Speaker 1: I don't know if y'all noticed, but we got a lot of pink going on in here today.
Speaker 1: No, we didn't turn into a different kind of church Saying that, wrap me up, october is best cancer awareness and so we are supporting by having a pink Sunday.
Speaker 1: It's important to lift up and honor those who suffer through things that some of us will never understand.
Speaker 1: So I got 60, I'll train eight, nine and Anybody have fun.
Speaker 2: Last week, last Sunday, at the lake.
Speaker 1: Tell you my forehead was burnt.
Speaker 1: Seems the older I get, the more real estate.
Speaker 1: I got going on up here.
Speaker 1: I went out on Brother Josh's boat and I came back and apparently I still had hair stuff in from Sunday morning and I get off the boat and everybody's laughing at me.
Speaker 1: I'm like what they said, your hair is just.
Speaker 1: That was the happy hair.
Speaker 1: Look, we had a blast out there.
Speaker 1: We will be out there again.
Speaker 2: We did also baptisms, and last week we had three families join the church.
Speaker 2: That was a good Sunday.
Speaker 2: So if you look at me, we have it on the screen already 1 Peter 1, verse 6 and 7.
Speaker 2: We're going to be looking at a couple of key verses here and then we are going to dive into God's word today.
Speaker 1: It says in verse 6,.
Speaker 1: It says anybody got it All right If you don't.
Speaker 2: It's back behind me.
Speaker 2: Anybody got it All right.
Speaker 2: If you don't, it's back behind me.
Speaker 2: So be truly glad.
Speaker 2: There is a wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.
Speaker 2: These trials say trials.
Speaker 2: These trials will show you that your faith is genuine.
Speaker 2: It is being tested, say tested.
Speaker 2: It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, though your faith is far more precious than gold.
Speaker 2: So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
Speaker 2: Let's pray, father.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for your presence, honoring us with your presence one more time for one more service.
Speaker 2: Father, I pray for every heart that is in here today, for every mind that may be distracted and focused on other things, for every heart that may be in the wrong place right now.
Speaker 2: Father, I pray you move your spirit on them, let them come to a place of repentance and let the saints understand that, even though we may be tested, there may be trials, you are with us In your name.
Speaker 2: We pray Amen.
Speaker 2: Are with us In your name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 2: One more announcement.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell him about it because I was going to say it.
Speaker 2: I had it in my notes, do not forget.
Speaker 2: If you want to be in leadership at any point, if you want to and it's a good thing to go through if you want to be a member, here at the church, we have what we call a growth track, and so what this is?
Speaker 2: I say it almost every single Sunday because it is so important to me that you go through this.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Because I want to know who you are and, as a person coming to this church, you need to know who your pastor and his wife are.
Speaker 2: We open up our home, we invite you in, we feed you, we break bread together.
Speaker 2: We get to know you.
Speaker 2: We have a actual, tangible handout that is our core values and our core beliefs and what we believe in biblical context to back it up, so that when somebody says, you go to that church over there I heard they speak in tongues, what's all with that?
Speaker 2: Well, I got a paper.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you about it, and here's the scripture that backs it up, which is the most important key to witnessing to somebody.
Speaker 2: If you don't have scripture to back up what you believe, you're living in false doctrine.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on Anyways.
Speaker 2: So make sure everything that we talk about there's a sign-up sheet out there.
Speaker 2: If you want to support our kids as well, pastor D has offered her services.
Speaker 2: It's kind of behind this door.
Speaker 2: If you look back when you walk out and you look to your left, there are t-shirts there.
Speaker 2: You may have seen some of us wear it.
Speaker 2: The leadership usually gets a free one, but every dollar that is spent on those t-shirts it goes to support our kids.
Speaker 2: So if you want to support the kids, you want a t-shirt.
Speaker 2: You want to buy one, you want to give it away?
Speaker 2: Have at it.
Speaker 2: So today's title is called Come.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: May.
Speaker 2: Now we as humans we love matter of fact, we probably indulge in a little too much of complaining and whining to the people around us.
Speaker 2: Maybe not any of y'all do it, but let me just talk about me for a second.
Speaker 2: Anyone ever be in a bad spot in your life or a dark valley in your life, and you go into everybody else's house flipping off lights so they can be in the dark too?
Speaker 2: What's this?
Speaker 2: Oh, we're in the dark together.
Speaker 2: Oh, woe is me.
Speaker 2: Or you have what's called in the gospel of I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1: It's really not in the Bible.
Speaker 1: I was going to make up a Bible or a chapter of a one-upper.
Speaker 2: Where if you hear somebody going through something bad, oh well, let me tell you about my week last week.
Speaker 2: Because misery loves company.
Speaker 2: When you hear something bad going on in somebody's life, you know we gravitate towards more of gaining or joining bad stories than we do spreading the good.
Speaker 2: You'll be quicker to talk about your mishaps and your trials and your tribulations and your dark seasons and how your kid's acting like an idiot and how your kid got kicked out of football, or how your mom and dad are being weird and they should have just kicked it a long time ago.
Speaker 2: That get real dark, real quick, because that's real life.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you don't like the people you're around and then you find out well, you don't like who you're around either.
Speaker 2: Well, guess what?
Speaker 2: We're best friends now.
Speaker 2: And so this big ball of misery and anguish and suffering and all of a sudden, before you know it, you're living a life full of negativity and bitterness and we wonder why God never moves in our lives.
Speaker 2: Because he can't get past your whining.
Speaker 2: You know, I really think God shows us things in our life, physical things, to describe and explain spiritual warfare, for instance.
Speaker 2: There's not a whole lot that I want to make happen in my son's life because he whines about everything all the time.
Speaker 2: Does anybody else understand that If someone's always whining about them, about something going on in their lives.
Speaker 2: You don't really want to help them much because you're afraid that you may end up on their lips.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 2: This is a little bit of wisdom.
Speaker 2: I know I'm younger than most of y'all, but let me tell you I got a wide streak in me and if they'll talk about somebody else, they will talk about you.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go back Now.
Speaker 2: Has anyone ever been guilty of?
Speaker 2: And especially if you're fresh and new back in church, you're fresh and new to God.
Speaker 2: It feels so good when you first come to God.
Speaker 2: There's nothing like it.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, I say it all the time.
Speaker 2: It is the best.
Speaker 2: I love my wife to death, but coming to Jesus was better than marrying her.
Speaker 2: Some of y'all clapping about what I just said she knows your names.
Speaker 2: I love my family, but God takes precedent over my family.
Speaker 2: I love my church.
Speaker 2: I love you, but God takes precedent over you.
Speaker 2: God is higher than you in my life.
Speaker 2: But when I came to Jesus, when I came back to Jesus and I was free of the drugs and I was free of the alcohol and I was free of everything that Satan had on my meal plate every single week that he was trying to get me to partake of, I realized real quick that just because I came back to God did not make everything rainbows and butterflies.
Speaker 2: Just because I said yes to Jesus, it was going to be 10 times, a thousand times harder to say no to my flesh in the world.
Speaker 2: Now Life is just going to be an easy breeze because I've said yes to Jesus a thousand times harder to say no to my flesh in the world.
Speaker 2: Now Life is just going to be an easy breeze because I've said yes to Jesus.
Speaker 2: Now, magically, I'm going to get along with everybody in my life, my job is going to be perfect, my kids are going to act right again, my marriage is going to be immediately healed.
Speaker 2: Everything is going to be perfect.
Speaker 2: Everything is good.
Speaker 2: We forget that.
Speaker 2: Yes, god is good, but people are people and life will still hit you in the face after you leave this door, giving your heart completely over to God.
Speaker 2: Just because you got saved doesn't mean everybody else in your circle did.
Speaker 2: Just because you've changed the way that you think about things and you begin to have a biblical attitude and a spiritual walk and you begin to understand that it's not the people that are coming against you that is the enemy, but there's actually principalities that rule in this area, here over in the darkness, that are trying to come against you.
Speaker 2: It's not the person that is your enemy, it's what's influencing them that there will be no more pain no more drama.
Speaker 1: Anybody got it, never mind.
Speaker 2: There's really only one word I can think of to drive with drama, and it was mama.
Speaker 1: Now they want to call out the women, because it's not always them.
Speaker 1: I could think of to drive with drama and it was mama and I didn't want to call out the women, because it's not always them.
Speaker 1: I worked in a machine shop before I became a youth pastor and photographer, more full-time, and it was nothing but men out in the shop and I was welding and stuff.
Speaker 2: And you talk about gossip girls.
Speaker 2: That's why they screamed the loudest, trying to blame the women for all the gossip.
Speaker 2: But it's just bad, as the women, the men were all I don't care about.
Speaker 2: You tell one person one thing.
Speaker 2: You go to the other side of the shop.
Speaker 2: By the time you could walk all the way down, it had gotten to there.
Speaker 2: I don't know how, I don't know if they had secret gossip radios or what it was, but they ended up getting the message all around the shop.
Speaker 2: And then you come in to eat lunch and everybody already knows your business and you think, when you come to God, all that's going to go away Magically.
Speaker 2: Now everyone will be nice and magically people that are driving in the fast lane will get over it.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, it's just, it's all the time.
Speaker 2: Like I don't understand, like I pray.
Speaker 2: This message finds you ma'am or sir, you need to get off of the fast side of the road and get over.
Speaker 2: 55 is not equal to 70.
Speaker 2: Not everybody gets a trophy.
Speaker 2: That's life.
Speaker 2: Get over.
Speaker 2: Okay, that there will be no more struggles and no more hurt.
Speaker 2: This is why, in the church, we somehow got it in our heads that this is why, in the church.
Speaker 2: We somehow got it in our heads that if people hurt you in the church you need to stop going there.
Speaker 2: Church hurt is some of the most detrimental issues in the house of God, in the body of Christ.
Speaker 2: That kills the spirit moving because there is issues between people in the church when actually, from cover to cover, the Bible tells us God even says that if we are in the middle of sacrificing, if we are in the middle of worshiping him, drop what we are doing and go fix what someone has done to you.
Speaker 2: It does not say if you have done wrong.
Speaker 2: It says, even if the other person has done you wrong, you need to do right and make it right, because relationship is valuable to God.
Speaker 2: That's why God doesn't really care about these religious movements, because he wants relationship.
Speaker 2: Just because you come to a church house doesn't make you a part of the body of Christ, excepting Jesus does.
Speaker 2: And then you become the church.
Speaker 2: That way, everywhere that you go, the spirit of God is in you and you can share that and the church becomes multiplied, when in fact, throughout the Bible, we are actually promised the opposite.
Speaker 2: Throughout the Bible we are actually promised the opposite that not everything will be perfect that now, magically, not everyone is going to love you.
Speaker 2: In fact, it says the opposite, that if you begin to profess your faith in Jesus Christ, the devil's hornet's nest gets kicked and he comes out to play.
Speaker 2: And when he comes out, he is out for blood because he knows that he just lost you.
Speaker 1: I know, Pastor, this is really encouraging.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all this encouraging word.
Speaker 2: Let's go save somebody and tell them hey, guess what?
Speaker 2: It's just going to get worse from here.
Speaker 2: But is that not life already?
Speaker 2: What a blessing we have to come to a church and be a part of a body of people who accept you for who they are.
Speaker 2: I've heard stories of churches that will not let you in until you get your stuff together.
Speaker 2: Listen, we'll hold your beer outside while you come inside and get Jesus.
Speaker 2: We'll hold your beer outside while you come inside and get Jesus.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a crazy statement, but I'm telling you I welcome people with it because someone welcomed me in in the depths of my sin, in the depths of my addiction, and someone showed me that, even though I am a sinner, I still have a savior.
Speaker 2: And when the church begins to look down on our noses and other people and we think that just because they don't have it together right now, we are all in the middle of a different process and a different season, trying to get our stuff together.
Speaker 2: But I promise you at the end of today's service, I hope that you will get a little more encouraged than these few verses.
Speaker 1: I just read and don't wait, I mean don't worry.
Speaker 2: There is more Now.
Speaker 2: That is it.
Speaker 2: It will be an encouragement to you if you agree that it is an honor and a pleasure to suffer for the name of Christ.
Speaker 2: You see, we have this new church culture that they preach prosperity If you come to Jesus, oh, your bank account's gonna be large If you give to this church.
Speaker 2: Oh, god's gonna bless you.
Speaker 2: You got another crown in your or another jewel in your crown in heaven.
Speaker 2: God's gonna bless you for your faithfulness.
Speaker 2: That's not anything to do with God.
Speaker 2: That is 100% man-made, trying to do whatever they can do to get your dollar.
Speaker 2: That's why I have the policy here that if you think our church is after your money, give your tithe somewhere else.
Speaker 2: But give your tithes and let God show you how faithful he is.
Speaker 1: And then you'll come back to me and apologize.
Speaker 2: Why do I know this?
Speaker 2: Because there's been times in my life where I have been severely tested and when I took that test and I stayed faithful to what I know the Bible tells me to do, god always shows up.
Speaker 2: Now, why does he always show up?
Speaker 2: Because we know that he is faithful and true to his word.
Speaker 2: Anything that he says in his book he promises it will never return void.
Speaker 2: That means it always has substance and always has meaning.
Speaker 2: But we have a church culture today that we don't want to do any sort of sacrificing for the word.
Speaker 2: We don't want to do any sacrificing for the body.
Speaker 2: We want to come and get our hour in on Sundays and we don't want to do anything else because it's inconvenient and we literally live a life full of Christianity and there is zero suffering for the cross.
Speaker 2: We're scared to have and I say we.
Speaker 2: We are scared not all the times, but sometimes to speak out and witness to somebody because we don't want them to think that we are weird.
Speaker 2: And the fact is some of us have such a reputation of negativity and bitterness.
Speaker 2: If you witness, they will call you a liar anyways.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to go back to my notes.
Speaker 2: I want you to look over here with your Bibles in James, chapter 1.
Speaker 2: Now I want to give you a little context while you're turning over there.
Speaker 2: We're going to be starting in verse 2.
Speaker 2: The context here of James writing is this James is not writing to the people whose lives are perfect.
Speaker 2: James is not writing to the people who accepted Jesus Christ as the one true Son of God.
Speaker 2: And now everything is rainbows and butterflies.
Speaker 2: That's not who he's writing.
Speaker 2: He's actually writing.
Speaker 2: If you read in verse 1 of the first chapter he's writing.
Speaker 2: He says to the 12 tribes Now he specifically addresses them in verse 1.
Speaker 2: And these are the faithful ones who clung to the truth, in spite of what the culture said.
Speaker 2: They knew that Jesus came to die for the sin, that he was an actual living sacrifice.
Speaker 2: That was fulfilling prophecy throughout the Old Testament, and so Jesus died.
Speaker 2: He rose again.
Speaker 2: So, if you know the specific point in time, jesus had been crucified.
Speaker 2: Now we have a new wave of believers.
Speaker 2: They're beginning to call themselves Christians.
Speaker 2: These are the people that believe in Christ, that he was the one true Messiah, he was who he said he was, and all those who claim Christianity.
Speaker 2: They are now being persecuted and they are driven out from their homes, severely persecuted.
Speaker 2: Disciples are being murdered.
Speaker 2: The people that James is writing here are those who haven't yet been killed or martyred for the name of Christ.
Speaker 2: These are the leftovers.
Speaker 2: Some may call them a remnant.
Speaker 2: These were the people who literally had the fear for their lives because they said that Jesus was the Messiah.
Speaker 2: Now I don't know about you, but I live pretty comfortable here in East Texas.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't know about you, but I live pretty comfortable here in East Texas.
Speaker 2: Everybody believes something, usually about God.
Speaker 2: They may have a disordered view or definition, but in some cases most cases, very few cases that you don't have anybody that doesn't know about God, most cases Bible Belt.
Speaker 2: You know, we all believe in Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I go to church.
Speaker 2: Where you go, first Baptist over on the corner, blah, blah, blah and they tell you the story.
Speaker 2: Everybody goes to church somewhere.
Speaker 2: It's very rare that you don't have somebody who does, but none of us as of now have been persecuted for the right to say that Jesus is the one true son of God when there are people around the world in other countries right now, that cannot even.
Speaker 2: I saw a video and it was I don't know where, but it was Chinese or Japanese, I'm not sure, but they were in a secret group.
Speaker 2: They would have to take these different routes that were not the same ever they would go.
Speaker 2: I knew it had to be China, probably because they're very they'll kill you.
Speaker 2: They're going through all these little things on the back of whatever and then they sneak through this and you see these videos of no noise coming out of their mouth.
Speaker 2: It's very like coming from our culture.
Speaker 2: Looking over there, it's really weird to me, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: No noise is coming out.
Speaker 2: But that's how they're doing worship.
Speaker 2: They can't make sound when they clap together.
Speaker 2: They go like this Because if they make a sound and someone hears them, they may be discovered and they will be killed or locked up for the rest of their life Just for saying that Jesus is the one true son of God.
Speaker 2: I saw in the same video, the same post, that it was.
Speaker 1: I don't have one with me, it's actually at home.
Speaker 1: You know how we in America't have one with me, it's actually at home.
Speaker 1: You know how we in America we have Bibles everywhere.
Speaker 1: The Gideons actually even put them in places that you can go to a hotel right now and they're usually down in a drawer beside the bed of the New Testament.
Speaker 1: They hand them out.
Speaker 1: We have them freely.
Speaker 1: I have several here.
Speaker 1: We give newborns their first little Bible with some verses to encourage them and say how much we love them.
Speaker 2: And over there, they were praising God for a page out of the Bible.
Speaker 2: Sometimes just a verse that had been cut out and they would hold it and they couldn't even let anything come out of their mouth.
Speaker 2: They were holding it to their chest and they were mouthing Of how much they appreciate.
Speaker 2: They were crying and sobbing at just having a verse from the word of God and here in America we don't even give our five minutes.
Speaker 1: We suffer no persecution and we have the privilege.
Speaker 1: None of us understand really what it is to suffer for the name of Christ.
Speaker 1: That's right Supper.
Speaker 1: For the name of.
Speaker 2: Christ.
Speaker 2: We have a new wave of believers, and all those who claim Christianity are being severely persecuted.
Speaker 2: Now, those who haven't been killed yet are martyred.
Speaker 2: They've all had to flee and leave their homes.
Speaker 2: They had to give up everything that they knew, everything that they loved, in fear of being killed.
Speaker 1: Because when revival breaks out, the enemy does everything he can to stomp it out.
Speaker 1: And let me say that one more time, in a different way, here at Connect Church the enemy is going to fight you, to keep you home.
Speaker 2: He is going to fight you and inflict you in your daily, day-to-day life, whether it be your kid doing something stupid in school or your job situation.
Speaker 2: There's going to be something that is going to pop up in your life to try to keep you distracted, that will dismantle your divine destiny that God has for you and that is to be here, to be faithful and to show up and serve.
Speaker 1: They're running for their lives.
Speaker 1: So now, when we know this context of what was going on in this specific time when James was writing them if you look at verse chapter 1 of James and 2 and 4, when I researched this and looked this up, I read this different.
Speaker 1: Now it shed a different light on why.
Speaker 2: James was the way James was.
Speaker 2: James was pretty stern in a lot of ways, but he was talking to a lot of people who had fear gripping their life.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever dealt with someone who they have nothing but fear that they see everything through, they have to be sternly talked to or they will never change.
Speaker 2: It says in verse 2,.
Speaker 2: It says, dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind, say any kind, any kind, come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.
Speaker 2: Say joy, joy, joy, joy.
Speaker 2: The church has lost its true roots in joy.
Speaker 2: And where does that come from?
Speaker 2: It comes from the testing of our faith.
Speaker 2: When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
Speaker 2: Verse four says so let it grow.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: So let yourself be tested.
Speaker 2: So offer yourself up as a sacrifice to God.
Speaker 2: God test me.
Speaker 2: Those are serious prayers, because when you say God test me, guess who's coming?
Speaker 2: Usually he allows the enemy to do something in your life.
Speaker 2: So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and you will be complete, needing nothing.
Speaker 2: So trouble produces what Joy?
Speaker 2: I don't even want to say that Trouble produces joy.
Speaker 2: Look over in Psalm 66, verse 10.
Speaker 2: It's very short.
Speaker 2: I have it on the screen.
Speaker 2: We're going to move along.
Speaker 2: It says you have tested us, oh God.
Speaker 2: You have purified us like silver.
Speaker 2: You know, what's cool about silver and the same with gold is that when you begin it's dug from the earth, it's impure, it has to be refined, it has to be renewed over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: And something that I studied on and found out about silver is that the purer it becomes, the more reflective it becomes.
Speaker 2: God is not testing you to be mean to you.
Speaker 2: He is trying to get you so reflective.
Speaker 2: You reflect him.
Speaker 2: But that comes with a purification process.
Speaker 2: That comes through the refiner's fire, that comes through submission to the Holy Spirit to say God, whatever you want to do in my life, I know I'm praying something really stupid.
Speaker 2: It's going to look dumb to everybody else.
Speaker 2: My faith is going to be so large and so big it's going to measure up to the great God that you are, because faith looks stupid until it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Faith looks stupid until what you have faith for comes through and then everybody else is like well, man, I should have prayed for something Like yeah, maybe you should, bro, maybe you should.
Speaker 2: Maybe our faith, maybe our prayer, maybe our believing that healing can take place should measure up to the great God that we serve, because the God who healed in the Bible is still the same God today.
Speaker 2: But what does it take?
Speaker 2: It takes prayer.
Speaker 2: It takes fasting.
Speaker 2: Fasting is a test of the devil, because I love food, man.
Speaker 2: It's like every time I'm fasting, somebody wants to go out to eat.
Speaker 2: It's like every time I'm fasting, somebody wants to go out to eat and some people don't.
Speaker 2: Peter in the Bible was a different character.
Speaker 2: The Lord Jesus said get behind me, satan.
Speaker 2: To him and I think he took it very well.
Speaker 2: If you're inviting me out to eat and I say get behind me Satan, I don't think you'll take it the same.
Speaker 2: You probably will get a little bit offended.
Speaker 2: But Peter was like okay, lord, whatever you say, you're right.
Speaker 2: Always, when I'm trying to do something for God, when I'm trying to stay pure in my mind, things pop up on social media.
Speaker 2: When I'm trying to stay pure in my mind and my heart for my wife, summertime comes and booty shorts come out.
Speaker 1: There's no lie.
Speaker 1: You got another booty shorts.
Speaker 1: Don't go to.
Speaker 2: Miami.
Speaker 2: But there's things in my life that I try to keep pure, that I try to keep safe.
Speaker 2: That's why my wife has access to all my accounts, because there's nothing that when you start hiding what you have done wrong or start hiding what you're thinking, the enemy begins to sense it and he comes for you.
Speaker 2: He knows what you're going to fall for.
Speaker 2: You see, some of you you may be, you may have an aptitude to go in the pornography way.
Speaker 2: Some of you may have the aptitude for going and drinking or drugs or whatever.
Speaker 2: You don't take an alcohol or a person who has recovered from alcoholism.
Speaker 2: You don't take them and say, hey, man, you want to go out and hang out at the bar, do you?
Speaker 2: You don't take somebody who's addicted to drugs.
Speaker 2: Go underneath an overpass, go down to the wrong side of town and say, hey, man, I know this guy over here, I know you're trying to stay away from drugs, but he's got a deal for you.
Speaker 2: You don't take somebody who's addicted to buying things.
Speaker 2: Is this real, come on?
Speaker 2: Somebody who's addicted to shopping?
Speaker 2: Some of you, some of us, may maybe even a little bit addicted to Amazon, because it shows up to the door and all it did was click a couple of things.
Speaker 2: You don't take them into the mall.
Speaker 2: You want to go get some coffee from Starbucks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, where at?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's in the mall.
Speaker 2: Okay, you don't take somebody who has a problem looking at women down to Miami because, that is what's there Now, all these things that we can laugh at and we can say things about.
Speaker 2: A lot of times we laugh because we know we're really struggling with it.
Speaker 2: Things about a lot of times we laugh because we know we're really struggling with it.
Speaker 2: We don't want anybody to know our secret struggles, and so we struggle in private, we suffer in silence and then, when we fall, all everyone sees is the fall and they had no clue that you were going through what you were going through.
Speaker 2: This is why relationship is so important to God, because he wants us to talk to each other.
Speaker 2: He wants us to be open with each other, because if you don't have accountability, you will fail.
Speaker 2: The more you purify the silver, the more reflective it comes.
Speaker 2: When something is purified, it has to go through fire.
Speaker 2: It's going to be hot, it's going to be uncomfortable, but sometimes that fire that is so hot will keep you out of a hill.
Speaker 2: Psalms 31 through 5, it says this I will exalt you, lord, for you rescued me.
Speaker 2: You refused to let my enemies triumph over me.
Speaker 2: Oh Lord, my God, I cried to you for help and you restored my health.
Speaker 2: You brought me up from the grave.
Speaker 2: Oh Lord, you kept me from falling into the pit of death.
Speaker 2: Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones.
Speaker 2: Praise his glory, his holy name, for his anger lasts only for a moment, but his favor lasts for a lifetime.
Speaker 2: Weeping may come in the night, but joy will come in the morning.
Speaker 2: It does not matter what season of life you were in, it does not matter what kind of addiction you face, it does not matter the level of loneliness in your heart.
Speaker 2: It does not matter depression trying to take hold of your mind.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter anxiety trying to steal your peace.
Speaker 2: Know this we have a blessing assurance that no matter what is trying to consume you, no matter what is trying to take you down, trying to distract you, you can face whatever it is coming against you and scream God's Word.
Speaker 2: Reaping may last for the night, but the joy of the Lord will come in the morning.
Speaker 2: Devil, you've tried to take me down.
Speaker 2: You tried to take me down.
Speaker 2: You tried to take me down, but all you did was drive me to my knees.
Speaker 2: You tried to destroy me, but all you did was reveal to me how much of me I need to get rid of, how much flesh I still have left.
Speaker 2: You tried to shut me up, but I understand that the power from God Almighty comes when I become an overcomer by sharing my testimony.
Speaker 2: The devil may try to shut you up, but my God can shut him down.
Speaker 2: I believe today that God is wanting us to stop focusing on how bad it is and start remembering how great, how good and how merciful our God is, how good and how merciful our God is.
Speaker 2: Today is the day that you have set in a joyless relationship with God.
Speaker 2: For far enough, the devil has been busy robbing you of what you need, and that is joy.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Speaker 2: If he can rob your joy, you become weak.
Speaker 2: If he can steal your laugh, he can replace it with bitterness.
Speaker 2: Joy is missing from the church today.
Speaker 2: If you want freedom from depression, anxiety, addictions issues, marital problems, kids acting crazy, you can make it through all of this.
Speaker 2: If you remain joyful in the Lord, it through all of this.
Speaker 2: If you remain joyful in the Lord, if you understand that no matter what the enemy, somebody, no matter what the enemy throws your way, and you keep the joy of the Lord, the devil can't hold you.
Speaker 2: He can't contain you.
Speaker 2: There's something about when the joy of the Lord takes root in your heart.
Speaker 2: It drives the enemy out.
Speaker 2: When you realize that who the devil's been trying to whisper in your ear that you are is not who God says you are, your joy becomes restored.
Speaker 2: Then, no matter what the enemy is trying to call you, you know that God calls you his and that when you have joy it brings peace.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, joy will produce the rest of the fruits of the spirit, because if you can stay happy and joyful even through the trial, see, happiness is good.
Speaker 2: Happy can be very superficial.
Speaker 2: It can be something that you buy, something I love.
Speaker 2: My wife got me this shirt for pink day and it came in.
Speaker 2: I like the material.
Speaker 2: It's like that quick, dry stuff and I've been wanting some more polos because pastors apparently don't have t-shirts and jeans anymore.
Speaker 1: So when I meet with other pastors.
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything to wear.
Speaker 2: I said baby, I just want some polos.
Speaker 2: And when it came in the mail I put it on, I said okay, a little bit of happiness came to me.
Speaker 2: Y'all know me.
Speaker 2: And shoes, we got a connection.
Speaker 2: When I put them on, I walk around, I'm like pal.
Speaker 2: Strangers in Walmart are like what are you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm like shoes.
Speaker 2: It brings me happiness.
Speaker 2: But nothing you can buy, no relationship that you can have, will bring you the joy of the Lord.
Speaker 2: You may try your hardest, your entire life, what you're trying to do?
Speaker 2: You're trying to replace the joy of the Lord with a superficial happiness, come on With a synthetic joy.
Speaker 2: And what does that leave you?
Speaker 2: That leaves you starving, unhappy and miserable, feeling unfulfilled.
Speaker 2: Because what happiness will do?
Speaker 2: Happiness will try to drive you to the next thing that you want.
Speaker 2: Joy keeps you sustained in what you have.
Speaker 2: I'll say it again Happiness will try to get you to buy the next thing, to have the next relationship, to go to the next place.
Speaker 2: Oh well, this church, they're okay, but I want to try the next.
Speaker 2: You'll try everything to fill that happiness want, but the joy of the Lord will sustain you through it all.
Speaker 2: Nothing compares to the joy of the Lord at all, Nothing compares to the joy of the Lord.
Speaker 2: Some of you have been allowing the enemy, you've been allowing the enemy to rob you of what God's been trying to place in your life.
Speaker 2: And if you're like me, for the longest time you sit there and took it because you thought you had to.
Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you that you don't have to.
Speaker 2: It don't matter what's going on in your house, it don't matter what's going on in your job.
Speaker 2: You have the authority in Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost to speak over something.
Speaker 2: And mountains move.
Speaker 2: Why do the mountains move?
Speaker 2: Because you're in relationship with the creator of it.
Speaker 2: Everything that you come in contact with is in direct relationship with God, because he ordained it and put it into place.
Speaker 2: That gives you the authority, as being his child, to speak to whatever is around you, whatever is ailing you, whatever's making you sick, whatever's disrupting your house, whatever's doing at your job, whatever your kids are doing, to speak life over that.
Speaker 2: And it has to straighten up.
Speaker 2: And you say well, pastor, I've been praying for a while.
Speaker 2: So Let me ask you this If you've been praying for a miracle, tell me when it's enough.
Speaker 2: Can't give me a date, can you, because in the times where God doesn't do it, we still love him, even if he doesn't.
Speaker 2: God isn't here for our support, we're here for his.
Speaker 2: We are created in his image.
Speaker 2: God is not created in ours.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean?
Speaker 2: We do have the authority, but we also have to submit.
Speaker 2: We understand that we have the authority to speak things into existence in our lives, but we also have to submit that if God does not have it in his perfect will to make it happen that, we need to be okay with that.
Speaker 2: And that is where joy comes in.
Speaker 2: Because even when God doesn't answer my prayer, even when I'm feeling lonely and I'm feeling desperate and I'm feeling depressed and I feel illness and I don't feel good in my body or my relationships are bad and I just can't find happiness, you need to find the joy of the Lord, because the joy of the Lord will sustain you through every single circumstance, will sustain you through every single circumstance, every single season, every single test.
Speaker 2: The joy of the Lord will sustain you.
Speaker 2: And you've been sitting letting the enemy attack you and robbing you of your joy because you don't like where you are joy, because you don't like where you are.
Speaker 2: Read your Bible.
Speaker 2: You are not the only one, now or ever, or in the history books, that was in a place that they did not desire to be in.
Speaker 1: Brother Jim read last week about Jonah.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to go save those people.
Speaker 2: He was like deuces, I'm going, but he had to live with that choice.
Speaker 2: Some of us are blaming the enemy about the echoes of the choices we made.
Speaker 2: Bad choices lead to bad problems, but our God is still faithful, even through our stupidity, especially through my stupidity.
Speaker 1: I tell my wife all the time I haven't talked about you in a couple weeks.
Speaker 1: Calm down.
Speaker 2: And I mean this from my heart.
Speaker 1: I know it got me brownie points, but I wasn't saying it for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like brownies, so it's fine.
Speaker 2: But I told her.
Speaker 2: I said our marriage is exactly what I dreamed marriage would be.
Speaker 1: Does that mean, we don't fight?
Speaker 2: No Matter of fact, on the way to church this morning.
Speaker 1: I was an idiot before we even left the house, so let's just say that I was an idiot before we even left the house.
Speaker 2: So let's just say that.
Speaker 2: But even through the good, even through the bad, we are still faithful to each other.
Speaker 2: It's not because of all the stuff she does for me, it's not because she looks so pretty, but hallelujah for that.
Speaker 2: I don't understand why she stays in relationship with me, even when I don't deserve her love.
Speaker 2: But it's a thing ordained by God, that God is trying to show us that, even though you have issues, even though you have desires of your heart that don't come true, even though you're in the darkest valleys, even though you are being tested and tried, your faith will produce endurance and after this endurance is provided for you because of the test, you won't need for anything, because you will have real joy of the Lord.
Speaker 2: And even though I get mad at God and even though I act as an idiot towards God, even though I question God, I treat anybody else that ever treated God in a way that he did not deserve for the almighty God that he is.
Speaker 2: But yet he loves me anyways.
Speaker 2: Yet he stays anyways.
Speaker 2: Yet the promises that I don't deserve, he still says I will fulfill over you.
Speaker 2: And that just because, just because I mess up, he doesn't throw the clay away.
Speaker 2: I'm so thankful that God has not thrown the clay away but getting back up on that wheel to let him form and fashion us is a choice.
Speaker 2: God loves every single person under the sound of my voice and he desires for everyone, here or online, that he wants you to have a real joy.
Speaker 2: Some of you have probably been living for years now and been getting things to make you happy, but you have no joy in what.
Speaker 2: You have probably been living for years now and been getting things to make you happy, but you have no joy in what you have.
Speaker 2: God wants to free you today of the synthetic happiness and he wants to bring and restore real joy to your life.