What If God's Delay Is by Design? | Life in the Spirit Week 8

Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 32, all right? Let's dive into the Word and see what the Lord wants to say today. We're jumping back into the season we were in before Easter called Life in the Spirit, learning what it looks like to be formed by the Spirit. What does it look like to live a life in the Holy Spirit and seeing what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us and through us? This is a message that I've had in my notes for quite some time, and I knew that it would come out eventually, and today's the day. Reflecting back even on my life, my journeys of my life, specifically for the sake of this example being the pastor of this church, coming up on 12 years, which is wild, but I remember in the early days of pastoring this church, I prayed a lot. I prayed a lot. You know, if you ever go through hard times, it'll help your prayer life real quick. And I prayed so many different prayers, so many specific prayers, and quite honestly, God didn't answer most of them. There were seasons where I felt like God felt absent, and I mean, there were times where I'd be like, God, this is your church. Moses did that with the people. At one point, Moses was like, these are your people, God, not mine. Like I've had those moments where I'm like, God, this is your church. Why don't you help? I got all these prayer requests and all these things that I'm asking you to help me with, and it just, there were seasons where it felt like my prayers would just hit the ceiling and bounce back down. And I don't know if you've ever felt like that before. Maybe you've had a season like that before in your life where it just felt like God had abandoned you and just left you to do this on your own. And so you're left thinking like, did I do something wrong? Like are you, is this punishment? Are you punishing me because you don't want to answer my prayers?

And 12 years later, I can honestly say that, and you know, not just 12 years, but 46 years of life, I can honestly say that the times of life where I felt like God was delaying something in my life, and it just felt like delay after delay after delay, I actually think, and it's kind of what I want to talk about today, I actually think that God was exposing things in me that he wanted me to work on. And he was making me more like Jesus, and I didn't realize it. And he was making me a better father, and I didn't realize it. He was making me a better husband, he was making me a better pastor, he was making me a better leader, and for some weird reason that I'm super not happy about, it's like he did those things through delaying things. So if you'll go to Exodus chapter 32, I want to show you a passage of Scripture. So the context of the Scripture is Moses has delivered the children of Israel, they've left Egypt, and they've stopped at Mount Sinai, and all the people stay down in the valley, and Moses goes up to the mountain to meet with God, and some unbelievably miraculous things are happening, it's unbelievable. Like the Bible talks about how Moses met with God face to face, and God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock, because Moses is like, show me your glory, you know, he's having these unbelievable moments, like the cloud descends, fire on the mountain, and the Bible says that God inscribes with his finger the Ten Commandments, like God is like coming down and carving into rock, and so some of the most amazing moments, and Moses is fasting, the Bible says he's fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, and all these things are happening for the people down there. So let's see how it's going down there while Moses is up there. Watch verse 1 of chapter 32, it says, Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, Come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses dude, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him. And Aaron said to Moses, Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.

Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron, and he took this from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf. And they said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. I want to direct Pay attention back to verse one. Verse one says, what caused this whole thing, all of this to unravel, all of the rebellion, all of the things that they went on to do in rebellion. It's interesting to me to think that if you go back to verse one, it all happened because Moses delayed coming down the mountain. And you know, in sports, you'll watch a whole game and you'll see a whole game unfold and then at the end of the game, they'll interview the coach or the players in the post-game interview in the press room and they'll kind of unpack the game and what happened. And it's like, if you go down to verse nine of this chapter, it's like God's giving his post-game interview of what just happened in the game. And in verse nine, it says, the Lord said to Moses, I have seen the people and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now this is not a word we use very often. I don't know that I've ever used the word obstinate really in my common vernacular. But if you look up this word in the dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary, it says obstinate means stubbornly refusing to change one's opinion

or a chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so. If you look up this word obstinate in the Hebrew, it's the Hebrew word kasha and it means stiff-necked, hard, difficult, stubborn. And this was God's conclusion because of the delay. Because Moses coming down from the mountain was delayed beyond their expectations or their desires of how quick they wanted Moses to come back down from the mountain. It turned them into a stiff-necked people, an obstinate people. And keep in mind, Moses, again, Moses is on the mountain for them. Like he's fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, seeking the Lord's face, seeking the Lord's guidance, seeking the Lord to come and to guide them and to lead them and to write down these 10 commandments that would become a guide and the law that they would need to follow to make it to the promised land. But delay caused the people to assume that nothing had happened. So God is moving, they just didn't know it. And the delay caused them to rebel. And as much as I wanna, you know, bash the Israelites and be like, shame on them, how stupid are they? If I'm honest, I can relate. I can totally relate to the Israelites

because I don't know what God's doing sometimes. Like why is the delay? I mean, it's pretty obvious what you should be doing, God, but you're not, you know? And I don't question the power of God at all, ever. I don't know that I've ever questioned the power of God, but I have questioned his timing. Come on, can I get amen? Am I the only one up in here that has difficulty sometimes with the timing of God? But in the same breath, I don't want to be the guy that God looks down and says, husha, stiff-necked, obstinate. And so how do I wrestle with this? How do I manage, in a sense, these delays and these things where I'm waiting on God to move and there is no move? And what I'm finding is that in reflective nature, as I look back on my life and all the prayers that God didn't answer or is yet to answer, more often than not, I can look back and say, thank you for not answering that one. Because a lot of the time, it ends up being better than what God would have designed it to be. If I didn't mess it up in the process, you know? So I'm finding, so living life in the spirit means that I want to live what Jack Hayford, my hero, calls a spirit-formed life. Spirit-formed life. It means that the Holy Spirit is forming me

and shaping me into the image of Christ and I'm becoming more like Jesus every day. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is forming me and shaping me. If I will resist the temptation to form my own golden calf and allow the Spirit to form me and shape me, that many times, what I'm finding in my life is that what has formed me the most and shaped me into the man and the pastor and the dad and the father that I am wasn't breakthroughs. It wasn't miracles. I am not very happy about it, but I think what shaped me the most is delays. And I didn't expect any amens. No one's excited about this sermon. We want sermons, five steps to the Lord's blessing, you know? But I'm fine. finding that the Lord has done his most formative works in my life through me walking through seasons of delay. And so perhaps delay is not a tool of the devil as much as I think it is and hope and wish it was. I think delay might be a tool of the divine. And so what I wanna talk to you about is, here's the subject that we're gonna talk about, all right, and it's the question, all right. What if God's delay is by design? Okay, and we're just gonna wrestle with this. And it kind of makes sense if you're a parent, you know, there's this beautiful symbolism between God being our heavenly father

and we're God's children, we know this is true. And so there's some good parallels that we can learn as parents. Any parents in the house? Come on, all the campuses, raise your hand, you're a parent. Somebody said, woo, that means they're done, their kids are moved out, like they're celebrating. The rest of us are like, ooh, ooh, ooh. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? There are things in your children's lives that they have begged you for, wanted to have, and you don't say no, you say not yet. You don't put a phone in the hands of a four-year-old. At least I hope you don't. And as your kids get into those adolescent years, it becomes like a vice grip on you. It's like, do I give them a phone, do I not? Everybody else has a phone, which is true. And then here comes social media, and it's like, you know that there will come a day where you cannot keep a phone out of your kids' hands, even if you wait till they're 30. They're gonna get a phone eventually. And you know there'll come a day when you can't stop them from getting social media. You know that it's coming. So what do you do? You delay it as long as you possibly can, because you know their prefrontal cortex has not developed. Right?

Somebody's really happy about that over there, amen. And so what happens is when you deny or delay something with your kids, something comes out of your kids, and it's anger, and it's emotion, and it's attitude, and all those things. But think about what caused that to come out of them. Delay. It was the fact that you resisted giving them what they wanted that caused them to show their true colors and their immaturity to prove that they're not ready for the very thing that they were asking for. So what caused you, what caused them to show their true colors? Delay. So if you're taking notes, and you can write this in your Bible. I love to write in my Bible. My Bible's just one big mark. So it's okay to write in your Bible. It's not blasphemy. If you have your Bible, by Exodus chapter 32, and your word may not say delay. It may say waited or whatever. Write these words in your Bible. Just put delay is the great exposer. Delay is the great exposer. It's not as though that didn't exist. Delay didn't create it.

Delay exposed it. And the same is true with us. When I go through seasons of delay, it exposes things in me. And you see this in scripture. Delay doesn't create it, it exposes it. And sometimes you see the delay shapes them and molds them into greatness. And sometimes the delay exposes things in their hearts. And you see this in almost every person in the Bible. If you look close enough, you're not that unique. Everybody in the Bible went through delay. God delays. Joseph was delayed. His journey was nothing but delay. He had a vision and a dream of how God was gonna use him. And then he went straight to the pit and straight to the prison. It was delay after delay after delay. But delay formed him and it was forming integrity and leadership and faithfulness in him. So the delay is actually what formed him and shaped him. David was anointed king with oil and then went years before he ever got into the palace. It was delay after delay after delay. But the delay is what formed a restraint and a trust. He trusted in the Lord. You can read some of his Psalms where he's just pouring his heart out, trusting God in the delay.

The delay actually drew him closer to the Lord. And he learned the gift of restraint. Remember, he could have killed Saul. He had a knife in the cave. And he didn't. He restrained himself. And delay shaped him. Hannah wanted a child and she couldn't have a child. And the God just delayed it and delayed it. And it formed a deep dependence of her in the Lord and a surrender. Job was delayed. You read the whole book of Job, it's just delay. It's delay. And it's shaping in him a new revelation of who God is. And in the end of chapter, in the end of Job, you hear him say things like, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. It was the delay that formed him and shaped him. The disciples, Jesus said, wait, I'm ascending up to heaven. I want you to wait. He delayed the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a delay in the upper room. It was forming them and preparing them. And the delay for the disciples actually created a hunger for the things of the Lord. So delay has a purpose is what I guess is what I'm getting at. And then delay has a way of exposing things in us. Think about Saul, King Saul.

Well, we'll read his story in just a minute. Samuel told King Saul, do not, wait till I get back. Do not do the sacrifice without me. And he became fearful of the people and he did it anyways. And it exposed his insecurities and it exposed the fear of man that he had. Abraham and Sarah, God told Abraham, you will be the father of many nations and then delayed it. Sarah couldn't get pregnant. And so because of the delay, Sarah said, let's just make a golden calf in a sense. And Hagar, sleep with Abraham. Let's just make God's plan. God doesn't know what he's doing. He needs our help. And the delay exposed it. The delay was the very thing that exposed the self-reliance and the striving. Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup, y'all, because the delay was too much. Rachel, another one, she couldn't get pregnant, but Leah could. And the delay exposed the jealousy and an envy in her. And God dealt with that jealousy and dealt with that envy time and time again. Martha, Martha wanted Jesus to come and heal Lazarus. And the Bible says that Jesus stayed where he was on purpose and delayed four days. And it exposed in Martha a pain and a disappointment and a false expectation that she had of Jesus.

And so I'm just trying to build a case here, y'all. It's my thesis that I'm just proposing that maybe God's delay is by design. Listen to this in Deuteronomy 8, chapter two. It says this. This is God speaking to the children of Israel. He says, you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years. He says, now I'm gonna tell you how I led you. Here's how I led you. I did it so that I might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. Now listen to verse three. He humbled you and let, listen to this. He let you be hungry. He let you be hungry on purpose and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. And here's why. So that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone. So I let you be hungry on purpose to bring an understanding to you, to expose something in you so that I could bring proper understanding so that you would know that we don't live by bread alone. It's just, maybe it's on purpose. Verse four, your clothing did not wear out on you,

nor did your foot swell these 40 years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Now, I love that the Lord shows his real heart here. It's like, well, great. God's just gonna punish me. That sounds like a great ride, John. Sign me up. No, but he's saying, listen, I'm trying to get you to the promised land that you're praying for. But I want you to get into the promised land becoming more like Jesus every day. And I'm going to get you into the promised land. Another passage, I'm writing a book on it right now that'll sell tens of copies. And it's called The God of Little by Little. Because he says, I will drive out the enemies out of the promised land, but I'm doing it little by little. And then he says, until you have increased enough to occupy it. So God's like, you're waiting on me, but I'm waiting on you. So God's wanting to do a work in us. And then he says, I promise you, you are gonna get to the promised land. Verse seven says, for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land.

It's a land of brooks of water and fountains and springs and flowing forth in the valleys and hills and wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates and land of the olives and the honey. He's like, I am gonna get you the job you've been praying for. But I wanna get you there and I want you to be sustained once you're there. And I want you to be able to keep it. And I want you to be prepared for what I'm calling you to do. So the delay was by design, not to shame us, but to make us whole and complete. What we would say a victory church so that we could live life to the full. So delay is the fiery furnace to purify our hearts. Aren't we excited? Let's pray and go home. This is so encouraging. So real quick, just real quick in the time we have left, I'm gonna show you four things that when you go through seasons of delay, I believe that there's more than four, but I wanna show you four things. If you'll be on alert, four things that God might be trying to expose in you, okay? If delay is the great exposer, then what is it trying to expose? Number one, if you're taking notes, write this down. Delay exposes what you trust. Delay will always expose what you trust.

Let's go back to the story. The story says that the children of Israel in verse one says we do not know what has become of Moses. So make us a God who will go before us. So the delay has exposed who they trust. Who did they trust? Moses. To the children of Israel, Moses, in essence, was God. And once Moses disappeared, now we're lost. We don't know where to go. We don't know what to do. We're completely lost because we had put all of our hope and all of our trust in a man, not even realizing that it wasn't the man at all. It was God. And they lost sight of this. And this happens a lot in church where people put a man or a woman on a pedestal because they're a great pastor or they're a great leader or they're a great worship leader. And no man, no woman belongs on any pedestal. We're not meant to be famous. There's no such thing as a famous pastor. There shouldn't be. But we put them on pedestals, and then when they fall, people fall. And that doesn't make any sense to me. They weren't God. So when there's delay, it exposes what we trust, and it's exposing in them.

They lost their guide, Moses, so now they made a guide. It says, make us a God who will go before us. We don't know where to go because Moses is gone. We put our trust in Moses. They had mistaken Moses as their guide, their God, so now we have to manufacture a guide. And we may be like, well, let's go on to the next one, John, because I don't have any golden calves in my house. I don't have any, there's nothing on my mantle. If it's made of gold, I wish I did. I'd melt that sucker down, you know? But we do create our own golden calves. We do. We may not call them that, but really a golden calf is anything, anything that we create to feel like we're in control when we feel like God is absent. So when we feel like God is absent, we have a tendency, at least I do, y'all can polish your halos, but this guy, I have a tendency to try to control it myself. I've got the same thing that Abraham and Sarah did. Well, God said it, so I'm just gonna make it. I'm gonna create it. I'm gonna make it happen. So a golden calf may be something that you grab when you feel anxious. When I have anxiousness in my heart, what do I reach for? Do I reach for my phone? Do I reach for food?

Do I reach for a bottle? Do I reach for a pill? Do I reach for amazon.com? Come on, somebody. Like, what am I reaching for to satisfy this? It's something that I force. It's delayed, so I'm gonna force it. I'm lonely, and I'm sick of being single, and he seems like a decent guy, so let's just do it. Get quiet, I know when I'm preaching when it gets quiet. It's opportunities, it's decisions, it's outcomes, all those things. Number two, let's keep going. Number two, delay exposes what you fear. It exposes what you fear. So for the Israelites, it said, who's gonna guide us now? Their fear was abandonment. Their fear was, if Moses is gone, now what? We feel abandoned, we feel lost, and when they said, as for this man Moses, we do not know what has become of him, and we don't know what to do next. This was not a phrase, this was not an informative phrase. This was an anxiety-filled phrase. They were anxious, they were afraid of being leaderless. So delay is the great exposer of our fears. When a job that you really need badly is delayed, your biggest fear of not being able to pay your bills will rush to the surface. So delay will just expose those fears in us.

The loss of control, loss of certainty, all those things. This is Saul, 1 Samuel chapter 13. This is Saul that I referenced earlier in verse eight. It says, now he waited seven days. This is Saul, he waited seven days. According to the appointed time set by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal. and the people were scattering from him. That's an important phrase. That's his fear. His fear is just exposed. The people started scattering. So Saul said, bring me the burnt offering and the peace offering, and he offered the burnt offering. Only the priest was to do this. As soon as he finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came and Saul went to him and meet him and to greet him. And Samuel said, what have you done? And Saul said, because, listen, he's exposing his fear. Because I saw that the people were scattering from me and that you did not come within the appointed days. And here's his greatest fear, that the Philistines were assembling in Michmash. Therefore, I said, now the Philistines will come down against us, I'm afraid. And I will not, and I have not asked the favor of the Lord. Watch this.

So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering. The delay exposed the fear in King Saul. And fear doesn't always look like panic, y'all. Very rarely does fear look like panic. Usually it looks like control, that I take control. So fear, fear will always rush in on the things that I feel like God has not finished. So we control people, we micromanage our teams, we try to over-control our children, we force conversations, we over-plan everything, we try to control our finances. Whatever that looks like, fear will drive us to take action. All right, you guys don't like that one. Let's go to the next one. Number three. I can read a room, all right? Number three, delay exposes what you crave. What you crave. So we know this because in verse four, Aaron makes the stolen calf and he lifts it up and he says, this is our God. This is our God. This is what has brought us up out of Egypt. So what they craved was a God that was tangible. What they craved was a God that they could see, that they could witness, that they could control and manipulate in some variation or form.

They wanted that God and whatever we reach for during our delay shows us what we crave, okay? Pull your toes back, all right? This might step around your aisle a little bit. So whatever we reach for, again, I said it a while ago, we'll reach for a phone, we'll reach for a bottle, we'll reach for people, we'll reach for, I see this a lot of people, we reach for attention because we have orphan hearts and we don't get affirmation from the Lord, the only true source of affirmation. And so our orphan hearts are starving, so we reach out to people because we want people to feel sorry for us. Ooh, it's quiet up in here now, okay. We think money will fix it. We think a new job will fix it. We think a new relationship will fix it. And so we reach for what we crave because the delay, this is what fasting is. You realize that's why we fast. So during our 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter, I fasted sugar. One of the things I fasted was sugar. So I'm not saying I'm never gonna eat sugar again. That would be foolishness. I will eat sugar again. What I'm saying is that for 40 days, I'm going to delay eating sugar. And on day 41, watch out, Blue Bonnet,

whatever the ice cream's called, Blue Bunny. So for 40 days, I delayed eating sugar. And guess what it did? It exposed my craving for it. So as soon as I delayed it, my craving came rushing to the surface. So while you're going through a season of delay, all I'm saying is take note of what you're reaching for because whatever you're reaching for is a form of a golden calf that's trying to take the place. Okay, last but not least, number four, delay exposes what you believe about God. This is the most important one of all of them. If you fell asleep and you just woke up, you're still good because this is the most important one. Delay will expose what you think about God. Delay reveals that orphan heart in us. Delay always reveals your theology. Okay, here's what I mean by that. If you kind of grew up in a home where God was, you had parents that would say things like, God has forgotten about us, God doesn't care about us. That formation, remember I talked about a spirit-formed self versus a fleshly-formed self, your theology. If you believe that God has forgotten you, then when delay happens, then delay feels like rejection. And delay reaffirms your theology about who God is. God's, see, I told you, God doesn't care.

God doesn't care about us. So delay's exposing that. If you think God is an absent God, then delay will tell you that he's abandoned you. If you think God is a withholding God, that he withholds, he's like, if you're a good boy, I'll give it to you. Oh, good boy, good job. You know, if you see God as like, give to get, if I'm a good boy, he'll bless me. Like, if that's your theology of who God is, then when delay comes, you will feel like God is punishing you because your theology will shape how you respond to delay. If you think God is distant, he's this distant God, he created us, but he's just kind of absent, then you will take his delay personal. It's a personal attack. Think about Martha, we'll circle back to Martha. She sent word to Jesus and said, hey, your best friend, Lazarus, is sick. She assumed, her theology was that Jesus is a healer. Jesus will come, she set an expectation, Jesus will come and heal his boy, Lazarus. Jesus, the Bible says that Jesus stayed where he was for four days. So listen to me, Jesus intentionally delayed. Why would he do such a thing? That seems so harmful, it seems so mean. Well, until you realize that he was trying to bring Martha a fresh revelation of who he was

because Martha only saw, Martha only saw Jesus as a healer, but now Jesus was gonna show Martha that I'm not just a healer, I'm a resurrector. So he changed her perspective of who he was. And how did he do it? By exposing through delay, through delay. So delay was an intentional thing. The reverse is also true. So if you grew up in a home or in a church where you believe that God is an intentional God, that God does not make mistakes, he's intentional in what he does, then you, when there's delay, you will see that as God's preparing you. God's working on me, he's preparing me for this. If you see God as, if you believe that God is good, if your theology is that God is a good God, then when you go through delay, you will decipher delay as protection. Let me tell you something, I've prayed for stuff before. I'm gonna just, I won't list her name. Okay, I'm good. I dated this girl in junior high and I was like, she's the one, I'm gonna marry this girl. Let me tell you something, I looked her up on Facebook, y'all, whew, whew, whew. That was from my protection. Can I get an amen, somebody?

I'm just saying, if you believe that God is a good God, then when there is a delay, you're like, the Lord loves me, he's protecting me. He knows that if he was to give that to me now, he would do more harm than, your theology, it shapes your theology. If you believe that God is sovereign, then delay means positioning. It's like, Lord, I'm playing checkers down here, but you're playing chess. So bring it on, I trust you, I trust you. The delay is just you positioning and your alignment. If you believe that God is working, then you believe, if you believe that you are a work that God is trying to shape and mold, then delay means, God, you're forming me into the man or the woman that you are creating me to be. And if it takes delay to shape me and mold me into the man of God that you are calling me to be, then I will rest with peace, knowing that your timing is perfect, not mine. So delay will always expose your theology. Okay, so if you're going through delay and there's something angry in you, then you're angry at God. Listen, first of all, God's not gonna strike you with a bolt of lightning, we can thank him for that, but it should also expose something in me that says, I gotta get back in this and find out who God really is, because this will tell you who God really is,

and then delay will help shape your view of that. So when we don't have a healthy view of the divinity of God, you have to have a healthy view of the divinity of God. And if you don't, we'll start questioning the delay of God. Okay? Okay, I wanna close with one passage of scripture and then we'll go home. Of all the things that God does, delay and how he works all these things, the Bible says, if you're looking for a word to stand on, just stand on, he works all things together for my good. Even the delays, he's working it together for my good. But I do wanna bring you just a bit of exciting news that there is one thing in your walk with the Lord that is instantaneous, that you do not have to wait one second to receive. And I always wanna preach words that, I don't think being a Christian is easy. If being a Christian is easy, we may not be doing it right. Because the Bible says that we pick up our cross every day and follow him, like it's tough. And we forget this in the modern Western world because life's pretty easy here in America. But you go ask some people in Iran, or Iraq, or Russia, or China, if it's easy to be a Christian, right? So I'm not sure it's meant to be this easy path. But there is one thing that we do when we come to Jesus for the first time that's instantaneous. There is no delay.

And thank you, Jesus, that there is no delay. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul says, he says, and working together with him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, at the acceptable time, I listened to you, and on the day of salvation, I helped you. He says, behold, now is the acceptable time. Right now is the acceptable time. So when we receive Jesus into our heart, we make him the Lord and Savior of our life. It's instantaneous, we are saved in that moment. God comes down, it is by faith, it is by grace through faith because of the grace of God, because he sent his one and only son to die for us, and we believe by faith that he died on a cross, he was buried, and he was resurrected on the third day. Because of that, we are saved, we are made new. And it's instantaneous, it's instantaneous. And so if you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, that's the best news you're gonna hear all year, is that no matter what your past is, no matter what you've walked through, no matter what this life has tried to throw at you, and no matter how many mistakes you've made, there is one thing in your life that there is no delay. There is no delay. It is a decision by faith, and because of the grace of God, you receive salvation instantly, instantly,

because of your faith. There was a guy that came on Easter, I met him after church at the nine. He was basically memorized scripture his whole life, knew the word of God, but he used it to weaponize, to prove that God wasn't real with people. He was very smart, very intelligent man, and on Easter Sunday, I said that people that have the most difficult time accepting Jesus are the smart ones, because they wanna try to figure it out, and they want it to all make sense, and everything to line up, and they wanna go, they wanna know about the dinosaurs, and this day, and this day, because they're brilliant people, if everything doesn't line up scientifically perfectly, then they won't believe, and I said, it is only by faith. It's by faith, not by your calculations, but by faith. He gave his life to Jesus. Easter, got baptized last week, and he's on fire for the Lord, and he's like, I'm gonna use all these scriptures now, not to go after people to not believe, but to go after people to believe, so it's by faith, it's by faith, and so I want, if you're at Edmond campus, at Grave Vine, here in the room, I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes.

I wanna give an opportunity for someone to receive Jesus, and so I'm gonna ask in just a minute, a pastor at your campus is gonna be making their way to the stage, and I'm gonna count to three, and I just want you to shoot up your hand and say, I need this without delay. I need Jesus. I have tried it without him, it doesn't work, and you ready to give your life to Jesus today, and change the trajectory of your entire life? Yes, but also eternity, all of eternity will be changed. Your family will be changed, your children's children will be changed because of the decision that you make today. So on the count of three, I just want you to raise your hand are you ready, one, two, three, shoot your hand up real high. 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. 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 give. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God, and we expect big results. Thank you again for joining us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God, and we expect big results. Thank you again for joining us today.