Let God

Well, hi, y'all.

So glad to be here with you as always.

It is our privilege and our treat to be able to share God's word this weekend with you at what we do consider to be a little bit of our family here at Gateway.

Y'all just can't seem to get rid of us and the people in our family.

We just love so much being a part of what God is doing in this community, partnering with you in serving this community.

As you know, many of you may know, our church, which has been my home church since I was one year old, is about 40 minutes from here, where my father happens to also be the pastor.

And so my parents, Dr.

Tony and Lois Evans, they send their greeting to you and to your pastors in their absence as well.

And so thanks for having us.

It's a treat to be here.

I just have a couple of thoughts that I want to share with you from God's words.

A couple of things that have profoundly impacted my life as I have asked the Holy Spirit to sear these little simple messages to imprint them on my soul.

And I'm asking that he would do that for every single one of us today.

Simple things that can transform your entire life.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you, Lord, that this book is alive.

I thank you that it's not just black ink on a page, but that what the Holy Spirit does is that he causes it to leap up off the page and to grip us in our souls.

So, Lord, I'm praying that in these next few moments that we're going to spend together, that you would do it only you can.

God, I'm asking you you would take this one little simple message.

Would you please divide it several thousand different ways so that every single one of us, under the sound of my voice, hears a direct personal word straight from the mouth of God.

In Jesus' name, everybody agreed and said.

Amen.

As was mentioned, I have three boys.

A couple of them are in service with me right now.

One of them is shaking their head at me just like this because he knows where I'm going.

And I have another son as well that is uh in Sunday school or in your kids' church this afternoon.

Um my boys are 12 years old, Jackson is 12 years old, and then I have a 10-year-old, his name is Jerry Jr.

And then my little one, he's our surprise baby.

Uh, we still don't actually know how he got here.

We named him Jude on purpose because that is as close as I could get to Revelation, because it is finished.

It is over.

So I got Jackson, Jerry Jr., and almost Revelation.

I've got Jude.

And our three boys are um, as you can imagine, they keep us very, very busy.

They are the highlights um of our lives.

And one of the um trademarks of my children is that they have um their daddy's size.

Um, their dad is a big guy, they are big kids.

My 12-year-old already wears a size 12 men's shoe.

Somebody come help me feed these people, please.

They are big boys.

And one of the ways that it actually works well for them is that they love sports.

Whatever is in season, they're kind of playing it.

So we find ourselves at basketball courts right now, basketball season, even football.

We find ourselves every year um at baseball diamonds, as my second son has found that for sure baseball is his thing.

And so my oldest son, basketball is his thing.

The youngest one still is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life.

Uh, but that second one, Jerry Jr., um, baseball is his thing.

We're pretty proud of Jerry Jr.

in baseball because he actually is pretty good at the game.

I think because of his size, he's got a lot of power behind his swing.

He can already, he's 10 now, but at eight and nine years old, he could swing a bat and get a good hit and get that ball already over the fence line.

And then at first base, he makes a lot of stops, pretty good there.

He's got a lot of growing to do and he knows it, but he's pretty good, and we're proud of him.

We enjoy baseball season in the fall in particular, and also spring ball because, well, it's fall and it's spring.

It's not summer.

Those evenings when we go out for practice, it's fun and enjoyable because the air, the breeze is blowing by as we're watching practice.

And then on those Saturday mornings at 8 a.m.

or 9 a.m.

or 10 a.m.

when those games will be, it's early in the morning and and the breeze is blowing and it feels good.

The problem with spring ball is that it will become summer ball.

And y'all know what happens here in Texas in the summer.

The sun ain't messing around.

And it comes out and it scorches us, and there you are sitting there uh watching your child uh playing baseball.

And it's really okay when there's just one game, but then at the end of the season, there's going to be a tournament.

Lord have mercy.

What that means is you're going to go out on Thursday and that you're going to play one game, two games that may parlay into three games if your child's team has done well.

That it means if they did well on Thursday, you are coming back on Friday, and you are going to sit there underneath the umbrella or the tent that you bought from the sporting goods store, still sweating bullets running down your face and down your clothes as you try to be excited for your kid that keeps on winning.

And then you have to come back on Saturday, and then they have the nerve to want you to come back on Sunday for the ending of the series.

And I don't know if it's ever okay to pray your kid loses so you can go home.

And I will neither confirm nor deny that I have ever done that, but I do recall a couple of summers ago, maybe it was last summer even, there was this one particular day where it was scorching hot, and we had sat outside and we had gone through two games already.

It was time for a break.

And so we'd all gotten into our car, gone to a restaurant where we could get some air conditioned and some nice cold ice water.

And so we just enjoyed a nice refreshing lunch, came back for the next game.

We got all of Jerry Jr.'s uh gear out of the back of the car and we headed over towards the dugout so that we could get him and the rest of his team members all set up for the next game that they were getting ready to play.

And my son is a normally fairly confident young man, and he was actually excited about this next game.

But as we got closer and closer to the dugout, I watched my son's countenance begin to change just a little bit.

I watched as that chin that had been kind of held up high as he walked over towards the dugout, I watched it kind of hang a little bit.

I watched him start wringing his hands and I saw his shoulders kind of slump forward.

He seemed a little worried about something.

I looked around trying to figure out what it was, and then I thought I could I spotted the problem.

You see, there was another team.

In fact, it was the team we were about to play in this next game.

This team had played my son's team earlier in the season.

And when this team had played my boys' team earlier in the season, they had annihilated us.

I mean, it had been a complete upset, a complete embarrassment.

This team was filled with boys who are serious baseball players.

You know, the kind that when their parents gave birth to them, they put a mitt on one hand and a baseball on the other hand.

You know the kind, the team that has the serious parents as well.

It was that kind of team.

And we were up against them again.

And my son was a little nervous about it as he spotted this team.

He knew how good they were.

As we walked past them, he overheard two of the team members talking to each other.

We all overheard them.

They thought they were whispering, but they weren't doing a great job.

One leaned over to the other and said, There goes that kid from the from the other team.

Do you remember him?

He was the one that hit the ball that went over the fence.

Yeah, that was the one that was at first base, the one that caught all the outs during that earlier game.

That's him.

The other kid leaned over and said, You mean that's Jerry Shire?

My son heard his name cross the lips of the opposing team members.

And all of a sudden, that head that had been down, all of a sudden it popped back up again.

All of a sudden his chest poked back out.

He got his swag back as he walked over toward the baseball diamond.

I in fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the game started.

It is absolutely amazing how your countenance changes when you really understand what the enemy thinks about you.

The reality is that in our lives you are going to, and I am going to face challenges.

There are going to be battles that you have to fight.

There are going to be difficulties that you will have to traverse.

And we could face them, church, with insecurity and with our heads hung down, unaware and unsure of how we're going to be able to get through this difficulty in our lives.

But everything about the way we face challenges can and should change when we really overhear and understand what the enemy thinks about us.

Because the reality is, my friends, that even if we don't believe it, he believes your enemy.

He believes every single thing that the word of God declares to be true about you.

Even if you aren't convinced, he knows, because the word says it, that you and I are victorious.

He knows that you have already been forgiven.

Even if you don't believe it, he knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.

Even if you aren't convinced about it, he knows that he is already under your feet.

Even if you aren't sure, you need to know that he's sure, that he can form a weapon against you, but that that weapon will never ever prosper.

He knows that you've been made competent by the Spirit of God.

He knows that if God is for you, then no one and nothing could ever prosper against you.

What?

What ashamed it would be for the enemy to believe more about our potential than we do.

For him to be more convinced about who we are because of our relationship with God through Christ Jesus than we are.

So I want to talk for just a few moments tonight to anybody who may be in the room, and you are facing a circumstance right now where honestly you are a bit intimidated, a bit discouraged at this particular valley year in your marriage, or difficulty in your finances, or trouble in your health, or struggle in your singleness, or problems on your job, or in that ministry, or that business you started, you have run into trouble in your journey of life.

And you're wondering how you're gonna get across this one so that you can move forward and onward to all that God has for you.

There are some simple lessons that we can learn from a group of people in Scripture that know exactly how that feels.

If you have your Bibles and you want to turn with me to the book of Exodus, you can do that if you actually still use a Bible with paper pages like I do.

Or you can use your iPhone, your iPad, any manner of Iness.

Just get to Exodus chapter 14, because in Exodus chapter 14, we meet the children of Israel.

Exodus 14 · chapter mention Exodus 14 · chapter mention

Two million pilgrims that were once slaves, they have been freed miraculously, and they are now on their journey with God, headed toward the land of milk and honey.

They are walking with God, wanting everything that he has for them, just like you and I are.

We are on our journey with God, but on the way, they come across what seems to be an impossible, seemingly impassable situation called the Red Sea.

And with the Red Sea in front of them, threatening them and their ability to move forward in their journey.

Moses looks at the children of Israel and says to them the exact same thing that the Holy Spirit wants to say to us today.

Verse 13.

Moses says to the people, do not fear.

Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will.

Somebody say he will.

He will accomplish for you today.

For the Egyptians whom you've seen today, you will never see them again forever.

The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.

Ooh, that's good, isn't it?

Listen to that again.

Moses says to the people, do not be afraid.

Because ain't nobody got time for that.

Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will.

Somebody say he will.

He will accomplish it for you today.

For the Egyptians whom you've seen today, you will never see them again forever.

The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.

Moses looks at the children of Israel as they are facing their Red Sea.

They are looking at it dead on, just like you might be as you sit here in these seats, or you're on the other side of that screen participating in this time of worship and in the word with us, and you are looking dead on.

You are face to face with a Red Sea circumstance in your life.

And for the life of you, you cannot figure out how you're gonna get around this one or through this one or to the other side of this one.

Moses says to the children of Israel, embedded within these instructions that you and I are gonna look at for just a few moments, embedded within the instructions.

I hope you noticed there is a promise of victory.

He says to them, He will, God will, your God, Yahweh, will give you the victory.

You do not have to manipulate for it, you don't have to create it, you don't have to manufacture it.

All you have to do is go and claim the victory that you've already been given.

I don't know if you know or not, my friends, but if you read the whole book, in the end, we win.

The victory has already been given to you.

So Moses says, when you realize that you're fighting not for victory, but from victory, it changes the way you look at the Red Sea.

When you realize that the victory has already been given to you and that you are just going to lay claim to everything that your God already has stored up for you, it changes the way you face the difficulties and that I face the battles in my life.

So Moses says, now, knowing that the victory is already yours, that your God is for you, that he is paving the way on your behalf, he says, now you just do these four simple little things and you can lay hold of the victory that has been up, has been stored up for you.

He says, number one, be fearless.

He says, be still.

He says, be watchful, see the salvation of the Lord.

And he says, shh, be quiet.

I figured for just a few minutes we could talk about these four things.

The very first and probably uh possibly the very uh most important thing that Moses says to the children of Israel as they face their Red Sea is that they need to be fearless.

He says it this way: do not fear.

In fact, this principle is so important and I know it is taught uh so uh importantly at this particular church in this church life.

I've heard it taught from your pastor, from this platform on many occasions, different conferences and different settings.

So I know you have heard this before, and yet it needs so much uh reminding in the lives of God's people.

It is so important that over 300 times throughout the scriptures, we find this exact same command.

Do not fear, do not be afraid, be fearless over and over, fear not, different ways, different variations of the exact same command.

In fact, this command is so important for the people of God that by the time you get all the way to the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, writing to a young man named Timothy, he says, just in case you're unclear, Tim, you need to know that our God does not give a spirit of fear.

He does a lot of gift giving, he enjoys giving gifts, but one thing you will never find coming from our God is a spirit of fear.

That's just not the way he rolls.

So, it made sense that sense that Moses would need to tell the children of Israel not to be afraid.

It made absolute complete sense.

I mean, think about their situation.

They have been tortured for 400 years as a people group, they have just been um hesitantly released by Pharaoh uh from captivity.

They are literally days into the journey, and just days into the journey, they they overhear that Pharaoh and the entire Egyptian army are coming up on the rear as they try to journey onward with their lives.

And and then to top off the problems that they're having, the Red Sea is now in front of them.

So they have problems in front of them, and they have problems coming behind them.

But scholars say that the army would have been so vast that they wouldn't have just come up on the rear.

Y'all, they would have been spread out around the sides, the east side and the west side, so that really the children of Israel were completely surrounded on all sides.

It occurs to me that in a group this size, there are some of you that know exactly how that feels.

Because just when you finish fixing this problem, you turn this way only to find out there's another one waiting on you over here.

And then you fix this one only to find out there's another here and another there.

Everywhere you look, you feel like you're completely surrounded.

And when we're in scenarios like that, it makes sense.

In our natural human frailty, our response emotionally would be fear.

It makes sense because we're just human.

And still, Moses looks at the children of Israel and says, Do not fear.

Even though your human reaction is to fear, he says, it's not that you won't feel it, you just get to make the choice whether or not to wallow in it.

You get to decide whether you will make friends with the fear that you feel, whether you will allow it to cripple you and paralyze you and keep you from moving forward.

If fear crippled them, they would never have the opportunity to see the incredible, incredible miracle that God had in store for them that they would only experience if they were still willing to put one foot in front of the other and move forward and onward, even with the difficulty in their eyesight.

What the enemy knows is that fear will cripple you so that you will not put one foot in front of the other and move forward.

And as long as you and I are just sitting in church saying amen to the message, he doesn't have a problem with that.

Long as you just come to the first conference once a year, he doesn't have a problem with that.

Long as you are at the pink conference once a year, he doesn't have a problem with that.

What he has a problem with is someone who comes on Sunday and comes to the conference and is enjoying the presence of God, but then walks out of these doors and lives fearlessly, puts one foot in front of the other in obedience to God and moves onward toward the destiny that God has for them.

He doesn't mind us hearing the word, he doesn't want us hearing the word, tucking it into our hearts and moving onward with our lives, disregarding any intention he may have to cripple us and paralyze us for moving forward.

So you've got to decide whether or not you're going to entertain the fear that you feel.

And so, when fear knocks on your door, you've got to decide whether or not you're going to invite it to come in, to have coffee and and and tea and stay a while, to put up its feet on your coffee table and become your friend.

That's your decision.

And so, when you feel fear arising, don't entertain it, don't engage it, exchange it for an opportunity to pray, to offer your request to God as He just does desire to hear our request, but in the meanwhile, you keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Do not be afraid.

Can I just tell you all, too, that uh just quickly, that one of the ways that I determine the leading of God in my life, one of the ways that I start to determine the way the leading of God in my life, is when I'm praying, and Jerry and I are trying to consider two options that are in front of us and whether God would have us choose option A or chop option B in some area of our life.

Um, if there is one in particular that I do not care for, I just I don't want to do that, don't want to go there, don't want to participate in that.

And as I'm praying through it, if I consider all of the reasons why I don't want this option, and when I water it down to its base level, if any of the reasoning, even at its most root, most base fundamental level, if there is anything having to do with fear or intimidation or insecurity that is keeping me away from this option, that I automatically assume that if our God does not give a spirit of fear, and there is a spirit of fear attached to this option, that it must mean that the enemy is going out of his way to try to steer me away from that particular option.

And if he's trying to keep me away from that particular option, he must know that there is a blessing in that option that he does not want me to have.

And I don't know about y'all, but when I find out that the enemy is behind something, it causes a holy indignation to rise up on the inside of me.

I want every single thing God has for me.

Can I get one person to say amen?

And so if you find that a spirit of fear is attaching itself to some specific area of your life, then you pray about that, you ask the Lord, is there, is this a Red Sea that the enemy is trying to steer me clear of?

Because he knows if I keep putting one foot in front of the other, if I cross through this thing, that on the other side is the milk and honey that you have planned for me.

So do not be afraid.

The second thing he says to the children of Israel, if they're gonna claim uh the victory, he says to them to be still.

Some translations say stand by, some say stand firm, stand still.

That's the gist of it.

I want you to notice the Two parts of the command, the standing part and the stillness part.

I want you to put yourself in the position of the children of Israel, Red Sea.

400 years of being brutalized as a people group, the Egyptian army coming up behind them.

And the best, most strategic battle plan that Moses can come up with is stand still.

You got to be kidding me.

Moses, you do realize that there's a sword right here.

You don't want me to grab this sword, sharpen it so that I can get ready to defeat these enemies.

Moses, you do realize there's bow and arrows right here.

I can set set flame to the end of these area arrows.

We can go ahead and send them sailing into enemy camp.

Mo, you do realize that there's some wood right here.

I can go ahead and start carving it up, and I can tie some logs together.

I can get us a nice, a nice raft for me and my family to head across this body of water.

Moses, I do have some solutions, and the solution you have doesn't seem to make any sense.

You mean, Moses, that you do not want me to lean to my own understanding as to what to me seems like a suitable solution for this scenario.

You want me to do that which contradicts my flesh, contradicts what you are instructing me to do.

Moses says, Yep, what you need to do in this scenario is not what your mind thinks you should, not what your flesh wishes you would.

What you need to do is plant your feet and stand still.

Now, standing and stillness both sound like the most passive of commands.

I mean, there are so many more active, engaged things that I could think of doing when I'm in um troubling situations in my life.

Standing still doesn't seem like it's gonna do any good at all.

It seems so passive.

We need something more active, but I want you to think about this for just a moment.

Thursday, after you ate your third helping of turkey, after you downed a bit more of the sweet potatoes and the yams and the green beans and pumpkin pie.

I don't know about you, but after I took in all that sugar and all those carbs in one sitting like that, when I walked into the living room in front of that football game, the last thing I wanted to do was stand.

I wanted to sit down.

Because standing is actually not that passive.

Sitting is passive.

Because it means you want something else to carry all of your weight.

Moses says, do not relax yourself.

Require your body to be resolved.

In fact, think about how much energy and effort it really does take when you're especially tired and you're sitting down and someone asks you to stand up.

You just don't want to, right?

But it could because it really does require you to engage your mind for your brain to send instructions down to the bones and the joints in your body, the muscles, everything has to cooperate in order for your skeletal structure to be held upright over an extended period of time.

There's nothing passive about standing at all.

Moses says to the children of Israel, the Holy Spirit says to us today, you want to win this battle, then you plant your feet firmly on the promises of God, and you call your mind and your brain and your joints and your muscles to be resolved, to stand firmly on what God says about your circumstance, no matter how deep your Red Sea looks.

You stand still.

Plant your feet, be resolved, believe that he is who he said he is, and he can and will accomplish what he says that he will accomplish.

There was a young lady that interned with our ministry for a while.

Her name was Katie.

She was with us for the summer.

She moved from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Dallas Fort Worth.

Now, Baton Rouge, Louisiana's airport is a little bit smaller than Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

And I am sure that the majority of you here in Dallas have flown out of DFW, and you know it's just a monster airport.

And she had never flown a lot, period.

But when she had, it had only been in and out of Baton Rouge.

And so when she moved here for the summer, she was going to be traveling with my family and I.

We all traveled together most of the time.

So on our very first trip, y'all know we went to Terminal D to catch our flight.

There are five terminals over there.

And then if that weren't confusing enough at the airport, not only are there five terminals, but then there are 30 to 36 gates in each of those terminals.

And then if that weren't confusing enough, they have the nerve to cause some of those uh gates to actually have a part A and a part B.

So you might be going, you know, to terminal A, gate 36B.

Well, on this occasion, we were at terminal D.

We pulled up, parked the car, got all our bags out of the car, and we made our way towards security.

We we then began to take off all of our clothes so that we could get through security and get to the other side.

Katie's line was taking a long time.

My family and I had been in one line, she was in the other.

There was a hiccup in her line, she couldn't get through.

And so uh Jerry sent her a text from the other side of security and said, Hey, we're just going to gate 22A.

It was literally right there to the left.

He said, We'll meet you there.

She waved at us, she got the text, she'll meet us there.

We sat down, waited for Katie.

She still wasn't there.

That line was taking a long time.

Boarding the flight.

We got on the flight, got the kids all settled, put our bags in the overhead compartment.

We were waiting for Katie.

I mean, they were boarding the last person now, still absolutely no Katie.

We were we were sweating now.

We couldn't understand what was going on, and we couldn't find her, we couldn't text her, she wasn't responding, nothing.

Finally, at the very last minute, I mean, the very last minute, Katie comes running down the jet bridge and down that little narrow airplane aisle and she plops herself down in the seat.

She is sweating bullets and her hair is plastered to her face from all the sweat.

We're trying to figure out what was going on.

Security was just right there to the left of the gate.

Finally, she looks up from her seat when she got all settled to find the five of us looking back at her like this.

We said, Katie, what happened?

She said, Well, I saw that Jerry text me to come to gate 22A, but I just assumed that he meant gate A22.

So I got on the airport train that takes you to every other terminal in DFW airport when I realized I was in the wrong place.

I tried to scramble my way back here as soon as possible.

I'll never forget my husband looking back at her and saying, Katie, if you would have just believed that exactly what I wrote was exactly what I meant, I could have saved you so much time and so much energy and so much, so much sweat if you would have just believed, if you would have just stood confidently on the fact that exactly what he what he wrote is exactly what he meant to be true for your life.

And so be fearless and be still.

And then Moses says, Would you be watchful?

He says, Open up your eyes and see the salvation of the Lord.

Remember, they're still praying on this big miracle.

They don't know if the Red Sea is gonna divide, they don't know how in the world they're gonna get across this body of water.

And Moses says to them, Don't close your eyes waiting on a big miracle.

You open your eyes up while you're yet waiting, even while you're waiting to see how God is gonna respond in a great big way to your great big problem.

Don't close your eyes and sleep through it.

Open your eyes up right now to see the little miracle, that miracles that God is already doing on your behalf.

Be watchful, see the salvation of the Lord.

Moses didn't want them to ever forget what it looked like when his rod was held up over that body of water.

He wanted them to never forget what the faces of their toddlers looked like as they were wide-eyed in awe and wonder at all that God was doing.

He never wanted them to forget what it looked like, what it felt like, the hands, the weathered hands of their elderly as they grabbed those hands and walked across the body of water.

He never wanted them to forget what it looked like when their sandal feet collected absolutely no mud on the bottom because they were walking across on dry ground.

He never wanted them to forget what it felt like when that east wind started blowing slowly at first, but then began to gain more and more steam and began to blow so hard that it parted that body of water into two walls.

He wanted them to see the details of God's deliverance.

So he said, Don't close your eyes waiting on something big.

Open your eyes up right now because God is already doing something big that you do not want to miss in your life.

So open up your eyes and be watchful.

Yes, keep praying that God will do it.

In the meanwhile, keep your eyes open to see all the it's He's doing in your life today.

So you be fearless, you be still, you be watchful.

And finally, Moses says, shh, be quiet.

Guard yourself against complaining.

Discipline your mouth to do what my mama said growing up.

If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all.

The scripture says that our God watches over his word to perform it.

So why would we give the enemy something to work with out of our mouths?

Instead of giving God something to work with over our lives.

And so you speak this word over your Red Sea.

You you you find confidence in the promises of God that are specific to what it is that you are facing, and then you just watch God respond, just like he did with the children of Israel, because then a fearless, watchful, silent, steadfast bunch of Hebrews, they got to see the miracle of the lifetime.

A miracle that, by the way, when the when Hollywood did the movie The Ten Commandments, it took them 18 months to figure out how to simulate what our God did in a split second.

He did it for them, and I'm here to tell you, He'll do it for you.

You just be fearless, you be still, you be watchful, and shh, don't complain.

Be silent.

Lord Jesus, I pray for your people.

I pray, God, that you would cloak us with an assurance and a holy courage, Lord, that will enable us to face our Red Sea head on without being paralyzed or crippled or hampled, hampered by fear.

Lord, I pray over this group of folks that's in this room today and even those on the other side of the screen.

I am asking in the name of Jesus that you would lift fear off of us, Lord.

That you would bring a holy courage and boldness to us in Jesus' name.

Lord, I'm praying that you would help us to be a church that will stand steadfast on your promises.

That we will believe that what you have said to us is what you mean for us.

Lord, would you cause us to be watchful, to be so grateful for everything that we see you do in each 24 hour period of our day, even while we're yet praying and waiting and desiring to see you do something else?

Would we never be ungrateful for all the things you were already doing?

And then, God, would you help us to be guarded against complaint?

Would you remind us of all of the benefits that we already have in you?

In Jesus' name.