Sermons tagged with Identity

My name is Nate. It's good to see you. Thanks for being here on this August Sunday. I hope that you've had a good summer as they're winding down. We're winding down our summer series as well called Obscure Heroes. And if this is your first exposure to it, the idea is we kind of know the heavy hitters in the Bible, right? We know some of the main characters. We know the Davids and the Moseses and the Abrahams and the Pauls the John's and Peter. We know those folks. But tucked away in the Bible. Sir, if you could please find your seat. I just always want to do that. Tucked away in the Bible are these folks that we just see for a chapter or two. We just get little snippets or little glimpses into the lives of these folks, but the examples that they leave through their stories are profound. And we wanted to take some time in the summer and focus in on some of these stories. So this morning, we're looking at the story of a woman named Rahab. Rahab, when we meet her, we meet her in Joshua chapter 2. Now, Rahab lived in a city called Jericho. To understand why that's important, what we have to realize is that the people of Israel, God's chosen nation, have come out of Egypt. They've come out of slavery. They've lived in the desert for 40 years, and now they're about to cross over the Jordan River. They're on the east side of this river. They're about to cross over the river and go on a conquest to conquer what we know as the modern day nation, land of Israel. To them, it was the land of Canaan. And Joshua was going to lead his armies over the river and then through the nation to sweep through and take over all the cities for themselves per God's orders. And like good war planners do, they had to go get some intel. So Joshua finds two spies and he sends them into Jericho to go see what they could see and come back and they would come up with a strategy on how to attack this city. So when the spies go into Jericho, they end up in the house of a woman named Rahab. Now Rahab was a prostitute. And I like to think that these men were there not because they were of a weak moral fiber, but because it made sense for people coming in and out of town to spend the night at her house, because this was something that was done a lot. So this would kind of throw people off the scent. It makes sense for some transient businessmen to come in, spend the night there, and then leave the next day without raising too many eyebrows. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. But when we meet Rahab in Joshua chapter 2, one of the first things we learn about her is that she was a prostitute. She was used to this kind of thing. But the men come in and somehow or another, the king of Jericho, the authorities in Jericho, get word that there are some spies in their city. And so they start trying to find them. And then they hear that they're probably in Rahab's house. But Rahab, who has every reason to hand them over to the king, she doesn't need this stress in her life. She doesn't need this drama. I don't know what her life looked like at the time, but I'm sure it had plenty enough drama that she didn't need to be hiding spies from the government. It would have been way easier for her to just let the king in and say they're right there and go get them. But that's not what she does. She actually, we see, she goes up to them. They're sleeping on the roof. And we see in Joshua 2, verse 8, that this is Rahab's response when she encounters God. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof. Verse 9, and she said to the men, I know the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. And she goes on. She goes on and she's talking about their fear and she makes a deal. She says, so here's the deal. I'm going to hide you. I'm going to protect you. I'll lie to the king for you. I'll give you an escape route. But I need to know that when your armies come through Jericho and conquer us, that you're going to protect me and my family. I'll make a deal with you. And I love this response from Rahab because what we'll see as we move through her story is that Rahab's response to God was faithful obedience. Rahab's response to God was faithful obedience. Think about it. This is a woman that's presumably grown up in Jericho. We don't know what their religion was, but it was what we would refer to as a pagan religion. She didn't worship the God that we worship. She didn't worship the Hebrew God. This was a land and a time when each civilization and each culture had their own gods, and they would always vie for power with each other. That's why the 10 plagues in Egypt was actually a strategic affront to 10 different gods of Egypt to show the nation of Egypt that the Hebrew God is more powerful than your God. And so if you had any national pride at all, if you had any cultural pride, you would always say that your God was stronger than the other gods. Except when she encounters the Hebrew God and hears of the stories of the Hebrew God and what they're doing and what he's doing for Joshua in his army, she responds in fear. And then that fear produces obedience because she had a choice. She can hand over the spies and do what's easy for her, or she can protect them and take that on. And she chose in faithful obedience to protect them. And I call this obedience to God. And here's what I think is super interesting about this step of obedience that Rahab took. Would we call her a Christian? No. Was she a believer? Was she in? Was she a Hebrew? Was she practicing? Was she following the law and performing the sacrifices and going to temple? Did she know the Torah, the first five books of the Bible? Did she know even who Moses was? Did she know the story of Abraham or Noah? Did she know any of this stuff or any of the things around the religion that she was being obedient to? No. She just knew that God was coming and she wanted to be on the right side of things. So she took the step of obedience that was in front of her, and she helped the spies. I love that response from Rahab. So she tells the spies, I'm going to hide you. I'm going to lower you out of my window because she had, her house was actually in the city walls of Jericho. She says, from your window, then we promise that we will protect you and anybody who is in this house. They say, okay, deal. So she lets him down. Sure enough, King knocks on her door. She gives him the old that away. You know, they went over there and lies to him, which is an interesting thing to know because God counts this to her as righteousness. So sometimes lying is okay. Just so we're clear, there's a hierarchy of things that we're supposed to do to love others. And in this situation, she was supposed to love on the spies and obey God by deceiving the king. So this absolutism of morality doesn't really work sometimes. It's just a useless aside for you. But she lets him down the window. They get away. She sends the king in another direction, and everybody's safe. And then a little while later, we have the famous Battle of Jericho, where God's strategy from on high was to march around the city seven times, which seems, first of all, ineffective, and second of all, tiring. But I've actually gotten the chance to be at Jericho and see the size of it and actually look down in a dig and see the excavation and the layers of the walls. And towards the bottom, there's this one black layer of soot from the walls being burnt down this one time, which is super interesting. And the whole size of Jericho is maybe the size of the parking lot that's across the street. So walking around it seven times in a day isn't unfeasible. It's not like a triumph of the human spirit or anything. So that's what they did. And on the seventh time, the walls fell down, the armies of Joshua swept into Jericho, took over the city, but because the cord was hanging from Rahab's window, they protected her and her family and grafted her into the nation in a way that you'll see in a minute. And I think that Rahab's faith is remarkable. One of the reasons I think it's remarkable, and I don't know how much time you've spent thinking about this, probably not much. I tried to really think through it this week. And I have to make some guesses here, but I think that you'll give me the license and the liberty to make these guesses? What was Rahab's life like? What happened in her life that she ended up as a prostitute? Women in that day, and it goes without saying that it's totally wrong, but women in that day had very little value outside of being a wife. They could not have a profession. They had no opportunity to make money. And so to be on your own as a woman is to have very few options. And so she took the only option that was in front of her. And so what it tells me is she either experienced loss or rejection or both in her life. Maybe she had a husband and he passed and so now she had to fend for herself. Maybe she wanted to be married and she couldn't. Women in that culture very much wanted to be married. They had no way to provide for themselves. They needed to get married. And so it's safe to say that almost every woman in that culture had this innate desire to find a husband. And for whatever reason, she finds herself without one, either through loss or rejection. I wonder what kind of number that would have done on the psyche, on the self-image, on the hope of this woman. More than that, she's a prostitute in ancient Jericho. What was that like? There's no justice system there. If there was, it was nothing like ours. It was a place where might made right. It was a patriarchy. I don't know what she had to do to avoid abuse from some. I don't know what she had to do to gain the protection that she was afforded. I don't know the kinds of awful things that she saw that if we closed our eyes, we would still be seeing. I don't know what that woman's life was like, but I guarantee you it's harder than mine. I guarantee you she saw and experienced things that you can't unsee. I wonder what it would be like for Rahab to sit in the office of a therapist or a counselor. I wonder what layers would have to begin to get peeled back from her about trust that she lost early, about feeling worthless, about feeling shame over who she was. I wonder what it was like when Rahab was being honest to look in the mirror. I think that Rahab was a broken woman. And in that brokenness, when confronted with God, without understanding all the ramifications about it, she chose obedience. And for that, it's amazing, for that, this foreign woman who had the worst job that churches think you could have, she is put in the Bible dozens of times. God shares her story throughout the Old Testament. She's mentioned again and again. And she shows up two places that I know of in the New Testament. And in the New Testament, she shows up in one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 11. We're going to finish the series with looking at Hebrews chapter 11. Some people call it the hall of faith. The book of Hebrews is easily the most beautifully written book in the New Testament. We don't know who the author was, but it's so eloquent and good that we go, that probably is not Paul because we've read a lot of his books. It has the highest view of Christ, of Christology in the New Testament. It really holds him up as the high priest and the sacrifice and the Messiah once and for all. It's a beautiful book and absolutely worth delving into. And in chapter 11, the author wants to make the point of how important faith is, how impactful faith can be. And so the author goes through the heroes of the Old Testament and says, you know, by faith Noah built the ark, and by faith Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, and by faith Noah or Moses led them through the desert. And he goes on and on and on until he gets to Rahab, who by faith protected the spies in Jericho. And here this foreign broken prostitute is laid right next to these Jewish men who are heroes of the faith. And God says, the things that they did to me are the same. The things that they did to me have the same faith, have the same obedience, have the same heart. And she's held up as a hero of the faith alongside with these men who made the choices that they made. And God says they're equal because she responded to God with faithful obedience. That's remarkable to me. It's remarkable to me because do you know how concerned God is with the Jewish lineage in the Old Testament? He tells them over and over and over again, do not intermarry. When you move into this nation, do not take wives or husbands from the surrounding cultures. And he even punishes them for doing it sometimes. He'll ostracize them for doing it, but yet here in Rahab, he's grafted in someone into his people, into his family, who is a foreign woman of ill repute. And it goes to show us that God was never concerned with protecting the genetics of his people. He was always concerned with protecting the faith. He doesn't care about what our makeup is or what we look like or how we were born. He cares about our faith as we respond to him. And so because Rahab responded with faith, he grafts her into his family. But to me, as I researched this, I knew that Rahab was in Hebrews chapter 11, so I turned to that and I read through that and kind of let that soak in. But I also know that she shows up in one of the most boring chapters in the Bible, Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1 is the begats. It's so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so all the way down. It's a whole chapter. It's really fun to read it out loud and see how good you do at pronouncing the names. It's fun if you're like a huge Bible nerd like me. It's like a great time. Let's sit around with our friends and pronounce Bible names. But you can go through that, and it's just super boring, man. It's hard to read. Like if that one shows up on your quiet time that day, you're going to fold it up and be like, God, I got nothing. I'm so sorry. There's actually a great sermon there, and I want to do it one day, but I have to get my ego out of the way because I really want to say that I've done a sermon out of Matthew chapter 1. But there's really a great sermon there. One day I'll share it with you. But Rahab shows up there too. And we can put it up on the screen. This is where she shows up. I thought it was remarkable as I read this. It says that she married a man named Salmon, and together they had a son named Boaz. And Boaz with Ruth had a son named Obed, and Obed had a son named Jesse,. There's a whole lot going on there. Now, I'm going to make some guesses about Rahab if you'll give me the chance to do this. Rahab married a man named Salmon. Maybe the Jews pronounced it Salmon, but I can't bring myself to do it. She married a man named Salmon. Salmon was from the line of Abraham. Salmon took great pride in his forefathers. He had to have. The whole line of Abraham did. It would have been a huge deal for him to marry a foreign woman who used to be a prostitute. So my guess about Rahab is, after taking that initial step of obedience when she encountered God, is that once she got grafted into the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew faith, and she began to look around, and she began to step into synagogue where she would find community, and she began to adopt the values of the people around her, that she continued to respond to God and his word, and that she grafted herself into the faith, and that she continued to take steps of obedience. I doubt very seriously that after the battle of Jericho, Rahab ever returned to her previous profession. I think God got a hold of her and moved in that way. Can I tell you the main reason I believe that? There's this old saying, I don't know if you guys have heard it before, but you can't fake good kids. When there's a group of brothers and sisters coming out of a house and they're spiritually strong and they love God and they have good character and they're great folks, you have to, whether you like them or not, give credit to their parents. You have to look at their parents and go, I don't know what they were doing, but it was good. You can't fake good kids. Now, sometimes kids can come out of messes and become really great humans, but that's not typically how that story goes. Usually, if you have a great kid, you can find some great parents. Rahab and Salmon had a great kid. Their kid was a guy named Boaz. Boaz stands out in the Old Testament as an example of what the Messiah is going to look like. You understand this? There's a girl named Ruth. She was a Moabite woman who had no options and no hope. She wasn't very different than, I guess it was her grandmother Rahab. Or was it mother-in-law? Is that how that works? I don't know. I should have planned this part of the sermon. She wasn't very much different than her. And she comes in. She's hopeless, she's a beggar, taking what she can at the corners of fields. Boaz says, we need to protect her, nobody lay a hand on her. And then going to look like when he gets here in the New Testament. And that's Rahab's kid. And I don't think that he comes from that home with those values if Rahab doesn't continue to respond to God in faithful obedience. And Ruth and Boaz have Obed, who has Jesse, who has David. Because of her faithful obedience, God didn't just pluck her out of the life that she was living and give her a new life. He didn't just put her on the pages of Hebrews thousands of years later to be displayed for all of time with an equivalency to all the other people of faith who had preceded her. He wrote her into the genetics of his son and used her to bring about two pictures of his son in David and in Boaz. God had an incredible story written for Rahab. And so as I look at her story, and I think about this woman in Jericho who must have felt hopeless and broken, and what God saw in her, and why we even get to see the story of Rahab in the Bible. What I see is that God made beauty out of her brokenness. God made beauty out of her brokenness. I picture Rahab as this vase or a bowl or a vessel that's just been shattered on the ground. I wanted to bring in like a clay pot and shatter it, but that would have been dangerous for like Holly and other people around me. So I had no way to do that. But that's how I picture Rahab, just broken and shattered on the floor. Irrevocably damaged. And in different ways trying to grab pieces of her life and put them back together in a way that feels whole, in a way that feels healthy, in a way that can at least look from the outside in like it's beautiful. I imagine her trying to assemble the pieces of her own life, and I think many of us can relate to this. I think many of us are broken. Listen, if we're being honest, we all are. We're all broken. And I don't mean that in some dramatic way. Some of us are walking through really difficult things. Some of us have walked through incredibly difficult things, and it doesn't feel like our life is ever going to be the same. Some of us can relate to the brokenness of Rahab, just sitting amidst your life feeling like it is in shatters. Some of us remember that and have pieced things back together. Some of us, maybe we're not broken into a thousand pieces, but it's a couple. We all struggle with value. We all struggle with feeling good enough. We all struggle with unselfishly loving others. We are all, in our own ways, broken. And so as I thought about Rahab and her brokenness, and us and ours, I wanted to find a picture of something beautiful being made from something that's broken. So I did what any good pastor does and I googled things. And I found the perfect picture. I want to show you guys this bowl. That bowl is an example of the Japanese art of kintsugi. That's how you know I Googled it. I don't know what that is, man. I just started learning about this this week. That's an example of the Japanese art of kintsugi. And what kintsugi is, is to take something that's broken and fashion it back together in a way that is beautiful. And what they would normally do, what you normally try to do when your bowl was broken is you try to piece it back together so that nobody would ever know it was broken, so that when you used it as a dinner party, people wouldn't know that you had dropped it on the floor once and no one would ever know that it had been broken before. But Kintsugi says, no, we're not going to do that. We're actually going to make the brokenness beautiful. We're going to fill the cracks with gold. And we're not going to try to hide the past from anybody. And in doing this, it actually becomes more beautiful than it was before. And I think that this is a picture of what God does with us. God took Rahab, this broken prostitute from Jericho, and wrote her into his family story. So that when we look at her story now, when we look through Matthew now, when we look at those names, married to Salmon and then had Boaz and Obed and Jesse and David and on down all the way to Jesus, we see the bowl. We see the thing that God pieced back together. We see the brokenness and all of its beauty. And God doesn't attempt to hide it. He doesn't say that there was a woman of faith from Jericho. He tells us who she was. He doesn't attempt to hide her faults. He makes them beautiful. And I want us to know this morning that if you feel broken, whether it's completely shattered or just missing a couple pieces, if you've been scrambling to kind of try to fix your life and put it back together in a way that makes sense, in a way that feels whole, in a way that feels beautiful, in a way that gives you meaning, I want you to know that God is doing that for you. And that you don't have to hide those cracks. And you don't have to pretend like you were never broken. And you don't have to pretend like you were always right. Because God is making something beautiful out of you. And all we have to do is respond with faithful obedience. Now some of you might not believe me. Some of you might think I've heard stuff like this before. I've got too much sin. I've got too much stuff. God's not going to use me. He's not writing me into his family tree. He doesn't have any big grand plans for me. I guarantee you, if you went to Rahab a month before those spies hit out at her house, and you said, hey, Rahab, you want to know something cool? The Hebrew God that you're scared of, he's going to use you. He's going to set you up for all of history on par with all the heroes who have preceded you. He's going to write you into his family tree. And he is making beauty out of your brokenness. She would have told you you were crazy. She would have sat right where you are, thinking right what you're thinking. Not me. Not possible. That's silly. Here's what I want you to know. When God looked at Rahab, he didn't see what she was. He saw what he was going to make her into. When God looked at Rahab, he didn't see what she was. He didn't see a broken prostitute in Jericho living a hopeless life. He saw the great, great grandmother of King David. He saw the mom that he was going to entrust to raise Boaz. He saw somebody that he was going to write into his own son's family tree. When God looked at Rahab, he did not see what she saw. He saw what he was going to create. And I want you to know that God looks at you with those same eyes. And all Rahab did was respond with the next step of obedience. She didn't understand all the things. She didn't get all the religion. She didn't know where it was going to go. She didn't understand the Bible. She couldn't quote to you verses. She didn't even know what theology was. She wasn't even a Christian. She just took the first step of obedience. And God began to craft beauty out of her brokenness. And I want you to know this morning that God wants to make something beautiful out of you. Not just in the way that he removed Rahab from her life immediately, but as he wrote a beautiful story about her for generations to come. God has beauty that he's creating you into. You have no idea who your children will come in contact with. You have no idea what kind of grandchildren they're going to have. But God sees them already. And he's fashioning you into that beauty. And all we have to do is to continue, like Rahab, to respond with faithful obedience. And I believe that God will make beauty out of our brokenness as well. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for the story of Rahab. Thank you for including people like that in your Bible. God, we love to learn about David and Moses and these men who were leaders. But God, sometimes that feels so far away from us. We thank you for regular people that you used in extraordinary ways. Father, if we are broken, I just pray that we would trust you to restore us and to make beauty out of that. Father, I pray that we, me, maybe most of all, would see what you see when we look at ourselves. We thank you that you don't see us now as we are, but you see us as what you want to make us into. And I just pray for us that you would give us the courage and the faith to take the next step of obedience as you make beauty out of the things in our life that are broken. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. But thanks for being here on this July weekend. It feels fun and full and energetic. I loved the worship this morning, and I'll just admit up front, I'm at risk today. Whenever I'm feeling good and happy and energetic, I'm going to say some crazy stuff. So I'm going to try to keep it concise. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. Now, to spend any time in church, to spend any time around the Bible, even to be in the South, in the Southern Christian culture, is to be aware of some of the heavy hitters in the Bible, of Moses, and of David, and of Ruth, and Paul, and all those different figures. But in Scripture, there's so many different people and so many different examples, and I love getting into the nitty-gritty of it and finding it for ourselves. I love uncovering new people and new examples and new stories. And so for eight weeks this summer, that's what we're doing, is we're going to look at some of the lesser-known figures in the Bible and see what we can learn from them and their example. And really, why did God include this story in the Bible? What can we learn from it? So this morning, we're going to look at somebody in the book of Judges, Judges chapter 4. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. There's also myriad free options online. So, you know, take your pick there. But before we do that, before we get to the book of Judges, I want to tell you about something that happened in my house this week. I think this was Wednesday night. Jen starts texting with her sister. And I'm saying, what's going on? What are you texting about? And she said, they've found, her sister's name is Lauren, her husband's name is Rusty. They have a daughter named Meredith. She's my niece, for those playing along at home. And she said, Lauren and Rusty have found this app called State Stack. And I said, what's that? And they said, well, it's just, it's like for learning. It's just a map of the United States with no borders on the inside of it. And then the app gives you a state, and you have to tap on the map where it goes to test your geographical knowledge. And my niece, Meredith, is super smart. Like not the kind of smart like, oh, she's going to be sharp one day. Like the kind of smart where you're like, she's going to create rockets. Like she's really smart. And they were texting because Meredith had beaten her parents. She's three. But she loves maps and she beats her parents at this. And listen, her parents may listen to this podcast. They're not dumb people. They're smart. They're as smart as anybody in this room. But Meredith's a genius at this app, so they're texting back and forth about it. And so Jen says, I want to try it. So she tries it. I'm not going to tell you. You can ask her what she got later. I'm not going to tell you. That's between her and Jesus. And of course, what do I want to do? I know my states. Give me a thing. I want to try it. I got to try this thing. And listen, normally I don't brag on stage. I got a perfect score. First try, right? I got an 80, which bummed me out. It bummed me out. That's the max score. Max score's an 80. Who makes an app with a max score of an 80? It's got to be 100. That's terrible. It's so dissatisfying. That's as high as it goes. In my mind, it's 100, but that's what I got. So I do it really quickly, and I just hand it back to Jen and walk off like, yeah, that's right, you know, waiting for her to kind of acknowledge it. Then, because I'm such a me monster, because I have such a fragile ego that I need the affirmation of others so desperately, after like three minutes, we're sitting there watching the British baking show, and I kind of look over, and I'm like, did you text your sister? Has she heard tale of my victories yet? Does she know that I'm smarter than her three-year-old daughter? Have we covered this? My ego needs to know that they have responded to this. So eventually she's like, yes, Nate, they're very impressed. And once I was adequately stroked, this is good. Great, everybody knows I'm good at states, right? And now listen, that's pathetic. But that all exists in us. We all need the praise of others. We all like to know that we did a good job. We all like to be told that you're important, that you're enough, that you're special, that what you did is exceptional. We all need that. We all want that, which is why I think Saul is such a relatable character for us. We're going to get to Deborah, who we're going to talk about today, but we're going to do that by contrasting her with Saul because we have a picture in the Old Testament of two leaders of Israel and two people who handled it in a very different way. Saul was the first king of Israel. He followed up a period known as the period of the judges that I'll tell you a little bit more about in a second. But he was the first king of Israel. Israel collectively acted like a seventh grade child and stomped their foot and looked at God and said, we want a king too because everybody else has one. And God says, fine, I'll give you a king, but you're going to regret this choice. So he named Saul the king. And Saul was from the smallest clan and the smallest tribe. He was a Benjaminite or Benjamite or whatever. I don't really know how to say that. But he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. He was of the smallest clan. And so in that way, he was an unusual choice. But scripture tells us that Saul stood head and shoulders above everybody else. If you were to look through a room, he was the most impressive looking guy. He's the one that you would look at and go, that guy's probably the one that needs to be leading us. He probably looked a lot like me. And so that's who God chose was Saul. Saul became the first king. The problem with Saul is that he had this fatal flaw. Here's a man with tremendous opportunity, tremendous choice by God to be named the very first king to lead his nation. He's got the whole world in front of him. He is the first choice by God to lead God's chosen people. But Saul messes up and he continually makes it about him. He continually leverages all of his power and all of his authority and all of his ability to make it about himself, to put the praise on him, to get the attention of other people looking at him and going, Saul, aren't you good? Saul, aren't you wonderful? Aren't you a good king? And we see some big sins in his life. There's one time where he goes out to battle. Samuel is the prophet, and he's the earpiece to God and the mouthpiece to Saul. And he tells Saul, take the men out for battle. Stay here for seven days. On the seventh day, I'm going to come perform a sacrifice, and then you can attack the Philistines, and God will give you favor. So Saul says, okay. So he goes out, and he waits seven days. Well, it's the seventh day. Samuel's still not there. Saul looks around. He feels like people are starting to scatter. We don't know if that's true, if that's an excuse. But he takes matters into his own hands and he gathers everybody around and he grabs the sacrifices and he performs them himself without Samuel. And Samuel shows up as this is happening or right after it's over. And this is in the first part of the book of Samuel. You can see all this stuff. And he says, Saul, what are you doing? And Saul tells him, he gives his excuses. Well, you weren't here when I thought you would be. And the people were scattering and I got scared and we needed to go ahead and do this. And now we can attack. And I was just trying to do the right thing. And really what's happening in the heart of Saul, I think is he's got military authority. People respect him as a military leader. People respect him as a political leader. But Samuel's the religious leader. But now he's not here. So what does scheming Saul get to do? Well, now I get to step into this void and I get to be seen as a religious leader. I get to grab myself a piece of that pie too. And now people are going to respect me politically and militarily and religiously. I can step into that and we don't need Samuel as much anymore. Now we can just be me. And now people are going to think that I'm a religious leader too. They're going to respect me for my faith because the respect that I have already is not enough. I need more, right? And so he steps into that and Samuel says, what are you doing? And because of that sin, God tells Samuel, I'm going to take the kingdom away from Saul. And Saul's made aware of this, but he doesn't seem to change anything in his life. He continues to live and lead and guide that way and continue to make everything about him. Another time later on, he's going into battle and God says,, I want you to go in, and I want you to completely conquer these people. And a lot of us know, particularly if we're interested in military history, that in that day when an army would sweep into a country or a city, that when they would conquer an army or an enemy, they would plunder. They would take for themselves all of their goods. Anything that was there that was of any value at all, they would claim for themselves. And kings had first dibs. And so God says, when you go in and you conquer them, you don't take anything for yourself. You destroy them. Don't touch it. But what did Saul do? There's some stuff there that he wanted. He wanted to build himself up. He wanted to be the guy with the wealth. He wanted to be the guy with the stuff. I don't know why he took the things, but he took it, and part of it was, look at me, look at how great I am, look at my great kingdom, look at my vast wealth. And so he couldn't keep his grubby hands off of it, and he made it about himself again. Later, when David comes on the scene, and he's anointed as the next king of Israel and Saul has to deal with that reality, there was this song that used to just drive him crazy. It incensed him with rage to the point where he tried to kill David. And I'm sure that it sounds better in the Hebrew, but in the English it's Saul has slain his thousands and David has slain his tens of thousands. Saul's getting credit, but it's not enough. He needs more. He's jealous of David. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Saul would definitely wanted to know what his sister-in-law's response was to state stack. He absolutely would have needed to know that. When he got home from battle, he would have to know from his wives, did you text the other wives and tell them about my great accomplishments on the battlefield today? He would have to know that stuff because it was about him and it was about getting praise of man. Saul sought the praise of man. That's what we see in his example. He sought the praise of man. Everything that he did, every avenue that he took, even when he was sorry, when he feigned sorrow to Samuel, when he was confronted with his sin, was this feigned sorrow. He was really just sorry that he got caught. All he wanted is for everybody to like him. Saul sought the praise of men. And this, I believe, stands in direct contrast with the story of Deborah. We find the story of Deborah in Judges chapter four. Judges is the seventh book of the Bible if you're trying to turn there. And I'm not gonna go verse by verse. I will read a portion of it, but I'm just gonna tell you the story. Now, a judge at this time in Israel, they wandered around in the desert and then Joshua came in and he conquered the land of Canaan that we know as modern-day Israel. And then the tribes got scattered to their different states, as we would understand them, or territories. And then Israel had no king. God was their king. But every now and again, the Israelites would go through a pattern that we go through. We see this pattern over and over again in the book of Judges. We see it all throughout the Old Testament, and we see it in our own lives. Sin, slavery, sorrow, salvation. God sets them up in the promised land. Everything's good. He's their king. Everything's wonderful. They have their laws. They love God. He loves them. But eventually, after things went well enough, they would kind of forget about God and be like, God, we're good. We're going to take it from here. Thanks for getting us into the promised land. Thanks for getting us through that hairy spot. But we're fine now. They would forget about God. They'd start to do what was right in their own eyes, the Bible says. None of us can relate to this. So let's all just judge the Israelites together as they failed in this way. And sure enough, when that happens and we go, I'm good, God, I don't need you anymore, what happens? They fall into sin. When they would fall into sin and forget about God, God would allow an oppressor to come in, the Amalekites and the Amorites or some ites, and they would come in, the Canaanites, and they would oppress them. And they would cry out to God, oh my gosh, God, we have sinned, we have forgotten about you, and because of you, we're under the rule of this people. Will you please throw them off? Will you please save us? And God would respond to them, and he would send a judge. He would appoint a judge, and the judge's role was to overthrow the oppressors. When there's a judge in the Old Testament, there's a whole book of them here, their entire job is to overthrow the oppressors. That is their appointed job by God. And so in Judges chapter 4, we see a woman named Deborah. And we're told some stuff about Deborah. First of all, she's a prophetess. Second of all, she's a judge. She's the only lady judge, female judge, that I know of in the Bible. She's the only one, the only judge that was both a prophet and a judge that had both military and religious authority. And to me, I don't know about you, but in this time for a woman to rise to power, anytime somebody rises to power who doesn't look like all the people before them who have risen to power, that's an interesting person to talk to. Deborah's awesome. Love to talk to Deborah. She's a prophetess and she's a judge and the Canaanites are oppressing them and it's her job to get rid of the Canaanites. So she calls on a guy named Barak. From what we can see in the text, Barak seems like a general. She calls on a guy named Barak to come talk to her and the very first thing she does is she kind of gets on to him a little bit. Barak, didn't God tell you to go to assemble 10,000 men and go up against Sisera? Sisera was the general of the king of Canaan, and he had 900 chariots, the Bible tells us, which in contrast with Israel's zero chariots, is overwhelming odds. And apparently incredibly intimidating. And you get the sense that Barak has not assembled the men that he's supposed to assemble because he was scared. He felt like that was an unwinnable battle. It was an unwise choice. He was leading people to their death if he did that, so he kind of shied away from it. And Deborah's like, hey, did God tell you to do this or not? She's just got so much faith. And he's like, yeah, I guess so. And she goes, well, go assemble your men and let's go. And then Barak says this, because I think Barak's a little bit of a coward. He says, I'll do it if you go with me. Because he thinks that this is a bad deal. He thinks that he's going to die if he goes. He thinks there's no way that they can win this. So he says, okay, Deborah, you put your money where your mouth is, and then I'll do it. And I would love to have been in Barack's head when she said, okay, let's go. Right? I would love, like, what did he go? Oh, well, good. Here we go. This is super. That's not what I was planning on, Deborah. So they go. Now, here's what's interesting on stuff right here. Think about this. What would Saul do if he were Deborah? What would I probably do if I were Deborah? Barak comes to me. Didn't God tell you to take your army? Yeah, but I'm scared. What would Saul have done? Saul, knowing that God was going to deliver the victory, that there was glory to be had in this victory, I think would have told Barak, that's all right, dude, go home. Just give me your army. I'll lead them. You don't have to. It's going to be good. Conniving Saul, conniving Nate, some of us, is that not what we would do is look for a way to leverage that for our own power and authority? Let me grab the glory. I don't have any troops, but if you're scared to take yours, I'll take them. You don't have to do it. Barak, don't worry about it. I got this. That's not what she did. She said, this is something that God has asked you to do. You need to go do it. Irrespective of what it meant for her. She's not going to leave the troops. She's not going to get anything from this. And then she says this incredible thing. I love this line. She tells Brack to go and let's attack Sisera. And so they're on their way to go, but before they go, she says this in verse 9. Barak said to her in verse 8, if you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go. Okay, so that's his gamble, right? And then she says this, and she said, I'll go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you But you are not going to get the glory for this. No one's going to know about this. No one's going to know what you did. There's a woman. It's not me. We find out later her name's Jael. She gets to kill Sisera, not you. So you're just doing this to be obedient. And I don't think Barak hears her because they go into battle and they defeat the chariots. It's amazing God gives them victory on that day. During the battle, Sisera jumps off of his chariot and takes off to survive. And while he's running, it says that Barak is still chasing him. Barak is still chasing that glory. He still wants the victory. He's still like Saul. He's still that me monster that needs people to look at him and give him the glory for what he's doing and say, you were great. That was a great victory that you won that day. He's still chasing the glory. There's no indication that Deborah's doing that. Deborah's chilled out. She already knows how this is going to play out. She doesn't care. And here's the cool thing about Deborah. Deborah has no idea that this story is going to end up in the Bible. She doesn't even know what the Bible is. It's not like there's some journalist embedded with her who's getting quotes from her as they do this. She has no clue that this is going to be recorded for posterity. But here we are thousands of years later and we know about Deborah because God saw her faithfulness and rewarded her. So Barak is chasing Sisera, and there's a woman named Jael who's married to a king that's buddies with Sisera's king. And she sees Barak running, and she's like, hey, come in here. This is a very loose paraphrase of what's in Judges. She says, come in here. I got a spot for you. So he comes in there. He lays down. He's exhausted. She covers him up with a rug, which I guess will do if you need a blanket. And he asks for some water. She gives him warm milk and dude falls asleep. And then, now I'm sorry if you don't like this part, but it's in the Bible and I like it. I think it's neat that it's in the Bible. She takes a tent peg. It says that she went to him softly, but she did. She put the tent peg against his temple and she drove his head into the ground. Yeah, it's in the Bible. You deal with it, okay? Judges 4. Go read it. Super fun. Now, then she goes to the entrance. Barak and his army are still chasing him. She's like, hey, Barak, you should come see a thing. And he goes in there and she's killed Sisera and God has defeated their oppressors and Israel is free. And we're told that Deborah provided a peace of 40 years. Now, there are so many different places where Deborah could have solved that and made it all about her. She could have taken the army. She could have gotten word of Jael. She knew who was going to kill him. She could have gotten word of Jael. When you get him, just secure him in your tent. I'm going to come and I'm going to kill him. She could have taken any of that stuff for herself. She could have made it about her. In fact, after Judges 4 and the next chapter, Judges 5, there's a song called The Song of Deborah and Barak. And if you read it, she writes it. It's in her voice and all of the credit goes to God. The day that God won, the day that God defeated, the day that God delivered into the hands. None of the credit. She didn't care. She wasn't looking for admiration for other people. She wasn't looking for other people to notice her. Sometimes it just takes a woman to teach us men that lesson that she was just doing the right thing because it was the right thing. Deborah sought the praise of God. Saul sought the praise of man. Deborah sought the praise of God. She did what she did to an audience of one. So to her, it didn't matter who defeated. It didn't matter who killed. It didn't matter who the glory went to. She sought the praise of God. And in that way, I think personifies a principle that we see Jesus lay out in Matthew chapter 6. I think that she is the personification or the best example of this. In chapter 6, Jesus is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, his first recorded public address, and he says this. He's talking to people about practicing giving. When you give, he says this. Pick it up in verse 2. Can you imagine? You're sitting here having a church service. Some dude, it would have to be a dude, kicks open the doors. Then trumpets sound. He's like, I'm going to give you guys 50 grand. And we're all like, great, thank you. That would be ridiculous. But he says, don't do that like the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be seen in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. I love that. I love the matter-of-factness of that statement. Don't be like the people who seek the praise of men for the good things that they do because I tell you the truth, that's their reward. You want to give something away to somebody? You want to buy somebody a meal? You want to do something nice and altruistic? That's fine. Post on your Instagram story and the likes that you get, that's your reward, God says. Congratulations. You got this from someone you talk to twice a year. Good. When you do something good and we do it for other people, we do it to be noticed and we put it out there, God says, that's your reward. But if you'll do it in secret and not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, then your Father in heaven will see and he will reward you. And can't we admit that we like people who have this figured out? We admire people who have the character to do good things because God has laid it on their heart to do them, and not for any other reason than because they believe it's the right thing to do. Don't we admire people like that? I told you before about my father-in-law and how much respect I have for him. One of my favorite stories about him, he's just like this in a lot of ways. I could tell a lot of stories, but one Christmas, Jen and I gave him a North Face fleece, which was like, I don't know, like a hundred bucks. It was a big deal for us to give that kind of gift. Like, look at us. This is what we're getting to give her dad, my father-in-law. So we give him this North Face fleece. He worked downtown. He worked in an office, but he liked to wear that to work. And he called it pretty, and it was good looking, and whatever. It's a nice fleece where everyone's very happy. Well, a couple months later, or maybe the next winter, I don't know, he's not wearing this fleece anymore. And Terry, his wife, is like, John, what did you do with that fleece? And he says, oh, I don't know. I'm just not wearing it today. He keeps not wearing it. She's pressing him. John, come on. Nate and Jen gave that to you. Where is that fleece? He's like, ah, it's not cold outside. She's like, John, it's like 12 degrees. You need something. She presses him and presses him and finally he confesses. He's driving down the road one day coming back from work and it was a particularly cold day which in Georgia is probably like 56, 57 degrees. It was a particularly cold day and there's somebody on the side of the road spinning a sign which when I see somebody on the side of the road spinning a sign, which when I see people on the side of the road spinning a sign, I'm like big on technique. I want to see what you're bringing to the table, man. Like, I want to see what you got over there. Like, sometimes it's pretty impressive what they can do. I do not notice what they're wearing, but John noticed that this person just had a hoodie. They just had a thin sweatshirt. And their job was really cold. So what's he do? He pulls off to the side of the road. He gets out, takes off his fleece and walks it over and hands it to the person and says, your job requires this a lot more than mine does. You take this. And he gets in his car and he goes home and he never tells a soul. He only tells anybody because his wife bugged him about it long enough to learn the story. We love stories like that. We want to be like that. Deborah lived her life like that. Jesus says when we do that, that God the Father sees us and that great is our reward. And so listen, what I want us to understand today is this. The praise of man intoxicates. The praise of man intoxicates, but the praise of God satisfies. The praise of man intoxicates, but the praise of God satisfies. Here's what I mean. When you're intoxicated, you're not thinking clearly. You're not making the best decisions. You're not the best version of yourself. You probably say some stuff and do some things that you don't mean. It causes you to act in ways that are not reflective of who you really want to be. The other thing about being intoxicated is it always takes what? It always takes a little bit more. If one drink did it this time, then it won't be long before you need two. Right? If one pill, if one whatever does it this time, if I get this feeling for one, then eventually I'm going to need two. And eventually two's not going to be enough and and I'm gonna need three. And isn't this what happened to Saul? He gets appointed as the king, he gets anointed, and people are giving him attention in his little clan and then he continues to get elevated and people continue to acknowledge him and continue to heap praise on him. And it's never enough. So he steps in and he says, I want religious praise too. It's never enough. He steps in and he takes more wealth too. It's never enough. When we live for the praise of man, it's never enough. We can never hear enough good things about ourselves to be satisfied. We always want more. It causes us to act in ways that are not reflective of who we want to be. It causes us to not be the best version of ourself. And we always need just a little bit more, just a little bit more praise, just a little bit more pats on the back, and no one can ever make us feel like we are enough. And God's praise satisfies. And when I say satisfies, I think of it like this. Every now and again, I eat healthy. And when I do, one of my favorite things to eat is just grilled chicken and grilled vegetables. I just put a skewer of grilled vegetables on the grill. Sometimes we roast them in the oven, a little bit of salt and pepper, and then chicken with salt and pepper. I like that meal. I like that meal because I can eat as much of it as I want and I don't feel bad. Now, if you know something about dieting and you would say to me in the lobby, well, actually, it's not good to eat that. Listen, just let me have my chicken, okay? I'm not at that level yet. Just keep it to yourself. When I eat that grilled chicken and I eat those grilled vegetables, I can eat as much of it as I want and I don't feel bad. I just feel full. I feel good. I feel healthy. And if you were to come to me after that and you go, hey, you want a piece of this pie? You want cinnamon roll? I would tell you, no, I'm good, thanks. I'm fine. I'm satisfied. That's what the praise of God does for you. When God has acknowledged that what you're doing is good, when between you and the Heavenly Father, He says, I'm proud of you. That's good. That's enough. You don't need to take the troops and go to conquer anybody yourself. Deborah says, I'm squared away. I'm fine. You don't need to get the credit for winning the battle that day. I'm good. I'm fine. I'm squared away. I'm good. John didn't need to tell anybody that he gave his fleece to anyone. Why? Because between him and God, he's good. I'm satisfied. When we live for the praise of God, it satisfies us. We don't need anything else. Because the one who created us is looking at us, telling us, you're enough. I'm proud of you. I love you. For some of us, that's all we need to hear. If we keep fighting and scratching and clawing to get other people to tell us that, it's never going to satisfy. Even when you get what you think you want, you're going to get there and find out it's not enough. But God's reward satisfies. And so listen, it's not about stamping out this need to be known. It's a very natural need to need somebody to say, you're good and I appreciate you and you're enough. Lily has started in with this. Like yesterday, for an hour. It was the first time it happened. Jen and I were looking at each other like, oh my goodness. Daddy, look at me, look at me, watch this. Daddy, watch this. Daddy, watch this. And I'm like, I'm watching, buddy. Let's go. And listen, Jen's going to be mad at me. It wasn't even that good. I mean, she's just like, she's just running and jumping into a chair. Get back to me when you memorize the states, kid. But she wants to be noticed. She wants to be known. She wants somebody to tell her, that's good. I'm proud of you. So the Christian life isn't about stamping that out. It's just about focusing it on the right thing. Moving from trying to get our affirmation and our praise from man to seeking our praise and our affirmation from God. And when we do, we're told we will get a reward. And I thought about this. If I'm going to make the whole point of the sermon, obeying God so that we get a reward, I should probably be able to define what the reward is. I don't know what it is. For Deborah, it's being in the Bible and us knowing her story thousands of years later. For some of us, it's some sort of arrangement in heaven. I don't know. Great is your reward in heaven. I don't really know what that means, and I can't really define for you what it is for God to reward you for operating for his praise, but here's what I know. God's reward is better than your friend's reward. God rewarding you, noticing your good behavior, and affirming you is better than the reward you're going to get from Mitch in accounting that you talk to twice a year. It's better than these online. God's reward is better than your friends. It's better than your spouses. God's reward is better. And that's what we should be living for. So I hope that as we look at the story of Deborah and we compare it to Saul, that we'll be honest about where we sit and that we'll have a desire to live for the praise of God and be satisfied in that and let that be enough. And in light of those things, I would ask you as we finish, for you to consider as you go into your week this week, for whose praise are you living? For whose praise are you living? Another way of thinking about that is, the next time you feel compelled to do something good, ask yourself, why do I want to do this? Do I want to do it so that other people will see me be good and I'll get their appreciation for that? Because God says, that'll be your reward. Or do I want to do this because it's the right thing to do and I want my Father in Heaven to see me and be proud of me? For whose praise are you living? Let's pray. Father, you're so good to us. You see us and you know us and you tell us that we are enough. You see everything that we do in secret, God. I know that there are good people here who have done so much in their lives that nobody knows, that they feel like nobody sees, that they feel like they're never going to get credit for. And I pray that they would hear loud and clear this morning, God, that you see them. You notice. And their reward is great. God, for people who are like me, or like Saul, and struggle so much with wanting other people to tell them how good they are, would you just help us make you enough? Would you help us live for your praise? Would you help us hold out for your reward? God, we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

This is the third week of our series called Best Practices. The idea is that I believe that there are some habits in life that we can form that if we do, they're the most important possible habits we can have. I believe that these habits, these practices, will make us better at every aspect of our lives. They'll make us better wives and mothers and husbands and fathers. They'll make us better friends, better children, better family members, better employees and employers. And more importantly, they will bring us alive in our walk with God and our knowledge of God and be a part of the answered prayer that Paul prays over us, that we would know God with the depth of all the saints, that there are some practices, some keystone habits that we can develop in our life that if we do, we will become closer to who God created us to be. And so we're taking four weeks and looking at those habits that make us better in every aspect of life. The first week we looked at reading the Bible. I hope that you guys took the challenge from that. I kind of challenge you all to make a goal and make a plan and then let somebody in on that plan for some accountability. So I hope that you've been reading the Bible maybe a little bit more than you're used to and that that's been a blessing for you. Last week, Steve did a phenomenal job talking about worship. If you missed that, which is the summertime and I get it. So if you missed that last week, they're online. You can watch them on video. You can listen on our podcast and catch up with that one. This week, I want us to look at the practice of prayer. And prayer is a huge topic. It's incredibly broad. At the last church I was at, we did a six-part series all on prayer, and it still wasn't adequate to cover everything that the Bible had to say. So this morning, I know that I get to touch on prayer, but I don't get to talk about everything around prayer. Because if you go through the Bible, what you find is that the Bible is replete with verses on prayer. We're told in the Old Testament if we're brokenhearted that we can run to him. That's what David tells us in Psalms. We're told that we should be marked, be characterized by prayer. James says the prayer of the righteous person is powerful and availeth much, does much doing. Jesus tells us that if we're tempted, he tells us in Matthew, if you're tempted, if anyone is tempted, pray. So there's this aspect of prayer that helps us stave off temptation. We're told in Philippians that we should be anxious for nothing, but pray over everything. And that if we do this, that somehow God's peace comes into our life and guards us if we will be people who pray. In Colossians, Paul tells us that we should be devoted to prayer. In Romans, he tells us that we should be devoted to prayer. But there's this peculiar verse. It's not peculiar. It's just kind of famous. It's probably a better word. In 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 17, where Paul is finishing up his letter to the church in Thessalonica, and he's telling them, hey, here's the last things I want you to do. And in the middle of this list of advice, he tells them this really difficult command, pray without ceasing. He says, I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to bless one another. I want you to help one another. I want you to honor God. And I want you to pray without ceasing. And I don't know about you, but I read that verse and I'm like, I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how many in this room would raise their hand and say, you know what? I have been obedient to that command in my life for X amount of weeks, X amount of years, X amount of months. That's a super challenging verse. And so as I thought about the best place to invest our Sunday morning on prayer, I thought it might be best to tackle this verse. Because we can talk about all the things around prayer, postures in praying, different types of prayer. We can go through Psalms and see the different types of prayer that David offers. We could look at the correct format of prayer that Jesus does when he teaches the disciples how to pray. We'll talk about it more later, but he gives a pattern of prayer in the Lord's prayer that we're supposed to follow. We could talk about that. We could talk about this idea of listening prayer. Spurgeon, one of the most influential pastors to ever live, this guy from England in the 1800s when he was 19 years old, he had a multi-thousand person congregation, just an amazing guy. He wrote to his students that if you only pray, and if when you pray, all you do is talk and you don't listen to God, then you are like somebody who dips their toes in the Atlantic and claims to have experienced the whole of the ocean. So there's this whole idea of listening prayer where we clue into God, which I'm being honest, sounds a lot lot like meditation, the Christian version of that. And we could talk about that, and I think there'd be some ground to gain. But where I've landed is, until we get this command down, the command in Colossians to be devoted to prayer, the command in Romans to pray continually, the command in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, until we become people who are characterized by prayer, then all the different types of prayer and all the different information around prayer really is not as impactful to us. I think the first thing we need to do is become people who are characterized by prayer. And if you think about the biblical heroes that you know, they're characterized by prayer. Moses prayed all the time. David prayed constantly. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, is famous because of her prayer, because she was praying so fervently that Eli, the high priest, thought that she was drunk. She was just praying to God. There's a great prayer from Moses' mother. There's all these great prayers through Scripture. All the biblical heroes that we know are people who are characterized by prayer. And I would bet that the people that you look up to spiritually are people, whether you know it or not, who are characterized by prayer and devoted to prayer. As I think about this idea to pray without ceasing and make that kind of the first goal of our prayer life is to be a people who are devoted to prayer, Spurgeon again said that we cannot be constantly in the act of prayer, but we can be constantly in the spirit of prayer. And I believe that that goal is best illustrated through a super cheesy made-up story that I heard years ago. I heard this story back in high school. It is not true. Somebody made it up, but it makes a good point. There was a guy who was super spiritual, really close to God. Whenever he prayed in public, it was excellent, excellent prayers. People were really impressed with him. For the sake of the story, we're going to call him Nate. So there's Nate, the super spiritual guy. I'm talking about Nate Murray there in the back, not me. Super spiritual guy, and his prayers were incredible. And one day his friend said, I want to hear his nighttime prayers. Like, I want to hear what he prays for at night, at the end of the day. Because that's like the good prayer. Like, you pray in the morning, you pray for the day, then at night you pray again. I want to hear what Nate prays at the end of the day. And so again, this is made up, it's silly, they snuck into his room and they're hiding out somewhere. I don't know if it's in the closet or under the bed, wherever you want. They're hiding out, they're listening to Nate. Nate comes in at the end of the day and they're like, oh, here we go, dude's going to pray, this is going to be some good stuff. They're super excited to hear what Nate says to God at the end of his day. They expect him to get down on his knees next to the bed and double over like you're supposed to. I mean, that's what good believers do. You get on your knees next to the bed. That's part of the deal. And they're waiting for him to do that, and he doesn't do that, and he just gets into bed. And they're like, oh, maybe Nate's having an off night. And as he climbs into bed, he pulls the covers up, and he lays back, and he simply says, good night, God. I'll talk to you tomorrow. That's what it is to pray without ceasing. He didn't have a big, long prayer at the end of the day because he had been in the spirit of prayer communicating with God throughout the day. And so when he got to the end of the day, he had run out of words. He had said everything he needed to say. And so like you say to a good friend or to your spouse when you're roommates or whatever, is you say, hey, good night. Talk to you in the morning. And that's it. That, to me, is a good picture of what it is to be in the spirit of prayer and be praying without ceasing. But just like the Bible, when we talked about in the first week of best practices, we hear this, but we don't do it all the time. Christians, a lot of us are not good at praying. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, but man, how hard is it to pray sometimes? You sit down, you're like, I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to pray, and you go for like two minutes. You're like, God, I don't know what else to do. You start thinking about the emails that you're going to have to send out, and your kid starts making noise, and you run upstairs, and that prayer time's done. It's hard to pray. It's hard to be devoted to do. You start thinking about the emails that you're going to have to send out. Your kid starts making noise and you run upstairs and that prayer time's done. It's hard to pray. It's hard to be devoted to prayer. But I think that maybe there's a motivation to go into prayer that we haven't considered that if we do, it would make it a lot easier to approach prayer. Because again, don't raise your hand, but how many here have decided at some point in your life, I want to be better at prayer, I want to pray more regularly, so I'm going to white knuckle this thing and set my alarm and I'm going to get up early and I'm going to pray? How'd that go? So as we think about how can we be obedient to the seemingly impossible command to pray without ceasing, how can we be more like Nate? I now regret using that name. I think it's important to answer this question, and I want you to answer it personally. When do you pray? Like right now in your life, as you go throughout your week, when do you pray? What is it that drives you to prayer? Maybe you're in a habit of praying every morning. Maybe it's specific things that take you to prayer. I mean, a lot of us pray for the meal, right? We know that drill. We're Christians, and so you go out to eat, and you kind of look around the table, and who's the most spiritual one here that's going to say, like, hey, I'll pray. Like, who's going to be the big Christian? And then if you got to eat with me, you have to go like, Nate, you have to pray. You're clearly, you're the pastor. That seems to be the gig. And so like you pray, right? And here's what I would say about meal prayers. If you mean it, pray. If you don't, eat. Okay. It doesn't matter. If you mean it, pray. If you don't mean the prayer, don't pray the prayer, ever. We need to be sincere with prayer. One of the things I try to do about prayer is not pray when we don't mean it on stage. We don't pray as just a way to get people up here awkwardly. It would have been really great to have Jordan pray at the end of worship so that I could hobble up here without all of you guys staring at me, but it wouldn't have been an honest and an earnest prayer. So pray when you mean it. And when you don't mean it, don't pray. But we pray when we have meals. We know that. And some of us are good about having time set aside to pray. But what is it that makes you pray the most? What is it that drives you to prayer most earnestly? Isn't it something that happens in your life that's too big for you? Doesn't anxiety drive you to prayer? When you're so worried about something, when you don't know what's going to happen, isn't that when you run and you go, this is too big for me, and you appeal to the almighty creator God? Isn't that when you appeal to the supernatural is when you realize in life this is too big for me. When the decision is too big and you don't know what to do. Do I take the promotion or do I not? Do we move to the city or do we not? Do we change our kid's school or do we not? When the decision is so big that we don't know what to do, we pray. Because in that prayer is an admission that God is bigger than us, that he's supernatural and we are natural, that he is God and that we are not, that he's a creator and that we're the created and that we need his wisdom for this. When we're walking through the difficult times and our spirits are low, we pray. When the diagnosis comes in, what do we do? We run to God and we pray. When we don't know where our kid is, or we don't know about the decisions that they're making, or we're so worried that they're going to run off the rails, what do we do? We pray. I was just at a wedding last weekend in Dothan, Alabama. And it was a really beautiful experience because it was Jen's cousin. Jen's my wife, not just some lady I talk about. It was Jen's cousin getting married. And she's older. She's like 30? She's 35? Oh, man, she's up there like me. So she's 35 and for years she was dating a guy that wasn't good for her. Just wasn't good for her. I've met the guy. He's a good guy. He's got a sweet heart. He just had stuff going on that made him not husband material just yet. And there was nothing, her dad's name is Edwin. There's nothing that Edwin could do. Edwin and Mary, there was nothing they could do. You guys who have kids who are adults, you know you can't tell them who to date. You can't tell them who to see. That's not going to work out. You just have to hope that they end up with the right people. And so they didn't know what to do. They had no other option, and so they made a space in their home, and every day, Edwin went to the space in his home, getting choked up thinking about it, and got on his knees and prayed for his daughter, that she wouldn't marry this guy, and lo and behold, after years of doing that, she broke the cycle with him, and she met the right guy, a good dude who loves the Lord, who's got a good head on his shoulders. And they got married on Saturday. And as they got married, I looked over at Uncle Edwin down the row, and he has tears streaming down his face because that's an answer to prayer, because the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective. And what happened to Edwin is he had no other options. He was simply reduced to prayer. And what I want you to see this morning is when we are reduced to prayer, we pray. We pray when we are reduced to prayer. If you think about when I asked you that question, when in your life do you pray? The answer, whether you know it or not, is I pray when I'm reduced to prayer. When I have no other options, when I've exercised everything else to try to exert my control over it, when I've exercised every other avenues to fix it myself, and I realize that I am helpless, then I am reduced where the only thing I have is prayer, and so we cling to prayer, and we appeal to the supernatural God that we know. After we had a miscarriage and we got pregnant again, I wanted desperately to be able to do something to keep this baby safe. There was nothing I could do. I was reduced to prayer. So I prayed. Guys, we pray when we are reduced to prayer. When there's something happening in our life that is so big and so confusing and so difficult that makes us feel so helpless that we get on our knees and we appeal to our God. God, you've got to help me here. And if that's true, if that's true that we pray when we're reduced to prayer, then the opposite is true too. And when I say this, this is going to step on some toes. And I'm sorry about that. But let me just tell you this. Okay, this is not an us or me and you situation. This is not an us and them situation. This isn't staff and elders and then lowly congregation situation. This is a we situation. If this steps on your toes, I promise you it stepped on mine too. My toes hurt literally and figuratively worse than yours. I'm in this with you, okay? So when I say this, I'm not accusing you of anything that I am not guilty of. We are just all a bundle of insecurities and mechanisms trying to go through life, figuring out how to follow God together, okay? All of us. But if it's true that when we pray, we pray because we're reduced to prayer, then it's also true that when we don't pray, we assert our independence, right? When we don't pray, we are asserting our independence. When there's something coming up in life and we don't pray about it, we don't go to God about it, what we're saying implicitly is, I'm good, I don't need you for this one, I got it, right? And I know that's harsh, and I know that's not what you intend when you don't pray, but tell me that's not what we're saying when we don't pray. When I don't pray about a sermon, God, what would you have me do this week? What I'm saying implicitly is, I'm good. This is community. I've done a community sermon twice a year for the past 10 years of my life. I got it, God, I'm fine. When we make a decision at work, when we approach the sales meeting and we haven't prayed over it, what are we telling God? I got this sale, God, don't worry about it. We go into a meeting and we have a blanket of that prayer, blanket of that meeting and prayer. What are we telling God? I got this meeting, God, I'm good. We make decisions with our kids when we interact with our spouses, when we try to build them up, when we make decisions about church or about which small group to join. When we make these day-to-day decisions and we don't pray to God about these decisions, we make them on our own. What are we saying? We're saying, God, I'm good. I got this. And I'm in there too. There's a pastor in Washington, D.C. named Mark Batterson, and he said, you should never initiate what you cannot saturate in prayer. I don't know about you, but in my life, I've initiated a lot of things that were not saturated in prayer. And when we do that, we claim our independence, don't we? We flex our little independent muscles. We say, God, I'm good. I don't need you for this. And we figure it out on our own. And every day we do that is one more day we convince ourselves that we are adequate for the things that God has called us to in life. It's one more day when we make the argument implicitly by not praying to God that I am enough for today and that I don't need you. Thank you. Every day we go, we get a little bit more independent. We build our sense of self a little bit more. We reduce our dependency and our reliance on God and we build up our independence on and our dependence on ourselves. And then we go through life like this, praying maybe just for meals, praying maybe just for things here and there, praying when we go to Bible study and somebody goes, hey, will you pray? And you're like, okay, I guess I will. But we know in our own life we haven't prayed like that in a while. And every day we do that, we build our independence a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more until something happens and outside forces in life exert themselves on us and act on us to reduce us to a state of prayer. And then we pray again. And then we pray and we pray and we pray. And God in his goodness and his glory, he fixes it. And then what do we start to do? We exercise our independence muscles again and we say, God, thank you for your help over there. I'm good now. If it's true that we pray when we feel reduced to prayer, then it has to be true that we don't pray when we feel adequate for the day's task. Now, there is another reason why some of us don't pray sometimes. And I don't have time to talk about it at length this morning, but it is true and it should be mentioned. Sometimes we don't pray and it's not because we think we are adequate for the task. It's because our faith is a little broken and a little shattered and we don't think God is adequate for the task. And so we don't pray because we're just afraid that it's going to further hurt our faith. And I don't have a lot to say about that this morning, except if that's you, please don't carry that by yourself. If the reason you have not prayed as much as you normally do lately is because you kind of doubt God's ability to answer that prayer, you think he might be inadequate to it, talk to somebody about that. Come talk to me. Talk to one of our elders. Talk to someone that you respect spiritually. Don't carry that by yourself. So I think that that's true. But I think that for most of us, as we walk through our Christian life, if we find ourselves in a season where we are not praying without ceasing, we're not even praying regularly, much less without ceasing, that the reason that is, is because we feel adequate for the task. And if we want to break this cycle of meaning to pray more, but not praying as much as we should, then I think we have to initiate a practice. And we need to understand that every prayer we pray admits dependence. We need to understand that every prayer we pray admits dependence. Every prayer we pray, no matter how flippant, even if it's just a, dear God, thank you for this food, we're so excited for this lunch, amen, that admits some sort of dependence on some level that God, it's because of you and your gifts and your goodness that I get to eat this delicious, this week I had a pot roast and Cajun macaroni and cheese sandwich. I'm in prime condition to recover from my injuries. And when we pray for that, we say, God, it's your goodness that I get to enjoy this. Even in part, every prayer, every prayer admits dependence. Every time we throw anything to God, whether we do it for 45 minutes or for 10 seconds, is a way to go, God, I'm not big enough for this. I need you. That's why I pray every Sunday before I preach. It's honestly not as much to ask God for help as it is to remind me that I need it. I'm not big enough for this. I need you. Every prayer that we pray, no matter how small or how big, admits dependence. And so if we want to make prayer a daily habit, if we want to finally figure out how to persist in prayer and be devoted to prayer and be obedient to all those verses we talked about at the onset, if we want our prayers to be powerful and effective, then I think what we need to do is practice a daily reduction to prayer. I think we need to practice a daily reduction to prayer. I don't think that we need to practice praying every day. I do, but I think it'll come after this. I think we sometimes put the cart before the horse and we skip it. And we go to God with all of our independence and all of our capabilities and we go, well, I know that I should pray to be a good Christian, so let me try to pray. And what we need to do instead is the very first thing we need to do is daily reduce ourself to the need to pray. Do you know that this is actually how Jesus prays? When the disciples went to him and they said, hey, can you teach us how to pray? You pray differently than us. Can you teach us to pray? The very first thing he does, he gives us a pattern, doesn't he? Gives us lines to recite. He gives us a pattern to follow. The very first words out of his mouth, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, you are big. We call this adoration. God, you are awesome. God, you are wonderful. God, you are the creator. God, you are holy. You are different. May your will persist here as it does in heaven. May your will be done. We start every prayer. God, you are big and I am small. God, I need you and I am insufficient. God, will your will be done, not my will be done. And it puts us in this place where we are reduced to prayer. So I think we need to practice a daily reduction to prayer. Daily admitting I am insufficient for my tasks today. Now, if you're a thinking person, that exercise of daily reducing yourself to prayer will force you to ask the question, what am I inadequate for? If you're a thinking person at all, you'll want to know, for what am I inadequate? What do I need to get done that I can't handle? What do I need to appeal to God for? And in this exercise of thinking through, for what am I inadequate, we will arrive at these great callings that we have on our life that we sometimes forget. If you're a husband or a wife, do you know that your role is far more than to simply love your spouse? According to Scripture, my understanding is that my goal, my job with Jen, is to serve her like Christ loved the church, to lay my life down for her, and to do everything I can to be a tool in the hands of God to make her as beautiful and as spiritually vibrant as is possible, to help her become the best version of herself. I'm not adequate to that task. Her job is to be a tool in the hands of God that makes me into the most respectable, lovely, godly, spiritually healthy version of myself possible. Nobody is adequate for that task. How can she do that without prayer? Our job is to raise Lily, and not just to raise her so that she goes to a good school and has a nice life, but to raise her, to release her into the wild with as little baggage to undo with a therapist as possible, who loves God, who knows him, and knows him more intimately than Jen and I ever did. That's our job. We're not adequate to that task. You're called to be pastors in your workplace. We are all a member. If you're a Christian, you're a member of the royal priesthood. You are called to be pastors in your workplace. Jesus tells you in the Sermon on the Mount that other people, if you're a Christian, other people should see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven without you ever talking to them about who you believe in. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we are led in procession by Jesus and that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You are inadequate to that task. You have no choice but to rely on God to help you accomplish those things in that day. When someone asks you a difficult question and you realize they've opened the door for a spiritual conversation, you're inadequate for that conversation. You need the Spirit. You need to say, God, help me here. Give me ears to hear and give me wisdom to speak. When we practice a daily reduction of ourselves to prayer and admit our inadequacies before God, what he will do is bring to light all the wonderful, beautiful, grand things that his word calls us to, to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And in the face of those, we'll have no choice but to say, I can't do that myself. And that will drive us to prayer, to God. And in doing that, in a constant reduction of ourselves, we have reminders of the tasks to which we are called. In the face of those, we feel inadequate. We run to God in prayer. And because of our mindset and our posture before the Lord every day, by to Scripture? Be devoted to prayer? Be a person who is characterized by prayer? You want to be obedient to that seemingly impossible command in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. I think it begins with a daily reduction of ourselves to prayer. Daily admitting our inadequacies and admitting our need for God so that we might accomplish just in that day what he wants us to accomplish in that day and that that knowledge will drive us to a prayer with him all the time. I know it's a lofty goal. Pastors say stuff like this a lot. But I really do want grace to be a place that's devoted to prayer, that's characterized by prayer. I know we have some people here who all you have to do in this sermon is nod your head because you're already doing this stuff. You're some of our warriors and you pray all the time. We need more of those. We need people praying for our families. We need people praying for the children's ministry. We need people who come and sit in this space and touch seats and pray for the people who sit there. We need to be a church that prays. And I think the key to getting into that habit is daily confessing our need to do that, is daily reducing ourselves to prayer. And I hope that we will. If that's not part of your life right now, then I would encourage you, make it a part of your life this week. This week, daily reduce yourself to prayer. This week, every day, just get up and say, God, I need you today, and tell them the things you need them for. And let me also tell you this, if praying isn't part of your normal habit, just pray until you're done praying. If you pray for a minute, nobody cares. Pray for a minute. Pray for 60 minutes, great, good for you. Pray for 60 minutes. Pray until you're done praying and then go and do what God's called you to do that day. But I would challenge you this week, for one week, if it's not a part of your regular habit, to daily this week reduce yourself to prayer. Now, I'd like to invite you all to pray with me, and the band will come up, and we'll have a song, and then we've got a special thing that we're going to do at the end. Father, you're good. You love us. You're merciful to us. You call us back to you. Your goodness, like a fetter, binds our wandering hearts to you. Father, if there's anybody wandering, I pray that you would draw them in. God, I pray that if we are not characterized by prayer, that we would be. Lord, help us reduce ourselves to prayer. Help us not wait for life to do that for us. Show us the things that you've called us to for which we are inadequate. Let us be the husbands and the fathers and the wives and the mothers and the friends and the employees and employers that you've created us to be. May we be a people and a church and individuals who are characterized by a devotion to prayer, Father. God, may you work in my own life that I might set the pace for that too. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the lead pastor here. I don't think you guys got the memo. It's Memorial Day weekend. You're supposed to be like at the beach and stuff, and here you are. So this is fantastic. I'm super encouraged by our Memorial Day crew. Just for the record, to throw this out here before I get launched into the sermon, if you are ever here while a staff member falls off the stage, the appropriate response is laughter. Don't feel bad about that. Don't feel like you have to wait and see if we're all right. Even if it's Aaron, you just laugh, all right? That's funny. And if you had fallen off the stage, that would be the best. That would be amazing. Actually, they're all rooting for me. Now they're all like, they're not even going to pay attention. They're just going to root for me like to fall off the stage. I'm going to stay right here. This is the third part in our series called The Forgotten God. For the unindoctrinated, for those that may not be as familiar with Christian theology, we believe that the Bible teaches that our God exists as a trinity or the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And the idea is we talk a lot about God the Father. We pray to him. We hear about him. He's all over the Bible. We talk a lot about God the Son in the form of Jesus. We see Jesus a lot. We just did a whole series on his life for 12 weeks. But sometimes we forget about the Spirit. We know he's there, but we don't familiarize ourselves with him or his roles or his influence in our lives. Last week, we said we've been talking about that what the Spirit does is he continues Jesus's ministry both through us and to us. This week, we're going to look at how he continues Jesus's ministry to us and the roles that he plays in our life. Last week, we looked at his continuation of Jesus's ministry through us and the spiritual gifts. And I brought up that there was two spiritual gifts that are often misunderstood, tongues and prophecy. And I promised that I would write up a little something to help you understand it if you're curious about my stance, not our stance, my stance on those gifts. So that's actually typed up and printed out and on the information table if you want to grab one on your way out. To the five of you that read it, I hope that it's good. They'll be there as long as there are copies, so for eight months. This week, I want us to look at the roles of the Spirit. How does the Spirit continue Jesus's ministry to us? And when I say Jesus's ministry to us, one of the things that Jesus was doing with the disciples is he was showing them how to become more like God in character, more like him in character and in disposition and in love and in heart. And so now the Holy Spirit does that in us as well. We're taught that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment or a guarantee on our salvation. So we believe that if you are a believer, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then you have the gift of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit does certain things for you. I saw one author, he listed out 50 things that the Holy Spirit does. We're one service now, so I've got extra time. So number your paper, one through 50. No, I'm just messing around. I'm going to do five, but there's more than what we're doing this morning, right? But the Holy Spirit plays roles for us. And as I was thinking about how do we understand who the Holy Spirit is for us and what he does for us and how he helps us, as Jesus talked about, I was reminded of this clip of the 92 Olympics in Barcelona. This is, we're going to watch in just a second, this is my favorite Olympic moment of all time. Number two, for those interested, is Carrie Strug in the 96 Olympics when she does the vault with her sprained ankle. But this is my favorite one of all time. I watched this as an 11-year-old boy, and even in the moment, I thought, my goodness, something really neat is happening here. And I thought it was a really good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. So I wanted us to take a second here at the onset and take a look at this video. Storbritannia Terima kasih telah menonton! That's his dad. Terima kasih telah menonton I'm going to make a small tree with a small tree. Stenbergsforskning I love that clip, man. It's great. First of all, I mean, if you're blessed to have a good dad, like, that's what they do. And so now as a dad, like, I understand that even more. But every time I watch that clip, I cry. I get a little misty. And so I was in my office this week trying to find the right version of it on YouTube. And so I was watching it, and it finishes, and I'm in my office crying by myself. And then I start laughing at myself for crying by myself. And so if you'd have walked into my office at that moment, I would have looked absolutely hysterical. Like, you probably just would have slowly shut the door like, Nate's lost it. This is terrible. And going on with your day. But I love that clip because dude's running. He's trained for the Olympics. He's poured his life into it. And he tears his hamstring, right? And I can appreciate the heart of the dude that says, no, forget this. I'm finishing this thing. And he gets up and he goes and he's going to finish this thing. And then here comes his dad fighting off people. And I love, you guys giggle both times, I love when some other guy comes over and tries to help. He's like, get away from us. Get out of here. I've got this. I'm taking care of him. I love that. And I think it's a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. And I think about us that we can all relate to that sprinter. That sprinter's name is Derek. I think in our life we've all felt like Derek. When we didn't know what to do or where to go, we felt like we were all alone, that we were just limping through life, trying to get this thing figured out. And darn it if we couldn't just use a hand. I sat with somebody this week. We have the young girl Molly that sometimes plays the violin for us. Her father passed away this week far too early. That's a heartbreaking thing. And I was sitting with somebody from our church this week as we took them lunch. And we were talking about, his name was Mac. We were talking about Mac passing. And she just brought up that there's just been a lot of people in the last couple years in her life who have passed away. She knows a lot of widows who are widows far too early. And she kind of broke down. She said, I don't understand. It's been really hard for me. I don't know how to make sense of this. I believe in my God, but I don't know why these things happen. She felt like Derek. And sometimes that moment is deep and it's grievous and it's intense and we just don't know what to do. We feel like him. We're all alone. Other times we just kind of look around and we're like, gosh, I've been carrying this weight for a long time. Goodness, it's felt like it's been all on my shoulders to lead this family, to lead this business, to decide on my career, to raise this child, to be in this relationship. Sometimes it just feels like it's all on us and that we're just limping through life. And if we're being really honest, we just wish sometimes we could have a hand. And this is true even of the toughest sons of guns in here. Because some of us are wired in such a way that you never ask for help. You never need anything from anybody. You're quick to help other people, but if other people offer to help you, no, I'm good. I'm fine. And I know that mentality. But let me tell you something. Even the toughest, most independent people in here, you have moments in your life, if you're being honest, where you feel like Derek, and you could really use a hand. That's why I think Jesus' words in John 16 should comfort us so much. And let me just say, if you're sitting here going, I've never felt like Derek, boy, you need to feel like him more than anybody in this room. And I think that's why Jesus' words bring us so much comfort. We started the series with this verse in John chapter 16 where Jesus says, it's better for you that I leave so that you can receive the comforter. And we talked about that's an absurd statement because wouldn't it be great to have Jesus right next to us all the time? But Jesus says it's better that I'm not here because if I don't leave, you can't receive the comforter. And we just talked about how can that statement possibly be true. But this week, I want us to actually look at a different portion of the verse. So come back to it, but zero in on a differentper, and that's capitalized, and some of your Bibles may say Comforter, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And this is going to be important later. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. I say that these should be words of comfort to us because of what that word helper means. The word helper or comforter in your Bible, and I don't do this a lot because normally I think it's pastors just showing off, but in this point I do think it's important. The original word there is parakletos. parakletos, which literally means to come alongside. And that's the word that Jesus uses to describe the Spirit. It's all through the book of John. It's alternately translated as advocate, helper, comforter, or teacher. It can mean all those different things, but sometimes we see it helper, sometimes we see it comforter. But what he's saying is, if I don't leave you, then the one who's going to come alongside you will not come. And that's why I say that clip was a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is, because what did that father do? He came alongside his son, and he helped him through the race. And this is the picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. When he rushes into our life, he comes alongside us, he fights his way to us, he picks us up, and he stays beside us through life. He is our ever-present helper. And so it should bring us great comfort. And as I was doing the research on this sermon, I realized that there's a lot of different roles that the Holy Spirit plays. There's a lot of different things that he does for us. I said that one author listed as many as 50. But what I realized as I looked at this is, wait a second, Jesus calls him the comforter. Jesus calls him the helper. So the Holy Spirit's role is to help us. The Holy Spirit's role is to come alongside us. That's his big umbrella role. And then underneath that umbrella, sometimes he takes on different shapes or different forms, depending on what we might need most. And the Scripture kind of tells us or shows us the different forms that he takes on for us. So we're going to talk about the roles of the Spirit, but his role is to help us. And that role looks differently depending on different seasons of life and different wiring. So one of the first ones I want us to look at is that sometimes he's the comforter. Sometimes the role that that takes on is that the Holy Spirit is the comforter. And this is easy to see that when we're grieving, the Holy Spirit is there and he is with us. And the Bible says that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. We know that when we are grieving and when we are hurting that the Lord is near to us. But to be honest with you, this was a hard one for me to relate to. I've not walked through a lot of tragedy in my life. There's not been many times where I was so broken and so grieved, maybe once that I can think of, where I felt like I needed to run to God. But I also felt like the role of comforter in our life is more prevalent than that. The other thing I know about myself is that I'm kind of emotionally broken. Like I don't really like feel emotions to the same degree that other people do. Like I'm a little bit weird in that way. And one time I was really sad about something and I called Jen and told her I was down. And her response was, Nate, those are feelings. And I said, well, you can keep these. These are terrible. I don't like feeling this way. I don't get down a lot. I probably should. I just don't get affected by much. I get grumpy about things, but I don't get sad about things where I feel like I need comfort. I don't feel like my life calls for a lot of comfort. So I actually went to some people on staff. I went to Aaron, our children's pastor, and I went to Steve, our worship pastor, and I said, hey, when you hear that the Holy Spirit is your comforter, how do you relate to that? How does that strike you? What does that mean to you? And they both gave me the same answer, and I thought it was a great one. They said, when I think of the comfort of the Spirit, I think of peace. And I thought that's so true. And often the comfort that the Holy Spirit offers comes in the form of peace. Often the comfort that he gives us is not patting us on the back and saying, hey, it's going to be okay, or giving us the plan like, hey, I'm going to comfort you by showing you exactly how it's going to work out. Sometimes that's not it. Sometimes it's just the peace that he offers us. I got to participate in the funeral that happened on Friday for Mac McElroy. And I peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That peace of God is delivered to us through the Holy Spirit. And the comfort comes in the form of, I think, the Holy Spirit getting near us, putting his arm around us, and saying, I know that you don't know how this is going to work out, but I do. And saying, I know that you don't know what you need to do in this situation, but I know. I know that this doesn't make sense to you right now. I know that you can't make heads or tails of this. I know that it feels like a loving God wouldn't allow this to happen. I know that this feels confusing and it doesn't fit into your theology. I understand that. But I understand it. It makes sense to me. I know that you don't know how this is going to be okay or how life will ever be okay, but I think the Holy Spirit, as he comforts us, whispers into our ear, but I know how it's going to be okay. And I know how this is going to work out. And the Holy Spirit is what enables people, those Christians, to face the unknown with certainty and with peace. One of the greatest blessings of my life has been the privilege of watching my grandma, my mama, walk to death with perfect peace. She was diagnosed in February a couple years ago with ovarian cancer. It was advanced stage, and she said, you know, I've lived a long life. I'm pretty good. My husband's in heaven. My kids don't need, like, my support on a day-to-day basis, so I can pray for them. I can pray for them from heaven, so I'm just going to refuse treatment and live out the last couple months of my life in peace. And she walked. I had coffee with her every other week and talked to her about it. And she walked to death with perfect peace and no fear. You know how she did that? The Holy Spirit whispering in her ear, Linda, I know that you don't know how this is gonna work, but I do, and I've got you. So sometimes the Holy Spirit helps us by taking on the form of a comforter. Sometimes he's the illuminator. This may be the most important role of the Spirit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is the illuminator. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, I've got it there on your notes, verses 13 to 14. Paul writes this, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Okay. What this means is, if we want to understand spiritual things at all, it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand those things. Do you understand that the Holy Spirit is the activator of your faith? That if you would call yourself a Christian, that in the days and weeks and years before you were a Christian, you were wandering around, the Bible says, blind, unable to see the truth. And the only way you can see the truth that it takes to become a believer is for the Holy Spirit to illuminate that truth in your life, to do the work in your heart so that you'll be turned on to the things of God. None of us comes to faith because we sit down and intellectually pursue faith. We come to faith because the Holy Spirit, in whatever way he works, illuminates for us our need for God. That's how we come to faith. None of us has faith without the Spirit. And then as we walk through life and we seek to understand spiritual things, the Holy Spirit explains them to us. He directs our paths in such a way that spiritual things make sense to us that beforehand they couldn't. That's why I truly believe if you're not a believer and you're trying to come to grips with Christianity, but the deal for you is I have to understand everything about what I'm getting into to be able to take the step of faith to be a Christian. You never will, because the Holy Spirit has to act in our life to bring that about for us. I think it even works like this. The Holy Spirit, part of his role is to illuminate God's Word. I have notes in my Bible where I was reading a passage, and I went, gosh, I don't understand what that means. And I wrote down and dated it. Father, please show me what this means. Spirit, please help me with this one. I don't understand this. And I wrote it down and I dated it and I just made it a prayer. And I can tell you that there's been a couple of times when I come back through my Bible, I'm reading it again, and I read a passage and there's a note off to the side of it that just says, Lord, please help me. And I go, oh, I understand what that means now. Because the Holy Spirit was good in answering the prayers and showing us what Scripture means. I would just tell you this. If you're having a hard time understanding some things about God, if you're having a hard time understanding some things about theology, if you're having a hard time understanding some of the things that you may read in Scripture sometimes, have you prayed to the Spirit and asked Him to illuminate for you what it means? Have you asked Him to show you? I would challenge you to pray that prayer and see what happens because sometimes the Spirit is the illuminator and he shows us spiritual truths. Sometimes he's our leader. Sometimes he shows us where to go and what to do next. I love the moment in that video when Derek is limping down. He's limping down the track, and his father fights his way to him, and he grabs him, right? And Derek at first looks at him. If you go back and you watch it again, he looks at him with some apprehension. He thinks it's another guy in a suit who's trying to help him, and he kind of looks at him like, no, get away from me. But then he realizes who it is. And when he realizes who it is, he breaks down crying because he realizes it's not all on him anymore. And he turns and he buries his face in his dad. And at that moment when he's burying his face in his dad, he's still moving down the track, but he's no longer looking where he's going. And that's a picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. His dad has his eyes down the track. His dad hasn't. His dad says, you don't need to worry about where we're going. You don't need to worry about where we're stepping. You don't need to worry about staying in your lane or avoiding all these camera people or crossing the finish line. You don't need to worry about any of that. I got you. I will take you across. And all of his concerns and all of his worries went straight into just focusing on his dad and the comfort that his dad offered. And sometimes this is what we need to do with the Spirit more than anything, is just bury our face in Him, focus our eyes on Christ, focus our eyes on God, and allow the Spirit to lead us into the decisions that we need to make. Because sometimes we don't know what to do. Do I take the job? Do I not take the job? Do I put my resume out there? Do I not? Do I stay in Raleigh? Do I move somewhere else? Do I go to this church? Do I go to that church? We have a dynamic in a relationship that's hard and sticky and if we address it, it's going to blow it up and it's going be really difficult to talk about it, and maybe it's best just to let it lie. What do I do? Do I stick my face in the wood chipper, or do I step back and hope it works out? How do I discipline my kid? What do I say in this particular instance? How do I handle this situation? Oftentimes, we're in a place in life where we could go this way or that way, and we're not sure what to do. I was in a conversation with somebody in my family a while back, and she was in a very stressful situation, and a lot of things had fallen on her that were not typically her responsibilities. And she was really struggling with it and having a hard time with it and was ill-equipped to handle it. It was really very stressful for her. And I spent some time on the phone with her. And I tried to lovingly tell her, hey, where you're at right now in life, the things that are being thrust onto you are too much for you. They're too big for you. You're not wired to handle these things. So you don't need to continue to feel encumbered with all the decisions around the situation because you have a couple of people around you who are smart and who are level-headed and who are thinking clearly and who are capable of helping you carry that burden. So the only decision that you need to make is to trust the people around you who love you enough to make those decisions for you. How does that sound? And she said, that sounds pretty good. I think I can do that. Some of y'all came in here this morning and this is what you need to hear. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have been leading the company or the family or the dynamic or the department or whatever it is, and it has felt all on you for a long time. And you're trying to decide between this and that and what's the best way and what do we do. The only thing you need to do is turn and bury your face in the Spirit and trust His leadership and trust His guidance and say, listen, God, I'm just going to focus on you and you just take me where we need to go. Sometimes the Spirit helps us by leading us. Sometimes the Spirit is the convictor. This is what Jesus says in John, that the helper is going to come and his role is going to be to convict the world of sin. And I feel like this gets a bad rap. This idea of conviction kind of gets, especially now in our culture, it really gets a bad rap, right? We are so touchy about telling anybody that they're wrong about anything. We could hear, man, this guy, he murdered his wife. And some of us would go like, I'm sure he had his reasons. Like we equivocate everything. We won't judge anything at all. We're so scared of it because we don't want anybody to feel bad about anything that they may have done, God forbid. And so when we hear that the Holy Spirit is the convictor, we kind of immediately be like, I'm not into that. Because we feel like that the Holy Spirit is the voice in our head that's shaming us for our sin. The one that's getting on to us when we look in the mirror and we say, look at you. Look at who you are. If everybody knew what you know about yourself, they would not be your friends anymore. She would not be your wife anymore. He would not be your husband anymore. They would not respect you as a parent anymore. And some of us sometimes think that the Holy Spirit is that voice in our head that's shaming us into obedience. But I really feel like that's not how the Holy Spirit works. Have you ever had, I feel like the Holy Spirit works like this. Go with me. I know this is kind of a leap, but just hang with me. Have you ever had those days when you overeat? I never have. I'm assuming that you guys have. But those days when you overeat. Gosh, I've had so many lately. The other day, this happened. This was Thursday night. Thursday was a really busy day. I got up. I had something early, so I left before Lily woke up. I had the whole day. I saw her really quick for like a minute in the afternoon. I snuck up on her at a park and said, hey. And then I went back to work. And then I had meetings that went until like 8.30 at night. And so I was trying desperately to wrap up the meeting and rush home so that I could hug Lily before she went to bed. That's what I was trying to do all day. And I get there and I walk into the room. It's right before she goes to bed. The lights are down. Jen's sitting on the bed. And she says, Daddy. And I'm like, oh, this is the best. And so I hug her, and then I decided to push my luck. I said, can Daddy snuggle with you for a minute? And she said, no, I want Mom to. Dang it. Which is, that's Lily. I mean, she loves her Mama. And so we kind of negotiated. I'm like, well, maybe mom can do it for a little bit and then daddy can. And she goes, okay. I'm like, all right, good. So long story short, I tried to lay down next to her and snuggle with her for a minute, and she just bawled hysterically. The way that any of you would react if the same thing were happening in your life. She just bawled hysterically, right? And Jen's kind of looking at me, and now I realize I'm the selfish 38-year-old jerk that's making this poor girl cry because I want her time and this is really not good fathering. So I relent and I get up. And I'm not messing around. My feelings were legitimately hurt. I was sad when I walked down the stairs. And so I drove to cookout and I ate my feelings. I did. We had decided that week we were on a diet. We were going to be strict. And I had been good that week. I really had. And then I walked down those stairs and I was like, forget this. So I get in the car, I go to cookout, double cheeseburger, onions, mayonnaise, mustard, onion rings, chicken quesadilla, Coke. All of it. All of it. I wasn't even, stop it. You've done it too. I get back to the house. I ate the cheeseburger and like two onion rings and I was like, I'm full. But I am not a quitter. So I finished it. And I'm sitting there, right? And like ten minutes after I'm done, I do not feel good. I'm having some serious indigestion. And what's the indigestion telling me? Hey, pal, that probably wasn't a good choice. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice that talks back to you in the mirror after you overeat that says, look at you, you man, it stinks that it's getting hot. It's bathing suit season and you are not ready. Like that's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the indigestion that you feel that says, hey, that decision that you just made, that's not what's best for you. The Holy Spirit is the heavy breathing at the top of the stairs that lets you know like maybe a walk would be good sometimes. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice trying to shame us into submission. He is looking to love us into health. He's the voice that whispers in our ear, hey, that thing that you're doing with your life, that's not what's best for you. When you feel bad after you overeat, that's the Creator whispering to you going, you were not designed to eat cookout. When we sin and we mess up and we feel this voice in our head telling us, you were not designed to do that. That's the Holy Spirit. That's the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The conviction of the Holy Spirit never induces shame because our shame hung with Jesus on the cross. He took that from you so that you don't have to feel it. But it is a voice telling you, hey, that thing that you're doing in your life, that's not what's best for you. The conviction of the Holy Spirit loves us to health. And for some of us this morning, he's been whispering to us for a while. And we should listen. I like to say that you win every argument you ever get into with God. The Holy Spirit can whisper to you and say, hey, that's not good for you. And you can go, yeah, it is. I think it's fine. And he'll go, okay. You do not want to win that argument. Listen to him. Listen to him. And I think it's important that we understand that the Holy Spirit is never seeking to shame us in this conviction. He's only seeking to love us because it plays into the last role I want to cover today. Sometimes he's the identifier. Sometimes the Holy Spirit identifies us for who we are. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are, get this, children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs to God and co-heirs to Christ. So the Holy Spirit's role is to identify you for who you are. And I think that this, to me, as you become a Christian, is maybe the most persistently needed voice and role of the Spirit that we have. Because I'm convinced that most of us, when we think about standing face to face with God, feel far more like an indentured servant than we do a loved child, right? I feel like most of us just assume, think about the way that you pray, think about the way that you worship, think about the self-talk that you feel when you even try to do spiritual things. Don't most of us in this room just assume God's disappointed in us? Don't we just assume that if we were gonna be face-to-face with God, that his first primary emotion towards us would be disappointment? We think God's love is for everybody else, God's forgiveness is for everybody else, but not me, I know better. I've been in church for a long time. I know better than what I have done. Doesn't everybody in this room feel like, if you've been a believer for any time, don't you feel like, if you're being honest, gosh, I should be so much further along in my spiritual walk than I am. God has to be disappointed in how little ground I've covered in these last 10, 20, 30 years. Don't we feel like that? Like we're somehow God's indentured servants and we owe him. We need to get better and that his primary emotion towards us is disappointment. To that voice, the Holy Spirit whispers in our ear, you're not an indentured servant. God is not ashamed of you. He is your father, and you are his daughter, or his son, and he loves you, and he is proud of you. When that dad rushed onto the track and grabbed Derek, the sprinter, and picked him up, did you read anything on his lips about him being disappointed for not properly stretching before the race? No, he just picked him up and he said, I'm here. I'll help you. I feel like we have this picture of God that's gonna be disappointed in us for not stretching or eating right the day of race, when all God wants to do is rush into our life and pick us up and help us. What I want you to see is that God's primary emotion towards you is not disappointment. It's delighted love. And the Holy Spirit's role in your life is to identify you as an adopted son or daughter of the King and to constantly remind you God loves you. God delights in you. God is proud of you. And some of you just said in your head, God's not proud of me. Yes, he is. He's proud of you. Some of you just said he doesn't delight in me. Yes, he does. He delights in you. He loves you. He's proud of you. You're his children. And the Holy Spirit's role is to remind you that the Creator God looks down on you and smiles and takes delight. Those of you who have children, you know that your primary emotion towards them is not disappointment or frustration. It's love. Why would we think our perfect heavenly Father is any different than that? So sometimes the Holy Spirit serves us as the identifier. I would ask you this question. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which good on you for being church at a holiday weekend and not even signing up for the whole deal yet. But if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, don't you want that? Don't you want the helper? Aren't you tired of running the race on your own? Aren't you tired of it all being on you? Aren't you ready to let the helper come alongside you and serve you in whatever capacity you need? For those of you who are a believer, I want to encourage you today to lean into the roles of the Holy Spirit in your life. I don't know which one that we covered today resonates most deeply with you. But when I pray in a second, you might spend some time praying and ask God to just help you lean into that part of his spirit. You might ask God to help you trust him as your comforter and as your helper. You might ask him to lead you and to show you. You might ask him to remind you. All you need this morning is a reminder that you are a beloved son or daughter of the King. I don't know which role resonates with you most, but the encouragement this morning is to lean into it and allow the Holy Spirit to be in your life who he is and to do in your life what he's come to do. And let's embrace this idea that it's better for us to have the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit continues to bring you closer to God and draw you into the Father by coming alongside you and being your helper as you move through life. All right, let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for your spirit. Thank you for how he helps, how he comforts, how he illuminates and leads. We even thank you for the gentle conviction of the spirit. We thank you that he identifies us for who we are. God, I pray that we would leave, those of us who are believers, knowing that we are adopted children that you love. God, if there's anybody here who walked in this morning not knowing you, I pray that they would be your child before they leave. Let us give proper weight and value to your spirit and his ministry in our lives, God. Give us the faith to lean into him and to trust him. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.