You Are The Answer

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life Podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? So this is your host Tim Pratt Jr. of the Student of Life Podcast, and I have a really good one for you, uh, today, man, because I had the opportunity to preach this message twice. Uh, second time was a little different. Still growing, still growing. Uh, but nevertheless, I preached it twice and I have kind of condensed some stuff for the context of this podcast, uh, today. So that being said, man, I want to talk to you a little bit about you are the answer. You are the answer. But before we get into the context of this episode, I'm gonna adjust my mic just a little bit. Uh, before we get into the context of this episode, I want to say something that I don't necessarily mean literally, but figuratively, as Darius Daniels says. Many times we can hide behind the Holy Spirit or prayer as believers. And what do I mean by that? Sometimes we do not like to be used as the answer to the problem. We would rather pray about it, continue to commune about it, or just say, hey, I'm waiting on God. And when you look at this world, or just in general, and as we're going to see in Luke 10— matter of fact, go ahead and write this down— Luke 10, I believe starting in verse 26 through 35, or you can kind of focus in on Luke 10, uh, Luke 10, verses 30 through 35. It's the parable of the Samaritan. Uh, but nevertheless, getting back on track, is that we're gonna see this man, some I don't want to just pray about problems, I want to be an answer to them. I don't want to just pray about problems, I want to be an answer to them. Because see, people that need help, people that need their bills paid, people, kids that are balling out of control, um, people that are having trouble in basically their decision-making, people who need opportunity, people that need property, houses, homes, they need more than prayer. They need the, the body of the body, the hands and feet of Jesus, man, to help them in a capacity that can say, hey, I'm helping meet your needs. Now, this is not something that people— you should let people take advantage and just start meeting everything that people want, but help meet the needs of people that are lost, man, that are hurting, that are in pain. We have to be the answer to that. And so this is what this whole episode is about. Lord, I want to move from being just a person that talks about prayer to actually being a person that will demonstrate what I'm communing with God in prayer. And so I don't want us to hide behind the Holy Spirit. And what I mean by that, hide behind the Spirit and God, is that I know God truthfully doesn't need us in the context of that he is self-sufficient, but he has created us, so therefore he chooses to work through us. So now he does need us in, in, in a, in a light. I, I, I like, because I want this to be very, very contextual. But he has chosen to use us. He needs us to do what he has instructed us to do because he has chosen to create us for this world. Because he's not coming back as Christ, Jesus Christ, in the context of the scriptures and the gospels that he did before. So he said, no, I want to use the people that I have on Earth. I desire to use them, in other words, to go out and do what I've instructed them to do. To carry out what my, my Son has instructed them to do. And so in this parable, just for some context, it's this lawyer. He's basically asking this question, you know, he talks about the commandment, loving God and loving your neighbor, loving God with all your heart, love your Lord God with all your heart, and loving your neighbor. But he wants to take it a step further, and basically he tries to trick Jesus, the Word himself in flesh, on who is his neighbor. But Jesus doesn't answer it straight out, right? He goes into this, this parable with this Samaritan. And so basically what Jesus does, he talks about how this priest and Levite— if you look at that in the modern day, think about your senior pastor or leaders and the elders of the ministry, where they either on their way to church, the local church, or away from it, and they see someone that is in desperate need, the very people that they are preaching and teaching about. They see a person in desperate need, they keep going, and when it's time to pass them again, they are on the other side because they are going out of their way to not help meet the needs of this person. This person that was robbed and stripped on his way, um, on his way just traveling through, and he was robbed and stripped of his clothes to the point where he was left half dead. So let's pause. How many people have we passed up on our way to do ministry that we didn't do ministry, that we could have took the time to minister to them and pray with them and even sow into them? To be the answer to whatever they were dealing with. How many have— how many half-dead people have we missed, all in the name of, I gotta get to the local church, or I gotta get here, I gotta get here, I gotta get here? No, no, no. So Jesus is basically saying, no, no, this Samaritan who had compassion on this man, he moved from just praying to actually being the answer to the problem. Inecessari to answer. Like I said, I don't want to just be a person that pray about problems. I want to be answering to them through what God has given me. And God has placed a lot of stuff through you, through all of us. But a lot of times, man, with our gifts and talents, God has given them to us and we don't want to use them because it's all about how we feel. So we're telling the creator of our gifts that I know you have placed this on me to reach people, but because I'm so full of myself, I don't want to use them. So therefore, I don't want to be an answer to the problems that you have anointed me and graced me to meet, to solve with what you have given me, God. That— hey, it ain't me, this is the text. So, and hey, listen, all inclusive, because there have been many times that I have been with people that I know that I was under the unction of Holy Spirit, and then sometimes just knowing that, dude, you can meet this need. But I'm like, man, you know, bro, I'm praying for you and didn't pray at all. And it's sad, it's sad. So I just— I repented. Have maintained a repentant heart. If you haven't, cool, thank God. But if you have, this is the time to lean in and say, look, let me pause this because I need to repent. What if God puts you in the ability to be a connector with people, man? You can literally connect relationships like none other, but I'm just tired of people. Or he's giving you the gift to teach and preach or sing, and not just— not since just sensational gifts. What about all the other ones? Train and develop kids. And, um, what if you are really good with kids and you can really train? What if you are really good with helping broken women? Whatever. What if you are really good with helping broken men? What if you are really good with, um, going out here and just working in schools? What if you're really good in organizing and helping people? Where that's the opportunity to like, man, I'ma do this but this is ministry. Because we got to stop sensationalizing just the gifts on the platform. We, we do. But God has put— like, if he's giving you a gift to organize people and vision, and, uh, or you have a very creative mind and you can express this through various forms of working, and you say, no, no, no, I don't want to do it, so I therefore I don't want to be an answer to problems— this is what we are essentially telling God. But yet we'll turn around and pray to God about them, and God's saying, I've given you everything you need, you need to bring it together now. This kind of goes back to what Jim Rome's saying. I never seen God on this Earth grow a garden by himself. Now we know that God can speak to whatever and say, garden, rise, and all type of gardens will rise around here. But what Jim Rome was essentially saying is like, no, he's chosen to partnership with a gardener. The gardener can't bring the rain. All he can do is look at a forecast and hope that it does. That's up to God. But that gardener said, I can cultivate it and I can till this ground and plant the seed, and the rest I'm leaving it up to God. I'm gonna do my part and I'm gonna trust that God is going to do his, just like God is choosing to entrust in me that I'm going to do mine. That's essentially what Jean Ron was saying. So the observation is that we can't be so focused on doing ministry that we aren't doing ministry. Because either we're hiding behind the Holy Spirit or we're hiding about behind too much prayer. And that's what Jesus was saying in this, like, this is what this leave— this priest and Levite was doing. The second thing that we have to understand, if you want to go take notes, is that we've already shown that you have to have prayer and obedience. Prayer is not a substitute for obedience. When you commune with God and don't do what he say That's disobedience. It's not a substitute. So prayer has to partner with obedience. And this is what this— what Jesus is— he's taking this man through this story because of how this man, like I said, is trying to justify himself. And if we bring it in modern terms, think of the most racist-hearted person that only wants his neighbors to be other racist people or other people that look like him or her. And Jesus is saying No, the black man or every other ethnicity, that's, that's your neighbor too. That's what's kind of this relationship with this whole Samaritan and Jew thing. So in this dynamic, we see, we see that this man, he attends to the man's needs. He knows that he has compassion. He moves on him. And I'm not— I don't want to stretch the text, just, but just imagine for a second, man, that this Samaritan was saying the main reason he had compassion, because he once was there. And he said to himself, man, if I ever get in a situation and use what God has given me, not necessarily just become rich, but I use what God has given me to be a blessing to others, if I ever see someone in this situation, I am going to be the answer. Because I don't want to treat this man how people treated me. I don't want to stress the text, but it's just an observation of just something I was meditating on. I believe that Holy Spirit was just communicating to me. And so we want to become one with the word. So this man, he, he, he, he goes out, he, you know, he bandaged, uh, the, you know, the wounds, and he pours the wine and things like that, and just attends to this man's needs and nurse him back, and then puts him on his animal. So all this is just resources. He takes the man to the inn, and then he says, basically, he pays it up and say, when I come back, if there's any other more debt, I will basically pay the bill. This man has used his resources to be an answer to the problem. What resources has God blessed you with? What resources has God blessed you with, man, to be an answer? Because we don't want to use prayer to negate us from the responsibility. Because a lot of times, man, it just— it basically blocks out— I can tell people all day I prayed for you, and there's no accountability if I actually did it. So this man, this Samaritan, Jesus, like I said, is navigating through this thing. Another main observation I want us to really look at and don't miss is that in the context of scripture, this Samaritan was not supposed to be the one helping that man. Just kind of was going back with a modern day when we're talking about racist and Black neighbors. Sometimes we aren't an answer is because we're looking for people that are just like us when we should be looking for people that God has placed in front of us. Sometimes we're not an answer is because we on the other side, we're the one that needs help. We need the answer. We need to— we need the answer so that we can become an answer. I'm expounding a little bit, but once again, we're looking for people just like us. So in other words, let me tell you something, uh, my leadership style is— it has always been very different. And I do— I'm not— I want to say I was ahead of my time or anything like that, but the leadership style that I was moving was the transformational servant leadership style. And kind of coming up, I didn't really know how to harness that and use that style very effectively. So I always felt penalized for my, for my style. Then all of a sudden I start seeing all of these books, especially today, is just like this new way of leading, this new way of leading. And I'm like, I've always felt this way. I've always felt this way, but I've always been challenged not to lead that way in, in a certain context. Not by everybody, but by a lot of people. And so then I got under Coach and, you know, we had a— and I started getting on the training and development and they taught me how to know this is how you really lead in the way that you're trying to lead. So yes, I needed some areas that needed to be tuned up, but I was about to throw the whole thing away because I was like, clearly, you know, this is not the right answer. I don't know how to be an answer to this situation. But no, I had to go out and get up under some people that were totally different than me. That seen things differently than me, that had to teach me. And this, all of this taught me how to basically navigate a space and give me everything I need that now I could go back and be the very answer that I couldn't be at first. But what if I would have been so head down on just like, man, I, I, those people don't look like me, uh, I don't believe they can really teach me anything, they are so different. No, I had to go submit and learn some things in order to come back and be the very answer that my team, my community need, whether in the technology or ministry, marketplace or ministry. So we have to be very cognitive and say, Lord, am I missing out on being the answer because I'm looking at the wrong people? I'm, I'm forgetting what my true neighbor is. I'm forgetting that truly everybody is my neighbor versus just a set of certain people. Am I missing out? Or with the verse, what I just said. So we have to understand, we have to, we have to understand this dialogue of like, man, okay God, who have you put in front of me? Because it's up to me to define and align. But Lord, who have you put in front of me? Who, who, who is my true neighbor in the context? Or more so, Jesus. I'ma say that part, I'ma say that part. So we just want to be, we want to be very intentional You know, are we expecting— are we expecting something or someone, um, based on our preferences, based on how we grew up in the local church? Oh, I don't want to do this because it's not how I grew up. Oh, I don't want to— I don't, I don't believe it should be that way. Oh, I don't want to go learn things from this ministry because that, that's just not how I know. Oh man, I would never go, they too loud. Oh man, they're too quiet. Oh, like, this is why we miss out on a lot of stuff, because we can't— it's all about what we want. When God say no, your answer is through what you least expect. Sometimes, sometimes it will be common to what you know, but a lot of times it's going to be what you least expect. So we want to be very cognitive of that, very cognitive of that, and truly living out that principle. And then the last observation, man, that I believe— that I said I didn't want to get ahead of— is that Jesus flipped this. He literally flip this from basically saying, who is my neighbor, but how can I be a neighbor? In other words, how can I be an answer to the problem? Your neighbor is whoever you are in the proximity of. So if you're in your house, it's probably going to be who— who's ever there, not— not in your family. If you're in your car, it's whoever drive. When you're in the store, it's those people. When you're in your local church, it's those people. It's whoever you are in the proximity of. That's what we have to truly understand. And so Jesus is basically saying, how can I be a better neighbor? How can I be an answer to the problem? And I'm just feel compelled to share this, like I was just kind of saying in the thing, is that a lot of times with us, man, there are plenty of resources out there. There are plenty of people out there. There are just— it's so much content out there. It is so many people we can be connected to. But I want to submit to you that in order for you, especially in today's time, to truly be the answer that God desires you to be, you're going to have to have a level of intentionality through the power of the Holy Spirit to weed through all the noise. Because there's just so much. You should do this, you should do that. For example, you know, when I really got deep into like studying the Bible, my whole thing was like, listen, there's a lot of people that understand the Bible in a way that I don't, but I wanted credible resources, people that I know that was staying with the biblical doctrine, sound doctrine as Paul wrote, but biblical doctrine, the doctrine of Jesus, the doctrine of God, man, just like truly staying with the word. And then I just— I needed them to also have an ability to teach it in a way that I could understand it. I understand that the Holy Spirit is the one that— he's the one that illuminates the passage of scripture. But I would be a fool to discredit all the other people that are long gone and that are still here that he has illuminated through their writings. The Bible is the final authority, but it's not the only authority.— it is the final authority. I'm sorry, it is the only authority. I apologize, it is the only authority. I meant to say it is not the only resource that we can use. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for the correction. I apologize. The Bible is the only authority. It is the final authority. It is God's word. But it is not the only, only resource that we have to use. There are plenty of resources that we can use to help us navigate, but they have to be credible, and we need the Holy Spirit and we have to be dedicated to studying truth because a lot of us like to be spoon-fed by what everybody else is saying. This is why we have to dig in for ourselves so that you may test everything by the scripture. You want to know if your marriage is right? Test it by the scripture. You want to know how to parent your kids effectively? Test it with the scripture. You want to know how to live a Christian life and truly live a, a life that's pleasing to God? Test it with the scripture. You want to know where to stand on marriage and all this, test it with the scripture. It's not our opinion. We have to test it with the scripture because the scripture is the authoritative word of God. So all those other resources are truly— when we read them and we say something and it's like, oh man, well, trace it back to the scripture. You— there is work. It is work. And I love it now, but at first it was just so dry because I was trying to just understand everything on my own. I'm like, man, That's stupid. And for— and, and this is the thing, I know I'm kind of going a little tangy, but I have to share this because like this is all about being an answer. But I hear pastors often say, you know, listen, for the most part they will say— I've literally heard a pastor say, listen, no, no, no, it is the Bible and the Bible alone. Nobody else matters. Okay, if that's the case, then I will ask the question, why in the world am I here listening to you teach the gospel? Because I can read that same Bible for myself. So what am I saying? No, you're trusting God because he— that pastors, and they have been called and anointed by God to preach and teach the gospel, live it of course too, but you're there to be trained and equipped for the work of the ministry. So we have to be careful with some of the things that we release. So we're there in order to get answers so we can go back and be developed through the power of God to be an answer. A lot of times, Lord, I want to be a better communicator. The Holy Spirit is like, uh, turn on your TV. There's plenty of communicators that you can learn from, you know. I think it's— I might be good— the Shahrukh rule or something, where it's like, follow the rule, break the rule, be the rule. Learn this since like some of the Scrum training, and it's a karate technique or something like that. But it's like, okay, listen, I'm going to follow you, I'm going to imitate you. Then I'm going to break and bend. I'm gonna make it more where it can be like myself, and then I'm just going to become it. That's who I'm going to be. So in other words, if I'm teaching and preaching the gospel, yes, no one can teach me like the Holy Spirit, but I have to find someone that I can imitate. I'm learning, I'm imitating kind of like their styles and their technique. Now I'm like, Lord, help me make— I want to become one with this because you can train me through other people. So I want to become one with this. Now I'm bending, and all of a sudden it's just like, oh wow, Lord, I I'm just— it's the essence. This is how I'm supposed to be. I am the rule now. We see this in sports all the time. Take Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. He followed, imitated Michael Jordan's game. Then he started to bend things, and he started to like, okay, I'm adapting it to my style and my uniqueness and how God created me with this ability. Then all of a sudden, I'm Kobe Bryant. So God uses people, man, to teach us and, and help us become an answer so we can go be an answer. But we can't be so caught up and be so spiritual that we aren't truthful that we need help in developing us on how to become the very answer that we're trying to be. So I want to just challenge you, man, like, whoever it is in your life— and, and this is the last thing I want to say— I don't want to excuse hurt, trauma, and things like that because every situation is different. But if I just made on a baseline— so please, that's my disclaimer, because I'm like, some things just don't need to be. But what I am saying is that remember, Jesus Christ became the answer in flesh so we may be redeemed, reconciled, and back into God because of what Adam and Eve had done. He had to do it in the flesh because it was relinquished in the flesh. But this is the thing, When you are an answer, remember that we— none of us had the capacity or the ability to be the answer for reconciliation. So even for some of the people that truthfully have done negative things to you or bad things or whatever, just pray and commune and consider and say, God, I understand that truthfully I don't want to be the answer to this problem. Be honest with God. I don't want to help this person. They did me like this. They did XYZ. But just commune with God and talk to him. And what if God does tell you, yeah, that I understand you did it to me, but my son became the answer? So in other words, God is saying, I still want you to be the answer and demonstrate my love and my compassion and my reconciliation. Listen. It's easy to sit up here and talk about this in a theoretical standpoint and like, you know, bring out the text. And some people say bring the text alive. But when God pairs your life with scripture and you have to demonstrate it, that's where the living the gospel truly resides. When he said, uh, now I'm pairing your life with the text because now you have to demonstrate the very thing that you have been communing and reading and studying about. So I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to go be the answer because you are through the power of God. Man, I love you all. Be blessed. If this touched you, share, share, share with someone. If it didn't, hey, I thank you for even just giving me the opportunity to speak in your life through the power of God. Man, love you all. Be blessed. Always praying for you all. And connect with me any way, uh, you want to. Just go to www.timothyprattjr.org. It will also be on the outro. Be blessed. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student Life Podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me Or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.