Replay | Say Yes with Sharon Meade

Welcome to Hub City Vineyard.

To get connected or to give online, go to hcv.church or give.htv.church.

If at any point during this message you feel called to make a change in your life, text

change me to 970-00.

Thank you and enjoy the message.

This is Sharon Mead everybody.

She is joining us from Vineyard Community Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I'm a little jealous.

Many of you know I love the beach and wanted to plant there, but God had other plans.

We ended up here.

I mean really in this place.

But anyway, Sharon and Andy have been our regional leaders in the vineyard for the last

10 years.

They are our specialized regional leaders and they are just strong impactful leaders

that have been a great job leading the vineyard and leading the Mid-Atlantic region.

She has just got something special for all of you this morning.

This series is just, I'm just excited about this series.

It's just going to be a great month of March as we dive into the Bible and find those women

that said yes.

Amen?

Amen.

Alright Sharon, it's all yours.

Thank you.

Alright guys.

Well, I do want to say hi from Virginia Beach.

While it might be warm for you, I've got my boots on.

I was thinking about putting my coat back on.

Right?

It's a little chilly for me, but it's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

I love my drive up here.

I want to encourage you because I really think that, yeah, you have some of the most just

beloved pastors, right?

And Chris and Jess, they're very special, but it's not just them, it's their children.

I'm going to tell you, down in Virginia Beach, we love the children, their children when

they come in, right?

And so we so enjoy them.

And I want to tell you what a gem you have.

Their example to be a passion, you know, and just to care for the community is huge.

It's unmatched in my opinion, right?

And so make sure you take good care of them, alright?

Or we'll be having them down in Virginia Beach.

No.

That's not true.

They wouldn't leave you.

They love you so very much.

Alright.

Well, it is my practice to always like to open in prayer, okay?

And so if you bow your heads, I'm going to just take just a few moments and invite the

Holy Spirit, which is God's presence, to even come more than it is now.

Yes, Father.

Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.

Yes, Lord.

I hear you.

You know, every hair on every head that walked in here.

That says He's well acquainted with you.

Ah.

And He has brought you, I see that He's brought you in for a moment such as this because He

wants to talk to you.

He wants your life to change.

And it's not because I have any special skills, but because He loves you.

So Holy Spirit, I ask that you would pull every wall, Father, that you would pull it

down.

That you would cause nothing to be erected before you and Him, you and her, you and them,

Lord.

That your Spirit might go in and hit its target.

I thank you, Jesus.

I thank you for your love and your mercy.

And I thank you that you'll take this humble message and you'll use it, Father.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Okay, well I am blessed and honored to open up your series.

She said yes, right?

I'm very honored that they asked me to do that.

And when I was praying for you on one of our Saturday prayer services we had, I was sitting

there and going through my stuff and then I brought up Hubb sitting.

I said, well, what do they need to hear about, Lord?

And he said, I want you to be speaking on Mary.

I said, Mary?

Mary?

And he goes, Mother of Jesus?

And I was like, Lord, it's not Christmas, right?

So we're all familiar with that story, you know, the Mother of Jesus, because it gets

recounted all the time, doesn't it?

At Christmas.

So we're all kind of familiar with that and we give her a nod.

But you see, she deserves more than a nod, right?

She's probably one of the most powerful women in the Bible.

And she has a lot to say to us.

I also think she's the most misunderstood woman, okay?

Why?

Because I think tradition has gotten a hold of her and in certain religious circles they

have elevated her up to be like a god, right?

That she's equal with Jesus.

And the scriptures don't teach that.

And matter of fact, I think if Mary were here today, she would tell you, she would tell

you that she herself needs a savior.

She's not a god.

Actually, she's a very ordinary lady.

She's an ordinary woman that had extraordinary things happen when she said yes to God.

And so she is so worthy of us looking to her, right?

And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna try to humanize her for you because I know people

lift her up and make her out to be this glorious human being and she is.

But it gets lost.

She's so human like us.

Matter of fact, when the angel came and talked to Mary, right?

Mary was just a little 14-year-old girl, right?

When the angel first appeared to her, that's what the historians tell us, about 14.

And so when he came to her, right, to talk to her, he said, you can remember a story

where the angel comes in, you can see the angel comes in and says, hey, Mary.

Now that would be enough to scare most of us, right?

But hey, Mary, I'm here.

I got some good news for you.

You're gonna get pregnant with God's son.

You know?

It's like, whoa.

Mary's like, what?

That's the plan for my life?

Right?

And so all of a sudden, it hits her and, you know, and I'm thinking that she's there going,

wow, I'm gonna tell people I'm pregnant, no husband, and it's God's son.

They're gonna say I'm cray-cray.

That's my paraphrase.

I am crazy, right?

And so you can just see that.

But here you go, guys.

Out of the response that Mary gave, right, the way she responded to the angel and then

how she conducted her life, she has actually made a pathway for you and I, a pathway to

be able to understand how she did her life that we could follow in her example.

So she has a lot to say to us, and she wants us to understand that these, what we call

God moments will come into our lives, and she wants us to take advantage of those.

Now what are God moments?

God moments are just the Holy Spirit in breaking, happening.

You know, the Holy Spirit is the spiritual aspect, and it in breaks into the physical

world, it in breaks into our world, all right?

And so Mary wants us to understand that this stuff is going on all the time.

The Holy Spirit has given us direction.

He was in here talking to some of you when we were worshiping, right?

And so he's talking a lot more than we're listening, right?

But he wants us to move for the extraordinary, to come out of the ordinary and go into the

extraordinary, right?

So that requires us to allow him to work in our lives.

And so today we're going to take, and I'm going to show you just a couple of simple

things that Mary did that impacted her life and can impact ours.

Okay?

So pull out your outline.

First thing, she said yes when her God moment came, when she says to us, they often seem

impossible.

They often seem impossible, right?

You know, I would go beyond that.

They're not just impossible.

They're like scary.

They are, they're frightening and they're awkward and you just, you know, you just can't

conceive them in your brain.

Your brain just doesn't want to compute that this is happening, you know, when you hear

things that God will talk to you or move on you.

And so we see the first thing is when Mary had her first encounter, her God encounter,

I want you to see what happens here.

It's in Luke 1, 31 through 34.

It says this, you will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call him Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the son of the most high.

The Lord God gave him the throne of his father David and he will reign over Jacob's descendants

forever.

His kingdom will never end.

I like this part.

How will this be, Mary asked the angels since I am a virgin.

Here's what I think is funny, right?

She gets this pronouncement and it's right.

And so I love this because she only goes to grab the thing she knows, right?

And so she talks to him, she goes, Hey, angel, just in case she didn't know, you have to

have sex with somebody to get pregnant.

Not me, right?

So she's like trying to correct the angel because in her mind, nothing has prepared

her for this moment.

Right?

So you get this pronunciation of this great thing that God wants to do and she's like

struggling with it, right?

You know, the human mind cannot understand it.

She didn't even get to the part that's going to be God's son, right?

She's just stuck with, Hey, you can't get pregnant that way.

Right?

And so with us, I think it's true.

You know, when God gives us something and we can't figure it out in our minds, right?

Our mind can't comprehend it, right?

We begin to push back on God and we're like, wait a minute, God, you know, this can't happen.

I see it over and over and over again in my church.

When I'm working with people, you know, I can sense a God moment happening, right?

And I'm like, Oh, this is so cool.

And then people will turn to me and they'll be talking to me and say, Hey, I don't understand

that.

If I can't understand it up here in this brain, then I'm not jumping, right?

I'm not going to jump.

And it could be when salvation is offered to them, right?

And they're in a dark place and God's calling them out.

It's like, I don't want, I got to understand it all up here.

Right?

Or we're talking about how God wants us to be with our bodies, what he wants us to do

with our bodies, right?

Or how he wants, you know, us to handle his finances.

When any time a person can't understand from here, a reasoning type person might, they're

going to go, um, I'm going to push away.

No, thank you.

No, thank you.

I don't want that.

And I always give, I always draw back, I'm pretty gentle girl for the most part.

Uh, but there is a part that isn't anyway.

So I'll step back and go, okay, then let's see how that works out for you.

Right?

Because I know that they'll never encounter God's fullness of what God has for them.

If they try to make everything make sense in their brain, it's like you take the God

of the cosmos and you say, you're going to work in my brain.

If I can't understand you right here, then it ain't real.

No.

Right?

God is bigger than our mind.

That's why he's God and we're not.

And so we need to get out of our mind and then we need to drop it down into our hearts.

Right?

We need to think through our heart also.

That needs to be a part.

And it's almost like God is saying, you know, get out of here, come here and trust me.

Right?

Trust me and follow in this impossible situation.

Now, my practice is always talk to the Lord in the morning.

It's because my life.

Right?

It's how I breathe each day.

And so I get up and I spend time with Him.

Well, in our church, my particular, because I work side by side with my husband.

Right?

We are co-senior founding pastors and people always go, look, how does that work?

Well, it's our gift mix.

We lead out of our gift mix.

We always come together and so we can have an agreement on where we're going.

Okay?

We lead out of those folks that are following in those ministry areas that we're leading

out of.

That's how that works.

Anyway, mine is I am a person who comes out of business.

Right?

In education.

And so we were getting ready.

We just bought our building and we paid it off three years, so excited about when we

did that.

And then we were turned around and I knew we had to renovate this building.

And so I was making a campaign, trying to put it all together and stuff so that I could

go to the people and present it before them and stuff.

And in the process, that morning time, the Holy Spirit shows up and He says, Sharon,

whenever He says your name, look out.

Right?

He says, Sharon, I want you to do something different.

I was like, okay.

He says, I want you to build somebody else's church first.

I said, what?

And He goes, yeah, I want you to collect the money to build the church in a little place,

an impoverished place that I'm part of.

It's down in Mexico.

You've been there before and they don't have a building.

And I want you to build their building first.

Wow.

You know, yes, the shock and all.

Right?

That's the impossible.

I'm like, come on, God, does that mean we can't do our house?

You mean you want me to prioritize their house over my house?

He's like, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So God speaks to us.

I couldn't figure it out.

I did what Mary did.

I did what Mary did.

I'm like, God, let me tell you, this isn't a good business plan.

You know?

I'm like, why do we do that, right?

But we do.

I'm like, it's not a good business plan.

He's like, nope, I want you to do it anyway.

And matter of fact, He gave me a scripture.

He gave me a scripture.

It's on your outline.

It's in Mark 10, 27.

It says this, Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible, but not with

God.

All things are possible with God.

And so what He was telling me, and He tells you and I, right, together, is that what seems

impossible is possible with Him.

We just gotta focus there and not here, right?

And so this is gonna be an important theme that comes through because I truly believe

that God gives us the impossible because we come to the point of knowing that we can't

do it.

And so we have to trust Him if it's gonna happen.

See that?

We have to trust Him.

And so Mary's leading us on this journey and we go, oh, so when our God moments come, they

are supposed to be impossible.

They do feel like that.

The next thing she says when God moments come, that we're supposed to be able to say, just

say yes.

Just say yes.

It's like, really?

I saw those dresses up there and you know what I thought of, girls?

Just say yes to the dress.

I was like, oh, okay, God.

Well sometimes it's complicated, isn't it?

Just say yes.

And watch this, what Mary says here in Luke 1, 38.

I am the Lord's servant.

Okay?

Mary answered, may your words be to me fulfilled.

Then the angel left her.

And so what I want you to see here is that she agreed.

She agreed with the words.

And so God wants us to agree with the word that He wants to share with us, whether we're

reading it or somebody's, you know, praying over us and it comes up, right?

He says agree with it.

If He puts a dream in your heart.

Agree with it.

We agree with it, right?

And so we need to know that that's something that He wants us to do.

I actually have heard a teaching and I thought, oh, this is brilliant, about Mary.

When Mary actually said yes, when she said yes, she actually got pregnant at that moment

because that's when faith got released, right?

I thought, oh, I like that.

I'm gonna steal that and use that, right?

It's good stuff.

It's good stuff.

The yes is the signing on the dotted line.

Very important.

It's very important and so we need to understand that God is waiting for us to say yes, even

when we don't understand it.

And it seems impossible.

He says say yes and follow me.

And even if you're afraid, you see, again, I think Mary being pregnant, right, without

being married in that time and age, that's a shameful thing, right?

I mean, she was part of a Jewish community, right?

So I can just see now, you know, she's living with her family, her belly starts to grow

and her parents are looking at her thinking, is she eating more or what?

Right?

Her belly's starting to grow and they're like, they're looking at her and go, come on, you

and Joseph could wait, right?

Yes, right?

And then Joseph, poor Joseph, when he gets that news, right, he's gonna not only be devastated

but he's gonna feel like she's unfaithful.

Hey, this is not mine, right?

And we know that from scripture, that he wrestled with this and God had intervened.

So this whole group of people that she's very close to, they're pushing back.

Her society or her culture is gonna push back and say that this is scandalous.

Nobody's gonna believe that this is God's child, right?

And Mary knew all that, all that.

And she said yes.

She said yes to God, right?

So it's something we need to do, even if it's hard and it's dark and you're not quite sure.

I was thinking about a teaching that Jesus gave us when he was walking on the earth with

his disciples and it involves a man named Jairus who was a synagogue leader.

Well, Jairus comes to Jesus and his daughter is very sick and so he falls down and he pleads

with Jesus, please come to my home.

My daughter's so sick, she's going to die.

Jesus has compassion and says, okay, I'll go.

I'll go.

But we know from scripture that on the way to the house that there were so many people

that are compressing Jesus all around, touching him.

And scripture tells us, you know, there was a healing, he stops to have a conversation

and right in the middle, somebody from Jairus' household comes and looks and says, your daughter's

dead.

Do not bother the master anymore.

It's too late.

I just wonder if that's how some of you feel.

Things have gone on and you just feel like this is just too late.

How could God help us in the midst of where we're at?

Now watch what Jesus says here.

Over hearing what they said, Jesus told them, don't be afraid.

Just believe.

Just believe.

You know, Jesus wants to challenge us to get our eyes off our situation and to believe

that he can do the impossible.

Just say yes.

Yes, God.

You know, I can't do it, but you can.

And so God is looking for that.

He's looking, he wants to resurrect, I hear that, he wants to resurrect some dreams tonight.

He wants to resurrect some things in your life.

And you have to go with him and say, yes, God, I believe you can do it and take that

step of faith.

That's how you do that.

All right, the next thing that Mother, Jesus, just as Mom said as a teenage girl when she

said yes to God, she said her God moment produced, right, this.

They open up God's best in your life.

So this door gets to be opened up for God's best, for him to descend on you, right?

And so when these doors open up and we say, yes, I'm stepping into it, right, and we start

to walk in that, that's an act of obedience.

And it's an act where you have to go, I think you know better than me, right?

But once you're starting to walk that way, resist the whys, you know?

Why God is it this way?

Why did you close that door?

Why did that person die?

Why, why was somebody so cruel to me?

Why?

You can fill in the blanks, right?

And you know you're going down that way and the tendency is to want to go why.

But you know, I've been doing ministry for over 40 years and I have learned with every

yes and stepping that the why I no longer need, it starts to go away.

Why?

Because the one that has been faithful in my past is faithful in the present and he's

so faithful in my future, right?

And so we just got to know that.

And I was looking at Mary and I surmised that when she said yes in her fear, she still said

yes, she started walking.

And when I read scriptures, here's what I think is happening here.

I think she's getting discouraged, right?

Because things are happening around her.

She's getting these negative things come at her, you know, especially in her hometown stuff.

And I think she's going to get out of Dodge, right?

She's going to leave her hometown.

Because next thing we know, we know that she is going to, which girls in that time didn't

travel by themselves, but she's going to go to her cousin Elizabeth's house, right?

She's going to go there and hide out.

That's what I say, right?

Because she's beginning to feel anything but helped, you know, anything but blessed.

I mean, this is hard for her and she's feeling so discouraged and thinking, you know, what's

happening here, God?

I'm not quite sure and I'm not strong, I love this, I'm not strong enough to do this.

I'm afraid, right?

And so you can see that when you're reading the scripture, when you start to sit and reflect

on them.

And I love the fact that God knew that she was going to get discouraged.

Yeah, I hear that.

God knows you are discouraged.

God sees that and He knows that.

And He wants to speak into whatever that discouragement is, right?

And so for Mary, He provided her cousin Elizabeth.

Now Elizabeth had her own God moment, you know, that she stepped in and said yes, her

and her husband, because she's pregnant, right?

And she's ahead of Mary.

She's pregnant and she's going to have John the Baptist, who's the forerunner and preparer

for Jesus Christ, right?

And so now Mary's at the doorstep of Elizabeth's home.

Elizabeth didn't know she was coming.

Elizabeth didn't know she was pregnant and yet look what Elizabeth says here.

In Luke 1, 42, she says, in a loud voice, Elizabeth exclaimed, blessed are you among

women and blessed is the child you will bear.

How does she know that?

The Holy Spirit is telling her stuff.

Blessed is she, blessed is she, Mary, who has believed, right, said yes, that the Lord,

to the Lord would fulfill His promises to her.

And so Mary now, who's standing unsure, is getting greeted with this positive message,

right?

She's getting greeted with this, you can do it, God's in the middle of this, He told me

about this, isn't this great, even my baby jumped, right?

And so what you see is God is preparing a way.

And I think He used Elizabeth, by the way, girls that are older like me, right?

Because He uses us older girls because we've gone through life.

You know the perspective, you know to tell younger women, you know, hang on, right?

Hang on, because it's going to get better.

Same with the older guys.

God wants to use you in the years you've had, if you are a man of faith, He wants to use

that because you've seen God time and time again carry through and do stuff.

And so we need to know that that's exactly what's going on here.

Elizabeth has given her a different perspective.

Now I started thinking about in my life, right?

In my life, saying yes to Christ has been a journey, has been a journey for me, being

able to just, I don't know, trust Him, right?

There's a lot of things that have happened in my life and I have said one yes after another.

One very profound one though came when I had to have children, right?

I got married when I was 29, right?

I was smitten by Pastor Andy Meade, who was just a kid at the time in grad school with

me.

And you know, he was going to become a minister of me.

I was a business and an education major.

That's what I, and I actually had my own business at the time, right?

So that's my trajectory.

And so anyway, I marry him and we try to have children and over five years we lost numerous

children in miscarriages.

So hard, so hard.

And so, you know, I talked to the Lord a lot about it because it was something that burns

inside of you, right?

Especially when you're a leader type person and you can't make something happen, right

girls, guys?

Yeah, it's true.

So in spending time with the Lord though, He did promise me, I'm going to give you a

child and He actually gave me His name.

His name is Samuel.

I was like, okay, but then when I got pregnant and they did an ultrasound on Samuel because

I was high risk and they came away with, oh, this is about the fourth month now.

They're going, oh, he has some problems.

I was like, oh gosh, okay, what?

And so they described his problems called C-CAM and it's where his heart can be pressed

by the lungs and so it's just a mess.

And so their advice to me when we sat down is, hey, here's what's going to happen.

Well, they first told me to abort him and then they could see I wasn't really grooving

on that nor Andy.

And so they began to tell me of the painful journey we would have where he would slowly

die in the womb and then I would either birth him stillborn or he would die shortly after

birth, right?

And so I pushed back, decided to say, God, I'm going to believe you.

I'm going to trust in you, right?

So I started walking through that pregnancy, ended up in bed rest where I had to count

his movements, right?

Because they were going to, when he stopped moving, they were going to take him out of

me, C-section to make sure he was, they could give him a shot.

So all that to say that about the, I don't know, end of the seventh month, I really took

an inventory of who I was and I was like, God, I can't do this.

I actually was so discouraged and without hope.

I fell to my knees outside one day.

I looked up in the scar and I just started yelling at God, right?

Like, God, why, why are you got me here?

Why is this happening?

And then I realized, God, I don't have it in me because when that child dies, right?

When that child dies and I have to bury him, I will have to go into a mental hospital because

I cannot do this.

And in there, I heard the quiet whisper and the quiet night said, trust me, Sharon, trust

me.

You know, I thought, oh, I can't do anything else but trust you, God.

My whole life has been about following you.

I'm going to go and follow you some more.

And so I went to the hospital, you know, they're doing the ultrasound and stuff because the

movements had begun to cease.

And at that moment, I have a little Jewish doctor.

He starts looking and he goes, something's going on here.

Wait a minute.

And then he goes out and Andy was with me and I grabbed Andy's hand because I know I

can't, I can't hear he had died.

And so the little Jewish daughter comes back in but he's got like 10 people and they're

all like looking at the ultrasound.

I'm like, and Andy finally goes, what's going on?

And he goes, the little Jewish doctor looked at him and I'm like, I think this is what

you call a miracle.

And I'm like, what, what?

Right?

And he goes, hey, the lungs are starting to decrease and the heart's starting to come

back and he doesn't look compressed anymore.

Right?

So we began to look week after week and the child was being healed.

You see, I didn't know but God was healing that baby.

Right?

He was healing that baby because he gave me a promise.

His name shall be Samuel.

Asked of God.

And it was up to us to believe God that he would fulfill his promise even if it took

all the way up to the ninth month when he began to do that healing.

Right?

He began to do that healing.

Listen, we need to say yes to God's moments.

That we need to say yes, God.

I'm going to follow you even if I don't understand, I'm going to follow what you have for me.

Right?

The best that you have for me.

We need to trust, we need to trust God.

We need to follow him and we need to just realize he's going to work all things out

for God.

You know, for the good of us.

Right?

Now, I got so caught in my story, I lost.

So here you go.

That story always gets me.

Right?

So did I go over?

Mary said yes and they opened the doors up for her.

You guys got that, right?

Okay, good.

Thank you, Lord.

I can now move on.

Alright, so we see that Mary is working to try to tell us to be encouraged, you know,

encourage us that these God moments are going to be hard.

But we can do it.

We can do it.

We just got to lean on, not on our understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge him.

Okay?

So now we're going down to the next section there.

I also felt like she was saying to us that we need to stay connected to God.

We need to stay connected.

And we can stay connected in these couple ways.

This is your, well that's a great story, but then what does that mean to me?

Here you go.

You stay connected to God.

Right?

That's the first one.

We stay connected to God.

Very, very important that we stay connected to him.

And the one thing that will get me to disconnect from the Lord, it's not sin.

Not as a believer.

For me, it's my busyness of my life.

Right?

And they're good things.

They're family, ministry, you know, health.

I mean all these things will cause me to push back because I'm so busy.

Our society, we spend a lot.

We run a lot.

And it can take our time away from connecting with the Lord.

So that's something I wanted to push down on.

And I even seen it in Mary's story.

You know, when the angels came and told the shepherds that Jesus was born, right?

And these are their responses.

The shepherds' responses.

They start spinning.

Look at this.

In Luke 2, it says,

So they hurried off, these are the shepherds, and found Mary and Joseph and the baby.

When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what they had been told about this

child.

And what I want you to see there is the spin, hurry, run, exciting stuff.

All good stuff.

We talk about it.

I preach about it.

Right?

All good stuff.

But I wanted you to notice.

Now don't miss this.

Look at what Mary did, right?

Look what Mary did.

She said,

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

She pushed back from the spinning and the busyness of the world and the culture, right?

And that's what she's saying to us.

Don't get caught up in the spinning of the culture.

Make sure you have your time with God.

Make sure you sit and talk with Him and know that you're good.

Right?

Make sure you have your time where you sit and you listen to worship music and you're

like,

I am a child of the God most high.

Gosh, I can do this, Lord.

You are with me.

If you are for me, no weapon that can hurt me.

Right?

And so we get in our mind, we get in our mind that we need to sit and connect because when

you connect with God, everything is okay.

You connect with Him and He begins to show you who you really are.

Connection with God.

Very, very first thing.

If you want to know what to do with this message, you make sure you're connecting with God.

Second thing, the second thing she says to make sure you connected with people, right?

With people who will encourage you.

And that's the next point there.

To make sure that you are with people who encourage you.

In Mary's story, you remember I was kind of alluding to this in Luke 1 to 56, it says,

Mary stayed with Elizabeth, and this is the part I want you to notice, for about three

months.

Right?

And then returned home.

So what I want you to see is, is her time with Elizabeth was over a long period of time.

Why?

Because she was so discouraged.

She needed to have, she actually needed to have that positive input.

Right?

When, when Mary would call and say, you are blessed in her mess.

Right?

She's like, oh yeah, that's right.

I am.

Right?

And so she's, she's helping her and we need help.

When you were going through those God moments and you're stepping out, you knew people in

your corner.

You knew people talking to you.

I put it this way, you need to have dream makers in your life, not dream busters.

Right?

You need to have people that have the same spiritual foundation that you do.

Why?

Because then they can remind you who you are.

Right?

So you need that.

You know, I was having a dinner with your pastors last night and Pastor Jesheed said,

you know, when we finish this series that we're doing, I'm going to start a group of

women that they would, to encourage them to be all that God has for them.

I thought, yay.

So here you go.

If you're a woman and you're listening to this, you want to be in that group.

You want to make time for that group, to be encouraged, to begin to discover what is God

doing in your life.

You need people.

You need people to encourage you and be your dream makers.

And lastly, Mary says to us that we need to make sure we have the bigger picture.

We need to make sure we have the bigger picture of what God is doing.

This is going to be really important.

Right?

You mean if you fast forward 33 years, we've been talking about Mary and the birth and

all that.

Will you fast forward 33 years?

Mary, Jesus' mom, is sitting at the cross looking up at her son who is getting ready

to be crucified.

You know, I've heard many preachers talk about the cross and they talk about the cross in

terms of what the perspective of Jesus dying on the cross, the pain, suffering.

I've heard that.

I've heard somebody talk about, the pastors talk about the Father God, His perspective,

His only begotten Son on the cross.

I just wonder what Mary's is.

I just wonder what is Mary's perspective of the cross.

You know, in my line of work, I have to walk with people that lose their children.

And if you've lost a child, I don't mean to pull in stuff that make you real sad, but

is one of the hardest things that has to go.

One of the hardest.

Parents weren't meant to outlive their kids.

Right?

And so when they had to bury their children, I know my young apprenticing pastors, they

come to me when we have to do this and they're like, Sharon, what do we say?

I mean, you're standing at the grave site of a child that's just died and you've got

grieving parents, what do you say?

That's where Mary is, guys.

That's exactly where she's at.

Right?

She's right there and she's getting ready to enter into this place, this really hard

place.

Look what it says here in your last scripture in John 19.

Jesus' mother, right?

Jesus' mother, His aunt, and Mary, the wife of Claudius, and Mary Magdalene stood at the

foot of the cross.

Thank God she had somebody with her.

Right?

And Jesus in his darkest hour, now he's going to remember his mother.

Jesus saw his mother and the disciples he loved standing near her.

And he said to this woman, woman, here is your son.

Then to the disciples, here is your mother.

From that moment, the disciples, the disciple accepted her as his own mother.

What Jesus is saying here, is He's saying, Mary, I can't be your son anymore.

I have something I have to do.

I have to die for sharing meed sins.

But mom, John, John's going to be your son.

And John's going to take care of you all the days of your life.

And then she watched Jesus die.

I mean, when I think about it, it wrecks me.

It wrecks me.

How does she get through that?

How does she get through one of the darkest times of her life?

You know?

What did she do when she walked away and her son's gone and he's dead?

What then?

What happens to you when you face death?

What happens to you when you lose somebody that you love dearly?

I mean, how are you going to get through that?

I think we get through it by remembering eternity.

By remembering eternity.

You see, the blessed hope that we have is that heaven awaits us.

And that's what gets you through it.

And that's that bigger picture.

You got to always keep it because the reality is we put too much effort and too much time

and thought into this world.

And we're like a vapor here today and gone tomorrow.

We're just a sojourner.

This is not your home.

This is the place you were meant to be in an ambassador.

Right?

One day you will stand face to face with Jesus.

That is eternity.

That is the point.

That is the bigger picture of all things.

I can talk to you about God moments, but all the God moments that I have had has now driven

me towards being the woman of faith that I am today.

Right?

Powerful.

Powerful if we trust God and we walk.

But all that I do is because I know like you with 100% certainty that my life will end.

And I will stand between, you know, before a holy God.

And oh, I hear that.

And when I'm standing before Him, right, and I got to give an account of my life, listen.

Yes, why?

Because there are some of you, you know about God, but He doesn't reside in your heart.

And so God has asked me to give you this analogy, this thought.

And it's for this service.

He says when you stand before Him, those of you who have on earth declared Him Lord and

Savior, He's going to come around, you know, before you, you can say one word to a holy

God like God, this is why I did what I did.

Because it's all going to be on a display.

God is going to send His Son Jesus Christ, who's going to walk over.

He's going to slip His arm around you.

Before you can even say a word, He's going to say, Father, this one belongs to us.

This one belongs to us.

See, He throws our sins as far as the east is to the west.

But you want to have Him doing that because there's no way, no way you want to stand up

before God and try to give an account for all the things in your life.

No matter how good they are, we always have sin.

And so I encourage you, your next step in here, if you feel far from God, is hear the

Spirit of the Lord.

You have ears to hear what He's saying.

He's saying come home, come home, allow me to lead you in a prayer in just a few minutes

because He's saying come home.

He's also been talking to me a lot and He was talking to me about people that, people

in Hagerstown, this is for you guys, that there are many of you that do feel hopeless

in this situation and there are some of you that are struggling with loss, loss, loss

of a child, loss of a loved one, right?

And God wants to bring some peace into that.

And then there are many who need to grow in trust, right?

Who need to grow in trust.

And so I believe that God's going to talk to us.

We're going to do ministry time in a few moments, right?

And that's your time to come forward and to receive prayer.

But right now, Father won't let me get off the fact that not everybody in this room is

right before Him.

So I'm going to end this part of my time with you by praying over you, giving you an opportunity

to upright yourself, all right?

We're going to go into prayer, but listen, if one of those things I called out is something

that you're wrestling with, you want to come up here.

You want to come up here.

All right, bow your heads with me.

Holy Spirit, whoa, that's all I can say.

I thank you that every wall that was erected against you by the words, Father, were brought

down low.

I thank you, Father, that you work through my weaknesses, all of them, Lord.

Yeah.

And so Holy Spirit, just come more.

Father says that the most important thing in life are people that are far from Him,

that He wants to draw you in because He wants you to be with Him in all eternity.

I see that.

So Holy Spirit, just breathe.

Breathe upon your people.

Bring about, I hear that, breathe on the ones that came in today.

Oh, the one that was crying in their closet and saying, do you know me?

The ones that were saying, why, God?

The ones are saying, is it really real?

Holy Spirit, I ask that you would begin to stir in their hearts.

I hear that.

Just stir in their hearts, Father, right now.

The Father always gives us a chance to respond.

And so you see every head is bowed and every eye is closed.

But for those of you that feel like, no, you know, I feel distant from God.

Today God wants you to upright yourself.

And so in a moment I'm going to ask you to raise your hand so I can see who you are so

I can lead you in a prayer.

And this is between you and God.

But I'm going to do that to give you that opportunity because that is what the Father

put in my heart.

So right now, if you want that while every head is bowed and you know what an important

place this is if you've made that decision, you'd be praying for those folks.

And you just stick your hand up so I can see you because I'm looking for you.

I'm looking for God's hand.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anybody else?

Okay.

You put your hands down.

And right where you're at, I want you to pray a prayer with me.

Just say, Father God, I don't understand everything.

But I choose today to come home.

Jesus, forgive me for my sins.

Those places that I knew I shouldn't have gone and I went.

Place I missed it.

Forgive me.

Holy Spirit, come inside of me and lead me.

I give you my life.

I say yes to you.

I'm going to pray for those praying that.

Father God, I thank you that you seal that in their heart and that you've written their

name in the book of life.

And that yes, Father, and that from this day forward, that yes marks a place of faith that

you will bring them to a different, a different reality than they were on.

Now Father, bless this church.

Bless it, Father.

Bless its pastors.

Allow it to be like a, I see that like a lighthouse Father that jets up and for all the communities

surrounding it, it would see you Father.

And that all that are lost and drift would be able to find haven, safe haven and come

here Lord.

That you would begin to call the people that have a voice to hear what your spirit is saying,

that they would rise up and be able to help take care of those that you want to bring

in.

For Father says many are lost, many are adrift.

But if you come close to me and you lift me up, he says, I will bring all men onto myself

and onto this church.

And Father, I thank you for that.

Just bless these folks.

In Jesus name.

Amen.

Alright, first.

I'll go down to him.

Sharon Ledgerwahn, if you could text me this week, the number's on the screen there.

Just text changeme to 9700 and I'll follow up with you this week praying for you and

encouraging you to take some next steps.

But I don't feel like God's done here yet.

You know, Sharon was hitting on that issue of loss.

And I really feel like God wants to minister to anybody that's going through and grieving

a loss.

It could be a death, it could be a relationship, it could be many number of things that you

could be going through.

But I want to encourage you, our prayer team is going to be up here.

And if you're dealing with some sort of loss, don't leave here without allowing God to just

wrap his love around your heart.

Amen.

So we will be up here for you directly after this.

So if you're joining us online, thank you for welcoming us into your home.

We look forward to connecting with you.

Amen.