Lessons from the Life of Job: Week 4

Good morning. My name is James, senior pastor here, and

I hope you guys are enjoying your summer so far.

And I know that it's a crazy week up here

with VBS and all that, and youth groups leaving on

their mission trip next week, and so we got a

lot going on. We had a group this week that

was in the Dominican Republic, and then here in a

couple of weeks we got another group going to Roatan,

and so we're all over the place and excited to

see what all God is continuing to do this summer.

I want to introduce somebody to you. This is Leo.

Leo stand up, it's your first time here. I like

doing this. This is Leo. Leo's going to be moving

in with our family here in about two weeks. And

Leo is from the north Woods of Wisconsin and he's

at my best friend's church. And Leo grew up in

Mexico and when he was eight years old he moved

up to the north Woods of Wisconsin and about three

or four years ago God radically changed his life and

it's an amazing testimony. And so he's actually gonna come

and work for a Jose our Spanish pastor for about

twenty hours a week, you know, just volunteer. And so

Wes's church is helping him to fund this, and West says,

send him back a pastor, and so I said, you know,

and he didn't ask me. He said, can Jose send

him back a pastor so that he can launch the

same ministry we launched here up there in Wisconsin. And

so what a brave young man coming up here and

willing to live. And yeah, so I got to hang

out with him this weekend. I'm very proud of you.

And I can't wait to see what all God does

the next service. Make sure you say hi to him,

but then he's got to scoot over to check out

the Spanish service after this. So very cool. Hey, let's

pray and ask God to continue to talk to us

through this series. Father, God, we give you praise today.

We thank you for the opportunity to worship you, to

seek you, to draw near to you. Now, today's message,

Lord is going to bring some hurt emotions up, and

so God, I pray that you will help us to

take those hurt emotions, those memories, and allow them to

refine us and also allow us to be shaped by

you and grow in you. In Jesus name, we pray Amen. Amen.

You know, my family has a little tradition the first

week after Thanksgiving, Christmas officially starts for us when we

all get together and we watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

I don't know if that's anybody else, is that that's

what kicks off. And then usually a couple of days later,

we watch Elfe and then it's officially Christmas season. And

I love that show. I could almost quote the whole

the whole show. And I love the scenes that involved

cousin Eddie. Okay, and if you've watched his cousin Eddie

is an outstanding character in the show. And and but

here's the things about cousin Eddie. He always shows up

when he's unexpected or not expected. He stays longer then

he's welcome. He knows how to run a party, he

says crazy things at the most inappropriate moments, and he

drives Chevy Chase's character Clark Griswold absolutely nuts. This week,

we're gonna be talking about how to handle criticism. And

for me, in my life, criticism is my cousin Eddie. Okay,

criticism like cousin, Eddie, shows up in my life when

it's not expected. It stays in my mind much longer

than I wanted to, and especially at night. It has

run my day many many times. Matter of fact, I

wouldn't say day, it's run my week many many times.

And like Eddie, criticism says inappropriate things to me at

inappropriate times. I do not appreciate my cousin criticism. Unfortunately,

if you're going to be a leader, any of you,

if you're gonna be a leader in any organization, and

if you're leading your family or you're leading a project,

whatever you are going to be doing in life, if

you are in leadership, you will face criticism and a

lot of it's unfair. But as part of the package.

I learned that early on my first youth pastorate. The

youth group have been about thirty kids for about thirty

years and I got there and man, just revival broke out.

God did amazing thing. I was just blown away by

what God was doing. And within about eight or nine

months we were running about one hundred and thirty youth

every Sunday night, and the youth group changed and like

I said, the kids were getting saved every week. It

was like revival mode. And there was this young lady

who was not happy about the grove. See, she grew

up in the church, and so she went to our

chairman of the board and she had a conversation with

him and told him that I was ruining the youth

ministry and that the church kids hated the youth ministry. Now, now,

she did not go to our senior pastor because our

senior pastor was her former youth pastor, and he knows

that it was all He would have known it was

all beloging, because here's the thing. She was the absolute

center of attention of that youth group. And when the

youth group grew, guess who was not the center of

attention anymore. She wasn't. And interestingly, her friends the group

with her and church were thriving because I put them

all in leadership spots because they've been Christians longer. And

so everything she said was completely misrepresented. And so by

the time he came and talked to me, I just

simply explained, here's what's going on, and he just goes, Okay,

this is all about her, This is none of this

is true. See, even when you're doing really good things,

and God is with you and God is working. You

will face unfair and sometimes even untrue criticism. Okay, that's

just a part of life. Last year, and this has

happened to me plenty of times, but last year I

got some pretty bad reviews on social media for my preaching.

And by the way, my younger staff loved it and

they could not wait to show it to me. And basically,

a person came in and I was preaching on what

the Bible says about sexual ethics, and they did not

agree with what I believe the Bible teaches about sexual ethics.

So they were a guest that day and they were

just could not believe that somebody would disagree with them

or even say that there is a thing such as

sin in this world. They just couldn't believe that, and

so they went all over all the social media platforms

and just absolutely trashed me. So even when you're being

faithful to God's word, people will trash you. Why because

they have their own agenda. Okay, about a year ago,

I wrote the story in This Week because it was

probably I would say it would take the oscar if

I was given an oscar away for the most insane

criticism that has ever been given to me. And I

wrote it in my sermon when I send my sermon

out on Wednesday, so all the different groups can have it,

so they can write small group questions, write PowerPoint, all

this other stuff. It was the first time in my

ministry I had several pastors come to me and said,

I read that, please don't share that illustration. And they said,

what was said to you was so nasty and mean,

we don't even want our people to hear what was

said because it was completely just well, it was insane.

And by the way, after I had that launch in,

that person said one of the most mean things that

ever been said to me in my whole life. They

text me later that day like, jeez, I has such

a great time with you, Thanks for hanging out with me.

So sometimes even when you're ministering and doing good, you're

going to be criticized. Criticism is a part of our life,

and sometimes it's fair, often it's not. It might come

from your boss, your family member, your friend. Might be

about your work, your personality, it might be about your faith.

But let's all be honest today, it hurts to be criticized.

You could feel like a punch in the gut, especially

if you're already down about some things. And so this morning,

here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at chapters

twenty two through twenty four and learn how Job handled criticism. Okay, now,

these chapters they record a heated exchange. Again that looks

like advice, but actually it's very cruel, jusive criticism. And

we're gonna watch how Job responds and how he teaches

us how to handle criticism. So, just to remind everybody,

at this point of story, Job's life has been turned

flip upside down. Okay, he has lost his family, his wealth,

his career, his status, his whole life is in shambles.

And on top of that, he's sick. He has sores

all over his body. There's nobody more miserable in the

history of time than this man. And then his friends

start to criticize him. Have you ever had a friend

who kicked you while you were down? It's like the worst.

And that's the situation. So the very first thing we

learned today is simply this unfair criticism sometimes comes from

those who are close to us. And let me tell

you something. Those of you who are younger, college age,

high school. I'd of given anything to have set or

this sermon. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about

this material when I was your age, because it would

have helped me understand that a lot of things people

say to me as I grow up it's just trash.

There's a lot of mean people out there, and there's

a lot of people who won't like to see good

in your life. And so what they will do is

they a will to try to tear you down. And

how you handle that decision about what you were gonna do.

Are you gonna fight back? Are you gonna get into mud?

And are you gonna let it destroy you and destroy

your confidence? Today we're gonna talk about how to really

in a good way handle criticism. Okay, so let's just

look at what happens. Okay, So first of all, we

see Lavas jumping again and he assassinates Job's character. He says, Job,

because he has this theology, Job, for all these bad

things that happen to you, you must be a horrible person,

a terrible person. Apparently you over here in your great kingdom,

with all your wealth, everybody doesn't know all the evil

you've been doing, because surely you had to be doing

very evil things, because why else would God do this

to you. Let's look at this, he says, Joe, it's

because you're a first class moral failure, because there's no

end to your sins. So that's a serious accusation. Then

he goes, when people came to you for help, you

took the shirts off their backs, exploited their helplessness. You

wouldn't so much as give a drink to the thirsty,

your food, not even a scrap to the hungry. And

there you sat, strong and honored by everybody, surrounded by

immense wealth. You turned poor widows away from your door, heartless.

You crush orphans, all right, And I want to talk

about that. He says it like it's a fact, like

you knows something. But here's what's going on. His theology says,

in order for bad things to happen to you, you

must have done evil. So he says, here's what you

were probably doing. If God wanted to kill your family

take away all your wealth, you must have been one

you must have taken. You know what, You probably got

your wealth from taking advantage of people. He trashes him, leus,

remember what does God say about Job, Job, Chapter one,

Verse one, Job was what He's blameless. He's a man

of complete integrity, So he's suffering. He has all these

accusations on him, but they're just made up. It's a

wild imagination because of somebody's bad theology, which says, if

something bad happens to you, it must be because you're wicked,

and by that logic, Job must have been an awful person.

So then he goes on. He evinced scenarios. He says,

you took shirts off people's back, refused to water the thirsty,

no other words, you're a scrooge. He even taunts Job, saying,

you know you're now the one who's trapped in terror.

You're paralyzed by your fear. Suddenly, look that tables have turned.

And how do you like living in dark, sightless up

to your neck in floodwaters? The table turn? All right,

He has moved from baseless accusations to a full blown jerk. Okay,

he's being mean, he's being nasty, and I want to

tell you something right now, do not be shocked when

people will just be mean and nasty to you in

this life. And so this is harsh criticism. He doesn't

deserve any of that, and maybe you've been there before.

Maybe a coworker trashes you, blames you for their mistake,

and then you're the fall guy. Or maybe people in

your family they've misjudged your motives and they trashed you.

It's frustrating because it's not based on truth. And that's

what Jobe's feeling right now because all of this criticism,

none of it's true. It's just a verbal attack from

the imagination. And let me tell you something, this happens

to the best of the people in the world. I

was going through this, don't know why I had this

crazy thought. I was thinking, surely there's somebody that has

never been criticized in history. So I typed in, was

Mother Teresa ever criticized, you know, because she's like the

ultimate like you know, Mother Teresa. And then I read

this huge thing about how she was trashed and criticized

her whole ministry because she served those who were in poverty.

She was accused of perpetuating poverty instead of helping it.

She was her motives, her character was assassinated over and

over and over again. Her methods were criticized. But here's

what she did. She didn't fight back. She just kept

serving with humility. And one of the orphanages that she

helped to build, there was a saying on the wall

that's attributed to her, and here's what it says. If

you're kind, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway. If you do good, people will often forget.

Do good anyway. So she understood that even when you're

out there doing your best, criticism is gonna come. And

she says, all right, when criticism comes, don't let that

stop you keep doing good. And so I just want

to say to you today, from the very beginning, if Joe,

who God said was blameless and right, and if Mother

Teresa can be trashed, we're in trouble. We're gonna be trashed,

We're gonna be humiliated, We're gonna have people criticize this.

But what really matters is how do we respond to it.

And I want you to understand that not all criticism

is created equal. See, some of us just lie some

of it. There's just mean people out there that happened

to Joe, happening to Mother Teresa can happen to us.

And people are gonna judge you without knowing the full story,

and don't be shocked when it does. The big question

is how do we respond to it? All right? That

leads us to number two today, the second thing that

job teaches us is that when you're unfairly criticized, you

take your case to God. You take your case to God.

So here's what we got going on. He's been hammered

by la Fas, and he doesn't explode in anger. We

see him do two things. Number One, he holds to

his integrity. Number two, he directs his case to God.

So right as the beginning of chapter twenty three, Joe says, listen,

I'm not letting up. I'm standing in my ground. My

complaint is legitimate. God has no right to treat me

like this. This isn't fair. In other words, he says, listen,

I don't know why God's letting all this happen to me.

But I'm gonna tell you something right now. It's not

because I'm evil, it's not because I've done something wrong.

I'm not gonna let you tell me that I'm a

horrible person, and I'm not gonna feel guilty about that.

I haven't done anything wrong. I don't know why God's

doing this. Okay, so he holds on to his character.

Now this is important. See, when you face criticism, especially

false criticism, you may need to stand your ground in truth. Okay,

So there's nothing wrong with saying this is not truthful.

Here's the truth, doctor Martin Luther King Junior, great civil

rights activists. You thought about somebody who was criticized in history,

and there is the normal critics, racist, segregationalist. But we

actually get this amazing letter. It's called the Letter from

the Birmingham Jail. If you haven't read it, I'd highly

encourage you to read it. And this letter came about

because when he went to that town, the local pastors

got together and they sent word to him saying, hey, listen,

you're just stirring up trouble in our town. Stop doing this.

Stop stirring up trouble. This is too fast, too soon.

The country's not ready for this. Well, Martin Luther Lesson protests,

he got put in a Braham jail, and so he decided,

interestingly to write a letter to the pastors. Why not

to condemn them, because he actually respected them and he

loved them. And he says, I just want you to

know why I'm doing this. And here's how he actually

starts out his letter. He says, seldom do I policy

to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I

sought to answer all the criticisms, I'd have no time

for constructive work. So, in other words, he ignores petty

criticism so he can say, focus on God's mission. But

because he respected these ministers, he actually wrote them a

letter that's full of love and logic. And this is

where he wrote injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere,

and he says, you know, we can't wait any longer

for equality, and he addresses their concern one by one

by one without malice. And so doctor King teaches us

a very important principle. Answer only the criticism that truly matters, okay,

and even then respond with truth, spoke good and love.

That's the only way will be heard. So you can't

let your critics derail you. Your critics will love for

you to throw a fit, yell back at them, gather

people around, start some drama. Guess who wins if someone

criticizes you and you lose your composer composure, you lose.

They win. And Martin Luther understood this, okay, and he

allowed this criticism to refine him and refine his resolve

rather than destroy it. So Job and Martin Luther they

understood this, don't automatically believe every negative thing said about you.

People are gonna trash you and say things about you.

You don't have to believe it if it's not true.

Now that, of course, I'm assuming you search your heart,

you go before God. And he said, God search me. Okay.

See Joe says this. He says, you know what, my

complaint is legitimate. He's saying, you know what, I know

I'm suffering, but I know I'm not suffering or doing

something evil. And it took courage for him to say,

all right, I didn't do these things that you're saying

I did. And he's dealing with his unfair criticism. But

instead of firing back at Eli Fas, he longs for

an audience subject before God. So instead of addressing Eli

Fause and saying, hey, let me tell you something, because

let me tell you something. When people trash me and

destroy me, like you know, my first reaction is like

I do take it to God. I just want you

guys know that it sounds something like this, God, do

you have any of those lightning bolts up there. I

don't want you to kill the Lord. I just want

you to wound them, and then when they recover, and

wound them again. Guys, I'm no mother Teresa. All right,

so listen. But it's interesting we see here he doesn't

go and attack the person who trashed him. He shifts

and he goes to God. He says, if I knew

we're on earth to find him, I would go straight

to him. I'd leave my case before him, face his face,

I find out exactly what he's thinking. Do you think

he dismissed me or bully me. No, he would take

me seriously. He would. He'd see a straight, living man

standing before him. My judge would equit me for good

of all charge. He says. Listen, I know God knows

the truth, and I know God knows that I am innocent.

So Joe teaches us to do this. Resist the urge

to enter into a muslinging contest with your critic. Instead,

bring your hurt and your confusion to God. You know.

We go before the Lord and we say, Lord, all right,

here's what they're saying. Search me, Lord, if any of

this is true, help help me to correct it. But Lord,

if it's not true, I need you to defend me.

I need you to give me the strength to endure this.

Fanny Crosby was an incredible woman. She wrote over eight

thousand hymns, and she actually wrote my favorite hymn, Blessed Assurance.

If I had the skill set of Michael Thigpen, I

was singing that to you right now, but I do not.

You are welcome. She did other songs like to God

be the Glory, and she was a remarkable lady. She

was also blind. When she was six years old, she

got an affection. The doctor didn't do the treatment right,

and so she was blind her whole life. And as

she was growing up she got made fun of. She

got mocked a lot, and one person, as she was

older and pretty successful at this point, just took a

dig at her. And the person said, in a very

cruel way, isn't it such a shame that God made

you blind? And it was putting the blame of her

blindness on God, almost like it's a punishment. But she

didn't retaliate. She didn't let that shake her trust in God.

She called me, replied, and I love this. She says,

you know what, if I had a choice, I would

still choose to remain blind because when I get to heaven,

the first face I will ever see will be the

face of my savior. Wow. Amen, Amen, that's the type

of faith, by the way, that's the type of faith

that writes eight thousand hymns. Okay, she didn't fight every critic,

she didn't try to defend herself. And this is what

Joe's doing. He's putting his faith in trust in God.

And lastly, today even though he's suffering, here's what job

teaches us, this one last thing today, that we do everything,

do everything you can to not lose heart when you're

not immediately vindicated. Because you know what I'm talking about.

If someone's trashed us, someone's heard us, someone's done us wrong,

what do we want. Let's just be honest. We want

vengeance that day you want them to pay for And

this is where it gets hard, okay, because what's going

on is in our relationship with God. Here's what we understand. God,

you're asking me to trust you that if anyone does

harm to me, or does evil to me, or says

evil things, you're asking me to trust you. So, Lord,

if you're asking me to trust you when someone trashes me,

then I want to know God, and this is legitimate God.

I want to know what you're gonna do about this.

Will you let that sinful thing go away? Or or

are they gonna get away with evil? Will they receive consequences?

I'm your child? Are you gonna protect me and defend me? Now?

Why does this matter when it comes to criticism? Because

in order for us to keep our christ like witness,

So in order for you to keep a christ Like witness,

when someone trashes you or criticize you, you actually have

to trust that God is going to defend you and

take care of you, okay, Because if you don't believe

that God is going to defend you or take care

of you, then you switch into a mode where you say, well,

if God's not gonna defend me, then I got to

defend myself. And that's when our witness is blown up.

That's when we fail. And so we have to go

to God and say God, are you gonna defend me?

And see Job was at this point and he asked

this important question. He says, if God is really in control,

then why are we kept in the dark? Why do

those who know him not see justice. He's saying, Hey,

those of us who follow him, why don't we see justice?

People are out there getting a way of murder, stealing, lying, cheating,

They rip off the poor, They push the helpless into

the ditch, the poor cry out for help, and God

does nothing, acts like nothing's wrong. Oh you hear it

him right now. Joe's like, why doesn't God do anything

about all the evil going on? So it sounds to

us like Job says, where is God and why doesn't

he do anything about evil? But there's more to the

story here. Why is Joe bringing this up? Because there

is a reality that bad people do thrive for a while,

good people do suffer for a while. And Job is saying,

all right, open up your eyes, guys. You can't assume

that someone is evil just because they suffer or are

righteous just because they prosper. The World's more complicated than that.

And so when you face criticism at your workplace and

you notice that the very people that slander you actually

get a promotion or succeed without any consequences, that'll make

you mad, okay, And you're like, doesn't God see this

and He's gonna do anything about this? Or or we

see somebody who is a malicious co worker. They're promoted

when they gossip and they go completely unchecked and we're like, hey, God,

don't you see me this? And so Job sees these

things too, and he doesn't stop there, and he affirms

that the wicked are often very, very very successful in life.

You hear that the wicked are often successful in life.

But it's an illusion. It's an illusion, he says. However

much they shrut and flex, there's nothing to them. They're hollow.

They may have an illusion of security, but God has

his eye on them. They may get their brief successes,

but then it's over, nothing to show for it. Like

yesterday's newspaper used to wrap the garbage. Job says, in

the end, evil doesn't last, Justice does come. And then

Job even says this. He says, prove me a liar

if you can. In other words, this is the truth.

It looks like people get away with doing evil things,

but the end of the day, God will deal with them. Now,

when you're criticized, I need you to understand this for

you to keep your witness. As a member of Church

of the Crossing, we represent this church. Most importantly, we

represent Christ out in our community. So your witness matters.

Do you understand that. So when you're criticized unfairly, it's very,

very important that we don't attack back. You can defend yourself,

of course, but here's what you have to remember that

God sees the big picture. That God has his eye

on those who are hurting you. He sees your critics,

he sees your enemies, those who wrong you. And the

triumph is temporary. And so don't spend all of your

energy chasing down every rumor or whatever. Trust that God

is just and that he will handle it in the

right moment. Your job is to keep doing what's right.

You might remember Winston Churchill back in the early thirties,

he was ostracized, kicked out of the political party. He

was an outcast. Why because he says, you guys, know

what Hitler's doing over here. Hitler's trying to take over

the world and he's gonna do some pretty evil things.

And they're like, you're an alarmist, you're overreacting Hitler, You're

or you know, went send your nuts. And so he

was trashed kicked out of politics. Well guess what happened

a few years later? Everything he said was prophetic and

it happened. So then he got ushered into leadership and

he was the exact man that Britain needed. And to

be honest, he was the exact man that the whole

world needed to destroy evil back in the day. But

he just kept doing right even when all of his

critics trashed him. So here's what you need to understand.

We must not let temporary criticism derel us from doing

what's right. In Job's case, he knew that he would

eventually be proven right. In our case, we got to

stand in the truth, trust that God will bring it

all the lines. See Job teaches us to keep our integrity,

believe the score SA to God. All right, here's what

I'm gonna do for rest of time today really quickly,

here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna talk about two things. One,

I think it's important for us to understand the psyche

of a critic, like what's really going on when a

mean person criticizes people, or if you know some people

who just happen to be habitual critics, I want to

give you some insight into their psyche. Then we're going

to end the day on talking about how to handle criticism.

We're gonna go through these pretty quickly, okay, so stick

with me here. Number one, here's what you need to

understand about the motivations and the psyche behind a critic.

Number one. Most of the time they're very insecure people.

They feel unsure of themselves, and sometimes people criticize other

people just so they feel stronger, smarter, more in control.

It's a defense mechanism. So in other words, are like,

if I could point out your falls, I don't have

to deal with my own. So they got issues, but

in order for everyone not to look their issues, they'll

point out other people's issues to get the eyes off

of them. Number two. Some people want control, Okay, they

will criticize to maintain influence. This happens a lot at work.

People will push some way down, trash someone just so

they can stay on top. In other words, they think,

if I could weaken you, I feel more in control.

Number three. Some people they're just hurt. You've heard hurt

people hurt people. And some people they have unresolved issues

and so they want to project their pain onto you. Okay,

So they're like, if I'm in pain, I want you

to feel it. Too. Number four. All right, some people,

and you've met these people, they just have rigid thinking.

They just think that they're the only ones right, and

they're not going to back down. So they criticize you

because they think everything you're doing is wrong, because they

are convinced that everything they do is right. And then

this is the one we might give grace to. And

this is number five misunderstanding, and they just have the

incomplete story. It's not malicious, they're just uninformed. So they

think they know what's going on, but they really don't.

But here's what I want you to understand about the

psyche of the critic. Okay, here we go. Most criticism

that's really harsh is not about you. Can you receive

that today? It's not about you. It's about what's going

on inside of them. All right, So as we close today,

here we go. How do we handle criticism? Number one?

We got to pause and examine ourselves. So when we're criticized,

we have two emotional reactions, either to fight or fight

I'm either gonna attack you back, or I'm gonna go

disappear and cower away. Neither one of those are the

right response. What we want to do is I'm wann

to pause and begin to search our soul like Psalm

one point thirty nine. Search me, O, God and God

if I if any of this is true, change me.

If it's not, defend me. Number two, don't rush to retaliate.

We have to respond with grace and truth. And this

is where our witness, This is where our witness is awesome.

This is where God smiles. The Bible says that be

quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

And so instead of having an emotional outburst, we respond thoughtfully.

We maintain truth, but we also answer back in a

gentle way. Number three, take your pain to God. Criticism hurts.

That's not act like it does not hurt. Okay, But

the healthiest thing you can do is pour your heart

out to God. Now by bringing your hurt to God,

two things happen. One God comforts you, and two you're

less likely to explode on others and lose your witness.

Number four, last thing today, you have to trust God

to vindicate you and refine you. You have to trust

that God will defend you. And here's what I want

you to understand. That criticism is inevitable, but it doesn't

have to destroy you. If you handle criticism well, it

will actually develop you. Will you, people the Church of

the Crossing, allow criticism in your life to actually be

a classroom for you, a place of development so that

you can grow. And as you respond correctly to one

criticism after another, patty stuff won't even bother you after

a while. Other people's opinions won't define who you are. Young'uns, listen,

not other people do not get to define who you are, Okay,

You and God you get to define who you are.

So you gotta be careful when people criticize you. Okay.

So we want to bring glory and honor to God.

So let me tell you this week, we have some

awesome marketing videos going out right now to just get

the word out about how we can help our community.

But so amazing, amazing serving videos. Please share them when

you see them. But we also had some videos that

were going out to promote our eighteen to thirty year

old ministry, and one of them was about soccer, okay,

and so it was inviting young adults to go play

soccer here on Wednesday nights. And they've had about twenty

five show up and they're having a great time and

and but one of them got promoted and I saw

it and somebody promoted or someone commented, and it was

huge comment and all it talked about how evil organized

religion was and how it does nothing but take advantage

of people. I mean, it just trash religion on an

advertisement saying would you like to play soccer with friends?

And so I'm like, man, who's this guy? I looked

him up. He's from Boston, Massachusetts, shocker. And so I

see him trashing God and religion on our soccer invite

and it made me chuckle. And I have never ever

ever responded to anything negative put on our social media,

but I couldn't help myself. I typed in, so you're

saying that you don't like to play soccer? And I

was so proud of my joke, like God is false manipulated. Also,

you don't like soccer? Okay? And I was very hit

sin and then the Holy Spirit checked me and I

erased it. And here's why I did not want to

do something that might make you younger folks. And some

of our other members laugh when they saw it. But

more importantly, I don't want to create a culture around

here where someone would come up to me and say, hey,

someone says something about our church on the internet, and

here's how I destroyed them. I don't want to. We

really want God to anoint this church. Then we just

have to let Him defend us and we have to

trust him and when other people criticize us, we just

keep doing good. All right. I want us to pray.

We're going to pray about two things. One is this,

if you are unfairly being criticized right now, or you

have a critical person in your life. Most of you

right now are thinking about sister in laws and mother

in laws. I'm sorry, but if you have a critic

in your life, I want you to talk to God

about trusting him with that, asking him to defend you.

Asking you to ask God to give you the strength

to be christ Like in your response. Number two, some

of you are still hurting from some criticism that was

said to you in the past. Here's what I'm going

to ask you to do today. Let it go. Do

not let that be a story in your head anymore.

Let it go, Hand it over to God, and declare

victory today that other people will not define you or

control your emotions to their criticism. Let's pray