Transcription
I tell you, we need that reminder, don't we, all the time—that God's Word is more real than what we feel. Right? That we are, our future is not determined by our circumstances, our emotions, or situations, but our future, our next steps are determined by God's divine rhythm. So how do we get back to their people? How do we get back there when our life is falling apart, when things are hitting us fast, when what we feel feels more real than what God says? As we talked about last week, God's pathway back to the divine rhythm is Sabbath. Sabbath is six days we work; seventh day we rest. And whether this is your Sabbath or you've taken some day along the way, we unplug from everything else so we can plug into God. We stop working so we can start seeing where He is working in our life.
And one of the hardest places to see God working is when we're in pain, when we have a physical disablement, when we have a sickness or disease that clouds all of our judgment. It's hard to see God and how He could work with any of that. And yet, as we read Scripture, we actually see that He uses Sabbath to show that He is even Lord over our sicknesses and our diseases. You guys ever notice how often Jesus heals on the Sabbath in the Gospels? Over and over again! In fact, we get seven times in Scripture specifically where He heals on the Sabbath, on the seventh day He heals seven times, and seven is the number of completion. God wants to bring to completion something in our life that can't happen if we're not stopping on the Sabbath to understand what He's doing. Through our sickness: He heals a man with the withered hand; casts out an unclean spirit; heals the sick; heals a man with dropsy; heals a man ill for 38 years; heals a man born blind—and that's the passage at the top of your notes in John 9; Pastor Wayne will be unpacking that for us in a couple of minutes; we have video; heals a man in John 7. And when the Pharisees and religious leaders are angry for Him doing work on the Sabbath, He says, "Why are you angry with me for healing a man's whole body on the Sabbath?" You see, they had lost the true meaning of the Sabbath. The original seventh day was what God, man, and woman together as one—completely whole, mind, body, and spirit—no sickness, no disease, no separation, no worry, no fear. How did all of that enter into the equation? When they decided to descend—just so Bane—eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's when disease entered in, and you and I, all these years later, are living in the fall—not fall out of their original sin. And yet Jesus came to reverse the curse—their sacrifice on the cross. And every time He would heal on the Sabbath, each of those examples, it was a reminder of the way things are supposed to be, right? And yet we still rail at heaven and go, "God, why would you let me be sick? Why would you let this disease come on my loved one? Why would you let there be death and destruction?" And the whole time, God is taking the blame when He is not the one who did it. We are living in a fallen world because we have decided to live our own way, and Sabbath is that reminder to come back to His way, which is the healing way.
And so, if we're in this room right now, or you're watching online, or in one of our videos, or out under the Johanna today, God wants to slow you down by calling you back to the Sabbath rest—back to seeing things from His perspective. And yet you and I, we can still choose to, you know, cross our arms and be stubborn and just go, "God, this is all Your fault," or "This is all my husband's fault," or "This is all my wife's fault," or "Someone else's fault. It's not my fault." Maybe it is my fault. "God, I'm so angry right now." And we can get so stubborn and so stuck in our ways that we can't see it from His perspective. You know, I, I used to be that way when I was a kid. I used to be a little stubborn and hard-headed and determined that my way—it was the only way. Thankfully, I've grown out of that completely. My wife's in the room—yes, I've grown out of that completely. I'm not that way anymore at all. No, no, no. But it's—see, in those days where my favorite color was orange, and so when we would be—when I was a little kid, we'd be driving up to the intersection, and I'd see the stoplights, and I'd look at the yellow light and go, "I love that orange light." And my parents would look back and go, "What are you talking about? It's yellow." I go, "No, it's orange." "Jon, roll up to the next light, Jon. It's red, yellow, green." I go, "No, it's red, orange, green." And no matter how much the truth of it was right in front of me—that is very clearly yellow—I wanted my favorite color to be everywhere that I went, so I called it something different. Now you look at that, you just got that, John. That is so silly. None of us would ever be that way. And yet, even, you know, when we think we've grown out of that stubbornness—that way of seeing things the way we want to instead of the way God wants us to—I was on the front row with Cindy in the first service, and I'm like, "How do you like my orange lei?" And it's all fuzzy and cool. And she's like, "It's not orange, it's yellow." I'm like, "No, it's orange." And she's like, "That's more of a mustard." Then I'm like, "No, mustard goes on my burgers, not on my lei. This is, this is orange." And am I, even to this day, I'm still stubborn in those things. And if you and I aren't careful, we're gonna point to our sickness, our disease, and we're gonna call it what we want. We're gonna say, "God, this is orange. This is Your fault. This is awful. This is the end." And God's saying, "Actually, this is My chance to show My glory." "No, God, no. It's not. This is awful. This is all Your fault. This is 'cause You don't love me." And God's saying, "Actually, I want to show you how I love you through this hard time." Nope, nope, nope. So we can either continue to call it orange, or we can begin to see how God sees it. And how do we do that? The Sabbath calls us to slow our roll in our perpetually in-motion culture that causes us to be moving to the tyranny of the urgent. The Sabbath invites us to find His unforced rhythms of grace. Fine. It calls us to slow down. And yet you and I, we're entering the intersections of life at full speed—accelerator on, shifting into the highest gear—and we aren't slowing down at all. And that's why it's counterculture to save this—counterculture to take a timeout. What we're talking about in this series—it says it's not going to come natural, but it will come supernatural if we prioritize it. And the reason why most collisions happen when you're heading into an intersection is because of distraction: your cell phone, while you're doing your makeup, while you're, you know, grabbing your morning shake, and you're slapping your kids in the backseat, and you're plowing right through the intersection, right? You're not paying any attention to what the lights are saying, and that's usually where a collision happens. And I believe God has redesigned this whole message for this weekend because some of us are on a collision course that will destroy you, your marriage, and your relationships. But here and now, you're gonna listen to the Sabbath Lord. He's gonna call you to stop. He's gonna call it a slowdown. You're gonna lay down your distractions for the next 30 minutes, and you're gonna say yes to begin to seeing things the way He sees them. At the intersection of fear and faith, we find His face. So there's—we were on a collision course for anything—it's a collision course with truth that will set us free than the beset in lives that you and I are seen. So Sabbath causes us to do the opposite of what we feel. The opposite of what we feel when things are going bad is to stop. And yet the red light is exactly that—stop. And turn your bad report into a prayer request. You can feel that in your first blink there—turn your bad report into a prayer request. We all know what a bad report is. Your doctor calls you in, says, "I, I see something on the x-ray. I see something, and it's not good." We get a bad report—maybe it's not for us, but it's for a loved one or a friend, and our heart sinks. Maybe that bad report's not medical, but maybe it's financially. You get a bill in or debt that you can't possibly pay, or you didn't even know you had. And a lot of times those two are connected, 'cause being sick is very expensive here in our country. Those are all bad reports, and those are the reports that keep us up late at night and steal our rest, even when we do take a Sabbath. Those are the reports that God wants us to turn into a prayer request. And yet, most of the time, we don't stop when we get a bad report; we actually press on the accelerator, we close our eyes, and we plow through the intersection hoping we can just get through it. And the Lord is saying, "No, no, no. That's only—that's the path to destruction. I want you to stop because I have something to show you. I have a different way of dealing with this—not their own strength, but Mine; not their panic, but through prayer." And we learned that as this—look at our readings—this is all came out of our journal readings—this message from our last couple of weeks. And I didn't know when I was journaling on these things that it's gonna become a part of today's message. But our Sabbath moments prepare us for what's coming. Second Kings tells the story in 19—well, you guys can read through these scriptures later. Now, I would encourage you to do so, but for time's sake, I'm just gonna summarize. The king of Assyria was plowing through country after country, overtaking king after king, and now it had Judah in its sights. And this was just gonna be another in a long line of successes. There was no army as big as the Assyrian army at that time. And now Judah and its puny armies had no way of standing against them, and they knew it. Assyria knew it. So they send in a chair about it—begins to shout insults to God's people, to God Himself, to King Hezekiah, disparaging their God, discouraging their hopes, distracting them from what it is that God would have them do. And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, he also sends a letter to them, and the message says, "What are you doing? Don't depend on your God. Look at all these small 'g' gods that they all depended on, and look where they're at now. They're all destroyed, decimated. You surrender now. Don't think that your God's gonna come save them if their gods didn't do that." So Hezekiah takes that letter, that bad report, and does he panic? Does he run up and down the walls going, "Batten down the hatches! Grab your spears and your swords and your shields! They're coming to kill us!" Does he surrender and wave the white flag and go, "Well, we might as well give up now"? No. What does he do? He does the opposite of what you feel like doing when you get a bad report. He stops. He stops, and he humbles himself, and he falls to his knees, and he lays the message out—the letter out before God—said, "God, You hear what this puny King says about the King of all kingdoms? God, You hear what this man is saying? This is, this is a battle I can't win, but this battle is Yours." You guys understand the battle belongs to the Lord when we let it, but most of the time we never stop long enough to actually let God step in, and we keep trying to fight it with our own means and our own will and our own strength, and that's why we keep getting decimated. And yet what Hezekiah did is what some of us need to do today. We need to do the opposite of what we feel like doing. Instead of panic, we need to pray. Instead of going, we need to stop. We need to turn our bad reports into prayer requests. Just like King Hezekiah, we need to introduce this lowercase situation to our uppercase Savior. We need to introduce this king of countries to the King of all creation.
When my dad got the bad report from the doctor two years ago that he had prostate cancer, it leveled him. You never think you're gonna—you're gonna be the one that's gonna get that bad report. You always think it's gonna be somebody else. Well, my dad, Mom, I'm only here because of their faith, and they've gone through so much, and yet I've never heard his voice tremble the way it did when he called me. But what did he do? He did the same thing that King Hezekiah did after that time with the doctor where they freaked out. Yeah, were they scared? Yep. Panicked, worried, wondering? Yeah, all those things. But they went to the prayer closet. My mom and my dad, they got the actual report from the doctor—saying all the awful things that could happen from this—and laid that down in their prayer closet before the Lord and got on their knees, said, "God, You're bigger than this. God, this is Yours. I, I didn't see this coming, but You did. So, God, I'm gonna put my trust in You. I'm gonna turn this bad report into a prayer request. I'm gonna introduce this lowercase cancer to My uppercase Christ. I'm gonna put my life into Your hands because You're the one that determines the number of my days." And it's that place that some of us need to—not let this day go by before doing the exact same thing. Some of us have been walking around with a bad report that's trying to define you, determine your future. But today, before the day is done, you're gonna go home, and you're gonna lay those bad reports before the Lord, then you're gonna turn them into prayer requests, and you're gonna let that battle belong to the Lord. Why? Because you're gonna stop. Yeah, you could keep going into the week just like you did last week, but can I just suggest to you, take a Sabbath. Stop. Bring it before the Lord, and watch what He does with it.
Now, if you think stopping is hard, so is the second one—yielding. You know how we see the yellow light, right? Come on, you know red means stop, green means go, yellow means go really fast. Go really, really fast. You could make it—just go fast, right? You know who you are. Don't be pretending like you're all holy, like I would never do that. Oh, so someone's honest over there. Okay. And that's why you don't even buy the new whole bumper stickers and put them on your car because you don't want people knowing, "Wait a minute, I, I worship next to that person on Sunday. They just went right through there," right? That's why you don't buy those bumper stickers. I know, I know. And if you're going fast enough through that yellow, you see that shade between the yellow and the red—guess what it looks like? Orange. I told you it was orange. I told you it was orange. And though that may be how we drive, that cannot be how we live. Our God says, "No, you must follow the yellow light of the Sabbath. You must yield your timetable to God's prophetic promises." You can feel that in your blink—the second blink there—yield your timetable to God's prophetic promises. Why is it that we don't stop for the yellow? Because none of us have time to wait out the light. "I'm gonna be late! I'm gonna be late for my office. I'm gonna be late dropping my kids off at school. I'm gonna be late going to meet my friend." Whatever it is, we don't have time for the yellow. We don't have time to yield. And the Lord is saying, "Your path to My perspective is yielding. Let Me have it—have what—your timetable." We all know that God does not operate on our timetable, but we keep trying to get Him to do it anyways, right? It said this—you know that God is never late, He's rarely early, but He's always on time. But that time is usually not ours. That's especially, especially when it comes to pain and suffering and sickness. We feel like, "God, this is taking way too long." We read recently in our internal reading out of Habakkuk chapter 2, and he was looking at his society and his people—same way we could write today and go, "God, this is off. We're going to hell in a handbasket. When are You gonna come and do something? When's it gonna want to get changed? This thing"—he looked at his own people and their indifference to God's rules and laws. He looked at the injustices in his culture and the poor and the sick and the needy and how no one was doing anything—has heard of anybody but themselves. And to make matters worse, he was God's prophet stepping onto the scene, going, "God is gonna move," but, "God, when are You gonna move?" Everyone's looking at me like, "Hey, when's this God gonna do something? When is He gonna do something?" And so, instead of continuing to press on the accelerator, he slowed his roll and waited on the Lord, and God gave him a word. And some of us, we gotta do that today. At the end of service, you're gonna receive a word from God—a prophetic promise of what it is He's gonna do through you. And God made it clear to him, "I am coming, and though My word may linger, it will never be late." Let me repeat that: Though God's promise to you may linger, it will never be late. They see the wrong question to ask in this situation is, "How long is this gonna take?" The right question to ask is, "What has God promised He will do?" "How long is this going to take?" That's what we ask when we're sick. "It's taken forever!" What we need to be asking, though, is, "What does God promise He will do?" You know, like when I get sick—I mean, just even a little sick—I feel like my whole world is gonna come to an end. Like, even when I just start getting a little sniffle, my—my wife calls it the man cold, here's—I really—John, and I'm in bed like, "I need—listen to my throat. It's really bad." She's like, "John, you're fine." "No, it looks bad. It's bad. I need chicken soup. Can you make chicken soup?" And she's like, "John, you're totally fine. You can make yourself chicken soup." You see, when your wife has had five boys, there's not a whole lot of room for whining from the man, right? And she calls it the man cold. Like she—she's like, "I've endured a lot of pain, John. You're fine. You're fine." My whole world shuts down, and I get a little man cold. But some of us were facing like chronic pain on a daily basis. We're facing disease and suffering that—that tends to sap away our trust and our strength and our perspective. And when you're facing some of them like that, it's hard to have a preacher come up here and just go, "Wait on the Lord." We have a right to ask, "Well, how long is it gonna take, God?" But, but if we ask the wrong questions, we're never gonna get the right answers. The right question here is, "What does God promise He will do?" And in the case of King Hezekiah, the wrong question was, "How big is my enemy?" The right question was, "How big is my God?" How big is your God? Is He bigger than what you're facing right now? You know, if anyone had the right to ask, "How long is this gonna take?" it certainly was Pastor Karen Ross. I don't know if you all know her, but she's an amazing minister of God's—administering a New Hope family for four years. She ministers now as a pastor of our New Hope Waikiki campus. And because of her immunodeficiency disorder, for the last over three decades—since she was 23 years old—she has contracted disease after disease after disease, sickness after sickness after sickness. And this most recent one was threatening to be the one that did her in. And it was this rare—super rare—form of pneumonia that most of the time everyone that gets it dies from it. And it's so awful, she described that it's like her lungs fill with fluid to the point where every 10 minutes for a couple of weeks it felt like she was being waterboarded—where when she would try to get a breath, all she would get was liquid, and it felt like she was drowning in her bed. And as she's sharing this with me when Cindy and I visited her this last week, I'm going, "How do you—I can't even fathom—like I can't even get through a cold. How do you get through that? What do you focus on?" And she said, "Every single time, I would focus on, 'God's not done with me yet.'" And I go, "How do you—how do you get there? How do you have that focus when it feels like you're drowning every 10 minutes?" And she said, "Oh, I hadn't written my book yet." I'm like, "What—your book?" Yeah. She said, "Someone prophesied over me a couple of years ago that I was gonna be writing a book that was gonna help people through their sicknesses and their diseases and not lose faith in God. And I haven't written my book yet, so I knew I wasn't done." And I'm looking into that, going, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." What was she doing? She was yielding her timetable to the prophetic promises of God, and she was understanding Philippians 1:6—"There's my God that began a good work—He's faithful to carry it out to completion until Jesus Christ." She understood that if God started it, He is gonna be ending it. "My God started in my life; He's the one that's gonna end it. My doctor, my nurse, my disease, and my sickness doesn't determine the number of my days; my God does. And that's where I'm putting my trust." And she had this holy determination inside of her—the death was not gonna win. And it was—she described it like when she focused on God's promise, that I cut the tether between her and death. When she came out fighting, she came out with a fierce faith in the middle of that. And I look at that, I go, "Wow, God, I need that kind of faith. I need to be able to yield my timetable to focus on Your prophetic promise." And some of us need to do that right now. You need to return to the promises of God's Word. What is it that God has said He's going to do in you? Because I got good news for you: If you're here watching online right now, if there's still breath in your lungs, He's not done. "But John, I'm sick. But I've got all this pain. But John, I'm suffering here." Yes, and God sees that. But if you're still here, He's not done with you yet. And He's gonna, in fact, do something through the very thing you're facing right now. And the only way you can have that perspective is by yielding your timetable to His promise.
And finally, the green light. Yeah, we're gonna go forward. We're not getting stuck here. Well, we're gonna go forward with a focus not on my sickness, but on God's strength. You see, sometimes we could have a sickness—like Pastor Karen—for so many years, it becomes our identity. Our identity becomes our sickness; our identity becomes our disease. We just identify with—"Yeah, this is just who I am. This is just how it's gonna be." And the Lord is saying, "No, no. I want you to move forward. I want you to move forward with a focus on My strength." And Habakkuk, who had received that word in chapter 2, shares something amazing in chapter 3. He says, "Even though I look all around and not a single thing has changed yet—in fact, I would say it's probably gotten worse—My God said He's gonna do something, so I will rejoice." That's right. "I'm gonna sing in the middle of the storm. I'm in the valley, but I can already see that one day God's gonna take me to the mountaintops. I don't even have strength to get up; my legs are quivering. I don't even have strength to climb, but I'm calling those things that—"
Aren't as though they were, and I see myself like the feet of a deer on the mountaintops. One day I will be looking down on this valley of trouble, because my God is gonna take me there. But I'm not waiting till I'm on the mountain; I'm gonna praise him in the valley. Can you do that? True worship is a choice to rejoice before you've seen the resolve, before you've seen anything changed. You're gonna praise the God who will change it, because he said he would.
True worship is not based upon convenience, circumstance, or convenience situation. It's based upon the unmovable promise of our God. And if he said, "I will be your strength," and you better believe he's gonna be your strength, but you gotta let him. And some of us were got stuck where we're at, and today's the day that you're gonna go forward with God's green light. "I will be your strength." I'd never forget the picture that my mom sent me as my dad was being rolled in for his prostate surgery. They have his prostate removed. Look at this—who smiles like that when you're going in for prostate surgery, right? You guys are probably thinking, "What is said?" You know, it was on medication. No, this is my dad. If you knew him, you know this is him. He, he lives out the joy. "The Lord is my strength." He knew he wasn't in the hands of the surgeon; he was in the hands of the one who made him, who knew the one to determine his case. So he could even head into, even while he's still got cancer in his body, he could head into the surgeon room knowing that his God was in control. He could choose to rejoice right there before anything else had changed.
And there was a couple months ago that we were back with my family in Bend, Oregon, and this is him now going down that waterslide with my oldest son, 100% cancer-free. The right, the, the wrong question is, "Why are all these bad things happening?" The right question is, "What is God doing through this?" Your sickness, your disease, threatening to drown you—mm-hmm—God's gonna raise you up, because he's the rock, and movable, unchanging. We can focus on all the bad things, but like Pastor Williams about to share with us, God is going to do something through this. Open up your hearts; receive what he's about to share from his own life. [Music]
So this past Tuesday, all the parents were rejoicing across the land as we brought our kids back to school, right? But it kind of throws our whole routine out of whack. And, so it was nice to be able to drop them off, but we were talking with our launch of this brand new series, Divine Rhythm. Now there's a difference between daily routine and a divine rhythm. A daily routine is dependent upon everything going the same, so it's a real surface, it kind of peace. So naturally, I love being with my boys during the summer, but my routine is messed up. But a divine rhythm is a dependency upon Jesus Christ in the middle of massive upheavals, unexpected news, difficult challenges. And daily routines are good, but life's constantly throwing curveballs at always. Yeah, we're driving to work, Cindy and I are driving, Endora staff mean, and we usually listen to the daily reading that we're gonna journal on with the staff on Tuesdays, and it was John chapter 9. And Jesus and the disciples walk across this blind beggar that had been blind since birth, and they kind of asked Jesus some question that was how a lot of people thought in those days. "Jesus, is this man blind because his parents were sinners or because he's a sinner?" And I love how Jesus goes, "Neither," right? He, he doesn't go with the options we present him, and he said, "Actually, this is an opportunity for God to reveal his glory." And it was while we were listening to that on the radio that I got a text from you. Of course, safety first. I said, "Hey, Sydney, I think I got a text from Pastor Wink," and you know, check it, and, and she read the text and immediately my heart sank as I realized life has just thrown you a curveball.
Yeah, yeah. That's what's going on. Well, last year, so I've been and not been feeling well. Something, you know, you know your body pretty well, and it's not right. And then this last December I got very ill, and so the doctor put me on antibiotics and didn't help. And so four months later on antibiotics, it's still not, something's not right. Yeah, yeah. So we went in, began to do a battery of tests and checked me out, and then they said, "You know, we need to do a biopsy because there was a pain in a certain area." And so, so I thought, "Okay," and they did and found out that I have cancer. And so that was a bolt of lightning from left field, you know, and when anybody gets that kind of news, it's like, "This is nuts. It doesn't happen to me. I'm healthy, strong, and invincible. What is this?" Yeah. And so the first week or so you can't sleep; I mean, you're just, you're tossing and you're turning, and, and my wife struggled probably more than I should. Absolutely. And then all of a sudden you come face to face with your mortality and you're finite. You, you're not that Superman, and you come to grips with the fact that you're not around here all that long, and you, you, you talk about it, you know, you pray, and you tell people you preach, but what happens to you, it's, it's different, and it nails you. And so you struggle and struggle and struggle and struggle. So we're still in the throes of it right now. I've got to go in to an oncologist and see, you know, if I'm gonna be doing radiation soon or surgery. And, and but after about a week you kind of settle down a little bit and you think, "Wait a minute, I am not my own." I remember in First Corinthians 6:20 or so, Paul says, you been, it's like Paul was talking to me, says, "You, you were bought with a price; you're not your own." Hmm. Your body belongs to Jesus. Yes. So what he wants to do with it, he'll do. And like you said, I really did think this is for the glory of God. Huh. Yeah, because I mean, I'm loving Jesus, doing what he's asking me to do, and all of a sudden, bang, right? Like, yes. Yeah. My wife was wondering, "What is this, Lord?" Yeah. And, and I had kind of facetiously tell her, "It's like, honey, if I'm gone, he won't have as much money to spend it, Ross." No, she said, she's the best gift I've received since salvation, a day. But she does get feisty once in a while, and I just give her chocolate and it passes. But, but she's been praying with me; we've been praying together. And John, this is what I came to grips with after about, oh, maybe a week and a half or so, and the earthquake is subsided a little bit. We usually ask the question, "Why is this happening?" Yeah, yeah. "Why do I got things happen? Why, why is this happening?" And the Lord said, "When you need a better perspective, so you need to ask better questions." Hmm. That's a bad question. Okay, like Dad said, is he is centers? Yeah, yeah. Wrong notion, because you're looking for blame. Uh-huh. You're looking for reasons as if that will assuage the problem and mitigate the, the challenge. So he said that's the wrong question; you've got to ask better questions. And the question he put on my heart is this: It's not, "Why is this happening?" He said, "Ask who is in control." And I thought about that, and I thought, "God is in control, and God is good, so he's gonna use this for his glory." Yes. And he said that he'll work all things together for good, 'cause he's good. So I have to remember that, that the questions I ask are important, and I have to frame it correctly. Not, "Why is this happening?" And that's what happened in John, right? The question is, "Who's in control?" And at this point we don't have the luxury of hindsight. I don't have hindsight yet; everything is before me, right? I'm facing this stuff brand-new, researching like crazy, talking to different oncologists and getting second opinions, third opinions, and, and seeing what stage it's in. It's in an intermediate stage, so it's not low, but it's not high; it's in the middle. So I need to get moving on it. And through all of this, I don't have hindsight yet; everything is before us. And that is often the toughest state in life when you don't have any hindsight. Sure, you can't say, "Oh, yeah, this is what God did." He hasn't done it yet. Mm-hmm. You just have to trust, right? He will, right? So that's when your faith is like tested for sure. A lot of times we as Christians talk about, sing about, and it's very idealistic, and it's, you know, kumbaya, but when you get nailed with it, it's like, "Okay, that's where the rubber meets the road." Or no faith, and we determine then and there is my faith fragile, yeah, or is it fiercely dependent upon my God? Oh, yeah. It comes down to, if Jesus takes you home, are you okay with that? Mmm. Do you have everything in order? Hmm. Do you have everything in orders? Like I'm laying there in the nighttime thinking, "Do I have everything in orders?" My will and order is there, yeah. You know, and I know it's a little bit more than you need to go, you know, it's kind of overdoing it, but, oh, everything is going through your mind at that point. I mean, it is just swirling around. Yeah. And this was not part of your plans for the fall. No. And if I do radiation, it's five days a week for two months. Goodness. Wow. And so it's like, "Okay, everything is changing," yeah, but it makes you realize that you are fragile and your plans are in the hands of God. And if he couldn't change it like that. And at the same time, what you were saying about control, that is, is he in control of your life in your days? I marveled at, once I got over the shock, I marveled at the care of our God that he would make sure your son Aaron was with you, that he moved there, just he was just being obedient to what it is he asked God asked him to do this days before the news came, days before the news. So he was with you when you received that news. Yeah. And, and then your daughter Abby came the day after you received that. Yes. I just look at that as the Lord's confirmation, saying, "Wait, I am in control. I know this took you by surprise. Yeah. I knew this was right. He knew this before time began." Oh, so he's good with it. I'm not, but the neat thing is, is I have to remember that even in the midst of the challenge with no hindsight, God is good. Mm-hmm. And God is in control. Yes, yes. And I have to rest. Doesn't mean that I am exonerated from my responsibilities. The second thing he said when I said, "Why is this happening?" The second thing is, "Woe is me," and the Lord said, "No, you've got to get on, get off the defense and get on to the offense." Okay, okay. You have to kick this; you have to take the initiative and go after it. And Paul's words came to my mind when he said, "You run in such a way that you win." Mm-hmm. So do we have responsibilities in all of these? Yes. While you're trusting God for sovereignty, you still have responsibilities. Yeah. You know, it's sort of like sometimes we really pray and say, "God, we want a good marriage, but we don't want to give up our streaks of anger." "God, I want to be a good student, get A's, but I don't want to be disciplined and study. I'd rather go to the mall." You know, "God, I really want to have a good devotional life and be a man or a woman of faith, but I can't get up every morning to do devotions." It's like, "No, you have a responsibility in this because it's a partnership." And Jesus didn't create us to just sit there and observe while he does the work; he wants fellowship with us; he wants to partner with us. And the word commission in Matthew 28, the Great Commission, is we're gonna do this mission together. Mm-hmm-hmm. So I want God to do his part; he expects me to do mine. Often I want God to do my part, and I think I'm responsible for his. That's why we get overwhelmed, right? Right. But if we'll just do our part, let God do his, the mission is done together. God is in control, and God is good. So your daily routines obviously couldn't be completely different, but your divine rhythm continues to be the same, the thing that you've been training us in all these years. You're gonna stay within your devotion; you're gonna stay in accountability; you're gonna stay connected to your family; you're gonna be obedient when God's ask you to do. That's your part, and then he does the heavy lifting because you can't heal cancer. Yeah, he can't, he can't. And, and I also have to understand that it might be God's a way of telling me to slow down a little, to use a two-by-four. I didn't think he would come in this form, but he will. Yeah, we will. And if you're serious with God, you'll get serious with you. Yeah. And sometimes we pray prayers that aren't safe; they're good and they're right prayers, but you can't pray safe prayers all the time. "Remember me, God. You spoiled me; bless me." Then you'll never change, right? But if you pray and you have the courage to pray some dangerous prayers, "God, whatever you need to do, use me for your glory," he will. Yeah. Well, and he's going to. Yeah, yeah. And even how you look at scripture, when David was going through his unexpected trials, or even we just read through the back three, and how in the middle of nothing was going right, there the crops were failing, there was no fruit on the trees, the barns are empty, and he still sailed, "I choose to rejoice," right? Yeah. If you were to, I know worship such a big part of your relationship with the Lord, if you were to say, "This is my go-to song when I'm really needing to reconnect to the Lord," what would that be for you?
I love that. There are so many great songs, you know, but I keep thinking about First Corinthians and when Paul said, "You're not your own; you've been bought with a price." I need to reaffirm that again. And one of my songs I love to sing is that old song, "Lord, I give you my heart; I give you my soul," 'cause it's kind of like reaffirming I already gave it to him, but I need to sing, "Lord," afresh today. Yeah. It's a lot of times we've given the Lord our marriage, but we got to give it to him every day, don't we? Hmm. "Lord, I give you my health," but I got to do it every day. Yeah. "Lord, I give you my thoughts, my mind," I can still got to do it every single day. "Lord, everything I have is yours," but you better do it every day because what you said last month will not suffice for today. Mm-hmm. The commitment you made on your wedding anniversary will not suffice your marriage today; you have to reaffirm that. And so it's like a lot of times I just kind of go into the closet and get on and just same place again because it just reminds me again how important, give him a fresh, "Lord, I give you my heart; I give you my soul. I live for you alone. Every breath that I take, every moment I'm, Lord, have your way in me. Lord, I give you my heart; I give you my soul. Live for you, every breath that I take, every moment I'm away." [Music] "Lord, I give you…" [Music] "I live for every barrette…" [Music] "in me…" [Music]
You know, my prayer is that that people don't hear this message and kind of commiserate with Ray. Yeah, really. I really want people to say that God is in control, and his promises are as true in tough times as they are in good times, right? Right. In the bottom of the valley or on the mountaintop, when you're happily married, when you're not happily married, when you're double or single or struggling with finances or riches, can be, his promises are the same for every single one of us. Yes. It's not a better promise for someone that's winning, and it's a lesser promise for someone that's losing. It's a better promise for someone who's healthy and not quite as much for someone who's ill. God's promises are as potent and as powerful in both cases. And if you're going through this one here, the tough times, and you're in the valley, his promises are ever true, and God is in control, and he is a good guy. Yeah. Don't ever let go of it. Yes, 'cause that we don't, you don't need pity; that's not what you want. You don't want people feeling sorry for you; don't want good thoughts; you want people rallying around and going, "I'm gonna stand with you in prayer." And that's what came through so, so well, and what you just shared, this is about what God is doing through this. Yeah. And John 9, you know, it says that this is for the glory of God. What Jesus was saying is, "Don't focus on his blindness; focus on what can God do through the blackness." This is for God's glory. So the focus isn't on the blind person; it's on the all-seeing God. It's not the one who's debilitated; it's on the Great Physician. It's not the one that's stumbling around because of a lack of eyesight; it's the one who knows the way and knows how to get you there. So we've got to focus on him; otherwise, you'll start to commiserate with yourself, and you'll start asking the question, "Why is this happening?" rather than, "Who's in control?" Yes, yes. And, and remember that in order to get a better perspective, you have to ask better questions. And sometimes our questions are impoverished, and they're motivated out of fear, and so it actually eats up faith. But if your questions are based out of faith, it will give you the momentum to act on that faith, cooperate with God, and watch that commission take place together with him. So healing and glory comes. Yeah. And that fear is so often birthed out of our lack of control. When you get a report like that, you realize, "I am NOT in control at all," and that's where that fear comes from. And then fear can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, then I've got to control the other things in my life, right? I've gotta bring everything else in control. And the Lord's words for you were so sweet and so good, "I've got this." Yeah. "I've got this." Yeah. It's a lot of times fear births inaction. Mm-hmm. And it starts to blame, whereas faith is the, the beginning of action or bias for action that says, "God, you're still in control." Yes. So when I see you're in control and everything is going good, it's easy to say, "Poop, God's in control," but when you're at it because you're in control. Yes. But when you're out of control, you think God is out of control, right? And what it does is it really reveals the fact that for a lot of us we think we're God. Yes. When I'm in control, God's in control, me, you know. When I'm healthy, God is good. When I'm doing fine, I got some cash in my pocket, God's a provider. Yeah. But when you have nothing and you're not feeling well, is he still in control? Hmm. And that's when you, you discover that you really need to worship God and not the man in the mirror. And he's the one that determines who's in control, not you. Yeah. And sometimes he has to take everything away so you see that. And that's why I say, you know, sometimes you don't realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you got. And sometimes he allows a debilitating sickness to hit you so that you realize that Jesus is all you need. Yeah, because he's all I god. Yeah. Well, I love how even so soon after getting this news you're already able to move forward in this kind of faith, teaching the rest of us what to do instead of reacting in panic. You responded in prayer, and that's exactly what we need to do. Yeah. I wish I wish I could say it came easy. Yeah. No, like I heard it, "Praise God, remain completely calm," right? Yeah. No, I'd lost a lot of sleep. Yeah. And in fact, just until maybe two days ago I was extremely fatigued because you get all of this is you're trying to process, and you're a man of faith. And some people say, "Wayne, are you a person of faith?" I say, "Yes, I am," but it did not come easily, and it did not come quickly. Yeah. So if someone is wrestling with their faith, it's not a negative thing, right? No. Just keep asking yourself the right questions. Better, better questions gives you a better perspective, and a better perspective helps you to see the better faith. Hmm. And so watch that, and don't let circumstances dictate your questions; let the Word of God dictate your questions. And that's why I say, doesn't matter how deep the valley you're going through, stay with your devotions because the Word of God is gonna echo in your soul and the chambers of your heart, and you'll start asking right questions that are reflective of the Word of God, not of the circumstances without the Word of God. Mm-hmm. So sometimes we get going through the world and we were, we're busy and, and just full of activity, so we don't have time for the word, and then bang, something hit, but happens, and it's like, "What do I say? What do I do?" And there's no word in you; there's no arc; I've nothing to fall back on. If no, yeah. And this, the Bible says, "The Holy Ghost will bring back to remembrance the things which you have heard." Well, if you haven't heard much lately and you haven't been storing or archiving anything, it's like, "What's the Holy Spirit gonna bring back?" Right? You have no anchor. Yeah. Like, "Oh, here's an iPad," but you did, or let's see, you know, "Here's a magazine; there's a Netflix show." Yeah, that's not good. But, but you've got to have an archive of the Word of God, and then the Holy Spirit seasons your thoughts, and then you start asking better questions, which prompts a better perspective, which pushes you to a far better faith. We thank God what it is that he's doing through this. Thank you, Lord. The question is not, "Why did this happen?" The question is, "Who is in control?" Let's stand up together. Who's in control of your situation in your scenario right now? Pastor Wayne and I, as we prayed over this service, we wanted to kick the devil in the teeth. You guys ready to do that? You guys ready to kick the devil in the teeth? Yeah, because God does that, right? What the devil meant for harm, God will turn for good. When the devil meant for us to focus on sickness, we're going to focus on the Savior. And so I'd like to invite up our pastoral staff; I'd like to invite up our prayer team just to come up, up in front here and on the sides here. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a step of faith; we're gonna put feet to our faith, get out from our chairs. And if you need healing or someone you know needs healing, God is in the house to do exactly that. And if you're online right now, just type into the messaging where you need us to join you in healing out under the Ohana. Can't just stand up or you're out, and our venues just stand up or out so we can agree with you in prayer. And as you come up, just make your way into the middle here and all along here and on along the sides so that everyone can get prayer before you go now. We just thank you that your word is more true and more real than what we feel. We thank you, God, that even right now, got your healing and Pastor Wayne in his body, that right now, God, Urich healing, got our bodies because we belong to you. And got what you said you will do what you said you will start, God, you will finish. We thank you, God, that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever; that what you did then you will do again, and you will do in this place right now. So you are just raising the faith; the gift of faith is being imparted to your people right now, and we receive on behalf of your son Jesus Christ everything that you provided for us, in the name of Jesus. Amen.