Sermons tagged with Courage

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you so much for joining us. If you're watching online, thank you for doing so. If you're catching up later, that's fantastic. Thank you for doing that. If I seem just a little bit distracted this morning in the transport of my paper, it got a crease in it. And when I was a teacher, if you handed in a piece of paper to me that had a crease in it, I handed it back to you and made you rewrite it because it doesn't stack well and I don't like it. So now every time I look at it, I'm like, this sucks. So, you know, forgive me that. This morning we are in some part of our series in the life of Moses, and we've arrived at a very famous story where Moses parts the Red Sea. And this is a story that's so famous that even if you're not a church person, you have become at some point aware of it. And as I was prepping for this sermon, I was reminded, when I was a kid, I really enjoyed Farside. And there's this one Farside cartoon. Thank you, Tom, for your support. Everyone else, you're mean. And you have no sense of humor because Farside is great. And I remember this particular cartoon of Moses as a kid. And I know it says Moses as a kid at the bottom. I know you can't see that very well, but that's him parting his glass of milk at breakfast just for practice, right? So we know this story. We know what it is. We've heard it before. I think the question for us in 2025 in the United States is, does this story about how God rescued his children in ancient Egypt apply to us today? And are there things that we can pull from it that we can apply to our lives? Or is it just a story about what God did? And we should marvel at that. And honestly, sometimes that should be the answer. We should just read a story and think about it and consume it and allow ourselves to just marvel at who our God is in that story. But as I looked at it, I did think, because I put this in the series plan because you can't tell the story of Moses and not tell the story of the parting of the Red Sea. So I knew that we needed to do it. But it's very rare that when I put a sermon on the calendar or in the series that I don't know kind of where I want to go with it. But for this one, I had to sit down with the text and just read it and go, what do we talk about here, God? What do we preach? What do we do? How do we direct? And as I read it, something became clear to me. And so I want to share that with you this morning. But to do that, what I'd like to do is just dive right into the story. So this story is found in Exodus chapter 14. I'm going to read the first four verses to kind of set it up. And then we're going to talk about it a little bit. So Exodus chapter 14 verses 1 through 4. So the Israelites did this. These instructions are essentially what I'd like you to do. Moses, take your people that are fleeing from the most powerful nation on the planet and move them back and forth across the desert in a nonsensical way. And then I would like for the conclusion of that meandering journey to be at the shore of the Red Sea so that Pharaoh will look at you and go, they don't know what they're doing. They're lost in the desert. Let's go get them. And when he decides to do that, you're going to be pinned against the sea. And then I'm going to do something to make my name great. And we're going to come back to that later. But what strikes me is these instructions are directed by God from God. They're very intentional. And he has a plan. And they make no sense. Right? Can you imagine being one of the tribal elders that Moses comes back to? And he's like, listen, I heard from God. Here's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to go a few miles that way, and then a few miles that way, and then we're supposed to encamp a few miles that way, pinned against the coast of the Red Sea. And when we do that, Pharaoh's army is going to pursue us. If you were an elder in that situation, if you were an advisor in that situation, you would say, I think, I know I would, hey Moses, that doesn't make a lot of sense, man. Maybe that's not the best plan. Like, okay, meander around, let's do this a little bit, but is there a place to stop where we've got an escape route? Is there a place to stop where we can bail out, there's an exit hatch? Maybe the best thing to do, and I know that this is a wild idea, Moses, but maybe the best thing to do is just continue to move north away from Egypt and not meander in the desert and let Pharaoh watch us. Maybe that's the best idea. Moses, this doesn't make any sense. Isn't that the counsel that you would offer? As that came down the pipe, I know from talking with some of you in Bible study and socially, that sometimes there's decisions that are made three levels above you, and when they get to you, you're like, that is dumb. That doesn't make any sense. Why are we doing this? Wouldn't you feel that way if you were one of the Hebrew people and you're told we're going to be meandering here and here and here and then we're going to pin ourselves against the sea and we're going to let Pharaoh see us? That sounds like a terrible plan. But it's a God-directed plan. And so one of the first things that jumps out to me in this story is sometimes God tells us to do things that don't make sense. There are times in life when God will direct us to do things that don't make any sense. And this is a theme that's been coming up lately in our sermons and in what we've been talking about as a church. And I can't help but think that the Holy Spirit is pressing on some of us to do something that might not make sense on its face. That the Holy Spirit is pressing us to make a decision and to take a step that on its face doesn't make sense. On its face, if you were to tell the advisors and the people around you what you wanted to do, they would go, I'm not sure that's the wisest course of action. Maybe it's to quit your job and to pursue a different field. Maybe it's to stay in your job when all you want is to get out of your job. Maybe it's to end a relationship that's tenuous and hurtful, but you're scared to do it because you need it. Maybe it's an impetus to stay in a relationship that you think has a dead end and isn't going anywhere. But you just feel this press from God to stay in it. Maybe it's to quit something or to start something. But I do know that from time to time, the Lord will press on our hearts through the Holy Spirit for us to do things that might not make sense. I remember years ago in 2016 when I was looking for a job and becoming a senior pastor, moving on from being a staff pastor at my old church, Greystone, that my pastor preached a sermon on Abraham. And he pointed out that God spoke to Abraham when he lived in Ur in the Sumerian dynasty in the Middle East, probably modern day Iran. And he told him where Iraq, and he said, I want you, he woke him up and he said, I want you to get your things together, get your house together, get your wife, get your servants, get all your possessions. I want you to go to a place where I will show you. Not a specific place. Abraham didn't get to watch a YouTube video about the land of milk and honey to decide if he wanted to go there on vacation. He just had to go into the unknown. Just go that way and I'll let you know when you get there. And his point was sometimes God asks us to do things that don't make sense. And I was very convicted in that sermon because I was listening to that sermon and I'm thinking, we need to sell our house. We need to sell our house. I don't have a job yet. I don't know where we're moving. It doesn't make a lot of sense because we don't have a good place to go, but I know that we need to sell our house. And so I went home and I thought about it and I prayed about it. And that afternoon I went to Jen and I was like, hey, you're not going to like this. And I know that we don't have a place to move, but I think we need to sell our house. And she said, me too. What? She said, that's all I was thinking the whole sermon. We need to sell our house. And so we did. And for the next seven months, we lived with her parents and my parents. And then when I got hired by Grace, things were a little bit rushed. And I had two weeks from when I had my last Sunday at Greystone to when I preached my first Sunday at Grace. Two weeks. That is not enough time to sell a house. That is not enough time to get my affairs in order. But God pressed on us to do something that made no sense. And so we just felt like we were supposed to walk towards the sea. And we did. I have some good friends from that season of life, Heath and Ashley. And the sea that they walked towards was a lot scarier than ours. Heath was a staff pastor with me at Greystone. And I remember how he was and is a very dear friend of mine. If for no other reason than in 2013, he took me to the Masters. And I'll be forever grateful for that. I'll pretend to like him in hopes of further Masters visits after that. But I remember having a conversation with Heath when we were talking about spiritual gifts. And he said, what do you think my spiritual gifts are? And I said, honestly, I don't know. Maybe all of them. You're good at everything you do. He's so humble. He's so sweet. You would like him way more than you like me. Heath is great. And everything that he did just seemed to flourish. And by the time that both of us had matured in staff, he was a campus pastor in a city called Monroe, which was, you know, 35 minutes down the road from our main campus. And it was this quaint little southern town, a little bit like Wake Forest, but just better because Wake Forest stinks a little bit. And he bought this house downtown that was built in like the 1800s. And his wife, Ashley, is very eclectic and wonderful. And we love her. And we're actually going to see them in a few weeks when we go down to Florida. And it was just this perfect house for them. And they had two little girls. And it was just this really great thing. And they fixed up the house. And the house had appreciated in value really greatly. And they had set up this very nice life for themselves. And he's the campus pastor at a campus that's flourishing. And they just felt this press from the Holy Spirit, this direction like we see from God in verses one through four. Hey, I think I want you to go to seminary. And he felt this conviction that he needed to go to seminary. He had never been. He graduated from UGA with a degree in business and then got involved in church world and had never been to seminary. And so he felt like he needed to go. And he shared it with Ashley. And Ashley is one of these people. She was either convicted by the Holy Spirit or just so wild and free in her spirit that she was just like, yeah, let's do that. She's very adventurous. So he told Ashley, and they said, yeah, let's go to seminary. And so they sold everything they had, and they moved to Pasadena, California to go to Fuller Theological Seminary. And they lived in a student apartment. And if you've been to college and you've seen student apartments, those are a little bit less good than your own house in a small city, right? It was small, it was constricted, it was confined. Their little girls are meeting new people, going to a new school, a new environment. They really felt like God asked them, give up your comfortable life, move across the country, and I'll show you what I want you to do there. And so that's what they did. And when Heath told me this was his plan, I said, I don't think you need to do that. You're very successful in ministry. You're very good at what you do. But if this is what God's convicting you to do, then I think you should go. But it didn't make any sense to me. And I got off the phone with Heath and I looked at Jen and I was like, this doesn't make any sense. And she was like, that's weird. And I was like, I know. But they felt convicted and so they did and so they walked towards the sea. Sometimes in life, God asks us to do things that don't make any sense. But let me show you what happens when we follow through in obedience. First, we tend to come to a point of conflict. Exodus chapter 14, verses 10 and 11. As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, was it because there was no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Which I have to admit, until I dove into this story and was reading through to figure out what to preach and how to preach, I was unaware. This verse had never stuck out to me before, but it's one of the great sarcastic lines in the Bible. What have you done to us? Are there not enough graves in Egypt that you would bring us here to die? And then if you continue to read and you follow the discourse, some of them say, didn't we tell you in Egypt that we didn't want to do this? Didn't we tell you that we thought this was a bad idea? We were oppressed there, but we were alive. And now we're about to be mowed down by the army of Egypt. Because now what's happening when they say this, they're pinned against the Red Sea. They're shoreline and shoreline and nowhere to go. And in the distance is the armies of Pharaoh. And one detail that I think is interesting, because I'm silly, I just have to point this out. It says in the text that Pharaoh chose 600 of his best chariot men to go and to pursue the Israelites, which is great. But how do you determine the top 600 of anything? Like who was 601? You know? And was that guy like, I mean, come on, I'm at least 585. If not 590, this is bull. 601 has to be sour about it, right? It just seems like a really specific number. Anyways, I'm sorry. So they're pursuing the Israelites. And the Israelites say, why are we here? We told you this didn't make sense. They're raining down on us. We would have been better off if we did the other thing. This was a stupid decision. And so they come to this point of desperation where now they've done what they were supposed to do. And the only thing that can rescue them from their peril is an act of God. It's this point of desperation. And it reminds us that the reality is sometimes God asks us to do something, and we take that step of faith, and it opens up and it works out wonderfully. But most of the time, God asks us to do something, and we take a step of faith, and there is a process. There are things to wait on. We don't understand it fully. God told David, you're going to be the king of Israel, and then he waited 20 years. God called Moses to be the leader, and then he waited 40 years. God called Paul to be his witness to the Gentiles, and then he waited seven years. God called Peter, and Peter was a moron for three years, and then got it together and ministered well. Sometimes when we take a step of obedience, it works out right away, but most of the time time it's a process. And within that process, we will often reach a point of peril and desperation where we go, God, if you don't act, I don't know what to do. And it will cause us to question everything about the decision that we made. We will agree with the Egyptians. I was better off in the previous situation. I was better off with the previous resolution, with the previous decision, with the previous direction of guidance. I was better off then than I am now. Why did I do this? I regret quitting the job. That was a bad decision. I wish I could have it back. I regret starting this company. It was a bad decision. I wish I could have it back. I regret, I regret ending that relationship. I regret staying in this relationship. This is so hard. I regret moving to this school or to this place or to, or to go to this thing or to start this or to stop that. I regret it. It was wrong. And I wish I could have that previous life back. I wish I had a redo, God, because maybe I got it wrong. But when we follow God towards the sea, there is almost an inevitable moment where we will reach a point of desperation like the Israelites did and say, maybe I would have been better off if I had never done this. But it's at that point of tension that we reach the denouement, the climax of the story, the resolution of the event. In verses 26 through 28. It's at this point that chariotman 601 was 601 was like, thank goodness for that. God had a plan. He told Moses, raise your arms, close the sea. And he defeated this army of Egypt. And though I can't peer into the mind of God, I cannot know the mind of God. It makes sense to me that what God may have known, I'll just proffer this to you. You accept it or don't based on what you think. But I think it's possible that what God may have known is that Pharaoh is not going to just let you go. If you just scurry north, at some point or another, he will decide that he wants you back. And his army of trained soldiers and men on chariots and horses is faster than your entire three and four generations of families shuffling through the desert. It's faster than you. And if he wants to come get you, he will get you. And he will at some point, whether it's on the banks of the Red Sea, in the desert congruent to the Red Sea, or on the shores of the Jordan River, or even if he has to come back to Israel and reconquer you and bring you down. He will get you. I think this may be something that God knew. And so he knew that the Egyptian army needed to be conquered. And he knew that the Israelites didn't have the tools and the armies to do it. So he knew that he was going to need to step in. So what did he do? He told them, I want you to make yourself bait for Pharaoh. And I want you to put yourself in a completely vulnerable situation so that he will attack you. And when he does, look back at verse 4. Why did he do this? But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. Sometimes God uses the nonsensical to spread his name. Sometimes he directs us towards nonsense, towards things that don't make sense, towards things that our friends would not advise us towards except for the will of God. And he uses it to spread his name. I remember having a conversation with Heath. They moved out to Pasadena. They lived in this small apartment. They were struggling, but they were good. They took all the equity that they gained from their home in Monroe, and they used it to live for those two years that he needed to do seminary to complete his degree and then towards the end of his seminary education I spoke with him and I was like what do you what are you gonna do because he had been a staff pastor and he didn't know what he wanted to do after seminary he just noted he wanted to be trained and he was listening to God go to this place and I will show you right then right? And so one day he calls me and he was like, hey, I think I know what I want to do. And I was like, great. What are you going to do? And this is what he said, because you're not going to believe. He said, I want to buy a laundromat. What? Why? He was like, I've been exposed to this really cool model of ministry where you own and operate a laundromat and you make it a point to spend your days there and you interact with the customers and you get to know them and you hear their stories. Because people who use laundromats are typically not affluent people. They've typically struggled. And they may be living a life where not very many people care about them. And so I want to show them care. I want to show them that Jesus loves them. I want to show them that they're seen. And I want to build community there. And I think Ashley and I can do this. And there's actually a model of ministry where they're building communities through laundromats and people are coming to Jesus as a result of it. And he said, that's what I want to do. And I said, Heath, that's stupid. That's a bad plan, man. I did. That's what I told him. But I laughed and he laughed and he said, I know. And I said, but if the Lord is directing you to do this, do it. Walk towards the sea. Go ahead. And so he did. And they, they moved, they, he graduated from seminary and they, they, they kind of looked all over the country and they settled on a suburb of Phoenix. And in the suburb of Phoenix, they began to save money for a laundromat, and Heath got another job with another missions organization where he's able to support people who spread Jesus' name throughout the world. And it's a good fit for him. And Ashley got a job as a teacher. And they have a daughter, Lucy, who's Lily's age. And Lucy and Lily have become pen pals. They write each other notes, and they send them to each other. And I should have grabbed one this morning. Jen's not home this weekend, so I didn't know where to find it. And I didn't want to bug her on a Sunday morning. But they are the sweetest little letters they write back and forth to each other. Lucy is the sweetest girl, but for whatever reason, she was having a really hard time at school. She was really getting bullied, really being ostracized, and it was a really hard time for them. And for them, I would point to that as a point of desperation. God, did you send us to seminary and then to Phoenix just to watch our daughter struggle? Wouldn't we have been better in our comfortable life, by the way, doing your ministry in Monroe? Wouldn't that have been better for us? But I believe that that was their point of desperation. And so from that, they've now moved to Tampa and they are thriving there and their story continues. And I do believe that God has walked them to the sea to make his name greater, but I don't know how their story ends. And we may not for a while. But I do know of another story of someone who had the faith to walk towards the sea. I want to introduce you to a hero of our faith, a man named George Mueller. He was born in 1805 in Germany. Here's a picture of him right there. He did not look like that when he was born. He's approximately eight years old in that photo. And he's got one of the cool German U's in his name, which is really neat. I'm jealous of that. But he was born in Germany in 1805. He immigrated to England later in life. And he was attending a church that had an attendance of 18, is what you read, which feels like a small group. But he went to a church of 18. And there he came to know that he already knew the Lord, but he became convicted because the pastor of that church and his wife decided that they were going to embark on a life of faith ministry where they were going to leave their job and go be missionaries and just rely on support from other people. But they were never going to ask for that support. They were just going to pray for it, which is a terrible idea. But they did it and they succeeded. They walked towards the sea. And so George was a pastor, and he went through some hard times with his children where they had a stillborn, and then he had a son, and that son passed away early in life. And that tremendous tragedy, there's nothing sadder than losing children. But it gave him a heart for orphans. It gave him a heart and it says for true orphans with no father and no mother. And so he decided to open an orphanage and then he decided to open multiple orphanages. But his thing was, oh, here's another thing about Mueller that's really interesting that I'm a little bit frustrated about. When he took over the church, you would rent pews. So your family would pay high dollar to sit where Tom and Linda are. This is an expensive pew right here. You guys in the back, you're barely doing anything. Who cares about you? But these are the important seats, right? You would rent a pew, and then that's how the church funded itself. But he looked at that and he said, this isn't right. It's ostracizing the poor people in the down and out. I don't like this anymore. So he eliminated pew rental, which was their source of income to run the church and for him to get paid. And he installed free will gifts, what we call offerings. He was one of the first pastors to invent offerings. And I'm kind of frustrated by it because that makes my life harder. It would be easier to charge you per sermon than it is to ask you to just give what you want. All right. So like when I get to heaven, me and George, I got a joke for him, man. Thanks a lot, buddy. But he just had this giving heart. He said, no, at church, we're not going to ask for people's money. We're going to do freewill offerings. And when he started his orphanages, he said, I'm not going to go around and collect support. I'm not going to charge families. I'm not going to apply for government support. All I'm going to do is pray. When we need something, I'm going to get on my knees and I'm going to pray that we would get it. That's all that he did. And he never went around asking for support. He never went around passing the hat. And now what we know about nonprofits is that that's exactly how you support the nonprofits. As you go around, as a missionary, you come up to the church, you stand up here, you tell your story. If you want to give, you can give. You have galas and you have banquets and you have functions and you have dinners at people's houses where you can share your story and you try to gain supporters. And then you and then we have this whole mechanism for philanthropy where emails go out and we're just keeping you up to date. And like, we know all of that stuff. And listen, I'm not impugning any of those systems or any of the people who have participated in those to support their ministry. I think that's a good thing. I have participated in those. I will continue to participate in those. But George Mueller said, that's not what I feel led to do. I'm just going to pray. And there are stories of him working in an orphanage and looking at the food resources and realizing at the end of this week, we do not have enough food to feed the children next week, and we do not have the money to buy new food. And so he would get down on his knees on the banks of the Red Sea with the army bearing down on him. And instead of fleeing, he would pray. He would pray for food. Father, I know you love these children. I know you care for them. I know you directed my steps here. Would you please provide for them? And every time God God provided. The man never walked around passing a hat. He is a legend in Christian circles. He's got a biography that is absolutely worth reading. And by the end of his life, by the end of his life, I have read that he cared for over 18,000 orphans without ever asking for a penny, without ever doing a single campaign. Through simply prayer, he allowed Jesus to wrap his arms, I'm getting emotional thinking about it, around 18,000 children with no parents. By the end of his life, I have read that he gave away the modern day equivalent of $129 million to ministries outside of his orphanages because he decided, I do not need a surplus to operate. I will pray and God will provide. That man walked towards the sea. He did what makes no sense. And as I tell that story of George Mueller, I think our tendency as we hear that is to say, well, that is exceptional. That is a man of tremendous faith. And you're right. But we also then look at ourselves and we say, but that's not me. I don't have that faith. I'm not going to do that. Or maybe you hear the story of my friends Heath and Ashley who sell their house and move across the country and go to seminary and then buy a laundromat in Tampa, which is weird. And you're like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I don't think that God is calling me to do that. And so I think what we do is we hear stories like that that we consider heroic or courageous at the very least. And we kind of categorize them as for the exceptional, but not for me. And as I thought about that, it just occurred to me that very few of us have the courage to walk towards the sea. Very few have the courage to walk towards the sea. Very few of us have the courage to sell our house, move across the country, and fundamentally change our life for our girls. Which, by the way, Heath's mom openly wept for days when he said he was moving away because their family is very tight-knit and has lived in the same city for four or five generations. Very few of us have the courage to do that. And so when we hear stories like that, I think the typical reaction is to say, well, I don't know that I can relate to that. You're probably right, because statistically speaking, most of us don't have the courage to walk towards the sea. Most of us want that escape route. But if we'll do it, if we'll walk there, there may be a point of desperation. There may be a time when we regret our choice. But God will come through. And he will come through to use you to make his name great. George Mueller did not know that he was going to be written about in history books and that someone would write a biography and that every seminary student would hear about him. He just walked towards the sea. And I don't know what God is pressing on you to do. I don't know what he's pressing on you to start or stop or engage in or follow through with. But here's what I know. I know that for some of you, I know that for everyone in here, God wants you to do something. He wants you to take some step. He's pressing something on you. And I know that for a few of you, that is ringing loud in your ears. And you know exactly what it it is and you wish I'd let up on it. So some of you need to have the courage to walk towards the pond or the creek. Some of you are facing a sea. But I think what we can take from the story of the parting of the Red Sea is that when God tells us to do something nonsensical and walk towards the ocean, that we can do it in faith that he will make it work, that he will provide and that he will do it to make his name great. So this morning, let me encourage you from this story. Have courage, have faith, and walk towards the sea. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this story that we read in Exodus, for what you did for your children, for what you still do now. God, I pray that we would take faith and comfort and solace from what you did. God, I know that there are some of us that you have directed to walk towards a pond, and there are some of us that you have directed to walk towards an ocean. But Father, give us the courage and the faith and the fortitude to step forward in that way and to take those steps and to allow you to pin us against an ocean needing you desperately to resolve the situation. God, we thank you for the story and for what we can learn from it. And God, I pray specifically for those that feel compelled by the Holy Spirit to walk towards the sea. Please give them the courage to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you, all 26 of you, for joining us this summer Sunday. I'm sure there is a cacophony of folks joining us online, so thank you for doing that, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Before I just dive in, I feel as a pastor that whenever something happens in our world that enters into the national conscience in such a way that a vast majority of us are thinking about it and processing it, that I should probably pause and address it. And so we know, I think, I hope this isn't breaking news to you. If it is, this is a terrible way to find out. But the United States bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran last night. That's a big deal. And it just makes me want to pause and pray before I just dive into the sermon as if nothing's going on. I have no assessment of what's happening. I have no opinion that I will share with you from here of what's happening. But I do have some prayers. The very first thing I thought of because of my recent experience in Istanbul when I got to sit in a circle with Iranian pastors, the very first thing I thought of was my friends and their safety. And some of them are able to flee to the north and out of cities. But I've been told that many of them have moms and family members that are locked into their apartments in Tehran. How terrifying is that? So the first thing I want to pray for is just for the people that would be impacted by the decisions that are being made by other folks. And then I'd like to pray for those other folks that God would give people in control wisdom and put people around them to have wisdom. So if that's alright with you, I'd like to pray for that and then we do the normal, regularly scheduled programming. Let's pray. Father, you have seen all the wars, and you have seen all the suffering, and your heart has been broken as you watch people suffer who had no hand in the violence that was brought to them. And so, God, we lift up the people on both sides who are being harmed and will be harmed by the escalating violence. We pray, Father, that you would bring peace. We pray that the violence would cease, that people would stop losing loved ones, and that you would bring stability to that region. And to that end, God, we just pray for our leaders. We ask that you would give them wisdom, that you would give them depth of insight, that you would surround them with wise counsel, and that your hand would be on the decisions that are made moving forward. We ask these things with a heavy heart, but we ask them in the name of your son. Amen. Hard right turn. I was invited to a Rick Springfield concert a couple of weeks ago. This is actually sincere, and that's how I wanted to start the sermon before I knew that I would be offering a very sincere prayer about a potential war. Yeah, I was texted by a friend who goes to this church, and let's just call him Keith Cathcart, just for the sake of it. And he legitimately invited me to a Rick Springfield. Is that right, Springfield? Steen. Field? Field. Concert. Hard no. Immediately. No, nay chance. No, no, no. I'm not doing that. I couldn't be. You may as well invite me to volunteer with you at the animal shelter. Okay. And if you know me, you know, that's funny because I don't even like dogs, which is weird. I know that's my problem. Here's the, here's another problem I have. I also don't like music. Okay. I don't. I don't want to go to a concert. If the music lasts longer than our worship set, sometimes Gibby, three songs, too many, too many. I can't stay engaged for that many songs. And if it's louder than, if the music is so loud that I can't talk to my friends, it's like, why are we here? I don't want to be in this place. And then it's Rick Springfield. I thought that was an SNL character. I didn't even know he was real. And I couldn't, I didn't know anything. I was like, what does he even sing? And so I think I asked Jen, I did a quick Google search. I asked Jen, and she told me Jesse's Girl. And I was like, right. I do know that one. I have heard it. I will not sing it for you, but I have heard it. Yeah, thank you, Elaine says. You're welcome, pal. Now I'm tempted to do it just to spite you, you know? I'm not willing to humiliate myself in that way. And it was like, oh, yeah, right. Okay, I think I do know who that guy is. And I think that that's how we think of the 10 plagues. We have a loose awareness that there were plagues. We've heard about them our whole life, most of us. Because if you're coming to church in June, you're like a Christian Christian. You know what I mean? Like you're real Christian. So you've heard of the plagues before. But I bet if I asked you, name all 10, I don't think you could do it. I really don't think you could. I think very few people, Mike Harris just led a study on, I should call you up here and make you do this, Mike. I bet he could get a lot. As I was kind of going through, I'm pretty sure I could get eight of them. But I think as I remind you of what the plagues are, that we're going to go, oh, that's right. There was that one too. And so we'll kind of have that moment together. This morning is unusual for me because I'm not going to open the Bible and read directly from Scripture, which is kind of a cardinal rule that I try to never break. It's just that the plagues are in chapters seven through 11 of Exodus. And there's no one like crucial verse that defines the plagues and what they are. But these plagues that I'm going to list are listed there. And I just didn't want to read you every verse of every plague because that's disengaging. So anyways, that's my personal confession. But here are the 10 plagues, okay? The setting is, most of us know, but in case we don't, the children of Israel are enslaved by Egypt. They're under the thumb of Pharaoh. And God appears to Moses in a burning bush and he says, I want you to go back. I want you to leave my people. I want you to go to Pharaoh. And I want you to tell him to let my people go. I would like for you to go tell Pharaoh to release his economy and workforce. That's what he tells him. And so he goes to Pharaoh and he says, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, I'm not going to do that. And he goes, okay, well then God's going to send plagues on your nation. So he sends these plagues. And I've made this point before a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about it. I don't have, there's no indication of the timeframe of these. I don't know if these were one right after the other, like over the course of a month or a couple of weeks, or if they were protracted out over the course of a year or two or more. I really don't know. And I'm not sure there's an indication of it, but this is what God does to get the attention of Pharaoh. First thing he does is he turns the water into blood. The Nile River, as the account records for us, was turned into blood. After that, there was frogs that swarmed Egypt from the Nile. And I happen to know somebody who is unnaturally and deathly terrified of frogs. This would be the worst possible plague for that person. She would rather get boils all over her body than frogs anywhere. So this would be a particularly terrible plague for some. Then there was a plague of lice, then flies, then there was the death of their cattle, then there was a plague of ash falling from the sky, then a plague of hail, then locusts, then darkness, and then we know the last one, the death of the firstborn. I don't know how many of those you would have gotten, but maybe you just went, oh yeah, those are right. But those were the plagues. And with each plague, God is making a request. Will you let my people go now? And Pharaoh says no. And really at its baseline, the request is, are you going to let me win? Are you going to give me my way? And Pharaoh says, no, I'm going to win. And so he stays stubbornly in his stance and digging his heels in. No, God, you are not going to win. I am going to win. Those are the plagues. But here's what you may not know about the plagues that I didn't learn until probably about 10 years ago. So I grew up my whole life knowing about the plagues and knowing that the point of them was to get Pharaoh humbled and broken so he would let God's people go. The whole point of them was for Pharaoh to finally let God win and for God to claim victory. I knew that, but what I didn't know is this. In the plagues, God was systematically dismantling Egyptian allegiance. In the plagues, God was systematically dismantling Egyptian allegiance. And when I say allegiance, I mean allegiance to their gods. Most of us are probably aware that Egyptians worshipped a pantheon of gods. They had a god for everything. For day and for night and for sun and for moon and for war and for peace and for fertility. That God's for everything. And what we may not know about the plagues is that each plague was a systemic and intentional assault on one of the gods of Egypt. To show the Egyptians and to show Pharaoh, I am more powerful than that God. The water, just for your own edification, the water to blood was an attack on Heket, the goddess of fertility. Frogs from the Nile was an attack on Geb, the god of the earth. Lice was Kepri, the god of creation. Flies was Hathor, goddess of love. Death of the cattle was Isis, the goddess of medicine. Ash was the god of nut, who's the god of the sky. Hail was Seth, the god of storms. Locust, Ra, the sun god. Darkness, Pharaoh, who they viewed as a god. And the firstborn is how you transferred your power to the next generation. It was an assault on that God as well. So in the plagues, God is systematically assaulting their gods and their frame of reference. He's doing it intentionally. Last week, we talked about God as I am and how we said, I am all that you need. I am all the gods, all the time. And here, he's meeting that out, pointing out to them, I'm more powerful than that god. Pharaoh, I'm more powerful than that god. Are you going to let me win now? Pharaoh, I'm more powerful than that god. Are you going to let me win now? This is what the plagues are, and when we realize that, that this was a systemic attack on their gods, it's, to me, a much more powerful story. I do, however, think that as Americans, we have a difficult time relating to that story. Because my assumption and perception of most of you in this room is that in our culture, and particularly in what demographics are represented here, we never really made a choice between this God or that God. I would be willing to bet that very few of you here, if anybody in the room right now, has ever considered, do I want to worship the Christian God, or do I want to worship the Muslim God or do I want to worship the Muslim God or maybe Buddhists or maybe I want to be Hindu and worship thousands of those gods. Maybe I want to embrace Judaism and worship God the Father but not God the Son as he's depicted in Christianity. Most of us here have never chosen between gods. The choice we make in our subculture in America is typically God or no God. Right? We choose the Christian God or we don't believe in God. That's kind of a binary choice for us. So it's difficult to relate to a story where there's a pantheon of gods being worshipped and God is showing that he's superior to those gods. Because if we're here and we believe in the Christian God, we just accept it by default and as fact that he would be superior to what we think are made up gods. Right? It kind of doesn't make any sense to even consider it. And so it's hard to relate to the story because we don't really have a pantheon of gods. We don't think we have a pantheon of gods, but we do. We absolutely do. We don't call them gods because we're intellectually dishonest, but we have pillars of our culture. We have things in the American culture that we worship. We pray to the altar of things that are not God the Father, for sure. We pray to the God of career. We might not ever say it out loud, but we orchestrate our life around it. We worship it. We prioritize it. Do we not? We are defined by our careers. It's a trope, and it's an easy thing to point out, but it's also true. When we meet people, within the first three questions, what do you do? Right? And if they're a stay-at-home mom, what's probably typical, I don't know because I'm not a stay-at-home mom, but what I would think would be the response when they say, well, I don't work, I'm a stay-at-home mom, is that now in that conversation, they feel a little less. And then if they say, I'm the CEO of blank, they feel a little bit more, right? And so we value people based on their careers. And then this is how sick I am about it if I don't keep it in check. When you tell me what you do for work, I go, that's wonderful. What do you want to be doing in five years? I want to know what your career goals are immediately. When I was younger, when I was in my 20s, I woke up early every day and I read books so that I could be what I wanted to be in my 30s. Like we get addicted to this and it drives us. And this, I say this room, we're missing like 75% of the church today. So also people watching later, this room is an accomplished room. This room is a room that does care and has cared deeply about careers. And if we don't watch it, what we find is that we pray at the altar of those and we serve them. So sometimes we get caught up in worshiping the God of careers. Let me tell you another one that I want to spend a little bit of time on because I think it's important and we don't talk about it very much. Sports. Nice 49ers shirt, Tom. Sorry. Tom's an elder. He's a great guy. He's also really funny. We pray at the altar of sports. We allow them to be too much. We do. Years ago, I'm a Falcons fan, which is a curse. It's a curse. I don't like it. I don't want to be a Falcons fan. I don't want to be a Georgia Tech fan. I don't want to. I would like to choose other teams, but that's not how sports works, okay? The Falcons are my team. And a few years ago, I was watching them, and every Sunday, I couldn't have anybody around me, and I couldn't speak during the game. I was insufferable to be around and if they lost it ruined my day and Jen finally told me hey it's pretty immature to allow a sports team to impact how you treat your family maybe you should care less is that fair the facsimile thereof? Okay. And I went, she's right. She always is. I'm sure you've picked up on that. And I realized I needed to detach myself from that. I had a friend who at one point in his life, and this is just sick of behavior. This is terrible. He went to 149 straight UGA games, home and away. 149 straight. That's a wild commitment. And God got a hold of him and convicted him. He was like, yeah, I got to stop. And his goal was to get to 200. He's like, I got to stop. I can't do this anymore. Sometimes we make sports too important. I have another point to make here, but as someone who's done funerals and who sits with families and says, tell me about your dad. It always makes me so sad when one of the top three things that they know about their dad is that he liked this team. That's your legacy? Liking a team? Cool. I hope I do more with my life so that when my kids are asked about me, they don't lead with I I like the Falcons, right? So sometimes we make a God out of sports. Now here's the other way we do it. And this is what I really want to say. The culture around sports and in our culture now has gotten so absurd that families begin to worship it without realizing it. Lily played challenge soccer last season. And what that meant is she, we had two practices a week. The practices lasted an hour and a half for nine-year-olds. I was one of the assistant coaches and I thought it was dumb, but it lasted 90 minutes, 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back. We are wrapping two hours plus twice a week into practice. And then there's games on Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays. And then one weekend there's a tournament and you know who you play in the tournament, the other four teams that you've already played three times during the season, who cares? It's dumb. And it takes so much time and so much energy and so much money to make this happen. And that's the lowest level of it. And the truth is, parents who currently have kids of the age to play sports, let me just say this objectively to you. You do not have to be very good at a sport to get on a team that will take your time and your money. Okay? So your kid making challenge soccer isn't a big deal. And then what happens is the coaches and the leagues tell us that we have to do more, more, more. And now that's ruling our families. It's consuming our time, talent, and treasure. And I have seen over the years at my old church and at this church, I have seen families that handle this very well. And we have some great examples here of families whose kids are highly athletic and they are still highly involved. And they prioritize things that we would encourage them to prioritize. So some families handle it very, very well. I have watched it wipe off the map other families where they're engaged in church. They're raising their kids in church. They're serving in whatever capacity they're serving and kids and kids grow up and then they get of age when they start to play sports. And then dad starts to think maybe they're good at sports. And then we commit more time to sports and they come less and less and they volunteer less and less. And I see them less and less. And then here's, let me tell you what happens is I've had, I've talked to so many parents when I was a student pastor and I would be talking to them about their graduating senior. And I've heard this comment so many times in my life, you know, we regret that we didn't spend more time getting them to church and less time playing sports. I have never heard the contrary. It would be a weird thing to say to a pastor, but I've never heard anyone say, I wish we would have focused more on sports and less on church. Before we know it, we're praying at the altar of sports, and that becomes our God. So we should check that. We pray at the altar of wealth. In America, if you have money, you're good. You're a good person. You've been successful. You've made good decisions. You may not be morally good, but you've won the game, right? And so now wealthy people, better, better looking because they have more money for better haircuts. Poor people, worse, worse looking because they cut their own hair, right? This is how we value people and we pray at the altar of wealth. We pray at the altar of comfort. We don't want to get our feathers ruffled. We don't want to get involved. We don't want to feel uncomfortable. We make our life comfortable. We make our life predictable so that we don't have to feel discomfort when we don't want to. And if there are pain points, instead of leaning into that discomfort and trying to figure out why it's there, we just figure out a way to alleviate it and never have to deal with it. So we pray to the God of comfort. I could go on and on and on. My point is, when we look at the 10 plagues and the systematic assault on these gods, at first glance, I think we find it difficult to relate to, but if we'll stop and be thoughtful about it for a little bit, what we'll realize is, no, no, we do have a pantheon of gods. And many of us in different times and in different seasons for different reasons have prayed to those gods rather than our God. And so it made me think, what would it look like if God assaulted our gods? What would it look like if God were going to systematically dismantle the gods that we have in our pantheon? And I thought of this season of my life where he dismantled one of mine. This god still creeps back up. I've got to keep it in check. But he exposed me to it and he dismantled it. In my early years as a pastor, I would have people say nice things to me. And sometimes they would say, you should be a senior pastor. And so people would speak potential into me. You've got a future here. Actually, the funniest thing that's ever happened, this is just an aside, it's just funny, is I preached one time at my last church when I was the, I spoke about 10 times a year, and one of my buddy's dads was there. And I preached, and we got done, and his dad came up to me. His dad came up to me. We called him, his name was Doug, but he had the largest noggin I've ever seen in my life, and so we called him Doug the Head. That was his name. So Doug the Head comes walking up to me, and he goes, man, that was, buddy, that was good. And I said, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And he goes, no, no, no, I'm telling you, I've been in the radio business for 35 years. And I go, okay, great. And he goes, no, listen, you could do that professionally. And I didn't say this, but I thought like, you know, they pay me. That was professionally. Thanks. But people would say nice things and they would speak potential into me. And I'm very sure that many of you have had people speak potential into you about different things in your life and so I carried that sense of responsibility with that potential and I had this question in my head can I actually do it and then you guys were crazy enough to find out to give give me a chance. And it went. In April of 17, there was 85 people in the room. In February of 17, there's 85 people in the room. April, there's 100. By January or by February of 2020, we had two good services. The second one was averaging about 100 people, so we reached like a critical mass. And we were averaging about 335 people a week. Bunch of kids, bunch of new folks, things are going and blowing. We do a campaign. We have more pledged than we even asked for and way more than we thought we would. And this whole time as we're growing, I'm telling people it's not about the growth. God is blessing us. This is good. This is wonderful. Nothing that we're doing is about making the church bigger, yada, yada, yada, all the things you're supposed to say. But internally, if I can just be honest, I did it. I'm somebody. Look at me go. This is all God and a little bit me. And I was proud. I was. And I can admit that now. And I'll admit now that I still struggle with that, but I fight it a lot harder and I'm a lot more honest with myself about it. Then COVID hit. So in February, two services, 335 people. Next time we had a service, it was July. There was 40 people wearing masks. If you were here during that season and you did worship with a mask on your face, it was the worst. It was terrible. You can't hear anybody. There's 35 people in the room. It was the deadest worship ever. It was awful. And I got depressed. I started seeing a therapist because all my self-worth just went out the window. And what I realized was, through conversations with him, I was worshiping at the God of respect, of approval, of accomplishment. I was worshiping at the God of proving myself to myself and to anyone paying attention. And do you know what God did with COVID? He systematically dismantled my God. Now listen, I do not want to give you the impression that I think that God orchestrated a worldwide pandemic so that he could teach a real lesson to a small church pastor in Raleigh. Okay? It's silly when we think that. But what I am saying is that he used that to dismantle my God and my life and build me back up. And here's what happened as a result of that. And as a result of the therapy and the counseling that I went through as I kind of dug and dug and dug and went, why am I worshiping at this God? What is the deal? And here's what it did. Here's the fundamental change it made in how I pastor. And it's more, this is more disclosure than I want to give, but I think it's helpful. And I think some of you can relate. I used to write sermons with the goal, I wouldn't state this, I would never say this out loud to anybody at the time, but I used to write sermons with the goal of being impressive. I wanted to impress you when I preached. When I got here, that's why I wrote sermons. Anything else I said was fluff. Obviously I wanted to serve God in all the things, but somewhere in there, I want to impress you. That's probably my main motivation. And now, my motivation is I want to help you. That's what I think about. Is this helpful? I don't think about being impressive. Not nearly as much. Sometimes I'll get caught in that trap, but not nearly as much. When God dismantled my God, I left that season of my life and I went, man, leading grace and doing my job is not about being impressive with people. It's not about growing the church. It's not about big numbers. It's about being faithful in the small things. It's about honoring people. It's about being humble and being honest and trying your best to help the people that God entrusts to you. And so what I used to do when I finished a sermon is I go and I sit in that chair. And what I used to do if I had a bad sermon, I would be upset. And the core emotion was, gosh, that was not impressive enough. And now if I sit there, and sometimes I do, and I might after this one go, gosh, that wasn't very good. It's my criticism and my response is that wasn't helpful enough. Do you see the difference? Here's my point, and here's why I'm telling you this. When we let God win, we win. When we let God win, we win. Pharaoh refused to let God win. And when he finally did, everybody won. I had a God in my life that I was not aware of. And God began to dismantle it. And it was hard to let go. But when I let God win, the people around me won. I can guess at some of the gods that we have in this room. At some of the things that you pray to. But I don't know what they are specifically for you. But I can tell you that sometimes in life, something bad happens. Maybe not plague worthy, but something hard. Our kid gets injured and can't play that sport for a while. We get laid off. They let our department go. The big client that we have bails and now we have to scramble to make up those sales. We get in debt. We get sick. Our kid's having a hard time. It's in a difficult season. Our relationship or our marriage is on the rocks and we're not sure how to repair it. I'm not saying that every single one of those things is an assault on a God in your life, but I am saying that you should stop and ask if it is. And take from the plagues, God, are you trying to win something here? Are you trying to show me that I have something positioned in my priorities and in my life that is out of whack? Have I been finding my identity in my career and not in you? Have I been finding my identity in my kids and not in you? In my house and not in you? In my wealth, in my status, in my approval and not in you? So when we see the plagues, when we're reminded of them, let's be reminded that this was a systematic assault on the pantheon of Egyptian gods, and that same God will still assault our gods and dismantle them for our sake. Because when God wins, we win. But here's the thing, and I love to point this out. You will never lose an arguing match with God. If you want to argue with God, you win. Congratulations. God will not force his hand on us. He loves us too much to do that. He will not make us do things. But he will give us points in time to reflect and say, there's something wrong here. But when God's trying to win, he'll keep a steady hand on it. But you have to let him. You win every argument you ever get into with God. But when God wins, we win. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a God who loves us. Thank you for being a God that doesn't force yourself upon us, but that gently pushes us in different ways at different times towards you. Lord, if we have been worshiping at the altar of things that are not you, I pray that you would reveal that to us. I pray that we would see it. And I pray that you would give us a depth of conviction and courage to confess that and to move away from that, God, and to move towards you. God, this morning, it's clear to me that we have a lot of people traveling, and so I just ask that you would keep them safe and that their trips would be enriching. I pray for grace as we enter into the summer. God, would you keep your hand on us and bless us? And God, would you help us be people who let you win? In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's so good to see everybody. I've got a lot of people sitting in seats that they don't normally go in. I don't know what you're doing over there, Zach, DJ, Laura, what in the world? I'm totally distracted. And just, I need to give you a peek behind the scenes before I just dive into the sermon like there's nothing happening in my life. I know I'm jovial now. This is serious. Yesterday, my sister-in-law, Jen's sister, Lauren, was in a really bad car accident and has just a lot of broken bones and is currently in surgery. The doctors say that she will recover and walk again, which is just a wild sentence to hear about your sister-in-law on a normal Saturday. So Jen was doing something yesterday afternoon, got home, grabbed Lily, and fired down to Athens, Georgia. So she's down there. So I've got John. Normally on a Sunday morning, I get up at 5, I shower, I come into the office, I'm locked in at 545, I run through the sermon, and I just kind of steep it and I try not to let anything distract me and I just focus on that. And then at about 930, I come over here and I glad hand you guys and pretend like I'm not trying to think about my sermon. But I'm just focused on that for most of the morning. This morning I was getting John ready, right? And so just all the scramble of that and getting a toddler ready and kind of run through my sermon, juggling Bluey and Lucky Charms and then coming back and trying to go through it. And then at 9.20, I'm like, okay, I'm ahead of the game. This is really good. It's time to go to church. I've got plenty of time. And I go to get all my things, and I'm like, I don't know where my car key is. I can't find my car key. And so I just start frantically looking for my car key and at 935 I called our good friend Anna Johnson and I was like, hey I think I need a ride to church. You have a car seat. She had pulled in the parking lot. She was like, all right coming to get you. And so she came around and as we pulled up I said, Anna park front and center because this is a great look for me to show up with you at church while my wife is out of town. So when I say, I don't know what's about to come out of my mouth, it's honest. All right. And if you're sitting there thinking, is this an elaborate way for him to excuse a potentially terrible sermon? Yeah, that is. All right. It's June. Ride with me. In one way, I'm completely frazzled and off center on the sermon and I'm just really hoping and praying that the Lord will order my steps and my thoughts because I want to do justice to this passage because it's one that I love so much. In another way, and I'm reminded of this by the Holy Spirit from time to time, God's been preparing this sermon in my heart and in my head for 20 years. I love this passage. I love where we are. We are at Moses and the burning bush. And I love it so much that we're going to spend two weeks here. We're going to look this week at the five excuses of Moses and how we can relate to those. And the next week we're going to come back to what God says his name is, I am, because that is an amazing statement worthy of camping on for a week. As we arrive here this morning, what I want to bring to mind is something that we talk about often at Grace, and it's intentional. A few years ago, a good friend of mine was kind of pressing me. What do you want for Grace? What do you want to produce at Grace? What do you want to be about? I knew, based on past church experiences, what I didn't want to be, but he was pressing me into what do you want to be? What do you want grace to be? And that's how I arrived at that phrase that we use here all the time, kingdom builders. At grace, I want to produce a church full of kingdom builders. We have five traits at grace. If you leave, if you go out those doors, on the wall, over the glass windows and over the doors are the five traits of grace. People of devotion, step-takers, partners, conduits of grace, and kingdom builders. Those are all out there. That's who we want you to be. And the apex of that is to be a kingdom builder, someone who builds God's kingdom. And the idea is simply this. We acknowledge at Grace that we all spend our lives building a kingdom. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Are you going to waste your life building your little fiefdom? And maybe you're really good at it, and you leave an inheritance and a legacy that lasts for a generation or two. But eventually it will pass away. Are you going to invest your life building your kingdom? Or are you going to invest your life building God's kingdom? And so at Grace, the goal is to have a church full of kingdom builders. People who understand that every gift, every talent, all the time, all the treasure that I've ever been given is to be leveraged to help build God's eternal kingdom, not my sorry temporary one. That's what we try to press on you over and over and over again. And it's my desire to have a church full of activated kingdom builders who understand that every gift they've ever been given is to be used to build God's kingdom, not their own. It's why I so often return to Ephesians 2.10 that says, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so the idea here is when God knit you in your mother's womb, he had for you good works for you to walk in. Just like he had good works for Moses to walk in. And it's your job as an adult to find those good works and to faithfully walk in them. Parents, it's your job to help your children identify their good works and encourage them and inspire them to walk in them with trust and fidelity to their God. This is what we talk about at Grace all the time. And when we talk about kingdom builders, I'm talking about things big and small. Some of us have big God-sized dreams that we don't dare give breath to because we're afraid people might judge us or that it's impossible and we shy away from it. Others of us have small God dreams right now of just repairing our marriage or a relationship or just growing in our own faith or just getting to a place where we can actually reliably and dutifully disciple our own children. I don't know what the size of your dreams are and I don't know what God has placed on your heart, but here's what I do know. And here's what I am certain of that. God has given you something that he wants you to do. God is pressing on you to take a step of obedience, to build his kingdom, whether that's through generosity, whether that's through a relationship, whether it's realizing that you have been placed in your workplace to be a pastor there, not to forward and advance your career there. That's secondary to your primary role of being a missionary and a pastor in your workplace. Maybe it's simply to prepare your marriage, to repair your marriage. Maybe it's to start a ministry. Maybe it's to start a small group. Maybe it's to start a Bible study. Maybe it's to volunteer somewhere and get involved in a nonprofit. I don't know what God is pressing on each of you to do, but I am certain that he's pressing something somewhere. And so this morning is only going to work if you can lock into that. If you can lock into what that is, and you can ask God, God, what are you pressing on me to do? What should I think about? What should I consider? What's my next step of obedience? What would you have me start? What would you have me stop so I can start? What would you have me do? What conversation would you have me initiate? What neighbor would you have me reach out to? What Bible study would you have me start? What nonprofit would you have me volunteer with? This sermon only works if you're willing to lock into what God has for you to do to build his kingdom. I kind of feel a little bit this morning, this isn't completely true because I do think it's universally applicable if you'll tap into it and let it be, but I kind of feel this morning that this is almost an old school Marine recruitment tactic. I've heard stories of a guy that signed up for the Marines and there was an assembly at a school and the different armed forces, armed services came and they presented, this is why you should join the Army. This is why you should join the Navy, the Air Force. And they kind of did, this is awesome. You get to fly planes. You get to do this. You get to do this. You get to do this. And the Marine goes last. And the Marine comes up, and a lot of you guys know how this story goes. The Marine comes up, and he says, I've been watching you all. There's three, maybe four of you that have what it takes to be a Marine. If you think that's you, I'll be at my desk. That's it. That's the talk. Who has the most recruits? The Marine. Right. That's what I feel like this morning is. This sermon is not for everybody. Some of you are not ready for it. You're just not. That's okay. But some of you are. And if it's you, I want to press you this morning to answer God's call and to step into the obedience to which he is calling you. So let's press in together and learn from the example of Moses at the burning bush. goes out. Remember, as a young man, he walked out of the palace one day, and he saw Egyptian guards beating some Hebrews, some of his brethren, and he went to their defense, and he was so angry and virulent in his defense that he ended up murdering the two guards that were beating the Hebrew people, and so he had to flee. And he went to a place called Midian, and Midian had a priest named Jethro, and Jethro had seven daughters, and one of them was named Zipporah, and Moses married her. And he spent 40 years in the desert as a shepherd, long gone from his previous life in the palace. And one day he's shepherding, and an angel of the Lord appears to him, and there's a bush that's being burned but not consumed and he walks up to it. And in the subsequent reading, what you'll find is that the bush tells him, take your shoes off. You are on holy ground. And he realizes that he's in the very presence of God and God asks him to go do something. God, in our vernacular, we would say, God says, this is how I want you to go build my kingdom. Go and do this. And he tells Moses, I need you to go to Pharaoh, and I need you to tell him to let my people go. And I know that I alluded to this last week, but I want us to be on the same page as far as this ask, because it's a ludicrous ask, right? For some farmer to come, some shepherd from the wilderness to come into the most powerful palace in the world and walk up to the most powerful man in the world and say, I need you to let your slaves go. Let's understand that it's not just slaves and it's not just the ego of that, but this is his very economy. This is how he gets things done. If he lets the Hebrew people go, it's not just, well, that was a possession that we had and now we don't have it anymore. If he lets them go, it's, this is my workforce. This is how I get things done. This is how I pay the bills. This fundamentally changes the foundation of my country. So it's a pretty big ask. And God says, I want you, Moses, to make that ask. And Moses, in this discourse with God, offers five excuses. And I think that they're, I think that they're wonderful. I think it's a really a delightful discourse if you read it and you open your mind to what it must have been like to be there. And I think that we have this discourse with God, whatever you say, whatever, whatever is in your heart that God is calling you to do, however, God wants you to build his kingdom. And here's what I would say about being kingdom builders. One of the reasons we phrase it this way is some churches are, they're the orphan church at this church. We care for orphans and that's wonderful. At this church, we do prison ministry at this church. We do missions missions. At this church, we do children's. At this church, we do outreach to the unhoused. Whatever it may be, some churches have a specific thing that they funnel everyone to. And that's wonderful and good. And I would not deride any of those. Those are always choices between better and best. But at Grace, what we said is, I don't want to direct you where I think God wants you to go. I want you to walk with God and go where he would have you go. And if you can build his kingdom from here, wonderful. If you need to leave this church to go and build God's kingdom elsewhere, good. Be a kingdom builder. So that's our heart. And I don't know what God is calling you to as he seeks to use you to build his kingdom. But I do know that whatever is in your head and whatever you think it might be, we have some of the same excuses that Moses has at the burning bush. And so here's the first one in verse 11 of chapter 3 after God has told him what he wants to do. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Who am I that I could possibly do this? I'm nobody, God. I'm a shepherd. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. No one's going to listen to me. You've got the wrong guy. And this is our natural instinct too. I know somebody who's very dear to me that every time they think of an idea of what God would have them do, they have this voice in their head that probably needs some counseling that pops up that says, who do you think you are? You're not going to do that. You're not going to follow through with that. You're not actually going to do it. And so I would be willing to bet that even as I pressed upon you, what's your thing? What does God want you to do? How can you tomorrow begin to build his kingdom? What steps of obedience can you take? For many of us in this room, our very first thought, if we even had the guts to identify that and say it out loud, speak it to ourselves, I bet for a lot of us the very next thought was, who do you think you are? Who am I that you would send me to do that? I'm not going to, that person's not going to listen to me. No one's going to come to my Bible study. I can't be a pastor in my workplace. They know who I am. And we begin like Moses to disqualify ourselves. So it's helpful to look at God's response when he says, who am I? And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who have sent you. You have brought the people out of Egypt. You will worship God on this mountain. He's like, I'm going to be with you. I will come back here. And so if God is calling you to something, he will be with you in it. But that's Moses's first excuse. So Moses says, who am I? And God says, it doesn't matter who you are. It matters who I am. I'll be with you. Don't worry about it. God swats it aside. And Moses says, okay, I've got another one. Here's my other excuse. Here's his next question. Verse 13. I'm just going to read straight through so you guys can get a sense of the passage. And God said, I will be with you. And this will be a sign that it is I who has sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Verse 13. Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? And then this won't be on the screen, but verse 14 is, this is where we're going to spend all of our time next week. It's maybe the most amazing verse in Scripture. God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. This is where we get the name of God. I am. And that's what we're going to talk about next week. This name of God is so powerful that 4,000 years later, Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by 300 guards of the high priest. And they go to him and they say, are you Jesus of Nazareth? And he says, I am. And those words knock over all 300 guards. These are powerful words. God says, I am. But let's look at what Moses is asking. Okay, okay, all right, all right. I'm going to go back to my people. I'm going to go to the elders of the Hebrews. I'm going to say, God has sent me from Midian here to free our people, and I need your support as I go to Pharaoh and begin to negotiate our release. When I do that, God, this is something you think is possible, which is ridiculous. When I do that, who should I say sent me? What is your name? We're going to talk about God's answer to that next week. But here's the point of Moses' question for this week. Moses is asking, God, will you put your name on this? Will you put your name on this mission? Is this something you are behind? Is this something you are supporting? Am I doing this in your name or am I doing this in my own name? And when we feel that God has directed us to build his kingdom in a certain way, it is right and good to pause and say, God, are you putting your name on this? Because if God's name is on it, then he will see it through. But if God's name is not, then it is on us. And that is not good. So before we take a step of faith and obedience and walk, we need to be sure that God's name is on it. A few weeks ago in FAQ, I was talking about how can we be certain that we have heard from God? How do we know that we know that we know? And I said, you can test him sometimes. Look at what Gideon did with the fleece. God, make this wet and the ground dry. Okay, God, that was a neat trick. Make this dry and the ground wet. Okay, God, thank you. Now I know that I know that I know that your name is on this project and you want me to go do it. It's good to ask if God has put his name on something before we go. I remember at my previous church, and this is one of those moments where I hope that no one from my previous church is listening to my sermons because it's a little bit disparaging and I don't mean it to be. It's just a good illustration of this. My senior pastor was a guy named Jonathan who gave me tremendous opportunities and is still supportive to this day and is really wonderful as a human. And we, at the time, were running three services, 9.30, 10.30, or 11 and noon or something like that. Yeah, 9, 10.30 and noon. And so we were redlining. And those were pretty full. Noon wasn't very full, but we were redlining as a church. And we had some people who wanted to come, but we had a lot of them in the service industry. And so they weren't able to make it to Sunday morning because they were paramedics or nurses or servers or whatever. And Sunday morning was difficult for them. So Jonathan got the idea, let's do a 5 p.m. service. Let's have a Sunday evening service for folks that have to work on Sunday mornings or just would rather come to that. Betty and Steve Rock would love that. They would be the first to sign up. They bug me about it every week. Sorry, Beth. We're not doing it today. And he said, let's do this. But I don't want to preach it. That's too much work. And I don't want our band to have to do it. That's too much work for our volunteers, which about the second point, he was right. About the first point, come on, man, just go preach. But he didn't want to preach it. So he said, we're going to show a video and I'm going to be too tired to run it. So Nate, you be the campus pastor for the 5 p.m. service. You make it go. Recruit people to set up pipe and drape to make the auditorium smaller for the amount of people that are going to be there. Recruit a band, run it, recruit all the volunteers. You're the campus pastor of that service. You be in charge of it. You make it go. It was a big task. And as he and I were talking about it, I remember one day in his office, I looked at him and I said, I just need to know one thing, Jonathan. Do you feel that this is something that God has directed you to do? In today's language for this sermon, I would say, has God put his name on this to you? Has I am sent you? Because I knew that it was going to be discouraging and I knew that it was going to be hard and I knew that it was going to be a tough sell. And I knew that I was going to have to lean on some relationships and some friendships to make this thing go. And I didn't know if it was going to be successful. But I knew that if God put his name on it, that it was going to flourish. And so in those moments of discouragement, I needed to know that Jonathan felt that God had put his name on this and sent him to do it and said, yes, go and execute this thing. Because in those moments of discouragement, I could lean on that moment. That's what I needed. And so I asked him, is this something that you feel strongly God has asked you to and directed you to do? Because if it is, I can have confidence as I walk into it. And his response was, well, let's just see if it works. And I knew it was doomed. I gave it my best effort. We lasted 10, 12 weeks and we folded up the tent. God's name wasn't on it. It's important to say who is sending me? Whose name is on this? We need to know that. And so God says, my name's on it. I am. We're going to talk more next week about what that name means. But he says, you have me. You tell them I am sent you. I'm putting my name on this mission, on this instruction to go build my kingdom. You go. And so Moses says, okay. And you would think that this would be enough. That Moses says, who am I to go? And God says, don't worry about who you are. You worry about who I am. And Moses says, well, I don't have the ability. And he says, I'm going to supply you with the ability. And God says, well, who should I say, send me? And he says, yeah, I will send you. Okay, put my name on it. You're good. You should think that would be enough. But Moses has another excuse. In chapter 4, verse 1. After this whole discourse, this I am, I'm going to give you the power. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Moses' response, because he's human, is, what if they do not believe me or listen to me and say the Lord did not appear to you? Moses says, no one's going to believe me. No one's going to listen to me. I'm going to go and I'm going to say, hey, God sent me and you guys have been in these moments. Or someone tells you that God has told them to do a thing and because we're jerks, our skeptical minds go, did he? So Moses says, I'm going to go and say that I'm doing this in your name and no one's going to believe me. I'm a shepherd from Midian. No one's going to buy this. What do I do? And God's response is really amazing. God says, do you see the staff in your hand? Moses, we presume, based on the text, is holding a staff. And he says, yeah. And God goes, throw it down. Moses threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. And God said, pick it back up. Moses bends down and he grabs the serpent and it becomes a staff. And God says, that's nothing, buddy. I've got a lot more of these in my back pocket. If anybody needs proof that you're with me, I'll give you a sign when you need it. You're fine. It's this little wink. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to show you. And I believe that God is still in the business of doing these things. I believe that God is still in the business of winking at us. He may not turn your staff into a serpent and your serpent into a staff, but he will show you. If there's something that you think God wants you to do and you're trepidatious about it and you don't even dare breathe it and speak it out loud because it makes you so nervous and it makes you so worried. If there is something that you believe God is pressing on you to do and you're not sure if you should do it, God will give you those staff moments. He will give you those winks where he tells you that he is with you. I've had so many of those at Grace, so many of them. It's not very many times that I've been brought to a place where I'm thinking about maybe I need to quit. This is too hard. This is too difficult. Maybe I just need to get out of the way so they can get a real pastor that actually cares about others and things like that. Thanks. Maybe I need to get out of the way. Maybe I'm not in the right job. Maybe I need to quit. I'm just so discouraged. And the very next day, God turns a staff into a serpent. He encourages me in this uniquely God way. And I go, okay, all right, we're in. I remember, I guess it was last week, I mentioned Memorial Day is very special to me at Grace. And so I always preach on Memorial Day because of how grateful I am for what God has done on Memorial Day. It was the first year that I was here. And when I got here in 2017, it was a bad scene. To say it was a dumpster fire is actually a disservice to dumpster fires. It was really bad. If they didn't hire some poor schlep in April, they were not going to make it out of May. It's just where we were. We were in debt. It was bad. And at the time, we were looking week to week at offering. And when I got here and I saw the finances, I just said, I just made it my prayer, God, please don't let us go into any more debt over the summer. Please just let us get through the summer because the summer is bad giving months, just typically at a church. I said, just let us make it through the summer without accruing any debt. And then maybe we can start to chip away at it in the fall. That was my prayer. And we were coming to the end of May. Memorial Day is the last weekend of May. And we needed, I don't remember the numbers, so just go with me, but I think we needed about $11,000 a week to stay afloat. I have no idea what it is now. Probably $47,000. That's how much we need every week. Just give it. But we needed like $11,000 to stay afloat. And that particular week, we needed $13,000 to come in. And again, don't quote me on these numbers, but these are approximate. We need $13,000 to come in just to not go into debt and be able to pay our bills in May. And I remember praying that week, God, please allow $13,000 to come in, which on its face is an absurd prayer because Memorial Day in church world, we all know it's one of the lowest attendance attended and lowest giving Sundays of the year, Memorial Day and Labor Day. So the idea that we would need to bring in whatever it was, 15, 10 to 20% more on a particular week. That was a holiday weekend where nobody comes and nobody gives was an absurd prayer. It was a miracle in and of itself, but I remember praying it. God just let $13,000 come in. And we get to the Tuesday. Tuesday is when I learned what the giving was from our finance director, and I'm just refreshing my email, waiting for it to come in to see if God delivered on this prayer. And I got the email and I frantically click on it and $13,000 did not come in. $28,500 did. It was the largest Sunday of giving of 2017 until December. It was amazing. And I saw God turn my staff into a serpent. And then my serpent into a staff. And he said, I'm here. I got you. I'm with you. Let's go. You're in my hands. And there have been other moments. And so now what I say about grace, Aaron Winston likes it when I say this, God likes grace. I don't know why. He just does. Look at us. Who would have thought? He just likes us. And he's just rooting for us. And he's with us. And he shows up in these amazing ways when he turns our staff into a serpent and our serpent into a staff. And if God is calling you to do something and you have a moment's hesitation about it, I'm certain if you pray for it and if you look for it, he will turn that staff into a serpent for you too. And he will turn that serpent into a staff. Just give him a chance to show up and wink at you. But once he does, walk in faith. Once he does, walk in courage. But don't be like Moses, because Moses saw that cool trick and he's like, yeah, great. But how about this? Fourth excuse. Exodus 4, 10. Moses said to the Lord, I mentioned this last week, Pardon your servant, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue. This is a legitimate gripe. We talked about last week that scholars believe that this probably indicates that he had a speech impediment of some sort, that Moses more than likely stuttered or had some other thing that kept him from speaking eloquently. He was not silver-tongued. He was not charming. Moses was not the guy. There's some people that when you go to dinner and they sit on a certain side of the table and you're on the other side of the table, you're bummed out because all the fun's down there and I have to talk to stupid matt down here you know it's just a bummer you want to be with this guy moses wasn't that guy moses for the sake of this illustration was matt sorry matt that's what you get for sitting on the front row pal he wasn't eloquent he wasnspoken. And how is he supposed to go in to the most powerful man in the world and make these negotiations? How is he supposed to do this? God, you've called me to this thing, but it's not in my skill set. That's not what I'm good at. You want me to be like Chief Shepard? We can talk about that. You want me to go negotiate with the most powerful man in the world? I'm not silver-tongued. I can't do this. So he says, I'm not qualified. I don't have the skill set for that. And I would be willing to bet that if there's something that God is pressing on you, something you need to start, something you need to stop, a conversation you need to initiate, a relationship that you need to patch up, a step of obedience that he wants you to take, I'd be willing to bet that for a lot of us, we kind of go, we disqualify ourselves. We go, I don't have the right skill set. God, you've got the wrong person. Those are not where my talents and abilities lie. I don't think I can do this. That's what Moses said. And you know what God said to Moses? Hey, pal, I made you. I made your mouth. I made your brain. I'll give you the words. Don't worry about it. And later we see, I'm also going to give you your brother Aaron, who is silver-tongued and is good at doing it. I will put, not only will I give you what you need to do to get this done, but I will put people around you who can help you get this done. This is an amazing thing that God does as he sends us to build his kingdom is not only does he give us the skill set that we need to get it done in his goodness and in his grace, but he also surrounds us with the right people who supplement us where we are weak. I can't tell you how blessed I feel in the decisions that we make as a church that at every decision, at every turn, every big thing that we we do, I am surrounded by people both in my elder board and in my friendships and in my advisors and on our committees who are smarter than me about that particular area. They're not smarter than me in general, okay? I'm not willing to concede that. But they're smarter than me in that particular area. And we lean on their expertise and they advise us, God, I am weak here. I can't guide the church in this way. Great. Here's five people to surround you that know more than you about that, and probably are, in reality, smarter than you. You should listen to them. God does this. He doesn't just equip us for what he calls us to, but he surrounds us with the right people that we can lean on and trust as we walk into that. And so that's Moses' last excuse. I don't have the skill set. And God says, I know. I do. I made you. I'm calling you to this. I've put my name on it. I've winked at you. You can go. I've got you. And then we get to Moses' final excuse, which is frankly hilarious. Exodus 4, 12 and 14. Now go. I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. This is what God says to Moses. But Moses says, pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else. Now we're just at the heart of it, right? Like the rest of it was smoke and mirrors, you know? When you ask your kid to do something and they give you all the reasons why they can't do it. And you're just like, yeah, you just don't want to do it. You're just being lazy. Like, yeah, I know. And then they have to go do it. All the smoke and mirrors are gone. Now we get to the heart of the issue. Oh Lord. Fine. I hear what you're saying. Please send someone else. Like I'm comfortable. I've got a life. I'm fine. I don't want to upset the apple cart. I'm used to this. I've been a shepherd for 40 years. This is normal to me. This is what my life is. I'm old. I'm in my sixties. I'm like really old. You know, we're just coasting until the retirement home at this point. When you hit 65, like you're just waiting, right? I'm good. I'm comfortable. Please don't make me do this. Which is what we say. God, my relationships are good. My life is good. My life is comfortable. Don't make me upset the apple cart. Don't make me be the weird one at work. Don't make me be the weird one in the neighborhood. Don't make me rearrange my, I'm 40. Don't make me rearrange my life around those things. That's not how I set things up. God, please, God, send someone else is what we tend to say. And this is the first time this happens, and I think it's amazing. Verse 14, then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. And he said, what about your brother Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He's already on his way to meet you. He'll be glad to see you. So Moses says, I want to have. I've placated you. I've put my name on it. I've given you a sign. I've assured you that I'll be with you, that I created you, that I'll give you the words to speak. I'm even bringing your brother Aaron to go with you. Go do the thing you're supposed to do. And whenever I read this, my thought is, may the wrath of God never be kindled against me because after all the assurances in the world for the thing he wants me to go do, I still have the response of, oh Lord, please send someone else. No! You go do it. You do it. You do it. I don't know what God's pressing on you. I don't know what he would have you start or have you do. But here's what else I know. Or here's what I do know. Moses, from this moment at the burning bush, goes on and becomes, this is true, one of the most known figures in human history. You understand, every tribe and every nation and every tongue virtually that has ever existed from this point on knows the story of Moses. They know who he was. They know what he did. Moses had no idea at the burning bush that the first five books of the Holy Bible would be called the books of Moses. He had no idea that he would bring God's law down from Mount Sinai and give it to the people and that that law would echo through the centuries for Jesus to satisfy it. He had no idea that in eternity he was going to appear with Jesus at the transfiguration on top of a mountain thousands of years later. He had no idea that God is going to use him in Revelation as one of the two witnesses. He had no idea what was in front of him. All he knew is that he needed to do the next thing that God asked him to do. Very quickly, I want to tell you this story because I think it's relevant. I'll try to go fast because we're at the end of our time. I have a friend who was on staff with me at my last church at Greystone, a guy named Jim Hollinsworth. Jim was the associate pastor, executive pastor there. And one Christmas, his small group received something from a sort of co-op that provides things for people in need. And there was a stack of papers of families that were in need and they needed some Christmas gifts that year, much like we do with the tree that we do every year. And him and Melinda at Small Group picked up a piece of paper and there was a family on it that happened to live in a particular trailer park down the road. And all of the families that their small group picked were located in that trailer park. So Jim and Melinda said, gather your stuff and we'll go drop it off. We'll be fine to do that. And so they go to drop it off. And I was talking to Jim this morning because I wanted to get the origin story right. And he said they felt his word was icky going the first time which makes sense but they went anyways and they dropped off these gifts and they dropped off this gift with a single mom and it happened to be in a trailer park where the population was 95% Mexican immigrant and they made they made a good connection with this mom and they kept in touch and so they just followed up to see how she was doing, see if she needed anything in January. And through conversation, one of the things she said is, you know, my kid's going into middle school. I don't speak English. They're struggling academically, and I don't know how to help them. Can you help them? And Melinda said, sure. And so she started showing up at the community center and tutoring this kid after school a few days a week. Well, that kid's friends found out. Another mom started sending more kids to Melinda. And then Jim started going. And then they got a volunteer to start working with them. And then it grew and it grew and it grew. Within a couple of years' time, it became a ministry known as the Path Project. They bought a trailer in that trailer park. They served out of there full time. Melinda quit her job to do this full time. Jim went halftime at the church to give time to Path Project. And then there were more needs and an after-school program and then ESOL for the parents so they could go be advocates for their children in the schools. And then this remarkable thing happened. The company that owned that trailer park reached out to Jim and he says, I don't know what you're doing, but I will give you a free trailer in any trailer park that I own across the country because crime is down, graduation rates are up, rent payment is up. Things are more consistent. This is across the board better for the community. Can we do more of these? Then you fast forward five years and I'm in a gala where things are being auctioned that I can't afford at all. I'm just watching rich people compete with themselves to support Path Project. It's amazing. Jim does it full time. They're nationwide. He didn't have the skill set. He was not a fundraiser when God called him to do this. There was not a vision in there in Jim and Melinda's mind that we're going to go nationwide with community centers and trailer parks to do after school programs and ESOL and offer haircuts and just general hygiene. That was not in their mind. All they did is take the next step. They didn't know at their burning bush what God was going to do. They just knew that they needed to buy some gifts for this family. And then while they were there, they needed to talk to her. God is pressing on you to do something. And maybe it's so big, this is what excites me. There's somebody in here. It's not everybody, and I don't know who. But there's something in your head that's so big that you're scared to say it out loud. You're who I'm preaching to. Do it. Take the step. Do the thing. Let this be your burning bush. Allow God to push you into obedience. Ask him if his name is on it. Watch him turn staffs into serpents and serpents into staffs. Let his assurance wash over you. And when it comes down to you admitting that you need to do it, don't be like Moses and say, oh Lord, please send someone else. Just go do the thing and let's see what God does with a church full of kingdom builders that he is enabling and equipping for his ministry. The last point is simply this. If God is calling you to something, he will equip you for it. If there is something God is pressing on your heart to do, do it. And let's see what happens. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for stories like Jim and Melinda's. Thank you for Moses. Thank you for keeping for us a record of this discourse at the burning bush. For us to see how you give assurances, how you wink at us, how you put your name on things. How you give us the skills that we lack and how you provide for us the people that we need. God, I pray that this can be a burning bush moment for some people in here who will go and do the thing, who will start the ministry or reach out to the people or begin to take the steps. God, make us a church full of kingdom builders, full of people who seek to allow their lives and their time and their talents and their treasures to be used by you to further your kingdom. Give us a distaste for our own such that all we want to do is build yours. Equip us to go, point us in the direction, and wind us up and sustain us as we run towards you. Use us, Lord. Make us kingdom builders. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. You already know my name is Nate. I got introduced earlier. Thank you for being here on Mother's Day. These two are laughing because I'm preaching directly to you for the whole service. Right there in the middle. Thanks for being here. I like Mother's Day. I love the celebration of Mother's Day. I'm genuinely sorry that we don't have enough seats for everyone. We don't normally dedicate 11 babies and their subsequent families. And I'm also sorry if you had issues parking. But if you did, you could always just be on time and then, you know, not a problem. Before I just launch into the sermon, it's important to me on Mother's Day to express this. Mother's Day is a good day, and you get to express your gratitude for your mom. And mamas deserve to be celebrated. They work harder than dads. They just do. And I hope that you have a good mom that you're able to celebrate today. And if you're married, I hope you're able to celebrate your wife who's a good mom. And so it should be a joyful day. But I also know, because I've experienced some, that Mother's Day sometimes comes with mixed emotions. Sometimes it's been pretty recent since we lost our mom, and so Mother's Day becomes difficult. Or maybe we didn't have a great mom, and so Mother's Day kind of induces envy or disappointment. Or maybe we want desperately to be a mom and we are not. And so Mother's Day causes us to want and to be sad. So what I want to do before I just launch into the sermon that has absolutely nothing to do with Mother's Day, I just want to pray for the good mamas in the room and in our lives, but also pray for those of us for whom Mother's Day is challenging. So pray with me, and then we'll get started. Father, we thank you for the good moms, for the ones that love well, that show up, that show us you, that nurtured us and cared for us. And we thank you for the opportunity to celebrate them. We thank you for the mamas in the room now. And I thank you, God, for the multiple generations in the room. And so we thank you for the good ones and the blessing that they are. God, I also just want to lift up those for whom today is challenging. For whatever reason that it might be challenging. Would they feel your presence? Would they feel your arms wrapped around them? Would they be comforted in the unique way that only you can do? I just lift them up to you, God. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, we are in a series. And when I said this has nothing to do with Mother's Day, I'm being serious. We're in a series called Frequently Asked Questions, FAQ. And we sussed it out to our small groups to generate some questions for us that we could address over a period of five or six weeks. And we've been moving through and kind of addressing some of those questions. Today, we got a lot of questions on doubt. We got a lot of questions around doubt. How much doubt is okay? When is it all right to doubt? What do I do with my doubt? How do I handle my doubt? Or I have these specific questions and I don't know the answers to them. And one of the reasons why I thought it might be appropriate to put it here today is because I'm not sure. I remember when I was 19 or 20 years old, I was part of a ministry called Young Life. And I grew up in church. Christianity is foundational to me. I have no memories that precede church. I was there every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night. And if there was a weekend event, I was there too. So Christianity is a big part of my life. And so it made sense that in college, I would do the thing that good Christians do. Cause the environment that I grew up in was, um, if you're a good Christian, then become a, like go professional, be a really good one and be a minister, start getting paid for your Christianity. If you can't do that, get a good job in tithe. That was pretty much the idea. And I decided I was going to try to go pro. So I'm doing young life. And I remember having a conversation with the guy that led our team, a guy named Brian Krawczyk. I reached out to him one day and I said, hey, man, I really need to talk. And I went over to his little basement apartment. And I remember sitting there in tears saying, I'm not sure if I believe that God is real anymore. And he said, okay, you know, why are you thinking that? And I said, well, it started with my prayers because it feels like when I pray that my words are bouncing off the ceiling and back down to me and that they don't really mean anything. And it's just me talking to myself. And because I don't know if I believe that prayer actually works and because I don't know if my words are actually reaching the ears of some God somewhere, I don't know that I can believe in God anymore. And because I don't know if I can believe in God anymore, I don't know if I can continue to minister with you because it's inauthentic and doesn't make any sense. And I was kind of crying the whole time. And Brian responded to me rather ineloquently by saying, Nate, get a grip, dude. You believe in God. It's going to be okay. See you tomorrow night. That was pretty much it. I mean, that was along the short of it. But, you know, I was 19. Brian was 23. We weren't exactly swimming in wisdom. So that's fine at the time. But what I really remember from that conversation is how emotional I was about it. Because I had been a Christian my whole life. And I had had these doubts simmering in the back of my mind for longer than I realized. And when I finally expressed them and gave vent to them, I thought it meant that I was going to lose my faith. And I thought it meant that because I would lose my faith, I would lose my worldview, and it would shake the foundations of my very life. And so I was scared of it, but it got so urgent and so much that I felt like I was living duplicitously to not address it. So I had to. Because if you're a believer and you've been a believer for any length of time, you've orchestrated your life probably around the teachings found in here. And so when you start to have questions about this book, or you have questions about what's taught here, or about what someone tells you is taught here, those can become very scary things because we don't know what to do with it. Because if we question it, if we pull that thread too much, the whole thing could come unraveled. And if that's what's going to happen, then we don't want to deal with it. Or we could get judged, or we could get questioned, or we could feel like we're very confused. And so I'd be willing to bet, because since that day, when I was doing Young Life, I managed to stay professional. I managed to continue to get paid for being a Christian. It's been a long time now, over 20 years. I guess it's about 25 years. Jeepers, creepers. I've sat in a lot of circles. I've sat in circles with teenagers, with middle schoolers, with children, with adults, with pastors, with atheists. I've sat in a lot of circles and I've sat with people as they had the moment that I had and said, I don't know if I can believe anymore because of this or this or this. And so what I'd be willing to bet is that a vast majority of you in the room have experienced doubt in your life. You may be here and you're not a believer and you're like, yeah, that's all I've ever experienced. I get it. I get it. And for you, your doubt is easier because you're not tethered to faith. You're not tethered to Christianity. So it's not, it doesn't cause an emotional response to have it. You just have it. And that's fine. But for a believer, it's tethered to things. It's connected. It's all woven in. And so if we pull that thread, we worry that we may disappoint the people around us, that we may not know what to do with our world and with our faith. And so even though everybody in this room, at least I think, has experienced a season of doubt in their life or has questions that are yet unanswered, even though we've experienced that, I'm not sure that as a church we talk about how to handle it well. So that's what I want us to do this morning, is if we can agree, and I don't know if you do or you don't, but if we can agree that yes, I've walked through seasons of doubt in my life, or I'm currently right now experiencing profound doubt, and I have questions that go unanswered. Wonderful. Let's look at scripture and see what we should do with that doubt. By looking at the OG doubter of all doubters, Thomas. There's a guy named Doubting Thomas in the Bible. He's the captain of the doubt team. And so we're going to look at his doubt and we're going to look at how Jesus handles it more importantly. And then we're going to think about how that impacts how we should handle our doubt. John chapter 20, verses 24 through 29. Now Thomas, also known as Didymus, which pretty clear why I went by Thomas, one of the 12 was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So when Jesus came back, he had died, he'd been buried, he resurrected, he came back, he visited the disciples. For whatever reason, Thomas wasn't there. Probably working on a name change. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where their nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands? Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe. Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. So we see the story, and it's a famous story, and maybe you've heard it before. Most of you probably have. And because of that story, we assign him the moniker Doubting Thomas. That's how he's known. And we do that because it's a negative thing, because Jesus tells him, it's in the text, stop doubting and believe. It's almost like a command or instruction from God, stop doubting and believe. And so the way that we tend to handle doubt is we tend to say that it comes from a weak faith or a lack of understanding, or if you'd only like do the work or whatever it might be, but we feel bad about it. And we feel like if Jesus could talk to us about it, he might say, stop doubting and believe. And here's what makes it really, really tough is when we grow up in church and we see the adults that are leading us, or we look at the generation before us and we see how they live out their faith and they never seem to be the one asking the doubt questions. The children ask the doubt questions. High schoolers are free to do it. College sometime. And then by the time you get in men's group, you better, you better be buttoned up and know the answers and quit asking those questions. You dumb, dumb,, that's kind of how we treat it. And so we don't ask those questions. And we bottle them up. Because we think doubt isn't allowed. We think, as church people, that doubt isn't allowed. That'll be up there on the screen in just a second. We think doubt isn't allowed. That's your first blank, for those of you who do that. And we think it's not allowed because we think it's typically frowned upon, or that we'll be judged for it, or that we're scared of it, and we just need to put our head down and believe. But what I want you to see this morning is how Jesus meets your doubt, because I think there is this erroneous idea in the church that when we have doubts, we're supposed to just believe. Stop doubting and believe, Jesus says. And so the church has parroted that teaching through the centuries and said, just tuck that away and believe. But let me go back to verse 27 and show you what Jesus does to Thomas' doubt. Verse 27. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands? Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe. I don't know if you noticed this when I read it. I wouldn't have because when other people are reading scripture to me, I barely pay attention. So if you didn't get it, don't worry. Jesus shows up and Jesus knows that Thomas has not believed him. Jesus knows that Thomas didn't believe the disciples. The disciples told him about Jesus and he said, no,, not buying it, not yet. Now, here's what I'd like to say about that doubt, too. It's easy to think of Thomas as a skeptic and going, I'm not believing it until I can see it. No way. But this is, I'm guessing, okay? I'm guessing. You don't have to agree with me on anything, but you definitely don't have to agree with me on this, okay? I'm guessing at this, not in the text. I'm just guessing. I think it's more likely than not that Thomas' main motivation in that doubt was that he thought it was too good to be true and is trying to protect his heart. Thomas loved Jesus. He left everything in his life to follow him nomadically for three years, to basically live in poverty and on handouts for three years to follow this man around and learn from him. And Thomas was expecting that Jesus was going to become a king and he would be in his inner circle of influential people. So not only does he love Jesus, but he's hung his hat on the hope of a future with Jesus. And then he shows up and they say, hey, Jesus is risen. And he says, I'm not going to believe it until I can touch him. It just doesn't sound like to me that he was skeptical of the disciples and didn't trust them or didn't believe it was possible. I think it's most likely that there was something good motivating his doubt, which was probably that's too good to be true. And my heart can't handle it if it's not. So I'm going to hope that it is and wait until I see him. Now, that's a guess. Don't know. It's conjecture. But that makes sense to me. And so Jesus shows up and apparently he knows that Thomas doesn't believe him, doesn't believe the disciples. He knows that he doubts Jesus. And Jesus has every right to show up in the room and say, peace be with you. And then just stand back with his arms folded, waiting for Thomas to come check out what he needs to check out. He has every right to do that. He has every right to at least wait until Thomas comes to him and shakes his hand. That's not what he does. If you read the text, he walks in the room. He says, peace be with you. And then he walks over to Thomas and he says, hey man, here are my hands. Touch them if you need to. Here's my side. Touch that if you need to. Okay, you good? Do you get what you need? Okay, stop doubting and believe. Jesus met Thomas in his doubt. Jesus met Thomas in his doubt. And let me tell you something. If you are in a season of doubt, if you have doubted, if you have questions, Jesus will meet you there. He will not wait for you to come to him. He's not sending back arms folded, disappointing that you don't know the answers to some things and that is starting to really nag you. And there's different kinds of doubt. There's lingering doubt that just kind of there and you can kind of ignore it. And sometimes people talk about it, but eventually it becomes urgent doubt where you're me crying in someone's office going, I don't know if I can carry this faith anymore because I have these questions that have become so big that I can't ignore them. But in those questions and in those seasons, if Jesus goes to Thomas, walks in the room, hey everybody, Thomas, here. Don't you think he does that for us? Don't you think he meets us in our doubt? I don't think that we have to fear it being not allowed because I am convinced that Jesus meets us in our doubt. And what happened was Thomas was experiencing doubt. Then he had a personal encounter with Christ. And Jesus, as a result of offering him that encounter and meeting him there, says, okay, now stop doubting and believe. This also is a subtle way to communicate with us and to remind us that belief is a choice. Believing in anything is a choice. I believe the Canes are going to take the series in five. I do. That's a choice. And I'm putting my heart on the line. It might get broken. Not really. It wouldn't break my heart. I'd be like, oh, that's a bummer for Christmas Artorias. And then I'd move on with my day. All belief in anything is a choice. It's choosing to believe in Jesus, that he is who he says he is, did what he said he did, is going to do what he says he's going to do, and hanging the hat of our hopes for our future on him. It's exactly what Thomas did. I love you, and everything in my future is anchored on you. That's what belief is, is to say, I'm going to choose to love you, I'm going to choose to believe in you. And I'm going to choose to place my hope in you for my future. That's what it is to believe. And it is a choice. There will never be enough proof one way or the other to completely convince us one way or the other with absolute certainty. So all belief at any point is a choice. This is why in Romans 8, Paul says, let me get my thoughts together on it. He says, we hope, something like in this we hope. And he says, we hope, who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So what he's saying is we hope in the redemption that Christ offers. And you don't have to hope in things that you can see. But since we're hoping for what we can't see, we wait for it with patience. And I've mentioned this a couple of times before. Do you realize that in eternity, in heaven with God, we have no more use for hope and faith? Those fade away with the world. We don't need hope in heaven. It's been answered. It's been satisfied. We don't need faith in heaven. He's right there. But on this side of eternity, we have to have faith and we have to have hope. And where we put it is a choice. And so Jesus is saying to Thomas, I've given you what you asked for. I've shown up for you. Now make the choice to believe in me and to be done with your doubt. But he doesn't ask him to do it until he shows up. Several years ago, I was in Honduras with a group of high school seniors. And after Bible study one night, one of the girls, a girl named Allison, came up to me and she said, hey, can we talk? And she had some doubts. She grew up like I did, Christian family, except she had some older siblings who had kind of, I wouldn't even say deconstructed or moved away from the faith. They just kind of disengaged, deprioritized it. And it was messing with her. And their reasons for doing so were messing with her. And she didn't really know how to handle it or what to do. And she asked some questions, and I was honest with her. I said, those are good questions, and I don't have good answers for you right now. I said, but here's what I hope for you. Here's what I hope for you. I hope that you can have a personal encounter with Christ. So tomorrow we're going to go to a village and we're going to be in the back of a truck and we're going to be handing out bags of rice to the women in that community. And I said, sometimes we see Jesus in his work. When we do his work, we meet him there. And the way it works is some dudes get in the back of the truck and they grab the bags and they hand them down. But there's people at the end who are sitting and they're the ones handing the rice to the Honduran women. And I said, when we go tomorrow, Allison, what I want you to do is I'm going to make sure that you get on the end of the truck. And I want you to look those women in the eyes as you serve them with the love of Christ. And I just, and I want you to pray that you have an encounter with Christ there, that you see him in their eyes. And she came back to me crying after the event. She says, I saw it. I saw it. I don't know what it is. I can't explain it, but Jesus showed up today. And that helps me. And see, these personal encounters with Christ, when he shows up in our life in a meaningful way, serve as anchors for our faith. So that when we do encounter things that we don't understand and we encounter questions that are hard to answer and we have lingering doubts that we've never approached and we just don't know what to do with it. But when we've had these irrefutable personal encounters with Christ, when he's shown up in our life in a meaningful way and we see his presence, we can anchor our faith there and it tethers us together between our doubts and makes it easier to hold our doubts. And here's the other thing I'll say real quick. Parents in the room, the better you handle your doubts, the more you have to offer your children in theirs. I think part of the reason that so many people have moved away, who grow up in the church, move away from the church, particularly in this era of what's called deconstruction, is because they start to experience doubts in college and early adulthood, and they go to their parents with questions, and their parents are like, yeah, I never figured that out either. And they're like, okay, well, then see ya. The better you handle yours now, the better you can help them with theirs then. But we don't do this. We tuck it away. And what I prayed for Allison that day is that like Thomas, she would have a personal encounter with Christ that would anchor her faith in such a way that Jesus could say to her, Allison, I've showed up for you. Do you believe me? Okay, well then stop doubting and believe. And stop doubting doesn't mean not having those questions. It just means being comfortable with holding them until we can get them answered. I'm reminded of the passage that I love that I remind you guys of sometimes in the gospels where Jesus tells the crowds, it was getting, Jesus had this way. Uh, he had this very intentional way of thinning the herd. Anytime his ministry got too big, he said something that self that sounded crazy. And half the people were like, okay, we'll see you later. And the craziest one he ever said is before he had died in resurrection and installed communion, he said, I tell you the truth, you cannot follow me unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. And people like, yo, cannibalism's kind of, that's a line for me. Can't do it. And so a bunch of people left and Jesus looks at his disciples and he says, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, one of my favorite things in the Bible, he says, you are the Christ, the son of God. Where are we going to go? Meaning, I don't understand what you just said. Or in our case, I don't have answers to all of my questions, but I know that you're Jesus. Where else can I go? But these personal encounters, when Jesus encounters us personally, it's only then that he says to us, now choose to believe and hold your doubts well, or stop doubting them or start letting them prohibit your belief. And I would say this too about doubt, as opposed to it being not allowed, I would say that doubts, often doubt is an indication of health. Very often these doubts that we carry is an indication of a healthy, more robust faith. It would be very problematic if your faith and your understanding of your faith was the exact same as it was at whatever point in your life you became saved. I shared last week that I got saved when I was four and a half because they scared me with hell. And I was like, I don't want to do that. And so then I got saved. If I still had that same understanding of my faith that brought me to salvation in the first place, that would be remarkably unthoughtful and unprogressive. We ought to mature in our faith and better understand our faith. And we ought to question and poke and prod our faith so that it can become ours and so that it can become something that we hold. Not something that we're mimicking from someone else, but something that we own because we've been satisfied intellectually and emotionally and spiritually with the robustness of this faith that we've progressed towards. And some of us grew up in traditions, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, whatever. Some of us grew up in traditions and you've never been outside that tradition. And you just took all the answers that the pastors and the teachers gave you about all the things, and that's just what you've believed too. And I can't tell you, I can't speak for other pastors, I can speak for me. I am certain, I've been preaching for eight years, I am certain that in that time, I've taught you some wrong stuff. Probably this morning. Who knows? I'm certain I've made mistakes. I'm certain that I have said things that it would actually serve you better to disagree with than to just accept. And I would be deeply concerned for you and the way you think about your faith if you've been listening to me preach for eight years and you go, I've never had any questions. That would be remarkably unthoughtful, wouldn't it? Don't you think it's remarkably unthoughtful to grow up as a Baptist and just assume that they're right about everything all the time ever, even though there's like myriad other denominations that all seem to have some good ideas and some smart people too. Doubts and questions are more often than not an indication of a healthy faith, of a thoughtful and ultimately a more robust faith. Conversely, unexpressed doubt is a cancer. Unexpressed doubt is deeply unhealthy. Those questions that linger, that we never resolve, that we never give vent to because we're afraid of what the answers might be or because it's going to be hard or because it requires work or because people might look down on us or whatever it is. Those questions that we have about our faith that we don't answer, those are not healthy. Having doubt is healthy. It's indication of being thoughtful and serious about our faith. But unexpressed doubt that we just hold and we never deal with and we push down, that's a cancer in our faith that tears it down from the inside out. So if we are experiencing those, we have to find ways to express them. Two final encouragements for you about that. So let's say that we've moved through, we've experienced doubt, we can agree that that happens to us from time to time. We see the way that Jesus met Thomas and his doubt. We know that Jesus meets us there. Then after he meets us and we have a personal encounter with him, he says, okay, now choose to believe and no longer doubt. And then we go, okay, I want to do that, but I still need to exercise these things. What do I do? Well, here's the first thing I would encourage you with. The truth has nothing to fear from doubt. The truth has nothing to fear from doubt. There is this attitude in Christian circles, particularly conservative ones, that if we learn too much, we might walk away from our faith. That's stupid. Don't let your children read too many books. They might learn things that make this untrue. Okay, well, then it was never true. And why are you holding your kid back with that? I heard, this is true. I heard multiple times as I was getting educated in church. I went to a conservative Bible college, and then I went to seminary at a conservative place, and I heard multiple times, oh, so-and-so is going to Duke. Oh, Duke's, they're liberal. They're going to, a bunch of atheist professors over there, they're going to teach them the wrong stuff. That person's going to lose their faith. And there was this attitude of you had to stay in the conservative strand. You couldn't go learn more information about your faith from other perspectives because it's going to cause you to lose your faith. As if the truth has something to fear from doubt and new ideas. And what I'm here to tell you is God's truth and the reality of God and the saving work of Christ is not threatened by your doubt and it is not threatened by more truth. And if we can learn so much that this faith becomes not true, then it never was. And we ought to quit encouraging one another to bury our heads in the sand and just accept things sometimes because that's not a healthy faith. We can say, that's a hard question, I don't know what the answer to that is yet, but God showed up in my life in this way, and I am choosing to believe in him until he helps me resolve this. We can do that. And so when I say that truth has nothing to fear from doubt, it's also an encouragement to you to do the work. If you are someone who carries lingering doubt, if you have questions that have never been answered, if they bother you, do the work. Have the conversations. Ask people who have more Christian life experience than you if they've ever had these questions before. I promise you, you will relieve people by being honest with them about what you wonder about. This should be phenomenal discussion in small groups. It would be so good and rich in your small groups if somebody were brave enough to say, yeah, I've always wondered about this. I've never really known how to handle it. Like the ark. Is that real? Come on. That's a great question. Let's talk about that. We should be doing those things. So do the work. Have the conversations. Read the books. Listen to the podcasts. Go out and figure it out. And don't be scared of what's going to happen when you pull the thread of that doubt. Because I am confident because it's happened to me multiple times. There have been times when I have had questions that have lingered for years and I said, I have to explore these and figure them out because if I have to continue to maintain this teaching or this thing, I can no longer be a pastor because I cannot maintain that. And then in doing the work that I thought would lead me away from faith, what I found was a stronger faith because I had a more robust understanding of my faith. So if you have doubts, do the work. Don't be scared of what's there and don't be embarrassed by your questions. If anything, ha, how about this? Be embarrassed by your cowardice, sissy. Ask the question. The other thing that I want to encourage you to do in your doubts is to pray for what Jesus gave Thomas. Pray for what I've experienced multiple times in my life and what Allison experienced in Honduras. Ask Jesus to meet you in your doubt. Say, Jesus, I doubt. I don't understand. I can't quite get to belief or my belief is being challenged or eroded because I don't understand this, Jesus. Ask Jesus to meet you in your doubt. And I'm going to pray that he would meet you even this week and open your eyes and let you see him and go, okay, he just showed up. I'm going to use this to anchor me for a little while while I do the work that I need to do to answer the questions. But we need to remove the stigma from doubt as if it's a bad thing. We need to open it up. We need to see it as healthy. We need to do the work and have the conversations. And in doing so, we can, as a church, have a much more mature, genuine, sturdy, healthy, rich, full faith. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you again for all the babies and all the families and all the friends and all the folks. Thank you for what you're doing at Grace. Thank you for the way that you're blessing us with these families. We pray earnestly, God, that we would be good stewards of them. Father, if there's anyone in the room who is experiencing doubt, who has questions, I pray that they would be brave enough to ask them. That they would be courageous enough to see them through and to let you meet them there. I pray that you would strengthen our faith through these doubts that we have sometimes, these questions that go unanswered. And God, for those of us that need you to meet us this week, I pray that you would. Would you just show up in profound ways that leave people dumbfounded at the way that you showed up and the reality of who you are? I thank you again for the mothers and pray that they would be celebrated well as we go through our days. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Gibby, I got to hand it to you. It takes a real man to bracket himself with people with better voices than him week after week. I thought Holly and Dave sounded great this morning. Fun fact about David, I'm pretty sure that this is true. If it's not, Katie, please don't publicly correct me. But I'm pretty sure that they met at a bar or a restaurant where David was singing karaoke to Backstreet Boys. And she said, I need to know about that guy. That's true, right? I can't believe that's true. I love that story so much. And I just think that every time he's up here singing, you should know that that voice got him a family. OK, That's pretty great. That's pretty great. This morning, we are starting a new series called Frequently Asked Questions. We thought it would be good and hopefully helpful to take some time here following Easter as we kind of finish up spring, move into the summer to answer questions that Christians often ask, but sometimes are too afraid to ask them like in a small group setting or ask somebody that they know because sometimes there's things that we feel like we should know and we don't and we don't want to admit that we don't. So we just kind of go along with it and pretend like we know things when we really don't know things. And so part of what we want to do is stop and answer those questions so you don't have to ask them out loud. We want you to keep your dignity, and we're just going to help you along the best we can. To get these questions, we did poll our small groups and ask our small groups to respond and give us your questions back. I think we had about 33% participation on that. So the ones who helped, thank you. The ones who didn't, thanks for nothing. I hope you hate this series because you could have fixed it. So then we got all the responses back and we kind of grouped them together, the staff and I did, and put them up on the whiteboard and we saw, okay, where are the redundancies? What are we seeing a lot of interest in? And we tried to talk about the things that came up the most. Now, I will tell you up front, we're not touching on any hard topics. Some of you guys snuck some questions in there about revelation or culture or whatever, like, hey, let's see if Nate will do this one. No, I will not do that one. But if those questions are so burning to you that you really do want to know, I would love to get coffee or lunch with you or let you come to my office and let's chat about it. So if you have a question that is serious to you and you really do want to discuss it, I would love to discuss it. I love discussing things way more than I love actually working. So if you want to take up some time in the afternoon and I call that work and I get to talk, this is fantastic. Okay, so if there's something you want to talk about, I want to talk about it with you if it doesn't get addressed in this series. And what I'll probably do is put out the schedule for the sermons so you guys will know what we're discussing and when we're discussing it. And then you'll know if there's something that we're not going to discuss that you would like to. This morning's question is kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of different questions that all mean, how can I discern God's will for my life? It's questions like, how do I know when I'm hearing the voice of God versus when I'm just dealing with my own thoughts? How can I know God's will and move in the direction that he's encouraging me to move in with confidence, knowing that it's something that he wants me to do? Essentially, how can I discern God's will for my life? How can I be sure that I'm hearing his voice? This question is a question that comes up a lot. Almost every time I do a sermon or I mention being kingdom builders, we need to build God's kingdom. And that's my goal for everybody who calls grace home is that God would slowly but surely mold you into someone who is passionate about building God's kingdom, who understands that that's why you were placed on this earth to build his kingdom, not your own. But I always get, okay, I want to build God's kingdom. How do I do that? What do I do? And the question that they're asking is, how can I get God's discernment on his will for my life? It's this question. So I think that this question, how can I be sure that I know God's will? How can I hear God's voice? I think it kind of comes up really in two big ways in our life. The first time it comes up is when we first become a Christian or we first begin to take our faith seriously. Because when I say that, what I mean is a lot of us were saved, became a Christian as children, but we didn't really click into that Christianity until adulthood or until high school or until college. And so there's some point in our life at which we began to take our faith seriously or we drifted away from a devout faith and now we're clicking back in. We never lost our faith. We just didn't prioritize it the same way. And now we're clicking back in and it occurs to us, man, God has a will and a plan for my life and I need to know what that is. So how do I hear from God? How do I learn from him? How can I walk with confidence in his direction and in obedience? And so one way that we begin to ask this question of how can I hear God's voice is when we first kind of come online as a Christian and start to realize that God does have a direction and a will for us, and we need to tap into that. So how do we hear it? The other time in life that this question becomes really important is when we are faced with a very difficult decision. Or maybe we even find ourselves languishing in a period of indecision in our life, where we just don't know what to do. Do I take the job or do I stay where I'm at? And what I would say there just real quickly is if that job is going to take you away from grace, God does not want you to take that job. As your pastor, I'm just telling you that. I want to be direct. Do I take the job or do I not? Do I fix this relationship or do I not? Do I have that conversation with someone or do I avoid it? Do I interject myself in this situation or do I stay out? How do I move forward with my child is making this decision. I don't want them to make that decision, but they're a grown up or they're close to it. And I don't know how to be their parent right now, what do I do? And so in a room this size with this many people, I'm certain that there are some of you who may or may not be languishing, but you're certainly existing in a season of indecision. Or you may be facing a big decision, and you're just not sure how to discern God's will for that decision. You're not sure how to hear his voice. And hopefully all of us are in places where we do try to listen to God. We do try to discern his will for the big decisions and the small decisions in our life. So the way I thought about this sermon is if you and I were to down for lunch, and you were to give me one of those two scenarios. I'm newer to the faith. I hear people talking about praying and hearing from God. I don't really know how that works. How do I hear from God? That's one question. Or we sit down for lunch, and you go, I'm facing this decision. I don't know what to do. How can I discern God's will for my life? Okay, that's another question. But I would answer both those questions in the same way. And so this morning is really just practical advice. This is a highly practical sermon. And I hope and pray that it's helpful for you if you're in either of those seasons. And if you're not, I hope it's a good reminder and some things that you'll grab onto that I can give you to think about as you face decisions in the future. So if you were to ask me, hey, how do I know God's will for my life? How can I hear his voice in either this situation or in general? I would say, well, I think it's progressive. I think we have to learn. I think there's a system. And I think the Bible teaches us. The Bible gives us enough information, but I don't have to guess at how we hear from God. The Bible shows us how we hear from God. So the first thing I would say is the very first thing to do when you're facing a decision or when you want to start listening to the voice of God, I think one of the very first things we do is know that we hear from the spiritually mature. We hear God's word and God's voice and God's will from the spiritually mature people that we have in our life. I'll show you where we see this. 2 Kings chapter 4. I'm going to be looking at verses 2 through 4. So this woman, this woman comes up to Elisha. Elisha, and you can just leave that up there, Andrea. I'll get to it in just a second. I false started you on that. I'm sorry. Elisha is one of the great prophets in the Old Testament. Elijah and Elisha are some of the great prophets in the Old Testament. They're underrated and underappreciated because they don't have a book named after them, but they're probably the two greatest prophets that we have. They're incredible and their lives are amazing. And we see their stories in 1 and 2 Kings. Elisha is going about his day and a woman, a widow, comes up to him and she says, my husband has died. I have no money. My creditors are after me. I'm afraid I'm going to be homeless and destitute. What should I do? What can I do? And this is how Elisha responds beginning in verse 2. She's afraid she's going to have to give her boys over as Testament. This widow comes to Elisha and she says, I'm poor, my husband's dead, I'm destitute, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to give my sons over to slavery to pay my debts off. I don't know what to do. And Elisha says, okay, I want you to get, what do you have? Do you have a jar of oil? Great. Go around to your neighbors, ask if you can have access to their recycling bins and get all the milk, get all the gallon jugs you could find. This is essentially what's happening. Get all the jars that you can find from your neighbors, bring them to your house, go into a room by yourself, shut the door behind you and begin to pour the oil from your jar into these other jars. And so she does, as she's told, it probably doesn't make any sense to her. She probably thinks this sounds crazy, but she does it. And it's one of the great miracles of the old Testament that no matter how much she poured, there was still oil in her jar. And all the jars were filled. And then she says, I've done it. I filled all the jars I could find. He says, okay, go and sell that oil and take a chunk of it and pay off your debts. And there should be enough remaining for you to live well for a while until you can figure something else out. And so she was taken care of, but she was taken care of by going to a spiritually mature person and saying, what should I do? And then having the courage to do what she was told. And what you're going to see is that this question isn't as much about how do I know God's will for my life? This sermon and this question is really about, do you have the courage to walk in obedience when it's clear? Because a lot of times it is clear to us what we need to do. We just keep praying, hoping for a different answer because we don't want to do the thing. She did the thing. It was crazy, but she did it. And so similarly in our lives, if we want to hear from God, if we want to know what to do in a difficult decision, we should go to the spiritually mature people in our life. I have a friend named Tyler. And Tyler is, he's the most trusted recommender I have in my life. I will do, and he does research about everything. Two or three years ago, we moved into our new house. I was in an airport, and I had been doing research on security systems. Jen said she wanted an alarm on the house, so I was trying to figure out the best way to do this and how to get this accomplished. Apparently, this is not much of a security system for us, so we need a little bit extra. And I'm in an airport. I can't remember which airport I'm in, and I'm not sure what to do, and I think, I know, I'll call Tyler. I'm certain that Tyler has done research on this. So I called him, and 45 minutes later, we are still talking about security systems from all the research that he's done. He was delighted to have the conversation. I kept saying, dude, I'm so sorry I'm taking up your time on this. I know this is silly. He's like, no, no, no, I love this. Anyways, so the ring system, and he's getting back into it. Tyler, if he tells me, hey, dude, you need to read this book. Hey, man, you need to listen to this podcast. Hey, I watched this show, and it was great. I always say, don't say another word. I don't want to know what it's about. I don't need to know what it's about. I will consume it tomorrow. He is the number one recommender in my life. If Tyler says it about silly, frivolous stuff, there's no one that knows more about less important things than Tyler. So I just go with whatever he says. We need spiritual Tylers in our lives. When we face indecision, we go to them. They've done the work. They've done the research. They're in the word. They're a man or a woman of prayer. They know how to hear from God. They've matured past us. We go trust their voice when we can't trust our own. We go to spiritually mature people and we ask them what they think, trusting their ability to hear from God. If you feel like I have no idea how to hear from God, the first thing you do, go talk to spiritually mature people who know God's word and who are prayed up. Before I took this job, when it was offered to me, before I agreed to come, I went to six different senior pastors who are far more experienced than me. And I put everything in front of them. And I said, does this seem wise? Do you think this is a good idea? I went to spiritually mature people who know better than me. As a spiritually mature Christian trying to discern God's word, I went to people who had already moved beyond me and asked them what they thought. And I sought their counsel. Proverbs has a lot to say about seeking wise counsel. So if we want to hear from God, we go to wise people. The other place we go, and the only reason I didn't put this one first is because sometimes you don't know where to go in God's word. And so sometimes we need a spiritually mature person to direct us there. But the other place we go to hear from God is to know that we hear from God's word. What do we hear from God? We hear from his word. Look at Luke chapter five, verses four through six. Simon Peter had been out fishing all night and he comes back and Jesus sends him back to throw out the nets. In verse 4, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything, but because you say so, I will let down the nets. When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. A lot of us know this story. A lot of us know this story. We've seen this before. But what I want you to see is Peter is responding to the very words of God, the words of the Savior. He gets done with the night of fishing and Jesus says, you didn't catch anything, go back out, cast in deep water. Which, by the way, deep water's further away, so it's no small thing that he's asking after a full night of fishing. And Peter says, we just did that, but since you told me to, I will. And he has the courage and the fidelity to obey. Which, again, is what this question is really about. Once you have discerned God's voice, do you have the courage to walk in accordance with it? They go out, they cast the nets, just like Jesus told them to, and they caught more than they could ever imagine catching before. The nets were breaking from pulling in the fish. And so the example here is when God speaks to us, we should listen. And we have the benefit of this whole Bible. And we believe about this Bible that it is inspired and it is authoritative and that these words are God's words. And so if we can find it in the Bible, God is speaking to us. And there are some things that we're trying to discern God's will on. And there are very clear passages on that thing. I've had people come to me before and say, should I forgive so-and-so? This happened in my past. I can't forgive them. Do you think God wants me to forgive them? Well, there's a passage for that. That's easy. You go to where Peter asked Jesus that very question, where Peter says, hey, if someone sins against me, I know I should forgive them. But if they do the same sin, how many more times should I forgive them for the same thing? And Peter says, should I do it up to seven times? Thinking this is a generous offer. And Jesus says, I tell you the truth, you should forgive them 70 times seven times. Which means as many times as they commit the offense, you should forgive them. So if you come to me and you go, is it the Lord's will for me to forgive this person? And a lot of times that question is not asked lightly. That question is not asked lightly. Sometimes it's stupid. Sometimes it's, you know, my boyfriend and my girlfriend broke up with me and I can't forgive them. Okay, we'll be a grownup. But other times it's really, really serious stuff. It's stuff from childhood. It's the worst kinds of betrayal and I can't find it in my heart to forgive. Do you think God wants me to forgive? Yeah, it's in the Bible. It's right there. Do you think God wants me to give, even if it's tight, even if finances are difficult? Does God want me to be a generous person and be a giver? Yeah, I think he does. If I have a lot, if I have an overabundance, and 10% is a serious chunk of money, does God still want me to give 10% even though I'm giving generously compared to all the people around me? Yeah, I think he does. I think that's the baseline in Scripture. I think that's pretty clear. So there's some things that we go back and forth about, what's God's will here, when really it's answered in Scripture. And sometimes a spiritually mature person can point us to the right passage. Sometimes we can point ourselves to the right passage. I'll tell you what's really great in this instance. This is my number one sermon prep tool. It's www.google.com. What does the Bible say about forgiveness? What does the Bible say about fathers and mothers? What does the Bible say about child rearing? Now, I know that that sounds ridiculous, and you have to kind of sort through some stuff sometimes to get something of worth, but very often you'll find that someone has made a list of all the verses that address that topic. And it allows you easily just to see, oh, this is what the Bible says about these things. And when we're trying to discern God's will for our life or what we should do in a certain situation, if we're lucky enough to find a passage that addresses it directly, we can be done wondering what God wants us to do. We just again again, have to have the courage to actually do it. Now, sometimes, sometimes we've grown in our maturity. We believe we've heard from God before. We've been obedient to scripture and we allow it to speak to us and into situations in our life, but we might be facing a decision that isn't specifically covered in the Bible. Do I take that job? Do I address that situation? Do I support them in this or not? Do I invest in my friend's company in this way? What non-profit should I serve in? I want to give, and I want to give generously, but there's so many options. What's the right one? How do I know God's will for that? So there's some questions that are not easily laid out in scripture. And for those, we need to learn to listen to God. And one thing we can do to learn to listen to God is sometimes you test God. Sometimes you test him to see. And this is a biblical thing, because that sounds a little out there, put God to the test, but there's a way in which you can do it, and it's appropriate. There's that famous story in Judges with Gideon. Gideon is a judge that God has raised up to overthrow the Midianite oppressors of his Hebrew people. And Gideon thinks that God wants him to go to battle. He's pretty sure that he's got his army assembled and God wants him to go to battle, but he just wants to be extra sure. So he says, okay, God, I think that this is what you want me to do, but just to be sure, I'm going to go to bed and I'm going to leave a fleece. I'm going to leave a fleece, a rug out in front of my tent. And if I wake up in the morning and that fleece is wet with dew and the ground around it is dry, I will take that as a signal from you that this is what I need to do. So he goes to sleep. He wakes up the next morning. Sure enough, fleece is wet. We know this. The ground is dry. And he says, okay, God, I'm going to go do the thing. That's not what he says because Gideon is like us. Gideon actually says this when he finds the fleece. Look at this verse in Judges 6, verse 39. Then Gideon said to God, I love this part, do not be angry with me. Please don't be mad. Just let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew. So he's like, all right, that was a cool trick that you did with the fleece last night. But just to be sure, can you do the opposite? Can we flip it? Are you that fancy? So he goes to bed. He wakes up the next day. The ground around the fleece is soaked in dew. The fleece is dry. And Gideon knows what he needs to do. He assembles the men and he goes to war. And he goes to war knowing that he has the assurance of God to do this thing. And the wonderful part about putting God to the test is when you put him to the test for very difficult things, we don't have to lead people into war, most of us. But sometimes we have to move our families to different states. Sometimes we have to eat a big thing of humble pie. Sometimes we have to take a new job that we don't know about. Sometimes we have to step off the cliff hoping that God will catch us. And when those times come, it is so helpful to put God to the test and be able to go back to a clear signal that he gave us, yes, this is what I want you to do, move forward. There's been so many times in the life of grace and in my tenure as a senior pastor where I've had to put God to the test and say, if you want this to happen, you're going to be the one that has to do it because I don't see a way forward. And then he's made a path forward. Sometimes we can put God to the test like this. Now, I'm not recommending this, but this is a famous story in my family. And every time I hear this story, I think it's false. I think one of my great aunts or uncles made it up, okay? But my mom swears that it's true. And if you can't trust your mom, who can you trust? I have a great aunt. I forget her name. Maybe Sarah. And my whole family on my mom's side is from the South. My pop all grew up in South Georgia, literally on a dirt floor. My mom all grew up in Red Stick, Baton Rouge, and she's Cajun. So I've got a real good combination of low quality individuals in my ancestry. And my great aunt Sarah was a widow and lived alone. And her house was in disrepair. Her roof looked terrible and I believe was leaking in some places. And she was a woman of faith. She was a devout woman of faith and she went to church every Sunday. And the story goes that one day she got fed up with her roof leaking in the way that it looked. And she marched out in her front yard and she turned and faced her house and she said, Father, everybody around here knows that I'm your daughter. And if this is how you want to see them taking care of your daughter, then that's your business. But I should think that you would want better for me. And then she walks back in the house. Again, I wouldn't try it. Walks back in the house. That was her prayer. It was her test. The next day, no kidding around, she gets a knock at the door. Two dudes from a roofing company. We're new in town. We can see that you need a new roof. We'd love to replace it for free if you'll allow us to use you as a model home and put a sign in your yard. And she says, thank you, Father. Yeah, that'll be fine. She gets a new roof. God wanted her to have that roof, no doubt about it. Sometimes we put them to the test. Here's something that I do sometimes. Sometimes I'll be concerned for a person, or I'll have something that I think I want to say to somebody that's hard. Maybe I see a pattern, and I just want them to know that I see it it and I want them to know that I want to encourage them through it. Or maybe I can just see that they're having a hard time and I want to give them a space to talk about that hard time. But I'm not sure if I need to interject myself. I'm not sure if they want that. You know those prompts that you feel of, I think I should probably talk to that person. I think I need to call them. Or maybe you're in a social gathering and you see somebody and you're like, oh yeah, I wanted to talk to them about this, but I don't know if it's appropriate. I don't know if I should. The prayer that I'll pray when I feel those things is, Father, if you want me to talk to that person, will you make that possible? If I'm in a social gathering and there's somebody that I know I need to talk to, but I can't just walk up to a circle of people and start talking to them about that thing. I will pray, God, if you really do want me to say that to them, will you put me alone with them and give me a window to do that? And then I just know, and I'm sensitive to, if I'm just moving about whatever it might be, a grace's big night out, and this person ends up alone with me. Now, none of you are going to talk to me at Grace's Big Night Out. I'm not talking to him. He might have prayed about this. I'm not going over there. But if there's a door that God opens to that conversation and it becomes appropriate, I have to have the courage to walk through it. Or I'm going to lunch with somebody, and I know that there's something I want to say to them, but I'm not sure if I should, I'll pray, God, if I'm supposed to say what I think you want me to say, will you have them bring it up so that I can walk in confidence into that conversation, knowing that I'm doing the right thing? And see, for me, that's an exercise in discipline, Because I don't know how many of you are like me in that you're messed up and you love confrontation. I love it. I want to say the thing. Like, I don't want to be mean about it. I just want to put my face in the wood chipper and have the conversation. Let's just do it. It's best for everybody. I'm chomping at the bit to have those conversations. So what I'm asking for is like, God, you tell me when I'm let off the leash and I'll go. That's what I'm asking for. Others of you are just, you don't even need a leash. You don't need an electric fence. You're just going to stay in your yard. You're not going, you are so scared of those conversations. But let me tell you something. If God's placed something on your heart that he might want you to say to somebody, and then he opens the door for you to do that, have the courage and the obedience to step through it. Because I can tell you from experience, God uses those conversations. When you're having a holy conversation, a holy confrontation, a holy period of encouragement, it refreshes refreshes you and it refreshes them and it builds both of your faiths and It builds your ability to hear from God God I think you want me to say this then he opens the door then you walk through it and you say it and now that you that exists in your life as a marker of a time that you heard God's voice. And you're starting to learn it. And you're starting to walk in obedience. And he's able to use you as more of a tool as you walk through life. And it builds their faith. Because you can say to them, you know, I just have been thinking about you and praying about you. And this is on my heart and so I just feel like I want to say it. I've never said that and been met with apathy. No one's ever said that to me and I've gone, yeah, I didn't really need to hear that. I think you missed it on that one. It's always right. It's always good. So whether it's a conversation or a situation, it's okay to put God to the test and say, God, if this is truly what you want me to do, can you give me this kind of sign? Can you do this thing? Can you bring this person into my life? Will you have them, if you, I've even done it before too. I've said, God, if you want me to talk to that person about that thing, I'm going to need you to have them call me today. And then an hour later, my phone will ring and I'll see their name and my heart will sink because it's like, shoot, I have to do it. I thought that was, I thought I was going to sneak that one by him. So one thing we can do is we can put God to the test. And as we do that, eventually you learn to hear God on your own. So as we talk progressively about how can we hear from God, eventually we talk to spiritually mature people who know how to hear from God. Then we consult Scripture, God's Word. Then we start putting God to the test to learn when we are and when we are not hearing God's voice. And then eventually we learn to hear God on our own. John 14, 27 says this, or 10, 27, sorry, it's wrong in your notes. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. We are taught, Jesus says that his sheep know his voice, right? That when the sheep are out there, all the shepherds in the world can be yelling, but when our shepherd yells, we know and we look. I've always thought about this as God's dad whistle. Every dad worth his salt has a whistle. Charlie Healy, if you don't have one, you've got to develop one. I don't want to see you shaking your head. You go home and you work on it. Or you're underserving Henry. Every dad worth his salt has a whistle. You have to. You have to. We were on the subway in Washington, D.C. this week. And Jen and the kids were in a seat. And I was standing in the door because I had the stroller that I had to hold up. And I wanted Lily to see something. So I just gave her a little. And it cut through just that loud. but it cut through everything. She's reading a book. She looks up right at me. She knew it was me. And I was like, yes, I'm a good dad. That's all you need. You don't need to know. I didn't snap at her or be too hard on her at any point in the trip. You don't even need to know that. I'm a good dad because she responded to that whistle. I can remember being in a park when I was a kid at the ballpark or something like that running around and I would hear my dad's whistle and I knew, I knew, I know Rayvon has a whistle. I knew that I had about 10 seconds to get my butt to the car or it was going to get tore up. Like I knew that, right? Every dad worth his salt has a whistle. We hear it and we know. When we've been walking with God long enough, we know his voice. We don't have to put him to the test anymore. We just say, yes, Lord, okay, open the door and I will walk through it. Do you want me to take this job? Do you want me to do this thing? Do you want me to fix this relationship? When we've been walking with him long enough, we know his voice. It's just, I don't think it's describable. When people say, how do you know you hear from God? When you've put them to the test enough times and you've learned to recognize that impulse in your life and in your heart, you learn when it's the Holy Spirit and when it's not. But that's just a repetition thing. It's just a time thing. We've spoken to spiritually mature people. We've consulted his word. We've we've put him to the test and over time we learn to identify his voice finally as we progress through it you expect to hear from God now this one's wild to me I've never known anyone that was like this but it's in the Bible so it's's true. 2 Kings 4.27. I'm going to read it to you. This will seem unremarkable, but you'll see where I'm going. 2 Kings 4.27. So the widow is coming back. Her son has died. And when she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, leave her alone. She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why. So he's going through his day. The widow that he helped with the oil earlier in the chapter, her son dies, and she comes to Elisha in distress. And she grabs his feet, and Gehazi was his assistant, his right-hand man, and he goes to push her away. Like, that's not appropriate. Don't do that. And Elisha holds him off and says, don't do that. She's in bitter distress. And this is a phrase I will, it will never not impact me when I see it. And when I think about it, the Lord has hid it from me and I'm not sure why. Do you understand that Elisha walked so closely with the Lord and heard his voice so regularly that he went through his day and listening and expecting to hear things from God. He is surprised that God did not tell him about the death of this boy that he is close to and that he loves. He's surprised that God didn't. Can you imagine walking through your day and going, oh, so-and-so just got diagnosed with cancer, I'm going to call him. That just occurring to you because you can hear God's voice that clearly, but that's who Elisha was and that's who we should strive to be. I know that that feels like a very long way off for most, if not all of us, but I believe it's possible based on the example of Elisha to listen to God so intently and so regularly and to know his voice so well that he begins to tell us things that we're not even asking about. And the last thing I would say about hearing God's voice and how do we discern it is something that I say very regularly. God often speaks in stereo. God often speaks in stereo. If you're a new Christian, you want to know, or you're a newly engaged Christian, you want to know how to hear God's voice and discern his will. Know that he speaks in stereo. If you have multiple mature friends saying the same thing, that's stereo. If you have a friend saying something and you're reading scripture and you're not even seeking out an answer for this, but a verse jumps off the page in a new way that's in some way directly applies to your situation, we call that, my buddy Harris calls that a God wink. Just God winking at you going, yeah, I got you. I'm taking care of you. That's my voice. You can trust it. Or you're having a conversation and it comes up and this person says a thing and you're like, you didn't even know I was dealing with that, but that's exactly what I'm dealing with right now. This must be a God thing. Yeah, it must be. Or you come to church and I'm preaching about something and it happens to be exactly what you're dealing with that week, which happens all the time. People come up to me afterwards and go, you have no idea, but either my wife called you and told you to preach that to me, or the Holy Spirit is speaking to you because that's exactly what I needed. God often speaks in stereo. And if you find yourself in a season of indecision, if you find yourself not knowing what God's will is, but you've heard the same thing from multiple sources, it might not be that you don't know what to do. It might just be that you don't have the courage to do it yet. Because like I said, this sermon is not really about learning to discern the voice of God. It's about challenging ourselves to walk in confidence once we've heard it. These are the ways that we hear it. And if God is speaking to you in stereo, then you already know what you should be doing. So I'm going to pray for us. I'm going to pray for those of you who are in seasons of indecision that God will bring some clarity, that he will speak to you in stereo and multiple trusted sources. And I'm going to pray that for those of you who want to learn the voice of God will have opportunities even this week to begin to hear him and put him to the test and walk in faith. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for speaking to us. Thank you for being a God who hears, but also a God who speaks. God, give us ears to hear you. Give us hearts to obey you. Help us walk in confidence once we've heard from you. God, if there is someone here, as a matter of fact, I know there are people here who find themselves in these seasons of indecision. Would you give them clarity for those choices? Would you give them confidence to walk according to your will? And would you make your will abundantly clear to them? Father, for those of us who are learning to hear your voice, would you give us a chance even this week to hear it? Would you give us a chance to put you to the test so that we might walk in faith and so learn to hear your voice more and more? Would we be like your sheep who know your voice and respond to it? And one day, maybe, God, we can be like Elisha and even have the boldness to expect to hear from you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.