Love In The Gap

We connect the gap between God’s truth and our lived experience to something every family recognizes: patient love that keeps investing before the results show up. We honor mothers while also learning how God stays present in our process and how faith keeps standing when growth is hidden. 
• defining the gap between belief and experience 
• the gap as a place of rooted faith rather than distance from God 
• motherhood as constant investment before visible return 
• the kingdom of God growing invisibly before it grows publicly 
• Mary in Luke 2:19 as a model of quiet, pondering faith 
• why delay gets mislabeled as failure and how that creates condemnation 
• hidden transformation and the danger of false church expectations 
• Romans 5:8 and Jesus refusing to define people by their worst moment 
• motherhood beyond biology through spiritual mothers and everyday nurture 
• choosing love as the evidence of the gospel in real life 
You got a challenge this week. Go out and love on somebody who is unlovable. Go pray for somebody. Go love on somebody today. Tell them how special they are. Tell them something they don’t see in themselves yet.

Transcript

Defining The Gap

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So over the last several weeks, uh, we've been talking about what I've kind of coined, and I'm I'm probably not the first one that's ever named it this, but I've never heard it preached from this with these words, but I call it the gap. And what we've been talking about in the gap is that space between what we know to be true, and I want you to see this because this is really gonna help you understand this message today. That gap is that place where we know what is true, we know what we believe, but then we also know what we're experiencing in life. And between what we believe and what we're experiencing, it's not always the same. So, in between those two things is a gap. And that's what we've been talking about for the last several weeks. Uh, I've kind of been stuck on that. I believe that's something that God has really kind of opened up to me to uh to speak on and to talk a little bit deeper about. But it's that space between what God has declared true and what we are experiencing in life. It's kind of the promises that he's made to us and the manifestation or the lack of manifestation. Because sometimes we know the promises, we know what he said, we believe what he said, we know the word of God, but we may not see it manifesting in our life yet. There's a gap in there, and that's where I think a lot of us live, I really believe all of us live in that place. And we're we're in that place now. I also like to say it like this: it's what's finished in Christ and what still feels unfinished. There's promises that were made, there's things that we read about that we decree over our life, but when we're honest about it, when we really look at our life, maybe we're not seeing that we've manifested that thing in our life yet. We believe it, we think it's true, we know it's true, but we haven't quite manifested it. There's a gap in there, there's a process in there. So that's really what we've been talking about. And one of the things we discovered in this is that the gap is not proof of absence. And that's one of the main things I wanted to push across, and I was fearful about teaching the gap for that reason because I didn't want anybody to misunderstand what I was saying about the gap and think that I was saying that that was a place where we were distant from God. That gap of distance between us and God has already been closed on the cross. There is no distance between us and God. And some people would still argue that point. And I would simply say Jesus went to the Father. He sent back the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not wandering around in the air somewhere, he has made a presence inside each one of us. So how can I be distanced from something that lives on the inside of me? The Holy Spirit is present on the inside of us. There is no distance between us and God. The gap is often that place where faith learns to remain rooted in the truth even when visible evidence is not fully arrived yet. I stand on the word of God. That's what we're talking about all the time. Standing on the word of God, even when life presents evidence that's totally contradictory to what I'm believing. Can I stand on the word anyway? Can I take a verse and read it and know it and believe what it says? And then when Monday morning life hits and it don't line up, can I still continue to stand on that word? Even though life is showing me something different. Experience is proving different. There's a gap in there. Can I stand on the word while I'm in that gap and stand on the truth? So you may say, okay, you're talking about the gap.

The Gap Is Not God’s Absence

SPEAKER_00 4:03

This is Mother's Day. When are we going to get to a Mother's Day message? And this is where it kind of tied in, and I really have never looked at it like this before. As I began thinking about Mother's Day, I realize something really powerful. No one may understand the gap better than a mother. Now, listen to me. Not just understanding more about why you're such a good mother, but also understanding more about this gap that we're talking about. Because motherhood at its core is living in constant investment. Think about what you've invested in your children. You live in

Why Mothers Understand The Gap

SPEAKER_00 4:52

constant investment long before you ever see a visible return. You have invested, invested, invested a lot of time, a lot of hours, a lot of money, a lot of different things. And sometimes, let's be honest, sometimes we, you know, as a mother, you may sit back and say, When am I ever going to see the fruits of my labor? You know, that's just life. There's a gap in there between what we're doing, what we know to be true, and what we're experiencing. A mother speaks identity into a child long before they ever have confidence in themselves. She nurtures character before character actually shows up in that child. She carries hope through seasons where growth seems really slow. Sometimes it even seems uncertain that they're going to grow up. Much of motherhood is believing in what cannot be fully seen yet. Now think about that. Because this is what we've been talking about in the gap. The gap between what is being formed and what has fully appeared and being experienced in life. I believe that mothers live in that place constantly. Think about the things that a mother does. They love through unfinished seasons, regardless of the problems, regardless of the mistakes that the child makes, they love their child through unfinished seasons. They love through situations and circumstances. They may not see the outcome of a check. They may not know what's going to come out of it. They may not know what the end result's gonna be, but the situation and the circumstance never changes the love that they show toward the child. It just don't happen. They are speaking over their child's life even when they don't realize it. How many times have your mama spoke over your life, spoke encouragement into your life? You probably didn't realize it. You didn't realize what she was doing, but she spoke stuff into your life. They continue showing up in ordinary moments that may not seem very significant at the time. Yet sometime during those moments, our lives begin to take shape. We don't even realize it. We think she's just there because she's mama and she's supposed to be there. But behind the scenes, she is speaking. Behind the scenes, she's decreeing. Behind the scenes, she is saying things into your life. And before we even realize it, she is slowly molding and shaping us into exactly who we're supposed to be. I believe that's what makes motherhood so amazing. It reflects the heart of God. And just like Him, mamas remain present while their children are still becoming who they were created to be. It'd be nice to have your five-year-old be able to wake up one day and be totally mature. No problems, no terrible twos, nothing like that, but we know that don't happen. But we remain there, we remain constant, we remain in a place of love even during all that mess that goes on in a child's life. A God, think about this: a God and a mama. A God and a mama continues nurturing, continues loving, continues forming, even when the final outcome can't be seen yet. See, I thought this was powerful because we've been teaching so much on this about God, who God is, and that no matter what happens in our life, he never leaves us nor forsakes us. He's always nurturing, he's always loving, he's always there for us, he's always encouraging, he's always faithful. But when you turn this thing around and truly look at motherhood, that is the exact nature of the Father. It's the exact nature of God. So today we're absolutely honoring every mother that's in here. But we're also recognizing something a little bit deeper. That motherhood itself becomes a living picture of what faith looks like inside the gap. We preached a message a couple weeks ago that said, what happens when you're triggered inside the gap? And then we went on and talked about how do you have faith inside the gap when you're triggered? When that thought comes up that you thought you got rid of, when that habit reappears that you thought wasn't there anymore, when it comes up, how do you manage it? The same thing we're talking about here. So we're gonna honor mothers today, but we're gonna go a little bit deeper than that as well.

The Kingdom Grows Through Process

SPEAKER_00 10:05

And I believe one of the most frustrating things when you look at the kingdom of God is that it often grows invisibly before it ever grows visibly in front of people. We want immediate outcomes. We want instant results. That's just the generation we've come up in. We we want to see it right now. We want to see clarity. We want to see transformation happens as soon as we get somebody to kneel down on an altar. We want them to get up and everything be transformed and everything be changed. And oftentimes we fool ourselves into thinking that's what happened. And then we can't believe that they got saved last Sunday and they out here doing this next weekend. Because we don't put enough stock in the process, in the process of transformation, and we naively think that it's just happened because I said a prayer and repeated a prayer after somebody. There's more to it than that. Again, nothing wrong with the prayer. But I think we got to go a little bit deeper and realize that there's a little bit more to it than just repeating words. And we got to realize that. So the kingdom is something that we need to look at and realize it's not instantaneous. There's more to it than that. We can't always have immediate results, we can't always have it right now. But here's the good news reading through the Bible and looking at different stories, this is what I've come to realize. Heaven seems really comfortable with process. Jesus was really comfortable with process. Nowhere will you read in the Bible that Jesus made a statement and expected it right now. A lot of times, when he's talking to people, and I'm talking about relationship here. I'm not talking about when he healed somebody, I'm talking about relationship. And I think if you go back and you read the stories of Jesus in the Bible, he shows us this many times in his teachings when he spoke of like a seed being buried underground. Why didn't he just speak of a tree? Because it was a process. He talked about the leaven being hid in the dough. The dough itself was not going to rise without the leaven. He talked about roots forming beneath the surface. What feeds the tree? The roots. So he talked about things underneath. He talked about deeper things that initiated what we always want to see. We just want to see the tree. We just want to see the fruit. I want to plant an apple tree and walk out there next week and pick an apple off my tree. It ain't going to happen like that. It's going to be a while. That thing's going to be growing underground for a while before it ever comes up through the ground. And then it's going to be a little while longer before it starts forming a tree and actually starts producing fruit. It's a process. In the kingdom, something grows quietly before it grows publicly. I think the church hurts people because we see it differently sometimes. We expect it now. We expect when somebody gets saved, their life transforms. Everything in their life, every bad thing they've ever done, every every mistake, every issue, every problem is supposed to just be wiped away immediately. And we put a false expectation on people. And see, here's the thing, motherhood reflects that pattern in the same way. Some of the most amazing work that's happening in this world right now is not going to go viral online. It's not going to receive a standing ovation. People's not going to recognize it. It's things that's happening behind the scenes. It's things that's happening with a mother talking to a child at a kitchen table, spending time with them. It's a mother talking to a child about difficult situations. It's a mother correcting a child in love. Being consistent in what she says. And also through refusing to give up on someone who has not yet become who they truly are. What I just described is exactly what a mama does. Exactly. But isn't that exactly what God does with us as well?

Mary’s Quiet Faith In Luke 2

SPEAKER_00 15:18

I want you to look with me at Luke chapter 2, verse 19. Just one verse. But look at what it says. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Now, if you just read this isolated, like I just isolated it, and I've done that for a reason, it don't really mean nothing. Why? Because I don't know the context of this verse. All I know is Mary kept some things to herself and she pondered them in her heart. I don't know what things she pondered. I don't know what she was keeping to herself. I don't know nothing about this situation. But what I do know is that Mother's Day, and we're talking about a mother right here, Mary. So I went back and I began to look at the context of this. And the context of it is this: after the shepherds arrived and prophetic words surrounded the birth of Jesus. Jesus was just born, and all of a sudden, all these people are arriving to the scene. Wise men are coming and bringing gifts and speaking words of encouragement, speaking prophetic words over this child that was just born. And then Scripture says, But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. So you mean to tell me she was not so excited that she got up and ran into town and started telling everybody about the prophetic word that was just spoken over her baby. She kept the things and she pondered them in her heart. Why is that important? See, this verse is fascinating to me. Because Mary just gave birth to someone she really doesn't understand yet. She knows what's been spoken. She heard these prophetic words, but she's not sure how this whole picture is going to unfold. She knows there's a calling on her baby's life. There's no doubt about that. She was told that before she even got pregnant. She knows there's a calling on this baby's life, but she still has questions that she wants answered. She believes what's being said by the wise men is the truth. But there's not a lot of clarity on how it's going to come together. And yet she continues to carry all of this forward. Pondering these things in her heart, as it says right here. And that's something all mothers, I think, can relate to loving, investing, remaining faithful to something that is still in process. Your mama held on to a vision for you while you were still struggling as a child. She had a vision for your life. And she held on to that vision, even through all your mistakes, all your problem, all your rebellion, all everything you went through. I don't know what kind of child you were, but you was probably not the rest of us. She probably wasn't real good at times. But your mama held on to a vision for you during that time. She would look at you and know exactly who you were while you were still trying to figure out your identity. How many of you loved your child? If you're a mom, you love, you know you loved your child, or you know that your mom loved you so much.

When Delay Feels Like Failure

SPEAKER_00 19:20

And every time a problem arose, did you run away? Did she run away? I'm asking that question, because if mama wouldn't run away, why do we keep preaching to people that God does? If a human wouldn't do it, would the one that created us and shaped us and created us after his own image, after his own likeness, would he run away from us every time we mess up? Sometimes I just think we gotta be unspiritual and use a little bit more common sense. We get too spiritual sometimes. We try to get way up here. Try to get so deep with it that we miss the meaning of it. And I believe we do have to look at it in a natural sense too. Do we really believe that we care about people more than God cares about us? I love my kids, my son. I love my grandkids. I love but I believe that God loves me just the same, if not more. I would do anything for them. Which means he would do anything for me. And I think most mamas would agree that the hardest part sometimes is the fact that you don't force, you can't force growth. You can't make it happen, you can't rush transformation or instantly produce maturity like you want to. Some things can only unfold through time and through a process. And that's difficult for us because what we do a lot of times is we take the delay and we automatically attribute it to failure. What happens when we're in the gap? I know what God said, I believe what God said, I know the word, I can speak it, I can decree the Bible verse. But man, I'm not seeing that in my life yet. I must be doing something wrong. I begin to look at myself in a sense of failure. Without realizing we're in a And there's a process in here. So instead of looking at it as a negative thing, looking at it as failure, I can look at it and truly say, why am I not manifesting what the word has said? And instead of a problem, it now becomes an opportunity. I can look back and say, where am I missing this at? Where's the problem at? What can I correct? What can I do different? And I believe that's because we taught people. We have truly taught people to think that way. Some things just have to unfold through time and through process. But hidden growth is still growth. Slow growth is still growth. We can't put a time frame on how quickly somebody's going to get there. Did our mamas ever put a time frame on how quickly we mature? How quickly we get to a certain point? And I don't think we can put that same thing on ourselves when it comes to spiritual stuff. One of the things we talked about last week is that the gap becomes dangerous when we misinterpret it incorrectly. Like I just said, when we start putting our condemnation on ourselves, guilt. When we start looking at ourselves in a negative way because I don't feel like I'm where I need to be yet. I don't feel like I'm in the place that I should be yet. And I start looking down on myself because maybe something's wrong. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I've literally heard people say, maybe I'm not really saved. They begin to question the entirety of their salvation simply because they misinterpret the gap that they're in, the process. Because when visible evidence is slow, the human mind often creates false expectations or false statements. Nothing is changing in my life. Maybe this thing just ain't working. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe I failed somewhere along the way. Those are false statements or false comments that we begin to make toward ourselves. But the absence of visible fruit is not always the absence of transformation. Just because I don't see myself progressing to the next level doesn't mean I'm not slowly moving forward. But we put this expectation that if you get up from this altar and you just ask the Lord to come into your life, we have certain expectations that we put on people. And if they don't reach them by next Sunday, there's a problem. Instead of just letting them go through the process and walking with them through the process and saying, guess what, buddy? I know you got saved today, but you're going to hit some bumps next week. There's some thoughts that's going to come that didn't get washed out at the altar. There's something that's going to trigger you, and that word that you thought you wasn't going to say anymore is going to come flying out of your mouth. And you're going to feel bad because you're going to say, I thought I was born again. I thought all those words just disappeared. And the truth was they didn't. They don't disappear. We learn how to distance ourselves from them. But they're still there. The thoughts are still there. The words are still there. The mindset can still be there. And some of the deepest things God does in people happens internally, long before it ever happens externally. And I believe that's one of the problems is we put this expectation that it's going to happen externally. We don't give people the time, the space, and the process to walk some of this stuff out. We think it ought to be done because why? They repeated a prayer and we poured some oil on their head. And they got dunked in water the next Sunday. Those are all good things to do. They all have a legitimate purpose. But if we put a false expectation behind them, then I believe we're leading people in the wrong direction. And I believe this is my opinion. This is not Bible. I'll tell you when it's my opinion. I believe we're hurting people more than we're helping people when we do that. Because then when they get disappointed because they failed, they're going to slip up and make a mistake and they're going to think they backslid. And then they're going to get out of church because they're going to feel like they don't fit in anymore. They're going to say, I probably wasn't saved to begin with. And then they're going to stop coming to church, which we've had people do, so I know from experience. And now we got to try to get on the phone with them or meet with them and say, no. That's a false thought that you're having. You're still a child of God. He still loves you. He still never left you. And the whole time you're telling them that, they're not believing any of it. Why? Because the power of the problem becomes stronger than the power of the word. That'll preach. That's another word for another time. The power of the problem becomes stronger than the power of the word. I think mothers understand this. I think they understand this really well. Now think about it. I wonder how many prayers your mama prayed, even though she wasn't seeing change in your life. Did she stop praying? Or does she go in deeper? See, some of you might have been so bad, she had to go in deeper. She said, God apparently is not hearing me. But she never stopped praying, even in the midst of seeing no change in your life. How many times did she continue to love you even though you were so rebellious? You've done everything you could to come against what she was asking. But she loved you anyway. How many times did she continue to believe in you during times where you didn't even believe in yourself? You were lost. You didn't know who you were. You didn't know where you were going. She continued to believe in you, continued to speak over you every single time. It's really amazing what your mama did for you. And some of you that's mamas, what you did for your child. It's powerful. And it wasn't because she was perfect. It's not because you're perfect. What mamas do truly reflect the nature of God.

Hidden Transformation And Church Expectations

SPEAKER_00 29:56

In Romans chapter 5, it tells us while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I love this. I think we need to read this verse more. I think we need to go beyond just reading this verse. I think we need to actually catch the revelation of this verse. And it'll change your mindset on everything. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You know what this shows me? And I didn't get this for a long time. I'll be honest, I didn't get this for a long time. God did not wait for a completed transformation before he extended love toward me. Think about that. He moved toward us while we were still in the process of trying to get fixed, of trying to get better, of trying to get to a better place. While we were in the process and we were still making mistakes, we were still falling short, we were still doing dumb things, he died for us. One of the most beautiful things about Jesus, all through the Bible, there's a lot of great things about Jesus, but one of the greatest things about Jesus is his refusal to define people by their current condition. Religion, the problem with religion, and you've heard me say this many times, and I'll continue to say it, I hate religion. Religion hurts people. I don't like religion. And one of the problems with religion is it freezes people inside their worst moments. Jesus consistently looked deeper. He never froze people inside the worst moments of their life. Most people saw Simon, the unstable fisherman. Jesus saw Peter. Nobody else saw Peter. They seen the crazy fisherman. Others saw failure, Jesus saw transformation. Others saw the current version, Jesus saw the finished reality hidden beneath the process. It wasn't there yet. But he seen it. He seen it in faith. Substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen in the physical yet. But because I don't see it in the physical, don't mean I don't see it in the spiritual. I've told you many times that land we bought out here, I can ride by right now and I can tell you exactly what that church looks like sitting on the property. It's not there yet, but I can tell you exactly where it's going to be, what it's going to look like, what the colors are going to be, where the plants are going to be. I can tell you everything about that because I've seen a vision of it. Now we're waiting on the provision to come. And it's going to come. But that's one of those things that we can see. Jesus didn't just see the old dirty fisherman. And if y'all know anything about fishermen, he probably didn't have the prettiest language. But Jesus seen the finished product. He seen deeper than who he really was or who he was showing at the time. I think mothers carry this same kind of vision. Not just for their kids, but for people in general. They see beyond current behavior, beyond temporary immaturity, beyond difficult seasons. Not because they deny reality, but because love has the ability to see deeper than the moment. When you truly love, you see deeper than just the surface. If you look on the surface of people, there's not a lot of people you'd probably like. Let's just be honest. But when you can look beyond the problems, beyond what's going on in the natural, and truly look at somebody and say, man, I don't like the position you're in in the natural, but my God, he is on the inside of you. And there is something special on the inside of you. And when you can begin to speak to that thing that he doesn't even see yet, that's what the prophetic is. The prophetic's not scary. The prophetic is speaking into something that person can't even envision in themselves yet. Why? Because they're tapped into the natural instead of tapping into the spiritual. So maybe faith is not pretending that problems don't exist. Maybe faith is refusing to let the unfinished version become the finished version. Let's not look at somebody in their worst moment. Let's not tie somebody down to the worst season of their life. Let's go deeper than that. So Mother's Day is a beautiful day. But it can also be painful, as I said earlier. It can be really complicated for some people. Some mothers today feel fulfilled. There's other mothers in here who may feel exhausted. Some feel appreciated, while others feel unseen. Some are carrying grief. Some are carrying regret. Some are carrying prayers that they still that still seem unanswered. You're still praying, but you haven't seen the manifestation of it yet. And there's women in here today who may not have biological kids yet. Yet they've spent their lives nurturing others, mentoring others, protecting others, carrying others emotionally and spiritually. I personally just believe motherhood's larger than biology alone. I really do. That's why we call it spiritual mothers. You can be a spiritual mother, but not be a biological mother. But you can speak life into somebody, you can nurture somebody, you can be there for somebody, you can see more in somebody than what they really are. So any life that you consistently nurture growth into, I believe that's something sacred. Don't matter if that person comes from you or not. When you can speak life into somebody who they feel dead at times, and I'm talking spiritually, but you can speak life into them that's sacred. I think there's people in this room that need to hear that today. Because there's some people that you need to speak into. There's some people around you in your job, in your neighborhood, in your family. There's some people that you need to open your mouth and you need to speak into. What if she don't? Maybe you can have the opportunity. Just because the work is hidden does not mean it's insignificant. Everything doesn't have to be done in the front of a church. Sometimes it can be done behind the scenes. Some of the most amazing work, I said a while ago, is done behind the scenes. You hear a message on Sunday morning,

Love Sees The Finished Person

SPEAKER_00 38:40

but you don't know behind the scenes what led up to this message. You don't know the going through and looking and studying and writing and taking it out and bringing something else in. You don't know what built the message because all that happens behind the scenes. He is having fun today on Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, Kaylee. Where was I at? We'll get ready to end right here. I think it's important to understand that God works through process more than through performance. Think about that just a minute. He works through process more than he works just through performance. What do I mean there? The world celebrates finished products. We want to see when it's done. God works through formation. The world gets caught up in what it sees, but God focuses on a process. And maybe one of the reasons we struggle with the gap that we talked about is because we want outcomes faster than transformation can actually happen. Transformation is not microwave work. You don't just pop it in a microwave and put it on for 30 seconds. That's why I say you can't just come to an altar, kneel down, say a prayer, and expect everything to be fixed. There's a process that goes behind it. That's a good place to start. But there's more to it than that. Even Jesus spent 30 years behind the scenes before his little three and a half years of ministry. And I say little because that's not long in the ministry. But he spent 30 years behind the scenes. Now think about that. The Son of God spent most of his life unseen. That alone should challenge how we define importance. Because he was the most important man that ever walked the earth. But most of his life was never seen. Heaven has never measured significance by people, by the way people do. Maybe some there's some mothers need to hear this. The ordinary moments that may seem small, they matter more than you realize. The little things, the little conversations, they matter more than we sometimes realize. In Galatians, it says this let us not grow weary in doing good. For in due season we shall all reap if we do not lose heart. That verse is not about pretending things are easy, it's about refusing to let temporary seasons take over and become the main focal point of my life. Who cares if you went through a temporary season? We hear people say it all the time. Well, brother, I went through divorce during this, or I went through addiction here, and I went through alcoholic. Who cares? That was a short season of your life that you cannot let a short season define your entire being. Can't do it. It was simple as that. It was a season. And now it's gone. And the good thing about one season ending is another season begins. And we have a say in what's going to happen in the next season. So today, as I close up here, we honor mothers not because they always did things perfectly, not because they always had the right answers, but because they never, or not because they never became stressed out. How many of you ever just got just got tired of your mama sometimes? She was stressing you out. Come on, be real. But she never stopped praying. She never stopped loving. She never stopped encouraging. She was always there even when you wasn't. And that's powerful. Motherhood reflects something deeply true about the heart of God the willingness to continue nurturing life. Before the fullness of that life can truly be seen. The willingness to remain present during the process. And the willingness to love unfinished people. Unfinished, messed up people. You know why? Because they see the finished work. Even though we don't yet, they see it. And maybe that's what, again, what faith inside the gap looks like. Continuing to nurture, continuing to believe, continuing to love. And when the final outcome is not seen yet, we continue to stand on the truth regardless. And even though this is most of this today, I hope you've noticed has been about mothers. I hope you see too that this is exactly what God

Motherhood Beyond Biology

SPEAKER_00 44:58

does with every single one of us. Some of you are sitting here today, still inside your own gap, still waiting to be healed, still waiting for clarity, still waiting for restoration to happen, still wondering if anything's going to change at all. But hear me clearly this morning. Just because the fruit is not visible does not mean God is absent. You may not see it yet, but God has not left you. Just because transformation feels slow does not mean heaven has stopped working. We just have not seen it yet. And maybe years from now, when people look back on your life, they might call it a miracle. But they will never truly know the prayers, the tears, the patience that watered those roots to get you to where you are today. They see a miracle. They didn't see behind the scenes mama that was praying, that was having patience, that was crying, that was on her knees. I can literally remember, I get chills every time I think about this. I can remember years ago, back I was probably about six or seven years old. My brother had a bad accident. He was in the hospital for a while and had to have surgery on his leg. I had to stay with my grandma. My grandma was, I mean, she was strict church of God. And anytime you've seen her, she had that big old bun on her head. And I can remember she lived in a little old tiny apartment, and she had a curtain up between the living room and where you walk into her bedroom. And I can remember to this day so vividly, I would hear something, and I didn't know what it was. Church of God now. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I heard a language that I didn't understand. And I snuck, I finally got up the courage one day to sneak back there and peek my head behind that curtain. And when I did, man, I seen this old woman sitting on her knees on that floor with that hair all the way down, laying on the ground, and she was praying. And I'm telling you, she was lifting. I mean, I stood there, even at six, seven, eight years or whatever I was. I remember standing there listening to what she was saying. She was praying for her kids. She was praying for her grandkids. She was decreeing life over every single one of us. She was decreeing, because me and my brother stayed with her a lot. She was decreeing that we would preach the word of God at seven and eight years old. Powerful moment. I wish we'd have had phones back then where I could just start a recording. Because it would have been so amazing to go back and look at today and listen to the words that she prayed. And I know you probably had that experience too, but it just stands out. It stands out because I didn't realize the hair was so long, too. I was used to seeing that big old bun, and when she put that bun down, man, that hair went down to the ground. But it was a powerful moment. But she was lifting up her kids and she was lifting up her grandkids and speaking life over them years before it would ever come to pass. So some of you here today, some of you is here because somebody kept believing when you gave them every reason not to. Somebody kept praying, kept speaking life, kept seeing something in you that you couldn't see in yourself. So today we honor mothers, but more than that, we honor the kind of love that refuses to abandon unfinished people. That's the love of a mother, and that's the love of God. A God who stays, a God who forms, a God who remains present in the process, a God who can already see the finished story while you're still living in unfinished chapters. He sees the end of the story. And maybe faith inside the gap looks like this. And I'm gonna end with this.

Don’t Grow Weary In Doing Good

SPEAKER_00 49:30

This is what it looks like. Maybe it's you waking up tomorrow and continuing to love in spite of all the reasons not to, continuing to trust, even when that trust has been broken so many times, continuing to believe in what can't be seen yet. It's not just something nice to do. That's actually the gospel. That's what the gospel message, the good news, is all about. You might say, well, how is that the gospel? Because he hung on a cross and he gave me the ability to be able to do this. He gave me the ability to be able to love unlovable people. You ever met an unlovable person? You gotta raise your hand. I have, I'll raise it for you. I've met some unlovable people. And I had to figure out a way to show love anyway. That's what he's called for us to do. Why? Because that's what he does for us. In the midst of your problems, in the midst of everything, he's loved you anyway. And that's all he calls us to do. Be an example of me. Replicate what I did. That's it. There's a lot of other things we can do too, but it really just comes back to that. Because when we do that, those other things are just falling in place. Sometimes we put those other things more important and we get lost in that stuff. But if we can just love and love the ones that's hard to love. I ain't talking about go love the ones that's easy to love now, because we know that's easy. But the hard ones, the difficult ones, the ones that you'd really rather step back into who you used to be and say a few words to. Love them anyway. Pastor Don Pinder used to say, love the hell out of them. If they got hell in them, love it out of them. Hard to do. But that's what we're called to, and that's what I think mothers done. That's what God does. Why? Because mothers carry the nature of God. And we're created in his image after his likeness. And we come from the mother. So we should be able to do this. You got a challenge this week. Go out and love on somebody who is unlovable. If you come back next week, Sunday with a black eye, I know you tried. Go pray for somebody. Go love on somebody today. Tell them how special they are. Tell them something they don't see in themselves yet. Because there's a lot of people out here that don't see it. There's too much junk. And they can't get past the junk. Help them. I call it being a Christian excavator. You gotta dig through the junk to get down to the main stuff. Sometimes they can't do that. They need somebody to come along and do it for them. We

The Challenge To Love Unlovable People

SPEAKER_00 52:56

have that opportunity. That's your challenge for this week. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for what you're teaching us, what you're showing us, what you're giving us in revelation. And I pray that every person, Father, just receives this word today. And that it don't just stay in this house, but it goes beyond this building, Father. It goes into the hearts of the people that's here. That you will bring somebody into their life this week, Father, that needs them, that needs what they have on the inside of them, and that you provide the opportunity, Father, and that when they open their mouth, the word of the Lord comes forth. That Father, we just begin to speak life in the people. We don't have to quote Scripture. We don't have to know where it's at in the Bible. We can just love on people.

Closing Prayer And Blessing

SPEAKER_00 53:50

We can just be nice to people. We can speak life in the people. And that's all it's about. Just creating an atmosphere that's different than what they're used to. So, Father, we thank you. We thank you for every mother that's here today. We thank you for what you're doing in their lives, Father. We thank you for just the motherhood for the for this thing that looks so much like what you did. Father, we'll be careful to always give you the praise, the honor, and the glory for everything in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.