Journey's in Genesis: Gathering Spiritual Data with Moses

They were like, what is that white stuff on my car? And it's okay.

It's called frost. We don't get it very often.

But you're cozy at home, and that's good. And we're glad that you're there.

And for those that are traveling or with the youth or whatever.

But thank you. You guys are the real warriors right here. You warmed up your

car. You hit your electric starters early.

Peter and Jenny ran in there like, we forgot to de-ice the car.

And it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, there's a whole nother level of things you

have to think about in the winter sometimes here, which is fun.

I'm so glad I live here. I remember the, the, okay, this is a total aside.

I used to live in Connecticut on the East coast. And I remember not long before

we, we, we moved out here one Sunday morning, my pastor, like,

I mean, it's New England.

It's like, it's like, it just snows and you just do, you just live anyway.

So I had to be at church at 6 a.m.

And it snowed two feet.

And so I had to wake up at 3.30 to start getting my driveway clear.

And I thought to myself, Lord, send me somewhere where this doesn't happen. And God is faithful.

So here we are, a little layer of frost. Thank you, Jesus.

All right, so we are continuing on this week. We're in this series.

It's called Journeys in Genesis, a super creative title, because we've been

kind of just looking at journeys that God's people take in the book of Genesis.

And I told you last week, it's also going to be in Exodus, but Journeys in Genesis

and Exodus doesn't sound as good as Journey in Genesis. So we're actually going

to look at some of God's people's journeys in Exodus today, and I'm squinting

at it, and you'll be fine, and it's still in the Bible.

I've been explaining, we're not just doing this to think about the book of Genesis,

though it's an awesome book, and there's so much that's strange and fascinating

and exciting in the book of Genesis.

I also have an ulterior motive, right?

We're looking at this series because, as you probably know at this point,

we've been talking about it for a while, I-90 may be going on a journey ourselves.

Which is to say that we are, and I'll give you the full update in just a second

here, but we may be leaving this building sometime soon.

We have been setting out and we're entered into a contract to potentially sell

the building to another church.

And many of you know that we had been nearing the end of our feasibility period.

That's that early stage in any contract where a buyer can come in and just say, eh, nevermind, right?

So we were getting to the end of that. that was going to be ending on the 15th,

but we've extended it because why not?

A little bit more to, well, we said to the 20th, but actually the 20th is a holiday, so the 21st.

Extended it to the 21st for just reasons that it takes a while when churches

are involved. I know this personally for elders to get together and talk and discuss.

And so they wanted some more information. We gave that more information. They're like,

okay, this is probably going to be good, but we just got to get into our meeting and

formalize our decision and everything like that so it is

looking like they and i expect kind of

things to resolve and move forward here on

the 21st but i'll update you i'll just continue to update you on the timeline

because at this point unless something changes in their thinking at least from

what they were they were telling us through the through the of course the telephone

literal telephone game of realtors involved that they are looking like they're want to move forward.

And we've hammered out the details and the questions that we've had.

So it's my read. What I'm anticipating is that they will want to move forward.

And once we move past that feasibility stage, things become just more concrete and more clear.

So that's my read. Who knows what's going to happen? God's in control.

But if that happens, and I just want to assure you, and again,

talk about the timeline, there's

still a long time until we would have to vacate this building, right?

So within the contract, we negotiated an option to lease back after the execution

of the sale, to lease the building back for three months.

So if we were to close tomorrow, which we're not, we would still have three months, right?

So there's that. And plus, there will be a longer time if we move out of feasibility.

It will be a while until we can execute because part of the deal is for us to sell this.

One thing we are willing to work with is to do some work on the septic that needs to be done here.

And if you've ever worked with King County.

Respect to King County, but things take a little while.

And so it's going to be however long that's going to take, plus three months,

right? So that's not happening tomorrow.

We don't anticipate that happening tomorrow. Just to set everyone at ease,

it is a big decision, but there's not like urgency. We got to get out of here.

Like, you know, grab your kids and some furniture, nothing like that.

Not that sort of thing. So there's no urgency on the move and the timeline,

but we are right now. And that's the purpose of this whole series and focusing in on this.

We are praying urgently about, you know, the next question, this important question that comes after.

Like, if we leave this place, the important question is, where are we going to go?

And, you know, I put up this map in the last couple of weeks of the potential options.

They're not that wide. You know, we're not moving to Mexico,

although with the frost, maybe we could think about it.

It might be nice, but we'll probably just stay really close to where we are

within a couple miles, which is not, you know, a huge variability.

We're not talking about a great distance.

But that said, there's consequences. Left or right, east or west,

going either direction.

Like, it's a meaningful decision. It's not like, oh, hey, no big deal.

You know, wherever we're to go, like we are asking God to plant us in that place.

And I mean, if you're a gardener or something, like I'm not,

but my wife is, like she's really good at that stuff.

And she understands that where you get planted matters for how you grow, right?

And so we're praying to God, you know, God, if we're gonna move,

we're gonna uproot, like we want to be planted in the good soil.

We want to be where you're putting us so that we can flourish.

And we're not trying to think our way like just by making the best choices only

on the basis of our thinking, though thinking is a part of it.

We're really asking God, like we're asking him to direct things.

And so we, the whole point of this kind of couple of weeks, which we're wrapping up right now,

thinking about this journey is we are asking you, and I am pleading with you,

please participate in the process of prayer and discernment.

Ask this question, God, what is next for this group of people?

Because it's a complex decision, right? There's a lot of variables and a lot of things.

And some people say, well, it's not that hard. And I get that. And I appreciate that.

And, and, but, but for, for others, it is like there's, you know.

However many people are in a room right now, or however many people who call

I 90 church, that's how many opinions and views and preferences we have.

Right. And that's just life. Right.

And so what we're trying to do is saying, Lord, what do you want?

And then we're trying to get our wills and our hopes and our expectations to

follow after what God wants.

That's what we're doing in a prayer process. And so I'm asking you to pray.

We need the Lord's decision.

We need his direction.

And last week, we actually spent some time and I've kind of helped.

I use props last week, which I don't usually do for various reasons.

Maybe laziness is one of them.

Bad handwriting, also another one, right?

We talked about this illustration of what I'm trying to do with this is just

trying to visualize how do we make complex decisions,

decisions that require thinking, but also like prayer.

And I mean, I just realized this, this was super helpful to me thinking about

this particular situation, but I also think it will be really helpful for you

in whatever decision you have.

And so I wanted to dwell on this imagery a little bit because to me it is interesting.

And I actually got a ton of positive feedback that it was helpful to just sort

of visualize this in this way.

Whenever we are praying through complex challenges, we're saying,

okay, Lord, what do you want?

Like, I recognize there's a challenge in front of me, but I'm seeking God's will in this thing.

Like, what we find is that everyone has at least one bucket and one way of approaching any scenario.

We have, I call this factual data, which is a little bit misleading because, of course.

When we come to factual data, we're talking about the problems that we see,

but we're also just talking about what do we think the problems are?

In any given scenario, if you have a relational challenge, you have some facts

about what you're perceiving to be true, but you also just have your interpretation of those facts.

We are a people, we live in our perspective and we just have to deal with things.

We have to deal with what we're seeing and what we're perceiving.

And so we have factual data, We have information about what we think is true, and we load this up.

Whenever we're facing any decision, we load this up with just data,

like literal, factual information. We also load up our feelings.

We load our anxieties, our concerns, our what-ifs.

You know, we have all of these things in your brain, like it's inevitable.

When you are thinking about a complex thing, you are holding this heavy burden

of factual data, and some of it might be totally true and everybody could say that's true.

Some of it might be just your impressions about what's true.

It doesn't really matter. Like you actually have trouble discerning between those two things.

What's actually true and what I just feel like is true, right?

And you just, you load them up in your brain, right? Represented by this factual data bucket.

And that's normal. Like we begin to consider data, factual data.

You have your concerns, things that are true. and so like as we've like again

thinking about the decision that we have before us,

this is how i've been and and the elders have

been approaching this thing because we have an understanding

of some of the challenges that this building comes along with like there's lots

of great things about this building we probably wouldn't exist as a church without

this building because if we had gone through covid and all the stuff that happened

to i-90 in covid had happened and we didn't have a place to land and kind of recover,

like we just wouldn't have been here. This building is such a huge blessing.

That's a fact. That's a part of the data set, right? That's a reality. That's truth.

But then we also just like been thinking through some of the challenges.

And last week I printed out because I know you guys just really want to hear more from me.

So I said, you know what? I have about an hour and a half more of stuff to say,

but I don't have an hour and a half of time. So I wrote you a six page document.

Explaining at least my perception of the factual data, some of the challenges

that we face here. And honestly, it would be the most boring sermon in the world.

So I didn't want to just sit up here and tell you all that stuff.

But I wanted to, if you want that stuff, like that is my understanding of some

of the challenges we face.

I mean, some of you guys have taken me up and you've read about it.

And you could look at some of those things and say, I see that this is true

and I recognize this. I don't think that one's quite right.

And that's it. Like, I'm just giving you my perspective.

I'm giving you, as I've been working with the variables and thinking through

the variables and using my brain and my authority as pastor,

some of the challenges that I've come up against, and I could be right and I could be wrong.

That's it. Just like when you

have a challenge, you have a relational problem, you have a work problem.

You might be right, you might be wrong about what the nature of the problem

is, but you're stuck with your view.

And so what do you do with that?

And so like, it's really funny.

I gave you this printout, right? And I'm trying to make clear that,

okay, yeah, we have factual data, but we also have other data, right?

It's funny because Tony, one of our elders, he was in children's ministry serving

during the sermon, and it was great.

But he came in afterwards. He said, oh, there's a printout here.

I'm going to take this home, and I'm going to read it.

And then I talked to him earlier. He still hadn't listened to the sermon.

He says, well, this is just like all the things you're worried about.

And I'm like, yeah, that's the point.

That's the point. If you read that printout, you say, well, these are just stuff

you're worrying about. That's it.

Because that's mostly where we begin with complex decisions.

The stuff you're worried about.

And so yeah, if you feel like that's not really complete, you're right.

That's why there's a part two.

There's a part two, right? Because there's factual data.

When we come to not only church decisions, but honestly, in anything in your

life that matters, you also are going to have another data set, spiritual data.

It's the stuff gathered in prayer. It's the stuff gathered as you study the

word of God and you say, God, what do you want from me?

What does serving you and seeking your will above all else really mean for me

in this particular situation?

It's subjecting your will to God's will. It's that intention and devotion and

desire and then seeking the counsel of wise people, right? Who you've been surrounded with.

Thank you, Jesus, that you have wise counselors around you, that you have fellowship, right?

So it's like cultivating these things that are, yeah, I mean,

like they're interpretations of facts, but it's putting it in a new context

and you get this spiritual data and you cultivate it.

And my point was, and I don't have my water and my rocks, but this was filled

with water and that was filled with rocks.

And what we did is we poured the water into the rocks and it was such a great moment.

Everyone was, oh, yes. And the point is that like, when we, I really didn't

think it was that great. I mean, it was, it was fine.

When we have factual problems, when we have issues and hard stuff and difficult

things, and we don't know what to do, what we can do is through faith,

we can mix the facts with the spiritual data.

And what we find is that God does something and he can do what he wants.

He can dissolve the problems. He can tell us, you know, that thing that you

think is this immovable obstacle, it's actually not that big of a deal.

I've got it because God can move mountains, right?

And God can do anything he wants. And he's got cattle on a thousand hills.

He's got all the money and power and love in the world to supply us with abundantly.

And so we take our spiritual data and we mix it in with the factual data.

And oftentimes things are just gone. and the facts aren't so hard and difficult

and heavy laden and our anxieties are taken away, right?

Or we clean the factual data and we're left with a realization that actually,

you know, there are some real things.

And then we have to ask the Lord, what do we do?

Now that we've moved out the anxiety, what do we do with the real things?

So when you face a problem or a challenge, right?

Or a complex decision that you have to make, You always begin,

and this was really important.

Everyone begins with factual data.

And there's sometimes in Christian circles, we're told, eh, who cares?

And that sounds spiritual. I don't think it is.

I don't think it is. Hey, let me give you a Bible verse, right?

Don't take my word for it. Philippians, it's a classic.

What do you do when you're anxious, right?

Philippians 4, 6 through 7. Don't worry about anything.

There you go. Well, but it's not actually over there. It's important.

It doesn't end right there. It's not, don't worry about anything.

It's don't worry about anything. But in everything, through prayer and petition,

with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So the question is like, how do you deal with complex decisions?

And how do we deal with complex decisions? you don't just chuck the facts.

You bring the facts before the Lord. You request, petition, prayer.

Supplication is the older translation, the one that I have in my head from the 90s.

And you mix those things in. And doing that, like bringing the factual things

to God and then praying about them and seeking the Lord's will,

that's when the peace comes.

And it's going to come because he deals with the problem, or he says,

just hang in there, or he shows you what you ought to do, how you ought to respond,

that the Lord shows up to us in those places. So how do you deal with complexity?

You can't, I don't think it is responsible of you.

Like faith does not ask you to just turn off your brain.

Your concerns, your requests, your needs, your perceptions of problem.

Those are important to hang onto them and to shield those things from the spiritual

data and to not give God a voice in your inner monologue. That's the problem.

But to invite God into your requests, the things that are on your heart,

your concerns, that's how we deal with anxiety.

There is not an anxiety button switch that you can flip in your head.

You hold on to things and you deal with facts and you bring them to God,

and then he can do what he wants with those things.

But as we do that, we grow confident. We allow God to do the work.

I love this quote by Richard Bauckham, one of the most known theologians.

He's just like a rock star.

He says this, simply, to be a Christian, a person of faith, we might suggest

is precisely to live as a person for whom God's future shapes the present.

Such a good and clear definition of hope, if you ask me.

You know, because oftentimes we hold the present, the challenges that we face,

and we think what could possibly be done.

But as Christians, what we say is that we know that we serve and seek and follow

after a God who holds our future in his hands.

And so though we live in the present, and we live carrying this bucket. We don't get to chuck it.

That kind of rhymes. Terrible.

Don't embroider that on a pillow. We carry this bucket around, right?

You have to carry it, but we don't do so without hope.

And our hope and our expectation is that our God cares for us and he knows better than we do.

And so we come to him and we seek his counsel and his wisdom and his guidance

in any decision that we have.

The way out of worry or anxiety is not to chuck your problems.

It's to soak the now in the spiritual facts,

subjecting what I feel like is immovable or difficult to the power of God and

to just fill it up with spiritual data, no matter what your today looks like.

So hope, I mean, this is it. Hope and hope-filled decisions begin with a sober

assessment. Like this is the thing.

Sometimes Christians do this thing where we're like, oh, I won't think about the reality, right?

If the reality makes me uncomfortable and if it makes me feel discouraged.

And so I'll just act like it's not there. Oh, I don't have any problems.

My life is great. I'm super happy.

Everything's fine. We ignore like some of the facts that stand before us, right?

Because we think God is asking us for that.

But I think the truth is that God wants us to have wide eyes,

to understand the challenges we face.

And yet with those wide and open eyes to also be wide and open eyed to who he is.

And that he's not a God who can just deal with small problems,

but he's a God who can deal with any problems.

Any massive challenge. And we don't have massive challenges,

but we're seeking the Lord.

And so my intention in giving you the part one of that document was like,

it's really, I'm really direct.

And you might say, and people did, dude, what's wrong?

I'm fine. I'm really fine. Like, but my intention was to give you a really vivid

picture of the things that I have been like wrestling with. and some of us have been wrestling this.

Like, I want you to know that there are some challenges and I don't want to

hide those things from you. And some of you guys were like, that's a little too much, buddy.

And I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if it was too much, right?

But I wanted to give you an insight into some of the challenges that I see.

And I could be right or I could be wrong.

That's really not the point. I do think I'm right. And like the elders have

talked about various, these categories, like I might understand the problem

a little bit differently, right?

Or its root a little bit differently, right? But we all kind of agree that in

these categories, we have some challenges in front of us.

And so I wanted to give you some insight into those challenges.

But I also want to assure you, and what I want to focus on today,

is that we haven't only been doing this.

We are not trying to think our way out of the challenges.

Like, you know, there's responsibility, and we try to be responsible and manage

what God has given to us and steward what God has given to us.

But we're also really trying to get this bucket full.

We are really seeking the Lord. We have been seeking the Lord,

because we know that God has plans. Jeremiah 29, 11 through 13.

There's like at least three people who that's your life verse,

right? In this room, right? And that's good. It's a good life verse.

It's one of these things where, oh man, it's so true that we can just build

our life upon this kind of truth.

I know the plans that I have for you. This is the Lord's declaration.

Plans for your wellbeing, not for disaster. To give you a future and a hope.

And you'll call me and come and pray to me.

And I'll listen to you. And when you seek me with all your heart and you search

for me with all your heart, you're gonna find me.

This is like a particular word delivered to a particular people at a particular

moment in time back in Jeremiah's day, right?

But it's the sort of thing that we can say, this is totally the character of God.

And so we can just seek him because he doesn't want our bad.

God wants our good. He wants to see us moving into maturity,

right? And that might not be our vision of maturity.

Like he has a vision of maturity and hope and a future. And so we come in and

we say, okay, God, we have whatever challenges that we're facing,

but we come in confident that God loves us and cares us. How do we know that?

Because he died for us on the cross, right? Romans 5, 8.

God demonstrates his love for us. And while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. And so for all of our, I think I used the word doofustry

last week, and I'm gonna bring it back.

Like I can be a doofus, you can be a doofus. It happens, right?

For all of the things that we do, we know that God can deal with it because

he loves us and he cares for us. and he loves us as we are and in the situation

that we find ourselves in, not as who we ought to be.

He loves us as we are, as sinners.

Even while you were still sinner, Christ died for you.

God has taken into account all of your problems.

None of it catches him by surprise. And so we come to complex decisions and

we come to challenges and we just say, hey God, I know you love me.

You've always proved yourself to me. Would you prove yourself yet again?

Would you lead us forward in this decision? Would you lead me forward in whatever

the thing that I'm facing?

And we have been, you know, just as elders, like seeking and praying God and asking Him.

And we've been asking Him to make clear what He has for us.

And we believe that He's calling us to a new place through the long process

of cultivating spiritual data. And I'll talk about that in a second.

We've been filling up this bucket, looking at the facts, but not letting the

facts overwhelm us, like just saying, okay, God can do anything He wants with

the challenges that we face.

And over the years, over the years, because this is not a new thing that we've been praying about.

Over the years, we have this sense as the elders that God is moving us to a

new direction and it's not a decision motivated by looking at the facts and

just being like, oh, we can't possibly, we have to run from these problems.

It's a decision that's motivated by looking at the facts and just trying to

be good stewards of the challenges and then asking God this question,

and being curious enough to ask God, God, what do you have?

Will you make it clear what you're telling us so that we know what we need to

do about the challenges that we face?

And it's been a long process.

And as we look at Scripture, right, as we look at Scripture,

as we look at God calling his people on journeys,

we see that this spiritual data, like his guidance, his direction,

really matters when God's people set out.

Because it's pretty consistent, and we've already kind of looked at it so far,

but the spiritual data that is before any journey sets out in the book of Genesis,

like from Abraham, Joseph,

Joseph's journey, and then like what we're going to look at today when Moses is being called out.

All of God's big moves are preceded by revelation, right?

Guidance, spiritual data, right? Abraham literally hears God say,

come, leave your family, leave where you're at, the place where you've been

comfortable, and come to a land that I'm going to show you.

So the Joseph cycle, right? Which ends up like Joseph has all these dreams, right?

And he anticipates that what's going to happen is that all my brothers are going to bow before me, right?

And that kind of kicks off this series of events where Joseph seems to be like

in total despair and things are going really bad.

But it ends up being true that his brothers come before him and are bowing before

him because at this point he's been elevated to the right hand of Pharaoh and

he's seen them through famine and stuff like that, right?

But if it weren't for that spiritual data in the beginning, I can't imagine

how Joseph would have been sustained through such a difficult season.

Before God begins to move people along, he makes things clear and he gives spiritual

data. He fills up the bucket.

Let's look at Moses for a second. I realize it's not in Genesis,

but if you just go three more chapters past the end of Genesis,

you get to Exodus 3, continuation of the narrative that's been going on in Genesis.

And we can see like this really remarkable example of God providing for his

people spiritual data that's going to kick off their journey.

So if you've got Bibles, you can open it up. I got it up here,

but it's this classic moment.

Where Moses is called out. So meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of

his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian.

And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire with a bush.

As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire, but was not consumed.

And so Moses thought, well, I must go over and look at this remarkable sight.

Why isn't the bush burning up? And when the Lord saw that he had gone over to

look, God called to him out from the bush and said, Moses, Moses, here I am.

He answered, do not come closer. He said, remove the sandals from your feet

for the place where you're standing is holy ground.

And then he continued, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham,

the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

And Moses hit his face because he was afraid to look at God And then the Lord

said, I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard them crying

out because of their oppressors.

And I know about their sufferings and have come down to rescue them from the

power of the Egyptians and to bring them from the land to a good and spacious

land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

See, God is, this is the kickoff to the whole narrative of the book of Exodus,

where Moses ends up leading his people out from Egypt back to the promised land

after 400 years of sojourn there,

you know, ending with Joseph's, you know, leading there.

And we see as he's about to send his people Israel out on yet another journey,

he begins by providing spiritual data.

And it is so clear and so vivid, and it needed to be.

It needed to be clear. It was appropriate to the level of factual problems, right?

Like God says, I see the facts. The facts are this. My people are oppressed.

I see it. I recognize there is a deep and grave problem.

And then he says, and because I love my people, I'm sending them,

I'm responding to the facts, the situation, and I am telling you about this,

Moses, now so that on the front end you will know that I am providing a solution

for the factual problems.

And Moses like,

He's providing this clear and vivid picture to Moses.

And Moses needed it because, I mean, he was in quite a situation.

He's an Israelite by birth.

You kind of know this story if you back up a little bit. He's an Israelite by birth.

But at this time, Pharaoh is persecuting the Israelites and killing the male children.

And so he was given up, kind of in this kind of miraculous adoption process,

right? put into the river and raised by Pharaoh's daughter.

And so what Moses is doing, he has a wide-eyed assessment of understanding the problems.

He had a sober assessment of the facts that he faced in life.

He is a Hebrew raised by Egyptians, right?

And the Hebrews, he knows, are being persecuted and oppressed by the Egyptians.

And that's left him in this really strange position, right? He's connected to

Pharaoh, but he knows he's a part of this people group that are being persecuted.

And then he gets into this little pickle at the end of chapter 2,

where he kills an Egyptian who's beating a Hebrew person.

He kills him, and then he's worried about what's going to happen, and so he runs away.

He's a very sober assessment of this predicament he finds himself in. He runs away.

He runs to the land of Midian, which is kind of northern Arabian Peninsula.

So he's up there and he's just hiding out.

He's taken up work as a shepherd and he is suddenly confronted, right?

He's not particularly, doesn't seem to have a particularly spiritual approach

to his problem, but he's confronted with spiritual data, like really remarkable spiritual data.

He's out with the sheep and he sees something. He sees a bush that's burning,

which wouldn't have been that surprising.

I mean, we've seen some bushes burning lately here in the United States of America,

right? It happens all over the world.

Things burn up. There are fires, right? But what he says is,

man, this bush is burning, but it's not being consumed.

It just keeps burning and burning and burning and burning. And like,

you know, if you get a bush on fire, it's gonna go up.

We went to the Andonians after Christmas and we burned our Christmas tree.

And I will tell you, it burned really quick.

Really hot 15 feet in the air so awesome it was very wet don't worry we weren't we weren't dangerous,

and it burned right up but then what happened it

stopped it stopped burning immediately what he sees is

this is this continual burning bush and he steps out he goes near he wants to

investigate he says something interesting is going on here and so he takes a

step i need to gather more facts i need gather more data something is strange

here let's be open-minded let's let's pursue it and as he gets close.

I mean, it's crazy because God just makes it super clear.

And if you keep reading in the chapter, God literally gives him a play-by-play

of what's about to happen.

You're gonna go, you're gonna do all these things. Pharaoh's not gonna like

it, but we're gonna keep at it.

It's just like reading off the script of everything that's about to happen in

the following chapters here.

And you kind of like, it's like so clear. You're kind of like,

well, God, isn't that kind of ruining the story?

But he needed that kind of clarity in order to take his first step.

I mean, you're asking him to go back to the place where he thinks he's wanted as a criminal.

He's a member of this social group that is totally being actively oppressed.

And he's like, and you want me to go back there? And then you want me to walk

into Pharaoh's place and you want me to say, hey, Pharaoh, I'm just gonna take

these people that you've been oppressing and that you hate and are your slave

force. We're just gonna go, okay?

And then, I mean, it takes a lot of chutzpah, a lot of chutzpah to do that sort of thing, right?

But he has this clear spiritual data that God has provided because it is a big

decision and he needed it.

And spiritual data can lead to two things, right? It can lead to God taking

the problem away or it can lead to, as is the case with Noah,

with Moses here, leading to a confrontation with a problem.

Like God could have delivered the people by any means. He could have just,

you know, have Egypt fall apart.

He could have just, I don't know, had like the miraculously change to this other place.

But God says, no, I'm giving you some spiritual data because I can do anything I want.

And I've chosen in this scenario to have you, Moses, deal with this problem in this particular way.

And that was really important for Moses because why would he step out and do any of this without it.

See, without spiritual data, Moses would have just stayed in Midian,

and the Hebrews would have remained oppressed, and he probably would have never

have set out to free his people because it is so audacious and so crazy and

such a big, complex thing. Why would he?

You're not going to do something that is hard or dangerous, risky to you in

any way, unless you have a clear direction from God.

And so, I mean, like the question is, in talking about this decision,

what is the spiritual data?

We have not had a burning bush moment. I don't want to let you,

I just want to just turn the heat down.

Like we have not, no one has heard from a bush in this process. And.

But we have had some moments that had been pretty remarkable along the way.

And it's funny, even the current elders are not even the elders that have been

in this throughout this whole process, right?

We've had people come and go off the elder board. But throughout this process,

and this process has been very long, I will tell you, there has not been a burning

bush moment, but there have been some moments of real clarity and things that are like, boy,

God seems to be doing something here.

It's not just us like feeling like we have a problem.

It's like God seems to be, have been nudging us in the direction to pursue something different.

And so I've actually prepared, like part two of this document is in the back

there. If you want it, it's printed out. I got 15 copies. I can print out more, whatever.

I'm also going to email it like I did last week. If you're on our email list, you got it.

And it's much easier to read this time because it's just the narrative, right?

It's just the story of what has been happening and what's going on here And

what has the process been for the elders of praying through this decision and

thinking through this decision and seeing God lead in this decision?

And if you want that, if you need that, if that's important,

you want that spiritual data collection, go ahead and get that.

And I wanted to actually just share with you one of the points from that story, right?

This is probably one of the things that for me was just like,

man, this was kind of a big thing, okay?

So quick backstory, we've been praying about this for a long time. I really mean that.

In fact, we first started talking elder team, you know, and praying about it

in the summer of 2021, which was my first summer here, right?

So I've been here for almost four years now.

And the reason we started talking about it is not because we were thinking about

the facts. I didn't know anything about the problems at this point, right?

But in the summer of 2021, what happened is someone came to our door and said,

would you ever think about selling this building?

We didn't, no signs, no interest, no knowledge of the problem,

but someone came to our door, said, hey, would you ever think about selling the building?

And for three years, that same party has been interested. It's not the party

that's actually we're looking to sell to right now.

This party is still interested. They're probably not super happy.

They're not the ones who we would prefer because this is not a church.

We prefer to sell to a church. And so like.

For three years, that party has been interested. And so we've been praying,

well, God, like, is this a thing?

Is this something that we should pursue or is it not?

Is it worth pursuing or not? We're not out here looking for the burning bush,

but we see this thing happening and I don't know, who knows what God wants to do.

And so we've been praying and we've been praying and, you know,

not praying like seriously, like just a thought in the back of your mind.

Like, well, that is a thing that seems to be happening and who knows what God

wants. And you might remember, we've been praying for this a long time.

You might remember if you've been around at church for a while,

in the winter of 2023, two years ago.

Okay, so two years ago, I got up here on a Sunday at the vision night that we had at that time.

And I asked you guys to pray about this question with us. Where are we going long-term?

Should we, like we had this potential, just kind of abstract person who would

be interested in buying it, not talking about terms, not talking about anything.

Just like, is that even worth pursuing? and I asked you guys to pray about that.

And I told you guys at that point, hey, the elders are just thinking about it.

We're praying about it. We don't know if this is what we should do.

We're praying about selling the building and we're gonna really start talking

about it on our upcoming elders retreat.

And I told you at the time, and this is like interesting details.

April 13th through 16th, we were going on an elders retreat.

I have the Airbnb receipt. In case you don't believe me, we stayed at Laura's

place in Leavenworth and we went down there and it's like, okay,

church, we're going to go pray about this question.

Where should we go? Would you pray with us? And that was two years ago.

And so we had this set, April 13th through 16th, 2023.

And not long after that, a friend who was involved in the elder team back in

the day, back when Trinity, the church that was here, that met here in this

building, merged with I-90 a long time ago.

And he came out to me, I said, hey, we're praying about this.

And he said, I'm not sure if you can do that.

And I'm like, well, tell me more, please. And he said, so here's the thing.

He explained to me that when Trinity, this historic church that owned this building,

decided to merge with I-90, and we took over the building, and there was an

agreement that was made.

And the agreement stated that if we were ever to sell the building,

it's perfectly a reasonable agreement, by the way. I'm not complaining about this.

I'm just saying it's an agreement that was made. If we were ever to want to

sell the building, it would need to be approved by a super majority of the members

of Trinity at the time who are still alive.

You get what I'm saying? So we would have to have this, which is not like,

it's just a thing. It's like a procedural thing, which we didn't know about, right?

But we could, it's not an impossible obstacle.

We could gather those people together. We could explain the problem.

And I'm sure that they would be okay with that, right?

But there was this thing, and I had never heard about this agreement.

In the handoffs between COVID, some knowledge was lost.

Let's just say that, right? And this was a piece of knowledge that was lost.

So news to me that this agreement even exists.

And it's important information and I appreciated having it. But the person said,

okay, look, I might have a copy of the agreement.

Let me go look for it. And so he goes back into his records and he emails it to me.

He emails me a draft of the agreement that had been written up.

And he says, but you know what? There's something interesting.

I looked at this. There's actually a stipulation.

The agreement, the requirement to have that two-thirds majority again,

not a problem. It's a perfectly reasonable thing.

It actually ends at 10 years, at the 10 year mark, after the merger is formalized.

That's the rule for 10 years. I was like, oh, okay.

And so important information sends me this email.

And so the question is, when was the merger between I-90 and Trinity finalized?

Well, I have documentation for that too.

Well, April 15th, 2013.

I didn't know this agreement existed. I did not, we weren't planning on running

down the clock and saying, all right, let's make it, let's vote on the 15th of 2023.

It just like, it didn't even know it existed.

And look, this is not burning bush clarity. I understand that.

But when you're sitting and you're saying, church, let's pray,

let's pray. We don't know if this is right.

We don't even know if we have permission from God to move on this way.

This felt a lot like at least permission to explore the possibility and i don't know like,

i have to believe that when we're when we're thinking about complex decisions

that if god is in control that he's not going to send like like like false positives

i mean you know like like we have to weigh these things and weigh the significance

of these things and is this the only piece of spiritual data no there's six

pages of it if you want more right?

Just kind of the things that we've been praying and seeking God,

but we've been asking the Lord and things like this have happened along the way.

Just things that are, maybe they're circumstantial, maybe they're coincidences.

I don't know, but all I can do is just fill up the bucket and we can just mix

it in with the facts and we can just be curious about what God is doing.

And that's all that we can do. We can pray and then we can seek the Lord and

we can ask him to make his will clear.

My college roommate wrote a song to

this proverb and it was intentionally terrible, but I still remember it.

Trust in the Lord. I'm not going to sing this song. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Don't lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he'll

make your paths straight.

Don't be wise in your own eyes.

Fear the Lord. Turn away from evil.

So you're setting out on a process. We've been setting out on this process.

We're just trying to discern God there might be a big decision that we have to make.

How do we do this? How do we weigh this? There's emotional complexity.

We don't know what's right.

And yeah, we have the facts, but we can't just have the facts.

We have to trust in the Lord.

We have our understanding, understanding, but we need to lean on the Lord.

We need both of these things. He doesn't say, I don't care about your understanding, right?

When I lean, I just take weight off of one leg and put it onto another leg.

But the prescription isn't cut off the leg, right? It's just have balance.

And so, yeah, we have some facts. We have spiritual data.

And what we're told, as we have this balance, we think, we have understanding,

but we also have trust and we have hope and we have faith and we have spiritual data.

And what God says is you keep those in line, God's going to make your path straight.

And so guys, that's where we're at. Like, man, I am so afraid of making.

I love this church and I love these people, the people who call this place church.

I am not taking this lightly, this decision, but we're just saying it feels like a straight path.

And so just going to wrap up here. Worship team can come up here.

I'm asking you to be a part of this.

To walk the path, right? To walk the path of just saying, okay,

God, where is this story going? What is going on here?

I'm asking you to pray and to pray seriously.

I've been asking you guys, if you would join us on Thursdays throughout this month to fast.

Why do we fast? We fast because we desperately need to not have our own understanding,

but we need to know that the Lord's in control and we need to know his will.

And so we deprive ourselves, right? And it seems like, I know that's not popular

this day and age, depriving yourself of anything. Why?

We withhold food from ourselves, right?

Not in a masochistic kind of way, because we want to remind ourselves that the

most important thing is not the things that appear most important,

like our sustenance, but that actually the will of God and his purpose is what

sustains us. And so would you join us in fasting?

Would you join us in seeking the Lord's will and praying for more spiritual

data so that we could just have clarity in this process, that's what I'm asking you guys to do.

If you want those documents there in the back, join us on Thursdays in prayer.

We're going to have a prayer and worship night here, first Thursday of the new

month, February. That's the word I was looking for, of February.

Please join us, guys. When we gather together, when we seek the Lord together,

when we pray, I believe that he's going to make the path clear.

I know it feels like we're sometimes just carrying this around,

but I'm asking you to help fill this up.

I can't do it alone. The elders can't do it alone. We all need to fill this

up. We need clarity from the Lord. Would you please take that seriously?

Would you please pray? If you don't feel like you know how to pray, great.

A challenge is before you. I don't know how to work out.

I just got a gym membership though, right?

Still haven't been, but you get it?

Like, don't be like me at the Planet Fitness where I'm still not known.

And you can kick me. You can say, get to that Planet Fitness.

Show up. Be a part of it.

Like, I'm asking you to really, you really take this seriously.

If you don't know how to pray, learn how to pray. It's really not that hard.

Just sit in quiet. That's the hard part.

Quiet yourself, undistract yourself, wait upon the Lord and say,

God, if you're real, would you speak to me?

And I am confident that he will. It's good. It's going to be great.

Let's worship.