Acts - Joy Through Pain

Well, we've got to start by saying Happy Mother's Day.

Right?

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms here.

Thank you so much.

I was thinking about that.

If you really think about this, it's true.

Literally, none of us would be alive without you.

Not one of us.

Not a single one.

So thank you so much for everything you have done, everything you continue to do.

We have a lot of great moms here at his hands.

A lot.

And we've got one mom in particular that we'd like to show a God story from this morning.

Her name is Rhonda Hunter.

I've known her for several years.

She's an awesome, awesome woman.

She helps out here all the time, junior high, Lord's Supper setup.

She helps out in the office.

I've gotten to know her really well the last few years, and she has an amazing story.

And it's the story of someone that's gone through something very difficult, but throughout the entire ordeal kept her focus on Jesus, and her faith remains strong, and she experienced great joy as a result.

So this is Rhonda's story.

All I could see was just the lens.

A friend of ours, a good friend of mine, uh whose wife I worked with introduced us.

We finally decided to meet one day, and we met, and was it 16 months later we were engaged, I believe?

That's pretty much how it started off.

So on May 26th of 2011.

And she works worked near where I was, and so of course our you know, probably a normal couple routine talk on the way home, you know, as you're and when you get off work.

So it was about 5 30 that Thursday evening, and it rained and stormed in Georgia a lot.

And we were talking, and she was saying, Man, the storm is it's gonna be a bad one, I think.

And I was like, I don't think it's gonna be that bad.

And and at that moment, I remember thinking, she's never been focused on the weather in terms of something being a bad storm.

Talked for a couple more seconds and she got quiet and she said, Yeah, this is this is gonna be bad.

And the phone clicked off.

It's kind of strange.

And um my phone rang, and it was her, I looked at it, it was her number, and I said, Hey.

And it was a guy's voice.

And he said, Uh, hi, um you don't know me, but your wife told me to call you.

And I said, Oh, okay.

All right, what's going on?

And he said, Well, a tree just fell on a car.

I said, What, really?

All right, and I'm thinking crate myrtle, not that crate myrtles ever fall over, I guess, but I'm thinking something small, you know.

And I'm kind of smiling, I'm kind of laughing, like, hey, can I can I talk to her?

And he said, No, they're they're trying to get her out of the car.

And um I said, okay.

Um is she okay?

And he didn't say anything.

I said, is she alive?

And he said, she's talking.

I said, I tell you what, when I get out of the car, can you call me that?

Either she was dying or she would have dead.

You don't know anything.

All you know is a three call on the car and a guy called you.

And um I asked myself, did I believe in God?

And uh and uh I guess the the reason I asked myself that was if I if I believe in God, I can't be afraid right now.

And I had to decide once and for all if I did or if I didn't.

I couldn't keep going back and forth.

Um I had to either believe and know that whatever was going on with her was okay, was alive.

And at that point, I I wasn't afraid anymore.

So driving in, I see all the the emergency vehicles, and I'm like, oh my god, what happened?

I'm thinking it's like a 20-car pile-up or something.

Like, what could go wrong?

You know, how much of a tree was this?

And I see it, and this thing is, I mean, I put my arms around it, but I couldn't even reach around and touch my fingers together because of how big it was.

So I see the tree.

And at the corner of my eye down, and I see in the parking lot, I see the truck.

And I say, there's no way she could have survived that.

Where could she have been in the car?

I don't, there's no, the roof was touching the seat.

Everywhere in this car, I couldn't even see where she could have been in the car and be alive.

Didn't see it.

I'm driving, you know, just almost right about the T bone in the car myself, and jumping and got on the police was like, Hey, who are you?

I'm like, that's my wife, where is she?

And he just looked at me in my eyes, he's like, slow down.

Now is not the time to be emotional.

You got something you gotta do.

He said, She's going to Grady.

So turn around and got in the car.

After I said, No, babe, it's gonna get bad, and the phone snapped, my seat went forward, and when the tree fell on the car, and then all you could just see was limbs.

And at that point, I'm really not sure what happened because I mean I didn't see it coming.

The fireman and the rescue team had come, and they got me in the ambulance, and I was like, I just need them to be quiet so I can start praying.

I said, Can you kind of like just cut down the questions?

He said, Okay, just give me five.

So I was like, Okay.

So he was like, Can you move your legs?

I could tell myself that I'm doing it in my brain, but they wouldn't move.

And I was like, hey, just give me a minute, and then all of a sudden I was like, okay, God, you're gonna let these legs move.

You're gonna let them move.

And so we had a little bend at the right knee, and then none at the left.

And I remember I prayed all the way until I got to Grady.

Got to the hospital, got to Grady, and I went and I walked around and I heard her voice and saw her hand go up, and she was, somebody please help me.

And she was still in her clothes, she was still wet.

And she was saying, I'm a baby, my hands.

She said, It feels like they're on fire.

And it's because when the tree came down, it broke her neck.

And so what she was feeling was almost a separation of her spinal cord because of the bone pressing into it.

So after about an hour we got into the x-rays, and then when this specialist came out and saw her, he said, um he said, we gotta get her into surgery now.

And because it had done something they call canning, where the vertebrae was so shifted that they were barely stacked on top of each other anymore.

He said, I gotta tell you, and this is another surreal, hey, this is a soap opera moment.

He said, When we see an x-ray like this, they're not walking.

He said, So I just wanna I don't want to give you the wrong expectation for surgery.

We can only maybe hold her at where she is, but we can't fix whatever damage is there.

And he said, All right, so I'm gonna get the minister to come in and um let you talk.

Um so the minister leaned over and she pulled her hair back and she looked at Rhonda.

And Rhonda's first thing out of her mouth was, You're so beautiful.

She was.

She was like a And the minister said, Wow, you know, I came out here to make you feel good.

You just you're doing it to me.

That's how she stayed the whole time.

Throughout the whole ordeal.

But our faith was too strong.

I mean, we we we've gone through too much, and we have a beautiful family, and for me, I knew that if I could make it to the hospital, then I was gonna walk in my house.

I knew that everybody has to come through some kind of test, and I just felt like this was our test.

Yeah, I agree.

Her damage was her C4 and five and six were crushed.

So they did the surgery, and the nurse came out and she said, good news, they you know, they saw the levels go up like they hardly ever see them, which is a good sign that the spinal cord is is talking.

So the surgery went well, and and uh at about the fourth or fifth day, she was able to stand up out of the bed.

Not not take a step, but just stand up.

About the seventh or eighth day, um, she was able to take a step or two.

So I'm thinking Shepard, gotta get her to Shepherd, because that's the where you're supposed to go if you got spinal cord.

They sent a person out and actually denied her.

And as one of my buddies called it, sweet denial, they said she was gonna come in the door the way that they like to try to give people going out the door, you know.

So they denied her for that reason.

She was already just too, you know, healed.

I'm thinking, wow, she just went from she she isn't supposed to be able to walk to we gotta now leave.

So that another quick second of what?

To all right, let's handle it.

So told the caseworker we're going to uh decab.

She was in decab medical from that Friday.

About a week and a half.

They thought initially three weeks.

They ate said, all right, you know, she's she's ready to start just doing outpatient.

She can go home and just do outpatient therapy.

So pretty much exactly three weeks, um, 15, I'm sorry, 21 days from that Friday that she was coming home.

You know what?

We shifted into man, this is cool.

We're all, you know, spending way more time together.

We're not hustling and bustling and running everywhere.

Mommy's home.

The kids were loving, you know, just seeing her.

You know, I hear my kids every day, and even him say, it's so good to come home and see everybody at home.

I said to her, I said, I know this is gonna, baby, this is gonna sound odd or bad.

I hope you don't take it the wrong way, but I don't feel bad that this happened.

And she said, I don't either.

Normally this would be like, oh, whoa is me, this is terrible, what is my life?

But neither one of us felt bad from it.

And I don't think I've even thought it since then.

Oh God, why did this happen to me?

And people always ask us that.

Yeah, we don't know why this happened to you.

And I was just like, What?

I'm a chosen one.

You know what?

And I'm chosen.

But I and I think everybody is is is chosen, but you're given the opportunity to be chosen by choosing to live and think a certain way.

It was like four of us, me, him, and my two children, that had to really arm her up and say, you know, we know who's in front of us, beside us, behind us, and there's no question about that.

So if you challenge us or if you say something's not possible, um, we're gonna be examples of, you know, true Christians and say, we'll accept that because we know what he's done for us.

We chose to redefine with the word responsible and put the hyphen in the middle and say response able.

Mean we are able to respond to whatever happens to us any way we want to.

Again, if we believe in God.

If we don't, then we're just that leaf blowing in the wind, then so I knew Rhonda for over a year before I heard any of that story.

About as soon as they got back to his hands and after all the rehab and she was able to come back, she signed up to help with the junior high kids, which is an interesting choice after going through something like that.

And I met her and said, Oh, you'd be perfect with our eighth-grade girls.

Let me put you with the eighth grade girls.

And not once did she ever say, Hey, you know what, I don't know if I can keep up, they have a lot of energy.

I had this major thing happen to me recently, not one time.

And I'd sit here on Sunday morning setting up for Lord's Supper early, and I'd walk past her and say, Hey, how are you doing, Rhonda?

And every time she would say, I'm doing awesome, how are you?

And I'm so sorry, Rhonda, because I know there were times that I must have said, Oh, I'm kind of hurting today, I'm a little sore.

I get whiny sometimes in the mornings, especially, and so I apologize.

I didn't know, you didn't tell me.

But she you watch that and in the best way possible, you you look at that and you go, All right, Rhonda, and I know her pretty well, she's one of those weird people in a good way, because you're just not supposed to respond to situations like that with that much joy.

That's not the normal response.

Where you're sitting there and your neck's broken and you're in intense pain, and and the person comes to pray with you, and you're like, You look wonderful today.

Like, you're not supposed to do that.

That's not how you're supposed to respond to that.

In the book of James, verse 2 of chapter 1, it says, Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.

There's no better description of the way that Rhonda and Daryl handled that situation that they were dealt.

When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.

That's a strange concept, right?

Joy through trials, joy through trouble, joy through pain.

That is not the way that this world explains how joy is supposed to work.

All we have to do is turn our televisions on and watch a few commercials to realize that you're supposed to have joy by having no troubles.

That's why you need to buy those things and download those things and subscribe to those services because they make your life trouble free.

And if you have no troubles, and if you have no trials, that's when you have joy.

But yet here James is the Holy Spirit saying, No, no, no.

Joy when the troubles come, joy when you're in the trials, joy through pain.

And that is a weird concept.

It's probably not a weird concept, though, if you're a mom.

If you're a mom, you understand joy through pain very well.

And what better way to describe a child coming into this world, right?

Joy through pain.

I had the the amazing opportunity to be right there when both of my children were born.

I have a three-month-old daughter named Lily.

I've got a four-year-old boy named Liam.

They're incredible.

And I got to be there when they were born.

I got to see them come into this world, I got to look in their eyes seconds after they were born, and it was instantaneous joy.

There's no experience I've ever had that even comes close to seeing my children come into this world.

There's also no experience I would rather not have than to trade places with my wife and be the one bringing them into this world.

There is nothing that looks more painful or more uncomfortable than that.

I remember it was it was two weeks, maybe three weeks before our daughter was born.

So this is just a few months ago.

And like I said, I get whiny sometimes and I was hurting a little bit, my back was hurting, I was a little sore.

And I I had the audacity to look at my beautiful wife, nine months pregnant, and tell her, I'm hurting a little bit.

How are you feeling?

And and those of you that know Megan, she is uh she's not afraid to speak her mind.

And so she uh she looked at me with with love and intensity.

I'll say that.

And she said something along the lines of this.

She said, right now, the bones in my hips are softening so that they can separate.

As I give birth to your daughter who's been kicking me in the bladder all day long.

And so I'm very sorry that you don't feel well right now.

That's right.

And that's how it goes, right?

When when your wife gives birth to a child, you immediately lose the ability to complain.

You just can't do it anymore.

Nathan, you're in a lot of trouble.

You can't do it anymore.

That's just how it works.

All of a sudden, I'm tired, my back hurts a little bit.

No, you can't do those things.

But at the same time, despite all that pain, you're not gonna find a mom who, when holding that baby for the first moment, goes, Oh, I don't know if that pain was worth it.

Not at all.

It's joy, it's instantaneous joy.

It is joy through pain.

And it's very fitting that we're showing Rhonda's God's story, this amazing story of joy through pain on Mother's Day.

Because it just lines up perfectly with where we're at in the book of Acts.

If you've been here the last few weeks, we started a study on the book of Acts, and we're calling it the gospel of the Holy Spirit.

We see a lot of people as characters in the book of Acts, but the Holy Spirit's really the main character.

He's the main one that's moving and making things happen.

And we get to witness the birth of God's church on this earth.

We get to witness the birth of the early church, and it is like any other birth.

It is joy through pain.

There is incredible joy.

People are healed, miracles are performed in the name of Jesus.

The message of Jesus spreads, thousands upon thousands of people come into a relationship with God, are filled with the Holy Spirit, get baptized.

There is joy everywhere you look, but there's also a lot of pain, there's a lot of struggle.

The leaders of the church are persecuted against, they're thrown in jail, they're beaten.

People are afraid for their lives just because they accept and acknowledge the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the Messiah.

There is pain everywhere.

Early on, for example, Peter gets brought before the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin is the Jewish religious ruling council.

They had a lot of authority and a lot of power, and it's just a few months before that Jesus himself is standing before the same men.

And Peter was very close by.

He was in the courtyard just outside the trial, and someone recognized that he was one of Jesus' friends and followers, and they called him on it, and he denied that he even knew Jesus.

Three times.

In fact, the last time he said, Hey, I'll be cursed.

Curse me if I've even met this man.

He was so terrified of the Sanhedrin, so terrified of what they might do to him that he denied knowing his best friend, all of his courage failed him.

And here he is a few months later.

He's just performed this miracle with his friend John in the name of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And the Sanhedrin are upset.

They thought they took care of Jesus, but it's not working out for them.

And so they bring John and Peter to meet with them and to set them straight.

And we get to that in Acts chapter 4, verse 5.

Acts 4:5

It says, the next day the council of all the rulers and elders and teachers of religious law met in Jerusalem.

Annas, the high priest, was there.

Along with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and other relatives of the high priest.

They were there for Jesus' trial as well.

They brought in the two disciples and demanded, By what power or in whose name have you done this?

So once again, Peter is being called to answer regarding his association with Jesus.

Whose name?

Goes a little differently this time, though, in verse 8.

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers and elders of our people, are we being questioned today because we've done a good deed for a crippled man?

Are you serious?

Do you want to know how he was healed?

Let me clearly say to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene.

The man you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead.

Go Peter.

There's a boldness here and there's a courage here that he did not display a few months before.

He says two incredibly bold things to the Sanhedrin.

Number one, he says that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Now the Sanhedrin was a group of about 71 men.

Not about 71, 71.

It'd be about 70, 71 exactly, actually.

And most of them belong to a group called the Sadducees.

And you see the Sadducees every once in a while get into it with Jesus, not as much as the Pharisees.

They're a little bit more laid back.

But one of the things that the Sadducees deeply were against was the resurrection of the dead.

Disagreed with the Pharisees actually on that point.

The Pharisees believed that God could raise from the dead.

The Sadducees did not.

They did not believe in life after death.

So here Peter is months before, terrified just to stand in these men's presence, and now he's standing before them saying, You're wrong.

He's challenging their beliefs, but that's not the most bold thing that he says.

He says, You crucified Jesus.

You did this.

And that's a big deal because the Sanhedrin had a lot of power.

They had a lot of authority from Rome.

The way Rome worked is they would conquer you, and then they'd let your people kind of rule you as long as they kept you under control.

They wouldn't tolerate civil unrest or rioting, but if you could keep your people under control, sure, we'll let you keep having the power that you want to have.

And they gave the Sanhedrin the authority to arrest people.

Technically speaking, the Sanhedrin had every right to arrest Jesus.

That was their legal right to do, but they did not have the authority to sentence death.

They did not have the legal ability to sentence someone to death.

That was outside of their jurisdiction.

But if you go back to Matthew 26, here we have the high priest again.

It says, Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, Well, aren't you going to answer these charges?

What do you have to say for yourself?

But Jesus remained silent.

Then the high priest said to him, I demand in the name of the living God, tell us if you're the Messiah, the Son of God.

And Jesus replied, You've said it.

And in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.

Then the high priest tore his clothing to show his horror and said, Blasphemy, why do we need any other witnesses?

You have all heard his blasphemy.

What is your verdict?

Guilty, they shouted.

They did not have the right to sentence Jesus to death.

And Peter is calling them on it.

Where's all this courage coming from, right?

Who is this man?

And we see it in verse 8.

Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit.

That's what it said.

Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit.

He is not afraid anymore.

The Holy Spirit casts out fear.

And you have to wonder what's going on in Peter's mind at this moment in time.

Or John's.

John doesn't say anything here.

And I'm guessing John was sitting next to him going, like, yeah.

Or he might have been slowly inching away, like, whoa, little in your face, Peter.

Remember, these guys kill people.

Peter's gotta be thinking, I'm about to die.

This is it.

I mean, I've offended these men deeply.

I mean, I'm I'm it's like he's putting them on trial in this moment.

But amazingly, he doesn't die.

The Sanhedrin are kind of stuck.

All these people have seen this miracle.

They can't afford for people to get up in arms and upset.

Rome will not tolerate that.

And they know that people are going to be really mad if they punish John and Peter after healing this man, so they just let him go and say, Hey, stop talking about Jesus.

And Peter and John say, no.

And they go and they talk about Jesus more.

And they get arrested again and they get put in jail, and then they get miraculously let out of jail.

And they go right back to the temple and talk about Jesus more and find themselves once again in front of the Sanhedrin.

And this time the high priest, he's beside himself.

In Acts 5.28, he says, Didn't we tell you never again to teach in this man's name?

He demanded.

Instead, you have filled all Jerusalem with your teaching about him, and you want to make us responsible for his death?

I love that last part.

Like, what did we do?

We just arrested him for no reason, put him on trial, sentenced him to death, pressured Pilate and all the people to have him crucified.

Like, don't blame this on us.

Clearly we're innocent.

You can actually see the guilt here.

They're dealing with this guilt, and sometimes when we deal with guilt, what do we do?

We just sort of go, oh no, no.

We deny it completely.

And this time Peter is just as bold as before.

In fact, he's even more bold.

And they actually decide in this moment to have the apostles, all of them, killed.

That's it, they deserve to die.

They're going to do the same thing they did with Jesus, but ironically, a Pharisee, of all people, a Pharisee steps in.

And he says, My advice is this: leave these men alone.

Let them go.

If they're planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown.

But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them.

You may even find yourselves fighting against God.

The others accepted his advice.

They called in the apostles and had them flogged.

They were beaten severely.

And then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

Look at this.

The apostles left the High Council rejoicing, full of joy that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus.

So see, the apostles are weird like Rhonda.

You're not supposed to respond that way.

You just got beaten.

You were flogged.

You're a grown man who has been spanked.

You should not be happy right now.

You should not be excited.

Friday night, Ken told a joke.

He told a lot of jokes.

He told one joke, though.

That'd have been a weird comedy night if he did one joke.

Or it would have been a really good joke.

He told a lot of jokes.

One of them, though, was a joke about giving your children a choice.

Do you want to do the right thing or do you want a consequence?

Do you want to do what I'm asking you to do, or would you like to have a spanking?

And I've had those situations with my son.

He's such a good boy.

So I do not have to discipline him very much.

But every once in a while I do, because while he's a good boy, I want him to become a good man.

So I have to do that.

And I had a situation months ago where I did have to give him a spanking.

I gave him warning after warning after warning.

And I gave him a very, very light spanking, you know, enough to let him know I meant business, but but that was it.

And I'll never, man, I'll never forget this moment as long as I live.

So my son, after being spanked, turns around and looks at me and he says, That hurt.

And I looked at him and my heart's breaking.

I love this, I love this kid more than life.

I throw myself in front of a train for him, and and I said, I know, but that's just kind of how spankers are supposed to work.

And then, oh, this got so awesome.

He goes, God is mad at you.

For spanking me.

Now I correct him, but but I am blessed to know that even at four years old, he understands that God is for him.

I like that.

But then it gets better.

He goes, Jesus healed me.

Okay?

And I said, Well, I'm so glad he healed you.

If you keep acting this way, I will have to spank you again.

And then he looked at me, pointed right in my face, and said, He will heal me again.

Now that is a reaction that makes sense to pain.

And I could see the apostles being flogged and going back in front of the standhed and saying, God is mad at you.

He is so upset with you, you don't even know you are in so much trouble.

He's gonna heal us, because that's what he does, but he is mad at you.

But that's not what the apostles do.

No, no, they they rejoice.

They're saying, I'm so glad we went through this.

John, aren't you glad you got beaten?

I am, it was great.

See, they understood that there is joy through pain.

When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.

See, the world lies to us.

Joy doesn't come from the absence of pain.

True joy comes by walking through pain with Jesus.

That's where joy really comes from.

Absolutely.

It's by overcoming pain through the power of the Holy Spirit that's when we have real joy.

That's what Peter and John understood.

That's what Rhonda and Daryl understand.

That real joy doesn't come by avoiding pain, it comes by by embracing those moments where it comes knowing that our dad, that our God, is right there with us the entire time, and we will get through it with him.

Things get more painful for the early church.

Another one of their leaders is brought before the Sanhedrin.

There's a pattern.

His name is Stephen.

Stephen is a good man.

He loves the Lord, he loves people.

His role in the early church is to make sure that when people donate money to those in need, it gets distributed the right way.

That's his job.

And he tells people about Jesus, and he gets brought before the Sanhedrin.

They're already upset, they keep having to bring these guys in, and Stephen's response is even bolder than Peter's was.

He says, You stubborn people, you are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth.

Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit?

That's what your ancestors did, and so do you.

Name one prophet your ancestors didn't persecute.

They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the righteous one, the Messiah, whom you betrayed and murdered.

You deliberately disobeyed God's law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.

The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen's accusation, and they shook their fists at him in rage.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God.

And he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God's right hand, and he told them, Look, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God's right hand.

I wonder sometimes if the Sanhedrin saw the same thing.

Because what did Jesus say back in Matthew 26?

In the future, you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.

Whatever guilt they were feeling must have been stirred up in a big way.

Their response is vicious.

They have Stephen killed on the spot.

He's stoned to death.

And this is a huge blow for the early church.

This is so painful.

He's one of their best and brightest.

And he's killed.

And this creates a lot of fear for all the believers in Jerusalem, where the church has started.

And so they go back to their hometowns, most of them.

The apostles, they stay in Jerusalem, they're not afraid, they've already been beaten.

But most of the other followers of Jesus go back to their hometowns.

And the Sanhedrin might have thought they won a big victory, but it backfires on them.

Because when all these people go back to their hometowns, guess who they take with them?

The Holy Spirit.

And they tell people about Jesus, and now all of a sudden the church isn't in Jerusalem, it's everywhere.

And the Sanhedrin have a big problem on their hands.

Their plan backfired.

Satan might attack us.

Life might attack us, but it backfires.

When Satan stands in God's way or stands against God's children, and we are God's children, it doesn't just fail, it backfires.

Just like it did with Rhonda and Daryl, now they have a story that inspires people, that points people to Jesus.

Satan's life story would be let me tell you all my backfires.

One time I tried to challenge God's authority in heaven.

Oh man, didn't work out.

There's this one time that I influenced this guy named Judas to try to have Jesus killed.

I thought by having Jesus killed, I'd be good.

And oh, it backfired so bad.

You have no idea.

One time I had this guy, Stephen, killed.

And I thought it would make everyone afraid and silence him and ended up spreading the message of Jesus everywhere.

And his next move is gonna backfire a big as well because uh the Sadducees decided decide to send one of their best and brightest, a man named Saul, after the church to nip this whole thing in the bud.

And you can see them, them thinking, hey, Saul, no one's against Jesus more than Saul.

I mean, what's gonna happen?

It's not like he's gonna become a follower of Jesus and grow into one of the greatest leaders the church has ever had, right?

I mean, what are the odds of that happening?

Just backfires.

This is a moment meant for pain, but God uses it for joy.

And that's how our God is.

So, this is great news.

If you're here this morning and you're experiencing pain, or someone you love is, whether it's physical pain, it's a health issue, God can heal that.

He does all the time.

Maybe you're you're dealing with depression, maybe you're going through a divorce.

Maybe you don't know what's off what's going wrong, or you just know something's off.

But no matter what pain you're experiencing, Jesus is right beside you.

He is with you, and he knows pain.

He understands pain.

And he understands that joy happens through pain.

The Bible says that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

It means we need Jesus.

So if you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus, ask him to be part of your life.

Get to know Jesus because he is joy itself.

And he's joy through pain.

The worship team wants to come back up.

It helps to have a dad in heaven when we're going through pain.

It really does.

It's the only way we can get through it.

And God Himself actually says he's like a mom in the Bible.

In Luke, Jesus said that God is like a mother hen that wants to gather his children under his wings.

So God gets moms.

And I do think it's appropriate this morning to give a big round of applause to all of our moms that are here this morning.

My mom, uh, my mom's not here.

She lives a thousand miles away, but in case you're listening later, I love you, mom.

Um, you know, when you're going through pain, it doesn't hurt to have a mom either.

Sometimes my son will get injured.

He's a boy, he likes to jump off things.

Sometimes that doesn't work out for him.

And when he's in pain, he makes a beeline for mom.

There have actually been times where where he's crying and he's hurt, and I'm like, I'm here.

I'm ready to rescue him.

And I reach my arms out and I'm like, son, and he just runs right past me to mom.

Even if she's much further away, there's something about mom.

So, moms, you're worth celebrating this morning.

We can thank God for you as we worship.

In fact, if Satan had to list out his all-time backfires, one of them would definitely be the first time he messed with moms.

In Genesis, he tricks Eve, the very first mom, into sinning against God, and a lot of bad things happened because of that.

None so bad as what happened to Satan, though, because Eve's punishment was, you're gonna have pain in childbirth.

You're gonna have joy through pain.

Satan's punishment is in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman.

And between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.

I'm gonna make you the enemy of woman.

And you know Satan was like, oh God, no.

Please, right?

Please send men after me.

Please.

Not women, right?

They're relentless, they're crafty, they're smart.

You cannot figure them out.

You can't do it.

Not even Satan can do that, and he's going, oh no, at that moment in time it was over.

Eve got joy through pain.

Satan just got pain.

So thank you, moms, for everything you do.

But no matter what pain we're going through this morning or what we've been through, what's ahead of us, we have Jesus.

We have God.

He is our dad.

He is He's a mother to us as well, and He wants to wrap us in His arms.

And He wants to love us through whatever we're going through.

So let's celebrate that this morning as we thank Him for blessing us, as we thank Him for our moms on Mother's Day.

Let's stand up and let's worship Him a little bit more and let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for walking with us alongside us through our pain.

Daddy, it is amazing how often joy and pain go together.

We had amazing joy last week as 65 people got baptized.

And then we had a lot of pain on Monday when our brother Ray Bell passed away.

But even yesterday during his memorial service, God, you were here.

And there was joy.

Because with you, Jesus, even the pain of death, it is just temporary.

And we have joy waiting for us on the other side.

And we love you so much.

We thank you for everything you've done for us, for saving us, for giving us great moms.

Amen.

All right, let's worship.