Learning to Let Go and Trust God | Genesis | Full Experience

I want to invite you to stand to your feet, let's worship Jesus together now, come on. Yeah. Come on now, this is it. This is what we declare now, right here, sing. Yeah. Yeah. Yes He did. Oh. Yeah. I know He does. Oh. Tell me now, oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. So we pray for the impossible. And this is it, right? We believe that He will do it. Yes we do it. Hasn't He made a way? And didn't He make a way? And won't He make a way for us? We believe. Yes we do it. But hasn't He made a way? And didn't He make a way? And won't He make a way for us?

We know, we know, we know. He will make a way for us. He's working. He's working. He's working everything for good. He's working. He's working. He's working everything for good. He's working. He's working. He's working everything for good. He's working. He's working. He's working everything for good. Oh. Yeah. He's working everything for good. Oh. He's working everything for good. Hey, yeah. You are Lord Almighty God. What a gift. What a precious gift that He is. Undeserved and yet. We let the joy be for Him, what a friend, what a friend, what a faithful friend He has been To wear my sin and clothe me with His righteousness Behold the Lamb of God, blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and save away Behold the Lamb of God What a love, what a perfect love

God with us, praise the worthy one He is my King, my confidence Behold the Lamb of God, blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and save away Sing holy, holy name, holy divine Cleanse me with His sacrifice He rescued me and barred me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God You deserve it all You alone There's no one like your God Worthy, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy He is, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy you are, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of your Lord Worthy you are, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Behold, behold the Lamb of God Blameless, blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and save away Holy, holy name, holy divine Cleanse me with His sacrifice He rescued me and barred me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God So worthy God You deserve it all You alone There's no one like your God

There's no one like your God I love you Lord Oh your mercy never fails Come on, you know it, let's hear you sing it now, tell Him. And all my life you have been faithful, all my life you have been so, so good, every breath that I have taken. I will sing of the good news of God, yes we will, come on. I love Your name, You have led me through the fire, in darkest nights You were close like no other. I've known You as a father, I've known You as a friend, I have lived in the goodness of God. Come on now, tell Him, sing it. And all my life You have been faithful, and all my life You have been so, so good, every breath that I have made. I will sing of the good news of God, yes we will, come on. Your goodness is running after, it's running after me, Your goodness is running after, it's running after me. With my life laid down, I surrender now, I give You everything, Your goodness is running after, it's running after me, my God. Your goodness is running after, it's running after me, Your goodness is running after, it's running after me. With my life laid down, I surrender now, I give You everything, Your goodness is running after, it's running after me. And all my life You have been faithful, and all my life You have been so, so good, with every breath that I have made. I will sing of the goodness of God, thank You God, and all my life You have been faithful, thank You God, and all my life You have been so, so good, with every breath that I have made. I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah, I will sing of the goodness of God. Woo, CCV, thank you all for singing with us, you can go ahead and take your seats. If I haven't met you, my name is James and I serve as one of the pastors here. If you call CCV home or you're joining us for the first time, we just want to welcome you. God is good, and my wife and I, we lead a young adults group and it has been amazing. It's been generating some good conversation and it got deep the last time that we met and it takes me back to when I was a young adult. I remember I was in college and I was on scholarship for basketball, I had no bills. So I got to enjoy that and I felt like I was going to play professional basketball at some point. And I was the main character in everyone's life. It was all about me, my life felt big until one day, it got really small. Something that will shock all of you happened, a thing called life. In fact, there's this one time where I got my first bill with my name on it. And the first question I asked myself was,

who's going to pay this? Who's going to pay this bill? Because it ain't me. But it was at that point where I began to think about my life. And I began to think about my purpose, now that the dream of playing basketball had died, or even if I was worth anything at that point, because I felt insignificant. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're at a point where there's a situation or a season where you felt like things were going well and it's big, it just shrunk. You know, when we take communion, it's something that we do every week here at CCV. It's a reminder that no matter how small or insignificant you feel, that God's love is not small. It's big. It's huge. And I actually didn't meet and experience him when my life was big or when I had all these successes and the highs. But it was when I was the most isolated. And I struggled with depression. And it was only through tears that I could pray. And God met me. He met me right there. And if I had to think of a Bible verse that would be anchored in communion, for me, it would be John 3 and 16. And if you know this verse, I just

want to invite you to say it with me and let this be our encouragement and our prayer as we go into communion. John 3 and 16, will you say it with me? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, and that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen. Amen. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ As a single income home, you know, with a wife, three kids, I try to do my best to really budget and figure out, okay, what is the best way where we can make it at the end of the month? And tithing wasn't a part of that. I was thinking of every dime and dollar needed to go towards bills, rent, food. Okay, we have X amount of dollars at the end of the month, and there's no room for anything else. And then we heard that sermon, learning about what tithing really meant, and then going home and sitting down

with my wife. And I wrote all of our bills, and I calculated all the numbers, plugged everything in, and usually everything's, like, barely green. And then everything turned red as soon as I plugged in that tithing number. And I was like, okay, I took a deep breath, and I understood. I was like, okay, it may not make sense to me, but it makes sense to God. And if I can get past that stubbornness that I have, then maybe I can find some peace in my finances. So there was one month where there was no way we were gonna make rent. And I recently was out of work for medical reasons, and I just didn't know. I didn't know how it was gonna work. And suddenly, a check came from our insurance company. And all of a sudden, we were able to pay our rent. I just, I broke down. I was like, I don't know how you did it, God, but you did it. This is more than just giving money. This is a spiritual battle that I need to wrestle with and win. No matter what, if you just give faithfully, and not just giving to get, but giving to realize that He's the only one that can steer your life forward. He's the only one that can really strengthen your life financially. financially, spiritually, emotionally. And yeah, I love the way he comes in at the best time.

The story you just saw just helps us capture the heart around giving. You see, giving is a way for us to be a part of not only a way that God works in us, but also beyond. And it's not that he needs our giving, but it helps shape who we are as followers of Jesus as we continue to walk with him. And we've made giving simple here at CCB. You can give through the website, ccb.church.give. You can also download the CCB mobile app. It's absolutely free to do. At the very bottom, you can tap give. You can automate it digitally. You can send it to whatever campus you would like. And if you have further questions, or you would just like to talk to someone about this, we just wanna encourage you to stop at our Next Step Center. We have pastors out there that are ready and willing to chat with you about your next step in giving, and to see all that God, be a part of all that God is doing in your life, and also beyond. We are a church that is about prayer. Prayer is not our last resort. It's our first response. And there is power in prayer. And after services, our prayer team is gonna come up to the front, and they're gonna be right up here off to the sides.

And if you are in need of prayer, or you would like to invite others into prayer for a situation that you're dealing with, or something going on with the family, or finances, we wanna invite you to do so after service. There is power in prayer, and we'll have teams up here that are ready and willing to pray with you. So hopefully you'll take advantage of that after service. Well, our senior pastor, Ashley Woodridge, has the message today, so go ahead and take out your notes or the mobile app, or maybe you brought your books to follow along as we continue week five in our series, Genesis. Pepper. What's all about? Oh, sure, sure. Go on, go on, go on, go on. Yeah, go, go, go on. Go, go, go, go. Come on, anybody else, so glad you're here this weekend. I know I am. I'm glad, you can clap for that across all our campuses. Hey, one of the things we're crazy passionate about as a church is raising up the next generation of leaders in the church, and you may not know this, but there's a national pastor shortage, not only in America, but really across the world, and that's really, there's two reasons why. One is there's fewer people going into full-time ministry than ever, and secondly, a lot of stats are showing

that up to 80% of pastors that go into ministry will burn out or drop out within five years, and it's tragic, and we're not okay with that, and so we wanna turn the tide. That's why over 10 years ago, we launched our CCV Leadership Institute Residency, and what we do is we invite young people from across the country, and even sometimes across the world, to come spend just under a year with us at CCV. We give them 36 hours of classroom training that's deep, but most importantly, because you don't learn truly in the classroom, you know this, we put them with a coach somewhere in the ministry area where they get hands-on ministry experience so they can go further, faster, longer in ministry, and who I have next to me right now is our latest CCV Institute Leadership Residency class. Can we just celebrate them? They're unbelievable. Love you guys. We think this may be like our best residency class yet. You know what I mean? We're excited for you guys to go change the world, and I want you to know as a church, we're just praying for you, and if you know someone that may be interested in our leadership residency, they can get more information by just texting the word residency to 72020, and let me tell you how many of you can maybe pray

about being involved. One of our greatest gaps to growing our leadership residency, we have to grow this, and we're going to grow it. One of the greatest barriers is housing. Most of these residents live with a host family. A lot of them would tell you the host family is one of the best parts of the program, just being invested in by another couple that can invest in them and their future, and so if you have an extra room in your house, if you've got a casita. something like that, that you wouldn't mind opening up to have or host one of them for just about nine months, I promise you it'll change your life and it'll change theirs. So you can text the word HOME to 72020. If you text HOME, it doesn't sign you up, all right? It just says you want more information and you can find out more, but I would pray many of you do that. And I just, I just hope as a church right now, can we celebrate one more time this residency class? That's all God's doing. Congratulations, you guys. Like so, so excited for you. Love it. Love it. Well, if you could peer into my heart, leadership, and raising the leadership bar in not only our church, but churches across the country in our world, that's, that's a part of my passion. When I felt called into ministry almost 20 years ago, what I felt like God told me is, one of the visions he gave for my life is, he said, I think the local church should be the most well-led organization in the world. And it's not. And we have a ways to go. And so we feel called to invest more in just raising up not only young leaders, but churches and leaders everywhere. And so we're going to do something this year. We're breaking ground on something that's going to be one of the biggest things we've done in a long time as a church, I believe. But we're launching what we're calling a Ministry Launch Center. Let me show you a picture of it.

This is going to be on our Peoria campus. And it's going to be a building that is going to house not only some of our staff where we can launch ministry to reach our whole entire state for Jesus, which we're going to keep doing. We're going to keep investing in raising the leadership of our staff. But we're also going to have a world-class training center inside this building where we're going to do all of our Leadership Institute residency training. We're going to continue to grow that program to more and more people. And then we also want to invite other pastors and churches to come and spend time with us. You may not know this, but in the course of a year, we have oftentimes over a hundred churches and pastors come visit CCV to just learn what God's doing here. We share everything with them free, free, free, because we want them to take it back and to be able to use it to grow their ministries. And so we want a training space to be able to do that better. We believe this is going to be world-changing for us. And so we're so excited about it. We want to let you know about it. And the beautiful thing about this is there's been a small group of people at CCV that have stepped up to help fund this. So we can continue to use your tithes and offerings to help really further the mission of reaching our state for Jesus. So I want to thank those people. But I also want to let some of you know, some of you, this tugs your heart because you really get the importance of leadership. If this tugs on your heart and you would like to be a part of it and there's zero pressure of that to help fund it because there are still some funding gaps, then you can simply text the word MLC, Ministry Launch Center, just MLC for short, to 72020. And you can find out more information about how you can be a part of that and just about it. But are you excited about what God's doing at CCV? I know I am and I'm honored to be a part of it. Well, we're continuing our Genesis series today. If you open up to Genesis 22, that's where we're going to be at. And I want to start with a question. I would like every person here to answer. And here's the question. What are you white knuckling right now?

You know, white knuckling, you know that phrase? It just means what are you holding on to so tight that your knuckles are white? And I can't tell you the number of things I've done this to in my life. I mean, I've done this with my future, with my career, with my finances, with a relationship, just something God's telling me to do, but I'm not sure I want to do it. Has anybody here as a parent ever white knuckled your kids? Yeah, nervous laughter. Yeah, you know, what I've learned is that whatever you're white knuckling, it's almost always something you love. It's something you care about. And so I'm going to ask you to do something right now. I just want to ask all of us to just close our eyes for a minute. Now, if you're watching this on a pod, listening to it on a podcast while driving a car, don't do this. Okay, keep your eyes open. But for those of us in the room, just close your eyes. I want you to just kind of put your fists together just out in front of you. Just squeeze a little bit. And I want you to just ask God to put a picture or a name or a word in your mind of what you are white knuckling in your life right now. Like, what would it be? Just name it. It could be your health. It could be a relationship. It could be your kids. It could be your reputation. It could be what you look like in the mirror. It could be so many different things. I just want you to name it. And with your eyes closed, I just want you to picture naming that thing. I want you to picture that God walks up really close to you right now and he says, I want you to sacrifice that. completely to me. I want you to open your eyes. How many of you

thinking about sacrificing, like completely releasing that thing to God? How many of that makes your stomach drop? Is it easy for anybody out there to do that? My hand isn't up, but when we open up Genesis chapter 22, what we see is God goes to a man of faith named Abraham, and he asks him to do that exact thing. He asks him to sacrifice what he loves the most. Now, last week we were introduced to Abraham. He's the father of our faith, and I love what Mark said about faith. He said, faith isn't what you think. Faith isn't often even what you feel. Faith is what moves from your head and your heart to your feet. It's when you move. It's when you actually do something. That's actually faith. In other words, I put it this way two weeks ago. I said, faith is belief that shows up in behavior. Like, that's real faith is when something happens. You believe God that much that you take a step of faith, and Abraham has already had to take so many steps of faith. God calls him to leave his homeland to go to a land he's never been before. Remember last week? And then God makes him all these promises that he's going to make him into a great nation and many descendants, and Abraham's like, my wife is almost 90. We have no kids. Remember that? You ever seen a 90-year-old? The womb is dead. It's done. And yet God specializes in bringing dead things back to life. I feel like I just want to pause for a minute, and I just want to speak to a certain group of people right now. I've been praying over the prayer requests that come in oftentimes to our church through our app, our website, and sometimes on social, I'll put a prayer request out, and I'm just praying, and I've just been so heartbroken over the number of prayer requests for couples in our church that can't have a

baby and really want to. And I just want to tell you that I'm praying for you, our church is praying for you, and I know that is incredibly, incredibly difficult. But just picture Abraham and Sarah. They wait almost their entire lives to have a child, and then God is going to give Abraham the greatest test of his life, the ultimate test of his faith. God is going to ask Abraham to completely sacrifice and release the thing he loves the most. That is a massive test, and some of you are in the middle of a massive test in your life right now. And so if you're taking notes, page 44 of your Genesis books, you can take notes. I hope you brought those with you. Here's the very first thing you're going to see as we walk through Genesis chapter 22. I'm going to give it to you right up front. Very first thing is this, is that a faith that cannot be tested cannot be trusted. I want you to write that down. You can take a picture of that. I want you to ponder this. A faith that can't be tested can't be trusted. And in Abraham's life, we know this is a test from God, because watch how clear it is. Genesis chapter 22 verse 1. Sometime later, God tested Abraham. It's a test. Now notice the wording. God didn't say, I'm tempting Abraham. He said, I'm testing, and there's a very big difference between tempting and testing. Let me explain it to you. Temptations are designed to trip you up to fail. Satan tempts. Satan tempts with all sorts of things, whether it's money or dishonesty or infidelity or gambling or whatever your vice might be, Satan's going to test you in it. And he, sorry, tempt. He tempts all the time. What's a test? It's very different. Tests are designed to strengthen you to grow. And God oftentimes will test, never for you to fail, only for you to

succeed and grow. Let me show it to you clearly in Scripture. Watch this. James chapter 1 verse 13. And remember, when you are tempted, do not say God is tempting me. God is never tempted to do wrong and never tempts anyone else. God will never tempt you. Will he test you? Watch a few verses earlier in the same chapter. James chapter 1 verse 2. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. Like pure joy? Yeah. Pure joy. Why? Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. When we are tested in our faith, it's like going to the gym. It's like you break down the muscles so they can grow back stronger. When we are tested, at times. God is doing that because he wants to grow our faith, and he wants us to become mature and complete, not lacking anything. So yes, there are going to be tests. That said, how many of you like tests? Go back to school. Any nerds here today? Let me see all of our campuses. Any nerds that say, I love tests in school? I see a couple. You're so nerdy, okay? Most of us hate tests. I hate tests. Do you know that? Did you know we don't like tests in our own life, but we demand them in other people's lives? It's like the example I heard recently of a man that was going for his very first surgery, and he was sitting down with a doctor. The doctor said, you seem so nervous. He said, this is my very first surgery. The doctor said, I know exactly how you feel. This is my first surgery I've ever done too. It's like, would you put your life in the hands of someone that's read a textbook but never had a real life test? No, we demand that out of people in our lives. In fact, when I was the age of 30, Jamie, for my 30th birthday, took me skydiving, and I'm so like nervous. I'm going up in this rickety plane. I'm strapped to this guy's back. He's going to pull the chute. My life is in his hands, and so as we're going up in the plane, I just looked at him, and I said, hey, how many times have you done this? And he whispered in my ear. He goes, this is my first jump. And I'm like getting that. He was joking with me, but am I okay that he's watched a YouTube video on skydiving? I want him to have a real life test. We demand it in other people, and yet we

forget, why wouldn't the same principle apply to our faith? Because a faith, a faith that cannot be tested, cannot be trusted. Come on. God's greatest goal in your life, look at me, is to grow your faith. It's his greatest goal, because he knows that's what's best for you to become more dependent on him so your life can go the way he wants it to go, and less dependent on yourself. But it can't grow without some tests. Now here's the second thing we learned from Genesis chapter 22. God often tests what we're tempted to put in his place. I want to teach you something so basic theologically that so many people miss. And if you get this one thing, it will change everything. It will be revolutionary in your life, and here's what I want you to get. God cannot accept second place in your life. He is first, he is best, he wants first place in every area of your life. And some of us are like, he's not in second. He's like, yeah, he can't even accept second. So something right now, look at this, something is on the throne of your life. It is the most important thing to you, and if it's not God, God doesn't want to be first because he's narcissistic, or he's got some like superiority complex. He wants to be first because he knows the only way your life works is when he's on the throne, nothing else. What is the very first of the Ten Commandments? You shall have no other God before me. In the words of the great theologian, Ricky Bobby, if you're not first, you're last. And God would say it this way, if you're not going to put me first, you might as well put me last, and nothing is going to go well in your life, and that's where some of you are. What is it called when we put anything in our lives over God? Like anything in God's place, what's that called throughout Scripture? It's an idol, and the human heart is an idol factory. We produce things or grasp onto things all the time that we put in God's place, and oftentimes we think, well, idol's a bad thing. No, no, no, no. An idol, I found in my life, I bet you would agree, is that most idols aren't bad things, they're good things we put in God's place. Money's not bad, a relationship isn't bad, a vacation home isn't bad, but it can become that if you put it in God's place. And how many times do we do that? I mean, kids aren't bad. Most times, you know. Have you ever seen a parent idolize their kids? Yes, you have. And anytime you put a kid on the throne of your life, there's anarchy. And it's why some of you have a marriage that benefits you. apart or life it fell apart because your kids became more important than not only God but even your marriage. Now let's go back to Abraham. Think about Abraham and

Sarah. They've waited their whole entire lives to have a kid. You think they don't love that kid with everything inside of them, Isaac? He's not only their child that they waited for, he's the embodiment of the promise God gave Abraham. It's only through Isaac that he can have the descendants and the promise and the nation God wants to build. So Isaac represents the promise. Let me ask an unsettling question. Do you think Abraham could have got to the point where he began to love the promise, Isaac, more than the promiser, God? Do you think we ever get to the point where we grasp hold of something so tightly that we love that thing more than God himself? Of course, and it's destructive in our lives. So what we know is that this probably began to happen with Abraham. He was tempted. Now the text doesn't say explicitly that he did this, but I'm gonna read it to you. You're gonna see obviously that God's calling out a temptation that Abraham and Sarah may have to put Isaac above their love for him. Now watch this. Let's pick up again. Remember in verse 1 it says, sometime later God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, and Abraham replied, here I am, here I am at your service. What can I do? And God replies. Then God said, take your son, take your only son whom you love, Isaac, and take him to the region of Moriah. It's a mountain range. Now do you see what God just did? He's not being vague. He's calling out your son, your only son, that one that you love maybe even more than me. And what he says next, this is a tough passage. Let me prepare you in advance. He says this. He says, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain. I will show you. Now that's tough for some people, but let me just put it this way. Did God ever intend for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Never. And you're gonna see that really clearly in just a minute. But what you're gonna see in this passage is that Isaac was never the sacrifice Abraham was. Abraham releasing the thing that he may love more than God. Let's let's read on. Verse 3. Early the next morning, watch the immediate obedience by Abraham. Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut through wood and the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, I want you to see all the

Easter eggs that point to Jesus throughout this passage. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship. Now pause. This is the first time in all of Scripture the word worship is ever used. And think about the context. It's a man that is trying to put God at the center of his life, not something else he's gonna worship. Because what is worship? Worship is putting God in his proper place. It's when we sing, we're trying to sing into our hearts, God I need to put you in your proper place. When we show up to church, we put God in his proper place. When we give, we put God in his proper place. You know, worship costs you something. It costs you a couple hours on the weekend. Worship is gonna cost you. Sometimes you're putting God first in your finances. Worship might cost you a friend or a promotion because you put God first. But it's worship. And then watch what Abraham says next. We will worship. And then what? Say this out loud. And then, wait a second. If he was gonna sacrifice Isaac, why did he say that we will come back to you? Why not just say I'll come back? Because the book of Hebrews, if you want to study this more, the book of Hebrews explains that Abraham had already reasoned that even God could bring his son back from the dead. Which is an amazing theological thought because we're in Genesis chapter 22. We're 22 chapters into the Bible. There has never been one resurrection in the Bible at all recorded. Abraham has no like reference for that. How could he ever think that God could bring something back from the dead? Hasn't Abraham seen God take his wife Sarah's dead womb and bring life from it already? Like he's, what radical, radical faith. And so let's go on. Watch all the Easter eggs. It says Abraham took wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. You remember Jesus having a cross placed on him and carrying it to his place of sacrifice? You see the parallel to Jesus? And he himself carried the fire and the knife as the two of them went on together. Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, hey father, yes my son, Abraham replied, uh the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb? Like I see fire, wood, what are we sacrificing here buddy? Because I'm starting to get a little nervous.

Watch Abraham's reply. Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the Bernafri, my son. And the two of them went on together. That's a beautiful line because Abraham says God will provide the lamb. When Jesus came on the scene and John the Baptist saw Jesus for the first time, do you remember what he said? Behold the lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. In fact the second song we sang in this service was called Behold the Lamb based on that passage. And it's pointing to Jesus. God will provide the lamb. Not only now, but ultimately. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Now this is amazing to me because we picture Isaac as like a little teeny boy. No, remember he could carry the wood, which means he was not a little boy. Most theologians believe he was probably around the age of 15 by this point, which meant he could have fought back being laid on that altar. And yet he willingly, he himself willingly let himself be bound. Who else willingly allowed themselves to be bound and to die for you and for me? His name is Jesus on a cross. Then he reached out his hand, this is Abraham, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. Here I am, he replied. Do not lay a hand on that boy. This was never about sacrificing your son, ever. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. The word fear here does not mean I'm afraid of God. The word fear here means to put honor and to put God in the highest place in your life, to fear God. That's what Abraham did. As it goes on in verse 13, Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. Now notice this, it's not a lamb, it's a ram now. Why? Because the lamb of God is going to come later on in Jesus. This is a temporary sacrifice. He went over to look and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place the Lord will provide and to this day is said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. This is so powerful. The Lord will provide, that line means Jehovah, Jireh, it's one of the names of God. It means God will provide. Now the word provide here in the Hebrew is a specific word to mean see. God will see to it. Remember in the story when Isaac said, Dad, where's the sacrifice? I don't see it. And Abraham's like, I don't see it either son, but we have a God that provides. He will see to it. That's how much faith he had, which means for someone here today, this could be the biggest point. It's not just point one, which is a faith that can't be tested, can't be trusted. And point

two we looked at, which is God often tests what we're tempted to put in his place. Here's a big idea for someone here today. Anything you release to God, his provision will always be better. God had bigger plans for Abraham and he just wanted him to release those to me so I can provide you the provision that is so much better. The ultimate point of this story, come on, is not that God would ask you to completely sacrifice what you love the most. The ultimate point of the story is that if he did, would you trust him that there's more provision on the other side of that release? Beginning of the message, I asked you, what did you name that you're holding onto in your hands? And you got something in your head right now that you are gripping hold of, you're white knuckling, and I just want you to ask yourself this question, do I have the faith to trust that if I release that to God, he has so much more for me on the other side of that? His provision is always greater. I started thinking this week writing this message of all the times that God has asked me to release what's in my hands that I'm white knuckling. Immediately what came to my mind, so many things, but when I was in high school, I had a girl that I truthfully was putting above God. I had a girl that was ultimately in front of God in my life, and I was white knuckling it to hold on to that in my life. And God asked me to fully and completely release that relationship, fully. And it was hard. I mean, just, I know looking back, we think, oh, it's, no, in the moment, it was hard. I fully released that, and it was almost a year later that God brought Jamie into my life. His provision is always better. Some of you know my story. I grew up very poor, and so when I graduated Bible college and went to work in the business world for a period of time, I started making a lot of money, just a lot. And I, you guys, I white knuckled money, just finances.

I love the security that I just didn't feel like I had. I love the, what I thought it could bring to me. And yet, the more money I made, it didn't make anything in my life better. Sure, I had some more stuff, but my marriage, my peace, my happiness, it was not there. And I'll never forget when Jamie and I, for the very first time, it was like, we were, like the video you saw earlier, we were trembling, we decided to put God first with our finances, and to this day, we would tell you, that one decision of release has brought more peace and more of God's provision in our life than anything we've ever done. It's taught us more about God as a provider than anything else we've ever done, but it took release. Last thing I started thinking about was my kids. I'm a dad of three daughters, and very honestly, when our oldest daughter started dating, this dad lost his mind. I did, I began to lose my mind. I began to grip hold of that, like so tightly, trying to control it. And not only did it drive a wedge between my daughter and I, more deeply, it began to drive a wedge between Jamie and I. We were gripping hold and seeing things very differently, and I will never forget having to fully release. In fact, I'll never forget walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding and giving her away.

Some of you know that Jamie and I's life story is that of generosity and what God's done. And I told people at the wedding and afterwards, when I was doing my speech, I said, I think the most generous gift I've ever given in my life is giving my daughter away at the altar. But she was never mine. She was always designed to be released. I was just a steward. And remember, anything you release, God's provision is so much better. So now, now, I'm happy to announce that in April, I will be a grandpa for the very first time, right? So I'm gonna, Paulie's gonna have a baby. We're so excited. And I know some of you are thinking, how could someone so young be a grandpa? I get it. I can't wait to spoil, her name's gonna be Rory. I can't wait to spoil that little girl and just chuck her back to them and say, deal with it. I can't wait. But do you understand, God's provision is better. So what are you holding on to that God's gonna call you to release? I've been praying for you. And I just, in my prayer time, I said, God, you just tell me whatever you want me to say. And so I'm just gonna say what God told me to say. Here it is.

Some of you are holding on to a child. And honestly, you have a child that is more important than Jesus in your life, than God. And here's how you know, because if you prioritize a child or their activities or their sports over being present at church on a regular basis, I'm just telling you, they're more important than God. And you convince yourself it's okay because you wanna give them the good life and they have opportunities and they have dreams. Do you understand that the chances of your child becoming a professional athlete or excelling in that activity or hobby, they're in dance, whatever else it is, it's 0.0001%. What's their chances of needing the church when they leave your house? 100%. And you're telling them. Every single time you prioritize their thing over church, this matters more than the church. And that will bite them long-term. You don't see it now, I've seen it over and over again. So I just wonder, and most of you aren't gonna do this, and that's okay. I'm just gonna look, there's one person here, I wonder if there's one parent here that I would have the courage to decide once and for all, I will release all those dreams, all those things for my kids,

because God will be first in our house. Others of you, this is what I was praying, is that God just said, tell someone that work is their God. You have a great job that is not good for your family. And the thought of releasing it, it scares you to death, because you worked so hard to get to this point. You've built up those clients, you've built up that business. How could you ever give that up? And man, you have no idea the provision God has if you begin to release. I was talking to a dad this past week, and he's a lot older now, and he looks back, and he says, I messed up, because I was gone all the time, and I thought my greatest job as a dad was to provide, I was the provider. Being a provider is important. You know what's more important? Being present. And if you would be present and prioritize God in your life, with your family, He is your provider, more than you. There's others of you here that your big issue is your health. It's like, you're just holding on to your health with such tight fists, that God's just like, I want you to trust me and release it, whether this thing changes or not, would you trust me? Some of you, you're holding on to giving your life to Jesus, and you haven't ever been baptized, and you're just holding on to something that's holding you back.

Would you release it? I'm just gonna say what God told me. Some of you have a vacation home. You're like, don't talk about my vacation home. I'm just telling you what God told me, okay? If it feels weird, that's just what He said. He said, someone's got a vacation home here, and here's the thing, it keeps you from worship. It keeps your kids from worship. And I know you worked hard, I know it's been your dream your whole entire life, but God has bigger dreams than a home. Just saying it. Others of you, it's your reputation. You're always protecting your reputation. You're always so worried about what's on social or what people are saying about you. And I'm embarrassed. I mean, I'd be embarrassed to just get vulnerable with you about how much I, you know, sometimes I worry about my reputation. I wanna represent our church well and everything out there. In fact, like, this is, it's so dumb. This Wednesday, I'm gonna play in the, I got an invitation to play in the Waste Management Pro-Am at TPC Scottsdale. It's a really cool opportunity. But can I tell you how worried I am about my reputation? I'm stupid. I feel like I'm, this pastor's gonna shank a ball

and hit a young kid in the face, and then like, you know, it's like done. So I could use your prayers, all right? And if you're there, I could use some support, all right? But what is it about your reputation that you might just need to release? This last one is sensitive. And I'm gonna say it just because God, God told me to. There's someone here today that you can't have a child right now, or you lost a child, and you've thought to yourself, I will never be happy and complete without a child. And I just wonder if today you'd be willing to just admit that and say, what if I release that? Is God still enough? And I understand if you can't answer, like, yes, I think he would be. I understand if you're not there right now. I get this is a really hard thing. But I might just ask you to wrestle with this question. Is your desire to love God still enough? Is your desire to love a child one day greater than your desire to love God today? Because he wants to be first above anything in your life. He wants to be first because that's the only way your life works. So what is God calling you to release today? Remember, you can't catch God's blessings with closed fists. You got to open them up and release.

And these are hard questions, I get it. But do you understand God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son? That's a hard question. And it's sometimes the hard questions that rattle us to a point where God gets us where he wants us to be to put him on the throne and nothing else. else. So faith, a faith that can't be tested, it can't be trusted. You may have a faith that's being tested right now, and then God often tests what we are tempted to put in His place, and that may be the thing you have in your mind right now that you identified earlier, but here's the blessing. Anything you release to God, His provision is always better. Would you close your eyes again as I pray for all of us? Just put your hands out again. Just, you know that thing you had in your mind? Even if you're not sure you can do it, would you just open your hands right now? Just open them up as just an act of surrender to God. Just say, God, I don't know if I can do it, but man, I want to have a faith like Abraham that I can trust you. I can place my faith in you, and you are a God who always provides. Father, I pray for every person here today. The really hard cases, God, that people are feeling like they're being tested beyond their ability, God, would you remind them that you will never, ever put them in a position where you won't provide. Would you bless them? Help them know this is a church that loves them, and would you guide and direct them in your power, in your peace, would we have a faith like Abraham? In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. We'll see you next weekend as we continue our Genesis series.