Still Waiting | John 5:1–8 | Eric Pennington

If God's gonna do it, this is the way that God's got to do this. We get in our head a fixed thing. We're focused, and it's good to be focused. Amen? But we're so focused on God's gotta do it like this, that we forget that God could use anything in any way to get you what you have need of.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast. It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community.

Be sure to follow and share with a friend. We hope you enjoy today's message.

Isn't God good? Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles this morning, look with me a little bit in the book of John's gospel chapter number five. As pastor Ed mentioned, Joshua is my nephew, and he's a great man of God doing a wonderful job and a work for the Lord in Galena, Kansas. Great church, great people, love the city, love what God's doing.

And but guess what? God's working everywhere he can find people that have a mind to work. Amen. How many believe that God wants to do something supernatural, unexpected, blow your mind out of the ordinary right here in Vinton, Virginia? Amen?

Amen. God can do it. He's looking for availability. Amen? Are you available this morning?

Amen. In the book of John's gospel chapter number five, Begin reading at verse number one. After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is a Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called in the Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. And in these lay a great multitude of sick folk, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.

For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred the water when whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well and whatever of whatever disease he had. Now, there was a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty eight years. And Jesus saw him laying there and knew that already he had been in that condition for a long time. He said unto him, do you want to be made whole? The sick man answered him, sir, I have no man to put me in the pool when the water is stirred, but while I'm coming another steps down before me.

And Jesus said to him, rise, take up your bed and walk. And immediately, the man was made well, took up his bed and walked, and that day was the Sabbath. Can we say amen? Just real quick, wanna talk to preach for a while on the thought, still waiting. Look at your neighbor and say, still waiting.

Before we get into the body of the text, I want us to understand something here about this world. The scripture says that there was an angel that went down at a certain season and stirred the waters. Now, through and I don't wanna get into a long lengthy explanation and theological debate about the validity of what this was saying. I'm not saying that the word of God isn't valid, but some as some searches have led, believe that maybe this text was added after this event had taken place. It was kinda put in there.

And and so the idea was that an angel of the Lord would come down at a certain time, and God certainly can do that. How many knows that God is not bound by our ideas, or God is not bound or put in a box that he can do whatever he wants to do? He can minister to you in any way, in any fashion, in any form that he desires to do that. Amen? Because he's God.

God could use anything and anybody in any situation to get what he needs to get to you. Amen? So if God wanted to use an angel, I believe that he could do that. But I don't think that in this text that it's actually an angel. Now, the sheep pool is where they would bring would come through the sheep gate.

They would bring the sacrifices of the animals because Jesus is at the feast. They think a lot of people think that this is the Passover feast. So if this is true, there's hundreds and hundreds of sheep coming through the sheep gate. And through that sheep gate, they will through one of these pools, these these natural springs, if you will, where this water would flow, and there was upper pools that would flow into the lower pools. Some of them had under thermal type activity that where the water would kind of build up like Old Faithful, and kind of underneath the waters would kind of at certain times would begin to bubble up.

Begin the the of all these this thermal activity. So it'd cause a bubbling and it would look like the waters are being stirred supernaturally. Okay? So there was a lot of minerals in this water, so that probably had some healing properties to it. So the calcium and the minerals that would probably get into your body or into a sore, or maybe heal it up, whatever the case might been.

And so a lot of people think that it could have been a disturbance in the water. It could have been a where the water flowed from the upper pools down into, because it was a bathing place. It was for purification for the people and the animals to be purified for the sacrifice. It was pure, it was a bathing place for people where they would wash off to be ceremonially clean physically to go into the temple to worship. So when you begin to begin to put all this together, and again, it doesn't make no difference whether it was a supernatural disturbance of an angel or it was what the thought of the people was that they thought this is the place that my miracle was gonna happen.

Because of whether they heard this is an angel that comes down here, or whether it was a phenomenon of, thermal waters and heating up, and and or the upper rule. But anyway, some of me thought because of the animals that was washed near these pools, they were settlement of the washings of those animals and they would possibly be even been have been blood because of the animals that were sacrificed. And so, lot of people think that One commentary said that someone a person would go and because the waters would get murky, the waters would get kinda filled with sediment. It would often settle in those thermal places and kinda block it from flowing naturally, and someone would go in there and stir up the waters. All those make sense.

And and again, whether it's one of these or the other, that's not really the matter. I want you to notice the people that are gathered there. Okay? I want to paint a picture of this this scene that's taking place. Okay.

Have you and just ask yourself, have you ever just expected something, anticipated something that never came to pass? I tell you what, you talk about a letdown. When you've got your anticipation and your expectation is just hinged on something happening or taking place, and seemingly it doesn't happen the way that you expect it to happen, it is a letdown. Come on, let's be honest, we get a little discouraged, don't we? We get a little like, I don't know if this is gonna happen, or what's wrong with me, or we'll take it even sometimes to the next level and say, what is wrong with God?

God, why are you not using this to get my need met? And we kind of become kind of tunnel focused. We kind of just latch onto something that this is the way that it's got to be. Amen. It can't be one thing or the other.

It's got to be how I see it in my mind, how I've been told, what I've been expected, what's been given to me, what's been told to me, what my expect. So it's got to be this way or it can't be any other way. And so we become super fixed on one thing that we got in our head, this is the way that God has got to do this. Are you with me? And so we get really discouraged when when God doesn't when God doesn't fit within our box.

Man, that is frustrating for a lot of folk who want to put God in a box. Come on someone. What happens is when we when we get to the place where God doesn't operate or do things the way that we expect him to do or the way that we anticipate him or the way that we want God to do something for us, we often go about to try to manufacture our own miracle and our own breakthrough. Let me give you an example. When Abraham got the promise that you're gonna have a child and through him is all the nations of the earth are gonna be blessed and you're gonna be the father of many nation and he's gonna be the promise seed that's gonna happen and so what happens?

He's 75 years old. Sarah's 60. By the time the promise actually takes place he's a 100 and she's 90. A little bit of time there has went by, amen. So between the time that God made the promise until the time that the fulfillment of that promise happened, There was a season of nothing happening, only that the God had given a word to Abraham saying, this is what I'm gonna do for you.

Well, what happened? Because God didn't do it in the time frame and do it the way that maybe he thought in his head, this is the way that God should do this and this is the way God's going to operate. He got ahead of God, Come on. Sarah said, I'm in agreement. Let's have a child but let's do it through Hagar.

Well we know the disaster that that happened to be. Come on somebody. While when Isaac is finally born and there these two flesh and spirit is growing together because Hagar gave flesh to, Ishmael who end up making fun of and mocking and sporting the promise of God. Anytime that you go beyond God and you get ahead of God because God doesn't operate the way that you think he ought to operate and do things the way that you think he ought to do it, you will get ahead of yourself and manufacture something that God didn't ordain for you to have. God, you will produce Ishmael's in your life and it will raise up when God does perform the miracle.

It'll mock the thing that God does. Come on somebody, look at your neighbor and say it's a flesh. It's amazing to me that the multi let's get this picture. Here's this pool of five has five these pools there, there's five porches and in this portico, these porches where this water is in the mind of the people, they're waiting on the expectation of the waters to be troubled that they can step in and get their miracle. Now Jesus has been on the scene for a little while now.

People are talking about this Messiah. People are talking about he is a miracle worker. He turned water to wine. He has fed the multitude. He has healed the blind.

He has raised the dead. He is doing things among the people. I guarantee you that these people that were on the porch by the Pool Of Bethesda had somewhere, somehow had heard of Jesus of Nazareth. He was there. But watch the people they get because they have it in their head.

God's gotta do it like this. Jesus is there and the people gather and they're lame and they're blind and they're halt and they're paralyzed and they're if the king James says impotent, they're without power, they're weak, they're anemic, they're all laying on the porch, all of them have one thing in mind, I've got to get in the pool when the waters are stirred because this is the only thing that I this is the only way that God is gonna be able this is only way I'm gonna get my miracle is I've got to get in there first. Now, the amazing thing is that the multitude of needy people are all gathered and none of them seek for Jesus. The Bible just says that they're waiting, all of them. We don't know how many's there.

I'm sure because it's a tradition, it's the thing, it's the buzz, it's the word, get it to pull because this is the season that the miracle's gonna happen. So they're gathered there and there's a lot of people there and they've been gathering there for year after year. In fact, this man had been in this condition for thirty eight years. He had the same expectation, Brother Lewis, as everybody else did. This is the way that God's gonna do for me because nothing else can do.

And yet they know, yet the buzzword is that Jesus, the miracle worker's in town, he's here at the feast and nobody seems to be saying, hey, wait a minute. There's another way. There's more than one option here. And the multitude doesn't look to Jesus. A blindness, if you will, has come over the people at the pool.

There they are and there is Jesus who could heal them, but not one single person sought for him. Wow. It's hard to picture that, but yet here's the picture that the Bible is painting us. Not one single person at this pool is expecting Jesus or calling on Jesus or looking over towards him to say, Hey, wait a minute, there's my healing. Their eyes were focused on the water expecting it to be troubled.

So listen, they were taken by their own expectation, their chosen way to be healed and the true way of healing was neglected. How many times have we wanted something so desperately for God, from God? Whether it be a touch in our body, a miracle that we need, maybe it's a miracle in our health and our healing, that we just need God to touch some part of our life, a disease, or maybe it's a relationship that's on the rocks and and and we're we're to get God to to pay attention and or maybe it's a growing a church or it's finding a job or you're having a problem in a relation, whatever it might be. You got wayward children away and you don't know what to do and and all these things, the life problems. How many knows what I'm talking about?

Just life happens and life can be tough. Amen? And and and and we're desperately saying because of what we thought, what we've heard, what we've been taught, what we've think or whatever it might be, something that has formed the idea in our mind, if God's gonna do it, this is the way that God's got to do this. We get in our head a fixed thing. We're focused, and it's good to be focused.

Amen? But we're so focused on God's gotta do it like this, that we forget that God could use anything in any way to get you what you have need of. But so many people are missing the miracle that God has for them because they got it in their mind, their expectation is that God's gotta do it my way. Nahum, when the prophet came to him he says, go dip seven times in the muddy Jordan River and he said, there's other rivers that I could do this in. I mean, there's some other rivers that are cleaner than the Jordan River.

I mean, God, if you would just, and the prophet says, if God would have asked you to do something difficult, you would have done it. I mean, if God would have told you to do this or this, something that conformed to your idea, you would be more than glad to do it. But because God sounds crazy, come on, let's just be honest, sometimes God requires and says things to us like, what in the world is God wanting me to do? That doesn't make sense, That's crazy. That goes against reason.

That goes against culture. That goes against tradition. That goes against what I've been taught, what I've been told, what I think, what I pray and what we're drawn to do. We're just painting God in a corner. And we say, unless God does it this way, it can't be God.

We're waiting on the moving of the water and guess what? We're still waiting. Some of you have been waiting for years about what God can do and you've put him in a box and said, God's gotta do it this way because this is the way that it was told to me. Come on. And guess what?

Twenty five, thirty years later, you're still waiting for the moving of the water. When the miracle is in this place, your miracle today is not some idea, is not some God in a confined box. It's not some tradition. It's not some idea or a theology that you have that God's got to do it a certain way. If you're gonna do it God, you got to do it in the clean river, you got to do it this way, and God says, no, no, just let me be God, just let me do what I need to do, let me use who I need to use.

Let me use the circumstances in your life to get you to where I need you to go. Come on somebody. They were take their expectation was God's got to do it this way. Charles Spurgeon said of this scripture, and I'll read, and he says, I quote, picture the multitude waiting around the water, the Pool Of Bethesda. All of them waiting, instead of looking to Jesus, how foolish this waiting is for so many people today.

What's he saying? It's not foolish to wait upon God for they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. It's not that I'm sitting in a chair, just twiddling my thumb thinking, well, I'm just waiting on God to do something. No, no, no, no, no. But the word waiting actually means that you're in a position of serving.

While I'm waiting, I'm serving. I'm gonna put a towel around me and I'm gonna serve. I'm gonna work in the kingdom. I'm doing something while I'm waiting. And so how foolish it is that we just sit and wait.

Not that we're not patient, not that we're, but we're waiting on God to fulfill our expectation of, of what we think God ought to do. Amen. Some wait for a more convenient season. Guess what? They're still waiting.

Some are waiting on angels. Guess what? They're still waiting. Some wait for a, the stars to align. Guess what?

They're still waiting. Some wait on dreams and visions to happen and guess what? They're still waiting. Some wait on a celebrity preacher to come along and guess what? They're still waiting.

Some wait on revival to come. Guess what? They're still waiting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone were waiting on a particular feeling or an emotion to happen.

Guess what? You're still waiting because God, yes, God can use those things but God rarely ever does. I'm not limiting God to say you've got to do it within the confines of my reality because God doesn't work within your reality. God works in the area of the supernatural. He works in the area of the divine.

He works in the area where there's no time and space and limitations. There's nothing that can control him. He is free to do as he wills for your life to be blessed. Amen. So many people are stuck here waiting for God to fit their concept, their idea.

They got, it's got to make sense to them. They've got to be in a, have a sense of control. Come on, let's be honest. It's got to be reasonable. Right?

I mean come on, after all God, we're reasonable people. We're reasonable people. So ultimately God, you've got to be reasonable to me. You've got to make sense to me, God. The plan has to I need to see the plan in order for me to walk.

No, no, no. Walk supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. Oh, okay. So you mean God, I've just got to trust you. I've got to be obedient even though I don't know the next step.

What? Yeah. Just walk. Just just walk. Everybody just say walk.

So what happens is when we want to put God in the box and confine him to our own concept of way things have got to be, what we're trying to do, we're trying to duplicate the past because God did it that way last time. He's got to do it again again this time. And so we fall into the rut of the expectation that God has to meet my need according to me. You know what a rut is right? A rut is a grave with both ends kicked out of it.

Yeah. And when you find yourself in a rut where you're just expecting God to meet you at your junction of ideas, at the intersection of intercepting your problems and your needs the way that you want him to. God doesn't operate by your plan. That's why you gotta trust him. I know we say all the time, I'm trusting God, I'm trusting God, I'm trusting God.

It's easy to say until you have to trust God. When you have to put your money where your mouth is, when the rubber meets the road and you've got to live it out in the hard times and the struggles and the difficulty, when the healing doesn't come and the waters are not being stirred and God isn't meeting your expectations of what he ought to be doing in your idea. All of a sudden God just blows your theology out the water and it's like, I'm still waiting. Still waiting. We're stuck in a rut.

What what what what is it that you're waiting on this morning? Just just in your heart, what is it that you've been waiting on God to do? Do you see yourself by the pool just waiting because you have a certain idea God's gotta do it this way. And there's there's nothing wrong with wanting God to do something the way that you can understand. But be open enough to say, God, I know you're able to blow my theology and just do something absolutely beyond what I can even ask or think according to the power that's working in me.

Wow. And God often, often does things that are crazy. Amen. God wants you. Why?

Because God is not, God, he doesn't come down at a just a set season and just trouble the waters. He works in crazy, crazy ways. He may wait till all the people are gone and you're on the outside of the city and he may walk up to you and say, who is Jesus? And he says, Lord, I don't know. He says, it's him that's speaking to you.

And he lays his hands on a blind man that he could have done it in front of everybody because everybody was expecting him to do it. But he waits till the man is all by himself outside the city and Jesus goes to him. Wow. Jesus waits by a well for a woman when his disciples are, and he was there just by himself. He could have done it with the disciples there.

No, no, no, no. God does things the way he does things. And you gotta love the beauty of God just wanting to make a one on one. Now here is a man that is surrounded by other people who were in the same need. Listen to the progress here.

Jesus comes to him and says, and isn't it strange to say to someone that's sick, what would you like for me to do? Jesus asked this to a man that had been there for thirty eight years expecting the waters to be troubled, and Jesus asked him such a silly question, what do you want be what what do you want? Now, man, I just want to be healed. I just want to be free. I want to be made whole and complete.

I want to be like everybody else. I want to receive something from the Lord. And why would Jesus because Jesus why Jesus asked us because a lot of people who need things really, really don't want God to do even what they're asking him to do. Some folk like to live in their misery. Misery loves company.

It draws a certain era and a certain atmosphere around them. It's kind of like Linus on Charlie Brown with a little cloud above his head. He all the time, and it's a dust cloud, know, it's just always the rainy cloud over his head. Some folk like that. Some folk want you to pity their condition.

Jesus never said, man, I'm so sorry that you have been waiting this long. I'm so sorry, Jesus said, what do you want me? What what what is it that you need? I want to be healed. Jesus wants you to talk to him.

He wants you to tell him what you need. And notice this, the Bible says that when Jesus got there, he saw the multitude and he saw this one man among all those people. He could have healed every one of them, but only one of them he came to and asked, what do you want me to do? And I don't even recognize, I don't even think the man even recognized that it was Jesus. He never said that he could recognize Jesus until Jesus told him to do something.

But something happened when Jesus said to him, take up your bed and walk. Something happened in that man. The waters were stirred inside of him. He begins something began to transpire in his heart and in his mind to believe God to stand up and rise up and pick up his bed and begin to walk. Because his expectation had been on, the water's being troubled.

Now all of a sudden faith arises and erupts in this man's heart and he obeys Christ and the miracle takes place. Wow. What are you waiting on? Because what happens, and I'm gonna try to bring this this home real quickly. And Jesus says, flip over here, waiting for the moving of the water.

The angel went down and Jesus saw him laying there and knew that he had already been there, both in this condition for a long time. And Jesus said, what do you want me to what do you want me do you want to be made whole? The sick man answered, sir, I have no one to put me in the water. Now watch his, his, now his view is, this is the way God's gotta do it. It's gotta be the troubling of the water.

Watch, what, where, look where this man's at. Jesus said, I can make you well. Do you want to be made well? And the Bible says, first thing he says, Lord, when the waters are troubled, I don't have anybody to put me in there. His focus was not on Jesus.

His focus was horizontal, people. And I think this is where we miss a lot of that what God wants to do in our generation, in our churches, in our homes, in our lives, in the call of God upon our life, is that we're looking for people to affirm what God has said. We're waiting on someone that is our counterpart, someone that we can see, someone who has the same idea to confirm and affirm what I already feel. You don't need someone to affirm your sickness. Oh my.

Because our view is horizontal. We're always looking. I don't have anybody. My miracle could happen if I had somebody that would pick me up and put me in the water. How many times have we just waited on the right person to come along to tell us what God has already told us?

And many people are just sitting around waiting for somebody to pick them up and put them in when Jesus is right in front of you. Amen. When Jesus is in your presence, hallelujah. I don't have anybody to put me, watch this, horizontal expectation breeds excuses and complaints. And he said this, while I'm coming, somebody steps in and gets it before I do.

Don't that sound familiar with a lot of church folk? Well, somebody else is always getting what I'm needing. Well, they just got saved, and they got the Holy Ghost in the same night they got saved. I've been serving Jesus for fifty years, and I still ain't got what they just got. No, horizontal.

When we start looking at people, whether they're blessed or whether whatever's going on, we look at them and we compare it to ourselves and we begin to complain because our view is on people. I don't have anybody to put me in the water. It's your fault. And when I'm coming, you jump down before me. It's your fault.

Excuses. Look at you, you never say excuses. Jesus saw this man and had compassion. He saw this man's condition. Can I tell you that Jesus sees your condition this morning?

He knows what you have need of. He knows you've been waiting a long time. And I love what the Lord says. Waiting on the Lord is looking and living with expectation of the Lord's timing and instruction, producing an encounter and a miracle from God. So when you put your expectation, when you begin to wait upon God and look to God, look to Jesus, you begin to live with expectation of the Lord's timing and instructions, and it always results in a miracle.

Let me close with this. Listen to what Jesus says. Rise, Jesus, verse eight, Jesus said to rise, take up your bed and walk. Rise, everybody say rise, take up your bed, walk. All three of those words, rise, take up your bed and walk is present tense language.

It's being spoken in the present. Take up, rise up, walk. It's also not only a present tense, but it's a command. It's a present tense command. It's not a suggestion.

The Lord is saying, rise up. Now it's easy to say that's, oh, okay. But let's understand what the word rise up now, because it's a present tense. It's presently being stated. It's not a suggestion, it's a command from the Lord to rise up, take up, walk.

Amen? Now watch this. The word rise, present tense, command word, action word. The word rise means to rise up from a sitting position. Watch this, arise from a diseased position.

Oh my. You see the Lord sees where you're at. And the Lord is saying, I see you in a diseased position. What is the diseased position? It's gotta be my way or the highway.

God's gotta do it this way. God's gotta trouble the water. That's why I've been told that's what I'm expecting. That's what I'm believing. That's what I'm that's what tradition tells me.

That's what my church tells me. That's what my whatever tells me. And not understanding that God can, God is so big. God could do anything in any way that he wants to get you to be blessed. And you've got to rise out of your diseased position.

Rise from your diseased position. Love, some folk love the attention that their disease brings them. Take up your bed, present tense, command word, action word means to remove the anchor or the weights. Take up your bed. In other words, after you've risen from your place of position, the thing that's been late, you've been laying on, that thing that's anchored you to your excuse.

The thing, the weight that's held you in that position, that mat that you've been laying, what you've been laying on has been lying to you. And it's become a weight and an anchor for a lot of folks because it gets me what I want. It gets me the sympathy and the, attaboy and bless her heart and bless and praise God. They can't help it. They're in that position and they're struggling, bless their heart.

Let's pray for them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being insensitive to people's needs, some folks just love to wallow on their mat of misery. They don't want, because they've been anchored there so long, it's easier to lay than to rise up and take up your bed and walk. Walk, present tense, command word, action word, and it means this, to live, to walk about as proof of ability. To be occupied with walking, be living proof of what God can do, will do, and has done.

Oh my. Folks, I'm here to tell you, you can lay by the pool until you die, expecting God just to meet your need just the way you think he's got to do it. Or you can let God out of the box and say, God, I'm gonna, I'm gonna believe you. However you choose to do this. God, I'm all for it.

I'm gonna rise up. I'm gonna get out of this position of sorry me, what was me, everybody picking on me, Charlie Brown mentality, victim mentality, I'm woe is me, you know, sarah, sarah, whatever would be. Well, it's just my lot in life. Well, God can bless some folk, but he don't wanna bless me. Oh, come on, stop that nonsense.

Get off your bed, rise up, take up your Get out of that better That position of disease. Because you think of the word disease, D I S E A S E, disease. Oh, there's a lot of folk who are in the disease of ease. They like their mat, but Jesus is calling us, Vinton church, Pentecostal believers, filled with the spirit. Rise up like an army.

Do you realize that however many is here that you can turn this city upside down for the Lord? Do you realize in a year from now you could run triple, quadruple Europe? Is it about numbers? No, it's not about numbers, but we want to depopulate hell and populate heaven. It is about numbers.

Jesus said to give them an idea. He says, I want my wedding to be full. So you go in the highways and byways and compel them to come in that my house might be full, but you're gonna have to get off your mat. Go out and get out of your place of ease. You to set aside the weights and the things that's holding you down.

Get God out your concept that this is the way God's gotta do it. It's gotta make sense. I don't want God to embarrass me. You need to be embarrassed. But he don't do that.

He convicts. Amen. I'm not jumping on anybody tonight. I'm just helping us to understand. What are we waiting on?

What is it? We're waiting on them just a ton of money to drop from heaven. Or what are we, are we waiting for them just to walk through the door and fill up the church? No, no, no. It doesn't happen that way.

Yes, it can. God can do it. I'm not limiting God, but he commands us to go in the world and preach the gospel. He tells us to go and make disciples of all nations. You can't make a disciple laying on your mat.

You can't make a disciple waiting on the moving of the water. How about you throw the water for somebody else? Well, I can't, yeah, you can flop yourself over. If you can't swim, flop over like a fish, get in there and do make some disturbance. Somebody will see you drowning and running get you.

But at least you got somebody to come to where you're at. Come on somebody. Amen. Pastor, if it's all right, I just want us to I want if we could, if we stand to our feet real quick, come on. This may be, you know, a little different this morning and I don't mean to I'm not hollering at nobody.

I'm not getting on nobody. I just I feel this man. Man, I feel this in my spirit this morning. The time of just waiting on God to show up and meet our expectations of what he ought to do is over with. Let's just believe God for the supernatural.

Hallelujah. Pastor, I really feel like god wants to do something amazing in this city. Roanoke and Benton desperately needs a move of god. I said, Roanoke. You know, the other day I was watching, I was watching YouTube.

I think YouTube. Yeah. Someone's going around videoing people in Roanoke and they're focusing on the homeless and the drug addicts, they're saying, Just another day in Roanoke. And yes, that's the sad reality of a lot of folks. And there's some folks sitting in fine cars, and fine houses, and have fine jobs and have fine lives and fine marriages, and they're just as desperate as the one living on the street hooked on crack cocaine.

You know why? Because they're just as lost. They deal with the same hurt, pastor, that homeless mother who's dragged from house to house, or that prostitute, or that drug addict looking for his next fix, or the one sitting in a million dollar home, they're still bound. They still have the same hurts, same disappointments. They're bound by the same positions of disease as those that are also sitting in churches who raise their hands every week in the house of God and say, Jesus, I love you, but you're anchored to a mat that you won't get off of.

You're anchored by a disease that God's gotta do it my way. You know what the last words of a dying church is? We've never done it that way before. Well, good. Amen?

We resist change, but yet every day of our life we are changed. You're a little older than you was last week. I got less hair than I had when I was in my twenties. You wouldn't believe that. I was in my teens and twenties.

I used to be in bodybuilding and power lifting and setting state records. Can't do it anymore. My body's changed. Now, I can barely pick up a cup of coffee. No, I still got strength for that.

Our body's changed. I fight it. Man, I want to look like I'm 25 years old again, but no matter how much I fight it and try to resist it and I try to eat right and I try to do right, I wake up sometimes thinking, oh God, I can't already move. It's like what's going to hurt today? Oh, I'd never knew that.

That's hurting. I never knew that would hurt. I'm changing. I'm getting wrinkles. I'm losing my hair.

Retaining weight that I can't get rid of. My heart gives out sometimes and had to have surgery and diabetes and had to lose my job and couldn't work it because my diabetes and ties my heart and then I got to have a hip replacement next month and after that I got to have back surgery. And it's just like, when's it ever going to end? But through it all, through it all, I'm not just going to sit around and wait, I'm gonna rise up. I'm gonna take up my bed, and I'm gonna walk.

Yesterday was almost called and said, Dallas, pastor Dallas, I'm in the emergency room, and they wanted to keep me. I said, nah. I got an assignment. I got some stuff I got to do. I could have laid that mat and been in the hospital day getting food and everybody oohing and ahhing.

How you doing Mr. Pennington? Oh, God bless you. Praying for you. And I could have had my church of, you know, 700 people saying, oh, bless brother Pennington today.

He's in the hospital. Oh, that would have been good. That mat would have just felt comfortable. No, pick up your mat. I wonder this morning if we could come up here and pray together.

Can we all just slip out of our seat and don't come up with an idea saying, okay, God, you got to do it this way. Can we just say, Lord, whatever you want to do, I'm available.