The Haves and The Have Nots (How to Receive From God)

Receiving From God | Pastor Chip Dandridge

God is a good Father who wants His children to receive the good things He has promised. In this message, Pastor Chip Dandridge teaches how faith, expectation, and confidence in God’s character position us to receive from Him.

If you have been struggling with doubt, unanswered prayers, or feeling like you have to strive for everything on your own, this sermon will encourage you to trust God’s Word and come boldly to Him in faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well this week I was so confident in it. I was like, man, this thing's done. I can, you know, not worry about it. And at about probably eight o'clock, I started last night I started hearing something in my spirit. It's like, thank you, God. I'll write that down for when we're done with this series. And I'll come back to it. Um, and he's like, didn't say anything, so I was like, okay. Then, if you read in the prayer chat, my dog went to the hospital. He's okay. Um, we get home, the power had been out. So I I don't like hotness. And it was hot in the house, and it was it it was the power had finally come back, and I was like, finally, let me let me go to sleep, or pretend I go to sleep. And then me going to sleep is let me lay in the bed and see what happens, because I never know. And then I just felt that thing rise up in me again, and he's like, No, that's for tomorrow. So I was like, oh, okay. So I got up and redid all this. Um, and I hope it helps you. The name of um the message today is the haves and the have-nots. Some of you may feel like the haves, some of you may feel like the have-nots, some of you may feel like in between. Uh, but we're gonna talk about that. My main scripture I'm gonna kind of jump from today, and there's gonna be a few scriptures, so if you take notes, you're gonna want to write them down. Um is Mark 11, 20 through 24. And we're gonna read that to you, and I'm sure they'll be on the screen. As they passed by in the morning, they saw a fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter, remembering, and because Jesus had cursed the fig tree earlier, said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered, and Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says, To this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass. It will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Amen. I want to look at that part. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received, and it will be yours. That is a wonderful thing. Father, in the name of Jesus, in these next few moments, anoint my mouth, Lord, fill it with your words. Remove anything that's not of you from this message, God. Let it bless someone, free someone, and help someone in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. What a great scripture. And it's a scripture we all say, Amen. But now that I'm long in the tooth, thank you. I've learned something. A lot of times we say amen to that out loud, but in our hearts we think, it doesn't really work that way. It doesn't really work that way for me. I guarantee if I took a poll, I would find that there's people in this room who feel like they have unanswered prayers. There's people in this room who have prayed for things that didn't come to pass. There's people in this room who are praying for things and they're having a hard time believing it. And it feels like sometimes there's prayers that just go unanswered and we don't know why. Also, if you've been around the church long enough, just not this church, but the church in general, you'll begin to see people that seem like they're always walking in constant blessing. Like they are constantly, God is they're constantly having God do things for them. God is constantly coming through for them. God is constantly performing miracles on their behalf. How come that's not happening for me like that? I know none of y'all have ever thought that because you're more spiritual, but it can feel like the haves and the have-nots sometimes. It can feel like God is with someone a little more than he's with you, working with someone more than he's working with you, blessing someone more, and it leads us to an internal question, and it's not always a question that we're asking in rebellion or anger or anything like that, but the question is, God, what about me? Why aren't you helping me the way you're helping others? Why am I not hearing from you the way others hear from you? Why am I not receiving things from you that others receive for you? Why am I not walking in the blessings that I see other people walking in? A lot of us we we we don't say it out loud because it would, people would go, ugh, uh, but we say things in our hearts like, Lord, I'm doing the things, going to church, Lord, I'm praying, Lord, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Lord, I love my spouse, but they still won't come to you. Lord, I pray for my kids, they still won't come for you. What's going on? And if we're not careful, we can get in a posture of that where we begin to believe that God is good but to everybody but us. And if we live that way and we believe that way, it's going to damage us and it's going to damage our lives and our hearts. God is good, and he's good to everyone. But what do you do when that doesn't feel like the reality? What do you do when the reality you confess with your mouth doesn't match the reality that you feel like you're living in? And the other question to that is, why? Why? And I'd like to present to you, and I'm not saying don't take any of this as it's your fault, though some of it may be, most of us don't know how to receive from the Lord. We don't know how to get in the posture to receive from God. And what happens is when we don't get in that posture, we're not able to receive it, and we think God is withholding. What if God isn't withholding? What if God is waiting to give you what he wants to give you for you? It's because you're not in a posture to receive from him. You follow? So as I'm thinking through this, I'm thinking, okay, why? Why is that? What are the postures? What are some of the things that stop us from receiving from the Lord? A good example of that is last night, as I said, we took the dog to the hospital, he was fine. And I called my mom, because that's what you do when you're in trouble. You call your mom. She's like, go to the vet, it's gonna cost $300. So I was like, uh yay, praise God. So I'm starting to panic, the dog's not looking good. So I run in the bathroom and I text the church because I'm getting emotional. I didn't want my grandma to see. Because I I'm an emotional person. And I'm like, hey, the dogs, y'all saw the text. I walk out of the bathroom, and the nurse is right here, and she goes, He's fine. We're gonna we're gonna do this and that, but he's gonna be fine. And then we and then she goes, Yeah, and so we're getting ready to pay. She's like, Oh no, you don't even have to pay for this. You can go, he's fine. Um I know, right? That's what we said. And even the nurse was kind of like the doctor said no. And I thought, Lord, that was you. And I've seen things like that happen. I've seen things happen, and I've received things from the Lord, and I realized how easy life would be if we lived in that posture. So, how what's stopping us? I want to share that, not because I think you're bad or I'm bad, but because I think it's important to know maybe what's blocking things. So I'm gonna give you a few points with a few scriptures. There may be other things, but I'm only one person and I only have a little bit of time. So, number one, oftentimes we're trying to get things in the flesh instead of asking God for them. Many times the things that we need, we're trying to get them through fleshly means, and we don't get them, and we never even bother to ask God. How do I know that? James 4, 1 through 2 says this. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. Okay, I guess not. I'll did I put that on there? Oh no. Okay, we got it. You do not have because you do not ask. So that first part, I was thinking, okay, Lord, what does that have to do with it? Why'd you give me that scripture? What it's saying is the things that's causing the quarrels among people is they're trying to get things through their fleshly means because all of those things, um, murder, coveting, lying, deceiving, quarreling, many people revert to that and revert to manipulation and revert to all these ways to get the things they need instead of asking God for it. Amen. So what we see happening is instead of using the tools of the spirit, we use the tools of the flesh. So then, when we use the tools of the spirit or of the flesh, guess what we reap? The things of the flesh. You cannot obtain things of the spirit with works of the flesh. It's not gonna happen. I don't care how big and bad you are, how hard you work, it's not gonna happen. And until we start using the proper tools, we're not gonna reap the proper harvest. And then it goes on to say, you do not have because you do not ask. How many of us depend on ourselves to get things done versus asking? In fact, I would argue, and maybe it's just me, maybe I'm less spiritual than everybody, sometimes I don't even think to ask. Sometimes I get an idea, I get a plan, something happens, and I just start rolling. I just start trying to do what I need to do to get it done, to get it fixed, to fix the. And it doesn't occur to me, hey, what if God wants to do this for you instead of you doing this for you? And if it doesn't even dawn on us to ask, how can we then get mad at God for not coming through? Because that's usually what happens. We do everything in our flesh, don't ask God. When it doesn't work, we go, God, I thought you loved me. I thought you cared about me. I thought you, I thought you said that you would give me anything I asked for. I thought you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We get mad at God for not solving a problem we never brought him into. It doesn't make much sense, but that's what we do. It's human nature. That's why the Bible says the flesh and the spirit are constantly at war with each other. So it's possible you're using the flesh to get something, but it's also possible you haven't even asked him. You haven't even prayed. How often do we do things and it doesn't even occur to us to pray? How often do we tell someone, I'm praying for you? And we really don't. You will say, Oh, they're sick, I'm praying, I'm praying for you, and then we never remember to. That's why a habit that I have is I don't really say that unless I'm gonna do it. Or I do it right then, whether out loud or in my mind. That way I know that I'm not lying, because that is a lie. That Christians act like that's not a lie. Don't say I'll pray for you if you don't pray. That's a lie. There are these things called the Ten Commandments. Guess what's on there? So, I mean, it's we we treat these things as innocent, but they're not they're really not. So, what we have to do is we have to actually pray. It's not enough to say we're gonna pray, it's not enough to think about praying. It's not enough to just, it's not something that you say to someone to make them feel better. We've got to actually pray. And we've got to pray for ourselves. We've got to pray for ourselves too. So that's number one. Number two, we often ask, well, let me read this first. 1 John 5, 14 through 15. And this is the confidence that we have toward him. That if we ask anything, everybody say anything. According to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we have asked of him. Do you know? Usually we ask according to our wants instead of according to his will. Many times we ask according to what we want instead of according to what God wants. I'm letting it sink in. We go to him with a list and we say, God, here's what I need, here's what I want, make it happen. And we never even enter into a process of discerning what he wants. Before you make requests to God, do you first try to discern God's will? In fact, when is the last time you actively tried to discern God's will? We tend to run and gun and say all this stuff and do all this stuff, but when was the last time you stopped and said, you know what? I wonder if this is God's will for my life. We usually think God's will, unfortunately, is our will. And then He's there to empower it. And then when we don't get what we ask for, we think there's something going on. There's God doesn't love me. No, the problem is you have no process in your life for discerning God's will. Usually that's because A, no one taught you, and it's a real, I'm gonna teach you right now. It's simple. It goes like this God, what's your will for my life? God, what's your will for this situation? God, how do you want this to play out? So that's number one. Number two, we really don't want God's will. And I would say that's the biggest one. We naturally don't want God's will. You can pretend to be holy and say that you do all the time. God bless you. You should be a pope or something. But um, we typically want our will. And we typically want God to fund our will. Not just through money, but through blessing, through favor, through we say, God, here's what I want. Bless it, please.

unknown 16:02

God.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah, yeah, now, right now. We want it on our timetable. We want, we want exactly what we want when we want it. We don't really want to submit. In fact, culture has made submission into a bad word. A bad word. We don't want, we don't like that. When we hear pastors preach on submission, we tend to start going, I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear all that. You even even as far as marriage, you hear husbands submit to your wives. Because there's people that have abused that, there's there's people now that they don't even want to hear that. Or wives submit to your husbands. Yeah, let's fix that. That would definitely get me some YouTube comments. I thought the ones I was getting now were mean. We don't like to hear that because there's men who have used that to abuse women. We don't like to hear submit to God's will because what if God wants me to do something I don't want to do? What if God wants me to give up something I don't want to give up? What if God's calling me to be a missionary in Africa and I don't want to go all the way over there? Because it's not convenient. What if Paul had said, I don't want to get on all these ships? What if after Paul's shipwreck, he's like, that was enough for me? That would be me if my ship crashed once. I went to a conference to speak and had turbulence, and I was like, Lord, this is too much. Even my hotel room is paid for, the food, the air conditioner, but it's still too much because it was a little scary. God's will doesn't always call us to comfort. God's will doesn't call us to be to just be self-serving. And we have to discern his will, and then we have to accept his will. Some of us have discerned his will, but we haven't accepted it yet. When I was growing up in the ministry, I still am, but when I was young, young, young, I was like 15 when I started becoming a pastor, 16. They used to say about people, everybody's told you they're everybody's told, everybody knows the person is called except the person. And you would meet people that it's like there's such a call of God on your life. They see it, we see it, we recognize it, and they're oblivious. And it's usually that's not that they're oblivious, it's that they don't want to serve. Because they don't know the lifestyle. They know it's going to be challenging. I know somebody who, I'm not going to share who it is because they're close to me. They went to a conference when they were 16 years old and had an encounter with the Lord and told their parents when they were 16, God's called me to ministry, but I don't want to do it because you don't make any money. It's not an easy life. And their life is hell to this day. You know, God sometimes, if you miss God's will, you have to settle for God's second best. I know that's not a comfortable thing, but I want God's best, amen. I don't want to live a second best. I think of my grandfather. He was called to ministry, and he was he was a people magnet, much more friendly than I. People love to talk to him, people love to speak with him, and he was ready to sell everything he owned and go to Bible college. But his church told him not to go because he shouldn't leave and do that with the newborn. And he lived a good life, but he would always tell me he felt like he's had to settle for God's second best for his life. I don't want that. He discerned God's will, he accepted it, but then he let people talk him out of it. Don't let people talk you out. Oh my God, there's something you need to remember this. Don't let people talk you out of God's will for your life. Don't let people's mouths talk you out of the blessings God has for you. Don't let the things people say and their judgments and their inability to understand the call that you have keep you from accomplishing the things you need to accomplish. Amen. Because that happens every day. People get taught, people want to go to college for ministry, people want to go on the mission field, people want to do this, people want to do that, and then the people around them go, I don't know about that. I wouldn't do that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's a good example. I'll pull that in. Jesus, like John just said, Jesus looks at Peter because Peter's rebuking the Lord, saying, You don't have to die. The Lord don't say that. And what does he say to Peter? Get behind me, Satan. Get behind me. God's will isn't always easy. God's will isn't always fun. The devil's will usually feels easy and fun. That's usually pretty easy to do. And it leads to utter eternal destruction. But if we suffer now for a little while, we're guaranteed to not have that. We're guaranteed to have eternal bliss with the Lord. There's people that will be in your sphere who will tell you not to do things because their faith is weak. You cannot rely on other people's faith. You cannot rely on their experiences. Only rely on what God has said to you. Amen? And what he'll do is he'll send the right people at the right time to confirm that it's his will. There's an interesting thing we see a couple times in the Bible. Jesus goes in, one of them, to heal a woman, a girl who died. She's dead. And what does he do? He doesn't take in all of his disciples. He only takes in a couple of three of them, I think. He sends the parents out and goes in the room with the girl. Do you know why he did that? There's theories, but my theory is the parents could only see the situation and were very upset. And he brought the disciples in who we see in the Bible, if you look at their track records, have the most faith. Sometimes you need to get rid of people in your circle who don't have the faith that you have. It's not easy, it's not fun, but there are people around you that can contaminate what God is doing. There's some situations where I've got to go into them and I've got to go in with faith, and the last thing I need is somebody telling me why it's not going to work. The last thing I need from you is tell me how why my bills won't get paid, why the church can't grow, why the ministry can't reach people, why this is too much, or that is too much, or this is too crazy. No, I need people that can stand there and believe God for the miraculous. I need people that are willing to stand there and say things that look foolish to everybody else in the world outside of the kingdom. And you need that too. And Jesus models that and Jesus shows us that. And that's why sometimes when we pray for people in serious situations, I'll even say, if you don't have faith for this, please don't lay your hands on them. No offense to you. We don't need that. We need faith. Amen. We have to accept his will. We have to have faith for it. Number three, this kind of leads into that. You don't really believe that you can receive. James 1, 6 through 8 says this. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is double-minded, a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. First, let me get this out of the way. This is not referring to a moment of weakness. This doesn't mean you pray and you have one moment of, oh gosh, what if what if something bad happens? That's not what he's talking about. That's being human. You're always going to have a doubtful thought enter into your mind. That's the devil. He'll do that. It might not even be your thought. So he's not saying if you ever think, oh no. He's not talking about a moment of human weakness. This is someone who is completely divided in their heart. Where one minute they really believe God is going to come through, they really believe he's going to act. They really truly think it's going to work. But then you talk to him the next day, and it's woe is me, nothing ever happens. I don't think God is going to do this. What if he doesn't come through? And then the next day you talk to him, I'm just waiting on the Lord and I'm just believing. Hallelujah. The next day, I want to kill myself. Nothing ever works. God doesn't love me. That's what he's talking about. Because what happens is when thoughts enter our mind, thoughts of doubt, they are usually seeds from the enemy. Whether you cultivate those seeds, decide whether you will actually have doubt in your heart. There's a difference. I hate to use this example, but I'm going to. It's kind of like cancer. You can have cancer in one part of your body, but if it goes untreated, it spreads. That's doubt. Doubt is a spiritual cancer. It starts here, and then what you do is you either treat it and get rid of it by making it obedient to Christ, or you just let it in there and let it grow. Your heart, because in your mind it gets in there, but what happens is the doubt grows in your heart. And when you start having a heart that is divided between faith and doubt, you won't receive anything because you can't. You have to make the decision to believe. It is a confidence issue. Faith is always a confidence issue. Not self-confidence, but confidence in God. Are you confident God is who he says he is? Are you confident God can do what he says he can do? Are you confident that God loves you? Are you confident that he is able? And if you are and you stand in that confidence, then you will see what you've asked for. Or are you confident in God and something else? God, I need you to come through for my finances, but I also got to do this, this, this, and that, and work myself to death. That's not biblical. Sometimes we think there's a difference in toil and work. The Bible says. Working is good. You should work. You know, the Bible says if a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying quit your job and have confidence God's gonna pay your bills. That's dumb. God wants you to do that. But not that, he wants you to work. But God does not want you to toil. Toil that's part of the curse. What does he tell Adam? You're going to toil. Toil is unenjoyable, soul-crushing, trying to make ends meet, doing everything I can work. That's not the will of God. Everything God wants us to do typically is life-bringing and life-giving. Even the suffering. Even the suffering somewhere down the line will become life-giving. But many of us, we we depend, we depend on God and we say we have confidence in Him, and then we toil as hard as we can in the flesh. Why? Because just in case he doesn't come through. Christians love a clause. Just like we pray for people that are sick, and Jeff has talked about this many times, and I remember he did it with John, and that was a powerful day. Don't pray someone's dying, and you pray, Lord, heal them if it's your will. Not because we really don't want God's will, but because we're using that as a as an out. We're using that as a, well, just in case he doesn't, must not have been his will. But in when I read my Bible, it looks like healing is usually his will. Looks like that's something he likes. But a lot of times Christians disguise doubts with spiritual words. And we say these spiritual words, and they're not really coming from a place of spirituality, they're coming from a place of fear. You know, I've been so many times where people will pray, Lord, touch my. I don't know why they all talk like this in my mind. Lord, touch my brother. Lord, if it's your will, help him. Amen. Well, we know it's God's will to help him. So why are you praying that? But see, help him is very different than in Jesus' name be healed. Help him is, well, you did help him. He enjoyed his last days. We've all heard stuff like that. It's because we're afraid to be bold, because we don't have the confidence. I used to hear all the time people would be like, Chip, you're a little too bold. The things you're saying, the things you're doing, they're a little too bold. It's not that I was I was in a church that wasn't quite as bold. Y'all are pretty bold, so I like that. Um, but this church was not. And they're like, you're just you're too bold. I'm not bold. I just have confidence. I have confidence. Why? Because I've seen him do it myself. Some people only have head knowledge of what they've heard God can do. But when you've been through some stuff and you start seeing what God can do, nobody's gonna talk you out of it. Because I've seen God deliver me at the last minute. I've seen God pay bills for me at the last minute, I've seen health problems that get healed all of a sudden. The first time I ever came to this church, I had a kidney stone. The second time, it was the second time. I'd never had one in my life. Chris prayed for me and it went away. She probably don't even remember. Maybe you remember. You might, I don't know. My second thing, like, well, we'll pray for your kidney stone. So that's fine. Don't lay hands. No. No, I'm kidding. But but they did, and it went away. And I was like, wow, this is really a bold church. They're believing this stuff. I have seen so many times in this church people step up and pray huge prayers that make no sense. And then I've seen God act, and I've seen miracles. I think of the day, again, that we all prayed for John when he was in the hospital. No offense, we thought you were gonna die. But we knew that if God had a different plan, we wanted that plan. And what happened? You began to improve. Because sometimes you got to do crazy stuff. We're praying over a blanket and sending it to a hospital. People are like, what are y'all doing? Guess what happened? It worked. I've seen that work so many times, by the way. Prayer cloths, that's in the Bible. So you've just got to have confidence that what you're doing is going to come through because God is able to do it. Amen. Faith is a confidence issue. It's also an anticipation issue. When you ask the Lord for something, are you anticipating it happen or are you anticipating it not happening? Because a lot of people will pray, and then after they pray, they keep anticipating the problem to continue. Lord, help me in Jesus' name. Amen. Oh, another day, another hard day, another this. I'm gonna have this happen. Verses, Lord, today's the day you heal me. Lord, today's the day you free me. Lord, today's the day of the breakthrough. We gotta think that way, not, Lord, another day, another struggle. What if today is the day? What if today is the day your depression goes away? What if today is the day you lose your anxiety? What if today is the day your body is healed? What if today is the day that person is saved? What if today is the day your marriage is restored? What if instead of anticipating all the days after the prayer to be another day in hell, you anticipated that heaven would break in? How different would your life look? And not only that, how different would your mental state be? Even your mental state changes. There's something about anticipating God moving that is far more healthy mentally than always anticipating a problem. There's people, I'll counsel them, and I'll guess what I love's my favorite line to tell them. I'll tell them thing after thing, scripture after scripture, and then they're gonna tell me every time why it didn't gonna work. That's when I say, well, you've got a problem for every solution. You ever met someone that's got a problem for every sol? Yeah, but you got they got the yeah, but yeah, but well, God said he's gonna do this. Yeah, but this, and you know, yeah, but but the uh shut up and believe. That's what I should have named this message. Really, I mean, things are so simple sometimes. Really, just please be quiet and believe the Lord. You're not helping yourself, and then it's all and then people will almost become argumentative about it. You tell them, God says he wants to heal you. Yeah, but healing could be this, this, that. I've read the Bible too, my friend. Just believe him. Just believe him. What are you anticipating? If you want to know why you're so unstable, it's because you're going from one to the other. Faith, doubt, blessing, curse. Pick one. At least if you're gonna be negative and unbelieving, at least stay in your lane and do it. You know, you'll be more, at least be a stable unbeliever. It sounds crazy, but, or you can choose to be stable and believe in God. And I'll move on because I'm getting mad. Because I'm thinking about all the conversations I've had. Four. Sometimes we don't receive, and this is a hard one, like they haven't all been, you're asking for something that isn't good for you. Matthew 7, 9 through 11. Or which one of you, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Amen for that. See, God is only capable of giving good gifts. He doesn't give bad gifts. Got quiet in here. Sometimes we're asking for things that we want, but actually wouldn't be good for us. Great example, I went fishing the other day with Gunner. He wanted an oh, he wanted a pocket knife so bad. He's six. So I got him a children's knife. And he and he's like, I want this. I was like, you can't have it. Only if I'm supervising can you use it. So that's how it's gonna work. You don't get to take it home, it's gonna stay in your little tackle box, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He thinks he should have it now. He thinks it's a good gift now. However, if he has it now, it will hurt him. So guess what he did? What we often do. He decided his timeline was better. So he pulls it out, starts messing with it, and cuts his hand just a little. And he said, I like looking at me, there's blood on his hand. He's like, Well, I cut my hand. I was like, Yeah, because you shouldn't have touched it. So after we bandage it up, he comes to me and he says, Chip, I've learned my lesson. Don't we do that a lot though? See, there's some gifts that you want, but you can't handle them right now. So God's not going to give them to you right now. There's some things you want that you shouldn't ever have. I remember being in middle school, and there's this girl that I liked. And I prayed. I was like, God, let me date that girl. Lord, I really like her. Let me marry that girl. Mistake. I didn't marry her. I did marry somebody else. Also, mistake, but that's a different story. Uh that's a different sermon. That girl ended up being a nightmare as she grew up. And had I been involved with her, it would have been horrible. But I didn't see that at the time. Because I thought I knew what was good. But you have to understand that God knows what's good for you more than you know what's good for you. That business you want to start, or that job you want that you think is supposed to be yours, that you can't seem to get? Is it possible that it would drain the life out of you so God's not giving it to you? Is it possible that the weight of the ministry you want would crush you so God's not giving it to you? Is it possible that the things you're asking for might look good to you, but are actually bad for you? Do you know how many people are crushed by success? Certain people are designed to handle certain levels of success. There's some jobs that are extremely successful and well paid, but if I had them, I'd be miserable. So we look at it as God withholding a good thing. But he's not. He's protecting us. Sometimes God's protection looks like what he withholds. Sometimes God's protection looks like what he blocks. And what he's actually doing is he's giving you the gift of knowing better than you. And he's giving you the gift of not having to go through some horrible situation that you would be in. He only gives what's good to us. The hard part is trusting that. Trusting that that's a reality. If you want to be happy about not getting things, you have to trust that God really is good. And that he really does want what's best for us. And again, these are just some things that might be blocking us from receiving. Number five. This is my favorite point, and I hope it's yours. Stop trying to make things happen. Stop trying to make things happen. How many people have heard be still? And know that I, let me say it, be still. He is a preacher voice. And know that I am God. That's how we learned it, right? Good old KJV, King James Version. Did you you know NASB is a word-for-word literal translation? So it's a little more accurate. So when I looked this up last night, I found this interesting. NASB doesn't say be still. It says cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. Stop stri are you striving. And so then I wanted to look deeper into this. Because once I saw that the word striving, that's a little different than still. Often we read that scripture and we think God's saying, be quiet. Be this is being still. Like that's actually not. So as I researched it, I found out there's the Hebrew word for that right there for striving is harpoo. That's the only thing I've ever wanted to get tattooed on me. Um, because I love it. Do you know what that word means that we use for still, that harpoo word? Oh, I have it up there. There you go. Well, I did have it. It means let go, cease striving and release your grip. Let go. You can come up when you're ready, Tyler. Cease striving and release your grip. How many times are we trying to make things happen by holding on to them, trying to control them, trying to work our way through it, trying to make it happen instead of being still, instead of stop striving, stop working, stop holding it so tight, and just know that he is God.