He Will Redeem You (Pastor Vann Trapp)

And. Good morning.

Yeah.

Is it

okay? Well, good.

It's good to be here.

How many you guys over the last couple of weeks?

How many?

Anybody feeling a little less stuck than they would have been

three weeks ago.

I'm just trying to lead into this.

Maybe, you know, maybe some of you guys have been

finding some stuff in these messages.

We've been in a series just on how we get stuck in life.

You know, the last several weeks we've been, talking about that,

you know, different places that we get stuck, stuck in dead end job, stuck in bad

relationships or bad financial situations, all kinds of stuff.

As I've been talking with some of you over the last several weeks to what

some of you've been saying is, man, this has been so relevant to my life

right now, and which either meant that I was an amazing just,

you know, in terms of my timing of pulling this thing out.

But I think it's more likely what I found is that, the truth is set in life

and tell me that this isn't true, but,

it seems that there are a lot of different ways that we can get stuck.

Right?

And they're out there all the time, and we tend to be in that position quite a bit.

Right. So I could have pulled this out like any time of the year.

And most of you guys would probably say, oh, it's so relevant to my life

right now, right?

That's why it's so important that we kind of

we get into this when we find out, we hear from the guy who says,

I want to not just get you unstuck, but lead you in a life where you aren't

getting stuck all the time. Amen. Amen.

That's that's essentially in Exodus six, what he's telling.

What he's telling, Israel.

And so today we want to we want to shift gears a little bit.

We want to get off of this idea

of kind of where we started, because we know that Israel was in Egypt

and they're their slaves, and they were stuck.

But today, I want us to start thinking about the second part of that story,

kind of the second half of that promise, which is what does it mean

for God to get us into a life where we're not getting stuck,

where we're not kind of always falling into those pits that are out there?

How do we walk with him?

Because this is part of his promise as well.

When Israel was in trouble in in Exodus,

in that book we read about, they're in trouble and God comes to him

and he says to him, he says, you know what?

I'm going to get them, get you out of this situation

and get you into a new one where you can live this unhindered life.

That's called freedom, right?

And we're all we're all looking for the freedom that God has promised to us.

He also says, I'm also going to take the impact of what has happened here.

I'm going to get that out of you

so that you're not carrying that

so that you can live into this unhindered life that I have for you.

That's called healing.

And we often were seeking that healing that God has for us.

But then he says to them, he says, I will also do whatever it takes.

I'll take all the power and resources that are at my disposal,

and I will free you, from this thing and take

you under my protection, take you under my guidance,

so that you can live this unhindered life without getting into that place again.

Right.

And he calls that redemption.

And that's what we want to look at today.

We want to look at this kind of this third piece of what God says,

where he says, I, I am going to, redeem you.

I'm going to help you live not just for this moment

or the next couple of years into this unhindered life

and this freedom in this healing, but that you might continue in it.

And so stand with me.

We're going to look again at our our passage in Exodus six.

It's chapter two through eight.

Look at these promises that again,

God made them to his people 30, 500 years ago.

But we're also hearing him.

We want to hear him speak these promises to us this morning.

So says God, continue to speak in Moses.

He said, I am Yahweh.

When I made myself known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it was as El Shaddai,

God Almighty, but not as now by my name, Yahweh.

However, I did establish my covenant with them, promising

to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as foreigners.

And now I have heard the groaning of the descendants of Jacob,

Jacob, who I renamed Israel,

because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage.

But I have not forgotten my covenant.

So say to the sons of Israel, I am Yahweh.

I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians.

I will suddenly release you from their bondage.

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great judgments.

Then I will take you to myself as my people, and I will be to you as your God.

And you will know that I am Yahweh your God,

the one who brought you out from under the burden of the Egyptians.

And I will bring you into the land which I swore

to give you, to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And I will give it to you as a possession.

I am Yahweh.

Father.

This morning,

We need to hear from you.

We need to hear through your word and through your spirit

and know these promises.

Because, father, I know that you have not just told us

that you will temporarily get us out of something.

Your intention is to bring us into a life

that is eternal, a life of blessing that doesn't.

That doesn't end, that doesn't run into new pits or new,

new barricades or new obstacles, but a life that that is lived

with, with all of the hindrances, all of the barriers,

taken out where you remove

the barriers to your blessings and to your covenant and to that,

that where we have that unfiltered communion with you

in communion with one another and,

and that we experience the fullness of life as it was

meant to be, as you intended it from before the world began.

And so, father, we want to understand that we know that that's why Jesus came.

We know that.

That's why we celebrate

this table, this communion

is because he laid it all down.

You put you leveraged all of your power, all of your resources, your very life

in order to buy us access, to open up access

into a life that would remain with you, or a life that could remain connected

to you and and protected by you and guided by you.

So, father, teach us about teach us about that life, about that promise.

Today, Holy Spirit, come and make this your place, your space.

We give you our attention.

Give us the eyes to see, the ears to hear.

Give us a soft heart that understands it listens

so that

we might see and hear and understand, and in turn towards you.

Turn with you in the direction that you want us to go, that you lead us in

and that we might be rescued, we might be saved.

We might find that freedom and that healing that you desire for our lives.

We pray, father, that you would again do this miracle

that has been bought for us through Christ,

by the power of your Holy Spirit, for the glory of your name.

Father.

Amen. Amen.

Have a seat.

So what does it take

to live lives that keep moving forward?

What does it take to live a life unhindered?

Well, you know, we answer that it's fairly simple,

because we need to have we need to have resources, right?

That will meet every need.

We need to have, strength.

We need to have wisdom.

We need to have, insight.

We need to have, influence.

I mean, in short, I need to

have if I'm going to live a life this unhindered or if you're going to.

We need to have finances that will meet all the

the obligations that may come up in the future.

Right.

We need to have the, the physical strength and health

to, to, to avoid all of the diseases that try to take hold in our body,

to be able to hold those off, we need to have, the wisdom

to be able to see the things that are coming and to avoid situations

that we're going to be, either unable to handle them or outflanked in some way.

We need to have the psychological ability to influence all the people in our lives,

right? To do the right thing all the time.

How's that going? And right.

It's hard enough to get ourselves to do the right thing all the time.

Or any of the time. Right?

Or or this or

we need to have just a pure brute force and strength

and physical or psychological military power to overwhelm

all opposition,

all opposition, so that we can clear the way

so that our life can move forward unhindered.

And we see all of those those approaches.

We see people trying all of those things so that they can somehow

grab hold of a life that they would like to live in.

In essence, what do we need to live a life unhindered?

We need to be God's, don't we?

We need to have un, un

unimaginable resources and riches to be able to and

and and strength and power and influence that is unopposed.

And and that's our problem.

The problem because try as we may and we do try,

we try hard to be gods, but we're not very good God's are we?

In fact, we

really mess things up when we start acting like we are God's.

But the truth is that our weaknesses are weaknesses.

They are our vulnerabilities.

And this is what brings us into these places where we get stuck

because we're not gods and we can't avoid those things.

And we we do fall into places.

And and we all know that one day, no matter how well we do

in managing stuff one day, economics is going to get us right.

Or one day old age is going to where our our strength and our health down.

Or, you know, one day we're going to get into a relationship

and it's going to fall apart.

One day we are going to the unpredictability of others

is going to is going to sneak up on us and surprise us.

Or the the random disaster and diseases of this world.

So what do we do?

What do we do?

What do we do in that case?

Well, and we all do this. So what do we do?

We go out, we look for some other kind of god,

some other person or institution or or approach or something,

something that will help, kind of help us with where we fall short.

We hope somebody else or something else will have those resources or those powers,

or those that just that ability or that wisdom to help us move forward unhindered.

And we don't always call them gods,

but that's really how they function, don't they?

So some of us, some of us trust in like different political parties.

They promise that they'll do all this for us

so we can move forward unhindered in our lives.

Right? And we trust them.

We throw our lot in with them or we trust in like some financial team,

some financial institution or an employee employer

who says, I will take care of you

or we trust, we try and gather some legal team together

that will watch our back

or some medical team together that we know will always be able to take care of us.

And what are we trying to do?

We are trying to again attain this unhindered life,

this life that we know that we were made for.

It was intended for us, but we're trying to find others

that will do this thing for us because we know we can't do it ourselves.

So we try to find these other gods in Egypt.

They were relying on literally who they called their gods.

And we look back at that.

We say, well, these were the myths and legends of the day.

They weren't.

If you

if you read in Scripture what you find, these are very real and very powerful,

even spiritual entities, because those are out there as well.

And some people will seek after those to rely on them to, to get them to this life.

So these weren't just missing legends

that mothers told their kids to keep them in line, right?

These were spiritual principalities and powers who they entreated

and they worshiped to keep Egypt on top

of that civilizational kind of heap.

So they'd be at the top of the food chain so they could live the lives

that they wanted to live.

And it seemed to be working in the world of Exodus.

When that story was going on, Egypt was at the top of the heap.

They were at the top of their game.

They were the they were the the undisputed powerhouses.

They were the powerhouse in the world.

And so people looked at them in Israel.

On the other hand, Israel was kind of at the bottom of the heap.

They were

the ones that seemed to have a God who either wasn't able to do anything for them

or didn't seem to care enough to do anything for them.

And so Israel is there, and what we find them doing,

when it seemed, is that their God didn't care.

It seemed that their God wasn't in control.

What did they do?

Well, we find later in the story that they had actually picked up

the habits of worshiping these gods of Egypt.

And we look at that and we go, well, how could they ever done that?

You know, how could they have ever worshiped the gods of Egypt?

Tell me how hard is it not to not to choose the ways

and the gods and the purposes and the perspectives of the world that you live

in, when the world seems to be doing far better than you are, right?

Do you know what I'm saying?

Do you guys understand that one?

Because that's what we live with.

That's a challenge every day.

How hard is it not to pick up the worship of this world?

And there are ways when it seems that our God is

when it seems like God is far away, it seems like he doesn't care.

It seems like he's either not able or not willing

to bring us to where we hope or we wish that we could be.

And so we find out that they had picked up some of the worship of of Egypt.

We find along the way they said, hey, why don't we go back to worshiping

that golden calf?

Why don't we go back to worshiping the sun, the moon, and the stars that

seem to do well for Egypt?

And we do that as well.

So sometimes there are those times that we

and we don't fully dive in to that either.

Sometimes we just kind of dabble with it.

We say, I'll try and keep enough of God that he doesn't get mad,

but can also maybe sprinkle some of this in to maybe help things out a bit.

So sometimes we say, you know.

I know this is going to step on some toes,

but these are real things.

Sometimes we say maybe if I just pick up a little bit

of like eastern meditational practices, right?

I hear that's really works for some people.

Or we say, let's just try a little bit

of the kind of relational wisdom of the day

and not not be bound and constrained by the kind of prudish

approach of this book is so old and seems so out of date.

There must be a reason why that approach to relationships and to life

is so popular right now.

We say, let's let's try taking on the ethics, maybe

shaping our ethics so we can just fit in a little bit better.

The ethics and practices

of a world that don't even believe in God.

We take on the worship and the practices

of other gods.

Well,

this is where Yahweh steps in again with Israel, right?

Because they're there in this place and they seem stuck

and they seem lost, and they seem kind of without hope.

It seems like they are without a God in their world.

And he tells them, you know what?

I've always been there, never lost sight of you, never lost my love for you.

And I want you guys to know he says these things to us as well.

When we feel lost and alone and by ourselves

and left behind, or on the outskirts with the kind of

just isolated, he says, I have never lost sight of you.

I have never lost my love for you.

I have always been with you.

But he tells him, you know what?

I need you to know why we go within.

Why did you let me get here?

Israel is like, why did you let us get into this place

where every every other God seems to dominate us?

And you don't seem to be anywhere?

And he says, you know what?

Because I don't just need you to know about me.

I need you to know me.

And I need you to know that I am the Redeemer.

I am the God, the only God, your God,

the only God who loves you, the only God who can rescue you.

And that I do have the power, and I do have the ability and the resources

to get you out of any pit out from under the power of any other God,

in any of their own, or any other possessor or oppressor.

And I need you to know that.

And I don't just need you to know that in your head.

I need you to know that.

So they had been brought down into this place,

and God says, I want you to know that I am God over the Egyptians.

I am God over their gods and God over the people

in their in their society that believe that they're gods.

I he wanted them to know I am God over nature.

I am God over all powers.

That I am the only God and I am your God.

So he said, I am going to come.

I'm going to get you out of this situation.

I'm going to bring you in to a better one.

I am going to come and I'm going to get the impact.

I'm going to heal you.

So the impact of this, that that you're remade,

that you're new so that you can live in that life.

But also I am going to get you, I'm going to redeem you,

and I'm going to show you that I am your God.

I'm going to show you that I am the one

who walks with you, and that I am the one that you want to walk with.

Because I

am the God that can bring you into life unhindered.

I am the God who can bring you into the blessing that I intended

for you from the beginning.

You eternal

and unimpeded.

So I am the God who will redeem you if you'll call out.

So why does God a lot of things to happen in our lives?

Why does he allow us to become stuck?

Because he knows that

he knows a couple of things.

One is he wants us to know him as our God, as our Redeemer, but he also wants us

to know that pursuing, pursuing

this life, our best life, where everything that he's not,

he's not interested in us just having this life go well.

His his desires for us, the life that he intends for us, is so much

beyond just what happens here and now.

And he doesn't want us to get so fixed, sated on it,

and so bound to it and addicted to it,

that we think that the only thing he is good for is to make this life go well,

because God knows he

says, you know what the only the only real life, the only true life is not

just a life where everything goes smooth, that everything's comfortable.

True life is found when we enter a relationship with him,

he says, I'm the source of life in James.

He says, I'm the source of all good gifts.

I'm the source of everything and anything that worthwhile that has happened to you.

I'm the source of that.

So life isn't found just in the gifts.

Life is found in knowing and walking with the one who gives the gifts.

Life is not just found in living out the existence

that's that's influenced or granted by this one.

Life is actually living.

The existence of walking with that one and knowing him

as our father, as our friend, as our Savior, as our Redeemer,

our greatest place of

being stuck, our greatest kind of source for reason,

for why we get stuck in our lives is because we don't know him.

It's not because we don't have enough.

It's because we don't know the one who even has

what we seek.

Our greatest source of getting stuck is because we don't have

a relationship with him, and so he lets us get stuck at times, right?

He lets us get stuck in the pursuit of the things.

So at some point will be will be confronted with the fact

that we don't just need the stuff, we need him, we need his rescue.

We need to come to know him and to walk with him as the source,

as the one who intends to bless us,

intends for us to know true life.

So even when, you know, and there are times that we have,

we have come to know him and,

and we still say, well, I know him as my savior,

but I still come against these challenges and these these problems in Romans

and James, they say, yeah,

but you can rejoice because you know that that's not the point.

You know that he is shaping something and he is granting something

far deeper than just what you're you're going through.

And so it says, we rejoice in our trials.

We rejoice that God you, your I know I have you

and that's all I need.

And so strip away all these other these

these loyalties to these other things, strip that away.

So all that I have is you, because you are my Redeemer.

And that life that you call me into is really a life.

It's about having a life of walking with and knowing you.

So in Exodus, you know, following chapter six,

what we see God do is he comes and he says, I'm going to redeem you.

I'm going to not just get you out of this place, not get get the impact out of you.

But I'm going to strip away from you all these loyalties that you have loaded

up, that draw you and keep you actually from life.

And so we see God taking on the spiritual, these gods of Egypt, right?

One by one in those plagues.

He just he just lays them out.

Here we see God taking out, and taking on the humans

who thought of themselves as God is like the Pharaoh

and those of his his household and those of his his kind of his military.

And we see him just kind of laying them out.

We see him

going against even the powers of nature as he walks

in through the middle of a sea, and he makes a dry, dry ground for them.

And we see him, and so we see him redeem Israel like he said he would

with his outstretched arm, this arm of power,

and with these judgments

of just saying, this is who you are,

and this is who I am, and he makes it.

He lets them see the difference between those two and why,

so that they would know without a doubt

who their Redeemer is, that they would know

without a doubt that he alone is God, and he is their God.

And he has a strength, and he has the resources

to bring them out of any pit

so that they would not just know it for themselves, but it would.

It would so mark them that they would pass it down from generation

to generation to generation.

You guys,

when we talk about our God,

he wants us to know him in that same way,

in a way that marks us so deeply,

so deeply that we know

that he is our God, that he is the only Redeemer that he has.

And we pass it on not just to generation to generation,

but we can't help but talk about what he has done.

And so in the New Testament,

it's like the last part of our Bibles,

and it literally just means it means this new covenant,

this new agreement that God has made with us in this New Testament

where it tells the story of Jesus and the story of the church,

what we find is we see that he wants us to know the fullness of his redemption.

He says the Old Testament what happened in the days of Moses in that what happens

in this world, even in our lives, is kind of like a it's like an illustration.

It's like a type.

It's like a shadow of the real thing that he's trying to draw our attention to.

And he sets us up with illustration and type after type after type,

so that when we get to the real, we recognize it.

We say, oh,

that's the rescue, right?

So we get to the New Testament.

We said, well, where did the rescue happen?

Well, we see that the fullness of his wreck, of his redemption,

the place that we most clearly see it is in the death and the resurrection.

Jesus

and the life, the death, the resurrection.

Jesus Christ is Jesus.

God took on human form and he came down right.

And he came down. He lived with us.

He lived right among us.

It says that he he suffered everything we suffered.

He went through.

He was tested and tempted with everything, were tested with and tempted with.

And he faced the same principalities and powers.

He seemed to the same temptations where he look at situations and

and it could have been just as easy for him to to say,

it doesn't look like God's here, except he knew he was.

He had

never been out of fellowship with the father,

and he lived this life.

And then and then at the end of it,

it says that what happened was that he he didn't just kind of

get into this life to mess around with the details of this world.

Right?

We have a life that we we live out kind of a shadow life

that starts at our birth and then ends with our death.

And in that shadow we see, like these illustrations of God's goodness.

We don't see the fullness of God's goodness.

Believe me, he says, there's a goodness that's coming, that's going to overwhelm

us with how how real it is compared to the shadows of what we taste now.

The best things that have happened to us are like shadows.

The worst things that have happened to us

also are like shadows of what it's like to really be separated from God

in the lets us live in this world of shadow.

And Jesus didn't come to rescue that world of shadow.

He came instead to bring us out of that in

into the life that he intended for us.

And so he doesn't come to just deal with mess with the

the details of this life, but instead it says

that he is come to show us his his true power.

Now in Israel, he he came to be so that they might you know, in Corinthians

it says that they might be like an illustration, a picture for us to see.

But now it says that in Jesus he's gone beyond all that,

because in Jesus he opened up a way into the eternal life.

It says that he he's given us a way for a new birth,

right into a new life, with the ends blown out,

where death and

sin and and disease and and powers, they have.

No they have no effect on that.

We're you're untouchable in this new life.

Oh, sure, the shadows might still look somewhat the same,

but in the midst of that, you have been given an access to this life.

And how did he how did he attain this?

You guys, it's the most amazing story that we have about what happened

is that God came and he took on flesh, and he lived among us.

And then the principalities and the powers and of this world and the rulers

of this world, they conspired together, and they did their best

to shut him down and to shut him up.

And so they tortured him, and they crucified him.

They put him to death.

They dragged him into death.

They sealed him into a grave.

And then he

just came out and, like, shook it off like it was nothing.

Three days later,

you guys, I want you to imagine he just.

He just shook it off like it was nothing.

And he said.

It's kind of like the best you got.

He came out knowing.

And everyone knew. Everyone was.

Everyone knew he had the power over the one thing that we had, we had

we had no power over that.

We were in bondage to, that we were bound to this thing called death.

And he just

obliterated it

and opened the way for us to go into

out of this, out of this death.

It says that baptism is kind of like

it was baptisms, like our our walk through the Red sea, right?

We go out of out of

this mess, out of this bondage, out of this stuckness.

And we go into this life says, and he provides for us this life.

He climbed out of death in the grave. Why?

Because he wanted us to see.

He wanted to come down as this living, this God who wants us

not just to know about him, but wants us to know him.

So he came down to our world, and he he lived this out right in front of us,

in our history, in our world, so that we would know him

and know that he is our God

and that he is our Redeemer.

And he says, do it.

So he comes and he says to us, I'm going to redeem you.

And when he says it,

I'm going to redeem you with the strength of my outstretched arm,

with the finality of my strong judgments,

in a way that is

irresistible.

It's un opposable.

And it's unstoppable.

And he says that this morning to us.

He wants us to know not just him as our Redeemer,

but he wants us to be brought into his redemption.

Because that's why.

That's why we celebrate at this table what we do right says, as often as you eat

this bread, drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again.

Why? Because it was at death.

It was like he went into it.

We look at the cross and that was that was like a what a horrible symbol

to like, have.

Except that that became he took that dead symbol of

of that for now and that finality of, of death itself.

And he said, now I'm going to make it the sign of my victory.

I'm going to make it the sign of redemption.

So what do we do?

What do we do with this?

How can we respond to this?

The first thing is this when we are in trouble in this world,

what should we do?

We call out to God,

right?

We call out to this God

and we because we know that he is our Redeemer.

If anyone is going to get offended, if anyone loves us enough

to get us out of a mess, it's going to be him.

And he has promised he will get us out of all of it.

Now, it may not get out the way that we think he needs to,

but he says, I am bringing you out not just of the problems

that are in this world,

but I am going to bring you out of all the problems that are with this world.

This world's broken. So I got to get you out of the world.

So we call out to him

because we know that this God, Yahweh,

his Son, Jesus, he is our Redeemer.

He is the only Redeemer.

He is the only God.

And we don't go running off looking for other gods right?

We're not the ones who go off looking for the best deal.

You know some God has to make.

If you sacrifice to me this way.

If you give up your life and I'll save you in this way,

we're not interested in that.

Instead, we seek after him

because we know

that he is the one that brings us into the fullness of life.

Life completely unhindered.

Not just a shadow, not just as an illustration, but he now in

Christ has brought us into the completion of that life.

So when you're in trouble, call on him, right?

But then wait for him.

Trust in him.

He did it for me.

He did it for the the Israelites in Exodus six.

He he's done it for us through Jesus Christ and even a greater level.

He keeps trying to show us and he says, call on me, but then wait for me.

Trust me, I am the redeeming God.

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm

and with mighty judgment, so expect it to come.

Look for it to come.

Amen.

How many guys?

I mean, again, I'm not going to ask you.

I'm not going to ask you that question

because I know some of

you guys are still in those places that you're just feeling stuck.

And I want you to think about, have I

how do I keep it?

I mean, and we get frustrated with this.

It's like, yeah, I keep turning to God and he hasn't done anything yet.

He will.

It's it's his own

reputation that that he's upholding in this.

It's his name.

He has said I will redeem you.

Is his promise.

Wait for him.

He will redeem you.

He will redeem this way.

He will bring you out and bring you in.

He will heal you.

He will take those things that have impacted you,

and he will heal them up because and he will bring us out.

But the second part of this is know that God is not primarily concerned

with this world.

We have to get that in our heads

because that's what we think about.

We think, I need God save me from all these shadows.

He says, I don't need you to save you from all the shadows.

I need to save you out of the shadows and into life as it was intended.

Sometimes we miss

the fact that God is using the events of this world

to make us more ready for the world that we're going to be a part of,

and that we've been born into already in Christ.

That's why we can rejoice in our trials,

because it's not about the trials that happened in the shadow world.

It's about what is that character that's being formed in me

as I walk through some of these things?

If I pray to God and I say, God, I need you to rescue you.

You rescue me out of this.

And I know that he's the God who hears me,

and he's the God who cares about me more than anything.

And he doesn't bring me out of this thing.

I don't mean that.

I just stop after one, you know?

Like you can cry out until.

I mean, Paul, he said, take this, this, take this thing away from me.

This thorn in my flesh.

And he says he prayed three times.

Then he, the Apostle Paul,

he said he didn't give up praying that

prayer until God said, no,

I'm going to give you grace.

My grace is sufficient.

So you're going to live with this thing,

but you're going to be shaped by it,

and I'm going to use it, but my grace will overwhelm it.

So don't don't stop praying for release.

Don't stop praying for redemption and rescue from the shadow,

the things that are going on in this world.

But there are times that God will say no.

There are times that God will say, I'm going to instead give you the grace.

I'm going to instead use this to build up

this character that is in you,

that is preparing you for the world which is to come.

You guys. That's a that's a hard one, isn't it?

But we need to know in our hearts and in our minds that God is not primarily

trying to get us prepared for this world, and he's not trying to salvage

the shadows that we live in.

He's lifting us out.

So look for the ways that he is lifting you out

and lean into those things and let him do his work in that.

And be thankful to him even in the midst of it.

Just say, God, I thank you that you're faithful,

even if this is a mess and I don't get it.

But you're faithful and you're good

and you are redeeming me.

And the third one is this if you're not in trouble

in those brief moments in our lives when everything's

going well.

Still thank him

because he's still working on redeeming you and getting you out.

Sometimes we think if everything is going well,

God must love us extra much, right?

But these are still the shadows we're living in.

And he's still getting us out.

Sometimes he gives

us a taste or a rest, or a taste of his goodness, or

a kind of where we just get to experience the blessing in this world as well.

And we're thankful for that.

But don't be, don't be, kind of deceived

by what goes on around instead.

Still keep leaning in to what the spirit is doing,

the work that the Spirit's doing, and don't get drawn out to say, okay,

I'm just going to start kind of settling into this world, settling into Egypt.

Things seem to be going okay.

Instead, keep leaning in and say, God, keep doing that work.

Keep doing that work.

Because this isn't the life.

This isn't the life that you call me to.

This isn't the ultimate kind of final life that you've redeemed me out of.

This isn't where I will find that unhindered life

of blessing that you intended for me.

So keep doing the work in me.

Keep doing the work of changing me, making me to be more like Jesus.

You guys, it is by that last one, that last attitude,

that last perspective,

that then we become those who are like testimonies

of this invitation that God then shows to other people,

whether where the things are going poorly, whether things are going

good, that we know that this world doesn't matter.

This world is not what I'm called to.

And through a life it's lived in that way.

People see in us.

They say, oh, there must be.

There must be more.

And they start hearing that invitation that God has to them.

The God has to them to be their Redeemer, to be their Savior, right.

To be their healer, to be the one who draws them out and brings them into

eternal life through Jesus.

Amen. And.