The Build Back Part 3 | The Plumb Line with Jess Schlotterbeck

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Thank you and enjoy the message.

Good morning.

We have so much to celebrate.

You guys, what an amazing weekend last weekend.

If you guys were part of any of that, thank you, thank you, thank you again.

It's so amazing.

Compassion Weekend came together.

Chris and I had this dream, this little inkling two years ago in Asheville, North Carolina

and said we could do a run, we could do a freedom run, we could do all this stuff.

And it's just God's developed that vision over the last year and a half, three, so it's

just so amazing to see it all come to fruition and just the lives that were changed, the

fun we had and just the night of worship afterwards just to celebrate what God's doing and what

God's going to continue to do in our city and in your hearts.

And so I'm just so thankful for you, for everybody that participated.

So give yourself a round of applause again.

Okay, and by the way, I'm Jess, if you don't know it, so I'm not Chris.

So I'm Jess, so you have me today for the message.

So I'm just going to get started, okay?

If you're welcoming us from your space at home, that's where we're going to get started

today.

We're going to be welcoming us all from space.

So I don't have any space theme music, so just pretend you're in space right now.

We're going to transport to space, okay?

That's where I'm going to begin our talk today.

So imagine you're a flight director, Gene Kranz, in NASA's space mission.

It is 1969 and the world is watching you as you are part of launching your team into space

and your goal is to fill John F. Kennedy's mission to land on the moon.

Oh, and you must achieve this goal before the other rival country does as well.

Tons of jet fuel, hundreds of man hours logged, plenty of planning, everything is in place,

but guess what?

Something goes wrong with your engineering and it's not right.

Your people who are already up in space are stranded and you've got to bring them home.

They've been losing oxygen and you have to call, you have called their family and they're

in danger and you need to get them home safely.

Guess what?

In this situation, failure is not an option, right?

This is the title of Gene Kranz's book about his experiences in mission control.

He talks about how every space mission, there was all these strategic moves that happened

and we thought everything was planned, but guess what?

There was always hairline adjustments that needed to be made or huge adjustments that

needed to be made to bring the astronauts home, all right?

And so failure was not an option, right?

And so this is the title of his book and this is the title of our sermon today.

And I'm going to read from you Isaiah 58, 6 through 12, it says, this is the kind of

worship God wants, true worship.

Free those who are wrongly imprisoned, lighten the burden of those who work for you, let

the oppressed go free and remove the chains that bind people.

Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless, give clothes to those who

need them.

Do not hide from relatives who need your help.

When your salvation will come like the dawn and your wounds will heal quickly, your godliness

will lead you forward and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.

Then when you call on the Lord, he will answer you, yes, I am here.

He will quickly reply.

He will remove the heavy yoke of oppression.

Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors.

Feed the hungry and help those in trouble.

And the light, then your light will shine out from the darkness and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.

The Lord will guide you continually giving water to you when you're dry and restoring

your strength.

You will be like a well watered garden, like an ever flowing spring.

Some of you will rebuild the desert, deserted ruins of your cities.

Then you will be known as the rebuilder of walls and the restorer of homes.

We people, we church, will be known as the rebuilder of walls and the restorer of homes.

That's our mission.

That's what God's caught us to do.

That's why this book of Nehemiah is so powerful because we have to learn that we are on a

mission from God to restore, rebuild and redeem our city, our lives for the kingdom of God,

right?

And so we are on mission today and we're going to talk about that mission.

And failure is not an option.

So we've been studying the book of Nehemiah and the first week Carl had an amazing message

about ownership, how we need to take ownership and step up like Nehemiah and allow us to

be used like a conduit, right?

That we're going to allow the Holy Spirit to use us for whatever God wants to fix the

walls of our city.

And he talked about worship and how worship was his wall.

Beautiful story.

And last week Chris went on to talk about when God puts us on mission, he gives us a

plan, right?

And how do we develop a vision and inspire others and how do we do the next best thing,

right?

The next best thing.

But today I get to talk about opposition.

What a fun topic.

Yes, let's let Jessica talk about opposition.

We get to do the fun inspiring things and she gets to talk about all the destruction

and all the attacks that are going to come your way.

But guess what?

Today, because I went through a lot of opposition this week and I get to share a lot of stories

with you, so we're going to look at the story of Nehemiah.

But I want to look at it with a different perspective.

So what I want you to do today is picture Nehemiah as Jesus, right?

So Jesus, he's in the presence of the king and he's distraught about his people.

He's distraught about the world.

You know, and he wants to go back and he wants to restore the walls.

He wants to rebuild your lives.

He wants to give you the key, which is God's love, right?

He wants to come.

And so I think being Nehemiah is too big of a task, but I can be Jesus' helper, right?

So we are going to partner with Jesus as he comes back and restores the walls in the story

of Nehemiah.

I want us to see ourselves as partnering with God to rebuild the walls.

You know, because our friends, our family, our community, all the walls that we see around

you, a lot of our walls have been torn down, right?

And they need, they need to be built back up.

They need to be strong.

And so we can experience God's love, God's joy, God's peace, right?

When our walls are broken down, we're easily attacked.

We're easily, things can come against us.

But we have strong walls in cities there.

They had strong walls to protect them and keep them safe.

And God wants to come in and rebuild our walls so that we're safe and we're protected and

we can protect those around us.

So our first point today is we will live life on mission.

We will live life on mission.

And I told you that our mission is to be the restorer of walls, the builder of, builder

in people's lives.

So Nehemiah 2, 17 says, but now I said to them, you know very well what trouble we are

in.

Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire.

Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and end this disgrace.

So my question is, I love to ask questions because I'm always reflecting and being a

problem solver.

My husband just loves that I ask so many questions.

And so I always want to know why, right?

I'm one of that annoying kid like why, why, why, why do we have to do this?

What do we have to do, right?

So why do we have to rebuild the walls?

If the walls are built in the first place and they seem to be good, why do we have to

rebuild them?

So from the story we know, from Nehemiah's story and that God's chosen people had abandoned

him and they decided that they could do life their own way on their own terms.

So Carl talks about them going into exile, right?

So they were destroyed, their pride, the ungodly practices.

And so that's where we find ourselves today, right?

The walls were destroyed because they thought they could do life on their own without God,

right?

How many of us, how many of us in our community of faith, how many of us in this neighborhood,

we built our lives on things that really didn't matter before Jesus, right?

We built our lives on things that didn't matter.

And so we have not built our lives true to plumb.

Have you guys ever heard the term true to plumb?

All right, so in construction or carpentry, I'm going to try to explain this.

Not a construction worker, but I kind of look like one today in my overalls, right?

So the plumb line would hang and it's a perfect vertical line, right?

So when you build your walls true to plumb, you build a perfectly straight wall.

So you think about your life and you think about the wall you built and it has to be

true to plumb so that the more weight you put on top of it, the more things that come

at it, the wall won't crumble and tear down, right?

So if you think about being to plumb, it's vertical.

And I think about our relationship with God being vertical.

And the reason I feel like our lives weren't built true to plumb is we didn't always have

God in our life, right?

We didn't have this perfect vertical relationship, right?

We built our lives on things that just were kind of worldly, right?

So Amos the prophet says, I see a plumb line in the hand of the Lord who stands by a vertical

wall.

God tells Amos that he will put a plumb line in the midst of Israel to measure their devotion

to him.

We have not built our lives perfectly vertical, just like Israel didn't build their lives

perfectly vertical, right?

For the most part, we were not built to plumb because we were influenced by our parents,

right?

We had parents who did the best they could and they tried to raise us, right?

I remember just when we had Isaac and I was 24 and I had him and you just had this baby

and you just loved them so much, but you have no idea what you're doing, right?

And you just kind of do what your parents do and you just try to do it a little better,

right?

And you're just, you don't get an instruction manual with kids.

It's not like, oh, okay, this is happening so go to B or this is happening.

You just do the best you can, right?

And so some of our lives got built like this.

Parents did the best they could, right?

We also are shaped by other factors like insecurities, fears, people that hurt us, trying to please

other people, never quite measuring up in school, being bullied, right?

We try to make sure everybody's happy around us, especially women.

We try to people please, right?

Oh, they're not happy.

I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that.

So we don't really know who we are.

So our walls get kind of shifted and twisted, right?

And then like in my life, I built my walls according to Jessica and according to what

the world said.

And then I experienced Jesus, Jesus.

I experienced his perfect love, his perfect peace, his perfect acceptance for me just

as I was.

I didn't have to change.

I didn't have to do anything.

I didn't have to be anybody.

I wasn't.

I experienced that love and suddenly my walls just came tumbling down.

The walls that I had put up for safety to keep other people out, God just exposed all

of that and said, I love you.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter who you are, what you did.

You're my child and I'm going to fight for you and I'm going to build your walls together.

And so when I experienced Jesus' love for the first time, I realized that I had been

building my life on the wrong foundation, you know, the wrong, I hadn't built it to

plum, right?

So I'm just going to talk about like, have you guys ever grow up in the seventies, the

eighties, you know, you had the old school wooden blocks, you know, wooden blocks.

You would get like, I remember in preschool, like I get my wooden blocks and I build my

houses and I had them out and then they'd always come tumbling down, right?

It was like almost impossible to build them to plum because you were basically like, okay,

I'm going to try to measure up and then your friend would come by and like kick them over

and then you're like, ah, I remember when I had kids, I had older kids and younger kids

and they, they build these amazing things and they just come tumbling down.

So I think about my life before God is like wooden blocks and then Jesus comes in and

he brings Legos, right?

He brings Legos.

Legos are cool.

He's like, let me show you how to really build.

You know, I get, you get Legos and he said, let's do this thing right.

Let's build the walls in your life right.

So Jesus comes in with Legos and Phoenix right now is into Legos, right?

We he loves to build things and create things.

So Chris and I went to Florida a couple of weeks ago and we brought him back a plane,

like he loves planes.

I didn't bring him back a spirit plane because Chris is mad at spirit right now.

So but we brought him back a Lego kit and it had pontoons.

It was a pontoon boat that he could catch.

And so he kept going, when are we going to build the plane?

When are we going to build the plane?

We're like, not yet because it was like eight plus ages, eight plus or 10 plus, because

you can't really build anything cool until you get older.

So Chris got him this plane and he was really excited about it and kept going, when are

we going to build it?

When are we going to build it?

And it's like, Phoenix, you need to have our help.

We got to build it together, buddy, because I don't think you can do this on there.

And there's like lots of little pieces and there's all these instructions.

And so finally we sat down and we built it together.

Right?

And I opened up the book, there's a lot of thousand pieces and we go to page one and

it starts with one part.

Right?

And that's what Jesus does with our life.

One part.

And then we flip the page and we go to page two.

And so I'm giving Phoenix a Lego, I'm showing him the pictures, we're working on it together,

we're discovering the pieces.

Right?

It was like a symbiotic relationship.

You know, a symbiotic relationship.

Both people need each other.

And I think about our relationship with God.

I think Jesus teaches us about God and we come into this community with God in this

symbiotic relationship where we're building our life on the kingdom of God.

We're building our life through Legos and we're creating amazing things in our life

that are going to stay together unless you're a four-year-old and you try to fly it through

the air.

Right?

But you're building life together and you're in this symbiotic relationship because you

understand that you can't do life on your own.

Right?

And it's not that God doesn't want you to, he doesn't want to help you, empower you and

all those things, but you need his strength.

You need the Holy Spirit in there.

Right?

And so that's what I think about when I think about Legos and God and building the wall

true to plum, that we need sets of Legos.

Right?

So a symbiotic relationship is a long-term interaction between two or more species that

can benefit one or both organisms.

And I think when we're in a symbiotic relationship with God, it benefits both of us.

Right?

He loves to have relationship with you.

He loves you coming in and saying, hey, I had a hard day, God, let's work this out together.

He loves his children to be close to him.

I love when Phoenix and I are able to do things together.

Right?

And that's our relationship with God.

So to build walls true to plum, we need a master builder.

Right?

So point two, here comes the opposition.

We will confront external opposition.

So Nehemiah and them start building on the walls.

Chapter three is amazing.

They're talking about all the things they're doing together, how each family is doing their

own part, and things are happening.

But guess what?

Nehemiah 4.4.

Then I prayed, hear us, O God, for we are being mocked, and may their scoffing fall

back on their own heads, and may they themselves become captives in a foreign land.

So Nehemiah and them are starting to build the walls, and all of a sudden they're getting

mocked by the people that are living in the land already.

Right?

So what are you doing?

Why are you doing this?

You shouldn't do it.

Just basically, you know when you live your life on mission, people are gonna start to

mock you.

Especially if you were before Jesus, if you were a different person, people that were

with you before are gonna say, what are you doing?

You're stupid.

Just come out to the bars with us.

Just have fun.

You're not the same person anymore.

Yes, I'm not the same person.

But I love God, and you can come with me, but they don't want to.

Right?

Right?

They mock you.

They make fun of you.

And other people don't understand all the time and it could be members of your own family,

right?

So many of you guys in this room have also been called to mission.

You've heard God call you to a certain mission, a certain thing, and you start that mission

and then opposition hits.

And I want to suggest, it's not just opposition from your own family or for your friends or

people around you, but Ephesians 6,12 says, for we are not fighting against flesh and

and blood enemies, but against unseen rulers

and authorities of the unseen world,

against mighty powers of this dark world

and against evil spirits in heavenly places.

Guess what?

We have powers fighting against us.

They don't want us to be good.

They don't want us to make a difference.

They don't want us to fight oppression, right?

The enemy loves that.

He loves you to stay in one place and to be stuck, right?

But we are fighting an unseen enemy,

so we have to realize what the attacks come

and the mocking comes, that is not the voice of God.

That is not the voice of our God.

Our God is encouraging.

Our God is positive.

Our God is not condemning in any way, right?

Nehemiah 4, 7, 3, 8 says,

"'But when Sandoval and Tobiah and the Arabs

"'and the Ammonites and the Astrodites heard

"'that the work was going ahead

"'and that the gaps in the wall of Jerusalem

"'were being repaired, they were furious.

"'They made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem

"'and throw us into confusion.'"

So we have all been verbally attacked here, right?

Everybody in this room, if you haven't been verbally attacked,

I wanna come and meet you because, right?

We've all been verbally attacked,

and the attacks keep coming, right?

They keep coming at you,

especially when you're doing things that are good.

You say, I'm gonna be a teacher and I'm gonna work

to change kids' lives and I'm gonna inspire others

and then the parents come and attack you, right?

Or I'm gonna be a police officer and I'm gonna work

and I'm gonna fight for the good of the city

and then you have to fight against the budget, right?

Or whatever you're doing, whatever God's called you into,

whatever career, you're a nurse and you're trying

and you're tired and you've made a mistake, right?

It doesn't mean it's not, and somebody attacks you

and says you're doing a bad job, right?

It's happened to all of us, right?

But that's not what God says, right?

And how do I know that we're all gonna get verbally attacked

because Jesus was verbally attacked, right?

He was verbally attacked while he was hanging on the cross.

He had people mocking him and making fun of him.

I read Matthew 27, 42 says, he saved others,

they scoff but he can't save himself.

So he is this king of Israel, is he?

Let him come down from the cross right now

and we will believe in him.

Jesus, hanging on the cross, dying for our sins,

and people didn't understand, right?

They didn't understand, they saw the worldly perspective,

right, they didn't see what God was doing.

They didn't see what Jesus was doing.

He was tearing down the gates of hell

so we could have a relationship with God.

He was living life on mission and he was verbally

and physically attacked, right?

We need to, when we're being verbally attacked,

we need to put on our kingdom glasses, right?

We need to take and get a different perspective, right?

We need to get a divine perspective.

So I always just pretend you're putting on your glasses now

and say no, I'm not gonna look at this

through my worldly eyes,

I'm gonna look at it through my heavenly eyes.

And God, give me perspective on this.

Why is this person coming at me?

Why are they so angry, right?

And God will show you how to pray, how to fight,

how to do your battles, right?

Name calling and mockery have the power to destroy a dream

if we give them power, if we give them power, right?

Many people have stopped doing what God has called them to do

because somebody didn't believe in them, right?

So why do you think the attackers in the story

were so furious, so angry?

Does anybody know?

You think they could have been jealous?

Have you ever been attacked by somebody

who is jealous of you, right?

So in the story, some of these attackers,

they're already living in the land

and they didn't restore the walls.

They just let them lay there, right?

They're laying there, people are attacking,

they're jealous of what's going on,

they're jealous that Nehemiah has a vision,

a plan from God and he's making progress, right?

They're jealous, they're afraid, they're scared,

they don't want things to change, they've got the power,

right?

Whenever you change things and people in power,

they can get scared because they're like,

wait, we've got power, we've got control of people now

and things are changing.

He's fighting for their press,

he's building walls around everybody's home,

everybody's gonna be protected, right?

So people can be scared, they can feel this shift in power,

your family can be scared

because they just liked you the way you were,

even though they didn't, right?

People like to keep power, right?

People like to keep power.

Nehemiah 412 says, the Jews who lived near the enemy came

and told us again and again,

they will come from all directions and attack us.

So they have the verbal attacks, right?

The verbal abuse, but now physical attacks, right?

When the enemy can't stop you verbally,

he tries to attack you physically, right?

This week I've been totally sick all week.

It might have been that I wore myself down last week,

but I think I was kind of sick last week,

but all week I'm just sick.

And whenever there's an event that comes,

usually my dog gets sick, my kid gets sick,

our pipes break in the basement, something happens, right?

Because the enemy wants to do a physical thing

to take your eyes off the spiritual thing

that you're doing, right?

As soon as you sign up to teach,

as soon as you say, yeah, I'm gonna teach, guess what?

The next week your car's gonna break, right?

I tell people that, your kids are gonna be sick, you know?

You're gonna, something's gonna happen, right?

Because the enemy doesn't want us to move forward

in what God's called us to do.

He doesn't want us to see our purpose

and how we can have, we can move forward in God, right?

He wants us to stay stuck.

So you're gonna have physical attacks.

When we were building this church, right?

We were building this church,

it felt like we were going up,

I think I've explained this before,

it felt like we were going uphill, right?

We were riding a bike and we were going nowhere.

Like literally I'm pedaling like this, right?

But the enemy attacked my kids, my kids ended up sick.

You know, people that I loved who were in relationship

with me attacked me, right?

Things happen because the enemy did not want this church

to be built.

And when I looked at it through my natural eyes,

it overwhelmed me, but when I looked at it

through my spiritual eyes, I said, okay,

God's gonna do something here.

And now can you pray and can you support me

because this is hard, right?

It's hard, right?

So it doesn't stop with just the external opposition.

So whenever I get sick, whenever I get down,

then we will contend with internal opposition, point three.

We will contend with internal opposition.

So not only do they have people attacking them

from without, now we'll read in Nehemiah 410,

then the people of Judah began to complain.

The workers are getting tired

and there's so much rubble to be moved

and we will never be able to build the walls by ourselves.

Complaining, arguing, grumbling, right?

It's so frustrating as a parent,

you're getting ready for vacation

or you're trying to get your kids on vacation

and they start fighting and bickering with each other,

right, how long are we gonna get there?

I can't believe I have to pack, I can't believe this.

Where am I gonna sleep?

Oh, my sister stinks, oh, they hit me.

I have to sit there, I can't, seriously,

we're on mission for vacation, guys.

Like, can we not be happy, right?

Everything, grumbling and complaining,

it just deflates you, right?

It's like, okay, I really wanna go on vacation,

but not really, right?

How much longer?

How much longer, I have to go to the bathroom.

Oh, mom, it's in my face, you know, it's just crazy.

But can you imagine, you're building a wall with people

and all of a sudden they said, oh, mm, I'm tired now,

I don't wanna work now, or oh, this happened at my house,

I gotta go home, right?

Arguing, grumbling and complaining.

You know, I've been on teams, you know,

I've been to coaches on teams, and you know what?

Teams that don't like each other don't win, right?

Teams that attack each other

and pick little bitty things out at each other

and say, she said that and she said that

and she did this and she did that.

Guess what, they're never gonna win

because they can't come together

and accept each other's differences

and come together as a team, right?

And I feel like sometimes that's us as the body of Christ.

We wanna point out everybody's faults,

everybody's failures, everybody's shortcomings,

but can we just say we're all on Team Jesus, people, right?

We're all in this together and we're better together

because we have strength in numbers

and God needs every single one of us

on every part of this wall, around this community,

we need every single church and every single community

that's building up this nation to work together

so that Hagerstown has changed, this Tri-State area's changed

and our country has changed for God's glory, right?

The political scene, we need to stop arguing

and bickering with each other

and we need to solve problems for the people, right?

Right, I love, I love, I love our country,

but we need to get off of ourselves

and get on like how can we get along and work together,

right, we need to work together to move forward.

We need to stop grumbling, arguing and complaining

and acting like little children

and say okay, God's given us a bigger vision here.

It might not be the way I wanna do it,

it might not be the person I elected

but God's given me a bigger vision here, right?

And I'm gonna fight for justice, right?

We only move forward when we all move together in unity.

So what about the internal struggle

that comes within when we build back?

So this week, I wanna talk a little

about the internal struggle.

So people are grumbling, we're complaining,

but I don't know about you, but when I get sick,

I kinda get in a bad mood.

Sick, tired or hangry, I get really hangry.

I really love food and if I'm low on my blood sugar,

just make me eat before you talk to me

because you might not like me afterwards.

I'm like, what I mean to you is probably hangry,

but anyway, so this week we went to the

National Air and Space Museum with Phoenix.

Chris and I took a field trip down there

to see all the big planes and the, it's crazy, it's amazing,

but I found myself staring at a case with clothes in it.

Yeah, out of all those big fighter jets

and all the airplanes, I was staring at this case

and I was looking at these two sets of clothes.

And when I went closer, I looked at it

and it was the clothes we wear for prisoners of war.

So in Vietnam, they would assign clothes

to people that were prisoners of war.

And I started thinking about the heartache

and how sometimes in our life we become prisoners of war

and all the people that fight for us and for our country

and have been locked away and isolated.

They said lots of times they were pilots that came down

and they're in this prisoner of war camp

and they're by themselves and they have to wear these clothes

that the enemy has given them.

Isn't it interesting how we have to put on clothes

to define us as prisoners of war?

And I saw that another set of clothes,

so they were very Viet Cong, very Vietnamese clothes,

and then there was another set of clothes

that prisoners of war would leave and go home in.

They were their freedom clothes.

And they were a jacket, a khaki pants, a shirt,

but just the differences in the two sets of clothes

and how we get defined of what we wear.

You're a prisoner because you're wearing this,

you're free because you're wearing this.

You're a slave because you've been in this battle,

but you're free now.

Just change your clothes and it's gonna be all good.

And I thought about the mental struggle

that prisoners of war face going home,

trying to put on these normal American clothes

and walk into their homes,

and they've been through all that pain and hardship.

And I thought about you guys and I thought about

what clothes are you wearing right now?

Like if I could look at you, not on the outside,

but if I could look in your internal,

and I could look in your heart,

are you still prisoners in your heart?

Are you still held back by shame or guilt

or something that you've been through?

And I thought about myself this week.

I was wearing prison clothes for most of the week.

I was not in a good mood.

I was not believing what God said.

I was down, I was defeated, right?

And I chose to wrap myself in this prison outfit

and not think of myself as free and forgiven

and full of the Holy Spirit, right?

So I found myself, so the problem we face in our minds

is we just have done, so let me say this again.

See the problem you and I face in our minds

is we haven't just done something wrong,

we are something wrong, right?

When we do something, when we make a mistake

or we're in sin, we feel like we are the sin, right?

We are the bad choice, we are the mistake,

but we're not, right?

We've just done something wrong,

but we wanna put it on ourself, I am something wrong, right?

Examples, I will include some examples

from my own life this week, right?

I don't love myself.

I can't believe I said that again.

I can't believe I did that again.

I'm no good.

Nobody cares about me.

Why would they care about me anyway?

I'm ugly, I'm broken, I'm not enough.

I'm not strong enough, I'm not brave enough,

I'm not smart enough, I'm not kind enough,

I'm not enough, right?

Those are just things that go on in our mind

and in my mind, maybe I'm just crazy, I always have that,

on a daily basis, right?

If we allow us to wear the prison clothes,

if we allow us to believe what the enemy says, right?

And do you know what I have to say

to all the I'm not enoughs?

That's enough.

That's not what God says about me.

God says you're loved, God says you're healed,

God says you're more than enough

because he is more than enough.

He is more than enough, right?

And I've gotta believe what God says about me.

I've gotta believe what Father God wants me to hear,

not what my mind wants to say about me, right?

I'm not the problem, right?

Sin is the problem, the broken world is the problem,

but I need to believe what Jesus says about me.

Point four, we will combat oppression and discrimination

within our own walls.

So they're building the walls,

they're going through all this kind of oppression,

I mean all this kind of attacks, right?

Opposition.

And then Nehemiah, so they're getting through that,

they're developing a plan, but then Nehemiah finds out

in Nehemiah five about oppression and discrimination

in his community, it says.

About this time, some of the men and their wives

raised a cry of protest against their fellow Jews.

They were saying, we have such large families

and we need more food to survive.

Others said we have mortgaged our fields,

our vineyards and homes to get food during the famine.

And others said we had to borrow money on our fields

and vineyards to pay our taxes.

We belong to the same family as those who are wealthy

and our children are just like theirs,

yet we must sell our children into slavery

just to get enough money to live.

We have already sold some of our daughters

and we are helpless to do anything about it.

For our fields and vineyards are already mortgaged to others.

So there was oppression and discrimination

within their community, so basically,

some of the people were extending loans

to the other people and they were so poor

they couldn't pay them back with all the interest, right?

Last weekend we had our first Freedom Run

and Raise Money for Compassion.

You guys heard about it on the video, right?

We sponsored children in Kenya and El Salvador, right?

And some of you guys asked, why Compassion?

Why that organization?

What are we picking them for?

What's that have to do with freedom?

What's that have to do with sex trafficking

and freeing people from?

So I wanted to explain to you,

Compassion's mission is releasing children

from poverty in Jesus' name, right?

And the number one reason that children are trafficked

and exploited and enslaved is poverty.

It's poverty.

It's poverty.

It's the same back then as it is today.

Children are trafficked and enslaved because poverty.

Parents sell their children or give their children away

because they hope for a better life for them

because they can't afford to pay for them to eat, right?

Poverty is what the trap is.

Poverty is what the enemy uses against us.

And the beautiful thing about Compassion

is it combats the problem by not only feeding the children

and providing clothes for the children,

but bringing them into a community of faith, right?

Bringing them into church service every Saturday

and teaching them about Jesus,

providing them spiritual health, right?

They're all connected to church.

So they not only feed them,

they bring them into a community

and they equip them spiritually.

They equip them educationally.

They educate them on how not to get trafficked,

what wisdom to use.

They give them dreams.

They have trade schools.

They help their moms find jobs.

Several, when I was in Kenya,

several of the moms worked at the center.

They were the cooks.

They had little businesses

that they started out of Compassion, right?

They were empowering the moms of the community

because in Kenya there was,

you can marry multiple wives, right?

So they're empowering the wives

to bring ownership to the home.

I met a widow who had five kids

and she just showed me how she had a job

and she had peace.

She had a new home because of Compassion, right?

And life was still hard, but they gave her hope, right?

And you are able to speak hope into one child's life,

their mental health.

You can tell them they're worth it.

You can tell them they're loved, that God loves them.

They can be seen by you

because it takes a village to raise children, right?

And you have one kid.

So you can say, okay, I know the world's a crazy place.

I know there's a lot going on.

I know there's evil out there,

but I'm able to speak into Mercy's life.

Mercy's my kid, right?

I'm able to speak into her life

and tell her how much God loves her

and ask her what her dreams are

and what she wants to do in the future, right?

I'm able to speak life into her.

And that's what we need to do

as a community of faith as well.

Speak life against poverty.

Because guess what?

We're all in a poverty spirit.

We suffer with emotional poverty, relational poverty.

We're not connected to God first

and we're not connected to other people, right?

We feel empty inside.

We feed it with food.

We feed it with drugs.

We feed it with whatever will cope the pain

because we're in a poverty-like state, right?

And families are increasingly becoming more disconnected.

We have connected our children to a social experiment

called smartphones, right?

And so what we've done is

we've not only been disconnected ourselves,

we said, we love you so much, kid.

You can have this phone that costs more than I can make

and I have to pay a bill that is more than I can afford,

but this is how I'm gonna show you my love.

And then they get connected

and they believe what the phone tells them.

They believe what Instagram tells them.

They believe what TikTok tells them.

I don't know how many arguments I got with my kids.

Like, that is not the truth.

I remember Isaac had a friend as a little kid.

He watched TV and he said,

he told me about Superman and this villain.

And he goes, you know what?

TV lied to me again.

It's not real.

Superman didn't defeat Joker.

He's still out there, you know?

So, but it's the same thing with our phones.

Our kids believe what they're fed.

They believe their beauty lies in these pictures,

these airbrushed people or what they have to do, right?

We've given them this thing to say here.

And you know, I'm reading a book, I'm not done it yet,

but it's called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.

And the author talks about when we,

the number one reason we have anxiety, depression, suicide,

all those rates have skyrocketed in our kids

since we've given them the smartphone.

And it's not just in America, it's all over the world.

All over the world, kids are choosing to believe

what the phone tells them about them, right?

Choosing, the boys are getting addicted to games and porn

and the girls are addicted to being coming beautiful

and what the internet says about them, right?

So we're losing our kids to a smartphone, right?

So it's emotional poverty.

They're not connecting with you

and they're not connecting with me, right?

I literally have to go to my teenager's district

and put their phones down, right?

Chris was frustrated the other day.

We went, we were at a game and the first thing our daughter

does, she's probably gonna kill me for this example,

but you know, we go over to say hi to her

and she's picking up her phone

and she's answering a text, right?

Whatever, but it was like just the fact

that we're there to support you

and she picks up the phone, right?

Same thing.

So we all have this poverty spirit

and we always feel like we need more.

Point five, we will withstand given

that we do not stand alone.

We will withstand, we will withstand the mission

given that we do not stand alone.

Nehemiah four, eight through nine says,

they all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem

to throw us into confusion, but we prayed to our God

and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves.

So what they did is they were coming against them,

but they became fearful.

I'm trying to read what they said.

They got dressed up in bunny costumes and hid in the cave.

No, it says they made plans to come and fight us

to throw us into confusion, but we prayed, right?

Nehemiah, our Jesus type figure, right?

He prayed and sought God.

He knew the attacks were coming.

Oh, do you guys, anybody have little kids

and they watch these cartoons like Paul Patrol or whatever?

This is a side note.

I'll probably get off course here,

but I hate it when I'm watching Paul Patrol

and there's this huge problem

and the train's coming into town and all of a sudden

they're like, okay, calling all Paul Patrol,

calling all Paul Patrol, and they come in

and they said, what's our plan?

And they sit down and they jot a plan

and they make a plan and they're like, okay,

you go here, you go here, you go here,

but they take this time to plan.

And I'm like, that's annoying.

Go and save the world.

You're gonna be hit by a train.

But they're teaching our kids that you need to stop,

you need to pause, you need to pray,

and you need to make a plan, right?

And so that's what they did.

And we also know that if we don't have God on our side,

they knew, Nehemiah knew, hey, I've got God behind me, right?

And if God's on my side, I'm gonna win.

So we know if we're fighting against injustice,

we know God hates injustice and God is on our side

and we're gonna win.

So Nehemiah, God gives them this plan, Nehemiah 4.13,

he says, so I placed armed guards

behind the lowest parts of the wall and the exposed areas.

I stationed the people to stand guard

by families armed with swords and spears and bows.

I love this example.

They're all fighting together.

They've got their equipment in one hand.

The families are standing together, right?

I was, it was so powerful in the worship night this weekend

when we saw all the kids and everybody worshiping together.

We're all gonna worship together.

You know, it's just kids worshiping and dancing

and singing and families doing it together.

That's how we fight our battles, right?

Together as families, right?

And even if it's not your physical family,

it's your church family, right?

Next thing they did, Nehemiah 4.23,

it says, during this time, none of us,

not I nor my relatives nor my servants

nor the guards who were with me took off our clothes.

We carried our weapons with us at all times,

even when we went for water.

They knew what their weapons were.

I say we need to stay dressed in the armor of God, right?

We have shoes of the gospel of peace.

We have the sword of the spirit, right?

We have the Bible, right?

And we forget that we need to stay dressed in God's armor

all the time, all the time.

We have enemies, if we are living life on mission,

we need to expect the attack, right?

We need to expect that the enemy's gonna come at us

and teach us lies.

We need to know as husbands and wife

that we're gonna start attacking each other

because the enemy wants that, right?

We know our kids are gonna start to attack us.

We know all that stuff is gonna happen

because God doesn't want us, I mean,

God wants us united, but the enemy wants us divided, right?

God wants us united, but the enemy wants us divided, right?

And so when I was weak this week,

when I was weak this week, that's kinda funny, anyway.

When I was not feeling my strongest this week,

I reached out to people in my community.

I reached out to lots of you and said,

please pray for me, I'm just struggling

and I'm not doing well, and people came back

with all these prayers and all this support.

When you're not doing well, if you're struggling

or if you're hurting, reach out to somebody

in the community of faith.

We'll pray for you, we'll support you.

We'll get you ice cream, I don't know, whatever,

unless you're lactose intolerant.

And we'll get you coffee, we always have coffee, right?

Sit down with coffee, you know?

And even I reach out and I pray for people,

people that are new to the community of faith,

and I sent out a text this week, sent out an email,

and I was praying for people,

and when I emailed the one lady back,

I said, you know what, could you please pray for me?

I prayed for her and her family, I said,

could you please pray for me?

I'm supposed to speak this week

and I'm just feeling under attack.

And she did, she emailed me back this huge,

but it's like we need, as leaders,

we need to ask for that, right?

Sometimes you're leading a group or you're on a mission

and you feel like everybody's looking to you,

but you need to get support from the people around you,

right, you need to ask for help.

Our marriage course this week, we had multiple couples

that had been in the marriage course before

come back and help and it was so nice

to be able to serve together.

It was so fun and it was not as exhausting

and I even got to wear a dress and look cute,

so that was good.

And this is what Nehemiah did about the oppression.

Nehemiah 5, 9 through 11, he said,

then I press further, what you're doing is not right.

Should you not walk in the fear of our God

in order to avoid being mocked by the enemy nations,

I myself, as well as my brothers and workers,

have been lending the people money and grain.

Now let us stop this business of charging interest.

You must restore their fields, vineyards,

olive groves and home to them this very day

and repay the interest you charge when you lent them

money, grain, new wine and olive oil.

We can stand up for injustice

because we are not fighting alone.

God hates injustice and he is on our side.

Nehemiah, what he had to do was he had to tell the people,

you're not right here.

Sometimes in our lives we have to stand up and say,

this is not right.

And what did he do?

He stood up with the power of God,

with the power of God behind him and the people changed.

He said, you're right.

We're not treating our brothers and sisters correctly.

As parents, I do that to my kids all the time.

Say, stop it, that's not kind.

You don't say that to your brother.

You don't say that to your sister.

We are a family, we don't speak negative to each other.

We encourage one another.

You as a parent, you have the power in your home

to tell your kids to be quiet and to be kind.

Because if we're not kind to each other,

we're not kind in our own house,

how are we gonna be kind to the people around us?

And so Nehemiah does this, he stands up

and the people change.

They change.

And God was with him and God was on his side.

All right, so that's all the oppression.

So how do we counteract the oppression and build back?

All right, I'm gonna go through this quickly, guys.

You ready?

Okay, pause.

Remember whose you are, whose you are.

Kev wanted me to change that in spell check today.

I am covered by the armor of love.

You are God's child.

You are not fighting alone.

You are not in this by yourself.

Remember whose you are.

Second Samuel 22 through four said,

the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my savior.

My God is my rock and whom I find protection.

He is my shield and the power that saves me.

He is my place of safety.

He is my refuge, my savior,

the one who saves me from violence.

I called on the Lord who is worthy of praise

and he saved me from my enemies.

I am God's child.

He will save me, he will protect me,

he will fight for me.

Romans eight, 35 through 39.

Can anything ever separate us from the love of God?

Does it mean he no longer loves us

if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted

or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death?

As scriptures say, for your sake we are killed every day.

We are being slaughtered like sheep.

No, no.

Despite all these things,

overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us.

I am convinced that nothing

can ever separate us from God's love.

Neither death nor life nor angels nor demons

nor our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow,

not even the powers of hell

can separate us from God's love.

No power in the sky above or the earth below,

indeed nothing in all creation

will ever be able to separate you from the love of God

which is in Christ Jesus our Lord

and that is our promise, right?

Pause, remember whose you are.

Two, pray, remember who you are.

I am powerful because Christ lives in me.

I think we all, I'm borrowing this from somebody,

but I think we all need to get off Facebook

and get our face in the real book, right?

God's word, right?

And then we will know who we truly are, right?

Right, we need to get off Facebook.

We need to know who we truly are in Christ

and get our answers from his book, right?

Whenever I get on Facebook, I'm approaching 50 now,

all I get is like things saying

I'm gonna have saggy boobs.

My gut's gonna grow,

so I need to do these weird wall exercises, right?

I need to do all these crazy dinner hacks.

I don't know, it's just all this crazy stuff

that I don't need because I wanna believe

what God says about me.

I am powerful because Christ lives in me.

I am beautiful because I'm God's chosen creation.

I am not defined by the world's standard of beauty.

I work for God, I work for the kingdom.

I am powerful, I am loved,

and I'm whole and complete in him

because guess what, he is more than enough, right?

Second Corinthians 12, nine through 10 says,

my grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness,

so now I'm glad to boast about my weaknesses

so that the power of Christ can work through me.

That is why I take pleasure in my weaknesses.

That's why I can tell you.

You know what, I had a rough week.

I was wearing my prison clothes this week.

Now I'm wearing my overalls, right?

For when I am weak, he is strong, right?

When I am weak, he is strong.

When I am humble and I let my pride get out of the way,

right, there's strength in humility, people.

Isaiah 40, 28 through 31 says,

the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the earth.

He never grows weak or weary.

No one can measure the depths of his understanding.

He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless.

Even youths will become weak and tired

and young men will fall in exhaustion,

but those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles.

They will run and not grow weary.

They will walk and not faint.

That's what the word tells me.

That's who I am in Jesus because he lives in me.

God is good and he lives in me.

Therefore, I am good.

Point three, proceed.

Whatever God's called you to, pause, pray,

and then you might have to adjust,

like the mission to control, right?

You might have to adjust.

You might have to change plans a little, right?

But then you proceed on your calling, on your mission.

Remember, you're in a community of faith.

You have others around you.

We will not let persecution persuade us to fear.

Just because you're persecuted,

you will not let persecution persuade you to fear, right?

Galatians 6, 10 says, therefore,

as we have the opportunity to let us do good to all people,

especially those who belong to the family of believers,

we are called as the family of believers

to support and encourage and care for each other.

Together, let's get on mission together, people, right?

Romans 15, 55 says, may the God,

actually, Romans 15, 55 says,

may the God who gives endurance and encouragement

give you the same attitude and mind

towards each other that Christ Jesus had,

so that with one mind and one voice,

you may glorify God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Amen, amen.

So those are the three easy steps

when you're becoming under attack.

But I want you guys, one other thing I do is I worship.

I worship, and I wonder if you guys will just stand

with me today and just worship with me.

We're just gonna allow the Holy Spirit to come

and fill us.

If you've never experienced the presence of God,

just allow him, as you're singing this right now,

just allow, there's freedom here.

There's freedom, okay?

And I'm gonna sing this,

and you guys are gonna help me, right?

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

This is how I fight my battles.

This is how I fight my battles.

This is how I fight my battles.

This is how I fight my battles.

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

Come Holy Spirit.

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

More God.

It may look like I'm surrounded,

but I'm surrounded by you.

This is how I fight my battles.

Thank you, Jesus.

I'm fighting my battles.

That's right, that's right.

This is how I fight my battles.

Thank you, Jesus.

This is how I fight my battles.

And as we were singing that,

I just saw a picture of you guys,

people looking and just seeing that they're self-surrounded,

but then seeing that we're up on the hill, right?

And God's fighting for us.

We have a whole army behind us.

We're not alone.

If you turn around and you look at your back,

God's got your back, but we've got your back.

So anybody that has experienced opposition this week,

we've got your back.

God's got your back.

There's no impossible.

I believe that you are working now.

Pour it out.

Oh, pour it out.