God of the Big Things

Sermon Summary

Exodus fast-forwards four decades and brings Moses back into the story as a forty-year-old man. He has lived most of his life as an Egyptian, trained in all their wisdom, yet still knows he belongs to the Hebrews. When he finally sees their oppression with fresh eyes, something shifts in him. What looks like a string of random events—anger, failure, exile, marriage, obscurity—is actually God threading small moments together to prepare a deliverer.

This sermon shows how God forms people long before He uses them, and how His quiet work in our ordinary lives is often the setup for something larger than we can see.

Big Idea

God lines up small things over long seasons in order to enact big things in His timing.

Outline

1. The Narrative Zooms In (Exodus 2:11–14)

– Forty years pass between verses 10 and 11. – Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew “one of his people.” – He reacts with misguided justice—kills the Egyptian and hides the body. – The next day, two Hebrews reject him: “Who made you prince and judge over us?” – Moses’ attempt to deliver fails, and his secret is exposed.

2. Running Into the Wilderness (Exodus 2:15)

– Pharaoh seeks to kill Moses. – Moses flees roughly 250–300 miles to Midian—harsh desert travel. – He collapses at a well, exhausted and alone.

3. Moses Can’t Stop Delivering (Exodus 2:16–22)

– At the well, he rescues seven sisters from abusive shepherds. – Their father, Reuel (Jethro), welcomes Moses. – Moses builds a new life: marriage, a son, a home. – His life takes shape not through strategy, but through responding to what’s in front of him. – Scripture teaches that God directs our boundaries, our seasons, and our steps (Acts 17:26–27; Matthew 6:26).

4. God Had Been Preparing Moses All Along

Everything in Moses’ background becomes a piece of God’s design: – Raised in Pharaoh’s house – Trained in Egyptian wisdom – Burdened by injustice – Forced into exile – Connected to a Midianite priestly family To Moses, these looked like random disruptions. To God, they formed a future deliverer.

5. The Shift in Heaven (Exodus 2:23–25)

– Another forty years pass. – Israel groans under slavery. – God hears, remembers, sees, and knows. – After eighty years of quiet alignment, God is ready to act. – Big moments often come after long seasons of unseen preparation.

Why This Matters

Most people don’t live out a perfectly executed plan; they live through small decisions, detours, failures, and unexpected turns. Moses shows us that God uses these very things to shape us into the kind of people who can carry His work. If your life feels random or disjointed, Exodus 2 reminds you: it isn’t. God may be lining things up quietly, patiently, purposefully.

Discussion Questions

• Where in your life do you feel the same disconnect Moses felt—wanting to do good but seeing it fall apart?
• What are the “small things” God may be lining up in your present season?
• How does Moses’ forty years in Midian reshape the way you think about your own waiting?
• What would it look like for you to respond faithfully to the situation directly in front of you right now?
• How does knowing God “heard, remembered, saw, and knew” change the way you handle discouragement?

Call to Action

Visit Chisenhall Fellowship this Sunday. Find a Home Group and take your next step into community.

Transcript

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

It is good to see many children running back. Amen? Amen. That's good. It's good to see them all kind of scurry out of there. You know, just like, it's gonna be so great. We don't have to listen to Pastor Drew preach. It's gonna be so. No, this great school doing a great job back there. It's good stuff. We have been journeying through the book of Exodus. We are in week four of, I think, 27, 28 weeks. We're gonna spend most of the year here.

And we're gonna start in Exodus 2:11 today. And this is the last week that we are on our series, Where Is God? In the first two chapters of the book of Exodus, God is hardly mentioned, and it doesn't seem like he's doing much. And if you read the first two chapters, it's written that way on purpose. It's written through the eyes of the oppressor. It's written almost, I don't know if it's sympathetically, but it's written almost neutrally. This is what happened here. This is what happened here. Egypt is oppressing the Israelites. And even whenever we're looking at the birth story of Moses, which we looked at last week, and Joshua did a great job, thank you, Josh, even as we look at the birth story of Moses, there's all these things that are happening, but it doesn't talk about God orchestrating those things. It's just a lot of ordinary things. And in the whole first two chapters of Exodus,

that's really what we see. We're gonna get into this a lot more today in our last week on it. Let's just start at the very beginning, Exodus 2:11, and let's just start with just the first couple of phrases there, it says, one day when Moses had grown up. Okay. There are 40 years between verse 10 of Exodus 2 and verse 11. Okay, 40 years. One day is talking about a time, 40 years after verse 10 occurs.

The reason we know this is actually from Acts chapter seven verses 22 and 23, it says, Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians that he was mighty in words and deeds. When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. So just to catch up, Moses has spent at this point in verse 11, 40 years learning in Egypt, becoming mighty in word and deed, becoming a big deal.

This right here in Exodus 2:11 is a lot of how Old Testament narrative works. If you're reading the Old Testament, if you're reading the book of Exodus in particular, you are going to see this happen a lot. There are points of fast forwarding, 40 years in a verse, and then there are points of slowing down. It happens all over the narrative. And really it's similar to any account of history. Any account of history, any book, anything at all, no matter how well-intended, cannot tell us everything that ever happened. The Old Testament zeros in on points of interest, on significant moments. For example, most of us cannot name all the battles of the Civil War. Most of us can't name one battle of the Civil War. But we do know about the Gettysburg Address.

We can't maybe recite it. We know the beginning, but most of us can't recite it. Don't start reciting it in your head. Just don't do it. Don't think of the Gettysburg Address. So we don't know every battle, but we do know the Gettysburg Address. We don't know every Steve Jobs innovation, but we do know about the iPhone. It's almost like the old Rockies movies when I was a kid, and it happens in a lot of other movies, but famously in the Rockies movies, there's a training montage. You ever see the training montage, and you're like, look man, that movie's not gonna show you every situp, okay? And thank you, director, for not making me watch every situp, but it communicates something. It communicates that time is passing, that something is happening, right? That there's these moments that are gonna be stacked on each other. A significant moment is coming, but it's not here yet.

As we approach verse 11, we are getting into this significant moment. The old time it's gonna focus on Moses at age 40 because something big is about to happen, although it does not look big at first. So let's read Exodus 2:11 again, the whole thing. "'One day when Moses had grown up, "'he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, "'and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew "'one of his people.'" Okay, Moses is witnessing an injustice. Moses is aware that he's a Hebrew. So he grew up in Egyptian culture, but he understands that he's not Egyptian. He is Hebrew, one of his people, it says. And it says that he looked upon their burdens and saw a beating happen. We don't know if Moses has never seen this before. We don't know if this is news to him. We don't know if he ever went outside and watched it. We don't know if he was hidden from it. We have no idea.

But for some reason, Moses here sees it with fresh eyes and he is very disturbed by all of it. Look at the next verse. Exodus 2:12, "'He looked this way and that, "'and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian "'and hid him in the sand.'" However wrong his act was, Moses is working at this point to deliver someone from injustice. The next day, Moses witnesses more injustice and he intervenes again, but it doesn't go as planned. Look at verse 13 and 14.

"'And he,' Moses went out the next day, "'and behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. "'And he said to the man in the wrong, "'Why do you strike your companion?' "'And he answered,' this is good, "'he answered, who made you a prince and judge over us? "'Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?'" Listen, I don't know if there's a top 10 historically of clapbacks, but right there, okay? That's pretty good. That's a pretty good sit down, shut up moment, right? Don't you, listen, don't you come at me. You're not a prince and a judge over us. You're not a ruler over me. And what are you gonna do to me like you killed that guy yesterday? You gonna kill me too, Moses?

First, the commentary that is given to us in Acts 7:25, it's funny because it says that Moses thought his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not, which is really funny commentary. And it kinda encapsulates Israel and their pride and what we're gonna see later. But that's kinda the first big thing. The second thing, really, and the biggest thing, is that Moses' secret avenging is not a secret. He is found out. He knows that other people know. Let's keep reading. 2.15, when Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. Pharaoh is seeking justice upon Moses. He wants eye for eye stuff here. Moses flees to Midian. Again, this is a part where it's just a small verse, like he fled, he stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

Let's talk about where Midian is in contrast to Egypt. This would be the equivalent of hiking on foot from Las Vegas to Los Angeles through the Mojave Desert. Okay, and avoiding highways, because you're trying to stay hidden, okay? You're dealing with exhaustion. You're dealing with, like, you're just freaking out. I'm sure, like, some panic attacks happening. He doesn't know if he's been seen or not. He doesn't know who's allied with Pharaoh. Who isn't? Is he in a safe territory? Is he not? Is he far enough away? Does he need to keep running? I mean, this is weeks on end. The author of Exodus is fast-forwarding us again. But we need to understand that when he ran, he had a lot of time to think, he had a lot of time. This was a life-changing kind of thing. He left everything in Egypt, and he's going to Midian. Look at verses 16 and 17. It says, now the priest of Midian had seven daughters.

Now, this is how, if you're reading Exodus, let me just tell you, let me just warn you, this is how Exodus works, okay? It's not giving you any kind of resolution on what happened with Moses. It's not really flowing like that. It's just a cutscene, right? It's just, okay, now over here, something's happening in Midian, okay? So the priest of Midian had seven daughters. Then you know that he's gonna be significant somehow. And they came and Drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock. So Moses again, this is number three so far, Moses again is witnessing an injustice, and he's making it right. He's working to deliver them.

Verses 18 and 19. It says, when they came home to their father, Reuel, he said, how is it that you have come home so soon today? And they said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and even drew water for us and watered the flock. This is some ironic stuff right here. An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds. Moses, no matter where he is, is working to deliver people from something over and over and over again. An Egyptian delivered us. It's as if, it's as if Moses is working out this programming that God has put in his heart. Many times, life can almost feel like a loop. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, I sure have, where you just run into the same kinds of situations over and over and over and over again. It's not the same thing exactly every time, but it's just really similar. And if you talk to somebody about their life,

you're going to hear these stories that just happen over and over and over again. And sometimes it's tempting whenever you're listening to that story, you start to think like, do you see the common denominator in these stories? It's you, you know, but it's, a lot of times we can't see those things. But that we feel like kind of on a loop. Sometimes those loops are good. Sometimes those loops are bad. Personally, I have two loops I'll tell you about. Personally, I have a loop where,

man, I will take offense easily at something I realize telling you that is somewhat problematic. I'm just going to go with it, but it's fine. It's an area of weakness for me. I have to remember things like it's not personal, right? That's a really hard thing for me to kind of like put through my brain. It's just, it's tough. It just is, it's okay. It's where I'm walking in some healing. The Lord has been very kind to me. The Lord has given me Pastor Daniel Oster who always tells me it's not personal, which is so good. God bless you, sir. Just hard, just hard to do that. But it's the same situation over and over and over again, like weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks at a time. I'll just, like something will happen and I'll be like, what did they mean by that? You know, and it's like the Holy Spirit is sometimes just telling me like, dude, it's not about you, just calm down.

They're just mad at something else and they just took it out on you. Or they didn't mean anything. They just weren't looking at you and they're not trying to ignore you. They're not mad at you. That's a loop for me. Another loop for me, a good one, okay? So you gotta bat me to get a good one. A good one for me is that I end up creating things. I like to create things. I like to make things. I like to paint, sort of. I like to draw a lot. I like to make up stories for my kids. When I would tell bedtime stories for my kids, I would always make up a new story. And you're like, dude, that's a lot of stories. I'm like, dude, I don't know. It just comes out. I like making things. I like writing things. I like imagining things. I like creating. I like doing those things. That's how God made me, right? And it's kind of like I'm on a loop. But if I have a choice of doing something the same way

or creating a new way to do it, I'm gonna create a new way to do it, right? That's just what I do. I don't have to try to do those things. That's just default. That's just me waking up out of bed, okay? You have similar loops. And just ask yourself, what do you end up doing? What happens in your life that keeps happening, right? And I don't think it'd be hard for you to peg. If it is hard for you to peg, then ask somebody who knows you really well. It'll be real easy for them to peg. It'll be real easy for them to say, oh yeah, okay, yeah. You don't see about, I mean, everybody else can kind of see it. What do you end up doing? What's that loop for you? We're gonna come back to that in a minute. For Moses, his loop is that he ends up delivering people. He just does. He just sees injustice and he wants to make it right and he wants to do something about it. He wants to do something different.

So back to the story, verses 20 through 22, this is, again, this is the father-in-law, this is Reuel, also called Jethro, long story. Reuel, Jethro, said to his daughters, then where is he? Why have you left the man? They call him that he may eat bread and Moses was content to dwell with the man and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son and he called his name Gershom for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. Moses is kind of unintentionally finding this new life in Midian, right? Moses is simply delivering people. He's kind of on that loop. He's going over and over again and he's kind of tripped on saving these people that needed saving and now he's married into their family. Right, Reuel and Jethro, just kind of, not Anne, sorry, same guy, Reuel has welcomed him in. He has received Zipporah in marriage. He starts a family, okay?

Look, if we are honest, if we are honest, this is most of us. This is most of us right here. That our lives are not the result of some grand plan that we put together 15 years ago, amen? Okay, right, yeah, we're all living in that what if, okay? 15 years ago, we had a great idea and now we're here. Okay, and it's not what we thought it was gonna be 15 years ago, but it's where we are, right?

We, in our lives, we have these sliding doors, right? Sliding doors, different opportunities that just like pop up and close and open and close and it's people, places, conversations. Josh actually, Josh Wood brought this up last week, which was really great. He just kind of brought up this scenario of a shopkeeper with like a bent key and you're supposed to go this way and then you accidentally bump into the shopkeeper. I realize that doesn't sound like any kind of story right now, but if you go back and listen to it, it'll totally make sense. It's just to say that sometimes, like if you try to be conscious of every little thing, if you try to engineer every little part of your life, you're gonna go crazy because there's so many other things to engineer. There's so many things that are happening around you that you're not even aware of. You don't even know. You couldn't know.

And a lot of times, man, the situation that we find ourselves in, we meet somebody, we have some kind of really great conversation, we become really good friends with them, or we meet somebody, we're attracted to them, we have a conversation, we like them, we marry them, we start a family. And here we are. It wasn't like, ah, my five-year plan is to, and it's all gonna happen, and it's all gonna be in a, no. It's not, it doesn't work that way. Even the most forward thinking of us, even the most planned out amongst us, we must admit that we are living life as it comes to us. Just one day at a time, man, we're just living it as it comes to us. We're not constructing some big, great thing. We're not going off of prediction models.

And yet, and yet, and yet, even though that feels exactly like, that's exactly what we feel. That's an everyday thing for us. We all live life in first person, okay? We're all making choices with consequences. We're not like trying to plan out every little thing. I want you to look at how Paul describes life in his sermon in Acts 17. It's just two verses, but man, it's so good. So he's just talking to these guys, and he says to them, it's Acts 17, 26 through 27, it'll be up here. It says, and he made from one man every nation, he's talking about God, he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. Let's just pause on that for just a second. God made people from a person, okay? Adam, that's what he's saying at the beginning. And then he says that God has determined

the allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place. God in eternity past had your zip code. That's what that's saying. God knew how long you were gonna live before you were born. God knows where you're gonna go, like in your whole life. You and I, we talk about this all the time. It's really helpful though. You and I experience time like a parade. We experience one float at a time. God experiences or experiences, God understands that parade, kind of witnesses that parade. He's in the parade, he's on the side with us, he's also above it, he can see the whole parade all at once. God sees time and history all at once.

That's mind blowing, but it's accurate. That's the God we worship. He sees it all. Let me keep reading. Because he does this for a reason, 27, in order that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us. That God doesn't do these things arbitrarily. God doesn't say, I don't know, you know, I guess they'll go there and they'll go there. Yeah, does that work out yet? No. God has the end in mind and is working toward that end. He's not surprised by things, he doesn't freak out. Jesus speaks of this level of attention on us in Matthew 7, and I love it, Matthew 7, 26 says, look at the birds of the air. And when Jesus tells you to look at something, you gotta just take note here, he's saying, look at the birds of the air, watch them. They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns,

and yet their heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? What a line. Your life feels like it has spilled out of a paint can onto, I don't know, like a pile of garbage or something. Like it just feels messy. Our lives don't feel like it's all ordered and all kind of measured out and all allotted and all boundaried, it doesn't feel that way. That's not how you and I experience life. I can barely keep my room clean. I'm not trying to control my whole life. I can't do that. You can't do that. When you dry, you go crazy. Or you become Elon Musk or both. You can't do it.

But here's what we can know, here's what we can do with that information. If that's all true, and it is, our lives must be pointed toward something. Our lives must be going somewhere. They must. And you say, I don't know, I just can't see it. My life isn't going anywhere. Look, man, we just read two pieces of Scripture that totally contradict what you just said. The Lord has your life planned out, allotted, boundaried, wrapped up in a bow. The Lord knows what's gonna happen. You can trust Him with that. And the Lord sees your value. Are you not more valuable than a sparrow? But look how we take care of sparrows. Are you not more valuable than a sparrow? You are more valuable than a sparrow. Just in case you're wondering what the answer to that question is. You are more valuable than a sparrow. The Lord has allotted your times. Then your life is pointed in a direction.

It's pointed toward something. That's why you feel like you're on a loop. Because you're always going for the same thing every time. This is why Moses just kept delivering people because it was written on his heart. It was going to happen. This was training. This was just prepping Moses for what was going to happen. We are meant to play our part in God's larger redemptive plan because we are created with a specific identity. Our days and our residence are allotted. We are chosen before the foundation of the world to do the good works that He's lined up for us to do. Let's connect this to Moses's life. Let's see this in Exodus 1 and 2. The whole time God has been lining up these small things. God lines up the small things.

For Moses to settle in Midian, he had to marry in Reuel's family. To do that, he had to be driven from Egypt in the first place. To do that, he had to be a vigilante and get caught. To do that, he had to be bothered by the injustice in the first place. To do that, he had to be raised in Pharaoh's house. To do that, he had to be thrown into the Nile. To do that, there had to be a Pharaoh who did not know Joseph. To Moses, in his first person in life, these feel like random events.

You think Moses was getting all meta with himself and being like, oh, I see the Lord, I keep delivering people. No, man, no, no. That's not, Moses is not that self-conscious. He's not that self-aware. Neither are we. Neither are we. We got loops playing in our lives just happening. And we're just like, oh, man, oh, this happened again. Weird, this happened again. Weird, this happened again. Okay. And sometimes, sometimes the people who love you wanna beat you over the head and say, quit doing it. You know, like, don't keep on that loop. Don't do it.

Look, we're human, we're fallen. We're gonna be on some kind of loop. It's gonna happen. But not all loops are bad is what I'm saying. There are some good loops in that. From what we see in Moses's life, it's also true in our things that God lines up the small things to enact the big things. God lines up the small things to enact the big things. The big things just don't happen very often. They're more like twice in a lifetime kind of things. They're not things that even sometimes that you're aware of are big things. Sometimes they might even feel like a small thing. This is not to try to hunt and pack what the Lord's will is and try to like, oh, I'm gonna guess over here, I'm gonna guess over here. I'm gonna try to, that's not, look man, the Lord has things for you to do. He lines them up right in front of you. Do them. Get encouragement to do them. Read your Bible.

Pray. Do them. All these little things, do them. God is using those little things to enact big things. And sometimes you don't get to see the big thing. Sometimes a big thing comes like 20 years after you're gone. There's a really great story. Do I have time to tell it? I do. It's in the Old Testament. Jeremiah is, the people of Israel are leaving their land. Okay, they're going into captivity. And what God tells Jeremiah to do, he says take a deed, like a deed, like an actual deed. Okay. And bury that deed in this spot. And he said in 70 years, somebody's gonna dig this up.

Guys, Jeremiah never saw that. Ever. There's no way he wouldn't live in 70 years. After that, I think he was already in his 50s by that point. I don't know. He was old. Old. You know what I mean? He wasn't 13, okay. He wasn't gonna see 83 in 70 years, okay. Be a lot for me too. I mean, if I'm burying something for 70 years, I'm like, I'll see y'all later. I'm not gonna see what's the end of that, right? It's like a time capsule, right? Like a time capsule, you just bury it. And you're like, somebody's gonna find it. Let's just throw random junk in it or something. I don't know. You ever seen the unveiling? Anyway, those are weird. Anyway, all I'm saying is that what God calls us to do very often is bury stuff for other people to find a generation or two later. You and I don't get to have like some kind of aha moment. It's not about us being like hashtag blessed on that.

It's not all of that. All that we would get to see from that is just gravy. It's just extra. And I know, look, I know we need encouragement. I need encouragement. Sometimes I'm praying. When I'm praying to the Lord, I'm like, Lord, let me just see a little bit of what you're planting. Let me just, just give me something. Just give me a little bit of hope. Just a little glimmer of what's coming.

And very often, Lord's like, you don't need to, you don't need to see it. Just do it. You're gonna have other joys, Drew, it's fine. You're gonna see some other things happen. You're gonna see some other things come to fruition, but it's fine. You don't need to know that what you're doing is going to end up in a specific way or be totally used for good or whatever. Look, man, no. Just do what I'm asking you to do. Just bury the deed. Just rescue the people.

Just follow the loop. See where I'm leading you. See how I've made you. See what part little, what little part you play in my big redemptive plan. And it's gonna be amazing. And there's gonna be joy beyond comprehension in the middle of that. This is the big thing that's coming. We can see it in Exodus chapter two, verse 23. It says, during those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. Those many days, because we're in Exodus still, those many days are another 40 years.

So if anybody asked you how long the sermon took today, it was 80 years long. We know it's another 40 years from Acts seven again. Acts seven is a sermon by Stephen, who is the first martyr for Christianity. And he's actually talking a lot about kind of the timeline of this. It just helps us. So these many days is another 40 years. And so for, just to keep score, for 80 plus years, God has been working out this plan. It was 80 years ago that a Pharaoh arose that didn't know Joseph. It was 80 years ago that they're starting to throw babies in the Nile. It was 80 years ago, okay? 80 years, all for this to culminate into something unspeakably grand.

Look at verses 24 and 25. It says, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. First of all, there is a play on words here that you can't see that is difficult to determine. But it uses the same progression, the same kind of words for God seeing Israel that Abraham saw in chapter two verse 11. When he said he saw, he went out and he looked at the, he looked at the people and he saw their oppression and he saw an Egyptian beating in Hebrew, right? Same kind of wording, same there. God saw, verse 25, the people of Israel, and God knew. And you get the sense in Exodus, you get the sense that things are shifting now, that God hears, that he remembers, that he knows, and it gives us the sense that God has finally had enough.

It's time. God is now ready to act. The time has been fulfilled. We're ready to go. Let's not lose this part. God right now is doing something in your life right now. God is either lining up the small things or he's enacting the big things. Chances are he's lining up the small things. Just by the odds, okay? Most people's lives, lots of little, really few big, okay? Big things like once twice in a lifetime, if that. Little things, most of your lifetime, okay? Deciding what to eat for dinner, right? Deciding where to put your kids in school. Deciding how to do this, how to work on your marriage, how to grow as a, all these little things, all these little things that are just kinda happening. And what we experience, you and I, what we experience is hard to understand because it feels so insignificant. It feels so little.

And so if you had the answer to the question right now, like what is God lining up in your life right now? Is he finally enacting something? What is God lining up in your life right now? What loops are you on? What is the Lord trying to get your attention on? Some of you know, I mean some of you know that you are about to be in for big, big changes, okay? I got a daughter and a son who are seniors in high school. Okay? I was telling them, I told them this the other day, in the year 1990, I was in eighth grade. In the year 2000, I was married. Okay, those are real dates. I was married at 23 years old, okay? So I was like 17 and getting married. In a 10 year span, 11 year span, I went from junior high to married, okay? For some of you, life is about to speed up a lot. Like you're about to, I mean, just some big things are gonna happen. They're coming for you. You might be staring down the barrel of them.

You might know exactly what's coming. You're freaking out. I want you to know the Lord has trained you for that. The Lord has brought those little things all together and your life is on a loop. He is, look, lean into how God made you so that you can be ready for what he's bringing. But also pay attention to all these things that you think don't matter, that you think are insignificant or small. Look, when you are waking up in the morning, man, crack a Bible. When you are waiting in line, pray. When you are wondering kind of what to do next, bring that before the Lord. Tell somebody in your community, somebody in your home group or in your life group or somebody just that you met at church or something. Tell me, tell Pastor Daniel, tell somebody about what's going on in your life. Get some help, get some wisdom. Don't try to do this on your own. The lie that we believe

is that we are living a much smaller life than we are. But what we have to stay away from is thinking that we're a bigger deal than we are. We're not a big deal, but we're part of a big deal. Our lives are relatively small, but they're working out in this plan that is redemptive, that is worldwide. And that is a good and glorious thing to remember. What is God lining up in your life right now? What things is God enacting? My encouragement, open your life to this. Begin to trust God with the things that he is lining up. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the opportunity to listen to it, to hear what you're saying to us. I pray that with all these little things that are going on in our lives, that we'd be faithful in them, that you would give us strength in them. And it's in your name that we pray, amen.