When God Feels Late: What to Do When Your Prayer Isn’t Answered

Maybe it's today. You know, no one asks for pain. No one wakes up and says, "Hey, God, today give me cancer, blow up my marriage, let a tragedy happen to my child." We naturally want life to work out. But we're old enough in this space to know that sooner or later, life hurts, pain. Mental, physical, financial, relational, sometimes it's self-inflicted, it's my own choices that I made. Other times, the pain is just the result of you living in a world that is soaked with sin, that's evil, it's cruel. John 11 and where we're going to go in our Bibles today, John 11, I think is going to help us because the danger in pain is drawing a conclusion that if God loved me, He'd keep me from hurting. In John 11, you're going to see there is pain, there is disappointment, there's waiting for God to show up, there's questions, there's tears, and there's death, the stench of loss. But what we're going to see is Jesus steps right in the middle of it. He steps right in the middle and that's what I'm hoping that we'll see in just a few moments. My prayer is that today, you would have the courage because we need to have the courage today to bring that pain point to Jesus. We don't need to cover up any longer. We need to pretend we don't need to think I need to work more, behave better somehow. No, we just need to come to the conclusion that God's not turned off by our pain. On the contrary, Jesus came because our humanity is marked by pain. You're in copy of God's word. Look at verse 1, John 11, 1. Now a certain man was ill. At the end of John chapter 10, he's not sick, but now Lazarus is ill. That's how quickly life can change. One diagnosis, one phone call, one conversation with a spouse, don't love you no more, one accident, betrayal, loss.

And then suddenly, life is divided between before and after, before I was divorced, after I was diagnosed with cancer, before the kids, after this. And notice how it continues in verse 2, it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him in our language, sent a text to Jesus, Lord, the one who you love is ill. And what's really important, I think the reason the Bible even puts this in here, God gave this because he wants us to be reminded that your pain doesn't mean Jesus stopped loving you. That's right, we can subconsciously begin to think, you know, if God loved me, my marriage would work out. might love them more. Look at their financial situation. answer my prayers, but Scripture never promotes, never promises a pain for your life. On the contrary, Jesus says in this world you're going to have all kinds of pain, all kinds of trouble, all kinds of problems. So the question this morning that you're going to wrestle in your life, that you're going to wrestle with is this, is not will I experience pain, but rather, what will I do with my pain when it comes? Here go to verse 4. But when Jesus heard it that Lazarus is ill, he said he responded, "Hey, he's texting back, the illness does not lead to death, it's for the glory of God." So the Son of God may be go over right now. This is really important because some of us, depending on how you grew up, you think that your pain is punishment. You think that the reason you're going through this is you did something that was less than best, you sinned, and now God's mad at you, and that's just not, that's just not biblical. He wants us to know that the reason Lazarus is ill has nothing to do with their behavior, but rather he wants God to be glorified, that in this moment of time I want you to see that God's not mad at you, he is madly in love with you, he's going to show up and be your God in your pain.

Now what Jesus does next is going to stretch you, because some of us have come to the conclusion that following Jesus is this safe under the steeple, weekend sport that I do, I sprinkle a little Jesus on my life so that I'm comfortable and all the bad things stay away from me. Here, go back to your Bible. Look what it says in verse five, "Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he immediately left and fixed their problem. Is that what the Bible says? It does the opposite of what you think. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Some of us are living in this space. Hey, I mean, God, what are you waiting for? I mean, certainly I've been praying for this. I've been asking, God, what would you do this? See, here's the problem. Is you and I, as human beings, we are stuck in the confines of space. God is not. Have you ever seen on social media these kind of puzzles that they ask you to solve? There's like a square, and then there's three rows of three dots, and they'll say, connect all the dots by drawing a line without crossing the line. And so you see that square, and the built-in assumption is you have to solve it inside of the square. The real test is the only way to connect those nine dots is to take your line outside of the box. See you and I live in a box of time. Your life is marked by seconds and minutes, hours and days, not so with God. And so God goes outside of the box at times to meet us in our pain point. See, God's delay is not proof of God's absence because God's delay doesn't mean that he's not there. Jesus doesn't prevent every pain, however he has promised to be present in the pain. And so in verse seven, time has passed, he's getting with the disciples.

He says, all right, guys, saddle up, so to speak. Let us go to Judea again. Let's go, and we're going to enter into the pain, and I'm going to do this miracle. Give them the disciples, like, wait, wait, wait, wait, come out, come out. Are you telling me that you want to go right back Rabbi to the Jews who are just now seeking to stone you? Are we going back there again? Again, this is challenging your safe little God in a box space. Did you want God to be this safe space that he'll act and perform exactly how you want him to act and perform, and what Jesus is saying, we're going back into the danger zone. You got to ask yourself a question. or am I looking for a comfortable Christ that I can control? So the disciples come to conclusion, well listen, we're in it to win it, so let's just kinda go along. And at the end of the day, like if we die, at least we're with Jesus. So they pack things up and they're going along the way. Look at verse 17, now when Jesus came, they finally arrived, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. The conclusion would be, you're late. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. Like many of you would go to a viewing, come alongside your friend, your co-worker, to let them know that you cared. When Martha hears that Jesus is coming,

she went and met Him, but Mary remained back at the viewing with everybody else consoling her, and Martha says what you can hear yourself saying to God. Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died, my marriage wouldn't have ended, my kids, my situation. I want to encourage you this morning, never measure God's love by how quickly He answers your prayer. It's a faulty theology. It's you living inside of the box, and it's not just Martha that let your eyes drop to verse 32, Mary says the same thing. Mary came to Jesus and saw Him, and she fell at His feet, saying to Him again, hear yourself, Lord, if you had been here, my brother, don't you remember the one that you said that you loved? He wouldn't have died. And then when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, the Bible says He's deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled. And He said, wherever you laid Him, show me your pain point. I want to focus in on it now. And the Bible says they took Him out and they showed Him, and then the Bible records what's known as the shortest verse, verse 35, Jesus wept. What I love about Martha is she is telling Jesus

exactly how she feels. She doesn't run from the disappointment. She runs right to Jesus and she leans in. See, faith isn't pretending you don't hurt. Faith is bringing your hurt to Jesus. The greatest thing that could happen in this space today, online today is those of us who would claim to be followers of Jesus is just stop pretending. Just stop it already. This idea of putting on your Sunday best. And I understand the sentiment behind it. Someone says, you know, God's good. And then you reply, all the time, God is good. Kind of like this, there's no problems in the world. There are problems, there are pressure points. We live in a culture where a mom can strangle her three children and we don't really understand whether or not it's murder or not. That's your culture, that's where we live. The pressure is on. And Jesus has stopped pretending that you got it all figured out. It's confusing and it's violent. And he's saying to you, bring it to me. He's deeply moved and he's troubled. Jesus knows, think about it. Jesus knows that he's about to, heal Lazarus, but he's still cries. Why? I mean, if you knew, if you were talking

to your son or your daughter and they had a really big problem or talking to a spouse, someone that was important, and you knew, you knew for a fact that what they're crying about is soon to be healed. What would your response be? Jesus knows that there's a coming resurrection in Lazarus's life, but that doesn't make that moment's pain any, Jesus doesn't say to Mary or Martha, "Stop crying, girlfriend. Get your emotions together. Buckle up. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I mean, come on now. Have more faith." Not reading your Bible is important in praying, but like we've all heard of. Well, just if you don't understand what God's doing, just read your Bible more. I've read my Bible more and still been in pain. I've prayed and asked God for something and still been in pain. He doesn't say, "Now, I want you girls to know. You know everything happens for a reason. Don't you just want to slap them when they say that to you? Let's be honest for a second. I know we need to ask for forgiveness, we're not supposed to slap anybody." But when someone says, "You know, I know this is hard and I know this is difficult, but everything happens for a reason or this one, you'll understand someday." Well, I'm not living in someday. I'm living in today and I don't understand today. He doesn't say any of that. You know what Jesus does?

He just sits there with her and he cries. Before Jesus does something about their pain, he steps into their pain. That's our Savior. That's what I love him so much. He enters in. Jesus knows what he's about to do. He knows that Lazarus is going to come back. He knows our pain. He feels our pain. Jesus knows rejection. He knows betrayal. He knows loneliness and physical loss and false accusations and grief and abandonment and death and Jesus is not intimidated by our tears. He enters in our tears with us. So I just want to say this morning, you don't have to pretend that you're okay anymore. Emily, before she came to join our team here at Hope, she served at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas. And if there's a pain point in the world, I would suggest to you it's Las Vegas. Think about it. If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, there's a lot of pain that's still in Vegas because we all go and dump it in that place, right? And at the church, they had this statement, it was on the walls, but they actually lived it and believed it, it's okay not to be okay. I was like that, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is stop pretending that it doesn't hurt. That's why Hebrews, chapter 4 says that we don't have a high priest, we don't follow after a God that's kind of up on a royal, you know, golden throne. He understands he has been touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He knows the pressure points. That's what makes God of the Bible.

If you're kind of wondering about if you want to follow Jesus, look at all the world religion. Every single one of them, it tells a story about a deity who someplace else and says to you as a human being, you perform in a certain way and that deity will look down upon you and one day will grant favor upon you as long as you please that deity except the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible says humans, you can't fix this. This is beyond you. So what I will do as God of the universe, I will step into your humanity, I will become a man just like you are a man, I will become human, I will feel the pressure, I'll feel the pain, I'll feel the rejection, I'll feel the problems, I'll feel the betrayal, I will cry just like you so that you will see, I love you. I'm with you and I'm for you and the life that you're looking for, it is completely rooted in me. See, God provides his presence because he understands in this world there is pressure. Here, go back to your Bible, look what he says in verse 38, then Jesus is deeply moved again. If it comes to the tomb, it was a cave and a stone laid against it, but we're good at rolling stones in front of our problems. We roll stones in front of our pain. Some of us have rolled the stone of a second marriage in front of a first marriage, a third marriage in front of the second marriage. Some of us roll the stone of a hobby in front of a pain point. We roll the stone of an entertainment, we do something to block. now, verse 39, Jesus said, "Take away the stone." In just a moment, I'm going to ask you to take away the stone. I'm going to ask you to trust God to let that pain point become exposed, because most of us in this space online, many of us are just like Martha, because God's stepping up and stepping in, and he wants to do the miracle in your life, but we show up with an excuse. Instead of experiencing the miracle, we offer an excuse. Hey, hey, hey, Jesus, if I roll away the stone, the stench of death is going to be experienced by all. People will see this pain in my life.

I've learned to live with it. Hey, now, Jesus, I asked you earlier to come. You didn't show up. I've kind of figured out how to get along with that, to go along with that. I'm controlling my life once again. Let's just leave this pain in my life covered up. Hey, when will you start becoming more aligned to the miracle that God wants to do in your life, rather than the opinion of people around you? Martha's worried about people. They're going to smell this odor. They're going to, did you not think that people already know that there was like a stink going on? It's death. That pain in your family, that pain from having a spouse tell you, I don't love you no more. Listen, let me tell you, the way that you've shown up in other conversations, kind of the way that you become a negative nally, the way that you become a bully. In many ways, people already know that you're hurting. How do I know this? Because hurting people hurt people. People who are hurting other people is inside. They've got some pain, and they're trying to control it. Rather than taking it to Jesus and letting him solve it. So he says, roll away this stone. See, God provides the power, but he requires your participation. And this is the great tragedy of the collective church in what I call the West. We have turned church in the West into an observation theology, rather than a participation mission. Not everybody, but many today on this campus, there'll be hundreds and hundreds of people here. And many of us, right, you woke up today and you had your bowl of Cheerios, you sprinkled some sugar on it, and you had your cup of coffee, and you got in your air conditioner car, and you drove here, and you parked it, and someone in the parking lot, they greeted you, and at the front desk, they welcomed you, and in the cafe, they served you, and you dropped your kids off in Hope Kids, and now you're here. The musicians, they came up, and they led us in songs and teaching, and you came as a consumer as if you're going to a restaurant. And God's never called us to be consumers. That's why at Church of Hope, if you didn't know this, here's a fun fact. We have no members at Church of Hope. There's not one member at Church of Hope. We have partners. See, membership denotes rights. You pay your membership fee at the local gym, and they give you a towel, and they give you a locker, and you have the rights to go in and do your workout, right? That's what membership is. Partners roll up their sleeves. Partners say, "I'm a part of what's going on here." It happens because I have leaned in. When you're on the team, you've got grass stains on your uniform. You've got an abrasion on your elbow. Your muscles have been strained. There is sweat on your brow. Why? Because I'm a partner. I'm on this team. God provides the power, but He requires. He calls for our participation,

roll the stone away. Just in case you're not convinced of that, go back to your Bible, look at verse 43. Jesus cries out with a loud voice. Lazarus, come out. The man who had died came out. However, his hands and his feet are bound with linen strips, and his faith, his face is wrapped with a cloth. They would die, and then they would wrap them with these cloths. They would put ointments to try to keep the stink, the stench, from permeating out of the cave, out of the burial spot. Now, let me ask you a question. If Jesus can cause a Could he say bandages fall off? Could he say bandages disintegrate? Hey, he could walk up there like Superman, right? And he could be the star of the show and he could take off all the bandages himself. But notice what he does. He says to them, collective now, not just Martha, not just Mary, but to them, the crowd, the community. He says to them, unbind him and let him go. Everyone in this space has a role. God's gifted you. That giftedness isn't just so you can go make a living. It's not so that you can be successful in your hobby. He wants you to lean in with the skills that he's given you so men and women, boys and girls, moms and dads will discover that the hope they're looking for has a name and his name is Jesus, that there is a promise that goes beyond this lifetime that promise of God that he is in us with us and for. So don't confuse trusting God with the neglecting what God has entrusted to you. Community, being involved, being engaged. So what I wanna do in a few moments that we have left is I wanna take John chapter 11

and I'm gonna give you three action steps this week because we're not gonna be just hearers of the word, we're gonna be doers of the word. We don't just kind of sit here on a Sunday, kind of soak up a little talk and then we go on to the buffet line and on with a holiday weekend. No, no, no, we've got our pins out, leaders are readers, we're notetakers and we're gonna write down these action steps because you will be held accountable not because of what you heard on a Sunday but how you lived your life 24/7, 365. So if you're ready, number one is this, is bring your pain to Jesus. Humans bring their pain to someone or something. There are a lot of men in this space who bring their pain to porn. Your life's out of control so you take that pain to porn, we take it to a hobby, we take it to some chemical, some food, some entertainment, bring it to Jesus. Mary cried and Martha questioned but neither one were rejected. See, here's the pressure. You brought your pain to somebody once and they told you, that's not so bad. Let me tell you what's happened to me. Well, when I was younger for whatever reason, I had a terrible complexion and I had acne

and I can remember talking to my mom and to her and everything, my dad had left, she's trying to pay the bills, like to her, having a bad complexion and a zit on the end of your nose isn't that big of a deal. But when you're in middle school and high school and you're already wearing glasses and they're coke, I mean, my glasses were thick and I'm not just talking about a little pimple. Like, I mean, I had some zits that if you squeeze them, you can put your protein powder in it and have a protein drink. I mean, I had some big old white nasty, like, milk looking like, and this is like, and it's never, if you knew the problems that I was facing, let me tell you, it was a problem to me. And so somebody rejects me, so you know what I learned? Don't ever tell anybody about your problem ever again. Don't tell your coach. Don't tell your boss. Know your role, shut your hole and just keep on pushing. And the problem with that is God says the opposite. God says, let your requests be made known to me. He says, come into the throne room of grace. You belong here, you're my son, you're my daughter. Bring that problem, bring that pressure. Bring it right up in here because I'm your God. I'll be with you. Yeah. Identify your pain, what is it?

Then take it to Jesus, don't spiritualize it, don't minimize it, don't hide it, just name it. This hurt me, he hurt me, this hurts me. I'm angry, I'm irritated, I'm agitated, I'm so frustrated, I'm scared, God. How is this all gonna turn out? Two plus two does not equal four in the world right now. I need you, God. I'm so disappointed, I don't understand, I need healing. You take that, hurts. You are living with the pain right now because you thought that your role was to hide it rather than take it to a holy God who says, "Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, all you who are pressure, burden, pain-filled, come and bring it to me." See, your pain may limit what you can see, but it will never limit what God can do. Faith is not controlling God's outcome. Faith is trusting God's character. Sometimes he removes the pain. Sometimes he does the healing. Other times he walks with us through the pain. Sometimes the healing can happen immediately. Sometimes the healing happens gradually. And for us as Christ's Father is one thing that we know is that ultimately the healing takes place in a real place called heaven. So I might not be healed and this pain might not leave me in this lifetime, but what I know is the beautiful promise that has been given to us by God, that there is coming a day in revelations that God will wipe away every tear. And this crazy world system, he will reestablish it into what he originally designed for us. And it's not lost on me that your pain, my pain, our pain, it's real. Something happened to you. It could be your own choices, the choices of someone else. And what happens is that pain begins to define you. I'm divorced. This diagnosis, I'm now the failure, the abuse, the grief. But I want you to know this today, that your pain may explain a part of your story without becoming the title of your story. It's your pain. It's a part of the story of your life. You've gone through this as a child. You went through this as a teenager. You said no to him, but he kept pressing and pushing. You said till death do us part, but she said no thanks. That pain is a part of your story, but it does not have to become the title of your story. Bring that pain to Jesus in just a moment.

Prayer partners will be here today's your day. You've been praying for a moment like this. You've been praying for a day like this. You don't have to live one more, one more moment. Here's the second thing I would say as action steps is ask yourself what stone do I need to move? What stone, what obstacle, what excuse have you rolled in front of your pain? I can say probably to some of the ladies here, even some of the guys that the stone that you've rolled is that I can't be at the becoming conference. I've got this with the kids and I've got that going on. I just want to say ladies, you need to roll that stone away. You need to register today. And to the guys that are here, you need to register. If you got a gal and you're like, you just register and say, listen, baby, I'm going to take care of the dishes. I'm taking care of the kids. I'm taking care of the house. I'm taking everything. You need to be there. I mean, close to 600 women are going to be here. You do not want to be the lady who's not in this space. Maybe the stone you need to roll away is a phone call that you need to make and ask somebody to forgive you for what you said, what you texted, what you posted. Maybe it's joining a group. A week from this Tuesday, the men's and women's groups will begin on Tuesday nights. You know, we've as a church and because many of you give generously, we've rolled away the excuse. Well, you know, I've got kids. We have child care completely provided for you, screened, trained, ready, protected for you so that you can roll away that excuse. And so guys, you can come. We have two groups on Tuesday night. One is a what we call BSF. This is in the book of Romans and it's more of a line by line Bible study for the guys. Guys, you'd like to get kind of dig a little bit. We have another group called Fight Club for the guys, a little more topical, a little more interactive with the guys. Just roll that stone away. Some of you have been caught up in a hurt and in a habit and a hang up for years. You come and you can experience the freedom that guy, but you gotta roll that excuse away. Some of us when it comes to our finances, we are so upside down and you don't have to live that way. We have financial peace. You have to roll that stone away. You might not be able to create the miracle. One thing everybody in this space can do today is we can roll away the stone. And I want to say this and I won't linger too long, but it's certainly going to feel like I'm meddling.

So just love me anyways and keep me on your Christmas card list. But some of us need to realize that particularly in our physical bodies, some of the healing that we're asked for, like we have developed habits that are actually causing the very physical pain that we're asking Jesus to heal. Like let me point you to the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price or glorified God in your body. Now, there's a part of our culture that glorifies the body, right? That we're trying to prep it and to, you know, inject it and all the, I'm not talking about that kind of craziness at all, but I'm talking about just a common sense understanding that like I want my life to be used for the glory of God. I want people to discover hope in Christ. So like this is by the way, it's my one and only body. So I want to do the best that I can to take care of it and watch my body is actually attached to my, my worship Bible says this in Romans 12, I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, unacceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So we ask God often to heal what our habits keep hurting. So let me just point a few things to you that will actually, we'll save you a whole bunch of money and we'll, you know, it won't change a disease that you've been diagnosed with, a medical condition that you've had, but certainly will bring increased health to your life. Sleep, just go to bed, stop spiritualizing, staying up late. I did that for years and decades. I used to say things like this. I'll sleep when I get to heaven, but for now I'm going to work for God so that no one goes to hell. You egotistical, prideful, narcissistic boy, go to bed. You need sleep. Well, I can't, oh, you can.

It's just a decision. I know it's hard. You've got 5,674 different channels on your TV now. You got everything else that's going on. You got travel ball. You got everything. All kinds of excuses, but let me just tell you that God created this body and this body. Medical experts will tell you seven to eight hours of sleep a night, which by the way means eight or nine hours in bed because we don't go to bed at 11 and get up at six and say, oh, I've done my seven hours. Oh, no, because you know it takes you a while to fall asleep and then you got a little night. You got to pee and tinkle and some of you guys are older. You got to pee and tinkle 20 times during the night and then you wake up because you're thinking about this and your mind's racing about that. And then the reality is, yeah, you went to bed at 11, got up at six or seven and you got like three hours of sleep. You got to go to sleep. You got to hydrate. I know you love your Diet Coke, your Dr. Pepper, all that kind of stuff, but listen, it ain't doing nothing for you, but you just, you got to drink that water. I mean, you got to, but PMC. But PMC, I don't like how water tastes. Call God. God designed you. You is water. You need the water, right? And then like nutrition, I'm not telling you what to eat, but like you know all the hacks and things, man, do not, do not go in the middle of that store. Just go on the outsides. Here's a great rule.

Buy things to eat that have five or less ingredients. They got five, they got more than five ingredients. Like just start eating this chair. I mean, chairs and Cheetos. They go together. I mean, it's like, I'm just, I'm just trying to help you move your body. You don't have to. Now, if you want to, you can get up on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and go run what they fellas downtown, you can go on an Ironman run, you can go, but you don't have to do that. Just go for a walk, just move this body emotionally. let them see. The bottom line is this is you don't change your life by making one huge decision, you change your life by making small, healthy decisions consistently. I heard there's an Instagram reel going around and it was kind of titled, I think it's TikTok. TikTok, make me beautiful overnight. Or I love this one, abs in three minutes, three minutes a day, six pack, eight pack. Anything in life, marriage, physical fitness, relationship with God, it doesn't because all of a sudden you got some great epiphany and you said okay, it's Sunday, tomorrow I go run a marathon. Tomorrow I know God intimately, it's a day by day by day by day. I've shared this with you before, I give this to you for completely free, particularly in a relationship. Linda has never asked me to love her the most on her birthday and on our anniversary and on the chocolate and flowers day, Valentine's Day. You know what she did ask me? She said I want you to love me for who I am, 365 days a year. That's powerful. Now she said after you love me the 365 days, you can still show up on my birthday, you can show up on my anniversary, you can do something nice with that chocolate and flowers on Valentine's Day, but let's do it every single day. Let me give you the last thing, is live in community and I define community for you as people following and obeying Jesus. Hey, have friends who don't know Jesus, be around them for the purpose of letting them see how awesome it is in knowing Jesus, how awesome it is in obeying Jesus, how awesome life is, knowing that Jesus Christ is your hope, but understand the five closest people to you are shaping your life and you want those five people closest to you following and obeying Jesus along the way. See, isolation magnifies pain,

spiritual community helps carry it. That's why we have groups. We want you to be in groups because inside that group you get to know somebody and somebody gets to know you. In James chapter five, it says something that, well, it's going to stretch you, but notice what God's word says, make this your common practice. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. Watch this. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful. Now, this is not describing a practice where some of you have grown up in the Catholic church, where you go in a little box, slide open the little lever, and then you confess to somebody your sins and somehow you become right with God. That's not, what this is talking about is being in spiritual community and I can share with you what I'm struggling to share because there's something in that community where healing takes place. The problem is, is we have exchanged confessing our sins to one another because we are too busy gossiping about one another to each other. Can I just help you with gossip? I'm going to solve gossip in one statement. Are you ready? Do you have what it takes to hear this? If the person you're talking about is not right with you in the room, shut up. You shut down gospel overnight. Now, you might need to talk about whatever you're talking about, but here's the, here's the beauty. You go to the person that you have the issue with and you talk to them about it. Not your girlfriends, not your buddies. You go and you lean in and you have that conversation and then what we do is we flip the script and we start confessing. Here's what I'm struggling with. Here's what's going on. I promise you, the guys who struggle with porn or whatever the thing in the world that you struggle, when you bring somebody else into that The probability of that vice having control over you greatly diminishes. Let me just land this message with this statement. Your wound doesn't have to become your identity. If you're human, like I'm human, we have wounds. There were a long time, there were many years, I limped with a wound, particularly in the relationship with my father. It doesn't have to identify you. In the hands of Jesus, it can become your testimony.

See what-- What the devil intended to wound me in the space of fatherhood, I would suggest to you, when I put it into the hands of Jesus, has become the greatest part of my testimony. My role as a dad to daughters, whenever I take my last breath, and you all gather and talk about me and have some chicken and green beans and potato salad afterwards, I promise you, one of the tallest stories in the room that day, won't be anything that did as a pastor, it won't because I did Iron Man's, it won't because I was a Marine, it won't be about any wealth that I've been able to accumulate. I promise you, what you will hear is a story of a guy. [MUSIC PLAYING] Who never really experienced fatherhood, but leaned in. And I don't know what your wound is, I don't know what your pain point is. I know that it's real, and I promise you, it doesn't have to become your identity. You take it this morning, you bring it here, you let prayer partners come alongside of you, you put it in the hands of Jesus, and it will become a part of your testimony. He will take your pain, and he will platform it for his glory and for the joy of people. He will take you into a point in a place so that people will not just hear, but they will see how good God is. Thank you. Being together in this space today is really good.

If you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, I'd like to invite you today to start following Jesus. It's not about your behavior. It's not about your church attendance. It's about the reality that Jesus is for you. God's not managed you. He's madly in love with you. Would you right now pray this prayer with me? Hey, God, it's me. I've sinned, and I know it, and I can't fix me. But today, I receive you, Jesus, as my Savior. I believe that you died on that cross for me, and that you were buried for three days, and then you became alive again. And I invite you into my life to guide me and direct me all the rest of the days of my life. And with that prayer, my friend, welcome to God's family. I'd like to continue our friendship. If you would email me, [email protected]. I'll follow up with you, and together, we'll celebrate Jesus in your life. Peace. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)