More: Confidence

Awesome.

And uh Justin's gonna let me uh come back in a few weeks as well as he and Megan have their their baby.

I'd love to say we're having a baby.

Um we we really don't do a lot, we just stand there and go, push.

Uh we we'll take it after that.

But uh so I am so looking forward to the next uh the next month in that.

I I do I gotta clarify a little bit.

Justin was absolutely right.

I said, hey, uh God's kind of laid this word on my heart for the coming year, and uh I want to share it down the road.

And then he called back, he says, I really think you need to share it now.

And I'm like, Yeah, I don't have it figured out yet.

Because it's something God's teaching me, not something he's taught me, and and it's really uncomfortable because I I'm really not good at it, and that's what he's teaching me.

It's something that I lack, and he's like, Yeah, you need to share that.

I'm like, awesome.

Um, it's almost like saying, Hey, come watch me play.

I'm gonna strike out.

That's what I'm gonna do.

That's it, just kind of has that feel.

But as I really unpacked it, it really became very clear because I started praying.

I I love this series.

I think Destiny's done an amazing job.

It's more God, more love, more growth, more less.

Just I've I've loved the series.

And I started thinking, well, what do what do I want more of?

And I started from there, and if truth be told, I would I started a little list.

Oh my God, I'd really love more uh time.

That would be great.

I would I would love more time, but everybody gets the same amount of time.

And uh there's there's a season right now where I'm finally getting on the other side.

I'd like more sleep, that would be great.

And it's like, well, everybody has the same amount of time.

And if you were to ask our society, what do you want more of?

What do you think they'd say?

They want more money.

I want more money.

Powerball, 1.3 billion dollars.

Think of what we could do with 1.3 billion dollars and that 100 million.

I can't I wouldn't even be able to live on that.

I'm not gonna buy it, but 1.3 billion.

Oh, my problems would be done.

I could probably create world peace if I had$1.3 billion.

And it's this mindset that that's that's the answer.

And yet, if you do this much research, you'll see that probably 99% of lottery winners are bankrupt, miserable, and disenchanted within seven years.

It's it's crazy.

That's not the answer.

So I started another approach.

I'm like, okay, God, what do, this is a dangerous prayer, what do I need more of?

Because if you tell me I need it, then I need it, and you're gonna be able to facilitate that.

So what do I need more of?

And this word came up, and God began to take me back and show me, Ken, you've you've had glimpses of this in your life, and you've experienced my power and my blessing and my overcoming because of this word, because you had the proper perspective and you experienced it.

I'm like, Lord, I have, but what is it, and how do I get more of it?

And I'll give you an example.

God took me back to my college days, my junior year.

I was a part of a group at uh Georgia Southern called FCA, and I was kind of one of the leaders, had this big weekly meeting, and uh, this a couple weeks really stick out in my mind because there was a gentleman who came and he started coming, and he was a little bit of a misfit in a lot of different ways.

He dressed differently, he wore these knee-high moccasins all the time, and he wore a leather jacket, and he was very black and denim and dark and sunglasses and reflected.

I'd seen him around campus, and he just looked like one of those kind of loners.

His name, I'll call him Richard, because that was his name.

And Richard, Richard started coming to FCA some, and it was just kind of a Bible study kind of gathering thing we had.

And Richard was like, man, and and after a few weeks of coming to FCA, he came up to me one time, a huge guy, six foot four, ripped to shreds.

You can just tell this is a very in-shape guy, and he just goes, Hey, um, I was just wondering, you know, you don't have to, but I was wondering if we could have lunch sometime.

I'd love to talk to you.

And I'm like, absolutely.

Well, I had lunch with Richard, and Richard started telling me his story because I'd seen over the two or three weeks he'd been coming, just a melting of the facade.

That the glasses were gone and that the leather jacket was gone, and and his whole countenance had changed from this harsh, bitter, almost angry person to this just peace.

And that's the only word I can use to describe it, just peace.

And so we're at lunch, and I'm like, tell me your story, I don't know anything about it.

And he says, Well, Ken, the last three weeks have been revolutionary.

I've discovered, um, I've come to FCA, but it was a journey, and and and God is just real.

And I'm like, Awesome.

I said, Tell me about your story.

He said, Well, I've I've tried everything.

He said, I've literally tried everything.

There's this emptiness in me, and everything I tried didn't work, and I kept trying other things.

He said, I tried drugs, I tried alcohol, I tried women, I tried this.

He says, I haven't even tried, he says, I got very fit and I got very focused.

And I remember 6'4 or 6'5, ripped to shreds guy, and he said, I became very excellent.

I have multiple degrees of a black belt.

And I just I turned to violence because I wanted to, I wanted to control the world, I wanted to control my world.

And me and a buddy of mine, we got so good that we would go down to Savannah and we'd just go to bars and we'd pick fights.

And we'd wait until the odds were about anywhere from three to one to six to one, and then we'd go, okay, let's go outside.

And we'd see how many guys we can put in the hospital.

And I was like, wow.

And then he reached over, he says, Ken, I'm I'm so good at this now that I could hit you right there.

And he reached over very and he just pointed, he said, I could hit you right there.

Just I just know how to do this, where I could just hit you and I could shatter every bone in your face.

And I was like, Awesome.

I'm gonna take your word for that.

You do not have to prove that to me.

And he said, I would walk around campus and I would just scowl at people and I would just, I wanted to control everything.

I would look down and I would just intimidate people.

And he says, with one exception, he said, I would walk around campus, and there there's there's only one person.

He said, I would walk down, and if I saw you walking across campus, I couldn't even walk on the same side of the street.

I I would have to move over and I couldn't even look at you.

You intimidated me so badly.

And I I was I literally I'm sitting there going, Yeah, yeah, you see that.

Actually, what I was thinking was, okay, that's that's a joke.

Because I mean, I'm I'm very unintimidating, very much so, to the sense where I can't even look at somebody and they just they just smile.

And it's like, okay, that's I've just had that effect.

And it that blew my mind, and I was like, seriously.

And he goes, Yes.

And he said, I could I couldn't put my finger on it, and I finally hit bottom, and I he said I finally just kind of called out, and I'm like, God, help.

If you're real, I I can't stand this emptiness anymore.

If you're real, help me.

And he said, he laid on my heart to anything that even resembled him, and FCA did.

So I came and I sat in the back.

I don't know if you remember, but I just sat back there and I glared, and it was like God was just speaking to me.

Everybody else could have gone home.

And he was just speaking to me, and then and then over the last several weeks, I just I realized God is real and he wants to forgive me, and he wants to feel that emptiness.

And I invited him in, and I just wanted to know what I need to be doing.

And we became friends, and I just shared with him some pieces, and I saw this mass of anger and emptiness turn into this enormous, gentle giant of a man that just loved and was full of the only way I can describe it, peace.

And God took me to that place and he was like, Ken, that that intimidation that you had on that guy, I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a little bit of an insight.

That wasn't you, that was me in you and through you.

And that's what that's what I want you to have more of.

And I flirted with that over time and I've experienced it, and it was God saying, I want you to have more confidence.

I want you to be more confident.

This year, I want to pour that into you.

So that I've already started the last couple months actually.

It started the end of November.

I started going, okay, God, what does that look like?

Because I thought we were supposed to be humble, and you're telling me to be confident, and how's that look?

What does that feel like?

What is that how teach me?

So this morning I want to share with you the verses and the truths that God has begun to show me, the facts about our life.

And if you and I will be honest enough, say, here's where I am, God, I I want to have the proper perspective of your confidence in my life.

I believe that when we walk out the doors, we will have that today.

And I want to read the verse that was kind of a catalyst.

This word confidence had come to my mind, and then I'm having breakfast with a buddy of mine, and he said, Hey, there's this really cool verse, I want to share it with you, and it's in Jeremiah 17, verses 7 and 8.

Jeremiah 17:7

It said, But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord.

And I'm like, I want to be blessed, whose confidence, there's that word, is in him.

They will be like trees planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes.

Its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

And I as I read that, I'm like, Lord, I want that.

I want to live fearless in every situation.

No matter what the political temperature is, no matter what our society is caving into, I want to live fearless with no worries, and I want to be bearing fruit no matter what.

I want to be blessed.

And I want that.

So that is my, and it really the first fact that came out of that to me is that the origin of confidence is in Christ.

It says, if you trust, those who trust in the Lord whose confidence is in him, the origin of confidence is in God.

I came to this, and I think I shared the comp the concept a few months ago when I was here.

I'd been to the Devil Wards in Nashville, and me and some comedian buddies were hanging out afterwards, we're just eating a late dinner and just hanging out, and one of the two of them were like, Man, have you heard of this gameplay thing?

And I'm like, no, what is that?

Is that like Nintendo or or Xbox?

No, no, no, no, no.

It's about what's attractive to women.

And I'm like, okay.

And they said this, it's it's not a Christian-based thing, it's very secular, but it's written by this guy who said, Hey, women are attracted to bad boys, and everything you've heard about what women want is not true.

And what they really want is to be treated a little bit poorly, and they want a bad boy.

And here's how to be a bad boy.

And I was like, huh?

And he said, I and he said, I've I've it's he said it's really got some truth in it.

He said, if you read it, there's some truth in it.

And these are friends of mine that are believers.

I'm like, this is some doesn't sound right, but here's the reality.

There is a grain of truth in most lies.

And so as I listened to him, he says, you know what?

The basics is that, hey, if you got a steady girlfriend or wife, and they say you think you've always been told, hey, don't look at other women.

He says, he says the opposite.

You need to be looking at other women and let them know you're looking because you need to communicate to them, hey, I can have other people.

You're lucky to be with me.

I said, obviously, you don't know my wife.

Uh I don't think that's gonna fly there, but then they just continued on.

There's just like this whole concept of women, and and they got into this that women only want what they can't have, and because once they have it, they don't want it anymore.

And they'll say that they want somebody who's feeling and nurturing and all this, but what they really want is somebody that's just just over the top about themselves.

And I was just like, wow, and that messed me up.

Because I I had experienced a little bit of this in high school in the sense that it did seem girls wanted the guys that weren't interested in them.

And here I am, a guy, and I had a lot of girls.

I was I lived in the friend zone, okay?

I was there, and I'm just like, wow, there's a grain of truth here.

And so I began, I did something crazy because I I really love to get very honest and real with God.

I'm like, God, there seems to be a little truth in this, but I know it's not right.

Will you show me what this is about?

And God literally began to show me this concept of confidence.

When confidence is me-based, or what I am, or what I can do, or what I have, it is the counterfeit of confidence, which is arrogance.

And that arrogance can be misperceived by women as confidence.

And the unfortunate part is they usually don't see it until it's too late.

That they see that this I'm drawn to confidence, but this is this is a counterfeit.

It's not real.

And it's about him.

And the the problem with arrogance is it's never enough.

And if you talk to those who are arrogant, who are the I have more money, I have more, I am this, I am this, and they keep puffing themselves up.

The reality is out of an insecurity.

Where confidence is a paradox.

I used to think, well, God, I don't want to be confident.

I want to be humble, I want to be like Christ, and in Christ's meekness.

Here's the foundation.

Its origin is in the fact that the confident foundation is humility of God.

I I can't do this.

I don't have the answers.

But I want to be confident in you.

Uh it's written this way in Philippians, in chapter 1, verse 6.

It says, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it unto completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

My confidence is not in me, what I can do, what I am.

My confidence is in who God made me to be, and the fact that he will continue to perfect that over my entire life.

Now, if you're here today and you're thinking, well, I just believe God is love, and maybe you're struggling with a sin, or maybe you're the lifestyle or I would come to God, but let me tell you this: this is the amazing part of how big God is.

God loves you exactly and completely and unconditionally right where you are.

Exactly how you are, period.

And when we come to Him, He doesn't go, okay, go fix these pieces and then come back.

That's not what He says.

He says, I love you completely and totally.

I made you with all every experience, background, and everything that you had control of and you didn't, and I made you and I love you for that.

But I love you too much to let you stay that way.

And I am going to start to, as you choose to let me, I'm gonna start perfecting you.

I'm gonna start showing you your imperfections, and I'm gonna start showing you who I made you to be, and as you let me, I am going to work on you, and I'm going to perfect you.

You are not perfect, you are being perfected.

And once we come to that realization, we realize that confidence comes as he puts in Philippians 3, 3.

We who serve God by his spirit, we boast in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh.

Not what I can do, but what Christ has done and what he is doing in me.

Well, let me unpack that just a little bit because I really hope there are some here today who kind of lean more towards the, you know what, I'm here with a friend, or I want to check it out, or there's something here, but I'm I'm I just don't believe the whole God thing.

And I'm whether it's agnostic or atheist or whatever, I hope that you're you're here.

Because here's the amazing part.

Here's what sets God, the one true God through Jesus apart from everybody.

It is amazing that we can believe in Him.

As creator, we can look out.

You can go out tonight, get away from as much light as you can and look in the sky.

And where scientists used to go, there are 2,248 stars in the sky.

We've mapped them, we've counted them.

Well, as time went on, the scientists realized wait a minute, we've got telescopes.

Whoa! There are more than that.

And then they started counting them to the point they're like, oh, okay.

There are quadrillions of stars in the sky.

And how vast and amazing God's creation is, how just elaborate God is, that he would make literally galaxies full of billions of stars, and there's billions of those.

It just is mind-blowing to the point of that's how big God is, and that we can believe in him simply by looking at the fantastic amount of his creation.

That's amazing, but that's not the most amazing part.

We can look at the infinitesimal, we can take the most high-powered microscope and look at this the strains of a gene and an atom and go, we can't even see how detailed these are, and that is amazing, and that will show us we can believe in a superior, amazing, unthinkable, all-knowing God.

But the most amazing part is not that I can believe in him.

The mind-blowing amazing part is that that God believes in you individually, intimately, intricately, and wants to be involved and says, I'd do anything to know you.

Something happened to happen for your sin to be forgiven, and I did that.

I died for it.

And I want to come live in your heart, and I want to perfect you into who I made you to be.

We live in a fallen world, and I don't have to convince anybody about that.

But in this fallen world, he goes, I want you to become perfected in what I made you to be.

Regardless of the experiences you didn't have control over, regardless of the failures you did have control over, I'm gonna work it all for your good, and you can trust me in it.

And my truth and the origin of your confidence is gonna come from me.

I've started to live this out.

I started to look at his scripture and go, okay, God, I I need your help here.

Because not only the fact is it starts there, but the the confidence, the second fact is that it's developed during perseverance.

Look what he says in Jeremiah 17.

He says, but that you would have no fear when the heat comes, that you will literally have no worries in the year of drought.

Or as Jesus put it, in this world you will have tribulation.

Be of good cheer.

I've overcome the world.

And he says, I want to do this with you.

In this developing of perseverance, in that heat, if I could put it this way, this is one of my favorite quotes, and I love quotes.

Anybody gonna watch the Super Bowl next week?

Anybody raise your hands?

Okay.

Anybody gonna watch the commercials?

Okay, all right.

I like the commercials more than the Super Bowl anymore, but I used to love leading up to it, kind of the preparation, the interviews, and the coaches and their mindset and media day, and they must run out of questions to ask.

Years ago, Bill Parcells was coaching the New York Giants.

Not a big Parcell fan, but I love the way he approaches and focuses on football.

And a reporter asked one of the most ignorant questions I've ever heard.

And I'm like, did you just ask him that question?

He said, Hey coach, um, who do you think's gonna win the Super Bowl?

What is he gonna say?

I'm thinking, you moron.

Really?

You just asked that.

And I it totally caught me off guard.

He just went a totally different direction.

He said, I can tell you exactly who's gonna win the Super Bowl.

And everybody's expecting, we are, because we practice.

And he's like, something is gonna happen.

Unexpected.

Maybe it's an injury, maybe it's a turnover, but it's gonna happen.

And it's gonna happen on both sides of the ball at some point during the game.

You give up a big play.

Whichever team handles that adversity best is going to win the Super Bowl.

Wow.

See, because here's the reality that perseverance, confidence is bred in the moments of greatest weaknesses.

That's where that's where confidence is.

This ability to persevere through that.

As he puts it in Hebrews, he says, so do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded.

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has.

Has promised.

Promised his blessing.

Promised his presence.

No fear.

Completely free of worry.

That comes through perseverance.

As he puts it in Proverbs 3.26, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared.

I'm learning this concept of, okay, Lord, it's through the perseverance.

It's not you removing obstacles, it's you teaching me in the midst of obstacles.

Because the third fact is that it is perfected in weakness.

If you're not familiar with the Bible, the Apostle Paul wrote a massive part of the New Testament.

Several letters.

He had an incredible encounter with God.

And yet he struggled.

He called it a thorn in the flesh.

We don't know if it was an ongoing sin or an ongoing struggle.

We don't know if it was physical.

We don't know if it was mental, emotional, spiritual.

We just know that it was a major detractor in his world.

And he was like, Lord, will you please remove this?

God, I've prayed multiple times.

Please take this away.

I would be so much more effective if you would take this away.

Now, for just a second, I want you and I to be honest because if we'll humble ourselves and we'll say, God, this is my weakness, this is my besetting sin.

This is what I struggle with over and over.

It's in that humility where God begins to say, I've got this.

Now you're engaging my power.

Paul goes on to write this.

He says, But God said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

I want that power.

I want to know that there is no circumstance that will come into my world that I cannot overcome.

Our society is one that says, get rid of any discomfort, get rid of as many problems as possible.

Eliminate or reduce or minimize as many problems and conflicts as possible.

But the world is going to have it.

I'm not saying go look for them.

I'm saying they're going to happen.

But God is saying, I want to give you the power that raised Christ from the dead to live within you so that there will be nothing that you will face that I will not overcome through you.

Nothing.

That's confidence.

That will last.

That will overtake any situation.

Now, to address those, and I really do hope there's some that are doubters or seekers or atheists or agnostics, because I really want to just share this concept because there's a grain of truth in every lie.

And one of the lies that Satan will tell those who are looking at God is they're a bunch of hypocrites.

They're a bunch of hypocrites.

You're using the wrong filter to look at those of faith, those of us who have put our faith in Christ.

Because if your filter is, well, they're Christians, they should be perfect.

They shouldn't say this, they shouldn't act like that.

They shouldn't, they shouldn't, they shouldn't, and they do.

I don't want to be a Christian because I don't want to be a hypocrite.

Your evaluation's wrong.

We're not only not saying, hey, they say, you know, they think they're better than I am.

No, we don't.

We know we're not better than you.

We know we fall short.

We know and have faced that besetting sins in that part of our life we can't get over.

We face that emptiness and go, we don't get it.

We need help.

And what we've done is we've said, God, will you help?

And he said, Yes.

I will forgive you.

I will be confident that he who began this good work in me will work on it until it's perfected.

I am not perfect, I'm being perfected.

And it's not me who's doing it.

It's God giving me the wisdom and the strength and the power to do that.

My confidence isn't in my ability to just pull myself up by the bootstraps and be better.

It's saying, God, I can't sustain it.

I can do a few good pieces, but I can't sustain it.

God, I need your help.

I need your help in this.

And I'll give you some very real examples.

I know these are very real.

I'm driving my daughter home from school the other day.

And I'm called to be a dad.

I'm a dad.

God bless me with three children, and I want to be a great dad.

And I want them to have confidence that I can handle this.

But there's some situations where I got nothing.

I'm driving, I look over my daughter, she's 12, and she's starting to tear up.

I'm like, oh, what happened?

What's wrong?

What's wrong?

She goes, nothing.

I'm like, oh my Lord, she's becoming a woman.

That's just, oh man.

And I said, no, seriously, what's wrong?

And she says, nothing.

Sometimes I just feel like crying.

Okay, you got to talk to mom about that.

I got nothing.

I got nothing for you with that one.

And I literally, I pray, God, this isn't a weakness.

This is a complete uh emptiness.

I've got nothing to relate here.

God help me.

And He let me see, you know what?

You're the dad.

Your confidence is not being able to fix that.

Your confidence is I'm here and I care.

That's all I got.

I'm there and I care.

And I have confidence.

And I said, well, honey, you can talk to mom about that, but you know what?

It's going to be okay.

I'm here.

I got you.

And I didn't resolve anything, but I just resolved everything.

And as I prayed through that, it was like God was saying, Ken, that's the whole point.

You're there and you care.

That's what I've called you to be as a dad.

As a husband, and this is going to be a little bit controversial, and I don't care because it's true.

I began to pray, God, I'm a husband and I'm a head of my house, and if I see Ephesians right, you tell me, submit to one another.

That's where it starts.

Submit to one another.

And then there's the verses to women that I'm not going to go over.

Then there's a verse to me that says, you're to love your wife as Christ loved a church.

You're to be the head.

You're to be the head.

Which takes me back to the whole arrogance confidence piece of going, God, if it's me just going, hey, okay, here's what we're going to do, and I'm the man.

We're going to do this.

Take it or leave it.

I'm in trouble at that point.

But don't miss this because women are wired within a relationship of marriage to say, hey, I want to be heard, but I want a man to step up and be responsible.

And I started by thinking, well, God, show me how that works.

And it's like, Ken, you're to submit to one another.

You are to take her discernment and her prerogative and her ability and her insight.

And you're to take that.

And you're to filter through it and pray it on the big decisions.

And then you are to make that decision.

And if that decision goes south, guess whose responsibility it is?

Mine.

Honey, I'm going to take all your input.

I'm going to take that.

I'm going to pray.

I'm going to make the best decision possible.

And if it doesn't work out based on the information you gave me, that's on me.

Because God put me here.

And he's going to work it out for our good because my heart is right.

And you don't have to worry about the responsibility.

I'm taking it because God put me here.

I love the way that Tony Evans put it, and I think I may have shared this before.

He said he walked in.

He's a pastor out in Texas in Dallas.

And he said he walked in, and his wife and his daughter are going crazy.

And as they're going crazy, their son is kind of spinning out and he walks into this chaos.

And he just walks in the middle of the room.

He can't even get in the conversation.

Finally, he just stands in the middle of the room and does this.

He says the conversation's going.

They all kind of look at him and finally they just all stop talking and look at him.

They're like, What are you doing?

He said, I got this.

I got this.

But but there's no butts.

I got this.

Tell me what's going on.

They're like, Well, what are you going to do?

And he goes, Whatever God shows us.

Because God put me here to get this.

I got this.

I'm responsible.

And if it doesn't work out, it will eventually because God put me here and God's going to be in it, and I'm going to listen to him, and that's what we're going to do.

Because God does not want us to live in turmoil.

He wants us to live in confidence.

I'm like, wow.

That's amazing.

I'm getting to the point where I realize that power.

This is a under this weakness, under this observation, I've learned over decades of following Christ, I'm starting to see two different areas.

When you and I come to Christ, he's going to gift us, give us abilities to be a blessing to one another.

And those are gifts.

And we have a choice to employ that gift.

The result of that to us will be fulfillment because, oh my goodness, this seems to come natural.

Or I enjoy that, or I get fulfillment out of serving in this way.

And there's peace and joy that comes out of that.

Then there's another side.

It's a side of obedience that as we're going through life, we're going to face that which we cannot handle.

It's a besetting sin or it's a reoccurring fault or it's a past that we can't get over.

And at that point, in that weakness, we have a choice to be honest and humble and say, God, I need your help.

Yes, you've gifted me.

I want to spend time over there because there's joy and fulfillment there.

But God, I want to face that which I cannot do.

I can't overcome this.

I've tried and I can do it in little spurts, but I fail at this.

In humility and honesty, then God says, Then you're going to experience my help because you're dependent on me.

And you're going to experience, as he says in 2 Corinthians, for my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I will boast even more about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.

That's what he longs for us to experience.

That's where confidence comes from.

Its origins him, it's through perseverance, and it's in our weaknesses.

And one of my favorite examples is I've been reading, if you look in Scripture, there's lots of people and lots of times where God shows up.

I want to just you can go back and look at this.

In 2 Samuel 23, I think it is.

Came across one of David's mighty men.

That's a quick aside, two and aside.

How many of us men wouldn't love?

We just love, hey, there, there goes Ken.

He's a mighty man.

Wow.

He's mighty.

We die on our headstone, Ken King.

Mighty man.

Wouldn't that be what did he do?

That would be incredible.

And we want that part.

We want the title.

We want this slay in the hundreds, but the process, there's this two verses that talks about Eliezer, one of David's mighty men.

He says, they went out to fight the Philistines.

They went out into this God-mocking, godless society, and they stood there because God had called them to confront them.

And then it said, All of Israel retreated.

The whole army left them.

So there's David and Eliezer, and they're like, Where'd everybody go?

So you know that God wants us to do this.

I do.

Alright, let's do this.

And hundreds of Philistines attacked them.

And I could just see their mind of going, well, either we're doing what God wants us to, or we get to ask him face to face, where'd we miss it?

Because here they come.

And I love this because the little, just the little details.

It said they fought and they slew the Philistines until his arm was exhausted and his sword was frozen to his hand.

Which tells me it was cold.

And they were abandoned.

We want to be mighty, but when it's cold and we're abandoned, I am convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that confidence is born out of our greatest weaknesses.

And they stood and slew, and he literally, his hand was from the sweat and the blood of slaying hundreds, just the two of them, and said, God gave them a mighty victory.

And says, then Israel came back to them.

Not to go way to go.

They came back to pillage the dead and take the stuff off of them.

Now, if I'm Eliezer, I'm just going punt you.

I got one left in me.

But he didn't.

Imagine the confidence of enduring abandonment and frozen and overwhelmed to where I can't even get my sword out of my hand.

It's frozen.

In our weakness, in his presence, through perseverance, God shows up and makes himself very real.

My prayer is that you and I would walk out today, realizing, God, here's my situation.

You can close your eyes if you want to.

If you want to leave them, that's fine.

But I want you to focus for just a second on whatever it is God has laid on your heart.

What is your biggest challenge, your biggest fear this year?

What is your greatest hope?

Because I want to let you hear God audibly speak from his word to you right now.

And I want us to take it out of these doors.

Get that in your mind.

Close your eyes if you have to.

But get it in your mind.

God, I need confidence here.

I don't have it.

Whatever that is.

I want you to hear from God, and then I want to pray for us.

Listen to what God says to you who believe and trust in Him.

So do not fear, for I am with you.

Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you, and I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

But Lord Allah, I don't know what to do.

We'll just do what is right.

Because He says this for the fruit of that righteousness will be peace.

And the effect of will be the quietness and confidence forever.

God, thank you.

We need more of you.

You have called us to be confident.

God, that only comes from you.

The joy is that it comes in what we're persevering through, and that all we have to do is bring you our weakness and honesty and humility.

God, I pray we'd walk out with exactly that.

We love you and thank you that you are our God.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

God bless you guys.

I can't wait to see you in a couple weeks.

Thanks.