Shooting Your Shot: A Lesson in Bold Faith

In your place this Sunday night for our surprise Sunday night

service.

Right.

We were all expecting to be in Bethlehem, but our plane flight got

canceled, I guess.

So if you have your bibles, turn to second kings, chapter 13.

2 Kings 13 · chapter mention

Of course I'm thankful for the opportunity to preach.

I'm not thankful that it comes when pastor is sick, of course, but

I am thankful for the opportunity to preach and the opportunity

to share what the Lord's laid on my heart.

And it's something that I don't take lightly and always enjoy.

Here in the book of Second Kings, this is kind of where I've

been doing my devotions for the last few weeks or so.

I kind of do a couple reading plans and one is a bit more in depth

and a little bit more slow paced.

And that's kind of.

That's this one.

And so the teenagers may recognize where we talked a few weeks

ago about the beginning of Elisha's ministry.

Tonight we're going to be talking about the end of Elijah's

ministry, which consequently is also the end of his life.

Let's pray and then we'll jump into the message this evening.

Dear Lord, thank you for this day, Lord, thank you for the opportunity

to be here.

God, I pray that you'd be with the service tonight.

Lord, I pray that you'd be with my message.

Lord, I pray that you would give me the words to say, Lord, I

pray that you would help me to say only the things that you want

me to say, Lord, and to come clearly communicate this passage,

Lord, and what I believe you're trying to teach us through

your word.

In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.

What if you could go back 15 years?

What would you do differently?

I had a enjoyable time this afternoon just thinking about some

of the things that I might do differently if I could go back 15

years with all the knowledge that I have now.

Unfortunately, in 2008 when the housing crisis and all that happened,

I made the mistake of being 10.

But I would go back and try to find some way to buy some property.

Right.

I thought back to 2016.

I was selling solar door to door in Lancaster, California.

I do not recommend it, but we were going door to door and I was

getting paid through the cash app.

It was kind of a brand new thing at the time.

And they just implement bitcoin on there and I had the opportunity

to take my paycheck in bitcoin.

At the time, Bitcoin was 500 bucks.

They were offering me one Bitcoin a week.

I needed cash though, because I had to pay for college.

So I didn't take it.

But now I'm like, man, put college on the credit card and take

all the bitcoin I can get, right?

Think back towards all the different things that have kind of

popped up in the last 15 years.

Think of Facebook and Amazon and Google.

Man, if I could, I'd go back and buy so much Facebook, I would

have had a controlling stake and then Facebook wouldn't be worth

anything because I would have ran it straight into the ground,

right?

But we can go back and we can think, man, there are so many missed

opportunities because we just didn't know, right?

There's so many missed opportunities in our life because

we didn't expect it.

We didn't know the exact timings of maybe when this stock

would be this price and we should pull out before a big crash

or, you know, we didn't know that.

Yeah, the economy's terrible, but this is the cheapest houses we'll

ever be ever again, Right?

Like, we didn't know that sort of stuff.

So there are missed opportunities for us here.

In second kings, chapter 13, we come across the end of Elisha's

2 Kings 13 · chapter mention

life and we see a huge missed opportunity by the king of Israel.

If you're there, let's look at verse number 10.

My goal tonight is to completely and totally thoroughly

confuse you guys and then hopefully bring it back around so

we can actually get to the point of the message.

Verse number 10.

In the 30 and 7th year of Joash, king of Judah, began Jehoash

the son of Jeho Az, to reign over Israel and Samaria, and reigned

16 years.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he

departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who

made Israel sin, but he walked therein.

And the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did in his

might wherewith and he fought against Amaziah, the king of Judah.

Are they not written in the books of the Chronicles and the kings

of Israel?

And Joash slept with his fathers, and Jeroboam sat upon his

throne, and Joash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel.

I don't know what got into Israel in this particular portion

of history, but they pretty much decided that there was like

four names.

And we are just going to have variants of these names.

I don't understand it.

Right, so we're talking about Elisha with an S, and then there's

Elijah with a J.

Those are the two prophets in this time Period.

Then the kings, we have Joash, Jehoash, Jeroboam and Jeroboam ii.

So I have a chart here.

Let's show the first chart here.

Yes, this is all the kings and prophets of Israel.

All right, so yellow on the top are the kings of Israel.

So you see we have King Joram, King Jehu, who is an awesome character

if you don't know King Jehu.

Awesome King Jehu.

And then we have King Jehoash, Jehoash and Jeroboam ii.

Okay, that's going on in the northern kingdom.

Then in the southern kingdom, we have King Joash.

So guys, let's go ahead and zoom in.

I have the second chart here.

There we go.

So those are all the characters that are being talked

about here in this passage.

I told you guys, if it's not confusing, it's going to be, right?

Trying to keep who is ruling and who is going on at the same time.

So what we are talking about is the end of Elijah's life.

You see the little blue line there with the word Elijah in it?

We're talking at the very end of his life.

So Jehoash and Jehoash are kind of right there.

Same with King Jeroboam ii.

And then Joash is ruling the southern kingdom right there.

It's a lot, if you guys ever have taken a class to look at the

whole of the kings of the northern and southern kingdom.

It is political nightmare.

There's one more thing that is super confusing, but it'll help us

if we can understand it.

Now, the Bible says in verse number.

Oh, where is it?

11.

He said he did that which is evil in the sight of the Lord and

he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam.

Okay, this is not, this is not jam.

The, the Bible is referencing the OG Jeroboam who did evil in the

sight of the Lord.

And now King Jeroboam II is living up to his name.

Is everyone thoroughly confused yet?

Alright, told you guys, the politics of this are a nightmare.

So we're dealing right here with the end of Elijah's life.

Hopefully that chart helps a little bit as we are deciphering

who is talking when.

But primarily the story here is between Jehoash and.

And Joash and then Joash again, the same name, three different

variations of it.

All right, thank you guys.

In verse number 13, we see that Joash, the king of the southern

kingdom, slept with his fathers and Jeroboam sat upon his

throne.

So here we have this whole situation laying out in verse 14

the Bible says now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness, whereof

he died.

Now, I'm pretty sure the author of 2 Kings just sat down,

was like, let's see how confusing we can make this.

He is not dead yet.

The author is stating this is the sickness that he has that he

will die from.

Just so confusing whereof he died.

And Joash, the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over

his face and said, o my father, my father, the chariot of

Israel and the horsemen thereof.

So the king of Israel comes down unto the prophet, and he's crying

over King Elijah going to or King Elijah, the prophet Elijah,

who is about to die.

And he uses this really cool callback.

He says, oh, father, my father, the chariot of Israel and

the horsemen thereof.

That's actually what Elisha said to Elijah when Elijah died.

Just a cool callback just to add to the confusion on top of all

of it, right?

In case we were already confused with all the names.

So he says, hey, O Father, my father, Father, my father, the chariot

of Israel and the horsemen thereof, verse 15.

And Elijah said unto him, take bows and arrows.

And he took unto him bow and arrows.

And he said unto the king of Israel, put thine hand upon the bow.

And he put his hand upon it.

And Elijah put his hands upon the king's hands, and he said, open

the window eastward.

And he opened it.

Then Elijah said, shoot.

And he shot.

And he said, the arrow of the Lord's deliverance and the arrow

of the deliverance from Syria, for thou shalt smite the Syrians

in aphek till thou have consumed them.

I have named this message tonight, shoot your shot.

Looking out here at a row of college guys here because, you know,

that's what college is for.

It's time for you guys to go get married and all that sort of

stuff, right?

Shoot your shot.

It's kind of a colloquial term.

It's a term that's used in our culture now for kind of going after

something that you want, right?

But here we have, first off tonight, a proclamation of victory

given to the king from Elijah.

So here on his deathbed, Elijah is sick and he's dying.

And the king comes and he's weeping and he's sad and he's so

concerned over what's going to happen in Israel and what's going

to happen with the spiritual future of Israel.

And Elisha kind of has this really weird request.

And if you're familiar with the prophets, they kind of did this

sort of stuff a lot didn't they?

And he goes, there's a bow and arrow on the ground.

Makes you wonder why, right?

Like, this is a sick and dying man.

Why does he have weapons of war just laying in his room?

Best I don't know, right?

Anyway, so he goes and he picks up the bow and the arrow and

he says, okay, I got the bow and arrow.

Imagine what's going through the king's mind at this point.

Like, are you gonna ask me to shoot you?

Like, what are you?

What is going to happen, right?

And he says, open the window eastward.

So he opens the window and he goes, shoot the arrow.

And the king goes, okay, easy enough.

Hope there's no one out there, right?

So he shoots the arrow and Elijah says, and that is a symbol

of the victory that's gonna come from the Lord.

And the king is probably like, woo hoo.

Victory.

It's gonna be ours.

That's awesome.

Simple enough, right?

Simple enough request.

So we see here this proclamation of victory and it's

matched with the prophet's promise.

You see, Elijah declares God's plan for deliverance for Israel.

It's funny because God always has a plan for our lives, for deliverance,

doesn't he?

Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11 says, For I know the thoughts that

Jeremiah 29:11

I think toward you, saith the Lord.

Thoughts of people, peace, not of evil.

Have you ever been trapped or at least felt seemingly trapped,

maybe in a spot or a place in your life that you felt like there

was no other place to go yet God always has a place of deliverance,

doesn't he?

There's a time in my life that I talk about a whole lot and it really

is the time when just trying to pay for college, probably top

five, maybe, maybe even top one or two trials in my life spread

out over four years, right?

And it was something that has left such an impact in my mind because

for most of those four years, I was absolutely convinced that one

day I was going to open my mailbox and there was going to be

a check there to pay for my school.

Sure enough, that never happened, right?

But I was absolutely convinced because you hear those stories all

the time, right?

You hear like George Mueller praying on the doorstep, then orphans

have nothing to eat and the milkman just happens to crash outside.

And you're like, yeah, Lord, where's my milkman?

Right?

And you're sitting there and you're praying and you're praying

for God, for deliverance, and you have it and you're so convinced

it's going to be this specific way that God is going to do it.

Yet God's plan takes us a whole nother route, doesn't it?

And then of course, you only see that hindsight, hindsight being

20 20, we can look back and I can see God moving in every step,

in every way, in every part, every semester where I had to go

sit across from the financial dean and be like, hey, I still don't

have your money.

What can you do to help me?

I can look back and I can see God working in each and every step.

So the prophet here gives a promise to the king that there is

victory coming.

And then not only do we see the prophet's promise, but we see

the kings participation.

What an interesting story.

Elijah, sick and dying in a room somewhere, has bows and arrows

sitting on the ground in the same room.

It's very interesting to me.

They seem to happen a lot in the Old Testament, right?

A few months ago we worked through some of the earlier kings.

We walked through the life of Saul, and like three weeks in a row

we talked about how Saul grabbed a javelin and threw it at

his kid or threw it at someone else.

And I said, maybe at some point we should just stop leaving

spears within arm's reach of the king, right?

But they had weapons all over.

So there's bows and arrows here in this room.

And he tells the king to grab it and open the window and shoot

an arrow outside pretty much blindly.

I am not a bow and arrow safety instructor, nor do I think

I could actually hit a target with a bow and arrow.

But I am pretty sure on page one, line one of bow and arrow safety

is, do not shoot the bow and arrow blindly out of a window or

something to that effect.

Yet the king here is participating in this whole picture

that Elijah is setting up.

James chapter 2, verse 17 says, Even so, faith, if it hath

James 2:17

not works, is dead.

Can I tell you, this is an act of faith by the king.

Imagine the PR nightmare if that arrow had hit somebody, right?

Imagine what would happen.

So we see the proclamation of victory here by the prophet.

But number two, I want you to see the partial effort.

Let's keep reading.

Verse 17.

He said the arrow of the Lord's deliverance and the arrow

of the deliverance from Syria, for thou shalt smite the Syrians

in Aphek till thou hath consumed him.

Verse 18.

And he said, take the arrows, plural, multiple arrows, and he took

them.

And he said unto the king of Israel, smite the ground.

And he smote thrice and stayed.

How many arrows are there?

I don't know.

Actually, the Bible doesn't make it known.

However, the Bible does make it clear that there's more than three.

So the next step of instruction, he says, okay, shoot

the arrow out the window.

Boom.

That, that's your arrow of deliverance.

You're gonna have deliverance over the Syrians.

Now I want you to shoot the ground.

Remember at the time it would have been a hard dirt ground, right?

Nice compacted mud, dirt ground.

If you look at paragraph one, line like five of bow and arrow safety

is don't shoot straight at the ground beneath your feet.

So the king grabs and he says, okay.

And he shoots the ground three times with arrows.

And the Bible says, and he stayed.

Now the prophet's instructions were clear.

Smite the ground.

The assumed context would say, take every arrow that you have and

shoot it at the ground.

Yet the prophet felt the need, or the king, excuse me, felt the

need to shoot three times.

And the Bible says, and he stayed.

He stopped.

He decided, that's enough.

What an interesting story.

I want you to notice the king's hesitant faith.

His hesitant faith, you see, he only strikes the ground three

times.

And you may be sitting here, you may be arguing in your seat and

being like this sounds like a really dangerous encounter.

And it is, by the way, do not try this at home.

Is it any more dangerous to shoot six arrows than it is to shoot

three at the ground?

Is it any more of a burden?

Is it any more trouble of the king to shoot all of the arrows instead

of just doing it a couple times?

Is it any more of an inconvenience?

Is it any more or rather any less confusing to only do it a couple

times?

Or is this just laziness?

Was this just the king not understanding?

Was this the king?

What was it?

You see, he hesitated.

He didn't fully follow the command of the prophet.

He decided to stop.

So not only do we see this hesitant faith, but we see a half

hearted focus.

Does anybody out there struggle with focus?

I struggle focusing sometimes.

Not as bad as some people, but man, I really struggle focusing sometimes.

There are many times when we'll be working outside or maybe

working on a project here and I'll be working with one of my co

workers and we'll be having a conversation or I'll be telling a

story and this particular coworker will stop and completely

change the conversation to a whole nother way or a whole nother

story, a whole nother sidetrack.

And we will finish that and the conversation will go and I'll

say, so Anyways, as I was saying, and let me continue on to

finish up where I was at.

You see, focus is one of those things that's really hard for us

to have day in and day out, isn't it?

I told the teenagers this morning, the guys, at least in my

Sunday school class, this is a time of year that I get really like

self reflective over the previous year.

Does anyone else feel that way?

I asked the teenagers this morning if it was just me being weird

or me being old, and they said it was me being old.

Just kind of hoping for a little bit more support out here,

but it's okay.

And I get a little self reflective over the year.

And I think back over what could have been different in 2024,

what could have been different in 2023, what could have been different

in 2022.

And what's funny is I find myself year after year kind of saying

the same things.

Maybe I've made moderate improvements in some areas, but those

seem to be kind of counteracted by just having the same

struggles year in and year out.

I don't have the focus that I truly need to see real spiritual

victory or real advancements made.

Right.

And I feel like that's something that as Christians we struggle

with a lot anymore, is we struggle with the focus to really

look at the future and really look at what God's word is commanding

us to do and accept it wholeheartedly.

We can sit here and we can kind of poke fun at the king for

not wanting to shoot all the arrows, but the reality is that we

live our life every day in the same way.

We have commands from God's word, and yet we do what we consider

to be just enough.

And then we stay.

We hesitate, we're done.

So not only do we see the proclamation of victory, not only

do we see the king's partial effort, but I want you to notice

the power of bold faith, or rather what could have been with

the power of bold faith.

Look at verse 19.

And the man of God was wroth.

With him, Elisha was nothing if not a passionate man.

Here he is sick and dying in the bed, and he's angry with the

king.

He said he was wroth with him.

And he said, thou should have smiten five or six times.

Then hadst thou smitten Syria, till thou hast consumed it, whereas

now thou shalt smite Syria.

But thrice what could have been?

I would be willing to submit the argument.

The king probably didn't understand fully the depth of what

he was doing.

But can you imagine?

He shoots the arrow three times, and the king or Elijah goes,

he's really angry with him.

And he goes, you should have done it five or six times.

What's wrong with you?

Now, instead of actually defeating Syria, you're just gonna

see three victories.

Imagine the king sitting there being like, oops, messed that one

up.

I really messed that one up.

What could have been?

And it seems like that is a reoccurring theme with the children

of Israel over and over and over again.

They are left looking back on hindsight, on what could have been,

rather than looking back and relishing in the victory that God

hath given them.

You see, the prophet rebuked him here.

And this is a thing that we see often in Scripture.

Jesus said in Matthew 13, he said, and he did not many mighty

works there because of their unbelief, right?

Jesus, in time, saw places and areas of Scripture where he wanted

to do great and mighty and miraculous works, yet he didn't because

the people there didn't believe.

You see, the prophet here wanted to see the power of God come

down on the nation and see a complete and total victory over the

nation of Syria here.

And yet, because of the king's unbelief, because of his hesitant

faith, they're only going to see a partial victory.

We see the potential results here, but if we can zoom forward

a little bit, I want you to see God's faithfulness through all

of it.

Verse 20.

And Elisha died, and they buried him.

What a simple ending to such a miraculous life.

I'll be honest here, the next two verses, we're going to read it.

It's kind of a little side note, and I really wish there was

more to it because it's absolutely crazy.

And Elijah died and they buried him.

And the bands and the Moabites, excuse me, invaded the

land at the coming end of the year.

And it came to pass that as they were burying a man, someone

else.

Someone else who had died as they were burying a man, that, behold,

they spied a band of men, and they cast the man into the sepulcher

or the tomb of Elijah.

So they're burying this tomb for a different man who died.

And they see invaders coming, and so they take the body and they

throw it into the tomb of Elisha.

And when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elijah,

he revived and stood up on his feet.

Time out.

We're having, like, this story about God's victory and deliverance

over Israel.

And, like, casually, a man just resurrects from the Dead.

We don't know his name.

We don't know what he does.

We don't know anything else about him.

This is it.

He is dead.

They're digging a tomb.

They decide it's too much work cause there's a Vader.

So they throw him in the tomb with Elijah.

He touches his bone, he raises to life.

What a crazy week in the nation of Israel.

What did they do with him?

Did they just give him a sword and spear?

Like, ah, perfect timing.

There's someone invading.

Let's go.

You got nothing to lose.

You're already dead.

Like, what is going on here?

But look at verse number 22.

But Hazel, the king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of

Jehoash.

And the Lord was gracious unto them and had compassion unto them,

and had respect unto them because of his covenant with Abraham,

Isaac and Jacob, and would not destroy them.

Neither cast he them from his presence as yet.

So Hazel, the king of Syria died.

And Benhadad his son, reigned in his stead.

And Jehoash the son of Jehoahash took out again the hand

of Benhadad the son of Hazel, the cities which he had taken out

of the hand of Jehoash, his father, by war.

Three times did Joash beat him and recovered the cities of Israel.

What a crazy story.

It's like the story's going really, really slow.

And then we zoom forward quite a bit of history.

There's this whole interaction with Elisha and the king.

We see the king's hesitant faith, and then Elisha dies, and

then the king dies.

And then the king that they're at war with dies and both of their

sons start ruling in their place.

Now, you guys saw the chart.

It's not that much time, right?

It's not like they all reign for 40 years and then they're sons.

It wasn't that much time.

But we zoom forward and we see the promise and deliverance of God

fulfilled.

And they defeated the Syrians and they took the cities back that

they had taken from Israel.

But they defeated him three times, just as the prophet had said.

What an interesting story.

What could have been?

What would have happened if he would have shot five or six arrows?

What would have happened if he had shot the whole quill?

What could have happened if he had recognized this was God's, his

opportunity to obey the Lord and see God's blessing come down

on his nation.

How would if he had responded differently?

I wonder what the king thought for the rest of his life.

There are certain moments in your life that you kind of think

of as pivotal or more important decisions, maybe things

where your life took a drastic change, either for the better or

for the worse, based on a decision you made.

And maybe if you're like me, sometimes when you get retrospective

this time of year, you look back on some of those decisions and

you think, what could have been?

What could have been different?

What if I never got saved?

What if when I was presented with the truth of the gospel, if

I denied it, what could have happened when I met my wife, if I

would have rejected her because she asked me out?

What if.

What if when Pastor Crawford called and asked if I'd be interested

in coming work here, if I went, nah, go somewhere else, do

something else, what would my life look like?

Tell you it'd be different?

I don't think it'd be different for the better.

If you've talked with me really at all, you know that I credit

a lot of the good things in my life to my youth pastor, and I credit

a lot of the influence that he had in my life and a lot of the things

that he influenced me to do for the right thing to him.

What if when he got in my face and told me I was being dumb, which

he did often.

What if when he said that, fine, I'm never coming back here.

Don't come pick me up anymore.

Don't take me to church.

What could have been?

And I think we can all sit back here and get retrospective and

think about what could be different in our lives with the good

things we do.

But can I challenge you tonight?

What could be if we had fully obeyed the Lord?

What could be different?

I believe it was Moody.

I mentioned it this morning in my Sunday school class.

I believe it was Moody who said, the world has yet to see a

young man completely, totally devoted to the Lord.

Can I tell you this morning, this evening, we still have yet to

see a young man completely and totally devoted to the Lord.

You may say, well, what about the disciples?

Yeah, what about the disciples?

You say, well, what about Charles Spurgeon?

What about Charles Spurgeon?

He had his vices.

He had the things that he would give into.

He had the things that would hold him back from fully devoting

his life to Christ.

What could be?

What could be different?

You see, when we look back at the history of our church, when we

look back at the history, specifically, of Heritage Baptist

Church in Hazlett, Texas, I've been a member here long enough to

know that we've seen some really awesome times and We've seen

some humongous spiritual victories.

We look back at times and even sometimes, if you're like me, maybe

you're guilty of thinking back on the good old days when we would

do this and we would do that and we would do whatever.

Can I challenge you that the best days are not behind us?

God's not done working through our church yet.

God's not done working in the city of Hazlitt yet.

God's not done working with you specifically yet.

There is more out there.

There is more arrows for us to take.

There are more spiritual victories that God wants us as a

church to have, but it's fully dependent on us.

What could have been.

Growing up, we didn't camp a whole lot.

We weren't camping people.

If you're camping people, more power to you.

I thought I was a camping person and I convinced my dad to

take me.

So we went camping.

We got a tent, we got sleeping bags, we got the little grill that

every family has a little grill.

I don't know why, but we had the little grill.

So we took it, we put it in the truck, we got hot dogs, we got

lighter fluid and we went out to the woods.

We were going to go camping and my dad said, on the way home

from camping, we'll stop at McDonald's and we'll get some ice

cream.

I was young, maybe 10, 11 years old, and I was so excited for

this.

I was so excited.

I mean, it was circled on the calendar.

I waited weeks, I waited months.

I mean, I waited, couldn't sleep the night before.

This was Christmas to me.

I was going camping with my dad.

And we get up there and we got the tent set.

That's another story.

Getting the tent put up was another separate trial in my life.

In that time.

We got the tent set up and it was almost dark and it was really

windy and we hadn't eaten yet.

So dad said, alright, it's time to start the fire.

And so we struggled and we struggled and we struggled to get

that fire going.

And like any good men, we just kept using lighter fluid.

If I keep using lighter fluid, it is going to light on fire at some

point.

And so we just kept using it.

We kept doing it, kept doing it, kept doing it.

And finally we lit it.

And all of a sudden we had a fire.

And dad said, hurry, put the hot dogs on.

So I put the hot dogs on.

Dude, they seared so fast.

Next thing you know, we had black burnt hot dogs.

Ruined, ruined hot dogs.

And this is the only thing that we had brought.

Then dad said, well, it is what it is.

This is dinner, okay?

So I went to go to the truck to get the bag.

By the way, this was my responsibility.

And we ended up arguing a lot about this.

The bag full of hot dog buns and condiments.

It's my responsibility to get put in the truck.

Anyways, it was back at the house.

So I went to go open the truck and I said, dad, you forgot the hot

dog and the ketchup or the hot dog buns and the ketchup.

And it was a whole fight.

And he said, well, this is the food we have.

You wanted to go camping.

We're here now, we're eating it.

So I cried and I cried and I cried and I didn't want to eat the

hot dogs.

And so I didn't eat the hot dogs.

I went to bed hungry.

And then I realized when you go out camping, there's nothing to

do when the sun sets at 8pm so my dad goes, well, I'm going to bed.

I guess I'm going to bed.

So we got in the tent.

We didn't bring air mattresses or nothing.

So we're sleeping on the ground, and my dad, in true dad form,

falls right asleep and five minutes.

And I remember like crying on the ground because I wanted to go

to sleep.

I was hungry.

We only had burnt and ruined hot dogs.

And this is not what I thought camping would be like.

That's not what it's like on the cartoons.

And so we got up the next morning, by the way, when the sun

rises, because again, there's nothing to do.

There's no darkness.

So the sun comes up, you're up, and we get up and we say, okay,

dad, I'm ready for breakfast because I didn't eat dinner last

night.

Well, in the same bag as the hot dog buns and the ketchup and

all the condiments was the box of pop tarts we were supposed to

bring.

So we didn't have that.

And so another round of fits ensued because my dad said, well,

this is basically breakfast sausage, eat up.

And I remember I lost it.

I was so sad and I threw a fit.

And dad said, well, fine.

Do you just want to go home?

Yes, I want to go home.

Ice cream is on the way home.

Yes, I have not eaten breakfast.

I have not eaten dinner, but I will eat two McDonald's ice cream

cones, no problem.

And so we went and started the whole process of tearing down the

tent, which is almost worse than putting up the tent somehow

Rolling up the sleeping bag, which is worse than all of it because

the sleeping bag never fits back in that little baggie that they

give you.

And I'm sobbing the whole time.

I mean, this is borderline a temper tantrum.

Like I am losing it.

And come to find out, later on in life, I have this thing called

hanger.

I get hangry.

And I was definitely well within that range at that point.

And I'm losing my mind.

And we get in my dad's truck, it was a 1975 Toyota.

And we get in the truck.

I about lost it.

I about lost it.

And finally I think there was someone else at the campsite.

They gave us a jump or something.

But we started making our way back down, heading back to our house

and we come up to McDonald's and we passed right by it.

And I remember looking at my dad with the eyes of the biggest

betrayal ever known to human.

And I said, I thought we were stopping for ice cream.

And my dad said, well, maybe we should have thought about that

before we threw a fit the whole time.

Round two.

Let's go again.

Right?

If I didn't win last time, we're going to try this one again.

Now I look back on this memory, it's not a very fun one.

I don't particularly look forward to the opportunity to go

camping again.

What could have been, could have been a fun trip with me and

my dad, could have been a good memory, bonding time.

But I ruined it.

By throwing a fit at every corner, by complaining at every turn.

I ruined it.

I wonder what God wants to do with us.

I wonder what God wants to do with us as a church and as individuals.

I wonder what could be if we would just fully and wholeheartedly

devote ourselves to him.

Not just the that's good enough.

Good enough for me, but I want all.

All that God has for me.

I want it.

All that God has for our church.

I want it.

All that God has for our youth department.

I want it.

What would our church, our community, our homes look like a

year from now?

With every head bowed and every eyes closed as we stand?

We're going to sing a verse of invitation as the musicians make

their way.

Just two simple questions tonight, then we'll pray.

Are you moving forward with bold faith or are you holding back?

Are you moving forward with bold faith or are you holding back?

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, thank you for this day, Lord, thank you for the opportunity

to preach tonight.

Lord, I pray that you.

I pray that I said something that would have been of help.

Tonight.

Lord, I pray that I communicated as clearly as I could

this.

This passage, Lord, with its intricacies and its confusing names.

But, Lord, I pray that something I said would have been

help, Lord.

And I pray that you would help me as a person, Lord, as a husband,

as a dad.

Lord, I pray that you help me to want everything that you have

in my life, Lord, I pray that you help me to not be hesitant, to

not hold back, Lord.

But I pray that you'll help me to move forward with faith.

In Jesus name, I pray.

Amen.

As.