Breaking Through Blacktop

8/26/1995

I don’t really have a question, but I have a thought to pass on with regard to all that has been said tonight and all the things that have been talked about thus far this weekend. Please, and I don’t know how strongly to ask that word, please don’t leave here with preconceived ideas and already as you are walking out the door figuring out if this is right or this is wrong, this won’t work where I’m at, this will work, this doesn’t have anything to do with me, I’m not like that, this doesn’t apply, any of that stuff. What you need to do is say, on your knees before Jesus, “Jesus, is this Life, is this Truth, is what I heard true from Your throne room, and how does it apply to me? How do I change? How do I respond to truth?” Because I think the thing that gets missed a lot of times in situations like this is that we leave and start formulating our ideas and our thoughts and conclusions before we even get out the door. Take it personally to Jesus Himself and say, “How do I respond to You personally about these things that we talked about?” What am I going to do in my life if what I heard is true? If I know in my heart and my spirit testified to the fact that this was the Word of God that came forth in my life, whether it is in this situation or one-on-one in a conversation any other time for the rest of your life. If, when you hear Truth, what do you do with it? Do you respond to it immediately if you know it’s truth, or if you hear it and you start trying to find ways to get out of it and dissuade yourself of the actual fact that you are hearing something that should cause you to respond, if you are really a believer, to the Word of God. What do you do with that?

I guess I am just asking us all to please not leave here tonight and just take it and run it through the grinder of your mind and then spit out something tomorrow morning when you wake up - “Oh, that was a fine time, I agree with that, but I don’t agree with that.” Take some time, as Mike was saying earlier. These are seeds. These are things that need to nurture and grow.

I guess the picture that I had in my mind was back in Indianapolis, there is a park that they build that has a blacktop on it now, they have a path that we run on. It’s very hard and compact, but after a little while of running on it, I started noticing grass growing up through this hard blacktop that had been paved down. It totally amazed me. All of a sudden along this whole path were all these bumps where this little sprig of grass had grown up through. If I took a lump of tar and tried to poke a blade of grass through it, there is no way I would ever be able to accomplish that. But how did that happen that that blade of grass worked its way up through that blacktop and now poked its way out and caused a split on the top of something that was hard and crusty. It was perseverance, it was pressing in, it was the light drawing up, even through the darkness, through the hardness, something that was generally drawn to the sun and to the light. That’s just an analogy of what I am talking about. Don’t go out and say, “This will never work in my situation, I can’t poke this thing in, it’s too hard, it doesn’t work here, it doesn’t apply.” Ask God, if this is really a Seed from Him, if He will provide the Light and the Wisdom and the Discernment and how to apply it in your situation, then He will be able to come up through the hard things, to provide you an opportunity if you will draw close to Him. Not to take the time that we have spent this weekend or any other time the rest of your life when you hear Truth, don’t suppress it, don’t do anything but take it to Jesus and ask Him how it applies to your life and what you need to do about it.