You Asked For It: Bible as Map, Holy Spirit as Guide

Well, hey, good morning, Refuge Church.

I'm excited for today.

We are gonna be finishing up our You Asked For series.

If you're catching up with us for the first time today,

over the past, oh, month or so,

we guys have been submitting questions

and we have been going through them.

And really, our theme has been the Bible is our map,

the Holy Spirit is our guide.

But I want you to know that all of these questions,

we have every answer that we need

for these questions right here,

in the context of everything we need to live a life

that honors God is right here.

And I want this to be not just a series view,

but a muscle that we build.

When we have questions in life, we don't run to Google,

we don't run to chat or Grok or whatever AI you wanna use,

we run to the Word of God first.

That's what we need to do.

So having said that, some of these questions

are a little heavy.

Some of them are a little silly.

I don't know which one of you asked the silly ones,

but some of them are heavy, some of them are silly.

And here's the deal.

That's okay, if you want to follow up with me,

if you're like, hey, I have another question,

I've got about 30 minutes, maybe a little longer

to answer questions.

And some of them are things that people have been debating

for thousands of years.

So if you give me a little bit of grace or maybe that,

if you wanna follow up, my contact is right there.

I would love to grab coffee, to catch up and grab lunch

and just go in depth on some of these.

Maybe a level I couldn't do right here on the stage.

And every one of these questions,

there's kind of three parts to it.

There is an intellectual part, the head, right?

Like, what do I know about this?

There is a heart part that's like, what do I feel?

How does this make me feel?

And then there's a hands part.

What do I need to do?

And some of these, they actually sound like hand questions,

but they're actually somebody

who's gone through some pain in their heart.

And so I don't wanna rush over these.

If you want to go deeper,

if you wanna have a conversation,

I would love, love, love to follow up with you

and to go deeper on some of these

because 30 minutes is not enough time.

So our theme for this series, I'm gonna put that up there.

If you guys help me out with the words in yellow,

the Bible is our,

and the Holy Spirit is our.

All right, let me pray for us

before we get into the word of God.

Would you guys put your hands out with your palms up?

Close your eyes.

Just a posture of surrender.

Take a deep breath.

And remember, God is just as near as the air we're breathing.

God, today, would you guide us closer to you?

Help us put away the distractions of the coming week,

to put away the frustrations of the past week.

We come empty with nothing to offer but surrender.

Fill us up as only you can.

Holy Spirit, move in here today with power.

We believe that in advance

and we ask all these things in Jesus' name

and all God's people said, amen, amen.

All right, I'm gonna start with the heavy hitter question

that you guys asked.

Do you think some of the manna from heaven was gluten-free?

I'm just gonna, that was a silly one.

This is starting with an easy one, all right?

If somebody had celiacs, all right, back in the day

when they were in the wilderness

and they got to give the manna,

let's just go ahead and say

that the manna was gluten-free, all right?

Give it down.

Second question.

Why, and this one I think is maybe a question

a lot of people have.

Why do so many books in the Bible read like poems?

I especially like the second part of the question.

Why are people going on long poems and rants

when talking in the Bible?

Like why are they just going on rants in the Bible?

I love it.

Here's the deal.

God most often moves through his people, all right?

He can do the miraculous, absolutely,

but he most often moves through his people.

If we are his hands and his feet,

that's how he's gonna move, is through his people.

And if, just say the church right here,

if we are his people, we are all incredibly different.

And that's not a bad thing.

That's actually a good thing.

And so God uses the differences for us

to smooth one another, to shape one another,

and to work it all together.

So when you think about the whole word of God,

there are some books in the Bible

that are a bit just descriptive.

They're just like black and white,

like here's what's happening.

There are some books in the Bible that are more poetic.

There are some books in the Bible that are letters,

some that read more like a narrative,

and that's not a bad thing.

It's all these different things coming together

because God uses people and they have personalities

and they have wirings and God uses how he's wired

and how he's gifted.

One of my favorite examples of this would be like,

honestly, one of my favorite books,

we've done a series over it, actually twice, right?

Is the book of Ecclesiastes.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes.

And it literally starts off by saying,

meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

Some people hate the book of Ecclesiastes.

They find it depressing.

I find it like it fills my cup up.

God uses different styles

through the authors that are writing them

because he's inspiring them,

but he uses those to reach different people.

There are parts that all of God's word is useful for us.

It is all beneficial,

but there are certain parts that might resonate with you

and might resonate with the people.

That's a good thing, okay?

So that's why it is all,

so there's long poems, there's long lists of rules,

there's everything in the word of God.

Question three, are we going to recognize each other

in heaven?

Heaven is a perfect place without sin or pain or shame.

Heaven is perfect.

So I think the question here is really getting at,

am I gonna know them?

Because if I don't know them, it's going to hurt me.

So I wanna start there.

Heaven is a perfect place.

And I would also say, I think biblically speaking,

there is some precedent for us to say,

yes, you will know them.

David in 2 Samuel 12, he is actually missing his son.

He has a newborn son who passed away

and while the baby was sick, he's fasting, he's praying,

he's doing all these things.

And then the baby passes away, this newborn.

And here's what David says,

he says, why should I fast when he is dead?

Can I bring him back again?

He's like, no, I will go to him one day.

I'll go to him, but he cannot return to me.

David is saying, this is a man after God's own heart.

He's lost his newborn.

He's saying, I will go to him.

So will we recognize each other in heaven?

Yes.

And I think if you're fearful

about not recognizing somebody that you love right now,

I just wanna, I think this is important distinction to make.

Heaven is a perfect place where we will be united

with other believers and that is awesome.

More so, we will be united with our savior, Christ Jesus,

the creator of the universe.

That's the win, right?

That is being with Jesus.

So yes, I think we will,

but even more so we will be with Jesus.

Question four, I really wonder who asked this one.

And then I wonder why they asked it.

Says, have you ever had to just wing it on a sermon?

I was like, that one hurts a little bit.

I hope they're not like asking experientially.

I have never winged a sermon here at Refuge.

All right, that has happened.

But once, I will say once,

this is me winging it on a sermon.

Once I was in youth ministry, youth pastor,

I had a guest speaker coming to speak to the kids that night.

He's a police officer in Oklahoma City

and he got called in.

He was in the SWAT department.

And I don't know, something happened.

He's like, hey, I can't make it.

You know, he's like, my buddies are being shot at.

I was like, that sounds more important.

You should go be with them.

Anyways, he gets called in

and that's like 30 minutes before service starts.

And I'm pretty green at this point.

And I was like, yeah.

So I just opened up the Bible and winged it.

All right, that was the one and only time that's happened.

And that was the example where it was like,

in Bible college, they say, you know,

you need to always have one in your back pocket.

You always gotta have one in the chamber,

one ready to go.

So if we ever have a guest speaker

and you hear me bring up 1 John 2, verses 5 through 18,

1 John 2:5–18

that's the one in the chamber.

I'm just letting you know, it ain't happening again.

I got one ready.

So yes, once.

And I will not make that mistake again.

All right, question five.

This one is an interesting question.

I think there's probably some concern to it

whenever they ask this.

Maybe they don't understand.

Maybe more of a hedge question.

What is a spotless bride

and why does Jesus want one slash get one?

What is a spotless bride

and why does Jesus want one slash get one?

So if you think about the old covenant,

this is Old Testament, how they were made right with God,

they would have to do a sacrifice.

They would sacrifice the lamb.

It would be the perfect, spotless, innocent,

without imperfection lamb, spotless.

No defects in that lamb.

And they would kill that lamb

and they would put it on the altar.

They would sacrifice that to God.

That's how they were made right with God.

It was through this spotless lamb.

In the new covenant, that is what Jesus has done for us.

Here's what it says in 1 Peter 1, 18 through 19.

For you know that God paid a ransom to save you

from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors.

He's saying sin has passed down to us.

And it was not paid with mere gold or silver,

which lose their value.

It was the precious blood of Christ,

the sinless, spotless lamb of God.

So think about this, the Old Testament,

the old covenant was through the precious, spotless lamb,

like a literal lamb.

And the new covenant is the spotless lamb of God.

It's talking about Jesus who spread, who spilt his blood.

So the new covenant is the spotless lamb of God.

When you think about what is a spotless bride,

the church is us as believers.

And we got another passage we're gonna read out here.

I was gonna talk about that.

And so Christ's union is with the church.

It's for those who believe in him.

And here's the deal.

His union with the church is covenantal.

And the best example is it is a marriage.

A marriage is a covenant.

A covenant means I'm with you no matter what.

It is not a contract.

And so the best example I can have is like,

if you had a contract,

say you get a phone bill, all right,

you got a phone company,

the contract is I'm gonna pay you this,

you're gonna have my phone service, right?

I don't have phone service, guess what?

I'm not paying the phone bill, right?

Like we had an agreement, you're gonna do this,

I'm gonna do that.

A marriage is a covenant.

There's not you do this, I do that.

If you had a contractual marriage vows,

you would throw up when you were watching the ceremony.

Like, I will love you as long as we have money

and you stay skinny.

Like, oh snap, right?

That wouldn't go, right?

Right?

I'm just being real.

There's no beauty in a contract,

there is beauty in a covenant.

We are together for richer or for poorer,

for sickness and health, for better or worse,

we're together, right?

It is a covenant.

The church is the bride of Christ.

The church is the believers.

And so here's where that comes together.

Why does he get a spotless bride?

I want you to think about this.

Before we had Christ, we were dead in our sins.

If your wife, if your spouse was getting ready

to walk down the aisle and she was covered in mud,

would you just let her walk down the aisle covered in mud

if she was all dirty?

You're gonna clean her up, right?

And that's not gonna change your relationship,

you're gonna make sure she's taken care of.

As Jesus followers, we are covered by the blood of Jesus.

So when God looks at us, he doesn't see our sin,

he doesn't see our imperfections, he does not see our mess,

he sees the blood of Jesus.

He sees Christ's righteousness that he has given to us.

It's not about us, it's about him.

So we are his, the church, his spotless bride.

It's a marriage, there's a covenant, there is union.

It's not going anywhere.

It's not a contract, it's a covenant.

And we're spotless, not because of anything that we've done,

but it's because of what he has done for us.

Ephesians 5, verse 25 says,

Ephesians 5:25

for husbands, this passage is talking about the covenant,

it's talking about the church,

but it's specifically talking to husbands here.

It says, for husbands, this means love your wives

just as Christ loved the church.

He gave up his life for her,

to make her holy and clean,

washed by the cleansing of God's word.

He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church

without a spot or wrinkle or any blemish.

Instead, she will be holy and without fault.

It is saying, we are his spotless bride

because of what he has done for us.

Okay, next question.

What happens, there's actually a few questions here,

so I'm gonna break it down.

What happens when we die?

Where do we go if we die before the rapture?

What happens to the dead and alive

when God comes back to earth?

All right, there's a lot there.

We're just gonna answer this as it's written here, all right?

So what happens when we die?

You got two options here, basically.

You were gonna go be with God

or you're gonna be separated from God.

All right, in 2 Corinthians, this is Paul.

He's talking to the church in Corinth.

He's writing them a letter

and he is talking to specifically believers.

And if you're a believer, here's what it says.

Yes, we are fully confident

and we should rather be away from these earthly bodies

for then we will be at home with the Lord.

This is a passage.

I grew up in the KJV world, right?

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

That's what he's saying there.

If you're not here, you're with him as a believer.

So what happens when we die?

We go to be with the Lord.

What happens if we die before the rapture?

We go to be with the Lord, right?

What happens to the dead and alive

when God comes back to earth?

So it's saying when Jesus returns, what happens?

The Bible is our map, the Holy Spirit is God.

So I'm not gonna give you my opinion.

I'm gonna read 1 Thessalonians 4.

It says this,

for the Lord himself will come down from heaven

with a commanding shout,

with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God.

First, the believers who have died

will rise from the grave,

saying their resurrected bodies

are gonna go be with the Lord.

Verse 17, then together with him,

we who are still alive and remain on the earth

will be caught up in the clouds

to meet the Lord in the air.

Then we will be with the Lord forever.

Verse 18, so encourage each other with these words.

He is writing this.

So he said, hey, you believers,

you who have lost somebody,

God's got it.

They're with him, that they haven't gone anywhere.

They are more alive now

than they've ever been on this earth.

Encourage each other with these words.

All right.

We're turning up the heat on this question.

So before I get there,

there's a lot here.

Just know we're going to that heart level.

You can hear the pain in the question.

How do you truly surrender your pain to God?

In the exact moments, it feels unbearable.

When every part of you wants to fall back

into the same unhealthy patterns,

what does it look like to trust him enough

to sit in the discomfort

without hurting yourself even more?

Believing he can hold it all together,

even when you can't.

How do you trust God when you're in pain?

You feel like this path is going to lead you to more sorrow.

I got invited, shout out Misty,

wherever you're at,

to go to the Metro Prayer Breakfast OKC this week.

They had this guy, he had a speaker,

and I think that the story that he shared

just goes perfectly with this.

This is a guy who works in like political conflict.

I'm not exactly sure how to explain it.

He's a former police officer.

His name is Jamie Winship.

He had a great story.

He was in the Middle East,

and he was there basically to create peace with this guy.

This guy was like the head of a bad organization.

He really didn't say, right?

He kind of kept it ambiguous,

but he's meeting with this guy.

And they have a meeting,

and then they get done with the meeting,

and Jamie, he's going to go home,

and he's waiting on his ride to pick him up

to take him home.

And this guy pulls up with his SUV,

and he says, we'll give you a ride.

Bad guy, Middle East, big organization.

And he's like, he's telling,

I know they're going to, culturally,

they're going to ask me three times if I want,

no, we got your ride, no, we got your ride,

no, I'm good.

They're going to go back and forth three times,

and he's going to say, it's good.

And he said, the third time, he's like, get in the car.

Yes, sir.

He's got a car full of people.

He's going to help him.

And then he gets in the car,

and they ask, where do you live?

And he's like, I'm that way.

And they start driving this way.

They drive down into the middle of the,

like, I don't know if the desert's the right time,

but they're right in the middle of nowhere.

Can you imagine being in a car with,

this is the guy who's the main,

he's the head honcho here.

Like, he's doing bad things.

And I'm in the car, I'm going with him.

I live that way, he takes me that way.

He's got a car full of people.

And basically, they are going to go kill him.

That is the plan.

And he says, he feels God just kind of give him

two things to have to say to this man.

He says, I love you, and I want to be your friend.

And he literally tells us, as he's telling us,

he goes, those are two lies for me.

That's come from the Lord.

He's like, I did not feel that I loved him.

I did not feel that he was my friend.

I'm just, Lord, he told me to say, I'm going to say it.

So he does it.

And that kind of stirred them up.

And they're like, okay, if you really do,

come tomorrow and have dinner with us.

We'll pick you and your wife up.

They don't ask for directions to his house.

They drop him off right in front of his front door.

They knew where he lived.

And he has to go in and say,

hey baby, I got dinner plans for tomorrow.

And anyways, he said that they go the next night.

His wife prayed about it, they came.

All of their training, all of their processes,

all of their procedure would have said, don't do that.

When the head of the other, like the enemy, so to speak,

says, get in this car with all of my other enemies

and you're gonna be outnumbered.

Don't do it, right?

Every training, every part of your body is saying,

don't do that.

And he said, I'm going to trust God.

And then the next night, he and his wife go,

they have dinner with him.

And they actually, it's an insane story.

He's got a whole book about it.

But basically they share the story of Jesus.

They share the gospel and God just doesn't work.

And this whole organization is just disbanded.

And God moves, he creates peace.

What does it look like to trust him enough

to sit in your discomfort?

I just wanna push pause on that.

I don't think God wants you to sit in discomfort.

I think he wants you to take your next step

and to keep growing.

Just to use that story as an example.

That's hard.

I'm not trying to sugarcoat it,

but God wants us to take our next step.

And he will use things that don't make any sense to us.

We won't connect the dots.

First Corinthians 1, 26 through 28 says this.

Instead, God chose the things.

Go back one verse, sorry.

I jumped again.

Remember dear brothers and sisters,

that few of you were wise in the world's eyes

or powerful or wealthy when God called you.

Hey, just low key version.

You guys were dumb and broke before you knew Jesus.

That's kind of what Paul's saying there.

He said, instead, instead God chose the things

the world considers foolish in order to shame those

who think they are wise.

And he chose things that are powerless

to shame those who are powerful.

God chose things despised by the world.

Things counted as nothing at all

and use them to bring to nothing

what the world considers important.

How do you surrender your pain to God?

When you don't understand,

how am I gonna sit in that discomfort?

My encouragement with you would be to take your next step,

to trust God.

That I think when we sit, we get stagnant.

We actually need movement.

Movement is life in our faith journey.

Whatever your next step is, take it.

That's going to be hard.

That's what growth requires, a challenge.

You can trust God.

All right, this is a two-part question.

Got two different questions that are very, very close.

Says, how can I forgive those who hurt me

without pretending the pain never happened?

How do I let God heal the scars I've hidden for so long?

Kind of just right adjacent to that.

Is it wrong to not want a relationship with someone

who has betrayed your trust?

Is it wrong to not want a relationship with someone

who has betrayed your trust?

How do you forgive those who hurt you?

There's a quote I like from Pete Scazzaro.

This is not a Bible verse,

but I think there's some wisdom in this.

It says, unprocessed emotions don't die.

They get buried alive.

God doesn't want you to hold on to what you're feeling.

He can handle your feelings, give it over to Him.

And so the fact, a lot of people say time heals all wounds.

No, they just got buried alive.

They're getting ready to sneak out of there

as soon as you give them a moment.

It's just not true.

You got to process it, you got to give those to the Lord.

You can't just let those sit there.

And then how do you forgive those

without pretending the pain never happened?

The pain, no, it wasn't there.

I just want to say, forgiveness is not,

does not equal freedom from consequences.

Forgiveness does not equal freedom from consequences.

I'll just put this in like a real tangible example.

If you had somebody embezzling money,

you could forgive them.

Maybe don't give them the checkbook next time.

Like, do you get what I'm saying?

Like, forgiveness is not freedom from consequences.

And so to go to this question here, the second part,

is it wrong to not want a relationship

with someone who's betrayed your trust?

I don't think it's that cut and dry.

No, it's not wrong.

It could, emphasis on the could,

it could be very wise to not want a relationship

with someone who's betrayed your trust.

It could be wise.

The other side would be, it could simply be avoidance

and not dealing with an issue.

It could be either one of those.

That's really between you and the Lord in that situation.

Last part of the question is, how does God heal us?

How does God heal us?

And there's kind of a rubric that goes around,

and it's talking specifically for like medical ailments,

but I think there's just some truth to this.

God heals us a few different ways.

They'll be up on the screen here.

Instantly, through miracles.

He's gonna heal it.

Gradually, through medicine.

Like if you have a physical ailment,

sometimes there's just things that get better with medicine.

Eventually, in glory.

That's saying like, hey, he's not gonna heal us now,

but he's gonna heal us in heaven.

And those are usually the three that stick there

as far as how God heals,

like you think about a physical ailment.

And I got one that I wanna add,

and it's just systemically through purpose.

And I think that is important.

When you talk about this question,

it's talking about like a mental health,

like my relationship, I'm feeling pain,

I'm feeling sorrow,

I'm feeling like just all these emotions.

Like our world has never been a more therapeutic,

sympathetic environment than it's ever been.

I guess sometimes there are more people in counseling

and therapy than ever before.

Like that's a fact.

There are more people in there than ever before.

And yet we have more people with mental health issues

and depression than ever before.

But like both of those things are true.

I am not dunking on counseling or therapy.

Those are good things.

If it was solely the issue just to talk about your feelings

and to have somebody to process things with,

things would be getting better, right?

But like as a world,

we see that more people are talking,

but things aren't actually getting better.

God can heal us systemically through purpose.

How does God heal us?

I think healing comes when we pursue God's purpose

for your life, instead of your purpose for your life.

And that means doing things His way, not our way.

This is a hard thing.

I'm not saying this is easy, but it's the truth.

How do you forgive those who hurt you?

Is it wrong not to want a relationship?

It could be wise to avoid a relationship,

but it could be avoidance.

I don't know.

I'm gonna read a passage

and just let God tell you what you need to do.

There's wisdom in boundaries.

So there's so much that I don't know in this question,

but there's wisdom in boundaries.

But I think there's a lot of wisdom in the Word of God.

So here's what it says in Romans 12.

Because I think most of us have wisdom in boundaries.

Romans 12.

Because I think most of us, like if I'm just being honest,

most of us would rather go, not dealing with them,

ask them out of our life.

And I think God wants us to be long-suffering

towards difficult people,

because we're difficult people ourselves.

He doesn't turn His back on us.

Romans 12.

Never pay back evil with more evil.

Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are.

Thanks, Billy.

All right, all right.

Do all that you can to live in with everyone.

Dear friends, never take,

leave that to the righteous anger of God.

For the scriptures say, I will take revenge.

I will pay them back, says the Lord.

This is the one that I like, right?

Instead, if your enemies are hungry, feed them.

If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.

This is the part that I really like.

In doing so, you will heap burning coals

of shame on their heads.

Do you feel me on that one?

It's like, I think there's just, we're human.

Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing.

I don't know about the relationship

this person was talking to.

I just know this.

God wants us to overcome evil,

not by meeting it with more evil,

but by being good.

To live honorably, to live peaceably,

as much as it depends on us.

To be kind to our enemies.

That doesn't mean they have to be involved

in every aspect of your life.

Boundaries are wise, but I think God wants us

to be discerning about these things.

He wants us to overcome evil His way.

That is with good, not more evil.

Next question.

I love this question.

How do we know when to turn over tables

and when to turn the other cheek instead?

Like Jesus talked about both of those, right?

So let's just go ahead and read these two passages

that Jesus was talking about here.

So Matthew 21, gonna read these few verses.

Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out

all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice.

He knocked over the tables of the money changers

and the chairs of those selling devs.

He said to them, the scriptures declare,

my temple will be called a house of prayer,

but you have turned into a den of thieves.

Just wanna pause real quick.

Jesus goes in there and He goes, Bobby Knight in the temple.

He's throwing chairs, flipping tables.

And I just wanna point out who His anger is towards.

It is not towards the people who are outside of the church.

It is the people who are in the church

who have turned what is the temple,

what the church of God is supposed to be.

They've turned into something where they do it for profit

instead of the good news being proclaimed.

There's something there.

It is, His anger is towards the people who know better.

I guess that's what I'm saying, okay?

So that's when He's talking about Jesus turning over tables.

Matthew 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount.

Little excerpt here.

This whole section's about revenge.

You have heard the law that says

the punishment must match the injury.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

But I say, do not resist an evil person.

If someone slaps you on the right cheek,

offer the other cheek also.

If you're sued in court and your shirt is taken from you,

give your coat too.

If a soldier demands that you carry your gear for a mile,

carry it for two miles, give to those who ask.

Don't turn away from those who want to borrow

and don't sin by letting anger control you.

Don't let the sun go down when you are angry.

This is Ephesians 4.

It says, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.

Okay, how do you know when to flip the tables,

when you need to go Bobby Knight,

and how do you know when you need to turn the other cheek?

I think there's a quote, I heard this in a movie once.

It says, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

You ever heard of them?

So if you talk about the righteous anger of Jesus a lot,

you might just be looking for tables to turn over, right?

And I think some of us are wired

where some of us want that conflict.

We want to be bold.

We want to have, like, I'm gonna flip tables.

I'm gonna be righteous for the Lord.

I'm gonna be bold with my faith.

And other of us, maybe we don't want it.

We will sweep things under the rug that actually do,

break God's heart.

I think there's a different,

like some of us are drawn to conflict,

and some of us want nothing to do with it.

I'm over here, right?

I don't like conflict, I don't want that.

I know some of y'all,

we got people on both sides of this aisle here.

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you're over here thinking everything

needs to be righteous anger,

and I need to be mad all the time,

that's not the Jesus we see in Scripture.

If you're over here not having any conflict at all,

this world is not our home.

There are things that should break your heart

because they break God's heart.

That like both of those things can be true.

Whatever it is, take your next step in that.

If you need to offer forgiveness,

or maybe it's time for you to be bold and say,

hey, this is wrong.

To not step into evil, but continue to do good,

and to speak life into a dark situation.

Go back to Ephesians 4, 26, that passage we just read.

Don't sin by letting anger control you.

For anger gives a foothold to the devil.

There is something to be said about that.

When anger controls you, that's sin.

We need to be in control of ourselves.

Turn the other cheek, and to flip tables.

When appropriate, right?

I think Jesus probably wants us to turn the cheek

so much more in our everyday lives.

Especially to people who don't know Him,

who don't have a relationship with Him.

That righteous anger, I mean, Jesus did that to the people

who claimed to be Jesus' followers, who were in His temple.

Be wise, be discerning in that.

Seek God to know whether it's time to flip tables

or to turn the other cheek.

Question 10, I got two more here.

Why does Romans 6, 23 say,

we can go ahead and throw it up on the screen.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God

is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

It says, why does Romans 6, 23 say that?

But 1 John 5, 16 says this.

If you see a fellow believer sinning in a way

that does not lead to death, you should pray

and God will give that person life.

But there is a sin that leads to death

and I'm not saying you should pray for those who commit it.

So it's kind of, it seems like two conflicting

statements there.

Like one is saying, sin you're gonna die.

One is saying, not all sin you're gonna die.

I think this is, you gotta remember these are two different

passages speaking to two different people

for two different purposes.

Paul is writing to the church in Rome.

He knows that they know nothing about theology.

They don't know the Lord.

They don't know anything.

And he's trying to, in the book of Romans,

he's giving everything about the doctrine of salvation,

what God's grace has done for us, what the penalty was,

why we needed that.

And he is saying in a general sense that all sin

leads to death, eventually.

It will.

And 1 John 5, 16 is talking about how

there are specific sins.

Yes, all sin leads to death, but not instantly.

Like we are all gonna die because we live

in a broken world, sinful.

But he's saying in 1 John that there are certain sin

that leads to death.

He's talking about if you do this wrong,

like there's going, not that sin is gonna kill you,

but the consequence of that sin will.

Does that make sense?

So yes, there's a general sense he's talking.

Generally, in 1 John, he's talking specifically,

if you do this, the consequence of that is going to be

you die.

So like if you go speeding and you're speeding,

you're going 130 miles an hour,

and then you hit a roadblock,

the consequence of that is gonna be death.

That's kind of what he's getting at there.

So those are the difference there.

One is specific, one is general.

All right, last set of questions here.

And these two are really tied together.

So when the love you crave from people,

when the love you crave from people keeps letting you down,

how do you fully rely on God to fill that space

in your heart without resenting him or feeling abandoned?

How do you stop seeking love from people

when you know only God can fill that space?

How do you rebuild yourself

when you don't even recognize who you are anymore?

The love you crave from people keeps letting you down.

How do you fully rely on God to fill that space?

How do you stop seeking that

knowing only God can fill that space?

Ecclesiastes three, it's one of my favorite books

in the Bible, I don't know if I said that right.

Verse 11 says,

yet God made everything beautiful for its own time.

He has planted eternity in the human heart,

but even so people cannot see the whole scope of God's work

from beginning to end.

God has planted eternity into our hearts.

Our hearts are restless to the rest of it.

That's what St. Augustine said.

If we are looking at, the question was specific

about trying to fill the space that was designed for God

with other people.

Can I just be real with you?

Some of you guys are wired,

you're seeking that satisfaction from other people.

It's not just people.

It's anything you look to satisfy your soul.

It could be food, it could be money, it could be wealth,

it could be power, it could be influence,

it could be success.

Anything you look at to satisfy your soul.

Is in the space that was made in your heart for God.

It's from Him.

You don't exist for your own pleasure.

I know that might cut a little bit.

You don't exist for your own pleasure.

You exist to be a temple for the Holy Spirit.

When we turn to other people, when we turn to money,

when we turn to success,

when we turn to, we want people looking up to us,

when we turn to anything other than God,

looking to fill that void in our life,

we will find it empty.

Because that space was made by our creator for Him.

He is the one who made that space

and He is the only one who can fill that void.

So how do we stop seeking the love of people?

Love of stuff, love of money.

How do we stop seeking that?

We can't just stop,

because I think like sometimes we just,

I'm just gonna stop doing that, I'm just gonna stop.

We were made to crave.

We search out things to fill that void.

So instead of saying,

I'm gonna stop trying to fill that with people,

we just need to start looking to fill that with the Lord.

Instead we pursue God.

Jeremiah 29, 13 says this.

If you look for me wholeheartedly,

you will find me.

God is not hiding from us.

He's actually very present.

It's easy to get distracted,

to be looking for other things.

Remember how I said to a hammer,

everything looks like a nail.

If you're looking for God, you're gonna find Him.

He's not hiding.

If you're looking for reasons to be upset,

if you're looking for reasons to be outraged,

you'll find those too.

Flip where we find our satisfaction.

Satisfaction is from God.

There is a space in your heart that He planted there

that can only be filled by Him.

Last part of the question here.

How do you rebuild yourself

when you don't even recognize who you are anymore?

How do you rebuild yourself?

Brick by brick.

One step after another.

We don't wanna sit in our discomfort.

We want to walk through the pain that is growth.

Everybody in this room is in a different part

in their faith journey.

There is a next step for everybody here.

It might not be the same.

Maybe some of you are like,

hey, you know what, I need to dedicate my child

on Mother's Day.

Maybe some of you guys are like, I need to get baptized.

Maybe some of you are like, you know what,

I need to get serious about getting into the Word.

Maybe I need to be generous.

Maybe I need to trust God with my money.

Maybe I need to fill in that blank for you.

There's always a next step.

How do you rebuild that life?

Brick by brick.

That's how God works.

James 1, verse 5.

James 1:5

Maybe you don't know what your next step is.

Maybe you're not sure.

Maybe you've got questions.

Wisdom.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God

and He'll give it to you.

He will not rebuke you for asking.

I don't know where you're at.

I don't know what your next step is,

but I do know this.

If you ask God what that is,

ask Him for wisdom in what that is,

He will answer you generously.

And here's the hard part.

It's easy to ask.

It's easy to say, I know what I need to do.

You gotta step towards it.

You can't just know it.

You have to do it.

If we look for Him wholeheartedly,

you'll find Him.

I don't know what your next step is,

but I know God has more for your life

than where you're currently at.

Look at all these questions.

You can feel the heartache.

You feel that people are hurting,

that they're going through hard times.

That's not a time to run away from God.

That's a time to run to Him.

He loves you.

He will give you the wisdom you need.

He has taken care of our salvation.

He paid that, and it cost Him so much.

It cost Him His son.

Nothing can make God turn away from you.

Turn to Him.

If you look for Him, you will find Him.

And pray for us.

God, I thank you so much for the cross.

I thank you for what you did for us,

for sending Jesus to pay the price for our sins.

I thank you that we don't have to have it all together, God,

but we can trust that you have done it all for us.

God, I pray that we have people

who know that we need to keep moving,

that we don't wanna sit still in our discomfort

or in our pain, but we want to keep moving and growing

because, God, you're never done working in our lives.

We never graduate from growth when we are in you.

Help us to know what our next step is.

For every individual in this room,

God, help them to know, and then help them to step into it.

God, we are so thankful for the work that you've done

in our lives.

God, we know that you are not finished.

Help us to live out the truth

that anything less than Jesus is a weak refuge, God,

that we can't turn to anything other than you.

You are the only one who always comes through.

Help us to trust your timing and your movement

in everything.

We ask all these things in Jesus' name,

when all God's people said, amen.

Hey, church, let's stand and worship together.