Pastor Bryan 11/17

Let's give him praise in this house this morning.

No, I don't think you heard me.

I said, let's give him praise in this house this morning.

Sometimes we sit down a little too long.

We get a little stiff legged.

We get a little stiffness in our body.

Sometimes we forget what wells up inside of us

when we know that an Almighty God is worthy of our praise.

He's worthy of our magnification.

He's worthy of our adoration.

Don't sit there and get stiff legged.

Let's worship God.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Church, if there's ever a time we don't need to be lacking

in our worship, it's the day and time

that we're living in today.

You say, well, he's just saying that

because he's about to take the offering, no.

I'm saying that because it's true.

And we're believers of an Almighty God

who knows he's worthy to be praised.

Give him praise again in this house tonight.

You can be seated if you can.

Don't know if I could, but you can.

I just feel God's presence in this house this morning.

And I'm excited to see what he's going to do today.

But as you gather your offering

and get your tithes ready to bring this morning,

I'm going to do nothing different

than our pastor does each and every week,

and that's pray blessings on you.

Because I believe that as we continue to worship

in our giving, God opens up those windows of heaven

to bless us.

My wife calls me constantly from the grocery store.

You won't believe what I got this for.

I just tell her that's another blessing

pastors done prayed down on us.

Amen.

God is good all the time.

Father, I love you today and I thank you,

Lord, for this gathering of unique individuals in this place.

And I pray, God, that you would bless them

as they bless the household of faith this morning.

I pray, God, that you would pour out your blessings on them.

Lord, give them increase and raises.

God, let them find the sales all over town.

Lord, I pray that beyond the blessing of finances,

you would bless them in their health and in their well-being.

God, I pray that you would anoint and touch each and every one.

In Jesus' name, I pray you can come and bring your own.

He is worthy of our praise. Amen.

God is good all the time.

All the time, God is good.

When I look across my life, it's not hard to find

that God is good, he's faithful.

Pastor and Sister Kathy are preaching for a dear friend of theirs

in Linden, Tennessee, this morning.

Remember them in your prayers?

One of the pastor's closest friends,

pastor's of church out there,

and he's there ministering to them this morning.

So, unfortunately, you're stuck with me.

I'm, you know, if I can be second best, that's all right.

Amen.

I'm okay with that.

I learned a lesson in the past couple years that,

I mean, I say in the past couple years, you know,

in ministry, it's never about the individual, right?

The ministers in the house know what I'm talking about.

It's about just doing the will of God. Amen.

And I know that if God's with me, I'm going to do his work.

Amen.

So, that's what I'm going to do today.

But I want to let you guys know where Pastor and Sister Kathy were.

So, just be praying for them, traveling back and forth.

I know they'll covet those prayers.

But I want to preach today out of Judges, the book of Judges.

And I'm going to be in chapter seven.

I'm going to be in verses two through verse eight.

Judges chapter two, chapter seven, verse two through eight.

You guys want to stand for the reading of God's word.

One last time.

Say amen when you got it.

Amen.

And the Lord said to Gideon,

the people who are with you are too many for me

to give the Midianites into their hands.

Lest Israel claim the glory for itself against me,

saying, mine own hand has saved me.

Now, therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people,

saying, whoever is fearful and afraid,

let him turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead.

And 22,000 of the people returned and 10,000 remained.

But the Lord said to Gideon,

the people are still too many.

Bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there.

Then it will be that of whom I say to you,

this one shall go with you, the same shall go with you.

And of whomever I say to you, this one shall not go with you,

the same shall not go with you.

So he brought the people down to the water

and the Lord said to Gideon,

everyone who laps from the water with his tongue as a dog laps,

you shall set apart by himself.

Likewise, everyone who gets down on his knees to drink

and the number of those who lapped,

putting their hands to their mouth was 300 men.

But all the rest of the people got down on their knees to drink water.

Then the Lord said to Gideon, buy the 300 men who lapped,

I will save you and deliver the Midianites into your hand.

Let all the other people go, every man to his place.

So the people took provisions and their trumpets and their hands

and he sent away all the rest of Israel,

every man to his tent and retained those 300.

Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.

Father, I love you today and I thank you for this opportunity

to preach your word.

God, I pray as your word has been broken

that I know it will not return forward.

But I pray God that you'd open up our hearts,

open up our spiritual ears to hear

what the Spirit is saying to us this morning.

And God, I give you all the glory and honor and praise in Jesus' name.

Amen. You guys can be seated.

When I was in high school, my sophomore year of high school,

which for some of the younger ones in the house,

I know my youth, they don't understand that,

but I only had three years of high school.

Some of you guys remember ninth grade was considered middle school

when I was in school.

So my sophomore year was the year they moved the ninth grade

or the freshman up to the high school.

But I was a sophomore in high school

and I remember I was on the football team

and I remember they had these drills during spring practice

and I had to go up against this guy who was a senior.

He was bigger. He was stronger. He was faster.

When I say go up against him, it was one-on-one,

mano y mano, right?

On the same team, but we're practicing.

Spring practice is where you're tested and tried

and do you have the metal?

A lot of people quit during spring practice, right?

Things get really hard. They give up and go the other direction.

But I looked across from the field where I was

and I saw this guy and I was like, I am in trouble.

Because I had watched them play as a freshman in high school

and I knew this individual was a very good football player.

I'll just say that.

He would lay the wood as some of you might know that terminology.

He'd hit you hard and have no, it wouldn't take no apologies for it.

He was just a really good football player.

And here you have me a sophomore.

I'm thinking I've been off more than I could chew.

And I go up against this guy head to head and I'm thinking,

Brian, you're going to have to give it all you got to stand a chance.

You're going to have to give everything you have inside of you against this guy

or you're going to get obliterated.

That's what was going through my mind as a sophomore.

It's a new world of football from middle school to high school, right?

So I go up against this guy and as I looked at him again,

I knew I was outmatched. I knew I was outweighed.

He was bigger, faster, stronger.

I knew I had a problem and I was in for a lot of pain.

But as the coach said, go, here we go.

We take off and we square up.

Bam, there was a collision like a car wreck.

You know, they say when you play football, every collision is like a mini car wreck.

But when I hit this guy and I came away from that situation pretty impressed with my own self.

I thought, man, Brian, that wasn't too bad.

You didn't get destroyed like you thought you.

I didn't destroy him.

Don't get that wrong.

But I didn't get destroyed.

So I was excited about that.

Y'all can clap. It's okay.

I didn't get excited.

I get excited that I did not get obliterated, right?

Because when I looked at what I was facing, I knew I had a problem on the horizon.

When I looked at what I was about to run into, I knew it could be bad for me.

I knew when I looked at him and I saw that he was bigger, faster, stronger.

He outweighed me.

I knew my circumstances was a lot that I was going to have to try to overcome.

But I was able to overcome it.

Now you think, well, where's the story?

Where's the spiritual story?

It's similar to how Gideon was in this story.

Amen.

You see, you have Gideon.

If you go back to chapter six, what you'll see in the first verse of chapter six is the same thing you see repetitive in the people of Israel.

And that's they did evil in the sight of the Lord and he delivered them unto place name here hands.

Right?

In this case, he turned them over and delivered them into the Midianites hands.

So the people of Israel were captive of the Midianites for about seven years.

And Gideon has been placed with raising an army to try to dig them out of this captivity.

There's a few things we need to talk about and I want to highlight in this, but Gideon had a very big responsibility.

He was to lead these men, this army.

And at this time, as he gathered his army, there was about 32,000 men.

Time for me to go to my notes.

He gathered an army of 32,000 people and God told him the first thing God told him is that's too many people because I want to get the glory here, not Israel.

If you if I deliver the Midianites into your hand and you have 32,000 men in your army, you will take the glory for yourself.

Right? Because that's our natural state.

What did we do to help ourselves?

We need to rely on God here.

And God said, you've got too many people.

You've got to me.

So Gideon said to him, he said, tell him if they're afraid, go to the house.

If they're fearful, go home, which leads me to the very first point I want to talk about today is fear and being afraid.

Gideon and his army found theirself in a very intimidating situation faced against the Midianites.

There's 32,000 men.

He takes 22,000 away.

So when he tells them to leave, if they're afraid, 22,000 guys leave and there's left with 10,000.

Now, if you look around at 32,000 men and you're about to do battle, it's normal to look around and say, I'm pretty confident about our chances.

Right?

If I've got 32,000, it doesn't even matter what I'm facing.

I look around, I'm like my circumstance and my situation says I'm good.

I should be fine.

We got 32,000 warriors.

We're going to go do battle and we're going to be delivered from the Midianites.

But when it shrinks down to 10,000, you might be thinking, I don't know about this.

We got a lot less people.

We got a lot less less people for this battle that we're dealing with.

And with that 22,000 people and 10,000 remained, he had 32 was fighting on their side.

They weren't too afraid.

They were pretty comfortable with the 32,000.

They'd be pretty confident in those numbers.

But I'm sure Gideon was very optimistic with that many soldiers and people that Gideon was going to war with the Midianites.

They had been oppressed for, like I said, seven years.

And it reminds me of when I send my daughter or my wife, when I tell them, hey, run out to the car and get something out of the car for me.

If the floodlights ain't on, if I don't stand at the door and watch for her, it's a scary situation to go to the car at night by yourself.

Ask your kids one time, go home and ask your kids.

Say, hey, go out to the car and get me something.

Will you go with me?

Will you watch for me?

I mean, I've got flashlights.

I'm beaming.

Erica does it too.

Y'all laugh.

It's not just landing.

It's Erica.

She said, baby, I've got to run in the car.

Will you watch for me?

I'm like, watch for you.

I can look out the window.

You're right there.

There's floodlight.

I got so many floodlights on my house, you can land an airplane in my driveway.

There's no way.

Nobody's getting close to the house, right?

But when we're with someone, when we're with a group of people, when we have numbers, we tend to feel more comfortable.

And that's the place Gideon was with 32,000 men.

They were comfortable.

They were OK.

And 22,000 leave.

Now you have 10, things start to get a little nervous.

I start to think to myself, Lord Gideon, first of all, if I'm a member of the Army, I'm thinking Gideon, what are you doing here?

You're leading us.

What are we doing here?

Why are all these?

Why did you tell them to leave?

They were afraid and they couldn't be there.

But that made everybody afraid.

The Israelites, God's chosen people, were reduced to living in caves and mountains to stay away from the Midianites for seven years.

They were hiding and running from the Midianites.

Gideon was able to build an army of that many people that were tired of running.

They backed him.

They supported him.

They were ready to go fight for their deliverance.

However, you notice that even though they had strong numbers, they were still very afraid.

At least 22,000 of them went home.

They were so afraid.

They had been bullied for so long and had even at the 32,000 people on their side, they were still too afraid to do anything about it.

But the Bible tells us in 1 Peter 5, 8 that our enemy, the devil, who is an intimidator and an oppressor, that he be sober, be diligent,

because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

I came, stopped by here this morning to tell you that it doesn't matter how afraid you may be.

It doesn't matter that the numbers look like they're against you or not on your side.

It's okay because the one person that you do have with you is God Almighty.

And he's going to walk with you through that fear.

He's going to walk with you through that valley.

He's going to walk with you and give you the deliverance that he's planned to all along.

So don't worry about your fear.

Don't worry about any of that.

God is with you.

Amen.

Isaiah 41, 10 tells us, fear not, for I am with you.

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you.

Yes, I will help you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And that's a powerful verse.

But if we stopped at fear not, would we get it?

If we stopped at fear not, would we get it?

Or would we ask why?

It's okay to ask why because it tells us, for I am with you.

Amen.

Stop right there.

The rest of the scripture is great, but that's all I need to know.

God, I need to know you're with me in my fear.

I need to know you're with me when I'm afraid.

But he is with us today.

Amen.

Amen.

The second thing you notice in the story is that,

Judges 7, 4 through 7 says,

but the Lord said to Gideon, there's still too many people.

You have 10,000, there's still too many.

He begins to give Gideon specific instructions on how

he is going to help him thin that number down even more.

So he tells them, lead the men down by a creek or a river

and let them to drink from the water.

And there's two separate ways they can drink from this water,

but if they drink this way, they're going to go with you.

If they drink this way, they're not.

Those who knelt down on their knees and leaned down to the

water to drink it with their face down were the ones that

did not get to go.

The ones who lapped the water up in their hands and lapped it

like a dog were the ones you're going to take with you.

But when he went him through this process and described to

them, here's how you're going to thin it out,

he ended up with 300 people.

So he went from 32,000 to 10,000 to 300,

facing an army the size of 135,000.

When you think about that and you think about being

outnumbered, they were extremely outnumbered.

They were outnumbered before, but now God had put them in a

position where they were even more outnumbered.

Even after the army had dropped to 10,000, which is impressive,

they still had too many.

And now the army shrunk down another 9,700 to 300 was all

that were left.

Extremely outnumbered, looking at their circumstances,

looking at everything they're about to go through,

overwhelmed in their mind.

And sometimes we think that same thing.

You may be thinking that today that you're terribly outnumbered

and you may be thinking things like,

I'm sure they were thinking things like the odds are

stacked against us.

They're looking around at each other, boys.

We are in trouble here.

The odds are stacked against us.

We're most likely going to die.

They're telling each other we're going to die today.

It's just us versus an entire army.

There's no way we can win this.

We're alone in this battle.

The people who have bullied us and beaten us for years,

we're all alone.

Do you blame them for thinking these things?

I would be willing to say that some of us even think that very

same thing.

We look around at our circumstance.

We look around at our atmosphere.

We look around at everything going on around us and we

immediately think there's no way we can win this.

We're down and out.

There's no way I can overcome my situation.

There's no way I can overcome my circumstance.

The odds have been stacked against me.

The enemy is pressing in on all sides.

I'm outnumbered.

I'm extremely outnumbered.

I've got depression.

I've got anxiety.

I've got addiction.

I've got fear of broken inside, divorce, sickness, worry, and

doubt.

Whatever it is that you're facing, I came to tell you that

even when you're outnumbered, you are mighty in God and

anything that comes against you, you are willing to overcome

with the presence of God.

Don't accept the fact that your circumstances stay one thing.

Accept the fact that you are a child of the living God and I

can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Amen.

Give him praise in this house today.

Little is much when God is in it.

There was 300 men.

And God was planning on delivering them with 300 men

versus an army of 135,000.

But God is very unconventional with his methods, isn't he?

There was a time in my life that I was seeking God passionately.

I knew I had a call in my life and I didn't know what it meant,

but I was seeking the Lord.

I wanted to know what it meant.

I wanted to dive deeper.

I wanted to press in a little farther.

But there was some confusion in my life.

Things weren't going the way that I thought it should be going.

There was conflict.

There was a constant struggle and a battle.

When I look now, I won't go into details.

We'll be here all day and I know you are thinking it's cold in here.

My team lost yesterday.

I'm sad, right?

But all you need to know is that God delivered me.

And but how he did it was very unconventional.

I look back at it now.

I'm like, God, I just asked for the thing.

That's all I wanted was the thing.

But he did all these other things that affected the one thing plus so much more.

Because our perspective is very little when it comes to the grand scheme of what God has going on.

But when I look back now, I'm like, God, I knew I see now what you were doing.

And thank you so very much.

Not only did you do a 360 in the thing that I was asking about,

but you did it even so greater than I had imagined.

God is good.

He's very unconventional.

He was unconventional in this, his deliverance of getting this army.

He took the 300 men.

They're down to 300.

They know they're outnumbered.

They're thinking we're all going to die.

What do we do?

Gideon said, here's what we're going to do, boys.

We're going to get ready for fight.

He took the 300 men.

He broke them up into three separate groups.

And he armed them with a trumpet, a clay jar, with a torch inside that jar.

Now they're ready for battle, right?

Now they're ready for a fight.

They're going to go to war with the clay jar, a torch, and a trumpet.

I know if it's me, I'm thinking, I don't know about this battle plan you got going on, Lord.

But you got me a torch.

I know they got swords.

I know they got shields.

I know they got stuff going.

I got a torch and a trumpet.

I got some questions, Lord.

But Gideon instructed them what to do.

The trumpet in one hand, the jar on one, and the torch inside.

And he instructed them.

He said, do as I do.

And they surrounded the camp, all three sides.

In my mind, I didn't look this up, but in mind, you have the camp and you have one on the sides and the front, right?

Because they're in a valley.

So they surrounded this army of 135,000 in the middle of a change of the guard at nighttime where they slept.

And Gideon instructed the troops, do as I do when we do it.

And he said he was going to, at that moment, when it came time to move, he blew his trumpet and broke the jar.

And then all the 300 men followed suit.

They blew their trumpets and broke the jar.

And they yelled out their battle cry.

And the Bible says that the enemy camp went crazy and turned their swords on each other.

And God delivered them out of the hands of the Midianites that way.

An army of 300 men armed with a torch and a trumpet with jar pictures and torches.

If it's me, I'm questioning this plan. I'm like, I don't know about this.

But an interesting thing that they did was they kept moving forward.

They didn't stop and they didn't buck Gideon.

They said, OK, we're going to trust in you, man of God.

We're going to follow you. And they followed him.

They kept moving forward. They surrounded the enemy while they were sleeping.

They blew the trumpets and broke the pictures of the torches inside.

And one of the best verses that I love is the one where it says, then 300 blew their trumpets.

The Lord set every man's sword against his companion throughout the whole camp.

So you need to understand that the enemy may have weapons to use against you.

The enemy may be armed to the teeth with all the weapons that they need to destroy you.

But what God's going to do is he's going to take those very same weapons that the enemy had against you

and use them to turn them on their own enemy.

The enemy would destroy themselves with the weapons that they created to destroy you.

Why? Because God is for me, not against me.

They were given specific instructions. God told Gideon, I'm going to deliver the Midianites into your hand.

And that's what he did. Unconventional.

We don't understand sometimes how God decides to work it out.

We don't understand the movements of God, the ins and outs. And that's OK.

Can I say that? That's OK.

Sometimes we don't have the answer when we want our answer.

Sometimes the answer we get is not the answer we want.

Sometimes we don't get any answer at all. And God says, wait.

I heard this this past week and pastors want to said it when he preached, but as a quote,

he said that stuck in my mind. I can't get out of it.

It's been with me all week. But he said in the waiting, he preached on patience.

But in the waiting, we're looking for the answer. We're seeking for the way out.

We're seeking for the deliverance always. The minute we go through a trial,

the minute we go through a hard time, we're seeking for an answer automatically.

That's OK. But there's a time of waiting. There's a time of patience.

But in that patience and in that waiting, God's grace is still applied to you.

So the quote is God's grace sometimes is better than the answer. Amen.

I think when we move and operate inside God's grace, it's better than the answer we're waiting on,

because sometimes God's not ready for us to get that answer. And it's OK.

But we need that answer. We're looking for that answer. But in the meantime,

let's surround ourselves and know that we're in the grace of God. Amen.

Amen. Though it may be unconventional, though God may do some things that you're like,

I don't know what's going on. God has a plan for you.

He has a purpose for you in your life. Amen.

So I encourage you today. It's OK. If you're afraid, know that God is with you.

If you're outnumbered, know that God is with you. It may be unconventional,

but God is still for you. So many times today, we, even as Christians,

let our circumstances and our surroundings affect who we are and who we believe in.

Do you believe in an almighty God or not? One of the things that for the longest time,

Erica couldn't stand about me and yes, she's my wife. She loves me.

I know she does. When she don't want to, she still does. Right?

But one of the things she couldn't stand about me early on in our when we really started

pressing in to see God, what do you have in store for us?

What calling, purpose and plan do you have for our life?

When we really started pressing in, things would come our way.

For instance, when we were looking for a house, we decided our first house we bought

when we were married, we decided let's put it up for sale and let's just see what happens.

We had no plan, no realtor. We were just like, let's put it up for sale, see what happens.

We sell it, we sell it. If we don't, we don't. That's fine.

We had one daughter, we had a land and we were looking to have more kids.

We needed more space. We put it up for sale and little did we know within 30 days,

we were looking for a house because we didn't have nowhere to go, but we sold ours. Right?

So then we're like, hey, mom-in-law, can we live with y'all?

Anyway, we moved in with her parents and we were thinking it's fine.

This is temporary. We're praying, Lord, we know you can provide.

You give us a home. We're wanting a home. We're wanting somewhere we can be there for a while. Right?

So we're praying, we're seeking God. We go to look at this house. We loved it.

It was gorgeous. Well, she loved it. I was just like, I just want a big bathroom.

But anyway, she loved it. We go there, look at this house.

And we didn't get it. We didn't get the house. Right? We put an offering on it.

It didn't happen. Well, we fell apart. Right? We're praying, Lord. What happened?

We're seeking you. We need a house. We're living with mom.

I'm like, we need help. What happened? We had to learn some patience there.

But then we found another house. And we're like, this is the one.

We just feel it. You know, we feel a lot, right? As Christians, we feel.

I just feel it. This is the one. This is the house.

We go look at the house and make the offer.

It was one of those, I don't think there was a realtor involved in this.

It was like, we found it. We went and talked to the owner. It was just us.

Made an offer. She accepted it. Praise the Lord. Praise Jesus.

We had a house. Thank you, Lord. Right? It's victory. We're dancing. We're shouting.

Well, the appraisal comes back on that house and it does not appraise for what we agreed to pay for.

And that's a problem. Anybody that's bought a house knows what I'm talking about.

You ain't paying it. The bank ain't going to give you money for something that ain't worth. Right?

So we went back and sat down with this lady in the dining room of what we thought was our,

this is our blessing. God's given us this.

We sit down in this dining room with this lady and we start talking about it.

She is, she's, she's firm on this house is worth that.

I don't care what the appraisal says. I can't go any lower than what we agreed.

Desolation, right? Complete destruction of mine and my wife's mentality

and what we thought was going to happen and what didn't happen.

We're on our vehicle and we're driving back to Target where we met up to drive together

and we're going out to the house and on the way there, she's crying.

I'm getting mad. Right? And I'm mad because I start thinking, I start looking and I'm,

the enemy is causing this. These emotions, this anger, this desperation.

We're supposed to be believers of God. We're supposed to be followers of God.

We're supposed to rely on Him and trust in God. We're supposed to do all those things.

We're letting it affect us this way. I'm getting mad at the devil.

I'm getting mad at the enemy. And when we get to Target, I said, look, we're going to take,

I'm going to take your hand and we're going to pray because this is not what God intended.

Whether we get the house or not, that ain't what it was about at this moment in time.

It was about battling with the enemy on who it, what it was doing to she and I.

And there's a battle that happens with each and every one of us because the enemy is the enemy of your soul.

He doesn't care about you. All he cares about is you don't make it to heaven one day.

So I want to encourage you today. And in that story, we said a prayer.

We get in our cars, we head to her mom's house. When we pulled in the mom's driveway,

we already had the phone call saying she was going to accept the offer and we're in the house today.

Yeah. Praise the Lord. They got blessing.

I didn't communicate it clearly because you all missed it. But anyway.

We're living in that house today, but that's what that's how the enemy does us.

Amen. Y'all can stand. I'm going to close.

You're welcome.

Hey, the Bible said laughter do good like medicine, right?

It's all right to laugh in the house of the Lord.

But the Lord causes us to feel that way sometimes, whether it be through our circumstances.

Guys, I pray just this season of pat me on the back moment, but I pray for this congregation every day.

And I don't know your stories. I don't know everybody's circumstance.

I don't know what everybody's going through. But what I do know is we all are going through something.

There's something there's a there's a there's a there's a situation in our life.

There's this there's an atmosphere.

There's something always going on in our life to where we need God to intervene.

I know I do. And I pray for each and every one of you.

Like I said, I don't know what you're going through and that's OK.

But I want to encourage you today. Do not be afraid.

It's not over until God says it's over.

You may be outnumbered, you may be the walls may feel like they're collapsing in on you.

But then I also want you to know that God's very unconventional with how he's going to deliver you.

So you may be going through some things tonight, you may be struggling with some things.

That's OK. The same weapons that the Midianites had that were going to be used to kill God's people.

He turned it around and they used them on each other to slay themselves.

And that shows us that the very thing that the enemy can use against us, God will turn and use it against the enemy.

Amen. Genesis 50 20 says you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Did God cause the pain in your life? No.

But understand there's a purpose for that trial. There's a purpose for that circumstance.

There's a purpose for that situation. We may not understand it.

Your deliverance is on the way. It's going to be conventional and that's OK.

But God will take that hurt and use it to make you stronger each and every step of the way.

Amen. All the head bowed and eyes closed.

Father, I love you today. I thank you for your word this morning, Lord.

I thank you for your encouragement to know that we are not alone, to know that we are in the palm of your hand and you are with us everywhere we go.

Father, even in the trials, even in the tribulation, even in the hard times when we feel like the world is against us or we know that you are with us and we praise you for and we thank you.

There's anyone here today that that needs prayer.

Maybe you're going through that certain situation.

Maybe you're going through something that says I've reached out.

I've tried my hardest. I'm trying to seek God, but I've struggled along the way.

I've been distracted along the way and and my original focus isn't what I wanted it to be.

I've let the enemy mess with my emotions.

I've let the enemy mess with with my heart and in my mind.

And I've fallen. I've done some things I shouldn't do.

These altars are open for you today.

I'd love to come pray with you.

Maybe you're just in a place where you know, I knew the Lord and I've strayed from him.

There's no better time to to rededicate or come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior than today.

There's no better day than today.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, God.

Thank you.

Lord, I thank you today and I praise you.

Thank you for your word. I thank you for your presence.

I felt your presence in this house today.

As we leave this place, Lord, may your words continue to bless,

continue to touch, continue to move in our hearts and lives.

Every situation, God, if there's discouragement, if there's doubt,

pray for your presence to intervene.

I pray for you to intervene in the situations, God.

In Jesus name, I pray, amen.

Can we give the Lord a hand clap one more time?