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on Wednesday night. Some people having to come in from work and get here a little bit late, so there's been several come in after we started. So, why don't we just take a moment and let's just walk around and greet one another here.

Greet your brothers and sisters. Welcome them into the house of the Lord. >> Amen.

>> All right. You can start making your way back to your seats. Good to hear everybody getting along.

All right. So again, so glad to have you here. I'm going to turn the word of the Lord here.

We're going to read from Psalm 13. You can You can keep seated and remainders seated there. That's fine.

Psalm 13, beginning with verse number one. It says, "How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, oh Lord my God.

Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemy say, I have prevailed against him. Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I'm moved.

But I have trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

And um I kind of changed it up a little bit here. Most of you know you've heard me talk about this before, but I usually try to read the Bible through every year. This year I decided just I started out.

I got into it for a few weeks and I just said, "You know what? I'm just going to kind of slow down here and just rather try to digest certain segments and just kind of chew on that maybe a day or two, you know. Uh changed it up just a little bit this year, but I started reading through the Psalms.

I just thought, "You know what? I'm just going to go to the book of Psalms." And uh so that's kind of led to where I'm at here tonight. I started noticing some things about the Psalms uh that I want to use kind of as an introduction here tonight, but you know, there's there's transparency in the Psalms.

Transparency, you know, it's you know, you know, our our way of communicating around here. Even when you're going around visiting here, you know, uh uh tonight, you know, "How are you?" "Oh, fine." Not really much of an in-depth conversation. But this is the normal interchange between friends and acquaintances uh as we pass each other by, right?

Uh we're very accustomed to clichés. And that's the something that kind of stood out to me thinking about the book of Psalms and our life today, the contrast from the Psalms to normal life today and then the word came to me cliches. A cliche is defined as an overused expression or idea.

It also means a person or character whose behavior is superficial. Superficial means near the surface. Not much depth there.

So, we've grown used to cliches being a way of life in this age of technology. It saturates it it permeates our sentences, our paragraphs, our conversations here, but if if this is the essence of our communication, then I can't help but feel that our relationships will be a little more shallow and superficial as well. Now, hear me here.

In in reality, it's only when this is okay you I realize I'm a man here. You I'm entitled to my opinion. You're entitled to yours, but I want to share my opinion here right now.

That is that it's only when honest feelings and emotions are shared that people can really be known, loved, and helped. And what's most concerning is that if we're not careful our prayer time, our our time talking to God can become simply superficial communication. Just rinse and repeat of the same phrases that sound appropriate for prayer.

We can easily slide through well-worn lines recited for decades or we can quickly just kind of toss in a cliche or two to God and call it prayer. But, you know what? God knows us.

And he desires for us to have a genuine, honest, deep, transparent communication with him. And at the center of our Bible here, at the center of our Bible is the book of Psalms. And the book of Psalms, you know what I It just came to me as I was reading it through.

You know what the The book of Psalms is just raw. It's raw. In this book, we find the whole range of human experiences, human emotions put out on display.

This book holds no cliches. Now, David, the other writers that wrote these Psalms that we have recorded here, they poured out their true feelings, their emotions. They didn't hold anything back.

And it actually reveals their life-changing friendship and trust with the creator of the universe. The psalmists, they confess their sins to God. And then they What really struck me, you know what?

They're confessing their sins here, and they actually write it down. All these thousands of years, we've got record of everybody confessing their sins. How many of you would want to people reading all that you're confessing and repenting about?

But the psalmists, they expressed their doubts, they expressed their fears. They asked God for help in their times of trouble. They get very, very specific about what they're afraid of, what they're feeling.

But they also offer their praise and their worship to him through it all. So, as you read the Psalms, you'll hear believers, God-fearing people, crying out to God from the depths of despair and most likely times of depression. And you'll also hear them singing to him from a heart full of love and worship in the same prayer session.

Like we read here, Psalm 13. I'll get to this in just a moment here, but but whether the writers are despairing or rejoicing, You'll always hear them sharing honest feelings with God. No cliches.

And what I want you to understand tonight is that it is because of the honesty expressed by these writers that men and women throughout history, including you and me, we have come again and again and again to the book of Psalms for comfort during times of struggle. If they had been living a clichéd life, how would we be deprived today? So, let's consider here.

Consider how we would be deprived here. If someone would not have been brutally honest and and avoided a life of cliches, so my my title here for the next few moments is the blessing from the struggle. Helen Keller said the struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings.

It makes us patient, sensitive, and even God-like. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it's also full of the overcoming of it. So, struggles in life are inevitable.

But you know what? Quitting in the struggle is optional. The dictionary defines struggle as a forceful or a violent effort to get free of restraint.

Also means an effort to resist attack. So, in the Christian context here, that can easily be applied to a struggle to free ourselves from sin, but also a struggle to resist the attacks of our enemy. And I can just remind you here, we've all got one, right?

We've all got an enemy here. And throughout my walk with God, I've experienced various kinds of struggles, and I know you have too here. Times there's been a a disconnect.

At times there seems to be a disconnect between what God said and what I seem to be experiencing. Can anybody relate? The process to the promise is usually not clearly defined and laid out for us in advance.

That's why we have to learn to walk by faith, right? But what I've learned is that we live between the word spoken and the word actualized in our lives. And it's at that in-between place that we become that we become a that becomes a place of struggle.

Struggle is a natural part of the human existence. We struggle with people. We struggle with ourselves.

And if we're really, really honest, then sometimes we probably all struggle with God. We struggle with sin and temptation. We struggle with our emotions.

We struggle with who God says we are and what we see ourselves as. We struggle with forgiveness. Not only the others who have hurt us, but sometimes we struggle with being able to forgive ourselves.

We struggle with the old me, the right now me, and the future me. We struggle with turning the other cheek. Video circulating out here right now, you know?

But the reality is we we struggle. We're We struggle with turning the other cheek. We struggle with when asked to go 1 mile, we ought to be willing to volunteer to go second mile.

And today we struggle pretty deeply with even being willing to go that one mile. We struggle with what Jesus teaches us in Matthew. Let's look at Matthew chapter 5 verses 43 and 44 says, "You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." That's quite a quite a change-up for what was normal. And it sets at times it's a struggle to maintain Christian etiquette, Christian conduct in an increasingly un-Christian world.

Because we live in a fallen world, many times it seems that nothing works the way it's supposed to. Sin has stained every part of the physical realm. Sin has deeply infected the human existence.

Reality is things break, our bodies wear out, we grow old, we die. People kill each other. Marriages fall apart.

People get addicted to drugs, to alcohol, to sex, to pornography. Sometimes all four at the same time. Some people are not addicted to drugs, but they they live a life that's addicted to drama.

Some people are addicted to lying. And the list could just go on and on and on. Reality is our friends disappoint us.

But don't stop there, because the reality is sometimes we disappoint our friends. Physically, financially, morally, and relationally, and spiritually, we have to accept the reality of struggle for survival at times. And again, it It stems from sin and from the influence of our enemy the devil here.

Pastor Allen, I hope I'm okay here tonight because this sounds really depressing, don't it? >> [laughter] >> We'll turn it around in a moment, but he just said it. Man, you can really start start it.

It seems like everybody's happy here tonight. I said, "Well, I hope I don't mess that up." Genesis 3:17 says, "And then to Adam he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten the tree of which I commanded you saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sakes. In toil you shall eat it all the days of your life." Let's read this from the New Living Translation because it says the New Living Translation says, "And to the man he said, since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you.

All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it." Struggle seems to be embedded in our spiritual DNA. Abraham struggled with God's timing. Result?

Ishmael. Gideon struggled with who God said Gideon was. We can read this here.

Let's look at Judges 6:11 says, "Now the angel of the Lord came sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah and which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. [clears throat] Uh while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the wine press in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, 'Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor.'" And I've thought about this before, you know, he his image of who he thinks he is and he's hiding.

Then the angel said, "You mighty man of valor." He's probably looking around saying, "Who's he talking to?" And Gideon said to him, "My Lord, if the Lord is with us if the Lord is with us, then why is all this happened to us? That's how we act when we're in the struggle mode. Why is this going on?

And where are all his miracles which our fathers told us about saying, "Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?" Because now the Lord has forsaken us. Delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. In verse 14, the Lord turned and said to him, "Go in this might of yours and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Have I not sent you?" So, he said to him, "Oh, my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my father's house." He's struggling with believing he's who God said he was. And just like Moses, sometimes we struggle with a perceived impediment or a perceived limitation that we feel will justify us.

Sometimes we're looking for that impediment because we want to be justified. Well, I don't have to accept responsibility. But again, like Moses, all the while God is saying, "I know who you are.

I'm the one that got you in this." So, hear me right now. Our struggle is critical to our success. If you want to soar with wing eagles' wings here, you you you you have to successfully navigate seasons of struggle.

And without our struggle or with our struggle, rather with our struggle comes revelation. Because it's in the struggle that we can find out just how awesome and how powerful God is. Please don't misunderstand me here because I I I want to say that there is no better life to live than a life that's pleasing to God.

Amen. I I totally totally totally surrendered life to God is the best life there is. Daniel 11:32, but the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.

Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 1 John 4:4, you are of God, little children, have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. That's who we need to convince ourselves of who we really are.

And then there's also all these oppressions, all these things from the outside, but there's also an inner struggle. So, not only do we have outer struggles in life, but we also have inner struggles. And we are tripartite beings.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 confirms this here. It says, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." So, we're three parts here, you know, we got a spirit. The spirit, the element in humanity that gives us the ability to have an intimate relationship with God.

It's that part of us that connects us with God. Things that flow out of our spirit are faith, and hope, and prayer, and worship, our reverence for the things of God. And when we're born again of water and spirit, our spirit man is reconnected to God.

The new birth. But then we also have a body, we know that, that's what connects us to the world around us, our five senses, what we see, what we touch. It's our physical realm.

But then when we get to the soul, spirit, body, and soul, there's that middle element called the soul. It's It's what stands between our spirit man and our physical man. Think of the soul, I guess you could say is a bridge between the body and the spirit.

The soul is removed at the time of our physical death. As I was said before here, you know, where it said this at funerals a lot of times, we're we're not a body with a soul, we're a soul with a body. The soul is eternal.

The body's temporary here, but our our out of our soul flows our passions, our our feelings, our emotions, our desires, our affections. So, the soul part of man is what has to be engaged to get into the discipleship process. Because this is why somebody can come to the altar and repent, they can have an experience at the altar, God's spirit just all over them, but then they continue living the same lifestyle.

The altar is a place where we give attention to the spiritual part of man. It just might be that in the past, maybe we've given an incomplete method of spiritual growth, because I've heard it before, and I'm guilty, I guess, but at times we just told people, said, "We just need to get to the altar and pray through again." Just need a good praying through here. That's good.

But that's only dealing with the spiritual part of man. We can't neglect the reprogramming of of the soul, our our personality, the emotions of the personality part of man, if we want to help people. If we want to help people become disciples, we've got to teach them how to deal with the soul.

And since we are emotional creatures, Satan knows that if he can affect our emotions, he's gained a greater degree of influence. Hence, the struggle. Actually, our soul, not our spirit, is what drives our personality.

It's our will, it's our intellect, it's our personality, who we are. It puts on display how we respond to people and how we respond to circumstances. So, for some people, talking in tongues is not the issue.

That's just our reconnection though. It's our birth certificate. We are reconnected to the family of God, but we come back to him damaged.

People have been molested, they've been abused, they've been lied on. You've been hurt, your identity has been damaged, your personal self-worth has been destroyed, your self-image is damaged, and your dignity has been stolen from you. And as a result, you've lost the ability to trust.

And you know what? A trip to the altar can fix your relationship with God. The same Holy Ghost that regenerates the human spirit wants to gain even greater influence and do a deeper work in the soul.

But here's the problem. For some reason, we thought it was all automatic. Show up, pray through, come to the altar, everything will be all right.

Sometimes we continue to struggle after salvation because we've not allowed the spirit of God to work deep enough in our emotions and affect our soul. We may be saved, but we're still struggling with wounds and temptations and emotional trauma. The devil likes to play on that and he'll tell you that you're not saved because you're still struggling with those things.

Let me tell you tonight here. You may You may not be lost. You're just still being worked on.

You're still in the process of being reprogrammed, reformed. You may be saved, but you're not whole yet. Because to become whole, you got to work on the soul, not just the spiritual man.

Little children's song we used to sing, used to hear it, he's not he's still working on me. Make us make me what I ought to be. And the success in the struggle comes when we realize that we're not lost.

We're not on our way to hell. And God's not mad at me. God just still wants us to remain on the potter's wheel.

Trying to complete the work that he started in our lives. He wants to make us whole. God doesn't just want you to be saved.

He wants you to be whole. But for that to ever be accomplished, we have to submit to the process that involves struggle. Because deliverance according to God's way is twofold.

It it it involves redemption and regeneration. The blood redeems. The spirit adopts.

But how God wants to restore and rebuild rebuild who we are and and who we have become because of the influence of the world. Sin killed the spiritual. But it damaged the emotional.

So salvation in its fullness requires regeneration of your spirit, baptized baptism of the Holy Ghost, but also rebuilding of our personality, our way of thinking, which is an action of the soul. You know, what's a God doesn't Again, God just doesn't want to save you. He wants to make you whole.

But your struggle is simply the method to lead you to greater blessing. It's the process here. The struggle in the Christian life is inevitable.

But it's also very beneficial. And we all want out of it, don't we? As quick as possible, right?

Because there's a blessing but there's a blessing that comes from the struggle. So, the struggle you're in today may be developing the strength you need for tomorrow. It's preparing you for the future that God's got in mind for you.

Caterpillar, we all know the illustration of a caterpillar. It goes through the process of metamorphosis through which it changes from an earthbound crawly creature into a beautiful colorful butterfly. But, the process involves struggle.

If we were to try and help the caterpillar to emerge faster and easier, what we would do is we would we we would shorten that time of struggle, but it would also rob the butterfly of its beauty and its destiny. The struggle is the method of transition. The struggle means you're on your way somewhere more beautiful.

And the devil wouldn't fight you if you were not going somewhere. Amen. The struggle is the evidence that you have the potential to be given a new identity.

The struggle prepares you for your future. The struggle is an indication that transition is in the process. But, there is a blessing from the struggle here.

We can look at Jacob. Let's read Genesis 32 uh verse 24. Then, Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.

Now, when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, "Let me go, for the day breaks." But, he, Jacob, said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." You've got to stay in the struggle to get to the point of blessing. Then, verse 27 continues.

He says, "So, he said to him, 'What's your name?' And he said, 'Jacob.'" And he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have noticed struggled." "You have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed." So, before this moment of struggle, Jacob's character was that of a con artist. A liar, master manipulator, a deceiver. But now he's Israel, or he who struggles with God and prevails.

Jacob has emerged from his struggle with a new identity. An even greater blessing. But you know what?

The result also involved a new way to walk. So, let me tell somebody here tonight. Here, there are those There may be those in this church who are about to emerge from your personal struggle.

Not defeated, but victorious. Amen. You're going to emerge not weakened, but stronger.

Because your struggle is not the destruction of you, but the building of you. Your struggle is not intended to be a new format for your future. That's not the way it's going to be for the from now on.

That's not what God wants for you to be in struggle mode from now on. But the struggle is simply a preparation for your future. Amen.

Amen. Let's just thank him right now. Thank you, Lord, for knowing where we are, who we are, what you have in mind for our future.

Thank you, God. But we get to David's struggle here. David's struggle.

We've all had days, maybe even years, when life just didn't seem to be going in a way that makes any sense. Maybe like me, you've experienced seasons of life, maybe sometimes long and sometimes a little bit shorter, but but seasons when you felt like nothing was working and everything's out of control. It was a struggle.

And Psalm 13 is when we read here in Psalm 13, David is struggling. And this Psalm here, David is all alone. He's momentarily feeling like even God has left him.

And some commentators say that this 1 Samuel chapters 21 and 22 this this time period is when David wrote this Psalm. He's running for his life from Saul. Now, he's rejected by King Achish.

And David is struggling with a dark moment in life. He's in despair. Everything is giving the appearance that he's been abandoned by God.

He's fighting loneliness. He's struggling with the effects of hopelessness. And in his mind, I try to picture it here.

He says, "Thinking, God, I know that Samuel anointed me for greatness. I know what I heard him pray over me. I know the victories you've given me, but right now there seem to be a disconnect between what I heard and what I'm living." And when we read here Psalm 13, we we can read four laments of David in this passage here.

You can hear it here. "How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long shall I take counsel in my soul having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? And you know what?

We can always control We cannot always control what we go through. But we can control how we respond while going through it. We need to be careful though and not allow the struggle to set the spiritual temperature of our soul.

I'm not going to allow what I'm going through to be a roadblock to my breakthrough. I'm going to remind myself daily, I'm coming out of this. I believe my future will be blessed.

I will be stronger, wiser, better prepared for the future because of this. I posted this. I know all you're on Facebook.

I just posted this kind of came to me as I was thinking the other day at my satellite office at Starbucks on Cherry Road. And I I posted out there says the things that broke your heart have the potential to open your eyes. If that be the case, it really wasn't a loss.

So, I've got to understand that the struggle is working for my good. There's a blessing that's coming from the struggle. But it's in the struggle where you choose joy or bitterness, forgiveness or a grudge, trust or doubt, faith or fear, love or hatred, kindness or anger, mercy or revenge, peace or worry, hope or despair.

And as I come to a close here tonight, let me just quickly share with you here four things. Excuse me. Four things that will help you move from struggle to blessed.

Number one, pour into somebody else. That means getting your focus off of yourself. First Samuel 22 verses 1 and 2 here says, David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.

So, when his brothers and all his fathers heard of it, they went down there to him. And everyone everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So, he became captain over them, and there they were about 400 men with him.

And you know, what? The people were struggling just like he was. People in debt, people in distress, and people that are feeling discontent or disoriented, he's struggling himself.

But these people are in worse shape than he is. So, what does he do? He becomes our captain.

All the people who are in counseling, all the people who are in therapy, they went to where David was. And he became captain over them. So, it's in the midst of their struggle, they needed somebody to tell them, "You're going to emerge from this.

This is not your destiny." And the person who is willing to guide and direct them through their struggle was somebody who was struggling himself. And these men may have looked like failures, but God had great plans for them. We know the story here that David's mighty men here that David did not stay in trouble, and neither did these men.

So, what a great transformation here just a few years time. David's men went from being discontented and distressed and disoriented to being honored as mighty men. What would have happened if David would have said, "Guys, I'm sorry.

I can't help you. I'm struggling myself here. I've got my own problems.

I'm trying to work it out myself." What would What would have happened? But it took somebody who was willing to pour into somebody else rather than focusing on themselves and their own problems. And as a result, everybody ended up being blessed.

So, next, if you want your to be blessed from your struggle, number two, live a life of repentance. Live a repentant life. Nearly every one of the people that God has used mightily all had to overcome seasons, usually multiple seasons of struggle and hardship, failure, sin.

They've all been broken somehow, but God helped them through the struggle into an abundantly blessed life, greatly used by him. So, if you're struggling, just be reminded you're in good company. Amen.

Be sure to evaluate your own heart. Repent of any sin. Repent of any wrong attitudes.

Harboring anything in your heart. Anything. Anything that may be hiding in some dark corner of your soul.

If you're going to emerge, you're only going to do it with a clean heart. So, we have we have evolved as sad here, but we've evolved into people of hiders. As I begin this message, I talked about the transparency of the writer of Psalms.

And today, too many people live clichéd lives. We try to hide. We try to ignore.

We try to justify all of our actions, our behaviors. I personally believe that we will not emerge into wholeness until we can be honest. There's a biblical principle that I think we've overlooked or maybe neglected.

James wrote about it. It's called confession. And you know what what you hide, he can't heal.

And the number three, make the transition from fear to faith. Because verse five here, David made the transition. Here he's talking about how long, oh Lord, how long, how long.

But then verse five, he says, "I've been struggling, but I have trusted in your mercy. In the midst of my struggle, I still trust in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

This is his heartbeat even though the struggle is not ended yet. I've trusted in the mercy of God. I still trust and I will trust forever, he says.

Forever, nothing's going to stop me. God was still in the throne. His character had not changed even though David's circumstances had changed.

So, I believe we ought to trust the God you know, not the God you feel. While our feelings can lead us to experience God more deeply and more intimately, they can also be misleading at times. In times of struggle, my feelings can lead me to feel hopeless and defeated.

Or the struggle can cause me to feel angry and bitter. The struggle can cause me to want to sit in self-pity, begin looking for somebody else to blame. But if I listen to the voice of faith, my faith will tell me, I believe God is working everything out for my good.

My faith will tell me this Job, I know my redeemer lives. And then number four, focus on convictions, not conditions. Convictions can be defined as a firmly held belief.

We can see something here about David's Psalm 34 verses 1 through 3 says, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. This is what a man's saying who knew what it was like to go through these seasons of struggle.

My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.

Spoken, written by a man who knew what it was like to struggle. And this is This is another time that David wrote during the onset of a time of struggle. But in Psalm 13, David starts out with describing his present conditions.

But then he shifts in verse 6. His focus transitions from condition to conviction. Verse 6, he says that in spite of my condition, in spite of my present circumstance, he says in verse 6, "I will sing to the Lord because He hath dealt bountifully with me." Even in the midst of struggle, we can always choose to praise the Lord.

Let me remind you here, God's character hasn't changed even if our circumstance has. So, we can still choose joy in the season of struggle. And joy may be choosing to to sing through the tears.

It may be choosing to pray through the pain. But you know what? Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.

That's what the Bible says. So, David says here in verse 6, "I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me." He knows what God has done. I'm in a season right now, but I still know who God is.

Even in the wilderness, David made a choice to worship. The wilderness doesn't usually seem like a worshipping place for us. David has every reason to be sad, bitter, despondent, depressed, sorrowful.

But we find just the opposite here. You can also read Let's look at Psalm 63:3-5. "Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you.

Thus will I bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. My soul shall be satisfied with the marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips.

That means he made a choice. He's going to live by conviction not by condition. David transformed his wilderness experience into a worship experience.

We see this beautiful example this in the New Testament here in Acts 16 verse 25, but at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. Notice it says, "And the prisoners were listening to them." Beaten, bloody, nasty place, and horrible circumstance of life, but they chose to worship anyway, and the prisoners were impacted by what they saw and what they heard. Then suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundation of the prison was shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were loosed.

So, you know what, church? In fact, go and stand with me if you would here. I'm about finished.

But if if you're in a season of struggle, let me encourage you to believe, I will emerge from this to a blessed life. God has a blessed life in mind for me. I will come out of this here.

And back to the butterfly here, that beautiful monarch butterfly, it struggles. It struggles to come out of that cocoon. It struggles for a new identity.

And it does all that struggle there, only has a short lifespan of 2 to 6 weeks. But you know what? When we're in our struggle, we need to realize that we're preparing for not 2 to 6 weeks, we're preparing for eternity.

Amen, we're preparing for eternity. So, right now maybe somebody can feel like David as he began this song. You might feel like David here, "How long, oh Lord?

How long will you You're going to forget me forever? But let me remind you you can choose to respond like you did in verse six. I'm going to praise him.

I believe there's a blessing that comes from the struggle. So, let's just take a moment right now. Let's just thank God for his word.

Help us, dear God, to be faithful to you in every season. Every season, dear God. You're always faithful, dear God.

You're always faithful, Lord. Nothing's hidden from you. You know every struggle.

You know every season. You know every detail. Help us, dear God, to believe for the blessing.

To be faithful through the circumstance, God. Live by conviction and not by condition, dear God. Jesus' name.

In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name.