"Five-For-Five" Sunday!!

Hi, this is John Ozanting, lead pastor of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolved Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Let's go.

Shall we sit them in order?

Alright, we got we got Dylan and then Renee and then CJ and then Dane and then Rebecca in that order.

Amazing.

So Rebecca Anchors, uh, where do you serve on team at Evolve?

Atmosphere.

So when you walk into the door, you see Rebecca and her team helping just create life in the foyer.

And Dane, where do you serve on our team?

Parking.

Parking.

Which looks a lot like worship with a guitar.

Parking.

Maybe you've got a dream to wave that, wave that uh Jedi wand in the parking lot.

CJ, where do you serve?

Live stream.

Yeah, part of our media team giving up for that.

Renee, where do you serve?

Worship.

Dylan, where do you serve?

Sound audio.

I knew the answer.

But um, so these are five of our incredible volunteers, and we've got five for five Sunday, which means they're gonna share for five minutes each uh just something that God's done in their life in their home, uh, and just invite us into scripture.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up on a platform in front of a room, in front of a body of friends and family.

And uh and I've heard what all of them have prepared, uh, or some version of it, and uh there's been some modifications as the spirit's led in the last few days.

Uh, but here's here's what we're gonna do.

I want you to like lean in today.

Everybody, just like wherever you're standing, just like lean forward a little bit.

Come on, I'm I'll wait.

I'm patient.

Yeah, just lean in.

And I want that to be like, and then get up on your tippy toes if you can, just like, and however you do this seated, I don't know what that looks like, but I just want our I want our expectancy and our faith and our posture to be one of just like, yes, God, do it again.

Yes, God, you've done it in them.

Would you do it in me?

Yes, God, you've provided for them.

Would you provide for my need today?

Whatever you're believing God for, do you trust that there's an answer?

Do you trust that there's wisdom from heaven?

Do you trust that the Father's not only present and listening but quick to respond?

Yeah?

Do you believe that?

Then let's respond with encouragement and with faith as they uh come through their five minutes together in the room today.

If you if you feel the need to stand and clap and give God praise for something that's said, like just make yourself at home today.

Get rowdy.

I never asked for that, but I want you to give that kind of faith to these five in the room today.

Sound good?

All right, give it up.

Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you that uh you still transform lives.

Thank you that your words and scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit and the gift of community one together is still changing us.

Make us new today, we pray, God.

We invite your words uh as it's prepared and shared through these five incredible leaders today to just settle in our hearts, make us new, help us understand you more today, God.

We love you, we honor you, we give you praise, Jesus.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, Dylan.

Kick us off, give it up for Dylan Mill, ladies and gentlemen.

All right, I get to go first.

That's uh oh, I get to stand at the table.

Oh man.

All right, uh you guys are all just happy you're not up here doing this, eh?

So I just want to begin by uh starting off with some scripture, and I don't want to get into it.

Uh Psalms chapter 19, starting in verse 7.

Psalms 19 · chapter mention

The instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul, the decrees of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living.

The reverence for the Lord is pure, lasting forever, the laws of the Lord are true.

One uh each one is fair, they are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold.

And I want to follow up with 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17.

2 Timothy 3:16

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

Yeah.

Um, it corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

God uses it to prepare us and equip his people to do every good work.

What I want to talk about today is I want to talk about our value for the word of God in our lives.

And this is something that um I grew up in the church, my entire life I've uh been a professing Christian.

And you kind of go through this little, you know, ups and downs, and oh, yeah, you know, high school, and you you know, you move out and uh your parents' house, and then life's great, and you're doing all these things, and then you get married and you get some kids and some challenges and some stuff, and you kind of have a mix, right?

And we can all relate to that at some level here.

I've always known we should read our Bible.

Like, read your Bible, everyone says this, right?

But but why?

And that's what I want to get into today.

This is difficult to okay.

Um, so yeah, so my tendency, I'm a bit of a driver personality, so I like to push through my struggles, just get her done.

Uh it'll get better, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

And uh that's my personality.

And so what I often would do is I'd say, Lord, I need you, Lord, I need you, and then I would just push through things instead of sitting down and actually seeing what the word has to say, what is the Lord really saying?

Can God even speak to me when I'm actually like in this hostel, like doing these things?

Can I hear Him clearly?

That's really what I'm gonna get into.

So what a year ago we did a small group, you talked about solitude.

And that's something that's kind of been a word, it's kind of been there for me.

And I've really been thinking about this a lot.

Like, I'm like, well, what what what why solitude and and how does that fit?

And then we talk about the gifts of the spirit, and you ask this question, what's your gift?

And I started asking people, what's your gift?

And I didn't really get a lot of straight answers.

And what I think is going on is I think that there's too much information, too many, uh the world is full of lies, let's be honest here.

And we need to know like what it what is God asking me to do?

What do what are my gifts?

You know, what what do you want me to do today, Lord?

Uh should I just go to work and hustle, make some money, come home, put the kids to bed?

Like, is that is that what we're here for?

Or is there some kind of purpose?

Maybe God wants me to take a second and think clearly and talk to this person.

Maybe they need to hear about Jesus.

Is that not most the most important thing?

I'm not following my notes at all.

I'm just kind of talking.

But follow the notes.

And uh, and I had to write down about 17 times smile.

Uh John O made me do that.

So here's I'm gonna I've got a minute left here.

This is my challenge.

This is my challenge, and I'm being real serious here.

I met with John O about what four weeks ago, and you gave me this challenge, 12 minutes a day.

And I took that seriously.

And since then I've noticed that my thought patterns have started to change as I'm reading my Bible 12 minutes a day.

I go and I find us a place where there's there's nothing going on, no music, no distractions, just me and God.

And uh so I wrote some a few things.

Uh how many people need peace in their lives?

12 minutes a day.

How many people need wisdom?

The word of God, you see, here's the thing the Bible is truth, and and I've come to understand that there is nothing else that's true.

What is true comes from God and God alone.

And so if we don't read that, if we're not doing that daily, we're not getting truth.

Therefore, I'm just gonna walk around, uh, do whatever I want and think I'm doing what's right.

And that's I need to be recalibrated every day.

Reality, truth, hope, these are all things found in the Bible.

And so that's my challenge.

12 minutes a day.

Woo!

All right.

Don't start the timer yet.

No, seriously.

My name's Renee, and I obviously love singing.

Speaking, not so much, but we're gonna do this.

Um, I'm married to the Dallas Nut.

If you know, you know.

And if you don't, you need to know him.

Um, we have five awesome children, and we've entered our farm era.

So we are now doing all the things.

We have a crops, we have uh animals, and we love it.

It's crazy, it's fun, it's exciting, it's hard work, um, but it's great.

Uh at the farm, we do a lot of things like waiting.

We wait on the weather, we wait on things to be fixed, we lay on animals to be born.

Um, but what that has actually reminded me of is some seasons in my life that I want to share about today.

Faith seasons marked by waiting.

Um, I do know what it's like to be in a season of having faith to hold on to a promise of God.

So I'm gonna tell a couple stories about two of my kids.

Uh, the first one is Andrew, our son, he's 15.

When he was born, he was two and a half months premature.

And that was our first, my first real experience with an urgent sense of faith.

Um, having to stand and believe for the life of your child, um, and seeing God's hand at work uh so that we could bring him home without any complications.

That was like my first real experience with a miracle.

And then fast forward a few years to our fourth child, Aria.

Uh she came home without incidents, uh, but then 10 days in, she crashed.

We found ourselves back at the emergency.

We were blindsided with um another diagnosis where she was put on life support and she was diagnosed with two major heart conditions.

Um, and again, we were finding ourselves fighting the good fight of faith.

Uh, we were praying and believing God to help us to save the life of our daughter.

And we again saw a creative miracle.

Um, we had enough tissue grow in her heart so that the first issue was resolved, so that she could then have a less risky surgery to repair the other part because God works with the medical system.

Um, and uh we then saw basically two years later, she was given a clean bill of health, and she is still completely healed today.

So that's good.

God is faithful.

Then last year, Andrew decided to do some things.

Um, no, that's me teasing.

He fell very ill and was diagnosed with a rare uh for his age heart condition called Kawasaki disease.

This time, although ready to fight, I was actually not okay.

Um I was actually really exhausted because we were in the process of trying to sell our house uh so that we could get the farm, which is another story for another day.

It's a good one.

But um, my feeling this time around was very different than other times.

I was really angry, I was shocked, I was confused as to why we had to go through this battle again.

Why did we have to fight this kind of fight again?

And I remember telling God, Andrew and I have already paid our price.

We've already done the time, hard time.

I already wear the Stollery Mom badge of honor.

I don't I don't need any more.

Um and I don't get it.

Nevertheless, we carried on.

Our Evolve family rallied around us in prayer and support, and we are living in Andrew's continued recovery.

We're so grateful for God's goodness and faithfulness as we journey through to Andrew's complete wholeness.

But over the past few months, I've actually been doing some deep diving into a question that Pastor Giano asked me a year ago, probably like this week, a year ago.

And that was how's my heart?

I've been serving God for a really long time, and I have never been asked that question.

Even in my other experiences with other church communities, I've never been asked, How's my heart?

I've never even asked myself that question.

Um, I've never slowed down long enough to figure that out.

And I've now realized how truly important it is.

Taking time to do a deep dive, I discovered that my questions of why God and the disappointment and anger that I was feeling was actually rooted in pride.

Pride that said, I've earned an immunity to these types of struggles because I'm strong enough already to power through.

But spending time with the Holy Spirit as my counselor, I've needed to sort out all of these things so he could create in me a clean heart, a whole heart, nothing missing, nothing broken.

And what's interesting is that that's the same thing that I'm believing God for physically in my son Andrew, is what he's been doing in my heart spiritually.

So, in long seasons of waiting or after an end of a battle, oh, how we need the Holy Spirit as our counselor to process and mend, to sort out the aftermath of experiences, whether good or bad.

This is where the hard work really is.

It's harder than farm work, for sure.

Uh, heart work is hard work, but it's really important work.

It's important for me because I truly want to love God, the way Deuteronomy 10, 12 explains.

It says, He requires only that you fear the Lord your God and live in a way that pleases him and love him and serve him with your whole heart and soul, with all of my heart and soul.

And to do that, I am learning to make it a regular spiritual practice to ask myself, how is my heart?

So, my challenge to you today is to ask the same question that's been asked of me, how is your heart?

If you find yourself in a long season of waiting while God is working, have you taken the time to ask yourself, how is your heart?

If you find yourself coming out from a mountaintop experience or through a valley, how's your heart?

Are you able to love God right now with all of your heart, or is something blocking you?

How's your heart?

Thank you.

I did it only a minute ago.

Well, good morning.

My name is CJ, and I want to tell you about what I feel gives me purpose, but also what I currently struggle with that makes it difficult to live out that purpose.

Start by reading Ephesians chapter two, verses eight through ten.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared us in advance for us to do.

I chose this passage because it clearly lays out the fact that no matter what we do in our lives, we did not earn our salvation.

Instead, this is a gift to us from God.

And we've also been put on this earth for a reason, and our purpose has been carefully prepared for each and every one of us.

I've gone through times in my life where I haven't lived up to that purpose.

I spent years living for myself, believing the lies that the enemy told me, believing that I should be ashamed of the sins I've committed in my life, and that no matter what I do, I will never be more than a sinner.

I've failed, therefore, it doesn't matter whether or not I live my life in sin, or believing that I should compare my life to others to see how well I'm doing, instead of focusing on what God has planned for my life.

I find myself to this day sometimes feeling the shame over the things I've done, times that I've missed the mark, and the more God blesses my life, the more I feel like just a big fraud who's unworthy of any blessings.

I do not deserve the life that I have, but that's the thing.

It's not about what you deserve.

God does not give us things because we deserve them.

Jesus didn't lay down his life because we deserved it, but because of his love for us.

Jesus does not call us to live in the shame of the sins of our past, instead, he calls us to live out a purpose.

If I am feeling shame, what am I to do?

I need to let go of the part of me that still believes I could somehow earn my way into heaven.

When I feel the creep of the enemy, instead of letting myself sit in the shame or guilt of not being enough, I need to put God back on the throne.

I need to give it all to him and remember that he put me here for a reason.

I had a lot of different jobs after high school, mostly due to the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I knew I wanted to help people, but everything I pursued always ended up being a bunch of closed doors.

Eventually I stumbled upon a passion to fix cars, so I pursued that.

And even though there's been hardships, no matter what, I always found that when one door closed, another opened.

I love what I do, and often I'm able to use this gift to help others.

There are a few of my neighbors that I would have never met if it wasn't for their vehicles breaking down.

I've had deeper conversations with strangers while I fix their vehicles than I have with some of my closest friends.

People have opened up to me about the darkest parts of their lives all while I change a little part in their car.

I hope to use moments like these to introduce the Lord into people's lives.

Through our good works, God can work through us.

To conclude, purpose can come from anywhere if you let it, but by guarding our hearts and our souls from the lies that we tell ourselves, the lies the enemy hopes we will believe, and instead lean into a long obedience for God in the same direction, we will hopefully discover all that God has in store for our lives.

I challenge you to think about the things that may be standing between you and God's purpose, and ask yourselves what lies you may be believing or actions you may be taking keeping you from His purpose for you.

Thank you.

Really nice.

Really nice.

Yeah.

Hey, maybe I like the color.

I'll also have you know, uh singing up here is way different than speaking, so it's as much time as I spend up here, but all right.

Uh I have known faith in Jesus for my entire life.

I'm really blessed to come from a family that served the Lord and upheld a strong integrity of faith and honor towards God.

And I made a conscious decision to continue that legacy and pursue a personal relationship with Jesus when I was in my teen years.

To be honest, I haven't faced a lot of external hardship in my life where my faith has really been put to the test.

In Acts, Paul talks about this conversion or his conversion on the road to Damascus, where the Lord instantly changes his life when he calls him to be his servant, a complete 180 from his persecution of the early church.

I haven't personally experienced such a radical shift, uh, and has previously been something that I felt made my testimony less impactful.

I struggled to figure out how my life could be a witness to others.

I believe and trust that Jesus has changed my life, but how do I demonstrate that to people and tell people my story when there's not that drastic shift within myself to tell people about?

I don't have that big wow moment, but I'm okay with that.

And I've learned that my testimony can still be impactful for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I recognize the miracle of living in the blessing of generational faith, where my parents and grandparents have fought for their faith and taken the narrow road for the sake of the people around them and those that came behind them, like myself.

And with that, I feel a certain weight and responsibility to carry that legacy forward in my own fatherhood journey.

And it's daunting, but I can take heart and lean on this foundation of faith that's been set before me and trust in the Lord to guide my steps.

The second reason is while I may not have had that radical outer transformation or trial, I believe that a slow, steady approach to faith can be just as impactful, just in a different way.

Knowing that my faith walk is not a sprint, I believe that a solid foundation of faith is formed over time, and as I continue to let the Holy Spirit lead me, I also trust that he will set tasks in front of me that pave a way for others to come to know him.

For me, this looks like actively seeking the Word of God and His will by asking, Lord, what do you have for me today?

If I'm honest, I'm not very good at this.

And maybe my biggest barrier is a fear that I won't be able to actually do what's asked of me.

I think this fear stems from me being a people pleaser.

Uh Enneagram 9, if you're familiar with that.

And not wanting to rock the boat for the sake of the truth, even though I believe that God's way is the true way.

I think I'm actually afraid that I'll push others away from me and maybe even from God.

And at the root of this, I actually think that it's my pride that's getting in the way of God's kingdom moving.

Fortunately, I also believe that God can use me to bring people to him despite this shortcoming because of the power in what Jesus accomplished on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirit through me.

I take encouragement from Romans chapter 1, verses 16 to 17, and this is from the NLT.

Romans 1:16–17

For I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes, the Jew first and also the Gentile.

This good news tells us how God makes us right in his sight, and this is accomplished from start to finish by faith.

As the scriptures say, it is through faith that a righteous person has life.

And thank goodness for the grace of God, because otherwise my works and deeds would fall short every time.

While I may not encounter mountains or valleys every day, the path remains narrow, and I choose to follow the path that the Lord is leading me on.

I hope that you can take encouragement from this: that God's love and desire for people to come to know Him is vastly greater than any personal fear of rejection and infinitely more powerful than a sense of pride and self-limitation.

Knowing this takes the pressure off to say the right things and gives the freedom to walk in obedience and humility and trust that he is still going to accomplish his will no matter what happens.

Thanks, guys.

Great job.

All right, good morning.

For those of you who I've not met, my name is Rebecca.

I am married to my husband Jeff.

We have two little boys.

Dawson is five, and Brandt is two.

And I'm really excited to be able to share with you guys this morning.

So after I graduated from university, I felt like God was calling me to work at the camp that I grew up volunteering and serving at.

I thought I'll just do this until I figure out my big girl job.

And 12 years later, here I am, still working there.

But I've had the most amazing opportunities seeing kids experience Jesus in profound ways.

It's taught me so much about obedience and God's faithfulness.

And this morning I want to share with you guys a little bit about God's faithfulness in my family this past year.

So about this time last year, I was noticing that my youngest son, Brand, was always walking on his toes.

He couldn't really stand or walk on his own yet.

He'd walk pushing a chair like he was wearing high heels, only his toes would touch the floor.

At first I thought, you know, no problem.

I'm not really in a hurry to chase a second small boy.

But then I noticed a couple of other things that led us to deciding we would take him in and get him checked.

So coming out of that appointment, we were referred to physio, a specialist at the Glenrose, the tow walking clinic, and a speech and language pathologist.

Throughout the summer, we saw lots of different people, we had lots of appointments and assessments, and they all led to us seeing a PEADES physiatrist at the Glenrose.

She assessed Brand, and so we could get a baseline for what our next steps would be.

She checked range of motion, muscle reflexes, muscle tone, and we discovered that Brand was unable to put his feet flat on the floor, like in a neutral resting position.

So foot flat, leg up.

Coming out of that appointment, she gave us a pending diagnosis of cerebral palsy.

But she wanted to have us confirm with an MRI, so that got scheduled for March.

This way we could rule out maybe that there was something else affecting him, but in the meantime, we were meant to do regular physio, seeing if stretching consistently over time we would see improvement.

So leaving there, I called a friend right away whose son has cerebral palsy.

She allowed me to process with her, she prayed for Brandt and I, and it felt like the life that I had pictured with two small boys, maybe in sports, with active backyard lives, might not be the reality that I was gonna live.

Throughout all of this, though, we did our best to trust that God would carry us through no matter what.

Our friends and families joined us, we began praying together, and I really did feel God holding my heart as we waited to see.

The MRI was scheduled for March, and we got connected with some really great physios in the meantime.

We saw them regularly throughout the fall, and although appointment after appointment, I was not seeing as much change as we had hoped for.

But in October, at a team day here at the church, Pastors Jonathan Nicole, the guest speaker, some friends gathered around, we laid hands on Brandt and we prayed for him.

We really did believe that God could do whatever he wanted in Brandt, and I knew that despite the limitations or despite the diagnosis, he could live a full life.

And then later that evening, we were at some friend's house, the Gerbers, and Brett walked for the first time.

Oh man.

I was so filled with thankfulness.

If I'm honest though, there's a big part of me that I felt a lot of tension.

On one hand, I knew that was God, and on the other hand, I thought, oh, is this just a one-off?

Will it change the diagnosis that we've received?

But I remember thinking to myself, why am I surprised that God would intervene?

He loves Brandt more than I do, even as his mom.

We continued to see Physio, and when they saw Brandt walking, they were all so surprised.

And that built my faith too.

The more times I saw Brandt improving leading up to Christmas, I grew more and more sure that God did heal him.

Fast forward to this past March, Brandt had his MRI, and we had a follow appointment with the specialist to give us the results.

Keeping in mind she basically diagnosed him with cerebral palsy.

We went in optimistic that it would be good news.

And it was.

His MRI was all clear.

She looked at us and said, I have no idea why Brand was having so much trouble.

She asked us a bunch of questions, trying to get an idea of what had happened and what was going on, and it all pointed towards typical healthy development.

Even though we don't have a before and after MRI, I am so confident that God healed Brand.

Where muscles didn't move, there's now movement, where range was extremely limited, there is now full range of motion, and where he couldn't stand unassisted or walk without help.

He's now running around and squatting with overextended muscles.

In all of this, hope has filled me for the other things we wait on God for.

It's built my faith and reminded me that God cares about the details and is at work.

I'm grateful that we chose to be open with our community and share about what we were facing.

And I'm so glad that we were met with people of prayer.

When Pastor Johnno asked me to share, I did feel a lot of tension.

I have seen God's goodness, but we're also walking through other difficult situations that He hasn't redeemed yet.

The things that are hard right now in life don't change God's goodness or his desire to make us whole.

Brant walking gives me hope to believe for the next impossible thing we face.

I'm so thankful that we can believe for more and hear stories of God's goodness to fill us with hope and help us keep our eyes fixed on him.

Would you stand to your feet and give it up for these five one more time?

Give glory to God as they uh as they take their seats and uh thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit Evolvechurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.