You Are Known | Part Four

And we thank you so much for that.

We thank you for being present here today.

You know, churches, it's good to gather together, isn't it?

You know, when you go through things, and everybody does, everybody experiences the ebb and flow and the ups and downs, and that's just the reality of life.

You know, this life is really, this world is really not a playground.

It's actually more of a battleground in many ways.

And we're feeling some of that effect today, this last week, in our in our body and the last few months.

But every family goes through things.

But what you want to do, and what I want to do, is make sure that we don't isolate ourselves when we're going through these things, that we that we stay connected, and even we might not even feel like we've got an ounce of faith.

Anybody?

But that's not the issue.

Because you have the Holy Spirit, you have your brothers and sisters.

You know, that that poor guy in the in the uh the book of the gospels there, he had four friends bring him because he couldn't bring himself to the meeting.

He couldn't get into the presence of Jesus.

But aren't you glad he had four friends?

Has anybody got four radical friends?

That no matter what's going on in your life, if you've got four friends that just won't take no for an answer, they'll get you into the presence of God.

And that's the group we're in here today.

That's who we're amongst.

It's people that gather around each other and support one another and say, let's get into the presence of Jesus, let's get into our place where there's answers.

We want to pray over uh a beautiful Lalan family, and we're all feeling the effects of uh Pastor Sean's passing.

We're just beautiful men, and we will miss him.

But God is with us, and God, you know, I read a scripture this week that doesn't always depict my life.

He said, God is my strength and power.

I read that Monday morning.

It didn't feel like God was my strength and power at all.

But, you know, let's just say that together.

God is my strength and power.

God is my strength and power.

Father, we thank you that you are our strength, that you are the Lalan family's strength, Val's strength, those children's strength, and friends and family that are feeling the effects as well, Lord.

You're their strength, you're everyone's strength today to face what we are facing, to deal with what we're dealing with.

We can do all things because of that strength and that indwelling Christ who dwells within us.

And we thank you, Father.

And so I just want you to look up to the Father.

He's the answer this morning.

Let's look up to him.

And there's all kinds of needs in the body, there's all kinds of health needs and employment issues and financial issues and relationship trouble, and people that aren't where they should be in their walk necessarily with God.

So let's just let's just engage our hearts and look up to the Lord.

Let's just, you know, raise your hands up, raise your heart up to God, let's look to him.

Father, we look to you in the name of Jesus.

We look to you for the answers for this body, for our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers.

We lift them up to you and all of those people, and all of the wonderful people that we rub shoulders with every every day and all week long.

We just pray, Father, that you would use us to be a source of kindness and a source of love and a source of hope and support.

And Father, we thank you that you're right here supporting every family that's going through something right now.

You're supporting them, and you're using this body to support them.

We're bearing one another's burdens.

Even in our prayer this morning, we're carrying a portion of that weight for them.

We're carrying it.

And Father, we place it, we carry it and place it before you because we know that you're answering it, meeting every need, and answering every situation, and bringing solutions to problems and answers to questions.

Father, we thank you that you are so, so very good.

You're so good, you're the best father that anyone could even imagine.

You're the greatest, and you're the best, you're the perfect father.

And we thank you today that we can lift our hands and we can lift our heads up because you're the glory and the lifter of our heads.

You never let us stay down too long.

You always come and lift us up.

And so we thank you, Father, that you're lifting people up, strengthening people, lifting us up so we can do the will of God with our lives.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Aren't you glad you're here this morning?

This is a great place to be.

Turn to someone, shake their hand, smile, tell them they look great.

Thank you.

And so today I get to announce Annie Rabadu, who is of our church that is coming up here to share with us this morning.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, how's everyone doing?

So, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Annie.

Um, I am born and raised in this church, and I love it here.

It's so good to be back and see all your faces.

Um, and yeah, so I get to share a word today about how God's grace succeeds over everything and how he goes through everything with us.

So, growing up, as many of you would know, I was a very shy kid.

Um, and I always marveled at those who can speak and lead with confidence, like on this stage.

And I've dealt with anxiety from a very young age, and anything from speaking on stage to like this to ordering pizza over the phone, I found to be remotely impossible.

And uh I still sometimes do.

I'd ask if anyone can relate to being shy, but us shy people don't always like to draw attention to ourselves, so we can all just agree in spirit and uh avoid the awkwardness.

So the girl I was three, four years ago um would be really embarrassed of the girl I am today.

God has brought me out of my comfort zone so much these past years, and I'm sure everyone here can think of something that they have gone through and that they can see that they've overcome themselves.

I've come to learn that the anxiety and the self-doubting feelings don't always go away and some things don't always get easier.

But I've come to learn that what triumphs those feelings is the strength in knowing that our God is in control over everything and that he has grace for me.

Anxiety can come and go, um, but through it all, God has always been and will always be the same God.

Uh I've heard the analogy that in times of storms, God is like a life raft or an anchor.

Uh, when you call on him, he either rescues us out of the storm or anchors us down within it.

And oftentimes we're looking for him as that life raft to get us out of the storm.

Um, and sometimes he does, but sometimes he just comes right along next to us and sits down with us within it.

Um James 1, 2 to 3 says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

And I don't know about you, but when I'm going through something hard, the last thing I want to do is be joyful.

Uh quite often my first reaction isn't to be joyful.

But I think that one of the reasons James is telling us to see it as pure joy is because not the moment is joyful, but because of what happens next.

And knowing this, I can look at anxiety as pure joy.

It means I can look at hard things as compliments, as things that God knows I'm able to conquer.

It means that I can look at hard things as opportunities to grow in my reliance of God, um, and persevering through those grows, which is my ability to face other anxious moments with God next to me.

There's another verse I love, 2 Corinthians 12, 9 to 10, which goes, but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

This is why, for Christ's sake, I will delight in my weaknesses, in insults and hardships, and persecutions and difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

I find a lot of comfort in this verse, in God's grace.

Um, in the moments that I'm most afraid, that I feel the smallest, and that I'm not capable of being able to do something.

I know his grace exceeds over it.

He not only makes up what I lack, but he goes over and above.

Uh, and I thank God for that because there are moments that I know I couldn't do it on my own.

Uh so I leave you today with these words of truth.

Um, that he goes through our hard times with us, and that when we think we're at our weakness, weakest, he is at our strongest in us.

Uh I know that when he was faithful then, he was faithful here, so I know he'll be faithful over there.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Ariana.

I'm in my second year with the launch program, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that God has given me to be in Tilliwac and be a part of this program.

I'm gonna start off today with a story from when I was about seven years old.

Um, it was recessed and it was warm and it was awesome, and my friends and I decided that we were going to write a play.

And we really loved to pretend that we were famous.

So we did this all the time.

Like we would write a circus and swing off of like the monkey bars or like a little show, and we would all have different parts.

And so this day when we were working out the details, I decided that I was going to be the star.

My friends did not agree.

And so I decided to do what any rational seven-year-old would do.

I threw a fit.

Now that didn't look like most seven-year-olds fit, I didn't kick or scream or cry or do any of any of that kind of stuff.

Instead, I embraced what I like to call my Shakespearean nature.

And so I draped myself against the play structure and said with almost genuine desperation, something like this.

If I can't be the star of our show, then I will never learn how to be a star.

I will have to live and change in the back of somebody's taxicab.

I will be late to every rehearsal, and I will never get a job, and I will starve, and I will die.

I actually said that seven years old.

So my friends did what any actually rational seven-year-olds would do.

They walked away.

I put this moment on, kind of like a coat, that said, uh, sadness is cool, joy is overbearing, and I am too much.

Psalms 30, 11 through 12 says this You have turned my morning into dancing, you have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I may sing to you praises and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.

In life, we face tough things.

It happens.

And when we come to these moments, we put on coats to feel accepted, wanted, or loved.

You know, mine said that I had to change the way that I approached life and expressed my emotions so that others would accept me.

Um, and maybe yours says something more along the lines of I have to be happy to be accepted.

Or if I'm not successful, nobody will notice me.

Or if I can't take care of this person, they won't love me.

Sometimes we buy into these lies and we put on these coats and we wear them for so long we forget they can actually be removed.

Eventually I came to a crossroads and I was tired of this ugly and heavy coat that I was wearing.

Um and I wanted to throw it off.

But it was most definitely not something that I could do on my own.

What I decided to do was to ask God for help.

I had to admit to him that I couldn't do it alone, and I had to decide that I would let him design the coats that I would be wearing, and I wouldn't put on the ones that I thought that others wanted me to wear.

God met me where I was, and he has provided countless like opportunities and healing and freedom from the lives that I had been living in.

Um I believed that I was an overbearing person, like I genuinely believed that I was too much.

That nobody cared to hear my Shakespearean embraces and that I would always be sad.

Like I thought I would forever be sad.

Um But in worship, I've been listening to a song called Defender by Rita Springer, and I'd like to share some of the lyrics with you.

They say, When I thought I lost me, you knew where I left me.

You reintroduced me to your love.

You picked up all my pieces, put me back together, you are the defender of my heart.

See, God knew where I left my joy.

He picked up that coat and made it a billion times better and clothed me with joy.

I'm still in process, and I forever will be, but now I get to go through that process with the joy of the Lord, which is honestly the best thing ever.

Um I'm sure all of you have gone to a lie about who you are.

And I'm here to tell you that God is a God who cares about what we believe about ourselves.

He cares about the coats that we're wearing, and he's there designing coats for us of acceptance and purpose and love and peace and all these awesome coats.

So why would we wear ones that say things like, I'm too much to handle?

Um He delights in us and he wants to clothe us well.

He definitely has for me, and I know that he will for you.

Thank you.

All right, alright, alright.

Alright, we're gonna get right into it.

Hi, my name is Justice, and I suffer from chronic victimization syndrome.

Or in other words, I like to make excuses or complain a lot.

Like, I complain a lot.

So I would like you guys to sit back while I take you through the ride I call the triangle of self-deprecation, which includes anger, conflict avoidance, and blame shifting.

To do so, we're gonna take a look at my thought processes leading up to this year.

So, looking back on my life, from an early age, I remember having anger boiling inside of me.

But what I don't remember is having expressed that anger.

Sure, I fought with my siblings every once in a while.

I have three younger brothers, that just kind of happens.

Um, I got into arguments every once in a while, but it was never a constant struggle in my life.

Rather, I chose to stuff it down, treating it as if it never existed.

This attempt at containing my anger, I give the honor to my desire to be perfect in the eyes of the people around me, including God.

I believed if I was ever to mess up, the people I would love would cease to love me, cease to acknowledge me, and then proceed to tell others no good, that I was no good.

The identity that I put on myself was what others thought of me, or what I thought they thought of me, and what others said about me.

I was afraid to confront those people because of what they what power I gave to them.

In order to cope with the symptoms I learned, I learned the heroic act of letting people walk all over me.

I would pretend the things that people did to me never happened, or on the completely other side of the spectrum, I would grab onto what they did to me and never let it go.

But do you guys know what happens when you hold something against somebody but you never tell them?

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

It actually just gets a lot worse for you and the other people around you.

Okay, let's take a quick moment and zoom out and see the cycle unfold.

First, I get angry, then I don't release that anger in fear of disappointment, then I internalize it or pretend it doesn't exist while simultaneously holding things against people without telling them, all the while complaining to God for the life he's given me, the person I am, what things are going on around me, and finding every moment to feel depressed or overwhelmed because I feel justified.

Now finally we reached the excuses.

The final symptom I chose to express was blame shifting.

I found I was caring way too much and in return hurting terribly, but it couldn't possibly be my fault.

So instead of taking ownership of my own harmful ways and taking charge of my life, I shifted the blame to people around me towards God, thinking statements like, if they only didn't treat me this way, I'd be okay.

It'd be different and if they'd only apologized.

If God only cared, he'd do something about my life.

Analysis doctor, sir, it's what we feared.

He's playing the victim.

Come on.

I wish there was a cure for this, a cure for chronic excuses, self-pity, and whining.

Well, I can stand up here pretty confidently and tell you guys that there is a cure, and his name is Jesus.

See, I was suffering and in a lot of pain, but the Lord asks us to take a different approach than to complain about it.

In Psalms 30, verse 5, he says, Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalms 30:5

Joy?

How's joy the answer?

Well, let me tell you something.

As I've gone through this year at launch, time and time again, a man by the name of Paul keeps coming up.

A man who quite frankly suffered a life far worse than most of the people in here, like got beaten to like almost death on multiple occasions and thrown to prison for his beliefs kind of bad.

And he and so in 1 Thessalonians 5.16, do you know what he says while he was in prison?

He says, rejoice always.

He was in prison.

And as I can see, none of you guys are in prison right now.

And like, but if you're supposed to be in prison right now, I heavily insist that you go back.

I'm sorry, you're not allowed to be here.

See, rejoicing, that's the new anthem of my heart.

When times are hard, when those around me treat me poorly, as anger burns inside of me, when I want to whine at the world and God for the life I have, or when I flat out don't feel like being joyful, which is all the time, and I know that you all feel the same way all the time, because that's just how we are as humans, we whine a lot.

But see, I will be confident knowing that joy comes in the morning, that Jesus will renew my mind with a spirit, oh sorry, my mind and spirit with a lease of joy and praise by flipping my perspective and looking at the world with eyes that see what's good and faithful about our God and not what's wrong with my life.

My diagnosis was chronic victimization syndrome, but now it's chronic rejoicing syndrome.

So now when I look at the circumstances, the oh sorry, I skipped apart.

I'm so sorry, guys.

See, when Jesus died on the cross, he gave us victory and access to the fruits of the Spirit.

So now when I look at the circumstances around me, when things are going downhill every which way, I get to declare over my life that when I'm going through those moments which are promised to us that we will go through hard times, that I get to declare and choose joy in those circumstances and know that there's joy in the morning, that there may be sorrow right now, and that I may be hurting right now, but joy.

Joy comes in the morning.

And so I encourage you guys all to do the same.

Let's look at our lives and ask what's my excuse for not having joy?

Quit complaining and let's all start choosing joy.

Thank you.

The comments and opinions of justice are not always held by the launch program.

So whether or not you should be in prison right now is his opinion.

So hi.

My name is Sean, and um I get the pleasure with my wife to uh lead this group.

And we've been up here, I think, the last two years and uh come up to uh youth a couple of times um in the past as well.

And we're just so grateful to be back up here again and to be a part of your community.

And thank you for opening your homes, those that did, to be able to host us, and it's just been so great to be a part of everything that's going on here.

So, in the time that I have left, um, I'd like to touch a bit more on um the sermon topic that you guys have been going through of you are known.

And to start with, I'd like to uh use the story that uh Jesus told in Matthew 25.

And to summarize the beginning of it, there's a rich young or a rich ruler, and he has three servants, and he's heading out of town, so he decides to give his three servants um a different sum of money each.

One of them it's five talents, one is two talents, and another one is one talent.

And I didn't know what a talent was, so I looked it up.

It's 35 kilograms, and normally used for silver.

So in today's market as of Friday, the the guy who got one talent got$22,561.

There you go.

And then I mean the guy who got five talents, he had enough to buy himself a Tesla.

Um down payment on our house or one tank of gas in Vancouver.

So now two of these guys decide that they're going to go and invest their money, and the third one decides that he's going to bury it in a field.

Um I guess uh putting it under your mattress wasn't really a thing back then.

So um so now we're gonna pick up the story right where uh the master comes back.

In verse 19, it says, After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled the counts with them.

So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, Lord, you delivered to me five talents.

Look, I have gained five more talents beside them.

His Lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things, like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars worth of things.

And I will I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of your Lord.

He also, who had received two talents, uh, came and said, Lord, you delivered me um two talents, and look, I have gained two more talents beside them.

His Lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of your Lord.

I want to stop right there.

What do you think about this master?

Here he's been, he's given money, he's gotten a reward, and now he's going to take that and he's congratulated those who did it, given them a pat on the back and says, I've got more for you than that.

I mean, if someone entrusted me with$180,000, and then I mean, I'd be a little scared, but I mean, okay, investing that and coming back, and it's like, you mean there's more than that's just a little thing for you?

My goodness, there's so much more.

So I see them as trusting and willing to share in that joy.

Like to say the entry into the joy of your Lord is like saying, Come and celebrate with me for the things that have gone on.

So now let's see what happened with that third servant.

It says in verse 24, uh, then he who had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

And I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.

Look, there you have what is yours.

The third sees him as a hard man.

Some versions of this say a harsh master.

And I'm wondering where he got this perception.

Because if you look at the first two, they they didn't really seem to have that.

They felt like they were able to do this, approach it, and look at the response that they got.

And now he's saying, Hey, you're a hard man.

Now let's see what actually happens when the when the Lord responds back to him.

It says, But his Lord answered and said to him, You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I've not sown and gather where I've not scattered seed, so you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest.

And then in verse 30, the master says, Cast the unprofitable servant into utter darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

You know, he had a view of what his Lord was going to be, and that's exactly what he received.

So I want to just say, sometimes when we're looking at being known by God, it's more about what we know of God than what he thinks about us.

Um A.W.

Tozer said it like this what comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

More important than anything, because it's going to see how we relate to the Lord and what we can actually hear and receive from him.

So, how do we see what God is, or how do we see ourselves with him?

Um, you know, if we don't see him very well, we're not really going to care what we have to think about him.

So I'd like to go through three different ways of seeing God.

The first is through other people's opinions.

Now, for me, when I became a Christian, or actually before I became a Christian, I was in university, and I had a friend who I wasn't actually a friend yet, he was just some guy who needed help.

Uh, teachers behind me couldn't help the guy, and I said, Hey, I could help you, and went over, helped him with his work.

We found out we were both carpooling in, so we carpooled together, and on one of our drives, he turns to me and says, So what church did you go to?

And I kind of look at him quizzically, like, Why do you think I go to church?

And he says, Well, you're very helpful, so I thought you were a Christian.

And I'm like, Well, if being helpful makes you a Christian, and I'm already helpful, why do I need to be a Christian?

And we started a huge talk about what does it actually mean to be a Christian?

And we'd have these debates that went back and forth, and I just keep asking questions.

Well, why do you believe this?

How can all these other people be wrong?

What's about this?

What about that?

And I just kept on asking question after question.

And the and the game kind of went on our drives that I could ask as many questions as I wanted.

When we got to a certain point and I didn't feel like having this conversation anymore, we could just change the topic.

And my friend Greg, he would just stop talking about it.

And he would just go quiet and just let that kind of go.

And then one day, um, a year and a half later, he invited me to church, um, not knowing that I'd had a weird dream where the Lord really convicted me.

And in that moment, I realized I had been asking all these questions based on other people's opinions.

I'd heard it from my teacher, I'd seen it in this person's life, I'd read it in this article, I'd listened to this uh speaker, I'd heard all these different things, but it was none of my own opinion.

And in that moment, although I didn't know it, the Lord basically called me out and said, You what do you actually believe?

And what do you actually see?

And so for me, up until that moment, I was really having my understanding through what other people's opinions were about God.

So then beyond that, the second way of seeing God is through simple understanding.

This is a great place to start, but not a great, or a good place to start, but not a great place to stay.

This is knowing and believing, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

It is believing the words to the one of the two songs my kids will let me sing.

Carrie gets to sing a lot more songs to our kids.

We have four kids.

And um, when I go to sing, they only want two because, well, one of them was supposed to be somewhere over the rainbow, but I get the words wrong, and they correct me every time.

And they're like, Dad, you're not doing that part right.

So I get to sing Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.

I know that one through and through.

I've been I I'd started really young with them on that, and so by the time we got to the end of it, and you're singing, and the Bible tells me, sodio, yodio, yodi, yodi, yo, de yodi, yodi, yo, and then we'd go back into singing the whole thing again.

And I kept on doing that every single time.

So when they actually got to school and sang it in a different environment, they started that way and then felt very betrayed.

The next night they came home from that one and it was like, Dad, that's not how that song goes.

And I'm like, what?

They don't know the second verse.

I thought they would all know the second verse, and they're like, No, but so it was it was a trauma traumatic spot for them.

It so a simple faith and a simple understanding is knowing those things to be true.

It was also like I had a friend that when I asked deep questions about stuff, he just said, Um, I just trust it to be true.

And I'm like, Well, why?

Well, I just trust it to be true.

Well, how come?

Well, I just trust it to be true.

I'm like, well, that doesn't work for me, but for them it was fine.

And as I said, it's a good place to start, but not a great place to stay.

Recently I was in a grade 11 classroom and uh the Bible class at our private school, and as I was going through talking about apologetics and talking about what it is to speak about your faith, the one of the students at the end of the class raised his hand and he said, What if I know the right answers, but I don't believe the right answers are true?

He's been going to Bible or to a Bible-believing school, sitting through chapel every single week, and he's in his 11th year there, and I know the quality of the teachers in that school.

I love those teachers.

They're some of them are my friends, and I know what he's being shown, but at the same time, he doesn't feel like he's got a good enough understanding, and there's a part of him that doesn't believe that he can ask the questions even, that he's supposed to just go along with what's being said.

And you know that's gonna cause a crack in his foundation.

And it's for things like that that we actually have the this program in our church, is to help people get their foundations right, because we know sometimes that simple simple understanding doesn't always grow into um anything bigger than that in some of those environments because you know teachers are having to worry about the academics, they're having to worry about other kids, they're having to do all these other things that sometimes they're not able to hit those questions the right way, and so that's why we actually have our program in our church for the last 21 years.

So, you know, there's other hard questions that can come up.

Um, two big examples of that is like Oprah.

Um, it was said that when Oprah um was young, she was going to church, and they had a revivalist preacher come through, and he was preaching out of Exodus, and he says, Um, God is a jealous God, and it hit her the wrong way and says, How can God be jealous if he's all loving?

And because she didn't never actually ask the preacher that, she just walked away and thought, This something's wrong with this church thing, and just didn't do it.

Steve Jobs, when he was about eight years old, was in church and he went up to his pastor now.

He's he's always been a strong-willed, precocious person, um, based on his biography.

And he said, Is God loving?

And the pastor's like, Yes.

Does God know everything?

Yes.

Does God want good over evil?

Yes.

And can is God all powerful?

Well, yes, of course he is.

Then he pulls out of his back pocket a copy of Time magazine, which on the front cover of it has the kid starving in Africa.

And he says, Then why doesn't God do anything about this?

And he turned around and walked out of the church.

He left.

He didn't actually wait for an answer, but the simple faith that he had before just couldn't handle the questions.

You know, the truth is, um this is how G.K.

Chesterton kind of put it, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.

Many of us hear something that's too difficult to deal with, and in that moment we um step back and say, no, I don't want to know anymore, and I'm just gonna walk away from that.

And that's why I find that a simple understanding is a good place to start, but not a great place to stay.

And the third way of seeing God is through tested understanding.

There comes a knowing that even when the world doesn't line up to what we know to be true about God, but we can still trust and we can still know that He is in control.

It's not blind faith, it's not uh I'm just denying everything else that's going on, but we just know that I don't understand everything right now, but God, you are still in control of this moment.

Jesus, at the height of his career on earth, he had the most people following him and everything else, and he said some pretty hard things to the crowd, and they were so hard that many of them couldn't reconcile what he had just said.

So in John 6, 66, it says, From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more.

Then Jesus said to the twelve, Do you also want to go away?

But Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life.

Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Say, where do you go when you know?

You know it and you know it and you know it.

And you say, I don't understand the rest of my world, but I understand this, so I gotta get my rest of my world to line up with this moment here.

That same idea has been summed up this way.

It says, When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him, but in heaven's name, to what?

Um, and where do you go when it gets hard?

The philosophies of the world are empty, they're vague.

You can end up in the pity party, you can end up in the poor me cycle, you can be leaning up against the post, no one's going to understand.

You could have all these other moments, but how is that going to get you to that next stage?

So you may be sitting here and you may be saying, Well, I do understand that, but life is going really hard right now.

How do I actually get to a spot of having a tested understanding?

So, first one I would say is ask questions.

That grade 11 student, he was asking that question.

And my response in that moment is I'm like, I am so grateful that you're asking that.

And his uh teacher in that classroom is actually was an intern my year of uh master's commission.

And she's there because they knew that they need to have a way to reach out into the back into those kids to help them because they knew that their kids were struggling.

And I'm like, you need to go talk to Corey, you need to go and find someone, find the time and actually dive into it.

Don't just ask the question and go la la la la la, not listening.

Is that's not going to help you in this moment.

But dive in, please ask more questions, ask the difficult ones.

The other is join a life group if you're here.

Find a way to plug in, get into community.

It's the best way because then you break down the barrier of, well, I don't know who to approach.

Well, now all of a sudden you're having a meal or you're having a fun time with people, and it's just like, well, in passing, I just want to ask the this bit here.

Because you know, the truth is at some point, if you don't ask those questions, one of two things is going to happen.

Um, you're going to get a little bit disillusioned, or you might feel like an imposter.

That how am I how can I say I'm a Christian when I don't know what I believe about this?

And I don't want you to live in those types of spots.

I know the team here doesn't want you to live in those spots.

So please find a way to ask.

And a life group is a great way to connect and be a part of it.

You know, asking questions requires humility because you have to admit that you don't have the answers.

And I mean, that's hard for my kids at times, and then oh, they really want to ask questions, and then it's hard there.

Um, but you know, if you're the one who's actually getting asked the questions, um, it's okay to say, I don't know.

But please follow it up with let's find out together.

It's you don't just leave it in the one spot, but go and find it and persist.

Persist, persist, continue to look.

It is only through asking questions that I actually found a chance to hear the truth about what God is, uh, who God is, and that I am actually known by Him.

If I hadn't asked all those questions, and then if I wouldn't have been actually asked a couple questions in return, I never would have had this opportunity.

So the second one is spend time in the Word.

Read or listen to the Bible, find a way to get into Scripture, find trusted voices and get their perspectives.

Uh I mean, for me, podcasts were a huge thing.

Uh my wife would call it my podcast seminary.

I was working in computers and I would drive to and from computer consulting calls, and for three hours a day I was in the car, and I was listening to Ravi Zacharias.

I was listening to all these other ministries and hearing the word and hearing how to articulate things and experiencing it.

So Carrie would come back from her ministry day and I would be coming in saying, these are all the things I learned today, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

It's like, and I just keep on going off because that was for me, I found trusted voices.

Um, if you don't know where to find trusted voices, one of them is uh a tool that you guys have with right now media.

Uh there's a lot of teachings on there.

So if you're interested in a specific book of the Bible, they've got uh multiple um trusted voices that can speak into that.

Or if you're looking for a certain topic, they have multiple voices that can speak into those things.

Also, there's the U Version Bible app.

Um, it's a great one.

It was the first one actually launched on the Apple store, and it has all these Bible reading prep plans, and you can actually get your friends to join up and you can go through it at the same time and talk so you have that extra accountability.

Um join join in and find accountability, find those spots, but really there's a part of this where you need to do the work yourself.

There is a part where you need to actually put the energy in so you don't end up with just other people's opinions, but that you can move from that simple faith to that tested faith.

And the third one, if you feel like yes, I'm doing all these things, is mentor someone else.

That can be as easy as leading a life group, it could be as easy as opening your home up just to have people around, or joining in when other events are happening, and just being present and just listening for people's questions and being able to sit down.

Um, some of it could even be talking to uh the pastors, Pastor Brody, Brian, or Malachi, and and finding out who needs to go out for coffee.

Who is it that really could just have someone come alongside them and hear them out?

Because, you know, the moment you actually have to go and mentor somebody else, you really get an understanding of how well you know that.

Um, for us, we do this every year when we have a new class come in.

There's a lot of questions that happen, and I have to figure out how am I going to re-articulate this and do I actually believe the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Because the truth is they'll know.

They'll know if I believe it or if I'm just giving them an answer to make them quiet.

They know those things.

And it's my job to make sure that I can give them an answer, or at least point them in a direction where they can find that answer.

You know, with my kids, I'm answering questions all the time.

I prefer the ones like, can I have gum?

Because my answer is always no.

Um, Carrie's the one that gives them gum.

I don't.

So it's like, no, you can't have gum before school.

No, you can't have it now.

I don't want to clean it up.

No, no, no.

But then there's other questions like, why did God kill everyone in a flood?

Well, um, well, time for school.

Um we need we need to have time to articulate it.

And if I can't explain it to seven-year-olds in that moment, I might not understand it well enough right then.

And I need to find a way to get the answer so a seven-year-old can understand it.

I also need to deal with when a 17-year-old is asking that question and find out how do I actually break it down for them.

So being able to do that really hones my understanding and tests my own faith when I mentor other people.

And I want you guys to all know it's worth it.

It's worth it to do it, it's worth it to push in.

When things get hard, it's worth it.

Um, whether whether you've walked into this church for the first time and you didn't know what was really going on, but you're you're here where you got suckered in by a friend, welcome.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Um, or whether you were here since the foundation was poured.

Um, and you maybe are older or you've been a part of this church longer than the building has existed.

I don't know how this church has the full history of it, so is that possible to be part of this church since before the foundation was poured here?

And maybe you've been in that spot, but I'll tell you, there is a next step for everyone to take.

There is another thing that you could be doing, and I'd really challenge you to go forward with that.

Uh, after the service is done, um we're gonna our team is gonna be here.

I know there's gonna be people from the church as well here to pray with you.

So if you have any prayer needs, we'd love to be able to talk with you and be able to pray it through.

Maybe you don't even know much about this God that we're talking about, Lord Jesus.

We'd love to be able to tell you more, be able to meet with you and do that.

So, right now, I'd just like to close in prayer.

Father, I just thank you for this time.

I thank you for this church being a part of what's happening here.

Lord, I pray that as as people have the questions in their hearts about who you are, Lord, I pray that they would be able to see you as that good Father, as a good master, Lord, the one that is kind, the one that is ready to celebrate, Lord.

And Father, so that they can hear you through those moments.

Lord, I pray that you would just help bring alongside people to help those who are in need.

Lord, I pray that you just help people to be able to engage with you on another level.

Lord, that people would just know how to press in and to hear your voice better.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you.

This team did a really great job this morning.

They've been here since really quite early supporting us this morning.

So it's been a really great time.

Um, we are gonna prepare for our tithes and offerings at this moment.

And uh if you're new here and this is your first time, welcome.

We are really glad that you're here.

In front of you in your chair, you are gonna see a connection card with information on there.

Please fill out the little box saying that you're bringing brand new, and then someone out in the lobby, maybe my wife, Natalie.

I would make your stand, but that's just embarrassing for her.

Good for me, but embarrassing for her.

Uh, she'll be out there to hand you and you get a free coffee.

If you're brand new here, we would love for you to have a chance to meet with you and have that.