Hear My Cries, Open My Eyes

We have been in a series pretty much all year long called Getting to Know God.

And we've been going through the life of a man named Abraham in the Old Testament.

Abraham's one of the first characters really that we have in the story of the Bible, at least one of the first characters that we stay with for a long time.

And Abraham's someone who believes in God.

God calls him to leave his home and to follow wherever God leads him.

And he does that.

He obeys God.

So he's a believer in God, but he doesn't really know God.

He doesn't have a close relationship with God.

He definitely doesn't know what God is really like because there's so many moments in the story of Abraham where God does something, and Abraham's like, really?

Or Abraham enters a situation that's tough, and you can tell that he doesn't enter it with the confidence of a person who knows God and knows that God is for him and God is with him.

There's a lot of situations where Abraham operates out of fear because he doesn't really know how genuine, how faithful God is.

But over the course of Abraham's life, he develops a close, intimate relationship with God.

He learns the nature of God, the character of God.

And through Abraham's story, we can do the same.

So we've been going through his story bit by bit.

We're taking our time with this and we're trying to learn in every situation what does this teach us about God?

How can we know God better through Abraham's story?

And one of the beautiful things about the Bible is that it tells us the truth.

It is so much the opposite of what we get in the world.

In the world, we get spin, we get marketing.

You know, if you go pick up the autobiography of any major figure that's in the world today, maybe someone in politics or some other famous person, you are getting a highly curated story.

You're getting a story that where they've definitely edited out a lot of the worst parts and they've emphasized the best.

The Bible does not do that.

The Bible takes its heroes, people like Abraham, people like King David, let's say, and it shares with us the most embarrassing, the most low, uh, it shares with us the worst moments.

The Bible is is it's incredibly honest.

That's why sometimes you read it and you're like, ooh, that's I don't know about that.

That's interesting.

Well, it's because the Bible's not lying to you.

God's word is He's not trying to hide from you the parts that aren't all like rainbows and sunshine, because the Bible is not the story of amazing people being used by God.

It is the story of an incredible God who uses broken people.

And when we read these stories and we see the brokenness and we see the struggles and we see the moments where decisions are made, that you're like, why make that?

Hey, yeah, you look at those and go, that that's not okay, but you also look at it and go, man, God can work even through that.

God can use people even when they make mistakes that that big.

And today is an example of that.

How God can work with us, meet us in our lowest points, and how even when other people make really bad decisions that affect us, God is with us.

Now, for some context, today we actually specifically follow a character in Abraham's story named Hagar.

And Hagar is an interesting person and she was put in an interesting place.

And here's the basic situation, and we're gonna kind of have to rewind a little bit.

We're gonna look at some scripture we've already studied in this series, but it's gonna connect deeply to what we're looking at today.

So Hagar was a servant of Abraham's wife, Sarah.

And in this culture, in this time, this is like ancient, the ancient world, you know, servant meant that she belonged to Sarah.

That's the way the ancient world worked.

It didn't matter the culture, it didn't matter if you were in Egypt or you were in uh where Abraham is and in kind of the Mesopotamia area, it's just that's how that's how the world worked, all the way really through a pretty modern point in human history.

That's the way the Roman Empire worked.

You had servants in your household, they belonged to you, and Hagar belonged to uh to Sarah.

Hagar was from Egypt.

In fact, the most likely situation that led Hagar to be in the household of Abraham and Sarah is that if you know the story, one one time Abraham and Sarah were taking a trip through Egypt, and Abraham got nervous because his wife was attractive.

Sarah was very attractive.

And so just imagine, wives, if your husband looked at you one day and he's like, Hey, you're so beautiful, and you're like, Thank you.

And he goes, So beautiful, in fact, that I'm worried someone's gonna kill me and take you.

So when we get to Egypt, tell them you're my sister.

That way they'll leave me alone.

You know, it's less romantic at that point.

And so Abraham did that, and Sarah, and Abraham told everybody, yep, just my sister.

And so the the actual uh king of Egypt, Pharaoh, he he looked at Sarah, he's like, I think she's attractive, I want to marry her, and he paid Abraham in the ways that you would pay people back then, right?

Livestock, servants, for Sarah.

And Abraham was like, Okay, I mean, it's a horrible story.

I told you the Bible doesn't lie.

And and then Pharaoh finds out that it's it's his wife, and he freaks out, and God shows up and is like, You did a bad thing, Pharaoh.

And he's like, I got lied to, and and basically he sends them on their way and he's like, Take the servants, take the livestock, take, take a bunch of stuff and leave.

Why did you do this to me?

And then they leave, and they had to have one of the most awkward conversations or or weeks or months, who knows, that any couple has ever had.

But they left with a bunch of stuff.

They left with livestock, wealth, and they left with servants, and it's very likely that Hagar came to their, came to know Abraham and Sarah and be a servant in their household through that situation, which is a messed up situation.

But it but here's the greatest thing about messed up situations, they can get more messed up.

You know?

You guys know that phrase, hold my beer?

All right?

That's a phrase, if you're not familiar, it means like someone does something stupid.

I can outdo this.

All right?

There's a lot of hold my beer moments in the Bible.

And so, as messed up as the whole Hagar situation is, it gets more messed up because God has promised a child to Abraham and Sarah, but Sarah can't seem to get pregnant.

And this goes on for years and years.

And so Sarah says, I have an idea.

Abraham, let's have a child through Hagar.

She's my servant, she belongs to me.

If if you sleep with her and she becomes pregnant, that child will be ours, and maybe that's how we can have this child that God's promised us.

And Abraham goes along with it.

And Hagar gets pregnant, and it gets it gets really bad.

I told you, it's super messed up.

In fact, we got there in Genesis chapter 16, and I want to read this because it's gonna connect directly to what we're gonna see today.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

Uh, Genesis 16, it says, When Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, her name later gets changed to Sarah, with contempt.

Then Sarai said to Abram, This is all your fault, and man, I just have to say, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Abram in this story.

Abraham, like, I mean, he did.

It's a stupid situation, you know.

Um, but it wasn't just his fault, right?

There's there's plenty of blame to grow to go around.

Um, this is all your fault.

I put my servant into your arms, but now that she's pregnant, she treats me with contempt.

The Lord will show you who's wrong, you or me.

And Abram replied, Look, she's your servant, so deal with her as you see fit.

Horrible.

You know, just I don't want to be involved.

You do whatever, I'll remove myself from this situation.

Not the best way to lead, that's for sure.

So Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away.

And the angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness along the road to Shur.

The angel said to her, Hagar, Sarai's servant, where have you come from?

Where are you going?

I'm running away from my mistress Sarai, she replied.

The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.

And then he added, I will give you more descendants than you can count.

And the angel also said, You're now pregnant, we'll give birth to a son.

You're to name him Ishmael, which means, God hears, for the Lord has heard your cry of distress.

And there's this interesting prophecy.

This son of yours will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey.

He'll raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him.

Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives.

Therefore Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord who had spoken to her.

She said, You are the God who sees me.

She also said, Have I truly seen the one who sees me?

So that well was named Beer.

I'm not going to try to pronounce that.

Let's just skip that.

It means well of the living one who sees me.

How about that?

There we go.

It can still be found between Kadesh and Bared.

So Hagar gave Abram a son, and Abram named him Ishmael.

Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.

Old guy.

So, messed up situation.

But God shows up and he meets Hagar where she is.

And he basically says, Look, this is a tough situation, and it's going to be a tough situation.

And Ishmael's life is going to be a tough life, but I'm going to bless him and I'm going to bless you.

So go back.

Do not stay out here in the wilderness.

So they go back.

Well, years go by.

Many years go by.

In fact, 14 years go by, and Sarah gets pregnant.

And now Sarah and Abraham have a son between the two of them.

They name him Isaac.

And last week we looked at this sweet moment in the story where they have their child and Sarah's like, who would have thought, who would have thought that I could have a child?

And how God fulfills his promises.

We can trust God to keep his promises.

And we explored last week some of the promises that he's made us.

But right after this sweet moment, we get this story.

Genesis 21, 8 through 21.

When Isaac grew up and was about to be to be weaned, Abraham prepared a huge feast to celebrate the occasion.

But Sarah saw Ishmael, the son of Abraham and her Egyptian servant Hagar, making fun of her son Isaac.

So he turned, so she turned to Abraham and demanded, get rid of that slave woman and her son.

He's not going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.

I won't have it.

This upset Abraham very much because Ishmael was his son.

But God told Abraham, Don't be upset over the boy and your servant, do whatever Sarah tells you, for Isaac is the son whom your descendants will be counted.

But I will also make a nation of the descendants of Hagar's son, because he is your son too.

So Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food in a container of water, and strapped them on Hagar's shoulders.

And then he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba.

When the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush, and then she went down and sat by herself about a hundred yards away.

I don't want to watch the boy die, she said, as she burst into tears.

But God, hearing the boy crying, but God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, Hagar, what's wrong?

Do not be afraid.

God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants.

And then God opened Hagar's eyes.

She saw a well full of water.

She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink.

And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness.

He became a skillful archer, and he settled in the wilderness of Peran.

His mother arranged for him to marry a woman from the land of Egypt.

So, again, messed up story.

You know, you can see this story in a lot of different angles, a lot of different ways.

In some ways, it's harsh.

I mean, God's like, hey, go ahead and send Hagar and Ishmael off, but I will take care of them.

That is the promise that God makes.

And you can kind of tell clearly through the story that this whole situation with Hagar, which never should have happened in the first place, and Ishmael, it's not gonna work.

It's untenable.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are just they are untenable.

It's not gonna work out.

Something has to give.

And God says to Abraham, like, this is not going to work.

And we have to be reminded, it's tough.

This was their plan.

Right?

This was them deviating from God's plan, and they choose their their own.

And and oftentimes when we take, when we do our thing instead of what God tells us to do, we shouldn't be surprised when it gets to a boiling point, right?

So God says, This isn't gonna work.

This is not, this is not gonna work.

Do what Sarah says, but I'm gonna take care of your son.

And I see it in many ways as God getting Hagar out of a completely impossible situation.

But it's tough.

It's tough.

And something you find in Scripture, and this is something you can wrestle with God about.

Um, it's not always the like American version of God that we get taught, is that God seems very comfortable with sending those he loves out on a journey.

And it's a really tough one.

Like we have this idea of God very often that you know you're blessed by God when everything goes smoothly, when everything's going great, God is with you.

And I don't know, yeah, sure.

But it seems like a lot of the people that God is with the most in the Bible have pretty rough journeys.

And God uses those journeys and he's with them in those journeys and he teaches them through those journeys.

And so just know that if you're going through a rough situation right now, like if you feel like you're in a wilderness, doesn't mean God isn't with you.

You might be exactly where he wants you to be, and he will take care of you.

This story for me, though, it's it's really impactful, and I think it's actually pretty profound in some of the things that it has to teach us about God.

Because again, the whole point of our series, the angle that we're looking at all this through is what does this teach us about God?

And there's two things that I want to focus on today, and we'll go through this fairly quickly.

Um, just so you know, what I'm about to say rhymes, which makes it cheesy, but also memorable.

So here's what it is this is the basic idea that we're gonna cover today.

God, he hears our cries and he opens our eyes.

All right?

It's cheesy.

I know it rhymes, but you'll remember it.

God hears our cries and he opens our eyes.

I don't know how often you have had someone cry out to you in life.

Like when's the last time someone cried out to you?

Like they yelled your name, and it wasn't them just asking for your help, it wasn't just like, hey, can you help me?

It was like, it is a cry.

It is a cry out moment.

I have four kids, so those are constant in my life.

It's just that usually they're dumb.

You know, those of you who are parents, you you might know this, right?

Like when your child cries out for you and it sounds urgent, and then you go to the situation and it's super dumb.

Like this happened to me this last week, actually.

We had a situation, and it was a it was uh my daughter cried out to me, Dad! She was very upset.

And the situation was that we were we were leaving, it was me and my daughter and my my two younger sons, and we were leaving to go somewhere, and my middle son Judah called shotgun.

That's what happened.

He called shotgun.

And she didn't, and so he got the front seat, because them's the rules.

You know what I mean?

And she was, I mean, she's like, this is an injustice has been done.

She's like, Dad, I never sit in the front seat.

I'm older than him, I'm taller than him, um, I'm tired of this.

And she, I mean, she was, she just turned 12.

There's new emotions that I'm learning.

And so, like, she is she is upset.

And after what seemed like five continuous minutes of her laying out her case and crying out to me, and dad, and dad, and I I just kind of I looked at her and I was like, man, what do I do?

And I just said, he called shotgun.

Who am I?

Who am I to break that sacred tradition?

I'm not God.

I can't rewrite the rules of shotgun.

I mean, to do that would be to undo, it would be to to literally dishonor hundreds of years of American history.

It would.

Do you guys know the origin of shotgun?

It's the it's the Wild West, okay?

Stagecoaches were raided, were often robbed and raided at a regular basis, and so uh they would hire security people.

Often there was a company called the Pinkertons, if you're familiar with this.

If you watch a lot of Westerns, you've met some Pinkertons, bad dudes usually.

Um, but they were paid to sit next to the person driving the stagecoach, and they rode shotgun.

And they would sit there armed to be a deterrent.

Like men lost their lives riding shotgun.

So when we call shotgun, we honor shotgun.

To not do so would be to their sacrifice would be for nothing, basically, at this point.

I told Lily, men died for this.

Okay?

So he's riding in the front seat of our corolla because of what took place.

No, like I have this happen so often as a parent, where there's there's tears and someone's crying out to me for help, but what they're talking to me about is just silly.

And sometimes, to be honest with you, that that puts me in a mood where there is a legitimate situation and a child of mine cries out, but my assumption is that it's something dumb, and so I don't respond with urgency, and I don't respond maybe even with kindness all the time because I'm just over it.

God is a much better father than I am, and that's a good thing.

He's a better dad than all of us.

When we cry out to him, does he hear us?

Scripture teaches us that he absolutely does.

In multiple places.

You know, it said in this story, verse 17 of chapter 21, God heard the boy crying.

And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, Hagar, what's wrong?

Don't be afraid.

God has heard the boy cry as he lies there.

God hears our cries.

Exodus 3.7.

This is when the Israelites are slaves in Egypt.

It says the Lord told him, This is Moses, I've certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt.

I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers.

Yes, I'm aware of their suffering.

Psalm 34, 17, the righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them, and he delivers them from their troubles.

God hears our cries.

The question is, do we cry out to God?

Do we go to Him, like truly go to Him for our needs, with our problems?

Very often in life when we have problems and situations that would force us to cry out in whatever version of that that we do, we have a tendency to cry out to all the wrong people.

We have a culture here at His Hands on our staff where we say, hey, always come, you can complain, just make sure you complain up.

Right?

Complain to someone who can do something about it.

Don't complain laterally, definitely don't complain down.

But we we do that often in life.

Some some situations hard.

We we have a need to cry out to someone, and we often cry out to people who can't do anything about the problem.

We cry out to people around us, we cry out to people who are who are just a listening ear, and maybe they make us feel better for a minute, and they're like, Oh, I can't believe you're going through that.

Especially when maybe we're crying out against something that we feel is being done to us by someone else.

We cry out, but we cry out to the wrong people.

We cry out to people that can't help or won't.

But to cry out to God, oh my goodness, what a powerful thing.

I mean, read the Psalms.

Like David wrote that.

When the righteous cry out to God, and if you're thinking, well, I don't think I'm righteous, if you belong to Jesus, you are righteous.

You have been made righteous.

That word righteous means right standing with God, and we don't have that on our own by our own accord, but through Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross that paid the penalty for your sins, you now have been made righteous in the eyes of God because of Jesus.

So you can cry out to God with confidence that you will be heard.

He hears your cries.

So cry out to him.

I don't know if you've ever had a situation in life where you cried out to God and he answered you.

And maybe he answered you in a way that blew you away.

I have had that happen.

And he can answer in a lot of different ways.

We're gonna get into that in a second.

But sometimes God will answer our cries by directly intervening in our situation.

Like direct intervention.

Years ago, years ago, gosh, this has to be 15 or so years ago.

Um it would have been right about the time my oldest was born, so that seems right.

So um we found ourselves in a really tough place financially.

And I'll just pull the curtain back, and it's okay talking about this stuff.

Um finances are a little bit sensitive, so don't like to talk about it too much.

But you know, in this particular situation, we we had felt about six months to a year before the moment we got to, kind of a breaking point, we had felt like God called was calling us to give above and beyond what we would normally give in order to meet a need that we found out about.

And so we we like giving is a part of our lives, we we give every single month, but there was a specific need that we're like, I think God wants us to give to.

And I'll never forget this because we both felt like we were supposed to do that.

If you've ever, you know, if you're married and you're your spouse, maybe have that feeling.

And I remember I felt like God was telling us, you need to give to this.

And then Megan said, Hey, I think God's telling us to give to this.

And I was like, Yeah, me too.

Um, what's he telling you that we ought to give?

And uh, I could tell that her number was gonna be bigger than mine.

You know?

She's like, Well, and I was like, hmm.

And what do you do?

What do you do when you're married?

And one of you feels led by God to give a lot, and the other of you feels led by God to give less.

What do you do?

I mean, in our situation, I don't want to shortchange God, you know?

So I'm like, well, all right, let's and we we all joke.

We prayed about it, and I had peace.

And so we we gave.

For us at the time, it was it was a ton.

And you know, if you've been raised in the American church, checks are supposed to come in the mail when you do that.

You know, you give a you give a lot of money, and then just boom.

Nope.

Uh the economy tanked, my wife lost her job, and then she got hired back by her job, but they could only pay her half of what they were paying her before, even though they needed her to work full time, they could only pay her part time.

And we got to a point where we had like$20 in our bank account.

And I'm sure many of us have been there before.

And we didn't know what to do.

And we had a new son, and we were we had a like a night of crying out to God about that.

And I was kind of mad.

Have you ever been mad at God?

I'm like, look, man, apparently you told us to give this money away.

And seems like we kind of needed it.

You know?

Timing is interesting.

I was pretty upset.

And but we cried out to God.

We're like, God, you gotta help us.

And actually, like the true heart of the prayer was, Lord, we feel like we're doing what you you told us to do.

Like we feel like we've done what you've told us to do, and here we are.

And I'm not making this up.

The very next day, my wife calls me.

The very next day,$20 in the bank.

You know, God, we're doing it the right way.

We're crying out to you.

We need you, something's got to give here.

And my wife's boss came up to her at work and said, Hey, I just want you to know, starting next month, we're gonna start paying you full time again.

And we're gonna pay you all the back pay we we really owe you for the work you've done.

And it was like, wow, right?

That happened.

That's a real thing that happened.

Now, does that happen every time?

Does does it always work like that?

Is the solution always God directly intervening and doing something like that?

No.

But he heard our cry, he heard us, and he answered.

And I remember that often because there are other times where I'm praying and I'm asking God to directly intervene and do, you know, hey man, do that again.

Um, you know, that was awesome.

Just do that all the time.

But there's other times where he answers in a different way, and that's what we see in Hagar's story.

And so first part, he hears our cries, cry out to God.

When you find yourself upset, you feel like life is against you, and there's situations that are pushing you and stretching you, and all that, and you you're tempted to cry out to somebody.

I'm not saying you can't talk to a friend, I'm not saying you can't talk to other people about it, but just let God be the first person you cry out to and cry out to him the most because he's the one that can do something about it.

We cried out to God and he answered.

But he has different ways of answering.

And what I found actually over the course of many years of following him, especially of being in a leadership role at a church where I get to see all kinds of situations, this might be like one of the most frequent ways that I have found that he answers when we cry.

It's that he opens our eyes.

If we go back to Genesis 21, it says, God heard the boy crying, the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, Hagar, what's wrong?

Do not be afraid.

God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Go to him, comfort him, I'll make a great nation from his descendants.

And then God opened Hagar's eyes, and she saw a well full of water.

She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink.

And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness.

He became a skillful archer.

He settled in the wilderness of Peran, and his mother arranged for him to marry a woman from the land of Egypt.

So here she is, she's in the wilderness, which means desert in their part of the world, and they're out of water.

And she's like, I can't watch my son die of thirst.

I cannot do that.

She puts him in some shade and she's like, I have to go.

I can't even, I can't take this, because we're out of water.

And God hears the boy crying, and he opens her eyes, and apparently there's a well of water that she just didn't see.

It was like hidden from her.

And God opened her eyes and he's like, hey, water.

Like, I'm here for you.

Here it is.

Here's the solution.

And so she fills her container, they drink, they survive, they thrive.

God's with them.

He fulfills his promise.

It's amazing how often in life we are looking at situations that we're dealing with, we're struggling with.

We're praying, and we're giving God suggestions.

I don't know if you do that.

It's okay to do that, by the way.

It's okay to not only pray in God, I need your help, and here's how I would like you to help me.

Lord, I I need this and this and this.

And just hear me on this.

I think what would be great.

I've given God so many suggestions.

I've I give God proposals on a regular basis.

God?

I don't know if you've had a chance to read my recent proposal.

Feel like it's pretty good idea.

I don't know, it's a pretty good idea, you know.

But God's solution so often is to show us, to open our eyes and reveal to us that He has already solved the problem.

It's just we can't see it.

Because as people, we we are really, really good at not seeing things right in front of us.

I actually think God does something.

I think this is actually like a legitimate, I don't think there's a scientific proof of this yet, but there's a legitimate thing that God does in the brains of children where it makes it impossible for them to find the things that their parents asked them to find.

And I think he does this to us at a young age to teach us about this part of our nature.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Like, how many of you remember being a kid and your parents would be like, go get that thing, and you would go and it was not there?

Like you looked, you searched, and then your dad would, you'd go back to your dad and be like, I can't find it.

Your dad would get mad and he'd go and it'd be like right, right where you looked.

And he's like, It's right here.

And you're like, I swear it wasn't there.

Anyone else, am I alone in this?

Did anyone else have this experience growing up?

Yes, it's the weirdest thing.

It's a real thing.

I have a distinct memory of my father asking me for a Phillips head screwdriver, not a flathead, Phillips head screwdriver.

He's like, son, there's a Phillips head screwdriver on the workbench in the garage.

Go get it.

And I went to the garage and I stared at it.

I knew what a Phillips head screwdriver was, and I looked and I looked and I looked and it was not there.

It was not there.

I went back to my dad.

He was on a ladder, I was his ladder holder, and you know, and he just did that thing, you know, dads do when they're working on stuff.

He's like, ah, you know, and he he got down the ladder and he walked, and I mean he walked right to that workbench and grabbed it off, and he's like, right here.

And I sat there like, dad, it wasn't there.

Wasn't there.

And and my kids do that all the time.

It is an almost daily experience where they cannot find something, a backpack, a pair of yellow shoes.

Like, I'm serious.

And and they'll be like, I can't find it, and I'll walk in, and it's right where I it's right there.

And it's the same thing.

And I don't even get mad anymore because I'm like, oh yeah, this is I wasn't wrong.

I think God does that to the the brains of children because we need to be reminded, even at a young age, that we are blind to things right in front of us very often.

We are blind.

Like, God can have a solution.

And he could have already put it in place.

Like, he didn't make that well of water in that moment.

It had been there for a while.

She just didn't see it.

And what if, what if when we were in stressful situations, what if when we're freaking out about all the possible things and this or that?

I mean, even this week I had a situation that I've been trying to wrestle through, and there's all these potential solutions to it, and every one of them I like, but also hate, and it's it's tough.

And I've been just wrestling, wrestling, wrestling.

And what I I'm so glad I was preparing the message this week because it was for me.

Because it's like, oh, what if I stopped trying to solve this problem or try to tell God how He should solve this problem?

And what if I just prayed, God, open my eyes?

God, let me stop.

Just open my eyes so I can see, so I can see what you're doing, or maybe, Lord, what you've already done.

God opens the eyes of people in Scripture all the time.

All the time.

One of my favorite stories of that, 2 Kings chapter 6, there's a prophet named Elisha, and Elisha, man, God does some crazy stuff in Elisha's life, and Elisha has a really close relationship with God.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

Really cool story.

If you've never read the story of Elisha, it's it's awesome.

Well, Elisha is uh in trouble, I guess, or or you could think he's in trouble because he has angered the king of an enemy of his people, because Elisha keeps helping his people escape the evil plots of this other nation that's against them.

And so word gets to this king that there's this prophet named Elisha, and he's why.

He's the reason that we can't seem to win.

And so the king's like, well, let's go get him, and he finds out where he is.

And we get to this story in 2 Kings chapter 6.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

Go find out where he is, the king commanded, so I can send troops and seize him.

And the report came back, Elisha is at Dothan.

So one night the king of Aram sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city, just for one guy.

When the servant of the man of God, so he has Elisha has a servant that's with him.

When the servant got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere.

Oh, sir, what will we do now?

The young man cried out to Elisha, Don't be afraid, Elisha told him, for there are more on our side than theirs.

Then Elisha prayed, O Lord, open his eyes and let him see.

And the Lord opened the young man's eyes, and he looked up, and he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.

So it's like this man can see that there is a spiritual army that is surrounding them.

So they're surrounded by a physical army, and that physical army is surrounded by a spiritual army, and God does a miracle, and and they're fine.

And Elisha just said, Let him see.

Let him see.

It'd be so amazing if we could see how much support we have from heaven sometimes.

It would also be helpful.

Can we just say that too?

Like, hey God, any at any moment you can, that'd be great.

Like, just show me that.

But truly, truly, like, God opened his eyes.

God opened his eyes and he saw the support that he already had.

What if, what if the situation that you're in right now, or your loved one or someone, what if that situation, however hard it is, has already been taken care of.

You just can't see it.

And instead of stressing and freaking out and and trying to come up with all the 50 different ways you can think to solve the problem, what if you stopped and just said, God, open my eyes.

Help me see.

Help me see.

He'll do that.

I've experienced that, guys.

I'm telling you, he will do that.

I have a lot of ideas.

Most of them are bad.

How many of you are idea people, just out of curiosity?

You're like, you can be okay with it, you're playing.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

Like, there's a difference between being an idea person and a good idea person.

Um in my experience, most idea people, and I'm one of you, I always have ideas.

It's just I've learned usually the hard way through life, is that a lot of them are bad.

But when you're an idea person, you get excited about your ideas and your plans.

And you think you're like, oh, if everyone just did what I think we should do, life would go really, really well.

Well, I've had so many moments where I've come to the end of my plans.

And I mean, one of them is an easy this is an easy target, but um, and worship team, you guys can make your way out.

We're almost we're almost done.

Uh you guys remember COVID?

Anyone remember 2020?

Yeah.

Man, I had some plans for our church that year.

They were pretty awesome.

They're pretty awesome because it was 2020, and to be clever, I don't really try to be clever anymore, I've learned the hard way, but to be clever, we started that year with a series called 2020 vision about how God's gonna help us see, you know, which is what I'm talking about today.

So full circle.

But it wasn't like God opened our eyes, we're blind.

That wasn't really the that wasn't the the context.

And I was feeling at that time, I'm just gonna be honest, guys, I was feeling at that time like we had we had turned this corner as a church and it was ready, we were ready for like something big.

And I had some plans, none of which included what the rest of that year became.

It was pretty awesome as a pastor when you do a 2020 vision and you kind of like, guys, let's just let's imagine our year together and what God's gonna do this year in January of 2020.

It's pretty awesome.

Builds your credibility.

So everything, I mean all my all my plans just gone.

All the thoughts I had for the year and everything, just over.

And I was I was frustrated, and I remember walking through this building one day and it was empty, and uh and I was wrestling with it with some stuff because I I had some some serious plans and I was like, God, I we're not gonna be able to do this, we're not gonna be able to do that.

Like, I felt like we need to do this, we need to do that.

And then the big one for us is that at that time we were a two-gathering church, and we had pushed hard to add a second service, and to be completely honest, um, a big part of that was we felt like we needed to grow back then, and so it was like it was kind of a growth strategy, and I'll be honest, at this point in my time, this is how God leads you.

I'm not a big fan as a pastor of growth strategies.

I feel like God will make it grow when it's ready to grow.

I've just had to learn that the hard way.

But at that time, I was all I had a growth strategy, and it wasn't, you know, a pandemic uh and uh and all that went with that.

It was a stupid time.

There's such a stupid time, but but I realized as we were planning on our return, I realized like we were only gonna be able to have one service.

We didn't have enough volunteers to do two services, we put feelers out to see who all was like interested in coming back, and that was you know, that was back when no one knew what was going on.

And so it was like we're only gonna be able to do one service.

And I was upset about that because it felt like a huge retreat, felt like a failure because we had added a second, which is a hundred percent more, you know.

So going backwards is is is not fun.

And in this frustration, in this moment of prayer, like, God, I can't, all the work we've done to get to this point, and we had all the I had all these plans, God, and now gone.

We're gonna have to be a one-service church.

That's how it felt.

We're gonna have to be a one-service church.

And it's like once that came out of my mouth, God opened my eyes.

I mean, I'll never forget where I was.

I was here in the building, I was actually uh in in the coffee shop area.

I was like, we're going to have to be a one-service church again.

And it was like something happened.

And in a moment, that my mind went from we're gonna have to, to like, what if that's what I want you to be?

And what if, Justin, all your ways of growing have actually just been exhausting.

And and there, uh and I he's he had blessed it, but but you know, it was like he was showing me there's a way to simplify.

And I started having these ideas about like we can simplify church and we can kind of we can still grow and we just have to knock some of these walls down, and people are gonna have to sit next to strangers, and you know, uh, thankfully in the summertime we have open seats in between, but you know, just guys in the fall get ready to sit next and people you don't know.

Um, it's gonna be awesome.

But like I seriously I started having these thoughts of like, wait a minute, we could be a one-service church and we could actually get back to a simplicity and and and all be together and it not be this giant, you know, structural organization where we got to get people out to get the next people in, and we would get rid of all the so many of our frustrations back then were about the transition time between this and that, and we'd walk away from Sundays.

I'm being honest with you, and a lot of our conversations weren't like, did the Spirit of God move in the service?

It was like, hey, um, the parking seemed a little bit slower.

We got to figure that out because next week, you know, it was all these logistics, and I was like, wow, Lord, we we could be one service.

And he started showing me all these, like he opened my eyes.

And so we've been a one-gathering church ever since then.

And what's crazy about it is that, you know, we average substantially more people at one service today than we did at two services before COVID.

And I was that would never have been my plan.

And there's nothing wrong, by the way, with multiple services.

And if you've ever been at a church that does that, we used to do that.

We're blessed, we have a big building, we're surrounded by big parking lots, we can do that.

I have friends that are pastors of churches where that wouldn't be possible, but I will say this the modern American church has gotten really good at things like big events and stuff like that, but it's also gotten really good at burning people out.

Because in order to do that kind of stuff, you just have to have we need more people, more people, more people, more people helping.

And it was like we rested, we stopped.

God opened our eyes and he said, Hey, I have a different way.

And it was right there the whole time.

I just didn't see it.

What I'm trying to say is as we wrap up, we'll take Lord's Supper, is that God can, He hears your cries, but He can open your eyes.

He can show you solutions to your problems that are already there.

Yes, he can directly intervene, just like He did with Megan and her job, and like we're praying that He will do with Sandy in the hospital.

Yes, he can directly intervene and he can show up and he can do miracles, he does that all the time.

But he's not limited to just that.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we think it's over, we think it's done, just like Hagar did in the wilderness.

We think, we think we're finished, we think our marriage is finished, we think our career is finished, we think all these things are over and done, and God has already met the need.

We just can't see it.

We gotta pray, Lord, open my eyes.

Open my eyes.

I'm blind, open my eyes.

Amen.

I'm telling you what I experienced when he did that for for me at the time.

I was stressed and tired, and we had been doing two services for years, and it was a grind, and it was it was a lot, and it was like there was a peace and a rest.

It's like, oh, a well of water.

That's how it felt.

And so let's let's take Lord's Supper.

If you're new, by the way, we have these cups with bread and juice.

You walked by them as you walked in in the in the lobby, but we also have some at the back columns if you forgot and you want to grab one.

We have a God who solves problems.

We do.

And oftentimes the problem's already been solved.

That's one of the cool things about being a Jesus follower and living on this side of the cross is your problem as far as like sin and your standing with God and eternity and all that has already been solved.

Right here.

Jesus' death on the cross, his body being given as a sacrifice, his blood being shed, paying the price for your sin, done.

Done.

And every week we want to get our eyes on this so that we we thank him for it.

But maybe you're here today and you feel like you're far from God and you feel like you don't know if you know God and you're broken and you feel like God is far away from you, he's not.

You're wondering what you need, it's like, oh, Jesus.

You need Jesus, you need to know him, you need to give your life to him, you need to surrender your life to him.

And this little meal that we take every week is a reminder of that.

But maybe you've never followed him, you've never given your life to him.

Today I pray that he opens your eyes and you realize that all your stress and all your struggles and all of that, I'm not dismissing that, I'm not diminishing that, I'm just saying that there is a solution to your life, and his name is Jesus, and he's already come for you, and he's already died for you, he's already done for you what you can't do for yourself.

Just open your eyes and see it and accept him.

And those of us who do know him, cry out to God, know that he hears you, and ask him to show you what you don't see.

Because a lot of people didn't see this, even his own disciples didn't see this coming.

Sometimes we miss it.

But he's still with us, he's still good even when we do.

All right, so let's take the bread and let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for this bread and what it represents.

This is the body of your son Jesus.

And Jesus, thank you for sacrificing yourself for us.

You paid a price we couldn't pay, and you solved a problem that we couldn't solve.

And we love you and we thank you.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this cup.

This is your blood spilled on the cross.

It purifies us, it sanctifies us, it covers us, it washes away our sin.

Lord, as we drink this, we thank you for solving our problems.

We thank you, Lord, that you always have a solution.

And we ask, Father, that you would help us see it.

Not just this solution for our ultimate solution, the ultimate solution for our sin and for for life everlasting and eternal life.

But Lord, in our everyday lives, in our daily struggles, help us remember that you're there, that you've gone before us, that you've already solved our problems.

We just need to see it.

We need to see your way and your will.

Help us do that, Lord.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.