Over the last several months, something pretty incredible has been happening. From our last service in the old facility to this moment, the size of our church has nearly doubled. New level.

We've also seen so many people taking steps in their relationship with Jesus. Some of those are first time salvation. Some have rededicated their lives to him, embracing his Lordship. Some have been baptized, started using their gifts through serving. Some have taken other spiritual steps, like forgiving stuff in the past, choosing to trust God with their finances, allowing God to change their mindsets. New levels.

Something I want you to understand is that new levels come with some things. Some of those things are incredible, life-changing, eternity changing. But some of those things are difficult, painful, frustrating.

Old-school Pentecostals used to say, "New levels, new devils.” I KNOW there are people in this room right now who have made a decision to be obedient to God and it seems like rather than God opening windows of heaven, it's like somebody unleashed the gates of hell.

Let me just ask you a question:
Do you really think Satan is just gonna lay back and let you get closer to God? Do you think he's going to throw his hands up and say, "Well, I guess we lost ‘em?” Do you really think you're not going to be tested in this new level?

Philippians 2:12
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

This passage does not mean you have to work to be saved, but it is the work that happens after you're saved. Remember, salvation biblically is rescue. It’s God's rescue which delivers believers out of destruction and into His safety. Your soul is saved from the moment you confess Jesus as Lord, but there is a process whereby God works destruction out of you so that you can embrace all that he is.

“Work Out” is katergazomai, two words: kata - down, and ergozomai - work.
This word means to “work down to the end point”

Why am I telling you this?
Because this walk with Jesus is going to require that you work down to the endpoint those things in you that are going to keep you from embracing him in his totality. You might be going to heaven, but you still struggle with that addiction. You might be saved, but you still hold onto the past. You might be redeemed by the blood of Jesus, but you still cling to the brokenness.

God is wanting to work all of that out of you, and while you might ascend to a new level, what it means is that there are new opportunities for God to work out his salvation in you, to work out his rescue from destruction in you

James 1:2-4
1 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

New levels are not made for new devils. New levels are made so that you can have an opportunity for great joy. How? That testing works endurance and causes you to grow so that you can become perfect and complete lacking nothing.

If you have made a decision to follow Jesus, to be obedient to him, to embrace his Lordship, to get serious about your relationship with him, then welcome, you are on a new level. And I want you to know that if you're on a new level, there is a whole other round of development that God wants to do in of you.

There are some things that come with new levels that I wanna share with you today very quickly in the time we have left.

1. New levels mean new challenges and new rewards
Nobody like Peter knows what this means. You talk about new challenges and new rewards? One minute he is a rough and tumble fisherman pulling slimy red bellied tilapia out of the sea, and the next minute, he's a leading disciple of Jesus.

Matthew 16:16
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
By the time we get to this awesome story, Peter has already seen Jesus healing people, feeding tons of thousands of people with a little kids lunchbox, even walking on water.

Peter steps out, Peter trusts, Peter believes, and then Peter fails. Peter faith was challenged. What he knew was challenged. Even the very laws of physics were challenged before his various eyes.

Jesus, you are the son of God one minute, and then Jesus calls Peter Satan the next.

Peter understood that new levels mean new challenges. Do you? Did you expect to live in this new level with the same tactics of the previous one?

When we moved from Longview to Dayton, how we lived our lives had to change. So much in our lives changed from going from a 100,000 person town to a 9000 person town. Our expectations had to change. Our thought processes had to change. Our conveniences had to change. Our friendships changed. We had to trust more because we knew people for less amount of time. We didn't have those relationships to lean on from day one. All of that had to be re2built.

We had to embrace a new rhythm and a new mindset. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was brutal. We stepped out and were being obedient to God and did exactly what we thought He said to do and just trusted that this is what he wanted, and that obedience forced us into a new level where we had to trust God like we never had before, to lean on each other like we never had before. We had to trust God for every meeting and every ounce of provision. We had to trust him for every event and for what was gonna happen next. All of this trust in God and then throw Covid into the middle of it. If you wanna do something for fun, try planting at church and the town of 9000 people in the middle of the global pandemic that forced everyone inside.

Our obedience was being tested. Our faith was being tested. What we believed God told us to do was being tested. We were being tested on whether or not we were really going to lean into God, or whether we would lean into fear and anxiety and failure.

We were in a new level and rather than rainbows and sunshine, we got challenge. We got testing. We got stretching.

You might listen to this and feel like you are in the same situation with different scenarios, and rather than embrace the challenge, you're bucking against it.

You might even stand out on your porch and scream at God, demanding to know what he's doing up there. "I've been obedient. How come all I'm getting is hell?”

Look, Satan wants that challenge to destroy you. He wants you to capitulate to it, to be afraid, to be anxious, to give up. He wants you to go home today with failure in your heart.

But God wants you to see that challenge for what it really is: an opportunity! This is what growth looks like. This is what faith looks like. This is the opportunity to show yourself that you're not going to give up, you're not going to back down. You've burned the ships and you're never going back again. You set your face like a flint, lean hard forward, and even if you fall down, you get back up again and you keep on moving. It's because you understand that the challenge is not meant to destroy you, it's meant to grow you.

Are you going to embrace the challenge for what it is?

If you will embrace that challenge, and you will allow God to use it to grow you, not only will the new level bring new challenges, it will bring new rewards. I found this online.

1. Prayer and Fasting
your Father who sees in secret will reward you

2. Compassion for the vulnerable
Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me

3. Bearing insults and being excluded for the name of Christ
Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven

4. Love for your enemies
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great

5. Generous giving
…Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

6. Hospitality that cannot be repaid
when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, you will be repaid at the resurrection

7. Endurance through pressures in ministry
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison

8. Quality work for your employer
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

9. Faithfulness through trials
…In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

10. Faithfulness to the truth
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

Praying and fasting, compassion for people, generous giving, loving your enemies, endurance, quality work for your employer, Does that sound like a challenge to anybody else in here?

New levels bring new challenges, but it also brings new rewards.

2. New levels bring new battles and victories
You're gonna spend your whole life fighting a war, but new levels bring new battles.

Let me give you an example:
You ever had a strained relationship with somebody and it seem like no matter how hard you tried, it was never going to be a relationship that would live up to the potential that you knew it had? But then, there was a moment of breakthrough where the Holy Spirit spoke something to you that caused you to change your perspective and all the sudden it was like that relationship was on a new level.

I bet that new level brought some new battles.

Maybe you had to switch up how you approached that person. Approaching them like you used to wouldn't work now because the level was different, and so the battle stops being against them in that moment, but now it's against your old mindset of how your relationship with them used to be.

How about another example:
I will piggyback off of what Pastor Tony preached on last week about King Saul. King Saul was the king. Samuel had anointed him king and God had put him in that position.

Tony brought up a good point in the story, that while Saul was king, he still was thinking like some secondary son in his father's house. So even though he had the role, his mind was still in the previous level and it's battles. He couldn't recognize that he had ascended to a new level and that the new level brought a new battle, and that new battle was how he saw himself.

I realize that doesn't necessarily sound like a great sales pitch for stepping into a new level. "Bro, I have enough problems right now. Why do I want to go to a new level and fight new battles?"

I will tell you why: because new victories come with the new level, too.

Are you willing to be obedient to God and step up to a new level, even though it brings challenges, even though it brings new battles, understanding that it is worth it because it also comes with new rewards and new victories? Do you want to keep fighting the same old battle against addiction? Do you really wanna still have the same terrible attitude towards that person in your family? Did you really want to spend the rest of your life coming to God begging for forgiveness for the same dumb sin that you've done your whole life? Do you really want to steal struggle, constantly in areas like finances or your marriage, or are you ready to win?

Do you really want to walk out the promises we find in Deuteronomy 28,
Blessed in the city, blessed in the field, good treasures opened up to us, head not the tail, above not beneath, etc.

Are you ready to stop talking about one day when you might win and actually start winning, actually start being victorious? Then you have to be willing to step into the new level through your obedience, and you have to be willing to face the new battle that's before you, Understanding that it's God who goes before you in the first place! Maybe a new battle you guys are fighting right now is the notion that you have to do it all on your own. He will never leave us. He will never forsake us, he goes before us! Maybe that new battle is against yourself trying to fix everything rather than just learning to trust God and allowing him to take care of business

If you want the honey, you gotta face the bees. If you want the paycheck, you have to do the work. If you want the victory, you have to face the battle, but you have to face the battle God's way, not your own.

How?

3. New levels bring new mindsets and healing.
The new level is going to require a new mindset. This is how you face the battle of God's way. You have to change what's going on in your mind, and this is biblical.

Romans 12:2
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Let me give you an example:
You get a cut on your arm and it creates a sore. You want to pick the scab but when you do, it creates more infection. You know that you need to not pick at it, so what you do is you put some ointment on it and cover it with a Band-Aid. If you can't see it, it makes you less likely to pick at it.

This is silly as an example, but at some point, you have to make the decision to change how you think about that sore and what you do concerning it.

You have an addictive behavior, for instance, something on your cell phone. You want to constantly look because you're addicted, but you know that creates more infection in your heart. But because you are taking steps to get closer to God, you realize how bad that addiction is for you and you know that you need to stop, so what you do is you refuse to bring your phone with you into alone spaces. You might even get real crazy and go back to a flip phone lol

In either scenario, what you're doing is you are making those adjustments that shift your mindset because remember, and we say this all the time:
What you do is dictated by what you believe, and what you believe is dictated by what you think.

How does that renewal happen? So glad you asked.
Prayer, yes. Accountability, sure. A good church, absolutely. But if you want to be renewed in your mind the most effectively, it is through the Word.

Proverbs 4:20-21
20 My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words. 21 Don’t lose sight of them. Let them penetrate deep into your heart,

Don't just read it, but embrace it, consume it, let the word become a part of you. Let it challenge what you've been thinking and what you've been believing. Listen carefully, decipher what's being said, actually understand what you're reading. Why?

Proverbs 4:20-21
22 for they bring life to those who find them, and healing to their whole body.
Healing.

You trusted God and took a step and it seems like your world is in utter chaos now, but the reason is because God is shifting what you've been believing your entire life and it has caused a disruption in what you have seen as normal life. It is life you’ve learned to endure. But what was normal for you yesterday, before you chose to obey, is not capable of bringing you the healing that you need to move forward. So God beckons you to step out and trust him, because he knows that if you will take the step, even if it seems like chaos around you, even if you feel like everything around you is out of control, that your mindset will be renewed and healing will come to your troubled soul.

Psalm 103:1-4
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! 2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

He does all of these things but we too often expect a snap of the finger rather than pain of the process. We too often live with Ozempic faith. We just take a shot and continue to live how we want. We expect the blessing without the obedience. We expect the new level without the challenges and battles and changed mindsets.

But God is not contented with you being anything less than he created you to be. You better than you were yesterday is good but it isn’t good enough for God to stop challenging you and allowing the battles and confronting mindsets

Why? Because you healed and whole is God’s heart for you.

So if you feel like you have been obedient and you’ve reached another level, take a moment and thank God. Count your blessings not your problems. Rejoice knowing that God is working his good into your life.

Let’s pray.

Nobody said it was easy. Just take me back to the start. That’s the band Coldplay.

I want to invite you to respond to this message like this. How you lived may have gotten you to a new level but it might not be enough to continue in it.

So first, take a moment and go back to the start. Remember what it was like when you first encountered Jesus. That same love that got you into a new family will sustain you in a new level.

And second, realize that this is a process that isn’t always easy, but you are not alone. Galatians 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens. We can’t help you carry what you won’t share.

Our team is here. Embrace the love of Jesus again, and maybe for the first time. Come and share your burden and let us help you succeed.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?