The Miracle of Ordinary Obedience | Casey Tobik

What if the most world-changing moments in your faith don't feel extraordinary at all?

This week, Pastor Matt welcomes Casey Tobik — Prayer Pastor at King's Church and Midwest Regional Director for 24/7 Prayer — to unpack one of Scripture's most overlooked hinge-moments: Ananias in Acts 9. Not Saul. Not the Damascus road. The ordinary, hesitant, honest disciple God called to place his hands on the very man who'd been hunting Christians.

Casey walks through what it actually looks like to hear God's voice, wrestle with fear and doubt, and still say "yes, Lord" — using Ananias's honesty as a model for real, unedited prayer. From Edward Kimball's shoe-store conversation that eventually led to Billy Graham, to Pastor Matt's own vacation encounter with a young couple he felt nudged to pray for, this episode makes the case that God's math isn't about grand gestures. It's about small, faithful obedience whose ripple effects we may never live to see.

If you've ever doubted whether that quiet nudge was really God — or wondered if your ordinary "yes" could matter — this one's for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

But I'm gonna um so uh KC Tobik is one of the pastors at King's Church, our neighbor just down the street. Uh Kate has been a friend for several years. Uh KC to the pastor of prayer there, but also is the Midwest regional director for 24-7 prayer. So if you've got a chance during uh our 40 days of prayer festival to check out the prayer room, uh casey helps our prayer rooms all over the Midwest, which are not quite well too. Uh and we've helped run the prayer rooms here in Cleveland as well. And so Casey's gonna get uh as well as part of King's Church. Uh King's church is because remember, we're part of something called Kingdom Collective, it's a group of churches in Northeast Ohio. There are their hearts, it's more churches to be planted. And so when we moved up here, King Church invested in us, this church, uh, to plant. We've helped invest in others as well, too. So we are truly friends on mission. And so I'm excited for Casey to come and share this morning. So I'll let Casey take it away from there.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Thanks. Good morning. Hi, neighbors. Good morning. It's good to be with you. Um Matt gave me an awesome introduction, but now I get to talk about how awesome your pastor is. Uh I get to I get get to go around the US, specifically in the Midwest, and I get to meet a lot of pastors. Um and I don't say this lightly, but you guys have a really, really good one. Um yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Uh you you know it. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. So being invited to a church like this with a pastor like yours is always just a real honor and a privilege. And what an amazing throwback because I used to be in that seat right there, actually. That's where my husband and I used to sit when we used to come here for church on Sundays when it this building housed King's Church. And what a cool, cool thing it is to be back here in this building with all of you as my friends. Um so, like Pastor Matt said, I am prayer is kind of my thing. I do it a lot. I love it. I actually, actually really believe that the Lord calls his church to be a house of prayer for all nations. And I have seen it work out in the lives of so many churches and people and places all over that I like I can't go back. No matter what happens in my life, this is the place I will always return to. Um, and so I'm gonna share a little bit about prayer today, but we're gonna be starting in Acts chapter 9. So let me read this uh passage to you that we're gonna be in today. Uh do you guys stand for the reading of God's word? No, we're gonna, you're gonna stay seated. It's it's hot, it's warm. We can just chill. This is great. I love this. All right, so I'm starting in Acts chapter 9, verse 10. Uh, we're gonna go through verse 18, and I'm gonna angle myself this way so that the fan that I'm grateful for doesn't blow into the mic. God's word says this. In Damascus, there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision. Ananias! Yes, Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, Go to the house of Judas on Strait Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. Lord, Ananias answered, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. For he has come with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name. But the Lord said to Ananias, Go. This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel, and I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized. I'm going to pray for us. Father, you are kind and faithful, you are true to your word, and so would you make it alive for us today? As we study your scripture, as we come before your throne, as a people who live under the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, would you come in this place as you want? Would you meet us where we are? And would we leave this place changed by your presence, by your faithfulness, by your goodness? We love you. Amen. This whole chapter is about Saul turning into Paul. We are familiar. If you're familiar with scripture, you know this story. He's the main character, he's the God, he's the one who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He is a pretty big deal. But I'm not going to talk about Saul today. I'm going to talk about an ordinary guy in an ordinary moment of prayer doing what he thought was probably an act of obedience on an ordinary day. And his yes, his ordinary obedience, changed the course of church history. I think whether you believe all of this Jesus stuff or not, whether you're here today as a faithful follower of Christ, whether you've been doing it for two minutes, 20 years, your whole life, I think we can all learn something from Ananias, from this moment in Scripture that might send us out into our ordinary days so that we might have vision to see God's extraordinary miracles working in us and through us. So when I read scripture, I ask a lot of questions. And so when I read this passage, the things that come in my mind maybe are a little less um religious than some other people, but I'm like, what was Ananias doing that God trusted him with this mission? Because I want that. But also, what was God doing in Ananias that he was like, sure, I'll go to the house of the guy who's persecuting all the Christians. I'll totally do that. Did he have moments of like wrestling and doubt? Like, we don't know how long it took him to be obedient to the word that God spoke. We just read that and we're like, oh yeah, he in a moment of prayer heard God and God was like, do this thing. And he was like, but God, and he was like, no go. And then it's the next thing it says is that he went, but we don't know the time. Did he wrestle? Like, how long did he wrestle? What were his doubts? And well, we know what some of his doubts and fears were like. Like, did he talk to anyone? Was he like, hi, wife? Uh, I'm gonna sit down with you, and this could be my very last time we get to talk to each other because I'm going to the house of the person who's been known to wrangle us up, bring us to jail, and get us executed. I don't think we sort of slow down, at least I know, I don't slow down enough in scripture to really examine those type of moments. Now, we don't live in a place or a country where we're at risk of persecution like Ananias was. But I think God has called all of us at one point or another to love a person who's really mean or hard to love. I think God's asked us to do something that seems like insignificant. And we're like, fine, maybe I'll go. I don't know. I think all of us have in a moment of prayer settled down and finally listened, and the voice of God said something, and we were like, was that you? I don't know. So Ananias, I think, is a lot like us. The scriptures also leave out those in-between moments, the moments where Ananias was wrestling with this decision, where he was walking from his house to the place where Saul was. What was that walk like? Did it feel like a death march? Was he fearful? Was he excited? Was he something in between? Ananias is human. He's not a robot, he's not like a soldier on the mission for God. Although, like technically, we could put him in that category, but he's not just blindly obedient. What I love about this example is that he's a lot like us and that he's just gonna back it up a minute and be like, I heard what you said, but I'm not so sure that I want to do the thing that you told me to do. Anyone ever felt that way?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

I'm sure it can be hard to compare ourselves to those written on the pages of scripture, but perhaps over the next few moments we can find ourselves in Ananias' narrative. An ordinary guy who met God in an ordinary moment of prayer, whose ordinary obedience changed things far beyond anything that he could have ever imagined. So let's go through this. We're gonna walk through this line by line. And so we're gonna start with this first part of the passage. And it says, The Lord called to him in a vision, Ananias. Yes, Lord, he answered. And this is the point that we're gonna make here today, and that is that ordinary obedience is birthed in a place of prayer. I get that I'm a person of prayer and prayer is kind of my thing, but it's right here in the pages, so I feel like I can hit it home here. Not only is Ananias in a place of prayer, but he's also making space to listen. Because prayer, in its most simple definition, is a conversation between us and God, and that means that we're both talking and listening. And if Ananias had just been pouring his heart out to God, he never would have had the space to listen for the voice that said Ananias. This for the readers of this scripture would have hearkened back to a moment earlier in the Old Testament where a guy named Samuel heard a voice and he thought it was actually his like teacher. And finally, his teacher was like, I'm not talking to you. Go back to bed. But if it comes again, just say, Lord, here I am. Your translation might actually have Ananias' response saying, Yes, Lord, here I am, in the same way that Samuel did. And this is really cool because it tells us a couple things about God. It tells us that one, God speaks, and two, we're invited to listen. And because I get to do this prayer thing a lot, I know that you guys are vineyard and you're all like Holy Spirit, and I love that. But most of the time people are like, God speaks, and I'm like, oh yeah. And then they're like, but how do you know it's God? And there's a guy uh called Pete Gregg from the UK who wrote an amazing book called How to Hear God, a simple guide for normal people. And in that book, he makes it a really simple, again, not theologically robust, but easy enough for me and you to use, and he calls them the ABCs. And so if you think you might hear God speaking, you can run it through this sort of litmus test. And it's A, does this align with God's character as revealed in scripture? B, is the thing that I'm hearing biblically supported in any way? Or C, is it common sense? Common sense means the Lord is probably not going to ask you to get up out of your seat, fly out of that window, go perch on that tree like a bird, because he didn't build you to fly like a bird. Amen. So these things are or can be ordinary for us. The extraordinary, powerful voice of God can be ordinary for us. The writers of scripture uh use Ananias' reply to remind us of that moment because it is a faithful remembering of God who spoke not just in the Old Testament, but now again is speaking in the same way for those who are believers of the New Testament, the new promise, the new covenant under Jesus. And here's something I ponder as a modern-day reader, speaking of the voice of God is how did this intimate interaction make it onto the pages that you and I read today? Because truthfully, nobody really knows what happened, but Ananias and God. To the community around him, all they saw was this dude who was like, Well, I'm going to Saul. And that would probably seem one foolish, two, terrifying, and three, would it put a lot of people in question of like, did you hear God? Did you really hear God? If he's asking you to go into this place where you could really be in danger. And I imagine that later on, a guy named Luke, who wrote this book, was sitting down with an old man named Ananias, saying, Tell me again, tell me the story again. How did it happen? And Ananias sitting there, maybe almost ashamed to say, I don't know. I almost didn't go. I wonder if that is a lot like us. This ordinary moment that God shows up in prayer saying something to us. This is the detail I wanted to sit with with us today. This beautiful passage talks about this miraculous moment for a guy named Saul who changed the course of history for the church, but it all hinges on the yes of a guy who was hesitant, of a guy who was ordinary, of a guy who we never hear from again. The ordinary life of a Christian, the gray areas of our faith, our doubts, our wrestling, the things we think we hear God say, these are the incredible material that God uses to do extraordinary things. And so it is in our ordinary obedience that God can do miraculous things. I want to go on to the next portion of this passage where Ananias answers. He says, Lord, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priest to arrest all who call on your name. And here's what I love about Ananias, because he's like me. I don't know if he's like you, but God says, Do this, and he's like, I think I would like to tell you my my side of things, Lord, because I would prefer not to. Uh, he's honest. That's what I love about Ananias, is that he's honest. He's like, he's not afraid to tell God the thing that God definitely already knows, but he trusts God enough with the wrestling of his soul, with his doubt, with his fear, with his shame, with his concern, with his logic. He's honest enough. I want to sit with that for a second because that's not weak faith, that is honest faith. And that's what God invites all of us to, right? Honest faith that says, I actually need to just tell you that I'm not comfortable with this. God's not scared of that. He doesn't require your comfort, actually. Never in the book does it say, blessed is the comfortable. We've got this idea sometimes that spiritual maturity means you have to stop asking questions. Like those who are the most spiritually mature never, ever, ever doubt, never, ever, ever wonder, never, ever, ever have any fear or shame. But the book is full of people just like me and you who have all of those things. I think about Moses, who's like, I can't say it. I'm the wrong guy for the job. I think about Jeremiah, and he's like, no, no, no, no. Don't you understand? I'm too young for this. I think about Habakkuk straight up asking God how long he's gonna let this injustice keep going on in the land. I think about Job demanding an audience. I think about the entire book of Psalms, or maybe even lamentations. I think about these things. Real prayer. The prayer that you and I are invited to has room for our fear, our doubt, our faith, our hope, our anger, our questions. It's honest. But I know that some of us, because I do it too, edit ourselves before God because we feel like we've got to have it together in some form or fashion. We think we have to arrive already convinced of the answer we think that God is gonna give us. And if we're not there yet, it's probably better to like stay quiet, not bother God with our stuff. I hear this all the time. Why would I go to God if I don't know? If I don't know, if I have questions, if I have concerns, if I have doubts. But Ananias shows us a different way, and that's bringing all of those questions, that fear, that doubt, into the conversation rather than avoiding it. Lord, I have heard reports. This man brings warrants for people like me. He names it out loud to God's face, and God doesn't rebuke him for it. God also doesn't comfort him. And he's like, no, no, no, don't fear. We're gonna get to that in a minute. But I think about people in our own history in the U.S. I think about a woman named Rosa Parks, who was part of a social justice group that said, We're tired of being treated differently. And if you know her story, she sat down in a part of a bus that she wasn't allowed to sit in. She's quoted as saying, in that moment, she said, I had no idea history was being made. I was just tired of giving in. Maybe our ordinary obedience doesn't feel like an aha moment from God. Maybe it just feels like I'm too tired to keep doing it a different way. She wasn't fearless. We don't have to be fearless. Rosa was tired. She was honest, she obeyed, even in the face of all she knew was possible. And this is the same shape of Ananias's yes to the Lord. This obedience that includes our fear instead of pretending it isn't there. So let's move on to the next part of the passage. It says this, but the Lord said to Ananias, Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. And in this, God is not giving Ananias the answer he wants. God's not even comforting or resolving his fear, he's letting it sit there. I like that he's not saying, no, no, no, no, Saul's not that bad. He's not trying to like pretend the issue isn't there. God is instead moving forward and saying, no, no, I said what I said. And then I think this could just be me reading into it. God, knowing Ananias, is like, I'm gonna don't worry. I'm gonna show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. And Ananias is like, okay, well, if he is gonna suffer, then I'll go. You know, he's like giving himself permission to finally go. Because he's like, Well, if I'm the one that's gonna tell him he's gonna suffer, then maybe this job ain't so bad at all. Anyway, I don't, I have no idea. I just think about that. So instead of offering Ananias a way out, or instead of comforting his fears, God expands his imagination and invites him into the bigger story. He says, Actually, I'm gonna give you a glimpse into why you need to go, because here's what's gonna happen is I'm sending Saul to preach the gospel to the Gentiles and to their kings and to all of Israel. And so God is getting Ananias in on his grand plan. And so instead of calming his fears, instead of telling him it's gonna be okay, he says, Can you see what I see? Can you see what I see? Can you I want to tell you what I'm doing? This man is my chosen instrument. I'm a little bit of a like word nerd, and the word instrument there is the same Greek word that Paul later uses when he writes, we have these treasures in jars of clay. That jars of clay is that same Greek word instrument. And isn't it interesting that God in his kindness uses the same word to describe Saul, who will be Paul, as that jar of clay, and that later as he's preaching the gospel, he understands that that is actually who he is and who we all are. Anyway, just thought that was cool. Uh, Paul spends the rest of himself, the rest of his life describing himself that way and inviting others of us who call ourselves Christians to embrace that same common clay pot, seemingly insignificant, without the presence of God. We are chosen to carry something priceless, miraculous, and beautiful. We are ordinary, just like Ananias. And probably just as Paul considered himself to be as well. And there's uh a part that gets me Ananias didn't know that he was about to recruit like the guy who was gonna write two thirds of the New Testament. He had no idea this. Moment would change the shape of history for those who were followers of the way. He didn't know he was standing at the hinge point of the entire Gentile mission of the church. All he knew was God's voice telling him to walk down Strait Street. This is the pattern of ordinary obedience. We rarely get to see the whole story before we're asked to say yes to our part in it. He knew that Saul was gonna go to the Gentiles and go to all of Israel and go to the king, but I have absolutely convinced myself that Ananias could never have known the full scope. He could have never known just how large his part was in the story of God. Because I think if he did, I don't know about you, I would have freaked out. I would have absolutely been like, wait, you want me to go to this guy, and then he's gonna do those things, and it's my yes that's gonna do the thing? Whoa! I actually think that's too big of a job for me, Jesus. But God's not asking Ananias to do anything extraordinary, so he doesn't clue him in on to the wide range of what the future of his yes will bring. And that's the same as us. We also don't know the huge implications of our ordinary yeses into the future. We will never know the ripple effects of our ordinary obedience. For someone like Ananias to walk into a room where he's meeting someone who's persecuted and actively killed or participated in the murder of his brothers and sisters. It's interesting to me that he doesn't walk in and say, You're a sinner, you persecuted people, you're my enemy, you're wrong. He doesn't say any of that. The first word out of his mouth is brother. And that to me signals a huge work of God's miraculous presence in Ananias' life. Because Ananias forgave Saul before he ever showed up. Before he ever showed up, God did something in the heart of Ananias to let him have the ability to approach a guy like Saul and call him brother. I don't think we realize how big that is. He doesn't call him prisoner, he doesn't call him blind man, he doesn't say, you monster, you had my friends killed. He calls him brother. This is before the scales fall off of Saul's eyes. This is before Saul is healed. And I want to submit something to you, and I think that can be said of a lot of moments in scripture and in our own lives, and that is sometimes the thing that God does in us, the miracle of forgiveness God does in us makes room for the miracle that God wants to do outside. Sometimes the thing that we have to say yes to, the ordinary but very hard thing that we have to say yes to, makes the space for God to do something so much bigger than we could ever do ourselves. Ananias extends the family word to Saul. While Saul is still, as far as anyone in that room is concerned, simply a man responsible for hurting, hunting down, and killing people they loved. The forgiveness came before the miracle, not after. And maybe this is just the kind of space that both men, both Ananias and Saul, needed. Maybe they needed that moment of forgiveness for allowing the Spirit of God to move in the miraculous way he did. That order matters. We tend to want the proof first. Like, I want you to show me that you're repentant before I let you back in. I think about Ananias' radical act of forgiveness that is not dependent on Saul's repentance. That mirrors for us the kind of forgiveness that Jesus offers us before we ever come back to him and tell him, I'm sorry, he loves us. It doesn't mean we don't have to repent. It doesn't mean we don't have to change. It doesn't mean that's not what God's actually asking us to do. It's the fact that we're called family before we ever earned it. The Lord extends to each of us that kind of forgiveness, even and maybe especially those of us who are hardest to love and hardest to forgive. I think about Corey Tenboom, who you may have heard of. She's a figure of history who was alive during World War II. She was a resident uh in the Netherlands. She hid Jewish families in her home and was eventually sent to a concentration camp when they discovered what she was doing. She wrote a beautiful book that tells a story about a night years later when she was speaking at a church in Germany about God's forgiveness. And at that service, a man came up to her to shake her hand, and she recognized him. He'd been one of the guards at the camp she was at. And he wasn't just one of the many guards, he was one of the worst, one of the most cruel. And he didn't recognize her, but she definitely recognized him. He told her that he'd become a Christian and that he knew God had forgiven him for what he had done there. And now this man was asking for her to forgive him as well. He held out his hand to shake hers. And in the book, she says her arm felt frozen at her side. Everything in her did not want to lift it, and she prayed silently, something like, Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. She said the strangest thing happened. A current, like electricity, ran from her shoulder down through her arm, through her hand, and into his, and she said, I forgive you, brother, with all my heart. In that book, she wrote, Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. That's the math. That's the same math as Straight Street, where someone who was persecuted showed up to the persecutor, extended a hand, and said, Brother. Spoken before the transformation is visible because it's spoken by someone who has learned that the word itself can call something forward. I think about Desmond Tutu, who led South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the apartheid, and said it this way: forgiveness gives us the capacity to make a new start. And this is not because the wrong didn't happen, and it's not because it didn't cost something real, but because someone has been willing to speak the word brother, sister, family, friend before the story is finished. So here's the question for us today. Wherever your straight street is, who is God inviting you to love that might be hard to love? Who is God inviting you to bless that might be hard to bless? And I'm not talking about getting back into like an abusive relationship. I want to be clear about that. We're not, we're not doing that. But I wonder if there's a freedom that God wants to offer you and me through the forgiveness of his spirit. Who's the person you'd have every earthly right to keep filed under dangerous, under enemy, under the one who hurt me who hasn't earned anything from me? And what would it cost you to call them brother or sister before you have any proof they deserve it? Let's go back to the passage. Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized. Physical sight, spiritual sight, all restored in the same breath. Luke doesn't separate them because in this moment they are not separate. The healing of the body and the healing of the soul happened together, and both happened because an ordinary disciple was willing to place maybe shaking hands on the head of a man, he had every reason to fear. Think about the size of what unfolds here. The moment in an ordinary house on an unremarkable street is the hinge on which the entire Gentile mission of the church turns. There's a modern-day theologian, a British one, his name is N. T. Wright, and he has spent his entire career as a theologian arguing that you cannot tell the story of how the gospel moved from a Jewish sect in Jerusalem to a global movement without Paul standing at the center of it. His letters, his journey, his theology shaping nearly everything that would come after. And two-thirds, as I mentioned, of the New Testament was written by this guy. And none of it happens if Ananias says, Nope, I'm not going. Nope, I'm too afraid. No, I don't like him. No, I'd rather not. And I'm fairly certain that Ananias has no clue what that ordinary obedient yes would do. I think he stops in this moment for us. Any excuse we might have to be disobedient in the moment where we hear that little nudge from God that says, Would you go talk to that stranger and just tell him that you're praying for him? Would you just cross the street and get in the way of someone else so that you might have a conversation? Would you reach out to your mother-in-law or father-in-law or aunt, uncle, whoever that distant family member is, and just say, I forgive you. I'm praying for you. I wish you the best. Most of us will not write two-thirds of the New Testament. In fact, none of us will. None of us are gonna get knocked off a horse by blinding light. We're not gonna have our story read aloud in churches across the world for thousands and thousands of years. Most of us are Ananias. In fact, I might say all of us are. Most of us will get a nudge in prayer or have that uncomfortable person keep coming to mind. Most of us will be offered an opportunity to extend a word of grace. Most of us will have the opportunity to do it while we're scared. And most of the time, we will not see what that small yes produces in the world. We won't see the receipts. We'll just get the invitation to obey, and then we'll have to release the outcome of it. Mother Teresa, another figure of our modern day who spent her life among the poorest people in Calcutta, used to put it this way. She said, We can do no great things, only small things with great love. And I don't think she meant that as a consolation prize, like, it's over, guys, all that great stuff is done. I think she meant it as the actual math of the kingdom that God has always specialized in taking the small, ordinary, unglamorous acts of obedience and kindness and multiplying them into things that whoever did them will have never imagined, and who will not get to see the full implication of. There's a testimony of a guy who lived in the 1850s named Edward Kimball. He was a Sunday school teacher in Boston. This guy loves teaching Sunday school. And he loved it so much that he taught the hardest to teach, he taught teenage boys. And he loved them well. But God began to highlight to him this one kid in his class who was like kind of there, but not really taking it serious. And this Sunday school teacher was praying for this kid and heard from God, you have to get outside of the Sunday school and you have to go to his work. And you need to tell him how important it is that he takes this faith thing seriously. And so this Sunday school teacher named Edward Kimball went to a shoe store and he talked to this student named Dwight. And he sat him down and he said, Dwight, it's really important that you take this faith seriously. God is calling you into something much greater. And that man named Dwight turned into the modern-day theologian and evangelist, famous through the 1900s, called D.L. Moody. There's now a college in Chicago named after him. And it was because of Dwight's ordinary obedience into the thing that God called him to, that is what inspired the faith of a man called F.B. Meyer. And F.B. Meyer's preaching influenced a young evangelist named Wilbur Chapman. And Chapman's ministry shaped a man named Mordecai Ham, who decades later, after a series of revival meetings in North Carolina, ministered to a teenager named Billy Graham, who walked forward and gave his life to Jesus. And Edward Kimball would never know who Billy Graham was. But it was his ordinary obedience that made a ripple effect through history that changed our lives. This awkward, unqualified feeling Sunday school teacher having one really uncomfortable conversation with a teenager at a shoe store is sitting somewhere on the family tree of one of the most far-reaching ministries in American history. Kimball never lived to see the chain reaction of that. But it is one yes and one conversation has rippled through our history. And that's Ananias Math II. That's ordinary obedience. If you're someone who's like inspired by this kind of story, I would really recommend for you a book written by Eugene Peterson called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, where he argues that the whole point of Christian life is so far less about spectacular moments and far more about faithful, repeated decisions, being obedient to God in the same direction God has pointed you day after unremarkable day. So I want to go back to the beginning where we started, where Ananias, on an ordinary Sunday, in the middle of an ordinary prayer, hears a voice calling his name, Ananias. And somehow, we don't know how, through many years of relationship with God, it took him to get here. He's practiced enough at listening to his voice that he recognizes it. And he says, Yes, Lord, here I am. And that answer is what led him down straight street. That answer led him to forgiveness. That answer led him to Saul. And I don't know what your straight street looks like, or your Saul is the person you'd rather avoid than approach, rather resent than reconcile with. I don't know if you're someone who doubts you're hearing the voice of God or what you're carrying into a moment or what version of Lord, I've heard the reports of, I've lost faith that you could ever. I'm not sure that person would ever. But I know that this is true. The same God who spoke to Ananias is speaking to each of us today. He's still inviting all of us to ordinary moments of obedience that we will never see the full ripple effects of. So this week, when you're in prayer, when the noise finally settles down and you've rattled off your to-do list to God, I want to encourage you with this. Practice saying yes, Lord. There are four things I want us to try this week. Say yes, Lord. Listen more. I want us to try this out. Not because you know what's coming, not because you expect a grand miracle, but just simply because he's worthy of being invited into your time. He's worthy of being listened to. And he's also worthy of being honest with. We can be more honest with God. I want us to try being obedient in one small thing this week, one thing that feels small and feels insignificant. But I also want us to look out because in that moment, Ananias did experience something of a miracle. The scales fell from Saul's eyes. And so it was God's faithfulness showing up in that moment to say, I know you were scared, but see, see what your faithfulness can do. And so maybe there's an ordinary miracle, or maybe a big one that God wants to show you in the moment. So let's look out for those miraculous things. So as we close, I want to pray for us, and we're gonna uh I'm gonna invite uh Pastor Matt up here for ministry time. Uh, he was just telling me about his amazing vacation. And I was like, what's your favorite moment? And he just so happened to tell a story that fits exactly perfectly into today's message. Uh and so I'm gonna pray for us, and then I'm gonna invite Pastor Matt to sort of just give a testimony of what that looked like in his life this week. Because if I know anything about God, he's never gonna ask the leaders to do something that he would uh not ask the congregation to do, and vice versa. So if he's inviting all of us to do it, then he's gonna ask this guy to do it too. Uh so, Father, we love you. We listen for your voice. We say yes, here we are. We want to go where you send us. We want to forgive as easily as you do. We want to extend grace as easily as you do. Would you teach us by the empowerment of your spirit to listen to say yes and to be obedient in ordinary, small, simple things, even when we're feeling afraid, even when we're feeling uncertain, we offer this to you as a holy and living sacrifice. Would you have your way in us, Jesus? Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah, so uh Aaron and I just got back from uh vacation celebrating 10 years of of being married, and we um Oh yeah. Um before we left, uh we were doing this thing, men at seven, and we're getting together and praying and reading the Bible together. And um actually I was getting prayer. Sean was praying for me, uh, and he was just praying that I would like be aware of like being uh like sharing Jesus on this vacation. And to be honest, I thought about a lot of things on this trip, uh trip of a lifetime, really, but not about like how do I show Jesus on this vacation. I was like, we're we're gonna eat restaurants, you know, hotels, all this stuff. And um, so we're on this trip, and um I kind of had that in the back of my mind that prayer, and we went to this um tour of like where they roast coffee, make coffee, and um noticed this couple there uh and we sat down uh to eat brunch actually. There's space next to this couple, and I was like, we should sit next to them, and you know, we started talking about what do we do for work, and I said, you know, I'm I'm a pastor, and I thought are you guys church people like spiritual? And and uh the girl was like, actually, I scam my life to Jesus a year ago, and the guy was like, You know, we go to church uh with her. I don't really know what I believe, what I think about things, but um you know we had a great conversation that's about like their early 20s and talking about like their hunger for like more and and like is God real and all these things, and it was a really, really cool conversation. Um and we were leaving and they were going to their uh vehicle and we were going to ours, and I was like, Man, I kind of want to pray for them. I don't know. But then they walked to their car, and I was kind of like, ah, they're already gone. So we we uh you know uh before they left, we had to use the restroom or whatever. And so I was like, God, if you want me to pray for them, I pray they'd still be here when we get out of the bathroom. And um so got out and they're still there sitting by their car. Like, okay. I was like, hey guys, um, I'm gonna I pray for you by chance. I was like, would that be okay? Is that kind of weird? I was like, has anyone ever prayed for you before? They've like, but no one's ever prayed for us. I'm like, okay. And uh so Aaron and I just start praying for them and pray for her and pray for him. And um, while we were praying, I got this picture of him like, like with uh with a garden hoe, like hoeing a field. And I was like, that's weird. Um, and so after we're done praying, I said, Hey man, this is kind of strange, but like, have you ever thought about being a farmer? Like, that's a weird thing to say. Maybe a hundred years ago, I'd be like, of course people think about being farmers. Uh like he and they look at each other and they're like, What? He goes, Literally the last three days, I started talking to her about like what would you think I ever want to become a farmer? If I like wanted to farm. Like, what would you like? Like, we've been talking about this, and she's like, about getting into farming. And I was like, Wow. That's kind of cool. I was like, man, I know you're kind of asking these questions about like, do you believe in God? Like, is he real? You're going to church. I'm like, this just feels like a way that God really wants to show you that he's really real and that he loves you.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

You know, and I was like, by the way, we don't believe that if someone has come to you and says this, that you should like quit your job tomorrow and go be a farmer. Like, that's not we test it, pray, all those things. Um, but you know, here's the deal. Uh I was on vacation. I was thinking about the restaurants we were gonna go to, I was thinking about the coffee, I was thinking about the beach we're gonna lay on. My like I wasn't like honed in on like who can I pray for, but it was this like little nudge that I like didn't say yes to at first, and then I was like, Well, God, if they're still there afterwards, then I'll do it. And it was like this little picture I saw we were praying for them. It wasn't anything grand. If I could have easily overlooked it, uh, and so these little things, and I know you're like, oh Matt's a pastor. I was on vacation. I was not in like, I'm the pastor. I'm like, I'm on vacation from being a pastor, uh, you know, and but it was just really cool, like God's kindness, you know, not to me, but just like loves us much. And I don't know, who knows what's gonna be this kid's story? Yeah, you know, like I don't know what's gonna turn out, but like just giving a simple yes, yeah. Uh just yeah. So anyway, I was sharing it with Casey and she said we should share that.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

So yeah, right, exactly. So I'm gonna invite the worship team back up. We're gonna enter into a time of response, and it's simply this is as we're all worshiping in this final song uh together, I want to invite you to ask God what what small yes do you want from me? Or maybe it's Lord, I want to be available to you. Where do you want me to go? Maybe you're someone who's like, I don't even think I have enough faith to step into a moment like that. And if that's you, if you're like if you're someone who's like, I just want more faith, to believe that God does that, says that, will do that, and that I can actually be bold or bolder than I have been, I want to invite you to meet with someone on the prayer team, find them, have him pray a blessing of faith over you. Let that faith rise up. God in his word promises that his spirit is active in here, and one of the gifts he gives us is faith. Faith to believe that God is who he says he is and is gonna do what he's actually said he's gonna do. And so, uh, if you all stand with me, I want us to worship together in this final moment. And maybe you're gonna go up for prayer, but if you're not, I would just invite you to hold your hands before you in a moment of maybe surrender. Maybe this is a place where you offer up to God all of the things that you're fearing. Maybe this hands-open posture is a place where God wants to drop in a gift of faith or drop in the name of a person or an act of faithfulness he wants to invite. And so, Holy Spirit, would you increase the faith in the room? Would you increase the faith in the room not just for here today, but for tomorrow and the next day, and the next month, and the next year. Would you create in us a spirit that says, yes, Lord, I'm listening? That says, even though I'm scared, I'll go do that thing you said. Even if that picture is just a small little nudge, even if I'm not feeling particularly brave, I'll still be faithful in the small thing. Because I trust that you can do great things with my small, ordinary. Thank you, Jesus.