July 7, 2024 • 53 mins
Some of us have believed the lie that “sad is bad,” and we’ve only brought our positivity to God. But when we bring our disappointment to Him, we learn that difficult seasons can become the cornerstone of our faith. Lisa Harper encourages us that our compassionate God is near in “The Gift Of Grief.”
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Scripture References:
1 Kings 18, verses 17-19
1 Kings 19, verses 1-5
Psalm 22, verses 1-2, 14-18
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Goodness, goodness, goodness. Thank y'all, Thank you so much. Please
sit down. I have a couple of confessions to make
before we dive into God's word. Ah love Elevation. I
love this house. I really really love Pastor Steven, Pastor Holly.
As a matter of fact, Holly, I had a message
(00:42):
that was rhymed and everything prepared, and then I've been
doing Holly is grateful for aid And the other day
I just got wrecked by thinking of what I'm grateful for,
and I realized one of my ates is grief. And
(01:05):
I thought, what a weird thing to be grateful for grief.
And I promise I have not been smoking anything medicinal.
I know that sounds so counterintuitive when we come from
this great time of worship to then just kind of
dive into grief. But I realized grief for me and
I'm in another season of grief. I lost somebody I
(01:25):
loved very much a month ago yesterday, and I'm just
in that place of I trust in God. And he answered,
but he took a wild answer. And ye know, sometimes
there's that gap between I trust in God and then
you're waiting on an answer, waiting on an answer, waiting
(01:47):
on answer. C. S. Lewis says, sometimes we don't get
the answer that we're so desperate for. We get more
of a no answer. He said, but it's not uncompassionates,
as if God is saying peace child. You don't understand
this because we see through the lens, you know, kind
of blurry, and so it's your fault. It's not going
(02:10):
to rhyme today because she wrecks me with just that
focused on everything that filters through the hands of God
is good. I love this house, deeply, deeply respect your leadership.
I'm at an age and stage of life where I
get discounts at fast food restaurants and I'm turning to
(02:32):
sixty one next month. So I've lived a whole lot
of life. So when I get to be around leaders
like Chunks and Colleen Tunis and people who've stayed the
course for a while I just so deeply respect that
kind of longevity. If you're one of those people who
gets bugged when people go on and on about how
(02:55):
much they love Elevation, you're going to have to get
over yourself this morning because I love the house. The
first time I got to come here, I really thought
they had messed up. I thought Chunks thought he was
texting Lisa Turkhurst, and I just wasn't going to tell
him any different. I was so excited about the fact
that I got to come and I still feel like that.
I kind of feel like the shy girl, you know,
(03:17):
with a you know, payless haircut, and I got invited
to prom by the football quarterback. I love getting to
come here. On the plane in Nashville, they delayed us,
and I was like, if they tell me they are
canceling in spite to Charlotte, I will get on my
bike and ride here, which would have been difficult because
it's a peloton, but still I would have attempted it.
(03:39):
I love, love, love this house, and a couple of
qualifications extra I'm a spitter, and y'all, I'm so sorry.
I get really excited when I'm talking about Jesus and
I spew, So y'all are kind of going to get
rebaptized if your presbyteria'll be cool, because it's a sprinkling.
If you need a full dunking, it's not going to
(04:00):
be that exciting. And then I might slightly wreck your
Independence Day week because I want to start with a
Fourth of July story, which is where I actually learned
to grieve in a way that led me towards Jesus
instead of into a place by myself. It's about fifteen
(04:20):
years ago. It was Fourth of July week, and I
was real excited. I love the Fourth of July. I
get all the blinkies and the Sparkleys and the red,
white and blue, and I was really really fired up.
And I was also fired up because I was in
a very serious romantic relationship with a really, really handsome,
incredible man. And I guess enough time has passed that
(04:45):
I can share his name publicly now. His name is
Larry super fat liar pants and it was such a
big fat liar. But anyway, we dated seriously for about
and we were heading to what I thought was I
was going to finally get to, you know, buy the
(05:05):
white dress and get all the bride's maid's dresses. I
was going to do a bush and I was so
excited because I was almost forty and to get married
at almost forty, I mean, spanks are going to be involved,
but that's like exciting, that's a huge relief. And he
ghosted me right before fourth of July, and I know,
(05:25):
I know I should tell you it was real name,
but anyway, he's married another girl but they divorced, so anyway,
that was hateful and not fruit of the spirit. But anyway,
I'm going to get to gratitude in just a second.
Do not is faster? Stephen watching this. Hopefully he's just
like being alone with the Lord and doesn't know what's
(05:46):
happening in his church this morning. We're going to get
to the Bible in just a second. But anyway, Larry
Lyerpants ghosted me right before Jolly fourth and we were
going to this big couple's sway and that I'd gotten
a new output for It's gonna be so much fun.
And I was like, well, I can't go with all
the couples, you know, when I'm he just I'm not
with him. That's like going to Krispy Kreme when you're
on keto. I'm not going to do that. And so
(06:08):
a friend called me and said, hey, if you're not
going to go to that party, why don't you come
over to my house because she was going through a
real awful divorce and it was the first time she'd
ever been without her kids. They were with their dad
for Fourth of July, and she said, I kind of
need a friend. And then a bunch of us are
getting together for our own Fourth of July party, and
I was like, oh great, I'll be with all the
(06:29):
sad single ladies with cats. So I thought, okay, I'm
just going to own this. And so I go over
to her house and I thought, you know, she doesn't have,
you know, her husband here anymore. Maybe I could actually
help before the party. My dad was a contractor, I'm single,
all kinds of power tools, and so I thought, I'll
put in some shelving in her garage. That would help
this nice girl who's a single mom and she's kind
(06:51):
of sad like me. And so I put these shelves.
I was putting them in her garage and I was
way up high on the ladder and the ladder started
to She had those bougie garage floors. They're real slick.
And the ladder started to slide and I'm way up
with this drill, and I thought, oh, shoot fire, I'm
gonna fall. I can't there's nothing I can do. I
(07:12):
wouldn't saidhoot fire if I wasn't in church. But so
I start to slip and I look down and you
know those tomato those swirly things people put tomato plants
on the summer metal things. I look down and I
see those, and the sharp part is up and I
was like, oh shoot, I'm about to become a kebab.
And so I was trying to you know how you're
(07:32):
like swimming in the air because I knew it was
going to hit the concrete. I just didn't want to
hit the tomato spirals. So I'm kind of swimming well.
When I did, my leg hooked under the ladder and
I fell from twelve feet on the concrete and knocked
myself out, and I cracked a tooth and lost a
tooth right there, which is why I listp a little
and broke my ankle, knocked myself out, knocked the tooth
(07:54):
out of my head. She heard me fall, she comes
running around. I promise this will get better. We're getting
to the Bible and hope, so stay with me. And
she comes running around while she was really alarmed that
I was unconscious when she found me in a little
bloody and so she calls somebody she knows who's the
medical field, and they say she probably has a you know, concussion,
(08:15):
so keep her up and ask her about the president
of the year and all that. And so she kind
of gets me on her couch and she's like, what's
the year? And I'm like, like, what are you doing?
She keeps asking me historical questions. I've never really liked history.
And then she comes back in like the fourth time,
because I'm thinking, I just need to go home, Like
this has just been not at all the day I expected.
(08:36):
I just need to go home. She comes running back in.
I think she's going to ask me about the president,
and she goes, Reeve's dead, and I was like, what
are you talking about. Well, a friend of mine when
they had kids, he found out his kids were allergic
to dogs, and so he said, can you keep one
of my dogs. I'm finding a place for him. And
(08:58):
he had a dog named Reba, because is why writes
country songs. And she wrote a cut on Reba's record,
so named the dog Riba. There's the worst dog in
the history of time. But I love dogs and I
felt sorry for this dog. Well, nobody wanted the dog,
and I ended up having the dog forever, even though
technically I was just keeping the dog for twelve years
until he got somebody to adopt this dog. So I
had several dogs, but also I had Riba and little tiny, red,
(09:20):
fluffy dog. And while I was helping at this girl's house,
I just put RIBA's leash on the fence because I
was going to go for a run with Riba before
the party. And when this girl named Kim took me
under how she just wasn't thinking that this little dog
the leash was still on the fence. And so when
fireworks started going off and she's making sure I'm not dead,
(09:42):
Rita but got all twisted up and Riba died, and
I thought she was kidding me, and I thought it
was this horrible, horrible joke. I'm like, that's just awful,
and she was no. You know when people get nervous
and they laugh because they're nervous, So I still couldn't
tell she was punking me. She was like, no, he
was dead, and I was like what, Like this is awful.
(10:04):
I've lost my man, I've lost a tooth, I've broken you.
Are you really tell him when my dog died? And
then she went yeah, I put her in the freezer.
I was like, you put her in the fresh star
and she said, well it's hot, and I was afraid
she'd stink and I've never dealt with the dead dog before,
so yeah, she's in the freezer. And for a moment,
I thought, this isn't my life. Like I was supposed
(10:25):
to get married. I'd picked out the dress and as
July the fourth, and supposed to be all sparkly, and
now I've lost my man, I've lost my tooth, and
my dog is in the freezer, and I thought this
is not one of those I trust in God, And
he answered moments this is I trust in God. And
I feel like it's gotten me to a really bad
place because now I can't even cuss because I trust
(10:47):
in God and this is just hard and sad, and
all I want to do is eat been in jerries
and like, oh, this is terrible. Maybe even go to Netflix.
I what happens when you trust in God? And you
don't get the answer you want right then. I used
to never talk about hard things like that. I never
(11:11):
used to say when I was grieving, when I lost
somebody I loved. I never talked about the gap between
I trusting God any answers. Because I grew up in
a stream of the church where it was just tacitly
endorsed that you always wear a happy face. I thought
that was somewhere in the Bible. I thought, if you
were serious about your faith, you could not ever say
(11:36):
you were having a hard day. I thought you just
shoulders back, head up, big smile, hopefully a T shirt
with a verse on it. Because I didn't think we
were allowed as Christ followers to say I trust in God,
but he hasn't answered yet. I trust in God, but
(11:56):
I'm really sad right now. I thought I'm not allowed
to do that. It'll be a bad witness, It'll hurt
God's reputation. I used to beat myself up internally and
just say, if you could just memorize a few more verses,
if you could just muster up a little more faith,
you'd be a more effective evangelist. Lisa, you can't say
(12:16):
you're having a hard day. Somehow that negates the whole
fact that he's a perfect God, that he's good God,
that he never leaves us, and he never forsakes us.
So I curated my emotions and I only brought the
bright and shiny and the red, white and blue sparkly
wines to church. And I never brought the black and blue.
(12:37):
My heart is broken and my dog is dead. I
didn't bring that to the family of faith. I just
ached in isolation because I swallowed the lie that God
is disappointed in us if we're sad. I thought sad
was bad. You know, it took me a long, long
long time to realize that our guy is so kind
(13:01):
that never one time, never, one time, in this love
story we call the Bible, does he say I want
you to stuff the sad parts and only bring the
bright and shiny to me. He never ever people do that.
But our creator, Redeemer has never said I only want
the positivity in you. He never says that. He says,
(13:23):
bring me everything, bring me everything. If deep if deep
fake was a sport, I was a world champion. Then
I went to seminary the first go round, and I
could wrap Greek and Hebrew around my deep fake, and
(13:45):
when I got in a ditch between I trust in God,
and it took a while for me to hear his answer. Man,
I got stuck stuck in that ditch, and God did
chastise me, and I didn't get a holy spanky, Uni
(14:05):
said through Holy Spirit. When I was literally and emotionally
flat on my face, he said, Lisa, you've been running
so hard for so long that I had to put
a lump under your rug, so big that it would
cause you to trip. Because I love you so much
and the pretense in you has caused offense between us,
(14:29):
and I want all of you, and so I'm going
to sit here with you in the dark until fear
doesn't own you anymore, until you can bring all of
you to all of me. So I still have deep ends.
This July the fourth was a hard one too, because
(14:50):
the only man I've ever trusted died, and he died
way too young, and we really believe that he would
be healed. So this July the fourth wasn't super bright
and shiny either, But the presence of God in that
place and the way grief has made his countenance a
(15:10):
little clear. When we're sad, sometimes the veil gets a
little thinnered, doesn't it, And His presence is just so
palpable because we need it and we're more cognizant of
the fact that we need God. I'm not trying to
be Debbie Downer today. I'm just saying, as a people
of God, sometimes I think we're missing this whole beautiful
(15:32):
green pasture and the still water because we try to
put on bright and shiny when we're in church or
when we were other Christians, and sometimes even the world.
We've got a world that is so sad and so broken,
and we've become so irrelevant because we try to pretend
like we aren't. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We
talk about how God is with us in the hard places,
(15:54):
not that we don't have them anymore. And it's all
throughout scripture. I don't know how I miss this. All
throughout Scripture. We have story after story. You have story
of people who were disappointed, people who were sad. Why
do we think they are all bright and shiny and
in leather pants. They're not. Every single one of the
(16:17):
saints went through seasons where they lost their groove. Charles Spurgeon,
who is my pretend theological boyfriend. I love Spurgeon, and
I was so encouraged when I read the Spurgeon, one
of the greatest saints we've ever experienced as a Christian
people lived in the UK late eighteen hundreds, amazing communicator
(16:39):
of the gospel. Hundreds of thousands got saved under Spurgeon's ministry.
We're still reading his books. He's amazing. Spurgeon said, there
are times when I feel like I'm living in a
dungeon underneath a castle of despair. That's sad. I mean,
that's like prozac kind of sad. Baby, that is carbo
(17:00):
loading kind of said, I'm living in a dungeon underneath
a castle of despair. One of the most effective evangelance
the world has ever seen. And he said, I ache, y'all,
we will all ache. Unless you have not gone through puberty,
or you have amnesia, or you too are Larry or
Larry at liar pants, we will all ate. Jesus didn't
(17:24):
punk us. He didn't say everything's going to be perfect here.
He said, in this world, you will have trouble. He said,
take heart, take heart, take heart. I've overcome the world.
And if you've listened to your pasture, I think we'll
get to the place where we even become grateful for
grief because we realize Oh. Usually revivals follow pits. Usually,
(17:51):
if you'll look back over the trajectory of your walk
of faith, you'll go Man, where I really grew wasn't
a season of where everything was going well. It was
a season where the bottom fell out of my world
and I found God there. I still have deep ens.
I'm just not afraid I'm gonna drown anymore. I brought
(18:13):
a couple of multisyllabic theological words so those of you
who are enneagram eights would feel like you got your
money's worth in church today. I learned these in seminary,
and I have sweat and blood in my doctoral programs.
So the few long words I remember and I paid
so much for, I want to humble brag about. But
(18:33):
these actually are really pertinent when we talk about bringing
all that we are to all of who God is.
First word is orthodoxy, and orthodoxy comes from a Latin prefix,
a Greek sorry prefix. Ortho means right. That's why you
go to an orthopedis, because they're going to get your
(18:55):
bones right. Ortho means right or correct, and dox refers
to beef. Therefore, in the Christian context, and you'll hear
orthodoxy as it applies to other things. But in the
Christian context, for those of us who who love Jesus
or stumbling towards Jesus, it means to have right beliefs
about God. So if you are going to Elevation, if
you're a member of Elevation, if you're Epham, if you're
(19:17):
online from South Africa, if you believe what's being preached
from this from this house every single week, what's being
done the bands that our people are coming alongside to bless,
then you have probably an orthodox Christian belief system that
means your beliefs are grounded in scripture. Second word is orthopraxy. Ortho,
(19:39):
of course, is that prefix that means write or correct.
Practice means activity. Actually like practice better than practice because
practice refers to your hearts in it, so it's not
just duty. So orthopraxy is to have right actions in
light of what you believe to be true about God.
You still with me orthopraxy, don't take mental field trips yet.
(20:02):
And then there's a third one, ortha pathy. So we've
got right and then pathos in Greek refers to feelings
or emotions, and y'all, this is where usually Christians have
train wrecks, because so many of us, like me, have
assumed there's part of what I feel that isn't congruent
with what I believe to be true about God. How
(20:24):
many of y'all heard a youth pastor when you're growing up,
Usually their next were poking out their veins, were poking
on their macs. I used to think I had to
scream to be effective. I had a lot of youth
pastors that slung their bibles and screamed, and so I
started doing that. One time, Genesis fell out of my
Bible chunks and hit a woman on the front row.
It's wonder I wasn't sued. But I used to think
(20:44):
to be effective, I had to scream pathos emotion. How
many times have you heard of youth pastors say, please,
is not a feeling? Any of y'all heard that? And
so I thought, Ah, I got to be careful my feelings.
I can only have, like you know, biblical feelings. I
can't have sad. Sad is bad. That's where we have
(21:06):
a train rag, because you can't have right beliefs about
God and segregate your heart. Yes, faith is not a feeling,
but we feel. In Genesis one twenty six and twenty seven,
God said I made you in my image. So feelings
aren't bad. They just have to be under the canopy
(21:26):
of what we believe to be true about God. So
to be sad isn't bad as a believer. It is
nothing illegitimate about being sad. Where you go with that
sorrow or that grief, or that disappointment, or that anngst
or that anxiety, that's where we get illegitimate. But to
have feelings or the pathy that's supposed to be congruent
(21:51):
orthodoxy or theoproxy how we behave we don't say the
things sometimes that are in our head about the Larry
Liar pants in our lives, and then ortha pathy, those
have to be congruent. I lost a little weight last
year and I have a lot of hanging down parts
now which are exciting, and so I was moving rocks
(22:13):
in my yard recently, and I thought, you know, I've
seen those big people on television who are trying to
get in shape of throw tires, and so it would
help me to just instead of move these rocks to
hurl these rocks. And so I picked up this river
rock that I needed to move to that garden. From
this garden, I thought, I'm gonna chunk this puppy over
my head. And when I tried to chunk it over
(22:36):
my head, I heard this horrible rip and I thought, oh,
that that doesn't sound good. And so I waited for
a while ago the doctor because I thought, you know,
I'm old school. I'm like, oh, take tylernand, don't be
a baby. And after you know, a week of talan
on dit coke, I was like, this hurts. And so
I went to the doctor and after an MRI, he said, Lisa,
(22:56):
I need to know how you did this, because I've
been doing a surgery for twenty five years and I've
only had one other woman who completely tore her bicep
to her rotator cuff and her laborum and in one
fell sweep. Only one other woman, and she was a
professional athlete. And he said, so I need to know
(23:17):
how you did this, and I said, well, I have
these hanging down parts, and so I had to confess
I was throwing rocks, and so he had to do
this major surgery. And after the major surgery had to
drill holes in my humorous because they had to, you know,
reattach the bicep and running up through it looks like
a toggle bolt. They run up through a hole in
your in your bone and then plopping on the other side.
(23:38):
And then one of the nerves got stuck in that
bone hole and that was unpleasant. And he said, it's
because nothing is aligned right anymore. He said, because your
nerves and your muscular structure and your what's left of
my muscles, and your joint it's not aligned the way
(23:58):
it was. He's said, I'm not real sure what we
can do. We can't go back in right now because
it's hamburger meat. But he said, we just need everything
to be aligned. And when he said that, I thought, oh, golly, jeepers.
That so often has been my walk with God too.
I get orthodoxy. I mean, I'm a student, baby, I
(24:19):
want to have right beliefs about God. I want to
put it on a bumper sticker on my car. Orthopraxy. Well, yeah,
I grew up half Baptist, I'm baptocostel. We've got the
activity baby, and it rhymes. I mean, I've got an
across stick from my behavior orthopathy. Ooh ooh, hard for
(24:42):
me to be honest about where I am because I'm
afraid I'll be judged by other believers. And one scroll
through social media and you know we're gifted at that.
But then, more significantly, I wonder if God will be
disappointed in me, if he'll go geez, Louis Lise. I mean,
I sent my only begotten son. Wasn't that enough for you?
(25:06):
And so I just sometimes feel so guilty if I
don't go, no, it's a great day. He's a good
God all the time. All the time. When I'm gonna,
I'm not really being honest about it. All the time,
I just feel like I feel like there's something wildly
wrong with me. And then I go to this love
story and I'm so stinking grateful that these saints stumbled.
(25:30):
Wouldn't it bug you if they were all perfect and
like Keito worked for them and they never ever had
seasons where they said, I am stumbling today. They stumbled
all the time, y'all. And God didn't kick him to
the curb. He said, I'm actually going to give you
more responsibility, because as you begin to understand, self reliance
(25:54):
is not a spiritual gift. I can actually trust you
with more now that you become more dependent on me.
I'm not just your savior, I'm your sustainer. You need
me every single moment of every single day. Don't ever
cut the cord with Jesus. We need him to breathe,
to live, to get up every morning. We've got it
(26:17):
wrong in evangelical circles. We think atonement is just for salvation.
No no, no, no, no. Atonement's three hundred and sixty degrees.
It's every day today. He's making all things new. Open
your Bibles to First Kings. You know this story, so
I'm gonna synopsize it. You've got a really, really good guy.
He's a prophet. His name is Elijah, and they have
(26:38):
this basically a super bowl between the good guys and
the bad guys. There's a stinker of a king, and
this king kind of says, okay. This is in verse
seventeen a First Kings Chapter eighteen, when Ahab he's the
bad king. When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him,
is it you, you troubler of Israel? And he answered,
I have not troubled Israel, but you have, you stinker liar,
(27:00):
pens of a king and your father's house, because you
have abandon the commandments of the Lord and followed the bales. Now, therefore,
send and gather all Israel to be at Mount Carmel
and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Bail and
the four hundred prophets of Astra who eat at Jezebel's table.
So basically, they're going to have this huge showdown between
good and evil. And you've got eight hundred and fifty
(27:21):
bad guys and you've got one lone faithful guy, Elijah.
Most of y'all know this story, if you grew up
like me, you've seen at flannel Graft And they meet
on this pinnacle called Mount Carmel, and the bad guys
called down their gods, little g gods, not real gods,
Larry Liar pants gods. And they call them down and
(27:42):
they say, come down, show yourself and consume the sacrifices
these bulls we've prepared for you. And nothing happens, to
the point that Elijah says, maybe your God needed a
restroom break. It's a little more colorful than that in
the Hebrew and people say the Bible's boring. I'm like, no,
you're lazy. If you'd actually read the these stories, they're unstinkin' believable.
Yellowstone's got nothing on scripture and says, then Elijah says,
(28:08):
go get some water. They're in a drought. That in
itself is a miracle. And they're like, Okay, we don't
know where we're gonna get water. We'll go get water.
They go get water, They bring it. They douse all
the meat sacrifice, just to make the miracle kind of amplified.
And then he says that's not enough water. Go get
more water. They get more water. People are like, golly,
(28:29):
he really is getting theatrical here. He says, for a
third time in a drought, go get more water. They
soak the sacrifice, and then he calls on the name
of our God, the One True God, God, the Father God,
the Son God, the Holy Spirit, and he comes down
and he consumes not just the watery sacrifice, he consumes
(28:53):
the boulders that the bulls are on top of. I mean,
it's this unstinkin believable bic miracle. I mean it would
have been all over ESPN, like every single day would
have been a real that never went away. It was epic.
Right after that unbelievable miracle where god Win. I mean,
(29:17):
I can't imagine how many worship songs that we would
have from that one moment in redemptive history. Right after that,
Elijah gets a text from this Houchi queen named Jezebel,
and it's in the Bible. I promise. Ahab told Jezebel
all that Elijah had done one kings nineteen verse one,
(29:38):
and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.
Then Jesse sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may
the gods do to me, and more also, if I
do not make your life as the life of one
of them by this time tomorrow, she's talking about the
bad guys that were killed. Then Elijah was afraid, and
he arose and ran for his life and came to
bear Sheeba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there,
(29:59):
not gonna camp out there. But y'all, Verse three is
so important. He goes with somebody in his sphere, and
then this is a massive mistake. He leaves him there
and goes alone. Don't ache alone. Isolation one of the biggest,
biggest lies of the enemy. If you are in grief,
if you're sad, if you're just wanted, if you're mad
(30:20):
right now, if you are secretly shaking your fist at God,
don't do that in isolation. Find someone to go. I'm mad,
I'm sad, I'm disappointed church it and doing it for
mean before I feel like my prayers are hitting the ceiling.
Find someone to go with you. Do not ache in isolation.
Huge mistake. Not that he grieves, not that he's scared.
(30:44):
The mistake is he does it alone. But he himself
went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and
sat down under a broom tree that's also called an
acacia tree, little bitty spindley tree, like a scrub oak,
and he asked that he might die. Y'all, this is
on the heels of this massive miracle. People had gotten
t shirts Elijah's epic. He's it, he was right, His
(31:10):
God is the one true God, massive revival. And on
the heels of that, he says, I don't even want
to live anymore. It is enough now, o Lord, take
away my life, for I'm no better than my father's.
And he lay down and slept under that scrawny tree
and behold, an angel touched him and said to him,
you are such a loser. We're chasing another prophet. No, no,
(31:41):
that's not what the Angel of the Lord did to
this great sad man. He said, God wants you to
take a nap, but he wants to make sure you
have snacks first. How amazing is a god who doesn't
forget snacks? Wow? Incredible is that he doesn't chastise Elijah. Yeah,
(32:06):
there's no reprimand he recognizes that we're human and he
gives them rest, and he gives them sesstenance. What a
good God. Why is it we are so hesitant to
bring him our hurts when he envelops us and says,
I know we don't get chastised, we get compassion. He's
(32:31):
slow to anger, rich in compassion. Please don't be as
dumb as me. Please don't wait until you're middle age
to be honest with God. One of the reasons I
think the church has lost its efficacy is the watching
world sees us pretend and they think we're so sick
(32:51):
of pretending. I'm so over holding in my stomach and
using a filter, and y'all do it worse than we do.
So your God must judge you the way other people
judge me. No, he doesn't, No, he doesn't. He sees
us through the righteousness of He's holy. Please hear me.
I'm not saying he's Santa Claus. He is absolutely holy, transcendent,
(33:14):
the only one who is perfectly transcendent. But he condescends
to be close to us. He condescends to say, I
want you to take a nap. Come to me, all
you who are weary and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.
He doesn't say, if you're weary and heavy laden, that
you have completely just ruined your testimony. He never won
(33:35):
times says that. So you see Elijah in First Kings,
and you see that to walk in divine power, which
is what happens after he has snacks and rest. To
walk and divine power presupposes a pit revival, pre supposes
a time when we get stripped of our self reliance.
(33:58):
Weakness presupposes strength, presupposes weakness. Why is it that we
always try to hide that. It's because we're trying to
be the hero. We aren't the hero, we aren't the answer,
we aren't the good news Jesus is we're conduits, y'all.
We are conduits, flip over a few pages to Psalm
(34:22):
twenty two. Oh I love Psalm twenty two. We crossed
itch Psalm twenty three, and we sing about Psalm twenty
three because that's happy clappy and it's super inspirational. But
Psalm twenty two the song. Remember all of the songs
were originally written as songs so O andngs, so it's
(34:42):
like God's Spotify list. And the song that precedes Psalm
twenty three, the green Pastures and the steer Still waters
and God is Our Shepherd. It's a blues tune. David
wrote both of these songs, and David began Psalm twenty
two right before Psalm twenty three. My God, My God,
(35:04):
why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far
from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh
my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night I find no rest. I am poured
out like water verse fourteen. And all my bones are
out of a joint. My heart is like wax and
has melted within my breast. My strength is dried up
like a potterd and my tongue sticks to my jaws.
You lay me in the dust of death for dogs
(35:26):
encompass me. At least they're not in the freezer. A
company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands
and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare
and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them.
For my clothing, they cast lots. Now, scholars will tell
you that Psalm twenty two it is christological and it's prophetic.
This is nine hundred years before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ,
(35:50):
and it's a play by play of the crucifixion. But
don't forget David is just like us. He's a divine
condu for God's word. But he's just a man, and
he's really really sad, and God says, bring it to me.
I love that more of the psalms are sad than perky. Yeah,
(36:15):
we've got some amazing victory psalms in there. I love
some of the stuff that comes out of this house
that just makes me want to dance. I mean, rad
ole goodness, it's gracious. But I also love psalms of
lament because I go, that's what I'm feeling today, and
that's not incongruent with believing he is a Good God.
(36:39):
It's being human and recognizing I'm not Him, and today
I can't carry the weight of my own life. Today,
I need Jesus to carry me. Two other terms, formal
theology and functional theology. Is what we can put in
(37:02):
a church mission statement. It's what you can hang on
the wall if you go to a formal church. It's
what some of us have recited growing up. The Apostles
Creed and I see Creed. Formal theology it's what we
can state or write that we believe. It's awesome. I
love the Creeds. I think we've thrown the baby out
with the bathwater with some of the Creeds. I love
(37:23):
the Creeds. Functional theology is how we live, and there's
a gap between formal theology, between what we say we
believe and functional theology. Why y'all can talk back because
(37:43):
we're human. Because we're human. We're not glorified yet we're
in the process of sanctification. So there are seasons when
we have a really hard time walking out what we
say we believe. In that gap between the two, it's
a hotbed for hypocrisy. That's why the world goes you're
all a bunch of deep fakers. Because you say you
(38:04):
believe this, it's written on your web page. But actually
I work with this guy, I work with this woman,
and let me tell you what they're like. Monday through Friday.
There's a gap, and there's a gap for all of us.
And if you don't acknowledge the gap, if we don't
act like our friends in the UK and mind the gap,
(38:26):
then you too are Larry layer Pants. There is a
gap for all of us. You know what makes the
gap wider? Pretense? No, I'm fine, I'm fine. I've got
it all together. I've got that gap. Makes the gap
just gets bigger when we fake it, when we humbly go.
I can't do this by myself. I know the theology.
I went to school for theology. I can make the
(38:48):
theology rhyme. But today I feel like I am barely
hanging on. Today my heart is like wax. Gap gets mourning.
Heartbreak actually narrows. Honest heartbreak when we bring it to
the Lord actually nearros the gap between what we say
(39:09):
we believe and how we respond to the world around us. Yeah,
we need more Christians who say, let me tell you
about the God who carried me when I couldn't carry
the weight of my own life. That's not being a
Debbie Downer. That's telling the world around us that he
(39:29):
actually is who he says he is. If we act
like we can do it by ourselves, what are we
saying about Jesus. We're saying we don't need him. He
is such a good guy. I've become grateful for grief.
I don't know any other setting I could say that.
In them with brothers and sisters. It's not the perky
(39:50):
seasons when I've stayed on Quito and I'm we're in
jeans of zippers. Those are not the seasons where I've
needed God the most. The seasons where I've needed God
the best have been the seasons where I can just
barely breathe without Jesus. Last week, I didn't want to
(40:13):
go to church. I sat in the parking lot and
I thought, I just don't want to go to church.
I don't want to raise my hands. I don't want
somebody to say God's good all the time. I'm gonna
punch him in the throat. I mean, I do believe that.
I believe He's good all the time. It's just right
now my life feels anything but good and I am
(40:34):
flipping sad, and he is in heaven and he wouldn't
come back if he could, but I'm missing. What do
I do with that? I bring it to Jesus because
he's close to the broken hearted, and he's near to us,
when our lives are crushed near to us, not disappointed
(40:54):
with us, near to us, near to us, near to us.
What grief have you been pretending like it doesn't hurt
because you don't want to disappoint your small group or
you don't think it's very singable. My parents divorced when
I was really little, and it was really ugly, very
(41:16):
acrimonious divorce with a lot of physical abuse, and so
when my dad left us, I just kind of made
a vow to my six year old self that I
would never cry in front of my mother. She's already
been through enough, so I just said that I was
always going to be positive. Didn't have theology to wrap
around it. Then I just had trauma. I will never
(41:38):
ever ever cry in front of my mom, much less
anybody else again. I'm just going to be positive. I'm
just going to find the good, find the good, find
the good. And I was able to live that way
for I don't know. A year and a half and
then something happened. I don't remember somebody took my bike,
or another dog died. I don't remember what happened, but
there was a deep hurt when I was about eight
(41:59):
years old, and I didn't know where to go to cry,
and so the only place I could think of where
I could be alone and my mom wouldn't see me,
was under my bed. And we were really poor, and
we had those mattresses. Some of y'all don't even know
a mattress used to come from a store, not from online.
But they used to have springs, and we were so poor.
(42:22):
The springs hung down real low, and so I crawled
under my bed. The springs were right in my face,
and I was just crying under my bed. I don't
know how long I was under there, five ten minutes,
and I hear my mom's voice and she had opened
the back door because she was calling me in for
dinner and I was usually outside playing. And I heard
her say, Lisa, it's time to come in for dinner.
(42:44):
And I didn't answer because I thought if I answer,
she's going to know I'm under the bed. And then
I heard the back door close, and I heard my
mom walk toward where my room was. I don't know
how I heard that because we had avocado green shagcar,
but you know, you just sense your mom's getting closer.
(43:05):
And she stopped in front of my door, and then
she said, Lisa, honey, are you under the bed. And
I didn't want to say yes because I thought, oh crud.
You know, she's going to see him under here crying
and it's going to compound her grief, and oh gosh,
what do I do? But she had really instilled honesty
(43:27):
in us, so when she asked it the second time,
Lisa Hunting, are you under the bed? I said yes, ma'am.
And I expected to be chestised, or I expected to
really mess up her day. But the next thing that
happened is the dust ruffle lifted and there was my
mom's face. My mom was a Southern bell. My apple
(43:52):
fell pretty far from the tree. It was beautiful. You know,
her hair was always done, I always had makeups, wearing pearls.
And I saw her beautiful face and she realized what
was happening under the bed, and I will never forget
what my mom did next. She just stretched out her
adult body and she scooched until she was right next
(44:17):
to me under the bed. She didn't say a word,
She just got right under the springs, right next to me.
I could feel her all the way down my arm our.
Bodies were just side by side, and she just laid
under the bed with me. The presence of God doing
(44:39):
difficult seasons becomes not just a gift, becomes the cornerstone
of our faith because then when we sing I trust
in God and He heard and He answered, it doesn't
(45:05):
matter if there's a gap in between, because even when
there's no words, we recognize presence. I want to ask
y'all to stand up. Pastor's going to come wrap up
this family meeting in a minute. And I know, y'all,
I know that as a very grateful guest, I have
(45:26):
not earned the right to be bossy. I have no
authority in this house except what is generously loaned to
me by Pastor Holly and Pastor Stephen. And so forgive
me if this comes across as bossy. I am older
than y'all, So I'll just be your auntie for a moment.
(45:51):
If you are in a difficult season for whatever reason,
nobody needs to know. Let's the Holy Spirit prompt you
to share that part of your story. If you're in
a difficult season, you're sad, you're in grief, you're mad,
you're so stinking disappointed because you've done the right thing.
(46:18):
You've tithed, and you're leading an Etham group and you're
studying God's word, and right now your life has not
at all turned out the way you hoped or prayed for.
And because you're human, you're just stinking disappointed. You thought
(46:41):
I was so so grateful for the presence of God.
You're in that miscarriage. Surely this pregnancy will come to fruition,
Surely there will be another baby, and instead you had
an emotional miscarriage, and you think, I can't do it anymore.
(47:03):
I know he's a good guy, but I just don't
know how to wait until he answers again. Will you
please sit down? If that's where you are today, just today,
that's where you are. You're in a hard place. You
feel like you're walking through wet and you're trying to
(47:24):
keep your head up and you're trying to keep the
smile on. But if you were in a safe place,
you'd go I'm just tired and I don't know if
I can carry the weight of my own wife well anymore.
Will you just sit down? There's no shame in that. Actually,
the fail is going to get thinner for you today
if you honestly bring your heartbreak to the God who
(47:47):
loves us more than we can ask or imagine. Just
sit down. If you're in a hard place, there's some
people over here who like me, you've been raised thinking.
You can't let your guard down. If it's hard for
you to season, please sit down. This is a safe,
safe family to say I need somebody to pick up
(48:10):
a corner of my mind and carry me to the
roof and lower me to Jesus. If you have the
gift the privilege of standing by one of those saints
who's sitting down right now, let's actually do church. Let's
not just talk about it. Let's be a community. I
(48:32):
had a woman recently say Lisa, I pray for you
every Tuesday at nine o'clock. And my first thought was, Man,
I'm so grateful somebody besides my mom prays for me
on a regular basis. You know what My second thought was,
what if I'm struggling on Wednesday? Let's not just put
(48:54):
each other in our prayer journals. Let's pray right now.
So those of y'all who have the gift of standing
by one of these beautiful saints, one of these godly men,
one of these brothers or sisters, would you just lay
a hand on them. That's not a denominational thing, that's
not an elevation tradition, that's a biblical thing. Just put
your hand on their shoulders so they can feel the
(49:16):
physical presence of somebody who loves Jesus, somebody who's not
judging them, somebody who's not going to rip them later
on social media, but somebody who goes. I know I've
been there. He carried me too. And would you pray
for each other? Those of you who are comfortable praying
out loud, please do so. You don't have to pray
anything fancy. You can actually just reiterate God's promise in
(49:39):
Psalm thirty four. I am close to the broken hearted.
I'm near to those whose lives feel crushed. This low
point in your life, if you bring it to a
Lord will lead you to a place of intimacy, a
place of personal revival you probably haven't had the faith
(50:02):
to carry quite yet. Lowering your pretense in the family
of God. Yell, it makes for a safer family of God,
those of you who are grieving. If the Holy Spirit
confirms this, would you be audacious enough to even right
(50:28):
now say thank you God. I'm gonna choose to be
grateful for this grief. I can't see around the corner
of my circumstances yet, but I really do believe you'll answer,
and I really do believe you're enough, and I really
do believe you're close to the broken hearted. So I'm
gonna choose right now to say I'm gonna say thank you.
(50:48):
I don't feel it yet, but I'm gonna say thank
you for this grief because somehow, some way, You're going
to use even this diad dog of a season to
make me more dependent on you, to make me lean
into my brothers and sisters more closely. You're going to
(51:10):
build in me a heart of flesh instead of allowing
me to hide my heart of stone. Oh, King Jesus,
come and bring revival. King Jesus, come and bring me healing.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you God, that we can
trust in you. We can trust in you, and you
will answer. Help us in the no answer or Jesus,
(51:31):
help us to keep our hands raised even when our
hearts are broken, and trust that your presence never leaves us,
even de're in the know. Answer kind of chapters. We
love you, we need you. We cannot make it by ourselves. Jesus,
you are a good God. You are a good God.
Thank you that you define yourself as a man of sorrows.
Thank you that you tell us you were prepared for
(51:54):
the cross through pain. Thank you that you are not
a stranger to hard seasons. Thank you that you are
an empathetic high priest who says, bring it all, bring
it all, bring it all to me. Don't just bring
me the happy clappy parts, bring everything. I want to
sit with you in every season, every moment of every season.
(52:14):
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you God for your closeness.
Thank you that your proximity has nothing to do with
our performance, certainly not our pretense. Teach us what it
is to be honest before you got and then honest
with the people you allow us to rupt shoulders with.
We love you, We love you, We love you, we
love you, We need you.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of
you who give generously to this ministry. Is because of
you that this ministry is possible. You can click the
link in the description to give now or visit Elevationchurch
dot org slash podcast for more information and if you
enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it
with your friends. You can click the share button, take
(52:59):
us greenshot and share it on your social stories and
tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God
bless you.
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Goodness, goodness, goodness. Thank y'all, Thank you so much. Please
sit down. I have a couple of confessions to make
before we dive into God's word. Ah love Elevation. I
love this house. I really really love Pastor Steven, Pastor Holly.
As a matter of fact, Holly, I had a message
(00:42):
that was rhymed and everything prepared, and then I've been
doing Holly is grateful for aid And the other day
I just got wrecked by thinking of what I'm grateful for,
and I realized one of my ates is grief. And
(01:05):
I thought, what a weird thing to be grateful for grief.
And I promise I have not been smoking anything medicinal.
I know that sounds so counterintuitive when we come from
this great time of worship to then just kind of
dive into grief. But I realized grief for me and
I'm in another season of grief. I lost somebody I
(01:25):
loved very much a month ago yesterday, and I'm just
in that place of I trust in God. And he answered,
but he took a wild answer. And ye know, sometimes
there's that gap between I trust in God and then
you're waiting on an answer, waiting on an answer, waiting
(01:47):
on answer. C. S. Lewis says, sometimes we don't get
the answer that we're so desperate for. We get more
of a no answer. He said, but it's not uncompassionates,
as if God is saying peace child. You don't understand
this because we see through the lens, you know, kind
of blurry, and so it's your fault. It's not going
(02:10):
to rhyme today because she wrecks me with just that
focused on everything that filters through the hands of God
is good. I love this house, deeply, deeply respect your leadership.
I'm at an age and stage of life where I
get discounts at fast food restaurants and I'm turning to
(02:32):
sixty one next month. So I've lived a whole lot
of life. So when I get to be around leaders
like Chunks and Colleen Tunis and people who've stayed the
course for a while I just so deeply respect that
kind of longevity. If you're one of those people who
gets bugged when people go on and on about how
(02:55):
much they love Elevation, you're going to have to get
over yourself this morning because I love the house. The
first time I got to come here, I really thought
they had messed up. I thought Chunks thought he was
texting Lisa Turkhurst, and I just wasn't going to tell
him any different. I was so excited about the fact
that I got to come and I still feel like that.
I kind of feel like the shy girl, you know,
(03:17):
with a you know, payless haircut, and I got invited
to prom by the football quarterback. I love getting to
come here. On the plane in Nashville, they delayed us,
and I was like, if they tell me they are
canceling in spite to Charlotte, I will get on my
bike and ride here, which would have been difficult because
it's a peloton, but still I would have attempted it.
(03:39):
I love, love, love this house, and a couple of
qualifications extra I'm a spitter, and y'all, I'm so sorry.
I get really excited when I'm talking about Jesus and
I spew, So y'all are kind of going to get
rebaptized if your presbyteria'll be cool, because it's a sprinkling.
If you need a full dunking, it's not going to
(04:00):
be that exciting. And then I might slightly wreck your
Independence Day week because I want to start with a
Fourth of July story, which is where I actually learned
to grieve in a way that led me towards Jesus
instead of into a place by myself. It's about fifteen
(04:20):
years ago. It was Fourth of July week, and I
was real excited. I love the Fourth of July. I
get all the blinkies and the Sparkleys and the red,
white and blue, and I was really really fired up.
And I was also fired up because I was in
a very serious romantic relationship with a really, really handsome,
incredible man. And I guess enough time has passed that
(04:45):
I can share his name publicly now. His name is
Larry super fat liar pants and it was such a
big fat liar. But anyway, we dated seriously for about
and we were heading to what I thought was I
was going to finally get to, you know, buy the
(05:05):
white dress and get all the bride's maid's dresses. I
was going to do a bush and I was so
excited because I was almost forty and to get married
at almost forty, I mean, spanks are going to be involved,
but that's like exciting, that's a huge relief. And he
ghosted me right before fourth of July, and I know,
(05:25):
I know I should tell you it was real name,
but anyway, he's married another girl but they divorced, so anyway,
that was hateful and not fruit of the spirit. But anyway,
I'm going to get to gratitude in just a second.
Do not is faster? Stephen watching this. Hopefully he's just
like being alone with the Lord and doesn't know what's
(05:46):
happening in his church this morning. We're going to get
to the Bible in just a second. But anyway, Larry
Lyerpants ghosted me right before Jolly fourth and we were
going to this big couple's sway and that I'd gotten
a new output for It's gonna be so much fun.
And I was like, well, I can't go with all
the couples, you know, when I'm he just I'm not
with him. That's like going to Krispy Kreme when you're
on keto. I'm not going to do that. And so
(06:08):
a friend called me and said, hey, if you're not
going to go to that party, why don't you come
over to my house because she was going through a
real awful divorce and it was the first time she'd
ever been without her kids. They were with their dad
for Fourth of July, and she said, I kind of
need a friend. And then a bunch of us are
getting together for our own Fourth of July party, and
I was like, oh great, I'll be with all the
(06:29):
sad single ladies with cats. So I thought, okay, I'm
just going to own this. And so I go over
to her house and I thought, you know, she doesn't have,
you know, her husband here anymore. Maybe I could actually
help before the party. My dad was a contractor, I'm single,
all kinds of power tools, and so I thought, I'll
put in some shelving in her garage. That would help
this nice girl who's a single mom and she's kind
(06:51):
of sad like me. And so I put these shelves.
I was putting them in her garage and I was
way up high on the ladder and the ladder started
to She had those bougie garage floors. They're real slick.
And the ladder started to slide and I'm way up
with this drill, and I thought, oh, shoot fire, I'm
gonna fall. I can't there's nothing I can do. I
(07:12):
wouldn't saidhoot fire if I wasn't in church. But so
I start to slip and I look down and you
know those tomato those swirly things people put tomato plants
on the summer metal things. I look down and I
see those, and the sharp part is up and I
was like, oh shoot, I'm about to become a kebab.
And so I was trying to you know how you're
(07:32):
like swimming in the air because I knew it was
going to hit the concrete. I just didn't want to
hit the tomato spirals. So I'm kind of swimming well.
When I did, my leg hooked under the ladder and
I fell from twelve feet on the concrete and knocked
myself out, and I cracked a tooth and lost a
tooth right there, which is why I listp a little
and broke my ankle, knocked myself out, knocked the tooth
(07:54):
out of my head. She heard me fall, she comes
running around. I promise this will get better. We're getting
to the Bible and hope, so stay with me. And
she comes running around while she was really alarmed that
I was unconscious when she found me in a little
bloody and so she calls somebody she knows who's the
medical field, and they say she probably has a you know, concussion,
(08:15):
so keep her up and ask her about the president
of the year and all that. And so she kind
of gets me on her couch and she's like, what's
the year? And I'm like, like, what are you doing?
She keeps asking me historical questions. I've never really liked history.
And then she comes back in like the fourth time,
because I'm thinking, I just need to go home, Like
this has just been not at all the day I expected.
(08:36):
I just need to go home. She comes running back in.
I think she's going to ask me about the president,
and she goes, Reeve's dead, and I was like, what
are you talking about. Well, a friend of mine when
they had kids, he found out his kids were allergic
to dogs, and so he said, can you keep one
of my dogs. I'm finding a place for him. And
(08:58):
he had a dog named Reba, because is why writes
country songs. And she wrote a cut on Reba's record,
so named the dog Riba. There's the worst dog in
the history of time. But I love dogs and I
felt sorry for this dog. Well, nobody wanted the dog,
and I ended up having the dog forever, even though
technically I was just keeping the dog for twelve years
until he got somebody to adopt this dog. So I
had several dogs, but also I had Riba and little tiny, red,
(09:20):
fluffy dog. And while I was helping at this girl's house,
I just put RIBA's leash on the fence because I
was going to go for a run with Riba before
the party. And when this girl named Kim took me
under how she just wasn't thinking that this little dog
the leash was still on the fence. And so when
fireworks started going off and she's making sure I'm not dead,
(09:42):
Rita but got all twisted up and Riba died, and
I thought she was kidding me, and I thought it
was this horrible, horrible joke. I'm like, that's just awful,
and she was no. You know when people get nervous
and they laugh because they're nervous, So I still couldn't
tell she was punking me. She was like, no, he
was dead, and I was like what, Like this is awful.
(10:04):
I've lost my man, I've lost a tooth, I've broken you.
Are you really tell him when my dog died? And
then she went yeah, I put her in the freezer.
I was like, you put her in the fresh star
and she said, well it's hot, and I was afraid
she'd stink and I've never dealt with the dead dog before,
so yeah, she's in the freezer. And for a moment,
I thought, this isn't my life. Like I was supposed
(10:25):
to get married. I'd picked out the dress and as
July the fourth, and supposed to be all sparkly, and
now I've lost my man, I've lost my tooth, and
my dog is in the freezer, and I thought this
is not one of those I trust in God, And
he answered moments this is I trust in God. And
I feel like it's gotten me to a really bad
place because now I can't even cuss because I trust
(10:47):
in God and this is just hard and sad, and
all I want to do is eat been in jerries
and like, oh, this is terrible. Maybe even go to Netflix.
I what happens when you trust in God? And you
don't get the answer you want right then. I used
to never talk about hard things like that. I never
(11:11):
used to say when I was grieving, when I lost
somebody I loved. I never talked about the gap between
I trusting God any answers. Because I grew up in
a stream of the church where it was just tacitly
endorsed that you always wear a happy face. I thought
that was somewhere in the Bible. I thought, if you
were serious about your faith, you could not ever say
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you were having a hard day. I thought you just
shoulders back, head up, big smile, hopefully a T shirt
with a verse on it. Because I didn't think we
were allowed as Christ followers to say I trust in God,
but he hasn't answered yet. I trust in God, but
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I'm really sad right now. I thought I'm not allowed
to do that. It'll be a bad witness, It'll hurt
God's reputation. I used to beat myself up internally and
just say, if you could just memorize a few more verses,
if you could just muster up a little more faith,
you'd be a more effective evangelist. Lisa, you can't say
(12:16):
you're having a hard day. Somehow that negates the whole
fact that he's a perfect God, that he's good God,
that he never leaves us, and he never forsakes us.
So I curated my emotions and I only brought the
bright and shiny and the red, white and blue sparkly
wines to church. And I never brought the black and blue.
(12:37):
My heart is broken and my dog is dead. I
didn't bring that to the family of faith. I just
ached in isolation because I swallowed the lie that God
is disappointed in us if we're sad. I thought sad
was bad. You know, it took me a long, long
long time to realize that our guy is so kind
(13:01):
that never one time, never, one time, in this love
story we call the Bible, does he say I want
you to stuff the sad parts and only bring the
bright and shiny to me. He never ever people do that.
But our creator, Redeemer has never said I only want
the positivity in you. He never says that. He says,
(13:23):
bring me everything, bring me everything. If deep if deep
fake was a sport, I was a world champion. Then
I went to seminary the first go round, and I
could wrap Greek and Hebrew around my deep fake, and
(13:45):
when I got in a ditch between I trust in God,
and it took a while for me to hear his answer. Man,
I got stuck stuck in that ditch, and God did
chastise me, and I didn't get a holy spanky, Uni
(14:05):
said through Holy Spirit. When I was literally and emotionally
flat on my face, he said, Lisa, you've been running
so hard for so long that I had to put
a lump under your rug, so big that it would
cause you to trip. Because I love you so much
and the pretense in you has caused offense between us,
(14:29):
and I want all of you, and so I'm going
to sit here with you in the dark until fear
doesn't own you anymore, until you can bring all of
you to all of me. So I still have deep ends.
This July the fourth was a hard one too, because
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the only man I've ever trusted died, and he died
way too young, and we really believe that he would
be healed. So this July the fourth wasn't super bright
and shiny either, But the presence of God in that
place and the way grief has made his countenance a
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little clear. When we're sad, sometimes the veil gets a
little thinnered, doesn't it, And His presence is just so
palpable because we need it and we're more cognizant of
the fact that we need God. I'm not trying to
be Debbie Downer today. I'm just saying, as a people
of God, sometimes I think we're missing this whole beautiful
(15:32):
green pasture and the still water because we try to
put on bright and shiny when we're in church or
when we were other Christians, and sometimes even the world.
We've got a world that is so sad and so broken,
and we've become so irrelevant because we try to pretend
like we aren't. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We
talk about how God is with us in the hard places,
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not that we don't have them anymore. And it's all
throughout scripture. I don't know how I miss this. All
throughout Scripture. We have story after story. You have story
of people who were disappointed, people who were sad. Why
do we think they are all bright and shiny and
in leather pants. They're not. Every single one of the
(16:17):
saints went through seasons where they lost their groove. Charles Spurgeon,
who is my pretend theological boyfriend. I love Spurgeon, and
I was so encouraged when I read the Spurgeon, one
of the greatest saints we've ever experienced as a Christian
people lived in the UK late eighteen hundreds, amazing communicator
(16:39):
of the gospel. Hundreds of thousands got saved under Spurgeon's ministry.
We're still reading his books. He's amazing. Spurgeon said, there
are times when I feel like I'm living in a
dungeon underneath a castle of despair. That's sad. I mean,
that's like prozac kind of sad. Baby, that is carbo
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loading kind of said, I'm living in a dungeon underneath
a castle of despair. One of the most effective evangelance
the world has ever seen. And he said, I ache, y'all,
we will all ache. Unless you have not gone through puberty,
or you have amnesia, or you too are Larry or
Larry at liar pants, we will all ate. Jesus didn't
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punk us. He didn't say everything's going to be perfect here.
He said, in this world, you will have trouble. He said,
take heart, take heart, take heart. I've overcome the world.
And if you've listened to your pasture, I think we'll
get to the place where we even become grateful for
grief because we realize Oh. Usually revivals follow pits. Usually,
(17:51):
if you'll look back over the trajectory of your walk
of faith, you'll go Man, where I really grew wasn't
a season of where everything was going well. It was
a season where the bottom fell out of my world
and I found God there. I still have deep ens.
I'm just not afraid I'm gonna drown anymore. I brought
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a couple of multisyllabic theological words so those of you
who are enneagram eights would feel like you got your
money's worth in church today. I learned these in seminary,
and I have sweat and blood in my doctoral programs.
So the few long words I remember and I paid
so much for, I want to humble brag about. But
(18:33):
these actually are really pertinent when we talk about bringing
all that we are to all of who God is.
First word is orthodoxy, and orthodoxy comes from a Latin prefix,
a Greek sorry prefix. Ortho means right. That's why you
go to an orthopedis, because they're going to get your
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bones right. Ortho means right or correct, and dox refers
to beef. Therefore, in the Christian context, and you'll hear
orthodoxy as it applies to other things. But in the
Christian context, for those of us who who love Jesus
or stumbling towards Jesus, it means to have right beliefs
about God. So if you are going to Elevation, if
you're a member of Elevation, if you're Epham, if you're
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online from South Africa, if you believe what's being preached
from this from this house every single week, what's being
done the bands that our people are coming alongside to bless,
then you have probably an orthodox Christian belief system that
means your beliefs are grounded in scripture. Second word is orthopraxy. Ortho,
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of course, is that prefix that means write or correct.
Practice means activity. Actually like practice better than practice because
practice refers to your hearts in it, so it's not
just duty. So orthopraxy is to have right actions in
light of what you believe to be true about God.
You still with me orthopraxy, don't take mental field trips yet.
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And then there's a third one, ortha pathy. So we've
got right and then pathos in Greek refers to feelings
or emotions, and y'all, this is where usually Christians have
train wrecks, because so many of us, like me, have
assumed there's part of what I feel that isn't congruent
with what I believe to be true about God. How
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many of y'all heard a youth pastor when you're growing up,
Usually their next were poking out their veins, were poking
on their macs. I used to think I had to
scream to be effective. I had a lot of youth
pastors that slung their bibles and screamed, and so I
started doing that. One time, Genesis fell out of my
Bible chunks and hit a woman on the front row.
It's wonder I wasn't sued. But I used to think
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to be effective, I had to scream pathos emotion. How
many times have you heard of youth pastors say, please,
is not a feeling? Any of y'all heard that? And
so I thought, Ah, I got to be careful my feelings.
I can only have, like you know, biblical feelings. I
can't have sad. Sad is bad. That's where we have
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a train rag, because you can't have right beliefs about
God and segregate your heart. Yes, faith is not a feeling,
but we feel. In Genesis one twenty six and twenty seven,
God said I made you in my image. So feelings
aren't bad. They just have to be under the canopy
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of what we believe to be true about God. So
to be sad isn't bad as a believer. It is
nothing illegitimate about being sad. Where you go with that
sorrow or that grief, or that disappointment, or that anngst
or that anxiety, that's where we get illegitimate. But to
have feelings or the pathy that's supposed to be congruent
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orthodoxy or theoproxy how we behave we don't say the
things sometimes that are in our head about the Larry
Liar pants in our lives, and then ortha pathy, those
have to be congruent. I lost a little weight last
year and I have a lot of hanging down parts
now which are exciting, and so I was moving rocks
(22:13):
in my yard recently, and I thought, you know, I've
seen those big people on television who are trying to
get in shape of throw tires, and so it would
help me to just instead of move these rocks to
hurl these rocks. And so I picked up this river
rock that I needed to move to that garden. From
this garden, I thought, I'm gonna chunk this puppy over
my head. And when I tried to chunk it over
(22:36):
my head, I heard this horrible rip and I thought, oh,
that that doesn't sound good. And so I waited for
a while ago the doctor because I thought, you know,
I'm old school. I'm like, oh, take tylernand, don't be
a baby. And after you know, a week of talan
on dit coke, I was like, this hurts. And so
I went to the doctor and after an MRI, he said, Lisa,
(22:56):
I need to know how you did this, because I've
been doing a surgery for twenty five years and I've
only had one other woman who completely tore her bicep
to her rotator cuff and her laborum and in one
fell sweep. Only one other woman, and she was a
professional athlete. And he said, so I need to know
(23:17):
how you did this, and I said, well, I have
these hanging down parts, and so I had to confess
I was throwing rocks, and so he had to do
this major surgery. And after the major surgery had to
drill holes in my humorous because they had to, you know,
reattach the bicep and running up through it looks like
a toggle bolt. They run up through a hole in
your in your bone and then plopping on the other side.
(23:38):
And then one of the nerves got stuck in that
bone hole and that was unpleasant. And he said, it's
because nothing is aligned right anymore. He said, because your
nerves and your muscular structure and your what's left of
my muscles, and your joint it's not aligned the way
(23:58):
it was. He's said, I'm not real sure what we
can do. We can't go back in right now because
it's hamburger meat. But he said, we just need everything
to be aligned. And when he said that, I thought, oh, golly, jeepers.
That so often has been my walk with God too.
I get orthodoxy. I mean, I'm a student, baby, I
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want to have right beliefs about God. I want to
put it on a bumper sticker on my car. Orthopraxy. Well, yeah,
I grew up half Baptist, I'm baptocostel. We've got the
activity baby, and it rhymes. I mean, I've got an
across stick from my behavior orthopathy. Ooh ooh, hard for
(24:42):
me to be honest about where I am because I'm
afraid I'll be judged by other believers. And one scroll
through social media and you know we're gifted at that.
But then, more significantly, I wonder if God will be
disappointed in me, if he'll go geez, Louis Lise. I mean,
I sent my only begotten son. Wasn't that enough for you?
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And so I just sometimes feel so guilty if I
don't go, no, it's a great day. He's a good
God all the time. All the time. When I'm gonna,
I'm not really being honest about it. All the time,
I just feel like I feel like there's something wildly
wrong with me. And then I go to this love
story and I'm so stinking grateful that these saints stumbled.
(25:30):
Wouldn't it bug you if they were all perfect and
like Keito worked for them and they never ever had
seasons where they said, I am stumbling today. They stumbled
all the time, y'all. And God didn't kick him to
the curb. He said, I'm actually going to give you
more responsibility, because as you begin to understand, self reliance
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is not a spiritual gift. I can actually trust you
with more now that you become more dependent on me.
I'm not just your savior, I'm your sustainer. You need
me every single moment of every single day. Don't ever
cut the cord with Jesus. We need him to breathe,
to live, to get up every morning. We've got it
(26:17):
wrong in evangelical circles. We think atonement is just for salvation.
No no, no, no, no. Atonement's three hundred and sixty degrees.
It's every day today. He's making all things new. Open
your Bibles to First Kings. You know this story, so
I'm gonna synopsize it. You've got a really, really good guy.
He's a prophet. His name is Elijah, and they have
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this basically a super bowl between the good guys and
the bad guys. There's a stinker of a king, and
this king kind of says, okay. This is in verse
seventeen a First Kings Chapter eighteen, when Ahab he's the
bad king. When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him,
is it you, you troubler of Israel? And he answered,
I have not troubled Israel, but you have, you stinker liar,
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pens of a king and your father's house, because you
have abandon the commandments of the Lord and followed the bales. Now, therefore,
send and gather all Israel to be at Mount Carmel
and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Bail and
the four hundred prophets of Astra who eat at Jezebel's table.
So basically, they're going to have this huge showdown between
good and evil. And you've got eight hundred and fifty
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bad guys and you've got one lone faithful guy, Elijah.
Most of y'all know this story, if you grew up
like me, you've seen at flannel Graft And they meet
on this pinnacle called Mount Carmel, and the bad guys
called down their gods, little g gods, not real gods,
Larry Liar pants gods. And they call them down and
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they say, come down, show yourself and consume the sacrifices
these bulls we've prepared for you. And nothing happens, to
the point that Elijah says, maybe your God needed a
restroom break. It's a little more colorful than that in
the Hebrew and people say the Bible's boring. I'm like, no,
you're lazy. If you'd actually read the these stories, they're unstinkin' believable.
Yellowstone's got nothing on scripture and says, then Elijah says,
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go get some water. They're in a drought. That in
itself is a miracle. And they're like, Okay, we don't
know where we're gonna get water. We'll go get water.
They go get water, They bring it. They douse all
the meat sacrifice, just to make the miracle kind of amplified.
And then he says that's not enough water. Go get
more water. They get more water. People are like, golly,
(28:29):
he really is getting theatrical here. He says, for a
third time in a drought, go get more water. They
soak the sacrifice, and then he calls on the name
of our God, the One True God, God, the Father God,
the Son God, the Holy Spirit, and he comes down
and he consumes not just the watery sacrifice, he consumes
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the boulders that the bulls are on top of. I mean,
it's this unstinkin believable bic miracle. I mean it would
have been all over ESPN, like every single day would
have been a real that never went away. It was epic.
Right after that unbelievable miracle where god Win. I mean,
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I can't imagine how many worship songs that we would
have from that one moment in redemptive history. Right after that,
Elijah gets a text from this Houchi queen named Jezebel,
and it's in the Bible. I promise. Ahab told Jezebel
all that Elijah had done one kings nineteen verse one,
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and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.
Then Jesse sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may
the gods do to me, and more also, if I
do not make your life as the life of one
of them by this time tomorrow, she's talking about the
bad guys that were killed. Then Elijah was afraid, and
he arose and ran for his life and came to
bear Sheeba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there,
(29:59):
not gonna camp out there. But y'all, Verse three is
so important. He goes with somebody in his sphere, and
then this is a massive mistake. He leaves him there
and goes alone. Don't ache alone. Isolation one of the biggest,
biggest lies of the enemy. If you are in grief,
if you're sad, if you're just wanted, if you're mad
(30:20):
right now, if you are secretly shaking your fist at God,
don't do that in isolation. Find someone to go. I'm mad,
I'm sad, I'm disappointed church it and doing it for
mean before I feel like my prayers are hitting the ceiling.
Find someone to go with you. Do not ache in isolation.
Huge mistake. Not that he grieves, not that he's scared.
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The mistake is he does it alone. But he himself
went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and
sat down under a broom tree that's also called an
acacia tree, little bitty spindley tree, like a scrub oak,
and he asked that he might die. Y'all, this is
on the heels of this massive miracle. People had gotten
t shirts Elijah's epic. He's it, he was right, His
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God is the one true God, massive revival. And on
the heels of that, he says, I don't even want
to live anymore. It is enough now, o Lord, take
away my life, for I'm no better than my father's.
And he lay down and slept under that scrawny tree
and behold, an angel touched him and said to him,
you are such a loser. We're chasing another prophet. No, no,
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that's not what the Angel of the Lord did to
this great sad man. He said, God wants you to
take a nap, but he wants to make sure you
have snacks first. How amazing is a god who doesn't
forget snacks? Wow? Incredible is that he doesn't chastise Elijah. Yeah,
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there's no reprimand he recognizes that we're human and he
gives them rest, and he gives them sesstenance. What a
good God. Why is it we are so hesitant to
bring him our hurts when he envelops us and says,
I know we don't get chastised, we get compassion. He's
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slow to anger, rich in compassion. Please don't be as
dumb as me. Please don't wait until you're middle age
to be honest with God. One of the reasons I
think the church has lost its efficacy is the watching
world sees us pretend and they think we're so sick
(32:51):
of pretending. I'm so over holding in my stomach and
using a filter, and y'all do it worse than we do.
So your God must judge you the way other people
judge me. No, he doesn't, No, he doesn't. He sees
us through the righteousness of He's holy. Please hear me.
I'm not saying he's Santa Claus. He is absolutely holy, transcendent,
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the only one who is perfectly transcendent. But he condescends
to be close to us. He condescends to say, I
want you to take a nap. Come to me, all
you who are weary and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.
He doesn't say, if you're weary and heavy laden, that
you have completely just ruined your testimony. He never won
(33:35):
times says that. So you see Elijah in First Kings,
and you see that to walk in divine power, which
is what happens after he has snacks and rest. To
walk and divine power presupposes a pit revival, pre supposes
a time when we get stripped of our self reliance.
(33:58):
Weakness presupposes strength, presupposes weakness. Why is it that we
always try to hide that. It's because we're trying to
be the hero. We aren't the hero, we aren't the answer,
we aren't the good news Jesus is we're conduits, y'all.
We are conduits, flip over a few pages to Psalm
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twenty two. Oh I love Psalm twenty two. We crossed
itch Psalm twenty three, and we sing about Psalm twenty
three because that's happy clappy and it's super inspirational. But
Psalm twenty two the song. Remember all of the songs
were originally written as songs so O andngs, so it's
(34:42):
like God's Spotify list. And the song that precedes Psalm
twenty three, the green Pastures and the steer Still waters
and God is Our Shepherd. It's a blues tune. David
wrote both of these songs, and David began Psalm twenty
two right before Psalm twenty three. My God, My God,
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why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far
from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh
my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night I find no rest. I am poured
out like water verse fourteen. And all my bones are
out of a joint. My heart is like wax and
has melted within my breast. My strength is dried up
like a potterd and my tongue sticks to my jaws.
You lay me in the dust of death for dogs
(35:26):
encompass me. At least they're not in the freezer. A
company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands
and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare
and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them.
For my clothing, they cast lots. Now, scholars will tell
you that Psalm twenty two it is christological and it's prophetic.
This is nine hundred years before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ,
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and it's a play by play of the crucifixion. But
don't forget David is just like us. He's a divine
condu for God's word. But he's just a man, and
he's really really sad, and God says, bring it to me.
I love that more of the psalms are sad than perky. Yeah,
(36:15):
we've got some amazing victory psalms in there. I love
some of the stuff that comes out of this house
that just makes me want to dance. I mean, rad
ole goodness, it's gracious. But I also love psalms of
lament because I go, that's what I'm feeling today, and
that's not incongruent with believing he is a Good God.
(36:39):
It's being human and recognizing I'm not Him, and today
I can't carry the weight of my own life. Today,
I need Jesus to carry me. Two other terms, formal
theology and functional theology. Is what we can put in
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a church mission statement. It's what you can hang on
the wall if you go to a formal church. It's
what some of us have recited growing up. The Apostles
Creed and I see Creed. Formal theology it's what we
can state or write that we believe. It's awesome. I
love the Creeds. I think we've thrown the baby out
with the bathwater with some of the Creeds. I love
(37:23):
the Creeds. Functional theology is how we live, and there's
a gap between formal theology, between what we say we
believe and functional theology. Why y'all can talk back because
(37:43):
we're human. Because we're human. We're not glorified yet we're
in the process of sanctification. So there are seasons when
we have a really hard time walking out what we
say we believe. In that gap between the two, it's
a hotbed for hypocrisy. That's why the world goes you're
all a bunch of deep fakers. Because you say you
(38:04):
believe this, it's written on your web page. But actually
I work with this guy, I work with this woman,
and let me tell you what they're like. Monday through Friday.
There's a gap, and there's a gap for all of us.
And if you don't acknowledge the gap, if we don't
act like our friends in the UK and mind the gap,
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then you too are Larry layer Pants. There is a
gap for all of us. You know what makes the
gap wider? Pretense? No, I'm fine, I'm fine. I've got
it all together. I've got that gap. Makes the gap
just gets bigger when we fake it, when we humbly go.
I can't do this by myself. I know the theology.
I went to school for theology. I can make the
(38:48):
theology rhyme. But today I feel like I am barely
hanging on. Today my heart is like wax. Gap gets mourning.
Heartbreak actually narrows. Honest heartbreak when we bring it to
the Lord actually nearros the gap between what we say
(39:09):
we believe and how we respond to the world around us. Yeah,
we need more Christians who say, let me tell you
about the God who carried me when I couldn't carry
the weight of my own life. That's not being a
Debbie Downer. That's telling the world around us that he
(39:29):
actually is who he says he is. If we act
like we can do it by ourselves, what are we
saying about Jesus. We're saying we don't need him. He
is such a good guy. I've become grateful for grief.
I don't know any other setting I could say that.
In them with brothers and sisters. It's not the perky
(39:50):
seasons when I've stayed on Quito and I'm we're in
jeans of zippers. Those are not the seasons where I've
needed God the most. The seasons where I've needed God
the best have been the seasons where I can just
barely breathe without Jesus. Last week, I didn't want to
(40:13):
go to church. I sat in the parking lot and
I thought, I just don't want to go to church.
I don't want to raise my hands. I don't want
somebody to say God's good all the time. I'm gonna
punch him in the throat. I mean, I do believe that.
I believe He's good all the time. It's just right
now my life feels anything but good and I am
(40:34):
flipping sad, and he is in heaven and he wouldn't
come back if he could, but I'm missing. What do
I do with that? I bring it to Jesus because
he's close to the broken hearted, and he's near to us,
when our lives are crushed near to us, not disappointed
(40:54):
with us, near to us, near to us, near to us.
What grief have you been pretending like it doesn't hurt
because you don't want to disappoint your small group or
you don't think it's very singable. My parents divorced when
I was really little, and it was really ugly, very
(41:16):
acrimonious divorce with a lot of physical abuse, and so
when my dad left us, I just kind of made
a vow to my six year old self that I
would never cry in front of my mother. She's already
been through enough, so I just said that I was
always going to be positive. Didn't have theology to wrap
around it. Then I just had trauma. I will never
(41:38):
ever ever cry in front of my mom, much less
anybody else again. I'm just going to be positive. I'm
just going to find the good, find the good, find
the good. And I was able to live that way
for I don't know. A year and a half and
then something happened. I don't remember somebody took my bike,
or another dog died. I don't remember what happened, but
there was a deep hurt when I was about eight
(41:59):
years old, and I didn't know where to go to cry,
and so the only place I could think of where
I could be alone and my mom wouldn't see me,
was under my bed. And we were really poor, and
we had those mattresses. Some of y'all don't even know
a mattress used to come from a store, not from online.
But they used to have springs, and we were so poor.
(42:22):
The springs hung down real low, and so I crawled
under my bed. The springs were right in my face,
and I was just crying under my bed. I don't
know how long I was under there, five ten minutes,
and I hear my mom's voice and she had opened
the back door because she was calling me in for
dinner and I was usually outside playing. And I heard
her say, Lisa, it's time to come in for dinner.
(42:44):
And I didn't answer because I thought if I answer,
she's going to know I'm under the bed. And then
I heard the back door close, and I heard my
mom walk toward where my room was. I don't know
how I heard that because we had avocado green shagcar,
but you know, you just sense your mom's getting closer.
(43:05):
And she stopped in front of my door, and then
she said, Lisa, honey, are you under the bed. And
I didn't want to say yes because I thought, oh crud.
You know, she's going to see him under here crying
and it's going to compound her grief, and oh gosh,
what do I do? But she had really instilled honesty
(43:27):
in us, so when she asked it the second time,
Lisa Hunting, are you under the bed? I said yes, ma'am.
And I expected to be chestised, or I expected to
really mess up her day. But the next thing that
happened is the dust ruffle lifted and there was my
mom's face. My mom was a Southern bell. My apple
(43:52):
fell pretty far from the tree. It was beautiful. You know,
her hair was always done, I always had makeups, wearing pearls.
And I saw her beautiful face and she realized what
was happening under the bed, and I will never forget
what my mom did next. She just stretched out her
adult body and she scooched until she was right next
(44:17):
to me under the bed. She didn't say a word,
She just got right under the springs, right next to me.
I could feel her all the way down my arm our.
Bodies were just side by side, and she just laid
under the bed with me. The presence of God doing
(44:39):
difficult seasons becomes not just a gift, becomes the cornerstone
of our faith because then when we sing I trust
in God and He heard and He answered, it doesn't
(45:05):
matter if there's a gap in between, because even when
there's no words, we recognize presence. I want to ask
y'all to stand up. Pastor's going to come wrap up
this family meeting in a minute. And I know, y'all,
I know that as a very grateful guest, I have
(45:26):
not earned the right to be bossy. I have no
authority in this house except what is generously loaned to
me by Pastor Holly and Pastor Stephen. And so forgive
me if this comes across as bossy. I am older
than y'all, So I'll just be your auntie for a moment.
(45:51):
If you are in a difficult season for whatever reason,
nobody needs to know. Let's the Holy Spirit prompt you
to share that part of your story. If you're in
a difficult season, you're sad, you're in grief, you're mad,
you're so stinking disappointed because you've done the right thing.
(46:18):
You've tithed, and you're leading an Etham group and you're
studying God's word, and right now your life has not
at all turned out the way you hoped or prayed for.
And because you're human, you're just stinking disappointed. You thought
(46:41):
I was so so grateful for the presence of God.
You're in that miscarriage. Surely this pregnancy will come to fruition,
Surely there will be another baby, and instead you had
an emotional miscarriage, and you think, I can't do it anymore.
(47:03):
I know he's a good guy, but I just don't
know how to wait until he answers again. Will you
please sit down? If that's where you are today, just today,
that's where you are. You're in a hard place. You
feel like you're walking through wet and you're trying to
(47:24):
keep your head up and you're trying to keep the
smile on. But if you were in a safe place,
you'd go I'm just tired and I don't know if
I can carry the weight of my own wife well anymore.
Will you just sit down? There's no shame in that. Actually,
the fail is going to get thinner for you today
if you honestly bring your heartbreak to the God who
(47:47):
loves us more than we can ask or imagine. Just
sit down. If you're in a hard place, there's some
people over here who like me, you've been raised thinking.
You can't let your guard down. If it's hard for
you to season, please sit down. This is a safe,
safe family to say I need somebody to pick up
(48:10):
a corner of my mind and carry me to the
roof and lower me to Jesus. If you have the
gift the privilege of standing by one of those saints
who's sitting down right now, let's actually do church. Let's
not just talk about it. Let's be a community. I
(48:32):
had a woman recently say Lisa, I pray for you
every Tuesday at nine o'clock. And my first thought was, Man,
I'm so grateful somebody besides my mom prays for me
on a regular basis. You know what My second thought was,
what if I'm struggling on Wednesday? Let's not just put
(48:54):
each other in our prayer journals. Let's pray right now.
So those of y'all who have the gift of standing
by one of these beautiful saints, one of these godly men,
one of these brothers or sisters, would you just lay
a hand on them. That's not a denominational thing, that's
not an elevation tradition, that's a biblical thing. Just put
your hand on their shoulders so they can feel the
(49:16):
physical presence of somebody who loves Jesus, somebody who's not
judging them, somebody who's not going to rip them later
on social media, but somebody who goes. I know I've
been there. He carried me too. And would you pray
for each other? Those of you who are comfortable praying
out loud, please do so. You don't have to pray
anything fancy. You can actually just reiterate God's promise in
(49:39):
Psalm thirty four. I am close to the broken hearted.
I'm near to those whose lives feel crushed. This low
point in your life, if you bring it to a
Lord will lead you to a place of intimacy, a
place of personal revival you probably haven't had the faith
(50:02):
to carry quite yet. Lowering your pretense in the family
of God. Yell, it makes for a safer family of God,
those of you who are grieving. If the Holy Spirit
confirms this, would you be audacious enough to even right
(50:28):
now say thank you God. I'm gonna choose to be
grateful for this grief. I can't see around the corner
of my circumstances yet, but I really do believe you'll answer,
and I really do believe you're enough, and I really
do believe you're close to the broken hearted. So I'm
gonna choose right now to say I'm gonna say thank you.
(50:48):
I don't feel it yet, but I'm gonna say thank
you for this grief because somehow, some way, You're going
to use even this diad dog of a season to
make me more dependent on you, to make me lean
into my brothers and sisters more closely. You're going to
(51:10):
build in me a heart of flesh instead of allowing
me to hide my heart of stone. Oh, King Jesus,
come and bring revival. King Jesus, come and bring me healing.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you God, that we can
trust in you. We can trust in you, and you
will answer. Help us in the no answer or Jesus,
(51:31):
help us to keep our hands raised even when our
hearts are broken, and trust that your presence never leaves us,
even de're in the know. Answer kind of chapters. We
love you, we need you. We cannot make it by ourselves. Jesus,
you are a good God. You are a good God.
Thank you that you define yourself as a man of sorrows.
Thank you that you tell us you were prepared for
(51:54):
the cross through pain. Thank you that you are not
a stranger to hard seasons. Thank you that you are
an empathetic high priest who says, bring it all, bring
it all, bring it all to me. Don't just bring
me the happy clappy parts, bring everything. I want to
sit with you in every season, every moment of every season.
(52:14):
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you God for your closeness.
Thank you that your proximity has nothing to do with
our performance, certainly not our pretense. Teach us what it
is to be honest before you got and then honest
with the people you allow us to rupt shoulders with.
We love you, We love you, We love you, we
love you, We need you.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of
you who give generously to this ministry. Is because of
you that this ministry is possible. You can click the
link in the description to give now or visit Elevationchurch
dot org slash podcast for more information and if you
enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it
with your friends. You can click the share button, take
(52:59):
us greenshot and share it on your social stories and
tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God
bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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