YOU’RE TOO CLOSE TO QUIT | Joshua 6:1–20 | Bianca Juarez

Y'all hearing there's gonna be the best sermon you ever heard, no pressure, Pastor Chris, no pressure. Listen, before you sit down, I just wanna take a quick moment. I wanna celebrate our hearts and our moments worship was just so powerful and I wanna lose that. But I have to tell myself, this feels like a first date. Where, and maybe even a blind date, because most of you don't even know who I am. But I know who you are. I may not know your name, I may not know your story, but I know the church's story. And I've been watching and I'm inspired. So I just wanna say thank you for diligently serving Jesus. Thank you for faithfully showing up. Thank you for wanting to be students of the Word of God. So before, before we get started, I just wanna give a moment to honor Pastor Chris and Pastor P-Y-D for their commitment unto the Lord. Can we give it up for the pastors of this house? (audience applauding) Ever trusting me. So if there's any heresy, Pastor Chris will fix it next week. Bless God, while you're still standing full of faith and a heart that's open to receive, will you do me a favor? Can we invoke the mighty matchless name of Jesus? Say, Spirit of the living God, I'm so grateful to be here. I just ask God that you use whatever words I bring.

And may you plant it in the hearts of those that are listening. May this go far and wide beyond this building, beyond this sparrow and into your people, God. We love you, we honor you. You are not just wanted here. You are welcomed here, have your way in Jesus' name. We all say, amen, amen. Go ahead and grab a seat. (audience applauding) I love following you guys and stalking you guys online because like your pastors, beautiful things can be birthed out of painful situations. And I think sometimes when we come to church, it might be a place of inspiration. It might be a place of motivation, but this house is not just a house of motivation and inspiration, it's a place of transformation because we are people that are willing to have some perspiration. All right, at some point, all these words are gonna stop rhyming. But I'm in New York and I feel like Biggie coming upon me right now, you know. I'm a product of the '90s, hip hop in the '90s where the real music lived and so bear with me for a moment. But the reason why I wanna move past maybe a motivational story in our inspirational little real on social media is that you can get all that content out there. But what happens when we walk out of a church building

is that we are prone to feel the weight of being overwhelmed and under-resourced. We are prone to feel overworked and underpaid and how many know New York is expensive. My God, you guys live in the most expensive city in the world. Sometimes it's easy to feel like a Jesus high 'cause there ain't no high like the most high, amen? But then we walk out or face with this reality of like, am I going to commit? Am I going to stay the course? Am I going to continue to do the thing that I believe that God has called me to do? Now I'm from California. I get to lead a church called Revere Church in Orange County. If you guys ever come to Disneyland, the better Disneyland at the West Coast, best coast, then you can come and visit us on a Sunday. But I am a little partial to a story that I read about that have inspired me in a season where my life was up in flames. I just felt that I could not go on to do what God had called me to do. In 1950, there was a woman by the name of Florence Chadwick and Florence Chadwick had this crazy audacious idea that she was going to be the first woman to ever swim the English Channel. Now in 1950, women were often under resourced and overlooked and she said, I'm going to do it. And so she set out and she trained there in the ocean of California and then took her team over,

a captain, a coach and her mother entered into the waters. And there her coach and her mom and the captain entered into a tugboat that pulled out to sea. They were looking for sharks and choppy waters and reefs and she entered into the ice cold water and she began to swim and she felt like she was ready. She had trained, she had done this in a different place and she felt like she was ready. But after about a good 15 hours, the water had turned to freezing bitter cold. The waves were choppy, her arms were locking out, she was exhausted, tired and frustrated, feeling overwhelmed, the skies began to change and a thick dense fog began to go over the ocean. She lost sight of the tugboat and she just stopped and screamed out, I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going. And then she quit. The captain, the boat went over to her, her coach and her mother pulled her in, she began to sob. Especially when she realized that she was just one mile from the shore. I read that and I felt her pain. I was so close to finishing. Had I known, had I known that something good was waiting on the other side, I would have kept going. And as I was preparing for this message, I began to just have a hutzpah, if you will, inside of me, that if I was Florence Chadwick's coach,

or if I could just be a friend to you today as we go through the word of God, I wanna speak to the man in the room who feels like they are isolated and icy cold water. I wanna speak to the woman whose arms are tired and she wants to scream, but she just whispers inside. I don't know where I'm going. I wanna speak to that person who's on the verge of giving up and I wanna tell you, you are too close to quit. You are too close to quit. If you are a note taker, I want you to pull out your Bible, your highlighter, your notebook. I want you to jot down the title of our time today. You are too close to quit. And in the passage I want us to turn to in a second, you might be very familiar with. But in case you are not, in case you are new to this church concept or somebody dragged you or you lost a bet or you got invited or you just wanted a place ahead AC on a Sunday, welcome to Good Company. There's a seat for you, yes. However you ended up here today, I wanna go through a passage that might feel familiar to some, but I'm gonna ask for divine revelation so it feels new to you. And for those that are new to this passage, you didn't bring a Bible no problem. I put the verses on the screen.

But as we go into this passage, every new place that I teach, this is my first time in Good Company, every new place that I teach, I have to just give a little caveat. I am Mexican, meaning I am Mexican and Puerto Rican, okay? It means nothing more than I show up late, came out of the womb with high heels and makeup and love to have a good party, all right? But you need to understand that I was raised also by my grand, Puerto Rican grandmother and we would watch her shows at night. But please understand, when I say shows or soap operas as they're referred to in America, many people think soap operas, one life to live, young in the restless, general hospital, Luke and Laura, I was raised on novellas. Novellas are something different, okay? So half of the hooting and hollering brown people up in this place can tell you that in an American soap opera, a very sane, light-skinned, fair-haired woman who very calmly looks at her forlorn lover who's just broken up with her and very calmly says, but John, please don't leave me. (audience laughing) I love you. And in the novella, somebody comes in with a very tight dress, eyelashes so long when she blinks,

you fill it through the screen and she screams, (speaks in foreign language) Somebody runs in, shoots Juanito, you find out that Juanito's her secret baby daddy and you're like, "Oh my God!" That's how I read the Bible, okay? (audience laughing) And so when people come up to me and tell me, "Oh, I don't read the Bible 'cause the Bible's boring." No, boo, boo, boo, you boring, all right? So I'm saying a little flavor at a little sasson. This is my first time here. So you're like, why is she reading it like that? Because I'm fun, okay? I'm fun, all right. (audience laughing) Turn with me in your Bible to Joshua chapter six. And as you turn there again for the new folk or the old folk that just need a little bit of refresher, the children of Israel were promised a land. In Exodus 33, God spoke to a man named Moses and said, "Go to a land I have promised you." That's why it's called the promised land. After 400 years of oppression, under the cruel hand of Pharaoh, Moses went to Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go." And in this miraculous storytelling moment of documented Israeli history, the children of God were set free out of slavery and they were faced with a Red Sea.

And in God's miraculous hand was able to part the Red Sea. They walked on dry ground, figure a big a remix. (audience laughing) They walked on dry ground and the Egyptian army was swallowed up whole. Now they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and Moses was no longer with the people of God and there is a man by the name of Joshua. The second in command who was a worshiper and a warrior was going to take the people into the land that was promised to them. They come to the Jordan River, the Jordan River in very similar fashion to the Red Sea parts and they walk into the promised land. But just because you were in the land that was promised to you, that doesn't mean that you possess it. We're about to read about the children of Israel holding onto a promise, a God word that was going to propel them to step into what God had called them to. And that's my hope for us today. What I want us to go through and understand is where this story picks up, it's a scary moment. Joshua, I'm sure feels under resourced and overworked because they've been wandering for 40 years and this is going to be their very first major battle and entering into the land that was promised to them. And Joshua, six, one starts with this. Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred.

You brought your own Bible, I want you to circle that word securely barred. And if you're sitting next to someone who brought their Bible and you didn't bring it, you could circle it for them. It's called biblical graffiti. I'm from East LA. We like to help each other out, help a home me out, circle that word 'cause it's going to matter. They're securely barred because, underline because, because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, see I have, circle have, I have delivered Jericho into your hands. What kind of God is talking about a battle that has already been won that they haven't even faced yet? A good God. Yahweh, who says, "If I See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all your armed men. Do this for how many days? Oh, this is New York, make the public school system proud. Y'all can read, right? (laughing) Oh, did you think this is a performance? Oh, honey, we're here to play, all right?

This is not a monologue, baby, it's a dialogue. You're gonna talk back to me. So I'm gonna ask you today, how many days did they have to do this for? And only Josh will got this instruction. The people who got did it. They trusted this man to hear from God and to lead the people, oh, kind of like your pastor. Okay, here we go. March around the city once with the armed men. Do this for six days. Have the seven priests, underline seven, we'll come back to that later. Priests carry trumpets of rams horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, this number's gonna matter, stay with me. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times. The Lord likes the number seven, stay with me. With the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout. And the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up everyone straight in. You know what that is? That's a promise. And all across this room, and for those that will watch on YouTube later on, there are promises not yet possessed by the people of God. Oh yes, this was a specific promise for into a specific group of people,

but we have a God that lives in eternity and there is no time. When he makes a promise, he does not pull back his promise. And in the word of God, there's promises that our God loves you with an everlasting love. That he has removed your sins, though your sin might be as red as blood, there will be washed white as, book a book in the B.I.V. The Bianca international version, your sins are like scarlet and you will be washed white as snow. That he has a plan and he has a future for you. That you are not done yet. That there's more for you all throughout scripture. God's word says that he will never leave you nor abandon you and God's word is full of promises that will encourage us not to give up. But I, as a pastor, as a Bible teacher, as a leader in religious communities, I'm here to say that I'm saddened by seeing so many Christians right now quit, stop short and walk away because the promises of God feel far from them. I've seen way too many people leave the church because someone was mean to them or their feelings were hurt. I've seen way too many people walk out on their marriage

because we lost the loving feeling and we just don't really get along anymore. They're not really for me. I see way too many people stop believing once God doesn't answer them immediately. I see people walking away from their startup companies because they don't know how to scale their business and they're not asking God for divine revelation. I see way too many people not understanding the power that we possess as the people of God with the power of his presence within us. The Holy Spirit, I see too many people giving up. Now, if you're here today and you're full of faith and you're full of vigor, God bless you. I love you. They say in the South, bless your heart, you know? Like, I love that, keep going. Before a large swath of people in this room, life can sometimes feel really overwhelming, heavy and hard and I see so many Christians giving up when they're so close to winning the battle. Please hear me, I get it. I'm with you. I've been there and if I'm honest with you, there are days where I am there where I feel tired because I'm trying so hard and yet the results aren't happening. I'm praying and faith and I'm believing and it feels like God is not hearing my prayers. I have been disappointed from doing all the right things

and yet life feels like everything's going so wrong. I chose this particular passage because I think it simply gets us a strategy to stay in our calling and hold on to the promises that God has given us. But how? If you feel like I don't know where to go, I don't know how to get there, I feel overwhelmed, I don't know if I have the right faith, I don't know what God has called me to. I want you to build some resistance. So I'm gonna use some psychological brain building techniques alongside of the Bible. I believe that we're gonna use the children of Israel as a grid to lay over. How to not quit, how to build resilience, how to build perseverance. If you're with me, can I get an amen? We just read verses one through six but I want you to actually jot down this point because you're gonna see it in the passage. I want you to write down change your perspective. Change your perspective. Perspective is an honest acceptance of reality while maintaining hope. It's an honest assessment, this sucks, while maintaining hope, but God is good. Honest acceptance of reality while maintaining hope. It's not faking ourselves out. It's not, you know, singing.

Everything is awesome when your world is imploding. I don't want you to fake it so you make it. I don't want us to just close our eyes and close our ears and pretend it's okay 'cause, you know, that's fate. No, no, no, no, no. For the Israelites, they had a promise and they were called to inherit a land And how many of us know there's always a problem stamped between our promise and our possession? And here, this is where we find the children of Israel. Now, as a preacher, we don't like to always talk about the work that's required to enter into the promise. We love the promise, and we love giving out positive Bible verses and having them fall like candies from Pinyatas, like, yeah, hit the Bible. I gotta promise, it's more than that. It's gonna require not just motivation and inspiration for divine revelation to happen. We got some perspiration, we gotta put in some work. And that's what the children of Israel are gonna do. But we need to change our perspective. In the passage, the problem is obvious. The problem is a city called Jericho. And I don't want a word nerd too much, but it was actually a double-walled city. So there was one wall that was roughly about 30 feet, a small two-foot precipice, and then another wall that was in about another 30 to 40 feet. They were in penitiable walls.

And then, not only were the walls impossible to scale, the doors were securely barred. Why? Because scripture said, "Because of the children of Israel." So let's figure this out. The people of Jericho had heard about Yahweh. The children of Jericho had heard about the God of the children of Israel and said, "Oh, their God dried up the seed. Their God smashed out the Egyptian army. Their God, oh no, no, we are locked down. They are locked down. The city was impossible to get into, but how many of the impossible situations are not intimidating to our God? Impossible is where God starts. And maybe the thing that feels barricaded in your life isn't because the Lord doesn't want you to have it. Maybe the reason why it's barricaded is because the enemy knows that if you get it, your God confidence, your God confidence, will be so secure, nothing will stop you from inheriting that promise that God has given you. Maybe that's why it's so difficult. Maybe it feels like why there is red tape and why there's resistance. Resistance means, doesn't always mean that you're going in the wrong direction. Sometimes resistance is to build perseverance. I believe that God has called me to this

and I'm gonna continue to do this despite what people say. And I love that God's God jokes. People say, you know, the Bible's not funny. I think God is funny because in verse two, again, he said, I have delivered Jericho into your hands. A God that is speaking pretits in a current situation. It's the question I have to ask is, what do you do when what God has said doesn't look like what you see? What do you do when what you hear doesn't look like you're here? You know what I'm saying? What do you do in those moments? Do you say, aw, shucks, I tried. I tried the church thing. I did it. Do you say, oh, I tried it marriage. Do you say, I tried it work, but I can't believe they fired me. Show up late all the time, but they don't understand I can't function without my Starbucks. Like, are we giving up too soon? Are we giving up too soon here? I say this as a church planner who had to start again, and life looked very, very different for me. Today I'm not gonna give you the novella, okay? The Bible is the novella.

I'm not gonna give you my novella, but I will say that in a moment in my life where I felt like I just wasn't going to make it, I felt like everything around me had incinerated. All the things I had hoped and believed for, the things that I have fought for, felt like it went up in a pillar of smoke and I was left among ashes. What do you do in those moments? God has promised me things as a woman of God, as a leader in our church community. And sometimes I can look around and see, this doesn't look like anything that God has promised. So I have to ask you, when you look around at your current situation, what do you see? Too many people quit because they have the wrong perspective. When they look at what's in front of them, all they see is walls, but I want us to be like the psalmist who says, I look to the heavens, I'm gonna look at my walls, baby, I wanna look to the heavens to see where my help comes from. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. I need to change my perspective. Yes, I see a wall in front of me, but I gotta figure out a way to make it around the wall. I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna figure my way around it because I know what God has promised me.

What I want is people have got to hold onto the promises of God as if their life depends on it because it might just depend on it. Can we be people that are not here to perform, that are not here to tick a religious box off and say, oh, I went to church and I did it, no, no, no. Just as God promised Joshua, a physical land. God has promised us every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, but here's the problem. Just because God promised it doesn't mean we possess it. I don't automatically possess it just because God gave me the promise, no, no, no. And that's my story. Girls like me are told, you're never gonna go to college 'cause nobody in our family went to college and you're a first generation of America, you don't go to college. Brown girls from East L.A. don't go to college. And yet, I don't know, I graduated graduate school as a Bill Gates Millennium Scholar at the 4.0. Okay, like, I mean, I'm humble, I'm humble. But I work really hard 'cause God promised me something that he was gonna provide for me and open up doors that only heaven can open. A girls like me, girls like me are told that we can't lead religious organizations. And yet I am. And not because I wanted to do it by myself with the person and the man that I started this with, quit and walked away.

In contrary to what people said, the church is gonna split. You're not gonna be able to do it. People are gonna quit. The men don't wanna be let by women. I'm here to just say, I was faithful to the promise and God's growing it. I wanna be somebody who holds onto the promises of God. And though I had a childhood laced with trauma, girls like me with my background and my color of skin and my category highest prone to failure according to statisticians, we end up in prison, not going to prison to bring the gospel to Jesus Christ. I know my promises and I'm holding onto them like a dog with a bone. What is God promising you? What is rooted in scripture that God is asking you to believe him for? And I need you to envision the end. Because if you don't envision the end, you'll give up in the middle. And I see way too many people giving up when they're so close to shore. Why are we tempted to quit? We lose our perspective. We don't see progress. And so I want us to jot this down. And again, we're gonna go back to scripture as a foundation for this,

but I want you to jot this down. These are scientific ways in order to wire our brain and we rewire our brain for perseverance, for resilience. I want us to progress despite progress. Progress despite progress. Newen's third law of motion says that for every action, there's an equal and opposing reaction. So if I step on the gas pedal, the car goes. If I step on the brake, the car stops. And in our faith in the Lord, sometimes we feel like it should work the same way in life. I went to church, I dropped five-minute docks, but five bucks in the offering basketed, and I'm good. I did it. So what are you gonna do for me now, God? Oh, I showed up and I said no to the devil. I turned that guy down 'cause he don't love Jesus. If he don't love Jesus, he ain't got no job. He's not the one for me. I did it. So what are you gonna do, God? No, let's break this down. And I want us to imagine ourselves in this text. Look at verse three. "March around the city once with the armed men "do this for six days. "Pause for the cause, just for his nanosecond. "Some people don't care about this. "I'm a word nerd, I do care about this." In biblical numerology, the number six represents man,

the number of humanity. This is interesting. I just want you to write that down because you're a word nerd, but I think it's gonna come back when we see how the passage unfolds. Verse four, "Have seven priests carry trumpets "of ram squarms in front of the ark, "and on the seven-day march around the city, "seven times with the priest blowing the trumpets." And when you hear them sound along glass, some of the trumpets have the whole army give a loud shout. Even the wall of the city will collapse, the army will go up, everyone's straight in. Now, I'm all about motivation, I'm all about task setting. I have to do lists for my to-do list and they're color-coded, and I'm a sick one. I will write something I've already done on my to-do list for the satisfaction of just scratching it out. Anybody else feel me? Yeah, we have OCD, we need therapy. All right, great, yeah, yeah. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, if I can jump into the text, maybe Josh was like me, or on day one, they walk around the walls of Jericho, and he's like, amazing, let's see a brick fall, or a wall buckle, like something, like a shake, right on roll, right, God? You know what happens? Nothing, nothing happens on this day. We have a plan, but God is say, no, no, no, pivot,

we're gonna do it my way. And that's exactly what God's gonna do. He tells Josh what, hey, Josh, I need you to line up everybody, and here's the big strategy. This is your first battle into the promised land. I want you to march. If Josh was anything like carnal me, I'd be like, are you for real? Dog, are you for real right now? We're about to go to battle, and you want us to march? What's next, throwing up rose petals and skipping? Like, are you kidding me? We have to show our strength. We gotta let people know who we are. We mean business, but the homework of people who don't quit is this. We have the ability to pivot. We have the ability to pivot. See, we have a game plan, but God asks us to move. What do you do? What do you do when God asks you to change? What happens when you've been working this amazing corporate job, and then you have a baby, and the Lord asks you to stay home and change 75 diapers a day? Pivot, what happens, what happens when you lose your job, and you feel like that means that you have to stop tithing? I don't know, the Lord might be challenging you to trust him with your finances. Maybe you have an amazing job.

Maybe everything is perfect and comfortable, but the Lord is calling you to start a business or step into ministry, or serve on the serve team. What if he is saying, hey, I have so much more for you? What if, what if, what if, what if, the Lord calls you to break up with that man that you've been dating for three years, and you think he's the one? And I'm like, yeah, Gorba, he don't love Jesus, You know, he don't love Jesus. He's not the one for you. You know what I'm saying? He don't love Jesus, he ain't got a job, he's not the one for you. My boy, Mike over here, this man loves Jesus, he serves in ministry, he's 37 years old, he works at Chase Bank, all right, he's somebody boas, okay. You're welcome, bro, you're welcome. I'll be the flower girl at your wedding, I prophesied the name of Jesus. What I've come here to tell you is pivot and don't quit. Maybe you feel tired and maybe what you feel like you're doing is foolish, keep marching because they kept marching around Jericho for six days. They kept circling, they kept circling, they kept remaining faithful. I know that good company groups are starting and I don't think that you could successfully march alone.

That's me, hot take. Joshua didn't do this by himself. God told Joshua to do it with the army. This is an army of people who are on mission here for this city and for their families. Don't do it alone. Get into a group, I don't like small groups. I don't either, but my life has changed when I'm around them. I say this as a pastor, okay. I'm like, oh gosh, it's awkward. Like, is their house gonna be clean? Do they have a cat? Like, that's weird, like, I know the feeling and the hesitation and all the cat people are like, why are you like that? Leave me alone, all right? Don't like hats, don't like hats. This is what I want us to do when we feel like we don't know what to do when we feel like one of the verge of quitting, when we feel like all that we're doing is not moving us or progressing us forward. When we feel like we don't have the right perspective, I want us to keep marching. I want you to march, even if you don't think it matters. I want you to march when it doesn't make sense. I want you to do God's will, even if it doesn't look like it's working out. I, as a pastor and as a shepherd and a lover of God, I want you to forgive that person, even though they might not forgive you.

As a pastor and as shepherd, I wanna tell you that though you might not be able to even envision the end, I want you to ask God to divinely reveal what he has for your life. Do you think that you have a God that loves you so much that he died for you, but he doesn't love you enough to speak to you? God wants to speak to you. God wants to speak to you through his word. God wants to speak to you through his people. God wants to speak to you through his community. So this message is for someone who lost a perspective and this message is for someone who doesn't see progress. I want you to know that just because your progress isn't obvious doesn't mean that your prayers aren't working. God, here's you. You might not get the response that you want, the time that you want, but our God, here's the cries of his people, even when nothing moves. Even when a brick doesn't fall or a wall doesn't buckle in our life, the children of Israel kept marching and I want us to do the same. What did the children of Israel demonstrate for us? Obedience. Maybe obedience isn't what God is doing on the outside. What if the obedience is gonna change us from the inside? What if God cares more about your internal than he does about your external? And this is what we see the children of Israel do. They progressed even though nothing was happening.

Look at verse eight, when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the Lord went forward blowing their trumpets and the ark of the Lord's covenant followed them. Now this is just a little word in our detail. This is so fun. People tell me people don't care about this. Well, I care about it so you're gonna care about it. The ark of the covenant represents the presence of God. They did not move forward without the presence of God. I want you to wake up every morning and say, God, I don't wanna move forward without your presence. I don't wanna go there. I don't wanna say that. I wanna do this without you a presence. Because when his presence is with us, his presence will protect us. It's not, you know, some sort of like woo-woo scary. Like, oh God, it's presence. So there is power in his presence. And the people of God knew that. Verse nine, the armed guard marched ahead of the priest who blew the trumpets and the rear guard followed the ark all this time the trumpets were sounding. But Joshua had commanded the army. Do not give a war cry. Do not raise your voice. Do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then, shout. Sometimes the best strategy is just a shut up in March.

And if you could talk yourself out of it, if you keep on talking, you might just talk yourself out of it. And so my hesitation is, what if we just stop complaining? What if we stop asking him, her, and them? What if we just obeyed what God called us to do the first time and just march? And just keep marching because this is what the Lord is calling to do. I'm just obeying what the Lord is calling me to do. This is speculation here. Again, this is how I get into the word. This is speculation. But I wonder about the people of Jericho. As they are looking out the window, what do they think about the people of God? If you were in Jericho, you're looking down on day one. Maybe you're thinking, oh, wow, okay. They're getting a lay of the land. They're just figuring this out. All right, they're just scoping it out. They're going to see where our weak spots are. But then on day two, they do the same thing. Nobody says anything. And then day three, maybe, maybe that's when the insults are hurled. Maybe then that's when people are laughing. Maybe they're mocking. Maybe they're throwing things. See, in life, sometimes people will ridicule you. Sometimes people will mock you.

Sometimes a lot of people will have opinions about things that they don't know. In those moments, I'm gonna ask you to shut up March because the word of the Lord was given to you, not to them. So you're responsible to listen to the word of God. How deflating though, as the children of Israel, I don't know if it's just me and I'm the complainer here, but after day three, after day four, we head back to camp, so what happened? We walked, yeah. In our life, it's like, well, I went to church again. Yep, I served and I greeted people awkwardly at the door because God asked me to serve in this community. What's changing your life? I serve him. What if you are believing for a healing for yourself or for somebody else? What has changed? Nothing but I keep believing. Let me share this with you and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time here because I know that stories and healings are very specific, but I don't preach this message from a place of, like, I'm gonna pontificate over some exegesis of the Old Testament. I preach this because it's my life. I get to stand in the wake of a 15 year prayer and it's tender in my life and I'm believing God to hold this, but anyone who's dealt with addiction knows that addiction is really hard to break.

I have a loved one, my brother. I am 11 years older than him, so it's kind of like a son to me and in high school he started dabbling with drugs and it ravished his brain, like wrecked him from the inside out. And it's one thing as a pastor's kid to know that there's hardship for pastor's kids and there's extra temptation and that sort of stuff, but you pray it away. You pray the devil away, it's fine, it's a testimony. But year after year of seeing my brother deteriorate because of drug use, year after year of keeping him away from the family because he was unsafe, year after year of seeing my brother lose everything. Year after year of his mind being blitzed out because he's an addict and just recently, when I say recently, I say recently, somebody called me in the middle of the night telling me like, hey, I saw your brother underneath a bush in the storm in a parking Compton. Now, if you don't know, a Compton is not a place that you wanna be, all right, I'm from California. We rap about it, that's that part. And my brother was underneath a bush in a storm in a parking Compton out of his mind. The car that he had been living in had been repossessed and he was left to walk the streets. I picked him up, I don't know how many miles away from where he was and he smelled horrible. He reaped, my homeless brother had lost his mind.

But God gave me a word by a woman on our prayer team. She said, I don't know your brother, but the Lord has given me that his name is Nebuchadnezzar. Because if you're familiar with the book of Daniel, there was a king and the king lost his mind. The king lost his mind because he turned away from God and said that he was powerful, that the king himself was powerful, the king himself had power and he lost his mind and he was eating grass in the field. And scripture said that when he declared that the Lord was his God that his mind was brought back to him and she said, I believe that word is for your brother and I held onto that word for five years. You know how hard it is to look at holidays with an empty seat? You know how hard it is to get a call with somebody who's talking to you, but they're not making sense. You know how hard it is for you to shepherd God's people, to feed God's people, to do the right things and feel like you're not getting the results that you deserve? You know what that feels like? I'm cautious to say this. But now I get to say his name. His name is Sebastian and I believe that Nebuchadnezzar was given to him because now I call him Nebuchadnezzar. The Lord has restored his brain and the Lord has given him freedom from this addiction and I declare it is forever. (congregation cheering) Don't give up when you're so close to quit

and sometimes it's your faithfulness and your prayers and your trust in God that will bring somebody else breakthrough. How long do I have to go through this? Just keep walking. We want to see growth and the progress. We want to know our prayers are working, but we give up when we lose the right perspective. We give up when we don't see progress and we give up when we don't see the point. I don't like sermons that all have the same letters, but I was raised on Sesame Street and since I'm in New York, it just felt fitting. Okay, so bear with me. Maybe today you're wondering, but how long do I have to keep on wandering these walls, walking these walls and wandering in the wilderness? How much longer am I gonna have to eat healthy and go to the gym while everyone else is just pumping themselves with those nymphic? How long God? How long are we gonna sleep in this king-sized bed alone because you told me that that was gonna be a spouse and now I'm just empty sleeping like a starfish and I'm all alone in this bed. How much longer God? How much longer do I have to remain pure? Well, everyone else is not. How much longer do I have to walk with integrity How much longer will evil people succeed?

How much longer, God? Shut up and march, shut up and march. I want you to write this down. I need you to find some purpose in your pain. There are people, and there is a psychological movement that are saying not all pain has a purpose. And most of the people that are talking about this do not have a faith background. So bear with me for a second. This concept of meaning making, finding pain to provide a sense of purpose actually came out of a concentration camp at a World War II where a psychologist started studying those who survived the Holocaust successfully. I was homeschooled, give me a break. All right, and I think because the world wants to just normalize any sort of hope or demoralize any sort of hope that we just go through pain for kicks and giggles. But as a woman of the world who has studied ancient Hebrew, I don't speak Hebrew very openly, but I've studied under some rabbis, and I found out this interesting bit of information. That in ancient Hebrew, there is no word for tragedy. And there is no word for tragedy because in ancient Hebrew culture and understanding, if God had not redeemed a situation, then God was not done. And all throughout scripture, I don't have time. That's another sermon for another day. All throughout time, God is faithful to keep his words.

That's why Paul says in Galatians 6,9, we do not grow weary in doing good for, in due season, we will reap a harvest. You don't have to feel it to do it. You don't have to like it to do it. You don't have to understand it to do it. But I want you to keep marching and inherit the promises that God has given you, even when you feel like it's crazy, even when other people think it's crazy, even when you begin to doubt, I want you to remain faithful to what God has promised you. And the process of circling my problems, God is preparing me for what he's called me to do. And as you circle the problem, it's almost like a death to self. So I can inherit a land that God has promised, knowing that it was not me who accomplished it. It was God. And we get to stand back when our walls fall down and have a deep understanding of, this is a God-didded moment. All I did was give a shout unto the Lord and the walls fell down. I think some of us need to be like David, more undignified than this. We need a shout in the house of God. Some of us didn't hear like the frozen chosen during worship. I want you to raise your hand in the act of surrender. I want you to get on your knees in the act of repentance. I want you to jump up.

I want you to shout, no, not because I'm Pentecostal. I was raised Baptist. I read God's word and God's word says that we worship in different ways, prostrate on the floor, arms up with the shout, with a clap. I want us to invoke the mighty mattress name of God so that his presence goes before us. So when the walls fall down, we know it is not us. We are worshiping God before the deliverance happens. Maybe you're sitting here and you're tired and you feel like Florence Chadwick, I get it. You're tired, you're injured, you're cold, you're hurt. And you don't know where you're going. I'm gonna tell you, keep going, keep running. Oh, I can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. If you can't crawl, drag yourself into the promised land because that land is yours. Florence Chadwick, she left dissuaded and disappointed and went back home, but she was undeterred. She said, I'm going to do this. So she hopped back into the cold waters and began practicing again and again and again. And the very next year, she got her mom tugboat camped and a coach that set out in a tugboat and she entered in to the frigid icy waters there in the UK. And there, she was in the water. The water was cold, the waves were crashing and the sun began to set and darkness began to creep over and fog began to creep in like it did the last time.

Except this time she told herself, I've been here before and many of you need to remind yourself, you've been here before and God has been faithful. Can you keep going because wouldn't it be a shame for you to quit when you're so close? Wouldn't it be a shame for you to give up and walk away for the very thing that you prayed for? I love that when Florence kept on going and the mantra she kept on saying is I've been here before, I've been here before, I've been here before. And when she reached the shore, she was embraced by her coach and the captain and her mother who told her, you didn't just make it to the other side. You broke the world record two hours faster than any man who has done this before. So I'm telling you today, six in biblical numerology represents the number of man. But does any word nerd don't answer pastors? Does any word nerd know what the number seven means? Completion, oh, that's a Bible teaching charge. Thank you, Pastor Chris, that's right. 10 extra bonus points in heaven for you. The number seven is the number of completion. That in God's strength, not man's strength, walls will come down. Today I have come on mission. This church is just beginning, and I'm asking you not to quit. I'm asking you to give of your time, to give of your treasures, to give of your talents.

There's nothing greater than the local church, and I have seen people experience the presence of God and a new sense of purpose in their life when serving in a local church. And so today, I'm gonna pray two different prayers. And today's a little bit different. There's only one service. Pastor Chris gave me a few minutes, and we're gonna just invoke the presence of Jesus to move in our midst, and to move specifically for specific people. But I'm gonna pray two prayers. For those in the room that they just feel like, that's me, I'm so tired and I'm fatigued, and I don't think I'm gonna make it. I know God is with me, but I wanna walk away. I wanna quit. I wanna pray for you. I wanna pray that the Holy Spirit gives you a strength that is divine, a strength for you to move forward, even when you can't, I'm gonna keep this, thank you baby. And then I'm gonna pray for those that don't have a relationship with Jesus. And so if you're here today, and you're feeling like, hey, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. I have a relationship with the Lord, but I'm tired and I wanna quit. I'm asking you for a moment of honest vulnerability. And usually in this moment, to make everyone feel safe and comfortable

with our emotions, I have everyone close their eyes, but you wanna know something, this is why I like New York, 'cause you're also real people. You can't be real in the house of God, we're gonna be real. So if you're here today, and you were like, that's me, I'm not sure if I'm okay. And I need God's presence to move in my life. If that is you, will you do me a favor? Very boldly will you raise your hand? God bless you, God bless you, God bless you, God bless you, God bless you, God bless you. Hands going up, yeah, yeah, we're honest, we're honest, we're honest, we're honest, we're honest. So spirit of living God, we come before you, and I just pray for your presence to give your children, the children who you love, men and women, young and old. Give them a divine win from heaven to accelerate them forward. Thank you God for who you are, thank you that today, it was like a B12 shot of your spirit into their soul to do what they cannot do in their own strength, in Jesus name, amen. If you're here today, and you've never said yes to Jesus, maybe at one point you were walking with the Lord, but you've turned your back, or maybe you've never heard the gospel message, today is the day of salvation. I wanna let you know that Jesus loves you so much, and he died and gave his life for you,

and because he died and gave his life through his shed blood, you can find forgiveness of your sins, not just forgiveness of your sins, but a clean mind and a clean heart and a clean body, that he can restore the years that the locus is eating, as the prophet Joel says, which means nothing more than he can restore everything that has been taken from you. So if you're here today and you've never said yes to Jesus, or maybe at one point you were, but you know, you are, you are living in the sin days, you're living in Boav, all right? You know that you are living the life that you should not be living today is the day of salvation. I do wanna create a safe and sacred space. If you do me a favor, if you bow your head, can you close your eyes? 'Cause this is a pivotal life-changing decision. If you are here today, you are ready to say yes to Jesus. I'm gonna count to three and invite you to raise your hand, but one, by raising your hand, you are saying I want Jesus, this is my personal Lord and savior. Two, by raising your hand, you are saying that I believe that God could forgive all of my sins, and three, by raising your hand, you are declaring the power of Jesus will live in you as Romans 10 says. So if that is you, you are saying yes to Jesus for the first time, we're coming back to faith. Will you raise your hand in one, two, three, we raise a high. God bless you, God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.

God bless you. Anyone else, I can't see you with the Lord, God bless you, God bless you, yes. And you're not raising your hand so I can see them. God bless you, you're raising your hand so heaven is rejoicing with you in this powerful decision and declaration. So to let you know, everyone who raised your hand, that you are not alone in this, can everyone as good company repeat this prayer of faith. It's not a magic prayer, but it's a prayer to articulate the decision that you're making. Can you say, Jesus, today I choose you as my Lord and savior. Cleanse my heart, cleanse my mind, cleanse my body, fill me with your spirit to do what I cannot do. In Jesus' name, amen. So church, today we have a few minutes and I'm just gonna ask really quick. As I mentioned, I believe that God speaks through His word. I also believe that God speaks through His people. And in the New Testament, Paul the Apostle in Romans 4, 1 Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 4 lifts out spiritual gifts. Then we have divine gifts given from heaven that yes, God can speak through His word, but He also can speak through His people. One of those gifts that Paul lists is a word of knowledge. A word of knowledge is when the Lord reveals something to someone about someone else without understanding, but heaven knows and so heaven wants to speak. And so there's a few words that we're gonna remain

But I don't want you to miss out. I don't want you to miss out. In a second, I'm going to have some of the pastoral team with some of the leaders be available for prayer. And then afterwards, when we continue worship, I would love to pray with you. I'm seeing God do crazy things in our church. And so today, I'm going to be praying that God move in healing. Let me share with you a little testimony of Rosanna. Rosanna came to our church a year ago after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now listen, every healing is different. And I believe in modern medicine. I believe in Western medicine. I believe in Eastern medicine. But more than that, I believe in a good God that I know can heal. And Rosanna was told by her doctors that she had to do radiation. She went through chemotherapy. She did all of this. She was so desperate. She started doing immunotherapy. Very fragile, very weak. She came to a service that we had dedicated to believe God for healing. I called it a healing service. And just in faith, we gathered around her, and I pulled her up. She was fragile, like a bird, and I put my hand on her back. And we began to storm heaven and pray for her. Well, this past Sunday, a week ago, she made it to church and said, "Pastor Bianca, I can't explain this to you, but at that prayer service, I just felt like the warmth of heaven was touching me. And I knew that God had healed my body." She said, "I went back and spoke to my doctors, and I told them even though I did radiation,

even though I did chemotherapy, it was still there. In the middle of her immunotherapy," she said, "the Lord told me to stop." I said, "Girl, I'm glad the Lord told you, because I would never tell you to stop. I'm a woman of faith, but give me some medicine. Man, medicine, or miracle, I'll take it." And she said, "No, I know that the Lord healed me, and here she is, eight months cancer-free. And I believe that the Lord wants a fresh move of his spirit." With that faith from the best coast to New York, with that faith, I'm going to believe. I'm believing even if you don't believe, and I'm going to pray even if you don't believe in my God. Because this is what I do know. I believe in healing by proxy. I believe in deliverance by proxy. That means when you are praying for somebody who is not here. I know because I prayed in proxy for fifteen years for Sepakineser and the Lord brought a healing. So who you got to pray for? Who you got to war for? Who you got to labor for? Because sometimes the healing isn't going to because they open up their mouth because of your faith, like the Syrophoenician mother, who said, "Will you please heal my daughter?" And because of her faith, the Lord healed her daughter. So many of us need to come forward for prayer for somebody else, even if it's not ourself. Before we go on, if you were here today and you have a stomach issue, it's a stomach lining issue, there's irritation around your stomach lining. I believe it's an ulcer, an ulcer, it feels hot, it feels like fire, and it's like circular. I think it's like right here in your stomach. I don't know what the Lord's going to do, but I got faith he can heal you. So we're going to pray and believe what I will declare is that you will experience healing in heaven.

But I got crazy faith to believe for healing here on earth. I don't usually do this, but to let you know that I'm not crazy, and that I do in dear deed here from the Lord, will you do me a favor? By the way, you're not going to sway me if you don't raise your hand, but you will make me look like a false prophet. I know God speaks to me, so how did you prove it? But I'm asking you for bold faith. If that is you and you have a stomach lining issue, ulceritis, I think, if that is you, will you do me a favor? Will you raise your hand so we can pray for you? Are you raising your hand or you're testifying? Yeah, okay, I'd love that. Is there anyone else? You know, this is my favorite, if that's you. Is there anyone in the back? I can't really see you, so you're going to have to holler. Okay, this is what I love, that in a room of this size, that the Lord would bring a crazy Mexican from California, and that he would see you, and that he wants to do healing in your life. What is it? If you don't want me asking, okay, oh, I love this. Okay, so in a second, the pastor and the prayer team is going to be of your bow, I'd love to pray for you, and we're just going to pray and believe that God can heal you, and in a second, we're going to continue to worship. But if you're here today and your name is Richard, you go by Richard, but they called you Ricky as a kid, I just need to tell you, God loves you so much, the relationships you long for, they will come, but you're settling for versions of relationships that are dragging you down, there's a high calling on your life, and it's time to elevate. I don't, maybe this is dating relationships, but I really do think there's something within business, like you're partnering with the wrong people, actually, maybe it's relationships

and business, but you're partnering with the wrong people, the Lord very clearly wants you to elevate, and to let go of the things that are holding you down. Today I read Proverbs 7, and if Ricky, Richard, if that is you, I want you to read that and be encouraged, and if you're bold enough to come forward for prayer so we can pray for you, that'd be amazing. If you're here in this room, and very recently, you had a father that passed, and you did not have a good relationship with him, and you're angry that you did not have a relationship with him, and you're actually holding that anger towards your heavenly father, today the Lord wants to let you know that he wants to restore fatherhood in your life. There is healing that will take place, but you've got to embrace your heavenly father as a father who is good, as a father who is loving, and he wants to walk this healing like you're looking in the streets regularly and then you see like little black dots in your vision, I don't know what that is, but I want to pray that the Lord can heal you from that and last but not least, and this is a sense of one I'm not going to ask for a response or confirmation, but if you're here in this room when you are experiencing post-abortive trauma, you had an abortion and you're living in the effects, the bodily effects and the psychological effects of that very clearly. You did this in private and it's killing you because nobody knows and inside you're screaming. Inside you want to wail, you want to weep, but you're keeping it inside and it has been this very private thing. The Lord very clearly wants me to tell you to make it public because the enemies keeping you trapped. He's keeping you wandering in the wilderness and he wants you to experience the freedom of the promised land, but it happens through confession and through confession comes healing. So the worship team is going to sing over us and I'll be down here, some passage will be down here, but I just I just want us to come forward to receive prayer for those that need to receive prayer. If you're here and life is beautiful and good, I want you to worship and add faith to the room. But spirit of living God, thank you for who you are, thank you for what you're doing God. I thank you and I believe God that this place is going to be a well, that good company is going to be a well and a land that is dry and erred and people are going to come here and they're going to drink of living water. So Heavenly Father, what you said, living water into this moment right now, as we worship you, as we believe in faith for

you God, as we are asking for miracles to break out God, I'm praying for those wrestling with post abortive trauma, those with the vision, I believe it's high blood pressure that's causing vision issues for the person, the young woman that has the stomach irritation and stomach lining for the people who need heart healing from a father whose past will you show that you are a good, good father, we worship you, we thank you and we praise you. Ephesians 3.20, now to Him, who is able to do exceedingly at a month, we'll be all told that we can ask, think, hope, or imagine to Him be the glory. In Jesus' name, can we stand to our feet and give God a clap off ring of praise. With your clap off ring of praise, you are saying God, I believe you. God, you are able. God, I want you to move my life. I want you to do exceedingly, abundantly, and I will march and march and march until I see the blend that has promised to me, can we worship God? Can we worship God? Let's go. Come on, Ryan. ♪ We won't die ♪