There Goes That Man | The End of Your Rope | Chad Bruegman

How are we doing, Richmond Campus?

We good today?

Alright, I'll take that.

I like that energy.

Hey, before we uh invite the other campuses into this moment, uh just a quick favor that I have for you guys.

Um we have a 1230 service that is uh where God's power is the most powerful, and we need you.

No, I'm just kidding.

Um I'll try anything.

No, we have a full room at the 9:15 and the uh 11 o'clock service, and praise God for that, man.

What an awesome logistical nightmare that it is.

So grateful.

Um thank you that you keep coming back and uh sometimes even inviting people.

What a what an honor that is for us.

Um but a lot of times uh on weekends at one or more of the services, we have to send people over to the lakeside building, and we're so grateful we have that overflow area.

But uh a lot of times what we find is it's visitors that are the ones going there because they don't realize you got to get here early to park unless it's chaos, and then they have to sometimes check their kids in for the first time, it takes a little bit longer, and then they're usually the ones that end up a lot of times over in our overflow.

And we just want the best experience for them.

And so one of the ways you can serve us in a season, and it's kind of seasonal, is if some of you could uh just attend the 1230 service for a little while.

Uh, maybe you, your family, uh maybe your family and another family that you guys maybe come to church with or are friends with, that would just be such a huge help to us to try and create the best possible experience for every single person.

And um, whether it's a bunch of you or whether it's a few of you, man, every seat that we have open here counts.

And so I would I'm so tempted to manipulate, uh put pastor guilt on you.

I will not do that.

Um, but it would just help us so much.

And so I'm just praying right, and by the, you know, if you do it, you'll God's told me to tell you you'll be rich and never get sick again.

I'm kidding, we're not those guys.

Uh but that would just be a huge help.

And so just think about it and consider it.

And if you do, I'll never know who you are when you switch over to that.

But I'm just saying on behalf of our whole team, thank you.

Okay?

So thank, thank you, thank you, thank you.

All right.

So let's welcome uh Missouri City, everybody uh, of course, down at our West End campus, all of you that are watching online with us this weekend, we are grateful for technology.

And at every campus, I love doing this.

I love this part of our church.

Can we make the men at the Ramsey Unit, our God behind bars campus, feel so welcome right now?

We love you, gentlemen.

Love you guys.

So grateful that we get to uh worship with you every weekend.

Um I'm gonna start out week two of this There Goes That Man uh series by asking a question.

Um, have you guys ever been in like an argument with someone uh or a contentious moment?

Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a coworker, maybe it's a sponsor uh maybe it's someone you've never met before, like road raid type, road rage type stuff.

But you get done with that conversation, and as they're walking away, you literally hear yourself saying, That dude's got issues, man.

Or she crazy.

She that girl's got issues, man.

Like, I I I'm not proud of myself, but I found that even happening to me uh this week.

Um my wife and I had one of those he's got issues moments.

And I had one of those she's got issues moments.

Uh my wife, for whatever reason, loves uh Facebook Marketplace.

Um she thinks that's how we're gonna get rich.

$10 to$25 per sale at a time.

And I have had some really fun, interesting uh moments where we've been contentious about Facebook Marketplace, because as one comedian says, are you really willing to sell something for$10 at the risk of our family's lives, right?

It just takes one stranger.

And so we've had that, and I was at work this week and I was in a meeting and I heard the buzz on my phone, and I during the meeting I looked at the text, and all I read in the text was from my wife was this.

She said, Please don't be mad at me.

To which my instant thought was, I'm about to be so mad at you, and I don't even know what you're about to say.

And she sent a long text telling me what I was gonna be mad at her about, and then a picture of what had happened.

My wife put on Facebook Marketplace this um big uh bookshelf that we had had in our upstairs living room uh full of kids' toys and kids' books, and it was just time to graduate that out, and so she put it on Facebook Marketplace for 25 bucks, and the minute she put it on, it sold.

And the guy said, I'll be right there.

I live in the neighborhood, and she panicked because she's at home alone.

Kids are at school, I'm at work.

And then my wife doesn't write him back and say, Could you come back later?

Because it's you know, and she knows I don't allow her to let dudes in our house that we don't know.

And so I'm like, You can't.

If you're gonna do Facebook Marketplace, that's the only thing I ask.

He can't, you know, and so uh she decides to grab this, you know, six-foot wide, five foot high thing and uh get it downstairs by herself.

By the way, our stairs right at the end curve, right at the end, right?

And so she gets, she told me about two steps down, and then all of a sudden she slips, she loses it, and it gets down the stairs just fine, just not with her help.

And the picture she sent me was uh some pretty good damage on our drywall going down the stairs.

And so I finally read it, saw the picture, I had time to recoup and regroup, and so I did my breath work and I out in the driveway and I prayed about the fruit of the spirit.

I quoted it, love, patience, peace, goodness, kindness, jealous, faithful, and self-control.

Like, please help me, God, right?

And none of it worked.

The minute I walked in the door, my wife's standing there like this, and I'd seen that look before, like, please don't be mad at me, and I go, show me the damage, and I look at the damage, and then I don't know what she said next, but then it was followed with this, and I'm not proud of this, but I just said, Hey, what did you sell that for?

She said 25 bucks.

I go, hmm.

How much do you think the drywall fix-up's gonna cost?

More than 25 bucks?

I go, well, hey, let's do this.

Uh how much do you think you've made since January 1?

We're about a quarter and a half into the year in your little business scheme.

How much do you think you made?

You know, I go, hundred, 150, and she's not answering anymore.

She knows what's happening here.

I go, I think this bill we're gonna get for our drywall is more than all of that.

You still want to do Facebook Marketplace?

And then very jokingly, because we've been married 22 years, uh, she had one boyfriend before me.

His name's Randall, we're all friends, he's an amazing dude.

She looks at me and joking, not joking, she goes, Man, I should have married Randall.

And I should have ended it there and went, well played, I hear you, I'll shut up.

And then I replied, Why is he into Facebook Marketplace?

And she just goes, Oh my word.

And then she goes, Well, it's a good thing I haven't put that couch on Facebook Marketplace yet.

And I'm like, why?

And she's like, Because you're sleeping on it tonight, and I'm like, Alright.

She walks away, and I know what she's thinking.

That dude has so many issues.

Why God, right?

And I'm thinking, that girl's crazy.

She has so many issues.

Issues.

And the reason I bring that up is because we're going to talk about that today.

If you have your Bibles, go with me to uh Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

We'll start in verse 21 here in a minute.

Um, but your heading on the Bible uh should say, not all of them, but some of them have headings before different stories in the gospels, which I love.

This one says this the woman with uh, here it is, issue of blood.

This girl we're gonna see has some really big issues.

Now, here's the truth about our church is I love this about our church.

We come in with so much diversity of all kinds in our church.

So many things that actually, I think, in a beautiful way make us different.

We come in here uh with different financial, socioeconomic statuses and situations.

We come from uh different neighborhoods all over Houston.

Uh I love this about our church more than almost anything.

We come in here with so many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

I absolutely love that about us.

We come in here, even many of us uh with different uh religious backgrounds.

Um we all to some degree come in here with different upbringings from the other person, you know.

That's a really important part of our story, but they're different, and I could go on and on and on.

But there's a few things every week, no matter how diverse we are, no matter how many differences that we all have, there's a few things that we universally have in common, and one of them every week is this.

We all got issues.

I got them, you got them, you got them, I got them, we all have issues, and probably the most important lesson I've learned about the issues that I've dealt with in my own life over time, and then as a pastor helping other people deal uh with their issues is this.

When there are issues that go unresolved for too long, you know what starts to happen?

More compounding issues from that issue.

Like one issue that goes unresolved never just stays isolated to that issue.

It always let me let me give you one example.

Um so so if you're having some serious seasons of financial pressure and issues and you are married, you cannot tell me that is not going to have an interesting and profound effect on your marriage.

We know just from the data alone.

I've been there before.

It just immediately bleeds into the marriage.

It makes everything more tense.

It tends to bring out because of the pressure the worst of both spouses, and then the kids start to feel it.

And sometimes that might mean for a little season, the kids just have a little bit of a different spirit that they bring to school and their friends, and it starts to compound.

And what ends up happening if we go too long with compounding unresolved issues is you will find yourself where almost everyone, if you've lived very long at all, at all of our campuses, you've been there before.

And it's this you find yourself at the end of your rope.

You find yourself where you're at that place of now vulnerability and weakness.

You're at that point where all human resource has been exercised and the issues still haven't changed.

I would put it this way: you find yourself desperate.

And why I'm so pumped up about today and this weekend, and why I couldn't wait to deliver this message to us, is because here's what I want you walking out of your campus with today by the time we leave, which is this one statement, and it is this, and we're gonna see this proven in Jesus today, and it is this.

There is always hope at the end of your rope.

Yes, I just rhymed.

I like it.

There's always hope at the end of your rope.

I believe the young kids these days call that bars.

I just spit a bar.

That sounded so bad.

We'll move on.

But but I'm not saying that in some kind of trite way.

I'm not saying that as a platitude.

I believe this with all my heart, and I know a bunch of you do too, because I have tasted and seen the goodness of God at sometimes the darkest of my moments in life when I simply just leaned into Jesus with the right posture and attitude and said, Look, in my weakness, I love this verse we quote it all the time, in our weakness, his power can then be made perfect.

His grace will always be enough resource for us.

His grace is sufficient for us.

There's always hope at the end of your rope.

And so, let's go to Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

We'll start in verse 21.

And this is to me, guys, a quintessential, there goes that man story.

When Jesus had crossed over again by boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the sea.

Now we get introduced to the first player.

It's gonna be two main players apart from Jesus: this guy and then a lady with the issue.

One of the synagogue leaders, remember that, because that that matters to this whole moment.

One of the synagogue leaders was named Jairus.

He came and when he saw Jesus, now I want you to notice his posture, he what?

He fell at his feet.

That is a posture of desperation.

That is a posture of submitting to someone that you are bowing towards and saying, You are it, I am not.

You have what I could never have.

So we already know, we don't know the story yet, but we already know there's a desperation with this man.

We're gonna see how far he is at the end of his rope.

Now, the reason the synagogue leader matters when it comes to his title is because these synagogue leaders were the most esteemed people of the day.

If you were leading the synagogue, you were a Pharisee, a Sadducee, or a teacher of the law.

That's as big as it got.

These were the big dogs.

And by default, that meant that Jairus was uh wealthy by their standards back then, that he carried with him power.

People considered those guys the most favored by God, whether that was true or not.

I mean, they were it.

Guys like that don't bow.

Guys like that don't beg.

But listen to what it goes on to say.

He fell at his feet and begged Jesus earnestly.

Here's why.

We'll all get this as parents.

My little daughter is dying.

Isn't it amazing when something like that gets you to the end of it?

You want to talk?

Can we agree, especially as parents?

Like, can you be more at the end of your rope than that?

Can you be more desperate than that?

My daughter is dying, Jesus.

Now you can see why he falls to his feet in honor and surrender and submission and humility to him.

Now you can see why he's begging.

Because all of a sudden, titles don't matter.

Power doesn't matter.

Wealth and privilege no longer matter when you're in this spot.

The playing floor gets real even with humanity when you find yourself in one of these situations.

And so he goes on to say, Jesus, please just come and lay your hands on her so that she can get well and live.

Now, if you're newer to church, uh, someone who was a synagogue leader or a Pharisee or a teacher of the law would have had the most contentious relationship with Jesus up to this moment.

The harshest words, the strongest language Jesus ever used in terms of warning was with guys like Jairus.

Guys like Jairus in his boys' club would eventually be some of the chief catalysts to get Jesus crucified.

They had done nothing but follow him and bother him and disrupt him and police him, try to defame him, try to get everybody not to keep following him and believing in him.

But now all of a sudden, isn't it funny the same person that Jairus would have been doing this to, now that his daughter's at death's door, what's he doing?

He's in humble submission to him like that.

He was telling us what he really believed about this guy.

Not what he was trained and taught to do with somebody like this, making holy trouble.

Now all of a sudden he's begging him.

Now, if I'm Jesus, praise God I'm not.

I'm sitting there going, oh now, big boy, now you got a problem.

Now you're desperate, now you start to see some value in me, right?

Well, you're you're so high and mighty, why don't you go fix your daughter yourself?

That would be a fair response based on how we humans often treat each other, but not this man.

Look what it says.

So he went with him.

No questions asked.

My translation there goes that man.

There he goes again.

He's always moving on our behalf.

He can make something out of nothing.

He creates something out of nothing, he still makes something out of nothing.

There goes that man.

Let me give you a spoiler alert because we're not going to get to that today.

And this is really good news.

Jesus, after a little bit of disruption, we're about to read, would eventually get to Jairus' house.

And there'd be a bunch of wailing, the Bible says, going on, because she was pronounced dead.

And Jesus stops all the wailing and says, Why do you cry?

This girl is not dead, she's simply asleep.

And they're thinking, kid me?

We know death.

She's dead.

The Bible says they go from wailing to laughing.

Not a good kind of laugh, a laugh of mockery, like, no, she's dead.

You don't understand what you just came to.

So Jesus goes in there, he speaks life over her.

He says, Get up.

She gets up and he says, Go make her some food.

She's weak.

Beautiful ending to an end of your rope story.

Could you imagine if Jairus could have had that song that we just sang at church today?

There goes that man.

Could you imagine how sacred and beautiful and how important, maybe top-of-the-list song that would be to him?

Because he just saw a man go with him.

When he had done nothing to earn the right for Jesus to want to go with him.

That's what he does for people that are his enemies, if they'll let them.

If they'll show a little bit of faith, if they'll surrender.

There goes that man.

There he goes again.

Now, they start walking to Jairus' house, and here's where we meet this woman with the issues, whatever they are.

A large crowd was following them, pressing against Jesus.

Now a woman suffering from bleeding for 12 years.

I'm not even going to pretend to understand the implications of that and what that must have been like.

12 straight years.

Some of you for 12 or more years have been having chronic pain, or you've been fighting disease, or maybe fighting one, two, or even three different bouts of cancer over 12 or more years.

You get this more than I do, but it's been 12 years of this hemorrhaging that hasn't been able to stop.

It says she's endured under many doctors, and listen to this.

Remember I said unresolved issues always end up compounding into other areas of life?

Because of that physical issue, now she's broke.

She had spent everything she had and was not helped at all.

On the contrary, she had become worse.

Have you ever been there before?

Come on, we all have, right?

If not, still take notes today.

Put them in your back pocket.

Because all of us on this side of eternity are almost promised that unfortunately it is true, you are going to have a few different moments in this lifetime where all of your human resources been exercised and you are at the end of your rope.

You don't know what to do anymore.

You will find yourself at different times in life.

It doesn't matter how rich you are, it doesn't matter how poor you are, it doesn't matter how in between you are, it doesn't matter how powerful you are, it doesn't matter how weak you are.

It is part of the human plight on this side of the grave.

Just like this woman, just like Gyrus, you're gonna have to go through this.

We've all been there before, so let's talk about this woman.

I love how different on the surface her and gyrus are.

Unlike gyrus, this woman is broke.

We just read it.

Unlike Gyrus, this is important, she's an outcast.

It started as a bleeding problem and then it can't compounded into a financial problem.

And this might just be the most painful of all the problems.

It didn't, she's not just bleeding and broke, she's also banned.

Because in the ancient Jewish culture, according to the Levitical law, Leviticus chapter 15, you can go this week and read it yourself.

Leviticus 15 · chapter mention

She was not allowed to get anywhere near the temple and worship with her community and her people.

Sometimes that happened to people for like a week.

And then they had to go through these lawful ceremonial bathing ceremonies and then sacrifice two dubs or two pigeons, and then they could come back to the temple.

But for this lady, it had been 12 years.

She had been what we call marginalized, pushed to the outskirts, ceremonially unclean.

There was a whole list of laws that made people ceremonially unclean in the ancient Torah and law.

This was one of them.

So imagine her getting this issue.

Then it makes her broke.

She spends everything she has on doctors.

None of it helps.

In fact, it said it even made her worse, and she has nobody to bear this burden with her.

Man, you want to talk about at the end of your rope.

She is absolutely at the end of her rope.

She's desperate.

Goes on to say this is what happened next.

Having heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd.

That matters.

She's trying to not be seen.

She's trying to not be heard.

She just needs a miracle.

So she's willing to do what the law said she couldn't do, get amongst the crowds, because anyone she touched instantly became ceremonially unclean in her culture.

And if you touched a rabbi when you were unclean, that was the ultimate no-no.

And what's she trying to go do?

Touch a rabbi, Jesus, but she wants to do it ninja style.

She wants to get her healing and get out of there, and nobody ever knew she was there.

So she comes up behind him in the crowd and she touches his robe, for she said this listen to the amount of faith that is in this statement, proven by her willingness to break through the crowds, knowing it would cost her even more social stigma.

She said, if I just touch his robe, I'll be made well.

Listen to what happened on that act of faith.

Instantly her flow of blood ceased.

And she sensed, I can't imagine after 12 years what that would be like.

She sensed in her body that she was healed of her affliction.

Immediately, Jesus realized that power, everybody say power.

Say it one more time.

I love this because here's what desperation does, and where we can find hope in it.

Because I said there's always hope at the end of your rope.

Desperation breeds faith when you channel it towards Jesus.

Nothing in life like being at the end of your rope will stir up faith when you're a person of faith more than you not having any more answers or resource.

Desperation breeds faith, and do you know what faith does?

It takes power from God into your situation.

And that's exactly what's happening right here.

She showed faith in her desperation, and when she touched just the hem of Jesus' garment, that was it.

Power went out from Jesus.

And it says, he turned around in the crowd and said, Who touched my robe?

We say this all the time around here at River Point and West End.

God doesn't ask questions so he can get answers.

He's always asking questions for other reasons, for the people in the crowd that he's at.

He says, Who touched my robe?

Now the disciples don't realize that God doesn't ask questions he needs the answer to, and so uh they try to answer that question.

They said, his disciples said to him, Oh, you see the crowd pressing against you, and yet you say, Who touched me?

Like, Jesus, how are we supposed to know that?

But he was looking around to see who had done this, and now all of a sudden the woman finally comes clean.

She confesses.

The woman, listen to the posture, listen to how she's feeling.

I don't want to go too fast on this.

I want us to use our holy imagination, put ourselves in this moment.

Imagine what it would be like to be her with fear and trembling.

Why would she have fear and trembling when she just got the best miracle of her life?

Don't you think it would be with joy and dancing?

Don't you think she'd want to just start sprinting around and telling everyone, look what the Lord has done?

Look what, right?

You're like, Chad, please stop, please stop.

But I, you know, that's that that's that's what you think would happen.

Why fear and trembling?

Because she thinks she's about to get a lashing.

She just made a rabbi ceremonially unclean.

She already knows that she's been marginalized, she already knows the social stigma she already carries.

She's not trying to make that worse.

She just wanted help and to get back out there.

And yet Jesus isn't going to let it happen.

And so, with fear and trembling, knowing all that had happened to her, she came and notice she does the same thing that who did.

Two people on the opposite ends of the spectrum in every fashion in life.

And when you are at the end of the rope, do you see the unifying effect it has on humanity?

Because all of a sudden their posture is the same.

And it's just this I'm nothing God without you.

Jesus.

I'm at your mercy.

If not for mercy, these issues will probably remain unresolved for the rest of my life.

Her and Gyrus, now all of a sudden, nobody all of a sudden has more common in that massive crowd around Jesus.

Nobody has more in common and are more unified than the two people that we're told are never supposed to be around each other.

Because of our dumb religious and cultural ideologies that we often let happen to us, and we often unfortunately let creep into the church.

And this is why this is such a beautiful There Goes That Man moment, is because Jesus is the ultimate bridge builder, and he is showing Gyrus in this minute.

This girl's problem is as important as your problem with your daughter.

They both matter to me.

Because you could imagine, she fell down before him, and then she told him the what?

The whole truth.

You know what that means?

It's gonna take a minute for her to testify.

Now let's go back to Jairus.

Imagine being the father of uh someone who thinks his daughter might already be dead, and he's sitting there listening to her testify, and he's watching his watch and going, hey, I'm really happy for this lady, but she wasn't dying.

She just had a disease, right?

I have a daughter who's dying.

Jesus, clearly on the scale of importance, that has to be more important.

Can we please go?

And I get that as a father.

He's like, This is my daughter, Jesus.

Do you want to know the very next words out of Jesus' mouth?

Here it is.

He looks at the lady and he says, daughter.

And I bet Gyrus would have gone, oh.

Oh, that is important to you.

That's your daughter.

She's not woman anymore.

She's not the unnamed anonymous woman anymore.

Her identity has been brought back to what it was always meant to be.

Daughter.

Jesus in front of all those crowds, including Gyrus, is saying, Gyrus, I got you.

You don't know yet, but I got you.

I said I would come help your daughter.

I'm gonna come and make good on that.

I'm gonna help your daughter, but not at the expense of stopping and taking the time to help who's my daughter.

Who's been struggling for 12 years and cast out in the name of law by people like you, Gyrus.

No, no, no.

I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna help her.

He calls her daughter.

You wanna like like this is this is restoration at its finest.

He said to her, your faith has saved you, so go in peace.

Peace is the word shalom for them, which means total wholeness, which means salvation.

Go in wholeness, not just physically anymore, but you're my daughter.

You're not just an image bearer anymore, you're my daughter.

Go in peace and be healed from your affliction.

Now, in uh 2001, I was interning at a church in Illinois.

I was a youth intern, and we every Tuesday had meetings, every Tuesday with our uh boss, and she was sitting there with us, and it happened to be September 11th of 2001.

Anyone familiar with that date?

9-11, right?

And if if you were too young for that, let me just remind you what your parents have probably already told you.

This is one of the few days that we all universally have seared into our memories.

Like if you were old enough during that season, you know where you're at when you first saw what you saw on TV.

You know where you were at where you first got the news that our nation was under attack in a way that we had never seen before.

You were starting to hear the warnings of World War III in the immediate hours following.

None of us had ever experienced something of an attack like that.

And so we were, man, desperate.

We were vulnerable.

Not just as one human to the other, as a nation.

It didn't matter what party lines you were on, it didn't matter what kind of beliefs or ideologies or how you voted at that point, all of a sudden there was a unification that came because of what?

Desperation.

Isn't that crazy that we humans have to get desperate before we can get kind to each other again?

Man, I wish it wasn't like that.

But the good news about that part of our human nature is it's precisely when God allows us to get to the point of desperation where he can actually start the process of maturation.

Where he can actually start to teach us what this life is really about versus what we've been taught it's about.

Where he can remove religion out of the picture and he can start to, as we always love to say, bring relationship into the picture.

Make it purer, make it more authentic, make it to be the way he always intended it to be.

And I remember the senior pastor who we didn't see much, he wheeled in this TV.

Kids, ask your parents when you get home, but we used to have TVs, and teachers like would bring them into the classroom and they'd fight for which who got the TV because there was only like three in every school.

He wheels in one of the TVs the church had, and we're like, What are you doing?

Why are you invading her?

And he goes, one of the trade towers just got blown up, a plane flew into it.

And not much longer after that, the second plane we watched, I'll never forget it, sitting in that office.

We watched that second plane fly into the building.

And I've never felt a quietness, such an eerie quietness than that was in that room.

None of us had a context for it, none of us had language for it.

Even our boss, who was a mentor and so schooled and seasoned, just jaw-dropped.

And then we all went about our day, we all got sent home early.

You could just feel the city was quieter.

And our pastoral team decided that on Wednesday, September 12th, Thursday, the 13th, and Friday, the 14th, we would open up the doors of our sanctuary for anyone and everyone in the community who wants to come and pray.

Pray for our nation, pray for our safety, pray for uh whoever was in leadership that they would be able to govern effectively through this.

Pray that World War III could be thwarted.

Pray that uh any responsibility we the church may have had in something like this happening, that we would repent and that we would humble ourselves, that we would fall to our feet, that we would come like like like the gyrus begging, God, God, can you please figure this out?

Now, imagine Richmond campus, imagine this room, but with 2,000 more seats attached to it.

That's the sanctuary at the place I worked in Illinois.

Massive auditorium.

It was never more than half full on Sundays.

That Wednesday night, packed.

That Thursday night, packed, standing room only.

Friday night, packed, standing room only.

Now here's what's even more interesting.

This city in 19 or 2001, this city in Illinois was so far behind the times, and there was a literal river in the middle of the city, and on one side of the town it was mostly black people, and on the other side of the town, it was mostly white people.

Which I had heard stories about, but I didn't know that still like happened.

That was the city I pastored in my first as a young person.

I didn't come from a city like that, and so it just blew my mind.

And for the first time in the four years at that point, five years I had been there, our sanctuary was packed with everybody from every side of the river.

Nobody cared anymore about race, all of the heat that had come in that city for generations that had gotten them to that point.

Nobody cared about politics anymore.

Nobody asked what side of the aisle you're on, nobody was making big arguments and pleas for Republican or Democrat.

Nobody even thought to think anything like that.

We were on our knees.

There were people literally who I went to church with who were like this in worship all the time that were literally like this that week.

Like, God, come on.

And I just remember as a young 20-something who was cutting his teeth, trying to learn what it meant to be a pastor and what it meant to be a leader.

I remember just sitting there observing three nights in a row.

I remember this feeling.

God, I don't want this to end.

God, I don't want them to go back to their church on the other side of the river and us to go back to our church on this side of the river.

God, I want to have church like this again.

And it was at the end of our collective rope that this beautiful leveling of all playoff playing fields for just three days.

I wish it had been so much more.

Happened.

We got a taste of what it could be.

I, as a young pastor, got a standard that I now have to always fight for, even though we got so much further to go.

I have to fight for that.

I want to fight for that because I got to taste something so much better than what I was told we could have.

And I just picture with Jairus and I just picture with this precious woman who had been healed.

I they couldn't, they couldn't see each other the same anymore after that.

We don't get told anything about her, and we don't get told anything about Jairus, but I have to believe with my holy imagination that if we were told about Jairus, there's no way he could have gone back to that job and acted the way he was acting before his daughter almost died.

There's no way he could see the woman with the issue of blood and with integrity keep pushing people like them to the outskirts and the marginalized.

Without helping, without intervening, without sharing resource.

There's no way he could have done that anymore.

In good conscience.

Maybe he, we don't know.

But I gotta believe, man, uh, everybody got a little more unified and started making what matters matter instead of all the crazy little religious games that we think are so important.

See, here's what I guarantee you happened to that woman and to Jairus, even though they were so on the opposite ends of the spectrum in every way in life.

Here's what I guarantee happened.

After that moment, they had to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength to such a deeper degree.

And you know what they had to do?

You know what their hearts had to be accountable to, seeing what they had just seen and witnessing what they had just witnessed?

They had to love each other better.

They had to start loving their neighbor by the like they love themselves.

And and I say that to end with this.

The reason I say that there is always hope at the end of your rope is because we serve a God.

And this is for those of you who right now, you happen to walk into any one of our campuses, please hear me.

And you're saying, Hey, Chad, that's my season right now.

I I'm I'm at a loss.

I'm at wit's end.

All resources have been exercised, and we're still in the same spot, and I no longer have answers and know what to do.

And I just wanted to get to this point in the day to say this.

Please hold on.

Please, this week, get alone, get in private, get in public.

I don't care.

Do what you gotta do.

And and literally, maybe for some of you it's literal, get the posture of your heart here.

Because the chief currency of God's kingdom is mercy, not money.

He loves when we are to the point where mercy is our only hope left.

He does his most powerful, miraculous work when you finally understand that if not for the mercy of Jesus, I'm toast.

I don't care how hard I've worked, I don't care how smart I am, I don't care how successful I've been, I don't care how schooled I have been, how much knowledge I filled my head with, there are gonna be seasons where none of that matters anymore.

And you don't have to wait for that to wake up every real day and realize if not for the mercy of God.

What if that was the posture of our heart before we were at the end of our rope?

What if the first things out of our mouth every day was thank you for another day of mercy, God?

Man, Jesus showed them the most beautiful mercy and he was showing God's heart.

We talked about it last week.

Jesus is the express image of the invisible God.

When you see Jesus do what Jesus does, you know what the unseen God is like.

When you hear Jesus teach the way he teaches, you now know what the unseen invisible God is like.

If you want to know God deeply, know Jesus deeply.

And this moment teaches us so much about what his heart is like, the heart of God, which is if you will just submit to the fact that you are currently products of mercy.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And I don't that you're not condemned by that.

I want to bless you with that.

Let my mercy pour over you.

Let me help you in ways you don't think you deserve.

Come to me when you're at your worst.

I'm not gonna punish you.

I know religious people will, I know sometimes the church will.

Don't come to them, come to me, you who are wearing burden.

Let me meet you at the end of your rope.

Now I wanna be a church, don't get me wrong, I wanna be a church that has the spirit of Jesus where we do meet people with the heart of Jesus.

But I've been in enough church, y'all have been in enough church to see we get sideways real quick, we get pharisaical real quick.

We start policing everybody but ourselves sometimes real quick.

We start comparing our Christian game to other Christian games real quick instead of constantly directing it back to the only thing that matters, which is the cross of Jesus Christ.

That's it, it's simple.

So if you're that person at the end of your rope, I just want to say there's not only hope, but God does his most powerful work right where you're at.

Just keep submitting.

Just don't give up.

Don't give in to the lies that it's over.

Don't give in to the lies that you failed beyond repair.

Don't give in to the lies that you can't and aren't strong enough to get yourself out of this.

You don't have to be.

In your weakness, his power is made purpose uh perfect, his grace and mercy will be sufficient for you.

And when you can exercise that kind of radical faith to trust it, to trust in an outseen, outside, unseen source, I'm telling you, you're set up for miracles in the name of Jesus.

And I'm not gonna sell that short.

So I gotta wrap this up.

I could keep going because I'm feeling good right now.

I'm ready to go.

Let's go.

I'm preaching myself happy right now.

But I gotta pray for us, but for everyone of you that that's you right now, I'm gonna pray the very words of God.

He told us to pray this blessing, which means he wants this for you.

So if that's you, I'm everyone receive this blessing, but if that's you right now, I want you to listen to every word I say because it's the heart of God.

So now, God, in the name of your son Jesus, I pray that you'd bless every single person today.

God, that you would keep us in the grip of your grace, that you would cause your face to shine upon every single one of us.

God, that you and your kindness would turn your countenance towards us again this week.

And every one of us, especially my brothers and sisters, at the end of their rope right now, that you would let us leave our church today with a renewed peace that passes understanding, that is going to guard our hearts and guard our minds.

In the name of Christ Jesus, we pray this.

And everyone said, Man, I love you guys so much.

Go have an awesome day.

We'll see you next week.