SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Can we give God a praise right there?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's praise him this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad?
SPEAKER_00: That you have a God that helps you when you get scared.
SPEAKER_00: I can stand in his love this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Um, real quick, I'm gonna go fast because I I have a little clock up there.
SPEAKER_00: Do not tell my church you can do this.
SPEAKER_00: I got this clock up there and it gives me fear.
SPEAKER_00: I'm handling this with fear and trembling, so I'm standing in this love this morning, too.
SPEAKER_00: Real quick, though, I am passionate.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk fast.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not angry.
SPEAKER_00: It's passion.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if if you get tired of me, just be glad I'm not your pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's only one week.
SPEAKER_00: You only have to put up with me for one week, and or be glad you were like not my fourth grade teacher.
SPEAKER_00: It was, man, if I could buy her a car, I would.
SPEAKER_00: Um brutal.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I want to make sure that I can deliver this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh what the Lord has sent me to deliver.
SPEAKER_00: Um, God is just good.
SPEAKER_00: I like to um, I know that there are people here that um you have a passion for uh reverence and you're serious.
SPEAKER_00: I'm on the other side of the spectrum.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not so serious.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and like I said, it's just one Sunday that you have to put up with me.
SPEAKER_00: Um Hebrews 10, 35 is where my assignment is, if you have your Bibles this morning, is where my assignment is this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Um just these five verses.
SPEAKER_00: Uh a simple text.
SPEAKER_00: It says, therefore, don't throw away, some translations say confidence.
SPEAKER_00: I love that this translation says boldness, that's the original Greek there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh do not throw away your confidence, your boldness, your hope, which has a great reward.
SPEAKER_00: For you need endurance, so that having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.
SPEAKER_00: For yet a very little while, he who comes will come and will not wait.
SPEAKER_00: I just think that's a weird verse.
SPEAKER_00: Like for yet a very little while.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how long that is.
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about time now in this moment, a little while, right?
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, he says he's coming and he will not wait.
SPEAKER_00: But we're waiting, but he's not waiting, so it's just a weird verse to me.
SPEAKER_00: Um but the righteous will live by faith if he or she shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.
SPEAKER_00: We are not those, that's us, who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.
SPEAKER_00: So, kind of my my commission this morning is don't just throw out your hope.
SPEAKER_00: Don't cast your confidence this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray real quick.
SPEAKER_00: We invite you to help us in this moment that we may understand your word.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, open up our eyes and our hearts that we can hear from you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that we will shake off any worries, any concerns in this moment that we can hear from you and empower us to live for you and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus, I pray, amen.
SPEAKER_00: So um full disclosure, um, I have probably some letters, A D D, A D, H D, T N T, C B S.
SPEAKER_00: I have some letters, some some some type of letters.
SPEAKER_00: So I I will I will maybe see like I I'll drift, but just hang in there.
SPEAKER_00: Um I like movies, and I don't just go to watch a movie, I want to talk about a movie.
SPEAKER_00: My wife watches a movie and goes to bed.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about the movie.
SPEAKER_00: And I talk during the whole, you do not want to go to a movie with me or watch a movie with me, because I'm I'm I'm talking to the screen, I'm talking to the people around me.
SPEAKER_00: It's bad.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a movie I want to go see with Tom Hanks called Castaway.
SPEAKER_00: Have y'all seen this movie?
SPEAKER_00: And and it's it's it's interesting in that we're watching a movie with just one dude in it.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And and and y'all, I I understand like this is church, and we all got a fake, and like, oh, it's church, and we all come here and it's oh hi, and oh, we don't see color.
SPEAKER_00: But y'all can see I'm African-American, and and we we typically in general watch movies, we're gonna get into the movie, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm talking to Tom Hanks and it like had me emotionally, like I'm like into it, and he becomes friends with a volleyball, and he names the volleyball Wilson.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm watching this white man talk to this volleyball the whole movie.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I I lose fact that it's a volleyball.
SPEAKER_00: I get into it with him.
SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know if you know the movie, but he's he's on an island, his plane went down, and he's by himself, and he gets lonely, and he becomes friends with this imaginary friend named Wilson, and it's a volleyball.
SPEAKER_00: And he draws a face on it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a handprint from his hands, and he makes a bloody handprint, and he looks like a face, and he puts little eyeballs on it, calls him Wilson.
SPEAKER_00: And they develop a relationship, and you actually get it.
SPEAKER_00: You actually, if you really are a person who gets in the movies, you're like, that's his best friend.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he starts talking to Wilson, he starts eating with Wilson, and and and he and Tom Hanks realizes he's gonna be on this island for some time.
SPEAKER_00: So he's gotta he's gotta become friends with Wilson.
SPEAKER_00: This is it.
SPEAKER_00: He starts trying to get off this island, he starts building rafts, he's a smart man, he starts trying to escape this island, and one day he finally does, and he takes Wilson with him.
SPEAKER_00: And and somehow Wilson ends out in the ocean and starts drifting.
SPEAKER_00: This actually goes with the sermon, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not just talking about this movie.
SPEAKER_00: The volleyball starts drifting out, and he and there's this scene where he's like, Wilson! And he's like screaming for the volleyball, like, Wilson! And the Wilson's not, he's just drifting away.
SPEAKER_00: And I cried, I never cried.
SPEAKER_00: Mom died, didn't cry, dad died, didn't cry, grandma died, didn't cry.
SPEAKER_00: Wilson! I'm like, Wilson, come back, you know?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like dying here watching Wilson drift away, like, and and then one day, you know, I want to talk about the movie, of course, and there's nobody that wants, I have to create my own Wilson maybe one day.
SPEAKER_00: And I just was thinking about that, like, it was not about the volleyball.
SPEAKER_00: Wilson, you're you're you're I'm in it going, I'm crying over a volleyball.
SPEAKER_00: This dude is crying.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about, and and all of us have been there.
SPEAKER_00: You've been there where you lost a loved one, the IRS letter comes in the mail, your your kids start cutting up, things start happening.
SPEAKER_00: You go to do your laundry, the washing machine starts stops working, you start crying, your husband comes home.
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: The washing machine's not working.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Why are you crying over the washing machine?
SPEAKER_00: It's not about the washing machine, it's just another thing.
SPEAKER_00: And we all have been there where it's just one thing after another hitting you.
SPEAKER_00: And people think you're mad about the boss or you're mad about the cousin or the brother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: My brother-in-law's here.
SPEAKER_00: You're mad about you're mad, I had to sneak him in there somehow.
SPEAKER_00: You're mad about all kinds of things, and people think you're mad at Starbucks.
SPEAKER_00: It's really not Starbucks, even though just make my coffee right.
SPEAKER_00: It's$13.
SPEAKER_00: It's really not about that.
SPEAKER_00: It's about I can't take another thing.
SPEAKER_00: And this letter comes to a group of Hebrew people, they're Jewish, they've given up their Jewish faith, and they started following this man named Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They've had their stuff confiscated, they've been kicked out of their families, they've been ostracized, some of them have been thrown in jail, and their confidence about Jesus is fading.
SPEAKER_00: And the writer's encouraging them.
SPEAKER_00: I know you're disappointed.
SPEAKER_00: I know you've been hit by grief, or maybe somebody in this room has been hit by betrayal, or maybe some of you are still fighting anxiety, and you're like, I've been to faith healers, I've been to conferences, I've been to therapists.
SPEAKER_00: I should not have anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: I obey God, I believe in his scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: How come I have this thing?
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not careful, you'll lose confidence because your circumstances don't seem conducive for God to come through with his promise.
SPEAKER_00: And the writer is saying, even though there's a delay, don't cast your confidence.
SPEAKER_00: And so, kind of a thing that you're gonna hear me say, hopefully, I didn't do it in the first service.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can do it this time.
SPEAKER_00: When you're at the end of your rope, choose hope.
SPEAKER_00: Hope, a confident expectation that my tomorrow is gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's a I know things may not have gone right, I know things don't seem to be going your way, but I'm not gonna base my future on what's happened to me in this present moment.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the the goal of the believer.
SPEAKER_00: So do not throw, if you want to throw something, don't throw your hope.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't throw a hammer either, but don't throw your hope.
SPEAKER_00: Do not throw your confidence.
SPEAKER_00: Hold fast to your confidence in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The word confidence is important because in Hebrews it means boldness, it means courage, it means freedom to speak, assurance before God.
SPEAKER_00: This is not self-confidence, this is Christ's confidence.
SPEAKER_00: This is not what we think.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 10, it kind of deals with the fact that when Jesus Christ died, I think in 1019, it talks about this access that Jesus Christ won from us in his resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: You have access to God.
SPEAKER_00: And you understand to Hebrew people, to first century Jews, they would go, huh?
SPEAKER_00: Access?
SPEAKER_00: Like no temple, no priesthood, no animal sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: I have access to God.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, what happens when life gets difficult is you have this sense to shrink back from God.
SPEAKER_00: You have the sense to start putting more space between you and your walk with God.
SPEAKER_00: When things get tough, you start putting distance between you and God.
SPEAKER_00: And the goal is when life is difficult, just like Jesus, when life is difficult, you go deeper into your walk with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You have access.
SPEAKER_00: So when Hebrews says don't throw away your confidence, it's saying don't throw away what Jesus has purchased for you, what Jesus died for.
SPEAKER_00: Don't throw away your access, don't throw away your boldness, don't throw away your confession, don't throw away your hope.
SPEAKER_00: The world may be shaken, but your savior isn't.
SPEAKER_00: The world may be crazy, but your savior has not gone crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's this thing about becoming a Christian, and you know how that is.
SPEAKER_00: We all went to sermons when we were kids, and the guy was like, you know, you you you have this need in your heart for things, and you try to fill it with rock and roll music and women.
SPEAKER_00: That's my favorite testimony of the church is that guy gets up and goes, you know, before I got saved, I had money, I had cars, I ran around with fine women.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm saved.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're a teenager in the back, you're like, no money, no woman, no car.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need a church.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you we have this sense about us sometimes when it's like this testimony is like life gets unstable, and somebody met us to believe that, you know, I give up rock and roll music and women and money, and then life gets easier.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no.
SPEAKER_00: And that I tell my church all the time, that's the wizard of Oz, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, just follow the yellow brick road.
SPEAKER_00: If you're black, it's ease on down, ease on down the road.
SPEAKER_00: Just follow the yellow brick road.
SPEAKER_00: Everything's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get to the wizard, life is gonna be great.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody says nothing about no flying monkeys, lions, and tigers.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that you're Kansans, right?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody said nothing about this.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody said nothing about flowers that get you high and make you pass out.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy that we were watching that and we were okay with it?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is really good.
SPEAKER_00: That movie would be canceled now.
SPEAKER_00: It's like nobody said anything about all these obstacles.
SPEAKER_00: They told us that just let Jesus into your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And even in obedience, even when you're doing the right thing, even on assignment.
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking about Mary.
SPEAKER_00: She had to move with move to Egypt after Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I have the Son of God in my tent, and I'm scared of the president?
SPEAKER_00: No! Yes, move, honey, move.
SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have to move.
SPEAKER_00: I'm raising the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it gets really disturbing for us because the church doesn't always leave room for this tension that says, sometimes it's just not good.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's okay not to be okay.
SPEAKER_00: And the church doesn't leave room for that.
SPEAKER_00: And you come to church and you, hey, hey, hey girl, hey girl.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you fought all the way here.
SPEAKER_00: Get out of the car holding hands.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, good morning, good morning, hey.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I know some of you, some of you are just sitting straight ahead.
SPEAKER_00: You can't smile, you just and and the they had this old covenant restriction, no access.
SPEAKER_00: And and the new covenant is completely open.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus opened an access, a passageway to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not careful, your circumstances can make you behave.
SPEAKER_00: You're not saying you're not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you're questioning your faith.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing something that the devil loves to do to Christians.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have a problem if you deny Jesus and discard your confidence.
SPEAKER_00: See, let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that the right way.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have a problem if you don't deny Jesus but have no confidence in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Is that better?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Satan will say, Yeah, you keep on believing Jesus, but don't believe he'll come through.
SPEAKER_00: Keep believing, yeah, yeah, keep going to church, but don't believe that prayer works.
SPEAKER_00: Keep believing Jesus, but you're wasting your time when you give and when you serve.
SPEAKER_00: Lose your confidence in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Lose your confidence in the people around you.
SPEAKER_00: Get so angry about politics and everything that's going on the world that you lose your confidence in what Jesus can do.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, keep believing in him, but don't be confident.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer doesn't work, obedience doesn't matter, God forgets about his people.
SPEAKER_00: These are all things that we would never say out loud.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes life can get real.
SPEAKER_00: And what the writer in Hebrews is saying is like you start to pray this prayer like I pray, like, Lord, get me out of this.
SPEAKER_00: It's rare that I pray for endurance.
SPEAKER_00: And the writer says, in these moments, when this becomes a problem, when things get hard, you need to pray for endurance.
SPEAKER_00: You need to pray that you can do the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: You need to pray that you can walk by faith and not by sight and stand up to the pressure.
SPEAKER_00: But I have a tendency to say, Lord, get rid of this pressure.
SPEAKER_00: While I'm waiting on God, when faith is under pressure, like, Lord, just get rid of the pressure.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord's like, no, I'm gonna strengthen you in that thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you this ability to endure and to remain under pressure without abandoning your confidence in me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you a supernatural ability to go through difficult times.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you the type of ability, I'm gonna have you go through a tough time without giving me a deadline.
SPEAKER_00: That's what real patience is.
SPEAKER_00: It's not passive waiting, it's trusting God in an intense moment.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem with endurance is it doesn't look good.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever ran a 5K and they took your picture like on 4.5k, and you're like, that's endurance, it doesn't look good.
SPEAKER_00: You remember glamour shots in the 80s, and all the women, all you women spent hundreds of dollars to that's not that's not what endurance looks like.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like a glamour shot, it's ugly.
SPEAKER_00: And no matter how much makeup we put on, no matter how much cologne we put on, it don't smell good.
SPEAKER_00: And as church leaders, we sometimes kind of strive to provide spaces for people who are in an endurance season.
SPEAKER_00: See, here's the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you forgive and the relationship is still broken.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like the pretty Hallmark movie.
SPEAKER_00: You forgive, and your husband still gets on your nerves.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not laughing, you're just like, boy, I mean this dude.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you pray and it feels like your prayer is hitting the ceiling.
SPEAKER_00: You're praying for your kids, you're praying for a change in their life, you're praying that they get it, tears are falling as you're at the pillow.
SPEAKER_00: Where are you, God?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you serve and nobody says thank you, and you serve for a moment, unnoticed, unheard, and unseen.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you actually do what the scriptures tell you to do, and your life gets harder, like Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: He did the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: He said no to her.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Joseph's the man.
SPEAKER_00: He said no to basically Beyonce.
SPEAKER_00: Like, wow.
SPEAKER_00: Lonely.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to be funny.
SPEAKER_00: He's lonely, he's away from his home, he's had trauma, he has every excuse, and it would be justified.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody would say, Well, what did you expect the man to do?
SPEAKER_00: It's Beyoncé, for God's sakes.
SPEAKER_00: He said no, and it got harder.
SPEAKER_00: He did the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: What do we teach our kids?
SPEAKER_00: Make your bed, you know, be nice to others, and everything will go right.
SPEAKER_00: And you go to school on that first day, and the kid punches you in the face.
SPEAKER_00: My parents are liars.
SPEAKER_00: It's like we have this idea that being a kingdom citizen is easy.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually, no, kingdom citizens do hard things.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the Holy Spirit, a kingdom citizen is allowed to do hard things.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a supervisor in here and you're trying to honor God with your life and supervise this generation of workers, yeah, we'll know if you're saved or not.
SPEAKER_00: Well, by noon, you're like, I ain't saved.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people want a paycheck.
SPEAKER_00: They call it work, they didn't come to work.
SPEAKER_00: It takes endurance.
SPEAKER_00: Under pressure, trusting God, and realizing this ain't a Hallmark movie.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Hallmark movies are great.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Stanley has this quote where he says, obey God and trust him with the consequences.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that quote.
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't always mean that life is going to be easy and the consequences for doing the right thing, like John the Baptist, can get your head cut off.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom's first pastor, prophet, teacher, and leader got his head cut off.
SPEAKER_00: That's why churches are so funny to me.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I don't fit in all churches.
SPEAKER_00: Because we give our kids these pictures of Noah's Ark with the giraffe with his head out the window, like we don't put all the dead bodies and the blood and the people banking on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: We leave that out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We try, we want to leave all those pictures out.
SPEAKER_00: But the first prophet of the kingdom died a violent death.
SPEAKER_00: The first person.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, the kingdom of, he's talking about Matthew 11, talking about John the Baptist, the kingdom of God suffereth violence.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And even when you're oppressed, even when you're oppressed, even when it seems like the oppressor is winning and you are losing, there's still a standard.
SPEAKER_00: When you're being treated unfairly, betrayal, what can you name that our Jesus hasn't experienced even more infinitely than us?
SPEAKER_00: We still follow the standard of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And you feel like you're at the end of your rope.
SPEAKER_00: And just like Jesus, we have to choose hope and go through this delay.
SPEAKER_00: God says, do this.
SPEAKER_00: And then somewhere down here is the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know how we are with time.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just, I can't even wait for my phone to call the person.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, come on.
SPEAKER_00: We have to remember.
SPEAKER_00: See, the thing that I say, this is not in the New Testament church now.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of young people don't really realize this.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna talk to the older generation right now.
SPEAKER_00: We have to remember the coming king will come.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's coming.
SPEAKER_00: Some glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away.
SPEAKER_00: Or whatever your eschatology is.
SPEAKER_00: That may not be your eschatology.
SPEAKER_00: But you understand what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: He's coming back.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't even really talk about that.
SPEAKER_00: This no more.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Hebrews is actually talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, do we want to take heaven and bring it down to earth and kiss the earth?
SPEAKER_00: And can we have victory on this side of heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, Hebrews is saying that Jesus Christ, the first century Christians, focused on this group of people are so perseverance that the History Channel is doing a documentary on the early church right now because in the first 300 years of the church, it's the most persecuted group of people ever, and it became Christianity, and the History Channel can't figure out how.
SPEAKER_00: We know how.
SPEAKER_00: But they can't figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: They were fed to the lions.
SPEAKER_00: Nero was not.
SPEAKER_00: He would, when things would go wrong, he'd feed Christians to the lions and watch.
SPEAKER_00: Just like, oh, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: If there was a drought, if the water went low, if the economy went bad, they blamed the Christians and they would torture them in public in Colosseums.
SPEAKER_00: And these people kept the faith.
SPEAKER_00: No celebrities were believers at this time, no political power, no money.
SPEAKER_00: And there was all the groups of people together.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't black church, white church, Mexican church.
SPEAKER_00: We got a Mexican service.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want a Mexican service.
SPEAKER_00: I want them in the service.
SPEAKER_00: What is going on with us?
SPEAKER_00: We look nothing like the early church.
SPEAKER_00: We're doing the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_00: And God is correcting right now.
SPEAKER_00: Because we forgot that a king is coming.
SPEAKER_00: And he's coming loud.
SPEAKER_00: And he's coming for his children.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, that's not cliche.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you hang your hat on, the writer of Hebrews is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Hang your hat on this.
SPEAKER_00: He is coming.
SPEAKER_00: This verse shifts from our pressure to promise.
SPEAKER_00: These verses go, yeah, you're going through tough times.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: You're under pressure, but remember the promise.
SPEAKER_00: He actually describes the book of Habakkuk here in this text.
SPEAKER_00: Habakkuk says the same thing this text says.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually quoting the Old Testament in this text.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, there's a parallel here.
SPEAKER_00: There's this dual reality going on here.
SPEAKER_00: How long?
SPEAKER_00: Remember the people in Habakkuk asked, how long, how long, God?
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you felt that way?
SPEAKER_00: Like you're like on, you know how you take your kids on a road trip?
SPEAKER_00: All right, guys, we're going to decimonies for vacation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why you would do that, but.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, how long, how long?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the people were asking God in the book of Habakkuk.
SPEAKER_00: And God just answered, He didn't give them the time.
SPEAKER_00: He just said, the vision won't fail.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the same thing for us.
SPEAKER_00: I had I had gone through, I got a call.
SPEAKER_00: I was working at Sprint in Kansas City.
SPEAKER_00: I actually lived in Lawrence.
SPEAKER_00: I was working at Sprint in Kansas City.
SPEAKER_00: I went to KU like for 25 days.
SPEAKER_00: And and I quit my job because I heard a call from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's as clear as day.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm going to be a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that was a miracle because I did not want to be around church people.
SPEAKER_00: It was a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And I moved to Chinook, Kansas, or the town next to Chinook, Kansas, and I was looking for a job.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't find a job.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would hire me.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, I went to Johnson's general store.
SPEAKER_00: We have a general store named Johnson's back in the day.
SPEAKER_00: And it said, help want it.
SPEAKER_00: And I went there every day to check on my application.
SPEAKER_00: And one day they just flipped the sign around.
SPEAKER_00: I think it said not want it.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't get a job at a convenience store.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would hire me.
SPEAKER_00: And I was frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: I went to my grandpa, and in a moment of weakness, I was like, can nobody hire me?
SPEAKER_00: And my grandpa said, Oh, grandson.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Stop saying nobody will hire you.
SPEAKER_00: Stop saying you can't find a job.
SPEAKER_00: Stop saying you're looking for work.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, what am I supposed to say?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Say you're in transition.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: He said, It means you're looking for work.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a different way of looking at it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, When you say you're looking for work, it's almost as if you're implying there's no job out there.
SPEAKER_00: When you say you're in transition, you understand when God closes one door, he opens another one.
SPEAKER_00: He said, but it's real in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say real, he actually said the place that people go when they don't believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But since we're Sunday morning, I won't say it, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's real in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just true.
SPEAKER_00: People are saying that very people say when God closes one door, he opens another door.
SPEAKER_00: When?
SPEAKER_00: When will God open the other door?
SPEAKER_00: When will my kid get saved?
SPEAKER_00: When will my marriage get better?
SPEAKER_00: When will my money get right?
SPEAKER_00: When will my boss finally give me the promotion I deserve?
SPEAKER_00: When?
SPEAKER_00: The vision will not fail.
SPEAKER_00: God's plan is working, church, even when life is unfair.
SPEAKER_00: His plan is working.
SPEAKER_00: Even when you are in the worst relationship, you can be.
SPEAKER_00: You know, some people won't admit that you can be a believer and go, I didn't sign up for this.
SPEAKER_00: Me and my wife right now are in the process of adopting my niece.
SPEAKER_00: My brother got in trouble, and we're in the process of adopting.
SPEAKER_00: First, start off as foster care.
SPEAKER_00: And I told my wife, this is our vision for this.
SPEAKER_00: This is our verse.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what the enemy meant for evil, God will work out for good.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 50, 20.
SPEAKER_00: We high-five.
SPEAKER_00: Then they said adoption.
SPEAKER_00: I changed our verse to Lord, remove this cup from us.
SPEAKER_00: Remove this cup.
SPEAKER_00: Adoption?
SPEAKER_00: This is my problem.
SPEAKER_00: Like believers are like, oh, we know you're so happy.
SPEAKER_00: You people come up to me at church.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor, you know you love your, I love my niece, but I don't want her living with me.
SPEAKER_00: That's truth.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all can fake like that.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna send her.
SPEAKER_00: If you come to me after the service, I'm sending her to you with her bags.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Lord, you're gonna have to work on me in this.
SPEAKER_00: But believers want this fake church where we all get up and act like every time God assigns us to an assignment, we're all like, woo-hoo! Family tradition, we're all like, woo.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, even Jesus doesn't give us that example.
SPEAKER_00: So even when you get called to a hard thing, we had plans, me and my wife.
SPEAKER_00: We thought.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, nothing trumps the king is coming.
SPEAKER_00: See, nobody likes the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: It's real in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: See, it's not like, but we learn in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: I've learned as a pastor in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning about myself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty selfish.
SPEAKER_00: So God, maybe if I would let a person tell me I'm selfish and I would receive it, that was all it would take.
SPEAKER_00: But he knows you telling me I'm selfish ain't gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: My wife can't tell me that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: So he gives me a 10-year-old niece.
SPEAKER_00: And every day I go, I am so selfish.
SPEAKER_00: I am so selfish.
SPEAKER_00: This girl has nobody.
SPEAKER_00: I have all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: How dare me act like this is an inconvenience.
SPEAKER_00: God knows the right circumstances to give you to reveal who you are.
SPEAKER_00: And here's another thing I'm gonna tell you that I didn't tell the other service is that God is not gonna bless who you're pretending to be.
SPEAKER_00: That's a bar right there.
SPEAKER_00: The young people know me when I say that.
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna bless, he's gonna bless the real you.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives you the exact right circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: So they're in the right spot, these Jewish believers are.
SPEAKER_00: And when your world is falling apart, you lose confidence.
SPEAKER_00: You draw back from prayer, you draw back from worship, you draw back from community.
SPEAKER_00: There's this term going church, hurt, church, hurt, church, hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And now people are drawing back from the bride of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta, even in church hurt, be courageous.
SPEAKER_00: Because the same church that hurt is the same church that heals.
SPEAKER_00: It may not be the same location, it may not be the same group of people.
SPEAKER_00: But the body of Christ is plan A.
SPEAKER_00: From house church to mega church, it's plan A.
SPEAKER_00: Community.
SPEAKER_00: You can't draw back.
SPEAKER_00: You can't draw back from generosity, you can't draw back from serving, you can't draw back from hope.
SPEAKER_00: So just because you're disappointed, are you gonna disconnect?
SPEAKER_00: You're grieving?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna keep looking to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Under pressure?
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget this promise.
SPEAKER_00: Some glad morning when this life is over.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna close this thing down now.
SPEAKER_00: Do not tell my church I can do this.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are like, man, it's 30 minutes, bro.
SPEAKER_00: My church, it's like a hostage crisis every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, I mean, they're all, they're like, woo, we're never leaving.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes on this message that I'm preaching right now, it sounds like I'm telling you to hold on to God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you to stay faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, I'm trying to get you to see that God is holding on to you, and great is his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna think about it here.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit, you're gonna say, All my life you have been faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what God is really trying to expose you to.
SPEAKER_00: You have to go through some type of difficulty to learn that when it's hard, he still stays.
SPEAKER_00: Even when you cause the hardness like Jonah, he stays.
SPEAKER_00: The church won't preach that because they think we're abbe we're saying it's okay to sin, but it's just the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Even when you cause the hardness, if you're his kid, he stays.
SPEAKER_00: And you finally go, Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: I told him in the early service I really came to encourage the older generation.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not church anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And they have no clue what I mean when I'm saying that.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know what I mean when I say that, but most people go, What is he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: It's still church, but it's just not.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the church you grew up in.
SPEAKER_00: Some good, some bad, but it's not church anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not careful, you get caught up in all the wrong things and fight over silly human stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And you forget the king is coming back, and he is faithful, and he's holding on to you in your later years, and you start to look like your mom more and more, and you start to act like your mom more and more.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, I'm becoming my mom.
SPEAKER_00: And God is saying, even when you become the Muhammad that you didn't want to become, I'm holding on to you.
SPEAKER_00: I got you.
SPEAKER_00: Because living, he loved us.
SPEAKER_00: Dying, he saved us.
SPEAKER_00: Buried, he carried our sins far away.
SPEAKER_00: Rising, he justifies us, frees us forever, and one day he's coming back.
SPEAKER_00: Glorious day.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do something a little different.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't do this in the first service.
SPEAKER_00: This is at my church, we'd have two or three services, and I preach a different sermon than all of them because I have all those letters around my name, like I told you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna use my pastoral.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put two chairs right here during the worship.
SPEAKER_00: These two chairs signify that you're gonna admit that you have low confidence, but I'm gonna sit in the chair as a prophetic gesture this morning and say, Lord, I don't know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand what you're doing, but my sit in the chair is just symbolic of me saying a core memory, I trust you again.
SPEAKER_00: Not, not, I know that you're trusting for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about I trust you with this current crisis that I've questioned where you're at in this whole time.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna have two chairs here at some point in time during the worship songs as a symbol of trust and saying, I'm picking up my confidence again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm picking up my boldness again, I'm picking up my hope again, I'm picking up my obedience again, I'm picking up my confession that there's nothing greater than Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I'm picking that up.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just nothing's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: There's no magic fairy dust I'm gonna sprinkle on you, and then you go home, and life is great.
SPEAKER_00: It's just something for your own heart's sake, a core memory in your mind that says, On May the 18th, I decided to really sit in this circumstance and trust that God knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's sad that we have more confidence in a chair than we do God.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm a big dude.
SPEAKER_00: I never go, will that chair hold me?
SPEAKER_00: But boy, when life gets hard, we start going, God, do you got me?
SPEAKER_00: How many times has he had us?
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: The band's gonna come.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray because I won't stop.
SPEAKER_00: The band is gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put these two chairs right here, or maybe somebody on the staff.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to break nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody can help me with that.
SPEAKER_00: There's just there's just two chairs right here.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to set them right here, facing.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want whoever during the worship, if you can, as a confident act of trust, you're gonna trust God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we just ask this morning that to whoever I'm talking to, you would restore their confidence.
SPEAKER_00: That boldness about who you are, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You would restore that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You'd give us the peace that surpasses all understanding and you'd give us endurance.
SPEAKER_00: We're not asking you to take away the trial, we're asking you for the endurance.
SPEAKER_00: We would trust that there's a testimony in the midst of this test.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, as we sing songs to you, I pray healing's happening in our head and our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We need emotional healing this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We need psychological healing this morning, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And we need theological healing this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We love you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You're an amazing God who does amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna stand up on our feet and we're gonna sing songs.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we do that, we did this this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to participate.
SPEAKER_00: Can y'all say this with me?
SPEAKER_00: When you're at the end of your rope, choose hope.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at the person next to you and tell them when you're at the end of your rope, God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.