I raise a Hallelujah! So, in case you didn't know, our session at church camp starts today, and we are excited about it.
As Cade mentioned, you know, in your bulletins, it talks about we'd love to have everybody come out on Wednesday night, but you're welcome to come out any night of the week. We have worship every night at seven o'clock, and so you're welcome to come out any night of the week and be a part of that.
But we're going to spend some time in the word together for a little bit this morning, and again, I'm so glad to see so many of you guys. I missed seeing you last week, and I'm glad to be back with you today.
We wrapped up our last series, and we're starting a new one today. I'll talk about it in just a minute, but I kind of want to start out this morning sharing some things that I discovered that I thought were absolutely true, and they're not quite totally true. I want to share some of these with you and see if you knew that these weren't completely accurate as maybe you might have thought they were.
So, one particular statement is that George Washington had wooden teeth. Did you know that that's not completely true? How many of you thought, "No, I heard that George Washington had wooden teeth?" He didn't have wooden teeth. He did have fake teeth—well, some of them were fake; a lot of them weren't his, I'll put it that way. They were made of gold, some of them; some of them were made of ivory; some of them were human teeth from other people. But none of them were made of wood. So, yeah, he had false teeth, but you know, he didn't have wooden teeth, so it's not completely accurate, right?
Okay, how about bulls get angry when they see the color red? Anybody heard this one before, seen this? I know there are Bugs Bunny cartoons that talk about this, so I mean, it must be true, right? Bulls are at least, as far as the colors like red and green, some of these colors are colorblind; they can't tell the color red. All they're interested in is the motion. So when the guy is out there shaking the cape, it just happens to be red, but they're charging the motion, not the colors. Does that make sense? So yeah, bulls charge, but not necessarily because of the color red.
What about cholesterol is bad for you? How many of you had a doctor tell you this? Some of you all, and some of you all aren't confessing, but yeah, cholesterol is bad for you, which is true, right? I mean, kind of. There is good cholesterol. I don't know which one it is; I couldn't tell you which one it is. I just eat the cholesterol; I'm fine with whatever, you know? The good outweighs the bad, right? Or it cancels it out, one of the two. So, but there is some cholesterol that is good for you; it's actually a positive thing to have that certain kind of cholesterol.
How about this? Now, I know I heard this one growing up a lot: cracking your knuckles leads to arthritis. Anybody ever heard that one? Cracking your knuckles? I see some of you all are already starting to crack them right now. Cracking your knuckles leads to arthritis? Well, it doesn't. There's no scientific proof that cracking your knuckles leads to arthritis. Honestly, it's just, you know, when you're not like cracking bones when you're cracking your knuckles; there's actually a little, you know, sacks of fluid in there, and that's what's popping. Now, it can lead to eventual loss of grip strength and stuff like that, but it's not going to lead to arthritis, so crack away, I guess, you know? Just go ahead and break your fingers if you want to.
You have to wait 30 minutes after eating to go swimming. You might have heard this one. Anybody told your kids this? And you might watch the clock and be like, "Oh man, counting down, like 30 minutes is never going to get here." Okay, some of your parents are going to be upset at me, especially if your kids are in the room right now. There is no scientific evidence that your body cramps up and things go horribly wrong if you go swimming before 30 minutes have passed.
The whole thought was, you know, all your blood in your body is rushing to your stomach to digest food, and so therefore you're going to end up getting cramps, and then when you cramp up, you drown, and so you have to wait for 30 minutes until your food's done digesting. That's not actually true, so swim away! Swim with food in your hand, I guess, you know? Just go for it.
Richard Nixon was impeached. Is that true? By now you're like, "No," because none of these are true. The impeachment process had started, but then he resigned before it was completed, so technically he wasn't impeached, although they had started the process. But there are those who would say Richard Nixon is the only president that was impeached. Well, he started to be impeached, but then he resigned.
How about this one? Twinkies have no expiration date, especially if you're a fan of the movie Zombieland. You know the Twinkies have no expiration date, right? Now, they do. Okay, they do have an expiration date. Now, they will last longer than a lot of other pastries and Hostess goodies and things like that. They last longer than a lot of them, but they do eventually go bad, so eat at your own risk, I guess.
And I share some of these with you, and you could probably come up with more. I mean, there's all sorts of things that you can Google and find out, you know, is this actually true or not? There's a lot of things that we have come to believe that are true that either somebody taught us or told us, or we figured those things out on our own.
And it's not that they're completely absolutely false; there may be some truth to it, maybe they're not just, you know, complete lies and falsehoods, but they're still not completely true. And yet my belief in those things has probably dictated my actions. I've probably chosen to do things or not do things because of certain things like that list I just gave you—some of those things that I thought were absolutely and completely true.
But now I have this fractured vision of what is actually true about those things. But you know, I've waited 30 minutes before to go swimming. I don't remember being around a bull, but I'm sure that if I did, I wasn't going to wear red. I know I've eaten Twinkies past the expiration date; I know that's happened.
But there are things that we believe to be true, and we choose to act a certain way or to do a certain thing or to not do a certain thing because of something that may not actually be true. We're mistaken about it, and that happens with our understanding of God as well.
I think there are things that many of us have come to believe about God and about who he is, about how he works in our lives, that aren't completely true. And maybe some of those things have some truth to them; maybe they're not just complete lies and falsehoods, but they're still not completely true. They give us a partial picture of who God is; they don't give us a completely accurate picture of how God is working.
And in essence, they're mistaken. It's a mistaken truth; it's a misperception that I have of God. It's not a complete picture of my relationship with him or what it should look like. And that's what we want to focus on today, and that's where we're going to spend time focusing on for the next few weeks—some of these mistaken truths, some of the things that we may have been taught about God, some of the things that we may have come to understand about how he works and about our relationship with him that isn't completely true, and yet we still believe it anyway.
And some of those mistaken truths that we have come to believe have impacted how we interact with him and how we interact with others and what we choose to believe about him and what we choose to believe about us in our relationship with him that aren't completely accurate.
I'll give you an example. Today I want us to go through something that I've heard people say. I've probably said it before, maybe more than once in my life. I've seen people post it on different social media platforms. I know I've heard people say in conversations, and that is, "God will not give me more than I can handle."
I've heard people say that. I've heard people say that up in front of a crowd of people. I've heard people say that in conversation. People have said that to me. Again, I've seen people post it on their social media. And it comes from this completely innocent perception: I'm a God's child; God loves me; God wants good things for me.
And even if God doesn't keep necessarily bad things happening, you know, from happening to me, he cares about me so much that he'll never let me get completely overwhelmed and never let anything happen that I can't completely handle. He knows how much I can handle, and so he's only going to allow me to have problems that extend to the level of my strength and my capacity to handle it. Does that make sense?
And we have this perception of God, and maybe we've been told that; maybe we've been taught that, and it's reinforced by how we look at certain scriptures too. One of the main scriptures that we look at comes from First Corinthians chapter 10. So if you got your Bibles or your Bible apps, feel free to turn there; it's going to be on the screen as well.
But First Corinthians chapter 10, in verse 13, Paul says this: "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind, and God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."
And it seems like Paul is saying that God won't give me more than I can handle, right? He will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can bear. He will not give me a problem so big that I can't handle it.
And the problem with this is not completely true. This is a mistaken truth; this is a fractured way of looking at this verse. It's a fractured way of looking at God and how he works in our lives.
And I got a couple reasons why I believe that. Why is it that I think this verse doesn't teach that God will give me more than I can handle? First of all, if the scripture does in fact teach that God will not give me more than what I am able to bear in any problems, any hardships in my life, then that is in direct conflict with other passages of scripture.
I mean, we're looking here at First Corinthians chapter 10, right? This is the Apostle Paul writing these words to a group of Christians, to a church in the city of Corinth. And he writes, you know, "You're going to be tempted, and God's not going to allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear."
And if we read that as Paul saying, "God's not going to give you more than you can handle," then how do we accept that as true and then see what Paul writes in a different letter a few years later in Second Corinthians chapter one? So if you got your Bible apps, just scroll to the next book, Second Corinthians chapter one. If you got your Bibles with you, it's just a couple of pages over.
In Second Corinthians chapter one, in verse 8, Paul says this: "We don't want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experience in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself."
What does Paul say here? We have problems; we had a lot of problems and pressures, and it was so much, it was beyond what we could handle. It was beyond our ability. We thought we were going to die. We thought we were going to be completely overwhelmed. We thought there's no way that we can handle whatever it is that we're experiencing.
Same guy writing to the same people who at one point says, "In our minds, God won't give you more than you can handle," and then a little while later says, "God gave us more than we could handle." I don't think Paul would contradict himself like that. I don't think scripture contradicts itself like that.
And if we believe that that's what First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13 is saying, there's a problem there; there's a contradiction. But also, First Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 13, if you look at it again, Paul is not talking in that context about hardships, about problems. What is he talking about? He's talking about sin. He's talking about temptation.
Now, can we have hardships and problems as consequences to our sin and our ungodly choices? Absolutely. But we can't just lift this one or these couple of sentences out of the whole context. What Paul is talking about here in First Corinthians chapter 10, which is about sin, it's about idols, it's about following other things instead of God.
It's about choosing other paths instead of the path that God has laid out for us. And when I choose to do that, that gets me in conflict with God. I leave his direction; I leave his purpose for my life. I do things that he doesn't want me to do because I'm following something else.
And in the middle of that conversation, Paul says, "Listen, it's going to happen to all of us. We're all going to be tempted. We're all going to be tempted to walk away. We're all going to be tempted to do something different. We're all going to be tempted to do something that God doesn't want us to do. That's not uncommon."
And when those times come, when you are tempted to do something ungodly, when you are tempted to sin, when you are tempted to make choices that you shouldn't make, just understand that in those moments, God is not going to allow that temptation to move beyond something that you can handle.
But instead, God is going to provide a way for you to escape from it, a way for you to stand up under it, a way for you to stand against it and choose not to do that thing. You see the difference?
So this verse that we look at sometimes to say, "See, God doesn't ever say he's going to give me," or "God says he's never going to give me more than I can handle," it's not what he says. That's a mistaken truth.
The mistaken truth is that God will not give me more than I can handle. The actual truth is that God will sometimes allow me to experience difficulties that are bigger than I think I can handle. That's a really long sentence; I want to repeat it again.
God will sometimes allow me to experience difficulties that are bigger than I think I can handle. God never promises that there will never be a time that I feel so overwhelmed that I can't handle it. But God does always promise that he will be with me through the difficulty.
God does always promise that even if he doesn't protect me from the difficulty, from the problem, he will walk with me through it. God never promises that he's going to make it obvious as to why I'm going through the hardship. We see that multiple times through scripture.
There's lots of different people that are having just awful times, and God is allowing it to happen. And some of you can cry out to God and say, "Why is this happening?" And sometimes God tells them, "Here's why this is happening; you've made these choices," or "I've got this purpose in mind," or whatever it is.
And there's sometimes where God just doesn't even answer the question. You ever read the book of Job? Thirty-eight chapters of Job is Job going, "God, why are bad things happening to me? Why have I lost everything? Why is my family dying? Why am I dealing with this awful sickness? Why? It's not fair; I don't deserve it. Why?"
And God, in the last couple of chapters of Job, shows up and basically says, "I'm God, and I've got a lot of things going on that you don't even understand." And not once in all that description to Job, how God is in control and got things going on that Job doesn't understand, does God ever say, "Job, here's why this is happening."
The promise is not that God will always make it obvious as to why I'm going through the hardship. The promise is not that God will always keep me from going through a hardship. The promise is God will always walk with me through the difficulty, sometimes even carry me through the hardship until I get on the other side of it.
And that is the real truth; that is something I can know for sure about my God. So if that's the case, then what do I do? Because maybe there's some of us this morning, you're like me; you just popped a really big balloon for me.
There's this understanding that I had that even when things—even when bad things happen—that God's never going to let me be completely overwhelmed by it, and now you're saying, "Oh no, yeah, he will sometimes." I don't want that. What do I do? How do I handle it when God allows difficulties, hardships, problems in my life? When he allows those things to seemingly overwhelm me, what do I do?
Let me give you some ways to handle it. The first thing that I need to do—well, let me back up. Let me share a story with you that may help us see how we can handle these problems, and it comes from Mark chapter four.
We've been in First and Second Corinthians; if you back up a few books to the Book of Mark, there's a story that we've talked about before as a church family, and maybe familiar to some of you, maybe many of you. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four books that talk about Jesus' life when he was here on this Earth.
In the Book of Mark, in chapter four, there's a story of Jesus being in a boat with his disciples, and he's exhausted. He's been teaching; he's been performing miracles; he's been interacting with people; he's just drained.
And so they get in this boat to go across what we call the Sea of Galilee—this giant lake. And as they're going across in this fairly good-sized boat, Jesus goes up to the front of the boat and he falls asleep.
At some point while they're trying to get across the lake, a storm comes up, which wasn't uncommon for this particular body of water. But this storm is bad; the winds are blowing; there's probably thunder and lightning and rain coming down, and the waves are crashing over the boat.
And there's at least four guys on this boat that grew up on this lake, that have seen storms before, that had been a part of really bad storms before, and yet are still so fearful about what they're in the middle of, about the storm that is surrounding them in this moment. They think they're going to die.
And they do everything—these guys, these disciples do everything they possibly can to deal with this storm. And we don't get a lot of description of what that is in the Book of Mark, but you've got to imagine they raise a sail; they lower the sail; I don't know, do the sail halfway? They're messing with the rudder; they're trying to steer towards shore, and they get blown away from shore.
So now let's go this direction; now they're getting blown back the other way, and let's try to dump water out; there's more water pouring in, and we just don't know what to do. And they're probably screaming, and they're doing everything they can; they're exhausted.
And the whole time, Jesus is asleep. He's just laying there in the front of the boat, sleeping through the whole thing. And they come to Jesus, and they wake him up and basically say, "Look around you! Look at what's happening! Do you even care?"
They're in the middle of a storm that they had no control over. They're doing everything they can to deal with it, and it's not working. And my guess is, just looking around this room, the number of people we have here, the number of people we have online, people that might watch this later on, there's people in this room and in mine who have been, or maybe right now in this moment, in the middle of a storm.
And they are doing everything they can to keep their heads above water and not sink. And maybe the finances are falling apart, and maybe the marriage is falling apart, and maybe there's fighting in the family. We don't know what to do about it.
And maybe they've lost their job; maybe they got bad news from the doctor, and maybe it's a combination of all those different things. Then there's just things that are overwhelming and crashing down, and I'm doing everything that I know to do, and I'm asking people for advice, and I'm following different things I can find online, and I'm doing everything that I know, and it's still not working. I'm still sinking; the storm is still here, and I can't get through it; I can't get around it, and it seems like it's just causing me to sink.
What do I do? Let's look at what the disciples did. The first thing I got to do when those times happen in my life, when I am dealing with something that is more than I can handle, the first thing I need to do is talk to God about it. I need to talk to God about it. I need to pray.
And for some of us, that might be the automatic thing that we do; that might be the very first thing that comes to mind. For some of us, that's the last option. We'll do everything we can first; we'll seek other people's advice, and we'll take action, and we'll find all sorts of resources, and I've got to fix this, and I've got to pull myself up, and I've got to take action; I've got to do the things to get me out of this situation.
And maybe the first thing that I need to do before I do anything else is just talk to God about it. And there's a couple of different things that I think are important in this conversation with God.
One thing that I need to talk to God about is just to ask him to intervene, to ask him to do something. "God, I'm sinking; I'm in the storm; I don't know what to do; I'm overwhelmed; this is hard; this is difficult; I don't know what the answers are." Talk to him about that.
"God, will you do something? Will you intervene?" Because that's what the disciples did. The storm was scary, and it was powerful, and it was more than they could handle, and they asked Jesus to do something.
So I need to be willing, number one, to ask for God's help. But also, when I talk to God about it, I'm allowed to vent to him too, which is kind of really what the disciples did if you think about it.
If you look in Mark chapter four, in verse 38, as Jesus is asleep in the front of the boat and the storm is raging, it says the disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
"Jesus, don't you care? We're scared; we feel abandoned; we've done everything we know to do, and you're not doing anything." And they weren't being disrespectful; they're just venting.
"Jesus, we don't know what to do." And I want to share that with this church family, with a guest this morning, because I want all of us to understand we're allowed to vent to God. We're his kids; he loves us. We can come to him with anything that's on our heart.
We can be sincere; we can be genuine in those moments when I feel completely overwhelmed, and when the storm is raging, and I don't know what to do next, I am more than allowed to talk to God and say, "God, where are you? I don't like this; I'm scared; I'm tired; I'm frustrated; I'm angry; I'm overwhelmed; I'm sinking; I'm calling out to you."
I'm venting to you. Why don't you talk to God about it? We need to be willing to be honest with him, to share with him what's on our hearts—not to be disrespectful, but just honest.
And when the storm comes, when the hardship comes, when I feel like I don't know how to swim or where to swim to, I can talk to God about it; I can vent to him, and I can ask him, "God, please intervene."
The second thing that I need to do is, when I have that conversation with him, when I talk to God, then I need to sometimes stop and watch and see what God does. The disciples had a front-row seat to what happened next. They got to watch what Jesus did when they asked him to do something about the storm.
If you go to verse 39, the next verse there in Mark chapter four, it says he got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" And the wind died down; it was completely calm.
Once they vented to Jesus and once they asked him to intervene, then they watched what he actually did. And that's important. It's important sometimes to just be still and watch what he's going to do.
They saw how Jesus took care of the storm, and that's what sometimes I need to be willing to do. Maybe it's just me; maybe I'm just confessing to you something that I struggle with.
For there are times when there's problems, there's hardships or stresses that I'm dealing with, and I talk to God about it; I vent about it; I ask him to do something, and then I just go ahead and keep trying to fix it myself.
And really, I'm just like, "You know, God, just jump on my back and make sure that I'm doing everything through my own strength to get through this difficulty." And there are times that I think I miss God's presence.
I miss recognizing that he's already in this storm with me. I don't see how he's walking with me through this; I don't see how he's carrying me through the storm because I'm so focused on the storm, and I'm so convinced that it's up to me to get through it that I don't even take the time to be still and just breathe for a minute and take a step back and watch what he does, watch how he rescues, watch how he moves, watch what actions he takes because he's walking me through it.
Now, I've talked to him about it; I watch what he does, but then the next thing that the disciples did that I got to do is keep rowing. There's kind of a balance here. I need to be still and watch what God is doing and watch where he's leading and watch how he's beginning to rescue me.
But I don't need to just be comfortable with just sitting back and going, "Okay, well, God's just going to carry me through, and there's nothing left for me to do, right? There's no changes I need to make; there's nothing I need to change about my life; there's no habits to deal with; there's nothing to do different; he's just going to fix it."
And while it's true that I think God will rescue us from our problems, maybe allow us to deal with them for a while, but rescue us from them, there's also a responsibility on my part to keep moving forward.
If he is providing a path of escape, I need to walk that path. If he is providing a way for me to get through the storm, I need to go through the storm. I need to keep rowing; I need to take the next step.
Again, I think the disciples had done everything. I think they raised sails; I think they turned the rudder; I think they got some paddles out and started rowing. They are doing everything they can to get to the storm, but I think even when Jesus calmed the storm, they still kept rowing.
How do I know that? You go back to Mark; the next chapter. We're here in chapter four; the next chapter is chapter five, and verse one says, "They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes." They kept going. They ended up getting on the other side of the lake.
They didn't just sit there in the water and go, "Well, that was good that he calmed that." Once he carried them through the storm, once he calmed the storm down, they needed to keep moving.
And I need to do that too. I call out to God; I ask him to intervene; I vent to him; I watch what he's doing. But when he starts to part the clouds, when he starts to calm the waters, when things start to get better, I need to keep moving forward.
What is the direction that he's leading me? Where is it that I need to go? What's the next step to take? That's what I need to do. If I've prayed, if I've vented, if I've seen what God is doing, I need to take the next step; I need to move forward; I need to keep rowing.
And then the last thing throughout this whole process, while I'm in this difficulty, while I'm dealing with it, while God is dealing with it for me, and through all that, I need to trust. I need to trust that God can rescue.
I need to trust that God will walk with me, that he will carry me through this difficulty. But even more than that, I don't want us to miss this: even more than just trusting in his power and his ability to do something, I need to trust that he wants to do something.
I need to trust that he actually does care about me and does care that I'm in this storm and does care about what's going on in my life, that he recognizes this is something that I can't handle on my own, and he wants to do something about it because he cares that much about me.
This is the question; this is the struggle, I think, for the disciples. Go back again, you know, to this story in Mark chapter four. After the storm is calmed, after things die down, Jesus looks at his disciples in Mark chapter four, verse 40, and it says, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
And for the longest time when I saw this scripture, I thought that Jesus was talking about their lack of faith in his ability to do something. "Do you still have no faith? Do you not believe that I could calm this storm?"
But I don't think that's what's going on with this question because they had no expectation for him to calm the storm. They didn't know that's what he was going to do because if you keep on reading, they were amazed that he did it. The expectation wasn't for Jesus to calm the storm, and they were wondering why he wasn't calming it.
Go back to their original question back in Mark chapter four, verse 38, when the disciples woke him up. What do they say to him? "Teacher, don't you care?"
"Don't you care if we drown?" Their question was not, "Teacher, can you do anything?" The question was, "Teacher, do you even care?"
"Jesus, do you even care that we're in the middle of a storm right now that we can't handle?" So maybe their lack of faith wasn't in Jesus' ability. Maybe their lack of trust wasn't in Jesus' power over nature.
Maybe what they didn't trust was Jesus' concern. Maybe what they didn't trust was that Jesus really cared. And so what's Jesus' response? "Why would you think that? Don't you realize how much I care about you? Of course I care; of course I want good things for you."
So what does that mean for me? When hard times come, when things are difficult, when it feels like I'm dealing with something that's bigger than I can handle, I need to pray. I need to talk to God about it. I can vent to him if I want to, but I need to talk to him about it.
I need to watch and see what he does in response, how he goes to work, and watch how even if he doesn't eliminate the problem, he carries me through it. I need to keep moving forward; I need to keep rowing; I need to take the next step.
I don't need to just stop; I need to keep moving. And through all that process, I need to trust—not just in God's power, but in God's concern, God's love for me, God's desire for me to get through this difficulty.
And it's a conscious decision I have to make. I have to choose to trust that God actually does think I'm significant. I have to choose to accept that God really does love me. And until I trust in those things, until I trust that to be true about God, it's going to be difficult for me to talk to him and watch what he does and keep moving forward.
If I don't trust in the first place that he even cares about the storm that I'm dealing with, it's a mistake; it's a misperception of who God is and how he works to believe that God will never give me more than I can handle.
And I want to say this as we wrap up this morning: if my hardships were only limited to what I have the ability to handle, then I don't even need God in the first place. If my hardships are only limited to what I have the capacity and the strength to handle, I don't need him because I can handle it.
And the reality is there are things that happen in my life. This is a fallen, broken world that I'm living in. The promise of Jesus in John chapter 16 is, "You're living in this world; you're going to have trouble." And sometimes those troubles are going to be more than I'm not just ready for, more than I can deal with, and I can't handle it.
But my God can, and I need to trust in that. Going back to Second Corinthians chapter one, Paul says, "We had this hardship that we were dealing with that was beyond our ability to endure." He says, "God into this rhetorical question that he doesn't ask in the text, but you know, why was that? Why did God give us this overwhelming problem, these overwhelming difficulties to deal with?"
And he answers the question in verse 9. He says, "This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God." It's not about me; this is all about him.
And there are times when I have a bigger burden I can handle, but anytime that I have a bigger burden than I can handle, I have a bigger God than the burden, and he's going to carry me through it if I trust him to.
There was a long time ago, several decades ago, there was a minister named Bruce Wilkinson that wrote this little book called The Prayer of Jabez. In that book, he describes the story of taking one of his little boys to the park one day.
And this big city park or neighborhood park that they were in had three slides. There was a smaller slide, there was kind of a medium-sized slide, and there was this huge slide. He took his little boy to the park, and he's running around, and he decides he wants to go on the slide.
And so this is like the first time—I can't remember if he said how old this little boy was, but this is the first time that he's going to let him go down the slide by himself. And so he goes to that smaller slide, and he climbs up, and he slides down, and he's having so much fun, and he does it multiple times.
He just does laps and goes around that slide, and then he runs over to the medium slide. And Bruce said his wife is like, "Hey, maybe you should go help him." And he's like, "No, no, let's see how this goes," typical dad response.
And so he looked over there, and he looked back at his parents, and anytime he looked back at his dad, his dad just kind of turned like, "Hmm, look at this over here." And he wasn't acting like he wasn't paying attention.
And it took a little bit; he kind of walked, you know, got about halfway up the steps, and then he paused for a second, and then finally got all the way up to the top of that slide, and he looked down, and he slid down, and he survived, and it was great.
And he went back like three more times; he was just screaming and laughing and having a great time. And so then he goes running over to the big slide, and Bruce's wife was like, "Okay, go help him." And he's like, "No, no, let's just see what happens."
And so he's standing in line; he's waiting for his turn, and finally, he starts climbing. He gets maybe like a quarter of the way up, and he says, you know, from his perspective, from his little boy's perspective, that ladder must have looked like it was going up into the clouds.
And he just freezes, and there's other kids in line; they're like, "Come on, kid, hurry up or get out of the way," or whatever, and he's just frozen. And Bruce is looking around like he's not paying attention.
And finally, his little boy calls out to him, "Dad! Daddy! Will you help me?" He walks over to the slide. "What's the problem, son?" "I can't do this by myself; will you go with me?"
And he helped him climb up to the top. They got up to the top together, wrapped his arms and legs around him, and went down that huge slide.
Wilkinson tells that story in his book and says, "That's what my God does for me in those moments when I think I can't do this. I have a father who is waiting and ready for me to ask and recognize I can't do this myself. I gotta have you."
In that moment, he runs to us; he wraps his arms around us, and we go through that challenge together. And if you've never known that about my God, I want you to know today that's the real truth; that's the kind of father that we have.
And if you don't have a relationship with him, you need to change that today. And we're going to stand in just a second; we're going to sing a song together.
And as we're standing singing that song, if you recognize, "I don't have the kind of relationship with God where I feel like I can call out to him," or "I feel like he's on my side," or "I feel like he will rescue and he will calm the storm when everything seems overwhelming," I want you to know we do have a father like that.
You can have a father like that. And if you want to come to the front and say, "I'm ready to have a relationship with him," please do that, and we'll help make that happen.
And if it's been a long time since you've recognized that about your God, you've tried for so long to get through the storms on your own, and you're still sinking, you're welcome to come forward this morning and confess that.
"I need help; I need a father; I need a community that will love me and help me," and we'll do whatever we can to help. The storm, quite honestly, may be bigger than what you can deal with; it might be.
But we have a God who's bigger than any storm, and when you have a church family that can row through it with you until we get to the other side, so let us do that for you this morning if we can.
Well, together we stand and sing.
on Nov 05, 2023
