A Tale of 2 Mothers - Happy Mother's Day

Well, happy Mother's Day, real life.

Give a shout to all the moms who are here today.

It's such a special day. Yes, to get to celebrate and

sorry I'm a little bit I don't always get to be down

worshipping with everybody and I love it so much and that song.

It just gets me that last song. It's like man, God put his

breath in our. Lungs and we get to give it back

to him like what an awesome picture of God.

So I am so excited I am if I haven't met you.

My name is Diane I'm Shawn's wife and so excited to share

with you just something God has put on my heart this Mother's

Day. So I think we can all agree on

something today and it's that moms are incredible right that

kind of yes give them a hand again.

They don't get enough thanks for all of the work they do.

They are the reason that we're all here.

They are the reason that some of us are here and dressed

appropriately for the day, right?

They might be the reason some of us remembered to come to church

today. OK, Like there, there might be

some of that going on too. So do a quick poll.

How many do you would say that Mom ever fixed something that

you had messed up? I forgot something.

I failed at something. I fell down.

I hurt myself. Yes, I think that's pretty

consistent. Moms have this superpower where

the combination of like a Band-Aid and a cold paper towel

and a prayer can fix just about anything.

And we're not really sure which one of those things it was that

did it right. All right, one more who has who

has a mom who has a special dish that nobody else on earth can

make the same way. Well, now Sean's looking at his

mom because I don't think it's because it's really good.

I think it's actually gets really bad.

For some of us. I love my mother-in-law.

I really do. She's great.

She's so great. But I know now I'm going to go

buy her flowers. It's going to be a great

afternoon. We're going to have so much fun.

Yeah. Hey, we got you some flowers.

It's going to be great. So that dish, right.

Like you might have gotten even gotten the recipe for mom and it

doesn't matter. You can't make it the same way

that she made it. And moms just really carry

something that's irreplaceable. It's often.

Unseen and you can't. Put your finger on it.

But it's woven in the background of all of the ordinary

day-to-day things that we do. It's so special.

We can't explain it, but they make such a huge difference.

So we hope that you feel honored today.

We love the moms in the house. We want to celebrate all of the

ladies across this space for all that they do.

And so happy Mother's Day to all the awesome moms out there.

Yeah, one more hand. Let's give them a hand.

So today we are going to talk about a story about two moms.

But the story is really one for every person in the room.

Of course, moms, but maybe those waiting to be moms, maybe those

who have lost their mom, maybe those who are in a complicated

relationship with their mom or whose mom never quite showed up.

Or maybe just any one of us today who needs a reminder that

no matter what circumstances we're in, that God is here and

he wants to show up in those. And so this story today is not

really the Hallmark Channel version of Mother's Day.

It's real life. And real life, as you all know,

can be a little bit complicated. So this story is almost kind of

uncomfortably real. I like to say it's in the book

of Genesis. Barry mentioned it.

It's a story of two sisters named Leah and Rachel.

I've heard some people call her Leah.

I can't get that in my brain. So today she's Leah and Rachel.

So if I'm my Hebrew is not right, that's OK, I'm sorry.

But she's Leah and Rachel today. And I'm calling it the tale of

two mothers. And Sean thought it'd be really

funny if I said this story really does have the best of

sometimes and the worst of times because it does.

So I'm not as funny as Sean. So you'll get some some Sean

jokes on the backside. Yes, I am.

I know it's not my superpower. It's OK.

I have other superpowers. But it made me think about this

story, looking at this series that we had been in called

Theology for the Rest of Us. And I think this story is one of

those nods to the credibility of God's word.

Because if I was looking back at the lineage of my family and

trying to like line down all the lives and what God had done

through them to get me where I am today, this is like a cringe

worthy account that probably wouldn't have made it in my list

of like, let's honor Aunt Leah and Rachel who had this just

messy, yucky weirdness. But what I love about it is God

doesn't whitewash the lives of the people in his story.

His intention isn't to make these perfect people that we

never feel like we could attain to.

The people in this book are real people just like us, and they

screw up just like us. And I really believe that God

knew that we would need that reminder to see that how He

works through the lives of people matters so little on our

own ability and so much on our ability to trust that He's in

control and He can do it. So we're going to dive in.

Sorry if I talk fast. I have lots of Bible verses

today. Logan gave me an award for maybe

having almost the most Bible verses that we put in a message.

But I really want you to, I don't know if that's a good

award or a bad award. There's lots of it, but I really

want you to see this story. So the setup is this Jacob, like

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jacob has just gotten the

blessing from his dad, Isaac. He has promised to go find

himself a wife who is still connected to his family.

So not a Canaanite woman, somebody in their family he

knows about. His uncle lives in a far off

town, so he goes off off on the way for several chapters.

He has this dream about the stairway to heaven.

He's promised all these descendants, all these things.

So we're going to pick him up when he has made his way to town

and he has run into some shepherds at a well.

So we are in Genesis 29. We are going to start in verse

9, and we are going to make our way through most of this

chapter. So it says, while he was still

talking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she

was a shepherd. And when Jacob saw Rachel, the

daughter of his uncle Laban and Laban sheep, he went over and

rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well, and watered

his uncle's sheep. And then Jacob kissed Rachel,

and he began to weep aloud, because he had told Rachel that

he was a relative of her father and the son of Rebecca.

So she ran and told her father, and as soon as Laban heard the

news about Jacob, his sister son, he hurried to meet him.

He embraced him, kissed him, and brought him to his home.

And there Jacob told him all these things.

Then Laban said to him, You are my own flesh and blood.

After Jacob had stayed with him for a whole month, Laban said to

him, Just because you're a relative of mine, should you

work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should

be. Now here's where we meet our

sisters. So in verse 16, Laban had two

daughters. The name of the older was Leah

and the name of the younger was Rachel.

It says Leah had weak eyes, which I will tell you does not

mean she didn't see well. It's actually a Hebrew idiom to

mean she wasn't much to look at. But it says Rachel had a lovely

figure and was beautiful. I know, right?

I want that to be MyHeritage like Diane.

Not much to look at like in Scripture for all of his.

No, just hypothetically speaking.

So Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful.

So you can imagine these two sisters already had some sources

of contention living this life. So Jacob was in love with

Rachel. We're one month in, he loves her

and he says I will work for you for seven years in return for

your younger daughter Rachel. Now, men, I want you to let that

sink in for a little bit. Like most of you are like, let

me save up two months wages for an engagement ring, or how about

7 years worth of your salary just to pay the bride price,

right? Like that's pretty sorry.

That's pretty significant, love, you would say.

Actually, in this time frame, the wage of a shepherd would

have to work about three years for the average bride price.

So Jacob's got it bad. He's like, no, I will work for

seven years. I'll do whatever it takes.

I love this lady. But so 19, Laban said.

It's better that I give her to you than to some other man.

Classic father-in-law line, right?

Like I guess you'll do better than someone else.

Stay here with me. So Jacob served for seven years

to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him

because of his love for her. Yes, we can all say so.

Jacob arrives, meet Rachel. He's got it bad.

A month in, he agrees to work seven years to marry her.

And this is where the Hallmark Channel version.

Oh, thanks. Sean will say it's not going to

let me drink this, but it's vodka.

Watch out. And that's what Sean just told

me. It's OK.

For those in the back who couldn't hear, kind of like

people are like, are you nervous about speaking all these people?

Like, no, I'm nervous because Sean's right here and I can hear

what he's saying. So it's like.

Oh man, marriage is a blessing so.

This, and maybe this is where the Hallmark Channel version of

this story wraps up. He loves her, she loves him.

He worked seven years, but it was only just a few days because

he was so in love, right? It's almost been 19 years, but

just felt like a few days. That's right.

So chapter 21. We're going to keep going.

Then Jacob said to Laden. Give me my wife.

My time is completed and I want to Make Love to her classic

son-in-law line. So Laban brought together all of

the people and gave a huge feast to celebrate this wedding.

But when evening came, he Laban took his daughter Leah and

brought her to Jacob. And Jacob made love to her, Yes.

And when the morning came, it says there was Leah, much to

Jacob's surprise. So Jacob is mad, rightly so.

Jacob said to Laban. What have you done to me?

I have served you for Rachel, didn't I?

Why have you deceived me? Now this is really interesting

because Jacob's name actually means deceiver.

And not too far before this, he had deceived his own dad and his

own brother to weasel them out of his birthright.

So the deceivers getting deceived, it's very ironic.

And Laban's like, oh, it's not our custom here to give the

younger daughter in marriage before the older one.

Probably like really helpful information from 7 years ago,

right? So why don't you finish this

daughter's bridal week and then we will give you the younger one

also in return for another seven years of work.

And so Jacob did it. Man, he loved Rachel.

He finished his week with Leah and then Laban gave him his

daughter Rachel also to be his wife.

Laban gave his servant Bill Hot to his daughter Rachel as her

attendant and Jacob made love to Rachel also and his love for

Rachel was greater than his love for Leah.

And he worked for Laban another seven years.

Like this story is crazy. And Jacob does end up getting

Rachel for his wife, but not without some serious collateral

damage to the lives of both of these women.

But. My favorite, but there's several

but gods in here. But God doesn't wait for their

circumstances to get better or change to show up and to let

these two women know that He's their God and He is with them.

In verse 31 it says this. When the Lord saw that Leah was

not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained

childless. God saw Leah, He saw that she

had been rejected, He saw that she was in the middle of a

situation she never asked for. He saw her and he moved.

And I think so much of the pieces of this story of God

walking alongside people in their suffering and in their

circumstances is so we can also know and have that reassurance

that whatever you're walking through right now, God sees you

too. Wherever you are, whatever

season, as you're waiting for things that don't seem to be

coming together, he's here. And it doesn't matter if your

pain came from your own choices or choices that those that

people had done for to you, God sees it and I believe he wants

to create something beautiful from your pain.

So we're here, two sisters, same house, same husband, both living

with circumstances. They didn't choose what could go

wrong. So this is where our story goes

from bad to worse. Because instead of them focusing

in and saying OK I have this that God has given me, they

immediately start looking at each other.

So let's look at verse 32. It says that Leah became

pregnant and gave birth to a son she named him Reuben for she

said it is because the Lord has seen my misery.

Surely my husband will love me now who was like what should we

name the baby? How about my misery?

Like you know suffering is a really great name to name your

first born child. You can see the pain that is in

the situation because every child is named after what's

going on in verse 33 it says she conceived again when she gave

birth to a son. She said because the Lord heard

that I'm not loved, he gave me this one too.

So she named him Simeon. In 34 again she conceived, and

when she gave birth to a son, she said, now at last my husband

will become attached to me because I have borne him three

sons. So he was named Levi.

And her pain is palpable here. Like she like, nobody wants to

name their child my suffering, you know, like, isn't that the

name of Hitler's manifesto, you know, like Mein Kampf, Like this

is literally these children, each one coming out.

And they don't just come out, you know, back-to-back to back.

This is a period of years that you can see that Leah is feeling

so unloved and so unworthy. But.

She's not the only one in pain. Let's look at Rachel in Genesis

30 verse one, it says when Rachel saw that she was not

bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister.

So she said to Jacob, give me children or I'll die, which

might be a little bit dramatic, but it also shows just how

painful that daily reminder was of her struggle.

And Jacob actually becomes angry with her.

Am I in the place of God who has kept you from having children?

Like, hey, I'm sorry you're going through this, but I don't

have any control over the situation and you're mad about.

So not only has it been bad, it's worse because nobody has

the life they wanted. They're joined together and they

have a permanent daily reminder of the pain and struggle they

have been through. Leah has married, but unloved

because Jacob loved Rachel more, it said.

And Rachel is loved but barren, which would be devastating in a

culture where the main place of honor for a woman is to be able

to provide heirs for a family. I mean, Jacob just got a word

from God that they're trying to build a nation, right?

She's like, I am totally failing at this.

And so can I be real for a second this morning?

I think that in a room. This size, there's got to be

some of us that are living in a life that we didn't choose.

Maybe your marriage is going harder than you expected that it

would, or maybe motherhood didn't bring you this peace and

joy that you thought this fulfillment was going to have

for you. You might be in a season of

waiting that just feels like it has gone on and on and on.

Or maybe you're carrying this quiet grief that nobody sees

because Leah had sons, real sons, who loved her, but she

couldn't stop looking at what she didn't have.

And Rachel had love and devotion and a husband who just

sacrificed so much for her, but she couldn't stop looking at

what she didn't have. Both of them were looking

sideways, and it was making them miserable.

And today, comparison doesn't just happen among siblings or

friends or people that we know in our workplace.

Comparison happens every time we open our phone.

You open a feed and see somebody who seems to have their life all

together went on another family vacation or upgraded their house

or their car or they meet you another milestone or an

achievement or any other life. And it's perfectly filtered,

framed, beautiful way just looks better than your life.

And suddenly then what you have, what God's given you, doesn't

feel like enough. What I'm building isn't enough.

And that turns into then who I am will never be enough.

And I truly believe that it's that comparison of my life to

someone else's life to something else I see that will make me

blind to the prayers that God has already answered in my own

life. Each of us has received so many

blessings from God, but comparison won't let us see it

that way. So I really wish that in this

story that they made it to happily ever after, but it

doesn't neatly resolve that way. The story is so raw and so real,

and I think that there's a real beauty in that.

But there's an undercurrent happening here about how God

continues to be present in the lives of these people through

their struggles and their circumstances.

Because for both of these women, in different ways in different

times, God continues to show up. So like I alluded to, in the

ancient world, names carried A tremendous meaning.

Every child Leah named was a window to her heart.

We talked about that in Genesis 2932.

She was pregnant, gave birth to a son, named him Reuben.

And she said it's because the Lord has seen my misery.

Her first son's name shows that she is reaching and she is

hoping, and she's still waiting to be chosen.

If only I can do these things, then I'll be loved.

Verse 33 same thing she conceived again her second son

named because the Lord heard I'm not loved.

Simeon means God heard that I'm not loved.

She's naming her pain out loud before God sharing her struggle

and her third son Levi. Now at last my husband will

become attached to me. Levi actually means attached and

she's still hoping and praying and waiting for this

circumstance to change. But it's between this point,

verse 34 and then 35, that something shifts.

And there's something really incredible in this passage

that's easy to miss if you kind of fly through it and gloss over

it. And I've missed it before, But

in verse 35, I don't want you to miss this, it says that she

conceived again, which is now her fourth child with Jacob.

And when she gave birth to a son, she said, this time I will

praise the Lord. So she named him Judah, Leah's

fourth son. Judah.

His name means this time I will praise the Lord.

We don't have any reason to think that between verse 34 and

35 that anything changed in Leah's life.

Jacob still loved. Rachel Moore Leah was still the

one who was never chosen. But somewhere between Levi and

Judah, something changed inside of Leah.

She stopped naming her children after her longing, and she

started naming them after her God.

She stopped waiting for her life to change and she's chose to

worship God inside the life that she had been given.

And I think for so many of us, like if that thing could be

tattooed on my arm to remember, to say I need to name my

struggle after my God instead of letting my struggle identify my

life. Leah stopped waiting.

She stopped longing and striving.

This life and these circumstances might not ever

change, but I am going to make a decision to choose praise.

I'm going to choose God inside of this life I have.

And I don't think that that's pretending that she wasn't in

pain. She'd already named her pain.

I think she just made a different choice.

No matter her circumstances, no matter her pain, no matter the

poor choices of her dad or anything else that led her to

this point, Leah decided to praise God.

And I think that's such a powerful example for us as we

look into what is God asking us to do today.

And her faith is so inspiring. But what about our other mom?

What's going on with Rachel because we're Leah chose to

praise Rachel's story is a little bit different path.

So in Genesis 30 verse one, we already saw these first 2 verses

1. So Rachel saw she wasn't bearing

children. She said, give me children or

I'll die. Jacob became angry with her and

said, am I in the place of God who's kept you from having

children? And then she said, here is

Bilhah my servant, sleep with her so that she can bear

children for me and I too can build a family.

Through her now to our world context.

This feels really strange. This was actually a common way

of building a family and building family wealth in these

days. Good, bad or ugly, this would

have been a common practice. So it's not so out there crazy,

but it says that she gave him her servant Bill Ha as a wife

and Jacob slept with her and then she became pregnant and

bore him a son. So Rachel is now getting to

build her nation with Jacob in her own line.

And Rachel said God has vindicated me.

He's listened to my plea and given me a son.

Because of this she named him Dan.

Verse 7 Rachel's servant Bill Ha conceived again and bore Jacob a

second son. And Rachel said, I have had a

great struggle with my sister and I have one.

So she named him NAFTA Lee. See, Rachel had already started

with so much. She was beautiful, she was

desired, she was the one Jacob chose, and yet she spent even

this part of her life receiving the blessing from God,

Miserable. Because she couldn't stop naming

her pain. She couldn't stop looking at

what Leah had literally named her child.

Like ha ha, now I'm going to win.

I'm doing it better than my sister did.

Like she couldn't be happy. She ended up manipulating,

bargaining. She used her servants as

surrogates just to keep up, traded her husband's company for

mandrakes, which were like ancient fertility herbs, because

she was so desperate to have what Leah had.

And I think you really see as you walk through this story

throughout Rachel's life that she was so consumed by what she

lacked and didn't have that she couldn't receive what she

already had. But this is my next.

But God, God is so good in this story because he saw her pain

too. And he remembered her.

In Genesis 30, verse 22, it says then God remembered Rachel.

Genesis 30:22

He listened to her and enabled her to conceive and she became

pregnant and gave birth to a son.

And she said, God has taken away my disgrace.

And she named him Joseph and said, may the Lord add to me

another son like she's in like this is it.

This is her beautiful moment where the prayer of so many

years, probably he had gone by God answers these prayers gives

her the deepest desire of her heart to carry her own child

with Jacob. Yet her name for him wasn't

praise. Her name for him was like, man,

I need God to add me another one because I'm still trying to

catch up with what God is doing in Leah.

She's still striving. She is still in continued

competition with her sister. And then Rachel's last moment is

really heartbreaking because some years later Rachel gets

pregnant again. This is probably the course of

the story takes place over decades.

You know, we're reading it a few verses over, but she finally

gets pregnant again. God added her other son even

gave her granted her the wish of Joseph's name.

She gets her miracle. And so in Genesis 3517 and 18,

you can slip over there. It says Enda, she was having

great difficulty in childbirth. The midwife said to her, don't

despair, for you have another son.

And as she breathed her last, for she was dying, she named her

son Ben Oni, but his father named him Benjamin.

Rachel was giving birth to her second son and she was dying.

She ended up dying in childbirth.

But in her final breath, she whispers out the boy's name is

Ben Oni. And what's so heartbreaking

about this story is that in Hebrew, been Oni almost

certainly means the son of my suffering or the son of my

sorrow. And so Rachel never got to her

Judah moment. She never made that turn from

longing to praise. And maybe her heart was broken

and suffering because she knew she was dying and she wasn't

going to get to live with this miracle that got it done.

But even at the very end of her life, in the middle of this

miracle that she is a huge part of creating this nation for God,

she was naming her suffering instead of naming her praise.

In a culture where names were someone's destiny, she used her

dying breath to curse her son's name because of her pain and to

push that pain on to the next generation.

She truly did get what she prayed for.

Two sons to carry their family's legacy, to build a nation, to

carry on the line of her husband Jacob.

But it wasn't enough. So the contrast is impossible to

miss. Unloved, overlooked, but chose

to praise. Loved, beautiful, chosen, but

suffering and completely unable to receive the life she had.

And I really believe this. A life that is spent grasping

for what we don't have. We'll always miss the blessing

of what we do. When my eyes are always up

looking out on what could be and what is not and what could have

been and what I don't have, it's impossible for me to look and

see with gratitude what I have been given.

These two women have the same family, same husband, same

house, same God, but they chose to do something different with

it. And there was a season in my

life, too, where I needed a miracle.

And like Rachel, I was begging God to take away pain.

So Sean and I had two teenage foster kids right out of, well,

really right out of getting married.

And after they had graduated from high school, we decided it

was time to start our family, to have our own kids.

And for about four years, we struggled through a season of

infertility. And if you've ever been in that

struggle, you know it's not just a physical struggle.

It's emotional, it's spiritual, and it touches every part of

your life. You have months and months of

trying and waiting and praying and then carrying that

disappointment to know that you're completely helpless to do

anything but pray and just say, God, why is this happening?

We want so badly for you to give us a child.

And I honestly wondered for a lot of years, like, is this even

going to happen? I question God, you know, I work

in healthcare, in Pediatrics, and you see all of these

children who are barely wanted by their families to go, why

God? Like we want a child so badly

and we would love a child so well.

Why is this happening? And it really, it feels like

like everything and everyone around you is moving forward,

but you're just standing still waiting.

Like I can't move to the next thing.

I can't go to the next season. I'm waiting for this to start.

And you know, we we're still serving God and trusting his

plans for us and really ultimately just trying to find

gratitude for every person around us who is expecting

children and love on those who got it, called us to love and

care for. And I think we finally came to

this place of what I call this like open handed surrender.

Like God, maybe you were calling us to a life where we don't have

any more children because you have something bigger for us.

Like you have something that we need to carry for your ministry

or for your word to go out. That wouldn't work if we had

kids. And so we started praying

through this season of what I now call the fiery furnace

prayer. And that comes from Daniel

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3. I'll read it.

But this is when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were

getting ready to be thrown into the fiery furnace because they

refused to bow down to idols. They only would worship their

God. And so it says Shadrach, Meshach

and Abednego replied to him. King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not

need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.

That they were unwilling to bow and worship the king.

But if we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we

serve is what? Yeah, he's able.

He is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from

Your Majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want

you to know, your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or

worship the image of gold that you've set up.

Like that prayer in that season was key for me because it's God.

You know the desire of my heart. You know that I want to have a

child. You know I want to carry a child

in my own womb with my husband. But even if you choose not to

answer that prayer, you're still good.

And you had to come to that place to say, even if he doesn't

is the prayer that it was. Even if he doesn't allow me to

have kids, even if he doesn't provide healing in this season,

even if my spouse never accepts Christ, even if my circumstances

never change, he is still good and I'm going to give him

praise. And in that season, we prayed

that. And we meant that.

There's actually a song from that season of life called by

Hillsong United called Desert Song, and the lyrics of it were

really a praise declaration for us.

It says all of my life, in every season, you are still God and I

have a reason to praise. I have a reason to worship.

So I will bring praise. And really it's Leah's prayer,

right? I will bring praise and there's

no weapon formed against me that shall remain.

I will rejoice and I will declare that God is my victory

and He is here and now only by His grace, His miraculous hand.

I do have three awesome little kids and they are loud and they

are full of life and they are absolutely amazing kids.

And if I'm honest now, almost 10 years removed from that time

frame, there are moments in the middle of the chaos of that

where it's easy to forget that this noise and the mess and the

exhaustion is the thing that I spent years begging God to give

me. And I catch myself in that

moment, frustrated about the dishes and the laundry and the

never ending sibling argument that happens.

I have to stop and remind myself, this is the life you

prayed for. Like see it, be in it.

Be in this real life that you have.

Take your Judah moment and give praises to God.

But I also know in a room like this that not every prayer gets

answered that way. And there have been plenty for

us that we've cried out to ask God and he didn't answer in that

same way. That means in a room like this,

there's joy, but there's also grief, and there's answered

prayers and there's waiting prayers, but God is present in

all of it. He was present with Leah in her

long, and he's present with Rachel in her grief, and he's

present with you right where you are today.

And so I want to end Leah's story with something that I

think will really stay with you. That's incredible to kind of sit

down and think about because Leah did probably feel

overlooked her entire life. She lived to be an old age.

She was buried with a family, She was unloved.

She was unchosen. She was always somehow 2nd.

And she never got the love story she wanted.

But her fourth son was Judah. And I want you to look at the

blessing that Judah's father, Jacob, then Israel, bestowed

upon him as he was nearing his death.

So this is in Genesis 49, verse 8.

Genesis 49:8

It says Judah, your brothers will praise you, your hand will

be on the neck of your enemies, your father's sons will bow down

to you. The scepter will not depart from

Judah, nor the ruler staff from between his feet, until he to

whom it belongs shall come, and the obedience of the nation

shall be his. You see, Judah, Leah's fourth

son was to become the ruler over all of Jacob's sons and

ultimately over all of the tribes of Israel that would come

from their family and the descendants.

It wasn't Jacob's first born Reuben, who you would have

thought, and it wasn't Jacob's most beloved son Joseph.

It wasn't even Benjamin, the son of his right hand.

No, Jacob chose Judah. He chose Leah's praise and look

at what he chose him for. Go back to verse 10.

The scepter won't depart from Judah, nor the ruler staff from

between his feet until who, until he to whom it belongs

shall come, and the obedience of nations shall be his.

The he in that verse is for the future to come, because from

Judah's lion came the tribe of Judah.

From that tribe came King David, and from David's lion came the

lion of Judah. Jesus Christ perfectly come from

Leah's praise from the woman who felt unseen, unloved, unwanted.

Her life, her story, and her faith in God became a part of

the greatest story ever told. God used her pain to bring forth

healing and salvation for all of humanity and brought forth a

Messiah to save the world. And so there's a really good

chance that you may not get to see or understand what God is

doing through your pain, what he's building, what He's growing

for another generation, for people on and on.

And maybe you'll never know why your circumstances are writing a

bigger story. But in God's story, your pain is

not ever wasted. He is doing more through the

day-to-day of your ordinary life than you could ever think or

imagine. And the prayers you whisper when

nobody's watching, the patience you're holding when you're

running on empty. And the way you keep showing up

even when you feel unseen. God sees you and he loves you

and his love for you is so great.

And your faithfulness to say yes to Him, and your faithfulness to

give him the praise. Like we sing about, it's your

breath and our lungs. So we pour out our praise.

God's weaving that into something so much bigger than

you can imagine. So how do we choose praise

before we feel it? There's going to be days when

you don't feel like praising. I'm sure Leah had them.

So we look to her. We praise God before the feeling

comes. We give gratitude to God for all

He has done. Because joy isn't found in

perfect circumstances. It's found in staying connected

to the One who can meet our every need.

It's not an easy recipe, but it's a simple one.

In First Thessalonians 516 through 18, it says this.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all

circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Joy always turns our pain into praise.

Leah took her pain, her overlook, her not loved with an

open hand. She brought it to God, She named

it Judah. She used her quiet, faithful

pain form life to bring the Messiah into the world.

And God's not wasting a single thing that you're walking

through in this season either. Not one tear, not one night, not

one moment of it is wasted. So whatever you're running or

whatever you're carrying from today, my encouragement for you

is not to run from it. Don't numb it.

Don't let it turn you into Rachel grasping and striving and

naming your suffering out onto all the people around you.

Bring it to God because he wants to take your been only the son

of my suffering and he wants to turn it into now I'll praise the

Lord into Judah. God can transform pain into

purpose, suffering into praise and he wants to use your story

for something far bigger than you can ever imagine.

And I believe today he wants every single one of us to choose

to praise walking through your pain.

Don't miss this. Walking through pain doesn't

just form you. Of course you're going to learn

from it. You're going to grow from it.

It's going to impact your life. But when you walk through a

painful season, that becomes the very thing God is going to use

for you to bring healing to someone else.

Your pain surrendered to God becomes your ministry, your

hardest season walked in. Faith becomes the language you

can use to speak to somebody else who is right where you used

to be. And I know this because I lived

it. Those years of infertility, of

waiting, of crying out to God. They gave me the ability to sit

with someone in their grief and say I see your pain and God sees

it too and he's still good. God actually gave me the ability

to name my turn my pain into praise and we named it in our

children that way. I have Jack Shepherd, his middle

name is because we believe that God's going to use him and his

generation to shepherd people to draw them closer to himself.

We have Emery Renee, her middle name literally means reborn

because there is salvation that this next generation needs to

bring in our Levi, not attached, but a Levite, the worshippers,

right? He can bring worship to his

generation. We named our children because we

want to see God use their lives and because he gave them to us

and we get to offer them back to him in a stewardship.

So you can just sit with people in that pain and say, I see you,

God sees you. And I don't know how many lives

are touched by sharing my story, but it's much less on a stage

than it is in a hallway or on a phone call or a text message or

sitting by somebody just in a cubicle at work.

God uses your pain in your story when you share it and when you

let him in an open handed way, say, God, all I have is yours.

I'm opening it to you. But I know you can use my pain

to bring your good. So in this season, my challenge

for you is to give this season of your life a new name.

Maybe it is suffering, but maybe God wants to turn that suffering

into praise. And I wonder, like Judah, what

story is being released into God's Kingdom by your choice to

praise him today? Because if you look at it, the

story of God, the lineage of Jesus Christ our Savior was born

out of Leah's choice to praise. Let's pray, God, we lift you up

in this place and just grateful for your word, God, for the

lives of the people that you've shown us to live by.

God, I pray today that as we lean in, that you would just

give us words of praise for our pain and that maybe there's a

group of people in here today who would say, you know what?

I need to turn my pain into praise.

No matter my circumstances, I need to make a decision to focus

on what you've done and to give this season a new name.

And if that's you today, you raise your hand, I'd love to

pray for you to say, you know what, God, no matter what I'm

going through, no matter what is going on in my day-to-day, God,

I choose to praise you. If you raise your hand, I'd love

to pray for you. I see your hands, God.

I lift up these people. I don't know what they're

walking through, but you do. God, you see them, you know

them, You feel your pain, their pain, God, because you have felt

pain. You know what it's like to feel

betrayed, God, and for circumstances to lead to a

horrible death that you died for us, God.

And so I pray that you would give us words for our pain so

that we can offer it to praise to you, God, help us to decide

today that you are enough and that we can praise you no matter

what we're walking through. And maybe there's one other

group of people today who would say, you know what?

I've never been able to offer praise because I've never really

experienced the healing from my pain that comes from Jesus, the

lion of Judah. But today I feel like he's

drawing me to himself. Today I feel this invitation is

urging to say yes. I want to surrender my pain.

I want healing. I want wholeness.

That's you today. And you'd say, you know, I've

never accepted Christ as my Savior.

I've never made that decision to trust him.

I've never made that decision to surrender my life and follow

him. That's you.

And you raise your hand. I'd also love to pray for you.

I'm not going to call you out, but if you say today, I've never

accepted Christ, I've never taken his sacrifice for my pain.

And today I want that. I want to make a decision to

follow him. If you raise your hand and pray

for you as well, and not only pray for you, but this is an

opportunity to say, you know what?

You can also pray to God. You can reach out your hand and

say, Lord, I feel you drawing me to yourself, God.

And today I've been carrying a heavyweight.

But I want you to lift that burden from me, God, I know you

died on the cross for my sins. You to take that burden of pain

away from me. God, through your sacrifice you

can make me whole. And today I want to do that,

God. Today I choose you, and I choose

you to save me in Jesus name, Amen.

Well, hey, let's give it up to those who made decisions today

to follow Christ, for those who are ready to open their hands to

that burden of pain. And thank you guys so much for

letting me share with you.