Delay Is Not Denial: God Developing You Through Suffering

How many of you are afraid to move the stone because there's an odor in there? How many of you are afraid to move it because of what's in there that you don't want to be shown, that you don't want to be exposed. See, the miracle can't happen until the door is open and everything and all of its glory is visible for the world to see. See, we don't want to do that. Some of you are suffering right now because you are embarrassed about what is on the other side of that. You haven't gotten desperate enough to go, I don't care. I don't care anymore. I want to be free. I want to walk out of that tomb. I don't want to be held captive by it anymore. I want to be free and before Jesus can call Lazarus out, the stone has to move. Christian, when are you gonna move it? [01:41:23] (65 seconds)  #MoveTheStone

See, one of the things I wanted you to get today is delay is not denial. I need you to hear that. Delay is not denial, it's development. While you are being delayed, God is developing something in your life and there's necessary sometimes for him to hit the pause button on your life and let you linger in that place for a while because there's work that has to be done and it can only be done when you're in that room. I don't know about you, but I have been in that room several times and and I will tell you this, he had my full attention when I was there waiting. I wasn't wondering, I wasn't playing on my phone, I wasn't distracted by whatever, just fill in the blank. I was focused because he had me in a place to where I couldn't do anything. [00:50:52] (71 seconds)  #DelayIsDevelopment

God does not waste suffering. You need to write this down. God does not waste suffering. He does not waste it. God does not waste it. You need to hear that to me. What you have been through will not be wasted if you give it to him. If you will put it in his hands and say, god take this. He will take it and he will dump it into that Romans eight twenty eight mystical thing that he does with that and he will cause something wonderful to bloom out of it. [01:18:07] (44 seconds)  #NoSufferingWasted

This week, I I wanna I wanna go back to that room and talk about what do you do while you're waiting for God to move. When you're in that place of uncertainty and you don't know what's gonna happen and you don't know what's going on and God seems to be a thousand miles from you. He seems to be so distant that you can't even hear or discern or feel anything. It's like you're living in a vacuum. What do I do in that moment? Because if we'd be honest, we've lived a lot of moments in that place. Wondering does God really care? Is he really involved in this? Did I misplace my faith? Did I it was I sold a bill of goods? Have I believed in a fairy tale? Or is he really real? [00:46:22] (56 seconds)  #WaitWell

See, disappointment. God meets us in our honesty. Do you have an honest relationship with god? Are you honest with him? See, one of the things that I love so much about king David, the shepherd boy David. I I love so much I love about him is he was so raw in everything that he wrote. So honest. He didn't hide it. He just put it out there. God, I'm disappointed. God, don't you see all these people are trying to kill me? God, don't you care? Here I am. I'm out here in the middle of this field and I am unprotected and you're nowhere to be seen and what am I supposed to be doing about this? They're trying to run me down. I'm running like a deer after some water and where are you? God meets us in our honesty. [01:27:39] (70 seconds)  #BeHonestWithGod

You know, there's a there's a few things in the human experience that is the same for every person. Person. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, it doesn't matter if you're a sinner or if you're lost, it doesn't matter what denominational brand that you wear, it doesn't matter if you hate church, it doesn't matter if you've have made mistakes or if you've done everything right. There's a common element that every single one of us as human beings when we were born into this world, we are all going to experience pain. Every single person that you meet, if they're breathing, I promise you, they have suffered at some point in their life. [00:43:57] (51 seconds)  #EveryoneHurts

See in that moment right there, if you're tempted, you could say, well, he doesn't care. I'm suffering. I'm in pain, and he hasn't showed up. I've I've been guilty of that. I've had things in my life that that that were so painful that that I couldn't even have you ever been in so much pain that your pain hurts? You got one pain on top of another pain, and you just got so much that everything hurts. Every breath is an effort. Every step is just incredibly difficult because all I wanna do is just lay down and die. It hurts to breathe. And when I hear somebody laugh, it sounds like broken glass to my soul. How could they laugh when I am dying here? That's when it gets real. [00:56:04] (74 seconds)  #WhenPainOverwhelms

See, character is what God is building in you and it is what remains after the test. See, you know what kind of character you have after you have persevered and you have been through the suffering and you stand back and you see what is left, that is what your character actually is. Hope is what comes out of you. This is trust and and and if you would say this with me, god's not finished yet. God's not finished yet. God's not He's not finished with you. You may think it's over. You may think there's not another step, but God is not finished yet Because we have taken a step back after we have endured and we have suffered and we look at our character and we go, okay, I got some things I need to work on. And then we enter back into that again because God's furnace never goes out. He's constantly refining us. He's constantly burning away what scripture said was the dross. That's a church word for crap. [01:10:20] (89 seconds)  #RefinedByFire