Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I love. Ooh, there we go.
[00:00:02] I'm back. I love the Christmas season. As Tina said, we have so many great opportunities to invite someone with you, whether it's a Christmas concert, winter wonderland, Sunday, Christmas Eve services. Don't come alone. All right? Bring family, bring friends. What a great opportunity to share the love of Christ this season. So. Well, today we're going to continue talking about the Christmas story. But before we do, would you bow your heads in prayer with me, Father? Thank you, Lord, for this season. Thank you for all that you teach us and more importantly, all that you've done for us in it. Father, today I pray that as we face the problems in our life, that we would walk with you through them. I pray, Father, that you would show us your trustworthiness, your wisdom and your strength. And I pray, Lord, that we would willingly and wholly follow you in the challenges of our life. Bless us today, Lord. Make your word clear to us, speak to our hearts, strengthen us with faith. And we ask all this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
[00:01:17] Well, I don't know about you, but the Christmas season is great. But sometimes there's also problems that come with it.
[00:01:27] And so sometimes you have sort of this mixed sense of excitement about what's coming and, you know, the joy of the season. But then you also feel like sometimes the financial stress of the season, we can worry about that, or sometimes the relational difficulties that can come with it. And today what I want to talk about is the problems of Christmas. Now, I know most of you, again, you probably don't have any problems here.
[00:01:56] That's really our Thursday night service or 11 o'clock service. This is like the, you know. But if you do have problems and if you are struggling through it, then you're in the right place today because we're going to talk about how God works through the problems in our lives, how God uses them for his glory and to guide us and to shape us. So we're gonna pick up the Christmas story at Luke chapter two. We've been reading a different part of it each week, and we're gonna pick up here at Luke 2. And let me read it to you here. It says this. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. Now at this time, he is the Roman Emperor. He is the most powerful person in the world. And he sent out a decree that all should be registered. In other words, it was a census that was going to be taken.
[00:02:51] And this was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.
[00:03:35] Now, when you first read this story, it reads very, just straightforward, just kind of some historical data and just sort of just, hey, these are the events that happen. But beneath the surface of the story is actually a lot of problems, a lot of difficulties.
[00:03:57] And when we read the other account of this in the book of Matthew, which is another biography of Jesus, we get even more of how difficult all these events were for Joseph and Mary. And so this first Christmas, even though God was doing one of the most amazing things that has ever happened in all of human history, there were still a lot of problems that were present. And so today I want to talk about walking with God through our problems. Now, this first Christmas, it was surrounded by problems, and I'm going to share some of them with you today. But I just want to point out this one fact that life, and you may not know this life is filled with problems.
[00:04:46] Have you learned that yet?
[00:04:48] And you figure out one set of problems and then you're presented with a whole new set.
[00:04:55] And it kind of keeps going, doesn't it? And I think if we're not careful, sometimes we can nurture this idea in our heart that if I can just like, get my schedule good enough, get my diet good enough, get, you know, my home. Exactly. Get work enough, then I can create a life that is mostly problem free.
[00:05:20] But I will tell you, you can't do that.
[00:05:23] And part of the reality of this world is that we live in a broken world.
[00:05:30] And when you read the pages of scripture, the pages of scripture are incredibly realistic.
[00:05:36] They don't sugarcoat it, say, this world, it's broken. The world itself is broken. And here's some more bad news. You and I are broken.
[00:05:46] We make bad decisions, we hurt people, we go the wrong way. And because of all of this, it means that there will always be problems and challenges in our life, even when God is working like in this moment here. And the problems actually are not necessarily the problems, but it's how we choose to respond to them.
[00:06:13] And there's a lot of unhealthy ways we can go. And maybe some of you identify with some of these. But when life gets hard, we can just retreat from it all and try to create, like, this cocoon of safety where nothing can get in and nothing can go out. But the problem is we end up cutting ourselves off from the people that love us and from the people that God wants us to love. And we end up cutting ourselves off from God's wisdom and help. And it actually creates even more problems. Or sometimes when we face a lot of problems, we can try and numb those problems.
[00:06:51] We can eat a lot of sugary food. It's one of my favorite strategies. Tell you, it's not a good one, but I find myself always wanting to go to it. We can numb ourselves with alcohol. We can numb ourselves with drugs. We can numb ourselves with Netflix.
[00:07:09] We can numb ourselves with social media. Right? But what are we doing?
[00:07:14] We're trying to deal with the problems in our life, but in dealing with them that way, what do we end up doing? We just make more problems for ourselves. Right?
[00:07:23] We can avoid them. But here's the deal. What we're going to see today is there's a better way than any of those options. And there is a way to walk with God through them. Because the presence of problems in your life does not mean the absence of God.
[00:07:42] Oh, man, life is hard. That means God must have abandoned me. Well, that doesn't mean that at all. This Christmas story was hard, and God was right in the center of it.
[00:07:54] And one of the confusing things about life is that sometimes you'll be exactly where God wants you to be. And it will be hard and there will be problems. But you know what? The problems are not the problem, because God is present within them. And today, if you're coming into this room and you're like, man, I do feel the weight of some of the problems in my life. Number one, no, you're not alone here. Amen. I mean, if we're all honest, isn't every one of us coming in with something today? Isn't every one of us? There's something that weighs on our heart, whether it's finances or relationships or our own health or things that we're struggling in our mind, in our spirit. That's part of this difficult journey of life. But the beauty of today and the beauty of what we see in the story is that God uses them. And God uses them to prepare our hearts and our lives for his purpose and his glory. And we can learn to walk with him through it. So let's talk about these Problems in this text. Here's the first one. It's the problem of perception. The problem of perception. Now, Matthew tells us more about this, but last week we talked about that scene, if you remember, where the angel shows up to Mary and says, you are gonna have God's son. And Mary's like, all right, this is crazy, but I'm a servant of the Lord. And then at some point she went back to her fiance and had a conversation with him. And could you imagine how that would go? Like, I just, I can't. I was trying to just think about how crazy this would be. And Mary would go up to Joseph. They're engaged. Joseph at this point doesn't know anything about this. And so she goes to Joseph and at some point says, hey, I'm pregnant. But it's okay because it's from God and his mind. He's like, what?
[00:10:05] I mean, how do you prep? What are you saying? I thought I knew you. What is going on? Can you imagine what he's feeling? And so Matthew tells us that when he found out he was going to end the relationship, he was going to break off their engagement. And Matthew tells us that Joseph was an honorable man. So he didn't want to humiliate her. He didn't want to make a big deal out of it. He was just going to do it in a very quiet way. And if you're Joseph, can you blame him? I couldn't. I mean, it would make. Because how he saw the situation was that at some point Mary wasn't honest or faithful to him and certainly all, probably his life experience would have made that make sense.
[00:10:53] But then Joseph goes to bed and he falls asleep and he has a dream. And in this dream, God speaks to him and he says what Mary is true.
[00:11:07] And this is an unbelievable, miraculous, eternity changing thing that's happening. And so Joseph wakes up and he has a completely new and open heart towards it now. And what I love about that moment is it shows me that in your life and my life. See, one of the things that we need God to constantly do is to change our perspective.
[00:11:32] See, we see what we're going through one way. Joseph saw it one way, but he did not see it from God's perspective.
[00:11:41] And until God showed up and spoke into his life, only then did it look completely different. This problem of this hurt and broken relationship all of a sudden was completely different. And I think you and I, we need times where God breaks through into our lives and gives us a new perspective. I've been reading this great book this week it's called Leadership not by the Book. Leadership not by the book. And it's the story of Hobby Lobby. Any Hobby Lobby fans? Yeah. All right. Yeah. And so the Hobby Lobby, probably many of you know, but they're a Christian organization and they, they operate in a very different way than most businesses. And this is kind of the story of why and how they do it. And David Green is the guy who started Hobby Lobby. And when he started this business, he just. His main goal was to honor God in this business. And so he's like, I'm gonna just approach it from a completely faith based approach. And it led him down this certain road, this way of doing business. And he has all these cool stories, but one of my favorite was is that as the company was growing, they did this big employee meeting. You know, tons of employees there. And David Green, he said, you know, I felt like the most important thing I could do for my employees is tell them about my faith. So at the end of the meeting, he got up and he shared his faith. He talked about who Christ was, and he invited people at this company meeting to commit their lives to Jesus Christ. And 15 people did. And as soon as the meeting was over, his lawyer, the company lawyer ran up to him. And he could tell. He's very concerned. He's like, hey, I like what you're doing. I appreciate it, but that could cost us an incredible amount of money. This could turn into some lawsuits, you know.
[00:13:42] And David Green said to him, he said, yes, you're right, but what is the price tag on an eternal soul?
[00:13:50] And I was like, what a great perspective. I love this guy.
[00:13:54] And it was all kind of things like that where what he approached in his work life, he invited God to give him a different perspective. And it radically changed what he did in those moments. And church, we all need that now. Joseph and Mary had the benefit of an angel showing up and giving them that perspective.
[00:14:21] My guess is I could be wrong. But my guess is that's probably not gonna happen to you.
[00:14:27] And if it does, I think that's awesome and I'd love to hear about it, but I'm guessing not. But here's the reason why. And believe it or not, you actually have something better than that.
[00:14:41] See, God can speak to us every day through the scriptures, church.
[00:14:47] See, Christians believe this is not just a book like any other, but it is God revealing himself to us.
[00:14:58] And so when we read the pages of Scripture, it's like we're having a conversation where God is pouring into us what we need to know about life.
[00:15:11] And I can't tell you how many moments in my life I was facing something and I said, God, would you speak to me through your word?
[00:15:23] And I read it. Maybe it was that day, maybe it was a week, maybe it was two weeks later. But there have been so many key moments in my life where God made a scripture leap off the pages. And I was like, I know this was written 2000 and 3000 years ago, but they wrote that for me because that's just how much it spoke into my life. And that's why I encourage you so much to every day carve out time to read the scripture and to open yourself to God's guidance and God's wisdom and God's challenge and God's and all of that through it. Now, if you're skeptical of the Bible or you're like, Chet, I think you're really overplaying your hand, then let me give you a nice friendly challenge here. And here's the friendly challenge.
[00:16:21] Commit yourself to reading it for like, let's say a week, just so you can read like one chapter you can read just a little bit, you decide and as you read it, just say, God, if you're real, speak to me and try to do it as open minded and open hearted as you can and see what happens. And here's what I think you'll find. God will speak to you and it will give you a new way of maybe looking at understanding, responding to what you're going through. God did it for Joseph, he did it for Mary and he continues to do that today. Now here's the other problem of perception. One of the interesting things in these verses that we read is in the census, Joseph brings Mary along.
[00:17:10] Now that might not seem strange at first, but it actually is a little strange because she would not have been required to go.
[00:17:19] It was a census for Joseph's side of the family and it was a unique one where he had to go back to his hometown. And again, she would not have normally went. And at this point she's pretty far along and not probably the best time to make a trip like that. Amen, ladies who have been pregnant, you're not looking to do that kind of thing at that stage.
[00:17:45] And so there's a couple reasons why and we don't know for sure. So these are a little bit of speculation here. But I think it's just worth noting for a second that the one reason is that Joseph just wanted to be with her and be present when she was born. And that could make some sense. But the other reason is that he didn't want to leave her in this situation where people were probably slandering them and not believing her story. Pretty hard one to believe.
[00:18:20] And he didn't want to leave her alone in the midst of all that negative reaction that they were probably getting. Because although she says this is the work of God and God is behind that, we see through the pages of Scripture that people didn't believe that even when Jesus was an adult.
[00:18:39] They say to them, at one point, they say, hey, we know who our dad is, but we don't know who yours is. And so we know that that idea was clearly very present even 30 some years later.
[00:18:55] And so here's what I think this might show to us today, is that sometimes when you follow God's purpose and call in your life, sometimes you need to break away from the crowd.
[00:19:12] And you need to be willing to pay the price of people talking behind your back, of people saying nasty things and thinking nasty things. And sometimes you need to find your identity not in the people around you and what they think, but in the calling and purpose of God. You know what Mary and Joseph do? They just keep doing what God asks them to do. And you know, that's the best thing you can do.
[00:19:42] When people, maybe you're following Christ and all your friends are like, man, what's up with you? What happened to you? Where's this old person? Well, that old person is dead. They died with Christ. There's a new person now. And you begin to walk with them. Yeah, they might not always receive it, but here's what I believe. If you are willing to do it, then you are a person that God can use in this world as a leader.
[00:20:11] You are a person that God can use in this world to influence others in a positive, in a way that calls them to you. With me on this church.
[00:20:25] And Mary and Joseph seem to do this. Now, there's a second big problem in this, and this is the problem of darkness. Now, Matthew really explains this. And the problem of darkness is this. When Jesus is born, there is a ruler named Herod.
[00:20:45] And Herod is the one that the Romans have put in charge of this area where Jesus was born and where his families lived. And you probably know the story that when Herod was king, there these three magi, the three wise men, you know, these guys, they came to Herod and they're kind of an interesting story in themselves.
[00:21:11] I won't get into all of it. I'm running out of time here. But it's a neat story, how they got there. And they come to Herod and they say, we've seen this star, we've seen this sign, and we want to go and worship the king, the new and the coming king.
[00:21:30] And Herod is very troubled by those words because Herod is king in his own mind.
[00:21:41] And Herod hears that. And Herod's like, say again, King.
[00:21:47] Excuse me, did you see my card right there? It said, king of Judea. That's me, son.
[00:21:54] And the magi are like, no, it's not you, but we're gonna go find him, but Herod. And history tells us actually a lot about Herod. Herod is this very shrewd leader.
[00:22:08] He's very politically savvy, if you will.
[00:22:13] And so Herod, he kind of got himself into this position. He had to make a lot of very savvy and shrewd moves. Herod is also, we learn from history that other family members that he felt threatened by to his throne, he just killed them. And there's historical record of this guy, just so that's how much this guy wanted power, authority and role. He was not a good man by any means, but he was very powerful and he was very savvy. And he also was a great builder. In fact, if you go to around Jerusalem and all this area today, some of the great sites that you will visit are things that Herod built. So even the temple at this time, Herod had sort of rebuilt it and expanded it and made it stunningly beautiful. This guy was skilled, he was shrewd, but he was nasty.
[00:23:18] And so the three wise men say, well, we want to find this king. And Herod very upset by this. But again, the guy shrewd. So he says, oh, you know what?
[00:23:29] There's a new king. I'm very interested in this.
[00:23:34] You know, in fact, when you find him, would you let me know so I can go worship him too?
[00:23:43] And we call them the three wise men. But they were about as naive as it gets because they seemed to believe him. Like, oh, yeah, Herod, we'll come back and tell you. Yeah, no problem. Should we text you what's the best way?
[00:23:58] And so they go, they find him, they worship Jesus, and then they're warned because they need an outside warning not to go back. And then Herod does one of the most ugly things in all the scripture, and he massacres all the babies, all the male babies in that area in Bethlehem.
[00:24:23] And how dark is that church? Does it get any darker than that? How horrific is that?
[00:24:29] How stunningly Evil is that. And this is again where I say the story of Christmas. There's a lot of problems around it, because when there is that grade of light that comes into the world, light also casts shadows, doesn't it?
[00:24:49] And have you ever found in your life that as soon as you take a step towards God, all of a sudden you face all this resistance?
[00:25:00] Why is that? It's because of this reality. Cause there are spiritual powers at work. Evil is real. We don't like to think about it, we don't like to talk about it, but it's real. And it is against the purpose of God in your life. And so we see this horrible circumstance, and of course, God leads them out of it, and God leads them to safety. But I think here's the lesson for us today.
[00:25:30] And you're not gonna like this. So you ready for it?
[00:25:34] There is a Herod within all of us.
[00:25:38] There's a little Herod within all of us, and it does not wanna give up its throne.
[00:25:44] There's a Herod within all of us that says, all right, Jesus may be the king, but I'm the king. Today I'm running the show around here. And we want to run God out of our life.
[00:25:57] We want to respond to him with hostility. And one of the great challenges of Christmas is it challenges the authority of your life today. Who owns your life, us or God? Well, Christmas shows us God does. Also shows us. We don't always like that. We don't always respond that there can be a Herod within us. But, church, I'm telling you, one of the healthiest things that can happen to us is when we begin to look at our lives and say, lord, this life isn't mine, it's yours. You're the real king. When you look at all the stuff you have and you say, God, this isn't mine, it's yours. Lord. This family that you've given me, they're not mine. They're ultimately yours. This church isn't mine. It's yours. And when everything in our life, when we stop seeing ourselves as the king and we start seeing Jesus as the king and ourselves as people that he's just loaned all this stuff out to, we begin to approach life very, very differently. This all isn't mine. I know we take credit for a lot of stuff, but you know who is behind the good stuff in your life? It is God. And it is his. And we're accountable and we're responsible. But don't ever think it's yours. The air in your lungs that is the gift and grace of God and our life is his. And the sooner we realize that, the better.
[00:27:35] And the, the more we resist that, the uglier it gets. And man, did Herod resist that. And man, did that get ugly. Not only was it ugly in his own life, it was ugly in the life of others. You want to make the problems in your life worse? Keep trying to run your own life.
[00:27:56] You want to make the problems in your life worse? Keep sitting on that throne, keep resisting, keep fighting against God's way and God's authority. And you know, the best day in our life is where we just say, all right, Lord, it's all yours, it's all yours. And we give it to him. And here's the last problem, the problem of Providence. Now, Providence is a, it's a theological word, but the idea of it is actually pretty simple. But let me give you a definition of it if we got it. Come on. Providence, definition.
[00:28:32] There it is. God, the great creator of all things, does uphold, direct, dispose and govern all creatures, actions and things from the greatest, even to the least, by his most wise and holy Providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy. Got all that?
[00:28:57] It's actually, it's very wordy, but it's actually really simple. Here's what it means. Your life is not an accident.
[00:29:05] The events of your life are not an accident.
[00:29:08] God is at work, and God is in control. And God is at work. And he's moving your life in my life towards an end that will glorify him, that will show his goodness, his justice, his wisdom, and his love. But here's the challenge of Providence. God can be working in your life in a very powerful way, and it doesn't look good to you.
[00:29:37] God can be aligning his purpose and doing his work just like Christmas.
[00:29:44] But then you have the horrible events of Herod, then you have the frustrating events of Joseph, and it all can look very, very confusing. In fact, if we just think about this story for a second, Joseph is subjected to this census. Caesar Augustus. Now Caesar Augustus fairly recently had become this great emperor and ruler of the Roman Empire. And he had expanded it and he had consolidated power. There was a bloody civil war before him, and he had worked through all that and made it bigger and stronger. And then he called forth a census. Now why did he call forth a census? Because a big empire has a big budget.
[00:30:32] And why do you do A census for taxation, so that people can give more money to the government. See, governments really don't change that much, do they?
[00:30:44] Dude? The eds, they're all pretty. What do they want? They want your money. And the bigger they get, the more that they want. And this is what the scenario was. So he calls the census. Now, if I'm Joseph, I'm annoyed because people in the ancient world didn't like taxes. Is it fair to say people today don't like taxes? Amen. That's annoying. Hey, I'm about to have my first kid, and great. Now Caesar Augustus going to tax me out of this place. You know, that doesn't feel good. Budget's already a little bit tight. We know that Joseph and Mary are poor.
[00:31:21] They don't have much as it is.
[00:31:24] And now they have that. And then what we learn is that normally when a census takes place, they come to your house.
[00:31:32] And today, maybe some of us, we've gone through censuses, and they come and they get your information, but they come to where you live. But the reason it's different in this story is because Herod knew that the people would not like it happening this way. So he tried to sweeten it up by getting them to go to their hometown. And it was. It was a ploy to make it a little bit easier for the people to receive this because he knew it would be bad news. So now Joseph has to go back to his hometown. He has to go for these reasons. He's got to bring Mary. Mary's pregnant. Then they finally get there, and there's no room in the inn.
[00:32:20] Now, we don't know where exactly Mary gave birth. Some speculate that it was kind of like a cave. Others speculate it would have been like the first floor of an ancient home where all the animals were.
[00:32:35] But I have been in the room three times for a birth, and I don't think Mama would be happy with either of those options.
[00:32:47] Neither of those are really comforting. Neither of those are really ideal. And then I love this, that they laid Jesus, baby Jesus, in a manger. Doesn't that sound so sweet? A manger. But do you know what a manger is? It's a feeding trough.
[00:33:08] And so that's where the animals would have had their food and eaten from.
[00:33:14] But calling it a manger is way better. Amen.
[00:33:19] But your newborn baby in there, these are just frustrating circumstances. You look at these circumstances, and it would be hard to believe that God is doing this great, incredible thing that the King of the universe.
[00:33:38] We're gonna Say, oh, that feeding trough doesn't have as much slop in it as this other one. Let's put them there.
[00:33:48] That just is crazy, isn't it? But yet God was exactly fulfilling his purpose.
[00:33:58] Bethlehem. Joseph wouldn't have went to Bethlehem except for the census, except for the way that Herod chose to run it, except for all these events that seemed so random and frustrating and disruptive and interruptive, and yet the purpose of God was in them all. And church, here's what I know. God is going to unfold his plan in your life, and it's not going to look a shred like you think it should. Do you hear that? God is going to unfold his plan in your life and you're going to have interruptions that you step back and you say what is going on?
[00:34:42] And you're going to have disruptions in it where you are, like, so frustrated with how it's happening, but yet it's happening according to God's providential purpose.
[00:34:58] And so what do we learn about this?
[00:35:01] Here's what I think we learn. I want to hold my expectations for how God's plan should unfold in my life very loosely. I want to hold those loosely.
[00:35:16] So many people, they walk away from faith because they say, well, God didn't answer this prayer. Here's the problem with that. He's the God of Providence.
[00:35:28] Your prayer may be wrong.
[00:35:30] It may be off. You're holding too tightly to how you think God should work. And every time you hold too tightly to that, you're going to miss him.
[00:35:41] Because he can't be predicted. He can't be controlled.
[00:35:46] He can't just go down to the size of our perspective. He's always bigger than that. So we need to hold that loosely. The highs and lows of life, we need to keep a level head.
[00:36:02] But here's what we need to hold really tightly.
[00:36:05] That there is a God who loves us behind it all.
[00:36:09] That I don't know the how and the when. I don't know how God is going to work through every stage of my life. I don't know when God is going to work.
[00:36:19] I don't know what his schedule is. I don't know what his timeline is. I don't know what his method is. But here's what I do know. He is working. And it is for my good and his glory.
[00:36:34] And if I can hold on tightly to that, I can navigate the challenges of Providence. You with me on this, church?
[00:36:46] I was going to the tool store this week and Emery, my oldest, she Loves to be my helper. Told you that before.
[00:36:56] Enneagram people. I think she's gonna be an Enneagram too, you know, Anyway, and she loves to help. And she was like, all right, I wanna go to the store with you and I wanna help you. And I was going to buy a wrench there that I needed. Very handy guy. He's doing some high level stuff.
[00:37:16] Yeah, that's right, Lynn. You heard that.
[00:37:20] And so we went to the store and, you know, I was kind of in a rush because she was coming, then I had to get her back for school, get lunch, you know, all those things. So I'm probably, like many of us perpetually in a rush. So I'm like darting through the aisles, trying to find what I need. And I was darting through the one aisle and Emory said. She said, dad, slow down.
[00:37:44] I'm your helper.
[00:37:47] And I was like, you're right, babe, I'm sorry.
[00:37:52] Because, you know, honestly, the most important thing to happen that day was to be present with her.
[00:37:59] But I love that language. It just. I've been thinking about it this week. Slow down. I'm your helper.
[00:38:07] And I thought that the problems that we're facing today.
[00:38:12] Could we just take a moment and slow down in our hearts and minds and realize God is our helper, but in the greatest and most real and most powerful and most significant way? Can we just slow down just right now in our hearts and minds and in your heart of hearts? Would you whisper to God and say, lord, I want to walk through this problem with you?
[00:38:44] Lord, you are my helper.
[00:38:47] You are the one I trust. You are the one that has the wisdom that I need, that has the direction that I need, that has the strength that I need, that has all that I need. Lord, would you help me to walk with you through this? Would you just whisper that in your heart in this moment? Lord, I want to walk through it with you. Because here's what I know. He is trustworthy, he is faithful. He won't fail you. Let's pray. Father.
[00:39:20] I thank you, Lord, that in the craziness, the difficulty, the pain of life, Lord, we can have confidence that you are at work.
[00:39:33] Father, we don't have to understand everything. We just have to understand your character.
[00:39:40] And I pray, Lord, that you could impress it upon our hearts today that we could see, Lord.
[00:39:49] Yeah, we're all caring. We're all facing some problems today. But more important than that, we have the God who is in control of all things.
[00:40:00] We have the God who came and broke into our world to be one of us. And Father, I pray our hearts could just respond in trust and commitment to you today. Father, we want to walk with you through our problems. We don't want to avoid them. We don't want to numb them. We don't want to make them worse.
[00:40:20] We want to walk with you. It might be what you need to prepare our hearts for what you want to do. Help us in this. Bless us in this. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
