SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Spring Church podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We are so glad you joined us.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to reach the lost by raising up fully trained disciples that are empowered by God to impact their world.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you are challenged and encouraged as you listen to this week's message.
SPEAKER_01: As you turn in your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter number 3, 1 Samuel chapter number 3, I just want to express my appreciation to the entirety of the Springs Church leadership team and staff for just hosting us so well this week and just making us feel at home like they always do.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to know that myself and the entirety of the Summit International School of Ministry leadership team, we so appreciate and we so believe in the leadership of this house.
SPEAKER_01: These are friendships that we count as very, very dear to our hearts, and uh we see the evidence of God's blessing and God's presence on this work.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it really is such a joy for myself and my family to be here with you once again and to just see and sense what God is doing in your lives.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_01: Can I just tell you this morning, you don't find this kind of faith and expectation everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's a special thing what God is doing in each and every one of your lives and homes.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just praying for you that you continue to guard that, you continue to lean into that, because I believe with all of my heart that the best days in God, the best days in the kingdom are not behind us.
SPEAKER_01: I think they're before us.
SPEAKER_01: I think we're getting ready to walk into a season where God's doing some incredible things.
SPEAKER_01: And so my prayer for you as a church and as a family is that God just continues to grow this thing and he continues to guard the deposit that he's made in your life.
SPEAKER_01: First Samuel chapter three, we're gonna begin reading this morning in verse number one.
SPEAKER_01: First Samuel chapter three, beginning in verse one.
SPEAKER_01: Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days.
SPEAKER_01: There was no frequent vision.
SPEAKER_01: At that time, Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place.
SPEAKER_01: And the lamp of God had not yet, but it was about to, had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was.
SPEAKER_01: Now jump down with me to verses 19 and 2.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That is, they recognized the presence and power of God in his life, despite his surroundings and the difficulties that he faced.
SPEAKER_01: What I want to talk to you about this morning is a thought or a theme that I've entitled Anomalies of Hope.
SPEAKER_01: Anomalies of hope.
SPEAKER_01: An anomaly is something that is strange, something that's unique.
SPEAKER_01: It's something that's unexpected, it's something that, according to natural reasoning and estimation, shouldn't be.
SPEAKER_01: And as Samuel was an anomaly of hope to his generation, he was the unexpected proof that God is who he says that he is, and he can do the things that he says he can do despite difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that in this generation, God is raising up more anomalies of hope.
SPEAKER_01: More proof and evidence that despite the darkness and the rapid declinion of our world, he is still God.
SPEAKER_01: And he still does God kinds of things.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone believe that this morning?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I am so grateful for your presence in this house.
SPEAKER_01: God, I thank you for the sense of your presence that I feel in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: Father, it's proof, it's evidence that you have a word, you have a thought that you want to communicate to your people, God, that it that is going to bring encouragement, life, hope, healing.
SPEAKER_01: And so, Father, thank you today for the truth of your word and the ministry of your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I pray in the next few moments that we have together that you would give every one of us the ability to see, to hear, and to receive everything that's in your heart for us.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_01: On August 6, 1945, the United States military dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
SPEAKER_01: Despite feelings about it politically or morally, what we know now is that the effects were absolutely catastrophic.
SPEAKER_01: Experts say that temperatures at ground zero reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_01: That's hot enough to melt metal and glass.
SPEAKER_01: In a moment's time, the once fruitful and life-filled city became a gray, lifeless wasteland.
SPEAKER_01: The effects were so devastating that scientists predicted that nothing, no plant life would be able to grow in that area for at least 75 years.
SPEAKER_01: Yet, just about a year later, something remarkable began to happen that stunned botanists and scientists alike.
SPEAKER_01: As they came to ground zero to survey the area and to begin to run experimental tests, what they found was that against all odds, green shoots were beginning to push up through the rubble.
SPEAKER_01: Flowers and lilies began blooming amongst the ruin and devastation.
SPEAKER_01: And where scientists, experts said there should only be death and decay, there was now life and fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_01: One survivor wrote, she said this, she said, When I saw the flowers blooming amongst the ruins, I was deeply moved.
SPEAKER_01: It was as if God himself had whispered to me, life can and will return.
SPEAKER_01: You know, eventually these flowers were given the name The Anomalies of Hope, the peculiar, unexpected flowers that defied odds and possibilities and inspired hope for an entire generation of people and survivors.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you read the beginning of 1 Samuel, especially chapters 1 and 2, what you find out quickly is that Israel looks like a spiritual wasteland.
SPEAKER_01: It's like hell has created and successfully dropped an atomic bomb on the spiritual life of the nation.
SPEAKER_01: The leadership is corrupt.
SPEAKER_01: What they have of religion is dead, it's lifeless.
SPEAKER_01: The people are discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: When you read these first two chapters of 1 Samuel, what you see is that spiritual darkness and decay characterizes the entire nation.
SPEAKER_01: Even the priests who are meant, they're called by God to facilitate access into God's presence and into God's blessings.
SPEAKER_01: Even they had become a hindrance to these good gifts from God because of their sin and because of their carelessness.
SPEAKER_01: When you look at verse one of 1 Samuel chapter 3, the text that we began reading this morning, here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says that the word of the Lord was rare in those days.
SPEAKER_01: There was no frequent vision.
SPEAKER_01: Can I just say this morning, that's not just a historical reality, that was a spiritual indictment.
SPEAKER_01: God's voice was seldom heard.
SPEAKER_01: Divine revelation was scarce, not because God wasn't wanting to speak, but because most were not interested in listening.
SPEAKER_01: The environment in 1 Samuel chapters 1 through 3, and even the tabernacle, their place of worship, the place that was designed to facilitate access into the presence and into the blessing of God, even the tabernacle wasn't ripe for anything spiritually productive or meaningful.
SPEAKER_01: Yet this is where a woman named Hannah chooses to place her son Samuel for his ministry upbringing and development.
SPEAKER_01: It's a questionable decision, to say the least.
SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, you commend her for believing that God could use her son at some point and sometime in the future to be the spiritual voice and director of the nation.
SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, you go, how in the world is God gonna raise up someone like that in an environment like this?
SPEAKER_01: This place isn't conducive to the spiritual development of anyone, much less a boy in his most pivotal years.
SPEAKER_01: And I have to imagine that there were times when even Samuel as a boy felt this way.
SPEAKER_01: I imagine after his mother dropped him off in the temple to be raised and reared up as a minister for God in his generation, I imagine him struggling with things like fear.
SPEAKER_01: I imagine him confused at times.
SPEAKER_01: I imagine him lonely, although he's surrounded by many people, wondering why he was here and what good could come out of a difficult, dysfunctional environment like this.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps there were times when he began to think that his parents missed God, or at the least they made a mistake.
SPEAKER_01: Because after all, if I'm called and anointed to be God's voice to this generation, if there's an anointing on my life to truly bring people into spiritual wholeness and freedom, then how in the world am I going to learn to function in that kind of calling and in that kind of anointing in this kind of environment?
SPEAKER_01: I don't have good examples and influences.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have people stimulating godliness and faith in my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I'm constantly confronted by more negative than positive.
SPEAKER_01: I'm stuck in a place, I'm stuck in a season that doesn't seem conducive to fruitfulness or to impact.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's something that we all face in one season or another.
SPEAKER_01: Seasons where we're not in the place that we thought or imagined we'd be in by now.
SPEAKER_01: The feeling of delay.
SPEAKER_01: God has spoken something, I believe, over my life, but the things He spoke to me seem slow in developing or coming to pass.
SPEAKER_01: We're not surrounded by as much godly influence as we'd like to be.
SPEAKER_01: And because our environment doesn't seem conducive to that calling, we find ourselves confused.
SPEAKER_01: We find it hard to believe for positive amidst all of the negative.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're honest, we walk around with more hurt than we do healing.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we find ourselves going, God, it looks like either I was misled or you were mistaken.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like the place that I'm in, nor do I find it easy to see how good or godly can come out of it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm frustrated with the place.
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of the season.
SPEAKER_01: I'm emotionally, spiritually, and physically wore out.
SPEAKER_01: I'm at my wits' end because of where I am and because of what I'm going through.
SPEAKER_01: The place.
SPEAKER_01: What do you do when the place that you find yourself in is beginning to evoke more fear and frustration than it is faith?
SPEAKER_01: What do you do when your current season doesn't match what you feel God said would be your portion and would be your calling in life?
SPEAKER_01: What do you do when instead of faith and hope and godly desire, your circumstances and your season only fuels doubt, disbelief, and anxiety?
SPEAKER_01: It can be a difficult workplace.
SPEAKER_01: It can be perpetual challenges in our family that no matter how hard we pray don't seem to get resolved.
SPEAKER_01: For those who are in ministry this morning, it can be a lack of fruit in the ministry that God has called us to.
SPEAKER_01: For some young person, it could be a tough school environment.
SPEAKER_01: For all of us, it can be seasons of dryness or grief, living in a dark, difficult world that seems unrelenting to try and stop us from what God has said we're called and destined to do and be.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what makes it even harder?
SPEAKER_01: What makes it even harder is when we begin to discover that problematic might actually be a part of providence.
SPEAKER_01: That the thing we're frustrated with, the season that we just want to escape, might actually be a part of God's will, God's plan, and God's purpose for our lives.
SPEAKER_01: You know what providence is?
SPEAKER_01: Providence is when God positions you for the advancement of his kingdom, even when you're unaware of it or not in favor of it.
SPEAKER_01: I want to say that again on a Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: Providence is when God positions you for the expansion or the advancement of his kingdom, even when you're unaware of it or not in favor of it.
SPEAKER_01: It's when you want out, but God goes, No, you're right where I want you.
SPEAKER_01: It's when when when when even godly people in your life are telling you that you should look and search for better, but God says no.
SPEAKER_01: It's when you're looking for the exit door, but all you can hear by the Spirit of God is this word called endurance.
SPEAKER_01: That I'm not calling you to escape the season, I'm calling you to endure and overcome the season.
SPEAKER_01: Providence sometimes can be scary because it leads us to things and places that are bigger than us.
SPEAKER_01: It leads us to things and places that frighten us.
SPEAKER_01: Providence can be hard.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what providence means?
SPEAKER_01: Providence means that God is with me and for me, no matter the hard or the difficult that I find myself in.
SPEAKER_01: Providence means that even if I'm in a hard, difficult, dark place, God is with me anyway.
SPEAKER_01: And if God is with me, it doesn't matter who or what is against me.
SPEAKER_01: Good and godliness can and will come out of my life if I choose to trust him.
SPEAKER_01: Providence can be hard, but there's possibilities that exist in providence that don't exist anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01: Because providence means your life is under the governance and the leadership of God himself.
SPEAKER_01: And when your life is under the governance and leadership of God Himself, miracles and the supernatural can begin to happen in and through your life.
SPEAKER_01: Because God is the one leading the way, not emotions or circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: A providence can be hard.
SPEAKER_01: And when we find ourselves in this scary, hard, difficult, but providential place, we have three options.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're taking notes, I want you to write these things down this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, here's our first option we can allow the place and the position to poison us.
SPEAKER_01: That is, we start to become bitter towards and angry with either God or people because of where we find ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We start to point the finger rather than take the blame.
SPEAKER_01: We become bitter and angry with the place.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, we can allow the place or the position to paralyze us.
SPEAKER_01: That is, we begin to become indifferent and apathetic toward the things of God because we've prayed and we've believed for so long with little results that we kind of adopt this mindset and attitude of what's the point?
SPEAKER_01: Why press in?
SPEAKER_01: Why seek God?
SPEAKER_01: Why maintain hunger and desire and passion when I've done that for so long and still nothing has changed for better, and still nothing has changed for good.
SPEAKER_01: You know what can happen in the place is we can start to echo the sound of our season.
SPEAKER_01: That is, we start sounding and looking like exactly what we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: The season is painful, so we become bitter.
SPEAKER_01: Miracles are delayed, so we become indifferent.
SPEAKER_01: We start to sound like exactly the environment or the situations that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_01: Or number three, we can allow it to posture us.
SPEAKER_01: That is, we allow the hard thing and the hard situation to push us into a place of deeper trust and surrender to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We allow it to thrust us into the power and the sovereignty and the goodness of God, despite what our emotions and our feelings want to dictate.
SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe Samuel was facing the same thoughts that we do.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, and I can only imagine, there were temptations to get poisoned by the season he was in.
SPEAKER_01: There were temptations for his faith to become paralyzed because of what he was going through.
SPEAKER_01: But what I love about Samuel is that even though he was a boy, there was no expectation of him to be some godly man in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: There was no expectation that he would lead the nation and what it looks like to follow and to obey God.
SPEAKER_01: There was no expectation on him that at this young age, 12, 13, maybe 16 years old, that he would show the world what it means to live for God in a hard and difficult place.
SPEAKER_01: But despite the lack of expectation and despite the difficulty pervading his life, he doesn't allow it to poison him and he doesn't allow it to paralyze him.
SPEAKER_01: He allows it to posture him.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just say this morning, posture means that the echo of our life becomes Jesus instead of the pain of our season.
SPEAKER_01: That what echoes, what emanates from our lives is the goodness and grace of Jesus rather than the bitterness and difficulty of what we're facing and what we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what the Bible says in 1 Samuel chapter 2, verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, But Samuel, though he was only a boy, watch this, served the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And he wore a linen garment like that of the priest.
SPEAKER_01: Though the place doesn't seem to fuel his future hopes and his future potential, the Bible says that he served the Lord anyway, and he became a testimony to his generation of a God who was able to sustain and anoint us to overcome even the hardest and most difficult of places.
SPEAKER_01: The tabernacle wasn't conducive to God's plan for his life.
SPEAKER_01: But staying postured meant that the echo of his life was empowerment and not weakness.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this doesn't mean that we ignore pain.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that we excuse wrongs that have been done to us in certain places and in certain seasons, but it does mean that in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, there's power to rise above the pains and the wrongs and the difficulties of our season and of our world to not be defined or infected by those things.
SPEAKER_01: Samuel, how do you echo a different sound?
SPEAKER_01: How is the sound that hit the wall of your life different from what bounces off?
SPEAKER_01: That's an impossibility.
SPEAKER_01: Because an echo is an exact replication or imitation of what hit the wall in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: How is the sound that hit the wall of your life different from what bounces off?
SPEAKER_01: That's an impossibility.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's an impossibility, but with Jesus, it's possible.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus has the power to take one thing, redeem it, and turn it into something entirely different.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just say this morning when hurt hits the poison paralyzed wall, here's what you get.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds of betrayal carry echoes of betrayal.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds of disappointment carry echoes of disappointment.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds of hurt carry echoes of hurt.
SPEAKER_01: But when hurt hits the postured wall, sounds of betrayal, some kind of a way, begin to carry echoes of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: When hurt hits the postured wall, sounds of disappointment begin to carry with it the echoes of faith.
SPEAKER_01: When hurt hits the postured wall, sounds of hurt begin to carry echoes of healing.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, when bad hits the Jesus wall, it can be transformed into good.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of God we serve this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Posture makes possible what place and position never could.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says in James chapter 4, verse 6, that God resists the proud.
SPEAKER_01: Those who don't recognize their need for Him, those who don't believe that He can be God through their lives, God resists.
SPEAKER_01: But God gives grace to the humble.
SPEAKER_01: Those who say, God, despite my circumstance, despite the difficulty, despite where I am, and despite what my heart wants to believe, I believe that you are God and you can be God through my life.
SPEAKER_01: God says to that person, there is an abundant measure of his power and his anointing and his provision to get us through whatever we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: You see, grace is not God's willingness just to overlook our sin.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is God's ability to give us what we need to overcome whatever it is that we're facing.
SPEAKER_01: And James says, for the person who sees his need for God, there's an abundance of grace.
SPEAKER_01: And we went there fully convinced of the call of God on our lives.
SPEAKER_01: It took us a few months to pray, but in the in the final days leading up to accepting that pastorate, we were so convinced in our hearts that this is where God was leading us.
SPEAKER_01: All of the signs were there.
SPEAKER_01: We felt like God has made had made his will clear to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We knew that we were walking in providence.
SPEAKER_01: But just about three to four months into accepting that pastorate, we began to face some difficulties in the church, but more than that, my wife began to become incredibly ill.
SPEAKER_01: So much so that by the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, my wife had become paralyzed from the waist down and could no longer walk.
SPEAKER_01: And so Providence began by us going to this church whole and healthy, with expectation in our hearts that God was going to use us and we were going to see God do great things.
SPEAKER_01: A few one or two situations of life to begin to cause us to question God's leading and God's calling on our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember for those first few months, Providence became scary.
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of 2018 was one of the most fearful and anxiety-inducing seasons of my entire life.
SPEAKER_01: As I began to reel and wonder and try to figure out why we were where we were, and to try to muster up the faith to believe that good could come out of the difficulty that we found ourselves in.
SPEAKER_01: But you know, obviously that situation affected my wife more than it did me because she was the one who was paralyzed and in a wheelchair.
SPEAKER_01: She was the one who was so sick most days that she couldn't accompany us to church anymore.
SPEAKER_01: So that when we started the church, it was me and my wife and our two little girls, but now most of the Sundays it was just me and my two little girls while my wife was at home with a sick and sick in body and and laying in bed.
SPEAKER_01: And I watched those the first four to six months almost crippled her in her face.
SPEAKER_01: I saw the situation that she found her herself in that tried to infect her with this poison for six months.
SPEAKER_01: I watched her have to wrestle through the emotions and feelings of doubt and uncertainty, at times even confessing to me that she no longer wanted to live because she saw no for her life or for our ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Who knows how to redeem the sounds of our season a God who can take the sounds of hurt and pain and paralyzation, and who can redeem them and turn them into echoes of faith and expectancy and healing.
SPEAKER_01: And I watched after those first six months, little by little, the same wheelchair that tried to poison her, it actually began to posture.
SPEAKER_01: It was amazing because I saw that although the wheelchair had paralyzed her physically, it had not paralyzed her faith.
SPEAKER_01: And I watched her with a postured heart, a desperate heart, begin to tap in, begin to press through, begin to seek God until finally the days and weeks were no longer characterized by doubt and disbelief.
SPEAKER_01: They began to be characterized by the presence and by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: I watched the echo begin to change from doubt to faith.
SPEAKER_01: And for the next, listen to me, for the next three years, nothing changed physically.
SPEAKER_01: She was still paralyzed, she was still in a wheelchair.
SPEAKER_01: But can I say this morning, she was no longer paralyzed in faith.
SPEAKER_01: She was completely unbound by circumstances and by sickness until one day that power that she tapped into because of posture, one day it manifested itself in physical healing.
SPEAKER_01: In physical healing.
SPEAKER_01: And on July 22nd, 2021, I came home from work for lunch one day, and for the first time in three and a half years, I watched as my paralyzed, formerly paralyzed wife was walking all over her our house with her hands lifted in the air, tears coming down her eyes, completely healed by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, presence means you don't just get through, you experience breakthrough.
SPEAKER_01: Presence means you get to see the undeniable power of God in and through your life.
SPEAKER_01: Presence means you get to see God work miracles despite the difficulty and darkness of your world and your situation.
SPEAKER_01: Posture connects us to presence.
SPEAKER_01: And presence means beautiful things can grow even in dark, barren places.
SPEAKER_01: You know, in certain deserts, there's a plant called the Rose of Jericho.
SPEAKER_01: And in times of drought, it it turns into this brown, brittle ball and it looks dead.
SPEAKER_01: And experts say that this Rose of Jericho plant, it can stay in that dry, brittle condition for years.
SPEAKER_01: But you can look this up online.
SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to do it this afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: Get on Google, get on YouTube, and look at this.
SPEAKER_01: Even after it's been dry and brittle and seemingly dead for years, the moment it touches water again, within hours, it begins to unfurl, it begins to turn green, and it starts to live again.
SPEAKER_01: Experts will say it doesn't need to be placed in a better environment.
SPEAKER_01: If you just bring water to where it is, it starts to bloom and it starts to blossom again.
SPEAKER_01: Can I just say what I feel in my heart this morning?
SPEAKER_01: God is bringing water to where you are.
SPEAKER_01: Situations and circumstances may not change for the better immediately, but until they do, and until breakthrough comes, God is gonna give you the power of the Holy Spirit that you need to not be overcome or overwhelmed by your season, but to get through your season with a testimony of God's strength and of God's ability.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to me this morning.
SPEAKER_01: You will not die in the dry place.
SPEAKER_01: You will not die in the barren place.
SPEAKER_01: You will not die in the dark and the difficult place.
SPEAKER_01: That was one of the psalms that my wife held on to for years.
SPEAKER_01: That you will not die, but you will live to declare the works of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to me this morning.
SPEAKER_01: You will live in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You will not die.
SPEAKER_01: This ministry will live in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: What God has given you to oversee will live in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Your family will live in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Your testimony will not die in difficulty and in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: You will live by and through the presence of God this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, somebody, give God praise in the house if you believe what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I just want to start notice on the devil this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not dying in the difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving up in the despair.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going down.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going over in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna die because of the pressure.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna give up because of the pressure.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going down because of difficulty in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna overcome because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, you're gonna live in ways that most people thought you would die in.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna overcome in ways that most people thought you'd give up in.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of Jesus! It's Jesus that's gonna echo from your life.
SPEAKER_01: Not pain or poison or hurt.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be his power and his presence this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Samuel lived through, stay standing with me.
SPEAKER_01: He lived through and he overcame stuff that anybody in their right mind thought would have crushed him.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way you live in that.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way you go through that and come out sounding and smelling only like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, somebody.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way you go through that kind of dirt and come out clean.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way you go through that kind of hearting, but come out with encouragement and joy in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: But I hear the cost of writers say that with that it is impossible.
SPEAKER_01: But with God, the lie that you're gonna die here.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We're going through.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to call on you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Those this morning who would be brave enough to admit, I've allowed the season that I'm in to poison me.
SPEAKER_01: I've allowed the stuff that I'm going through at this point in my life to paralyze me and my faith.
SPEAKER_01: You would have to admit this morning, there was once a time in my life where I passionately sought God.
SPEAKER_01: There was once a time in my life when I believed with full confidence that God was working through my life, not just for me, but to bring others into places of freedom and victory.
SPEAKER_01: But Pastor Ross, I have to be honest with you this morning, that part of me has seemingly died.
SPEAKER_01: The desire, the passion for God that I once had is no longer there.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm honest about it in my conversations and my interactions, I'm more infected by poison than I am faith.
SPEAKER_01: I echo hurt more than I do healing.
SPEAKER_01: And this morning I recognize that God doesn't want to leave me there.
SPEAKER_01: I recognize this morning that maybe my circumstance doesn't immediately change.
SPEAKER_01: But if my posture shifts even this much toward God, my spirit can change.
SPEAKER_01: And though physically I may still be bound and afflicted, something on the inside of me can begin to be set free by the power and by the glory of God, so that my eyes are no longer always down in disbelief and despair, but my eyes are starting to look up towards my hope and my help in God.
SPEAKER_01: God wants to touch you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I believe with all of my heart that God wants to work miracles in this house.
SPEAKER_01: I really believe that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: That Jesus is here to meet us, not to give us just enough strength to get through today and barely through tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: I believe he's here to this morning to totally revolutionize our hearts and our spirits, so that from this day forward our spirits will never be bound by unbelief or despair ever again.
SPEAKER_01: But that despite what comes our way, we can look forward with hope and with expectation in our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is the part, and I'm done.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is the part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we often forget and overlook in the Pentecostal world.
SPEAKER_01: We talk so much about tongues, prophecies, and healings, and I believe in all of that, and I'm believing God for it in this generation.
SPEAKER_01: But let us never forget that the Holy Spirit is not just for stuff that we do in ministry.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit wants to give us the grace and the anointing that we need to endure and overcome anything that hell throws our way.
SPEAKER_01: Anything.
SPEAKER_01: So that going forward, when you begin to encounter darkness and difficulty, your first response is not despair or unbelief, but your first response starts to be excitement because you know the God who's walking into that darkness and that difficulty with you.
SPEAKER_01: And if He's walking into the darkness and difficulty with you, there's no limit to what could happen through your life by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: The early church, weak, frail, we're gonna die.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: But when they postured themselves and the Holy Spirit came on their lives, all of a sudden they became the people of whom their enemies said, These are they which have turned the world upside down.
SPEAKER_01: They've not allowed their lives to be defined.
SPEAKER_01: Like we've done everything we know to do to stop them, but something keeps energizing them to keep getting back up and keep moving forward.
SPEAKER_01: That's the Samuel anointing.
SPEAKER_01: What I saw this week at youth camp was God raising up Samuel's in our generation.
SPEAKER_01: Hey! Young people who are starting to believe that my life is not going to be defined or deterred by negative circumstances and seasons, the only thing that's gonna define my life is the presence and the power of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing.
SPEAKER_01: And I say this morning, as we said on Thursday night at Youth Camp, why not us?
SPEAKER_01: Why not us be the generation of Samuels that rise out of obscurity and darkness and give this world a reason to believe that God is still God and that God can still do God kinds of things?
SPEAKER_01: Why not us be the people that are filled with the Holy Spirit like the early church, so that when resistance and opposition comes our way, we don't give up and we don't tuck tail and run.
SPEAKER_01: We stand in the power of God and we believe Him for the supernatural.
SPEAKER_01: Why not us this morning?
SPEAKER_01: Why not us?
SPEAKER_01: Why not us be the people through whom God brings himself glory again?
SPEAKER_01: In this generation, why not us?
SPEAKER_01: Dad, sir, why not you?
SPEAKER_01: Under the pressure of leading your family.
SPEAKER_01: I just feel it in my heart this morning, a husband, a father.
SPEAKER_01: Under the pressure of leading your family into the right place, trying to navigate the darkness and difficulty of your season.
SPEAKER_01: Why not you, sir?
SPEAKER_01: Why not you be the person that God empowers and raises up by his spirit today?
SPEAKER_01: That you would leave this service today completely changed and transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Why not you?
SPEAKER_01: I encourage you, sir, challenge every voice in your heart that is trying to convince you otherwise, and believe this morning that Jesus is about to meet you in this altar and he's about to change your life for the glory of his name.
SPEAKER_01: Believe God this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna begin to pray, and as I begin to pray, I want whoever wants to respond to this moment, whoever says, Pastor Ross, I I need God to take me from echoing the pain of my season, and I need to bring him, bring me into a place to where my posture allows him to do in and through me what he wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of echoing hurt, I'm tired of echoing pain, I'm tired of echoing unbelief.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to begin to be an echo of God's presence and God's glory and God's majesty in my world despite what I'm going through.
SPEAKER_01: If that's you, as I begin to pray, I want you to begin to make your way down to this altar.
SPEAKER_01: And the pastors and leaders are gonna meet you here, and we're gonna pray and we're gonna believe God together.
SPEAKER_01: So come on now, we're gonna begin to pray.
SPEAKER_01: You start making your way to this altar, and Jesus is gonna meet us here.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I am so grateful this morning for your word.
SPEAKER_01: God, I am grateful that you are present in the room.
SPEAKER_01: God, not just through the ministry of your word, but you're here personally and individually for every single person and family and home that's represented in this room today.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I thank you that in the next few moments you're gonna begin to meet with your people.
SPEAKER_01: And God, you're gonna begin to inspire faith and hope and courage for the days ahead.
SPEAKER_01: God, I know in my heart that the days ahead are not going to be easy.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps they will become more and more difficult, but I am so grateful that as your people, we don't have to face that day or that hour with fear or anxiety or trepidation, because you are a God who meets us in these places.
SPEAKER_01: You are a God who reveals yourself and glorifies yourself in these moments.
SPEAKER_01: And so, Father, for every hurting heart, for every bruised spirit, for every person that's been echoing doubt and unbelief and pain, Father, I pray today that you would meet them in a transformative, miraculous kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, I pray today that heaven would come down in the name of Jesus, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: God, that you would give breakthrough this morning, that the days ahead, Lord, would be defined by the miraculous and the supernatural and the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: That the days ahead would not be defined by our pain or the mistakes of our past, but that your grace would cover us and empower us this morning, so that the echo of our life is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So that we could be an anomaly of hope to this generation, that you are who you say you are, and you can still do the things that you say you can do.
SPEAKER_01: God, do that in us today.
SPEAKER_01: Revive us today, heal us today, empower us today, by the Holy Spirit, God, glorify yourself in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, breathe on this place, breathe on trifles, breathe on barren places.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit, do your work.
SPEAKER_01: Work in power, we ask you, in Jesus' mighty name.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' mighty name.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Springs Church podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you were encouraged, uplifted, and challenged by the message today.
SPEAKER_00: If you need prayer or want to learn more about the church, we would love to connect with you.
SPEAKER_00: Visit the New Year page on tfcjacks.com.
SPEAKER_00: We pray you have a great week walking in all that God has for you.