Before the Blessing (May 31, 2026)

Before there was a Promised Land, there was a wilderness.

In this powerful message, Pastor Michael challenges a common misconception about the Exodus story: God’s first destination for Israel was never the land flowing with milk and honey, it was His presence. Discover why God calls His people to intimacy before inheritance, relationship before reward, and worship before blessing.

If you've ever wondered why God sometimes leads you through a wilderness season before opening the next door, this message will encourage, challenge, and refocus your heart on what matters most, not what God can give you, but who He is. 

"Before the Promise" is a reminder that God's greatest gift has never been the blessing, it's His presence.

Transcript

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I want to preach out of Exodus this morning, and we're going to be in Exodus exclusively this morning. So if you want to go ahead and flip there, if you've got your Bibles with you, that'd be great. But you know, I want to talk about something that I have found myself doing as much as I have found other pastors doing. And it dawned on me that I think we're going about Exodus the wrong way. Because here's what happens: we always preach about the promised land. Right? The land flowing with milk and honey, right? Because that's the good part of the story. I always tell everybody, history is written from the viewpoint of the winner. Right? So if you ever talk about war, we always talk about it from the side of the person who won because they're the ones who get to determine the direction of the story. So when we talk about Exodus, we talk about the good part. We talk about the land of milk and honey, the promised land. But we're always talking about the same things. We're talking about blessings, favor, increase, breakthrough, healing, victory. Listen, we should be shouting about all of those things that God is doing, but before he ever mentioned the land of milk and honey, he had another destination in mind. If you have your Bibles, we're going to go to Exodus 5, 1. It says, after this presentation to Israel's leaders, Moses and Aaron went and spoke to Pharaoh. And here it is. They told him, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, Let my people go. That's the part where we stop, right? Let my people go, that's the line we know. But here's the other part of that. So they may have hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness. Now, they're not saying a festival for Moses and Aaron. God is speaking, saying, Send them to the wilderness so that they may have a festival in my honor. The land of milk and honey has not yet been mentioned. Instead, God is saying, Send them to the wilderness. Now, if you are the Israelites, you're excited about this, right? Why are you excited? Because you're free from slavery, right? You're not going to be doing hard work in the fields, you're not going to be doing all of the challenging work. But God said, Let my people go so that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. The first destination was never the promise. The first destination was his presence. He called them to his presence. See, the goal was never inheritance. Right? How many of you have rich parents that are going to leave you a lot of money when they die? You know what I'm going to get left when my parents die? A bunch of junk. My mom admits to it. Here's the only deal with my mom. She sticks money in pockets and forgets about it. So I said, when I get the call that my mom is dead, I'm going through all of her stuff first. First one there. I'm going to get all the $100 bills. It ain't going to be a $100 bill. Let's be honest, I'm going to find $7 the whole time. But anyway, the goal was not the inheritance. The goal was the intimacy. And that is what the church is missing today. I sat here for probably 40 minutes, much to Dave's dismay, last Sunday after church with Holly, and we said that does it feel as though there's a desire to be intimate with God anymore? The desire is the blessing. The desire is the gifts that He bestows upon us. You know, good health, jobs that pay us well, the things, the good things, but we don't ever actually desire intimacy with God. Because, see, when we say that word, people think, oh, that's some lovey-dovey relationship. Listen, sometimes intimacy with God is saying, God, I don't understand. I'm frustrated because you've put me in this place that I cannot see the light. And you wrestle with them a little bit, right? Listen, can I tell you that if you are in that, if you are in a position to ask God to show you, open my eyes, open my heart, guess what? You are being intimate with God. That's where the church needs to be. The church doesn't need to show up on Sunday morning. I love having you guys here. It's great, but I want to promise you something. I would preach if this building was empty. The same that I would if it was full. Because my desire is not glory for myself. My desire is glory for God. My desire is intimacy with the Holy Spirit. That's my desire. I just get lucky enough to have all of you folks here with me. Because God has always known something that we often forget: that if we reach the promise without knowing God, it will become our idol. What does the Bible tell us about money? Hmm. Ah, the love of money is the root of all evil. Not money, the love of money. How many of us chase careers every day? We want more and more money, right? Because if I have more money, I have less stress. I don't think that's how that works. Because what happens is you get more money, you don't steward it well, and all of these things start happening in your life, and you can't understand why. Let me tell you why. Because God has blessed you, but that blessing has become an idol. It's not just money. It's not just money. Listen, there's this young guy that I know, and he drives this little Honda Civic. Bought it brand new. Thing sounds like a lawnmower. You know what I'm talking about? He did that on purpose. I don't want to hear my car when I'm driving down the road. Right? I like a quiet car. That car is his life. That's all he knows is that car. Guess what? He had a deer in that car. He ain't happy. Can I promise you something? Everything that you put before God, he will remove. He will remove, and it's not gonna feel good. And then you're gonna argue with him. But what did he get? Intimacy. Man, that don't feel good, does it? Do you know how many things God has removed from my life that I'm I'm angry with him about? That I don't understand why. Why do you think, God, that I couldn't handle that? He says, because you have shown me that you can't handle it. You have proven to me time and time again that you will walk away from me in order to have what I've blessed you with. We're gonna get into that. Are you ready? Before they could possess his blessings, they had to experience his presence. And before they could enter the promised land, they had to meet God in the wilderness. See, Israel thought they needed freedom, but God knew what they actually needed, and that was simple. Relationship. Now I will tell you that second to God, the most valuable thing in your lives are the relationships that you have. Right? So, many of us don't have great relationships with our in-laws. Anybody in the room? Say that's true? You didn't raise your hand. He and I had a contest to see who could get our mother-in-law to hate us the most. It wasn't intentional, but we were good at it. Didn't you get a t-shirt made that said favorite son-in-law or something like that? I should have gotten one too. Anyway, relationships are the second most important things to our relationship. The relationships with the people around you. Can I tell you why? Because if you make relationships with people who don't believe in Jesus, I promise you that you will walk away before they will come too. Right? Because you can talk about Jesus all you want, sitting, well, not sitting at the brew house anymore, because well. Anyway, it's like a can of tuna. What was I talking about? You guys gotta stop laughing at me when I do stuff like that. Thank you. Relationships. Relationships. You can go, you can go talk about Jesus all you want at the brew house, but guess what? It ain't sinking in. It isn't sinking in. You know where you need to be talking about Jesus? At work every day. In Walmart, every day. See, I have a rule. I won't go to Walmart. Because when I go to Walmart, sometimes I lose my religion. Have you? This is a question. Have you ever been behind somebody in Walmart who's on speakerphone? And they stop in the middle of the aisle and start talking with their. I'm like, I'm gonna hit this person with my shopping cart. I don't have time, I got stuff to do, right? And I don't know what they do with their lives, but like I gotta get somewhere, so I just order my groceries. It's better for everybody. It's better for everybody. For over 400 years, they had been slaves in Egypt. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. Generations had lived and died in bondage, and most of them knew about Abraham, right? Most of them knew about Isaac, most of them knew about Jacob, but they had never personally encountered the God of Abraham. See, they knew the stories. That's the church today. We know the stories, but they didn't know the savior. Now, see, here's the problem today. We've gotten really good at Googling it real quick to make it look like we know the Savior. But pretending to know the Savior doesn't replace relationship with the Savior. Right? So listen, I uh you can quote Scripture all day long if you want. I think we should, Scripture should be in our heart. We should be able to recite Scripture. But here's the problem: even if you can do that, but you don't have relationship, all you have is religion. Right? You are no better than the Pharisees because you can quote it, but you can't live it. That's the challenge. The challenge is not just knowing, it is doing. You can know church culture and still not know God. Right? You can know how to show up at church and appear at church and shake hands and smile and hug everybody, but still not know Jesus. Right? I encounter those people all the time. Listen, I'll have people come in and matter of fact, it happens more often than not. They'll walk through the doors at the bank and they'll be like, are you a pastor? And I'm like, dang it, I have to behave. Right? That's part of the once once they know, and then I'll sit and I'll talk to those people for about 10 minutes, and I'm like, Woof. I've never heard anybody say such awful things about another person. And oftentimes they'll say them about pastors. I had one lady come in and sit down at my desk, and she's like, I think I've been to your church. I was like, Oh, you have. And you left real quick. And she said to me, Well, I went over to this church and that pastor, he was just, and I went, I'm I'm gonna stop you. I'm gonna stop you. Because he may not have been for you, but I know he's for God. He may not have been for you, but I know he is for God. And that blows people away when you do that. I'm not defending if he if he if he did something wrong, I'm not defending that action. But I will not, I will not stand and argue his favor or the hand that God has on him because you didn't like something he said. Because, see, let's be honest with each other. Oftentimes we want to blame a pastor or we want to say, I was hurt by the church, but really what happened is you got corrected and you didn't like it. Now, listen, that's not always the case. Sometimes people are just mean, right? Sometimes that is the case. There are pastors who are abusive. I'm not saying that those things don't happen, but we have to stop blaming everything on everybody else. We have to start looking at ourselves and saying, what am I not doing right? Because guess what? We know the Israelites don't do that. Ever. Okay. He was he wasn't, God was not rescuing them from Pharaoh when he called them out of Egypt. You understand that, right? We it sounds that way. Let my people go. He's bringing them out of Egypt, he is saving them, but he is not actually saving them from Pharaoh, he is rescuing them for himself. Those are his people, those are his chosen people, he is rescuing them from Pharaoh for himself so that his kingdom can grow and be glorified. Let's go to Exodus 19, 4. Do you have that one back there? I didn't mark it in my Bible. I can get there pretty quick. What? That's okay, I've got it. It says, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to my self. Not to the promised land, but to myself. Can I ask you a question? How many of us believe that God has brought us to Himself? Because the problem is, so many of us sit here thinking, well, God has just planted me here. God has just. God has never just. God has always gone above and beyond in every one of our lives. It is the desire to recognize it that is the problem. Because often when God has blessed us, we still hold on to those negative things that God did not do for us. Because, see, we can argue all day long about what God has taken away from us and not focus on the things that God has given us. Because oftentimes the things that things that He gives us are simple. The simple things in life will give us much more pleasure than the complicated things in life. Now I say that. I'm considering going to a flip phone. Anybody else besides Roger have a flip phone? Listen. I know that sounds crazy, but can I tell you why? Would you ever use a flip phone? Would you ever use a flip phone? I mean I have. You have, but would you do it right now? If I gave you $100 to switch from an Android or iPhone? iPhone smart man. You would it would be a blue bubble, so I'd you're on my team, so that's fine. If I were to give you $100 to switch to a flip phone, would you do it? You have to bump it up. He's like, that money ain't enough. So what is it about your phone that you love so much that you can't go back to a flip phone? Just the memory of it. Okay. That's that's if you were gonna lie to me, that's the lie I'd want to hear. Right? The truth is, what do I do when I go to the bathroom? Right? Isn't that the truth? Like, if if if you take my smartphone, how do I occupy my time when I'm bored? You know how you do, you know what you do when you fix those relationships, you build relationships with people. Right? When you're bored, you start talking to people in person. Can I tell you I spent a whole day one day? I said, I am gonna intentionally interact with people in every way possible. Normally when I go to the bank, I go to the ATM. That's because I'm a grown adult and have a debit card. Some people don't. I always go through the ATM. I said, you know what? I'm gonna walk into the bank, I'm gonna hand them my check, I'm gonna deposit it, right? And then when I'm done there, I'm gonna go into the store and I'm gonna shop for the things I need just so I can talk to people, right? Can I tell you every one of those interactions were absolutely awful? Worst experience of my life. So the last place that I stopped was a candy store. Popular candy store. This was right after Valentine's Day. My wife and I have a thing. Every year on Valentine's Day, we wait till the day after we buy chocolate on clearance, we binge eat chocolate, and we watch a movie, right? Best day ever. The best chocolate is chocolate that's half off. So I walk into the candy store, I go up, I start ordering. Older lady, not super pleasant, and I'm like, we're gonna make the best of this. I'm gonna make her laugh, we're gonna have a good time, everything's gonna be fine. She never cracks a smile the entire time. We get to the cash register, I pull out my wallet and I hand her my debit card. She goes, We don't take cards here. What? She goes, We don't take cards here. I said, Well, I don't have any cash, and she goes, Well, then you're not getting any candy. That was the statement that she made to me, and I went, okay. And I left. And I went to the dollar store and bought a box of chocolates, and there we go. Right? Listen, I spent an entire day being intentional about relationships with people, but there are people who are not intentional in their relationships with anybody else. When I went into the dollar store, the lady had Beats headphones on. Work in the cash register. She didn't even speak. She rung my stuff up. I'm not making this up, guys. She rung my stuff up and she pointed at the little screen that told me how much money I owed. I was like, Lord, I told you I was going to be in relationship with people, and you put these people in my path. And you know what he said to me? He said, because this is what the world is. This is the world. And if you want to be in relationship, you can't just think about people that you already know and people that you already love. You have to be in relationship with people that you don't agree with. You are going to experience them in the world. It doesn't mean they get a seat at my table. It doesn't mean they come into my house, but it means I have to learn how to treat them with respect. See, God was building relationship with the Israelites. He said, I brought you to myself. See, the greatest idea of salvation is not avoiding hell. It's seeing Jesus face to face. Right? See, we oftentimes we think about salvation as, oh, I'm going to get to heaven. I'm not going to go to hell. Whatever the case may be. But that's not, I tell everybody, somebody asked me one time, and they knew they they wanted a certain answer. They said to me, When you get to heaven, who are you going to see first? Well, everybody thought I was going to say Elvis. And we'd be high second, like let's be honest with each other. I want nothing but to see the face of Jesus. To enter into glory and be in the presence of my Savior. There is no better blessing. And then I realized I have to learn how to be in relationship with people that I don't agree with. Because if all I do is discard the world, discard the people that I don't agree with, that entry into heaven may not happen. My calling, each and every one of us, the great commission, is to preach the gospel to all the earth until Jesus returns. Are we doing that? Are we actually preaching the gospel? Somebody just shook their head no. I appreciate the honesty. Right? Because what we do is we sit here and we lie to ourselves and we pretend like we're doing what our lives are meant to do, but we're not doing it. Listen, we can't show up to church on Sunday. Sit through an hour service. You know, I know somebody sitting in here in their stomachs growling right now, right? Show me your hand. Who is it? Pastor Roger. He's like, oh Lord. We lived on fair food for three days. Like, we're like, enough is enough. But we cannot survive just showing up, sitting here, and thinking about what's next. We have to desire to preach the gospel everywhere that we go because that relationship with Jesus is far more important. God says, before I give you what I have, I want to give you who I am. Right? So I was watching this uh this guy that I really enjoy listening to him preaching. He said something that really kind of like, man, that was an eye-opener. If we were to read the entire book of Exodus, there are only two times that Moses is ever told no. Right? Now, if I could get that same rate out of my wife, we would be doing good. Right? That is never gonna happen. I hear no four or five times a day. I asked her, we have a graduation party after church. I said, Hey, are you gonna drive down so I can sleep? And she said, no. I said, All right, can you drive back so I can sleep? And she said, no. She said, That's when I'm gonna nap. Whatever. And it's the truth, too. She she has what I call carcolepsy. Her butt hits the passenger seat out like a light. We don't even get out of the driveway mostly. It's ridiculous. Anyway, Moses had two requests tonight through Exodus. And one, he said to God, Show me your glory. Right? And what did God say? You can see my back, but you cannot see my face. You cannot see my face. The other was, Let me enter into the promised land, and God said, Because of your disobedience, you may not enter the promised land. Man. Man, now I want you to hear something else. We're gonna fast forward and we're gonna go to the transfiguration account. Okay? Jesus is on the mountain and he sees Moses. It's transfigured into lightning. He sees Moses. Moses is looking at Jesus. He is seeing the face of God. And he's in the promised land. Can I promise you something? No does not always mean no. Sometimes it means not right now. Because sometimes we are too ignorant to understand the blessing that we will be receiving. When I say ignorant, I don't mean stupid. I mean we haven't understood it yet. Right? There's a reason that Jesus spoke in parables. He spoke so that some could understand and others wouldn't understand. He counted on there being ignorant people around him. And that's why he did it. Listen, sometimes our ignorance is our own fault, right? Because we choose not to learn, we choose not to do. Sometimes ignorance is just because nobody's ever shown us. Nobody's ever told us. How would we know if nobody tells us, right? Have you ever worked for a boss who doesn't tell you what to do but expects you to know how to do it? How am I supposed to know how to do that if you never told me I'm supposed to do that? Right? That's why we come to church. Because iron sharpens iron. We don't come to church just to hear somebody preach. We don't come to church just to hear all the fire worship songs that they play on Sunday morning. We come to church so that we can grow from glory to glory. See, we have to do better at being in community. Right? Dave? Right? Because this has become a building of people and not a community of people. We all show up on Sunday morning, we fist bump, we shake hands, we give hugs, but when we leave here, there is no relationship. So then you start talking about small groups. And I'll tell you, I hate hearing this statement. It drives me crazy. And almost every church that has small groups will say, You can accomplish more in a circle than you can in a row. Dumbest statement I've ever heard. Let's get everybody together in small groups. Listen, small groups are great, right? I love the fact that the young moms meet at my house and they have these wonderful times together because I sit upstairs and I listen to them, laugh, and carry on, and I hear the kids screaming, and I'm like, I gotta go. Right? But I know that God is working in relationship in that moment, right? We need more of that. But that doesn't forsake the gathering of God's people. Because if we have pockets, it's clicks, right? Because young moms don't talk to senior ladies. Can I tell you, legacy members, where you guys are falling short, and I'm talking men and women alike, you are not teaching the young generation anything. The one thing I am blessed with is I have Pastor Roger who will show me anything that I ask. I called him one day, he lent me his tiller, brought it down to my house. I get it out there and I'm tilling him. Man, I am making a mess. The belt pops off of it. And I call him. I was like, hey, how do I get this belt back on? He talked me through every step until that belt was back on. Can I promise you, we don't have enough of that? We don't have enough relationship. All we do is our own thing. And if you don't like it, oh well. Right? I'm gonna go my own way. If you don't like it, oh well. I'm gonna have this if you don't like it, oh well. That's not how this works. If God has called you to this place, he has called you to be connected to this place. This isn't my message today. I don't even know why I'm preaching this, but I think somebody needs to hear it. He called us here for a reason. He didn't call us here by chance, he called us here for a season to do something for the kingdom of God. But that relationship is gonna die on the vine because we are not gonna water it. We are gonna choose to remain separated from the people we should be caring, caring about, the people that we should be raising up. The wilderness was never meant to be a punishment, it was meant to be an introduction, right? At Mount Sinai, God revealed himself. And then they would see fire, they heard thunder, and they would witness God's glory. The mountain would shake under his presence, and why? Because God was introducing himself to his people. See, in Egypt, they knew slavery, right? Each and every one of us know bondage, right? We all know what it is to be bound up with something, depression or whatever it may be in our lives, something that controls us. But in the wilderness, they had to learn something new. They had to learn worship. That's not something that we teach as a church anymore, right? Because when we talk about worship, every time you say the word worship, people think music ministry. Right? Because you say that's a worship team. Listen, worship is beginning to end. This is a worship service. We give glory to God through the word of God. Amen? Not just through music, not just through song. In Egypt, they were taskmasters, they were constantly completing something. Build this, do that, till this, do that. But when they went to the wilderness, they would meet their father. In Egypt, they were in chains, but in the wilderness they discovered covenant. The church misses covenant. We don't have covenants inside of the church anymore. If you're on my leadership team, you sign a leadership agreement day one. That leadership agreement says that I will not post anything on social media that is not glorifying to God. It says that I will not drink in excess. It says that I will not take action or use illicit drugs. Listen, this isn't because I want to control your life. It's because if you are going to be in a position of authority in this building, I'm talking even this, even the legacy members of our church who are on council sign them. There are people that I look at and go, you've probably never done a drug in your life. And I still make them sign it. Because I believe that if we are in covenant with one another, we understand the expectation. Every bit of that covenant is grounded in scripture. Every line item on that covenant has scripture to back it up. This isn't to be controlling, this is to be in relationship. This is to understand one another, to understand expectation. Listen, when they entered into the wilderness, they started to learn expectation. Sometimes we get angry in the wilderness season, amen? Any of us ever been in the wilderness and been angry? Listen, I don't like poison ivy. You put me in the wilderness, I'm gonna be angry. Right? Like I gotta get the shot in order to get rid of it. Like, it's not good. I understand that I will become frustrated. I understand that I will become irritable. But sometimes, sometimes we have to pray ourselves through to the end, knowing that God is going to be on the other side. The Israelites had not quite figured that out. Some of you are praying right now to remove the wilderness in your life. We are praying that the wilderness would be removed. But God is saying, I am not punishing you here. I am not punishing you. I'm trying to reveal myself to you. Think about that. In this darkest season of your life, wherever you may be, I remember mine. I remember mine well. And I remember when I finally realized that all of the things that were happening were my own doing, and that the only person that could possibly save me from my own stupidity was Jesus. I was willing to submit myself to him, right? And I was allowing him to drag me out of that situation. That is not an easy thing to admit ever. But if we're sitting here today pretending like we're not there, you're not lying to yourself. You're attempting to lie to God. And he already knows. He knows the struggle, he knows the hurt, he knows the pain. So in Egypt, the Israelites depended on Pharaoh for everything, right? Food and water, livestock, houses. They were they depended on Pharaoh for everything. But in the wilderness, they had to learn how to depend on God. Which is a whole lot harder. Right? Because they knew Pharaoh was tangible. If they had a need, he could meet it. When we start talking about God meeting our needs, we're like, right, I understand what you're saying, but I don't have any groceries. Right? I understand what you're saying, but I don't have gas to get to work tomorrow morning. I understand that you're telling me God is good and He will provide. He, if He'll if He'll clothe the lilies, and we can talk about all of these things, but our flesh doesn't want to believe it. Amen? Because the physical side of us knows that He may clothe the lilies, but I can't go to work naked. At least not without going to jail. We begin to realize that our dependency becomes more on the world than it does on God. So when they were in the wilderness, they started to realize things like they don't have a grocery store. They can't just stop by Walmart. They can't go to 7-Eleven and get a Slurpee. Anybody ever had one of those? Don't get the red one. Elsa drinks slushies and slurpees like they're going out of style. I have never seen a kid drink slushies like Elsa does. There were no farms, there were no water systems, there were no supply chains. Every day became an exercise of trust. How many of you trust your spouse enough to say that if I did nothing all day long, then I know my spouse will provide for all of my needs? I will agree with both of you. I will tell you, Bobby is probably one of the hardest working people I've ever met in my life. He doesn't stop ever. Right? He'll text me, he'll be like, Pastor Michael, what can I do to help at the church? Talk to Pastor Roger, because Pastor Roger now has a list about this long. Right? He'll come here after work. What? Where's Bobby at? He's what? Okay. Going to get truck doors. Okay. Bobby one time was out until like midnight on the side of the road waiting on a tow truck for work. It was council meeting. He's on council. He couldn't stop apologizing to me for missing that meeting. God has called you to something greater, right? We will survive that moment. All I'm worried about is whether or not he got enough sleep. And he's like, I only slept for like four and a half hours and I was right back to work. This guy. But he is one of the hardest working people I know. You can trust those people to provide in your times of need, right? But we don't always want to trust God in our times of need. Every day was an exercise and trust. Every morning the manna appeared. Every thirsty moment, water came from the rock. Every battle required divine intervention. God was teaching them, you survived in Egypt without knowing me. Now you are going to survive in the wilderness depending on me. You survived without knowing me. Now you are going to survive by depending on me. Because dependence is a language of faith, right? If I depend solely on God, that means that I have faith that God will do what he said he will do. Amen? That is hard to understand. It's not something we want to grasp because if we believe that God is going to do it, then we have to let it go. And letting it go is the hardest thing that we could possibly ever do. Listen, there are people who will not like you. It's going to happen to all of us, right? The worst thing you can do is concern yourself with it. I learned that. Because if I concern myself with it, I consume myself with it, right? Why don't they like me? What did I ever do? I can't believe that happened. And then all of a sudden I have this epiphany, and God says, Why are you worried about whether or not they like you? Worry about whether or not you are glorifying the kingdom. If you are glorifying the kingdom, whether the flesh likes you or not, it doesn't matter. Our hope would be that we offend the flesh, convict the spirit. Amen. But we can't do that. We can't do that if all we're consuming ourselves is whether the flesh likes us or not. Whether or not the flesh likes us. God had to break Egypt out of them, right? Before he could break them into Canaan. Before they could enter into the land of milk and honey, before they could enter into the promised land, he had to take away that slavery mindset. Right? See, so many of us are still bound in that slavery mindset. Now I'm not talking like working in field slavery. I'm talking about bound to the things of this world, right? Whether or not we're gonna, we need a bigger house, we need a new car, we need more money, we need this, we need that, we need this. And we start to beg God for all of these things, right? That is all bondage. Because if God has told you to trust him and to believe him, I promise you, he's going to provide it. Not the way you think, not the way you want, but he is going to provide it. So I want to tell a real quick story. I'm running out of time, but I gotta tell the story anyway. So my wife and I, at one point, um, her van, nothing wrong with it, but she had decided she didn't want a van anymore, and she thought she wanted to get a larger SUV. Thank God we didn't do that now, right? We could afford to put gas in that thing. And we were sitting on the back porch one evening and we were looking and she found a Jeep grand wagoneer. Anybody ever seen one of those things? They're huge, right? And she was like, that's the one I want. She's like, that's it, right there. So I was like, all right, we'll call, we'll go see it. The following Monday, I got fired from my job. Can I promise you something? God knew what he was doing. God knew what he was doing. In that moment, it was hard to realize. You know, we had dreams, we had aspirations, we had all of the things that we thought we were gonna do, and then all of a sudden we weren't gonna do those anymore. Do you know what that's caused us to do? Depend on one another. Depend on our community, the people around us, the people who love us, the people who support us. That's hard. That's hard. Because we went from being able to depend on ourselves to having to depend on God. And you know, my wife and I just had a conversation the other day. And for those of you who don't know us well, please understand something that my wife and I are um very much so in tune on pretty much everything that we do in life. And uh I called her one day and I I broke some news to her that was somewhat good news, but it was we were right on the border of making some decisions that were challenging for our family. And she called me, or when I called her, she said, you know, I was reading my Bible this morning, and and I can't remember what the passage of scripture was, but I was I was really like, Wow, Lord, you're you're really telling me like I'm putting more, I'm putting more emphasis on the things rather than the moments, and we were on and on and on. And I said, Well, we were trusted with so much for so long that now we have to learn to live with little. And she goes, That was the scripture. Who would have thought, right? That wasn't like God was in that moment with us, and in that moment, we made a realization that if we want to hold on to the things, we can't have the relationships. And I don't mean like you don't sell all of your belongings, live in a cardboard box under a bridge, and think that's gonna fix all of your problems. What I'm saying is you have to start to realize the things that are taking over your life, right? Again, the Israelites never realized that. But when God began to speak to us, the realization was we are no different than the Israelites. We began to lean on him instead of leaning on ourselves. See, the bondage that held us, the control of our finances, the the amount of wealth, the money that we had, we knew we had to give up in order to be in relationship. I'm not saying that our marriage would have ended had I kept that job, but I'm not saying our marriage would have survived. We weren't in a place where we thought we were gonna get divorced, but I'm telling you, God knew something we didn't know. Right? I promise you, he knew something we didn't know, and we are thankful every day that he stepped in. Because we would have ruined, I would have ruined my life for sure. I would have wrecked my life. Because I was more worried about the blessings that he had given me than the relationship that I had with him. The shocking truth is this the promised land was never God's greatest gift. We think about it all the time. When I die and I go to heaven, the mansion on the hilltop, right? Seeing Jesus face to face, it is not the blessing, it is not in death. The blessing is not in death. The blessing is in God Himself. The fact that we can be in relationship with him, that is the blessing. And we've completely missed the point. We've completely walked past the blessing, that blessing, to get to all of the other things. In Exodus 33, God tells Moses, I'll give you the land, I'll send an angel, I'll drive out your enemies, but he also says, I will not go with you. Right? So let's break that down. He says, You can go. I'll send angels, I'll drive out your enemies, but my presence will not be there. Anybody in this room would have said, let's go for it. Because that's the easy way out. Moses instead, if thine presence go not with me. Carry us up not hence. If you don't personally go with us, don't make us leave this place. If you will not go, leave us in the wilderness. We would rather be here with you than in the land of milk and honey without you. We won't leave this place with him. We will leave this place without him. By choice. Because it's easier. Moses, if you won't personally go with us, don't take us. Just let us stay here. God, you can keep the land if you want to. You can keep the blessing if you want to. You can keep the houses if you want to. You can keep the vineyards if you want to. But don't send me anywhere where you are not present. Don't send me anywhere where you are not present. The greatest evidence of spiritual maturity is when you stop chasing the blessing and you start chasing God. Stop chasing the blessing, start chasing. What does that mean? How do we chase God and not the blessing? Our desire should be relationship. Our desire should be to be in the Word. Our desire should be in fellowship with Jesus. And the blessings will follow, but our response is the same, Jesus, if you don't go with me, then don't take me there. If this is not a place that you will go with me, leave me where I am. Leave me where I am. I wonder if today if some of us are still frustrated from being stuck in the wilderness. And I know, like, when I say these things, everybody's like, well, yeah, I'm frustrated, and you just don't understand, and you've never been here, you've never done that, you're right, I haven't. But you've never been where I've been. You've never seen what I've seen. One of the greatest gifts that I have is my testimony. Because what I know is this. So many people have never seen that side. So many people have never experienced the pain and the hurt and the things that I've gone through in my life. Nobody's ever experienced it. I don't know that I've ever spoken to somebody that goes, Yeah, man, I've been there. I've spoken to people who said, Oh, you think that's bad? Right? You ever met those people? Their story is always bigger, harder, worse than yours? Listen, I don't care how hard your story is. Because I know how big God is, I know how good God has been to me, and I know that He can do the same for you. The question is, do you believe that? Do you believe that? You expected a promise, you expected a breakthrough, you expected an answer, but instead you've been standing in Egypt, you've been standing in the wilderness, and you have not yet seen the promised land. But I want to tell you something. God has not abandoned you. You are not forgotten. He's drawing you closer. In this moment, he is asking you to draw closer. Will you turn on my prayer music, please? I want you to hear something. The wilderness is not proof of his absence. Because before he gives you the promise, he will take you through the wilderness. Before his promise, he will take you through the wilderness. Before the promise is his presence. Before the promise is the relationship with Jesus. Amen.