The Gift of Being Tested | Luke Humbrecht

Discover how trials and suffering serve a divine purpose in revealing God's glory within you. This powerful message explores the biblical perspective on hardship through the writings of Paul, James, and Peter, who understood that testing refines our faith like gold in a crucible. Learn why God sometimes works through reduction rather than addition, stripping away false dependencies and identities that obscure His original design. Explore the Sistine Chapel principle and Michelangelo's approach to sculpture as metaphors for how God reveals the beauty already within us. Find out how the way you talk about struggles determines whether you receive the gifts God has reserved in the middle of them. This teaching addresses common questions about why God allows suffering, how to find joy in difficult seasons, and practical ways to reframe your perspective on trials. Perfect for anyone going through challenging times, seeking to understand God's purpose in hardship, or wanting to develop a biblical worldview on suffering. 


This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is an old of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookout.church.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Good morning, good morning. Church of the Lookout, so good to see you guys. Go ahead and take a seat wherever you are. If we have not met yet, my name is Luke. So good to have you guys here this morning. Can't wait to jump into the word. One quick uh one more update, just to follow up. If you were here last week, uh one of the things that we mentioned is we're in a uh a window of time. Right now we're calling an affirmation window, where we brought to you last week the possibility of Jesse Vaught uh being added to our eldership team here at the church. And eldership, you guys may or may not know this, but eldership is a is a critical part of the functioning of the body of Christ. And we have a group of elders who pray for, who serve, and love the church behind the scenes, most of the times in hidden ways. And uh, and and every now and then we say goodbye to some elders. I mean, not permanently, they just leave the team. Um, but then sometimes we get to welcome on new elders. And so uh you have one more week. We put that out last week. If you have any feedback or questions as it relates to us bringing Jesse Vaught onto the team, for those of you who know Jesse, we'd love for you to send us any feedback, questions, concerns, any of those things uh to us by next Sunday, and then we'll be able to process that feedback as an eldership and then and move forward. So, but we we cherish, we value your feedback as a body. This is a body of family, and uh and we we're interdependent, right? And so we hear from God together. So just appreciate all the feedback we've received so far. It's been really encouraging. So, can we do that together? So you can find me or Graham, you can email Graham at the lookout.church if you have any specific feedback on that. So, all right, this morning, here's what's fun. Last week, we finished up a long series on the book of Ephesians called The Fullness. And it was a, it's been a really good journey. And so this week, we are not in a series, and we're we've got it's a couple more weeks, so we start a new teaching series, but it works. So that means this week I get to speak on whatever I want. Okay, so I was praying this week. It's like, all right, I got I I I got a free stab at this. I get to, I could do whatever I want. I feel like a kid in a candy store. Or as uh as Ray Hughes says, I feel like I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I mean, I I know what I'm here for. I just I just really don't know where to begin. Um, and so I do have a word I want to share with you, and this definitely is something that uh uh has been present with me. I'm just gonna share more of a pastoral word with us here today. And this is something that's present in my own season, and I think it is with you guys as well as a church. And so let's just pray for a moment. God, I thank you today as we come into your presence that um you are closer than we could ever imagine. And today, as we open up your word, I thank you that you know how to meet us, you know how to speak to us. Holy Spirit, you are our best friend. And you're shaping us into the image of Christ Jesus the Son. And so we yield to you today, we give our lives to you. We thank you for your word to us in Jesus' name. Amen. So have you ever faced something where you've come to the very end of yourself? Um, I hit a moment in the month of March where there was about a week where I just got to the point where my stress meter was completely pegged and my emotional capacity just vanished almost into bankruptcy. I hit one of those moments in just the last couple months where it all just kind of happened at the same time. Has anybody ever experienced that? And uh, and I and I can't quite get into all of the details of all the things, but some of it had to do with a situation happening with a friend across the country that needed, he needed a lot of support, a lot of care. His family was walking through some accusation, and it was a leader, and it was going to affect a lot of people. So I had to be on the phone, making my way through all kinds of phone calls with people connected to a certain situation. And meanwhile, there's things shifting here in the church, there's things going on, people moving in and people moving off. And I got to a certain point where it's like, listen, nothing's falling apart, but what was happening inside of me, I realized, oh God, I don't know that I have anything left to give. Can I admit that for a second? Is that okay? And it was one of those moments that we hit from time to time where we realize that even despite our desire to show up, even despite my desire to want to have everything to give and everything to fix, and everything and the capacity I need to sort through important situations, I didn't have it. And so, as people would start asking, you know, when you get into that awkward conversation when somebody asks you how you're doing, and you want to be honest with them, but you don't know if they can really handle it. You know what I'm saying? Or and you don't we're actually you don't want to go through it all again because you have to nuance everything for them to really get it, because not everything is really that bad, but just a couple things, and here's what I'm struggling with. Do you know what I'm saying? And so sometimes the way we frame in the way we talk about how we're doing, it's sometimes it takes a certain uh awareness to even know how we talk about what we're facing. And and one of the things that the Lord spoke to me a couple weeks ago when I was updating some other pastors of, hey, here's some things that I'm facing, some capacity issues I'm facing in my own life. I I felt like the Lord cautioned me afterwards and he said, I want you to be careful about the way that you talk about the struggles that you face. I want you to be careful about the way that you talk about the struggles that you face, because as you do, you're in danger of missing the gift I've reserved in the middle of them. The way that you talk about the struggles that you face has everything to do with our ability to receive the gifts that He has reserved in the middle of them. And I felt like the Lord said, Don't be so sure that what you're calling a struggle isn't actually a gift that I have prepared for you. So I want to talk about that just for a moment here today. It's something we I don't we didn't get to in the Ephesians series, but when it talks about the fullness of life, sometimes the way that God brings us into fullness is to get into the very center of our lives. And and and what I want to talk about is the way that we navigate and see the struggles that we face. And so I'm gonna um read a few scriptures to start us off, okay? Sound good? So if you have your Bibles, you can start in Colossians, okay? And uh and it's amazing to look at how the writers of the scripture talked about the struggles that they faced.

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Okay?

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I want you to pay attention. I'm gonna read a smattering of some scriptures together. And I want you to pay attention to the language that they're using. And I want you to frame that against how you talk about the struggles that you face. And maybe you're here today, just let's just level set this for a second. Maybe that's not a present thing for you, but I guarantee this you've either been through a struggle, you're in the middle of a struggle, or you're headed towards one. All right? It's part of the fine print of becoming a human being. As we get to participate in all of the things, okay? So Paul is writing in Colossians, and he starts as he does many of his letters, as he did in Ephesians, he does this in Colossians as well. He he had started by talking about the wonder and the mystery of Christ and what the be the beauty of the Godhead. And then he gets into this passage near the end of the first chapter in Colossians, and here's what he says. It says, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, this is the word of the Lord. Let's say it. Thanks be to God. And so this passage, Paul is he's writing from prison again. He's obviously enduring suffering. And but but what he starts off this passage with a phrase that we don't often say, I don't often catch myself saying, I don't hear people say this, but he says, but I rejoice, now I rejoice in the sufferings for your sake. And and and what was it was really clear in this passage that as he is facing a hardship of a certain kind, his mindset wasn't, hey man, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna weather this thing out, and then on the backside of this, we're gonna get to our rejoicing. It was, I I am, I am going to rejoice in my suffering right now, and it's for your sake. Now he gets into a couple really interesting lines here that are really hard to interpret, but he says, because I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's affliction. Now let's just, I just want to uh hit that just for a second. What Paul is saying here, he's not saying that Christ's affliction was insufficient to take care of our sins to make us right with God. He wasn't saying there was anything insufficient with Christ's affliction. Uh what he was saying was as he participates in the suffering, similar to how Jesus went through suffering, that means that we get to model for others in a way that others didn't get to see Jesus on the cross. He says, I get to model for others what it looks like to suffer so others can taste and see what Christ endured for us. So what's lacking, it's not that he lacked anything, but I get to model for you guys so you could see it in me to make up for where you guys can't see Christ himself. And he's saying, I'm participating, I'm co-suffering with Christ. And this is what Paul caught vision of is what I am going through here is I'm participating in a life of Christ in a way that is actually uh that that that is actually helping me stay in touch with who Christ is in me, which he would say is the hope of glory. So here's a question I ask when I read a passage like that. What has to happen to become the kind of person who actually rejoices in suffering? Like, are you sick? Are you sick? Like, if Paul were here today, if you're part of a church, we would send him to counseling, right? He said, You need to go to counseling, you're rejoicing, and you shouldn't be rejoicing in your suffering. But but for Paul, he could not separate what he was going through from what Christ was revealing to him in his participation. He could not separate the two, he could not separate his circumstances from this revelation he was receiving. And what was he captivated by? Paul is captivated by this mystery, and what was the mystery that Christ is in you and he's in me. It's the mystery that Christ is in you, and he is the hope of glory. He's not somewhere else. He's right, smack dab in the center of who you are. So you read a passage like that, though, and maybe you think, like, yeah, you know, but I but my suffering isn't quite like Paul's, right? It's like he was in prison, he was suffering for the gospel because he's a missionary, and so what I go through isn't quite the same level as Paul. Okay, well, let's take another one. Let's go to James, okay? James chapter one. And so James is the little brother of Jesus. This is the only letter he wrote, and he had his one shot to write a letter that would make the scriptures for all of time. Okay, he didn't know that, but this was his shot. This was his uh his offering. So James chapter one. I love that I hear the ruffling of Bible pages in the room right now. Thank you, God, that people bring their Bibles to church. You can bring your Bibles to church anytime you want. Um, James chapter one, here's how he starts it off. He says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Okay? So if you felt like Paul was, you know, maybe his suffering was like, wow, that's next level suffering. I can't relate to that. Well, James makes it a little easier. He says, My brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. So various kinds means that's a catch-all for any kind of trial, all right? So that's your trial, it's my trial, it's a lot of trials. Now he's writing to a persecuted church, but he's saying, listen, guys, the first thing I want you to know, he doesn't even talk about anything yet. The first thing I want you to know, count all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. Why? Because it's gonna test something, it's gonna test your faith, and it's gonna produce a kind of a level of steadfastness and endurance. And when that just has its full effect, listen, you're gonna be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So James is obviously as he's writing this, he's much more aware of what's being produced in him than what is being taken away. So he's writing to people who having things, their faith is being tested, they are things are being rearranged in their life, they have pressures, the weight of the world, there's an againstness even as they face persecution, but trials of various kinds. But James says, listen, if you if you can see things from the perspective of heaven, you will be more aware. It is possible for you to be more aware of what God is producing in you than what is being taken from you in any given point of time. Somebody, somebody, talk to me. And he connects, he says, Don't you know, don't you even, don't you know that God is using all things to perfect you, to perfect the image of God in you? Don't you know that? And if you know that, then there's something inside of you that turns into, oh, this is my joy. God is perfecting something inside of me. And so, okay, so if if so let's go, Paul, James, let's get to Peter, all right? So let's get another cross-section here. The apostle Peter, 1 Peter chapter 1, you can turn over there. 1 Peter chapter 1, and this beautiful, another little rendition. He's writing again to believers who were experiencing all kinds of different kinds of hardships. And we're gonna read the first part of this just for context, but then we'll get to Peter's take on this. 1 Peter chapter 1, he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy. He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Can we just take a praise break just for a second here? Oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you, Jesus. Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Now here's here's the key passage, verse six. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So for Peter, he he also connects in with the testing, the various trials, but he says, listen, through the various tiles, there's the faith that is inside of you, the genuineness of what actually exists within you, is being tested, not unlike gold being purified as it is heated in a crucible to eliminate the impurities. And if gold is precious, how much more precious is your faith that it's going to be revealed in the final days that when you stand before God, we're not bringing to him our gold, we're bringing to him our faith, which has been tested and proven over time. And it's our faith, it's your faith that Jesus is going to hold up as a trophy of his victory. It's not your gold, it's not your outcomes, it's not what you did for him, it's the faith that he puts inside of you that he is testing. And he's willing to test it, and he's willing to test it again, he's willing to keep testing it so that what remains is the pure essence of everything he had in mind when he made you. That you would be one with pure faith. In Proverbs 17, 3 says, the crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests the heart. The crucible is for silver, the furnace for fur furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests the heart. Do you guys know that God is willing to let us go through testing in our lives? And when we come into the kingdom, one of the key shifts that we have to make is that testing is not something we get through. Testing is something that we receive the gift of God in the middle of. The gift of God. Gold is refined by removing impurities. And listen to this gold becomes more of what it is, not when it is being added to, but when through testing it is reduced into what it really is. Gold becomes more of what it is, not when it is added to, but when it is reduced. Okay? Let's double-click on that for a second. One of the challenges we face is when we come into the spiritual life, the life of the kingdom, because we are so discipled in the modern Western culture, we think that the spiritual life is adding more good things to our already existing life. I'm going to take my life and I'm going to add some Jesus to it. I'm going to take my life, I'm going to add some Holy Spirit. All right. We're going to do some worship. We're going to do some prayer. We're going to say yes at the back of the room. We're going to buy plants, right? We're going to go to camp. We're going to join a small group. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm just going to so we we've been we've been discipled into a way of thinking that success is always about addition and accumulation, about adding and adding. There's something I lack. There's something I lack. I've got to listen for the punchline at the end of the sermon because there's something more I need to do. There's something more I need to do. I've got to add and add and add and add. This is part of growing up in our particular culture. It's an American way of thinking because we are achievers. There's nothing actually wrong with achieving. It's just when we come into the kingdom, we have to understand how God gets to the core of what He has designed for our lives. It's not always by adding, sometimes it's by reducing. We don't always improve our way into what we are supposed to be. Oftentimes, God reduces us into what we're supposed to be. Let me just I'll just explain this for a second. And this is not bad news, by the way. Um, one of my mentors years ago, um, when I had met him, I actually met him in the foyer right out here at church, and this was gosh, probably 15 years ago. And we were we were just meeting each other, and there's a group of us, and we were talking about what God was doing in our lives and this and that. And I was just sharing with him at that time we were going through some things as a church, and things were shifting around, and it was kind of hard because it just felt like we were getting sifted. And here's what he said to me He said, Listen, there are times that God reduces us into a concentration. The pure substance of what he wants to do. It's not diminishment. It's because he loves the pure essence of who we are. A concentrate can always expand, but first it has to be distilled. A concentrate can always expand, but at first it has to be distilled. Do you understand that God loves you so much, He's willing to reduce you into a concentrate? The essence of what he intended for you, the essence of your true identity in him. He's willing to let the clutter and the accumulation all around sometimes just kind of be picked away and fade away. Because he's willing to reduce you into the purest essence of what will actually stand, the kind of faith that will actually stand the test of time. He's willing to let you come to the end of yourself. And if you haven't come to the end of yourself yet, you will at some point, and when you do, it's the great gift of God to see what will actually stand the test of time and what will actually fade away. So here's the difference though. When we think that God, when God strips things from our life to show us what is real, we think he's teasing us, we think he's playing hard games with us. We see it as diminishment. Reducing is not the same as diminishing it because reducing is about revealing what is true and what what is worthy and what is eternal. Okay, so let me give you an actual example of this. Well, many people had even added their own touch-ups over the years because as the painting was fading, they're like, oh, we're losing some of the definition. And they would add to it. So this thing got added to you, layers and layers, varnish. And the buildup over time on top of this painting had darkened and muted the original colors, making the whole ceiling look flatter and gloomier than Michael of Michelangelo ever intended. And so in 1980, they started a restoration. It took over a decade. And part of the restoration was not how do we add to this painting to make it what it was, how do we repaint it to do what Michelangelo said? No, they actually had to remove what was there to reveal what was actually there in the first place. And when the work was finished, all of the accumulation had been carefully, patiently removed. Um, all of the soot, all of the smoke, all of the touch-ups, all of the, you know, the cracks and all the things that all been removed. And what they found underneath all of these layers of that happened over the century, all these add-ons, they found vibrant blues, glowing pinks, sharp greens, incredible fine detail that had been hidden for centuries, and people were shocked. So this is a before picture of uh the ceiling, and we see the after picture, and you could see the colors just kind of come to life. And what was seen as dark and dingy that they had tried to add to, and just through life, all of these things accumulated to get back to the glory of this painting. It wasn't how do we add more to it, as what can we take away to reveal what it was always supposed to be. Are you guys tracking with me? The restorers didn't paint anything new, they didn't add to the ceiling, they removed what didn't belong and what was always there. What Michelangelo had put there, it was visible again. What's interesting is it was just a few years before this when Michelangelo sculpted the statue of David. Somebody had asked him about the statue of David, and we have a photo of that here too. It's one of the most famous statues in the world. They asked him how they got he got this statue from a chunk of marble. He said, I didn't. He was already in there. I just chipped away everything that wasn't David. I just removed everything that wasn't David. So for him, it was not it was not about how do I add more to this marble to get it into something it needs to become is how do we remove what's accumulated over time to get it to its purest essence of what it was supposed to be? So a good artist knows this: that a piece of art is not finished when there's nothing left to add, it's when there's nothing left to take away. That's what good artists know from amateur artists. It's not when there's nothing left to add, it's when there's nothing left to take away. And so that's why God, in his great wisdom, knows that when we face trials of many kinds, and even as he works in our life, um, to in his providence lead us into an understanding and awareness of his glory and his beauty and the unfading uh eternal purposes that he has placed inside of us, his indwelling presence. Even God is okay for with us going through times of reduction for us to see to get rid of the things that have accumulated over time. And what kinds of things accumulate over time? False dependencies, false identities, things, you know, attachments to outcomes and goals and things that we think we need to get us to where we we feel like we ought to be, that can become idols over time. Outcomes in our life that are not Jesus Himself. God knows us well enough to know when our lives are getting too cluttered, where we've lost the beauty, that his hope is already right here in the middle of us, and we've been too obscured to see it. So all throughout scripture we see that God is not afraid of moving us through. I was just reading the story of Gideon this week. Some of you know the story of Gideon. He he's a reluctant, he's a fearful, reluctant leader who is facing a horde of armies, and he's second-guessing himself the entire way. And he goes and he finds all of these armies to go join him for a fight. But then when all of these, you know, tens of thousands of people are gathered there for this fight, God says, Hey, listen, you have way too many people for me to win this fight. You have you have way too much going on here. This is about you trying to assemble something that looks like it's going to win. I'm going to reduce this to get the people that I want to be there.

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So he starts picking off people. He said, All right. He gives them a test. He said, Whoever comes down by the water and whoever goes down to the water and drinks from the water, just face straight in the water, they're out. But if they come down and they they they lap the water, they they pull the water up to their mouth, then I want you to keep them. He's like, and then when all was said and done, he went from thousands of soldiers down to 300 soldiers. And God said, All right, now we're talking. Because I don't want you to get so sure of yourself. I don't want you to get to trust in your own ways above my ways. And sometimes God has to reduce us into a time where we can trust in his ways and not our ways. Are you guys hearing me today? Jesus, Jesus talks about this in the Gospel of John. He said, I'm the vine, the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. We see pruning oftentimes as a malicious act. How could God do this to me? God in his infinite wisdom, because his ways are higher than our ways, he knows what needs to be eliminated from our lives to lead us to the glory that he's destined us for. So what does all that mean? It means that the trials, difficulties, hardships, sufferings, whatever word that you want to use. It's not that it all comes from God. Sometimes God does actually allow things to be stripped away, to bring our lives back to the studs. But we get to these points where we don't have answers for everything we experience and we walk through, for some of us, that's just episodic and sporadic, it's a short-term thing. Some of you have been in that season for a long time. But the gift in a trial of any kind, various kinds, is that your faith, if you're willing to see it, your faith is being perfected. The image of you got of God inside of you is getting more clear, and your dependence on God is actually increasing, which is something that cannot happen outside of God letting us, our faith be tested in the furnace. How many of you guys have ever felt the furnace in your life? Some of you feel it right now. But it's in the furnace that the awareness of the hope of glory gets more concentrated. It is a good day when you come to the end of yourself, when your only plan is God and God alone. But God is my only plan. That's plan A and plan B drops to the ground. Listen, I realize the danger in a message like this is that some of you are hearing me right now. And what you could be saying, what you could be hearing underneath all of these words is a message that sounds something like this. Okay. All right, Luke's saying, get over your problems and suck it up because God loves you. So you might be experiencing the message like, okay, it's one of those sermons. All right, get over your problems. It's not that big of a deal, suck it up, God loves you. It can sound like a Christian platitude. And you might be thinking, Luke, listen, I appreciate what you're offering, but my life is more complicated than this, than just, hey, it's a trial, get over the trial, that kind of thing. Can't you just be more empathetic? You know, can't you just like empathize with what I'm going through? Listen, I just I just want to say it to you. Listen, we face trials of many kinds and it hits us in tender ways. But I just I felt like the Lord wanted to remind us today, because I talked to so many of us that walk through trials of different kinds, and I know by the way that we talk about the trials, whether we're finding the gift of God in the middle of them. And I felt like he just wanted to remind us that he loves us so much that even in the trials, the hardships, the difficulties, he's clearing away the clutter to remind you again of the hope of glory that is already inside of you. It's not somewhere else, it's already in you. And when you become aware of that, it gives you the power to counter all joy and to rejoice in the suffering while you're in the middle of it. I want to be the kind of person who can rejoice in suffering, who can say, God, I thank you for where I'm at because I see that what you're doing in the middle of it, and I'd never be able to get here if it weren't for you allowing me to walk through this. That takes a tremendous amount of faith. But this is the life that we're meant for, because we're meant to be tested in our faith so that produces a trophy that even Jesus at the end of time can say, That's my boy, that's my girl. The tragedy, I think, is sometimes we go through struggles and we leave it at that. I'm just struggling. And we never quite emerge into our true selves in Christ. We never find the gift in it. It's possible to walk through suffering and never find the gift. What a tragedy. To walk through hardship and to never find the gift in the middle of it. And we oftentimes have other responses. Sometimes it's anger. We become angry with God. God, you were supposed to do something about, I followed you, and I thought the plan was everything goes up and to the right. I thought that was the plan. I thought this was supposed to be good news. Listen, it is good news, but everything in the kingdom is upside down. The good news is what God is doing inside of you. He is doing everything to maximize your joy, to free you from your attachments, to anchor you into what is eternal, to let peace overwhelm you, even in the middle of conflict. He's doing all of those things in your life. But sometimes we think, I thought it was supposed to go this way. And so, God, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this. And so we can become angry with God, so we can be actively aggressive. Sometimes we're passively aggressive. And you hear this when we check in with each other sometimes. Hey, how's it going? Well, God has winning another test, I suppose. In the wilderness again, you know, like we do these things, it's super passive aggressive, of like we kind of joke around about, I guess God is pruning more stuff and he couldn't find enough in the first place. He's got more to prune. But listen, listen, guys, we do that. We're still missing the gift of God. We're still waiting for the wrong thing. We see trials as something that we have to wait to get through to experience the glory of God. I'm just telling you. The glory of God is for you right now. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do not wait to get out of where you are. Do not forsake the gift of God He has reserved for you in the middle of your deepest dark night of the soul. Do not miss the gift of God. When you miss the gift of God, what a shame, what a waste. But if you have eyes to see, if we have eyes to see in the Spirit, there is a possibility for all of us to become one with the Father and the Son and the Spirit, exactly where we are. He knows what we need to become one with Him. So, what does that look like? It looks like changing the way that we talk about our sufferings. It doesn't mean minimizing what we walk through. There are hard things that we walk through. Hey, that was painful. This is this is disorienting. I'm confused here. But I'm learning to see that this is what God is developing in me. So I was talking to you about this last month in March. I I was hitting some capacity issues. I was really, I was coming to the end of what I was physically and emotionally and mentally capable of handling on my own. But you know what I saw? I saw that when I come to my end, I get to talk to my wife about it. I get to talk to my elders and my friends about it. I get to confess this and receive the gift of God all the way around that I don't have to be a savior of everything. And I get to let go of my need to fix every problem and to know what to do all the time to be able to save this and to fix that and to absorb all the pain. And God said, Listen, I'm using this to show you that you're not a savior, you're my son. And this is my gift to you by showing you that you have limits. Count it all joy when you get to be a son and not a savior. Come on. So I rejoice because I can't learn that lesson until I get to the end of my false identities and let them be crumble away and be stripped away to find out who I'm actually at at the end of the day. And that's the beloved Son of God, warts and all, limitations and all. And you are too. You are too. You have limits in your life. You have things that you know how to do and things that you don't know how to do. You have weaknesses in your life, and God does not hold those against you. You have things that you're facing in your life that are testing you. You are in the fire, you are being tested, and the testing is not to humiliate you, the testing is to remind you of the hope of glory that cannot be taken from you. Come on, somebody. This is a word, I believe, for some of us here in the room. And this I'll invite Byron to come up and play. I just want to ask a couple questions this morning as we hold a space before the Lord. Just around the room, if just close your eyes with me, and we're just going to invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us and find us wherever we are.

SPEAKER_04 39:02

We thank you.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

We thank you, God. Jesus, I I just even hold this space right now for all the tender situations in the room, maybe the trials, the hardships, the suffering that are real, the places that that we carried with us into the room today, the stuff that we're holding before you in your presence, God, and we just do that. I just want to invite you just to think of the last moment that you faced a hardship. Maybe, maybe it's not a current hardship because that you're just too close to be able to even understand what's going on. I get that. But maybe just think about the mo a previous hardship, something that you walked through. Maybe it was a relational breakdown, maybe it was the loss of a job, a sudden move, a transition in your life, maybe it was a health issue. And I just want you to think about when you talk about those things to others, if you do, when you talk about them, how do you talk about them? Do you talk about what you lack and what was taken from you? Or are you able to see the gift of God in the middle of it and how your faith has been tested to produce what it could not have produced before? Something that deepened your dependence of God and not your dependence on yourself, something that drew you closer to your community and confession and repentance in a way that when everything is going well, it just doesn't quite get to us the same way. Can you see the gift of God and how it broke down the illusions that you had about where your life was headed or the outcomes that you felt like were guaranteed to you? Can you see the gift of God and how it rooted you more deeply into who you are, not just who you thought you were? And if you can see those things, if you can look back and say, Oh God, I see you. And maybe you just have to just ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, help me to reframe the things that I've endured to see that what you've developed in me over time and the kind of person I am today because of these things, that would be a good prayer for you for us today. God help me reframe these things. But as you do and as God begins to speak to you, I just want to invite you to even respond in thanksgiving. Thank you, God, for doing me what I could not do on my own. See, when Paul talks about rejoicing and suffering, it's because he knew that there was no other path forward. He had come to the end of what he could do on his own, and he's rejoicing because he was more certain than ever of the hope of eternal life. And so for us, are we hope are we also certain of that? Are you able to see God? As God has removed things like the sealing of the Sistine Chapel and the things that have accumulated over time and all the false hopes and all the things, the false idols, the things that accumulate, maybe even other people's expectations of us to reveal what was underneath. He uses trials and testing in the furnace to purify us like gold. Are you seeing the person that God is making inside of you? And if you do, just thank him.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

God, I confess that sometimes it's hard to have the language to talk about what we experience in this life. Jesus, may we be the kind of church that is purified from the inside out, rooted in the hope of glory. And God, we say anything that needs to happen in our lives, anything you lead us through in your divine providence, in order to reduce us into a concentrate, into the pure substance of what you've made us to be. God, I thank you that in the middle of that, we just say we trust you. We trust you, God. And we thank you for your work even when we can't see it. God, I thank you for your comfort. God, I thank you for the joy. I pray blessing, God, on us today. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Let's do this. Let's just stand together. And in a moment of rejoicing, I just want to sing this hymn together. I exalt thee. And you guys know this. And I want us to sing this. And maybe you're singing through something right now. But can we just sing this together? It's just the voices.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

I ye exalt thee. I exothe I execute we exalt thee. Lift up his name. We exe and we exalt the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Can we thank Jesus who is with us in the middle of all things? Thank you, God, that you don't leave us, forsake us, you don't leave us alone. And you were making us and transforming us day by day into your image. We trust you in your work, your steady work in our lives, God. And we say, We love you today, Jesus. And it's in your name we pray, amen. Listen, for some of you in a sermon like that, there's some tender places that opened up, maybe some unresolved places that you know you would benefit from just praying with somebody today. I'm gonna have our ministry team just around the room. And if you're going through something and you just want someone just to stand with you, this is a moment of vulnerability. You want somebody to stand with you, either a health condition, a relational thing, or maybe you just come to the end of yourself and you want to talk about that, you want to pray with it. There's no shame in that because God wants to meet you there too. And so you're gonna see some people with badges on the sides of the rooms. Go to them, receive prayer. And listen, as we leave here today, we go here counting it all joy. We rejoice in our sufferings, we count all joy. Whatever comes our way, we count it joy because he has not left us alone. Faith is turning into steadfastness, which is making us perfect and complete in him. So we go rejoicing. And listen, as we go today, we're going hopefully with plants in hand to our cars, all right? Because the youth were wanting to get to camp. So go buy some plants. Let me just pray one last prayer. God, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you. May He be gracious to you and give you rest. Go in the peace of God. Love you guys.