Wednesday 7/22/26 - The Call To Samaria - Pastor Bria

People from every nation, >> people from [music] every [singing] nation at home, from generation to generation, [singing] we worship [music] you. Hallelujah. [singing] Hallelujah.

[music] We worship you. Who you are. Sing.

We worship. We worship [music] you. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. [music and singing] Hallelujah. We worship [music] you.

Who you are. You are good. Yes, you are.

Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're so good.

So good. So good. Yes, you are.

Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Help me sing.

You are good. All the time. All the time.

You are good. You are good. All the time.

Yes. All the time you are. Lift your voice [singing] and say, "You are good." >> All the time.

>> All the time. >> Oh, you are good. [singing] You are good.

All the time. All the time. You [music] are good, [singing] Lord.

You are good and your mercy [music] endure it forever. [singing] Lord, you are good and your mercy [music and singing] endureth forever. Lord, you are [music] good.

>> Lord, you are good and your mercy endures forever. >> Your mercy endures, [singing and music] Lord. Lord, you are good and your mercy endureth forever.

[singing] [music] People from every nation, people from every nation [music] and [singing] tongue, from generation to generation, [music] we worship [singing] you. Sing hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. We worship [music and singing] you. who you are.

We worship [music and singing] you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

We [music and singing] worship you for who you are. For who you are. For who you [music] are.

And you are good. Come on, can you clap your hands? Can you give God praise if you [music] believe that this evening?

He's a good God. We thank you, Lord. We praise you, Lord.

You've been so good to us, God. You've been so good to us, God. >> Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you Jesus.

Thank you Jesus. I love you Lord for your mercy never fails me. All [singing and music] my days I've been held in your hands.

From the moment that I [singing] wake up until I lay my head. Oh, I will [music and singing] sing of the goodness of God. Because all my life, all my life, you have been faithful.

[music and singing] >> Yes, you have, God. All my life [singing] you have been so so good. Every [singing] breath that I [music] am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.

I love your voice. [singing and music] You have led [singing] me through the fire. In darkest nights, you are close [music and singing] like no other.

I've known you as [singing] a father and I've [music] known you as a friend. [singing] Oh, and I have lived in the goodness of God. Come on, let's sing together.

All my life, all my life, you have been [music and singing] faithful. Oh yes, you have. [music] All my life, you have been so so [singing] good.

With every breath that I am [music and singing] able, oh I will sing of the goodness [music and singing] of God. Your goodness is running [singing] after running after me. [music] Your goodness is running after.

It's running after me. With my life laid down, I'm [music] surrendered now. I give you everything.

Your [music] goodness is running after. It's running after me. Yes, it is, God.

[music] Your goodness is running after. >> It's running after running after me. >> Your [music] goodness, Lord.

Your goodness is running after. It's running after me. With my life laid down, I'm surrender now.

I give you everything. Your goodness is running [music and singing] after. It's running after me.

[music] Oh my. You have been faithful. [music and singing] Yes, you have God.

All my life, you have been so so [singing] good. Every [music] breath [singing] that I am able, oh, I will sing of the goodness [music] [singing] of God. Can we just take a few moments right now and just think back over our lives?

Maybe over the past week or the past month or maybe over the past decade [music] of all the things that God's brought us through, of all the things that God's done for us, every time [music] he's been faithful to us, every time he's answered prayer. Can we just take a moment and just reflect on that for just a few moments? And can we give God praise [music] for everything he's done?

Lord, you've been so good to us, God. You've been so faithful to us, Jesus. Lord, you haven't left us and you haven't forsaken us.

Lord, you haven't put on us much more than we can bear, God. You've always made a way of escape for us, [music] God. And we thank you for it this evening.

We praise you for it, God. You're worthy. You're worthy.

You're worthy, God. [music and singing] You're worthy, God. >> Hallelujah.

[music] Hallelujah. Oh my life. Oh, all my life you have [music] been faithful.

[singing] Yes, you have God. All my life. [singing] All [music] my life you have been so so [singing] good with every breath.

Every [music] breath that I am able, I'm going to sing. >> I will sing [singing] >> of the goodness of God. I [singing and music] will sing >> of the goodness of God.

>> I will sing. [singing] >> I will sing of the goodness of God. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. You are so good. Thank you Lord.

You are so good. That God is so good. God is [music] so [singing] good.

God is so [singing] good. He's so good to me. Sing that one more time.

God is so good. >> God is so good. God is [singing and music] so good.

>> God is so good. >> He's so good to me. Thank you Jesus.

Thank you for your presence, sweet Lord, for being rich in mercy. Lord, thank you for coming to visit us on [music] this Wednesday night to give us peace beyond our own understanding. Lord, peace that passes all understanding.

Lord, I pray that there would be a spiritual awakening in our hearts, Lord, to your presence in this place. That our problems would melt away. that our troubles would disappear even just for a moment.

Lord, as we enter into your throne room, Lord, the place where you reign. The place where you reign, Lord, where we are safe beyond our wildest imaginations. Whereas your presence protects us.

where there is no guile, there is no divisions, there is no bitterness or hatred, there is no sin that we dwell with, Lord, but you reign supreme. Let us sense it for a second, Lord. Let us sense another world.

Let your spirit awaken it in us, Lord, like only it can. We're grateful, Jesus. We're grateful.

We're grateful for all your blessings and grateful for this moment that only you can provide for us, Lord. Only you can do this. Thank you, Jesus.

Amen. Oh, isn't it good to be in the Lord's presence in his throne room? There is no safety in this world like the safety that we have in God's presence.

And I'm so grateful. Um, in just a few moments we'll we'll uh go to the word. But it just feels so good to be in the Lord's presence.

And I feel like it'd be real good if we shook each other's hand, tell each other we love each other, and just connect with one another for a moment before the preaching of the word. Well, if y'all want to start returning back to y'all's seats, [snorts] God for all you folks coming out on this Wednesday night. Um, you may be seated.

So, they we have a the Hendersons are with us tonight and Sister Gloria told me that his uh Dave Young is here and I'm like, "Okay, great. I'm go back and introduce myself." Well, he's coming in now. So, anyway, Sister Gloria uh introduced uh the Henderson's she said Dave Young's here.

So I go back and I shake his hand like, "Oh, you're Dave Young, right?" So anyways, his name's Dave. Um, so forgive me for botching your name. I'm so sorry.

Uh, but anyways, so glad y'all are here and appreciate y'all coming to be with us and every one of you that take time out of your Wednesdays. It always brings me a lot of joy and encouragement to see you coming out in your work clothes. Um, I know people plow and work hard to get here and it's just real precious to be with God's people.

Uh before I start today, I would like to read to you uh an excerpt. It's it's um it's from a commencement speech um several years ago. I I read this to the church, so it might sound somewhat familiar to you or it might just be familiar to you because uh at some point you might have um heard it yourself.

It's from Justice John Roberts. Uh he did a speech for his son's high school graduation and he uh said this and I I like his words. He says uh there is no doubt that many um I'm sorry I should read it like this.

He said now commencement speakers will typically wish you good luck and extend you good wishes. He says I will not do that and I'll tell you why. He says from time to time in the years to come I hope you'll be treated unfairly so that you'll come to know the value of justice.

I hope that you'll suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. And I'm sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don't take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck again from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then that your opponent will gloat over your failure. It's a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you'll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others.

And I hope you'll have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish you these things or not, they're going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend on upon your ability to see the message and your misfortunes.

Read you that last line one more time. Whether I wish you these things or not, they are going to happen. They're a fact of life.

They're as true as a sun rising. and whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes. John Roberts is alluding to the reality that our lives, all of us in this place, they're full of setbacks, challenges, troubles.

And that is our topic for today is adversity. In particular, praying through adversity. To be specific, we'll examine the prophet Habach's prayer while facing some of the most difficult adversity that you can possibly face.

And of course, my prayer for the church, as it always is, is that the Lord will bless you with the words that I'm going to speak to you. And that you will look on God's word with imagination. the kind of imagination that sees what your life could be like if you will believe these words.

That you'll put your all your stock in them. That you'll soak in them, meditate on them, and watch them come true in your own life. Now, in this room specifically, there is no doubt, I brought it up this past, maybe it was this past Sunday or the Sunday, the Sunday before that in every single room, there's going to be people that are facing difficulty, challenges, pain, and this will come from a lot of different places.

So, it's important to always know that challenges come from different directions. Sometimes it might come from your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends might be the trouble in your life, your spouse, might be your marriage, your job. It might be financially related, emotional, or mental.

You might constantly be dealing with your emotions from things in the past. Kind of that past that consistently haunts you. It chases you like a wild man that you cannot escape.

might be your own fault. Might come from bad decisions that you made. You might be reaping the harvest of bad decisions that you've made.

It's my prayer that we will see the good news through the life of this man who saw adversity just like you and I called Habach. I want to read you this text from him. It's Habach 1 uh chapter 1:es 2-4.

I'll read you his prayer. He says, "Oh Lord, how long shall I cry and thou will not hear? Even cry unto thee of violence and thou will not save." That's a prayer that's been prayed for a long time and waiting for an answer.

Oh Lord, how long shall I cry and you don't hear? Even cry unto thee of violence and you will not save. In other words, I'm not asking you to like, you know, get rid of the cough.

I I got a bad cough. Lord has healed me of this cough. Violence even unto cry unto thee violence and you don't save.

Why? Why dust thou show me iniquity and cause me to behold grievance? For spoiling and violence are before me, and there are that arise up strife and contention.

Therefore the law is slacked and judgment doth never go forth. For the wicked doth compass about the righteous. Therefore wrong judgment proceedth.

In other words, the wicked are winning. So how are we supposed to come to the conclusion that doing right is beneficial? See Habach was confused.

Doesn't take very long as a Christian to understand that just because you serve Jesus, your life just doesn't become a bed of roses. Your problems aren't going to disappear. What Christianity does for us, every one of us in this room, is it solves your greatest problem, the ultimate problem.

It brings you back into relationship with your creator. It restores your soul. It brings you from death to life and life more abundantly.

It heals the relationship with the very one that formed you. Here's what it doesn't do. It doesn't make life cease from being life.

Life still has its setbacks. It still has its challenges. And any of you and most of you that have served the Lord more than five minutes, you know this.

You kind of come in, you're exuberant when you serve the Lord. And you come in and you just think to yourself, the rest of my life is just going to feel like cloud9. And then suddenly life hits you in the face.

And you realize that very quickly life doesn't see cease being life. But but the difference is you got Jesus. You got him with you.

But with the new life that you have, the Christian life, there comes an entirely new set of problems that you didn't have when you didn't know him. Questions arise that were not relevant before you knew him. Why do bad things happen to good people and why did the wicked prosper?

Unbelievers don't have to ask that. Atheists don't have to worry about that. It's just time and chance happened to all.

It's just the randomness of the universe. Why isn't the Lord hearing my prayers? Atheists don't have to think that.

Lord, when I'm working the hardest for you, like I'm I'm really I'm giving my all. I'm seeking you. I'm desperate for you.

I mean, I'm going after it. I know when I'm mailing it in. I know when I'm on cruise control in my work walk with God, but but when I'm really really going for it, why is it that many times that's when I'm experiencing the worst from others?

Explain that, Lord. A real Christian life has adversity. And adversity brings with it questions.

Challenges bring questions. And I'm grateful that the Bible welcomes them. See, we get entire books in the Bible that give us permission to explore these questions.

And the most obvious that comes to mind, of course, is the story of Job. It's a poetic masterpiece. It's a gift from God to the church to help us with adversity.

But more obscure and less known is this prophet Habach, a man who also gives us permission to ask these questions. In fact, he becomes our voice to God when we have these questions. So, let me tell you a little bit about who he is because he is rather obscure.

And then I want to tell you a story. See, the Old Testament has four major prophets. It's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel.

You know why they're called the major prophets? They're longer books. That's it.

They're not more special. Their messages aren't necessarily more or less important. They're just longer books.

Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, they have longer books, but there are 12 minor prophets in the Old Testament. Their prophecies are found in the second division of the Hebrew Bible. And they're treated really as one book.

The the Hebrew would have considered the 12 prophets just one package of books, but they would have called it like one book. They're called the book of the 12. They're small.

They're difficult to place. I could throw out some fake names and you wouldn't be a 100% sure whether or not that was one of the books or not. The book of Hezekiah.

Does that sound right? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not.

Yeah, good call. But their messages are typically corresponding the time they live in, just like all the other uh prophets. And they're difficult to place.

Sometimes we don't know exactly who their audience was, what time period they lived in, how their message corresponded to Israel, what it means to us today. Sometimes it's difficult to know all of that. But please do not let that be a reason to dismiss them, to study them because they offer gorgeous pictures of the gospel.

Jonah's story. Take for instance the runaway prophet who God pursues. His prayer of repentance in the belly of the whale is one of the most beautiful in all of scripture.

Hosea's pursuit of goomer. You remember that one made visible by Francine Waters book redeeming love. That's was kind of her book was based off of the book.

Hosea's refusal to let her die as a slave. His pursuit of her was remarkable. Amos's pursuit of justice.

When Martin Luther King was trying to get America to wake up to what justice was, you know who he quoted? He quoted Amos, the great prophet of justice. These are there's gold in these books.

And one of my pray my favorites is Habach. One of the reasons why we don't talk about him very much is because we really don't know much about the prophet. He's just the prophet with the funny name.

He was contemporary of Jeremiah, kind of served at the same time of Jeremiah. He was a prophet in Judah or the southern kingdom. He was active around 600 years before Christ.

That's kind of his time. But we know him primarily through what he said. The most we know about him is through his book itself and what he said.

And the form and the content of Habach is very unique. It's three short chapters. The first two chapters are a dialogue between Habach and God and that's followed up by a hymn or a song.

That's it. That's all there is to the book to the book. A conversation between he and God and a hymn.

And it's unique. The book's unique and it feels unique when you read it because instead of speaking to the people for God, Habach is speaking to God for the people. In other words, he becomes our voice.

He is our voice like Job. He says the things that we wish we could say to God that we wonder, should I say this to God? He becomes that voice, what we would like to say.

And here is what he faced and what he saw based on his conversation with God. He looks around Judah and he looks at the people of God. And this is what he sees when he looks at the people of God.

He sees that the most wicked people in Judah, the worst of people, the people that are the least righteous, you know what they are? They're the most prosperous. He's looking at God's people, the most violent of, and by the way, this is God's people, the most violent of them, the most destructive, the most contentious, the most uh evil or wicked amongst them, and they are the most prosperous, and they are the most successful.

That's upside down. Especially Old Testament, you know, you sew the seed of righteousness and it grows and you reap the rewards. You know, when they did bad things or evil things in the Old Testament, it seems like God was always there to make sure they fixed it.

You know, Kora gathered up the wrong things. Uh uh I think, forgive me, I think Kora gathered. No, Kora rebelled against Moses.

They split the earth and Cora just falls down into the earth. God seems to take care of things right away, but not now. Not at this moment.

The wicked are just like flourishing and heaven's just silent. And he says to God, "Are you indifferent about this? Don't Don't you see what's going on?

Can't you see? Don't you care? I mean, God, like every good prophet, I want to turn this ship around.

I want to turn it back to you. I want TO GET IT GOING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. I want to wake people up.

But how am I supposed to do that when you're allowing the wicked people to be blessed? God, I'm working hard here, but it ain't turning. The ship's going in the wrong direction.

And he finds himself in the exact state of mind that many of us find ourselves in when we are facing this kind of adversity. Confused Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear me? Even a cry out unto thee of violence.

Again, not small prayers. Lord, not asking you to heal me of a cold. I'm asking you to do something about violence and you don't save.

See, this lament would have sounded familiar to the Jewish cries during the Holocaust or to the slaves in pre-Ivil War America. Lord, how long will I cry and you will not hear? Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to behold grievance?

for spoiling and violence are before me. There's strife and there's contention and they're winning. Therefore, the law was weak.

The law was slacked. The law is supposed to be the mechanism that corrects us. But for whatever reason, there is no correction.

Judgment is the correction. And he says, "Judgment never goes forth. It's all wrong, God.

It's wrong." I like the way Philip says it. He says, "The earlier prophets had preached against the same sins, but now a century later, the wickedness that had invited the Assyrian invasion was crying again to high heaven for another visitation of wrath." The sinning seemed to go on and on and on, age after age, generation after generation. No wonder Habach asked, "How long shall I cry?" And if you think the silent treatment from heaven was bad, the answer from the Lord was even more unpalatable.

This is what God's answer was to Habach. I'm going to take the Calaldanss, Babylonians. I'm going to raise them up and I'm going to let them take you, God's people, into slavery.

What? Lord, just fix us now. Deliver us now.

Just bring judgment now. Fix it. Sort it all out now.

Just take care of it now. No. So the wicked nation is going to prosper over us.

Not only are the wicked people amongst us going to be the most prosperous, but now this wicked nation of Babylon is going to profit over us. Prophet was confused. I don't get it, Lord.

I thought you had a special people that you wanted to be blessed. And I'm crying out to you, asking you to do something about it. and you seem to be indifferent.

See, a crisis of faith is what happens when your ideas about God collide with the reality of your circumstances. Like you just know you know God works like this. I know I know it.

I I know he's going to do this. I'm gonna faith hard enough. I'm going to pray hard enough.

I'm going to twist his arm with prayer and I'm gonna get my way and heaven is silent. Your prayers don't seem like they go above the ceiling. See, God seems so predictable that way, doesn't he?

Until he's not. Seems so sure. I'll never forget when I was like 14 years old, I was talking to one of my friends about healings and we were having a discussion about somebody and um I I somebody specifically was praying for healing and I just said his illusion or his conversation he alluded to the fact that well they just didn't have enough faith and I I just asked him I was like hey so so you mean to tell me you just think that the reason why they're not healed is because they don't have enough faith said They had enough faith the Lord would heal them.

Many of you in here this place that walked in limped into this place with your aching bodies know better than that. But a 14 or 15 year old I didn't know that. Just remember being like so so you're saying that because someone isn't healed it's because they don't have enough faith.

Yeah, that's right. See, several years later, I watched this same guy who had uh his wife was having problems in her pregnancy. This is when we kind of grew up a little bit later as adults and uh she was having problems in her pregnancy.

And I I watched him pray and pray and pray that the Lord was going to heal his baby. And he had a prophet come and prophesy to him that his baby was going to be healed. And he lost the baby.

He was confused because a crisis of faith is what happens when your ideas about God. They collide with the reality of your circumstances. God doesn't work the way you thought he did.

And because it doesn't work the way you thought he did, everything starts to unravel with it. Adversity causes confusion. I read a sermon from Charles Spurgeon and it's it's a message he had on adversity.

And there's a good reason for us to be confused about adversity. Like any good Puritan preacher that come before him, he preached like 30 point sermons. I mean, he would just stand up there and preach for hours.

If you guys think I preach a long time on Wednesday nights or if you think I get carried away sometimes, Puritans would just preach a couple hours, you know? They would just go through the Bible and like plug away and like they looked at every word and they would be like so you know and 'the' and they'd be like so the here means this and they would just kind of like work uh you know hard through scripture but he he preached a sermon he called it the sweet uses of adversity and it's a Bible study on adversity and the way it's explained in scripture and here's his point. Okay, God uses adversity to to show us his glory.

Okay, God's going to be glorified in our adversity. He uses it to develop your character. He uses it to expose secret sin in your life that you're unaware of.

He uses it to share your sufferings in Christ to become a picture of him. As you suffer, you become a picture of Christ. He uses it to humble you.

If you're proud and you need to be abased, he'll use adversity to humble you. And that's just the Christian list. He has an entirely other list for unbelievers.

So this brings questions, right? So God uses it to show his glory. God uses it to develop his character.

God uses it to expose secret sin. And this exposes all sorts of questions. Is this my fault when I face adversity?

Is this someone else's fault? Is God teaching me something? What is he teaching me?

Am I just so holy like I'm just so holy that I can handle it and I'll be the one that shows God glory? Or am I so sinful that God's got to expose my secret sin? Which is it, God?

and you get the adversity and you get silence from heaven. Which is it? I don't know.

You're not not likely to know the answers to any of it and you're confused. See, we had this sense within ourselves that if we only had more information. If if I just knew it would all make sense, if if we just knew what God knew, then I would be okay.

In fact, I think it's true. I think it's true. One of my favorite quotes about prayer is this.

I quote it here a lot. God answers every prayer exactly the way we would want him to answer it if we knew everything that he knew. That's one of my favorite quotes.

God answers every prayer exactly the way that we would want him to answer it if we knew everything that he knew. The trouble is we aren't God. We aren't meant to know everything.

Our brains, they don't have enough horsepower. So we have to accept this cold hard reality of not knowing and that is difficult. Not knowing is a part of the Christian experience.

It always has been. It was even a part of the early church. I mentioned Stephen last week when I was talking about the book of Acts and his death.

See, the early church had no idea, no idea that Steven's death would be the catalyst for the gospel going to the rest of the world. They didn't know that God used this tragic death, this gift of a human being. I mean, there's hardly anybody like Stephen in the New Testament.

Again, his face shown. There's three people in scripture that their face shown. Stephen, Moses, and Jesus.

That's it. It's a party of three. And God used this man's tragic death to force the early church out of Jerusalem and into the rest of the world.

They didn't know that. All they know is that he got stoned to death and his last moments were him being piled st or stones piled upon him. And when they came to church, there was an empty seat in their church where Steven used to sat.

That's all they knew. They didn't know that. Job had no idea of God's conversation in heaven.

None. Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him.

He just knew in a short span his life had fallen apart. He lost everything. And to add to the confusion, his friends were there to tell him, to pile onto him, you know, if you'd done things a little bit differently, Job, if you do things or you'd view things like this, it would all be better.

Job had no idea the conversation about him in heaven where the Lord said, "There's no one like him." John the Baptist is in a prison cell awaiting his death. He's lost his ministry. He's lost his freedom.

He's lost his future. And he's having a crisis of faith. Are we sure this is him?

Are we sure this is the Messiah? This is the thundering prophet, the one who stood in the face of everyone and preached that thundering prayer of repentance. And he's now in a prison cell waiting to get his head chopped off for the Lord.

That's how it's going to end for him. He he his his conversation was I must decrease so Jesus can increase. He understood his role and everybody went and slapped him on the back and said there's better things for you on the next horizon.

No, there wasn't. He had hit the apex. Now he was just going to go to his head chopped off.

That was what was in store for him. He's in prison waiting on this and he says, "Are we sure this is him?" And he has no idea that behind his back Jesus is saying, "There is no one like John. No one.

There's no prophet like him." John never knew it. So, he was confused. But what we learn in Habach's dialogue with God is that given enough time, there will be a message in your adversity.

There's something that we will learn. Habach does something remarkable. He says in chapter 2, and one, I love this.

He says, "I'm going to stand on a wall. I'm going to go stand on a wall and I want a better answer. I want a better answer.

Lord, this makes no sense because somewhere in all this, there's got to be some good news. You got to give me just some good. I don't I don't need this all to be fixed in my lifetime, but you have to give me some good news in all of this.

However long it takes, now or later, stubborn faith. And I love two and two. And the Lord answered me, "Write the vision.

Make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end, and it will not lie.

There's a message. It's coming. It seems slow, but wait for it.

It says, "The message seems slow, but wait for it. It surely will come, and it will not delay. Behold, his soul, he's speaking to the unrighteous, is puffed up, and it's not upright within him." Listen to these words.

But the righteous shall live by his faith. Take your eyes off of the circumstances. Don't look on the outside.

Look on your faith. It's not It's not what you think it is. It seems upside down, but that's it's not.

It It is the faith. The arrogant, prideful soul will die. All these apparent winners will die.

But those that have faith in him will live. It's upside down, Habach. It is.

It's upside down. But give it some time and it will work itself out. You know, you know when Paul stood up and he he or those I I should say, you know those uh the reformers like uh Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, the reformers, they stood up against that like wicked Catholic church, you know, they were there to go correct the church that had been corrupted.

You remember what they pounded and they you remember the message that they had? The righteous shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith alone.

They weren't quoting Paul. They were quoting Paul quoting Habach. But you don't get that without going through major adversity.

without finding a message in your misfortune. Trust God. I love Philip's words here.

[snorts] The silence of God has given many an ungodly sinner an excuse to blasphe and many a weary believer the temptation to give up his faith. Habach learned that when the saint asks how long, God simply says, "Trust me." Trust me. [snorts] Habach takes one final step that I want to point out to you.

Uh because he has this beautiful word from the Lord. He has this message in his misfortune. But now he's got to live in the middle of this chaos.

He's got to live out the rest of his life knowing that things are going to get worse before they get better. And he writes a song. It's a beautiful song.

It's a prayer. I hope that you go to Habach and read chapter 3 uh this week. If you're facing adversity in this p place today, and I really believe you do.

I felt a strong inspiration in my spirit uh to share this message with you tonight. Somebody in this place is facing something. I hope I hope you go read chapter three when you're confused and you're just wondering which way's up and which way's down and you have spiritual vertigo and you can't tell right from left.

Sometimes you just got to grab a song and you have to sing a song. It sounds overly simplified. It sounds like something some forget the term ignorant old-timer would say, but it's true.

Sometimes you just have to say, "I got a song. I'm worship the Lord. I'm going to hang on to the Lord.

I'm going to accept that he's in control. I'm going to sing and I'm going to sing and I'm going to sing and the joy of the Lord is going to become my salvation." So please in this place today, don't miss the message in your misfortune. Keep praying in your adversity.

Prayer and worship is the way that we survive. We don't survive on our personal strength. This isn't humanism like, "Let me trick you into some sort of mind tricks where you think you're strong." No, we're not strong.

We're weak. Our faith and our confidence is one is in one who is strong. What we must do when we don't know up from down, left from right, is continue to trust the Lord, continue to pray to him, and continue to put our time and our confidence in him.

Even when your praise prayers sound like Habachics, it wasn't pretty, was it? How long God sounded a little frustrating? Our frustrations need not be to people.

It's okay to vent. Most of our frustrations, most of our energy should be put in our prayers towards God. He could take it.

He could take it. Will you stand with me? Let's pray the Lord would help us and pray for somebody in this place today.

We pray pray for people in our congregation that are struggling that the Lord would give them strength and that we would be a source of strength to them. Lord, thank you for the privilege of your word. Thank you for this opportunity, Lord, to be together with the body of believers, Lord, to know that you're with us, that you're faithful, that you're rich in mercy, that we can trust you, Lord.

I pray Jesus that you minister to everyone under the sound of my voice today that you help them give them strength even Lord if they're confused if they don't know up from down if they can't see left from right Lord I pray Jesus that their guidance would come through prayer that their strength would come through a song worship to you Lord praise to you meditation thinking on that which is good trusting your fa faithfulness and your goodness, that you're rich in mercy, and that even in things that we don't understand right now, Lord, that given enough time, they're going to make sense. And we can trust you, Lord, that you are good and that you're going to bring us through it, Lord. That our faith, that our faith is what's going to save us, Lord.

Not our present circumstances. Our faith is what's going to justify us. Our faith, Lord, is what's going to take us through things, Lord.

Not our our strength, not our own wisdom or intellect, Lord, but our trust and our confidence in you as being a faithful creator. Our seeking your face, Lord, grabbing a hold of you and saying, "God, I'm going to stand on this wall. I'm going to stand here, Lord.

I know my answer isn't to run away. My answer isn't to go in the wrong direction, but I I I don't know where to go. So, I'm just simply going to stand.

I'll stand here. Lord, stand in confidence. Lord, and put my faith and my trust in you, Jesus.

I love you very much, Lord. I'm so grateful for this body of believers, Lord. I pray that you would pour out your blessings on my brothers and sisters.

Help them as they go through their work weeks. Lord, give them joy and peace or bless them. Bless them in every way, Lord.

Give them what they need, Lord. You know exactly all of our needs in this place today. I pray that you bless them, Lord, and bless us so we can be a blessing to the world, Lord.

Not for ourselves, Lord. But bless us, Jesus. Bless us with joy.

Bless us with satisfaction. Bless us with your spirit. Bless us with guidance and direction.

Bless us with resources. Bless us with all the things that you want to give us, Lord. You know what we need, but bless us, Lord, so we can be a blessing to others.

Help us, Jesus, to be a light in this dark world. We love you, and we're grateful for all you do for us. in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. God bless you. Thank you all so much.