Latest / REZ CHURCH Podcast / There's a Better You Waiting - May 10, 2026

Transcript

There's a Better You Waiting - May 10, 2026 · REZ CHURCH Podcast

0:00
Good morning, Happy Mother's Day to all your mom's out there.
0:05
There's nothing like Mother's Day celebrations for getting all
0:09
the moms up super early to get all their young kids up super
0:12
early to be at church to sing for them.
0:16
Sure, that works out somehow. My name is Daniel.
0:19
I am the lead pastor here at REST Church.
0:21
Welcome. My wife and I got a phone call
0:24
at about 6:20 on Tuesday morning, and we looked at our
0:30
phones and we realized that our daughter Avery, who was driving
0:33
up the Grapevine to go to school at Cal State Northridge on
0:36
Tuesday, had got into a car accident.
0:40
And well, here I'll show you. And so as the car rolls to the
1:01
stop at the centre of the I5, up the Grapevine in the rain before
1:07
it probably had fully stopped, she was on the phone calling
1:10
mom. That's how a lot of us feel
1:15
about moms. I was, I was trying to figure
1:21
out this week, like, how many times does the average kid say
1:24
mom by like the time they're 5? And so, you know, I'm like
1:28
looking at this stuff up and I end up on this, this TikTok
1:32
video of this mom who decided to count how many times her kids
1:37
said her name like in a single day.
1:40
It's pretty hilarious. It's better because she has an
1:42
accent. But here, check.
1:44
Good. Morning.
1:44
Let's see how many times I hear the word mom in one day.
1:48
Mom. Here we go.
1:50
Comment below with your guesses. It is 8:50 and we are at 88 moms
2:00
lunchtime. 127 kids are sleeping.
2:05
This gets a little bit of a breakdown.
2:11
It's 341. So we wonder why mums are sick
2:17
of hearing their name 234 times today from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
2:29
Also, just did some quick math. If that's the daily average in
2:33
one year I'm hearing it 85,410 times.
2:41
Good night. Some of you can relate to that.
2:47
The best part of being a dad is when your kid walks by you four
2:50
or five times and finally looks and goes, where's mom?
3:01
You know, for Mother's Day, I was, I was thinking about all of
3:04
the, all of the attributes about mothers that we really
3:08
appreciate the, the loyalty, sacrifice, patience,
3:14
faithfulness, just the, the presence of a mom when, when,
3:18
when a mother is around. The way for many of us, our, our
3:21
moms have prayed for us for so long, the love and tenderness.
3:25
And so, you know, I was like, man, there's so many different
3:27
things and it's trying to pick one to even do a message on
3:32
today. And I thought, you know, what
3:33
we'll do instead is instead of picking one, let's go look at
3:39
the most honored mother in the Bible and see what God
3:44
highlights about that woman that was worthy of honor and praise.
3:48
And so we're going to do that today.
3:49
We're going to be in Luke chapter 1 here near the end.
3:53
And before we we start our reading, I'll just give you some
3:57
back story. The Angel Gabriel has just shown
4:00
up to this betrothed virgin teenage girl named Mary.
4:07
And he tells her that she's been chosen by God to have a son and
4:11
she will call his name Jesus, and he will be the son of the
4:15
Most High and he will reign over the House of Jacob and his
4:18
Kingdom will have no end. And she says would probably most
4:23
of us in her place would, would say she goes, and how how is
4:26
that going to happen? Because I'm a virgin.
4:31
And the Angel has just has just told her just an impossible
4:36
miracle that she's going to have a son, this Immaculate
4:38
Conception, even though she's never been with a man.
4:43
And she's asking for an answer. OK, well, but how?
4:46
And this is we'll pick this up in Luke chapter one, verse 35.
4:48
This is the angel's answer. The Holy Spirit will come upon
4:53
you, and the power of the Most High will over shadow you, and
4:57
therefore the child to be born will be called holy.
5:01
That means set apart the Son of God, and behold, your relative
5:08
Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a Son, and this
5:13
is the 6th month with her who was called barren.
5:17
For nothing will be impossible with God.
5:20
And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be
5:25
to me according to your word. And the Angel departed from her.
5:30
The first thing that the Bible shows us about the most honored
5:34
mother in all of Scripture is actually in Mary's response to
5:40
the Angel. The Angel doesn't give her a
5:42
detailed explanation of how any of this is going to work.
5:46
His answer is pretty vague. She says how and he gives her,
5:49
oh, the Holy Spirit, there's no, there's no scientific
5:53
explanation. He doesn't walk her through the
5:55
biological. I mean, like there's there's no
5:57
logistics. Any of your planners are very
5:59
unsettled right now. How is this going to happen?
6:02
The Holy Spirit. And then he leaves.
6:06
And yet Mary, we see from her response, the first thing is she
6:10
chooses to believe that God is who he says he is and that he
6:15
will do what he says he'll do. Now she's just been told that
6:19
her entire entire future is about to change, to be
6:22
rearranged by this impossible miracle in ways that she
6:25
probably doesn't even understand yet, and she chooses to believe.
6:30
She chooses to believe belief, and you can see it in this
6:35
moment in Scripture. Belief is not the absence of
6:38
shock. She's clearly shocked.
6:41
Belief is choosing the word of God over the logic of your own
6:46
circumstances and feelings. Christian, for the the next time
6:53
your circumstances are loudly telling you one thing and God's
6:58
word is quietly telling you another, you slow down and you
7:03
ask yourself, which one am I going to let win?
7:08
Because this is where belief lives.
7:10
Not in the easy moments, in the loud hard moments.
7:14
So the first thing that God shows us about the most honoured
7:16
mother in history is that is her belief.
7:19
But the second is this, it's her identity.
7:21
Because look at her response to the Angel.
7:23
Even without details, her response.
7:25
I am a servant of the Lord and that shows us something even
7:31
deeper. It shows us who this
7:35
impoverished teenager viewed herself as.
7:42
You know, at the root of everything, you and I, we all
7:44
have an identity. We have an identity, a way we
7:48
see ourselves. And it's actually how we we wrap
7:50
value and self worth around ourselves.
7:54
It's in fact that will lead us to it will impact how we see the
7:58
world and how we move in the world around us.
8:02
Mary's identity is I am a servant of the Lord.
8:06
Now I want you to understand how remarkable that is.
8:09
Like this isn't a stage response.
8:10
This is in the moment in the shock and angels there, it tells
8:14
her about this impossible miracle doesn't really answer
8:16
her question. And she says I am a servant of
8:19
the Lord and she could have identified herself in 100
8:22
different ways. She could have said, well, I'm a
8:24
Jew or I'm a teenage girl. She could have said, well, I'm a
8:28
I'm betrothed or, or I'm the daughter of Joey Kim.
8:32
She, she had lots of ways to identify herself.
8:36
We do this. We identify ourselves via
8:39
different, different things about ourselves.
8:44
I'm a Millennial or I'm a Gen. X.
8:47
I'm an American or I, I'm a Republican.
8:50
I'm a Christian. I'm from Bakersfield.
8:52
I'm a Texan. We have identities built around
8:55
some of these things, built around a career choice or an
9:00
education status or a relationship status, a zip code,
9:04
a political tribe, social circles.
9:09
But but Mary, in the moment, in the shock, the overflow is I am
9:16
a servant of the Lord. It's so rooted in her that even
9:21
in the moment, in real time, it's what comes out.
9:25
Now. I just just consider that for a
9:27
moment because because like just about everybody that sings as an
9:31
Angel in the in the Bible is pretty scared, right?
9:34
Because it's almost always a first response.
9:35
It's always like, don't be afraid, which tells you it's
9:37
probably pretty scary in a moment of shock.
9:42
Who are you? When you introduce yourself,
9:48
when you're worried, when you're anxious, when you're stressed,
9:50
when you're angry, who are you? What what, what bubbles up when
9:56
you can't exactly control it and put on that church face?
10:01
Is it about your reputation, about how people perceive you?
10:09
Because her reputation was about to be ruined.
10:11
And maybe she didn't realize that yet, but her response is I
10:16
am a servant of the Lord. It's a it's a question worth
10:20
taking home today. What's that identity that comes
10:25
bubbling out when you're under pressure?
10:28
Because the thing that comes out of your mouth when you're scared
10:30
is probably closer to your real identity than you want to let
10:33
on. That's the real 1, not the one
10:37
on your Instagram bio, the one that surfaces at 6:20 in the
10:41
morning when the phone rings. That's the one worthy of working
10:45
on. She believes we see her
10:51
identity, but third, we see her submission.
10:56
Listen to what she says right after this.
10:58
She says let it be to me. According to your word, that is
11:05
a costly sentence. She doesn't understand
11:09
everything that that's going to cost her in the moment.
11:11
She doesn't know the scandal that's coming.
11:13
She doesn't know that Joseph's first response when he finds out
11:16
it's not going to be great. She doesn't know anything about
11:18
the the flight to Egypt that they'll take later to escape
11:21
Herod. She doesn't.
11:23
She doesn't know about the sword that Simeon will later say will
11:26
Pierce her own soul. She doesn't understand about the
11:28
grief or the suffering that is coming.
11:31
She says yes before she even sees the full picture.
11:36
Submission to God is not passive.
11:39
It's actually, it's the most active theological posture in
11:44
the Christian life because they're always going to be
11:49
things you don't understand. The decision to let God's word
11:58
be more authoritative than your own understanding as a choice.
12:03
And, and as Christians, they're always going to be mysteries
12:12
that we don't fully understand here on earth when it comes to
12:17
the mind of the Father. They're always going to be
12:19
things that are unseen, things that are unknown, things that
12:22
are confusing, things that are unexplained.
12:26
Yet the Bible calls us who are in Christ to submit to his will.
12:31
Jesus would actually say the same thing when he teaches his
12:33
disciples how to pray. He'll say your will be done on
12:37
earth as it is in heaven. And here's this teenage girl, in
12:44
the shock of the moment, told about an impossible miracle
12:47
without a lot of answers. She believes she identifies as a
12:50
servant of the Lord, and then immediately she submits to the
12:53
will of God. Do you want to know why she's
12:56
the most honored mother in history?
13:01
Christian submission is practiced in the small things
13:05
before it's possible in the big ones.
13:09
You practice it every time you you read something in Scripture
13:13
that doesn't agree with how you feel.
13:20
Anytime you read something in the Bible that you don't want to
13:22
do when you do it anyways. Every time you choose God's
13:26
definition of forgiveness over your own feelings about it.
13:31
Every time you say your will be done out loud about something
13:34
that is genuinely going to cost you something.
13:36
That's where we start and, and, and actually belief and identity
13:42
and submission, they're actually connected.
13:43
They're all inseparable. Did you realize, Christian, that
13:48
you only actually believe the parts of the Bible that you live
13:51
out? See, if you say you believe it,
13:55
but you're not willing to live it out, that's not actually
13:57
belief. That's lip service.
14:04
To really believe it is to live it out, particularly when you
14:08
don't agree with it. This is the fourth part to this
14:14
little story. You see Mary's given
14:17
confirmation from God. The Angel tells her not only is
14:21
this going to happen to you, but your relative Elizabeth, in her
14:26
old age, who's been barren her whole life, has conceived a son
14:29
and she's already 6 months pregnant.
14:33
Because nothing is impossible with God.
14:37
That's if you you read down in the story to see what happens
14:40
next. Mary actually goes.
14:43
Elizabeth lives in another town. We find out and Mary travels to
14:45
see Elizabeth. And as she does, she gets this
14:50
confirmation of what's occurring.
14:52
Not only is Elizabeth pregnant, but you, you see this this
14:57
reaction from Elizabeth when Mary walks in the door.
14:59
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your
15:01
womb. And why is this granted to me,
15:05
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
15:08
For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears,
15:10
the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
15:19
Elizabeth in another town through another miracle confirms
15:24
this angels word about Mary in this miracle.
15:29
But notice that the confirmation comes after the belief and the
15:33
identity and the submission, not before.
15:36
God doesn't give you the proof to say yes.
15:39
He gives you the promise and then when you say yes he shows
15:43
you the confirmation. That's almost always how it
15:46
works in the Bible and in the Christian life.
15:51
Notice this about the confirmation is swell.
15:55
Mary had to go find it. Mary had to get up and she had
15:59
to travel. This teenage, impoverished, now
16:02
pregnant girl had to travel to another town on her own to seek
16:08
out Elizabeth, to see the confirmation of God's promise
16:13
with her own eyes. Not because she doubted it, but
16:19
because we should all desire to see God at work.
16:24
We should push into where God is confirming things in our lives
16:27
and in our families. We should be proactive about it,
16:30
leaning in, moving toward the evidence of God at work.
16:34
And she does. She goes, this is the pattern
16:39
again and again and again. Belief, identity, submission,
16:42
and then confirmation. That's not just Mary's story.
16:45
That's the, that's the shape of every life after Jesus.
16:51
Jesus said it this way. Whoever loses his life for my
16:54
sake will find it. And Mary is the first person in
16:57
the New Testament that gets to live that out.
16:59
And he's not even been born yet, you know, for, for a lot of us.
17:05
I had someone I was texting with this last week and I said, Hey,
17:09
how can I pray for you? And they said, I, I really like
17:11
to, I really like to hear from the Lord hear, hear about
17:15
direction in my life and hear where God's leading me and get
17:18
some clarification. And, and I hear that a lot.
17:20
But I think that the opposite is often true for us.
17:23
I think God is often already confirmed things in our life.
17:27
We just haven't gone to pay attention and see it yet.
17:33
God's already at work. He's already confirming
17:37
promises. We're just really busy.
17:43
And then you get a change in the story.
17:45
In this moment, you get one of the most beautiful passages in
17:48
Scripture. It's called Mary's song or the
17:50
Magnificat. And it's if you see in your
17:53
Bible, it's kind of listed like a like song lyrics, like a poem,
17:57
and it just kind of naturally pours out of Mary and it's
17:59
recorded here in Luke 1. I want to read it to you.
18:02
That is absolutely beautiful. And I want to show you that in
18:06
it is this pattern that we should pay attention to.
18:10
It's kind of the kind of the key to unlock what's happening with
18:13
Mary. Verse 46, it says this and Mary
18:16
said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in
18:21
God my Savior. For he has looked upon the
18:24
humble estate of his servant from behold, from now on, all
18:28
generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty
18:32
has done great things for me. And holy is His name, and His
18:37
mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation.
18:43
He has shown strength with His arm.
18:45
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
18:48
He has brought down the mighty from their Thrones and exalted
18:51
those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with
18:54
good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.
18:56
He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy, as
19:00
He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring
19:03
forever. I want you to see three things
19:06
about how Mary describes God in this song and why this is so
19:09
important. The first thing in the in by
19:12
verse 49, she is describing who he is, who he is.
19:19
She calls Him holy, she calls him mighty.
19:22
This is where she starts. She didn't start with her
19:24
situation. She didn't start with her
19:26
circumstances. Here is a impoverished, teenage,
19:29
unwed pregnant girl and she's talking about who God is, not
19:34
her feelings, not her fears, some of the nature of God.
19:41
By verse 50, she begins to talk about what God does, what he
19:45
does. He's a God of mercy.
19:49
He's a God of justice. He's a God who provides.
19:54
He reverses everything in this fallen world that he has
19:57
established. He lifts the lowly.
19:59
He fills the hungry, He scatters the proud.
20:04
And she wraps up in verses 54 and 55 by explaining what he
20:08
keeps. She talks about his faithfulness
20:14
that he keeps, His promises that he remembers, He always
20:17
remembers. Think about what, what, what
20:22
Mary's doing this moment. She's describing God, his
20:24
nature, his works, his faithfulness as she's carrying
20:29
Jesus inside her body and singing about God.
20:35
The fullness of everything that she's actually saying out loud
20:38
is about to walk on earth in human flesh, and she's singing
20:43
about what Jesus is about to go do.
20:45
Because Jesus will lift the lowly, He will fill the hungry.
20:49
He will remember His mercy. The Magnificent is not just a
20:53
worship song. It is a preview of the gospel.
21:00
Now, why is this song such a big deal?
21:01
It almost feels like the thing that, you know, you're reading
21:03
the, the story and you kind of skip over, Oh, it's just a song.
21:07
But I want you to see something else.
21:08
See, when I read about these things about Mary, when I, when
21:11
I read about her belief and, and her identity and her, her
21:15
submission. And I think to myself, like, how
21:16
do you become a person that can believe like that?
21:19
How do you become a, a person who can submit who, who has an
21:22
identity that is rooted? How do you how do you do that?
21:32
How do you get an identity that is so rooted in being a child of
21:35
God that we don't get swept away by every identity that the world
21:38
offers? How do you become willing to
21:42
submit so radically that that even when things are hard, even
21:45
when they're costly, even when they're counter intuitive, like
21:51
love your enemies as yourself, turn the other cheek,
21:58
unsubscribe, serve others before yourself?
22:05
How do you become a person who wants to do that?
22:10
The answer is actually in her song.
22:12
You see, Mary had a clearview of who God is, a clearview of what
22:18
He does, a clearview of what He keeps.
22:23
If you take nothing else away from today from this message, if
22:28
you take nothing else, take this one idea away that's nestled in
22:32
Luke 1. You cannot be the best version
22:35
of you if you don't see the real version of God.
22:40
You cannot be the best version of you if you can't see the real
22:43
version of God. Mary didn't produce all of these
22:47
things in her life by trying harder.
22:52
She didn't produce them through self effort.
22:55
I'm just going to try really hard to be good.
23:00
She produced it because of what she saw in God's nature, in His
23:04
faithfulness, in his history, in his work, in her life, in the
23:08
lives of people around her. Her praise was an overflow of
23:12
her theology. Theology is just the study of
23:14
God. It bubbled up out of her because
23:20
she could see God clearly, she could see herself clearly, and
23:24
because she could see herself clearly.
23:26
We see these responses. And I think it's important to to
23:30
sit here for just a minute and talk through that.
23:33
The idea that, listen, I think most of us can trace the
23:37
problems that we're going through, the struggles that
23:40
we're having, back to this idea. We don't actually see God
23:44
clearly and therefore we don't see ourselves clearly.
23:49
When you see a distorted view of God, you will see a distorted
23:52
view of yourself. For instance, if you don't
23:55
understand how mighty God is, if you don't understand how
23:58
faithful God is, if we don't understand how loving God is, if
24:03
we don't fully grasp his omnipotence, that's that he is
24:07
all powerful or his omnipresence, that he is
24:09
everywhere at once, that he is timeless and outside of time
24:13
itself entirely, that he's omniscient and he knows all
24:15
things. God is so great that you cannot
24:20
fully wrap your mind around him. And So what we have a tendency
24:26
to do in our fallen broken state is we begin to reduce God.
24:29
We begin to begin to shrink him down into something that we can
24:31
contain and understand fully because we don't like mystery
24:35
and he can't be that powerful. And so we, we, we put him in a
24:38
box, we contain him in some, some way.
24:41
We, we reduce him to a caricature or an idol or a
24:46
concept or a meme. And when we do, we we not only
24:50
lose sight of the real God, we begin to not be able to see
24:55
ourselves clearly either. This is actually what happened.
24:57
The whole story of the Bible starts in the very beginning in
25:00
a garden, and there's two people, Adam and Eve, and Eve
25:06
eats this apple. She buys this lie, but there's
25:08
no way that she disobeys God in that moment if she could see God
25:13
clearly. Because the first thing she does
25:14
is she buys a lie that God is hiding something from them.
25:17
He's holding something good back.
25:20
She's already begun to see a distorted version of God, and
25:23
because she sees a distorted version of God, she begins to
25:26
see a distorted version of herself.
25:27
I could be like God. I shouldn't be a servant.
25:29
I shouldn't be a worshipper. I should be like God.
25:32
I should reign and rule. I should be in charge.
25:36
Because the moment you begin to see a distorted version of God,
25:38
you begin to see a distorted version of yourself.
25:42
And that sin that follows leads to every piece of devastation
25:48
that has ever happened in this broken world.
25:53
Christian, you who profess Christ.
25:58
Much of your struggle is rooted in a distorted view of who God
26:03
is. This is why the Bible says that
26:07
the beginning of all wisdom is fear of the Lord.
26:11
You get fear of the Lord. What you need to fear the Lord,
26:16
because to truly see who God is, is to respond in reverence and
26:22
fear to His might and His Majesty and His greatness.
26:25
It's like standing next to a giant waterfall.
26:29
It's beautiful, but it's powerful and therefore
26:31
dangerous. Or standing next to a rocket
26:33
launch and watching this tonnage of machinery go to space.
26:41
It's beautiful, but it's powerful.
26:44
We're standing 10 feet away from a lion.
26:47
It's beautiful, but it's powerful.
26:53
To begin to see a clearview of God is also to begin to fear
26:57
him, because there's a reverence in that power.
27:04
And to fear God means you've begun to see him clearly.
27:07
And so much of our struggle with submission and with with
27:10
identity and with belief comes down to the fact that we've lost
27:13
sight of who God really is. We've gotten busy.
27:16
This world is loud and noisy. Amen.
27:20
There's so many things that want your attention.
27:22
Do you know I was reading the statistics recently Says the
27:24
average person in America now spends 39 hours a week on social
27:27
media. Yo, that's a full time job and
27:36
they're not paying you for it. Some of you are paying for it.
27:43
It's not how jobs are supposed to work 39 hours, you know, some
27:54
of us now 39 hours we're we're being discipled by an algorithm
27:59
built by a man or a machine on a little glass screen.
28:03
See, couldn't have set that up better.
28:09
Thank you, Lauren. It's no wonder that the average
28:16
American has a distorted view of God.
28:18
We're not. We're not being discipled by
28:20
Bibles. We're being discipled by phones.
28:22
You're not being discipled by the word of God.
28:24
You're being discipled by TikTok.
28:32
Can you imagine if the average American spent 39 hours a week
28:35
in their Bible? Some of you get to 39 minutes
28:41
and you're sweating. I'm messing with you.
28:49
How do you fix this? It's actually two things at the
28:52
same time. To fix this in One Direction, we
28:58
increase the amount of time that we spend with the Lord.
29:01
If you want to improve our relationship, you spend.
29:03
You just increase the amount of time you spend with them.
29:07
But you know, the other thing that you can do is you can also
29:08
remove some of the distractions that actually create those
29:11
distortions. And so if, if you will increase
29:14
the amount of time you spend with the Lord and you will
29:16
decrease some of the time and the attention that you're giving
29:19
to the noise of the outside world, it actually begins to
29:22
help. Now, it's not enough to just do
29:24
1. You can't, you can't simply
29:26
remove some of the distractions. That's not it.
29:29
You have to do both, put some things in place to remove some
29:33
distractions and give the Lord some of our time, some of our
29:36
attention, some of our affection.
29:42
We have to steep ourselves in Scripture.
29:44
That's a that's a word we don't use very often.
29:46
Steep to steep in the Bible they use a Greek word called
29:52
epignosis and it means to this deep experiential knowledge, not
29:56
knowledge, not going to school and knowledge that you've
29:58
experienced at such a level. I like to say that it's not
30:00
simply that you've you've consumed something that's that
30:02
you've digested and metabolized it.
30:07
If the steep in the word of God. We don't use steep a lot.
30:11
Steep. Is anyone ever made a cup of
30:13
tea, you traitors? We don't drink tea.
30:19
We're American. I like my tea in the harbour
30:22
like every other patriots. These are horrible jokes.
30:31
Do you've ever, do you ever gotten a really hot cup of, of
30:36
water and you've taken that tea bag and you've you've put it in
30:38
the water and you've watched it? You actually can watch all the
30:42
flavour and the colour and everything to come out of the
30:46
tea bag and it turns a simple cup of water into a cup of tea.
30:51
And you know, crazy after, after a little while, if you, if you
30:55
let it steep enough, it smells different, it looks different,
31:04
it tastes different. Do you know if you just popped
31:09
it in and popped it out, I wouldn't do a lot right?
31:12
You know, some of us are wondering why our Christianity
31:14
is weak, and I would just tell you, maybe we could leave the
31:18
tea bag in longer, just a little longer, just a little more, a
31:23
little more, just a little more. If you're wondering why there's
31:26
a lack of flavour in your life, maybe we could just leave the
31:31
tea bag in. Just just just a little more.
31:34
Just a little more epignosis to metabolize a knowledge of God,
31:41
to know more about who He is, to be able to see him a little bit
31:44
more clearly. Because if you could see him a
31:45
little bit more clearly, you'd begin to see yourself a little
31:48
more clearly. For me, it works like this.
31:52
Even after all these years of following God and spending time
31:55
with the Lord, I still have a Bible plan that tells me what to
31:58
read every day. Yes, yes, yes I do.
32:02
I need it. It tells me read this chapter,
32:05
read this chapter. I have a little thing and I do
32:07
everyday. In fact I do this when I wake
32:09
up. I have tried to train myself to
32:10
do this. When I wake up in the morning
32:11
and I open my eyes, I try. The first thing I try to say is
32:16
God is good. And I try to think of two or
32:21
three things as soon as I wake up that are just blessings that
32:25
I can say thank you for just to be grateful for.
32:28
So I can start my day remembering who God is before I
32:31
get to the task list. And there's always a task list
32:33
And I always want to do the task list and I always want to get
32:35
anxious about the task list. So I want to start with just
32:39
who's God, because if I find that my view of God gets
32:45
distorted really quickly, it gets misaligned so fast.
32:48
And so I spend time during the day, I open up my Bible and I, I
32:51
spend some time talking to the Lord and, and walking with him
32:54
and thinking about him and praying sometimes for you,
32:57
sometimes for things that are going in my life and writing
32:58
down as God reminds me of truth. So I like to write those things
33:02
down. I tend to learn what, why am I
33:04
doing that stuff? There's no box.
33:05
I'm checking, trying to see the Lord more clearly.
33:12
These aren't spiritual superpowers.
33:14
That's not religious check boxes.
33:16
It's just the practical habits of someone trying, trying to see
33:20
God clearly. In the past two or three months
33:23
have been some of the just worst months of my life in terms of
33:27
dealing with some really deep emotions and feelings like
33:31
overwhelmed, hurt, abandoned, doubting God's plan in my life
33:37
and in this season, questioning everything about what's going
33:40
on. And it has been those those
33:42
simple little habits that have been saving my life, my
33:45
spiritual life, at least saving my life.
33:48
Why? Because I I spend time with the
33:52
Lord. Even then it's the pain and
33:54
confusion. And it is that habit that lets
33:58
him, through His word and through prayer and through wise
34:00
counsel and through other Christians and through
34:02
meditation, change me, realign me back to a clearview of who He
34:08
is. And I guys, I, I cannot do this.
34:17
I cannot be a good pastor for that matter.
34:19
I can't even be a good person. I need God to show up over and
34:26
over and over and over and over again.
34:33
And you do too. You do too.
34:39
We need the Holy Spirit to do this transformative work.
34:44
The the Spirit is active in your life as a believer.
34:47
Here's the The problem is not that the Holy Spirit is not
34:50
working in transformation in your life.
34:52
It's that we often times are working against His work.
34:57
Can you imagine if you would turn toward the work the Spirit
34:59
is doing and participate in the work He's trying to do in your
35:02
life? If you'd give him the time and
35:04
the space and the medium to really do work, to receive that
35:09
work. Verse 47, the beginning of
35:15
Mary's song. I don't want you to miss this.
35:17
This is pretty beautiful. She says.
35:20
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, God my Savior.
35:27
Mary needed saving and she knew it.
35:32
The woman carrying the very salvation of the world inside of
35:36
her body confess that she needed it herself.
35:40
So we don't put Mary, the the most honoured mother in all the
35:43
Bible, on a pedestal and say she was perfect.
35:48
She was a woman who saw God clearly enough to know that she
35:52
was not sufficient on her own. Tuesday morning when the phone
35:59
rings and Avery's got the car smashed up backwards on the I-5.
36:04
It's raining. She's scared.
36:06
Mom, we you know what we do? Marina goes.
36:12
Marina goes. What happened?
36:14
And she goes. I flipped to the car.
36:17
Marina goes. You flip.
36:18
You flipped the car. She goes.
36:19
Well, it's spun and she goes. Those are very different words,
36:22
Avery. Yes.
36:30
Yes, they are. She's scared and she's on the
36:35
side of the middle of the freeway and the big rigs are
36:37
zooming by. And So what do we do?
36:39
We do what you would do. We jump in the van and we start
36:41
driving up the I5 and we're making phone calls to work.
36:44
I'm not going to be in and, you know, calling people and you
36:46
know, we didn't do though. You know what's kind of
36:48
interesting, You know, we didn't do on the way to go get her.
36:53
We didn't call her and ask her whether or not she deserved our
36:57
response. We we didn't go back and do a
37:02
little inventory of her 21 years as our child and evaluate
37:06
whether or not she'd earned it. We didn't.
37:11
We didn't put out a checklist and count how many of the boxes
37:13
she checked it, you know, to see whether or not she was a
37:16
daughter worthy of our love or of us coming to get her.
37:21
She called. She was in need.
37:25
We got in a car and drove to her.
37:28
Guy is that that's the gospel of Jesus Christ, That everyone of
37:34
us hopelessly broken, born into sin, rebelled against God with
37:43
no ability to fix the problem on our own.
37:49
Maybe that's you today. You don't know God as your
37:56
Savior yet, or you do, but you've gotten a distorted view
38:02
of Him and you are spinning out of control.
38:06
Maybe not on the I-5, but maybe in life.
38:12
Here's what I want you to hear about Jesus.
38:18
Jesus didn't wait until you had it all figured out.
38:22
He came to you while you were still terrified in the ditch on
38:26
the side of the road. Because Jesus came for us while
38:31
we were still his enemies. And if the most honoured mother
38:38
in all of the Bible will open her mouth and say, God my
38:43
Saviour, you can too. Maybe some of you in this room
38:53
today or online, you've put your faith in Christ before, but you
38:58
have allowed your view of God to become so distorted that you
39:01
can't even see yourself clearly anymore.
39:04
And you have the same opportunity granted to all of us
39:08
to cry out to God and allow Him to do work in your life.
39:14
Maybe some of you in this room are online today, have never
39:16
placed your faith in Christ. You never surrendered your will,
39:21
the control of your life, to Him.
39:23
The Bible says you must believe in your heart and declare with
39:26
your mouth that Jesus was raised from the dead and is your Lord.
39:32
Guys, every single person in this world will one day bend a
39:37
knee to Jesus, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
39:39
The only question is whether or not you'll be happy when you do
39:42
it. Because we're either going to be
39:47
overjoyed that our King has come back to make all things right,
39:50
or we're going to be mortified that He has come to judge the
39:52
guilty. And I have stuck my nose up and
39:56
shaken my fist at God in rebellion.
39:59
And He was loving and merciful enough to outlast my outbursts,
40:05
my rebellion, and my running. That's His unending grace.
40:11
And if you will let Him, He will save you too.
40:15
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes as we finish up
40:19
our service today? I'm going to give you the
40:22
opportunity to come to the Father.
40:25
The invitation is granted to you from Christ in Scripture to
40:29
taste and see if He is good. And I'm going to lead you in a
40:33
simple prayer of surrender. And if you are ready to follow
40:35
Christ as King, I would ask you simply repeat after me Jesus.
40:44
I know I'm a Sinner who cannot save myself.
40:53
I need you to save me. I want you to adopt me into your
40:59
family, so I surrender everything.
41:03
Be my Lord. Please, Jesus, if you said that
41:10
prayer, if you gave your life to Christ for the first time, would
41:12
you be brave and raise your hand for me to see?
41:17
Thank you. Thank you.
41:19
Can you put your hands down if you know Christ?
41:27
But you have found yourself in this moment in the season of
41:30
life with such a distorted view of the world and yourself.
41:33
You also can cry out to God to ask Him to stir up your
41:40
affection for Him, to help you to lean into knowing Him more so
41:46
you can see Him clearly, so that you can see yourself clearly.
41:50
And if you'd like to do that, I'm going to give you an
41:52
opportunity to just pray to him for just a moment and ask for
41:54
his help. I believe.
41:57
Help my unbelief in Jesus name, Amen.
42:02
Amen. Real quick, if you've given your
42:06
life to Christ moments ago or recently and you haven't told
42:09
anyone yet, welcome to the family.
42:19
If you find yourself in a season where you've been struggling to
42:21
see God clearly, I want you to know he is a good, good God and
42:27
he loves it when you cry out to him.
42:29
So in a few moments, our prayer team is going to come up.
42:32
We love praying for you, praying with you, praying over you.
42:37
So we invite you to come up. If you gave your life to Christ
42:40
moments ago or recently and you haven't told anyone yet, there
42:42
are tables in the back. They say I raised my hand.
42:45
We would love to celebrate with you and talk to you about
42:47
discipleship and give you a gift.
42:50
Will you stand? We're going to sing a song.
42:53
Everyone that is ready to get baptized already signed up.
42:56
You can just go over there to the corner where by that exit
42:58
sign. If you have given your life to
43:01
Christ moments ago or recently and you've not taken the very
43:05
next step of obedience that the Bible would tell you, which is
43:10
believers baptism, we would invite you to come and talk to
43:13
us and be baptized today. We have towels and clothes and
43:16
everything else. What a wonderful Mother's Day
43:18
celebration to celebrate meeting the Father.
43:22
And so if you'd like to be baptized, we'd love for you to
43:24
walk right over there and talk to somebody and we'll get you
43:27
dunked. The Oildale water is very warm.
43:29
I swear you move as the Lord leads you.
43:33
Thank you Church, I love you.