13 years ago, God led me into the ICU unit at Miami Valley, where Greg was because of his alcoholism. He was dying, and the doctors, including Dr. Beth Delaney, who knew all the important people at Miami Valley, came to Beth and said, "You need to plan to live life without Greg. He's not going to make it. His body's shutting down; he's dying, and you need to prepare yourself for that."
I remember going into his room in ICU and praying over him. I basically said, "Dude, you can't die. You're going to be our recovery pastor." I had no idea back then what God had in store for Pastor Greg Delaney. God just used this church in a season of Greg and Beth's lives, but it was preparing him for an incredible, influential ministry—not just here in this city but in the state. He serves on the governor's team; he's with Governor DeWine frequently. He goes to our nation's capital in D.C. and is on a number of teams there, and he is very well known across our nation.
We are just so blessed to be able to have a little bit of the history of Pastor Greg and Beth's lives. But today, I'm going to ask that we give honor to whom honor is due, and we know that's Jesus. I would love for you to stand to your feet one more time. I know it's kind of like the Catholic Church—we're getting up and down, right?—but I'm going to have you stand one more time, and I want you to make welcome Pastor Greg Delaney. [Applause]
Well, thank you so much. Well, good morning. Let's pray. God, we've just been moved by you today, earlier today and throughout this morning. Lord, we know that you're always with us, but it's especially amazing when we feel you so close, enveloping us with how much you love us, but also with the hope that you are.
Lord, it's with hopeful expectation that I share from you today. I said in the first service, and I always say it: I'd much rather have nobody remember where this word came from, but that they know that the word came from you. So, Lord, today, I just ask for that from me, but for all that are here. Lord, this place is very special, and it's always special. It's a special time for me. I look forward to it every year, getting a chance to share what you've shown me and Beth and our family over the course of the year before.
So, Lord, today, I just ask that you watch over me, watch over all of us, help us to receive what it is that you want for each one of us. This is an individual journey, and Lord, there's something maybe here for someone that wasn't expecting it today. I pray that we're open and ready to guide that and, most importantly, to put flame to that. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, it's good to be with you, and thank you for that, Mark. You know, I can say from personal experience with Nathan, and I'm going to get to know you better too, Nathan. Nathan and I go back a minute; we played a lot of soccer together. He still looks like he can play; I look more like the ball. But he's been a good friend for a long time. We've shared some life together and shared a journey together, and his family has been a big part of my family. His uncle gave me one of my first jobs; I don't know if you knew that, and helped me kind of get along my way.
So, I can tell you, you're getting a good one and a good family to come here with us. Before I dive into something else, I started with in the last service, in between services, I received a very, very special Fourth of July welcome from all of you, and so I wanted to share it with you.
Yeah, that is Oliver. I'm a grandpa, which is nuts. And that's Oliver; he's saying hello from up in Muskingum County, where he is camping, which will break him of that soon in his life and teach him how to golf instead. But that's Oliver, and he says happy Fourth of July to all of you, and I wanted to share that with you.
We're a mess, is what we are, but it's been good. I wanted to share this next slide before I got started into the message, and the message today is "When Your Jacked Up Shows Up." So kind of hang on to that a little bit, and we'll dive into that. But I wanted to share this passage from Proverbs 29:18. It says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
I had texted Mark a couple of months ago or so about what I was going to share today, but as I was thinking about that, what he tells you is true. He came to the hospital to visit me, and I'll just be transparent: I really didn't like him. When I go out and tell the story, you know, there are all kinds of things I didn't like about him. Plus, he was Pentecostal; I couldn't deal with that. I grew up in the Church of Christ.
But one of the things that he did is he listened to the Lord, and he was intensely obedient. When he decreed that over me about becoming a recovery pastor, you know, I didn't believe it. I was a drunk. And yet, let me tell you something about Mark, you guys: he handed me the keys to the church, and he took a lot of flack for that because this community had seen him pass the torch, the town drunk, onto me as the town drunk. I had quite the reputation myself, and people naysayed him and said, "Why in the world would you bring a guy like that into your church?"
And yet, he was faithful and opened the door to the church, and we had seven guys that met on Monday nights and grew from there. But as I was thinking about a way that here in the last Sunday is him being senior pastor when I'm on the stage and been scheduled on the stage, I started to kind of pull just a few of the icons of the people who have been touched and communities that have been touched because of his and Anna's obedience.
I talk about a rock in the pond, and this doesn't even do it justice of the places where what happened here at AHOP and what happened through Mark and Anna. We've been to all of these places and have had direct or indirect impact on those ministries and those things, and it continues to grow and flourish. It has nothing to do with me; it has everything to do with a guy and his wife who believed in what God was telling them and took a step of faith in something that really he shouldn't have had any faith in at all.
So, I thank you so much for that because I'm not doing what I get to do if it weren't for you. Thank you for that, and give him a round of applause. He's an amazing guy. I mentioned that there's probably going to be a lot of that between now and September, and I know I'm going to get sick of it, so I wanted to get it out of the way early. But no, I do love you, buddy; you know that.
I wanted to talk a little bit about what to do when your jacked up shows up. I want to show you a picture of a couple of friends of mine. This is Micah and Allison. Micah and Allison have been friends of mine for a long time. They actually provided some music for one of my little girl's weddings and have been in ministry with them. I just have grown to love them.
I had the opportunity to officiate their wedding back in the springtime, and as we were getting prepared for the wedding, we went out to dinner. Allison is now a life coach at an organization in Lebanon, Ohio, a manufacturer where 50% of the employees that work there are folks either in recovery or returning citizens. It's an amazing place.
She has the incredible job of working with folks who are reassimilating to life, and it was during dinner that she made this comment about folks that walk into her office and talk about when their jacked up shows up. I was like, "Man, I really like that. I think I'm going to steal that." It was there that I began to think about what I wanted to talk about today.
I like what Pfeiffer says there at the top: "When something goes wrong, resist the urge to feel like a victim and start looking for an opportunity to grow and mature." So last week, I'm sitting in the back, and Jennifer starts talking. I'm like, "She stole my sermon." What was funny is that she was talking about all these wonderful natural ways that she kind of deals with her jacked upness, right? I was like, "I am the most unnatural person on the planet. I can't relate to any of that because I don't see Jennifer having cookies in her cupboard like I have cookies in my cupboard and dealing with this stuff."
But as Jennifer talked, it was just amazing to me because she took us through this journey, and it was a long time of testing. It was a difficult season in her life, and yet she had come to this incredible realization of the faithfulness and the wonderful nature of God. Then she was talking about pot, and so here I am, the addiction guy, and I couldn't come up with my own acronym that fit the pot thing. I tried THC; I tried CBD; I tried LSD. I tried anything, and I couldn't get it to work. So today, you just get a little TTS, and it'll make sense here in a second.
The gal in the bottom corner, her name is Jan Brown. Jan Brown is Dr. Jan Brown; she's out in Williamsburg, Virginia. She's in this space, and she's a wonderful lady, an amazing lady of faith. It was from a conversation I had with her that kind of formulated that TTS that I'll share here shortly.
What do we do when our jacked up shows up? I think Jen hit it quite a bit last week, but the first thing you should do—I'm going to give you three things—is a simple, practical way when you're jacked up, whether it's long-term, as she kind of talked about last week, or if it's short-term. We're going to kind of unpack that a little bit.
So what we're going to do is trust God. What's amazing is Jen shared this passage of scripture during her talk last week, and I had not used this in this translation before. I had already written this sermon about five or six weeks ago, and yet we both used the Passion Translation. I really like what it says here in James 1:2: "My fellow believers, when it seems that as though you are facing nothing but difficulties, see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can. For you know that when your faith is tested, it stirs up in you the power of endurance. And then, as your endurance grows even stronger, it will release perfection into every part of your being until there's nothing missing and nothing lacking."
What does that ask us to do? It's what she mentioned last week: surrendering into the process, right? But look what's there; look what's available there if we can trust our way through it. Because when we're in those moments of incredible difficulty, when the jacked up shows up, right, what do we look to do? We look to go, "God, what in the world is going on?" We don't want to see the possibility in it. It's hard when you're in the middle of it, and yet the Lord is sitting there saying, "Hey, I want you to take a look at a different perspective. I want you to lean into me while this is going on around you because in this, I have something for you. In this, I'm going to show you a new level of endurance. In this, I'm going to reveal to you something about you that you didn't even know. In this, I'm going to equip you with something that you're going to be able to go and share for someone else down the road that are going to need it because they're going to need to see that you got through it, that you had the endurance to make it over it, that you were able to come and now see the perfection in it."
Often, the joy isn't while it's going on; the joy comes after because now I can look back and say, "My goodness, he was a faithful God. He was a good Papa." And now, you know what? I can't contain that; I need to go share that with someone else. And then what happens with that? What happens as we do that? Well, what it does is it reinforces our faith. As our faith gets reinforced and as we lean into the Word of God, like this passage that is so true, we start to find things about ourselves that we start to ground ourselves and get more rooted into what God has for us.
I was pressed to Jeremiah 17, and I love what it says here: "But blessed is the man who trusts me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They're like trees planted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers, never a worry through the hottest of summers, never dropping a leaf, serene and calm through drought, bearing fresh fruit every season."
Like I said, as I was sitting back there and listening to what Jennifer was talking about, the only thing that kept coming to mind was, "There's my sister from that other mister." But take a look at what's there; look what Jeremiah is saying here. I really love it because he's saying with this, it's bringing about our roots, putting down roots. What did she say last week? She called them furious roots, right? How are we cultivating those furious roots? It comes by knowing the Word of God.
So when we are in those jacked up moments, leaning into the Word of God, being able to trust God, what he's doing is he's building into us the roots that go deep. And what do those roots do? It allows us to weather the season. The summer can't make us too dry; it can't create drought. Look, like it says, it doesn't even allow a leaf to fall. That's how strong you are. But I really love what the end says: "And in it, it's preparing us with fresh fruit." Something new is being birthed out of it; something that we haven't seen before is coming out of it. It's fresh fruit for us.
So when your jacked up shows up, how do you go? You trust God. Henry Nouwen says it this way: "The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it's lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now." Let that sink in for a second. Beth Moore says it this way: "We want Christ to hurry and calm the storm, and he wants us to trust in the midst of it."
Trusting God. So when our jacked up shows up—and I said, you know, Jennifer talked last week about this long journey, right? But sometimes our jacked up shows up in an instant, in a moment, right? I'm going to tell you about one of those moments.
So two weeks ago, I was going to D.C. and had my D.C. trip all kind of set up. There's a great flight that leaves out of Columbus at two o'clock, gets in about three o'clock. My hotel is right next to the airport; there's a convenience store right next to that hotel where I can go get cookies for dinner. There's a restaurant in there that I don't have to go anywhere. My trip goes perfect. I get in just fine, go with that, go to my meeting in the morning the next day, and I've got a flight scheduled to leave the next day at five o'clock. I'm going to get in at six o'clock. Everything is great.
Then about two o'clock, I get a text from Southwest: "Your flight has been canceled. Here are your options." So my lovely five o'clock to six o'clock getting into Columbus turned into six o'clock going to Chicago, getting in at one o'clock in the morning. So I was like, "Okay." I'm at the terminal for Southwest at Reagan. If you've ever been there, it's a bit of a zoo. I'm watching the board, and suddenly Houston gets canceled, and New Orleans gets canceled, and St. Louis got canceled. Pretty soon, I know Chicago is going to get canceled. My jacked up is starting to show up.
I'm thinking, "Okay." Then I get a text from Southwest, and Southwest says, "Oh, we have provided you a flight for Friday at five o'clock." I'm like, "Man, I can't afford to stay here two nights. There's just no way." So now I got to go get in the line—now 750 people in this terminal; that doesn't even do it justice. And how many gate agents does Southwest have? Six. And one of them is being occupied by two guys in suits who really thought they were important and really started to get on my nerves.
I'm in line, and I'm watching these two dudes, and you know what I see? I see old Greg in them, right? I'm in line, and they've got the gate agent on two phones, and the rest of us are waiting, trying to get our stuff squared away. I'm getting angrier and angrier with those dudes because I'm like, "Where are you going to go? The flights are grounded here; nothing's leaving. Everything west is closed. You're in Washington; you're not going to Europe on Southwest. It's not going to happen. What are you doing?"
It's just coming, and I am getting really riled up. Then I look down, and I have this bracelet on, and this is what my bracelet says as I'm standing in line: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time." You know, but look at the bottom line of that: "Accepting hardships is my pathway to peace."
So there's my peace. Finally, I get up to the gate agent. She says, "Look, we can get you out tomorrow, but you got to go to Baltimore." Great. Over to Baltimore, go to Baltimore; it goes to Nashville. I'm in Nashville, get in line to go get on the plane from Nashville to Columbus, and the gal in front of me says, "Oh, you from Columbus?" Because we're going in the C group. I didn't say this in the first round: anybody been in the C group for Southwest? This is awful.
So we're standing there, and she goes, "Are you from Columbus?" I said, "No, I live in Xenia." She goes, "Hey, we live in Xenia. My husband used to work for the Greene County Career Center. What is Emerge? My new where do project? It's at the Greene County. He was just there last week."
So I got to know her and how he's going to come out and volunteer for us, and I would have never been to Nashville and never been to Baltimore and all of that stuff. So there was something there, right? So when that jacked up shows up, it's trusting God. And sometimes trusting your bracelet, even though, to be honest, I really wanted to take this bracelet and punch those guys right in the face. But the bracelet prevailed, and God prevailed.
Max DePree says it this way: "Rather than ask God to change your circumstances, ask him to use your circumstances to change you. Life is a required course; might as well do your best to pass it."
The second thing Jan called this cleaning house. I decided to change it a little bit to take inventory. So we trust God when our jacked up shows up; we also have to take inventory. What's going on in us? Maybe there's something in us that needs some tweaking, some change. Because aren't we quick often when something happens to start projecting it to someone else, right?
Psalm 139 says this way: "Investigate my life, oh God. Find out everything about me. Cross-examine and test me. Get a clear picture of what I'm about. See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong, and then guide me." But I have to look inside; I have to take a minute in the mirror.
Jesus says it this way in Matthew 7: "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults, unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see the smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor."
When the jacked up shows up, it's easy to blame; it's easy to victimize; it's easy to project. But our first step is, "I'm going to trust God, and I'm going to ask him to take a look at me. What's my role here? What's the lesson that I'm to be learning here? Going to class here." And then before I do anything about making it about somebody else, what's my role? Let's clear the deck on me before we step forward into what we're going to do to deal with the issue.
I like what is an unknown quote that I found: "Unless you learn to face your own shadows, you will continue to see them in others because the world outside you is only the reflection of the world inside you." And how that can stay and create prolonged jacked up situations, right?
I gave you a short one; let me give you one that's a little longer where taking inventory completely changed the paradigm for a friend of mine. It says this: "Yesterday at church, the service was about Father's Day. During part of the sermon, the vision of my dad weeping was present and strong. The message to me was that he was sorry that he was with God and asked that I forgive him, as he had I did. Then the image of my dad's face in the sky with clouds came around him, came to me, and he was smiling with joy, and I was crying.
Then it came to the part of the service when the pastor asked to share messages he received based on church members he spoke to us and asked if what he'd been sharing resonated with anyone. He said that there was at least one person who did not look forward to Father's Day because their father was abusive. He shared that we have a greater father and to accept him as our father and forgive. He asked if this applied to anyone to raise their hand, and three people did, including me. He asked for prayers for the people raising their hands, and three people put hands on me. The pastor stopped the prayers and said that he was getting a message that one person in particular needed the prayers, and he pointed out me.
So now I'm really crying, and then let the anger go and replaced it with forgiveness. I told the pastor what happened after the service. This was the Holy Spirit filling me. I never experienced something so powerful, and it took some time for me to settle. Tony, of course, was great and so happy for me, and today I can't conjure up either image of my dad because it's not me who placed the image. I want you to know that because without you, I could not have gotten there. Now I have a father who is kind and loves me."
That's from a friend of mine who, when I first met her, she was an atheist, and part of her anger at God was rooted in the relationship that she had with her daddy. Yet in an instant, she began to take some inventory, trust God a little bit differently, and the Lord gave a completely different picture of her dad. Let me tell you, that issue with her dad had driven bitterness and her behavior for so long.
This past weekend, we saw pictures of her on Facebook, and she was at the DeWine ice cream social, and she's beaming. She's never looked better, and it was because she was courageous enough to take a look and say, "What is my part here? Can I clear the deck in order to experience the healing that you want from me, Father, and see a father in a completely different light?"
It was amazing. So we're going to trust God, and that was so amazing. I will pause there. It was so amazing I didn't even know what to say, and usually, I'm not at a loss for words, and I had no idea. All I said was just, "Wow." Beth knows our journey with her; it's incredible the work that God is doing in her life.
So we're going to trust God; we're going to take inventory. But the last piece I want to show you is a friend of mine. This is Dr. Kevin Hoffman, and Kevin was my personal counselor for about ten years. He was a dear man to me. During COVID, his church, where he served, went through some changes, and they've had some challenges financially. One of the things was they started to reduce his time, and he's going to be in a bit of a financial challenge in his life.
At the same time, we had some friends in Hancock County who have been friends of ours in what we do for a long time, and they reached out to me and said, "Hey, we think we're going to get some funding. We want to do something faith-based. We'd like you to lead that. Would you help us lead that?"
I was like, "Well, I would love to do that." My friend Kevin had a program that he had written ten years ago to help intervene for folks in early substance use disorder, and this has been a great fit. He had always had a hard time getting traction to get someone to kind of get behind him and support that. I was like, "Man, this couldn't be a better time. He's going to have some time; there's some bandwidth in his schedule. We can really bless him with the possibility of this funding."
So I went about the business of starting just to kind of make it up and write it up. He went on vacation to be with his kids out in New Mexico, and when he came back, he got COVID. He went into the hospital, and so we're filling out this proposal. Like with a lot of government funding stuff, there's a lot of T's to cross and I's to dot, but we were really kind of in a pressure time to get this thing in. We had to turn it in by December 17th, and I wanted to make sure that I had his blessing, but he had been sick.
So I called him, and he's in the hospital; he's on a vent. I said, "Hey man, I'm sorry to bother you. I got to get this done." He's like, "Man, I'm with you. We're going to do this. How can I serve you?" I said, "I'm going to take it forward."
So I turned it in, and a few days later, I get an email that says, "Hey, we fully funded your project. It's quite a bit of money." He went home to be with the Lord the next day. Kevin always, when we would be out, his first thing he would tell people is, "You got to serve somebody. That's how this works; you got to serve somebody."
December 17th, on a ventilator, he's still serving me, serving what we could do. I was one of nine speakers at his funeral. His funeral went on for four hours because Kevin not only served me, but he served people all around the world. There were Zoom calls that came in during the service from all over the world, the people that he had impacted. He had shown me so much about what it is to serve somebody.
So we're going to trust God, take inventory, but we need to serve someone. I want to give you a passage from John 13 in a situation where, in so many words, it was pretty jacked up for Jesus. Yet watch what he does.
Jesus knew the night before the Passover would be his last night on earth. Pay attention: he knew his last night on earth before leaving the world to return to the Father's side. All throughout his time with his disciples, Jesus had demonstrated a deep and tender love for them, and now he longed to show them the full measure of his love.
Before their evening meal had begun, the accuser had already deeply embedded betrayal into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now Jesus was fully aware—and we talk about being fully aware. Jesus knew what was coming, right? He knew what crucifixion was; he knew what was coming. One of his buds is cashing out. That's heavy, heavy stuff—all that weight in that moment in his humanity. We hear about later on when he goes to the garden, what is it? Drops of blood. This is legitimate, fully aware.
Watch what happens: fully aware that the Father had placed all things under his control, for he came back from God and was about to go back to be with him. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer robe, took his towel, and wrapped it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' dirty feet and dry them with his towel.
But when Jesus got to Simon Peter, he objected and said, "I can't let you wash my dirty feet." You're my Lord. Jesus replied, "You don't understand yet the meaning of what I'm doing, but soon it will be clear to you." Peter looked to Jesus and said, "You'll never wash my dirty feet. Never."
But Jesus said, "If you don't allow me to wash your feet, then you will not be able to share life with me." After washing their feet, Jesus put his robe on and returned to his place at the table. He said, "Do you understand what I just did?" Jesus said, "You've called me your teacher and Lord, and you're right, for that's who I am. So if I'm your teacher and Lord and just washed your dirty feet, then you should follow the example that I've set for you and wash one another's dirty feet. Now do for each other what I've just done for you."
I speak to you with timeless truth: a servant is not superior to his master; an apostle is never greater than the one who sent him. But really, watch what happens here. What does he say? "So now put into practice what I have done for you, and you will experience a life of happiness enriched with untold blessing."
This was a moment in time for Jesus that had to feel so intense and so crazy, and yet what was his response? "I'm going to serve somebody. I'm going to serve you guys, and when I do, what I want you to take away from it is that when you do as I have done, this is what you can expect."
So if I'm in a moment where things are jacked up and it showed up, Jesus is telling us, "If you get out of yourself and go serve someone else, I will bring about blessing that you can't imagine—untold, Ephesians 3:20—all that stuff. Serve somebody."
And here's the thing: at that moment in time, that demonstration—not that he hadn't demonstrated it through his entire ministry, but in that moment, in that demonstration, Jesus continues to serve us. He continues to serve us in the way that he inspired the Word. If you take a look at the words of Scripture, look how he continues to serve us with things like comfort, encouragement, acceptance, patience, kindness. He continues to motivate us from a place of love.
Here's the point, guys: I am most—you are most—we are most like Jesus when we are serving. When we are serving.
I got a good friend, Tammy. Tammy lives in Alabama, and I brought this up here. Tammy's an amazing gal, but when I text Tammy, these are the texts I get back from Tammy. They're very, very long. So sometimes I'm a little skeptical about asking Tammy how she's doing because it takes a minute.
So I checked on her just recently, and she's wanting to do work with churches, helping them to become like AHOP, a recovery-friendly congregation for people. She's really felt this pressing on her heart and a calling for her. I didn't say this in the first service, but her life right now reads like a country song. This gal has been through everything. She lost her home; she lost her car. Right now, she's living in a motel, and she's walking 90 minutes each way to go to work—cat calls while she's walking to and from work.
Yet if you read her text after she kind of gives me a little bit of a laundry list of what to pray for, and I wish I could do more in Alabama, you get to the bottom of her text, and it's always the same: "I really want to do what you get a chance to do. I want to serve people and show my church how they can love people who have addiction like you do. I want you to teach me how to do that."
I'm like, "Isn't it more to be focused on the fact that you're walking 90 minutes in the heat in Alabama every day?" No, her focus is, "When are you coming down? When are we going to get started to work on how I can help the people that I've been called to help?" She fully understands what it is to serve.
And so what it does to me when I read the passage from John and I hear things from Tammy, it can be a little humbling when I sit there and go, "Oh no, Leslie's calling again." I'm just teasing. No, it's an honor to get to serve, and we should always look at it that way because that's when we're most like Jesus, is when we get a chance to serve.
When we get a chance to serve, and right now, he's not just serving in those Scriptures that I gave you, but right now, in this moment, Romans 8 tells us this: "He gave his life for us, and even more than that, he's conquered death and now risen and exalted and thrown by God at his right hand. So how could he possibly condemn us since what he is continually praying for our triumph?"
Right now, Jesus is praying for everyone in this room, and you know what he's praying for? Your jacked up. He's praying for your jacked up. You know he's telling you, "Trust me. He's telling me, 'Take a look in the mirror. You may have some things that don't look like me; you might need to get those out of there a little bit.' And the last thing he's like, 'Go serve somebody. Untold blessing is on the back end of serving somebody.'"
First John says it this way: "This is how we've come to understand and experience love. Christ sacrificed his love for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers and not just be out for ourselves. My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality."
So your jacked up showed up: trust God and his promises, take a little inventory, serve somebody. Jennifer talked about the process and the outcome and the timeline. Let me tell you something: I've been thinking about talking about this for several weeks, and I can say without equivocation that this that I just told you, the Lord has given me lots of opportunity to practice.
Case in point: Thursday, sitting in my office, I get a phone call about seven o'clock. The phone call completely derails me. I'm frustrated; I'm angry; I'm jacked up, and I don't know what to do with it. I close my laptop; I got somebody sitting in my office. I'm sitting there going, "You know what? I don't know if I can do this." Kicking around, cashing out, and quitting.
In my Facebook feed, the memory for my Facebook feed for that day was something that I had posted that said from John Maxwell that people can't take your peace from you; you have to give it away. I'm like, "Fine." So I paused, and I posted. Hundreds of people needed that day—comments coming in, "Thank you. I didn't—this was perfect for me today."
The Lord knew it's what I needed for the day, but attached to that quote was this verse, and it says, "People with their minds set on you, you keep completely whole, steady on their feet because they keep at it and they don't quit. Depend on God and keep at it because in the Lord God, you have a sure thing."
Trust him, take inventory, and serve him.
Will you stand with me? It wouldn't be a Freedom Sunday if I didn't share with the freedom verse, and here's what's fascinating: the freedom verse fits just fine with what we talked about today because in Galatians 5, it says this: "Serve one another in love. That's how freedom grows. For everything we know about what God's Word—that Word that allows us to trust him, to endure things, to have ferocious roots—is summed up in one sentence: love others as you love yourself."
Being able to come to a grip with yourself, taking inventory to find the love that God has with you to give you what an act of true freedom. Today, we talked about the freedom of this nation and independence this weekend, and we're going to kind of hit it with fireworks that have already happened, fireworks to come.
But here's the thing: God wants you to experience that true freedom, and I know that many of you in here today may have things that really make you feel like it's jacked up—relationships, financial pressure, anger, bitterness, trauma when you were a kid. He wants all of it because here's what he's saying: "You want freedom? I'm freedom. Come and find freedom in me."
You'll find freedom. So I encourage you today, if you want that freedom, he's waiting to have you trust him, to step into it, to embrace it. Is it going to be perfectly easy the next minute? No. Are you going to have other days where it comes back around? Yes. But now you've got a way to say, "Okay, take a step back. Gonna stay steady; not gonna quit. You provide perfect peace for those who trust in you."
I'm going to allow you to do it. If you don't know who Jesus is, we're going to pray an opportunity for you to embrace this, to get this pathway to freedom. So I want you just to repeat after me. Stand there; if you're next to somebody, and you know that there are—it could be the catalyst to help somebody finally accept Jesus into their life. So don't be ashamed or embarrassed; just pray along with me.
Dear Jesus, I want to be with you. I want to embrace what you have for me. I believe in you. I believe you died for me. I believe you rose for me. And as Scripture has said today, you are praying for me. I want that, Lord. I want the freedom that it brings.
So, Lord, I'm stepping forth into that freedom. Lord, embrace me; I know you will. I want to love you; I know you love me. Thank you, Jesus. In your name, I pray, amen.
Before we dismiss you, our prayer team's going to come down. Maybe struck a nerve with you today; I hope I did. But if I did, find a friend. The thing that we have in this church that has been amazing, and it's been the leadership of Mark from the beginning, is that this place is a place of safety, vulnerability, and authenticity. You don't have to have a secret here; there's no judgment here. Mark told you my story; I redefined jacked up, and so did he.
on Feb 12, 2024
