You’re Not Abandoned, You’re Being Refined | Mornings with Mico

Good people, what's going on, man? How we doing today? I know it's been a minute since we've been right here, but we locking in this week, man. I'm sitting still and just having some time to just get back to my one, two, and my alone time with God, and just wanna welcome y'all to that space with me again. Don't know if you caught this past week's sermon. Brian told him, it's the first message he's spoken in a while, but it was just a really good word. And if you haven't watched it, I definitely encourage you to go back and check it out. For the rest of this week, I think I'm just gonna kind of like take some things, I don't know, I've kind of like taken that message, watched it a few times, and just use that as a framework and to build around like what I'm studying this week, and just kind of unpacking some key things from that passage a bit more. And so that's what we're gonna walk through for the rest of this week. So today, touching on one of the passages that he mentioned, it was Luke 22, 31 and 32. He says, Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you all, sift all of you as wheat, but I've prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

And for me, what's powerful about this passage, as I've just been reflecting on it, is that Peter had no idea what was coming, but Jesus did. Before Peter failed, before Peter broke down, before Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus already saw that. And not only did he see it, he was already praying for Peter. Some of us think that our struggle, you know, is like it catches God off guard. Or some of us think that maybe because we're under pressure or tempted or discouraged, or like emotionally exhausted, that somehow God has stepped away or abandoned us. But this scripture here, it just paints a different picture. It, Jesus says that Satan has asked to sift you, but I've prayed for you. And the sifting wasn't, in this story, it wasn't the end of Peter's story. It was the process that God used to expose weaknesses so that God could build a deeper dependence on himself, in Peter. Just like wheat is sifted to separate what's valuable from what isn't, spiritually, God uses difficult seasons to strip away pride or self-reliance or bitterness or false identity or misplaced confidence. And I know for me in my own personal life, like I often find myself like wrestling with that. Like I'll find myself so often either in this bucket of pridefulness or this bucket of insecurity, right? And just having like men in my life

that I've given permission to speak into, you know, speak truth into me and to call me out on things and a wife that does it as well, you know, not to condemn me or destroy me, but just as a part of my refining process to kind of help me to, you know, in my sifting process, you know, as God may use embarrassment or rough patches, you know, in life to kind of like get me to allowing it to sift me and refine me to get me back to a place of deeper reliance on him. Something I noticed is Peter not only saw, or Peter only saw the pressure beginning to build around him, he didn't see behind the scenes that there was a spiritual battle unfolding that Peter, he knew nothing about, right? It says, Jesus tells him that Satan has axed or in some translations say he's demanded to sift him as wheat. All Peter experienced was the manifestation of the sifting, the fear, the pressure, the uncertainty, but Jesus saw the full picture. I don't know about you, maybe you're in a season right now where life feels a bit shaky, right? Maybe your faith feels tested, maybe circumstances are pressing in from all sides, you know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, I don't necessarily, I don't need to give like examples, but you know what are some things going on in your life

if that's a season you find yourself in, where that's what, you know, that language could, you know, speak to you in your current season. And I just wanna encourage you with this, man, to not confuse the sifting that you may be going through right now with abandonment from God, because that's not the case. And that's a lie that the enemy will try to form in your mind. while you're going through the sifting. While you're going through your sifting, Jesus still sees you. He's still interceding on your behalf. And the season does not have the final word over your life. As we see here in Peter's story, as we'll continue, as we continue to dive, it didn't have the final word over his life. So I pray that you're encouraged with that, that you can call the season what it is and use that to refute the enemy's lies. You're not abandoned. God sees you. And be encouraged that Jesus is praying for you. Also, just in your alone time today, I'd encourage you to reflect on this. What areas in your life or where have you mistaken pressure for God's absence? Because I think that in these seasons, especially if we feel like distant from God or we feel, you know, he's quiet, we can mistake life's pressure with this idea that we're far from God or that we've been abandoned by God. Um, and let's call that out. Let's call that out. Let's, let's be real, you know, in that time with God and share like, Hey God, this is an area where if I'm honest, I feel like maybe this is a sifting going on, but I've, I've seen this as being disconnected from you or you being disconnected from me. Let's call that out and let's repent. Let's repent from that, from that ideology. Um, I pray for us, Lord, we just thank you, father. We thank you that you see every battle that you, um, hear every cry that you are fully aware. Um, of everything that we're encountering, not just our experience, but also what's going on behind the scenes. Lord, we thank you father, that, um, you are omniscient and all your knowing and that you are sovereign, um, and omnipotent in all that you do, Lord. So, um, Lord, we just ask that you just continue to, um, strengthen our faith, strengthen our faith that it does not fail us and our seasons of sifting,

Lord. And that, um, we can shift our perspective to seeing this, um, these seasons, the way that you see them, Lord. And that, um, if you're allowing us to go through this season, Lord, that we can just grow in our trust, Lord, that you're with us. And that, um, even in this Lord, um, you can be producing a good thing in us Lord. And, um, we just trust you. We love you. We're proud to see your son, Jesus name. Amen.