Promise Maker, Promise Keeper

I'm like the second string, you know, I'm the one that every once in a while,

God puts something in my heart.

And I tell Pastor Josh, you know, I might have something.

And I'm always kind of like hoping that he's like, well, you know what,

maybe wait on that. I have a series. And I was like, he's like, great.

That's awesome. This Sunday. And I'm like, really this Sunday,

this like this one, like the Sunday, the one, the next one we're going to live through.

And he's like, yeah, that would be great. That would be awesome. It would fit perfect.

And I'm like, why did I open my mouth again?

Like, what is going on here? So I appreciate your kindness and bearing with

me as I articulate my thoughts that maybe I'm not quite as smooth as the big dogs in the church,

but, you know, God is still hopefully able to use my life, my voice to minister

something to you that you can take home on.

And maybe it won't be perfect, but I just ask you to just listen and allow God

to work in your life, that God does amazing things through each and every one of us.

And I know that even though I'm making fun of myself, I know that God has a

purpose for me and he can still use me as unlikely a vessel as I am.

So we see here, as we already read, that God begins the work in our lives.

We don't begin our stories. I didn't begin mine. I didn't put breath in my lungs.

I didn't cause my heart to beat. I didn't do any of those things.

I didn't have a grand design. Psalm 139, it says how God orchestrates and every

day of our lives are written in his book that his thoughts about us are more

in number than the sand. I didn't do any of that.

You didn't do any of that. You didn't orchestrate your beginning.

You don't know your ending. I don't even know what's gonna happen for tomorrow for me.

The Bible even says that make your plans, but it's God who wills it and we need

to submit those things to him.

It's easy to just get caught up in our own thought process, in our own wants,

in our own needs, and the things, and none of that is bad or not all of it is

bad because God did create us.

He did place desires in us. He did place needs in us. We all need air.

Every single one of us has to breathe in and breathe out.

All of us need food to eat. All of us need community and people around us,

sometimes because we need encouragement, sometimes because we need to give encouragement.

All of these things God's placed in us, his perfect plan and design for our lives.

And it's easy though, and I don't know why it is. At least it's easy for me.

Maybe you guys are like so good at life and you'll just have to listen to my

sad story, but it's hard for me sometimes to remember that God began it and

God's gonna finish it because I just like to mess around with things.

Like I like to get in the midst. And if you're like, Pastor Josh is laughing

because I wake up and I got an agenda for the day.

I go to bed and I already got the whole week planned out. I just, that's how I tick.

That's how I work. Other people, maybe you can't.

Understand that personally, but I can't help but meddle a little and think about

how we could do it better.

And part of that is God-given, I believe, right? God makes some of us that way

so that the whole thing, we can get better, we grow.

But some of us, like myself, also have to recognize that I really can't do it better than God.

I know. Go figure. We can't do life better than God. I can't make a plan for

my life, for my tomorrow, for this week, that's better than the one that God has for me.

But it's hard to wrestle that thought through when bad things happen or when

things happen that I don't like or understand.

Or maybe when you happen in my life and you do something that I don't like or

understand, but God tells me to love you, to forgive you.

That's really hard for me. And I'm looking at you beautiful people,

and I know it's probably not hard for you, but again, just bear with me this morning.

We don't begin our stories. We don't end them. Our lives were created, crafted by God.

If you're sitting here this morning and you're wondering, why am I here?

Does my life matter? Is there anything out there? Does anybody care?

The answer is yes, yes, and yes.

God created you. God formed you. You do matter to God. You matter to me.

There's a plan and a purpose for every single person.

Not one of us doesn't matter or is like extra baggage that we can toss off when times get tough.

Every single person here matters.

God put something unique and beautiful. He crafted it. He started it.

And he wants to finish it.

All it takes is what we sang this morning. Here's my surrender. This is my surrender.

Imagine what God can do. He puts the stars in the sky,

the sun, the moon, the seasons as we're experiencing fall right now in New York

and the beauty of the leaves,

how it all works together, that a seed can go into the ground and die,

that things that are there right now looking dormant, that snow is going to

fall on them, that it's going to be even maybe four feet deep.

But next year, the miraculous happens and things grow.

Sometimes in places that we

don't even expect, God just uses birds and wind to put things in places.

That's a miracle. That the God that we know and serve does that,

not just in nature for us to look at and remember. That's what he does for my life.

That we're not just a mess of random cards thrown on a table and drawn at whim in someone's will.

But God places every single thing for a purpose.

Nothing wasted. Nothing.

The beauty of God is that even the bad times, even the things that the Bible

says it rains, like I said, on the just and the unjust, that even those things,

the misfortunes, the things that all of us wish would never happen.

Death, disappointment, betrayal, none of us wants that.

Even those, when we give it over to God's hands, create beauty in our lives

and not destruction because God is the giver of life.

So when things die, like we see in nature, there's hope.

Something beautiful can come of it. And the message, I don't even remember.

I'm gonna have to learn to look around.

Promise maker, promise keeper.

God makes you. He makes the promise of your life and he keeps it.

He doesn't destroy us.

He doesn't allow things to destroy us. But when we place it in his hand over

and over again, choosing, you don't just get to sing that song this morning

and go through your week. You got to sing it tomorrow.

You got to sing it tomorrow afternoon. And then when you're done singing it

for yourself, you should call somebody up on the phone and sing it for them

and to them to remind them that God is faithful and good, that he never changes.

There's not one bad thing in God.

When we release our grip on life, on the lives that we've imagined for ourselves,

the author becomes the finisher, the completer of every good and perfect thing.

And today we're going to learn about the Shunanimite woman. Shunanimite. Shunanimite.

Again, I don't do this professionally. Once in a while, they put me up here.

Try spelling it even, writing that in my outline over and over again.

My Lord in heaven. Thank God my mom named me Amy. me. I could spell it every

day. A-M-Y. Poor lady Shunammite.

Anyway, 2 Kings 4, 8 through 10. We're going to start there.

It's such a good story. If you can't hear my voice and I'm just too crazy for you, I get that.

Just go home and read the scriptures yourselves.

So 2 Kings 4, 8 through 10. One day Elisha went to Shunamm, hence her name is the Shunammite woman.

And a well-to-do woman was there who urged him to stay for a meal.

She said to her husband, I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God.

Let's make a small room on the roof and put in a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp.

So here we see the Shunammite woman, she's wealthy.

She doesn't really need anything. She's got all that she could ask for,

but she's also discerning and she's not complacent.

And I love that about her as a person that doesn't like to sit around and just think about things.

That she recognizes that this

man coming through is holy, that God's working in and through his life.

What can we do for him?

What can we build here?

So she goes to her husband, and they end up building a room for him on the roof of the house.

And if you study Eastern culture, that's like the most desirable room in the

house back then because it was accessed by a private set of stairs on the outside,

so you have privacy. Who doesn't like privacy?

And you also have the coolness that can happen up there, that the sun of the

day beating down on the house, you would be refreshed up in that area.

So she's not just giving him a room in the basement or the backside of shack

somewhere on the property.

She's actually given him a very prominent position in her home,

which I think is important to recognize a little later on in the story.

So she uses what she has to make room for God.

Every act of generosity toward the things of God creates space for his presence.

He moves in us and he moves through us. but we have to do like the song said this morning.

We have to be willing to make room

with whatever we have. Maybe we're not wealthy. Maybe we're not famous.

Maybe we're not articulate, but we can make room for God to move in and through our lives.

And then it says in 2 Kings 4, 13 through 17, Elisha says, you've gone to all this trouble for us.

The us, his servant is Gehazi that's with him. What can be done for you?

She replies, I have a home among my own people, meaning she doesn't really need

anything. She's safe. She's with her people. There's no danger for her.

She's got a house. She's got a husband. All these things are taken care of.

Then Gehazi says she has no son and her husband is old.

Elisha calls her again and declares, about this time next year,

you will hold a son in your arms.

She says, no, my Lord, please, man of God, don't mislead your servant.

But she became pregnant, and the next year she gave birth, just as Elisha had

said, No, my Lord, please, man of God, don't mislead your servant.

It's funny, I recognize myself in those words even, that sometimes we're afraid to even ask.

It seems like God is teasing us, like holding the carrot out of what could be,

and it's just not quite there.

Like, what is it, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? No matter what happens, he never gets up.

It just seems like that sometimes. Like, God, you're saying all these things.

You make all these promises.

But no, my Lord, please don't say it if it's not true.

Don't promise me something. I can't live with another heartache or disappointment.

I've already made peace with the fact that we don't have children.

I'm happy. I'm doing good things. Yes.

Don't stir up hope again for it to just leave me broken and sad.

That's her heart. But God sees a deeper need, a promise that only he can give and fulfill.

And he does. And for a season, everything looks perfect, right?

She became pregnant, and the next year she gave birth, just as Elisha said.

Can you even imagine her story, the joy for her, for her family?

The baby has come. Like, this is crazy. It actually happens.

And everything is beautiful and good, better than they could have imagined or even dared to hope for.

And then it says this in 2 Kings 4, 18 through 21, the child grew.

He's healthy. He's growing. And one day he goes out to his father who was with

the reapers in the field.

And he says to his father, my head, my head.

His father tells his servant, carry him to his mother.

After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother,

the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.

Can you even imagine? Your kid goes out in the field with dad for the day.

He's healthy, he's whole.

Everything's so perfect, better than you could even imagine,

better than you were even willing to dare to imagine it could be. The dream.

He goes out, and she's in her home doing whatever her daily tasks are,

and the servant brings them to her.

And I'm sure at first she just thought he was overtired and a little sunsick.

He just needs to rest a little, have something to drink, but there he is on

her lap until noon, and then he died.

And this is what she does in verse 21. She went up, and she laid him on the

bed of the man of God, she shuts the door and she goes out.

She doesn't collapse in grief, overcome by it.

She doesn't go out and start screaming at her husband, what were you doing?

He was with you. Why would you let this happen?

She doesn't start blaming herself like, I should have packed him some water.

I should have recognized something was wrong and had him rest.

All the things that we do when things go wrong, we look for an easy place to

place our blame. somebody easy around us, and often the somebody easy is ourselves.

Sometimes the somebody easy is God. She doesn't do any of those things.

She takes that heartbreak, that broken boy, the promise that she wanted but

didn't even dare to articulate or hope for, and she lays him on the bed that

she made for the promise maker.

She puts him right there. She closes the door.

She doesn't bury the promise. She lays it in the place she made room,

making room again for God to work in her life. She leaves him in his hands.

And it says in 2 Kings 4, 22 through 23, she goes out and she calls her husband.

And she says, please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to

the man of God quickly in return.

And her husband says, why go to him today?

So traditionally, she would have been going to the man of God to where he resided

for feasts or festivals or to pay homage.

They would be designated times, not just any old time of the day.

Why go to him? It's not the new moon. It's not the Sabbath.

And here's what she replies. You could read it hopefully behind me because of Pastor Josh. It is well.

Do you know what that word in Hebrew, that's shalom, peace, wholeness, safety, completeness.

That's what she says.

She doesn't say, stop asking me questions. I have to get there now. She's not frantic.

She's on mission. She's on task for the promise maker.

How often in our lives do we misdirect our pain, our questions,

our doubts, the tragedies that fight us, that we rail against one another or rail against God?

She doesn't do any of that. She does none of it.

Such a perfect example of how to respond to tragedy and hard times.

Let it rest in the place of promise.

Seek the promise maker. Don't scream at the people around you and blame.

Shalom. Peace. It is well.

So difficult to do. So admirable the way she reacts and shows us the Bible.

It's not a collection of stories for us to, oh, that's so cool.

It's so we can take and use this as an example that God's word,

it says in the Old Testament that they wrote the word of God everywhere so they wouldn't forget.

Everywhere, because we as humans, we forget everything all the time.

So God told them, write it here, write it there, put it on a breastplate, put it over the door.

Write it everywhere because you're going to forget if you don't see it.

But then he made this promise in the Old Testament.

Someday the word of God will be written on our hearts.

That's why this story isn't there. It's not just a cool thought.

So it's in our hearts because tragedy strikes us all. Hard times.

Will we write it in our hearts? That doesn't mean just coming Sunday morning

and hearing a good message.

If you want to live a godly life, that means you go home and you put God's word in your heart.

This is the word God spoke to me, but God has a word specific to you.

Do you know how beautiful it is? How awesome in wonder that the God of the heavens,

the God of earth, he laid the oceans and set the boundaries that he has a word

specific to you and your life to make your footsteps, it says,

sure, that you wouldn't be tossed to and fro with waves of doubt.

I hope this word inspires you. I hope it brings life to your heart and your

mind, that you leave changed and hungry for what God can do in you and through you as you make room.

But I can't be there tomorrow morning.

Jesus is. If you make room for him, look what he can do.

The Bible is full of stories that change us, that make us the best version of

ourselves, the God-authored version, not what we can do with our own hands and good ideas.

I got great ideas if you want some, but who wants mine when you can have his.

And I got good ones. I'm just saying.

Why, though? His thoughts are better. It even says that in Isaiah.

His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. His ways are higher than our ways.

But still, we all do it. You can pretend you're good, and I know you're not.

I'm going to admit I'm not and just be honest.

We all do it. We say, God, you're great. Do what I want.

God, give me the daily bread so I could spend it the way I want.

God, make my husband do what I want.

Make those kids do what I want. Lord Jesus, help my church to be the church that you and I want.

Help Pastor Amy to get her stuff together. And all the elders are laughing because

sometimes I don't say that word.

Help Amy to get her stuff together so our church could be the way it's supposed to.

I mean, come on. If we're honest, that's how we pray.

It's supposed to be the Lord's prayer, not your will.

Right? All right. We'll go back to the story because I feel like you guys are

getting sick of my talking. So we're just going to read the Bible because again,

it's his words, not mine. So we can't be mad about it.

2 Kings 4, 22 for 23. Actually, nope. We already did that.

So where are we? Oh boy, here we are. This is getting really good.

You guys are going to love this.

So just quickly, it says this in verse 24. She gets the donkey.

Her husband gets it because he's not going to mess with her,

right? She's a woman on mission. And I have a feeling he caught the vibe quick. Be smart.

So he doesn't ask questions. All right. Sounds good. Shalom on your journey.

So she says this, lead on to the servant.

Don't slow down for me unless I tell you.

That's her heart. Do you know how long the journey is by donkey?

Has anybody ridden a donkey?

I've ridden a horse. I feel like a donkey must be like worse.

It must be like ganglier and rougher. I don't know. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's great.

But a four to six hour ride on

a donkey is what it takes just to get to Elisha. That's the journey too.

This isn't with AC, heated seats, and that like back thing that pushes out and

supports your low back. I need that now.

This isn't that kind of journey. This is four to six hours on a donkey.

He's probably a great donkey. I don't want to diss the donkey because it doesn't

say anything about him that he's bad.

He's a great donkey. He's the best donkey there is. He's the BMW of donkeys,

let's just assume. But he's still a donkey.

And it's four to six hours.

She's not after comfort, though. She's after the promise maker.

And sometimes we or me, I'll just go with me because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable.

We start out strong on our journeys when troubles hit, right?

We're like, oh, my gosh, only God can do this. I need a miracle.

So we go to God. But then somehow, time, discomfort.

Distract ourselves. We numb ourselves with other things.

Facebook, probably. Oh, no, Instagram, a lot more Christian things on there.

Oh, my gosh, this post, just what the Lord spoke to me today. I am good.

The Lord just gave me a word, people, on my way.

We distract ourselves. We numb ourselves.

Oh, cookies. Right now, and if you've been in the ladies' meeting, you know this.

My thing right now in this season of life. We got a little hard times going on.

Boom chicka popcorn, the sweet and salty version, king size bag from Sam's Club.

I can, there is no problem that I can't eat that popcorn through.

We numb ourselves. We all have a thing, right? That we like just shut our brain

off and we forget about the thing that is driving us to the promise maker.

And we fill the place that the promise maker can fill with other things as the

journey is a lot longer than we anticipated or wanted or expected.

But this lady, this brave, awesome lady, she doesn't stop. She keeps moving.

And I'm just wondering how many things we miss because we stop or because we

quit because the journey got hard.

How many have I missed?

How many opportunities do we miss? I was talking to the elders about this and

Lexi in regards to the praise and worship team.

My good friend, Jason Peeks, was sharing something that he had talked with his

team about in regards to being prepared.

How many opportunities are we willing to miss?

And I think in the story of some other people in the Bible, the woman with the

issue of blood, who says, if I could just touch the hem of your garment, God,

that she wouldn't miss the time of visitation, that blind Bartimaeus,

Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, that he wouldn't miss Jesus walking by.

I want to be like these people in the Bible, like this lady,

that whether it's good days or bad days that I don't miss the opportunity to

meet the promise maker for my life,

and what he has for my life.

So she gets to Elisha's place in 2 Kings 4.27.

We're going to read that. It says, when she reached the man of God at the mountain,

she took hold of his feet.

Gehazi came over to push her away. I don't like Gehazi, just so you guys know.

I don't know. He just, he rubs me the wrong way.

Gehazi came over to push her away. He's so rude. But the man of God says, leave her alone.

She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why.

And then in verse 28, this is what she says to him. She's not messing around.

Again, lady on task.

Promise maker, I have arrived.

Did I ask you for a son, Lord?

She said, didn't I tell you, don't raise my hopes.

I said, I don't need anything. I'm good. You asked me what I wanted, and I said nothing.

Then you wanted to give me something that I said I don't need.

And I even told you, don't raise my hopes.

I told you then, do you remember the day that I told you that, promise maker?

Don't raise my hopes. And here I am, and he's back there on your bed, and he's not breathing.

What are you gonna do about it?

This is what we do with the times of doubt, when tragedy strikes or just a bad day.

We take it to Jesus, promise maker, be the promise keeper.

Remember the word that you gave. Remember your thoughts towards me.

And this is what she does. And what does Elijah do? He says,

oh my God, obviously he's upset.

He sends Gehazi right away with his staff. Gehazi, go.

Go lay the staff on the boy. We got to get him back.

And here's what she does in verse 30. But the child's mother says,

as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.

Sometimes we go to God and we knock a little bit softly because we're worried

maybe he's busy or he doesn't care.

We just knock quietly. But the Bible, do you know the scripture in the New Testament

says, keep on knocking, keep on seeking.

Knock again, knock again, knock again.

But we quit with a...

I'll figure it out. I got this. I got this. Right back into our own hands.

We become author and finisher and we're not good at it. Look at her though.

In 2 Kings 4, 30 through 35.

And I don't know if you caught the end of verse 30. So he got up and followed

her. Elisha's making smart choices. This lady's not going anywhere.

Elisha comes. He prays and he lays on the boy, mouth to mouth,

eye to eyes, hands to hands, and the body's boy grows warm, and he sneezes seven

times and opens his eyes.

And this is a little bit of a paraphrase. You're missing some here. We're.

Is shocking. Imagine you call Pastor Josh to pray for somebody in your house,

and he lays on them, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth, hand-to-hand.

I'd be like, buddy, nah, we're going to get in trouble. Get down.

Nope. Don't do it, buddy.

Well, guess what? Elijah could get in trouble, especially back then.

This would be unceremonally. You would be, well, hold on, let me read it because

I'm going to get this wrong.

Ceremonally unclean by touching a dead body. And also when he puts himself out

there as the prophet and he doesn't raise them, everybody's like,

yeah, you're not like Elijah.

He raised people, clearly not the man of God.

And I'm saying it in a lighthearted way, but this is the truth.

He risked his entire reputation really being ostracized from what God could

use him for in the future by this act.

It's dangerous. It's gross.

It's yucky. It's uncomfortable to look at and even think about.

But this is Jesus, isn't it?

We avoid the uncomfortable, all of us.

Awkward conversations, all of the things. We don't like to think about death,

but the death of Jesus, the crucifixion, it's ugly.

It's confusing. It's all of those things. God coming to save us.

Doesn't make sense. You can't rationalize it.

But that's the beauty of Jesus, that he demonstrates his love towards us.

While we are yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That Jesus comes, just like we see this picture of Elisha with this boy,

into the mess, into the death, risks it all.

It's uncomfortable. I would almost say it seems unholy even when you think about it.

It just seems the exact opposite of what holy is.

Jesus walks right in to the disappointment, the questions, the doubts, the fears.

And when we think about God, he's not a far-off God that sits high and mighty

above the earth, even though he is that.

But it also says that he's near to the brokenhearted, and that as we draw near

to him, he draws near to us.

That all of the ugly, all the death, all the hopeless situations,

all the lack that Jesus lays right in it with us.

Has been thinking about this a lot lately because, as I said,

you know, I think most of you know, our lives have had some ups and downs lately, personally.

And I was thinking about the phrase between a rock and a hard place.

And I was thinking, where do we let go when life seemingly collapses and we find ourselves there?

That rock and that hard place. It says this in 2 Corinthians 4,

7-9, We have this treasure in jars of clay,

hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed.

Perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned,

struck down, but not destroyed.

Psalm 18.2, The Lord is my rock, my refuge, or my fortress, my deliverer.

Psalm 31, 1-2, be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me.

Matthew 7, 24-25 talks about the wise man who built his house on the rock.

Isaiah 51, 1-2 says, look to the rock from which you were hewn.

The Shunammite woman turns towards the rock.

She doesn't run from it. She doesn't resist the crushing and rail against it

as we've already talked about it.

She embraces it and the rock becomes her strength and personally as you know

our grandkids are living with us and our beautiful daughter Genevieve and you

know because of life circumstances in her in her life she.

Live in a—we bought our house a few years ago knowing that our children were,

you know, going out to start their own lives. So it's three bedrooms, one bath.

That's great for Pastor Josh and I. Perfect.

You add some extra people that are also potty training. So, you know,

that excitement that is added to it.

And it becomes a little unfortunate sometimes.

And we love it, and we wouldn't want it any other way. And there's all the blessings

attached to that, as parents of young children know.

There's all the good, but it's also—it's hard, and it's hard for Genevieve.

I'm not saying it in a way that she's the hard thing. This is hard for all of us.

So we went on vacation a few weeks ago. It was amazing.

And it was just Pastor Josh and I. We went to the ocean, which is awesome.

The ocean helps gives us, it gives me anyway, perspective on life,

the vastness of it and my smallness in it.

And then we come home from just he and I. And on vacation, you know,

you go to bed when you want, you wake up when you want.

Do you guys do that on vacation. I hope you do. You like relax.

You just like drink coffee. You look at the beach. You eat good food. It's just chill.

So we go from this to back home, three bed, one bath, almost 1,500 square feet,

grown child to not grown children.

My brain, Pastor Josh is so good. You guys, he's the hero of our family.

My brain takes a little longer to get back in line with that situation.

So like a little longer, I was like having like a moment. I said,

I might need Prozac or something.

Like it's something's got to give. Like I can't do this anymore.

Like I reached, I think grace ran

out. Like I know the Bible says there's grace. We hit the grace ending.

And I told Pastor Josh, so we're working on her house that needs some repairs

here at the church house.

I said, he's tired at the end of the day. I get energy from physical work.

I'm that odd person. Pastor Josh does not.

At the end of the day, he's tired. I'm like, nope, think about it.

And I could sell it good too, just so you know. Think about it.

Remember the Canto Monte Cristo, because he loves the classics.

The Canto Monte Cristo, what does he have to do?

He digs himself out of prison every day. He doesn't quit.

We're getting out of here. Don't quit.

We got to get out. We're not quitting. We're digging out, which to me is fixing

up the church house for Genevieve again.

So I'm not quitting. and I'm getting out of here.

This place is a prison. There's savages in here fighting over the toilet.

Food, fruit snacks. We're going to go to fists over fruit snacks before 8 a.m.

I'm telling you, you don't give somebody milk in a hustle kind of fashion.

If Georgie could work a knife, I'd have knives in my back. Like things go sideways

with these little people.

It's the worst and the best. It's horrible.

So here I go. Pastor Josh, lovely person he is.

We get back Monday, 8 a.m. Genevieve's like, you got to babysit.

I'm like, this girl, like what the world?

8 a.m. You babysit. This is Sunday on the way home. We're driving back.

Knock, knock, knock. It's a text thing.

You're babysitting tomorrow at eight. That okay? And I'm like,

feels crazy. This girl, she lost her mind.

She thinks I can come over for 8 a.m. 8 a.m. sounds early when you've been on vacation time.

On a Monday, I'm like, my God, she's going to ask Grandma Kiefer,

Grandma Jilly, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Lexi.

Like, there's got to be somebody that loves these kids.

Nope, it's me. Oh, so I just don't answer, which is an answer, right?

It's kind of like if I don't answer, maybe that she'll get the hint, ask somebody else.

Dear Lord in heaven, woman. She didn't get it.

Genevieve didn't get it. She moved on. She dropped that little bombshell on me and she's going.

So 8 a.m. Monday morning, we're hustling, right? We're in it.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. This has a point, just so you know.

It's cathartic for me, too. So just go with it. Be nice to me. So 8 a.m., we babysit.

And again, these kids, they're not like you see them here all dressed in like

their finery. They're savages. Don't get the wrong impression.

Pray for the Sunday school. Sister Jill running that thing. They're savages

back there. Every single one of them. You show weakness.

You got to look them straight in the eye. Don't turn around.

They'll grab a fruit snack, put a crayon somewhere. It don't belong. It's bad.

So you got to remember this. Keep this in mind when I'm talking about my life right now.

Not cute kids that you see here. These are ones. Mm-hmm. Smart.

So Monday that happens. I manage Monday.

Wow. I get my boom chick on Monday night, get in bed with my fancy seltzer.

Non-alcoholic, obviously.

Get in bed with my fancy seltzer, watch whatever cooking or DIY show I can lose

my mind in for a minute and turn it up loud because it's still prison out there

in the rest of the house. I lock the door.

And I say, oh my God, Tuesday's coming. And Tuesday, you know what happens on

Tuesday for us? God-fearing people.

We have Genevieve's kids and we have Dawson. That's Isabel's little fella.

Again, he looks cute here.

Normally what happens is Monday and Tuesday, all the days, Pastor Josh,

he would go to work and I would be with the kids.

So Tuesday, he does the early shift of Dawson, 5.45 a.m. I don't do that.

Lolly don't work at 5.45 a.m. with babies. Nobody wants that.

So he brings him up around seven, eight o'clock. That's his normal drop off.

He's going to skedaddle and come hear Jesus.

All right. So I'm in there with the kids. He comes up and I'm like,

nope, babe, I don't got it today.

Like, I don't know what to tell you. Do you got Prozac?

I got to go. I'm going to check myself in somewhere. Like, this is not happening.

It's already chaos. It's not even 8 a.m. I had 50 requests for fruit snacks.

And these kids are like the per my last email kind of snarky.

You know what I mean? Like, give me my fruit snack.

So I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm out. I'll go work on the church

house. I'll get stuff done. I'll be useful.

I'm great with that. You got to stay with these kids and somehow you'll find

Jesus here because Jesus talks to you all the time. It's going to be good for

you. You're going to love it.

You're going to love it. Remember, Count of Monte Cristo. I got to go dig us

out, babe. You stay here.

So I go to digging over at the church trailer. Again, I have a point.

And it's cathartic for me and you love me, so it's fine.

I go to the church trailer and I feel a little bad for Pastor Josh because he's

back there And I know he's in prison with them savages that we call our grandchildren.

Super kitty, paws out, claws out. If you don't know, it's something.

So I'm down there at church and I'm going to, at the very least,

put on some Christian music because I'm a pastor and I profess to love and know

the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.

So I put me on some Christian music and it gets to this song,

Burnt Foundation. If you haven't heard it, it's a great song, right?

So I'm listening to it and I literally am like, oh my God, gut check,

right? Oh my God, I'm not swearing. I'm saying, oh my God, gut check.

Like, and I go on my knees. And when I tell you I go on my knees,

if you, the church house has been left by savages, by horrible things have happened there, right?

There's mouse poop, rodents took over, the floors rotted away,

the wall, the ceiling fell in.

Like, it's like real bad. It's not a good place.

So I go on my knees in the church house, in the mouse poop, in the dirt, in all the things.

And here's what happens, though. And this is why I'm telling you the story.

Up to this point, I'm railing against God.

What is happening?

I'm railing against Pastor Josh. I'm not telling the kids I'm railing against

them, but secretly, Lolly is not happy to be in daycare business.

I hate my life. Why would this happened to me. I'm a generally nice person, too. Even-keeled.

I'm railing against it. But then this song comes on. Listen to it when you go home.

There she is, folks. In the mouse poop.

God, how could you? This song says you're the firm foundation. What is going on?

And then I realized that I'm between the rock and the hard place.

But the rock isn't there to crush me.

It wasn't there to smoke me and destroy me. And I've been punching it.

You can't punch rocks. I've been kicking it. I've been pushing it away.

I've been saying things like, this shall not come nigh this house. It'll pass over.

Steps of a good man ordered by the Lord. Get out.

Move somewhere else. But the rock is there, pushing on me until I literally

feel like I might lose my mind.

It's not every Tuesday I ask for Prozac, just in case you're wondering. But.

Circumstances didn't change by the end of that day in the little church trailer

on Tuesday, however many weeks ago. Nothing changed.

But my perspective did. Just like this Shunammite woman, it took me a little

longer than her a lot longer to get there, to embrace the rock,

to remember the rock from which I'm caught, to remember that though that I could be crushed,

I'm not abandoned, forsaken, or destroyed.

That that's the purpose of my life, to know Jesus in the hard times,

the good times, and to recognize that even in the hard times,

God has something for me.

Do you know when grapes, like old timey days, and maybe people do it for fun,

the crushing of the grapes to make wine, it didn't used to be machines.

It was real up close and personal, like a foot on a grape.

And that's how it's felt like with me. like Jesus get off my back already.

But Jesus isn't trying to smush me to bother me or to hurt me.

He's using the things in my life that are not his orchestration.

The bad things, don't misunderstand, are not God punishing me,

but he's using them for his glory and for my good because nothing is wasted with him.

But it takes a shift in our perspective.

Between a rock and a hard place doesn't mean bash the rock.

Bash the people around us, run from it, hide from it. It means embrace it.

Put that boy right on the bed in that room and leave him and find the promise maker.

Because the promise maker, when we seek him first in all of these things,

becomes the promise keeper.

That the God who gave her that boy that she didn't ask for, wasn't even willing to dare hope for,

was the one that would restore him to her and use her story to illustrate to

us the ways that God works.

Corinthians, you're going to be happy. I'm almost done. 2 Corinthians 2, 16 through 18.

Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away,

yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

For our light and momentary troubles

are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

So what do we do? We fix our eyes, not on what is seen, not on the toddlers

that drive me crazy or the house that's never clean or all the things that bother me in life.

We don't fix our eyes on those things. They're going to change.

Georgie's bothering me now, but she's going to be 18 and like making her own

life choices. that's changing.

It's so temporary, them being little.

We don't fix our eyes on those things, the lack of finances,

the lack in our health, the lack in whatever area, the friction that we have with somebody.

Those aren't the places that we focus our attention. We focus on the unseen.

We remember the rock from which we're caught.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, verse 18, but what is unseen,

since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

And then in 2 Kings 4, 36 through 37, Elisha, he's brought the boy back.

He's gone through that process of beseeching God, of laying himself prostrate,

awkwardly, risking it all.

And the boy is back. And he says this, call the Shunammite.

When she came in, he said, take your son. She fell at his feet and bowed to the ground.

Then she took her son and went out.

The story ends with resurrection.

Hopeless becoming alive again. And I want to encourage you this morning that

wherever you're at in your faith, if it's felt like a dry or a dead season,

that God, when we make room, as we sang this morning,

as we see this Shunammite woman doing, when we make room,

God only brings life.

It might not look like our authorship, our idea, our demand and plan of what God should do.

But when we let the author work in us, he becomes the finisher.

The promise maker is indeed the promise keeper.

And his promises are high and far above what we could ask.

And his ability to keep them is in ways that we don't think of or imagine.

But it requires the simple act of making room.

Just like her, she built a room for a prophet.

She made room for God to work in her life and through it. It took sacrifice.

It took wisdom, like Pastor Josh has been preaching about.

Philippians 1, 3-6 as we stand. Thank God for the praise and worship team. I love these guys.

They do such a good job.

Philippians 1, 3 through 6, I thank my God every time I remember you in all

my prayers for all of you.

Always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first

day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you,

will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

How beautiful is that? The God who starts our stories.

We don't have to fret and worry with anxiety of how to figure it out,

what to do, when to do it, how to do it, all the things.

That God didn't place us here to be aimless, hopeless, or purposeless.

He didn't place us here to crush us, abuse us. He's not that kind of God.

That he puts us here,

with a purpose. He starts us with his very breath.

That his hands start our heartbeat that's who he is that he finishes it in the way that only he can.

Know if you guys would be willing to do this this morning, but if you would

be just to come up to the altar and just make room for God in your heart and your life.

Maybe there's an area that you just kind of sat on the back burner.

You don't want to think about it that God could even do something there.

Or maybe that's how you feel about yourself even.

God can't do it here. God can't use me.

But God made you He made you live I love the V,

He made each and every one of us So unique and beautiful So different So necessary

I can't be you You can't be me We don't compete,

we elevate one another. That's awesome.

That's what family is. That's what the body of Christ is.

My sister, I love you, Sarah. It's just, I can't even help but think about it.

That's family. We're all here together.

That God has something for each and every one of us. That's church.

That we're a city on a hill, that we don't hide the light that God has placed

in our heart. Don't hide the light of what Jesus has done in you. You're not perfect.

Maybe you swear. Maybe you drink. Maybe you smoke. Maybe you're still working

through stuff. Maybe your marriage is shaky sometimes.

Maybe your kids are shifty. My grandchildren, they're savages.

But God is still working.

God still has something for me, for you.

We can't hold back. The Shunammite woman didn't shut that boy in a room or bury

him in the ground hopeless. Thank you.

Sought the promise maker. The promise maker.

He's the promise keeper. And when you find him,

whether you find him on wooden floors in the church house with mouse poop,

or here this Sunday morning, knowing that Jesus died for every single one of

us, that he loves us, that he created us.

Wherever you find him, you can make room.

You don't have to know how to pray the perfect prayers. I don't.

We just make room. Have your way, Jesus. Use my life. Take these hands.

Take this brain the way it works.

Take my Monday, my Tuesday, my Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, my Sunday.

All of it, God, for you. You gave it all for me.

Lord I just thank you for every single person here in this church I thank you

for everybody that couldn't make it this morning God I just thank you that you are the promise maker,

God I ask you to help us Lord to lift our eyes to you to your ways to your thoughts

that we wouldn't settle in doubts and complacency with what is God but that

we lift our eyes and hope for what could be in you.

Knowing, God, that it's not on us to bring it to completion,

that we don't have to work it all out, that you're the promise maker and you're the promise keeper.

God, I ask you to just touch every single heart and mind, Lord,

that there would be peace, there would be joy, there would be hope, there would be love,

there would be salvation even from you, God.

There would be miracles, signs,

wonders, God, all the things that are from you, that we are crushed.

Not forsaken. When we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place,

God, we turn to you, our rock.

We remember you, our fortress, our strength, our deliverer.

Jesus, we yield to your hand, to your working in our lives.

We thank you for your love that we are so undeserving of God we thank you for it,

Jesus name.