Jeff Turner-Hayes | Make Room For Something New | February 22nd, 2026

Awesome, thank you so much.

Just let me get set up here for a sec.

Awesome.

Well, isn't the presence of God so sweet here this morning?

I know for me it was a little hard to make it through worship.

Um it was a little hard for you to make it through communion.

And uh God's doing things here, and so excited to be a part of that.

And I feel really teed up this morning, which is pretty funny.

What Pastor Brian uh touched on in communion and what Rebecca was just talking about really leans into where I want to go this morning.

And thank you so much, Rebecca, for the amazing intro.

And yeah, we did just move back here in June.

Um, but KCC has always been home for us.

Um little bit of backstory.

I moved here in 2009.

My wife and I both did Bible school here when when GMTC was still GMTC was still around.

And you know what?

That was an incredibly transformative part of our life, and we're so thankful for it.

And thankful for to be back in this house.

And my wife's an Okanagan girl, I'm from Alberta, I'm from Calgary, so that's why I dragged her back there after we got married.

Um, there may have been some kicking and screaming, can confirm that there was some kicking and screaming.

Um, but we always moved with the plan of being back in three to five years.

Thirteen years minus ten days.

And it's pretty funny, we make all these plans in our life, and God has different plans often.

And you know, there were reasons that it took so long, some of it was us, some of it was me dragging my heels in, but a lot of it was God, and a lot of it was God's growth in our life, a lot of it was development, it was grace, provision, healing.

And we went through a lot, but it prepared us to come back, changed, more developed, and more effective.

You know, we weren't wrong about where God had sent us and going back to Alberta, but I was wrong in my assumption and thoughts and how it was all gonna look and work.

I was wrong in the three to five year time frame, and I had an improper mindset in Alberta.

And it's funny, thinking back on that season, I think of how often we missed what God was doing in our lives just because I wasn't aware of it.

It wasn't that God wasn't moving and God wasn't doing amazing things in our life, it's that my mindset was shut off to what he was doing.

And there's a verse in Isaiah that describes God's invitation to see what he's doing.

You know, God's always inviting us to see and to respond, but we just need to be aware.

So in Isaiah 43, there's a verse, and to give a little bit of context, Isaiah 40 through 55 is called the book of comfort in Isaiah, and it's it's Isaiah bringing God's word of restoration and redemption to Israel.

But the previous 39 books before that were about God's judgment and discipline.

Because Israel was in Babylonian exile because of their unfaithfulness, because of their idolatry, because of their mindsets.

And then we get into Isaiah 43, and God starts reminding us of his identity, his covenant identity, his promises, his faithfulness.

He starts speaking of a new exodus or a new restoration, and then we hit verse 19, and it says, See, I am doing a new thing.

Let's say new thing.

Do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and I'm making streams in the wasteland.

How many of us know that when God asks us a question in the Bible that we should park there for a little bit?

I think most of the things that God has spoken to me has come through a question where I'm forced to sit there and ponder and actually see what God is doing.

And that word perceive is the Hebrew word yada.

And that word is more to than just to think, to hear, to see, but it's to know, to recognize, to discern, to acknowledge, or to respond.

I know there's lots of parents in this room.

I know for me it's one thing for my child to hear me tell them something, to hear me say, hey, stop that, it's a whole nother thing for them to actually respond, to acknowledge, to obey.

And that's what God is saying here.

He's saying, Hey, I'm gonna do a new thing, but stop.

You can't just hear me, you can't just see me, you can't just listen, you have to act, you need to discern what's happening, you need to respond.

See, perception in scripture is never passive, it's always a calling, it's a calling to alignment with what God is doing, right?

See, God was inviting Israel into something different, but they had to see it.

They were stuck once again in exile, once again they were stuck.

But what was happening is Israel's reference point for deliverance was Egypt.

They were so used to the signs and the wonders and these great things that God was doing, but God was gonna do it different this time.

God wasn't gonna come down and part a sea, he wasn't gonna wipe away an army, God was calling Israel back to himself.

You know, in the Egyptian Exodus, God showed them his power, but in the Babylonian one, he wanted to show them his heart, he wanted to restore them back to himself.

They had physically left Egypt, but they hadn't left Egypt in their minds or their hearts.

That's why Israel kept defecting back to idolatry, that's why they kept defecting back to all of these things, and that's why they were in exile.

It was God's judgment, and they still acted as though they were slaves, and this time God wanted to get slavery out of them before they walked out their their exodus or their freedom.

God had to change the way that Israel thought first in order to draw them closer to Him, in order to bring in redemption.

See, God often delivers us without changing our location or our circumstance, but first by changing the way we think.

We default just like Israel back to old patterns.

Pastor Malachi hit on that last week.

We've got our defaults of things that we go to that are just false.

They're counterfeit of what God has in our life.

But God wants to do more in us and through us, but our mindset determines whether there's room for that.

Israel was still stuck in slavery because they couldn't see the new thing, and sometimes we get stuck in that trap.

We hear God is gonna do a new thing, but we don't see it, we don't perceive it, we don't fall into an alignment with it.

And God needs us to not only see the new thing or perceive it, but to buy in and to actually walk it out.

It requires a correct mindset.

See, for us, Alberta wasn't a detour, Alberta was a mindset shift for me.

It was development, and it's funny, once we recognize that, and once I said, Okay, God, we're here, like I said, I see what you're doing, you're developing us.

God opened all the doors for us to move back here.

So if we want to make room for what God is going to do, we must think in ways that trust Him to lead, respond when He speaks, and that expect Him to move.

And that's what I want to talk about this morning is how God is calling us to a new thing, but that we need mindsets to match in order to receive it.

So, Father, we just thank you for this morning, God.

Father, we thank you for your presence here.

God, we thank you that you're touching each one of us, God, and Father.

We thank you that you're doing a new thing, that you're doing a new thing corporately here at KCC, but there's also a new thing in each one of our lives that you want to do.

God, we just thank you that that we can have the eyes to see it, God, and that we can have the feet to walk it out and respond it to it in Jesus' name.

So, as I was going through this, one of the clearest examples I could find in Scripture was actually in 2 Kings 5.

And it's the story of Naaman.

And to provide a little context, Naaman was this great commander, he was this general for the king of Aram.

And he the Bible actually describes him as a mighty man of valor, but Naaman also had leprosy.

So Naaman was this strong general, this strong warrior that walked around with a debilitating skin disease at the same time.

And actually, on one of their raids, they brought back a little Israelite girl, and she became Naaman's wife's servant.

And when she saw that Naaman had leprosy, she said, if he would only go see the prophet, the superhero that Malachi was preaching about last week, Elisha, he could be healed of his skin disease.

And so Naaman, of course, was like, Yeah, I've got to go do this.

He goes to the king of Aram to ask for permission, and the king says, Of course, go.

Right?

Don't even just go, here's a letter to bring to the king of Israel, here's gold, here's silver, here's chariots, here's an entourage.

Go, of course, get healed.

And so Naaman goes to Israel, and he goes before the king and gives him this letter, and the king of Israel becomes furious and actually rips his clothes off because he's like, Hey, I can't heal you, I'm not God.

Are you trying to start something with me?

Like, is this a joke?

And we pick up in verse 8, and it says, When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message, Why have you torn your robes?

Have the man come to me, and he will know that there's a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman went with his horses and his chariots, and he stopped at the door of Elisha's house.

Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.

But Naaman went away angry and said, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call in the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.

Are not Abana and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?

So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman's servant went to him and said, My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?

How much more then when he tells you, Wash and be cleansed?

So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored, and he became clean like that of a young boy.

Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God.

He stood before him and said, Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.

So please accept a gift from your sermon servant.

So Naaman came out of that river and everything had changed, but the first thing that I noticed wasn't Naaman's healing.

It was the shift that had to happen in Naaman's mind in order to receive that healing.

He had to shift what he was thinking, even just a little bit to see what God was doing.

And the first mindset that I want to talk about this morning is having a flexible mindset that trusts God to lead.

See, Naaman showed up expecting it to go down one way, and it didn't happen that way at all.

He showed up with a full entourage, with gifts, with silver, with all of these things, and Elisha didn't even come out of his house to meet him.

I don't know about you, but I would have been pretty upset in that moment, not just that I wasn't getting healed, but that the man that I traveled to come see wouldn't even come speak to me, wouldn't even leave his house.

And Naaman goes away angry in that moment, and justifiably so, but Naaman was angry because of his rigidity.

Naaman had assumed that it was gonna go down one way and it showed up and it didn't go down that way at all.

And Naaman also wasn't a man used to taking orders.

He was a commander of an army, he was used to giving them.

So now we have a combination of you won't even come see me and you're gonna go tell me what to do, not even pray over me.

Yeah, my my pride and my ego is bruised a little bit here.

Of course, I'm gonna walk away angry.

But Naaman's problem in that moment wasn't his leprosy, his problem was his assumption and his control.

He had a thought process of how it would go and it didn't go that way.

And his rigid mind said, God, you can move, but it has to look like this.

Where a flexible mind says, God, move however you want, I trust you, just move.

Right?

We can't control the way God is gonna move when we come to him and ask him for something.

My heart has to be open and flexible to how God's gonna do it.

And Naaman's servant had to help him shift his mindset in verse 13.

It said that Naaman's servant went to him and said, My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?

See, we can miss what's happening in the small things, expecting God to only do great things.

Right?

I can go to God and say, God, do this, do this, do this.

But he when he tasks me with a small thing to walk out, I often miss him because I'm looking for that big public spectacle like Naaman was looking for.

Naaman was looking for Elisha to come out and meet him, to wave his hand over the spot to call on God and his skin to instantly go clean, and all of my entourage, you're gonna see that God healed me, but it wasn't a public thing.

Elisha sent him to do a very small private thing.

See, Naaman expected to be healed in one way, and if he didn't shift his mindset, he would have missed his healing altogether.

And we can miss what God is doing in those small things, but here's the thing flexibility is also trust.

I can only be flexible if I believe or I trust in the person giving the instruction.

Right?

We can't expect God is gonna move one way and then define the way that He's gonna do it.

We have to trust that God sees more than us.

Right?

It's that picture that Pastor Brian gives us all the time.

Okay, God, what's the next step?

Well, here's the ladder, here's the first wrong.

Right?

You might not get the second, third, fourth step until you take that first step.

Until we're willing to trust him that God is gonna move in this way.

And I just need to come into an alignment.

It's a mindset shift that says God can move here in this season, even if I don't see how he's going to do it.

Going back to Isaiah 43, God didn't say that he was gonna remove the deserts and the wastelands.

God said he was gonna make a way through them.

Right?

If Israel was sitting there expecting their freedom and their exodus to come, just like it did in Egypt, they would have missed the relationship that God was offering them.

They would have missed that redemption through restoration, not through power.

They would have missed God's heart in that moment.

And God is calling us to trust Him to make a way through whatever we're going through.

But that means we still have to walk through it.

See, Naaman had to trust not only the method, but then he had to follow through on the method.

And then that's where obedience steps in, and that's the second mindset that we need to have an obedient mindset that responds when he speaks.

See, Naaman had to move beyond just being flexible and move into obedience.

How many of us know it's one thing to agree with God's plan?

It's another thing to step into it and walk it out.

Right?

It's one thing for me to get a prophetic word, it's one thing for me to get an encouraging word, it's one thing for me to read something in my Bible, it's a whole nother thing to live that out and to walk that out.

Verse 14 says, So he went down and he dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him.

And his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

See, Naaman already had the word and how his healing was going to come about.

It wasn't of a lack of word or a lack of God's activity in his life that his healing wasn't there.

It's that Naaman needed to obey and walk it out.

He needed to dip seven times.

And imagine going through that process because Naaman wasn't alone, he had all these people with him, so he needed to leave Elijah's house and he needed to go down to the Jordan and strip down and cleanse.

I can imagine that dip one, you go in, come out.

Nope, I still got leprosy.

Right?

Dip two, let's try this again.

Ah no, nothing's changed still.

And this goes on and on and on.

And I think that's how obedience feels in our life life sometimes, that obedience often feels pointless until it feels powerful.

Right?

Obedience is that faithfulness that we were talking about in the small little things, and faithfulness isn't exciting a lot of the times.

Faithfulness is just walking it out with God every single day in obedience, saying, Okay, God, yep, we're gonna walk this out.

See, had Naaman done it six times, it wouldn't have worked.

He had to do it seven times, and I'll speak for myself, but I think some other people will identify this.

Sometimes we just want to do the minimum requirement.

Right?

Okay, God, what do I need for my healing?

What's what's the bare minimum?

That's the trouble that that Israel had gotten into with God, right?

They were walking in his grace in the desert, they were walking in all these things, and God offered them relationships, and they were like, no, just give us the laws that we need to be good with you.

And God designed them so that we couldn't fulfill them to make us realize our dependence on Him.

See, obedience is getting beyond myself.

Because partial obedience, it'll keep me close to breakthrough, but it won't ever keep me in it.

Has anybody ever seen that meme on Facebook with the two diamond miners?

And there's the one, and he's going and he's going, and you can see that he's exasperated and he turns away just before he gets there.

But then there's that other guy that just put in that one last step, that one last swing, and he receives the reward.

That's just like obedience.

It feels pointless until the moment it feels powerful.

Because the thing is, obedience is alignment.

It gets me beyond myself, and it says, God, I don't understand it, but you said it, so I'm going to do it.

Right?

That's what Alberta was for us.

God, I don't see what you're doing here, but we're gonna be faithful one step.

One step at a time, one foot in front of the next.

And it ended up being countless reasons that we were there, and I'll go into that a little bit later.

But when we come into alignment, when we come into obedience is when God can command his blessing in our life.

Psalm 133 talks about this, and it refers to being in unity or in obedience or in alignment with another one another, but we can't do that as men unless we're in obedience and alignment under God.

And then that's when you can command his blessing.

And alignment isn't always agreement.

I would say most times it's not.

Right?

That leans a little bit back into the flexibility thing.

It's coming under God's plan, his provision, and his promise, even if I don't see how it's gonna play out.

Another way of saying that is obedience is purpose over preference.

God, I prefer it if you did it this way.

God, I would have preferred to be back in BC eight to ten years earlier.

Right, but you had a purpose over my preference.

Right?

We don't always realize that there's a reason behind why God is asking us to do something or why God has us in a season.

And when we fail to recognize that, we can lose beauty in the process of what God is doing.

Right?

There was a lot of beauty in our process in Alberta.

There was so much development.

We have two little girls now.

There's so many of these things that happened that was God's provision in our life.

And it's not always big things that we need to be obedient in.

It's faithfulness in those little things, like I've said a couple times.

See, verse 13 says, If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, wouldn't you have done it?

See, Naaman didn't want to do the Little thing, Naiman wanted the great thing.

And we want that in our life too.

It's I think it's easier to obey the big things sometimes, right?

God calls you to Africa, of course, God.

I'll go pick up orphans and babies and love on people and do all these things.

But when God asks me to speak to my coworker, that's a little bit different.

Right?

But we need to realize that the little isn't insignificant.

It's usually far more significant.

God calls us to be obedience in the little because obedience in the little is constant forward direction.

Right?

I can put one foot in front of the other and get somewhere a lot faster than if I just wait for big steps.

Right?

If I'm constantly moving forward rather than staying stagnant, waiting for God to do some big thing in my life, I'm gonna get to him a lot faster with just constant forward direction.

See, the new thing didn't happen when Naaman heard the word.

It happened when he obeyed the word.

It happened when he obeyed the small thing asked of him.

And James says this in James 1, 22 to 25.

It says, Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves, but do what it says.

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do it is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

Seems pretty foolish.

I looked at myself in the mirror today.

I didn't forget what I look like.

Before I walked out the door, I did ask my wife if I had anything in my teeth, but I didn't forget what I look like.

Right?

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they had heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.

That's the obedience part.

It's one thing to hear God's word, it's a whole nother thing when we actually obey it, and that's when God comes and brings his blessing and his favor in our life.

And it's that image that we were created in.

The Bible is the image, right?

It says in Genesis that we were created in God's image.

So in order to figure that out, we actually have to pick up our Bible and figure out what that image is saying, what God is calling me, and also what God is calling me to do.

Because it's all in there.

And I can't close it up and say, Okay, I fulfilled my 30 minutes this morning, I'm good to go for the day.

No, I have to walk that out.

I can't walk away from that mirror actionless.

I have to take what that mirror told me, and I have to walk that out.

Because the Bible isn't just suggestion, the Bible is not self-help, it's our guidance.

And obedience to that Bible is the change agent in our life.

Change doesn't come in disobedience, disappointment comes in disobedience.

We need it to change us, we need it to shape us, and we need it to be in us.

David said that he had hidden his word in his heart, that he might not sin against him.

And the thing about David is David was in love with God.

He was a man after God's own heart, and we find God's heart in the Bible, and that's why we need to fall in love with that book.

You know, John 14, 23 says, Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come and make our home with him.

The thing is, obedience isn't the precursor there, love is.

Right?

Biblical obedience says I get to do this.

Not I have to do this.

And there's a heart behind that that's different that actually produces results.

Because I can have an I have to mindset with God, but then it's very transactional.

It's if I do this, God does that.

Rather than God loves me and I know he's faithful, and I'm gonna walk this out with him regardless of outcome.

And it's when we have that change in our mind that we begin to think different, we begin to live different, we begin to walk different, and we begin to expect different.

And the last mindset I want to talk about today is just an expectant mindset that expects God to move.

And what is expectation?

I sat there for hours trying to define what expectation is, and the thing that helped me the most was actually defining what expectation was not.

Expectation is not presumption, it's not assuming God will act according to my timing or my will, as if I can dictate his plans.

It doesn't rush ahead of wisdom or patience or peace, it doesn't treat desire as a guarantee.

Expectation's not scripting God.

It's not trying to tell God exactly how to answer my prayers or orchestrate my circumstances, it's not me controlling the method, it's not me limiting the solution to my picture or how I see it being done.

Next, expectation's not demanding an outcome.

It's not insisting on a specific result.

It trusts that God's way is the best way.

It does not collapse when the outcome looks different than what I thought it would be.

And lastly, expectation isn't pretending that pain doesn't exist.

We come to God with expectation that He's gonna change our circumstance.

Not ignoring struggles or difficulties, but acknowledging their reality while trusting God's goodness.

It doesn't deny grief or deny hardship or force positivity, it doesn't mask or suppress my emotions or think that I have to have it all together for God to help me.

Right?

There's that old saying that God helps those that help themselves.

It's not that.

That's not what expectation is.

Expectation is confident trust in God's character without demanding control over God's process or the outcome.

See, expectation isn't anchored in how God works, but in who God is.

This is where I felt so teed up this morning is everything was about remain in me.

Right?

Expectation is anchored in who God is, it's in his character, it's in his faithfulness.

Because the flexibility releases control of the how.

The obedience, it responds to the what, but the expectant mindset trusts who is going to do it.

See, Naaman had a wrong expectation, and in verse 11 it said, Naaman went away, went away angry and said, I thought.

I'm gonna pause there for a second.

I thought.

Okay, God, you're gonna come.

I I th I think this is the solution.

Nope, pause.

Right?

It says, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord of God and wave his hand over me and cure the spot of my leprosy.

See, Naaman wanted Elisha to come out.

Naaman wanted that spectacle.

Naaman wanted that great healing that he had heard about, but God was calling Naaman to something different.

God was calling Naaman to something more private for his healing.

And an expectant mindset is not demanding that God fix it the way I imagine.

It's trusting that God is faithful, even when he works differently than I thought he would.

See, because the here's the thing: if your expectation is wrong, your experience is wrong.

That's why Naaman went away angry, is he thought his experience was wrong because my expectation was a public healing and a public spectacle, when in reality he was caught up in the how and not the who was going to heal him.

Right?

We got want God to remove the mess in our life, but if our framework for expectation is how God will do it, rather than faith in who will do it, we're going to land in disappointment time and time again.

And I've been there myself.

I'm a problem solver, I can create every single how you could possibly imagine to get out of a scenario.

It's how my brain works is I need to figure out the how, I need to break it down, I need to walk this through, and I can come up with a solution, but the reality is I need to surrender to the who.

See, we want God to remove the mess, and I've been there so many times, but when my expectation is attached to a specific outcome, not to God, disappointment feels like defeat.

Delay feels like even more disappointment.

But when my anchor, when my expectation is anchored in his character, delay becomes development, pain becomes revelation, and process becomes preparation.

See, there are some lessons that can only be learned through brokenness that can't be learned in wholeness.

And those relation, those lessons are often relational.

They're always about the who.

Right?

When when things are good, when I'm feeling whole and everything's going great in my life, is not usually when I run to God and discover his character and have him come through with me.

It's when things are broken in my life that I run to God and I discover who he is.

See, because God isn't Jehovah Jira until you need provision.

Right?

God's not Jehovah Shalom, your peace, until there's chaos, until there's a storm, until you need something to be calmed.

And God's not Jehovah Rapha, your healer, until you need healing.

And it's really hard to learn those things from a distance.

Even in my own health journey, some of you know, and I'll go into that a little bit later, but there were things I learned about God that I would have missed not walking through that journey that if I had just fired up a transactional prayer and say, God heal me, that I wouldn't have learned about God's character.

There wouldn't be foundational things in my life anymore.

See, when we lean into God in the middle of our circumstance, we learn who he is and not just how he works.

And those lessons form a stronger dependence on God.

Right?

When I know that God is my healer, I run to him much quicker.

I don't try and solve the issue.

Right?

When I'm in lack, I run to God, not away from him trying to fix it myself.

But that's only learned by walking through things and having God come through.

Because the more he comes through, the more I have faith and expectation that he will come through, regardless of how it looks.

And that's where Israel was stuck.

Israel was stuck in the expectation that God is going to come and he's gonna wipe out the Babylonians again and we're gonna be freed.

Where God was calling Israel back to himself in restoration and redemption.

See, sometimes we miss the new thing because we don't perceive it.

We're looking for the spectacle, not the invitation.

Do you perceive it?

That wasn't just a question, it was an invitation.

When God said, Do you perceive it?

It was an invitation to come into alignment with what he does.

And perception isn't ever passive.

Perception requires our engagement.

It's not always sin that shuts us off from what God is doing.

I would argue more often for me, it's my mindset and it's my misalignment.

And that's where Naaman fell short, is the public thing.

God was calling him to a private moment.

God was calling Naaman to alignment.

Because washing is intimate, washing is private, it's vulnerable, it's unseen.

I know the last few.

Because when I walk out that lesson of freedom, it creates a path, a pathway of breakthrough that I can bring other people along with me.

Revelation 19 says that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, but you have to have a testimony in order to prophesy.

Right?

I can't preach of God's faithfulness if I've never experienced it.

I can't preach of God's provision if He's never come through.

I can't share with you that God can heal you if I haven't experienced healing in my own life.

I need to walk through those things in order to have a testimony to help others, and that's where we're called to be.

That's where we're called to have that faithfulness and the little things to just share it because that's how we influence the world around us.

That's how we share the gospel.

Here's my testimony.

I'm a mess, but guess what?

God came in, removed my mess, and it's not perfect, but I have constant forward direction now.

I have hope.

I have a Savior to walk through these things with me.

And that's the message we get to share when we actually encounter Jesus.

See, when we expect removal or the public thing, and God chooses refinement, we sometimes interpret that formation as failure rather than as growth.

Well, didn't God didn't come through how I expected it, so I must have failed.

Right?

I must have done something wrong.

That's when misalignment and doubt always creeps in, is when I turn the focus off of God and turn it back to myself.

Right?

I must have done something wrong so God couldn't come through.

I was chatting with a few people that I went to Bible school through with back in 2011, and we had a teacher that would always say, Wrong question.

Love you, sir Norm.

And as I was thinking about this, it's not just wrong question sometimes, it's wrong person.

Right when I'm struggling, when I'm going through something, it's not me I need to look to.

It's to God, it's not me that needs to figure out, it's me who needs to surrender to the who.

Right?

God is calling us to that deeper place.

God is calling us to a place of intimacy and relationship with Him.

God's calling us to the river.

I'd love the worship team to come back up.

And it's just like obedience.

You know, proper expectation is birthed out of intimacy.

It's birthed out of love.

It's rooted in relationship with God, knowing that he's faithful.

Not because of what he's done, but because that's who he is.

You know, Timothy says that God is faithful even to the faithless, because he cannot deny himself.

Right?

God isn't faithful.

God doesn't come through because of because of the how, it's because that's his character, that's who he is.

God is faithful.

God is trustworthy.

Right?

God's track record in your life proves it.

Each and every one of us drew a breath this morning.

That's God's track record in our life that we're still here.

And I think about my health journey.

And for some of you that don't know, I went through a really crazy health journey from about 2018 to 2020.

And I ended up having something that only 60 people, less than 60 people in North America have ever had.

And it wasn't discovered until after when they did biopsies.

And you know, my healing didn't come the way I thought it would or the way I wanted it to.

It came after almost two years of no answers, it came after two years of countless tests, it came after two years of wondering and praying every single day that God would you heal me.

But my healing came on the other side of surgery and scars, and I'm thankful for that.

But it didn't come in a big moment, but what God healed in me was far greater than physical.

God radically called me in that season to relationship with Him, and it's the only thing I had.

I wasn't allowed to work, I wasn't allowed to drive, I wasn't allowed to go for a walk.

I had low blood sugar issues, and any activity could send me to the hospital or into a diabetic coma.

I literally wasn't allowed to do anything but just sit and be.

And as a man not being able to provide and all of these things, walking through that, God called me just to love him more.

God called me into a deeper relationship with him.

And it washed me of my pride and my self-dependence.

And I'll tell you, it took more than seven dips.

It was daily refinement, it was daily dependence for everything, for provision, for everything.

I couldn't even drive and get a coffee.

I had to beg my wife to drive me around, which was kind of cool because I had a chauffeur, but was also a little bit humiliating.

But that was my river.

Was that washing?

Was that season?

And there was an unshakable, firm foundation that I learned through that season of brokenness that I wouldn't have had without it.

And that that's that truth in my life is that God is still God and He's still on the throne.

Let me say that again.

God is still God and He's still on the throne, regardless of my circumstance.

God is still God and He's still on the throne, regardless of how my bank account looks.

Regardless of how I think this is gonna go through, no God, you are still God.

No matter the disappointment, no matter the defeat, no matter any of that, eternally, God is still God.

And he's still on the throne.

That's the only thing that sustained me through that season was that I could go to him.

And I just want you to stand with me for a second.

See, Naaman expected a public moment.

He brought silver, he brought gold, he brought influence, he even brought his reputation.

He arrived with horses and he arrived with chariots, and the prophet didn't even come outside to meet him.

It didn't go like he planned, which is often exactly the way that God works.

There was no traumatic prayer, no traumatic moment, just a simple message.

Go, wash.

And not in a clean river, not anywhere prestigious, but in the Jordan.

Muddy, ordinary, unimpressive.

Can you see Naaman standing there?

His armor on, his pride intact, his expectations shattered.

I thought those words almost cost him everything.

He thought it would be public, but God made it private.

It's personal because before God healed his skin and did a new thing for him, he wanted to do something in him, and washing is intimate.

You don't wash at a distance, you don't wash while keeping your armor on.

You step in, you kneel down, and you let the water touch what's broken.

See, the river wasn't about embarrassment, it was about alignment.

And sometimes we're frustrated because God is not moving publicly, but maybe he's forming you privately.

Maybe the river's not punishment, maybe it's preparation.

Maybe the dipping is not delay, but it's development.

See, Naaman had a picture of how God should work, but breakthrough came when he released his picture and aligned and obeyed with God's process.

See Naaman there, dip one, I'm still leprous.

Dip two, I'm still broken.

God, dip three, nothing's changed.

You see, alignment doesn't always produce instant evidence, but every dip was agreement, every dip was saying, God, I trust you here.

Dip four, I still look the same.

Dip five, God, this is starting to feel pointless now.

God, six, I'm tempted to quit.

If I'm honest, I'm at the end of my own strength.

But then there was dip seven, and then his skin became like that of a child: restoration, renewal, rebirth, wholeness.

See, the miracle didn't happen when he arrived, it happened when he surrendered and aligned with God's plan.

And the river was private, but the healing was permanent, and it wasn't just healing, it was alignment, it was renewal, it was restoration.

See, Naaman stepped into the water resistant and angry, but he came out surrendered, encountering a one true God.

He went in with his expectation and came out with an experience of intimacy.

And maybe the reason that God has you in this season right now at the edge of your rope at dip six is because he's building something in you that's drawing you closer to him, inviting you in because he doesn't want to just remove what's on you, he wants to recalibrate what's in you, he wants to change your mindset.

Because sometimes God does his deepest work in the place that no one sees, and maybe that's a word for someone here today that you've been waiting for the visible breakthrough, you've been praying, you've been going through all the steps, but God has been inviting you to deeper alignment, He's been inviting you to personal surrender.

See, the river isn't humiliation, it's invitation, it's invitation to trust, it's invitation to align, and it's invitation to intimacy and to relationship.

And that kind of transformation doesn't start in the spotlight, it starts with surrender.

It starts with stripping down my armor at the edge of a river and actually obeying and walking into what God is asking me to do.

See, Naaman's river was physical, but ours is spiritual.

And God wants to cleanse us on the inside.

And in the Old Testament, cleansing required water, but in the New Testament, it requires blood.

It requires what Jesus did on the cross, it requires us submitting and surrendering ourselves to Him to walk out that cleansing.

If you're here today and you say, I need to be washed, I need to be forgiven, God, I need you more.

This is your river moment.

It's not traumatic, it's not complicated, it's just surrender, it's just washing.

It's saying, God, I'm gonna come into alignment.

I have a picture of how it looks, but I surrender that to you.

God, I'm not gonna focus on the how anymore, I'm gonna give that up.

I'm gonna focus on the who.

And I feel like there's so many of us here this morning that are walking through disappointment, that are feeling like we're walking through unanswered prayer, that feel like we're waiting for promises to come.

Because God promised a new thing.

But it takes that moment of surrender, it takes that moment of flexibility, of obedience.

And if that's you this morning, just with every every eye closed, every head bowed, I just want you to put your hand up and say, God, I need you to come through.

I'm tired of figuring out how that's gonna look.

I just need you to come through.

God, we thank you that you're faithful.

God, we thank you that your word says that you'd never give us anything beyond what we can bear.

But God, our strength and our hope, our salvation is found in you this morning.

So, whatever that is this morning, God, we just give it to you.

God, we give you the way we were thinking about it, we give you our rigidity, God.

God, we come into alignment with what you're doing in our life and we surrender.

We hand you our expectation, God, we hand you our how and thank and are thankful that you'll take that, God, and you'll be faithful with it to come through.

And you know, Naaman had that invitation to intimacy and that invitation to find the who, and that can only be found in one person, and that intimacy and relationship can only be found in one person, and that river washing, that cleansing from the blood is only from one person, and that's Jesus.

And this journey only starts when we acknowledge Him in our lives.

When we say, Jesus, thank you for the blood that you shed on the cross for my cleansing, for my washing, for my renewal.

I surrender to you, I submit to you, I give you my life, I give you my mess so that you can make something of it.

And if that's you here this morning, where Jesus has just been tugging on your heartstrings and you know there's something missing, you know there's there's a brokenness in you that can't be fixed by everything else you've tried before, I want to invite you to a person named Jesus that can bring wholeness in your life.

And if that's you this morning, I just want you to put your hand up and say, Yes, Jesus, I want to follow you.

I want to live for you, I want to surrender my life to you.

And with every head bowed and every eye closed this morning, let's just pray this prayer with them this morning, church.

Say, dear Jesus, God, I thank you that you see my mess and you don't run away from it.

That you see my mess and you run to me, that you offer me new life.

So, God, I bring that mess to you right now.

God, I bring you my brokenness, I bring you my hurt, I bring you my disappointment, and I trade it for your life that was bought at the cross.

Wash me, cleanse me, make me brand new.

I want to live for you in Jesus' name.

Let's give Jeff a hand this morning.

I want the prayer team to make their way forward, and we're just gonna close the service.

But if this is you, if this is you in this space and you feel like the Lord is just tugging on on your things, your hang of your garment, your shirt, whatever it is, your spirit, and you're just saying you want more from the Lord, and you just want some prayer, and we want to invite you up.

This is an opportunity for your river moment.

But let's not walk away from a message like this and just ignore it and leave.

Let's respond to what the Holy Spirit is speaking to us this morning, amen.

God wants to move you, wants to shift you, wants to grow you, wants to see all that He has for you in your life.

This is what He wants.

So we we respond in these moments this morning, Church.

So if that's you and you feel like you want to come forward, please make your way.

We're just gonna have a time of prayer.

Those that need prayer this morning, and we just ask that as people are bringing prayer forward, just kind of move your way a little bit to the back, give them a little bit of space and quiet so we can pray with them.

But church, we love you, we care for you.

We're so glad that God is moving in your life.

But bless you this Sunday, and we'll see you next week.