God's Not Done Yet | Isaiah 61

Amen. If I could get an amen to the camera, I sure would, right? Places where we're like, God, clearly you're not going to change this. This is going to always be this way. It will never be. I always think about like, I have to listen to myself. What are the things I say never or always around? It will never change. Always be this way. And the word that I hear from you today is, God says in those situations, I'm not done. You may be done. I'm not done. This is the Crossroads Daily. No experts, no perfect people, just honest conversations about what happens when the Bible shows up in real life. Hey everybody, I'm Chuck. I'm Chris. I'm Jamie. I'm Jordan. And today is Isaiah 61. We're continuing in this theme of revival. And I think one of the best word pictures in the Bible is beauty from ashes. I mean, I just think we just, you naturally get it. Like the anytime you've ever seen, we probably already all have seen some kind of like a bomb dropped in a place where there was a fire in a neighborhood and you just see ashes, right? The smoke rising. And it's just like, man, there's almost nothing that feels or looks more hopeless than that. Because you know someone's lost something. Lives have been lost, property's been lost, serenity has been lost. And the fact that the Lord promises like, I will make that beautiful is one of the most powerful promises in Scripture and it's a true promise. I mean, I can think of places in my life that have been in ashes and the Lord has brought beauty out of it. You know, I don't talk about this a lot, but like I have two siblings that were addicted to crack cocaine. And when you live with a drug addict or you're in a family with a drug addict, you go through lots of highs and lows. You go through lots of like, this is never going to get better. You know, like really, again, they relapse, like you go through a lot of that. But I look at my two siblings today. And God has completely brought beauty in their life. One of them is a pastor, you know, like God has redeemed them in a powerful, powerful way. So I just think like, man, this is a beautiful, beautiful promise. So it's interesting to me that when Jesus comes on the scene, the New Testament, these are the first words he says when he preaches. The first words he says are Isaiah 61, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prisons to those who are bound. So that is the promise of Jesus. That is the promise of revival. Where do you long to see that promise happen in our world?

And you can talk macro. You can talk your own life. But where do you see brokenness around you that you'd love to see those ashes become beautiful? Let's just name some of those things. How real do we want to get here? Super real man. Go all the way there. Sure. I'll share a quick part of my story and my family's testimony. My wife and I have been married for 10 years. The details don't really matter. But, you know, five or six years into us being married, we're like, Hey, we want to start a family and we want to have children. And I remember the day I came home from work and I found out my wife had like prepared this whole thing to reveal and tell me that like I was going to be a dad and like, your whole world changes, your mind's blown, you're emotional, you know, like all the things. And then a few weeks later, we lost the child. And I remember I had no idea actually like how much I wanted to be a dad until I found out I was going to be one and then it was taken away from me. And so fast forward to two years later, we had a beautiful baby girl and God redeemed that thing. And fast forward a few years later, we had a son. But before that, we also experienced the loss of another child. So I have two children that God's blessed me with, but we also experienced lost twice before we experienced life. Yeah. And not only has that been a powerful impactful story for my personal like family about God creating beauty from ashes, I think it's awakened my wife, Lauren and I open to the challenges of creating and building family that so many people in the world experience. Yeah. Yeah. Marriage tensions, family tensions, miscarriage, adoption, there's so there's so much there. But I think like it's instilled a new burn in our hearts for just like the mandate that we've been given by God to be fruitful and multiply. And I see so much of family being how God wants to. like sons and daughters of his to bring about flourishing. So I'll stop yapping on that, but that's a big one. - Thank you for sharing that, man. - Thank you for sharing that. And both the highs and the lows of that. - Of course. - You know? - Yeah.

- That's real. - Yeah. - That's very real. What else comes to mind? Did you guys just think about what you long to see heal, brokenness that you love to see redeemed? - I'll share one. It actually, so I think it was yesterday in Psalm 144, we were reading that. And it said, "There will be no crying out from our streets." And man, I just, my heart goes out to people who are, whether they're homeless, whether they're impacted by the violence on our streets. Like man, it's just a part of me that just longs for more of God's shalom, peace, flourishing, wholeness to be accessible to more people. And that's just, I mean, I can just look up my own city and see that, but like when you take that globally and you think about third world countries, I think about places like Haiti, like man, I just, there's so many of these examples of like, you know, we talked about war torn areas. I just longed for that shalom peace. There's something in me that, you know, believes that when Jesus made these commitments and these promises, it's meant to go there. It's not just meant to be like, "Oh, lots of people have a good positive spiritual experience." But like, no, the power of Jesus is supposed to be restoring communities, healing families, transforming nations.

Like that's not like out of the scope. And I long for that. I really long to see that happen, you know? And that's why we need revival. That's why that's why I long for revival because I just realize nothing else is gonna bring that about. Nothing else is gonna make that happen. What about a time when you've experienced maybe some of that revival? What does that look like? Maybe something you talked about in your example, right? Like the gift of the two children that you now father and what that's meant for you and Lauren and your family. Yeah, where have you seen it? Where have you seen beauty turn to ashes? I'm sorry. Beauty from ashes. Beauty from ashes. Beauty from ashes. Don't mind your feet and go to ashes. We wanna see ashes go to beauty. Where have you seen that? I don't think my sister watches this. I think we're good. I talk, sometimes when I'm on here, I talk about my middle sister who I have a great relationship with. I also have a younger sister who I would stay. I don't have a great relationship with.

And she got married earlier this year and I felt deeply hurt by something. Oh my gosh, if you watch this, we'll talk about it later. I felt deeply hurt by something that happened at her wedding and it felt like, I think the words I said to my mom was, I'm done. She's now married, she's got someone else's last name. I'm absolutely done. And then my mom did what moms do, like, you said that before and I said, yeah, and I'm resolute this time. And I genuinely was. And then the sister I'm closest to, she got married. And so we had all the family wedding things leading up to it. And guys, when I said I was done, I was just like, that's cool, that's a person. She'll be present at all the things. And there was something that happened when we went to Tennessee for the wedding where God was just like pointed out all the things that I did in this space of it. And then I got to this place where I was like, well, I guess my mom was right, I'm not done. And I think that there was just restoration there. And like, like genuinely what I thought was completely burned down. And now it's just this completely beautiful thing. - Man. - So yeah, that. - That's powerful, that's powerful, Jamie. And what I love about that is like,

I think we've all had situations and have situations where we're like, I'm done, right? Amen, if I could get an amen to the camera, I sure would, right? Places where we're like, God, clearly you're not gonna change this. This is gonna always be this way. It will never be, I always think about, like I have to listen to myself. What are the things I say never or always around? It will never change, always be this way. And the word that I hear from you today is God says in those situations, I'm not done. You may be done, I'm not done. - Yeah. - Because the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and is anointed me to bring transformation to those very moments, those very situations. So, you know, I'm sure there are things, like the way I put it in this language is like, there are things I've stopped praying for. That might be, yeah, that might be hard to admit, but like, I've stopped praying for them because I don't believe that change is gonna happen anymore. And what I'm hearing through today is like, man, God hasn't. God has not stopped interceding for those things. The story is not done on those things. The book isn't closed on those things. The chapter isn't ended on those things. And so maybe today for us, the way that we can pray is think about the places in our life that feel like ashes literally burned up. We're done.

And hear the voice of God saying, "But I'm not done." So today, may you have maybe an inkling of faith to pray again for that place. In your life that you thought was done, but God says to you, says to us, "He's not done. He can still redeem even that thing in your life." [MUSIC]