Joseph // God Wastes Nothing

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at the lookout.church.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Isn't it fun to let the youth pray over us?

To take some time just to let them pray over us.

Sometimes it's hard to put in words what actually happened at camp, you know.

Um, but we just we thought this morning, let's just let them pray over us.

And I don't know if you felt that.

I mean, uh, one of the things I love about this church and about our families, and and you as parents, and we can see this in the lives of our youth, is there is a legitimate zeal for the Lord.

There is a passion for God that He is birthing in our young people.

And uh and I think it's worth celebrating.

We need to just remember that this is one of the greatest things we get to do is create the kind of family atmosphere, cultivate a ground where our young ones can know the Lord from a young age, and they can be indexed towards the Lord, that that would become the marker, the direction for the rest of the life.

Who's in for that?

Come on.

So I just want to encourage you, continue to pray for our families, continue to pray for our young ones, kids, and youth, um, that they would know the purposes, the call of God on their life.

Amen.

So this morning, if we if we have if we haven't met yet, my name is Luke.

I'm so so glad you're here with us today.

We're gonna jump into our message here in just uh a bit.

We're in a series on Joseph uh in the scriptures.

Um before we do that, a couple updates.

First of all, how many of you guys love Graham and Piper, Kepin?

Piper, our worship pastor.

Graham, most of the time he's behind the soundboard, but he's one of our elders.

Uh, I want you to be here next week.

Next week, we're going to send them on sabbatical.

And we'll explain what that means next week, but they're going to have a few months to actually enter into a season of restoration, a season of kind of reconnecting with God's purposes in their lives.

And they're going to be not here for a few months, okay?

And so it's a time to just do the deeper inner work, okay?

So we're going to bless them and send them off uh next week.

How many of you guys know Draymond Piper have been around like doing stuff for over 20 years, all right?

They've been at it, all right?

So we're gonna bless them with some time off.

That's gonna happen next week.

But we're kind of in a season where a lot of our staff is shifting around um and changing.

Uh, a few weeks ago, we mentioned uh Pastor Jeanette Ross is now leading the charge in our children's ministry, and uh and she's doing a fantastic job.

She's back there right now.

Um, and and and and she's it's it's amazing what's going on with all the volunteers and workers and what's going on with our kids back there.

So Jeanette moved around.

Um, Grandma Piper going on sabbatical.

There's a few other things we just want to highlight within our staff.

Some of you guys just have no idea how things actually work around here, and I'm not gonna tell you how everything works.

I'm just gonna highlight a few key changes here.

Um, first of all, just acknowledging that in this church, uh there are many leaders on all different scales and sizes doing amazing things because this is a body and it's not just run by staff members.

This is a church, and God supplies all kinds of members of the body to the church, and you are one of those.

Um, but our staff are those who are in roles that require more availability to serve the body throughout the week and support the life of God in this community.

Are you guys grateful that there's some staff members here at the church?

Um, to be clear, not all of our staff is paid because some choose to serve as a gift to this body in addition to their work outside of the church.

And quite honestly, we can't afford to pay everybody to do everything, right?

And so there's some that just avail themselves because it's what God has called them to do.

Um, much of our staff is here midweek for meetings, planning, prayer, discernment, uh, which is why we want to honor a few new players on our team.

First of all, I want to send a huge shout out to Shannon Capel.

Shannon Capel, write down stand up, Shannon.

So Shannon Capel just came on board on the Lookout team as kind of our official marketing coordinator.

She does all the stuff on social media.

If you don't, if you're on Instagram and Facebook and you're not following the Lookout, you need to, because Shannon's doing an awesome job telling the stories of how God is changing lives and what God is doing through the community.

So you need to be a part of that.

And uh, and she's gonna continue this next year to tell stories and just to highlight the goodness of God and and how God, and like Micah prayed a little bit ago, how this church is called to be a beacon of light and hope in this region, right?

We want to tell those stories, and so Shannon is on point to do that.

Not only does she do that, um, but uh kind of in an unpaid role, she is also leading up a lot of our prayer and intercession, and um, and oh my gosh, it's powerful.

If you ever prayed with Shannon, woo, the ground's about to split underneath your feet.

Um, and so we're thankful.

Thank you, Shannon, for coming on board.

Um I also want to highlight uh both Carly and Josh Roberts.

They're they're uh they've availed themselves this last season.

You guys stand up, Carly and Josh, Sand up, everybody thank.

Um these guys are a power couple, if there was one.

All right.

You know Josh um as a worship leader on a lot of Sundays here uh at the Lookout.

But over the last few months, Josh has actually stepped into a role uh that we call operations director.

Graham Keppen, some of you guys know, had been in the role of operations director for a long time.

Now Graham is kind of stepping in specifically as finance director and elder.

He'll continue to do that.

Josh is stepping in as operations director, which really has to do with bringing support to our facility, special projects, a lot of the contractors.

How many of you know there's a lot that happens in this building and on this property?

And it takes a tremendous amount of wisdom and stewardship and insight and discernment so we can continue to be good stewards of the property, the facility God has given us.

If uh if you've had a chance to even go visit our basement, some of you didn't know we had a basement.

Uh we have a basement on the other side of the building, and that's where a lot of our kids' rooms are.

We'll be opening up later this year.

But uh we just finished this huge, you know, we're finishing a big project down there because of some water damage this last year, but I'm telling you, that basement looks better than it has in 40 years.

All right, it's awesome.

And stuff like that, we are so grateful that Josh has come alongside.

Um, but then also uh but Carly uh Robertson as well, she has come alongside.

How many of you enjoyed the last couple years with our host team?

Who's on the host team here?

The hospitality team.

Come on, give it up for the host team.

If if you guys enjoy coming to church and actually see people smile with you and actually believe it's a good day and invite you into the goodness of the day, like this is this is what our host team does.

And we have a lot to be thankful for Carly and so many of our leaders for um for helping lead the charge there.

And so in this season, she's she's really stepping more in point as a connections director, helping create a hospitality culture so that when you invite your neighbors, they actually feel welcome and they receive and they have an amazing time.

We want that to happen, right?

When you invite your neighbors, and you will, right?

Right?

Right.

That we want to be here ready for them to receive them into this community.

Hopefully, that's been your experience.

We want to continue to create an environment of awe-inspiring love.

Carly is also doing a lot to just support our volunteers and recruitment and volunteer staffing in different ministries.

So, everybody, give it up for Josh and Carly.

So, a few high-level updates.

We'll continue to get uh to keep you guys informed on things going on, but it's a good season, it's a good time.

So, with that said, let us just pause our hearts for a moment and prepare to receive the word together.

Can we just sit together, share a moment of silence, just become aware of Jesus' presence with us even now?

What a fun it is to live life with you.

What a joy it is.

I know that we're caught up in your story.

I thank you today for the work of God in every heart, in every life.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Alright.

If you have your Bibles, let's open up to Genesis chapter 45.

Genesis 45 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 45.

Genesis 45 · chapter mention

We will have the scriptures on the screens here if you did not bring your Bible.

I always like the heart, hard copy, man.

Give me the hard copy, dude.

I want to hear some rustling pages, alright?

I want to know where it is when that power grid goes off, man.

I need this thing.

I need to know this thing, all right?

You need to have a relationship with the book, the good book.

We're in the story of Joseph as we've been making our way into the year.

Um, and part of the reason we're in Joseph as we're coming into the year, because his story is important historically, but also gets at some of life's big questions.

Is God with us in our suffering?

How do we remain steadfast when life goes in a dramatically different direction than we expected?

And why does God allow good things or bad things to happen to good people?

And I know that all of us in some way or some shape, shape, or form, have asked those kinds of questions or similar questions in our life, because this is these are the bigger questions of life.

And we know in the story of Joseph, just to recap, if you're not familiar, not to do a deep dive, but just to make sure that we have a common context here, Joseph was one of his father's favorite sons.

He uh he was uh Jacob's favorite, which is why he was given a coat of many colors.

Um, we know that Joseph uh had vivid dreams in the night.

He was a dreamer in the night, and because of these things, his brothers became very jealous, ended up selling him into slavery, which is how ultimately he ends up in Egypt.

When you track the story of Joseph, every time you think he's about to catch a break, when it looks like it's about to get better, there's hope on the horizon.

Somehow it gets worse.

And we gather that Joseph, though, in these seasons, that the ups and the downs and the trials, the uncertainties, somehow he maintains integrity, he maintains character and steadiness through the delays and the detours of life.

We're not giving a tremendous amount of detail to what was going on on the inside.

But in the passage we're about to read, we we see what happens when Joseph arrives, he arrives to what we could call a convergence moment.

When all of the threads of his life come together in a way that he never expected.

It's what we could call the climactic scene of the story.

If this were a movie, this would be the climactic scene of what happens when Joseph takes everything his life had become, everything that he had traveled and journeyed through, and it all just kind of comes together in one scene.

The text today, this is actually a little further in the story of Joseph.

Joseph at this point had arisen to second in command in all of Egypt, just behind Pharaoh.

There was nobody more powerful than Joseph.

And it just so happens that there was a famine in the land, and so his brothers came to Egypt looking for food, which brings Joseph face to face with the ones who betrayed him and sold him into slavery.

And so they had come to Egypt looking for food.

He he walks them through a few tests to make sure these are really the guys he wanted to kind of see what they were gonna how they were gonna respond and and uh and what they were gonna do, what they were gonna go back and tell his father.

And so this is a few chapters into that.

They've come back to Egypt, okay, after doing what he had asked.

So this is Genesis chapter 45.

Genesis 45 · chapter mention

Let's read this together.

Starting in verse 1.

Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him.

He cried, Make everyone go out from me.

So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it.

And the household of Pharaoh heard it, and Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?

But the brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

So Joseph said to his brothers, Come near to me, please.

And they came near, and he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God.

He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and ruler of all the land.

Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt.

Come now, come down to me, do not tarry.

You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children, and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds, and all you have.

There I will provide for you.

For there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have do not come to poverty.

And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you.

You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and all that you have seen.

Hurry and bring my father down here.

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept.

And Benjamin wept upon his neck, and he kissed all his brothers, and wept upon them, and that his brothers talked with him.

After that, his brothers talked with him.

Amen.

Joseph, Joseph's life had arrived to a point about 20 years after he had been taken into slavery.

It was only 17 when he was sold into slavery.

And we read that he makes his way into Egypt.

He makes his way into the house of Potiphar and is in charge of his whole household.

We read about the accusation that landed him in jail.

And we read about the what happened in jail, how he would befriend the cutbearer and the baker.

He would interpret their dreams.

And then it was several years later, even after that, he would uh somehow be called up into the courts of Pharaoh to interpret Pharaoh's dreams, everything that God had deposited in him, both his dream life and his dream interpretation life, he brought to bear for a really a wicked, evil ruler in Egypt.

He would come to Pharaoh and he would help him interpret dreams to lead to the flourishing of Egypt and ultimately the flourishing of all of the people of God.

But we read in this scene, as his brothers had come near, his brothers didn't know that it was him yet.

Joseph sees all the threads coming together.

And all at once it catches up with him on the inside.

And we see that Joseph he tells everybody in the court, he said, get out of here.

Leave me alone with my brothers.

And as soon as that door shuts, you can almost feel the welling up of his entire life into one single moment.

In one single moment, he's taken back to these dreams that he had as a 17-year-old boy.

In a single moment, he remembers the sting of betrayal and that long road to Egypt.

But he also can't deny how deeply he missed the and longed for his brothers and his fathers this last 20 years.

In this moment, he remembers the loneliness of sitting in that jail unjustly and yet having the gift of company, even a couple men.

In this moment, you can almost imagine he sees all of the faces of those in this journey.

He sees the face of his father Jacob.

He sees his grandfather Isaac, his great-grandfather Abraham, his eleven brothers.

He can see the face of his slave trader, Potiphar, Potiphar's wife, the baker, the cutbarrow, Pharaoh.

It's like scenes of a movie all flashing before him.

What catches up with him in this moment is he recognized that all of these different moments of time, he was growing in character, he was growing in skill sets, he was growing in trust and strength and power and authority.

In this moment, he was reminded of the promises of his people, the promises God had made and the covenant that was sustaining his people told to him by his father and grandfather and great-grandfather.

And so he starts to feel all of these threads kind of catch up with him in a single moment in a way that he could have never imagined, this story of rescue, restoration, redemption, and this torrent in his soul and spirit reconciling everything that had gone wrong, everything that had gone right, every assumption he had ever made, every misaligned expectation, every answer prayer, every unanswered prayer, it starts welling up, and you see him just say, get everybody out of the room, shut the door, and then as soon as it shuts, something inside of him, it starts to come out, and he just lets him cry.

He says, ah.

And it's in a single moment, his life comes into full view, and he remembers, oh my God, he was with me the entire time.

He was with me the entire single time.

And in a moment, something catches up in Joseph, and he doesn't say these with his words, and I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but when I read myself into this story, as we all do, there's something that wells up inside of him that concludes, oh my God, every single moment counts.

My life matters, and God wastes nothing.

Every moment counts.

And God wastes nothing.

Can we just say this together, these three lines together?

Every moment counts.

My life matters, and God wastes nothing.

If you believe that, give a shout to the Lord today that God waste.

See, it's part of our humanity.

It's part of these questions that we ask.

We're storytelling beings.

No other creature is telling stories.

There's no giraff waking up in Africa wondering if his life will actually mean something today.

Right?

There's no monkey in Costa Rica that's kind of feeling stuck today.

There's something unique about who how our our our humanity, being image bearers of God, we are created to live life's meaning, and we want to we want to know not only does my life matter, but how does my life matter?

We know the right answers, but we still live with these things of both.

What is happening with the content of my life?

And there's parts of our life, come on, if we're honest, there's parts of our life that just don't make sense.

And you probably feel that even coming into church today, you're just caring.

You're here because you know it's the right thing to do.

Or, like, I always feel better coming to church.

But if you're looking at your life, there's some part of your life, it's probably for all of us, there's part of your life that just doesn't make sense.

And you can try to get it to make sense, but it just quite doesn't always make sense.

And it's in those moments when we are the most vulnerable.

When we're living life and we don't know how to find the common thread and the common story that is seeing us through.

And when you don't know how it all fits together, it's really easy to feel stuck.

And I hear these stories all the time.

I I went to college, I got the degree, but it turns out I hated that degree, and I don't want to be in that kind of work, and I don't know what to do now because everything I was trained for is not actually the passion of my heart.

Or I moved here to Colorado from another part of the country because I thought life was going to look like this.

It turns out it looks nothing like what I had in mind.

So here I am.

I thought it was going to be one way, and it's completely different.

Or maybe you follow God and you took a risk, and uh, but it doesn't quite look like that new business venture or that new relationship.

It doesn't quite look like it's panning out yet, and you're holding on, wondering if you're about to turn a corner on that, but you're just holding that with a question mark hovering above it.

And what happens is a lot of times that these incomplete things in our life, many of us live chronically in a way, always wishing things could have been different.

And so certainly, you know, there's things in our life that either happen to us or decisions that we make or injustices that we take part in, um, that you know, that legitimately uh you know have to be grieved.

We have to lament the wrongdoing in our life or the wrongdoing in the world or the wrongdoing that we've taken part of.

But what happens for so many people both in the church and out is we live chronically with this sense of, I wish I could have blank, I wish I should have blank, or by this point in time, life should have looked like this.

My bank account should have been more like this, right?

My relationships should have been more like this.

And so we live in this thing of trying to reconcile what should have happened, and but the journey is about aligning our lives with God's perspective to see where he might have been active the entire time and just remembering the entire time that God wastes nothing.

One of my favorite authors, and probably one of yours too, C.

S.

Lewis, author of Chronicles of Narnia, and some apologetic books like Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters, in a biography of C.

S.

Lewis, um, A.N.

Wilson describes how Lewis' life was during virtually all of his productive years interrupted by the demands of his adoptive mother, who made him do all the shopping and housework.

And so Lewis' brother Warney, who also lived in the household and generally refused to let his own agenda be interrupted, he lamented the fact, lamented all this in his diaries and suggests that Lewis could have been much more prolific had he not been forced to spend countless hours doing his chores by his over-demanding adoptive mother.

But Lewis himself, upon uh recounting his life, Lewis himself gave a different assessment.

He said, far from being resentful about those interruptions, he was grateful and suggested that it was precisely because of the domestic demands, these interruptions which kept Lewis, kept Lewis's feet, I'm sorry, it's precisely because of these domestic demands that kept him in touch with life in a way that the other Oxford dons were not.

It was because of these interruptions which kept Lewis's feet squarely on the ground.

Lewis was able to have such empathetic insight into the everyday human condition.

And it's a really beautiful story because it reminds us that the way you're wired, your life experiences, your temperaments, and your skill sets, and most importantly, your handicaps, disabilities, weakness, and vulnerabilities, God can use, He can use those as well because your greatest secret weapon for the glory of God is the actual life you live, not the life you think that you should have lived.

Okay?

Which is why C.S.

Lewis would later go on and say, one uh he would go on to say, When we meet God, we'll spend most of eternity thanking God for the prayers that he didn't answer.

We'll spend yeah, you're gonna thank God for the prayers he answers, but you when your eyes open, you are gonna be very thankful for all the prayers he did not answer on your behalf.

And we'll be thankful for the interruptions, we'll be thankful for the detours, we'll thank him for the delays because we'll see the God who is so much more intimately involved in the details of our life than we ever knew.

And this is part of the reason we follow Jesus, because Jesus gives us the resources of heaven to know what to do when life doesn't make sense.

He invites us into a story that is compelling, where we learn that every part of our life matters.

He knows how to restore every part of our lives.

First Peter.

Peter taps into this as he's encouraging saints who are scattered all across Asia Minor.

He's encouraging them to not give up, to not lose hope.

Here's what he says He says, In this you rejoice, though, now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

If you catch this, as Peter is encouraging the saints, he's giving them a new lens to view the trials, to view the things that they work through.

And certainly our trials are different than your trials, and my trials are different than your.

We can't, it's not all apples to apples, right?

When we talk about trials and suffering, but what Peter seems to have learned at this point in time, and he learned this from firsthand experience, that when your faith is tested, something else happens in the process that leads to the praise and the glory of God and the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That even trials can be recycled for the glory of God.

And this is good news.

It's also sobering news.

And the reality is we have to acknowledge that this God does not stop pain and injustice from happening to us, he promises to use it.

God does not always stop pain and injustice from happening to us, but he promises to use it.

Does that mean all pain and hardship is from God?

Certainly not.

Is he the author of evil?

Not at all.

But the promise in God is not that he spares us from suffering, but that he joins us in it and he has joined us in it in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Now, as believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit that believe in the incoming kingdom of God, do we still lay our hands on the sick and say, be well?

Absolutely.

Do we still expect the breaking in of the kingdom of God as we walk this verse?

Absolutely, because he told us to.

But we just can't remember that all of us get to live a suffering-proof life.

That's not how it works, and that's not the promise of God in Scripture, but God promises that in the middle of whatever life brings, he promises to recycle it, to restore it, to redeem it for the good of the world and the glory of God.

This is why he can be trusted, right?

See, our modern Western view, often, especially in American Christianity, we have to be very careful.

We have to be very careful of this, uh, of a view of prosperity that says if we pray hard enough, we can avoid hardship.

If you were just a better follower of Jesus, you could avoid hardship.

Let me just let you off the hook.

That is not true.

That is not true.

There's a mystery in following Jesus.

Not all of our prayers are answered, yes.

Not all of prayers are answered, no.

Sometimes they're answered not yet, and we're not in control of how that works.

But there's a modern view that we have to contend with that says if we do everything right, we're going to live a pain-free life.

That is not the promise of scripture.

The promise of scripture is that Jesus went into a cold, empty tomb and he laid his life down, and that thing, that puppy was shut, but give it three days, and the Spirit of God brought his dead body back to life.

The Spirit of God, that the story of the Scripture is that pain doesn't exist and death doesn't exist.

The story of Scripture is that even when it does exist, there is resurrection life on the other side.

So we don't have to live our lives avoiding anything.

That's the good news of Jesus Christ, is that you don't have to live your lives avoiding anything because death is not the end.

And I could turn this easily into an Easter message today.

But I just want to remind us this is the gospel that He knows what to do with every single part of our lives, even the parts that we don't know what to do.

One of my favorite authors, and you've heard me mention his name before, he's actually a psychologist, a Viennese psychologist, Jewish during the World War II era.

His name is Viktor Frankel.

And Victor Frankel, some of you guys know, wrote a tremendous uh, he wrote several books, but but one in particular was called Man's Search for Meaning.

And and Viktor Frankel was one of the Jews who got actually taken captive to Auschwitz in the concentration camp in World War II.

And he writes about his journey there.

He writes about why some men were able to make it through the concentration camp and all the way out to their eventual rescue, and why some men just gave up over time.

And he concluded in the process that really what drives men forward, there has to be a sense of meaning.

And some of uh some of Frankel's contemporaries, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, they had a few other competing philosophies with his.

Hell can be unleashed against your life.

All of evil can come against you.

The one thing that no Nazi, no leader, no oppressive regime can ever take from you, no circumstance of life can take from you, is your ability to respond in hell on earth.

It's the last freedom that God gives us in the middle of it.

And what happens is he would, he, what Frankel did, he encouraged these guys that we're losing the will to live.

He would say, Listen, do not take your life because you're robbing yourself a chance to declare to the powers that be that they're not all that powerful.

And when you have the ability to decide that you are going to live for another day, you're actually declaring to them that you did not win.

Okay?

And so Frankel says this in some way suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment, moment it finds meaning.

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering in the moment it finds meaning.

And so when we avoid hardship or we're always trying to move on from the past, sometimes we relate to our past that way, that's I'm trying to move on from the past.

And and certainly, you know, that that makes a lot of sense.

There's things in our past that we don't particularly find a lot of joy in rehearsing over and over again.

But when we live our life just trying to move on from the past moments of life, we miss an opportunity for God to transform them so He can use them to sucker punch the enemy once and for all.

So another preacher, Philip Brooks, said this in the 18th century.

You must let God teach you the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it.

God will waste nothing.

The only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it.

God will waste nothing.

And I just want us to remember this morning, just think about this.

All of us, when it look, when we look at our life and we look at what it's become and what's happened to us or wasn't happened to us, God will waste nothing.

God will use your messes and your mistakes.

Everybody say amen to that.

Thank you, Jesus.

God will use your foolish decisions, God will use pain, things inflicted against you.

He'll grieve with you even in the pain.

God will use your betrayals and your accusations.

God even uses ultimately when we come to him in confession and repentance, he uses even our wanderings and our sin to bring us back to God and truly uses it to bring transformation, not only to us but to the entire world, which is why all the men and women of Scripture, over and over again, Paul being one of them, would all most letters he would start with, Man, I am the chief of sinners.

I am the last guy that deserves to be in line to do what I'm doing.

But because God is rich in mercy, I am here.

I was the worst of all sinners.

I was the persecutor of Christians, but because God was rich in mercy, he had a different story for my life.

The zeal that I used to destroy followers of Christ, I am now using that same zeal to launch the worldwide global movement of the church.

Thank you for Apostle Paul.

Thank you, God, that you recycled his story.

You didn't waste anything, but you transformed it into a new story.

Abraham, he seemed too old, but God used him.

Sarah was barren, but God used her.

Isaac was broken by fear.

Jacob was a liar and a cheater.

Job lost everything.

Moses had a speech problem and felt unusable by God.

Rahab was a prostitute.

Gideon was afraid to obey God.

Samson was an adulterer and a womanizer.

Naomi felt broken by grief and was a widow.

Boaz was alone and had no heir.

Ruth was a poor foreigner.

David was an adulterer and a murderer, and probably not that great of a father, from what we see.

Elijah felt suicidal.

Jeremiah, he felt too young.

Jonah ran away from God.

Martha worried too much.

The Samaritan woman was divorced more than once.

Zacchaeus was too small and a little money hungry, right?

The disciples fell asleep when Jesus needed them the most to pray.

Peter denied Christ three times, and yet we see that Jesus still met him on the beach and invited him back into the story of God three different times.

Because why?

Because God is committed to take the worst parts of our life and say, You are not done yet.

I am not done in your story until I say I'm done.

God can use everything and transform it for his glory and our good.

That's the main thing here.

And when we do that, when we entrust our lives, and we say, God, if it's true that you waste nothing, then I'm going to take everything that's happened in my life at this point, what it's become, and I'm going to surrender it back to you.

And there's something that happens in the surrender.

There's something powerful that happens in surrender.

It changes us from the inside out.

And going back to the story of Joseph, which here's what's really fascinating, the story of Joseph.

Just hang with me for a second.

Here's what's fascinating in the story of Joseph.

Joseph could have done anything at this point in time.

The tables had eventually turned.

His brothers were now before him, begging him for food.

Catch this.

His entire last 20 years, when Joseph was in solitude, he's thinking about, oh my God, what am I going to do when I see my brothers again?

And finally, the moment comes when his brothers are before him, they're in need.

He's the second most powerful person in Egypt.

Man, he could have let this one build for a long time.

Right?

It's like this is the moment you're waiting for.

Like if you wanted a chance to kind of finally get that justice, we're gonna get things back.

Son, you done messed up, right?

Just imagine what Joseph was wanted to do.

Son, you you done messed up.

Now look who's in charge.

Alright?

You got that Reuben?

Judah?

Look who's the man now.

I'm gonna tell you how it is.

We're gonna finally, we're gonna finally make things right.

But that's not what we see.

Why?

Because Joseph knew this entire time had nothing to do.

The story God was writing in him had nothing to do with what they intended or didn't intend it, because in Joseph's story, God was the one orchestrating events to get him where he needed to go.

Why?

That many lives would be preserved.

And so what does Joseph do?

He says to his brothers, come near to me.

Don't be distressed or angry.

God sent me before you.

Get your father and your children, come back to me, I'll provide from you.

And then we we read the end of this passage.

He kissed them and he hugged them and he wept on their shoulder.

Because in this in the mind of Joseph, how could I withhold forgiveness when God was the one who was orchestrating this the entire time?

That's what happens for us when we come into the story of God, when we see that He is intimately involved in every part of our life that we don't understand, every twist and turn, when we realize that God wastes nothing, what happens is we look at the people, even the people who have sinned against us and say, Who am I to withhold forgiveness from you?

Because God was with me the entire time.

And whatever you try to do against me, guess what?

It's gonna be double, doubly good because God is with me and he has never forsaken me.

And that's a word for you today.

If you think, man, I don't know how I'm going to restore my life.

God does.

God does, he knows exactly what to do with what you've carried and what you've endured.

And he is not about to let it be avoided, he's not allowed to just be put in the past, not to be remembered.

He is going to take it, and I believe as you come to him and surrender to him, as we do that together, what he does is he makes meaning of a life where we don't know how to make meaning for ourselves.

This is the beauty of following Jesus.

He takes one thing and he can he conforms it to another.

The scripture talks about a day where he's going to take swords and actually recycle them into plowshares.

He's going to take weapons of war, spears, and actually recycle them into pruning hooks.

The weapons that were formed against us, God is going to restore for us to plant gardens.

He wants to do that in your life, and he wants to do that in our lives, in our world.

We are in the business of recycling and restoration because God will waste nothing.

Yes! And this is an important word today.

Because I believe coming in even this morning, some of you feel you feel stuck in that well, you feel stuck in that pit.

I'm telling you, God is coming with a hand, and he wants to pull you out, and he wants to show you what he sees.

I just want to invite you.

Let's just take a moment before the Lord's here today.

If we can just close our eyes together, we're gonna hold open a space here.

Just join me for a second, we just invite you Spirit of God.

Speak to us, God.

You know where this message lands today.

You know the way to our hearts, God.

We thank you that you see us, God.

You see every scene.

You are every present, every present.

Over the course of these past weeks, um, as we've been invited to uh look behind us and see what the Lord wants us to leave behind and to press in to what he has for us in 2025.

The Lord showed me um that I had been wearing a life jacket named Control.

And I'd been wearing it because I thought that it was going to keep me safe.

And I asked the Lord, when did I start wearing this and how has it served me?

And he showed me when I was a little girl, my mom had a resale shop, and um she had closed up shop and she left me there, and I thought I had been asleep, and the Lord showed me, No, that's when you felt left all alone.

But I've always been with you.

And I feel like there are some of us that are wearing a life jacket.

It might not be called control, but it might be not enough.

It might be shame, it might be lack.

And God wants us to take it off because what he has for us on the other side is so much better.

And when I took that life jacket off of control, I was sobbing because I realized that God is the only one in control and he was giving me freedom.

But what I experienced in that freedom was also that I had been judgmental and I had been judging others because I thought I was the judge.

Because if I'm in control, I have control of everything, right?

And it's a false narrative, it's a lie that I'd been living out of.

And when I took that off, God showed me his mercy and his love for others, that we need to speak blessings and not curses.

And so I just want to lead you in a time right now.

If there's something that you need to lay down before the Lord, I believe he wants to meet us here today.

So if you are someone that is struggling today, I just um just ask that you stand and two or three gather together.

And would you we just lay hands on that person?

This is a family.

So if you're struggling today and there's something you need to lay down, would you just stand up so we can come around and we can pray for you?

God, thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, God.

Oh, Jesus, and even for those that didn't stand, Lord, that feel that they need to lay something at your feet, God.

Where we repent where we think we are the God of the universe, Lord, and only you are.

We ask that you would come into those places, Lord, of regret and pain and shame.

Lord, and would you restore us?

Would you make us a new creation in Christ?

Would we partner with the truth about what you say over us, Father?

And would your love cast out all shame?

Amen.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, Jesus.

Come on up to me.

I have a sense this morning that some of us in our life story and not making sense of the thread Luke was talking about have kind of closed off a portion of our heart toward God because we don't get it.

And so I just feel the invitation that the Lord is seeking the fullness of our hearts.

And any place where we've gotten numb or we've said no, um, we have an opportunity this morning to open that up.

And we can do that just by faith, but I just saying, just raising your hand, not not literally, but just in your spirit.

Lord, I do want to open my heart to you again.

Because you are the author and finisher of my faith.

You are the one who knows the end from the beginning.

You are the one who's orchestrating my life.

So if that's you, if you just would agree and pray with me this morning.

Yeah.

So, Father, there are things that we don't understand we can't make sense of.

And any place in our hearts where we have closed to you.

We just want to say, please forgive us for closing.

Please forgive us for shutting down that place in our heart.

And Father, by your grace and your mercy and the power of your spirit, would you come and partner with our heart to open again to you and the fullness of your story and your story in us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, God.

We thank you, God, that you are good to us.

And I just pray this morning, Lord God, as we reflect on our lives, we thank you today that you have given us, Lord Jesus, you have given us something to live for, God.

You have given us a story of meaning and purpose.

And God, I just pray that today, Lord Jesus, your praises would rise in our hearts.

We thank you, Lord God, that wherever we are in this room, all of us can say, Lord God, that you've lifted us out of the pit and you set our feet upon a rock.

And today, Lord Jesus, our songs are filled, our mouths are filled with new songs.

And we just pray that a song of celebration would rise up from the inside out, Lord God.

And just like Joseph, Lord Jesus, who found himself in convergence moments, I just pray for more convergence moments in this room, Lord God, that all at once, by your revelation, we our eyes would open up and we'd say, Oh my God, you were there the entire time and I didn't see it.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, for God's awareness over all parts of our lives, Lord God, that you would help us to see you so we can rejoice in you and rejoice, God, that you were with us the entire time.

We bless you, Jesus.

We thank you for the story that you're writing.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Hey, let's stand, let's stand together.

Let's stand together.

And listen, there's no need to rush out of here today.

We're gonna have our ministry team up front.

These are people that love to pray with you.

And I just have a sense that some of you would could really benefit from some extra prayer in your life, and then God wants to meet you in specific ways.

But as we go, we're not going empty-handed, we're going full of the grace of God, the peace of God.

And if you have never given your life to Jesus, we'd love to share with you about that, what it looks like to surrender to Him and to enter into the story of God.

We'd love to invite you up front to talk to you about that.

As we go today, I just want to pray a blessing over you as we go.

If you just put your hands out in front, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make His face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you rest.

Go in the peace and the strength in the kingdom of God.

We love you guys.