In The Middle Of It | Real Springcreek Church | Pastor Jerrid Fletcher

IN THE MIDDLE OF IT
Pastor Jerrid Fletcher 
Sunday, July 12, 2026

In The Middle Of It is a message about learning to see the space between promise and possession — the waiting, the delay, the unresolved season — not as evidence God has forgotten you, but as the classroom where He does His deepest work. Before we can learn there, we have to deal with the whispers that convince us we've been overlooked, taking every thought captive and renewing our minds in truth. From there, Scripture shows a pattern: God didn't wait outside Israel's wilderness, Joseph's prison, or the disciples' storm — He moved into the middle of each one. Using Elijah's cave, the desert, the grave, and the storm as case studies, and then walking verse by verse through Psalm 27, the sermon traces David's posture shifting from bold declaration to broken petition to a soul preaching courage back into itself — proof that the middle isn't wasted space, it's where faith gets shaped, tested, and made real. The charge: stop asking only "how do I get out of this," and start asking "what is God teaching me while I'm in it."

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

1. What's a "whisper" you've had to fight recently — a thought that sounded reasonable but didn't actually sound like God? How did you test it?
2. Think of a "middle" season in your own life — a wilderness, a delay, an unanswered prayer. Looking back now, can you see anything God was building in you during it that you couldn't see at the time?
3. Of the four classrooms discussed (Cave, Desert, Grave, Storm), which one feels closest to where you are right now? What do you think it's trying to teach you?
4. David's posture in Psalm 27 shifts from standing tall and declarative (v.1-3) to on his face, pleading (v.7-9). Why do you think honest faith includes both postures? Is one harder for you than the other?
5. The sermon draws a line between "surviving the middle" and "learning in it." What would it look like, practically, for you to shift from one to the other this week?
6. Psalm 27:14 tells us to "wait on the Lord" twice. What makes waiting the second time harder than the first — and what helps you keep your courage up when you're still waiting?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Listen, today I want to dive into a topic that even I've struggled with. I want to be very honest, but also I want to take my time today and teach. You know, Pastor Jarrett can get very excited and I can talk really, really fast like I'm in an auction. You know, Jesus don't need an auction. He don't need an auctioneer. But today, there's a lot of meat in um in my sermon, and I kind of want to walk us through. So by the time I get to the back half of my sermon, I'm gonna slow it down and I want to walk us through the text. Y'all good with that? Y'all okay this morning? All right, let's pray. Uh let's go to God. If you're driving and watching this, do not close your eyes. Father, I'm grateful. I thank you so much for this opportunity. I thank you for this amazing body of believers who've gathered here today to worship your name, to hear your word, Father, but to say, God, what are you doing with my life? Father, give them answers today. Give them your peace, but more than anything, give them your presence. Lord, we love you. We thank you. In Jesus, we pray. Amen. Now you know the way I operate. If you say amen, I get you out of here fast. It's 11:14. If you say amen, I get you out of here at 12. If not, 2.15 sounds real good. Y'all would never just talk it if Pastor Keith is up here. I know something. I want to start this sermon off this morning by taking you back to my childhood for a second. 17 years ago, there was this song written that lived in the African American church, and it was a song that echoed through the walls. The songwriter wrote the song without ever knowing the people who would sing it, nor the congregants who would listen and join in on the song. The song was a plea to God, to God to show up in that person's life. Have you ever needed God to show up in your life this morning? You good this morning? Okay, yeah, I got it. That's your first test. Talk back to me. If you're in the chat, you can respond too. But the songwriter wrote a song that was in a posture of needing deliverance, needing God's healing, needing God's breakthrough. Have you ever been in a place in your life where you needed God to heal, to deliver, or give you a breakthrough? Is that you this morning? The songwriter wrote a simple yet meaningful and powerful song. The song has a name and it's called Don't Do It Without Me, written by Bishop Paul S. Morton. The lyrics go like this Lord, whatever you're doing in this season, please don't do it without me. Then he would say, Please don't do it without me. Then he would continue to write on. He'd say, Lord, if you're healing in this season, please don't do it without me. Then he would say, if you're delivering in this season, if you're gonna bless in this season, he would say, Lord, don't do it without me. And I have a question. Does anybody want that same prayer response this morning? Lord, whatever you're doing in this season of heaven, whatever you're doing, please do not do it without me. Anyone this morning? Lord, if you're gonna bless people, bless me too. Lord, if you're gonna deliver people, deliver me too. Lord, if you're gonna heal people, heal me too. Anybody got that same prayer this morning? Lord, whatever you're doing in the season in the kingdom of heaven, Lord, please just don't do it without me. The songwriter implies it with a passionate plea for the Lord not to forget him in this season. And maybe today you're just like this songwriter. You're not asking God for a miracle this morning. You're simply asking him not to leave you and not to forget you, not to move on before you receive what he started in you while you're still standing and waiting in the middle of your season. Because that's the fear, isn't it? Not that God isn't real, not that God isn't able, because we know God is able. The fear isn't even about God's capacity, because we know God is not limited, He's not divided, and He does not run out of attention. The fear is not knowing how long our season of trouble will last. Have you ever been there in a season of trouble and you ask God, God, how long am I gonna be in this season? Have you ever had a how long type of moment, Lord? How long am I gonna be here? How long will I struggle? How long will I have to go through this? How long will I be in this particular season? And some of you this morning, let me slow down because I feel a little anxious, have walked in here with the same type of tension on your shoulders, asking God, how long is this going to last? Is there anybody this morning? How long is this going to last? And here's the tension point that the fear begins to talk to us. Because fear wants something in us to believe that somehow we could be overlooked and even forgotten about by God. The enemy wants you and me and us to believe that God is too busy, that he's working on everyone else, that he's somewhere else besides in our situation, and we're not on his list this morning. And it's a real feeling in us, and I'll be honest with that, because I've battled with the thoughts and heart in my mind in my season of trouble that I began to believe that God has forgotten about me, especially when I need to feel God's closeness instead of his distance. Have you ever been in the season where you just wanted God to feel close versus the distance that sometimes we feel? Anybody there this morning? I want to pull us in this morning, so I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions because there are seasons where I've seen him move for my coworkers. There are seen where I've seen him moving for my for my family, there are seasons where I've seen him move for my friends, and of course, I see it on Facebook, I see him post it, and the question that fear wants me to ask is Lord, when will it be my turn? Have you ever asked God, when will it be my turn? When will it be me? When will you deliver me? When will you heal me? When will you give me the same breakthrough that you've given everybody else? I've been there. And that's what fear does. It whispers to you, when is it going to be you? When are you going to be next? And my question is, have you ever battled with those silent whispers? Have you ever battled with silent whispers? Whispers things like, maybe God has forgotten about you. Maybe this delay means God is disappointed in you. Nothing is going to happen. And the fear and those whispers that the enemy tells you to give up and your prayers aren't going to make a difference. And the one whisper that gets me all the time, the devil tries to whisper to me, and maybe to you too, that if God was going to do it, he would have done it by now. Have you ever been there? Have you ever heard the devil tell you, well, if God was going to do it, he would have done it by now? Because sometimes the enemy makes you feel this anxiousness that if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. But the resistance that we have to face this morning and the realization that we need to realize is that the devil doesn't get to rush God's timeline. And that's the trick this morning is never to allow the enemy to rush God's timeline in your mind. Because the devil wants to speed up your mind to make you miss the blessing while God is trying to keep you in the process to refine you and to make you and to mold you. But if you allow the devil to get you out of God's will, making you think that God has forgotten about you, you will miss the blessing. And my prayer and my hope this morning to you is that you don't allow the enemy to whisper things in your mind to make you think that God has ridden you off. Y'all with me so far? So my question is: what do we do with these whispers? Number one, we test every voice. Somebody say test every voice. There you go. Now first service talked back to me real well. They was out of here in 30 minutes. Gina, I mean first service was out here in 45. See how I lifted that time real fast. You test every voice. Before you agree with a thought in your mind, test it first and ask one question. Does this sound like God? 1 John chapter 4, verse 1 says, Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit to see whether it is from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Number two, you have to take your thoughts captive. Somebody say, Take your thoughts captive. There you go. In 2 Corinthians, Paul gives us a strategy. He says, we demolish arguments, every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take captive every single thought and make it obedient to Christ. He doesn't say push the thoughts down, he says you have to take it captive. And that is the battlefield word. That's the move. You got to interrogate everything the devil ever says to you. Is this true? That's the first thing you ask yourself. Is this true? Does it line up with what God has said? And is it pulling me to Christ or is it pulling me away from Christ? And if it can't stand to those questions, then it doesn't get to keep a post in your mind. Y'all with me so far? Let's keep on riding. Number three, you have to renew your mind. Somebody say, renew your mind. You have to know this isn't a one-time fight. It isn't one in what you keep, it's it's one in what you keep feeding yourself day after day. Now I'm gonna put a pause here. My question to you is what are you feeding your soul every day? Think about that for a second. What are you feeding your soul every day? Is it Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Love Island, Love is Blind. I'm just teleporting I'll be watching, that's all. This is a big one. What you feed your mind every day is important. And the voices you listen to every day is equally important. Because there are people who think they know it all about your situation. There are people who think they know God better than the God that's inside of you. There are people who think they know all the answers to your problem when the truth is the only voice you really need to listen to in your season of trouble is the voice of God. So my question to you is what are you feeding your soul every day? Romans 12, verse 2 says, Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what is God's will, his good and pleasing and perfect will. One thing I learned is you cannot consistently think lies, meditate on lies, and consistently walk in freedom. Those things cannot live together. The truth is if you have to go in there and tear down every lie the devil has ever told you. And you got to tear it down from all the way down to the studs and rebuild it with the divine truth. The truth that God is a healer, the truth that God is a deliverer, the truth that God would never leave you or forsake you. Those are the truths that you have to feed your soul when the devil wants to feed you the lies. Amen. Because every you you have to know that. Because there are times when the devil will feed you opposite of what the Lord has ever told you. And that is the fight to renew your mind. Number four, fix your mind on what's true. Somebody say, fix your mind on what's true. There you go. I've learned that where your attention lives, your direction follows. Where your attention lives, your direction follows. Y'all with me so far? Philippians 4, verse 8 says this whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if any of these things is excellent or praiseworthy, he says, think on these such things. Paul is not telling us to deny what's real. He's not telling us to deny that we're going through. He's not telling us to deny trouble. He's telling us to deliberately dwell on what's true and what's real. Because what's real and true are not always the same voice competing for your attention. We know that, right? What's real and true isn't always the loudest voice in our mind. And I'm guilty of listening to the opposite of what's real and true. Because sometimes, thank you, Holy Ghost, because sometimes the devil will feed me a lie to hurry up and get through trouble faster. I'll get there in a second. Number five, now this is a big one. Bring your anxieties to God. Somebody say, bring your anxieties to God. I'm a camp here for a second. This is the most important one of all of them. Learning to be honest with God about where you are. Learning to be honest, let me say this slow. To be honest with God. Not honest with your neighbor, not honest with your best friend, not honest with even us as pastors, but learning to be honest with God first about where you are. To say, Father, here I am. It's me, your son, it's me, your daughter. I'm I'm in need. There's an old song. I'm on, I want to know if y'all know. There's an old song that says, It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. And didn't the songwriter said, Not my mother, not my father, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. And that's the type of posture we gotta have with God is to say, Lord, it's me. I'm in trouble. Lord, it's me, I need help. Lord, it's me, I need you to deliver. That's the type of honesty and posture that we need to have with God. And I had to learn that by living out the simple truth. I had to learn to be hot with God. Now pause. I'm not talking about Nelly, it's getting hot and hurt. No, leave your clothes on with God, and please leave them on the church. I had to learn to get hot. And here's what I mean by hot. To get honest. Oh, some of y'all, I had to learn to get hot with God. I'm gonna leave that there for a second. Honest, open, and transparent. I had to be honest, open and transparent with God. Leave that there for a second, Jules. Because too many times I was having a superficial relationship with God in my prayer life. Here's how I would go, Lord. Well, thanks for another day. Yeah, I'm having, I'm going to, but I know you're gonna do it. Amen. When the Lord, I had to learn to develop, to tell God my truth, and the truth that he already knew. There were moments and seasons of my life that I was hurting. I needed him closer, I needed him to deliver, to make a way, and to send a breakthrough just like many of us this morning. But I had to get honest, open, and transparent with God. And that looks like us saying, Lord, it is me. It is whatever your name is, it's Jared. And because my mom's here, it's Carolyn, it's Edwin, it's Shantae, it's him, whatever your name is. God always say, God, it's me, your servant. That's how we approach God first. Lord, it's me. And I need you to help me with me. Have you ever had that type of honest open and transparent with God? God help me with me. 1 Peter 5 says this cast all your anxiety on him. Because he what? Because he cares. That's why we're honest, open, and transparent with God, because he cares. And the trick of the enemy is to get you to believe that you have been forgotten about, that you're cast away, and that you don't matter when in fact the opposite is true. And what I learned is when is what you carry in silence gets louder every day, you carry it. But you was when you surrender it out loud, it starts losing its grip. We have to test those thoughts, take those thoughts, renew those thoughts, speak over those thoughts, and fix our eyes past whatever the enemy is trying to tell us. Because here's what we have to understand: that whispers, they don't need to be loud to be believed. We don't have to say, yes, that's true, out loud for it to start taking shape of how we pray, how we hope, and how we show up. Because here's what I want you to know a whisper we never fight becomes a belief we we never notice we pick up. And a belief we never fight becomes the lens we start seeing our whole life through. The question, for a second, I want to pull the room in for a second. I want to ask you a question. Right now, in the chair you're sitting in, whether it be vanilla, black, or red, whatever chair you're sitting in this morning, I want to ask you a real question. What season of life are you in right now? No? Don't answer that loud? Because we have a good old-fashioned testimony service in here. Y'all remember those old-fashioned testimony services? So y'all to grow up a little smaller church, didn't you? Well, the whole church was the testimony service. Yeah, we're not gonna do that. I want you to pause for a second. I want you to pause for a second and think about what season of life you're in right now. Because if we're honest, every person in this room is standing somewhere in between the story that God is still writing and the answers and the prayers that you're still waiting on. Some of us are celebrating, some of us are grieving, some of us are waiting, some of us are wondering if God is ever going to show up. And many of us are living in the space between what God has promised and what we currently see. And that's the place I want to talk about. That place has a name, and it's called the middle. Can we talk through the middle for a second? I want to kind of explain what I mean by the middle. The middle isn't a mood, it's a location. Scripture is a book that is obsessed with geography, mountains, valleys, wilderness, rivers. In the middle is one of the most repeated addresses. What I discovered is that God doesn't just show up at the beginning of things or collect the glory at the end. In the Bible, over and over, we find that he plants himself directly in the middle and says, I'll meet you there. So before we go anywhere else, let's plainly define this plainly. The middle is a space between the promise and the possession, between the word of God spoke over your life and the life you can actually hold in your hand. The middle is where God shapes your faith. It's where your trust is tested, it's where your hope is refined. It's where dependence is learned. And often it's where God becomes more real than he ever has before. The middle is where our questions live, it's where our faith gets tested. The middle is where God fills the quietest in, even though he's still working. Because sometimes the greatest miracle isn't that God gets you out of something. Sometimes the greatest miracle is discovering he never left you in the middle of it. Can I say that one more time? Sometimes the greatest miracle isn't that God gets you out of something. Sometimes the greatest miracle is discovering he never left you in the middle of it. The middle is often one of the most uncomfortable places we could ever live. It's standing between the prayer you prayed and the answers you're still waiting on. It's living in the tension between the memory and the promise, between the loss and the rest of the restoration, between Friday's cross and Sunday's resurrection. The middle is uncomfortable because it doesn't always provide certainty or clarity. It doesn't offer clear expectations or easy answers. The middle asks us something instead. It asks us to trust what we cannot see, to believe what we do not understand, and to keep walking when the destination seems out of reach. That's what the middle does. The middle is where control slips through our fingers, and faith becomes more about wording than we sing on Sunday morning. I've learned that the middle has a way of exposing what's really inside of us. It reveals our fears, our impatience, our need for control, our insecurity, and the things we've kindly placed outside of the confidence of God. Yet, as difficult as the middle can be, it's often the place where God does his deepest work. Y'all with me so far? For example, let's consider what I call the wilderness generation. Israel learned who God was in the middle of the wilderness before they ever entered the promised land. Israel left Egypt. That was the beginning. That was the miracle. That was the Red Sea splitting. But they did not walk from Egypt straight into Canaan. There's what we call the Messy middle, 40 years of it. And here's what's easy to miss: that God did not disappear in their middle. He showed up right in the middle of it. Exodus 13 tells us that God went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud by fire, uh day, by fire, by night, not after the wilderness, not before it, but during it, every single day. The wilderness wasn't punishment for for their unbelief only, it was also factually where manna fell, where the water came out from the rock, where the law was given, where the tabernacle was built, and almost everything that shaped Israel into a people happened in the middle, not in Egypt and not in Canaan. Next, y'all still with me? Let's take Joseph. Joseph was formed in the prison long before he stood in Pharaoh's palace. Sold at 17, ruling Egypt at 30, but there were 13 years in between all of that. And in those 13 years, a pit happened, a slave ship happened, false accusations happened, a prison cell happened. And Genesis 39 says flatly twice that the Lord was with Joseph in the middle of it all. In in that the pastor Potiphar, and even at the prison itself. Not the Lord rescued Joseph from him, but the Lord made himself present in the middle of everything that the wilderness generation was going through and what Joseph was going through. And if the wilderness can survive it, if Joseph can survive it, then baby, I don't know who you're looking at because you can survive it too. That was my preaching moment. Because some of you are wondering if God is going to show up in the middle of the wilderness. We're wondering if he's going to show up in your pit experience, in your in your prison experience. You're wondering where God is. And there's people that preceded us in the word of God. Joseph can tell you, Daniel and Elias did tell you, the three Hebrew boys can tell you. They are all evidence of God's goodness and his mercy showing up right when we thought God was tapped out. Baby, God don't tap out, God taps right into your situation. And if you're in the middle of it, just hold on a little while longer. Okay? I gotta touch, I gotta touch this, Gina, because I feel I get excited when I think about how God shows up. I get excited when I think about how God never left me, how God didn't leave me for dead. I get excited when I think about how God showed up when the devil tried to count me out. I get excited when I think about God coming into my situation and delivering me when the world left me for dead. I get excited. There's something inside of me. It's like fire shut up in my bones. There's a fire that burns inside of me when I think about the goodness of God and all that He's done for me. There's a fire that gets me excited every time I hear your testimony of how God built you out, how God delivers you from cancer, how God heals your body, how God set one of your family members free. There's exciting, there's an excitement that enlightens my soul that tells me that God is still real. And he's still reigning on the throne. We have to know that the middle is not God's waiting room while he decides what he wants to do. The middle is God's workshop. It's where forming happens, it's where testing happens, it's where our identity gets settled. Because anybody can hold on to God at the start when the excitement feels fresh, and anybody can praise God at the end while they're holding on to the answer. But the middle is the only place that tells you the truth about who you actually are. The middle. And I've learned this truth that God is just as present in the process as he is in the promise. And I don't know who's going through a process this morning, but I want you to know that God is right there with you. If you're going through a health scare, God is right there with you. If you're going through grief, God is right there with you. If you're going through a transition, God is right there with you. If you're trying to figure out where he is, he's right there. God is right there. Somebody say God is right there with me. Sometimes it's hard to realize God is right there because pain has a way of narrowing our vision. Pain has a way of having, of letting things begin to see, to seem narrow and small. Charles Spurgeon said this: God is too good to be unkind. He's too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace his hand, we must trust his heart. Oswald Chambers said it better. When God gives you a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will bring the vision he has given to you, real given to you reality in your life if you just wait on his timing. That's what Oswald Chambers said. But Paul David Tripp said it the best. He said, waiting isn't an interruption, waiting isn't an interruption of God's plan. It is his plan. That's what Charles said. He said, waiting isn't an interruption of God's plan. Waiting is God's plan, which brings me, see, most of us treat the middle like a waiting room. We sit down, we pick up our phone, we avoid eye contact, we just wait to hear our name call so we can get out. But what if God designed the middle to be a waiting room? What if he designed the middle to be a classroom? What if what you're going through right now isn't you just waiting on God, but it's a classroom where God can teach you about what you need to learn in the middle. I was on the phone with Aunt Annie, I know Aunt Annie, right? My I talk about Aunt Annie and Uncle John all the time. Uh and I was on the phone with Aunt Annie and she said, Jared, she said, what you gonna preach about tomorrow? I said, in the middle of it. She said, Ooh. I said, what the ooh's for? She said, explain that to me. I said, Auntie, here's what the Lord revealed to me. That when we're in the middle of something, that means there was a beginning and there's gonna be an end. Y'all with me so far? And there's also a middle. Sure, we're going to get out. That's that's the certainty. But what's not certain is that we take a posture of learning in the middle. That we learn whatever God is trying to teach us in the middle of our storm. Which brings me to what I like to call the classrooms of God. In a second, now I want to slow down. In a second, I'm gonna show us a graphic, and I want to teach these graphics for a second. This classroom is what I call three in one. Can you put that up for me, Jules? Three in one. This classroom is where God is the professor, God is the subject, and we're using God's textbook. Have you ever been in a class where the teacher is the subject you're learning about, and the subject you're learning about wrote the whole textbooks for the class, but the book has a past, present, and future subjects that pertain to your life, all spoken and written by the one who's teaching the class? Have you ever been there? Have you ever been to the three and one? I haven't. In my life, I have sat in many classrooms, you have as well, but none of that has a teacher like the one we're gonna talk about today. I want to introduce a graphic in a second. But before I do that, I feel it necessary to lay a foundation real quick. Jules, let's put the next slide up. I want to talk about real quick why God uses classrooms to teach and develop us, what's the purpose of them, and why we must pay attention to this classroom. Now, I asked Jules the first ever to lead it up, we can leave it up again. Because I want you to I want to answer these questions, but I want to leave them up so you can see what they are. Y'all good with that? Question number one: Why are classrooms important? Because formation doesn't happen on a platform alone, it happens in the room none of us applied for. Romans 5, 3 and 4 say this. So it doesn't say that suffering produces glory directly. It says suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. That's a syllabus, not a shortcut. James 1, 2 through 4 says the same, that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness, and steadfastness has to finish its work before we complete it. See, none of us want the class, but all of us want the diploma. But there, but there's no diploma without attendance. Can I say that one more time? None of us want to go to class. Some of y'all, I could tell, skip class when you was in school. I see a bunch of high school. It was you, wasn't it? David, I know you skipped class. You two, Dylan. Miss Margaret, you too. You ain't safe. You two. None of us really want the class. None of us want the storm. I don't know anybody in this church that gets up and says, Hey Lord, that hard class, sign me up for that. That trouble, I'll take two classes of those. Anyone do that? Because there's so many times got some annoyed noise with your name on it. Pastor Jessica's gonna be able to lay hands on you in a minute. I don't know anybody who signs up willingly for trouble. But we want to pass the class of trouble. We want the diploma. But in order to get the diploma into graduation, we have to attend the class. Which means we gotta sit there, we gotta go through whatever we gotta go through in order to get the completion or the certificate of diploma. Amen? So, in other words, buckle your seatbelt, pay attention, and write your notes in class. Number two, what's the purpose of them? The purpose of God's classrooms is just not only to teach us something new, but to reveal something deeper. In his classroom, God reveals his nature, he exposes our hearts, he reminds us that his presence is enough in every season. Because by the time the lesson is over, by the time the class is over, you may not and we may not have every answer to the lesson, but we should know more about the teacher. And in this case, God is the teacher. Number three, why must we pay attention to class? Because we can sit through a classroom and still fail. Now, trust me, I failed a class or two before, being the class clown. No, not Pastor Jared the class clown. Yes, I've been the class clown. Ask my mama, she had to whoop me four times. Anyway, Israel is the case study here. Israel is the case study of why they must pay attention in the classroom of God. The same wilderness that shaped Moses for a whole generation became a graveyard instead of a graduation. Hebrews 3, 16 through 19 says they heard, they saw the works, and they still did not enter the rest because unbelief kept them from receiving what the season was trying to teach them. Israel's classroom was supposed to be an 11-day trip and became 40 years, not because God needs 40 years to do what he's going to do, but because they kept failing the same lesson and re-enrolling. And unfortunately, some of them never passed the class. In the middle, his classrooms. This is the teaching that God does in the middle of our season, is never wasted. In fact, some of the most important things I've ever learned about God, didn't I learn it on a mountaintop, I didn't learn it at the highest moment. I learned them in the middle. I learned them in the waiting room. I learned them in the delay, in the interruption. I learned them in the classroom he designed for me to learn them in. Now, I want to show you two graphics. And I want to slow down for the next 13 minutes I have to preach, and I want to walk through these classrooms that God uses to develop and teach us. Y'all good with that so far? Let's have a little teacher, let's have a little teacher moment. Let's go through the first one. These are what I call the classrooms of God. Environments God uses to teach and develop his people. There's a cave, there's deserts, there's a grave, there's a drought, there's a temple, there's a mountain, there's a valley, there's a storm. And we all know what a storm feels like, don't we? We all know what going through storms feel like. Then there's the hypocrites, there's the people that he brings in your life that they got so much to say. I don't have time to go through all nine of these. But what I did do was I asked the Lord, what are the four most important ones that I feel that you need your people to hear today? And here they are: the cave, the desert, the grave, the storm. Can we walk through those for a second? We're gonna walk through them. I'm gonna give you a Bible example at the end, and we're out of here. Amen? And I'll meet you at Luby's. The first classroom, if you want to take notes, is the cave. Somebody say the cave. The cave is where God rests and recovers you. Rest and recovers you. This is the classroom where God rests and recovers you. The cave is a physical location, but in this cave, there's rest and recovery. Amen? Some of you need rest and recovery before you get your next assignment. This middle that you're in is called a cave. And you're wondering what's coming out of this cave. Do not get excited about exiting the cave before you learn what the cave was meant to teach you. Let's take Elijah for a second over in 1 Kings. Elijah didn't run to any cave, he ran to Herod, the same mountain where Moses hid in the cleft of rocks and watched God's glory pass by. That's 1 Kings 9 and 8, 19 and 8, also found in Exodus 33, 22. But do not miss how Elijah got to this cave. There wasn't a same-day collapse. There wasn't fire falling from heaven in the morning and a breakdown by night. Between Carmel and the cave, Elijah ran from Jezerel to Beersheba almost 100 miles, and then another day deep into the wilderness alone. Elijah didn't just crash in the cave. Elijah was wore down by the time he got to the cave. Y'all get that so far? That's the part we skip. But the real power in this story, and the more honest is, Elijah ran for weeks. He ran until Jezerel was behind him, until Bathsheba was behind him, until the servant he even brought with him was behind him. He ran until there was nobody left to run in front of, and there was nobody left to explain himself to. Then he sat up under that juniper tree and asked God to let him die. And God's first move with Elijah isn't to rebuke him. Twice, not once, showing him that his first move towards exhausted people is mercy, not condemnation. Notice what God does. He does not ask the question at the juniper tree. He does not ask it at Bathsheba. He does not ask it while Elijah is still on the run. He waits until the man is fed, rested, standing still. Because you cannot answer those questions honestly until while you're still in motion. And that is the point of the cave. And it is that the next answer for your next season means you gotta stop running. The answer to this next part of your life, for some of us, means we gotta get to a cave and sit down and allow God to rest. While Elijah was in that cave resting and recovering, God sent him out with more assignments. Check this out. He came out of that cave with three assignments to go anoint Hazel, anoint Jeru, anoint Elisha over in 1 Kings 19, 15 and 16. God does not retire Elijah in that cave. He does not leave him there to nurse his exhaustion into identity. God rests Elijah, he reloads him, and he said, with kings to confront and successes to raise up. That's the whole shape of the cave. It's not the end of your story. It's not a detour from it, it's the hinge. So if you're in a cave right now, if you're in a cave right now, running on a month of nobody knowing how tired you actually are, this is your sign that the cave isn't where God wants to leave you, it's where he wants to rebuild you and send you back out. He wants to rest you first, reload you, but do not mistake pause for God's ending. Don't mistake God, don't mistake pause for God's ending. God is not done with you in the cave, he's just getting you ready to leave it. Y'all with me so far? Number two, the desert. Everybody say the desert. Now, the desert builds and develops you. I won't spend too much time here because Pastor Keith preached an amazing series on the desert and groups and projects. If you haven't watched it, go back and watch it. But here's what the desert classroom doesn't do that the cave does. The cave rests you, the desert rebuilds you. That's the difference. God empties you of what you thought you needed in the desert so he can prove what you actually need to live on. The desert doesn't just empty you, it equips you. It equips you by building dependence on God, by building a develop a resilience with God, and it refines your calling. And the prayer here is Lord, if there is anything that's not like you, take it out of me in the desert. If there's anything that's not pleasing to you, that's not like you, that doesn't get your glory, take it out of me in this desert. Lord, purge me in this desert. That's what the desert does. It builds you and develops you. Y'all good with the desert? Number three, somebody say the grave. Now the grave, it this is a good one. It ends old seasons to birth new ones. Now, somebody say, end it to begin it. Say, end it, begin it. Now, the grave marks a decisive end of one way of living, one chapter, one assignment, but in God's hand, it becomes a womb of a completely new kind of season. One thing I've learned is when God is ready to bring something to a full stop, an identity, a relationship, a dream, it can feel like a grave. But in the kingdom of heaven, graves are where resurrection happens. If you don't believe me, just ask Lazarus. Just ask Jairus' daughter. And if you still need convincing that a grave does what a grave is supposed to do, just ask the teacher of this class himself, Jesus, because the grave is never God's final destination. It's often the place to get his often his favorite place to get his greatest glory. Because the same God who called Lazarus out of the stinking tomb and turned a little girl's deathbed into a wake-up call, that God stepped into his own barber tomb on the third day and walked straight up out of it. And he'll do that for a friend's grave, and if he'll do it for a stranger's daughter, and if he'll do it for his own body, then God can take what you've buried and resurrect it when he's ready. Amen. He knows where you've buried your purpose, he knows where you've buried your hope, he knows where you've buried your joy, and if he knows, then we can trust grunt trust that the grave doesn't have the final say. And here's the final thing I gotta say about the grave. Don't just fear the grave, but trust the gardener of the grave. Just as the writing in 1 Corinthians, where he says, Oh death, where is your sting, and oh grave where is your victory. And the last one is a storm. I don't even think I gotta talk about that one. Because everybody knows what a storm is. We've all been through storms, amen. Some of us are in storms right now. But a storm tests and expands your faith. Storms just don't shake your life, they stretch your faith. They reveal what we cling to and they grow what we didn't know we had. We know a storm just isn't a crisis, but a classroom because that's exactly what Jesus turns it into for his disciples over in Matthew. When the ferocious storms hit, y'all know the story. When the ferocious storm hit and it's the waves were sweeping over the boat, the disciples had the nerve to cry out, Lord, save us, we're going to drown. They had the nerve to say that. And Jesus got up and said, Oh yeah a little faith. Why are you so afraid? In that moment, their fear and their faith were both exposed. And my question to you, what is the storm in your life right now showing you about you? For me, I'm gonna tell you what my storms do for me. They show me how anxious I get when I don't feel God moving fast enough. My storms bring out what I call the quiet warrior in me. I start asking questions like, God, are you gonna do it? God, do you hear my prayer? Are you up there listening? And if I'm honest, my storms have taught me that my greatest battle isn't usually what's happening around me, it's what's happening inside of me. My storms expose where my trust is. Still under construction. I want to close this sermon today by taking us to Psalms 27, where we find David here writing a song, but I want us to pay close attention. There are two things I want you to pay close attention to in this Psalms. Pay attention to his posture and his language. Y'all good with that? I asked Jules to leave this up because I want us to read through this and walk through this as we end the sermon, okay? Because if you need just tangible evidence of somebody walking through a cave, a grave, and a desert all at the same time, David is the man. Can we walk through this for a second? All right. Psalms 27, verses 1 through 3 is what we call the storm of this psalm. David says, The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? David's posture, he opens, he's standing, his shoulders is back, his face is outward, talking about his enemy while he talks to God. This is a shout, not a whisper. But don't miss what he's declaring in the middle of verse 2. He says, When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it's my enemies and my foes who stumble and fail. That's what he says. Then verse 3 Though an army shall encamp against me, though the war shall rise up against me. This is the storm classroom that David is facing in verses 1 through 3. Y'all with me so far? Isolated, surrounded, no one else is on the boat with him but God. David isn't declaring the Lord is the David isn't declaring the Lord is his light because the storm has passed. He's declaring it while the wind is still howling. Can you declare that the Lord is your light and your salvation, even when it's the darkest outside in your life? Y'all catch that? Standing tall because he needs his own body to believe it before his circumstances does. Psalms 20, Psalm 7, let's go to verses 4 through 5 for a second. The cave. For in my time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret of his tabernacle, shall hide me. He should set my face upon a rock. Check David's posture. He gets low in verses 5 through 7. He gets really low. He's folded up, he's tucked in. Notice the order. He's hidden first, then he's lifted. This is the cave that David is facing in verses 5 through 7. Not he shall remove the trouble, he should hide them in a time of trouble. Sometimes the safest posture we could ever take is standing, standing to fight is low and hidden, and learning to be still and know that he is God. Somebody say, Be still. That's something that we got to do in our storm, is learning to be still. Let's finish this. Psalms 27. Let's go to verses uh 8 through 10. Now you hear David says, Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, hide not your face far from me, put your servant away in anger, leave me not, not forsake me. When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up. This is the hinge of the whole psalm. And the posture tells you before the words do. David goes from standing tall to on his face. And that is the place where God is asking some of us to get. It's to get down to our knees. He goes from talking about his enemies to crying out to God. Verses 1 through 6 sound like a man who got it all together. Verses 7 through 10 sounds like a man who doesn't. That is an honest classroom. It doesn't let you stay composed forever. This is the most exposed posture in the entire Psalms. David's arms are open, nothing is left to hide. And whatever David is referencing, it's real abandonment when he's talking about his mother and father. Real enough to write it in the scripture. And his response isn't bitterness. It is then the Lord would take me up, which reads like someone reaching off the ground, not standing in their own. Let's go to the last four scriptures. Verses 11 and 12. This is David's desert. He says, Teach me your ways, O Lord, and lead me in plain paths, because mine enemies uh bear false witness and rise up against me. David's posture here is kneeling. His hands are open, asks to be shaped rather than rescued. This is the desert classroom. He isn't asking God to remove the enemies, he's asking God to teach him in the middle of it. Then David closes the Psalms in verses 13 and 14. He says, I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. But he gives us specific instruction in verse 14 that I want us to leave here with today. He says, While you're going through your storm, while you're in your messy middle, while you're trying to figure out what the next move is, David gives us the answer. He says, wait for the Lord. Then he tells you what posture to take. He says, to be strong, to take heart. Then he said, in case you forgot it the first time I said it, wait for the Lord. Maverick City writes a song. And the song says, wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. For he will renew your strength. Wait, I say. I don't know this morning who's in the middle of whatever you're going through. But I'm going to take a page out of David's Psalm in 14. And I'm going to ask you to wait on the Lord. Wait for him to deliver you. Wait for him to bring it to pass. Wait for him to bring it to fruition. Wait for him to show you his glory. I want you to be strong. I want you to take heart. Be strong in the Lord. Take heart that he got your back. And at the end of it all, wait on the Lord. Waiting is hard sometimes. I never forget we was in a staff meeting. Diana said something, and I said, Diana, that's really good. She said, Well, Jerry, she said, y'all, while I'm waiting on God, I want to wait well. I want to wait well. Which means, here we go. I'm not gonna complain while waiting. That's easy to do, right? We may cry. We may have some tears while waiting on the promise to come. We may get it, tell you, let me have that one that that that that that we may the opposite of being strong is what, weak? We may get a little weak sometimes. But in the midst of God doing what he does, Lord, teach me what I'm supposed to learn in this middle. Show me what I'm supposed to learn in this middle. And Father, help me to wait well until your glory shows up. That's all I want. Help me to fix my posture. And the best one help me to fix my prayer language. Help me to say, Lord, I thank you that this storm will one day pass. But until it does, help me to see your glory in the midst of it. Amen. Be encouraged today to wait well in your middle. Wait, I say. Let's pray. Father, I love you. I thank you that we get to talk to you about our middle, as messy as it can be, as hard as it can be. But Father, like Diana said in their staff meeting, Lord, help us to wait well while we're waiting on you. And let us not get weary and well-doing. Father, we know a season is coming. A harvest is coming. But God, until that harvest and that season shows up where it's the opposite of hard. Help us to do good in the hard season. Help us to do good in the weary seasons. Well, Father, through it all, teach us in the cave, teach us in our desert, develop us, teach us in our in our storms, and teach us in our graves. That whatever you got to kill us, kill within us in this middle, do it, Lord, and resurrect whatever you need to. Father, we love you. I thank you for this church. I thank you for these people, for they're your children. Lord, we love you and we thank you. We pray. Somebody say amen. Hey, I love you. I will see you later.