Escaping Despair: The Road Out 1

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.

Welcome to our podcast.

I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.

I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

Enjoy the message.

Okay, so today I want to talk to you about the road out.

We all know what it's like.

Probably you've got circumstances, you've had situations in your life where you have felt trapped, you have felt forgotten.

Maybe you or friends all got married and you were the last one or the one who never got married and they all do married things now And you kind of feel like you're.

they never include me.

Or your friends all have kids and you don't have kids and they all do.

You know family kid events and you know you don't necessarily feel a part of that.

Maybe at your work group it seems like you've been passed up again and again and again for promotion.

It seems like other people move forward.

You don't particularly move forward.

Maybe you feel when you're at school you feel like I just don't know why I can't connect with people.

Some people feel like it looks like they do, but I don't feel like I do.

Maybe you're a little bit older and you're looking at the ones coming up after you and they're so tech savvy They always seem to know what to do with all the gadgets and you're looking at yourself and you're thinking about your career.

You made decisions 20 years ago and you're like, am I trapped now?

Like am I just going to put me out to pasture?

Maybe you're a little bit older and you've got a lot of wisdom, but you're like it doesn't seem like people notice.

It doesn't seem like people seek me out for my wisdom.

I feel forgotten.

If you've ever felt any of those ways or something similar, this is the series for you.

The Road Out Exodus is the book that we're going to be studying for the next several months of the summer.

We're going to take breaks here and there doing different stuff, but the word Exodus is a Greek word that means literally the road out.

We're going to be coming out of some things together.

This begins with a story of a family of people that likely felt very forgotten, likely felt very trapped.

See, they were a family nation.

They weren't just a nation.

They were a nation that came from one set of parents.

They're all related and they had a promise.

This promise was about at this point in time, 320 years earlier.

There was this promise made to Abraham.

Abraham didn't have any kids, but God told Abraham hey, man, i'm going to give you lots of kids, and when I do, here's what he says Genesis 17, 6,.

I will make you extremely fruitful.

Your descendants will become many nations and kings will be among them.

I'll confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation.

This is an everlasting covenant.

I will always be your God and the God of the descendants after you, and I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants.

It will be their possession forever and I will be their God.

Okay, that was a long time ago, though now.

Now, 320 years has gone by and they're a much bigger family, but there's no land.

And it's not only just that there's no land In the place that was once a source of deliverance for them.

They have become captives, they've become slaves, they've become the unpaid workforce for the Egyptians, and they're being very, very mistreated, and so they're beginning to wonder was that promise anything?

They got to forget.

We feel so trapped now It seems like that was a big deal and the people came to pass, but not the land.

As we talk about the road out, we're going to see some things in the book of Exodus, some larger level themes.

First of all, just like the Israelites that's the name of the family just like they're in bondage, figuratively speaking.

We're all in bondage.

We're all in bondage to the taskmaster of sin, and we're going to see as God uses Moses to lead the people out of slavery and into a greater promised land.

We're going to see a pattern of how God likes to lead his people.

He likes to deliver them.

He likes to say you need to face this moving, because we're not staying here, we're moving forward.

God's always bringing us into greater and greater lands.

But there's also a sense of sometimes we're just feeling like I got into an unfair situation that I didn't cause, but here I am And I feel like I can't get out of it.

Have you ever had that feeling?

We're going to see just the way.

The Israelites were in an unfair situation.

They didn't cause it, but they needed God to get them out.

And then, maybe one of the greatest things we're going to see.

We're going to see a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a picture of the great announcement that God himself comes to save.

Because that's what's happening with these, the slave family, the Israelites.

There's absolutely nothing they can do.

There's nothing they're going to do to get out of the situation.

It must be God who reaches in and causes them to inherit all that he has for them.

And as we look at this, we're going to see.

Here's the way God rolls.

He does things in his own time, he does things in his own way And he does things by his own power.

See, god is the main character of this story.

He is the one in charge And he's going to show us just what great lengths he will go to to deliver his people.

Nothing can hold him back, nothing can stop him.

We're going to see that, just as this family has a place in God's story, you and I have a place in God's story.

In fact, if you've trusted Christ, it sounds weird, but in the Bible, in the New Testament, it teaches that you're actually the spiritual offspring of Abraham.

We're going to pack that in another message, But Exodus is also an argument.

It's making a case.

It's saying here's why you should worship this all powerful God?

because he is doggone, awesome and ain't nobody like him.

That's going to be the argument to the whole book.

Okay, that's what we're going to learn.

I want you to remember as we go into this Is God is a God who remembers the covenants he makes, the deals he makes.

He's a one.

He's a God who remembers and he's a God who rewards.

He's a God who remembers, no matter what's what's happened.

He remembers and he's got.

Who rewards.

So let's start Exodus 1, verse one.

Let's let's talk about the family real quick.

These are the names of the sons of Israel, that is, jacob, the Israelites, the family we've been talking about, who moved Egypt with their father, each With his family.

Okay, so one day they moved with Almost youngest brother, joseph.

Joseph was betrayed by his brothers.

He was sold into slavery, all but just stuff happened.

God raises up this slave guy who's been recused of rape, all he goes.

They're all kinds of hell, but he raises up as the prime minister of Egypt.

He rescues his family from famine.

He brings them in, he forgives them.

They all get in this great space where there's lots of room and you know They're not persecuted in any way.

That's what happens.

They moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family Ruben, simeon, levi, judah, isacar, zebulin, benjamin, dan, naftali, gad and Asher.

In all, jacob had 70 descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there In time.

Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation, but their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren.

In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.

Here's something you can't see in the English version of this When it talks about they multiplied and and they were increasing and becoming extremely powerful.

This is actually referencing back to the book of Genesis, at the very beginning.

There's there's a lot of beginnings, just like in Genesis.

It's patterned after Genesis.

There's beginnings happening here in Exodus And he's saying remember when God told our first parents I want you to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.

What Moses is telling us in this passage is that's what was happening.

These Israelites.

They were being fruitful, they were Swarming, they were overtaking, They were doing it right.

They were.

They were doing what God wanted them to do.

They were fulfilling God's will.

This is a chosen family that is doing what God wants.

But why?

Why does God include all these names, like why we've taken our time talking about these people.

Well, it's because let's think about when people are reading this.

Okay, this isn't being written.

As it happens, this is being written by Moses on his way with the Israelites to the promise land.

He's writing stuff down.

It's like, okay, they're gonna have to remember this.

There's really important things I want them to remember and I need them to remember who they came from.

Not just that God made them, but they came from this family of people that believed God Against all odds.

They came from this family.

See, when we recognize where we came from, sometimes that Tremendously strengthens us when we think about who came before us.

So let me just think about this for a minute.

If you find out that you were related like a direct descendant to George Washington, probably there'd be something in your mind that would just start to identify yourself as well.

You know, i'm a.

It's in my blood to be a person of courage.

I It's in my blood, you know.

It's like, hey, man, we're gonna stick it to the man and we're gonna overcome and we're gonna do this.

There's nothing impossible for my family line.

Or if you're a direct descendant of someone like Frederick Douglass, who was a slave, former slave that became an abolitionist.

He's really dope.

If you haven't read a biography about him, i'd encourage you to do so.

But there's probably something to you that is that's not gonna stand for injustice when other people are looking the other way.

You're gonna be someone who's like, hey man, i don't care who's against me, we're going forward.

That's gonna be in your blood And that's what Moses is trying to convince these people.

Hey man, this should be in your blood.

This is who you come from, so don't forget it.

He said let this inform what you do.

Understanding who you are Now something we're gonna see.

It's a little sidelight, something we're gonna see as we go through this book.

In particular, we're gonna see something called progressive revelation.

Progressive revelation That means in the story of the Bible, god is gradually revealing stuff about his nature and his purpose and his heart and his desires.

It doesn't happen all at once, so, in other words, the characters in this story know less about God than you and I do.

It just wasn't revealed yet.

God is slowly unraveling, he's revealing who he is.

All they know so far they don't know much.

They know he's God Almighty.

He's the one that Abraham God was intentional with him and he's the one who made a covenant with Abraham.

They don't know a ton more than that.

Here's what happens with progressive revelation.

It eventually leads down as we find more and more out about God and his character and his desires and his purposes Down through the centuries.

We finally get to Jesus, and Jesus is the climax of progressive revelation.

He's the final one.

He's the one that says hey, i am the living image of the invisible God, but I make it all visible.

That's who Jesus is, and we understand.

at the end of revelation, progressive revelation stops.

Okay, like we now know everything God wants us to know for the rest of the age that we're in.

Jesus Christ was the last one.

We don't add to scripture.

Now we can.

We believe as a church that there's still ways God communicates to us and we can discern some of that, but it's always imperfect.

It's not like scripture.

It's not we're learning new stuff about God.

We're just trying our best to fall in line with the Holy Scriptures.

That's what progressive revelation means.

But what we need to understand, what the lesson is for us, is just like they didn't know everything about God.

In the places where you and I are stuck, we feel forgotten.

There's gonna be a ton of stuff we just don't know.

You don't really know how God wants to get you out of this.

You don't really know what it's gonna take.

You don't really know where this thing is gonna lead.

We don't know, because that's how God likes to operate.

He likes us to operate by faith.

He likes us to trust Him ahead of time, when we don't know what's going on.

In this way, our life is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, but we don't have the box top.

Okay, progressive revelation was like that jigsaw puzzle.

Slowly, god's putting in all the pieces and then finally we see Jesus.

Our lives are like that too.

God is putting in pieces and we're like what was that?

I don't like this picture so far.

But as time goes by, god is putting all the pieces together and one day we're gonna stand next to Jesus in heaven and we're like, oh my gosh, that was awesome.

I didn't even know that was coming.

What a beautiful picture.

It was scary sometimes when I was there It was hard, but now I see what God was doing.

We appreciate this because we like authors who do this.

I mean, this is the kind of story you probably like.

You know, when you see in a movie, and slowly they reveal something about the main characters or something about their past or something about their father, and then they finally get to like the last part and like, oh my gosh, now I understand the whole story, now you can go back and watch it again, you understand it even differently.

That's what great authors do.

That's what God does.

He already understands the whole story, but he's revealing bit by bit, piece by piece to us.

What's the application there for us?

Just remember, when the world seems chaotic, when it seems disordered, there is an author who has a perfect order, things are not in chaos, and he's redonkulously in charge.

Somebody say he's redonkulously in charge.

He is redonkulously in charge.

Well, just like in the book of Genesis, everything was great, everything was fine.

There was this command to be fruitful and multiply.

And then something happened A snake came in.

In the same way, we see this happen again in Exodus, verse 8.

Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.

He said to his people look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are.

We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more If we don't and if war breaks out, they'll join our enemies and fight against us.

Then they'll escape from the country.

One of the things that's really cool.

If you pay attention to it in the book of Exodus, you're going to be tempted to think that really, the battles between Moses and Pharaoh, that's the king, the bad king, moses and Pharaoh.

But it's really not.

It's really between God and Pharaoh.

See, god is showing Pharaoh that he's everything Pharaoh wishes he was, but actually isn't.

And you know, that's what God shows our spiritual foe, satan, as well.

God's like hey, man, i'm everything you wish you were, but you're not.

And now Pharaoh has this wicked plan to do the wrong thing to people that weren't doing anything wrong, people who are doing right, people who are doing exactly what they last understood they were supposed to do.

But Pharaoh is going to try to bring them down.

He's going to be cruel, he's going to try to destroy them, and there's a message for us in that too.

And the message is sometimes the wrong thing happens to people that are doing right.

We see this again and again in the Bible.

We see this excuse me, job, he's just.

It's like Job isn't doing anything wrong And he goes through this really difficult divine test.

We saw this with Joseph.

Joseph is just minding his own business.

There's no evidence that he was really anything other than just a little brother that was interested in what his older brothers were doing.

And yet he's sold And he gets accused of rape.

Then he's in the dungeon.

Often, when God is preparing us, wrong things happen to people that are trying to do right, and that is how God raises people up, and that's how he's raising up this special family.

Pharaoh plans to be cruel and wear down and destroy.

Now let me just jump to the sea.

In the text, god told our first parents and these folks be fruitful and multiply and keep building up and keep going out and keep bringing life to new stages.

And now Pharaoh says we're undoing that.

This is the anti command of that.

We're going to kill, we're going to shut down, we're going to stop them from progressing.

So the Egyptians made these lights their slaves.

They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down, and with crushing labor they forced them to build the cities of Python or Ramesses as supply centers for the king.

But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread And the more alarmed the Egyptians became.

How many of you can't stop the plan of God?

Somebody write you can't stop the plan of God in the chat.

Wherever you go are, whatever camera you're on, right in the chat, you can't stop the plan of God.

So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy.

They made their lives better, forcing them to make mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields.

They were ruthless in all their demands.

Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives Shif, shifah, shifrah and Pua When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver If the boy, if it's a boy, kill him.

If it's a girl, let her live.

He's like hey, man, no soldiers are going to rise up against us.

If we just kill all the boys for a while, that'll really help thin the flock, thin the herd.

But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king's orders.

They allowed the boys to live too.

So the king of Egypt called for the midwives.

Why have you done this, he demanded.

Why have you allowed the boys to live?

I mean, i like they're just like, i don't know what to say here, here they go.

Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women.

The midwives replied.

They're more vigorous.

They have babies so quickly.

They're just like they just come right out, can't get there in time.

I don't know what to tell you, king.

Now they're taking their lives into their own hands, a little bit Like they're prioritizing God's family over their own safety.

And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

Then Pharaoh gave this order to all the people throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River.

But you may let the girls live.

Two truths when you feel forgotten.

Two truths when you feel forgotten, maybe like this Israelite family did.

Number one God remembers you even if no one else does.

God remembers you even if no one else does, even if everybody's abandoned you, even if everybody's taken off, even if nobody even remembers your name.

God remembers everything And he remembers it about you.

We're going to see in chapter two God makes a point of this, verse 24,.

God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, isaac and Jacob.

He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.

God knows when it's time.

He knows when it's time to act, but don't you be fooled into thinking he doesn't remember.

God remembers his promises, he remembers his covenant, he remembers everything to do with you.

He remembers what's supposed to happen.

Even if you feel lost, even if you feel confused about what's going on in life right now, even if you feel like I'm even kind of mad at God, i'm kind of like ignoring him or I'm shaking my fist at him, he still remembers all the ways he promised to be good to you.

Even if you're hiding from him, he knows where you are.

He remembers all of it.

He remembers his covenant, his plan to bless you if you are in Christ, to rescue you, to save you, to lead you back to himself.

He remembers, god remembers and he sees you and he's going to keep his commitments.

I read a story this week of a man in 1997 who parked his car in a parking garage.

Then he left and came back later that day and he couldn't find the car.

They kept looking, kept looking, filled out a police report.

The police started looking and they couldn't find it.

Twenty years later, in 2017, a demolition crew is coming to tear down this parking garage and they find a car.

I don't know what this is.

They go to the police.

Hey, there's this car.

They find the police report.

They phone the guy.

The guy is now in his 70s.

He comes down and of course it doesn't start.

But he found it.

Well, god knew where it was the whole time.

There's things that you and I have forgotten even exist.

We forgot that happened.

We forgot that interaction even took place.

But God remembers.

God remembers all of it.

He never forgets.

He knows what to do.

Listen to Psalm 56-8.

You keep track of all my sorrows.

You've collected all my tears in your bottle.

You've recorded each one in your book.

God is paying attention.

Don't you believe for one second that God doesn't care.

Don't believe it.

It's just a lie from hell.

God knows and God cares, and God has a timing and God has a method and God is all powerful and God will get you where you're supposed to be at the right time.

What we need to do is keep remembering to believe that and say that and confess that God sees me, god knows me, god knows the right time.

God remembers all the things.

I don't even have to really remind him because he already knows Now, when you're in.

That, though, here's a little bit of a profitable exercise.

You only really get to know God, really to a certain degree, when you're alone.

Okay, so, when I was in my early 20s, many of you know, i was sick for four and a half years and it was bad.

It was to the point where everything had to shut down.

I had to decide hey, man, make sure you don't eat anything but rice or apples today, or you're going to the hospital again tonight.

That was my life, that was my everyday.

I was sick.

Well, during that time, you know what I learned to do.

I mean, i got lonely.

There wasn't a lot of company, just me in the apartment.

My little girl, my wife, had to go to work, which was humbling for me.

But you know what I got to do.

I got to spend a lot of time with this God I claimed to know, this God I claimed to follow, and I got to pass off some of my dreams and be like.

You know, maybe this isn't so important, maybe I'm not the man, maybe this isn't all that I thought it was.

Maybe I can just trust you to remember the right things and do them in the right season, and you know, you only get that when you're alone.

So if you're maybe in a season where you're alone or you feel trapped, you feel forgotten.

It might be so.

You definitely need people, man.

You need accountability, you need people to speak into you, to speak, live, to encourage you.

But sometimes, occasionally, it doesn't matter what you do, you can't seem to get around people, and it might be like God wants to use that season to train your heart to need Him more.

We need regular time with God.

One of the things we talk about is hey, man, you need time with God every day, even if it's only five minutes.

Going into the New Testament that's the latter fourth of the Bible and just meditating on stuff, jesus, we need that every day.

But sometimes we need an extended season, and the smartest thing we can do when we're in that and there's nothing we can do to get out of it, is to say God, i know you see me, i know that you remember and I know that you'll get me out of this when it's the right time.

But until then, let's grow our friendship, let's be closer.

Let me not waste this season, let me not see it end and then realize, oh, i could have gotten so much closer to God during that very difficult time.

So two truths when you feel forgotten.

Number one God remembers even if no one else does.

Number two God rewards even simple obedience.

Isn't that cool.

God rewards even simple obedience.

Sometimes we're like, oh, i got to do everything right.

Listen, baby, god sees you, he knows you and He's going to reward, even if it's all you know.

You're like, hey man, i don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do next.

Just do what you know to do and God will reward and bless that and it'll lead you to the next thing.

These midwives they didn't know much, as we said at the beginning.

They didn't have the law.

Moses writes that later.

These are just people.

All they know is protect and preserve the spiritual family, and so that's what they do.

They have varied little light.

But even in the face of danger, even in the face of like I don't know what's going to happen if I do this, they decide to obey and God blesses them, he rewards them.

And it wasn't immediate, it didn't happen just like that.

I mean they had, they had families, but I mean I think that takes at least nine months to start that.

You know, that's my theory anyway.

I think that's how we got these five kids, but it takes a while.

It's not always like the reward is just like that.

Sometimes it takes nine months.

Sometimes it takes another 80 years, which is when Moses is finally going to be sent back to Egypt.

Sometimes it takes a long time, but God is going to find a way.

God is not going to forget.

God is going to remember to reward.

That's how he does it.

That's how he rolls.

Now, one of the things we see with these two.

Of course, there are other midwives in the land.

These are just the two that we know who decided to obey.

They decided to take their own life in their hands and say we want to honor God.

Let's not just kill these boys.

God wants us to grow and increase and multiply, and this seems like we're shutting down the promise if we just start killing these guys.

So they didn't do it.

But there's an irony that you're going to see in the book of Exodus, in the road out.

You're gonna see a lot of ironies, and the reason you're gonna see them is because, believe it or not, god loves.

Irony is all over the Bible.

So here's the irony These two are named like these two midwives.

They're so important.

They're named in the Bible, forever recorded.

The Pharaoh isn't even.

We don't even know his name.

That wasn't even written down.

These people who are the least important, these are slave midwives.

They're exalted.

And the person who is the king, nobody remembers his name, nobody cares, because God's into irony.

God is always exalting that which was down.

I'm gonna give some other examples, though, because it happens all the time.

Okay, so the Pharaoh commands okay, i want you to.

If we can't kill him right out of the womb, hey, man, just go throw him in the river.

So here's this command go kill the people by the river.

And yet what does God do?

He's like okay, can you imagine?

he's up in heaven.

He's like Charlie, come here, come here, look at this, look at this.

This moron thinks that he can outsmart God.

Watch this, i'm gonna send a baby down the river.

He just talked about the river.

I'm gonna send a baby down the river and it's gonna go to his house.

So in Pharaoh's house, he's the one.

Yeah, you can clap for that.

That's pretty doggone, awesome.

Pharaoh, from his house, issues the decree of murder.

Okay, and yet God's like Charlie, watch this again.

He said murder, super eyes called super.

You know not compassion, i'm gonna lead this little baby to his very own daughter And, by compassion, i'm gonna raise the one Hebrew boy, the one that he was trying to kill.

All these ones And the one that he misses is gonna be the one that I raise up.

I'm gonna have Pharaoh pay for it.

I'm gonna have Pharaoh pay for his education.

I'm gonna have Pharaoh, you know, feed him.

He's gonna be part of this rich, rich family.

That's what God does, cause God is a little bit ironic And sometimes God's a little ironic with us.

Sometimes something happens in one season and we look back and we're like I don't know how God did it, but he completely reversed the whole thing And the point is not try to figure it out, it's just to trust that that happens.

Baby, don't get down yet.

Let's not give a negative report yet, cause you don't know what God's gonna do.

I know it seems bad, but it usually seems bad, so God can flip it and make it look so good.

Are we hearing that?

That's how God rolls, that's his modus operandi, that's the Latin phrase, that just means how God rolls, it's how God does it, it's his system, it's his mode of operation, and God is an ironic God.

So when you're feeling threatened, when you feel like I feel like I'm about to go down.

Just wait a minute, let God work on the problem for a little while.

You might find that he's gonna use that very thing to come and save you.

God will come and save you When you're trapped, when you're alone and confused and everything's falling apart.

Don't you believe it?

Don't you believe it?

This is it for me.

Now you put your hope in God, you'd be like those little Hebrew midwives who knew next to nothing and are the lowest, on the lowest rung of the ladder, and yet they still trusted.

And God gave them families, rewarded them and then exalted, put their names in the Bible.

If you're in a dark time, there is grace for you there to obey what you know, even if you don't know a lot.

There's grace for you there to obey what you know, even if you don't know a lot.

I remember when I was first getting interested in the things of God.

I didn't know what to do, i didn't know a lot.

I just went to this first meeting, this little campus little meeting, these little God dorks.

I called them.

You know they were super not cool.

I was cool, but they weren't cool.

And I went to the meeting.

I'm like I don't know, let's see what this is.

God captured my heart with the scriptures.

I never heard Jesus talk like that.

I never really explored it for myself.

I didn't know everything, i just knew the next thing.

Come back, hey, don't like wig yourself out by trying to get everything clear before you take a step.

If you know one step, take the step.

That's all you need.

Just trust him that he'll be there.

He knows what to do, and sometimes that involves the family of God.

That's what it was for these gals.

It was about the family of God.

When you bless the family of God, god will reward you When you accept them.

That's what the New Testament things that say do this one another, accept one another, love one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, teach one another.

God is very much into his spiritual family.

Still He says I will reward you if you make my family a priority, no matter how much light you don't have.

When you do it when it's not easy, when you do it when you don't feel anybody's affection, when you do it when you're not even sure anyone's ever gonna know, it's that moment that's the most worshipful.

When you just do it in a hidden way.

God sees And God won't forget.

We were in a really hard time, my wife and I.

I was selling Kirby vacuums and I didn't even sell one.

We're living in the ghetto, man.

I mean it was hard.

We had next to nothing.

All I could do.

I'm out trying to sell these vacuums, kenzie's at home with the baby and the dog And she's like I don't know what we're gonna do.

And she decides something comes over her, she gets lit and she puts this song on It's All Things Are Possible by Darlene Chek.

Do you wanna hear a little bit?

All Things Are Possible.

All Things Are Possible.

All Things Are Possible.

All Things Are Possible.

In our little kitchen.

She breaks out, she says I'm gonna worship him now.

I'm gonna worship him before he does all the things.

I'm gonna worship him before he gets us out And I'm gonna declare this is who he is, doesn't matter what's going on around me, this is who he is.

He's the God of the impossible.

And she began to praise.

I really believe that turns something around for us as a family That she stood in the gap and she said I ain't waiting until it's good.

I'm gonna pretend it's good.

Praise God now.

When you feel forgotten.

God remembers you even if nobody else does, and God rewards even simple obedience.

As we go into this song, i wanna encourage you.

if you're in one of those dark places, one of those difficult, confined, forgotten places, now is the time to focus on who God is.

Now is the time to declare it.

Let everybody know I am part of the family of God And this is what we do.

We trust that God's gonna flip it around at some point, but I ain't waiting to worship him till then.

I'm gonna do it now.

Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church.

We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.

Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.

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Whatever challenges you're facing, i know you can make it.

Don't give up.

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He won't let go of you.

Jesus loves you so much and we love you.

I hope someday we get to meet in person.

Thanks again for listening.