Transcript

Good morning. Good morning. Let's go. If you're watching online, it's written above my head. It's got an exclamation point.

I can't see an exclamation point. Yeah, whatever it is. Welcome to Eastgate. If you will gather and if you're with us here, if you're in the gathering place next door, if you're joining us online, if you're catching this in a couple of weeks when it got posted to the website, wherever it is, wherever you are right now, welcome, welcome, welcome. Especially if you're new, if you're unfortunate enough to be dragged here by some family or just trying out a new church, boy, you picked a Sunday to come.

Here we go. It's all exclamation points today. I am not the normal pastor. Pastor Gary is on a study break right now. He will be back next week.

So if I do terrible and you're just trying this out, try us out again next week, you would know that I am not Pastor Gary because he's really, really old.

Don't worry, we're not recording this one. Uh oh, y'all would have ratted me out anyway.

Yo, I was, I was, I was kind of almost late to walk up here because I was. I was hopping in all the different. So I don't know if you guys realize, but we have this service here going on. Worship center. We have the gathering place next door to us, and then we have the kids servant on the other side.

And I walk down to the kids service and they were just dancing. I don't know what they were doing. They were just all dancing or if you're, I guess, deeply Southern Baptist. They were creatively moving. I don't know if you're so.

Yeah, so it occurred to me it was an incredible moment as I just kind of kept just kind of popping into different rooms and everybody was just worshiping God. Same God, different ways to worship, but the same God. And it occurred to me what kind of party it must be right now in God's house that we're all worshiping together. We're coming together.

So this morning we're going to continue with the let's Go series that we started last week. Laramie started us last week on let's Go. And so we're going to keep going on the verse that we started with last week, Exodus 14. The Lord said to Moses, why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.

Lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. That the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. God bless the reading of his Word. So this is crazy to me. This is how.

This is why I think God's awesome. God never really in scripture, to my knowledge, God doesn't even have a gear that's like, go around. God's just like, what? That's bigger than me. Go through it.

Whether that's the ocean, go through it. Don't care whether that's the raging river, go through it. Whether that's the fire, go through it. God has this gear of just, like, not bigger than me. And for me, that's such a comforting thought because I'm little, I'm fragile.

And the idea that I have a God that's got my back. I have a God that's got my back. He's going to support me in whatever. And when I can't take another step forward, he's going to step right in front of me and part the ocean. You think the ocean's bigger than me?

Y'all follow. That's crazy to me. But that's the kind of God I want to follow. A guy that's not afraid of anything because I'll bring plenty of fear myself. And if y'all are walking with me, y'all gonna dogpile some fear on top of my fear, some doubt on top of my doubt.

But God's just gonna put it all on his shoulders. He's like, no, no, no, no. We're going through it. That thing you're scared of, we're going through it. We're not running away from it.

And that's what. That's what. So to give you a little context of what's going on in our theme verse here, remember that the Israelites have just gotten out of enslavement in Egypt. It's a whole thing. There's a whole thing around that.

You can read Exodus, the beginning of Exodus, and that part wasn't easy. And then the Egyptians were eventually just like, you know what? It's not worth it to hang on to these guys anymore and let them go. And then, like, the next day, the guy was like, wait a minute. Why did I let him go?

And so he sent his army after him. And so now they're stuck against the sea, the ocean, and the Egyptian army is coming, and they're like, what do we do? Why did you get us out of Egypt? Now they're just going to take us back. Now we're stuck.

And God's answer is, why do you cry to me? Why are you scared? What are you worried about the ocean? You're worried about the ocean? Go through it.

Lift your hands like this and go through it. Even if you have never heard this story before, you've probably seen this depiction. You've seen the Charlton Heston movie, you've seen some depiction of this staff guy in robe, big ocean man. How disorienting must it be to be a crab when that happens to be a fish and you're just swimming? This is the kind of craziness that the pastoral team, when I'm getting, preparing a message with them, they're, you know, looking up all these theological biblical questions and I'm like, but can the fish just swim out through the.

Could they just. That would be really crazy for a fish. Or do they bounce off? Like, how does that work? You're like, I don't know, who cares?

Like, yeah, but, yeah, but, like, was it like really muddy? Like, it has to be really muddy, right? Or like, like, what are you talking about? So that's the kind of energy I'm bringing this morning. Bringing fish swimming out into the air.

So one of the things where I do want to give a little context to this. I think the Israelites are very similar to us in a lot of ways in that they're morons. But one of the things that Israelites have on their side. I don't know if you would say it's on their side, but. But what I've found is that a difficult life leads to a deeper faith.

And one of the things that we are very, very, very fortunate about in America, feel how you want about the country. We are single handedly the greatest nation that's ever existed. I'll hot take it if you want, but we are absolutely definitively, historically the greatest civilization that has ever existed on the planet Earth. But that also comes with a lot of stuff that y'all do. You know, if I want a pair of Air Force ones, I could just get on my phone and they will show up like 45 minutes later on my porch.

That's crazy to me that I can just be like, you know what? I want six boxes of jello, two spare tires, and an ugly Christmas sweater. And I can just decide right now. And then by the time I get home, all that stuff would just be sitting on my porch. That is so crazy.

I also spent a few years living in Africa where parents have to decide which kids they're going to feed on any given day. And what I will say is, I don't wish that on us, but I do wish their faith on us because one of the things that we have lost in our life of plenty is a need for God.

We don't daily have to hold on to God. And so I find it's hard sometimes to preach in America because for me, like, to be a good Christian, the benchmark to be a good Christian in America is I go to church every Sunday. That's the benchmark. I'm a good Christian. I go to church every Sunday.

I spend four whole hours with God every week. Every month. I spend 40 hours a week at work. I spend one hour a week. And so we're kind of coming at this from a bit of a different place than the Israelites, because you'll have to read their history, man.

They got it heaping on their shoulders, but even they're getting it wrong. Even they. The crazy things that they have seen. And so I actually take a little strength from this, the nutty things that they have already seen. And then they get to the edge of the ocean and they're like, ah, what do we do now?

And God's like, come on, y'all, what are you crying? Why? Why you think that ocean's bigger than me? And so I take strength in that because I know that we are not a nation without hope. Because I know that God has our back too, and that it's okay for us to have our faith wherever our faith is.

Our faith starts where it is. So now we can build it, we can get bigger, we can get stronger. Today we're going to talk about how we go bravely, fearlessly forward. I do have to fix this thing, though. This is where my.

There was a piece of paper that was sitting weirdly on top of the bucket. If you're watching at home and I've spent the last 10 minutes fixating on that piece of paper, that's what kind of message y'all about to get.

So in Isaiah 43, if you want to. If you want to queue up your biblical devices to Isaiah 43, we're right at the very beginning, verse one, I'll buy you a little time by vamping. If you got an old school biblical device like I've got. If you've got like the hey, Siri, go to Isaiah, then you're cheating. You know it.

So in Isaiah 43, the prophet Isaiah shares encouraging words with his followers that they can fearlessly go through the difficulties ahead. So maybe that's where you are right now. Maybe you've got some difficulties ahead. Maybe when I say you got some difficulties coming. You know exactly what's about to happen.

You know exactly what you're going to walk through. You can walk fearlessly through it. Or maybe it's just a little more nebulous, maybe you're not exactly sure. But it's coming. You know it's coming.

You can walk fearlessly through it.

We're going to get three reasons today why we know we can walk fearlessly through whatever the challenge that lies ahead. Isaiah 43:1. But now, thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

And through the valleys, through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned. The flames shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. God bless the reading of His Word.

So we're given three reasons why we can be fearless in our journey. The first reason, God will be with you. God will be with you.

In verse 2. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. This is especially poignant in Old ye Olde Testament times because of this idea of this thing happened not that long ago to these guys. For us, it was thousands of years ago.

I don't even know what thousands of years means. I don't know what last week means most of the time. Thousands of years is crazy. But these guys, it was not super long ago that this thing happened and the ocean did this thing that's so crazy. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

So there's an image here that happens in my brain. So there's two different kinds of waters. So if you, if you were tracking with me for a second, notice it says when you pass through the waters and then it says and through the rivers in a little bit. So we're going to handle those as two different things because I feel like they're kind of two different ideas. So let's.

First, let's handle when you pass through the waters. So the waters, to me, there's an NLT translation that describes it as the deep water. The waters to me has this idea of being big and vast and expansive. To me, there's a. So maybe I'm a little messed up in my brain.

So one of the things that I listen to in podcasts is like survival stories, like when people fall off a mountain and into a volcano and then they land in a river of crocodiles or whatever. And it's just like this hour long ordeal of people surviving these things. And so I've listened to quite a few podcasts where, like, a boat sunk in the middle of a big, like, empty water or whatever. And sometimes I'm sitting at work and I'm so stressed out and I have no idea why, because I'm just. I mean, like, I do, like, marketing for a living, I'm making pictures for a living.

So, like, I'm, you know, drawing cute little pictures or whatever and like saying silly things or whatever on social media. Like, why am I so stressed? And then I realize it's because I'm listening to a guy talk about almost getting eaten by a shark. Like, why do this to myself? But overwhelmingly, the stories that you hear are a boat went down and it's somebody just in the middle of the ocean.

And that to me is so terrifying because if I'm at least in a river and I'm like tumbling, like, at least something is happening, I think the idea that water could be so big that it doesn't even have to be moving to be dangerous. And for me, that image, I pray to everyone here that none of us end up actually in the middle of the ocean. However, I don't think it has to be the middle of the ocean for me. And somebody in here. Statistically, one of you is struggling with that every day.

That if you're fighting depression, if you're fighting some kind of like, ongoing melancholy, maybe you lost somebody. Like, you're fighting. You wake up and what you look out and see is just horizon and nothing else. And there's no movement and there's no wind. It's just quiet and still and numb.

That can be so oppressive. But I want you to hear this. I want you to hear this right now. You are not alone. You are not alone in the middle of that water.

You are not alone in the middle of that water.

When you pass through the water, I will be with you. This passage, take this and print it on your heart. I have called you by name. You are mine. You.

You, specifically. You, the God, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all things, the good and pure and powerful and true. That God knows your name. He knows your name. He gave you a singular name, and he knows it.

It's written on your heart. And he knows you by that name and no one else by that name. He knows you. He loves you. And when you're feeling alone in the Middle of the water, he is with you.

We can never get too far out from the coast to get away from God. He's too big. You think your ocean's bigger than me?

I think about how vast the ocean is, and then I realize that it's only a fraction of the planet that we're sitting on. And then I realize that this planet is actually a very small fraction of the solar system that we live in. And then my brain melts out of my head when I zoom any farther out than that. So we don't need to go any farther out than that because it's already too big for me to understand. And all of that zoom back into what I think is a massive, massive ocean is in the palm of the hand of the one that made it.

You think your ocean's too big for me?

Joshua 1, verse 9. Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Wherever you go.

You can't get far enough away from land that God can't find you. You can't get lost enough that God is not with you.

You can't be helpless enough that God can't save you.

You think your problem's bigger than me? Why do you cry in the great commission? Matthew 28. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always.

To the end of the age. I am with you always. Always. You can't run far enough. You can't run fast enough.

You can't be dirty enough. You can't be evil enough that God can't save you. You can't have done bad so many times that God can't save you. Think your bad is bigger than me.

Whatever your water is, whenever I say the deep water, something in your brain that means something to you.

So take that now. Imagine yourself right in the middle of it and how insurmountable that is. And now zoom way out to the point where the Creator has that little thing in the palm of his hand. And know that that Creator knows you by name. He didn't forget you.

He didn't leave you. He came back for us. He came back to me to get me to him. He made a way through sacrifice that I can get to him. That is so confounding to my brain, but I'm so grateful.

My daughter, when she was little, maybe she still is, but she doesn't she's not as vocal about it anymore. She was afraid of the dark. When I was little, I was afraid of the dark. Y'all stop judging. Truth be told, I wasn't actually afraid of the dark.

I was afraid of what was in the dark. That's actually what I was afraid of, what might be in the dark. And I think it's probably true for my daughter as well. And so there was one time she, you know, she told me she was afraid, and I asked her why, and I was kind of, you know, talking her through it because I always. I'm very precise.

I'm weird like that, but I'm very precise of like. She said, afraid of the dark. I'm like, what are you afraid of the dark? And then I kind of figured out, oh, you're not actually afraid of the dark. You're afraid of what might be in the dark.

And we kind of talked through that, and I was like, all right, check it out. So I'm like, 20ft away. Like, our house is not that big. Like, your bedroom, my bedroom. And so if ever anything presents itself in the dark, you call me, because I'm way better than anything that's in the dark.

Now, that is maybe not true, because there could be, like, a leopard in the dark, and I'm going to lose that fight. But here's what I do know, is that the dude I'm bringing to the fight is bigger than whatever it is. So you put whatever bad you want in the dark. The guy I'm coming with. That bad is nothing.

That bad is nothing. And because of that, there's nothing I can't handle. Not because I'm not strong, because I'm not gonna be the one fighting.

And so when you take that idea, the dark, really, it's kind of the same idea as deep water. It's just some sort of vast thing that's so big you can't overcome it. You think your darkness is bigger than me. You think your ocean's bigger than me. And so I encourage you today, whatever the deep water that you find yourself in, know that you are not alone.

It doesn't matter how big the water is. It doesn't matter how deep it is. When you pass through the water, I will be with you. That is God's word, and God cannot lie.

The minute God speaks, it is truth. That's crazy to me.

I will be with you. There's a second reason that we can be fearless as we go forward, and that is that God will anchor you. God will anchor you so we have this crazy thing in America called the Internet. I don't know if you guys have heard of it. You guys heard it?

You guys hip to the Internet yet? It's coming. It's going to be a big thing. It's going to stay around a little bit, I think so. The Internet is a wonderful thing.

I think it's an incredible thing. So I had a lawnmower that stopped working a couple of years ago. I don't know anything about anything. And so I had a lawnmower that stopped working a couple years ago. And so I just beep, boop, boop, boop, boop.

Hey, Internet. My lawnmower stopped working. And then 45 minutes later, my lawnmower worked because I had this cool piece of information that was like, here, try this. Take this thing apart. Here, turn this thing upside down.

Whatever, whatever. And so I tried a couple of things, and then it started working. I think that's awesome. I think that's incredible. You know what else you can find on the Internet?

Everything else. Anything. Absolutely anything. Whether it's right or not, whether it's true or not, you can find it, and you can find documentation to back it up, and you can find somebody with a doctor in front of their name that will stamp it as certified. You know what else is crazy about the Internet?

It does this really wild thing where the minute you spend any time on a thing, that's all it feeds you for a while. And so if I'm a doubting Christian and I find this little, you know, I'm looking up lawnmower parts or whatever, it'll suggest other stuff to me. And if I've ever typed in the question, like, is God real? It'll give me a whole bunch of stuff. And if I'm a doubting Christian, then the headline that I might see would be, proof that God is real.

God has been proven false. Wait, what? Hang on. Let me see this. Boop.

And then Dr. Whoever, whoever will go through this, whatever it is. And the truth of the matter is that Dr. Whoever, whoever is potentially just making money. It doesn't matter what they're saying.

But the idea that if I spend just. Even If I spend 60 seconds and I go, this dude is not even talking about what he said he was talking about or this, you know, dude doesn't make any sense or whatever, whatever. You know What? The next 89 videos, I'm gonna get.

Proof that God is not real. Proof that God is not real. It's built in a way that it just feeds us our Fears. It's built in a way that once we've made an idea and once we've kind of come to this conclusion, that it actually reinforces our ideas. And so I think this is an incredibly dangerous thing.

I'm gonna scripture hop for a second, so my poor slide guy is gonna be mad at me because I want to go to Ephesians 4 first so that we may no longer be children. Tossed to and fro by the waves and carried by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. We in America are as awesome as America is at also the hardest time to know what's true in human history.

Everything is supported, if you look for it, every idea.

And so we are. This is one of our biggest dangers. I think this is one of our most incredible dangers. More importantly, this is one of the biggest dangers for our children. If you've got children that are growing up, this one terrifies me.

I've got a daughter with a phone. This one terrifies me. Tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, deceitful schemes. This is so terrifying because it's like building a house on the sand.

It's. I do my best to build my reality, my truth. I hate my truth. Your truth, that language, I hate it. In case you can't tell.

So this idea, I'm going to build my fortress. I'm going to build it as strong as I can. Matthew 7. Everyone then, who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.

It was built on a solid foundation. And so it doesn't fall down, the foundation doesn't wash away. This idea of being thrown around by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. The danger in all of those is when the flood waters come, your house falls down. The reality that you built your truth turns out not to be true, but built on the truth.

There's no flood water that can take that away. There's no river that can sweep you away. So that's why this part is a little different.

And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. So we started out in the water, but now we're in the river. The danger of a river is different than the danger of big water. River will just take you that way you don't know where you're going to end up. But God anchors us.

Christ anchors us into what is true, into what is eternal. Because there does come a point where we are answerable to our actions. There does come a point where we are answerable to the things that we have done. So one of the things that's, I think, incredible about Christianity is that it's the only faith, is the only explanation of God, where God does all the work, where God makes sure I get to where I'm supposed to go. God did all the work.

God made the sacrifice. Jesus accepted the sacrifice. Jesus defeated death. He stood back up, and then he held his hand out to me and offered me a trade. My imperfection for his perfection, to make sure I get to God.

Hebrews 6. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf. What that means is Pastor Gary, he's got a cool illustration that I like. Where we know, historically, Jesus is anchored in history. We know Jesus existed.

He lived, he died, he got back up. Historically, we tie a rope around that, and then we know into eternity he's anchored. Jesus is never going anywhere. God's never going anywhere. He's not going to change.

He's not going to change his mind. He's anchored there. And so we have this tight rope that if we just hang onto it, gets us into God's living room, it gets us into God's family. So Jesus has already come. He already did all the work, and he's waiting at the finish line for me.

Silly old me.

And as long as I hold onto this rope, no river can wash me around, no wind of doctrine can misguide me.

So we can walk fearlessly forward. I can walk fearlessly forward because I know past the water, past the river, past the fire, is eternity with God.

And I'm going to get there because as long as I'm with God, there is nothing that can stop him.

So we can walk fearlessly forward because God's with us. We walk fearlessly forward because God anchors us. And God will protect us.

God will protect you. God will protect you. Whatever it is that you're afraid of right now, God will protect you. Whatever it is you think you can't beat, God will protect you. Whatever you think you might lose to, God will protect you.

God will protect you.

When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned. The flames shall not consume you. So there's two pieces of this. And I want to hit them both because it's actually two different words in the source material. And so the first piece right there, when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned.

That word is like, to be marked by fire, to be burned. Like, to be, like, branded. To be like. It's specific. It's like a local.

To be marked by fire, to be branded. And then the second one is to be consumed, turn to ashes. So there are two different things. So this is not only promising. When you walk through the fire, that thing that.

Let's be honest. So when I was a kid, I set the fire. Some woods on fire, maybe. Allegedly. I blame my sister because she was there.

Yes. She's four years younger than me. But you know something? That's really scary, being in the middle of woods that are on fire. Boy, those flames got big fast.

I try to think walking through my life, going through the woods by itself is scary enough. Y'all are some backcountry people. So you're not scared of woods? I'm not particularly afraid of woods myself, but set them on fire, I'm scared of them. This idea of walking into something that you know is on fire, God, what do I do with this?

Go through it. You think your fire is bigger than me? I'll part the fire, too. You'll walk through this fire. Not only will this fire not consume you, it won't even mark you when you get to the other side of it.

It will have no claim on you whatsoever. It will not even brand your skin when you get to the other side of whatever the challenge, whatever your fire is, whatever your flames, this idea, this thing that you're so afraid of, you're not only going to come through it, you're going to come through it. And nobody that sees it, that sees you, is going to identify you with that thing. It's not going to leave a mark on you. Now, this is not to say that you can't volunteer up.

Look, here's some fires I've been through. I would challenge all of you to be honest with your past, to just start where you are right now. That's fine. Especially if you're a non believer. One of the biggest, I think, issues that non believers have is that they feel like they have to fix themselves before they can come to God.

Don't do that. Don't do that. God will fix you. God bought you. He bought you broken.

He bought you now. He bought you already. He bought you 2,000 years ago. And so don't feel like, you have to fix this thing about you. And certainly believers don't feel like you have to hide the person that you were.

All that being said, I am not the person that I was. God is bigger than me. God has cleaned me all the burns that I gave myself when I walked with myself. I carried all of those brands. I carried every mark.

But when God cleaned me, when I walk with God, those things are no longer me.

It's okay that I went through them. It's okay that I messed up. It's okay that you messed up. But in God, you are a new creation. You're not marked by your past.

Your past does not signify you. It does not identify you. Walk with God. Be fearless. God protects you.

Proverbs 30:5. Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. The arrows that are coming at you, they cannot harm you.

In God. God will protect you. Do you think your arrows are bigger than me?

2nd Thessalonians, verse 3. But the Lord is faithful. He will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one. I want to take a second.

The evil one.

Somebody in here has that voice right behind your ear.

It's the evil one. It's that doubt. It's that addiction. It's that whatever, that thing you did, whatever it is, there's this voice that won't let you go.

And you can only get so far in your walk with God because that voice keeps saying, yeah, but you remember that thing. Yeah, but that thing that you still struggle with? Yeah, but I challenge you right now.

Put on the armor of God.

Put on the armor of God. That little voice. You think that little voice is bigger than me? That little voice is nothing. That little voice is the wind.

That little voice is ash.

God will protect you. God will protect you. That's the encouragement. Here's the challenge.

Walk through it. Whatever it is that you've got in front of you, walk through it. Walk through it knowing that God will protect you. Be fearless. God will protect you.

God's not gonna leave you. You're not gonna suddenly find yourself alone. And if you're anchored to God, you're not gonna find yourself blown off course. And when you find yourself in the middle of the fire, God will not let you be burned. He will not let you be consumed.

I think of. So we'll do it. We'll do a Bible pop quiz. You ready? All right.

Get your hands ready. I'm watching. All right, I'm Going to say three names. Raise your hand if you know who I'm talking about. Azariah, Hananiah, Mishael.

1, 2, 2. Some of them are in the tech booth. They were here in the first service. They're cheaters. All right, now I'm going to throw three names.

Raise your hand if you know who I'm talking about. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. All right. Way more. All right, all right.

Now this is the self honesty time. How many of you thought it was Abednego, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and not Abednego?

There's a couple of little baby hands that went up. It's actually Abednego, and here's why that's important. Azariah, Hananiah, Mishael are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were the Babylonian names that they were given once they were brought into slavery and they were stripped of their actual names. Their actual names are.

They mean things like Walks with God, is a servant of God. Abednego, for instance, is a slave of Nego, is one of the false gods of the Babylonian people. So the names, unfortunately the names that we know these guys by are insult names given to them by their captors. So I challenge you going forward to just, at least in your brain, remember this. Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael, their godly names and not their taunting names that they were given.

That being said, you probably understand why I brought them up. Because they were people of great faith and standing in front of Nebuchadnezzar, king, powerful, Babylonian, all powerful, they would not relent on their faith. And they were thrown into a furnace of fire and they walked back out unmarked, literally, very specifically, this thing that is promised here. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, the flames shall not consume you.

I'm humbled by Azariah, Hananiah and Mishael because I wonder if I would have the strength to walk into the flesh fire, or if I would let my watered down version of faith tell me it's okay to make this one exception today to save my life. Because if they kill me today, who would evangelize next week, next month? And so in faced with this, this idea, things hit me sometimes when I'm reading especially Old Testament stuff, because I read it like it's old. And I completely forget that right now there are Christians in this world who today will be given the option, reject your Faith or be killed today.

Reject your faith or I will shoot you. Reject your faith.

I wonder if I have that kind of faith.

Do you feel like me?

But I'm encouraged because what that means is I'm not done growing yet. Because maybe today I'm not there. That means I still got work to do. I'm going to keep walking with God. I'm going to keep walking with God because fortunately for me, today I know I'm just going to go have lunch or whatever, I'm not going to be confronted with that.

But in four years, in eight years and 12 years, might I be confronted with that? Sure. And I hope it is my prayer that in four years, eight years, 12 years, I will be Azariah, Hananiah and Mishael. And so if you are like me, if you're comfortable in your faith, but maybe when confronted with what it could be, you have doubts. Or maybe you just have doubts in the day to day, on Tuesday, 11:30 or whatever, or wherever you are.

God's bigger God will get you there. Walk with God, especially if you have doubts. Walk with God because God will anchor you, especially if you're afraid. Walk with God because God will protect you. Especially if you feel alone.

Walk with God because God will always be there.

Wherever you are in your faith, walk.

Walk forward fearlessly.

Let's start 2025. Hey, Happy New Year, by the way.

Let's start 2025 intentionally. Let's start at fearless.

Let's start at completely unafraid. Let's start at knowing that whatever's coming at you, whatever big water is waiting for you, whatever raging river is waiting for you, whatever fire is waiting for you, whatever the challenge that you're going to go through in the next three. Cause I think today's the fifth.

We can go forward and not only are we not gonna run away from that, we're not even gonna go around it. God says, go through it. This big water, go through it. Make that deal with yourself, make that deal with God. Walk forward fearlessly.

No more fear, no more running, no more making excuses because God's bigger than you think. Whatever it is you're going through is bigger than me. I do this thing and maybe you can take this tool where if I'm ever starting to doubt or if I'm ever starting to get worried or whatever it is, what I do is I make a truth statement. I make a negative truth statement against God. The doubt that I'm having, what I do is I declare it as a true statement.

To say like God is not strong enough to beat this thing. God is too little to handle this thing. God doesn't care enough about me to get me through this. God, whatever it is, I challenge you to do this because even those three times that I said it just now, I wasn't even actually thinking of a thing. But it makes my skin crawl to say those words.

God is not big enough. The Holy Spirit in my body rejects that so intensely that it makes like the hair on my arms stand up. It makes me feel gross. And so that's what I challenge you guys with. So when you're going forward, if you're running into a fear, if you're running into a doubt, if you're running into something, make that truth claim.

I don't think God is big enough for this. God is not powerful enough for this. This thing is bigger than God. You'll find that your spirit rejects it wholeheartedly because it knows that it's not true. Because God's bigger than whatever it is that you're running up against.

And so when you say the negative version of it and it feels gross and you know it's wrong, then you know the opposite is true. Amen.

Let's walk forward fearlessly. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for today. Thank you for this incredible building you have given us to worship you in. Help us to be a believer body.

Help us to be soldiers that would be worshiping you on this 25 degree morning even if we didn't have a building. Help us to be worshipers in the rain. Help us to be worshipers in the storm. If you're here with me today and you want God in your life, you've been listening to me and thinking, man, if only I even had a God to hold onto. That is what I want.

I want to be able to walk forward fearlessly. But I don't even know God. But I wanna. I want that strength. I want that protection.

I have incredible news. God will always be there for you. He's there for you right now. Pray with me, Father God. I'm a sinner.

I've sinned against you. I've turned against you. I've made terrible decisions. I've done terrible things, Father God. But I want to be with you.

I know that you're bigger, Father God. I know that you sent your son Jesus as a sacrifice for my sin. And I know that Jesus was bigger than death. And he got up and through his resurrection, I know that you promised me eternity with you, that I am your child. That you asking me to make that trade.

Father God, I want that trade. I want your perfection for my imperfection. If you pray that with me right now. Welcome to the family. Congratulations.

Now let's get to work. Walk forward fearlessly. And if maybe you've been a person of faith for a while, and maybe your faith is stagnated, maybe that's where your deep waters is. It's just the sort of stillness, numbness of faith. Father God, help me to get on fire for you again.

Father God. Put people in my life that are going to fan the flames. Father God, send me a wind. Send me a wind to give me a direction. Father God, I want to serve you again like I did when I first came to faith.

If you're a person that feels like you have a very strong faith, pray this with me. Father God, I'm ready. Send me anywhere. Give me the broken ones. Give me the hurt ones.

Send me to the land where it's dangerous. Send me to where they hadn't heard your name yet. Father God, let me be the first one, the first pair of lips to ever speak your name.

Father God, put me in front of the ones who are smarter than me. Father God, give me the ones that are zealous against you. And then strengthen me. I'm going to need you. Father God, thank you for the opportunity this morning to worship you.

Thank you for being a God that's worth worshiping. Thank you for being a God that's so powerful that there is nothing that can overcome you, that there is nothing that we have to be afraid of. And thank you for being a God that is so loving, that little old me you call me by name. Call me home.

We love you so much. Amen.