. Self-control and moderation. There’s a lot that is good and we can have, but we should do it in moderation. Too much chocolate cake will not serve you well.
Let me share with you what God has made available to you. His Spirit — His Spirit has come and dwells within you. His Word — His Word is life and empowers you every day; as you stay in His Word, you gain life and strength from it. His wisdom is yours. His grace, His strength, His gifts, His power, His love, His ability to endure. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me — not in my own strength, but through Christ, through the anointing and power of Christ. So the statement, you have everything within you that you need to be all He created you to be — I’m not just saying that to motivate you. It’s a truth. It’s a deeply spiritual truth. God has not called you to become something while withholding from you the resources necessary for the journey. He has empowered you.
And having all within you that you need speaks to development. We live in a drive-through world, and now things just show up on our front porch. Pastor Conia shared with me a while back, she goes, “You know, this sowing seed thing works. I sow seed into Amazon and packages just appear on our front porch.” And I laughed and said, yeah. We live in a world where we want it now. I remember when my son was about eight or nine years old. He looked at me one day and said, “Dad, why couldn’t I have just been born knowing everything I need to know, instead of having to go to school and do all this other stuff?” I laughed and said, that would have been great, but that’s not the way God made us. We need to grow into who we are. A seed contains a tree, but the tree still requires time, cultivation, water, sunlight, pruning, and growth. In the same manner, you possess God-given potential in you, while you still need training, discipline, wisdom, experience, correction, community, obedience, and perseverance. Philippians 1:6, NLT: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” The promise is not that you are already finished. The promise is that God is still working in what He has begun within you. Once we transition from our time here on the earth, we will step into our eternal purpose, and He will continue to work in us so that we walk in the fullness of all He has for us throughout eternity. You’re always going to be learning and growing. Always. We are made in the image of God, and God is new every morning. Second Corinthians 4:17-18: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” God uses our present earthly service to build an unseen eternal reality for us.
Knowing that He has placed within us everything we need to be all He created us to be challenges the mindset the enemy wants to bring — a mindset of deficiency. Many people live from the belief, I don’t have what it takes. That one statement is such a lie of the enemy. When I say that God has placed within you everything you need to be all He created you to be, it confronts that mindset of deficiency that says, this is all I am, I don’t have what it takes. We don’t deny limitations where they are, but we redirect our confidence toward God’s provision. Instead of asking only, what am I missing, we can begin asking, what has God already placed within me that I have not yet recognized, developed, or released? You have things within you right now that you know you could do, things you could say, things you could create and be. But that sense of fear and doubt about what others think holds you back, and that is just the enemy robbing you of what God has for you. To think like this is a profound shift. It moves you from deficiency thinking to stewardship thinking. What do I have within me that I can steward for the kingdom of God? You are no longer searching for something outside yourself to make you significant. You are learning to steward what God has already placed within you and entrusted you with. Matthew 25:23: “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.’” And Peter addresses it in 1 Peter 4:10: “Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve others as good stewards of the very grace of God.” Whatever it is, you may not think it’s much, but it touches people.
I remember growing up, there was a restaurant my dad took our family to, and my brothers and I loved it. They had a special recipe for gravy. They became famous in the area for that recipe, and they never let anybody know what it was. But there was a grandmother who would come in every morning and fix the gravy. It was her recipe, and she shared it with the world. She loved doing it; she was so happy. People would come to that restaurant and talk and fellowship and connect. I saw Bible studies in that restaurant, families, laughter, people praying with someone — because someone decided to use her gift to help others and make a positive impact. And you say, well, gravy? Oh, yeah. I never had gravy like that. My brother has tried for decades to figure out the recipe, and he’ll get close, but he can’t get there. I tell him, it was her love in there. You just can’t put that in there like she did.
Which brings us to this question: who do you need in your life to help you be all God created you to be? We all need people around us. God wired us for connection, for relationship with one another. You should never be in a place where the enemy’s convinced you, hey, I have everything I need in me, so I don’t need others and I don’t need God. That’s not true. If God wasn’t in you to activate it and show you the way to develop it and maximize it, you might get good at something, but that’s all you would ever do and ever be. Here’s what you should be saying: God has placed within me what I need, and I must remain connected to Him to bring it into fulfillment. Again, John 15:5, from the Amplified: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much abundant fruit. However, apart from Me, cut off from vital union with Me, you can do nothing.” The branch cannot produce the fruit without the vine. Are you connected? The power is not independent. The power is not self-sufficiency. The power is God’s life working through you, working through what He has placed within you. You also need the body of Christ — your mentors, relationships, instruction, community, family. Hebrews 10:24-25 in the Amplified: “And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up, stimulate, and incite to love and helpful deeds and noble activities, not forsaking or neglecting to assemble together as believers, as the habit of some people, but admonishing, warning, urging, and encouraging one another, and all the more faithfully as you see the day approaching.” We’re supposed to be here supporting one another, admonishing, urging, and encouraging one another. That’s a part of what we do at our Gatekeeper events with the people who are a part of that. Colossians 3:16 in the Amplified: “Let the word spoken by Christ, the Messiah, have its home in your hearts and minds and dwell in you in all its richness, as you teach and admonish and train one another in all insight and intelligence and wisdom and spiritual things, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to God with His grace in your hearts.” What God placed within you may require others to help draw it out of you. And I thank God for the people He’s put in my life from the time I was a child who helped draw out of me what He placed within me — my family, mentors, teachers, pastors. The list goes on and on. Conia and I have a team of people we meet with a couple times a month to hold us accountable, to keep us on the path and not get distracted.
Then the thing we need to think about is this: divine design meets personal responsibility. God has created you with purpose, but you must discover what He has placed within you, develop what He has entrusted to you, discipline what must be strengthened, deliver what He has called you to release, and deploy your gifts for His glory. That’s what we’re all about here at Emerge International Church — helping you do that so you’re empowered to go forth. What God has placed in you is a gift. What you do with it is stewardship. How are you going to take that gift and steward it? You’ve heard the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30. The master gave each servant something according to his ability. The issue was not whether they had received something. The issue was what they did with what they had received. The servant who buried his talent failed to recognize the responsibility attached to the gift. Here’s the lesson: God does not expect you to produce from what He has not given you, but He does expect you to steward what He has placed within you.
You have everything within you that you need to be all God created you to be. This means God has intentionally designed, equipped, and resourced you with the potential, the gifts, the grace, and capacity necessary to fulfill His purpose through you. Your responsibility is not to become someone God never created you to be, but to discover, develop, and faithfully release what He has already placed within you. Or more simply: you are not empty. You are entrusted. Perhaps the deepest expression of this thought is: God did not create you without purpose, nor did He call you without provision. What He placed within you is the beginning of what He intends to accomplish through you eternally. Jeremiah 29:11 is where we started; let’s end there, from the NIV: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God desires, His heart is, to see you prosper, to see you walk in the plans He has for you, to fill you with hope, and for you to see the future He has designed for you. Father, I pray that as we go forth, Your Holy Spirit would stir within us this word, and that we would see that You have given us everything we need to be all that You created us to be. It doesn’t matter what the devil says. It doesn’t matter what the world system says. It doesn’t matter what people around us say. We know, Lord, that You’ve given us everything we need. So, Father, I thank You for bringing wisdom, insight, and revelation to this word that’s been sown today into the hearts and lives of everyone here. And I pray, Father God, that they become all You’ve created them to be, and that they represent You and Your kingdom well as they go forth. And we thank You for it, Father, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Pastor Conia is coming right now with a closing thought and a prayer. God bless you. Have a great week.
We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day, and I think we get some things that we know how to do, and we do them okay, and we think, okay, if I could just do that better, or if I could just do more of that, I could make more things happen. And we get in there and we start toiling, and we don’t ask God His opinion on what we should do with our twenty-four hours in that day. We don’t go to the multiplier before we start spending, and we spend ourselves out, and we don’t have anything left. And God’s like, I could have multiplied that for you if you’d have just given it to Me. So when you start your day, give it to God first. Tell Him, I’ve got these twenty-four hours. I have these resources. Lord, how would You like me to use these today? And I am living proof that He will multiply it back to you if you ask. Father, thank You for this day. Thank You, Lord, that everything we give to You, You multiply back to us. Thank You, Lord, that when we sow great seed into things that You have ordained and You have anointed, Lord, that it multiplies here in the earth and good things start to expand. Thank You for Your expansion plans, Lord, and thank You for including us in them. In Jesus’ name, amen. Y’all have a great week.
