Luke 7:1-10

Hey guys, this is Josh from Haven City Church.

The following sermon was recorded on March 18th, 2018, and the sermon text is Luke 7, 1 through 10.

This happens to be the last sermon that was preached from the Compassion Center, where we've been meeting as a church since the fall of 2017.

Our church is looking forward to its move into the new location at 710 Anne Street.

Most notably, it's known for the Sanctuary Body Building, which is formally known as the St.

Stan's Church.

That is a historic location in Fells Point.

For more information about the church, you can visit our website, www.baltimorechurch.com.

We'd love to hear from you, especially if you have any questions or concerns.

God bless.

Luke chapter 7, verses 1 through 10.

Luke 7:1–10

Luke 7 1 through 10.

When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum.

There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die.

The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant.

When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.

So Jesus went with them.

He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him, Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.

That is why I do not even consider myself worthy to come to you.

But say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.

I tell this one, Go, and he goes, and that one come and he comes.

I say to my servant, Do this, and he does it.

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.

Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.

Lord, as we look at this text, we just invite you by your Holy Spirit to speak to our lives.

God, we pray that you would uh that your word and the work of the Holy Spirit would intersect our lives in a divine way, that God, you would speak to us.

So, Lord, we yield ourselves to you.

We surrender our own will to you.

Lord, our agendas, the things that we wish were the case, the things that we f want to fight for, we're willing to lay those down at your feet and surrender to you.

We're willing to center surrender our identity to you, the things that we're anxious about and our fears.

God, we're willing to give those things to you and where we're still holding on.

Lord, we pray by your Holy Spirit that you'd help us to let go of those things and to trust you with our lives.

Thank you for saving us from our sins, and we pray, God, again, that you would just work during this time to speak to us through your word.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So in this story, we have Jesus He finishes his talk that he's gave.

So we gave two weeks to the what we would call the Sermon on the Mount.

And Jesus finishes that up and he goes back into Capernaum, which is a city where he did a lot of ministry.

And as he is heading back in, we're introduced to this man who is sick and about to die.

We're told that he is a servant of a centurion.

Matthew tells us that he's paralyzed and he is sick unto death.

And we are told that he's not only a servant, but he is a highly valued servant to this particular centurion.

And the centurion sends the elders of the Jews in Capernaum to Jesus to basically ask for Jesus to help heal this servant.

Or the elders come on the centurion's behalf.

So Jesus responds and he heads in the direction of the centurion's house.

As the centurion sees Jesus coming, he sends some of his friends out to meet Jesus, and they say to him, the message from the centurion is, don't bother yourself as a Jew to come into my house, which is a Gentile house.

Don't defile yourself, is kind of the underlying idea that's there.

And um, because you can just say the word, you can just say the word and he'll be healed.

And then there's what we call a substantiation.

Those of you that have been with us for a while, you know that a substantiation is one of seven structural laws that are used, so they're key structural laws, to kind of give us the logical progression of the text.

Where's my um, isn't there an English major in here?

Somebody yesterday's working on English.

Who's the English major?

Right?

Yes, yes, she's got, she's hiding.

She's like, oh, don't point me out.

A substantiation, right, is a is a it's a way of communicating, but a substantiation runs from effect to cause.

Uh we use it in the legal courtroom sense, where um we want to substantiate a point that has already been established.

And so here the centurion has, he says, the reason why I'm saying you do not need to come to me into my house.

You can just command this healing from afar, is because I too am a man under authority.

I can say, go, and my servants will go, or come and they will come.

And so that is the basis for the centurion kind of giving this message to Jesus.

He's saying, This is how powerful you are.

You are this powerful that you do not need to come into the house.

And then we we read that Jesus is amazed at the faith of the centurion and that the servant is healed.

So that's the story that we're going to look at.

And we're, and as a church, um, what we do, uh, the way that we kind of our sermons are based off of systematically going through the text.

So we've been going through Luke, right?

So as a church, we believe that that the Holy Spirit wrote this book through Luke, and that God wants to speak to us through this text into our lives.

I mean, I could have, if I wanted to just come up with something inspirational, I could have just spoken on, you know, UMBC's victory, you know.

Or I could have done a bunch of I could have done a bunch of different things, right, to inspire us.

But instead, what we're doing is we want to look at scripture and we want to, we believe that God wrote the Bible through human instruments and that the Holy Spirit takes and animates those things into our life and applies them to our story.

So just for a second, you walk through that door and that cheap little chime made that little ringing, ringing noise.

And when you walked in that door, you carried in with you your story, who you are, your identity, the things that you're afraid of, the person that you are, right?

You don't, you're you weren't looking at um Luke this week and wondering what the Greek words that were here.

You're you're desperate, you're in some place of desperation to meet God.

And I believe that if you will listen for the Holy Spirit's voice as we go through this text, that God will meet you and that he will speak to you through this text.

So what I want to encourage you to do is be listening.

Have your ears opened, not so much to me, but to be listening for what God may say to you through this particular story.

Here's the other thing is that God knows the ins and outs of your story.

So I would encourage you to be ready to write what it is that God says to you.

Being taking notes or being prepared to write down what you're hearing is a act of faith, right?

It's a step of believing that God can speak to me through this particular text.

So back in Luke, when when Luke started off this book, he was writing it to Theophilus, and he says, I'm writing this to you with this in mind.

Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that have been taught to you.

Luke was a doctor, he did his research on the accounts of Jesus' life.

He it says that he, the word he uses here is he investigated these things, and then he compiled it so that this man, Theophilus, would have a certainty about what he's believed.

And so he included this story about the centurion.

One of the questions that we want to ask ourselves as we're studying the Bible is why did the writer write these things to the original reader?

Right?

This is what we call authorial intent.

Authorial intent is it asks, we asked the question about authorial intent before we ask the question, how does this speak to me?

Before we get to that point, we want to know how was it originally speaking to the original hearers?

What was God saying to this original audience, right?

So Luke has told us that the things that he's written are intended to build up and give a sense of certainty about Jesus.

So what is Luke trying to teach here?

Well, we love the outcome, right?

We look at the end of the story and we see a servant who is healed.

God rescues this man from the brink of death.

Can you imagine a paralysis that's leading to death?

That's severe.

We see a centurion that gets his most valuable employee.

Here he's called a servant, right?

He gets his most valuable servant back.

We see Jewish elders who uh value this centurion, they get to see this centurion blessed.

So no matter whether you are a Jesus lover and a Jesus follower or not, you can look at the end of this story and say, that's awesome.

Right?

We can find a point of agreement with this text in our humanity that appreciates the outcome of this story.

So the question is, is how did we get there?

Right?

Is this type, this ending to the story, isn't this the type of longing that we have in our humanity?

Don't we want God to work in our circumstances and in our stories in this way?

We do.

We do.

We want God to do these types of miracles in our lives.

And so the uh Jewish elders, who are kind of the older, um, kind of reputable men of the city, take it upon themselves to go to Jesus.

And what do they say to Jesus?

Other than telling Jesus about the state of this centurion, what do they say?

Look at verse 4 and 5.

Look at verse 4 and 5.

When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him that, and they said, This man deserves to have you do this because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.

Do you see what they're saying to him?

He deserves to have you do this because he is a patriot and because he has given us a synagogue.

This is a Gentile centurion that has paid for a Jewish synagogue.

So you might be tempted when you see the outcome of this text to think that, wow, God listened to the Jewish elders.

God listened to and observed the good works of the centurion and therefore healed his servant.

The Jewish elders suggested that the grounds for healing this servant.

Note this, the grounds for healing this servant is that this man loves the nation of Israel.

And the second point they make is that, look, he paid for the construction of a synagogue in our town.

That's the basis of the appeal to Jesus.

The context also suggests some other reasons why Jesus might heal this man.

Look, he cares for the health of his servant.

He's a good boss.

He has significant social status.

Maybe somebody could say, well, the grounds for God healing this servant is because he's an important man.

He leads a hundred other soldiers.

He's wealthy enough to build a synagogue.

No doubt this centurion was an honorable man.

If this centurion lived in Baltimore City, we'd probably regularly see him in pictures with the mayor, or maybe on a float in a parade that the mayor was putting on.

Maybe we would see him as somebody who had a lot of followers on his social media page, or maybe he would get a park named after him, or maybe even a library would be named after him in the city.

He had, he was an honorable man.

And the outcome of this story, the fact that his servant is healed, is a dream come true.

Jesus worked to heal this servant.

But let me ask you this question.

Aren't these oftentimes the grounds that we subconsciously or consciously give to God, believing that we deserve to be blessed?

We want the outcome of this story, but sometimes the way that we look at our own lives is that we think we deserve the favor of God.

We may believe that we deserve God's blessing because we're a patriot.

We love our city, we love our country, we've got an American flag, or we've got a Maryland flag, or a Baltimore flag.

Or maybe that's not you.

Maybe it's that you're wired and you think I've done good stuff for other people.

I've made huge sacrifices for other people.

I'm a good person.

I care for the people that are around me.

Other people like me.

I have a good standing at work or amongst my peers.

Or maybe it's it's another sense of kind of superiority or a sense of worthiness based upon how you're doing with your Instagram posts.

Maybe you've got a huge following, right?

Or you're getting a lot of likes, right?

Hey, that's real, right?

I know people they put up a post and it's not getting enough likes, they'll take it down, they'll retake the picture, right?

We got to get those likes coming in.

Or maybe the way you're wired, maybe the way you're wired is that it's um your grades or your academic achievements.

Um, when your friends are goofing off, you're the one that's at home, you're studying, you're you're working hard.

Maybe you're the one that gives to the homeless, or you're attending church every week, or you're giving church to your uh money to your church.

We take all of those things and we we can subconsciously try to hold those things up before God and say with the Jewish elders, I deserve the blessing of God.

That is a life done in the works of the flesh.

That's what Romans says.

That's the label that Paul puts on that life.

Where we try to please God with our human activity.

Paul addresses this in Philippians chapter 3.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Philippians chapter 3, he talks about his own life.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

So Paul's this great missionary who preached the gospel all over northern Asia or Northeast Asia and South Europe.

He says in his letter to the Philippians, he says, if someone else thinks that they have a reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.

I was circumcised the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regards to the law, a Pharisee, as for zeal persecuting the church, as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

And then he says this But whatever were gains to me, I have considered these things loss for the sake of Christ.

Wait a second, he just gave his whole list.

This is his resume, this is his CV, this is his credentials, and yet he says this whatever were gained to me, I consider loss for the sake of Christ.

This is the most religious man.

This is an incredible pedigree.

It reminds me, recently we our family's been looking at getting a dog, right?

And when you start shopping for dogs, one of the things that makes a dog more valuable is its pedigree, right?

So this one guy I've been talking to, he has a dog farm and he's a former Navy SEAL, he trains dogs.

He's in Florida, and his puppies sell for$2,500 because the this the purity of his dogs are incredible.

His pedigree and the paperwork that comes with it with his dogs are amazing.

Don't worry, I'm not going to buy that dog, right?

But that's that is the basis for that dog being evaluated.

And Paul says, look as me, as a Jew, as a of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, those things I count as loss.

So the answer is no.

The centurion was not healed.

This centurion in our story, his servant was not healed because he deserved it.

In fact, no human has ever earned the favor of God other than Jesus Christ.

There is no one who can stand before God and say, I have deserved and earned your favor other than Jesus Christ.

In fact, in Romans 3.23, it says that everyone, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Every human ever born has sinned against God.

In Romans 6.23, it says that the wages of sin, what is earned by our sin is death.

But God's gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Each one of us have sinned, and because of that sin, we deserve death.

And so if you and I bring our story before God and there's holes in it, believe me, there's my holes in mine and holes in yours, and there's lack and there's insufficiency and there's sickness and there's there's just overall lack.

And we bring our story before God, there's no way for us to say, God, look at what I have done.

I deserve your help.

But we long for the outcome of this story.

We need the touch of God upon our life.

We need the touch of God upon this city.

We need God's touch upon our families.

We see how broken the world is around us.

We see fellow human beings being murdered without mercy.

We see doctors and scientists dedicated to discovering cures for death.

We see artists longing to express beauty and truth.

We need God to say the word and it will be healed.

Here's what I would suggest to you.

Luke included this story in the manuscript because it illustrates, it embodies two key principles.

Two key principles.

Look back at verse 6 and 7.

Are you there?

Look at verse 6 and 7.

This is really good because the the the message of this text is right there.

It's written right there for us.

This is the words of the centurion.

He says, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.

That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you.

But say the word and my servant will be healed.

The first thing that he says is, I do not deserve.

The second thing he says is, you just say the word and it'll be done.

These two statements express humility and faith.

The first, I do not deserve to have you come into my home, is an expression of humility, of lowliness, of meekness.

And then he says, Say the word and my servant will be healed.

That is an expression of faith.

He's saying, God, you can do this, right?

That Jesus, you are, I can place my faith in you.

And then Jesus praises the man, right?

This is the only one of two times where Jesus is filled with marvel, he marvels, right?

This word of marveling is only used twice.

It's used with this guy, and it's used with a Gentile woman who comes begging Jesus to heal her son, I think, is where it is.

And Jesus kind of says interesting interaction with her.

Jesus marvels only twice that we know of, in the or we're given two accounts of Jesus marveling at people's faith, and they're both Gentiles.

And they have this remarkable faith where they're just trusting God to do the work.

Let me ask you this um question.

How did you become a Christian?

What makes you a Christian?

I mean, a lot of I most of our ministry that we do is is here in Southeast Baltimore, you know, between Hopkins Medical Center and Fells Point.

And a lot of my neighbors have grown up in the church and they'll tell me uh Um yeah, I'm a Christian, you know, or or I went to the ch I went to church, or or I'm spiritual, um, or or I I like Jesus, he was a good guy, or or I, you know, I'm okay with the church, I don't like this, but there's a lot of people that are um they're they're not hostile to me or or what I stand for stand for, but if you were to ask them this question, what makes you a Christian, they wouldn't know.

And so the question for you this evening is how did you become a Christian?

Is it because you go to church?

Is it because you listen to Christian music?

Is it because you read the Bible?

What makes you a Christian?

In Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith.

Ephesians 2:8

Right?

You and I are saved.

We are made Christians.

We're brought into the family of God by God's grace and our faith in Jesus Christ.

In John chapter 3, verses 14 through 16, Jesus says this just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, and there's some context, you've got to go back and read the Old Testament for that story, Jesus says this so the man, Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.

John 3:14–16

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

What makes you a Christian?

And by believing in Jesus Christ, by placing your faith in him.

You cannot become a Christian by any other way.

There's no other way for you to be a Christian.

If you died today and you stood before God, and God asks you, why should I let you into heaven?

If you try to hold up some good deed that you did, no matter how good it is, it's not good enough to get you into heaven.

You see, we're all sinners.

We're under the wrath of God, and without Jesus' work on the cross, we cannot be forgiven.

And the only response, the only work, in fact, the Jews came to Jesus and they said, What's the work that we must do?

What do we do?

What is our, what's what's humanity supposed to do?

And Jesus said, believe on the one whom the Father sent.

In other words, believe in Jesus.

Your faith in Christ is what makes you a Christian.

Paul writes about this in the book of Romans.

Look at Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

Romans 3, 27 through 28.

I'll give you a second to turn over there.

Because this is a legal manuscript.

The book of Romans is really laid out by Paul in such an eloquent way.

Romans chapter 3, verse 27, says this.

Romans 3:27

Where then is boasting?

It is excluded because of because of what?

Law.

The law that requires works?

No.

It's because the law that requires faith, for he, for we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

So Paul lays out as he goes through the text.

I wish, man, Romans is going to be so fun for us as a church to go through.

It's going to be so much fun.

It's really technical.

But Paul is saying, look, you are justified before God by faith, not by doing the works of the law.

Justification is the legal term for being saved, right?

If you go to, if you go before a judge and you're hoping to be found not guilty, you need justification.

You need the justification of the courtroom to be counted as a righteous person and not guilty person before God.

And Paul says that the way to get God's justification to be found not guilty in God's courtroom is by placing your faith in Jesus Christ.

The most important work that God can do in your life is to repair the broken relationship that you have with God.

You may have walked through the door and you may think the most important thing in my life is I need this or I need God to do that.

Now I'm going to tell you, you there may be other things that you sense as a more dire need in your life right now, but the most intense need that we all bear is the brokenness in our relationship with God, and we need Jesus to repair that, and He has through the cross, and all we need to do to be a part of that is to place our faith in Him.

Many of you have already placed your faith in Christ, and you are already a Christian.

The reason I'm going over this material, even though it is kind of the entry point into your relationship with God, is for this reason.

Because in Colossians chapter 2, Paul says, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Do you see that when you and I are saved, we express two things before God.

We come before God and we say, God, I can't save myself.

That right there is an expression of humility.

We're saying, God, I can't do it.

I cannot please you.

I cannot make you happy with the works in my life.

I can't be nice enough to people, I can't give enough money away, I can't attend church enough.

I cannot do it.

And you know what?

God's okay with that.

That's an expression of humility.

But then we say, God, you can save me.

I'm trusting in Jesus and the work that He did on the cross to save me from my sins.

That is an expression of faith.

It is those two attitudes of our heart that brings us into the kingdom of God.

God gives us his grace as we express our humility and faith.

That's how we're saved.

So Colossians comes along and it says this.

It asks the question, how were you saved?

How did you become a Christian?

It's by expressing humility and faith.

And then Paul says, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

You see, oftentimes people have this perception that, yeah, God saves us as we place our faith in him.

That's how we're we become Christians, but now we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, get our act together, and love God somehow in our own strength.

And it's it's somehow this idea that the life we now live, now we're trying to just kind of pay God back for what he did for us to get us out of hell.

And that's not how it works at all.

What Paul teaches and what Galatians teaches and what the whole New Testament teaches is that we keep staying, or we need to stay, in that attitude of humility and faith.

Can I um as as that thesis kind of goes forward, let me back up what I'm saying by giving to you Romans chapter 5, verse 1 and 2.

Romans 5:1

Romans chapter 5, verse 1 and 2 says this.

Romans 5:1

Therefore, since we've been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have, look at this.

It says, we have gained access by faith into this grace.

Romans, Romans is written to Christians.

This is a Christian audience that he's talking to, just like you guys, you know?

He's already writing to Christians, but here Paul is talking about accessing grace by faith, right?

The way, one of two ways that we access the grace of God in our life is by believing in God, by trusting in him.

Do you remember we were a couple weeks ago we were studying Jesus when he was back in Nazareth?

And Jesus was not able to do many works in Nazareth.

Why?

Because the people there didn't believe in him.

He was too familiar.

They couldn't trust that Jesus was the Son of God.

They couldn't believe and they couldn't get past their doubt in him.

And it limited, somehow it limited God from his work.

God's grace, which is his just pouring his blessings out in our life, those things come in our life when we're trusting in God.

So you and I are this kind of receptacle for the grace of God.

And if you're and you're in a person like me, you're saying, I need God's work in my life.

The good news is that, good, great, God wants to give grace, gives you access to grace as you trust him.

The second attitude is this attitude of humility.

1 Peter 5.5, this is so well known because this is spoken of in Proverbs and then back in James, and then 1 Peter 5.5 quotes the same thing.

But Peter says, likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to elders, your elders.

Yes, all of you be submissive one to another.

Be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

He gives grace to the humble.

He resists the proud.

He gives grace to who?

The humble.

So again, you're in your life, you're looking, you're saying, God, I need you to work in my life.

Great, he wants to work in your life.

He needs your heart to be humble, right?

If you're proud, if you're in this position, I deserve it, right?

He can't, he's all he can do is resist that person, right?

He can hold you at an arm's length.

But if you're humble, he can give you grace, right?

So the two attitudes here that are put on display through this story in the centurion's life is this attitude of humility.

I don't, I'm not worthy for you to come.

It's amazing.

The word worthy is like repeated twice there, right?

The Jews were like, hey, this guy's worthy.

And then the centurion says, No, no, no, I'm not even worthy for you to come into my house.

And then he says, you just say the word and it'll be done.

Right?

This is, remember, how does the whole creation story start?

Right?

God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

God just says the word and it's done.

And this man here, he says, You, you God, you just say the word and it will be so.

Here's the thing: landing the plane, closing it up here.

The goal of God through his son is to be glorified.

Right?

God wants to magnify his name.

The Lord's prayer is, hallowed be your name.

In other words, may your name be famous in the earth.

That should be the thing we are praying for.

God's goal, his objective is to be glorified through his son Jesus.

He sets the table so that he can get glory.

This is the system in which he gets glory.

It intrinsically makes sense and extrinsically makes sense.

As we say, God, I cannot do it, you can, that intrinsically, oh, that makes sense, right?

But extrinsically, it brings God glory because his system works, right?

He's pouring out grace, and then Jesus becomes famous through your life and my life because his grace is our rescue.

His grace is our provision, his grace in our life is our sanctification, our growth, our ability to be loving.

He is at work in our life.

So let me encourage you to ask yourself this question.

Are you seeking the favor of God, believing that you deserve it?

Or are you seeking the favor of God in a position of humility and faith?

I hope that you're seeking God, but I want you to know that he's got to resist the proud.

He wants to bless you because of his goodness and to bring glory to himself.

This story, Luke included, he picked this story out so that you would see Jesus in this text.

That you would see the Jesus who cared about a Gentile centurion who received this statement of faith and humility, and he acted.

And Jesus is there.

Wow.

In um in Luke, somewhere else, I was uh gonna include this in my sermon, and I just realized I forgot, but this is this is where we'll close.

Jesus tells a parable encouraging people to pray and not faint.

And he tells this parable, I think it's about a man who comes before a judge and just pestures the judge repeatedly for something, right?

To be um to be vindicated.

And he keeps, and it's a hard judge, and it's a judge that doesn't like to listen, right?

And yet the man keeps pestering him and pestering him and pestering him.

And finally the man gets what he was asking for.

And it says, Jesus says, When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Jesus has been away, right, for 2,000 years, right?

He ascended back up to heaven 2,000 years, and yet he's told that story, encouraging us to pray and not faint.

When we pray, we that is the greatest expression of this attitude of humility and faith.

If you're not a person of humility, and if you're not a person of faith, then you don't pray.

Like who would pray?

Right?

Who would who would pray unless you were humble and you trusted God?

But when we do pray, what we're saying is, God, you can work.

You can work.

So may we be, may we be a people that are trusting in God.

Maybe be a people that are believing in God for His work.

Amen.

Um what I want to do is I want to um Amen.

She heard me say Amen.

Um we are going to pray for Jasmine, who's back there, and we're gonna pray for Don, who's not, he wasn't able to work and be here because he's working.

And I told some of you on my um on our Slack channel.

So we have as a church, we communicate through Slack, which is an enterprise solution for group messaging.

Um and it's great.

We love it as a church, and we're able to just kind of be a part of one another's lives.

But I I I mentioned that there were two inter individuals that came across my path that I was introduced to.

I was honored to be introduced to them.

Um, they are they were in crisis, they are in need, and um Jasmine's one of them.

She uh has been homeless, she's got two kids she's taken care of.

They're at City Spring here.

Um one of the administrators at the school um connected me with Jasmine, and um, and so it's a real honor to hear her story.

And since I actually started talking to her, she found a new place to live, and um, which is awesome.

And she um needs about twelve hundred dollars to uh pay her down payment to get into the new location, and she's looking for a second job.

And so I asked Jasmine to come tonight so that we could pray for her, and I mentioned on our Slack channel that we would like to give to her.

So um, as a church, we don't talk about money a whole lot.

Um we there's a lot of abuses with money in the church, so rarely do we talk about money.

But in this particular instance, I wanted to um just bring these needs before you.

Our church, we we're a very tiny church, we don't have a big church uh bank account.

Um, so we can give whatever you guys want to um give with us.

And some people have already generously given uh to this, including um our family.

So you do not have to give, but I wanted to, I just asked her to be here so that you guys could be a part of her life.

If any of you know of uh work, a second job, she's trying to take on a second job so she can afford this new place to live.

Um and she's trying to be a good mom, right, Jasmine?

Amen.

We love you.

I I uh she's shy, so I didn't want to humiliate her.

And it's a hard, it's a hard thing to um do.

But I here's the thing is I I get to meet people like Jasmine who like my heart goes out to like these single parents um all the time.

And and I they don't all they're not always here, right?

And but but you guys are, and I want to connect your life with them more, and I want to let you guys be a part of them.

So um we don't give to everybody, I mean pretty much everybody buddy we meet with is lacking funds, right?

And half of our church is lacking funds.

But um some after I spend a little bit of time with them and get to know them, I feel like, yep, we want to give.

So um there are giving envelopes that are over here.

If you want to give after church, um you can.

Um also Don's story, he's not here, he's a single dad.

Uh, he has a 15-year-old daughter, and his problem is that he's he is doing too good financially.

And the housing authorities saw his um overtime, his paycheck based off his overtime work that he had done, and they increased his rent in um Douglas Holmes from$250 to$800 a month.

He's paying, paying uh like$650 in child support.

He's um he had done some, he had messed up like his taxes a few years ago, so he has some garnished wages.

So, hey Matthew.

So he is in need as well.

So he's somebody that we are going to um be uh helping out.

So um I spent some time with him as well.

So um we're gonna pray for him and then we're gonna I'm gonna have Brian and Ashley come back up.

We're gonna worship.

Um, but yeah, I just I appreciate you guys and um your willingness to be a part of that.

Lord, we just um we we do pray for um Jasmine.

We pray that Jesus, you would um rescue her in her present situation that you provide for all of her needs.

And we pray too for um Don that you would provide for him.

Thank you for um uh uh their desire and their um their effort, Lord.

Um and we're just are grateful for how you've been gracious to each of us.

And um we just are uh we're blessed.

We pray that you, Lord, you Lord, would make yourself known.

You would make yourself known in their life, in our life.

Lord, as we trust you, as we trust you, we pray, Jesus, for um your work that you would be magnified through our lives.

Make yourself known.

Make yourself known, Lord, um, in and through our lives.

Lord, some things are hard, some things are painful.

We might not have wanted the story to go how it's been, but Lord, we um surrender to you.

We pray that you would show yourself in such a powerful way.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.