By Faith

[00:00:02] Amen. Amen. Church, go ahead and be seated. Good morning, Christ Church. [00:00:08] Happy Priester to all of you. Look at your lovely faces. [00:00:13] You look good. Church, how we feeling this morning? [00:00:17] Amen. [00:00:18] Happy Priester. [00:00:21] Happy Palm Sunday to each and every one of you guys. As Tina said, my name is Javon. I reign all the way from old Brooklyn. And I'm excited to be here, excited to. To be present with all you amazing, amazing people. Man. Can we thank God for the blessing that he has just been so freely been giving to West Campus building a new building. [00:00:44] Thank God for the people that allow us to use this building. I mean, God is. God really likes you guys. [00:00:50] He really, really likes you guys. So I'm just so thankful to hear about all the great things and to be present and seeing them as well. But before we jump in today, will you bow your heads with me? Let's pray. Let's call on the Lord and pr. Dear Heavenly Father, sanctify us in your truth, for your word is truth. [00:01:10] We have our hope set on the living God today. Lord, teach us what it means to be people of faith. [00:01:19] The words of the apostles. We pray these words as well, increase our faith. [00:01:25] It's not done by our efforts, it's not done by how much we know, but it's done by your spirit. So may your spirit be present. [00:01:34] May your spirit guide us. May your spirit lead us and may you help us to draw nearer to you so that we can know what it looks like to be people of faith. [00:01:46] Father, there are so many needs in this room today. [00:01:50] I am just a man. [00:01:52] And these people, they don't need to hear charismatic words. [00:01:57] They need to hear from a perfect Savior, from a loving father, from a present Lord, and let him walk out saying, great is the Lord, for he is worthy to be praised. [00:02:09] And I will put my trust in him. So, Father, use me as your vessel. [00:02:16] Use me, Lord, so that when people hear me, they hear you through me. [00:02:22] Because we need you, Lord. Let the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. We pray this all in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It's in Christ's perfect name is who we pray. Amen, Amen and amen. Well, good morning once again, Priester. It is here, y'. All. Are you guys excited for it? [00:02:44] I remember years ago when Tina and I heard Chet bring up this great idea. Priester, we were like, so what is it again? [00:02:52] But hey, listen, y' all are still doing it, so it must be working, right? You know, And God's blessing it. And I'm excited to be here today. I want to bring to you a message that, a series we've been talking about over at Old Brooklyn. We've been walking through the Book of Hebrews. It's a New Testament letter that we find in the Scriptures. Walking through the Book of Hebrews talking about faith, right? Talking about faith. And the reason why we're doing this series is not just that we can have more knowledge of what faith means, but so that we can become people who walk in faith, so we can become people who become people who are trusting in God more and more. The goal of our series, the goal of today, isn't just to have a firm definition of what it means, but that we can experience God through it. So we can experience God through a life of faith. So we've been walking through that and we're on over there. We're preaching on week four. So I want to bring to you a message today talking about faith in a way that's practical, but in a way that's encouraging as well. Speaking of faith, if you think about it, every one of you, when you walked in this room, you exercised faith. And you might say to yourself, what does he mean? You sat down in your chairs. [00:04:15] Yeah. You know the one thing you didn't do when you walked in the room, you didn't inspect the legs and make sure the bolts were nice and tight, did you? [00:04:24] No. If you did, Bob Vandermark would have been coming to get you and would have had a conversation with you and escorted you out. It would have been a little bit weird. No. When you walked in, you simply saw the chair, you saw the place that you wanted to sit, and you trusted the chair enough to hold you. [00:04:44] You trusted it enough to rest your firm booty right on it. [00:04:51] That's what you did. [00:04:53] That's what you did. You exercised faith. And if you think about, if you think about this idea, we all, we exercise faith on a daily, right? For instance, we trust in highways and roadways to hold us. [00:05:09] We trust in doctors to treat us. [00:05:12] We trust in cars, unless you have a Ford. But we trust in cars to. What? [00:05:20] What? Did I say something wrong, man? Look, I don't know about you. Four Day never helped me out. So, you know, if you don't like it, you can email Chet. [00:05:32] He doesn't read his emails. [00:05:34] But if you think about it, we exercise faith on a daily. So the question isn't, friends, the question isn't, you know, do you have faith? [00:05:44] The real question is, where do you place your faith right? [00:05:49] Who do you ultimately trust? [00:05:52] And that's what we're gonna be discovering today, and that's what we'll be walking through today. [00:05:56] Faith is not just something that we do. What we're gonna learn is that faith is essential to experience a life with God. [00:06:06] It's essential to experience a life with God. And if you're a note taker, this is where we're going today. This is kind of been the main theme of our series out at o'. Br. And I want to bring it to you. And the way we can understand it is that faith, it is trusting God enough to build your life around what he says. [00:06:28] Yeah, faith, it is trusting God enough to build your life, to center your very life around what he says. Again, the goal today, the goal today isn't just so you can walk out of here and you can have a great definition of what faith means, but that you can become a person who lives faith every single day in the Lord. And so that's where we're gonna be going. And so that's where we're gonna be landing at. And today we're gonna be looking at a New Testament letter written by the author that we don't know who he is or who she is, we don't know who they are, but it's a letter. And it gives us a great way of how we can view it, but how we can start to walk in it as well. And it's in Hebrews chapter 11. And we're gonna start at ver. Hebrews chapter 11, verse one. And it reads like this. It says, now faith, faith. It is the assurance of things hoped for and it is the certainty of things we have yet seen. We're going to jump to verse 6. Verse 6 says this. In verse 6 it says, and without faith, it is impossible to please him, meaning God. [00:07:43] For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Verse 7. It goes on. He says, by faith, Noah, you know your Bible. Just talk about the Old Testament. By faith. Noah being warned by God concerning the events as yet unseen in irreverent fear and godly fear, some translations say, constructed an ark of the saving of his household. [00:08:13] Goes on. [00:08:15] And by this he condemned the world and he became the heir of the righteousness, heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. So here's what the author is doing. The author in verse one, he starts off and he talks to us and he presents to us kind of his way of how we can understand faith. And he says faith, right? In totality, faith, it is assurance. [00:08:42] Now, another way we can say this and maybe even says in the translation that you're using, I'm not sure, but faith, it is the confidence. [00:08:52] Faith, it is confidence. [00:08:55] It is confidence in things that are hoped for and the reality or the proof or the evidence of things not yet seen. Here's what the author wants us to learn. Here's what the author wants us to settle in when it comes to this particular passage. Faith. What is it? How do we understand? [00:09:13] Faith rests its ultimate confidence in who God is. [00:09:20] And it is fully convinced that God will do what he has promised. [00:09:26] That's what faith is. Faith is resting your ultimate confidence in who God is, the person of God, the character of God. [00:09:39] And because it finds its confidence in who God is, it can live with an expectation or a certainty that God will be who he says he will be. Isn't that awesome? Now, I love how he uses this word confidence, like this word confidence or assurance. Because if you think about it, or if we trace this word back to Hebrews 10, the chapter before, he's talking to a group of people who are losing confidence. [00:10:11] I don't have time to go into the grand detail of all of Hebrews and who he's writing to and what's going on. Just know life is lifing for them right now. [00:10:23] Life is hitting them, right? That imaginary bat, right? It's hitting them. And it's not just hitting them, it's hitting them quite often, right? It's one thing to go through something. [00:10:37] It's a whole nother thing to go through some things plural, right? Because when we get hit quite often, that's when our confidence begins to shrink. [00:10:51] Am I right, friends? [00:10:53] And there's one thing. There's one thing you can do without in life. There's a lot you can do without, but there's one thing that you need is confidence. [00:11:02] And so the author in this passage, he is trying to encourage this church. He is even trying to encourage us in this room today, 2,000 years later. He's trying to restore those who've lacked confidence or who are losing confidence. He's trying to restore their confidence, but he's not trying to restore it by looking at things that is happening, but he's trying to restore their confidence by looking upward, by looking upward to the person of God, right? And this is the ultimate purpose of why he is saying faith is the confidence in who God is. Now, if faith. Now I just want to say this. If faith is resting our ultimate confidence in who God is. [00:11:56] That means this. We gotta know God. [00:12:00] Because faith is more than just believing in God. [00:12:05] Faith is knowing God. [00:12:09] And the more you know God, the more you trust God. [00:12:15] Faith is more than just saying, I believe God exists. That's a great step. I love that. It's a great step. God will use that. But now it goes deeper. [00:12:27] Now it goes deeper. And for us, friends, for us, friends, for us to find our ultimate confidence in who the person of who God truly is, we must know who God is. [00:12:41] That's the goal. [00:12:43] We have to know him so we can trust him. [00:12:48] So we can trust him. And so the author, he says that faith, it is the confidence. Because at the end of the day, friends, you need confidence. And confidence can't be found in anything that is happening or anything that is in front of you. But confidence must ultimately be found in who is above you. He says, so faith. Faith, it is the assurance, the confidence of things that is hold for. But also, he says, it is the certainty of things not yet seen. [00:13:16] If you think about it, if you think about it naturally in life, we interpret our lives by what's happening. Am I right? [00:13:25] That's just how we are, right? We evaluate our very life by what's going on around us, which is just natural. It's the human tendency. It's kind of how we are wired. [00:13:36] But it's also kind of why we also lose confidence. [00:13:41] We evaluate our lives by the dysfunction that we find ourselves in. [00:13:47] We evaluate our lives by the broken relationships that exist around us. We evaluate our lives by the losses. We evaluate our lives by what we lack. We evaluate our lives by all the things that is seen. [00:14:02] But here's what the author's saying. The author says, hey, here's what faith is. Faith is learning to evaluate life through the lenses of who God is. [00:14:14] Faith, it is learning to evaluate all of what your life, what's going on and what's happening and what's coming. It's learning to evaluate all of that through what is true about God. [00:14:30] What is true about God. Some of you who are very familiar with me, you're probably looking like Javon's got glasses. When did he become the black Clark? Clint? Like, what happened here? [00:14:41] When did this happen? You know, and I get it, the first thing you thought about when you saw me, that's Superman. Yeah. No, it's just. No. [00:14:50] So, you know, I've been going through some things and, you know, I had to get some glasses. And I remember, you know, when I got the Glasses. [00:14:59] When I put them on, the world didn't suddenly change my ability to see it clearly, did you? [00:15:09] I noticed that the world didn't change my ability to see it clearly. [00:15:15] That's what changed. And faith doesn't change reality. I love what Charles Spurgeon says. Faith sees reality through the lens of what is true about God. It sees reality in a deeper, deeper way. [00:15:30] And friends, naturally, again, we, we will naturally interpret our lives by everything that is happening. But when we learn to look at the scope of our lives, when we take this 30,000 foot view and by faith and we learn to look at it through the lens of who God is within, that's when confidence is truly restored for us. [00:15:56] Faith and practice is living today as if God's promises are already true. [00:16:03] Faith treats the future as present and the invisible as seen. Why? [00:16:09] Because God said so. [00:16:12] Faith is finding confidence in God. Where's my confidence? My confidence isn't in my relationships. My confidence isn't in my finances. My confidence isn't in how well I'm like. My confidence is found in the true living God who knows me, who formed me, who created me, who was for me and who. [00:16:35] This is where my confidence ultimately lies. And that's where the author wants you to know. [00:16:45] Because the confidence that God gives to us, it impacts the way we live. [00:16:52] It impacts the way we live. Think about this, think about this, think about this. [00:16:56] Without a doubt. You know, there's one thing you know, there's one thing you know and you don't question is that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. [00:17:07] You are so certain it's going to happen, you plan for tomorrow. [00:17:13] Am I right? [00:17:15] If you're like me, you set out all your supplements the night before. [00:17:19] You know, I got to take my fish oil because iron deficiency is the greatest enemy for me right now. And. [00:17:25] Right. [00:17:26] You said because you're so certain tomorrow's coming, you're so convinced that tomorrow's gonna it's coming and you begin to plan for it. You know it's coming and therefore you live differently. [00:17:41] And that's friends. That's the kind of faith we have in God. [00:17:47] Faith lives today because it know God will be present tomorrow. [00:17:52] It lives today because it knows God's gonna be God tomorrow. [00:17:57] God's gonna be good tomorrow and God's gonna be good the next day and the day after that. And therefore, because I know God is in tomorrow, I can live by faith today. [00:18:08] That's what the author is giving to each and every one of us. [00:18:14] Faith is not blind. Trust Faith is not blind optimism, as some people may think, or as wishful thinking, but rather faith. God is the object of our faith. Notice that the author, he's trying to root them and trying to help them to see that the confidence or the trust is not in anything but God. [00:18:41] Because God is the object of our faith. Why? [00:18:44] Because faith is only as strong as the object that it rests on. [00:18:51] Because faith is only as strong as the object that it rests on. You know, for me, I think the one thing that gets me in trouble in my relationship with the Lord is that I think the Lord should be doing everything that I want. [00:19:08] And ultimately, ultimately, and I know you've heard this before because I know your pastor has said this, ultimately, I would say I put my faith in God, but really my faith is in my plan. [00:19:21] My faith is in my plans. [00:19:23] And the author helps you and I to see this. Faith is not in a plan. [00:19:27] It's not getting what we want. [00:19:30] But faith is in a person who is ultimately who we need. [00:19:37] Faith is not in a plan. It's not in getting whatever we want. It's not when everything goes my way. [00:19:42] It's not when everything is aligned up perfectly how I want to want it to be. It's not when I get everything that I want. It's not when all my prayers are answered. No. [00:19:52] It's in the person who is present and with me. That's where faith lies. [00:20:00] The author is telling us this, that faith, it looks like this faith says, God has spoken, therefore I will trust, because what he has said is enough. [00:20:16] God said, he's going to be your shepherd. [00:20:20] That's enough. [00:20:22] God said he will be your peace. [00:20:25] That's enough. [00:20:26] God said he will be present, and that is enough. God said he will be your shield. [00:20:31] That is enough. God said that he will be a mighty tower to whom you can run to and whom you can find refuge. You, Jen, Guess what, friends? That is enough. Faith lives by what is already revealed and what is true about God. [00:20:50] The faith says. The author says faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the certainty or the proof of the evidence of things not yet seen. But then he elevates it, and he elevates it. And the way he moves on. If you keep reading in the passage, if you keep reading in this particular chapter, this is known as the hall of Faith, next to Romans 8, probably the coolest chapter in the Bible, right? This is the hall of Faith. And what is the hall of Faith? He is taking Old Testament figures, Old Testament characters, because he just now gave us a description of what faith means. But now he's moving on to what does faith look like? [00:21:31] Right? Right. And now he's gonna transition not just the words that are spoken, but to a life that is lived. [00:21:39] And so he goes on and he brings up these Old Testament figures, and then right in the middle, he says something in verse six. Bring up verse six for them again, he says, and without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Let's stop there. [00:22:02] See, faith shifts again from not just the words that we say, from a life that we live. Faith moves from just saying, I trust God, to now saying, I walk with God. [00:22:18] So the author wants you and I to learn to gravitate to this point. Not just that we would be people who just know about it, but we would live it out. [00:22:30] Right? Because it's one thing to say. It's one thing to say God is in control, right? Or if we want to be more theological about it, God is sovereign. It's a whole nother thing. It's a whole nother story. It's a whole nother level to live as if that is true. [00:22:47] It's one thing to say God is in control, that God is good. And it's a whole nother thing to live as if that were true. [00:22:57] The other day, I was coming home from the grocery store, and I walk in from Aldi's. You know, Aldi's makes you pay for your bags, which is ridiculous, but. [00:23:05] Right. Shame on all these. I gotta pay a quarter for a cart. And now, you know. Anyway, so I walk in and I got all these bags. I got the milk and everything. And I'm sitting them down at the front door, and, you know, I'm bringing them in. And then my boys, some of you don't know, I got two boys. They are the most quiet kids ever, by the way. And they are. [00:23:27] And just joking, no. [00:23:29] And I bring in the groceries. And then one of the. One of my boys, the youngest one, you'll see him later on today, he's got the chipmunk cheeks. And he goes. And he's about to grab the groceries, and he goes to grab the heaviest. The heaviest groceries, and he says, da, Da, I got this. And he spits on his head. Don't ask me why. Spits on his hand, rubs his hand together, and he goes and he says, da, da, can you do this? [00:23:58] Right, Right? And it was a real funny moment, right? He had all this confidence in himself that he could lift it. [00:24:07] He had all this confidence that I got this and he didn't have it. [00:24:13] But I love. I love. In that moment, he exercised faith in his Father, who was strong enough, who was sufficient, right? He exercised faith enough to look at what he couldn't do, but to what God can do. [00:24:35] And friends, this is what a life of faith looks like. It's not found in what your ability, but it's found in God's greater ability. [00:24:43] It's finding true dependence on who he is. It is being rooted in saying to yourself, I am not strong enough. I am not wise enough. I do not have all the tools. I do not have what it takes. But you know who does? [00:24:58] The Lord, and he is willing and gracious, wants to give to me what I need so I can walk with him. Faith depends on God fully in life. [00:25:12] That's what faith is, not trusting in myself. It's not trying to get what I want. It's trusting in the one who is good. [00:25:22] And it's a faith that seeks God right now. Faith that seeks God. It doesn't seek God as a resource, but it seeks God as the source. Faith says this God, I'm not just coming to you for what you can give me. [00:25:38] I'm coming to you because you are what I need. [00:25:43] You are what I need. [00:25:46] Yes, Lord. I trust you can heal. I trust you can restore. I trust you can do all of this. But at the end of the day. Did you notice in verse six, bring up in verse six for them again. Verse six, verse six, verse six. In verse six, he says. He says, without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to him, draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards this word rewards. It's easy to read this passage and say, well, if I just draw near to God enough, he'll give me what I want. [00:26:13] No, this passage wants to speak to us. Not in a way that says, well, God's going to give us everything we want. [00:26:22] But if we draw near to him, he'll give us what we need. [00:26:25] And what do we need, friends? [00:26:28] Him. [00:26:31] He is the true reward. [00:26:34] God is the reward, friends. [00:26:37] He is the true treasure. [00:26:39] The true treasure isn't when I get what I want. The true treasure isn't when my prayers are answered. Do I believe God King? Yes, you better believe. I believe. You better believe. I will stand on that ground. You better believe. Yes, I believe all day long. But in the end, what I need is not an answ, but what I need. Is my heavenly Father near to me? [00:26:58] That's faith. [00:26:59] That's what it means to seek him more and more in our lives. He is the true reward. Which means this. Which means this. As we get to the end, as we close. You know, when preachers say that there's like 15 minutes left. So as we get to the end, there's one thing that helps us frame when we think about faith. When we think about walking with God. [00:27:25] Faith is more than just a crisis response. [00:27:31] It's the way you live. [00:27:34] You know, whenever I'm unfamiliar with a location. [00:27:37] Or how to get to somewhere and I'm driving, what do I do? I pull out my gps, pull out my gps, I put in the address. And if I gotta go there a couple more times, slowly but surely. I stop relying on the gps. Because I get familiar with the route. [00:27:56] And sometimes. Sometimes. And maybe this isn't for you, but maybe I'm just talking about me. [00:28:01] Sometimes I treat faith. I treat God as just a fire extinguisher. [00:28:08] When things are burning, that's when I'll run to you. [00:28:13] But see, faith. Faith. Here's what faith does. Faith doesn't just trust God with your difficulties. Yes, do that. Scripture invites us to do that. Faith doesn't just trust God with your difficulties. [00:28:25] Faith. Trust God with direction as well. [00:28:30] We don't need just God to fix our difficult moments. We need God's direction. [00:28:35] I need God's direction. Because here's the thing. When it comes to these two kids that I have. I'm not doing a very great job. But I need his direction when it comes to loving my wife. As Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. [00:28:49] I need his direction because I'm really good at making life about Javon. [00:28:54] And I need his direction to give me wisdom, to give me grace, to give me strength. To give me the encouragement to trust him in those moments. Faith doesn't just trust God with what's hard. [00:29:06] Is trust God to guide as well. [00:29:11] Trust God to guide as well. Well. And so the author, he wants to help you and I to understand what it means. Right? Right. What faith does, it seeks God. Right. Faith is what? It's confidence in God. [00:29:27] What does faith do? It seeks God. [00:29:30] And now he talks about what does faith look like? And we find that in verse seven, he brings up Noah. Anybody grow up in church? And you see all the cool, cute little stories about Noah and the Ark? You know, I get older and I read it. I'm like, this isn't a really cute story. [00:29:49] This is a Pretty interesting story, right? But Noah brings up Noah. I'm sorry, but the author brings up Noah to talk about how Noah lived faith. And the scripture says this by faith. Noah being warned by God. Back in Genesis 6, we find God seeing the world, and the world is full of wickedness. The world is full of evil because God is loving and God is just. And both of those come together. Not one is in the opposite. They don't contradict love and justice meets. God loves you. God loves so much that he will not let evil exist. [00:30:22] So God. So God comes to Noah and says, hey, I'm gonna bring a flood. [00:30:29] Bring a flood, devastation and all of that, right? And it's going to happen. Here's what I need you to do, Noah. I need you to build an ark, right? I need you to build an ark, and I need you to do this. And I need you to bring your family and I need you to bring the animals and all of that stuff, because I'm bringing judgment and all of that, right? That's the way the story goes. [00:30:50] And here's the truth, friends. [00:30:52] It took decades for it to rain. [00:31:00] Noah moved and trusted God, even though it had yet rained. [00:31:06] Because Noah saw the rain by faith. [00:31:10] And Noah built the ark. [00:31:13] Noah built this big old ark. Now, here's the thing about the ark, friends. It wasn't a weekend job. [00:31:21] He kept building even. Even. Even when it didn't rain, he kept building. [00:31:29] He kept trusting. Noah didn't move off what he can reason. [00:31:34] He just moved off what was revealed. [00:31:38] He didn't move off what he can fathom or what he can. He said, because God said this, therefore I will trust. [00:31:48] And he kept building. I preached this out at Old Brooklyn, and I told them how long it probably took for it to happen. Somebody came up to me and said, that's a lot of faith. [00:31:57] I said, yeah, because Noah saw that God was trustworthy. [00:32:04] He saw that God was enough. And he kept building and building and building. Because Noah saw the rain by faith. I love the words of Oswald Chambers. He says this, and it's very wonderful. He says, faith doesn't always know where it's being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading. [00:32:27] And I love what Charles Spurgeon says to add to this. [00:32:32] He says, faith isn't trusting God to get our way. [00:32:38] Faith is trusting God because he is the way. [00:32:43] Faith isn't trusting God to get our way, but it's trusting God because he is the way. And Noah displayed this. [00:32:53] Noah didn't delay. [00:32:55] He didn't stop. And ask for more evidence. [00:32:59] He didn't stop and do any of that. He just kept building and building, even though it had yet rained. He kept building and trusting and building and trusting. He acted because he took God at his word. And his obedience proved it. And his obedience, it was costly, probably cost him money. [00:33:19] It probably cost him labor. [00:33:21] Heck, it probably even cost him a reputation. And it probably cost him opportunity and all of that. Because obedience always carries a cost. [00:33:32] It always carries a cost. [00:33:35] And trusting God to others, it may not make sense. [00:33:41] To others, it may feel like it's a waste of time. To others, it may feel like it's just getting you nowhere. [00:33:48] And it may cost you, may cost you popularity, it may cost you reputation, may cost you. But here's the truth, friends. [00:33:57] The reward is greater than the cost. [00:34:02] And that reward, the Lord himself to Noah, it cost him ridicule. [00:34:13] People said, why do you keep trusting? It's haven't even rained yet. [00:34:18] He says, because God, because God said it. [00:34:24] Therefore, I will trust. [00:34:28] Here's the thing, friends, and I, and I want to make this connection clear. [00:34:32] Noah built a wooden ark. And this ark would save his family and the animals. [00:34:42] But 2,000 years ago, there was a man who walked into Jerusalem who went onto a wooden cross. [00:34:54] And this salvation, this rescue, isn't just for a few, but it's for all. [00:35:06] Because Jesus is the greater Noah. [00:35:10] Jesus is the greater Noah. In this story, Noah was just a foreshadow of what is to come, of what is to come. See, for Noah, his obedience, his faith, it cost him ridicule. [00:35:24] For Christ, his obedience, it cost him his life. [00:35:29] It cost him his life. [00:35:32] So, friends, if you need a reason to trust God again today, don't look to your circumstances. [00:35:41] Don't look to the uncertainty. [00:35:44] Don't look to even yourself. [00:35:46] If you need a reason to find confidence and trust in God again, look to the greater Noah, Jesus Christ. [00:35:58] Look to Christ. [00:36:00] Look to him. [00:36:02] And today, maybe our encouragement and what we need is for God to fix our lens, for God to fix our focus, for God to fix our perspective, for God to fix our way of how we are interpreting life. Not by what we're seeing, of what is happening, but by who is good. [00:36:21] And God totally displayed his perfect goodness through his son, the better Noah, the one who rescues and the one who saves. [00:36:39] Let's pray. [00:36:42] Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you would give us a faith that says because of what you say, because of what you promised, because of what you revealed, I will trust and I will rest my confidence on the one who is competent and I will rest my confidence on the one who was able and I'm arrest my confidence and my trust in the one who saves Jesus Christ. You are confidence. [00:37:22] Even when life is life and the things aren't going the way we we envisioned, we still look to you. [00:37:37] We fix our eyes on you for you are the author and the finisher of our faith. [00:37:44] We fix our eyes on you and we run this race with endurance. [00:37:50] We lay aside all the things that try to trip us up and we do that by looking to you. [00:38:01] Help us. I pray. [00:38:02] Guide us. I pray. [00:38:04] Give us faith. [00:38:07] Give us faith to trust you again and again. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. We can have faith today because you will be in tomorrow as well. [00:38:19] We love you. [00:38:22] Most importantly, we need you. [00:38:25] Help us. Guide us. [00:38:27] Senior Son's perfect name is who we pray. Amen.