Kill the Craving

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

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

Let's turn to Numbers 11.

Numbers 11 and the title of today's message, which is a little bit hard coming off of Thanksgiving week, where I'm sure we still we're still eating leftovers today.

But the title is Kill the Craving.

Kill the Craving.

Now we all have cravings.

I have a little bit of a sweet tooth myself.

I enjoy gummy bears.

I enjoy sweet potato casserole.

That's my favorite dish for Thanksgiving.

My mother-in-law does a phenomenal job.

I feel like she makes it just for me every single year.

At least that's what I'm gonna say, because I'm her favorite son-in-law, so.

But I realized that apparently a sweet tooth was passed down to my children as well.

So we have four kids: Addie, who's eight, Kate, who's six, Preston, who's five, and Jack, who's three.

So Elaine clearly is the real hero in our family.

But our oldest son, I know they say you have sons and they eat a lot, and I expected that to come a little bit later on in life.

But apparently it started a little bit earlier on.

So I actually gave my son Preston a nickname.

And his nickname in our house for me is Pantry.

Because if it got quiet at our house, even when he was two years old, I knew exactly where to go find him.

He was in the pantry.

And what he would do is he would go in there, he'd grab the Oreos, he'd grab the oatmeal cream pies, he'd grab all of these things that may taste good to you, but aren't necessarily good for you.

And he would go and he would have his secret stash, which I eventually found, with some mold all over it.

And I told him, hey, you you can't do that.

Man cannot live on gummy berries and oatmeal cream pies alone.

It just can't happen.

But we all have our cravings, and what I want to not talk about today is just food, but also I want to talk about the things that our soul craves.

We all have cravings in our soul.

For some of us, it may be acceptance.

We're craving acceptance.

We want it so badly.

Some of us it may be we want to be known by others.

Some of us it may be wealth, some of us it may be different things for all of us, but we all have those cravings.

And what do we do with those cravings is really important for us as we grow in our relationship with God.

And in Numbers 11, the people of Israel reveal a lot to us about how they handled the cravings that they had.

And I believe there's a lot that we can learn from them.

So let's jump in Numbers 11, starting in verse 4.

It said, Then the foreign rabble, remember that, who were traveling with the Israelites, began to crave the good things of Egypt.

And the people of Israel also began to complain, oh, for some meat.

I understand that craving sometimes.

They exclaimed, We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt, and I'm gonna stop right there.

They said it was free in Egypt.

They have selective memory, and many times when we're pursuing our cravings, we give ourselves an imagination that the past was better than it actually was.

And this is how our cravings can deceive us.

And he said, and it said, continues to say, and we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted.

But now our appetites are gone.

All we ever see is this manna.

The manna looked like small coriander seeds, and it was pale yellow like gum resin.

The people would go out and gather it from the ground.

They made flour by grinding it with hand mills or pounding it in mortars.

Then they boiled it in a pot and made it into flat cakes.

These cakes tasted like pastries baked with olive oil.

The manna came down in the camp with the dew during the night.

Moses heard all the family standing in the doorways of their tents, whining, and the Lord became extremely angry, and Moses was also aggravated.

And Moses said to the Lord, Why are you treating me, your servant, so harshly?

Have mercy on me.

What did I do to deserve the burden of all these people?

Did I give birth to them?

Did I bring them into the world?

Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby?

How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors?

Where am I supposed to get meat for all these people?

They keep whining to me, saying, Give us meat to eat.

I can't carry all these people by myself.

The load is far too heavy.

If this is how you intend to treat me, just go ahead and kill me.

Do me a favor and spare me the misery.

How many of you know Moses was a little bit fed up?

Sometimes how we can get with our kids.

But I have three points today about how we can be prevented from falling into our cravings.

And the first point is this remove the rabble.

Remove the rabble.

Now, the rabble, as it was mentioned in this passage, there were foreigners that actually went with the children of Israel whenever they left Egypt.

So they didn't just leave alone by themselves.

There were also a group of people that came with them.

Now I don't want to talk about the people that came with them, but I want to talk about what the rabble may be in our own lives.

The rabble consisted of a mixed company, a disorganized and disorderly crowd.

And here's why it was bad for them.

Because a rabble brought along their patterns, their perspectives, and their processes for their life in Egypt, and also tried to put that on the children of Israel, and they went along with it because they were conditioned for their cravings.

And when they were out and about, they actually came to the point where they were willing to say, I would rather go back and be in bondage again than to be free.

Is there anything from our past that we may have craved or love that we're like, hey, you know what?

It may be better than I thought it was.

There may be a reason for me to go back to that rather than moving forward in what God has for me.

And here was their problem is their cravings became the foundation for their complaints against God.

The things that they were craving led to them complaining against God, and they were discontent with his provisions that he was already giving to them.

They were saying, We want more, what you've given us isn't enough.

But I want to say to us today that the easiest way for us to miss what God is doing is to get wrapped up in what he isn't doing.

I'm gonna say that again.

The easiest way for us to miss what God is doing is to get wrapped up in what he isn't doing.

And we've all been to that place where we get these spiritual blinders and we can't see what God has done.

We can't see how God has saved our marriage because we're focused on this one problem.

We can't see how God has brought that prodigal home because we're still focused on this one problem.

It doesn't make a difference what else is around us because we're craving for this one thing to get done.

Now, what were they complaining about?

Their main complaint was about what they had to eat.

Heaven's food truck would show up every single day, six days a week, and put manna on the ground.

But it's interesting when it comes to our temptations, here's what James 1.14 says.

It says, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

So like I said, we have four kids.

Our oldest Addie, we went to her school, it was a parent teacher function that was happening, and me and Elaine when we got uh to see their report card, we got to learn about them.

Addie brought a report card home and said, Hey, look, Daddies, I I've got all A's.

There's no B's.

And I'm like, that's awesome.

She's like, I've never gotten a B in my life.

I was like, that's nothing.

I've never gotten a B in my life either.

So, hey, we're good.

Thank you for all you smart people that are messing up the curve for everyone else.

But we got to sit and sit down, and the teacher told us all nice things about Ad.

She really is a good student.

But one of the projects that they had to do and work on was talk about the temptations that they may face.

So Addie wrote down three different temptations.

And one of the temptations that she wrote down was sneaking to play on the program.

That's the temptation that I have.

The second one was I get tempted to talk a lot in class.

I looked at Elaine and I was like, well, I wonder where she got that from.

But there was a third temptation that she had, and it was sneaking around to get something to eat.

And Elaine looked at me and said, I wonder where she got that from.

And I was a little bit offended, I did not expect it to go there in my head.

But her temptations are very innocent.

And my hope is that they would stay that way, but I know they'll they'll grow because we all have desires that we want as we grow up and they can continue to grow.

And here's what's weird for them: they were experiencing a miracle every single day.

They were experiencing God's provision every single day, and they said, our appetites are gone, we've had this enough.

And what they were saying to God, in a sense, was the miracle's not good enough anymore.

The miracle for them had actually become monotonous.

They were simply going through the motions, not ever understanding that God was doing something special.

But here's the weird part about it is that the manna wasn't supposed to last forever.

It was just the provision that God gave them for that season, because when they stepped into the promised land, the manna stopped because God was providing for them in a different way.

It's important for us to understand the season that we're in may determine the provision that we receive because he knows what we need in that moment.

But his purpose behind giving them manna was to wean them off of anything from Egypt.

And he clearly was doing a good job because they desired more.

That's what they were fighting for, and that's what they were clamoring for.

But there's things that we need to remove from our life.

I don't know if you've ever been to a Build-A-Bear workshop.

There's one, there's one here in the mall.

We have some people who have been.

And we've taken our girls there, and it's it's an incredible time.

What you do is you go to the bunch of different places and you pick the accessories that you want to put on your stuffed animal.

It's a great place if you want to go and spend$2,000 on a stuffed animal that your kid is not going to use a week later.

It's awesome.

That's what you want to do.

But at the very end of it, you get to the place, and it's not really$2,000 if you're wanting to go there, by the way.

Feels that way.

But at the end, they then stuff the animal and then you walk out with it.

But as I was thinking about that, I actually feel like if we're not careful, as even Christians, we can become stuffed with all the wrong things.

We can be stuffed with pride, we can be stuffed with lust, and it prevents the Holy Spirit's work that he wants to do in our lives.

And what we need to do is remove the rabble so that the Holy Spirit can do his work on the inside of us.

So it's important for all of us to first remove the rabble.

Here's the second thing.

We need to inventory our words.

We need to inventory our words.

I don't know if this has ever happened to you and you may be this person.

Have you ever been around a person who complains a lot?

You don't have to raise your hand, no one has to poke anybody in any of our campuses.

But we've been around those people who can turn any positive into a negative.

And it seems like they complain a lot.

And you're really never excited to be around that person, you actually try to avoid them.

I've told my kids, hey, I don't want to hear your whining, and I'm actually not really gonna respond to your complaining.

Because the scriptures say, Ask and you shall receive, not complain and you shall receive.

And it's important for us to realize that God wants us to ask.

See, they were so content of going back to Egypt.

God was more intent on being their father.

And he was saying to them, you don't need Pharaoh when you have a father.

And they were still stuck in this part of where they continue to complain.

In Psalm 78, it gives kind of a different picture of this.

In verse 18, it says this they stubbornly tested God in their hearts, demanding the foods they craved.

Just so you know, whenever there's cravings, desires eventually will turn into demands.

They even spoke against God.

Remember, they're saying this, himself saying, God can't give us food in the wilderness.

Yes, he can strike a rock so water gushes out, but he can give his people bread and meat.

When the Lord heard them, he was furious.

The fire of his wrath burned against Jacob.

Yes, his anger arose against Israel.

And here's really the key.

For they did not believe God or trust him to take care of them.

That was ultimately what was in their hearts.

And it's important for us that we get to the place where we don't let our cravings cause us to compromise.

This is what happened in their lives.

In Israel, if you really read throughout the Old Testament, you see them continually compromising what God had.

They wanted idols, they wanted meat in this instance, they wanted all these different things, but ultimately it kept them from what God ultimately wanted them to have.

Now I want to say something here.

I mentioned temptation earlier.

I want to mention it here because I feel like it's important.

Here's what we need to know about temptation.

First of all, temptation is not the sin in and of itself, it's acting on that.

But I know the scripture says God doesn't tempt us.

And here's why God doesn't tempt us, there's many reasons, because of his nature and because he's good.

And here's a reason I personally believe is because the person who tempts you can never comfort you.

Whenever you're tempted by Satan, what happens on the other side?

He's the accuser of the brethren.

He will accuse you and then condemn you.

The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, convicts us and then comforts us, but God doesn't tempt us because he's ultimately our comforter and he's not wanting us to get to the place where we compromise and fall short of what he has for us.

But one of my favorite books that I've read recently is a book called Never Split the Difference.

And he says something very interesting about compromise.

He said, People don't compromise because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the easy thing to do.

And he used a story to illustrate.

If you've ever read the book, you know what I'm about to say.

He uses this illustration of a husband and wife.

They're about to go out on a formal night, a gathering with their colleagues, and he's wearing a suit, and his wife really wants him to wear the brown shoes, but he wants to wear the black shoes.

And so they went back and forth only a little bit, and the wife just kind of gave up.

She's like, okay, go ahead, do whatever you want.

When the husband is there about to leave, steps out, and he says, You know what, honey?

I was thinking about it, and I decided to compromise.

And look, here I am, I'm wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe.

Now I know this guy was newly married because if he wasn't, he wouldn't know he should just go with the shoes that his wife wanted to him, too, and move on with the night.

It took me 11 years to learn that, but I'm sure I'm giving this out for free if you're single or a young adult.

But that's what compromise is like.

It gets us to look a little bit silly, it gets us to look a little bit foolish.

And here's why I say though, inventory your words.

Because if you would take the time and inventory your words, I could actually show you what's in your heart.

Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And if you want to invent inventory your words, I bet your spouse is willing to help you with your inventory of your words.

Because we need to watch the things that we're saying.

Jesus says it this way, Luke 6, verse 43.

Luke 6:43

It says, A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit.

A tree is identified by its fruit.

Figs are never gathered from thornbrushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes.

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.

What you say flows from what's in your heart.

And it's important for us to realize that, that what we're saying is actually an indication of what's going on in our heart.

But what we say, you think about fruit, a tree is identified by its fruit, a fruit has a taste to it.

In Psalm 119, verse 103, it says, How sweet your words taste to me.

Psalms 119:103

They are sweeter than honey.

I want to say if God's words have a taste to them, I will submit to you today that our words also have a taste to them.

As a matter of fact, Jesus goes on to say something in Matthew 5 about us being the salt of the earth.

He says, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

Whenever I was going up, I had a big problem with my words.

I was a little bit mean.

My mom noticed this, and when she tried to figure out other consequences to give me, she was like, Okay, I'm gonna renew his mind.

That seems like the best way to go.

So what she would do is she would, I call it punishment, but it helps out in the long run.

She would say, Okay, you're gonna write Ephesians 4.29, and here's what Ephesians 4.29 says let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth except that which is necessary for education, edification that it may impart grace to the hearers.

I wrote that scripture when I was 15, probably 1,000 times.

Because I was so mean, I was dealing with a lot of anger at the time, and I was just so mean, and I was sarcasting and I was cutting down.

And if she was really upset, she made me write it from the Amplified Bible because it was a little bit longer.

She's like, it's a little bit louder, maybe he'll finally get the point.

But here's what's interesting, and I don't know if she had the foresight of it, but it says that you may impart grace to the hearers.

Every single weekend, whenever I have the opportunity to speak, I have the opportunity and the chance to speak grace to everyone who comes through the doors of Gateway Church in Houston.

That's what I have the opportunity to do.

But this should be a part of all of our lives that we should speak grace because we're supposed to be the salt of the earth.

Salt's very important, especially in their society.

And salt, let's just be real, makes everything taste better.

Just me.

This is why I think Jesus called it.

But salt is a preservative and it has other significant portions of it.

But I love what Job 6, 6 through 7 says.

Sometimes I talk back with the scriptures whenever I'm reading it.

He says, Don't people complain about unsalted food?

Yes, Job, we do.

Does anyone want the tasteless white of an egg?

No, I don't want that.

My appetite disappears when I look at it.

I gag at the thought of eating it.

Job, I am 100% with you.

But we are the salt of the earth.

So how do we maintain our saltiness?

We stay close to the rock.

We stay close to the rock, who is Jesus?

The salt that was closest to the rock actually was the purest.

The further and further away you got from the rock, it would have different mixture of earthly elements in it, and it would not be as pure, and it was actually thrown out to the wayside, and it wasn't of any good use.

Now here's what I want to say: God has called us to be salt in this earth.

A couple of months ago, we were out to a restaurant after church.

We were out with some members, and outside of the shopping area that we kind of were, there was an ice cream shop, but there was a turf where kids could go out and play.

So I was actually out there with the kids.

And there was a person who came from the ice cream shop.

They saw the kids that were there.

There were about eight of them.

Three of them were mine.

And so she came and asked, Hey, can I give them a sample?

And I was like, Okay, great.

Yeah, you can give them a sample of ice cream.

I don't want one myself.

So they're all eating them.

And once again, I said, only three kids.

Guess which kid wasn't with me?

Pantry was not with me yet.

So Preston sees everyone having ice cream and he runs out there at full speed.

And he says, Hey, can I have some ice cream?

Where's the ice cream go?

I'm like, sorry, buddy, they're all gone.

And then other people like, hey, you can have some of mine.

He took a bite, but he said, No, I want my own.

And so he's like, Daddy, can you take me to the ice cream shop?

I was like, okay, let's go.

But like all eight kids, even the kids that weren't with me, we all went over there to the ice cream shop to get Preston his own sample.

But I want to let you know the person who was selling the ice cream knew what she was doing.

She knew she was giving them a sample because what would they do next?

Turn to me and say, Daddy, I want some more.

Because a sample never satisfies.

See, we're called to be the salt of the earth.

When people encounter us, they should get a taste of who Jesus is.

But I want to submit to us today we can't be people who, when the world looks at us, they want to get They want nothing to do with Christianity.

We should be so about loving what God loves that when they see us, they say, I want a personal relationship of my own.

That's what we should be all about.

So we need to inventory our words.

Here's the third and final thing.

We need to feast at God's table.

We need to feast at God's table.

It's not just a going away from something, it's a running to something as well.

Numbers 11, we're gonna finish this passage, verse 31.

It said, Now the Lord sent a wind that brought quail from the sea and let them fall all around the camp.

For miles in every direction, there were quail flying about three feet above the ground.

So the people went out and caught quail all that day, and throughout the night, and all the next day too.

No one gathered less than fifty bushels.

That's one of the biggest measurements they had.

Talking about a bushel is about eight pounds.

So no one gathered less than fifty bushels.

They spread the quail all around the camp to dry.

But while they were gorging themselves on the meat, while it was still in their mouths, the anger of the Lord blazed against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.

So that place was called Kebra Hataba, which means graves of gluttony, because they were there they buried the people who craved meat from Egypt.

Here's what's interesting is the effort they gave to go after their cravings.

It said they went all day long, they went all night long, and then they even came back the next day, and while they were gorging themselves, they received what they asked for, complained for, but it came with a price.

Another phrase is another translation instead of graves of gluttony, it says actually graves of cravings.

But how many people let their cravings end up being their grave?

Their craving leads to their integrity going in the grave.

Their cravings lead to their marriage going into the grave or the relationship with their kids.

The things that we're craving, if we refuse to deal with them, will ultimately deal with us.

That's why God wants to free us so that we can walk in his strength and everything that he has for us.

Philippians 3.19 says this they are headed for destruction.

Their God is their appetite.

They brag about shameful things and they only think about life here on this earth.

See, if you only focus on what's temporary, you'll lose sight of what's eternal.

God was taking them to a place where they would have more than enough.

But in this moment of time, they were frustrated because they couldn't have all of their cravings and their appetites ended up shaping their attitude.

And that's what this scripture says.

They brag about shameful things and they only think about here and now.

And if you read through the Apostle Paul's letters, he's trying to raise everyone's sights and say, you're not just living for here.

There's an eternity that we need to be storing up for, that you're going to be with Jesus on.

So some of us need to pray and ask God to give us new taste buds.

And here's why.

Because we have a generation that's coming behind us, that's looking at us and watching us.

There's a story in Joshua chapter 7, and I'm gonna give it to you from the ESV.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

If you've ever heard me, you know that's the Ethan Standard Version.

Which means I'm gonna paraphrase it just for the sake of time.

But there's a story about a guy named Achan.

But I need to give a little bit of context because hundreds of years before, God gave the promise to Abram, who we know as Abraham, that they were going to go into the promised land and one day his descendants would reach the promised land.

So they spend hundreds of years in Egypt.

God finally frees them, he takes them to the Red Sea, He's taking care of them in the wilderness, and he gets to the place where they he would love to bring them into the promised land, but they were so discouraged by the report that they received, they elected not to go.

An entire generation fell in the wilderness.

So God's like, Okay, I'm gonna pick Joshua, he's gonna be the one to lead you in.

And he says to Joshua in Joshua chapter one, be strong and of good courage, do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for I will be with you wherever you go.

Whatever land you step into, I'm gonna be with you and you're gonna get the victory.

So they finally are walking into the Jordan.

God splits apart the Jordan River and they're able to walk across.

They go through some painful stuff in circumcision.

I'm just building this a little bit because context is important.

Because I just think about everything they had to go through to get to where they were.

And then they go and God conquers Jericho for them, what they thought was never gonna be possible.

God flattened it, but he said one thing.

He's like, Everything in there is mine.

You're not supposed to take anything.

The first in the promised land is mine, so you'll give it to me.

But Achan, the one person, decided, nah, I'm actually going to take this for myself.

And I wonder to myself as I read this story, I was like, what in the world is he thinking?

He's seen a generation come beforehand and disobey God.

He's seen what they've had to go through, he's seen what their cravings did in this moment, where they craved meat and the price that they had to pay on the other side, yet he was not willing to say no to his craving.

So they defeat Jericho and then they actually go to the next battle, thinking that God is with them, but not realizing that they actually lost that battle because of what Achan had done.

And here's the interesting thing as you read this story in Joshua chapter 7, after they lose this battle, it said, Fear came among them, and their courage melted away.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

God had told them, Be strong and very courageous, and their courage melted away because of their cravings.

And it's important for us to realize that God said, You need to remove this, or my presence won't actually go with you.

But when they approach Achan, here's what he says: He said, Achob replied to Joshua, It is true, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel.

Among the plunder I saw a beautiful robe from Babylon, 200 silver coins, and a bar of gold weighing more than a pound.

I wanted them so much that I took them.

They are hidden in the ground beneath my tent with the silver buried deeper than the rest.

If you know the story, he was eventually stoned, and they called that valley the valley of trouble, the valley of Acor, which means the valley of trouble.

But there's actually good news on the other side of this.

God did not leave this place forever named as the Valley of Trouble.

In Hosea 2.15, he says, I will actually turn for vineyards and transform the valley of trouble into a gateway of hope.

So today, if you're hearing this message and you're feeling, hey, there's this sense of things I'm desiring from God that I'm not getting in this moment, I'm not getting in this season.

Things that I'm desiring that I think may be good, but God may not have for me right now.

There is a gateway of hope, and even if we've fallen into our cravings, God can redeem us, He can make us new, and He can make us holy, and He can ultimately free us.

But here's how Matthew 5, 6 says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Psalm 23, 5, a very famous passage, he said, You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.

Now think about that for a second.

It doesn't make a difference the circumstances or the situations that are around you today.

God has prepared a feast for all of us.

But the question I have is, is there something preventing you from sitting down in the seat and partaking of everything that God has?

Because as a as a church planner, there was some things for me.

We were sent out at a time, and in my head I thought, God, you you know all things.

You know what was coming ahead.

Couldn't send me out a year later.

Might have been a good time.

And I was craving for so much, craving for comfort, craving to make things happen, and I was just out of control.

Everybody was out of control.

And it was a very frustrating time in my life.

And God began to speak to me very something very clearly.

He said, Actually, I sent you out exactly where when I wanted to.

Not just for you, though.

I've sent you out for other people as well.

And I was losing my perspective, and he began to shape my life and shape my heart.

And what's been so incredible is that our kids have been able to join us along for the journey.

And we had our first presbytery service this past August, and Pastor Wayne Drain, who's been here many times, he was one of the presbyters, and he gave an incredible word to the next generation, and he just proclaimed the goodness of God over the next generation.

But then he pointed out my daughter Addy, or my oldest daughter, and he asked her to stand up on a chair.

And he said to her, You have the same mantle on your life to preach and teach the word of God as your mother does.

Many of you know Elaine travels and speaks the word of God, and many lives have been changed.

So he says that.

But one cool thing that happens is that Elaine is taking our kids with her as she's gone to minister, and it's really been incredible to see how they've really desired to go with us, to desire to be a part of it.

Waking up early in the morning to be a part of what God is doing.

But they went on a trip one time and I actually have a picture while Elaine is working on her message.

Addie's sitting there, and she's writing her first message.

And there's a picture of it as well.

It says, John 17, 17 says, the Bible is true.

You know the song, the Bible is true, the Bible is true.

It says, Nothing is better than Jesus Christ who died on the cross for us.

He made us all very special.

He made a path that's the greatest one of all.

Who is better than Jesus Christ?

No one.

And here's what I learned in this situation is that we shouldn't just let the next generation see us walk in our cravings.

We should allow them and live with such a purpose that they see us walk in our callings.

I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes with me.

It's what is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

Some of us we may be at the beginning part, and there's some things we know that God we need Him to remove some things in our lives so the Holy Spirit can actually work something fresh in our hearts and our lives.

We've been craving for some things that we need to let down.

Some of us, we may be in that place where we've been complaining and we need to lay down that complaint and trust that God cares for us.

But some of us we need to pray about what may be keeping us from sitting down and receiving all that God has for us, what may prevent us from feasting on all that God has, despite our circumstances and situations.

But let God speak to us today.

And I want to pray for us.

And Father, we thank you for your goodness, we thank you for your love.

We thank you that no matter what we go through, that you promise to never leave us, you promise to never forsake us.

We thank you that there is no one better than you.

You have us exactly where you want us, and you're taking us to the place where you want us to be.

And we say today that we wholeheartedly trust you.

It's in Jesus' name I pray.

Amen and amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

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We hope you have a great week.