April 19, 2026 - "Discovering You"

Passage: Exodus 3:1-10

Guest Speaker: Nick Honerkamp

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One of my favorite Proverbs 25 2. It says, It's the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter. And I know that the Lord, you know, sometimes the Lord hides some things, but sometimes I just think that the Lord is so deep that we're not ready to discover it all. You know, we dig down a little, we're like, I found Jesus. And then a year later, you're like, oh wow, now I've really found Jesus. And then three years later, it's like, oh my gosh, that's why I think the angels in heaven say holy, holy, holy.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Well, welcome in, everyone. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the pastors at Highland Christian Church. And on behalf of our team, I just wanted to say thanks for taking some time to journey with us through the scripture. Our hope is that these words would cause you to think carefully about this Jesus we proclaim, and that you would choose to trust him in your day-to-day. And as always, if you're in the Asheville area, whether you live here or you're visiting, we'd love for you to come join us at the corner of Livingston and Depot Street in person at the Dr. Wesley Grant Senior Southside Center. Our prayer is that God's words would equip you for every good work that He's prepared for you to do today.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

This morning, we have uh a wonderful friend of our church, um, a gifted communicator, a man who loves the local church, uh, and who we have asked to come and bring the word this morning. Um, so will you guys uh help me welcome Mr. Nick Honor Camp to come preach for us?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

All right, good morning. Glad to be here with you guys this morning. Um I that blast sermon, I can't compete with that. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But also earlier Jacob was preaching my sermon because I'm preaching out of Exodus 3 in the burning bush today. So God's got us all lined up. But before I get into the sermon, I just want to take a second. I've had the privilege of spending a lot of time with Pastor Jason and Jacob and the elders, Ben and Tim and Rob, over the last six months, just behind the scenes. Um I pastored for 27 years in Haywood County. Now I'm a consultant that works with churches, and so we were doing some projects behind the scenes. And I just want to tell you that this is a great church. This is a great church. I I I've I've been to 150 churches in Bunkham County alone. And I so I've got a view of the church world. This is a unique church, and I just want to applaud you all for the way that you do ministry and the way that you encourage each other in the Lord. And I just want to say three, I want to honor the Lord today, but I also want to honor this house. I want to say three things about Jason Garris. Number one, in the pastor circle, when we get like 50 pastors in the room, what Jason is known for is the purity of his heart. He's not trying to get a good crowd, build the budget, he's not putting on events to prove his value and his worth. His heart is in the right place. He leads with his heart, and that's pretty rare for pastors. Number two, integrity. He is what you think he is, because he does the stuff that he says we should do. And if he'll do it himself if no one else will do it, because he has integrity. And number three, amongst the pastors in this community, he's considered one of the points to the spear of what God wants to do reaching out into our community. Whenever we talk about community outreach or something, Jason's name comes up because this church had been built around that. And I just wanted to give you that view of yourself and your leadership because he's not gonna stand up here and say it by himself. Pastor Teddy's back there. We talk about Jason all the time like this. But I thought I'm gonna take a moment and I'm gonna go ahead and say it out loud. Doreen can at least be sitting here listening, and I just applaud very much and very honored to be here. All right, so here we go. We're gonna, I want to talk today about discovering you, discovering you. And I've got five points and I want to get somewhere, and I'm gonna start with a scripture, one of my favorite Proverbs 25, 2. It says, It's the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter. And and I know that the Lord, you know, sometimes the Lord hides some things, but sometimes I just think that the Lord is so deep that we're not ready to discover it all. You know, we dig down a little, we're like, I found Jesus. And then a year later you're like, oh wow, now I've really found Jesus. And then three years later, it's like, oh my gosh. That's why I think the angels in heaven say holy, holy, holy. I think God just turns like like one degree, and they're like, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy. And and I want to inspire us today about really paying attention and being aware of God's presence in the room, like Jacob said earlier. So the passage I want to read to you today, you all probably all know, Exodus 3, 1 through 10, and I'm gonna read it to you. And it says, Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Median, and he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a burning, in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush, so he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn. So when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am. Then he said, Do not draw near this place, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy gown. Moreover, he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and bring them up from the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Parasites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And the the first point I want to talk about is awareness. When we study, most of the theologians that write books about worship, it's not about singing, it's not about writing songs, it's not even about prayer. It's about worship is a response to a revelation that he's present right now. It is, it is, it is that moment where you see God in a circumstance where he puts something together in your head that now makes sense. And in that moment, what comes out of our heart is a response to God. We're overwhelmed with his goodness, like, thank you, Jesus. That's amazing. And so in this passage, Moses just sees a bush and he's curious about this bush that's you know, by the way, what was Moses doing in the desert? He was hiding. He was running from Pharaoh, and he ran out to the desert to hide. And not only that, he's on the back side of the desert. I don't know about you, but I've been in a season in my life that it's like, Papa, you can use somebody else. I think I'll just sit in the back over here and do that. He said, Nope, I'm not done with you. And I'm like, Papa, are you sure? And I, you know, I own plenty of preachers would love the microphone. Give it to them. I don't need it anymore. And but I found that he is so sweet and he's so good. The other night, he, I don't know how this happened, but I was sitting there and he whispered something to me that made sense about a circumstance in my life. And in just a few moments, he pulled three or four things that have happened in my world together and showed me what he's been doing in my life. I worshiped him for four hours the other night. When you experience God on a personal level where it makes sense, okay, Papa, now I understand. It's just a response, it's an awareness to his presence and then a response to the goodness of God. And Pastor Jason told me I could tell you a couple uh stories about the churches that I've visited and some of the things that I've seen. And I want to just tell you a couple stories about this. Number one, ABCCM. We have a crisis ministry, and the crisis ministry helps people with their rent, it helps them with food, helps them with clothes, their utilities. And one day I was at the Hominy Valley Crisis Ministry when I worked for ABCCM, and this woman came in, and she her just lost her husband three months before. And she was Moldovian and she had three kids with her, but her husband had been killed in a semi-truck accident. And so when the person was interviewing her to find out what she needed, uh she had to list out her address. And the person doing the intake said, You can't, you should not live there. That's a dangerous place. You've got to get out of this place. You can't live in this place where you're living right now. She said, I know. I've been trying for three months to get in this new apartment complex, but I can't get them to respond to me. Or, you know, I re- I just can't get in. I don't know what to do. And they said, Okay, we're gonna stop right now. We're gonna pray and ask God that He will open a door for you. And when we're done praying, we're gonna give you some food, we're gonna give you some clothes, we're gonna give you some financial help. And the woman working there prayed over this lady, and they got up. She said, Now let's go get some food, let's go get some some clothes for you and your three kids. And she took about 10 steps and her phone rang and she picked it up, and it was the apartment complex saying, Your apartment's here. When you see those moments, man, it deserves worship, it deserves God, it gives you hope, it gives you encouragement. One day I was working at the medical clinic, ABCCM's medical clinic, right up here on the hill. And this woman came in and she needed a very specific kind of medicine, and it's it's expensive and it's rare, and she couldn't afford it. And she's like, I need this medicine. And the doctor that was working with her says, I'm sorry, but we work off donations, we just don't have that medicine. It's a very unique medicine. And the woman says, Okay, and she went home. Ten minutes later, somebody walked in with a box of that medicine, and we got to call her back. And when she got there, she was like, Thank you, thank you, thank you, what you've done for me. Said, No, if we had done it, it'd already been here. God wanted you to know not only get your medicine that you need, but that He has you, that we couldn't fix your problem, but there's a God sitting on the throne room of heaven that can do that for you. And I just I've seen these miracles, and I'm amazed at what God can do. Now I've had to turn the TV off and turn the news down a little bit so I can see him better. Say la. So one of the churches I went to, and I love the way you do communion. I I don't know any other church that does communion the way you are, where you receive and you give. That we all need to receive, but we all need to give as well. And uh so I went to this traditional Baptist church, and the preacher, I've known this preacher for 25 years, love him. He was wearing a suit and a tie, because that's what they do. They sing hymns to have pews and they have a choir and they suit and tie. And uh somebody fussed at me today for wearing a collar today, and so we don't do collars here. And so um he gets up to preach and he says, You know, some things are God and some things just tradition. Some of the things in the church are just tradition, it's not really God. He said, In fact, let's just see if I can preach today without a tie on. And he took his tie off and he put it on the choir loft. And he started talking, and he said, You know what? Let's just go all the way. I'm gonna take my jacket off. Took his jacket off, put him over his hand, pulled his shirt out, and he said, Now, can I still preach without all those trappings right there? That man began to speak, and the Holy Spirit started to empower him. And he said, I need to stop right now. If you give money to this church to be seen by man or to be seen by God, then stop giving. I don't want you to give anymore. Unless your heart's overflowing with gratitude, I don't want you giving. And I was like, Holy, what, what, what? And then he said, in fact, if you're serving in this church and you're serving to be seen or serving to meet a hole in your heart, stop serving. I don't even want you to serve anymore. He says, if you aren't serving to honor the Lord, I want you to stop. Now, I'm scandalized right now. By the way, giving is scriptural, serving is scriptural. Let's make it very clear. Don't go home and say, past the guest preacher said, I don't have to give anymore and I'll have to serve anymore. That's not what I said. Yeah, yeah. And the elders are back there getting ready to charge me. And so what happens is he starts preaching. And when he finished, the gentleman came up to do the song at the end. And when he started playing, the Holy Spirit just fell in that room. Bam! And I was like watching to see, because the guy that was doing the song didn't pick up, that God just walked in the room. The Holy Spirit, the presence of God, just became palpitable. And the preacher got back up and said, Stop, he's here. I don't know what we're gonna do next, but we're not moving on. He's here. One of the bravest things I've ever seen a guy do in the pulpit. I went up to him afterwards and I said, That was brave. And did you see how the Holy Spirit responded to what you did? You had an awareness of what God was doing in the service, and you wouldn't let us just sing the song and continue on with the order of service. You were willing to let us stay here, and the people felt it, they didn't know what to do. They love that pastor because he's not playing games, he's for real, and I've been very impressed by him and by his church. But it begins with an awareness of knowing that he's in the room, and that's what happened. Moses is like, wait a minute, there's a bush over there on fire. That's not right. That's what's up with that. He had an awareness that something unique and different was happening. And my heart, my prayer for you is that God would give you Holy Spirit eyeglasses where you can see him in circumstances. And you know, I've got people in my world that say, I see you. I see you. That's the way they worship the Lord every time they see him do so. I see you. So, number one is awareness. Number two is there's got to be some divine interest or curiosity. You know, Psalm 37, 4 is my favorite passage. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he places his desires inside of your heart, and now you're walking in the with the heartbeat of God. And and what we see in this passage, and it's really important, Moses is just taking care of the sheep. He looks over and sees a burning bush. And then Moses does this. He's responding. He says, Then he, I will turn aside and see what's going on. In the church world, unfortunately, when we see a burning bush, we think that that was the whole thing. It's not the whole thing. When you notice God doing something, that's not the end of the story. He's welcoming you into a deeper revelation of who he is. Remember what the passage said. It says, When Moses saw the burning bush, he said to himself, Now I will turn, another word for repentance, by the way, I will turn to see what's going on. And it says that when God saw that he turned, he spoke to him. And it's one thing to hear a message from the platform or be reading in scripture or God whispers something to your heart, but if we don't turn towards that, if we don't take the next step, then God doesn't speak. We we've got to do both. We've got to see the sight, and then we've got to turn towards it and be curious and say, God, what are you doing in this circumstance right here? And then God goes deeper. And if we keep going back to God, he keeps going deeper. And I see, I actually, one time in my life, I told Papa, Stop, I cannot handle anymore. I think my face is gonna melt off right now. Please hold back to Revelation. You're killing me right now. And sometime later I said, Go ahead and kill me. Just go ahead and kill me. I'm not gonna stop God from pouring out what he wants to pour in. But in the church world, too many times we already know what's gonna happen when we walk in the room. But if the Almighty God of the universe is here in this room right now, miracles can happen, supernatural can happen. And that's what I want to entice you to just go home today and say, Papa, show me what you're doing in my life. Give me a burning bush experience, and then turn towards it and get really curious and say, I want more, I want more, because God wants to give us more. I promise you that. There's a um, there's a a little poem, a part of a poem that I love, and it says, Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush of fire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around and pluck blackberries and daub their natural faces unaware. What a powerful part of a poem that God is crammed in every bush and every tree and nature and the beauty and every human and every circumstance. He's there. But if we don't see it, we just pick blackberries and feed our tummy. We need to be able to see what God's actually doing. Number three, adjust. And this is the real big piece that we have to get to. Is the other day I was talking to Papa the night I was worshiping him, and he says, Nick, what worship really is, you know, we're supposed to pray without ceasing, but I think we can worship too without ceasing. And he said, Nick, what true worship is, is you being aware that I'm in this circumstance, and then you adjusting to this new revelation. I just showed you how I'm working in your life. I just showed you that's good for you, that's not good for you. And then you adjust to that, that's true worship. When you respond to my my guiding and my unction, and and I've I've said this a lot in the last six months. The Lord scandalized me when he said, You cannot be led by the Spirit if you're being driven by anything else. So you're being driven by fear or insecurity or lust or pride or greed or acceptance, whatever. But if you're being driven by that, the Holy Spirit can't really lead us. But with the Holy Spirit, he's so gentle and so sweet and so loving. He just comes in and says, I want that thing. And if we adjust to that, we enter into a deeper relationship with God and more revelation of what God's trying to do into our lives. Moses turned, God said, I saw that he turned, and then God comes in and speaks to him, and he says, Now, Moses, real quick, there's holy and there's common. You got to be careful, there's there's holy and there's common. Because when God works in our hearts and lives, he wants to pull us up to a higher level. And part of that higher level is saying, that's not holy over there. That's just common, but this is holy. And the rules for handling the holy is way different than the rules for handling something else. I had a woman, uh young woman, this is a scandalous story. I I think Jason will forgive me. I had this young woman come up to me and she after service and she says, What do I do now? And I said, What do you mean? She says, Well, I was at home and I was reading my tarot cards, and as I was looking at my tarot cards, the tarot cards told me I had to be silent for 24 hours. So I just said, Okay, so I knew the only way I could stay silent is stay at my house all day. Well, I was at my house and somebody had given me a Bible one time, and so I have never read the Bible. But since I have to be quiet for 24 hours, I thought, why not just read this Bible? So I read the Bible. I started reading John. So I started a little here, a little there, I started reading. And and and God spoke to me and said, You have to go to church tomorrow morning. Just pick a church and go to church tomorrow morning. And she walked in and said, Now what do I do? And I'm like, This is holy. I don't even want to touch this. I mean, you're dabbling in tarot cards, and somehow the Lord directed you over here. I I don't I it sounds like he's got your number. I don't know that you need me. Well, then my youth pastor got a hold of her and let her to the Lord. But uh, I it's just there's times it's holy, and we've got to be careful to not touch something. And and there's times in my life, particularly with people that are hurting, people that are struggling, that Papa will say, Be gentle right now. This is holy. I'm working with them right now. Be kind, be compassionate, and don't you dare judge them. So the Lord is good like that. So there is this adjustment that we have to make, but he's so good to teach us how to do this. Now, let me teach you something. This is really important. Remember when Jesus was being baptized? It said that Jesus, when he was baptized, he saw the Holy Spirit like a dove come and land on him, and he heard the voice of the Father. Two things happened when he got baptized. He saw and he heard. That's your input gates. And what I learned in repairing radios in the Marine Corps was if there's an you're you get out of something, what you put into something. So the first thing God does is He He took Jesus and He He calibrated his eyes to see in the heavenlies, and he saw the dove, and he heard the Father say, This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And once your input gates are calibrated to the Lord, now your output gates, which is your mouth and your hands and feet, now they can be purified to go do the things you need to do. So now Jesus started preaching and he started healing people with his hands and feet, with his hands. He started touching people. So we got to watch our input gates, our eyes and our ears, so that he purifies it so our words have power and authority, and also so that we can do the things God's called us to do. That's how he does it when we make the adjustment. Number four, identity. And I like Jacob was all over this as well. Um, you know, God shows up and he says, Moses, Moses. God knows your name, and he knows how to find you, and he knows how to speak to you. You can be on the backside of desert hiding from everything, but God show up in a bush, and you're like, What is this going on? And he says, Moses, Moses, this is what's going on. I am the God of your forefathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's what's going on. This is not just a burning bush. And it's that Moses was terrified. He's like, Oh no, I have stumbled into the holy and into the divine, and he covered his face because he didn't know how to deal. With the holy, he was scared in that moment. And one of the things that happens throughout scripture, and we see it with Abram and Abraham, and we see it with Sarai and Sarah, and we see it with Jacob and Israel, that when we see who God is, he then shows us who we are in relation to that. And if you'll remember, um, Jesus asked Peter one time, he said, Peter, who do people say I am? And Peter says, Well, some people think you're this, some people think you're that, some people think you're over here, you know. And Jesus says, No, no, who do you say I am? And he says, You're the son of God, you're the living son of God. And immediately Jesus said to him, And you are Peter, and on this rock I'll build my church. When you find God intimately for yourself, not out, not just out of the Bible, not just from somebody else's preaching, but I'm talking about God speaks to you for yourself. He shows you something in scripture, he gives you meaning for the circumstances going in your life. When you see him, he then turns it and says, And this is who you are in relationship to who I am. And that's where identity really gets formed. What a great message on identity. Um, because we all have had those names that we carry around. And Papa's been good to me recently. He's been taking some of those names off of me. And and he said, You know, what are some of the names that you call yourself? And I was like, This one. He says, I want it. And so that that message was for me. I don't think I came to preach today, I think I came to be preached to today. So thank you, sir. It's the identity. Yeah, rip it off. I don't have anything on right now. Um, take my tie off if I had one, but it's the identity, and I want to go to point five, and I'll come back and forth for just a second. Number five is assignments. When you figure out who God is and then who you are in relation to that, then you can start finding the assignments that God has for you. And I'm just gonna share a couple real quick. There was a season when I needed to um, I was gonna fire um a person on my staff, and I fit there was just some problems, and I felt like I needed to fire the person. I put them on a 90-day improvement plan. We got to the last two weeks, and I'm like, okay, need to start looking for a new guy because I'm gonna have to let him go. And the Holy Spirit says, do not touch him. And I said, Well, Papa, I mean, we can't let this keep going on. And he said, Don't you touch him? And I said, Okay. The next week he found out his wife had cancer. And if I had let him go, they would have had nobody to care for them. But because I didn't let him go, we as a church got to care for her for the next year before she passed. And the Holy Spirit said, You've been his boss for years, and you were ready to fire him. What I want you to do this next year is go visit him every day and sit with him while he sits with his wife and love on him and pray for him. And I was like, Papa, I got a I'm busy, I got a lot going on. But Papa said, This is your assignment. It's the most important thing I want you to do this year is sit with that man and be there for him as he tries to care for his wife. Well, there's a potter here in Asheville who really loved his wife. And so she started coming every day. I was going every day. I was loving on the husband, she was loving on the wife. And one day I bumped out into her out in public and I said, Hey, by the way, you don't need to go check on them today. I'm gonna stop by and see them, so you don't need to take your time. I'll take care of it. And she said, Nick, that's my assignment. You can't tell me not to do my assignment. I don't care if you go for stay for eight hours. My assignment is to go sit with that woman, and I'm gonna keep going and sit with that woman. And I, what a beautiful thing I learned about the assignments that God will give us. And assignments do change because they're not your identity, but you find your identity in the assignments that God asks you to do. If God asks you to love on somebody that's not very lovable, you're gonna be a blessing to that other person, and God will use you supernaturally to show love. But you'll get more out of it than they got out of it. How many of you have ever been on a mission trip? We go to help people and we get more out of it than they get out of it. You can't outgive God. It just can't. But when you do the assignments, I remember I had a young woman in my church, and she was a worship leader, and she went to Greece for two weeks, and she came back and she said, Pastor, the Lord showed me what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. And I thought, this is gonna be easy. I mean, I've I've been paying attention for years. And I said, A worship leader. And she said, No. Everybody thinks I'm a worship leader, but I had to get away from everybody else and go somewhere else for God to speak to me. He's called me to be a different kind of minister. I'm laying my music down, he showed me what I need to be. Her assignment opened up her identity. Identity is more important than assignments, but a lot of us struggle to find our identity without doing the assignments. So sometimes we have to walk it out before we can really see what God's trying to do in our life. I remember one time that Papa was talking to me and he said to me, I want you to go sit. There was a woman in my church, she she was the second hardest person I ever had to pastor in my life. She had she had been in a horrible childhood, and because of that, she was pretty antisocial and didn't read the cues in the room, and she just was a difficult person. And I would come off the platform after preaching, and she said, Pastor, this church doesn't work. And I said, Hope, I don't understand. I mean, I just look around the room. A lot of people are getting help, a lot of people are being blessed. She said, But this church doesn't work for the one, it only works for the 99. And I said, Well, if I'm taking care of the 99, somebody else could take care of the one. And Papa whispered to me and says, Until you learn how to take care of the one, you're not really taking care of the 99. And she she drove me bonkers. I mean, if yeah, she drove me bonkers, she just did. Uh we we we had a little phrase called EGR. Extra grace required. This is one just needs a little extra grace, and she got cancer. And the Lord said, Your assignment. Every week, go sit with her. Every week. I felt I began to love hope. Her spirit, her heart. She came to the elders to be prayed for. And one of the elders had the courage to say, What do you want us to pray for? Of course, healing, right? What do you want us to pray for? And she said that I might know God in this season as well. And in that last year of her life, she came to me. One day I came, sat with her, and she said, Pastor, do you you did you know the book of Job? I said, Sure, I know the book of Job. She says, You know, there's seven brothers and three sisters, but the three sisters don't have names or possessions in the beginning of Job. He said, But then Job meets God, and at the end they have inheritance, they have names. You can't meet God and treat women the same. That's a great message. I've never seen that in the scripture before. But if you've met God, you can't treat people the same way because you see the God peace in them. And towards the end of her life, I can't tell you how much I prayed for hope. To this day, I have a seven-page prayer that I wrote out that I still keep because she changed my life. She was the unlovable, but I was the unlovable. We were the unlovable. And one day I came in and she said, I need to apologize to you. I said, Why? And she says, This church does work for the one. And I said, No hope, you were right. We're not doing a good enough job for the one. No, Pastor, I was wrong. No, no, hope, I was wrong. And so we went back and forth, and then hope passed, and she went to heaven. And I got to do her funeral, and about 20 people showed up. That's all. 10 was their family, and 10 were other friends, outside at a graveside doing a funeral. And I stood up and I talked about hope. I talked about how hard, difficult she was, and then I talked about what a beautiful soul she was and what God did towards the end of her life. And her parents were like, Man, you knew her. We thought you were just gonna come say some nice stuff, but it's obvious you knew who she was. She was difficult. And yet that's me, and that's you, and that's us, that we can be difficult. And thank God that somebody has the assignment to love us when we're not lovable. My hope is that sometime this week you'll see a burning bush somewhere. The way the Lord does it with me is he shows me something unusual, and I'll write it down like, Why did you teach me? The other day I was talking to this young young guy, I call him Young Bucks. I said, Young Buck, teach me something. Just this young guy, and asked, teach me something. He said, Don't chase happiness, pursue peace. Happiness follows peace, maintain your peace at all times. I'm like, dude, that is deep. The only time I've ever asked a young buck to teach me something, and he taught me, well, watch your peace. Happiness follows peace. If someone walks in the room and your peace starts to leave, notice that. What the Lord does with me is he'll show me something over here, show me something over here, show me something over here. I'm like, Papa, that's all good, but I don't know. And then in one moment, he ties it all together and shows, this is what I've been doing in your life. All this time, this is what I've been doing in your life. The other day I was talking to Papa, and I thought back to when I was in high school and I worked at the golf shack, uh, the cart shack at the golf course, and we had a group come in and play four-day tournament, and then they would leave a tip, and we'd all share the tip. And and I got a $40 tip. Now, back in the day when I was young, that's a lot of money. $40 tip. And then I, on the way home that day, I rolled through a stop and got a ticket for $40. And I've used that story for decades in my preaching, talking about how the devil will steal from you, how the devil steals from you. And recently, Papa and I were talking, and he just said, How long are you going to keep giving the devil credit for that story? And I said, What do you mean? And he says, Did it ever cross your mind that I knew you would commit the crime? So I made sure you had the money before you committed the crime to get out of the problem, just like I knew you would need a savior before you even sinned, and then you sinned, and I'd already come and already prepared. I was already here ready. I gave you the $40 because I knew you were a knucklehead and you're gonna run through that stop sign. Give me the credit for what I've done in your life. Awareness. Be aware of Holy Spirit this this week. What's he doing in your life, what's he doing around you? Be curious, dive in, look, ask questions, make whatever adjustment he asks you to make. Because I promise you, if you'll turn towards the Lord when he shows up to speak, you'll get an assignment, and that assignment will lead you to understand your identity better, because there's nothing more important than our identity here on earth. We are sons and daughters of the living God. We are already saints, we've already been redeemed. We have a purpose on this earth. We're here for a reason. And so for me, my assignments led me to my identity, but my identity continues to inform me about which assignments are for me and which assignments are for other people. So my prayer for you today is that you will be aware of Holy Spirit this week. And if he asks you to turn, that you'll just turn a little bit. And you might want to write it down. Just write down what the Holy Spirit's saying because he may bring up two or three other things, and at some point in the future he brings them all together. But he's holy. Sir, I don't know your name. I grabbed you as soon as you came off the platform. When you began to sing, I felt an authority behind that voice. I I it it I was like, something's going on right there. And it's not that all of us aren't gifted in some way, but I've never met you before. And when you started singing, I something was rattling like chains in my chest. And I was like, okay, Papa, are you breaking something off of me right now? What's going on right here? I used to be very critical, very judgmental. And I asked Papa to take that away from me, and he said, No. He said, I'm gonna teach you how to find beauty and brilliance in other people. I'm gonna redeem it. And I could not leave this building without grabbing you. And I don't know if it meant anything to anybody else, but there were chains in my heart that were rattling as you began to sing. God uses all of us, and my hope is that you will see the holy this week, and that you won't be scandalized where you find it. One more thing. One of the hardest things for mature Christians to do is not judge other people by your assignment. If God's called you to be a thumb and he's called me to be a pinky, don't judge me because I'm not a thumb. Don't judge other people by your assignment. We don't all have the same assignment, okay? Papa, we just thank you for the privilege of being in this room today. We thank you for the privilege of you being in this room today. The love and the joy. I thank you for for Ben and Jacob and the ways that you were moving through all of us today in the same theme. And I'm just asking that you would open the eyes and open the ears, the input gates of every person in this room this week, that they would see you, that they would recognize you, and they would recognize the holy that's happening in and around them. And I ask that you would dip them deep in your glory, that either one, they will find better clues to their identity, or at least will get an assignment about what they're supposed to do next. And I thank you for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

We just wanted to say thank you for listening to the Highland Christian Church Podcast today. And if you ever want to connect with us, send prayer requests, ask questions, or for any other reason, you can visit our website, www.highlandchristian.com, or you can send us an email at info at highlandchristian.com. God bless you guys.