For Inconvenience | Pastor Chris Kouba

Grab your Bibles, open them up with me to Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

And such a great, great morning already together of just seeing how God is moving in our midst in a big, big way.

Hey, I want to take this opportunity to welcome all of the men at the Ramsey Unit and all of the women at the Plain State Correctional Facility.

We are so grateful to be able to bring this message to you.

Excited to see how God continues to move.

We actually, uh it was mentioned a little bit quickly last week, but we actually last Saturday uh baptized 75 women at the Plain State Correctional Facility, which is pretty amazing and pretty awesome.

Uh here's what I want you to know, though.

We're not just baptizing these people and forgetting about it, but instead, we've actually got uh people who are already uh trained and people who are already cleared to be able to go, and they weekly go into the prisons and help disciple these women.

So I say that to you that if you're looking for God to maybe move and to push you in some direction, and maybe you uh are looking for an area of service in 2023, would you consider that?

Would you consider the possibility that maybe God wants you to be able to go uh and to be able to invest in these ladies?

We're seeing God move.

Uh, we actually have somebody who was in Growth Track last week, uh, and she came, she was Kate was in plain state just a literally a month ago, uh, and now she was out, and now she is here with us because we're a church.

Uh, because she's been watching that, and that's just an awesome, awesome story.

We pray there's many, many more like it, and that God would just use the ministry that He's allowed us in 2022, the door that He flung wide open to be even more so as we consider what God is going to do in the future.

Let me ask you this question to consider.

Uh, what do you do?

How have you responded when your plans don't quite happen the way that you expect?

Have you ever had a situation to where maybe your dreams, the thoughts of how you wanted things to go, the way how you envision life to be lived out, maybe at this stage of your life or as you look back, but those dreams have had a major detour along the way.

How do you respond when the perfect isn't perfect?

When you have issues that come up along the way called life.

It seems to clutter and cloud out what at one point was a perfect picture of your future.

Last week we began a new message series called Prepare Him Room.

Our goal is in the month of December to try to help you not endure Christmas, not get through Christmas, not have all of the clutter and the activity cause you to miss Christmas, but instead that you would set aside intentional time, focus, and effort in order to actually experience Christmas.

For you to be able to understand the reason why we celebrate what we do instead of all of this stuff happen, you look up and you missed it.

I know that as I think back on my life, I very rarely float into focus.

I don't drift into a greater devotion.

Instead, if I'm gonna have a memorable experience, I have to really work at that.

As I think back through some of the memorable experiences in my life, maybe it's a sporting event that I watched or I attended, or maybe it's a something around my family being together with them.

What I've noticed is that what made that event memorable was something that required a lot of intentionality, a lot of focus, a lot of schedule, making sure that I was able to give full devotion and attention to that moment.

And as a result of that effort and as a result of that work, based upon what I was doing and who I was doing it with, that moment became memorable.

One that I'll treasure forever.

It is our prayer and it is our desire that this Christmas, you would allow Christmas to be memorable.

And we're gonna see that you have to work hard at it, you're not just gonna fall into it.

But I also would tell you this: the the work is worth it.

This morning we're gonna look at the story of Joseph, and what we're gonna see is that one of the ways that you can make Christmas an experience that you need to have, and you can prepare him room to be able to see all the wonder and the grandeur of Christmas is all gonna depend on how you deal with the inconveniences of life.

Let's begin reading in Matthew chapter 1, beginning in verse 18.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

It says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

Let me give you two points this morning related to the idea of inconveniences.

The first thing that I want you to see is this.

Expect inconveniences.

Expect inconveniences.

This story is so familiar to us.

If you even aren't in the church and didn't grew up in the church, you've probably heard the story of Christmas enough to where you may just hear this and kind of immediately tune out and not really understand the gravity of what we just read.

I need to give you a little bit of cultural background for you to understand fully what verse 18 and verse 19 meant.

You see, back in those days, there were arranged marriages.

Essentially, a father of a daughter would go and he would choose a man to go and to marry his daughter.

It would be his choice.

He would go about that process, and not only would he be in charge of choosing a husband for his daughter, but also the person that he chose would be responsible to give him a dowry, that is a fee, in order to marry his daughter.

I've got two high school daughters, one that is sophomore and one that is freshman.

I did a ton of research on this, and I'm excited to announce today that I actually am bringing this practice back, okay?

I will be picking who my daughters marry, and they will be paying me for that process.

It's a great thing, really.

Uh I'm only kidding, kinda, actually, unless you want to talk, like we can we can maybe talk through what this could potentially look like, okay?

Uh but but that being said, I mean, just just think, you've got that going on here, and so there's that process, and then you have to also understand what it means when it says there in verse 18 that when the birth of Jesus took place in this way, Mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together.

You see, there were two different ideas when it came to the idea of marriage.

There was a legal marriage, and then there was an actual marriage.

What happened was is that you would literally get married, but you actually wouldn't be functionally married, meaning you wouldn't consummate the marriage in any way.

You wouldn't sleep together.

In fact, there was a year basically like probation time.

And what happened was that the girl, she would stay at her parents' house over the course of that year.

The guy would either stay with his parents or the guy would go live on his own.

And ultimately, the idea was it was a year-long process to see whether she would not be pregnant and to show that she was, in fact, pure.

And at the end of that year, they then functionally could be married as well as being legally married.

Now, look, there's a lot of things I know whenever you read the Bible in ancient times and you're like, man, we should totally go back to that.

This is not one of those things, okay?

We're all really glad that that's not how things go anymore, all right?

But that's how it was back in those days.

So you can imagine whenever Mary comes forward and says, Hey, I'm pregnant, that wasn't a good thing.

They're legally married, but now it proves to Joseph, okay, now I've got a situation because the woman that I am married to has in some in many ways cheated on me.

Here's this announcement, and it wasn't met with excitement, instead, it was met with frustration, it was met with anger, it was met with resentment.

It indicated in a very, very clear way that ultimately Mary and he were not going to be able to be together.

You can imagine the shame that this represented.

In every aspect of this, it was inconvenient.

Throw on the fact that all of a sudden his his wife comes to him and says, Hey, I'm pregnant, which means basically I've I've sleep slept with somebody else.

Then she's like, No, no, no, no, you don't know, you don't understand.

It's actually God's baby.

So now he's got an adulterous wife who I'm sure he thinks is absolutely crazy.

You can imagine the situation.

It says there that he's like, Man, I gotta get out of this.

You see, that the cultural times would suggest that in this situation, he had every right to make sure to defend his honor, to defend his integrity, and it actually says that he could have had her stoned as punishment for her adultery.

He could have made a massive stink and a massive deal about this, making sure everybody knew that it wasn't his child and that he wasn't the one responsible here, and she's the one to blame, and she's the one to make sure that she gets all of the anger and the frustration and the shame that goes along with this.

But at the end of verse 19, it says that he desired and resolved to divorce her quietly.

This isn't actually a part of the message, but I feel like it needs to be said.

In a culture where basically your rights is considered to be the most important thing to you, and anytime you're ever wronged in any way, anytime somebody does something to you that you shouldn't have to experience, the assumption is everybody needs to know about it.

We basically live in this culture which screams about how we've been wronged, and screams about how we've been abused, and screams about all the evil things that have taken place to us.

But what I think this shows us is some good biblical wisdom, and it's this just because you can doesn't mean you should.

He could have made a scene.

But it says here he chose not to.

Instead, he tried to divorce her quietly.

I want you to keep reading and see what it says.

Takes place beginning in verse 20.

It says, But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

And Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

What I want you to see, this is a huge deal.

We talked about it last week.

Pat gave us the story of Mary and how an angel came to Mary and told her that she was going to be the mother of Jesus, and so she had this divine announcement.

Now you see Joseph having a difficult situation.

It says he's trying to figure out how to kind of quietly get away, and now the same Holy Spirit comes and tells him, Hey, I've got plans for you, and I've got plans for this situation that is highly inconvenient, but I've got a much bigger will going on here, and you just need to do what I'm asking you to do.

That is an awesome thing and an awesome announcement.

The problem was the angel told Mary and the angel told Joseph, the angel didn't tell everybody else.

So the culture looked at a situation that was scandalous.

The culture looked at a situation and was like, yeah, okay, God's baby.

Okay, sure.

All right.

Joseph, sure, you didn't sleep with her.

No, you can look at the situation, and God was asking them to do something that was highly inconvenient.

You can imagine if Mary just thought, you know, I just need to end this pregnancy.

It'd be so much easier if I just ended this and not have to deal with all of these explanations and all of this, yeah, yeah, you don't understand, type conversations and the shame that would go along with it.

You can understand how Joseph already was thinking this direction, how he's like, Look, I don't want this scandal in my record.

I don't want all of this stuff going on here.

This is a reason why there's this probation period for marriage, and therefore it's obvious that she didn't fulfill her end of the bargain, and so he could have very easily gotten out and tried to do everything that he could to get out and not admit guilt by marrying her for something that he didn't do.

Mary, you can imagine she had all these dreams and visions of a storybook wedding.

I read an article this past week that the average age in which a girl begins to think about her own personal wedding is the age of 13.

Same article said that single women, 49% have already picked out their wedding dress that they plan to wear at their wedding day.

Average wedding in Houston is about$24,000, which means there's a lot of single women who've already picked out their wedding dress, just waiting for somebody to ask them out so they can fulfill the dreams that they've already had long before that guy was in the picture, right?

I don't know what Mary was thinking, but I assure you of this.

She thought about what that day was going to look like.

She was excited for that day.

And now all of a sudden, God intervenes and comes along with this angel, and her storybook wedding all of a sudden was interrupted with an extremely big inconvenience.

God operates differently than we do, and most often God begins to do things by how having situations come up in our lives which are highly inconvenient.

Jeremiah chapter 29, 11 says, For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 29 · chapter mention

Plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

We love this verse, right?

Like we love it.

We claim this verse, like we we we call on this verse, like this is a verse that you're gonna put on some sort of frame in your house.

Like you're gonna memorize this verse.

God has a purpose and a plan for me.

That is definitely true.

That verse in every way is true of you, but Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9 is also true.

Isaiah 55:8

Look at what it says.

It says this it says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as high, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Proverbs 16, 9 says, The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

What this tells us is this God has a purpose and a plan for your life, but it's probably not going to be convenient.

Because you see, what we think is a massive inconvenience.

God looks at it and he's like, that's perfect.

You see, in our finite minds, thinking through our world, having everything all figured out and laid out perfectly, is not what God wants for us.

Instead, God desires his good, pleasing, and perfect will to be carried out in our lives.

And most often, and we see over and over again in scripture, it's not usually convenient how it happens.

Just think about biblical examples.

One of them would be Joseph from the book of Genesis.

The other Joseph.

Joseph from the book of Genesis, it tells us this story about how when Joseph was a child, Joseph, whenever he was a young man, he was actually given a dream.

He was given a dream later on in his life.

Both dreams said the same thing.

Joseph, you're gonna be a big deal.

You're gonna be the leader not only over your brothers, but you're gonna be a leader over all the nation.

And I'm gonna use you to be able to carry out my divine plan for my chosen people.

Here's how his life map went.

Joseph, the Bible tells us, began to talk about this dream that God had given him.

Sure enough, his brothers weren't too excited about this dream that he was gonna someday rule over them.

And so the brothers threw him into a pit in order to die.

Then after a few days, they decided, no, let's not kill him.

Let's instead sell him off.

And so he was sold off into slavery.

And the Bible tells us that he ends up being raised in an Egyptian court.

While he's there in Egypt, he's being raised in this area, he begins to get falsely accused by Pharaoh, the leader of Egypt's wife, and says that he was coming onto her, even though he wasn't.

And as a result of that, he is now thrown into prison.

He's got this dream that he's gonna be a leader of all of the people and be used by God, but he's in prison.

While he's there, he begins to interpret dreams, and he interprets dreams for two other guys that were in prison with him.

These two guys get elevated out of prison, and while they're there, they totally forget about Joseph.

So now he's by himself with this dream that God is gonna do something great in his life, yet he's in prison with nobody to advocate for him.

God supernaturally begins to call him up, he begins to interpret dreams for Pharaoh, he then finds himself at a place of authority in the land, and all of a sudden there's famine all over the land, and here is Joseph in charge and able to be in the right place at the right time to be able to be used, and literally the fulfillment of all of his dreams gets taken place there in that moment.

Here's the deal: the life map wasn't convenient to get there.

The dream was fulfilled.

Like Jeremiah 29, 11 is true, but the life map to get there is usually not gonna be a series of convenient things to lead you from one point to the next.

And so, what God is calling you to do is to expect these inconveniences.

Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

This is Joseph speaking, and it says this in verse 20.

It says, As for you, you meant evil against me.

But God meant it for good.

To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

He's saying, All that stuff that I went through, all that back up and down, going back and forth, prison and out, falsely accused and out, it was all worth it because God ultimately used it to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish, and that is the most important thing in the midst of this whole story.

Folks, let me ask you the question.

What does this show you?

This shows you that God often chooses the inconvenient.

If we had kind of a testimony time, I'm guarantee that I could kind of pass the mic around and that you all could be able to share.

This is what God has done in my life, and it was not convenient, I would have not chosen it for myself.

You all have a version of that story where you can maybe look up and you would say, you know, this is this has not been convenient how my life has played out.

As you think about Christmas, you want Christmas to be perfect, you want Christmas to look perfect, you want everybody to get along at Christmas, you want all of the gifts to be received and be the perfect gifts.

You want them to be dressed and wrapped in the perfect wrapping paper and have the perfect bow.

Yet what I've discovered is this some of the greatest gifts God has ever given to me in my life were highly inconvenient.

They were hard, they were difficult, they were often confusing.

You just gotta know life is not convenient.

Yet God shows up and he has a way of operating in the inconvenience that allows you to experience more of Him, which is what you ultimately need.

Don't get me wrong, plans are good.

Don't get me wrong, strategies are good.

I live, eat, and breathe that stuff, and want to make sure that we've got a plan and that we've got a strategy.

Yet when God decides to rearrange that strategy and to rearrange that plan and to do something different, what I need to recognize is this it doesn't mean planning is bad, but what it does mean is what God says, though, is better.

And so please hear me.

As a church, we've learned this over and over and over again since I've been your pastor.

I am planned and I've got a strategy, and this is what I think God wants us to do.

And over and over again, God has come and said, Yeah, but you're actually gonna do this, and it's way better than that.

And so we want to be a people who expect inconveniences and recognize that God may be doing something supernatural and better than what our best plans could have ever come up with.

Proverbs chapter 19, verse 21.

Proverbs 19:21

Listen to what it says.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man.

Thank God this is the case.

It is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

For some of you, Christmas is gonna look different than you expected.

For some of you, there's gonna be people at your Christmas celebration that you don't want there.

There's gonna be maybe people not at your Christmas celebration.

Gosh, that you long so wish that they were able to be there.

For some of you, you may be walking through financial difficulty and challenges as a result of the economy and inflation.

For some of you, you may have a cloud of health issues that are kind of covering over all of this Christmas that is definitely making it.

Feel and look different.

Many of you may be dealing with life choices heading into 2023 that you could never have imagined even dealing with just two or three years ago.

You have to expect inconvenience.

Please hear me.

It's never convenient to serve on a serve team.

It's never going to be convenient to give sacrificially.

It's never going to be convenient to share your faith with somebody else.

It's never going to be convenient to have a biblical stance on God's word when it comes to the issue of sexuality and gender and marriage in our culture today.

It's never going to be easy when God prompts you to go foster and adopt somebody.

It's never going to be easy when God says, hey, that human trafficking issue, yeah, I know that that may seem far removed, but I want it to be your issue.

It's never going to be easy when God prompts you to step out and take a next step, but that is why we want to preach to you over and over and over again.

We want to be a people who expect inconveniences and take those next steps and do what God calls us to do.

Second thing I want you to see today, not only do you need to expect inconveniences, number two, embrace inconveniences.

You just gotta embrace them.

One of the greatest joys that I have is to be able to have a direct relationship with some of our church planner partnerships.

Many of you may know that we are part of church planting.

We're chart of that in a couple different ways through something called Sin Network.

It's an organization that we partner with in order to help us plant churches all over North America.

It's one of the greatest resourcing and greatest training mechanisms to plant churches.

Their success rate is can't be compared anywhere else, and that's why we gladly partner with Sin Network.

But we also have some direct churches that we also give money and support.

We've got three of those.

One in particular is Matt Kendrick at Redemption City Church, which is in Fort Worth.

We took a team this past year.

We've got plans to send another team next year.

Encourage you to go on one of these short-term mission trips with us.

Matt Kendrick called me, though, uh about a month and a half ago, uh, and he said, Hey man, you got a second?

He said, I need to vent a little bit.

No problem.

Uh one of the beautiful things we have is not only just financial partnership with these people, but we also have relationships with these churches to where, man, absolutely, what you're struggling through is what we're struggling through too.

We're gonna bear these burdens with you.

He says, Man, I need some, I'm honestly I'm just a little frustrated, I need to talk it out.

He said, I just got word that our trailer was stolen.

You see, basically, they set up every week at a YMCA.

Literally, they kind of have like church in a box, like all of their stuff, all of their sound equipment, all of their things are in basically a trailer, and they go and bring it in early in the morning, they set it all up, do church, they take it all down, and they have it in this trailer.

This trailer got stolen.

They reported it to the authorities, the authorities did all the various things and have the here's the number if you find this.

And they got a phone call that says, Hey, we found your trailer, uh, and we'd be more than happy to sell you the material that's in it that we found.

He couldn't prove it, but he knew basically the people who stole his trailer was now asking him to buy the stuff they stole.

He needed to go and have it for church that week.

He he also couldn't prove it, and so he's like, Man, I don't I don't know what to do.

Like, here I am in a situation where I'm having to buy back my stuff from the guy who stole.

And he said he ended up buying 90% of their stuff.

The other 10% was actually fully, completely stolen.

He got it all back, and then he had to go and purchase 10%.

He's like, Man, we're we're on a shoestring budget anyway, and now I'm having to buy from thieves.

He's like, Man, I I I've given my life to this thing.

He's like, Man, I've I've I've I've sacrificed in every way.

I mean, he's like, I don't understand why in the world I'm having to go through all of this.

I asked him, I said, Hey man, have you called any other church planners and just talked with them?

Why don't you do that?

So he does it, he calls me back the next day and he says, You're not gonna believe it.

Every single one of the guys that I called have a stolen trailer story.

He's like, apparently it's like a thing.

Like you haven't planned at a church unless your trailer's been stolen.

He's like, this is a fraternity that no one told me about, and this is a fraternity I would have never chosen to be in.

He said, But man, it was so encouraging just to be able to talk to some of these guys and to be able to know we were praying for them and trying to help him out any way that we possibly could.

He's like, man, I'll just tell you.

He goes, I'm sorry for getting for venting yesterday.

He's like, I'm just serious though, man.

I would tell you, and I'm gonna say it out loud because sometimes it struggles for me to believe it.

This is worth it, even when your trailer gets stolen.

I mentioned to you Haydn Ratner, Haydn preached for us in July.

Uh Haydn is the pastor at Walk Church.

He's the one that we were able to send a gift to this past week out of our missions fund because of your faithful giving to our church.

Uh Haydn called me uh earlier this year, and he's done this a couple different times because they are in their private, their their school that they're in, but they're trying ultimately to purchase land, and then once they purchase land, begin the process of being able to build.

But in order to purchase the land, they have to kind of give all these drawings of what it is that they plan to do on the property.

And what they've done is they've gone through the whole process, they've worked with the architects, they've worked with the engineers, they've worked with all the things that they're supposed to do.

And every single time at the last minute, the city has moved the goal line, and all of a sudden they have to start the process back over.

He said, This has literally happened four or five times.

He's like, Man, would you just pray that they would just say yes?

I don't even care at this moment what it looks like, what it is.

I just, he's like, it just is a I don't understand why we're going through this.

Please hear me.

These are two church planters who've given their lives to go and spread the gospel in different places, in places that need to hear Jesus, and they would tell you that guess what?

At times, man, it's inconvenient.

But they also know this.

You embrace it because you know it's worth it.

For some of you, maybe your situation is financially, you've been tipping the Lord, maybe you just kind of the the basket comes around or whatever, you feel a little bit guilty, you kind of empty out your wallet, and every once in a while you kind of throw some things in there, but you've never experienced the inconvenience of giving because if you were truly giving the way that God calls you to give, you would all say, This is a really inconvenient.

I could buy a whole lot more stuff with this money.

That being said, whenever you operate in God's economy and you experience his blessings, here's what you do, just like these church planners.

It's worth it.

It's worth it.

Some of you relationally, maybe your story is you need to offer forgiveness to somebody else, or maybe you need to seek forgiveness from someone.

And please hear me, it's not gonna be easy for you to do that.

There's gonna be all these reasons in your mind.

Well, I, you know, they they don't live here, or I'm gonna have to set up a time to get with them, or all of these various excuses are gonna come to your mind because hear me, going after biblical reconciliation is never convenient.

You gotta embrace it.

Maybe for some of you in a dating relationship, God calls you to purity and you want so badly to indulge the flesh.

You want so badly to do whatever you want to do when you want to do it.

And I'm gonna tell you, it is never gonna be convenient to seek purity, but it's always worth it.

I believe wholeheartedly that God is calling our church to have a regional influence well beyond 19901 Townsend Boulevard.

I'm I'm I'm telling you the doors that he has opened up in the last month and the relationships that he has begun to do, I'm kind of honestly I've been praying a lot, just saying, God, I'm ready.

I don't know what you're about to do, but it seems very clear you have positioned United City Church for such a time as this to be able to have massive impact in Northeast Houston.

Is it possible that God may be stirring in the hearts and lives of some of you?

For maybe you to go to plant a church or for maybe you to be a part of something new, some sort of new thing that God may be doing in our midst.

Please hear me.

It will not be convenient.

Like mark it down.

It will not be convenient.

It won't be convenient for your finances, it won't be convenient for your schedule, it won't be convenient for your life.

That being said, God desires to do miraculous things and it's never convenient, but it's always, always worth it.

I believe God wants the desire to raise up in our church people who are going to be called to the ministry.

Whether you do that through serving in a local church capacity, or whether you do that as an indigenous missionary in some other way, let me just tell you this: you can make a heck of a lot more money and have a heck of a lot more stress if you don't do it.

I would also tell you this it's worth it.

It's worth it.

Because what God calls you to, convenience isn't part of it.

That being said, he works through those inconveniences when you embrace those things.

And please hear me, when your trailer gets stolen, you need a chance to vent.

But you then embrace it and you begin to move forward with what God is doing.

Matthew 1 23, let me read this verse to you.

It says, There, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

This was a promise that was prophesied about and a promise that was kept.

In my Bible, it's actually indented, which means basically it's a quote of something else.

What this shows us is that the reason why we can expect and embrace inconveniences is because of the story of Christmas, which is the proof that God is a promise-keeping God.

This sign is given in quote in verse Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14.

Isaiah 7:14

It reads this: therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.

The word virgin can either mean in the Hebrew there a person who has never had sex before, or this can mean a girl who is of an age to be married.

Whenever they had this prophecy given in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, the people of the day just assume it meant that a person who is of marriageable age would eventually get pregnant, no big deal.

Isaiah 7:14

And so they didn't pay attention and see exactly what it was.

And then now, fast forward 700 years later, this same prophecy is mentioned, and it isn't referring to a girl who is of the age to be married, instead, it is referring to an actual virgin girl who is now pregnant.

What this shows is that God was desiring to fulfill this prophecy, but he wasn't doing it by just allowing God's son to be born, but instead for God's son to be in the lineage of Abraham and the fulfillment of all of the prophecies that spoke about how God's son would be born, and now 700 years later, we see it come to fruition.

Embrace the inconvenience because here's what we see is that while they thought God was going to do this thing, instead, God was gonna do something more that wasn't just gonna save the people in that time in Isaiah chapter 7, but instead was gonna be something God would use to ultimately save the world.

Isaiah 7 · chapter mention

Do you trust his plan?

Do you trust that what God wants to do in and through you is best, even when it's hard, even when it's inconvenient, even when it's disruptive.

Matthew 123, I want to read it to you again.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

This name is meant to speak to not only who Jesus is, but what he did.

Jesus came and he was born 100% man and 100% God.

He was born as Mary's son so that he could be human.

He was also conceived by the Holy Spirit so that he could be God.

He was the perfect completion and fulfillment of all of the prophecies.

He lived a sinless, perfect, obedient life.

There was nothing about his birth that was inconvenient.

And all of his followers that were really close to him would also tell you, man, it was a bumpy ride along the way, but they would also all tell you that it was God's desire from the very beginning of time to use the most inconvenient of circumstances to be the very means by which he would save the world.

Have you ever come to the place where you've given your life to Jesus?

Received his mercy and his grace through a personal relationship with him.

I would tell you this: you're not signing up for a life of ease, but you are signing up for a life of joy, peace, goodness.

Today you want to receive Jesus.

I want to give you the opportunity to do so.

I'm not asking you to enter into a transaction with him where somehow you identify that you know certain things about him and can check it off like it's a box.

Instead, I'm asking you to enter into a relationship with him where you give everything that you know of yourself to everything that you know of him and allow his mercy and his grace to cover your sins and to change you forever.

Would you bow your heads and would you close your eyes all across this room?

Please, no one be moving.

If you're watching me online, I want to invite you to pray with me as well.

Do you know Jesus?

I want to invite you to pray a simple prayer of faith where you can transfer your trust and receive the forgiveness of Jesus.

Just pray, dear God, I want to be saved.

I ask that you come into my life and that you change me.

Forgive me of all of my sins.

I believe that you died on a cross, that you rose from the dead, and right now I receive your gift of eternal life.

Thank you for saving me.

I want to let you know if you've never been here before, what we do is something called a public invitation.

We believe in next steps.

We want to literally model this for you.

We want you to not just feel like God is saying do something, but we want you to actually do it.

So in just a moment, our staff team is gonna be up front and they're gonna be on the sides, and we're gonna invite you.

If you just prayed that prayer of faith with me, you've given your life to Jesus, that you would come forward and tell one of our team members.

I know right now what you're thinking.

This is not convenient.

I gotta go here after service, or or I don't know what I'm gonna do with my stuff, or I've got somebody with me, I don't know.

Bring them with you.

Bring your stuff with you.

Fight against the inconveniences and embrace it and instead realize what God is calling you to do is to make this decision that you've done, to give your life to Jesus public and official today by coming forward and telling somebody up front.

Would you do that here in just a moment?

Others of you need to come and join United City Church.

God has been leading you to make this your church home, a place you can believe and belong to.

Moving from just a casual attender, and instead being all in on what God is doing, we would love for you to lead the way today.

Maybe others need to be baptized.

You've given your life to Jesus, but you've never followed through in baptism like these four that we saw earlier today.

Would you come forward and would you allow us the opportunity to schedule your baptism for a later date?

I believe God's calling people to ministry in our church.

If maybe you sense that and feel that, you don't know what it all looks like.

I know that in fifth grade, when it was undeniable that was happening to me, I had no idea what that meant.

I just knew this.

I had to do something about it.

Maybe God's calling and leading you.

Would you come forward and say, Man, I think God's calling me to ministry.

I want to pursue this.

I want to state this, I want to be open to whatever He says to do.

Maybe some of you just need prayer today.

Maybe you've got a need in your life and in your heart.

And I want to invite you to come and be prayed for.

We've already had people come forward and we've already had people respond.

So I'm gonna pray.

And as we stand and as we sing, after I say amen, I want to encourage you to do the same.

You won't be alone.

Let's pray together.

Father, we come before you and we say thank you.

Thank you, Father, for the boldness that you're gonna give to those to respond today.

God, for the fact that you stir and that you move in people's hearts.

I pray they would move past the inconveniences that naturally are creeping up.

And instead would respond to you today.

It's in the name of Jesus I pray.

Amen.

Would you stand that as you stand, you come?

What an incredible message.

Hey, if you made a decision today to give your life to Jesus, we'd love to know about it.

We'd love to celebrate with you.

We'd even love to pray with you.

And so if you made that decision, would you text next to 55498?

And someone from our team would love to follow with you.

In the meantime, I would love to pray with you even right now as God continues to thank you for you.

So Jesus, we love you so much.

We say thank you for the truth of your heart.

Thank you for still showing up with people's minds.