Sermons tagged with Healing

The All right. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you are going to miss that Revelation intro, that's the last time you get to hear that music, let me know and I'll send you the clip. You can use it as your alarm clock on Mondays just to really face the week. This is the last part in our series moving through the book of Revelation and it's been a good series. I think it's been good for the church. I think it's been good for our small groups. I've heard that we've had some really good, robust discussions in those, and it's been fun for me to get to tackle this book on your behalf. And sincerely, I appreciate your trust and belief in me as we've walked through this together, and I've kind of served a little bit as a guide through the book of Revelation. By way of review, as we finish up the series, I thought it would be worth it to kind of recap all that we've learned and talked about as we arrive here at the final week. So in the first week, we're setting the scene. It's Revelation chapter one. John arrives. He's given a vision while he's on the island of Patmos. An angel comes and gets him and says, write down the things that I'm going to show you. And in that first chapter, we see this remarkable reunion between John and his savior, Jesus, his best friend, Jesus, who he served and spoken about and longed for for years. And we see that the greatest promise, no matter what else we encounter in the book of Revelation, the greatest promise in the book is that one day we will meet our Savior face to face. That one day we will meet Jesus too. And after we meet Jesus, after we see his face, whatever happens after that is going to be okay. That's the greatest promise in Revelation. In week two, my dad preached and we looked at Revelation 4 and 5. Remember, we skipped the letters to the churches in 2 and 3. We're going to tackle those in a series to be named later. Revelation 4 and 5, God sits on the throne. That's the important part. God's in control. And then Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, worthy to open the seals and begin the tribulation process. Remember, we define the the wrath of God and how even though we kind of shy away from it in the 21st century church, it's important. It's important to lean into. It's important to acknowledge. And we actually want a God that's capable of that. And then for the next two weeks, it was kind of academic. I pulled the whiteboard up here one week. We went through the events of the tribulation, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls and God's wrath being poured out and what order that comes and the different views around that. And then we kind of looked at the figures of the tribulation, the antichrist and the false prophet and the dragon and the witnesses and the 144,000 and kind of decoded some of those things within the book. And then last week was probably my favorite week where we look at the return of Christ and what that wins us. How he conquers evil once and for all. He conquers Satan once and for all. He makes all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And we also kind of reflected on the idea that when Jesus comes, we can finally lay down our faith and our hope. Those things are no longer needed because we're looking at our Savior face to face. And so this week, we arrive at the end of the book, at the end of the series, and I almost titled this morning's message, It Begins, or The Beginning, because this is where eternity begins. This is where the temporal world stops in Revelation 22, and eternity begins, an eternity that I want us to see this morning, for which we were created. So we arrive not necessarily at the end today, but at the beginning. As we do, there's a couple more things in Revelation to look at, namely the millennial reign of Christ. The millennial reign of Christ is discussed in Revelation chapter 20. So Jesus has just come down. He stormed down on the white horse. He has the troops of heaven, the angels of heaven arrayed in white linen behind him. They conquer the armies of the antichrist, of Satan, of the false prophet. They conquer the dark kingdom. They take the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth, the antichrist and the false prophet, and Jesus binds them and throws them in the lake of fire forever. And now all that remains is to deal with Satan. How is Jesus at the end of time going to deal with Satan? We find this in Revelation chapter 20. Now just a caveat about this sermon. It was a holiday week, all right? So I wrote this basically in my head during the 24 hours I was in the car this week with a six-month-old, which means I didn't produce notes for Kyle to put in there, which means that Scott back there, who's in charge of the slides, has the easiest job ever. And Carly, who's in charge of printing your notes, had an easy job because there's nothing there. So it's entirely up to you to write down what you want to write down and to follow along as you want to follow along. I would encourage you to grab a Bible. Grab the one in the seat back in front of you and be looking at Revelation 20, 21, and 22. I'm going to read the first four or five verses from each of those chapters as we move through, and they will not appear on the screens. If you're at home and you're watching, grab a Bible so we can go through it together and interact with the text together. But we see the millennial reign in Revelation chapter 20 in the first three verses. John writes, So if you keep reading, what you find is that after Satan is bound and thrown in a pit for a thousand years, that at the end of that thousand years, he is released and allowed to tempt the people on the earth who are alive at that time. For just a little while longer, he pulls away some people from Christ. And then Christ once and for all binds him and throws him in the lake of fire with the Antichrist and the false prophet. So around this, there are a lot of questions. Namely, the biggest one to me is, why in the world would God bind Satan, put him in a pit, make him stay there for a thousand years, and then let him out to tempt people one more time, just one last hurrah from Satan, like God's doing a favor to an old buddy or something, and then throwing him in the lake of fire. Why does God do that? Listen, I don't know. To me, this is one of those mysteries of revelation. I have literally nothing for you. You can research it and read about it, and people make guesses, but in all honesty, as is often the case to me, a lot of the guesses, and in fact, for this one, all of the guesses out there really don't hold intellectual water for me. I see them. I can see how they might be thought of as reasonable, but I can also very easily, to me, poke holes in them. And so I thought it not worth sharing with you the different guesses because they're all bad ones. So I would say, I don't know. It's a mystery on this side of heaven why God chooses to order things in that way. I continue to believe that if in my elevated body, if in my new heavenly body I get at the marriage supper of the lamb, I have the mental capacity to understand this and God deigns to explain it to me and I even still care once I'm in heaven, which I definitely won't. But let's pretend that in heaven while we're amidst this perfect joy, we say, hang on a second. Why'd you do that thing with Satan where you released him one last time? If God were to explain it to us and we had the mental capacity to grasp it, I think we'd all go, oh, thanks. And then we'd go on with our joyful day. By the way, I haven't said this yet. It's important to point out. Part of the reason that heaven is so joyful is because there's no dogs or animals there. It's fantastic. No more hassles, no more cleanups, no more messes. It's really, it's a wonderful place. I know it says lion lays down with lamb. That's figurative. There's no animals in heaven. I'm certain of it. I'm sure your dogs are all there. All right. I'm sure they are. Except for my first dog, Maggie. If they have an afterlife, Maggie's in hell, that dog is. What was I preaching about? So we don't know why God chooses at the end of the millennial reign to allow Satan loose for a period of time and then throws him into the lake of fire. And I'm not going to pretend to offer you explanations because they don't make sense to me. There are also views about the millennial reign. And we're going to get in the weeds just a little bit. And if this doesn't interest you, I am sorry. But there are some people who showed up with questions this morning about the millennial reign. And so this needs to be discussed. So we will move quickly, but there's kind of three traditional views about the millennial reign. They are called amillennial, postmillennial, and premillennial, and they're questions about when does God return? When does Jesus return? Does Jesus return after the millennial reign? Does he return during the millennial reign? Does he return before the millennial reign? And so we're going to basically group them like this. There's premillennial, which says Christ's return is before the millennial reign, that Christ comes back like he does in 19. He conquers Satan. He throws them in there. It's literally a thousand years where he reigns on earth and Christian ideals flourish and Christians flourish and God's kingdom flourishes. And then at the end of those literal thousand years, Satan is released. He tempts some people and then Jesus conquers them once and for all. Amillennial and postmillennial believe, and this is where it gets tricky, that you take chapters 19 and 20 and you lay 20 over chapter 19. See, premillennials believe that first chapter 19 happens, which is the return of Christ, the big war. He comes out of heaven and he conquers the beast. And then chapter 20 happens, which is the millennial reign. So premillennialists read this literally and say that these things literally happen. Christ, after he binds the beast and throws him in the lake of fire, then he reigns for a thousand, he binds Satan, then he reigns for a thousand years, then he loses him. It's a literal thousand years. The amillennial and postmillennial view think that you take chapters 19 and 20 and you lay them over top of each other and that they are different ways of describing the same events. Do you remember in week one when I said when you're interpreting Revelation that sometimes it's linear and sometimes it isn't? And how do you know when it is and it isn't? You just study really hard and you make a good guess. So some people have studied really hard and they've made this guess, that 20 lays over 19. In which case, the millennial reign of Christ, the thousand years, is figurative language for a long time. And we are in the middle of that. The millennial reign comes between the two comings of Christ. The Christ as crucified Savior that we read about in Scripture. And then the Christ as returning conqueror that we talked about last week. That in between those two comings of Christ are the millennial reign. And it is I fall in? Probably the latter, the ah or the post, the figurative meaning of the millennial reign. But as my father is listening to this sermon, he will vehemently disagree with that. So there are, I would say there are smart people on either side, but there's not necessarily based on me and my dad being on the two different sides. You'll have to pick which one of us is dumb. But there are good arguments to be made for either side, and it's really not that important which side you choose. The important part is, in the end, Jesus wins, and he binds Satan, and then we move into an eternity that's briefly described in Revelation 21 and 22. In Revelation 21, and you can look at verses 1 through four, we have a passage that I've shared a lot from this stage, that I refer to a lot in my preaching. It's a passage that I think is maybe the single most encouraging and hope-filled passage in the Bible. It's one that I use to comfort others with. It's one that I use to comfort myself. It infuses itself into my preaching and into my thinking over and over again, so much so that I can vividly remember that in the interview process and talking with the elders, when they were asking me about my worldview and my theology and all the different things and my approach to the Bible, I referenced this passage tearfully in my interview with them because it, over the years, has come to mean so much to me. And I thought it worthwhile before we read it this morning to tell you how I encountered this passage and the hope that it can bring in the most dire of situations as we prepare ourselves to look towards eternity. About, I think it was about eight years ago, I was at Greystone Church outside of Georgia, or Atlanta, and I was the small groups pastor and a couple other things, and one of the other hats that I wore at that church was I was the care pastor. Thank you. There it is. Right. Yeah, we were short-staffed. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. That'll probably never be my title again anywhere I go, but it was my title there. And I got a call one day, and it was a couple who had just recently started coming to the church, and they had an eight-year-old son named Landon, whose name I'll never forget, who had passed away. And it was an incredibly sad circumstance. Landon had an infection. He was sick. Went to the doctor, got some antibiotics, took him, went upstairs, I think take a bath or something, and they found him dead. He had had an allergic reaction to the medicine that he took, and they didn't know it. Incredibly sad situation. So sad, in fact, that a few days after the funeral, I was driving somewhere, and I called Jen, and she said, what's wrong? And I said, I don't know. I just, I feel heavy. And Jen goes, Nate, those are emotions. And I was like, well, then you can keep these. These are terrible. I hate this. It was a hard time. And so leading up to meeting with the family and doing the funeral, I called my pastor growing up, a man named Buddy Hoffman, who's no longer with us. I wish he were so I could talk to him about being a pastor. But I called Buddy. I said, Buddy, this has happened. I'm going to have to do this funeral and meet with this family. This is way out of my depth. I don't know what to do or what to say. What do I do? And he says in his typical, very blunt, forthright, buddy nature, he said, Nathan, just don't say anything stupid. And I laughed and I said, yeah, man, that's the goal. That's what I'm trying to avoid. That's why I'm on the phone with you. And he said, well, in times like this, so often people try to say things when they shouldn't. Sometimes your presence matters way more than your words, so really lean into just being quiet and being there. And then when you share scripture, be careful what you share, because it can often ring hollow in times of deep grief. And I agreed with him because I think of when something terrible like this happens, when we lost our first child due to miscarriage and somebody would quote us Jeremiah 29 11, I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, prayers to prosper you, not to harm you, plans for a hope and a future. Listen, listen, listen, that's true and that's good, but that doesn't help my pain, right? And if part of God's plan was to take a kid from me, then I don't really want to be a part of that plan. You know what I'm saying? So those verses can ring hollow. And I didn't want to say those to this family, Romans 8, 28. You know, for we know that for those who love him, that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. That's good and that's true. And that means that in eternity, it's gonna work out and we see it working out. That's what Revelation is about, is affirming Romans 8, 28. But in the moment, boy, that doesn't really bring a lot of comfort to a grieving family. And I said, I agree with you. There's verses that ring hollow. so what do I share? And he said, I always use Revelation 20, Revelation 21, verses one through four. This is the hope that we cling to. And this is why these verses have infused themselves into my preaching and into my thinking and into my prayers and why I still use this passage at every funeral that I do because I believe it's maybe the most hope-filled passage in all of Scripture. And it says this. John writes, I love this part. That, remember last week, I said that hope and faith were burdens and we cling to our hope and our faith. That is the hope that we cling to. This is the event that we place our faith in. That Jesus' death on the cross won us this. That one day, God will be with his people and we will be with our God and he will wipe every tear off of our face and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And if you've heard me do a funeral, you've heard me say what the former things are. In this moment, the former things are death, pain, cancer, birth defects, difficulties, abuse, estrangement, broken homes. The former things are the brokenness of other people that spills out and breaks the people around them. The brokenness is gone is this idea that hurt people hurt people because nobody's hurt, so nobody's getting hurt. The former things are all of the things that cause you stress and anxiety and pain and discomfort now. There's coming a day where those things are no longer present. Those are the former things. And it hearkens back to this promise that we see in Revelation chapter 1 that we highlighted in the first week, that one day we will be with our Savior face to face. One day we will sit in the very presence of God. He will be with us and we will be with him. And in that day when that comes, the former things, the things that cause us pain now. The things that are difficult now. The things that made this week tough. The things that have made these last two years tough. The things that you came in here worrying about now, the scars that you bear from the people who have come before you, all those things have passed away and we walk in perfect joy. This is why I love this verse because this verse acknowledges the former things and it doesn't seek to cheapen those things. It doesn't tell Sean Weldon who lost his son Landon that this thing doesn't matter, that this thing doesn't hurt. Don't worry about it. God has a plan for this thing. It says, no, no, no. This is one of the former things, man. And if you can cling to your faith and your hope through this, it will become a former thing and you'll see him again. So I find this passage to be uniquely and tremendously hope-filled. And it inaugurates the eternity that we are going to share in together. The holy city comes down. We are a part of the new Jerusalem. We are a part of the new heaven and the new earth. Some people believe God creates an entirely new heaven and new earth. Some people believe he replaces this one. I believe it doesn't make a bit of difference. But Revelation 21 inaugurates the eternity following the marriage supper of the Lamb, the greatest celebration feast of all time. And it ushers us into this beginning of life. Not the end of time, but the beginning of eternity. And this eternity is described, I think, the best in chapter 22, verses 1 through 5. In 21, there's a description of what the new heaven and the new earth is going to look like. And if you remember in week one, I read you a portion of that description where it talks about the jewels that adorn the walls and sit at the base. It says that the city is like gold and the streets are like glass. And we're gonna see a description of a crystal river flowing from the throne of God. And it describes it as this remarkably beautiful place. And that's well and good. And I don't want to cheapen or dismiss the remarkable beauty of heaven. But what is more compelling to me is the peace that we find there, is the tranquility of life there, is the provision of God there, and the perfect peace that we rest in for all of eternity. And I think that's better captured in these verses, in chapters 22, verses 1 through 5, where John writes this. Through the middle of the light that we need. His kingdom knows no night. His kingdom knows no darkness. The tree of life is on either side of the river. It provides for us in season all that we need. There is nothing left to do but to enjoy God and His perfect love and the people that we are there with forever. And what I want you to focus on this morning and what I want you to remember from this series is that this is what we are created for. You understand? What we see in Revelation 21, what's described in Revelation 22, that's what you were created for. Hear me, you were not created for this place. You were not created for this world. You were not created for your current body. You were not created for that. You were created for what is described in Revelation 21 and 22. You were created for eternity. It's why you have a soul that will outlive your body. It's why you have a soul that will pass into this next life without the broken shell that it inhabits right now. It's why your soul longs for eternity. It's why there's something inside of you that says there's gotta be more than this. It's why the people who have accomplished the most on the planet get to the end of their rope of accomplishment and say there has to be more than this. It's why nothing in your life ever fully satisfies you. It's why I believe this to be true. Perfect happiness is not possible this side of heaven. To choose one road towards happiness is to fundamentally disallow another road to happiness. And we are therefore incapable of perfect happiness on this side of heaven. And that's why we are incapable of it, to remind us that on that side of heaven, we will walk in perfect happiness for all of eternity. Because we were created for that eternity. We were designed and purposed for that. We long for it. Paul writes about this over and over again in the things that he says and in the things that he writes to the early church. Particularly in Romans 8 where he says the whole earth groans for this eternity, pressing against the shell that we are in, waiting for our perfect bodies. And I think that this is why Paul writes this in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 17 and 18. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to me because these are famous verses. We refer to these often. These are funeral verses. These are grieving verses. But I think that Paul writes them because Paul was aware of this idea that we were not created for this place. We were created for eternity. So he writes this in chapter 4, verse 17 of 2 Corinthians. I'm going to pick it up in 16. Paul calls all of the pain that we endure in this life light momentary affliction. And just so you know, he's addressing a persecuted church. And the verses that precede this, he's talking about the harm that faces them, the death that faces them. He's talking, he's in, if you want to look historically, he's in a time period where the life expectancy had to be somewhere in the 40s or maybe as late as the 50s. He's looking at a high infant mortality rate. He's looking at people who have lots of kids and are very used to some of the kids not making it to adulthood. These people know what loss is. They know what pain is on a level that most of us in this room are not even close to being acquainted with. So before we think that Paul is being flippant with our pain that we walk through, let's be clear. No, no, no. He's being flippant with way worse pain than what we walk through. And he still calls it light and momentary affliction. And he says it is not worth comparing with the glory that we will experience on the other side of eternity. The pain that we experience in this life is not worth comparing. It's just preparing us for the weight of glory that we will experience on the other side of eternity. I've mentioned this before, but you've likely forgotten it, and it stands out to me. When Lily, my daughter, was I think about three years old, we were putting her to bed one night. And as we were trying to put her to bed, she insisted on jumping on her bed. And we told her, no, you can't do that. Stop jumping on your bed. And she tried to do it. And I had to be stern. No, stop jumping on your bed. You're not allowed to jump on your bed. She lost her mind. She was so bummed that she couldn't jump on her bed. I mean, she screamed and she cried and she kicked and she wailed and she flailed. And it was the biggest deal in the world to her. And, you know, in that moment, would it have been easier to just say, all right, listen, kid, just jump on the bed for five minutes and then go to bed, right? Of course it would have. But the Rubicon had been crossed, man. I had planted the flag and I had to defend it. You will not jump on this bed. I will cry with you all night before you jump on this bed one more time. Like it is not happening. So she's losing her mind over and I won't let her, I won't let her jump on the bed and whatever. And while it's happening, after she settles down, she goes to sleep. I think to myself, that's so dumb. She treated it like it was the biggest deal ever. She's not even going to remember it in the morning. Two days later, that thing never happened. When she's an adult, it's not even a blip on the radar screen. It's completely and totally inconsequential to who she is as a human in every way that she didn't get to jump on her bed that night. It does not matter. And then I started thinking about all the things when you become an adult that mattered so much when you were younger that when you're older, it's like, who cares? Remember how much you cared about homecoming? And then 20 years later, it's just a waste of money. It was silly. Remember all the things that mattered so much in elementary school? Then in the light of adulthood, they just, who cares? It makes me wonder how often in this life we're wailing and flailing and ticked off and upset and hurt. And God's in heaven going, you're just trying to jump on the bed, man. When you get here, it's not gonna matter. Quit getting so dang worked up. It makes me wonder how often we just wanna jump on our bed. It makes me wonder all the things that we get so worked up about that cause us so much anxiety that just spike our blood pressure. We just got done with a week-long trip driving to two different cities with a six-month-old. So I had some chest tightness this week and it got pretty stressful. And it makes me just, if I see that through the eyes of God and in light of eternity, how utterly ridiculous it was for me to waste one ounce of energy on getting frustrated at a six-month-old for crying. And when I read through the Bible, the more I walk with God, the more of Scripture that I see, the more times I expose myself to Jesus and the Gospels, the more times I read Paul, the more times I see the nature of God and begin to ask, why did he do this? And why did he direct in this way? And why doesn't he give us more of this? The more I conclude that God himself is far more concerned with eternity than we are. And that the problem is not trying to figure out all the things that are happening in this life and how to make sense of them all. The problem is not focusing enough on the next life and looking forward to that and seeing this life through the perspective of eternity the way that God does. Because when we read through scripture over and over and over again, it's very clear to me that God cares way more about what happens after Revelation 22 than he does about what's happening right now. He's just trying to get us there. So as we go through this life, I think it could be helpful to have reminders of eternity. And maybe that's what joy and pain are. I would argue this morning, if we had notes, this would be a thing that showed up on the screen that I would encourage you to write down. But I would note this morning that all joy and all pain are simply reminders that we're not yet where we belong. All joy that we experience and all pain that we experience are really simply reminders that we are not yet where we belong. Thanksgiving was this last week. If at your Thanksgiving table there was pain, because maybe someone wasn't at that table this year who was there last year. Maybe we hoped that there would be a baby or spouse or at least just a boyfriend or a girlfriend or something at the table this year and there wasn't and that caused us pain. Maybe there's strife in our family. Maybe one of our family members just isn't who they used to be. And because of myriad circumstances, when we sat around our table this week, there was pain for us. That pain is simply a reminder that we're not yet where we're supposed to be. That pain that we experience, that's a former thing. It will pass away. So we let pain remind us that I'm not intended for this place. I'm holding on for the next place. Likewise, joy is a reflection of the perfect joy that we will experience in heaven. If we sat around the Thanksgiving table this week and there was particular joy there, there was richness of friends and richness of family and richness of relationships. If there was a new seat at the table, if there was a new baby at the party, if there is a pending birth to celebrate, if there was a new relationship represented there, if there was reconciliation, if maybe this was the first time we've been together as a family since we had to start wearing the dumb masks, maybe that's what got us together and that's what brought us joy. That joy that you experienced this week is just a reflection and a smudgy window of the pure joy that's waiting on you in eternity. It's just a hint of the joy that's waiting on us in the future. And so I think we would be wise to allow all pain and all joy simply remind us that we are not yet where we are supposed to be because God did not intend us for this life. God did not design us for this life. God designed us for the next one. And in Revelation chapter 22, chapter 21 and 22, we see those things begin. That's why I actually like the following verses in 2 Corinthians. The ones that follow the light and momentary affliction and they are preparing us for this eternal grace. Because they acknowledge that we were not made for this place. I'm going to read to you just kind of a selection of them from 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Paul writes, He's talking about what we talked about, the former things, that we weren't made for this world, we were made for the next one. So if in this tent, sometimes it's uncomfortable, if in this life, sometimes we feel pain, those are groanings that are reminding us that we were made for the next life. And then he goes on down in verse six body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage. And we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. Scripture acknowledges, that. It is right and good to hope for that. It is right and good to remind ourselves that there is perfect joy where the former things have passed away waiting on us and we cling to that hope. And I said in week one that this mysterious book of Revelation really is the greatest book of hope that we have in Scripture and I hope that you've reached that conclusion on your own as well. So I would finish the series with this encouragement. Cling to your faith. Cling to the hope that this is true and that one day these things will be realized. Cling to your faith and cling to your hope and take courage, Christians, because we know how this story ends. Let's pray. Father, thank you for telling us how the story ends. Thank you for not making us wonder that. Thank you for the book of Revelation, for the vision that you gave John. Lord, I pray that you would give us a heart to understand the important things there. That you would give us a heart to respect the mysteries, to wonder in awe at all the things described. More than anything, God, I pray that we would see that you acknowledge that some things in this life are tough. Some things in this life are the former things that we're walking through right now. But that God, you offer us a hope and a future. So Lord, I pray that we would cling to that. I pray that we would be of good courage. That no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, we would live to please you. And that nothing that could happen to us in this life could wrestle away from us the hope and the faith that we have in you. God, we look forward to the day that we can spend eternity with you when Revelation 21 and 22 come to pass. We thank you for this book. We thank you for the series. God, I ask that it would push us closer to you and that it would more deeply entrench us in the hope that we find in you. It's in your son's name I ask these things. Amen.

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else? And what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day they're not nearly as big of a deal? What are our big rocks And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Isn't it cute in that video how I assumed that we were just charging right back into normal? And then here we are in masks again. Boy, the naivety as we roll into each wave of this is pretty funny, especially to think back. I can remember back in March of 2020 having conversations. Joe, the moderator of our board, called me in between the 8th and the 15th of March, and he said, hey, I think maybe we need to take a break. Maybe we can't meet in person this Sunday. And I was like, Joe, this is a big decision. I don't know if we should do this. And he goes, no, man, I really think we need to. And I'm like, Joe, listen to me. This is not going to be like a two-week thing. This could go well into April. So who the heck knows? But it's good to see everybody. Thank you for doing your part. And this is the last part of our series called Big Rocks, which if you've been here all four weeks or you've watched online all four weeks and you've watched that intro video of me four times in a row, good for you. That's serious partner of the year stuff right there. This week, as we talk about our priorities in life and approaching this fall, we're going to talk about the idea and the topic of community. And if you've been in church for any amount of time, you've heard a sermon on community. If you've been here, you've probably heard me talk about the importance of community. In our mission statement, we emphasize community by saying that grace exists to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. So you might be tempted when I say that the sermon this week is on community, you might be tempted to kind of glaze over and go, yep, got it. Christian community is important. I'm going to do it. Good. And then start thinking about whatever you've got going on the rest of the day, lunch plans, or if you're me trying to get the grass cut before the thunderstorm start, whatever it is you've got going on, you might be tempted to take your head there when I say that the sermon is going to be on community because we might feel like we kind of get it. But if that's you, I want to encourage you to lean in this morning. Because I hope that what we'll do is I'll leave here or I'll turn off our TVs, wherever we might be consuming this, that we will finish this experience this morning or whenever you're listening, thinking differently about the power and efficacy of community than when we started. I hope that we will be inspired to pursue it as if our lives depended on it. I think the idea of community is incredibly important. And if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the Gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament and you pay attention, what you'll find is a lot of we's and ours and collective you. Like when Paul writes in the letters that he says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And he says, I pray for you. I thank my God every time I remember you. That's not you as an individual. That's a collective you as the church in Rome or Philippi or Ephesus. The Gospels are written to an audience, are written to a church, are written to a group of people. You find in the New Testament very few personal, singular pronouns. You find very you singular yous. You should do this, you should do that, God did this, whatever it is for just you. You don't find those in the New Testament. What you find in the New Testament is collective we and are. The New Testament assumes that your faith will be communal. It assumes that you have other Christians around you walking in the same direction you are pursuing, the same Jesus that you are pursuing. As a matter of fact, if you go to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, that's not in your notes, so you can write that down if you want to. You can turn there if you get bored at some point in the sermon, which is likely to happen. Turn to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, and make sure that I'm not making this stuff up. That is the quintessential church passage. There is no pastor who has preached more than two sermons on community and has not based one of the sermons in that passage. It is a quintessential church passage. It describes what the church looked like and did in its very infancy. As soon as Christ ascends and we have Pentecost and Peter and the disciples share the gospel, we see 3,000 people come to faith that day. That's the birth of the church. And then Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47 describes what the church did and how it behaved in its infancy. It is the barometer by which all church for the rest of time is measured. And if you read those verses, what you find is collective wheeze. It's communal. The church did this and they committed themselves to the apostle teaching. They devoted themselves to prayer. They met in one another's homes day by day. They were together all the time pursuing teaching, sharing meals, praying together, learning together, pursuing Jesus together. It is a communal activity. Your faith, if you have it, is quintessentially communal, which is why there's a little bit of an issue in evangelical churches with this phrase that we like to use sometimes. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the phrase that Christianity is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Have you ever heard that? Now listen. Christianity is about a personal faith. It's about a personal belief that God is the creator and author of the universe, that to reconcile his creation to himself, namely you, he sent his son to die in your place, and we place our faith in Jesus' death on the cross, and we place our hope in his resurrection on Easter, that one day we will be united with our God and reunited with those who also have faith in our Jesus, and we have a hope that will not put us to shame. To be a Christian, you need to individually believe that and have faith in that, and one of the remarkable things about Christianity is that our God does offer us a personal relationship with him. But listen to me closely. We must have an individual faith, but your faith is not about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ because your relationship with Jesus Christ is not personal. It is communal. We see it over and over again in Scripture. It is a communal faith. It is not just your business. It is our business as a church. We don't see that phrase, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, pop up in the Bible. We see a necessity for an individually claimed faith. But make no mistake about it, your faith is quintessentially communal. It is, I would argue, it is impossible to grow close to Jesus and have a vibrant walk with him totally by yourself. To take your Bible and a prayer book and to wander off in the desert like these mystical people who have existed before us that we somehow, we look at and we think that they were the ones who had nailed faith. And I don't think any of those existed, but the people who just go off by themselves and just totally ensconced in God's word and in prayer, and it's just them and God. you can't have a vibrant walk with Jesus doing that because loving Jesus requires you to love others. If your love from Jesus does not cause you to pour out love onto other people, then you are not expressing the love that Jesus has lavished on you. You are bottling that up. You are keeping that to yourself. To live a non-communal faith is fundamentally self-centered. And we miss out on who Jesus is by not lavishing his love on others in the same way that he loves us. John tells us in his letters at the end of the Bible that if we love Jesus, then we will love others. The Christian faith was not designed to live alone. I think that there are parts of Jesus that you find in loving other people. We cannot come to know Christ in the way that he wants to be known if we are trying to do it void of loving others and serving others and doing his work. This is why the mission statement at Grace is connecting people to Jesus first, but also connecting people to people. Because your walk with God will not be as vibrant and as healthy as it can be if it is void of community as you share your faith. So community and our faiths is vitally important. It's why I think that community is God's primary tool for tethering, comforting, and sustaining his children. Community is God's primary tool for tethering his children to him, for comforting his children in their time of need and for sustaining them in their walks and in the commitments that he's led you to make. Now, I would offer you a caveat here. I need to, if you have notes, if you're a note taker, please write this in your notes. Community is God's primary tool dash outside of heaven. It's God's primary tool this side of heaven to tether us and to sustain us and to comfort us. Because he tethers us with his son. He sustains us with his spirit. He comforts us with Jesus as he weeps with us. But these things, this community I'm going to show you is the way that God gives himself time to work in your life to bring you to a place where you're walking with him. It's the way that God the Father throws his arms around you in times of trouble. It's the way that God comes beside you and sustains you when your faith and your commitments are faltering. So I do not at any point want to replace the work that the Holy Spirit and God the Father and Jesus are doing in our lives and moving in us, but I do want us to see that community is often the tool that they use to work powerfully and effectively in our lives. I say that it's the primary tool for tethering, for kind of keeping us attached to the faith, even at times when we might be wandering off. With that in mind, I'm going to share something with you that I really am not sure that I'm all the way ready to share, because if I share it and then I don't do it, I'm a failure and a quitter. But last week, I committed with some friends of mine to run a half marathon at the end of February. I committed to do this because I'm fat now, and I need to. Somebody asked me before the service, why is your shirt tucked down? Like, are you being serious today? I'm like, no, no, I'm fat. I need to be able to blouse a little bit for the camera, you know? But I'm sharing that with you because if you know me well, you know that I've got a group of really good buddies. One guy I've been best friends with since I was five years old, so we've been friends for 35 years. And then there's eight of us total. We've been friends together, all of us, for at least 20 years. And we talk on this app called Marco Polo. It's probably for high school girls, but we love it and we use it to talk back and forth. We talk every day. And so there's eight of us and we legit, we talk every day. Whatever's going on in the world, whatever's happening in sports, whatever's happening in our lives, we talk about it. Just this morning, I was watching my friend, he dropped his daughter off at college yesterday and was telling us how emotional he got about it. And I'm in my office getting emotional about Lily starting kindergarten tomorrow. And if I talk about it for too long, I'm gonna get emotional in front of you. So we talk about stuff all the time. And then we have different threads for different topics. You know, different things that some of us may wanna talk about, but not everybody does. Anyways, we've got one for exercising. I can't tell you the name of it. There's a cuss word in it, but we've got one for exercising. And I started it. I started it back in January. I was like, guys, I'm fat now. I think I want to start eating well. I think I want to start exercising. Is anybody with me? And seven of them were like, yeah, let's do it. My one buddy, Tim, God bless him. He does not care. And I wish I could be more like Tim. But the rest of us were in there. And so we're encouraging each other every day, right? But eventually, I just stopped caring. I kind of fell off the wagon. Having a nine-month-old or an eight-month-pregnant wife will do that to you. And then so will having an infant and a three-month-old. It kind of takes you out of your regular rhythm. So it's been more difficult, and I kind of just lost my desire to do it, and to the point where they were daily talking about their workouts and the stuff that they're doing and yada, yada, yada. And I would just skip. Like, I wouldn't even listen. I would just fast-forward to the last one, hit play, skip to the end of that one, and so that those didn't show up as new, because I don't know. You people that just leave notifications on your phone, I don't know how you live with yourself. So I would have to go and just skip all the way through it, right? Ignoring it. And then I even became the devil on the shoulder of the people. They would share sometimes when I would listen, like, I didn't do anything today. I've been eating like crud lately. I just don't feel good about myself. And then I'd go out there and be like, come on over. It's great over here. There's barbecue and sweet tea. This is wonderful. Just buy larger fishing shirts and you're good. Like you can just let it all hang out. It's really, really great. It's good over here. But somewhere in that week and a half ago, my buddy got on there and he said, hey, I found a half marathon in Greenville and I think it would be fun if we would train for it together and try to run it together. And something about it, I don't know what it was. I don't know. I had some weakness that day and I said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Like it caught me on a good day. And I said, let's do this. Let's do it. And they were all very surprised that I was into it. But now I think there's five or six of us who are going to do it. And I'm only a week and a half in and I'm just a slow lumbering mess. As a matter of fact, if you live in my neighborhood, Falls River and then Bedford or whatever, and you see me running, can you just do me a favor and avert your eyes? And we'll just both pretend like that never happened. Do not honk at me or wave. I do not want to know that you saw me. I'd just like to live in this world where no one can see me lumbering down the road. But it's been fun to get back to it and to begin to train and begin to exercise and share that with my buddies. And I feel more inspired now to do this than I have in a long time. And I really think it might stick. So barring injury, which is more of a factor than it's ever been in my life, Lord willing, I'll run that thing in February and I'm looking forward to doing that. I share that story because I believe that this is what Christian community does with us for the church. To be a Christian for any amount of time is to go through a season of wandering. It's to go through a season where I was once committed, I once cared very much about my spiritual health, I was once very consistent in going to church and going to small group and reading my Bible and praying on my own, and I can remember seasons of vibrancy in my life, but now I'm just, whatever you want to call it, I'm in a rut, I'm wandering off, I don't feel it right now, I just am not, I'm going through some things and I just not sure that I can really connect with God. I'm not really sure that's a thing that I want. To be a Christian is to have gone through a season of wandering and probably not just one. And what community does is it keeps us tethered to our faith, even in times when we're not necessarily very committed to our faith. I didn't leave that thread because I like my buddies. I wanted to know what they were talking about. I wanted the community there. Even though I wasn't engaged in what they were engaged in, even though I wasn't pursuing what they were pursuing, I didn't want to totally detach myself because I thought maybe one day I will. Plus, I want to know what my friends are talking about. I don't want to have FOMO. So I stayed in there. And then one day, because I was tethered to that group by the community in that group, something caught me right. And I said, yeah, I'm going to make that choice for my health or for my children. Church community does this too. As we're going through a season of wandering, maybe we're not feeling faith right now. Maybe we're not super committed to it. Maybe we're not doing the things in private that we know we ought to be doing, but we keep showing up because we love the people in our small group. We keep showing up because we love to serve on Sunday morning. We keep showing up because that's our community and we don't want to miss out and those are our people. And then one day when you're at church or your small group or you're having a conversation or one day God speaks to you. He shows you something. You have an experience that moves you. Something catches you right. And that's what clicks and you re-engage in your spiritual life and you begin to pursue Jesus again. Our community tethers us to God in a very real way. Don't raise your hand, but I would ask you, those of you who are Christians, has there been a season of your life where if you didn't have Christian brothers and sisters who loved you and who just accepted you, not who came after you and got onto you and tried to convict you for the decisions that you were making, but who simply loved you, have you had seasons in your life that if it weren't for your Christian community tethering you to your faith, that you would have walked away from it entirely? Yeah. Or you're not being honest. God places us in community because he knows there will be times when we wander, and when we do, he's tethering us about this wandering at the end of his book. he writes this, my brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Not only do we have brothers and sisters who love us as we begin to wander and tether us to our faith and kind of draw us back to God as God works on our souls to soften them back to himself. But we also have the opportunity in Christian community, in church community, to be the one that pulls back a wandering brother or sister. To be the one who just consistently loves, who just consistently shows up for, who just consistently says, I'm not here to judge you. I'm just here to love you. I'm here to enjoy you. Not a project friendship, deep, meaningful friendship. When we express that with one another, when we express the kind of community that I've seen at Grace, we are used by God to tether people to their faith and draw them back towards him. You are a tool in his hand used to draw back a wondering brother or sister by simply maintaining community with people even if it feels like they're wandering. So those of you who have wandering friends, which, has there ever been an easier time than now to wander away from the church? Continue to love them. Continue to be that tether that lets them know anytime you want to come back, we're here, we love you. And you can be a brother or a sister that is blessed according to James as we do that. The community here is absolutely a huge way that God keeps us tethered to him and to our faith. Community is also an enormous tool in the hands of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit as they seek to comfort us. We're told in Psalms that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, that he saves those who are crushed in spirit. It's this idea that when we're at our lowest, God is at his closest. I've preached from stage many times, John 11, 35, the miracle of that verse. It's the shortest verse in the Bible that says that Jesus wept when he met Mary in her sorrow at the loss of her brother Lazarus. Jesus' response was to weep with her. And we get to preach and we get to claim and we get to know that we have a Jesus who weeps with us. And that's wonderful. But have you ever thought about how he does that? Have you ever thought about how God brings himself close to the brokenhearted? Will he bring his presence and his spirit close to the brokenhearted? Yes, absolutely he will. And he will speak into difficult times. Just yesterday, I was sitting on my porch swing and we've had a difficult couple of days and I felt pretty stressed. And I was just sitting there in the rain because that's what I love to do. And it was a good storm yesterday. And there was just this moment where God spoke some encouragement into my life. And it instantly gave me a peace. And so God will absolutely do that and comfort us in that way. But have you ever considered that the church community itself is also how God wraps his arms around us? Have you ever considered that our church community crying with us is also how Jesus weeps with us? Have you ever considered that that might be why Paul tells us to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn? Because that is the expression of the very body of Christ hurting with those who hurt. Jen told me as I was talking through this sermon with her, she said, you got to tell the Lisa story. And I'm actually glad she's not here. Jen's not here this morning, because we'd be a sobbing mess. But if you've been going here since the end of last year, at least, then you likely know that in December of 2020, December 29th of 2020, just to cap off a real humdinger of a year, we lost Jen's dad, John, to pancreatic cancer. That's who our son is named after. And so in the months prior, Jen had been down there a lot. They're located in Athens. Jen had been down there back and forth a lot. And at some point she came home. After Thanksgiving, she came back with me and we were home. And John has a brother-in-law named Edwin who's a doctor. And Edwin and Mary stayed with John. And Edwin told me, Nate, go back home, take your family. We don't really know what's going on with John. But when you need to be here, when it's time for family to be around him, we'll call you. I said, all right. So we came back. We were back for about a week. No, it was just a couple days. It wasn't even a week. And it was the Sunday of December 6th. And at the time, we weren't meeting in person because we'd had a COVID flare up, and so we were just chilling out for a little bit. And so I had to come that morning on December 6th, and we did a live service. So we had worship worship and then I was to preach, right? And five minutes before the service started, my phone rings and it's Edwin. And he says, you need to get down here. So I said, all right. So I called Jen. So we need to get down there. I'm going to go ahead and preach this sermon. And then we'll hop in the car and we'll go home. Let me tell you something. I have no idea what I preached December 6th. I have never been less present for a sermon in my whole life. If you watched it and got something out of it, the Holy Spirit is good, okay? Because my mind was not on that sermon. And I got done and things felt so urgent that I literally, and I never do this, I just pulled off my mic and everything. I set it down. I got right in my car and I drove away. Steve was still playing. The band was still going. Folks were still here. I just got in my car and I left. And when I got in my car, I texted Steve and Kyle because they were both here that morning. And I said, hey, I'm so sorry for leaving so quickly. Here's what's going on. We got to head home. And I go home. I get Jen and we're scrambling to get out the door. We scrambled to get out the door so quickly that to pack for this trip, I just opened up the biggest suitcase I have and dumped all my dirty clothes in it and then grabbed clean clothes and threw them in there, zipped it up, and we headed out the door. I can do laundry where I'm going. I don't know how long I'm going to be there. But that's the kind of urgency that we were trying to get out the door with. In the middle of that, somebody rings our doorbell. And we're like, who's ringing our doorbell on a Sunday morning? And we look, and it's Lisa Goldberg, Steve's wife. And she's at our door, and clearly Steve had called her or texted her and told her what was going on. And see, Lisa's mom passed away of pancreatic cancer a few years prior. Actually, right before, right as Steve and Lisa were moving here to become a part of Grace. And she knew the road that Jen was about to walk. So Jen goes and answers the door. And Lisa has a little gift bag prepared for her and hands it to her and just gives her a hug and starts crying. And Jen was telling me about it this week, and she said she can't even remember Lisa saying any words. Maybe I'm sorry. They just hugged for a really long time. And then we got in the car and we left. And that hug and those tears meant more to Jen in the following weeks than they did in the moment. Because in the moment, she didn't know the hell that she was about to walk through. But Lisa did because she had walked it. And so that provided her with comfort as she walked through that period. You can't tell me that that morning wasn't Jesus coming to our door and wrapping his arms around my wife. He did. That's how he weeps with us. That's how he comforts us. That's why he tells us to weep together. Because when we do those things, we're the hands and feet of God. We're the hands and feet of Jesus wrapping ourselves around people who are hurting. That's how God expresses his love to us. That's how we express ourselves as the body of Christ. He places us in community so that our community can comfort us when we need it. So that he can be close to the brokenhearted. So that we can experience having a God that weeps with us. That's what community does. And it also sustains us. And this is my favorite. Community sustains us. There's this great picture in Exodus. Exodus chapter 17. I'm just going to tell you the synopsis of it, but the story is in verses 8 through 16. I'm going to be a mess. David, can you go get me a tissue? Do you mind doing that? Thank you, sir. Oh, Wes is on it. Thanks, Wes. That's why Wes is an elder, because he does things like that. Oh. That's why Cindy's a resting elder. Thank you. All right, give me a second. I'm sorry. Especially if you're watching online. You're just going to watch me turn my back. All right. Does anybody else need some of these? I saw a couple of tears out there. In Exodus 17, there's a guy named Amalek who's brought his armies against Israel. Moses is the head of the nation at this point. Joshua is his general. Moses is too old to lead people into battle. And so Moses tells Joshua, you go down into the select some men, go down into this valley and you fight Amalek. And as you fight him, I will be up here and I will have my hands raised to God. And as long as my hands are raised to God, then you will win the day. And Joshua says, okay. So he goes down and he begins to fight Amalek. And as he's fighting Amalek, Moses is on the top of the mountain with his hands raised. And as his hands are raised, then what he said comes true. And God is with Joshua and Joshua is winning the battle. But battles are long and Moses is old. And I guarantee you, he had lived a life of shepherding for 40 years. If you wanted to have a hold your hands over your head contest, he would crush everybody in this room. But at one point or another, no matter how strong you are, you'd get fatigued. And he needed to take a rest and let the blood get back in his shoulders. And when he would rest, the army would begin to be defeated and the battle would go towards Amalek. And so he's in this struggle of trying to hold his hands up, but not having enough strength to do it. And they're losing the battle if he can't hold his hands up. So what happens? Well, his brother Aaron and his friend named Hur, H-U-R, are next to him and they find a rock and they put a rock behind him and they tell him to sit on it and then they stand. I love this picture. They stand next to him and they hold his hands up so that he doesn't have to anymore. That's the best picture of community in the Bible. Because each of you, your husband, your wife, your friend, your Christian, your son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, if you're a woman in this church who's married and you have children, you've got a marriage that you're holding up, that you're offering to God. You've got children that you're trusting to God. You've got concerns in your own life. You've got your own faith that you need to carry. You've got your own stresses and your own anxieties and your own worries, and you're facing those battles. And life is long, and I don't care how strong you are. At some point or another, your hands get tired. At some point or another, you think, I don't know if I can do it with this marriage. I don't know if I have the energy it takes to make this thing go. I just don't know if I can pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can continue to love these kids the way they need to be loved. I don't know what to do. I can't pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can walk in faith. I just can't see it. I have so many questions. God's disappointed me in these ways. I just don't know if I can keep doing this anymore. And when you're on your own, you're right, you can't. This is why we're placed in community, for our friends to come up beside us and grab our hands and say, hey, buddy, I got you right now. I will fight for your marriage right now. I will hold your hands up and fight for your faith right now. I will stand beside you and hold your hands up for your children and for your business and for your health and for your love of Christ right now. I will stand in this gap for you, and I will be the strength that you don't have. That's what community does for us. Our friends come alongside us, and they hold our hands up, and they give us the energy and the strength for the battle that we can't fight right now. And that's what community offers to others. This is why I think that community, this side of heaven, is the most powerful and effective tool that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit use to tether us to him, to comfort us, and to sustain us in our faith and the commitments that he's led us to making. And I'll end with this because I think this is important. Community is a choice. It's a choice. That kind of community, that kind of community where someone shows up at your door just to wrap their arms around you because they know what you're about to walk through, that kind of community that grabs your hand and holds you up when you can't do it, that kind of community that loves you when you're wandering and keeps you tethered to your faith so that you can wander back. That kind of community, that doesn't happen by default, man. We don't just stumble into that. That kind of community we show up for. Sometimes in small groups, I'll talk about it in a second, we sign up for. And then we let the Lord do his work in bringing us together and knitting lives together. We have to choose that community. Just last night, some friends of ours had a birthday party. And our childcare fell through, and so we had to figure out what to do. And so we decided that Jen was going to go to dinner, and they were going to go to drinks afterwards. Jen was going to go to dinner, and then when she got home, I was going to go and have a drink or two with our friends and then come back. That's what we decided we were going to do. Well, Jen stayed at dinner until like 9.15. I needed her to be back at like 6.15. Do you think, listen, I don't know how well you guys all know me. You think I wanted to go anywhere at 9.30 on Saturday night? No, I was in my gym shorts with paint on them and a big baggy t-shirt and Crocs and I was unshowered. I didn't want to go anywhere. But I also knew that I couldn't get up here today and preach about community if I wasn't going to prioritize my own. So they got Saturday night and ate and I showed up just how I was dressed. And we had ourselves a grand old time over at, I think, Tonic in Wake Forest. We have to choose community. It's not always convenient. You're not always going to want to go to small group. You're not always going to want to prioritize it. Parents of elementary and middle school age kids, you'll never be in a busier season in your whole life. It's so hard right now to prioritize small group. Do it. Community is a choice. It's an essential tool that God has placed in our life to bring us closer to him, to experience his love of us. In a minute, I'm going to talk more about small groups. But I want to encourage you here at the end of the sermon to sign up for them. If you're not in one, join one. Step into this community and let's begin to pursue it together and let's let God use this place to further connect us to him. Let's pray. God, thank you for you. Thank you for how you love us. Thank you for who you are. God, thank you for our friends. Thank you for the people who love us, who we get to share life with. Thank you for our brothers and sisters who draw us back in our wandering. Thank you for the ones who comfort us. Thank you for the ones who sustain us and hold up our hands when we are too weak to do it. God, give us the desire and the conviction to choose community. To choose to live our faith with those around us. Remove any obstacles that we might have, whether fabricated or real, and knit us together, God, as a church family, that we might love one another well, that we might express your love for one another well. That we might support and sustain one another well. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

This morning we really want to acquaint you with the ministries that we partner with. We want everybody to know a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes kind of of grace because you've probably heard me say plenty of times that 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries operating outside the walls of grace. We actually have a missions committee full of people who have a heart for missions, a heart for seeing others come to know Jesus, and want to use the resources that we have to see that brought about. And their job is to find ministry partners for us to pair up with who are accomplishing the mission of God out in the world. And then they take the money that we give and we support these ministries in various ways. And it occurred to me, it's actually, we're doing this because Sarah Prince emailed me, or maybe a Facebook message. I forget how we communicate. Hey, we'll be in town. We'd love to share if we got the opportunity. And I thought, gosh, I think the church needs to know about all of the people that we partner with and what they do. And so we're going to highlight Jen Taylor. You're going to hear her story and what she does over at Refugee Hope. And then we're going to talk with the princes as well. But this is an opportunity. This is kind of a getting to know you. Let's learn who are we supporting, what are they doing, and how can we get involved, how can we pray. And so without further ado, this is Jen Taylor. She's with Refugee Hope Partners, which I think is, are you guys located outside of Raleigh as well? So we have families that have moved outside of Raleigh that we remain connected to, but our main location where we start all of our relationships with our refugee friends is actually five minutes down the street right behind the Falls of the Neuse Chick-fil-A. There's an apartment complex right there. Cool. So we're going to dive into that, but before we do, there's some folks here, even though you've been here for like your whole life, who might not know you. So tell us about your background at Grace. You grew up here. Your parents dragged you here all the time. So how was it growing up at Grace and all that stuff? Tell us about that, how long you've been involved here. Yeah, so I've been involved at Grace probably since the start of Grace. I grew up here in the youth group. I actually had Casey and Sarah as youth leaders back in the day. Like they're not getting enough attention. Exactly. But my parents were super involved. I even did, if any of y'all are back that far enough, the handbell choir. I was a part of that. Yo, we had one of those? We need to dial that back up. But yeah, so just grew up here. Had a family here. Y'all are family. And so I went away for a few years, but once I moved back to Raleigh about three years ago, it was just natural to plug right back into Grace Family and right back into the ministry here. So that's great. I'm now going to refer to you as the handbell chair. You're in charge of getting that rolling. So tell us just a broad view about Refugee Hope Partners and what they do, and then we'll kind of talk about what you do with them, and you can tell us about some of the families that you work with and things like that. So what is Refugee Hope Partners? Yes. So Refugee Hope Partners is a nonprofit right here in Raleigh. We work with over 700 different refugees from over 40, well, right under 40 different countries from around the world. Refugees come from these countries after being in refugee camps. They sign in with the UN and get placed by the U.S. government right here in North Raleigh. So they move into these apartment complex, specifically Cedar Point Apartments where we're located, and we help that transition. As refugees come in, they don't have the language that they need. They don't know the systems that are in place in America. They don't know how to read. So paperwork is a huge issue to get past. So we are there not just loving our refugee neighbors but really trying to help in everyday life build confidence, engage the community and really equip them so that they can become sustainable right here in the U.S. So we have tons of different programs that we do that through but some of them are medical, some are ESL, some are homework help. So we do tutoring for all of our kids. We have like 350 kids that we work with. So it gets to be a little bit crazy, but it's a whole lot of fun, and we do a lot of ministry. We have Bible study as well, and we share the gospel throughout. You said, I think, 40 countries are represented. What are the predominant ones? I'm sure that there's a majority there. So what are the top two or three? So we do have a very large group that comes from kind of Central Africa, the Congo, a lot of Swahili speakers. And then we also have a large group of Karenni refugees from Myanmar and Burma. That conflict is still going on. So they are 25 years deep in a refugee camp before they come here. And then we also have a lot of Middle Eastern countries represented. So a big group from Afghanistan has come recently. So we have a lot of Farsi speakers that come in as well. And as you love on them and help them and kind of help to pave a way to assimilate, I would suppose is the right word. How are you also able to point them towards Jesus? And with coming from so many different places, there's so many different faiths represented there. And I would imagine that encountering each faith has its own sets of issues and things that make it helpful and things that don't. So how do you, what do you guys do programmatically and relationally to point the refugees towards Jesus and to let them know that you're doing this because Jesus loves them and you do too. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that we do is we just love them. Jesus loved us first so that we can love them, and we love our refugee neighbors in so many ways. We are there during crises. Whenever those happen, we are right there, feet on the ground, loving them in the midst of it. And even in our programs, we don't shy away from the fact that we are a Christian organization and that we are here to love them no matter what they believe or where they come from or what their background is. That we have Bible studies that are geared towards all different groups of people. We have, even in our ESL programs, at least around Easter and Christmas, we tell the whole gospel story right there. And many of those people that are in our ESL programs come from Muslim world, Muslim background, and they're getting to hear the story of who Jesus is and how he loves us right there in our programs. That's wonderful. And what is your role now? How did you get hooked up with them? Did you start a volunteer? Was there an internship process? Or did you find them and go, that's a position that I think I might enjoy and so apply for it? And then what you started as, how has that morphed over the time that you've been with them? How long have you been with them? About three years. Okay, yeah. So when I started, I actually moved back to Raleigh and didn't know exactly what to do next. And I knew I wanted to work with refugees. So I went to talk to the executive director about volunteering. Where'd you go to school? I went to Chapel Hill. And got a degree in? Global Studies. She's using the degree, Pop. Okay, so I'm sorry. I just wanted to, so you saw that, you thought it could work, and carry on. Yeah, and I sat down for coffee, and within that coffee chat, the director said, well, we have a position for you. And so I got a job right after thinking I was going to volunteer. So it was definitely the Lord being like, you need to be here. I started out part-time doing more of the ESL program and then switched into program staff, which means that I do everything on staff. And then from there have moved into the volunteer coordinator. So I actually connect everybody that wants to volunteer. I'm the first person you see. I walk you through the whole process and all of our programs and what we do and get you connected in the programs that we have. What kind of volunteer opportunities are available? If you have 350 kids to tutor, I'd imagine you need some of those. Emil is great at high-level math, so bring him in for all your advanced students. But besides that, Zach, don't laugh so hard. That's mean, man. There's tutoring needs, I'm sure, maybe even some ESL needs, but what else? What other kind of volunteer spots are there? Yeah, so you can plug in anywhere. We have a medical ministry that helps drive families to doctor's appointments. So if you can drive a car, you can volunteer with us. We have a bridge mentorship program that literally pairs volunteers with a high school student and helps them move into those next steps of what do I do after graduation? What is my career? What could that look like? We have ESL for adults. We have a preschool, like a preschool for our three and four year olds. We have childcare during the ESL times. Anything that you would like to do, we have it and we would love to get you plugged in. And it really is any schedule as well. We run programs that are on a weekly basis, so you can plug in and really get to know people on a weekly basis. But then we also have programs that are come as you can. Show up once a month, show up once a year, that's okay. We'd love to have you be a part of our programs and really get to know the community and the refugees there. So as you think about, well, I guess I would ask you this too. I think this is relevant of every organization. What were your specific unique challenges during COVID? Because I can imagine in an apartment complex with refugees, folks who are not yet fully assimilated, that that had its own unique set of challenges. What was the biggest challenge during the heart of the pandemic? And now what are you guys thinking about as we move out of it? Definitely at the very beginning, the biggest challenge was just feeding our families and making sure that those that were unemployed were able to pay rent. That was a huge thing at the beginning of COVID and all that happened, and we were right there. Grace was with us actually donating on a weekly basis groceries for some of our families. And then as we transitioned into online school, that was a giant mess for us. I bet it was. Even just Wi-Fi and tablets, right? Even just Wi-Fi and tablets. So we were the main access for schools to help kids get computers, get internet, get connected to their teachers. We had different classrooms running all year long of if you can't get internet working or something's wrong, you come to us and we'll actually have school right there. So every morning we would be trying to sign in five different students at once to one teacher and say, no, they're here, they're attending, I promise. So just getting through that process was a big challenge. Thankfully, they're in person now and we don't have to worry about that anymore. I can't imagine what a challenge that was. I'm curious, in ministry, in my experience, you have stories or experiences that sometimes will anchor you in what you're doing. They encourage you. They kind of God-breathed into those moments, into those families, into those relationships. You see someone come to Christ. You see a family strengthened, or you see some prayers answered in a big way. And those stories kind of, they anchor you in the not so easy times. And I'm sure that you have a couple of those. So as you look back on your three years with Refugee Hope, tell us a story or two of someone that you saw come to Christ, of a family that you saw strengthened, of some prayers that you saw answered. What are your kind of anchor stories? Well, like I said, I started out in ESL. And while I was there, one of the ESL moms who comes from, she grew up in Pakistan and Afghanistan, kind of switching over those borders. That sounds like an easy background. Goodness gracious. So she and her family have moved here, and they got really connected to our ESL volunteers. And one volunteer in particular was able to share the gospel with her to the point that they do a Bible study on a weekly basis even still. And her family has moved not only from being able to speak English. She actually wants to become a nurse and wants to go back to college and get a degree. And then her family was able to, through the years of learning how to save, learning how to speak English, learning to get better jobs and fill out applications, they actually just bought a house six months ago in Nightdale and are now living on their own, sustainable, and still bring their kids back every week, at least twice a week, for violin class that we have running and to be a part of ESL and encourage the other families and moms to be a part of it. Gosh, does anyone else feel terrible about their life right now? Holy smokes, that's unbelievable. And here's what's really cool about what Jen just did. She told a story about something that someone else did. You don't think that she's had those conversations too? And she just took the spotlight that we put on her and she was like, well, this volunteer one time did this thing. That's really, really cool. As we finish up our time with you, what are we hoping for next at Refugee Hope? And what can we as individuals, not Grace as a church, but what can we as individuals do to be a part of whatever the next season of life is at Refugee Hope? Yeah, so right now we're getting, gearing up to go back to school. So one of the big things that Grace is already going to be a part of is our back-to-school drive and sale. We're actually going to equip our 350 students with all that they need for school. And so Grace can be a part of just helping supply some of the supplies, and that information will be soon to come of exactly what we are asking for. But then just prayer. Our ministry is growing continually, and we're looking at strategically how we can grow and love on our refugee neighbors, not only at Cedar Point, but all around Raleigh. So it's moving. The Lord is moving in this place, and it's really cool to see. That's awesome. I also just kind of feel compelled to say, I don't know to whom this might apply, but if you're in a position where you need workers that folks like this may be able to fill, I would imagine that you could reach out to Jen, and she could hook you up with some pretty good folks. So to whomever that might apply, I think that would be something good to keep in mind for Grace. Thank you so much for coming and sharing with us. She will be in the lobby immediately following the service, so you guys can bombard her there and we can find out more ways to get involved. And we're going to end the service with talking about a volunteer team. So if you're hearing about, like, well, Grace is involved in school supplies, and you're going to see a video here in a minute from Fox Roads, something that we did for them at Christmas, and you're like, I want to do that stuff when that's happening, you'll be able to. So we'll get to that in a minute. But before I let you go, I just want to pray for you as a church. Let's pray for her and everything that's going on at Refugee Hope. Father, gosh, we are just so encouraged by the work that you're doing just down the street from us. God, I can't imagine what it is to be a refugee. I can't imagine what it is to grow up on the border of Pakistan. I can't imagine some of the things that these people have walked through. And yet you've brought them here and they have people with them who love them. And God, we pray that they would continue to see your love in Jen and the folks that she works with and the folks who volunteer over there. Lord, if any of us are compelled to be a part of what you're doing there, I pray that you wouldn't let go of us, that your Holy Spirit would just tenaciously get after us as we get more involved in what you're doing over there and get front row seats to watch you work in the lives of these people. We pray that you would bless Jen. I know that it is fun to share success stories and it is fun to talk about what's next, but God, I also know that it is hard. And so I pray that you would be with her in those times and in those moments as well. We thank you for her, for her humble example and witness and ask that you would just encourage her and give her many, many more stories of folks who came to know you through what they're doing over there. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. who haven't been at Grace for as long and don't know who the princes are and why we get excited. So now they get to share with us and everybody can be excited together, which is great. So tell us, where'd you grow up? How'd you get to Grace? When did you realize you were in love with each other and you needed to move to Africa because this is just what God wanted you to do. So go. There's a lot of steps in one question. So I think like I was part of the, I would call it the St. Grace crowd. So Chris Sasser sort of lured me into youth ministry as a high school student. And then I felt a call to youth ministry very as like a teenager. And so he sort of nurtured that. And I interned a couple summers, and then basically we sort of always dreamed of conspiring so that once I would graduate, I would come on staff. You and Chris would... Chris and I would... Yeah, we conspired together, and that worked out. And so I used to sit between he and Karin and sort of mediate their marriage and relationship up in the old loft. In the aughts. In the early years of Grace, Chris Sasser was the student pastor here. And they were going and blowing. I mean, they were doing some really cool things. So he was doing high school, she was doing middle school, and I sat in between. And it was a dangerous place. But it was an amazing experience. But yeah, I mean, Sarah had interned as a college student as well. And then as she was at Seminary at Duke, we were also conspiring to figure out how to get her on staff. So as you're on staff, there's an attractive intern, and you're now conspiring. No, no, no, no. I brought the intern. Okay, all right. So basically we met at Fun in the Sun, the camp we used to take kids to. And she was from Lakeland, Florida, and they had a lot of pretty girls at her church. so I spent a lot of time talking to the girls at her church. You made your way over to the Lakeland crowd. Yeah. So then we moved back to Raleigh and I started working at Grace and she started seminary. I think what was a mutual attraction was we both just loved kids. We both loved ministry. I mean, we met where we were both interns, you know, loving on kids. And so that's always been a part of our life is that we just love loving on people together. We love having people in our home. And we lived, you know, five minutes from here and literally would always just have people in our home, a lot of kids, a lot of adults. And, I mean, we're just so grateful for this place. I became a pastor here. I was ordained here. We grew up a lot here. And I feel like, again, this name lives up to its name. I received so much grace in this place as we just kind of clumsily figured out what it looked like to be pastors and to love people and to be newly married. As some of these now adults can attest to on mission trips. We had some marital strife over, you know, pranks and Chris Latta. And so, yeah, we just... He was usually the center. Just strife specifically over Chris. Yeah. Usually he's in the center. Yeah, specifically. But we grew up here. It's not just your own marriage. You got other people's too now. For sure. 100%. Yeah. So we're grateful. I mean, just to sit here and to look out at so many old faces and so many new faces, it brings us so much joy. And we're just so grateful that you guys loved us while we were young. And now that we're old, that you love us from afar, it's such an incredible thing. We're the same age, I think, and we are old. What year did you guys get married? 2002. Wow. Okay. And then when did you go to Africa? So, yeah, basically I think the thing is that Grace nurtured this heart for mission because we were taking students on all these mission trips. And that was our excuse for not doing it ourselves is that we were taking Jen and we were taking Colleen. And so that's cool. We've done our part. And unfortunately, God was continuing to stir that. So she went to Uganda in 2007 with some girls who had been sort of involved with Grace. I somehow let my wife and three college girls go to northern Uganda by themselves. It's very irresponsible. I don't feel like you had a lot of choice. I don't choice. He did not. Also true. And so that was kind of a make or break moment. Either this is going to die down or this is going to get worse. And it got worse. And then she basically said, I'm going to stop working at church. And, you know, so she went to Jeff Hancock, the pastor at the time, and said, look, I'm going to stop and we need to go do something. And he had heard about this organization in Cape Town. So, hey, why don't you try them? And so the church was just unbelievably gracious to us to not only, you know, let her quit, but also just to, I mean, I took a three-month leave of absence, and they just supported that and said, cool, we'll hire someone to replace you to help the thing keep going, and go do it, go explore, and go sort of figure out what God is doing. And so it was just incredibly gracious. And so in that period of time, working with Living Hope and meeting a guy named Michael and him just sort of answering that prayer that we were having of, okay, if God, you want us to be here, what would we ever do? And so that's sort of where Ubuntu was birthed in us and then came back and told people. And I think people there advised us, you need to tell people there. You can't decide here. You must decide. You must really hear from God there. And so as we told people, everyone said, well, we hate the idea that you're going to leave, but this sounds like exactly what you should be doing. Knowing you, this is what you should do. So it was very affirming and, yeah, pushed us out the door. And what year was that? So we left in 2009, October of 2009. Okay. And my understanding is, correct me if I'm wrong, you went over there with Living Hope. And Living Hope is an organization that was founded by a pastor in Cape Town, South Africa, and initially was doing a majority of its work in the HIV community because it was, for a while, the highest case per capita in the world. And so that's where it started, and then other programs got built out of that, and now it's this whole big thing. And so you guys originally went over there partnering with them, and then at some point or another transitioned to Ubuntu. Yeah, like our 2008 time was all with them. And then in 2009, we kind of went back saying, I'm going to do, I'm going to start this Ubuntu thing eventually, and she's going to work with Living Hope and with the Methodist Church and, and, and. That's always and, and, and. Always and. Yeah, right. There's lots of ands. Yeah. I mean, I think there's been a, there's been a couple paths. I mean, Ubuntu is a path which Casey can obviously really share about what that is and even what that word means. But us as a family, we studied missionaries. I studied at Duke race and reconciliation and justice things. And we thought, let's try it out really doing this. And so we went to Cape Town the first time, lived in a cute apartment and did all the sightseeing. When we moved there, we actually moved into an impoverished community. So their apartheid has been lifted for about 20 years, but everyone is still kind of stuck in whatever community they were forcefully removed to. So in way deep in Cape Town, very south, there's a community called Ocean View, and it's mixed race people. It's colored. That's a PC term there. And so we had done work there. We'd made friends there, and we just thought, we want to try this. We actually want to live among people and try to be friends and try to be neighbors with the people that we serve. And people were like, you can't do this. People are crying. No, it's a death sentence. And we just were very stubborn. And we just wanted to give it a try. Also was serving at a Methodist church in the community. So we moved into the pastor's house. And that's really where our ministry manifesto, as I call it, was born because we showed up. I mean, someone literally, when we left, made a cake with South Africa on it. They were like, you're going to South Africa, save Africa. And we were like, okay, a little bit, we will. I mean, you just, you get this kind of hype. And so we show up in Ocean View and no one cared and no one talked to us and they were suspicious and they didn't need whatever we were selling. And so we sat alone in our house for a while and started to open the Bible and just say, okay, Jesus, this didn't happen to you. You know, when Jesus went from town to town, he had throngs of people following him, coming to his feet, touching the hem of his garment. So what are we doing wrong, Jesus? And I found myself in John 4 specifically, and it's really the woman at the well. And she doesn't want to know a religious guy, and yet at the end opens up her entire life and her soul, and then goes back to her town and converts everyone. And it's just because Jesus came to this place, and this is our ministry manifesto, look, listen, love. You know, we go to save and to conquer and to, you know, rescue all the orphans, but God really, in Jesus, showed us you just show up and you look. What's around? Who's there? What's not there? What are people feeling? You listen. You get people to open up, share their stories, share their lives, and then, if God allows, you love them. And so because God humbled us, slowly we started to make friends. Slowly people started opening up their lives to us. Slowly people started letting us in. And it's changed our lives, that humbling experience of not having the answer, of not knowing the way, of not being the saviors, and just people slowly allowing us in has changed our lives, and now these people, 11 years later, are our friends. They're our family. We do a lot of life together, and one story, I was actually thinking about while we were sitting. So Bernadette is a woman we met the first time in Living Hope. She worked for Living Hope. We did HIV support groups together. We'd go into communities. She had these groups of people, all HIV people. She was supporting them, loving them. I would just tag along. We come back. Her son, Robin, comes to the academy, becomes a part of the academy. And while he's still in high school, they're in the front yard, basically, and someone next to him is shot dead. Robin is there with a friend. The friend is shot dead by a gangster. Bernadette calls, crying, weeping, for months. Obviously a lot of grief. Robin as well. So we walk a lot of life together through this trauma, through a lot of stuff. Eventually Robin graduates from Ubuntu after he comes here to America. Now he's in Portland. He is at school. Where is he at school? Corbin University. But just recently before I came here, I was having my own crisis, struggling with how to love people, what to do, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I can't do this anymore. Who do I call? I call Bernadette. I show up at the Ubuntu house. She now works at the Ubuntu house. She's our cook. Bernadette, I need you. I show up. I'm crying. Help me. Guide me. What do I do? She sorts me out, and she says, I tell everyone, I have this white friend, and she's my white sister, and she lives in Ocean View. She said, but Sarah, you need to be colored now, and you need to toughen up. And she prayed for me. And that's our life. Our life is not about us saving anyone. It's about neighbors. It's about friends. It's about a lot of stories that are intertwined and us finding God sometimes more than we feel like we're even helping them. Sure, sure. I like to be colored and toughen up. That's great. Casey, can you tell us about all things Ubuntu? Just how did it start? How did it germinate? What has it become? What energizes you the most now that you're 10 years in? Yeah. So Ubuntu is really, it's born out of a desire to deal with fatherlessness. So 60% of kids in South Africa grow up without a father in the home, which is a very frightening statistic because it leads to then all of the other issues that come with it, gangsterism and drug abuse and alcoholism and massive unemployment, and it keeps going. And really, Michael, it's not really my idea. Michael Jenkins had the dream and the idea, and he saw a sucker who had all the background he needed to make it happen, and I took the bait, and so we did it. But really, we work with a small group of kids who, sort of elite footballers or soccer players. And we really try to walk from really almost nine, but they enter the academy around grade six. So kind of 11 years old through the end of high school. And it's really about now we run our own school. So we register with the Department of Education. And so you go through the normal South African kind of educational system. We train four or five, six times a week. We have amazing coaches. We have a residence for about 30 of the boys who live further in town to get there every day or who live locally in their home situation. It's just not going to help them be successful. So there's about 30 kids who live in the residence. And then, yeah, and then we just spend a lot of time on their character, leadership, and spiritual formation. How do we help them become the man that will, you know, be different than what the men are in our country currently? How do we help them raise a different heart for their own community, their own family, and the nation wider? And so, yeah, in February, it was kind of like our 10th anniversary of our first training sessions. We had big celebrations. And I think what's amazing now is watching, we have this sort of first generation of graduates, of guys who finished and the things that they're doing. So in August, we'll have 17 kids now studying in the United States. One of them is here. Yeah, you got one here with you, right? So Tarek is here. So if you want to bombard Tarek to get the real stories about Casey, you can. So, I mean, poor Tarek from the age of 12, even beyond up until last year, so until he was about 20, had like one coach. He got stuck with the same guy all the way through that process, and he loves me deeply still. Is that true, Tarek? Do you love him deeply? Okay, all right. So it's amazing to not watch those guys. There's about 10 playing professionally. We have our first Olympian. So if you watch the Tokyo Olympics, hopefully Luke Fleers will play and hopefully play well. So he actually brought Tariq to trials because we had seen Luke first. But, I mean, it's been amazing. But what's really amazing is to see the two guys who are training to be teachers and Josh, who's now a policeman, and the impact that they will have. But I'm also so excited because I know that we, after 10 years of bumping around and making lots of mistakes, are infinitely better at what we do now. We have a much, much stronger team. We have all these amazing teachers and house staff and coaches that are around it. Where in those first couple years, it was like me and Mike stumbling around, wondering when the adults were going to show up and help us run this thing. And tell you what to do. Yeah. And we're like, ah. I'm wondering that here, actually, in my role. We heard. Yep. So we have this amazing team. And what's been really great is now Sarah is actually a full-time Ubuntu staff person and on the leadership team. Can you believe it? That took a long time to lure in. We're going to get to Sarah in a second. I want to hear everything that you've done because it's been a lot of different things. The last year really showed us the need to really focus on formation. We were doing it, but it was sort of on the edges of everything we did. And I think, obviously, that is her heart and what makes sense. I know that that's going to drive the next 10 years to be even more amazing and that the graduates will be even more amazing young men than we have already produced. When you say formation, you're talking about spiritual formation, spiritual health? Spiritual leadership, character formation. And what are you guys doing now to key into that specifically? So we have some programs for all of that. So spiritually, it looks like a lot of different things. A lot of it's relational. It's work that our teachers and our coaches and our staff do, especially at our residence, through relationships, just inviting them to be in a relationship with God, modeling that. We have a Bible study that our very own Casey leads at the house once a week, which is incredible and really cool. And then we have other programs that we're really excited to launch. You know, it's been kind of just a few programs spiritually. We want to get even better about that. Leadership is also something that we're really starting to do. We don't want just to expect them to be leaders, but teach them what does it mean to be a leader and that every one of them is a leader. And then character formation is actually a program that we do once a week. They have an hour that they do it. And they're learning to really know who they are and live with integrity and live with excellence. These things have to be taught, especially because of all the trauma and bad habits that some of them have faced. They really have to actually be taught these things. And so it's really exciting to now look at who we want the Ubuntu 30-year-old man to be and then intentionally and strategically create a pathway to that place. It's really exciting. That is really, really cool. And now briefly, as we are out of time, I am interested in the chronicle of all the different positions and things that you've done in your now decade in South Africa. So run us through it. And then now, I believe you just finished a book, yes? And now you're on staff with Casey. So what have you done? A lot of different things. I'll say most, a lot of pastoral stuff, really. I learned in South Africa that even if no one thinks you're a pastor, even if no one gives you a title or, you know, a cool cloak or whatever a pastor is supposed to have. We're supposed to get cloaks? Yeah, I had one. I had one back in the day here, but it's just who you are. And so, you know, people in Oceanview call me Pastor Sarah, and I don't pastor a church anymore. And I'm so thankful. I'm so honored that they call me that. So we were at the Methodist Church for a while. We've been at different churches, but we're now at a local church. We actually want our kids to now just be involved in a youth group and have that kind of stuff. So I've done a lot of things, a lot of stuff in the community, in the high schools, in the different kind of organizations of Ocean View. My book is actually about our journey with special needs because, as many of you know, our son Keller, who's now was one was diagnosed with autism mild autism and so we walked this unexpected journey where literally we googled autism after we got the diagnosis from the doctor to getting totally integrated in ocean view with the schools we got a team of therapists and experts and this really extraordinary thing happened where people just came into our house daily and changed all of our lives, most all my son. So he lost his diagnosis when he was five. And it's a miracle, but it's a miracle of community. It's a miracle of people coming into all of our lives. And it's a miracle of God saying that Keller is fearfully and wonderfully made, autism or not autism, and watching that come out. And so I finished the first draft. We're hoping to launch it next summer. It needs a lot of work. But it's really also my story of an unlikely mother, very unlikely. I didn't even know if I wanted kids. And now here I am, the mother of a special needs son. And so it's been a journey. You've got your daughters here. Are you happy that you have her? So happy. We thought she was going to be a boy. We were certain God loved us and it was going to be a boy, and now we have this incredible daughter who loves Jesus, loves acting, singing, dancing, is a leader, is kind, is this incredible person. So I don't know how he did it, but I feel like it's made me more than it's made them. And so I really want to share that story of what God has done in my life and how I found a real God in the midst of real trial. And now I'm the mother of Ubuntu. I never would have wanted to be Tarek's mom. And Tarek and I had a deep and real, even last night. There's fireworks and bourbon flowing last night, and Tarek and I are in having this deep conversation because I'm the mom. And that's what I do. And I am so humbled to be the mother of Ubuntu. Again, never would have expected it, but it's my best job I've ever had. It's the one that brings me the most joy. Best boss I've ever had. He really is. That's great. That's great. I wonder if he feels the same about his employee. Okay, Princess, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your story. I have one more thing. Okay, let's pray. No, I'm just messing around. I just want to, I think, like, affirm and honor Grace, because, you know, like, hearing Jen share and Colleen on the video and, you know, Suzanne's work with Anastomari and stuff, it's a reflection of who Grace is. And so, you know, Suzanne and I came through the youth ministry and Beth and Bill Gentile tried to, like, ruin us at young, young ages, and they didn't. But all of that practice we then got serving people because of grace, it shaped our hearts. And now seeing kids you invested in, like Jen and Colleen, doing a really amazing work. I know that those seeds were planted by amazing parents, but we got to throw a lot of water on it for a period of time and really do something. And their reflection of that and their response to that is exactly the picture I want for Tarek and Vazumzi and Luke, that they would, through that, somehow, our feeble efforts, water something in them that when they finish, that they would change and transform South Africa. And it's a silly kind of vision we have, but I really believe it's possible. And I believe it's possible because I've seen it now in kids that I got to water the seed and that they were doing it. So today is such a perfect picture and it's such an encouraging picture for me that it really is possible that for seven feeble years of really only having one or two days a week with someone, I got to water something. And now I get, I mean, they're stuck with us all day, every day. So what does that mean I can, you know, our staff can do? And so it's such an amazing picture. But I want to honor what you've done over years and years as a church to do that. Thank you. And I would echo that and just say we really have a very strong group of folks on the missions committee who care deeply about this and are kind of the stewards of this culture that Grace has fostered through the years. And it's one of my favorite things about our church. You guys are having an event tonight here. We are. We're having an event at 7. And we're just going to share some more stories. Vazumzi Plamana, who was here actually two years ago sharing, he is now at NC State. And he actually couldn't be here because he's at his church today, and so he'll be here tonight. And so we're so excited to just share a little bit more about what God's doing. And we wanted to say thank you. Look, Listen, Love is the organization that Grace started to launch out missionaries. And so when you support Acts of Grace, sorry, Look, Listen, Love is manifesto. Acts of Grace, thank you. And that's the way that you support us so that we can keep doing what we're doing. Ubuntu is its own 501c3, but Acts of Grace just keeps us there and allows us as a family to keep doing what God has called us to do there. So we'll share more about that tonight, and we're so thankful. Wonderful. Thank you. And they'll stick around, too, to chat with after the service. Let me pray for y'all, and then we're going to suffer through Alan Morgan together, and then we'll eat some tacos. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for all that you're doing in South Africa, in Ocean View, and in the ways that you are using the princes and also drawing them more near to you. God, I pray that their walk with you, that their exuberance to follow you, that their joy that they find in you would be contagious as they move in and out of circles and relationships in what they're doing in South Africa. God, we pray for Sarah in her new role, that she would thrive there. It certainly seems as though all the experiences that you've given her over the years have prepared her for this in really incredible ways. And we lift up Casey as he continues to plug away at this thing that he's done now for a long time. I pray that you would give him new and fresh excitement and motivation and that he would wake up tomorrow as excited about Ubuntu as ever. And God, we thank you for bringing them here safely, for them being able to share their story. And we pray that you would write many, many more good stories through what they're doing down there and that you would just draw these young men and these folks in the community to your son Christ through what they're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If I didn't know any better, it would seem like your senior pastor guilted you into attendance this morning. This is great. Thanks for being here. I hope we keep it rolling. We are resuming our series today called One Hit Wonders, where we're looking at different passages in the Bible that we don't often get to stop at or pause at or focus on. And this morning, we're going to be in a passage at the end of Habakkuk. We'll be right back. Habakkuk. Very few people know where it is. You're probably going to have to get your table of contents involved. There's no shame in that. It's one of the minor prophets towards the end of the Old Testament. So join us in Habakkuk. What we're going to find there, I think, is a passage that is tucked away and little known, but it really brings to me a lot of hope and a lot of faith, sometimes when we need it the most. But as we approach that passage, I'm reminded of these rites of manhood that I would hear of as a kid growing up. You hear about these different tribes across the globe that have different tests for children to become adults. They throw you into the wilderness for a few days, and if you come back with like 10 beaver pelts, then now you are a man. There was the Maasai tribe I was reading about this week out in Africa. They don't do this anymore because it's illegal, but for generations, what they would do is on your 10th birthday as a little boy, they would send you into the savanna with a spear, and you had to kill a lion and bring back proof of this kill, which is an insane test for a little boy. But in the Messiah's defense, if a 10-year-old can do that, dude's a man, okay? I believe them. That's a legitimate test. But you've heard about these rites of passage and these tests of manhood or adulthood before, right? And I actually think, I bring that up because I think that there is a test for our faith in the Bible. I think that there is actually a test that all believers at some point in their life must go through, must experience, and must come out the other side as proven and mature. And I'm arguing this morning that we find that test in the end of Habakkuk chapter 3 and verses 17 through 19. So read them with me, and then we're going to talk about why I think this really is suchber verse. This is a difficult thing to be able to say. So I'm going to contend with you this morning that being able to authentically claim this passage is the mark of mature faith. Being able to authentically claim this passage, Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19, to be able to say this out loud to one of your friends, to be able to say this out loud to God himself, To me, to be able to authentically claim this verse, claim this passage, to say it out loud and to mean it, is the test of a sincere and a mature and authentic faith. And if we look at the verse and the context in which it comes, I think you'll see why I think this. Because the picture that Habakkuk is painting here follows three chapters of devastation. Three chapters of the nation of Israel being laid low. Three chapters of the consequences of their action resulting in poverty and death and famine. Three chapters of hopelessness. And so here at the end, he's saying, even in light of all of that, in light of all the devastation that we just experienced, in light of where I find myself now, and listen to this, even though the fig tree will no longer produce and the olive crop fails and there are no herds in the fields, what he's saying is, even though the present looks bleak and the future looks bleaker, even though today stinks and tomorrow looks worse, I don't find any good reason to hope in a good and bright and hopeful future, even though that's true, yet I will choose to find my joy in the Lord and find my strength in him. Do you see the power of that statement? And for many of us, we know what it is to feel like the present stinks and the future doesn't look much better. We know what it is to look around and think to ourselves, though the fig tree does not blossom, though the olive is not going to produce a crop, though the things that I relied upon are no longer there. We've walked through those moments, right? And I'm not talking about small disappointments. I'm not talking about little fissures in our life that upset our otherwise peaceful existence. I'm talking about the hardest of times. I'm talking about my dear friends in the church who they have some good friends who are in their early 30s, I would presume, and have young children, and she has been battling cancer for months, if not years, and has recently found out that her body is so riddled with it that she will not survive this. That's today stinks and tomorrow's not looking good either. That's hard. That's what Habakkuk's talking about. I've mentioned before my friend Carla Gerlach who lost her husband at the age of 30, my college roommate to a widow-maker heart attack with three children under the age of five. That's sitting in the middle of a present that stinks and looking towards a future that doesn't feel very hopeful. We know what it is to walk through these difficult times. That's raising a child and then watching them make decisions that hurt us so much and not knowing what to do. That's experiencing a parent with dementia or with a difficulty that has now been imposed upon you and you have to love them and carry them through it. I've seen that happen over and over again in our congregation as some of us age and take on the role of caretaker of our parents, that's a difficult spot. That's in the middle. What Habakkuk is talking about is how we feel in the middle of a divorce, in the middle of finding out about infidelity, in the middle of getting the call about the difficult diagnosis, in the middle of the difficult relational thing that we don't know if we're going to see through it. It's how we feel in the days and months after we lose our job or after someone hurts us deeply. That's what Habakkuk is talking about. And so what he's really saying in this passage, to put it in our language, is that even when God disappoints me, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. Even when my God disappoints me, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. I debated on that word disappoints because you could say, even though I'm disillusioned by, you could say even though I'm confused by, even though I'm let down by, even though I don't understand my God right now, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. And where the rubber meets the road on that is when as a believer, you know that God is good and you know that he is sovereign and you know that he is loving and you know that he is all powerful and you know that he could have stopped this thing if he wanted to, but he didn't and you don't know why. You know that it's in his power to cure that cancer. You know that it's in his power to prevent that heart attack. You know that it's in his power to heal this person, to mend that relationship, to see this thing through. You know he can do it and he didn't. And you're left with, but why, God? Why didn't you do that? It's a feeling we feel whenever there's another shooting. God, you could have stopped this, and you didn't. Why didn't you? It's a feeling that Mary felt when Jesus let her brother Lazarus die. And she wept and she said, why didn't you get here sooner? And in that moment, when we're disillusioned by our God, when we don't understand why he let this happen, and there's no words that anybody can say that can comfort us, to choose in that moment to say, God, I don't understand you, but I trust you. God, I don't understand you, but I find my joy in you. And God, I don't understand why you let this happen, but I'm going to lean on your strength to get me through the season of disillusionment and confusion and disappointment. To be able to do that, to be able to choose that despite the confusion and disappointment that we're walking through, to me that is the test that produces a mature and authentic faith. To me, when you've been forced into making that choice, is when your faith becomes sincere and mature and authentic. And listen, there's some middle ground there. I've talked to people walking through this season. There's some middle ground there. There's some people who will say, yeah, life stinks and it's really hard right now. And God, I don't know if I trust you and you could have fixed this and you didn't and I don't know why. And they, even though they love God, they trust God, they still follow God and believe God, they are not yet prepared to say, and I will find my joy and my strength in him. They're not there yet. There's a middle ground where you don't understand what God has allowed, where you know you trust who he is, but you're not yet ready to fully embrace the reality of it. You're not yet ready to fully say, even though I find my joy in you, I rejoice in you, and I find my strength in you, and I know that you will make me walk in high places. There's a middle ground there. And if you are in that place, that middle ground, between God, how could you let this happen, and not quite ready to say, I want to rejoice in you again, this sermon is specifically for you. And the reality is we all face these tests. We, all of us, if you are a Christian, at some point or another, is to be disappointed or disillusioned by God and to feel that he has let you down. It's to go through this test. And the Bible is very clear. It's very open with us. We should see it, right? This shouldn't be a surprise to us. The Bible is honest with us that this test is coming. I could share with you myriad verses, but I've gotten just three here for us to consider this morning. In Proverbs, Solomon writes, He speaks of this test that's coming. The fire burns the gold and the purity rises to the top and there's something to this in the way that the Lord tests us as well. Peter writes famously, 1 Peter 1, verses 6 and 7, He says, on the vine, that today looks bad and tomorrow looks worse. And even though that happens, I will rejoice in the revelation of my Savior, Jesus Christ. I will look forward to the day when he returns and he makes the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. I will cling to that, even though I don't understand God, even though he doesn't make sense to me, even though I would do it differently if I were God. I will choose to trust that in eternity I will understand him, That if I ever possess the capacity to understand what God's doing and why he allows things to happen in this way, I'll sit back and I'll go, you're right. You were good. And I love you. He allows these tests to produce in us a perseverance that will result in glory and honor, praise and the glory and honor of the revelation of Jesus Christ. And then Peter writes at the end of that same book, 1 Peter 4, verse 12, I kind of like this one a lot. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. Don't be surprised when we walk through the test. Don't be surprised when life is hard. Don't be surprised when there's a season and you look around and you go, God, where are you? When you relate to the Psalms where David writes, how long, O Lord, will you hide your face from me? Where are you, God? I cry out to you, and I do not see you. Don't be surprised when those trials come, and we look around, and we say, this isn't right. This isn't fair. God, you could have done something about this. He says, don't be surprised as if this is something unexpected. The reality is the test happens. And I want you to know this too about the test. Our father doesn't delight in testing his children. He simply knows that a fallen world will test us. Our God in heaven, our good father in heaven is not up in heaven looking at your faith going, hmm, they seem to be doing pretty well. How can I tighten the screws to see if they really mean it? What can I do to make them to kind of poke and prod them and see if they really mean this or if they're going to fade away? He's not up in the heaven tightening the screws. He doesn't take delight in watching you squirm. That's not what he's doing. He simply knows that in a fallen world, his children will be tested. And he weeps with us. And he offers us his presence. And he offers us his hope. And we're told that those who hope in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and not be faint. We're told things over and over again. We're told that God is our refuge and our strength. We're told that we can trust him, that he is our ever-present help in times of trouble. We're told that he is close to the brokenhearted, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. We're told blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We're told over and over again throughout Scripture that God is close to us in our brokenness, that when we are in the middle of this test is when God is closest to us if we will only be able to feel him, if we'll only have the ears to hear him and the eyes to see him and the heart to know him. We're told that the test comes. And it doesn't come because our God delights in testing us and watching things be hard. The test is coming because this world has fallen. Because in a fallen world, people get cancer. In a fallen world, sin begats abuse, begats divorce, begats pain, begats generational scars. In a fallen world, people die too soon. In a fallen world, people get addicted. In a fallen world, we have to watch our parents become people who no longer know us. And those things will test our faith. Those things will make us look at God and say, couldn't you have done something about this? Because of that, I think it's important for us to think, I actually think it's important for us to remember the story of John the Baptist who had this very moment. John the Baptist was this great prophet. He was the last of the great prophets. And he was the one to announce Jesus as the Messiah who was to come. He was the one to introduce Jesus to the people of Israel. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. And subsequent to that, John the Baptist is arrested. He's being held in prison by Herod, and he is going to die. And he sends one of his disciples to Jesus. And he asks Jesus, are you the coming one? Are you the coming one or should we hope for another? And we have no reason to know this, but this is a reference to Isaiah 35, which is a messianic prophecy, a prophecy about the Messiah that is to come. And he calls in that, in Isaiah 35, Jesus is referred to as the coming one or the one who is to come. And it says that when he arrives, that the blind will see, that the deaf will hear, and that the lame will walk, and that the prisoners will be set free. John the Baptist is a prisoner. And he sends a messenger to Jesus to say, hey, are you the guy? Because your word promises that when the guy shows up, I'll be let out of prison. Or should I hope for another? And Jesus tells that disciple to go back to John and say, go and tell John that the blind do see and the deaf do hear and the lame do walk and the prisoners will be set free, but you won't be set free, John. And then Jesus says, blessed are those who don't fall away on account of me. Blessed are those who have expectations of me that I don't meet. Blessed are those who are confused by my actions and my choices, and still choose to trust that I am sovereign and that I am good and that I love you. John the Baptist walked through this very test. All saints walk through this very test. Because of that, I think it's important for us to think of our faith as a clay pot. Think of the faith that you have as a clay pot. If you grab clay and throw it on the pottery wheel and start to form it, you can make it into a thing. I don't know anything about pottery. I've seen it in enough movies and TV shows that I feel like that's what you do, right? You slam it down and you press the pedal and it spins and you can make it into a thing. You can make it into a bowl or a pot or a vase, right? And if you just take the wet clay and you form it into a shape, it's there and it's real and it exists and it's not not clay. It's not not pottery. And you could probably even hold stuff in it if you wanted to. It could probably even serve a purpose. But that piece of pottery is not finished until it goes into the kiln and it comes back out of the fire. That pottery is not hardened. It's not mature. It's not ready to serve its purpose. It's not ready for use. It's not trustworthy until it comes out of the kiln formed and fashioned and fired. And after a couple decades now of being in ministry and being in church my whole life and watching people's faith and watching how it grows and how it fades and how sometimes it seems to go away and sometimes it seems to come back and then sometimes it seems to move into maturity. I am certain of this. Our faith isn't as mature as it could be until we walk through that fire. Our faith is most trustworthy when it's put into the kiln and it comes out the other side hardened and authentic and mature. Our faith, to me, isn't yet mature, isn't yet strengthened, isn't yet completely trustworthy until we've been put in the fire and we've been forced to choose God when sometimes it doesn't make sense to choose Him. And say, but even so, in the words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we trust that God will protect us from this fire, but even if he doesn't, we will declare his name. Please understand that the test is not, the fire is not the circumstances that we find ourselves in because those will come and go. To me, I firmly believe that the fire is that moment, it's that season when we question, can I really trust this God? It feels like he let me down. Can I really trust him? Can I choose? When faith isn't easy, when faith doesn't come naturally, when faith isn't fun, when faith is a choice, will I then choose God? When it doesn't make any sense to me, will I trust his wisdom over my own? Will I trust that in eternity, when I can look my Savior in the eye, that I will understand the way that he ordered his creation? I really do think that that's the test of genuine faith. And there's something to that fire, too. And that picture of gold being purified through it. You know, the reality is, as hard as it is to hear, the fire burns off the impurities, right? And so what we find usually when we go into these crucibles and we go into these tests, and the real test is not the circumstances around us, but having to choose God in spite of our confusion. The real test is choosing Him anyways. And allowing some of our impurities to be burnt off. Acknowledging I've been carrying expectations from God for a long time that he never gave me. I've lived, and I know that this is hard, but I've watched it happen. I've lived in myopic faith where my assumption is that by my actions I can control him. And God, I've been good, so you should order the universe to not harm me. That person was so good. They were such a good man. They were such a good woman. They went too early. God, how can you let that happen? That assumes that God pres think the fire forces us to see that maybe we've built a myopic faith. Maybe he's opening our hearts to a grander vision of eternity in his kingdom. Maybe we open ourselves up to God, what did I bring into this test that doesn't belong here? So that when we emerge from the other side, we can authentically claim Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19. This is why James writes in the first chapter of his book, Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you endure trials of any kind. For we know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance, when it takes its full form, will leave you perfect and complete, not middle space. When you find yourself in the fire, take heart in knowing that your Father is shaping you into a saint who can claim Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19. If you find yourself in that sacred middle ground and that land between God, you've disappointed me. I believe in you. I want to. I want faith, but I can't yet find my joy in you. If you find yourself there in that fire, take heart. You are in the midst of your test. And when you grab onto God and you choose faith, you will come out the other side persevering. You will be perfect and complete, not lacking anything. You will have a fire-tested faith that was hardened through experience, and you will be able to use your faith as a blessing and beacon to others. To this day, the people whose faith I respect most are the people who have walked through this fire and chosen God anyways and now use that to help walk other people through their test. So if you've been through the test, if you've been forced to make that choice, forced to choose faith, you know how formative that is. You know how solidifying that is of your faith. You know that that season of life, no matter how difficult it was, if you have a sincere faith now, is one that you look back to and flag as the time when I really moved into maturity. You know that that instance, that season of life, anchors your faith now and now so that when things happen around you, they are not near as difficult to deal with. Those of you who have not yet walked through that fire, you will. And when you do, remember those words of Peter. Don't be surprised by this. We all walk through this. Choose God. Choose to find your joy and strengthen him. And for those of you in that middle ground right now, who know God and trust him, but are not yet in your heart at a place where you feel like you can worship him, where you can find your joy in him. God has grace for that. God doesn't rush that. God loves you and is closest to you as you walk through it. My hope and prayer is that we will be heartened by that, that we will be encouraged by that, and that we will be a faithful of people who have chosen God and have mature, authentic walks with him that will stand the test of time, that will be perfect and complete, not lacking anything. Let's pray. God, you're good. Even when we don't understand how you're good, you are. Even when we can't see a hopeful future, God, we know that you do. Lord, I pray specifically this morning that you would be with those who are in the fire. I pray that they would feel your comfort, that they would feel your presence, that they would feel your peace, that they would feel your love. God, fill us with your spirit so much so that even though we don't understand how or why, God, that we would still trust in you. Give us the strength of faith to find our joy and strength in you. Be the one who strengthens us even as we walk through the fire. It's in your son's name we ask all these things. Amen.