Keep Focus on the Journey

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

This morning, we continue our series on the journey. The journey is one large extended metaphor, really to help us look at all of our spiritual journeys. What is it to follow Jesus? What does that look like over the span of a life? We've talked about how many people have sought to capture this. You know, most famously, John Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress, right? In Pilgrim's Progress, it's this extended metaphor to talk about how somebody walks along with the Lord throughout an entire lifetime. But what we are trying to do, we're actually using a kind of a camping metaphor. What we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out how do we know where we are right now, spiritually? How do we know what we're ready for? How do we know what we're not ready for? What is progress on our journey? What is progress in our spiritual life look like? When I talk to people, I ask them how they're doing spiritually

and most of them do not know. They have no way to tell. They have no kind of inclination. They don't understand enough to have a sense of the whole to figure out where they are or where they need to be. And so we live, most of us, if we're on this journey, we live with the sense of looming doubt, this aching guilt that either we should be further along or that we took a left turn here, we should have taken a right, now we can't undo that and we don't really know. So what I really want to do as we look at scripture, as we continue to do this, really to be able to give you tools to understand where you are and to understand what that next step can be, what it can look like. So we've talked about the journey in different sets of items. And so today, I want to actually categorize those items. We have personal items, right? So we've been talking about a passport and a compass. So

your passport, Jesus gives you your passport when you say yes to following Him. Okay, so you're in, you're on the journey when you say yes to the Lord. And then our compass is for us to know how, like we're listening to the Spirit, right? So we're making progress by listening to the Spirit. For group items, we've talked about a map. Like, what does it look like? What's the general layout of following Jesus? What can we expect? What does it look like? The robe connects us all. And then our backpack has items in it for other people. Okay. It's specific items that are specific to us that we have in order to serve other people, to fight on their behalf, to nurture them, to help them grow. And so last week we kind of shifted gears. We started talking about what other people needed. We talked about packing items on our journey for other people that we meet on the

journey. So we talked about packing firewood and building campfires. And that we build our campfires close to our tents. We build our campfires so that people can sit at them and we can talk about the fire, we can talk about the Lord. And so when we are packing all of that, when we are helping not just ourselves, not just our group, but helping other people, that's where we're going to be staying today and next week. And the last week, we're going to talk about a sleeping bag. I mean, are you excited or what? We're talking about a sleeping bag. I actually, I went camping this weekend and I went camping without a sleeping bag. We thought that we had one more sleeping back than we had. So I thought, man, this is going to be great. So I was on this little puff air mattress thing, you know, and so it was comfortable. And at the beginning of the night, we went to bed about 11.30.

At the beginning of the night, it was fine. I mean, the air was great. It was normal. I was just in like t-shirt and shorts, and I'm just like, this is great. And a little bit later, I had about four layers of clothes on. I had taken my pajama bottoms and put them on like a Snuggie, like around my arm, so that I was just warm. Sleeping bags are really good to have. I will probably not tell that story whenever we talk about sleeping bags. However, sleeping bags are good. We're going to be talking about that today. We're not going to be talking about sleeping bags. We're going to be talking about binoculars. The next item on our journey is for binoculars because sometimes our journey can become exceedingly difficult. Our spiritual journey with the Lord can become exceedingly difficult. And it's hard to talk about this directly, so I'm going to be a little more indirect. And I'm going to say that there are things in our lives

that we cannot know unless we have lived it. There are things in our lives we cannot know unless we've lived it. You can see this in sports. So the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago Cubs baseball team, They won back-to-back World Series titles in 1907 and 1908. And I'm sure in 08 and 07 of 1900, people were thinking, man, we've got a dynasty going on. And then 107 years later, into their drought, they didn't win another championship again until 2016. 107 years, the Chicago Cup went without winning a World Series. It was the longest championship drought in baseball. And when they finally won it in 2016, there were 90-year-old men and women that had been cheering for the Chicago Cubs their entire lives. And the cameras, because they're the cameras, they're panning to all these people. I mean, these grown men, these 90-year-old men that are probably finding wars are crying

because they've waited that long for the cubbies to win the pennant, okay? They've waited that long to see it happen. We cannot imagine, we cannot imagine what they felt like. We can't, there's no way. We can't even get mentally wrap our minds around it that they've cheered for a baseball team for 90 years, probably since they were a kid, and they finally saw them win it after 90 something years. You can also see it, so you see it in sports, You also see it in towns, many, and I hear this probably weekly. I remember when Burleson was a really small town. I hear it all the time. I remember whenever it was, so here's to put it in perspective. From the year 2000 to the year 2014, Burleson's population doubled. From 2000 to 2014, Burleson's population doubled. It went from 21,000 to 42,000. That's a rate of about 4.5% per year. 4.5% growth per year. Now, there are just a tick over 50,000 people

living within the city limits. And just as a show of hands, how many moved to the Burleson slash Crowley area between 2000 and 2014? Okay. How many moved here before that? Okay. So a lot of you just don't live in Burleson or Crowley. Okay, that's good. If you have lived in Burleson your whole life, you've seen it grow from this little two-light town, so cute, into now what many of those people would describe as a monstrous, metropolis, big city. You've seen it grow from this little thing to this really big thing. You cannot duplicate that unless you've lived it. You can't know. I can't know what it's like to have grown up in Burleson. I didn't grow up in Burleson. I don't know what it's like to see the town change. I've seen towns change, but not like that. Not here, not Burleson. I haven't seen it. I can't know it. I can't even pretend to know it unless I have lived it.

It's like saying, It's like saying, hey, I climbed Mount Everest. Let me tell you about it so that you can know what it was like. I mean, don't make me laugh. There's no way you can know what it's like to climb Everest until you climb Everest. There's just no way. I mean, you can send a camera there, you can watch a video documentary, you can feel like you climbed Everest, but you do not know what it's like to climb Everest until you have done it. And the same thing happens on everybody's spiritual journeys. Although there are no two journeys that are alike, every single journey has a tough stretch. Every single journey has tough stretches when our faith costs more than we thought it would. When we run into something that we did not anticipate, when we thought following Jesus was gonna look one way, our journey was gonna look like this And now it does not look like that at all.

And we don't know where to go from there. Where we are not sure we have what it takes to conquer that next hill. Many people call this a crisis of faith. This is what St. John of the cross called the dark night of the soul. And it's a stretch. It's not a one-time thing. It's not a one-day thing, typically. It is a stretch where we know on our journey, we know in our head, we need to move forward, but we cannot. The doubt, the fear can feel overwhelming and we don't know if we have what it takes to take that next step. And in these tough stretches, and here's probably the hardest part, in these tough stretches, No one can say anything that is going to speed it up or make it better. No one is going to lay down this, you know, beautiful nugget of truth, this tip, this new trick, this fad, nothing, nothing is going to make it work. No, make it pass. Nothing's going to work.

Nothing's going to just magically just make it go away. It's something that you simply must suffer through, that it's actually part of the journey that this tough stretch is something that you must endure. There's no shortcuts through it. And in fact, what you learn as you endure it, what you learn in the process of going through that tough stretch. And some of you, maybe many of you are in the middle of that tough stretch like that right now. Maybe it's been like a health crisis. Maybe it's been, you know, family emergency, whatever, whatever it's been. You're in the middle of something where you don't know if you have what it takes. It cost, your faith is now costing you more than you thought. You don't know if you have what it takes. What you need, what you learn in the middle of that struggle is godly perspective.

It's godly perspective. And that is why our item for this Sunday is binoculars. Because on tough stretches of our journey, we need to see beyond what we are familiar with. We need to be able to see the journey and where it's going to go eventually in order to have the perspective on what we're looking at right in front of us. If all we can see is what is right in front of us, it's incredibly disheartening. We see this throughout scripture. In fact, there's a refrain throughout the Old Testament, and that refrain is two words long. That refrain is, how long? How long, O Lord, will you let this thing happen? happen? How long is this thing going to endure? How long do I need to see suffering? How long, how long, how long? That is refrained throughout Scripture, throughout the Old Testament in particular, how long? And it's this ache, it's this, it's this, why do you make me see this?

It's a crisis. It's verbalizing a crisis of faith. Today, I would like to focus on one little part on a man named Habakkuk, who's an Old Testament prophet. And if you want to turn to Habakkuk one, we're going to be there. If you don't know how to get to Habakkuk, do not feel bad. I can barely get there myself. It's fine. Habakkuk, fun fact while you're going there, Habakkuk in Hebrew means big hug. Okay? So if you're, okay. It's not a Hallmark moment, okay? Habakkuk means big hug, or he who hugs bigly. Hebrew's kind of weird. Okay. Normally, a prophet preaches God's word to people. What you see in Habakkuk is actually Habakkuk talking to God. So it's a little bit of a different kind of strange. So we're going to go through it. Habakkuk chapter one, verses two and three. I'm going to read it out loud. Oh, Lord, how How long, and you see it again, how long shall I cry for help?

And you will not hear or cry to you, violence, and you will not save. Why do you make me see iniquity? And why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction of violence or before me, strife and contention arise. We usually hit a tough stretch when we feel like God is not listening. When we feel like God is not listening. Particularly when we see injustice, we personally witness injustice and it goes unpunished. When something happens, it really doesn't matter who you are. When you witness that and you witness it go unpunished, there is something within you that is broken, that is saddened, that you want to see justice happen and it is not happening and it makes you sad. It breaks you inside. It should. That's something that we want to see. And in Habakkuk, in those verses, Habakkuk is very much in first person. He says, how long shall I cry? How long will you make me see iniquity?

Habakkuk is talking to God in the first person and saying, why are you doing this to me? Why? For example, for Habakkuk, for his example in particular, for his situation, why is he seeing people's homes lost, whole families killed, murdered, and no one is held responsible? There's invading armies that are coming in to Habakkuk's town, they are coming in, they're taking exactly what they want, they're killing everybody in their way, and then they are leaving. And then they're coming in again and doing the exact same thing. And Hosea is tired of it. how long will you make me see this? I've heard many stories, I lived in South Louisiana for kind of the first half of my life, and I've heard many stories of people driving through post-Katrina, New Orleans. And I don't mean like a week later, I mean years later, like 10 years later. And they would drive through certain parts

of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and they would still see houses with blue X's on the door, which means it flooded, 10 years later. And it made them angry. They weren't just sad, it made them angry. They wanted to know why that was still the case. Why hasn't something been done? They didn't even know who to be mad at, and they were angry. Habakkuk knows what's going on. He sees, and not just what these invading armies are doing to the Chaldeans, not just what the Chaldeans are doing whenever they're coming in, he sees the actual violence and the strife and the contention that arises, even when they're gone. Cuz you have people tearing each other apart, trying to figure out what to do about these Chaldeans.

It's a cycle of destruction that Habakkuk has a front row seat to, and it's not ending. And so Habakkuk decides this, what we see in verse four. So the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth for the wicked surround the righteous. So justice goes forth, perverted. When we all see this, when we experience what Habakkuk is experiencing, we openly wonder about God's power and God's character. So look at the first part of verse two, verse, oh, oh, no. So in verse two, if you go back, it says, why do you idly look at wrong? And so you see here in verse four, so the law is paralyzed. What Habakkuk is saying is, God, you can't fix this. You can't do anything.

You're, you're idly looking at wrong. You're paralyzed. You can't fix this. Or the second half of verse two where it says, why do you make me see iniquity? You see here, so justice goes forth perverted. God won't fix it. God doesn't care. God either can't fix it, he's powerless, or he won't fix it, he doesn't care. These are the exact two things that whenever people are mad at God, what they will tell you. They will tell you, they look at evil in the world and they say God either doesn't care enough to fix this evil or God doesn't actually have the power to fix this. Even in other words, God doesn't exist. When people are mad at God, that's what they run through. They see their little sister die of cancer and they're saying God couldn't stop it, God was powerless. God wouldn't stop it, he didn't care. They watch their dad do really horrible things or they didn't see their dad at all.

And they're saying, hey, God didn't stop that. So God couldn't stop that or God wouldn't stop that. But either way, this is not on God's radar. I can't trust God. I don't know God. God doesn't know me. When I see this happen, when I witness it personally, individually, when it affects me and affects the people around me, I immediately, because I'm human, begin to, I'm tempted to call into question God's character and God's power. And people that do not know the Lord, when they witness what I witness and don't believe what I believe, they immediately disbelieve whatever God says about himself. When we see things wrong with the world, it makes us question God's power and God's character. And this process, this questioning right here can put us in a tough stretch. Again, maybe it's a death or a loss in your family. Maybe it's just a dull ache of loneliness. Or maybe you just say, oh, I feel tired.

Maybe you always feel like an outsider with Christianity. Maybe you just always feel like an also-ran. You always feel like you're not in the cool kids club. And you don't really know why, but you know it's there, and you know it bothers you, and it gnaws at you. And really, when you do that a long time, whenever you begin to believe that God either doesn't care or isn't powerful enough, it changes you. It can change not just how you see things, but how you respond, how you act, how you build your life. And this is why we need binoculars. This is why we need Godly perspective, because we need to be able to see past these tough stretches. And as we get a couple of verses further in, we can see why in Habakkuk. If you skip to verses 14 through 17. 14 and 15, it says, this is Habakkuk still talking to God. You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.

He, the leader of the Chaldeans, he brings all of them up with a hook. He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet. So he rejoices and is glad. When you see evil happening around you, when you feel 100% victimized and you are wondering who's gonna fix it, you see yourself as small. When you are in a tough stretch, when you are without binoculars, whenever you are without the wider view, you can only see yourself as powerless and insignificant. It becomes your whole identity and your temptation, and it is very easy to say yes to this temptation. It is to believe that God does not care about something so small as your problem. How could God, God's got so many other things he's busy with. How can he care about my insignificant life? So we see ourselves as small, Habakkuk, 1, 16 and 17. He goes on, therefore he, the leader of the Caledians, he sacrifices to his net and makes

offerings to his dragnet, for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? When you see all of that happening, not only do you feel small, but you also feel like the problem is invincible. You feel like the evil is out of control. And look, you might not witness a nation, army, killing other nations, wiping out whole. That's fine. You might not see that, but we all deal with harsh realities

that blind us to anything else. We all see, we all have these things that come to our view that dominate everything. Sometimes it's really just a problem with a coworker. It's something as everyday ordinary as that. And then that problem with the co-worker, we just think about it, think about it, think about it. And it's all we can see. And every interaction with them, we think that they're like plotting our death or something. We're just, we're over-blowing every little thing they say, every eye movement, everything they don't do or don't say. I mean, it will mess with our minds because we have bought into the fact that we have to take care of ourselves, that God doesn't care about our problem with our co-worker. It's just up to us. And so if it is just up to us, well then it's this huge problem and now we have to make this huge plan and we have to somehow manage all these things

that we weren't built to manage in the first place. You're trying to run your life just to protect yourself and you're not even safe. It's not even working. You're just stressed out. You're just seeing that problem as really huge and your ability to handle that problem as really small. And when you are in that, you're in a tough stretch. It's a rough time. It's hard to take the next step. So what did Habakkuk do? Because Habakkuk was right there. I mean, he's in a tough stretch in chapter one. He waited for an answer. And this is what we see in chapter two, the beginning of chapter two starts like this. It says, I will take my stand at my watch posts and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. What you are doing when you are going through this is you are believing the lie that you

are in control. What Habakkuk does here is he pivots and he says, listen, I'm going to be honest with God on this. after one, he's like, how long are you going to do all this? Right? I'm going to be honest with you. In fact, let me just say, if you're hurting right now, if you're in a tough stretch right now, the best thing you can do is to just get alone and be honest with God. And don't get all in your own head and think, all I need to say, you know, like I need to say things a certain way. I can't say these, whatever I can't, I have to be really prim it proper? No. No. Go, get alone, and if you're mad at God, then yell at it. I know. It seems irreverent. I get it. Here's my point. What you're doing in your heart is much worse than yelling at God in the first place. So if it takes you yelling to begin to get honest with what you're mad at God about, then go ahead. It's more important

for you to sit there and say, okay, God, you took this from me. I don't know why. And I'm not happy about it. You know, I'm not happy about it. What's going on? I encourage you to have those kinds of discussions. I would encourage you to do it in private because then people are going to wonder who you're yelling at. Might call the cops or something depending on what you say.

I would recommend being alone. Uh, and I would recommend doing that. I've actually, uh, once upon a time I was, I was really, It was a tough stretch, man. It was a really tough stretch. And I took a half day off of work and I went to an old abandoned golf course where I knew nobody was. And I just yelled. I mean, I must have yelled for hours. And it wasn't just something that like made me feel better because I yelled. I mean, I'm not talking about that. I'm saying like, I got what was in my heart out before the Lord and said, I need an answer. I need to know. I need an explanation.

It's okay to ask, cry out to God. We see from the Old Testament, how long? How long will this happen? How long will I be this frustrated? When we are in our tough stretch, when we're in that rough season, getting honest before God, sitting and waiting for that answer, right? Sitting in prayer, waiting for that answer. That's an important process. And if you don't want to do that, then all you're saying is that you want to continue to suffer. You don't wanna learn from the suffering, you don't wanna endure anything, you just wanna put your face to the ground and just keep grinding away. Progress, progress looks like vulnerability. Progress looks like being honest with what's going on in your heart. to the Lord at least, and then saying, okay, I need to know, I need an answer. And when the Lord answered Habakkuk, he gave him a vision beyond what was in front of him, and these are his binoculars that we see it in verse two of Habakkuk,

chapter two. Said, and the Lord answered me, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it. For still division awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith." A few things should kind of stick out to us as we look at this.

First is that when God answers Habakkuk, he's immediately talking about the future, immediately. He says, write the vision, write the vision. When our perspective is only that we are small and that our problems are big, God gives us a vision of the future that puts both of those in perspective. He shows us the plans that he has for us, and he shows us really how insignificant this big thing is. And what he does is through that, He gives us a perspective on something that will last. He gives us perspective on something that is unchanging. Your current circumstances, changing all the time, all the time. What the Lord has set an eternity past that will come to be, that ain't changing. We can set our perspective on what will last, on what the Lord has done. The second thing that should stick out to us, so he's immediately talking about the future, but the Lord has already said it right.

In other words, this problem with the Chaldeans, the Lord's already fixed it. The problem that you're going through right now, the solution is already there. It says that the vision awaits its appointed time. All these things that trouble us, all this unrestrained evil, all this unexplained suffering, all this like when we say the good die young, what a shame. All of those things that will come a day when we will collectively see it all and go, oh, I get it now. I see it. This makes sense. That will not be tomorrow, no matter how frustrated you are, but that will be one day. The Lord has promised that to us. The other thing that should stick out to us is that this process seems very, very, very slow. When we don't look through binoculars, all this evil and suffering can make us anxious if all we're doing is just waiting for it to end. But even then, whenever we see, you know, God's talking about the future,

and we see that, and we trust you and say, okay, we know that's coming, but it's like waiting until three o'clock for the school day to end, right? It's all you can do is stare at the clock, okay? 2 Peter 3:9 has the same idea. It says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should read for penance. What 2 Peter 3:9 is helping us understand, it's given us light onto Habakkuk 2, 2-3-4, and it's saying that whenever God is slow, seems slow in keeping His promise, that there's another thing that is being fulfilled.

We're wondering why the world isn't fixed yet. Oh Lord, just come and fix it. Just, you know, end it all. Just make it happen, right? Like come down in final form in the world, fix justice, fix injustices, make it all happen. And what the Lord is saying is, I'm waiting for that to happen so that I can have mercy toward people who have not turned in repentance to me yet. Your suffering, whatever you're going through, your tough stretch serves a purpose that you probably can't see. In fact, it's almost a guarantee that you don't see it. It's serving a purpose in your life, in the lives of other people, in the lives of the people that you love. Sometimes in lives of people that you don't even know. The Lord is working that process out. You are suffering. You wanted to end tomorrow. And the Lord is saying, hang on. I've got another purpose in the middle of it. It's not done yet. You

need to keep staying the course. I know it hurts, but it's coming. It's coming. Hold on until the end. This is the substance of faith. Faith means that we hang on to the fact that something is coming. Hebrews 11, 1 says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. In other words, we don't have it in front of us. It's not something we have in our our hands. We can't substantiate it in any capacity, but we believe then we believe that the Lord is going to fulfill the promise that he gave. The root cause of all pain and suffering, every single bit of it, is sin slavery. Sin slavery makes people selfish, vicious. It makes people exploit other people. Okay? You want to, just with those three things I listed, I've covered like 99% of the world's problems. Okay? When you are talking about what is wrong with the world, you were talking

about sin, slavery, and if God wanted to end it all tomorrow, then the atheist says all he has to do is just fix that problem of sin, slavery. And the answer is he already did. He already fixed it. The solution, the solution to what is going on in our world, generally, in our world, world specifically, the solution to that is that God has already fixed it. Its fulfillment has not come. This is why we talk about faith in Jesus. When we talk about people, what about people who exploit the vulnerable, right? People that are running rings of human trafficking, okay? Vile people, terrible people. Jesus has made a way for them to be set free from that and from having to do that to anyone anymore. Jesus has already made that way. Healing is available to that person to stop doing it. In fact, what Jesus is going to do in the heart of the person that is running a sex

trafficking ring is to convict them and then to work to make it right. That's Jesus' plan for fixing the world. What about the victims? What about the victims of those people? Jesus has made a way for them to be set free also from the fear of being taken advantage of again. Jesus has a plan for every heart to be made secure in him. Jesus has a plan to fix everything because he wants to and has dealt with the sin problem. Faith in Jesus then means that we hold on to this promise that Jesus is going to come and fix everything, either with somebody's compliance or without, Jesus is going to do that and we have to hang on to that promise even when it's deeply frustrating. Even when we see injustice, we see people take advantage of other people and they're not, you know, they're not strung up for it. We We talk about, we often talk about this emotional connection with Jesus.

What we need as much as the emotional connection with Jesus is a mental connection with Jesus. We need to understand the substance of our faith connects to real time and what we believe is that in Jesus's life, death, burial and resurrection, through that comes power, not just to one day make everything right, but gives us power to see beyond what we are dealing with right now. We can see past our tough stretch.

Jesus in that power gives us binoculars and says, take a look at what's coming. And even though we can't see it, and we say this in faith, it's going to be worth it. It's going to be worth it, all of it, yes, it's going to be worth it. We can say that unequivocally, yes. Everyone needs these binoculars, and we often, because we lose sight of what Jesus is doing, we seem small, evil seems invincible.

But the point is actually not to avoid those times. In other words, your spiritual journey should not include trying to evade every tough stretch, okay? Because you're going to hit them, right? If you've been walking with Jesus over 20 years, say amen very loud, okay? All of you, do you agree that you will have one of those tough stretches whether you like it or not? Say amen. Okay, so that's the witness of the body. If you have been walking with Jesus for any amount of time, you will hit a tough stretch. The thing is not to avoid them, but to prepare for them. To prepare for them, you need to know the promises and you need to hold onto them. Quickly what I want to do is I want to go through what we've already covered in our series and I just want to say one thing about them. It's a promise to give you hope. Your passport, right? Your passport, you said yes to Jesus.

If you've said yes to Jesus, then Jesus promises to never leave you or forsake you. The compass. Jesus promises to everyone that has said yes to him to give them his spirit and his power. It gives you the power and the desire to obey. That's what you have. It doesn't matter if you believe that you have that or if you think you have it at a given moment, it doesn't matter. Jesus has promised it to you. It is there. Whether you're taking advantage of it or not, that's up to you. But it is there. The compass is there. The rope that Jesus has promised, if you are in Christ, He has promised to knit you together with a community of believers. That you are connected to Christians in the past and Christians in the future. You're connected, you're backpacked. Jesus has promised to give you gifts to make you useful in the body. Jesus wants your life to have meaning to serve other people.

And He's equipped you with that. If you think that you're useless, if you think you're some bottom-shelf Christian who can't do anything, if you think you're too old, too young, too dumb, or too smart, it doesn't matter. The Lord has given you gifts to use within the church body. A map. Jesus has promised that through any tough stretch, through any lay of the land that's weird, any frustration that you have, There's nothing that you're going to do that is going to somehow disqualify you. You came to Jesus disqualified in the first place and Jesus accepted you. That's the point, that's the gospel.

If you are not in crisis now, and you know all those promises, I guarantee you somebody in your life is. If you're not in crisis, somebody that you know is. What I want you to do, just as we have our invitation time today, What I want you to do is to pray. And depending on where you're at, I wanna challenge you to pray differently. If you are going through one of those tough stretches, my encouragement to you is just to reach out for prayer. Now I'm gonna be sitting up here, and if you want somebody to pray with, you can come pray with me, and that's cool. If you wanna pray, if you wanna ask the person next to you for prayer, go ahead and ask them, that's cool too. But if you need prayer, ask for it. That's my challenge to you. If you're in a tough season, ask for prayer. Receive it. Don't worry about looking dumb. And the other thing is, if you are not in crisis,

and if nobody's asking you to pray, I want you to pray for the people that you're close to, that maybe you know they're going through something, maybe you don't, I'm not sure, but be burdened for the people that are immediately around you, that may be going through some kind of crisis, maybe going through some kind of frustration. You can, if you don't know anybody like that, you can pray for our church. Listen, our church, we are full of believers that are about to hit a tough season. No matter where we are, we are full of believers by the end of tough season or full of believers that are in a tough season.

You can pray for our church. Again, pray, pray, pray. You can either pray with me, pray with somebody next to you, or you can pray just what the Lord's burden you'd pray for. Let me start us off in that prayer and let's continue as we stand and sing. Jesus, thank you so much for today. Thank you for all that you've given us for life and godliness. Thank you for the frustrating times, for the tough stretches. Help us to reach out to you in the midst of that. Help us to pray even now. Oh soul are you weary and troubled, No light in the darkness you see, There's light for a look at the Savior, Light for abundant and free, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in his wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of his glory and grace Through death into life everlasting He passed and we follow Him there Over us in no more half-dominion

More than conquerors we are Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace. His word shall not fill you, he promised. Believe Him and all will be well Then go to a world that is dying It's perfect salvation to tell Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace