Grow in the sun (Anti-fragility)

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning

into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

When I was 24 I was knocked back at selection panel.

Last year I was ordained as a minister in the United Church and selection panel is basically

the big job interview that's on the road to becoming a minister.

They do a big like a full psych workup, a physical, you have this interview where you walk in

and then you're surrounded by like 10 to 15 people in a circle and they're all taking

turns at asking you questions.

It's great.

They're trying to find out can we affirm this person has both the maturity and the call

for the church to invest in them as a candidate for ordination.

It is quite an investment.

And I didn't.

I had the call.

I just couldn't really articulate it very well but I definitely did not have the maturity.

And so I was told basically don't come back until you've worked on your emotional resilience.

This was fair, didn't feel at the time.

I was not very resilient.

I would run in the opposite direction from too much stress, too much work, too much of

anything that encroached on me in my time.

I loved the comfort zone.

I wanted to stay there forever.

It's nice in the comfort zone.

Anything I didn't feel like doing I would kind of find my way around it.

And even though at the time I would have found this very hard to hear that meant that I was

very fragile, I cracked easily.

I shattered easily.

I broke easily.

All it took was a little difficulty and it would take me out of the game.

That was about seven years ago.

Some of us here are fragile like I was.

You might find that jarring language as I would have.

But this is what it means.

The difficulty comes, you crack easily.

You run, you avoid, you get mad, you stay in bed.

Takes you months to recover.

Some of you here are resilient.

When difficulty comes, you bounce back quickly to where you were before the difficulty came.

You can ride the wave.

I had a horrific day yesterday, but today is a reset, no lasting damage.

And some of you are anti-fragile.

When I told Tex last night at 9.30 he had to rewrite his communion, he did it.

When difficulty comes, if you're anti-fragile, you don't just bounce back, you get better.

And Tex's communion was great.

Anti-fragility is a concept popularized by Nassim Nicholas Tlaib.

And the premise is that some systems, they're actually not weakened by a chaos or disorder

or by difficulty, but they're strengthened.

Difficulty actually makes them better.

And resilient people are like, you know, forks from Harry Potter, the Phoenix Bird.

Whenever it dies, it's reborn from its ashes, exactly the same.

It's still a bird.

But anti-fragile people are like the Hydra, that myth Greek mythological snake.

It's a multi-headed snake.

And when you cut off one of its heads, what happens?

Two grow back in its place.

A Hydra, when it faces difficulty, gets better.

And the easiest example of an anti-fragile system is something that when difficulty comes,

it gets better is your muscles.

When you work out, and clearly Isaac has, you put your muscles under difficulty.

And you overload them beyond what they currently can handle.

And by doing this, you actually tear the muscles on a micro level.

You tear the muscle fibers.

And your body's response to this is to be sore because you've torn muscles.

But then it begins to repair them.

And it repairs them by actually making them thicker and stronger.

And so the result of putting your muscles under difficulty are bigger and stronger muscles.

Your muscles are anti-fragile.

They still break like a vase would break under difficulty, but very unlike a vase or however

you want to say it.

It's the breaking that makes them grow.

Today we are in the second week and we're doing a six week series on revival, which is a really

exciting series.

Revival, we talked about this last week, is a quickening of God's ordinary work to put

everything right.

All of creation and us as well.

Now putting all of creation right is something God is doing slowly.

And sometimes it's so slow that it feels imperceptible.

But through, and he's doing it through salvation, he's doing it through justice, he's doing

it through reconciliation, through healing, through freedom and through love and more.

He's doing this all the time.

But in revival, God does these things quickly and dramatically.

And last week we talked about needing to clear the fields of our heart through forgiveness,

to make room for what God wants to do in us and through us.

Because God won't bring revival out there or out here in our church until he first brings

revival in here, in our hearts.

And we want to see revival here and encounter.

We want to see it in Adelaide.

We want to see it in Australia because we need it.

We need things to be put right.

And so we want revival.

We rightly want revival.

Revival is exciting and amazing.

And people are falling in love with Jesus en masse.

Longstanding feuds are reconciled.

You see tangible change in society and genuine revivals.

You see people genuinely just growing into more people of love in the way of Jesus.

But I, like, it's cool to talk about revival, but I don't think people really think about

what revival would mean for us.

We want the idea of revival, but in reality, revival would demand a lot of us.

Because revival is intense and demanding in reality.

I'm not just speaking about the practical implications, because the practical implications

of revival are staggering.

For example, in 1904, there was a revival in Wales, a Welsh revival, 100,000 people

came to faith in Jesus.

That was 10% of the population at the time.

They did that in one year.

100,000 people in one year.

There's 100,000 people that need to be taught to follow Jesus and integrated into regular

loving Christian community.

Imagine if even 100 people came to faith through this church and a genuine move of God.

Every single Christian in the room is taking one or two to go and teach them how to follow

Jesus and invite them into your lives.

Because I can't do 100 in a week.

Like, we're going to have to spread the load.

We're going to have to take, everyone's going to have to take two.

Revival brings significant practical implications.

But there are personal implications as well.

As God's spirit comes to put things right, we're going to get put right too.

We're going to get put right.

You speak to anyone who's been a Christian a long time.

And it's like every year you discover a new way that your heart is disobedient, selfish,

sinful and prideful.

You never noticed it before, but now you do.

It's like every year, here's a new thing.

God in His kindness is slowly revealing these things to us and invites us to work with Him

to deal with them.

This year I'm realising just how strong will, I never would have called myself a strong

willed person.

But I'm finding that I actually have a strong will and my heart finds it difficult to surrender

that will to God, to His will and to His love.

And I had never noticed that before.

But here we are.

God's inviting me to come and deal with that and lay that down.

You see, God does this all the time to all of us if we're open to it, slowly putting

us right.

But if you read any history of revival, there's a common thing.

And it's this, when the spirit comes in power, sin and unforgiveness and compromise, God

just does not tolerate that on any level.

In revival, women and men, they cannot stay in the presence of God without dealing with

those things.

God often does a decade of inner work in a day in a revival.

And sure, you may spend that day on your face covered not just with the presence of God

but your own snot and tears as well.

But God will have put a whole lot right in that day.

You have forgiven that person from your heart.

You will have sought forgiveness from that person you hurt.

You have convicted of some sin and made steps to cut it out of your life.

You will experience incredible inner and possibly outer healing.

You will understand God's vision and intention for your life.

You'll see things about yourself that you didn't even notice before.

But here's the problem.

Both the personal and the practical implications of revival can be really, really hard.

Like so difficult.

And yet that regular pace, that slow pace of God putting everything right, the practical

and the deeply personal in us, that itself, without even bringing in revival, that regular

slow pace, that can feel to us difficult and overwhelming as it is.

So we want revival but reality right now is overwhelming.

For a lot of us, it's the ordinary difficulties of ordinary everyday life that can throw us

off.

Throw us off being in community and church.

Throw us off spending time talking with God.

Throw us off filling our hearts and minds with God's word.

Throw us off becoming more and more a person of love.

And that's before you add revival in, before you add God's power come and just to mess

everything up.

And if we want to see a genuine move of God in our time in our church and steward it well,

we have to become women and men who will not break under difficulty and not just return

to how we were before the difficulty but women and men who get better, who do not burn

up under the heat of the sun but grow in the sun.

Who like a sunflower that grows not just in the sun but towards the sun.

We've got to become people who come out of the other side of difficulty, not just better

but actually closer to Jesus.

So how do we do this?

Because we need to do this.

How do we become anti-fragile?

Well gladly and gratefully scripture can help us here.

Today our teaching texts we see Moses and he's just under immense difficulty.

Pharaoh has just let God's people go and they camp down by the Red Sea but Pharaoh and the

leaders of Egypt have changed their minds and decided to pursue Israel with their army.

And so here Moses is, he's got a sea behind him and the army of the Egyptians coming in

the distance in front of him.

And I think the technical term for this is just a real pickle.

Like he is in trouble.

You can't run, probably can't fight.

It just looks like they're doomed.

And so the people, they're panicking, they've been whipped up into a panic.

They come at Moses, they go, bring us out here to die in the wilderness.

This is your fault basically.

Were there enough graves in Egypt?

But what have you done to us?

Why are you doing this to us?

And under this kind of pressure, you know, this is a people that Moses has just let out

a slavery by the power and hand of God and they're attacking him for what they were just

rejoicing about.

I wonder how you would respond to that kind of difficulty.

Would you panic?

Would you run?

Would you freeze?

Would you counter attack?

Are you serious?

God, didn't you just see what God did?

But Moses stays calm and he is not anxious in the face of the people's anxiety.

He says, do not be afraid.

Just stand still, watch the Lord rescue you.

The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again.

The Lord himself will fight for you.

Just stay calm.

How can anyone pin between the sea and an army coming full force out you to kill you

be this calm?

How can he be this calm?

Well, Moses has been on a journey since the burning bush.

You know, God speaks to him out of this perpetually burning bush and tells him he's going to use

him to save his people and his response is, I really couldn't.

I couldn't possibly.

It's not really for me.

You probably should find someone else.

But back and forth he goes, look, I'm just not a great public speaker, you know, got

a bit of a stutter.

You really should find someone else.

That's what Moses is like when God calls him.

And yet here he is with the sea behind him and staring down the barrel of an army and

his response is to be basically say, get out the popcorn boys and girls, we're going to

see a show.

That is a staggering change.

Everything has shifted in Moses.

And I think it's a key shift that we need to make in order to become the kind of people

who can grow under difficulty, who can grow in the sun.

You see, Moses at the burning bush, he's trying to avoid difficulties coming up with

excuses about why he shouldn't go and do what God wants and why God actually has a really,

he's just really, it's just not a good plan.

And it's somewhat understandable because God wants him to basically harass the most powerful

man in the world for an extended period of time in order to get him to free his people.

It's not exactly a desirable job.

Moses is in the comfort zone out in the wilderness.

He's got his family.

He's got a job, looks after sheep.

He's probably got a nice tent.

You know, God, and God's just trying to rip him out of the comfort zone.

And Moses initially resists.

He knows that it's saying yes means it's going to be, it's going to be hard.

It's going to cost him, but God can be very persuasive.

I don't know if you've realized that in your life.

I sure have.

And so Moses goes.

So contrast that Moses to this Moses that we see here in our teaching text.

Moses no longer avoids difficulty.

Moses embraces it.

Moses is undergoing a mindset shift.

He's moved from avoiding difficulty to embracing difficulty.

He expects difficulty.

And this is wise.

You know, life will never be free of difficulty.

You can pick up any self-help book from a bookshelf or from Dimmicks and you will get

that one idea.

Life is never free of difficulty.

But Moses has a difference.

Not only does he expect difficulty.

He expects to God to bring him through the difficulty.

Meaning he expects God to be with him in the difficulty.

And because he expects God to be with him in it, he knows that all will be well and

all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

So an army's coming at him.

No stress.

Enjoy the show.

God's going to sort this one out for us.

Just calm down.

Actually, how can he say that?

How has Moses made that shift?

Because before he didn't know God.

He didn't really trust God.

But now he knows God.

And now he didn't trust God.

He trusts God's power.

He trusts God's promise.

And they're pinned between the army and the sea because God instructed Moses to put them

there.

And this is in chapter 14 verse 4.

I have planned this in order to display my glory through Pharaoh and his whole army.

Okay.

So you might say, you know, sure, it is easier to trust God that he's got you when you know

you are where God wants you to be.

And to that I say, amen.

Yeah.

In life, in our lives, it is easier to trust God when you know you are where God wants

you to be.

But in the context of Moses in this situation, it's kind of a yes and a no.

Like trusting God here does still require him to put his neck essentially on the chopping

block to risk their life to trust God.

And that gives us an insight into the level that Moses trusts God.

He is willing to embrace the difficulty.

And he puts, so he puts the people in the, in a threatening and compromising position.

And I can't imagine Moses is going, yeah, this, this is a great, this is a great situation

by itself.

This army coming at us by itself, not great.

But with God, Moses expects that the fruit of the situation will be great.

Moses has had a mindset shift, you no longer avoids difficulty.

He embraces it.

And if we're going to become people who grow under difficulty, who grow in the sun, we

must become people who shift, make a shift towards embracing difficulty, who trust that

even though the difficulty I face is not great with God, the fruit of it will be.

So even though like a muscle, we may feel like we are just being torn apart in a thousand

places on a microscopic level.

We can repair and rebuild and grow because we no longer see difficulty as something to

be avoided.

Instead, we see it as an invitation to be embraced, an opportunity to grow and to get

better.

Now you could write that down if anyone was taking notes and say, yeah, that's a good

idea.

I do want to make the shift from avoiding difficulty to embracing it.

That sounds like good.

But embracing difficulty isn't really something that can just be thought of and then just

left.

It actually must be lived out and practiced.

And that's hard because we like the comfort zone, don't we?

And to practice embracing difficulty will require us to leave it again and again and

again to learn how to embrace it.

But luckily for us, again, Moses gives us a blueprint to navigate anything that we face.

He gives us, in the way that he responds to this, he gives us a framework for how we can

embrace difficulty in the midst of any struggle, big or to the downright horrific.

Moses does three things in this passage.

First thing is this.

He stays calm.

In the face of attack, not just from an army, but from his own people, Moses keeps his head.

He expects difficulty to come.

He's not surprised by it.

He stays calm and because he stays calm, he actually gives his people an opportunity to

also stay calm.

Imagine if Moses had panicked as well, then it would have been all over.

They would have whipped up into a frenzy and no one would have been listening to God about

how he planned to get them out of this situation.

See anxiety breeds more anxiety.

Anxiety does not exist in a vacuum.

This applies to armies coming to kill you, all the way to mobs to your family and even

to this church.

You think about it, if a kid gets a paper cut and their parent freaks out about it,

then the kid will also start freaking out about it.

But if the parent is calm about it, it gives them all an opportunity to address the situation

calmly and efficiently.

And this is true if it is something much, much worse, like if the kid has cut their

finger off.

If the parent will keep their head and stay calm, it gives their kid an opportunity to

stay calm, which helps everyone to get that finger sewed back on.

To begin to embrace difficulty and grow, we have to learn how to keep our heads in the

difficulty.

We must learn how to stay calm.

Take a deep breath.

Remember who we are.

Remember what God has done in our lives and that through it all God is with us.

And that's the second thing Moses does is he stays connected.

Moses doesn't run away.

He stays connected not just to his people, but also to God.

His people are anxious and they're coming at him.

But God is the one who has led them there and the only one who can save them.

When we read the text, it doesn't show Moses crying out to God.

It says the people cry out, but it doesn't show Moses crying out to God.

But we know he is because God says to him in verse 15, basically stop crying out to

me, get moving.

Moses is calm on the outside, but he's praying like mad on the inside.

When difficulty comes, the answer is not to pretend it's not that bad and this is fine.

For that's just another way of running away from it.

Denying reality is unhelpful.

Moses was in a difficult situation and he knew it.

And so he takes it to God in prayer.

He cries out to God.

And when difficulty comes, we must stay calm and stay connected to what's going on and

who it's going on with, but also to God.

Whatever the difficulty, God is the one who has the power to get us through and save us

and we must stay connected with him in order to get through.

The last thing Moses does is he stays the course.

Even under significant difficulty.

He trusts God and he does what God asks of him anyway and God rescues them.

He tells Moses to pick up his staff and raise his hand over the sea.

And so he does and the wind changes and the strong east wind comes and blows against the

sea all night until the dead sea is pushed back on both sides and people can walk across

as if it was on dry land.

He's saved.

That's because Moses stayed the course.

Staying the course is something that is sometimes the last thing we want to do when we face

difficulty.

When things get hard, it feels easier to bail, to cancel, to give up, to quit, to run away,

to lash out, to bunk it down.

It feels easier.

But Moses stays the course.

He's followed God up into this point and so he does this.

And here it is.

This is the important thing.

He does the next right thing.

He does the next right thing.

And with us in whatever difficulty we face, staying the course sometimes just looks like

asking yourself, what is the next right thing?

What is the next right thing I can do here?

And no matter how hard it is, holding your hand out over a sea might feel silly, but

it's effective.

Do the next right thing.

In the face of difficulty, if we'll stay calm, stay connected and stay the course, we can

not just survive anything, but we'll actually be able to embrace the difficulties that we

face and grow from them.

A couple of years after I was rejected from selection panel, told to go and sort myself

out, Ash got sick, really sick as many of you know.

At that time I was fragile, I was not resilient, I was not anti-fragile.

And the comfort zone that I have, I had just crumbled before my eyes.

You know, I'd spent my life up into that point chasing the comfort zone.

I didn't really know difficulty growing up.

I didn't lack anything as a kid.

I had no genuine real hardship during my school years.

And the result of that really was that I was just not a great person.

I was selfish, I was lazy, I was indulgent, I was stingy.

I avoided difficulty at all costs.

To the point where I can say like I was genuinely a bad husband and father at the start there.

I sought the comfort zone to the detriment of my own family and it was a sin that I

feel and have genuine regret about.

When Ash got sick, suddenly the comfort zone no longer existed.

I had to step up around the home with the kids in my marriage in a way that I hadn't.

Because Ash's illness just left me no choice.

I could not find a way around.

I had to learn to embrace the difficulty of my situation and our situation.

And in the early stages that absolutely rocked me.

I took like a month off work.

I was very well as me.

But I'll just knuckle it down until it gets better.

But then it didn't get better.

And I couldn't just push through and then collapse back into the comfort zone at the

end.

And I realized that if the situation wasn't getting better, then I needed to get better.

That I needed to leave the comfort zone permanently to meet the demands of my reality.

I realized for the sake of my family, I could not be fragile.

And so I cried a lot, I yelled at God and then I got over myself.

And I began to slowly embrace the difficulty.

I began to learn that I could actually stay calm regardless of what was going on.

I dug into my connection with God and relied on it like those oxygen masks that fall from

an airplane that's going down.

I was just plugged into God.

And I stayed connected with Ash and the kids.

I stayed the course.

I learned to do the next right thing, to be steady and to chip away faithfully, to not

let the situation take me off course of what God wanted me to do.

I did not do it all perfectly.

But over time, if I look back, I can see that I went from fragile to resilient, began to

be able to bounce back quicker and quicker.

And then I began to really grow.

And I started to become anti-fragile.

See my mindset has already shifted from avoiding that difficulty, realizing I had to embrace

it.

But I really started to grow when my mindset shift became a paradigm shift for my life.

I went from I can't avoid this difficulty.

I must embrace this difficulty to difficulty is a good thing to be embraced in every area

of my life.

I started running because I wanted to teach myself to do something I hated and fasting

because I just love food way too much.

And ultimately saying yes to planning Henley was a decision that came out of a paradigm

shift for me because I knew it would be both hard and the best.

And as those who were here in the launch team, you know, church planning can't be done in

the comfort zone.

I had learned that difficulty actually promotes growth.

And in fact, nothing grows without difficulty.

Moses doesn't grow without the difficulty of Egypt.

Muscles don't grow without the difficulty of training.

Immune systems don't strengthen without the difficulty of a bacteria or virus.

And plants don't grow without the difficulty of the sun.

It's a universal principle.

For you right now, you might have a lot of difficulty with your family, with your job,

with your school, your health, your finances, with your house, your home, your kids.

Or you might have very little real difficulty.

The temptation for us all is to avoid difficulty and retreat into the comfort zone.

It's understandable.

It's comfy.

Comfy in the comfort zone.

But friends, nothing grows in the comfort zone.

Nothing grows.

You will not grow in the comfort zone.

And going back to the comfort zone is like going back to Egypt for the Israelites.

They wanted it in that moment.

Egypt was comfortable kind of, the grass was greener there, right?

But they forget that Egypt was slavery.

Egypt was slavery.

The grass was not greener.

You were a slave.

And the comfort zone is a kind of slavery, a slavery to your desires, a slavery to what

you like and what you want.

If you only ever do things because you want to do them because they feel good or they're

comfy, then you just waste away as a person.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

What kind of life is that?

If you leave your life in the comfort zone, you will live a shorter and less fulfilled

life.

Because a comfort zone like slavery promises everything delivers almost nothing.

Because nothing we most deeply or truly want in life comes easy or without difficulty.

Anyone with kids knows that's true.

The best things in life are long and hard fought for.

You simply won't grow in the comfort zone as a human being or as a follower of Jesus.

Now we generally cannot control the things that happen to us in our life.

The difficulties that we will face from the minor to the horrific.

But our response to those things kind of is our responsibility.

So the question I have for you today is what do you want?

What do you really want?

Now what do you surface level want?

What do you want in the deepest parts of your being?

The deepest parts of your heart.

What do you want?

Do you want to be the kind of person who runs towards the comfort zone regardless of the

difficulty?

Or do you want to be the kind of person who runs towards difficulty?

To embrace it so that you can grow?

Do you want to live your life in the shade or do you want to grow in the sun?

There was another one like Moses who was placed in a life and death situation.

There was another who God intended to display his glory through.

There was another who embraced difficulty.

I'm talking about Jesus.

Jesus had the ultimate comfort zone.

He was with God the Father since forever and for forever.

And yet he abandoned the comfort zone to become one of us, to take on human flesh, to live

our experience of being hungry, sick and thirsty, to experience pain and suffering.

Jesus abandoned the comfort zone to live that life.

And he abandoned the comfort zone to die.

And to not die a nice comfortable death surrounded by friends and family.

He was surrounded by friends and family kind of.

And he died an excruciating and humiliating public death.

And he did it for you and he did it for me.

So that we could be reconciled to God forever.

You know Jesus went to that cross out of sheer love for you and for me.

Jesus abandoned the comfort zone out of sheer love for you and for me.

So that we could be with God and have life with him forever.

And as a follower of Jesus, I look at Jesus, what he did on the cross, what he willingly

went through for me.

And I think if I was brought into the family of God by such willing suffering, such blatant

abandonment of the comfort zone, how could I be so concerned with staying there?

How could I be at home or a church or a work or at school drop off and be so focused on

what I want, what's good for me, what serves me, what feeds me, what's nice for me?

The more and more I experience the love of God and the more that I love God, the more

ashamed I feel about getting mine and doing what's best for me.

That's not the path that Jesus took.

And I'm just utterly convinced that the comfort zone just has to die in me.

It just has to die.

And my friends, if you want to grow, if you want to see revival, if you want to see God's

kingdom come in Hanley as it is in heaven, it's got to die in you too.

It's got to die in you too.

You've got to get out of the comfort zone.

You've got to get out of the comfort zone.

You know, when they're young, they grow towards the sun, which means they track the sun in

the day.

And that is what we want for each of you.

That you would become people who not just grow in difficulty towards Jesus.

You're not just growing difficulty, but you're growing in difficulty towards Jesus, towards

the Son of God.

But to do that, you've got to leave the comfort zone.

I have here a bowl of sunflower seeds.

Bunnings tells me there's 150 in here, but that is a straight up lie.

There's probably 45, which means there's one for everyone in this room.

You are like this sunflower seed.

We all are.

And this bowl is like the comfort zone.

These seeds are nice and comfy in here.

They're hanging out.

They're having a good time.

The bowl's nice.

But this seed will never grow into a plant until it leaves the bowl.

It goes into the soil and dies.

And we will never become the people that God has created us to be unless we will leave

this comfort zone and go out into the world and pick up our cross, deny ourselves, follow

Jesus, unless we will also die.

Bonhoeffer has an amazing, Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was executed by Hitler

in the Second World War.

And he has this amazing line which says, when Christ calls a man or a woman, he bids him

come and die.

Invites us into his death so that he can also invite us into his life.

And so I want to give you an opportunity to, and an invitation to respond today.

You do not need to do so.

But if you would like to, if you want to commit and say, you know what, yeah, I'm going to

do the hard work of leaving the comfort zone for the sake of my friends, for the sake of

my family, for the sake of my kids, for the sake of Henley, my neighbourhood, my community.

I'm going to do the hard work.

I'm going to leave the comfort zone.

I want to grow in the sun towards Jesus.

I'm going to put this over here when we sing some worship and I want you to come and grab

one, just one.

Take your seed out of the comfort zone.

Take it out and take it with you.

You can put it in your wallet or on your desk or plant it in your garden.

Use it as a reminder of your decision that I'm going to leave the comfort zone.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to be that kind of person.

I'm going to embrace difficulty and I'm going to grow.

But I want you to not do this lightly because it's there because you like sunflower seeds

because God sees these little symbolic decisions that we make.

If you say, I'm going to step out of the comfort zone and grow, He's going to make you step

out of the comfort zone and grow.

You may have the comfort zone ripped out from under you if you come and grab one of these

sunflower seeds.

But what do you want?

Do you want to grow?

You may not always enjoy the difficulties of your life.

But if you become someone who grows in the sun, you'll look back and you'll say, yeah,

that was really bloody hard.

And I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But look what God did.

Look what God did.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message.

If you felt challenged or need prayer, would love to hear from you on Instagram at EncounterHemmy.

Or if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website, EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening.

God bless you.