Dr. Tony Evans emphasizes the importance of viewing life through kingdom lenses, aligning our perspective with God’s vision. Often people see life through cultural, racial, or personal lenses, but God calls us to see it through His kingdom perspective. Even when challenges seem insurmountable, we are to break free from past limitations, take bold steps in faith, and embrace God’s perspective for a victorious life. SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/drtonyev… If you would like to download two encouraging, FREE full-length MP3s of Tony’s popular sermons: “The Sovereignty of God” and “How to Handle a Crisis,” you can do so by clicking on this link: https://share.hsforms.com/1atT9MJvXQN…
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Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies. The first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he has been named one of the 12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World by Baylor University. Dr. Evans holds the honor of writing and publishing the first full-Bible commentary and study Bible by an African American. His radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on over 1,400 radio outlets daily and in more than 130 countries. Dr. Evans’ sermons are also streamed and downloaded over 20,000,000 times annually. #tonyevans #tonyevanssermon #KingdomPerspective
if we insist on not moving forward with
God’s perspective we will go in circles
and never cross over to victory in our
lives victory over our addictions
victory in our relationships because we
still are giving excuses for staying
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stuck
God wants us to have a set of glasses on
as we look at
life that are colored with Kingdom
lenses lenses that are seeing things as
he colors them as he God perceives them
as
God directs them as God wants them
understood far too many of of God’s
people are wearing cultural
glasses or racial glasses or class
glasses or personality glasses and they
see things through the
lens of those particular
perspectives God has a set of
glasses that he wants us to
wear
as we look at
life Kingdom lenses designed to give you
Kingdom Vision that is vision from God’s
rule the kingdom is the rule of
God the Kingdom Agenda is the visible
manifestation of that rule over every
area of life he wants you to look at
every area of life through his
lenses
God
had sent Israel through a
process these are his people in the Old
Testament and he sends them through a
journey for which he sends all of us
through the Journey began with
deliverance from Egypt so it began with
Deliverance it continued through through
development in the
wilderness so he set them free from
Egypt in order to develop them in the
wilderness development then led to
Destiny his ultimate purpose for them in
history God does the same three
movements with your life and my
Life Deliverance the point of your
salvation when you trusted
Christ then he wants to develop you
through Spiritual Development in
discipleship so that he can lead you to
Destiny the place he’s taking you in
order to use you in
history now by Destiny I’m not referring
to Heaven that’s our ultimate Destiny
I’m referring to usefulness in history
because when God took Israel to their
Destiny in the promised land there were
still Hittites Canaanites
amorites there were still problems to be
dealt with not true for us in heaven but
those are challenges that we still face
in history but we’re prepared to face
them because of development having
already been
delivered we find
in chapter
13 of the Book of
Numbers Israel is on the
precipice of the promised land the place
of
Destiny the place where God wanted them
to wind up in
history the place where they were
anticipating God’s Divine favor being
fully
realized but that is where we run into a
problem a problem that they ran into a
problem that we run into and that is the
problem of grasshopper
thinking a grasshopper
complex as they come into the precipice
of where God wants them to be they are
right on the
verge of
Experiencing God historical purpose for
them and we read in verse 33 these
words there
also we saw the
Nephilim the sons of
anch a part of the
Nephilim and we became like
grasshoppers in our own
sight and so we were in their
Sint please notice what they say after
they start feeling as Grasshoppers and
so we were in their
sight so when we felt like grasshoppers
they treated us like
grasshoppers in other words your
self-perception will affect how other
folk view you
amen said we saw ourselves as grass
hoers and they saw us as
grasshoppers see a lot of
folk are seeing themselves in a way God
never defined
them and then wind up being mad cuz folk
are treating you like you see
you why shouldn’t I agree with how you
view
yourself a grasshopper mentality a
grasshopper complex
is when you limit your
perspective to the size of the physical
problem that you face rather than the
spiritual assessment that God
makes he said we saw the
Nephilim when we saw them they got
bigger and we got
smaller they limited their perspective
to the physical
alone because the Nephilim were
giants the Nephilim were this huge
community of strong
men and when we saw them We
Shrunk many of God’s people and many of
us as
individuals don’t see ourselves like God
sees
us and so we cumb to cultural analysis
racial analysis social analysis
political analysis because we have
limited ourselves to the Nephilim of
society and how they want us to be
viewed and how we view
ourselves and
so let’s look at this situation A Little
Closer because I want you to
change if you need to change how you
look at yourself
and I want you to
change how you look at God’s church and
how the church views itself because this
was the collective people of
God in a culture that’s now being
controlled by the
Nephilim see I I want to submit to you
that the Nephilim look like they’re in
charge see the Nephilim were anti- God
the neph Le were were big they were the
powerful ones they were they were the
ones who controlled the agenda they were
the ones who occupied the territory they
were the secularists of the day and they
were calling the
shots and they were defining
reality we’re told that in the beginning
of the chapter verse one then the Lord
spoke to Moses saying send out for
yourself men so that they may spy out
the land of Canaan so let me give you
the rest of the
story it’s described for us in
Deuteronomy chapter
1 after numbers comes
Deuteronomy Moses is rehearsing what
happened so this is after the
fact verse 19 says then we set out from
Horeb and we went through all the great
and terrible Wilderness which you saw on
the way to the Hill Country of the
amorites just as the Lord Our God had
commanded us and we came to Kadesh
Bara and I said to you you have come to
the Hill Country of the amorites which
the Lord our God is about to give us so
they got in the promise of God God’s
going to give you
this see the Lord your God has placed
the land before you go up take
possession as the Lord the god of your
fathers has spoken to you do not fear
and be dismayed so Moses is rehearsing
this verse 22 then all of you approached
me and said let us send men before us
that we may search out the land for us
and bring back to us word of the way by
which we should go up and cities which
we shall enter this thing pleased me and
I took 12 of your your men one man for
each tribe oh what we just got some new
information from Deuteronomy that we
didn’t get from
numbers in numbers chap 13 verse1 it
says God said send the 12 Spies that’s
what numbers 131 says but in Deuteronomy
1 it wasn’t God’s idea to send the 12 it
says the people came up with the idea to
send the 12 and the reason the people
came out the idea to send the 12 was to
spy out what strategy are we going to
use to take
it Dr Evans will be right back after
this important
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announcement
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God makes legal promises I’ll do this
I’ll do that but God wants us to
implement the strategy for claiming what
he’s declared will
happen if you don’t know the
promise then the strategy is connected
to nothingness or your own human
opinion but if you do know the promise
but don’t develop a
strategy then the promise lays dormant
it’s still there but you don’t get
it they had a strategy to claim the
promise even though the promise involved
the problem I don’t want to go too fast
here the promise was the promised land
but in the promise was a
problem the amorites the Canaanites the
Hittites the
jebusites the IES were in the
land so God’s promises don’t mean there
aren’t
problems but God’s
promises that also have problems are to
be
addressed by the strategy used to grab a
hold of what he has
said he says it up there we implement it
down here so they send 12 Spies into the
land to spy out the strategy for taking
it now numbers 13: 20 5 when they
returned from spying out the land at the
end of 40
days becomes very important that way
remember say 40 days all right they
proceeded they came to the congregation
verse 26
says and they brought the word
back verse 27 we went into the land
where you sent us and it flow with milk
and honey that means it’s highly
productive just like God said this is
fertile
territory
nevertheless the people who live in the
land are
strong the cities are
fortified and moreover we saw the
descendants of anoch there that’s the
Nephilim he says these folks the am
amalec Hittites Je ites amorites these
problems are all over the
place 10 of the spies spoke
up and said while God’s promises are
true the problems are too
big when I when I look at the culture
today I I see I I see Nephilim
everywhere I see Democratic Nephilim and
Republican Nephilim black Nephilim and
white Nephilim I see Nephilim
everywhere strong problems in every
direction and they said this it’s too
big even though we agree that yeah God
said
it but here it is then Caleb quieted the
people before Moses he had to quiet the
people down why because they said oh no
oh no this is this we can’t fix this
this is too big
we should Caleb said verse 30 by all
means go up and take possession of it
for we will surely overcome
it but the men who had gone up with him
we are not able to go up against the
people for they are too strong for
us so they gave out to the sons of
Israel verse 32 a bad
report of the the land which they had
spied out the land through which we have
gone is spying it out is a land that
devours we got cannibals in there
devours its inhabitants and all the
people whom we saw in it are men of
great size we have a big
problem because we got a divided
leadership the 10 saw the physical and
two saw the
spiritual
this is the problem with majority
rule cuz the vote is 10 to
two 10 Spies versus Joshua and
Caleb so let me give you a secret if you
want to begin to experience God’s
Kingdom power working in your life your
home our church and hopefully to
influence our
culture you don’t vote on the will of
God
amen let me say that again they going to
vote it’s 10 to
two and you’re gonna get ready to see
the folks say majority
rule and since 10 leaders said this and
two leaders said that we’re gonna go
with the 10 you never vote on the will
of God when God said something it
doesn’t matter how many folks say
something
else
doesn’t matter how many
folk doesn’t matter how many people
voted for it or voted for this or voted
for that when God speaks you are to
implement his principle if you want to
see his power even though it means you
have to overcome some
problems if you listen to the voices of
the majority who are not pursuing the
the will of God it doesn’t mean they’re
wrong except that they’re not pursuing
the will of God whenever that happens
you have the wrong set of glasses
on you want leadership in your life in
your family in the church and even in
the culture that has the guts to see the
spiritual and who will start
there doesn’t deny the problem Caleb
does not deny the problem he just
doesn’t stop with the
problem he starts with the reality that
God had already made a promise so let me
let me show you what happened Chapter 14
verse 3 and 4 why is the Lord bringing
us into this
land to Fall by the
sword our wives and our little ones will
become
plunder would it not be better for us to
return to Egypt
so that they said to one another let us
appoint a leader and return to
Egypt uh here’s another problem we had
we had a problem of bad
leadership but we had a problem of also
people who were still tied to their
past see Egypt is their past Egypt is
where they came from in fact when they
were in Egypt they were fussing and
cussing to get out
yes but they said and and and when they
heard the word of God about this
promised land they thought that was
great but now that they have a problem
they want to go
backwards they want to
regress and not keep going in the will
of God even though their problems to
overcome they were Tethered to the
Past see so many of us were raised by
the
world raised by
ungodly way of thinking that our minds
got to think that’s the only way we can
be happy that’s the only way we can be
fulfilled that’s the only way we can be
victorious that’s the only way we can
overcome and so we go back to that
Egypt because we still see a challenge
to move
forward because we’re not like Caleb who
is looking at things through spiritual
eyes he says in Hebrews chapter 4 verse
one these verses therefore let us
fear while a promise
remains of entering his rest his Destiny
any one of you may seem to have come
short of it not make it over for indeed
we have had good news preached to us
what was the good news back then go to
the promised land God has given it to
you the good news is whenever you hear
the promises of God given to you in
church just as they also
but the word they heard did not profit
them did you know you could hear the
word and not benefit from it the word
they heard did not benefit them profit
them because it was not United by faith
in those who heard verse three for we
who have believed enter that rest just
as he said as I swore to my fathers they
shall not enter my rest he says you can
hear the word and not profit from it
because you don’t mix it with
faith when they heard the
report the majority report versus The
Minority Report 10 veres 2 chapter 14
verse1 then all the congregation lifted
up their voices and cried and the people
wept that night and the sons of Israel
grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the
whole congregation said to them would
that we have died in the land of Egypt
or would that we have died in this
wilderness they are
crying sad and emotional about their
Rebellion not because they trying to fix
it cuz the next verse says and they
grumbled they
grumbled at a time they should be giving
thanks for his
promises they were grumbling because of
bad leadership and
faithlessness verse 29 of chapter 14
your corpses will fall in this
Wilderness even all your numbered
men according to the complete number
from 20 years old and upward who have
grumbled against me verse 35 I the Lord
have spoken surely I will do all this
evil congregation who have gathered
together against me in this Wilderness
they shall be destroyed and and they
will die look at verse 34 according to
the number of days which you spot out
the land 40 Days for every day you shall
bear your guilt a year even 40 years and
you will know my
opposition they said oh that we might
die in this Wilderness and God said
okay if we insist
on not moving forward with God’s
perspective Kingdom eyeglasses we will
go in
circles and never cross over to victory
in our lives victory over our addictions
victory in our relationships because we
still are giving excuses for staying
stuck I’m trying to get us to move
forward with the
challenges in spite of the challenges in
our lives and in our
spheres so search out God’s promises for
your situation for our situation and
then let’s move let’s get let’s get
going I want you to ask God to give you
new eyes to give you a different pair of
Shades to help you see his promises and
then to act on
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them the size height scope of these
Hills and rocks and trees makes me look
very very
small when you compare the size of your
problem your circumstances your
struggles against the size of your God
they will begin to shrink too life does
have
realities that cause us pain and that
cause
consternation but they must be all put
alongside of who God Is What God Says
and what God has done in the past to
help us cope and not only cope but
overcome the things that we’re facing
now throughout the Bible God’s people
have faced things that look like it was
going to both defeat and Destroy them
but when they were able to bring God’s
perspective into it even though it
looked like defeat was inevitable God
was able to bring Victory out of Ashes
whatever you’re going through right now
put it along side of God and watch it
shrink as the side of God grows when you
look throughout the Bible praise is
appropriate to problem because the more
you praise the more you’re recognizing
God and the more you recognizing God the
smaller the issues of life will become
keep your your praise up so your
struggles go
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down
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so what Jesus is offering us all of us
as Believers is the opportunity to see
differently to see with new eyes how do
you do that simply you invite God’s
perspective into decision making this
world is real but it is temporary you
and I are supposed to be in this world
drawing life from that world and he says
when you do that you will not lose
heart sometimes it says suddenly that
means out of nowhere are you telling me
you can be messed up for 18 years
doctors can’t help you friends can’t
help you you can be tow up from the flow
up for 18 years and just a touch
I just a
touch from Jesus can turn that thing
around overnight there is neither Jew
nor Greek there is neither slave nor
free man there is neither male nor
female for you are all one in Christ
Jesus and if you belong to Christ then
you are Abraham’s
descendant hes according to the promise
somebody ought to get excited up in here
you can tell them now I’m a child at a
king