Ep 030 || God Doesn't Waste Your Time

What's up, Pando family? Excited to be back with you for another week of our Pando exclusive podcast. If you're new with us, my name is Derek, this is Brandon. We're part of our online ministry team here at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah. And so every now and then we'll have some special guests that'll come on here from our recovery team and some other maybe adjacent ministries here at our church, but today you're in luck because you have Brandon and myself with you. Just us. Just us. Let's go. We're coming to you from Louisville, Kentucky, and so we're excited to be with you today. Brandon, we're wrapping up Journey of Faith. So it's been seven weeks. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Yeah, I mean, that's seven weeks. Went fast. Yeah, it did. And how far... I mean, I'm trying to think, how long was the first sermon series? Like six? So we're like 13, 14 weeks into Genesis? Yeah, something like that. So we are firmly into this journey of walking through the book of Genesis, which is great. I mean, Genesis is 50 chapters, so you got a lot of stories to dig into. You got a lot of things that are going on. Some of it, as we've seen, has been very affirming and great, and some of it has been a little tough to wander through and see, like, well, why is this story here? What is God talking about? But I think, as we've talked about so many times before, Genesis sets such an amazing kind of chessboard, I guess, for the rest of the Bible to play out on. Like, hey, this is what's going on here. This is how God is moving things around. This is how he's preparing things for how the story is gonna move forward. So yeah, I've loved walking through it. I'm excited to see where we go kind of from here. Absolutely. And this past weekend, we had something called Campus Pastor Weekend, and so for those that don't know, there are probably four or five times a year, maybe, that at our local campuses, either the campus pastor or maybe their connections pastor is delivering a sermon, and so it's all around the same text. So no matter what campus that you would have gone to in person this last weekend, and so, you know, for whatever reason, anybody, you know, watching this right now, if at some point in your life you're able to come to one of our campus locations on a Campus Pastor Weekend,

that's why you'd be hearing from that person. But we got to hear online from a guy named Lucas DeVries, who's our campus pastor at our Blankenbaker location, which, again, is what we get to see online each and every weekend. But Brandon, he was walking us through Genesis 21 and talking about Abraham and, man, this really difficult testing of faith that God had for him. Yeah, yeah. So in Genesis 21, we kind of read, to kind of back up a little bit, we read about the birth of Isaac, right? The son of the promise is finally born to Abraham and Sarah, and you know, it's been 25 years in the making that, you know... It's a long time. Yeah, a long time. Abraham, it was like 75 when God called him to leave Haran and move to Canaan, and so they've just been waiting for two and a half decades. And you know, I thought about this a couple weeks ago when we were doing sermon discussion stuff, is, I mean, you kind of put that in perspective for our own lives. Like, where were you 25 years ago? That's a chunk. Yeah, like, I wasn't even married 25 years ago. I was about to be, but I wasn't married yet. But it's one of those, like, that's a long time to sit and think about, like, what has happened in this amount of time in my own life, and how long would that have been if I'd been waiting for something that long? So they're waiting on the son of the promise. They finally have him in Genesis 20, 21. And then in 22, it's a little bit of an indeterminate amount of time. It seems like Isaac has grown up a little bit, maybe a teenager, young adult. And then we read in Genesis 22, sometime later, God tested Abraham's faith. Now, from our perspective, that's very helpful to know, because what's about to happen is pretty hard. But Abraham doesn't have that assurance, right? God doesn't tell him, hey, like, tomorrow I'm gonna call you up, and we're gonna have a test. Right. Yeah, this is a test. There's no pop quiz announcement here. He's just following what God's asking him to do. Yeah, yeah. This is, from Abraham's perspective, he does not know it's a test

till the end. Thankfully, the Bible tells us at the beginning, like, hey, what is about to happen is just God testing Abraham. Why is that important for us to recognize? Well, I think it's important for us to recognize because on a couple levels, what God is going to ask Abraham to do here doesn't make sense to us. Like, why would God ask Abraham to go and offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice? Like, what is that about? And one level of it is, well, we know it's a test. Like, we know this is not something God really wants Abraham to do. From a Middle Eastern perspective, though, from an ancient Middle Eastern perspective, I should say, this request absolutely makes sense. Because so many other gods in that culture, they would, like child sacrifice was not uncommon, right? Like the Middle Eastern God, Molech, later on in the Old Testament, they'll talk about like one of, like child sacrifice was something that God demanded. So from Abraham's perspective, right? What God asked him to do here isn't out of bounds, like other gods have done it, right? And, and so, you know, for that audience, I think it's important for them to know it's a test because you want to know ahead of time, like, Hey, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, he's not like this. And in fact, you know, when Abraham will later say, well, the Lord will provide the offering. Like that is completely counterculture to the other gods of their day. Like, you know, the other gods are demanding things of me. And this is the God who makes the sacrifice for me. This is the God who gives me what I need to make that sacrifice. So I think it's important culturally both ways for us to know it's a test for, for our own sake, for, so that we know like, Hey, this is not God really asking him to do this.

But from their perspective also to know like, Hey, the God of the Bible is not like the other gods. He's, he really doesn't want you to do this. Right. Yeah. So it's not like, you know, God has changed his mind that, Oh, Hey, you know, even though these other gods, you know, are requiring you to sacrifice your children, well, that's something that I want now, right? That it's, that's not necessarily what God is saying. And he's, uh, I remember I was reading this, you know, oh gosh, I think it was when our son Lucas was born. And I remember like really being troubled by this passage. Cause it was like, man, like what I have the faith to be able to do something like this, you know? And then just being freaked out by this fact of like, gosh, like would God ask me to do something like that? And I don't think he's necessarily asking us to do this exact same thing. Praise the Lord for that. Right. Um, you know, but there are definitely some other things that, uh, in regards to maybe the, the loves of our heart, maybe we'll get into here in a little bit and how those need to be kind of reoriented in the right way. Uh, but continue on in the story, Brandon. Yeah. So God, God calls him and, uh, we know it's a test and, and, you know, to kind of back up on that a little bit too, like knowing it's a test takes the edge off a little bit, right? Like if, uh, I don't know if they do it anymore, but you're on the radio stations where they're always like, they play the tornado siren and they're like, what you're about to hear is just a test, like it's so you don't freak out.

Yeah. But if you miss that and you just hear like the burnt, burnt, burnt. There's a storm. All of a sudden you start looking out the windows. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's going to take the edge off the story a little bit. Like we can calm down. So the, the request God makes, uh, as he says, take your son, your only son. Yes, Isaac, whom you love so much. And I love that Lucas brought out that he really like layers it on there. Like your son, your Isaac, the Isaac that you love your only son. Uh, and it tells him to go to the land of Moriah, go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you. And so like this test, ultimately I, you kind of hinted at this is like Abraham, take this gift that you've been given, take this promise that you've given, take this son, you've been given the son that you love so much and give him back, give him back to me, like offer a sacrifice to me. And we don't really, well, I shouldn't say this cause we'll get, probably get to it later in Hebrews. Genesis doesn't really give us a glimpse in what Abraham is thinking in this moment, right? It doesn't say, and Abraham thought about it for a couple of days. Like the very next verse is the next morning, Abraham got up early. He saddled up his donkey. He cut the wood. He got everything together and he left to go to the mountain where God would show him. And I think it's so significant to stop and think that, that Abraham, he doesn't, from the perspective of Genesis, he doesn't wrestle with it.

He doesn't really question it. He's okay. Well, God has called me to do this and God is asking me to do this. And, and there's, there has to be a reason for it. So, so I'm going to go do it. And, and he does, they travel, we're told three days to, they see the mountain in the distance. Abraham turns to the servants who have gone with him. And he, he makes this very curious phrase, which I think gives us a glimpse into his mindset here. He said, he tells the servants to stay behind and he says, the boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there and then we will come right back. So there's some element of Abraham and again, we'll get to Hebrews, what Hebrews says about this a little bit later. There's some element of Abraham that understands, I think, okay, well, God can be trusted with this. Like we're going to come back, we're going to worship. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know how that's. going to happen, but we're both gonna come back from this. Yeah, ultimately, God will provide in some sort of way. Yes, yeah, so they go up the mountain. It's at this point, Isaac kind of asks, I laugh about it, but it was probably heartbreaking to Abraham. Hey, what are we doing? Yeah, hey, where's the sacrifice, Dad? Yeah. Where's that at?

And then Abraham has the statement of verse eight, God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son. So they get up the mountain. It becomes clear, I think, to Isaac what's happening. He binds up Isaac, lays him down on the altar, and verse 10 gives us the height of the drama that Abraham goes to lift his knife in the air, and it's not until that moment that the angel of the Lord stops him and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Abraham, don't lay a hand on the boy. Don't hurt him in any way, because I know that you truly fear God. You haven't withheld anything from me. And then Abraham's words to Isaac become true. They turn around, and they see there's a ram caught in the thicket, and they offer that as a sacrifice to the Lord, and God reaffirms his promise to Abraham, like, you've passed this test. You've done what I asked you to do. You have not withheld even the greatest gift I've given you, and I think it's just a testament to, this sermon series was called Journey of Faith. It's just a testament to the journey that God had Abraham on. You think about throughout his life, from the moment he was first called in Canaan to the time when the covenant is reaffirmed, when God takes him out to look at the stars, to when he's haggling with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. Every encounter Abraham had with God

was leading him towards this moment. God is preparing his heart, preparing his mind to go to that place and offer that sacrifice. Yeah, this is such an impactful story, because when we think about Abraham, this is a guy that, this faith wasn't just developed overnight. This trust in the Lord wasn't just developed overnight. It was over the course of this 25-year period where God was continually taking them through, he and his wife, Sarah, through these really difficult, probably confusing moments of life where you had one of two decisions, either to obey or not obey, to trust or not trust, and there's a lot of those types of moments in our own life where it's like, okay, hey, we don't really understand what God is doing, but are we gonna trust the God who is behind it all? Are we gonna trust the person behind it all? And so, Brandon, do we know at this point how old Isaac is in this part of the story? We don't really know. He seems to be a little bit older. I would say, I mean, he's at the very least probably a teenager. I mean, he probably could be as old as 20, I guess, like, let me go back to Genesis. The only, because Genesis 22 just says sometime later, and then the next thing we have there is at the beginning of chapter 23,

and it says when Sarah was 127 years old. Gotcha. So we have a, there's a pretty big space gap there for us to really determine his age, but he does seem to at least have some mental awareness, some, I mean, some point where he could have even stopped this, I guess, but you're trusted in Abraham. And so, to kind of summarize it, we have this guy named Abraham who God has called. He's told both Abraham and Sarah that they would be blessed and be a blessing to many people to come, and that many people and nations would come from their bodies, which is ridiculous to think about with how old that they were at that time. And so we go 25 years later, right, which is a significant chunk of time. It's definitely not insignificant. Finally gives birth, right, to this son named Isaac. And then several years on down the road, God decides he's gonna test Abraham again of, hey, go on this three-day journey to this mountain to sacrifice your son. And God ends up providing a sacrifice. God ends up providing the sacrifice that he doesn't have to actually sacrifice his son that as he had promised his servants as they were walking there

would know that they would return back to him. And it showed the Lord that, okay, he wouldn't even withhold his only son from me. And so I'm grateful just from a human perspective that God has not put me in a position like that where it's like, hey, I'm asking you to sacrifice your son, so to prove your faithfulness to me. That can seem a little bit intimidating. So, Brandon, for a Christian, what are a couple of things that we should take away from this story? Oh, well, I mean, there are a lot of things we could take away from this story. I'm trying to decide which direction we're going. Yeah, I get you. Let's start kind of broad theologically. Why is God asking him to do this? What does this mean? Well, I think what God is wanting Abraham to understand here is his own heart and what God is willing to do to save us. I think there's this element of the story of Abraham offering Isaac overlaps so well with the gospel that I think it's very, very clear that God is trying to help us understand where this story is ultimately going. God has promised Abraham, I'm gonna bless your lineage, I'm gonna bring the Messiah through it. And I think he wants Abraham to understand like this Messiah, he's not gonna save the world by conquering it. He's gonna save the world by dying for it. And what God is asking Abraham to do only makes sense if God is willing to do it himself. It only makes sense in that way. And there's an interesting little detail there in Genesis 22, where when Abraham has his hand raised and is about to strike Isaac with the knife, we're told that the angel of the Lord, again, is the one who intervenes. He's the one who stops. And we don't have time to get into it. I think we said that a couple weeks ago too, but largely most theologians believe that the angel of the Lord is like a pre-incarnation appearance of Jesus, that it's in a sense Jesus himself who stops Abraham from making this sacrifice. And you think about that from just our perspective and understanding the cross, like Jesus can only

stop that because he's gonna be the one who's willing to do it. He's the son who's willing to die. And I think that's just so powerful to think about that God is gonna provide that sacrifice. He's gonna make the jump that he's asking Abraham to do. And I think he just wants us to understand it, to put ourselves in those shoes from the very beginning of the Bible, to be like, hey, what if I had to sacrifice my son to find salvation from my sins? And God looks at us and this is exactly what he's willing to give up. This is exactly what he's willing to do. So I think broadly, there's that for us, is that we can see this has been the plan from the beginning, is the son is gonna die. Yeah, and I think that's a very easy reference here in the New Testament, is one of the most popular verses, maybe of all time, in Scripture. It's John 3.16, that for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. And just like you said, that first point is to help us understand God's heart, that God loves us so much that he would be willing to give his one and only Son in Jesus, and that is a truth for us, no matter who we are, what we've done, where we come from, that because of Jesus, we can be a part of the family of God. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I think the other way we can take the story too is to put ourselves a little bit in Abraham's shoes, and then wonder, how much do I trust God? What am I willing to give God in those moments where he calls me to sacrifice? I've hinted at it a couple of times, so we'll just get to it now. In the... Let's jump ahead to the New Testament. Yeah, we'll jump ahead to the New Testament. In Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews is reflecting on all of this, and he's talking about the heroes of the faith and what they've done. So this is... Sorry to pause you there for a second. So Hebrews book, or a letter, I guess, in the New Testament, so towards the end of our Bibles, this Abraham and Isaac story is a story that Hebrew people would have known. Yes, yeah. So what he's doing in Hebrews chapter 11 is he's been encouraging this group of Christians to stand firm in their faith. And so when he gets to chapter 11, he's trying to tell them, like, everyone who's ever followed God has had to rely on their faith. And this is what that looks like. This is what you do. And so in Hebrews 11, 17, he goes specifically to Mount Moriah and talking about the offering of Isaac. He says, it was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a

sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God's promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, even though God had told him, Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted. Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. Wow. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead. So think about... We're not just talking about... To go back to our earlier point, we're not just talking about a playing out of the crucifixion, we're talking about a playing out of the resurrection. Right. That Abraham in his mind is thinking, well, God has promised Isaac is gonna continue my lineage, so he's gonna live, which is just an incredible thing. think about. But there's also that element of how much does Abraham trust God in that moment? Like, I've seen him do incredible things. I've seen him work in incredible ways in my own life. He gave us this child when we were well past the age of being able to do it. If he says it, I can do it. And I think for us as Christians, that's something that we need to think about or even wrestle with is as we look at this particular example of faith, or even as the examples of faith in the Old Testament is, what were these men and women, what were they willing to step out and do because they thought God was calling them to it? What chances were they willing to take? What were they willing to sacrifice for him? And count it as, if I give it over to him, then I trust that he's gonna do with it what he wants. Yeah, and I think just to reiterate what you just said, to think about the depth of belief that Abraham must have had in the Lord, knowing that, like you mentioned from the writers of Hebrews, just our own conversation right now, that him walking with Isaac to that place, this three-day journey, I can only imagine over the course of three days how many times I would have talked myself out of doing this, right? Yes. Oh, 100 percent, yeah. And he had this belief, from what we see in Hebrews, that like, okay, well, one way or the other, God's going to take care of this. Yes. One way or the other, I have seen God show up enough in my life where I can place this faith in him that no matter what happens, like, I can trust him, even with something as in-your-face and intense as this story is. Right. But Brandon, it kind of brings us to maybe an application point here for all of us in that,

again, I'm grateful that I haven't had to go through a journey like this with my son, or one of my children, or with someone that I love that God has asked me to do that. I'm grateful. But there are so many things in our life, and I think Lucas DeVries phrased it up like this of, what does it look like to dethrone the Isaac in your life? Any thoughts on that? Because when I think of Isaac, right, this is... It's not this evil person that he's getting rid of, it's that he represents in human form this promise that God has made to him. So, kind of thoughts on that? Yeah. I think one of the ways I've heard it phrased up so often is that we get ourselves in a situation where we care far more about the gifts than we care about the giver, right? And I think that's what this story challenges us, or even challenges me to look at. If God offered me nothing else, right? Is he enough on his own terms, right? If God is like, well, we take, I think, so many blessings for granted, right? And we just assume like, hey, God is gonna give me this, or he's gonna give me this. And sometimes those are really great things. Most of the things, I shouldn't say most, all of the things God gives us are really great things. But it's one of those like, am I following God because I think I'm gonna get really good things about it, or am I following God because I think that he's enough? And I think that's the test that Abraham is going through here is, of course he packed up his homeland, he packed up his tent and moved from Haran to Canaan. God promised him amazing things. But as well, if God gives me none of these amazing things, is he alone worth it? Is pursuing him and chasing him and knowing him, is that what I really want, or do I want all the other fun stuff that goes with that? And I think that's something that we all have to kind of look in our own hearts and see. We have to look in our own attitudes, our own actions, our own priorities even, really, that we equate so much of our spiritual life with physical blessing. And it's, well, you know, God offers us enough just in himself, and we can rely on that even when we can't rely on anything else. Yeah. Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, was it Tim Keller who talked about the reorienting of the loves of our heart? Yes, yeah. Is he the one that talked about that? And basically, the premise of this, Tim Keller, a pastor who passed away a few years ago, but wrote a lot of great books, was a pastor in New York, and just spoke about this idea and concept that we see in Scripture about how a lot of the work of the Spirit in our lives is kind of reorienting the loves of our heart. And it

doesn't mean that these things that we have, it could be family, it could be your kids, it could be—gosh, even— even good career goals or whatever it may be. It may be a financial thing for some people. Like none of those things are inherently evil, right? But when those things occupy the number one spot in our heart, our whole life is thrown out of whack. It just is. And I think, this is probably a bad analogy, but it kind of reminds me, it makes me think of a car. Like, I mean, if you remove the engine out of any type of vehicle, well, that puppy ain't gonna run. It's just not going to. You can put any type of other sophisticated car part in that spot. It's got a great radio. Right, and if it doesn't have an engine, like it ain't gonna run the way that it's supposed to. And I think the way, talking about Genesis and the way we've been created, is that God has specifically created us and our souls to such a degree that I really do think that there is almost this like engine shaped part in our whole, in our soul, I should say, right? That only He can fill, right? There's this space that only He can fill. And when we put, say we even put something like family in there, say it's our spouse. Well, man, like our spouse was never meant

to occupy that space. Like we're gonna put pressure and expectation on them that they were never meant to serve. I laugh about talking about people vicariously living through their kids, especially through sports. Man, if you wanna find some angry parents, go to a youth baseball game, right? Because they have put their kids or whatever they think that, and I can be guilty of this too, of whatever we think we want our kids to be and when it doesn't happen, our whole world gets thrown out of whack. And it's like, well, what's going on? Well, it's this idea of reorienting the loves of our heart. And if we are not being intentional about putting God and allowing Him to have that space in our soul, in our heart, everything can get out of whack and we can make some pretty poor choices based on that. Yeah, well, and you even made me think when you were talking about coaching youth baseball, which I know you do. I can't coach, I'm a terrible coach. Just run to the base. But you think about, as a coach, there's a big difference between coaching your team to win and coaching your team to play good baseball. Yeah. If you coach your team to win, there's an element in which that could go sideways

real quick and you're just doing what you need to do to cut corners or even try to cheat the other team out or whatever. But if you're coaching them to play good baseball, well, then the winning will presumably come from that. Right. And I think that's where you're talking about is where we get ourselves kind of messed up is that when we're letting the wrong things drive us, when we're trying to get the accomplishments versus living life well, then that's where things kind of get a little bit sideways and get a little bit messed up is because we start thinking about accumulation as opposed to the affections of our hearts. And I love Kelly's reordering our loves because I think that's so important. And I think this is kind of, in a way, what was it Lucas said this weekend? Something along the lines of testing doesn't reveal, it doesn't show us anything new, it reveals what's already there. Yes, which is very true. Yeah, and I think that's so insightful to think about that in terms of Abraham's story is this is what 25 years, well, I mean, let's assume for the sake of argument that Isaac is 15 here. So that's what 40 years of following God has done. Yeah, that's a good point.

So 25 between the promise and him being born and then you add on however old he is now, yeah. So yeah, we're talking about, let's just say for the sake of argument, that's what 40 years of following God has done is he's just to this point where his heart is so reordered that he's like, well, if God is asking me to do this, then I can do that and I can trust him in it because he's never let me down. No doubt. And that's where if someone like you're watching this today and you're like, gosh, I wish that I could trust God like this other person does. Well, what I would be willing to bet, maybe not every time, but maybe 99.9% of the time is that that other person that you're kind of idolizing for their faith in Christ, they have had a lot more opportunities to trust God. And I think that, Brandon, that's ultimately what that comes down to is that, like you mentioned, in coaching, well, it's that idea of development. When we just think about it from a sports perspective, whenever you have a team, you're not just like, okay, hey, we want to, our number one goal is to win. And so that's all we're gonna focus on today is winning. Like I think everybody understands that you know, but that like what was so wise about what you said Is that in order to win? Even at a youth baseball level is that you have to break things down in such a way that eat each Individual kid is developing over the course of the season. Yeah, so that

When those situations come up in a game those skills come to the surface, right? That becomes just second nature to them that at the end of the day like the individual development of each kid is going to Contribute more to your team's overall success than just hey, the main thing is winning, right? Well, yeah, that's a great goal to have And everybody would like to win right everybody would like to you know But it relates a lot to our faith in that again, like it's not that you know, Abraham just had this overnight Faith that it's like hey just out of nowhere He had enough faith to be able to take this step and go on this journey and make this decision but that man he was tried and tested and in so many different ways and and so my encouragement I think to all of us would be That there are going to be times when you're gonna get frustrated and it's like gosh Like why is this thing not happening? You know, maybe it's like your parole hearing maybe it's something where you're like man, like I have just been praying for you know this person in my life to write me back or respond to me or And you're frustrated right and you're kind of in this season where you're not where you want to be Well, what I think I have learned just in my experience following Jesus is that he never wastes it He never does Right, and I think maybe one of the things to remember in the midst of this Brandon is that It can be hard to say is that we're not the main character No in any of this no, you know, and that's where I can be guilty of like being so frustrated So I'm like, well, why is this thing not happening for me? Right, you know, and I have to remember That I am one person who God loves so much But in a world full of people that God loves just as much. Yeah, absolutely And you know, I I love that word development I'd like I think that's so helpful for us to think about because like we live in we live in what I would call a microwave world right where we want to happen quick like we want it now and That even comes to our faith

Like I'm I'm gonna read my Bible once and feel like I got it Like I have I found this verse that really applies to me today But we know right that There's no shortcuts and things like that and even I mean we use this because just talking about the phrase Mike microwave like we know Food in a microwave isn't as good as something that you've taken time to prepare. No, right? Yeah, so even if we could microwave our faith, it wouldn't be great. You know, it wouldn't turn out for us But you know there's this element of where God just wants to develop us over time and get us in the right habits and the right investments and Reordering of our hearts that gets us in a place where it's you know, rather rather than just doing the things We know we should do that. We become who it is. We won't he wants us to be You know, I it's oddly enough. I think Dallas Willard uses the the analogy of baseball When he talks about like spiritual disciplines and growth is that he talks about you know How does how does a baseball player know how to hit the ball in a game like when he's up at you know? The bottom of the ninth and he's you know, he's got to get a hit to win the game It's like how do they how does he know how to hit? Well, it's cuz he's put in the time in the batting cage He's put in the time of batting practice And so all at that point it's it's muscle memory and it's thinking it through and it's paying attention and doing the things you do and so he talks about spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible study and things like that as Like that's batting practice. That is I'm gonna sit down with the word I'm gonna read it and read it and read it and then when I get in those moments where things get rough Just know to swing the bat. Just know to the words there and I can lean on it You know, sometimes prayer feels as mundane as batting practice like I just don't know what I'm doing here But it's in those moments where it's like, okay. I learned that this is how I pray This is how I can talk to God So when the time does come really rough and when the time comes where I don't feel like I know what to do I'm used to talking to him and I can just be ready to Stretch that muscle again and know like alright this this is what I've done This is who God is This is how God is working in me and this is how I can trust him to work even when I don't understand what's going

On around me. That's so good because I think maybe one of the questions someone would have Watching this or even a sermon would be well, how do I develop a faith like that? Right, right Well, I think the good news is is that God carries a lot of weight and yes helping you develop that. But it comes through spending time with him, right? It comes through getting to know him, because again, the biggest... one of the biggest things in our relationship with Christ and in following Jesus and trying to be a Christian and do the right things is knowing him intimately, and when we know him, it's a lot easier for us to discern what to do and what not to do. Yes. Because we're all gonna face situations where it's like, hey, okay, do I do the right thing or do I do the wrong thing, even though it may be easier? Right. And good, bad, or indifferent, like, our lives become a collection of our choices, you know, because there are things that happen to us that we can't control, and that's just a fact. Like, there are things we can't control, but oftentimes, like, our life generally becomes a collection of our choices. And, you know, so for our pando family, right, watching this right now, like, my encouragement, our encouragement for you would be to take the time you have in this season of your life, whether you have kind of a date when you are going to get to walk out of that prison cell where you're at and back into life again, or maybe you're gonna be there for a long time. Our advice would be, spend your time wisely. Yeah. Get to know the Lord through things like Brandon said, through reading your Bible, through watching content like this on Pando, because again, it's not so much just to teach you facts about some guy named Abraham that lived a long time ago, it's about to teach you about the God that Abraham trusted and followed so that you can follow the same God, and He will bring you through each and every season. And like you said, Brandon, it may not turn out exactly like we think it's going to, but we can ultimately trust the God who is helping us work through all of it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you make me think, I mean, like I said, we get that reference there in Genesis 22, where it's like, well, the Lord came to test Abraham, but I think we also find, and I'm sure you would probably find this true as well,

that it's not just in those moments where God tests us that we discover things about ourselves, it's also where we discover things about God. In a sense, in those times where I feel like God is testing me, I'm also in a sense testing Him. That's probably a bad way to say that, but there's an idea of like, can I trust Him in this? And every time on the other side of that, He proves Himself faithful, He proves Himself to be true. So it's not just an opportunity for me to look and see what's inside my heart, there's an opportunity for me to step back and see what's in God's heart too. How does He respond in this, and how does He meet me even in the midst of the trial? That is so good. And as we wrap up, you may be someone watching this where the next decision of faith you need to make is to put your trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, to be able to recognize that because of your sin, because of my sin, because of all of our sin, Jesus had to come, God's only Son, to die on the cross. But the good news is that because He did that, we can have eternal life, we can be forgiven of our sin. And so for you, that may be today, is getting on your knees and repenting, turning from the way that you've been living, praying to God, asking for His forgiveness for your sin, and making Jesus the Lord of your life. That may be step number one, right? For others of you, maybe that have been doing your best to follow Jesus and trust Him in every season, our advice would be to keep going, right? Keep going. Don't give up on that walk, don't give up on that race, because we know that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Even for Abraham, gosh, as Brandon said, I mean, it was about 40 years between the promise that God gave them and being up on that mountain with his son Isaac, where God ultimately provided the ram as the sacrifice for him. And that faith, like Brandon said, was not microwaved, it was something that was kind of put in the oven and was baked over time. And so for you, hang in there, keep praying, keep trusting, keep staying in your Bible, keep praying, keep trusting God, because the more seasons we go through that we have to trust God, we may not have another choice. As Brandon said, we not only discover more about our faith, but we discover more about God, who ultimately is the one behind it all. But y'all, we love you guys, we're grateful that you sit and listen, and we hope that this is beneficial to you. If you missed last... Last week's podcast, I would recommend you go back and watch it. Brandon and I were here at this table with a lady named Jody. It was awesome. Yeah, she's from our recovery team. She talked about this curriculum that's on the Pando app now

called Foundations, right? Foundations? Pathways! Pathways! I knew when I said Foundations, that didn't sound right. But we hope that you would go through it. We're releasing it kind of one phase at a time. It's gonna be great just to help you continue to grow in your understanding of Scripture and your understanding of this God that we follow, that we put our trust in, and it's been developed for people that are going through addiction and recovery. And so if that's part of your story, then this should be a great fit. So check out that Pathways material. But Brandon, any final thoughts before we hop off here? No, no. I'm looking forward to this next week. We're starting a series going through the stories of Isaac and Jacob, Abraham's son and his grandson. The new series called Dysfunction Junction, because again, things get a little weird in Genesis, but some really great stories in there. So I hope you guys will join us back next week as we keep going. Absolutely. And so we'll be talking a lot about dysfunctional families, and if you have one, then you are in good company, and it should be a great series. But you'll be hearing from one of our student guys, Brock Odell, during service this next weekend. But y'all, we're grateful for you, for Brandon, for myself, for our folks behind the camera. We're grateful for you, and we'll see you next time.