Ep 027 || A God who Sees You

Well hey, Pando family! Thank you for being here today for our Pando exclusive podcast just for you. We are part of our online team. Brandon and I are. My name is Derek, this is Brandon. We're part of our online team here at Southeast Christian Church, but we have a special guest with us today, Andy Potter, who's on our Shine team. Excited to have him to be a part of what's going on. If this is your first time, welcome. We do this each week just to kind of talk about the sermon that we just heard from the previous weekend. So if you've already watched week four of our Journey of Faith sermon series, then you are prepared for this, and if not, I still think it'll be a great place for you to learn and grow. But before we go any further, Andy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, so tell us who you are, where you're from, what you do here at Southeast. Yeah man, hey, thanks for having me. So I'm Andy Potter, I lead our Shine Disabilities Ministry team. So here at our campus here at Blankenbaker, where you all see services each week, but across all of our other campuses as well. Love that. Yeah man. And so how long have you been on staff here at Southeast now? Nine years. Nine years. I swipe my badge every day, and the door unlocks, and I'm like, I'm so psyched, this is awesome. Love that, love that. And so you were just telling us, a big soccer fan, right? Excited about that. How did you get into soccer? Was it something you played growing up? Just a... Played growing up, played all the way through college, played through my sophomore year, and then made one wrong turn and got caught in the knee, and I was done. But still, the last couple years I've had to step back a little bit, which has been really hard, but even with my kids, and post-college, I've been able to coach and still pour into soccer and kind of fill my bucket up. So huge fan of the game, try to get involved in it. If you ever see me around the office, I dribble a ball around the office, and it's probably a little strange, but it's fun. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That brings some fun to the people around you, and I know you enjoy that more than anyone, so that's awesome. Well, so for you, being able to lead the Shine Ministry team, be a part of that ministry, what's maybe one thing that people should know about our Shine Ministry that maybe on the surface someone wouldn't? I think for me, the biggest takeaway that I've had, especially over the last few years,

the season that God's had us in as a family, I think it's just that reality that we are called to serve and lead and pastor and shepherd many different groups of people here at our church, but the thing that's probably taken me by surprise is how well a lot of our Shine friends have been the ones pastoring and shepherding me. And that for me, it's humbling that they care for me in such a unique way, but they also challenge me to see the world around me in a very unique way that I don't think I ever would without them. Yeah, I love that. And so on top of that, I'm sure that when I ask this next question that it may be somewhat of the same answer, but I was gonna ask, hey, what's the thing each day that when you get up that you're like, man, I'm just so excited that I get to be a part of this thing? What are some of those things that come to mind in regards to Shine ministry? Yeah, so I'm actually a dad of two little girls with special needs, and so for me, it's joining this legacy of a church. There are not a lot of churches in the United States that serve this community, and I think for me, getting to dive into this faithful legacy that our ministry team has built to help even continue to pave a way for my little girls to show up to church and be served week in and week out, yeah. You know, the other piece of it, not just selfishly for me, but the more that I have stepped into this world and served this community, I'm not serving people that come to our church, I'm serving my friends, and I'm worshiping in our spaces with my friends. I'm going to church with my friends, and so it becomes less work and becomes more just me being surrounded by the people I love the most. Yeah, it's just an extension of your heart that God has developed inside of you anyways, right? Like, and now you get to do that as your job, and not only as a dad and a parent, loving those sweet kiddos, but at the same time being able to help extend that love and grace and kindness to other people, and there's such a need for it. Like you were just sharing that there's... camp that we have for our shine folks every summer that that our team leads and shine and you said I mean within like a week signups signups just hit the limit you know how to wait list and just shows there's such a need but Andy for you being a part of this podcast today so what are you like what makes you so excited or encouraged or looking forward to like this moment getting to speak to our Pando people like where does that come from inside of you yeah I tell you the Pando community so I before I was on our shine team I had the great you know honor to be part of our IT team and so I was part of a group of people that

really kind of started this whole Pando movement for our church to join you guys and there's a few people that I know that'll probably catch this podcast that's awesome that in my heart I know you by name and so for you know few of the men that are here in our local community listening in on Pat Pando man this is just such a fun way for us to stay connected as as a church but also when those phone calls happen or those letters arrive in the mail that we're having raw and real conversations about what God is doing in our lives in real time it's not us spending the 15 minutes at a time on the phone talking about you know in cramming in as much as we can at once but it's us having like really raw and intentional discipleship conversations over the phone and when we get to visit and really also hearing what God is doing inside the walls of some of our penitentiaries to see the life change that's happening in the walls where a lot of our viewers and listeners are are at right man really just spurs me on to keep fighting on this side of the wall because we know that that life change is happening on the other side of the walls mm-hmm yeah I love that because that's so true is that I think you know of all the the letters we get from our Pando viewers of all the even when we've run into people that are now out of prison and come to one of our southeast campuses and just hearing like how that's affected their life and how God's used something like this and our weekend services to help you know encourage them in their relationship with Christ and others it's just been so cool to see yeah you know that you know we can move kind of past the fluff of all the other stuff that maybe we we talk about just maybe small talk types of things but be able to talk about the things that matter yeah right and the things that are gonna actually resonate in the hearts of our people you know and so I love as a church we get to be a part of all types of communities we get to do that together yeah and I'm thinking you know about one of the men locally here that that is a member of our church that you know he's even taken his time that that he's serving right now and he's been very intentional about it you know and he's been leading a Bible study inside the walls through Kyle's Every

Thought Captive Bible study. That's incredible. And he calls me all the time and he's like I know you're not gonna believe me and he tells these fantastic over-the-top stories of what God is doing to the lives of these men that have been connected to him and even though the some of the men that he's walking alongside of it wasn't necessarily probably the audience that was intended when the book was written but sure but hearing the stories of life change really challenges me to wake up each day and you know I'm a real live human being like there's those moments of apathy where I just take for granted the things that God's doing around me. No doubt. And then you hear the life changes that's happening in spite of the circumstances that they're currently living through and and it's like man I've got more to do and just seeing those unique ways to where we just put ourselves out there and see God run with the things that he's already given us is just such a cool and unique opportunity that we get to do. Absolutely, and that's why we we love doing this every week and just getting to dive deeper into scripture and to the topics that you know for example Pastor Kyle talked about this last weekend especially with this idea of detours and delays and so one of the things that I have learned in life so far is that it doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what you look like, what language you speak, we all run into detours and delays in our life. And Brandon we are picking up what was in chapter 15 of Genesis that we continued our walk through this last weekend. Yeah so we are solidly in the middle of Abraham's story here in Genesis chapter 15 and let me just tell you guys from the outset I'm gonna own this at a time you're probably gonna have to stop me because there are so many cool things that happen in Genesis 15, 16, and 17 that it's like... We could stay here for a long, long time and talk about some stuff that's happening. So you may need to be like, just shut up. He's gonna teach me some stuff in the midst of this. Yeah, there's gonna be some stuff going on here. And we didn't even talk about Melchizedek in 14, we can skip over that. So Genesis 15, it just begins, the NLT is what I'm reading for,

it starts with some time later. We don't have really any solid, firm idea of what that is. But back in Genesis 12, we read that Abraham was 75 years old when God called him to leave Aharon and go to the promised land. And then at the end of 16, we read that he's 86 years old. So this is somewhere about 10, 11 years after the initial call that he received from God. It's a long time of waiting. So he's got about a solid decade there. And so the Lord speaks to him and says, do not be afraid, I will protect you, your reward will be great. And as Kyle pointed out on Sunday, Abraham's response to that is a little bit of a complaint. What does it matter how you've blessed me or you've given me wealth? It doesn't matter because I don't have an heir, I don't have a child. I'm gonna die without a child and this servant, Eleazar of Damascus, he's gonna be my heir, he's gonna inherit all my wealth. So it doesn't matter how you've blessed me, you haven't blessed me in the one way that I want you to and the one way that you promised to. So God reaffirms the covenant with him. He tells him, go outside, look at the stars, you'll see the stars up in the sky and you'll know you're gonna have descendants that outnumber the stars. And there's this really interesting story that happens at the end of chapter 15, where God reaffirms the covenant through what would be like an odd practice to us, but was actually really well understood in Middle Eastern culture at that time. The Lord tells him to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove, a pigeon and offer them as sacrifices. And one of the ways you would solidify a contract or a covenant in that culture would be that you would take an animal, you would sacrifice it and cut it in half. And then what you would do is you would spread those pieces out and both of you would walk between the pieces. Fascinating. And what you were saying in that moment was, if either one of us breaks the terms of this agreement, then we should be like these animals, then let this be done to us, which is kind of fascinating. You think like all that paperwork you sign when you buy a house, it would be way worse if you were like, hey, we just killed a cow out in the parking lot, we need you to go out there and solidify your mortgage. Oh my gosh. Okay. It'd be a little bit weird. There's a little learning tidbit for the day. But the crazy thing about it, right, and there's a hint of the gospel even in this, is Abraham makes the sacrifices, he cuts the animals in half, but we're never told he walks between the pieces.

And in fact, what happens after that, if you read at the end of chapter 15, it says, the sun went down and darkness fell. Abram saw a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. And so what Abraham gets in this vision as he's solidifying this covenant with God is this idea that God himself is gonna fulfill the covenant. He's taking on the responsibilities of both parties and say, well, if I break the covenant, then may this be done to me. But if you break the covenant, may the same thing happen to me. And there's a really neat hint of the gospel there, I think, is like, because this covenant that God is going to make with Abraham and then with Moses and the descendants and the Israelites, like he knows, you can't keep your end of it up. You're not gonna be able to do it, but that's okay. The penalty for breaking the covenant is gonna fall on me. I'm gonna take it on myself. And so even here in Genesis 15, like we've seen throughout Genesis, starting in 315, we get hints of the gospel that God himself is gonna be our deliverer and save us from our sin. And here in 15, it comes into focus even more, that God is saying the consequences for breaking the covenant will all fall on me regardless. I'm gonna keep my side of it, but regardless of what you do, I'm gonna take the penalty for it. So, 11 years later, after God has given Abraham this promise, he's now speaking to him again, saying, do not fear, I'm a shield to you, your reward shall be very great, and reaffirming in Abraham that like, hey, no, I will bless you through your offspring, but he doesn't see it yet. Right. Right? Which is like, I mean, if I were Abraham, I'd kind of be thinking, well, yeah, this is 11 years ago. Yeah. And not only that, God's telling you, I'm gonna bless you through this thing that you most long for, but you don't have. Right. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Well, and someone brought this out in my small group the other... Or last night, actually, that I had never considered. They said, well, in times like these, in the early chapters of Genesis, it wasn't uncommon for people to have children kind of later in... Sure.

age and things like that. But he said, what makes this fascinating is that Sarah has never been able to get pregnant. So she's going on... They've been married 50, 60 years, and it's one of those, well, this has never ever happened. So maybe it's not so much the age as we would think about it, it's the idea of like, well, this has just been so long that this hasn't happened, why would we ever think it would? Sure. But that's not all the waiting he does, right? Because this is 11 years later when he's 86, and we're told that after the covenant is reaffirmed, Sarai, who is Abraham's wife, we'll call him Abraham and Sarah, right? It just makes it easier, right? Sure. Alright, well, gentlemen's agreement, we'll just do that. So she gets this in her head, well, if it's not working for me, then maybe God has something else in mind. And so she proposes to Abraham that Abraham sleep with her handmaiden or her servant, Hagar, who we're told is an Egyptian slave. And again, this is something that's culturally very odd to us, that somebody I was talking to the other day described Genesis 16 as full of ick, like it kind of is, because it doesn't make sense to us. But again, culturally, this was okay. And in fact, we see Abraham's grandson Jacob do a similar thing to actually pretty similar effects later on in Genesis. So anyway, Sarah comes up with this plan, well, you sleep with Hagar, she'll get pregnant, and then we'll have the heir that God has promised us. And wouldn't you know it, as with so many of the plans that we make, Sarah hates her own plan, right? Because it turns out exactly the way she says, Hagar ends up being pregnant. And then at that exact moment, Sarah turns against Hagar and starts treating her terribly. Eventually, the mistreatment gets to the point that Hagar is driven out into the wilderness, because she's just trying to escape from it. She's pregnant at the time, like this pregnant Egyptian woman in the middle of the desert, just trying to get away. And we're told something very interesting in 16 verse 7, that the angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness along the road to Shur. The angel said to her, Hagar, Sarai's servant, where have you come from? And where are you going? So we get this appearance in Genesis 16 of the angel of the Lord. And we don't have... Again, I told you there's a whole bunch of fun stuff here. We don't have a lot of time to go into the why of this, but it's often said that throughout the Old Testament, we will see this figure, the angel of the Lord, appear at certain places, like he appears to Joshua before they

take the promised land. And a lot of scholars believe that whenever we read about the angel of the Lord, not an angel of the Lord, but the angel of the Lord, that what we're seeing is actually Jesus, because the angel of the Lord both speaks for God, but has the authority of God. So it's just kind of interesting that this could be like an Old Testament appearance of Jesus showing up and talking to Hagar and saying, where are you going? What are you doing? He reaffirms her and says, no, return to your mistress, submit to her authority. And then he added, I will give you more descendants than you can count. And so Hagar, because of this, she goes back, but she names this place, as Kyle said, El Roy, which is, he has seen me. She goes back, her son's name is Ishmael, which means God has heard me too. So there's this really interesting moment that she meets God, or maybe she meets Jesus in the wilderness. And she says, no, it's in this angel of the Lord that God has seen me, that God has heard me, that he knows who I am and understands my circumstance. That is so good. And so I wanna jump just really just straight into the application for us, because this sermon that Kyle preached is called Detours and Delays, right? Detours and Delays. And so pretty much to summarize what Brandon just said, is that God promised to bless Abraham and make him the father of many nations, and obviously it's for him, meaning, hey, I'm gonna have children, my heir is gonna come from myself, and yet decades later, it hasn't happened. And so they've decided, you know what, I'm gonna take this into my own hands, and then we're gonna have you sleep with our servant, she's gonna become pregnant, but that wasn't necessarily what God had in mind, right? And oftentimes we kind of, well, we do more often than not, take things into our own hands and can mess things up. But as you guys think about your life and you think through this story, what comes to mind for you? I tell you, if I'm honest, guys, this is the season that my family is living in right now, and it's not been a short one either. When you talk about the decade long of waiting, I mean, we're not at a decade, but we're three years... into this waiting for this season to be over. But I would even say that we still see the fruit, and we step back out of these situations that our family has been enduring, but we see God's goodness in the middle of them. And at first we had struggled just seeing God's goodness in any of it, and the more and more that we have sought Him out in this season of detours for our family, it becomes more real-time that we're seeing God's hand in those

moments. Yeah. Yeah. Randall, how about for you? I mean, I think of a couple things. You know, one would be just how difficult those times of waiting are, right? It's just... it's always so testing. It's always so hard. You know, we were kind of joking earlier about the idea that, well, you know, you better not pray for God to give you patience, or else this is the way He's gonna give it to you. Have some opportunities. Yeah. And that's absolutely what those times of waiting are, is like, it's just... it is a slog. It is so difficult. And it is one of those things where... I love how you pointed that out earlier, that like, Abraham has so many blessings, but it's that one thing that makes... that just hangs him up. Yeah. And I can see that, you know, in my own life. I think about... well, I'm skipping ahead a little bit. So it's a slog. It's really difficult. But then I also think about, on the other side of that, those times that I've been able to wait. Like, God's ways have always been better in that, right? Like, on the other side of the waiting, it's been like, oh, that's what this was about. You know, I think about, you know, one of our most intense periods of waiting was, we went through a long season of infertility, kind of like Abraham and Sarah. Like, we had five years where we tried a whole bunch of stuff, and a whole bunch of different plans, and nothing worked. And then, you know, just out of the blue one day, my wife was like, oh, I'm pregnant. And then we had three more. So, you know, God... but it was in God's timing now that I look back. I'm like, oh, like, we weren't ready in a certain sense, like financially at that point in time. We weren't ready, you know, where we were living and things like that, that God really worked and was like... He was bringing pieces together to be able to make that happen when it did happen. So, you think it's better. I think about, like, times, you know, prior to my ministry here, like, coming... I searched for a long time to find a church to preach at, like, and like, to the point where I was pounding my head against the wall, almost literally, to be like, you know, I feel like this call to do this, like, why is this not happening? And then, you know, after two years of searching, it was, oh, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be, you know. And so, like, I think the older you get, the more experience you have in the waiting, the

more you get to understand, like, okay, well, this is going to be worth waiting for. It's just gonna be difficult in processing, you know, through that time period. Yeah. Yeah, I think the other side of the waiting too is, you know, just like Abraham encountered this, like, really weird covenant that God gave him of, like, how are you gonna bless me through all of my generations that I don't have a generation behind me? You know, I think back to where we were in 2023, maybe even 2022, when my oldest was making her college decision, and she comes to my wife and I and says, hey, I think God and I have, like, found what my next step is, and I was like, cool, what's that? Like, go to the school 20 minutes down the road here. No, Dad, I'm gonna move 1,800 miles away, and I'm gonna go to Grand Canyon University out in Phoenix, and it's like, huh? Like a chunk of your heart just fell off. Yeah, but then at the same time you're, like, so proud, you're like, hey, my kid wants to go to Christian University and pursue ministry, and in that prayer time, you know, we as a family were very quickly, you know, affirmed about God, like, help is one phone call away. If something happens, people here on staff who had other kids that were at that university, you know, would even say things along the line, like, hey, if something happens, just let me know, we'll make one phone call to some friends of ours that are there. And I'm thinking through my head of, like, man, here's this, like, completely healthy, risk-adverse child, what in the world is God talking about in this moment? Fast forward, even the journey to get there was rough, so we're driving out, everything's going great, we get into the Badlands that's out in the Midwest, if anybody's traveled out there, so here we are in the petrified forest, I can't make this up, and I see this big crow, and me as a dumb city kid, I'm like, I'm gonna honk the horn at the thing and see it take off, and I'm even videoing it, I'll honk the horn, the thing looks back at me like, well, you're dumb. But then from that point on, we get in the car, we go to start it, and I start feeling hot air pouring out of the car. I'm like, oh man. All right, AC's out, let's look at the bright side, the windows roll down. We roll the windows down, so fast forward, we're driving, we finally get

at maybe about 50 miles north of Phoenix. It's hot. Yeah. You know, we're moving in in September. It was a brisk 117 this day, and we get 50 miles outside of Phoenix, and next thing you know, the engine overheat light starts kicking on, and we're like, okay, here we go. So we literally roll downhill to the very last rest stop north of Phoenix before you hit the metro area, and make one phone call. One of my best friend's sons just happens to live in Phoenix and work for the Arizona Cardinals, and so we call him up, and he was like, hey, give me a little bit. I'm at work right now. He goes, let me just type some loose ends. I'm on my way to you guys. So here's this affirmation already, and we haven't even made it to school. So now we fast forward. She's on campus for maybe 30 days or so, and we get this phone call from her that just, hey, I've not been feeling good. They think I'm dehydrated. They gave me IV fluids. Seems like she's got a cold happening. Long story short, a few weeks of that,

we're out there for fall break, go home. Couple weeks later, my wife flies back out. Again, hey, we're gonna take this into our own hands. We're gonna send mom out. She's gonna mama bear this, whatever it is, out of her. Gain some control over this situation right here. Yeah, absolutely, and so here we are with God's covenant of what does this Helps One Phone Call Away truly look like? Well, I make one phone call to another staff person here and say, hey, you're from Phoenix area. Where am I going? What hospital am I going to? And she calls back and is like, hey, I talked to some family. They said, don't go here. Lo and behold, that's where we were headed, but go here instead. And so we wound up landing in the hospital. They admitted her almost immediately. Long story short, 40 days in the hospital. Isn't this an odd number, 40 days? She's in the hospital there, had life-saving surgery. Oh my gosh. But if you go back to minute zero, sitting in the emergency room, we make one phone call that Dave Stone, one of our pastors here at Southeast, just happened to be preaching at one of our sister churches in Phoenix. And we make one phone call and Dave and his son

show up at the ER to meet my wife and daughter 1,800 miles away, because God said, hey, if something happens, help is one phone call away. How's having your own pastor standing in the ER with you when that moment starts? And I look through that story and how riddled that story is with God just providing. But also in that moment, too, and I think this is part of Abraham's journey, maybe the what's not necessarily written piece of, it's in that journey that we had to also learn the place to allow God to not only service, but allow the people that God sends to service as well. We're all in ministry and it's like, hey, we're called to serve other people. Man, it's tough and it's a little humbling. You've gotta check yourself in those moments where you realize that you also have to allow the people in the spaces that God sends you into, you have to allow them to do the things that God's ordained in their lives as well. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that, because one of the things I had written down from Kyle's message was, he had kind of used this illustration or this analogy of our life is kind of like this book that's being written, right? And there are probably several chapters of that book that we just, we don't like, we don't really enjoy being in that chapter.

And the thing that kind of stinks is that we don't know when that stinking chapter is gonna end. We don't know when that's coming. You can't flip ahead in life and be like, ah, man, I'm really not enjoying this, but there's only three pages left. We have no idea, right? But the thing that Kyle challenged us to remember is that we need to trust the author, right? We need to trust the author. And Andy, as you were sharing that story, what it made me remember is that so many times in life, we think of these seasons as we have this starting point and then the destination. And then what's horrible, even about a road trip, maybe for me, is the in-between, right? It's the driving, it's going on that journey, it's getting stuck in Phoenix. Are we there yet? Right, are we there yet? But I'm reminded that God does so much and He teaches us so much in the midst of that journey. And so much formation happens that we just, through the way that God teaches us, through those moments, those environments. But Andy, for you in that story, what were some of the things that maybe What's one thing that you're like, you know, like this is something that I learned about God

as we were navigating through that season. I'd honestly, I actually wrote this down. Like you didn't prep me with this either, which is crazy, but it's the fact that God writes intentional stories through us. Whoa, yeah, there you go. You know, good, bad, or indifferent. You know, a lot of the people who are gonna be listening to this conversation, man, do y'all have some stories? But I think that God writes these stories for us, but he also gives us promise in scripture that he works all things for his glory, for goodness. And I think it's when he writes those stories, he really kind of challenged me to think through it this way. Andy, are you willing to trust the creator of the universe? Do you really feel like you are giving up control if you're asking the creator of the universe to control your life and what's happening? And I think the more that I've really started to lean into that, it's helped me kind of build one of the filters that I see the world through, but it's when, you know, for me, I jokingly call them the three winds. My girls roll their eyes and kind of groan when I mention it, but one of those kind of filters that I filter my world through at least is when you know who's in control, the rest is just noise. And so it really, it taught me to drown out

the noise of life in those moments where I really needed to just hone in on, God, what are you doing? Fast forward, you know, here recently, about 18 months ago, I had one of my other daughters, she's a competitive cheerleader, was, I guess, but doing what she did every day of the week in the gym, and she breaks her back. Oh my gosh. So fast forward 18 months go by of just, God, like, will you just miraculously heal her today? And it's, you know, you hear those yeses and you hear those nos, and those are usually like really easy to deal with. But it's that waiting piece too, that you're waiting on the author to reveal what's next. And so for us, even as our family, you know, it's like, God, will you just miraculously heal her in this moment as he's writing this chapter of the story? And he's like, no, I need you to wait. And then wake up the next day, God, you can heal her. Watching my kid go from an elite athlete to barely trying to walk and completely seeing her body, you know, be debilitated day after day. It's like, God, will you do something? And he's like, no, I need you to wait. And then fast forward, she had surgery a few weeks ago. The next day, my mom actually came up to visit her in the hospital, and while sitting in the hospital,

God providentially, I think, had that 18 months of waiting for my daughter after being hurt in the thing that she loved to save my mom's life. She has a stroke in the middle of my daughter's hospital room, right across the street from the children's hospital is the adult hospital here in town. And so within 45 minutes, my mom was on this journey. I think, number one, to heal her, but number two, I think my daughter's surgery and the fact that she was where God had planned for her to be saved my mom's life. Wow. Well, yeah, and I think those are, I appreciate you sharing that again, because that's deeply personal and transparent. And I think those are very real, those are real circumstances that we run into in different times of our life. Like, there are going to be things in our story that we're like, I just don't see how this is good, right? And a lot of times, I know for a lot of people that are even watching this right now, they're like, man, I don't think I could count on one, I don't even think I have enough fingers on one hand to count the good things that I have, right? Or I'm limited to one hand on the things that I could share that I could honestly say, these are the good things that are happening in my life

or that have happened in my life. And so it's not even about, man, that, hey, do we trust that all of the things in our life are gonna be good? It's not even that, it's asking that question of, do I trust the author, right? Do I trust God with all the stuff that's going on in my life? Yeah, and it's that piece too of like, it's not just waiting to read the story and highlight a few verses, it's finding those things. And fast forward, the thing that we learned three years ago with Izzy's story that we see now in Molly's story, it's intentionally seeking those things out in the turmoil. Our circumstances stink at times. And I challenge people all the time when they're going through those bad moments to just write out in a journal, write out the things that you find that are bringing you joy, and then flip it to the back and start writing. out those things that just irritate or really tick you off. And man, I can flip to the backside pages, I can fill those up, like, with every breath I can fill a page up. And sometimes it's those moments that we've all struggled through that you're just trying to find that one thing of goodness. Like, tell me one thing good, I don't have any. But when you intentionally seek God out in these things and you see the work that He has at hand, man, He reveals Himself very quickly. It's not just He's the God that hears us, but He's also the God that sees us, too. Yeah, and I think one important distinction to make is that we don't serve a God who is just continually looking to make our life miserable. He's not going out of His way to ruin our lives, to bring people into our lives that are going to hurt or abuse us. And I know there's a lot

of people listening to this that haven't had great figures of influence, people of influence in their life, and so even that idea of what is a good father doesn't even equate in their minds, but we serve a God who is good and merciful and loves us, and we believe that He formed us, right? He created us in our mother's womb and wants the best for us. But we're going to go through things just like that, where it's like, man, why am I having to deal with this? Right, yeah. Not again. Right? It's those not again moments, yeah. Right, and it's like you had mentioned of waking up and saying, God, is today the day? Is the day the day that she's gonna be healed? And He's like, no, not today. Well, I think one of the hardest parts of waiting is that we are so often focused on what we want God to do for us, where the waiting is more about what He wants to do in us, is how He is working, how He is motivating us, how He is transforming us in the midst of the waiting, because I can't help but think that we're essentially halfway through Abraham's story in Genesis 17. He's in Genesis 12, and it's in Genesis 22 that he's gonna offer Isaac as a sacrifice when God calls him to do that. I don't wanna skip too far ahead, because I know we're gonna talk about that when we get there. But there are times where you can look at Genesis 22 and say, why in the world would Abraham have done that? How could he have taken Isaac up that hill and offered up the child as sacrifice? Well, I think Genesis 22 happens because Genesis 17 happens, right? That this is... Abraham has had such an experience in waiting on God and learning how to trust God that the writer of Hebrews will tell us in Hebrews 11 that Abraham reckons that God can bring Isaac back from the dead. He trusts God so completely that he's like, well, if He's having me sacrifice the child of the promise, then I can give him over to Him and trust it's gonna be okay. Like, I think Abraham only gets to that point because he's at this point. And this is only halfway through his waiting, right? We talked about this is 11 years. He's 86 when Ishmael's born. It's not until he's 99 that God appears to him and says, well, no, hey, now it's time. Now it's time, buddy. I'll come back to you next year, and you guys will have a baby boy named Isaac, who will be named after the laughter that you and Sarah shared over a child being born to you in your old age. Yeah, and I think you bring up laughter, like, why is that even a laughable situation? But I think it... Like Kyle described in the sermon yesterday, it's more of that laughter

of like, well, of course he did. Yeah, of course that happened. It's like that familiar laughter of like, you're laughing because it is this over-the-top shocking thing that is right in line with his character, and it's like, of course, of course he did. Of course he's gonna do this thing. And it's not necessarily like a sarcastic laughter of like, laughing at, but it's more of laughing in line with more of that kind of shock to the system of like, yeah, here we go again. He's gonna show me again that I am me and he is God. Almost like you get to a great twist at the end of the movie and you're like, oh, they got me. They got me. He got me. Yeah, I was trying to find this quote and I couldn't find it. Someone had posted it, I think, on the internet several years back, and basically they were like, I had gone to talk to this more experienced Christian about something that was going on in my life, and he responded in such faith that it just really encouraged me, inspired me. And he was like, and as I was kind of lamenting to this, again, more experienced Christian that he was able to handle this in faith a lot more than I could, and I wish I could just naturally react like that like he did, and he said the older Christian looked back at him and said, it's not this idea of being a more experienced Christian. He said, I've just had more experiences with God. And I was like, man, that is such a good... point, because again, it's not about... Reading Scripture is so important because... Well, it's not just important because we get to learn about these facts about these people's lives and the way they handled things, but that we're learning about the God who is behind it all. It inspires us, it reminds us, it helps us to see and hear and believe how He works, and it helps us to recognize when He's working in our lives and in other people's lives. But yeah, any thoughts on that? Yeah, no, as you're talking, I'm thinking of even going back to what did I learn in our time in Phoenix in the hospital? What have I learned over the last three years? And I don't know about you guys, but I used to always read the Psalms, I just disliked them. I like Leviticus more than I do the Psalms, if I'm being honest, because I would read the Psalms and I'm like, David is the chosen one. He's the chosen one by God. God said, you're my guy. And I'm reading them of like, dude, all you're doing is complaining and whining, shut up. Pull yourself together. Yeah, come on, you big baby, He's given you

everything. And what I came to realize, even in my own journey as a husband, as a father, just as a believer, is that David wasn't living in a place of entitlement. I was projecting that on him. David was just desperate, and he knew that God was the only one that could do it. And I think that journey to connect the dots with Abraham, that's what Abraham is learning in this moment to lead him to be okay with offering Isaac as the sacrifice. As he's learning in this moment right now, that God is the God of all, and not just the moment. It's that God is a man of His word. He's honorable, He's trustworthy, He's also gracious. But it's that moment of, for me, that clicked that David's not just this entitled punk that just has everything, this trust fund kid. David has this just sincere, desperate knowledge of who exactly God was, and He was willing enough and man enough to give it all to him, too. Yeah, it absolutely is. And so to wrap us up, Andy, I would love for you to speak directly to the camera with the red light, to the person who's watching this right now, that if you could look them in their eyes and say, hey, brother or sister that's trying to follow Jesus, based on this message, here's how I would encourage you today. Man, I think I would probably land it on these three things. Thing number one, God's promises often unfold over time and they require trust. Kyle talked about trusting the author, trust the Creator. Time and time again, and we read throughout Scripture, you can skip pages, you can jump around, skip around, but His character is always the same. So I would trust the author, as Kyle said, but I would say it a little differently of just God's promises often unfold over time, but it requires trust. And for some of us, we've had people in our lives that have broken trust, and it makes it really hard for us to look at this in trust. We've had to survive, and our survival primal instincts tell us that it's based on my abilities and what I'm doing, but I'm telling you, things are going to change when you stop that fight. Two, I would say that God writes intentional stories. I talked about this a little bit already, but the more I try to take control of the Creator, Kyle talked about don't take away the Creator's seat, don't try to put yourself in His seat. I think the more that I have done that in my life, and I hope this is not the case for you, but I've seen my life spiral so far out of control, the more that I try to do it. I wake up day after day, and I'm like, man, why do I have this headache? Because I keep trying to run through the brick wall in front of me where God is trying to show me if I step to the side, there's a door for me to walk through. And then thing number three, I would honestly, I would just encourage you guys, God's covenant involves two

things, His promise and our obedience. So this is His grace, but it's our response to His offer of grace. John 10 says, the thief comes to still kill and destroy, but I have come, this is Jesus speaking, I have come that we may have life and have it to the full. And so God is offering us this peace that when your detours in life, it's not just the things that maybe we have done to ourselves or to other people, but oftentimes things that have been done to us, God doesn't allow the these things to define us. El Shaddai is another one of his names, but it's God Almighty. So it's the things that we have done and things that have been done to us that those things don't define us any longer. God does. God Almighty does. Satan knows our failures. We hear this often from any of our communicators here at Southeast. Satan knows us by our failures. He knows us by our detours and he calls us by those. But God knows our failures. He knows our detours. He knows our sins. He knows the things that are deep inside our minds and inside of our hearts, but he calls us righteous. He calls us worthy. Calls us sons and daughters. Calls us holy. But he also calls us to share in his glory through Jesus. But he also calls us by name. And I think for me,

the fact that God even cares to know my name, he cares to walk beside me, he cares to walk beside you too, shows that he's not just a God that's lording over top of us and calling us out on the things we've done wrong, but just as we see with Abraham's story, he's a God that's committed to do any and everything that he can to show us that we are called, we are holy, we are worthy, and we're his. We are also called to do one easy and simple thing. And I don't know if this is a norm, but he calls us to make one simple decision. That when we recognize who he is, that he is Lord and Savior, that he is Jesus, that we just simply say yes. He calls us his. But he also erases the sleep. And though here on earth we might have to abide by some of our mistakes, for me, one of my biggest mistakes was not acknowledging and going to the doctor and having to deal with cancer surgery, having to deal with the fact that now I can't hear very well out of the left side of my ear, but had I listened to people close to a decade earlier, maybe that might not be my story. I've ruined a lot of relationships over time, too, and I think that had I been more obedient and followed God and pursued him instead of myself,

a lot of these situations may not have happened. But he's called me into some really hard situations here over the last few years, and you might be in the middle of your hard situation, but I tell you, if you seek him, you will find him because he is faithful. So if you take anything away from today, trust the author, because he's faithful, he's taking you on a journey, and that journey's gonna have a really sweet ending. So my challenge would be to say yes and go on it, see what he's got to show you. That's good, that's good. Well, y'all, we are so grateful again that you decided to spend some time with us today. We genuinely hope that all of this is helpful to you in your walk with Jesus, and that's why we do it. Again, like Andy just said, hey, don't trust in us, right? That's not what we're asking for you to put your trust in. We're asking you to consider putting your full trust in the Lord and the Lord Almighty who will carry you through each and every season, no matter how hard or how good it is, he's gonna be there with you. Y'all, we love you, thank you again for being here with us, and we will see you next time.