[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help you know God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here, and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's Word in practical ways.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Let's listen in.
I'm so glad you're here. For those of you watching online, I'm glad you can make it from wherever you are. Let me just tell you, I wish I could say I've missed you for the past seven weeks, but I'm not trying to lie in the first minute. I'm getting back up on this platform.
I'm trying to go straight and fly right from now on out.
So I am. I am very, very glad to be home. It has been wonderful to spend some time away, me and my family, my wife, we've been able to catch a break and I am rested, rejuvenated, ready to go. So grab your Bibles, if you would. Second Corinthians, chapter four. We're going to spend all of our time right there in God's Word. And I'm praying that God would speak something directly to you as you turn your attention to God's Word. I do believe that you are not here by accident.
I believe that you didn't just tune in. If you're watching this online, you're not watching this by accident. God has something to speak to you. And every time we open up God's Word, every time we put in an effort to understand God better, God will meet your needs. God will speak to you. He says, my sheep, hear my voice. God is speaking.
And it's no accident that you're here today. God's got something for you. And I want to set that tone of expectation that God wants to speak to you through His Word. And so Second Corinthians, chapter four is where we're going to be. I want to bring a message called a really bad day.
A really bad day. I've not had one of those in a while.
Mostly because most of my really bad days started out when my kids refused to pick up their Legos before they went to bed. And you step on a Lego in the middle of the night when you go in the bathroom. And you know, like, I'm. I'm not. I'm calling in sick to work tomorrow. I'm not. I'm not going to.
I'm done. I'm out.
I'm talking about a really bad day. Not just like, oh, I ate some unwashed lettuce last week. And I know you're trying to hit your goal weight, but that's not the way to do that.
Get in the gym. Come on.
A really bad day. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Not just like when you walk into a restaurant and they're like, we have Pepsi products only. Like, I'm out. I'm not eating here. This is not God's plan for my life. God would not want me to suffer like this.
For those of you that are Pepsi drinkers, there is a great church in this city that you would love to. It's not this one.
That's not good. I'm talking about a really bad day.
Because whether we admit it or not, believers, Christians, those that love Jesus with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, we still have very bad days. We're just really good at hiding it from people and pretending like things are going great. How you doing? Blessed.
How you doing? Great. Highly favored.
Too blessed to be stressed.
We've learned all of the Christian jargon that tries to convince people that we don't have to walk through anything bad. But believers suffer.
We walk through difficult situations.
There is virtually no difference between the unsaved world and the same world and the saved world in terms of, like, divorce rate.
We have divorces. Marriages don't work sometimes 50% of the time.
Can you imagine if they gave you those odds if you were about to parachute out of a plane?
It's a 50% chance you're not going to make it. Cool, cool, cool.
Nice goggles though, right?
We have bad days, we have hard seasons, we have difficult moments. We're just really good at pretending that we don't.
And one of the things I love so much about God's Word and the beauty of this word is that it doesn't hide bad days from us. It doesn't hide character flaws, it doesn't hide defects. It doesn't hide moments where God's beautiful people walked through God awful seasons. It doesn't hide that only we do that.
You've got scars, I've got scars. You've had terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. You've had difficult seasons. You know, one of the ways you know you're about to have a difficult season is if your dad finally gets you onto his NBA team and then he leaves for the 76ers. You're about to have a bad season.
Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's okay.
Unless your name is Bronnie. It doesn't apply to you.
Believers have bad seasons. We have bad days, we have scars, we have pain.
We're just really good at hiding it.
And I think one of the reasons behind that is that we like to believe what we've been taught.
And that is, you don't con. You don't confess those things.
You don't say it.
You don't say, I'm struggling.
You don't say that I've been walking through difficulties. You don't say, I've had a hard season. We don't say those things. Why? Because we're too blessed to be stressed. We're highly favored and loved by God.
We don't confess it.
But that's not what happens in Second Corinthians, chapter 4. The apostle Paul, who, by, by the way, knows how to suffer very well.
There's multiple examples in Scripture of the Apostle Paul telling us this wasn't good, but he never leaves it there. He says stuff like, nevertheless, here's what the Holy Spirit did. Here's what God did in the midst of those seasons. I love that the Apostle Paul, that Christ, that the writers Old Testament and New Testament do not hide bad seasons from us. Bad days. They go into great detail about defeats and failure, scars and wounds.
They. They show you the. The other side.
They show you what happens when great people walk through horrible seasons, when great people make bad mistakes.
They show us the warts, the scabs, the burns, the wounds, the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. They had them. You have them. The difference is, the Bible doesn't hide them. Only we do.
And so the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian Church, 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. He talks about reality.
We have this thing in our mind where. Where faith is denying reality. That's not what faith is. Faith is confidence in God in spite of reality.
Reality says it's cancer. Yep, it may be, but God's still good. God still has a plan. God could heal me anytime he wants to choose to trust him, choose to believe in him. I believe in that. There is a. There is another reality.
But denying one doesn't make the other any less true.
We all have difficult days.
Your day might be different than the person sitting next to you. We've had pink slip days. Remember when they used to call it pink slip and everybody knew, oh, you got fired. In ministry circles, we say, God's moving me to another season of I don't feel like this is the correct pasture that God has me grazing in at this moment. You got fired, bro. That's what that means. God is transitioning me. Mm. Mm. You transition yourself.
We don't say that in the Christian circles. But the pink slip days, the.
The days where you. You sign divorce papers, some of you may say that was not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. That was the rest of my life. It was awesome. We got some healing for you. We're gonna help you. It's. It's okay. God wants to speak to you. I'm talking about the. The bad days, the diagnosis days, the. The. That phone call, that email that came out of nowhere, that your body just loses all color. Those kind of days.
You have those. The person next to you has those. I have those.
We have those.
And the good news is you're not alone. You've had bad days.
So when Paul writes this letter to the Corinthians, he doesn't deny it. He gives them reality, but he also gives them the reality that they're not focusing on to help them understand that there's balance not just between good days and bad days, but even in the bad days, God's still good.
And so he tells them this and pick it up in verse eight, if you read it along with me. If not, if you don't have it in front of you, we'll put it on the screen.
It says, we are hard pressed on every side. Fact. It's a reality. Hard pressed on every side.
But here's another reality.
Not crushed.
Pressure, yes.
Completely crushed. Not so much.
I'm not giving up yet.
And I want you to see that both sides of the story are still true.
He said, we're perplexed. We don't understand.
I don't get it.
But I'm not in despair.
He says I don't have to understand to trust that God is still good. I'm not in despair, haven't given up all hope.
But it's not good.
Even if God is.
Both realities are still true. He says we're persecuted, yes, but not abandoned. God hasn't left us. And when he says persecuted, it's completely different than today's persecution. For most American Christians, we don't deal with the same kind of persecution that they had to walk through. Come on, let's. Let's not. Let's not compare and say that these are apples to apples. That's not true. They. You know, when. When. When they're using Christians to light the streets of Rome with their. Their bodies as they're burning, like that's different than you having to walk through an argument with someone who had a theological disagreement like, that's not the same.
He says, we. We are absolutely walking through difficult situations, but there's no period. At the end of that sentence, he said, there's a but.
Perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but we're not abandoned.
Both realities exist simultaneously.
He says this. We're struck down, but we're not destroyed.
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus. Sounds kind of morbid.
We like to think of ourselves as carrying the light of Jesus and the life of Jesus. Is that true? Absolutely.
But we also carry around in our bodies the. The death of Jesus. Let's not forget, yes, Sunday morning happened where Jesus gets up out of a grave. Triumphant victory over death and over hell over the grave. But also there was a Good Friday that happened that it's strange that we call it Good Friday. Wasn't good for Jesus. Really good for me, not good for him.
Did Sunday happen? Yes, but Friday also happened. Both are equally true and both exist inside of us as believers. We carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus.
He says this, for we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.
So then death is at work in us. But this is also true.
Life is at work at you as well, Because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus.
All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow. I don't just want you to breeze past that. It's really, really critical and in the lives of every believer that you recognize. He's saying, yes, we're walking through difficult times, but God is still good. He's not abandoned us. We're not alone. Does that mean that God is going to deliver us through all of these things? Maybe, maybe not.
What's the most important thing that we read here? He's saying, unbelievers are watching you suffer and it's making a difference.
They're watching how you suffer. Remind yourself of this. Whether you are saved or not saved, you're going to suffer. It's called life.
Life has bad days.
But with Christ, they have a purpose. It means something.
We can suffer. We can walk through difficult situations and watch God get the glory from it. Watch people look at our lives and say, wait a minute, what's. We're walking through the same thing. But I'm not.
I'm not doing as well as you're doing.
How are you able to get up in the morning? I couldn't even get up. And you're like, coffee, bro.
And Jesus, he's my hope, he's my helper, he's my strength.
Everybody's going to suffer. Everybody's going to walk through difficult days. But believers suffer with purpose.
Keep moving on.
He says, therefore, because all these things, we do not lose heart. It'd be really easy to lose heart when you're watching your friends be persecuted and killed, be chased from their homes, lose businesses. Real persecution. He said, no, no, no, we don't give up. We don't lose heart. Though outwardly, here's the fact we are wasting away, but inwardly we're being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us. There's purpose behind it. They're achieving for us. Look at, he says, an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what we can see, but on what we don't see, since what we see is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. There are things I can't see, things I can't understand. I don't get it, but I trust it.
I trust that there is a second reality.
Not only is this a difficult season, is this a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but there is an alternative reality that in the spiritual realm, there's rewards for how I suffer and suffer well.
There is a spiritual reality that the Lord is using this to bring glory to himself. There is a spiritual reality that other people can see the way I walk through this and say, if. If Jesus did that for you, then I. I want that. I want that Jesus.
There's. There's purpose in it.
Those of you that have experienced the miracle of childbirth, you understand that there is real pain involved in childbirth.
But when the child is born, you kind of forget about that for a while until you start having the conversation like, we should have another one. It was so easy. This one's great. And you realize, number two, not as easy as that first one.
Like this one came out and needed some help. The first one is perfect in every way. That second one, like, might be in prison.
Of course, my second mourns that saved by the grace of God. Come on.
Thankful for God's grace.
I remember when my wife was giving birth to my son, and we had foolishly decided in our immaturity, we're going to do this the natural way. No offense to those of you that decided to do that. Go for it.
But this is the 2000s, man, this is technology, bro. Like, you don't have to do that.
There's easier ways. Like, no, no, no. We want to do this all natural. And then about halfway through, like, this is stupid. This is dumb. We have made a horrible decision. She says, I am ready for that epidural. Give me that epidural. Forget my birthing plan. Give me the drugs. The doctor says it's too late.
Like, no epidural. Can't give it to you. Can you give me a hammer? She needs some help. I'm doing this for her. Not for me, for her.
After about 13 hours of childbirth pain, you're like, I'll do anything. Give me a gun.
Until a child is born. And then you're like, that was so easy.
No big deal. I'd do it again.
We'd have twins next time, multiple verses, same time. This. This group plan going.
There's a lot of pain until you recognize it. On the other side of it, Please hear me. On the other side of it, there's. There's blessing, there's new hope, there's new birth, there's new life.
It's. It's worth it.
Everybody suffers.
But Christians can suffer on purpose.
Here's what we know. If you're a note taker, you might want to write this down. This will help you. Is that with Jesus, every bad day can have a greater purpose. Every bad day. Now, it doesn't say it has to have a greater purpose, because even for believers, sometimes we're like, I don't care. I'm out.
But recognize that if Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life, if he sits on the throne of your heart, bad days can serve a much greater purpose.
And it kind of helps us reframe that in our minds.
There's a great scripture, one of my favorite scriptures, Romans 8, 28, that says for we know. We know. I love that word, know. We know it.
It's definitive.
Not we guess. Not. We hope.
There are wonderful scriptures talking about things that we put our hope in. This is not hope. He says, we know it.
We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
It tells me that there's purpose in bad days. It shows me very clearly something that has become a defining sentence in my life. God doesn't waste pain.
We waste pain all the time.
We cover it up, pretend like it's not happening, hide it from people, because we don't want people to think that we're weak and we miss out on the testimony.
That really is the heart of what I'm getting at today. Where I felt like the Holy Spirit was leaning and pressuring me to bring to you today, is the power of your testimony, the power of your scars, the power of the bad days, the power of the bad seasons. If they produce purpose, if they produce things like the scripture is very clearly telling us that they do, then why is it so often that we hide them and call it faith? Why do we hide it and still pray for effectiveness in the kingdom?
I think because some of our bad days were self imposed.
Some of our bad days, it was. It was my own sin, my own mistakes, my own faults, and I don't want people to know that I have those.
Sometimes we're embarrassed.
Sometimes we're like, you're going to think differently of me and some people will. Let me just remind you of this. If you're. If you're the only one that knows your secrets, you're in trouble now. Not everybody needs to know your secrets. But. But somebody does. Let me say it this way. You're only as healthy as your secrets.
Not everybody needs to know them, but the right people do.
Scripture tells us that we go to the Father and we can ask for forgiveness, but it also tells us that we confess our faults one to another, so that we can be healed.
And there is some healing for our bad seasons and bad days that some believers will never see because we think just because we got forgiveness for it. I don't have to talk about it ever again. I can sweep it under the rug. Lots of churches have failed that way. Lots of believers have failed that way. There's a reason why the world looks at Christianity and calls us hypocrites because they'll suffer and we'll suffer and we'll pretend like it's not happening or cover it up or pretend like it didn't.
God doesn't waste pain.
Believers do.
As we're looking at this scripture, it shows us the power of the testimony. And remind yourself of how many believers walk through real pain that God didn't waste. Remind yourself of Joseph getting thrown into prison when he was completely 100% innocent.
That's a lot of pain. That's unnecessary. He didn't bring that on himself.
Can you imagine him getting out? Like, what'd you do for the past three years? Oh, I was in a community college.
Really? Yeah. Florida State.
Florida State University.
Florida State Penal Colony. I don't. Yeah, doing three to five. But I didn't do it. I swear.
I saw a Meme one time that says, when you ask your bro, like, who's one person you want to spend a day with in the Bible? And it's like, Potiphar's wife. Like, bro, what's wrong with you?
There's a lot of pain that he walked through. That would have been embarrassing.
I got thrown here, but I'm innocent. But everybody's innocent in prison.
But there was. There was. Please hear me. There was purpose in it.
Purpose in the pain. God doesn't waste it.
Remind yourself of some other incredible characters. Like, David did not mistreat Saul, his boss, in any way. But yet he's on the run, no home, loses his family.
It says he's going on one side of a mountain. King Saul and his troops are on the other side. At any moment, at any mistake that he makes, he could find death on the other side.
Lots of unnecessary, it seems, pain. Why am I having to run? Why can't I just find another job?
This guy's an incredibly toxic boss. Like, let me go.
But there's purpose in it. God's teaching him how to lead.
It says David was surrounded by those that. That came to him looking for a leader.
Reminds me of. Of Christ coming in. He surrounds himself with those that were uneducated, those that were considered less than.
It says David's men were, Were in distress or discontented or, or. Or in debt, and they rallied to him to find a purpose in the midst of David's great pain.
Seemed embarrassing.
Like, why are you on the run? What did you do? I played the harp, bro.
Played the harp, bro. Like, can you just, like, turn it aside and play guitar or something? Like, that's a.
I'm really good. Like, he threw a spear at me. I probably would have too. It's a harp.
No offense to you to play the harp.
A little offense. Sorry.
The point is, there's purpose in the pain.
Remind yourself of the pain that Christ walks through on his way to the cross.
I'm so thankful the Bible doesn't whitewash that.
It tells us in great detail what Christ walked through.
Even Isaiah, the prophet, 700 years before Christ goes to the cross, he prophesies what would happen. He talks about, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment of us all was placed upon him.
And then by his stripes, we're healed.
Jesus walks through incredible pain on purpose. And the purpose was you. The purpose was me.
If God doesn't waste the pain of Joseph and David and even Christ, he's in no danger of wasting yours. There's purpose in your pain if you allow him to be glorified through it. Remind yourself of this. Jesus had the worst day in history so that our worst days would not be wasted.
There's purpose.
You tell me Christians have bad days. Yes.
They just normally won't tell you about them.
The cross didn't eliminate bad days, it redeemed them.
And we have the message of redemption inside of our scars.
There are many of you here that this might be your third or fourth or fifth marriage. Some of you came and you're sitting with your spouse.
Some of you are sitting with your girlfriend or boyfriend. Some of you sit with both of them. Like you, we have a past. We have some issues. Look at me. I'm glad you're here.
I'm thankful that you're here.
This is a place of freedom.
Freedom starts with honesty. Can we be honest for a moment? You have had some bad days, some bad seasons. It hasn't all been one miracle after the next.
And if it's been one miracle after the next, if you say that, it's because there's a lot of reasons why you needed a miracle. Come on.
We can talk about the faithfulness of God and still acknowledge the fact that perhaps at times we weren't sure he would come through.
I remind myself of that because pain in God's hands produces so much incredible stuff.
Scripture tells us that it produces perseverance, it produces character. It produces things in our life that just don't come out in any other way. You need to walk through it, but you need to walk through it not alone with the Lord. And then when you're done with it, when you come out the other side, you need to be able to say, look at the goodness of God.
There's some things I needed to know, and pain served its purpose.
It teaches me something.
It produced something, produces things like humility and compassion, produces things like dependence on God. And you. You don't know that God's all you need till he's all you got.
As I was spending some time away, this. This past sabbatical on just kind of a longer name for a vacation and some time spent with the Lord, a little more spiritual name.
The Lord began to take me through some specific moments in my life. As I was praying, as I was studying, just asking the Lord, like, what would you have for me to do? Are there things that you want to show me? Are there things about my life that you need to correct?
That's an important space to be in, by the way, it's really critical in believers that you allow the Lord the freedom to correct you. You don't always get it right.
How foolish would it be to live life? And you get to the end of it, you're like, I got off there. I took a left, and I should have taken a right. It was the other right. And God's like, I try to tell you, just don't listen.
You were in charge and you said it was me, but you only listen to you. You know, it's like I need his direction and I need to be corrected at times. But the Lord took me back to a specific moment decades ago in my life when I was at the end of my marriage. Those of you that know my story, I had a failed marriage.
And if you know the story that, that I've. I've shared very openly, it's. It's.
It's very traumatic. It's difficult.
If you've ever been. If you've ever been married to someone that's in active addiction and they, they refuse to get help. They don't want counseling, don't want rehab. They. They don't want those things. They don't want family, they don't want marriage. It's difficult to try to keep hope alive after months and months and months of trying and trying and trying and trying. Anything I can do. I remember there was a specific moment that the Lord recently took me back to where, like, I haven't eaten in days. I've been fasting and praying and fasting and praying and fasting and praying. Haven't eaten, haven't slept in days because my life is in shambles. I'm worried about my spouse. I'm worried about my marriage. I'm worried about my family and doing this the whole time in ministry.
Believing foolishly.
And no one's going to believe me. Or even if they did listen, they would never trust me, not recognizing that there was people that could have helped me, people that could have loved me. There's other people that have gone through something similar that would tell you, look, here's what to do. Or I might not know what to do, but I know what not to do. Don't do that.
That would have helped, but instead I was suffering alone, believing foolishly. If I don't. If I don't say it, it's not really true.
If I don't confess it, then it's not. There was reality. It was horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, and God was still good.
I remember the moment that the Lord Took me back to where I was sitting in my truck. I'd put my children down for the night. And I thought, well, I'm going to be up all night anyway.
So I sat in my truck and just began to cry out to the Lord. Just cry. After a while, it's just like, are you even listening? Like, are you there?
Do you care? You ever had those moments of honesty between you and the Lord? You should.
Here's the thing. He can handle it.
He can handle it.
He hears the cry of the brokenhearted.
And in those moments, the brokenhearted cry doesn't always sound politically correct, doesn't always sound grammatically correct. Sometimes that cry of the brokenhearted is just, bruh, help me. You know, I remember saying things like, if you don't care, I don't care if you're not going to do anything, if I don't see your head, if you're not. If you're not willing to do some miracle, okay, whatever. But it's obvious you don't. You don't care about me. I remember having those discussions with the Lord, just screaming at him, what are you doing?
Help me.
The Lord took me back to that moment and said, we need to talk about this.
Because looking back on it from 20 years past, you can see my hand all over it.
But in the middle of it, you said, I wasn't even there.
He reminded myself that sometimes God is the most quiet because he's like a teacher during a test.
You can do this.
It's producing something in your life.
You can walk through this, you can suffer. Well, it's not your fault, but you do have to walk through this, and you have to trust me. You see, it's easy for me to declare the goodness of God with theological accuracy from His Word. I can do it until you have to walk through it, until it's not just what you say, but it's what you're having to choose.
God doesn't waste pain. Remind yourself of this, that sometimes God changes your circumstances, sometimes he changes you.
I wanted God to change my circumstance, but God was changing me. Why?
So I could stand on this platform 20 something years later and say, God's still good on the mountains and in the valleys, in the good times, in the bad times, in a good marriage, and when it's horrible.
He's God of the scars, He's God of the burns.
He's God of the pain as well as the blessing.
With Christ, a bad day can have a greater purpose. Here's the second thing I want to share with you, number two with Jesus, every bad day shows us something.
Every bad day shows us something. It reveals something. I have a statement that pressure, when applied, will tell you the truth.
It tells you what's really going on on the inside. You put enough pressure on your life. What comes out and what you say and how you emote tells you what's really happening on the inside of your heart.
Because I can say the right thing as long as you don't apply a bunch of pressure to my life. But you put a bunch of pressure on my life, and I want to slap somebody. That's what happens. That's what's inside my heart. I was raised on the south side of the kingdom. That's what comes out.
We're being honest, are we not?
It's easy to say I trust in God, but bad days show us the truth of where that confidence really lives. It shows us the level of our faith.
Is it just words, or can you actually walk it out when it's not convenient, when it hurts, when it's painful?
Faith is confidence in God. So faith is choosing to believe God's purposes before we can see God's plan. I don't see it. What is unseen. Paul says faith is the substance of things hoped for. It's the evidence of things that we can't see. I trust that he has a plan. I trust that his plan is good. I trust he's going to work it out for my good. Can you see it?
I mean, through the eyes of faith, maybe learning to have faith, confidence in God, more than just what you say, more than just what you sing about on a Sunday morning, more than what you just declare to somebody that's walking through a tough season, just keep the faith, brother. More than that, when it's your turn to walk through it, when the pressure gets applied, when the heat gets turned up, real faith, real trust in the Lord is what matters.
And the pressure will tell you where your faith really is. Do you trust that God can handle it, or you trust that I can handle it and God's just going to have to be okay with it? Like, that's how people go to prison.
That's what happens.
But with Jesus, every bad day shows us something. So remind yourself that the greatest victories in scripture often began with what looked like defeat, Right?
And that brings me some help, that brings me some hope. When I'm walking through a day that feels like this is what defeat looks like, remind yourself what it might have felt like. When Abraham is walking up the side of a mountain with his son versus what it felt like when he's coming back down with his son, when he thought he was going to have to leave his son there and determine that he was going to do it. One feeling is completely different. Same footsteps, same people, same mountain.
But there's a different attitude.
Looked like defeat on one side, but it's victory on the other side.
That's something that the Lord has had to remind me of the times in my life where I needed to go back to and remind myself.
I didn't really ask the Lord for forgiveness for that. And I never really forgave the Lord for what I thought he was doing to me.
You're punishing me.
What did I do?
I had to remind myself that bad days often have very little to do with punishment. But they're always invitations.
An invitation to trust him.
An invitation for your relationship with him to go deeper, for you to have a relationship with God that's real, that's more than surface, that's more than just Facebook Christianity.
I'm talking about battle tested relationship with your father. We've been through some stuff like that kind of faith.
It produces something in each of us. It shows us something. Here's the final thing I want to share with you. Number three.
With Jesus, every bad day becomes part of your testimony.
Your testimony. That really is the heart of what I want to share with you today. It's what I felt like was the most important thing that I was impressed upon by the Holy Spirit is the power of your testimony. It's become a very, very ignored part of our discipline, an ignored part of our, of our daily relationship with Jesus. Is the testimony part the scars part, the hurts, the habits, the hangups, the unhealthy parts?
The testimony? Remind yourself at the, at the end of all things. It says that believers, we overcame by the blood of the Lamb. Jesus is the lamb and the word of our testimony.
So when was the last time you shared your. Your testimony?
Ouch.
When was the last time you shared your story?
Now we have plenty of people that will come up after the service. And it happened after the first one. Well, Pastor, I gotta share with you my testimony. Let me tell you a story. I'm not the one that needs it. I'm already saved.
But I promise you, if you'll listen to the Holy Spirit, there are people that do need it and need your story. You don't have to tell it to me, but there are those that are about to walk off a cliff that God has specifically put you in their life with the scars that you carry with the tales of the goodness of God when it sucked.
That will help someone not give up if you'll be honest with him about what you've had to walk through, the addictions that you face. I get the privilege of sitting on this side of the platform. I know many of you personally know your stories. I know some of the stuff you're like.
You've had to walk through it.
Question is, are you using it for the glory of God?
Are you ignoring it, pretending like you got it all worked out?
I know. You look really good today. You're great. You took a shower.
Been walking with God for 25 years, but there was a BC version of you, and that still has a lot of power.
It's not giving glory to the enemy.
It's not making.
Making light of your past, but it's using it. There's power in your testimony. I do believe that's where the Holy Spirit is taking us next. As believers, he's showing us that our greatest ministry grows from our greatest pain.
It doesn't come from your successes.
People will admire you because of your successes, but they connect with you through your pain.
They say you've been there. You get me. You understand me?
You've been where I've been. You know what it feels like to suffer. Here's the thing. We've all suffered.
We've all walked through stuff.
So my general rule of thumb, by the way, and you can write this down if you'd like to, if you're five years free from it, five years clean from it, you're ready.
But until then, like, at least change the names and dates, like. Cause there might be some people in this room, you're like, it's this one right here. Like, don't do that. Not here to embarrass anybody.
There's not a lot of details that you have to include. But be willing to share your story. Because our greatest ministry grows from our greatest pain. It really does. God wants to use those moments to help people that are walking through those moments.
You see the difference?
It's not ignoring reality.
It's accepting the fact that God has given you a story.
Your story is redeemed. And it has a purpose.
It's true. Through all the Bible, God used those stories on purpose to show us that he will use ours on purpose as well.
I want to remind you of something that perhaps you haven't thought about. And that's when Jesus gets up out of the grave, when he conquers death and hell and the grave. When he. When he he comes back and he's playing these incredible pranks on all of his friends and he's revealing himself and people are freaking out because they watched him die. And now he's risen from the grave. It's huge. And the city is just in a massive uproar and all of that incredible heavenly activity.
Jesus shows up and he still has his scars.
Remind yourself of the importance of that.
It's not because he had to.
He chose to.
Jesus doesn't hide them. Why?
Because they're proof of God's redemption.
I'm not saying it didn't happen.
I'm saying God's still good.
I'm saying in spite of the pain that he walked through and the scars that it leaves. The scars tell a story.
That's my reminder to you. Your scars tell a story.
You have them, I have them.
It's incredible that if someone asks you how'd you get that scar, you'll tell them a story like, oh, I was doing something stupid. You know, I've got mine.
I was cutting open a jar of fudge one time after like a three day high. I used to have an addiction issue. I'm just telling you.
Cut the end of my finger off right here. I have a massive scar. This is dumb. That's a cool scar. It's a stupid story.
I have a scar on my pinky toe on my right foot because I was at a party one night, everyone was drunk and I passed out on the bed and I got up to get off the bed and trying to step over people and I just jumped off the bed and I stepped onto a broken beer bottle, severed the tendon right there on my little pinky toe.
Like, did you feel it? No, not that day.
I got some scars. They got stupid stories.
You'll connect with me through those because you've like, I got some stupid. I got a scar right here on my chin where my sister hit me with a seesaw when I was 4 years old. Walking in front of her, just bang, you know. My first concussion ever of many, which explains a lot.
It's a dumb scar right here. I've got one.
Still have glass at my knees from a head on collision I was in. I still have. Every once in a while you're like, what in the world? Just pop it like a pimple and piece of glass shoots out. Like, cool.
Did you just shoot glass out of your knee? I can do that. That's dumb.
It's real dumb.
I've got scars, but those aren't going to save your life.
Those aren't going to help you. Those aren't going to encourage you.
But the ones on the inside will.
I've got them. And you've got them, too.
If Christ has redeemed you, if he's set you free, if he's washed you, if he's given you purpose, a new life, a new hope, your story is more powerful than you think.
You're called by God to be used by God for a greater purpose than to just come to church on Sunday and pretend like you had it all worked out from the beginning. You're not perfect.
And the more that I sense this so strongly from the Holy Spirit, the more that you lie to your children about that, the more it comes out in their life. They think they're a failure because they never get to hear your scars. This is important. Please hear me.
You can't hide now. You don't have to give them all the details.
You can tell them enough to tell them. Let me tell you where God found me.
Let me tell you how to trust in the Lord's goodness, not have to make the same mistakes I did.
God doesn't waste pain.
So let me remind you of that with a simple statement. Don't waste your wounds.
Don't waste them.
You have a story. You have struggles. You have hardships, trials.
And by the way, you have incredible blessings. We're incredibly blessed, favored.
Let people see that you've walked through some stuff.
It does more than you think.
God wants to use you.
Your life is a sermon. You're a living sermon. And it will help if you use it. It's not easy for me to tell you the stories of a breakdown inside of a car in the middle of a horrible marriage to a meth addict. That ain't easy for me.
But some of you need to hear that.
You'll connect with me more through that and say you get it.
Cause I came here today fighting through a marriage that's hard.
I came here today carrying the scars of my own addiction or being married to an addict. I get it.
Let me just make sure that you hear this. I'm glad you're here.
You're supposed to be here. But it's not just my story now. It's your story. And what God can do with that is incredible.
Don't waste your wounds.
I was reading a story this past week, and I'll close with this. This was part of. Part of our sabbatical. We spent some time in Boston. We walked the freedom trail during, you know, the 250th and got to see Paul Revere's house in Bunker Hill and all these great American Revolution kind of great stories and stuff. And one of the. One of the stories that I read in that same time period in 1773, there was a.
There's a man that was.
That was fighting depression and suicidal thoughts.
His name is William Cowper. And he finally got to the place where his depression and mental health had declined so much. He decided to take his own life by throwing himself off a bridge over the Thomas River.
So he calls for a carriage to come and to drive him to the river and gets in the carriage to take his last ride at the end of his supposed life. And a heavy fog moves in and the carriage driver gets lost and they start going around in circles. And finally after. After what seemed like forever, like the worst Uber ride of all time, like, this is. I can't find my way. There's no gps. Like, there's horrible fog. And then this guy's about to off himself. Like, there's no tip big enough.
What I have to deal with. I'm having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Right?
Well, finally the guy just. He just stops the carriage and he's like, I don't know where we're at, bro. Can you just get out?
Old English and Thomas Copper gets out of the carriage and realizes he's back at his own house.
And he just kind of laughs to himself and he's like, I think the Lord's working in all this.
God must have. He must have a sense of humor.
And he writes a hymn that some people still sing today. It's called God Moves in a Mysterious Way. You might have even seen that hymn in the old Baptist hymnal, God Moves in a Mysterious Way. I was drawn to the lyrics of that. There is one that stuck out to me, and I want to close with this.
He says, judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.
I think those words still speak to us today. Would you bow your head, close your eyes?
I want to pray for you. For those of you walking through a difficult season, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad God brought you here today. If you're watching online and this has been a difficult, horrible, no good, very bad day, bad season, bad decade, I want you to know that God's here and he's speaking today.
And there's hope for you.
If he did it for me, he could do it for you.
He's not just The God of blessing.
He's also the God of suffering.
He's a suffering servant. He knows what it means to bleed, to suffer, to be betrayed, to be cast aside, to be made fun of, to be humiliated.
He's a God that's familiar with our grief, well acquainted with our issues because he experienced them for himself.
Father, I thank you that you're the God that gets us.
You understand what we're walking through. You're not some distant entity that could care less about what we're walking through. You see it.
And so, Father, I pray that you would show yourself in the midst of trials, in the midst of tribulation, in the midst of bad days, in the midst of horrible circumstances, in the midst of sleepless nights and days that seem to never have an end.
Dark seasons, would you show up?
Show us you're still in control. You still have a plan. You're producing something.
You're not wasting our pain.
It has an end.
And it's gonna be for my good Lord. We choose to trust you today with heads bowed and eyes closed. How many of you would say, pastor, I'm walking through a difficult season right now. Nobody else is looking around. Can I just see your hand all over this place? Would you mind?
Good, good, good, good, good. You can put your hands down. If you're watching online, just type that in. The chat, that's me. It's been difficult. I'm going through some stuff.
I'm believing the Lord hears the cry of the brokenhearted. Talk to him today. Speak to him.
Tell him how you feel. Be honest with him, and then let him use this for his glory.
Share your testimony.
When it's all said and done, declare the goodness of God in the land of the living.
Speak of his great love, his provision, his hope.
My friend, perhaps you came here today and you're saying, pastor, I don't really have a relationship with Jesus. My friend, I'm glad you're here. I would love for you to begin your relationship with Jesus right here, today. For others of you, you might say, pastor, I was raised in church. I've done all the Christian things, but I have gotten so far away from God, I need to come home. My friend, I'm glad you're here, and I would love to help you the same way that somebody helped me. One time, they led me in a prayer, and I prayed that prayer, the prayer of faith, and my life began to change.
So whether you need to meet Jesus or whether you need to come home to a relationship with Jesus, I'm going to Lead you in a prayer right now. And if that's you, I'm going to ask that you pray with me. I'm not here to embarrass you in any way. I would never do that. But right where you are, pray this prayer with me. As a matter of fact, let's all pray this out loud together.
Just say, jesus, I believe you're the son of God.
I believe you came and died, and I believe you rose from the grave so that I can have life and forgiveness for my sins.
I need your grace.
Please forgive me and I'll give you the rest of my life in Jesus name.
And with heads bowed and eyes closed, if that was you and you prayed that prayer and you say, pastor, that was me. I made that decision today. Once again, I'm not going to embarrass you in any way, but would you lift up your hand all across this place and say, that was me. I meant that prayer. Good. I see you. Good. I see you. Good, Good, good. You guys can put your hands down. I want you to know, if that was you, I would love to help you take your next step.
It's a very simple process. I'm going to put a phone number behind me on a screen that's just for you. If you raised your hand, I want to ask you to text me.
Text the words I prayed to that number on the screen. If you're watching online, that number is available for you as well.
Text the words I prayed and I'm going to send you back the link to some things that will help you understand what just happened.
Good for you. I'm proud of you.
How rich family. Go ahead and look up at me if you would, and stand to our feet together today. I'm going to invite our elders and their wives forward to be available to pray for you if you have any prayer needs. We would love to pray for you.
As we do that, I want to just remind you, if you're doing growth track, if you've been around here saying, I think this might be my church home, and that's going to take place in a growth track process. It's going to be right across the street in our youth building. We would love to walk you through what we believe and where we feel like your place is. It's going to be good for you. Is that right, sweetheart? Awesome. You look so pretty today.
That's mine. Don't y' all look? That's mine.
Let me bless you and send you out. Father, I thank you for your incredible hand of blessing. I pray that you would bless my friends with an incredible week. Watch over them Father, protect them, minister to their needs. Walk them through every valley. Walk them through to the next one. I pray in Jesus mighty name and all of us said together. Amen. God bless you as you go. I hope you have an awesome week.
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