Snow Globe – Forgiving God

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

We've been in a series called Snow Globe, and in the series, we're really wrestling with what does it mean for our hearts to be made white as snow?

So yesterday I got to thinking.

I I had to drive yesterday to and from Orlando, and it was raining hard, and I thought to myself, if it was just, you know, like 60 degrees colder, this would be snow, everybody.

So I got home and I thought, is it possible that it could snow?

And I found out that in 1970, it did snow in the Tampa Bay area.

So to quote, my favorite movie, Dumb and Dumber.

So you're saying there's a chance, everybody.

And so I looked it up online.

I wanted to give you an update on the possibility of snow.

Here's the chances of a white Christmas in Florida.

This part no.

This part no in blue.

And um probably, probably not happening for us.

But here's the point of the series: you can have a white Christmas, but it's a white Christmas of your hearts.

Here's why we say this.

In the book of Isaiah, some 750 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah said this.

He said, Come now, let's settle this, says the Lord.

Like, let's stop playing games.

Let's get to business.

He says, Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.

I'm gonna clean up all the junk that junks your heart up.

He says, Though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool.

Then he says, Here's the hard part.

If you will only obey me, like if we'll do our part, the hard part of obeying God, he'll make our hearts white as snow.

I think for a lot of us, this idea that our heart could be made pure and white as snow, it feels kind of like a snow globe, doesn't it?

It feels like something that the truth is we'll only ever see from the outside, but we may never experience it for ourselves.

So I've been asking this question what would it look like if we did the hard work of obeying God so that our hearts could be made white as snow?

So week one, we said this.

We said that if we're gonna be people like Jesus, if we're gonna have a heart that's pure like snow, we have to be people characterized as people who are forgiving others.

And this is hard.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

I preached that one and I got such incredible feedback from people who made the decision to stop holding on because holding on keeps you from moving on.

I heard from people who made the decision to forgive, and even though the other person didn't forgive back, even though the other person maybe had nothing to say or no sort of response, forgiveness sets someone free.

And it ended up being them.

Then last week I took it from being outside of us to inside of us.

You see, a lot of us struggle with what it means to forgive ourselves.

I quoted one of the most powerful verses in the Bible last week, John 3.17, where it says, For God did not come to condemn the world.

For God did not send his son to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.

If God doesn't forgive you, and if the whole point of Jesus coming was for forgiveness, if he's already forgiven, why would you keep beating yourself up?

Like, what if you chose to let go so you could go into the life God calls for you?

Today, I've got one that if I could be honest, this is a hard one.

In fact, um, this message I only prepared about like 60% before today, and I got up first service, and I'll be honest, I cried about two times in it, and so I have no idea how this is gonna go, but buckle in today.

I want to talk to you about the hardest one for some of us, which is forgiving God.

And here's the funny thing you need to understand you don't forgive God.

He's perfect, he's sinless, he has no faults.

But there are many of us that have disappointments in God.

There's been times we prayed and it felt like God didn't come through.

There's been seasons that we prayed for people who we loved who were sick and we still had to bury them.

There are times in our lives when we've had we've had nothing but prayer to hold on to, and we prayed and prayed and prayed, and it felt like our prayers never got beyond the ceiling.

What do you do when it feels like God let you down?

What do you do in that moment?

This week I had two interesting days back to back.

Monday morning, I got up early and I went to the gym, and it was about 5.45.

I got to the gym, which is in kind of an industrial part of town.

And as I'm walking out of my car, a man yells at me, he goes, Hey, I said, Yeah.

He goes, Do you have a job you can hire me for?

I said, bro, it's 5.45.

I don't even know if I have a job right now.

Like, I'm trying to wake up.

He goes, Fine, do you have any cash on you?

Can I have some cash?

And I'm like, I literally don't even have my wallet on me.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

And so he left and went the other way.

Then Tuesday, I had to fly up to Atlanta, to and from Atlanta in the same day.

And while I was there meeting with someone, I got out of the car, and when I got out of the car, he was driving, I looked down and there was$15 on the ground.

So I was like, wow, this is crazy.

I offered it to the guy who was driving.

I said, You were driving, this should be yours.

He goes, No, you keep it, put it in your pocket.

So I put$15 in my pocket.

That night I flew back from Atlanta to Tampa.

And when I when I got to the Atlanta airport, it's big.

If you've been there, it's a huge airport.

Parked the car at the rental car place.

And I'm walking, trying to find the terminal where I need to go, and a man stops me and he goes, Hey, do you need help?

You look lost.

I said, I'm just looking for the terminal.

He goes, it's right over there.

I said, Thanks, bro.

And he goes, No, no, hey, hey, guys, my brother.

He goes, You got any cash I could have?

I'm starving.

And just as fate would have it, I had$15 in my pocket.

So I pulled it out and I just handed him whatever the stack of cash was, 110 and 15.

And he literally took the cash and he unfolded it in front of me.

He goes,$15.

Exactly what I prayed for.

Thank you, God.

And he walked off the other direction.

It's kind of an interesting kind of conundrum of moments, isn't it?

On one hand, one person is in need and I'm not the answer to the prayer.

On another hand, I meet another person who prays for the same thing and God seems to answer his prayer.

You ever felt like that?

You ever felt like you pray for something and God doesn't come through for you like he does for someone else?

I think a lot of us harbor hurt and resentment and pain towards God.

We can intellectually know that it's misdirected, but the truth is we feel it in our hearts.

Like God, somewhere along the way, he heard us, he let us down, he didn't come through, he fell asleep at the wheel.

Have you ever had this?

When we started Access some 17 years ago, I would go meet young adults because we started this thing as a college and young adult Bible study.

I'd go meet young adults in coffee shops and I'd have conversations with them.

And what was so fascinating all these years ago is how many people had church hurt.

They they trusted a pastor and he let them down.

It was interesting over and over and over, I heard the same story that some 30 or more years ago the largest church split in the history of our country happened here in our city.

And there were people who maybe were too young to understand and process the pain of that moment, but they saw the pain and the devastation in their families, and so for the rest of their life they chose to stiff farm God.

Over these last few weeks, I've been paying attention to the things people say to me, things people have they've just kind of uttered, like in the middle of conversation as they told me about something they're walking through.

See if any of these stories might resonate with you.

I talked to a person who's an incredible Christian, incredible believer.

And they just walked through a major, major, major medical procedure.

It was really scary.

It was touch and go.

We didn't know if the person would live or if they wouldn't make it.

And they got through this medical procedure and it was way harder than what they expected.

So I'm sitting with this person and they they say to me, look, like I if I had known it was going to be this hard, I might not have done it.

And then they said these words, God tricked me.

Talked to another person who was single just a few weeks ago.

And they were telling me how their last single friend was engaged and getting married to their dream spouse.

And this person felt conflicted because, on one hand, they felt happy for their friend.

They were going to be in the wedding.

But they said to me, like, doesn't it doesn't make sense?

Everyone else in my life has been married except for me.

And then they said these words, why does God do it for other people?

Not me.

Talk to a person who's married.

They've been married for a long time, but the marriage has never turned out the way they expected it would go.

They married and thought this person would be their life partner, their best friend through thick and thin, for better or worse.

And the person they married has turned abusive physically and emotionally.

The person they've caught over and over and over are struggling with addictions to things like pornography, alcohol, and other things.

And on top of all that, it's come to light that the person has had affair after affair after affair.

And the person said, I've asked God over and over and over for help, but I've reached this point where I gave up even asking.

I met with a person some time ago who said, um I have lost family member after family member after family member in my life, over and over and over, to disease, to tragedies, to wrecks, to you name it over and over and over, and it's back to back to back to back to back.

The person grabbed me by the shoulders and looked at me with tears welling up in their eyes, and they said, Where was God when I needed him?

I need my family, and they're all gone.

Where was he?

I want you to look at these with me.

You ever felt any of these emotions towards God?

You ever felt like God tricked you or that he fell asleep at the wheel, or if he was there, he didn't care?

And maybe in your heart you believe he can, but in your mind you've given up hope that he will.

Well, what do you do with that?

What do you do when it feels like the person that you have all of your hurt and frustration and anger directed towards is God because he could have done something, but he didn't seem to do something.

He didn't seem to care.

Here's the question I want us to wrestle with today, and this is so important.

It's what do you do with your hurt and your frustration and disappointment with God?

What do you do when it feels like God's the one who dropped the ball?

Like we understand that people are jerks sometimes and they'll hurt us and they'll betray us, but they're people, they're fallible.

But what do you do when it's God?

And what do you do when it feels like God does things for other people?

But the truth is you've become what I would call a practical atheist.

You do all the right things, but in your heart you're kind of atheistic, meaning you're like, I'll pray it because I'm supposed to pray it, but I don't think he will.

What do you do with those things?

To explain what I think we do, I want to take you to an interesting story.

It's found in the Old Testament in the book of 1 Samuel.

It's a story that revolves around three central figures.

The first is a man named Elkanah.

Now, to understand him, you need to understand his name.

In the ancient world, names meant everything.

Your name was almost prophetic about who you were.

Every person that has a name, the name has a meaning.

So my name, Jason, the meaning of the name is healer.

And it's funny because that word was a name chosen for me by my parents, but in some weird way, it's almost been prophetic over my life.

I've heard over and over and over and over the last 17 years people saying, God healed my heart as a result of this church.

God healed my mind as a result of this church.

God brought healing to my marriage or my relationships as a result of this place.

It's like, it's not just a name, it's really a prophecy.

So we meet a man named Elkanah, and Elkanah, his name literally means God will give a son.

So his whole life, when people said his name, what's up, Elkanah?

He was literally healing.

What's up, God will give you a son?

You're gonna have a boy and it's gonna come from God.

He heard it over and over and over and over and over in his life.

Now we don't know a lot about Elkanah, but we do know that he was a good man.

And he took a wife, his name, her name was Hannah, and he loved his wife, Hannah.

And Hannah was a good girl.

She was a good person.

We find in scripture about Hannah that she was a person who loved the Lord.

And as a quick side note to all the single people in the room, that is the highest attribute you should look for in a spouse.

I think we get enamored by all the temporary stuff.

We get enamored by the dimples and the smile and the height and the weight and the look and the attraction.

All those things are wonderful things.

And I believe that attraction is something that you should pay attention to.

And I want to tell you, attraction does grow over time.

But what's more important to that is the stuff that their life is built upon, their relationship with God.

She's a person who loved God.

And Elkanah's name means God will give a son, but he's married to a girl named Hannah, and they tried to have a son, but for whatever reason, Hannah was unable to get pregnant.

Now I need you to understand something.

In our day, when a couple struggles to get pregnant, we get sad for them, but there's all kinds of treatments and IBF and all kinds of things that people can do to try to get pregnant.

In the time of the Bible, when a person couldn't get pregnant, they didn't assume something was wrong medically.

There was an assumption that they were doing something wrong with God and God was punishing them or disappointed in them or angry at them.

In the time of the Bible, when a person couldn't have a baby, they were judged unfairly.

So you got Hannah, and she's dealing with the fact that her heart longs for a child, but she's unable to have a child.

She's unable to meet the desires of her husband because she can't give him a child to carry on his name and his legacy.

She can't do any of these things.

And on top of that, now she feels a layer of spiritual guilt.

What did I do to God?

What did my parents or my family do to God to cause me to walk through this punishment?

So scholars believe that when Hannah couldn't give him a son, Elkanah decided to take another wife.

Now, all the single guys in the room are like, oh, that would be awesome.

Like, what if we could have multiple wives?

Um I just want to say to you, look at me.

That's stupid, everybody.

Um, I got the best wife out there.

I can't keep up with her.

I can't even add, I can't even imagine trying to keep up with another one.

Makes no sense at all, but this is what he did.

And scholars believe the reason he took a second wife was because he wanted a child and Hannah couldn't give it to him.

So he married a lady named Penaniah.

And the three of them have this interesting dynamic.

Every single year, they would go from where they lived in the city of Ramah to the city called Shiloh.

Shiloh was this place where they would go, they would go to the temple, the tabernacle, the church, essentially, and they would go to worship and to offer sacrifices to God.

And what's interesting about the city of Shiloh is the name Shiloh in Hebrew literally means gift from God, and it means place of peace.

So they're literally going year after year after year to this place called the gift from God, place of peace.

And it was literally the opposite of how Hannah felt in her heart.

Can you imagine this?

Every year she wants a child, and every year she goes back to this place to worship God, she's reminded that she hasn't gotten the gift from God, and as a result, she lives in constant torment.

The opposite of peace.

To make it worse, Pennaniah was kind of the opposite of Hannah.

If Hannah was a good girl, Pannaniah was the girl that your mama warned you about.

Like, stay away from her because she's dangerous, but stay away from her because she'll treat you bad.

And Pennaniah would constantly tease and taunt Hannah.

She would rub it in her face that she had children when Hannah couldn't.

That's where the verse picks up.

1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 7, verse 6 is this.

1 Samuel 1:7

So Pennaniah would taunt Hannah and make fun of her because the Lord had kept her from having children.

Year after year, it was the same.

In our day, it's sad when couples try for a long time and can't get pregnant.

We understand this.

We've walked with dozens, if not hundreds, of couples over the years through this.

I'll never forget the early days of our church.

Our church was quite small and it was full of people that were somewhere between 18 and 35 years old.

And one time I just kind of noticed that everybody was pregnant.

And in this season of our church, it was small enough where we could be like, hey, let's celebrate this family.

They just announced their pregnancy and we'd clap for the person.

Now we've gotten so big that we wouldn't have time for anything else if we celebrated everything every week.

And one time I announced that two or three families were announcing that they were pregnant and we celebrated.

And I made a dumb joke because in that season it felt like everybody in our church was either pregnant or a man.

And so I made a joke like that.

I said, Don't drink the water.

You know, I thought I was being funny.

I had no idea how insensitive the joke was because when I said it and the words left my mouth, I looked out on the first couple of rows, and there were two or three families staring at me like a deer in the headlights, like a wounded deer in the headlights.

Found out later they'd been trying for years and they were unable to get pregnant.

It's painful.

And the verse says, year after year, they would go to Shiloh.

Year after year.

It's like every time they would go, Hannah is reminded that she was unable to have a baby.

I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but like different holidays sometimes tend to serve as mile markers.

Maybe for you, Mother's Day is hard.

Like for a lot of people, Mother's Day is beautiful.

But for some people, Mother's Day is a reminder that either your mother is no longer with us or a reminder that you've tried everything and you're just not a mom, and maybe there's no hope of you becoming a mom.

Some holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving, there's an empty seat at the table, and year after year after year, you're reminded of some pain or some loss.

Maybe every birthday for you, people celebrate you and they get you a cake and you blow out a candle, but you're reminded that another year has passed without you getting to that dream or that miracle that is in your heart.

And year after year after painstaking year, Hannah would go to the temple in Shiloh.

She would worship God, and she'd be taunted, tormented by the other wife in the relationship.

The verses go on to say this.

Year after year it was the same.

Pennaniah would taunt Hannah as they would go to the tabernacle.

Each time Hannah would be reduced to tears and not even eat.

This is how I know that I'm hurting, is when I don't have the desire to eat.

It's like what happens emotionally when it physically manifests itself in something like this, that's when you know you're sick.

And so she's so sick.

She's not just heart sick, she's physically sick.

She can't do anything right because the thing that she wants most seems to keep evading her.

Well, remember, she's married, Hannah, to a good man.

His name is Elkanah.

But I want to teach you a very important principle.

And if you get nothing else, I hope you get this today.

Um, men, and when I say men, I don't mean some men.

I mean all men are morons sometimes.

We uh we just are.

Some of the women are like, I like this church, access church.

Like, I'm a big fan.

We just are.

And I think the truth is, some of us like we never graduate from middle school.

I mean, intellectually we do, but emotionally, we are like a sixth grader.

You know what I mean?

Like, to this day, if you find yourself constantly tempted to make a your mama joke, you never made it past sixth grade, and I am the chief of sinners, you know what I'm saying?

It's just bad.

And so you got Elkan, he's a good man, but he's a man, and men can be stupid sometimes.

And he tries to help, but in all he ends up doing is sticking his foot in his mouth.

It says this, 1 Samuel 1, verse 8.

1 Samuel 1:8

He says to her, Why are you crying, Hannah?

Elkanah would ask.

Why aren't you eating?

Why be downhearted just because you have no children?

Then he drops the dumb statement on her.

He says, Why are you downhearted?

You have me.

Isn't that better than having 10 sons?

Now, scripture doesn't record Hannah's response.

But I think I know what she said.

She said, Look me in the eyes right now.

I will cut you.

I'll destroy, I will rip you, and I will kill you right here, right now, in this moment.

He tried his best, but he made it worse.

The story goes on to say this.

Here's what Hannah does.

She's heartbroken, year after year has passed.

And it says this Once after a sacrificial meal at Shiloh, Hannah got up and she did something interesting.

She went to pray, because what we tend to do when we're hurting spiritually is we tend to turn from God.

She turns back to God and she prays.

And I want you to see the contents of her prayer.

It goes on, it says, Eli the priest, was sitting at his customary place beside the entrance of the tabernacle, and Hannah was in deep anguish.

This is a picture into her prayer.

She's in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord.

Let me tell you what you do in the moments when it feels like God doesn't come through.

And here's some advice based on what Hannah does.

Let me say this to you.

I don't recommend this every day.

This isn't a good way to start your day every single day of the year.

But I do think every once in a while, if you are really hurting and you have unresolved issues towards God, listen to me.

Tell him.

And be honest.

Tell him.

Yell at him if you have to, but get it out of your mouth.

What we tend to do is we tend to conceal how we feel.

You'll never heal what you conceal.

You can only heal that which you're willing to reveal.

And she goes off on God.

And she tells him what she's going with.

Some of my most beautiful encounters with God came in moments of honesty and yelling at him.

You read through scripture, there's moments.

You read the book of Psalms, David over and over and over goes out and he yells at the Lord.

The book of Jeremiah is full of the prophet Jeremiah screaming at God.

Even from the cross, Jesus himself says, Father, why have you forsaken me?

Forsaken means why have you turned your back on me?

Why did you leave me here by myself?

I don't know if you've ever had a moment like this with God.

When I was 23 years old, got married at the end of my 22nd year.

23 years old, I'm six months married, and I'm out traveling for a summer, speaking at camps all over the country to kids.

Now I want you to remember this because this is important to the story.

I'm serving God.

It's not like I'm out selling drugs.

You know what I mean?

I'm like I'm serving children, I'm loving them, I'm blessing them, I'm teaching them about God.

And we're doing these camps, and I was in Tennessee at this camp, hundreds of kids, and literally the weekend before, I'd been with my wife in North Texas, and we got a call.

Where the doctor said, Liz, I'm so sorry, that lump you found in your leg is a cancer.

Put her on a plane back home, and I had to go speak at this camp in Tennessee, and all week I was tormented by these thoughts.

Tormented by the idea that I might get to my one-year anniversary and be a widower.

Tormented wondering if I would even have a wife in three months still alive.

All week it weighed on me, but there was a moment when I felt like the dam of my soul broke open and spilled millions of gallons of emotion out.

The end of the camp, the camp director, who he was a guy, which means he's a moron.

He goes, All right, everybody, listen to me.

Last night of the service, he goes, Jason, come back out here.

So I come back out.

He goes, kids, Pastor Jason just got married and his wife has cancer.

And it's like, do we clap?

Like, what do we do with that?

You know?

He goes, we're gonna pray for him right now.

Jason, go stand on there.

And I go stand on the floor in front of the stage.

And he said, I want all you kids to come forward and we're gonna lay our hands on Pastor Jason.

So all these kids came up, and I'm gonna be honest, a couple things.

Number one, when you pray for someone, you just like like lightly put your hand on them.

All of a sudden there's all these kids and they're all like pulling down on me.

I felt like I was trying to back squat 350.

You know what I'm saying?

And it's a kids' camp.

And at youth camp, it's hard to get kids to shower.

At kids' camp, they just don't even try.

You know what I mean?

And so got all kinds of smells going on in this moment.

And these kids prayed for me, and it was a beautiful moment, but all I'm gonna be honest with you, I was just trying to stand up.

But it was after that moment of prayer that I thanked everybody and I walked out and I went on a walk by myself, and I'll never forget where I stood.

I'll never forget this Tennessee campground.

I'll never forget the smell in the air.

I walk outside, I take a deep breath, and all of a sudden this dam comes breaking loose, and I start crying uncontrollably, and I let God have it.

Why me?

I'm out here serving you, I'm out here blessing kids for you.

Like, do you know what's in my future?

Do you know what's in my heart to do for you?

Do you understand how hard I've worked to get this degree and this extra degree?

Do you know what I've done for you?

I let God have it.

Came home to a wife trembling the night before.

She would start chemo.

The next week I went and sat down with my counselor.

I don't know if you've ever met someone who reads your mail, who it feels like God has a bat phone directly into your soul who knows exactly what's going on in your heart.

I sat down with him and I said, I'm so angry right now.

Can I be raw?

Can we be honest?

Because what's going on?

He said, I don't know where the hell God is right now.

I'm trying my best to serve him, and he left me alone.

My wife and I gave our lives to God.

We committed to serve him all of our days, and I don't even know if she'll live another year.

Where's God in this?

I'll tell you where God is.

And in these moments when you don't understand, it is God carving out of you the capacity to know him and to trust him in a different kind of way.

The story for Hannah goes like this.

She cries out to God, she unloads on God, and by the way, you can do that because God's a big man, he can handle himself.

When you open your heart and you're honest, it shows what's actually there.

When you reveal what's in your heart, it opens you to the potential of God healing you.

But I want you to see the next verse.

The next verse in the story is so fascinating because she's poured her heart out to God.

She's dealing with another wife who teases her, a husband who's disappointed in her.

She feels all the pressure and the religious pressure that somehow she's disappointed God.

And the next verse says this it says the entire family got up early the next morning and they went to worship the Lord once more.

Why does this matter?

Because for a lot of us, when it feels like God's let us down, we turn our back towards God instead of turning to God.

What does worship do?

Worship serves as warfare on our circumstances.

When you worship God, what it does is it magnifies Him, which in turn reduces your circumstances to nothing.

She goes and she worships God.

Can I be honest?

This is my assumption.

She may not have felt like it.

You ever had a day when you didn't feel like worshiping God?

Maybe that's your story this morning.

You came in.

This is one of the reasons that one of the analogies scripture uses for worship is we bring a sacrifice of praise.

It means we do it even when we don't feel it.

Worship is warfare on your circumstances, and she makes this decision.

I'm going to worship through my worst moments.

She turns to God and she worships him.

What does worship say?

Even though I don't understand you.

I trust you.

Even though I feel like I'm in a season of confusion and waiting, I understand this principle that a waiting season isn't a wasted season.

Let me add to this: your waiting season isn't a wasted season when who you're waiting on is God.

Do you remember a few weeks ago I preached on faith?

And here's what I said about faith.

I think a lot of us think faith is not sight.

Faith is stepping another step forward, but not knowing and not seeing.

No, no, faith is not about not sight.

Faith is about sight.

Faith is about seeing, but it's about seeing from God's perspective and from God's point of view.

What worship does and what we do in these moments is we choose to say, God, I'm waiting on you.

And I know this isn't a wasted season, and in this season where I don't know what's coming next, I choose to take your perspective and your point of view on it.

It's not a wasted season when who I'm waiting on is you.

The story for Hannah goes on and it says this: it says, They, the whole family, returned home to Ramah.

When Elkanah slept with Hannah after he apologized for that stupid joke he made in verse 8, right?

It says, the Lord remembered her plea, and in due time she gave birth to a son, and she named him Samuel.

For she said, I asked the Lord for him.

Here's the thing about us what worship does in the middle of our story.

And what worship does in the middle of all of our challenges and in the middle of all of our circumstances is worship declares that God, I trust you, even though I don't understand.

That God, this isn't going according to my schedule, but you need to understand this.

God's delays are not necessarily his denials.

God might say, not now, for the thing that you want.

You ever thought, stop to think about what if God answered all of your prayers?

You ever stop to think about that?

You ever stop to think about who you'd be married to if God answered all of your prayers?

You ever stop to think about where you'd live or what you'd do?

If you uh if you could somehow get me in a time machine and take me back to the day Liz was diagnosed with cancer.

And you put before me two buttons.

Button one is healing, never walk through this season.

Option two is walk through it, but knowing God will be with you.

I would have probably pushed the path of least resistance.

Nobody wants to walk through that.

Can I tell you something?

As her husband, it was gutting to me.

But my pain had to pale in comparison to hers.

As a husband, it was hard because I like to fix things and control things and make things better, and there was nothing I could do but drive her to endless doctor's appointments and hold her hand.

Nothing I could do.

But from God's point of view, that season that felt like a setback really was a setup.

If I could ask Liz, if we could bring her up and ask her in this moment, tell us if you could go back and undo it, would you undo the cancer season?

Would you not get cancer?

Well, naturally, sure, nobody wants cancer, but can I tell you something?

My guess is she would say no.

Why?

Because if it weren't for that season, the path and the directive of our lives would have been entirely different.

Were it not for that season, we wouldn't have stayed in Lakeland.

Were it not for that season, we would have never started a college Bible study.

Were it not for that season, this church would never exist.

And every once in a while, when I get myself down in the dumps and I start thinking about like, what's this all for and is this worth it?

I start thinking about all the miracle stories that have happened.

I think about people that have been healed, marriages that have been saved.

I think about couples who met together here in these rows.

I think about people who've started families here, I think about people whose lives have been changed.

I think about the hundreds, if not thousands, now of people who've been baptized and the thousands of people who've put their faith in Jesus.

Was it worth it in the moment it didn't make sense?

But in perspective, God used it.

Some people say really helpful things, they mean it helpful.

They say time heals all wounds.

Time doesn't heal anything, perspective changes things, and only Jesus can heal your wounds.

So look at me.

I don't know what you came in with today.

I don't know what hurt or loss you've misdirected to God.

If I had two hours, I could load you up with stories.

I told you I only plan like 60% of this message today, only plan the story of Hannah.

Any other story, I I've got so many to tell.

Because either me or the thousands of people that have come to our church over the years have walked through stuff.

And can I say this to you?

If you will choose to make this decision, that in the middle of your confusion, the middle of your hurt, the middle of your loss, which tends to make you nearsighted, you'll take your eyes off of you and you'll point them upward.

If you'll make this decision that in the middle of my worry, I will worship.

In the middle of my anxiety, I will trust.

Even when I feel out of control, I trust that someone else is in control.

If you will submit your life to this idea that there is someone who is writing a beautiful story, and the pages of the story that he's penning are often, they're often full of stories that don't make sense in the moment, but with perspective, you see that God is writing a beautiful story through you.

What would happen if you and I made this decision to say, God, even when I don't understand, I trust.

I'm gonna ask you to do this.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

I want you to think about that thing that you've held on to.

The thing that maybe you've misdirected at God.

Maybe you feel like you've come to church just out of obligation, but the truth is you are still so angry.

If this is you, in a moment we're gonna make a decision that we're gonna forgive, we're gonna let go, we're gonna choose to move on because holding on has kept us from moving on.

And here's what I believe can happen in this moment.

I believe in this moment you can walk out free.

I believe the Christmas story can sneak up on you because you experience the goodness and the grace of Jesus.

Your head bowed and eyes closed.

Have you thought about that thing?

Those stories, those moments.

Let's give it to God now.

So, God, in this moment we decide to trust you.

Even when our life doesn't make sense, even when things have gone ways that we would have never chosen for ourselves, we declare that we trust you.

God, for those of us who have prayed for a miracle for so long and we feel like we're running out of strength to hold on, we choose to worship you.

For those of us who are hurting, who feel lost, who feel like you abandoned us, you fell asleep at the wheel when we needed you most, we choose to let go.

God, I know we don't need to forgive you, but sometimes in our brokenness we misconstrue our feelings as feelings of hurt, abandonment, or anger towards you.

In this moment, would you forgive us?

May we choose to let go.

May we let go of what we're holding on to because what we're holding on to is holding us back.

So, God, we trust you in this moment.

We thank you.