Awesome. Well, good morning and uh welcome again to Church at the Grove. We're so glad that you are here with us and spending part of your Sunday here at Church at the Grove. If I haven't had a chance to meet you, my name is Nathan. I'm one of the pastors here, and uh we're just excited about um who the Lord is and uh just the opportunity we have to gather together as uh the family of God and to meet with our Heavenly Father. Um and we're just we're just thrilled that that's even an opportunity for us, and we can't just even take that for granted, I think, this morning. Um just the the power of the gathering, gathered, gathered church, if I can say it. Um real quick before we jump into the message, just uh quick reminder. Um, this upcoming Thursday, um we we're doing our monthly uh prayer night here in at the Social Circle Campus. And so from seven to nine, it's kind of a drop-in type thing. So you can kind of come and stay for the whole thing or for part of it, or you can come late or early, whatever works for your schedule. Um, but it's really an opportunity for our church family to come together and just to have a place where they can experience the presence of God in this room together. And it's simple, we're not asking anybody to necessarily pray out loud. You're more than welcome to if you want, but uh most people, it's just really sitting in the Lord's presence, trying to listen and discern his voice. And uh there's some worship and there's some just opportunities to kind of sit in silence. And it really is one of my favorite nights of the year. Um, I'll be honest with you, it's one of those nights where every single time it comes around, I'm always like, oh gosh, it's another Thursday, and I'm ready, I'm tired by the end of the week, you know. And every single time that I come, I leave feeling full and blessed. And so I would just encourage you guys to make a priority to be there. I know it's a busy season, but I'm telling you, you'll be blessed if you come and be a part of that. But this morning we're uh continuing our series, The God You Can Know. And last week we talked about how we have this covenant-making God. That we have a God that will make promises to his people that he will covenant with them and that he will be in relationship with them. And that should, again, blow our minds at the thought of that. And this morning, what we're talking about is God being this all-powerful God. Now, if you know me, if you've known me for any stretch of time, um you know that probably one of my besetting sins is that I love to be in control. Um, I love to be in control of the things that are happening around me. Um, last year, Caitlin tried to surprise me on my 40th birthday and do a surprise party, and luckily I figured it out like the two days before, so it wasn't a surprise, because I would have hated it, honestly, if it would have been a surprise, because I wouldn't have had any idea what was going on. Uh I love to be in control. I don't like surprises. And uh, you know, the longer I walk with Jesus, the longer I learn um that we are not supposed to be in control. And if anything has ever taught me this, parenting has taught me that I am not in control. I can remember when we had Sam, he's 10, he's soon to be 11. And I can remember when we first had him, we brought him home from the hospital, and we thought we were like the greatest parents in the world. Uh like we thought, man, we've got this thing figured out. Like, we have him on a schedule. He's eating at this time, he's sleeping at this time, like it is so easy. I mean, we were literally like he was like a couple of weeks old, and we're going, you know what? Like, I don't understand why people talk about parenting being so hard. They're obviously not as good as we are. Like, we've gotten this thing figured out. Um, we we even started to explore maybe we should, you know, bless other kids and like the foster care agency with our incredible parenting skills. And so we started the foster care process, and then he started to crawl and walk, and we realized, oh, wait, this isn't quite as easy as we thought that it was going to be. Uh, then he started to talk, and it was like mine and no, and he had a will of his own. And over time he's developed even more of a will of his own, and oftentimes it rarely aligns with my will and what I think should happen. And 10 years, um, the older he gets, the more I realize that I am not in control. And when I try to be in control, I'm only setting myself up to be sorely disappointed. Now, parenting maybe has taught you this, but there's a lot of areas in our life where we're taught that we're not in control. When it comes to your body, the older you get, the more you realize that you are not in control. You can do all the exercise and you can eat perfectly and you can take all the supplements, but at the end of the day, you're not totally in control of your body. It's just one phone call from a doctor, and everything in your world suddenly changes. You can think you can be in control of your financial life and the money that you have been given. And to some degree, you can. You can make a plan, you can have a retirement goal, you can have all of these things set in place, but you can't control when the car dies or the HVAC dies or you have a job loss that suddenly occurs that you weren't expecting. Your relationships. You think you can be in control of your relationships, other than you can't control how other people feel or what they think. You can't change their minds to shift to what you believe. Creation, just in general, just the nature around us, we don't have the ability to control the seasons or the weather. We are in the state of Georgia and we can go from t-shirts to jackets to t-shirts again, all in one week. We don't have the ability to control. But it's deep down we love to have and believe the illusion that we are in charge. Because when we think that we're in charge, when we think that we're in control, we feel secure. We feel secure, we feel like we we've kind of got it together, that we don't have kind of the chaos that surrounds us. But when we believe the lie that we are in control, it really is exhausting. It fills us with anxiety when we try to manage our image and our souls are numb to the things that are around us. And here's what I've learned is that life, in the 40 almost one years that I've been here on earth, life is a practice of releasing control and placing ourselves in the hands of an all-powerful God. And I believe truly that the sooner you can learn this, the more success you will have in life. Not earthly success, but spiritual success and walking more intimately with the Heavenly Father when you can release control. And so here's the big idea for us this morning is that God's power is my permission to surrender. We have an all-powerful God, and because of his power, we have permission to surrender. And so that's what I want to talk about this morning. So let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for just the opportunity, like I said earlier, to be in this room together. And Lord, we thank you that you are an all-powerful God that is meeting with your not-so-all-powerful people. And even in this moment, Lord, you dwell with us and that you are here. And we don't come to meet about you, but we come to meet with you, Lord. And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now, Lord? Would you speak to us? Would you open up our hearts and our minds and our ears to be able to hear from you, Lord? We need a word from you this morning. And so, Lord, we are desperate for your voice. Would you come now and speak to us? And it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. We're gonna kind of jump all around the Bible this morning. So uh feel free to try to flip along as quickly as you can. It will be on the screen behind us, or you can jot down notes. Um, you can also check out the Church at the Grove app. That might be helpful for this message. But we're talking about God being an all-powerful God. The theological word is that he is omnipotent, that he is omnipotent, that he is all-powerful. That literally means that he is a God has the power to accomplish all he wills, always in line with who he is. That God's omnipotence means God has the power to accomplish all he wills, always in line with who he is. That God is all powerful, that he has unlimited power, and he can do anything he proposes to do. That nothing is outside of him, nothing can stop him, nothing can slow him down, and he is not surprised by anyone or anything. Psalm 115, verse 3 says it this way and sums it up very well. It says, Our God is in heaven and he does whatever he pleases. That we have a God that is all-powerful, and he does anything that he wills to do. Anything that God wants to do, he can and will do. This means, though, that it's not necessarily what we want him to do. That he is subject to his will, not our will. It doesn't mean that God will do everything that I want, but that he will always do what he wants. And this all-powerful God that we're talking about, he can do anything, but everything is always tied to his character. God is never going to do anything that goes against his character. Like God can do anything, but there are some things that God can't do. God can't lie because he is holy, he is perfect, he always deals in the truth, and so he cannot lie. God is always holy, so he is never sinful. God is powerful, and his power is always wise, so it's never foolish. God's power is always good, so it's never cruel. God's power is purposeful, so it's never random. That his character is the driving point behind his power. So if God is truly all-powerful, and his power is always holy and wise and good and purposeful, then that means that we can loosen the grip that we try to hold on in this life. That I'm not placing my hands into the life, it's my I'm not placing my life in the hands of a God that is dealing with chaos, but I am dealing with a God that holds the goodness and the safety and the belonging that only He can bring. And so this morning I want to talk about four areas where we see God's power on display, and they all play into our relationship with him, and ultimately they all point to us relinquishing control of our lives and giving it to him. So the first power that we want to talk about is that he has the power to create, that he is a God that brings something from nothing. And this is obvious from the statement that we read in the very beginning, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 through 3. It says, In the beginning, so before anything had happened, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Verse 3. Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God speaks, and reality obeys. God said later that he would separate the waters from the expanses, and it was so. God said, Let there be dry land, and there was so. Let the earth produce vegetation and it was so. Let the earth produce, or let there be day and night, and it was so. Let there be animals and birds and fish of the sea, and it was so. God said, Let us make man in our own image, and it was so. So we notice that in the power of creation, that God is creating from nothing, that he's not rearranging pre-existing materials and then calling them into existence. He's speaking into nothingness, and something is coming forth. We have a God that is creating from nothing. God is creating by his word. There's no tools, there's no fight, there's no strain, there's no effort on his part. He speaks and it is. He speaks and it is. God creates with order and with purpose. We see that creation has a purpose, that there is an intelligent design behind the world, the way the world was made, and in when and how things were made and in what order. God is creating with order and purpose. But most importantly, I think is that God is creating and everything is good because he is good. He creates good things, and at the end of each day, he looks back over what he has spoken into existence and he declares, it is good.

A.

You're breathing oxygen into your lungs. God is providing that oxygen into your lungs and allowing you to unconsciously not have to think about breathing. Even while you sleep, your body is working and being sustained by the Creator God, and it is a miracle beyond miracles. Your brain is running the whole system in the background. It's controlling your digestion and your temperature and your balance and your reflexes and making sure you blink when you need to blink and producing saliva when you need to produce saliva. It's a God that is sustaining every fiber of our being. And so, what does that mean for us? It means that the God that created the universe with his word doesn't need my frantic micromanaging. If God can bring order out of nothing, if he can bring order out of what feels like the chaos of my life, if God can create, then he can provide. God's power is not only seen, though, in creation and what he creates, it's also seen in how he reigns over what he has made. He has the power to rule. He reigns over kings, nations, and outcomes. The power to rule. God's power is not just seen in what he creates, but it's also in what he commands. That his all-powerfulness is not just his strength, but it's also his sovereignty. That God rules without rivals. I love the book of Daniel. Daniel's in the Old Testament. If you've never read the book of Daniel, I would encourage you to read it, especially the first half of it. It's like really great narrative, great story to follow. The second half, very difficult to read, but incredibly important when you start talking about prophecy and all the stuff that is to come. But the first part of it, we're introduced to this guy named Nebuchadnezzar, and he's this evil king of Babylon. And he's pretty much taken over the nations, surrounding nations, and most powerful man on the planet. He's even conquered God's people, the nation of Israel. He's exiled many of them. He's moved them from their homeland to the nation of Babylon. And that's where Daniel finds himself. And Nebuchadnezzar has gotten this big head. I mean, he's no one has been able to stop him. No one has been able to stop him from conquering their nations. And so Nebuchadnezzar gets this idea in his head that he's going to create this huge statue, massive statue, and that they're going to blow the trumpets, and everybody's going to bow down to this statue. This is what Nebuchadnezzar is proposing. And there's Daniel and there's others that stand against him and stand against his rule and worship the one true God. But what's incredible is that in Daniel chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar is making this, you know, grandiose like marvel for everybody to worship him. And God steps into the situation. And in Daniel chapter 4, it says this. It says, talking, God's talking to Nebuchadnezzar here through a dream, and it says, You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals. You will feed on grass like cattle and be drenched with dew from the sky for seven periods of time until you acknowledge that the Most High is ruler over heaven, heaven, human kingdoms, and he gives them to anyone he wants. So Nebuchadnezzar has built this huge statue. Everybody's told to worship it. And God steps in and says, Listen, Nebuchadnezzar, you're going to go out of your mind. And for seven years, seven years, he grazes on the grass of the field like a wild beast. And this is the king. This is the one that is the ruler, the one that is the most powerful man. And all of a sudden, in an instant, he's now out of his mind, crazy, grazing in the fields. And this is what happens at the end of that seven days. Verse 34, it says, But at the end of those days, I, it's Nebuchadnezzar talking, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven, and my sanity was returned to me. Then I praised the Most High and honored and glorified him who lives forever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of earth are counted as nothing. And he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of earth. There is no one who can block his hand or say to him, What have you done? Nebuchadnezzar looks up and acknowledges the reality of what is, that God is the one that rules over nations and kings and lands. That God sets him in his place. This is why we read in Revelation 19:6 that Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. God's not campaigning for authority. He's not waiting on the approval of others. He's not reacting to the world events that surround us, but he is the one that is in control. And as Nebuchadnezzar says, there is no one that can block his hand. Ephesians 1, verses 20 through 22, it says that he exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every ruler in authority, power, and dominion in every title given, not only in this age, but also in the one to come, that he has subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church. That he reigns. He reigns over every ruler, every authority, every power, over dominions, over titles of this age and the age to come, that everyone is under his rule, not just some, but all. So what does that mean? It means that we can take a very big deep breath. Why don't we do that together? What was it, two weeks ago when uh the bombings in Iran happened? And I just made a casual comment in our house about World War III. And Sam, our oldest that I just told you about, he said, What? And he immediately started getting super anxious and very nervous about the whole thing. And I was like, Sam, there's no need to freak out. Why? Because we have the one that is on the throne. So there is no election that changes who's on the throne. There's no economy that threatens his rule. There's no diagnosis that catches him off guard. There's no situation in your life that is outside of his authority. Now that means us as followers of Jesus, we should fight and we should stand for justice and righteousness, especially in the free democracy that we have. But at the end of the day, he rules, he reigns, he puts in whoever he wants to put in place to rule and to reign, and we rest in that. He uses the good and the bad, the wicked and the good to accomplish his purposes. He rules. He has the power to rule. He also has the power over nature and the unseen. So from storms to sickness to demonic forces, he has the power over all of these things. You can see this in the Old Testament. Here's just some examples from the plagues that he gives to the nation of Egypt when he's trying to rescue his people out of captivity, when he parts the Red Sea and the Israelites walk across on dry land. In Joshua 10, he makes the sun literally stand still so that his nation and his people can win the battle. He shuts the sky and gives droughts. And then Elijah prays and he sends rains in 1 Kings 17 and 18. In Psalm 29, 3 through 10, it says this. It says, the voice of the Lord is above the waters. The God of glory thunders the Lord above the vast waters. The voice of the Lord in power, the voice of the Lord in splendor, the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and the siren like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the woodlands bare. In his temple all cry glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord sits enthroned, king forever. The God not only just rules over people, but he rules over reality. He parts the seas, he stops the sun, he commands the rain, he sets the boundaries of the oceans and even appoints the storms and the fish to swallow men and spit them out again. He's not just, it's not just seen in nature and in this world, but he also humiliates the false gods of Egypt. He topples Dagon, he opens the eyes of the heavenly armies to show the spiritual reality, and the opposition was real, but the spiritual opposition was real, but it was never equal. And one of the clearest examples we see in Mark chapter 4, where Jesus and his disciples are on a boat, and in verse 36 it says, So they left the crowd and took him along since he was in the boat. And the other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke him up and said to him, Teacher, don't you care that we're going to die? He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Silence be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then he said to them, Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith? And they were terrified and asked one another, Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him. That he's ruler over the nature in the created world in which we live. The disciples are freaking out. They're losing it. We're gonna die. And Jesus is like taking a siesta on the front of the boat. And he doesn't wake up panicked. He doesn't look around and go, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? He looks up and just says, Stop. And it stops. How does that connect to your life? In the chaos and the world that we live in. Jesus asks the question, What, why don't you trust me in this? And that's a question that challenges us when maybe things seem out of control from our parenting to marriage to finances to jobs to our health status. Jesus doesn't always calm the storm immediately, but he is always Lord over it. He has the power over whatever you're facing right now. Whatever seems immeasurable, whatever seems to be too big of an obstacle, Jesus, just his word, can say stop, and it would stop. Now that doesn't mean it always happens the way we want, but he has the power over that. And we'll talk more about that in just a second. The last power that he displays is maybe the most significant. It's the power to save and transform. It's the biggest display of his power. I think a lot of times when we think of power, we think of miracles and these supernatural things that occur around us, and those very much are powerful moves of God. But also the power that God displays, and maybe the deepest miracle is when he raises dead people to life by forgiving sins, changing heart, and making us new. It's one thing to calm a storm outside of you, but it's another thing to calm a storm inside of you. The greatest miracle is not what God does out there, but what he does in here. When he can forgive the sin of my life. Ephesians 1, 19 through 20, Paul says it this way. Paul is praying that the believers of Ephesus and us today would understand the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us. He wants us to see that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that still allows and raises people from the grave today. Romans 1, 16, it says, Paul says to the church in Rome, he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. The gospel is power, that it provides the way. It's the good news that announces that we can be reconciled with our heavenly Father, that there was God that was willing to send his one and only Son to not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but to make himself nothing, taking on the form of a human, taking on the form of a servant, and then go to a cross so that we could be reconciled with our heavenly Father. He became our sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. God's power raises the spiritually dead. He makes us alive together with him through Jesus Christ. God's saving power is ultimately a permission for us to surrender. Or we can just go, God, I can't do this on my own. Save me, forgive me, remake me. He is powerful enough to lead me. I don't have to clench my fist and try to become new, but I can open my hands and receive the grace that He freely gives. God has the power to create, the power to rule, the power over nature and the unseen world, and the power to save. He is an all-powerful God, and he will accomplish whatever he wills. Nothing can stop him. Nothing can thwis plans, nothing can come against him, nothing can defeat him. And if God is all-powerful, though, here's the big question that we wrestle with. Then why does life feel so out of control? Because this is the argument that people make. Either God is all powerful or he's not all-powerful, and that's the reason that we have what we have. And if God is all-powerful, then maybe he's not good. And that's the reason that we have the issues that we have in this life. If God's truly all-powerful, then why am I dealing with anxiety? If God's all-powerful, then why does my marriage seem to be falling apart? If God is all powerful, then why did this diagnosis come? If God is all powerful, then why do I have prodigal kids that have walked away from the Lord? If God is all powerful, then why did I lose my job? If God is all powerful, why do I have the same besetting sin and the cycle of addiction in my life? And I wish that I had an easy answer this morning. I don't. There are things that we will never be able to understand on this side of eternity. And I think that we can get in a lot of trouble when we demand clarity in places where God calls us to trust. This life is just an exercise. It's a training ground where God's saying, Hey, just trust me. My ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. You don't understand it. I understand that. I know you don't get it. But I'm seeing what's happening 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years, or maybe even after you leave this earth and what will come way down the road. I've got a bigger plan in place. See, God's power is not in question here. God's character is not in question. God's time is often a mystery. God's purposes are always bigger than our perspective. Charles Spurgeon said this. He said, God is too good to be unkind and too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace his hand, we must trust his heart. God being all-powerful doesn't mean that life will be easy, but it does mean that life will never be meaningless. That life will never be meaningless, that you will have a purpose and a purpose behind your pain. And the perfect example of this is the person of Jesus and the life that he lived here on earth. I mean, imagine for a second that God, incarnate, coming down to earth, dwelling among sinful people and living the perfect, sinless life. And here he is the couple of days before he would ultimately give his life on a cross for the sins of mankind. And he's in the garden and he's praying, Father, take this cup from me. Don't let me have to walk through the pain and the suffering that I'm about to walk through. I don't want to go in that direction, but then at the end he says, But not my will, but your will be done. We don't understand the pain that we have to walk through, but there's always a purpose behind it. And Jesus modeled this. He was willing to endure the cross. And it was not because God was weak. Although the cross looked a lot like losing, it looked weak. It looked like God wasn't doing anything, but the cross wasn't God's absence, but it was part of God's plan. The resurrection is God's signature, that his power was at work the whole time. God didn't flex his power to keep Jesus from suffering. He displayed his power through Jesus' suffering to save the world. Corey Tinboom, concentration camp, Nazi Germany, says, never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. You can trust him because he is all-powerful. God's power is my permission to surrender. Because God is all powerful and God is good, then I can loosen the grip of control. And you don't have to understand everything. You don't have to have answers to all of your questions. You might have doubts. I have doubts. But at the end of the day, I rest in knowing that he's in control and that I am not. I can trust an all-powerful God. And so if God is truly all-powerful, and if God is good, and if he is ruling over creation, if he is ruling over the nations of this world, if he's ruling over the unseen world, and he's ruling over and reigning over the salvation of men and women, what does that mean for us? It means that we can let go. We can relinquish control. We can stop striving and fighting to hold the whole world in our hands. Because he's all powerful. And he does whatever he wills. So what is it that you're clinging on to? What is it that you're trying to fight to hold in control over? Is it your work? Is it your business? Is it your family? Is it your marriage? Is it your kids? Is it your finances? Listen, there's work, don't get me wrong, there's work that we do. Like we contribute to it, but at the end of the day, we trust in an all-powerful God. And so if you have a notebook out of our Bible, if you'll close that, just to kind of move into a moment of response to the Lord this morning. Maybe just with open hands, maybe in our laps or just palms up, just in a posture of releasing. I would love for us just to pray this prayer individually together. Father, you are all powerful, you're good, so I will surrender blank to you. Let's just take a moment. Father, you are all powerful, but you're good, so I will surrender blank to you. What is it that you need to surrender to the Lord this morning? Maybe who do you need to surrender to the Lord this morning? There's people in the room that are having health issues and just dealing with being in and out of hospitals. And they recognize fully that they aren't in control. Maybe this morning their prayer is just, Lord, I give my health to you, give my life to you. I relinquish control. Maybe you're so full of anxiety and you're just worked up. Your shoulders just even feel tight, and you feel like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders. Lord Jesus, I I give you my anxiety. I give you trying to hold the world together. Because you are all powerful, you are good, and so I can trust you and surrender to you. Lord, help me to be faithful with what you put in front of me. And I will trust you with what I can't control. And so, everybody, if we could, just maybe take a deep breath. There's wars that are happening. You watch the news for any extended amount of time, and you immediately there's a there's a there's a panic that kind of sets over us. But Lord, we we trust that you're a God that's in control. Help us to not get wrapped up in the fear that this world so easily wants to push over all our lives. But Lord, let us trust our future to a known God, an all-powerful God. I release my need to control outcomes. I release my need to control and try to play through the worst-case scenarios. I release my obsession of just trying to be enough. And Lord, I just open my hands to you this morning. God, you are able. You are wise, you are good, you are all powerful. And so, Lord, we trust in you this morning. And maybe you're here this morning and you never put your faith and your trust in Jesus, and just recognizing this morning that God is a God that is over our salvation and our spiritual lives and can reunite us. He has the power to raise us from the dead and to make us alive together with Christ. And maybe your surrender is just saying, Jesus, like I have doubts, I still have questions, but I'm giving you my life. I'm surrendering myself to you for you to be my Savior and my Lord. Maybe that's the step you need to take. And so in a minute, our band's gonna lead us and just responding to the Lord. There'll be people up here to pray with and for you if you would like, or you might just want to come down to the altar. It's just a posture of surrender this morning. But let's not lose sight this morning of the God that is meeting with us right here in this moment. That He is an all powerful God. And because of that, we can surrender our lives to Him. We thank you, Jesus. We thank you, Father. We thank you, Holy Spirit. Be with us in this moment as we respond to you.