The Essentials: Confident Hope

Well, hey, we uh we love you guys.

We are for you.

Um, real quick, this kind of off the cuff, but Robertson, Bryden, Emily, would you guys come up here real quick?

Um, you guys make way for them real quick.

And is like, is Taryn in the room or is she somewhere else right now?

She's working in another area.

Um I just it's hard to see.

But I I just as I was looking out at these kids, um, these these used to be kids, now they're not.

Um, but one of the great marks of of a church is when the young people stay.

And these these uh young, you are young, uh, you just you know, but you're not kids.

But I remember when you guys were in the youth group years ago, and these these are three of my favorite people ever.

They they love the Lord so much.

And when they graduated, it was important to all of them that they immediately begin investing back.

And so they're going on this trip, and they've been investing in the students here at his hands for the last several years.

And I just think it's so amazing to know that some of you guys right here that are going on this trip a few years from now, you're gonna be in their position.

And you're gonna be going on the same trips, you're gonna be going to serve, you're gonna be going to lead, and I'm so excited for that.

And Tessa, I should have brought you up here, I didn't see you.

Sorry.

Um, but you guys are awesome.

We love you.

I'm proud of all you guys.

Thank you so much.

And let's hear it for our young people, let's hear it for this church.

That's awesome.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

All right.

You guys can grab a seat.

You can grab a seat.

I should have said that.

Whew! This has been a good day.

Now my job is not to blow it.

Okay.

Um, so we have been uh last week we started a new series called The Essentials.

Thank you so much, Katie.

Um it's called The Essentials, and what we're doing is we're studying a section of scripture.

It's Ephesians chapter 1, the second half of chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

And what we have in this in this particular part of scripture is a prayer.

Rather, Paul, the author, is telling us what he's been praying for when it comes to these Jesus followers that he's leading.

He's praying that they would experience some things.

And it's so amazing to think about the fact that Paul is, he's the leader of the early church.

He is the most influential Jesus follower who has ever lived.

And we get to hear what he prayed that the people he led would experience.

He's praying for the church.

And here's the cool thing: if you belong to Jesus, you're the church.

And so Paul's praying for you.

Prayers don't expire.

There is no such thing as like a shelf life to a prayer.

That's why it's so important that you pray for your children, by the way.

And pray for your grandchildren, because there are blessings that you may be experiencing today because someone prayed for you two generations ago.

And so when Paul prays for us and we sit here and we we read what Paul was praying that God would help us to experience, this prayer is for us and it's valid and it's alive and it's powerful.

And in the midst of this prayer, Paul reveals five things that to him are essential for us to experience that we want to have the full knowledge of Jesus that we're meant to have.

He says, look, these are essential.

You gotta have, you gotta experience these things, you have to comprehend these things.

And so, starting last week, we began going through these essentials, one each week.

Last week we talked about having spiritual insight, that we can actually see what's happening spiritually, that God wants to give us the ability to recognize and discern what he's doing.

Sometimes we look at the world and we go, God, what are you doing?

Well, God can reveal to us what he's doing.

And so last week we prayed with Paul that God would give us spiritual insight.

That he gave us like spiritual eyeballs, as strange as that may sound.

And if last week was about spiritual eyeballs, today is about spiritual swagger.

That's that's what I would say today.

That today God wants us to have some swagger when it comes to our our faith.

In verse 18, Paul says this I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called, his holy people, who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

Paul prays that we would have confident hope.

That God has actually given us confident hope, and he's saying, Hey, I want you to have confidence.

I want you to believe with confidence that God is gonna do great things in your life.

I think we all know what it's like to not have confidence and fake it.

Like anyone remember middle school?

You know, that's like the entire experience, at least for me.

We all know what it's like to have a lack of confidence.

And we all know how damaging it can be when you have no confidence.

When you're trying to operate with no real faith that anything's gonna happen, that's that's a tough place to be in life.

But the funny thing about confidence is that if you have it, but it's misplaced, like if you put your confidence in the wrong thing, that's as dangerous as not having confidence at all.

In fact, it's even more dangerous.

Confidence misplaced will lead to ruin.

We see it happen all the time.

When I was in high school, I've been thinking a lot about me being in high school because of you guys going on the trip and all that.

When I was in high school, um, I got my first job at Blockbuster Video.

Anyone remember Blockbuster Video back in the day?

Come on.

Wasn't that long ago?

Wasn't that long ago that there was a blockbuster in every strip mall that was of any significance, you know?

That's how you knew you were in civilization.

Ah, Blockbuster.

Okay.

I worked at Blockbuster, I got hired in 1999, I got fired from Blockbuster, and uh I want you to know that that should impress you.

That is an accomplishment.

It is hard to get fired from Blockbuster video.

Takes effort, takes commitment to have standards that low.

It's funny, when I was when I was working there, there were 4,500 blockbuster stores in the United States.

In the year 2000, they did over$800 million in late fees alone.

Y'all remember late fees?

Remember what that was like?

All right, just be honest.

Anyone ever just let the blockbuster employee have it when they told you you had a$3 late fee?

Anyone ever do that?

Does anyone?

I was the one, you liars, I was the one.

You would never you couldn't even imagine how angry people would get when you would say, um, sir, you have a$3 late charge, and they would just take all their disappointment in life and channel it into that one conversation.

And you just had to be like, I am 16 years old, I have no authority here whatsoever, I can't change anything.

You know?

But I worked at Blockbuster and Blockbuster was crushing it.

Blockbuster was on top of the world.

On top of the world.

Like they were they were everywhere and they were doing really, really well.

And then this thing called Netflix came along.

No one really saw it coming.

You know?

There's a quote by the CEO of Blockbuster in 2008, which is not that long ago, when you really think about it.

2008, 10 years ago.

I'm gonna go ahead and put this on the screen because I want you to read this.

Neither Redbox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.

Two years later, Blockbuster went bankrupt.

Netflix is doing fine, you know?

I got really feel for that guy because you know what?

He has Netflix.

Like, he has to.

Because it's the only way to watch movies, pretty much now.

And so, what's it like for that guy to sit down at night with his family and say, let's watch a movie and turn Netflix on?

You know?

Like, you guys, sometimes you gotta eat your words.

The really scary thing, if if if this guy, I pray that this man is okay.

Like, pray for the former CEO of Blockbuster, he's probably doing great, but like Netflix wanted Blockbuster to buy them in 2005 for$50 million, which is a lot of money.

And Blockbuster, you know, Blockbuster, they're not even on the radar screen.

They said, nah.

And today, Netflix is valued at over$100 billion.

And if you're like, what's the difference between$50 million and$100 billion?

Well, picture$50 million, and I don't even know how to do that.

I have no idea how big of a stack that would be, but whatever it is, picture it.

You just need 2,000 more of those to get to$100 billion.

So it probably would have been a good investment.

And again, remember, that man has Netflix.

Like, that's gotta be hard.

You know, you can you can look at that quote and sort of, you know, put your face in your palm when it comes to the ignorance or the lack of foresight.

But you gotta give the guy credit when it comes to confidence.

Because he wasn't hedging, you know, he didn't say, yeah, Netflix is really interesting, they're they're definitely a disruptive force in the market, and we're really paying attention to what they're doing, and maybe trying to learn from them.

No, no, no.

He's like, they don't even matter, they're nothing.

He was wrong, but he had confidence.

See, confidence misplaced will ruin you.

But confidence properly placed, confidence that is placed in the Lord that will lead you to places in life you've never been before.

And I pray today that we walk out of these doors with confidence, with more confidence than we've we've ever had before.

Because Paul says that we need to understand that we have been given confident hope.

It's interesting that phrase pops up a few other times in the New Testament, always when Paul is writing.

Ephesians uh Romans 12, 12, for example.

Rejoice in our confident hope.

Be patient in trouble and keep on praying.

Romans 15, 13, he says, I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him, and then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we see Paul say often, hey, you need to have confident hope.

Rejoice in it, it'll overflow in your life.

But what's what's actually really interesting is that in the original language that Paul was writing in in Greek, that word confident, it's not in any of what he wrote.

It's kind of weird.

So we can look at a different translation.

The New American Standard Version, for example.

We'll look at all three of these verses in the New American Standard.

Ephesians 1.18.

He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know the hope of his calling.

What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints?

Romans 12, 12 says, Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer.

Romans 15, 13.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And in all of these, we see absolutely no mention of the word confidence.

Now, in the translation that I originally read from, that's the New Living Translation, that's the main translation that we use when we teach here.

We see that word every time confident hope, confident hope, confident hope.

But when Paul originally wrote that, the word confidence wasn't there.

So what's going on?

I guess may make you go, man, my Bible's been messed with, and I can't trust what it says.

No, that's not the case.

The cool thing about the Bible is that we have a variety of translations, and they're all very, very close.

But they sort of specialize in different things.

And we need that because Greek does not translate perfectly to English.

Like language has evolved a lot over the last few thousand years.

Words take on different meanings as they go on in time and change hands and culture.

And so sometimes what maybe was said is not the same thing as what the person was trying to say when it comes to our understanding.

I know this is kind of boring stuff.

I'm talking about biblical translations.

You're like, I got up on a Sunday morning to learn about biblical translations.

Seriously.

But but I actually think it's pretty interesting.

So here's the deal: um, the new American standard, the one that doesn't have that word confident, it's the closest to the original language.

Its specialty is that it tells us what the author said.

The new living translation, the one that we usually use, it tries to tell us what the author was saying.

And that's not always the same thing.

Like, how many of us have experienced the fact that, yeah, I said that, but that's not what I was saying?

We have a lot of examples of that in our world.

Who here has ever used the phrase, don't beat a dead horse?

Who here has used that phrase while someone in front of you was literally kicking a horse that was deceased?

Right?

Like, no one.

But we understand that phrase means, hey, if something's not working and you've tried and you've tried, at some point you gotta move on.

But it's a phrase that originated with horses, and then it just sort of carried through, and a few thousand years from now, that phrase will make zero sense to anyone.

Won't make any sense at all.

How about this one?

This is a really easy example.

Um, most of the phone calls that we make in life now are made via our cell phone.

There may be a few of us that are still rocking the landlines, and hey, go for it.

But like the vast majority of our communication now happens on a cell phone.

And when you're done talking to someone on your phone, what do you do?

You hang up.

Except you don't.

Because that phrase hang up, that's from a bygone era where when you were done with the conversation, you physically took the phone you were holding and you hung it up, and that's what ended the call.

But we don't do that anymore.

I don't hang my phone up.

I hit a button, I end the call.

But I still say hang up, and we all do.

That's what we say, but it's not what we're saying.

And so the New Living Translation, what it does is it looks back at the language, and they've done so much research and understanding into what these words meant in the context of the culture at the time, and it will help give us clarity that we can understand what is actually being said, what's being communicated.

And so the reason that the New Living Translation adds that word confident to hope is because in Paul's day, his understanding of hope is very different than ours.

And we need to be reminded that this hope is something born out of confidence.

Because look, in our world today, when we use the word hope, it's very rarely connected to confidence at all, right?

Like if someone comes to you and says, Hey, how do you think it's gonna go?

And you say, Man, I really hope it works.

What you almost always mean is, I see no reason this should work.

You know?

But I'm I'm I'm hoping.

I'm hanging on to hope.

If you're in a relationship with someone and man, the relationship's not going well, and you're thinking about maybe breaking up or whatever, and someone comes to you and they're like, Man, how's it going?

You're like, man, I hope we work this out.

Oftentimes what we mean is like, yeah, this isn't working.

But I'm holding on to some hope.

That's kind of our modern understanding of hope.

Hope is is not confident.

Hope is flimsy, it is shaky.

Hope is like a last-ditch effort, it's it's something that you hang on to when it's all you've got.

But when Paul wrote about hope, that is not what he had in mind.

Because hope in the ancient context was a word that was always associated with certainty.

If you said, I'm hoping for something, it wasn't like this probably won't happen, you know, but there's a shot in the dark, there's a chance.

When you said you were hoping for something, you were saying it hasn't happened yet, but it's gonna happen.

And so that's why they put that word confident in there, because that's how they understood hope.

And we see this by the way in some other scriptures.

Hebrews 11:1, for example, connects hope with faith.

Hebrews 11:1

And it says faith shows the reality of what we hope for, it is the evidence of things that we cannot see.

Other translations say that it's the assurance of what we can't see.

So connected to hope are words like assurance, reality.

The biblical understanding of hope is something that is so certain it is bound to happen, it just hasn't happened yet.

And the question is, do we have that kind of hope?

Like, do we do we believe with that kind of belief?

From the very beginning of our faith, we have been known as Jesus followers as believers.

You see it constantly in Scripture.

Read the book of Acts, and about every other page it says the believers.

And when the believers were gathered together, and then the believers were together, and then all this stuff happened to the believers, we've always been called the believers.

And there's this one element that's really necessary in being a believer, and it's called belief.

Like if you don't have belief, you're not a good believer.

And I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I don't have a lot of belief.

There have been so many seasons in my life where when it comes to God, whatever hope I have communicated has been like me trying to convince myself that maybe there's a chance God's gonna do something.

And so I might say with my mouth, like, oh, I just I hope and I believe and all this stuff, and in the back of my mind, I'm like, yeah, it's probably not gonna happen.

There have been so many times where I've hedged in my life when it comes to God, and I've spoken, you know, in these very, very vague terms that basically keep me from having to be disappointed if God doesn't show up and do something.

Because if I'm really honest with myself, I don't always believe.

But Paul tells us that it's essential.

It is absolutely essential that we have a confident hope in God.

I've seen God do things that don't make sense.

I've seen God show up in ways that He is the only explanation for.

And I've shared many of those stories here, and I'll share them in other times.

I've seen God heal people, I've seen God do things, you know, with the circumstances that just are so perfect that only God could do it.

It's crazy.

And it's always amazing when that happens.

Maybe you've had that experience, maybe you've had a God thing happen in your life, and once it happens, you like praise God.

You're excited, you kind of brag on God.

You might say to people, you will not believe what God did.

You won't believe how God showed up, and that's awesome.

It's so good to brag on God when he does something.

But confident hope is when you brag on God before he does it because you're so convinced that he's going to.

Like, have you ever bragged on God before he's actually done the thing that you want him to do?

There's some people in scripture that we get to see do that, and their stories are pretty cool.

Like, there's this guy named Elijah.

We talked about him a lot last year.

We did a whole series on Elijah's life, and and Elijah has this kind of nemesis, a man named Ahab.

It just so happens that Ahab's the king of Israel.

Israel's way off the rails, way off track.

Ahab's an evil dude.

He's married to a woman named Jezebel.

Have you guys ever heard the name Jezebel connected with something bad?

You know?

Um, I'm just gonna be full disclosure.

There was this woman that started texting me years ago, and and that's not good.

I don't do that.

I don't text women.

I don't, I mean, like I text my wife and probably text my daughter one day, but that's it.

And so I just named her in my phone Jezebel.

Um so anytime I got a text, I would show it to my hey, Jezebel's texting me.

Um and then I just won't answer it.

So, you know, and she was like shocked and offended, but I don't care.

I love my marriage, I'm gonna protect it.

So, anyway, um, you know, and she doesn't go to church anymore, so I can say that.

But uh, but like like Jezebel, Ahab's wife, she was the first Jezebel.

So all that, all the that term, like, oh, that's a Jew, like that's all, that's all because of this woman, bad lady.

And Ahab, super bad dude, and they did some things that made God very unhappy because Israel was his special, like his possession.

In the Old Testament, they're the people that he's promised to bless, and and he said, Look, just follow me and I'll bless you.

And then Ahab led these people way off the rails, like crazy stuff.

And so God chooses Elijah as a prophet, and one of the first things Elijah does is go to Ahab and he says, Hey, I got some bad news for you.

It's not gonna rain for like a long time.

And three years goes by, no rain, and rather than repent and say, Lord, I'm sorry for what I've done, Ahab just blames Elijah.

And then all of a sudden, three years later, in 1 Kings chapter 18, verse 1, it says, Later on in the third year of the drought, the Lord said to Elijah, Go and present yourself to King Ahab, tell him that I will soon send rain.

1 Kings 18:1

So Elijah went to appear before Ahab.

And you would think that Ahab is gonna be like, Hallelujah! It's gonna rain, it hasn't rained in three years.

We need rain bad.

Thank you so much, Elijah.

That is not how it goes down.

Because Ahab is stubborn, he has a hard heart.

And the one thing that Ahab wants to see more than rain is Elijah being wrong.

Like seriously, Ahab would rather see Elijah fail than see it rain on his kingdom.

And so when Elijah says it's gonna rain today, Ahab would love for that to come and go so he can look at Elijah and say, Haha, you're no prophet.

So all this stuff goes down, and toward the end of the day, we see this really interesting thing happen.

Um, Elijah sends a servant of his to go to go scout the land.

He says, Hey, go go tell me if you see any rain clouds.

And his servant comes back and says, There's nothing in the sky.

Clear skies, Elijah.

So he says, All right, go again.

And the servant goes again, clear skies.

He goes again, clear skies.

Sends him six times.

And every time the servant comes back and he's like, hey, uh, no, zero, zero rain.

This was basically like the weather channel 3,000 years ago.

You just send a guy outside, is it raining?

Nope, all right, no rain.

And then it says in verse 44, finally, the seventh time, I love this, the servant told him, I saw a little cloud about the size of a man's hand rising from the sea.

Now, you gotta read this with some like reality in mind.

This guy's not that excited.

He's trying to soften the blow.

You know, he's gone six times and come back every time and said, nothing, nada, zero.

Your prediction, Elijah, it's not looking good.

And this time he comes in and I mean he's sitting there like, okay, um, hey, good news, Elijah.

I saw a little cloud.

You know, it's a little bitty cloud, and it's way far away.

It's like about this big, you know, maybe like the size of my hand, and I don't know.

Maybe that's a rain cloud, but that doesn't sound like a rain cloud to me.

He doesn't come back and say, I saw a storm, Elijah, on the horizon that I've never seen before.

So Elijah hears, there's a little bitty cloud way in the distance, tiny little thing, and listen to Elijah's response.

He says, and he shouts actually, hurry to Ahab.

Like, go now and tell him, climb into your chariot and go back home.

If you don't hurry, the rain will stop you.

Like if I was Elijah, that probably wouldn't be my response.

I'd probably be like hedging big time.

All right, well, you tell Ahab that even if it drizzles, that counts.

You know?

You tell Ahab that a sprinkle is still rain, but he says, you go tell Ahab.

But if he doesn't get in his chariot now, the rain will be so intense he won't be able to leave.

That is some spiritual swagger.

That is confident hope.

And it happens exactly as Elijah said.

They have a rainstorm that might as well have been a monsoon.

There's a connection between confident faith and seeing God work.

I don't know how it works.

It's not like a scientific thing where we can say, here's the formula, but there is a connection between confident faith and seeing God work.

Probably my favorite story of confidence in God, of being able to brag on God before God does what he does, is the story of David and Goliath.

It's a really common story.

Like we're all familiar with the story of David and Goliath, right?

Even if you don't go to church, you know, every time there's a sporting event and one team is heavily favored, they're like, this is a David and Goliath scenario.

And it's funny how often Goliath wins in those scenarios.

Um, but you know, there's that chance.

Well, in the very first David and Goliath scenario, David is this young man.

And he goes to bring food to his brothers who just so happen to be in the military in Israel, and they're actually in the standoff with a nation called Philistine.

And the Philistines have lined up on one side of a valley, and the Israelites are lined up on the other side of the valley, and rather than fight like men, they're just like yelling at each other, like men, you know?

They're just going, you know, we're better than you, we'll crush you.

Well, why don't you bring it?

Why don't you bring it?

You know, it's just like it's like a middle school fight, you know, it's just sort of like, fight me, I'll fight you, you fight, I'll fight you, at a lot of those.

Um and so finally, the Philistines they send their champion, Goliath, he's their mightiest warrior, and he comes out from the crowd and he stands in the middle of the valley and he looks up at all the Israelites, and they're like shaking, shaking so much that you can hear the armor.

And he says, I'll fight any of you right now, if you're brave enough to.

And he begins to curse the Israelites and he begins to curse God, the God of Israel.

He begins to say, Your God is nothing, and he hurls vile insults at God, and it just so happens that David shows up after this has been going on for days.

And David's just there to bring food to the soldiers.

He's not in the army.

And David goes, What's going on?

Like, why is this happening?

Why isn't someone shut this dude up?

And they're all like, Well, he's big.

And David goes, So?

I'll fight him.

I'll fight him.

And at first, everyone, like, no, don't go fight him, but then eventually they're like, Well, I'm not gonna fight him, so might as well send this guy out.

And David goes out, and he can't even wear armor because there's not armor that's small enough to fit him, you know?

You would never have a kid that played sports and their jersey was like three sizes too big, you know, their shorts were basically like long pants, and you just see like a little bit of ankle and a shoe.

That's kind of what David looked like in the armor.

But David goes out and he walks, he walks up to the Philistine, to this giant named Goliath.

I love this.

Check out this braggadocia when it comes to his confidence in the Lord.

Goliath walked out toward David with his shield bearer ahead of him, sneering in contempt at this ruddy-faced boy.

He said, Am I a dog?

That you come at me with a stick, because David didn't even have a sword, he just had a slingshot basically.

And he cursed David by the names of his gods.

Come over here, and I'll give your flesh to the birds and wild animals, Goliath yelled.

David replied to the Philistine, You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin.

But I come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you, and I will cut off your head.

And then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.

And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear.

This is the Lord's battle, and he will give you to us.

Like David said that.

And then David took a rock and a sling and he hurled it at Goliath, and it hit Goliath in the head.

Goliath fell down.

David walked up to him, picked up Goliath's own sword, and chopped his head off.

And everyone went, oh, oh, what just happened?

And I know it's gross, and I know it's barbaric.

By the way, when you read the Old Testament, you're like, they're barbaric, it's because they were barbarians.

That's why.

We look at him more like they're being weird, they're acting normal from what they've experienced.

But when you when you hear that response of David, when you look at Elijah's attitude, do you get this sense that they're like, Man, I really hope God shows up today?

You know?

Like David's not walking out there going, like, I hope I don't die.

I hope God does something.

No, it is a certainty to David, and it is a certainty to Elijah that God is going to show up.

And you want to know why that is?

Because God showing up is a certainty.

Because our God is a God who shows up, because our God is real.

And if we will put our confidence in Him, if we will place our confidence in the Lord, if we will have confident hope and actually be believers, we will see God work in our lives.

I don't know what you need today.

I could rattle off a bunch of examples that cover most people.

Your marriage, your career, you're not gonna go all through that stuff.

But I don't know what you need today.

God does.

Do you believe that He's gonna show up in your life?

Do you do you have confident hope?

Spiritual swagger where you're like, I am bragging about my God before my God even shows up because I know he's gonna.

Believe in your heart with that kind of intensity because he's God, because it's what he does.

Like it's just what he does.

I'm getting to the point in my life where it's not even surprising anymore when God does something, because I'm like, oh yeah, God.

It's just what he does.

Confidence misplaced will ruin your life.

And if you're here today and your confidence is in yourself, or your confidence is in the government, or your confidence is in some outside force in this world, and you're hoping that that's what's gonna get you through.

Like in love, not in judgment, but in love, I want to warn you that your hope will crumble if it is in anything but the Lord.

But if you put your confidence in him, you will have an unshakable faith, a strength, and an endurance and an ability to persevere that does not make sense to this world.

The psalmist wrote it this way in Psalm 42, 5, why am I discouraged?

Why is my heart so sad?

Are you discouraged today?

Is your heart sad?

Does that describe any of us in the room?

If that's the case, he says, I will put my hope in God, I will praise him again, my Savior and my God.

In Psalm 27, he writes, The Lord is my light and my salvation, so why should I be afraid?

The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble?

When evil people come to devour me, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.

Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will not be afraid.

Even if I'm attacked, I will remain what?

Confident.

I will remain confident because my God shows up.

The Bible says if you have to boast, and let's be honest, some of us do.

That's our personality.

Like we gotta we gotta boast about something.

If you have to boast, boast in the Lord.

As we leave here today, have confidence.

Like walk with your shoulders back and your head held high.

And believe that God's gonna do something.

Believe to the point where you're bragging about it before it even happens.

Instead of going to your friends with your problems and saying, you won't believe what happened to me, and this happened, stop giving glory to your problems and start giving glory to God who solves your problems.

Like start telling people, my God's gonna show up.

My God's gonna show up.

And I don't care how it looks, I don't care what the prognosis is, I don't care how bad it is, my God's gonna do something.

You just wait till He shows up, it's gonna blow you away.

There's a strong link between confident faith and experiencing miraculous in life.

And I want that for me, and I want that for you.

I know God wants it even more.

We're gonna worship, finish up with one song like we always do.

And this song, like this song, is an amen for us today.

You guys know what the word amen means?

It basically means let it be so.

Let it be so.

And so this song for us, it's our amen.

It's us saying, Let it be so.

And we're gonna sing about the fact that our God does not fail.

Our God, He's not intimidated by anything, our God is never perplexed, our God is never stumped, our God is never afraid, our God does not fail, our God is certain.

I'll tell you this: his power, it is certain.

And even more importantly, his love for you, it is certain.

Jesus is real and he loves you, and he can do anything, so let's stand up right now and let's cry out to him and let's tell him what he already knows, but what we need to be reminded of.

Let's tell him that he does not fail, and we have confident hope in our God.

Please pray with me, Lord, we love you.

It has been an honor to be here today.

It's been an honor to sit and witness people's lives completely changed by you.

It's been an honor, God, to pray over our young people and have hope that they're going to experience you.

Mostly, God, it's an honor just to be in your presence.

We all need to be reminded that the hope you've given us is not some flimsy thing.

The hope you've given us is sure, it is certain, it is reality, Lord.

So as we worship you right now, flood our hearts and minds with confident hope and help us leave this place full, full, God, of confidence in you.

We love you, Lord, we praise you, and we ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.