Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good morning, Christ Church. Would you bow your head in prayer with me, Father, we do. I thank you for just the truth of those words. Lord, you are a firm foundation. You are the solid rock that we can build our lives on.
[00:00:19] And, Father, the storms come and the winds come. And Lord, with you we can stand them and we can even thrive in the midst of them.
[00:00:31] So, Father, I pray, Lord, that we could just connect to you this morning in ways that each of us need to.
[00:00:39] I pray your word would be persuasive to us. And I pray your spirit would strengthen us in everything that is good.
[00:00:48] Bless our time together. May it just glorify you.
[00:00:53] And may we leave here committed to Christ for the first time. Great. Name of Jesus.
[00:00:59] Amen.
[00:01:01] It's good to see you today, Church.
[00:01:04] If you are a guest with us and we haven't had the chance to meet, my name is Chet, and I'd love to meet you and shake your hand. But we're honored you're here today.
[00:01:13] And when I come in Sundays, I drive down Chestnut and I pass the property.
[00:01:22] Yes, every Sunday. And I don't know if you've seen it lately, if you haven't, or if you don't know. We are in the process of building a new building.
[00:01:32] Lots of machines, lots of things going on.
[00:01:37] And one of the cool things just every Sunday, obviously, I'm just excited to pass it and look at it. And you can really start to see the drive off a Chestnut coming in. And I look forward to that day when that's my turn into church. Anybody else?
[00:01:55] And it's cool to see it get there. I saw a bunch of stones, so it looks like they're gonna start maybe putting some stones on the drive.
[00:02:02] I was talking with the construction company, and they said that maybe by late summer we could actually do some outdoor services there, which would be really fun.
[00:02:14] But, you know, we gotta get the drive in, gotta get some other things going. But that's what I'm hoping for and looking forward to that. Wouldn't that be great?
[00:02:23] But praise God, we are moving forward.
[00:02:27] And today we're gonna wrap up our Be Strong sermon series. And a few weeks ago, or maybe a month ago, I read this book by Ken Rideout.
[00:02:36] It's a biography, and it's called the Other side of Hard.
[00:02:41] And it's just kind of a fun, interesting read. But Ken Rideout, he grew up in a really.
[00:02:47] Just dysfunctional family. I mean, really, really bad. Lots and lots of big problems and all that. So he grew up in a very difficult environment. But he was athletic and he was driven. So he was able to use some of those qualities to chart a better course for himself.
[00:03:09] And he ended up getting very successful in business and finance and stocks and did really well.
[00:03:17] But because of all the struggles that he had as a kid, he had some severe addiction problems. And so he was successful, but he still had this secret addiction that he couldn't figure out. And it was slowly eating away at his life.
[00:03:35] And part of his strategy to find sobriety was to channel his energy in healthier ways. And so he became like a die hard runner, which I'm like, can't we think of better ways? Amen, anyone?
[00:03:54] No. I know some of you are like, I get it. Well, God bless you. But he got very serious about running.
[00:04:00] And because he was a gifted athlete, he realized he was actually pretty good at it. But he got into it later in life, and one of his early goals was to qualify for the Kona Triathlon. This is in Hawaii, and it's really hard to qualify. And he worked super hard and he qualified for it, and he got into Hawaii. And I don't know if you remember or know the actual distances of a triathlon. It is no joke.
[00:04:31] You're running a marathon, you're biking. Was it 100 some miles?
[00:04:37] And swimming, I mean, who cares at that point? How do you swimming a ton. So, I mean, these are no jokes. And so he made the race and it started out rough for him, and it just went downhill from there. And he finally got to the run section of the race and his wife was on the sidelines cheering him on. And he looked at her and he said, I'm done.
[00:05:06] And she looked and she was like, what? Said I'm done?
[00:05:10] And he quit early.
[00:05:13] He just quit. He had worked so hard so much to get there and quit. And you know, when you ever quit something in life, and then as soon as you make that decision, you're just flooded with regret.
[00:05:24] You're like, why did I do that? And that was him. And so then for the next year or so, he just devoted himself to training and to getting better so he could go back and run it again. And he did, and he did really well. But what I find interesting about that story, and this is what I want us to think about today, is he goes and he runs this race and he quits in the middle of it.
[00:05:53] Now, his strategy, think about this. His strategy is not then to go to the master of the race and say, hey, could you make the run a little shorter?
[00:06:05] Could you make the Swim, maybe like a doggy paddle for a few minutes? Could you make the biking section last? Senate is right. His strategy is not that. And we know, like, that would not be one. No one's gonna go for that. Right? They're not gonna say, oh, you didn't make it through the race, so therefore, we will make the race easier.
[00:06:29] His strategy was, I didn't make it, therefore I'm gonna make my body stronger. You with me on this?
[00:06:38] Now, why that's relevant to us is because the New Testament loves to talk about your life and my life as a race.
[00:06:47] Several times it's used that our life is a race, and God is the master of that race.
[00:06:54] He has designed your life to go a certain way and to head toward a certain finish line. Your life is not random.
[00:07:08] It's not accidental.
[00:07:10] God has a real purpose, and he has set a race for you. And God looks at people like us, and he's like, hey, I've set this course for you, and I want you to run it.
[00:07:21] I don't want you to quit, and I don't want you to peter out on the sideline, and I don't want you to give up this race. Yeah, there's hard parts to it.
[00:07:32] Some parts are more difficult than others, but. But it's a race I've designed for you. And what I think happens if maybe you're like me is sometimes I look at God and I'm like, God, can you make this race a lot easier? Anyone?
[00:07:48] God? Could you trim the marathon part? Could we do, like, a 5K?
[00:07:54] Could we just skip the swimming part? Totally. Or could I, like, use a raft? I don't know. Right. So often our approach to the race of life is, God, make it easier, make my race easier.
[00:08:09] But I think church and what I want to.
[00:08:13] What I want us to have open hearts to is I think God's solution is to make us stronger.
[00:08:20] Because God is interested in the end, at the end of the day, not in making our life as easy and as comfortable as we want it to be.
[00:08:31] But what God is interested in is growing your soul to be as big as he wants it to be. You with me on this.
[00:08:40] And so when I can be on the same page with God in this, it helps a lot.
[00:08:47] Or I could say, lord, it's a really heavy load in my life right now.
[00:08:54] I'm not gonna ask you to lighten it. I'm gonna ask you to broaden my shoulders.
[00:08:59] I think when we can start to enter into that mindset and enter into that Heart and even make it a prayer church. I think we will honor God and we will be better prepared for all that he has for us. You with me on this? And so I want to invite you, just as we wrap up today, this is the last one in this series. I want to invite you to be praying. And I will tell you up front, this is a bit of a dangerous prayer.
[00:09:29] You know, some prayers, you pray like, you gotta then put your seatbelt on. You with me? And this is a bit of one of those, but it's worthwhile. And here's what it is. God, I'm not asking you to make everything easier.
[00:09:43] I'm asking you to make me stronger.
[00:09:46] And I believe that is a prayer God will honor and God will be glorified in. And so today I want to talk about how God makes us stronger. And we're going to look at First Corinthians, chapter 16, verse 13 and 14. Let me read them to you. They're just very quick and to the point. It says this.
[00:10:10] Be watchful.
[00:10:12] Stand firm in the faith.
[00:10:15] Act like men.
[00:10:17] Be strong.
[00:10:19] Let all that you do be done in love.
[00:10:24] Now, these are just like quick hits. It's little bullet points that guide us that you can kind of grab onto and bring into your life easily. And these are written by the great apostle Paul, and he has been writing to this ancient church in Corinth for 16 chapters. This is a long ladder.
[00:10:45] You ever get a text message and you gotta, like, scroll through it and you're like, wow, that took a while. This is Paul doing that. In the ancient world, they didn't have iPhones, but they had papyrus. And so he pretty similar, but a little bit different.
[00:11:02] And he wrote this long letter and he addresses so many things in the book of First Corinthians. It's just problem after problem.
[00:11:12] You think our church has problems? Read First Corinthians. You'll feel fantastic about our church. You'll be like, yeah, not that bad.
[00:11:20] And at the end of it, Paul has this great way of just kind of summarizing his intent in very succinct ways.
[00:11:30] And I think that these verses are a good summary where Paul is saying, hey, this is what a strong and healthy faith, faith looks like. In other words, if you bring these things into your journey to grow your faith, then you'll be on point, you'll be growing stronger, you'll be moving in the direction that God has for you. I kind of think about it this way. If we were to just consult all the great health experts in the world.
[00:12:05] And we were to ask them all, like, hey, just give us the fundamentals of having a healthy body.
[00:12:12] They would all kind of be in the same ballpark, wouldn't they? They'd probably talk about sleep.
[00:12:17] They'd talk about nutrition.
[00:12:20] They'd talk about movement, exercise, movement, that kind of thing. They would talk about maybe social connection, that it's not just your body, but your spirit and your emotions. What we could probably say, like, most of them, there's probably gonna be a group of fundamental ideas that say if you focus on these things, if you do these things, your body will operate better and stronger. You agree with that?
[00:12:48] And it's okay to give me an amen today. It's okay to nod your head. It's okay.
[00:12:55] And they would probably be like, yeah, these are good. You can't go wrong with them. And when I look at these verses, these are verses you can't go wrong with in bringing into your faith to make it stronger and healthier. And so these are five ways we could think about it to a stronger faith. Five ways. And let's just look at them again. Be watchful. Stand firm. Act like men. Be strong.
[00:13:21] Let all you do be done and love. So let's talk through these. Number one, be watchful.
[00:13:28] Be watchful. Now, this one is interesting to me.
[00:13:33] He's saying, pay attention to your life.
[00:13:38] I tell my kids all the time, pay attention. They never listen.
[00:13:45] Like, pay attention to what you're doing, right? And parents, parents, you're telling them this because you don't want them to get hurt, right?
[00:13:53] Like, hey, when you're running up, maybe try to slow down a little bit. Cause you can't quite control the horsepower of your body.
[00:14:02] Pay attention. Be careful. Be watchful. And our heavenly Father Church listen to this. Is looking at us and saying the same thing.
[00:14:13] Our heavenly Father's looking at us and saying, hey, I know you think you got everything figured out.
[00:14:18] I know you think you can do all these things. I know you think you're kind of invincible. But pay attention, be watchful. What does that mean? I think first it means this. It means recognizing that within my own heart there is a great capacity for evil.
[00:14:41] Now, we don't like to acknowledge this.
[00:14:44] We like to look at everybody else, and we like to look at the mistakes that they make. And we like to look at them and say, I would never do that.
[00:14:53] But get this church.
[00:14:55] The Bible warns us.
[00:14:57] And the Bible says, hey, buddy, if you think you're standing firm, get off your high horse and recognize you're not better than those people you're judging right now. You with me?
[00:15:11] You? Maybe it's just God's grace that you didn't make that mistake, that you didn't.
[00:15:19] Church. Here's what the Bible's saying. It's saying, look, don't give yourself too much credit.
[00:15:25] We all on our worst day are capable of great evil and sin. You with me on this, Church? And to acknowledge that is is the first step in being healthier.
[00:15:40] And so here's what it means to be watchful. Jesus teaches us this. Jesus says, pray like this. God, lead me not into temptation.
[00:15:52] That is the prayer of watchfulness and saying, lord, I know there's a lot of pitfalls in life. Amen.
[00:16:01] Some I see, some I don't see. Lord, lead me so I don't step into this hole that I think is solid ground.
[00:16:11] Lead me so I don't step into this area that is gonna get me trapped and I'm gonna regret and I'm gonna get lost in it. Anybody with me on this? That is a prayer of watchfulness. And guess what? A stronger faith. If we want to have a stronger faith, we could pray that every day.
[00:16:30] And church, I encourage you, too. And if you have kids, pray that for your kids, too.
[00:16:37] Lord, lead them not into temptation. Look, there may be some temptation that is unavoidable, but then there's other temptation in our life that we're like, opening the door, and we're like, hey, come on in.
[00:16:51] Have a seat.
[00:16:54] You want a coffee?
[00:16:59] And that's what your voice sounds like when you do it.
[00:17:03] I don't know what that was.
[00:17:06] I blacked out what just happened.
[00:17:11] But church watchfulness is paying attention.
[00:17:15] And here's maybe one of the biggest things to take away from this.
[00:17:22] Be ruthless about not making small moral compromises in your life.
[00:17:30] You hear that, Church? That's watchfulness. It's saying, look, I'm not gonna open the door at all. I'm not gonna crack it open to these things that I know can grow and can lead me away from God, that can grow and that can pull me.
[00:17:52] I'm not gonna open the door to them. I'm gonna keep it shut. You with me on this, Church? Now, here's the deal.
[00:17:59] I think most of the time, when large mistakes happen in our lives, it's because there was momentum that had been building for a long time in the wrong direction. You with me?
[00:18:14] I don't think a lot of people go out and they're like, you know what? Today I'm gonna ruin My friendships just feels like a good day for it. I don't think there's a lot of people that wake up and are like, today I'm gonna ruin my marriage.
[00:18:26] Today I'm gonna shipwreck my faith today. You know what? I'd like to do something really, really stupid today that I will regret for decades.
[00:18:34] Church. Amen. We don't wake up and do that, but what happens is, is we allow those seeds of that moment to come into our lives and to grow and to take root. And then we hit these moments, we're like, oh, my gosh, now I'm here.
[00:18:56] But that had been growing for a long time, and we had led it. You with me on this church, and watching is saying, watching, saying, man, by God's grace and with God's help, I'm gonna close those doors as soon as I see they're cracked open.
[00:19:13] And I'm gonna invite God to help me to see what I might not see today. You with me on this? That's watchfulness church. And it matters. Now, the next one is stand firm in the faith.
[00:19:28] Now, this is a phrase that we see a few times in the New Testament, and a lot of times it's connected to spiritual warfare, to spiritual battle.
[00:19:41] Now, that might hit us strange, but this is something the Bible shows us again and again. It says, look, at the end of the day, you and I are not just flesh and blood.
[00:19:53] You are an eternal soul.
[00:19:56] You are a spiritual being.
[00:19:59] The Bible says, but you're not the only spiritual being.
[00:20:02] And that there is a world beyond this world. And I think all of us are open to that because we know at the end of the day, you cannot understand life if you say, well, it's just a bunch of molecules moving in a certain direction.
[00:20:15] No one really believes that. No one lives like that. No, we're like, there's more than the physical world. And the Bible says, duh, there's a spiritual world.
[00:20:27] And it's something that we don't have to understand everything about it, but we do need to understand that this is part of our experience of life and that at times we can be under spiritual attack.
[00:20:43] And so this command to stand firm is usually in the context of that reality.
[00:20:51] But here's what spiritual attack often looks like. It might not look like what you think it looks like. These absolutely devastatingly unhealthy thoughts that you can't root out of your own mind.
[00:21:04] Like, why is this.
[00:21:07] It could look like this thought that keeps leading you deeper into shame and into isolation and into the Place where you wanna crawl in a hole and you don't wanna seek God and you don't wanna be around anyone else because you're in such this dark place. I think that often can be one powerful expression of it. Here's what's interesting. The word Satan means accuser.
[00:21:42] It means slander, which guess what that means. That oftentimes what evil looks like in our life is when there is slander being thrown our way that leads us into devastating and paralyzing shame.
[00:22:01] How do you stand firm?
[00:22:03] Here's one application of it. You stand firm in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
[00:22:12] As you are assaulted by those kinds of thoughts. You say, you know what?
[00:22:17] I may have done that, but Christ has forgiven me.
[00:22:22] And his voice is greater than yours. Because here's the voice of God will not lead you into shame.
[00:22:33] It will free you from it. You see, it will lead you into conviction. But that's different. Conviction is a pathway to growth.
[00:22:42] Conviction is when God's spirit is like, hey son, let's not do that anymore. You with me? That's not good, son. You're being prideful, you're being egotistical. I love you. Let me show you a better way. That's conviction. It's rooted out of love. It's growth oriented. It pulls something better out of us. It doesn't leave us naked and ashamed.
[00:23:08] But the voice of evil exposes us, berates us, shames us. And when you stand firm, you say, no, no, no, I am gonna live in the truth of Jesus Christ.
[00:23:20] And when those thoughts just become, they come into your mind and they assault you and you just, you're struggling to say, listen, I'm not taking this. Because there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus.
[00:23:35] You're only telling half of the story.
[00:23:38] Yeah, that was my life, but it's not it anymore.
[00:23:43] I was that person. But now I'm a new creation in Christ.
[00:23:49] And those things do not define me. Anybody with me on this church. And you stand firm in the truth of the gospel. Now there's a lot of other ways we can talk about, but I gotta keep moving through these. Cause I'm running out of time. Stand firm in the faith. The next one is act like men.
[00:24:10] Now, ladies, you're like, oh, I get a pass on this?
[00:24:14] Well, this was written to men and women. And this is a word that typically means be courageous. And sometimes it gets translated that way. But what the word is indicating is that when guys are healthy, when men are healthy, they bring certain virtues into the world that Matter and church. There's a lot of great men in this church.
[00:24:44] And you've seen it, and you've seen the impact that they can have on the world when they're healthy. And so what Paul is saying, he's saying, hey, that quality that you see in healthy men when they're connecting to God and when they are serving his purpose, that's a good quality to practice. You with me on this?
[00:25:05] And one of the ways that I think we could think about this in a more simple way is just through the idea of engagement. And here's what I mean.
[00:25:18] One of the great temptations for men and one of the ways that evil manipulates and hurts men is when men just disengage.
[00:25:35] There's a great quote by Irenaeus. He was an early church father, and he said this. The glory of God is man fully alive.
[00:25:46] Did you hear that? The glory of God is man fully, fully alive.
[00:25:52] Which. What is the opposite of that, the non glory of God is man not alive, sleepwalking through life, comatose, disengaged.
[00:26:05] Howard Thurman, he was a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. He said this. He said, don't ask yourself what the world needs.
[00:26:14] Ask yourself what makes you come alive.
[00:26:17] Because what the world needs is men who are alive.
[00:26:21] Same idea, right?
[00:26:23] And I think there is a lot of truth to that. And how many times have maybe brothers we've been in this place, or maybe we had a dad that was like this, or uncles that were like this. They're just disengaged.
[00:26:40] They're comatose.
[00:26:42] They're there, but they're not really there. You with me?
[00:26:48] And when that happens, the world and our families and our churches lose out on the great things God wants to do.
[00:27:01] Because the glory of God is man fully alive.
[00:27:05] When men are engaged and when they are bearing the image of God at work, at church, in their marriage, in their families, awesome things happen. Amen.
[00:27:19] Powerful things happen when men are sleepwalking.
[00:27:24] They could easily become a tool of evil. You with me on this church?
[00:27:29] There's a powerful scene in the movie the Lord of the Rings. It's the second one. I know there's like 800 now, but the Two Towers. And it's about this king named Rohan. And he's been overcome by the powers of evil. And do you know what it makes him look like? It makes him look like he's half asleep all the time.
[00:27:51] His eyes are glazed over. He mumbles around, he talks. He looks super tired, super disengaged.
[00:28:00] And it's A great picture of how evil can work in men's life. It's not that they just turn completely against God. They just get disengaged.
[00:28:13] They just become incredibly passive.
[00:28:16] They stop showing up. They stop solving problems. They stop pursuing the people that God wants them to love and serve.
[00:28:23] They pass on everything.
[00:28:26] And finally, when this guy is freed from the power of evil, all of a sudden he looks younger and he picks up his sword and he starts doing good.
[00:28:35] And when the Bible says, act like a man, that's what it's talking about.
[00:28:42] Be engaged.
[00:28:44] Be part of the solution.
[00:28:48] Show up and say, God, I'm here.
[00:28:53] Make something good happen through me.
[00:28:55] And guess what?
[00:28:57] God will honor that prayer, and the people around you will be blessed. You with me on this.
[00:29:04] And, brothers, you are the glory of God when you're fully alive. God is uniquely glorified through you.
[00:29:13] Don't forfeit that.
[00:29:15] Don't live a life where you let that opportunity pass you by. Can I get amen on this?
[00:29:25] Get engaged. Everybody is better for it. Then he says, be strong. Now, what's interesting about this verse is when we read it, it's sort of be strong, like, hey, strengthen up. But it's actually a passive verb in the language that it's originally written in. There's three voices of verbs. Active, passive, and middle. Active verbs mean be strong. I make myself strong.
[00:29:51] Passive verbs mean I am strengthened.
[00:29:56] Active verbs, I do the action. Passive verbs, I receive the action. It's done to me. You with me on this?
[00:30:05] You like going back to English and grammar, or did I just trigger you?
[00:30:13] But here's what's important to see. This is a passive. This isn't a passive voice. So it's not make yourself strong, but it's be strengthened, receive strength.
[00:30:26] And where does that strength come from?
[00:30:29] Comes from God.
[00:30:31] Be made strong.
[00:30:34] Here's what I believe.
[00:30:37] Life is intentionally designed to drive you to prayer.
[00:30:44] What that means is you and I are not meant to do it on our own.
[00:30:51] God didn't design it that way.
[00:30:54] And those seasons. I've learned to begin to look at those seasons where, like, I'm praying all the time.
[00:31:01] And when my heart is healthy, I'll say, thank you, God.
[00:31:04] Thank you that this has brought me to you, because I know that I'm meant to depend more and more and more on you. You can't get through your race without God's strength flowing into your life. You with me, Church.
[00:31:25] And Paul says, be strengthened. How do we do it? Here's. I think it's simple. Number One, you just ask for his strength.
[00:31:34] You ask for it.
[00:31:36] I can't tell you how many times.
[00:31:38] I'll be in the middle of something and I'll be like, what is wrong with me?
[00:31:43] I didn't even ask for God's help.
[00:31:46] I just get to doing anyone. I can be a doer. I just start going ahead. I start trying to figure it out. But what I found in life, everything's better when I start. And I say, all right, Lord, would you strengthen me? Would you help me?
[00:32:03] Would you guide me in this?
[00:32:06] And guess what, church? He absolutely will.
[00:32:10] So we ask for it, number one, we pray.
[00:32:14] It doesn't have to be sophisticated. It doesn't have to sound like the most eloquent, beautiful prayer you've ever heard. A simple prayer, lord, help me, goes a long way.
[00:32:26] Guess what? That still gets through the ceiling.
[00:32:29] Lord, give me your strength.
[00:32:32] Lord, I'm struggling.
[00:32:37] Grant me a fresh wind today of your spirit. We ask, and then we show up and we expect it.
[00:32:48] Here's what God says again and again through the New Testament. He says, hey, let's just get something straight.
[00:32:56] When you ask me for something, would you give me the honor of believing I will actually do it for you?
[00:33:05] Now, that might feel like presumption to you, but God looks at that as faith.
[00:33:10] Like, I don't want my kids to ask me for something important and then sit there and wonder, is dad actually going to do it?
[00:33:18] That would hurt me. You with me?
[00:33:22] I want them to know, no, he will, because he loves you and he has integrity. You with me?
[00:33:30] And when we ask our Heavenly Father, he asks that we would give him that same honor that we would ask without this wavering doubt, is God really going to help me? Can I really count on him? Is he going to show up? Is he going to leave me alone? Does. Does this even matter? God says, hey, would you give me the honor of asking and actually expecting that I hear, that I care and that I will show up?
[00:33:59] And then you show up and you do what he wants you to do. Be made strong. And then lastly, let all that you do be done in love.
[00:34:11] Here's what I gotta say about this.
[00:34:14] You ever find yourself some days running on bad gas, like, today, I'm just mad.
[00:34:23] And then you're like, then you're just mad at anyone? Everyone.
[00:34:27] Am I the only sinner here today? Looks like hopefully I got a more unholy crowd at the 11.
[00:34:33] But you ever have those days where you're like, I'm running on bad gas.
[00:34:37] There's Anger in my system.
[00:34:40] Maybe there's fear in your system and you're ducking at every noise.
[00:34:47] You're just ramped up in all the wrong ways.
[00:34:51] There are different types of gas that your soul can run on.
[00:34:57] But Paul says, let all that you do be done in love.
[00:35:01] Love is good, clean fuel to run on.
[00:35:05] It's good, clean fuel.
[00:35:08] And that's a choice.
[00:35:10] I can wake up today and I say, all right, God, I want to do today in a way that is driven by my love for you.
[00:35:25] And I want to run on that. I want to remind myself I love God, I want to serve him well.
[00:35:34] When I get up to preach, that's the first thought I want in my mind. I love God and I want to honor Him. I want to think I love these people that I'm looking at, and I want to serve them. That's better fuel to run on you with me, Church. Paul says, let all you do be done in love.
[00:35:56] What fuel you running on? You know, when you go to the gas station, there's a bunch of options. No one uses any of them.
[00:36:04] Only 87, right? That's it. Why do those exist? No one knows. It's a grave mystery.
[00:36:12] But when you wake up, there's a lot of different. You could pick, but there's only one that really matters. Love87 and just fill that bad boy up.
[00:36:30] I love this whole thought about God's strength to us. And just to close today, I want to read to you from First Peter.
[00:36:38] It says this. After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
[00:37:00] That verse speaks so powerfully to me. And I think about it. I think about it this way.
[00:37:05] Here's what Peter is saying.
[00:37:07] He's saying, listen, life will hit you.
[00:37:12] It'll be hard.
[00:37:14] There will be suffering, there will be pain. There will be exhausting days. There will be days that take you to your limit. Peter says, I'm going to shoot straight with you.
[00:37:25] That is real. That is part of this experience of life.
[00:37:29] But I said, but there's always a part that follows behind that.
[00:37:33] And look at that verse one more time.
[00:37:36] It says this.
[00:37:38] The God of all grace will himself.
[00:37:43] He's not delegating that to anyone else. He will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. Yes, the waves of pain will come, but behind them are waves of grace.
[00:38:00] And those are always bigger, those are always better. And God himself brings those.
[00:38:08] And church, I just believe that for many of us, Maybe you've had a tough season, painful season, a season of hurt, of loss, of grief.
[00:38:20] But here's what I want you to know. There is something behind it.
[00:38:25] God himself will bring it.
[00:38:27] And we can trust him for it. We can expect it.
[00:38:31] We can be strengthened by it. He is faithful to do what he says.
[00:38:37] Let's pray.
[00:38:40] Father, we thank you that you are the great shepherd of the sheep.
[00:38:49] That, Lord, suffering, pain, difficulty, exhaustion.
[00:38:55] Lord, you don't mince words you tell us will have, that we'll experience.
[00:39:05] Doesn't mean you don't love us.
[00:39:09] But, Lord, you also promise to bring yourself renewal, restoration, healing and strength.
[00:39:22] And Lord, I just pray you'd bring that this morning.
[00:39:26] Lord, where souls are empty today, fill them.
[00:39:30] Where souls are wounded and hurting, bring them the balm of your presence.
[00:39:38] Where souls are worn out, renew them.
[00:39:43] Where souls are afraid, give them courage.
[00:39:47] Where souls are hopeless, bring them eternal hope that no circumstance can take away.
[00:39:56] And, Lord, may we see it come from your very hand into our very life. We ask this in the great name of Jesus.
[00:40:04] Amen.
