The Valley Is Not Your Home

Come on, that's any good.

We serve a good God.

You may be seated.

Come on, how do you know that we serve a good and faithful God?

Come on, the days that we don't feel good, he is still very good.

Amen.

I am so excited to be here.

Y'all ready for church today?

Y'all came ready.

I'm excited to be here today.

It is such an honor.

Like she said, my name is Brittany Jones.

I am from Richmond, Virginia, and we say hello for Motivation Church.

I want to say, I want to take a moment before I begin to just honor your pastors of this house.

Come on, can we give it up for Pastor Greg and Pastor Shaylin?

They are incredible.

I know that you know how amazing they are, but I just want to tell you from an outsider looking in, one, you have an incredible church.

And two, you have great leaders leading this movement.

And I'm super thankful for them.

I'll tell you, about six years ago, probably, um, I came to one church.

My husband and I planted our church, motivation church, about five years ago, and I was much like a deer in headlights, getting ready to launch a church, very nervous, very quiet, just afraid of what this was gonna look like.

And I remember Pastor Greg being our coach and training us uh to launch our church, and we were sitting down and he invited us to come to one church.

And I remember sitting in the back, and I came in just like in awe of everything that was happening here, but also very afraid.

And I remember your pastors being the people that would look me in my eye and remind me of the purpose that God had for our lives.

Remind me that though it may look like it's massive, God was gonna do something really great with my life.

And so I love them, I honor them because they're not just people that speak on stages, but they they live their life this way.

We're people that know them personally that can say, man, they've spoken life into me.

I'm on this stage because these are people that spoke purpose into me.

So I just want to thank Pastor Greg and Shaylin, and then I want to introduce you to my amazing family.

There's a picture that will probably go up on the screen.

I have two incredible daughters, Jalen and Jada, and then we did get a pandemic dog.

Some of y'all know what I'm talking about.

Um, my daughter, Jalen, she's 12 years old, and she is the superstar of our family.

She is the one that's like, I am going to sing and dance my way to stardom.

And she tells us often that we're gonna have to move our church to LA so that she can be on all the shows.

And then Jada, my baby, is eight years old, and she is the comedian.

She's an introvert, and so she's my Velcro baby, but she's also the kid that kind of tells it like it is.

And if you're a parent, you always have that one kid that you're like, all right, so listen, we're not allowed to say this in front of people.

We can't like this is the kid that tells all the business.

Let me tell you, she goes to school and she just started a brand new school.

They they my daughter was homeschooled last year.

Both girls, one one went to school and one stayed home, and Jada was my Velcro baby, so I'm like, okay, you can stay home.

We kept her home, and so this is her first year back in school.

They're both in the same school building.

Okay, this is interesting.

Now they have to wear uniforms, and now I have a seventh grader who has to wear uniforms, so she's like, Well, I have to have the flyer shoes because you're making me wear the same thing every day.

Cool, you can have the flyer shoes.

But my youngest literally makes the face of like, you have got to be kidding me that I have to wear a skirt to school.

She refuses to wear skirts to school, so it's literally boy slacks and like a tucked-in shirt with socks all the way hiked up because she is like, I have to wear the same thing.

I don't want to wear skirts.

My kids are amazing, they're the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.

And then we got our dog Juno, who was supposed to be my emotionally supportive dog, and he supports my husband more than he supports me.

So there's that.

My husband and I have been married for 13 years, and he is my best friend.

He pushes me towards greatness, he pushes me to do the things of God, and so I love him so much.

So that's my family.

I just wanted to show you because they're cool and I love them, and they allow me to come and do things like this.

I want to share something from my heart that I feel like is such a big piece of my life, and I hope it's an encouragement to you.

And what I recognize is that many times we're faced with uncertain situations, when diagnoses hit our lives out of nowhere, when we're when things happen and they don't go as planned, I know that that causes us to believe that we cannot follow the purpose of God.

I know it for myself.

I know that I can disqualify myself from the goodness and greatness of God because of dysfunction of my life.

And what I recognize is that though I walk through the valley, the valley is not my home.

Though you walk through the valley, the valley is not your home.

It's not your resting place.

You're not gonna be there forever.

No matter what you've walked through, no matter what you walked in this room with, no matter what you're walking through at home, the valley is not your home.

But I do know that oftentimes we face things and we disqualify ourselves from walking in the purpose of God because it's painful, because it's hard.

I know that's true for myself.

I grew up in a broken, dysfunctional environment.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago.

Any Chicago folks in the house?

No, a few of y'all.

All right, family.

Great.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago, a lot of dysfunction.

I grew up around poverty, gang violence, drugs.

From the ages of five until I was 15 years old, I was sexually abused by more people than I can count on two hands.

That was my real life.

My parents were both addicts growing up, and so when I was four years old, my father was murdered on the streets of Chicago, not to be found until months later.

The dysfunction I grew up with made me believe that there was no hope for my life.

That this was how I was gonna end my life, that there was no way out.

And I remember, you know, people ask kids, what do you dream about?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

And for me, I just wanted to make it out.

It's not a big dream for a 10-year-old, but I wanted to make it out, and I remember as a 10-year-old girl, we moved again, and we moved around this golf ball-sized church.

This it they had a dome that looked like a golf ball.

All the neighborhood kids thought it was a golf ball.

Now I wasn't a church going person.

My family didn't go to a church a lot.

We didn't know much about Jesus, didn't know much about God other than what you heard through the streets.

And so I didn't know anything about Jesus, but I knew that that was a church.

And so I remember growing up when there's these pastors that would come, they had these yellow shirts on and they would come and clean our yard, clean the trash up out of our yard, every Saturday.

These bright yellow shirts on in the hood.

They wanted to be noticed, I guess.

So they came to our community and they would clean up consistently every single week.

Now, I'm a kid that struggled with trauma, so I didn't talk to people all the time.

I wasn't like, hey, let me get to know you.

I was a little more timid and afraid to have those conversations, but there was something about one of these pastors that I just thought he might have been safe.

So I remember going up to him and I'm asking him, Why are you cleaning our yard?

We're just gonna make a mess again.

You keep coming back.

And I remember him telling me that they were from the golf ball church and they were inviting people to church.

And so he handed me a flyer, inviting me to the after-school program, that they had free snacks after school for kids, and they were gonna help us with our homework.

That was it.

So I went.

Kid that lived grew up in a rough neighborhood.

I went, wanted a free snack.

Give me all the chips, okay?

I went to this church, and at 10 years old, in the hallway of the church, I gave my heart to Jesus.

10 years old, and there wasn't at that point, no, they no one was giving me heavy discipleship at 10 years old.

They weren't giving breaking down scriptures and saying this is who God is and explaining all the things, but what they did offer me was hope.

Because imagine your dreams only being to make it out, and now somebody is offering you a level of hope that even you can't obtain by yourself.

So at 10 years old, I give my heart to Jesus, and I'm still going home to the same trauma, the same issues, but now I have a hope to cling to.

I know that many of us have walked in and we we we think for ourselves like, hey, we're never gonna make it out of this situation.

Things are not gonna change for us.

Let me just remind you to cling to Jesus.

I can't imagine my life without him.

At 10 years old, I gave my heart to him and I never turned back.

I've been living for Jesus ever since that day I gave my heart to him in the hallway of that church.

This is what I know to be true.

What happened to you doesn't have to harden you if you allow God to heal you.

What happened to you?

I'm gonna say this for the person in the back.

What happened to you does not have to harden you if you allow God to heal you.

Walking through many years of trauma, I couldn't imagine making it out.

And I'm standing on this stage as a result of somebody doing the very thing God has called them to do.

You know, I heard earlier in the announcements that you all have a love thy neighbor week coming up.

Imagine if every person in this room connected with that week coming up and said, I'm gonna reach out to every 10-year-old Brittany that's outside of these doors because they need to know that there is hope for their life.

Imagine the people that you get to come in contact with that is walking through heavy brokenness, heavy pain, maybe you yourself.

And you get the opportunity to pick up the corner of someone's mouth.

So we're gonna talk about that a little bit today.

If you have your Bibles, will you take it out or look over somebody's shoulder?

Just read their Bible.

It's gonna be on the screen, I believe.

We're gonna read from Mark 2, verse 1 through 5, and then I'm gonna jump to 11 and 12.

Mark 2:1–5

Will you read it with me?

It says, A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.

Some men came, bringing him a paralyzed man carried by four of them.

Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, Son, your sins are forgiven.

Verse 11, I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home.

He got up, took his mat, and walked out in full view of them all.

This amazed everyone.

And they praised God, saying, We have never seen anything like this.

Church, we are all called to be mat carriers.

Every single one of us are called to be mat carriers, but I believe the tension for us sometimes is that it's easier to do life alone, especially when it gets hard.

Because how many of us want to just tell our stuff?

How many of us want to expose it all?

So the tension is that we just muscle through our pain.

We fight battles by ourselves rather than inviting someone to grab a corner of a mat and lead us together.

This man faced opposition from the start.

The first being his mat.

The mat represented his dysfunction, his inability to help himself.

Imagine laying on this mat and exposed to everybody, right?

Everybody's walking past, many of them trying to get from one place to the next, many of them trying to get to Jesus.

They know Jesus is in town, and they're just walking past this man laying on this mat until his four friends showed up.

This mat represented all of his pain.

Everybody can see it.

It's on full view, and people just walking past.

But I wonder what does your mat represent?

What does your mat represent?

Broken marriages, rough family dynamics, financial crisis, illnesses, issues at your job, emptiness, issues with your friends, fear of failure, lack of peace, mental health issues.

We've all been there, we've all struggled, and oftentimes we won't allow people to grab a corner of our map because we're afraid of what it might do and what it might expose.

How could we?

When we come in places like church and someone says, How are you doing?

Most of us are gonna say what?

Good.

Because we are really, really good and programmed at saying all the good things.

So we walk in buildings like this, and I feel good, I look good, I wore the right clothes, my outfit's popping, my shoes look good, I got a great smile on my face, and I'm going home to brokenness.

I'm going home to dysfunction, I'm going home to pain, my mind is wrestling.

The things that I didn't deal with from when I was a child are still bubbling up from out of me.

And I carry it and I bring it here, and I'm offered one thing, but I'm afraid to expose it because I don't know what you're gonna do with my pain.

See, the greatest thing about someone picking up a corner of your mat that it's not just anybody, so it's trusted people, mentors, friends, people you love and care about.

I can't imagine this man laying on this mat and being so exposed to everybody.

And then the thought of them saying, you know what, there's no room.

What do we do?

That's super, super hard.

But allowing someone to pick up a corner of your mat is inviting someone into your space.

So there's something that I learned along the way because obviously I grew up in a lot of dysfunction and trauma, and I I struggled really hard with coming into spaces and not being able to say, I'm not okay.

I'm a pastor, so there's an expectation that we got it all together all the time, right?

Everything's perfect.

I just didn't want to live my life like that.

I saw, I experienced, I've been in places where it wasn't okay to not be okay.

So I didn't want to be that way.

So I learned a couple things.

The first thing I learned is that vulnerability leads to freedom.

Vulnerability leads to freedom.

Here's the thing: transparency is knowing us.

It says, look, but don't touch.

Transparency is knowing about us.

Look, don't touch.

Vulnerability is knowing us.

Come inside, sit down, but be gentle.

Know my pain, share my experience, walk with me towards freedom.

See, it's easy for somebody to be transparent because you could say, Hey, this is what I've been through.

Take a look.

It's like a magnifying glass.

You can see it, but I don't want you to get close enough to know me intimately.

But if I'm vulnerable with you, you could do anything you want with what I'm sharing with you, but you're getting close enough to know my pain and share my pain.

So I stood on stage and I just told you a part of my experience.

We're in a world right now where people take out their phones and everything goes on Instagram and Facebook and people screenshot and they put it up, right?

I share things with people that I'm okay with you sharing with somebody else.

Vulnerability is allowing it to be exposed, but knowing that there's purpose in the exposing.

I want to be healed, I want to be free.

And a part of being free is not pretending like it's everything's okay.

We can't glaze over our pain.

I grew up with that.

I grew up thinking that my pain would eventually go away.

So I went through counseling, and I've been in counseling for many, many years.

And I told myself, because there's layers to it, right?

It's like an onion, you just keep pulling off layers.

And when I felt good, it was like, okay, I'm good.

Right?

I'm good, I feel good.

And then you move on, and we tend to forget that there's some more digging that we have to do.

And when you allow people to pick up a corner of your mat, you're allowing them to get close enough to you where they can expose the areas that you may be blind to.

So this man laying on this mat, I imagine him being incredibly vulnerable.

You gotta walk down, they're walking him down the street to this house, and then his friends, they couldn't get him through the door, so now they gotta drill a hole and they don't have a drill.

I'm sure they're using their hands, right?

Getting a hole in a roof.

So imagine the people, Jesus preaching in the house.

The people in the house, things are just crumbling all over their head.

I mean, it's just like stuff falling, they're looking like what's going on.

Imagine what this man must feel on this map.

We don't know of the full situation, we know bits and pieces of it, but I can only imagine what I would feel if everybody now is exposed.

Now you know I can't get up.

I can't help myself, that I had to have my four friends come and dig a hole to get me to Jesus.

But it was like a by any means necessary type spirit.

We're gonna get you there.

We don't care what people think, we don't care how they feel.

I'm sure he was a little bit embarrassed, I'm sure it didn't feel great, but they got him to Jesus.

They knew that if he would be vulnerable enough to let them grab a corner of his mat, then he would experience freedom.

I think some of us get a little bit uncomfortable with sharing pieces of our lives because we're afraid of what people will do with our stories.

But what if I told you that there is freedom, there is healing on the other side of it?

I am a witness to the fact that when you open up your heart, and that doesn't mean to everybody, that means going and sitting in a therapist seat and saying I'm broken and I'm hurting, and there's some things that I'm wrestling with, and sharing all the things and not holding things back because it's uncomfortable, but sharing it all for the purpose of being healed and whole because you don't know what your story how your story is gonna impact somebody else.

Vulnerability leads towards freedom.

The second thing is opposition leads towards opportunity.

Here's some things I know about opposition versus opportunity.

Opposition wastes valuable time, opportunity redeems the time.

Opposition creates problems, opportunity finds solutions.

Opportunity says I can't, opportunity, opposition says I can't, opportunity says I will.

Can't just slide you in or throw you in the window.

There's absolutely no room.

Many people knew that Jesus was coming, so they flooded the house and they wanted to get near him.

The opposition was the map.

The opposition was the room.

The opportunity was make it, make a way.

Let's get creative.

Let's do whatever we gotta do to get them to Jesus.

Many of you have faced opposition in your own life, and oftentimes in the middle of our opposition, we give up because it's hard.

I faced a major opposition in my life.

If have if I hadn't already, this was one that smacked me in my face.

We were getting ready to launch our church, and I remember feeling some things many years before me.

I was going through counseling, and so I'm doing the things that I thought was necessary to do, working through all the heavy emotions, digging deep, sometimes pausing because it was hard, but doing the work.

And I remember experiencing some emotions and feelings that I couldn't explain, I couldn't get rid of.

I couldn't work my way through them.

I prayed, I love God with all my heart.

I've been serving Jesus since I was a little girl.

So I knew that's the first place to go.

But there was something deeper.

And I remember prior to us launching our church, we're in the thick of it, we're praying about it, we're asking the Lord to help us send the people, and then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I didn't have the face of what I believe somebody with bipolar disorder was supposed to have based on what I saw on TV.

The only time I ever heard of somebody with bipolar disorder was on Law and Order SVU.

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

Some of y'all saw that episode.

Just I didn't know what to expect.

What did that even mean?

That wasn't something that I should have.

I was healthy, I loved the Lord.

I didn't hear about mental illness from the stage, rarely ever, unless it was depression and anxiety.

And usually it was three points in a prayer, and you'll be good.

So, bipolar disorder doesn't make sense.

How could I have bipolar disorder and there's no way that God can use me?

We're getting ready to launch this church, Lord.

Why?

Many questions that I had with this diagnosis.

And trust me, I did not just allow somebody to slap a diagnosis on me.

It took a very long time.

I needed you to explain, process, take me through the map, show me everything there is before I could believe it for myself.

But my mind and my body was telling me what it was.

I remember spending four days straight awake.

I cleaned everything in sight.

Everything.

I washed every wall in my house.

I washed every dish, every laundry.

My family was thrilled.

They have to do no chores.

Everything was clean.

And I remember feeling like, why can't I sleep?

Why won't my eyes shut?

My body felt like it was just full steam ahead.

But what goes up comes down.

And I spent over a month in debilitating depression.

Couldn't get out of bed.

Couldn't seem to gather myself.

Now imagine I'm a worship leader at our church.

I'm on stage every single week, leading people to the throne room.

And yet I'm wrestling with my mind.

I can't seem to get out of how do I help myself?

And at that point, no one's telling me, hey, this is what's available to you, this is what's available.

Go to a psychiatrist.

I had to figure it out.

And I made a decision that I was not gonna do what I thought that was the responsible thing as a Christian to do, just come and say, I'm good.

I needed help.

And I needed help beyond what my pastor could help me.

So I went to a psychiatrist and I got the help that I needed.

And I continued to go to therapy and I got the help that I needed.

Let me just tell you, I know sometimes that we're faced with opposition, and it seems like it's a major dysfunction, like a stop, but don't quit in the middle.

The middle is where the good happens because that's where God shows up and shows you who He really is.

Here's the thing: there's a story of these three Hebrew boys.

Y'all know the story I'm talking about: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abinnego.

They're in front of this fiery furnace that they're about to get thrown in because they will not bow.

They declare they're not gonna bow.

And I know that in that story, they're looking at that fire and they're like, man, we're about to burn up.

Like, we're about to really burn up.

And they're looking at the fire and they're saying, Okay, we're not gonna bow.

And we know that this fire is in front of us.

We know what our God can do.

But there's this really cool scripture hanging in there, and it says, But even if he does not, but even if he does not, I'm still gonna worship the Lord.

Some of us need to remember that God is in it, even in the middle.

He may not heal you today, but even if he does not continue to worship his name, I'm in the butt even if he does not stage.

Because when I walk off the stage, I still have bipolar disorder, but I recognize that it does not have me.

It does not have me.

If you've walked in this room and you're discouraged, if you've walked in this room and you've recently been diagnosed, you've walked in this room and your family is in shambles, just know that the middle is where the good happens.

Do not give up in the middle, it's where the good happens.

I've seen God more in this season of my life than I did when I was questioning why.

And I'm not saying that you can't question.

You can question, you can wrestle with it, but stay in the fight.

There are many days where I wanted to give up.

God can't use me.

I'm too broken.

I'm too broken.

And then I allowed somebody to come and grab a corner of my mat when I'm wrestling with those thoughts.

My mentors that said, Brittany, God has purpose for you.

My therapist that reminds me of the purpose that God has for my life.

My husband, who loves me greatly, that's gonna hang in there in the middle with me.

Get you some people that can grab a corner of your mat.

Because there are gonna be days where you wanna give up, but those people that's hanging in there with you and got a corner of your mat, they're not, they're gonna just take you to Jesus.

They're not gonna let you give up in the dip.

They're not gonna let you give up in the middle.

And there's one more thing that I've learned in the midst of this: that desperation leads to healing.

Desperation leads to healing.

There's something that happens in this scripture.

One of the first things that Jesus says to the man after he saw the faith of his friends, the friends that picked up a corner of his mat, he said to the paralyzed man, Son, your sins are forgiven.

What that made me recognize is that God deeply cares about my heart.

And he's gonna heal my physical and he's gonna feed me bread, but he cares about my heart.

Your sins are forgiven.

Now pick up your bed and walk.

See, there's some people that are gonna hang out there with you, and they're gonna grab a corner of your mat, and because of their faith, and because of their witness of what God can do, they're gonna lead you towards faith.

Gonna lead you towards healing.

Desperation leads to healing.

I thought that I had experienced everything there was to experience.

We're in the midst of our church plant and it's going great.

God's doing great things, I'm getting healthy.

And one of the things that I had to recognize for myself is that I'm gonna practice healthy habits when I'm well, so that when I'm not well and when my mind just does whatever it's gonna do, I'm doing healthy things already.

So going to counseling, eating well, doing all the things that I need to do to make sure that I'm well.

So I'm in a good rhythm.

Everything's great.

Got my therapist lined up, seeing my psychiatrist, my dietitian, everybody's lined up.

I'm doing everything that I thought was necessary to do.

Yet something happened.

You know, oftentimes when we don't deal fully with our stuff, whatever you don't heal will spill.

Whatever you don't heal will spill.

And so sometimes we think we've healed some areas in our life, right?

You know, you're doing the work, but you really are like dodging some places that hurt a little too.

I do it.

I mean, I know y'all do it.

We dodge the places that hurt.

So five-year-old Brittany was still stuck a little bit because it was overshadowed by the Britney that was diagnosed.

So now I gotta work through that and work through the emotions of that that I failed to go back to the place of my greatest pain, and that is the trauma.

And as I'm dealing with stuff in therapy, it just kept bubbling up in other areas of my life.

And what I recognize is that I was looking for something to control.

And so February 4th, 2019, I remember walking into this lady's office and sitting down on her black couch, and she looked me in my eyes and she said, Brittany, you have an eating disorder.

Anorexia, to be exact.

It hit me like a ton of bricks because I was processing so much pain at that time, and I was dealing with so much that there's no way I could stand in front of my new church and tell them one more thing.

I had already stood in front of my church and said, I have bipolar disorder, and I'm gonna lead you well, and I'm gonna love you well, feeling that shame attached and the stigma attached to mental illness, but still in the midst of the fight and saying, I'm gonna lead you well, and I want to model to you what it's like to walk this thing out.

Yet now I'm here having to stand in front of my church again.

Now, the interesting thing is I let worship every week.

So as I'm standing on stage, my body is withering, and so is my life.

Because I was looking for something to control because everything else in my mind felt out of control.

I felt like I was losing control.

So I remember this woman saying to me, Brittany, we're gonna put you in a process.

So they put me on this process, this plan, this eating plan, and I'm doing it, I'm working the plan, I'm doing everything I thought I needed to do to work the plan.

And it wasn't enough because I'm still hanging on to a little bit of hope that if I could just control some of it, and I needed to trust and be desperate enough to allow the Lord to lead me and to heal me, and then to be open enough to tell somebody that I really need help.

And these are the areas I'm not saying out loud.

And so I get back a month later, and she says to me, This is not working.

You need further help than what I could offer you.

And so, for 30 days, I packed my bags and I went to a hospital, a treatment center for eating disorders.

I left my family, I left my children, I left my church, I left everything because I knew if I could get desperate enough, I could be healed.

Sometimes it takes that, church.

Sometimes it takes us just saying, you know what?

I don't care about my pride, I don't care what people think.

I need to get desperate so that I can be healed.

Because if I can be healed, the people attached to me will see the goodness of God and they can be healed.

Church, I'm not telling you somebody else's story, I'm telling you my real life story, but not for the sake of you knowing me, but so that you know what God can do for you.

I know it gets a little intimidating when we are faced with situations where we have to pause and say, Okay, I gotta remove myself from this so that I can be completely whole.

That was in 2019.

I did the hardest thing I ever did in my life, and I left my family to get help.

And I got it.

And I'm here today to let you know that God is a healer.

I would not be standing on this stage without people picking up a corner of my mat.

Without my dietitian saying the hard thing, you gotta go to the hospital.

Without my kids saying, Mommy, we'll let you go for 30 days so that you can get help.

My mentors who walked me the entire journey and would literally bring my children to the hospital to visit me because I couldn't live a day without not seeing them.

Are you willing to let somebody pick up a corner of your mat so that you may be made well?

I know that my story has brought healing to my family because I'm just saying, you know what?

You know my real life.

I'm walking this thing out, and there's nothing about this that's not true because they know my life.

I remember the first time my sister saw me get on a stage and share about my story.

And she, I got off stage and I sat next to her and she said, Wow, that's like your real life for real.

Like, I know, I know you.

That's like you just told all of these people your real life.

Because oftentimes we hide behind the facade of leadership and who we are, what our titles are.

Church, I believe that God can heal every single person in this room.

I believe that God can heal me, but until He does, but until I'm completely healed from my bipolar disorder and any trauma that I ever experienced, I'm gonna still proclaim the goodness of Jesus because the desperation of my life leads towards healing.

I don't know where you are in your journey, but I do know that God does not waste pain.

God does not waste pain.

He's not gonna waste your story.

And I know that my story has brought hope to my family.

Now, I told you earlier that my mother struggled with addiction, and about 10 years ago she gave her heart to Jesus and is living for him.

The amazing thing about it is that, you know, sometimes it takes one person saying, God, use me, even in the midst of my darkest moments, use me.

And it changes the trajectory of your entire family.

My mom is not only living for Jesus, but she came and helped us plan our church the first year of our church.

She came and helped take care of my kids.

God is doing a miracle in my family because of vulnerability, because of freedom and desperation.

But it's all because somebody picked up a corner of my mat.

I didn't do this by myself because we all can't do this by ourselves.

I had to allow somebody to pick up a corner of my mat and walk me through.

There's no way I would have made it to this place without them.

So if you walked in this room, if you're watching online and you're saying, Man, I've been through some things, I'm going through some things right now, just know that God wants to use your story to make way for people in your life.

But it starts with you being vulnerable.

It starts with you using the opposition that you're facing as an opportunity.

And it starts with you getting desperate enough to touch the hem of his garment.