Will You Wait on the Lord?

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♪ And if you've got breath in your lungs ♪ ♪ Then give Him your praise ♪ ♪ And if you've got breath in your lungs ♪ ♪ Then give Him your praise ♪ ♪ So sing it in the morning ♪ ♪ Sing it in the evening ♪ ♪ The Lord's been kind to me, amen ♪ ♪ So I'll sing it on the mountain ♪ ♪ Sing a little louder ♪ ♪ Cause the Lord's been kind to me ♪ ♪ Is that true for you today? ♪ ♪ So sing it in the morning ♪ ♪ Sing it in the evening ♪ ♪ The Lord's been kind to me, amen ♪ ♪ So I'll sing it on the mountain ♪ ♪ Sing a little louder ♪ ♪ The Lord's been good to me ♪ ♪ Sing it in the morning ♪ ♪ Sing it in the evening ♪ ♪ The Lord's been good to me, amen ♪ ♪ So I'll sing it on the mountain ♪ ♪ Sing a little louder ♪ ♪ The Lord's been good to me ♪ ♪ Oh, the angel of his goodness to you ♪ ♪ He's coming strong ♪ ♪ And if he's saintly, guilty, maybe give him your all ♪ ♪ If your sin is faithful, thank you for all of your days ♪ ♪ And if you've got faith in your love ♪ ♪ Then give it another day, come on, amen ♪ ♪ If the Lord's been good to me, oh, he's coming strong ♪

♪ And if he's saintly, guilty, maybe give him your all ♪ ♪ If your sin is faithful, thank you for all of your days ♪ ♪ And if you've got faith in your love, then give him your praise ♪ ♪ And if you've got faith in your love, then give him your praise ♪ Come on, let's pray. Amen. Amen, it is such a gift to gather together, to get to come together and worship, to celebrate what the Lord is doing in his church. And as we do every week when we gather, we're gonna take some time to read scripture together. And you'll notice this week, there's a few repeating lines that we have highlighted, and those are the lines that we're gonna say all together. So let's turn our eyes to the screen. We're gonna read out of Psalm chapter 136. It says, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords for his steadfast love endures forever. It is he who remembered us in our lowest state for his steadfast love endures forever and rescued us from our foes for his steadfast love endures forever. He who gives food to all flesh for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven for his steadfast love endures forever.

And this is the word of the Lord. And we all say, thanks be to God. Let's continue to worship together this morning. You are here, moving in our midst, I worship you, I worship you. You are here, working in this place, I worship you, I worship you. You are here, moving in our midst, I worship you, I worship you. You are here, working in this place, I worship you, I worship you. I worship you, I worship you, for you are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. Come on, make it your declaration. Waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are here, touching every heart. I worship you, I worship you. You are here, you're healing every heart. I worship you, I worship you. You are here, turning lives around. I worship you, I worship you. You are here, mending every heart. I worship you, I worship you. For you are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. That is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. That is who you are. ♪ That is who you are ♪ Sing it again, Waymaker. ♪ You are Waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper ♪ ♪ Light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are ♪

Come on, you sing it, you sing it. ♪ You are ♪ ♪ Light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are ♪ Sing it, it's who he is. ♪ That is who you are ♪ Make your declaration. ♪ That is who you are ♪ Come on again. ♪ That is who you are ♪ ♪ That is who you are ♪ Sing it again. ♪ That is who you are ♪ Sing it again. ♪ That is who you are ♪ ♪ That is who you are ♪ ♪ You'll never change, no ♪ ♪ Oh, you'll never change, cause it's who you are ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, glory to God, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, glory to God, hallelujah ♪ ♪ I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ There is none like you ♪ ♪ I worship you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ That is what I long to do, and I give you praise ♪ ♪ For you are my righteousness, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ There is none like you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ Thank you, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ There is none like you, I worship you, oh, I worship you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ Oh, I worship you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ That is what I long to do, and I give you praise ♪ ♪ For you are my righteousness, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪

♪ There is none like you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ Thank you, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ There is none like you, oh, prince of peace ♪ ♪ Thank you, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ Thank you, oh, I worship you, almighty God ♪ ♪ To the one who wore a crown of thorns ♪ ♪ To the one who tore the lash and scourge ♪ ♪ To the one who gave his life for me ♪ ♪ That will pierce my nails for the sacrifice ♪ ♪ That has torn the way we cry out your name ♪ We crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God, you are worthy God. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God. You are worthy God, you are worthy God. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God. To the one who gave his very life away, took upon himself all our guilt and shame. Hanging on a cross, for the world he loved, with his precious blood, purchased his land for God. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God, you are worthy God. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God, you are worthy God. Worthy, worthy, only you are worthy. To the one who endured all the shame of the cross, to the land who was slain as atonement for us, to the son who overcame all the power of death, we praise you. For the stripes, for the wounds, for the beating you bore, for the tears, for the blood that was willingly poured, for the merciful, wonderful majesty of your love. To the one who endured all the shame of the cross, to the land who was slain as atonement for us, to the son who overcame all the power of death, we praise you. For the stripes, for the wounds, for the beating you bore, for the tears, for the blood that was willingly poured, for the merciful, wonderful majesty of your love. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God, you are worthy God. Oh we crown you, we fall face down and we worship, we all cry out, you are worthy God, you are worthy God. To the one who endured all the shame of the cross, to the land who was slain as atonement for us, to the son who overcame all the power of death, we praise you. For the stripes, for the wounds, for the beating you bore, for the tears, for the blood that was willingly poured, for the merciful, wonderful majesty of your love. ♪ God, God was really there ♪ ♪ For the merciful, wonderful majesty of God ♪

♪ We crown Him with God's wisdom ♪ ♪ We worship in your presence ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ God, we crown Him with our faith stounding ♪ ♪ We worship in your presence ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ You are worthy God ♪ ♪ Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah ♪ ♪ This is my song, my song of praise to you God ♪ ♪ My Savior God, to thee, how great thou art ♪ ♪ How great thou art, how great thou art ♪ ♪ Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee ♪ ♪ To thee, how great thou art, how great thou art, oh ♪ ♪ How great thou art, how great thou art, oh yeah, oh yeah ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ Great and mighty God. Our worship is for you and you alone and your son, Jesus Christ. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Can we just say thank you, Jesus, today? Thank you, Jesus, for what you did for us on the cross. It's the reason we sing, it's the reason we're here. It's the reason we have hope today because of Jesus. It's in that beautiful name everyone said, amen. Can we give praise to our one and only Savior today?

Thank you, Lord, amen, amen. Hey, before you see it, I want you to turn around, give somebody a hug, shake a hand, do something. Let them know you're grateful to be here today. Well, good morning, church family. So good to see you this on this beautiful morning. This may be the only weekend all year in Oklahoma we could have had church outside, but we didn't do that. It is good to be together. One more time, can we celebrate everyone who was baptized? Such a special thing to be a part of them taking that next step as a church family, but we're gonna have a great weekend ahead of us. If you're new to Church on the Move, my name is Priscilla. I'm up here with my friend, Kim Vaughn, and we just wanted to take a moment to say hello before Pastor Witt joins us. Also welcome anyone who may be here for the first time. So if that's new, we're so glad that you're with us. In fact, we would love to give you a gift. Yes, if you're new, we have a gift for you. We'd love to send you a gift card to Fulfill Coffee Lab. It's our coffee shop that's right here in the lobby, and it's where some of our church family and staff hangs out throughout the week. And so you can fill, pull out your phone right now and text the word new to 23101, and we'd invite you to stop by sometime during the week. And we will also send you some details about Next Move. Next Move is a monthly lunch that we have

for those of you that may be new or curious about who we are as a church. It's a time where we share a meal together. You get to meet our team and hear about the different ways that you can get connected whenever you are ready. That's right, our next gathering is actually happening May 17th after the 1130 service. So you can get signed up for that by texting the word next to the number 23101. We would love to host you in Next Move. Well, before we move on with the rest of our service and share a couple of more quick updates with you, we wanna take a moment right now to honor God with our giving. It's something that we get to do as a church family every single week, and maybe you're new to giving and you're curious about ways to give around here. We have a couple of really easy next steps for you to take. If you've never given with us before, there's a generosity card in the seat back in front of you that lists out three ways that you can partner with us, or you can even text the word GIVE and the dollar amount to 23101 and follow the prompts. But if you came prepared to give in the room today by cash or card, there are giving envelopes in the seat back in front of you. You can fill that out and drop it in the drop boxes as you leave today. But before Pastor Witt comes out, I just wanted to highlight a few things that are coming up. Next weekend is Mother's Day weekend. We can't wait to celebrate with you. We will have some treats for everybody, flowers for mom. We will have vendors, local vendors out in the courtyard, and of course we'll have activities for the kids.

So be sure to plan on being here next weekend. That's right. We'll have some sweet treats. Make sure you invite someone to come with you as well next weekend. We'll have a lot of fun together. Well, one last update we want to share with you is applications are now open for COTMU year one. If you're not familiar with what that is, it is a 30-week class where we get to dive deeper into the Bible and really learn about this unified story that points to Jesus. And since we launched a COTMU year one seven years ago, we've seen over a thousand students graduate from the program, including the both of us. I remember the first time I walked into class on day one, I sat at a table. I had not been in a classroom environment in decades. And so my kind of unreasonable fear is, what if I find out I don't know anything about the Bible? I know it's a little bit ridiculous, but over the next 30 weeks, what happened was I fell in love with the Bible in a deeper way than maybe I have experienced in my entire life. And I became a true student of scripture. So really that is our hope for you. Maybe you're new to reading your Bible or you've been following Jesus for decades. We hope that this program would bring the Bible to life for you in a special way. So if you'd like to apply or find out more information, just go to cotm.info. You can apply there as well. But there is a cost associated with being a part of this really incredible class. So maybe the Lord is stirring on you to take this step, but financially it's going to be a struggle. We do have some scholarships set aside that you can apply for as well. So hopefully you'll look into that. Last thing I'll tell you about it, the classes fill up really, really fast. So you're not going to want to wait to apply.

Go ahead and go to cotm.info to do that. Well, we're ready to move on with the rest of our service. Before we do, Kim, why don't you pray over our time together? Well, Father, we thank you for the finished work of the cross. God, I thank you for this church family that we can come together and to worship you. God, right now as we settle our hearts, God, I just pray for Pastor Witt as he brings the word, God, that you would just speak through him. God, we are ready to receive, and it's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Good morning, Church on the Move. Welcome this weekend. If you're new around here, my name is Witt, and we're glad that you worship with us. I also want to welcome anybody that might be joining us online. We always have Church on the Movers who are traveling or maybe unable to be here on a particular weekend. I imagine my mom and dad are perhaps watching this morning. Welcome and greetings to you. Gary and Cindy Schott, and I think about them, they're in a spot right now where they're just not coming on the weekends, and I know they're watching. I just want to say we love you guys, we're with you. And then we also have two churches, one in a men's prison and one in a ladies' prison, and we always like to welcome them this week. Or each weekend. So can we put our hands together and just say welcome? We're glad you're here. Before we jump in today, I want to let you know about one more thing that's coming up here in just a couple of weeks, actually a little less than a couple of weeks. We've got a night of worship and teaching with Pastor Matt Chandler. Pastor Matt is a dear friend of mine. We went through Wheaton College together and just became good friends.

He is one of the, in my opinion, the best living Bible teachers on the planet right now. He's coming to teach. We're going to have just a beautiful night of worship. If you've ever used to come to some of the old kind of first Wednesday services that we used to do way back when, that's kind of what this is going to be like. A little bit of extended worship, and then just a time of preaching and teaching. This is a no-cost event, totally free to you. He is releasing a new book, and I know he's super excited about that, and he's going to be teaching out of that. But there's no obligation to buy anything, just to come and be encouraged, lifted up. I think this is going to be a wonderful night, and I would love to see this room filled up with people who are coming to hear good Bible teaching on May 13th, 7 p.m. It's a big night at 180 as well, so a lot of students will be here. And so we would love to just kind of fill this campus up, see a lot of people here learning about Jesus on a Wednesday night in May. So I wanna invite you to be a part of that. All right, commercial break over. If you have a Bible, grab it. And we're gonna be jumping into Genesis 16. I have loved studying this passage. I've loved this series so far. I've read the story of Abraham, but you know, anytime you spend extended time just kind of meditating on a passage that you read before, all these new things come out. And this certainly has been the case for me this week in Genesis 16. I was familiar with this chapter,

but I saw so much that I had never seen before. It's beautiful, it's practical, but maybe the thing I like about it most is that it's just relatable. It feels so real and raw, like human nature just right on the page. This, in Genesis 16, is the first two-way conversation recorded in Scripture, maybe recorded in human history, I don't know, but at least in Scripture, between a husband and a wife. And it's an argument. How real is that, right? Like, Sarai is upset with Abraham because he has taken her suggestion. In fact, she's going to blame him for simply doing what she told him to do. And if you're married and a husband, and that doesn't feel relatable, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not even sure you're actually married. But that's what we're gonna find here. Just humanity, like right on display. And the tension and the grittiness of what it looks like to actually try to follow God, to journey with him. So, if you have your Bible open, we're gonna read the whole chapter. It's not that long, 16 verses. If you don't have a Bible, you can follow along on the screen.

And it starts like this. Now, Sarai, Abraham's wife. Let me just pause here and point something out. I want you to notice how often in this chapter the narrator is going to kind of reaffirm each person's position in the family. Here, we're getting, because it's gonna get confused. That's their problem. They're gonna confuse these relationships. So, the narrator keeps drawing us back to who's who and what role do they have in this family. Sarai, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abraham, behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children through her. This was an ancient Near Eastern practice where if a woman was unable to have children, she would offer her servant. And the child that would be born to her servant would become her child. And that's what Sarai is doing. It's a common cultural practice. It says, Abraham, listen to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abraham had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abraham's wife, just in case you forgot, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abraham, her husband, as a wife. And he went into Hagar and she conceived.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abraham, may the wrong done to me be on you. It's your fault for doing what I told you to do. How relatable is that? I gave you my servant to your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abraham said to Sarai, behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please. I don't love that particular translation. I think a better way of understanding it in other translations might put it like this. Do with her what you think is best. This is not Abraham saying just do to her whatever you want. He's saying do what you believe is best. Treat her the way you think would be best to treat her. Well, Sarai doesn't exactly do that. She deals harshly with her. And Hagar then flees. She runs away. Verse seven. The angel of the Lord found her, that is Hagar, by a spring of water in the wilderness. The spring on the way to Shur. This is on the way back to Egypt.

Remember, she's Egyptian and she's most likely headed back where she's come from. She's going back home. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from? Where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction. he shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. In other words, he's gonna be fighting with everyone all around him. That will be his nature, his future, and certainly that has borne true. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing, for she said, truly, here have I seen him who looks after me. Therefore, the well was called Bir Lahai Roy. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. So this chapter divides into two halves. You may have noticed that the first half deals primarily with Abram and Sarai. They are kind of the center of the story. The second half, the focus shifts to Hagar and her interaction with this angel of the Lord. And that's how I wanna kind of divide the sermon this morning. Normally, I like to work in kind of three points, but we're gonna divide this into two. We're gonna look at two questions that emerge from this text. One is implied, meaning it's not stated in the text, but it's there if you read between the lines. The second is explicit, meaning it's there in black and white. And these questions, I think are gonna be helpful for us as we consider what does it look like to follow the Lord. Maybe you're new to faith. Maybe you've been walking with God a long time. Either way, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this. These questions are powerful to sit with and consider. The first one is this. Will you wait on the Lord? Receiving what he has for you, when and how he wants to give it. Walk with God long enough, follow him long enough,

and you will find yourself in Genesis 16. That is, you will find that God has led you somewhere, made you a promise, directed you in some way, put a dream or a vision in your heart. And as you have begun to move forward with it, it feels like now God has somehow gone missing. It's no accident that Genesis 16 follows Genesis 15. God has given Abram the what. I will give you a son. He knows what God wants to do. What God has not yet told him is the when and the how. And if you'll walk with the Lord long enough, you'll notice that God likes to deal in incomplete information. He will often give you the what, but withhold for a season the when and the how. Why? Why does God do this? Does he just enjoy toying with us? Does he like watching us sweat? Does he like watching us squirm? Why does God do this? And the answer, of course, is no. God has no joy in making you suffer, making you anxious. No, he's testing Abram and Sarai, and he tests us. Now, let's just pause here for a second and be really clear when we talk about a test. Last fall, we studied this, and what we saw in James chapter one, James writes this, let no one say when he is tempted,

I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. There is a difference between a test and a temptation. God tests, he does not tempt. You might ask of them, what's the difference? How can I know the difference between a temptation and a test? Here's a helpful way to think about it. A test aims to strengthen character while a temptation seeks to destroy it. Let me say that again. A test aims to strengthen character while a temptation seeks to destroy it. It's all in the motivation, and in this way, here's what's interesting, the same event, the same circumstance, the same season or situation in life can be at once both a test and a temptation. In fact, we see this biblically more than once. Let me point you to a couple of examples. Here's Matthew four, verse one. This is the temptation of Christ. It says this, that when Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Who's behind this? The Spirit or the devil? And the answer is both. The Spirit is in it to test. The devil is in it to tempt.

And in this way, what you could say is in every trial, every test that you face, there is an opportunity. In every test there is a temptation, in every temptation there is a test. God tests, he does not tempt. The enemy tempts, his desire is to steal, to kill, and to destroy. But the Lord, his intention is different. He's trying to build, form, produce something in you. This is why James would say, again, we studied this last fall, that we should count it all joy when we meet trials or tests of various kinds. For you know, he says, that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, patience, perseverance. In other words, God is trying to build something in your character. It is not to destroy you, it is to produce something in you. So in every test there is a temptation, in every temptation there is a test. It all depends on the motive behind it. We see this again in Genesis 50. This is the story of Joseph. Do you remember what happened to Joseph? Sold into slavery by his brothers, left for dead. Notice what Joseph, after all that God did, in and through the hardship that he suffered, look at what he says. He says, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. This is fascinating. Same circumstance, same trial, same situation. One party means it for evil, one means it for good. In every test there is a temptation, in every temptation there is a test. It all depends on which voice or impulse you will listen to. Now we see this play out so vividly here in Genesis chapter 16. Almost every commentator that I read this week pointed out that there are striking parallels between Genesis 16 and Genesis 3. Very similar. Now, you might remember that Genesis 3 tells the story of the fall of man.

Do you remember? This is Adam and Eve being tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit of the tree that God told them not to eat. Let's look at these parallels. Go to Genesis 3. Genesis 3, 1 says it like this. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say? This is the method, the modus operandi of the serpent to question God, to get you to doubt God. Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Well, if you know the story, you know that God said no such thing. What God said was you may not eat the fruit of this particular tree, one tree. But here he's twisting the words of God to frame God as someone who withholds, someone who keeps back. And this is always how temptation works. Temptation will always come with doubts about God's character and ability. That's how temptation always functions. Did God actually say? You see the same thing happening in Genesis 16. Look at it again. Genesis 16, 2. And Sarai said to Abram, behold now, the Lord has prevented me. It's the Lord's doing. The Lord has prevented me from having children. It's interesting this word prevented in Hebrew means to withhold. It's the same temptation of Genesis chapter 3. The Lord's holding out on you. There's something good here that you could have and he doesn't want you to have it. He's keeping it from you. Take it for yourself. This is the difference between a temptation and a test. A temptation is always the desire to take from God what God wants to give.

Rather than being patient and receiving it from his hand, the temptation is always to take matters into your own hands. To become like God for yourself. That's exactly what happens in Genesis 3 and again here in Genesis 16. Back to Genesis 3. Let's look at the parallels. This is Aviv. So when the woman saw, that's Eve, saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. Notice the language. She took of its fruit and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Notice that the same words, the exact same words are used here in Genesis 16 to describe what Sarai does with Hagar and Abram. Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. And we read, just like Adam, that Abram listened to the voice of his wife. It's interesting here that the one person who is not consulted in this whole matter is the Lord. Abram nor Sarai paused long enough to pray. pray to ask God what he wants. They just determine, God seems silent, God seems distant, we'll take matters into our own hands. And this is what will happen, this will be the temptation. At some point in your life, you will come to this crossroads, a test. God will send you somewhere. He will put a dream in your heart, a desire for something, and you'll begin to move forward. And at the beginning of it, it will be exciting. It'll seem new, it'll seem fun, there'll be something there. But as you start moving toward it, it will slow down and you'll wonder, is God still in this? Does God expect me to do something?

God, I thought you were the one that sent me to Tulsa. God, I thought you were the one that told me to apply for this job. God, I thought you were the one that wanted me to go for that internship. It'll seem like God's left you somewhere and then dumped you. And the temptation will be to take for yourself what God wants to give. So the question remains, will you wait for the Lord? Receiving what he has for you, when and how he wants to give it. Now God doesn't just hold out on you because he enjoys watching us struggle. He's doing it because he's trying to form something in you. And this is the key that we so often miss. We overestimate our readiness for what it is that God wants to give us. But God doesn't give us what we want and what we desire so often when we want it. Let me tell you why. Because if he gave it to you when you wanted it, you would destroy it and it would destroy you. You're not ready to receive what it is that God wants for you, so he has to prepare you. And God has had to do this in me for years and years and years and years. You see me standing on this stage today, but getting here was a journey of a lot of preparation and much of it unwanted and not comfortable from God to me.

I remember when I received my, what I would call my call to preach and pastor. It was probably 2004. That's my best guess at when it happened. I'd been working at Church on the Move at that time for 10 years. I started working here in 1994. I was sitting in a big auditorium like this in Dallas, Texas watching a pastor preach. This was one I'd seen teach many times before, but this one was somehow different. As I was watching him speak, and I quite frankly can't remember what he talked about that day or anything really of the service, I just know that as I was watching him preach and teach, I had a vision of myself. Not anything visually that I could see, but just inwardly. I saw myself preaching and I thought to myself, I could do that. I want to do that. That may seem like, yeah, the most obvious thing in the world to you, the son of a pastor, but for me, I didn't grow up wanting to do what my dad did. I admired my dad. I had an immense amount of respect for my dad, but I was going to be completely different. I was going to be an artist, a filmmaker, a musician.

These were my dreams growing up. I had no desire to be a pastor, but for the first time in my life, I could see myself not only doing what my dad did, but wanting to do it. It's interesting. The motives, as I look back on them now, weren't even all that pure. There was a lot of self-centeredness and selfishness wrapped up in that, but I think that's where God often begins. He starts with us where we're at, the desires that we're even able to conceive of. God begins to put this dream, this call in my heart and on my life. Well, fast forward a couple years. I come back to COTM and ministry doors begin to open up. I start speaking for the first time. I have a wildly over-inflated view of myself and my readiness, how ready I am to step into this role. It would take years before I was actually ready, but when you're young and dumb and God's still working things out in you, you think you're ready way sooner than you actually are. So I remember coming back and it was one Sunday after several services that my dad had preached. He was preaching the vast majority of the weekends at that time. We were back in the green room back here, couple other staff members in there.

We were just kind of debriefing the weekend, what happened, what went on, and I made a suggestion, one that I had been making or something like I had been making many times in that season where I did the foolish thing. I look at it now with a lot of regret that I so often compared my dad or tried to get him to be more like other pastors that I liked. I imagine what that must have felt like to have your own son constantly saying, hey, why don't you do it more like so-and-so? In fact, I think to myself, I told my dad this week, I said, I would hate to work with someone like me, but that's what happened, and I was. and dumb and naive, and so it's after the service, and in my mind at the time, I'm making a suggestion that seems perfectly reasonable, you know, benign, there's nothing behind it, I'm just, hey, why don't we do it, why don't you do it more like this, you know, fill in the blank, whatever flavor of the month pastor I was into at that time, and my dad just looks at me, and to me, kind of out of nowhere, he's like, well, if you like him so much, why don't you go work for him? And I'm just like, whoa, what crawled up your, you know what, you know, I'm mad. Like, why are we overreacting to a simple suggestion? Like, now I look back on it, and let me just say,

like, this whole preaching thing is pretty vulnerable, putting yourself up here, and then to have your own son, like, right after you do it, say, hey, how about you be more like so-and-so? It's just like the worst thing I could imagine. And yet, that's exactly what I was doing, and so my dad is just like, go work for somebody else. I'm like, what? And it got tense, and it got awkward, and so we all leave, meeting's over, and I go get in my car, and I'm just like, what is up with him? So I'm driving home, he's driving home, I get a call on my phone, it's my dad. Great, all right, so I pick up the phone. Whit, I want you to think about whether or not you wanna work for me anymore. Because I can't keep doing this, I can't keep having you compare me to, fill in the blank, and fill in the blank, and him, and him. I wanna know, do you wanna be here with me at church on the move? Think about it, and give me an answer, but I'm not gonna keep doing this. I hang up the phone, I'm just still seething mad. Fine, you want me to go? I'll go. We'll see how you like it. I'll leave, that's what I'll do. So I go home, and I unpack the whole thing with Heather,

and I'm like, this is what dad's, can you believe it? He, blah, blah, blah, just, the stupid feelings that you feel. At that time, they felt so real. And so I began to think about it, and at that time, this would have been, I don't know, 2007-ish, a friend of mine, someone that I had kind of come up in ministry under, Blaine Bartell, who was my youth pastor, was leaving to move to Dallas to start a church. And I thought about it, I thought, wait a minute, he's gonna go to Dallas. My brother was gonna go down there and help him. I thought, I could go work for him. I wouldn't have to deal with all this nonsense with my dad, he's cool, Blaine's chill. He's like an older brother. He's easy, it won't be any of what, these are all the thoughts that are going through my mind. And so I call Blaine, and I'm like, Blaine, what do you think if I come to Dallas with you? And he's like, whoa. He's like, I don't wanna get between you and your dad, but if you wanna come, man, I'm not gonna stop you. I would love to have you, but I don't wanna make things awkward. So I'm like, okay, I hang up the phone, and I'm considering all of this. Now fortunately, Heather and I had the sense, and I think it's actually God's grace,

to do what Abram and Sarai do not do, which is to consult the Lord. And so we sat down on our fake leather Sam's Club couch, and prayed, Lord, what do you want for me? What should I do? And I knew immediately, God was gracious. He didn't make me wait. I knew, go back, don't leave. It's interesting, we'll see this as we go a little deeper into the story, but that's exactly what the Lord tells Hagar to do, return. You think it's unfair, go back. Don't get your feelings all hurt about this, go back. Return and submit. Why? Why? Because you're not done yet. There's more I want to form in you. You have so much further to go than you realize. In our minds, oh, I'm ready. I've got this, God, give it to me. I know what I'm doing. You don't. And God would have to prove this out in me over and over and over again. This wasn't the only time that this test would be put in front of me. Will you take for yourself what God wants to give, or will you allow him to give it to you as a gift, not because you took it, but because God gave it?

You know what's amazing is that church that started in Dallas, Blaine went down there. What I had no idea, and Blaine and I are dear friends today, but I had no idea that Blaine was dealing with his own deep brokenness. He had sexual addiction in his life and had for years, and it was all going to come out in a short matter of time. That church would get off the ground and then it would fall apart. It would disintegrate. I'm so glad I didn't go. I'm so glad that I stayed. I'm glad that I didn't try to take what the Lord wanted to give. I would have to learn that lesson again and again and again and again. Finally, I think the point that I had to do it for the final time, and I imagine the Lord will do. to do this again in different ways, but as far as it pertained to this calling of being pastor and leader at Church on the Move came in 2020. I had been pastor for three years. The transition officially happened in 2017, and it didn't go well to start with. I mean, we lost a lot of people, and all that excitement, God's gonna do something, all that I was talking about, it felt like by 2020 he had abandoned me completely. Of course, you know what happened in the summer of 2020,

everything, the world is shut down, also on fire, and I'm thinking to myself, why God, why me, why this, why now? I mean, my dad, in my mind, had 30 years of cultural stability, and now I get to deal with this. The new pastor that nobody likes, I can't please, nothing I do is right, everybody's comparing me to my dad, and I'm in the middle of this. Why me, why now? And I remember walking through my neighborhood and pouring my heart out to God, because it was the only thing I could do. We weren't allowed to do anything else. And so I would just go for a walk, and I would pray, and I remember a specific day, everybody was mad at me. Nobody, seemingly, would have felt like, liked what I was doing, and I said to the Lord, Lord, if it's not me, if there's somebody else you've got for this, tell me, and I will get out of the way. And if all you want me to do is pastor a church of 300 people, I will do it. I don't care anymore how big this thing is. I don't care anymore how successful it is. I don't care anymore what people think of me. I just want to do what you want me to do. And if I could put a pen and a map on a chart that told you where did it stop going downhill and where did it start going uphill,

I would put it right there. At that moment of surrender, all right, God, it's yours. And the reason so many of us, we fail this test. We don't trust God. We keep trying to take from God by our sheer effort, by our hustle, what God wants to give. Let him open the door, let him do it in his time when he wants in his way. This is a test that every one of us will have to learn. Why do I need to learn this? Because you need to learn that it's not all about you. You're not making this happen. You're receiving it from his hand. And until you learn that lesson, you are not fit to be used by God in any kind of significant way. Jesus said, everything I do, the Father tells me to do it. Even the second person of the Godhead said, I'm just simply receiving this from above. How much more for you and I? We must receive. That's where our strength and power comes from when we know who we're connected to. Will you wait on the Lord, receiving what he has for you, when and how he wants to give it? That's question number one. Question number two, explicitly stated in the text, is we'll see is where have you come from and where are you going? So the story pivots halfway through.

You'll remember to Hagar, the Egyptian slave. Let's refresh our memories in verse seven. It says this, the angel of the Lord, if you have a Bible open, you might highlight or underline that title. This is gonna be a significant character here. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. Now it's interesting, we can't say for certain, but Hagar, being an Egyptian, was likely acquired by Abram and Sarah. Do you remember at the end of Genesis 12, what happens? Abram goes because of famine. He takes his wife to Egypt and he says, hey, I want you to lie and tell them that you're my sister because if they find out you're my wife, they'll probably kill me and they'll take you. So you just lie. He's willing to sell his wife, as it were, into the marriage of another man, Pharaoh, in order to save his own skin. Well, God protects them. He looks out for both Abram and Sarai and he sends plagues on the house of Pharaoh. Pharaoh, fortunately, has enough sense to recognize that a divine hand is against him and he comes to Abram and he says, what is this that you've done to me? You've given me your wife and told me she was your sister

and he sends Abram away with many possessions, it says. A foreshadowing of what actually is going to happen at the Exodus many hundreds of years in the future. It's likely that Abram and Sarai acquired this Egyptian slave when Pharaoh sent them away with many possessions. There would have been people. servants in that list. Well, here, she is returning back to where she's come from, verse eight, and he, that's the angel of the Lord, said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from? And where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring, so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He said, he shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing. For she said, truly, here, I have seen him who looks after me. Now, a couple things about this part of the passage.

First, we need to take a minute and consider, who is this angel that is speaking to Hagar? Because he's a little different than you might expect. Maybe it just seems obvious to you on the surface he's an angel, and you just think, yeah, like any other angel, but there's some unique things. First of all, let me just remind you that the Hebrew word for angel is simply messenger. It doesn't necessarily mean a divine being. In other words, if you read through the Old Testament, there are human messengers, or angels, and divine messengers, or angels. So the word angel just translates as messenger. The way we understand whether this being is divine or heavenly or human is through the context. Here, clearly, we're speaking about a divine being, but what sort of divine being? There are certain things, for instance, about this angel that are very different from other angels, like Gabriel and Michael, that we see later on in Scripture. Let me point out a few of these differences. First of all, his sort of title morphs over the course of the conversation. In the beginning, he is simply the angel of the Lord, but here in verse 13, it says that she called the name of the Lord who spoke with her. Here, this is the name of the Lord. Earlier, as well, one of the interesting things that we see is that this angel seems to speak

with the authority that only belongs to God. Notice, again, in verse 10, for instance, the angel of the Lord said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring. Not God will, or the Lord will, I will do it. He's taking authority that seems to belong only to God. And then, lastly, we see that he's willing to receive worship from Hagar, something that other angels are very reluctant to do. In, for instance, Revelation 22, John writes this, I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel, the messenger who showed them to me, but notice how the angel responds. But he said to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book, don't worship me, worship God. So here we have this mysterious angel of the Lord character who speaks as God speaks, who is called the name of the Lord, and who is willing to receive worship that belongs to God alone. And he turns to Hagar, and he asks this question, where have you come from, and where are you going? It's often in the scripture that the Lord asks questions that on the surface seem simple, benign, non-threatening, but if you pause with them for long enough, you realize this is a deeply profound and penetrating question. Where have you come from, and where are you going?

Can I suggest to you this morning that you will never understand yourself, not really, until you can first answer this question, you will not know who you are, and you will not know where you are going if you don't first understand where you have come from, what has made me, me. It's amazing to me how many people, Christians included, live unexamined lives, we spend very little time, no time at all, examining, thinking about, pondering in the presence of the Lord where we've come from, and as a consequence, we are unaware of the patterns that have been playing out, the themes of our life that seem obvious if you just take a moment to kind of look at everything, but we are unaware, focusing on only what's right in front of us. We miss the fact that all our lives we felt invisible, that in every relationship. It feels like nobody sees me, nobody's paying attention to me. We miss that we've been anxious for maybe particular reasons and for years, and that pattern just keeps playing out. We never ask ourselves, why do I get so angry? Why do I have a tendency to blame and shame whenever tensions rise? Why do I do the things that I do? Most of us just accept the feelings that we have as valid. We welcome them right into our soul, and we act upon them, not questioning them at all. But I wanna tell you,

if you wanna become a mature follower of Christ, you cannot just accept every thought and feeling that comes your way. Can I tell you something that maybe you've never considered before? You are not your feelings. Let me say this to you again. You are not your feelings. You are not also your thoughts. Now you may be shaped by your feelings or your thoughts, but you get to dictate how much they're going to shape you. And so many of us, we just have such a pattern of responding in insecurity, responding with anxiety, responding in fear, responding in anger that we just associate our feelings with our identity when they are not one and the same. And maybe this question would do you some good. In fact, I'm certain it would. Where have you come from? Why do you act the way that you do? Why do you keep responding? I bump into this all the time. I hear followers of Christ, believers say, I just, I get anxious, and we never even question why. We don't stop to see, wait a minute, there's a pattern through my life, a pattern of rejection, a pattern of fear, a pattern of anger. Maybe it's related to something that has happened to me,

something that I've been through. That's what the Lord is doing here. He's asking Hagar to stop and consider where have you come from? And this may take a counselor, a pastor, a trusted friend, where you sit down and maybe begin to lay out your story. I was sitting with someone not that long ago who was just sharing with me kind of what had happened in their life, and it didn't take me long to see. I wasn't even probing around. I was just asking basic questions about where you come from, your family, to see that there's a pattern of rejection, people missing you, not seeing you, not seeing you for who you are all the way through their life. And I went like, have you ever thought that there's a theme here? I'm just seeing this. When you were a kid, mom and dad split. Dad didn't seem interested. Mom went off over here. Then you get over here, and nobody seems to pay attention to you. Then you come here. Nobody's paying, do you notice this pattern? He was like, no, because we haven't reflected on this long enough to see that maybe

some of the things, here's what's interesting. It's not just the bad stuff, but it's also the good stuff. Often God uses the experiences that we've been through to help them bring ministry out of that. It's a remarkable thing, but unless you know where you've come from, you will not know where you're going. So Hagar here encounters this angelic, divine being, and she says in verse 13, you are a God of seeing. She names him. Hagar is the first person in scripture to name the Lord. You are a God of seeing, for she said, truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Now depending on what translation of the scripture you have in front of you or you read, you'll find this verse translated in maybe a few different ways, and that's because these two statements are really hard to translate. The Hebrew is not exactly clear. It could be that she's saying, you're the God who sees me, I feel seen. Or it could be that she's saying, I have seen the Lord and I have lived. Both are true. God sees her, but also she sees God. There's this idea in the Old Testament that if you were to see God, you would die.

And it's kind of like, think about it like the sun. If you get too close to the sun, what happens? You die. It's not that the sun hates you, it's that you can't endure the sheer power and radiance of the sun's glory. The sun is good. It gives life. If the sun goes out, we all die. We need the sun, but if you get too close to it, you die. That's how God the Father works. It said that he dwells in an approachable light. You cannot see him. Just as you cannot go out outside today and look up at the sun. If you do, it'll burn your eyes. It's not good for you. Why? Because the glory of the sun is too much for you to take. The same is true with God the Father. And so there's this idea that if you were to see God, you would die. Isaiah has this kind of experience in Isaiah chapter six. He says, saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and then he says, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. In other words, he recognizes that to see the Lord means death, and yet somehow he doesn't die. The same thing happens here with Hagar.

She sees the Lord, and yet somehow doesn't die. Two things. One, this is the God who sees me, but two, this is the God who makes himself able to be seen. Who is this? It's Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, because this is what Jesus does. He is the God who sees you. He is the God who took on flesh and blood. Scripture says he identifies with our weakness. He was tempted in every way as we have been tempted. He's the one who knows what it's like to be human. He became one of us, but at the same time, he's also the God who allows himself to be seen. He is both at the same time, the God who sees and the God I can see, the God I can relate to, the God who knows my name and the God I can name. Both are true at the same time. John, in John 1.1, puts it like this. That which was from the beginning, he's speaking of Jesus, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it. In other words, he's saying I saw him, I touched him, I knew him. He was the God I could see, the God I knew. That's who Jesus is, and it's so fascinating to me

that this happens here in this chapter, this seeing and knowing. This is the language that's used, the God who sees, the God who knows me, the God I can know. It's amazing, and it's ironic to me that it happens here in this chapter of all chapters. Because in the Old Testament, the idea to see and know someone is a euphemism for sexual intimacy. If you have an old enough translation of the Bible, you will find, let's say, for instance, early in Genesis, it says that Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and had a son. This is the idea of sexual intimacy as being described here. And we don't have to get graphic to sort of understand the idea that seeing and knowing someone, but that is unique to the husband-wife relationship. The nakedness, to see the other person naked is to see them in a way that no one else, at least that's the idea, that no one else will ever see or know them in that way. It speaks to a relational closeness and intimacy, and it is interesting to me that all this seeing and knowing language happens here, ironically enough, in this chapter where the sexual relationship is used in perverted ways. Here, Hagar is, in some ways, taken advantage of

so that Abram and Sarai can have what it is that they want. And it doesn't bring them closer together. It doesn't result in what they were wanting. In fact, it just brings strife and drives them further apart. Ross Clark puts it like this. No one asks Hagar whether she wants to sleep with Abram. None asks whether she wants to have this baby. No one asks whether she's fine with handing that baby over to another woman. Hagar doesn't matter. It's only her body, her baby, her life, after all. But God sees Hagar. She isn't invisible to him. He is the God who sees and knows, knows you all the way to the bottom. Where have you come from? What have you been through? What has happened to you? You can trust this God. Why? Because he's the God that also makes himself vulnerable and known to you. It was pointed out to me this week by Pastor Ian, who's preaching over at Church on the Move Broken Arrow this weekend, that this isn't the only time that Jesus would meet a woman at a well in the wilderness. A woman who also was outside the covenant people. She, in that case, was a Samaritan. Like Hagar, is the victim of sexual brokenness. And like Hagar, he wants to know where have you come from.

You have had five husbands, he says to her, and the man you are with now is not your husband. He does not bring this up to shame her. He does not bring this up to rub her nose in it. He brings it up to heal her brokenness. There are broken places in her soul and life, and all he wants is access, vulnerability, and what's amazing about this is he makes himself vulnerable to her. Because in John chapter four, he reveals his divine nature to her, and part of his plan, in a way, that he would not do so with others until much later in the day. the story and yet this is his nature. To come and to find the broken and to meet them in the brokenness of their story and to put the pieces back together again, to redeem them so that where they've been can become a launch pad for where they are going. This is our God. This is our Christ. This is what he does. Just a few chapters later in John's gospel, in John 8, Jesus would make a seemingly audacious claim about himself. It's not the only time that he would do this. He seemed to do this with some regularity. In John 8, he said, I am the light of the world. Anybody who follows me will walk in the light

and they will no longer be in the darkness. The religious leaders are incredulous at this claim. In John 8, verse 13, they reply in this way, you are bearing witness about yourself. Your testimony is not true. And if you stop and think about what they're saying and what Jesus is saying, you can kind of understand where they're coming from. You're bearing witness about yourself. We do the same thing. We don't take people's word for it. If you're interviewing someone for a job and they tell you they're gonna be your best employee, they're wonderful, they're easy to work with, their worst quality is that they're too generous and too forgiving and too patient. What do you do? Do you take their word for it or do you call and check their references? Why do you call? Because I can't take your testimony for it. You are not fully trustworthy. We're biased toward ourselves, are we not? We don't always have the most clear and accurate self-understanding. So we need to take someone else's word for it. This is why you read Google reviews. It's the best Italian in town. So it may say on your website, let's see what the people say.

I don't trust your marketing talk. Do this all the time. I wanna know whether or not what you're saying is accurate and I can't do that just taking your word for it because you're biased. That's what they're saying to Jesus. You're testifying about yourself. How can we trust you? I want you to notice his response, striking in light of what we've just been considering. He said to them, even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true. Why? For I know where I came from and I know where I'm going. It's pretty remarkable. This is the only healthy identity that you can have. What do I mean by that? The only way to be a spiritually mature, I would call fully alive in Christ adult is that you know where you've come from with the Lord and you've spent time in his presence considering these things with him and you've allowed him to redeem and to restore and to heal and meet you in your fears, meet you in your anxiety, meet you in your anger to set you free and put you on a new path. Jesus said, I am who I am because I know what the Father has said about me. You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. He knew who he was, therefore he knew where he was going.

Do you feel lost? Do you wonder what's next? Maybe in order to understand what's next, you need to go back with God and consider for some time where have I come from and out of that let the Lord then show you where you're going. This is our God who meets us right where we're at. In the middle of our brokenness, fear, anxiety and pain, he meets us and calls us forward in him. Will you trust him there? That's really the question. Will you trust him with your past? Will you trust him with your pain? Will you trust him with your future? He's safe, he's good, he's worthy and all he wants for you is better than what you want for yourself. Open your hands and trust. Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? Oh, our gracious father, you love us so much that you came yourself, you sent your son to become one of us that we might know you, know you closely, intimately, to be restored into relationship with you, to trust you fully where sin has separated. You came and by your blood, you have brought us back together again. Thank you, Lord, for your grace and your mercy and your kindness to pursue us

when we were not looking for you. He found us in the wilderness, running away. Now Lord, heal us and bring us back. Put us on the path that you have for us. Lord, I pray that as we consider these questions, and I pray that they would stick with us. I pray we wouldn't just walk out of here and forget this, but that we would take some time to consider, where have we come from? Where are we going? To sit with you, sit with you in quiet moments and quiet places and allow you to begin to speak to us, to heal what's been broken, and to set free where we've been imprisoned, to put us on the good, the straight, the narrow path. Lord, that's what you have for us. I pray we would consider these things, take the time to do it, and that we would hear your voice. The voice of a stranger we would not hear. Thank you, Lord, for speaking and ministering to us in just the kind and gracious and patient way that you do. You are good, in Jesus' name, amen. As we close today, our prayer team's gonna be down front, right in front of the stage where I'm standing on the floor down here. We would love to be able to pray with you, to minister to you. Maybe you're going through something right now. Maybe you're kind of in a season where it's like,

where is God? We would love to be able to agree with you in prayer, and maybe you're in the room today and you're kind of in a new place in your relationship with God. Maybe you're realizing that you're becoming a Christian, maybe you'd say, I'm just ready to take my faith seriously for the first time. We have a little book that just is called, How Do I Know That I'm Saved? We wrote it, we put it together for you. It really is just about what it looks like to follow God. Our team down front has it. We would love to be able to give that to you. It's completely free. We're not trying to rope you into joining the church. We'd just love to connect with you and give you this resource before you leave today. So if you have a prayer need, or you're in a new place in your relationship with God, we would love to be able to minister to you today. They're down front. Stand to your feet. We're gonna close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter six. And we like to put it up on the screen and say it out loud together so you could join with me as we close. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you

and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. We'll see you next week. You're dismissed. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. 🎵