Look at the Cross

I'm so excited about this message.

So happy to be here preaching to you this weekend.

And as Dad said, please be praying for them.

They are in London currently.

Spoke to them yesterday.

They're having a great time and everything is going really well.

So if you will keep them in your prayers, that would be great.

I'd like to welcome all the campuses, all those watching online.

We're honored that you are watching with us and worshiping with us from wherever you are.

And uh so I uh I'm be honest with you, I'm in a weird phase in my life right now.

I have a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old.

And uh my 10-year-old just figured out how to be sarcastic.

And because it's new, uh I can't tell whether he's being genuine or sarcastic.

It's very subtle and it's throwing me off a little bit.

And uh so I'm super sarcastic all the time, and so I blame myself for this new thing.

But uh uh the other day we were driving in the car, and it was just me and my son Grady, and uh he was telling me something, he's whining about something, you know, and so uh I said what I typically say in something like that.

I said, Well, son, sometimes in life it just doesn't work out the way that we want it to.

And he said, Yeah, Dan, that's true.

You know, it's uh it's sort of like you, actually.

He said, Uh, you know, you've always your whole life wanted a really big, good, manly beard on your face, and it just won't happen for you.

I was like, is he being serious?

Is it this hurts like sarcasm?

What should I do in this moment?

So I said, Well, uh what do you know?

You you don't have any beard, you can't grow a beard.

I immediately went back to like fourth grade with him, you know.

You can't have a beard.

He goes, Well, I'm not supposed to be able to, but you definitely are.

I was like, Oh, man, he's getting me good here.

Uh, what do I say?

What what can a parent say?

Wait, I have I have more power than him, so I said, you know what, you're grounded.

He goes, Whoa, someone is really sensitive about the lack of a beard.

So I didn't win at all, and there was no way getting out of it.

I just uh I gave up after that.

I was like, uh, no, I'm secure, you're not grounded, everything's fine, you're okay, it'll be fine.

So I want to share with you today a message called Look at the Cross, and we are gonna look at the story of Jesus as well as the story of Moses, and there are unbelievable similarities between the story of Moses to what Jesus did whenever he came to earth and died on the cross and then rose again, and the salvation that he brought to us from that.

And it's it's gonna be I I wish that I could do a whole series about this.

I've I've cut so many things out, but as you read this story, it's incredible to see the the types and foreshadowing of what was going to happen when Christ came and the salvation that is offered to us, extended to us through what Christ did, and the story of Moses foretells that thousands of years before in an unbelievable and incredible way.

And so we want to look at that and and talk about how now we look to the cross not just for salvation, not just for an idea of where we're going to go whenever we die, but also to learn and to know how it is that we are called to live out our lives here on the earth.

It is a story that is for here and now, not a story that, as much as it applies to the afterlife, it applies to what we do right here on earth.

And the story of Moses is a great and incredible story, as is the story of Jesus.

And every great story, it seems to me, has this one thing in common.

It's uh it's this idea that is found in almost every good story.

Every story worth telling, I believe, has this element in it.

And I believe what it is, is a balance between chaos and order.

In every story, every story worth telling, there is some battle between chaos and order.

And in our lives, there is a battle between chaos and order.

And so this is what it typically looks like.

A person is thrust down into chaos, whether by their own doing or someone else's doing, but they are thrust down into chaos so deep into the underworld that they really don't know how it is that they will pull themselves out of it.

And then a savior comes down into the chaos with them, defeats it, and brings order, pulling that person back up into the place where they were originally.

This is the story of nearly every superhero movie that you've ever seen.

Uh a villain comes along, takes what was in order and normal and doing well, thrusts that into chaos by bringing destruction into the world and death and the threat of violence and brings all of this chaos to the world.

A superhero descends down into the chaos, defeats the enemy, and restores order.

This story is found in every movie.

There's always this battle between chaos and order.

Ladies, you're thinking that's a superhero movie.

Of course it's there.

Not in chick flicks, though.

Well, guess what?

I've watched a lot of chick flicks, okay?

I'm married, I've seen them all, all right?

It's there too.

What happens is a man or a woman is in a relationship, maybe, is then out of that relationship, or the relationship goes into turmoil, something happens in the relationships, it sends that man or the woman down into chaos.

Another man or another woman, or the same man or woman comes down into the chaos, the relationship is restored, or a new relationship blossoms, bringing that person back up out of the chaos and back into normalcy.

This story is found everywhere that you can imagine.

And we deal with it every day in our lives.

Every day is a balance of chaos and order.

You don't want too much order.

It doesn't mean that all order is exactly the way that it should be.

Too much chaos is debauchery, too much order is legalism, but the balance is supposed to be there.

You've you've probably been in someone's house when it's a little too orderly, it's not it's not a good place to be.

Like if you're if your furniture is covered in plastic, how comfortable is that house, really?

Is it that it's a good place to be?

It's not a good place to be.

Live live your life, you know, eat some Cheetos on the couch, it's fine, but clean it up afterwards, put some order in your life as well.

And so this balance is there.

I'm somebody who does not do well with chaos at all.

I just don't do well with chaos.

Now, my brother, on the other hand, he's extremely comfortable with chaos.

It's totally fine with him.

And so we just took a trip a couple weeks ago to Colorado, and he said, I need some new hiking shoes.

Will you meet me at Cabela's and and we'll find some hiking shoes?

So I go to meet him at Cabela's, and his wife, Bridget, was singing on the worship team.

So he says, uh, just meet me there.

He has three kids, and all three kids were with him.

And so uh my brother is the slowest moving human being in the history of the world.

And he was looking at shoes, and it was just it was taking forever.

He was lacing the shoe slowly.

And you know, at Cabela's, there's like a fake mountain that you can climb.

He climbed it two dozen times with every shoe that he had on.

It was taking forever.

So I go, James, I'm gonna go shop around a little bit, and then I'll come back in a little bit, whenever you maybe you narrow it down to two or three choices, and then I can help you at that point.

So I shopped a little bit, no more than 15 minutes, and I came back and I have this wide-angle perspective of what's happening.

And no less than four aisles are completely destroyed by his children.

Three dozen boxes of shoes have been pulled out and made into a fort.

No telling where they go back at all.

There's no way to figure it out.

All the paper that lines the shoes in the boxes, every single piece of paper had been taken out.

His youngest is one.

She had ripped it into snow for everyone and spread it out.

Then she went up into the rafters where you keep the shoes, and we couldn't find her.

We were like, she's here somewhere, I'm sure.

I'm like, James, look at this.

Look what's happening here.

And he's like, Oh, yeah, we we got a lot to clean up, don't we?

I was like, no, no, no.

You got a lot to clean up.

I'm out of here.

I am gone, man.

This is too stressful for me.

So I left, and uh, he said, a little bit later, I did, I left him there with it all, and uh he said, a little bit later, his oldest son Parker was like, uh, hey daddy, where'd Uncle Josh go?

And James goes, Well, you stressed him out too much, so he left.

And uh so he'll be in Kairos soon, Freedom Ministry, you know.

And uh he told me the next day, he said, Yeah, I was telling Bridget the story, and he goes, I didn't even get to finish the story because she got so hung up on the fact that the kids weren't on the same aisle as me.

He's like, Yeah, they were in the same departmental area that I was.

I was like, no, James, it's not good.

Every day, chaos, there's this, there's this balance, but then there's there's bad chaos too, and you know bad chaos.

You understand really bad chaos.

Um maybe one of the starkest examples of this would be when uh a spouse cheats on their spouse and and the person who has been cheated on, this this may be what they were they were going through.

If you can imagine putting yourself in in that situation, just the understanding of being thrust into the depths of chaos, the the person finds out, and maybe it was a long-term relationship that had been going on for a while.

And so all of a sudden they feel like everything that that we were built on was a foundation of trust.

And the foundation fell out from underneath the person.

They they then are thrust down into the underworld, into chaos, because all of a sudden they're looking at this person that they've been living with for so long, and they go, I don't, I don't trust you anymore.

Everything that that we knew about each other and and and the trust that I had put in you, I don't trust you anymore because I don't know what is truth and what is a lie.

And so they're they're battling through this.

So I don't trust you anymore.

And furthermore, I don't trust myself anymore, really, because I thought I could judge character and and I invested in this and I gave myself completely to this person, not knowing what was really happening the whole time.

And in fact, I don't know where I am anymore.

I don't know where I'm standing.

It's in a house, but it's not my home.

It used to be my home.

It was a safe place, it was a shelter, it was a good place for me, and now it's just a house, and I don't know the people who live in here, and I don't know who my friends are.

I don't know who knows and who doesn't know and how they'll respond to this, and who will be with me and who won't be with me as I go through this.

And I don't know what my schedule is anymore because my schedule had been planned out based on holidays and Christmas and being together, and and and even next week is unsure to me right now.

And so everything that was a certainty in their life falls out from underneath them, and they are thrown into the depth of chaos.

So such a deep chaos that there's a hopeless feeling, how can I pull myself out of this chaos?

This is the chaos that we know and understand very well because we were thrown into the chaos based on our unwillingness to accept the vocation that God had given us.

We were thrust into the depths of chaos, and we know for certain that we can't pull ourselves out of the chaos.

Jesus then comes down out of heaven, becomes his own creation, coming down into the chaos, and then descending even further into the chaos through his death, going down into the pit of hell to defeat it and to bring order, and he restores order.

But not simply for the purpose that we will leave this place now.

He could have just taken everyone with him at that time, but for the purpose of you then being a type of Christ to others and administering the same freedom that he administered to you, giving you a heavenly vocation here on earth.

When Christ says, take up your cross and follow me, we know that that means to participate in the suffering of Christ.

We know that it means to die to ourselves, giving our life to God, but it also means, as Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me.

Watch how I defeat the enemy, and now you go do it too.

Watch it, watch me.

This is how I defeat the enemy, and now I'll send you out, going and making disciples, bringing order where there is chaos.

You can do what I'm doing, defeating the enemy and bringing God closer to people's lives.

This is the heavenly vocation that we've been given.

It's the vocation that Moses was also given.

The Bible says that God told Moses, I will make you appear like God to Pharaoh.

You will be like God to him, and you will be the one that rescues my people, brings them out of chaos, and puts them in order.

Moses' story is unbelievably parallel to the story of Jesus Christ.

Even from the very beginning, you'll remember that Moses had to hide in the basket in the river.

His mother put him in there because there was a decree to murder the firstborn sons.

Jesus, we know, there was a decree from Herod to murder the sons under two years old.

From the very beginning, the story parallels, and it's unbelievable in all the ways that the story of Moses teaches us what Christ was going to accomplish for us.

So we're going to take a look at several different aspects and elements of Moses and his life and how we can do that.

And even the understanding of what the Israelites went through.

You see, the Israelites went through a salvation, which is Moses, the exile, Moses pulling them out of the place where they were in bondage.

That's a salvation.

Then they went through a baptism, a water baptism, where then they crossed through the Red Sea, and then they were guided and led by the Holy Spirit on the other side.

They then followed the pillar of fire as well as the cloud.

It illuminated the path in front of them.

And the New Testament says the Holy Spirit will lead you and guide you into all truth.

This is the job that we have.

We walk through the same process that they did salvation and then water baptism and then following the leading of the Holy Spirit and for a purpose.

Their time of wandering in the wilderness was not wasted time.

God had a purpose for them and a purpose for the people around them.

There was something that they were called to do.

It's very, very similar to us right now.

We may feel like we're in the desert and the wilderness, but there's a calling on our lives.

Sure, we're waiting for the promised land.

Absolutely.

We're waiting and longing and hoping for the promised land, that place that we will one day be, but we cannot neglect the purpose that God has given us right here on earth.

In fact, even in the story of Moses, whenever God showed up on the mountain of Sinai, Mount Sinai, it says that it was announced with the ram's horn, and we know that the second coming of the Lord will be announced with a trumpet.

So there are unbelievable similarities, even as they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

I don't know if you know this in the Bible, it says uh that, you know, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

At 39 years and 11 months, Moses' wife Zeborah actually finally stopped and asked for directions, and it ended the whole thing.

So that was all that was needed.

Um you can find it in your Bible.

I'm not going to show it to you, you know, but you can you can find it in there.

Um so we're gonna look at these elements, and the first one that I want to show you is the call, the call of God on Moses' life.

We all have a call of God on our lives, and so let's take a look at this is the account of Moses encountering the burning bush.

And I'll show it to you in Exodus chapter 3, verse 4.

Exodus 3:4

It says, When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush.

Moses, Moses, here I am, Moses replied.

Do not come any closer, the Lord warned.

Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.

I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.

Now, this is an interesting story, and I always thought it was interesting that God needed to communicate with Moses, and he was like, What should I do?

A bush, but not just a bush, it's gonna be on fire.

It'll be awesome, and it'll be the greatest thing ever.

And I'm I'm listening to this going, I don't understand what this is.

I think there are so many things that we can learn from this story, though.

For one, the Bible says that the bush was on fire, yet it was not consumed.

That's amazing to me.

The bush was on fire yet not consumed, and Moses was a long way off whenever he saw it and noticed it, and it was so interesting and different and attractive to him that he traveled a long distance so he could get closer to it.

We are called to be the burning bush in people's lives.

You see, we are called to be on fire with the presence of God.

On fire with the presence of God, yet not being consumed by it, so that people will see you from a long distance off because you are different.

It is it is magnetic in its drawing, and people will come from far away to get closer to you so that they also can hear the voice of God.

That's what we're called to do.

Moses was so awe-stricken by this that he traveled a long distance to get to that place, and that ground was so holy that he removed the earthly and material object that kept his bare skin from touching the ground where God inhabited.

He had an encounter with God that sent him out on a mission, that God called him to accomplish something, to go back to his people and to rescue them and to bring them out of slavery.

There's this unbelievable passage in Hebrews that I'm just paraphrasing it here, it won't be on the screen, but it says that by faith Moses chose to leave the castle and refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He chose to share in the suffering of his people rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He thought it better, listen to this, he thought it better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he knew there would be a greater reward.

When I read that, I think it's so fascinating because he chose to cooperate, to be a part of the suffering of his people, knowing that there was a greater reward in the end.

That is exactly what Christ did for us.

That he chose to come here and participate in the suffering of his people, knowing that it was for a greater purpose in the end.

So Moses acts as God in this time, goes back and begins to rescue his people.

We are called to be that light in people's lives.

Whatever it is, no matter where you work, no matter what you do, you are called to be something that is so attractive with God's presence that people come from far and wide to experience his presence and to get closer to him.

So that's the first thing that we want to look at that that Moses went through was the call.

The second one is the Passover.

Now you know the story that Moses goes then to Pharaoh and he says, Let my people go, and Pharaoh doesn't do it, and so then the plagues happen.

The tenth plague is what was then what then became commemorated as the Passover.

The tenth plague was where if the people of Israel would sacrifice an animal, take the blood of that animal, and paint it on their doorposts, then when the angel of death went by, then that would spare life.

It would give life when there was going to be death.

And for the Egyptians, they experienced death because they did not have this on their doorposts.

This then became Passover, which then is celebrated, and God even commanded for it to be celebrated every year.

And there were very specific instructions about how the Passover was to be handled.

And that happened on and on and on every year that took place.

It it happened to be the weekend of the feast of Passover that Jesus was crucified, saying what was taking place for Moses and the Israelites is now taking place for the whole world, not just the Israelites, but for the Gentile also.

He signified what he was doing, and that his blood being painted onto us now releases us from the sentence of death and gives us life.

It's interesting, though, if you read about the animal that was slaughtered, of course it had to be an innocent and spotless animal, and so that represents the innocence of Christ and him not being tainted by sin, but they would sacrifice the animal, they would put the blood on the doorpost, but then they were commanded in a certain way to eat the body of that animal.

And how interesting is it then that God, Jesus, in the Passover meal, before he is about to be crucified, then institutes a new practice, which is in essence the same.

You will take my body and my blood.

We just took communion here at every campus, and we remember in that moment that he is the one who was the spotless lamb sacrificed so that we would have life.

We remember in that moment, we take that moment seriously because he asked us to commemorate that just as they would with Passover every year, but to commemorate that with his body and with his blood.

Passover is the celebration for the Israelites of coming out of bondage, and it is that same thing for us also.

If we were to say the cross is only about relieving us from sin so that we can one day go to a better place, we are missing the point of what God called us to do here on earth.

It is about setting us free out of bondage into a new vocation, into a new land, and into a new place.

And so we remember that Passover changes the way that we look at the cross and what happened there.

The third area, the third thing that Moses went through was the water.

And this we relate this back to water baptism.

Water baptism is uh is as well as communion, many times in churches today, is very confused about what its purpose is.

And allowing the Bible to be a continuating narrative tells us then what we're to expect from baptism.

But baptism is very confused today.

There's the old story about people.

Being confused with baptism, there was a guy who uh he was uh the town drunk, and one night he uh fell asleep in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

And when he woke up, it so happened that directly in front of him in the river, the local pastor was doing a baptism service.

So he woke up drunk and hung over and stumbled down to the river.

For some reason, he walked right down into the river and just stood and stared right at the pastor.

So the pastor could smell the alcohol and knew that he was the town drunk and said, You know, how about you?

Would you like to go under?

And the guy said, Yeah, sure.

So he said, Okay.

So he says, come over here and he takes him and he dips him in the water, pulls him back up, and he says, Well, son, did you find Jesus?

And the guy goes, Uh, no.

Uh-uh.

So he's that's weird.

It always works for my normal congregants.

That's weird, you know.

Let me try it again.

So he takes him under the water, pulls him up.

Did you find Jesus?

No, I didn't.

So he says, Uh, let me let me try again.

Something's not working, right?

He takes him.

This time he holds him under for a while, you know, gives him a good like 30 seconds in there.

Maybe he'll fear death, you know, and find God, you know.

So he pulls him back up and he says, Did you find Jesus?

And the guy goes, Uh no, are you sure this is where he went under?

Don't joke, sorry, that's a stupid joke.

I just read it on Google, it's fine.

When we look at the story of Moses, we find out that baptism is so much more.

It's not a symbol, it's not this idea that we just go in the water, and then that somehow reminds us that we are a new person.

Obviously, it's about the old man who is dying, staying under the water.

But when we look at it through the eyes of the Israelites, what we realize is that God held back the chaos of the water, allowed the people to walk through, and then the person, the people, the thing who was oppressing them and keeping them in slavery drowns in the water.

The thing that was keeping you in bondage must drown in the water.

Gregory of Nyssa has this uh amazing quote uh about the the baptism in in it's uh says, in the same water, the enemy and the friend are distinguished by death and life, the enemy being destroyed and the friend given life.

You see, the passing through of the Red Sea is all about leaving back the idols that you have built in your life.

If you were to have gained some type of material wealth or something before your salvation and your baptism, or you were to carry over with you after water baptism some unhealthy or destructive relationship or something that is holding you back to your previous life.

If you were to carry it over or continue in the ways that you were doing before water baptism, what you are doing is choosing to take the Egyptians on your back and carry them through the Red Sea so that they survive on the other side and continue to keep you in slavery.

You carry those things over to the other side of you of that and say, I allow you then to keep being a dominating force in my life.

All through the Bible, God is trying to get us to remove idols from our lives.

We remember that whenever they left, God said that we're gonna force the Egyptians to give you their jewelry and whatever it is that you ask for.

Moses does an amazing work of God.

The Egyptians give the Israelites their jewelry, and that same jewelry that the Israelites wore on their ears and around their necks that God gave them divinely is the same jewelry that they melted down into an idol to worship.

How many times has a blessing from God been given to you, and you take that same blessing and turn it into an idol?

Water baptism is all about leaving the idols behind, and it is a choice that you make from within yourself.

NT Wright says, they stop being demons as soon as they stop being gods in your life.

As soon as you dethrone these things from being a God in your life, that's when they stop tormenting you.

So the water is the third step that Moses went through, and it is all about removing idols from your life.

I want to read to you a passage that I think sums all of this up together in an amazing way.

It's a story that I've always been fascinated with in the story of Moses, and and and reading it and understanding what it means, it it tells you so much about the cross and Jesus' crucifixion.

So if you'll follow along with me here in Numbers chapter 21, verse 6, it says, So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people.

Numbers 21:6

Many were bitten and died.

And then the people came to Moses and cried out, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.

So Moses prayed for the people, and then the Lord told him, Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole.

All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it.

So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole, and then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed.

Now this sounds really simple.

Um, if I'm walking along and I get bitten by a snake, I can be like, oh, there it is, and be healed.

Sounds really simple.

The truth is that they were a massive city of people.

If you were bitten by a snake, maybe you were on your way to get water, maybe you lived on the outskirts of town.

If you were bitten by a snake, you had a couple different choices that you could make at that time.

If you were bitten by a poisonous snake, you could take the last few moments of your life and say goodbye to your family.

You could take that last few moments and use whatever relief remedy that somebody might have told you about, look for some other cure.

You could consult the mystics or whatever it is that you wanted to do.

You had the choice in that moment.

Or you could believe that what God said was true and you can make the travel, the journey all the way to that place and look at the pole in faith that what he said was true and that you would be healed.

If he was wrong, it would be all over.

If you heard him wrong, if it was wrong, if Jesus lied, if God lied, then it would be all over.

And so you had to have faith in that moment that the last few moments of your life is going to spend traveling to this place so you can look at a bronze snake on a pole just so you can be healed.

It's a powerful story of what faith really means in our lives.

Because we're faced with the same decision.

We've been bitten by the curse, we've been infected with the poison, and you have a choice now.

You can look to other remedies to give you life, you can look in other areas, you can just throw this life away and say, what doesn't matter?

It doesn't matter, everything is shot, anyways, I don't really care.

Or you can take this moment to go to the cross, to look at the cross and to experience life and salvation.

We know that that this story is tied to the cross and the crucifixion because in John chapter 3 is where Jesus is talking, these are the words of Jesus, and he's talking about salvation.

John 3 · chapter mention

John 3.16 is where he said, For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.

It's all about salvation.

But I want you to see two verses before that what it says in John 3.14.

It says, And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so now the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

He's describing that in the same way they had to have faith to look at the pole to receive healing.

Now the Son of Man will be lifted up on the cross, and if you look at the cross, then you will experience salvation as well.

Simply look at the cross.

It's an amazing story for us to pay attention to to teach us about where salvation comes from and how we ought to live our lives looking at the cross.

But when I've taught it in the past, I've always said, you know, it's weird, I get it, it's a little bit weird that Jesus compared himself to a snake.

The snake was lifted up on the on the on the pole, and now Jesus will be lifted up on the cross.

And that's we Jesus is not a snake.

Don't worry about that, Jesus is not a snake.

It's just an analogy to talk about this.

And and and I was always thought that.

I always, Jesus is not the snake.

It's fine, Jesus is not the snake.

And then I was reading one day, and uh a passage in Galatians stood out to me, and I want to read it to you now.

It says in Galatians chapter 3, verse 13 But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law when he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing.

Galatians 3:13

Some translations say he became the curse, and I realized in that moment that what was lifted up on the pole for the Israelites was the curse.

You see, the people had disobeyed God, had refused to accept their heavenly vocation that God had given them.

They had turned aside from God, and so because of that, then that's when they were bitten by poisonous snakes.

The snake was the curse for their disobedience.

The snake was the curse, and it was the snake that was lifted up on the pole.

And so he says, So now must the Son of Man be lifted up on the cross so that he can become the curse for us.

So that he can become the curse for us.

And it was there on the cross that he became the curse for us, so that we wouldn't have to suffer the consequences that we were destined to suffer.

I remember back to the story of Moses where in the moment where his rod turns into a snake, he throws the rod on the ground, it turns into a snake, and the purpose of it turning to a snake was so that it could eat all the other snakes that came from the enemy.

So Christ became the curse, descended down into the chaos so he could defeat it, and then emerged on the other side, bringing order to our lives, restoring order to the chaos that we had thrust ourselves into.

My son Grady, he's uh in public school.

He and my daughter are blessed to have some of the best teachers we've ever had in our lives.

They are amazing teachers.

Um, they go to this church, so that makes them especially great, you know.

That's probably why they're so great.

But um they they are incredible teachers, and and our kids go to the public schools, and uh, but my son is testing to get into a program that he has really always desperately wanted to get into.

And so he started getting unbelievably anxious about this test, overwhelmingly anxious.

It is is is weird to see a 10-year-old have so much anxiety.

And so we started talking to him about this and praying over him, and we realized we're not the only ones that are involved in this process.

And so my wife reached out as a friend to his teacher and just said, Grady's feeling a lot of anxiety.

And she sent her an email back, and this is what she said.

She said, This is what I'm praying over, Grady.

Lord, give Grady peace and a clear mind to focus on the task in front of him.

Let this test be an opportunity for him to tap into the creativity you have blessed him with.

Thank you for the way you made Grady so uniquely and purposefully.

Then she said, I got this scripture over him today.

The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.

You support my lot, the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.

Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.

Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices.

My flesh also will dwell securely, for you will not abandon my soul, nor will you allow your holy one to undergo decay.

You will make known to me the path of life, and your presence is fullness of joy in your right hand, and there are pleasures forever.

And she said, This is what I will be speaking over, Grady, this week, as he takes this test.

My wife was in Starbucks whenever she read it, and she was she began crying a lot.

If you saw her crying in Starbucks, it was not because we're having marriage issues, it's because she read this beautiful email.

I was thinking about it.

My kids are in public school, but I have a teacher who chooses to be a light for Jesus.

Who chooses to where my son thrusts himself into chaos, who chooses in that classroom to bring order where there is chaos, and to speak life and blessing and scripture over my son.

Whatever it is that you do, whatever job you have, you have the opportunity to bring light into a dark situation.

You have the opportunity to bring order where there is chaos.

And that is the destiny that God called us to accomplish on this earth.

Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?

In just a moment, I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna go back into one more song of worship.

And if you need prayer today, we want to pray with you.

Every weekend, more than a thousand people come forward for for prayer on most weekends, and and it can be prayer for anything.

If you need prayer for an area of your finances, your health, your family, whatever it is, we want to pray with you today, no matter what the prayer need is.

This is something we love to do every weekend, and many, many people come forward for prayer.

We want to pray with you no matter what your prayer need is.

So when we start praying, you can come forward and receive prayer.

But there's three groups of people that I want to highlight right now.

The first is that if if you are hearing this story and you're saying, I have not experienced that type of salvation, we want to pray with you today.

When you come forward, you can just tell the person, I want that salvation that we talked about today.

Let us pray with you so that you can begin your journey of salvation, water baptism, and being led by the Holy Spirit.

The second group of people that I want to pray with are the people who have been thrust into the depths of chaos.

Whatever it is, if it's by your own doing or someone else's doing, whatever it is, sometimes God even allows us to go into chaos because he wants us to rely on him.

Why not agree with somebody in prayer today that you're gonna put your trust, your hope, your faith in God?

And the third group of people that we want to pray with today is the people who say, I got, I sense that there's a call in my life, but I need to know what it is.

I need a burning bush experience where I can go to God and I can say, God, what is it that you would have me do?

What people is it that you would have me minister to?

We want to pray for you today.

So we're gonna go back into one more song of worship.

I'm gonna pray and we'll go into one more song of worship.

If you need prayer, don't let anything stop you from agreeing with somebody in prayer today for whatever your prayer need is.

Holy Spirit, right now I pray that you would draw every person who needs prayer.

And God, we are thankful that you laid down your life for us on the cross, that you died and rose again so that we would have life.

Lord, we look today to the cross.

And Lord, teach us how to be a light to others around us.

God, would you teach us how to show your glory to those around us?

God, we are so thankful for your presence.

I pray every person who needs prayer would come forward and receive prayer.

We pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.