A Season of Recovery

It's good to be here together this morning and as one house today.

Thankful to be here.

I won't before I get started, Angela asked me last week if I had mentioned I and Brother Blake knows in a few weeks, August 16th, I'm going to be able to do that.

I mean August 12th.

Yeah.

I'm going to be traveling to Central America on a quick missions trip.

We're going to be distributing uh water filters in some of the mountain villages where they really don't have access to clean water.

And then that gives us opportunity to preach in some of the villages after we distribute the water filters.

And the water filters actually will provide the family clean water for years, not just momentarily.

So it's actually longevity and the purpose of going there.

And I think it was Charles Spurgeon that said if you're going to witness to a hungry man, don't give him a track unless you wrap it in a sandwich.

Because his need is to be fed.

And uh he said if we see someone hungry, we say go and be filled, but we don't do anything.

We really have it ministered, you know.

So some people don't agree with the methods, but I believe we use every method possible.

And the kindness to humanity is the method that speaks universally, right?

And so just I we ask you to pray for us as we travel, as we have safe travels, that we have a good pilot, right?

And God keep the pilot healthy and awake and attentive, and that He able He's able to take off and to land the plane successfully.

Amen.

That's important.

On both going and coming.

So I I ask you, don't forget to pray because that's going to be uh the purpose in this going is to minister, but we want to be able to come back and be back on the 17th.

And so, and pray that we have success.

There's a lot of uh bondage in those little places.

They're impoverished.

I think the average uh income is like$240 a year.

Wow.

So they're really poor, but they have from what I understand, they have a alcohol problem.

Isn't it amazing that you don't have to have much money to find alcohol?

And so I don't know if they're making moonshine on those hills like they do in Tennessee, but anyways, there's a problem with abuse.

And uh, how many understand that the enemy, if he can get us locked up in any kind of abuse, he will.

And so just pray.

I ask you, uh I know you will, and I'm not going to make you sign a commitment to pray just as God brings it to your mind over the next few days, and especially when we're traveling, if you would commit to prayer.

I promise you, when we stand before the Lord, you're gonna have a reward.

Do you believe that?

Yes.

I believe that.

I believe that every every part of the body has uh we have a purpose.

And and don't underestimate the power of your prayers, because I'm telling you, that goes into the unseen.

And I'm excited to see what God's gonna do and and and just wanted to let you know what we're gonna be doing.

And Angela's gonna stay at home, she's gonna keep those babies fed and loved, the little two four-legged babies we have, and she'll keep them at at peace because they're gonna probably miss me because I'm their playmate.

But and pray for our dogs, I guess they'll have things there.

They'd be wondering where I'll where I'm at, you know.

But thankful for the opportunity.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to be here because this is a ministry also, to be able to minister to God's people is is part of the ministry of Jesus Christ.

And so I'm thankful.

I don't have the words that express how how grateful we are to be able to stand behind this sacred desk and open the word of God to encourage you and strengthen you, to help you as the Holy Spirit helps us.

So saying that, we're gonna be in 1 Samuel chapter 30 this morning.

1 Samuel 30 · chapter mention

God's put this word on my heart.

I've preached it a few times, but I always write a new outline and new notes because I believe that we can have five people preach from the same passage of scripture, and you'll have five different messages, right?

And so I think it is it's relative.

The scripture is always relative, but it fits us today.

And so I know God would not have put this on my heart had there not been someone or all of us here today that uh needs this word for our lives.

So 1 Samuel chapter number 30.

I'm gonna begin with verse number one.

We'll read to verse number nine.

And uh if you haven't stayed in mids, I'll know you're there.

All right, verse one.

And it came to pass when David and his men were come to Ziglag on the third day that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziglag and smitten Ziglag and burned it with fire, and had taken the women captive that were therein, and they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away and went on their way.

So David and his men came to the city, and behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captives.

Then David and his people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep.

And David's two wives were taken captives.

Ahana and the Jezreelitis and Abigail, the wife of Nabal, the Carmelite.

And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was greed, every man for his sons and for his daughters.

But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

And David said to Abathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the Ephod.

And Abathar brought thither the Ephod to David, and David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop?

Shall I overtake them?

And he answered him, Pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

Father, I thank you for the word of God this morning.

I thank you, Lord, that you have a purpose to speak this to us today, and I ask you for the anointing of the Holy Spirit right now to come and to rest upon our hearts, make our hearts, Lord, attentive to your word, our ears to hear what you would say to us individually and corporately this morning.

And God, that you would strengthen us and that you would help me as your servant today.

Lord, guard my mouth and let it bring glory to you and to your word.

And I ask it all in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

As I was preparing for today, my thought went back to who is David?

Or who was David?

David was the young lad that was handpicked by God to succeed King Saul.

Saul had been rejected by God, and and God spoke to Samuel, and he said, How long are you going to be grieved seeing that I've rejected Saul as king?

And he told him to go to Jesse's house.

He said he had found a man that was after his own heart.

And if you read the history of David up until this point, David was anointed to be king by Samuel, but yet he has not ascended to the throne.

There's always a process that God will carry us through individually.

For the purpose of your life, there's a process that God works in bringing us to the purpose that He has ordained for us as individuals.

And I've come to the conclusion as a man to understand that I am not the whole picture of the purpose of my life.

There may be someone in my future that I have a purpose in right now that God is using me to encourage someone or to speak to someone or to help someone that is part of the whole picture.

And I'm just a little piece of the puzzle.

You're just a part of the puzzle, but it is an important part because it is in the makeup of the purpose of God that we're here today.

Amen?

And just as with David, so with us, and the enemy wants us to be null and void.

He doesn't want us to have any purpose in the part of God's kingdom.

He doesn't want us to be part of the overcoming plan of someone else's life.

And so what he wants to do is to, he wants to throw at that.

He wants to discourage us, and he wants to render us ineffective.

Have you ever felt maybe in your life that you were ineffective as a follower of Jesus?

And I think that's a that's a tactic of the enemy that he wants to wear us out, that we always feel that we're ineffective.

But I'm here today to encourage you to let you know that you are indeed effective for the kingdom.

And that is one reason that the enemy fights so hard to keep you in a place of discouragement or to steal from you as he is still stole from David in this passage of Scripture.

And so John Maxwell, how many know who John Maxwell is?

He's an author and he's a coach, a leadership, but he's a Christian.

And he wrote in one of his books, he said, over time, speaking of David, David became weary of Saul's pursuit and he chose to escape to a land of the Philistines.

I mean, they're enemies of God's people, but yet we find David in chapter 29, he's living in the territory of the Philistines, or the Philistines, however you will pronounce it.

He's living there with the enemies of Israel.

And they've accepted him into that place, but even in a place where he should not be, the enemy is still attacking him.

And he says David became vague about his purpose.

He is defensive about his leadership, and he's lost trust in Israel.

And we need to understand that even great leaders become vulnerable when they're tired, lonely, angry, or hungry.

Somebody say amen.

We always had a saying about my dad that he was hangry.

I mean, when he got hungry, if he didn't get to eat quick, he became angry, right?

And we as God's people are affected by things that are just momentarily, and we need to understand today that they're not eternal.

These skirmishes that we go through, the things the enemy is shooting at us, are momentary.

They're just for a moment.

You're going to go through many valleys and many mountains as a believer.

You're going to go through many trials and tribulations as a believer, but we mustn't forget that although we're being attacked, God has a purpose in allowing us to go through these attacks.

I wonder sometimes, God, what's the purpose?

Amen.

And he doesn't always tell us what the purpose is, but he carries us through it.

You need to be assured today that God is with you in every situation.

And what David experienced here in chapter 30 was an unprovoked attack.

He hasn't done anything to deserve this attack from the Amalekites.

The Amalekites were constantly opposing God's people and attacking without reason.

And I'm here to tell you sometimes there's no reason at all why the enemy's attacking us except that we are the children of God.

Amen.

There's a target on you as a child of God, and the enemy hates you because he hates God.

And you and I at times are going to experience unprovoked attacks.

It's just, it just happens.

And I don't think I'm telling you anything that you don't know this morning.

We just reaffirm that truth that we do suffer attack.

And David and his men return to their city to find that they have been attacked, their families are captured, they're taken away, their possessions are stolen, and their homes are burnt to the ground.

Nothing but sinners there.

And this is a generational warfare that keeps occurring.

Have you ever felt like your family just kind of has the same cycle of warfare?

You just keep circling the mountain and things, and you go through some of the same battles.

Well, listen, that's nothing strange here because the enemy wants to wear us out just like he was trying to wear David out.

And he and he it was unprovoked.

And here's what the enemy uses against God's people.

Are you ready for this?

Fear and discouragement.

Those are two weapons that the enemy uses against God's people fear and discouragement.

Ian Bounds in the book, his guide to spiritual warfare.

If you don't have that little paperback book, I highly recommend it.

It's a good read.

But it says, he writes, the devil often tries to break the soul down, doesn't he?

And reduce it to despair.

That's what the enemy does.

He wants to break our soul down and reduce us to despair in order to discourage us.

He tells us we'll never succeed, that the way is too hard and the burden is too heavy.

And that's exactly what the enemy was wearying David with, these same tactics.

David felt like, I'm never going to be king, I'm never going to get away from Saul.

I'll just go live in the enemy's camp and I'll just live out my life and I'll just be on their side and I'll just forget about the whole purpose that God has called me.

Now it doesn't tell us that in the Bible.

We can gather that the enemy's attacking him and he's discouraged.

And on top of that, David comes to find his family has been carried away, his possessions are carried away, and anything that was left is burnt to the ground.

And that's how the devil takes advantage over us.

And he, in our weak and distracted place of loss, he discourages us.

And we become fearful.

Well, nothing's ever going to happen that God says would happen.

Well, that's a lie.

Everything that God promises in his word is for us.

Say amen.

God promises they're true for you.

They're not just true for your neighbor, they're not just true for the preacher, they're not just true for Billy Graham.

They are true for the people of God.

And we, as God's children, must remind ourselves in times of discouragement that if God is for me, who can be against me?

Amen.

If God is for me, the enemy cannot win in my life.

That doesn't mean that we won't go through trouble.

That doesn't mean that we won't suffer attack.

That doesn't mean that we won't have times of fear in our life.

We are people with emotions.

Have you ever felt like that some Christian leaders think that Christians should have some kind of a lobotomy, that we have no emotions, that we never uh experience fear or discouragement or joy or happiness?

You were created by God as a person to have emotions.

That means it's okay sometimes to cry.

Amen.

The Bible says that they wept until they didn't have any more strength to weep.

Is there anyone here that would point our fingers at them and say, Well, what are you crying about?

You only lost everything.

And if you've ever lost something and you wept, you know what I'm talking about today.

Loss, it rips our whole being.

And here we see that the enemy is has a plot behind this, and he wants to hide from sight that the grace of God is with us through everything.

Sometimes we feel our shortcomings are magnified.

Does anybody feel that way at times?

You feel like, well, I can't do anything right when it comes to living for Jesus.

Well, I promise you, God is not behind that thought in your life.

God is a good father, and He's not going to tell you that you're not a good child or you're right just because you have shortcomings.

God will uphold us in that.

Remember what Jesus said?

A bruised reed he will not break.

Do you understand what a reed is this morning?

It's a hollow stalk.

It's easily broken.

It's easily knocked over.

But Jesus, the Bible says that He would He would protect it from being broken.

He would, it is crushed, but He wants to uphold us this morning.

And the enemy would cause us to believe that God is not for us, but indeed God is for us this morning.

Heaven and God are often hidden by a veil of fear and discouragement.

And so we need to get alone with God when we are in fear and in discouragement and attune our ears to what the word of the Lord says.

They wept until they had no more power to weep, verse 4.

John Wesley wrote, I preach on that delicate device of Satan to destroy the whole region of the heart.

Satan doesn't just want to discourage you, he wants to destroy you.

He wants to destroy me.

And he tells us not to regard our feelings.

He wants to say that we live by faith.

And you say the devil would say that we live by faith?

Absolutely.

Because in plain terms, what Wesley said, he says not to regard either love or joy or peace or any other fruit of the Spirit, and he says not to regard if they feel them in reverse.

Listen, never never think for a moment that God can't speak to you through your emotions.

Amen.

And God speaks to me.

You know what sometimes God tells me?

To be still, to be quiet, to not say the things that He wouldn't say over me.

And you know, sometimes I do the opposite.

And then I ask God to forgive me.

Because I believe that my emotions were given to me by God.

Not in order to keep me bound by my emotions, but to teach me to walk by the spirit and not by the flesh.

If you lose something, you weep over it.

That's humanity.

But also on the other side of that is we rejoice when good comes to us.

Amen.

And so there is a reason to weep.

And there's a reason to rejoice.

But David, the Bible says that he strengthened himself in the Lord as God.

And that's where we are today.

We're not just focusing on the times that we lose, but how we respond to those moments the enemy attacks us.

David, the Bible is very pointed here.

He encouraged or strengthened himself in the Lord.

That means that there was no one else there encouraging him.

Have you ever felt alone?

Isolated?

Even in a room full of people that no one encouraged you or strengthened you, then this word is for you this morning.

You can strengthen or encourage yourself in the Lord your God.

David sought for direction from the Lord.

He said, Bring me the ephod to the priest.

And I believe for in for a fact today, I believe this.

If I'm going to have a good outcome, if you're going to have a good outcome when the enemy attacks, we must get our directions from God.

We must get our orders from God.

We must go to God and say, God, shall I pursue or do I need to be still?

God, are you teaching me something through this?

Or God, are you telling me to go ahead and to move forward?

And I want to bring this back to a time when David is king and he had a family member, remember his own son Absalom, who he loved, who disagreed with his father, and all of a sudden Absalon is trying to have a coup in the kingdom.

He's trying to take David's throne.

And throwing rocks at David and his men, and he's cursing him.

And one of David's mighty men says, Who is this dog that he curses the king?

Let me go and take his head off.

How many wish you had a friend like that sometime?

Defend you.

I'll take his head off.

Just say the word.

And David says, No, let him alone.

He says, Maybe he says, God will hear him cursing me and God will requite me a blessing instead.

He says, Just let him curse, let him throw rocks, let him kick up dust, let him say whatever he wants to.

If God will have mercy upon me, it doesn't matter what he does.

And see, I I think then when we have that understanding that if God is for me and I go to God, we should expect God to give us an answer when we go to him.

And I I would love for it to be suddenly, as Sister Susan said this morning in her in her in her prayer request, but sometimes God has us to wait.

Sometimes quiet.

Sometimes God is waiting to see what we will do.

Amen.

Wait upon the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart.

Wait, I say, upon the Lord.

That's the Bible.

Amen.

And so when David asked God, shall I pursue?

And will I overtake them?

That's important.

God, do you want me to move?

And God, if I move, will I have success?

Several years ago, we had an opportunity to go to Tennessee and to minister.

And it was in between the time that we had resigned the church and were waiting on God, and we really felt that it was an opportunity from God.

Because we were willing.

And we went, and it was it was a sad move.

Because in the end, after much prayer and much heartache, I felt the Holy Spirit impressed upon my heart that He didn't send us to Tennessee.

Have you ever made a move and you thought it was God and then you found out it wasn't God?

That's what he was telling me.

He said, I didn't send you to Tennessee.

I felt that so deeply on my heart in prayer.

I wrote it down.

He said, You went because you thought I was sending you.

And he says, and you experience, I wrote down some bad things.

But here's it didn't end there.

I felt the Holy Spirit say, but nothing's wasted with God.

I will teach you through that some things that will help you to not do that again.

See, David couldn't help this unprovoked attack.

He couldn't do anything about the enemy coming in.

It was not merited because David did something wrong.

It was something he had to deal with.

And after he's wept, and after he's through weeping, has no more strength, he seeks the Lord and he asks, God, Shall I pursue?

And the Lord says, Not only should you pursue, I'm going to help you overtake the enemy.

And he says, and you without fail shall recover all.

You might want to underline that in your Bible.

See, God, he doesn't just give us partial victories, he gives us complete victories when he sends us into the battle.

Amen.

When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against the enemy.

We've got to believe that today because it's the word of God.

Not because I merit any grace from God is simply the grace of God.

Not because I'm special, it's simply because God is good today.

And he loves us as his children, and he will help us when we cry out to him.

This is the promise of God's word to us today.

No weapon formed against you shall prosper.

That weapon will, it may be formed against us by the enemy, but according to the word of God, it shall not defeat us.

It will not prosper against us.

We have that assurance today.

And if we understand this, we can confidently seek God for direction, knowing that He will give us success today.

That means when the enemy says, don't pray about it, pray about it anyway.

Amen.

When the enemy says you can't, you say, Well, let me check with God on this before I buy into what you're selling me.

Amen.

So we go to God and God gives us confidence to seek him, and then when we seek him, we can, with all assurance, believe everything he said, it will happen.

Amen.

He doesn't always give us the plaintiffs.

I didn't read on any further than this, but David just pursues.

He didn't say go north, south, east, west.

He just said pursue.

So today we must understand that God will direct our steps.

Even when we don't get a direct word from him, if we seek him, he will direct our steps.

And the Bible says that they came upon an Egyptian slave that was left in the field.

I like to think this was a setup.

He got sick, they left him behind, and when they found him, they gave him some water, gave him a little cake to eat, and asked him a question.

And you ever heard anybody say he sang like a bird?

I mean, he opened his mouth and he began to tell them things.

He said, Listen, don't take me back to them and let them hurt me and I'll tell you everything.

And he told them where they were, what they had been doing.

He spilled the beans on them.

And what happened was it was God's perfect plan to leave that man there in the field that they could find someone that would point them in the right direction.

Because he told David, he said, You pursue them and you're going to catch up with them and you're going to overtake them and you're going to, without fail, recover everything.

That means to me that if they stole their honey buns, they didn't get one bite off that honey bun.

Amen.

They didn't eat their little debbies and leave the box behind.

They got everything.

Not a crumb that they had taken from them was kept.

God said, You're going to get everything back that they took from you.

And I want you to know today, whatever the enemy's been stealing from you or taking from you, God promises that when you seek him, not only will you get it back, you'll get everything back that the enemy has taken from you.

Amen.

Now, we struggle with that.

I'm not saying I didn't say you, I said we struggle with that.

But I want to remind you of what our Lord said.

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

See, we've got to start believing.

Last week we talked about unbelief, right?

We've got to begin believing and trusting God, not what we understand, because the Bible said he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above more than we think, ask our thing, according to the power which works in us.

Well, that's Holy Ghost power.

And so I'm just encouraging you today.

I'm not here rebuking you.

I'm encouraging myself.

Because I have lost things.

I have had the enemy steal from me, unprovoked.

I didn't do anything to him.

He just came in, took my stuff, threw a can of gasoline and a match on it when he left.

And I come home and said, Well, what?

What is going on?

And you're you're you're dumbstruck.

How'd this happen?

What's going on?

God, and we we and then we pick up stones, right?

We they they picked up stones.

They fixed the stone, David.

It's your fault.

We begin pointing fingers.

The Bible says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

Look at your neighbor smile at them, telling them, you're not the enemy.

You're not my enemy, right?

The enemy works through people, but it's the it's the source behind it.

We love people, we don't love their actions, right?

All the time.

The devil is the root of destruction.

I'm about to close.

I don't mind if you ring my watch, so I'm about to wrap it up.

How many know I'm not fussing today?

See, here's what when I God was giving this message, I said it's a it's a recovery season.

It's a recovery season.

Things that you've lost is somewhere.

It didn't cease to exist.

It is somewhere.

The Bible says that there are treasures of darkness.

There are things that are stored up.

There's things that look, if you've lost something, it's somewhere.

If the devil took something, it is somewhere.

And God says, when you seek me and you ask me about these things, he said, I'm able to not just give you victory, but restoration.

I'm able to restore what the enemy stole from you.

And the Bible says that he that stole from you when he's caught, he doesn't just restore what he stole.

He's got to restore what?

Sevenfold.

That means that there's restitution coming in your life if you can believe God for that.

And I'm ready for some restitution, aren't you?

I'm ready for some payback.

I'm ready for the tables to be turned on my enemy.

And here, God says, You shall surely without fail recover all.

If we understand this, we can be confident in asking God for direction and knowing that he will give us success.

When Satan's methods are clever devices, the words of Jesus, his conqueror to us are Behold, I give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

Luke 10, 19.

And you've got to underline that word, A L.

All the power of the enemy.

He said, I'm not just giving you power over some things the enemy brings against you.

He says, but I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions over all the power of the enemy.

Now that's not to be bold and brash in my own abilities, is saying that the head, Jesus Christ, over the church has given us the authority to overcome the enemy.

We just need to seek him in it.

So what we see is in this passage of scripture that God turns sorrow into success.

I don't know individually anything that any of you have experienced that you may be thinking of right now.

How can God restore?

How can God do this?

And I'll bring you back to Scripture.

What is impossible with man is not impossible with God.

That is why I preach the word of God.

I don't preach myself, I don't preach what he's done in me.

I'll testify what he's done for me.

But the truth we build upon is the word of God.

And that if he did it once, he'll do it again.

That his word shall never pass away.

It's just as good a hundred years ago, it's just as good today.

And it'll be just as real and powerful and able to build upon it a millennial from now because he said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away.

And I'm thankful for that today.

And I and I may not preach profound messages every time I preach, but I will determine to preach nothing but the word of God.

And I will encourage the church.

If there's any rebuke that comes from a pulpit, it must be a rebuke that is backed by the word of God to instruct us in righteousness, right?

And I and I'm here today and encourage you, as a body of believers, that God is still working to restore.

And he'll turn our sorrow into success.

As we look at the scripture, we see loss was not the final outcome, recovery was the final outcome.

Not only did they recover all, the Bible says nothing was lacking, neither, it says either small or great, sons or daughters, spoils or anything which they had taken from them, David recovered all.

In verse 20, it says, and David took the flocks and the herds that they had driven before those other livestock.

Notice this, the other livestock, and he said, This is David's spoil.

He's let the enemy know, this is mine.

I'm not only taking back, Cooper, listen to what he said.

I'm not just taking back what you took from me, but everything you took from these other cats, everything every village that you raided before, because they've been going around, they were been raiding villages and taking and burning.

He said, I'm not taking just mine, I'm taking this stuff too.

So he came out with more than he lost when he came back home.

He he came back bringing their spoils with him.

Listen, I'm telling you today, God's saying to us in this season, not only will I give you back what the enemy stole from you, but I will have retribution in your life that you'll get back more than what the enemy took, because the enemy's been stealing from other people, and God says the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous.

Do you believe that today?

The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous.

We say, hold on.

This sounds like name it, claim it, word of faith stuff.

It is the Bible.

And we gotta hold to the Bible when it's the Bible.

And if it's not the word of God, we can reject it and file it in file 13, throw it in the trash.

But as long as it's the word of God, if you believe it and you hold tight to it, get ready, there's some fruit coming in your life from it.

How many is tired of planting seeds and it seems like that nothing comes up?

I don't want to plant a garden and water it and tend to it, and I go out there and I get one cucumber, one tomato, and I've spent hundreds of dollars on and time preparing and working.

I go out there and and the deer are out there eating my one cucumber, right?

I want the harvest.

And not one crumb that the enemy takes shall the enemy eat.

God close their mouth up and they can't eat it.

God, protect those things that belong to me until Lord I take it back.

And I believe today that the word of God is true for us.

That God has given us a word that without fail, without failing, you're gonna recover all.

Underline that all.

That means if you lost your joy, God said, Oh, I've got more joy than you ever lost.

It's coming back to you.

You had suffering, oh what I'm gonna repay you for the suffering you went through is gonna outshine what you thought was the end.

Church, this is not just an hour that we spend every week to come and say we did this.

It is to encourage us, to stir us up, and to sharpen us to know this is a spiritual warfare.

We are spiritual beings, and we are victorious in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

There ain't a weapon that the devil has with your name on it that's gonna prosper.

There's not a tool in this toolbox that can take you out as long as you're under the shadow of the Almighty.

You're gonna have success.

And I just speak that over our life today, Father, because your word says so, God, we're gonna have success.

You say, well, when will it happen?

Right on time.

It'll happen right on time.

And I've made my mind up.

I've told Angela this, I said, Listen, if I've got to suffer every day of my life until I make it to heaven, I've got less suffering ahead of me than I've got behind me.

Amen.

But I don't believe I'm just gonna have suffering.

I believe we're gonna have some good to go along with that, amen.

We may have some more tears, just cry.

Amen.

May have some more pains, just endure, but don't settle that this is it.

Expect, believe, talk to God, get your marching orders from Him, and I believe you're gonna find out we still serve a God that turns our sorrows into joys.

Amen.

Amen.

Father, I thank you for this word.

God, I'm so grateful for this word.

God, there's times we don't talk about what we've gone through or what we've experienced and or what we're going through now, but God, you know everything.

God, you know the heaviness of our hearts, you know the tears we've cried.

You see there's nothing hidden with you.

But God, I thank you for this word that reminds us that after we wept, after we've been attacked, God, when we come to you, God, you always have a word to speak to us.

And that word is not retreat, that word is to pursue.

God, you will help us to overtake our enemy and without fail, God.

According to this word, you will give us victory.

We'll not recover some.

But according to your word, God, we shall recover all.

So I'm praying, Lord, that this is the season of recovery for us.

As individuals, as corporately, Lord, this church was once filled with souls who loved you and worshiped you, God.

And I'm praying, God, once again, stir that in this house, Lord.

Let it fill.

Let it begin to fill with people.

Let us begin to be people of hope that will encourage others.

And God, I pray, Lord, that we'll find, Lord, that you can fill the house, Lord, once again.

That, Lord, this will be a place, Lord, where people have testimonies of new beginnings, Lord, of restoration and hope and life.

And God, this is a place that, Lord, you are the healer.

And God, you're the one who gives us victory.

And we thank you for that.

We pray, Lord, for any lost loved ones, Lord, that they would come home to you.

And God, that we'll have a testimony.

God, you are still the same today as you will be forever.

And we thank you for that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

Praise the Lord.