Hope in a Hard Place

Come on, Gateway Church.

What an incredible honor it is to be with you guys.

And I gotta tell you, um, I've been to Gateway.

I don't I think I might have been to Gateway more than any other church that I have been to.

Gateway, you guys have become family.

I'm a member there.

I tithe there.

Actually, I don't I don't I don't do that.

Pastor Robert wouldn't let me.

He is the one who taught me to tithe at my church.

And so uh, if you go to Gateway, tithe.

Um, but I I love your pastor so much.

Pastor Robert and Debbie are just such influential people.

Um, and what I love about them is they are even more genuine behind the scenes than they are on stage.

And I've heard people say this before.

He's the same on stage as he is off stage.

That's not true.

Because if I was the same on stage as I am, if I was the same offstage as I am on stage, you guys would get sick of me, okay?

My daughter said over here, y'all would get sick of me.

I like the word genuine better because Pastor Robert and Debbie, as genuine as they are in front of everybody, they are even more genuine behind the scenes.

They deeply love you.

Um, in fact, uh, whenever I'm around them, they're they're nonstop talking about Gateway Church.

They're talking about the miracle, they're talking about the honor it is to be there.

And so I just I'm grateful to be here.

I have a lot of friends on staff.

I love you guys a lot.

In fact, I just feel like I'm part of the Gateway family.

So this is not the prettiest intro I've ever done.

This is just me saying, hey, welcome home.

We with the fam today.

This is your play, hey, this is your play cousin, Gateway.

This is your play cousin, Jeremy, from home city in Houston, and we're honored to be with you guys.

And I believe today God is gonna do something amazing in your life.

Okay, the the first thing that I want to tell you is I'm just I'm just grateful that it's 2021.

I don't know about y'all, but I have never, I have never wanted to see a year gone.

In fact, the Lord gave me a song.

He gave me a song.

On December 31st, the Lord put a song in my spirit for 2020.

It was na na na na.

Come on.

Na na na na.

Hey.

It's an anointed song.

Goodbye.

I just I'm glad we're in 2021 because everything, everything in 2020 was hard.

It was just everything.

What was funny to me is in the beginning of the year, pastors were like, this is gonna be your year.

It's gonna be the best year of your life.

And it's like, pfft, not, you know.

But it was just hard.

I mean, I even I got pulled over.

I haven't been pulled over in years, like by the popo.

I got pulled over in 2020 for, I mean, it they were right.

I I was driving um in the HOV lane, the high occupancy vehicle lane, which means you're supposed to have more than one person in the vehicle.

I was I was by myself in the car, and the police officer pulled me over, you know, and being a pastor, as he walked up to the car, he said, You know why I pulled you over?

I said, Yes, sir.

He said, You are uh you're by yourself in the HOV lane.

I said, I'm a pastor.

I am not by myself.

The Holy Spirit's in here with me.

Come on, somebody.

And he gave me a ticket anyway, but it's okay.

All right.

Um, but here's what here's what I want you to know.

As hard as 2020 was, and we walk into 2021, it might look like you're by yourself, you might feel like you're by yourself, but you are never alone.

And that's what I want you to understand today.

And I'm gonna push that into your spirit.

Now, the challenge is as we walk into 2021, the hope was, ha! 2020's over.

It's done.

2021.

And then you realize we're still dealing with challenges.

It's still hard.

What do you do in a hard place?

So today, I want to talk to you on this subject: finding hope in a hard place.

If you're taking notes, I want to encourage you to write it down because because all throughout your life, you're gonna have the opportunity to need hope in a hard place.

The character in the scripture that we're gonna be talking about today is Jacob in Genesis chapter 28.

Genesis 28 · chapter mention

And I won't I won't belabor Jacob's whole life, but but Jacob had been born into a challenge.

Jacob uh was was he has a brother, a twin brother, Esau, and they actually fight it out in the womb.

The Bible says there's there's nations battling in uh their mother's womb, and Esau is born first, which in Jewish culture, if you understand that, that's everything.

He gets the birthright, he gets the blessing, he gets he pretty much gets everything, and and Jacob is kind of a backup kid, okay?

And and he didn't want to be that even in the womb because the Bible says that he was born holding on to his brother's heel.

So Jacob, here's what's here's the weird thing about Jacob.

It's very unique.

He wanted the good things, he wanted the God things, he just went about getting them the wrong way.

And that's the challenge that a lot of us deal with.

We want the good things, we want the God things, but we go about getting them the wrong way.

He exploited his brother's birthright, he tricks his father out of the birthright blessing, dresses up as his brother, his mom actually helps him in this.

It's just a it's a it's a it's a bad scene.

We pick it up in Genesis 28.

Everything that could go wrong for Jacob has gone wrong.

He's just he's just on the run all the time.

Life, life is just hard for Jacob.

Verse 10 says, Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran.

And when he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set.

He couldn't go on.

He couldn't go any further.

And taking one of the stones there, when she noticed how bad it is for him, taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.

I don't know about y'all, but I've been in a hard place before.

I don't know that I've ever been in a place where I had to use a, it was so bad I had to use a rock for a pillow.

Okay, pillows are very important to me.

I want your boy wants a good pillow.

You ever looked at a pillow and you're like, that's a good pillow, and then you lay on it and it's just filled with air, and then just like I'm on the mattress.

This is a this it's a bad day when you have a rock for a pillow.

Like it's so bad that everything is falling apart.

And I don't know where you are right now.

Maybe that's where you are.

Maybe your expectations were high in the beginning of 2020, and we're in the beginning of 2021, and you're like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm never doing that again.

I'm not setting my expectations up there because if I don't set high expectations, I can never feel disappointed.

And it's now affected my faith because I didn't get what I wanted, and life is hard, and maybe maybe you thought the marriage was going to be healed and it's sitting here in 2021 broken, or maybe you thought a marriage was gonna fix everything and it didn't.

It actually brought more problems in your life, or maybe you're in your 40s and you're on your third or your fourth or your fifth marriage, and you never dreamed that it would be like that.

Maybe it's a dream that you had that died.

Maybe, maybe it's uh it's a perpetual sin habit that you've never been able to kick.

Maybe it's your own sin habits that have caused pain in your life, and you're just like, you know what?

I just can't, I don't know if I can do this anymore.

Maybe it's financial, maybe it's your kids.

Coming out of 2020, it literally could be anything.

The one thing that all of us had in common last year was pain.

Everybody, every continent was just the pain of dealing with a situation.

And I want to tell you, if you want to find hope in a hard place, one of the first things that you have to do is you have to do this.

You have to be honest in the hard place.

You have to actually acknowledge that you're in a hard place.

The challenge with a lot of us is we don't ever acknowledge to anybody that we're in a hard place.

How you doing?

Fine.

Everything good?

Fine.

House of marriage?

Fine.

Where are you guys going to eat?

Fine.

Like you just you're on autopilot, and everything's always fine.

And look, I love and I have a love-hate relationship with social media, like Instagram and all that stuff, and I'm on Instagram, and you don't have to follow me on Instagram, but it's at Jeremy Foster.

All right, but um, it's a dumb joke.

All right, um, but if you follow me on Instagram, you're you're gonna see things like I'm getting ready to show you, okay?

I'm gonna show you something.

My son did a fifth birthday party.

My wife, well, my son came to his fifth birthday party.

My wife put it all together and she asked me to do one thing, and it was epic.

And so if you follow me on Instagram, then you saw this last year.

Take a look at this.

My son loves Peter Penn.

So, for his birthday, he's Peter Penn.

And I'm Captain Hook, I'm not a codfish.

You're a codfish.

It's so ridiculous.

But I want to show you that A, because I thought it was pretty awesome, guys.

I gotta tell you.

Like, it even scared, it scared my kids.

I was the scary Captain Hook.

It was my wife who was like, No, what are you doing?

Where did you get all that stuff on your face?

I was like, it's your eyeliner.

She was like, That's my really expensive eyeliner.

And I looked at her and I was like, but it's worth it, right?

Okay, and then um we put these pictures, they show you these pictures right here.

That I mean, like we had an amazing party.

My son dressed up as Peter Pan, I was Captain Hook, and that's what we put on Instagram.

What we didn't put on Instagram was the chaos that the entire party was.

And when everybody left, and it was a socially distanced party because there wasn't very many people there.

We had just a few kids there and a few parents, and when they left, there were cupcakes everywhere.

My wife had made this incredible, like this, she had taken a watermelon and dug it out and made a pirate ship out of it.

I mean, it was I was telling kids like, don't eat that, take pictures of that.

That's for Pinterest.

And the the when they when everybody left, the pirate ship was upside down on the floor.

My wife had sat in cupcakes, and she had cupcakes from here to there, and then sat on our white couch, okay?

But I didn't take any pictures of that.

I only showed you on Instagram the highlight reels.

Like I don't show you the hard places.

It's funny to me that people, Jen and I laugh at this a lot, but people will, I'll post a picture of me and Jen, and they'll be like, hashtag goals.

And me and Jen will laugh and they'll be like, because we're just posting the good stuff.

I don't post the fights.

How many of y'all married in here?

I know you're married.

Okay, you're married.

You don't, you don't, when you're in a fight with your wife, you don't like pick up your phone, like start it, start Instagram, and they're like, hey, hey y'all she real match.

Oh, baby girl, we don't say those words.

No, no, you don't do that.

Because you don't want people to see what you're really going through.

And the challenge is, I think the social media persona has taken over our even our spirituality.

It's taken over our public lives, and we have these secret private lives and secret private pain that nobody knows about.

Because we won't tell them about it.

How important is honesty when you're dealing with pain, when you're dealing with heartache, when you're dealing with challenges, how important is honesty to God?

In Matthew chapter 20, Jesus is leaving Jericho, and some blind men approach him, or actually they're just screaming out for him, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us, and Jesus does.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

In Matthew chapter 20, he stops, Jesus stops, and he called them.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

And we got when he when they got to Jesus, I don't mean this offensive at all, and I hope you're not offended by this, but Jesus asked them, what on face value seems like the most ignorant question, and Jesus, I'm not calling you ignorant, I'm just saying it seems like the most ignorant question that you could ask a blind person who's calling out to Jesus.

Jesus looks at them and says, What do you want me to do for you?

And you've got to know the disciples are like, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Jesus.

You've been out in the sun too long.

The sun's been out in the sun too long.

Jesus, you Jesus, they got the sticks.

They're padding around.

They even wore robes during those days that kind of signified that they were blind beggars, and you're still gonna ask them, hey, hey guys, what can I do for you?

It wasn't because Jesus needed to ask this question, it was that they needed to answer the question.

Because if you don't realize you're broken, how can you ever be healed?

If you don't know what to ask for, how are you going to ever receive the answer that God has for you?

The word says you have not because you ask not.

I think the challenge with a lot of us is if Jesus rolled up incarnate in the flesh and said, Hey guys, I'm Jesus, we'd be like, Jesus, what's up?

It's so good to see you.

And he said, Hey, what can I do for you?

You'd be like, Jesus, just a selfie.

Come on, people ain't gonna believe this.

And you'd be quiet in the kids.

Y'all act right, quit acting crazy.

Y'all stop this Jesus right here.

And we would never even tell him what we really need from him.

We don't want anybody to know that we're not okay, even Jesus.

Hey, it's 2021.

And we're still not okay.

I need you to understand this.

And maybe this is a word that you need to hear.

It's okay to still not be okay.

At some point you've got to just say, guys, I thought it was all gonna end on January 1.

I thought when the calendar year turned that it would be great.

It's a new year, and I wanted to be a new year and a new you, but we're still dealing with old problems and still dealing with past pain and heartache and trauma and challenges.

Who knew we'd still be wearing masks?

Are you kidding me right now?

I thought we'd leave the mask.

I never wanted to wear a mask.

I didn't even like masks when I was a kid, and I definitely don't want to wear them as an adult.

How many of y'all have you ever been breathing in the mask?

Well, you see somebody and you're fine, and then you and you see somebody and you're gonna yell at them, and you take in and like you're like, oh, and you got you have cotton in the back of your throat.

I have swallowed more cotton.

It's crazy.

Here's what I need you to understand.

That's just dumb.

That was that was just free.

I'm just gonna give you, I'm gonna take an extra offering for that.

Listen, here's what I need you to understand it's your honesty with where you are that helps you see when the answer shows up.

But if I'm not honest with where I am, Jacob had a moment of honesty.

Like you don't get more honest than I'm going to sleep on a rock now.

He stopped and he rested.

Do you know why?

Because he couldn't go on.

And when you can't go on, that's when God shows up.

So here's what happens Genesis 28, verse 13, Jacob lays his head on a rock, and all of a sudden he has a dream, and in a dream he sees God at the top of a ladder, and there's angels ascending and descending off of the ladder, just a side note.

Genesis 28:13

If you want something to come down, you've got to send something up.

And here they they're ascending and descending, which seems backwards.

But if you want, if you want to, when you sow worship into God, God sows blessings back into you.

That's the law of the harvest right here.

But but God shows up and he says this, and I won't read everything, but he says, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham, the God of Isaac.

I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.

You mean I can get blessings in the midst of brokenness?

I can get peace in the midst of pain, I can be overwhelmed, but not overcome, and God will even give me the land where I am at right now, even the pain and the heartache.

There are some of us going, God, get me out of this place, and God's going, No, I'm gonna give you that place if you'll trust me.

Verse 16, when Jacob awoke from his sleep, and that's where some of us need to, some of you just need to stop and rest so that you can dream again.

And then some of you that have been dreaming, you need to wake up and recognize that God has been there all along.

He wakes up from his sleep and he thought, surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.

You ever been not aware of something?

I'm from Louisiana, and so uh just by default, I'm an LSU fan.

And so uh in uh 2019 when LSU went to the national championships, I just told my wife, I was like, we have to get tickets to go to this game.

It's in New Orleans.

Come on, it's gonna be awesome.

We got to get tickets.

And then we looked online and saw the tickets were like$3,000 apiece.

I was like, babe, we are gonna watch this game on TV.

And I'm telling you, not an hour later, my brother-in-law called me out of the blue.

We didn't talk to him, we didn't ask him, and he said, Hey, brother-in-law.

I was like, What's up?

Brother-in-law, he's my favorite brother-in-law.

I got a lot of them, but Daryl, you're my favorite because of what you did right here, bruh.

I don't know if you'll ever see this.

I'm just giving you honor.

Come on, somebody.

And Daryl said, Hey, I just got you tickets to sit right next to us on the second row at the National Championships.

And I was like, Oh, there is a God in heaven.

And so we went and it was amazing.

And while we were there, we're walking around the city before the game, and I just got on Instagram, this Instagram again.

So I got, if you follow me, this is the dumb stuff you're gonna see.

I got on the Instagram stories and I was like, What's up, everybody?

We're here in New Orleans, there's my wife.

And she was like, get the camera off of me.

And I was like, they were having fun, and hey, by the way, if you got any hookups for your boy to get field passes, holla at your boy.

I was being dumb, but you gotta put it out there.

Come on, somebody.

And so at night while we're sitting at the game, um, there was like a lull, a kind of a boring moment, and I and I looked at my I looked at my phone, and there was this girl that had hit me, and she said, You're at the uh you're at the game.

What section are you in?

And I was like, Oh, oh, JoJo 2234, you don't even know.

My wife is a ninja.

You better watch yourself.

So I showed Jennifer immediately.

I was like, You know who that is?

And she was like, I don't know who that is, but answer her.

I was like, You said to answer her.

Okay, all right, all right.

I don't know what she might be a stalker, she might be crazy, you know.

So I answered her, and about 10 minutes later, I told her where we were.

About 10 minutes later, this dude comes walking down.

I was cheered, I was like, ah! And this guy taps me on the shoulder and I turn and look, and it's a dude in an all-black suit, black tie, he's got an all-access pass on, and he said, Pastor, and I said, Ah, son of the Lord, how are you today?

And he said, He said, Uh, my wife told me that you'd like to get field passes, and uh, I just wanted you to know that in 2015 we went to Hope City, we lived in Houston, and then God gave me the job as the financial controller for college football.

So I have two VIP all access passes for you, and we're getting ready to go on the field.

And your boy went on the field, and I partied with the team, and it was crazy, and it was a relationship and access that I did not even know I had until I actually asked.

At some point, you gotta realize where you are.

You know what you need to realize?

You need to realize who you are, but you also need to realize whose you are.

When I go through a storm, I'm not in a storm by myself.

I'm in a storm with the creator of the world, and I have access.

He goes on in verse 17.

It says, He was afraid and said, Now I want you to notice this.

This is so powerful.

He said, How awesome is this place?

This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate of heaven.

Now I want you to think about that in context.

This man had just slept with his head on a rock in quite possibly the hardest place that he had ever been.

And all of a sudden, that hard place went from being a hard place to being a holy place.

This place.

This place.

I wonder how many of us God has done something amazing for us in a hard place.

And we just haven't realized it.

A few months ago at our church, I met Ariana, and it blew me away when I met her because she had gone through our growth track, which is our membership process, and she had jumped on our dream team all during the COVID season.

We were just online, our church was just online, our doors weren't open, we couldn't open.

We we meet in all high schools, we don't have any uh any campuses that are ours, everything's portable, all of our campuses are portable, and so she had just she had seen it, somebody told her about it, she started watching, she gave her life to Jesus.

Just crazy.

And the first weekend that we reopened, I met her, and it was awesome to meet her.

And I asked her for her story, and she said, Yeah, I joined.

I got on the growth track, I gave my life to Jesus, I got on the dream team, and she said, I haven't been to church in 17 years, and God used all of this pain to get me back to church.

So I could tell you this as hard as it was, the hard place was worth it because Ariana sent hell an address change notification, and now she's gonna spend eternity in heaven.

Thank you, God, for the hard place.

Sometimes I gotta get thankful for the hard place.

Jacob did three things, and we're gonna talk about them.

Verse 18.

Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone that he had placed under his head, he set it up as a pillar, and he poured oil on top of it, and he called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.

So I'm gonna give you three things that I think you ought to do to really turn a hard place into a hopeful place.

The first thing that you have to do is you have to make your problem a pillar.

You have to make your problem a pillar.

Please don't let the problem define you, let it refine you.

Let it make You into what God has called you to be.

You get to decide whether it's going to be a stumbling block or a stepping stone.

If you could look around this room that we're in right now, or the room that you're sitting in right now, you would realize there are pillars behind the sheetrock.

There are pillars behind the walls.

They're not pretty, but they've been tested.

The sheetrock is not what holds the walls up.

The sheetrock just looks pretty.

I can't depend on the sheetrock.

I depend on the pillar.

And the pillar has gone through pain, and the pillar has gone through fire, and the pillar has gone through challenges.

So don't neglect or reject the things that make you strong enough to hold things.

Listen, you want a family?

You got to be a pillar.

You got to go through pain.

You want to do something successful in your life, you got to go through hard places.

That's where you find out your strength is.

All of this steel in this building has been through tensile strength tests.

That means it's been put under pressure until we can figure out how much it can hold.

God needs to find out how much pressure you can handle so He can figure out how big of a blessing he can build on top of your life.

And the stronger I am, the greater the blessings can come to me and through.

Challenge with a lot of us is our problem didn't become a pillar, our problem became our partner.

You ever met somebody who's got an excuse for everything?

Hey, y'all, it's January.

I know people who've already given up on their New Year's resolutions.

Well, I would go to the gym, but you know, I gotta lose a few pounds first.

That don't even make sense.

I've talked to people who said, well, you know, I wanna, I really wanna go all in for God, and I really want to go to church, and I really want to do what God has called me to do, and I really want to tithe, and I really want to give, and I really want to serve, but I gotta get my life cleaned up first.

I'm like, that's like saying, I really need to go to the hospital, but I'm bleeding real bad right now.

Doesn't make any sense.

At some point, you have got to allow that pain and that heartache and that challenge to become the reason you pray and the reason you fast and the reason you get in the word.

Let it become a foundation for prayer and devotion.

Let the problem become a pillar.

The second thing that he did.

Real unique, real Old Testament.

He poured oil on the problem.

Remember, he he set the stone up as a pillar.

Then he poured oil on the pillar.

He poured oil on the problem.

What does this mean?

That means he anointed his issue.

Oil in the scripture signifies worship, it signifies uh uh uh prayer, it signifies uh being separated for God all throughout the Old Testament.

It signifies that, hey, I've separated this for God.

So if you want to pour oil on the problem, the question will be well, how I how do I do that in today's terms?

I understand what you're saying, but I'm not gonna go crack open uh some oil and pour oil all over the kids.

Because some of y'all need to do that.

Just anoint your kids with oil, the whole Crisco, whatever it takes, okay?

But how do I pour oil on the problem?

If you take a note, write this down.

Worship is what signifies awareness.

Worship is the oil.

It's me pouring my life out and saying, God, I can't do this, but I'm gonna trust you because I know that you are able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, according to the power that's working on the inside of us, so I'm gonna trust you and not myself.

Here's what I know heaven shows up where worship lives.

The Bible says God inhabits the praises of his people.

Everything changes when worship arrives.

Why?

Because all of a sudden, the enemy's scared to death when you worship.

When you complain, it doesn't scare him at all.

In fact, when you complain to God, it really doesn't scare him at all.

But when you begin to lift up your hands in the midst of pain and in the midst of heartache, and in the midst of unmet expectations and challenges, and you go, God, I don't know what to do, but I'm gonna trust you and I'm gonna lift your holy name.

It aggravates the enemy and it scares him to death because he realizes that you know that you know that God is in your situation already.

The challenge with some of us is we're persevering without progressing.

When you don't pour oil on the problem, you don't ever move past it.

Some of you want to get past it, but you've never gone through it.

You won't go through it because you're sitting in the middle of it.

Some of you are just holding on to the problem instead of holding on to the solution.

I'm just persevering.

How you doing?

I'm just holding on.

It's like those couples you say, man, hey, y'all, how'd y'all' marriage?

They've been married for like 45, 50 years.

How's y'all's marriage?

You're like, well, he's still breathing.

Like that's people that are just holding on, okay?

They're not, they're not growing at all.

Jacob, Jacob understood.

I've got to make a marker here.

I've got to give this to God.

God cannot bless anything you keep.

He will not bless anything you keep.

You have to at some point release it to him, release it to his hands.

Verse 19.

He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Los.

Now this is this is weird.

If you really look into it, it's powerful.

Let me read it again.

He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Los.

There's a lot to be said about words.

How many of you know that words matter?

Words matter.

Los means twisted, separation, or departure.

Bethel means the house of God.

So what are you saying?

Here's what I'm saying.

I'm saying the night he arrived, it was separated.

It was twisted, it was a hard place.

But the morning when he left, it was the house of God.

So the third thing that you need to do is you need to turn your problem into praise.

What does that mean?

You need to actually rename it.

The anointing makes that hard place a holy place.

At some point, you've got to shift the way you're talking about things.

Stop calling your marriage a disaster and start calling it a miracle.

Start just focusing on your pain and start focusing on your purpose.

Because when I have purpose, I can make it through pain because I can trust that God's got a reason on the other side of this and he's gonna bless it.

And so I'm just gonna rename it.

I cannot allow my surroundings to dictate my destiny.

The problem is we keep our eyes on our circumstances and not on our source.

The night before, Jacob had his eyes squarely on his circumstances.

The next morning, he had his eyes on his source.

And I want you to understand as we walk into 2020 or 2021, please get your eyes on the source.

He is the source of your hope.

He is the source of your light, he is the source of your strength, he is the source of your peace and your joy.

Joy is not circumstantial.

Happiness is.

Happiness comes from, oh, that just happened.

Oh, I just got a raise.

Oh, the kids just did something cool.

Joy comes from the inside.

Out of my belly will flow rivers.

You know, the living water doesn't come from the outside, it comes from the inside.

At some point, I need you to understand what happened.

Jacob went, watch this.

He went from Luz to Bethel and never changed locations.

It was all here and here.

That means you can go from a bad place to a blessed place in the same day and never change your situation or your circumstances.

You know what?

If he needed to lay down that night, he'd have still had to lay down on a rock.

But that time he would have laid down on a pillar.

Because he understood I'm in a different place.

At some point, you have to understand I might be in a broken place, but God can turn it into a blessed place.

You just got to get your attention on the right thing.

David understood this.

David said this in Psalm 34, 3.

He said, Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

Now, if you read that and you look at the words, it's it's a little confounding because how do you magnify the Lord?

You ever thought of that?

We used to sing that song, oh magnify the Lord with me.

It was a choir song, let us say together.

You know, it's awesome.

And I thought about it as a kid.

I was like, how do we magnify the Lord?

How do you make something bigger that's already as big as it will ever be?

You ever heard those old preachers who say, We're gonna have a move of God?

God was getting ready to move.

I understand what they were saying, but God don't move.

If God moved, that means he would have to go from point A to point B, and there would be a void where he was that he is no longer.

God doesn't move, he's as big as he will ever be.

If you blasted off this planet in a rocket and you flew the deepest, darkest black hole that you could find, you poked your head in.

Gotta say peeky boo, because he was there before you got there.

He doesn't move, he manifests.

And what makes God manifest?

He's your worship, the recognized presence of God brings hope.

What changed Jacob's situation?

His recognition of who is there with him.

Yeah, it's 2021.

Yeah, it's hard, yeah, it's tough, yeah, it's a challenge, but God is with us and he has a plan, and he's gonna do great things, and I just have to learn to trust him when I can't track him.

You want to find hope in a hard place?

Worship God.

In fact, that's what I want you to do right now.

Would you bow your heads?

Would you close your eyes right now in your own way?

I'm gonna magnify the Lord.

In fact, David told us how to do it.

He said, Oh, magnify the Lord with me.

And here's how let us exalt his name together.

That word exalt means to lift higher.

You you want to magnify, you want to make God bigger, make your issues smaller.

Get his name above the name of every issue that you're dealing with.

Please, at some point, you have to stop telling your God about the size of your giant, and you have to tell your giant about the size of your God because he's able, but it only happens through the recognized presence of God.

If I want hope in a hard place, I have to recognize that God is in the hard place.

Even if God doesn't deliver me out of the hard place, even if he doesn't do exactly what I wanted him to do in 2021, that's okay.

All I need is his presence.

God, right now, all we need is your presence.

All we need is your power, all we need is your strength.

God, we can do anything if we have you.

Our eyes are not on this world.

Our eyes are not just on our blessings, even though we love blessings and we're grateful for them, God.

We don't serve you for the blessings.

We serve you because of who you are and who you are to us and what you've done for us by sending your only son.

So in this moment, we yield our lives to you.

And we say, God, do in us whatever you want to do.

This year, we give you this year.

We lay it at your feet, we trust you.

And we say, God, let come what may.

We're gonna do what you've called us to do.

And we're gonna see great things happen in our family, in our lives, and in our church this year.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Come on, let's give Jesus an oversight.