The Walk That Talks | Life in the Spirit Week 12

All right, I think we're almost done with this season we've been in called Life in the Spirit, I think. But I've got at least one more in me that I wanted to share with you today. So we'll get to Numbers chapter nine in just a few minutes. How many of you have paper Bible? Let me see paper Bibles. Paper Bibles, raise your hands in the sky. Look at that, gold star to you. Gold star, Sunday school class, gold star. I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you. Sunday school class, gold star. You get half a star for a digital Bible, okay? I'm kidding, it doesn't matter. Several months ago, I was really needing to hear from the Lord on a particular subject and I was asking for Him to speak and I was asking for Him to give me a word. And it was nothing, just crickets, you know. And one morning I woke up real early in the morning and I just, for some reason in the morning your mind's free, it's not cluttered and you begin thinking. And for some reason in my mind, I don't know if it was on the tail end of a dream or what, but I started thinking about all the ways in scripture that the Lord speaks.

And because I'd been waiting on God to speak for so long on this particular thing, for some reason I just woke up with that on my mind. What are all the ways that God speaks? And I just started going through my mind about all these different ways that God speaks. And in the midst of that laying in bed, I just, out of frustration, I said to the Lord, not audibly, because I didn't want to wake Michelle up, but in my spirit I just said, God, why won't you just speak plainly to me? Like, I want you to speak. You're the God who speaks. I'm the dude who has ears. We should just hook up, you know. This doesn't seem that complicated to me. And then I felt like He did. I felt like He spoke pretty quickly after I complained to Him and I just had this prompting, it wasn't audible, it was just this prompting in my spirit and I felt as though the Lord said, well, the reason that I don't speak plainly to you is because that would require very little trust or faith on your part. And I got up and I went into my office and I just started kind of typing out all the ways God speaks. And it's pretty fascinating when you really think about all the ways in Scripture that God speaks, you know. A lot of times He speaks in spectacle,

like massive moments of spectacular, you know, the burning bush. On Mount Sinai, the Bible says that God spoke to Moses face to face. I'd take that. I mean, come on, that's what we all want. He spoke in dreams and visions to Peter. He had angelic, like angels would show up, like in person and speak to people. Jacob and Joseph and Mary. Upper room, you know, tongues of fire. My gosh, God speaks in some miraculous ways. But we should also know that those are rare, you know. They make it into the Bible, but how many years did they go in silence? So those are rare. We should pray for them. We shouldn't stop praying for them. God speaks in subtlety, just in subtle ways. The whisper to Elijah, just in peace. God speaks in peace when you have peace in your spirit. The Holy Spirit speaks through conviction. The Holy Spirit speaks through scripture. If you're like, well, God just won't speak to me. Well, if you read this, he will. I mean, he's always speaking, so there's never an excuse, right? But he speaks through discernment. When Paul was trying to go to Macedonia, the Bible says that the spirit of Jesus

would not let him go. So there's these subtle ways. And then God speaks through people. We know that. God speaks through people. God speaks in the Old Testament, spoke through priests and prophets and kings and then apostles in the New Testament and pastors and teachers and parents and friends and spiritual mentors. So God speaks through people. God speaks through signs and symbols. The cloud by day and the fire by night in the Old Testament, the rainbow. When you see a rainbow, God's speaking. It's a sign. God said it will forever be a sign. And every time we see a rainbow, it's a sign of God speaking to us. It's an ongoing sign. God speaks through communion. God speaks through Passover. God speaks through circumcision. That's a weird one. Thanks, God. God speaks through baptism. If you wanna know a really crazy one in the book of Acts chapter one before the Holy Spirit came, when they were down to 11 disciples

because Judas, they were trying to decide on the 12th disciple. The Bible says they cast lots. That's crazy. That'd be like, I don't know, let's take a coin. Let's just flip it. Heads, it's you. Tails, it's, okay, it's tails. Must be God, you know? But God was speaking to them in these ways. It's fascinating. But today I wanna show you in Numbers chapter nine another way that God speaks. And I wanna try to teach you a language. Alright, I want to try to teach you a language in just a couple of minutes here Of one of the ways that God speaks to us and we it's a language that we need to learn All right, so numbers chapter 9. Let's go to it real quick numbers chapter 9. I'm gonna start in verse 15 This is what it says. It says on the day. The tabernacle was set up the cloud covered it but from evening until morning the cloud over the tabernacle looked like a pillar of fire and This was the regular pattern at night the cloud that covered the tabernacle had the appearance of fire And whenever the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent the people of Israel would break camp and follow it And wherever the cloud settled the people of Israel would set up camp and in this way They traveled and camped at the Lord's command wherever he told them to go then They remained in their camp as long as the as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle as the cloud remained over the tabernacle for a Long time the Israelites stayed and performed their duty to the Lord Sometimes the Lord sometimes the cloud would stay over the tabernacle for only a few days so the people would stay for only a few days as The as the Lord commanded then at the Lord's command they would break camp and move on

Sometimes the cloud stayed overnight and lifted the next morning But day or night when the cloud lifted the people broke camp and moved on see a pattern here When the cloud stayed above the tabernacle for two days or a month Or a year the people of Israel stayed in camp, but did not move it But as the soon as it lifted they broke camp and moved on so they camped or Traveled at the Lord's command and they did whatever the Lord told them to do So it's almost as if the Lord was teaching them a new language in the midst of their journey He was guiding them. He was directing them. He was moving them While they walked While they walked He was speaking to them in the journey in the journey And I think sometimes well-meaning pastors and well-meaning Christians when we tell stories about how God spoke to us Sometimes we can communicate it in a way that could make other people feel like God never speaks to them And I've heard you know I try to be careful when I say God said or God told me what I usually try to say is I felt like the Lord impressed upon me or I sensed the Lord saying Unless I heard it audibly I need to be careful with how I use my words and sometimes people will say well I said this and then God said this back to me and then I said this back to God and then I laughed and then He laughed and then and then I said this and then God said, oh, that's a great story Let me tell you more about you know, and like like they have these six-hour conversations with the Lord and they speak in paragraphs And sometimes even as a pastor, I'm sitting there going man. I must be a loser. I mean And I'm not saying that that God doesn't speak that way God can speak to you However, he wants to speak to you. And so if you hear God in paragraphs good on you. I'm happy for you. That's amazing But what I'm finding is that Many times now I've heard the Lord speak. I've heard him speak bluntly. I've heard I've heard it abruptly I've told the story one time It was a really terrible idea and the staff till still gets on me for this

but we were gonna do an Easter about how The grave has lost and the grave is empty and all this kind of stuff and I got this brilliant idea to put a casket on the stage on Easter morning and So see, you know how dumb that is. I didn't and And so they did what I said, you know I think advised me not to but I told him anyways and they put a casket on the stage and I walked in that back door one day Leading up the the week leading up to Easter and I saw that casket sitting that over here and when I walked through that door The Lord goes no So I've heard those those moments, you know I'm not discounting that and we should always pray for those moments that the Lord is blunt and clear and precise We should pray for those moments But I have found that for me the most common way the most common way that the Lord speaks to me and Quite frankly the sweetest way sweetest way and the way in which my faith grows the most is He speaks to me as I walk in the Spirit He it's as if he speaks to me in the walk in the stride We'll talk more about this in a minute but over and over again It says at the Lord's command at the Lord's command in this text We just read but not one time in that scripture. Does it say the Lord said? Not one time the Lord's command was in the cloud lifting and descending, lifting and descending, lifting and descending. In Genesis 3, the Bible says that the Lord, God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. He walked with Adam in the cool of the day. And so the very first time, the earliest picture of humanity and God interacting

wasn't in a sermon, it wasn't with words, it was in a stroll, just walking together in this walk, in this journey. And our theme verse for this season has been Galatians 5.25 that says, if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. So somehow there's this connection in living in the spirit and walking in the journey, in the walk. And so as your pastor, I want you to hear from God. Listen, I want you to hear from God and I hope it's just clear and I hope he speaks to you in paragraphs and I hope it's face to face and I hope it's a burning bush. But what I want you to do more than hear from God is I want you to learn to walk with God. And I want you to learn that walking in the spirit is its own language with the Lord. It's its own language with the Lord. And so what I wanna talk to you about just for a few minutes, the title of what we're gonna talk about is the walk that talks, the walk that talks. These Israelites went from Egypt to the promised land and historians, they'll try their best to map out the journey that's recorded. There's a lot of debate on where Mount Sinai was and where they crossed the Red Sea. I have my own opinions. But the estimates are that it was around

a 250 to 400 mile journey. Some estimates are because they went around in circles and just paced and walked around blind in the desert for years that some say they marched over 1,000 miles. But we're all in our own journey, right? Into our promised land. And what I wanna show you is this language that the Lord wants to speak to you is that the truth is he is speaking to you, but it may not be the way that you want him to and it may not be in the language that you wish he would speak to you in, but he is speaking to you. And what I wanna do is show you five things in this scripture that we just read that I think are pretty cool, that I think will show you God's voice in your walk. All right, so the first one, if you're taking notes, write this down. Number one is that God speaks through patterns. God speaks through patterns. It's the most plain one in the scripture that we just read in verse 16. It says, this was the regular pattern. At night, the cloud that covered the tabernacle had the appearance of fire. And when the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel would break camp and follow it. And whenever the cloud settled,

the people would set up camp. That's the pattern. Pretty simple, isn't it? Cloud moves, you move. Cloud stays, you stay. And they see this pattern. And God often communicates to us in this way. God will, if we're paying attention, God is communicating to us in patterns, in pacing, in presence. It's a cloud by day, fire by night. It was a pattern. When it moved, you move. When it stops, you stop. So the walk in and of itself was a form of communication. It was a form of communication. Now, why would God do this? This is just cruel. Why doesn't God just say, hey, guys, tomorrow we're leaving. All right, pack your stuff. Why would God do it in this way? I would say this way is because patterns require paying attention. Patterns require paying attention. This happened to me yesterday. My son, he'll be 16 in a couple weeks, and so we're looking for a car for him. And we're searching and looking at used cars and looking at used trucks. He knows what he wants.

He knows exactly what he wants. And so we'll find the right one online. It looks perfect. We'll call, it's already sold. It's gone. Or we'll go up there and the price, you know, was a bait and switch. It says this, but once you get there, it's all this. I'm like, come on, sleazy. Just kidding. If you're in the car business, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about these other people. And so we just can't, no matter how hard we try, we can't find. And yesterday, we're sitting at a desk on a laptop looking at trucks, and it just hit me. And I go, I just stopped, and I go, Jase, have you prayed about this? And he goes, no. And I go, I haven't either. But I'm starting to notice a pattern. Every time we find something on our own that we think is the right one, it falls through the cracks. And it's a pattern. Like, it's happening over and over and over. Maybe God's trying to show us something. And so I said, why don't you just pray about it for two or three days? I'll pray about it for two or three days,

and let's just see what the Lord might do. It's important because, think about it this way. All it tells us is when the cloud lifted, they left. When the cloud stopped, they stopped. What does that require? Pay attention. Pay attention. How do you know when the cloud lifts if you're not paying attention? So I can picture, you know, as a man of the house, and you know, you're in your tent, and you've set up tent, and about every couple hours, I'd like to be peeking out the tent door. No, still here, we're good, okay, we're good. It would require paying attention. When it descends, you stop. So patterns require paying attention. The cloud did not announce itself. The cloud, the night before, did not send out a phone tree to all the tents and be like, hey, tomorrow morning, we're gonna be leaving 6 a.m. sharp. No, it just lifted. It lifted. It just moved. And so the wilderness trains attentiveness. It trains attentiveness. And so chances are the Lord is speaking to you. You're just waiting on him to have some audible voice or to come down and inscribe it in stone

or to give you some sign. When the truth is, he probably is showing and revealing patterns. The question is, do we notice the patterns? We have prophetic weekend. This is prophetic weekend. And some of you should come get a word from the Lord. That's great. That's one of the ways that the Lord speaks is through prophetic ministry. But even in prophetic ministry, what you're looking for is patterns. What you're looking for is patterns. If somebody comes up to you in a prophetic ministry and says, you should move your whole family to China today. I'm gonna pray about that and see what other patterns develop. Most of the time, a prophetic word is a confirmation of something that you've already been sensing. And we have people every month, and if this is you, it's fine. I'm not trying to get onto you. But come back every single month for a new word. That's not needed. Okay? Look for patterns. Is the prophetic word you're getting revealing or confirming something that you've already read in the scripture or that someone else has already told you

or something that you've sensed in your heart? Number two, God speaks without words. Now, this is kind of obvious. Everyone kind of knows this, but I wanna show it to you in this story. I mentioned it a while ago, but it says, when the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent the people of Israel would break camp and follow it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel would set up camp. In this way, they traveled and camped, here it is, at the Lord's command wherever he told them to go. Verse 18, verse 20, verse 23, they all say, at the Lord's command. This one says, wherever the Lord told them to go. But if you reread the story, nowhere in this story does it say, and thus saith the Lord. It doesn't say, and the Lord spoke. It doesn't say, and Moses said. It doesn't say, and the prophet said. It's nothing. The Lord was speaking with non-verbal commands. The movement, the movement of the cloud in and of itself was the directive. It was the command. There was no audible voice. And sometimes, at least for me, sometimes I'm so hungry for a word that I miss his ways.

That I miss, that many times, it's the journey in and of itself that he's speaking in. And I've noticed that the vast majority of the time in my life, I want him to tell me. I just want him to tell me. And you've prayed the prayers I've prayed. God, just show me and I'll do whatever you say. You just tell me, you know, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. But I have found that the majority of the time, God doesn't tell me, he wants to show me. And when he shows me, a lot of times, there is no verbal discussion. He wants to walk it out with me. And he's gonna show it to me in the life cycle of the journey. And when the Spirit lifted, they followed it. And I'm afraid that many Christians don't recognize when the Spirit lifts, when the grace lifts. Number three, God speaks through timing. God speaks through timing. This was a big one for me that I had to learn, not the hard way, but the long way. So the Bible says that whether it was two days, or a month, or a year. Now can you imagine, like you're on this journey, and the cloud descends, and you're like, okay, let's set up camp. Now keep in mind, we know that there was well over a million people in this encampment.

Some say up to two million people. This is not a quick setup, y'all. They had to set up the tabernacle, the tent of meeting. They may have taken them two days to set up camp. We don't know. And then once they get everything set up, they don't know if they're going to be there one day, or one year. So the cloud never explained why. It's not like the cloud stopped the march and said, okay, this looks like a good place. There's water over here, so this is why we're gonna stop here. The cloud would just stop. So the cloud never explained why, and the cloud never explained where. All right, everyone, get up. This is where we're going tomorrow. We're gonna take a six-mile journey, and our next encampment is six miles from here. They would just have to obey. The only thing they knew, they didn't know when, they didn't know why, and they didn't know where. All they knew was when, when. When the cloud lifts, go. When the cloud stops, stay. And God often tells us it's time, even when we wish it wasn't time. I left the King's University, next month will be three years,

and when I left the King's, I didn't really share this with very many people, but I didn't wanna leave. It wasn't the timing that I wanted. I would've continued to be a part of TKU the rest of my life. I loved Jack Hayford, I loved training pastors, I loved everything about it, but I knew that God was making it obvious that it was time. The cloud lifted, the grace lifted, and all through that season, all through that season for a good year, God was just silent, silent. Didn't answer my why questions, didn't answer my where questions, what's next, Lord, what do you want me to put my hand to next? Didn't answer any of those questions. All he did was tell me the when, and that was frustrating to me. But now, three years later, I can look back, I can rewind the clock in my mind's eye and look back on that time, and what I would say now is God was speaking very clearly to me. It just wasn't in the way that I wanted him to speak. And it is possible that the reason God's not answering you in this season is because the only answers, the only questions you're asking is why and where.

Why, God, why, God, where, God, where, God, instead of just embracing the when and saying, God, you're speaking to me in timing. You're speaking to me in the timing. It's not yet, and I don't like it, God, but if your cloud is staying here, then I'm not going without you. And if God descends the cloud before you wished he would, you wanted to keep going on that journey, but he put a stop to it. What they did well was obey. The Israelites didn't do a lot of things well, honestly, but they obeyed, and what I found is that faith does not grow from exhaustive explanations. Faith grows from my responsive obedience. Faith doesn't grow, my faith in God doesn't grow when God sits me down and says, okay, John, I know you don't get it, but let me just explain all this to you. It grows when I'm like, God, I don't understand what you're doing right now, but I'm staying, I'm staying. And I don't, or I don't understand what you're doing right now, God, but I'll just keep going. I'm gonna keep journeying. I'm gonna keep walking this out, and I'm gonna believe that when your voice is silent to me, our walking together is speaking to me. And I'm telling you, five years from now,

you'll look back on this season, and you'll realize that God was speaking. He just wasn't speaking in the way that you wished he would've. So God's speaking in a different language many times. And notice that the cloud was very unpredictable. Very unpredictable. It's not like they were like, you know, I got a feeling that tomorrow's the day we're gonna leave. I got a feeling. It was so unpredictable. Could be two days, could be one night, could be a month, could be a year. You're not gonna know. And just all of a sudden, God intentionally refused predictability. Why would God do that? Well, because predictability slows, it slows, slowly replaces dependence. When God becomes predictable, I don't need God anymore. And so God will intentionally be unpredictable. Therefore, we must lean on him. And you see this in the story, and I gotta keep going, all right? So God will not let you become an expert on him. And if you think you're a God expert, buckle up. You can't figure God out. The Bible says it. It says his ways are higher than your ways, and his thoughts are greater than your thoughts.

So why do we try to figure him out? All right, number four, God speaks through interruption. Interruption. I won't belabor this one, because it's very similar, but it's slightly different. Prompter, let's skip to verse 21, go all the way to verse 21. It says, sometimes the cloud stayed only overnight and lifted the next morning. Now listen to this. But day or night, day or night, when the cloud lifted, the people broke him. and moved on. The cloud did not consult them before it moved. And I don't know about you, but I like, I go to bed at like nine o'clock, y'all. I like sleep, sleep is one of my favorite things. When I crawl into bed at night, I'm like, oh my goodness, this is what I've wanted to be all day. I mean, now I may not go to sleep at nine, but I'm gonna read, I'm gonna watch a show, I'm gonna watch Seinfeld or something with my wife, and we're just gonna hang out, you know? But if somebody came in my bedroom at one o'clock in the morning, and it was like, hey, we're moving. The cloud has lifted. I mean, it says day or night. Hey, John, the cloud's lifting, man. I'll be like, I'll follow your tracks.

There's two million of you, I think I can find you. Y'all go ahead. I'm gonna sleep at least till five or six, you know? And the interruption, like, I don't know if you've lived for God long enough to be interrupted. God has a tendency of interrupting us. God rarely fits nicely and neatly into my human conveniences. And I can put myself in the story, you know? That's what you should do with the Bible if you wanna understand it, put yourself in the story. And I can just picture me and Michelle and Jason, Cory, and I, we stopped for the night, and I set up the tent, and, you know, I just unpacked. And the cloud lifts. I'll be like, can we get a heads up? Could we just set, could you have said, hey, only half unpack. But God has a tendency to be unpredictable. Number five, this is the one I wanna focus on for just a moment and do some ministry prayer here, and then we'll be done. Number five, this is my favorite one. God speaks through seasons. God speaks through seasons. Now, this is what I realized in this text. This is what started the whole sermon is this realization, these two words that is used two different times in this passage of Scripture. And I don't mean to oversimplify the Israelites' journey

or yours, their walk, you know, but to oversimplify 40 years of wilderness living. I think it could, I think their entire 40 years could be whittled down and simplified into two seasons. And they went from one season to this one, back to this one, back to this one, back to this one, back to this one, over and over and over again for 40 years. And I think we do too, all right? So in verse 18, it says this. It says, in this way, they, here's two things. They traveled and camped at the Lord's command wherever he told them to go. Then they remained in their camp as long as the clouds stayed over the tabernacle. And then again, same thing in verse 23, just five verses later, in verse 23, it says, so they camped or traveled at the Lord's command. And I think it's kind of comical that the author just reverses the words. The first time he says, the first time he says traveled and camped, and then just almost out of spite or to laughable to say, oh, guess what else they did? They also camped and traveled. It's all they ever did. And I can relate to this. I can imagine what it would be like to be on the road traveling, longing to just sit and rest. I mean, they're walking through the desert. They had to have been wearisome, tiresome.

And I can also simultaneously feel like after they had camped at a place for over a year, they had to have been like, aren't we on our way to the promised land? Why are we still camped here? Why am I still having to relive this day over and over and over again when everything in me just longs to go to the next season of moving? And I think we can relate to that all through our lives. There are seasons of life where you're just camped and you don't wanna be camped. Like you're in a season of raising toddlers and you're like, this is never gonna end. I am just in toddler mode and you're in a season and like you will literally long for the days where your kids become teenagers only to realize that it's worse, you know? It's like we went from one desert to the next one. And don't you do this? Don't you say things, well, if we can just get past this season, then things will get easier. When you're newlyweds, you've got no money and you're on, you know, you're just like, if we can just hunker down, let's get our savings account. If we can just get through this season and then you have kids and then you get. careers, and then you get, I mean, mortgages, and then everything you're doing is like

you're just in a season waiting for the next season. And I can relate to this because for 40 years they camped or they traveled, or they traveled and they camped. And regardless of where you're at, you're in one of those at any given time, all the time. What I love about what the Israelites did is their response in both of those seasons. I'm not saying they did it perfectly, because we know the Bible says they murmured and complained and they always bickering and complaining. God called them a stiff-necked people over and over again. But they did obey. When the cloud stopped, they stopped. And when the cloud got up, they went. There was something about them that knew, hey, God is leading us. So, there had to have been seasons when their feet were killing them and they just wanted to sit so bad. Like, we just need to rest so bad. But the cloud kept moving, so we're just gonna keep moving. We're just gonna keep plowing through this season. And I've had seasons like that, and you've had seasons like that. And then they've had seasons where they just sat and sat, and it was a dead-end job, it was a relationship, it was just a season of life where you would give anything to get past this season.

Can we please, Lord, for the love? And I can relate to this. But what I see in the Israelites is no half obedience, no partial surrender. The Israelites did not camp when they were camped. They didn't camp half-packed, ready to go. They just camped. Just gonna stay here. We're just gonna unpack, and we're just gonna stay here. But they also didn't travel half-unpacked. You know, they fully embraced whatever season that they were in, whether they were camped or whether they were traveling. We're just gonna embrace that season. We're gonna embrace it for what it is. And if we're camped, we're gonna believe that God has us camped for a reason. And when His timing, we don't know anything. We don't know when, where, or why, but at some point, God's gonna open the next chapter of our lives, and we're gonna walk through it. But until then, we're just gonna be camped, and we're gonna rest. We're not gonna be anxious, we're not gonna be fearful. We're gonna trust the Lord in this camping season. And we're also gonna learn how to have endurance for the seasons where we're moving, and we'd rather be camped. So, I think what I wanna, my goal today,

and I wanna pray and we're done, is to help you learn a new language. And to learn that if you don't, if you're desperate to hear a word from the Lord, I get it, I've been there. I've been there over and over and over again. But I also wanna teach you a new language that the Lord wants to teach you, that He is speaking to you. He has not abandoned you. The Bible says, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, I will never abandon you. So the truth is, He is with you. He is speaking to you. What we have to do is learn a new language that our Heavenly Father speaks. And our Heavenly Father isn't just a one-communication type of God. We see that all through Scripture. So, in what other ways is the Lord speaking to me? And I promise you, five years from now, you'll look back on this season that you're walking through right now and you'll realize He was talking the whole time. It just wasn't to my ears, it was to my feet. The Bible says we walk by faith, not by sight. It's in the journey that God speaks. The Bible says man plans his ways, but God directs his steps. It's in the walk, it's in the journey.

So don't be discouraged if you feel like God is silent. Don't be discouraged, you keep walking. You keep going, it's in the journey, it's in this path that He's gonna speak to you in those ways. Galatians 5.25, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. So, we're gonna close with this little quick exercise. I'm not gonna say bow your heads and close your eyes because every one of us are in one of these two seasons. And I'm not gonna ask you to come down front, I'm gonna pray for you right where you are in your comfy little tushy seats, all right? So, those of you who would say I'm in a season of camping and I'm sick of it, I am so restless and I wanna get through this season. It could be job related, it could be relationships, it could be a season of rearing children, it could be a financial season. Like you just can't seem to get past, whatever it is, it's just like you just can't, you long for the next. I long for the next because I'm so sick of the what is. Okay, and it can be whatever it is. I just wanna pray for you. If that's you, at all of our campuses, I want you to just raise your hand real high, real high. Awesome, okay. Okay, lots of us, put your hand down. Okay, the reverse of that. If you would say, I am jealous of the people that are camped

because I'm exhausted. I've got so many things going and I've got so many things demanding my attention. And I long to just settle, to settle. It's funny how we can long for one. A couple of weeks ago, Michelle and I traveled. I had some speaking to do in a couple of different States and Michelle came with me and like leading up to the travel. I'm excited. I'm like, I love travel. I love to travel, especially with my wife. I was so excited. And then about three or four days in, we were both like, we're ready to go home. Like we were longing to travel. And then in the travel, we were longing to go home. And so maybe you're one of the ones who's been on a journey for a season and you just need a new season. You need a rest. You're exhausted and you need a season of rest. Raise your hand. Okay, awesome. Well, Lord, I just pray for my brothers and sisters. They're your sons and daughters. So you know them intimately. You know when they rise, you know when they lay their head. You know our worries, you know our doubts, you know our fears. You know how many hairs are on our head, Lord. You know everything about us, every intimate detail.

And so you know our struggles and I'm not gonna be bold enough to pray that you would lift the cloud or descend the cloud. That's completely up to you because your ways are higher than our ways. So I'm only simply going to pray for those that are camped, that are ready for the next chapter, that are ready for the next season. God, I pray that in some way you would help them find rest. Help them find rest. And trust that you do have a plan. You do have a plan. And they're good. But timing is everything. And they can't rush the timing of it. So just help them to learn the rhythms of grace, Lord, the rhythms of your mercy. And to find rest in those seasons. And to maybe realize that the next season's going to be wearisome, so rest while you can. Rest while you can. So I just give them rest. I speak against anxiety or fear of failure. I speak against fear of failure. Or fear of failure. Or fear of man. Or depression. Or a sense of pointlessness or hopelessness. Or those who might struggle with identity,

that they're not good enough, that they should be doing more, but they just can't seem to break camp. Lord, just help them to learn the rhythms of this season. And to lean back into the loving arms of their father. And to trust them in this season. And God, I pray for those who are weary, who have walked and walked and walked. God, that you would give them endurance. Endurance. Yeah, we can pray for the cloud to descend so we could rest, but that's up to you, Lord. So God, I pray that you would give them endurance. The Bible says that the Israelites' clothes and their sandals would not wear out. So that tells us that you're mindful of our journey. You know that the journeys we're on are wearisome. And so God, I just pray that you would give them a special grace, a special grace, to endure the season that they're in until the camp comes. We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God, and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church slash pray. If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life, and you would like to partner with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church slash give.

Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full.