SPEAKER_01: Listen, you're not gonna break God with your brokenness and with your anxiety.
SPEAKER_01: Anxiety is one of the things.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a it's it's somewhat of an epidemic right now.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen it just increasing everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And I get that sometimes it's hard to say, well, just pray about your anxieties, it'll be all right.
SPEAKER_01: And you go, there needs to be some action here.
SPEAKER_01: There needs to be some response.
SPEAKER_01: And I acknowledge that, I recognize that.
SPEAKER_01: But there is an element to where some people will come to me and they say, Man, I get just I just don't know how to pray, I don't know what to pray about.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, here, let me give you some hints.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you pray about what you're anxious about?
SPEAKER_01: I don't even need a cup of coffee to do that.
SPEAKER_01: I get up in the morning, I know what's going on with my family, my kids, my my my you know, work, all the different things, they hit me right away.
SPEAKER_01: And so the anxieties, the idea is that you come to God and you say, Cast all of your anxieties on him.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he cares for us.
SPEAKER_01: Because he recognizes, you know, there's a couple passages that talk about Jesus being a man that's acquainted with sorrow, familiar with grief.
SPEAKER_01: He's a God that's not distant and cold.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Hey, come and cast the anxieties on me.
SPEAKER_01: Saddle me up with what you're carrying right now.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to have to carry.
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Amen, amen.
SPEAKER_01: Pray with me, church.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Father, it's good to be reminded that you are holy, not just for half a day, but forever.
SPEAKER_01: So, Lord, disrupt our false peace this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Set us off of the throne, remind us that you are our firm foundation.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to be grounded in that.
SPEAKER_01: In the heartache that we face and the brokenness that we encounter.
SPEAKER_01: Father, would you go before us and speak to us this morning in a way, in a language that we will understand?
SPEAKER_01: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a guest this morning, we want to thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_01: My name is James Perryman.
SPEAKER_01: I am uh one of the pastors here on staff.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a regular around here, you go, who's that turkey?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know him.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the new guy.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm the connections pastor.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh not the newest guy anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew can take that title now, so I'm no longer the guy with the least amount of seniority.
SPEAKER_01: Um we are gonna be in, if you've got your Bibles, invite you to turn over to uh 1 Peter chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Bibles, your phone, your your tablet, whatever you've got.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter chapter 5, and uh we're gonna kind of work our way through the text.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna pick up with verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it'll come up on the screen as well.
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't have your Bible, we can follow there.
SPEAKER_01: Um a couple things about myself.
SPEAKER_01: I I um have uh pastored about a little over a decade in in the pastorate.
SPEAKER_01: Um we were most recently we're out in East Bernard, uh just about 45 minutes south of here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh pastored uh there for the last five years.
SPEAKER_01: We actually have a history here in the church.
SPEAKER_01: Um I pastored in Tyler, and then my wife is from the South Houston area, so we came to Houston in 2018, and I was in the private sector, and we attended here as members from about 2018 to 21 before we went out to East Bernard.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord uh made it clear that that's where he wanted us out there, and so uh it's fun.
SPEAKER_01: I remember uh we were in the old sanctuary back then, if any of you guys remember when we were over there, and there was a Sunday we came over here, this building was just being built, and we were signing the pillars.
SPEAKER_01: Do you all remember that Sunday?
SPEAKER_01: And uh different scriptures and different things.
SPEAKER_01: Somewhere over here around the stairs, I signed one of these pillars.
SPEAKER_01: No idea where it's at now.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we uh we didn't get to come over here and worship here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we ended up out in East Bernard, and so it's fun to be back uh here.
SPEAKER_01: It feels like being home uh for us in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_01: Um uh and so uh we're we're glad to be back.
SPEAKER_01: But that's just a little history on me.
SPEAKER_01: Let's dig into the text.
SPEAKER_01: What I like to do is kind of fun to be able to uh it's it's been a few weeks since I've preached, and so it's fun to be back in it this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Um we're gonna work our way through this text.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a person that likes to kind of know where we're at and how far along we are, I've got six basic points that we're gonna make.
SPEAKER_01: We're going through six verses.
SPEAKER_01: So it's funny how that worked out.
SPEAKER_01: Um and we're gonna work our way through, beginning with verse uh six of 1 Peter chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read it to you and then we'll work back through it.
SPEAKER_01: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
SPEAKER_01: Be sober-minded, be watchful.
SPEAKER_01: Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
SPEAKER_01: Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
SPEAKER_01: And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
SPEAKER_01: To him be the dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Uh listen, uh, we're gonna work our way through this.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I want you all to watch for in the text is a little bit of a rhythm here going on with this text.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like a dance.
SPEAKER_01: There's a uh I'm gonna talk to you this morning, if I didn't say this already, about formative uh experiences and grounding behaviors.
SPEAKER_01: It'll be reversed on that.
SPEAKER_01: It's grounding behaviors and formative experiences because the behavior comes first a lot of times.
SPEAKER_01: There's an old saying, it says that you don't feel your way into good behavior, you behave your way into good feelings.
SPEAKER_01: You guys familiar with this?
SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna look at this idea of this rhythm that happens within this text and wants to watch for it, where you'll see this behavior that's a grounding behavior, like humble yourselves, and then there's an experience that's a formative experience like being lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: So you'll see this rhythm.
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing we're gonna look at is being uh made low uh and then being lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: This is the idea we see in verse 6 here.
SPEAKER_01: It says, humble yourselves, which the word there just means to be made low, uh to lower yourself, if you will, lower yourself or to humble yourself where?
SPEAKER_01: Not with everybody, but therefore uh for under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of these things that uh a couple different passages that speak to this throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 12, verse 3 says this for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
SPEAKER_01: And then again, in Proverbs 25, verse 27, it says this It says, It's not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one's own glory.
SPEAKER_01: In today's culture, uh, we kind of feel like, man, if I don't praise myself, then nobody's gonna praise me.
SPEAKER_01: If nobody understands what's what's going on or what I've done or how, you know, hey, let me let me get out here ahead of this.
SPEAKER_01: Let me let everybody know, hey, this is who I am.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible kind of tells us, hey, that's not glory.
SPEAKER_01: If somebody else comes along and praises you, that's one thing.
SPEAKER_01: And even in that, you've got to live up to the praise.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not glory for you to go around and say, hey, listen, I'm really awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And we tend to kind of get caught in that all the time.
SPEAKER_01: But I will say this: in both of these contrasts, to bring yourself low and being lifted up, you as a believer need to experience both.
SPEAKER_01: It's not enough for you to just say, you kind of beat yourself up and go, oh, I need to make myself low and never experience God lifting you up.
SPEAKER_01: You need to experience both.
SPEAKER_01: If you grew up in a in a in the church environment or in the legalistic culture, you might say, this is a very familiar place for me to just be humble and lowly and never really think much of myself and never really appreciate what God has, the value that God has set on me.
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to learn to experience both.
SPEAKER_01: But one of the grounding behaviors is to say, hey, listen, I'm gonna be made low, not just under everybody, but under the mighty hand of God, which is a recognition that he is powerful.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the things that we've sung today is this idea that he is worthy, that he's holy, that he's mighty, that he's that he's a firm foundation.
SPEAKER_01: These are things that are bigger and greater than us, and so we're willing to submit up under those things.
SPEAKER_01: At the same time, we need to experience him lifting us up, which is a foreign, perhaps a foreign feeling for some of you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you kind of take a false pride position or a false uh humility position.
SPEAKER_01: It's actually a prideful position of saying, you know, when God comes in to lift you up, you're going, hey no, God, I'm I'm I'm you know doing this self-flagellation thing right now, and just leave me alone, let me do this.
SPEAKER_01: This feels better, this feels holy, this feels religious, and it's not necessarily the case.
SPEAKER_01: So it's thinking honestly about yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It's being okay with being lifted up, and it's being okay with being made low.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of these things where we begin to recognize that our value is not, it does not come from our performance, it doesn't come from what other people think of us.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we have this innate desire to be understood a lot of times.
SPEAKER_01: We need people to understand why we're doing whatever, and so we tend to overexplain ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We need somebody to understand.
SPEAKER_01: When you get this place where you realize, hey, listen, God is the mighty hand, and I'm willing to be made low under his hand, I don't need to be understood.
SPEAKER_01: That's a difficult place to be.
SPEAKER_01: It's a formative place to be.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be understood.
SPEAKER_01: And if he lifts me up, he lifts me up.
SPEAKER_01: If he wants me to do this, if he wants me to take out the trash, I was uh, so Travis has been the title of Connections Pastor has been Travis's, uh Travis Dunham's for a while.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we made the switch uh and I came on board, he's picking up missions and uh men's pastor, that's his new title, and they said, Hey James, you're gonna be the new connections guy, which just means that I get to come around and harass you guys.
SPEAKER_01: And so they said, Hey, we want you to connect each other, people to each other, God and the church.
SPEAKER_01: I said, I got it.
SPEAKER_01: Turn me loose.
SPEAKER_01: And so uh I was looking, we were out searching for houses one day and we're looking at getting moved back over here, and we're driving by the church, and Travis was taking trash out to the dump uh over here on the side of the old building.
SPEAKER_01: And I called him.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't know I was out, you know, driving by that I could see him.
SPEAKER_01: I said, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Your job.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I purposely did not respond to that.
SPEAKER_01: I changed the subject.
SPEAKER_01: He has no idea that I was looking at him.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I told him about that later.
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah, I was just making a bunch of phone calls.
SPEAKER_01: I thought I was actually doing your job.
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, no, no, we take out the trash.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the things I was telling somebody earlier, I said, I love the culture of this church.
SPEAKER_01: Because today I may get up here and speak and then I may be out here taking out the trash, or we may be cleaning a toilet.
SPEAKER_01: It's about realizing, hey, my value is not in a performance.
SPEAKER_01: My value is in the value that Jesus and the Father sets on me.
SPEAKER_01: When I get settled in that, it's a very grounding thing.
SPEAKER_01: The second grounding behavior that we need to experience is this idea of cast.
SPEAKER_01: Well, before I move on, I need to touch on this.
SPEAKER_01: Deprivation.
SPEAKER_01: I need to say something about deprivation while I'm on the subject of like humbling ourselves and this false humility.
SPEAKER_01: Deprivation is not a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: And in the church culture, we can kind of equate that with being a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna deprive myself of the things that God has created me to need.
SPEAKER_01: We all have needs, and we have there are proper ways to have these needs met.
SPEAKER_01: There are healthy ways to have these needs met.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't go about having these needs met healthily, you're like a person who won't drink water, you end up drinking nasty water because you're just like, I'm so thirsty, I gotta have something.
SPEAKER_01: You're like a person that starves yourself, and you're like, I'm kind of on a diet and I don't need to eat sugar, but I'm so hungry, I'm just gonna eat whatever's around.
SPEAKER_01: And you end up feeding yourself things that are not healthy.
SPEAKER_01: We end up self-medicating in ways that are self-destructive.
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to learn to allow God to do two things to us that are maybe words that you're not really familiar with with the Father.
SPEAKER_01: You need to allow God to nurture and nourish you.
SPEAKER_01: Nurture and nourish you.
SPEAKER_01: Those are kind of parenting terms, right?
SPEAKER_01: And it's gentle terms.
SPEAKER_01: The idea that God is feeding you the things that you need to be strong.
SPEAKER_01: And so this idea that we don't get off into this world where it's like, I'm I'm a humble person, I'm just gonna kind of, you know, push myself down and never and ignore God, it's this idea that you learn to receive from God the things that He has designed you to need.
SPEAKER_01: And you learn to receive those in healthy ways so that you are healthy.
SPEAKER_01: All right, now, second grounding experience that we need, or grounding behavior that we need to practice is this casting all anxiety on him, and then the experience is experiencing his care.
SPEAKER_01: So casting all anxiety on him and experiencing him his care.
SPEAKER_01: This is verse 7, says this cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
SPEAKER_01: You see where I got that point?
SPEAKER_01: It's right there in the text.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the idea is, listen, you don't cast your anxiety on somebody if you don't realize they care for you.
SPEAKER_01: So you need to learn to experience God's care for you.
SPEAKER_01: It's not enough for you to say, man, I'm just casting all my anxiety on God, but I feel like he's distant and cold and not engaged in my life, and I just keep doing this and I keep doing this and I keep doing this, and it's just I never experience his care.
SPEAKER_01: At some point, if that's the pattern, you're gonna just walk away.
SPEAKER_01: You're just gonna say, I there's nothing there.
SPEAKER_01: As you begin to learn that he cares for you, you begin to cast your anxiety on.
SPEAKER_01: The idea of casting here is kind of like saddling something up.
SPEAKER_01: It's like taking a burden and throwing it on a beast of burden.
SPEAKER_01: Growing up, my grandfather had uh later in life, he bought a little bit of acreage and he raised some cows and a few horses, and we would go out there on Saturdays with him.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things is he was busy, we'd like to ride the horses, so we would go and we would, you know, try to saddle them up as we got a little bit bigger.
SPEAKER_01: And so you're carrying this big old saddle, and if you're you know young, you're only about that tall, and the horse is this tall, and you got a saddle that's this big, you're trying to get this thing up on the horse, and you're just you know, you're pushing and shoving, and maybe one of your siblings is running up under the horse, and you know you're trying to get this thing up on there, and finally you get it up there, and it's like, ooh, that's done.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to carry that anymore.
SPEAKER_01: That's the that's the language that's being described here.
SPEAKER_01: It's this idea of I'm carrying an anxiety, and it's too heavy for me, and it's a lot of work to get it up on this horse, if you will, saddle it up on God.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I noticed pretty early on, my grandfather got to where he would raise Tennessee walkers, which, if you're not familiar with, those are like the Cadillacs of horses.
SPEAKER_01: They've got a gate that they'll slide into when you get going, and it's like just like riding on butter, man.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could put a glass of sweet tea on the saddle horn, it wouldn't go anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And so we had this one particular horse who was who was very experienced, and when we'd come around and try to saddle him, he would lean into the saddle.
SPEAKER_01: So, most horses, you got a skittish young horse, you throw a saddle on them, and they're gonna go running away from you, right?
SPEAKER_01: You try to get away as fast as they can.
SPEAKER_01: It's just like you're chasing them around in a circle, you know, okay, come on, the whole slow just down.
SPEAKER_01: This horse would hold still, he'd lean into it.
SPEAKER_01: And I uh I was thinking about that this morning as we were looking at this text, this idea of casting this burden on.
SPEAKER_01: It's the way the Father operates with us.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I can handle it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm right here.
SPEAKER_01: So you're shoving this burden up on him, going, I can't handle this anxiety, God.
SPEAKER_01: And God's like, I can put it on me, saddle me up with it.
SPEAKER_01: I got it.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not running from it, he's not scared.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, you're not gonna break God with your brokenness and with your anxiety.
SPEAKER_01: Anxiety is one of the things.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a, it's it's somewhat of an epidemic right now.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen it just increasing everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And I get that sometimes it's hard to say, well, just pray about your anxieties, it'll it'll be all right.
SPEAKER_01: And you go, there needs to be some action here.
SPEAKER_01: There needs to be some response.
SPEAKER_01: And I acknowledge that, I recognize that.
SPEAKER_01: But there is an element to where some people will come to me and they say, Man, I get just I just don't know how to pray, I don't know what to pray about.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, here, let me give you some hints.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you pray about what you're anxious about?
SPEAKER_01: I don't even need a cup of coffee to do that.
SPEAKER_01: I get up in the morning, I know what's going on with my family, my kids, my you know, work, all the different things, they hit me right away.
SPEAKER_01: And so the anxieties, the idea is that you come to God and you say, cast all of your anxieties on him.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he cares for us.
SPEAKER_01: Because he recognizes, you know, there's a couple passages that talk about Jesus being a man that's acquainted with sorrow, familiar with grief.
SPEAKER_01: He's a God that's not distant and cold.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Hey, come and cast the anxieties on me.
SPEAKER_01: Saddle me up with what you're carrying right now.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to have to carry it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's a repeat process.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a one-time thing.
SPEAKER_01: The third grounding behavior that we have to do that doesn't have a nice, warm, fuzzy, corresponding experience is this idea of watching out for the opponent.
SPEAKER_01: Watching out for the opponent.
SPEAKER_01: You'll see this in verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: It says, be sober-minded, be watchful.
SPEAKER_01: Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
SPEAKER_01: There's no corresponding nice, warm experience from the Father in this verse.
SPEAKER_01: It's just like you don't see that one.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, recognize, watch out.
SPEAKER_01: He is out to destroy you.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to have a good, I love the the honesty here.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you gotta realize Peter's the one that's writing.
SPEAKER_01: Peter is one of the disciples, right, who who Jesus looks at and rebukes and calls the devil.
SPEAKER_01: Get behind me, Satan, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who gets kind of full of himself several times, puts his foot in his mouth a number of times.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one that understands.
SPEAKER_01: He's got a right to say, hey guys, lower yourself down.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get too elevated, all right.
SPEAKER_01: Lower yourself down, let him elevate you.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, listen, watch out.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out for the devil, because he's out to destroy you.
SPEAKER_01: I had a lady come see me a while back, and uh she did this thing that people tend to do when they come for counseling.
SPEAKER_01: They they they tell you a little story, they drop something there, and they see how you handle it.
SPEAKER_01: And then if you do okay, if you pass the test, they give you a little bit more, and then and then a little bit more, and finally the floodgates hit and they just throw up on you if they realize they can trust you.
SPEAKER_01: And that's okay, that's part of it.
SPEAKER_01: I do the same thing with people.
SPEAKER_01: I did this with Neil the first time I sat down with Neil.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, can this guy, I mean, he gets up on the stage and he talks.
SPEAKER_01: Can he handle this in the office?
SPEAKER_01: And so you you you we do this, we test out people.
SPEAKER_01: But her story is one of tremendous brokenness, it's one of the devil just trying to destroy her from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: She grew up in a home uh where there was a lot of abuse.
SPEAKER_01: At 13, she ends up getting coming pregnant from the abuse, gets dropped off at a nun convent, thinks her dad's going to go park the car, he hits the street and leaves her.
SPEAKER_01: She gets picked up, never gets to hold the baby, taken back home.
SPEAKER_01: Parents never say a word about what has happened.
SPEAKER_01: Goes on to graduate high school, gets attacked again, ends up in an abusive relationship, ends up having to change her name, change states, go into a protection program.
SPEAKER_01: Tremendous amount of brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: All of her life, the devil's been out to just absolutely destroy and devour her.
SPEAKER_01: At 40 years old, she finds out that her dad's her uncle and her uncle's her dad.
SPEAKER_01: Tremendous amount of brokenness out there, tremendous amount of just like, there's no, there's no rules to the game out there, guys.
SPEAKER_01: There's no rules to the game in here, in your lives.
SPEAKER_01: You have to, I love the honesty of Peter and the honesty of God of saying, hey, listen, look out, realize, be watchful, there is an opponent out there.
SPEAKER_01: And the wording here is it's like a it's like a courtroom setting.
SPEAKER_01: Your opponent in the courtroom is trying to wipe you out.
SPEAKER_01: There's a term in the legal world, it's called an arm's length relationship.
SPEAKER_01: It's like you do what's best for you, and we'll do what's best for us.
SPEAKER_01: You're on your own.
SPEAKER_01: And you have to recognize that in life.
SPEAKER_01: You have to recognize that listen, there's a there's a messy world out there.
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we cast our anxieties on him, but also watch out for the opponent.
SPEAKER_01: Realize he's out to destroy you.
SPEAKER_01: He's out just like we had communion last week, he's out to devour you.
SPEAKER_01: It's just like we take the grape juice or the bread, and we're just it's gone.
SPEAKER_01: He's on to the next to the next target.
SPEAKER_01: So there's jungle warfare out there, realize that.
SPEAKER_01: The next thing that we see, which is again another practice, it's another behavior.
SPEAKER_01: Endure suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out for the opponent.
SPEAKER_01: Endure suffering.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you think what the rhythm we have here is, you know, be made low, be lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: Cast your anxiety, experience care.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out for the devil, be rescued.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, nope.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out for the devil, he's after you.
SPEAKER_01: Endure suffering.
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden the rhythm of the music changes.
SPEAKER_01: Endure sufferings, verse 9 says this.
SPEAKER_01: Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brothers, brother, your brotherhood throughout the world.
SPEAKER_01: Endure suffering.
SPEAKER_01: The uh, I don't know what your theology of suffering is, but you need to figure it out.
SPEAKER_01: If you think that that, you know, hey, I come to church and I tithe and I and I serve and everything's just supposed to work out for me, that's not what the Bible teaches.
SPEAKER_01: There is an aspect of suffering.
SPEAKER_01: There's an aspect of, we say this a lot around here, hey, love is not, love is not convenient.
SPEAKER_01: There's this aspect of just saying, hey, listen, everybody around me is experiencing this too.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not enough for me to just say, hey, listen, everybody, I'm suffering.
SPEAKER_01: I'm suffering for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know what you got.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's like realize you're not alone in that.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody else is suffering too.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, all around the world.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I get it, our suffering is ours.
SPEAKER_01: And it's real and it's somewhat relative, right?
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I would dare say that our suffering sometimes is probably not as hard as some of some of the other people we could find.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it's ours.
SPEAKER_01: There's an old saying it says, it doesn't get easier, you get stronger.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we endure suffering, it's one of these things where we begin to build out our faith muscles.
SPEAKER_01: It says, resist and firm in your faith.
SPEAKER_01: And so we begin to build out our faith muscles and we begin to get stronger.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't necessarily get easier.
SPEAKER_01: We become stronger.
SPEAKER_01: We begin to handle the burden a little more, we begin to lean into the suffering and say, hey, listen, I know this is part of it.
SPEAKER_01: Endure suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And then the experience healing.
SPEAKER_01: This is where the positive experience comes into play.
SPEAKER_01: Experience healing.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10 says this, and after you have suffered a little while.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't rush in.
SPEAKER_01: After you have suffered a little while.
SPEAKER_01: The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory, will send your neighbor over with a with a meal.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_01: The God of all grace is going to send your pastor or the elders or your no.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm not saying God doesn't love us through other people, but this is one passage where it's very specific as to who does this.
SPEAKER_01: The God of all grace, who has called you in his eternal glory in Christ, will himself.
SPEAKER_01: This is a job that God does not delegate, he does not assign, he doesn't send his angels to minister to you in this case.
SPEAKER_01: God will himself do four things: restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
SPEAKER_01: Restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, a lot of things come into play where we experience brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: Something we're very comfortable with in this culture at Grim Park Way.
SPEAKER_01: We talk a lot about brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you think that ministry is, you know, you would be surprised at how much ministry happens at a kitchen table, right, Marcy?
SPEAKER_01: It's like you sit down at somebody's kitchen table, you think it's going to be somewhere else on Sunday morning or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Consequential ministry happens at the kitchen table.
SPEAKER_01: I think I joked about this in my video when I introduced myself.
SPEAKER_01: I said, listen, when you get into ministry, you think it's, you know, the theme song for ministry is something like Kumbaya or bringing in the saints, and you get a little involved in it and you realize that the theme song for ministry is a little closer to an Alan Jackson song that says, uh, still you wonder who's cheating who and who's being true and who don't even care anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And that's pretty much where it lives.
SPEAKER_01: And you sit down.
SPEAKER_01: So my wife gets a call one day from uh uh a lady and she says, Hey, I'm I'm leaving my husband, I'm taking the kids, and I'm going to my parents, and they're out of state.
SPEAKER_01: And my wife says, Well, you want to talk to James?
SPEAKER_01: She goes, Yeah, I'd like to talk to him.
SPEAKER_01: And so I sit down and I said, Well, I understand the situation, I get what you're doing, why you're doing what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
SPEAKER_01: I think it would be good if you told your husband before you left town.
SPEAKER_01: Um, because otherwise he's just gonna come home from work and find that you're gone and think that something has happened, and I I think it would be better, plus you're crossing state lines and all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, she goes, Okay, well, uh I'm leaving tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Can you come help me tell him?
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it's Friday at 5:30.
SPEAKER_01: I said, How about we do this tomorrow morning?
SPEAKER_01: I'll come over tomorrow morning.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, come over tomorrow morning.
SPEAKER_01: And you sit down at people's kitchen table and you see the realization hit, and you see the attempt to control, and then the attempt to realize they're out of control, and then the brokenness, and then the snotty crying that comes into play as we begin to realize something is broken and it needs to be restored, and I can't fix it.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things about the way God operates in restoration is he applies the necessary pressure.
SPEAKER_01: See, the restoration process is not all fun and easy and kind and gentle.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times the restoration process involves more breaking.
SPEAKER_01: My first church, I was a I was a lead pastor of a small church at the age of 22, which is a little young.
SPEAKER_01: I don't advise that, but it was my life.
SPEAKER_01: And so, five years in, uh, we uh discovered that uh a sweet little old lady in our church had embezzled 30 grand.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm praying through this, scoring, okay, God, how do we navigate this, you know?
SPEAKER_01: People that I loved.
SPEAKER_01: Her husband had no clue, well-respected man.
SPEAKER_01: He had taught me how to play golf.
SPEAKER_01: He was like a grandfather.
SPEAKER_01: And so I've got to go in and I've got to break this family up with this news.
SPEAKER_01: Can't ignore it, can't just go, huh, let's just brush that one under the rug.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm praying through this, and and uh it's like I hear God come to me and say, hey, listen, James, um one of the things I used to do at that time in that season, I was I would restore furniture.
SPEAKER_01: And so you take a dining room set and it's got wobbly seats, you've got to take it apart, dial it out, put it back together, glue it up, brace it, let it sit.
SPEAKER_01: And he came to me and it's like he said, Hey James, when you're breaking something with the mindset of restoration, how do you break it?
SPEAKER_01: And I knew the answer.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, you don't take a hammer to it and just go bust it to smithereens.
SPEAKER_01: But you apply the necessary pressure until it gives.
SPEAKER_01: And it gives in a place that it's not designed to.
SPEAKER_01: When you break something with a mindset of restoration, you break it as gently as possible.
SPEAKER_01: But you apply the necessary pressure.
SPEAKER_01: And it's unnatural.
SPEAKER_01: It's unnatural for us in our lives to be pulled apart, just like it's unnatural for a piece of furniture to be pulled apart in the very space and place that it's designed to hold together.
SPEAKER_01: It's not supposed to let go in these joints.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it fails as a chair if it lets go in this joint.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, that joint's loose.
SPEAKER_01: And the only way to fix it is to pull that joint apart, drill it out, put a new dowel in, glue it up, put it back together, and bind it and leave it all bound up for a season until it dries and takes.
SPEAKER_01: Then you can release it, it can be reused for its purpose.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a comfortable process when God comes in to restore us because it involves that pushing and pulling, and we go, I don't want to give right here, God.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to yield under your mighty hand, I don't want to humble myself here.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to, I I've got a lot of anxiety around this, I don't want to get, and then God goes, hey, this is gonna happen one way or the other.
SPEAKER_01: And then we allow it and we think, ah, this is where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01: We're in pieces on God's workbench.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we end up breaking in places we're not designed to break in the process.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you break a piece of furniture where you're not intending to.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a good, if you're a good craftsman, you can fix that too.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the beauty: God is a good craftsman.
SPEAKER_01: He's able to get in there, he's able to find where the problems are, put it right, and put us back together.
SPEAKER_01: The healing things that come restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish.
SPEAKER_01: These are things that God himself does in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: These are formative experiences that we need to experience as believers.
SPEAKER_01: We need sometimes, sometimes we've gotten through the restoration process and we find that we're in a season where God confirms us.
SPEAKER_01: This is not coming from other people.
SPEAKER_01: This is God Himself saying, Hey, you don't need other people to say it to you.
SPEAKER_01: Seasons where God comes in and strengthens us.
SPEAKER_01: You say, Hey, listen, God, this is not getting any easier.
SPEAKER_01: I need to get stronger.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, there's a season where he establishes us.
SPEAKER_01: Jack Lee, you know how you know that you've experienced these four things.
SPEAKER_01: Where'd he go?
SPEAKER_01: There he is.
SPEAKER_01: You release control.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11 says this to him be the dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Dominion is just a big fancy word that means absolute control.
SPEAKER_01: When you've experienced the God who cares for you, when you've experienced the God who loves you enough to come in and work on you, who has the skill set to restore you, to strengthen, establish, and confirm you, you get to a point where you're just like, you take it.
SPEAKER_01: You happily release control.
SPEAKER_01: You're just like, you, you got it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I don't, I can't handle it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand, but you took care of it, you got it.
SPEAKER_01: And then you rinse and repeat.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a one-time birth canal that you go through and just like, I got it figured out, I've done it.
SPEAKER_01: You go back to lowering yourself, being lifted up, casting your anxiety because he cares for you, experiencing his care, watching out for the for the for your opponent, enduring suffering, being restored, being confirmed, being strengthened, being established, and releasing control and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a process that we go through.
SPEAKER_01: And the more we go through it, the more we begin to learn that the Father really loves us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray, church.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a guest, we want to invite you to relax.
SPEAKER_01: Got some questions that are gonna come up on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: Just look over those, see what has your name on it, grab a hold of it, say, hey, what anxiety do I need to saddle God with today?
SPEAKER_01: I want to give you just a little bit of space for some mental worship.
SPEAKER_01: To think through what we've talked about this morning, to listen to God's spirit, say, hey God, listen, would you speak to me in a way, in a language that I will understand?
SPEAKER_01: Show me what I need right now in this season of life.
SPEAKER_01: Do I need restoration?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need confirmation?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need strengthening?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need establishing?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to release control?
SPEAKER_01: Where am I at?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, thankful for the fact that you are a faithful God, that you are not afraid of our brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: Father, would you come and kick the door down in our lives and say, hey, listen, I'm here to restore, I'm here to strengthen, I'm here to confirm and to establish.
SPEAKER_01: Where are the anxieties?
SPEAKER_01: Give them to me.
SPEAKER_01: I want them.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, may your presence, may you lean into us as we try to struggle to shove the anxiety on your back.
SPEAKER_01: Say, hey, here you take it.
SPEAKER_01: I can't handle it.
SPEAKER_01: It's too much for me.
SPEAKER_01: May we experience the joy that comes in being close to a God who says it's not too much for me.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we ask these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: All of God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this message.
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SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to go deeper with our sermon content, you can hear more on our circling back with Neil McClendon podcast at Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.