When There is No Way Out

Well, good morning, church.

Um, if I haven't met you, my name's Russ.

I'm one of the pastors here at Church of the Grove.

I want to say welcome to all of you.

And I know on a Sunday morning we've got a lot of people that are part of our church family.

Um obviously, we have some of you that have been here more recently.

Maybe today's your first Sunday, and I want to say a special welcome to all of you that might be here for the first time.

Um, you know, we we say everybody's welcome.

Nobody's perfect, but anything's possible, right?

With Jesus.

With Jesus.

And so welcome to Church of the Grove.

It's so exciting.

And if you are here and you, you know, maybe for the first time, second time, you you you've come at a very exciting time in the life of our church.

And I've uh, you know, where we are in the life of our church is is uh is so significant and it's and it causes me to go back and and look at some of the significant roadmarks and some of the significant experiences that have led us here.

Uh the the experience of just receiving a vision, you know, to really to go after people that are far from God, to go after people that are that are like me and some people in my family who who didn't grow up in church but but are hungry for truth and hungry for relationship, hungry for community, hungry for uh to really know what God, who God is and what he's about, and and and and and knowing him through the person Jesus Christ that he's revealed.

And so so and it makes me think about all of the families that were a part of us in the very beginning, and some of you are scattered around this room, and and the excitement of seeing all those families process whether or not this was for them or not, whether whether God was supposed to lead them, maybe to leave a comfort zone, to leave a church that they are they're they were comfortable with, or uh and and to leave churches that had established children's ministries and youth ministries and all those things.

And they were all willing to step out in faith and and and now to see where we are.

I think about um God adding people immediately when we started, God adding people across the years, and and the excitement of passing by, knowing that this is probably where God wanted us to be, this this piece of land that we're on, and then the excitement when we bought the land, and then we began to raise money for this building that we are in right now.

Every step seemed so big and seemed like such a huge, huge reach.

But to see God come through, to see God work in the faithfulness of his people.

And so today, as we continue this series, we we continue this series.

It's not just about a building, it's not just about dirt being moved, it's about seeing God continue to advance the gospel and advance his kingdom, to see how we can pray a prayer like the Lord's Prayer that says, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And so what we want to see is the kingdom of God to come and manifest itself in and through us, where we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but we also love our neighbor as ourselves.

And what is it that God could do if there is a community of people or uh uh uh like communities of people like this church all over the nation?

Let me tell you what, God is doing such a thing now.

God is doing, you may not hear about it in in the national media, but God they call it the the some of the theologians, some of the scholars, some of the some of the people that that keep up with what's happening in our culture, they call it the quiet revival.

There is a revival taking place in our country, in our nation, and really, really around the world.

And it they refer to it as a quiet revival where behind the scenes God is working and God is bringing people together to see his mission accomplished.

Amen?

Man, yeah.

It's okay to clap.

You can clap.

Let's just, if we're gonna do it, let's do it the right way, right?

Everybody together.

Let's thank God.

Yes.

All right, so here we go.

Uh uh Exodus chapter 13.

Exodus 13 · chapter mention

If you are, uh if you have your Bibles, we're gonna be Exodus chapter 13.

Exodus 13 · chapter mention

Last week we took a brief look and a journey through what we call the ten plagues.

Uh, but today we're we're looking at the actual Exodus itself.

And see, we as we as Americans are uh um, we use a number of words to describe what it means to become, to, to get ourselves in a predicament.

Have you ever gotten yourself in a predicament or have you ever been around circumstances where somebody else's actions has put you in a predicament?

What do we mean by predicament?

If you're from the East, you probably know about uh uh if you you would call it being in a pinch.

How many of you have ever been in a pinch?

Um if you like to cook, it you put yourself in a jam, right?

You're in a jam.

Hang on, hang with me, okay?

Or maybe you're in a pickle.

You're in a pickle.

Fastest growing sport in the world, by the way.

Pickle ball.

And so I uh what it has to do with the this phrase, I'm in a pickle, um, not sure, but uh, but if you're from the south, we would say, hey man, I I am caught between a rock and a hard place, right?

And so there's all manner of such expressions.

And so especially when people, when you're translating one language to another, it's it's interesting to see how people decipher some of these uh these sayings.

When we're talking about, man, I'm I man, she he or she is driving me up a wall.

Or man, they put me in a corner, they back me up in a corner, I'm up against it, I'm hard-pressed.

And so what do we mean by that?

What do we mean at being in a pinch?

What do we mean by being in a predicament?

A predicament occurs, for example, when an attorney who specializes in medical malpractice suits finds himself in need of major surgery.

Now that's a predicament.

So a few of you got that.

Okay.

See, it's always a predicament when I practice a joke in my head, but and and it's so funny, but when I say it out loud, it's a predicament.

We're in a predicament, right?

What does it mean?

What does it mean to be be between a rock and a hard place?

I mean, we all find ourselves in those situations.

Let me let me uh can we get serious for a second?

So predicament is is is my wife and I married in 1995, June 24th, 1995.

So what does that mean this past week?

30 year anniversary, and uh asked me what we did, absolutely nothing.

But I got something planned, so I'm okay.

I'm not in trouble yet, as long as I follow through.

So my wife and I were uh we were a little bit older when we got married, and so we uh this is in her words, you know, hey, she says, we're not spring chickens, so if we're gonna have kids, let's get to it.

And so I was like, okay.

Uh and and and so we we we desperately wanted to have children, and we knew, you know, at 30, we we it's not like we could say, hey, we're gonna wait for five years.

So so it wasn't very long after we were married that we found out that we were expecting.

And you know that that experience is so exciting.

Um and so we're this was in 1997, the summer of 97.

So my my dad's health was failing, and he was in the hospital at Henry, at Henry Medical Center, I think it's a Piedmont hospital now, uh, but it's basically right out, you know, between Stockbridge and McDonough, which is where I grew up.

And but I was serving as a youth pastor in Hall County, and so um I was actually um in my car, about to head down to the hospital.

My my older brother and myself, we had a middle brother that uh this that was already with Jesus, and so my brother and I were taking turns every other night to go stay with my dad to give my mom a break.

And so I was about to get on the expressway right right in Gainesville to head down to the hospital in Henry County, and my wife Jill calls me, and she says, um, and and she's she's cry- I can tell, I can tell she's she's in tears, she can't hardly talk.

And and as I'm listening, I finally can make out that she is experiencing at that moment a miscarriage.

And so um many of many that's not something that that's necessarily uh you know unique to us.

Many, many couples, many people uh have gone through that type of experience, but I felt caught between a rock and a hard place.

I'm literally about to get onto the own ramp to go do what I feel like is my family responsibility.

I love my dad.

Uh, you know, we we've seen how God had worked in his life, he had come to Christ late in life, and and that, but I know my number one responsibility is now my wife and my family.

But I'm I'm I'm like, man, I'm really struggling.

What am I supposed to go south or am I supposed to go back north?

And so now, so I I pray and I was like, Lord, what do I do?

And and immediately I did what I I was very common and has been a very common thing for me.

I I use the lifeline.

I use the lifeline.

And and very often I find that God, God is always speaking.

Very often I find that God will speak through somebody else in our life, and we rely on other people, especially mentors and family members and disciplers and people that invest in us.

And I and I called my older brother, Butch, and who had already been in the ministry for a number of years, and I said, Butch, you know, Jill's called me.

She's going through a miscarriage right now.

I know I'm supposed to be at the hospital tonight.

And Butch didn't hesitate.

He said, You turn that car around and you go back to your house.

He said, Your number one responsibility is to your wife.

Once you exchange those vows, he said, your number one responsibility is not your biological family.

It is now your wife and the children that will come out of that relationship.

Those are your number, that's your number one responsibility.

As I turned around.

And God used my brother, as he has so many times.

He used us uses other people.

Obviously, the number one way that God speaks is through his word and through, he confirms it through the person of Jesus Christ.

But in the process of us following Jesus, he promised, he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he speaks to us, and he can take a predicament.

He can take a place where we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And God can turn things around.

And so sometimes we get stuck.

We feel stuck and we don't know which way we're supposed to go.

Or am I supposed to turn south and go to the hospital?

Am I supposed to turn north and go back to my home?

Sometimes you're in the middle of experiences or circumstances and you are, you just feel stuck.

You feel like you're in a jam.

You are in a pinch.

And you ask questions.

You start thinking, how long is this gonna take?

How long is this gonna am I gonna have to go through this?

What what are we going to do to get out of this situation?

What if we never get out of this situation?

What what about a diagnosis?

What about a situation where we've got to step up for somebody in our family?

And so we we feel stuck at one time or another.

We've all probably felt that that pressure or this feeling like man, we we have driven up in a into a cul-de-sac and we just feel stuck.

And we all can identify with that.

If you've grown up in Atlanta, I feel stuck as a Braves fan right now.

I feel stuck.

Lord knows, as a Falcons fan, and my dad, we had season tickets from the very first year.

I feel stuck.

I feel we listen, there's times we feel stuck.

We feel stuck in a job.

It feels like a dead end, it feels like a cul-de-sac.

We feel stuck in our marriage, we feel stuck in the past, or we're we feel controlled by our past.

We feel stuck in our lack of uh forgiveness.

Maybe we feel like we are unforgivable, or we feel like, man, I can't produce the kind of forgiveness that I need to produce to forgive somebody else.

We feel stuck in our um failures in life, we feel stuck in our sin.

We feel stuck in in all these different areas in life.

At one point or another, we felt like we've been stuck.

What do we do?

How do we respond?

Sometimes we panic.

There's this panic.

Some of us have legitimate physical issues that we refer to in our culture as panic attacks.

We try to fix things ourselves.

What do we do?

This is one of the things we try to do is I'm gonna manipulate the circumstances myself.

Or I'm gonna focus blame, I'm gonna I'm gonna deflect blame on somebody else instead of taking responsibility or trying to find a legitimate God pathway out of this.

We might even feel abandoned by God Himself.

And most of us wouldn't choose to be stuck in our lives.

It's not a pleasant place to be.

And to show up.

You might be here today and you feel stuck, and here's what God will say to you today in this big idea is that our dead ends are God's open doors.

Our dead ends are God's open doors.

You pull up into a cul-de-sac, let me tell you something.

You may not know which way and how to get out, but if you're willing to lean in, to rest, to depend on God, and ask the Holy Spirit to provide the way for you to get out of this situation.

God will lead you and He will guide you.

This summer we're walking through the life of Moses, so we've we've we've gone through the first 80 years of Moses' life, and God appears to him in the burning bush that we've already uh looked at.

God calls Moses to a life of that that surpasses his wildest expectation.

God tells Moses that he's been that he's chosen him to be the one that he will send back to Egypt to deliver his people out of slavery from Egypt.

And so, so so um last week we went through the the ten plagues and and how God used the Passover uh as a foreshadowing ultimately of how the Lamb of God Jesus would give his life and shed his blood to provide not just for physical freedom, but for spiritual freedom, forgiveness and joy and hope that we find in Christ.

And so where do we pick up this morning?

Exodus chapter 13, verses 17 and 18.

Exodus 13:17

And so it says, when Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the promised land.

God said, if the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.

So listen to this, verse 18, so God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.

Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle.

And so God led them out in the wilderness.

So before they come to the Red Sea, they wander.

And I just imagine in a maybe a directionless type way as they wound themselves through the wilderness.

And maybe God is using this to prepare them.

And so then we jump forward to Exodus chapter 14, verses 1 through 3.

Exodus 14:1–3

Then the Lord gave these instructions to Moses.

Order the Israelites to turn back and camp by Pi Hahiraph between Megdal and the sea.

Camp there along the shore across from Baal Zephon, then Pharaoh will think the Israelites are confused.

They are trapped in the wilderness.

And I and I it's one of those things where this morning, as I'm driving in, I'm like, I love maps.

I loved seminary.

One of my friends called it maps class.

He hated maps class.

I loved maps class.

And, you know, maps are, you know, if you go to the back of your Bible, there's all these maps.

And so you, you know, and you don't have to go to seminary to learn about maps and to learn all about all the archaeology and about all the you know the actual physical places of the Holy Land.

You you can you can study it by just looking at those maps.

So I wish I'd put a map on the screen, but I want you to imagine, you go look this up.

Uh we call it the Suez Canal here in the 21st century, but the Suez Canal is the Red Sea.

It literally in the Hebrew it means reed sea.

And this would have been the very northern part of the Suez Canal, the northern part of the Red or the Reed Sea.

And so God, God's people wander around aimlessly, seemingly like as if they are lost, and then they travel north, and what they do is they travel in such a way that they put themselves in what we would call a cul-de-sac position.

There's no way to get out.

And so they have been set free, they're in the wilderness, but but when Pharaoh lets them go, his attitude begins to change from letting them go to chasing them down and killing them.

And so they're in a God's people, now that are between a million and two million after coming to Egypt as a family of about 70.

They're stuck along the coast of the northern part of the Red Sea, and now coming after them is Pharaoh's army.

Chariots and horses and all the weapons that a superpower would have.

Chasing down, and God's people have basically, they've grabbed, they've grabbed stuff that Pharaoh and the Egyptians had given them.

They took things as they left, but they don't have the sophisticated weaponry that the Israelites uh that the Egyptians have.

So understand what's going on here.

God's come to Moses and asked him to be his representative to rescue the people from Egypt.

Moses goes and mighty miracles are performed, showing that God is ultimately in control over all things.

There's nothing beyond his power or ability, and he leads the people out of Egypt, but he leads them into in a roundabout way, and they start going one direction, and God calls them to turn back and go another direction.

And he here's here's what I want us to understand.

Here's a takeaway.

God often leads us to impossible places.

God often leads, and you say, well, why would God that seems so that seems that seems kind of um uh man, that that that seems like God wants to inflict.

It doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem loving, it doesn't seem as as if God is all powerful.

But Israel didn't get lost.

It's not like their GPS recalculated.

I mean, Moses didn't misread a compass or directions.

God himself directs the people into that cul-de-sac, into that trap in the wilderness.

Chuck Swindah, he writes this great biography on the life of Moses, and he says this, and he says their predicament, their jam, their pinch wasn't an accident.

It wasn't a wrong turn.

It wasn't a miscalculation.

God knew exactly where he was leading them.

Yes, God was leading them.

He led them up into what seemed to be a trap.

And our dead ends are God's open doors.

Why can I say that?

Because I've seen it as I've read this book, and then I've seen it as I watch Him work in the lives, in my life, in the lives of some of your families.

I see it.

And what does God want to do through this?

God wants to reveal his power.

Why does God allow us sometimes to go through these circumstances or experiences where it feels like it's a dead end?

Because God is setting himself up to reveal his power.

God wants to test our ability to trust and to grow our trust in him.

God wants to remove all self-reliance and pride and what we would call your own attempt at gaining moral high ground.

God wants to get the glory over the most powerful nation on the earth.

Let me tell you something.

God will do what is necessary when we feel all powerful.

God will do what is necessary to bring us down to a place of dependence.

So as you look at the news and you are tempted to get caught up in the panic, call it clickbait, panic.

Just you need to filter everything through God's word.

Filter everything through God's character.

Filter everything through what we know about God.

And so God wants the glory.

And he's not going to accept Egypt trying to keep the glory.

So God will do what it takes to bring us to a place of dependence and humility.

And so here's what we realize the book of Exodus isn't just about God rescuing a group of people from Egypt, but it's primarily about God saving and sanctifying a people who would represent Him on this earth.

God's not just concerned with rescuing the people, but he also wants to transform them into his people, his identity.

And it's the same way he works today in the 21st century.

God doesn't just want you to experience just salvation.

We think it's all about a ticket to heaven.

Now I can't, I'm thankful for heaven.

I can't wait till Jesus returns or I get to heaven one or the other.

And as I experienced some of my family members, you know, my mother passed away last month, and so when we go through these experiences, it makes us long even more.

I mean, I think about my mom's experience now in the presence of Jesus.

Being reunited with my dad.

Being reunited with my brother and her siblings and her parents and to know that she is no longer struggling physically.

She is flourishing in the presence of God.

And so so but so heaven is wonderful, but God is also about working in our life here on this earth to transform us into the character of Jesus where we can put his love on display in such a way that people would hunger and thirst for Jesus as well.

And so the Hebrew people have been in Egypt for 400 years.

And you think, man, you're going through a rough year?

A rough week.

Every day they woke up, they followed the commands of Pharaoh.

They weren't depending on God.

They were depending on Pharaoh and his underlings to provide for them, to tell them what they needed to do.

God's teaching and training them no longer depend on Egypt, but you learn to depend on God.

So he leads them into an impossible situation to put his power on display and to transfer their trust from Pharaoh and this controlling nation into God Himself.

And I know this experience predates Jesus by a long time, but you can't mistake the foreshadowing and the pointing forward to how Jesus will step into our world and he will represent God to us and he will provide for our freedom spiritually and ultimately at one day he'll provide for our physical, complete physical healing and redemption.

God sometimes leads us.

Listen, it says God is the one that led them, and God leads us into dead ends so that we will look up to him and stop depending on ourselves.

John Mark Comer says this.

He says, God is not in a hurry.

But trust him.

And he takes us into impossible situations.

Not to destroy us, but to deliver us, to grow us, to help us learn how to trust him completely.

And sometimes it doesn't feel right.

It doesn't feel like God is working on our behalf.

When you're going through something really, really difficult, sometimes you feel, you feel a bit abandoned by the Lord.

You feel, you feel all sorts of things.

And that's why we can't, we don't, we don't, we obviously our affections, we we need to direct our affections to the Lord, but we don't need to base our life on feeling.

We base our life on the truth because sometimes our feelings will lead us to think that, oh, this God is not good.

He's not, he doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't have a plan.

And this is why what Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, says this in Isaiah 55, 8.

He says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

And so sometimes God is working a bigger plan.

These are Red Sea experiences where God is building our faith.

Red Sea moments strip away our control.

They expose our limitations and they position us to witness the power of the living God in our life.

That's right.

I mean, think, you know, Swindahl, you know, that I love he's coming to the end of his life.

He's a pastor in Texas now.

And I I'll never forget the first time I ever got to hear Chuck Swindall speak, it was in 1994.

I was sitting in the Colorado Buffalo Stadium at a big men's event called Promise Keepers.

60,000 men worshiping God.

And Swindah is speaking and telling some of these stories.

And he tell here's what he said.

He said, sometimes God will, God's will is only understood clearly as we look in the rear view mirror.

And so you don't you don't determine or make judgments, snap judgments in the middle of your circumstances.

Sometimes you've got to be out of the circumstances, looking back, and you see, oh, God was faithful right here.

God was faithful right there.

God showed up right there.

God added these families.

God brought this community together.

God provided for a piece of land.

God provided for a building that there is absolutely no explanation for how we can get the number of people onto this property and off this property as we have in the last couple of years.

As I look back, I remember what it felt like to be in the middle of COVID.

And to think I can't deal with this another day.

You remember the shutdown?

My kids all had to come home.

Now, I want to tell you, that was that those are twelve, I told my wife, I said, listen, we need we need to cherish this because this one, it'll never be like this again.

Thank God it won't be like this again.

But it was so good to have all the kids at home for that period of time, and we almost killed each other several times.

I look back, oh man, I mean, you know, it's just me and my wife now.

But it's great.

It's awesome.

So here's what we learn.

God fights for us when we stand still.

Sometimes, you know what I learned in that in that that that shutdown period?

And that listen, I don't care.

I don't want to get we don't get political.

We're not talking about politics.

I don't care whether we should have been or did or whatever, but we ended up spending, what, 12 weeks where everybody's in the house and and and and we had to be still.

We couldn't change the circumstances.

So we I had to learn it.

God fights for us when we stand still.

God leads the people to this dead end.

Going back to Exodus 14, verses 13 and 14, but Moses told the people, don't be afraid, just stand still.

Exodus 14:13

Listen, listen.

Stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today.

The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again.

The Lord Himself will fight for you.

Just stay calm.

Just stay calm.

Be still and stay calm.

So what insane and counterintuitive instruction.

This command from Moses.

Don't fight, don't strategize, don't negotiate, just stand still and trust the Lord.

Trust the Lord.

Now, that's crazy.

You're stuck.

There's no way out.

You're in circumstances and there's fight or flight, kind of center stuff going on here.

And God says, don't fight, stand still.

He's saying it's not that you shouldn't care.

He's not saying to be passive, but yet stop striving.

They had to stop panicking.

Stop thinking that you're the one that has to fix it all.

Or that you might even control part of it.

I don't know.

I think as I observe people, there are some of us that have a fixer mentality, and then there's some of us that just chill.

We just have a natural chill.

And I, you know, I would like to think that I have a little bit of chill in me.

But when I'm between a rock and a hard place, man, I turn quick into the fixer.

I think I can control it.

If I can make the right connection, I can do the right thing, take this right step.

And God says, nope, you are going against what I've called you to do.

And so so sometimes we've got to stop.

If you've ever been uh part of a 12-step group, or Alcoholics Anonymous, or you've been through therapy, or um you've been in a situation, you've probably heard of the what we call the serenity prayer.

Reinhold Nieber is the is the author of that.

He says, God grant me the serenity, accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And there, there is in itself is not necessarily scripture, but it is wisdom.

And it was it mean, it means we choose prayer over panic.

It means we choose silence over scrambling.

It means that we choose God's presence over our own plans.

And so you get stuck.

Have you ever gotten your car stuck in the mud?

And what's our first response when we we realize, man, the tires are spinning, we're not going anywhere is to do what?

Hit the gas.

I mean, yeah, if I just hit the gas harder, I it's gonna, I'm gonna, there, there's gonna be some traction.

How does that work?

You just keep spinning.

And so sometimes you gotta stop, breathe, get out of the driver's seat, and depend on something else.

And the psalmist writes in Psalm 46, 10, be still and know that I am God.

And here's your final step, final action point.

God makes a way when there is no way.

God makes a way.

John Mark Comer says this stillness is the space where we lay down the illusion of control and receive peace from the one who actually holds the world together.

Exodus 14, 21 and 22.

Then Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind.

The wind blew all that night, turning the seabed into dry land.

So the people of Israel walked through the middle of the sea on dry ground with the walls of water on each side.

There's no way around the Red Sea.

Pharaoh's army is gaining ground.

What are they going to do in the midst of this impossible situation?

You can't do anything but depend on God.

And God works powerfully in the midst of our faith steps.

And so I want you to imagine this.

Here we are.

Coming to the conclusion here.

Moses holds, what has he got in his hand?

He's got a staff.

And we've already talked about God, God calls Moses to be the lead leader of this deliverance movement.

And Moses says, I can't do it.

He says, Yes, you can.

I put something in your hand.

I put in your hand my staff.

Use what is in your hand.

Use what God gives you.

And so the step of faith holds your staff out up over the sea, and a strong wind comes.

Pharaoh's army's behind him.

What we don't have time to get into here is God is still with them in a physical manifestation where it's the cloud by day and a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

And so he moves the pillar from out in front of God's people to behind God's people.

And the pillar of cloud it puts a barrier between Pharaoh and his army and God's people.

And in a sense, here's what I imagine it takes to focus off the physical threat.

And it allows them to turn around and to see God's miraculous hand at work as the east wind blows and the seas park and the ground becomes dry and they can cross over, and the Pharaoh's army can't see what's happening.

And so God's people cross over.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

I'd be like, keep preaching, keep preaching.

I know you're not going to say that.

And so not only does God part the seeds, because you can't walk through mud.

So there's part of this miracle sometimes we lose sight of.

And it drives it enough where they can cross over.

They can't be seen by Pharaoh's army because of God's physical manifestation of his presence.

And they make it to the other side, and here comes Pharaoh's army.

God moves with them.

The cloud moves.

Listen, the presence of God is always going to be with his people.

And so here's Pharaoh.

Oh, oh, we got them now.

We got them.

And all these chariots, all these horses, all these soldiers begin to cross the Red Sea, and what happens?

Here comes the water back.

God shows up.

I don't know about you, but I need God to show up.

I got things going on in my own life.

I think we need God to show up in the life of our church.

We need God to show up.

And we need to listen, here's three things that God has put on my heart related to moving forward.

Is we need to keep the spiritual momentum that God's brought to the life of our church.

Next service, we're going to have a hundred, we had a hundred students, and I hope they're here this morning.

If not all of them, at least most of them will be here.

And you got to uh to hear from Caroline this morning about how God is working.

Our campaign, our initiative is called Four Generations.

We are preparing four students, four children, for the next generations, for your family.

So the gospel can continue to go forth and the kingdom of God can be advanced.

Yes, hallelujah.

And so, so let's let's don't panic.

When things get tight, let's rest in the Lord.

Let's be still.

Let's pray.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your goodness and your grace.

And we pray, God, that you would work in such a powerful way.

We pray this morning for just a time that we can reflect on the goodness of our Savior and what Jesus has provided.

Even a story that we can find that's in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, it points forward to how God would deliver us not just physically but spiritually through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And it's through that that He would change us into a people that were not a people.

And God, we would be a collection, just like we saw at Pentecost, a collection of nations and ethnicities and God, people from all over the world, from every nationality, every tribe, every language, every color, every background.

And that God, as we as we grow as a people, we would reflect the love of Jesus to a world that is filled with panic, ruts, and people that are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they are in a cul-de-sac and they need a miracle.

God, would you work right now?

Draw that person to Christ.

Maybe you've never put your faith in Christ, and this today is the day.

Today is the day.

If you want to put your faith in Christ, you simply call out and say, Jesus, I need you.

And the Bible says when He does, when you do that, He is there.

He comes and lives inside of you and He provides you salvation, but not just salvation.

He begins to do a work of transformation in your life and character.

Father, as a people, many of us know Christ, but we're still stuck.

We still feel like we're between a rock and a hard place, God.

You make a way.

You make a way.

God, help us grow in our ability to trust you.

Help us to grow in our ability to know you.

I think of one of my mentors that that taught me this, and I came across this.

This was written down in a journal years ago.

And it's this when I panic, I run.

When I run, I lose.

When I lose, God waits.

When I wait, he fights.

When he fights, he wins.

When he wins, I grow.

So Father, help me understand.

You always bring victory.

You always help us to grow in our ability to trust in you.

Help us to do that right now.

So in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.