Skip to content Beyond Expectations: Embracing God's Abundant Grace || Pastor CJ Johnson Feb 9 · 1 hr 7 min ...more
Beyond Expectations: Embracing God's Abundant Grace || Pastor CJ Johnson
February 9, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
Series Patria Sermons February 9, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min · Patria Sermons
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492K followers
Adam Mesa is Lead Pastor of Patria Church and speaks to a congregation of 12,000 about how the gospel of Jesus Christ brings purpose to every life. Patria
492K followers
In this video 0:00 Vision and Growth10:49 Miracles and Faith23:25 Generosity and Character38:52 Commitment and Legacy
Vision and Growth 0:00 So if you have it, you can pull it out right now because we're about to jump into the word in just a few moments. If you did not get 1 last week, would you raise your hand? Because our dream team is gonna grind and get0:11 it to all y'all as fast as possible. And so, would you do me a favor? Until you get it, would you just keep your hand up because they're gonna do this as fast as they can so that you have a journal. We0:23 wanna make sure that you can follow along with us. If you missed the launch last week, you could go to our YouTube channel, and you can go listen to our launch. I'm gonna give us a little play by play right now in a0:34 moment. When you get your journal, you could jump to page 36 because that's where we're gonna be at. We're gonna be in week 2 in our series as we, this week, talk about God's perspective of our0:46 life. And so just keep your hand up, so that we can get it your way. And, while your hands are up and they get it to you, I'm just gonna do some brief overview about what we shared before we jump to the0:57 word, last week. And so, last week what we shared about is Ephesians chapter 3 verse 20. I have it up on the screen. Here's what the word of God says. It says, now to him, God,1:09 who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us. Do you know oftentimes God does1:21 more than you ask or think? God goes beyond. God is abundant in his grace. And so we've seen God do that in our church. Right now across all of our campuses pretty
1:33 much at many of our services, we have 0 parking at most of our campuses. Rancho second service has ran out of parking. Our Pomona campus has ran out of parking, their second
1:44 service. Our Alameda campus right outside of Oakland, they don't even have parking. And so, we wanna get them parking as soon as possible because God has been absolutely growing,
1:57 that campus. And there's tons of opportunity, to reach the area and city of Alameda. I know we just got a few more hands up. Keep it up. I'm getting you your workout. You're you're learning what the
2:09 quarterback feels like at the end of the Super Bowl today by keeping your hand raised. We're gonna get it, to you as fast as possible. Additionally, what we shared is, you know, even for me,
2:21 there's often times I put my own limitations, on God, and I did that last week. We launched our Saturday night service, last Saturday. And when we launched it last Saturday, I had convinced
2:32 myself that our attendance was gonna be relatively the same over the weekend. I thought there's gonna be a little bit of people that don't show up for first service. There's gonna be a little bit of people that don't
2:42 show up for second service. What we had in a very long time, literally years even before COVID, we had a record setting weekend last weekend. We had
2:52 7333 people in attendance for that week. Our attendance in Sunday did not change at all. And so where we thought opening a Saturday service would
3:04 mitigate parking on second service, it didn't. Everybody still came. And so that's part of our vision is as our church is growing and reaching more people, and we're so blessed right now in America for
3:16 every 1 church that starts, 4 churches close their door, because they're not able to either financially take care of the church anymore or the church has not grown. They've lost people. We're seeing the opposite
3:28 in our church. We're seeing an increase of attendance across our campuses anywhere between 20 and 30 percent right now. And we're seeing our record setting baptism numbers this past year that we have in the history of
3:40 our church. And so God has been moving. And so last week, we shared with the church that, over the next 3 years, we're doing a campaign together for those that call Patriot home. If you're still
3:51 exploring our church, if you've not made it your home base, then this real this isn't for you, but God's gonna speak to you every week regardless. But we did a campaign of of 20000000 dollars as a church. And with
4:03 that campaign that we're doing over the next 3 years together as a church, it's not equal gift, but what we're committing to is an equal sacrifice. And with this equal sacrifice, we're gonna see, and it's in your journal
4:15 as well if you'd like to look over it more, is you see all the projects we're doing. And so we're gonna be setting aside money to get physical locations for our Alameda and our Corona campus. We wanna
4:26 be able to do, renovations all across our Rancho campus. Our overcomers ministry has been growing, and so we wanna do sensory rooms. We wanna remodel our children's ministry.
4:38 We wanna do new playgrounds for our children's ministry on the backside so that we're when they're in church, we're gonna renovate that space. This campus at Rancho, believe it or not, in the next 2 years is gonna be 20
4:50 years old. And so we gotta figure out parking as a church. In the past, all the businesses around us used to let us park on Sundays. But just over the years, businesses don't really
5:02 have a respect as a whole. People don't have respect as a whole, to not be open on Sundays. So most of the businesses around us, they even work on Sundays, and so they've told us over the years, hey, we don't want you
5:14 parking our parking because we open our offices. I mean, we used to not get mail on Sundays. Now I get like 6 Amazon people a day starting at 3 AM, you know, at my house on a Sunday. And
5:25 so with that, our parking is sustained fully to our on-site. And so we're looking at land opportunities nearby so we can extend our parking, and so there's a lot of things. How many of you guys know growth is
5:37 good, but it comes with new expectations. You know, when your cousin asks to come live with you for a season, you think, oh, this will be fun. This will be exciting. But when they bring their 6 children with them, you
5:49 think, oh, that's more food, more refrigerator space, that's more laundry, that's more water, that's more gas. And so, as we're seeing God move in our church, which we're so thankful for, it
6:01 means that we are in a season where we got to resource this if we wanna see God do more, some of us need to sacrifice more because this is our house. And so if you missed last Sunday, that's what we've talked about is we
6:12 take care of our house. And so before we jump in the word, there's 4 things we're asking everyone who calls Patriot home to commit to. If Patriot isn't your home, you sure could join us, but this is
6:24 really for those that if someone was out in the streets and they said, you go to church and you said, yeah. And they said, where's your home church? If you say Patriot, that this is something we all should commit to in
6:33 some way. You'll see in your in your, journal, there's a pledge card that we don't want you to fill out yet, but we do want you to pray over. We do want you to ask God if he would want you to be a part of this. Not
6:44 decide whether God wants you
6:48 to be a
6:48 part of this. Here's something we're asking. Would you join us every weekend for the next 5 weekends? Really, it's for the next 4 weekends, at this point, from February first to March ninth.
7:00 Second of all,
7:00 we're asking, would you pray and believe God for 1 lost friend?
7:05 Because that's
7:06 what we do everything for at our church. Not only for the people that come, but the people that would be potentially coming that may wanna find out who Jesus is. And when they meet Jesus, they're gonna radically
7:18 transformed. And so, we wanna pray for those lost friends. As a church, we don't have a care to build big churches or big build big buildings. We wanna build big people. That's what we wanna
7:30 do as a church here. We want to build giants in the faith. And everything that we're doing during this campaign is to build our children, to build our youth, to
7:39 build people who are yet to come here, and also to build your faith up
7:39 as people who are yet to come here, and also to build your faith up as well. And so we're gonna pray on Wednesday. We're asking that would you join us across our campuses? You may work in
7:51 LA, stop at our Pomona campus. Some people I know, they're actually doctors and nurses, and they work every couple of weeks up in Northern California, and they actually go to our Alameda campus now every couple of weeks
8:02 as well. So wherever you're at this Wednesday, would you either watch online with us or would you join us in person? Because we're gonna worship and we're gonna believe God for the lost. We wanna see lost people come to
8:14 faith in Jesus Christ. We wanna see marriages restored. We wanna see a people that is healed. We wanna see people come to know God as their Lord and savior. That's what we're believing God for, and that's what we're
8:25 doing as a church. Come worship, with us this Wednesday. Additionally, we're asking, would you pray about a 3 year commitment? Your pledge card, we don't want you to turn it in yet because we're gonna do it all together
8:36 on March. We have it right, on March first and second. We're gonna ask, would you come on that weekend? And if God put on your heart to be part of this, we're asking that you would make a 3 year commitment with
8:48 us. You could do it annually, monthly, and it's above the tithes and offering is what it is. And so, we don't wanna rob Peter to pay Paul. We don't wanna say, oh, well, I'll stop tithing, and then I can give to this.
8:59 Well, then we just may not have electricity 1 Sunday if you do that. So it's on top of our tithes and our offering, and it doesn't matter how big or how little. It's just all of us doing our part. You may be in a season
9:11 financially where you say, pastor Adam, I can't participate in this at all. It's been so hard for our family financially. I understand that. Please don't over stretch in order to be part of this, but we do want you to at
9:23 least fill this out and just let me know. If you're if you can't commit commit financially, on March first and second, would you just put pastor Adam, we're with you? You're in agreement that you're you wanna see God do
9:34 something in our church, I I just wanna know that you're with us on this. And then lastly, March eighth and ninth, we wanna do a 1 time miracle offering. In other words, the projects that we wanna do as a church, it's
9:45 not something we start in 3 years, it's something we start right
9:48 away.
9:48 As the money comes in, it immediately goes to impact. It immediately goes to growth in our church. It immediately goes to looking for opportunity. It immediately goes to to deposits, to architects, to start working on
10:00 architectural plans for all the things that we're doing. Everything starts moving right away on March eighth and ninth. And so 3 to 4 years from now, you won't say, whatever happened to that campaign you were doing? No.
10:12 You're gonna see it every single month happening before your eyes, just like you've seen with our courtyard and our lucky climber and fire pits and our whole courtyard renovated and done. You're gonna see it in front of
10:23 you as well. And so we thank you so much for coming alongside of us as we see God doing
10:27 incredible wonders in our church. We're so thankful that
10:27 God would grace us as we're so thankful that God would grace us as a church to see that we are growing, and we are reaching more people. And so we thank you that you're a part of our family, and you're a part
10:39 of this, with us. And so, in a moment, we're about to jump into the word. I really felt led by God to ask a friend, pastor CJ Johnson, to come speak to us. I'm in a cohort of 8 men who have
Miracles and Faith
10:51 all transitioned into senior leaders from, very pretty much larger ministries, big heroes in the faith. And so I'm in a cohort, with, like, Rick Warren's, person that took
11:03 from him, Andy Wood, and some others. And all we do is we meet each other together twice a year, and we text each other every week, and we pray for each other, and we encourage 1 another. That's our whole goal
11:15 together. And CJ's in that cohort with me, and he's from Indianapolis, Indiana. I don't know if I got any Midwest people, in the house. We got a few. My mom's from Gary, Indiana,
11:27 so she's at home today with pastor CJ, in the house. Pastor CJ pastors, 16 campuses all across Indiana, over 20000 members,
11:38 in their church. Last year, they had just finished a campaign of 80000000 dollars as a church. And their church in just a couple of years raised about 80000000 dollars And I really felt like
11:50 God wanted to show our church our future. To say, if God if God continues to blow this wind in our in our heart and in our church, that there could be a day that we could see
12:02 God do more campuses, because it's not about campuses and it's not about cities, it's about people. And you can go out in the cities and you can say, no one's going around and saying, you know, they really need less
12:12 churches in these cities. No. We're saying, we need more churches in these cities. We need more transformed people in these cities. And maybe God would grace us to do something like that as an impact. If Indiana's being
12:23 reached like that, I believe in California, we could be reached as well. And so Pastor CJ is gonna deliver the word today. Last night, man, he spoke a word to me that I've been ruminating on all night, and so I'm excited
12:35 to hear it again. But before we do that, I have a testimony from a family and a couple in our church, that God has done a miracle in their life, and I wanna encourage you this Sunday morning. Let's check this
12:46 out.
12:48 I met Liz, in 20 18. No wonder I reached. 20 19. They're starting all over. Well, just testing her.
12:59 Okay.
13:04 Hi. My name is Carlo Garibaldi, and this is my wife, Lizeth Garibaldi. And we've been coming to Patriot Church since, pre COVID. So Liz and I met in, 20 19. We
13:16 started dating. We fell in love. I knew right away that she was the 1 for me. We sought premarital counseling through Patria,
13:25 and we
13:26 got married in 20 21.
13:27 Got married a few times. Is we got married during COVID. So we had a civil wedding, and then we got married another time in Cancun. And
13:39 then we got married here.
13:41 I think it was Valentine's Day 20 22. Pastor Diego had a price and commitment ceremony at the church. We all, engaged or married couples, could have an
13:53 opportunity to get married here at church. And so, we sought the Lord and, we we thought that that was a welcoming, especially since this is our, we consider Patriot our church. And
14:05 we got married here after we got married in 20 21. We were looking to have a child of our own. We tried all things. Ironically, I'm an OBGYN and infertility doctor specialist,
14:17 and I did everything possibly in my power that I could to, you know, help us try to conceive a baby, but we struggled.
14:27 Yeah. It was it was really hard getting pregnant. We tried, many things, and nothing worked.
14:34 And as a physician and as a husband, it was a added challenge, because, again, I'd seen my patients go through the same struggles, and it hits a little differently when it involves
14:47 your own personal case.
14:48 As a woman, it's something that that hits you emotionally very hard as you're not able to, conceive. You don't know what's going on. You don't know what's wrong with you.
15:00 We attempted different methods, different treatments, different diagnostic procedures. She had, tests done to confirm that her anatomy is adequate, that her ovulation was adequate.
15:12 There was nothing wrong with her. I did test on myself, and, there was a deficiency, in my ability to conceive. So I had to submit myself to 6 months of treatment with medication.
15:25 Even after that, I was cleared. So we, you know, we tried again. The last straw was, doing the intrauterine insemination. We had already tried, you know, the
15:37 calendar method.
15:38 Yeah. It it's it's tough because you have you have this calendar, you have this time. It's like, you gotta do it at this time and, you know, because if not, it's gonna pass and now you gotta wait. And
15:49 it it was it was a chore. It was terrible. You feel the pressure on you. What's happening with my body? Why isn't it happening?
15:59 1 of the procedures was intrauterine insemination where, artificially, the womb is inseminated, to hope to achieve
16:11 pregnancy by bypassing the cervix.
16:13 I was sure 100 percent that it was gonna work because we had already done treatment before, tests and things like that. And they had
16:25 told us that there was nothing wrong with with me. My husband had also taken, medication, and everything was good to go pretty
16:37 much. So when we did that that procedure, shortly after, I found out that it didn't work.
16:49 So it was a very, very tough time for me. And I did have friends that were getting pregnant and just, you know, having their families with their partners,
17:00 and I didn't have that. So it was it was very tough as a woman.
17:08 It was a reality check on a daily basis that, you know, I was there helping other families, in their happy times, but yet in my own family,
17:21 we were struggling with infertility. There was times where I cried out to God lots of times and, you know, just begging for this to happen if it was his will.
17:31 And after that, we we had a conversation, like, okay. So it didn't work. Maybe we should start trying, IVF. But Carlo said, you know what? Before we
17:43 we do that, let's ask for prayer.
17:46 And We met with pastor Adam after service 1 day, and we shared with him our struggles in our journey. He suggested that we try anointing the womb
17:58 besides praying. I think we went home that night with the oil from the library, and that woman was getting anointed every night. Yeah.
18:10 And miraculously, I come home from work 1 day, and she had made a little box with little baby slippers.
18:21 No. They weren't Jordan. Little Jordan
18:23 hanging out slippers. And, and it said, you're gonna be a daddy and the positive pregnancy stick. And I'm thinking, yeah, babe. God's got got us. You know, this will happen in God's
18:35 timing. She's like, you idiot. Don't you get it? I'm pregnant. And I'm like, you're pregnant now? Yeah. And, like, I could I can't explain what that felt like.
18:46 God went above and beyond for us. I didn't think it was gonna happen for us. And when it did, I was just mind blown.
18:55 To have it immediately answered in that fashion
18:59 Yeah.
18:59 That was what really made it stand out as a miracle that God can do above and beyond, exceedingly above and beyond, what we didn't even think or ask for.
19:09 Come on, church. Anyone believe God's still in the business of doing miracles? Amazing. I believe he's still in the business.
19:20 I
19:20 believe he still wants to display his might, his glory, his creative redemptive power in and through our lives. He's still looking for willing people to be a platform and a
19:32 pedestal to his goodness. Like, people who long for the miraculous. The problem is, people long for the miraculous, but they run from problems.
19:43 Right? You can't run from a problem yet declare God's power and might over your life. You, at some point, either have to decide, are you gonna live
19:55 governed by a victim's mentality or victor's mentality. You can either view your God through the filter of your problems or you can view your problems through the filter of your God. I
20:07 know who my God is, he is wonderful and majestic, he is intentional and thoughtful, and he is actively productive in my life, even when I can't see it.
20:20 The moments when I can't trace the hand of God, I have to be able to trace the heart of God. I know that he's loving, and I know that he's faithful and I know that whatever comes my way, if it's not good,
20:32 well, he's just not done. Because he works all things together for the good of those who trust him. Amen? The victim says, why is this
20:44 happening to me? But the victor says, why is this happening for me? How is God going to use this as an opportunity to showcase to
20:56 the world, look how good my God is. Amen. I love that this is a house, of miracles. Anyone thankful for your house? You just love the place that you get to worship.
21:09 You can tell a lot about a person's house. Right? Like, you walk in, you can be, oh, I know who your favorite team is. I can tell you're not organized.
21:24 I know who you voted for. Right? You can just tell a lot about a person's house and spending time around Patria and the team and, just all the different
21:35 ministry initiatives that are an expression of this body of believers. The the 1 thing that is the most apparent is this is a house of wisdom. And we're just thankful
21:47 for the wise leadership and the just thoughtful visionary futuristic strategic thinking that would produce something like this and it is really amazing. And,
22:00 folks you're blessed with the best. Amen. You are blessed with the best and I love my guy pastor Adam Ashley. Just a wonderful, mighty dynamic duo. Can we just show some
22:11 love to them? Anybody have an annoying friend? The annoyance is rooted in your jealousy.
22:24 You know the parable of the talents. 1 guy gets 1, the next guy gets 2, another guy gets 5. It's how you steward it. I always felt like I'm a 2 talent guy, and then you become friends with a
22:36 5 talent guy. I was thinking of pastor Adam and I thought, you know, is there a prototype for him in scripture? If I were to think of my guy and the different
22:48 mantles and anointings and assignments, that you see throughout the word of God, where would I try to envision God's thoughts towards Adam? And I think there is a
23:00 younger son's mantle upon his life. Now track with me on this, get beneath the surface of the thought. There's a lot of younger sons in scripture.
23:12 Isaac was a younger son. Jacob was a younger son. Joseph was a younger son. David was a younger son. And when I I think of pastor Adam, I I think
23:24 of a David's anointing. I think of a Joseph's favor. I think of an Isaac's, identity, and I would think of a Jacob's authenticity. You you guys have aShow more
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