"Easter Eggs: The Hidden Stories of Easter" Week 1

Pastor Jake kicked off our Easter series, “Easter Eggs: The Hidden Stories of Easter,” with a message on anticipation—the hope and longing that pointed to the first Easter. As the series continues, we’ll uncover overlooked moments in the Easter story and see how they reveal the hope and redemption found in Jesus. We’d love for you to join us as we journey toward Easter together.

Our mission is to glorify God by equipping His people to change their world and by planting churches with the same world-changing vision.

Website: https://mannastafford.church/

Find us on: 
Facebook:   / mannastafford  
Instagram:   / manna.stafford  
TikTok:   / manna.stafford

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

All right, good morning, man of church. Are you guys ready for the word? Yes, I I'm ready to deliver the word today. I'm gonna tell you, I'm excited about this series. Um I feel like, I mean, I always love preaching, I always love sharing the gospel and the good news, but there are some times where the Lord gives me a word and I feel like there's a special um burden on it. And today is one of those words. So I think um as a church, God has something for us today. And so if you're joining us for the first time, or maybe you're online at one of our locations at Quantico or Omaha, um, we want to welcome you. And and man, I want to welcome you to this series where we're talking about Easter eggs. And so uh this series, it's a little bit of a play on words because you know, most of the time, we you know, we we know Easter families hide Easter eggs all around the house. My family did it when I was a little kid. We would dye them the night before Easter, and then mom and dad would hide them around the house, and then sometimes they would get lost, and they were real eggs back in the day. So um, you don't want to lose a hard-boiled egg in your house that's there for weeks, maybe months. You find it at the worst time. Um, but uh but actually in our our common vernacular, the way a lot of us use Easter eggs is when there's something that's hidden in a movie or a show. Like Pixar. Pixar is amazing at this, right? They have all kinds of little Easter eggs. They'll put the the room number that all of the content creators or a lot of the content creators went to in school to learn how to do some of the graphics design. They'll they'll hide that throughout the show. Um, all kinds of cool little things like that. But but there's also these little almost hints that you see in movies or stories where they'll hide something or they'll they'll they'll just very subtly allude to something at one point, and you don't see the fulfillment until later, and then you have this aha moment. Wow, I get what was going on there. Like one of my favorite ones is uh Marvel. I'm I'm a Marvel nerd, okay? So I really love the the Marvel movies, all however many there are of them, a couple dozen, maybe three dozen now. And um there's this one Easter egg, it's more of a foreshadowing that you see in uh Avengers Age of Ultron, where everybody's trying to lift up Thor's hammer, right? And Thor, if you know Thor's hammer, only Thor can lift Thor's hammer. But you see Steve Rogers, Captain America, he comes over and he tries to move it and it actually wiggles a little bit. And so, and nobody says anything. There's no there's no revelation at that point. But nine movies later, nine movies later, probably my favorite moment in a in a fiction fantasy movie, there's this scene, and we're gonna play it, we're not gonna, we're not gonna stream it, we'll play it up here for the people in the room. There's this scene where Thor is getting beat up by the bad guy Thanos, and you see the hammer start to come off the ground. And Thor's, he's getting destroyed, right? And the hammer smacks Thanos in the head, and then you see Steve Rogers. Because he's worthy. He's able to hold the hammer. And actually, if you if you were able to play the sound from this, you would hear the crowd erupt in the theater. It was so cool to see that moment because it was a it was a culmination of something that they planted like nine years ago. So I love it because it was just a ball or move in the movie, but also I really love it because you finally got to see um the anticipation fulfilled. Because if you'd read any of the comics or or knew anything about the story, you knew that that might be a possibility. So you got to see the fulfillment of this anticipation. And so today, that's actually what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about anticipation. We're we're a couple weeks out from Easter, and I want us to build some good anticipation for Easter, but I want to talk about what anticipation in our souls does and how we actually respond to anticipation either in positive or negative ways. And so Jesus left us some clues, some Easter eggs, in his story about how we should handle anticipation. So, where we're gonna start today is actually in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew chapter 26, starting in verse 36. And so we're gonna read this together. It says, Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here while I go over there and pray. And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that's James and John, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch with me. And going a little further, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And he came to the disciples, and he found them sleeping. The disciples, they get a bad rap here because we often look at them and we think that they're just napping. That's not actually what's happening here, and I'll explain it more as we get a little bit further in this. He said to Peter, So couldn't you watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again for the second time he went away and prayed, Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done. And again he came and he found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away, and he prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Luke actually captures this prayer in Gethsemane as well. We're gonna we're gonna finish with the narrative from Luke, because he has a couple details in there that I think are really important to help us understand this. Luke chapter 22, verse 42. It says, Father, this is this prayer, Father, if you're willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done. An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found him asleep, exhausted from sorrow. Why are you sleeping? He asked them. Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. While he was still speaking, a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. So in this moment, I want us to recognize just for a minute, Jesus is not under any kind of physical punishment or torment from the people around him. There's nothing that's physically happening to his body. Everything he's dealing with in this passage, all of the pain that we hear in the text, both from he and his best and closest friends, it's purely emotional. It's not physical. Now, we all know what's coming, and so we can all appreciate the seriousness of what he's about to face. But I don't want us to miss this point. Jesus is not bleeding, because it says he's bleeding. He's not bleeding because someone wounded his body. He's bleeding from wounds of his emotion, wounds of his anticipation. He is anticipating something and it's causing him to bleed. And the hard truth, this is real. Anticipation can sometimes hurt more than the event itself. Now, Jesus, I don't want to say that what he experienced here was just as bad as what he experienced on the cross, but we know for most of us, for a lot of us, the things that we experience in life, anticipation can be the worst part of it. And this is because the brain actually treats anticipated pain as real pain. It's why when mom tells the kids to go upstairs, dad's coming home. Go upstairs and wait. I had this happen to me. We didn't have upstairs, but it was just wait. Or I got a note from my teacher that I had to take home and give to my dad. I knew it was going to be bad. And the anticipation of that moment was way worse than the punishment. If I just weigh the two of them, the anticipation leading up to getting spanked was way worse than actually the spanking. And the reason is because the same neural pathways they activate when you expect suffering as when you experience it. Your brain doesn't necessarily know the difference. And a lot of us, we deal with this all the time. You mess up on a project at work, and you expect, when the boss finds out, I'm gonna be in trouble. And so it changes the way that you start to behave. Or maybe in a relationship, you know you did something wrong. And there's a conversation that you know that you're gonna have to have and you dread it. And it changes the way that you experience the world around you. And listen, this actually doesn't just apply to things that you're responsible for, where you cause the negative outcome. There's some of you, you have experienced suffering at the hands of evil people in the world. And you are anticipating a repeat of that same pain. Women, maybe a man was was harsh with you, maybe he abused you. And anytime that you're alone with a man, you start to experience that same kind of anticipation. You start to feel the anxiety in your body. And you don't know where it's coming from, you just know you don't feel good. Or maybe you were demographically racially profiled, you were treated poorly by somebody who looks a way that's different from you. And every single time you're around people that look that different way, you start to worry, you start to feel like, man, is this gonna be the same thing? And you anticipate it. How about this? Maybe you or somebody close to you got sick, and it didn't end up well for them. And so every time you feel a little pain or just a little tweak somewhere, you think, well, I mean, everybody thinks, cancer, right? And then you go on the Googles, and Google's gonna tell you that it's cancer. That's that's the only response that Google has. Everything is cancer. But you start to anticipate it, you start to worry about it. And the thing is, uncertainty can actually intensify the pain of anticipation, just the not knowing. And if you've ever dreaded some unknown experience on the horizon, you're not alone. Jesus actually went through the same feeling, he'd never experienced in his physical body the pain of the cross or the level of isolation that he was actually getting ready to experience. In fact, one of the things he says is, he said, My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. I don't think that this is a metaphorical exaggeration. I don't think he's trying to be hyperbolic. I don't think he's saying, I'm so sad I could just die. I think that he's telling God what he's really feeling. And his disciples, they felt it too. You can see they fell asleep not because they were lazy. If you go back to Luke 22, 45, it's because they couldn't handle being awake. It says they they were asleep because of sorrow. They were overwhelmed with grief. Anticipation can actually paralyze you. Any of you ever been so overwhelmed with the burdens of the week that you just can't get out of bed? You don't have to raise your hand, but I know that there are people in here who've experienced that. Maybe you're experiencing it right now. Maybe you're online, and the reason you're not in the room is because you are so overwhelmed with the burdens of the week, you just couldn't get here. When you do wake up, you know you want to move, you have this circumstantial paralysis that you're kind of going through. Jesus, guys, they didn't abandon him, they just couldn't bear the strain in the same way that he could. And we see how bad it was because of how Jesus responded. Jesus actually experienced a medical condition. It's real, it's called hematidrosis. It's where the the hair follicles in your skin actually start to secrete blood. When you're under so much stress, under so much burden, that there's blood that comes out of your skin. Not supposed to do that. Stress can do that to you, though. And Jesus actually experienced it. He was God, but he was also human. He was fully God and he was fully man. And in this passage, we see a human, a body like a felt world response to a spiritual pressure. Jesus' spirit and his mind, they're causing a reaction in this body that was birthed in the womb of Mary. And Jesus, he wasn't just thinking about the cross, he was already experiencing the cross at this moment. And the place where he was in Gethsemane, it actually comes from the Aramaic, the two words Gatsimane, and it actually means press of oils. So there's a little Easter egg there too. He's in a place where there is a press of oils, and he's feeling the crushing in his soul. And he's asking, Lord, let this cup, Father, let this cup pass from me. He's not talking about a cup of wine. He's talking about the cup of God's wrath that we see mentioned several other times in Scripture. He's saying, Lord, I know that there's going to be wrath that's going to be poured out. I'm going to experience it. If it's possible, can it pass from me, please? And this wasn't the first time. Again, I think we missed this. This wasn't the first time Jesus was aware of the pain that he was going to experience. He didn't just learn about the cross that day. He didn't just learn about the betrayal that day. He knew what was going to happen years in advance, and he even told his disciples well in advance. Well, read this. Mark chapter 8, 31. It said, He began to teach them, so he taught them more than once, and we'll see another verse here. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. Jesus, he stopped hiding it from them. He knew it all along. He didn't make it clear to everybody, but he did make it clear to his inner circle what he was about to go through at some point. And some of you, you're anticipating struggles that are in your future. Maybe they're tomorrow, maybe they're a week in advance, maybe they're months or years from now. What if you had to anticipate the cross? Imagine this. Jesus, for his entire ministry, all the great, amazing stuff that we see him doing, the way that he postured himself and served and loved people, that whole time he had the cross looming. It's coming. That entire time, three years of ministry that we see, and he knows it's coming. I think it's really important that we look at how Jesus handled this anticipation versus how his disciples handled it. Mark 9, he tells him again, it says, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he's killed, after three days he'll rise. But they didn't understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him. He can't say it any more plain than that, right? I'm gonna be killed, guys. They're gonna kill me. It says they were afraid to ask him. Have you ever been so afraid of an answer that you didn't even ask the question? You ever been so worried about what the email's gonna say that you don't open it? You don't know what the bill's gonna be like, so you don't go to the mailbox? That's real. Students, you ever not check your grades? You don't want to see what your grade is because you know it might not be what you think it's gonna be. For parents, better yet, parents, you don't check your kids' grades because you don't want to know what they're gonna be? Yeah. That one's fun, but what about this? Parents, you don't check your kids' phone because you don't know what you're gonna find. And you would rather not know. You would rather just be ignorant. I don't want to know. I don't want to have to deal with this. The anticipation of what I might find is gonna be too much. I'd rather just not see it. How about this one? You don't go to the doctor because you don't want the diagnosis. You just rather not know. I'll just live up until the point where I can't live anymore, and then the diagnosis comes. I'm just not gonna ask the question. I'm afraid to ask the question. That's what it was with the disciples. They didn't want to ask. Honey, what were you doing with that person? That looked a little bit odd. Who's that text message you got? I just don't want to know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just gonna keep going forward. The disciples, they were exhausted with sorrow. Jesus gives them little tidbits about what they would see happen to him and how the culmination, how it would all culminate, and it wiped them out. It wiped them out. They couldn't even keep their eyes open to stay awake. And they did the opposite of what Jesus did, and they did the opposite of what I would I would like to say, I tried to do at least, and I'd love to teach you some steps that we can do if you find yourself paralyzed with anticipation of something negative in the future. Can we do that? I'm gonna give you four steps here. The first one is this it might seem really easy, but for some of you, this is gonna be the hardest thing. Number one is acknowledge the situation, just be open about it. I had a boss when I was doing defense contracting, um, his name's Joe, and he told me this. He said, Jake, bad news doesn't age well. Doesn't get better with age. And if you got some bad news that you need to deliver, just be open about the situation. Stop ignoring it. Deal with it. Sin is the same way. In fact, Hebrews talks about how sin can kind of calcify in our souls when we don't deal with it. We know that it's a problem, but I'm like, you know, I just I just don't have time to deal with it right now. I just don't want to face it right now. And so you just let it keep going. And it hardens in you. And it turns into something way more ugly than what it had to be. And make no mistake, sin, all sin is ugly. But man, you get to the point where you it's so big you can't even get beyond it. The lies are so huge. Men, we're notorious for this. We don't go to the doctor until it's way too late. We just it's not a problem. It's not a situation. And you can apply this to all kinds of situations that you're procrastinating on dealing with. And so I would ask you right now, what are the things that you've been ignoring that you know the Holy Spirit's putting his finger on right now? Like that. Like I'm talking, but the Holy Spirit is speaking to your soul right now. He's saying this. This is a situation you've been overlooking, you've been ignoring, you've been avoiding. Some of you, you've got that first part down. Like you're not you're not ignoring the situation. You're all over acknowledging it. In fact, um, it's in the forefront of your mind. It's just about all that you can think about. And so for you, I'm gonna skip you down to step number two, okay? Step number two, first thing is acknowledge there's a situation. Step number two is after you admit that there's a situation, you have to ask this question. It's a very, very important question. Is this a today situation? Is this something that I need to address today? Is there something I can do to effect a solution to this problem? Because I know that it's a problem. Is there something I can do today? I'm gonna tell you like you get a letter in the Mail on Friday and ain't nothing open until Monday? Stressing over the weekend, all it's gonna do is ruin your weekend. That's it. We got terrible news. I've told this story before. Terrible news that our third child didn't have a heartbeat. And this has been 16 years ago. And I'm gonna tell you, I didn't I didn't think through these steps, but this is 100% what I applied. I'm on a missions trip to Baja, Mexico. I'm on the phone with Daniel, and I say, here's what we're gonna do. It's Friday. You saw the doctor. We're not gonna be able to see the doctor until Monday. So we're not gonna worry about it. I'm gonna fly home. We're gonna enjoy the weekend with our babies that we do have here. And we're gonna let God work it out. We're gonna pray, but we're gonna let God sort it out, and then when we get to Monday, we're gonna go in and deal with it. Because it's not a today problem. There's not there's literally nothing we can do. Some of us we live so much in the future that we have a difficult time experiencing the present. And this isn't all just negative anticipation either. This can be positive, specifically with young people. You're living like 10, 20 years down the road, thinking about the car you're gonna drive, thinking about the person you're gonna marry, thinking about the job you're gonna have, all the money that you're gonna make. And you just need to get a a C in geography. Like that's real. When I was just a little kid, I remember being worried what would happen to my mom and dad when they died. Like seven, eight years old. I remember thinking about that. And my kids, they've actually asked me, Are you ever gonna die, Dad? And you see this, like you see this with your kids. They experience this this worry, this anticipation when they see something happen in the world. And then if you're not careful, their little souls will start to do this. They'll start to grab a hold of worry and and and let it own their life. They get hyper-anxious. And maybe that like there's some fears that are just irrational. You get on a plane, you can't get on a plane because you're worried the plane's gonna crash. Plane travel is the safest travel. It's way safer than driving in a car. Or maybe you're worried about aliens, something even more irrational, right? Like there's some people that are super worried about stuff like that. And then there are some that are a little bit less irrational, but you still, man, you you worry about it, like world wars. You worry about climate change, you worry about geopolitical actions that you can control zero of. Who's gonna be the next president? Who's gonna be the next governor? I'm not saying we don't take action and and do things about those those important pressing needs of our time. But some of those issues are not today issues. Today, maybe you just need to go have lunch with your family and don't stress so much about who's in the Oval Office. Just enjoy your babies. Parents, we are so good at this. We worry. My oldest drives to Richmond and back every day for work. I can't tell you how many times I have to remind myself of this. I think about him being on the road, and I'm like, oh man, so many cars, so many wrecks. He's gonna be on the road for an hour and ten minutes each way, five days a week. If I extrapolate that to however many hours it's gonna be for the year, we're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. Oh like, wait a second, I can't do anything about this. I'm not in control of this. I'm not gonna worry about it. Jesus talked about this, Matthew chapter 6. He said, Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? Your anxiety doesn't actually make your life longer. In fact, studies show that it does the opposite. Verse 33 says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, therefore, because of this, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. What he's saying here is there's enough worry for tomorrow to leave it there. Don't let the fear of the future paralyze you. And Jesus, he didn't just say this to us, he actually modeled it in the word. He modeled it in this passage, and it's an Easter egg that you might have missed. It's super cool. So we read about how he told the disciples, we know that he knew it was gonna happen. He was praying to God about it that same evening. He even sent Judas to initiate his betrayal. The amazing point here is in Matthew 26, 37, I think we can put it up on the screen. It tells us when he first started to have grief about this. It says, he began to be sorrowful hours before it happened. He could have carried this grief for years and let it impact his ministry, but he began to be sorrowful right before it happened. It's the first mention of it. He didn't borrow tomorrow's sorrow. He faced it when it was necessary. The cross was coming, but Jesus didn't carry it early, and some of you have huge burdens that you're gonna have to carry throughout life, but you can't carry it all today. So I go to the gym with my my 14-year-old a lot, and what we do is we put on the weights for that set, and I lift the weights for that set. He's always wanted to do bench press. I'm I'm making fun of him now a little bit. He always loves doing bench press. So we go, we go, and man, we're we're putting on the weights. What's interesting is I only put on the weights for that set. I don't put on the weights for the second set, too, and the third set. I don't put on the weights for tomorrow. I don't put on the weights for the rest of the week, do I? You know why? Because I can't lift it. I literally cannot lift tomorrow's weight today. It's impossible. And and and you see that there's a visual representation that you know, and yet we carry the burdens of tomorrow all the time today. You guys know we do this all the time. Listen, don't carry tomorrow's weight and today's strength. It's not gonna be enough. It's not gonna be enough. You will collapse under the weight of tomorrow. God didn't build you to carry the weight for weeks and months and years in the future. He built you to carry the weight for today. In fact, it says his mercies are new every morning. Give us this day our daily bread. This is a lesson God constantly is teaching his people. Step number three. Submit it to God. I know, I know it's common sense. But a lot of us don't even do this. Sometimes we just have to be reminded. Just give it to God. Before you fight the battle in the natural, fight it in the spiritual. What you'll find there is there's wisdom. We get it from James. You'll get strength. It says David, when he was lost and had this whole issue where everybody was against him, it says he strengthened himself in the Lord. And we see that Jesus does this too. Find shelter. Run for shelter. Shelter is in the Lord. That's where you find it. Psalm 57.1. I go to the Psalms 57.1. It says, Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy. I will look to you for protection. I'll hide beneath the shadow of your wings until the danger passes. Psalm 27, 5. He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He'll conceal me under the cover of his tent. He will lift me high upon a rock. Psalm 91.1. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. And listen, abiding there with the Lord in that shelter, it doesn't just mean existing and riding out the storms. It means actually trusting God. It means being able to find peace for your soul, even in the most trying of times. Jesus ran for shelter. He brought his closest friends with him to pray. And even though they didn't turn out to be a huge comfort, God didn't leave him alone, did he? Lucas says he sent an angel to minister to him. And listen, some of you think that you're alone in the struggle that you're facing right now. You're not. God's not going to leave you alone. He just won't do that. That's not his nature. Psalms 23 says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are. You're with me. Isaiah 43, 2 says, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Some of you got some things that you think, man, they're going to overwhelm me. And that's not what this says. When you walk through the fire, you won't be burned. The flame will not consume you. And this isn't, it's not just an Old Testament thing. We have some in the New Testament too. Hebrews chapter 13 says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Those are just people problems. That anticipation that I've got, it's about people. What can man do to me? The Lord is my helper. The last time I checked, he's on the throne. We just sang that for a while, didn't we? I'm gonna tell you, that is so encouraging. And it's at this point, it's at this point in most messages, man, most Bible stories, we're discussing prayers, our fears, our concerns, trusting God's goodness, and we get to this great resolution, and we find out, in fact, that God does. Yes, he does provide an answer. Gideon gets an angel to come in and deliver him. You see the Israelites, they get out of Egypt. Moses gets water from the rock. Leah gets her baby. We see Sarah, Elizabeth, they get their babies. We see all these crazy things happen, right? This is what we're expecting right here. That's not what happens. It's just not. At least not in this story. The resolution that Jesus gets through his prayer isn't that he's gonna avoid suffering. I find this part of the story, it's so sad and it's also super comforting simultaneously. To imagine a sinless, perfect man, he's begging his father for relief and he doesn't get it. It it hurts my soul. And it should hurt your soul a little bit too. But knowing that in the resolution, Jesus experienced the denial of a request, it does actually give me some solace. Because I've experienced the denial of requests before. I've asked God to answer me. I've asked him to deliver me, I've asked him to heal. And sometimes he doesn't. My dad on his deathbed at the age of 42. Man, I prayed hard. And I did not get the answer I want. I got an answer. It just wasn't yes. And when we say that Jesus is a man that's acquainted with our sufferings, even in this, he is acquainted with our sufferings. He knows what it's like to be told no. And the thing is, in this prayer, this isn't even a bad prayer. I think sometimes when we don't get the answer to our prayer, we think it's probably because it was a bad prayer. It's probably because I'm I'm asking something that's that's wrong or evil. This isn't a bad prayer. Asking that he wouldn't experience suffering, that's not wrong. Jesus is is fighting hard for this. And if you think, and if I think that I have prayed hard, y'all, I've never prayed so hard that I bled. I don't know of anybody in here who has. In fact, it says the first time when he went away to pray, after an hour he came back because he said you couldn't wait one hour. You get on your face for an hour? Most people don't. Most people, when they pray to God about a struggle, it's a little microwave prayer. It's not on your face weeping, being pressed, being crushed for an hour. And you think maybe if I pray a little harder, I'll get the answer that I want. It says Jesus prayed earnestly, even more earnestly. And he still got told no. And there's a ton of people in here with with prayers that you might call them unanswered, but they were answered. They were just answered with a no. That's hard. It's hard to deal with. I think Jesus, it's it's so interesting. He doesn't get corrected by God for asking that the cup passes. That's not sinful. God doesn't challenge him. As we anticipate the struggles that are in front of us, the fourth step, as you're honest with God, be honest with him. He can handle it, guys. God can handle your honesty, but we got to trust him with the resolution. Trust that his plan is a good plan. His answer, yes or no, is a good answer. There's nothing wrong with us not understanding the resolution. I don't understand why God does or doesn't do what he does and doesn't do all the time. But I never question his goodness and his character. Ever. Never. I don't. My life verse, I had some guy ask this to me one time. I was in Hawaii doing something for the Marine Corps, riding in a truck with this guy. He says, What's your life verse? I said, Oh, that's easy. Job 13, 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. I don't always understand what he's doing, but I will never lose my trust in him. And Jesus gives us a key as to why he was able to sit under that no. Hebrews 12 says this: look into Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. No matter what you're experiencing today, no matter what the anxiety is that you have, what tomorrow, next week, next month, next year might be bringing, here's what I want you to fix your heart on. It's what Jesus fixed his heart on. He wins, y'all. Jesus wins. Every single time he wins. It may feel like there's a setback right now. It may feel like this is this is a difficult situation, but Jesus always wins. And in your circumstance, it might not feel like a win. It might feel like you're losing. It might feel like you're just getting kicked and kicked and kicked even while you're down. But but make no mistake, Jesus was about to literally get kicked. He was gonna be hung on a cross, he was gonna be whipped and beaten, have a crown of thorns placed on his head, and in some crazy way, he found joy. You want to talk about whiplash going from praying so hard that there's blood coming out of your hair follicles, to joy. How do you do that? It comes from what you really believe. Do you really believe that God is good? Do you really believe that he's gonna win? I'm gonna tell you, I've thought back multiple times to when my dad passed away. Multiple times. And the thing that that I'm confident in is that God knew what he was doing. What I've often reminded myself of is my dad for most of my life was far from God. The year leading up to his death, he was so close to Jesus, to the point where the church I grew up in asked him to be a deacon. And God knew just the right time to take him. I believe that. What if God had answered my prayer? I don't want to mess with anybody's theology or suggest anything about mine, but what happens? Does my dad stay in this state of grace? I don't know. What happens if if God answers this prayer of Jesus? Think about that? What if he says, okay, Jesus, yes, yes, this this cup can pass. What we're doing right here, the the the life change that you experience by accepting Jesus into your heart and soul, doesn't happen. And listen, I want you to understand this. There is joy in heaven over what we have done today. Jesus, he's so glad when we come into his presence and we worship him, we fellowship together, we we put him in his rightful place, when we give him honor, and then when we when we help other people be delivered from the dominion of darkness into the dominion of light. That gives him joy. And so he was saying, yes, there's suffering here, but I'm gonna anticipate that there's a win on the other side of it. And in your circumstance, you might not be able to see what that win is, but I promise you, Jesus will win. He always, always, always wins. I want to give you one verse. I'm gonna give you one verse here as we close. I want you to hang on this because listen, Gethsemane, this place of pressing, it wasn't just a prelude to the cross. This was the decision point. This was where it was decided, was in that moment of pressing. And some of you are in a season of pressing now. And I believe that there's a decision point for you today, and what you're gonna do with that, how are you gonna respond? How are you gonna respond to God? There's this great verse, it's in Proverbs, it's talking about a righteous woman. This I love this verse, it's such a good verse. It says this she's clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. Some of you have burdens today that are so great you feel like you can't. I don't know when the last time I laughed about the future was. The only thing that I feel is dread. The only thing that I feel is foreboding. I am uneasy. I have tomorrow's weight on me, and it does not feel good. And so as we close, I just want to I want to pray for us today. So if we could we bow our heads for a minute here? And I believe the Holy Spirit wants to do some work. So if if you're in a season where if you're in a season where you're struggling, you got a lot of weight that's on you. And it is it is too much for you to bear. You know it. Or maybe you have something that you haven't acknowledged because you know that the anticipation of it is gonna lead you to really dark places. And you just need to be free from that burden. I want to I want to pray for you today. So I'm gonna give you a chance, and we're we're gonna we're gonna have like a little faith response here. Alright? I'm just gonna ask you to slip your hands up. I guarantee that there are a lot of people in here with this situation they're dealing with. You're facing a lot of struggle. So do me a favor, here in just a second, I'm gonna give you an opportunity. Just slip your hand up. You're not raising it to me, you're raising it to Jesus. You're telling him, like, I need freedom from this burden. So go ahead and do that now. All over this room. I know that there are people, yeah. Lots of hands. Keep keep them up, hold them up high. Let Jesus see it. He knows what you're dealing with. I'm gonna pray for you today, Lord. There is no burden you can't lift. There's no anxiety you can't calm. There's no fear you can't overcome. And so, Father, right now, I pray that for these people who've lifted their hands, Lord, would you come in? Your word says that the Holy Spirit is the comforter. So, Holy Spirit, would you come and bring comfort? God, would you soothe, Lord? Father, I pray that the the vision of the future that is foreboding, that feels dangerous, that feels dark, that feels like there's only loss and failure. God, would you replace that with a victory of you winning, Lord? God, would you give us hope? Father, only you can make that exchange. Only you can make that exchange, Lord. And so, Lord, we we just we give these worries to you. We give them to you, God. They're not ours to carry anymore. We're not gonna carry them today. If you're here and you have never actually made a commitment to Jesus, you you don't actually know what that joy is that he was looking forward to. I'm gonna tell you, he was looking forward to you accepting him. He was looking forward to you making a decision to make him your Lord. And I want to give you a chance to do that today. The word is really clear. There's nothing that you can do that will save you, not a single thing. The only thing that you can do is believe in Jesus' sacrifice, believe that he was good. And that belief and that profession of faith, we're gonna profess it with our mouths. That profession of faith, that is what saves you. When you stand before God, he's gonna say, What'd you do to get here? You say, Nothing. Jesus did something though. And if you want that offering placed on your account, I'd just love to give you a chance to repent of your previous lifestyle and give your life to Jesus today. So same thing. We're just gonna do this right now. If that's you, I just want you to lift your hand up right now. Just slip your hand up. You're making a decision today. You're gonna be delivered from a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light. Yeah, anybody else? Man of church, we're gonna say this prayer together. Everybody, can we say this? Say, Jesus, I need you. I repent of my failures and flaws, and I surrender to you now. I know you lived, you died, and you rose again. All with us in mind. Come into my heart, save me, forgive me, and lead me in Jesus' name and his authority, and all God's people said, Amen. Hey, if you're free today, give Jesus a clap.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week and we'll see you next time.