Transcription
Good morning and welcome to Beltway Park. My name is Jeffrey. I am the lead pastor here and, uh, and it is a, it is a fun morning. It is the first, uh, it's the first of our Christmas. Like, we're kicking off a new series today. We got all the lights, everything's pretty. Uh, and it's awesome, and I love the season.
And I just want to say, if you're a guest around here, I know we already talked about this in, uh, at both campuses, but if you're a guest, I love that you're here. And I would, I mean, I love what God's doing around here. We'd love for you to get plugged in and and find a way to get connected. We have something for everybody. We've got amazing stuff happening in our kids ministry. Our youth ministry is awesome. We've got stuff for young adults. We have a new young adults pastor, and he is incredible, and God's just doing a lot of cool stuff. So, if you're a guest, fill out that guest card, get plugged in, get connected, because God's doing a lot of cool things around here.
But we're going to kick off this series by embarrassing some of our staff, which is a great way to do anything, right? All right. So, y'all welcome Ben, uh, Johnson, our executive pastor. Mason Kirby, one of our worship pastors. Daniel Reinhardt. He, I told him to stay in here. Daniel, get up here. Daniel Reinhardt's one of our student pastors. Molly Lee is one of our student pastors as well. So, they're going to come up here. Uh, oh, Molly, they clapped for you. They didn't for Daniel. So, we know who's the favorite in the youth ministry.
Uh, uh, we're going to play a fun game. There is a social media trend where you, uh, there's like a really iconic song that is this, that has a drum beat in it, and it's fun to try to hit it. So, uh, I need to say, what did you do? Oh, I need, uh, online campus, just know this. Your audio is going to cut out for a second, and that is YouTube's fault, not ours. But it'll cut out for just a second, and then it'll come back. So, uh, Jeremy, why don't you play the song that we're going to play?
All right. So, the goal is to hit the drum beat at the right time. Okay. So, we're going to let, uh, we're going to let Ben go first. He's our executive pastor. So, Ben, uh, Ben, you did decent first service. Let's see if you can do better this service. All right. I, I forgot to say this, too. There's no toetapping allowed. All right, Molly. I know you love being in front of people. So, this is Molly Lee. She's one of our youth pastors.
There's no chance you get this right. Go ahead. [laughter] Oh, you were so close. All right. She wasn't close at all. That was horrible, actually. All right. We love you, Molly. Hide behind the tree. You're in the, the cone of shame. All right. [laughter] All right. Hit it again. You [laughter] did it. I'm so proud of you. You can keep your job now. All right. Reinhardt. Reinhardt. Come on. Come on, buddy. I've got to go at some point, and I'm not following that. So, all right. Hit it.
I don't know who is closer, Daniel or Mason. All right. No one knows what anyone said. All right. Um, and you know what? I'm not going to follow that. So, y'all give them a hand. Y'all are good. I don't want to be embarrassed. I saw what happened.
Um, like timing matters. That's, that's the fun part of that video. I mean, that's the fun part of that video that I saw on social media. It's the fun part of doing that is we all recognize timing matters. It's why if you are married, the odds are you did not get engaged while you were sitting in the drive-thru line at Roses waiting for your chips and queso, right? Because, uh, if you did that, shame. Okay, the queso's good. It's not get married good. But what the timing matters. So you plan, like you curate this moment, you, you know you're going to do it on this day, at this time, in this environment. And guys, if you just want a tip, if you're thinking about getting engaged there, you, there's an expectation. It's unspoken, but there's an expectation that you remember that date for the rest of your life. So pick a day you'll remember, not a random Tuesday. Get engaged on Christmas Day. Okay? You'll never forget it. Christmas 2005. Okay? That's free. Just do it. Get engaged. And then, uh, all the new fiances at Christmas this year, I expect presents back to me. Okay. You're welcome.
Timing. Timing matters. We, we don't, uh, we don't send a text that we know is going to be like controversial and somebody's going to have to respond back to us when our phone hits 1%. Cuz then what's going to happen? It happened to me before. You send the text and you're like, I can't wait for their response. Then your phone dies. Then you can't find a charger because your teenagers took the charger. Again. Like timing matters. We don't go on a diet the week of Thanksgiving, right? That's stupid. Cuz you know what? You want to eat green bean casserole, cuz it's the best part of Thanksgiving. Turkey's dumb. It's not good. Okay, it's just turkey. Ham. Who eats ham? Green bean casserole. I eat it for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving every year. I promise. Honest to God. Truth.
Timing matters. We don't pick a fight when we're hangry. We don't pick a fight when we're tired. There's a scripture that says, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger." And we often have like taken that out of context and meant that like, we have to finish this argument before we go to bed. No, you don't. You know what you have to do sometimes? Shut up and get some sleep. And then you'll wake up the next morning a new human. Get yourself to the place that you can sleep in the same bed. Go to bed. Okay, that was free. Marriage advice all over today.
Timing matters. Which then we get into the place because it matters to us a lot. We get in the place sometimes that God's timing and our timing don't align. And then we begin to get frustrated with God, and we begin to ask God some questions of like, God, why aren't you doing this in the way that I want you to? We care deeply about timing. And when God's timing doesn't fit ours, we let frustrations begin. When we've been asking God, you know, God, I, I, I really want to get married, and I know this is the person that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, and all of my friends are getting engaged. God, when? Come on, I'm ready for it. And it hasn't happened yet. We begin to go, God, what? Get your act together. We really want to have a a child, and every month we keep getting the negative pregnancy test, and not pregnant. God, I, I know I want to be a mom or dad. Like, why, why can't you make this happen? We're tired of the job, and we feel like it's time for us to transition into something different, but every time we go to a job interview, we end up with a no back in our face. God, I, I'm ready for this to to be different. We know we need to get in a new house or new neighborhood, and that we just can't find the right one.
When we get to the place because we live in an instant gratification society. We live in a microwave society that when God doesn't microwave our requests, we get to the place that we're frustrated. We're like, "God, I'm ready to do it." We want what we want on our timing, and I want what I want, and I want it yesterday. And so when our timing doesn't align with God's timing, we get to the place that we can often begin to be frustrated with God. We can even get to the place that we can question God's goodness. It is easy to question the goodness of God when his timing doesn't match up with ours.
Now, before we assume that God is slow and that God's the one that's wrong, I want you to think about something. You're you, and I'm me. And I know some of you, and I know that you're wrong. Some of you a lot. I'm not ever wrong. It's fine. But like, we're humans. I, I know that I mess up. You know that there are times that you make the wrong decision and do the wrong thing. And yet we'll go to God Almighty and go, "Hey, you're the one wrong here." One of us is human. One is God. God's timing has always been perfect. Miraculously perfect. We see that in scripture all over the place.
I mean, you, you see it. Think, take, take for example, Abraham and Isaac. If you've never heard this story, Abraham is promised that he's going to be the father of many nations, and he waits forever to get pregnant. His wife is barren. Finally, his wife Sarah gets pregnant, and they have Isaac, and Abraham is raising Isaac, and he is going to be the son of the promise that he's waited decades for. And then God says, "Hey, I want you to take Isaac up a mountain. I want you to sacrifice him." You know what Abraham had to be like? God, you recognize who this kid is, right? Take him up there. So Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain, and he gets to the place that he's about to sacrifice him. And at the right time, Abraham sees a ram, and God says, "Don't." There's the sacrifice. Think about this. God had to be positioning the ram. As Abraham and Isaac were going up one side of the mountain, God had to be moving and positioning the ram on the other side of the mountain so that they met at the right time.
Moses, he, he is like, they're killing all the firstborn boys. Guess what? Moses was firstborn boy, going to kill him. So what does his mom do? Puts him in the Nile River, and he just so happens to be found by the perfect person at the right time so that he could be raised in the way that he needed to be raised and have the influence that he needed to have to eventually lead the people out of slavery. That's, it's pretty incredible.
What about, what about Joseph? Joseph is the youngest of his brothers. And he tells his brothers something that if you're a younger brother, let me just tell you, this worked for Joseph. I'm not sure it would work for you. He told all his brothers, uh, you're going to bow down to me at some point. They shockingly didn't love that. And so they took him and they threw him in a pit and then they sold him. And he, he, uh, he just happened to get in the right caravan at the right time to be in position for Pharaoh to know who he was, and then interpret a dream for Pharaoh that then ended up saving the entire people, therefore getting him into a place that he had as much influence. He was the second most important person on that, in that whole area.
David just so happened to get there at the point that he could hear Goliath and then go after Goliath. Esther wins a beauty pageant at just the right time to then be in a place of influence that she could save her entire people. God's timing is perfect, and nowhere is that more evident than the Christmas story.
So, we're going to look at that today in Luke 2. If you will find a Bible, we're going to be in Luke 2. If you're at a physical campus, there's one around you. Online campus, there's one right there on the screen. While you turn over there, this is the holiday season, and I want to just get this in front of you because the holidays get on us fast. I mean, November was the was the fastest month of my life. And now, here we are already almost a week into December. So, let me tell you the schedule for our holiday services. We're going to work backwards, though.
Say December 28th. That was so bad. Say December 28th. December 28th. So much better. I bet North was better than y'all the first time, but don't feel bad. It's okay. Um, December 28th, we will not have in-person services that weekend. So, we won't have plus Thursday on Christmas. We will not have in-person services on December 28th. We will meet online, 10:00, YouTube and live.org. We do that because it takes hundreds of serve team every year to, I mean, every week to to do services, and that gives them a break. We get to worship as a family. So still, we still are having church. It's just going to be online.
And then our Christmas Eve services. These, I'm going to throw a bunch of times at you. So if you want to go to the website, they're all on there. You can also scan the QR code in the chair in front of you, and it'll take you to this website. But we will kick off Christmas Eve services, our candlelight services, on Thursday, December 18th. That service will have children's ministry. Then the next Sunday, the 25th, 21st, we will have services not in the morning. If you show up in the morning, you will be alone. Okay? Two services, one at each campus, on Sunday evening. There will be candlelight services. We will have children's ministry then. Then on Christmas Eve, we'll do two services at each campus. There will be no children's ministry then. I encourage you, highly encourage you, come to one of those services and then serve at one of those services. There's an insert in your park news. Be, like, take an opportunity to love the people around you and serve. We will have tons of guests that weekend. And so we, we all, I promise you this, we can find a position for anyone to serve. So fill out, fill out that form, turn it in, and then, uh, and then come to one of the Christmas Eve services. They're going to be incredible.
All right, now to our text. So this is, like, the Christmas season is, there's so much. We just talked about a lot of different dates and stuff, and that's just one of a million things that's going on in this season. What I love about this text and where we're going to go in the next three weeks as we're in this series is the beauty of the Christmas story is that God cuts through the noise of all the chaos, and it is a declaration of the love of the Father for you and for humanity, and it shows his power. It shows the miracles that all went into Jesus.
We see that beginning in Luke 2. Says, "In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn."
All right. You want to think that we wrestle with timing? You imagine being Mary and Joseph. You flip over just one chapter to Luke 1. It talks to the story about them finding out that they're going to have Jesus. Mary is like 13 or 14. Joseph is just a little bit older. They're not married. And I'll tell you this, in a society like theirs, having a child unwed, not going to be highly looked upon. I mean, it's, it's not going to be great. And they're not married. And then they don't even do the deed necessary to have a child. And then Mary is, you know, pregnant. And then she finds out that not only are you pregnant and you're not married, and all that is going to go into that, oh, but also, you, the child that you have is going to be the savior of the world. You're going to raise the savior. You think all that was the way that Mary and Joseph envisioned having a family, getting married, that they would not have been it. It would not have made any sense for them. The timing of that in the natural, like in, in just the regular, our own way we think, the timing of that is horrible. Yet that is because we think about it in, in our terms. The Christmas story opens with timing that feels completely upside down from what any of us would expect or what Mary and Joseph would have wanted. God's timing is perfect. We know that because we know the end story with Mary and Joseph having Jesus. [snorts] But in the natural, in the moment, your unwed teenager, that's tough. God's timing is perfect. And we [snorts] we see that tied this story in Luke 2 tied to another passage in Galatians 4.
So, if you will flip over a few, few pages, we're going to be be in Galatians 4 starting in verse three. And this, at this time, in the, in the church culture, you, they're beginning, the early church is beginning. And so, it's messy, just like anything new that's happening. It's, it's a little bit messy. The early church is messy. They're dealing with, you know, you have the Jewish law and Jewish traditions, and how much of that do we follow, and how much that do we do? But then you have Jesus saying stuff, and Paul saying different things, and how, how do we figure this out? There would have been a lot of unrest, a little unease. And so Paul writes all these letters to different churches, and in them, he has different purposes. And in this one, in Galatians 4, Paul is going to tie Luke 2 to the promise that God's timing is perfect.
Says this in verse three, "In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world." Now, the word elementary in the Greek, it can mean one of three things: elemental spiritual forces, basic religious rituals, or worldly thinking. Here's what Paul is saying when he says, "In the same way, we were when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world." He's saying, we, we all have things that keep us children and stop us from growing. That there are things that it may be the enemy working on our life. Maybe our own decisions that we make, or it could be lots of things. And when he uses the word elemental right there, most scholars believe he is tying all of that together into one, saying, "Hey, it's just anything that keeps you as a child, immature, not living in freedom, though." Because he says, "enslaved to the elementary principles of the world." He doesn't say this is stuff that you're going to deal with. He doesn't say it's something that might come up every now and then. He says there is an, a time that we are enslaved. We are stuck, not free, to the elementary principles of the world.
Then he goes on, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law." When the fullness of time. There are two Greek words for time. There's Kairos, which means basically like an opportune time, and Chronos, which, the Chronos is where we get our word chronology from. It is the measured, ordered, intentional, purposeful time. Something that is planned out in advance. When Paul writes this in Galatians 4:4, that's the word that he uses for time. This ordered, measured, intentional, purposeful thing. God didn't accidentally get Jesus here at the right time. He planned it. It wasn't just something that happened.
We see that in some really practical ways that were happening in the world at this time. You know, there was a Roman road system at this time that was more advanced than any road system in all of human history up until this point. They had estimated 250,000 miles of roads. So at the time that Jesus is born, what happens is, is they, they have all these opportunities to get everywhere, which means that as Jesus began to travel and tell the good news, and then as the disciples began to do the things that they were doing, and as Paul began to go on his missionary journeys with Peter, and they began to share the gospel, they could. Never before in human history had the world been prepared. And now, because of that, the gospel had an opportunity to grow and advance. That's, that's pretty cool. [snorts]
There was a common language about 300 years before this. Alexander the Great conquers most of the known world. And when he does that, he institutes a common language everywhere that he goes, Greek. The New Testament we read originally in Greek. So then whenever, because of what Alexander the Great did 300 years before this, there is an opportunity for there to be a common language across the vast majority of all of humanity so that everyone could hear and understand. So that when these letters began to go out and begin to be preached, and and they began to go from city to city and church to church, they could understand them, and the gospel could stick.
That's not all, though. There was a stable culture. Anytime you're having a new movement, [snorts] one of the things that can stop the, the movement from growing in the way that it needs to is, is instability in the culture. In the year 27 AD, there began to be a period of 200 years called the Pax Romana, which means Roman peace. And from the year 27 AD to about the year, 127 BC to the year 180 AD, there was peace in the culture. And because of that, when Jesus comes and he does what he does, and the early church begins to grow and begins to be formed, and begins to, begins to move forward, there is peace in the culture and stability in the culture, which gave the opportunity for the gospel to stick and the gospel to advance.
Had this before there was a spiritual longing. Most scholars believe that at this point, because of what had happened in the world, and then what happens in the Pax Romana, that there was peace, and people could like begin to figure out what's going on with their world. And you've got, you've got the Jewish people who then have dealing with all the Jewish traditions and laws, and that had left them wanting. And you had the rest of the culture that had tried God after God after God, idol after idol after idol, and it had been left them wanting. And most scholars believe that this is the most spiritually hungry that the world had been of all time. Which means that then when the savior of the world comes, they hear him, and the gospel sticks and has the opportunity to grow, not just for like some years, but forever.
It's not even that. I mean, you can keep going. We could do all of these. The world was perfectly positioned at the perfect time in human history for Mary and Joseph to stroll into Nazareth, stroll into Bethlehem. What's cool too is that Jesus, with Jesus's birth, God fulfilled perfectly on time hundreds of prophecies that have been building for centuries. There, there are around 300 to 330 prophecies about the savior of the world and what needs to happen for that person to be a savior. For example, that person needed to be born in Bethlehem. It says this in Micah 5:2. "But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler of Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days." It says, "From Bethlehem will come the Savior." Here's the problem. Jesus is not from Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth. Oh, but that census happened at the perfect time to pull Jesus, him, Jesus's parents from where they lived to then go to Bethlehem for Mary to then to go into labor in Bethlehem. And then the savior came from Bethlehem, just like what was prophesied in Micah.
The lineage of Jesus is another prophetic thing that Jesus fulfilled. In 2 Samuel 7, David is promised this. "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." The savior had to come from the line of David. Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because he is from the line of David. Therefore, Jesus is from the line of David. The savior came through the correct lineage to fulfill that prophecy.
Maybe my favorite one, though, of all the prophecies Jesus fulfilled is a, is a promise of timing of Jesus's arrival, of the savior's arrival, that we get all the way back in Daniel 9. Says this, "Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. And for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in troubled times. And after sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing." All right, that was a lot of numbers. Let me give you more. Interpreters believe that when this word weeks is used here in Daniel 9, that it's actually talking about a period of time, each of them being seven years. So what, what is prophesied in Daniel 9 is that there's going to be a moment that somebody is going to give a command for Jerusalem to be rebuilt. And when that command is given, the clock, the timeline for the savior of the world begins. That was done in the year 445 BC by King Ardis Xerxes. And we know this from, like, outside of the Bible. This is in historical literature. Artis Xerxes gives the command to rebuild Jerusalem. So then, if you take the numbers, and you should go do this math later, but you take the numbers in Daniel 9, it is 483 years that the savior of the world would be cut off. 483 years after 445 BC is about the year 30-33 AD, which is just about the time that Jesus strode into Jerusalem on a donkey. That's crazy. 500 years before it, we see Jesus fulfilling the prophecies.
There was a study done years ago about the odds of one man accidentally fulfilling eight of the prophecies that were given about Jesus. Just eight. The study found that it was the odds of one person accidentally doing that was one in 10 to the 17th power. You know what that looks like? No, that's a little short. Close. Still not enough. That's the odds of one man fulfilling just eight of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. And Jesus fulfilled over 300. Okay? And we can't, we see this number and we can't even compute that. It's 17 zeros. Our brains don't even understand that that amount of that number. So let me give you an illustration with it. If you were to take a silver dollar, and if you don't know what a silver dollar is, it's about the size, if you take an Oreo and you split in half, like, like you do when you eat an Oreo. That's God's way to eat an Oreo. It's in the Bible somewhere. I know it is. And you take the side that didn't have icing. That's about the size of a silver dollar. And you were to take these silver dollars and you were to put them all over the state of Texas, covering the state of Texas, 2 feet deep in silver dollars. And then you and I were to get in a plane. We were to take one more silver dollar, and we're going to mark it with a dot. We're going to fly up over Texas somewhere. We're just going to throw that silver dollar out the window. And then we stir all the silver dollars up. And then we got one of our buddies, one that we don't like. We take them anywhere in Texas and we blindfold them. Drop them off in Amarillo, Midland, South Padre, doesn't matter. Blindfold them. Just tell them to start walking and at some point to reach down and pick up a silver dollar. The odds of Jesus fulfilling eight of the prophecies that he fulfilled is the same as if that person randomly walked to the correct point in the state of Texas, reached down and picked up the one silver dollar that we threw out the window of the airplane. That's crazy.
I mean, God's timing is perfect. And the connection between Paul saying the fullness of the connection between Paul saying the fullness of time in Galatians 4 and Jesus's arrival in Luke 2 is a megaphone declaring the power of God's perfect timing. God's timing is perfect. And if it was true for Jesus and his arrival, Paul's saying, "Hey, it's also true for you." Because he, he goes on. He says this in verse five, "to redeem those." So he just said, you know, "in the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to fulfill those who are under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir, through Christ."
God adopts us through Jesus, through his birth, and through the cross. And that adoption gives us both our inheritance and our identity. When we say yes to Jesus, the baby that was talked about in Luke 2, that Galatians 4, the fullness of time, when we say yes to him, all of a sudden our identity shifts. We become not a slave, but a son or a daughter. And if that's the case, then we get an inheritance that comes from being a son and daughter of the Most High. That is a massive, massive thing that God did. And if he loves you enough that he would call you, let you call him Aba, not just God up in the heavens, but Aba, Father, if he loves you that much, then don't you think that the things that matter to you matter to him? I'm a broken, messed up dad. I make mistakes, and everything that moves my kid's heart moves my heart. And if that's true for me, how much more is it true for him? We wrestle with timing on our terms. And God's going, "Hey, I, I got this."
This is the way the great theologian Charles Spurgeon talked about it. "The omniscient Lord of all appoints the date of every event. All times are in His hand. None are left to chance. There are no loose threads in the providence of God and no dropped stitches. The great clock of the universe keeps perfect time, and the whole machinery of providence moves with unerring punctuality. It was to be expected that the greatest of all events should be the most accurately and wisely timed. And so it was. God willed it to be when and where it was. And that will is to us the ultimate reason."
The God who shaped history for Jesus's first coming is the same God shaping the timing of your life. As we wrestle with timing and all the different things that we can wrestle with, and and even sometimes dealing with questioning the very goodness of God. Him sending Jesus at the perfect time and orchestrating that shows us his power in timing, but also it shows us that we get to call him Aba, and therefore the things that move us move him. God's perfect timing matters in our life and means that his timing is perfect in our life, no matter what. God's timing is perfect even when it isn't ours. Do I love that all the time? No. I would much rather my timing and God's timing align all the time. But his timing is perfect even when it isn't ours, no matter the situation or the circumstance. So we can pray this like Psalms says, "But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors."
God's timing is better even when it isn't convenient. I mean, I, I prefer his timing and my timing to be the same. I moved to Abilene when I was 17. I was a sophomore. I mean, I was a junior, second semester junior. And I went to a little tiny public private school. And I had to move to Abilene. And I was going to have to go to a public school. And for a private school kid, that was the most terrifying thing you could ever imagine. Now, my kids are in public school. Love it. Love you teachers. Love what you do. It's great. We love the experience. But as a private school kid coming to Abilene, that was terrifying. I also was leaving a church that I loved and friends that I'd grown up with. And I was going to have to move the second semester of my junior year. Is that convenient timing? No. Horrible. First Sunday I was here, about right here, I looked out and saw a girl and then convinced her by just sheer force of will to marry me. It was here at this place that I, I felt God's call into vocational ministry. It was here that my kids got baptized and dedicated, like we did today. When I, God's timing wasn't convenient when I was 17. But it was sure right. It was sure for my good. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, those who are called according to his purpose.
I mean, think about the Christmas story in Luke 2. Nothing about that's convenient. Pregnant, traveling, get there's no room in the, it's harder to find a hotel in Bethlehem than it is in Abilene right now, which is saying something, sleep in a barn, go into labor in the barn. None of that is convenient, but it brought the greatest good we could ever imagine. God's timing is purposeful. It can become someone else's testimony. Our waiting on God's timing might be the very thing somebody else needs to experience the radical move of God in their life. Sometimes what God does in our waiting, in us, and through us becomes a testimony that changes someone's world forever.
We [music] started trying to have a family, uh, at the beginning of 2020, like right in January of 2020. Um, [music] I got pregnant pretty quickly and then had a miscarriage the day before our first doctor's appointment. Got pregnant again in '21. Had a miscarriage again. Um, got pregnant again in 2022. Uh, had an ectopic pregnancy that tore my fallopian tube. So, [music] had to have surgery and then got pregnant again twice in 2023. [music] Two miscarriages in 2023. Um, kind of sprinkled throughout that time, we did two rounds of IUI, two rounds of IVF. Those were kind of our big [music] things. So, right after our last miscarriage in 2023, [music] based on some of my lab work and blood work that was done, our doctor had told me like, "You do not need to get pregnant for at least six months." You know, it was [music] a tough time. Our last pregnancy, I really felt like I was like, "This is it." Like, I [music] had two of my best friends were having babies. My sister was having a baby. We actually, our due date was going to be one week apart. So I kind of felt like I was like, this is [music] you know, all the struggles God had led me to this, like he just, I was going to become a mom, like with all these women in my life. And so we went in for our first [music] appointment. We like go in so early at four weeks, and everything looks good. Then we like saw a heartbeat at [music] like five weeks, and then we, we went really close together, and then we go in for our nine-week appointment, and there was [music] no heartbeat. And so that was like devastating, crushing. And then to find out that we were going to be taking a break was hard too, cuz we just hadn't [music] for so long. And so we were kind of in this waiting period. And a few times throughout the years, we had talked about adoption. [music] And, you know, we would talk about it, and then I would get pregnant, and then I would have a miscarriage, and then we would kind of be grieving [music] that loss, and then the process would start over. So in this waiting time, we had started talking about like, okay, like [music] let's start looking at agencies. And I was having a hard time kind of just like making the decision to go in that direction. In February of 2024, Hunter's family actually [music] knew, um, a girl who was pregnant and was thinking about putting the baby up for adoption and was about to start looking into agencies. And they were like, "Well, Burk and Hunter might want to adopt the baby." And so, we set up a meeting with her, um, to meet her and just kind of see [music] and she was so sweet. And she was like, "Well, like, you know, telling us everything, everything looks good." And she's like, "I could do a gender reveal for y'all if y'all want." And like, all this exciting stuff. So, we left the meeting and being like, "I think..."
Oh, dang. She wants us to take this baby. Yeah. Yeah. And so, we were like, "I think we're going to do..." And so it was very different than the adoption journey we had thought that we would have. You know, we didn't go through an agency. It definitely kind of fell into our lap, which I always say, I think I needed. I think it was God finally being like, "Hey, this is what I want you to do," cuz I [laughter] was struggling so much to make the decision.
Like Brooke said, like we had just started to look into adoption, cuz Brooke's a very type A person. Again, adoption was on her, probably on the list of things that we would have done in our life. But I think we both wanted a little one, you know, of our own. And so for Brooke's heart to be ready for adoption, it took a little bit, especially after all the miscarriages and the grieving for it to just fall into our laps. Like, as soon as we just even started to kind of look into agencies, like I just, you know, kind of Googled agencies like, adoption agencies, and then I think it was like [music] a week later we found out about this. And I kind of thought there was never going to be like a light at the end of the tunnel. And to have just, just fall into our laps like after constant prayers, uh, constant just conversations with God, like, why, why are we having to go through this? Um, [music] it's not in our timing. It's all in His timing. Um, which I think we all know that, and this is a very true testament to that.
Through all the miscarriages and all the hard times, I remember asking God like, "Am I just [music] not supposed to be a mom? Like, have I been, you know, I thought I wanted this my whole life? Is this not [music] what you want for me?" And then this happened, and I became a mom in a different [music] way than I thought I would. But it's been beautiful, and it's been life-changing, and it's been the best thing that we've ever done.
Here's what I love so much about their story. Well, first of all, that that little boy, I got to see in between services here at the South Campus a couple of months ago, a little boy got dedicated here, which is awesome. I mean, it makes me feel old because Brooke and Hunter were middle schoolers in my student ministry. So that's old Jeffrey. But that baby's life is forever different. I mean, it's his whole destiny changed. My, I know that cuz my dad is adopted. And I can't tell you what life would have looked like without my grandma. I can tell you what it looks like because of her. You think it was easy for her to raise two kids that were not biologically hers as a single mom in DFW? No. Like my testimony is greatly influenced by her. That little boy from that Brooke and Hunter adopted, that made them a mom and dad, forever different [music] because of what they went through. Would anyone wish that series of events on them? No. That's awful. But it became somebody else's testimony. And what happens is God's timing grows trust, and waiting deepens our faith because it makes us tuck into Him when we have to wait. Makes us go, "All right, God. I need you in the midst of the waiting. I really want this to happen, but I'm going to trust you." And when we do that, we get to walk in this. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
But more than any of these things, and they're all awesome aspects of God's perfect timing, I love the opportunity to trust Him and, you know, have an influence in somebody else's testimony. More than anything, God's timing is personal. Calling your name. I mean, if we go back to our text today, we get the fullness of time, God's perfect timing, tying back to Luke 2. But then we see, "when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons." For some of you, you have run from the fullness of time that God has for you as hard as you could. The Christmas story is a declaration that God loved you enough that he would send Jesus to become a child so we would have the opportunity to become children. That he would adopt us so that we could call him Aba, [music] Father. For some of you, let this Christmas season be the [music] time that you stop running. But for each of us, the Luke 2 story, Galatians 4 text, they show us that no matter what the waiting feels like, and often it is difficult, His timing is perfect, and [music] He cares about you. And that it moves your heart, moves His too.
Let's pray. God, I thank you. I thank you for Jesus. We're in [snorts] the Christmas season. Would we, would we not rush past into the presents and the lights and the trees and all the fun stuff? How would we not [music] rush past Jesus? We thank you for the way you positioned human history for that moment in time. We thank you for the love that you showed us in sending your Son to be the Savior of the world. It's in your name we pray. Amen.