The Provision Of God

Then turning to his disciples, Jesus said, That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear.

For life is more than food, and your body is more than clothing.

Look at the ravens.

They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them, and you are far more valuable to him than any birds.

Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

And if worry can't accomplish a little thing like that, what's the use of worrying over bigger things?

Look at the lilies and how they grow.

They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.

Why do you have so little faith?

And don't be concerned about what to eat and what to drink, don't worry about such things.

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your father already knows your needs.

Seek the kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

So don't be afraid, little flock, for it gives your father great happiness to give you the kingdom.

Sell your possessions and give to those in need.

This will store up treasure for you in heaven.

And the purses of heaven never get old or develop holes.

Your treasure will be safe, no thief can steal it, and no moth can destroy it.

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

This is the word of the Lord.

Mom, Esther, thank y'all for reading.

Um what a lovely day to be together.

What a great weekend.

Yeah, great weekend.

My bride and I spent the better part of yesterday with our grandson out at a farm out near Somerville.

And um it was his it's his birthday's not till next week, but we were celebrating his birthday, and we went out and I got my hands on some explosives, and uh and we went out and uh blew up all kind of great stuff and shot every kind of gun imaginable, and uh we just had a great time, built a bonfire that last night and cooked out, and it was a it was a good day.

Happy birthday, Teddy.

Happy birthday, Teddy.

Happy birthday, Larry.

Yes, yes, yes.

It was Larry's birthday as well.

Yes.

All right, all right.

Um, real quickly, before I got one more announcement for you, and uh if you have if you know me at all, then the announcement will make perfect sense.

Well, read your Bible every day.

I've never uh if you don't know me very well, then it might be a little confusing, but I'm gonna you'll you'll have to just trust me.

I'm I'm gonna retire in three Sundays, counting today, on the 29th of this month, and uh I'm gonna throw myself uh my very own retirement party.

And it's gonna be at Kim and Jerry's house.

They very kindly and graciously offered to be the host, and uh it's gonna be at 5 o'clock that Sunday night at their home, and it's just it's gonna be very simple, very straightforward.

We're gonna have some refreshments, and I'd like to invite y'all to come and be a part of it.

But I want to uh there's not gonna be any speeches, there's not gonna be any testimonies.

There's gonna be a big bowl.

Kim's gonna provide a big bowl to put in the middle of the kitchen counter, and if you'd like to write me a note and put it in the bowl that I can read later on, or actually that Shirley will probably read to me.

That is the truth.

Um, then I'll do that and I can keep those.

But it's just gonna be a time where I can enjoy the people that I love most.

And I want to ask you, it is not intended for you to feel the need to call up family and friends and Romans and countrymen from the past and invite them to come.

They're not invited.

They're not invited.

This is for the people that are in my church family now.

Okay?

So that's what I this is for me.

And uh when you get to retire and throw yourself a party, you can do it any way you didn't come want.

But uh, this is the way I'd like it.

So I'll remind everyone of this next Sunday and then the following Sunday.

But if you want to, come by the Baldans on the 29th around 5 o'clock.

And like I said, we'll have some refreshments.

But really, what I'd like to do is just sit around and enjoy the people that I love the most on the planet.

So that's what we're gonna do.

All right.

Um this is um a special lesson for me in particular, and thank you for participating.

Um I struggle in a lot of areas of my Christian life.

The list is long, and we can do it by date or by level of difficulty, but I don't have any struggles in my life that are older or more serious than my struggle with trusting God to provide for me and to meet my needs.

Notice you don't see my wife beside me going, no, that's not true.

No, she knows it better than anybody.

It is a real struggle for me to trust God's faithfulness and abundance to provide for me and meet my needs.

I grew up in a home by most people's definition that was full of abundance.

And we didn't have golden commodes or, you know, Tiffany chandeliers necessarily, but I never lacked for anything.

Never lacked for anything.

It was a lovely home, wonderful home, and it was full of abundance.

But it was also a home that it took me 20 years to understand this.

Because when you're a kid and you grow up in an environment, in an atmosphere, you don't really, it's all you know.

It's it's like the air, it's what's there.

And so I didn't understand.

But in the midst of the abundance that my mom and dad worked very hard to provide, and I'm very grateful for, there was also this atmosphere of stress, of scarcity.

Yes, we have a good life, but it could run out tomorrow.

It could be gone tomorrow.

And there was always this, especially at the first of the month.

Everybody knew to make themselves scarce.

Um there was just this this uh fear that there wouldn't be enough.

This worry, this stress that permeated the atmosphere of my home growing up, and it impacted me profoundly.

I'm not blaming my parents, I'm not blaming anybody.

It was the exact same atmosphere that my dad grew up in, and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, so it's not a matter of blaming anybody, it's not that, it's just this there was this fear when there was anything unexpected or over the top as far as affecting the finances.

It was a it was it it was tough.

I'm just I'm just telling you.

And and you, like I said, I didn't even recognize it growing up, but later on I look back and I did.

Let me just give you a couple of examples of how it affected me.

Shirley and I had been dating about six months.

Maybe, yeah, about six months.

My dad was always, he was always making deals.

Always making deals to to generate extra money.

Had a good job, was very successful, but he always was doing these deals to to generate extra income so that we could live an even better life.

So one day he said, Larry, I was a senior in high school, he said, uh, Larry, I sold a guy up in Nashville uh a bunch of urethane.

That's what he sold, was these floor sealant sealant kind of stuff for uh warehouses and shop uh uh uh stores and and showrooms and and uh it was very expensive and it was very good.

Uh and he said, I sold a guy in Nashville uh all this urethane and uh he bought way too much and he won't tenant the company he worked for wouldn't buy it back.

He said, but I told the guy that I'll I Larry, I'll buy it back, and uh then I'll turn around and I'll sell it again.

And he said, if you'll go to I had a little business, I swept parking lots, I bought a sweeper and a scrubber and a thing to strike parking lots, and uh and I have this little business going on, and uh, so I had this trailer.

And he said, uh, if you'll drive up to Nashville and get some of that urethane and bring it back, uh, you can make some money.

Well, as it turned out, uh, but the last thing he said to me is he says, Boy, don't your trailer will only hold 85-gallon cans.

Don't get more than 80.

I said, yes, sir.

Which me saying yes, sir, was like saying, you know.

Anyway, so I said to Cher Lee, hey, drive to Nashville with me.

We'll get some urethane.

I'll get this urethane.

Well, take just a you know, half a day or better part of a day.

Best pickup line ever.

Go to Nashville with me and we'll pick up some urethane.

And so um, I get to Nashville, go to the warehouse, all this urethane is there, and so I'm figuring in my mind that if I get 85-gallon cans of urethane, I'll make about$2,000 by the time it's all said and done bringing it back and reselling it.

Well, if you can make$2,000 with 80 cans, what could you do with 160 cans?

That's a lot of money.

I mean, sure enough, I can't match time, I can't drive you.

So the man's watching me.

Put these 165-gallon cans of urethane on this trailer that that really couldn't carry 80.

We get in the car and we start driving down I-40 back toward Memphis, and we don't get 30 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe 20 minutes on the side of blowout the tire on the trailer.

So we pull off to the side of the road, and um, I don't have a spare tire for the trailer.

So I gotta take the tire off, take it, find a garage, get it fixed, and then come back.

So I had to unload all the urethane on the side of the road, I-40.

Before I could change it.

I get it all the time.

And while I'm working on the tire, all the urethane is off to the side.

This truck, just to be a jerk, swerved over and ran over a significant amount of the urethane.

Just to be a jerk.

And when he hit that urethane, a wave when I tell you a wave, I mean a like a Florida wave in the ocean of urethane came over me, the trailer, my car.

It's a miracle of God.

We would not be married today if it had gotten on her, but it didn't.

She ran out of the way.

She was sitting on the back of my car, you know, just talking to me.

Yes.

And uh while I was working, and uh, and I was so happy this year.

And uh um uh it didn't get on her, but it it covered everything else.

What you have to know about polyurethane is the minute it hits the air, it congeals.

So it covered me, and this happened on Friday, and our senior prom was Saturday night.

And so end of the story is I lost a third of the urethane, and then by the time I had to we had to get home and I had to come back and get it another time, and I it was an absolute disaster.

I wound up not even making the two grand, much less the four.

It was a nightmare.

And on literally, for the next two and a half hours, you had to drive 55 back then, um, next maybe three hours, Sherry sat in the back seat of the car and took every strand of my hair and pulled that urethane off out of my hair.

It had all beat it up on every hair fall.

And it covered my it got on my face, my arms.

It was a it was a nightmare.

But I I couldn't let go of the possibility of getting four grand instead of two.

It was it was just it was irresistible.

Um move fast forward.

Shirley and I, we don't do it as much anymore, but there for a while we went to New York, to Manhattan a lot.

And one of our favorite things to do is we'd hop on the subway, go down to Battery Park, and walk back to where our hotel would be around Central Park, and we'd go through uh Wall Street and uh Chinatown and uh uh Little Italy and then Greenwich and then what's that other whatever?

Soho.

We would go through all these walking back and we would eat something different in every place.

It's great.

I mean, one of my favorite things in the whole world to do.

So we're walking through Wall Street.

Randy Colton were actually with us.

Yeah, yeah, Randy Colton were with us.

Great trip.

I've got my family, it's a beautiful day, we're having a blast.

And there's a hot dog vendor right on the corner of Wall Street selling hot dogs, and he has a sign, hot dogs$3.

I have to have one.

I'm hungry.

So I buy me a$3 hot dog on Wall Street, and I'm eating and I'm enjoying it.

Nothing, nothing has changed.

We walk about four blocks, and there's another hot dog man, and he's selling the very same hot dogs for two dollars, and I get hopping mad.

I cannot believe that I wasted a dollar.

We're in Manhattan having a great time.

We walk another four blocks, and dang it, there's not a hot dog man selling hot dogs for a dollar.

Well, by the time this all I'm furious.

He talked about hot dogs for three days.

Oh, I was, you know, it it had the potential of ruining my trip over a two dollars.

But it was the two dollars.

I have wasted two dollars.

And I I have so many other stories that I would love to tell y'all.

My wife and my daughter and my son-in-law uh unkindly tease me that I am a I I try to use the last of I don't let things, I don't throw away things that whether there's some in the bottom.

I make sure it's emptied and you will not but you would not believe it.

Like the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar.

It's hard to get down into the very bottom of a big thing.

I can do it.

It looks, it's clean.

It's like somebody stuck his head in there and licked it all clean.

Yes.

It's unbelievable.

Whether it's shamboo, peanut butter, mayonnaise, I don't throw away things until it's empty.

Same with leftovers.

They'll have refrigerated full of leftovers.

They just go out to dinner like they've got good sense.

I mean, just going out and eating and living it, living big.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, we got leftovers.

We had a taco from Taco Bell, two tacos.

We used to eat Taco Bell on Wednesday night.

Anyway, um, tacos in there, and it was like Tuesday the next week.

Nothing wrong with the taco the week old.

Taco from the that is that is so gross.

That is over a year.

Oh, mmm.

Because it's not waste.

Actually, it's a when you eat leftovers, then you're getting two meals for the price of one.

How can you beat that deal?

And we I laugh about it with y'all, and it is sort of funny, but it is a deal.

It is a d- I cannot.

The idea of throwing away leftovers, throwing away a can that's got a little bit of whatever at the bottom of it.

Um more, one more.

I know we need to get started.

This very morning.

Larry's up early, he sits on the back porch, there's lights on the back porch, and we read out there in the morning, some and at night, summer, whatever.

There's plenty of light on the back porch.

He's over there in the corner.

There's a there's a lamp that has two bulbs.

You have to pull two different things.

He's got the one on, and he's doing this.

And I'm I come out there and I'm like, Oh, she's like John Dee Rockefeller.

She's flipping the lights and everyone like the light.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

I'm good.

I can't help it.

It is a part.

Why would you put turn two lights on when one will do?

Why would you go blind?

Yeah, well, uh yeah.

Having said all of that, one of my greatest regrets, I tried hard to be a good husband.

I I really did.

Um I tried even harder to be a good father.

Um, but when I look back at those roles, I have such regret and sadness over making too big a deal about money, getting stressed, getting upset, getting mad, making them feel bad for turning on an extra light.

Or the air conditioner.

Well, I'm just green, is I that's all that I'm I'm just trying to be a good environmentalist.

Um my father used to come to our house in the summer and turn the air conditioner on and leave a dollar on top of the air.

He would leave a dollar on the can we turn the air on?

I'll put the and I'd say, You're a funny man.

Uh anyway, um, but just getting stressed.

And hey, here's the thing.

It wasn't that there wasn't provision.

There was provision.

It was, and it's still in my mind that it might not be here tomorrow.

This scarcity, this fear, this stress, this worry, and it all winds up being anger.

Anger that things are being wasted, anger that things might not turn out.

Well, uh oh that I had instead been open and honest with you and Rainey about what I was worrying about, how I felt.

But you don't tell your wife and your children what you're worried about or what you're stressed about or what you're of course you know you would never do that.

How wrong would it be for a husband to be open and honest and transformation?

Transparent with his family.

You can't do, you know, I couldn't do that.

Oh, that I had used those opportunities when maybe there was some lack or not an abundance.

Rather than using it as a platform to get mad, oh that I had used it to teach my daughter how to be thankful when there's abundance and when there's not, how to learn to be content, how to trust God, how to go to God and ask Him to meet the.

But see, I wasted all those opportunities because I was so worried, so stressed, so angry, out of this fear that there wouldn't be enough.

I just want to declare to you today, and I I've never taught you anything that is more true.

In contrast to my foolishness, my greed, my covetousness, my lack of faith, my worry, my anger, I want you to hear me.

The God of the Bible and the God that dwells in my heart has been faithful.

Every day of my life, I have never lacked what I needed.

Not one day, not one hour.

All of that worry, all of that stress, all of that anger, all of that conflict, it was wasted.

It was wasted.

Because God has been faithful.

And not just He has been abundant in a vision for me.

I read through the Bible and I just think about.

You know, from the get-go, you start reading through your Bible in January, and you just right out of the gate, Adam and Eve.

He makes Adam.

Adam, you need, what do you need?

I sure would love a partner.

I'll make you one.

I need a place to live and to work.

I'll make you one.

I'll provide one for you.

Would you like some children?

When you fail, would you like a solution?

Would you like something that will address your failure?

I've got it taken care of.

When one of your children dies tragically, violently, I'll replace that hole in your heart with something else.

I mean, you can go right through the Bible.

Cain, God, I'm scared that when I leave home and start wandering, people are gonna kill me.

Cain, I'll take care of that.

I will provide for you.

Noah, I'll provide for you a refuge in the storms of life.

Abraham, Sarah, what do you want?

What do you dream of?

What do you long for?

We want a son, we want a baby.

I'll meet that need.

I'll meet that need.

Jacob and his sons.

What do you want?

When there's famine and when there's conflict and when there's need and when there's problems, I'll take care of you.

You are mine, and I take care of mine.

And you can just go right on through the Bible and see how the people, did the people of God have problems and pains?

Did they suffer?

Did they go through difficult?

Absolutely.

But the testimony of the Old Testament is that God will provide faithfully and abundantly for his own.

You go to the New Testament.

Jesus says, I uh uh Esther read it, and my, no, who did my and mom read it.

Jesus, I will provide for you.

Who came to Jesus with a need and the need wasn't met?

Shout out a name.

Shout out a Bible name of someone that came to Jesus with a real need.

And Jesus said, No, I will not meet that need.

Because there's I don't hear a name.

Because there's not any.

What do you need?

Paul says in Philippians, here, let me get my Bible verses out here.

Philippians chapter chapter 4.

My God will meet all of your needs according to the glorious riches of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament declares, what do you need?

I need forgiveness.

Man, I've screwed up a bunch and I've got the weight of sin on my life.

God, I need forgiveness.

Okay.

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What do you need?

I need wisdom to make good decisions.

Decisions that I won't regret.

Decisions that I'll be happy with down the road a year from now and five years from now and ten years from now.

Okay.

If you lack wisdom, ask of God and you will receive it because God gives wisdom liberally.

What do you need?

God, I live in fear.

I live in worry.

I live in doubt.

I need strong faith.

I need strong faith.

2 Peter, you have been given a faith that is as precious as ours.

In Ephesians 2, for by grace are you saved through faith.

For it, the faith is a gift of God.

I need faith.

How do you get faith?

Faith comes from hearing, hearing what?

The Word of God.

God will provide the faith that we need.

I need direction.

John 14 and John 16 declare that the Holy Spirit who lives in you will guide you and direct you and show you the way that you are to go so that you experience abundance in your life.

What do you need?

I need provision and I need resources.

Jesus says in Matthew 7, he who asks will receive, he who seeks will find, he who knocks, the door will be open.

Which of you, if you have a son and he asks for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a snake?

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

And I could go on and on with when we're dealing with the def uh my need is I'm being attacked.

I've got strongholds, I've got areas in my life that are so weak.

Every time I try to stand up against things, I'm I'm weak, not strong, and I get my fanny whipped spiritually.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10, our weapons are not like the weapons of the world.

Our weapons have divine power, and they will demolish strongholds and everything trying to imprison and ruin you.

What do you need?

I need a refuge because I don't know how long I'm gonna live.

I don't know when the day will come.

One of my good friends, I don't know exactly how old Tim was, 45, give or take.

Something like that.

This guy was.

Early 50s.

He was okay, early 50s.

I hired him at Bellevue.

Great guy.

You talking about healthy, he was John Hahn Jr.

He ran Ironmans and triathlons and didn't eat anything but roots and tree bark.

He was the he was the healthiest person I know.

Last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, as five kids, five boys, died.

Dead as a doornail.

But I can tell you about Tim.

When he faced death, do you know what his declaration was when he opened his eyes?

Death, where is your victory?

Oh death, where is your sting?

God has given me victory through my relationship with Jesus Christ.

I just want to declare to you today that in my life personally and in my understanding of God's dealings with his people from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, God is faithful.

He is faithful.

When the Bible declares in Psalm 34, lions may grow weak and hungry, but people who seek the Lord like no good thing.

And in Psalm 145, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time.

It's literally at the perfect time.

You open your hand and you satisfy the desires of every living thing.

I have wasted hundreds of thousands of hours worrying about how I'm going to take care of my wife and my daughter.

I have hurt them and alienated them and just taken the joy out of life from them because I chose to bear that weight.

I'm just like Jacob.

Jacob was, he was born into wealth, he lived in wealth, and he died in wealth, and he lived like a pauper.

He was always stressed, always conniving, always cheating, always manipulating, always living like if I'm gonna eat my next meal, it's on me.

It's all on me, and everybody in the world's trying to take it from me.

And I can tell you that is a hellish way to live.

It's a hellish way to make your family live.

And I'm not talking about these spiritual rear-ends on TV that are talking about being millionaires and uh all that kind of stuff.

That's not what I'm talking about.

That's not what the Bible's talking about.

I'm just declaring that if we, Mom or Esther One, read, seek first the kingdom of God.

And if you will, God will add to your life everything you need and more.

That has been my experience with God.

That's the testimony of my life, and that is the testimony I believe if we could get Adam to the Apostle John at the end of Revelation, or yeah, his book, and say, guys, tell me about God's faithfulness, tell me about God's provision, tell me how is God trustworthy?

I was talking to a precious lady yesterday on my back porch yesterday morning.

Precious.

And they're having some family challenges and struggles.

And she just said, I'm really struggling with, you know, I love this person, but I'm just struggling with trusting them.

And I said, Well, that what I don't even understand.

What's that got to do with that?

Love and trust have nothing to do with each other.

God loves me and you, but he doesn't trust us.

Where did the Bible do say God trusts you?

He knows you and He knows me.

He knows we're a bad loan risk on our best day.

Love and trust have nothing to do with each other.

I find it very significant.

I don't know how many there are, 36, give or take, of these one-anothers, love one another, forgive one another, pray for one another, rejoice with one another, weep with one another, serve one another.

You know, all those one-anothers.

I find it very significant.

Never once is there a trust one another.

Hmm.

Because trust, all those other one another are choices.

I choose to pray for you.

I choose to forgive you.

I choose to serve you.

I choose to love you.

All those one another are choices.

Trust is not a choice.

Trust is a response to track record.

There's somebody that I trust probably more than anybody in this world.

You know who it is?

The sun.

Every morning for 64 years and two days, it comes up.

I trust the sun because of the sun's track record.

It's the only reason I trust it.

I don't love the sun.

Love has nothing to do with it.

Trust has to do with track record.

Even when another planetary object comes in front of it.

That's exactly.

Lord, she's throwing in these eclipses and all this stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Thank you.

It's still there.

It's dark.

No, it's a great.

That's when I can see it and when I can't, on cloudy days and clear days, I trust the track record of the sun.

My precious family, I love you more than life itself.

I declare to you that the track record of God in my life and the track record of God in this book, I have no choice but to declare that God has a track record that declares He is trustworthy to provide for us, to meet our needs, to give us that which we need for that day.

My problem is when I doubt him, it's because I don't know him.

Oh, that I would spend the time rather than worrying and fretting and getting mad and walking around the house flicking off lights and air conditioners.

Oh, that I would spend that time just telling God what my needs are and asking him to meet them and seeing what he does next.

The God of the Bible and the God of your pastor is faithful to provide abundantly and meet the needs of my life.

And he'll do the same for you because I think he probably loves you and likes you better than he does me.

So if you'll do it for me, throw in there, sister, he'll do it for you.

Okay?

Anything you want to throw in there, sister?

Sister B?

Just one last thing I thought of in closing.

So back in the day, early years and of our marriage, early perhaps decades of our marriage, um, back when everybody was paying their bills with checks, with physical, you know, before the internet, with physical physical things, um, he would do it once a month.

And at the end of that day, that that check writing time, he would come out of the room and start flicking off lights and flicking off the jar and the air conditioner off and everything, and he would say, for 25 or 30 years, we're going under.

He would check.

I mean, we were the raised.

And we'd eat, you know, you know, peanut butter.

That's why we made all the peanut butter from the bottom of the jar.

And one year, one season, many years later, we would tease Larry all the time.

We're going under.

Yeah, she and Rainey would just tease like I'm like, I'm serious, I'm not joking.

You know.

Well, finally, after a period of time, I realized that he had stopped saying that.

Probably months back, but it takes a minute, right?

And I finally realized, he's not saying that anymore.

And I said to my father, who teased him the hardest about going under, um, I said to Geezer, Larry doesn't say, oh.

Larry doesn't say we're going under anymore.

And he said, that's because he knows you're not going under.

That's what faith is.

You're not going under.

Come on, let's go.

Am I well?

Well, sucker bill.

I don't know what I need to do.

Oh, there we go.

All right.

I'm not saying that God does not give us direction for our lives through the provision he gives.

And he wants us to be wise.

And he wants us to learn to be content with what we have rather than being so consumed with what we don't have.

He wants us to work hard.

This attitude, well, I want a miracle.

I'm believing God for a miracle.

I'm expecting a check in the mail.

What you need to do is get your rear end at your job, is what you need to do.

God honors hard work, God honors frugality, God honors saving, God honors taking a sacrificial portion of the abundance that He gives us and passing that on to those in need.

And God honors those things.

God blesses those things, and God wants us to do that.

And when we choose not to do those things, that creates special problems and challenges.

So I'm not talking about laziness and irresponsibility and just living crazy.

That's not that's not what I that's not what I mean.

I'm just telling us.

I'm telling you, oh, that I could take back 40 some odd years.

What a waste to spend all that time worrying and stressed and angry and complaining.

Um what a waste.

Okay.

Uh Kevin Lisa, would y'all come up here, please, ma'am?

And uh Brennan Leslie, would y'all come up here on this side, please?

We're gonna celebrate the Lord's Supper.

That gummit's gonna be a Schwarzenegger to all that thing.

Of all the things that God has provided for us in abundance.

It's that which is needed so that we can be reunited with Him and become a part of His family and experience the intimacy and the joy and the peace that he intended for Adam and Eve forever.

They lost that.

And because they lost it, we've lost it too.

But God said, I want to provide that which is more than sufficient to restore that intimacy.

And so he sent his son to die on the cross, prove that what Jesus did on the cross really, really would be sufficient.

It was sufficient to solve the problem and restore our broken relationship with God by him rising from the dead.

And so we as a church, we believe that that really took place.

And we have put our faith in that as the provision necessary so that we could be right with God.

If that is your hope, your prayer, your wish, your belief, then I invite you to come and to eat and drink with me.

Okay?