How to Survive the Death of a Dream | Brad Leach

If you are a first-time guest, welcome. We're really glad you're here, even though things are different, and I'm sure you're picking up on that. We're walking through a real shock as a church, but we are glad you're here and believe that God wants to speak to you, even in the midst of it. If I haven't met you yet, my name is Brad. I'm the lead pastor of City Life Church in Philadelphia, and we are there because of Allison Park Church. We're one of Allison Park's church plants, and it's an honor to be here this week. I also serve as one of this church's overseers, and so we have a great team of overseers that Pastor Jeff put in place to be able to provide covering and care for situations just like this. In fact, Pastor Jeff is just such a wise and thoughtful leader, led just so beautifully by the Holy Spirit. He had put together a couple years ago an emergency succession plan, and there's a plan literally for this situation. If something were to happen to him, and so what we're doing right now is we're just running the plays that he laid out in that plan, and I thank God. How many thank God for a leader

who is led by the Spirit of God, so wise, and in that plan, Pastor Jeff's heart was that this church would be led well, that it would be cared for well, and so one of the first things that that plan puts into place is an interim pastor in order to shepherd and guide the church through a crisis like this, and Pastor Jeff wanted that person to be Pastor Joe Schaefer, and so very pleased to announce and want you to know that Pastor Joe is gonna be our interim pastor as we walk through this season of transition, and you know, Pastor Jeff, he did not build the church on his gifts. It's not built on his personality. He developed people. He developed leaders, and Pastor Joe has been leading shoulder-to-shoulder with Pastor Jeff for over 20 years, and so he is well-prepared. I just want you to know, Pastor Joe, you've got my support. We are all behind you. I know you feel the same way. We are with you. We believe God has a plan for the future, and thank you for helping to provide leadership

together with the staff to lead us into that future, and so we really have three phases that we're walking through as we have talked. Phase one was just we gotta absorb the shock of this, and so really this past week, that's what we've been doing, grieving the loss of Pastor Jeff, honoring him, honoring his life and his legacy, and so we're gonna continue to do that. Second phase is what we're shifting into now, and that is this interim phase, this interim plan. Pastor Joe is our interim pastor, and even the guest speakers who are coming up that Pastor Joe mentioned, those are people that Pastor Jeff had listed out in the plan, and so he knew who needed to be here, people that you know, people that you love, people that you trust that are gonna speak hope and comfort and stability into this church right now, and so those folks are gonna be here in this interim plan, and then ultimately, when the time is right, we have a process that also Pastor Jeff left for us that involves the leadership of this church in order to name ultimately the new lead pastor that will lead Allison Park into the future. There's no hurry to get there. I mean, you know, it takes time for God to heal and bring perspective,

and so we're just gonna wait on him for the right timing in that, but when that time comes, there's a plan in place as well to make that decision, but this is the time, here's my challenge to you. This is the time to lean in, keep showing up, keep giving, keep serving. In fact, I would say if you've been on the sidelines a little bit, now is the time, start to tithe, get on a team, start to serve, because when a family goes through a crisis, that's when the family needs the family members more than ever. And so I wanna just challenge you, show up strong, let's carry out Pastor Jeff's legacy together. And I wanna speak to your hearts today. There is a painting that I wanna show you, actually, as we kick off the message. This is a Picasso. It is an oil-on-canvas painting, one of his most famous paintings. He painted this in 1931. It is in French called Le Rêve. That's the name of the painting. It translates in English, the dream, the dream. And you can see here, it's a woman. She's looking up into the sky. She has her eyes closed.

She looks like she's dreaming the dream. And this painting has inspired a lot of people for almost 100 years, including a billionaire named Steve Wynn, who has made his fortune in hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. And Steve Wynn loved this painting. He was an art collector, and it really spoke to him. about his journey and so he bought it in 2001 for 60 million dollars. We like to have that kind of discretionary money. 60 million dollars. He bought this painting and he brought it back to Vegas. He had it in his Hallmark casino and then five years later there's another billionaire guy named Steve Cohen who's the majority owner in the New York Mets. It's a hedge fund billionaire in New York. He bought it from Steve. He offered to buy it from Steve Wynn for 139 million dollars. Not bad for a five-year flip and so Steve Wynn said okay like I'm not gonna turn that down. I'll sell it to you but before we move it to New York could I just have a farewell send-off for the dream and so he invited people to come. Celebrities came from all over the world. He had his family, his friends there at his Hallmark casino in Vegas and he had the dream sitting on an easel and he stood up next to it to give a toast to the painting, to the dream and as he was giving the toast he's a guy who talked a lot with his hands and he'd had a little too much to drink. I think that night, you're already a way ahead of me, he tripped while he was giving the toast and his elbow ripped a hole right through the center of the canvas, right through the center of the dream, ruining the painting and everybody just gasped in the room recognizing the destruction to something so valuable, not only the monetary value but the value in the art world and just this beautiful piece of art and that story I often think about it because I think it represents moments in our lives when we experience things that are shocking, that are surprising, that feel like they just rip a hole right through the center of our dreams for the future, our expectations for the future. Maybe you've experienced that. We have hopes for the future, expectations

for the future, the way in which we think our story is gonna play out and we can experience moments of crisis and loss that feel like it just rips a hole right through the center of those hopes for the future. We've experienced that as a church this past week when we looked into the future of Allison Park Church nobody saw this as part of the story, this chapter and it can feel like well you know what's happened to the dream, what has happened to our church and that is why I love so much the second half of this story because Steve Wynn began to do some research and he found somebody in Europe who was a master art surgeon and he worked in the restoration of paintings and so Steve Wynn took the dream to him and he said do you think you can do something with this and so he and his team put it under the microscope and they began to study the tear and they came to the conclusion yeah I think we can I think we can restore it and so it took five years it took hundreds of thousands of dollars they actually found the original Italian cotton that the canvas had been woven from, they took out every piece of fabric thread by thread that had been damaged they matched the original paint exactly and after five years had restored the painting so beautifully that Steve Cohen in New York heard about the restoration and he said I want to come and look at it and so he came and he saw the painting he saw how beautiful it was and he said to Steve Wynn I want to buy it still but instead of giving you a hundred and thirty nine million dollars I want to pay a hundred and fifty five million dollars and they asked him why do you want to pay even more for it now and this was his response because of what it's been through because of what it's been through and how many of you are glad that we have a God who is a master heart surgeon and he is able to take our lives even when our heart is broken in pieces he is able to take us even in the midst of grief and loss and begin to put things back together and begin to restore and begin to begin to redeem and as I prayed over this service this weekend I just felt like the Lord said I want to just remind the church I want to remind those who are gonna be there that I am able to redeem the dream and I want you to know that our God is a God of

redemption he's a God of resurrection and he is able to take the pain in your life and redeem it to such an extent that your life is even more beautiful your story even more brilliant after the loss than it was before and so I want to tell you the story today of a woman in the Bible who experienced a disastrous loss of a dream and her story is in 2nd Kings chapter 4 we meet her starting in verse 8 and so let's pick it up there one day Elijah went to the town of Shunem a wealthy woman lived there and she urged him to come to her home for a meal after that whenever he passed that way he would stop there for some to eat. So, Elisha was a prophet of God, and he would travel from village to village doing his ministry. And usually, he was just kind of on his own when he came into a village, no sheets, you know, there to get something to eat. And so, except for this one village in Shunem, there was a woman there who had some resources. And every time Elisha would come through, she just had an open door, you know, come on over, I'll cook, we'll make you some food. And so, it kind of became a home away from home for him, and her generosity just continued increasing. Verse 9 said, she said to her husband, I am sure this man who stops in from time to time is a holy man of God. Let's build a small room for him on the roof and furnish it with a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp. Then he will have a place to stay whenever he comes by. This is a first ever Airbnb. She said, let's build a little roof deck. We'll put some furniture in there. He'll have a place to stay whenever he comes to town. And so, Elisha, way before there was ever Marriott Rewards, now, I mean, he's got the hookup here in Shunem, and he's grateful. And so, he actually sent his assistant, a guy named Gehazi, to her to just express that, to say, hey, Elisha is so happy, he's so grateful for what you're doing for him. He wants to know, is there anything he can do for you? And she sent the message back, no, I'm good. God has taken care of all my needs. I have what I need, thanks, but I'm good. And Gehazi just kind of kept pressing, you know, maybe we could put in a good word for you to the king. Like, there's gotta be something. And she just kept saying, I'm good, thanks for asking. And so, finally, the Lord spoke to Elisha. He knew that she did not have any children. And so, God gave Elisha a word, and we'll pick it up there in verse 15. Call her back again, Elisha told him. When the woman returned, Elisha said to her, as she stood in the doorway, next year at this time, you will be holding a son in your arms.

And so, you would think a woman who has dealt with infertility, likely for decades based on the age of her husband in this story, that this would be the best news in the world. That now, finally, after years of praying to have a baby, she has a promise from God that she's gonna become pregnant. You'd think she'd be just dancing in the streets and celebrating with the neighbors. God's giving me a promise. I'm gonna be pregnant. But if you have ever had expired hope called out of retirement, you might be able to understand her chilling response here in the next verse. No, my Lord, she cried, oh man of God, don't deceive me and get my hopes up like that. She said, don't mess with me, man. Do not mess with me. She's putting up, you know, a no trespassing sign over the door of her heart. And if you've ever had a dream for the future that you prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed, God, would you do it? And it hasn't happened. There comes a time where sometimes you're like, I'm just gonna let my heart off the hook here. And that's where she was at in the journey. Finally, she was good. Finally, she was content. Finally, she was at a place where she's not trying to, you know, check the pregnancy test every month. And she just is triggered. And she says to Elisha, man, do not mess with me. I'm good, finally. Yet verse 17 says, sure enough, the woman soon became pregnant. And so here she is. It says, at that time, the following year, she had a son, just as Elisha had said. So now she starts right on cue experiencing morning sickness. And she's got inside of her womb, little toes and fingers and internal organs that are starting to develop. And she allows herself little by little to do the one thing she vowed she was never gonna do again. And that's to hope, to expect, to imagine her life as a mom, to imagine the sound of little kids running around the house. She begins to think about it. And then she has a baby boy. And before you know it, he's starting to teethe, and he's crawling, and he's standing, and he's walking, and he's running. And right there before her is this breathing, living human being, a dream that God resuscitated in her life. It says, in verse 18, one day when her child was older, he went out to help his father who was working with the harvesters. So now he's growing up. He's getting stronger. He's actually working with his dad in the field. And the story's beginning to play itself out the way that they used to imagine it, that we'll have a son who will take over the family business one day, and we'll have security when we get older, and we'll have grandchildren. And she is beginning to imagine all of this. And this is when, I have to warn you, the story just drives off the rails. Verse 19 says, suddenly, he cried out, my head hurts. My head hurts. His father said to one of the servants, carry him home.

home to his mother. Come on, guys, you know that's true. Go see your mom, buddy. She'll know what to do. So the servant took him home, and his mother held him on her lap, but around noontime, he died. I have to tell you, as I've read this story many times in my life, this has always been to me one of the most head-scratching stories in the Bible. I always think, like, God, what was the point of that? Here she is, and she's holding him on her lap, and she could tell she's a mom right away that this is not an ordinary headache. She does not have an ER or a hospital to rush him to, no ambulance to call. She's just praying, God, you gotta do something. You gotta heal him. You gotta save him. You can't let this happen. And here again is another prayer that from her perspective goes unanswered as she is holding now her dead son in her lap. In verse 21, she does something that, when you think about it, is incredibly visionary and courageous. It says, she carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and left him there.

And when you experience this kind of trauma, this kind of loss, only thing you can do is take the loss to sacred space. She takes it up to the place that the promise came from. She takes it up to this room that they had dedicated to God, that they had dedicated to the ministry of this man of God. She takes him up there and she leaves him there at the foot of the Lord, leaves him there in the presence of the Lord. And then she goes literally storming off. She went on a journey several miles through the wilderness to find Elisha. And she is ready to have a little bit of a showdown with the prophet Elisha. And we'll pick it up there in verse number 27. But when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she fell to the ground before him and caught hold of his feet. Gehazi began to push her away, but the man of God said, leave her alone. She's deeply troubled, but the Lord has not told me what it is. Then she said, did I ask you for a son, my Lord? And didn't I say, don't deceive me and get my hopes up. She's like, man, I told you this would happen. I told you not to take me down this road. And she is ticked. She is angry. Can you see her?

She is on the ground. She has a hold of his ankles. She is giving it to him straight. And I mentioned this last week. I just wanna say it again today. This is so important to remember this. Permission to be honest with God. When you're walking through loss, when you're walking through pain, permission to be honest with God, he can take it. There's a myth sometimes, we don't think that persistent faith and honest emotional expression can coexist, but they can because faith is not a feeling, it's an action. And you have to bring your feelings to the Lord and you have to, as you feel whatever you feel, process it with him in prayer. And then you begin to walk in faith and that's what she does. She says to this man, listen, I don't know how, but you're gonna make this right. Somehow you're gonna fix this. This is your fault. This is your problem. You are coming home with me. She takes him. She drags him back to Shunam. You gotta do something here. And it says in verse 32, when Elisha arrived, the child was indeed dead, lying there on the prophet's bed.

He went in alone and shut the door behind him and prayed to the Lord. Then he laid down in the child's body, placing his mouth on the child's mouth, his eyes on the child's eyes, and his hands on the child's hands. And as he stretched out on him, the child's body began to grow warm again. Elisha got up, walked back and forth across the room once. I want you just to imagine this crazy scene. And then stretched himself out again on the child. This time the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. Then Elisha summoned Gehazi, called the child's mother, he said, and when she came in, Elisha said, here, take your son. She fell at his feet and bowed before him, overwhelmed with gratitude. Then she took her son in her arms and carried him downstairs. This mom with her son back. But I mean, this is a moment. This is a miracle. The power of God, this is what God can do. He is a God of resurrection. And I want you to know, I think this is a prophetic picture of what he wants to do in your life, of what he wants to do for this church. God is able to take dead things

and raise them back to life and do something new. Even when we think the dream has been destroyed for good, he can redeem the dream. But I will tell you, this miracle, it's often kind of, you know, left me puzzled because this isn't the way that I imagine a miracle like this. What happens? And to me, in my mind, you know, the man of God just kind of comes walking into the room, confident, and just says a few words, rise and walk. And the crowd is there surrounding him, you know, witnessing this miracle, cheering him on, oohs and aahs, but that's not what happens here at all. This, isn't it just, this whole thing is like really weird and kind of awkward and messy. And my sense is that Elisha has no idea what he's doing here. Am I the only one who feels that when I'm reading this story? I mean, he gets there and he goes upstairs. And the first thing he does is he shuts the door. Why? I don't think he wanted anybody watching him trying to figure out what to do next. And once he has the door closed, he just starts to pray. And it says he laid down on top of the kid, mouth to mouth, hands to hands, you know, eyes to eyes. What's that all about? One thing I can think of is, if you know the backstory, Elisha had a mentor named Elijah and Elijah once raised a dead boy back to life. And that's exactly what Elijah did. If you read the story with the kid he raised back to life. So I think Elisha is in there. He has no clue what to do. He's just like, what would Pastor Jeff do right now if Pastor Jeff was here? And he's just, he's trying to figure it out. Nothing happens except the body starts to warm up a little bit, which is encouraging, but he's still not alive. So he stands up and then it says he just walks back and forth across the room. I think he's just praying, God, you got to show up. God, you got to help me here. Then he lays down on the kid again. Then the kid starts sneezing once, twice, three times, seven times the kid sneezes. And we know seven is a significant number in the Bible. It represents completion, something being finished. And here's the idea. I think this miracle of resurrection takes place when, when this weird, awkward, messy process was finished, was completed. And that's the big idea I want to give to you today as we continue just to figure out what do we do in the midst of this death that we've

all experienced. And here it is. The restoration of a soul, it's a process. The restoration of a soul is a process. It's a lot like this. It's weird. It feels awkward. As you're walking through it, you're not really sure that you're doing it right. It involves waiting. It involves praying. It involves doing the same things over and over and over. It involves some signs of life, but you're not really even sure sometimes if you're moving in the right direction. It is a messy, awkward process. And I think this is so important because for a lot of my life, I did not know how to process grief. And I realized looking back on seasons in my life, when I experienced depression, when I experienced anxiety, that it really was because of internalized anger and things that I had just pushed down in seasons of loss because I didn't know what to do with the loss. I didn't know what to do with the grief. And even psychologically speaking, there are some different things we do when we experience grief. One is that we repress the grief. We repress it. And to repress grief is actually an unconscious decision. You're not really thinking about it. You're just unaware of what you're feeling emotionally. You don't know how to get in touch with it. You don't know how to process it. A second thing we do is we suppress the grief. And that is similar to repressing it in that you're ignoring the grief, but instead of being an unconscious process, suppressing the grief is a conscious process. And sometimes that's what we do. We just decide, I don't have time to deal with this right now. I gotta be strong for my kids. I gotta be strong for my small group. I can't deal with this right now. Or sometimes we have bad theology where we think we just gotta fake it until we make it. And if I really pleased God or had more faith, I wouldn't be feeling this. And so we suppress it and we just say, well, God is good all the time and it's not that bad and I'll be okay. And we push it down and we push it down and we push it down. But it's like a beach ball. If you have ever tried to hold a beach ball underwater, you can do it for a few seconds. But ultimately that thing is gonna come torpedoing up out of the water. And unprocessed pain and grief, it does not die. It just gets buried alive. And then it comes out. It leaks out later in our life through sarcasm, defensiveness, hurt people, start hurting people because we've never taken the time to do what the Bible teaches us to do. And that's not to repress it or to suppress it. It is to process it, to express it as it comes. And so what I want to do as we close today is I just want to give you a practical guide for processing your grief. And this is something that has really helped me. And as you walk through the process over the next few weeks, in the next few months,

my prayer is... is that this might help you as well. So maybe you wanna take a picture of these slides as they come up and this will be something that'll be a blessing to you. But it's based off of the gospel story and what happened with Jesus from his crucifixion to his resurrection, the 40 days that he spent with his disciples after he was raised from the dead, his ascension back into heaven, and then ultimately the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and the new thing that he birthed. But I wanna take you through this process. The first step is that you have to name your deaths. You have to name your deaths. This is Good Friday. And I want you to imagine Jesus hanging on the cross, bloody, it's violent, it's painful, it's disorienting for the women and the disciple who was there. And it's confusing, yet here's what we learn when we see Jesus hanging on the cross. You can experience death, even the most shocking, disorienting death, and yet still be smack dab in the middle of God's will for your life. And so whatever emotions come your way, you can't run from them, you have to feel them. You have to let them surface. You have to experience it and name those losses and name those deaths.

And then the second thing is that you claim your births. And this is Easter Sunday morning. This is where you start to just notice, and it's just gonna be a small sign of life at first, the body's just starting to warm up a little bit, but you just start to notice some new thoughts that are starting to pop. And it could be as simple as maybe you have a thought that God wants me to tell my story someday. I don't know when, I don't know how, but God, I think, is gonna use this. He wants me to tell my story someday. We have a family in our church in Philadelphia who experienced a devastating loss. They lost their son to a drug overdose. And they were crushed, and they're trying to process through this grief. And then at one point in the process, I'll never forget the weekend that they told me this. They have a house that God has given them, and then behind it, they have a little guest home. And this thought just popped into their heart from the Lord, but it was this simple. It was maybe God wants us to move into the guest home so that he can use our house to become a recovery home for addicts. And it's just this thought of, God, maybe you wanna do something with this pain. Maybe you wanna redeem this pain. That's the second step.

Start to claim those births. And then number three is to grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality. This is a difficult step of the process, I'll be honest with you. But you see, Jesus, with his disciples, for 40 days, he was with them after his resurrection. What was he doing? He was trying to reorient them to what was coming next because it was gonna be different from what they were leaving behind. And he just kept telling them, guys, I gotta leave, but I'm not gonna leave you alone. And I just want you to get ready because something new is coming, and it's gonna be different. We've had a wild ride for the last three and a half years, but things are gonna change, and it's still gonna be me. I'm still gonna be doing it. I'm still gonna be in it, but it's gonna be different, and it's gonna feel different, and it's gonna look different. And he's just having conversations. He's having meals with them. He's giving them time to just get their minds around. Something new is coming. Embrace it. Adjust to it.

And then number four is then, this is a really critical turning point. Do not cling to the old. Let it ascend and give you its blessing. I remember I heard a story one time about a priest who was counseling a woman who had lost her husband. They had been married for decades, and as he was counseling her and walking her through this pain, she was just having a really difficult time moving forward with her life. By the way, when you walk through loss, you never move on. I hate it when people say that. You don't move on. You move forward. You move forward. And she was having a hard time moving forward, and this priest had an idea, and he actually led her through a ceremony in which he helped her remove her wedding ring. I'm not saying that's God's will for everybody, but in this case, it was very spirit-led, and he asked her, were you faithful to him in sickness and in health? She said, I was. Did you love him faithfully until death do you part? Yes, I did. And it's this moment of recognizing your husband's blessing you to move forward with your life,

and here's Jesus on the Mount of Olives ascending up into heaven. I don't know about you, but if I was there with the disciples, I think I'd be grabbing his ankles trying to hold him down. You are not leaving us here, Jesus. And there's this old Chinese proverb I remember hearing. It says this, let go or be dragged. And I mean, those really are the only two options. Life is changing. Life is constantly changing. But can I just remind you? God never changes. He's our rock, He's our anchor, and He wants to do something new, and that's the last point I'll leave you with. Number five, accept the spirit of the life you are now living. On the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead, something beautiful took place. And when you look at our story, where did the woman take her dead son? She took him to the prophet's quarters, she took him to Elisha's room, but where was Elisha's room? She took him to the upper room. And what we know as New Testament Christians that happened in an upper room is that after Jesus ascended into heaven,

the disciples waited in the upper room for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And 10 days later on the day of Pentecost, a mighty wind blew through that upper room as God began to do a new thing, and the disciples were filled with the spirit of God. And the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead came to fill them and live in them. And that breath of God moved them into the streets of Jerusalem to preach and plant churches and usher in a brand new move of God that would change the world forever. That is who our God is. He wants to take you through a process to restore your soul because he's not done with you yet. God's a forward-looking God, and he can use the pain and losses of your life to prepare you for what he's planning to do next. He's busy today working on tomorrow. He's going before you, and he's got more for you to do. He's got something for you to write. He's got someone for you to forgive. He's got a business for you to start. He's got a ministry for you to begin. He's got some bolder prayers for you to pray. He's got a new assignment for you to accept. He's calling you to live it out. He's not done with you yet. And he's not done with this church yet. Allison Park Church is resilient, it's poised, it's covered,

and Allison Park Church is prepared for a hopeful future. You're gonna keep reaching the one. You're gonna keep planting churches. You're gonna keep sending missionaries. You're gonna keep discipling the next generation. You're gonna keep being a hospital for the hurting. You're gonna keep being a family for the lonely. You're gonna keep being a lighthouse for the lost. It's gonna be a process. It's not gonna happen in one week. It's not gonna happen in one month. But as you stay faithful and keep seeking God, he is gonna be faithful to restore your soul and redeem the dream. So I leave you with this encouragement. Take your loss to the upper room. Let God breathe on it and do something new. Thank you, God, for your healing grace in our lives. I thank you for what you're doing in this room. And I pray right now, Father, over each of the people in this room that might say this message was for me today. Listen, I know for many of you, what we're walking through as a church family, it's bringing to the surface, it's reminding you of losses you've experienced in your own life. The loss of a parent, the loss of a child, the loss of a marriage, perhaps. And if that's happening,

I just wanna pray right now that the healer would run to you in this moment. God, we thank you for your healing grace. We thank you for your ability to redeem the dream, to heal the pain. And God, I pray that you would draw close right now to every one of your sons and daughters in this room and that you would bring out that original Italian cotton, that you would pull out, God, the pieces of the pain thread by thread and that you would begin to write and to weave a new story that only you could come up with, God. Right now, I pray for just some small signs of life. I pray that the body would start to get warm. I pray that in this room, God, you'd start to drop maybe just a thought or an idea, or maybe it's just this simple promise that God's not done yet. But God, as we process this grief, we're asking you to be faithful. We're asking you to work. We're asking you, God, to reveal step-by-step your plan in it. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm gonna invite you to stand. We're gonna have just a moment of prayer before we close today. And I wanna ask Pastor Joe and Rachel to come and join me here on the stage.

And Pastor Ron Johnson is gonna come as well. Many of you know Pastor Ron Johnson. He is a longtime friend of this church and apostolic voice in this church, longtime friend of Pastor Jeff and Melody. And he also serves on our overseer team. And so he'll be a part as well of guiding us here into the future. But we wanted to take a moment and just pray over these. Beautiful leaders these gifts that God has given to this church that God we know he's gonna give you exactly what you need before I pray Pittsburgh knows something about football, don't you? Well, let me just say Jesus is the team owner of team Allison Park and Pastor Jeff as an amazing coach laid out the plan and He's been the coach from the sideline and Pastor Brad and didn't he do an amazing job with that message today? What a word what an incredible word and he has been an amazing quarterback Implementing the plays all week long Pastor Joe is our halfback He's running those plays in an incredible way. How many of you know, you're blessed here at Allison Park. You are blessed You've got an incredible incredible team and I know all our hearts break there's a Sadness, but at the same time We can trust God. Can't we? Yeah, here's the first scripture It's out of Psalm 84. Here's what it says Blessed are those whose strength is in the Lord and then it goes on to say whose hearts are set on pilgrimage

We're going somewhere Step by step God is taking us. Pastor Joe Rachel as you step into this Incredible role that God has ordained that you should take you can trust that the anointing of the Holy Spirit Will give you the wisdom you need the grace you need as you lead The team and the team leads the church Let's pray father. We thank you today That in every situation and set of circumstances that we walk through you're in charge of our lives You know the moments that we face before ever a moment occurs in our life You'd already mapped all of the details of even this situation out Lord we just pray by the power of the Holy Spirit. Will you comfort our hearts as we're in this season? Bring us through as a church And father we thank you for Pastor Joe and for Rachel and today Lord God we extend our hands and our hearts to them and we speak your blessing over them your Anointing over them. We thank you that you will Supernaturally grace them with wisdom and skill as they lead in this hour we thank you God for the staff of this incredible church and as Every single one puts their hand to the plow as every Member of this team and every person in this church Walks in this season. We pray father by your Holy Spirit Will you give us the strength? Will you give us the passion let us keep on giving let us keep on serving. Let us trust you Every step we take and we thank you that you have an amazing future for us Our hearts are set on pilgrimage and we give you the thanks for where you'll lead in Jesus name Amen, and amen Come on if you're grateful that even in the storm, he's Lord. He's King. Let's sing it one more time Oh Well, thank you so much for being with us today we're gonna move forward together I

Pray that God fills you with hope as you walk through this week each day step of the way each day, each moment that comes. May He remind you that He's near, that He's redeeming the dream. Have an amazing week, everybody. God bless you. Amen. Amen. Amen, amen. Amen, amen. Amen. Amen.