The Ache of Unfairness (Luke 15) | Pastor Keith Pittman

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Over the past three weeks, we've been in the series Lost and Found.

And this series has been intended to reveal and bring us into the heart of God, the nature of God, the love of God, the pursuit of God.

And today we're concluding that series with part two of what we spoke about last week.

If you have your Bibles, I want to read this passage of scripture into your hearing, and we're going to be in Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

And we're going to start at verse 25.

This is a continuation of where we left off last week.

So if you missed last week's message, it'll help you to engage it when you can to kind of give you the bookends of this parable because it's it's one story that has two different sections to it.

Starting here at verse number 25, the word of the Lord says this to us.

Now his older son was in the field.

Somebody say, In the field.

And as he came and drew near the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked, What these things meant.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he was received back safe and sound.

But he was angry and refused to go in.

His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father.

He said, Look, these many years I have served you, I have never disobeyed your command, and yet you never gave me a young goat with my friends.

But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you've killed the fattened calf for him, and he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that I have, all that is mine is yours.

It was fitting to celebrate and be glad.

For this is your brother who was dead and is now alive.

He was lost and is now found.

And that's the end of the story.

A father who's celebrating that a son who had wandered off had come back home, simultaneously dealing with another son who's angry and resentful at the father's love towards the other one, and comparison, and he's angry, and the older son is echoing these words in his heart.

This doesn't seem fair.

But God is good.

So today I just want to spend a few moments concluding this series and bringing it all together with a message that I've entitled The Lost Son Part 2.

But the asterisk is lost at home because it's possible to be in proximity of God and still be away from Him.

We're gonna pray and then we're gonna dismiss the youth.

I didn't forget you guys, but I wanted y'all to hear this.

I may have thought I forgot you, but I see you out there.

But if anybody can wrestle with things not being fair sometime, it's our youngest.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your faithfulness.

We thank you so much for your goodness and these reminders where we can come together as a community, as a family, to be encouraged, to be challenged, to be inspired by the truth that is found in your word.

Lord, right now I ask that every single one of us that we genuinely lean in because I believe that you prophetically want to deposit something in us that can change the trajectory of our lives.

Today, God, we're gonna celebrate baptisms.

Today we're gonna take communion together, and I believe that many of us who are distant from you are gonna draw closer to you as a result of what the Holy Spirit is already doing.

So, Lord, I just ask that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear your truth, and open hearts to receive everything that you have for us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

This the youth, you guys can go ahead and be dismissed, and as we are taking our seats, turn to someone around you and say, You look good today.

You look good today.

And depending on the enthusiasm in which they said it, that might be a brunch date right there.

I'm just trying to help y'all, I'm trying to help y'all find whatever is next for you.

You look good today.

You know, family, I I've been, this series has really been speaking deeply to my heart, personally, deeply on a multitude of levels, and and and and engaging this particular passage over the past week in some change and knowing that this is bringing it all together, it's really kind of been bringing up a lot of things for me.

I'm I'm reminded about 15, maybe 18 years ago where a group of friends of mine, pastor friends in ministry, we had gone to a pastor's conference.

And this pastor's conference is really designated towards pastors and ministry leaders.

Um, and it's meant to be a safe space because it's it can be challenging to be in ministry.

It can be challenging to be in a space that we find ourselves in, and so it's a spot where we can come, we can be encouraged, we can exchange ideas, we can be sharpened.

It's it's a beautiful experience.

I've been going for for many years.

And this particular year, um, I'd went with about four or five of my closest ministry friends to this conference.

It was a lot of it was a lot of interactions, a, a lot of, a lot of connections, a lot of relationship building.

And then the keynote that was going to be taking place on one of the final nights was given by a guy who had had an epic moral failure of quantifiable proportions.

It it was it was very well seen.

It it was deeply impactful for for him, his family, the ministry that he was a part of.

It was it was deeply impactful.

So this was the keynote speaker.

He had kind of gone off into obscurity for about five years or so, and now he was back in a room full of pastors to tell his story.

And and while he was telling his story, he didn't gloss over the messy parts, he didn't in any way minimize his sin and his mistake.

In fact, he he told the story in a very compelling, cautionary tale type of way.

Of saying, hey, as a person in ministry, as a person in leadership, I'm I'm aware of the blind spots that some of us have because we don't even know it.

So he was speaking from that space.

He was speaking from a space of understanding and walking in the authority of our influence, but being sensitive about not having the proper protocols in place to protect you.

He was he was revealing that no matter how close you are to God, that it's possible that that sin is always lurking at the door, and you need to never turn a blind eye to these temptations.

It was a powerful message, it was a powerful, life-altering sermon, and at the end of it, he he had an altar call and the altar was packed.

Thousands of pastors had come down looking to just receive encouragement, looking to receive impartation, and he laid hands and prayed and declared over everyone that was in the room.

It was really one of the most monumental ministry experiences that I can even ever remember having.

At the end of the night, my friends and I, we got into the car and we drove to the local restaurant, and as we were there, it was a lot more quiet than it typically is.

My friends, they love God, but they're a hot mess.

So, so as we were sitting there, that was not like us to be sitting in a space where there was so much, so much silence and so much tension.

You could kind of feel it as we're all processing what just took place and making sense of where we were in all of these things and asking questions of like, man, like do I have these vulnerabilities?

It was really a personal moment.

But then there was a moment of levity because one of my friends, who's the ultimate comedian of the group, he looks at us as he looks at the menu and he slams the menu down.

He says, Guys, I figured it out.

All we have to do is have a moral failure and come back, and that's how we're gonna get our book deal.

Everybody started laughing.

It was one of the most hilarious, well-timed jokes you can ever imagine.

I mean, it was it was laughter coming from the depths of the soul.

We were just laughing to the point of tears coming there, and and it was really meant in jest.

We stayed in that moment for just a few minutes and then we moved on with the rest of the night.

But when I got to my hotel room that night and and I found that I couldn't sleep, I just felt like this weight was on my chest.

And I don't say that lightly, I literally mean like I was trying to sleep and I just couldn't rest.

And what I've learned in my relationship with God is a lot of times when I feel that pressing, that spiritual pressing, that's often God wanting to get my attention.

So I did what I typically do.

I reached for my Bible, I opened it up, and I just began to read.

And God wasn't leading me into any particular thing.

I wasn't going towards my reading plan, I wasn't in message prep mode.

I just found myself just kind of reading and skimming, reading and skimming.

And then it brought me to Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

And I've read this multiple, multiple, multiple times.

And as I'm reading through the story of the lost sheep, I'm I'm I'm I'm filling in the words similar to the way that we would do a dialogue of a movie that we watched hundreds of times.

I know these parts all too well.

We get past the lost sheep, and then we get to the part of the lost coin, and I'm looking at that, and I'm like, of course, I can I'm I'm I'm I'm mining out principles and I'm thinking about like how beautiful it is to people who still have value even in the shadows.

And then I get to the prodigal son, and as I'm reading the story of the prodigal son, and I'm I'm a I'm familiar with it, he goes off into a into a far country and he he he loses all of his wealth with with wretched living.

I'm familiar with all of those things, but when I got to verse number 25, I stopped.

Because I had never considered in my life that I may potentially have older son tendencies.

Lying there in the dark, I realized in that moment that that joke wasn't just a joke to bring levity, it wasn't just a moment to kind of lighten the mood.

I believe that that joke was the commentary of where some of us can get when we get to a space and we ask the question, why hasn't my faithfulness been rewarded like that?

I have faithfully walked with God and I didn't get these speaking engagements.

I have faithfully raised my family, and no one's inviting me onto their podcast.

Why does it seem as if the people who explode in life and somehow find a way to bring the pieces back together, those are the ones who get the notoriety, those are the ones who get the attention, those are the ones who get the respect, those are the ones we want to get the life hacks from.

And in that moment, I found myself saying, God, that just doesn't seem fair.

It doesn't seem fair that I've tried to steward my life in a way that brings glory to you, and it seems as if it doesn't even matter.

After many years of engaging this scripture, I never considered that maybe I drifted into the lane of the older son.

Jesus is talking to a group of people who personify and are the characteristic of the older son.

Let us remember that Jesus is talking to Pharisees and scribes.

This is why he's telling these stories.

He's speaking to older sons.

And their complaint wasn't about theology, their complaint wasn't about God's goodness, their frustration was with the access he was given to people who didn't seem to earn it.

The older son syndrome.

The Pharisees, they had been faithful, they given their life to studying scripture, they tithed, they fasted, they prayed, they did all the things that scripture tells you that a disciplined person is supposed to do, and now it seems as if Jesus is giving access to people who don't even know what Psalm 23 is.

And to them they were saying, Jesus, this doesn't seem fair.

Why are we doing all of this if it doesn't give us access?

So Jesus speaking to these group of people who are frustrated with the grace he's extending to them, and he tells them three different stories lost, lost coin, lost sheep, lost sons, and and he begins to show them that this entire storytelling arc that I'm on, it all lands on you.

And he doesn't end the story with the party, he ends it with the conversation with the older son, letting them know that you have a choice to whether or not you want to participate in this party.

The text tells us that this son, that he was faithful to the work of the father, but he was distant from his father's heart.

Let's give him some credit here, though.

He didn't run away to the far country like his younger brother did.

He he didn't demand his inheritance early.

He was in the field, working, consistent, and being present.

That he's the one that when his brother left, who had to feel the questions of the people who were saying, Hey, where's your brother at?

I thought he was supposed to be a part of this whole movement as well, and the shame that he felt as a result of that.

He was the one who saw his father on the front porch day after day longing for the son who left, instead of embracing the son who remained, he was the one who had to navigate through doing extra work because his brother left him off to do it on his own.

So he was faithful, but he grew distant.

He was in the field.

And the field is not a bad place, but that's what makes it so dangerous.

Because the field is the job that we started that we can't take a break from because we're afraid of what happens if we slow down.

The field is the ministry role that we said yes to out of love, but now we carry it out of obligation.

The field is the is the marriage that we're so busy being faithful in that we forget to be close with them.

The field is the parenting season that you find yourself in where you give everything to your kids but stop receiving something for yourself.

The field is serving at church and volunteering, showing up early, leaving late.

But also recognizing you haven't talked to God in weeks.

The field is not the faraway country, and nobody is out in the field wasting their life, and that's what's so scary about it.

Because we know the faraway country will ruin you.

We know that.

But the field will drain you and you will call it faithfulness.

And the older son, who has been out there in the field for so long that it became his actual identity, he didn't even know there was a party going on, he didn't even know that joy was an option in his father's house because he was convinced that the duty was the ceiling of his father's goodness.

Tim Keller says it this way: the older brother has kept all the rules, he's never embarrassed the family, he served faithfully, but his obedience shifted from love and to leverage.

He was not relating to his father, he was trying to manage him.

And hear me, friends.

That's not relationship, that's a business arrangement with religious language.

Being in the field is not the same as being in a relationship with the father.

Activity is not the same as intimacy, attendance is not the same as affection, and showing up is not the same as belonging.

This this son was he was there, but yet he was still distant.

And the text tells us that as he's coming back from working in the field, he hears the sound of celebration, he hears the echoes of music, he understands that there's dancing and things going on.

He he didn't ignore it, he he understood the symbols of it, he understood the movement, he's seen the activity, he's seen the movements of the people, he saw the servants and and what it looks like to have a party, and he's filled with curiosity.

But the problem is he didn't go to his father to get these things resolved, he he deflected it to the servant.

We have to be very careful of the places that we take our frustration to.

We have to be very careful of the people that we invite into our pain because oftentimes they will validate a distance that God is quickly trying to break off of us.

He doesn't go to his father.

He's close enough to hear the music, but too far to understand why there needs to be a celebration.

And some of you know exactly what this feels like.

You you've been in church for so long that you know the songs.

You know the part where you're supposed to lift your hands, you know the part where you're supposed to give.

We have all the movements, but somewhere along the way, the song stop being something you can fully engage and enter into.

I know the words, but I don't know the truth.

And what closes us off in these moments, this area where calluses can begin to build, it's not the faraway country.

But what often creates these wounds on the inside of the older brothers is the thing that was never healed, the prayer that goes unanswered, the sacrifice that seems to go unrecognized, the resentment that we carry for so long that it starts to feel like it's discernment, the distance that we begin to justify, the the scripture, the biblical band-aids that we use to keep ourselves from genuinely sitting with God in our disappointment.

And you're not the only person in the house of God who has ever felt that way.

That feeling of this just doesn't seem fair.

I've done the stuff, I've done what you've asked me to do, and why does it feel as if I'm not getting the blessings and breakthroughs that people who don't know anything about you, God?

I've seen people get breakthroughs in prayer after one prayer.

I've prayed over people, things I'm praying in my own family, and I still haven't seen it, and yet they got it next week.

And then I get the testimony card and look at what God did, and He used you as a vessel.

I'm like, oh, that's amazing.

But if I'm honest, that doesn't seem fair.

And it's possible to show up in the house of God, walking in this duality, filled with frustration, trying to be a vessel that's used by God while also harboring deep disappointment.

And we're not alone in this.

This is why I love the book of Psalms so much, because the book of Psalms brings us on these emotional journeys from David and other writers that shows us their vulnerabilities, it shows us their success, it shows us their failures, it brings us on this journey.

And Asaph, he's a worship leader of Israel, he's the most faithful musician in the temple.

And he opens with one of the most honest confessions in Psalm 73.

I wanna I want to read this to you.

I want you to think that this is the person who faithfully serves God.

And in verse number two and three, he says this, but as for me, I almost lost my footing.

My feet were slipping, I was almost gone.

For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.

This is the man who's serving in the house of God, and he's saying, I'm frustrated with seeing people who were not in proximity to God to get all these miracles, and I'm not getting one.

He goes on in verse number 13 and says, Did I keep my Heart pure for nothing.

Come on, I'm talking to somebody.

Did I do all this for nothing?

Did I serve for nothing?

Did I give for nothing?

Did I keep myself for nothing?

Did I that I genuinely try to honor and I'm not getting the honor in return?

Did I do all this for nothing?

Did I keep myself innocent for no reason?

I get nothing but trouble all day long.

Every morning brings me pain.

And some of us feel like this could be a part of your journal, it seems so cutting to the reality of where you are.

I'm doing all these things, and every day there seems to be a new problem, there's a new setback, there's a new challenge, and I've done all these things, and I'm reading the word of God, and I'm trying to have an even if moment.

But the truth of the matter is, God, I have expectations, and it's just not fair.

That's not the prayer of pride, that's the cry of a person who's been faithful but still suffering.

But here's what I want you to notice Asaph didn't leave it there.

He took that pain, and the text tells us he brought it into the sanctuary.

Verse number 16 says this.

He says, So I tried to understand why the wicked prosper, but it was a difficult task.

Then I went into your sanctuary, O God, and I finally understood.

He said, I tried to figure it out on my own terms and I couldn't do it, but I went into the house of God and I began to see things more clearly.

He brought his confusion into the presence of God, not away from it.

And that's the difference between lament and resentment.

Lament walks through the door with pain, but resentment stands outside and lets the pain build a wall.

And God is challenging us in these moments when we're dealing with frustration, when we're dealing with disappointment, when we're dealing with grief, when we're dealing with things that just don't seem fair.

He's saying, I understand that.

Will you bring that into my presence with you?

The text tells us.

The text tells us that at some point the son hears about his brother coming back and being celebrated and he loses it.

It says that he was so filled with anger, so filled with disappointment that he had made a decision.

I'm not going to be a part of that.

I'm not going to celebrate that.

I'm going to distance myself from that.

He had this inner righteousness because on the inside of him he was thinking to himself, I am better than him because I didn't make the choices that he's made.

And if we're honest with ourselves, we can sit here in silence because I know it's uncomfortable.

But all of us have had that self-righteous moment.

As if we don't need God's grace every day.

I may, I may do this, but I don't do that.

I may be over here, but I'm not over there.

I'm not like those people.

I didn't do those things.

And so I can sit on my moral high ground and look down on people because they haven't had the struggles that I've had.

They haven't made the choices that I've made, and it's all on them.

And so I'm going to distance myself and put myself on a different plateau.

So this brother said, I'm going to distance myself from him and his sin.

I'm better than him.

And so the father's inside, celebrating with his youngest son.

And they're talking.

And there's a moment where the text doesn't tell us, but there's a moment where he he understands that his oldest son is absent.

We don't know how that information came to him.

Maybe the servant told him, maybe he saw his son in a distance pacing, but that awareness came to the father.

So the father gets up and he goes outside to pursue the son.

And what I think we can often miss is that the father did the exact same thing for the oldest son that he did for the younger.

He got up and he went to him.

And the other one was so angry he couldn't even recognize that he needed the love of his father the same way that his younger brother did.

That's what pride does to us.

It makes us blind to our own shortcomings while we're pointing the finger at everybody else, not recognizing that we all need the same grace from a good God.

The Bible tells us that the sheep ran off and the shepherd left the 99 to go for the one.

The coin slipped and the woman lit a lamp and swept up until she found it.

The prodigal ran off and the father ran through the street to go and get him.

And now the older son is standing outside the door, and the father who's inside hosting the party, he stops the celebration.

He goes up and goes out to get him again.

The father is actively showing grace on both ends of the spectrum.

And notice the father didn't leave him there.

He didn't wait for him to get it right, he didn't yell from inside the house to do the right thing.

He goes out while his son is in the midst of refusal.

And the text tells us that he goes out to his son and entreats him.

I'm not sure the last time you used the word entreat in a sentence, but let me give you some other words that can help you to get a clear understanding of what entreat means.

To entreat means to exhort, that means to compel.

It means to beg.

It means to invite.

It means to encourage.

It's literally the same language that Jesus uses for us when we go out and we evangelize and tell people about the good news of the gospel.

The father literally went outside and preached a sermon to his son about how he is welcome and needs to be a part of the celebration.

But it's in this moment he could not convince his son.

The father was standing right in front of him.

He showed up with his presence.

He was biting him into a space of intimacy where he could partake of the very thing that he was mad at someone else for getting, and he couldn't see it because his anger, his pride, his resentment, his pain, his disappointment didn't allow him to see what was right in front of him.

And then it all comes out.

He says this to his father.

He said, Look, these many years I have served you.

That I might celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours shows up, you gave him the best.

Might I remind you that he's the one who devoured our property and was out in these streets with these prostitutes?

We don't know what he came back to this house here with.

Don't act like we don't keep record of where people been.

I don't know what he got on him.

And you just gonna let him you just gonna let him sit next to you?

You gonna give him your robe?

You gonna give him the sandals?

You're gonna give him the ring that should have been mine?

Like, bro, like what is going on right now?

This isn't fair.

This outburst reveals two things about the sun that I think can live inside of all of us.

Because the first thing that he said is, I've served you these many years.

He doesn't say I've loved you, he doesn't say I've been in relationship with you, he doesn't say I've walked in fellowship with you.

He says, I've served you.

He has been in the father's house, but somewhere along the way, he stopped con he stopped calling it home.

He'd been doing the father's work and forgot that it's actually a privilege.

He was living like an employee inside of the family, and it can happen so subtly, even for us who are engaged in the things of God.

And sometimes it's semantics, but sometimes it's an echo of the heart because we have to watch our conversations where it's like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow?

I have to serve.

I have to serve, I have to get there early.

And somewhere along the way, it works its way into our vocabulary that what should be a privilege that God has invited us to to be a part of this sacred work, it is now turned into a burden that we resent.

It can sneak in so quickly.

Isaiah in chapter 29, verse 13, he says it this way The people praise me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

Our mouth can be present, but our heart can be absent.

Our body's in a field, but our soul is somewhere entirely different.

The elder son didn't leave physically, but emotionally and spiritually, he had already checked out.

And some of us have drifted into a space where the things that we do for God, it feels more like an obligation than an invitation and an overflow of the love that we have for him.

It happens when children stop being children and start functioning like contractors.

The second thing that the son says, and I think it's so revealing, is he says that this son of yours, he didn't say my brother, he said this son of yours.

The elder son refused to say it's his brother.

That's just not rudeness, that's a theological statement.

He was literally trying to rewrite the family, he was declaring in his anger, I do not share the same father as this man.

And that's the thing about us sometimes that we don't even realize that can creep into our hearts, is that we stop looking at the others as our family, and we start thinking of them as our ops.

Those people over there, that denomination over there, those political people over there, that posture, that posture over there.

We begin to get into this space where we lose sight that we're all made in the image of God, we're all children of God who are trying to get into the presence of God, and we lose sight of that, and we distance ourselves from the very people that God has called us to do community with.

Not every person who's standing outside of the door got there through pride.

They're standing outside because their faithfulness did not protect them from the devastation that they can sometimes experience.

The child that they prayed for that didn't make it, the marriage that they fought for that still ended, the diagnosis that came anyway, and they watched someone with the stench of the world come in and get the very thing they had been laboring for for years.

The older brother's real problem isn't that he had pain, it's that he allowed the pain to get so deep that he stopped bringing it into the presence of his father.

The resentment began to rewrite the story.

And I want you to know that maybe you're in here right now, and maybe there's some things that are unanswered, maybe there's some disappointments you're walking through, and there's a space where we're we're declaring what a God, what a God, and we're we're saying that if the highest place I can get is at your feet, then I have it all.

But to reconcile that with, but Lord, here's some desires of my heart that seems as if in one moment you can change it.

And I don't understand why you haven't.

And I'm trying to sit with that dichotomy.

But the father comforts him in this moment because somewhere along the way, the older son began to believe that if you're doing that for him, then it's not available for me.

But the father says in verse 31, Son, you are always with me.

And here's the thing, and all that I have is yours.

The son just finished his speech that was full of accusation and distance and scorekeeping, and the father doesn't argue, he doesn't correct the record, he doesn't negotiate, he doesn't pull out his own ledger, he simply reminds the son of who he is.

Me blessing him doesn't mean that I don't have something also for you.

The breakthrough for him doesn't mean that that means that there's a limitation for you, and the scarcity mindset that exists within people who are followers of Christ but obsessed with culture is they believe that God is very limited, and if God is doing something over here, then that means it's coming at my expense.

But I serve a God of abundance, and when I see that he's moving on your behalf, I begin to believe the same God that is doing it for you can absolutely do it for me.

The same God that has brought you your miracle is the same God that can bring me my miracle, the same God that broke addiction off of your family is the same God that can break addiction off of my family.

Maybe I'm still waiting for it, maybe I'm still believing for it, maybe I'm still declaring it, maybe I'm still fasting for it.

But the Bible that I read says God doesn't have any respecters of person, that God is faithful, and I'm gonna stand in the field, but I'm also gonna be in the Father's house and I'm gonna be faithful to what he says, not out of obligation, because I've come to the revelation that inside of the presence of God is the fullness of joy, that inside of the presence of God is where my breakthrough takes place, that inside of the presence of God is where the healing is going to be.

So I will not allow anger to distance me from the very thing that can bring me the relief that I need.

And some of us need to be reminded of Romans 8, where it says that we are children of God and join heirs with Christ.

Ephesians 1 reminds us that we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, not based off of my performance, but because of what Jesus did 2,000 years ago.

You cannot earn what has already been paid for.

You just gotta be faithful, you you just gotta stand still and see the salvation of God.

And we have to believe that God is working all things together for the good.

The Bible says that when Paul was called into ministry, that God's message to him was, you're gonna suffer many things for my namesake.

And Paul, while he was used to do incredible things, he's a legend of the faith.

He wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, but the Bible says that he also lost his sight for a season, he lost his friend group for a season, that he had to deal with being shipwrecked for a season.

But God used him to do some things that were exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think.

And all of us have a cross that we have to carry.

And just because I got a cross and I got some splinters, it does not mean that God is not faithful, it does not mean that God is not doing something in you, it does not mean that God has forgotten you.

I promise you that weeping may endure for a night, but joy will come in the morning.

I declare over this church that this is the year of more.

And I'm not talking about more stuff, but I'm talking about more of the presence of God.

I'm talking about more breakthroughs, I'm talking about more signs and wonders, I'm talking about more restoration, I'm talking about more healing, I'm talking about more freedom, I'm talking about less bondage, I'm talking about more of God, more of Jesus, more of God in my family, more of God in my finances, more of God in every area of my life.

Lord, do the work in me, and I will stand faithful to you no matter what.

This is the year of more in Jesus' name.

That is the word of the Lord for our church.

And maybe you're in here right now and you feel much like the elder brother, where some things just don't seem fair.

And let me tell you something, it may not be, it may not be, but let me remind you of something so simple, so pure, so challenging, but also so encouraging.

God sees you, and God is faithful.

He sees you, and he's faithful.

He sees you, he sees your tears, he sees your disappointment, he sees your heartbreak.

And I know on this side of glory, we may not understand why some of the heartbeaks that we have are even there, but I promise you, he will not leave you nor forsake you.

He is working all things together for the good, but right now he's saying, You've been outside long enough.

Come on inside and participate in this celebration because guess what?

Everything that I have is also yours, and maybe the enemy has convinced you there is something that God has that he's holding out on.

Let me say this as boldly, as clearly as I can.

The devil is a liar, the truth is not in him, and the way that you know that the devil is lying is when he is speaking because the truth is not in him.

So if you hear voices that are saying something to you that is inconsistent with God's word, your response is the devil is a liar, the truth is not in him.

The Bible that I read says this, and that is what I'm choosing to stand on, that is what I'm choosing to walk into, that is what I'm choosing to believe, that is what I'm declaring.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipped in the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.