Remembering For The Sake of Trust (1 Samuel 17) | Cabe Matthews

Music.

Hello, family, and welcome to Kingwood Methodist. In John 4.23,

Jesus states that a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers

will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

As we gather at church and open God's word, we are not just coming together

for the sake of gathering, but also to learn the truth of God and how we can

grow to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.

As we continually surrender our lives to the Word of God by the power of the

Holy Spirit, we become the type of worshipers our Heavenly Father seeks. Let's dive in together.

Music.

I always hate to break up the conversation. It's just like, it's music to my ears.

But am I rushing you, Jeannie? Am I rushing you? We'll wait.

We'll just work around your schedule today.

I can do that. I can do that with Jeannie because I know her pretty well.

So welcome. Good morning, Vine family. Such a joy to get to worship together with you.

Thank you so much for being here in worship together. This is the moment in

our service where we release kindergarten through second grade to go and hang

out in children's church.

I see Miss Whitney back there to collect you to go and have a great time.

So this is that moment of the service.

And so they will go and enjoy. While they're figuring all that out,

let's bow our heads and pray.

Gracious and merciful God, pour out your Holy Spirit on all of us who are gathered

here. God, that as we open up your scriptures.

We just ask that you would open us up, open up our hearts, open up our ears,

open up our eyes, open up our minds, to hear, to receive, to see,

to be moved by, to be transformed by whatever it is that you would show us today,

this morning, here in this place. God, pour out your spirit on your people.

We're here, our hands, our hearts, our minds.

God, move in power. In the name of your son, Jesus, and in the power of your spirit, I pray. Amen.

So in most areas, in most things, experience is one of the best teachers that you've got.

Experience is really, it informs the way we behave, the way we live,

the way we operate in the world in so many areas.

I was thinking about like, if you are, if it's your first day of school,

if you go to the same high school for four years, if it's your first day of

school, that feels one way as a freshman, feels a completely different way by

the time you're a senior, right?

You're just different level of experience.

You know, your way around, you know, where the things are, you know how to do,

you know what you're doing. And it's, it's not as big of a deal, is it?

I was thinking about this with respect to parenting and my own parenting journey.

My wife and I are both middle children.

She is, she has an older, older brother and a younger brother.

I have an older sister and a younger sister.

So we are, we're both middle children, which is why we're so incredible as people, actually. It's true.

But we just, we, I think halfway jokingly, and I think maybe more than halfway

seriously, we were just convinced that if God was going to bless us with a second

kid, we were going to treat our second child just exactly the same as we treated our first child.

It was going to be even, it was going to be equity across the board,

right? Everything was going to be fair and wonderful.

I hear some chuckles. We're three years into this having a second kid adventure that we've been on.

And I'm here to tell you this morning, we do not treat our two children the same.

For lots of, we have not really, we have not treated our two kids the same and

we won't, and really we can't in so many different ways for so many different reasons.

For one thing, they are two very different kids, right? They're just two different

kids. You know, I mean, one's a boy, one's a girl.

One is really, one is really outgoing and is going to get in your face if you

give her the opportunity.

The other one is maybe a little more reserved, maybe.

One is really bold socially, but timid physically.

The other one is the exact opposite, you know. One has a really high tolerance

for pain, and the other one has a seemingly pretty low tolerance for pain.

They're just different, right? We could just go down the line.

We could name some other categories, and we could do that for a lot of different areas.

They're just different kids, and so they need to be kind of interacted with a little differently.

They've got different strengths, different weaknesses, you know,

different things they need help with and different things they want to be left

alone with, you know, right? It just, that's just, they're just two different kids.

Another, another reason why we can't treat our two kids the same is because

with the first kid, at least for the first two and a half years,

we had, she had us to herself, you know, when the second kid came along,

lo and behold, the first kid didn't go anywhere. She was still there.

So we were dealing with, With one, with the first kid, we were just dealing

with a baby and whatever adult responsibilities we had to deal with.

It wasn't a big, we could juggle all that and we were kind of fine.

With the second kid, we were dealing with a baby and our adult responsibilities, whatever that was.

And we also had this like two and a half year old who was very insistent on

needing quite a bit of attention at the time, right? And still is.

So just, so that's another, but another reason why really we have not treated

and really we can't interact with our kids in the same way is that with the

second kid, we have some experience.

With a second kid, I'm not saying we're, we're not writing parenting books yet.

I'm getting one of these for my wife.

But, but like, but we, we have learned a trick or two, you know,

maybe not three, but at least a trick or two, right? We've learned some things, right?

So with, with our, with our daughter, I remember, Stephanie reminded me the

other day, we went to the pediatrician one time for, I think this was just for a checkup or something.

And, and, you know, they always ask, you know, do you have any questions,

whatever, this, this kind of thing. And, well, she's kind of making some weird

noises. And we described the noises to the pediatrician.

Sort of felt like going to the mechanic because you got like that your car is

making a weird rattling sound. And you're like, is that normal?

You know, what do we do with that? I don't know. We don't know what we're doing with that.

And the pediatrician was very reassuring. She was very positive,

very helpful, and assured us that nothing was wrong and that babies are just weird.

That was, I believe, a more or less direct quote from our pediatrician at the

time. So with the second kid, we haven't really had as much of that,

you know, and we've just been able to, you know, just kind of roll with it a little better.

Experience is the best teacher. And when our daughter was little,

when our five-year-old was little,

we leaned a lot on the experiences of parents and friends and other family and

our pediatrician, other people in our lives who had been around and who had seen it.

With our youngest, with Joshua, we're still doing that. We still benefit a lot

from the people around us, the community that we have.

But also we've gained our own experience. And it's just different,

you understand. So experience is the best...

Teacher, I think, in many areas of life. This is true in parenting.

It's true in lots of different areas.

It's also true in discipleship. If you are following Jesus, experience,

again, is one of the best teachers, really.

So our series right now, what we've been kind of talking about,

what we've been wrestling with these past, really, I mean, almost two months

now, these past eight weeks, we've been talking about discipleship.

We've been talking about these eight markers of what a disciple is,

what a disciple looks like in the world.

And so we've just kind of gone down this list.

And the first three are a disciple of Jesus is someone who professes Jesus as

Lord, who trusts the Holy Spirit, and who pursues holiness of heart and life.

These are like bedrock, baseline level commitments.

These are commitments sort of through which everything else gets kind of filtered.

These three things aren't really things that you like kind of do once and then

you're done. And that's not exactly that you're doing them over and over.

They're sort of things through which you do everything else,

right? They're just like basic baseline.

This is what it is. What it means to follow Jesus is you're someone who at just

baseline, basic, basic, basic trust, you profess Jesus as the Lord,

you trust the spirit and you're pursuing holiness.

That's what it is to be a disciple.

But there are habits. There are things that you can do over and over.

There are rhythms, behaviors, there are things that you can cultivate in your life.

And when you do that, it tends to increase and make it even a little easier

to profess Jesus as Lord, to trust the Spirit, to pursue holiness, these kinds of things.

And these are some examples.

Disciples of Jesus are people who live lives of prayer and worship,

who believe in and study the Bible

as the word of God, who are giving generously, who are serving others.

And today we're going to talk about disciples of Jesus are people who share

the story of God's faithfulness in their lives.

So again, the more we do these five things, the easier it becomes to be people

who profess Jesus as Lord and do the other first three things.

And the more seriously and the more deeply we're professing Jesus,

the more seriously we're taking Jesus to be the Lord of our life,

the more deeply we're trusting God's Spirit,

the more fully we are pursuing holiness in our life, the more we'll be drawn

into these five things and maybe some other things like them, right?

Does that make sense? So it creates a virtuous cycle. It's a virtuous cycle.

The more we do these things, the more our life is characterized by the first three things.

The more our life is characterized by the first three things,

the more we'll be drawn into doing these five things and others like them.

Does that make sense? Everybody on board?

Cool. For the five of you that are on board, I appreciate it.

Okay. So with that, today we're going to talk about sharing the story of God's

faithfulness in our lives.

Sharing the stories of God's faithfulness in our life. to get at this,

we're going to look at a passage of scripture.

So if you've got your Bibles with you and you want to follow along,

you've got a paper Bible, turn to 1 Samuel 17. You've got a Bible app, same thing.

Tap your way over there. 1 Samuel 17, I'm going to start in verse 32.

But first, kind of a bit of introduction, a bit of background.

Set the stage a little bit.

This is a familiar story to many people.

Many people are going to find this to be a familiar story. This is something

that I imagine probably most people have heard this story in one form or another in there.

We tell this story to kids. One reason why we tell the story to kids is because

the main human character in the story is a kid.

It's the story of David and Goliath. It's the story of David and Goliath.

But we're going to, when you read this, and if you read it in the Bible, it's 1 Samuel 17.

It's pretty long, actually. There's a lot of details, lots of ins and lots of

outs for something that, you know, you can make short work of on a felt board

in five or so minutes. Right.

But in the story is really quite long.

And if you read it, if you read first Samuel 17, just straight through,

you might miss this few paragraphs that we're going to talk about today.

So, so we're just going to kind of focus on one, one aspect of the story that

that's kind of easy to, easy to miss when you just kind of read it through.

So, but first again, just set the stage a little bit. So what we have is we have, we have a battle.

We have a battle that's been going on for a long time, at least 40 days that we know of.

And on one hill side, you've got the Israelite army.

This is God's people. These are our, these are our protagonists.

These are our heroes over here. These are the people that we're rooting for in the Bible.

On the other side, you got the Philistines, you got the Philistines and they

have been fighting again for at least 40 days that we know of.

And the reason why we know they've been fighting for at least 40 days is because

we know that every day for 40 days, something significant has happened.

Something that was memorable to everybody there happened.

And that is every day for 40 days in a row, a person whose name is Goliath walked

down from the Philistine camp and he stood at the battle line and he called

up to the Israelites and he basically called them out.

He called them a bunch of cowards. He called them a bunch of sissies.

He calls them mean names.

He says unkind things to them. He probably uses all kinds of words that are

not acceptable for polite company.

Goliath, he is calling them out. He's calling them to the carpet.

And he's saying, hey, send down your champion. Send out your best guy.

And I'm going to fight him. And if I win, then you be our slaves. If he wins, that's fine.

You know, my people be your slaves. That's fine. That's how we're going to settle

this. one of the detail about Goliath you need to know that,

again, since it's a familiar story, I think we all already know,

or at least most of us already know.

Goliath is, he's a tall guy. He's a tall fella. He's a big fella.

He is, you know, your Bible, different translations have different kind of units

of measurement, but because they didn't have like feet and yards in the ancient world, go figure.

So, but as best we can figure, he's somewhere around nine or 10 feet tall. He's a big guy.

He's a big guy. In a world where fighting is mostly,

almost exclusively hand-to-hand combat, in a world where it's spears and shields,

and you're just down, you got to be down within a few feet of your enemy to fight.

It's a very intense form of combat.

Goliath is not somebody you want to face, is it? He's not someone you want to

challenge to a arm wrestling match.

Definitely not a dunking contest.

And for sure, hand-to-hand combat is not interested, right? Like,

let's, the case we change the subject, we should talk about something else, right?

Doesn't seem like that would go well. He's nine or 10 feet tall,

again, in a world where people are on average shorter than they are now.

So he is, there are many people in Israel's army that are half the height,

half the size of Goliath.

And he is standing there and he is calling them out every day for 40 days.

In a row. This is some serious psychological warfare. This is some serious,

like, he has got to be in their heads.

He has got to be. There are some of those guys on the Israel side,

they are losing sleep every night, worrying about Goliath and just dreading

this whole situation, this challenge.

And this whole time he's making fun of them.

And so this is what's going on in the background.

Meanwhile, so that's what you got on one side. On the other side, we have David.

David's just a kid. He's just a kid. He is the youngest of eight brothers.

He's the youngest of eight brothers.

And the only reason why he even shows up here at all is because his dad sends

him with a care package to go deliver to his brothers that are in the army.

David, it seems, is too young to be a part of the army.

But it's not just that David is too young to be a part of the army.

Again, he's the youngest of eight.

He has three brothers who are in the army. Now, think about that.

The youngest of eight, he's got three brothers.

And it's his three oldest brothers. he has four older

brothers who are also seem to

be too young to be in the army how young

must david be if he has he is five him and four of his brothers are all too

young to be and he's the youngest of all of them right how old how old do you

think david is he like i can't imagine him being 12 10 he could be eight he

i could i like it's hard for me to imagine just based on what happens in this

story, that he's any younger than eight.

But just like, but I mean, just like he's a little guy.

So again, think about the heights in play here.

Nine or 10 feet on the one hand, David, who is probably not fully grown.

He's probably not reached his full adult height.

David was not famous for being tall in the ancient world as an adult.

He has not yet reached his full adult height, probably.

He is definitely less than half as tall as Goliath. Almost certainly,

right? Everybody on board with that?

David is, he's a kid. He is a kid.

But he shows up one day to deliver some care packages to his three brothers,

and he's delivering some nicer

things, some wine and cheese to the commanders of his brother's unit.

You know, dad's trying to butter him up, I guess. I don't know.

But so this is what David is doing.

Meanwhile, while he's there, again, just being pretty much like Uber Eats delivery

boy at this point, while he's there, he hears Goliath come out and do his daily

thing that he's done for 40 days.

And he comes out and he calls the Israelites a bunch of sissies and they're

all weak. They're all a bunch of wusses. And he's going to, you know,

he could take all of them.

And he just dares somebody to come down and fight him. And David is just appalled at this.

David is just really, again, as a kid, but he's just like bothered by this.

And he is talking this up in the camp.

And this gets around to his brothers that he's talking about this guy,

Goliath, and how somebody needs to go fight him. And his brothers are really

like kind of angry and annoyed at their little brother, as you might imagine,

some family dynamics coming into play there.

But word gets to Saul, who's the king, word gets to King Saul that there is

someone in the camp who's just really interested in this Goliath thing,

and it seems like he wants to do something about it.

And so Saul summons David.

That sets the stage. That's where we're at.

Saul is going to summon David. He's going to bring him into his tent,

his court, his presence, and to talk about this Goliath situation.

And I imagine maybe Saul is expecting someone else, but what he gets is David.

So Saul summons David, and this is their conversation.

This is the record of their conversation as our Bibles have it here.

So again, I'm in 1 Samuel 17. I'm starting in verse 32.

We read, David said to Saul, let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine.

Your servant will go and fight him. Your servant is kind of his sort of,

that's kind of in the ancient world, this is how you talk to a king.

You've referred to yourself as your servant, right?

So David's basically saying, hey, don't worry about, don't worry about that big jerk Goliath.

I'll take care of him for you. No big deal.

That's what David is saying. And again, Saul is looking at this kid.

Saul's sitting on a throne. He's looking at a child.

So Saul replies the way probably most of us would reply if we were faced with a similar situation.

Saul, verse 33, replies, You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.

You are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.

So again, Saul sees things really logically. He sees the situation,

and he knows how the world works,

and he knows how fighting works, and he knows that that 10-foot guy is not going

to be beat by that 4-foot kid. He just knows that's the case.

Saul thinks in the world and in life like most of us think oftentimes in our lives and in our world.

Saul is looking at the world like what we might call a practical atheist.

Saul sees the setup. He sees the situation in a purely human kind of way.

And he knows how the world works. He's a king. He's been around the block a time or two.

He understands fighting. He gets it. And he actually is a pretty tall guy himself.

Saul had that reputation in

his day. And he sees this little kid and he knows this is a terrible idea.

Saul approaches the world as if there were no God.

Saul sees the battle, sees the fight in front of him as if it would just be,

this proposal, it would just be, you know, like whatever fourth grader versus 10-footer, you know?

That's all Saul sees. And he calls it like he sees it, right?

It's pretty easy to figure that one out, right? Well, David,

you don't stand a chance.

That's not how David sees the world. That's not how David thinks about this.

Here's how David responds. So, well, before I get to that, just David comes

and says, hey, I'll take care of that big jerk for you.

Saul looks at him and he says, no, you won't. Who are you kidding?

He's going to stomp you like a little bug.

This is how David responds to that.

Starting in verse 34, we read, but David said to Saul, your servant,

again, he's talking about himself there, has been keeping his father's sheep.

Not maybe the strongest start, but bear with him. Okay. bear with him.

Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.

When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock,

I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth.

When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it.

Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear.

This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied

the armies of the living God.

The Lord, and this is key here, the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the

lion and from the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.

Saul said to David, go, and the Lord be with you.

So David has to have at least enough of a head on his shoulders to see the same

kind of interpretation of events that Saul sees.

He has to know roughly how tall he is and roughly how tall that giant is,

right? He has to know that in an arm wrestling match, this is no contest.

But David also sees something else.

David also has something else.

David has a story. David has a history.

David knows that he has faced impossible situations before,

David knows that, you know, when the lion came and carried off the sheep You

know, something snapped and he went and took care of it and it was okay,

And that when the bear came and tried to carry off a sheep that he did the same

thing and it was all right It turned out okay But David isn't looking at this

and he isn't saying like Hey, I've beat up guys that are bigger than me before

I've handled a bear and a lion.

I can handle a giant, you know, because I'm smart or I think about things in

a different way. I've got creativity. I've got creative problem solving.

He's looking at things one way. I'm looking at things. David doesn't come at it like that.

David isn't saying I'm going to outsmart him. He's not saying any of that.

What David is saying, he's saying that God's been with me.

He's saying that the Lord, the God who protected me from the lion,

the God who protected me from the bear can handle this big buffoon over here.

David is saying, I've been in impossible situations before.

I've been through really hard things before. I've faced down terrifying foes before.

And the fact that nobody else here is willing to face down this one makes me feel called to do so.

I've faced terrifying foes before. And so I believe that the God who was with

me in that previous fight, the God who helped me when I faced somebody who was

bigger and stronger than me before, can help me,

can be with me, is going to see me through this.

David is certain. David feels like his cause is right and righteous, and it was.

David seems to feel like a calling, like a burden to this.

But I can't imagine that he would have been willing to go through with it,

except that he remembers that God was with him in the past.

I've been through impossible things before. I've faced a terrifying foe before.

And the God who carried me through that is going to carry me through this.

And then what happens? Two things happen.

Saul, I think David remembering this story, remembering this fact that,

hey, I've been through these, I've faced a scary foe before, and God saw me through.

David's faith is strengthened. And suddenly, because of that history,

because he knows he has a God who can bring a people down through the Red Sea,

because he knows he has a God who can part the seas, because he knows that he has a God who,

was always with Moses, who was with his ancestors, Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob, because he knows he has a God who is with his people because he knows

he has a God who's been with him.

David is able to have the faith to know that God's gonna be with him in the

next thing, to know that God's gonna be with him and gonna walk and gonna see

him through the next fight.

So David remembering his story with the bears and the lions,

his faith is empowered to face what's coming next.

But also his story, David's story doesn't just encourage himself.

David's story doesn't just call out faith and trust in his own heart and life,

it calls it out in Saul too.

Saul, who again was seeing things at a very basic, like obvious kind of level,

the way that most of us see most of our lives most of the time.

And Saul knows that a four foot kid can't beat a 10 foot seasoned warrior. Saul knows that.

Suddenly hearing David's story, hearing the story of how God has seen David

through, suddenly Saul realizes that the opposite is the case. right?

Saul realizes that what's impossible for people is possible with God.

And so Saul says, okay, go for it. And may God be with you.

And again, probably most of us know the rest of the story.

Saul, David, David does. He goes through with it. He goes down to the river.

He picks out five smooth stones.

This is probably would have been like a little creek or stream kind of through

the middle of the valley. Again, you got two armies camped on hillsides.

You got a valley down the middle, probably a stream down the middle.

David goes down, he picks out five smooth stones, and that's about four more

than he needed, because he just takes one go at it with a sling,

and bang, right between the eyes,

Goliath falls, and that's it.

David is able to face Goliath, not because he's bigger, stronger than Goliath,

but because he has a story.

He knows that God has been with him in the past and he believes that God is

going to be with him in the future. And friends, it's the same way with us.

Many of us in here, most of us, maybe all of us in here, have some kind of a

story, some kind of a thing that you can point to and you can say, God was with me in that.

I don't know how I got through that except by the grace of God.

And maybe it's a story of salvation, a story of just like, I was low, but God lifted me up.

I was at the end of my rope, but God pulled me up.

I was dead, but now I'm alive.

I was useless. I was a selfish sinner, but God has made me into something else.

God's transformed me. Maybe that's your story. Or maybe you're thinking,

and or, maybe you're thinking about just some hard times you've been through in your life.

Diagnosis, a sickness, some kind of challenge.

And you've seen how God carried you through.

And that can strengthen you to believe that God's going to carry you through the next thing.

Thinking about our lives right now a little bit.

We own a house a little over about an hour away or so. We listed it for sale

on May the 1st and have hardly gotten a nibble.

But we're here. And we believed that God was calling us here.

And we also knew that we had someone who was planning on starting kindergarten.

So we kind of wanted to be settled before the school year started.

So we just took it on trust and we moved back in July.

And maybe a week or two or so later, we listed our house for rent.

And again, hardly a nibble.

Apparently not timing the market super great on this whole job transition in

our lives, right? Which it just isn't, it just isn't happening.

And, and you may, you probably should not be surprised to learn that an associate

pastor and an educator can't really juggle two mortgages for a long period of

time, right? Like we're not set up for that. We're just not.

And yet we, you know, we've, we've done this. We've, we've moved forward in

spite of all, you know, surface appearances.

And in spite of all surface appearances, like we've actually,

the most amazing thing about this whole thing actually has been just how not

terrified by it we've both been really, like we're just putting one foot in front of the other.

We're just doing what we think needs to be done and just trusting that God is going to see us through.

And the reason why we're able to do that is not because we're magic and it's

not, I hope, because we're fools.

I don't think we are, but it's because we can look back and we can see,

especially in these last few

years, how God has been so good and so faithful to us and to our family.

How God has seen us through some really intense, weird challenges that we weren't

expecting and how he's brought us through on the other side.

We did some crazy things in the last few years. We started a church.

We got some friends from that church that we started that were a part of that

here with us this morning. We started a church and it was nuts.

It was a big risk. But what we kept telling ourselves and what we kept telling

everybody who took a risk and joined us in that adventure was that when we step

out in faith, God honors that and God blesses that.

And that when the Holy Spirit calls you out on a limb, when you go out on a

limb with the Holy Spirit, there's no safer place for you to be.

And maybe it's just repeating it over and over, but we really believe it.

And here we are. We believe that really the culmination of this journey—God,

we hope it's the culmination of this journey.

We really believe the culmination of this journey is being here.

We're so excited to be here.

We believe that God has brought us here, and we believe that God who brought

us here is faithful, and he's going to see it through.

And so I had in the back of my mind the likelihood that I was probably going to share some of that.

And lo and behold, this week we actually might have a renter, maybe.

I checked my email during the worship set just to see if I'd gotten an email

with a lease that we needed to sign on the other end. You know what I mean?

But regardless of whether that had been the case or not, like...

I still believe that. Even if this deal falls through, God is faithful.

And our job is to just keep moving forward as faithfully as best we know how.

So friends, that's my invitation. That's my challenge to you,

is to remember those times, to remember those places, remember those situations,

where God has been faithful to you.

We sing in that one song, The Goodness of God, All my life you have been faithful

All my life you have been so, so good And he is, right?

He is Remember those stories Hold on to those stories I hope you're thinking

of those stories right now And if you're not,

I want to challenge I want to encourage you to think about those times Those

places where God has been with you In the valleys and seen you through where God has pulled you up,

lifted you up, and given you and graced you with things that you didn't deserve.

I mean, starting with his love, starting with his favor, starting with his grace.

If you don't have a story like that, I want to encourage you to lean on your

community, lean on your church, listen for other people around you and their

stories, because this is what those stories are for.

When we share our stories, we have an opportunity to strengthen our own faith.

We also have an opportunity to strengthen other people's faith.

So I wanna challenge you to do that. First of all, figure out what your story is.

Second of all, share it. Share it for your own self, but also share it for people

around you and listen to other people's stories.

Friends, we live in a world of giants, but we have a God who is bigger than the giants.

Bow your heads, pray with me. Graciously merciful God, we are just so in awe

of all the ways that you have blessed us with your gifts, with your grace,

with your love, with your forgiveness.

God, the ways that you have journeyed with us in life.

And God, if we can't think of a story like that in our lives,

God, if somebody in here doesn't have something like that, that they can point

to, God, I just pray that you would pour out your Holy Spirit on them, God.

That you would just, you would do something. You would work something in their

heart, in their family, in their lives, such that they just wouldn't even believe

if somebody was going to tell them that was going to happen this morning.

God, move among your people in power. And help us to remember those stories

of how you've moved among us in power in the past so that we might be empowered,

emboldened, inspired to just take big risks, take big swings for your kingdom.

God, glorify you. Glorify yourself. glorify your name through us,

your servants. In the name of your son, Jesus, I'm going to.

Music.