What to do when you don't know what to do?

ZI would like to speak today a message that I'm going to title "What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do." Come on somebody, amen. I want you to open your Bibles with me to 2 Chronicles 20:12.

This is not a message that will apply to every situation. I believe God wants us to live having plans. I believe God wants us to have strategies. I believe God wants us to have wisdom in what we are doing and the future of our life. But there are situations, and there are seasons, and there are circumstances where we find ourselves where the wisdom that we have, we don't have for that situation. And where we don't have wisdom, we have to apply faith. We're not just a people of wisdom, we are as Christians, people of faith.

Now some people, every area of their life they apply faith. Meaning, they don't want to work, they don't want to plan, they don't want to strategize, they don't want to exercise budget. They're like, I'm just going to live by faith. That's irresponsible. We must practice wisdom. The Bible doesn't just teach us every single day to wake up, not work, not brush our teeth, not take a shower and just kind of go with the flow. We are taught to have structure in our life, have discipline in our life, raise a good family, love our wives, respect our husbands, raise our children. But there are areas in our life that you can exercise, do everything right and everything good, and you find yourself in the place where your wisdom fails. You just don't know what to do, and that's exactly what happened to a Jewish King, Jehosaphat.

Jehoshaphat was a good King. He was a good man. The Bible actually says he was a mighty man, meaning that he had a good army. Jehoshaphat was not some kind of a spineless, weak and had nothing going for him. No. He was a good, mighty man. But the Bible says there was a great multitude that decided to have a coalition and come against him to destroy him. And so what Josaphat does is I'm going to share with you four things to do when you don't know what to do. So I want you to pull out your phone, pull out your notebook. If you are here we are here to learn, we here to shout but also take notes. We are here to receive faith but also to receive instruction. Some of you maybe this message is going to come in one ear right now and come out of the other ear because you're like, man I know what to do. I just don't want to do it. But there are others of us who are like, man I don't know what to do. Maybe one day you will be in the place where this message will be necessary. I can tell you I have paid a visit to this verse that I just read countless times. I've had seasons in my life, where for a short time I felt what Jehosaphat had felt, and this verse is the verse that I would go to, camp there for a little bit and find encouragement. And I want to share that with you today. What do you do when you don't know what to do?

Number one. When you are under attack, assemble. When you are under attack, assemble with your family. Now this could be your physical family, but mostly it will be your spiritual family. I want you to notice what Jehosaphat did. The Bible says in verse four. "So Judah gathered together." Somebody say, together. A little bit louder for the second sanctuary, say, "together, to ask help from the Lord." I want you to see the verse five, it says, "Then Jehosaphat stood in the assembly of Judah." So they gathered together. They don't know what to do. They're being attacked or the attack is coming. It's not there yet. It hasn't arrived yet. The plan of the enemy hasn't come to pass but it's in motion, and when he doesn't know what to do, what he does do is he assembles together with Jewish people. Now I want you to notice, he doesn't assemble only with the military man to plan, what do we do? He assembles together with a spiritual family, this was also their nation. And the Bible says, together Jehosaphat started to ask God. When you don't know what to do, go to church. Why? Sometimes you'll get an encouragement, a touch from God, a word from God. A couple came this morning in the first service who were actually debating on what they should do. And exactly the word that I spoke, I didn't even know them from Adam. They said, you have no idea, that was a sermon for us. We're relocating to Tri-Cities this Monday. I didn't even know. I was like, I hope my sermon didn't make a mess out of your life and I was like, practice wisdom when you apply it. But they said no, this is exactly what we needed to hear today. You don't know how God can meet you when you come together. Jesus says, where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am among them.

The greatest temptation when you are under spiritual attack will come in this form. Stay away from believers, stay away from Christians, why? They don't understand what I'm going through. And the reason why we come to that conclusion is because we think everyone's life is summed up in their latest Instagram post. Just because we shared a happy moment on an Instagram, this doesn't mean that that our life is always, every time filled with happy moments. You're not the only one that's battling loss, defeat, destruction, attack in your life. There's a lot of others of us that come together and we are in the same thing. I like to make fun of snowflakes, but I'm going to give some honor to snowflakes today. Sometimes I like to say, don't be like a snowflake who melts when the sun comes up. You know snowflakes are cute, feeble and weak. But you put them together, they stop traffic. You put them weak things together, they close schools. You put them together, they flip semis. So sometimes we are weak, feeble, put us together. We become unstoppable. Put us together, and then your tears become my tears, my joy becomes your joy. Something happens when we come together. That's why the Bible says in Hebrews 10:25, "Not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together, as a manner of some." When Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites are attacking you. Excuse me, when sickness, when poverty, when addiction comes and attacks you, the enemy will whisper and say, get away from them. Why? Because look, you just fell into the sin. Look, you're struggling with this addiction. Church is for perfect people. You're not one of them. Get better and then you come back. You see the enemy knows. He's the predator, you're the prey. He can't get you when you're in the herd. It's hard to get you when you part of the flock. But the moment you begin to kind of get behind and you have these excuses in your mind, you know what, I just don't feel good. It's not a right time. I'm under attack. Nobody understands. I'm kind of sad right now. I'm kind of alone. I'm dealing with anxiety. I'm dealing with depression. I'm dealing with this family crisis. You know what, my child just you know went this way that is not right with God, and so I'm just going to stay home and I'm going to take some me time. But see, you become a prey. The predators is after you. These Edomites and these ammonites and these all of these people that are coming against you, when it's the hardest to come to church, this is when you have to fight hard not to miss church. When it's the hardest to come to a small group, this is when you have to fight hard not to miss a small group, why? Because we are strong together, we are weak separate. We're called members. That's why as Christians we don't go around saying, I am the church. I know it's cute and popular, and it sells t-shirts. I am the church. Biblically it's not accurate. The word "church" means ekklesia and ekklesia means an assembly. We are a church, when we assemble. Do you remember a few months ago when I brought a chair in here from Walmart, the pink chair? And it was assembled in a box, and I sat on that box and I said that's not how you sit on the chair. You have to take the stuff apart, put it together and then sit on a chair. See all of us separately are like members, but when we come together, we assembled. We become an army, no longer just a soldier. We become a family, no longer just one unit. We're not just a snowflake, we become a storm. So Jehosaphat did not know what to do, he assembled. He got together with other people who were facing the same problem, and they together did not know what to do. But they were together, not knowing what to do. At least I'm not alone, amen.

Studies were done. 148 studies involving 308,000 people between 1980 to 2014. So about 34 years. They concluded that social isolation was roughly equivalent to the negative effects of smoking one pack of cigarettes per day. Stated more positively, participants with strong social bonds had 50% increase in longevity when compared to less social connected individuals. Today being connected socially is more difficult because we are all connected digitally, and we think that is being connected socially. Having 5,000 friends on Facebook and having zero friend in life, is not going to help you. Because these 5,000 friends won't show up to you when you're in a hospital, they won't be at your wedding and they will not attend your funeral. And so the more we are connected to everyone, the less we are connected to anyone and that's the dilemma of the Digital Age. And what that does is this. We have Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter. I mean X, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook. Which other ones? That's it? Okay, that's it. There's threads. Is anybody still on threads? Do they still thread? Okay, nobody knows what that is, okay. Mark Zugerberg didn't, didn't work. So we're all everywhere there. Interesting. We have more focus in our generation on mental health for our youth, and we have more "social media" tools, and my generation that the generation after me is more suicidal and has more health crisis, mental crisis than any other generation before them. They haven't seen war, they didn't fight Nazis, they didn't fight you know Soviet Union. They didn't live in that, why is there so much? One of the reasons, one of the reasons is that this is the most isolated generation ever. And why we are so isolated is because we think because we're digitally connected, we're okay. The Bible says in Genesis what scientists confirm now. It is not good for man to be alone. Another study was done by Claire Young from the National Academy of Sciences, examines social relationships and psychological markers across two decades of more than 14,000 participants. Her finding were that socially isolated individuals had increased blood pressure, body mass index, heart disease, cancer, even their waist was larger and inflammation when compared to individuals who were socially connected. I want to encourage you today that not to run from your community when you are being targeted by your enemy. If you don't know what to do, have a place where you know where to go and that place is church. Now, it may not be this church. Find the church to go to. You may say, but all churches. Not all churches are the same. Because you had a bad experience in one church, it doesn't mean all churches are the same, and the enemy will try to focus on two things. One of them is isolation and the other one is accusation. Accusation will say, the church is bad, those people are bad. And isolation will say, I am bad. Don't let the enemy trick you. Still go to church. Why? Because you need that church and the church needs you. We need to be together in the community. For example, if I take and not to make it graphic but cut off a finger. Now I'm not planning to do that, just FYI. But if I do that. If that were to happen by accident, and I put this finger in a freezer you know or you know I put this finger away. What's going to happen is this, my body will heal and learn to operate without my finger. My finger will not heal. When you disconnect yourself from the body of Jesus, whether it's this church or another church. What will happen is this. The church will recover, you cannot recover because you're not supposed to be a member, an organ in the bank. You're supposed to be organ in the body. You know organs in the banks, where they take an organ, they freeze it in the bank. God never called you to be an organ in the bank. He called you to be an organ in the body. You're supposed to function, you're supposed to be connected. You may say, of course, you're a pastor, you're going to say that. Yes, I will say that and repeat that because I see this in the Bible, and I see and it caught my attention. I've never saw this in the story how Jehosaphat assembled together, got together. When life is hard, don't skip a life group. When life is good, don't miss church. Be connected to the body.

The second thing we do when we don't know what to do and that is this. Prayer should be our first response, not our last resort. Usually we pray when everything else fails. We're like, went to the doctor, try this, try that. Oh nothing worked, okay let's go to God. But Jehosaphat didn't do that. Jehosaphat didn't have a military planning. He didn't check his weapons or anything of that. He first goes together, assembles together and when they assemble together, they didn't gossip. They prayed. They didn't talk about each other. They talked to God about their problem, so we have to pray. Now Jehosaphat, he prayed a prayer and it was a four-part prayer. Can, can I say something? There is power in short prayers. Now some of us we have Shakespeare prayers, you don't even know half of what you're saying. But God is a good God, He understands you. The rest of us, we speak plain English. We don't have Shakespeare's prayers and our prayers are short, and some of you men, your prayers are kind of short sometimes. I want to tell you something, they're still powerful. Your prayer doesn't have to be eternally long to be impactful. Even if it's a short prayer but it's directed toward God in faith, it's a powerful prayer. Jehosaphat covers four things in his prayer. First he praises God for who God is. I love that because Jehosaphat is down, in his mind God is still up. And it's a good place, anytime you're praying, no matter what hell you're going through, you always start not with where you are but where He is. You say, God, I'm sick. You're on the throne. God, You're rich in mercy. I'm broke in finances. God, You are highly exalted and I got fired. So don't always make it about you. It's also about Him. How are you doing God? Highly exalted, You're on the throne. And Jehosaphat doesn't start with, God we're beaten down, don't know what we're doing, don't know what's going to happen to us. He says, God You are a mighty God, big God, a mighty God. You're on the throne, God nothing is impossible to You. And then the second thing Jehosaphat does that we need to do is he praises God for His gifts. The gifts that God gave to Jehosaphat which was the promised land. He says, God You gave Your servants the land with flowing milk and honey. God we're grateful for that. Even when you're going through the worst situation, do not become Debbie the downer. Do not become a pessimistic person. It's okay to have pessimistic moments, not to be pessimistic. Meaning you still find one thing to thank God for. If Jesus had five loaves and two fish and He didn't say, God what is that? That's not enough. He says God, thank You. Jesus faced the dead Lazarus and He said, Father thank You for hearing Me every time I pray. The poor guy is dead but thank You that You hear My prayer. In everything, the Bible say, give thanks to God. Sometimes you don't have anything to thank God for, you still can give God thanks in some of those things. Lord I thank You, I came, I'm alive today. I thank You for the gift of having a good family. I thank You for having a job. I thank You for giving me this. You begin to praise God for the little, good things that He has given you. The third thing is you complain. It's okay to complain. In fact some of us, it will be better that you complain in prayer and not complain anywhere else. I say this, if you complain more in prayer, you become a less complaining person in life. When you praise, it's okay to complain. If you never praise, never thank God and only complain, you're in trouble. But if you praise Him, if you thank Him and then you have a little bit of pity, pity, pity moment, and Jehosahphat did that. He didn't go all happy. He says, God that's not fair. These guys are attacking us. We didn't do anything wrong. We didn't attack them. Why? that's not right. It's okay to have a moment, say God why is this happening? I don't feel good. That's not fair. That's not right. God has a whole Book of Lamentations. God can handle your complaining, tears, questions and doubts. He can handle your complaints, it's okay. As long as they're brought to God. And then he complained, complained, complained. But I love the fact he didn't finished with complaining. He finished with, God help us. Because complaining says my life sucks. Asking God to help says, God come and fix it. Because you don't want your prayer to always be how bad your life is. You want your prayer to be an invitation to God to come and help you with it. It's okay to have a little bit of me whiny moment, but make sure finish it with saying, God I don't want to be like this. Could you help me and fix it. Fix my spouse, my dog, my cat, my children, everybody and me too. But God help me, God help me. The successful prayer is the one, not the one where God changes everything around you right away. It's when God changes you right away, because the Bible says look at how this prayer ends, verse 12, it says this. "We don't know what to do," so this is part of his prayer, "but our eyes are upon on You." This is when you know you prayed well. Not when everything is fixed but when your focus is fixed. He came into prayer enemies is attacking them. God You are great, thank You for the land. Ah that sucks they're treating us so wrong, not fair. God please help us and God our eyes are upon You. If you can leave a prayer and your focus is shifted, you prayed well and something is already starting. Maybe nothing changed on the outside but something changed on the inside. Stability, anchor, focus came on God because the biggest warfare happens first for your focus before it happens for your circumstances. The Bible says in Philippians and it says this in Philippians chapter 4. So many people, not everyone, but many people that face anxiety, biblical remedy for anxious mind. Now this is not dealing with chronic anxiety disorder. We're talking about the normal anxiety we all face just living in this world. We're talking about that anxiety here. It could be resolved if we do this. Come to God with thanksgiving, let Him know what troubles you, and the Bible says, God says if you give Me your problem, I will give you My peace. God doesn't say everything will be solved. He doesn't say I'm going to quickly run and change everybody. What God says, I will give you peace and you might be able to sleep in a storm and then I'll stop the storm. I'll calm your thoughts. I'll calm your thoughts, I will help you. But most of us, what we do is we're quickly running to somebody to give us a pill, somebody to give us an advice. But biblical precedent is this, is that you pray well and God says, I'll give you a good peace, amen.

What do you do when you don't know what to do? Well number one, get together with some believers. Number two, talk to God. When you talk to God, don't forget to thank Him first, complain and always ask for help. And how do you know that you really prayed is if you walk away with peace you didn't have before. Peace is a deposit. Something is about to change. Peace doesn't have to make sense, that's why the Bible says peace that passes understanding. Meaning your understanding says, I don't know why I'm peaceful. But remember when you were anxious, you also didn't know how you were anxious. You're like, everything seems to be fine. I don't know, why am I anxious? Anxiety doesn't always make sense. So it's okay if peace doesn't always make sense. If peace that passes understanding. Meaning sometimes the understanding is just going, and the peace is there, just shh, shh, sit down, sit down and learn, everything's going to be okay. Why are you disquietened my soul? Why are you so cast down within me? Hope in God, for yet I will trust in His countenance. And then David five verses later says, why are you disquietened again? The little student got up again. Sit down. Everything's going to be okay. Peace doesn't have to make sense to touch your soul.

Number three. God gives promise before He gives provision. So they're praying, Jehosaphat is, Lord You're great. Lord, thank You for the land. Lord, that's not fair that these people are attacking us. Lord, we ask You for Your help. Help us and God we look to you. As he finishes the Bible says, then the Spirit of the Lord came upon this guy that I'm not going to pronounce his name because I'll butcher it. And he's the son of somebody, who is the son of somebody son. This is like giving you like a whole family tree right here in one verse. But he's pretty much a Levite from the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. So in the assembly. I want you to notice this. This was not some isolated event. This was not a Facebook prophet or a YouTube apostle. This is a community of believers, scared for their life but but gathering together. Snowflakes coming together, weak and feeble but together they're unstoppable. They're praying to God. They're not oblivious to their problems. They're not saying, oh we're okay. We don't have any problems. That's not faith, that's illusion. No but they're in the midst of that they're saying, God You're great. Thank You for the gift of land. Lord, we are needing help. We're going to focus on You. And the prophet rises up and begins to say, don't be afraid. Position yourself tomorrow. God's going to fight for you. This battle belongs to God. It's not your battle but you're still going to have to show up. And Jehosaphat after that starts praising God. The whole people start praising God, and Jehosaphat says, if you believe in God you will be established. If you believe in His prophets you will prosper. But nothing changed. God spoke, well what you have to understand about God, He doesn't first work always with His hands. Sometimes He works with His mouth. Let me give you an example. If I give you a check, do you thank me when you get the check or do you thank me when you cash the cheque? So if I give you a check for example, and it's a, it's a very large gift. You saw the check, you're like [gasp]. Do you hold on that thanks? Saying, I don't know man. I just need to go check, cash it first and see if actually he meant it. No, you say thank you so much, and if it's like a lot of zeros, more tears. You're like, thank you! Amazing! Praise God! And you could literally be three days before you cash the check but you're already walking praising God for the gift, why? Because it's there. It's not in your account. It's in the check. See when God gives you a promise, you have to praise Him. Most of us say, well God I'm going to see when that becomes true. But see you trust God enough to know He's not bluffing, He's not exaggerating and He doesn't throw words on the wind. A word of the Lord does not return void. Whether God gives you a prophetic promise, whether God gives you a dream, whether God's inspires a word from here or puts it in your heart. I'm not talking about you come up, meeny, meeny, miney and you just going to choose whatever verse you want to apply. But the Holy Spirit quickens that. What you do is you get happy. Not because you seeing it but because you are already seizing it. What many people do is because they don't understand this, they think well so what the God said it, I'm still sick. So what He said it, I'm still broke. So what he said it but I'm still single and miserable. So what that God said it but my husband hasn't changed. So what that God said my house

And my family will serve God. My child is still doing drugs. You know, until I see it, I won't believe it. And we're like, we do like Thomas, but God doesn't always work like that.

Think about it. You read the first few verses of the Bible and what you're going to see is this: God said, "Let there be light." When I was younger, I used to believe on the first day God made the sun and the moon and the stars, why? Because well, God made the light on the first day, right? And then I would read more carefully and I see on day four God makes the sun, moon, and stars. I'm like, wait, what happened on day one? He made the light on day one and on day four. I'm like, man, the Bible has a contradiction. It's already from the beginning. No, there's no contradiction in the Bible. There's a contradiction in my mind because in my world I cannot have the light if I don't have the sun. God's world, you cannot have the sun until you have the light. Where does the light come from? God said.

And then you read later, you see Abraham. God says, you're going to be Abraham, meaning father. He doesn't have kids. The guy, the guy doesn't have kids, and God says you're going to have, you're going to be a father before you're going to have kids. Now I'm a simple man. In the world we live in, you can't be walking around calling yourself dad if you don't got children. Like, I mean that's cute and stuff, but it's just not right. You have a child, then you call yourself a father. God calls somebody a father, and then they have a child.

In the world I live, your world, the natural world, what begins to happen is you win the battle, you have the victory. But God comes to Joshua and says, Joshua, I give you the victory. He didn't even fight the battle yet. The world we live in is you do right things and you become righteous. God says, I give you righteousness so you can do right things.

Please understand, God first gives you a promise and then gives you the provision. He gives you the message and then He gives you the miracle. He gives you the word and then He does the work. So when the word comes, most of us like, yeah, well, you know, it's just a check. It's not like money in my account. It's when I see it. No, no, no, no, no. You have more faith in a check than in God's promise.

We had a situation one time that happened with a wonderful couple from our church where me and my wife decided to give a car. And we meet with this couple on Sunday after church, and now we didn't give them a car, we gave them a promise. And we simply said, with my wife, we want to bless you with a car, and they started to cry. We didn't give them the keys. Just gave them a promise. We said, we're gonna give you this car. And I said, but we can't actually give you the car right now because I want to change the bumper, and change the tires and change the oil. They said, "Pastor, you can even change the engine if you would like while you're at it." They're like, of course, you can take all the time you need. And so they walked away from our house having a car but not having keys. Over one simple thing, because we promised them. We had what we promised, so like we could do it. If I would promise them an airplane, it would be pretty dumb for them to believe us because I ain't got an airplane. But I had a car, and I promised them what I had. Because they knew me enough to know that I don't make those promises on accident. It's not just an emotional burst, and then tomorrow like, oh, sorry, changed my mind. They trusted, they stopped looking for a car, and then a month and a half later when the car was fixed, they received the keys.

When God gives you a promise, can I submit to you, what if perhaps He goes to work on that promise? So you're not seeing it because He's working on the promise, or sometimes He's working on you. Because it's not the miracle that needs to be worked on. Sometimes it's the one that's about to receive it. So God is beginning to prepare you for that, and so the promise of God, when God gives a promise to Jehoshaphat, He says, hey, the battle is done. Don't worry about it. Jehoshaphat starts praising God, why? Because Jehoshaphat understands, before God does His work, God speaks His word. Most of us postpone our praise, postpone our joy to "until I see it, I won't believe it." But see, when God speaks, He means what He says. But yeah, He said it, and I'm not seeing it yet. Trust the Lord and His timing.

When I was 16, in a parking lot of a WinCo store in Richland. We had a terrible youth service, bad youth service. I was made fun of, and I decided on that youth service to quit youth ministry. My parents picked us up, and then in a parking lot of a WinCo store the Lord gave me a promise. I would say a few times in my life where I can be very certain that the Lord gave me a vision, this was one of them. And He said, "If you don't quit," it's exactly what I felt He said, "you will pastor a church that will reach many people. Many hungry people will come and they will leave full." Now I'm 16, I'm insecure. I barely spreche kein English. I don't even understand my own English. It's difficult. I just moved to Pasco High. At Hanford High I had an F in the keyboarding class. God blessed that teacher. I didn't, I didn't speak English. It was difficult, a cultural shock, and to that teenager God gives the promise. Now did I see the promise fulfilled next week? Oh, I thought it would be next week. It didn't happen next week. It took 13 years. But you know, in those 13 years when things got hard for me, I got in the car, I drove to the WinCo parking lot and I said, "God, I don't believe You lied to me. I trusted You and I continue to do so." Looking back at it right now, it's not the miracle wasn't ready. I don't think I was, because the Lord prepared me.

Thank Him when He gives you a promise. Sometimes it could be a prophetic word, it could be a dream, it could be a vision. And there's those things that you're just not sure, but there are those like you're just sure, God spoke to you. Hold on to that because it will hold on to you. Can somebody say, amen?

What do you do when you don't know what to do? You assemble together. You pray to God. You trust in His promise as though it's true because it is, and lastly, remember, the miracle is God's job, marching is yours. I find this portion of the Scripture slightly intimidating because the prophetic word comes, the battle is not yours, the battle is the Lord's. Hallelujah, yes! You don't have to fight, amen. But tomorrow march against them. Um, do we have to like march? Can we just stay here and just worship because God could You go there and march? I want to stay home, that's not safe for me. Like, could You go and like take care of them first and then bring me there with my cameras? No, God says you march tomorrow. So today we pray, tomorrow we slay. Today we meet, tomorrow we march. Today we trust, tomorrow we obey. Remember that song, trust and obey, when there's no other way. I think I just made up that second version of it. When there's no other way, or that's the only way is you trust one day, but the next day you got to obey.

You can't just simply say, "Lord, bless my marriage." That's good to pray, but the next day you have to get up and as a wife submit to your husband, as a husband sacrificially love your wife. God change my parents. That's good, but then as a child you have to honor your parents. God change my kids, but the Bible says, as a parent do not provoke your children to anger. God bless my finances, Lord, I believe for breakthrough. Yes, but the Bible says, the hand of the diligent makes rich. That means today I pray, tomorrow I slay. God doesn't always give you all the details of how and what. He just begins to lead you to walk by faith. I'm not saying we should live in the area of faith every single area of our life every day. But there are seasons of our life where we don't know what we're doing, and we have to do it anyway.

I met with this pastor this week. Incredible pastor who has a massive ministry that exploded during Covid in the Seattle area, and I asked him, I said, how do you do it? He said, I don't know. He said, I'm making the plane as I fly. I felt so encouraged. The Bible says this about Abraham. It says this in Genesis 12:1, God says, "Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land I will show you." Hebrews says this: Don't postpone your obedience until you get more detail. It's not my job to make a miracle. It's my job to march in obedience. It's not my job to turn water into wine. It's my job to pour water into empty vessels. It's not my job to split the Jordan River. It's my job to step into the Jordan River. It's not my job to provide a ram caught in a thicket. It's my job to offer the sacrifice God told me to offer.

Many of us, where we get anxious about is we want to produce a miracle. But God isn't expecting you to make a miracle, He's expecting you to make a march. Meaning march in obedience. Do what you know is right at this moment. Do what you would do if you would know God is with you, why? Because He's with you, so do that. March forward. But you're uncertain of the future. People are afraid of getting married, people are afraid of having children, people are afraid of settling today. Especially in our generation because we don't know, the world's going to end, the global, the climate change, what's happening in the Middle East and everything. You have to understand, as Christians we don't live by fear. Fear and faith have something in common. They both ask you to believe in something you cannot see. You choose what you believe in every single day. You can believe in fear. You know what fear is? The devil will show up in my tomorrow and kill me. You know what faith is? God will show up in my tomorrow and save me. I choose to have faith. Choose to have faith.

When you get up in the morning or when you're about to get out of the garage, your car has these few buttons there. One it says "R," meaning reverse. The other one says "D," is drive. Do you know that it takes the same amount of energy to move that, how do you call that? The shifter from R to D. It doesn't take, like in order to go into "D" you don't have to exercise a lot of strength. Same strength that it takes to move the shifter to "R." Did you know that it takes the same amount of energy to believe that you're going to fail as it is to believe God will show up? Same faith. Every day some of us are getting up and putting our faith in reverse, by believing the devil will show up, I will die, this sickness will kill me, I'll never make it, they'll fire me. This person, they'll never return my call, why, something bad is going to happen to me. You're just pretty much putting your faith in reverse. Meaning you're putting your faith in the devil will show up. I'm challenging you today to trust in God, to pray and to put your faith in drive. Believe in God. Believe you will see the salvation of God. Believe you will see the glory of God.

What if nothing happens? I'll rather die believing than succeed doubting. I'll rather be a wet water walker than a dry boat talker. What are you expecting every day? That's why God told them. He says, stand still, position yourself, and He said this, you will see the salvation of God, but you got to march. Meaning you got to take the step of faith. You got to go into the unknown. You got to do what you know is right. You got to do what you know if God is with you you would do. You got to do that. But if I don't have all the details, I got to still take a step of faith. No, Lord, I'm just going to stand here and wait for You to do the miracle. Once You do the miracle I'll come out and say. But see, miracles don't happen where you meet, miracles happen where you march. Miracles don't happen just in your prayer, they happen because of prayer, but they happen when you come out of that prayer and you walk in obedience. That's why Deuteronomy always said, because you obeyed I will bless you. Some people use prayer as an escape from obedience. There's a time to pray and there's a time to slay. You pray, you got to then slay, then you have to go and apply, then you have to go and take a step of faith, then you have to go in and you have to take that small little risk. You cannot just simply pray and pray and pray and not do anything that God makes very clear to do. He told them, go out and march. That's where fear is challenged. And then what do I do when I march? I expect God will show up. Now I don't know how, I don't know when. I just know who. I don't know how, I don't know when. I know who. He'll show up.

One woman was married to a man, and on the wedding night she gets up. She was scared that somebody broke into the house. Tells her husband, honey, you, you have to go check the house because we, we have somebody, I have an intuition we have an intruder. Poor husband came down, checked the whole house, nobody's there. Came back, comforted his wife, says, honey, we're okay. The second night it happened again. This happened for 30 years. He already automatically would go just around the house just to comfort his wonderful wife, and one day he comes up there and there is a thief. He was happy to see him. The thief points a gun and says, give me all of your belongings, all your jewelry. He says, of course, yeah, just don't shoot me. Gives him all of his stuff, and right before the thief leaves, he says, sir, you got to meet my wife. She's been waiting for you. It's been 30 years, you finally came. You know Jesus said to a blind man, according to your faith, let it be to you. What if every day you're putting your faith in reverse and every day you're receiving exactly that?

Why does God call us believers? He wants us to believe. Some of us are practical atheists. We believe God exists, but we behave as though He doesn't. We expect like He doesn't. He's not going to show up. We're not going to see salvation, we're going to see destruction. So we pray for it, we don't expect it, and we're afraid of getting our hopes up because what if we fail. It's okay if you fail, He won't. I don't have faith in my faith, I have faith in my God. My faith will fail, He won't. And the Bible says, they marched with faith. And how you know you have faith is when you're praising God for what you're still yet about to see. Because it's one thing when you praise God and the doctor's report came good. It's another thing when it hasn't come good yet and you're already praising God in advance. In advance. And God's like, oh wow, they're already praising Me for that. That hasn't even come yet. Let's speed that up. The Bible says, the last verse I'm going to read in 26. "On the fourth day they assembled in the Valley of Berachah, for there they blessed the LORD." Now this Berachah, for you and I, just a word. But that word means blessing. Now watch this. They named that valley where their enemy came to attack them a valley of blessing. Because they came back again there to gather all the spoil, and they decided to have a worship service. See, a valley is not where you expect a victory. A burden is not where you would expect a blessing. A trial is not where you would expect God to move. But see what I want to tell you today is this: When you have faith in God and you trust Him where you cannot trace Him, you keep going forward and you don't even know what's going to happen next. You don't know about the future, but you know who holds the future. And you saying, you know what, I'm just going to take one step at a time, God will light my step. What will happen is this: What will seem like be your valley will be where God will bring the victory. See, God doesn't have to bring the victory in your high place. He can bring the victory in the low place. Some of you think Tri-Cities is a valley. Oh, if I just go to the Seattle area, if I just go somewhere else, and if God is moving you there, God bless you. But if the Lord is not moving you and you're just simply frustrated because you're not sensing a victory, listen. God does not need a better place to show up. He just needs a better person, a better attitude, and God can touch you right there in the valley. It could be a place of blessing. Maybe you look at your marriage, you're like, man, I wish I would have not married that person. Well, too late. But you know that God can turn that valley into a victory. He can turn that joker into a blessing. Maybe some of you have a job and you're like, man, I'm not sure I like this job a lot, but I don't have any other options. Instead of being grumpy all the time, what if in that valley God can bring a victory? What if in that area God can bring a breakthrough? Don't be disappointed, don't be discouraged because God has that for you, in Jesus' name.

Well, my goal today is to water hose you with encouragement and hope, why? Because the God that I serve, the God that you serve still walks with us in the valleys of the shadow of death, and because of that we fear no evil. He comforts us with His staff, He sets a table in front of our enemies, He anoints our head with oil, and goodness and mercy will chase me all the days of my life. Not collectors and exes, but goodness and mercy. I believe in that, in Jesus' name. And why am I optimistic? Because no matter what I'm going through, I'm going to assemble. When I don't know what to do, I'm going to pray. When I don't know what to do, I'm going to listen to God because His Word changes circumstances. And when I don't know what to do, I'm going to obey the last thing He said. And I will obey it with faith, not with trembling that something bad's going to happen, but with faith God is going to move in my life, in Jesus' name.