I Doubt It!

We're starting a brand new series called, What About? We're gonna be looking at, you know, life has a way of, you believe one thing, but then life kind of makes you go, whoop, what about this, and what about that? And it can have a way of promoting questions within our heart, our mind. What do we do with those? So over the next few weeks, we're going to be looking at some of the big questions. We're gonna look at things like, what about suffering? And what do you do with suffering? Yes, I believe what the Bible says, and yet life has suffering. What does the Bible say about that? We're gonna look about truth and take a look at truth as well. Really looking forward to it. As we get going today, the title of my message is this, I doubt it, I doubt it. Last, well, not last week, couple weeks ago, I'd been on a long string of just working morning to night, tired out, feeling in my body, feeling my emotions, feeling just overall. And I was looking forward to one day that I had alone that I was going to be able to just chill. Anybody ever have one of those moments? You're like looking forward to just chilling. Well, Jodi was taking care of one of our grandkids at one of our son's houses,

and she was not gonna be there that night. And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna handle the evening. I'm gonna get home. I got one quick meeting to do, but I'm gonna come home and I'm gonna put a pizza in the oven because that's how I cook, right? Either that or Taco Bell drive-thru or something like that. And so as I put the pizza in the oven and I'm thinking I need to get something to drink, I go to put my cup in the, we've got a water thing in our fridge, no water comes out. And I'm like, shoot. So I pull the fridge out and I look and I can't see. What's the problem? Is there anything out? And I push the fridge back and I hear a pshh. And I'm like, oh no. Like, so like, what do I do in this moment? So I'm like, I've gotta find as many towels as I can. I ran downstairs, shut off the water. And then I finally get the water stop and there's just water everywhere. I don't want to mess our wood floors up and I'm trying to do everything. And then it was like, all right, what do I do next? Because Jodi's the one that fixes things around our house. And so I just am not sure what I'm gonna do.

And so, and so I'm like, she's not here right now. And then I remembered I had a Zoom meeting, a team meeting with somebody that I had to get on. And so I had to, I pulled the pizza out of the oven. Thank you, Jesus. And then I went in the living room and I went on our Teams or Zoom and had our meeting, got done, and then I realized, I gotta figure this thing out. I don't know what to do. So I called my son, Josiah, who likes to fix things. And he said, oh, dad, yeah, that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. It's really simple. All you gotta do is you gotta have the right tools and you cut off the tube and you put a new fitting on, you do it up. And I'm listening to him, I'm going, oh, man. And so he's like, you just go to Lowe's or Home Depot or something and they have the right stuff. So went to Lowe's and I went and somebody helped me out. We figured out the right stuff. And by the time I got back to my house, it was like 8.30, nine o'clock. And then I'm looking at it and I'm like, I'll do it in the morning. I just, this is a little too much for me right now. And then I, I'm just being honest right now. And then I look in the fridge because I'm gonna just get something else out of the fridge

and I realized the light's not on. And come to find out the water had sprayed and blew out the computer on the fridge and the compressor and it's all dead. So then I had a responsibility to figure out what to do with all the food in the fridge and in the freezer. So I spent the next hour taking stuff to the fridge in the basement and then we had a freezer in our garage and I'm running back and forth. By the time I was done, it was 11.30 at night. And I was supposed to be rested. Have you ever hit that spot where you're like, Lord, do you even care? Where are you in this moment? Because things were good and I did my devotions this morning but what is going on and why does this only happen to me? And why did it have to happen when Jody was gone, you know? We all have those moments where we are on Sunday morning, we experience the presence of God, the comfort of the Holy Spirit and then we go into real life. And then we question. We say, yeah, I believe that but what about? And we fill in the blanks with our own questions. Today we're gonna look at. The issue of doubt. What do you do when you face doubts? Doubt's human, it's not necessarily sinful,

but our response to doubt determines the outcome of our future. In fact, in discipleship, those that follow Jesus, Jesus relies on doubt for growth. In other words, not everything comes easy to those that follow Christ. God allows experiences in life to happen to us to strengthen our faith. If you haven't faced doubt, you haven't been a Christian for very long, you're going to face those moments. And I wanna look at a particular text that will kinda illuminate a moment right after Jesus was resurrected that has everything to say about doubt. Would you turn with me to Luke chapter 24? Luke 24. For those of you that are new, we have an app here in Emanuel called the Emanuel MN app. Manual with the letters MN at the end of it. You can get it at the app store. And we have our message notes in there and scriptures, and if you wanna follow along, you can do that. And I encourage you to do that. You need to actually even take some notes while you're listening and email them to yourself at the end of the service. So it's an easy tool.

Now, in this place where we're coming into in Luke, Luke is one of the four gospels, one of the four accounts of Jesus' life. This is on the last chapter of Luke, right after Jesus is resurrected from the dead. We're gonna look at verse 11 here in just a moment. But what's happened is that Jesus' death and resurrection has happened. And on the day of the resurrection, so Sunday morning, early on, there's something that happens. These women go to the tomb, Mary, Magdalene, and Joanna. They were going actually to put incense and perfume around the tomb because dead bodies stink and it's something that they did to honor. And only they got surprised and the tomb was empty. The stone had been rolled away. And as they got in there, there were angels that said to him, hey, listen, he's risen just like he said he would be. And those women then do something with what they hear. They run back and they tell the other disciples this. And look what happens in verse number 11. It says, but the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it. How many women you've had that experience? Let's be honest. These men just wouldn't believe it. It's the truth, but they wouldn't believe it, okay?

Verse 12, however, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. So there were some that now wanted to follow up and look at it. And now the scene shifts in verse 13. Verse 13, it says, that same day, two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along, they were talking about everything that had happened. Now, these two followers were probably insiders, part of the group of disciples with Jesus. And as they are walking, they're debriefing this moment in their life. Now, they had already heard from the women, but they didn't really believe. So doubt had slipped in between Friday and Sunday so deeply that by the time they heard the tomb was empty, just as Jesus had said, it didn't sink into their heart. They were still in a mode of being dejected. It was a moment like a huge letdown. They had believed that this whole movement was building to Jesus being the Messiah that would overthrow the Roman government. Like, this is the guy, and it didn't happen. And now they're walking away after a huge letdown, a loss. It was almost like the many moments Vikings fans have experienced just before we went to the Super Bowl.

And then it was the ref and the dirty players and everybody else that kept us from that moment. After a bad moment and you're having a conversation, you're debriefing it, you're dejected, you're sharing certain things. And then somebody jumps into the conversation, and it's Jesus, by the way, but they don't know it's Jesus yet. In verse 15, it says, as they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them, but God kept them from recognizing him. So Jesus is now walking with them on the seven-mile. a walk on the road to Emmaus. And did you know that Jesus is interested in our conversations after the disappointing moments of our lives? Did you know that he's not only there for the big, high, mountaintop experiences, but when we have gone through something we just can't explain, we don't understand. Did you know Jesus wants to be a part of that conversation too? He began walking with them. Verse number 17, it says, he asked them, what are you discussing so intently as you walk along? They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, you must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things

that have happened since the last few days. Oh my goodness. The irony is we know it's Jesus that they're saying this to. But they are so overwhelmed that they're talking about something that's a deep sadness. It's the feeling of loss, of disappointment. And it's as if Jesus were stepping in, he says, what are you feeling? I don't know, you know, a lot of our concepts of God come from our relationship with our earthly parents. And some of us, we got huggy parents. You know, they love us and they're touched and they can share, we can share anything. They're interested in our feelings. Others of us, that wasn't our experience. But I'll tell you this, Jesus is one that's interested in what you're feeling. There's a deep sadness going on inside of these disciples, followers of Jesus, who now are walking along and he's interested. Did you know that Jesus doesn't stop with just hearing one thing? He leans in and listens more. You ever have a friend that would just listen and it's the best thing ever? And they don't let you get away with just saying, how you doing? Good.

I mean, you know, the quick first answer is usually not what's really going on on the inside. But the person that leans in and goes, no, how you really doing? This is what Jesus does. He's probing them and he's such a good listener. He leans in and he asks, what things? Look at verse 19. He says, what things? They're dejected and they've talked to you. He goes, well, what things? The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth, they said, he was a prophet who did powerful miracles and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people, but, everybody said, but, but our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago. Then some women from our group of his followers were at the tomb early this morning and they came back with an amazing report. They said that his body was missing and they had seen angels who had told them Jesus is alive. Some of our men ran out to see and sure enough, his body was gone,

just as the women had said. I want you to see a few things here. First of all, Jesus says, what things? And I think we need to be prepared when we have conversations with Jesus to not just talk about the things that we think he wants to hear. He's interested in what things are bothering you. Why are you so sad? He's interested in the stuff you might talk to your sister about, but you don't talk to God about. Or your colleague at work, or your classmate at school, or your roommate. He's interested in what is going on inside of you. You get into that spot where you're deeply sad. And then what we see here in these followers of Jesus as they continued, as they talked, they referred to Jesus as somebody who was a prophet. Past tense. Somebody who did powerful miracles, who was a mighty teacher. And they referred to him in the past tense. In other words, it's a previous experience in my life that I don't feel anymore. This is who he was. There's an exception. There's a like, yeah, he's great, but. Everybody has a but. I'll stop right there. Everyone has an exception.

I believe everything about the church and what pastor, priest, but there's an exception in there. Sometimes in our lives it creeps into the back of our head and I prayed for something and the prayer wasn't answered or somebody let me down and we can get into this space where we're moving it into the past tense. In the present tense, I'm not feeling as confident about it any longer. It's because we're reassessing how we think. We thought we knew what we believed, but now in light of this refrigerator experience, I don't know. So what things have happened in your life that have created your exception? Common everyday doubts. Some people have doubts about ourself and we think about ourselves. I doubt I can be the person my family needs me to be. I'm not sure if I'm good enough. I messed it up before. So in the back of our brains, we've got this, I'm not as confident as I was before. There are doubts related to our circumstances where we have financial worries and anxiety, feeling like the world is caving in on us, is out to get us. We're overwhelmed and it can feel like everybody's against me when you're in the circumstance. Sometimes there's doubt that evolves out of hurt

where people have let us down. It's just hard to trust people we trusted hurt us. And then there's doubts about God. Does God really care? Will he actually provide for me? Why didn't he answer my prayer? Doubt can cause us to reassess what we believe. Life experiences introduce new information, causing us to question our previous foundational beliefs. It's natural to pause and think in our moment, but it's critical to choose the next right thing because what you do next determines your future. Let me give you two options in your doubt. When you hit the moments of doubt or disillusionment or despair, the first one is offered to you is the enemy's bait. The enemy will come at you and offer you something, causing you to question and doubt. In Genesis three, the first two human beings, Adam and Eve, were in the garden. Everything was cool. And then the serpent comes along and questions something. God has said, don't eat from the tree of good and evil. And then things will go well for you. If you don't, you're gonna die. And then the serpent begins to plant a question in there. Do you really mean that? Did he really say that? Now, Adam and Eve are questioning something they believed before.

Sometimes there's people in our life that do that. They plant a seed or something comes in and then we begin to doubt, did God really say that? And the solution that is offered on the other side of the question that is the bait of Satan is basically saying the result is, go ahead and eat it. Eat the fruit of the tree. And then the result was disastrous because they went ahead and took it and they ate the fruit. And the result, man, we're all feeling it still today. Proverbs 16 says this, there is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. The enemy wants to deconstruct everything in our lives. And by the way, that word deconstruction is a common word now in our culture because the critics have looked at failure and systems and organizations and all kinds of people, failure in people in positions of authority. And we've looked at those things and the solution offered is tear it all down. Just tear it all down. Somebody hurts you, so tear it all down. Somebody turned their back on you, so leave the family. And the bait is not just to get angry, but the bait is to push anybody that loves you out of your life. It's the worst thing that you can. Listen, when you get in a relationship with people, there's gonna be disagreements.

If you misread that disagreement as a reason to jet, you aren't gonna have any friendships for long. And you've gotta be able to lean in or the enemy is trying to get you to take the bait. He wants you to deconstruct. The second option in the middle of our despair or our doubt is Jesus' grace. Because Jesus comes to seek and save the lost. He knows none of us are perfect. And he steps in and he offers his own life. Even the Apostle Paul, who was a deep studier of scripture and followed Christ and is writing these letters to the New Testament church, he had his own challenges. He had something that he referred to as a thorn in his flesh. We don't know what that was, but it was something that bothered him. And he really wanted it out. In fact, he prayed to God, would you get rid of this for me? And Jesus' response was not, yes, I'll take that from you. His response is, my grace is sufficient for you. So Jesus offers himself and grace is the ability to fill in the gaps of everything we can't do on our own. And we don't deserve it, but he fills it in. And I want you to think about Jesus when he's with us. He says, we're two or three are gathered together in my name, and then he tells all of his believers, every time that you get together, do this in remembrance of me.

And we reference that as communion nowadays with the bread and the cup. And we think, okay, well, what are we supposed to be doing in this? Jesus is essentially dispensing his grace in an ongoing perpetual manner. That every time we gather together, Jesus is with us. And we have the option of what we'll do with what's going on inside of this thick skull of ours. And all the thoughts that are springing back and forth, we have the option, do we take the bait of Satan, or do we receive Jesus' grace? If you stay in your doubt, it will lead to frustration and wandering. These two followers of Jesus had left Jerusalem, and they were heading seven miles away on a walk. They weren't gonna stay with this new movement of Christ followers, they had given up. Good news is, at the end of the story, they go back to Jerusalem. But in the middle of despair, it'll take you away from everyone and everything that you love. If you take the bait of Satan. Turn to the person next to you and say, don't take the bait. And by the way, we've gotta figure out a way to even let God see and hear what we don't like that's going on. We're not frustrated. The Israelites, who had been rescued from Egypt,

had been brought out, and now God had given them food every day, and manna, and water, and leadership, and they still whined and complained. And it went from one individual to a movement. It was like a spread of a cold. And it went all over Israel, and because they were whining and complaining about God, about their disappointments, about their doubt, but not to God, what ended up happening? They wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. People that don't deal with this right circle the wilderness. You and I have to figure out how do we take our doubts to the Lord? The key is having our eyes opened and gaining Jesus' perspective. Going back to the story here in Luke. Jesus heard these guys' doubts, their real thoughts and their feelings, and he responds to them in verse 25. It says, then Jesus said to them, you foolish people, you find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory? Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the scriptures the things concerning himself. By this time, they were nearing Emmaus

and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, stay the night with us since it's getting late. So he went home with them. Now, this is an important moment in the story I want you to see because Jesus had stepped in with them. They had dialogue. He took them to the scriptures. I'll talk about that in a moment. But then there was a moment that Jesus could have kept going and they lost out on the conversation that they were having. But they had to pause and say, no, no, no. Even in my doubt, Jesus, I need you to. stay at my house. They didn't know it was Jesus yet, but they said, no, it's not done yet. Some of us haven't fully worked through our doubts. Maybe we did a quick prayer, we went and did a prayer line, or we talked to Jesus about something. But listen, Jesus is interested in going all the way in. He wants to go into your house, into the space that you don't let other people in. This generation, we're so used to putting the perfect Instagram photo up that doesn't have the real talk beside it or behind it. But with Jesus, he wants us to go all the way in.

He wants us to invite him. Jesus could have kept going, but they invited him home. And as they sat down to eat, in verse 30, as they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. What does that sound like? And then he broke it and gave it to them. And suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment, he disappeared. I love this moment, because what happened is, the culmination of that is Jesus did with these guys what he did with the disciples on the night he was betrayed. What he told us to continue to do, he did his own version of take and eat. See, Satan wanted them to take the bait and make the wrong step. But Jesus says, I want you to take and eat my blood and my flesh. That's the communion, that's the relationship. Communion is relationship connected. It's not just being in the same room, it's being connected to the person that you're with. And he took it and he blessed it. And it says the result of being with Jesus is their eyes were opened. It is the exact same phrase in the Septuagint, in the Old Testament, in Genesis three, that when Adam and Eve had sinned, it said that their eyes were opened. But their eyes were opened to the real condition

of their soul. They recognized that they were naked, that they were vulnerable, and they had shame. When you follow the dialogue of the enemy in your life, you invite your eyes to be opened to shame. But when you invite Jesus into your life, you invite his revelation for your eyes to be opened, where now your sins are forgiven, and you are a son or a daughter of Christ. Come on, somebody. It's a different picture. They invited Jesus in for further convo. He took the bread, broke it, and he gave it to them. After the discussion about their doubts, they had dialogue and conversation. And they said to each other in verse 32, didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us? And within the hour, they were on their way back to Jerusalem. There they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them, who said, the Lord has really risen. He appeared to Peter. So let me give you today something to go out of this text. How can I have my eyes open on the road to Emmaus? How can I? You can write this down. How can you, all right?

Number one, don't water the doubt. Don't water the doubt. What do you mean water the doubt? It's like a little seed put on the ground. Jesus told stories about the parables, the seed that went on in the pathway. And there are different things that choked out the seed. Doubt is one of those things. Don't water it. Tell Jesus your doubts. Don't give it to the enemy. Turn it over to Jesus. If you turn it over to the enemy, then something negative will happen in the future. This is what Galatians was, Paul was speaking of in Galatians chapter six. He said, don't be misled. You cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time, we will reap a harvest, a blessing if we don't give up. Come on. somebody, you have a choice in here. What am I gonna water? What am I gonna plant?

What am I gonna invest in? If you got doubt in there, and you go back and death scroll, every anxiety, everything that frustrates you, everything that makes you angry about this leader or that leader, what's going on in the state, it's all facts, all it does is reinforce the doubt. It grows in you. And when it grows in you, you'll feel like giving up. It'll choke out the seed. But if instead you choose to invest in what is right, and you do what is right with your doubt and turning it over to the Lord, then what happens is now all of a sudden you have the ability to finish. See, the enemy wants your thought life. He wants your talk life. He wants your relational life. And if in all three of those areas, the only thing coming out of your mouth is only the doubt, and it's reinforced when it comes back. You aren't getting away from doubt. You're growing in doubt. But if instead you learn to do the right thing, put your mind, your thoughts on things above, doesn't mean you deny what you're feeling, it's who do you talk to about it? There are people who will feed your doubts. First Corinthians 15, 33, don't be fooled by those who say such things,

for bad company corrupts good character. And now for the phrase that I will bring up once or twice a year. Friends are like elevators. They can take you up or take you down. Come on, somebody. You gotta think about what's going on in your dialogue. Turn to the person next to you and say, you better take me up. How can I have my eyes open on the road to amiss? Number one is don't water the doubt. Number two, follow Jesus into the scriptures. Follow Jesus. Many of us have given our lives to Christ. We've received our forgiveness. We know we're gonna live with him. But if you're a follower of Jesus and he is a leader, follow where he leads. In this particular story, Jesus leads these two guys back into the scriptures. This is his method for dealing with doubt. He took their disappointments back to the word. Back to the word. What does the word say? When my feelings say, I don't know where God is, he's abandoned me, I'm not sure what's going on, I can go back to Isaiah 41. Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Don't be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you.

I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. I can go back to what does the word say? I know what my doubt says, what does the word say? I can go to Psalm 121. I look up to the mountains. Does my help come from there or Amazon or to chat GPT? No, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not let you stumble. The one who watches over you will not slumber. When I'm wondering what to do, I go back. What does the word say in Isaiah 43 too? When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up. The flames will not consume you. Listen, this is the real talk. We gotta read the word and know the word and go to the word. You find yourself not going to the word, but your doubt is growing. What's going on? I need to get back into the word. Even Jesus, after he was tempted in the wilderness, he had fasted for 40 days and nights. Anybody ever fast a long time? For some of you, it's like one meal. Thank you, Jesus. Whatever that length of time is and you're hangry

and the enemy comes along with the fruit. Every time the enemy confronted Jesus, what is his answer? is written. You answer the enemy with the word. Because the enemy will bring up all the things you did wrong. He'll remind you of what is not good about you. He'll remind you of how you failed in the past. But Jesus, that's under the blood. And when you confess your sins to the Lord, he's faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. So when the enemy starts chirping, you can be able to, you can say what the word says and you can also say, hey, listen, all those things you're telling me is not new information to God. I've already told him and he's forgiven me. So back off even in my doubt. He's with me. Number three, make it a habit to have a conversation with Jesus about your doubt. Make it a habit. You can underline the word habit, highlight the word habit, write the word habit. Because we all have habits and some of our habits are not taking it to Jesus. Our habit is when we're frustrated, slam the door shut.

Some people, when they're really angry, really frustrated, they go for the first drink, then the last one, the next one, and the next one. All trying to medicate inside, that's the habit. You gotta break that habit. You don't need to go to that porn site. You don't need to erupt in anger. Have a conversation with Jesus about it. Pastor Allie, one of the youth pastors here, she has a common phrase that she'll say with the students. Those kids are growing up and they face like tons of injustices and what do I believe and what's going on? They're really bothered by something going on in their family. And she'll say to the students, sounds like you're due to have a conversation with Jesus about it. When I was raising our sons, they frustrated me time or two. We had some conflict up in the house. It got loud and it got physical. We had to fix the drywall several times. But as the boys grew up and I would hear them arguing with each other and maybe really bad stuff would come out of their mouth towards one of their brothers. I mean, when you're family, you know where their buttons are. Sometimes we say really mean stuff to each other. That's why spouses have to be careful

what comes out your mouth. Parents to kids too. But I would say to my son, Jeff reminded me this last week. Jeff, what you just said to your brother was so evil and mean. I can't believe you said it. And it really makes me mad. Now, some of us, we wanna power up and go off on our kids and go, that is horrible. I'm like, you know what? I can't change your heart, but something is going on in your heart that needs to be dealt with. You need to go in your room, close the door and have a conversation with Jesus about this. You need to ask him to forgive you and change whatever's going on inside of you because I can't do it. And Jeff was one of those that did it. He went to his room, closed the door. He was in there for a long time. And he made it right with God and God got that stuff out of him. Now today, he's raising his own kids. He's pastor in our Maple Grove location. But it started in the heart. Are you hearing what I'm saying? I don't know what the things that are going on inside of you, but if you don't deal with it the right way,

it's gonna wreck your future. But if you can take it to the Lord, hmm. Say, Lord, I'm not hiding it anymore. This is what's going on inside of me. I'm due to have a conversation with you. Luke 24, verse 30. As they sat down to eat, he took their bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. And suddenly their eyes were opened. Say that with me. Their eyes were opened. And they recognized him. At that moment, he disappeared. You see, here's the truth. When you have a deep communion with the Lord, where there's nothing hidden, that's when your eyes are open. Revelation follows communion. Revelation follows communion. Would you stand with me today? Might need to have a note somewhere, write a note, deal with things in your heart. But if Jesus joined you on your walk to Emmaus today, what is your but? What's your excuse? What's your exception? Is it about yourself? Is it about the situation? Is it a doubt about God?

What does the word say about this? If you don't know, who in your life does know? I don't know the word, you may say. Then you need to follow another disciple of Jesus. Chase somebody down that does know the word. Chase somebody down that's gone through what you've gone through. We got a lot of people in this church. Look around you right now. There's a lot of people. Nobody in this room is perfect. So we don't have any perfect people here, last I checked. But I do know this. There are a lot of people that have found this word is life. They have found their way through difficult seasons of their story. Chase them down. Tell me what you did when you hit rough spots in your marriage. How did you handle it when you were disappointed because you lost a job? What did you do when you lost your loved one? You chased them down and you go into the word. What does the word say? Get those toxins out of your heart and let the word of God seep in. Talk to Jesus about your doubts. In a moment we're gonna sing that song I Belong to Jesus, which by the way is in our new album.

You should download it and get it and listen to it on your way home. Because when you say I belong to Jesus, it doesn't matter where can I go where he would not be. It don't matter. You're like, hey, you have no idea where I live, what I go through, what school I go to, what my family is like. All I know is you go to the highest mountain, he's there. You go to the lowest valley, he's there. You can't shake him. You get that going around in your head, I belong to Jesus. You are gonna take the bait of Satan. Come on somebody. Get them out. Get those toxins out of your heart and tell Jesus what you need. Have a conversation with Jesus today. I wanna pray with you and I'm gonna ask you, ask you to deal with your but, deal with your exceptions. Talk to the Lord about it. We're gonna sing together, but first let's just lift up your hands to heaven. Can you do that? Lord, we just come before you. We thank you, Lord, that you see us, you know us. Thank you, Lord, even though we were still sinners. You died for us on a cross. You chose ahead of time. You believe in the knuckleheads in this room.

You believe in the wanderers in this room. You believe in the doubters in this room. You believe in people. Thank you, Lord. And Lord, thank you that you've invited us into a conversation, a conversation with you. Lord, help us to make it a habit, to have that conversation with you on a daily basis where we're talking and walking with you and that we would have our eyes open. Then we would realize, Lord, it's not as despairing. It's not as overwhelming, because you've got this. Lord, I pray that revelation would follow confession. Revelation would follow communion. As we lean in and not walk away from you, I pray, God, that you would open our eyes to see just how close you really are. That, Lord, you would recall the word of God to our mind, in our hearts, and we would walk in the truth deep inside and outside. It would come out. And that the love of God would be in us. And as Galatians said, that, Lord, we would reap a harvest if we don't give up. We would pursue you and continue, Lord, to lean on you, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.