Deeper Wk 9- In the Mess

You see, there will be breakthroughs There's something that we have to believe. It's something that we have to receive and something that we can't just simply sing it as a lyric or sing. It is something that's written, but we have to sing it as something that's smoking something that we're prophesying over our life and saying that there will be breakthrough.

So let's just sing that one more time as we sing with understanding. And as you sing with something else it's not just lyrics, because the Bible does say that they do sing my praises, their lips sing my my praises, but their hearts are far from me. So this morning, let our lips me with our heart say when we sing, there will be breakthrough We pray to you through whatever circumstances there will be breakthrough.

There will be prayer through trials and tribulations set to test our faith. There will be breakthrough there. There'll be breakthrough circumstances that we have no control over and we like to have control over. We know that God will have a right to power Father, we just come before you. You say have your wings. We say thank you for breakthrough because Lord, not all breakthrough is immediate, but sometimes a breakthrough can take time that can be progressive.

Father, help us understand the Lord. There is something spiritual or there's something about a miracle. Lord, about it even being progressive and having to go through a progress, having to go through a process so that we God may be perfected, so that we may be wanting nothing Father, prepare our hearts, prepare spirit. And we may be able to receive your word.

Father, that we may be able to to have something from my Lord, to get something from my Lord, even if it's just a small nugget, even if it's just something smaller. I pray that you would just allow us to leave this place different than the way we came in. Father we thank you. We know that your spirit is here.

We know that your presence is here, and we know that you've got our throne or the praises of your people.

And we thank you, Lord, for just being in this place. We love you and we honor you. So your son's name, we pray. Amen.

You may. Come on. If you know God is good, just give it some praise right there. You write him in so good morning. One church thing. It's so morning. We, sir. And I was a campus pastor. At the living room church. We had our services at 7 p.m.. And so every time that I opened of service, I'd say good morning every single time.

And they were they were gracious. They would never correct me. They'd just say, hey. Yeah, good morning, Ray. Hey, hey. And so I lived the live for a long time. But here I have my watch on to make sure that I'm correct. They got the time of their they got the time here in like eight different places. So if I say good morning when it's not morning, and it's definitely an issue that it's just a personal issue.

But before I continue, I do want to say that if I have like a slight coughing spell, it is okay. I do not have COVID. I've already had it like three times. But aside from that, I have had a parenting cell that I would like to share. So any new parents in here in a new parent? Probably not just us.

Okay. But there will be a couple of new parents here soon. So thank God for fruitfulness. Thank God for multiplication. In service, fulfilling the purpose that we were called here for. But anyway, so we had a humidifier it was a cold one because apparently you can have hot humidifiers and I didn't know that either, but we had a cold humidifier.

And so for a lot, for the longest time, we just had it there. My wife said, Hey, can you clean this for me? And I said, Sure, yeah, I'll clean the humidifier now. I did it the first time. She asked the promised and then so I took it apart. And then she was like, I think there's some dirt in there.

And so I'll take it apart. And I'm like, Baby, I think this is mold. And so I don't know about you guys, but when there is a humidifier, I absolutely love to just kind of like just get a whiff of that coldness that cold Misty is. So anyways, what is there was more I don't know how long had been there for it because I don't know, I had to clean those out.

And so I had been just kind of breathing it in for a little bit. So if I have a coffee smell, I think I just have an allergic reaction to that because I've had it for a couple of weeks. So just wanted to let you know that way you're not like, Oh, oh gosh, just go, go in the south.

So just, just letting you know, just they're fine. But anyways, so in today's message, if I had to give it a title, right? Just like Pastor Ryan says, if I had to give it a title, it would be in the mess. And so I wouldn't want to talk about this morning. It's just how God sees our mess, because if you're anything like me, then you probably have a mess somewhere.

I promise. I'm a little organized. I'm not that disorganized, but I am going to say that I'm not the most organized person. My wife is my timekeeper. As I have mentioned to some people before, like, Hey, man, what are you doing tomorrow? I have no clue. Let me ask my timekeeper. I have a calendar for work, and if they didn't put the dates and stuff that I had to do, I would probably never go to anything that I had to do.

But you know what? Thank God for timekeepers. Amazing, wise, right and responsible bosses. But so laugh it. Oh, yes. I see some people are a little disorganized in here. They can. They can they can resonate with that. Or that resonates with them. But I want to talk about this mess. And so just basic superficial example. How many of you have anybody asked for a ride before?

Like, Hey, can you can you pick me up? Or you can can you just like last minute? Can you take me somewhere? And you're like, yeah, yeah, give me one second. Maybe if you're like me, you run to your car, you're your passenger seat, not your seat, but the passenger floorboard is full of my personal life. In my life, it's full of energy, drinks, monsters, bangs, rain.

I mean, I could probably name them all because I don't have I am not biased like I will have each and every one of them. It just depends on the day, depends on the mood and depends on how much I have to get done. And so but I have them there. And on top of that, I'll go to the gym, taped some pre workout.

So I'll take a bottle and I don't, you know, something like this and it just put some pre-workout in the bottle, drink it and then just chuck it on the floor. So it's a bad habit that I have of just throwing stuff on the floorboard. So but if you're like me, you're going to try to run there and it's either going to be too much of a mess, but you're still going to try to just like chuck cans in the bag throw stuff bottles.

I don't know. Some of you might have a different kind of addiction than a caffeine addiction, and some of you might have Twinkie wrappers on there. Like, I don't know. To each their own. Right. But you try to move everything. You try to make it look like your car's at least halfway decent or halfway prepared for times like this.

And so you whatever. But at the end of the day, you didn't actually do anything. You just kind of put your mess in the bag. You just kind of hid your mess from the people, which is cool. But now this might be some of you might have great car hygiene. I guess you might have a little trash bag and you have a habit of putting your stuff in the trash bag take out every day.

Good for you. That's awesome. It's just I'm just not there yet. But now just a more real example, your house, your homes, wherever you live, at all. Right now, how many of you like unexpected guest because when I grew up, for some reason, it was okay to have unexpected guests, like, hey, somebody knocks at your door, like, without coming.

That's totally fine. Like, that's just how life is, right? You know, they always have a door open. Like, when I say my door is always open, I mean, like, literally my door is always open. Come that. Come in. But as I grow up, I start to realize that it's not actually like that. Like I was painted a different picture.

People even have doormats where it's like, if you didn't call before ahead of time, then turn around and go back home. So I live that live, too. And so but I realized why. I realized why because some of us, we don't throw energy drinks and cans and stuff on the floorboard of our car. Sometimes we leave our we were doing our we're doing our laundry.

We leave it in the living room or we have a stack of dishes or the trash cans like overflowing. And you're just trying to play that game of let's see who the trashcan falls on first or who has that last piece of trash. It doesn't fit and then you have to take the trash out or, or whatever. But that's part of the reason we don't like Unexpected Guest, because we'd like at least a ten minute notice that we can shove all our mess, all our messiness, and organize things into a closet or under a couch or under a bed or something.

So that way it looks like we sort of have it together, but in reality that people come over and it's okay. But at the end of the day, the we keep them from going into the rooms. Hey, yeah, don't go into that closet or but I have guests that it's like their home so they can come and go wherever but sometimes if we if it's a mess in the room, I'm like, Hey, man.

And we usually go into that room for whatever. But like, today, just kind of don't go in there today. So we, we do that kind of stuff too, because we've thrown our mess in there. But the whole point is that we never really fix anything. All of that is just temporary. And a lot of the time, that's also what our spiritual life is like.

We have a mess in so many areas of our life. That we just would like to put under a bed or we'd like to just shove it all in a closet, or we just like to have no one over and when we're talking spiritually, we're talking about having that personal relationship with Jesus, because when he comes into your life, he doesn't want to be a guest he doesn't want to be prohibited from entering certain rooms or certain closets or certain areas in your life.

Because when we give our life to Jesus, we have that expectation that, hey, we say, Yeah, I give you all of me except for this part of my life.

So our addictions, our our temptations are bad habits. Those are some of the things that we don't like to release to God, our personal preferences. That's a lot different for personal preferences or things that maybe aren't sin personal preference are things that maybe they're not said in the Bible doesn't tell you that it's a sin, but sometimes it's things that God is asking you to lay down.

We're holding on to them. Just a couple examples, and this is, like I said, this is just personal preference. Everyone has personal preference, but for example, vulgar music or music that just is very degrading or just music that, you know, maybe God is asking you to lay that down, but you're like, Yeah, know what kind of like this?

Or maybe drinking is also one of those areas. Maybe you have a personal preference of drinking or not drinking, and God is either asking you to lay it down. In some industries, that's just an examples of personal and personal preference, and it's personal preference for a reason. So everyone has their own personal belief and their own personal thing about them.

But those are just areas that I'm just using as examples of things that sometimes God is asking us to lead down, or God is asking us to give Him permission to change. And then so I do want to talk about a couple that I have about four points. I think either four or five points I don't remember. So just bear with me, but I'll try to be kind of quick if you're in my next group or my next group to tell you that I'm pretty quick, I like to just get in go because I heard people have the attention flight or attention span of not that much.

So they say anything over like 10 minutes is too much. So I'm going to try my best, but I'm here passive minds not a love faster. I don't have any examples. I'm sorry. I'm not going to bring out a table. I'm sorry. Production crew, you're good for today, so I apologize in advance. It's not going to be super exciting but here we go.

The first thing I want to talk about is are the first points in the first part of this is Jesus comes to confront your mess. Okay. So Jesus comes to confront your mess. And this part, I'm going to use the woman at the will as an example so everyone knows the story of the woman at the well. Jesus meets up with this woman at the wheel, and she's like, Hey, man, why are you talking to me?

You shouldn't be talking to me. And he's like, Yeah, well, I'm kind of different. She's like, Okay, you're different. He's like, No, I'm. I'm really different. Like, seriously, like, I have water that you will never want to drink water again. You'll never thirst again. She's like, Oh, really? Yeah. I'm trying to tell you I'm different. So that's how that whole narrative goes.

But the part I want to go to is that he says, Bring your husband mess. Example of mess. Number one, bring your husband. She says, I don't have a husband. So we can see that she's trying to avoid that confrontation. She's trying to avoid that piece of that mess that she's been trying to keep from people that she's been trying to hide.

She says, Bring your husband. I don't have a husband. Okay, cool. You're right. You've had five husbands. And on top of that, the one that you're with right now is not your husband. So we can see that when we come. Do we have two options when we allow Jesus into our life? And that's either it confronts our mess in a good way.

And we're just like, here, just go ahead, have it all, like, just have it all. Or we can have these moments where we're confronted with our mess and we try to hide it. And I don't know why we try to hide things from Jesus like the Bible clearly states that our sins are just laid out before him. So I don't know why we try it, but we can see here that at the end of the day, he's going to take it from us if we allow him to.

So he had said that you're the one you have that's not your husband, but here's the kicker, though, is that he didn't do this to embarrass her. Okay, let's keep that in mind. Jesus will never confront you and your sins to embarrass you. He will never put you in shame. But we can see that later on in this narrative.

We can see that she runs out and she goes and tells everyone what she said. This man just told me things that that nobody knows. You have got to come talk to him. And guess what? The Bible says that later on. And here we go. We can go ahead and go to John. Four 39, three 42. So you don't think that I'm lying and this is after Jesus had talked to her and told her that I had just revealed all that to her, and this is what she said afterwards.

Well, this is what the Bible says in verse 39. This is many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did is what she said. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word.

They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said, that we believe what we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world that is why Jesus confronts you in your mess. He doesn't want to confront you and your mess, to embarrass you or to put you to shame.

But God wants to do something through you, through your testimony, which is the reason why we have to let him have it. Amen. So he doesn't want to embarrass you. He wants to use it. He wants to use you. That testimony that once brought you shame, that testimony or that experience that once brought you condemnation or shame and guilt is also that same testimony that is going to set someone free.

Amen. Next. Peter. Okay. Now, when I was in Bible College, I had my, my, my professors we call them brothers like everyone. So brother, brother, Phil, brother, Mark, brother, like, just so their first name is brother to me. So I had a teacher named Brother Phil, and he always we always talked, and he always told me that I was like, Peter.

I was like, Okay. And then I started reading about Peter, and I was like, oh, so he's telling me that I'm rambunctious, I have no control, and I'm just all over the place. But I love Jesus. Oh, okay. Like, cool. I appreciate that. I'll take that as a compliment. But we can see that he's a fisherman. We can see that he's the boldest disciple that Jesus has.

He literally cut someone's ear off because he thought they were going to take Jesus. So we can see that he's definitely both. Okay. How do we how do we young and say he's about it? He's about it. Okay. He means what he says. But this is this is what what's what's funny is that Jesus also told the voters to say, boy, he said, you're going to deny me three times.

And the boy, this disciple he said, of course, he said, I would never do that. Never. But in the heat of the moment, his savior taken away the circumstances had changed. He didn't have that thing or that person that he had relied on circumstances change. And of course, he denied Jesus those three times, just like the Bible says he would or just like Jesus.

I told him he would. So we see that after that He returns to his past life. He returns to being a fisherman. He returns to just have no just moseying around, just working to to live, sleep and to work. That's what they had said. You you make the money to get the food so that you have the energy to go back to work the next day.

They said it's a vicious cycle, but this is what I want to get out of this, is that even then Jesus comes to meet you in your mess.

Well, how does he do that? Okay. Well, he does that. And we can see this, that Jesus was so detailed in the way that he showed himself to Peter. He was very detailed. And we see that and it narrates it in John 21 and verses one through 20. And how does this anybody well first of all, I guess we have to remember that when Jesus showed up to Peter, he was on a fishing boat and he said, Cast your net to the right.

We've all heard that right. Casting it to the right. This is where you're really in the most fish. And they were like, Oh, wow, this guy must know a lot about fishing. And he was a I'm different. But anyways, Jesus again is at the shore, so he's at the shore. The disciples are fishing, and I don't even know if we can call them disciples anymore because they're kind of just like kind of their faith is in the balance that I don't like.

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to fish and just live my life like I did before I met Jesus. So what's interesting is that it narrates in John 21 that Jesus is on the shore and in some version that says, Hey, friends, in other versions he says, Hey children, have you got any fish yet?

They said, No, not really. Hey, cast your net to the right Does that sound familiar? This is after Jesus had been crucified. And what I want to get out of this is that even in our mess even when we have just abandoned the call that God has for us, or even when you've just abandoned the things that you know, that God had had for you, Jesus will come to you in a detailed way that you will know that it's him drawing you back to Him.

Jesus is the most detailed person I think I've ever read about or ever heard about. He made he recreated the scene of when Peter had first met him. And so much so that in John 21 and verses one through 20, Peter says, Lord, it's you it's you not because Jesus said, Hey, it's me, Jesus, I'm back, but because He recreated the instance.

And when he had that encounter with him, when he was called out to be fishers of men, but here's the thing is that in any moment or maybe you're going through this right now where you're going through a phase of I don't really know if Jesus is real, or maybe I don't really know what's going on, or I just kind of feel faith or I'm just kind of neutral right now.

Let me tell you that Jesus is working on something right now. To meet you in your mess and still do it in the most detailed way possible so that you unmistakably know that it is him that is calling you and that it is him who called you in the beginning. And then the man next to you got Judas.

Judas, do I have to give an introduction about Judas the most dislike disciple in history? Like there is no close second place. I mean, maybe Peter, but like, it's not even close denying Jesus and betraying Jesus is a little bit different.

But, like, we know he's notorious for betraying Jesus. Everyone knows this. Everyone really dislikes him. Funny fact is that he was one of the original 12, and he had been with Jesus for three years.

Jesus only did ministry for three and a half so he was with him the whole time that Jesus had done ministry but the Bible does say that not everyone that says Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of the Father in Heaven Who does that mean? This is off topic a little bit, but it means that you can come to church and still not go to heaven.

Right That's what that means. If Judas was with Jesus the Master for three years, the reason that we are followers of Christ is Jesus Christ the Savior, followers of the way. That's who we are. But He was with him. He was with the author and the finisher of our faith. And even then he still betrayed Jesus. So that just means that regardless of how long you're in church, you can be in church 22 years and still be a one year old Christian that's been in church for 22 years.

Because and I heard that somewhere where it says, you can be a four year old Christian or you can be a one year or one year old Christian that's just been in church for 22 years. It's so different but we see here that it doesn't matter. I'll go as much to say it doesn't matter if you're serving Does it matter if you're doing worship?

If your heart's not in it, then you're just a musician. You're not a worshiper. Because the Bible does say and John, for when he was talking to that woman at the world, that there's people that are going to worship me in spirit and in truth.

And a lot of the times we just want to be musicians or we just want to be seen or we just want to stand on the platform. I say musicians a lot because that's just my background. Like I that's all I've done pretty much as I've been in ministry as being a worship leader or things like that. So I always had to constantly remind if it wasn't an issue, then I wouldn't have to constantly remind the worship team that I was leading.

Hey, if you're not right, if you're not doing things right. Look, I'm gonna tell you something. It is going to be bad to worship next to you because we're building a throne because the Bible says that we're in throne or he's in throne on the praises of his people. And I'm not trying to have Jesus sit on this little chair made for five month old or two year old.

I'm trying to I'm trying to have this throne big enough to fit this king so the moral is that if we are not in it, if our hearts are not in it and we're not being transformed, then we can just sit here all day long. We can come to church, is still is still miss it. And I would hate for any of us to miss it.

But back on topic number three is that Jesus knows the mess you're getting into.

Your Jesus new Judas is going to betray him. He was in the last dinner and he said, someone here is going to betray me. Everyone is like you. I would never do that. Just like looking around the table, like, would you imagine receiving the pastor on one day to just 12 of you? Like, Yeah, someone's going to betray me.

Oh, gosh, it's not me. Hey, Pastor. And I want you to know it's not going to be me. I really want you to know that but what's interesting is that Judas eight to that's what's interesting. That's the kicker.

Even knowing he would be betrayed, even knowing that because of him, he would be going to the cross to suffer probably the most excruciating death documented Judas eight to Judas had a seat at that table.

Knowing his heart, knowing his intentions, he was still able to sit with the master at the last dinner on top of that, they had on top of that, they had, oh, my gosh, four other words. Oh, they had just had less dinner, but they were together that's just so crazy to see that. And often I'm reminded of that.

I'm I'm Judas. After I'm reminded that I didn't deserve a seat at the table and to this day, and this is just something that I told him my next is true. That's a lot. But there was this really really old guy that I used to go to all the time, the wisest of them all. His brother Ray was like a 84 year old guy or 82 year old guy that every time I had an issue, I was like, I'm going to Brother Ray because I need some of his wisdom And it was it was with him that he had said, like, I will never be able to love God as much as I want to So

even in this Judas and see myself in Judas is that I don't know that any of us ever deserve a seat at that table.

But we're being reminded that Judas eight to be reminded that he was with the disciples and that even after he was going to betray him, even then he still had a seat at that table. Gives me hope gives me hope that the one that we follow is merciful, gracious, and that we have a seat at that table.

And then lastly, when want to talk about point number four, just going right into it, that Jesus solutions can get messy as some of you Old Testament geeks you're laughing because you know who you are as we Old Testament geeks are going to like this. But what is the outside of the tabernacle made of? Oh, my God, is a tabernacle?

What is that? Aren't you like 24 tabernacle the tabernacle outside of the tabernacle was made with animal skin the first sacrifice made for atonement of sin was animal skin. And Genesis so that carries that symbolic representation. But we know this, but every other thing that is inside of the temple is beautiful. Super detailed, very detailed, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

But the outside of the temple is not that nice. There's animal skin on it. I'm not talking about a nice fur coat. Like, that's what I'm talking about. But just dead animal skin, like, just not processed, nothing and it just it intrigued me when I had learned this a couple of years ago, that the place where God's presence existed, the place where it was like the hub was ugly on the outside, it was like, huh, interesting.

I would expect some amazing structure. I would expect them to super, super nice for this. You know, I'm saying but the primary reason is that the reason that we should come to his presence is not because of how attractive it is. And I think that's what he was trying to say.

And it's the same today. Obviously, all of us are temples of the Holy Spirit, but we can call this place our our gathering spot, right, a church. But superficial attractions, the church are in danger of super official relationships with Christ like I had said before, you can come to church and still not go to heaven. That would be terrible.

I could be doing something else right now. I could be going to the gym. Or if he watches the TV, if I'm just going to come here and waste my time, you know, or whatever your self-care is but it's the same thing. All his solutions are like that. Some of them are really really enjoyed. When I came here, it was that cross.

I really enjoyed it, not fancy. I feel like I get it. Get a splinter. If I touched it wrong, but that's probably one of the most accurate representations of a cross that I've ever seen.

Because too often times we go to a church or we just imagine this cross sanded down this cross made perfectly, geometrically awesome measure, measured out perfectly but when I see that cross beat up risk of splinters, very high and kind of ugly, very crooked, that's the kind of cross that I imagine our savior carrying obviously a lot bigger than that, way bigger than that.

Can't imagine our savior carrying the cross, getting splinters in his hands buried under the weight of the cross while he's weak and being hit after had been whipped I can't imagine I can't imagine being put up next to criminals with people that deserve to be embarrassed and humiliated. I can't imagine being stripped down out of my clothes. Having flesh ripped off isn't going to get gravity.

Having flesh ripped open. I can't imagine not being able to get up to go use the restroom. So I have to use the restroom by myself on the cross next to these criminals, openly humiliated publicly exhibited to be shamed the smell, the sight, what it must have been like to be there in that moment is not a sanded cross the Bible actually sometimes refers to the cross as a tree but that's why we are here.

That's why you and I have a hope in a future to be with him again. Because the ugly mess and the reality of the cross, the reality of the cross, the messiness of it serves a beautiful purpose far beyond what it physically looked like.

But I'll tell one more thing just to not my personal testimony, but it's something that impacted my life actually a lot. And so many of you know, my father passed but what was it? I had a tried to talk to him for a long time about the reason why he came to the United States. It when my wife was there one day when I don't know if that was a good idea to ask in public.

And I was like, Hey, Dad. So are you ever going to tell me why you why you came here? And so so it all started because one day I was I rebelled against my dad or I wanted to no one's ever done that. Right. And and I was like, I hate you. This is like no 12. Hey, you Then my mom was like, why don't you ask your dad why he's here?

And what do you mean? So he wanted to kill someone. I was okay, y'all asking So that was like when I was 12. 13 to this day, I had until he passed. I kept asking him like that. Are you ever going to tell me what happened? Are you ever going to have to tell me what happened? And he was like, Yeah, I'll tell you.

We always had to go to this place called Carolina Diner. It was in but in Greensboro, not the one here. And every Friday morning or Saturday morning. And he oh, I was he was going to tell me like he really was before he passed away. And he said and then so he passed away. So I had to ask my mom.

I was like, Mom, why? What? Why? They didn't want to tell me what's wrong. Like, is it that bad?

And they didn't tell me like they didn't want to tell me that even my mom like, it was like, mom, dad, my all jokes aside, my pops is gone. Like, he's not going to be mad if you tell me and my mom would come over to house too long, you know, like, are you going to tell me, like, can you just please tell like, I'm going to be really mad if you don't tell me So she finally told me and she said the reason that your dad had come to the United States was to kill someone.

I said, okay, I know that much. But here's a if y'all if I would have met my dad, he was like, I never said he never said anything to anyone. Like, he had that, like, resting dad face like you just thought he wanted to hurt someone. But reality, he was like the biggest, softest guy ever.

And so she was like, yeah, your dad came to United States to kill someone because they had raped him.

And I was like, Oh, yeah, I guess I wouldn't want to tell my son that either.

And she said she was she was trying to get to him. He was trying to get it, but he had gone to Chicago and your dad thought he was he was going to come up here, but he ended up in Texas. So I guess they don't teach geography down there. So he landed in the wrong part of the place.

Thank God for ignorance. And long story short, that's what it was. And so I was like, wow, you're telling me that my dad could have gone from a criminal to just being this father that he is or that he was with the wife, that he had the care that he gave to us as his children without his desire to want to kill someone, without his desire to want to do harm to somebody, without his desire to have revenge or to have vengeance over somebody that humiliated him.

Without that, I wouldn't have been here. I wouldn't have been with my wife, wouldn't have met my wife. I wouldn't have had my daughter. But this is where we see what Roman says, that all things work together for good to those that love him this is where we see that. But because in the moment we don't see that in the moment we just see the messiness in the moment, we see the desperation in the moment.

We see all the negative aspects, all the negative circumstances in the moment. We're trapped inside of our bubble of ideas and our bubble of thoughts. And we forget that there's a season two to our life come on. Don't tell me that you haven't watched a series that has eight seasons and you think the main character is going to die in every season, but there's still eight seasons.

He can't die in the first season and be done. That'll be terrible. So no, they have eight seasons left to go. So similarly, whatever situation you're in, whatever circumstance you're going through, remember, you have another season. This season of life is just a season that you're going through right now, but you have more to go you have to remember that even in the mess, God is faithful and even in the mess he uses it.

We have a seat at the table not because we deserve it, but we have a seat at the table because of the ugly and messy reality of the cross. Don't stop. Don't stop now. Don't know what you're going through. I don't know what you've been going through, but don't stop now.

And this is so timely for somebody. But don't stop now because the reality is that you're a lot closer to breakthrough than you think you are. And if you give up now, you will never know what was waiting for you on the other side of breakthrough. You have to pursue it. The Bible says that we're in a race and now we have to run our race.

Don't stop. Run your race.

Don't put the gloves up yet.

You've got to keep going because this is probably the worst part that you're going through. If you're going through something bad, this is going to be the part that God wants you this is going to be the part where you're being formed and you're being shaped. This is the part that the Bible talks about us being in the potter's hand and being broken down when there's an imperfection and being broken down and having to start all over again.

And it's not because you're it's because you're not exactly the way that he wants you to be for the purpose that he wants you to be in the worship team. Go ahead and come up. I think I forgot to say that last time I was the certain but don't stop because there's circumstances, some people circumstances and some people's future depends on what you do right now.

No, I'm not saying that you have control over your your own life or someone else's life. I'm not saying that you have complete control over someone else's life. But I am saying that if you can't see the indirect effect that you directly have on somebody or that you can't have on somebody in the future, your kids, your future generations, in the future generations, after that, this got to be selfless.

We got to begin to think about that.

So don't stop now. Someone depends on it. Something depends on it. Assistant. Our feet is we just pray and let the worship team do their worship thing.

Father We just come before you, Lord, and we just humbly ask that you would make something happen, that you would make us move. The Father If we've been stuck in our own ways, if we've been stuck in our own desires, for that, you would change it. Let us fix our eyes on you.

And let us understand. And even if we don't understand, let us continue. Because, Lord, sometimes we just got to keep going and then we can receive the understanding later Jesus. We're so thankful. Got it. In the middle of the mess, you give us a seat at the table, a seat that we don't deserve. So we just come before you in our mess.

We come before you the way that we are, just as we are and say, have your way we love you and we honor you, and we're just going to worship you in Jesus name.