Thrive in Life's Storms with God's Hope and Protection

Jesus teaches his disciples to thrive in life's storms with God's hope and protection.

God gives us the word ahead of time to face tribulations with confidence.

Life is not fair, but Jesus warns us of the storms we will face.

Jesus has deprived the world of the power to harm us, and we can thrive instead of just survive.

Thank you. I can shout it if you love my Lord. John 16 and 32. Indeed, the hour is coming. Yes, it says, Now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave you alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with you. These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have the Lord on the boat. Would you pray with me? Father, your words mean something more than just religious words. We want to soak in your truth this morning. Speak to us. Bring your word alive to us and give us that what you've determined to be ahead of time for us here at Income Church. We need you in days like this. And we pray out to you that you will not hesitate, but move deeply into our hearts and our souls. For your name's sake and for your glory and for your kingdom, I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now I want to have a conversation with you guys this morning about how to thrive and not just survive in the storms of life. Now, I don't know if you're old enough to have storms of life yet. How many of you have not had storms of life yet? Raise your hand. See, there's a few of you that just, you guys are the luckiest people in the world, you know what I'm telling you right now. Yeah, you have children. It's already, you can't even lie about it. You just got to give up and say you have storms of light, right? Storms of light are spoken to us that they will be real, it will happen, and you will be part of it as a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ. And so I want to reread what I just read to you, but I want to read what's called the Amplified Bible. Amplified Bible is just a, scholars have taken the actual original language, whether it was the Hebrew or the Greek, in this case it would be the Greek in the New Testament, it amplifies it, expands it, and lets us get the whole content of that Greek language. It tends to be richer than English. We need to take usually a bunch of words to make sense of what, a lot of times that one Greek word just blasts to the person of that era or the time of that language. Let me reread it and see if you can follow with me. It says, I have told you these things, verse 33, so that in me you may have perfect peace and confidence. In the world you will have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration. Notice a little more expansion there, right? But be in good cheer. In other words, take courage. Be confident. Be certain I'm daunted. for I have overcome the world. And that concept is very much deeper than anything you thought. It really is saying, I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you. Now those words have basically three thoughts I want you to grip this morning and use them for God's kingdom sake. Number one, as he said, I've told you these things so that in me you may have perfect peace and confidence. In the context, he just told his disciples something very unsettling to them. In verse 32, he said, indeed, the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered. You're going to be oppressed by some people. In other words, he told them the future. He told them something that was going to come that wasn't going to be pleasant. it was going to be hard on them. And it's very interesting that God so loves us, He gives us the word ahead of time so that we can face those tribulations, those hard times, and be able to not just survive and endure, but to thrive. That's right, thrive. And He told these men these words on purpose so that they would have confidence. Number two, He said, In the world you have tribulation, trials, distress, and frustration. I'm telling you, life is not fair, not easy. You will find times of great distress. You will find times of great pressure. You will find times when you're just frustrated with God, your wife, your kids, and the government, the world, and anybody that comes near you. Because that's what life brings here. Jesus warned you of that. Before we were born, he told us that's going to be what life's about. My fellow servants, my disciples, that's what life's going to be. And three, he said, I am deprived of the world of the power to harm you. Everything that happens has to get by Jesus first, because God, your creator, has to allow me. Because I said, I have stripped them of the power. They can't harm you without me standing there before you. Now, if you understand that, then you need to see why you can thrive instead of just survive in days of hardship. I need to give you a little history lesson because to make sense of this story for me, I had to go back to history a little bit. Anytime church a few years back basically came together from some tribes. It was the tribe of Del Rio Community Church. Anybody still here from Del Rio Community Church? There was another tribe, Whispering Pines Community Church. Anybody here still from Whispering Pines? Okay. And then there was another tribe, the tribe of Paul, called the Church of St. Lucie. How many are here from the Church of St. Lucie? And how many didn't come from any of those tribes? They came because any time church, you're here. Praise God. Now, these tribes all have history. Now, the history of what I want to give you is basically connected here, where you are right now. I came from the tribe of this building. This building was a tribal group. Twenty years ago, I had 85 to 100 people in our church, just like we have now, 20 years ago. We were here as a church. We were making it okay. But I don't know how many of you lived here for that many years in Port St. Lucie. The Port St. Lucie was a stirred-up pot of bodies. There was such outrageous changes going on. The people from the telephone book told me the day I got my phone book, it was already worthless. Fifty percent of the people in Fort St. Louis had already moved in that one year. Every year, it was just a pot of people coming and going as fast as things could be. It was an uproar of the city. I don't know if it's calmed down any, but I know that at that time in my life, that was what was going on. One year, at our tribal gathering, in the summertime, approximately seven to ten families left. Left about half of us. They moved to Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Lake Worth, Stewart, I don't know where. Tennessee, I think some people moved to. People were moving everywhere. and we found ourselves stripped down. Now, here's the thing. When I came here, there was this building that didn't look as nice as this. But it was here. And God brought me here. And I came from Stewart at a church. I was a youth pastor, a large church. And I came and I got a phone call and I said, you should consider being a pastor here. So I drove in here, peeked open the window and said, you've got to be kidding. I want a real job. I want to be here. And then they told me, oh, by the way, there's no people. There was a couple families from Walt Road who were here just to help me get started, and they were going to leave too. So it was my wife and kids. No one else. And they said, by the way, you have this tremendous debt, because you've got to understand, from this road here to the next road down there is all our property. The whole face of the block is ours. And not only that, on the back corner over there, of those three-quarter lots that we also had, but we didn't own them. We had to keep paying the bank for them. Well, with such a small tribe, we were overwhelmed with financial storms and crisis. We couldn't pay our bills. We couldn't take up and deal with it. We couldn't minister. We were overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed with the storms and distress and frustration of trying to be here. I took kids to Guatemala on mission trips. I went to Guatemala, and the people responded to the word of God. Kids were hanging on my legs. They were so grateful. They accepted our word. I went to this little church. You literally had to walk down in the valley with rocks and stones, climb up the side of the mountain to get to the building. If we put that here at Port St. Lucie, not one of you would even come. They made an obstacle course to get there. I was so exhausted just to get to the building. Then I had to preach and they had to translate my sermon and stuff. And they all loved it and everything. And I'm thinking, man, Lord, I want to stay here. The people want you. The word is being responded to. The people are hugging me. And I went back to the mission camp and got on the roof that night and said, Lord, I don't want to go back to Port St. Lucie. They hate me back there. Nobody listens. The whole city is just nobody cares. You've left us in an uproar. We can't pay our bills. I want to stay here. And man, I didn't want God to talk to me. I was telling him. You know what I'm saying? And I finished my diatribe to the Lord. Told him everything that was my will that I wanted to get off my chest. And as clear as you talk to me today, the Lord said to me, I sent you to Port St. Lucie. Rats And so I crawled back to Port St Lucie and nothing changed We still had the mountain of death that we couldn answer We cried to God, we prayed to God, and this didn't go on for a day, or a week. This went for a number of years, and we said, Lord, I quit. He said, no, you can't. I want to quit. No, you can't. I can sell a building, give it to somebody else, they can do better. No. and we received no, no, no. You're killing me. I can't get anywhere. I am a failure before the world. Everybody laughs at me, thinks I'm an idiot, a joke. You've got to let somebody take over just for the sake of making it look good for your name. I mean, I'm embarrassing you. Lamentations. I don't know if you ever read this book. But Lamentations 3, let me read some of it. It really related to my life. I am the one who has been exceeding afflictions that come from the rod of the Lord's anger. He has led me into darkness, shutting out all life. He has turned his hand against me again and again all day long. He has made my skin and flesh grow old. He has broken my bones. He has besieged and surrounded me with anguish and distress. He has buried me in a dark place like those long dead. I was feeling dead. He has walled me and I cannot escape every time I try to tell me no. He's bound me in heavy chains. I feel like I'm a slave to this place. And though I cry and shout, he has shut out all my prayers and wouldn't answer a word. This word was really just kind of soaking out of my heart here. He has blocked my leg with a high stone wall. I couldn't even quit. He has made my robe crooked, which means he's bending it back. He has hidden like a bear or a lion waiting to attack me. He's dragged me off the path and tore me in pieces, leaving me helpless and devastated. He has drawn his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He's shot his arrows deep into my heart. My own people laugh at me. All day long they sing their mocking songs. He has filled me with bitterness and given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink. He's made me chew on gravel. Now that's a rough dinner. Gravel. He's rolled me into dust. Peace has been stripped away. And I've forgotten what prosperity is. Boy, did I not know what prosperity was. I cry out, my splendor is gone. Everything I have hoped for from the Lord is lost. You know, those great visions that Paul would know when you start a ministry, you've got these visions and you're thinking, God, that was all gone. I had lost everything. I had no vision left. The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time as I grieve over my loss. Boy, that was me. Boy, was that me. And no matter how hard we tried, we felt God abandon us. Interesting things began to happen after all this time of frustration and distress and the storms of ministry life. God was ahead of us. But I was too blind to see it. Because one thing was going on through all this time. Remember I showed you about those three lots that were back there? They were designed for homes only. The city told us multiple times we cannot use them. We cannot build anything on it. We're stupid if we want to do anything with them. So just drop the subject even though we asked multiple times. One final day in our cry to God for help and wondering why he abandoned us, why they couldn't pay the bills and we were going to lose this thing anyway. Somebody had a wise thought. Why don't you sell those three lots? I thought, well, that's a stupid idea. We only paid $4,000 for them. That wouldn't get us out of all the debt we owned for thousands of dollars. I'm such a savvy businessman. I had no idea, nor did I pay attention, that the property values of Fort St. Lucie had skyrocketed to unbelievable levels. So when we actually found out how much those free lots were worth, we thought, duh, if we sold those, we could pay our whole debt off and we wouldn't have to be crying and whining all day long. And I realized God had already answered my prayer before I was whining and crying in distress. us. He had went ahead of us and dealt with it. I couldn't see the answer if it was stapled on my forehead until someone finally spoke to me and tried to get my attention because I was such a savvy businessman. So we said, wow, let's sell those things. And we did. We got 99,000 bucks off those things. And so So we went to pay our bill, and we didn't know something. Because the Southern Baptist Commission, who we're a part of, gave us a grant. They had stipulation on that. They got one-third of the money when we sold anything. So they walked out with a huge check, and we still didn't have enough to pay our bill. I crawled back to God and started whining again. How could you tilt us and give us hope and do this, and now we're in the same, we still don't lose the property because we still can't pay the bill. We've lowered a dollar, we still can't pay it. So here we went back to our faces, waiting on God because we had no way to manipulate to make it happen. So we cried and prayed and sought the Lord over and over again, saying the same stupid thing I said before. You abandoned us. I feel like I'm too high gravel. Why did you tip me? And I was really thinking God probably ticked off of me. I can't tell you how dumb I was. You know what? Our God was merciful. I get a phone call from a pastor that basically their church started this place called Walton with Baptist on the other side of town. The thing is, they go, we have really been convicted by God that we're not going to be in debt any longer. We're supposed to pay off our debt so that we're debt-free for our building. And we think God is telling us to tell you the same thing. I said, you've got to be kidding me. This is like, I'm a gravel in the face. Now you're, we've already been praying for years and we can't do it. Then you're going to shove me in the face with gravel and stick it in my face and run it up my nose? I know that, but I can't do anything about it. He said, well, you guys, you work hard for like six weeks or eight weeks. you get together and you do get your money together and you ask for sacrifice and then we're going to get together and we'll have a lunch and together and you guys come over after your worship day on that victory day and we'll have a lunch together and celebrate. I'm like, dude, you're going to really kill me now. So we worked hard and gained like $1,500. It was like peanuts. So we're going over there going, man, I'm like more rambling on the face and they're going to really, you know, So we kind of crawled over there and had the lunch. And sure enough, we get to meet and they get up and go, praise God. Can you deliver this? We paid all our debt off and we're so excited. What do you guys do? It's like, well, we worked hard and we got peanuts. We did like $1,500 or so. We tried our hardest, but the best we could do. And they stopped for a second, smiled, and said, that's okay. We paid off your debt. Ah! They tricked me so suddenly. They stopped God's ministry by his miraculous, merciful hand. In two steps. It's done. All the stress. All of the doubts. all the storms, all the things that ground us was on purpose because he had a plan. He knew the day that we would be here at Anytime Church. He knew that we would be here glorifying God and serving him. He knew that this was his place to do his work because he called us to it. We didn't think so. We were doubting. We didn't think it ever happened. I gave up on that dream a long time ago. But God did not. Does this make sense to you? Now, this has all got to make sense to you for a reason. Because you are already in the midst of the evidence of God's hand upon his people. Because here's what Lamentations 3.21-25 says, which I stopped and didn't read. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this. the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness. You know that old hymn? Great is His faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, the Lord is my inheritance. Therefore I will hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who depend on Him to those who search for Him. And I want to give you some practical steps in conquering the hurricanes of your life so that it's real to you every day. Number one, my wife loves this word, hunker down and wait for God to save you. Hunker down. Dude, we're from Florida. What do we do when we say that? We are looking at hurricanes that blow into Florida and we hunker down. We can't stop the storms. We have to face them. They're overwhelming to us. The government can't come in and say, oh, I'll turn off the cement, you click there, and the hurricane won't bother you again. The government can't help you. You can't lie the storm off. You can't do anything to make a storm not coming through this area. The only thing you can do is either run for it, which is stupid. Don't ever do that. I did that one year and I was on the highway for 10 hours trying to get out of here, trying to go just to Orlando. Don't do it. It's not worth it. Hunker down the way for God to save you. And what's that mean? Well, back at John 16, 32, remember he said the hour is coming and it has arrived when you will all be dispersed and scattered. Now, in other words, he told those men, listen, guys, something's going to happen. I'm telling you ahead of time. I'm telling you something so that you can still be confident. Remember I told you that? God knows our future. He knows exactly what's going on, and he's got a plan. And he promises in this scripture that, listen to me carefully, the world cannot cry for you. I already stole the power from them to do that. I am with you. I'm with you. so when I looked at Deuteronomy chapter 4 it gave a couple interesting sentences it said but if from there you will seek in other words inquire for and require as necessity of the Lord your God you will find him if you truly seek him with all your heart and mind and soul and life all is an important word to God Did you hear that When you have your life easy, when things are going your way, you don't do a lot of seeking after God. You do a lot of, this is cool, life's good, sorry God, I've come busy now with things, I'll get back to the guitar because I have a good time. when storms start blowing your way you get a new motivation to do something called seek him with all your face that's a good thing to understand he sends those trials to get you to seek after him because you know what he's got to blow away all the false things that you've been holding on to because the only safety you have is God but we don't really know that until we experience a lot of storm to blow some of that old stuff away. I mean, I'm telling you, if you're dumb enough when the hurricane comes to run down to the beach and put up a tent so you can watch it come on the sand, go for it! But you will be blown away. God says, if you listen to me, though, if you're coming to me and really seek after me, it's like you build your house on a rock way up high so the floods won't get you, on the rock it'll protect you so the winds won't blow you away, and you'll be saved in me. Amen. But if you want to go to that beach and watch the storm coming, go for it. But the sand will be in your face. It will be drawn from the floods. And man, you're going to be hurt. And the break will be your fall. You've got to have a choice, don't you? God says, tell me a thing because I want you to make a choice in me. I want you to be able to hang on to me. So under that first point, I want you to know this. perseverance is more than endurance. Endurance. Did you guys see the movie Twister? Remember when at the end they went into a pump and a pump and a strap belt on them and then they were flying through the sky and all that stuff. But all they were doing was enduring. And there's no way they would have been. Stuff would have beat the nail. Stuff would have been blown away. But, and look in on the movie. But endurance. And the movie made it so they endured. All they did was endure. Enduring is okay, but it's not what God wants. God doesn't want you to endure. He wants you to be way past enduring and live in the life of perseverance. Do you know the difference? Perseverance is very important to get the difference here. Perseverance is kind of like a supercharged endurance. according to Oswald Chambers in his endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. And it goes on to say perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance, a call not to hang on and do nothing but to work diligently. God has called us, if you are a follower of Christ, to work as missionaries on a mission with God. We are called to serve him because this generation is going to be a place called hell unless we can share the good news with them. And unless they can hear the truth and come to Jesus and be rescued out of the storms and destruction of the eternity that's laid before them as they've been destroyed by this world, by the devil's life and sin of God, whatever else. The only hope is actually coming to Christ Jesus. Right? Well, if all we are doing is enduring and hanging on to our families, and to our lives, and to our stuff, while everybody else is getting blown away, so what did you endure? You're going to heaven anyway. But what about your neighbors who are not? You can't just drip down to enduring. you must have the good, polite instruction from Jesus to move beyond endurance and literally work through to perseverance because they need you because you're the only Jesus someone that will know in this world today. Does that make sense? If you're not limited, they have nowhere to turn. you are the one called for this day and this hour yes this day is going to have problems and calamities and issues but you must come up with strength that you don't have normally, guess what Jesus said I'll be with you to the ends of this world he gives you that strength don't keep your head down living through the week, getting by with your wages and surviving with your family. Look up! Because this world needs you. That world needs you desperately to be more than just one of them. You need to be one of Jesus' followers. Make sense? And even though they don't need it, they don't think they need it, don't want it, they need you. Now, Revelation 3.10 makes it really clear. Jesus, when he gave a word to that church, he said, because you have kept my command to persevere. And then he gives you promises. This concept of persevere as a church, persevere as a Christian, is very essential for you. If you don't get anything else out of a Christian today, I need you to pick that word persevere and really wrestle with it and see how it needs to tangle up your feet and trip you from where you're heading and get back on path with Jesus. You really need to make this important change of mindset. And therefore, the next point I want you to get out of this is to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Be prepared. Now, again, we're from Florida, so this works easy. We know in here hopes for a hurricane to come through Fort St. Lucie and blow us to kingdom come. Unless you're an idiot. I mean, who doesn't want that? I mean, I don't want that. I really want my house to kind of stay together. I want my family to be safe. I want my wife to still be with me. I don't want that. But how many of us know better than to just blindly say, well, since I hope it never happens, I'm never going to prepare myself. No. You have shutters. You buy extra water. You buy food. You get generators. you prepare for the worst but hope for the best correct? that's just natural life here well Jesus remember I told you he tells you the things of the future on purpose in Matthew 24 Jesus says some very important words he says you will hear of wars and threats of wars but don't panic when I read that in the day I laughed I thought you were going to be cute to me You'll hear of wars and rumors of the don't panic. Now that's like, I know you're God, and I know you're not afraid of this stuff, but wars and rumors of wars are overwhelmingly destructive and destroying, and our world is rocked by that. And you say, don't panic. Isn't that an amazing word? But why did he say that? Again, why did he tell the disciples back in John 16 ahead of time that they were going to be scattered and things were going to be brought? Why did he say he told that ahead of time? What was it going to say in John 16? Remember what it did say? Why did he say, I'm telling you this, and you're going to be scattered, and I'm telling you this because? What was the answer? Anyone? You may have peace and confidence. What? You may have peace and confidence. He said you may have peace and confidence. He tells you ahead of time what's going on so that you'll have peace and confidence. And also that word courage is there. so you'll be courageous during this time. But he says, okay, then he goes down and says, yes, these things must take place. When the end will follow immediately, nation will go against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There'll be famines and conflicts in many parts of the world. When the earthquake slightly, oh yeah, how about Haiti? How about Japan? Oh yeah. They're destructive and they're scary and they go on and life is not easy. There's a lot of distrust and tribulation and calamity going on all around us. And then we have threats of our government with financial crises beyond that the government can handle and we're in such debt. Things are just scary and things are going on. The markets are great. Businesses are great. People are out of work. We have all kinds of threats of things going on. Why did Jesus say there'd be famines? That means shortage of foods. That means financial issues are going to be hard to hurt even by the movie. Why don't they tell us this ahead of time? So that we would not be afraid, but that we would be confident and courageous. Well, what do four things do when there's a possibility of a hurricane? What do they do? Go first? They don't even care. They don't care. Proverbs 27, 12 says this. Listen carefully. A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. That's what Florida people do. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. What do you think Jesus told you ahead of time about the possibility of the world being distressed and wars and famines going on? Does it scare you to death? that gets to be excited to watch movies like 2012 and stuff just for fun? No. No. He told you ahead of time so you can be a prudent person and act like you should as a poor idiot. Prepare yourself, protect your family, just like you do in the case of a storm or a hurricane. Don't blindly live through these days. Prepare yourself. God didn't tell you that so you blindly come on and say, well, I trust God. I have no food. Please somebody help me. Oh, and I don't know what to do. I can't take this pressure. He told you so you wouldn't have to take the pressure if you'd be prepared to deal with it. Well, how can you do that in the real world? Say, what are you going to do for hurricane supplies? Get real. Think it through. Watch around you. Say, you know what? This is dumb. I need to make sure. my family is protected. But also there's some things that we need to do as anytime church, Christian people. Number one, work together through all the storms. Work together through the storms. He told us to persevere. You can't do it alone. If I hadn't had help from people coming here from the hurricanes we had, I wouldn't have been able to have a roof on this building. But people came and re-roofed this building. Volunteers from other churches came and helped us in our time of need we must work together what Eugene Peterson calls a long obedience in the same direction the Bible calls steadfastness faithfulness, perseverance. It means to get on the road and stay there, no matter what. To hang in there, some people say, or keep on, keeping on, as the old, my generation used to say, yeah. That's how the Christian life as it lived, though, isn't it? Regardless of circumstances, opposition, your feelings, discouragements and hardships, regardless of emotions, put-downs, doubts, and obstacles, day by day, one step at a time, persevering to the end and obeying the Lord's commands to reach this community for Jesus. It's probably going to get hurt before it gets better. Look around at each other. Will you help each other? Will you work with each other? I'm telling you right now, I wouldn't have survived much if I hadn't got help from people. Today I got an envelope from a stranger, probably not stranger, I don't know. I didn't say it. I just had my name on it. Somebody gave me money. That was very, very encouraging that they supported me that way. It's tricky because I can't tell them that I'm going to do it because they snuck it very well. But that is helping on work. And when you see the need, you rise up and help each other. That's exactly what this point is. Help each other through the storms. All the believers met together in one place in Acts 2. It sounds very interesting. They shared everything. Verse 45, they shared their money. And also they shared their meals. They shared, they shared, they shared. I got the hint. God wants us to share. Share. Paul shares all the time, and he needs sharing to him. Marty shares all the time, but she also needs sharing. Every one of you, you know what I'm saying? You need to get a new mindset if you haven't already. Share is the word at any time, church. Share, share, share. Keep your ears open. Watch with your eyes. Who's struggling? Who looks like you're down? Encourage them. pray for them immediately find out what's going on get sneaky like somebody did with me and help share and care that is the only way we're going to make it through rough times it's the only way and we can't read your minds I wish I could I don't know what you're thinking don't you have to think that again I'm a God king we can't read your minds if you're so struggling beyond your ability and you are feeling hurting and you want somebody to help you don't step there and get mad because they didn't reach your mind cry out ask somebody to pray for you say I can't handle this I don't know what to do and as people pray God stirs I ask a friend to pray for me up north Turkey sent me a check instead. I said, why'd you do that for me? He said, because when I started to pray, God said, I don't want you to pray for him. Send him a check. I said, I can't tell you anything anymore, dude. I can't tell you that when you send me the check. I was asking you to pray for me. I thought we were far enough distance from Michigan to here that you would just pray for me. Instead, as I cried out for God in the last few months of my struggles, God blew my mind. Next thing I know, I get a check from somebody else out of town. Next thing I do, somebody gave me an envelope back a few weeks ago. It's like, man, this is spooky. The Lord is hearing my need and people are sharing in what a comfort it was because I felt again, Lord, you've given up on me. I'm feeling awful long here. I'm struggling. And God said, no. I am faithful. Great is his faithfulness. And instead I found his hand coming to my rescue. You need to be the part of the receiving because that's the importance of what God wants to do. The last point of this whole issue is this. In 2 Corinthians 6, I found that the temptation is when I'm struggling I don't want to help somebody else. I can't afford it Lord. You know I can't do this. Tell somebody else to help. And you get to the Corinthian letter and man in 2 Corinthians 6 verse 3 it says we live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us and no one will find fault with our ministry. and everything we do we show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind. We've been beaten, been put in prison, faced eight remonts, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, gone without food. We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us and by our sincere love. Notice that. In spite of all the things that came at Paul, he said, you know what? I just kept persevering and doing what God told me to do. I kept preaching the truth. I keep loving people anyway. I keep sharing the goodness of God. I keep trying to lift them up. And guess what? God worked through us anyway. Oh, that's cool. Verse 7, we faithfully preach the truth because Paul is working in us. We use the weapons of righteousness in the right hand for attack and the left hand for defense. We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We're honest, but they call us imposters. We're ignored even though we are all alone. We live close to death, but we're still alive. We're honest. We haven't beaten, but we have not been killed. I can't tell you I've been beaten for Jesus yet. Paul just said, I've been beaten, but I'm not dead yet. I'm going to keep doing it. What perseverance. Our hearts hate, but we always have joy. We're poor, but we give spiritual riches to others anyway. We own nothing, yet we've got everything. Wow. What amazing truth that we're so afraid of, aren't we? We are afraid of. And then the last portion is chapter 8, 2 through 6. beyond their ability they voluntarily begged us most insistently for the favor and the fellowship of contributing they gave as much as they possibly could having put themselves at our disposal to be directed by the will of God so much so that we have urged Titus that as he began it he should also complete his benefit and gracious contribution among you for the church of Jerusalem. These crazy people were so hurting, so under distress, so financially broke, they begged them to let them give money. And they were telling them, no, you guys can't even hardly pay your bills. We don't want you to sacrifice for Jesus. You know, come on, just calm down a little bit. And they said, no! Don't you tell us that. We're begging you that we want to be a part of the sacrifice for Jesus. Don't ever tell us we can't give. We'll find a way to give. And folks, these people so blew his mind because out of the desperation of their poverty, they gave beyond their ability for the sake of Jesus. And they were honored by being written in Scripture as a testimony to us today, 2,000 years later. God says, folks, don't you keep looking at your calamity don't keep looking at your distress stop being so focused on the storms coming at you I've already overcome the world what are you fussing about they have no power to hurt you because I am faithful do you hear about it do you hear him tell you stop your fussing. Stop making excuses. Move forward for Christ. Stop crying about the fact that life is harder than it was two years ago. Give sacrificially for the sake of the kingdom. He will provide. He'll provide. Beyond your wildest dreams when you don't expect it, He will shock you with His presence. He will shock you with His love. And nothing you can get yourself stuck into will be deep enough that He cannot walk right in in delivery. That's the word today. Do you hear Him? Do you hear Him? Would you bow your head with me and pray? Father, we're unto you. We hear your word. We hear your truth. You are a great God. Not something of stories that happened just over here in other parts of the world and all these thousands of years ago. But you're the living God today. And today, you have proved yourself strong in our lives. You have made us the people. Your servants. We're your Christians. We're your disciples. And you promised us. You promised us that you would be with us to the end of the age. And unto you we look in our distress. We say, so what? We move forward. We're not going to quit. We're not quitters. As our world falls apart, perhaps, as the nation trips and struggles financially, as people around us are struggling, we know you're our God. and you've promised to know our needs and come before us. And unto you we trust. We might need the Lord to live with things that we thought we couldn't live with. Good. We'll be more like the disciples of the scripture. But Lord, teach us to trust and love you in spite of what we see. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.

Playlist coming soon.