Forrest: Well, good morning.
Forrest: My name is Forrest Coleman, lead pastor here at Multiply.
Forrest: Myself, along with many others a year and a half ago, worked together to launch and begin the work of Multiply Church.
Forrest: And I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful for the team that we have here in our church and what the Lord has provided to us and thankful for it.
Forrest: I don't know if you've ever had an experience before where you've had a health scare, but I'll never forget being a high school student when I got word that my father had had a widowmaker heart attack, rushed to the hospital, cracked his chest, open heart surgery, quadruple bypass.
Forrest: We didn't know if he was going to live or die.
Forrest: As a high school student, you can imagine the fear in that moment for my family, for my mom, the people who supported us in our church.
Forrest: I don't know if you've experienced something like that before or you've had some type of a scare like that before, but not too many years ago, in January of 2017, I led a group of college students to this conference, this massive conference in Atlanta, Georgia, called the Passion Conference.
Forrest: And we took a hundred students or so from different colleges, and we went into the dome there, and there were some 70,000 college students present, and this whole couple of days that kicks off the year is filled with worship and preaching from some of the best, most talented preachers and speakers, and the best worship.
Forrest: And to my surprise, midway through the conference, there was a lady who was brought on the stage in a wheelchair by the name Catherine Wolfe with her husband Jay.
Forrest: This woman, Catherine, began to speak and she spoke with the slur.
Forrest: She didn't have full control over a part of her or half of her body.
Forrest: And that was due to the fact that she'd endured a massive stroke.
Forrest: See Jay and his wife Catherine early, early in their life and in their marriage, when they were just 26 years old, college sweethearts, after they got married and were doing all the things that young couples do, having children.
Forrest: One random day, Catherine was making a meal for some other couple of families that also had had children, and she had a headache.
Forrest: And just like most moms would do, she just kept bearing through that headache and knew that it was gonna go away.
Forrest: And she was making the meals, and it got to the point where the pressure was so much on her eyes, she said, You know, I'm just gonna lay down for just a second.
Forrest: I'm just gonna take a little snooze, take a little nap until this this headache goes by.
Forrest: But the headache didn't stop, and instead, she was experiencing a massive stroke at the age of 26.
Forrest: She realized that she couldn't move her body fully.
Forrest: She began to scream and yell for her husband Jay, who came and frantically called the ambulance to come.
Forrest: He was still in school to become a lawyer.
Forrest: And the last thing that they ever would have considered happening would be that his wife Catherine would be fighting for our life on that just normal day.
Forrest: Rushed to the hospital.
Forrest: Doctors and nurses crowded around and escorted Jay out of the room.
Forrest: The doctor came and spoke to him and said, Your wife has had a serious stroke, and she's entering into surgery, and it may be unlikely that she survives the surgery.
Forrest: About that time in the hallway, he saw a gurney with someone being pushed down the hallway, and he noticed that it was his wife Catherine, and he went and grabbed her hand as she went by, and he thought to himself, Is this the last time that I'll ever be able to say I love you to my wife?
Forrest: As she was wheeled past him in the hallway to the surgery.
Forrest: Now, some years later, Catherine has endured surgery after surgery after surgery.
Forrest: And even though she's not able to fully function like she once did before, the Lord has used her to begin to speak, even with slurred speech, across the country and nation, of the fact that it's her hope in Christ that has brought healing to her.
Forrest: So much so that she's written a book called Hope Heals.
Forrest: Now, I know this.
Forrest: I'm here ready today to feed you.
Forrest: To feed you the word of God as my call as your pastor, but are you ready to receive it today?
Forrest: Have you come into the room today expectant that the Lord's going to do something?
Forrest: Are you tired from last night?
Forrest: Are you in the room right now and you're hearing me but you're kind of falling asleep?
Forrest: Maybe you're closed off to this right now because something that you're dealing with or going through, something that somebody did or hurt you.
Forrest: Maybe right now you're in the room and you're very skeptical of even what we're doing or the word of God because there's a bitterness that's taken root inside of you.
Forrest: And that bitter bitterness, you'd rather hold on to it because you can actually control it versus letting it go and giving vulnerability to the Lord for Him to do a work in your life.
Forrest: Maybe you've come in today and you've said before, you know what, I'm I'm against organized religion.
Forrest: Even though Jesus came to be in a relationship with you.
Forrest: That what we're doing right now as this gathering as the body of Christ, his bride, something that he loves.
Forrest: I know this.
Forrest: If you came to me and you asked me, hey Forrest, how is your uh your organized relationship partner doing?
Forrest: Talking about my bride, I say, excuse me, what are you talking about my wife?
Forrest: Because uh we're not just in some organized partnership, I love her dearly, and God loves what we're doing right now.
Forrest: He loves us gathered.
Forrest: Maybe you've turned your mind off to religion, and religion being man's attempt to get to God, but instead you haven't realized that Jesus didn't come for religion, but Jesus came and is this his attempt to come to us and to get us.
Forrest: Not that we can work our way, not that we can get anything on our own, that we can earn our way into good graces, but instead that Jesus has devised a master plan to get you.
Forrest: A master plan.
Forrest: Instead of being expectant and ready to receive it, you're miserable, stuck in whatever it is that you're stuck in.
Forrest: And the control that you want to hold on to versus giving control to the one who hung the stars and created the universe today.
Forrest: I just want to know is anybody in the place today?
Forrest: Is anybody here got high hopes for today?
Forrest: Does anybody have a hope for a future that God's called us to?
Forrest: Is anybody here gonna receive the call of anticipation and expectancy of the word and the power of the Holy Spirit?
Forrest: Because that's what it is to be called to as a believer.
Forrest: Romans 15, 13 says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Forrest: See, it's the work of the Holy Spirit, the the fruit of the Holy Spirit, joy and peace that that produces a hope inside of us that we're called to as believers to be overflowing with.
Forrest: That we would not have a life that is just going with the flow, but instead there would be an overflow of hope in the gospel and hope in the power of God.
Forrest: That you would be a person who's known as someone who has high hopes and situations and not always a naysayer or a pessimist or the glass half empty, but instead for you to be overflowing with the joy and peace because you've been saved, bought with a price by the one and only Jesus.
Forrest: See, that's our calling.
Forrest: Our calling for us is that we, that we may allow the God of hope, the God that gives us hope, to allow it to overflow out of our lives.
Forrest: And today we see a story of a woman in Scripture who didn't give up hope.
Forrest: A woman who was going through something very difficult and hard, a physical ailment.
Forrest: But even in the face of the physical ailment that she was experiencing, she didn't give up hope.
Forrest: Instead, she continued to work.
Forrest: Now, this story is this story of a woman in the scripture, it's recorded in three of the four gospels, but she's never named.
Forrest: She's a nobody.
Forrest: And she's dealing with this issue, and she's dealing with an issue of bleeding, of constant bleeding that she has experienced for 12 years.
Forrest: Now, we don't know if this is a feminine bleeding or if this is another type of bleeding that it's not it's not clear in the scripture, but we know is this is that if you have any kind of ongoing illness like this or any kind of issue with blood, by way of the Old Testament and the laws of the Old Testament and of the Levitical law, because this the temple and the synagogue was set up for this place of purity, it was a foreshadowing.
Forrest: We weren't yet in the freedom that Christ has given us because of her issue, she was not allowed to be in the temple in the synagogue because of her physical ailment.
Forrest: She was an outcast.
Forrest: Dealing with this issue for twelve long years.
Forrest: Not only was she an outcast because she couldn't enter the temple, but anybody that she touched would be then deemed unclean and would have to go through a ceremony purification until the following day.
Forrest: No one could sit on a couch with her or on a bed with her, no one could give her a hug without then also being called unclean.
Forrest: But this woman, in a whole 12 years, she never gave up hope.
Forrest: Look at Mark chapter 5, verse 25.
Forrest: Jesus is coming through a crowd of people, and uh the the scripture records a woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding.
Forrest: She had suffered a great deal from uh from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had not gotten better.
Forrest: In fact, she had gotten worse.
Forrest: She had heard about Jesus.
Forrest: So she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe.
Forrest: And she thought to herself, if I could just touch his robe, I will be healed.
Forrest: Immediately, everyone say, immediately.
Forrest: The bleeding stopped.
Forrest: And she could feel in her body that she had been healed of this terrible condition.
Forrest: Jesus realizing at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, Who touched my robe?
Forrest: His disciples said to him, Look at the crowd passing around you.
Forrest: How can you ask who touched me?
Forrest: Disciples saying, What a silly question, Jesus.
Forrest: Look at all these people.
Forrest: Verse 32.
Forrest: But he kept on looking around to see who had done it.
Forrest: Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done.
Forrest: And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.
Forrest: Go in peace.
Forrest: Your suffering is over.
Forrest: There was a crowd pressed around Jesus.
Forrest: He's walking through, and there's many people, so many people touching him, so many people around him in the crowd that the disciples even think that it's a silly question for him to ask who touched him.
Forrest: But there's a difference of being around Jesus and being in touch with Jesus.
Forrest: And today I'm wondering: are you in touch with Jesus?
Forrest: Some of you have been around Jesus for too long without being in touch with him.
Forrest: You've been around the church, you've been around people of faith, you've been around things that are happening in peace, but you don't have it and you don't have the healing and you don't know why.
Forrest: You've been riding on grandma's faith for way too long.
Forrest: When somebody asks you about your faith or where you go to church or whatever, you say, Oh, yeah, my grandma took me to church when I was a kid, and I went to a VBS one time, but you know, it didn't really work out for me.
Forrest: You know, it didn't really work for me.
Forrest: Did it not work or were you not truly in touch with Jesus?
Forrest: I never forget the story.
Forrest: My first assignment in ministry was in Somerset.
Forrest: I talk about it a lot, and a part of a church there, and there were it was a large church, and there was, it was multi-generational.
Forrest: There were young people, there were young families, there were lots of older people in the church.
Forrest: And Ann Gover, she married a man named Oakley, and Oakley was at the time that they got married, both widdeders, they got married in their 70s.
Forrest: He began to attend church with her in their 70s, and and they were attending church every single week, and every time the doors would open, Oakley was there, and and I remember many services that they were a part of, and they would be coming so consistently, and along the way, we heard the fact that Oakley was not a believer.
Forrest: And Oakley in his late 70s continued to come to church and continued to come to church, and he was there every single Sunday, but had not received Jesus.
Forrest: He was around Jesus, but he wasn't yet in touch with Jesus.
Forrest: And I'll never forget the Sunday in his early 80s that he accepted Christ as his savior and was baptized.
Forrest: Oldest person I've ever seen be baptized.
Forrest: Oakley Gover, 80, early 80s being baptized.
Forrest: Today, Oakley is 91 years old and is walking with Jesus.
Forrest: You can be around Jesus without being in touch with him.
Forrest: And you can certainly be around Jesus without trusting in him.
Forrest: Jeremiah 29, 11 says, For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord.
Forrest: Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
Forrest: And this is a declaration to those in the Old Testament, but this is a true statement that rings true through the New Testament as well.
Forrest: That God has a plan and a purpose for each one of you.
Forrest: That there are good works that He's designed before you were even born, for you to walk in and to walk in as His masterpiece that He's created you for.
Forrest: Sometimes that's hard for us to imagine and think with the tragedies of life that we experience.
Forrest: A second assignment in ministry was in Charleston, South Carolina, where we became friends with a young lady now named Emily Kerr.
Forrest: Emily, when she was a college student at the College of Charleston, she was engaged to a young athlete named Chad.
Forrest: They were engaged to be married and everything seemed to be going well.
Forrest: And Chad, one day playing basketball, an athlete on the court, one random day playing with his friends, shooting basketball, working hard, had a massive heart attack in his early 20s and died there on the floor.
Forrest: Set Emily into a tailspin, not knowing what to do.
Forrest: This young woman who had a whole life planned out ahead of her with her soon-to-be husband now completely changed.
Forrest: We met Emily a couple of years after Chad's passing, and as she began to work through the grief of losing the love of her life, she began to go into the work that she had intended for her to do work in the nonprofit world and for her to be in education and to serve Title I schools, and she began an organization called Chad's Hope.
Forrest: Today it's known as Charleston Hope.
Forrest: Everybody say hope.
Forrest: And that the enemy was trying to pull her into despair.
Forrest: And Emily, my Emily, looked at Emily Kerr and she said, I want you to know that you are not living God's plan B for your life.
Forrest: You're living God's plan A.
Forrest: It was never intended for Chad to be your husband.
Forrest: You need to move forward in what God's called you, a hope and a future.
Forrest: Church, today, you're not walking in God's plan B for you.
Forrest: You're walking in his plan A.
Forrest: The tragedies, the things of life that you've experienced have gone through.
Forrest: The struggle is what makes us stronger.
Forrest: The struggle is what allows us to be able to walk in the hope of who Jesus is.
Forrest: See, this lady who's dealt with this blood issue for 12 years, never gave up hope.
Forrest: She continued.
Forrest: She went to doctor, and doctor, she spent her entire wife's money and was trying to find a cure so that she could then stop being this outcast from society, but that she could rejoin with the life and family that she wanted to be a part of, and she was not letting go of hope, but she was holding out hope, and she heard of this man named Jesus, and she said, I've got to go touch him.
Forrest: If I could just touch his robe, I'll be healed.
Forrest: You know, Jesus, when he was speaking to this woman, he didn't say, Woman, your touch has saved you.
Forrest: He looked at her and said, Daughter, your faith has made you well.
Forrest: And I don't want you to miss this right here.
Forrest: The King James Version says, You've been made whole.
Forrest: I love that.
Forrest: You've been made whole.
Forrest: You've been healed, you've been made complete.
Forrest: But there's something very special about this woman and this story.
Forrest: That she was saved, she was healed by the faith that she had.
Forrest: That she would say, if I could just touch his robe, I know that I will be healed.
Forrest: I believe in who he is, I believe that this is the Messiah.
Forrest: I believe that he can do the miraculous.
Forrest: And Jesus looks at her and says, Your faith has made you well.
Forrest: She didn't give up hope, but she placed her hope in the right place.
Forrest: And when she did, not only was she healed physically, but she was also healed spiritually.
Forrest: She put her hope and trust in Jesus.
Forrest: And how do I know that?
Forrest: It's because Jesus responds to her and he says, daughter.
Forrest: Everybody look at me.
Forrest: He says, daughter.
Forrest: This is the only recorded time that Jesus ever calls a woman daughter.
Forrest: This is the only moment in the scripture where Jesus speaks to a woman and doesn't call her by her name or call her woman, but he calls her daughter.
Forrest: She moved from being in a place and she came to Jesus despised and in despair, but she left a daughter of the king.
Forrest: She came of a place, came in a place of hurt and of brokenness and of despair.
Forrest: The family of God.
Forrest: The only one to be honored.
Forrest: What about you today?
Forrest: Guaranteed physical healing, but we promised a spiritual healing.
Forrest: Catherine has words that I've just got to let you see and read over you today.
Forrest: Catherine writes in her book.
Forrest: She said, My experience has called me, has caused me to redefine healing and discover a hope that heals the most broken places, our souls.
Forrest: What has happened to me is extreme.
Forrest: However, it's not different from what everyone deals with.
Forrest: I'm sort of a microcosm of what we all feel.
Forrest: I can barely walk, even with a cane, but who feels free even if they can?
Forrest: My face is paralyzed, but who feels beautiful even when they look normal?
Forrest: I have no coordination in my right hand, so I can't hold things, even my child, but who feels like a competent parent, even if they have all their faculties intact?
Forrest: For months I could not eat and even today have difficulty swallowing.
Forrest: But who feels fully satisfied even if they can enjoy every delectable treat they desire?
Forrest: I'm tired almost all the time now.
Forrest: But who always feels energized and engaged fully in their life?
Forrest: My voice is messed up, but who feels understood even if they can speak plainly?
Forrest: I have double vision, but who sees everything clearly even if they can see normally?
Forrest: My future is uncertain, but whose is it?
Forrest: So no matter the situation, universally, people feel what I'm living out.
Forrest: They don't feel free, they don't feel understood, they don't feel satisfied.
Forrest: I believe that pain is pain, no matter what the form, but perspective is also perspective.
Forrest: Ultimately, ours is a story of life, of a life overcome by hope.
Forrest: We are discovering joy even in the sadness and choose contentment when it's very, very hard.
Forrest: For that and for countless other blessings, I'm grateful to God.
Forrest: In some ways, Jay and I have been blessed to suffer greatly at such a young age because it informs the way we live the rest of our lives.
Forrest: We have learned that when everything else is gone, hope remains.
Forrest: I asked you this question, how's your hope?
Forrest: How's your hope?
Forrest: Not all of us are promised a physical healing, but we're promised a spiritual healing.
Forrest: And as we kick off this series of high hopes, I I asked you the question, are you overflowing?
Forrest: Are you overflowing with hope?
Forrest: Or is the enemy trapped some area of your life that you're still feeling a darkness and a hopelessness attached to it?
Forrest: Today Jesus wants you to be in touch with him for you to receive the hope.
Forrest: The Bible calls Jesus the living hope that can only come through him.
Forrest: You may be like this woman today that you've been dealing with something for years and years, decades of something that has held you back.
Forrest: Something that you haven't been able to get beyond, you haven't been able to get over.
Forrest: Today is a day that Jesus can give you his hope and invade you with hope.
Forrest: See, I know this, I know that just like this woman in the text, that she was an outcast and she was alone.
Forrest: There's some of you in this room right now that you feel alone.
Forrest: You may even be in a crowd of people, or you may be around others all the time, but even in that, you feel alone.
Forrest: And there's a burden and there's a stronghold where you feel a hopelessness that you're never going to find that family, find that spouse, live the life, be truly fulfilled in your marriage or with your friendships.
Forrest: Can I tell you today, don't give up hope.
Forrest: You may be in the place today, and you've walked in today, and today, like many days before, that you have rejection all over you because somebody walked away from you.
Forrest: You had a spouse who walked out, you had a parent who abandoned, and that rejection is sitting on you, and there's a hopelessness inside of you and a despair, and God's looking at you and saying, son, daughter, today your faith can make you well.
Forrest: I have a hope that fully satisfies, I have a hope that can bring joy and a peace.
Forrest: I have a hope that will produce an overflow in you.
Forrest: And today you need to leave the rejection behind, and you need to walk into the family that God has called you and the security of the place that He has anointed and appointed you to be in as a son or daughter of the one true King.
Forrest: The rejection to leave and for you to walk in God's best and greatest for you today.
Forrest: What is it that you feel the despair and the hopelessness connected to?
Forrest: Today, God wants to heal it.
Forrest: Jesus wants to have you receive it.
Forrest: And I'm gonna pray that over you right now.
Forrest: Head bowed, eyes closed.
Forrest: I'm gonna ask something a little differently today.
Forrest: I'm gonna ask today that if there's something in your life right now that there's a hopelessness and a despair, I'm gonna ask that you be so bold, because I want to pray over you.
Forrest: If you would right now, there's something that you're feeling a hopelessness and you're feeling a trap and you're feeling the enemy's hold on you.
Forrest: I want to pray specifically for you.
Forrest: And so I'm gonna ask you, everybody's head bowed, eyes closed, I want you to be so bold to just stand to your feet very quietly to receive the hope that God wants for you.
Forrest: Thank you.
Forrest: Bold people all over the place.
Forrest: God, I pray right now, all across the room.
Forrest: I pray for every single person who's standing right now, Father.
Forrest: Lord, that they would receive your hope today.
Forrest: Jesus, you've promised us the fact that we are not rejected.
Forrest: But instead, Jesus, you went to the cross 2,000 years ago and you took our shame, our red, our rejection, our brokenness, our hurt.
Forrest: And God, you took it on your back on the cross.
Forrest: And instead, God, instead of what we deserve, you replaced it with healing and love and power and kindness.
Forrest: And so, God, all across this room, God, for those who are standing to receive your hope today.
Forrest: Father, I pray right now, in the strong name of Jesus, that right now the Holy Spirit, God, would bring a blanket of peace, joy, and hope into their hearts and minds right now.
Forrest: God, they're standing, Father, to receive it.
Forrest: God, they're asking you to supply it.
Forrest: And Lord, we know that you're faithful.
Forrest: And so, God, all across this room, Father, we pray, Lord, that right now, those in the sound of my voice, that Father, they would receive the unending, undying hope that will lead from now into our next step and breath in eternity in heaven with you.
Forrest: Everybody's head bowed, eyes closed.
Forrest: Those remain standing.
Forrest: There's anybody in the room right now, today, that you've come in to this place and you have turned your heart and mind away from God.
Forrest: Or you're just now, for the first time, realizing that you need to receive Jesus and the gift that he's given you on the cross.
Forrest: Today is the day for you to trust in Jesus now and forevermore that you will receive his hope.
Forrest: I'm gonna ask those who are seated and who are standing.
Forrest: If anybody in the room today wants to receive Jesus and to be saved by the power of his blood, would you just raise your hand?
Forrest: Yep.
Forrest: Yeah, I see you.
Forrest: Today, right now, for those of you who want to receive Jesus for the first time, I ask that you would pray right now in your heart and mind, pray, Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I'm a sinner in need of your grace.
Forrest: Forgive me, cleanse me.
Forrest: Thank you for dying on the cross for me, and that you are alive.
Forrest: I give you my life as you gave your life for mine.
Forrest: God, give me hope now and into eternity.
Forrest: Thank you for saving me in Jesus' name.