Speaker 1: Happy Mother's Day friends.
Speaker 1: Happy Mother's Day mamas.
Speaker 1: We applaud you.
Speaker 1: We are so grateful for you.
Speaker 1: You are, like Brandon said, you're the reason why we're here, like, quite literally, we could not be alive without you.
Speaker 1: And so thank you for your faithfulness, thank you for your just diligence.
Speaker 1: As long as I can remember, on Mother's Day, after service we would go to the local floral shop or garden center and we'd fill up our cart with all of our flowers for the year.
Speaker 1: We'd go home and have a quick lunch of like sliders Sammy sliders with the special talent dressing and my kids even eat it today, like it's a thing.
Speaker 1: And then we would put on our grubby clothes and we'd go out to the garden and we'd plant.
Speaker 1: We'd have to first start, you know kind of tilling the soil a little bit, and we'd have to pull the weeds and we'd have to make a plan and we'd like set the flowers in their pot in this station no, I don't like that, let's move it over here and we'd be rearranging and planning.
Speaker 1: And then we'd get to the planting.
Speaker 1: We'd actually put it in the ground and we would be covered in dirt and sweat and all things icky, but then we would go inside and get a cup of iced tea and go back outside and stand back and admire Our hard work has paid off and look at how beautiful this is.
Speaker 1: When my parents moved, I was a freshman in high school and we moved into this new house and this is the dream my mom had.
Speaker 1: We bought this house in 2001 and it was just those trees.
Speaker 1: There were no other plants around.
Speaker 1: But she had this vision to kind of make like a kidney shape around it and plant all these flowers.
Speaker 1: And my dad just took that picture yesterday, my mom's not.
Speaker 1: Golly, I'm sorry y'all, I'm going to cry, just going to cry.
Speaker 2: Sheesh, this is our sixth year without my mom.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Love you too, Heather and probably in total about 16 years, since she was actually like mentally present and look at how beautiful that garment still is she had it in her mind to plan.
Speaker 2: And every mama in here I'm so sorry Tiffany always tells me when you're preaching I just know I need Kleenex because you're going to make me cry, Mamas.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got the Kleenex.
Speaker 1: We have beautiful, hard and holy work that the Lord has.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, I did put a whole bunch in my.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We have beautiful, hard and holy work set before us as mamas, and one of the glorious things that we get to do is we get to envision our lives kind of as this garden right, like we think about what we want to have in our family and how we want to be, and we make plans and we decide, Jesus, this is what we want and we want to do it unto you, and we get to see the landscape of our lives like a beautiful garden.
Speaker 1: The landscape of our lives like a beautiful garden, transform over time.
Speaker 1: Today I want to go a little deeper into my husband said this to me a few weeks ago and it has just been sitting with me Galatians 6, 9.
Speaker 1: So let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time you will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Speaker 1: If we do not give up.
Speaker 1: Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians and he's actually telling them kind of all throughout the book listen y'all, I know that you love Jesus and you're trying to follow him, but you're getting stuck in all these traps along the way and you're trying to like muster in your own strength to make yourself good enough for the Lord, but he doesn't need that from you.
Speaker 1: Like Jesus already accomplished it, it's done.
Speaker 1: You are secured in the family of Christ because Jesus did the work.
Speaker 1: And yet you are part of a family now and there is still good work to do, and we wanna make sure that, as we're going through our lives, that we are honoring the Lord with our good work, that we are making sure that we're sowing unto him.
Speaker 1: And so the problem, however, is it's exhausting, right?
Speaker 1: I mean, how many can testify this week alone?
Speaker 1: I often find myself going, I give up, I quit, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Uncle, can I have a pass?
Speaker 1: Can I just?
Speaker 1: Can I have a day off?
Speaker 1: Can someone else, like, do it all for me, whether that's taking care of my kids or getting the groceries, or making the dinner or going to work or finishing that project or making sure this task is accomplished, I just can.
Speaker 1: I, uncle, I can, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Good, yep Out, we're fine.
Speaker 1: Anybody felt like that this week?
Speaker 1: There we go, we got some honest hands there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we get to this place where we just don't want to put in the work.
Speaker 1: We're exhausted.
Speaker 1: Maybe moms of littles right Like it is the you have changed the diaper for the umpteenth time.
Speaker 1: This is like day 12 of not getting a full night's sleep.
Speaker 1: Your four-year-old is still wetting the bed every night and it's all the things right.
Speaker 1: And if you're not careful, if you try to give up in that moment, if you resign in that moment, you might miss their sweet smiles the second you walk into the room, because you are the thing that lights up their life.
Speaker 1: You might miss the moments where your home becomes holy ground, where your kids are playing together and they're actually being kind and sharing their toys.
Speaker 1: We don't give up.
Speaker 1: We might miss the beauty Women.
Speaker 1: Maybe in your middle life, maybe your kids have already flown the coop and you're sitting here going like I got nothing.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just stay on the sidelines.
Speaker 1: I don't have a purpose anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, like my kids are raised.
Speaker 1: No, no, no.
Speaker 1: You might miss.
Speaker 1: There's something that you're supposed to create right now.
Speaker 1: There's words that you're supposed to say because those who are coming behind you.
Speaker 1: We need your wisdom, we need your insight, we need your encouragement, we need your life hacks.
Speaker 2: We don't know what we're doing.
Speaker 2: We need you.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: God is not done with you yet.
Speaker 1: There is more in you.
Speaker 1: There is good work for you to do and you can't stop now.
Speaker 1: There are people alongside you or who are coming behind you, who are depending on your faithfulness today, who are waiting on.
Speaker 1: Are they going to do it?
Speaker 1: Are they going to remain faithful?
Speaker 1: Are they going to keep going?
Speaker 1: Are they going to press on and persevere?
Speaker 1: But listen y'all, we have some what I'm going to call I give up traps.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of.
Speaker 1: I give up traps Like yep, we're good, I just want to be done when some difficulty arises.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have a teenage boy who you adore with all of your heart and yet he's being an income poop and you just don't know how to engage with him and you're really struggling and you're like I don't know what to do here.
Speaker 1: I give up.
Speaker 1: Maybe your budget is just so incredibly tight.
Speaker 1: You're like there is literally negative $28 in my checking account.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: I need bread and peanut butter.
Speaker 1: How do I get through this?
Speaker 1: I give up.
Speaker 1: I give up peanut butter.
Speaker 1: How do I get through this?
Speaker 1: I give up.
Speaker 1: I give up this.
Speaker 1: Last week, y'all, I had just a crazy week at work.
Speaker 1: My boss wasn't there for a few days.
Speaker 1: We had an event Friday morning for like a kindergarten mother's tea.
Speaker 1: It was precious, but I had to like help coordinate some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And then we actually hosted a volleyball tournament here at Fierce and it was an all day thing and all of the prep work to get into that and all of the things.
Speaker 1: And my son also had a concert Thursday night.
Speaker 1: It was like by Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: I'm like can I, uncle, can I just be done?
Speaker 1: I give up.
Speaker 1: There's too much going on.
Speaker 1: I'm tired.
Speaker 1: I just want to eat chocolate and watch shows.
Speaker 1: I want to be done.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's the trap of you know, I'm just tired, I'm just tired.
Speaker 1: Women, we know that there's a week where we are just tired.
Speaker 1: There is and we're just tired, and what we'd really like to do in that week is eat bonbons, put our feet up and not do anything right, and we can get in this trap of like I do everything for everybody all the time.
Speaker 1: Me, it's my day and I just want to be lazy and I don't want to do anything else, and I get it.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, solidarity Sisters some days, but that's a trap.
Speaker 1: There's also a trap of you know I'm not seeing any results.
Speaker 1: It's not making any difference.
Speaker 1: I can't see that this is actually going to be fruitful.
Speaker 1: Why do I keep trying?
Speaker 1: It's a trap.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Star Wars, there you go.
Speaker 1: Okay, you got it, but there is a future fruitfulness that is waiting on your present faithfulness.
Speaker 1: There is a future fruitfulness that is waiting on your present faithfulness and it cannot come about if you don't put your hands to the work.
Speaker 1: Your perseverance through this trial is not only producing fruit for you, but for everybody to come behind you.
Speaker 1: Your perseverance, past the tiredness and the laziness, shows those around you you can do hard things, you can persevere, and it produces intentionality in those eyes that are watching you persevere.
Speaker 1: And it produces intentionality in those eyes that are watching you.
Speaker 1: Our perseverance, even when it looks like nothing is happening, proves a reliance on the God who is in charge of the harvest.
Speaker 1: The God who is in charge of the harvest.
Speaker 1: So dream with me for a second.
Speaker 1: What could it look like if we chose to do the good work, to not grow weary and to not give up?
Speaker 1: Can you think about it for a second.
Speaker 1: What could it look like?
Speaker 1: Think about your children and your grandchildren, maybe, if you have not had children of your own, think about the children that you serve.
Speaker 1: Think about your co-workers.
Speaker 1: Think about the impact that you could have on your team at work.
Speaker 1: What could it look like if you would remain faithful today?
Speaker 1: So, just like my mom planned out her literal garden at our house, I want to think about today.
Speaker 1: What could we glean from Paul's words in Galatians so that we can have a figuratively fruitful garden in our own lives?
Speaker 1: So again, galatians 6.9 says let us not grow weary in doing good for at the proper time.
Speaker 1: Somebody say proper time, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Speaker 1: So we're going to dive in.
Speaker 1: Fruitful gardens require what do they require?
Speaker 1: Cultivating constancy.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be constant, I'm tired, I don't want to keep going here.
Speaker 1: But no, it requires cultivating constancy.
Speaker 1: How did that verse start?
Speaker 1: Let us not grow weary.
Speaker 1: What does that suppose?
Speaker 1: We're going to grow weary?
Speaker 1: It supposes this is not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: This is not just a cakewalk.
Speaker 1: This is not just simple.
Speaker 1: It requires consistency.
Speaker 1: Now I have to say this is not a try harder sermon.
Speaker 1: This is not a try harder sermon.
Speaker 1: We don't need that.
Speaker 1: We got enough of that in our lives, don't we?
Speaker 1: We don't need to just try harder.
Speaker 1: We need to lean on Jesus more.
Speaker 1: We need to be like Mary, the mother of Jesus, who says let it be to me as you have said when the angel spoke to her.
Speaker 1: Let it be to me as you have said Embracing the season that the Lord has placed before you.
Speaker 1: Galatians 5.16 in the NLT says so.
Speaker 1: I say let the Holy Spirit placed before you.
Speaker 1: Galatians 5.16 in the NLT says so.
Speaker 1: I say let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.
Speaker 1: Then you won't be doing what the sinful nature craves.
Speaker 1: Our sinful nature, if we're totally honest, craves like being weary and being lazy and not doing the hard work.
Speaker 1: But the hard work is good work.
Speaker 1: The hard work, as Pastor Andy preached a few weeks ago, is the very thing that God intended us from the beginning of the world, right.
Speaker 1: He made creation and he said do the work Like.
Speaker 1: This is the beautiful thing I've given you.
Speaker 1: Do the hard work.
Speaker 1: John 15, four, though, says remain in me as I also remain in you.
Speaker 1: No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine.
Speaker 1: So neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
Speaker 1: If we are coming to Jesus and saying I need your help, holy Spirit, what can I do right now?
Speaker 1: I need your insight.
Speaker 1: I don't have the solution to this problem.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm supposed to do next.
Speaker 1: I need you to come and fill me with your very presence, your very ability, your power that can raise the dead, your power that brings dead things to life.
Speaker 1: I already said that, but your power, jesus, that is good enough and strong enough to help me do exceedingly and abundantly more than I could ever ask or imagine.
Speaker 1: What is true is this hard work sometimes does just need to get done right.
Speaker 1: There's so many things in our life.
Speaker 1: We just got to get it done.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about mamas again.
Speaker 1: The diapers need changing, the laundry needs doing, the corporate office needs to report, the lawn needs to be mowed.
Speaker 1: The mundane and seemingly ordinary things are waiting for you.
Speaker 1: They're waiting for you.
Speaker 1: I love this quote by one of my absolute favorite women in like I don't know in history.
Speaker 1: Her name is Elizabeth Elliott and she says this job has been given to me to do.
Speaker 1: Therefore, it's a gift.
Speaker 1: Therefore it's a privilege.
Speaker 1: Therefore it's an offering I may make to God.
Speaker 1: Therefore, it is to be done gladly if it's to be done for him, here, not somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I may learn God's way In this job, not in some other.
Speaker 1: God looks for faithfulness.
Speaker 1: This job, mamas, this job is a gift.
Speaker 1: This job is a privilege.
Speaker 1: This job is an offering, and when we do it unto him, it just fills us up in ways that we could have never experienced before.
Speaker 1: We cannot grow weary because he's in it with us.
Speaker 1: He's in it with us.
Speaker 1: So if you're not feeling like it's very holy work, perhaps it would be wise to surround yourself with some people who are going to encourage you and spur you on.
Speaker 1: This is holy work.
Speaker 1: You can keep going.
Speaker 1: You have more in you.
Speaker 1: You can do this.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to find some hacks, some things that you can kind of do consistently, creating that constancy, so that otherwise, if you just kind of go on autopilot like chaos is just going to ensue.
Speaker 1: If you were to come to my house this past Tuesday and probably the Tuesday before and every Tuesday, there there is a mountain of laundry in my living room.
Speaker 1: Our laundry is in our bathroom and we have one bathroom, and so when it's time to do laundry and it's clean, it goes in the pile on the living room floor waiting for me to fold it, and it waits, and it waits and it waits because I get home and I'm exhausted.
Speaker 1: But if I were wise, exhausted, but if I were wise and I'm growing not there yet I would create patterns and I would develop some constancy of it doesn't go on the living room floor, it gets folded as it comes out of the wash right, it's not that much stuff as it comes out of one.
Speaker 1: But when it piles up and it's eight loads of laundry later, there's literally a fountain that could tower me.
Speaker 1: Loads of laundry later, there's literally a fountain that could tower me.
Speaker 1: Thanks, laundry.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes to fold it.
Speaker 1: There is the sacred laundry pile.
Speaker 1: But perhaps we could develop some rhythms.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we could follow some other mamas, whether it be online or at church.
Speaker 1: Tell me your hacks.
Speaker 1: How did you do this?
Speaker 1: How do you make it happen?
Speaker 1: There's one lady that I follow online.
Speaker 1: Her name is Abby Halberstadt.
Speaker 1: She's a mom of 10.
Speaker 1: And every morning she wakes up, she puts a load of laundry in.
Speaker 1: At lunch she takes it out, she folds it and then her kids put it away.
Speaker 1: That's a hack.
Speaker 1: She's incredible.
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1: Maybe I will someday.
Speaker 1: Not quite yet, that's okay, because we're all growing.
Speaker 1: But we can ask other mamas how they do it.
Speaker 1: We can maybe pick up some books.
Speaker 1: How did they learn how to do this?
Speaker 1: What are some rhythms I can build in?
Speaker 1: How can I develop this constancy so that I don't grow weary, so that I'm taking a little bite at a time instead of trying to take all of it all at once?
Speaker 1: Right, because let's be honest too, everything's in a cycle.
Speaker 1: Your living room, your kitchen and your laundry are not all going to be spotless, and if they are, we know two seconds later it won't be anymore, because we have humans who live in this house.
Speaker 1: But if we remember it's in a cycle and we can remain constant with our cycles and ask the Holy Spirit to be in it with us, maybe we can grow a little bit in that.
Speaker 1: So we're going to not grow weary, because fruitful gardens require cultivating, constancy and then letting go of our timing.
Speaker 1: Letting go of our timing, what does the verse say For at the proper time this word time is not Kronos, like at two o'clock this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Everything will align and life will be perfect and it will be simple again.
Speaker 1: No, this is Kairos, and it's like it's an appointed time at just the right time.
Speaker 1: God is going to do the work.
Speaker 1: Time.
Speaker 1: God is going to do the work.
Speaker 1: Hb Charles Jr says harvest doesn't happen in a hurry.
Speaker 1: Present labor results in future reward.
Speaker 1: It's at the proper time.
Speaker 1: A future reward is coming.
Speaker 1: Time often isn't exactly what we planned right.
Speaker 1: Not getting the job that you want right out of college.
Speaker 1: You figured you'd get noticed for your talents, but you're not.
Speaker 1: Potty training is taking forever.
Speaker 1: You're four years old and still not sleeping through the night.
Speaker 1: You're still reminding your team to do their chores.
Speaker 1: Your department is closing and you want a solution now.
Speaker 1: I want it now.
Speaker 1: Makes me think of Veruca Salt from Charlie and Chakram.
Speaker 2: I want it now.
Speaker 1: But we have to let go of our own timing.
Speaker 1: One of my really good friends, happy Thorpe, a little while ago moved from Illinois to New York and for as long as I can remember, happy has had this desire to write a book and it's been like deep inside of her.
Speaker 1: And for as long as I can remember, happy has had this desire to write a book and it's been like deep inside of her and yet like nothing's really happened toward that goal.
Speaker 1: And yet the Lord in his infinite wisdom placed her at a church in New York where there are all these like kind of really famous writers, and she got around some of them and she kind of started getting a little more encouraged and she joined this book club about the writer's way, and she thought it was just a book club, but it actually ended up being like an 18-month intensive of how to write a book and all these things.
Speaker 1: And even with that, though, she's like I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But one day a friend looked her straight in the eye and said I don't want to hear another word from you about feeling stuck and not knowing what it is you're going to say until you've tried this thing called morning pages.
Speaker 1: She was like all right, fine.
Speaker 1: So morning pages is where you start every morning and you just start writing, and maybe it's journaling to the Lord, maybe it's writing about the sun coming up, maybe it's writing about the flower that you saw blooming, maybe it's for her.
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases it's writing about the crazy things that she sees on the New York subway.
Speaker 1: But she said, after only two weeks of doing that consistently, some creativity sparked and an idea came to mind.
Speaker 1: And then it was about maybe four months later that she was like okay, I think I want to pursue this.
Speaker 1: And then, about five months later, she started writing.
Speaker 1: She's been writing for about a year now and she is at 142,000 words and the book is awesome.
Speaker 1: I've begun reading only a piece of it so far.
Speaker 1: She's sending it to me in installments.
Speaker 1: But if you would have asked her 12 years ago if she'd be writing a book while working full-time and planning this out, she would have been like there is no possible way, but at the proper time at the proper time, at just the right time, it will come.
Speaker 1: I'm sure almost everybody in here has a dream, a hope, an aspiration, a great desire for your life and the lives around you, and I'm also positive that the Lord planted some of that dream in your heart and the Bible says that he wants to give us the desires of our heart when they align with his.
Speaker 1: So if your timeline is looking just a little bit different than you hoped, don't give up.
Speaker 1: Don't grow weary in doing good.
Speaker 1: Sarah in the Bible had to wait 80 years for her baby to come.
Speaker 1: The Israelites had to wait 40 years to get to Canaan.
Speaker 1: Joseph had to wait probably about 20 years, from the time that he had the dream about all the moon and stars bowing down to him to the time where he had the dream about all the moon and stars bowing down to him, to the time where he was finally alongside Pharaoh and was in the position to save the entire nation of Egypt and all of the surrounding nations.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: It's at the proper time at the proper time, all right.
Speaker 1: So faithful gardens require cultivating constancy.
Speaker 1: We got to get those rhythms in motion, letting go of our timing, remembering that we are not in charge, but God is.
Speaker 1: And number three, it's persevering through the pain.
Speaker 1: There are days, y'all, where it is just not easy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to preemptively get Kleenex out and I apologize now.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of briars and trials in our lives that we can endure.
Speaker 1: My mom I come from kind of a split family, so my mom had been married before and had two kids and she grew up here in Round Lake and then married this guy and moved down to Texas.
Speaker 1: And then married this guy and moved down to Texas and, y'all, he was not a good guy and she was in a very unsafe marriage and she knew she needed to get out.
Speaker 1: And so, with like a six and a five-year-old, she jumped in her car and drove all the way back up to Illinois to move in with my grandparents and to be faithful.
Speaker 1: She decided I can't give up in this.
Speaker 1: I can't just resign this.
Speaker 1: I can't do this to my kids.
Speaker 1: There's more for my kids than this.
Speaker 1: This is unsafe, unhealthy.
Speaker 1: I have a dream and a future for them.
Speaker 1: And she started working really, really hard.
Speaker 1: Single mamas, you are incredible.
Speaker 1: I know it is not easy, but your faithfulness is moving mountains for you and your kids and your grandkids and every generation hereafter.
Speaker 1: My mom worked full time at Joanne Fabrics May it rest in peace and she worked really, really hard.
Speaker 1: And then eventually she met my dad and they got married and had me and she continued to remain faithful, like we were a family that really didn't have a lot of income, but she just kept sewing.
Speaker 1: And you know what she did.
Speaker 1: She worked with kids because she was determined to not have any other kid have the littlest self-doubt, self-confidence.
Speaker 1: She grew up feeling like she just wasn't worthy, which is why she stepped into this relationship and she wanted to make sure that every kid that she met knew Jesus, loved them, he had a purpose for them and he had good things in store for them.
Speaker 1: She was not willing to let them just walk past.
Speaker 1: And so my mom was really faithful, even though it was hard, even though there were days where, like, we didn't have a lot of food, we didn't have a lot of money, but she just kept remaining faithful.
Speaker 1: She had to persevere through the pain.
Speaker 1: The fruit is a little bit dependent on our perseverance, isn't it, if you do not grow up?
Speaker 1: There's a story of this lady, florence Chadwick.
Speaker 1: She was a female swimmer in the 50s.
Speaker 1: She was known for she was an American swimmer known long-distance open-water swimming.
Speaker 1: She was the first woman to swim across the English Channel in both directions, setting a record each time.
Speaker 1: Well, she decided one day she lived in California, she wanted to go from Catalina Island to the California coast and it was a 26-mile swim, 26 miles.
Speaker 1: It was in deep fog, and she was getting to it 15 hours in 15 hours.
Speaker 1: Into this thing, she gave up.
Speaker 1: She gave up and she said I'm not excusing myself, but if I could just have seen the land, I might have made it.
Speaker 1: She was only a mile away.
Speaker 1: Y'all, if we do not give up, sometimes we can't see the thing that's coming, but our present faithfulness is what is going to make it happen.
Speaker 1: We got to just keep going.
Speaker 1: Do not give up.
Speaker 1: And what I love in this verse is if we do persevere, then there's a promise.
Speaker 1: So if we want to have fruitful gardens, they require cultivating constancy, they require letting go of my timing, persevering through pain and, finally, confident expectation.
Speaker 1: And I think this might be the secret sauce Confident expectation.
Speaker 1: The verse says you will reap a harvest.
Speaker 1: You will reap a harvest.
Speaker 1: There is a promise tucked right in there you will reap a harvest.
Speaker 1: If you do not give up, you will reap a harvest.
Speaker 1: The hard work isn't for nothing.
Speaker 1: There is promised fruit coming.
Speaker 1: When my mom left Texas, betcha, she had no idea that my sister would grow up, go to Trinity to be a missionary and she would affect all these kids.
Speaker 1: When she went to Denmark to start this television show in Denmark, I betcha, she would have had no idea that my brother would end up having four kids, three of which are triplets.
Speaker 1: And he's a good man.
Speaker 1: He loves his wife and he loves his kids and he works hard.
Speaker 1: He's faithful in ways that his dad didn't show him how to be.
Speaker 1: But my mom had the future hope, that confident expectation.
Speaker 1: If I do the hard thing now, it's going to produce fruit in the future.
Speaker 1: She would have never gotten to see.
Speaker 2: She never really did get to see that I'm sitting here preaching on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 2: That's like mind-boggling to me y'all.
Speaker 1: She did that Her faithfulness to watch Jesus, to trust him, to pour into me, to make sure that I had the foundation of knowing Jesus, to make sure that I had the foundation of knowing Jesus, to make sure that I had the foundation of God's word.
Speaker 1: She never got to see it, but her faithfulness reaped a harvest, and it's not just her kids.
Speaker 1: My mom taught children's church for years and she also was a preschool teacher and y'all.
Speaker 1: Those roots go out far and I am confident when we get to heaven we're going to see all of the people that were affected by my mom's faithfulness.
Speaker 1: Mamas, your faithfulness today is producing a legacy of beauty that you may not get to see.
Speaker 1: Beauty that you may not get to see, but at the proper time, at the proper time you will reap a harvest if you do not give up.
Speaker 1: Talking about Caleb, my six-year-old again, he loves this new show.
Speaker 1: It's called Weird, but True, it's a super cool show.
Speaker 1: He's a geeky science nerdy kid and the most recent episode and I got like locked in and paid attention was about giant sequoias and I mean y'all these things are huge.
Speaker 1: Pastor Carter talked about them just a few weeks ago, like they're so huge that people didn't even believe that they were real when they first saw them.
Speaker 1: Anyway, there are 400 seeds in each cone and there are about 4,000 cones on this tree.
Speaker 1: Math Mama, mrs Gordon, how many is that?
Speaker 1: 400 times 4,000?
Speaker 1: She's got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 1.6 billion.
Speaker 1: She's got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 1.6 billion.
Speaker 1: Right, 400 by the times fourth.
Speaker 1: Anyway, whatever, it's a lot of seeds.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of seeds.
Speaker 1: I totally put you on the spot.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's so many seeds, guys.
Speaker 1: One tree, that many seeds.
Speaker 1: Your faithfulness today could have ridiculous fruitfulness in so many corners of the world that you can't even see today.
Speaker 1: Confident expectation, the Lord is going to do it.
Speaker 1: It's huge.
Speaker 1: So how do we keep that confident expectation?
Speaker 1: Maybe for some of us, your step is just to keep a journal where you're seeing okay, god, like I actually followed you in this, I have small acts of obedience.
Speaker 1: God, I thank you.
Speaker 1: You're producing things in me.
Speaker 1: This is much better than I was before.
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking me to the next step.
Speaker 1: It might just be a small thing, but thank you for helping me sow that small seed of obedience.
Speaker 1: Maybe a step would be to actually regularly serve someone else, because then you stop thinking about me Am I making progress and you start going.
Speaker 1: Am I sowing faithfulness in others?
Speaker 1: How can you develop confident expectation?
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to share your harvest stories with other people.
Speaker 1: Y'all.
Speaker 1: This is how God got me through this season.
Speaker 1: This is what he did in my life.
Speaker 1: I need you to know, because I need your faith to be encouraged by what he's done for me.
Speaker 1: We can help each other develop that confident expectation.
Speaker 1: Single mamas, maybe a thing for you would be to create a God's help tracker on things where you, every time you sense man, the Lord just carried me through that you write it down.
Speaker 1: Everything of provision, every moment that you had peace that you didn't think was possible, you're writing it down and you're remembering oh yeah, that's right, god did that, he can do it again, that he can do it again.
Speaker 1: He's good.
Speaker 1: And if we keep confident expectation, it's like that cycle again, when we have that faith and that hope and that remembering that God is good and he's done this before, it helps us to not grow weary again.
Speaker 1: So let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Speaker 1: Y'all.
Speaker 1: There's this trend on Facebook right now, with the rise of AI.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1: There's this trend to like, pop a picture of your backyard or your garden into chat GBT and then say design me a beautiful garden.
Speaker 1: And so this is how this one began.
Speaker 1: But how does it turn out?
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's pretty.
Speaker 1: Look at that.
Speaker 1: Glow up.
Speaker 1: Let's see another one.
Speaker 1: All right, I mean that's pretty.
Speaker 1: How's it turn out?
Speaker 1: Look at all those flowers.
Speaker 1: One more oh, I mean that's a decent backyard.
Speaker 1: How do they make it better?
Speaker 1: Ooh, right.
Speaker 1: But I want to encourage you.
Speaker 1: Let's ask the ultimate AI.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get cheesy here.
Speaker 1: The almighty Emmanuel, the all-powerful God, is with you.
Speaker 1: He knows what's best.
Speaker 1: He you're laughing, sorry he has the best design in mind for you.
Speaker 1: What could it look like if you slowed down and said Jesus, what do you want my life to look like?
Speaker 1: What do you want my family to look like?
Speaker 1: What do you want my personality and my character to look like at work?
Speaker 1: How do you want to use my present faithfulness to produce a future fruitfulness?
Speaker 1: Dream about what could be.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's something today or over this next week, that you take some time and you slow down and you ask Jesus, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: Create a garden for me.
Speaker 1: Help me to see what next steps I need to do, and then plan it out.
Speaker 1: Start drawing it out.
Speaker 1: Start writing it out.
Speaker 1: Jesus, I want to see this look like this.
Speaker 1: I want to see this look like this.
Speaker 1: Do it in me first, jesus.
Speaker 1: Transform me first.
Speaker 1: That's maybe a cautionary tale for some of us.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, in the waiting, we want to change everybody else.
Speaker 1: No, jesus, what do you want to change in me?
Speaker 1: What do you want to change in me first?
Speaker 1: And then y'all?
Speaker 1: We got to put our hands to work.
Speaker 1: We got to stay constant, we got to stay trusting, persevering and confident.
Speaker 1: And y'all do not quit.
Speaker 1: Watch the Lord bring the harvest.
Speaker 1: There is a Chinese bamboo tree that, if you plant the seed in the ground, nothing's going to happen for five years.
Speaker 1: Five years.
Speaker 1: You planted the seed, nothing for five years.
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 1: And over those five years, though, there are roots that are going down and spreading out and preparing the plant, because at that fifth year, in only one year, it will shoot up 80 feet, up 80 feet.
Speaker 1: Don't stop now, friends.
Speaker 1: The Lord is doing things in the soil of your life that you may not even see until heaven.
Speaker 1: But by doing that, he is producing a garden in and through you for the next generation and the next generation and the next generation, and through you for the next generation and the next generation and the next generation, and he is the Lord of the harvest.
Speaker 1: He will be faithful to complete the good work he's begun in you.
Speaker 1: Would y'all pray with me, jesus?
Speaker 1: We thank you for your presence.
Speaker 1: We thank you, god, that you are the one who does actually all the hard work here.
Speaker 1: We plant the seed, but you water and make it grow.
Speaker 1: So, god, help us to be faithful today.
Speaker 1: Help us to trust you as we sow to you, as we put things in the ground, as we remain faithful, as we choose to not grow weary in the doing good.
Speaker 1: Help us to remember it is a good and holy work.
Speaker 1: Help us to release the timing of it to you and to entrust.
Speaker 1: You're going to bring the harvest.
Speaker 1: I don't know how, jesus, but I'm so excited because you've done it for centuries before and you're not going to stop now.
Speaker 1: So, no, neither will I.
Speaker 1: We love you, king Jesus, in your name we pray Amen.
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