Faith Sounds Like: God is with you!

Welcome to Venture Church. I want to give you guys heads up that my

wife and I are going on a ministry trip on through the Journey of Paul

the Churches of Revelation in Turkey. So we'll be gone for the next couple

of weeks, but we have our faith sounds like series. You're gonna love

it. Every week, different genre of music. If you're curious. I'll

do videos on my social media, so you can follow me on Instagram at

fight pastor if you would like to see where we're at in this journey.

It's gonna be fun. We've been looking forward to it. We've never done

this before, so this is the first time and if we really love it,

it'll be a trip that will plan for our church and years to come.

The Journey of Paul literally everything we've been talking about it acts. I'm

gonna walk through many of those moments. It's gonna be really incredible. Grab

your Bible's turn to Psalm thirty four. As you're turning there, you saw

clips in the background of one of the all time greatest movies ever, The

Breakfast Club. If you were my age and you are a gen xer,

your life revolved around that movie, because that movie summed up your life what

was interesting growing up in the eighties. And again, if you were like

me and you were a teenager in the eighties, gen Xers were infamous for

the fact that we felt not seen, We felt ignored, we felt invisible.

We wondered if anyone cared, if anyone noticed us, if anyone understood

how we felt. And that movie takes people from the different social groups that

were very prominent back in the eighties, who would really war against each other.

They were not friends. You didn't cross over to different social groups,

and they stuck them together in a detention and come to find out they all

have the same fears, the same angsts, the same struggles, and the

movie really kind of became a rallying cry for the loneliness that a gen xer

felt in the eighties. Today, I want to tell you the story of

the loneliest moment in my life. But first I want to read you this

verse, and then we'll pray. Psalm thirty four fifteen says the eyes of

the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry.

I want to ask everyone to buy your heads, close your eyes,

repeat this prayer after me, Everyone say, Dear Jesus, speak to my

heart, change my life in Jesus's name. Amen. Was August of twenty

seventeen. I had gone on a road trip by myself. I was driving

really in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. I was following an app called

road Tripper that would have all of these off the beaten path sites that you

could see, and I was driving one hundred and twenty degree heat. I

had been driving for two hours without seeing another car. I lost cell reception

an hour beforehand. And my destination was the Lunar Crater Monument. It was

supposedly off of this bizarre small highway down a dirt road about ten miles and

it was a bunch of craters that were created by atomic bombs that were set

off in Nevada. And for some dumb reason, I wanted to go there,

fly my drone and get a picture of myself in the middle of this

crater. And here's the video. I don't know why I took a video

of it, but I did. Well. This is the type of stuff

I promised my wife I would warn her before I did. I'm now going

to drive ten miles into the middle of nowhere to look at a bunch of

craters that were created by atomic bombs. So hopefully my car makes it.

So I drive down that road. As I get further down that road,

the dirt road gets covered by the only way I would describe it as it

was covered by ash. And as the ash got thicker, my hemy rear

wheel drive stick challenger started fishtailing. The only way I could keep my car

from fishtailing is if I drove at least forty miles an hour. So I'm

driving forty miles an hour down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere,

and all of a sudden, my car falls two feet down into a hole,

shoots out of the hole, and dies. Try to start it up,

can't get it to start, and I think this is bad. So

I get out of my car. I look underneath it, and I see

what had happened. I had driven down this ash covered road when I hit

a hole, and down inside of the hole were boulders, and my car

had landed on top of those boulders and had skipped off of them out and

those boulders tore apart the underneath of my car and snapped my power steering.

Remember I'm three miles off of a creepy highway where I had not seen a

person for two hours, nor did I have self reception for two hours.

The only way that I could get my car to move, I finally got

it to start, it would only drive in reverse five miles an hour.

So I get my car in reverse and I slowly drive all the way out

back to that sign again. And here's the aftermath. One of my proudest

moments. I started driving down a dirt road, hit a rock and snap

my steering. I am literally, well, this is not one of my

proud Okay, go on to the next video. I'm literally two hours that

way, two hours that way, in the middle of nowhere. I can

honestly say, I'm not sure exactly what to do. I kind of praying

and hoping that God provides a solution. I had a guy that drove me

up. I called the cops and hopefully the will be coming, but they

said they didn't have a clue when they were going to come. I'm tempted

to try and get to a place where I can get some cell reception and

just do this myself, but it's not working, so we'll see that night.

The night beforehand, my I was talking to my wife on the phone

and she said, Brandon, will you promise me? She could tell the

frame of mind I was in. She said, will you promise me if

you do anything dangerous you'll call me beforehand, and that if you do anything

sort of dangerous, will you make sure that you have water with you.

Well, I'd gotten up super early to head out to this monument, and

of course thought, I don't want to bother or die. I'll just tell

her afterwards. And when I broke down on the side of the road right

there, I didn't have any water with me either. When I realized I

was stuck and I didn't know what to do, I remember walking around my

car feeling about as helpless as I've ever felt my entire life, and believe

it or not, I fell down on my hands and knees, and this

was my prayer. I was like, Jesus, it is my fault that

I am here at this place, and no one knows. I deserve whatever

happens to me. But if you could find it in all of your mercy

and grace, will you rescue me? Amen? I said, Amen.

I stood up, and I looked down the road and there was a car

coming. I hadn't seen one in two hours. I did what any crazy

person would do. I ran in front of the car and waved it down

on the freeway because it was not passing. The car comes to a stop.

It was an old super wagon full of all of the possessions of the

people in the car, who told me the story that they lived in a

state park in Colorado and were now moving to a state park to live in

in California. There was no room for me in this car. I looked

at them and I said, hey, my car Broketown. I don't know

what to do. I'm in the middle of nowhere. Will you drive me

to where I can get cell reception. This guy looks at his wife and

thinks, this is how every horror movie starts. And I don't know what

caused him to do this, but he had his wife get out of the

car. She stood on the side of the road next to mine as he

let me load up to his car, and he drove me an hour away

to get cell reception, called the toe company that said they would be there

in five hours. He drove me back when his wife saw that he wasn't

bleeding. She was thrilled. They got in their car and drove away and

left me on the side of the road. Five hours later this happened.

Spent three days in the great town of Tonapaw, Nevada, at the clown

Motel, no joke, look it up worse than it sounds, the Clown

Motel. Finally I ended up at my condo in Vegas. My insurance company

declared this an act of God and paid me off immediately for my car,

miracle among miracles. And then they told me, if you're willing to buy

a car within the next three days, we'll cover all of the sales,

tax and licensing on the next car. So I did what any dude would

do. I bought another car, a better one, And it was four

days later lighted turned green with a left arrow saying to go green. Unbeknownst

to me in the state of Nevada. By the way, only in the

state of Nevada, a green left turn is a yield. I turned green,

turned left on the green, got hit by someone going fifty miles an

hour, and my brand new car that i'd owned for four days, this

is it. In a matter of one week, I totaled one hundred thousand

dollars worth of cars. As a meeting with the police officer on the side

of the road and he's explaining the completely ridiculous law in the state of Nevada

that it is my fault. I fell on my hands and knees and I

just started sobbing. It was the culmination of the lowest six months of my

entire life. Have you ever been in those moments where things got really bad

and you said it can't get worse, and then you're like, don't say

that, because it will. It was in May of that year. We

were in the middle of the building program. I'm trying to raise millions of

dollars trying to keep our church united as we're going through the building campaign so

this building would happen. And my senior associate, who was beloved by our

church, had been on staff for ten years, had tons of influence,

comes into my office in the morning and he says, Brandon, I need

to talk to you, not as my boss, but as my pastor.

He said, there's a church in Bellingham that offered me the senior pastoring role,

and I want to know honestly what you think. Well as a Christian.

I love you, You're an incredible leader. You should pursue this.

Two days later, another staff person came into my office and said the exact

same thing, different church, but same scenario. Week later, my women's

director comes into my office says the same thing. Several days later, my

worship pastor comes in, then my missions pastor. In a three week period

of time, some of you were here back then, six of my pastors

resigned, all unrelated, all for really good reasons. God promoted each one

of them. But to the average person that sat in the church, something

was wrong with me, because surely, why would six pastors resign if there

wasn't something wrong with Brandon's leadership. Pressure starts coming as we start raising money.

People get upset. They love these buildings, but they hate how much

they cost, and when you start asking people to sacrifice and donate, they

get angry and they leave. Pressure. Finally, it raised all the money

that I thought we needed to raise, applied for our loan. We assumed

we were going to get this loan. It was never even a thought we

weren't going to get it. It took us about a month to hear back

from our loan company. It was ten o'clock on a Wednesday night. Was

actually at a movie. I look at my phone and our lender is calling

from Missouri. It was ten o'clock at night here, it's midnight there.

I thought, if they're calling, this is really good news. So I

ran out of the movie and answer the phone, and I hear Pastor Brandon,

I'm really sorry, but we are declining your loan. There's nothing you

can do. We're really sorry, but this is officially our your notification that

we are we are removing ourselves from your building project. And at that point

ten o'clock at night, pressure starts mounting. I don't know what to do.

For the next couple of weeks, I started having this weird phenomenon happened.

My vision would get blurry and I would I'd had it's called asphasia.

I couldn't speak. My wife would help me through it when it would happen.

Sometimes my kids would help me through it. But it was weird because

Dad didn't have things like this happen. So everybody was kind of nervous and

we weren't sure exactly what it was. The pressure was mounting. We had

a staff meeting on a Monday, after staff meeting, it was like three

o'clock. I went to my office and sat down and was typing on my

computer, and I noticed that I was losing feeling in my right arm.

So I started going like this and I couldn't feel anything, and then my

right side of my face felt like it had novocan in it. I was

like, this is and I'm trying to shake it off, thinking maybe I

gotta get blood circulation. And right side of my body was numb, and

I thought, huh, I should go see what Die thinks. So I

walked across my office into hers, and my wife, up to this point

in time, you know, we'd been married for thirty years. You know,

my wife is the queen of just rub some dirt on it, you'll

be fine. So I walk into her office and I said, this is

really strange, but the whole right side of my body is numb. Instead

of telling me to rub some dirt on it, she looked concerned, and

I'm thinking this is really bad. She gets on the phone and she calls

a surgeon in our church, and she describes to him what my symptoms are

and he says, die take him immediately to the emergency room room. He's

having a stroke. So she drives me to the emergency room. We spend

six hours there by. Now this is spread throughout the church, pray for

Brandon. People are getting concerned, they're worried. And I have six hours

worth of tests and in the end the doctor looks at me and says,

you're not having a stroke. You're having a severe reaction to stress. You're

having a massive anxiety attack and your body is manifesting itself in stroke like symptoms.

Go home. What do you say to that. I mean, I'm

feeling like I'm feeling. I go home. The next day, I meet

with my primary care physician, who loves me, an incredibly godly man,

and this is what he said to me. He said, Brandon, I

work with guys like you all the time. Said they're CEOs for software companies,

they're executives at Boeing, and they start having these same reactions. And

he says, I got to be honest with you and tell you that your

job is killing you. And I looked at him and I said, Lee,

what do I do? And he said, normally I tell somebody with

your symptoms that it's time to change your career, because if not, you're

going to die young. And at that point, I am thinking half my

staff has just resigned. I have taken my church on a journey to build

a building and everything's fallen apart. What do I do? And I remember

he and his and he loves me. He looks at me and he says,

but Brandon, you were different, and that you have a calling.

And this was his expert medical advice. So I'm quoting him. Please forgive

me for what I say. He says, I would normally tell them to

quit their job, but you have got to figure your crap out. That

was his expert medical opinion. Every single week that followed, I would have

these same episodes about six times a week. No one understood. I always

say that for me, I always do things before like everybody else does them.

I planted a church eighteen years ago, back before it was cool.

I planted a church when every other church in the community was mad at you

for planting a church in their backyard. Now you can plant a church next

door to a church and we get to cheer them on. So everything I

do, I'm always doing ahead of time. I had anxiety before everybody else

did, so nobody understood me. My family wrestled with it, my staff

wrestled with it. My friends didn't understand me. Our board didn't understand I

remember I met with our board one time afterwards and they're like, what would

we do help you? And we had a meeting, and then we had

a follow up meeting a week later, and it was the equivalent of are

you better? Like, probably what should have happened is I should have immediately

gone on a six month medical leave, but instead I went to work the

next day, and week after week, I kept having these episodes. I

remember moments it would get so bad I wouldn't know what to do with the

anxiety that I was dealing with because something broke in me. It just snapped

and broke and I couldn't get it back. And so I remember times I

would be panicking and I would go drive to my doctor's office and I would

just be in my car, calling him over and over against saying I need

some sort of medication. I cannot handle this. I was absolutely losing it,

and no one understood me. If you're here and you have ever struggled

with any sort of mental health disorder, whether it's anxiety, depression. No

matter what it is, the one thing they all have in common is that

you feel like no one understands you, and you feel totally alone, and

the devil lies to you in those moments and he makes you afraid of everything.

Like it got to the point anytime somebody called me, I thought it

was bad news. Anytime someone texted me and wanted to meet with me,

I just thought it was bad news. Like everything was causing these anxiety and

panic attacks and this isn't supposed to happen to me. So at the moment

in August when I drove, fortunately the board had finally given me a month

off from work, and all I would say is I just ran away.

I remember being on that road trip thinking if I didn't have a family that

I loved, I would just keep driving and never come back, because that

was where my head was at. I remember, I'm gonna tell you one

more story and then I'll give you some hope. Once I started making my

way through this, probably almost a year later, I shared the story in

front of our church. It was me just being honest on why I was

acting so weird for six to eight months, and I shared the story is

really hard being that vulnerable and transparent in front of people, and for the

next week and a half, my staff had to meet with people and apologize

for me over and over and over again. Because people didn't understand. All

of those people they left the church and moved out of state. It's not

you that was mean. If you are one of those people and you're still

here, I forgive you from the bottom of my heart. Art don't ever

do that to someone again. It just made me feel more and more alone

every every time I turned around. The only thing that helped me was I

I couldn't sleep at night, so I finally just thought, might as well

just get up and read my Bible. So I started going to the Starbucks

on Boffalorett Highway in one sixty fourth. I'd be there, usually at five

thirty in the morning, and I'd spend two to three hours there just reading

my Bible in journaling, and the craziest thing would happen. I would read

God's word. I felt over and over again that he understood me. It

was like God's word was healing my soul. I remember sitting in that Starbucks

and I would read things, and I would look around, thinking, does

anybody else know this too. You'd've been a minister for thirty years, and

God is turning my world upside down. And I remember when I finally started

studying Psalms thirty four. God just blew my mind. So I want to

share with you today three truths from Psalm thirty four. And I tell you

this is truth for you. I'm describing how God feels about you in your

lowest moments, in the moments where you feel the most alone, in the

moments where you feel like no one cares, no one understands you. You

want to give up, You want to throw your hands up in the air.

You can't handle it anymore. Here's the truth of how He feels about

you. It blew my mind. It says, the eyes of the Lord

are I'm the righteous? Who are the righteous? You're a follower of Jesus.

If you're somebody that serves him, you've surrendered your life to him.

He's watching you. In the middle of nowhere, in the Era or the

Nevada desert where I should have died, he was watching me. I remember

sitting there thinking, no one even knows I'm here. I should have called

my wife, And then I realized he was watching me the whole time.

He sees you when you feel like no one understands you, no one sees

you where you are. He sees you right where you're at. And it

goes on and it says, and his ears are attentive to their cry.

I love this. Not only does he see you, but he hears you.

I think only moms get what this what David meant here. Moms,

you don't need that walkie talkie system by your kid's crib. You don't need

that because if your baby is laying in his or her crib and they rustle

a little bit, it doesn't matter where you are. You can be three

houses away and you're like, I think the baby's moving. Moms are attentive

to the cries of people they love. If for those of you that dropped

your kids off in kids church, if your son or daughter walked in,

you're facing me. But if you heard them, do this mom, mom.

First off, every mom's gonna look, but the mom whose child that

was immediately when they heard mom, you recognize that's my daughter, that's my

that's my son. That's how attentive he is to your cry. And I

followed on my hands and knees and say, Lord, help me. He

recognized my voice. His ears were attentive to me. All right, let's

keep going. This is so good. The righteous cry out and the Lord

hears them. Okay, this is the key about the Lord hears you.

He doesn't act until you cry out, So you gotta view it this way.

This is the way God is with you. You keep walking away from

him and he's following right behind you. What I wished he would do is

grab my shoulders, spin me around, and slap me with his bible.

But he doesn't do that. He waits for me to stop and cry out.

What does that word cry out mean? In the Hebrew, it's described

as bitter, angry, emotional, short, heartfelt like it is rescue me,

Jesus, Help me, Jesus. And what does he do? He

delivers them from all their troubles. Oh, this next part. The Lord

is close to the broken hearted, very bad, your heartbroken. Have you

ever thought I'm gonna get this promotion. I've deserved this promotion, I've earned

it, and you just got jacked and didn't get it. Have you ever

thought this is the person I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with I'm

in love with this person and then come to find out they didn't feel the

same way about you. Have ever been in a marriage and I mean,

yeah, we had our rough times, but I can't believe she left me.

Have you ever been brokenhearted? Have you ever done everything you possibly could

do for your kids? And then when they became an adult, I just

totally rejected you. Have you had friends that you thought you were super super

close to and meant you you went through a funky season like I did,

and then it's like, where are you? Have you ever been broken hearted?

He's close to the broken hearted. Oh my gosh. This next part

he saves those who are crushed in spirit. Have you ever been crushed before?

Has someone ever crushed you before? Crushed you with their words, crushed

you with their actions? Has life crushed you before? He'll save you.

It's just so good. And then he throws this one in. The righteous

person may have many troubles. First off, I want to tell you,

if a preacher ever told you you give your life to Jesus, you will

be without pain, without heartache, without trouble, they lied to you.

That is manipulation. It is not true. Life happens to the good and

just happens to the bad just as much as does anybody else. Life happens,

the stress. Life overwhelms everybody. So it says, the righteous person

may have many troubles. You're gonna deal with times your finances are great and

times that isn't. You're gonna deal with, times your health is great and

times it isn't. You're gonna deal with times your relationships seem to be thriving,

and times it seems like they're dying. Trouble will come to you,

because it comes to everyone, it's part of life. But the Lord delivers

him from them all. This next part it's just so crazy. He protects

all of his bones, not one of them will be broken. Now,

obviously that's metaphorical, but what it means is it means like you're gonna go

through troubles, but the righteous cry out and he hears them, and he's

gonna protect you down to your bones. He's You're gonna protect every square into

your body. He knows every single hair on your head, he knows every

tear that you shed, every struggle that you have. He knows it all,

and he is gonna deliver you from it all. Church he sees you,

and he hears you. And number three, he'll deliver you. Now,

you got to realize this when it comes to being delivered by God.

Sometimes God miraculously delivers you out of something, but most of the time he

delivers you through. I would love to say that after three nights in the

clown motel and tone of paw Nevada, that all of a sudden I snapped

two was put back together. It was three years of struggling with this,

in three years where every time I would start recognizing that my mind is beginning

to lie to me again, I would pivot back to what God said about

me, and he would walk me through. I remember thinking, I'm never

going to be the same person again, but at least I know that he's

never going to leave me. And you guys have heard me use this illustration

a lot. I say what I learned through all my anxiety was I hold

on to Jesus like this and everything else like this. And I always realized

that as soon as my anxiety increased, it was because I was doing this.

I was starting to hold on to everything else tighter and loosen on Jesus.

And then I just quickly pivot back, Jesus everything else. He says

this. He says, the Lord will rescue his servants. No one who

takes refuge in him will be condemned. Coolest thing about this story Dave wrote

this. David wrote this. I want you to put yourself in David's mind.

David is told he's going to be king. He has seen God affirm

an instance after instance by miraculous victories against his enemies, where he is convinced

God's promise to me is that I'm going to be king. But when he

wrote this Psalm Saul, the actual king was trying to have him killed.

Israel, the place that he was supposed to be king over, had gotten

so toxic intention filled that David ran away. And if you ever wanted to

run away David relates to you. You know where David ended up. In

the land of the Philistines, the enemies of Israel, is where he sought

refuge. This makes no sense. He felt safer with his his enemies then

he did with his people that were supposed to be his friends. While he's

in the land of the Philistines, he encounters the ruler of the Philistines,

a guy by the name of a Kish. Your Bible might have a heading

that calls him a Bimelech. That was his title, but his actual name

was a Kish. Well, here's what happens. A Kiss recognizes David,

and David probably deep in the midst of like he wrote this when he was

having anxiety issues, and he wrote this when he was depressed. He wrote

this when he was feeling alone, and in those moments, the enemy lies

to you. And David had all of these worst case scenarios going his mind.

He thought, oh no, a Kiss is gonna think I'm a spy

from Israel and having me killed. And he thought, best case scenario,

He's not gonna think I'm a spy and to win over Saul, He's gonna

capture me and hand me over to Saul, who's gonna kill me. And

David doesn't know what to do. You know what he actually does. He

like, goes crazy, drives his challenger down to dirt road that a car

that's lowered to the ground should never drive on to begin with, and he

drives his challenger into a hole and totals it. Now, actually it's similar.

He pretends to be insane, he acts crazy. A Kiss thinks he's

lost his mind. He probably had at that point, and so he just

says, David's crazy, I'm not got anything to do with him, and

he just leaves him alone. And out of all of that, David writes

a song where he said, I am I'm literally losing my mind, finding

safety in the land of my enemies, away from my friends and family who

all want to kill me. So I'm losing my mind. But you see

me. You are attentive to my cry. Your word promises that you're going

to deliver me just a moment. We want to pray for you because I

know that there are many of you that the message I shared was for you.

Before we pray for you, I want our band to lead us in

that song that we closed the worship set with because it's the reminder of how

God sees you and how God will deliver you from your situation, your loneliness,

your circumstances. David