Truth - Part 2

Well good morning.

It is so cool to be back for week two.

And I can't not think of freedom and really how to find that.

And I did share last week that I'm going to just kind of unvolve kind of the element of freedom that I've kind of been discovering the last six months in a way that I haven't before, but without really what we have in this country, we don't have freedom.

Because if you know freedom, you realize freedom is not free, it comes at a cost.

And I was talking to Justin, and I said, you know, let me do this part of it because my father was in the Air Force, my brother is in the Air Force.

And if if you would do us the honor for just a minute, because we do want to realize and remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice, but also those who have stood up.

So if you uh have been, are in the active military reserves, formerly retired, if you've been in the military at all, would you just stand up for five seconds for us real quick and just let us all thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Last week I shared the idea of if we want to experience life to the full, we have to know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

And that we need to know the truth both in the in word and the person himself, Jesus, because the word became flesh and dwelled among us.

Now, I want to go through a quick progression of just what that looks like to find freedom, because there comes, there's really every one of us is in one of three states of relationship with God.

Either one, we are in our own world and we are the self, we are on the throne of our life, we are in control, we are the God of our life.

And in that, God is on the outside of our life, and we may know about God, or we may see, oh, he's a great teacher, blah, blah, blah, but we are in control.

But there comes a point in life where we have to make a decision.

Am I going to live that way and decide I'm going to be the God of my life?

Or am I going to step off the throne, open the door to my life, and say, God, I want you to come in.

I want to accept your forgiveness that you offer.

I want to accept the plan that you have for me.

It is simple, but it is not easy, and it is scary because it's giving up, giving up control.

And here's the deal.

We give up control every day, but to the one who is ultimately good and longs for our best, and we let him sit on the throne of our life.

And I don't know how you are, and I'm not going to include you in this, but there's times in my life where I either knowingly or unknowingly kind of nudge God off the throne and go, hey, you know, I got this, and I realize I've taken over control.

God is still in my life, still there, but I've taken over control.

And I find when I'm in control, I my level of freedom just diminishes greatly.

And the only real control is when God's in control, He's on the throne of my life, and I'm trusting in Him.

Well, this morning, that one element, I'm not going to tease you the whole morning with it.

Um I'm going to go ahead and just share it with you.

There's a great verse in Galatians chapter 5 that really kind of hit me as I've gone through the experience I've had in the last about six months ago.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

And if you haven't been here, there's a whole talk on it where I unpacked the whole deal.

But if you haven't been here, you don't know me, six months ago I had an emergency open heart surgery.

Um, all four arteries in my heart were over 99% blocked, and I was literally on the verge of death.

And you have that type of experience.

It gives you a clarity and a moment of what now?

I'm not supposed to be here.

And with that, for the past six months, I've been unpacking, okay, God, what?

What now?

What why am I here?

What do you want from this?

And this one verse is kind of the foundation, the catalyst of that element that I'm discovering at a new level.

And it's kind of wrapped up in a very simple verse in Galatians chapter 5, verse 25.

Galatians 5:25

It says, Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

And here's the deal: there's God the Creator, the one who made everything, and the Word, He spoke the Word into being, and the Word became flesh, Jesus, and He lived and died.

But then there is the Spirit.

He says, I'm going to leave, but I'm going to send my advocate.

I'm going to send you something greater than me physically being with you.

I'm going to live in you.

And that spirit is what he says will allow you to experience life abundant in a way that you can't imagine.

Now, my mind has been expanded, uh, blown, and amazed in these past several months of how real God the Spirit is right here, right now.

He's not out there somewhere.

He's not up there somewhere, that he's right here right now.

And as I've started to look at that, the first piece of it that really hit me was this, and the key word of this element is connection.

We need to be connected with that spirit that when we invite him in, am I connected with him?

Now that's the what, the how is the key part.

How do I get connected with God where I'm keeping in step with him in every part of my life, every moment of the day?

How do I do that?

What does that look like?

Well, the first piece that I've really seen in that, um, how many of you have been to a movie in the past year?

Raise your hands if you've been to a movie in the last year.

Okay, most of us.

One of the theaters I go to, I love this particular part because it explains the concept of clear connection.

I realize that if I'm going to be experiencing God, I have to have a clear connection to Him.

At the beginning of a movie, they have one of these screens where the guy is talking about, okay, if you would be so kind to silence your phone and do this.

And as he's talking, the static comes in.

And then a phone starts ringing, and the baby starts crying, and it becomes this chaos of noise, and then quiet.

And he's like, silence is golden.

If you can eliminate the distractions, you're going to really enjoy the movie a whole lot more.

And I believe with all my heart, God is saying to you and I, if we really want to experience him with us, we have to have a clear connection.

A friend of mine, I'll call him Douglas because that's his name.

And uh, Douglas, he sent me this quote this past week, and I love him and I hate him for it because it's one of those clarifying moments of a quote, and it was from D.L.

Moody, who was an amazingly godly man, walked with God years ago, and he wrote several amazing works, but this quote really spoke, hit me between the eyes of a need for a clear connection.

He says this, and I quote, if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking pleasures of the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God.

I believe many a man is praying for God to fill him when he is already full of something else.

Much too convicting.

Let's move on.

One of the uh revelations in my world has been that it's not that God is not longing to fill me, it's just that my life is filled with so much more.

And and what is in my life that should not, does not need to be there, that I need to say, okay, God, how do I rid myself of this?

How do I fill it up?

Or am I one of those who's just saying, you know what, I'm letting myself be filled with that which is not clear, which is not helpful, which is not allowing me to meet God.

So take that clear connection, and I think we're gonna weave this through it, because the first connection that I'm experiencing is that God longs to be most connected during the hard times, the times of our lives that are very difficult.

And here's the deal.

Once, and I love in Romans chapter 5, where it's talking about, he's saying, hey, once we've accepted God, experienced his grace and his forgiveness and it's coming into our lives, he says he literally implants himself in us and we can start hearing, but are we listening?

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Now, I don't know how you are, but I am this way.

In the most difficult times of life, when I am most taxed, most overwhelmed, most frustrated, is usually when I'm the most attentive because I clear everything else out and I need to hear what God has to say.

It's in the hardest of times where I hear God clearest, but here's the deal: He is not speaking any more clearly.

It's the same.

What I'm doing is I'm clearing out those distractions.

And I'm clearing out all the clutter and going, God, I need to hear from you.

And when I get to that point of these hard times, it goes on to say in Romans 5, verses 3 through 5, it says this not only so about the grace and God's forgiveness, but we also glory in our suffering.

Romans 5:3–5

Now, if you don't know God, that's the dumbest statement in the world.

Why would I rejoice in suffering?

Because suffering's gonna happen.

This is a broken world, but look what he says, because we know that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom has been given to us.

It's that alive of Christ in us.

Now, back when I was a new believer and I was trying to figure this all out, I saw all these denominations.

What's different?

What's the same?

I don't know.

And there was this one part that was a little more charismatic in nature.

I'm like, okay, they talked about the Holy Spirit, and it was all this list of kind of odd things that didn't make sense.

Some made sense, some didn't.

And it's like, okay, well, I don't I don't understand that.

I don't want to stay away.

But here's the deal put all the denominational stuff aside.

What God longs for us to experience is Him with us.

In those hard times where He says, I want you to keep in step with me during the hardest times.

And the best example God just kind of poured in my heart is I said, Okay, God, what does it mean to keep in step with you?

How does that look?

And he instantly took me to a place.

One of my favorite parts of the world, of my life, is I love being married to Heather.

And I one of my love languages is kind of physical touch.

And one of the greatest parts of my world is when she just comes next to me and kind of nuzzles under my arm and we walk together.

I I get chill bumps right now just thinking about it.

I just, I love that.

And what God is saying is let come tuck under my arm and let me walk with you.

Because it is not about us doing for him.

God is longing for us to do with him, to walk with us in those toughest of times.

And I've had those times, whether it was the heart surgery, my daughter going through cancer and surviving that, I can tell you I got very attentive, going, God, I need to hear you.

I need to hear you.

And this past time, it was really in Psalm 34.

And if you're going through a time with an audience this big, some of you are going through it right now.

I would encourage you to live in Psalm 34 this week, and it will encourage your heart.

Let me hear a couple of the high spots in Psalm 34.

I sought the Lord and he answered me, and he delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces are never covered in shame.

Go down a few more verses to verse 7.

And the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

Verse 8, taste and see that the Lord is good, and blessed are all who take refuge in him.

I don't know what you're going through, but if you're going through it and you need a place of refuge and oasis, it is in him and that arm around us, and that he encamps around us.

In verse 15, the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry.

Verses 11, the righteous cry out of the Lord, hears them, and he delivers them from all their troubles.

What do you want to be delivered from today?

It is in him, and it is in getting that connection, and in the hardest time there, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

As I sat there with a broken heart, literally physically, I'm like, Lord, is this real?

I need you.

The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.

It's in the times of hardest that we need to get most real with God and say, This is it.

I remember decades ago hearing this story.

A woman that would go to a psychiatrist.

She would vent about all the issues, how she was overwhelmed, how her family was in shambles, her husband didn't love her anymore, her kids were chaotic, and they were all dispersed.

And he would listen every week for an hour.

And he'd write her her prescription.

And she would go and she'd come back the next week and he'd write another prescription.

And he said, Finally, it just dawned on him, this isn't helping after years.

And she would take the prescription and go to the pharmacist for one week.

She comes back about an hour later and she goes, Well, Barge is in an office.

What is this?

You're some kind of quack.

And he goes, What do you mean?

She said, That's the prescription that you need.

She goes, I don't I need my meds.

I need to get through this.

I need them to figure this out.

And he says, No, you need that to figure it out.

And she goes, This makes no sense.

See, because it wasn't a prescription for meds.

He said, Read it.

She said, Go to Niagara Falls.

Go to the lowest observation deck and stand there for eight hours a day and look up at the falls.

This is ridiculous.

What will that do?

And he said, Your problems are overwhelming.

And until you realize there is something bigger than you out there, you will never find freedom.

And see, here's the deal: the God of the universe is bigger than our problems, but he is intimately interested in our issues.

There's a place in Romans, I love this, it says, the power that raised Christ from the dead lives in you.

That's the power within us.

I don't know your problem or the size of it.

I do know the power that raised him from the dead when we accept Christ and He's in our life and we put him on the throne.

That power is there to overwhelm and overcome anything in our lives.

The question is, are we connected to it?

Are we connecting to that which is within us?

Not just in the hard times, but in the regular days.

What about our everyday?

God longs for us to be connected to him in that way as well.

And I'll give you one example.

I literally list out everything in my week, and I'm like, God, here's everything in my week.

Will you give me wisdom?

What's most important out of that?

And then I just kind of pray and think and I put them in order and like, God, how do I do this?

Because I can't get it all done, or if it's, I don't know what to do.

And I just kind of get a clarity and I kind of get a peace, and and I can't say that I've always gotten it all done, but I can tell you this: I sense that I'm doing it with him, not for him.

God longs for us to do it with him.

The next time you're overwhelmed in a daily, because here's what happens.

I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands if you've ever had this.

You've pretty much got your week.

You know what you've got to get done this week.

And then something unexpected or undeserved happens in that week that wrecks your week.

Has that happened to anybody else other than me?

All right.

I'll give you an example because I was really seeking God at this one point in my life.

I had transitioned out of the corporate world, started doing what I'm doing now, and I had kind of hit to where I was at the bottom.

I was as broke as I've ever been, literally scraping to pay rent.

I'd eat a lot of macaroni and cheese, and I was at that point.

And the last piece I had, I had paid off my car.

That was really the only thing of value, the only entity of value I had.

And and I'll never forget coming out of church one Sunday, and I'm walking out, I talk to some friends, I'm looking, I'm like, huh, somebody had backed in and rammed the side of my car.

Huge dent.

And I'm like, what?

What?

And I get over there and I'm looking at the front, and there's no note on the car, and I'm just like, I hate Christians.

What is this about?

And I'm just like, Lord, and I was going through this time where I literally put God on the throne and I wanted to make sure he's there, and I'm like, God, I you're on the throne.

I don't, it's your car, it's your bank account, everything is yours, everything is yours, and everything that's mine is yours.

I'm the manager of it.

But I had a time with the Lord.

I got back and I'm like, Lord, there's a dent in your car, and it wasn't there before, and your checking account does not have the money to pay for it.

And just, I was just frustrated.

See, here's the deal, here's the unbelievably cool part.

That is where God wants us, not the problems, but he wants us being honest with him in the midst of our everyday of undeserved and overwhelming and going, God, I need you here now, because when we connect with him at that point, he shows up in a way that we start experiencing him in reality that we can't otherwise.

And when I got to that point, I'm like, Lord, would you would you just help?

I see that Jesus, he did that over and over as I read the Bible.

He's walking through his everyday, and he's just going, Father, as you walk through, who do you want me to connect with today?

And see, when we start getting attentive to that, we start seeing those.

It was Jesus who saw the woman in the middle of the day when nobody else went to get water.

Lord, maybe it's her today.

It's the guy up in the tree, that little guy up there.

I come down, I want to eat at your house.

It's this awareness that God's gonna start giving us.

I'll never forget the whole car issue.

I was at church a couple weeks, and as I after I had this tirade of God, your car has a dent and your can't have the money to pay for it.

And I'm just sitting there getting very honest with God, very mad.

And I just sense God going, Ken, is it drivable?

Well, yes, it's drivable.

I can still function, I can still get to work.

Okay, that's a good thing.

A couple weeks later, a gentleman at church came up, he goes, Man, what happened to your car?

And I said, Well, somebody backed into it at church and didn't leave a note or whatever.

He goes, Man, I'm so sorry.

He says, Well, I I that's what I do.

I actually fix wrecked car.

If you need any help, let me know.

And I said, Well, I need help, but I don't I don't have the funds for it right now.

And he said, Well, why don't you bring it by?

And I said, he gave me a quote, it was a fair quote.

I'm like, I don't have that money right now.

And he said, Well, what's your schedule like?

And I've got this, and I'll work out some stuff on the side.

And next time you have to go on a trip, let me let me just have it for two days.

I'll have it ready when you come back.

And he did it for a fraction of what he would have done it for before.

But I it's just like, look at look at God getting real there, coming alongside, going, I'm I'm gonna do that with you.

And and it's okay for us to be real with God.

He's like, Yeah, I'm a big God, I can handle it, you can get real.

Help.

And the most powerful prayer we're gonna help here is when we're in our everyday and we are overwhelmed, and we simply turn and say, God, help.

Because God says, I will do it, but I'm you have freedom of will.

You want to sit on your throne, you can sit there.

But I I've got a plan, and and I would love to do this with you if you'll let me, but you have to ask.

Ask and you will receive.

It may not be what we want and when and how we want it, but God begins to start shifting because here's the day.

I've learned in Hebrews 13 to 8.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The same God that created the world is here today.

The one who became the flesh is here today.

In the form of the Spirit, he is here today.

He's not out there, he's right here, and he's within me saying, I want to be with you.

And in our everyday, God's gonna start letting us see how he is with us.

I want to have his eyes.

And I had a glimpse of this a couple weeks ago.

I was on tour and some buddies, and we had a moment.

I said, You know what?

I need a smoothie.

I love smoothies.

It's one of my uh just favorite parts of my healing, is I gotta have this really cool smoothie that's very healthy.

And I said, I'm going to get a smoothie.

You guys want one?

I had like six orders.

I go to there's a smoothie king right by the venue we were performing at.

I'm like, awesome.

And I get there, and the guy's like, hey man, uh, hang on one second, I'll be I'll be right with you.

He's working at the window, and then he comes over, yeah.

Can I take your order?

And then the window's beeping, and I'm like, Yeah, I need these six smoothies.

Like, okay, okay.

And he punches them in, and he's like, I'll I'll I'll I'll be right with you as soon as I can.

I'm like, okay.

And so he takes the money, and we're sitting there, and I'm thinking, where's this help?

And there wasn't, because every time I go to this particular place, it this type of place, it was a different city.

There's always three or four of them, and there's only this guy.

And after about five, ten minutes, I realized, man, somebody didn't show up for work and somebody did something wrong.

This poor guy's got four cars at the window, and he's got five, six, seven, eight people in the store, and it'd been 15 minutes, and he even got near my order yet.

And I'm like, wow.

Now, normally in my flesh, I'd have been like, man, somebody messed up.

I'm gonna I'm gonna tell him what for, or I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna write a letter, or get on the email.

Instead, I just kind of had the eyes of Jesus.

I'm like, man, this guy's doing unreal.

Look at this guy.

He's doing it all by himself and he's getting it done.

And he finally got my order ready after about 25 minutes, and he came up and he put him on the counter and he wouldn't even look up.

He's like, Man, I'm here, here's your order, man.

I'm really sorry.

And I'm like, dude, you're amazing.

And he's like, oh, what?

And I was like, I don't know who left you out to dry, but I've been watching you, and you're running three people's jobs as one person.

This is unbelievable.

I'm like, dude, you need to just keep doing what you're doing, hang in there, and when you get off, I put$5 on the counter.

I said, go get a cup of coffee or whatever is your favorite, and just chill and just realize you're awesome.

And he was like, thanks.

And tell me, is he gonna feel better or worse because of that encounter?

Because it's one of those that again, that's not me.

That's kind of Jesus going, hey, you want to know how I feel?

I'm gonna give you a chance.

And here it is.

Take advantage.

It's our everyday to experience him, be honest.

And then finally, and probably the biggest connection that I'm seeing is that of a felt need or desire.

And what does that look like for you and I?

If I want to experience God, it's gonna be when you and I stop and say, okay, they don't exist.

We are they.

I was in a big church out in California.

If you've ever heard of the book, The 40 Days of Purpose, Rick Warren wrote that.

He's a pastor out of this church, and I'd done a couple events out there, and uh uh it was amazing to me.

I love this story.

He was sharing it.

He had met this lady who was in a small group at their church, and she said, Pastor, I need to tell you something.

He goes, Okay.

And he says, um, one of the ladies in our little Bible study, we have a Bible study once a week, and sometimes we get together and we just talk, but sometimes we have a Bible study and we just get together, and and uh one of them, she had this, she had this uh medical condition, and she had to go to the hospital and she couldn't drive, so we're taking turns driving her to the doctor, and then we got her home and she can't do housework, so we go over once a week and do housework, and then we we take her some meals and stuff, and we've been doing that for about two months now, and I just he's like, Man, that is fantastic.

He goes, she goes, Yeah, I just thought the church might want to know because I thought the church might want to do something.

And he said, I think the church is doing something.

She goes, Oh, really good.

What is the church doing?

He said, I think the church is taking her to the doctor and back and cleaning her house and fixing her meals.

She goes, Well, when did they do that?

We've been we've been doing that.

And he goes, You're the church.

She was like, Oh.

He said, That's the way it's supposed to work.

And it's this idea of, you know what?

When we see a need, maybe God is letting us see that for a reason.

When we have a desire, maybe he's showing that to us for a reason.

It's to take our experiences.

Now you may be sitting here going, I could never speak on stage, I can't sing.

Those are wonderful gifts, but that's a minuscule part of the church.

It's when you take your experiences, good and bad, and let God redeem them and say, I want to use you.

When you see a need to just go, I want, I need to meet that.

I'll give you a brag moment.

My oldest son, who's 19 now, was 17 at the time.

My daughter is a cancer survivor.

And we'd heard about an organization called Blue Skies that actually host families that have a child with cancer at a resort down in Florida.

And people pay to take their vacation to go and serve these families.

Well, I had served there one year before as kind of the chaplain for the week, and then the next year I took my family down and we're serving, and I watched as my boys, in their uniqueness of their experience, having had a sister with cancer, interacted with these kids and siblings and encouraged them, and they were the life of the party.

And I watched as my daughter worked with these kids who had cancer because she had had cancer.

And I watched as my wife and I got to sit with these families with this overwhelmed feeling and look on their face and pour into them because we had been there.

And it's like, this is awesome.

But my oldest son looked and he went to the head, the creator of the whole thing, who was a nurse at children's, who said, these families just need a break, and she created this, and he said, You know what?

I see these leaders coming in, but you know what you really need is interns, somebody who's here for the whole time that knows where all the stuff is and that can help and just kind of do that.

He says, When you get back, I'd like to meet with you for lunch.

They met and he went online, he researched it, came up with an intern program.

He's 17 at the time.

Came up with an intern program, and he says, This is what it looks like, here's how it can help, and I'm gonna be your first intern, I'm gonna raise the support to do it, raise almost$2,000 to go and serve for the whole next summer there.

And that's just one of those pieces where there's a need.

I I can do something with that, and then create that.

There's an ongoing intern program at Blue Skies now because a 17-year-old saw a need and an experience and said, This needs to happen.

God is gonna do that with you if you start looking at those needs.

And when you see a need, just go, what can I do with that?

And let me just tell you, it's not always simple, it doesn't come together easy.

Sometimes it's over a great amount of time.

I want to close with one of those because my wife, uh, we had had our boys, and we'd had three miscarriages.

And she said, you know what?

This has always been on our hearts.

Why don't we just adopt?

I said, great idea.

Great idea.

I love that idea.

So we went and got some information on it, and we started going through the classes, and we were lined up.

And they said, So what kind of child do you want?

And we're like, a human would be great, you know.

I just and they said, No, I mean, uh, what what what type child?

And we said, you know what?

We have two incredible young boys.

We're not doing this because we need a child.

We're doing this because we want to give a home to somebody that doesn't have a home.

We said, what are the most difficult to place children in this situation?

They said, well, that's that's biracial kids.

They they really don't fit in either culture, and those are the hardest.

And we're like, sign us up.

That's what we want.

And we went through the whole process, paid the money, and then Heather got pregnant.

And you can't adopt domestically if you're expecting.

And then we had this beautiful little girl named Kennedy, and we just put it all on the back burner.

And when Kennedy was just about three years old, Heather said, You know what?

We still have this desire.

What do you think about adopting maybe from an orphanage overseas?

And these different pieces came together, and it's like, okay, let's do this.

And we set aside the time, we went through the process for another year.

We identified the country, got a helper, and lined it up for two months.

We were going to go to Kazakhstan, serve in an orphanage, and adopt a little girl from over in Kazakhstan.

And it's like, okay, well, two weeks before we're to leave, they said, you know what, the government's shutting it down, and there's no little girls that are available, and they're just saying no.

What do we do?

Well, let's just go serve in the orphanage then and we'll see what God does.

Well, seven days before we were supposed to leave for two months, Kennedy was diagnosed with cancer.

And we thought, well, let's be here.

The silver lining to that was that God just, in ways bigger than I can comprehend, they said the hardest part of that treatment is the first two months.

Well, I had two months off because I was supposed to be in another country, and I got to do all that, and in that silver lining, I was like, Lord, thank you.

Fast forward two years later, and Heather's like, you know what?

I I don't want to do adoption.

Because unless God drops it in our lap, obviously we're doing it wrong.

And here's a need and a desire and trying to do right, and it's not working out.

It's been years.

And she said, Maybe we should just foster, maybe we should just help some kids, because there's a verse in James that says, care, the what God considers pure religion, is care for widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep your life from being polluted.

Well, the polluted is that connection part with God, and we're like, okay, Lord, how do we do that?

And and we said, okay, let's let's foster.

And we go through several classes connected with Faith Bridge, which I think is several of you have gone through those classes.

Let me just encourage you that, man, that respite part is huge.

We had a little three-year-old, we'd forgotten how energetic three-year-olds were.

She rocked our world.

And she got a placement.

But then the other family that had a foster child, a little 11, 10-year-old little boy, I think at the time, was uh there said, you know what, our daughter's in college, we want to go to these events, and we just can't because we've got this foster child.

We're like, hey, hey, we don't have a foster child, we can respite, which just means give you a break.

And we did several times.

This young man, a great young man, unbelievable for what he's been through, how amazing he is, and we're just like, this is great.

Well, things have progressed to the point where it looks like the mother hasn't showed up to court several times, and I met her once, and it just they're gonna they're in the process of the termination of parental rights, and our friends who are fostering said, we've got older kids, we weren't in this to adopt.

And we said, Oh my goodness.

If he's not gonna go in the system, we'll adopt him.

We've always wanted to adopt.

And so he moved in with us at Christmas this past year.

He's been with us, and it's not resolved yet.

There's another court date in June and one in July, but it's one of those where God is just like, I'm really big, and I can't give you all the details, but if you will walk with me, I will blow your mind with what I want to do with you and in you and through you.

That's the element that I'm learning, and I'm still learning it.

But I can tell you this, I know that God's gonna start doing that here.

And I've talked to Justin, we were talking at lunch.

He says, you know what, we're gonna get a forum online where people can fill it out and say, you know what?

God's laid this need on my heart.

And pray for somebody to come along with you because I've seen that happen over and over where God brings more together.

And then the church is gonna facilitate letting others know about it, and if that's a fit, to say, hey, we need to be a part of this, whatever that is, because you are the church.

It's not an organization, it's an organism.

And to ask the question, God, how do you want to connect?

How do you want to connect this?

So here's that one simple verse: pure religion, care for widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted, ask this question this week.

God, is there anything in my life that is polluting and keeping my connection with you not clear?

Maybe I need to have you on the throne.

Maybe I've jumped too much on that.

Maybe you're one who doesn't know God and invite him into your life.

That's the biggest, best, and first step.

Because God loves you exactly where you are, but too much to let you sit there because he made you for something bigger, and he wants to show you that with you as you go.

I just can't encourage you enough.

This one element of walking with God, keep in step.

Keep in step with the Spirit makes all the difference.

Let's pray.

God, thank you.

Thank you that freedom, true freedom, meaningful freedom, fulfilling freedom, significant freedom only comes from you.

And it may start with a simple prayer of God, help.

Please come in.

Please come into my life and help.

And Lord, I just pray that we would understand that being connected to you is everything.

In our everyday, in the hard times, letting your word permeate us.

And even with those needs and desires that we see, let us realize that is you walking with us, showing us so that we can be a part of it with you.

So, Lord, we lift it up to you and just ask that you would show us how to become the men and women you made us to be.

We love you and thank you for today, and it is only through Christ we can pray.

Amen.

God bless you guys.