Can You See?
Presented by Minister Paul Washington
On Thursday we spoke about finding an accountability partner, and the importances of finding someone who can hold you to a specific standard in the kingdom of heaven. This is done by someone who asks you questions, hard questions. Questions concerning areas of your life. The purpose in this is to help you understand moving forward and how to handle situations in the moment. All of us will come across circumstances while walking out our sanctification that will be hard and can cause us to stumble. This person who holds us accountable is there to initiate a healthy spiritual relationship, a healthy spiritual relationship with someone.
And so when we think about an accountability partner we can also look at it as someone who is there to protect us, or to guard us from certain aspects of life that the mave experienced or they have foreknowledge of or insight in things that they may know.
There are advantages and disadvantages to having someone as an accountability partner. One of the advantages is you are able to see things from a different perspective. No two people are going to see the same two things alike at all times.
You may see similarities, but no two people are going to see the same things.
However, one disadvantage is when we choose someone untrustworthy, and this is where having accountability partners can be tricky. We have to be able to choose someone or allow, let’s put it like this, allow God to show us someone with certain characteristics that shows us that they can be trusted with telling us not only the truth in love, not only the truth in love, but also holding on to who we are, not in secret, but in trust.
And so there are advantages and disadvantages. Advantages is if you find someone, when God places someone in your sphere of influence or places you in someone’s sphere influence that can be trusted, then you can trust the very words that are coming from them. We should test what they are saying to us.
But there is so much importance in having someone whom we can balance these things off of. It helps us to grow.
Accountability is hard, it is pressing, it can feel as if you are being squeezed in a wine press. You might find yourself asking your accountability partner, “why are you doing this to me?” A well-rounded church and a good accountability partner will put you in a situation where you feel uncomfortable. But this leads to our passages today what were to happen if you placed yourself into an environment where you didnt have this accountability partner. An environment where people want nothing more than for you to stop pressing. To stop seeking out the kingdom to not recieve your healing, to not recieve your blessing or comfort from the lord. With that lets read from Matthew.
29 As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. 30 Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
31 The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
32 Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
33 “Lord,” they answered, “we want our sight.”
34 Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.
I want to draw your attention to something at the beginning of this passage. These two men just went through an amazing change. They were blind yet now they could see. They weren’t afraid to step or stumble through the crowd to receive their healing. How many of you still believe that God can still change your life in an amazing way? At any moment! At Any Age! At any Stage! It can happen at a time when you convinced yourself it was over. Maybe you are going through. Maybe life just keeps beating on you and beating on you as it has been doing to my family. Maybe you just feel like stopping. Even as I write this sermon I want to stop, but I cant. This change can come from any direction and you will never see it coming because you are walking in your blindness. Maybe you need to stumble through the crowd and shout. Maybe we are in this position of hardship because we found ourselves without our accountability partner, or without our church to lift us up. We found ourselves much like the blind men being told by the overwhelming crowd to stop. Because we were labeled as hopeless or not good enough or called by the sin from our past lives.
You begin to say I want my healing, they say stop. I want to draw closer to the lord they say stop. Every direction we try to take the world says stop.
Depression and anxiety and states that we get stuck in situations and circumstances that seem insurmountable. Relational profiles that never seem to change though everyone else seems to change theirs monthly. Habits that seem unbreakable and patterns of thought that seem to be embedded into the very way that you are.
Discipleship is always about redefinition. He was coming to redefine history as we knew it. It’s a significant moment in Jesus’s life, and yet everything in the passage screams of limitation. For although Jesus is fully God and able to do whatever he wants, he doesn’t have much time left to walk the earth as a man.
He’s one week away from hanging on a cross, just a little bit over a week away from rising from the dead. He’s headed to Jerusalem. He’s headed to Jerusalem to face the cheers of the crowd when he arrives riding on a donkey as they spread their palm branches on the road, saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, which means save now.
Yet days later, many of the same crowds that shouted Hosanna will be shouting, crucify him. Don’t ever commit your view of yourself to a crowd if they like you, wonderful.
If they don’t like you and God still loves you, you’ll still have something to eat and somewhere to live in his presence.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.Brothers and sisters we have to keep pressing forward always. Especially when we find ourselves in these situations where we are being told to stop.
Your asking me why?! Why do I have to keep going why do I have to keep pressing cant I just stop for a little while we are tired we’ve only been iving off just manna we want more and more because we cant see what God is doing and we are losing hope. But is ay to you brethren do no lose hope because change is coming at any moment we just have to keep pressing forward even if it is blindly. Walk just walk you don’t have to see to take another step. Fall forward I promise your other foot is going to catch you. It is like when you were just learning to walk. Stumble Forward and shout. Shout Jesus father God I need you for when I am weak you are strong and it is by your cloth that I am healed. It is by the faith and hope that I have in you that all of this insurmountable challenges and blindness fade away. Because what is a wall to a way-maker what is a chain to a chain breaker. Because reading the passage it shows us that Christ can help you go the right way even if the whole crowd goes the wrong way. But I’m getting ahead of myself because I want to talk about the two men who were blind. And notice it says two things happened to them because they shouted.
Everybody Shout… stop
And when they shouted, he called them
Everybody Shout… stop
And when he called them, he touched them.
Everybody Shout… stop
And when he touched them, he healed them.
And when he healed them, this one I thought was the best part of the text. In verse 34, it said, they received their sight and followed him.
Watch what happened. This is no longer about the blind men this is no longer about two men who were living in iniquity and begging on the side of the road. This is about a change a great and miraculous change. BECAUSE THEY ARE HEALED!!! I am a living testimony of this.
I was blind but now I am healed like them I am now bold. I am shouting I am walking in this state of forgiveness and I have found my accountability partners and my church and all of a sudden…… the crowd is quiet. You notice how in this passage they received the healing because they pressed and now the crowd is simply quiet. We don’t hear from them again.
17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, was blind, was blind. Somebody shout was blind.
The Bible says that we walk by faith, not by sight. And maybe if they had seen how big the crowd was around Jesus, they wouldn’t have had the faith to say anything about their own condition. For all of you who think that we shouldn’t preach about personal growth from the pulpit when Jesus asked the men, what do you want? They didn’t pray about environmental pollution or carbon footprint or world hunger.
They asked for something that they needed, and Jesus did not turn them away as selfish, but he enabled them to experience what their previous tradition had indicated was not possible. There are some of you here, and there is a whole crowd telling you, just keep it down. Don’t even bother.
Don’t even worry about it. But the interesting thing is not all crowds are outside. Some of the crowds that tell us to keep it down are the crowds you carry inside from the voices of fear that you’ve accumulated in your life.
I mean, you don’t even really understand sometimes how the trauma of what you went through became your template for where you think God can take you. And here’s the problem that I have when people say, I’m finding myself. If I’m finding myself, it means I’m lost.
Because while you want to hear God’s voice, there’s another voice telling you, you really need to stop going to church. It’s not changing your life anyway. Why do you keep serving God? Why do you keep trying to be a person of integrity? Don’t you notice that the nice guys finish last anyway? Why are you trying to be pure? Didn’t you notice that all your friends who have no sexual morals are getting the girls, and you’re not? Why are you even trying to reclaim this part of your life, when every time you try, it only gets harder? Why are you even going back to rehab right now? Why would you even try again? Just stop.
He says I want you not because you’re good, but because i’m good and i’ma show you how good I am I’m gonna take you from being an orphan and make you a son and give you a family in my kingdom I’m gonna show you that you never knew what love was before you met me I’m gonna show you exactly what it is and i’ma give you grace and he did he gave me grace Supernatural grace that brings an unworthy wretch like me in supernatural grace that kept me restored me Repaired me held me loved me and the darkest of my nights supernatural grace that helped me avoid the consequences Of my own mistakes supernatural grace that empowers me to keep going when I want to quit Supernatural grace that empowers me to put my foot on the devil’s neck the grace of the father that no matter how many times I messed Up, he was always there with arms wide open the kind of grace where hell could be breaking loose in my life And my soul is at peace My mind is at peace because I know greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world The kind of grace that will get you in rooms You don’t deserve to be in the kind of grace where the first shall be last and the last shall be first The kind of grace that can take someone who’s been divorced who’s failed who’s messed up over and over again And he says i’ma clean you up forgive you and use you for my glory use you to show the religious my heart Use you to show the world my Unconditional love all have fallen short of the glory of god, but not his grace. No, not his grace I am a case of grace and you will hear me roar. You will hear me testify It’s by the grace of god that i’m still here that i’m still breathing that i’m still living that i’m still growing That i’m still moving into god be the glory For the things that he has done. I am a case of grace
But you can take a moment and shout I was blind but now I am healed and thats not who I am anymore. I am full of life and not death, that sin does not rule over me anymore. But in order to get there we have to shout and we cant stop we cannot stop, we have to shut them out. We have to run back to our accountability partners we have to shout to the Lord and say I no longer want to be on the side of this road, I no longer want to be in a state where I am begging. I am called according to your will father and you will equip me for the road ahead. The issue is that you have allowed what you don’t have, your sight, to keep you from using what you do have, your shout, and your steps. Because even if I have to shout and stumble and shout and stumble and shout and stumble, I can still get there.
1Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.
2 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”
6 So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.”
If you were to stop on the sixth day you wouldn’t see what god has for you. If you were to stop moving you wouldn’t never reach the promised land. If you were to not shout you would never recieve your healing. If you were, stop if you were to do what the crowd said.
But I know that that is not your testimony, I know the promise that the lord has for each and every one of you so I know when I shout.
It’s gotta come down! It’s gotta come down! It’s gotta come down! When we shout, it’s gotta come down. When you pray, I praise when outnumbered. I praise when surrounded because praise is the waters my enemies drown in.
I praise when I feel it. I praise when I don’t. I praise you because I know you’re still in control.
How about this? I praise you because you’re faithful. I praise you because you’re true. What are you shouting about? I praise you because there’s nobody greater than you.
My praise is a weapon. It’s more than a sound.
My praise is a shout! That brings Jericho down!
Im here to be your accountability partner im here to bring you the good news. Im here to help move the crowd and to silence the crowd to give you sound and trusted knowledge. So family Praise with me.
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