Where is God?

Sermon Summary

The book of Exodus opens with a problem many people recognize immediately: God seems absent. Israel grows from a family into a people, only to find themselves oppressed, enslaved, and forgotten by those in power. Exodus 1 tells the story almost entirely from the perspective of the oppressors, placing us inside the confusion and fear of generational suffering. This sermon looks at why Scripture begins this way, what it reveals about God’s character, and how God forms His people through adversity rather than avoiding it.

Big Idea

God may feel absent in seasons of suffering, but He is actively forming His people for faithfulness, strength, and trust.

Scripture Texts

Primary: Exodus 1:1–14

Supporting: 1 Corinthians 10:11

Sermon Outline

I. Exodus as Context for Knowing God

• Exodus is ancient, grounded in real history, and shaped by a single theological voice.
• God reveals Himself personally, giving His covenant name, Yahweh.
• Exodus shows God’s complex nature: compassionate, patient, faithful, and just.

II. From Family to Enslaved People (Exodus 1:1–7)

• Israel grows from seventy people into a nation.
• God’s promises are advancing quietly, even before conflict begins.

III. Fear Turns to Oppression (Exodus 1:8–14)

• A new king forgets Joseph and rewrites history.
• Fear leads Egypt to invent threats and justify cruelty.
• Oppression multiplies suffering—but cannot stop God’s purposes.

IV. Experiencing the Silence of God

• Israel knows the stories of God but has not yet experienced Him personally.
• Secondhand faith is tested when life becomes unbearable.
• The text places us inside the emotional reality of waiting on God.

V. A Modern Parallel

• Many have heard stories of God’s faithfulness but struggle to trust Him today.
• Public scandals, moral failures, and shallow Christianity erode confidence.
• The question remains: Is God still at work?

VI. God Is Not Finished With His People

• God is still saving, calling, sustaining, and growing His church.
• Faith is often formed in pain, not comfort.

VII. What God Is Doing Through Adversity

• The point of life is not to avoid hardship but to trust God through it.
• God uses adversity to form strong, mature, faithful people.
• A shaped people become a help to others and a witness to the world.

Why This Matters

Many people walk through seasons where God feels distant, silent, or absent. Exodus reminds us that silence does not mean inactivity. God often works beneath the surface, forming endurance, clarity, and trust. Faith that survives hardship becomes faith that can serve others, lead families, and endure suffering without losing hope.

Discussion & Reflection Questions

• When have you felt like God was absent in your life?
• How does knowing Israel’s long season of suffering shape your expectations of faith?
• What is the difference between knowing stories about God and experiencing Him personally?
• How might God be forming you through difficulty rather than removing it?
• What is one area of life God may be calling you to embrace rather than escape?

Next Steps

Visit Chisenhall Fellowship this Sunday.

Find a Home Group and walk through Scripture with others seeking honest, grounded faith.

Transcript

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

If you'd like, you can turn to Exodus chapter one. That's where we're gonna be today. And it's also where we're gonna be for the majority of 2026. Every year, we take a book of the Old Testament, or New Testament, the book of the Bible, and we go through it for the majority of that year. Last year was Ephesians. Year before that was Hebrews, I believe. We've done a few. This year will be Exodus. We will be going through it from beginning to end, verse by verse. That's just kinda what we're gonna do. It's not gonna be every single week on Exodus. We take a break for the summer. We take a break for Christmas time. But beyond that, we're gonna do a full 26, 27 weeks on the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus is a strange and wonderful book. It is an Old Testament book, which means it is steeped in ancient and Near Eastern culture. It is about 6,000 years ancient. Okay?

So if you, I don't know if you've ever read like Beowulf or seen anything like Old English. Man, if you go back like 250 years in America's past, you would not understand what they're saying. They're speaking English, but they're speaking a different kind of English than we're speaking today. Okay? Okay, take that, that's 250 years, okay? And now extrapolate that by 6,000 and in a different culture. Okay, so it's real different. Whenever we're reading the book of Exodus, we are reading ancient Near Eastern culture. We are reading something. It's a mix of like history and narrative and laws and sometimes you don't even get a break in there. Like much of the Old Testament, it is composed a lot like, it's composed more like Wikipedia than it is a single editor. Let me explain. Oh, excuse me. It's like Wikipedia with a single editor. So it's not like a letter. So we read, for example, the book of Galatians.

The book of Galatians is an author writing a letter to a specific people. Okay. In Exodus and in much of the Old Testament, with some exceptions, it is way more of like an editor that is pulling a lot of these things together and putting them in a specific order. It's still inspired. It's still the Bible. It's still God speaking to us, okay? But the process of it coming together and being woven into a book is different than Galatians. Okay? That's really helpful to understand because there's gonna be times whenever we're gonna be reading through Exodus and there's just randomly gonna be a genealogy that pops up and there's no reason for it at least. It seems to us that there's no reason for it but it'll just be there in Exodus. So that just kind of helps you understand a little bit of the Old Testament and specifically how Exodus is composed, how it's put together, how it's inspired.

So Exodus helps us on two fronts. Exodus helps us see God reveal himself personally, okay? So we see, for example, we see God reveal his covenant name in the Book of Exodus. We're not gonna see that today but we will see that. Normally, the word for God, the generic word for God is Elohim. Okay, in Hebrew, sorry, yeah, in Hebrew, that's the word for God. God's covenant name is Yahweh. God's covenant name is something that is just between him and his people, okay? So it's like a special name. We also see God's really complex nature, right? He's vigorously faithful and sometimes he seems like he's too patient. Sometimes he's really compassionate and sometimes he's bringing the heat of justice. And it's all in the same book. It's actually all in the Book of Exodus. Exodus is kind of what it kind of illustrates. In fact, more than other books, it illustrates God's character in a way

that is intriguing and sometimes difficult to use. And I think it's important to even comprehend. Exodus also helps us understand God's people, okay? So we see deep, deep touchstones of our faith in the Book of Exodus, okay? In the Book of Exodus alone, we've got manna on the ground. We've got honey in the rock. We've got the 10 commandments. We've got the 10 plagues. We've got the Red Sea. We've got the golden calf. We've got the wilderness. We've got it all. We've got land flowing milk and honey, okay? We've got it all in the Book of Exodus. Okay, and it's kind of wild when you actually read it that it's all there.

It's all in the same book. We also can see ourselves in God's people. So as we're reading about God's people, as we're understanding God's people, we also see ourselves in that, like all of the Old Testament, their lives serve as instruction for us, okay? That is 1 Corinthians 10, 11. It says specifically, it says, now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, okay? The reason, part of the reason that we read Exodus is because it is both a warning and an invitation. Exodus is a warning in that it helps us avoid these historical mistakes. It helps us to see where God's people took wrong turns in the wilderness, for example, and helps us understand how we're prone to do the same thing. But it also, at the same time, it invites us, it calls us into this really gritty, authentic faith in God, that it's not just like covered over

with like unicorns and rainbows, that it's just, it's really, at times, it's almost ugly. It's visceral, it's earthy, it's unvarnished. And that is the kind of faith that we are being called into, but sometimes, you know, if all you have is the bumper sticker, if I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, okay, I'm not saying that's not good, it's the Bible, right? It's one verse in the Bible. It's different when you read Exodus. That's my encouragement to you, if you would. Exodus, not for the faint of heart. It is a lot of chapters. So my encouragement is to read it, just read it in different chunks. The first 19 chapters are different than the rest, but it's pretty helpful. So even if you just read the first 19 chapters of Exodus, you're getting a lot of the narrative, okay? Exodus chapter 20 is whenever the 10 commandments start. You get a lot of laws, your eyes start to cross.

You don't understand what you're reading anymore. It gets weird, okay? So if you want, you can read it. That's cool, the Lord's gonna bless it, okay? The Lord blesses us through his words. That's good, I never wanna warn you against it. I would just say, here's my challenge. My challenge is gonna stop at chapter 19, that's all. Okay, today we're gonna focus on the first two chapters. In fact, this and the next three Sundays, we're gonna focus on just the first two chapters of Exodus, and it leaves us with this question that many of us have felt before, and that is where is God?

Okay, first two chapters of Exodus illustrate this beautifully, but this question, this pain is here. And where is God? So let's dive in, let's wrap ourselves a little bit of context first. Let's look, we're gonna just read the first 14 verses, and I'm just gonna give some commentary, and then we're gonna kinda go through it, okay? Here we go, Exodus chapter one, verse one. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his own household. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher, all the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt, okay.

These first couple of verses here, it kinda brings us up to speed, it kinda serves as a bit of a prologue. If you have just finished reading Genesis, for example, you will know who all these people are, you will have read about them being born. It's that Joseph is now in Egypt. That's how the book of Genesis ends, is that Joseph, one of the sons of Israel, okay, Israel's a person in Genesis, okay. Israel is a person, he's the father, he's the patriarch of this nation that we're gonna see here in a minute.

Israel, also called Jacob, Israel has 12 sons. One of those 12 sons is Joseph, and Joseph is in the technical dream coat, okay. So you, maybe, no, no, okay. I lost half of you with that, it's okay. It's a famous musical, it's fine. Joseph, in the coat of many colors, okay. Okay, now I'm getting some nods. All right, yeah, coat of many colors. That Joseph, who sold the slavery and the Lord protects him and brings him, he comes through the ranks in Egypt and he saves Egypt from famine. Okay, the Lord uses Joseph to save Egypt from famine. All right, okay, let's look at verses six and seven. It says, then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation, but the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them, okay. So this is how Israel goes from a person to a big family to a nation, to a people, okay.

So we are now the people of Israel, okay. We're getting into nation status because there's so many of them. Now verse eight is a standalone, I just wanna look at it. It says, now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph, okay. You talk to any like Jewish historian, you talk to any really any Jew that was raised kind of in the Jewish tradition, they're going to know Exodus 1:8 by heart, right. This wraps up a ton of their history in one verse, okay. There arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He didn't remember that Joseph saved Egypt. He didn't have any kind of goodwill toward Israel. He didn't know what he owed them, nothing. It's a big turn, okay. And in this, in this, Exodus 1:8, by the time we get here, this king that has arisen in Egypt, we are about at the 400 year mark. It's been about 400 years since they've been in Egypt.

Little bit less, more like 350, it's fine. Because there's some things that need to happen first before the 400 years is complete. Okay, let's look at verses nine through 11. This is the new king over Egypt, the new Pharaoh, okay. Verse nine through 11 it says, and he said to his people, behold, the people of Israel to many and to mighty for us come, let us deal shrewdly with them, let us multiply, and if war breaks out, oh sorry, lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. Therefore, they set task masters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaohs, store cities, pithom and ramesses.

So this fear that they have, so they're kind of looking at all of these Israelites, and they're saying, look, there's a ton of these guys. There's probably more of these guys than us, and they're strong. What's going to happen if war breaks out and they're not a legion, they don't have any allegiance to me. They don't have any allegiance to Egypt, and they turn on us. So fear then turns into oppression, okay. So Pharaoh is running nightmare scenarios. People are getting stirred up, freaking out. So they start oppressing, they start putting task masters over them, and this isn't the full gamut yet. This is just the beginning of it. They're putting some task masters over them, but it has the opposite effect. Look at verse 12. It says, but the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad, and the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.

Okay. So you have the numbers of the people and the fears of the Egyptians multiplied, all at the same time. This oppression is not working. So they doubled down. Look at verses 13 and 14. This is kind of the end. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field, and in all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. So in all their work, they're ruthlessly oppressing them. And so they started with task masters, and they're like, yeah, this will knock them down a peg. This will allow us to keep control of them. But it wasn't working. There was more stuff going on. And in the next half of Exodus 1, we're gonna look at another ploy they're gonna do. But right now, we can kind of sit on this just a minute and say, you've got a new king that's coming in power

that's freaking out, that is now beginning to oppress people and has convinced all of his people to oppress these people. And they are making them work hard with bitter service. They are making bricks out of straw and clay, mud. Okay, they're assembling bricks and they're baking them in either an oven or in the sun. And they are, you get the impression that it's not a picnic, right? That this is kind of the kind of slavery that is the worst kind. It is, they are ruthlessly making them work as slaves.

This kind of thing, when you have oppression of one people to another, and the oppressors believe they're doing the right thing, it is usually the harshest kind of oppression that you're going to find. I'm not saying any oppression's good, mind you. I am saying there's levels, right? There are types of oppression that are more harsh than others and this is some of the harshest. But what I want you to notice, just as we read those, as we have read those first 14 verses, I want you to notice that the narration of the entire scenario that we just read is through Egypt's eyes. The whole scenario is through the eyes of the oppressor, even in these two verses. It says, so they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the field.

It doesn't say how the people felt. It doesn't record anything as, even, it says it's ruthlessly, right? It does, it says hard service, made their lives bitter. But it doesn't really call it wrong. With each agonizing step, as we continue to read from verses eight through verse 14, we only see the perspective of the oppressors and it begins that way on purpose. As we open up to the book of Exodus, it puts us, as we read, even the first 14 verses, it puts us in the emotional moment of God feeling absent. We should, as we read these verses, we should feel the weight of generational oppression.

Because this wasn't one person enslaving another person. This is a whole people enslaving a whole other people and their children and their grandchildren. If we, if America, God forbid, were overrun tomorrow, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Red Dawn, something like that, right? Where there's an oppressive regime that somehow flanks us and they totally take our shores and they take control and they enslave all of us, okay?

That kind of dread is difficult to imagine. It's difficult to understand a complete loss of independence, a complete inability to dream about a future that you have any influence over. It's difficult. And so just, I want you to try to imagine being enslaved in this scenario where you're, you probably are asking questions like, how can I let my children grow up in this? For those of you with young children, imagine if you have a taskmaster over you and you see that taskmaster like whip your kid.

That's not a good day. That's not a good life. That's despair setting in. Where you are starting to think like, hey, this isn't legal. This isn't how it's supposed to be. We should revolt. This is not fair. Don't they remember God's kindness to them through Joseph? And maybe they might say like, I watched an Egyptian kill my sister today and I couldn't do anything about it.

That's exactly what they were going through and the question arises and we don't get an answer into the first 14 verses. Where is God? Where's God in the midst of this? If you go back and look at those first 14 verses, you're not gonna find them there. That's not how the narration starts. The narration starts in generational despair. The narration starts, theologically, Israel is in a tough spot because the people of Israel have heard the stories passed down. They've heard the stories and you read through Genesis. There's a lot there too. We got 50 chapters in Genesis. They've heard these stories passed down over the centuries. God promising Abraham to make him into a nation. That's a story they've heard. They've heard God saving Isaac on the mountain. They've heard of God coming to Jacob in a dream and showing him a ladder with angels going up and down. Jacob's ladder.

That's in Genesis. That's the story they've heard. They've heard the story of their patriarch Israel wrestling with God and whenever the sun was starting to rise, God just touched his hip and he walked with the limp the rest of his life and he changed his name to Israel. He changed his name from Jacob, which means heel grabber and deceiver, to Israel, which means somebody who strives with God. They've heard the story of Joseph's false imprisonment, his rise through the ranks, his ability to interpret dreams. It's a really amazing story. It takes up the last 14 chapters of the book of Genesis, just on one guy and ultimately culminates in the fact that he saves Egypt. They've heard all these stories. They know all these stories. This is their legacy. This is their heritage. It's their people. If they're saying I'm a son of Israel, they understand what that means. In fact, they could likely recite all of these by heart.

These were oral traditions. These are things that they would talk about around dinner. However, these are not things that any of them have experienced for themselves. At least not now. They're not experiencing it now. Is God even real? Is God even there? Why doesn't he come to me like he did Joseph? Why didn't he save us? Because these stories and these traditions are great. They're good. We should pass them now. We should tell those stories. We should tell our testimonies, right? We should share our testimony with people, with kids, coworkers, everybody. We should tell a story of God's faithfulness. Amen? Amen, okay, yeah, we should do that. But if all you have is that, if all you have is stuff you've heard, it's all secondhand experience. It's not the same as experiencing it for yourself. Let me just help you. Many in Burleson have heard really great stories of God's faithfulness.

Many. You have family members that tell crazy stories of God coming through, man. Crazy stories. I've heard a few of them and they're wild. And I believe them. I mean, these people aren't in the loony bin. They're like totally sane, you know? But they're just telling me the story that's really difficult to believe. And it just shows God's faithfulness. Many in Burleson have people that they know personally that have been born again into a living hope. They have seen their lives change. They've seen them grow into a completely different person. They're not perfect, but they've seen it. They've experienced it for themselves. They see these people. They saw, maybe they saw a revival happen as children. There is a former deacon that was here. And he often, he told the story often of how God saved him. And it was a pretty amazing story. So he was a drunk. And every day after work, he would have a case of beer

or something, he would get pretty wasted. And he would get pretty drunk. And he felt kind of God's calling, but there was one night, and it was the first time it ever happened, he was struck with vertigo. And he'd never had vertigo before. He was struck with vertigo. And I don't know if you've ever had vertigo, but you cannot stand up because the room keeps spinning. So you're on the floor and you're crawling, typically, if you're by yourself. If you need to get to a phone, if you need to get to help or something like that, you are just trying to not totally lose your lunch because everything's spinning, because everything's crazy. And so he was crawling on the floor, looking for a phone, looking for some way to get help, looking for some way out, looking for something. And he heard God say to him, "'Do you like this feeling? "'This is what it's like when you're drunk.'"

Do you wanna keep doing this to yourself? And he never had a drop of alcohol again. He gave his life to the Lord the next day. In this church building, he walked the aisle and everything, and then grew in the Lord and became a deacon. Hollis Upchurch. God bless you, Hollis. It's a crazy story, right? That's a story where, I'm gonna tell that story, but I'm gonna say, look, that's kinda wild. Not everybody comes to the Lord that way, okay? I'm not saying you're gonna get struck with vertigo or something. Praise God for stories like that, and praise God for saving people like that. Yes, right. Many have heard these stories, but many in Burleson have not experienced for themselves.

Let me just tell you what they have experienced. Okay, let me just walk you through, this is what people growing up in Burleson in the last 25 years have experienced personally, okay? They have experienced churches spending gobs of money on themselves. I don't know if I need to try it out all the examples, but they're there. They make the news. One recently made the news, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Christmas pageant. There are $700 million land developments that they seemingly go unchecked, right? The opulence is staggering, and it's all done tax-exempt. It's all done under the guise of like, yeah, we're just, this is for the kingdom, but it's a lot, it's a breathtaking amount of money. And it begs the question, like, how are they spending that? It's peculiar. They've seen major Christian leaders failing morally. I've seen Ravi Zacharias in his ministry.

They've seen Robert Morris at Gateway Church. They've seen Bill Hybels at Willow Creek. They've seen Mike Bickle with IHOP, Kansas City. All of them, all of those people that I just listed, groomed younger people to take advantage of them. Sexually. These are major Christian leaders. Carl Lentz, James McDonald, Harvest Bible Church. Philip Yancey, just recently, all had affairs, like extensive long-term affairs. Mark Driscoll, Tony Evans, Michael Tate.

The list goes on, man. So they've seen those major Christian leaders fail, get caught morally. Or tell them themselves, in some cases. They've seen the deconstruction of celebrity ex-vangelicals. Anybody ever read I Kiss Dating Goodbye? Yeah, have you ever read it? Joshua Harris, the author, Kiss Christianity Goodbye. Joshua Harris is not following the Lord anymore. Jen Hatwaker, not following the Lord anymore. Rob Bell, not following the Lord anymore. Kevin Mac is not following the Lord anymore. Derek Webb, not following the Lord anymore. Deconstructed their faith. Couldn't do it, couldn't follow the Lord. They have seen the fracturing of local church either,

either that local church was shredded up in politics, over who's supposed to do what for whom. I don't know if I have to tell you what a nightmare COVID was. Not just personally for people, but also for churches trying to make a decision about anything, to do anything. It was awful. Either those local churches are shredded up in politics, either local or state, federal or international politics, or that local churches became some video outposts of another Christian celebrity that I don't trust. We've seen people they know, there's probably been the worst actually, this last one, they've seen people that they know claim Christ and not follow him. There is a particular phenomenon that has happened recently, I would say, I don't know, 20 years, 15 to 20 years, where the church, many churches have grown broader and thinner, where lots of people come to a church event

and are told and are led to believe and do believe that that makes them a Christ follower, that makes them a Christian in some capacity. And so yeah, there's a lot of things wrong with that, I get it, but what plays out on that is that you have people that go to church for years, for decades. Do not know the Lord. Do not walk in light of the Lord's commands. Don't seek to obey the Lord, aren't trying to be holy, nothing like that. They just think they can do whatever they want and they do do whatever they want and go to church and claim Christ. I've spoken to many younger Christians who met Christians, people that they either were, they worked with them, they whatever, but they did not live like Jesus at all. They didn't live like Jesus sexually, they didn't spend money like Jesus spent, they didn't treat people like Jesus would, then nothing, there was nothing in their lives.

They were just kind of nice people who did whatever they wanted ethically and then just say, hey, God's got me. Grace, hashtag blessed, and they were just doing whatever they wanted. You know how confusing that is to somebody who's 19, who somebody watches and this person they're looking at, it's like 26 or 27, married with a kid and say they're following Jesus, but they're not following Jesus at all. Do you know how confusing that is? That's terribly confusing. I've had to clean up many accidents on that, but who am I gonna blame? I think some of the blame is gonna be with churches that are okay with people thinking that they're Christians without really explaining what that is. What I have just described to you is the lived experience, almost the entire soul lived experience of anybody who's 35 years and younger. I don't wanna embarrass you, I'm not gonna call you out,

I promise I'm not gonna make you come up here. If you're 35 years and younger, would you raise your hand? More than a few of you, yeah, okay. I saw some of you that didn't raise your hand and you're obviously into 35, so next time I expect a little more participation. Just saying, roughly half of you. All that I just described is the lived experience of somebody who's 35 or under. And the younger you go, the more that I just described is pronounced. I didn't dig that far into 25, I kept it probably in the last 15. It is tough sledding. They hear that God is all these things and they hear that church can be all these things and they hear that Christians are supposed to be this way and they have not seen it in any kind of overwhelming sense. They've had to look, scratch and find. Some of you have looked and scratched and found and you're here today, God bless you.

We're glad you're here. Okay, enough of the bad news. Let me give you some good news. There's some good news coming in the text. We're not there yet. But there's also some good news coming for us. It's the best news, it's the best news, that God's not done with his people, amen? Yeah, God's not done. Right now there is a groundswell, groundswells, plural, of revivals happening at college campuses all over the United States. There was a major revival at Asbury University in 2023, but right now there's major revivals happening at the University of Tennessee, Auburn, Florida State, University of South Florida, Kentucky, Ohio State. There's plenty more, USC, there's plenty more that I can name. It's happening all over the place, man. All over the place. It's happening through sports. It's happening, I mean, look, the entire OU softball team, who when they won a national championship,

they were being asked about, I almost wanted to show the footage, but it's fine, you can believe me. Or not, you can check me. They're asking, hey, how did it go? What helped you? And they're like, our faith in Jesus Christ, we were depending on him for strength the entire time. It wasn't just, I wanna thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then finish the interview. The whole interview was about the Lord. They were just testifying a lot. That whole team is walking with the Lord, right? They're experiencing revival. College campuses all over are experiencing revival. And it's not like it was happening before Charlie Kirk. Okay, God bless Charlie Kirk, but it wasn't just because he caught a bullet, it was because things were already happening. There are new churches being planted all over DFW right now. There is one in Cleburn, it's called Lake Trail Church. My buddy Kirk Storseth,

he is planning with some other people out of NorthPointe. And they're gonna be in Cleburn and they're planting Lake Trail Church. I wanna take a second right now and pray for them. I'm just gonna pray over there. I want you all to pray with me. Okay, let's do that. Just pray right now. Lord, we thank you for Lake Trail. We ask you to bless their endeavor as they start in the summer, as they are pushing forward through things that are difficult. We pray for bountiful blessing. We pray for the overcoming of obstacles. We pray that they would see you move in a mighty way, that they would struggle and not lose heart. We pray that they would be blessed in all they're doing. We pray that many more would see your face because of the work that you're doing through them. And it's your name and we pray, amen.

There are people turning to the Lord, it's happening. There are people taking real steps, real first steps for the first time, right? Just off the top of my head in the last probably six months, we've seen 10 or more people start doing that. We've seen people faithfully walking through cancer, through strife, through wayward children and they're seeing fruit in their lives and they're seeing fruit in the lives of their loved ones. They are, it is happening everybody. It is good. We can see some things that are happening. We see people kind of getting it, understanding God's call to invest and minister according to his word in the lives of other people. It's happening, it's good, it's slow, but it is real. There are actually like seedlings coming out of the ground. This isn't just us against this huge tide that's definitely gonna wipe us all out. This is us standing with the Lord of heaven and earth

saying the gates of hell aren't gonna prevail against my church, good things are happening and the Lord is blessing in the midst of all of that. Good things are coming because God is not done with his people, amen. Amen, good. Yet even in this, even in these victories, right, we have pain, we have toil, we have heartache, we have loss, struggle. It's not, again, it's not unicorns and rainbows. I probably overuse that phrase, but all I'm trying to say is that it's,

I hope no one ever gets the impression from our church or from anybody that is part of our church, a member here, that following the Lord is just some, you know, just some skip down a magical road of no problems. Okay, that's not, I mean, it's not what it is to follow the Lord. But sometimes when you just had the bumper sticker and you just saw the million dollar Christmas pageant and you go to a church service and it's way more like, I don't know, it's way more like, not just a concert, but it's like, it's just a motivational speaker, like you can do it, it's gonna be so good. It's hard, it's hard to watch that online. It's hard to see that, it's hard to experience that in person and not get the impression that my life needs to be Instagram worthy all the time, that my life needs to be perfect, that I need to be able to like take people like on a tour through my whole life and like,

look, look how great this is, you know. Like this, that's the impression though, that's the impression, I know it's funny, imagining me doing a duck face selfie, but that's the impression, that's the impression that is thrown out there, right? And if you don't believe me, dude, just get on Facebook, just get on Instagram, just go ahead and look, look at church's feeds. And I'm not throwing rocks, I'm really not. But if that's all you've got, if that's all you look at, then you're gonna feel like you're not measuring up, you're gonna feel like I'm not gonna sign up to be that plastic smile, I'm not gonna pretend like everything's okay, or I'm so, I can't even step foot in that place because everybody's so cool and so sure of themselves and so confident and so this and so that, that I'm not that and I don't belong there, I can't do that. And that is what is happening with people

that are looking to be a part of a church and they've never been part of a church before because all they see are these just, and I'm really talking about people that are 30 and younger, but still, all they see is this outward view of everything is so great. And it is not, it's just not. It's not great personally, there's things that are bad that are happening in our own lives, sometimes things are off-road, sometimes things are not our fault, but there's also things that are happening just on the world stage that are not like super great.

And if you don't believe me, go in at some public forum and say either that you love or hate the President of the United States. Go ahead, I dare you. You'll find out so fast how crazy it can get. You will, some of you have. You have, you found out. The point of life, and I hesitate, I hesitate to say things like the point of life, it's such a big statement, but I'll say it, I'll go ahead, here we go. The point of life is not to avoid

these bad things at all costs. Let me say that again. The point of life does not, does not involve the avoidance of bad things or difficult things. I'm not saying run and jump off a cliff and saying God save me, I am saying there's a way to live your life where all you do, all your energy, all your anxiety is stemmed from bad things could happen. That is not the point of life. Bad things will come. They just will. People are going to die, that you didn't want to die, that you didn't think we're gonna die so quickly. You're going to lose that job that you thought you'd never lose. You're gonna have a broken, absolutely severed, never talk to him again relationship that you thought was gonna be there forever. It's just going to happen and it is hard. It's hard to walk through it personally with people, it's hard to experience it ourselves, it's hard. But to pretend, to pretend like I'm more spiritual

because I don't experience those things, it's just so toxic, it's so bad. It's the opposite of Christianity. It ushers people into the gates of hell. It's not just a bad idea. It's not something that we can simply solve by saying, broken people welcome here, no perfect people allowed. I get the sentiment of those things and I appreciate the sentiment of those things, but look, if we are gonna do anything about it, if we're gonna make any kind of headway, if we're gonna take any ground on that, we need to understand something more fundamental than no perfect people allowed. And I'm sorry for crying, I try not to cry. It's the point of life is,

the point of life is to embrace what comes and ask God to work it for His glory and our good and to trust Him with it. Yeah, the point of life is to embrace what comes. It's to ask God to, whatever comes, I mean, good, bad, whatever, right? The Bible's very clear in this, that the Lord makes the rainfall on the evil and the good. When you read Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, sometimes, man, good things happen to bad people. It happens, man.

The point of life is to embrace what comes and to ask God to work it for His glory and our good. Turn, Lord, turn this into something that will make sense to you if not to me. Do something with it. I don't know what to do with this, but do something with this and trust Him for it. Look, this is why we need a church, man. Because when you go through that stuff and then you try to do it on your own, you try to figure it out,

and all you've got's Instagram and Facebook, it's just a recipe for disaster, man. And here's kind of like, here's why this is important, because it is by this process, it is by this process that God forms us as His people. No other process will do that. Mark my words. If you think that you're gonna grow as a Christian without going through something hard, if you think that you could somehow have spiritual metal, that you could somehow minister to other people, that you could have confidence in what you're reading and what you're sharing with other people, if you think that you can somehow make that progress without going through something absolutely harrowing, gut-wrenching, things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, then you need to rethink following Jesus, because that is what awaits you. Difficulty awaits you. Pain awaits you. We're definitely not having an altar call after this service.

But it's this process, it's this very process that we become like Him. Jesus didn't pray for His disciples and like hope bad things didn't happen. He told Peter to his face, like, Satan's gonna sift you like wheat. Anybody wanna be sifted by like wheat? No, it's terrible. God's desire is for us to become like Him, working for peace, discipling people, ministering to needs, leading our families, inspiring and connecting with our children. And this transformation only happens, it only takes place as we go through adversity, as we embrace adversity. In fact, avoiding adversity is the only thing that accomplishes the opposite. When you spend all of your time avoiding adversity, it makes you soft, it makes you weak-minded, it makes you easily tired, it robs you of your courage and your fortitude. You experience like one little tiny obstacle and you're like, I don't know if I can do it anymore.

There's a great Disney movie about this, not something I'm gonna say very often. Wally, Wally is a great movie about this. We'll call it a classic Disney movie. Sure, yeah, there you go. I got the other pastor approval, I'm good. Pastor approval, okay. It displays this, that this is humane. If you've never seen Wally, I'll give you the very short version. This is set way into the future and the person on the right is what all humans look like because they are completely dependent on robots and convenience to accomplish anything.

Everything is done for them. They don't even have to get out of the chair. Everything's done for them. And here's the irony, like when you watch the movie, it's so good, by the way, when you watch the movie, watch for this because it's not just that these people cannot fend for themselves because that's definitely true. It's also that they can't have difficult conversations

which is an interesting commentary from Disney. Just saying. It's not just that they can't, literally, it actually shows an x-ray of them and their bones, their bones are actually atrophied. Their bones are smaller. There's no connective tissue between bones anymore because they don't need to move that much. It's a crazy move. I really like Wally. Anyway, it's also that whenever it comes time to rebel, that a lot of them lack courage to do so. So it's not just that they are weak physically, it's also that they are weak in heart, that they are weak mentally. God desires for his people to be strong, to be self-aware, to be tough-minded, to be able to help the weak, to be able to follow his lead. Let's get Wally off there. I got the next one. I said, yes, that's what we need to see. Do you wanna be strong? Do you wanna be self-aware? Do you wanna be tough-minded? Do you wanna be able to help the weak?

Do you wanna follow his lead? Do you wanna be able to do things? Do you wanna be able to do those things? Yes, okay, I do too. I really do, I desperately do. Many days, I don't feel like this, but I desperately wanna do these things. I wanna be these things. I wanna grow into these things. I wanna be these things consistently for other people. I wanna be these things consistently and have the Lord smile on my life. It doesn't mean good things are gonna happen. It means the Lord's smiling on my life. That's what I want. I want when I die for God to look at me and say, hey, well done, good and faithful servant. We desire this. God desires this for us much like, much like how a parent wants a child to grow up, okay?

If you have young children, it doesn't matter. If you have young or old children, it's fine. If you've been a child, everybody's included, okay. If you, if your only desire for your child is for them to be dependent on you their whole life, there will come a day of reckoning that will not be fun for you or them, right? Because the whole point of raising a child is so that you can launch them into the world and they can be a blessing to people. That's what, that's what you want. And yeah, we all got like the different way that we describe that and the different way we go about. That's fine. I'm not trying to crack anybody's parenting. I'm just trying to tell you that the heart of a parent is not dependent. The heart of a parent is to usher them into this kind of self-governing, self-aware ability to do hard things, life. That's what we want. That is God's desire for you except there's,

it's not mixed motives at all, right? I think every parent would be honest and say like, yeah, I want my kids to grow up and be strong in part because I don't want them to embarrass me, amen? Oh, amen. But we want so much more for them than that, although we don't wanna be embarrassed. That is true. God is not worried about his image. God wants you to grow into somebody just like that consistently so that you can love people well, so that you can imitate him, so that you can be a blessing to many. So you can help people. You can actually help somebody who is struggling. Sometimes the lie that you believe in the middle of your own struggle is that you will never get out of your struggle. You will never become a person who is actually able to help another person through whatever you're going through. It's hard.

But let me just tell you, that's exactly what the Lord wants. In fact, a lot of times, that's why you have the struggle you have. When I was 11, my dad told me that he was gay. And as an 11-year-old, I didn't have too many compartments for that to fit in, right, that was kind of wild to me. I was like, okay. I didn't know. It brought up a lot of questions later, obviously, but I didn't really know it then, but at 11 and 12 and 13, I had to begin to process through what this was going to be like. I had to begin to answer difficult questions of myself about sexuality. I had to learn about other people's sexuality when I was 12. I barely knew about my own, but I've got to sit here, figure it out for other people, right? It's hard. But let me tell you, let me tell you, I praise God for that. I praise the Lord so much for it because I have been able to talk with so many people

who either are dealing with same-sex attraction themselves or have children that are dealing with it and don't know what to do next. Or they think that, man, if they would have prayed harder, then their kid wouldn't be gay. Man, what a blessing. What an absolute blessing that was for me at 12 years old to begin to wrestle through those questions so that at 25, I can help other people wrestle through those questions. Because at 12, I didn't feel like a blessing, as you may imagine, but I have been walking in so much ministry victory from that. I get asked to speak to go to things because my dad was gay. It's a wild qualification, but it's true and it's a blessing.

And I'm not like calling my dad every day and thanking him for being gay. I am, though, thanking the Lord for that ability that really kind of like a skeleton key to be able to kind of walk through a lot of different, like, sexually difficult scenarios and begin to speak life into that without getting freaked out. I'll give you one more because I'm already over time, so why not? Sorry, Daniel. Always owe it to Daniel when I go long. I'm sorry, Daniel. I just apologize to him. I once had a conversation with a pastor, front of mine, this is many moons ago, and I can kind of tell the story because nobody knows him and all that.

And he confessed to me a very difficult thing to confess, a really awful thing to confess. He confessed that he was bathing his newborn child in the sink, kitchen sink, and this newborn child was particularly difficult and things weren't going well in his marriage. I mean, just he was in a bad headspace, really, really, really bad. And he had this thought, I could drown the kid right now. And it took him years to forgive himself for entertaining that thought. He didn't go through with it. He loves his life. He loves his wife and his kid that he did not drown. And he told me that story, and I mean, he barely got it out. I mean, it was hard, hard for him to tell me that story, so much shame and guilt. What I was able in that moment to just speak life and just say, hey, man, you are not your intrusive thoughts. You are not your temptations. The Lord has made you to do different, to be different.

I'm really glad you told me that. Part of the way that God has used that story, not in his life, but in mine, is that whenever I have a difficult conversation with somebody and they are kind of afraid to admit something, I tell them that story. And remarkably, every time, they're like, okay, well, what I'm about to tell you is not as bad as that. So I will tell you, right? I know that sounds weird, but the Lord is kind. The Lord is so kind. That guy went through hell for probably a year. And part of the fruit of him going through that is for me to be a blessing to other people. I'm telling you these stories. They are wild, but I'm telling you that so that you can have hope. I'm telling you that because whenever you are like what these Israelites are going through in the first 14 verses in the book of Exodus, like where it doesn't seem like God is anywhere and it doesn't feel like things are normal.

And I pray, but it feels like it hits the ceiling. It doesn't come back. It doesn't, nothing. It feels like I'm being ignored, that God is working in the midst of that. You just can't see it. You don't know how it's gonna play out. You don't know what it's gonna be like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. You don't know. But here's what you do know. That the Lord God in heaven is not gasping at what just happened. He's like, I got it. I got it figured out. We're gonna move forward. Look, whatever, whatever you're going through, okay? And from the story I just told, I think you understand what I mean by whatever, okay? Whatever you're going through, whatever shame, guilt, frustration you're dealing with, whatever obstacle you think is too big, whatever is happening. My encouragement to you is you have no idea what the Lord could be doing in the midst of that.

And we're gonna see this in the book of Exodus, but we can also see it in our own lives. Here's my encouragement. Man, embrace what is in front of you. Pray and ask the Lord to use it for his good in our glory and trust him in that process. And church family, my encouragement to you, as you see other people, as you hear what's happening in them, that you would pray for them, for God to work it out for his glory and their good. That you would encourage them to trust him in that process. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much. Thank you for all that you do, all that we can't see, like not even close. That it's tough for us to figure out,

but it's not tough for you. You know, you've seen us at our worst. You've seen us at our best. You know what it looks like whenever we mess up. Lord, we know that you have a plan for everything happening. All the things that look so awful. You have a plan and that we pray, amen.