Breakthrough: Barriers & Bridges

Well, we are uh having a conversation right now as a church about breakthroughs.

And honestly, worshiping with you guys is kind of like a little breakthrough every single week.

So it's exciting to be part of that.

But you know, the reality is this we've been promised a life by God.

We've been promised a life.

Jesus said in John 10, 10, I've come so they can have life and have it to the full.

And sometimes when we think about the promise of life that we have from God, it's easy for us just to think about heaven, just life after this life.

But it was so much more than that.

It was so much more than that.

It's not just that our lives will continue into eternity, but that actually eternity, that God's presence would become part of our life in this life, right now.

So we have this full life that we've been promised by God, but but sometimes life doesn't really cooperate with that promise, and it feels like, at least circumstantially, it feels like things are standing in our way.

There's something in the way between our life right now and that life that we've been promised.

And whatever that is, whether it's external, whether it's internal, whatever that is, we've got to identify it and we've got to break through it so that we can live the life that we've been promised.

We need breakthroughs.

So right now we're talking about having breakthroughs and asking God to give us breakthroughs.

And one of the things that that gets in my way when it comes to breakthroughs more than anything else is like walls.

You ever hit a wall in life?

You know what I'm talking about?

I don't mean you literally hit a wall, right?

Like if that happens, you'll either remember it forever or never remember it, um, you know, because you blacked out.

But but you know what, when you're making progress in life, when it feels like life is moving in the direction you'd like it to move in, you're moving forward, and then all of a sudden you're just stopped in your tracks.

Like you hit a wall.

That's a very frustrating experience, and it's one that's far too common.

And I've experienced it, I'm sure you have, I've experienced it in so many different ways.

I've experienced it financially, I've experienced it when it comes to just, you know, things in my career and things we're trying to do work-wise.

I've experienced it in very personal ways.

You know, a few years ago, six years ago actually, uh, we just had our first child.

Just had Liam, and, you know, there's this thing called sympathy weight in pregnancy.

Uh, you know?

And if you're unfamiliar with this, you know, when when a woman is pregnant, she's gonna gain weight because she's growing a human being inside of her.

Men, we're not doing nearly that much, but it's very easy for us to put on weight in that whole process over that period of time, and they call that sympathy weight.

And so when we first had Liam, I got to learn how sympathetic of a man I actually am.

And uh turns out, you know, the times that Megan had called me insensitive were totally inaccurate.

I'm apparently a very sensitive man and a very sympathetic man, and I had the weight gain to prove it, which was really exciting.

But then after Liam was born, I realized that my sympathy needed to go away.

Like, you know, I needed to shed some sympathy.

So I started working out, and I was I was running and I was I was doing things I'd never done before.

Like I was running, pushing a stroller, which is the most dad thing to do in the world.

Like I was a new dad, and I'm running in my neighborhood, and I'm pushing my son in a stroller and like waving at my neighbors, you know.

It was it was like the most suburban dad experience that I'd I'd ever had.

It was awesome.

And so I'm doing that, I'm starting to make progress, I'm starting to lose weight.

I was running further and further.

I was getting to where I was running like four or five miles at a time, which for me is is amazing.

And then one day I was playing basketball with some friends of mine, and this one guy named Stu stepped on my foot as I was jumping, and the way it all kind of worked out, it was sort of a freak moment, tore two tendons in my ankle.

And uh and so I went to the doctor and I had to have surgery, and you talk about hitting a wall, right?

I was making progress, I was losing weight, and it was all about me being on my feet and running and moving, and then all of a sudden I'm told by the doctor, yeah, you're gonna have to have surgery, and you're looking at months, months before you can put any weight on that foot.

Like I hit a wall named Stu.

And uh and it stopped me dead in my tracks, and that that is why I look like this today.

This is what happens.

This is a cautionary tale.

This is body by Stu.

Okay?

So if you have a friend named Stu, just be careful, because this could happen to you too.

All right, like I got hit, I hit a wall.

And it was so frustrating because before that moment I was moving forward, I was gaining ground, and I felt like I had some traction, I felt like I was making progress, and then it just stopped.

Oftentimes in life we have those experiences where we're starting to grow, we're starting to get better at maybe a relationship, at maybe some other aspect of our life, but things are moving forward, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a wall, and we're stopped dead in our tracks.

And how do we break through in those moments?

In the Bible, there's a story about God's people actually hitting a wall, and this time it was a literal wall, and it's a story that we find in Joshua chapter six, and we'll look at it here in just a minute, but it's the story of Jericho.

It's a very, very popular story.

It's a story that if you've been in church for long, you've probably heard something about Jericho or the battle of Jericho and Joshua, and it's a really epic moment in the history of the Bible, but it's the story of God's people hitting an actual wall.

Because here's what happened.

For the last several decades, God's people at this point in history, the Israelites, the people that he chose to be the people that he would reveal himself to and reveal himself to the world through, they've been nomads in the desert.

They have no place to call their home.

Forty years before this, Moses had freed them from slavery in Egypt, which is this huge deal.

They'd been slaves for a very long time.

Now they're free, but they're still not a nation yet.

They're still not a nation because they don't have land, they don't have a place to call their own, so they just wander in the desert.

But they've been promised this land.

They've been promised land.

When God made a promise to their ancestor, Abraham, he said, Not only will you become a numerous people, which they had become, that promise had been fulfilled, but he said, You will be given a land, you will be given a promised land so that you can be a nation.

So that you can have a place to call home.

And they hadn't had that experience yet.

Joshua succeeded Moses in leadership when Moses passed away, and and really soon into Joshua's turn as the leader of Israel, God says, now it's time.

Now it's time to enter your promised land.

And so they all show up at the Jordan River one day, and God miraculously parts the waters of the Jordan River, very much like he miraculously parted the waters of the Red Sea when Moses led them out of Egypt, kind of a symbol to the people that God was going to be with Joshua just like he was with Moses.

And they walked for the very first time across that river, and they walked into the promised land, and literally for the first time in their history, they are standing on the land that they've been promised.

Progress.

For the very first time in centuries, progress, real progress toward this promise that God had given them.

And then right away, right away, they hit a wall.

A literal wall at a city called Jericho, because the thing about the promised land that God promised them, uh, it was occupied.

Like God forgot to put the reserve sign on the land saying, hey, this is this is claimed, you know, don't live here.

And the truth is, we don't have a promised land, we have a promised life, and our promised life is often occupied.

And in order to have it and to live it, there's some things that need to be conquered.

The same was true for the people of Israel.

And so that they get to to Jericho, this huge city, and they they hit a wall because Jericho was this incredibly well-fortified city, and it's fortified by some walls.

Some really, really strong walls.

We see this happen in Joshua chapter 6.

Joshua 6 · chapter mention

God starts to speak to Joshua about these walls, and he says, Now it says, Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites.

No one was allowed to go in or out, but the Lord said to Joshua, I have given you Jericho, its king, and all its strong warriors.

You and your fighting men should march around the town once a day for six days.

Seven priests will walk ahead of the ark.

The ark was this kind of like a box, basically, that God's presence dwelled in.

It's really kind of crazy and cool.

We're sort of like that box now.

We're the temple that God resides in.

And it says, Seven priests will walk ahead of the ark, each carrying a ram's horn, and on the seventh day you're to march around the town seven times, with the priest blowing the horns.

And when you hear the priests give one long blast on the ram's horns, have all the people shout as loud as they can, and then the walls of the town will collapse, and the people can charge straight into the town.

So they they come against these walls at Jericho, and God says, Don't even worry about it, just have a parade.

You know?

Don't worry about these walls, just have a parade and walk around the city for several days and play some music and shout a little bit, and it's gonna be fine.

It's gonna take care of itself.

And from like a military point of view, you'd be like, This is a bad strategy.

This is not gonna work.

It's really not.

In fact, if you actually study the history of military development, in ancient times it was all about walls and how to knock them down or get over them.

You know, what cities would build walls and then catapults and things like that were invented to figure out how to bypass the walls, and God just tells them, walk in a circle.

This would have been a great time for God to show them something called a catapult.

For God to say, hey, don't worry, here's how you're gonna deal with this.

But he says, just walk in a circle around the city every single day, and on the seventh day do it seven times and then yell and make some noise, and you'll be good.

But they do that, they follow God's instructions to a T.

And then verse 20 says, When the people heard the sound of the ram's horns, this is the seventh day, they shouted as loud as they could, and suddenly the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the town and captured it.

So this it worked.

They ran into a wall and the walls came down.

They had a breakthrough.

And the reality is there's actually something really powerful here for us.

This is not just some story in the Old Testament about a time that God did something cool.

This is this is actually something for us right now.

Talking about breakthroughs, this reveals to us how God often orchestrates breakthroughs in our lives.

I actually want to look at verse 20 again, but in a different translation that that's a little bit more focused on the literal words that were in the Hebrew language originally.

It's the New American Standard Version.

It says, So the people shouted and priests blew the trumpets, and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat.

So that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.

Okay.

For years, for years, centuries even, this detail about how the walls at Jericho fell down was a very contested detail in Scripture.

A lot of people said, ah, see, this shows that the Bible is so flawed, because it says that the walls fell down flat.

It says the walls fell down, you know, flat, so that the people of Israel just went up the walls into the city.

But the problem is that's not how walls fall down.

And so for years people looked at this and they were like, ah, aha, you know, this proves it, this isn't real, which is so funny to me because, like, if you read, if you read the story of Jericho and you're taking issue with the fact that the walls fell down flat, like if you're saying, I do believe that miraculously the walls fell down, I just don't think they could have fallen down flat.

I don't I don't understand that, but sometimes people get fixated on small things.

And I'm telling you, for years, this was one of these things that people said, you know what?

Walls don't do that.

They don't fall down flat, they collapse in on themselves.

Like, show you guys a clip real quick.

Uh, this is from a 1920s silent film starring a very famous old actor named Buster Keaton, and in this scene, this wall falls flat, and there was no glass in that window, thank God, and he's okay.

And so, you know, that's a slapstick moment from a silent film in the 1920s where this wall falls down flat and it's hysterical looking, but that's not how walls actually fall down in the real world.

Like that doesn't happen.

It just doesn't happen.

Walls cave in, they collapse in on themselves, they just become this big heap of rubble, and the Bible says that the walls of Jericho fell down flat.

But see, then in the early 1900s, ancient Jericho was discovered, and there really have been archaeological expeditions and excavations happening ever since.

And one of the most amazing discoveries, this happened about 30 years ago, was that walls, ancient walls, were discovered as they were excavating Jericho, and the walls happened to be dated to the same time that the Israelites would have been occupying the promised land, and the walls had fallen down flat.

They really had.

In fact, here's kind of a rendering of the way that the walls at Jericho were designed.

And so there was a retaining wall at the bottom, and then there was a lower city wall, and in between these two walls that you're seeing, there would have been buildings and buildings even built into the walls.

And so, first you have this retaining wall that's very high, and then there's this wall above that, and then even further up into the city, you have another wall that would have been protecting the palace and the wealthier districts.

In fact, here's another rendering giving you an idea of what Jericho would have sort of looked like as a city.

And so these are the walls that the Israelites come against.

And look at these walls, and they think there's no way in, there's no way we can do what God's told us to do, there's no way we can conquer, because these walls are stopping us.

But what all the archaeological excavations found is that somehow the walls fell down, and they fell down so that they just went down the slope and basically ended up forming this ramp at the bottom of the retaining wall.

So either the top wall fell down and it took the rest of it, and they just formed this ramp right up into the city.

Exactly what the Bible said happened, happened, or even articles in the New York Times about it.

I mean, it was a really big discovery.

And look, we we could talk all day long about all the times that science and archaeology has backed up scripture.

It's really cool, it'll be a fun conversation.

That's actually not the point of this morning, though, because I said that the way that God brought these walls down reveals to us how He He orchestrates breakthroughs in our lives, and we need to know this.

We need to believe this.

Because God not only knocked the wall down, but He made the wall the way in.

See, God not only got rid of the barrier standing between the Israelites and their promised land, God turned the barrier into a bridge.

God transformed the barrier that was in their way into their way, into the city.

So when they when they showed up to Jericho and they looked at these walls and they said, How are we gonna get into the city?

These walls are in our way, God said, I will make these walls your way in.

And God collapsed the walls in such a way that the people just walked up the walls.

The very things that were standing in their way became the thing that they walked across to get into the city.

How incredible is that! God turns barriers into bridges.

Those are the kind of breakthroughs that God orchestrates.

He turns barriers into bridges.

And the very things that we look at in our lives and we feel like that is in my way, this is my obstacle, this is my wall, God looks at and he says, I will transform your wall into a bridge.

I will transform your barrier into something that will propel you forward.

That's how God works.

I don't know what your barrier is today.

I don't know what wall you're dealing with in life, but have you have you stopped to consider the fact that maybe just maybe that that barrier is intended by God?

Is intended by God to be your testimony, to be your story, to be the biggest proof in your life of God's faithfulness.

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that maybe that thing that you look at and you say, I can't get around it, I can't get over it, I can't get past it, I'm stuck, maybe that's the very thing that God wants to transform into your bridge, into the very thing that moves you forward in life.

Because when the architects at Jericho were building those walls, they they were thinking that these walls would keep God's people out.

But God knew when they were building those walls that those walls were the way in.

See, that's what God does.

He turns barriers into bridges.

He's done it countless times throughout history.

He does it in the lives of his followers.

He does.

The Apostle Paul is an incredible example of this.

Very few people have ever lived a life like Paul and had the kind of connection to God that Paul had.

He's a very, very special person.

We all have access to the same Holy Spirit, that's absolutely certain.

Paul just, he walked in obedience to God in a powerful way, and he experienced things that were unbelievable and amazing.

And once he wrote to a church in Corinth about one of those experiences, it's in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 2.

2 Corinthians 12:2

He says, I was caught up to the third heaven 14 years ago.

And this was their way of talking about like heaven, heaven, not heaven like the skies above us, but the heaven where God dwells.

He said, Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don't know.

Only God knows.

Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside of my body, but I do know that I was caught up to paradise.

And I heard things so astounding they cannot be expressed into words, things no human is allowed to tell.

So he's saying, God gave me this vision, and either I physically went to heaven or I had like an out-of-body experience, but I was in heaven, I saw heaven, I saw God, I saw things that I can't even tell you because I don't know if it's okay.

Like things so powerful and so amazing that I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to talk about it.

Because it's that sacred.

And he goes on, he talks about this experience.

He says, This experience is worth boasting about, but I'm not gonna do that.

I'll boast only about my weaknesses.

If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so because I'd be telling the truth.

He's like, I could trump any of your God moments.

Because I was in heaven.

But I'm not gonna do that.

I won't do it because I don't want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, even though I've received such wonderful revelations from God.

So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

So Paul's saying, hey, right after I had this breakthrough in life, right?

Right after I have this amazing moment where I'm making progress, I'm like I saw heaven.

I'm experiencing things that no person's ever experienced.

I'm moving forward in a very fast pace.

I get a thorn in my flesh.

I hit a wall.

And we don't know what that is.

You know, it could be a some people think it's something medical in Paul's life.

It could have been a behavior in his life that he was just struggling with.

A lot of people think it was another person because he said a messenger from Satan, so maybe there was this person that came into his life that was just discouraging and constantly, constantly standing in his way, trying to make it hard for him to do what God was asking him to do, but but he's hit a wall.

He's hit a wall.

Satan obviously wants to stop his progress, and so he's put this thorn in his flesh, this this annoyance into his life that's stopping him.

Because Satan wants to discourage him, Satan wants to discredit him.

We have an enemy, and that's what he does.

But then Paul says this three different times I beg the Lord to take it away, and each time he said, My grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness, and so now I'm glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me.

That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults and hardships and persecutions and troubles that I suffer for Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

And it's so amazing because this scripture has encouraged millions, millions of believers over the centuries.

Sometimes there's this brand of Christianity, and we see it out there.

It's very common in our culture today where you know following Jesus means circumstantial bliss.

Following Jesus means, you know, you have all the money in the world and you drive a nice car and you look good and everything's just great.

And we have a lot, there's a lot of like celebrityism and stuff in the church where that sort of mindset grows.

People look and go, wow, that guy.

I mean, that that girl, those people in leadership, look at how together they are, look at everything's going great for them, and I guess I'm not, I guess I'm not where I need to be with God because my life's not going as smoothly, and that means they're more blessed than me.

That is not biblical at all.

Paul's kind of proof of that.

Because what Paul says is, yeah, I'm following hard after God, and I'm seeing heaven, I'm getting visions from God, and yet I'm having thorns in my flesh, and I'm struggling, and I'm weak, and I'm suffering, I'm having hardships, I'm getting persecuted, things are not going well for me at all.

And you'd look at Paul's life and you wouldn't be like, wow, Paul's life was not glamorous.

He was a tent maker.

That's what he did for a living.

He built tents.

And he's as close to God as any man has has ever been.

And he says, I boast about my weaknesses.

So instead of us having to look at someone like Paul and go, Man, I'm never gonna be there.

Because I my life doesn't look like that, we can look at Paul and go, okay, Paul struggled.

Paul suffered.

Paul had thorns in his flesh, things he couldn't figure out how to how to deal with.

If if Paul had an experience like that, maybe I'm actually in good company when I struggle.

Maybe I'm not alone when I have a thorn in my flesh.

Maybe I'm not alone when I'm having a hardship of some kind.

If Paul, blessed by God, was dealing with those kinds of things, maybe it's it's okay that I'm doing this.

Maybe it means that something's not wrong with me.

And I think it's so amazing that what Satan intended to discourage Paul, Paul used through God to encourage millions of Christians throughout the centuries.

What Satan intended as a barrier in Paul's life, by Paul opening up and being transparent and sharing those struggles with us, God turned the barrier into a bridge that has led millions of Christians and Hopefully, us today, into some encouragement.

Because that's what God does.

He turns your barriers into bridges.

To give you a testimony, to show how faithful He is.

And I've experienced that.

I know so many of us have.

Last Sunday I shared about an addiction that I had for 10 years.

I share about it fairly often.

Sometimes I plan to share about it, like today.

Last week I didn't.

It just comes up.

And it's funny because for you know the 15 years, 10 plus years, whatever it was that I was, I was in that addiction, I would never talk about it.

Like the, it was my it was my br it was my wall.

I couldn't figure out how to get over it, around it, through it.

I felt stuck because of it.

And I couldn't even imagine talking about it to one person, except for maybe a very small number of people that I felt like were safe.

But that was a very small number of people.

Like the idea of a lot of people knowing about it, oh my goodness, that would have, that would have been a nightmare scenario for me.

And it's so funny because my wall is now a bridge because of what God has done.

And so when I when I share, and clap for the Holy Spirit, because that was not me.

When I share about that addiction, every single time I share about it, there will be three or four guys after church that want to talk, and I know exactly what they want to talk about.

And I love it.

I love it because I get a chance to encourage them, and I get a chance to say, look, you can you can get through this.

I'm telling you.

God will absolutely, He's already defeated it, number one.

Like he defeated it on the cross.

It's dead.

You just got to learn how to live that out.

And what used to be the barrier in my life, keeping me from moving forward, is now the bridge that I can I can walk over and help other men, help other people grow through.

I mean, it's it's crazy that God not only removed the barrier, but he turned my barrier into a bridge.

And I'm not, I'm not proud of that sin, I'm not proud of that addiction.

I do not believe for a second it was God's will that I had that addiction.

I'm not saying that at all.

It was not God's will.

But God is so good that He can take the walls in our lives, He can take the things that Satan has intended to stop us, and He can transform them into something that moves us forward.

He will turn your barrier into a bridge.

I'm telling you, believe that.

If it's a barrier in your marriage, if your marriage is like struggling and you don't you don't think it's ever gonna get better, have you stopped to think about the fact that if that marriage was healed, wholly healed by God, that you would have a testimony and a story that would inspire so many other people that you could look at people and say, hey, we were exactly where you are now, and God changed it all, and our barrier is our bridge.

And maybe you have an addiction, maybe you have something else, some other part of life.

I don't know what it is.

You know what it is, God knows what it is, but God wants to take that wall and he wants to move it out of the way, but not just move it out of the way, but move it out of the way in such a way that you move forward.

He wants to turn your barrier into a bridge.

And what we've just got to figure out is how does he do it?

Like, how do we experience that?

How do we actually live in such a way where that happens?

Because like I believe that God will do that for you.

Because He's done it for me and He's no respecter of persons.

So I believe He will do that for you just like He did it for the Israelites.

I believe that fully, and it's really good for us to be together here and believe.

Like sometimes we just need to come together on Sunday mornings and say, hey, you know what?

I believe God's gonna do something.

That's important to do.

We need to grow in our faith and grow in our belief, but we actually have to be equipped at the same time.

We've got to be able to walk out of here on Sundays and not just be like, yeah, God's gonna do something, but go, what do I need to do?

What can I do that will that will help me experience this breakthrough that we're talking about?

What can I do that will help me experience a barrier being turned into a bridge?

And so I look back at the story of Jericho.

And I ask myself, okay, what did they do?

What did the Israelites at Jericho do that allowed them to experience this incredible breakthrough?

And the answer is really simple.

They walked in obedience to God.

God told them to do something really silly.

He really did.

Like march around the city once a day for seven days, and oh, on the seventh day, eat a lot of carbs because you're gonna you're gonna march around the city seven times and blow trumpets.

Like they're having a victory parade before the victory.

Sometimes we need to do that.

And then I just want you to yell.

I want you to walk in a circle around your wall, and I want you to yell at it.

That's ridiculous.

Right?

But you know what?

If you if you read scripture, it's amazing how often the greatest miracles that God does required people to do something that seemed absolutely pointless.

I mean, you story of Gideon, God's gonna defeat this whole army, and he's like, here's what I want you to do, Gideon.

Uh throw your swords away, get rid of over, you know, thousands of your men.

You know, I know you're fighting an army of 100,000.

Take like 300 guys, and don't have any swords on you, just lanterns with a candle in them, okay, and a horn.

And then I just want you to like smash the lantern on the ground and blow the horn.

Like, what?

One time there were 5,000 plus people that were that were hungry listening to Jesus teach.

And the disciples are like, we gotta send these people home, and Jesus says, No, we need to feed them.

And they're like, it's 5,000 plus people, Jesus.

We don't, how are we gonna do that?

And he's like, why don't you just go walk around and see if there's any food in the crowd?

And can you imagine like if we were all hungry right now and I was like, well, I don't know, does anyone have anything on you?

Like, and maybe a few of you have something, but common sense would say there's just no, there's not enough food in the crowd.

Like, are people hiding giant loaves of bread in their robes?

Like, what is it like?

Oh, okay.

You know, no, it's crazy.

And the disciples are like, fine, and they go and they do this thing that seems pointless, but it's the very thing that turns into the miracle.

See, the Israelites just did one simple thing.

They walked in obedience to God, and it led to a breakthrough.

They walked into in obedience to God, and because they just followed God's instructions and obeyed God, they saw their barrier turn into their bridge.

And I'll say this, and this is so important.

I know not all of us here are Jesus followers.

There's a lot of us here that are figuring that out and asking questions, and that's awesome, and you are.

This is a church for you, I'll tell you that.

But a lot of us in here are Jesus followers.

Like we have decided to follow Jesus.

We have a saying that we use here on the team, and I use this every once in a while.

It's kind of a guiding principle for us as a team at his hands.

You don't have to be a Jesus follower to become a Jesus follower.

But once you become a Jesus follower, you should probably start following Jesus.

Like it's just a really simple thing.

And I'm telling you, in my role, I meet with a lot of people who are who are desperate for a breakthrough.

And they have the love of God in their lives and they've they've given their lives to God, they've accepted God, and they have that relationship and they they believe.

But the thing that's missing in their life is they're just not walking in obedience.

And so in their life, they're like, oh, I believe God, but I'm not doing what he asked me to do.

And I'm not talking about like moving overseas, and I'm just talking about in the basics.

Like in your relationship life and in your financial life.

And are you just are you just walking in simple obedience to God?

Just saying that God's instructions and what God has asked you to do, that that's enough for you, and that you'll just live that way.

It's a very, very powerful thing.

It's a very powerful thing when God's people believe God and respond to God in obedience.

It's a powerful thing when the people of God just say, Hey, God, I don't understand it completely.

To me, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but I'll do it.

Fine, I'll do it.

I'll march around the city and I'll yell.

If you say that'll work, I'll do it.

And if we as God's people would just be committed to that, if those of us who have said, I follow Jesus, would just follow Jesus.

And walk in obedience.

That's why I love the story of Jericho.

Because it's it's the literal, it's the literal version of what we all deal with figuratively all the time.

God has an amazing way of doing that in Scripture.

Like in Jericho, they hit a literal wall, just like we often hit figurative walls in our lives, and the answer for their literal wall was to literally walk in obedience to God.

And the answer for us to see the figurative walls in our lives come down and become our bridges is for us to walk in obedience, to just obey God.

What I'm saying today, in worship team, you guys can come back out, and we're just gonna transition into worship.

What I'm saying today is look, I know there's barriers in this room, I know there's barriers in your life, but I'm telling you, it's time for us as God's people to start walking in obedience.

It's time for us to start circling those barriers and start shouting at those barriers and saying in faith that we believe that our barriers are gonna become bridges because we're walking in obedience to the Lord.

And all we got to do is just do what he says.

Just do what he says, just surrender your life to him.

You know, if you're here today and you don't know Jesus, the cool thing about Jesus is he's your bridge.

Okay?

Like sin, sin is a barrier between us and God, not because God doesn't love us through our sin, but because sin keeps us from engaging with God.

It's a barrier on our end.

But Jesus turned our barrier into a bridge when he died on the cross, and now through Jesus, we can walk right into God's presence.

And so if you don't know Jesus and you feel like there's something between you and God, give your life to him, just say, I'm yours, and and yes, you have that relationship with God.

But even more than that, those of you who have who have been following Jesus, just follow Jesus.

Like, let's be the church.

Let's be the people who will be willing to say, Yeah, I'll walk in a circle.

Yeah, God, I'm willing to walk in circles.

I'm willing to just do what you ask me to do.

I'll do it.

I'll do it in my relationships.

I'll do my relationships right, the way I operate in my dating life, I'll do it right.

Like, if you're living with someone that you're not married to, if you love that person, marry them, please.

Like, and not because you're doing some shameful thing, and it's important, like not because you're doing some shameful thing, but because God values commitment so much, like he's so committed to us that that for you to look that person in the eyes in front of God and other people and say, I will take care of you, that's important.

And God's gonna bless that.

It's like in your finances, right?

Just be obedient.

You know, when you're out at a restaurant and you feel that compulsion of generosity, and you're like, I want to give a good tip.

They don't deserve a good tip, you know, they got my order wrong, like you're having that moment, just be obedient and be generous.

Just be generous.

Just walk in obedience to God.

If we can be God's people and say, hey, God, I'll work, I'll walk in circles if that's what you asked me to do.

We're gonna see walls come down in our lives and in our world.

We're gonna see our barriers become our bridges, and that's what needs to happen.

And so, people of God, because that's who you are, God's kids.

Are you ready to see barriers become bridges?

All right?

Well, let's stand up together.

Let's stand up together and let's let's make the first steps in our in our walk around the walls be worship to God.

Okay, will you pray with me?

Father God, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you so much for this morning.

Lord, we we need to see.

We need to see walls come down.

Lord, we want to see walls in our lives.

Lay at our feet.

Lord, I just I think about the Israelites and what it must have felt like for them to look at the stones that had been standing in their way and then to walk on those very stones into the city that you'd promised.

Lord God, help us see the barriers in our lives laying at our feet.

Give us a vision right now of what it would look like for those very things to be laying at our feet and for us to walk across them into the promised life that you've offered us.

That's powerful, Jesus.

Lord, turn our barriers into our bridges, and we will walk in circles if we have to.

We are saying as your people that we will just obey.

That we will do what you say.

We pray all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.