Shaped in the Shadows

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hey, good morning.

How are we doing?

Good to see you.

Welcome to Awakening.

Absolutely thrilled.

It's great to be back.

My wife and I, we gotta do this.

This was amazing.

So my daughter is studying abroad in France, uh studying art, which is amazing.

Uh yeah, she's taking classes like pottery in the middle of a vineyard or something like that.

I'm like, how is this school?

This is incredible.

Celebrated her 21st birthday.

We gotta go celebrate with her.

Uh this is a picture of Jenny and me and Ella.

And because she loves art, she loves museum, we gotta take her to like the museum, the Louvre, you know.

This was amazing.

Here's a picture of uh Ella and I at the um in front of yeah, in front of the Mona Lisa.

You know, they used to have like a line that you'd kind of go through, and now it's just like full-on football.

Like it's just you rush to the front, it's a massive crowd, you're kind of elbowing to get all the way to the front.

Takes a bit, but it we gotta get all the way there.

It was a blast.

Um, and during my time there, I learned something about art, just figured that.

Uh, you know, and I was reading the book on this, and just the difference is totally fascinating to me.

The way uh we moderns think about art and the way the ancients thought about art, or even as the book was saying, and uh the way uh Westerners tend to think about art, and even today, the way uh the Eastern mind thinks about art, and and then it's just simply this question like, think about this.

Where does a work of art begin?

Like, where does it, like the origins of it, where does it originate?

And if you're like me, you would probably answer that it begins with uh a blank canvas.

You know, it's just this blank canvas.

I'm gonna turn it this way.

There we go.

Didn't you feel that?

It's like so much better now, right?

Um, it begins with this blank canvas of like you can create whatever you want.

It's just before you, it's out of nothing, you know, you get whatever your mind's eye comes to life.

And and that fits the way we think so much today, doesn't it?

Is of like, okay, Western, uh especially American mindset of like this, you know, you have this blank canvas of life.

Imagine it, visualize it, manifest it, and whatever your dreams are, they'll come true.

You can be whatever you want to be.

And so you just grab some of the paints of life.

And yes, I'm gonna try to paint.

Uh haven't done this in a very long time, but if but if we were thinking about like, okay, painting your masterpiece, painting your life, like it might look something like this.

That we well, we want to have um, you know, like this.

It oops, sorry.

Got, you know, sunny days, right?

That's the reason we spend so much money in the Silicon Valley, so that we have this beautiful, oh, raise the sun.

There you go.

Um, I would this will be for sale after the service.

Um, these beautiful, sunny days, and we we long for blue skies, right?

I mean, just this, oh, this blue, beautiful ease, like some version of the masterpiece that we're looking at has to do with like the American dream of comfort and success and upward mobility and and and being able to have adventure and pleasure and all the rest.

And and we we paint these things, we come up with like this is our life.

It's a this blank canvas, and you get to do it, you get to be it, but then but then there's this problem.

Because the problem is the picture, the idea in our head, the masterpiece of what we want our life to be doesn't always turn out the way we thought it would, does it?

And then there's what happens when like the storms of life begin to come in and rain clouds start to darken the picture.

Or gosh, the trauma and the pain and betrayal stuff in our life.

And all of a sudden, our masterpiece doesn't look the way we wanted it.

There's things that what we do is then we we try to cover it up.

We're like, hey, hello, just look at this part.

This is fantastic over here.

This is my Instagram picture perfect.

I'm gonna add some more blue.

There you go, right?

And what do we do with this part?

What do you do with the pain?

What do you do with the trauma?

What do you do with the difficulties?

What do you do with the things in your life that have been done to you or that you have done that feel like it's wrecked your masterpiece?

See, I think a lot of us instead of feeling like a masterpiece of work of art, we just feel a little bit like a chaotic mess.

We're just trying to figure out how do we fix this in some way.

Now, the Eastern or ancient understanding wasn't a blank canvas.

They actually believe that art already exists.

The artist's job is simply to reveal it.

It's the belief that every block of stone has a statue inside it, and the task of the sculptor is to discover it.

Now at the Louvre, we were walking around, we gotta see all the highlights, right?

Uh, and we gotta see this by Michelangelo.

I did some editing.

Uh, just you know, this is the PG version, just want to give you that.

I did a little bit of a little blurry out there, yeah, uh, of two slaves.

This was actually commissioned by Pope Julius II for his own tomb, is very extravagant, like 40 figures.

I'm like, hello, humility guy.

Come on.

Uh but Michelangelo is crafting this, and he says this incredible line.

He says, the sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work.

It's already there.

I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

He's attributive saying, I saw an angel in the marble and I carve it until I set it free.

See, it's the difference, and I I got a piece of marble here.

Oh boy.

Um dear friend, your Kevin Thayer.

Yeah, I just want to do that so you know it's real.

Um thank you, Kevin.

Where he generally sits on this side.

I don't know where he's at.

There you are.

Um and uh sorry, I got a little dirty there.

Instead of a blank canvas, the picture for the ancients was that the art is already there.

Instead of you be whatever you be, that there's actually a masterpiece right here.

And as you chisel, as you take away, as you thoughtfully, carefully, strategically chip and chisel away, you begin to see this piece of art revealed within the marble.

Slowly and carefully, precisely, the extra that is hiding the masterpiece is taken away, so you see exactly what was there all along.

Now, the blank canvas, by the way, puts a ton of pressure on us, doesn't it?

It sounds great.

You can be whatever you be, paint your own picture, manifest your destiny.

It sounds fantastic, but then you're like, will I choose the right colors?

Will it turn out to be a work of art or a chaotic mess?

Get it, paint the life that makes you happy.

So we pursue comfort, ease, pleasure, and then become disillusioned when life brings difficulty, pain, hardship, trauma.

And so we run, we numb, we cover up the painful to difficult.

Now here's what's interesting is the Bible, when speaking of your life, doesn't speak of the blank canvas, but of the masterpiece.

In fact, uh we've said it every week.

Ephesians 2, 10 says, for you are, for we are God's masterpiece.

Workmanship.

Not will be, not hope to be, not could be.

Present tense.

You are his masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works, which he's prepared in advance for you to do.

That he is at work in our lives, that you are his masterpiece, that he has a dream and design for your life, and you don't want to miss it?

What if the difficulties, the pain, the challenges of life are actually the process of chipping and chiseling away the extra, the superfluous things that are keeping you from living out who God intended and designed and made you to be?

Could it be that there actually is purpose within the pain of your life?

We're in this series, I think it's incredibly important, called Dreaming Wide Awake.

The truth is, so many of us we're going through life and we feel dead inside.

Breathing, moving, working, yes, but not fully alive alive.

We're going through the motion, seeking by sleepwalking, as it were, existing, but not really living, wondering, is this all there really is?

And we asked this question right at the beginning: how do you embrace a God-sized dream for your life?

How do you live for something bigger, more fulfilling, filled with meaning?

And we're looking at this story, the life of Joseph, an unlikely person to live out a God-sized dream for his life.

As you know, if you've been around, he's the 11th of 12 brothers from an obscure corner of the Roman, or not the Roman, but the ancient world.

His family literally put the fun in dysfunction, circumstances stacked against him, and if it could go wrong, it did.

And we're diving into that as it goes from bad to worse.

And yet his life didn't just impact and save his family, it rescued nations.

Week one, we talked about this dare to dream with God.

God has a dream for your life.

His dream is actually better than your dream.

However, he's not in a hurry and his timing's perfect.

Last week, my dad stepped in as Joseph was betrayed by his brother, sold into slavery, and said, This is the death of a dream that God must work deeply in you before he works greatly or significantly through you.

And today, we want to lean in and really wrestle with what is God up to when the difficulties of life are threatening to derail your dream?

You didn't get the promotion, you didn't get into the school of choice, your girlfriend, boyfriend broke up with you, your marriage is on life support, your kids have walked away from you or from God, you've been betrayed by a close friend, a co-worker, you got a biopsy report, you lost a loved one.

What if my life hasn't turned out the way I pictured it, I dreamed it, I thought it would.

What is God doing when it feels like He's doing nothing?

Sermon titled Today is Shaped in the Shadows.

Would you say that with me?

The big idea I'm gonna give you it right up front, and we're just gonna be circling back to this over and over, is simply this.

You'll find this woven all throughout scripture that difficulty is not derailment but development.

Difficulty, pain, trials is not derailment from your God-given dream, it's actually development.

In fact, James, the brother of Jesus in James chapter 1, verse 2, said it this way: consider it all joy, brothers and sisters.

James 1:2

When you face trials of many kinds, consider it all joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the test in your faith develops perseverance.

Perseverance must finish its work.

There should be a chiseling away of these things so that you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Now, the ark of Joseph's life, as we've seen, it begins with a dysfunctional family from zero to 17, moves on to a formation detour of 13 years of his life, betrayed by his brother, sold into slavery, unjustly accused, imprisoned.

By the way, we do not get to bypass formation detour in our life to live out our God-sized dream.

You don't get to opt out of it.

It is the chiseling process that God forms us and forms our character to step into fulfill the destiny as he becomes the second in command of Egypt.

Difficulty is not derailment, but development.

We pick up the story in Genesis chapter 39.

Genesis 39 · chapter mention

If you got your Bibles, you can open up your app or your uh actual literal hard copy uh analog Bible.

If not, it's in your notes or on the screen behind me.

Now, Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.

Potiphar, an Egyptian, who was one of Pharaoh's official, the captain of the guard, brought him from the bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.

Now, Joseph, okay, remember, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, he's now in the superpower Egypt, brand new culture, uh, brand new language.

He is a slave.

Where is God in the midst of all this?

The Lord was where with Joseph.

Where's God in the midst of pain?

Where's God in the midst of the hardship?

Where's God in the midst of the things that you wish weren't a part of your story?

He's with you.

He's with you.

He hasn't abandoned you, he's with you in the middle of it.

So, Joseph the Lord was with Joseph, so that he prospered and lived in the house of his Egyptian master.

When his master saw that the Lord was what?

With him, you gotta give me a little bit more, but that's fine, we'll work on it.

And that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in the eyes and became his attendant.

I love this.

Joseph is in unfavorable circumstances and yet still found favor.

It wasn't like, hey, I have unfavorable circumstances, so I can't have favor anymore.

He's in unfavorable circumstances.

We'll find out why, of the way he lived his life, that he had the favor of God and man as he's in these unfavorable circumstances.

Potiphar put him in charge of his household and entrusted to his care everything he owned.

From the time he put him in charge to his household and all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.

The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had in the house and on the field.

So Potiphar, smart guy, left everything he had in Joseph's care.

With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food that he ate.

Now, Joseph was well built and handsome.

Good for you, big guy.

And after that, a while, and after a while, his master's wife took notice of him, hmm, and said, Come to bed with me.

But he refused.

This is so important.

With me in charge, he told her, My master does not concern himself with anything in the house.

Everything he owns, he's entrusted to my care.

No one is greater in this house than I am.

My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you're his wife.

How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?

And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.

One day, dun dun dun, he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants were inside.

She caught him by the cloak and said, Come to bed with me.

But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and run out of the house, she called her household servants.

Look, she said to them, this Hebrew that was a d derogatory, racist name for them, has been brought to us to make sport of us.

He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed.

When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.

She kept the cloak beside her until his master came home.

Then she told him this story.

What is God up to when the difficulties of life are threatening to derail your dreams?

What could it be?

That difficulties, pain, challenges, or the process of chipping away the extra superfluous things that are keeping you from becoming who you are made to be.

Why?

Difficulty is not a derailment, but development.

I want to give you three areas that God uses to shape our character in the midst of these uh difficulties, in the midst of these trials.

The three areas, the faithfulness check, uh, the word check, and the integrity check.

The faithfulness check is best versus easiest.

I want you to notice something about Joe.

Betrayed by his brother, sold into slavery, finds himself in a foreign land, learning a new language and culture, with no foreseeable hope of anything changing, period.

From his perspective, this was his new lot.

His God-given dream, dead, his circumstances appear to be final.

He had two choices best or easiest.

The easy thing to do, give up.

The easy thing to do, quit.

Quiet quitting.

You can still show up and just not really show up.

Eke his way through life.

Have a pity party, throw a tantrum, blame God, blame his family.

But Joseph made the choice to be faithful where he was placed.

It wasn't ideal, it was a dead-end job.

It wasn't his dream job.

The painting of his life was dark and filled with betrayal.

He's like, I'm placed here, I'm going to be faithful.

From a human perspective, it certainly could have felt like punishment.

From an internal perspective, it was divine positioning and preparation.

And I want us to recognize Joseph didn't know the end of the story.

And you don't know the end of your story.

All he knew is God had given him a dream, and now he's sold into slavery.

And this divine positioning, think about this.

He was in an obscure part of the ancient world.

Now he's uh brought into the world superpower of Egypt, and he was sold to be a servant, a slave of Potiphar who works for Pharaoh himself.

God is at work behind the scenes in ways that we can't understand, and from our vantage point, we can't see.

And it's so easy to opt out, to give up, to complain and be done.

And it's like, no, no, will you choose what's best or will you choose what's easiest?

Being faithful, being faithful.

Some of you are waiting for the right circumstances to be faithful.

God, when you give me the promotion, when you send me the right person to marry, when you place me in the perfect job, when I finally grow up, when I'm finally older, then I'll follow you and be faithful.

God's classroom for character development isn't in the big moments, it's in the small, hidden moments.

He develops you.

He develops me when nobody's watching.

So you'll be ready and he can trust you when everybody is.

Galatians 6 9 says it this way let us not become weary in doing good.

Why does Paul say not to become weary in doing God?

Because at some point you get weary, you get tired, you get beat down, you go like nobody notices.

I'm completely overlooked.

I'm stuck in this dead-end job.

I'm trying to love my spouse the best, but it's she's not noticing it.

He's not noticing nothing's changing.

I don't know what to do with my kids, but I'm just showing up.

I'm trying to be faithful, what's in front of me, but I'm sowing seeds, but I'm not reaping yet.

And some of us we have given up before God can show up.

Do not grow weary and being and doing good.

Why?

For at the proper time will reap a harvest if you do not give up.

Jesus would say it this way, Luke 16, 10.

The one who is faithful with a very little thing will also be faithful with much.

Let me ask you, do you feel like you have little?

Like a little opportunity, a little role at work, little finances, little relationships?

Be faithful with the little.

Because it's the decisions that we make in obscurity that shape our destiny.

Joseph had no idea that this moment was preparation as he was put in charge of Potiphar's household, learning leadership skills, learning management skills.

He's being shaped in ways that he had no idea that this was not a setback.

This setback was actually a setup for what God had for him next.

But he had to be faithful with where God placed him in that moment.

Because if he wasn't faithful, he wouldn't have developed those skills to be able to step into second command and lead a nation.

But we despise the little.

Second, the word check.

Will we address or will we avoid?

But if their wife notices them, tries to seduce him.

This is not a one-time deal.

This is a constant, daily engagement.

Joseph's response is incredible.

He doesn't avoid it, he doesn't minimize it, he doesn't flirt, he doesn't try to, you know, he addresses it.

I've been entrusted, and so I'm going to be trustworthy.

I will not betray my master.

That's wrong.

And something that you may not get, Potiphar's wife, we don't get her name, Mrs.

Potiphar.

And I get that we don't have the same convictions.

I understand that.

But for me, I will not sin against God.

Here's my clarity.

See, part of the way God develops and grows us is with a word check.

Will we speak truth and love even though it's difficult and hard?

It's uncomfortable, might cost you personally, financially, relationally.

Ephesians 4.15 says, instead, speaking the truth in love will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is Christ.

There's something powerful, this hard, that when we begin to not speak our truth, by the way, God's word, God's truth, in love, it's not just like shouting at somebody.

God's word, God's truth, in love.

We receive God's word and truth from another in love.

That's how he begins to chip away and grow us.

So many of us are resistant to that.

We either don't want to step into what's uncomfortable or we don't want to hear it.

That's how he grows us and shapes us.

You're in a meeting and your manager says, let's just adjust the numbers a little.

Make the report look a little cleaner, if you know.

It's not technically illegal, but it's definitely not honest either.

Do I speak up?

Do I stay silent to protect myself?

You're dating someone who's amazing, but your physical, emotional boundaries that keep getting blurry.

You know it's not healthy, it's not honoring God.

It feels easy to just not talk about it.

Should I bring up the difficult conversation, risk the relationship?

Or do I continue pretending it's fine?

At work or in class or a group chat, someone starts tearing down another person.

You can say, ah, it's harmless, it's no big deal, but you know it's wrong.

Do you redirect, do you address, or do you stay quiet?

So you don't sound too uptight.

Silicon Valley faith is seen outdated, narrow, and anti-intellectual.

So when your beliefs come up in class or at work, you feel the tension.

Do I say something?

Do I speak up?

Do I lovingly represent Jesus or do I hide my faith behind, quote, professionalism?

Your friends drifting, making destructive choices.

You see it, everyone sees it.

But you don't want to be, quote, judgy, so you stay silent.

Do I risk the friendship?

Or do I risk their future by staying quiet?

Word checks are those moments when truth and love collide.

We think avoiding hard conversation keeps the peace, but all it really does is postpone pain.

Faithfulness check, best versus easiest, word check, address versus avoid, integrity check, finally.

Conviction versus compromise.

Joseph's going about his job and he gets blindsided, put in a terrible situation.

Potiphar's wife has emptied the house.

She's planned it out.

Compromise seems like the only option.

Literally could mean not just losing his job, but keeping his life.

Instead, he flees from the room.

Joseph puts into practice 1 Corinthians 6 long before it was ever written.

The Apostle Paul writes this: flee from sexual immorality.

Run from sexual immorality.

Don't stay in the presence of it.

What do we run from?

We run from things that if we entertain them, they'll take us over and they'll take us down.

He says, run from it.

All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but the one who sins sexually sins against their own body.

Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit of God who is in you, whom you have received from God?

You are not your own.

You are bought at a price.

Honor God with your body.

Honor God with your body.

Joseph literally does this.

He's caught in a compromising situation.

Will he hold to his conviction?

I'm gonna honor God with my body or compromise in the moment because it's easier.

Compromise in the moment because it's safer.

Compromise in the moment because you feel like you have no other choice.

And he gets up and he runs.

You know, I remember this passage from like my high school group, by the way.

I remember my high school pastor Dan Kimball.

We've had him speak here a few times.

Uh, he gave this talk on um dating guidelines, you know, dating rules.

I've used them, you know, and uh we even yeah, and so like these are so helpful.

And he gave a few of these, like you know, the bikini rules, like don't touch anything in the bikini area, guys and girls, underneath or overclosed.

I'm like, oh, that makes sense.

That's good, okay.

That's kind of the H factor, he talked about that.

Don't get horizontal, you know, you're already, you know, kind of in a precarious position.

You're watching a movie and you just kind of slide down, right?

Uh, you know, nothing good happens after midnight, is another one, and there's like all sorts of studies that say, yeah, that's really true.

Um, you're you go down in cognition uh and like decision making.

And then the last one he said was Joe's secret weapon.

And Joe's secret weapon was run.

It's like literally, there's some times in your life where you realize to hold to your convictions, you just gotta get out of there.

I remember as a friend, um he was upstairs in his apartment, downtown Capitola, uh, and he was with his girlfriend, and things started to get hot and heavy, clothes were starting to come off, and uh, and he remembers Joe's secret weapon.

Seriously, no lie.

He gets up in the middle of this moment, runs down the steps, and he rumps across the street, over the sand, and jumps into the ocean.

Literally cools himself off.

Like there's just this conviction, like, okay, what conviction do you have?

We live in a culture of compromise.

One of the things that I've talked to my kids over the years is just this whole idea of doing the right thing regardless if things go right.

See, the reason we struggle with conviction is well, if I hold to this conviction, things are not gonna go right.

I might lose my job, I might lose that friendship, I might be impacted.

And we we kind of justify it, don't we?

Well, they made me do it.

I had no other choice.

The answer is you did.

You had lots of other choices.

Small compromises eventually lead to big consequences every time.

No one suddenly wrecks their life.

It's rarely, if ever, a single decision, it's a thousand small ones that go unchecked.

No one plans to cheat on their spouse, no one plans to lose their job over dishonesty, no one plans to shipwreck their faith.

It just happens one small compromise at a time.

It's just a shortcut.

In business or in school, you justify the moral gray areas because it's personally beneficial.

It's not technically wrong, but it's not right either.

You put others down in order to push yourself up, take credit for something that wasn't really yours.

We have this justification.

Everyone else is doing it.

It's what you have to do to survive.

It's just the world we live in.

I mean, in sexuality, it's hookup culture.

I'm lonely.

It's just what people do.

You scroll, you send a harmless quote DM.

You change your route at work or lunch so you can see him or her.

It's just a series of small choices that take you down a path of pain and destruction.

It's the hidden habits, the private browser, the fake account, the story we tell others, and the one you're actually living.

Walter Brugerman, theologian, says this about Joseph.

It is not a calculation about personal well-being that things go right.

More likely, it is an understated sense of being a man of destiny.

A destiny not to be squandered on a fling of passion.

Joseph is not a passionless man.

He has passions, but they are of a very different kind.

Like, what is your integrity worth to you?

We compromise all these little areas and we miss out on God's best for our life.

Integrity check.

Conviction versus compromise.

What if the difficulties, the pain, the challenges of life are the process of God shaping, chipping away the extra, the superfluous things that are keeping you from living out who you are made to be?

Difficulty, it is not derailment from your God-given dream, but development.

What if instead of a blank canvas you are already a work of art in the process?

Like I said, uh Pope Julius II commissioned this.

It was a big, big project.

Um and um they adjusted it because of expenses.

It took like 30 years for Michelangelo to do this.

Um there's four sculptures that didn't get finished.

Um, these are them.

I feel like in my early days of walking with Jesus, this is how I felt, if I'm honest.

In my early days, I felt like this canvas and things that I've done or things that have been done to me, that I was a failure, I was a mistake, I was just a chaotic mess, and I was just messed up, and like it's just not working out, and like, oh my goodness, and the weight and the pressure, like that's it.

And what I've come to see is like I feel a whole lot more like this dude right here.

Like, am I where I want to be?

No.

But God has chipped and God has shaped, and there's part of his design and his fulfillment that are starting to show and starting to be formed, starting to come through the messiness, through the chaos, through the difficulty, through the pain, through the trauma, through the hardships, through the things of life that he has been forming and shaping.

And by the way, this is where you are at.

You're a masterpiece.

You're a work in progress.

And God is lovingly, actively working, Romans 8.28, all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purposes.

Read Romans 8, by the way.

That one line is in a very dark, hard chapter.

And the apostle Paul was someone who knew pain, knew difficulty, knew betrayal.

What if you're in the process of God?

Andrew Murray's has this formula for trials.

It's been something through the years.

I I first read this in my twenties that I just go back to.

And the reason is because the picture over here, there's something that I think we buy into that's just it's broken in our culture.

And what we buy into is that we are both the artist and the piece of art.

We're both the painter and the canvas, we're the potter and the clay.

And truth be told, you can be.

And most of us are.

We pick up our paintbrush and we're painting and we're working on it, but we don't know what to do with that.

And I just want to ask you, how's it working for you?

Andrew Murray reminds me of just saying, okay, God, I'm gonna let you be the great artist of my life.

I'm gonna let you be the master designer and architect and sculptor.

That you actually know what you're doing, and so I'm gonna entrust, entrust you where you have me.

He writes, He brought me here.

It's by his will I'm in the straight place or difficult place.

In that fact I will rest.

He will keep me here in his love and give me grace to behave as his child.

Then he'll make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons he intends for me to learn.

In his good time, he will bring me out again.

How and when only he knows.

So let me say, I am here by God's appointment, in his keeping, under his training, for his time.

I don't know what you're walking through in the pain and the heartache.

I do know in a room like this there's a lot of pain.

And what I want to invite you to do in this moment is to bring to God the paintbrush of your life as you're struggling to figure it out and bring to him the heartache and the pain, and just say, I am here by your appointment under your keeping, under your training for your time.

And God, I give it over afresh to you today.

God, I'm struggling in the midst of this and the chipping away with my doubt and my anxiety, my insecurity, the chipping away of that betrayal and that anger and that's the relationship and the health issue and all the things that are going on and hurting that you just go, God, I bring this to you.

Gotta bring this to you.

Gotta bring this to you.

Because honestly, I just keep making a mess.

It feels like a chaotic mess.

And today, in this moment, I'm gonna trust that you are at work.

And I don't get it because I I don't understand how you can take my messiness, the world's messiness, what others have done.

I don't understand that, but you are sovereign and you are good and you are faithful.

Even when I am faithless, you remain faithful, for you cannot deny yourself.

And so you're faithful in my story.

And what I know is that he who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete until the day of Christ Jesus.

So if I'm not dead, you're not done with me, and you're showing up in this moment, and you hand him the brush of your life and say, Jesus, I'm all yours.

I'm all yours.

I trust you through the heartache and the pain and the hurt.

Have your way.

Have your way.

So, Jesus, we come.

We come as as hurting, as broken, as messy, filled with doubt and anxiety, carrying the weight of the world as it would seem on our shoulders.

And confess, God, we've been trying to paint our own picture, and in this moment we hand you the brush of our life.

Would you be and take in me and be the great artist?

So let me say I'm here.

Under your training.

In your keeping.

I'm actually in your keeping.

In this moment, you are with me.

In every moment moving forward, you are with me.

And so give me the grace.

Give us the grace.

The hard places, the cover-up places, the secret places.

Over to you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.