Where Do We Go From Here?

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Well, stay standing with me for just a moment.

Father, we look to you.

We look to you because in looking to you, our faces can grow radiant.

We look to you, God, because in so doing, you can give us strength to leap over a wall.

God, we look to you because though a thousand may fall to our left or ten thousand at our right, God, that through Christ we can do valiantly.

We look to you because in your hands the five loaves and two fish that we have to offer you can feed a multitude.

In looking to you, the death sentence at times we feel in our flesh where we despair even of life, all of a sudden we look to you and we trust in the God who raises the dead and not ourselves.

We look to you because it is you that is calling out this next generation.

It is you, God, that is gonna bring healing to our land and to this world.

We look to you because a thousand years from now and ten thousand years from now, you will be just as glorious as you are today.

And in Christ, we will be a part of that story.

So, God, we choose to not look to ourselves, because heaven help us if we just look to ourselves.

We will be extremely vexed if we do that.

Lord, we're not choosing to look to this world because we will be depressed if we do that.

Father, we choose to look to you so we can experience your rest.

And so now we pray, God, that you would stop the mouth of every discouraging spirit.

And as we look to you, that we would receive nourishment and help and strength and power in your word through your spirit.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Give God a good amen, and you may be seated.

My family and I, just two months ago, just about two months ago, May the 10th, it was midnight as the story began, so almost May the 11th, as as we stood in our driveway looking up at the night sky, and I'm someone who speaks for a living, so I'm very not often speechless, but I was speechless because the northern lights were shining over our home.

I took a photo with my iPhone, it barely can convey the power of the moment.

It's the most powerful northern lights in 20 years.

You could see it as far south as Florida or even Mexico, but this was visible as plain as day to the naked eye over my house.

Now it was the day of my daughter's high school graduation party, and I chose to believe this was just God's way of saying, Levi, you're gonna make it through her going to college.

But as I stood there with my family, knowing something of the science involved, I marveled.

I marveled because I know that this only happened because of millions of tons of plasma left the sun some 92 and a half million miles away, with the force of nuclear bombs going off on the surface.

A coronal mass ejection is what it's called, causing all of this material to come towards us that should and would kill every single one of us on this planet, were it not for a shield that protects our earth.

Spinning out from our molten iron core in the middle of our planet, a magnetic shield protects us from everything that would come our way.

It's weakest at the top and bottom, the north and the south.

So thus we have the aurora borealis and the aurora australis.

Yes, there are southern lights as well.

And the little bit of this that should kill us that doesn't, because of the shield, gets through at the points on our poles where it's the weakest, and as it mixes with our atmosphere, it leads to this dazzling display in the sky.

So the very reason that I'm able to stand there going, oh am you to God, is two things: a massive storm and darkness.

And because of the combination of a storm and darkness, here we have the treasures in the sky.

And that's what Isaiah tells us.

Isaiah chapter 45, verse 3, God promises in every storm we face in Christ that He will give us the treasures, the rich treasures of darkness, and the secret riches of hidden places.

Isaiah 45:3

Now none of us ask for, none of us want the storms that come our way in this life.

But when they come, we can be convinced that it is because God wants to do something that's amazing in our lives.

C.S.

Lewis said that God delights the most in prayers that we pray in times of dryness.

We've all had those services where we had every goosebump and the goosebumps had goosebumps, right?

And those times we pray and it's easy.

And I'm not saying we don't get credit for those prayers, but I'm saying when we don't feel him, you'll see us, Lewis is saying, when we don't feel God, when we're when we're confused, when we're questioning, when when we're when we're unsure of why would you allow this, and we choose to press into him anyway.

I'm telling you something.

God delights the most in prayers we pray in times of dryness.

It's like me with my kids.

If I ask my kids to go get ice cream and they comply and get in the car, I'm happy, but only a little happy.

When I ask them to do something, I know full well they don't want to do, and I know it's taking every bit of restraint in their body to do it.

That's when I'm the most pleased.

And so we come to Scripture and we ask the question today: where, Gateway Church, do we go from here?

Where do we go from here?

This is the message today that God gave me as we pick up the pieces and move forward, facing the storms, facing the darkness, believing for something dazzling to break out above us.

In Isaiah chapter 6, we find these words.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

You've probably read them before.

You, if you've been around the conversation of Jesus for any length of time, you've you've studied them, but let's believe for God to reveal something fresh to us in them.

Amen.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above it stood Seraphim.

Each one had six wings.

With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king.

Notice the K is capitalized, I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand alive coal, which he had taken from the altar with the tongs, and he touched my mouth with it and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?

If you've ever wondered, is the Trinity something that's in the Bible, pay attention.

Whom shall I send?

And who will go for us?

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all involved in this moment.

Then I said, Here am I, send me.

And he said, Go and tell this people, and it goes on, and he tells them what the assignment is gonna be, a rather difficult assignment.

And as Isaiah listens to it, his eyes get big, and he says in verse 11, How long is this gonna be?

How long do you want me to do this for?

And God answered, Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, you're gonna keep preaching until the houses are without a man.

You're gonna keep doing this mission until the land is utterly desolate.

And it becomes basically a bit like that scene in The Princess Bride where he says, Cheer up, Wesley, I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

You're gonna do this ministry assignment, it's not gonna work.

How long am I gonna keep doing it for?

Until you're the only one left, preacher.

That's what I want you to do.

And uh and so we pause here, thanking God for his word.

Can we thank God for the power of his word?

What a wonderful thing it is.

And we're gonna try and get our bearings a little bit.

Because anytime we just parachute into a part of scripture, we need to ask the question, what's going on here?

And to really understand the emotion before we are quick to jump into the scene.

Because I know we're in this heavenly scene, almost like seeing stuff we shouldn't get to see, and we're like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna sneak a photo.

It's like it's so exciting.

It's like this is what heaven's like, this is God's presence, and you want to go, like, okay, what's that over there?

And and and what happens over here, right?

What are these things finding out?

Well, hold on a second.

The proper tone of the text is established, and we'll always be at a disadvantage if we don't understand the context, is when this king, King Uzziah, died, because Isaiah 6 begins with the death of a king, the death of a monarch.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

This isn't an unnecessary detail, like just add it as a footnote, right?

It's not like God was worried the Bible wasn't gonna be long enough, and so he gave us a ton of these extra little details for flourish or something.

It is absolutely essential.

Why?

Because of the first of three connections I want you to receive.

If we're gonna figure out where do we go from here, we need to understand the connection between grief on the one hand and glory on the other.

This text contains what we all want to see, we all want to experience.

We're all praying like Moses, Lord, show me your glory.

And he says to us, well, here's how you get there.

You walk in through a door called grief.

Isaiah, like the rest of the nation, had just been plunged into grief.

King Uzziah had died.

That's not bad enough.

Uh it's enough to know, well, this leader they looked to had been taken out, but when you understand something about the reign of King Uzziah, you realize he was one of the best kings the nation of Israel ever had.

He led in the south, in Judah, and he was amazing.

His story, if you want to jot it down and read it later, because you are allowed to read the Bible when you're not in church.

The rules just changed, so you're welcome.

2 Chronicles 26 is where we find uh the reign of King Uzziah recorded in the most detail.

And let me just give you the Cliff Notes edition of that.

He became king at 16 when his father died, who was king before him.

And he was so young.

You know what he did?

He said, God, my knees are knocking.

So you know what he did with those knocking knees?

He kneeled on them.

This is what we are to do when our knees knock.

We get down on our knees.

His knees were knocking, he was afraid.

He said, Who am I to be king?

Who am I to lead this great people?

And you know what he did?

He sought the Lord.

And the Lord prospered him as long as he was willing to seek God.

And so God poured out strength on Uzziah.

And Uzziah went on to become literally, along with David and Solomon and Hezekiah, one of the few examples of good leadership the nation of Israel ever had.

And under his soul that prospered, the whole nation prospered.

And if you read 2 Chronicles 26, you're gonna read about inventions Uzziah had, of things that could throw stones.

It became like a scene of the Lord of the Rings where these inventions he would invent would throw stones at the enemy.

And because they had these weapons that could throw stones, the enemy was a little thought a little bit carefully about attacking Israel.

And then he had uh inventions that God would give him in his dreams about how to come up with botany, a new way to, he was like, you know, Matt Damon on the martian growing potatoes in space.

It was like that, but with grapes, and so he figured out new ways to create vines, and and he was just this renaissance man.

And he's seeking God, and so as this happens, the nation begins to sort of trust in Uzziah, maybe, just maybe even more than they were trusting in God.

Why?

It's easy to mistake the hands that God uses in our lives and forget to look to the one who is blessing us through them all along.

And this is exacerbated by the fact that Uzziah, who became king at age 16, reigned for 52 years.

It's a very long reign.

We can't even relate to that.

Because in our country, there's a turnover every four or eight years, except for FDR, but that was during the height of the depression and World War II.

So we had, you know, three-term president, but that's not something that we're used to, right?

So to think of someone reigning for 52 years, that means that there were people alive in Israel who never knew anything except for an amazing king who trusted God, who blessed them, and the economy was banging, and then everything was good militarily, and it would be really easy to coast spiritually.

Because these are just good times, and and sometimes sadly, the soft times do create soft people, and they create the hard times that lead to the hard people, and the cycle, as you know, continues.

And this king, who was good, has finally died.

What's that old expression?

There may be other good leaders that will come, but there will never be another Camelot.

That would be how it felt when Uzziah died.

Except the plot thickens a little bit, because Uzziah, when we read his story, didn't die a normal death.

He died spiritually before he died physically.

He sinned against the glory of God.

He took what God had told him not to touch.

And listen, if you read the scripture, you're gonna find some themes that resonate from beginning to end.

And when you take, hear me, what God has told you not to touch, it will keep you from being able to receive what God wanted you to have all along.

And we can see this theme play out in Adam and Eve, and we can see this theme play out in Samson's life, we can see this theme play out in David's life.

So many of the stories in Scripture illustrate this theme.

God's rules are for a reason.

And when we take as trivial, something as essential as God's holiness and God's preferred way of doing things, when when we when we when we scorn what God has told us to do and to not do, we invite judgment on ourselves.

Someone said once that whenever God says don't, you could finish that sentence this way, hurt yourself.

God says don't, he means don't hurt yourself.

And there's collateral damage for other people.

So here's what happened with Uzziah.

He wasn't happy just being king.

He thought, I should get to be a priest as well.

Well, you're Uzziah, you're not a priest.

You're a king.

He said, Well, I'm gonna get to do what priests do.

And so he went into the temple as though it were a casual thing to bring incense in the temple, like he saw the priest doing.

He thought I could do it a little better than the priests do.

And one of the priests said, What are you doing?

You're a king, you're not a priest, you shouldn't be in here.

And his anger burned against the priest, and he said, Don't you know the name's Uzziah, pal?

And as that happened, God and his holiness caused there to be wrath that fell upon Uzziah.

And he became a leper on the spot.

And seeing the leprosy on his hand, the priest hurriedly rushed him out.

And he lived his life out in hiding off the throne.

Many people believe this is the point when succession took place.

And maybe, just maybe, it's Isaiah 6's moment of death that we're reading about.

Not the death of his life.

That came later.

It was the death of his usefulness in God's hand.

And so the people, Isaiah included, were left asking the question where do we go from here?

Grief.

And in that moment, they all did what maybe they hadn't been doing as much of on their own in previous good times.

They lifted their eyes and looked up.

And Isaiah said, When I looked up, I saw the Lord high and lifted up.

And the train of his robe filled the temple with glory.

And then he said, I saw these angels, these beings who were flying around, they were declaring holy, holy, holy every single time they they went around.

And the word in the Hebrew is kadosh.

They would say kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, because we tend to rely on adjectives and adverbs to modify verbs and nouns to show how intense something is.

But in the Hebrew and in the Greek culture, you would use a different way to do it.

You would use repetition.

So if Jesus wanted to get across something really intense, he wouldn't just say, you know, that was like so extremely wild, he would say, truly, truly.

Amen, amen.

Most assuredly, most assuredly, and they go, oh well, he just said that twice.

This is this must be serious.

But nowhere in the entirety of Scripture do you ever find something repeated in triplicate.

It's never in a treble form, except for the holiness of God, which tells us it's God's primary attribute.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a holy God.

God is not just holy, which means other than or separate or a different category.

He's not even just holy, holy.

He is, listen to me, Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh.

They're crying out, there's nothing like him.

There's no one that can do the things that he does.

He is God.

He is Kadosh.

He is holy.

And Isaiah sees one on the throne.

He maybe had been distracted by an earthly throne of a person who had been used by God, but now he sees the Lord.

So in his grief, he encounters God's glory.

He has this revelation of who God is.

And there's a connection because Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are those who are meek.

None of us would ever choose any of those things.

Mourning, being poor in spirit, right?

And yet all of us want to see God.

All of us want to inherit the earth.

All of us want to be comforted.

But do you see there's a connection between grief on the one hand and the glory on the other?

Perhaps Isaiah never would have been open to this kind of an encounter of God's revelation of who God was, had it not been for the humility that came through the grief that he faced.

James says, My brethren, when you fall into various trials, rejoice.

And all of us think, no.

Right?

Why?

When we fall into various trials, we want to complain.

When we fall into various trials, we want to criticize.

We want to backseat drive.

We want to do all sorts of different things.

But James says, no, when you fall into various trials, if you understood what God was trying to do, get away to church, in these trials you're facing, in this grief you're in, you would rejoice.

So come on, let's just take a moment and do so.

Let's rejoice in faith.

Let's rejoice in the goodness of God.

Because our circumstances have changed.

But God hasn't changed.

Peace the same yesterday, peace the same today, peace is the same forever.

And I'll prove it to you.

The year was 700 BC, roughly, when Isaiah had this encounter.

And he saw these angels flying around the throne.

What were they saying?

Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, right?

And some people go, that'd be boring.

That'd be boring, saying the same thing to God.

No, no, no, no, no.

You don't understand.

I think they only intended to ever say it once.

But then they saw something.

The second lack.

In God's glory.

And in God's goodness.

They hadn't seen before.

And so they're breaking it out all over again.

And so for the first time.

Oh, yeah.

Good dogs.

And listen to me very carefully.

Worship can never get old if you keep letting God show you something.

Knew there is no end to who he is.

There is no end to what he has done.

There is no eye has not seen and ear has not heard who God is.

Known from eternity are all God's works, and we will just 10,000 years from now in glory be unfurling the third page of the attributes of God that have caused these burning ones who have never not in their entire existence been before him to cry out, other than no one like you, who is like the Lord.

And so 700 years goes by.

The year is 90 AD.

John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, is on the prison island of Patmos.

He has been boiled in hot oil.

He has now been sentenced to live out his life in this terrible Alcatraz.

And he receives one of the greatest visions anyone's ever received.

It's called the Book of Revelation.

And in the fourth chapter of Revelation, the eighth verse, he sees and describes these beings, and he even gives some details about the angels that Isaiah didn't have a time to get down.

He says they're covered front and back and all kind of eyeballs.

So pray for their optometrists, y'all.

And would you believe that when he sees them on that day, they're saying as they cry out, what are they crying out?

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

You see, these angels got so lost in what they were seeing in the face of the one on the throne that 700 years has gone by and they haven't even broken in the lyrics of this song.

Why?

Because they're saying, He's holy, he's holy.

I can't believe, I can't believe, I can't believe, holy is the Lord.

And every time they cry out, the posts of the door are shaken as God's glory is felt.

You see, holy is what God is, glory is what God does.

And when God's holiness is felt, the result of is his glory.

And there will come a day, friends, when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth like currently the waters cover the seas.

That's why Mary knew to sit at his feet.

Every time Mary shows up in Scripture, she's sitting at the feet of Jesus.

When he was teaching a Bible study in the house, she was at his feet to listen.

When she faced a storm, she fell at his feet to ask him for his help.

And when she was the recipient of a miracle, she fell at his feet to thank him.

So there's a connection between grief and glory.

Secondly, there's a connection between repentance and refreshment.

Repentance and refreshment.

Isaiah's response to this scene is not to take a selfie with one of the seraphim.

Oh, this is amazing.

He fell on his face as though he were dead.

He said, and I repeat, Woe is me.

He did not say, Why did this happen, God?

I'm glad I get to see you.

Why did this, why'd you let this happen with Uzziah?

He did not say, Lord, you have a lot of explaining to do.

He did not say, Where were you when this all took place?

He fell on his face before the Holy One and He said, Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips.

Now that you have to understand for Isaiah was him taking the best thing about him.

This is not him confessing his sin, it's him confessing his strengths.

It's not him confessing his rich wretchedness, it's him confessing his righteousness.

This is a similar expression to Paul who said, I take all my resume virtues, that I was circumcised the eighth day, Pharisee, just sat up at the feet of Gamelil.

I count that as garbage compared to the excellence of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is Isaiah saying, I was sort of standing on me being an awesome prophet and not counting for something.

I was standing on me having such a way with words because I'm Isaiah.

No, he's saying the best thing about me, I'm throwing that away to the wayside because I see the excellence of the knowledge of the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.

I'm repenting of trusting in me and I'm looking to you.

And so what happened?

Refreshment came through a coal, brought to him by an angel who had to use tongs.

It was so hot.

And it's coming for your lips.

What should have killed him didn't kill him because of a shield.

The shield is the sacrifice on the altar.

Jesus, who is our shield and our great reward, who takes the hit for us, so that what should kill us leads to a dazzling display in the sky.

And Isaiah, in repenting and acknowledging he should be destroyed by God's wrath, realizes he now gets to be refreshed and get to walk in wholeness and in healing, for he is healed by this that touches him.

The point is that seeing God clearly causes you to see yourself accurately.

And so what happens next is we get to explore the connection between availability and opportunity.

As God says, now that you're humbled, now that you're looking at me, now that you've been cleansed by Jesus Christ's sacrifice and you're not trusting in your own merits, your own ability.

Now that I've got you where I want you, now I'm gonna use you.

Whom will I send?

I love that God says this as though there's a crowded room.

Whom will I send?

Who will go for us?

And Isaiah's all alone in there.

He's looking around like, well, I'll do it.

Well, I'll do it.

Now, just to be clear, my assignment is for you to preach to people who won't listen.

And to keep doing it until everyone's taken captive to Babylon because of their unwillingness to listen.

And Isaiah hears all this and says, When do we start?

Because I don't need to know exactly how it's all gonna pan out.

I don't need to know what my part in it is gonna be.

I've seen the Lord.

I will do anything you want me to do, I will go anywhere you want me to go, because there is nothing like you.

And Isaiah would go on to get sawn into in the middle of a hollowed-out log.

Many people believe it is him that is referenced in the book of Hebrews, the 11th chapter, when it says, by faith they were sawn into.

But Isaiah knew that death, what is death?

Death will only bring me to the one who I got to encounter on the throne.

So what does it matter if I live or die?

I only want to please him, for he is holy, holy, holy.

So why do some people get used and others don't?

I submit to you, it's not because they have bigger, better gifts than others.

It is simply because some people make themselves available.

And God has never been looking for great ability, but he has always been looking for those who have great availability.

Amen?

These are the connections.

And this message to me, church, that I bring to you is not one forged in the ivory tower of my study.

It has been formed in the difficulty and the agony of my own personal suffering.

Some of you know that our daughter died and went home to be with Jesus at Christmas time in 2012 when she was five years old.

I spent the whole day writing a Christmas sermon, and that evening we were picking out a funeral home.

This past year, in 2024, we saw my father go home to be with Jesus somewhat unexpectedly.

He had been battling cancer, but we thought there was another year or two that God would keep him on this earth for.

But over Easter time, he took a turn, and over the Easter weekend, he went home to be with Jesus.

To lose a spiritual father is painful.

We see this in Isaiah's story.

And for me to lose my earthly father has been horrifically hard.

And now I look at the year and I go, you want to talk about traumatic triggers?

I've had Easter and Christmas wiped out, and I'm in the ministry.

I can't exactly avoid these two.

It's the whole Christian calendar now, a reminder of hardship.

And in my grief, I have experienced what I want you to experience in these difficult days.

Glory.

So how do we get from here to there?

If we know where we want to go, it's God's glory.

How do we get there?

I'm gonna give you two things, uh, two different lists.

One is a list of what not to do in your grief, because this is grief.

Make no mistake, this is grief.

So what do we not do in our grief?

We number one, we do not sanitize.

We're not gonna sanitize and say, oh, it's okay.

We're not gonna put a Christian veneer on things, you know, like, well, it's just Romans 8.28, brother, right?

Well, you it's it's sad your daughter died.

God must have needed another rose in his garden.

Putting germ X on it, right?

Trying to pretend that that make that superficial display of piety means something.

Neither are we gonna stuff things down.

We're not gonna stuff it deep down and just, oh, no big deal, it's just, you know, hey, hey, just whatever it is, is and just move on as though it didn't happen.

This is the I'm fine mistake we make in grief.

Neither are we going to rush through this, thinking that we can heal from deep trauma and hard things in a moment when it takes time.

But we also don't want to make the mistake of running, running away from God, running away from his people.

Though it would be tempting, believe me, running away from things that trigger and and dig up those traumas in our lives.

The devil would have you to throw your hands up on Christianity, throw your hands up on the church, to just run away from God in the midst of all of this.

And then, fifthly, numbing would be the fifth mistake that we could make in this.

Whenever we're facing grief, the temptation is to dole our senses, because I'd rather not feel anything.

Here's the problem numbing isn't ineffective because it doesn't work, it's ineffective because it does.

But not feeling is not the same as healing.

And sooner or later that numbness is gonna need to wear off, and you're either gonna have to numb again or you actually do the hard, unpleasant work of healing inside so that you can go from here, amen, to there.

So, what do we want to do?

How are we gonna process this?

We're gonna do so slowly, we're gonna do so honestly, we're gonna do so in community, we're gonna do so theologically.

My daughter Clover, after I was telling them about this sermon, I wrote it in my journal, just like that, as God gave it to me.

She said, Dad, you spelled a bad word.

And I thought, it happens, it does sometimes happen.

And then I wrote down the last one that God gave me.

How do we actually process grief in a healthy way?

We do so with Jesus.

So when we face hard times, we don't have to pretend those hard times are good, we don't have to pretend those hard times are pleasant, we don't have to put rosy language on it, but we do have to choose to slowly make our way through the grief.

We do have to choose to be honest with each other and honest with God about exactly what we're feeling.

You don't have to put a filter on your prayers.

You give it to God exactly as raw and as hot and as messy as it comes out.

David prays for people's teeth to be broken.

God knows how to how to how to translate those things through his spirit.

We also want to grieve in community with each other, and we want to grieve most importantly with Jesus, because Jesus knows full well what it is to grieve.

Are you thankful you got a high priest who knows what it feels like to be betrayed, who knows what it feels like to have people let him down, who knows what it feels like to have people he trusted turn on him, who knows what it feels like to have those he loves die.

There is not a thing you can go through on this planet that Jesus with his nails scarred hands can't say.

I understand, but I make all things good.

Come on, I'm able to produce good things through them.

I close with a story.

My daughter Daisy's in the service with us.

My daughter Clover, though, at home was one day looking for a treasure box.

She said, Dad, I need a treasure box.

So she went thrifting.

And she brought home a battered, broken, beaten treasure box I wouldn't touch if you paid me.

She goes, Dad, I got it for three dollars.

I said, You overpaid.

She was offended.

She said, wait till you see what I'm able to bring about when I get done with it.

Oh, she snapped on latex gloves.

I'm like, How'd you get latex gloves?

Q tips, various cleaning materials, polishes.

She just goes to work.

And true enough, this thing, by the time she was done with it, was shining.

But she had the biggest squeal of delight when she was cleaning the velvet cushions out and found something someone had wedged deep down where the rings normally sit.

I have a photo.

She pulled this out.

A hundred dollar bill.

She's like, How you like me now, dad?

She says, I got paid$97 and I got a free treasure box.

Sometimes in life, following Jesus church, we are going to be handed things that seem dirty and seem broken, and I don't want this, and can anything good come from this?

And I just came to encourage you on behalf of the body of Christ at large who is praying for and standing with this amazing church, the people, the staff, the team here to say there are treasures in darkness.

Come on, there's hidden riches in the hard, secret places we go through.

And God's got a plan, and he's up to something, and he is able to do a good so good that the suffering is not even worthy to be compared to the glory he'll reveal through it.

And so come on, raise your hands up.

Raise your hands up.

Give him your pain, give him your hardship, give him your suffering, give him your difficulties, he can handle it, he can handle it.

Tell him you're confused, tell him you're betrayed, tell him you're mad, tell him you're angry, tell him you feel alone, tell him you don't know how this is all gonna work out.

It's okay because in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

We see you, God, we see you, we trust you.

Our eyes are on you.

God, we don't know what to do.

But our eyes are on you.

Our eyes are on you.

You can put your hands down, Lord.

Would you save those who don't know you?

Some have come in without a saving relationship.

But for the cross and the resurrection, hell for all of us.

If you're here and you need to trust Jesus, I want you to pray with me.

Say this to me.

You believe I bet the churches let me down, but leaders, but this, but that hold on.

Jesus will save you right now if you trust him, and he will never let you down.

Would you say this to him?

Church, pray with us.

Dear God, I know I'm a sinner.

I can't fix myself.

But you can.

Please come into my heart.

Forgive me of my sin.

Make me new.

Thank you for new life.

I give you mine.

In Jesus' name.

Head still bowed, eyes still closed.

If you just trusted Christ for salvation, I'm gonna count to three.

Every location, church online, those in the prison.

When you get hear me say three, I want you to shoot your hands up if you just trusted in Jesus for salvation.

One, two, three.

Shoot your hands up.

Praise God.

Church, come on, salvation all around the church, all around the church.

Salvation and new life.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Hey, we're gonna sing.

We're gonna sing.

We're gonna sing as we sing.

If you need a moment with God, if you need to say, God, I give you my brokenness.

I want to begin this healing journey, but I want a revelation of your glory.

I want you to leave your seats and come.

We're gonna make space at the altar.

Come as we declare that we serve a holy God.

He's holy, He's holy, He's holy.

God, we welcome you here.

Show us your glory.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.